What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[mythago]

I don’t think the poster was speaking of the companies but of the designers and people whose names go on the cover of the books, who talk about the games in question publicly online. I am sure many have felt those things when gauging online reaction to something they want to make, abd even more sure those who have had their name dragged through the mud publicly have felt those things (who hasn’t felt a twinge if that just opening their notifications on Twitter or Facebook at times: for people putting their creative work out in public, when the stakes have raised so significantly, those are very real reactions. I am not high profile but I have opened social media and physically felt like i was having a heart attack some days. This stuff has a real impact on people who are just trying to make games in a very niche industry (often people doing it out of live as a side gig or even as a hobby. People whose livlihoods completely depend on it, probably have much stronger reactions

You know who really feels a twinge of fear on opening their social media? Small, indie game designers who are from marginalized groups, and who are producing games that deal with their issues openly. I already linked to a thread on this very board where people lost their entire minds over an indie LARP anthology based on reading the table of contents.

And a lot of these small indie designers are dealing with exactly the "controversial" topics that people are wringing their hands about "losing". But I guess that doesn't fit the narrative of how oppressed and colorless the RPG industry is.

 

[mythago]

The following discussion seems to have reacted as if the slippery slope is a confirmed reality, and has blown out to, "OMG, we can't have any bad things! Censorship! Art!"

"OMG! Censorship! Art!"

"Hey, here are a bunch of games that deal with all of these things you're worried about losing."

"Never heard of 'em; doesn't count. OMG! Censorship! Art!"

 

[Scribe]

No which is why I am hopeful. If you check online you can see people cautious of their products looking for problematic content, and then others worried that they are "too woke" for including female NPC or sample characters, so they are certainly a target of both sides of people just looking for something to complain about.

However on the other hand you have WotC doing stuff like, actively sanitising the Dragonlance setting, rewriting the history of Lord Soth for example. Now he doesn't murder his wife and child, or leave his second wife and infant child to die in a fire, and this is the villain. They changed his history from hiding the murder of his wife and child waiting the appropriate six months of mourning before marrying his second wife. To his wife dying of natural causes, him getting married days later so got kicked out the knightly order for disrespecting his ex-wife, rather than later being found guilty of murdering his wife and exiled then.

He fails to prevent the Cataclysm and gets cursed for that, rather than cursed by the second wife falsely suspected of cheating after he leaves her and their infant child to burn to death, because the Cataclysm comes about as he abandons his quest because he believes the lies about his wife. The main villain of the setting goes from being a double wife and child murder, to disrespecting a corpse as his crime.

We all know infanticide is wrong, we all no wife beating and murder is wrong, having the evil villain of your fiction commit such acts doesn't condone it. D&D and Dragonlance in the 1980's was still aimed at the same demographic, if anything it was aimed at a younger audience, I know I was part of it. So I doubt it is to protect the children. Why do you think they sanitised it?

Seriously?

This is it right here. This is the 'disney-fication' the 'sanitization' the 'softening' whatever one wishes to call it without getting offended or offending others.

I had no idea they retconned this, and I'm now extremely glad I did not pay for this work.

Laughable.

 

[Irlo]

There is an implicit assertion in this that stepping away from the topic to please an audience is somehow different from stepping in to the topic to please an audience.

If we expect some creators to be "allowed" to address the topic, we must also expect creators to be "allowed" not to address it, and their making that choice shouldn't be a big a deal.

Well put. And there is another explicit assertion that creators are not stepping away from a topic to please an audience but rather to avoid displeasing a loud but insignificant minority. And that the creators, some would suggest, want to include the controversial subject matter, but they're scared away by the perceived threat of online abuse and impugnment.

 

[Scribe]

And there is another explicit assertion that creators are not stepping away from a topic to please an audience but rather to avoid displeasing a loud but insignificant minority. And that the creators, some would suggest, want to include the controversial subject matter, but they're scared away by the perceived threat of online abuse and impugnment.

Brink.

I’ll be frank here, the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways. And that’s the main reason we haven’t come back to it. We know it’s got a huge fan following and we have standards today that make it extraordinarily hard to be true to the source material and also meet our ethical and inclusion standards... We know there’s love out there for it and god we would love to make those people happy, and also we gotta be responsible.

It seems clear to me, that they dont want the smoke (from "both sides"), and its as simple as that.

 

[mythago]

This is it right here. This is the 'disney-fication' the 'sanitization' the 'softening' whatever one wishes to call it without getting offended or offending others.

I'm old enough to remember when complaints about, say, RPG supplements with pin-up covers or rulebooks with gross stereotypical NPCs were met with derisive sneers that "this is what sells" and "they're just doing what the market demands" and "maybe if you don't like it go write your own game". Now that the market has changed, all of a sudden everybody is very concerned about sanitizing and Art.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm old enough to remember when complaints about, say, RPG supplements with pin-up covers or rulebooks with gross stereotypical NPCs were met with derisive sneers that "this is what sells" and "they're just doing what the market demands" and "maybe if you don't like it go write your own game". Now that the market has changed, all of a sudden everybody is very concerned about sanitizing and Art.

Yeah, it used to be that when haters acted like they had a right not to have their sensibilities offended, they were told exactly what they could go do with their righteous indignation. Now the complainers' sense of entitlement has been catered to, and so people are concerned about what that's done to the hobby.

 

[Scribe]

I'm old enough to remember when complaints about, say, RPG supplements with pin-up covers or rulebooks with gross stereotypical NPCs were met with derisive sneers that "this is what sells" and "they're just doing what the market demands" and "maybe if you don't like it go write your own game". Now that the market has changed, all of a sudden everybody is very concerned about sanitizing and Art.

Did PF1 sell?

 

[Faolyn]

But why lose colors?

Because it's a really, really ugly color. It's the Pantone 448 C of the visible spectrum.

But it is less, and limited, by definition. And again: why? It smacks of discrimination at the very least. Or denial.

Discrimination against who, exactly? Against people who are pro-slavery in RPGs? Against people who are pro-slavery in real life?

You keep limiting this discussion to a singular campaign/adventure. I'm discussing the system as a whole. There are great G rated movies, but that's not all I want out of streaming.

It's shockingly possible to have even R-rated films without slavery.

So question for you: what do you gain when a company puts out an adventure with slavers?

 

[SteveC]

So question for you: what do you gain when a company puts out an adventure with slavers?

You get villains who are truly bad guys. No one is going to be on their side. There's a surprisingly short list of groups you can put on that list at the moment.

 

[Scribe]

Yeah, it used to be that when haters acted like they had a right not to have their sensibilities offended, they were told exactly what they could go do with their righteous indignation. Now the complainers' sense of entitlement has been catered to, and so people are concerned about what that's done to the hobby.

90's Vegans. Anyway, we all know this wont go anywhere. Just glad we can establish that 'disney-fication' or whatever one wishes to call it certainly is a thing, and its the way forward for 5e/1D&D, because 'reasons'.

 

[Bagpuss]

Okay, that's an interesting test case. What do they fear will happen if they do go ahead, how reasonable is the fear, and if they did do we think there would have been a reasonable way to do so? We can turn them into a hypothetical designer instead if you don't have that information.

I'm afraid I don't have that information to hand, and I don't want to assign motivations beyond what I can recall.

 

[Faolyn]

Perhaps in reality, but not in a box of crayons they are finite.

Or are you saying we can get rid of slavery in our story telling but the we, but just have a different tone of slavery, say indentured servitude, or judicial system that imprisons people and then forces them to do labour (might even disproportionately target a particular race).

At which point why not just use the Red Crayon instead of the Cranberry Crunch Red Crayon?

So, you're saying that you can't imagine telling stories that don't involve the red crayon? Harold wouldn't be happy.

There may not be an infinite number of stories that can be told--but there's a lot, probably more than any one GM can expect to run in a lifetime, and a lot of those stories can be told without slavery. And even more can be told with slavery that doesn't reduce it to a goal the PCs need to achieve in order to get some XP--which is what the majority of RPGs reduce slavery to.

Are you planning to run a game where the BBEG is the government, and instead of killing people the PCs take on the role of politicians who are attempting to reform the entire judicial system and also take on systemic racism, entirely through legal means (for a modern-day politician meaning on the word legal, of course)?

If so, awesome. Seriously, that could make for an interesting and rewarding game. But... I doubt that's what you actually mean, and I doubt that most people would want to play in that game.

Instead, what you probably mean is, there's a modern-day game, and there's an NPC who has been forced into prison labor, and you want to break that person out for whatever reason--maybe he's an ally of the PCs, maybe he's a bad guy who has info you need--and maybe you'll also break the other inmates out as well, and the only long-term effect that's going to happen depends on how well you rolled, because that will determine if the police are able to track you down. Or maybe the PCs have been arrested (wrongfully, I'm sure, or at least on trumped-up charges) and forced into labor and they have to escape. Best case scenario, the party reveals the prison's abuses to the media and something is done about them so the prisoners aren't being forced into labor anymore, turning the game into a complete fantasy.

(And this is as much as I will talk about the prison system here, since I'm sure it's getting too far into politics now.)

But hey, it's your table. You do you. But we're not talking about individual tables; we're talking about gaming companies, who literally hire people to write with the crayons and who can easily figure out a way to use red crayons mean something other than slavery.

 

[mythago]

Yeah, it used to be that when haters acted like they had a right not to have their sensibilities offended, they were told exactly what they could go do with their righteous indignation. Now the complainers' sense of entitlement has been catered to, and so people are concerned about what that's done to the hobby.

Some sensibiliities are more equal than others!

 

[Alzrius]

Some sensibiliities are more equal than others!

Or simply more delicate.

 

[Thourne]

I would love to have those things put into WotC's products. It would give me hope that they care about worldbuilding. Consider me officially arguing for it.

If you go back a good stretch (I am going from memory here), I believe "A Mighty Fortress" (2nd ed AD&D, I think, and based on Western Europe) had all the languages and the barriers to communication were down right hilarious and troubling. The first sessions initial meet in an Inn segment, ended up lasting three full sessions with multiple arguments and two fights breaking out. This all because in several cases only 1 person could translate for one to two other persons and this was repeated over a 10 player/character group. It was all kinds of mistranslation and misunderstanding. We still laugh about it now, all these decades later...and also will still never do that again, lol

 

[Faolyn]

It seems to me that we're talking about slavery as an issue because of the recent Dark Sun kerfuffle.

It wasn't really a kerfluffle, even. WotC said they weren't going to put out Dark Sun, and they cited slavery as the reason. Personally, I think that the real reason is that people keep poo-poohing their attempts to create a psionic system (three UAs, none of which succeeded) but also don't want psionics to be limited to archetypes and feats. Meaning that WotC knew that whatever they put out would annoy people, so when combined with the slavery--which has had people even on these forums saying is apparently more important than the psionics, defiling magic, scarcity of water and metal, the post-apocalyptic feel, the replacement of gods with elements--publishing Dark Sun would be a failure.

(This, of course, is just speculation, except for the first sentence.)

But, zero Mythic Africa. Again, if we've had all this freedom for all this time, to produce any product we could think of, then certainly there should have been a couple that spoke to a Mythic Africa. After all, everything is supposed to be equal right? Free speech and all that.

To be entirely fair, there were a couple of Dragon Magazine articles for 2e.

Which actually just shows that TSR knew that Mythic Africa was a definite possibility that at least some people were interested in, but they never expanded upon it. Not even with a green leatherette book. Because we needed both Charlemagne and the Crusades, but not Africa.

 

[gamerprinter]

If I may ask, @gamerprinter, what were the specific concerns about the module? Or, were there specific concerns, or, more just general, "Well this kinda sucks" sort of thing? On a personal level, I wouldn't have any problem with this to be honest. And, as a few additional questions, do you think these concerns hurt future sales? Did you feel you were being attacked for doing this?

Nothing specific I don't think, just the general 'this situation sucks' - Kaidan is Japanese horror with an emphasis on Japanese cultural authenticity (I'm half Japanese and a lifetime Japanophile, I thought OA sucked in the greater scheme of things). So fixing OA was a part of original concept (back in 80's when I first purchased OA), but no, it's nothing like OA, it does have a hint of Ravenloft, though.

Edit, oh and now, Kaidan was very successful and spoken well of by the reviewers. F. Wesley Schneider, EiC, at Paizo, at the time, wrote the Forward in the Gamemaster's Guide to Kaidan and it was a glowing overview of what Kaidan was to him. Still RPGnet banned me because of it.

 

[mythago]

90's Vegans. Anyway, we all know this wont go anywhere. Just glad we can establish that 'disney-fication' or whatever one wishes to call it certainly is a thing, and its the way forward for 5e/1D&D, because 'reasons'.

"reasons" = sales. That used to be thought to be an appropriate yardstick for game content - if a company published Journey to the Lair of the Big-Breasted Witch Queens with cover art to match, there was clearly a market for that supplement, it was entirely appropriate for the company to target to the "sex sells" market, and if you didn't like it, STFU and go write your own thing. Now that the market has shifted, all of a sudden
we're-just-selling-what-the-audience demands is "pandering" and bad for the hobby, and being told to STFU and go write your own thing is silencing.

Or more delicate.

Here we are firmly in agreement, though I suspect not about which sensibilities are actually the delicate ones.

 

[Faolyn]

Maybe because they didn't sanitize it as much as you think they did. He fails to prevent the Cataclysm because he goes to murder Isolde, who does curse him with her dying breath. As to the question of his prior wife's death, I don't think a revision is entirely unwelcome. After all, if he had murdered his first wife and child, the gods would have really been making a reach offering him redemption. I think the story works more easily if his initial transgression isn't quite so extreme.

I hadn't heard about the changes to Soth, but what you say makes sense. Having murdered his wife and child (and IIRC, the child was murdered for being ugly and/or disabled) and the gods being all, "OK, here's a chance for redemption," it turns the wife and child into mere plot devices.