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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8527144" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I think there's quite a difference between art that seeks to provoke thought about difficult topics and art that only does so accidentally. I think each can lead to interesting conversations and ideas, but in the case of D&amp;D, while there may be examples of both, the ones that tend to stick out are the ones that were accidental. To revisit the Keep on the Borderlands, Gygax didn't put the non-combatant orcs in there to challenge ideas of what would be morally right for the PCs to do, or to make people think about colonialism or related ideas. He put them there simply to maintain verisimilitude...to explain where these orcs keep coming from. Now, years later, the inclusion of those non-combatant orcs actually has led to a discussion about colonialism and related topics as they relate to gaming and fiction. So eventually, we kind of got there. I think if he had written it with the care and intent necessary to approach such a topic, then chances are it would have provoked these kinds of questions for many readers/GMs/players immediately. I think it really is about the intention of the author for presenting the material in the first place. If the intention is to provoke thought by presenting something problematic, then I think that's more easily understood and processed by the audience. As it reads, that's not at all what's going on, and so it's the kind of example where we can look at it and decide &quot;we should try and avoid this kind of thing going forward&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 8527144, member: 6785785"] I think there's quite a difference between art that seeks to provoke thought about difficult topics and art that only does so accidentally. I think each can lead to interesting conversations and ideas, but in the case of D&D, while there may be examples of both, the ones that tend to stick out are the ones that were accidental. To revisit the Keep on the Borderlands, Gygax didn't put the non-combatant orcs in there to challenge ideas of what would be morally right for the PCs to do, or to make people think about colonialism or related ideas. He put them there simply to maintain verisimilitude...to explain where these orcs keep coming from. Now, years later, the inclusion of those non-combatant orcs actually has led to a discussion about colonialism and related topics as they relate to gaming and fiction. So eventually, we kind of got there. I think if he had written it with the care and intent necessary to approach such a topic, then chances are it would have provoked these kinds of questions for many readers/GMs/players immediately. I think it really is about the intention of the author for presenting the material in the first place. If the intention is to provoke thought by presenting something problematic, then I think that's more easily understood and processed by the audience. As it reads, that's not at all what's going on, and so it's the kind of example where we can look at it and decide "we should try and avoid this kind of thing going forward". [/QUOTE]

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