What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Alzrius]

Well, s***. I'll just walk away with this post, then.

Fair enough. I'll do the same.

For what it's worth, let me just add that I think this was a worthwhile discussion to have (even if it got heated a few times), and that there was definitely a lot of good ideas thrown around in the course of the back-and-forth.

 

[Umbran]

Being upset about slavery in a GAME is just looking to be offended.

Mod Note:
Or, you know, just having different sensibilities than you have.

I suggest you go refresh yourself on our inclusivity policy - lumping everyone who disagrees with you into one group and dismissing them in this way as if they could not possibly have some well-considered points isn't acceptable.

We don't need you to agree, but we need you to treat others as if they are worthy of a bit more respect than you are showing here.

 

[Umbran]

Can I just point out that both sides here really REALLY need to take a step back and adhere to the no politics policy of the board.

Not taking any side here but folks, you are all WAY out of line.

Next time you see folks way out of line it would be really helpful if you used the "report post" button.

 

[mythago]

In normal discourse, that's true for the most part. But on the teh interwebz, it is a well-known trolling technique to take advantage of that good-faith urge to correct things. The troll's purpose, of course, is wasting others' time and cluttering up conversations.

There’s even an Internet name for this: “JAQing off”.

There’s also a famous quote from Satre about bad faith arguing. He was speaking specifically about anti-Semites, but the principle is the same for all sorts of bad faith arguments. The colloquial American version of this is a caution about wrestling with pigs.

 

[mythago]

Being upset about slavery in a GAME

Ironically, the starting premise of this thread was being upset about NOT having slavery in a game. The very title assumes “we” suffer a loss if we leave those “controversial” elements out of our games.

 

[Hussar]

Well, let's hope that this thread doesn't also suffer from an untimely demise.

This approach - to simply remove references to slavery - actually seems entirely reasonable to me. If a kingdom is "wicked" in a canonical setting - say the Great Kingdom in Greyhawk, or Thay in the FR - it would appear sensible to me to allow individual campaigns to manage what that entails, without going into specifics. This is a question of what each table decides and is comfortable with.

We don't really need to know the details of slavery in a published mainstream setting, or of racial persecutions, or rape as a weapon of war - or really anything which, when examined, is apt to elicit extreme discomfort or act as a trigger. Big publishers aim their products at a wide audience, including children, and also need to consider their responsibility to parents in their choices. While I think a direct corollary with the Satanic Panic is misplaced, I do think there are some parallels - which is to say that a game which seeks to successfully capture an audience of young, impressionable minds needs to be sensitive to the prevailing cultural mood, whether reasonable and justified or not.

I don't think this is a question of "sanitizing" a product or setting, but more about providing an uncontroversial baseline, and I think that the space which is left - whether it be with regard to eroticism, or mental illness, or institutional slavery, or anything else which might cause a parent to raise an eyebrow - is ripe for investigation by small publishers, if that's the route they want to go. Whether they address any such issues intelligently and thoughtfully is another matter, of course, but it's not WotC's problem, and nor should it be.

The entire premise of D&D is already patently absurd, so I don't see how removing controversial elements somehow makes it less believable. And with something as charged as slavery - the legacy of which remains a gaping wound in the collective psyche - omission of the phenomenon altogether is a sound choice. Because if it is included, it leads to questions of what exactly does that entail? - and that is a topic which the D&D ruleset is entirely unequipped to handle.

At your own table? Play whatever and however you agree, of course.

I'm just going to quote this here because I think it got a bit lost in the scrum from before.

Honestly, this is probably the best approach. There's really no need to detail why a given land is "wicked". Just saying that it is should be enough. The Great Kingdom in Greyhawk is probably a good example. I'm not a huge Greyhawk SME, but, I've followed the setting off and on for years, and I don't think slavery was a big element in Greyhawk outside of the Scarlet Brotherhood.

But, there's a good example of how things could go very, very wrong. The Scarlet Brotherhood are very bad. We'd all agree on that right? These guys are just the worst. And, in later Greyhawk, they are very much cast in the role of colonialist exploiters in the Amedio Jungle region and the conquest of the Hold of the Sea Princes (not that the Sea Princes were much better). Now, how detailed do we need to get here? Can we just leave it at that and let individual tables decide?

Probably yes, but that does make setting adventures there somewhat problematic. I'm not sure what the exact right answer is. After all, the recent Ghosts of Saltmarsh does feature the Scarlet Brotherhood. But, only (AFAIK) in the opening chapter as one of the factions in the adventure. They don't go into much detail at all about the Brotherhood at all. If you only used Ghosts of Saltmarsh and didn't draw on the larger Greyhawk lore (plus GoS is set before the Greyhawk Wars), you wouldn't actually know very much about the Brotherhood, other than they are bad and want to rule the world.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah, there are too many bigots, racists and trumpists on this forum.
Its the problem of a place where you can't downvote the edgelords out of existence.
I'm out.

Mod Note:

Yes you are.

One of this site’s rules is to conduct yourself with civility. You have failed that very basic rule multiply and egregiously. Instead of reporting conduct you felt rose to such offensive levels to the moderation staff to deal with, you started name-calling frequently and with vitriol. That got you a temporary ban.

When your time-out ended, you went back to the same behavior.

You engaged in other behaviors contrary to site rules as well.

So it’s time for you to find another website. I hope you find a community more suitable to your temperament.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

That was kind of my point. Just like Greek or Roman artisans would make the people on their coinage in a Greek or Roman style, Egyptian artisans would make Egyptian rulers look Egyptian. She wad depicted by both, contemporaneously. Hence my “”.

It’s fairly indisputable that the Ptolemies had practically 0% Egyptian ancestry though. Their genealogies are fairly well established. I don’t see the relevance.

 

[Mesero]

You are, because saying "American" misses that there were many minority voices on the book, which was my point.

Yes, but being a minority in America does not make you knowledgeable about specific cultures in Africa.
So when you say "people from those cultures" like you did in your post I do expect that the writers would have grown up in said cultures. Not just that they are descendent from someone from said culture or otherwise claim kinship to it.

 

[Cadence]

Yes, but being a minority in America does not make you knowledgeable about specific cultures in Africa.
So when you say "people from those cultures" like you did in your post I do expect that the writers would have grown up in said cultures. Not just that they are descendent from someone from said culture or otherwise claim kinship to it.

This has me thinking about discussions on a FB group on Finnish culture. A lot of the Americans or Canadians of Finnish decent will ask about things they learned (by passed down word of mouth or in writing) about phrases or foods or customs of their ancestors who emigrated from Finland 100-150 years ago. And it's a regular occurrence that most of the modern day folks in Finland never heard of it, but digging can find an old reference to them. And then there's the whole upheaval in what used to be eastern Finland that was taken over by Russia. Who do you ask about what things were like there? Someone whose family fled, or someone there now who may or may not have ancestors from their and may or may not know the actual past?

Does living anywhere make someone accurately knowledgeable of what life was like some place 200-1000 years ago unless they are gifted with exceptional educational systems? Does living in one country give insight into how people from that country are treated in another they have never visited? Is the goal of diversity knowledge of history, or is it the first hand experience to recognize something that might be a landmine to a modern reader?