What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Minion X]

But this difference is also a major reason why Star Wars is still considered family-friendly.

Most RPGs don't have this sort of slavery, but instead go for the violent version.

As far as I can recall, most games also put slavery in the hands of evil societies like orcs or dark elves, which kind of oversimplifies things, but also makes it, if not family-friendly, then at least a non-controversial evil, like environmental destruction in The Lord of the Rings.

 

[billd91]

The Gaming Goat CEO Jeff Bergren Escorted Out of Gen Con

Gen Con 2021 starts tomorrow at reduced capacity with a self-imposed 50% cap on attendance. As most people know, Gen Con 2020 was canceled along with just about every other convention due to the…

www.boardgamequest.com

Now, I suppose Gen Con might have had for some other, undisclosed reason for ejecting them, but I haven't heard of anything being proposed.

All of which is to say, the issues raised about the outraged mob are not theoretical. It has caused real harm to real people, far more so than an illustration of a frog with its toes touching could possibly have inflicted on anyone.

Did you read all the way down the article you linked where it indicated that Bergren was also banned from Board Game Geek for a litany of behavior beyond the frog image? Apparently booted from Origins too. So, yeah, I'm going to go with it's not just the frog image.

 

[Alzrius]

Did you read all the way down the article you linked where it indicated that Bergren was also banned from Board Game Geek for a litany of behavior beyond the frog image? Apparently booted from Origins too. So, yeah, I'm going to go with it's not just the frog image.

If it wasn't just the frog image, the Dicebreaker headline would have been very different.

I can understand the idea that's being pushed here; that it wasn't really people being outraged over something that no reasonable person would have been upset about, but was instead the latest in a pattern of immoral behavior on the part of the company for which people were rightfully condemnatory. But that looks to be an after-the-fact justification; while the CEO certainly has a history of posting things in poor taste, the reporting on the controversy focused on the frog imagery first-and-foremost, and strongly suggests that alone was what drove people over the edge. The entire issue should have stopped when the illustrator's reference was shown, rather than being reported as "white supremacist imagery" in the headlines. (That said headline came out two days before Gen Con 2021 started makes it hard for me to believe it played no part in his being kicked out.)

 

[billd91]

If it wasn't just the frog image, the Dicebreaker headline would have been very different.

You also included the article from boardgamequest.com.

 

[AnotherGuy]

EDIT: Also is it open season on players or is this purely a done to NPC thing? What's the recommended age for this product?

Well the recommended age for Eclipse Phase RPG is 12 and up which means you could realistically find gamers that young who are mature enough to deal with issues such as slavery (including indentured labour), exsurgent virus outbreaks, political unrest, weapons of mass destruction, mental stress and trauma, transhumanism, surveillance, flesh parties (truly horrific) and other forms of mental and physical torture, mind rapes, selling and cloning of your ego for all types of reasons (ego = could be backup of yourself)...etc

 

[Alzrius]

You also included the article from boardgamequest.com.

Yeah, because it's one of the few places that reported on what happened at Gen Con.

EDIT: You do realize that the fourth picture in my post is a link to the Dicebreaker article, right?

 

[Faolyn]

No, you don't.

OK then. So why care about that one? Why is slavery better than some of the others?

 

[AnotherGuy]

And that almost answers my question from my last post.

Why is slavery more practical and less prone to push-back than inflicting PTSD on your PCs?

Mental stress and trauma is already included in Sanity rules within the DMG. If you want you can use it. It's an optional rule. I do use it. I've tried fleshing it out more.

You can also use Bonds/Ideals/Flaws along with Inspiration in this regard.

 

[Lanefan]

Not as far as I am aware. Demons and intelligent undead are usually looking to take over the world, not kill every living thing. Unintelligent undead - the zombie horde - is more a force of nature than it is a culture trying for genocide.

There's a strange irony here where something so anti-natural (even in a game setting) as a zombie horde is described as being a force of nature.

 

[Faolyn]

Mental stress and trauma is already included with Sanity in the DMG. If you want you can use it. It's an optional rule. I do use it.

So as an optional rule buried in a book that many people don't read, and not a requirement for any settings (5e Ravenloft doesn't reference those tables, AFAICT).