What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Doctor Futurity]

Again, I recall them making changes in tone and removing classes like the assassin (I think they also took out the half orc as well). I think those changes were not great. I enjoyed 2E for its settings, and I think the system worked well. But it did suffer in terms of the tone (to me it felt like an extension of the blandness that had crept into so much 80s entertainment). Which is one of the reasons a setting like Dark Sun was so refreshing.

I know for example the removal of the assassin almost resulted in Artemis Entreri being taken out of the books too (and I believe RA Salvatore had to make a case that he wasn't an assassin but a duel or multi class character---fighter thief or something). So there definitely were substantial changes.

But again, I don't recall any actual ban on evil player characters. It is possible I missed this and just have overlooked it all these years. I wouldn't say cautioning against evil pcs is the same as prohibiting them.

Yeah, I am pretty sure it wasn't ever seen as a ban, but maybe more of a "nod-nod-wink-wink we're writing it this way so when your mom reads it, she won't flip out and tell the Pastor at the church to light up the bonfire," kinda deal.

 

[Irlo]

Because it's far more difficult to add in. If they remove it, they will have to completely alter how Dark Sun society works. That means that I would have to rework the entire setting to add it back in, unlike the Wall of the Faithless.

You wouldn’t have to rework the entire setting. Just use the readily-available original DS materials. I can understand why people would like the DS classes, species, and monsters officially updated to 5e, but wouldn’t those be usable in the old setting, if that’s your preference? Do you need a reprint with a 5e logo?

 

[Doctor Futurity]

There were a lot of options put out in the brown books. Also a lot of people I knew just used the 1E monk and assassin in their 2E games (at our table it was pretty common to have 1E hardcovers next to the 2e ones)

OMG I had totally forgotten they got rid of the monk in the PHB....yeah they added them back with another expansion book. And Ninjas, too.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You wouldn’t have to rework the entire setting. Just use the readily-available original DS materials. I can understand why people would like the DS classes, species, and monsters officially updated to 5e, but wouldn’t those be usable in the old setting, if that’s your preference? Do you need a reprint with a 5e logo?

A mechanical update would be nice. I don't trust WotC with anything else.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Part of it might have been things like the rise in White Wolf (and the overall move away from pablum in the 90s). If you look at something as simple as sitcom TV from that Era, Seinfeld was a direct response to the emphasis on overly wholesome shows littered with very special episodes and learning lessons. Being a bit more transgressive was cool, so I do think some of that crept into the content more and more (just a sense, it isn't like I have gone back and quantified it)

That is a really good point. The Seinfeld comparison especially, I hadn't considered it a reaction to more traditional sitcoms but that makes sense. White Wolf sort of spearheaded that in the early nineties, and at some point TSR sort of rode along with it. Very interesting, you've got me thinking.

 

[Faolyn]

Slave tribes.

And you can't have tribes of not-slaves? Maybe refugees from a city destroyed by an army or a monster, or people who were exiled from a city, or who fled instead of being executed by the sorcerer-king?

Adventure plots where the PCs are caught by slavers and have to escape.

Freeing slaves as a PC activity.

And you can't have adventures featuring any of the literally hundreds or thousands of other plot elements in Dark Sun?

Neither of these are ways the setting would fall apart. The first requires an incredibly quick fix and the the last two are just one less type of plot.

Dark Sun seems the best supported TSR/WotC setting for freeing slaves as a PC activity. There are evil slavers and slave holders in a lot of the setting. There are free areas with lots of motivated ex-slaves (Tyr and slave tribes), there are lots of ex-slave concepts and NPCs. There are mapped out trade routes of the slave trade you can raid.

Spelljammer has the Neogi as bad guy slavers you can target for freeing slaves. There are big illithid and beholder factions too who likely have slaves. But it is mostly a thing of the monsters and not really developed as a setting thing beyond that.

Spelljammer doesn't have slavery being an accepted part of everyday life like Dark Sun does. The same goes for the Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and every other setting. In those settings, slavery is a rare evil and the slavers are undeniably the bad guys and often a completely different species with a completely alien mindset.

In Dark Sun, the slaver is your next door neighbor.

There is literally no comparison between slavery as presented in Dark Sun and slavery presented everywhere else in D&D.

 

[Faolyn]

Not in Dark Sun. Plenty of other setting ideas that have similar themes but don't use things you don't like though.

To which part are you referring?

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is a really good point. The Seinfeld comparison especially, I hadn't considered it a reaction to more traditional sitcoms but that makes sense. White Wolf sort of spearheaded that in the early nineties, and at some point TSR sort of rode along with it. Very interesting, you've got me thinking.

This is why TSR had so much good content in the '90s. A time now long over for D&D IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To which part are you referring?

I don't understand the question?

 

[Bedrockgames]

OMG I had totally forgotten they got rid of the monk in the PHB....yeah they added them back with another expansion book. And Ninjas, too.

I remember that because I found the change perplexing. I haven't seen a 1E monk in play in a long time, so I don't know how well it holds up, but at the time, especially in the atmosphere of the types of martial arts movies that were become more prevalent, it seemed super cool to me. And taking it out, took something from the default setting (again I think the monk was something that fit perfectly well in that Conan vibe but fit less well in an more PG fantasy, default is strictly Western and Northern Europe type of a setting (a lot of the ancient, mediterranean and eastern stuff felt like it wasn't part of the base sense of what fantasy was: that stuff might be supplements, it might be in specific regions of settings, but it wasn't as kitchen sink as Conan and other sword and sorcery type stuff)