What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Faolyn]

I feel like the, "this story element is tired and overused in my opinion, so no one should use and it should no longer be publishable" argument is a little selfish. Shouldn't people be allowed to make their own decisions about what to use and what to purchase?

You either misread, misunderstood, or are deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote.

 

[Minion X]

Again, “dehumanizing” is not quite the same as defining someone as “not human at all.”

It's also a spectrum. You yourself said that "some" did not consider black Africans human at all, but that was far from a majority opinion, otherwise there wouldn't have been people opposed to slavery, people who wanted to baptize and civilize them, and so on. So there would obviously have been a similar scale of hatred or acceptance for the other in similar situations, like the aforementioned Crusades or various caste systems, or how some people on opposites sides of political issues in contemporary society would deny that the other side is even human (like space lizards or soulless husks).

 

[Micah Sweet]

You either misread, misunderstood, or are deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote.

That is how I read it. "Isn't it great not to have this story element as a crutch? That makes it ok for no one to have it in a published product anymore!" If that's not what you meant, I apologize. Please explain.

 

[Minion X]

With Lovecraft it's worth noting that his work has essentially been reclaimed, though. Many PoC/minority authors love the concepts in Lovecraft despite the demented racism (and I've read suggestions that it's actually less offensive than some of the more subtle and insidious racism of later authors, because it's so incoherent and extreme).

This is a point I frequently make. Lovecraft had no need to hide his prejudices and was free to incorporate them in his published fiction since that was the style of the times, I remember picking up the Belgariad by David Eddings in my school library and even then I wasn't oblivious to his evil Mongol-style races, though I did read them voraciously. Life sure was boring before streaming and ebooks.

 

[Kaodi]

I think it's a completely hollow point (NPI) and also completely dishonest because the PCs in D&D are frequently bursting into the homes of beings to slaughter them. "Bad factions"* aren't slaughtered by "good guys" in media, note - that's not a thing. Fascists do that. Creepy spec-ops guys who are completely morally ambiguous do that. Zero Dark Thirty isn't about "good guys" getting "the bad guy". It's about an imperial power tracking down its enemy and murdering him, outside of laws and justice.

I think I agree with your general point about murderhobos basically being completely nuts; they basically operate on a kind of mobile castle doctrine where it is perfectly find to kill things and take their stuff if they appear to have even any disposition at all of defending themselves against predation by you with lethal force.

I think, however, that I would disagree that offing you know who was outside of justice. There is a reason the word is "extra-judicial" and not "extra-justicial" or somesuch.

 

[mythago]

Are you saying that having slavery in your campaign excludes other stuff from it? I'm not sure I am following you here.

The original poster complained that if you exclude “controversial” elements, you have a sadder and more limited campaign world because you can’t tell stories that depend on those elements. This is fallacious. First, we all exclude and include certain things that mean we can’t tell particular stories depending on those things. (Look at how many D&D game worlds are polytheistic; but you don’t hear many complaints about how sad it is that we now can’t tell the story of Martin Luther or of the Council of Trent.) Second, any time you include certain elements, you are excluding stories that could happen in a game world where those elements aren’t present.

 

[Faolyn]

That is how I read it. "Isn't it great not to have this story element as a crutch? That makes it ok for no one to have it in a published product anymore!" If that's not what you meant, I apologize. Please explain.

I wasn't talking Sabathius42's insistance that you need to have that element or else the end product suffers and isn't as creative as it could be. When not using a particular trope means you get a chance to be even more creative than if you had relied on it.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

You literally said there's an infinite number of colors. If you're comparing colors to stories, then there's an infinite number of stories. Any number subtracted from infinity still leaves infinity.

But more prosaically, if you can't rely on a tired trope like slavery, then you learn to be creative by bringing in other things. I have players who have a fair number of things they don't want to see in games, based on everything from phobias to trauma. I mostly run horror and sadly, some of those things make for great horror plots. For instance, possession is a no-go at our table due to religion-based trauma. But possession is also an overdone trope, so my horror games become less tired and more original by having to find plots that don't rely on it.

If you can't use red anymore, then maybe that's a good thing, because red is used far too much.

On Infinity - 1

You are interprting infinity from an arithmetic point of view. I am viewing infinity from a sets/subsets point of view.a Rather than debate math I think I'll just move on from the infinite stories part of the discussion.

On Git Gud GMing

Why would you think it's fair or reasonable to tell me I don't need to use a topic because you find it a tired trope? Double so when you have stated you use the topic yourself. I'm having a hard time not viewing this as a hypocritical double standard.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I wasn't talking Sabathius42's insistance that you need to have that element or else the end product suffers and isn't as creative as it could be. When not using a particular trope means you get a chance to be even more creative than if you had relied on it.

Please cite one single time in this thread I have said "you need to have a particular element or the product suffers".

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Please cite one single time in this thread I have said "you need to have a particular element or the product suffers".

You know what, I'm going to go with one last analogy. If we can't be in the same page after this, then it's just not going to happen.

A DnD game is a pizza.

All the different narrative choices are toppings.

This thread is about how we feel about restricting the toppings allowed to be put on pizza at the most popular pizzaria.

I am saying we should all have all the toppings available so we can build the exact pizza we like.

You are misunderstanding what I am saying to mean that every pizza should have every topping.

You are also saying I shouldn't like pepperoni on my pizza because it's overused.