What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Irlo]

No? Because comments about Lord Soth's dead wife and child suggest otherwise.

Okay. I don't see it, but I'm not going to argue the point. Nothing in those comments indicates to me that either poster had concern for Soth's victims, and there's no indication that WotC revised Soth's backstory because they wanted to protect a fictional woman and baby.

 

[mythago]

No one says it has to, but some people are saying shouldn't, and maybe it can't anymore. That's where I have a problem.

Again, the entire premise of this thread was that people shouldn't remove certain 'controversial' elements from their games, because doing so makes them less interesting.

And, again, there are plenty of games that deal with controversial subjects head-on, and are set in cultures other than Standard Fantasy Middle Ages. It's interesting to me how people concerned about edge and controversy don't seem to have much interest in finding out about those games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I, at least, am more saying that the majority of publishers only approach the matter casually, with minimum effort, little sensitivity, and little accuracy. You should expect folks to react as if that is dismissive and insulting, because it is! Folks pushing back on treating the topic casually, for a casual entertainment game, is not unreasonable behavior.

If someone makes themselves an expert on the matter, and does a really good, serious game supplement on it, that might be different. But slapping a slave-race history on the Hadozee and dressing them as minstrels wasn't an expert treatment. Just putting in slaver cultures for PCs to beat up isn't a serious treatment.

It is okay if WotC and Paizo don't choose to be the ones to do a serious treatment. It is not a bad, or slippery slope choice on their part.

To be fair, TTRPGs are, for the most part, intended as casual entertaining games, and have been for 50 years.

 

[Alzrius]

And, again, there are plenty of games that deal with controversial subjects head-on, and are set in cultures other than Standard Fantasy Middle Ages. It's interesting to me how people concerned about edge and controversy don't seem to have much interest in finding out about those games.

That's not the indictment you seem to think it is. Wanting to have the game that you like (and that your current group is playing) also have material with regard to topics, themes, and content that you want to explore is entirely reasonable. If you have to switch to another game in order to bring that content into play, that means not only expending money and time learning the new system (since mechanics are separate from themes et al), but also convincing your entire group to make the switch. All things which are barriers to trying those new games, in other words.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again, the entire premise of this thread was that people shouldn't remove certain 'controversial' elements from their games, because doing so makes them less interesting.

And, again, there are plenty of games that deal with controversial subjects head-on, and are set in cultures other than Standard Fantasy Middle Ages. It's interesting to me how people concerned about edge and controversy don't seem to have much interest in finding out about those games.

A lot of people play D&D and its derivatives, and that's what they care about.

 

[Alzrius]

Okay. I don't see it, but I'm not going to argue the point. Nothing in those comments indicates to me that either poster had concern for Soth's victims, and there's no indication that WotC revised Soth's backstory because they wanted to protect a fictional woman and baby.

Well, when someone is disapproving about how tertiary characters in a particular narrative are "mere plot devices" when something bad happens to them as a way of advancing the main character's development, that they're upset over said fictional characters' welfare strikes me as the most obvious interpretation. But I suppose your mileage may vary.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And, again, there are plenty of games that deal with controversial subjects head-on, and are set in cultures other than Standard Fantasy Middle Ages. It's interesting to me how people concerned about edge and controversy don't seem to have much interest in finding out about those games.

I can't speak for others but I am always interested in finding things outside standard fantasy middle ages. And I am also all for people dealing with controversial subjects head on. Where I probably would disagree with some posters is more around what kinds of parameters we should have around treatment of controversial material in gaming culture

 

[Bedrockgames]

That's fine, as I don't think the folks you are arguing against are saying "never".

When someone wants to do the serious, thoughtful, sensitive Schindler's List of RPGs, we can talk about that. But so long as it is a cheap, "Well, the PCs need to fight someone, so let's put in an analog to the Holocaust just so we are clear it is EVIL, folks are going to respond as if it is cheap.

I am about to begin my two days of gaming for the weekend, so this might be my last contribution to this discussion for a bit.

I do think that the more specific and recent the thing you are talking about, the harder, the more challenging, the more likely it is to provoke (though not always). I worked in a kosher bakery when I was younger (which was my way of connecting more with the Jewish side of my family: my father's family is Jewish). We had a regular customer who was a very gentle old man who seemed lonely and liked to chat for a while, and I quickly learned he was a survivor. He even talked about it with us. That had a pretty profound effect on my worldview, in a number of ways. I don't think you can meet someone like that, hear their story and come away the same as before. And that impacted how I might be wiling to handle the material creatively. I would never personally want to publish anything that deals directly with the holocaust itself (I don't see a problem with doing so, I just wouldn't want to). But I am comfortable dealing with it through analogy, and have done so, and part of it for me was trying to understand why people even do that kind of thing in the first place.

I think my point here was that Falkovnia isn't Schindler's List. It is pretty far afield from that, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. I prefer a creative landscape where both those approaches would be possible and people can choose to engage or not engage them as an audience how they see fit. I know plenty of people who had the opposite reaction to us to Falkovnia and I think that is entirely fair.


I think there is also the topic here of the specific and the general. On the one hand you might have things like specifically alluding to or invoking the holocaust in a fantasy setting. And this might be handled in a number of ways and with a variety of tones. There are places where I would have a personal limit on that, but the limit would not be using it to make clear the villain is evil (that is probably a pretty thin and uninteresting use, but I don't take umbrage at it). Then there is genocide more broadly, which is something that I think is fair to include in a fantasy setting. Again, I will have lines (I wouldn't want to see someone use it to promote anti-semitism for example). But I also think it is important to not leap to conclusions when I see controversial content in a movie, game or book, and to try to understand the aim of it, what the creative vision was, and to have an honest emotional reaction to it (which might mean enjoying a schlocky fantasy film where the bad guy is a genocidal maniac----or finding the 90s version of Falkovnia compelling and evocative at the table).

Genocide is something that has happened. It is tragic, horrific and puzzling. So I think it is natural for people to want to explore it in creative venues.

 

[Umbran]

To be fair, TTRPGs are, for the most part, intended as casual entertaining games, and have been for 50 years.

Yep. No argument there.

 

[mythago]

A lot of people play D&D and its derivatives, and that's what they care about.

Okay, and? The discussion is about TTRPGs broadly (as was the original post, which was made in TTRPG General), not just about D&D and Pathfinder and what the companies publishing those specific games should do in their worldbuilding. Nor does one have to play other games to read those gamebooks and mine them for ideas/settings/themes.

Bluntly, it feels more like examples are being dismissed because they don't fit the narrative.