What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[doctorbadwolf]

No, and I wasn't really suggesting that we do. All I'll say is that safe is way over rated. Kids like scary, they like transgressive. Safe? Not so much. That's obviously different that safe in terms of groups, which is important.

Sure, but kids also like candy, which is only okay in moderation.

Transgressive is better left to games and game supplements that aren’t designed to be for everyone, IMO. 3pp can direct products toward specific audiences, and aignal The intended audience in various ways like curating the art style and content, and people for whom dealing with slavery in an immersive roleplaying experience is not emotionally safe can fairly easily avoid it.

 

[Autumnal]

I want to object explicitly to something I see implicitly and semi-explicitly in various people’s message. Preferring not to engage with something in gaming is not, not, not the same as refusing to engage with it at all, dammit.

I live with varying degrees of chronic pain and mental illness, and have for most of the last forty years. I support activism around issues of pain diagnosis and treatment, and likewise for mental health. I could probably horrify and then stupefy most of you were I to start writing up what I know about it. In recent years I’ve been reading a lot of pessimistic and nihilistic philosophy and a a side order of theomachy, and discussing it in appropriate places. And virtually none of that will ever appear in in games I write or run, because I’m not up to it.

Or to take a more drastic example: one of my trans friends was for several years one of the principal gatherers of info for the Trans Day of Remembrance, which honors the trans people murdered the preceding year. If I were able to run a game for them, I would never, ever bring in institutional transphobia into a game setting, not unless they took the initiative in requesting it.

There’s a very unpleasant air of machismo in a lot of talk about this kind of thing. But horror and tragedy are not actually more mature than comedy. Gaming in brutal, degraded, degrading environments isn’t more mature or serious than adventure and cooperation. Gaming is one part of a life, and saying “not in my gaming” is no more demonstrative of some basic lack of moral seriousness than, say, a anting people not to wash their feet and pop blisters at the meal table. Foot and blister care are important! But not all the time, in every circumstance! Gaming means different things to different people at different times. It’s best to allow rhetorical room for others to be as with it as yourself even if they load their gaming differently.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Or to take a more drastic example: one of my trans friends was for several years one of the principal gatherers of info for the Trans Day of Remembrance, which honors the trans people murdered the preceding year. If I were able to run a game for them, I would never, ever bring in institutional transphobia into a game setting, not unless they took the initiative in requesting it.

I think @Fenris-77 covered this in his reply to you last time.
There are some things that do not need to be said in every post, in every thread about topics like these.
Upsetting the people at your table is not a goal of any DM.

When someone talks about inserting x element into their campaign, it is implied their table would be fine with it. And I'm not encouraging for anyone to bring up a story about this one time at band camp...

 

[aco175]

Over the years, I think I have little of this in my games. I recall a frontier town with a whipping post and hanging tree outside the church of Tyr. The players needed to free someone before they were hanged, like in some of the wild west movies. Another time, there were some giants with a goblin slave/servant that the PCs freed. The goblin followed them trying to help them, but kept causing more trouble like warning the monsters in the area that people were around because he could not sneak. Eventually, the PCs took him in and made him their henchman to tend the horses and stuff.

I think most of it in knowing your group and what they want or can handle. Some may go to far if you are making a horror adventure and play on a players fear of spiders or darkness for instance. Likely not the same. Players also have some responsibility on this as well. Telling the DM in session 0, or after a session to allow for change in the next session.

DMs are people, Players are people- the don't be a jerk rules seems to fit here.

 

[Committed Hero]

As a player/GM, it hinges on the degree to which the group thinks dealing with such topics is important. If you are trying to create enjoyable experiences at the table, and not historical reenactments, that's the prime concern.

As a creator of content, you should try to express why your work must involve a controversial subject. If you can't, it's probably best not to work so close to the line. Of course, this also assumes you can identify a subject that will be controversial - which is another matter entirely!

What products that bear mentioning deliberately explore such issues well? Harlem Unbound and Cthulhu Confidential deal with marginalized PCs and include this marginalization as part of the challenges of play. I recall a Pagan Publishing scenario for Call of Cthulhu that involved a gay NPC pressured into a marriage, but that's around 20 years old.

 

[MGibster]

Well, in our game worlds, we don’t have to have a history of colonialism and slavery to have a Black samurai. We can pick and choose the vices we want to include without erasing anything.

Of course that presents other problems. Including elements of other cultures in your game while divorcing them from their historical context is seen by some as the worst kind of cultural appropriation. i.e. It's still problematic. And this goes for all of you talking about creating a fantasy world influenced by other cultures. We've had people on this board argue strongly that you shouldn't use real life cultures as any kind of basis for your fantasy settings. This also highlights the, uh, problem, with the word problematic is that it's so vague. If I tell you a work of fiction is problematic, you have no idea what I might be talking about.

All history is not created equal. This is crucial in making assessments. I hope that none of you would knowingly run a game for someone you know was abused that featured massive institutional child abuse. One of my parents has Alzheimer’s, and I can’t watch The Taking Of Deborah Logan; I don’t expect that I’ll ever be able to include Alzheimer’s in my gaming. All kinds of thing warrant some consultation in circumstances that make it easy for someone who wants or need to say no to tell you so, and not to have to make any elaborate justifications for it. This is respect for the specific people you’re gaming with and the complexities of their particular lives.

I have a player who is arachnophobic, which I found out in the middle of a game session when the PCs were fighting giant spiders. In the middle of play, I paused, asked the player what was happening, and asked if we could continue if I remove all descriptions of the spiders? She said yes, that's what I did, and then I never included spiders in any game she was in. I have another friend who battled eating disorders when she was younger. It's a topic she just doesn't want to deal with and it'll never be dealt with in my game while she's a player. No problem. But it's okay for a publisher to include those elements in their game even knowing some people don't want it.

@Fenris-77 - the part I, er, didn’t get to is that we don’t know all of what will strike personally. I’ve seen Black and Native American friends who knew without any doubts they slavery was part of their history develop fresh gutted feelings after doing significant genealogical research and being able to point at specific things in the modern day stolen from their family and usually then lied about.

When I worked at the archive, I used to assist visitors with genaological research. Mostly I was teaching people who were new to the research where to find and how to use the tools that were available. Very quickly, I noticed a lot of African Americans ran into a wall with the 1860 census. For those of you not in the United States, the 1860 census was the last census ran by the government where slavery was still the law of the land. This wasn't always an insurmountable wall, but researching further back became a bit more complicated and uncertain. You could really see something was robbed from them.

 

[Reynard]

Well, in our game worlds, we don’t have to have a history of colonialism and slavery to have a Black samurai. We can pick and choose the vices we want to include without erasing anything.

Its fantasy... we could just create a culture based on a mix of the cultures of an ancient African people ( because even though its hardly brought up... Africa is a continent with numerous countries and cultures) and ancient/medieval Japanese culture... why do we need colonialism, slavery or anything else like that to enable this??

You can play a "black samurai" without slavery and colonialism, but you can't play Yasuke. His story is explicitly about the rise from slave to champion in a foreign based on his intelligence and capability (and assumed badassery, but we don't actually know much about his combat prowess).

This is actually a good example of what I mean. Removing slavery and colonialism from the world of Yasuke just makes him another figure of the "stranger in a strange land" archetype. That's not bad in and of itself, but it is less than the "real" Yasuke (quotes because we are obviously talking about about a legendary version of a historical figure).

Also, separate from the above quotes, I was talking more about broad historical and cultural wrongs as background to characters and the world. What I meant by "not wallow" was avoiding "on screen" depictions of such things. It's enough to have Nazis exist so they can be mowed down; you don't need to show their crimes directly IMO.

 

[Kaodi]

Of course that presents other problems. Including elements of other cultures in your game while divorcing them from their historical context is seen by some as the worst kind of cultural appropriation. i.e. It's still problematic. And this goes for all of you talking about creating a fantasy world influenced by other cultures. We've had people on this board argue strongly that you shouldn't use real life cultures as any kind of basis for your fantasy settings. This also highlights the, uh, problem, with the word problematic is that it's so vague. If I tell you a work of fiction is problematic, you have no idea what I might be talking about.

To proscribe "any kind of basis" seems like a bit of a misunderstanding of how creativity works. I might go so far as to challenge anyone to find a single fictional culture that has absolutely zero basis in real culture. It might be conceptually impossible.

 

[Imaro]

You can play a "black samurai" without slavery and colonialism, but you can't play Yasuke. His story is explicitly about the rise from slave to champion in a foreign based on his intelligence and capability (and assumed badassery, but we don't actually know much about his combat prowess).

This is actually a good example of what I mean. Removing slavery and colonialism from the world of Yasuke just makes him another figure of the "stranger in a strange land" archetype. That's not bad in and of itself, but it is less than the "real" Yasuke (quotes because we are obviously talking about about a legendary version of a historical figure).

Also, separate from the above quotes, I was talking more about broad historical and cultural wrongs as background to characters and the world. What I meant by "not wallow" was avoiding "on screen" depictions of such things. It's enough to have Nazis exist so they can be mowed down; you don't need to show their crimes directly IMO.

See this right here is what's irritating... We have a black (African) figure known for an amazing thing, and who has so much capability and potential in his abilities and intelligence but you've tied his entire identity to slavery... do you know how often this happens to black historical figures, characters, heroes, etc. It's a tiring old trope. He isn't great because he was a slave... he's just a great historical figure who accomplished something amazing. If you enjoy this trope have at it but I think (besides placing him in the situation to become a samurai) you are giving way too much credit to slavery as opposed to the actual man.

 

[Irlo]

See this right here is what's irritating... We have a black (African) figure known for an amazing thing, and who has so much capability and potential in his abilities and intelligence but you've tied his entire identity to slavery... do you know how often this happens to black historical figures, characters, heroes, etc. It's a tiring old trope. He isn't great because he was a slave... he's just a great historical figure who accomplished something amazing. If you enjoy this trope have at it but I think (besides placing him in the situation to become a samurai) you are giving way too much credit to slavery as opposed to the actual man.

I hope people read this over and over again.