Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9833304" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think that the slavery is inherently a problem, but it's not a problem that can't be handled. One of the key play experiences for Dark Sun to me is the temptation to do the easy thing that makes the world a worse place. Defiling is the vanguard example: cast a spell, kill the world. You can avoid defiling by putting in some work.Slavery is within that context: build a castle, dehumanize someone. By metaphor, you can avoid slavery by putting in some work. Maybe your castle takes longer to build, maybe it's more expensive, maybe both. But, whenever you put the temptation in a game to dehumanize someone in the game, you're entering "this is a problem" territory. Real people are dehumanized in brutal ways, both historically and currently, and using that as fuel for magic wizard fun times is pretty disrespectful, even if it's Clearly Evil Villain Stuff. ...And if you add the dimension that this Clearly Evil Villain Stuff, in a Dark Sun game, is at its most compelling when it's a good option for a PC to accomplish their goals, that you want to kind of encourage people to do the Clearly Evil Villain Stuff, that you want to make avoiding that kind of HARD...it gets to be a bigger problem.Is it OK to run an evil character in Dark Sun who uses the expedient method to achieve their goals? Is it OK to play a ruthless defiler who slays all her rivals and tips the world to ash in the process? Is that a story that's on the table? If so, is it OK to play a brutal slave merchant who does the same? I think we can all agree that this is Kind Of a Problem. There are some possible solutions, but nothing that's a clear win. Exclude these options and now we don't really have a struggle in play between doing good and doing evil. Include them, and then when the 13 year old who plays the brutal slave merchant starts quoting from the Bell Curve on X The Everything App....things get messy.I think my favorite solution is probably some kind of mature content warning, combined with some good DM advice on how to treat the Clearly Evil Villain Stuff your PC's might do in play, but that's not perfect (that edgelord 13 year old won't be stopped, and let's be honest, that edgelord 40 year old will be even worse; it also kind of messes with your D&D target audience, since it rules out a lot of high school kids). The easier solution is just to rule out PC's doing Clearly Evil Villain Stuff. Every mage is a Preserver, no Bastion is ever built with slave labor, etc. Weaker for the game, but understandable, at least.</blockquote>

Verification