What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Synthil]

And indentured servitude isn't like that? My own grandfather was an indentured child laborer. I don't think anyone is arguing for race based chattel slavery targeting only black people. Which would indeed be grossly specific and reproduce real world bigotry that perpetuates real world harm.

That being said, if this is indeed as uncomfortable a topic as it seems to be (at least for Americans), I guess it only makes sense to minimize or delete in official settings. In the end, the (emotional) well being of the players trumps any inclusion of tropes in a fictional setting.

I'm more flabbergasted than anything. I like having unambiguous bad guys. But anything that makes them such is now off the table in official products? I guess destroying the world would be far removed from the real world to still be used. At least in a post cold war era.

 

[Maxperson]

I always thought the idea of an atheist in Forgotten Realms was silly. The equivalent of being a flat Earther today.

The Wall of the Faithless is not about atheism, though. It's lack of respect/honoring of the gods. A few might be atheists. A few might be agnostic. The overwhelming majority just don't venerate the gods that they know exist.

 

[Irlo]

I'm more flabbergasted than anything. I like having unambiguous bad guys. But anything that makes them such is now off the table in official products?

No. What brings you to that conclusion?

 

[Autumnal]

I spend a bunch of time bedbound (orthostatic hypotension - don’t ask for it by name, or at all), and sometimes I go on long mental rambles. I got to think how I might construct a Dark Sun without slavery in it. Two notes:

* I haven’t tried to preserve all the other features unchanged. I went for the vibe: desert environment, swords and sandals, all of that.

* This is one evening’s pondering, not a serious plan of action. I’ve written real gaming book outlines and contributed to ones for game lines, so I’m sure this is not that. It’s more a proof by existence to show that something (I think) with the vibe and without slavery can work.

the premise is here is that there’s never been large-scale slavery on Athas. Powerful individuals do sometimes treat prisoners as slaves, but they have to keep it secret. Keeping slaves is punished with loaf of status and privileges, at best; and worse, it gets you executed.

instead, I’ve looted a real but neglected concept from history: the Roman system of patronage. This was really important in both the republic and the empire. There’s a book about one aspect of this, whose title gets the. Sin point across: Murder Was Not a Crime: Homicide and Power in the Roman Republic.

The basic status for anyone who wants to live in one of the cities is “contributor”. There’s a universal levee for labor. You “donate” two days a week or one week a month, doing whatever you do, and in return you get basic protections from the authorities. You can stay in one of the official barracks, you have the right to buy and register property, you can pay standard fees and work in any lawful occupation, and you get a share of civic water. Everything else, including having offenses against your person and stuff other than theft taken as a crime, requires a patron.

Patronage is a bit like idealized feudalism in miniature. Your patron gives you protection as a extended member of their clan, supports you in job-seeking and in legal disputes, owes you a share of clan food and resources, and so on. Doing patronage badly or dishonestly can cost the patron loss of status and privileges, like being fired from civic positions or losing authority to have privately employed soldiers. As a client, you owe your client a personal labor levee, which can take up to as much time as the civic levee but not more. You owe your patron gifts on top of thst (there’d be a table of expected swag based on patron and client social positions). You support them in social and other conflicts. Your patron can assign you special tasks to be part of your labor for them, and you’d better do them.

You can have a second patron, and many social climbers do. Figuring out how to juggle conflicting orders, though, is on you as the climber. The city intervenes only to prohibit you from taking a third patron.

There are many levels of authority In the cities, down just two or three in villages. For an actual core book, I’d work this out in detail, with diagrams of the pyramid of power in different cities to show ways it can pile up.

Patrons vary, of course. Good ones give their clients useful gifts, mention them in public proclamations of the patron’s excellence, connect them with good people to know in the courts, the temples, the civic professions, etc. Bad ones give cast-off crap and do as little as possible for their clients.

There‘s a lot more I could spin up, but I’m tired, so let’s look at the social context of adventuring. Clients‘ accomplishments give credit to their patron, which means that patrons who can afford to are always looking for clients who can do something distinctive. Performers, gladiators, lawyers and doctors, teachers, they all help their patron rise in prestige. And so do those who can venture into the wastes, negotiate with outsiders who can be dealt with, triumph over those who can’t, and return with interesting things that weren’t nailed down firmly enough. Doing PC stuff is a well-known, familiar, expected part of the society.

And there you go. No slavery, lots of shitshow happening in routine exploitation, social and dungeoneering action both routine, room for lots of interesting weirdness swiped from history in ways learnable from Grand Master Robert E. Howard. Oh, and note there‘s no necessary ethnic or species or gender exclusion required. Women can be both patrons and clients, people don’t worry much about gender diversity, nonhumans may have extra work burdens but can be part of this system too. Anyway, enough for now.

 

[Umbran]

I like having unambiguous bad guys. But anything that makes them such is now off the table in official products?

I can make a bad guy unambiguously bad, by making their individual actions bad, rather than create an entire culture of that badness, and make the ones I need for the PCs to beat up members of that culture.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can make a bad guy unambiguously bad, by making their individual actions bad, rather than create an entire culture of that badness, and make the ones I need for the PCs to beat up members of that culture.

you can do this for sure, but then you don't have Roman Empire levels of epic empire expansion and enslavement, gladiatorial arenas (they would at least need to be all volunteer or something) as a potential campaign backdrop.

I am fine if someone wants to make a campaign world where all the evils are at an individual level. Campaign worlds at their best are thought experiments and that sounds like a good thought experiment to me. But I also think we need to have room for society wide evils in a setting two (including things like slavery)

 

[Faolyn]

No less than three different people have specifically told me that if I didn't like something in the material, I should find another hobby, and that I would not be welcome to play at certain public events because I wasn't comfortable with the material.

I want to expand on this one, possibly.

I, personally, don't want to ever play a PbtA game that has a sex move. I find them uncomfortable and disturbing for several reasons. Unlike many other games, these sex moves are built into the game, which means if a PbtA game has a sex move, the entire game is unavailable to me. I went to a con and someone were to be running, say, a Monster Hearts game, I wouldn't play it, nor would I feel unwelcome. I can go play the sex move-free game Monster of the Week (which I'll be running in a month or two, in fact). If I were playing a con game of MotW and someone decided to try to have sex with my character, then it's that person doing that, not the game itself.

But!

Monster Hearts is a distinct game unto itself. There are PbtA games that don't have sex moves, which means I have plenty of choices. Apparently, even the original Apocalypse World game has removed those moves from its newest edition, although I confess that I haven't really checked.

However, we've been talking about Dark Sun.

Dark Sun is not a game unto itself. D&D is the game. Dark Sun is just a setting in the game. Which means that if I were to go to a con and saw there was a D&D game going on and wanted to join in, and whoops, it turned out to be a Dark Sun game with slavery in it--well, I would feel cornered here.

D&D is also fairly unique in that if something exists in one setting, it can very easily be brought into every setting; it's practically a generic system like GURPS or SWADE in that manner. There are spells named after Greyhawk people in the Realms and monsters that started out as Realms-specific (thanks, Ed Greenwood) have spread to every other setting. Dark Sun monsters (and one of its races) ended up in 5e Spelljammer, and some Spelljammer monsters ended up being generic for all settings. And of course Ravenloft steals from everywhere. If you're fine with the idea of a satyr PC, you're probably not going to insist that they exist only in Theros--and, indeed, they no longer exist only in Theros; they're part of Mordenkainen's multiverse now, openly available in all worlds. I doubt that anyone is going to say that you can only play a Lunar sorcerer if you're in a Dragonlance game, or an Arcana cleric only in the Realms. One of the games I'm in that takes place in the Realms has a warforged PC--and not one that came from Eberron, either, but one apparently built in Maztica (we're still finding out his exact origins). And another game I'm in, which is playing the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure, has a leonin PC. Between spells, planar travel, and spelljamming ships, the idea of traveling between settings is baked into the system. D&D has been like this from the start, what with a Boot Hill PC winding up in Greyhawk.

So hey, there's slavery in Dark Sun. And not the type of slavery that involves a couple of bad guys doing bad guy things to the shock and dismay of all the Good People around, but the type that's considered the acceptable norm for normal society, where the only thing stopping the PCs from buying and selling slaves themselves is a DM willing to say no. Which means that sort of thing is, by D&D's standards, going to end up everywhere else.

So this isn't like the Monster Hearts/Monster of the Week deal, where a rule in one game simply doesn't exist in the other. Even though both games use the same basic chassis, they're different games. Instead, all D&D is D&D. It's not even a slippery slope here. It's part of the game.

 

[Umbran]

you can do this for sure, but then you don't have Roman Empire levels of epic empire expansion and enslavement,
gladiatorial arenas (they would at least need to be all volunteer or something) as a potential campaign backdrop.

Yes, well, I've been gaming since 1982, and not used Roman Empire levels of slavery, nor gladiatorial arenas, so I don't think I'll miss 'em, myself.

I am fine if someone wants to make a campaign world where all the evils are at an individual level.

Do remember, we are not talking about individual tables - do what you want in your own game.

WotC and Paizo have apparently chosen to step away from slavery tropes. This somehow gets blown out to be some universal prohibition.

 

[Faolyn]

My problem is more with what is considered controversial. Slavery and cannibalism were easy markers for evil to me, precisely because they're universally condemned. They're the opposite of controversial. No one is advocating for them or making excuses, unlike sexual assault. The latter also directly impacts a lot of people. But when was the last time a player lost someone to cannibalism?

There are people who are advocating for slavery now, though, or at least the discrimination against and subjugation of Black people (and sometimes other people as well).

Cannibalism is also kind of weird because of ritual cannibalism, which is part of the of several real-life cultures, often part of the grieving process. Interestingly, the 3x book Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead actually discusses this--people who engage in cannibalism generally wind up as a hungry dead of one sort or another after death because it's an act of depraved evil, but those who engage in cultural cannibalism don't; it's not an evil act then.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes, well, I've been gaming since 1982, and not used Roman Empire levels of slavery, nor gladiatorial arenas, so I don't think I'll miss 'em, myself.

Which is absolutely fine. If you have no interest in these elements, I get that. A lot of my campaigns are more inspired by the ancient world and Rome than by medieval Europe, so I tend to have more of this stuff.

Do remember, we are not talking about individual tables - do what you want in your own game.

WotC and Paizo have apparently chosen to step away from slavery tropes. This somehow gets blown out to be some universal prohibition.

Again, if an individual publisher wants to shy away from something I have no issue (though if you are going to make Dark Sun, I say go all the way and include things like Slavery---just my preference). Where I am concerned, and I do realize there are a wide range of views being put forth here so this doesn't apply to all the posts or anything, is when people seem to be saying those things either should be taken off the table in terms of what is acceptable for publishers to include in a setting. I would personally rather be in a hobby environment where publishers like Paizo and WOTC feel as though they are able to include this stuff if they want to. I feel like we have moved too far in the direction of taking out interesting material.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I haven't caugh up on the thread, but earlier discussion on the 'necessity' of a given piece of art made me recall this excellent video essay by Jacob Geller, so with the knowledge that it might not be germane to wherever this thread has gone since, some of you might find it interesting to the overall topic.

 

[Synthil]

There are people who are advocating for slavery now, though, or at least the discrimination against and subjugation of Black people

Subjugation isn't quite the same thing as slaver though, is it? And I said I wouldn't include real life bigotry in products for that reason. The slavery advocated for nowadays is more in line with indentured servitude. Like prison labor.

And yeah, I meant cannibalism where people are specifically killed for the purpose of eating them. Not ritual cannibalism. You could even have people who eat their foes who aren't evil. They may just think worthy opponents are fit to become part of their group posthumously.

I can make a bad guy unambiguously bad, by making their individual actions bad, rather than create an entire culture of that badness, and make the ones I need for the PCs to beat up members of that culture.

True! And that certainly works. I guess I just like my bad guys to have a position of power, and not be the scrappy underdogs. So changing systemic injustices is just more my jam rather than having conservative (lower case conservative here!) fantasies about preserving a generally good status quo. This is entirely my preference however. The culture being bad should also always be the ones the heroes belong too. Fighting an evil "other" culture has its own pitfalls.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I haven't caugh up on the thread, but earlier discussion on the 'necessity' of a given piece of art made me recall this excellent video essay by Jacob Geller, so with the knowledge that it might not be germane to wherever this thread has gone since, some of you might find it interesting to the overall topic.

Thanks for posting this. Just getting to the part on Piss Christ now (this photograph and the reaction to it, had a very big impact on how I view things like art and free expression). Enjoying the video so far

 

[MGibster]

I started out in this thread by talking about how including controversial content made people feel unwelcome in the hobby. Now, let's take a look at this thread as a good example. In this thread, those that have a problem with including controversial material have been compared to the following:

1. Pat Puling - one of the most disliked individuals in the history of the hobby who is known for lying and spreading mistruths about the hobby in order to drum up support to shut the hobby down.

Specifically, I compared those who made the argument that slavery in RPGs was a bad idea because, unlike a book or movie, gaming is not passive entertainment, it's "you" making the decisions to one of the arguments made by Pat Pulling on why role playing games were psychologically harmful to young people. The idea that gamers can't separate the game from reality is baloney. It was baloney when it was made about D&D in the 80s, it was baloney when it was made about video games in the 90s, and it's baloney when the argument was brought up in this thread. I only compared a specific argument to Pat Pulling rather than all the arguments against slavery in the game.

 

[Scribe]

I've skipped on buying books I didnt think were marketed, or designed for me.

Does that mean I've been told to leave the hobby?

 

[Bagpuss]

I always thought the idea of an atheist in Forgotten Realms was silly. The equivalent of being a flat Earther today.

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?

 

[Justice and Rule]

you can do this for sure, but then you don't have Roman Empire levels of epic empire expansion and enslavement, gladiatorial arenas (they would at least need to be all volunteer or something) as a potential campaign backdrop.

I mean, you can absolutely have "epic empire expansion" without mass enslavement, and you can get the same sort of stuff through just basic economics. Like, you talk about "volunteer gladiators", but what if they are desperate people at the end of their rope who can't leave because they are contracted out to a certain number of matches by a powerful gladiatorial stable owner. People don't need to be sold into chattel slavery to still be trapped in such things.

I am fine if someone wants to make a campaign world where all the evils are at an individual level. Campaign worlds at their best are thought experiments and that sounds like a good thought experiment to me. But I also think we need to have room for society wide evils in a setting two (including things like slavery)

Again, if you think the only society-wide ill is "slavery", then you aren't looking hard enough. I've had my disagreements with @Ruin Explorer , but they're absolutely right when they are talking about how oppression is what people are looking for, and that doesn't need to necessarily be through slavery.

I've skipped on buying books I didnt think were marketed, or designed for me.

Does that mean I've been told to leave the hobby?

I dunno, were they "not made for you" by including things that may be insensitive to your heritage? I think there's a difference between me not getting into Ponyfinder because that lacks appeal to me and someone looking at a setting that gratuitously uses things like slavery because I'm a minority.

Like, it's not a matter of taste, but a matter of being welcoming to certain minorities at that point.

 

[Scribe]

I dunno, were they "not made for you" by including things that may be insensitive to your heritage? I think there's a difference between me not getting into Ponyfinder because that lacks appeal to me and someone looking at a setting that gratuitously uses things like slavery because I'm a minority.

Like, it's not a matter of taste, but a matter of being welcoming to certain minorities at that point.

Sure, and I've moved well on from thinking the core of D&D offerings needs to appeal to me, and me alone.

The crux of the question is, if a book is released that offends someone, makes them feel unwelcome, does that mean they are being shown the door to the entire hobby, or does that mean that book is not something they care for?

Now personally, I absolutely feel that Wizards has no interest in my money. That doesnt mean I'm unwelcome. It doesnt mean they are excluding me.

It means my personal tastes, do not align with what they are providing in a general sense, and so I can look elsewhere to other games/books/companies.

If a 'controversial' book, singular, was released, that is not excluding people from the entire hobby. It is a matter of taste. Its a matter of personal choice, as I certainly do not assume that any demographic views near any issue as a monolith.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mean, you can absolutely have "epic empire expansion" without mass enslavement, and you can get the same sort of stuff through just basic economics. Like, you talk about "volunteer gladiators", but what if they are desperate people at the end of their rope who can't leave because they are contracted out to a certain number of matches by a powerful gladiatorial stable owner. People don't need to be sold into chattel slavery to still be trapped in such things.

Of course. I wasn't saying you can't have epic expansion without slavery, I was saying epic imperial expansion is an evil that presumably people would also want to exclude.

In terms of gladiators, yes you absolutely can do what you are saying. Like I said, settings are thought experiments at their best so I am always in favor of more being on the table (if someone wants to make a world where the kind of gladiators you describe exist, I am all for that). But I am also for not taking Roman style gladiators and slavery off the table as a creative choice by publishers and designers.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Again, if you think the only society-wide ill is "slavery", then you aren't looking hard enough. I've had my disagreements with @Ruin Explorer , but they're absolutely right when they are talking about how oppression is what people are looking for, and that doesn't need to necessarily be through slavery.

I wasn't suggesting slavery was the only society wide ill (genocide is another that leaps to mind, but many forms of oppression can exist at the society level, mass impoverishment, moral panics, etc). I don't think we are in disagreement here. I was responding to Umbra's suggestion of focusing on evil at the individual level, not focusing on slavery as the sole societal evil.