What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Faolyn]

I am familiar with the one drop rule, it's on all the hot sauce bottles.

Unless you're joking, it doesn't sound like you're actually familiar with it.

In case you're not joking and honestly don't know what it means... if a white person could be said to have any amount of non-white heritage, even generations back, then you weren't considered white. You would be subject to laws that affected non-white people, if others knew about it, and may not be able to get the jobs you want, marry whom you wanted, or live where you wanted. You could lose friends and be ostracized from your extended family.

As to your arachnophobia player, I would then introduce a spider who'd sympathize with her. Upon learning of her phobia he would tell her, "Sorry, but this is what I am. What I resent is your stereotyping me, and I would appreciate your treating me as an individual."

So, trivialize a player's legitimate, out-of-character phobia and mock the player all at the same time?

What you're saying would work only if it were an in-character phobia, like, they took the Phobia disadvantage and got points for it or something. If it's an out-of-character phobia, then what you're saying is heartless, clumsy, ill-intentioned, and not even remotely going to help the player one bit. Pro tip: you are not a therapist (and if you are, you shouldn't be gaming with your clients), and you are not qualified to help anyone get over their fears.

 

[Perambulator]

All this "we" and "our", as if we had to all do the same thing.

Indeed, we can turn this around a bit, and note a trope I've often seen discussed. When many writers of fiction want to show a character is "tough", they do so by introducing trauma into their backstory. With female characters ,the go-to trauma seems to be sexual assault.

Because, yes, sexual assault is a real thing. Even a common one, in the real world. But it is also super easy to use. Cheap, even, if not handled with sensitivity and some understanding of the realities, which are often not in evidence. When it becomes common, but handled poorly, the result is unsatisfying, even inslulting to real-world survivors of the trauma.

I have witnessed my wife pick up a book, and nearly instantly physically toss a book aside, saying, "Welp, by page three, the main character has been raped. I'm done."

So, using these controversial, adult, or historical issues can be fraught - they give you the opportunity to make characters that feel more real... at the cost of not actually understanding the reality.



This kind of weird skew of the world sometimes happens - if you like a thing, or find it valuable, it suddenly becomes required. But it isn't like historical injustice is the only valid source of conflict!

If a bunch of PCs goes out after a dragon that's been ravaging the countryside, or to lift everlasting night that has draped the land in everlasting winter, there's no "historical crime" (as I think you are using the term) involved. Heroism is about taking personal risk for the benefit of others - that can be done fighting slavery, or rescuing someone from drownings in raging rapids.



Have an adult discussion with the players about what bothers them, and asking about what is fun, what is tolerable, and what isn't, and how they'd like it handled.

"Sharon's dad had always been sickly, so she had to be tough to handle the fools who would abuse him." That is how I would handle it.

 

[Perambulator]

What you were is never as important as what you are.

 

[Minion X]

Unless you're joking, it doesn't sound like you're actually familiar with it.

In case you're not joking and honestly don't know what it means... if a white person could be said to have any amount of non-white heritage, even generations back, then you weren't considered white. You would be subject to laws that affected non-white people, if others knew about it, and may not be able to get the jobs you want, marry whom you wanted, or live where you wanted. You could lose friends and be ostracized from your extended family.

Some people outside of the US do take a passing interest in your quaint colonial customs, and it's not the only nation to implement similar policies, like South Africa with its pencil tests that led to at least one publicized case where a girl born to white parents was classified as colored and ended up on the other side of the apartheid divide. It is rather different from the other European colonies in America that instead graded people on a social scale of whiteness and blackness, with mulattos, quartettos and so on, and where men would on occasion recognize their extramarital mixed-race sons, as in the famous examples of Joseph Bologne and Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. Actually, I am not familiar with any such cases involving high-status men in the US though. There are well-known ones like Thomas Jefferson's children with his wife's slave half-sister, but they were never officially recognized by their father.

 

[Minion X]

There’s a TV show here that explores & reveals the DNA and family histories of celebrities. They go back centuries. So far, not one person’s known recorded history been complete or fully accurate. There’s always gaps, misattributions, or outright fables in the records.

I know it's really bad form, but I can't not say that American celebrities are probably the worst example you can pick if you want a clear family tree. Professions like musician and actor really screams riff-raff.

 

[Blue Orange]

From what I've read (though I can't find a citation, so I wonder) Shadow Over Innsmouth was inspired by Lovecraft finding out he was possibly part Welsh. Fear of mental illness probably did play a role too--both his parents died in a mental hospital. No reason anyone, especially a horror author, couldn't have more than one lifelong fear.

The one-drop rule was, in fact, a very serious and dark part of American history, and went to bizarre lengths. There was a play with a name I can't put here (but it was by Dion Boucicault and premiered in 1859) where a character is of one eighth African ancestry, and in the American version she kills herself because she knows she and her (white) fiancee can never be together...and to avoid portraying a mixed marriage. In the British version, they marry and live happily ever after. (It wasn't usually made law until the post-Civil War Jim Crow era though.)

It's often confusing to people from Latin America, which has more of a continuum and a whole bunch of intermediate terms.

 

[Minion X]

From what I've read (though I can't find a citation, so I wonder) Shadow Over Innsmouth was inspired by Lovecraft finding out he was possibly part Welsh. Fear of mental illness probably did play a role too--both his parents died in a mental hospital. No reason anyone, especially a horror author, couldn't have more than one lifelong fear.

It would be a hilarious explanation that meets both arguments halfway. At the same time it leaves you wondering how Lovecraft got along perfectly well with Howard who loved to write stories about Gaelic heroes.

 

[Kaodi]

Unique, sure. But unique doesn't always mean high-quality. I like Lovecraft's concept and I really like some of his stories (I particularly enjoy The Colour Out Of Space and The Dunwich Horror), but his writing style is often tiresome.


I have a sneaking suspicion that TSR wouldn't have had an "everybody's bi" setting even without any sort of moral panic. The time period wouldn't have allowed for that. It would have been watered down to straight girl prostitutes for the straight-and-manly adventurers, while the female adventurers would go shopping or whatever.

I could easily see an "everybody's bi" setting leading to an objection that it trivialized the fact that who you are attracted to is not a choice; just a gentler way of suggesting that less common sorts of sexuality are just a lifestyle choice and thus fair grounds for condemnation.

 

[Faolyn]

I could easily see an "everybody's bi" setting leading to an objection that it trivialized the fact that who you are attracted to is not a choice; just a gentler way of suggesting that less common sorts of sexuality are just a lifestyle choice and thus fair grounds for condemnation.

Good point. It would take a very careful hand to create a world where nobody is going to condemn you for whatever your sexuality or gender happens to be or how much or how little you're willing to experiment and manages to get around noble lineages and need to produce heirs and the like that medieval fantasy generally requires. It can be done, but it would be hard to do right and probably impossible to have done right back in the 80s.

 

[Blue Orange]

It would be a hilarious explanation that meets both arguments halfway. At the same time it leaves you wondering how Lovecraft got along perfectly well with Howard who loved to write stories about Gaelic heroes.

It didn't make him Gaelic, did it?

You're also giving the guy a little too much credit (or expecting too much) for intellectual consistency. He ignored his antisemitism long enough to marry a Jewish lady (and be a lousy husband, by all accounts). Most people aren't that tied to their convictions--they'll gladly make exceptions to their rules for people they hate or like. "Oh, but see, this one's different, see..."