What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Autumnal]

Hussar's right. I've been in uncomfortable situations where I just decided the best thing to do was to keep my mouth shut and walk away. If someon were offended, bothered, or otherwise uncomfortable with some aspect of the game, they'd likely not say anything.

Yup, just so. In my early years of gaming, there were aspects of the local play style that I found stressful and unpleasant. But i was a lonely nerd bad at socializing, so I kept quiet and put up with them for the sake of having a place.

 

[Imaro]

Regarding your shyness about minorities - I'd venture, and I could be wrong on this - but don't think so, that it's more difficult to tell a DM or player you don't like their playstyle than it is to tell them that you'd prefer x feature be removed from the game.

You really believe it's easier to tell a DM that you don't enjoy their playstyle as opposed to you think they should remove something because it draws on racist stereotypes, racist caricatures, or is partaking in trauma tourism? Because let's be real, the DM is going to ask why....

 

[Umbran]

I was saying epic imperial expansion is an evil that presumably people would also want to exclude.

That presumption is a problem. Your presumption becomes a sort of strawman, and folks start arguing over a thing that nobody ever actually said they wanted. Restating another's position inaccurately, or with additions, tends to drive internet discussions to poles, lacking nuance.

So, maybe don't presume much. Maybe ask if that's something folks would want excluded.

I think you'll find most of the positions around here aren't about absolute exclusion, but are more about careful choice, respect, and care in using such material. The extra effort required to do the subject well is maybe more than is really called for in most game products - which is why I think WotC and Paizo have chosen to leave those things out.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That presumption is a problem. Your presumption becomes a sort of strawman, and folks start arguing over a thing that nobody ever actually said they wanted. Restating another's position inaccurate, or with additions, tends to drive internet discussions to poles, lacking nuance.

So, maybe don't presume much. Maybe ask if that's something folks would want excluded.

I think you'll find most of the positions around here aren't about absolute exclusion, but are more about careful choice, respect, and care in using such material. The extra effort required to do the subject well is maybe more than is really called for in most game products - which is why I think WotC and Paizo have chosen to leave those things out.

You are right. I thought you were saying it is better to focus on individual evil abd exclude societal but looking back at it I misunderstood. My apologies

 

[MGibster]

I mean, there was a major row when a well-known DM basically narrated a sexual assault on a character on a stream and basically no one let's on how bad they felt until they were off-camera. That sort of situation isn't completely comparable, but there is often a lot of pressure to go along with something even if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

I think a lot of people are averse to conflict, in part, because they've been inculcated with a strong desire to to behave in a polite manner and keep the peace at all costs. What ends up happening is that people avoid having unpleasant conversations because it's difficult. It's not easy to tell someone they're doing something wrong especially in a social setting with multiple people some of whom might be virtual strangers.

When I'm in an awkward social situation that I am not prepared for and have no experience with, I tend to clam up. In my particular case it's not because I'm shy or afraid of making waves, it's because I want to make sure I choose my words carefully and avoid saying something I might regret which is something that happened with alarming frequency when I was younger. i.e. I need time to process what's happening so I can formulate a correct response.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't want to rehash the Ravenloft debate around the new book, and I have no issue with it being put out in the form it was (I disagree with many of the creative choices, but I think they had a vision of it and they made it, which is fine, and a lot of talented people worked on it). But on this particular choice, I definitely think it is one of the areas of the new setting book where it loses something for me where I feel the original was more interesting. I do think this is subjective, but my point is more this isn't about things should be X or they should be Y, or that Z is too hot of a topic to even entertain anymore. For me the old Falkovnia worked great for gaming when it came up. I get that the new one shifts the focus to something else gameable (which I can at least appreciate). But I prefer having that ability to get into stories that draw on WWII, the Holocaust as well as behind the iron curtain themes. There is a lot you can do there. I don't really need an external zombie threat, when the evil in Falkovnia was actually very human and worked splendidly for adventures (it was one of a handful of domains, including Kartakass and a few others) that I used to run a lot because I found them so good for adventure ideas.

Personally, I found the old Falkovnia to be the wrong kind of horror for my table. I don't even mean nazi-horror here; I mean the extreme bleakness. My personal taste is for tiny bits of hope, not that you can win Ravenloft but that at least you can maybe get past this horror. Even if (especially if) it turns out to be a false hope, it's still hope, which makes the horror that much worse. But Falkovnia (and certain other domains, like G'Henna) were such depressing places, it kind of felt to me like the only way to get past the horror is to die, and that's not fun for me to run.

I'm not entirely sold on the 5e Falkovnia; I'd go for a combo of both versions of Falkovnia and Dread Metrol.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally, I found the old Falkovnia to be the wrong kind of horror for my table. I don't even mean nazi-horror here; I mean the extreme bleakness. My personal taste is for tiny bits of hope, not that you can win Ravenloft but that at least you can maybe get past this horror. Even if (especially if) it turns out to be a false hope, it's still hope, which makes the horror that much worse. But Falkovnia (and certain other domains, like G'Henna) were such depressing places, it kind of felt to me like the only way to get past the horror is to die, and that's not fun for me to run.

And that is fair. Tone really matters with horror and that is very individual and Falkovnia was pretty bleak. Generally speaking, I somewhat agree in the sense that I don't respond well to settings that are bleak across the board. I want some tonal variety. I guess for me, Falkovnia stood out as one the bleak domains, but it was there amid domains of many other flavors (for example running some adventures in Kartakass the going to Falkovnia has a certain feel in terms of shifting tone that I liked).

I think with Falkovnia it also lent itself to very dark campaigns. I wouldn't say there was no hope, but it is a bit like a movie set in a society where people are living in oppressive conditions. So what hope you do have is with extremely high stakes and that will tend to be pretty bleak and gray (even the films set in that kind of situation tend to be shot with a gray filter or with a gray color palette I think for that reason so your point is taken here). For me Falkovnia worked so well I was able to have a long term series of adventures (almost a mini-campaign) that got into the politics of the domain (I expanded a lot on the Drakov family and got into his possible parentage of Gabrielle Aderre---which at the time I think was just hinted at, not canon yet).

 

[Random Task]

what do we do with dominate

Some people already take this stuff out of games that have it.

 

[Lanefan]

When you have powers like Wish in the hands of mortal men, and you know some gods have been killed what makes God's special? Aren't they just slightly more powerful beings, why worthy of worship?

Depends on how the setting has its deities set up.

In mine, a mortal's Wish would bounce off a full deity much like a thrown pebble would bounce off a battleship...unless and only unless the deity in fact wanted that wish to succeed.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

which is why I think WotC and Paizo have chosen to leave those things out.

Actually, Paizo's Lost Omens Firebrands (coming out to the public in a few days) contains narrative exposition on how Cheliax has freed its slaves, but is targeting them with 'help' that creates horrendously exploitive binding contracts in ways that very much feel like someone was writing a fantasy metaphor for sharecropping or something similar. Now granted, it's still written from a very progressive viewpoint that this is a very bad thing the freedom fighters the book is about need to help fight, and I wouldn't be shocked if those passages were PoC written, but that is something that is going to be very personal to some people in the way that this thread is discussing.