Hey, I realize that MOST regular posters here don't like me. Many despise me. It does not stop me from being right.
I have a personal saying: I'd rather be right than popular and I'm incredibly unpopular.
There's a better known saying "it's better to be kind than right", which is especially true when you choose being "right" about a TTRPG over being kind to members of the same hobby. Edit: I'm also going to point out that this is an inverse of the Appeal to Popularity fallacy, basically, you're saying that you're correct because you're unpopular, or vice versa.
I enjoy being right, but I also enjoy having friends. Being popular and being right are not mutually exclusive, and people who want to be both most often just need to reword what they say.
Honestly, I'm finding the lack of empathy in this thread really, really disturbing, but honestly I'm not surprised given who it's coming from (and honestly, for one of you, since you get offended enough to, in your own words "scream at the wall" by, lets see here, roll 4d6 drop lowest, a player possibly fudging rolls, and freaking Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, I'd say you should just hold your tongue here). If you really, really don't think words hurt, then why do you care if WoTC or your fellow players decide to use different ones? If you really, really think that, then changing language should mean nothing to you, since one word is just as good as another, right?.
I'll leave the following quote (from Dolly Parton, no less) and get the heck out of dodge before my ire really gets up:
"There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that," she observes. "When they said 'Dixie' was an offensive word, I thought, 'Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it the Stampede.'"
"As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it," Parton adds. "Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose."
All so inoffensive ideas, each in and of itself, harmless and sounding like something that is just and reasonable. Until WOTC announces 6e was game tested by 8 year old children to make sure it did not offend or scare anyone.
D&D is supposed to be a tough game, where success hard fought, players have to be intelligent, and face stuff unimaginable in the real world. If there is a segment of the population that can't deal with that fact, D&D is not for them. I am doing my part, on a single web site, to fight the good fight, and will die on that hill.
That's not what D&D is.
The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. Like games of make-believe, D&D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing a crumbling castle in a darkening forest and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents.
In this fantasy world, the possibilities are limitless.
Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories—a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers’ actions. Players roll dice to determine whether their attacks hit or miss and whether their characters can scale a cliff, roll away from the strike of a magical lightning bolt, or pull off some other dangerous task. Anything is possible, but the dice make some things more probable than others.
This is what D&D is from the front page of Wizards. There's nothing in there about being gritty, grimdark, realistic. There's nothing in there about how players have to be smart, witty, conniving.
If we go back to 1974, this is what D&D is:
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantastic, exciting and imaginative game of role playing for adults 12 years and up. Each player creates a character or characters who may be dwarves, elves, halflings or human fighting men, magic-users, pious clerics or wily thieves. The characters are then plunged into an adventure in a series of dungeons, tunnels, secret rooms and caverns run by another player: the referee, often called the Dungeon Master. The dungeons are filled with fearsome monsters, fabulous treasure and frightful perils. As the players engage in game after game their characters grow in power and ability: the magic users learn more magic spells, the thieves increase in cunning and ability, the fighting men, halflings, elves and dwarves, fight with more deadly accuracy and are harder to kill. Soon the adventurers are daring to go deeper and deeper into the dungeons on each game, battling more terrible monsters, and, of course, recovering bigger and more fabulous treasure! The game is limited only by the inventiveness and imagination of the players, and, if a group is playing together, the characters can move from dungeon to dungeon within the same magical universe if game referees are approximately the same in their handling of play.
This was a game meant for 12 years old to play. Again though, nothing about having to be a certain person.
Your way of playing D&D isn't anyone else's way of playing D&D. It just isn't. Your way IS valid, and at a table of like minded individuals, its GREAT. When talking with others? It's not going to be standard. It's fantasy. It's an escape. It's collaborative story telling. It's where friends are made, and its where friendships get stronger. It's where people fall in love, and its where, sadly, people also learn they were never meant to be.
However, it is NOT for one specific playstyle and its not to die on hills.
There's a better known saying "it's better to be kind than right", which is especially true when you choose being "right" about a TTRPG over being kind to members of the same hobby. Edit: I'm also going to point out that this is an inverse of the Appeal to Popularity fallacy, basically, you're saying that you're correct because you're unpopular, or vice versa.
I enjoy being right, but I also enjoy having friends. Being popular and being right are not mutually exclusive, and people who want to be both most often just need to reword what they say.
So you're only being "kind" (and yes, I'm putting that in quotes for good reason) in order to be popular. That's just manipulative. Be kind because kindness is the right thing to do, not to make people like you.
As for it being a fallacy, yes. It's extraordinarily obvious that it's a fallacy. That's half the point of the saying. Pointing it out isn't kind, btw, because it assumes I'm too stupid to have realised that in the first place.
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Myself I want to always run a fun game, might have scary stuff might have funny stuff might even have heroic stuff and sad stuff but if everyone is having fun cool. But if one of my players is having a tough time due to something I did I feel bad, I will do whatever I can to correct it so that player can be on the goodtime bus with the rest of us. If you have a good session 0 things like this may not occur, but even someone who thinks they have no issues finds out they do that needs to be fixed, repaired what have you. As a DM its important that we grant our players safe fun, I just don't know what is wrong with that in some DM's eyes. Have a fun and safe time everyone.
So you're only being "kind" (and yes, I'm putting that in quotes for good reason) in order to be popular. That's just manipulative. Be kind because kindness is the right thing to do, not to make people like you.
Everyone is just "kind" to make friends. Humans evolved that, because a species that is dependent on social interaction almost always incentivizes kindness through reward, typically through friends or a higher social status. That isn't manipulative, that's positive reinforcement for good behavior that was evolved both genetically and socially.
I almost always am kind just because I don't like being mean to others, because a) that's just a morally bad thing to do, and b) friendship is a mutually beneficial relationship.
As for it being a fallacy, yes. It's extraordinarily obvious that it's a fallacy. That's half the point of the saying. Pointing it out isn't kind, btw, because it assumes I'm too stupid to have realised that in the first place.
. . . I'm honestly not sure what you're saying here. Can you please explain? Because right now I'm understanding it to be "yes, I know I was using a logical fallacy, that's half the point of the saying. also, you're being mean by telling me that". If you're not saying that, could you please help me understand what you are saying?
There a many a word that has been culturally appropriated by a group and then made to be to somehow be "traumatizing" to some sub-set of humanity. Not that I don't think that word has always been abhorrent, but the "n-word" is one where if you are non-black, it is a horrifying word, but if you are a black rapper, or Samuel L. Jackson, it is art. You can get in serious trouble if you use the word "Negroid", which is on the same level as Asian and Caucasian, when it comes to defining races.
So, you're now demanding that the term "madness" become appropriated by people with mental conditions? How about no. You don't get to tell people what terms to appropriate, or get to dismiss an argument because an offensive term can be appropriated. That's like saying "How about we don't remove this bomb that's underneath an elementary school, because when the kids get older and join the military, they might be able to use it!"
No. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And, even if it does get appropriated (which is very, very unlikely), people outside of that community don't get to use it. There's a reason why Samuel L. Jackson can use the n-word, and a white guy like me can't.
Now "master" and "slave" when talking in terms of computer hardware and software is going bye-bye, and will get you fired if you refer to gear that way.
I have no idea how this is at all relevant to the discussion at hand, so I'm going to guess it's another red herring meant to distract from the real discussion.
I will give you another silly example. It may not even make it past the auto-censors here, let alone the moderators, centred around another culturally appropriated word: gay. The "Gay Nineties" is a historic term that refers to the 1890's of the United States. I had a post on another website auto-censored, talking about baseball pitchers doctoring balls, when I referenced a living Hall of Famer, by the name of Gaylord Perry. That is his given name. It was the name of his dad's best friend. The man was born in 1938, pitched in the majors until 1982. You try calling someone that today, in general conversation, and watch what happens.
So a word is supposed to be perfectly fine for decades, or hundreds of years, then suddenly "traumatizing". I recognize that English, and dozens of other languages, are living things and evolving. But to suggest that a single word can "traumatize" someone, well, that person has got a priority scale way out of whack.
This is a false equivalency. The fact that words used to have different meanings isn't an excuse to use offensive/problematic terms. That's like someone in elementary school making fun of a girl whose name is Allison because that used to be a boy name. Language evolves. Get over it.
We are living in a world of hysteria. People are dying in a pandemic, and rightly or wrongly, people are losing their collective minds over it. We have a biosphere that is teetering on the edge of catastrophe. The U.S. came within inches of becoming a dictatorship, and there is a very good chance it will still. China invading Taiwan could very well trigger a regional war, and it sure looks like it will, not can, happen.
Yet we are supposed to worry about whether WOTC is insensitive to the word "madness" and consider removing all aspects of the game that invoke "real harm" over said aspects? How about no. Collectively we have way more to worry about.
Again, this is the "Appeal to Worse Problems/Starving Children in Africa" fallacy. None of us have the ability to stop the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the pandemic, or the threat of domestic terrorism in the US, or the China-Taiwan conflict, and none of the energy used to solve/deal with any of those problems is being taken away by this argument existing. This is a red herring used to distract away from an issue by saying "worse problems exist!!!"
This is also highly hypocritical, as is the nature of that logical fallacy. You're complaining about people complaining about a relatively minor issue while all those larger issues exist. If you don't want us to discuss this issue, you might as well lead by example and stop complaining about us discussing it.
You're well past Strike Three on the "bad faith debate-o-meter". You're no longer trying to argue against the matter at hand, you are trying to distract against the matter at hand. That's threadcrapping. I kindly suggest that you stop it, as it's against site rules to do so.
So, you're now demanding that the term "madness" become appropriated by people with mental conditions? How about no. You don't get to tell people what terms to appropriate, or get to dismiss an argument because an offensive term can be appropriated.
I've seen this said a lot "you don't get to tell people" seems.. super hypocritical to me because your telling him or others. Or is it ok for YOU to tell him because by your view he's wrong?
So, you're now demanding that the term "madness" become appropriated by people with mental conditions? How about no. You don't get to tell people what terms to appropriate, or get to dismiss an argument because an offensive term can be appropriated.
I've seen this said a lot "you don't get to tell people" seems.. super hypocritical to me because your telling him or others. Or is it ok for YOU to tell him because by your view he's wrong?
There is a thing called the Paradox of Tolerance. Look it up. The short answer is no, we do not have to accept an intolerant view. Vince et. al. who are agreeing with him are promoting a view that they can use whatever language they so choose because said language is incapable of hurting others, and that those who are offended or otherwise negatively affected by their use of language can just suck it up or get out. That is by definition a less tolerant view than the other side of the coin, and in a tolerant society can be rightly challenged.
So, you're now demanding that the term "madness" become appropriated by people with mental conditions? How about no. You don't get to tell people what terms to appropriate, or get to dismiss an argument because an offensive term can be appropriated.
I've seen this said a lot "you don't get to tell people" seems.. super hypocritical to me because your telling him or others. Or is it ok for YOU to tell him because by your view he's wrong?
It is not at all hypocritical. Are you supporting his argument that he gets to demand that a group appropriate an offensive/harmful term? Because that's what it seems like you're doing.
The fact that I am using words to communicate with someone else to tell them why they're wrong does not make me a hypocrite. The fact that I'm telling someone else that they don't get to speak for a community that they're not even a member of (or at least hasn't said they're a member of) does not make me a hypocrite, because I'm not speaking for them either, and I am a member of part of that community (I have ADHD, depression, and ASD, all of which have been considered types of insanity in the not-so-distant past). Davyd is a member of part of that community, and he also made it clear that he's not speaking for them. It is the opposite of hypocritical. Imagine a black person telling the white person that it's offensive to use the n-word. Then, one of the white person's white buddies comes over and says "You're offending me by saying that it's offensive, you hypocrite! You need to appropriate the term, and then we can all use it without you snowflakes complaining about it!"
That's what you're doing, or at least trying/seeming to do. Is it really so much to ask that you don't speak for a whole community of people, or tell them what to do, especially if you aren't a member of that community? Really? Because it's not that hard. It's just human decency, and I cannot fathom that you are arguing against it.
Edit: And, yes, Iconarising is completely correct in referencing the Paradox of Tolerance. It is, by the nature of intolerance, necessary to be intolerant of intolerant viewpoints. Otherwise, intolerance as a whole wins.
. . . I'm honestly not sure what you're saying here.
You're just being nice.
No, I'm honestly confused as to what you're saying there. I have ASD, so I'm not great at picking up on subtlety and often misunderstand things that aren't clear.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
If we censor everything that can be construed as inconsiderate to a group of people, then there won't be much left in the end. That's what I'm saying. I don't think the term "madness" in D&D is something that should offend anyone really.
What someone finds inoffensive may well be offensive to me, but I don't expect it removed from mainstream media.
Just stop with the strawmen, the personal attacks against the people you disagree with, and the red herrings. Those are logical fallacies and aren't helpful to the discussion in general and isn't helpful to your side of the argument. Arguing in bad faith on accident is bound to happen sometimes to even the best of us, but once you've been pointed out to be doing it, you need to correct your argument and begin using good faith arguments. This applies to not only you, but it applies to Vince, RodneyMcNeely, and everyone else that is protesting against this change that has already happened.
I have not personally attacked anyone, so I don't know why you put this in your reply to me. I will assume this is meant to be aimed at people in general.
Where does it say that this change has already happened? Genuinely curious.
It feels like you see me as an enemy, there's no need to. I'm not out to hurt anyone.
After reading through, I can tell those who prefer self-victimization dismiss any comparisons to other instances of this happening, due to it punching holes in their claim that a word now hurts. Dismissing other terms that meant one thing, but have changed to NOT refer to everything under an umbrella isn't making your case as much as showing denial in the sometimes "over the top" claims of being offended or wounded.
Any time a group wants to adopt a word and call it their trigger, there is debate. People outside the group struggle to understand that some groups NEED a trigger to help explain and/or validate their condition or situation. The issue here is that in most civilized countries where English is the main language, haven't used the term "madness" to describe mental illness for a very long time. Those of us not suffering from it (and as per this thread, many who ARE suffering from it) reject the notion that it's a good idea to dredge up a terms used 50+ years ago and claim it's a trigger. The essence is, if you try hard enough, you can be offended by anything. Dismissal of similar examples is evidence your claim lacks substance.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
After reading through, I can tell those who prefer self-victimization dismiss any comparisons to other instances of this happening, due to it punching holes in their claim that a word now hurts. Dismissing other terms that meant one thing, but have changed to NOT refer to everything under an umbrella isn't making your case as much as showing denial in the sometimes "over the top" claims of being offended or wounded.
Any time a group wants to adopt a word and call it their trigger, there is debate. People outside the group struggle to understand that some groups NEED a trigger to help explain and/or validate their condition or situation. The issue here is that in most civilized countries where English is the main language, haven't used the term "madness" to describe mental illness for a very long time. Those of us not suffering from it (and as per this thread, many who ARE suffering from it) reject the notion that it's a good idea to dredge up a terms used 50+ years ago and claim it's a trigger. The essence is, if you try hard enough, you can be offended by anything. Dismissal of similar examples is evidence your claim lacks substance.
It comes down to this:
As a player, I have to abide to the rules the DM of that table lays out, or walk away.
As a DM, however, if I want to use words and concepts that 10 years, or 100 years, or a 2000 years ago were considered OK in real life (madness, sexism, slavery, sacrificing children to gods) that is my right. If the player does not like it, they have every right to leave. They don't have the right to force me to change my game.
What's fascinating to me (in a revolting, staring-at-train-wrecks sort of sense) is the notion that all of these vicious counter-arguments against even the discussion of sensitivity in D&D - or anywhere else, for that matter - are primarily driven by fear. They sure don't look like fear, but as a wise old Muppet once said: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering."
Arguments against sensitivity and empathy always seem to hinge on how new the idea is - "Back in my day, nobody got offended by this crap! Why're y'all whippersnappers so easily offended these days?!" They see the world as having changed and for the worse, with people actively seeking ways to be injured or outraged. Hell, even people in this thread have accused others of looking for a cause to be outraged by "for brownie points on the Internet". They believe that modern outrage culture is nothing but a flash-in-the-pan fling and once people go back to not being offended by anything anymore, like it was back in their day, none of this will matter anymore. Or rather, they desperately want to believe that because they're terrified of the idea that the people advocating for sensitivity have a point. They're terrified that those people might be right, and that the world truly is changing.
What folks like that fail to realize is that the world did not change so much as discover. Back in the pre-Internet days, people with unusual natures - gender-nonconforming, neuro-atypical, alternative lifestyle, and the like - were generally isolated. If they had anyone around them like themselves, it was a very small splinter community buried amidst a sea of Normalcy(C) that evinced enormous hostility to anyone who did not conform. They had no voice, no backup, and no easy access to the same sense of community that more typical folks had, and the only way to stay safe was to stay silent. Gender-nonconforming folk risked ridicule, ostracization, and even violent death if they tried to push back against hurtful ideas. Neuroatypical folk risked being imprisoned "for their own good" in horrifying psychiatric facilities of the sort they still make scary movies out of. Alternative-lifestyle folks were dismissed as simply a phase, never taken seriously or allowed to take themselves seriously, and treated as unruly children regardless of their age or competence.
They - we - were 'offended' (read: hurt) by all the same things they're hurt by today. Those things have always been hurtful, but prior to the last decade or so there's been almost no way for anyone to speak out against it without risking severe harm to their life and/or livelihood. The world did not grow easier to offend - it grew more sensitive to the offenses it was already offering on the daily. It started paying attention to people it had previously dismissed as unimportant, inconsequential, or annoying. It started listening to their voices.
Yes, some people have taken things a bit too far and pushed things a bit too hard. But the world will not go back to being insensitive. People cannot tell us to go back to being silent and fearful for our lives so they can go about blithely living however they please, cracking jokes and guffawing about the queers and the retards and the weirdoes in the safety and comfort of their Fortress of Majority. Some of those folks are terrified of this. The thought that the way the world works is changing and they'll be held to new standards they don't know and weren't raised to respect frightens them. That fear turns to anger, lashing out at the people they perceive as driving this change - all the atypical people demanding acknowledgement, respect, and sensitivity. Demanding to be treated as being just as valid, just as real, as a typical person. That anger turns to hate, as their emotions crystalize and they lament their self-declared Enemy as having ruined a perfectly good thing and thrown the world into shit.
And that hate leads to suffering. For everyone.
A concept was referenced earlier in this thread that I think deserves far more recognition and awareness than it's gotten - that of "innocent ignorance." The idea that someone can say something that harms another person without any desire to inflict harm - from a position of unknowing due to the limits of their experience sphere. Innocent ignorance means people can hurt you without meaning to, and without knowing they've done so - hurting them back in vengeance makes you as much the belligerent party as they are, if not more so. The answer to innocent ignorance is respectful education. The question Helhawke posed, eleven pages of nastiness ago, is not meant to attack or wound, but to inform and educate. Similarly, when an atypical person is wounded by the words of a typical person - or even another atypical person with a different experience sphere - the answer is not to lash out and wound back. The answer should be to calmly inform the person of why what they said caused pain, and what they might be able to say instead.
Sensitivity is not about never giving offense or causing pain. That's impossible, none of us can know with perfect clarity how to avoid giving injury to everyone we will ever speak to. Sensitivity is about knowing how to back up when one steps on another's emotions with a minimum of additional pain. About knowing how to listen, and how to empathize with another's pain enough to avoid causing them more of it if we can. It is the responsibility of a sensitive person to say "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'll try and do better in the future" when they accidentally step on someone else's emotions. And it is just as much the responsibility of a sensitive person to say "I don't blame you, you didn't know. Thanks for keeping it in mind" when their emotions are stepped on by someone else in innocent ignorance.
If someone tells you that certain words or ideas hurt them, and you persist in attacking them with those words and ideas because you don't think their pain is valid? Because you don't want their pain to be valid, since it upsets your worldview? Then you become the problem. You are no longer ignorant, and you are certainly no longer innocent. Your own fear and anger have made you into a bully, and other people are absolutely in the right for denouncing you as such.
You can discuss. You can debate. The pain of upheaval, the pain of watching your view of the world slip away into a new order? That pain is just as valid as any other pain, and a sensitive person will try and help you with that pain however they're able. But belligerent denial, accusations, and outright assaults on a person's character, integrity, and emotions like the ones commonly thrown out by several posters in this thread? Those are bullying. And bullying is not okay.
Nobody is going to go back to living in silent misery so the folks in the Fortress of Majority can continue laughing it up at our expense.
I'll point out, Kotath, that the original post - the one written by Helhawke, which started this whole mess - was not pushing for a ban or aggressively jockeying to omit the word "madness" from D&D. The original post was simply intended to start a discussion on whether this was something to be cognizant of and worth taking into consideration, given Wizards of the Coast's recent trend towards increased sensitivity and awareness.
Note that Wizards is under a much stricter burden of sensitivity than a regular person, as they cannot back up once they step on someone's emotions. A D&D book is read by many, many more thousands of people than the average person will ever speak to in their life, and the words printed on the page cannot retract harm done to someone who reads them. Wizards has to be more careful than the average person in what it produces. That's the entire reason sensitivity consultants/readers exist - so that companies like Wizards don't step in it the way they did with the Vistani. That sort of misfire can be an enormously costly mistake to a business unable to retract words it may not have intended to be harmful, but which turned out harmful anyways.
Down at our level, though? The level of individual people having conversations? We can discuss whether something is doing more damage than we thought it might be, and if there's enough harm being done that we should alert Wizards (and/or DDB) to it. Innocent ignorance is still ignorance. It's better to be knowledgeable than ignorant, and knowledgeable doesn't happen without conversations.
And yes, Vince. I am talking social upheaval, which has elements of politics. Social upheaval is the root cause of all of these issues. Wizards is making strides to make the game more tolerant and inclusive, and more respectful of people's emotions. They aren't doing that because it's fun. They're doing that because the world is demanding they do that, because many of their players are demanding they do that. You've been railing against the idea for months, citing it as Wizards capitulating to the outrage-culture masses and social media pressure. You cite it as a distortion of the true spirit and character of D&D, as a bunch of Johnny-come-latelys demanding the game be butchered to suit them and in the doing losing the essential spark of greatness that was The Way It Was Before.
I've seen the exact same argument raised against inclusiveness movements online, and against other companies that don't have anything to do with gaming at all who take steps to broaden their horizons. Like, the exact same arguments. Nearly word-for-word, if one substitutes whatever is being railed against for D&D. There's a reason I wrote that post you quoted, and didn't really speak to D&D at all. This is a Whole World problem, not just a D&D problem. You can't talk about the D&D problem without also talking about the whole-world problem, at least in microcosm.
After reading through, I can tell those who prefer self-victimization dismiss any comparisons to other instances of this happening, due to it punching holes in their claim that a word now hurts. Dismissing other terms that meant one thing, but have changed to NOT refer to everything under an umbrella isn't making your case as much as showing denial in the sometimes "over the top" claims of being offended or wounded.
Any time a group wants to adopt a word and call it their trigger, there is debate. People outside the group struggle to understand that some groups NEED a trigger to help explain and/or validate their condition or situation. The issue here is that in most civilized countries where English is the main language, haven't used the term "madness" to describe mental illness for a very long time. Those of us not suffering from it (and as per this thread, many who ARE suffering from it) reject the notion that it's a good idea to dredge up a terms used 50+ years ago and claim it's a trigger. The essence is, if you try hard enough, you can be offended by anything. Dismissal of similar examples is evidence your claim lacks substance.
It comes down to this:
As a player, I have to abide to the rules the DM of that table lays out, or walk away.
As a DM, however, if I want to use words and concepts that 10 years, or 100 years, or a 2000 years ago were considered OK in real life (madness, sexism, slavery, sacrificing children to gods) that is my right. If the player does not like it, they have every right to leave. They don't have the right to force me to change my game.
If that is what it comes down to, then what's the issue? Regardless of "rights", there's nothing anybody can do to force you to do or not do something short of committing some serious crime (don't commit crime, folks) and that includes WotC. What they choose to put in their books or choose to leave out, you can remove or include - whether it's a book like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or a potentially sensitive theme like genocide.
That said, players are free to ask you to change your mind. There's a bit of middle ground between my way and the highway, at my table and pretty much any table I know.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I'll point out, Kotath, that the original post - the one written by Helhawke, which started this whole mess - was not pushing for a ban or aggressively jockeying to omit the word "madness" from D&D. The original post was simply intended to start a discussion on whether this was something to be cognizant of and worth taking into consideration, given Wizards of the Coast's recent trend towards increased sensitivity and awareness.
Note that Wizards is under a much stricter burden of sensitivity than a regular person, as they cannot back up once they step on someone's emotions. A D&D book is read by many, many more thousands of people than the average person will ever speak to in their life, and the words printed on the page cannot retract harm done to someone who reads them. Wizards has to be more careful than the average person in what it produces. That's the entire reason sensitivity consultants/readers exist - so that companies like Wizards don't step in it the way they did with the Vistani. That sort of misfire can be an enormously costly mistake to a business unable to retract words it may not have intended to be harmful, but which turned out harmful anyways.
Down at our level, though? The level of individual people having conversations? We can discuss whether something is doing more damage than we thought it might be, and if there's enough harm being done that we should alert Wizards (and/or DDB) to it. Innocent ignorance is still ignorance. It's better to be knowledgeable than ignorant, and knowledgeable doesn't happen without conversations.
And yes, Vince. I am talking social upheaval, which has elements of politics. Social upheaval is the root cause of all of these issues. Wizards is making strides to make the game more tolerant and inclusive, and more respectful of people's emotions. They aren't doing that because it's fun. They're doing that because the world is demanding they do that, because many of their players are demanding they do that. You've been railing against the idea for months, citing it as Wizards capitulating to the outrage-culture masses and social media pressure. You cite it as a distortion of the true spirit and character of D&D, as a bunch of Johnny-come-latelys demanding the game be butchered to suit them and in the doing losing the essential spark of greatness that was The Way It Was Before.
I've seen the exact same argument raised against inclusiveness movements online, and against other companies that don't have anything to do with gaming at all who take steps to broaden their horizons. Like, the exact same arguments. Nearly word-for-word, if one substitutes whatever is being railed against for D&D. There's a reason I wrote that post you quoted, and didn't really speak to D&D at all. This is a Whole World problem, not just a D&D problem. You can't talk about the D&D problem without also talking about the whole-world problem, at least in microcosm.
You are correct.
Someone, or some group, at WOTC is making a business decision, based solely on how many books or widgets they will sell. They did some calculus and decided they will sell more if they cave to the SJD's. I, and obviously others, are saying that no, that calculus is wrong. They will not sell more by caving to the SJD's, but will sell more by staying true to the values of D&D the past 50 years.
I don't think anyone is arguing that "Madness"/Mental Trauma rules need to be excised from the game. That's silly, and there's no good reason to do it and many good reasons not to do it. I think the only thing that was originally up for debate was whether the term "Madness", itself, was problematic and something that could be refreshed to a less problematic term, if so.
People in this thread have stated that "Madness", the term, brings up bad connotations for them and it does indeed sour their D&D somewhat. Perhaps not enough to stop playing, but it is a pain point. Van Richten's guide treats the same mechanical rules differently, referencing external factors such as fear and stress rather than making statements about the characters' mental state, and that seems to be going down smoother. Problem more-or-less solved, no need for violent dissent.
As Davyd, Third, and others have said, language shapes thought. The risks of having one's mind broken by experiences they're simply not able to cope with are absolutely a part of D&D and should remain so. How we talk about those risks, what we call them, how we treat them, can change without it being an effort to censure ideas.
I've seen the exact same argument raised against inclusiveness movements online, and against other companies that don't have anything to do with gaming at all who take steps to broaden their horizons. Like, the exact same arguments. Nearly word-for-word, if one substitutes whatever is being railed against for D&D. There's a reason I wrote that post you quoted, and didn't really speak to D&D at all. This is a Whole World problem, not just a D&D problem. You can't talk about the D&D problem without also talking about the whole-world problem, at least in microcosm.
The rules being discussed, whatever they are titled, are optional rules, though. So it is not like every table is obligated to use them, even setting aside DM perogative to say no. The default on any optional rule is 'no' with a DM perogative to say 'yes.'
This is not an issue of inclusiveness. This is actually an issue of exclusiveness, the idea that society needs to be protected from certain ideas. It is the same logic that lead to so many of the shows from the 80's or 90's, where it was deemed ok to show violence as long as there are no consequences shown.
The rules being discussed, again, whatever they are titled, help counter that move, providing an option for more consequence to particularly traumatic events.
Unlike in the real world, in game, there are magical cures that can help those so afflicted. However burying the existence of such risks is not inclusiveness.
And their existence facilitates open discussion of such issues and such risks, which is arguably a good thing.
Now, we can call these rules 'Madness' rules, or we can call them 'the rules being discussed' or something else. However, whatever they are called, however they are described, they could be triggering for some people. But so could going at each other with swords, which in the real world is a very real potential trigger for such conditions. We literally burn people alive in this game. If you think about the common aspects of 'normal play' you will realize that there is rather a lot in this game that is far more likely to be triggering than merely the conditions we are discussing here, or what we call them.
It is the slippery slope you are describing. First it was real world gender issues intruding on the game. Then race issues. Now we are talking about mental health issues. Eventually, they will get to the inherent violence in the game. I think of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene were the pleb yells "Come and see the inherent violence in the system. Help help, I am being repressed." I long for the days when supreme executive power was given by a watery tart throwing a sword at people. Imagine trying to make that movie today, and all the people screaming about how it offends them.
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There's a better known saying "it's better to be kind than right", which is especially true when you choose being "right" about a TTRPG over being kind to members of the same hobby. Edit: I'm also going to point out that this is an inverse of the Appeal to Popularity fallacy, basically, you're saying that you're correct because you're unpopular, or vice versa.
I enjoy being right, but I also enjoy having friends. Being popular and being right are not mutually exclusive, and people who want to be both most often just need to reword what they say.
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That's not what D&D is.
This is what D&D is from the front page of Wizards. There's nothing in there about being gritty, grimdark, realistic. There's nothing in there about how players have to be smart, witty, conniving.
If we go back to 1974, this is what D&D is:
This was a game meant for 12 years old to play. Again though, nothing about having to be a certain person.
Your way of playing D&D isn't anyone else's way of playing D&D. It just isn't. Your way IS valid, and at a table of like minded individuals, its GREAT. When talking with others? It's not going to be standard. It's fantasy. It's an escape. It's collaborative story telling. It's where friends are made, and its where friendships get stronger. It's where people fall in love, and its where, sadly, people also learn they were never meant to be.
However, it is NOT for one specific playstyle and its not to die on hills.
So you're only being "kind" (and yes, I'm putting that in quotes for good reason) in order to be popular. That's just manipulative. Be kind because kindness is the right thing to do, not to make people like you.
As for it being a fallacy, yes. It's extraordinarily obvious that it's a fallacy. That's half the point of the saying. Pointing it out isn't kind, btw, because it assumes I'm too stupid to have realised that in the first place.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
Myself I want to always run a fun game, might have scary stuff might have funny stuff might even have heroic stuff and sad stuff but if everyone is having fun cool. But if one of my players is having a tough time due to something I did I feel bad, I will do whatever I can to correct it so that player can be on the goodtime bus with the rest of us. If you have a good session 0 things like this may not occur, but even someone who thinks they have no issues finds out they do that needs to be fixed, repaired what have you. As a DM its important that we grant our players safe fun, I just don't know what is wrong with that in some DM's eyes. Have a fun and safe time everyone.
Everyone is just "kind" to make friends. Humans evolved that, because a species that is dependent on social interaction almost always incentivizes kindness through reward, typically through friends or a higher social status. That isn't manipulative, that's positive reinforcement for good behavior that was evolved both genetically and socially.
I almost always am kind just because I don't like being mean to others, because a) that's just a morally bad thing to do, and b) friendship is a mutually beneficial relationship.
. . . I'm honestly not sure what you're saying here. Can you please explain? Because right now I'm understanding it to be "yes, I know I was using a logical fallacy, that's half the point of the saying. also, you're being mean by telling me that". If you're not saying that, could you please help me understand what you are saying?
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So, you're now demanding that the term "madness" become appropriated by people with mental conditions? How about no. You don't get to tell people what terms to appropriate, or get to dismiss an argument because an offensive term can be appropriated. That's like saying "How about we don't remove this bomb that's underneath an elementary school, because when the kids get older and join the military, they might be able to use it!"
No. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And, even if it does get appropriated (which is very, very unlikely), people outside of that community don't get to use it. There's a reason why Samuel L. Jackson can use the n-word, and a white guy like me can't.
I have no idea how this is at all relevant to the discussion at hand, so I'm going to guess it's another red herring meant to distract from the real discussion.
This is a false equivalency. The fact that words used to have different meanings isn't an excuse to use offensive/problematic terms. That's like someone in elementary school making fun of a girl whose name is Allison because that used to be a boy name. Language evolves. Get over it.
Again, this is the "Appeal to Worse Problems/Starving Children in Africa" fallacy. None of us have the ability to stop the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the pandemic, or the threat of domestic terrorism in the US, or the China-Taiwan conflict, and none of the energy used to solve/deal with any of those problems is being taken away by this argument existing. This is a red herring used to distract away from an issue by saying "worse problems exist!!!"
This is also highly hypocritical, as is the nature of that logical fallacy. You're complaining about people complaining about a relatively minor issue while all those larger issues exist. If you don't want us to discuss this issue, you might as well lead by example and stop complaining about us discussing it.
You're well past Strike Three on the "bad faith debate-o-meter". You're no longer trying to argue against the matter at hand, you are trying to distract against the matter at hand. That's threadcrapping. I kindly suggest that you stop it, as it's against site rules to do so.
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I've seen this said a lot "you don't get to tell people" seems.. super hypocritical to me because your telling him or others. Or is it ok for YOU to tell him because by your view he's wrong?
There is a thing called the Paradox of Tolerance. Look it up. The short answer is no, we do not have to accept an intolerant view. Vince et. al. who are agreeing with him are promoting a view that they can use whatever language they so choose because said language is incapable of hurting others, and that those who are offended or otherwise negatively affected by their use of language can just suck it up or get out. That is by definition a less tolerant view than the other side of the coin, and in a tolerant society can be rightly challenged.
It is not at all hypocritical. Are you supporting his argument that he gets to demand that a group appropriate an offensive/harmful term? Because that's what it seems like you're doing.
The fact that I am using words to communicate with someone else to tell them why they're wrong does not make me a hypocrite. The fact that I'm telling someone else that they don't get to speak for a community that they're not even a member of (or at least hasn't said they're a member of) does not make me a hypocrite, because I'm not speaking for them either, and I am a member of part of that community (I have ADHD, depression, and ASD, all of which have been considered types of insanity in the not-so-distant past). Davyd is a member of part of that community, and he also made it clear that he's not speaking for them. It is the opposite of hypocritical. Imagine a black person telling the white person that it's offensive to use the n-word. Then, one of the white person's white buddies comes over and says "You're offending me by saying that it's offensive, you hypocrite! You need to appropriate the term, and then we can all use it without you snowflakes complaining about it!"
That's what you're doing, or at least trying/seeming to do. Is it really so much to ask that you don't speak for a whole community of people, or tell them what to do, especially if you aren't a member of that community? Really? Because it's not that hard. It's just human decency, and I cannot fathom that you are arguing against it.
Edit: And, yes, Iconarising is completely correct in referencing the Paradox of Tolerance. It is, by the nature of intolerance, necessary to be intolerant of intolerant viewpoints. Otherwise, intolerance as a whole wins.
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You're just being nice.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
No, I'm honestly confused as to what you're saying there. I have ASD, so I'm not great at picking up on subtlety and often misunderstand things that aren't clear.
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I have not personally attacked anyone, so I don't know why you put this in your reply to me. I will assume this is meant to be aimed at people in general.
Where does it say that this change has already happened? Genuinely curious.
It feels like you see me as an enemy, there's no need to. I'm not out to hurt anyone.
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Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
After reading through, I can tell those who prefer self-victimization dismiss any comparisons to other instances of this happening, due to it punching holes in their claim that a word now hurts. Dismissing other terms that meant one thing, but have changed to NOT refer to everything under an umbrella isn't making your case as much as showing denial in the sometimes "over the top" claims of being offended or wounded.
Any time a group wants to adopt a word and call it their trigger, there is debate. People outside the group struggle to understand that some groups NEED a trigger to help explain and/or validate their condition or situation. The issue here is that in most civilized countries where English is the main language, haven't used the term "madness" to describe mental illness for a very long time. Those of us not suffering from it (and as per this thread, many who ARE suffering from it) reject the notion that it's a good idea to dredge up a terms used 50+ years ago and claim it's a trigger. The essence is, if you try hard enough, you can be offended by anything. Dismissal of similar examples is evidence your claim lacks substance.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
It comes down to this:
As a player, I have to abide to the rules the DM of that table lays out, or walk away.
As a DM, however, if I want to use words and concepts that 10 years, or 100 years, or a 2000 years ago were considered OK in real life (madness, sexism, slavery, sacrificing children to gods) that is my right. If the player does not like it, they have every right to leave. They don't have the right to force me to change my game.
What's fascinating to me (in a revolting, staring-at-train-wrecks sort of sense) is the notion that all of these vicious counter-arguments against even the discussion of sensitivity in D&D - or anywhere else, for that matter - are primarily driven by fear. They sure don't look like fear, but as a wise old Muppet once said: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering."
Arguments against sensitivity and empathy always seem to hinge on how new the idea is - "Back in my day, nobody got offended by this crap! Why're y'all whippersnappers so easily offended these days?!" They see the world as having changed and for the worse, with people actively seeking ways to be injured or outraged. Hell, even people in this thread have accused others of looking for a cause to be outraged by "for brownie points on the Internet". They believe that modern outrage culture is nothing but a flash-in-the-pan fling and once people go back to not being offended by anything anymore, like it was back in their day, none of this will matter anymore. Or rather, they desperately want to believe that because they're terrified of the idea that the people advocating for sensitivity have a point. They're terrified that those people might be right, and that the world truly is changing.
What folks like that fail to realize is that the world did not change so much as discover. Back in the pre-Internet days, people with unusual natures - gender-nonconforming, neuro-atypical, alternative lifestyle, and the like - were generally isolated. If they had anyone around them like themselves, it was a very small splinter community buried amidst a sea of Normalcy(C) that evinced enormous hostility to anyone who did not conform. They had no voice, no backup, and no easy access to the same sense of community that more typical folks had, and the only way to stay safe was to stay silent. Gender-nonconforming folk risked ridicule, ostracization, and even violent death if they tried to push back against hurtful ideas. Neuroatypical folk risked being imprisoned "for their own good" in horrifying psychiatric facilities of the sort they still make scary movies out of. Alternative-lifestyle folks were dismissed as simply a phase, never taken seriously or allowed to take themselves seriously, and treated as unruly children regardless of their age or competence.
They - we - were 'offended' (read: hurt) by all the same things they're hurt by today. Those things have always been hurtful, but prior to the last decade or so there's been almost no way for anyone to speak out against it without risking severe harm to their life and/or livelihood. The world did not grow easier to offend - it grew more sensitive to the offenses it was already offering on the daily. It started paying attention to people it had previously dismissed as unimportant, inconsequential, or annoying. It started listening to their voices.
Yes, some people have taken things a bit too far and pushed things a bit too hard. But the world will not go back to being insensitive. People cannot tell us to go back to being silent and fearful for our lives so they can go about blithely living however they please, cracking jokes and guffawing about the queers and the retards and the weirdoes in the safety and comfort of their Fortress of Majority. Some of those folks are terrified of this. The thought that the way the world works is changing and they'll be held to new standards they don't know and weren't raised to respect frightens them. That fear turns to anger, lashing out at the people they perceive as driving this change - all the atypical people demanding acknowledgement, respect, and sensitivity. Demanding to be treated as being just as valid, just as real, as a typical person. That anger turns to hate, as their emotions crystalize and they lament their self-declared Enemy as having ruined a perfectly good thing and thrown the world into shit.
And that hate leads to suffering. For everyone.
A concept was referenced earlier in this thread that I think deserves far more recognition and awareness than it's gotten - that of "innocent ignorance." The idea that someone can say something that harms another person without any desire to inflict harm - from a position of unknowing due to the limits of their experience sphere. Innocent ignorance means people can hurt you without meaning to, and without knowing they've done so - hurting them back in vengeance makes you as much the belligerent party as they are, if not more so. The answer to innocent ignorance is respectful education. The question Helhawke posed, eleven pages of nastiness ago, is not meant to attack or wound, but to inform and educate. Similarly, when an atypical person is wounded by the words of a typical person - or even another atypical person with a different experience sphere - the answer is not to lash out and wound back. The answer should be to calmly inform the person of why what they said caused pain, and what they might be able to say instead.
Sensitivity is not about never giving offense or causing pain. That's impossible, none of us can know with perfect clarity how to avoid giving injury to everyone we will ever speak to. Sensitivity is about knowing how to back up when one steps on another's emotions with a minimum of additional pain. About knowing how to listen, and how to empathize with another's pain enough to avoid causing them more of it if we can. It is the responsibility of a sensitive person to say "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'll try and do better in the future" when they accidentally step on someone else's emotions. And it is just as much the responsibility of a sensitive person to say "I don't blame you, you didn't know. Thanks for keeping it in mind" when their emotions are stepped on by someone else in innocent ignorance.
If someone tells you that certain words or ideas hurt them, and you persist in attacking them with those words and ideas because you don't think their pain is valid? Because you don't want their pain to be valid, since it upsets your worldview? Then you become the problem. You are no longer ignorant, and you are certainly no longer innocent. Your own fear and anger have made you into a bully, and other people are absolutely in the right for denouncing you as such.
You can discuss. You can debate. The pain of upheaval, the pain of watching your view of the world slip away into a new order? That pain is just as valid as any other pain, and a sensitive person will try and help you with that pain however they're able. But belligerent denial, accusations, and outright assaults on a person's character, integrity, and emotions like the ones commonly thrown out by several posters in this thread? Those are bullying. And bullying is not okay.
Nobody is going to go back to living in silent misery so the folks in the Fortress of Majority can continue laughing it up at our expense.
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I'll point out, Kotath, that the original post - the one written by Helhawke, which started this whole mess - was not pushing for a ban or aggressively jockeying to omit the word "madness" from D&D. The original post was simply intended to start a discussion on whether this was something to be cognizant of and worth taking into consideration, given Wizards of the Coast's recent trend towards increased sensitivity and awareness.
Note that Wizards is under a much stricter burden of sensitivity than a regular person, as they cannot back up once they step on someone's emotions. A D&D book is read by many, many more thousands of people than the average person will ever speak to in their life, and the words printed on the page cannot retract harm done to someone who reads them. Wizards has to be more careful than the average person in what it produces. That's the entire reason sensitivity consultants/readers exist - so that companies like Wizards don't step in it the way they did with the Vistani. That sort of misfire can be an enormously costly mistake to a business unable to retract words it may not have intended to be harmful, but which turned out harmful anyways.
Down at our level, though? The level of individual people having conversations? We can discuss whether something is doing more damage than we thought it might be, and if there's enough harm being done that we should alert Wizards (and/or DDB) to it. Innocent ignorance is still ignorance. It's better to be knowledgeable than ignorant, and knowledgeable doesn't happen without conversations.
And yes, Vince. I am talking social upheaval, which has elements of politics. Social upheaval is the root cause of all of these issues. Wizards is making strides to make the game more tolerant and inclusive, and more respectful of people's emotions. They aren't doing that because it's fun. They're doing that because the world is demanding they do that, because many of their players are demanding they do that. You've been railing against the idea for months, citing it as Wizards capitulating to the outrage-culture masses and social media pressure. You cite it as a distortion of the true spirit and character of D&D, as a bunch of Johnny-come-latelys demanding the game be butchered to suit them and in the doing losing the essential spark of greatness that was The Way It Was Before.
I've seen the exact same argument raised against inclusiveness movements online, and against other companies that don't have anything to do with gaming at all who take steps to broaden their horizons. Like, the exact same arguments. Nearly word-for-word, if one substitutes whatever is being railed against for D&D. There's a reason I wrote that post you quoted, and didn't really speak to D&D at all. This is a Whole World problem, not just a D&D problem. You can't talk about the D&D problem without also talking about the whole-world problem, at least in microcosm.
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If that is what it comes down to, then what's the issue? Regardless of "rights", there's nothing anybody can do to force you to do or not do something short of committing some serious crime (don't commit crime, folks) and that includes WotC. What they choose to put in their books or choose to leave out, you can remove or include - whether it's a book like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or a potentially sensitive theme like genocide.
That said, players are free to ask you to change your mind. There's a bit of middle ground between my way and the highway, at my table and pretty much any table I know.
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You are correct.
Someone, or some group, at WOTC is making a business decision, based solely on how many books or widgets they will sell. They did some calculus and decided they will sell more if they cave to the SJD's. I, and obviously others, are saying that no, that calculus is wrong. They will not sell more by caving to the SJD's, but will sell more by staying true to the values of D&D the past 50 years.
I don't think anyone is arguing that "Madness"/Mental Trauma rules need to be excised from the game. That's silly, and there's no good reason to do it and many good reasons not to do it. I think the only thing that was originally up for debate was whether the term "Madness", itself, was problematic and something that could be refreshed to a less problematic term, if so.
People in this thread have stated that "Madness", the term, brings up bad connotations for them and it does indeed sour their D&D somewhat. Perhaps not enough to stop playing, but it is a pain point. Van Richten's guide treats the same mechanical rules differently, referencing external factors such as fear and stress rather than making statements about the characters' mental state, and that seems to be going down smoother. Problem more-or-less solved, no need for violent dissent.
As Davyd, Third, and others have said, language shapes thought. The risks of having one's mind broken by experiences they're simply not able to cope with are absolutely a part of D&D and should remain so. How we talk about those risks, what we call them, how we treat them, can change without it being an effort to censure ideas.
Please do not contact or message me.
It is the slippery slope you are describing. First it was real world gender issues intruding on the game. Then race issues. Now we are talking about mental health issues. Eventually, they will get to the inherent violence in the game. I think of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene were the pleb yells "Come and see the inherent violence in the system. Help help, I am being repressed." I long for the days when supreme executive power was given by a watery tart throwing a sword at people. Imagine trying to make that movie today, and all the people screaming about how it offends them.