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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8527665">Fundamentally Hawkeye, what I am saying is: there is a phrase in the hobby, and that phrase is "This thing causes harm", This is usually followed by some kind of call to action about the thing. I am a let less concerned about lose uses of harm, hurt, etc. And more concerned about this particular use, because it doesn't seem to get a lot of examination when it is used, but it also appears to hold a lot of rhetorical power. I think that is worth commenting on . It isn't the end of the discussion, but it means we should drill down when someone says "This causes harm" and ask what they mean, whether harm is the best term to describe what they are talking about, etc. And this is a phrase I hear and see used all the time, and it very consistently quiets people (so I do think discussing is helpful: but I agree we don't need any more discussion of it than we've had here, it is something of a side point). I do get there can be problems. But there can also be hysteria around these kinds of issues, and I think people have a tendency to rush towards poorly thought out solutions. I don't think for example, that an old product with content that could be labeled problematic, that is clearly a product of its time, is much of a barrier to the hobby in a real sense anymore. And I think intelligent people can look at these historical products and deduce this for themselves without WOTC telling them what to think of it. Now telling people they aren't welcome, that absolutely hurts the hobby and excludes people. Having racist art certainly would discourage people. But a lot of what we are talking about is much more gray: evil orcs, tropes about barbarians versus people form cities, anachronistic or inaccurate adoption of cultural aesthetics (not mean, mocking, or racist, just anachronistic and inaccurate), plundering a dungeon, etc. And like I have been saying, if you go and talk to people who you are expressing concern about, you get very different opinions on these things. It isn't as cut and dry as I think a lot of these discussions would make it seem.</blockquote>

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