My idea was the establishment of a body to oversee 6F issues. What that body would be, exactly, was to be determined. Some sort of third party arbiter like the Southern Poverty Law Center, or maybe just rules based on their findings, would avoid the problem of being beholden to WOTC. If nothing else I thought at least a committee made up of the cultural consultants WOTC had already committed to using on each project. Perhaps even an entire DEI division with a C- level head in charge. There's possibilities but no, not just a list. That doesn't work and is not future proofed.
A number of users here keep mentioning the need for morality clauses and one user actually suggested enumerated morality rules were required.
I would like to see a list. All the users advocating for this, please enumerate for us what is and is not morally acceptable. Don't tell us is common sense because while we all mighta agree on some things (no derogatory language about a person based on their identity) we almost assuredly disagree on others (can ask entire species be evil). Being vague doesn't help, define it for us, since you seem to know (alone) what is best for the world.
What is the definitive list of acceptable or unacceptable morality in D&D?
Counterpoint: why are so many people saying no one should have any say? Why are so many people saying that minorities, marginalized communities, and discriminated people should have absolutely zero protection ever from any form of harassment, discrimination, exclusionism, or hatred, WHATSOEVER?
"Show us the line in the sand" is the retort of people who want to know when they have permission to hate. How much hatred is technically acceptable, how much is technically under the line, so that they can sidle right up to the very edge of that line and stay there being juuuuust this side of hateful without regret or recourse. Everyone else knows that there's no sharp, clear, morally absolute easy Line. That's a childish pipe dream. Don't look for the line; looking for the line means your entire mindset is wrong. There is no line, there never will be. There are best practices, ways to be a more accepting and tolerant person, ways to minimize your harm and maximize your good.
I've said to multiple people, if not anyone on this board yet, that the only thing worse than Affirmative Action and antidiscrimination laws, rules, and systems is what happens when we don't have them. Those laws, systems and rules suck. Everybody knows it. Hateful people hate them, tolerant people hate them, the people those laws are protecting hate them. That doesn't make them any less necessary. No one wanted 6f to go through unmodified, everyone thought it gave Wizards too much leeway, but now we're in a situation where it's a total free-for-all and anybody can be as hateful as they want with no penalty or pushback at all.
And people think that won't ever be a problem, somehow?
People, now don't be jerks. WoTc has heard our demands. They have done well. And they might not have.
Let's not keep making noise, please. We have achieved it. That's it. Let's continue with One D&D and what's to come.
They made a mistake, yes. But they have rectified. Congratulations.
I hate to disagree, but we need to keep making noise. Yes, they did good when they didn't have to but we all saw how close they came to pushing through something awful. They will try again. That's inevitable. We need to make sure they remember that they broke our trust and that they need us so much more than we need them. Trust has to be earned and while this was a great first step we need to stay vigilant for when they try something like this again.
So I think this was an awesome step and needed step by WotC/Hasbro to earn back some trust. Publishers wanting to produce 5e content now can do so and continue their businesses. I do worry about older versions of the SRD. Right now publishers can still publish content for older versions under the OGL. However if WotC decides to try to revoke the license again it will harm them. Now with 5e being protected there might not be as many people to fight back since it won't affect as many people. I would definitely like to see WotC publish the older versions of the SRDs under the Creative Commons license. I would also if possible like them to add it for versions without SRDs like 1e and 2e as to my knowledge they aren't covered under the OGL.
What WotC does with 6e or 1D&D is up to them. They can make the license as restrictive or as open as they want. Players and publishers can choose if it's right for themselves or not. If it's too restrictive we'll probably see a repeat of 4e. I hope they make it open and something people want to work with. I also hope that they add value to the system so that it entices players to leave 5e and draw new players in. However only time will tell.
As for the hate. I know this opens the door for hateful products to be produced. The community does have to police itself. However if left to wizards they could use that morality clause as a weapon against marginalized if they don't agree with it. As a company their morality is subject to change based on their investors interest and who owns the company. The morality clause could be used to block positive content from a marginalized community because the company doesn't agree with it. Sure 3rd party creators can create hateful or bigoted content now but that doesn't mean people have to buy it or use it. They have to get it out to the people. Also if they did start publishing material and it started to get traction of any kind. There would be real pushback from the community. Look how fast the community reacted to the Hadozee issue. The publisher wouldn't be forced to remove it but the community would make others aware and prevent many unwitting people from supporting that product.
Not having a morality clause also lets marginalized communities publish materials that help represent themselves without fear of retribution down the line. WotC might have been okay with it when it was first released but their OGL 1.2 stated something along the lines that just because they didn't reject something before that they couldn't go back and do it in the future. With the shifty morality of a company and of society I think having the freedom to be able to publish the content you want without retribution a good thing.
This is all just how I see things and my opinion. I'm obviously no expert.
My idea was the establishment of a body to oversee 6F issues. What that body would be, exactly, was to be determined. Some sort of third party arbiter like the Southern Poverty Law Center, or maybe just rules based on their findings, would avoid the problem of being beholden to WOTC. If nothing else I thought at least a committee made up of the cultural consultants WOTC had already committed to using on each project. Perhaps even an entire DEI division with a C- level head in charge. There's possibilities but no, not just a list. That doesn't work and is not future proofed.
So if I understand you correctly, you would like to create a "Board of Inclusiveness" that is essentially a 3rd party unit made up of cultural consultants that would rule on what and what is not is considered dangerous and harmful material being produced by 3rd party developers.
That was one of my ideas. The ones I floated were something like: - WOTC establishes their anti-bigotry rule, but instead of making a static list they do something like refer to a list of protected groups from a 3rd party (SPLC? The UN? SCOTUS?) - They establish a committee of their already existing cultural consultants to determine what is a violation of the clause, ideally with transparency regarding their criteria posted somewhere publicly - Perhaps establishing and entire Department of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) with a C-level exec in charge, with the sole mission of safeguarding the disenfranchised, probably over more than just WOTC
Those were just ideas and could work in combination.
Would that body then have the ability to ban such material, and I assume ban the producer, or would it be more like the movie ratings board, which can only label material?
Like many others, I thought there should be some sort of review and appeal process made transparent to the public, but yes if the anti-bigotry clause were to have any appreciable effect it would have to be able to delicense a product for hate or bigotry.
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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!
STU. Why are you so against protecting people? You don't want Wizards to do it, you don't want a third party to do it, you don't want the community to do it, you don't want anybody to do it. Risk?
Risk?
Who gives a shit about Risk? This is the D&D Beyond forums, we're here to discuss D&D. The rest of Hasbro can sod off. Nobody cares about million year old children's board games. This is ridiculous. AT SOME POINT, SOMEONE has to do something to stop the Ernest Gygaxes of the world from taking D&D away from countless people that he's decided don't deserve to play anymore because they're not white enough, or straight enough, or cis enough, or male enough. Someone with some actual authority to take a stand and make it matter. I don't have that authority. None of us do.
And I assume that this board or body would have control over all 3rd party material created in any genre, be it RPG's, traditional board games, comics, novels, etc, and have global jurisdiction? How would you deal with the imperialistic and racist implications in the game Risk, or the anti-poverty bigotry in Monopoly?
Note that only one of my ideas was something that branched out of WOTC and D&D, but to answer your question: A review and appeals process, ideally with publicly transparent criteria, goals, and oversight.
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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!
For what it's worth, I think it's a good idea to have formalized rules to protect minorities and oppressed groups. I don't think the implementation of clause 6F was good at all, but I think there should be something as opposed to just "letting the market weed them out" because if there's something worse than letting one corporation decide on the rights of people it's letting corporations as an aggregate do the same thing. "The market" never goes out of it's way to protect the disenfranchised, that's why those protections and regulations need to be imposed upon it.
This is the wrong approach. Formallized policies designed to protect against hateful or obscene content always and unfailingly end up being coopted and weaponzed against marginalized groups. A much, much better approach is proactive inclusivity. Build inclusivity into the core of the product, and that inclusivity becomes a poison pill that keeps the hateful people away from the "woke" product. Things like the SRD become tainted by association. Proactive inclusivity is the best defense against bigotry and intolerence because it leads to the bigots self selecting out of the community.
I already did answer it. Like in most cases, the market will. Just like the market did last year, the year before that, and the year before that. The market has the authority. If a product is awful, it will not sell.
Further, as I stated before, the distributors like DTRPG and DM'sGuild already don't distribute certain products. Not because the decision-makers at those companies are offended by any particular product. No, they ban them because they make the dispassionate decision based on "will marketing this particular product, in the current environment, negatively impact our brand, hurting future sales?" The market is the most powerful tool out there, one that shifts with the changing social values of society.
As someone who has had their civil rights subject to "the market" I can tell you that it does not work. Market forces work to maximize profit and minimize loss, that's all they do. In almost every case where protecting the civil rights of a minority would represent a bottom line loss, the market will sacrifice human rights. When marriage equality was the law only in a few states in the US, corporations did their damnedest to do the minimum they had to in order to comply with the law and they would invariably pass any sort of financial burden down onto the customer. This was mainly seen in industries like health insurance, who would slice ever thinner and finer hairs in order to not recognize married same sex couples for the purposes of health insurance or death benefits. That's the market for you. So yeah, in my experience you are mistaken about this.
People are quick to air their distrust of a corporation given the power to determine the safety of minority groups, but you know what is worse than a corporation trusted to protect people? An aggregate of many corporations given the trust to do the same. Because that is what leaving it up to "the market" amounts to. If you think a corporation, which is an aggregate of the people is it made of, is slow to change why on earth would you think an aggregate of multiple corporations would be any faster?
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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!
For what it's worth, I think it's a good idea to have formalized rules to protect minorities and oppressed groups. I don't think the implementation of clause 6F was good at all, but I think there should be something as opposed to just "letting the market weed them out" because if there's something worse than letting one corporation decide on the rights of people it's letting corporations as an aggregate do the same thing. "The market" never goes out of it's way to protect the disenfranchised, that's why those protections and regulations need to be imposed upon it.
This is the wrong approach. Formallized policies designed to protect against hateful or obscene content always and unfailingly end up being coopted and weaponzed against marginalized groups. A much, much better approach is proactive inclusivity. Build inclusivity into the core of the product, and that inclusivity becomes a poison pill that keeps the hateful people away from the "woke" product. Things like the SRD become tainted by association. Proactive inclusivity is the best defense against bigotry and intolerence because it leads to the bigots self selecting out of the community.
As someone who is both a multi-marginalized minority and was the author of formal policies for protecting such I can tell you from experience that such are not always weaponized and in fact their mere existence actually makes me feel safer in an organization as well as more attracted to become a part of such an organization.
But also ... why not both? Let's not make perfect the enemy of good.
A number of users here keep mentioning the need for morality clauses and one user actually suggested enumerated morality rules were required.
I would like to see a list. All the users advocating for this, please enumerate for us what is and is not morally acceptable. Don't tell us is common sense because while we all mighta agree on some things (no derogatory language about a person based on their identity) we almost assuredly disagree on others (can ask entire species be evil). Being vague doesn't help, define it for us, since you seem to know (alone) what is best for the world.
What is the definitive list of acceptable or unacceptable morality in D&D?
Counterpoint: why are so many people saying no one should have any say? Why are so many people saying that minorities, marginalized communities, and discriminated people should have absolutely zero protection ever from any form of harassment, discrimination, exclusionism, or hatred, WHATSOEVER?
"Show us the line in the sand" is the retort of people who want to know when they have permission to hate. How much hatred is technically acceptable, how much is technically under the line, so that they can sidle right up to the very edge of that line and stay there being juuuuust this side of hateful without regret or recourse. Everyone else knows that there's no sharp, clear, morally absolute easy Line. That's a childish pipe dream. Don't look for the line; looking for the line means your entire mindset is wrong. There is no line, there never will be. There are best practices, ways to be a more accepting and tolerant person, ways to minimize your harm and maximize your good.
I've said to multiple people, if not anyone on this board yet, that the only thing worse than Affirmative Action and antidiscrimination laws, rules, and systems is what happens when we don't have them. Those laws, systems and rules suck. Everybody knows it. Hateful people hate them, tolerant people hate them, the people those laws are protecting hate them. That doesn't make them any less necessary. No one wanted 6f to go through unmodified, everyone thought it gave Wizards too much leeway, but now we're in a situation where it's a total free-for-all and anybody can be as hateful as they want with no penalty or pushback at all.
And people think that won't ever be a problem, somehow?
We don't want hateful content in DnD, or in the TTRPG community at all. We're just aware that any sort of morality clause, or any sort of morality panel, or code like this will, without fail, end up being weaponized and used against the people you want to protect. I've addressed this in a number of posts on this forum, included at least one response to you, but there is a long history of morality clauses being used against queer people, racial minorities, the disabled, women. Anyone who isn't part of the dominate socioeconomic ethnic group. In our case cis gendered heterosexual, culturally Christian white men.
If you want to protect the game and the hobby from bigotry and hate, a far more effective strategy is proactive inclusivity. If you put inclusive language in the game, if you put diversite characters and rules and systems for people to create their own diverse characters into the game, then the people you don't want in the game with self select out of it for being "woke". The SRD will become tainted in their mind by association.
That would be true if we weren't talking about THIS market, the one built on open source. Where you could go make your own gay pirate adventure and no one can stop you. Heck now i think you might be able to go seduce Strahd the Pirate Booty King with the CC.
I feel like, if you're going to be a racist troll, there are easier, faster, and more profitable ways to be a racist troll than to publish third party content for Dungeons and Dragons.
I feel like the number who try publishing something will be few, the number who succeed at publishing something will be even fewer, and the number who sell even one printing of something that they published will be even fewer still.
I don't understand how Ernie Gygax trying to publish Dungeons and Racists for handfuls of terminally online, edgelord gamers takes Dungeons and Dragons away from people.
All I can picture are Ernie Gygax and others of his ilk with bedroom closets full of books that they can't sell who may as well have scrawled slurs on dollar bills, tossed them in a trashcan, and lit them on fire.
I feel like, if you're going to be a racist troll, there are easier, faster, and more profitable ways to be a racist troll than to publish third party content for Dungeons and Dragons.
Fair point, but not all racists are trying to be racist. It is often something that happens unintentionally. It is still harmful, though.
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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!
F*** capitalist, free market "solutions" to oppression, but letting the thousands of third party creators and the millions of gamers in the tabletop roleplaying game community toss the chuds out on their ears is way better than giving one billion dollar company and its board of directors all of that power over the same community.
For what it's worth, I think it's a good idea to have formalized rules to protect minorities and oppressed groups. I don't think the implementation of clause 6F was good at all, but I think there should be something as opposed to just "letting the market weed them out" because if there's something worse than letting one corporation decide on the rights of people it's letting corporations as an aggregate do the same thing. "The market" never goes out of it's way to protect the disenfranchised, that's why those protections and regulations need to be imposed upon it.
This is the wrong approach. Formallized policies designed to protect against hateful or obscene content always and unfailingly end up being coopted and weaponzed against marginalized groups. A much, much better approach is proactive inclusivity. Build inclusivity into the core of the product, and that inclusivity becomes a poison pill that keeps the hateful people away from the "woke" product. Things like the SRD become tainted by association. Proactive inclusivity is the best defense against bigotry and intolerence because it leads to the bigots self selecting out of the community.
As someone who is both a multi-marginalized minority and was the author of formal policies for protecting such I can tell you from experience that such are not always weaponized and in fact their mere existence actually makes me feel safer in an organization as well as more attracted to become a part of such an organization.
But also ... why not both? Let's not make perfect the enemy of good.
Yep. Whole ass trans woman right here. Tell me, a person living in a world where I have to worry about getting arrested, going to prison, and ending up on a sex offender registry because I needed to pee and went to the ladies room, how morality laws are good and helpful. I'll wait.
I feel like, if you're going to be a racist troll, there are easier, faster, and more profitable ways to be a racist troll than to publish third party content for Dungeons and Dragons.
Fair point, but not all racists are trying to be racist. It is often something that happens unintentionally. It is still harmful, though.
Which is why I asked about a list of what is and is not acceptable. Not, as Yurei suggests, because I want to know "how far I can go", but because it might not be obvious to all of us what is and is not acceptable. Things are changing so quickly that some of us may not even be aware of what the new "norm" is if we didn't happen to be following twitter that day, especially those of us who want to be supportive of marginalized communities, but who have very little experience with, or within, those communities.
And then, who is the final arbiter of that list? What if the community disagrees vehemently about whether or not something belongs on the list?
It's like we're being told that the government is passing new laws, but won't tell us what those laws are, but if we break those laws we are in trouble. We'd like to respect the laws, but it's hard to do if we don't know what they are!
I'm sure some users, like Yurei, will accuse me of arguing disingenuously, and suggest that I am a BAD person who just wants permission to do BAD things. On the contrary, I'm just trying to understand what the bad things are, and who gets to decide.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
For what it's worth, I think it's a good idea to have formalized rules to protect minorities and oppressed groups. I don't think the implementation of clause 6F was good at all, but I think there should be something as opposed to just "letting the market weed them out" because if there's something worse than letting one corporation decide on the rights of people it's letting corporations as an aggregate do the same thing. "The market" never goes out of it's way to protect the disenfranchised, that's why those protections and regulations need to be imposed upon it.
This is the wrong approach. Formallized policies designed to protect against hateful or obscene content always and unfailingly end up being coopted and weaponzed against marginalized groups. A much, much better approach is proactive inclusivity. Build inclusivity into the core of the product, and that inclusivity becomes a poison pill that keeps the hateful people away from the "woke" product. Things like the SRD become tainted by association. Proactive inclusivity is the best defense against bigotry and intolerence because it leads to the bigots self selecting out of the community.
As someone who is both a multi-marginalized minority and was the author of formal policies for protecting such I can tell you from experience that such are not always weaponized and in fact their mere existence actually makes me feel safer in an organization as well as more attracted to become a part of such an organization.
But also ... why not both? Let's not make perfect the enemy of good.
Yep. Whole ass trans woman right here. Tell me, a person living in a world where I have to worry about getting arrested, going to prison, and ending up on a sex offender registry because I needed to pee and went to the ladies room, how morality laws are good and helpful. I'll wait.
I never said morality laws in general were a good thing, what I said was that formal policies protecting minorities are a good thing. I also said clause 6F was not a good implementation, but that there should be something rather than nothing.
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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!
For what it's worth, I think it's a good idea to have formalized rules to protect minorities and oppressed groups. I don't think the implementation of clause 6F was good at all, but I think there should be something as opposed to just "letting the market weed them out" because if there's something worse than letting one corporation decide on the rights of people it's letting corporations as an aggregate do the same thing. "The market" never goes out of it's way to protect the disenfranchised, that's why those protections and regulations need to be imposed upon it.
This is the wrong approach. Formallized policies designed to protect against hateful or obscene content always and unfailingly end up being coopted and weaponzed against marginalized groups. A much, much better approach is proactive inclusivity. Build inclusivity into the core of the product, and that inclusivity becomes a poison pill that keeps the hateful people away from the "woke" product. Things like the SRD become tainted by association. Proactive inclusivity is the best defense against bigotry and intolerence because it leads to the bigots self selecting out of the community.
As someone who is both a multi-marginalized minority and was the author of formal policies for protecting such I can tell you from experience that such are not always weaponized and in fact their mere existence actually makes me feel safer in an organization as well as more attracted to become a part of such an organization.
But also ... why not both? Let's not make perfect the enemy of good.
Yep. Whole ass trans woman right here. Tell me, a person living in a world where I have to worry about getting arrested, going to prison, and ending up on a sex offender registry because I needed to pee and went to the ladies room, how morality laws are good and helpful. I'll wait.
I never said morality laws in general were a good thing, what I said was that formal policies protecting minorities are a good thing. I also said clause 6F was not a good implementation, but that there should be something rather than nothing.
But if you don't enumerate the "Morality rules" specifically (a list?) then no matter the intention, it just takes someone coming to power with different ideas of morality to use it against you.
So, can we enumerate these morality rules or not? If we can, why won't anyone do it?
Here's some that I make non-negotiable in my session 0: Absolutely NO gratuitous violence towards children or animals; No non-consensual sex or assault; No use of derogatory words, slurs, jokes or language based on a person's identity.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
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My idea was the establishment of a body to oversee 6F issues. What that body would be, exactly, was to be determined. Some sort of third party arbiter like the Southern Poverty Law Center, or maybe just rules based on their findings, would avoid the problem of being beholden to WOTC. If nothing else I thought at least a committee made up of the cultural consultants WOTC had already committed to using on each project. Perhaps even an entire DEI division with a C- level head in charge. There's possibilities but no, not just a list. That doesn't work and is not future proofed.
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!
Counterpoint: why are so many people saying no one should have any say? Why are so many people saying that minorities, marginalized communities, and discriminated people should have absolutely zero protection ever from any form of harassment, discrimination, exclusionism, or hatred, WHATSOEVER?
"Show us the line in the sand" is the retort of people who want to know when they have permission to hate. How much hatred is technically acceptable, how much is technically under the line, so that they can sidle right up to the very edge of that line and stay there being juuuuust this side of hateful without regret or recourse. Everyone else knows that there's no sharp, clear, morally absolute easy Line. That's a childish pipe dream. Don't look for the line; looking for the line means your entire mindset is wrong. There is no line, there never will be. There are best practices, ways to be a more accepting and tolerant person, ways to minimize your harm and maximize your good.
I've said to multiple people, if not anyone on this board yet, that the only thing worse than Affirmative Action and antidiscrimination laws, rules, and systems is what happens when we don't have them. Those laws, systems and rules suck. Everybody knows it. Hateful people hate them, tolerant people hate them, the people those laws are protecting hate them. That doesn't make them any less necessary. No one wanted 6f to go through unmodified, everyone thought it gave Wizards too much leeway, but now we're in a situation where it's a total free-for-all and anybody can be as hateful as they want with no penalty or pushback at all.
And people think that won't ever be a problem, somehow?
Please do not contact or message me.
So I think this was an awesome step and needed step by WotC/Hasbro to earn back some trust. Publishers wanting to produce 5e content now can do so and continue their businesses. I do worry about older versions of the SRD. Right now publishers can still publish content for older versions under the OGL. However if WotC decides to try to revoke the license again it will harm them. Now with 5e being protected there might not be as many people to fight back since it won't affect as many people. I would definitely like to see WotC publish the older versions of the SRDs under the Creative Commons license. I would also if possible like them to add it for versions without SRDs like 1e and 2e as to my knowledge they aren't covered under the OGL.
What WotC does with 6e or 1D&D is up to them. They can make the license as restrictive or as open as they want. Players and publishers can choose if it's right for themselves or not. If it's too restrictive we'll probably see a repeat of 4e. I hope they make it open and something people want to work with. I also hope that they add value to the system so that it entices players to leave 5e and draw new players in. However only time will tell.
As for the hate. I know this opens the door for hateful products to be produced. The community does have to police itself. However if left to wizards they could use that morality clause as a weapon against marginalized if they don't agree with it. As a company their morality is subject to change based on their investors interest and who owns the company. The morality clause could be used to block positive content from a marginalized community because the company doesn't agree with it. Sure 3rd party creators can create hateful or bigoted content now but that doesn't mean people have to buy it or use it. They have to get it out to the people. Also if they did start publishing material and it started to get traction of any kind. There would be real pushback from the community. Look how fast the community reacted to the Hadozee issue. The publisher wouldn't be forced to remove it but the community would make others aware and prevent many unwitting people from supporting that product.
Not having a morality clause also lets marginalized communities publish materials that help represent themselves without fear of retribution down the line. WotC might have been okay with it when it was first released but their OGL 1.2 stated something along the lines that just because they didn't reject something before that they couldn't go back and do it in the future. With the shifty morality of a company and of society I think having the freedom to be able to publish the content you want without retribution a good thing.
This is all just how I see things and my opinion. I'm obviously no expert.
That was one of my ideas. The ones I floated were something like:
- WOTC establishes their anti-bigotry rule, but instead of making a static list they do something like refer to a list of protected groups from a 3rd party (SPLC? The UN? SCOTUS?)
- They establish a committee of their already existing cultural consultants to determine what is a violation of the clause, ideally with transparency regarding their criteria posted somewhere publicly
- Perhaps establishing and entire Department of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) with a C-level exec in charge, with the sole mission of safeguarding the disenfranchised, probably over more than just WOTC
Those were just ideas and could work in combination.
Like many others, I thought there should be some sort of review and appeal process made transparent to the public, but yes if the anti-bigotry clause were to have any appreciable effect it would have to be able to delicense a product for hate or bigotry.
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!
STU. Why are you so against protecting people? You don't want Wizards to do it, you don't want a third party to do it, you don't want the community to do it, you don't want anybody to do it. Risk?
Risk?
Who gives a shit about Risk? This is the D&D Beyond forums, we're here to discuss D&D. The rest of Hasbro can sod off. Nobody cares about million year old children's board games. This is ridiculous. AT SOME POINT, SOMEONE has to do something to stop the Ernest Gygaxes of the world from taking D&D away from countless people that he's decided don't deserve to play anymore because they're not white enough, or straight enough, or cis enough, or male enough. Someone with some actual authority to take a stand and make it matter. I don't have that authority. None of us do.
So who's it gonna be?
Please do not contact or message me.
Note that only one of my ideas was something that branched out of WOTC and D&D, but to answer your question: A review and appeals process, ideally with publicly transparent criteria, goals, and oversight.
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!
So, who wants to take bets on how long it will be before RaHoWa or F.A.T.A.L. gets a 5e conversion?
This is the wrong approach. Formallized policies designed to protect against hateful or obscene content always and unfailingly end up being coopted and weaponzed against marginalized groups. A much, much better approach is proactive inclusivity. Build inclusivity into the core of the product, and that inclusivity becomes a poison pill that keeps the hateful people away from the "woke" product. Things like the SRD become tainted by association. Proactive inclusivity is the best defense against bigotry and intolerence because it leads to the bigots self selecting out of the community.
As someone who has had their civil rights subject to "the market" I can tell you that it does not work. Market forces work to maximize profit and minimize loss, that's all they do. In almost every case where protecting the civil rights of a minority would represent a bottom line loss, the market will sacrifice human rights. When marriage equality was the law only in a few states in the US, corporations did their damnedest to do the minimum they had to in order to comply with the law and they would invariably pass any sort of financial burden down onto the customer. This was mainly seen in industries like health insurance, who would slice ever thinner and finer hairs in order to not recognize married same sex couples for the purposes of health insurance or death benefits. That's the market for you. So yeah, in my experience you are mistaken about this.
People are quick to air their distrust of a corporation given the power to determine the safety of minority groups, but you know what is worse than a corporation trusted to protect people? An aggregate of many corporations given the trust to do the same. Because that is what leaving it up to "the market" amounts to. If you think a corporation, which is an aggregate of the people is it made of, is slow to change why on earth would you think an aggregate of multiple corporations would be any faster?
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!
As someone who is both a multi-marginalized minority and was the author of formal policies for protecting such I can tell you from experience that such are not always weaponized and in fact their mere existence actually makes me feel safer in an organization as well as more attracted to become a part of such an organization.
But also ... why not both? Let's not make perfect the enemy of good.
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!
We don't want hateful content in DnD, or in the TTRPG community at all. We're just aware that any sort of morality clause, or any sort of morality panel, or code like this will, without fail, end up being weaponized and used against the people you want to protect. I've addressed this in a number of posts on this forum, included at least one response to you, but there is a long history of morality clauses being used against queer people, racial minorities, the disabled, women. Anyone who isn't part of the dominate socioeconomic ethnic group. In our case cis gendered heterosexual, culturally Christian white men.
If you want to protect the game and the hobby from bigotry and hate, a far more effective strategy is proactive inclusivity. If you put inclusive language in the game, if you put diversite characters and rules and systems for people to create their own diverse characters into the game, then the people you don't want in the game with self select out of it for being "woke". The SRD will become tainted in their mind by association.
That would be true if we weren't talking about THIS market, the one built on open source. Where you could go make your own gay pirate adventure and no one can stop you. Heck now i think you might be able to go seduce Strahd the Pirate Booty King with the CC.
I feel like, if you're going to be a racist troll, there are easier, faster, and more profitable ways to be a racist troll than to publish third party content for Dungeons and Dragons.
I feel like the number who try publishing something will be few, the number who succeed at publishing something will be even fewer, and the number who sell even one printing of something that they published will be even fewer still.
I don't understand how Ernie Gygax trying to publish Dungeons and Racists for handfuls of terminally online, edgelord gamers takes Dungeons and Dragons away from people.
All I can picture are Ernie Gygax and others of his ilk with bedroom closets full of books that they can't sell who may as well have scrawled slurs on dollar bills, tossed them in a trashcan, and lit them on fire.
Fair point, but not all racists are trying to be racist. It is often something that happens unintentionally. It is still harmful, though.
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!
I mean, don't get me wrong.
F*** capitalist, free market "solutions" to oppression, but letting the thousands of third party creators and the millions of gamers in the tabletop roleplaying game community toss the chuds out on their ears is way better than giving one billion dollar company and its board of directors all of that power over the same community.
Yep. Whole ass trans woman right here. Tell me, a person living in a world where I have to worry about getting arrested, going to prison, and ending up on a sex offender registry because I needed to pee and went to the ladies room, how morality laws are good and helpful. I'll wait.
Which is why I asked about a list of what is and is not acceptable. Not, as Yurei suggests, because I want to know "how far I can go", but because it might not be obvious to all of us what is and is not acceptable. Things are changing so quickly that some of us may not even be aware of what the new "norm" is if we didn't happen to be following twitter that day, especially those of us who want to be supportive of marginalized communities, but who have very little experience with, or within, those communities.
And then, who is the final arbiter of that list? What if the community disagrees vehemently about whether or not something belongs on the list?
It's like we're being told that the government is passing new laws, but won't tell us what those laws are, but if we break those laws we are in trouble. We'd like to respect the laws, but it's hard to do if we don't know what they are!
I'm sure some users, like Yurei, will accuse me of arguing disingenuously, and suggest that I am a BAD person who just wants permission to do BAD things. On the contrary, I'm just trying to understand what the bad things are, and who gets to decide.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I never said morality laws in general were a good thing, what I said was that formal policies protecting minorities are a good thing. I also said clause 6F was not a good implementation, but that there should be something rather than nothing.
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!
But if you don't enumerate the "Morality rules" specifically (a list?) then no matter the intention, it just takes someone coming to power with different ideas of morality to use it against you.
So, can we enumerate these morality rules or not? If we can, why won't anyone do it?
Here's some that I make non-negotiable in my session 0: Absolutely NO gratuitous violence towards children or animals; No non-consensual sex or assault; No use of derogatory words, slurs, jokes or language based on a person's identity.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?