No one said boo about it, yet we have encountered child sacrifice, terror from a dragon which is clearly a mental health issue, slavery, and the equivalent of cannibalism, in the past 3 sessions. Plus, clearly one of the players would be considered insane by any modern standards, as he believes his god will get him, but not the rest of us, through any crisis, and we should wade into any battle, no matter what the odds. If he was an officer in war, his own soldiers would have shot him.
We discussed NONE of these "triggers" in any session 0, which was about game and char mechanics. Yet everyone seems thrilled with what is happening, RP'ing most of it, and not a single person has said, at least in game, "wait, I am uncomfortable with this particular thing". And I can tell you why. These guys have all played D&D, as is, for some period of time, and we all knew what we signed up for.
If people don't like the concepts that occur in D&D, don't wreck it for the majority that love this stuff. Go find like-minded people, House Rule your own version, create your own non-D&D game, or play another game. Do not impose your recently updated social values on a game that has an entrenched set of values that has existed longer than many of these posters have been alive. I don't need some 24 year old who is just starting to experience the real world in all its glory and horribleness to tell what I can and can't do, what of my views is wrong or right.
Going to go out on a limb here (won't have to go very far for this one) and assume none of these things other than perhaps the Fear effect were official, WotC-published content. And a Fear effect is not a mental health issue - absolutely everyone in the game is susceptible to it, with a few exceptions who are clearly exceptional in that they need a specific ability or quality in order not to be. So how is this germane to what WotC should or should not be sensitive about in their official content?
Again, nobody is stopping you from having any of this in your game. Nobody can stop you, WotC included. Lots of campaigns, some of mine included, deal with sensitive issues and possibly even make them core themes. This is fine. Nobody's saying this is a bad thing. What is suggested in this thread is a) that WotC should possibly be mindful of sensitive issues with regards to the content they provide and b) that if a particular subject is problematic for one or more players in a campaign, this could be something for the DM to take into account.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Vince, I'm not talking about your game. I'm not talking about my game. I'm not talking about anybody's game, how they choose to run it, what themes they include or what consideration or lack thereof they give to their players. I'm not even talking about actually playing the game.
What I'm talking about is the products WotC puts out into the world, the words they put in their book that frame the game. The words people read when they pick up a book and crack it open, maybe for the first time in their TTRPG journey. So whatever happens at your table is of no consequence to this discussion; no one is going to stop you from running your game however you want. You can include whatever themes you wish, coded however you want, with as much or little safety tools.
D&D is, and always has been, two different things at once; it's the product that TSR, then WotC, puts into the world, and it's the experience each DM currates at their table. While they both affect each other in a cycle of feedback and growth, it's important to separate the two in discussions such as this.
No matter what language WotC uses, you'll still be free to use whatever language you see fit at your table. However, that has no bearing on the experience people have when reading that language in the books they've paid for, books that expose them to the game.
So you can keep your anecdotes of how your games are completely fine and don't need safety tools Vince, that's fine and dandy. That's not what this is about, and if you have never had a harmful experience with something said or read, that's great. I wouldn't wish that kind of harm on anyone. But this isn't about the people it doesn't harm, it's about the people it does. No harm, not an iota, not a drop of harm will be done to you or anyone else on your side of this discussion, by changing the language from something that doesn't affect you negatively, to something else that doesn't affect you negative. But it will benefit those who are harmed by that language. And that's called a net benefit.
Look, I get it. You consider me and others of my generation, as some kind of anachronism, and our world views have no connection to the real world and what D&D SHOULD look like in this new world order. But to say that changing the language does not impact me and my game is just wrong, and you know it. When new editions of the PHB start appearing with umpteen spells changed, or removed, you bet that impacts me as a player or DM, when said DM or player with the new edition says "I don't know what you are looking at, but Crown of Madness does not exist."
You, and others, except we dinosaurs to simply die off and become a smaller and smaller segment of the WOTC client base, with less and less leverage. Well, that is true to the extent that all things die. But I will remind you and WOTC of two words: New Coke. I think you are probably too young to remember the uproar. There is no way anyone under 35 can fully grasp what happened. But fundamentally, businesses make decisions all the time that have catastrophic implications. This catering to the woke mob is shaping up to be another one.
Vince, I'm not talking about your game. I'm not talking about my game. I'm not talking about anybody's game, how they choose to run it, what themes they include or what consideration or lack thereof they give to their players. I'm not even talking about actually playing the game.
What I'm talking about is the products WotC puts out into the world, the words they put in their book that frame the game. The words people read when they pick up a book and crack it open, maybe for the first time in their TTRPG journey. So whatever happens at your table is of no consequence to this discussion; no one is going to stop you from running your game however you want. You can include whatever themes you wish, coded however you want, with as much or little safety tools.
D&D is, and always has been, two different things at once; it's the product that TSR, then WotC, puts into the world, and it's the experience each DM currates at their table. While they both affect each other in a cycle of feedback and growth, it's important to separate the two in discussions such as this.
No matter what language WotC uses, you'll still be free to use whatever language you see fit at your table. However, that has no bearing on the experience people have when reading that language in the books they've paid for, books that expose them to the game.
So you can keep your anecdotes of how your games are completely fine and don't need safety tools Vince, that's fine and dandy. That's not what this is about, and if you have never had a harmful experience with something said or read, that's great. I wouldn't wish that kind of harm on anyone. But this isn't about the people it doesn't harm, it's about the people it does. No harm, not an iota, not a drop of harm will be done to you or anyone else on your side of this discussion, by changing the language from something that doesn't affect you negatively, to something else that doesn't affect you negative. But it will benefit those who are harmed by that language. And that's called a net benefit.
Look, I get it. You consider me and others of my generation, as some kind of anachronism, and our world views have no connection to the real world and what D&D SHOULD look like in this new world order. But to say that changing the language does not impact me and my game is just wrong, and you know it. When new editions of the PHB start appearing with umpteen spells changed, or removed, you bet that impacts me as a player or DM, when said DM or player with the new edition says "I don't know what you are looking at, but Crown of Madness does not exist."
You, and others, except we dinosaurs to simply die off and become a smaller and smaller segment of the WOTC client base, with less and less leverage. Well, that is true to the extent that all things die. But I will remind you and WOTC of two words: New Coke. I think you are probably too young to remember the uproar. There is no way anyone under 35 can fully grasp what happened. But fundamentally, businesses make decisions all the time that have catastrophic implications. This catering to the woke mob is shaping up to be another one.
I honestly have no strong feelings about you and 'others of your generation'. I don't even know which generation you're referring to because this game is played by so many different age groups. But you're making some bad faith arguments:
When new editions of the PHB start appearing with umpteen spells changed, or removed, you bet that impacts me as a player or DM, when said DM or player with the new edition says "I don't know what you are looking at, but Crown of Madness does not exist."
This isn't what's happening
This hasn't happened
This isn't what anyone is suggesting (not even me).
I'm not actually opposed to the word 'madness' in a vacuum, that's not the argument being made, which I'm sure you're more than capable of understanding. My discomfort comes from a specific application of the word in the context of some specific optional rules as they pertain to their coding, implications, and ramifications on perception of mental illness.
You, and others, except we dinosaurs to simply die off and become a smaller and smaller segment of the WOTC client base, with less and less leverage. Well, that is true to the extent that all things die. But I will remind you and WOTC of two words: New Coke. I think you are probably too young to remember the uproar. There is no way anyone under 35 can fully grasp what happened. But fundamentally, businesses make decisions all the time that have catastrophic implications. This catering to the woke mob is shaping up to be another one.
It's funny because you have this caricature of me in your head that really has no bearing on the reality of who I am. I remember New Coke. I remember that it was a marketing ploy designed to revitalise interest in Classic Coke by intentionally stirring up brand controversy and making coke relevant again. I also remember that it barely caused a dent in cokes overal bottom line. It was a pop culture blip.
And you say what WotC is doing is sharing up to be another catastrophic business decision? Well, I hate to break it to you, but it's not. D&D is growing at a phenomenal rate, sales are up and reception of these improvement and changes are positive. WotC has been promoted to their own division within Hasbro, which is huge from a business standpoint. D&D is not suffering from the decisions WotC is making, it's benefiting, and you need to honestly stop trying to perpetuate the misconception to the contrary. I know that "get woke, go broke" is a fun, catchy slogan, but it's also one that has been proven time and again to be nonsense. Making an inclusive product is profitable because when more people want to play your game, more people spend money on it.
These changes are happening Vince. You're not forced to use them, the D&D police aren't going to kick down your door and demand you prove you own a copy of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. The only people who might pressure you into using these new options and rules are your players, and you've already demonstrated you're plenty capable of setting those boundaries. There's no conspiracy to kick you out of the hobby, no disdain for you or your generation (whatever it is). I don't have to play with you so I don't care about how you run your game. The only thing I do care about is when you bring hateful, exclusionary, prejudicial and otherwise toxic attitudes into public spaces like this forum. You don't have like everything about D&D Vince, but you also don't have to be so angry about the stuff you don't like. There's clearly a lot about D&D you love, and no one is going to take that from your table. You're a DM, you have the power of the game and its world in your hands. I don't care for the way you run your game, but as long as you don't try and push your style of play on me, I'm not going to push my style of play on you. The books are tools, they don't tell you how to play, they just make suggestions. Try and find the joy in D&D rather than the hate and anger you seem to espouse here so often.
I love D&D, which is why I put so much into this community. And I don't want a single person to pick up a rulebook, look at it, and put it back down because they don't feel included in what the game is. I've not had skin in this topic before, I'm a cishet white guy who leads a privileged life. But when it comes to harmful representations of mental illness and counterproductive attitudes towards mental health, well that's a race I have a dog in. So I'm here, providing my experience, both with the bad and the good.
Look, I get it. You consider me and others of my generation, as some kind of anachronism, and our world views have no connection to the real world and what D&D SHOULD look like in this new world order. But to say that changing the language does not impact me and my game is just wrong, and you know it. When new editions of the PHB start appearing with umpteen spells changed, or removed, you bet that impacts me as a player or DM, when said DM or player with the new edition says "I don't know what you are looking at, but Crown of Madness does not exist."
You, and others, except we dinosaurs to simply die off and become a smaller and smaller segment of the WOTC client base, with less and less leverage. Well, that is true to the extent that all things die. But I will remind you and WOTC of two words: New Coke. I think you are probably too young to remember the uproar. There is no way anyone under 35 can fully grasp what happened. But fundamentally, businesses make decisions all the time that have catastrophic implications. This catering to the woke mob is shaping up to be another one.
I do not believe that this is on the table. I do not think that any changes, other than correcting errors or specific clarifications, have been made to the 5e PHB. New content will come along, and this new content is likely to be affected by the social norms of the time, but it is highly unlikely that any significant changes such as those discussed here will be made to the PHB or other previously published books until a new Edition is released.
As for New Coke: Firstly, many suspect this was just a marketing ploy. However, even if that's not the case, Coca Cola gained a huge amount of market share and sales by changing back after the backlash. The effect of bringing in New Coke and then changing back to the original recipe was incredibly positive for a company which was on a serious downward trend beforehand. The moral of the story seems to be that you should change your product every now and again, because if it doesn't work out you can always change it back and do better than before. Conversely, there is strong evidence that had Coca Cola just stayed as they were, they would have struggled to survive.
Ok taking this a different way, in my world there are mental illnesses, NPCs can have multiple personalities, depression, can here voices and go insane. However there is no psychology, there has not been a Freud or equivalent to create the concepts of what these are, these are all termed as being madness because my world doesn’t understand. Villages burn intelligent people at the stake accusing them of possession, because they hear a voice. They lock them up on straight jackets, or apply magical medical techniques to them. There are other institutions who care for them better, run by clerics. Now this may or may not all become part of the narriative, that is still to be determined, but, it is one of the concepts of my world o work out in my head at world creation. Do long term mental health issues exist, or are they all curable with magic, are they defined and studied, or is the world not yet at that point and how are those suffering such conditions treated by society.
So no the term madness is not a trigger, it is a concept for a high fantasy game and it is up to the DM how they apply that into their universe.
So no the term madness is not a trigger, it is a concept for a high fantasy game and it is up to the DM how they apply that into their universe.
It's not anyone's place to say what is and is not a trigger for anyone else. Triggers can be literally anything, it all depends on the trauma. Let's avoid making sweeping (and false) statements like this that minimise the the trauma of others; it doesn't add anything positive to the conversation.
[Also snipped for brevity, because DDB's quote handling system sucks freaking rocks]
Look, I get it. You consider me and others of my generation, as some kind of anachronism, and our world views have no connection to the real world and what D&D SHOULD look like in this new world order. But to say that changing the language does not impact me and my game is just wrong, and you know it. When new editions of the PHB start appearing with umpteen spells changed, or removed, you bet that impacts me as a player or DM, when said DM or player with the new edition says "I don't know what you are looking at, but Crown of Madness does not exist."
You, and others, except we dinosaurs to simply die off and become a smaller and smaller segment of the WOTC client base, with less and less leverage. Well, that is true to the extent that all things die. But I will remind you and WOTC of two words: New Coke. I think you are probably too young to remember the uproar. There is no way anyone under 35 can fully grasp what happened. But fundamentally, businesses make decisions all the time that have catastrophic implications. This catering to the woke mob is shaping up to be another one.
It's all right, Vince.
Your pain, fear, and stress are as valid and real as any of ours are. You're afraid that the game you've loved for decades is disappearing and becoming something unrecognizable. Other people coming in and taking this thing you've enjoyed and supported for most of your life off in wild new directions without regard for the history of the property causes you pain. That fear, that pain, it's super stressful for you. No one can deny or negate that pain, or claim it isn't real.
You don't need to martyr yourself on a hill over it. You don't need to position yourself as the last defender of a dying generation. The OSR is going strong, and I see no reason why Wizards can't get in on it themselves in the future. I would be willing to support Wizards releasing a book periodically in their cycle tuned to the OSR style, or perhaps releasing supporting documentation via articles, Sage Advice, or even something new talking about how to play the game from that perspective. There's also a thriving third-party market for content of this type.
Have you looked into Grim Hollow? It's a series of third-party books published by a company called Ghostfire Gaming as a supplement to Fifth Edition. They're in the tail end of their third wildly successful Kickstarter for their dark fantasy sourcebook series set in a world called Etharis, where the gods are all dead and evil has won. The world of Etharis is beset by plagues, nightmares, and corruption, the people have more or less lost hope, and the remnants of civilization are set in fragile bastions as hostile to each other as they are to the dark wilderness, each convinced the others are responsible for all the woes of Etharis. It has a lot of truly fantastic material for use in dark fantasy games even if you don't use the world of Etharis itself, there's some absolutely wild curse mechanics in the Campaign Guide and the upcoming Monster Grimoire promises to be an absolute treasure trove of vile, horrific monsters to serve as delightfully awful inspiration for new ways to give your players heart attacks. When it's my turn to run a season for my table, I absolutely intend to do something with my Grim Hollow books.
I know you're not a big fan of homebrew or third-party add-ons, but the other cool thing about Grim Hollow's three different million dollar-plus Kickstarters is that they're proof you're not alone. This is a company whose entire product portfolio is a grimdark setting for D&D 5e, where grim-faced men and women pit their fragile courage and feeble force of arms against a fundamentally hostile world that laughs in the face of their pitiful resistance, where "Victories are Earned" is one of the core tenets of the game given in the preamble from the Player's Guide. Ghostfire encourages DMs to ensure that all the players' victories cost them a very real price, and that no victory is unstained by the spectre of sacrifice. And this series is wildly successful. People love it, they're eating it up. Hell, Ghostfire has been so succesful they've managed to earn a few sponsorship spots on Critical Role, where Matthew Mercer himself - the face of 'New D&D' - has stated he super wants to play with this setting and its content sometime.
Your D&D is alive and well. It may have a new coat of paint on it, they may update the firmware from time to time, but you're not the last of a dying breed. You're simply one of many players with a strong preference for a grittier, nastier, more punishing aesthetic of the game, and that aesthetic is alive and thriving in the third-party market and not entirely unsupported even in core D&D through books like Van Richten's Guide, Frostmaiden, Descent to Avernus, Ghostmarsh (sort of - I'll admit that book was a super disappointment, but it tried), and both releases of Curse of Strahd - which, I can point out, remains one of the most popular and best-selling adventure books Wizards produces despite its age, and which earned an entire updated reprinting due to how beloved it was and is.
No one's asking you to die on your hill, Vince. All anyone asks is that you show compassion, understanding, and consideration for your fellow players and try not to force them to suffer and die on their hills.
If we're comparing D&D to Coca Cola, the apt analagy would be saying D&D 4e was New Coke. And 5e is the major brand resurgence that happened afterwards.
Notes: Removed condescending language toward another user
Your pain, fear, and stress are as valid and real as any of ours are. You're afraid that the game you've loved for decades is disappearing and becoming something unrecognizable. Other people coming in and taking this thing you've enjoyed and supported for most of your life off in wild new directions without regard for the history of the property causes you pain. That fear, that pain, it's super stressful for you. No one can deny or negate that pain, or claim it isn't real.
And there is an example of exactly what I am talking about regarding renaming this fear and stress.
How so? I was being entirely serious. Yes, I was doing so in a way that demonstrates what we've been trying to say, but I also told Vince as early as page two, post #42 in this thread that his pain, stress and fear were as real as anyone else's. His pain, fear and stress being real does not mean anyone else's is less real, but their pain, fear and stress being real doesn't negate his, either.
Take another look at the list of conditions in the rules we are talking about. Now understand that in saying what you just posted, you are equating Vince's actions with that list.
This is exactly what I mean about 'Fear and Stress' being too easily taken too lightly with respect to the subject matter. Consider further, that given you are defending the changing of the section title 'Madness' to 'Fear and Stress' and are thus stating that Vince is suffering from form of madness.
And it is what I am talking about in a different way, too. You are in the following paragraphs telling him to get over it, that things are not as bad as he thinks. You are treating it as a rational decision on his part despite your opening paragraph, again in the context of this discussion, claiming it is not such a thing.
And finally you are making my point (and his, actually), in a third way too. You are defending changing the name of this section of the rules based on the harm the current name is causing, then acknowledging that Vince feels he is suffering harm from this changing, yet feel he should simply get over it, simply accept this thing that your opening paragraph claims is harming him.
I hope that fully explains the problematic nature of the position you seem to be taking.
I think I see your point. The terms Fear and Stress could be seen as minimising the serious effects which are being discussed, and could be considered to have gone too far the other way.
I do not think the correct response to this is to say "that's gone too far, let's not change it at all". Instead we could find a way to emphasise that this is something extreme. Maybe just call them the effects of extreme fear and stress?
To be fair, this is a fight we have with mental illness in general. It is reasonably common language for someone to say they are stressed, anxious or depressed, but these are rarely the same as Stress, Anxiety and Depression. People will tell someone suffering from Depression to cheer up, or those suffering from Stress or Anxiety to calm down or relax, as if they were speaking of the "everyday" uses of the words instead of the mental health conditions. However, I still believe it is better this way than putting people in mind of the "dangerous madman" every time you have to explain your mental health issues to someone and then talk them back down from being scared of you.
WoTC may be treading an insensitive line concerning mental illnesses when it comes to describing "madness." The Dungeon Master’s Guidehas a section dedicated to short-term "madness," long-term "madness," and indefinite "madness." However, the use of these terms seems unnecessary as it's really a table of effects including paralysis, incapacitation, fright, "babbling" (inability to speak/spellcast), disadvantage on ability checks, a charm-like effect, pica, stun, and unconsciousness.
On one, hand, portrayals of "madness" have some history with horror tropes, however, it seems that as we understand more about how labels have the potential to stigmatize, WoTC (and those who write about their products) might want want to reconsider how they portray mental illnesses in their materials. It seems that it is unnecessary to label a group of imposed effects by this term.
I think this is a very relevant question and something that D&D is paying attention to, even if they aren't at the forefront of inclusion and diversity. I do think efforts to include creators of various backgrounds is a good thing, and is something Wizards has been stepping up to attempt, even if their record on how they actually treat their people is spotty. Still, there are glimmers of hope. Take this discussion hosted by D&D Beyond with an author of a section ins Candlekeep Mysteries talking about how she brings representation of different peoples into her writing as well as how be more sensitive on issues of people with disabilities and how they are treated in stories. I don't remember exactly, but portions of this talk regarding neurodiverse people might be relevant to your question:
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
...right. Sure. This is what I get for trying to be the better person.
Okay. Let's go through this.
1.) I was not actually 'defending', or advocating, any specific name change. I was using the terms "pain, fear and stress" because those are the terms I've been using this entire thread. Those are the things people feel in situations like this. I was not dismissing pain, fear or stress as 'light', nor conflating them with "Madness" as it is traditionally thought of.
2.) I was not telling Vince to "get over it". If I wanted to tell Vince to 'get over it', I'd use exactly those words, probably with a few other choice ones attached. I was attempting to show the man aspects he might not have considered, broaden his knowledge and demonstrate to him that the style of gaming he cherishes is by no means disappearing or dying. It is not the only form of gaming anymore, but it's not gone either.
3.) I do not believe I have ever advocated directly for changing the name of rules or systems in the book. I have advocated for allowing discussions of whether those changes should be made to take place. Those are two entirely different things, related though they may be. The thread started, and continued for a dozenish posts, as a useful and educational discussion on whether the word "Madness" is perhaps not the best word for the system and whether it might be causing harm many do not realize it's causing. I was educated myself that yes, this is absolutely the case - several posters have stated that the language used causes them distress, which was literally news to me. I'd acknowledged this earlier myself - I had not previously considered the idea that others could be bothered by this term, but now that I am aware of it, it seems only natural to allow a discussion to take place as to what to do to alleviate that harm.
I have not proposed a solution either way, but wish only to facilitate the discussion being had by folks who wish to have that discussion in good faith.
I do not believe Vince is arguing in good faith. I believe he is attempting to berate, denigrate, and bully other people into believing their pain is invalid. That they have no reason, no right, to feel any pain. That is not and never will be okay, and I will not stand for it. But by the same token I will do my best not to stand for people denigrating his pain, either. I offered him the words I did in an attempt to ease the pain he's expressed, not to silence him or nullify his pain.
I am a forum wonk on a board Wizards does not bother monitoring. My capacity to solve the problem posed by this thread is exactly zero. What I can do is try to get people past the point of sniping at each other, each side lashing out from their own pain, and hope that somewhere in this morass of nastiness there's meaning to be had. That someone reading my words comes out the better for them, whether it be Vince, Helhawke, Third, Davyd, or any of the silent bystanders that may or may not have bothered reading this far.
So please kindly return to good faith discussions if you would, Kotath. You surprised me earlier, I was delighted by it. Let's get back to that point, if we can.
2.) I was not telling Vince to "get over it". If I wanted to tell Vince to 'get over it', I'd use exactly those words, probably with a few other choice ones attached. I was attempting to show the man aspects he might not have considered, broaden his knowledge and demonstrate to him that the style of gaming he cherishes is by no means disappearing or dying. It is not the only form of gaming anymore, but it's not gone either.
I was utterly confused by Kotath's response to this, because here I thought you went out of your way to validate Vince and his feelings, while still disagreeing with him about the subject.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
2.) I was not telling Vince to "get over it". If I wanted to tell Vince to 'get over it', I'd use exactly those words, probably with a few other choice ones attached. I was attempting to show the man aspects he might not have considered, broaden his knowledge and demonstrate to him that the style of gaming he cherishes is by no means disappearing or dying. It is not the only form of gaming anymore, but it's not gone either.
I was utterly confused by Kotath's response to this, because here I thought you went out of your way to validate Vince and his feelings, while still disagreeing with him about the subject.
This may be where a part of the conflict comes in (although it may not be, so if I have got it wrong I apologise).
Discussing what people are offended by, what hurts people, and how they feel requires an honest and open discussion about those feelings. However, it is only recently that it has been considered acceptable for people, men especially, to be open and honest about those feelings with anyone but their nearest and dearest, if them. For them, they have been taught all their lives that, if they have a problem, if something is upsetting them in any way other than making them angry, they should suppress, hide and, by any other means, ignore that emotion and just "get over it". If someone attempts to sympathise and discuss the feelings they may be experiencing, this is felt as an attack, trying to cut the repressed emotions out of their dark, hidden place to examine them in the light. It is an absolute anathema to openly discuss either their emotions or those of someone else, putting them instantly at odds with anyone trying to examine anything from an emotional point of view. In their mind, it shouldn't be an issue, because everyone should just do what they do and "get over it". Validating their feelings is seen as mockery at best.
Of course, in this case, I could be over-analysing and it could just be that text based communications allows something to be read as sarcasm when it wasn't meant as such.
Now we have discussed at lengths in this thread. What's the solution?
Here you go! You may want to read carefully through that page, as it explains in depth why this argument against change is neither valid nor helpful in any case.
I personally am very strongly opposed against anything that resembles censorship. I would be fine with the invention of trigger label warnings on media/content etc. That way people that can get triggered over certain things can petition a central government unit (whatever thingie) to have their trigger added to the label warning system, and then we can have a whole industry of trigger-consultants that specialize in helping content creaters sniff out content that should go on the trigger warning label.
This is a serious take, not a joke, so if you think it reads as a joke, note that it's not meant to be one. This is an attempt to move on from pointing fingers and move onto solution talks. We are clearly not going to get everyone to agree.
I know you think that this looks like censorship, but it isn't, as I explained thoroughly in this post (btw, my reference to "strawmen" was your assertion of this being censorship, as that's a mischaracterization of our argument, personal attacks as attacking the other side as some form of "cancel culture" or whatnot, and red herrings, as they distract from the real topic that is being discussed).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I had "Vince brings up New Coke" on my bingo card. I'll have a glass of soda...
If we're comparing D&D to Coca Cola, the apt analagy would be saying D&D 4e was New Coke. And 5e is the major brand resurgence that happened afterwards.
I was actually going to bring this up in case no one else did. However, the analogy isn't perfect, as WotC almost definitely was not trying to make 4e fail, some people actually like/liked 4e, while New Coke was pretty universally hated, and it wasn't a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation like the New Coke/Classic Coke situation with D&D 4.0, as D&D could (and now has) improved a ton since the end of the 3.0/3.5 era.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Edit: And I guess that is where I am coming from on this, that the words we choose do not cause harm due to simply being words used for these conditions but rather by how we use and misuse them. Changing the words does not help at all without serious changes to how we use them.
It sounds like you're saying that the real problem is not the triggering words so much as the underlying culture of misunderstanding neurodiverse people that leads to harmful portrayals, would that be a correct summary? But what about actual people that have come here to say that, as a step, using different words for things have actually relieved some of the harm? I'm all for changing the underlying culture to one of increased compassion and understanding, but if changing some words or phrases can do some legitimate good why not start with that? Are we not making perfect the enemy of good by nixing small changes until the larger changes can come about?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Edit: And I guess that is where I am coming from on this, that the words we choose do not cause harm due to simply being words used for these conditions but rather by how we use and misuse them. Changing the words does not help at all without serious changes to how we use them.
It sounds like you're saying that the real problem is not the triggering words so much as the underlying culture of misunderstanding neurodiverse people that leads to harmful portrayals, would that be a correct summary? But what about actual people that have come here to say that, as a step, using different words for things have actually relieved some of the harm? I'm all for changing the underlying culture to one of increased compassion and understanding, but if changing some words or phrases can do some legitimate good why not start with that? Are we not making perfect the enemy of good by nixing small changes until the larger changes can come about?
Precisely.
I'm would love to flip a switch and for me, my wife and my neurodiverse friends and family members to be able to discuss our various mental health issues openly and honestly with the wider population with no stigma, no judgement, no fear or dismissal. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works. It takes time to change attitudes in society. It takes far less time to stop saying a word which is causing someone pain.
As an analogy, of someone has been been attached and has a serious, deep wound which is bleeding heavily, the best thing may be for a doctor to clean the wound, stitch it, and dress it. However, in the middle of the road with no doctor and few supplies available, applying pressure or improvising a tourniquet is likely to be much better than standing there saying "you'll need some stitches in that".
I had "Vince brings up New Coke" on my bingo card. I'll have a glass of soda...
If we're comparing D&D to Coca Cola, the apt analagy would be saying D&D 4e was New Coke. And 5e is the major brand resurgence that happened afterwards.
I was actually going to bring this up in case no one else did. However, the analogy isn't perfect, as WotC almost definitely was not trying to make 4e fail, some people actually like/liked 4e, while New Coke was pretty universally hated, and it wasn't a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation like the New Coke/Classic Coke situation with D&D 4.0, as D&D could (and now has) improved a ton since the end of the 3.0/3.5 era.
(Hopefully everyone can excuse this digression. It's just interesting.)
One (possibly apocryphal) take on New Coke was that it was trying to make a non-diet version of Diet Coke. (Diet Coke has a different flavor profile than regular Coke; if you want regular-Coke-but-diet you drink Coke Zero these days.) Back in the 80s, some blind taste tests showed that Diet Coke beat both Pepsi and regular Coke...so they tried a different formula that was Diet-Coke-but-with-real-calories. There was backlash to the flavor change.
In this (admittedly super flawed) analogy, Coke is D&D, and Diet Coke is MMOs, and 4e was an attempt to make D&D more MMO-like, because MMOs are/were super popular.
Edit: And I guess that is where I am coming from on this, that the words we choose do not cause harm due to simply being words used for these conditions but rather by how we use and misuse them. Changing the words does not help at all without serious changes to how we use them.
It sounds like you're saying that the real problem is not the triggering words so much as the underlying culture of misunderstanding neurodiverse people that leads to harmful portrayals, would that be a correct summary? But what about actual people that have come here to say that, as a step, using different words for things have actually relieved some of the harm? I'm all for changing the underlying culture to one of increased compassion and understanding, but if changing some words or phrases can do some legitimate good why not start with that? Are we not making perfect the enemy of good by nixing small changes until the larger changes can come about?
Precisely.
I'm would love to flip a switch and for me, my wife and my neurodiverse friends and family members to be able to discuss our various mental health issues openly and honestly with the wider population with no stigma, no judgement, no fear or dismissal. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works. It takes time to change attitudes in society. It takes far less time to stop saying a word which is causing someone pain.
As an analogy, of someone has been been attached and has a serious, deep wound which is bleeding heavily, the best thing may be for a doctor to clean the wound, stitch it, and dress it. However, in the middle of the road with no doctor and few supplies available, applying pressure or improvising a tourniquet is likely to be much better than standing there saying "you'll need some stitches in that".
My counter to that is to ask if that is really anything other than a bandage. There is no shortage of alternative words. Euphemisms arise constantly finding 'polite' ways to hide discuss this topic. Someone might feel better in the short term, until the next person comes along to misuse whatever the new term is.
Meanwhile, the change of terms is not necessarily happening in isolation either. There have also been significant changes in phrasing which provide help discussing such issues while reducing risk of harm.
There’s a lot of truth to what Kotath is saying here. It’s similar to how some (white) people say “bad neighborhood is coded racist language” and use that to ignore the socioeconomic disparity that results from systemic racism. It’s not fixing the problem, it’s sweeping it under the rug.
I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here, but I do think it’s a danger we should be aware of.
Edit: And I guess that is where I am coming from on this, that the words we choose do not cause harm due to simply being words used for these conditions but rather by how we use and misuse them. Changing the words does not help at all without serious changes to how we use them.
It sounds like you're saying that the real problem is not the triggering words so much as the underlying culture of misunderstanding neurodiverse people that leads to harmful portrayals, would that be a correct summary? But what about actual people that have come here to say that, as a step, using different words for things have actually relieved some of the harm? I'm all for changing the underlying culture to one of increased compassion and understanding, but if changing some words or phrases can do some legitimate good why not start with that? Are we not making perfect the enemy of good by nixing small changes until the larger changes can come about?
Precisely.
I'm would love to flip a switch and for me, my wife and my neurodiverse friends and family members to be able to discuss our various mental health issues openly and honestly with the wider population with no stigma, no judgement, no fear or dismissal. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works. It takes time to change attitudes in society. It takes far less time to stop saying a word which is causing someone pain.
As an analogy, of someone has been been attached and has a serious, deep wound which is bleeding heavily, the best thing may be for a doctor to clean the wound, stitch it, and dress it. However, in the middle of the road with no doctor and few supplies available, applying pressure or improvising a tourniquet is likely to be much better than standing there saying "you'll need some stitches in that".
My counter to that is to ask if that is really anything other than a bandage. There is no shortage of alternative words. Euphemisms arise constantly finding 'polite' ways to hide discuss this topic. Someone might feel better in the short term, until the next person comes along to misuse whatever the new term is.
Meanwhile, the change of terms is not necessarily happening in isolation either. There have also been significant changes in phrasing which provide help discussing such issues while reducing risk of harm.
There’s a lot of truth to what Kotath is saying here. It’s similar to how some (white) people say “bad neighborhood is coded racist language” and use that to ignore the socioeconomic disparity that results from systemic racism. It’s not fixing the problem, it’s sweeping it under the rug.
I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here, but I do think it’s a danger we should be aware of.
It is a never-ending slide, once you start down that slippery slope. WOTC has done so, and we have posters here applying more grease to that slope.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Going to go out on a limb here (won't have to go very far for this one) and assume none of these things other than perhaps the Fear effect were official, WotC-published content. And a Fear effect is not a mental health issue - absolutely everyone in the game is susceptible to it, with a few exceptions who are clearly exceptional in that they need a specific ability or quality in order not to be. So how is this germane to what WotC should or should not be sensitive about in their official content?
Again, nobody is stopping you from having any of this in your game. Nobody can stop you, WotC included. Lots of campaigns, some of mine included, deal with sensitive issues and possibly even make them core themes. This is fine. Nobody's saying this is a bad thing. What is suggested in this thread is a) that WotC should possibly be mindful of sensitive issues with regards to the content they provide and b) that if a particular subject is problematic for one or more players in a campaign, this could be something for the DM to take into account.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Look, I get it. You consider me and others of my generation, as some kind of anachronism, and our world views have no connection to the real world and what D&D SHOULD look like in this new world order. But to say that changing the language does not impact me and my game is just wrong, and you know it. When new editions of the PHB start appearing with umpteen spells changed, or removed, you bet that impacts me as a player or DM, when said DM or player with the new edition says "I don't know what you are looking at, but Crown of Madness does not exist."
You, and others, except we dinosaurs to simply die off and become a smaller and smaller segment of the WOTC client base, with less and less leverage. Well, that is true to the extent that all things die. But I will remind you and WOTC of two words: New Coke. I think you are probably too young to remember the uproar. There is no way anyone under 35 can fully grasp what happened. But fundamentally, businesses make decisions all the time that have catastrophic implications. This catering to the woke mob is shaping up to be another one.
I honestly have no strong feelings about you and 'others of your generation'. I don't even know which generation you're referring to because this game is played by so many different age groups. But you're making some bad faith arguments:
This isn't what's happening
This hasn't happened
This isn't what anyone is suggesting (not even me).
I'm not actually opposed to the word 'madness' in a vacuum, that's not the argument being made, which I'm sure you're more than capable of understanding. My discomfort comes from a specific application of the word in the context of some specific optional rules as they pertain to their coding, implications, and ramifications on perception of mental illness.
It's funny because you have this caricature of me in your head that really has no bearing on the reality of who I am. I remember New Coke. I remember that it was a marketing ploy designed to revitalise interest in Classic Coke by intentionally stirring up brand controversy and making coke relevant again. I also remember that it barely caused a dent in cokes overal bottom line. It was a pop culture blip.
And you say what WotC is doing is sharing up to be another catastrophic business decision? Well, I hate to break it to you, but it's not. D&D is growing at a phenomenal rate, sales are up and reception of these improvement and changes are positive. WotC has been promoted to their own division within Hasbro, which is huge from a business standpoint. D&D is not suffering from the decisions WotC is making, it's benefiting, and you need to honestly stop trying to perpetuate the misconception to the contrary. I know that "get woke, go broke" is a fun, catchy slogan, but it's also one that has been proven time and again to be nonsense. Making an inclusive product is profitable because when more people want to play your game, more people spend money on it.
These changes are happening Vince. You're not forced to use them, the D&D police aren't going to kick down your door and demand you prove you own a copy of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. The only people who might pressure you into using these new options and rules are your players, and you've already demonstrated you're plenty capable of setting those boundaries. There's no conspiracy to kick you out of the hobby, no disdain for you or your generation (whatever it is). I don't have to play with you so I don't care about how you run your game. The only thing I do care about is when you bring hateful, exclusionary, prejudicial and otherwise toxic attitudes into public spaces like this forum. You don't have like everything about D&D Vince, but you also don't have to be so angry about the stuff you don't like. There's clearly a lot about D&D you love, and no one is going to take that from your table. You're a DM, you have the power of the game and its world in your hands. I don't care for the way you run your game, but as long as you don't try and push your style of play on me, I'm not going to push my style of play on you. The books are tools, they don't tell you how to play, they just make suggestions. Try and find the joy in D&D rather than the hate and anger you seem to espouse here so often.
I love D&D, which is why I put so much into this community. And I don't want a single person to pick up a rulebook, look at it, and put it back down because they don't feel included in what the game is. I've not had skin in this topic before, I'm a cishet white guy who leads a privileged life. But when it comes to harmful representations of mental illness and counterproductive attitudes towards mental health, well that's a race I have a dog in. So I'm here, providing my experience, both with the bad and the good.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I do not believe that this is on the table. I do not think that any changes, other than correcting errors or specific clarifications, have been made to the 5e PHB. New content will come along, and this new content is likely to be affected by the social norms of the time, but it is highly unlikely that any significant changes such as those discussed here will be made to the PHB or other previously published books until a new Edition is released.
As for New Coke: Firstly, many suspect this was just a marketing ploy. However, even if that's not the case, Coca Cola gained a huge amount of market share and sales by changing back after the backlash. The effect of bringing in New Coke and then changing back to the original recipe was incredibly positive for a company which was on a serious downward trend beforehand. The moral of the story seems to be that you should change your product every now and again, because if it doesn't work out you can always change it back and do better than before. Conversely, there is strong evidence that had Coca Cola just stayed as they were, they would have struggled to survive.
Ok taking this a different way, in my world there are mental illnesses, NPCs can have multiple personalities, depression, can here voices and go insane. However there is no psychology, there has not been a Freud or equivalent to create the concepts of what these are, these are all termed as being madness because my world doesn’t understand. Villages burn intelligent people at the stake accusing them of possession, because they hear a voice. They lock them up on straight jackets, or apply magical medical techniques to them. There are other institutions who care for them better, run by clerics. Now this may or may not all become part of the narriative, that is still to be determined, but, it is one of the concepts of my world o work out in my head at world creation. Do long term mental health issues exist, or are they all curable with magic, are they defined and studied, or is the world not yet at that point and how are those suffering such conditions treated by society.
So no the term madness is not a trigger, it is a concept for a high fantasy game and it is up to the DM how they apply that into their universe.
It's not anyone's place to say what is and is not a trigger for anyone else. Triggers can be literally anything, it all depends on the trauma. Let's avoid making sweeping (and false) statements like this that minimise the the trauma of others; it doesn't add anything positive to the conversation.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
It's all right, Vince.
Your pain, fear, and stress are as valid and real as any of ours are. You're afraid that the game you've loved for decades is disappearing and becoming something unrecognizable. Other people coming in and taking this thing you've enjoyed and supported for most of your life off in wild new directions without regard for the history of the property causes you pain. That fear, that pain, it's super stressful for you. No one can deny or negate that pain, or claim it isn't real.
You don't need to martyr yourself on a hill over it. You don't need to position yourself as the last defender of a dying generation. The OSR is going strong, and I see no reason why Wizards can't get in on it themselves in the future. I would be willing to support Wizards releasing a book periodically in their cycle tuned to the OSR style, or perhaps releasing supporting documentation via articles, Sage Advice, or even something new talking about how to play the game from that perspective. There's also a thriving third-party market for content of this type.
Have you looked into Grim Hollow? It's a series of third-party books published by a company called Ghostfire Gaming as a supplement to Fifth Edition. They're in the tail end of their third wildly successful Kickstarter for their dark fantasy sourcebook series set in a world called Etharis, where the gods are all dead and evil has won. The world of Etharis is beset by plagues, nightmares, and corruption, the people have more or less lost hope, and the remnants of civilization are set in fragile bastions as hostile to each other as they are to the dark wilderness, each convinced the others are responsible for all the woes of Etharis. It has a lot of truly fantastic material for use in dark fantasy games even if you don't use the world of Etharis itself, there's some absolutely wild curse mechanics in the Campaign Guide and the upcoming Monster Grimoire promises to be an absolute treasure trove of vile, horrific monsters to serve as delightfully awful inspiration for new ways to give your players heart attacks. When it's my turn to run a season for my table, I absolutely intend to do something with my Grim Hollow books.
I know you're not a big fan of homebrew or third-party add-ons, but the other cool thing about Grim Hollow's three different million dollar-plus Kickstarters is that they're proof you're not alone. This is a company whose entire product portfolio is a grimdark setting for D&D 5e, where grim-faced men and women pit their fragile courage and feeble force of arms against a fundamentally hostile world that laughs in the face of their pitiful resistance, where "Victories are Earned" is one of the core tenets of the game given in the preamble from the Player's Guide. Ghostfire encourages DMs to ensure that all the players' victories cost them a very real price, and that no victory is unstained by the spectre of sacrifice. And this series is wildly successful. People love it, they're eating it up. Hell, Ghostfire has been so succesful they've managed to earn a few sponsorship spots on Critical Role, where Matthew Mercer himself - the face of 'New D&D' - has stated he super wants to play with this setting and its content sometime.
Your D&D is alive and well. It may have a new coat of paint on it, they may update the firmware from time to time, but you're not the last of a dying breed. You're simply one of many players with a strong preference for a grittier, nastier, more punishing aesthetic of the game, and that aesthetic is alive and thriving in the third-party market and not entirely unsupported even in core D&D through books like Van Richten's Guide, Frostmaiden, Descent to Avernus, Ghostmarsh (sort of - I'll admit that book was a super disappointment, but it tried), and both releases of Curse of Strahd - which, I can point out, remains one of the most popular and best-selling adventure books Wizards produces despite its age, and which earned an entire updated reprinting due to how beloved it was and is.
No one's asking you to die on your hill, Vince. All anyone asks is that you show compassion, understanding, and consideration for your fellow players and try not to force them to suffer and die on their hills.
Please do not contact or message me.
[REDACTED]
If we're comparing D&D to Coca Cola, the apt analagy would be saying D&D 4e was New Coke. And 5e is the major brand resurgence that happened afterwards.
I think I see your point. The terms Fear and Stress could be seen as minimising the serious effects which are being discussed, and could be considered to have gone too far the other way.
I do not think the correct response to this is to say "that's gone too far, let's not change it at all". Instead we could find a way to emphasise that this is something extreme. Maybe just call them the effects of extreme fear and stress?
To be fair, this is a fight we have with mental illness in general. It is reasonably common language for someone to say they are stressed, anxious or depressed, but these are rarely the same as Stress, Anxiety and Depression. People will tell someone suffering from Depression to cheer up, or those suffering from Stress or Anxiety to calm down or relax, as if they were speaking of the "everyday" uses of the words instead of the mental health conditions. However, I still believe it is better this way than putting people in mind of the "dangerous madman" every time you have to explain your mental health issues to someone and then talk them back down from being scared of you.
I think this is a very relevant question and something that D&D is paying attention to, even if they aren't at the forefront of inclusion and diversity. I do think efforts to include creators of various backgrounds is a good thing, and is something Wizards has been stepping up to attempt, even if their record on how they actually treat their people is spotty. Still, there are glimmers of hope. Take this discussion hosted by D&D Beyond with an author of a section ins Candlekeep Mysteries talking about how she brings representation of different peoples into her writing as well as how be more sensitive on issues of people with disabilities and how they are treated in stories. I don't remember exactly, but portions of this talk regarding neurodiverse people might be relevant to your question:
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
...right. Sure. This is what I get for trying to be the better person.
Okay. Let's go through this.
1.) I was not actually 'defending', or advocating, any specific name change. I was using the terms "pain, fear and stress" because those are the terms I've been using this entire thread. Those are the things people feel in situations like this. I was not dismissing pain, fear or stress as 'light', nor conflating them with "Madness" as it is traditionally thought of.
2.) I was not telling Vince to "get over it". If I wanted to tell Vince to 'get over it', I'd use exactly those words, probably with a few other choice ones attached. I was attempting to show the man aspects he might not have considered, broaden his knowledge and demonstrate to him that the style of gaming he cherishes is by no means disappearing or dying. It is not the only form of gaming anymore, but it's not gone either.
3.) I do not believe I have ever advocated directly for changing the name of rules or systems in the book. I have advocated for allowing discussions of whether those changes should be made to take place. Those are two entirely different things, related though they may be. The thread started, and continued for a dozenish posts, as a useful and educational discussion on whether the word "Madness" is perhaps not the best word for the system and whether it might be causing harm many do not realize it's causing. I was educated myself that yes, this is absolutely the case - several posters have stated that the language used causes them distress, which was literally news to me. I'd acknowledged this earlier myself - I had not previously considered the idea that others could be bothered by this term, but now that I am aware of it, it seems only natural to allow a discussion to take place as to what to do to alleviate that harm.
I have not proposed a solution either way, but wish only to facilitate the discussion being had by folks who wish to have that discussion in good faith.
I do not believe Vince is arguing in good faith. I believe he is attempting to berate, denigrate, and bully other people into believing their pain is invalid. That they have no reason, no right, to feel any pain. That is not and never will be okay, and I will not stand for it. But by the same token I will do my best not to stand for people denigrating his pain, either. I offered him the words I did in an attempt to ease the pain he's expressed, not to silence him or nullify his pain.
I am a forum wonk on a board Wizards does not bother monitoring. My capacity to solve the problem posed by this thread is exactly zero. What I can do is try to get people past the point of sniping at each other, each side lashing out from their own pain, and hope that somewhere in this morass of nastiness there's meaning to be had. That someone reading my words comes out the better for them, whether it be Vince, Helhawke, Third, Davyd, or any of the silent bystanders that may or may not have bothered reading this far.
So please kindly return to good faith discussions if you would, Kotath. You surprised me earlier, I was delighted by it. Let's get back to that point, if we can.
Please do not contact or message me.
Nooooo don't lose hope! Stay on the good path!
I was utterly confused by Kotath's response to this, because here I thought you went out of your way to validate Vince and his feelings, while still disagreeing with him about the subject.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
This may be where a part of the conflict comes in (although it may not be, so if I have got it wrong I apologise).
Discussing what people are offended by, what hurts people, and how they feel requires an honest and open discussion about those feelings. However, it is only recently that it has been considered acceptable for people, men especially, to be open and honest about those feelings with anyone but their nearest and dearest, if them. For them, they have been taught all their lives that, if they have a problem, if something is upsetting them in any way other than making them angry, they should suppress, hide and, by any other means, ignore that emotion and just "get over it". If someone attempts to sympathise and discuss the feelings they may be experiencing, this is felt as an attack, trying to cut the repressed emotions out of their dark, hidden place to examine them in the light. It is an absolute anathema to openly discuss either their emotions or those of someone else, putting them instantly at odds with anyone trying to examine anything from an emotional point of view. In their mind, it shouldn't be an issue, because everyone should just do what they do and "get over it". Validating their feelings is seen as mockery at best.
Of course, in this case, I could be over-analysing and it could just be that text based communications allows something to be read as sarcasm when it wasn't meant as such.
Here you go! You may want to read carefully through that page, as it explains in depth why this argument against change is neither valid nor helpful in any case.
I know you think that this looks like censorship, but it isn't, as I explained thoroughly in this post (btw, my reference to "strawmen" was your assertion of this being censorship, as that's a mischaracterization of our argument, personal attacks as attacking the other side as some form of "cancel culture" or whatnot, and red herrings, as they distract from the real topic that is being discussed).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I was actually going to bring this up in case no one else did. However, the analogy isn't perfect, as WotC almost definitely was not trying to make 4e fail, some people actually like/liked 4e, while New Coke was pretty universally hated, and it wasn't a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation like the New Coke/Classic Coke situation with D&D 4.0, as D&D could (and now has) improved a ton since the end of the 3.0/3.5 era.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
It sounds like you're saying that the real problem is not the triggering words so much as the underlying culture of misunderstanding neurodiverse people that leads to harmful portrayals, would that be a correct summary? But what about actual people that have come here to say that, as a step, using different words for things have actually relieved some of the harm? I'm all for changing the underlying culture to one of increased compassion and understanding, but if changing some words or phrases can do some legitimate good why not start with that? Are we not making perfect the enemy of good by nixing small changes until the larger changes can come about?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Precisely.
I'm would love to flip a switch and for me, my wife and my neurodiverse friends and family members to be able to discuss our various mental health issues openly and honestly with the wider population with no stigma, no judgement, no fear or dismissal. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works. It takes time to change attitudes in society. It takes far less time to stop saying a word which is causing someone pain.
As an analogy, of someone has been been attached and has a serious, deep wound which is bleeding heavily, the best thing may be for a doctor to clean the wound, stitch it, and dress it. However, in the middle of the road with no doctor and few supplies available, applying pressure or improvising a tourniquet is likely to be much better than standing there saying "you'll need some stitches in that".
(Hopefully everyone can excuse this digression. It's just interesting.)
One (possibly apocryphal) take on New Coke was that it was trying to make a non-diet version of Diet Coke. (Diet Coke has a different flavor profile than regular Coke; if you want regular-Coke-but-diet you drink Coke Zero these days.) Back in the 80s, some blind taste tests showed that Diet Coke beat both Pepsi and regular Coke...so they tried a different formula that was Diet-Coke-but-with-real-calories. There was backlash to the flavor change.
In this (admittedly super flawed) analogy, Coke is D&D, and Diet Coke is MMOs, and 4e was an attempt to make D&D more MMO-like, because MMOs are/were super popular.
There’s a lot of truth to what Kotath is saying here. It’s similar to how some (white) people say “bad neighborhood is coded racist language” and use that to ignore the socioeconomic disparity that results from systemic racism. It’s not fixing the problem, it’s sweeping it under the rug.
I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here, but I do think it’s a danger we should be aware of.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
It is a never-ending slide, once you start down that slippery slope. WOTC has done so, and we have posters here applying more grease to that slope.