What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Justice and Rule]

I think those parts of the setting would not be the same without them, and as I said I value setting fidelity. Do they need slavery to make sense? Maybe, maybe not, I'm not deeply versed in Realms lore, but like @Bedrockgames I don't feel something has to be integral to be included and have worldbuilding value.

Yeah, but I'm trying to get at what it would do to "fidelity". People keep handwaving things in generalities, and I want people to actually explain to me why these things are important to the feel of the Realms. If it was removed, minimized... what is lost? That's what I'm trying to get to. What does slavery add here?

Oh, and I don't understand the dog picture. I only speak meme well enough to ask where the bathroom is.

The dog and its expression are self-explanatory.

I am using metaphors because this topic is about "Controversial Content" not "Slavery".

If use a singular concept like slavery as an example, then the discussion is about slavery. If I say controversial content people just ignore that and say slavery.

By speaking theoretically I'm discussing all controversial content not just a singular controversial topic.

No, because I think actually discussing different topics is way more useful than making up weird hypotheticals where there is no shared meanings and can be interpreted any given way. We can cover different topics easily and we should, because how can we talk about controversial content generally when things are often controversial for different reasons. Slavery is clearly where the topic came from in the first place, and we can hit other topics as necessary.

I think you can confirm most of my claims just by reading Greenwood's QAs on the Candlekeep site.

I have no doubt. I maintain my position.

 

[cranberry]

Sexual harassment, as far as the eye can see!

That's what really would have happened, considering that teens and young adults were the main players at the time.

Yes, you're absolutely right!

Just like putting devils in D&D resulted in Satanic worship and human sacrifice as far as the eye can see.

 

[Faolyn]

Yes, you're absolutely right!

Just like putting devils in D&D resulted in Satanic worship and human sacrifice as far as the eye can see.

I take it you are not female and you never had to game with a bunch of guys who were convinced that all female characters should have to wear chainmail bikinis like in all the art.

 

[cranberry]

I take it you are not female and you never had to game with a bunch of guys who were convinced that all female characters should have to wear chainmail bikinis like in all the art.

No, but I've played with plenty of women over the years (as early as 1982) , and I've never heard any of the males insist on such a thing whether it was at the table or privately.

I take it that you've never had anyone insist on participating in a Satanic ritual at the table?

 

[Irlo]

This thread has been going on for a long time and the conversation has evolved, but I haven't taken the opportunity to answer questions posed in the first post. Note that the questions are about what we do at our tables, not what publishers chose to include or exclude.

I am not saying we need to wallow in the horrors of slavery, colonialism, terrorism, fascism, etc... But I do think that we do not want to erase those things from our game worlds, because they give us the opportunity to create heroes that feel more real -- because in the popular imagination at least, it is rising above injustice (in all its forms) that makes heroes.

Do you scrub your world of slavery and other historical crimes? If so, how do you encourage heroism? If not, what do you do to mitigate the real potential discomfort such subjects can cause? Do you make different decisions based on the specific game or setting? Do you run historical games, and if so do you "soften" history to make it palatable?

Yes, I have eliminated some but not all historical crimes from any setting that I've used or written. Easy example: very early on (1985ish) I "scrubbed" subjugation of women, sexual assault, and disparate treatment based on sex and sexual orientation. My players had no desire to fight to overcome sexism in their fantasy games when it's a fight in real life every day. I did not need to encourage heroism. They were at the table to play heroes.

I was slower to recognize and change up aspects of racism, especially around the "half-" races, and colonialism.

I've made some mis-steps. In the early 1990s I ran a play-by-email D&D game. To head of some players' talk of brothels and harlots, I established that sex work was an abomination in the eyes of the God of Love and the God of Commerce. That shut down the unwanted eroticism, but now I cringe at my own thoughtlessness and disregard of real people. Later, I scrubbed that from my settings.

I don't run historical games, but I've pondered a few ideas and decided I would only be interested if I gave history a twist -- 1880s with magic, what-if-X-never-colonized-Y, etc. Some of those twists would certainly be changing up (what other would call scrubbing, I suppose) key aspects, some of them the ugly aspects, of real history. I would to that to avoid compromising my fun and engagement and that of my players.

I'd certainly make different decisions based on game, genre, and setting and depending on the players at the table. But some things would be off the table universally.

 

[Hussar]

Does that mean that no one should sell pepperoni then? That from now on if you want pepperoni you need to make it yourself?

Again, I refuse to dive down the rabbit hole of hyptheticals and whatabouts. What SPECIFICALLY do you think is being denied here? Stick to specific issues because otherwise, it's all navel gazing.

I brought up a specific issue - using Lovecraft in a list of inspirational reading in the 5e PHB. And several posters went off on wild tangents about Lovecraft's life, analyzing whether or not he really was racist in a specific work and various other directions. Yet not one single person has actually stepped up to address my very, VERY specific issue.

And that's how it goes with all of these conversations. We were talking about the SPECIFIC ISSUE of Dark Sun. Then it got broadened to this ludicrous position that if we don't have this one specific product, somehow that means that we're censoring all possible future products. Which, of course, ignores the fact that we actually DO have slavery in WotC products RIGHT NOW. IOW, the whole line about "losing" something is a complete red herring. Nothing is being lost. Absolutely nothing. What is being changed is the fact that facile, shallow treatments of very serious, nuanced and important issues is no longer quite as acceptable as it used to be.

But, again, you're ignoring history. The use of pepperoni, to use the analogy, MAKES PEOPLE NOT FEEL WELCOME IN THE HOBBY. Do you honestly not get that? Do you honestly not care? When people tell you, directly, that placing someone like Lovecraft in a privileged position in the books makes that person (me) feel unwelcome in the hobby, is your honest reaction simply, "Well, it doesn't bother me, so, I don't give a toss about you?"

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The point wasn't what Lovecraft would have felt had he lived long enough to this hypothetical DNA test, but what inspired The Shadow over Innsmouth.

You didn’t mention that story at all. Nor did I. So this is a bit of goalpost shifting.

Some think it reflects on miscenegation, while others (including me) believe it reflects on Lovecraft's fear of carrying some form of congential insanity, since both his mother and father were institutionalized. Since Lovecraft would be unlikely to fear having a secret African ancestor, the former theory does not mesh with the theme of a hidden heritage lurking unseen until manifesting later in life.

White supremacists didn’t fear miscegenation only with blacks. “Finding a Jew in the woodpile” (a euphemism for discovering jewish ancestors in your ancestry) was at least as horrific as finding non-Caucasian ancestors. So using that as the basis for your discounting the miscegenation hypothesis is shaky.

 

[Hussar]

I don't really care about the Forgotten Realms. I do care about setting fidelity, so if slavery was part of various cultures in the old lore, I'd prefer it to stay there. If that means we can't talk about that stuff to make a salable product, then so be it, but I'd rather they make new settings that conform to modern values than change old ones to suit. Does that answer your question?

So, it is more important to you that some imaginary place maintains its fidelity (whatever the heck that means) than making real, life, living, breathing people feel welcome in the hobby?

Seriously?

 

[Hussar]

The topic is controversial content, not just slavery. I'm trying to discuss the entire idea of controversial content not a single instance of it.

But, that's the problem. You can't lump everything into "controversial content". There is an enormous spectrum of what might be considered "controversial". Heck, Time Travel can be controversial depending on where you happen to live. So, by keeping the topic at the level of "controversial content", of course you're going to get absolutely no where. Because no one actually agrees what controversial content is, nor is there any one way of dealing with anything.

Keep it specific. That way we can actually discuss that issue. This is why you keep thinking people are shifting goalposts. You're simply talking past each other because you're working from such different contexts from whomever you happen to be talking to.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

When we were talking about blacks being considered “nonhuman”, we’re talking about white supremacists’ attitudes only, not the general population. This is a position absolutely nobody was taking.