because it's something that existed in the game prior
The new races and lineages which are to be added have never existed in the game, and fixed racial ASIs don't even exist for every race published in the PHB. Variant human can put their ASIs anywhere. WotC can chose to publish the rules for new content as they wish, but it is not removing anything which already existed to not publish static ASIs for brand new content.
the arguement in pro was always "its an optional rule if you like fixed ASIs at your table keep using those" well now that's not a thing because it was deemed harmful and has been removed from the game. Don't pretend new races wouldn't have fixed ASIs if the hub bub wasn't brought up, the point is that people complained and a standing aspect of the game was removed to not offend.
It doesn't matter whether they would have or not, they never existed so nothing has been removed.
Remember, if this offends you, you are under no obligation to allow the use of the new content at your own table. You can even house rule them to have static ASIs if you wish. But if they were not there to begin with, nothing has been removed.
Remember, you can keep using fixed ASIs. There are lots of races in the PHB and other books which still use them, and any new content published is optional so the movable ASIs is still optional.
However, this has gone way off topic.
Back to the point I was making: you have exemplified it again.
I have no empathy or find it incredibly hard to have empathy for people upset by seeing the term 'madness' in a book used as a catch all instead of defining each condition and becoming upset or those that took offense at stats in a book saying Orcs are naturally stronger than Gnomes. I find that reaching to try and find things to be upset about and victimized by.
This is just as dismissive as the "It's just a game" defence. You are minimising and trivialising traumatic experiences people have had and their feelings. It is close to saying "I don't believe you when you tell me that this reminds you of a horrible experience you went through". It is a horrific attitude to have towards another human being.
Than your being woefully ignorant of the change trying to pretend that nothing was changed in how D&D operates with Tasha's becoming the new standard for ASI's after this debate has occured.
I don't mind at all if someone wants to use the variant rule, all the power to them, what I do mind is now the exclusion of fixed ASIs going forward on new content. The standard should not have been removed for the optional (or the standard should of become the option) Just as you say I can house rule fixed ASIs people just as easily could of house ruled the floating ASIs. But again the argument made was always "this is an optional rule if you like fixed ASIs simply use those, this is just an option for those that don't", and now thats not the truth anymore because WotC has decided to remove them entirely going forward because of the pushes. Now if you play in a by the books game or AL you have the option of fixed or floating ASIs per optional rules but going forward you will not have the option for fixed just floating.
New optional rule is fine, removal of something is not. To simply claim "well the new races coming out weren't created yet so nothing has been lost" is so flimsy it's laughable, the design process at WotC has changed based on possible offense.
Also yeah thats what I am saying, that if seeing madness in a rulebook for a game, or seeing a stat block saying orcs are in general stronger than gnomes is traumatizing or brings on trauma in your life I find that very hard to believe. Sorry if I don't believe the same things cause trauma as you do
Than your being woefully ignorant of the change trying to pretend that nothing was changed in how D&D operates with Tasha's becoming the new standard for ASI's after this debate has occured.
I don't mind at all if someone wants to use the variant rule, all the power to them, what I do mind is now the exclusion of fixed ASIs going forward on new content. The standard should not have been removed for the optional (or the standard should of become the option) Just as you say I can house rule fixed ASIs people just as easily could of house ruled the floating ASIs. But again the argument made was always "this is an optional rule if you like fixed ASIs simply use those, this is just an option for those that don't and now thats not the truth anymore because WotC has decided to remove them entirely going forward.
New optional rule is fine, removal of something is not. To simply claim "well the new races coming out weren't created yet so nothing has been lost" is so flimsy it's laughable, the design process at WotC has changed based on possible offense.
I honestly cannot understand how you can think that not including something in new content moving forward is removal of anything. Yes, it changes the standard going forward, but all existing content still exists. All existing rules still exist. Nothing at all has been removed. All that has changed is that, going forward, a new standard will be used for new content. Nothing which already existed will stop existing, nothing has been removed from anything which already exists.
If WotC said today that it was releasing 6e and would not publish any new content for 5e, would you be saying that the 5e rules had been removed? Would you be complaining, telling them that they must publish all their future content under both 6e and 5e?
And again, this is all way off topic. You have completely diverted the discussion away from the original topic and onto something completely different. Therefore, this is the end of my discussion of the new, optional racial ASI rules. If you want to rehash this same old argument again and again, open a new thread.
Also yeah thats what I am saying, that if seeing madness in a rulebook for a game, or seeing a stat block saying orcs are in general stronger than gnomes is traumatizing or brings on trauma in your life I find that very hard to believe. Sorry if I don't believe the same things cause trauma as you do
This is pretty much calling the people who have come to this thread and spoken of deeply personal and difficult experiences liars. THAT IS NOT OK! You don't get to decide how people feel, and you don't get to dismiss them as making this stuff up. That is completely out of order and any decent human being would know that.
Than your being woefully ignorant of the change trying to pretend that nothing was changed in how D&D operates with Tasha's becoming the new standard for ASI's after this debate has occured.
I don't mind at all if someone wants to use the variant rule, all the power to them, what I do mind is now the exclusion of fixed ASIs going forward on new content. The standard should not have been removed for the optional (or the standard should of become the option) Just as you say I can house rule fixed ASIs people just as easily could of house ruled the floating ASIs. But again the argument made was always "this is an optional rule if you like fixed ASIs simply use those, this is just an option for those that don't and now thats not the truth anymore because WotC has decided to remove them entirely going forward.
New optional rule is fine, removal of something is not. To simply claim "well the new races coming out weren't created yet so nothing has been lost" is so flimsy it's laughable, the design process at WotC has changed based on possible offense.
I honestly cannot understand how you can think that not including something in new content moving forward is removal of anything. Yes, it changes the standard going forward, but all existing content still exists. All existing rules still exist. Nothing at all has been removed. All that has changed is that, going forward, a new standard will be used for new content. Nothing which already existed will stop existing, nothing has been removed from anything which already exists.
If WotC said today that it was releasing 6e and would not publish any new content for 5e, would you be saying that the 5e rules had been removed? Would you be complaining, telling them that they must publish all their future content under both 6e and 5e?
And again, this is all way off topic. You have completely diverted the discussion away from the original topic and onto something completely different. Therefore, this is the end of my discussion of the new, optional racial ASI rules. If you want to rehash this same old argument again and again, open a new thread.
Also yeah thats what I am saying, that if seeing madness in a rulebook for a game, or seeing a stat block saying orcs are in general stronger than gnomes is traumatizing or brings on trauma in your life I find that very hard to believe. Sorry if I don't believe the same things cause trauma as you do
This is pretty much calling the people who have come to this thread and spoken of deeply personal and difficult experiences liars. THAT IS NOT OK! You don't get to decide how people feel, and you don't get to dismiss them as making this stuff up. That is completely out of order and any decent human being would know that.
Lets put it this way, if a book lands and introduces a new class because ppl clamor that the wizard is offensive for some reason, and the new class retroactively obtained all the wizards features but it was ok because it was said this was just another option in the game, but going forward WotC did not release any new stuff for wizards because of the new class, would an option have been lost going forward? No new content would support the wizard in favor of the new deemed in-offensive option. To say "well nothing is lost because all those spells weren't out beforehand" is a lie, because beforehand you know wizard would of obtained those spells. The more accurate example of your switch to 6th ed or say 5.5 would be if in 6th WotC dropped the sorcerer and you trying to say "well nothing has been lost because 6e/5.5e never had the sorcerer" When yes, from ed to ed something has been lost an option for players has been removed not given.
If the decision had been hey floating ASIs are the standard going forward but OPTIONALLY here's a list of fixed ASI's I wouldn't really care, options are good if your table likes floating because fixed is offensive to it than rock on and play with floating ASI's, but going forward MY table has lost an option because we like fixed ASI's, so any new race hitting will only work via house rules. and if your answer is "well than house rule!" than why couldn't the floating ASIs be house ruled if ppl didn't like the statics? Something has been lost because of the changes, when something only should of been gained (IE if you like floating ASI's you can use them with all printed material, if you like fixed ASIs you can only use them on currently existing options for stuff like AL games or games that dont use house rules)
And I'm sorry but if you can't see that at all than I'm not sure what to tell you Urth. And who knows maybe WotC will change it and include both like they should be doing but for now that does not appear to be the case in how they are proceeding.
Also as for stance about not getting to decide about how people feel than saying any decent human being can see that's not ok, I suggest you take some of your very own advice
It is a simple question (one that I am sure I will pay for later, again and again):
What gives you the right to decide what is good in D&D and what is bad, and then campaign to remove said "bad" concepts? Who on this entire fan site has that right? I rail against people changing fundamental rules on a daily basis (when I am not banned) , and have created House rules like Falling, Grappling, Jumping, to make them harder in my game. But I have NEVER stated "this entire facet of the game must be removed." You and others are stating just that.
If you are a WOTC game designer, I would have to say, "yeah, it is your job to hack D&D to pieces and put it back together again." That is what is done with every new edition. Correct me if I am wrong, but that is NOT your occupation.
But I am merely shouting into a hurricane. I read and watch what Crawford says. He is in lockstep with your outlook on life and the game. You will get what you want.
There's this book someone keeps insisting shall not be named. I think we know which book, and especially who that someone is.
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Let's try this again, but differently. People seem to like it when I do analogies, like this one, so I'll do another one here. People also seem to like ice cream, so I'll use the same basis as my previous popular analogy.
Imagine that you're at an ice cream store, again using Baskin Robbins as the default. You are working at the store, scooping the ice cream for anyone who comes in, and occasionally your group of friends will visit you while you're working, and you're kind enough to allow them to choose whatever flavor ice cream they want and promise that you will pay for it.
You give everyone their ice cream for free, and one of your players asks you to wash the scoop before getting their ice cream cone, or use a clean scoop, because they're allergic to a type of nut that some of the other flavors have, and they're worried about cross contamination. Perhaps you forget the first time, or you just don't think that it's a big deal, and so you ignore their wishes and use the same scoop as before, not even rinsing it off before scooping the ice cream for your friend with the nut-allergy. They have an allergic reaction, not bad enough to kill them, but they do have to use their emergency Epi-Pen and go to the ER just to be safe.
Any reasonable and decent person would feel horrible for causing that. Any reasonable and decent person would then make sure to do everything in your power to prevent that same situation from happening in the future. You apologize sincerely to them, admit wrongdoing, and promise that nothing like that will ever happen in the future. You know the consequence of them eating something they're allergic to now, and you know that this situation is an important thing to avoid, even if they most likely won't die because of the cross-contamination.
Now, in case you need me to explain it to you, in this analogy, the DM is the person giving their group of friends free ice cream. The player with a nut-allergy is the one with a mental condition that can be triggered by something you put into the campaign. The allergic reaction is a panic attack, or a mental shutdown/meltdown, or any other stress caused by the inclusion of that part of the campaign. It's not your fault that they're allergic to that part of the game, and it's not your fault that it's even a part of the rules of the game, but it is your fault that you included it in in the campaign. Whether its inclusion was accidental or purposefully thinking that it can't be "that big of a deal", you are at fault for their "allergic reaction".
Both allergies and mental conditions are invisible. You can't see them by just looking at the person. It doesn't even matter how long you've known the person, you quite possibly don't know if they have any allergies or mental conditions. It may have never come up, or it may be a touchy subject, whatever the reason, don't assume that a person you know doesn't have a mental condition or allergy. If you do know that they have it, avoid harming them through it. That's the point.
The point isn't to make D&D a rubber room filled with stuffed animals and rainbows so that it can't possibly ever offend or harm anyone, it's to take away the parts that do harm people. It is not anyone's individual job to decide what is harmful in D&D, and neither is it the individual job of anyone else to say what isn't harmful in D&D. The more people that share their experiences, the more WotC should pay attention to it to consider a change. It's "take out this harmful part and replace it with something better", not "take out this harmful part and leave a hole in D&D until there's nothing left". This is like using a different ice-cream scooper to give your friend with an allergy ice cream, not staring at them and saying, "It's this scooper or nothing!!!"
Got it? Does this need to be repeated again? I hope not, because now I want ice cream. . .
Personally I think it would be far more offensive to call madness “mental illness” or something like that. The Lovecraftian madness of the game is not meant to reflect real-world mental illness: it’s meant to be a little campy and, well, fictional. But I do think we should be careful not to blur the lines between classic horror “madness” and actual mental illness, because that can be hurtful, uncomfortable, and unfun.
Yeah, pretty much this. And D&D's madness is an optional rule that can easily be left out of a game if players are uncomfortable with such things.
I fully agree.
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Rodney, if you want to see the real part of my argument in this thread, and not just a webcomic that I refer people to when they start complaining about being "censored", you're free to go back to my main posts and actually argue against them in good faith, instead of whining about this topic even existing. If you need help finding them, here you go:
Dismissing an argument because you think it looks like something you would see on a bumper sticker isn't a valid argument against it. I will debate with you in good faith if you wish, but based on you wanting to get the thread closed down, I'm assuming that's not going to happen.
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Wow! I just came upon a fascinating discovery, so here is my amazing theory to explain it: if a thread goes on long enough, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will eventually get brought up and blamed.
Anyways, back to the topic on hand, I think the best advice/lesson that I got from watching videos and reading the interwebs on running D&D is to have a session zero. Session zero can do a lot, such as teaching the rules, creating characters, what optional and house rules are in play, what is the tone of the campaign, etc.
However, when I was a new GM, what I did not really think about was content warnings for stuff like racism, ****, mental illness, etc. that could trigger people, because that was not really talked about very often. And because LMOP is quite tame and PG13, content warning would be one of the last things to cross my mind. While LMOP does not really need content warning labels, I still think some kind of content warning or sensitivity awareness should be included. While LMOP is PG13, GMs and players might not be, and we might not even realize it. I think it would be helpful if content warning and sensitivity awareness are included in the boxed sets, Basic Rules/SRD, DMG, AND PHB, because it only takes one person to potentially ruin D&D for the whole group and they might not know it. And if the group is new, they might not come back to D&D again due to that negative experience.
In fact, I think session zero itself needs to be a bit more codified and recognized. As far as I can tell, session zero was not officially even a thing until TCOE, which is kind of a shame it took this long to be recognized. TCOE's section on Social Contract is great, and I think it is something worth of being errata'd into all the boxed sets, Basic Rules/SRD, etc. as mentioned above, since those are likely the first point of contact for anyone new to D&D.
Wow! I just came upon a fascinating discovery, so here is my amazing theory to explain it: if a thread goes on long enough, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will eventually get brought up and blamed.
Anyways, back to the topic on hand, I think the best advice/lesson that I got from watching videos and reading the interwebs on running D&D is to have a session zero. Session zero can do a lot, such as teaching the rules, creating characters, what optional and house rules are in play, what is the tone of the campaign, etc.
However, when I was a new GM, what I did not really think about was content warnings for stuff like racism, ****, mental illness, etc. that could trigger people, because that was not really talked about very often. And because LMOP is quite tame and PG13, content warning would be one of the last things to cross my mind. While LMOP does not really need content warning labels, I still think some kind of content warning or sensitivity awareness should be included. While LMOP is PG13, GMs and players might not be, and we might not even realize it. I think it would be helpful if content warning and sensitivity awareness are included in the boxed sets, Basic Rules/SRD, DMG, AND PHB, because it only takes one person to potentially ruin D&D for the whole group and they might not know it. And if the group is new, they might not come back to D&D again due to that negative experience.
In fact, I think session zero itself needs to be a bit more codified and recognized. As far as I can tell, session zero was not officially even a thing until TCOE, which is kind of a shame it took this long to be recognized. TCOE's section on Social Contract is great, and I think it is something worth of being errata'd into all the boxed sets, Basic Rules/SRD, etc. as mentioned above, since those are likely the first point of contact for anyone new to D&D.
When I was a new DM, it was the 70's and a lot of attitudes were different. And I questioned a lot of aspects of the game back then, too (particularly the institutionalized racism and implications of that on free will). Many of these discussions and arguments are literally as old as the game.
Society has moved on since then, still with a ways to go but in most cases much better in those aspects than it was. The game should move on from it's 70's roots too.
Not sure about the 70s, but in the 80s, as was the case with comic books, content warnings were becoming a shopkeeper thing. Not as codified as say record label warnings or the Comics Code Authority (that actually predated the record label warnings by decades); but I think maybe to avoid that sort of quasi government imposed self regulations, a lot of comic shop owners had some books that were just in the "mature readers" section. In gaming, I first noticed conventions sometimes had "content" warnings that usually had either a PG-13, R or "adults only" equivalent advisory to _some_ of the session offerings, usually the late night ones where some of the sessions were clearly an opportunity to share dirty jokes. I don't remember anyone publishing game content with advisory until the 90s where you had consciously transgressive games like Kult or Over the Edge (speaking of mental illness...). Since we are talking advisory I'll put this next observation under this
I want to say Dark Sun kinda went there in an actually vanilla edge lord fashion with some of its aesthetics riffing of Gor.
and White Wolf's Black Dog imprint's transgressive chic efforts. It was the 90s, subversion (a lot of it echoing the 70s) had become cool, and commodified.
So all that said, I wouldn't throw out the 70s entirely. The 70s were also when the speculative fiction genres really started the established narrative questioning you yourself were questioning. The 70s were a very fragmented/fractured period culturally, probably why so many turned to Disco to take the edge off.
To XXXGammaRay's observation, I think some folks give Tasha's codification of the Session 0 a bit too much credit. It's just a codification of best practices that have been around gaming for quite some time. In published form it really reads like filler. Of course, I think the TTRPG community is bigger than it used to be so maybe codification of best practices is in order to content against signal/noise issues. The Consent in Gaming pamphlet I frequently cite (and compared to Tasha's it's much more practical, succinct and even provides check list tools or a description of "X Cards") was published in 2019, but while I think there's some claim to innovation being made, it also reads like a distillation of best practices known by a lot of "good DMs" and players.
In the early mid 90s I played Chill with a couple of ... Chillmasters? Keepers? I forget what they were called (Chill was a very successful ruleset for modern horror roleplaying that could be done as "monsters of the one shot" or played campaign style with a very well developed game world that make some Lovecraft derivatives seem childish ... in fact those who think Lovecraft makes CoC problematic should check out Chill, when the X Files came out folks were trying to articulate how different it felt ... to me it was feeling like playing Chill but watching TV, maybe that's why The Twin Peaks soundtrack was always effective background music when the Chill group was getting together). Anyway, every let's call them Keepers, every Keeper when I joined, we had "the talk" that always started with "What are you afraid of?" Boundaries would be discussed always concluding with the assurance that we're all here to have a good time and if anyone feels buttons are being pushed by the game plot or other players ... well, we had varying safe words. I always preferred, and tried to practice as a GM myself, games that led with that sort of sensitivity. It's why I scoffed at the consent form initially, because I thought it HR codified a common practice, but when I realized it actually expanded my awareness and was frankly a lot more efficient than "the talk," I embraced it.
If anything, I worry some of the present Session 0 zeal and frankly some of the performance attached to sessions 0 misses some of the point on a forgetting the forest for the trees level. TTRPG are about having fun. Any entertainer whether a movie maker or a stand up comic, knows there's a fine line between thrilling and being exploitive. The sensitivity required to toe but not break that line isn't inspired genius. It comes from knowing your audience. As DMs and players are all engaged in not just their own entertainment. but each others' entertainment, sessions 0 exist for the table to get know each other. It's like breaking bread, in many cases literally because of the foods usually associated with game night (in my book pizza is just Bread+good). And if folks who hate on that practice can tell me what is actually wrong with that, maybe I'll understand some of the incommensurate animosity that pops up in these threads.
Really, all a Session 0 advises is talk about what you're doing before you do it. Larger groups call it orientation, which means an effort to find one's way before you start.
All that said, I think this thread is drifting far afield from its original intent, to question the role or propriety of "madness" in D&D. I forgot what we were talking about; but I'll give my last two cents in this post on this. Is the "madness" posited in the iterations of Wells' "The Invisible Man" acceptable "villain madness" for D&D. We can talk the original fiction narration and Lon Cheney, but I"m thinking more so the sort of "madness" that consumes Kevin Bacon's "Hollow Man" or maybe a little more realistic the "monstrous mind" that consumed Elizabeth Moss's antaognist in the most recent Universal pictures effort. Is the madness or "insanity" realistic? Only in broad strokes that would make any real clinician throw up their hands. Or let's take Venom's hold on Peter Parker or any of its hosts in the Marvel universe, that "dark side" is often likened to "madness". Clinically accurate or sensitive to those actually afflicted with illness or otherwise contending with mental health? No. Do we really think we need to? Ravensloft+ comes out in less than a week. Dracula tropes: Renfield and Jonathan Harker are mechanics producing NPC or PC behaviors comparable to them inappropriate? I don't think so; but if my group expressed discomfort with us "going there" before we set out, I'd adjust the possible map; and I'm definitely curious to learn what others may think about these sorts of "madness" tropes. Van Hellsing, though, that guy's toxic workaholic narcissism ... I think we can all be in agreement about him.
Easy solution. Madness isn't a psychological condition, it's a supernatural effect upon the person. They're not describing mental illnesses so there's no direct correlation.
Simple assertion, if only the word madness wasn't tangled up in popular conceptions of psychology. You can hold onto that assertion in your game, but associations are sticky so it's not a clean break. Like every other "sensitive" area of TTRPGs.
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I'd love it if the simple fix was "oh, you know this word mired in literal centuries of discrimination and stigmatisation of mental illness, discrimination and stigmatisation that persists even today that you've personal experiences first hand? Yeah, it means something different but functionality the same. Problem solved"
The issue isn't one as woefully simplistic as "madness equals mental illness". That's such a shocking reduction of the argument down to meaningless that I'm stunned. The problem is that the madness and insanity language and mechanisms presented are a reflection of the persistent, pop culture notion of mental illness. They are a part of peddling the same harmful stereotypes and it. It doesn't matter if your characters 'madness' is mundane or supernatural in cause, it's still fuelling the harmful notions of what people think is mental illness.
This is why I truly appreciate what they're doing in Ravenloft. They're using language that is actually psychologically informed; stress and fear are things everyone experiences, so places these mechanisms in a sphere that less intersects with 'Hollywood insanity' and more with an empathetic depiction.
So there's no need for this ineffectual handwaving of 'just say it's magic madness,, instead look to what Wizards us already doing. Look at informed language. Look at dropping old tropes and instead revitalising with new, well thought out approaches.
I'd love it if the simple fix was "oh, you know this word mired in literal centuries of discrimination and stigmatisation of mental illness, discrimination and stigmatisation that persists even today that you've personal experiences first hand? Yeah, it means something different but functionality the same. Problem solved"
The issue isn't one as woefully simplistic as "madness equals mental illness". That's such a shocking reduction of the argument down to meaningless that I'm stunned. The problem is that the madness and insanity language and mechanisms presented are a reflection of the persistent, pop culture notion of mental illness. They are a part of peddling the same harmful stereotypes and it. It doesn't matter if your characters 'madness' is mundane or supernatural in cause, it's still fuelling the harmful notions of what people think is mental illness.
This is why I truly appreciate what they're doing in Ravenloft. They're using language that is actually psychologically informed; stress and fear are things everyone experiences, so places these mechanisms in a sphere that less intersects with 'Hollywood insanity' and more with an empathetic depiction.
So there's no need for this ineffectual handwaving of 'just say it's magic madness,, instead look to what Wizards us already doing. Look at informed language. Look at dropping old tropes and instead revitalising with new, well thought out approaches.
I've really appreciated your perspective and even moreso your willingness to speak from a very candid place regarding your own experience and thoughts. Frankly, what you describe Ravensloft as doing is something I like seeing in TTRPGs in general. However, while I've never read CoS in its entirety, what you're saying "WotC is doing," let's call it a progressive step past the problematic madness rules, is that trajectory you're recognizing CoS based on some sort of promotional or leaked pages from the new book? (I've sort of embargoed advanced press so no Bell of Lost Souls or YouTube reviews of the table of contents for me). I'm asking because as I mentioned (I think) elsewhere in this thread, I was curious about what if any dialogue there was between this discussion topic and the recent DDB posted article on "How to Introduce Psychological Horror in Your Campaign." I'm sort of hoping the article was largely written without any information of the steps you say WotC is moving in, because I don't see it. There's a preamble about season 0 and boundaries, and then it's a dive into relatively safe tropes to make your players uncomfortable and then an almost literal recitation of the madness mechanics. I was expecting a bit more of a bridge from that "old school" mechanic into as you put more modern psychologically informed dynamics, but I don't think it's there, at least conforming to my understanding of those dynamics.
On a different note, again appreciating and in no way trying to invalidate your experience or feeling on the matter - I think we can both agree this forum isn't the best place to bond on these issues, but I've had my fair share of experiences and have been a witness to many others' experience. But saying that, I think I'm going to have to disagree with the necessity to abandon "madness" not contained in within the present mental health models. While I think the most recent Invisible Man does actually speak to the stresses and fears a realistic women contends with against overwhelming misogyny (though begging the question whether casting misogyny as supernaturally monstrous does the real life problem of misogyny any real service), I want to turn back to that monster, but also look at Hamlet, Lear, for example. I worry some of the logic presented in this discussion rejects those as well. My cosmic horror touchstone is actually Job. Not the guy on Arrested Development, the one from a few millennia back in the ash pit. A mortal mind in anguish and despair where modern assessment of depression or other affective disorders don't really sync up ... and then that mythic mind confronted with "What the Leviathan said" and "What the Whirlwind says" ... literary revelations with psychic weight that maybe you could argue track to revelations sometimes reported from psychedelic experiences, though those analogies land flat too. Was William Blake being an arse when he attempted to illuminate those revelations in his poetry and engravings? In a later mystic era, maybe it was just narcissism as its alleged of most of the Beats, but the "madness" in Ginsberg Howl isn't clinical. Nor is it Hollywood commodity. There's something else at play, and to play with, if a player wants.
I apologize if I'm hard to follow here, I lost my train of thought myself. I guess what I'm saying is yes the play of the game should be respectful of what we think we understand of modern psychology. No one should want to be sitting down at a table to hurt someone. At the same time the game does work a lot in myth, and myth is a deep force in the psyche that psychology has tried to get under its grip, but I don't think ever has. Modern psychology tries to aid the modern mind with a map, I think there's still room on that map for "here there be dragons" written on its edges. Depending on a groups consenting willingness, done with care, I actually think it's ok for a game to go there. At the same time I don't feel able to assess any other groups capability besides my own so all I find myself capable of doing here is trying to advocate for mindfulness of the varied spaces these games can dwell in, including the esoteric (and based on the cults on this forum, I think more players dwell in the esoteric space than they're willing to admit).
I'd love it if the simple fix was "oh, you know this word mired in literal centuries of discrimination and stigmatisation of mental illness, discrimination and stigmatisation that persists even today that you've personal experiences first hand? Yeah, it means something different but functionality the same. Problem solved"
The issue isn't one as woefully simplistic as "madness equals mental illness". That's such a shocking reduction of the argument down to meaningless that I'm stunned. The problem is that the madness and insanity language and mechanisms presented are a reflection of the persistent, pop culture notion of mental illness. They are a part of peddling the same harmful stereotypes and it. It doesn't matter if your characters 'madness' is mundane or supernatural in cause, it's still fuelling the harmful notions of what people think is mental illness.
This is why I truly appreciate what they're doing in Ravenloft. They're using language that is actually psychologically informed; stress and fear are things everyone experiences, so places these mechanisms in a sphere that less intersects with 'Hollywood insanity' and more with an empathetic depiction.
So there's no need for this ineffectual handwaving of 'just say it's magic madness,, instead look to what Wizards us already doing. Look at informed language. Look at dropping old tropes and instead revitalising with new, well thought out approaches.
I've really appreciated your perspective and even moreso your willingness to speak from a very candid place regarding your own experience and thoughts. Frankly, what you describe Ravensloft as doing is something I like seeing in TTRPGs in general. However, while I've never read CoS in its entirety, what you're saying "WotC is doing," let's call it a progressive step past the problematic madness rules, is that trajectory you're recognizing CoS based on some sort of promotional or leaked pages from the new book? (I've sort of embargoed advanced press so no Bell of Lost Souls or YouTube reviews of the table of contents for me). I'm asking because as I mentioned (I think) elsewhere in this thread, I was curious about what if any dialogue there was between this discussion topic and the recent DDB posted article on "How to Introduce Psychological Horror in Your Campaign." I'm sort of hoping the article was largely written without any information of the steps you say WotC is moving in, because I don't see it. There's a preamble about season 0 and boundaries, and then it's a dive into relatively safe tropes to make your players uncomfortable and then an almost literal recitation of the madness mechanics. I was expecting a bit more of a bridge from that "old school" mechanic into as you put more modern psychologically informed dynamics, but I don't think it's there, at least conforming to my understanding of those dynamics.
This is actually something that was brought to my attention by Doctor B on twitter when he was looking at his promotional copy. He comments on the psychologically informed language in this thread. Why does his opinion matter? Because he's a doctor of psychology and clinical director of the Take This mental health charity. This is something I then discussed with my fiancee, who is a doctor of psychology herself, and a trained and qualified counselor and therapist. She commented further on the importance of language on shaping perception of mental illness, because the perception of mental illness has a direct effect on people's willingness and ability to get help
On a different note, again appreciating and in no way trying to invalidate your experience or feeling on the matter - I think we can both agree this forum isn't the best place to bond on these issues, but I've had my fair share of experiences and have been a witness to many others' experience. But saying that, I think I'm going to have to disagree with the necessity to abandon "madness" not contained in within the present mental health models. While I think the most recent Invisible Man does actually speak to the stresses and fears a realistic women contends with against overwhelming misogyny (though begging the question whether casting misogyny as supernaturally monstrous does the real life problem of misogyny any real service), I want to turn back to that monster, but also look at Hamlet, Lear, for example. I worry some of the logic presented in this discussion rejects those as well. My cosmic horror touchstone is actually Job. Not the guy on Arrested Development, the one from a few millennia back in the ash pit. A mortal mind in anguish and despair where modern assessment of depression or other affective disorders don't really sync up ... and then that mythic mind confronted with "What the Leviathan said" and "What the Whirlwind says" ... literary revelations with psychic weight that maybe you could argue track to revelations sometimes reported from psychedelic experiences, though those analogies land flat too. Was William Blake being an arse when he attempted to illuminate those revelations in his poetry and engravings? In a later mystic era, maybe it was just narcissism as its alleged of most of the Beats, but the "madness" in Ginsberg Howl isn't clinical. Nor is it Hollywood commodity. There's something else at play, and to play with, if a player wants.
I think that madness is not only a problematic term, but also a woefully ineffective term, which is why I think that moving towards better, more nuanced language won't just improve accessibility, but the quality of the game. What Lovecraft and others of that genre describe of 'madness' is actually the mind fracturing under external stressors and trauma. Calling this madness is like calling fillet mignon 'beef' or a severed limb a 'flesh wound'. It not only grossly simplifies portrayals in ways that oft do harm, but it does a disservice to the game. I'm not saying 'excise madness from the game', but I am saying 'move towards better, more nuanced, evocative and informed language'.
Also, I would like to comment on the fact that I'm not judging past language; it is what it is and it was a product of the times. Heck, I'm not even judging the DMG for the language it uses because things have changed a lot in just 5 years. What I am saying is "move forwards, do better, ever improve"
Also, no, forums are rarely the best place for nuanced discussion, but still better than twitter.
I apologize if I'm hard to follow here, I lost my train of thought myself. I guess what I'm saying is yes the play of the game should be respectful of what we think we understand of modern psychology. No one should want to be sitting down at a table to hurt someone. At the same time the game does work a lot in myth, and myth is a deep force in the psyche that psychology has tried to get under its grip, but I don't think ever has. Modern psychology tries to aid the modern mind with a map, I think there's still room on that map for "here there be dragons" written on its edges. Depending on a groups consenting willingness, done with care, I actually think it's ok for a game to go there. At the same time I don't feel able to assess any other groups capability besides my own so all I find myself capable of doing here is trying to advocate for mindfulness of the varied spaces these games can dwell in, including the esoteric (and based on the cults on this forum, I think more players dwell in the esoteric space than they're willing to admit).
No apologies necessary, this is a heady topic. I see what you're getting at, with the innate mystical fantasy of the game leaving room for anachronisms of language and concept. I think the important thing is to look at which anachronisms still carry modern weight and decide if they need to be gently tucked to the wayside. I have no desire to restrict any tables style of play; if someone wants to run a game with the most toxic and harmful of tropes about mental illness, and their players are down with that, that's not my place to comment, just so long as they keep it far from me. However, I do feel that the shared language of the game needs avoid that as much as possible; you can't unread the Dungeon Master's Guide, you can't unlearn that something is actually how it's presented in the books. My ultimate belief is that D&D should not stop people adding in potentially problematic language or topics, but it should never force people to take it out. The onus should always be on the DM and the players to turn those dials up to where they're comfortable, never down to where they feel safe. Imagine in this way; would you rather a stereo that always comes on deafeningly loud and you have to always turn it down, or silent and you always have to turn it up? I feel the latter would be most peoples preferences.
I do think there still is, and always will be, a place in D&D for cults, for the fracturing of perception in the face of the incomprehensible, for terrifying edifices of eldritch horror, and for the fear of that which lurks in the dead of night. I just think there's better language for it, we just have to be willing to expand our minds, hearts, and vocabularies to let it in. And in doing so, we'll let even more people into this hobby. Who knows, maybe that'll bring in some more DMs and I can finally be a player for once!
Thank you for your kind and measured words, I'll readily speak to my own experiences on this with candour and openness.
Simple assertion, if only the word madness wasn't tangled up in popular conceptions of psychology. You can hold onto that assertion in your game, but associations are sticky so it's not a clean break. Like every other "sensitive" area of TTRPGs.
Delve deep enough into anything, any word, any phrase, any culture, personage, you will always be able to parse out something horrific about them. Everything comes with baggage. You can't separate art from culture or culture from the artist. Everything is a choice at where you and the collective that forms current social norms are willing to draw a line, and everything before that line is accepted despite its potential for harm. It's the cold calculus of reason without which we couldn't play D&D at all. There is enough in D&D in its current form, even after the recent changes, for it to be hugely problematic if examined closely enough.
I have pretty debilitating mental disorders that have had a major negative impact on my life. That's right, MULTIPLE. ADHD, Major Depressive Disorder with Anxiety, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Dyscalculia just to name the diagnosed (by a psychiatrist) ones. I could choose to be offended at the 'madness' label just by having ADHD alone given its history. It used to be called "an abnormal defect of moral control" after all. Even its current name is a misnomer since there's no actual deficit of attention but rather an inability to regulate attention, and the hyperactivity component doesn't reflect the actual nature of the hyperactivity, which can be everything from tics to an overactive mind. It doesn't even mention the emotional dysregulation or executive dysfunction that is core to what makes the disorder a disorder by the definitions of the DSM. For these 'overloads of emotion', I could've been lobotomized at one point in time.
But we're talking about a fantasy game played with supernatural elements involved where someone can go 'mad' by virtue of looking at a (really) large squid. Whether I choose to 'hold onto my assertion' or not, we're not talking about the same thing as what madness represents in the real world from a historical or cultural perspective. We're talking about the 'madness' of Alfred Hitchcock and H.P. Lovecraft. So if the term disturbs anyone that much, call it something else, call it "Going Wobbly for a Spell" or something, but it's not going to bother me, someone who literally has debilitating, professionally diagnosed and treated mental health issues that I have to deal with every day (and no, I'm not saying I'm an authority who speaks for everyone with mental health issues).
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
I think we should keep "woke" and political correctness out of DnD. You do you, but I don't think these considerations should be made for the official content, because when does it stop? There will eventually be nothing but an empty husk left.
I think we should keep "woke" and political correctness out of DnD. You do you, but I don't think these considerations should be made for the official content, because when does it stop? There will eventually be nothing but an empty husk left.
There are three things here I wanna break down:
I think we should keep "woke" and political correctness out of DnD.
None of what has been mentioned is 'woke' or political correctness. It's people, myself included, saying "This language is actively harmful to myself and others in a non-speculative sense. Let's fix that". There is no politics here, just people and their experiences.
You do you, but I don't think these considerations should be made for the official content
The official content is exactly where these considerations should be made because, unlike what happens at your table or mine, the official content is what's put out into the world. It's what people experience when they pick up a book to see what D&D is about. The official content is the ambassador to the game.
because when does it stop? There will eventually be nothing but an empty husk left.
Well firstly, it doesn't 'stop'. D&D will never be perfect and, as times change, so will D&D. It will either grow and improve and become something more and more people can approach, or it will wither and die a stagnant, dated mess. But this presupposes to incorrect assumptions; this is about removing rather than fixing, and secondly that there is nothing redeemable in D&D and if we were to remove it, there'd be nothing left. I wouldn't say that about this hobby, this game. Sure, it has it's rough edges and harmful themes, but not as many as it used to have, and it'll hopefully have less in the future. It'll still be D&D, it'll just be better. To assume that D&D minus the problematic elements would be 'nothing but an empty husk' truly does a disservice to the hobby, the stories people tell with it, the experiences people have.
So no, this isn't about "wokeness" or "political correctness" or taking anything out. It's about moving D&D forwards, it's about compassion and respect and empathy. It's about acknowledging that D&D isn't perfect and never will be. There's an old adage; "perfect is the enemy of good". D&D may never will be perfect, but it can always be better. That's what this is about. Making D&D better.
I'd love it if the simple fix was "oh, you know this word mired in literal centuries of discrimination and stigmatisation of mental illness, discrimination and stigmatisation that persists even today that you've personal experiences first hand? Yeah, it means something different but functionality the same. Problem solved"
The issue isn't one as woefully simplistic as "madness equals mental illness". That's such a shocking reduction of the argument down to meaningless that I'm stunned. The problem is that the madness and insanity language and mechanisms presented are a reflection of the persistent, pop culture notion of mental illness. They are a part of peddling the same harmful stereotypes and it. It doesn't matter if your characters 'madness' is mundane or supernatural in cause, it's still fuelling the harmful notions of what people think is mental illness.
This is why I truly appreciate what they're doing in Ravenloft. They're using language that is actually psychologically informed; stress and fear are things everyone experiences, so places these mechanisms in a sphere that less intersects with 'Hollywood insanity' and more with an empathetic depiction.
So there's no need for this ineffectual handwaving of 'just say it's magic madness,, instead look to what Wizards us already doing. Look at informed language. Look at dropping old tropes and instead revitalising with new, well thought out approaches.
So what, precisely, do you do with this scenario:
The DM has an encounter where a NPC Fallen Aasimar 7th level Conquest Paladin fires up his Necrotc Shroud feature (because more PC's have CHA as dump stat than Wis).
Now, all within 10 feet that failed that CHA save are rooted in place, immobilized with terror, so much that they start taking actual physic damage. Pretty traumatizing stuff, in the hands of a DM capable of telling a story, which we are all to aspire to.
Do you, as a player:
a. Say this is an abomination and affront to all people with mental health issues and is causing you physical harm, pack up your stuff, and walk away, never to return?
b. Tough it out and tell the DM afterwards how his words traumatized you, and demand that he never create an emotionally traumatizing event again in the game.
c. Say though it did not affect you in the slightest say this "might have caused trauma to someone" and do option a.
d. Say though it did not affect you in the slightest say this "might have caused trauma to someone" and do option b.
e. Remind the DM that on session 0 that any and all potential situations that have the potential to make someone sad were discussed and were to be removed from the game, and it appears this potential scenario was not, and this entire encounter should be immediately stopped, and this kind of thing added to the list.
Because this is what happens in my world, at least the pre-Covid world.
I have explained this before, many times. I play at a game cafe. There are 3-5 DM's running games simultaneously on Sat aft, as that is advertised as "D&D afternoon". People walk in off the street every weekend, and the understanding is that space is made available for them at tables. So , in my Sat game, though I have a core of regular players, it is not uncommon to have a total stranger sit down at my table and join midway through my campaign for that session, or multiple sessions, depending on the size of the turnout.
Am I now to put a sign above my table warning that psychologically damaging events could happen in my game, or should I censor out any potential encounter that could trigger someone in the wide wide pantheon of mental illnesses, on the oft chance one of these walk-in's (my table are fine with everything I throw at them) has a mental illness.
What you describe is your form of a utopia. I live in the real world, where what you want is not reasonable.
I think we should keep "woke" and political correctness out of DnD. You do you, but I don't think these considerations should be made for the official content, because when does it stop? There will eventually be nothing but an empty husk left.
There are three things here I wanna break down:
I think we should keep "woke" and political correctness out of DnD.
None of what has been mentioned is 'woke' or political correctness. It's people, myself included, saying "This language is actively harmful to myself and others in a non-speculative sense. Let's fix that". There is no politics here, just people and their experiences.
You do you, but I don't think these considerations should be made for the official content
The official content is exactly where these considerations should be made because, unlike what happens at your table or mine, the official content is what's put out into the world. It's what people experience when they pick up a book to see what D&D is about. The official content is the ambassador to the game.
because when does it stop? There will eventually be nothing but an empty husk left.
Well firstly, it doesn't 'stop'. D&D will never be perfect and, as times change, so will D&D. It will either grow and improve and become something more and more people can approach, or it will wither and die a stagnant, dated mess. But this presupposes to incorrect assumptions; this is about removing rather than fixing, and secondly that there is nothing redeemable in D&D and if we were to remove it, there'd be nothing left. I wouldn't say that about this hobby, this game. Sure, it has it's rough edges and harmful themes, but not as many as it used to have, and it'll hopefully have less in the future. It'll still be D&D, it'll just be better. To assume that D&D minus the problematic elements would be 'nothing but an empty husk' truly does a disservice to the hobby, the stories people tell with it, the experiences people have.
So no, this isn't about "wokeness" or "political correctness" or taking anything out. It's about moving D&D forwards, it's about compassion and respect and empathy. It's about acknowledging that D&D isn't perfect and never will be. There's an old adage; "perfect is the enemy of good". D&D may never will be perfect, but it can always be better. That's what this is about. Making D&D better.
"D&D may never will be perfect, but it can always be better. That's what this is about. Making D&D better."
In your eyes. My idea of a better D&D and yours are far far different. The horror, the traumatizing events, the terrifying situations and monsters, that is what makes the game awesome.I want a game free of any pressure from a politically correct world where everything that has been created in is 50 years of existence is expanded upon. I want more Conquest Paladins, Aboleths, Dragons, Mind-Flayers, GOO Warlocks, not less, and certainly not neutered.
Tell me, did you manage to sit through Jaws, Alien, The Shining, 1408, or any other number of classic movies that terrorized people and the masses LOVED? The Shining is considered an all time classic, beloved by critics and movie-watchers alike. In your world, it would never have been made.
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Than your being woefully ignorant of the change trying to pretend that nothing was changed in how D&D operates with Tasha's becoming the new standard for ASI's after this debate has occured.
I don't mind at all if someone wants to use the variant rule, all the power to them, what I do mind is now the exclusion of fixed ASIs going forward on new content. The standard should not have been removed for the optional (or the standard should of become the option) Just as you say I can house rule fixed ASIs people just as easily could of house ruled the floating ASIs. But again the argument made was always "this is an optional rule if you like fixed ASIs simply use those, this is just an option for those that don't", and now thats not the truth anymore because WotC has decided to remove them entirely going forward because of the pushes. Now if you play in a by the books game or AL you have the option of fixed or floating ASIs per optional rules but going forward you will not have the option for fixed just floating.
New optional rule is fine, removal of something is not. To simply claim "well the new races coming out weren't created yet so nothing has been lost" is so flimsy it's laughable, the design process at WotC has changed based on possible offense.
Also yeah thats what I am saying, that if seeing madness in a rulebook for a game, or seeing a stat block saying orcs are in general stronger than gnomes is traumatizing or brings on trauma in your life I find that very hard to believe. Sorry if I don't believe the same things cause trauma as you do
I honestly cannot understand how you can think that not including something in new content moving forward is removal of anything. Yes, it changes the standard going forward, but all existing content still exists. All existing rules still exist. Nothing at all has been removed. All that has changed is that, going forward, a new standard will be used for new content. Nothing which already existed will stop existing, nothing has been removed from anything which already exists.
If WotC said today that it was releasing 6e and would not publish any new content for 5e, would you be saying that the 5e rules had been removed? Would you be complaining, telling them that they must publish all their future content under both 6e and 5e?
And again, this is all way off topic. You have completely diverted the discussion away from the original topic and onto something completely different. Therefore, this is the end of my discussion of the new, optional racial ASI rules. If you want to rehash this same old argument again and again, open a new thread.
This is pretty much calling the people who have come to this thread and spoken of deeply personal and difficult experiences liars. THAT IS NOT OK! You don't get to decide how people feel, and you don't get to dismiss them as making this stuff up. That is completely out of order and any decent human being would know that.
Lets put it this way, if a book lands and introduces a new class because ppl clamor that the wizard is offensive for some reason, and the new class retroactively obtained all the wizards features but it was ok because it was said this was just another option in the game, but going forward WotC did not release any new stuff for wizards because of the new class, would an option have been lost going forward? No new content would support the wizard in favor of the new deemed in-offensive option. To say "well nothing is lost because all those spells weren't out beforehand" is a lie, because beforehand you know wizard would of obtained those spells. The more accurate example of your switch to 6th ed or say 5.5 would be if in 6th WotC dropped the sorcerer and you trying to say "well nothing has been lost because 6e/5.5e never had the sorcerer" When yes, from ed to ed something has been lost an option for players has been removed not given.
If the decision had been hey floating ASIs are the standard going forward but OPTIONALLY here's a list of fixed ASI's I wouldn't really care, options are good if your table likes floating because fixed is offensive to it than rock on and play with floating ASI's, but going forward MY table has lost an option because we like fixed ASI's, so any new race hitting will only work via house rules. and if your answer is "well than house rule!" than why couldn't the floating ASIs be house ruled if ppl didn't like the statics? Something has been lost because of the changes, when something only should of been gained (IE if you like floating ASI's you can use them with all printed material, if you like fixed ASIs you can only use them on currently existing options for stuff like AL games or games that dont use house rules)
And I'm sorry but if you can't see that at all than I'm not sure what to tell you Urth. And who knows maybe WotC will change it and include both like they should be doing but for now that does not appear to be the case in how they are proceeding.
Also as for stance about not getting to decide about how people feel than saying any decent human being can see that's not ok, I suggest you take some of your very own advice
There's this book someone keeps insisting shall not be named. I think we know which book, and especially who that someone is.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Let's try this again, but differently. People seem to like it when I do analogies, like this one, so I'll do another one here. People also seem to like ice cream, so I'll use the same basis as my previous popular analogy.
Imagine that you're at an ice cream store, again using Baskin Robbins as the default. You are working at the store, scooping the ice cream for anyone who comes in, and occasionally your group of friends will visit you while you're working, and you're kind enough to allow them to choose whatever flavor ice cream they want and promise that you will pay for it.
You give everyone their ice cream for free, and one of your players asks you to wash the scoop before getting their ice cream cone, or use a clean scoop, because they're allergic to a type of nut that some of the other flavors have, and they're worried about cross contamination. Perhaps you forget the first time, or you just don't think that it's a big deal, and so you ignore their wishes and use the same scoop as before, not even rinsing it off before scooping the ice cream for your friend with the nut-allergy. They have an allergic reaction, not bad enough to kill them, but they do have to use their emergency Epi-Pen and go to the ER just to be safe.
Any reasonable and decent person would feel horrible for causing that. Any reasonable and decent person would then make sure to do everything in your power to prevent that same situation from happening in the future. You apologize sincerely to them, admit wrongdoing, and promise that nothing like that will ever happen in the future. You know the consequence of them eating something they're allergic to now, and you know that this situation is an important thing to avoid, even if they most likely won't die because of the cross-contamination.
Now, in case you need me to explain it to you, in this analogy, the DM is the person giving their group of friends free ice cream. The player with a nut-allergy is the one with a mental condition that can be triggered by something you put into the campaign. The allergic reaction is a panic attack, or a mental shutdown/meltdown, or any other stress caused by the inclusion of that part of the campaign. It's not your fault that they're allergic to that part of the game, and it's not your fault that it's even a part of the rules of the game, but it is your fault that you included it in in the campaign. Whether its inclusion was accidental or purposefully thinking that it can't be "that big of a deal", you are at fault for their "allergic reaction".
Both allergies and mental conditions are invisible. You can't see them by just looking at the person. It doesn't even matter how long you've known the person, you quite possibly don't know if they have any allergies or mental conditions. It may have never come up, or it may be a touchy subject, whatever the reason, don't assume that a person you know doesn't have a mental condition or allergy. If you do know that they have it, avoid harming them through it. That's the point.
The point isn't to make D&D a rubber room filled with stuffed animals and rainbows so that it can't possibly ever offend or harm anyone, it's to take away the parts that do harm people. It is not anyone's individual job to decide what is harmful in D&D, and neither is it the individual job of anyone else to say what isn't harmful in D&D. The more people that share their experiences, the more WotC should pay attention to it to consider a change. It's "take out this harmful part and replace it with something better", not "take out this harmful part and leave a hole in D&D until there's nothing left". This is like using a different ice-cream scooper to give your friend with an allergy ice cream, not staring at them and saying, "It's this scooper or nothing!!!"
Got it? Does this need to be repeated again? I hope not, because now I want ice cream. . .
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I fully agree.
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Rodney, if you want to see the real part of my argument in this thread, and not just a webcomic that I refer people to when they start complaining about being "censored", you're free to go back to my main posts and actually argue against them in good faith, instead of whining about this topic even existing. If you need help finding them, here you go:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/108237-is-wotc-treading-an-insensitive-line-concerning#c13
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/108237-is-wotc-treading-an-insensitive-line-concerning?page=7#c130
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/108237-is-wotc-treading-an-insensitive-line-concerning?comment=173
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/108237-is-wotc-treading-an-insensitive-line-concerning?page=6#c114
Dismissing an argument because you think it looks like something you would see on a bumper sticker isn't a valid argument against it. I will debate with you in good faith if you wish, but based on you wanting to get the thread closed down, I'm assuming that's not going to happen.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Thank you all for the continued patience with this thread. I would advise everyone to be aware of the posted Site Rules & Guidelines, as each post will individually be held accountable to them.
As such, this thread will certainly remain open for respectful, constructive debate. Those who cannot abide by the aforementioned Site Rules & Guidelines may find infraction points within close proximity. Again, I thank you all for using the report functionality on non-permitted posts, respecting those both on either for/against sides of the conversation, and keeping commentary civil as you explain your reasoning.
Keep on keepin' on.
-Sedge
Wow! I just came upon a fascinating discovery, so here is my amazing theory to explain it: if a thread goes on long enough, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will eventually get brought up and blamed.
Anyways, back to the topic on hand, I think the best advice/lesson that I got from watching videos and reading the interwebs on running D&D is to have a session zero. Session zero can do a lot, such as teaching the rules, creating characters, what optional and house rules are in play, what is the tone of the campaign, etc.
However, when I was a new GM, what I did not really think about was content warnings for stuff like racism, ****, mental illness, etc. that could trigger people, because that was not really talked about very often. And because LMOP is quite tame and PG13, content warning would be one of the last things to cross my mind. While LMOP does not really need content warning labels, I still think some kind of content warning or sensitivity awareness should be included. While LMOP is PG13, GMs and players might not be, and we might not even realize it. I think it would be helpful if content warning and sensitivity awareness are included in the boxed sets, Basic Rules/SRD, DMG, AND PHB, because it only takes one person to potentially ruin D&D for the whole group and they might not know it. And if the group is new, they might not come back to D&D again due to that negative experience.
In fact, I think session zero itself needs to be a bit more codified and recognized. As far as I can tell, session zero was not officially even a thing until TCOE, which is kind of a shame it took this long to be recognized. TCOE's section on Social Contract is great, and I think it is something worth of being errata'd into all the boxed sets, Basic Rules/SRD, etc. as mentioned above, since those are likely the first point of contact for anyone new to D&D.
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Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
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Not sure about the 70s, but in the 80s, as was the case with comic books, content warnings were becoming a shopkeeper thing. Not as codified as say record label warnings or the Comics Code Authority (that actually predated the record label warnings by decades); but I think maybe to avoid that sort of quasi government imposed self regulations, a lot of comic shop owners had some books that were just in the "mature readers" section. In gaming, I first noticed conventions sometimes had "content" warnings that usually had either a PG-13, R or "adults only" equivalent advisory to _some_ of the session offerings, usually the late night ones where some of the sessions were clearly an opportunity to share dirty jokes. I don't remember anyone publishing game content with advisory until the 90s where you had consciously transgressive games like Kult or Over the Edge (speaking of mental illness...). Since we are talking advisory I'll put this next observation under this
I want to say Dark Sun kinda went there in an actually vanilla edge lord fashion with some of its aesthetics riffing of Gor.
and White Wolf's Black Dog imprint's transgressive chic efforts. It was the 90s, subversion (a lot of it echoing the 70s) had become cool, and commodified.
So all that said, I wouldn't throw out the 70s entirely. The 70s were also when the speculative fiction genres really started the established narrative questioning you yourself were questioning. The 70s were a very fragmented/fractured period culturally, probably why so many turned to Disco to take the edge off.
To XXXGammaRay's observation, I think some folks give Tasha's codification of the Session 0
a bittoo much credit. It's just a codification of best practices that have been around gaming for quite some time. In published form it really reads like filler. Of course, I think the TTRPG community is bigger than it used to be so maybe codification of best practices is in order to content against signal/noise issues. The Consent in Gaming pamphlet I frequently cite (and compared to Tasha's it's much more practical, succinct and even provides check list tools or a description of "X Cards") was published in 2019, but while I think there's some claim to innovation being made, it also reads like a distillation of best practices known by a lot of "good DMs" and players.In the early mid 90s I played Chill with a couple of ... Chillmasters? Keepers? I forget what they were called (Chill was a very successful ruleset for modern horror roleplaying that could be done as "monsters of the one shot" or played campaign style with a very well developed game world that make some Lovecraft derivatives seem childish ... in fact those who think Lovecraft makes CoC problematic should check out Chill, when the X Files came out folks were trying to articulate how different it felt ... to me it was feeling like playing Chill but watching TV, maybe that's why The Twin Peaks soundtrack was always effective background music when the Chill group was getting together). Anyway, every let's call them Keepers, every Keeper when I joined, we had "the talk" that always started with "What are you afraid of?" Boundaries would be discussed always concluding with the assurance that we're all here to have a good time and if anyone feels buttons are being pushed by the game plot or other players ... well, we had varying safe words. I always preferred, and tried to practice as a GM myself, games that led with that sort of sensitivity. It's why I scoffed at the consent form initially, because I thought it HR codified a common practice, but when I realized it actually expanded my awareness and was frankly a lot more efficient than "the talk," I embraced it.
If anything, I worry some of the present Session 0 zeal and frankly some of the performance attached to sessions 0 misses some of the point on a forgetting the forest for the trees level. TTRPG are about having fun. Any entertainer whether a movie maker or a stand up comic, knows there's a fine line between thrilling and being exploitive. The sensitivity required to toe but not break that line isn't inspired genius. It comes from knowing your audience. As DMs and players are all engaged in not just their own entertainment. but each others' entertainment, sessions 0 exist for the table to get know each other. It's like breaking bread, in many cases literally because of the foods usually associated with game night (in my book pizza is just Bread+good). And if folks who hate on that practice can tell me what is actually wrong with that, maybe I'll understand some of the incommensurate animosity that pops up in these threads.
Really, all a Session 0 advises is talk about what you're doing before you do it. Larger groups call it orientation, which means an effort to find one's way before you start.
All that said, I think this thread is drifting far afield from its original intent, to question the role or propriety of "madness" in D&D. I forgot what we were talking about; but I'll give my last two cents in this post on this. Is the "madness" posited in the iterations of Wells' "The Invisible Man" acceptable "villain madness" for D&D. We can talk the original fiction narration and Lon Cheney, but I"m thinking more so the sort of "madness" that consumes Kevin Bacon's "Hollow Man" or maybe a little more realistic the "monstrous mind" that consumed Elizabeth Moss's antaognist in the most recent Universal pictures effort. Is the madness or "insanity" realistic? Only in broad strokes that would make any real clinician throw up their hands. Or let's take Venom's hold on Peter Parker or any of its hosts in the Marvel universe, that "dark side" is often likened to "madness". Clinically accurate or sensitive to those actually afflicted with illness or otherwise contending with mental health? No. Do we really think we need to? Ravensloft+ comes out in less than a week. Dracula tropes: Renfield and Jonathan Harker are mechanics producing NPC or PC behaviors comparable to them inappropriate? I don't think so; but if my group expressed discomfort with us "going there" before we set out, I'd adjust the possible map; and I'm definitely curious to learn what others may think about these sorts of "madness" tropes. Van Hellsing, though, that guy's toxic workaholic narcissism ... I think we can all be in agreement about him.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
Simple assertion, if only the word madness wasn't tangled up in popular conceptions of psychology. You can hold onto that assertion in your game, but associations are sticky so it's not a clean break. Like every other "sensitive" area of TTRPGs.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'd love it if the simple fix was "oh, you know this word mired in literal centuries of discrimination and stigmatisation of mental illness, discrimination and stigmatisation that persists even today that you've personal experiences first hand? Yeah, it means something different but functionality the same. Problem solved"
The issue isn't one as woefully simplistic as "madness equals mental illness". That's such a shocking reduction of the argument down to meaningless that I'm stunned. The problem is that the madness and insanity language and mechanisms presented are a reflection of the persistent, pop culture notion of mental illness. They are a part of peddling the same harmful stereotypes and it. It doesn't matter if your characters 'madness' is mundane or supernatural in cause, it's still fuelling the harmful notions of what people think is mental illness.
This is why I truly appreciate what they're doing in Ravenloft. They're using language that is actually psychologically informed; stress and fear are things everyone experiences, so places these mechanisms in a sphere that less intersects with 'Hollywood insanity' and more with an empathetic depiction.
So there's no need for this ineffectual handwaving of 'just say it's magic madness,, instead look to what Wizards us already doing. Look at informed language. Look at dropping old tropes and instead revitalising with new, well thought out approaches.
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I've really appreciated your perspective and even moreso your willingness to speak from a very candid place regarding your own experience and thoughts. Frankly, what you describe Ravensloft as doing is something I like seeing in TTRPGs in general. However, while I've never read CoS in its entirety, what you're saying "WotC is doing," let's call it a progressive step past the problematic madness rules, is that trajectory you're recognizing CoS based on some sort of promotional or leaked pages from the new book? (I've sort of embargoed advanced press so no Bell of Lost Souls or YouTube reviews of the table of contents for me). I'm asking because as I mentioned (I think) elsewhere in this thread, I was curious about what if any dialogue there was between this discussion topic and the recent DDB posted article on "How to Introduce Psychological Horror in Your Campaign." I'm sort of hoping the article was largely written without any information of the steps you say WotC is moving in, because I don't see it. There's a preamble about season 0 and boundaries, and then it's a dive into relatively safe tropes to make your players uncomfortable and then an almost literal recitation of the madness mechanics. I was expecting a bit more of a bridge from that "old school" mechanic into as you put more modern psychologically informed dynamics, but I don't think it's there, at least conforming to my understanding of those dynamics.
On a different note, again appreciating and in no way trying to invalidate your experience or feeling on the matter - I think we can both agree this forum isn't the best place to bond on these issues, but I've had my fair share of experiences and have been a witness to many others' experience. But saying that, I think I'm going to have to disagree with the necessity to abandon "madness" not contained in within the present mental health models. While I think the most recent Invisible Man does actually speak to the stresses and fears a realistic women contends with against overwhelming misogyny (though begging the question whether casting misogyny as supernaturally monstrous does the real life problem of misogyny any real service), I want to turn back to that monster, but also look at Hamlet, Lear, for example. I worry some of the logic presented in this discussion rejects those as well. My cosmic horror touchstone is actually Job. Not the guy on Arrested Development, the one from a few millennia back in the ash pit. A mortal mind in anguish and despair where modern assessment of depression or other affective disorders don't really sync up ... and then that mythic mind confronted with "What the Leviathan said" and "What the Whirlwind says" ... literary revelations with psychic weight that maybe you could argue track to revelations sometimes reported from psychedelic experiences, though those analogies land flat too. Was William Blake being an arse when he attempted to illuminate those revelations in his poetry and engravings? In a later mystic era, maybe it was just narcissism as its alleged of most of the Beats, but the "madness" in Ginsberg Howl isn't clinical. Nor is it Hollywood commodity. There's something else at play, and to play with, if a player wants.
I apologize if I'm hard to follow here, I lost my train of thought myself. I guess what I'm saying is yes the play of the game should be respectful of what we think we understand of modern psychology. No one should want to be sitting down at a table to hurt someone. At the same time the game does work a lot in myth, and myth is a deep force in the psyche that psychology has tried to get under its grip, but I don't think ever has. Modern psychology tries to aid the modern mind with a map, I think there's still room on that map for "here there be dragons" written on its edges. Depending on a groups consenting willingness, done with care, I actually think it's ok for a game to go there. At the same time I don't feel able to assess any other groups capability besides my own so all I find myself capable of doing here is trying to advocate for mindfulness of the varied spaces these games can dwell in, including the esoteric (and based on the cults on this forum, I think more players dwell in the esoteric space than they're willing to admit).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
This is actually something that was brought to my attention by Doctor B on twitter when he was looking at his promotional copy. He comments on the psychologically informed language in this thread. Why does his opinion matter? Because he's a doctor of psychology and clinical director of the Take This mental health charity. This is something I then discussed with my fiancee, who is a doctor of psychology herself, and a trained and qualified counselor and therapist. She commented further on the importance of language on shaping perception of mental illness, because the perception of mental illness has a direct effect on people's willingness and ability to get help
I think that madness is not only a problematic term, but also a woefully ineffective term, which is why I think that moving towards better, more nuanced language won't just improve accessibility, but the quality of the game. What Lovecraft and others of that genre describe of 'madness' is actually the mind fracturing under external stressors and trauma. Calling this madness is like calling fillet mignon 'beef' or a severed limb a 'flesh wound'. It not only grossly simplifies portrayals in ways that oft do harm, but it does a disservice to the game. I'm not saying 'excise madness from the game', but I am saying 'move towards better, more nuanced, evocative and informed language'.
Also, I would like to comment on the fact that I'm not judging past language; it is what it is and it was a product of the times. Heck, I'm not even judging the DMG for the language it uses because things have changed a lot in just 5 years. What I am saying is "move forwards, do better, ever improve"
Also, no, forums are rarely the best place for nuanced discussion, but still better than twitter.
No apologies necessary, this is a heady topic. I see what you're getting at, with the innate mystical fantasy of the game leaving room for anachronisms of language and concept. I think the important thing is to look at which anachronisms still carry modern weight and decide if they need to be gently tucked to the wayside. I have no desire to restrict any tables style of play; if someone wants to run a game with the most toxic and harmful of tropes about mental illness, and their players are down with that, that's not my place to comment, just so long as they keep it far from me. However, I do feel that the shared language of the game needs avoid that as much as possible; you can't unread the Dungeon Master's Guide, you can't unlearn that something is actually how it's presented in the books. My ultimate belief is that D&D should not stop people adding in potentially problematic language or topics, but it should never force people to take it out. The onus should always be on the DM and the players to turn those dials up to where they're comfortable, never down to where they feel safe. Imagine in this way; would you rather a stereo that always comes on deafeningly loud and you have to always turn it down, or silent and you always have to turn it up? I feel the latter would be most peoples preferences.
I do think there still is, and always will be, a place in D&D for cults, for the fracturing of perception in the face of the incomprehensible, for terrifying edifices of eldritch horror, and for the fear of that which lurks in the dead of night. I just think there's better language for it, we just have to be willing to expand our minds, hearts, and vocabularies to let it in. And in doing so, we'll let even more people into this hobby. Who knows, maybe that'll bring in some more DMs and I can finally be a player for once!
Thank you for your kind and measured words, I'll readily speak to my own experiences on this with candour and openness.
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Delve deep enough into anything, any word, any phrase, any culture, personage, you will always be able to parse out something horrific about them. Everything comes with baggage. You can't separate art from culture or culture from the artist. Everything is a choice at where you and the collective that forms current social norms are willing to draw a line, and everything before that line is accepted despite its potential for harm. It's the cold calculus of reason without which we couldn't play D&D at all. There is enough in D&D in its current form, even after the recent changes, for it to be hugely problematic if examined closely enough.
I have pretty debilitating mental disorders that have had a major negative impact on my life. That's right, MULTIPLE. ADHD, Major Depressive Disorder with Anxiety, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Dyscalculia just to name the diagnosed (by a psychiatrist) ones. I could choose to be offended at the 'madness' label just by having ADHD alone given its history. It used to be called "an abnormal defect of moral control" after all. Even its current name is a misnomer since there's no actual deficit of attention but rather an inability to regulate attention, and the hyperactivity component doesn't reflect the actual nature of the hyperactivity, which can be everything from tics to an overactive mind. It doesn't even mention the emotional dysregulation or executive dysfunction that is core to what makes the disorder a disorder by the definitions of the DSM. For these 'overloads of emotion', I could've been lobotomized at one point in time.
But we're talking about a fantasy game played with supernatural elements involved where someone can go 'mad' by virtue of looking at a (really) large squid. Whether I choose to 'hold onto my assertion' or not, we're not talking about the same thing as what madness represents in the real world from a historical or cultural perspective. We're talking about the 'madness' of Alfred Hitchcock and H.P. Lovecraft. So if the term disturbs anyone that much, call it something else, call it "Going Wobbly for a Spell" or something, but it's not going to bother me, someone who literally has debilitating, professionally diagnosed and treated mental health issues that I have to deal with every day (and no, I'm not saying I'm an authority who speaks for everyone with mental health issues).
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
I think we should keep "woke" and political correctness out of DnD. You do you, but I don't think these considerations should be made for the official content, because when does it stop? There will eventually be nothing but an empty husk left.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
There are three things here I wanna break down:
None of what has been mentioned is 'woke' or political correctness. It's people, myself included, saying "This language is actively harmful to myself and others in a non-speculative sense. Let's fix that". There is no politics here, just people and their experiences.
The official content is exactly where these considerations should be made because, unlike what happens at your table or mine, the official content is what's put out into the world. It's what people experience when they pick up a book to see what D&D is about. The official content is the ambassador to the game.
Well firstly, it doesn't 'stop'. D&D will never be perfect and, as times change, so will D&D. It will either grow and improve and become something more and more people can approach, or it will wither and die a stagnant, dated mess. But this presupposes to incorrect assumptions; this is about removing rather than fixing, and secondly that there is nothing redeemable in D&D and if we were to remove it, there'd be nothing left. I wouldn't say that about this hobby, this game. Sure, it has it's rough edges and harmful themes, but not as many as it used to have, and it'll hopefully have less in the future. It'll still be D&D, it'll just be better. To assume that D&D minus the problematic elements would be 'nothing but an empty husk' truly does a disservice to the hobby, the stories people tell with it, the experiences people have.
So no, this isn't about "wokeness" or "political correctness" or taking anything out. It's about moving D&D forwards, it's about compassion and respect and empathy. It's about acknowledging that D&D isn't perfect and never will be. There's an old adage; "perfect is the enemy of good". D&D may never will be perfect, but it can always be better. That's what this is about. Making D&D better.
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So what, precisely, do you do with this scenario:
The DM has an encounter where a NPC Fallen Aasimar 7th level Conquest Paladin fires up his Necrotc Shroud feature (because more PC's have CHA as dump stat than Wis).
Now, all within 10 feet that failed that CHA save are rooted in place, immobilized with terror, so much that they start taking actual physic damage. Pretty traumatizing stuff, in the hands of a DM capable of telling a story, which we are all to aspire to.
Do you, as a player:
a. Say this is an abomination and affront to all people with mental health issues and is causing you physical harm, pack up your stuff, and walk away, never to return?
b. Tough it out and tell the DM afterwards how his words traumatized you, and demand that he never create an emotionally traumatizing event again in the game.
c. Say though it did not affect you in the slightest say this "might have caused trauma to someone" and do option a.
d. Say though it did not affect you in the slightest say this "might have caused trauma to someone" and do option b.
e. Remind the DM that on session 0 that any and all potential situations that have the potential to make someone sad were discussed and were to be removed from the game, and it appears this potential scenario was not, and this entire encounter should be immediately stopped, and this kind of thing added to the list.
Because this is what happens in my world, at least the pre-Covid world.
I have explained this before, many times. I play at a game cafe. There are 3-5 DM's running games simultaneously on Sat aft, as that is advertised as "D&D afternoon". People walk in off the street every weekend, and the understanding is that space is made available for them at tables. So , in my Sat game, though I have a core of regular players, it is not uncommon to have a total stranger sit down at my table and join midway through my campaign for that session, or multiple sessions, depending on the size of the turnout.
Am I now to put a sign above my table warning that psychologically damaging events could happen in my game, or should I censor out any potential encounter that could trigger someone in the wide wide pantheon of mental illnesses, on the oft chance one of these walk-in's (my table are fine with everything I throw at them) has a mental illness.
What you describe is your form of a utopia. I live in the real world, where what you want is not reasonable.
"D&D may never will be perfect, but it can always be better. That's what this is about. Making D&D better."
In your eyes. My idea of a better D&D and yours are far far different. The horror, the traumatizing events, the terrifying situations and monsters, that is what makes the game awesome.I want a game free of any pressure from a politically correct world where everything that has been created in is 50 years of existence is expanded upon. I want more Conquest Paladins, Aboleths, Dragons, Mind-Flayers, GOO Warlocks, not less, and certainly not neutered.
Tell me, did you manage to sit through Jaws, Alien, The Shining, 1408, or any other number of classic movies that terrorized people and the masses LOVED? The Shining is considered an all time classic, beloved by critics and movie-watchers alike. In your world, it would never have been made.