What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Ruin Explorer]

There would be no threat of slavers and no slavers to directly fight.

What?

Why do you think people aren't impressed/kidnapped/tricked/etc into indentured servitude? Because historically they absolutely have been.

Gladiators as indentured servants can kind of work in a horrific ultra-capitalism critique/spin but it is a lot different than the typical Spartacus slave gladiator setup that Dark Sun traditionally has.

Dude, wow.

Let me clear - a lot of gladiators were effectively indentured servants. Some were slaves who had no hope, but many contracts that they could potentially buy or time their way out of - and many did! That you think it's a huge difference is just an ignorance re: history. I don't mean that in a mean way, because it's common not to know, but still.

You don't breed muls for indentured servitude.

I agree. And that's a good thing.

There is absolutely no possibility that ANY future version of Dark Sun will have Muls as a "bred" race. That's just not going to happen.

Escaping indentured servitude and freeing people from indentured servitude would have a significantly different connotation than from full on chattel slavery.

Not hugely.

Many, perhaps most indentured servants didn't outlive their term of servitude. If it's not horrific enough for you I dunno what to say. That you compare it to "wage slavery" is incredibly silly though.

 

[Voadam]

Just like a hypothetical 5e Dark Sun would presumably leave slavery out.

Not quite just like.

I think The Wall was a sentence or two from the SCAG. It was not in the 1e FR at all I believe. It is a planar afterlife cosmology detail developed for a video game and novel plot line long after the core setting had been established.

Slavery seems significantly a bigger core aspect of Dark Sun than the Wall is for the Realms.

It would be conceivable to have gladiators with no mention of slavery, to not mention that Tyr freed its slaves after the death of its Sorcerer King, and to not mention slave tribes at all, to not create an ex-slave background, to focus the adventure on Dark Sun things completely unrelated to slavers and freeing slaves, but it seems a bit more of a stand out thing to not reference than not addressing a cosmological afterlife setting detail.

 

[Irlo]

Sure, but are you and others saying that, regardless of your personal ability to make sweeping changes, you want these topics to be off-limits in published material?

No, I’m not saying that. I can’t speak definitively for others, but based on what I’m reading here … no, no one is saying that they want publishers to be prohibited from including objectionable content.

I can say that I don’t want something — and I can say why I think it’s a bad idea to include it — without suggesting that it be made off-limits.

 

[Willie the Duck]

No, I’m not saying that. I can’t speak definitively for others, but based on what I’m reading here … no, no one is saying that they want publishers to be prohibited from including objectionable content.

I can say that I don’t want something — and I can say why I think it’s a bad idea to include it — without suggesting that it be made off-limits.

I think that gets lost in these discussions. When people don't say otherwise, I tend to impute a 'I would prefer and advocate that...' before position statements. It tends to cut down on falsely assuming others are trying to dictate terms to everyone else.

 

[the Jester]

The hobby has been that way since day 1. Not everyone is comfortable running or playing in evil campaigns or even with real people. The solution has never been to remove evil from the player options and has always been to just not play it.

I've heard of a lot of games where there is a "no evil pcs" rule.

 

[Maxperson]

You yourself said that without slavery, it wouldn't be Dark Sun.

And without salt humans wouldn't exist on Earth. Earth is not the salt planet. Dark Sun is not the slavery setting. Stop misrepresenting.

 

[Maxperson]

So you didn't say that Dark Sun wouldn't be Dark Sun without slavery, thus meaning that my argument that it would be failed? Really?

Yes, really. You had no argument. You simply asked a question, which I answered.

First off, you didn't answer my question. Is the Forgotten Realms setting no longer truly the Forgotten Realms now that the Wall has officially been removed?

I did answer it.

Secondly, doesn't this just mean that, if WotC were to produce a slave-free Dark Sun, you would be fully capable of adding it back in? Especially since you have all of the 2e and 4e books to show you how?

Sure I could add it back in. I shouldn't have to. There's no good reason to eliminate it. It doesn't support slavery in any way. It doesn't encourage players to play slavers. People with an issue with slavery can have it not exist at their table.

Thirdly, it doesn't bother you at all that the Wall is attacking a group of people who actually exist in real life? I'm not going to ask what your religious beliefs are, but as an atheist, it bothers me that this game thinks people like me deserve to be punished and potentially get turned into a demon. I get enough of that $#!% in real life.

The wall isn't attacking anyone in real life. D&D is not real life. The gods are KNOWN to be real in D&D. And it isn't a matter of atheism. If you believed in the gods, yet chose not to venerate/respect them, you ended up in the wall. Faithless =/= unbeliever.

Slavery wasn't included in Dark Sun because it was important to the setting or because the setting needs it. It was added because it's a trope. It's only "important" inasmuch as every swords-and-sandals setting storyline has slaves. Which means that having slaves in Dark Sun is typical and, as a result, boring. It's up there with having ever advisor to the king be a goatee-sporting traitor.

Frankly, it doesn't matter why it was added. You might be right with that statement, or you might be wrong. It's not relevant. It was added and IS an integral part of the setting, regardless of why.

 

[Maxperson]

I've heard of a lot of games where there is a "no evil pcs" rule.

Absolutely. That's exactly my point. The answer isn't removal by the company. The answer is removal by the table. I have played in and run evil campaigns or mixed campaigns where there is an evil PC. I have also played under DMs who don't allow evil because it bothers them. The game, though, allows evil by RAW and has since day 1.

 

[Bagpuss]

Dark Sun was last released in 2010 and was used in public play in 2011.
So what changed in the last 12 years to make it "controversial"?

Twitter.

 

[Voadam]

What?

Why do you think people aren't impressed/kidnapped/tricked/etc into indentured servitude? Because historically they absolutely have been.

Because definitionally indentured servitude is serving a period of time with unpaid labor either through a contract or through a judicial sentence.

Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, or it may be imposed as a judicial punishment. Historically, it has been used to pay for apprenticeships, typically when an apprentice agreed to work for free for a master tradesman to learn a trade (similar to a modern internship but for a fixed length of time, usually seven years or less). Later it was also used as a way for a person to pay the cost of transportation to colonies in the Americas.

While kidnapping was known to happen to involuntarily get people into the indentured servant track, it is not what first comes to mind when I think of indentured servants or of slavers seeking prey.

Dude, wow.

Let me clear - a lot of gladiators were effectively indentured servants. Some were slaves who had no hope, but many contracts that they could potentially buy or time their way out of - and many did! That you think it's a huge difference is just an ignorance re: history. I don't mean that in a mean way, because it's common not to know, but still.

Some free people became gladiators as a profession. Some sold themselves into slavery to pay debts and became gladiators that way.

I would think of people judicially condemned to be gladiators as not being indentured servants but as condemned to being slaves.

Spartacus, my example of a slave gladiator you are saying wow about, was a soldier prisoner enslaved gladiator.

If gladiators in Dark Sun were solely contractors for me that would bring to mind either desperately poor people doing anything for a buck in a harsh free economy, or an American Gladiator celebrity type of thing in the vein of the more modern fantasy X-Crawl.