Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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It's disingenuous to minimize people's valid concerns about problematic content as simply being about discomfort. I'm cautiously optimistic the creative team at WotC can give Dark Sun a treatment that handles mature topics in responsible and thought-provoking ways and appeals to actually mature players. What I don't want is for the team at WotC to confuse edginess for maturity and to draw in a bunch of people who think being misanthropic edgelords makes them more emotionally mature than people who have basic empathy and consideration for others.
To start, I am going to preface this post by saying a few things. First, I think it is a good idea that D&D is taking more risks and is creating content like Dark Sun and some of their other 18+ projects in the works. I have been fairly outspoken that the previous design team played it a bit safe and that I am excited to see what the new team would do. I also feel very comfortable saying there are few players in the world more equipped to deal with dark themes in one's game than I am. Professionally, I regularly deal with the kind of horror that would be seen as too dark for Law & Order SVU, as do others in one of my playgroups. I say none of that as a flex - and frankly would abhor anyone seeing it as such - but to establish where I am coming from before I post the below, as sometimes folks dismiss this kind of criticism as someone who is not "mature" enough to understand this kind of content.
Having "higher thresholds for emotional discomfort" does not make you "emotionally mature." To be perfectly frank, I think it shows a considerable amount of emotional immaturity to see those two as equivalent terms.
There are plenty of folks who are emotionally mature and have a high threshold for emotional discomfort. I know several folks who are extremely into grimdark content, like Dark Sun, and are among the more emotionally well adjusted folks I know.
But there are also plenty of emotionally mature individuals who know their own limit and what lines they feel uncomfortable crossing, particularly in their fun, game time. And there are a lot of emotionally mature folks who can recognize "I might be able to handle something at a high threshold, but I do not want to put others through that, and having basic empathy, I will lower my own threshold rather than face the discomfort of playing in a way that makes others miserable."
And there are a LOT of emotionally immature individuals who have a "high threshold" explicitly because they are emotionally immature. They lack sufficient emotional maturity to realize just how harmful certain concepts are. They lack the emotional maturity and empathy to recognize that their conduct makes others uncomfortable. I have known a lot of Dark Sun fans who fall into this second category - they think that liking grimdark things makes them look mature and sophisticated enough to handle these kinds of themes... but in actuality they are using the high risk as a proxy to make up for their own lack of emotional maturity.
So, once again, I am glad Wizards is making this content for those who want it. But let us not confuse terms that are not congruent. Doing so denigrates those who are emotionally mature, but do not like grimdark... while also unjustly elevating the many emotionally immature individuals who gravitate to grimdark content. That is neither accurate nor conductive to this kind of conversation about what should or should not make the cut in darker content.
With all due respect, MackAdams, it looks a bit like you are selectively reading content to push your own biases. I specifically acknowledged that there are plenty of grimdark players I count as both my friends and as extremely well adjusted. You conveniently cut that portion from the post chain, seemingly because it did not fit with your narrative. And you both cut and ignored portions of my post where I explicitly discussed the fact I am glad Wizards made that content. I went out of my way to extend grace to emotionally mature players who enjoy Dark Sun because I think they should be extended grace.
Acknowledging the existence of a dark underbelly to grimdark content is not denying those players grace, nor is it simply anecdotal. Wizards has expressed concern before about how some of its community views grimdark content. Games Workshop, maker of probably one of the most famous games in the grimdark genera, has regularly lamented that its game has a strong Neo-Nazi following who they wish they could purge.
Once again, I do not say that to denigrate all fans of the genera - only to show that, by admission of even the big creators in the genera, there are a significant percentage of emotionally stunted players who use grimdark as an outlet for their emotional immaturity. The fact that the genera has plenty of toxic fans does not mean it cannot have good fans either.
I also will note, not once in my post do I make any accusations against your table or your playstyle. I have no data about what goes on at your games, and therefore I cannot make any conclusions.
Lastly, you are taking an incredibly limited view on “psychological resilience” that I do not believe would be supported by mental healthcare providers - something I say as works closely with mental healthcare providers and is required to maintain a level of expertise for professional reasons. Resiliency takes many forms, and “I can put up with grimdark settings” is such a narrow interpretation of resiliency that it borders on dangerous. It also is only one small piece of the pie for emotional maturity - and things like basic empathy and knowing one’s own limits are every bit as important to the conversation.
To sum, Wizards absolutely should listen to those who want more mature themes. They absolutely should take risks on settings like Dark Sun. I am happy they are doing so. But they should do those because the game should try to branch out and explore audiences 5.0e failed to capture. Absolutely no one should think this is “listening to their more emotionally mature audience.”
That is disingenuous at best - given the obvious fact that plenty of their “more emotionally mature audience” do not like grimdark; and plenty of their emotionally immature audience do - and psychologically dangerous at worst. They should be doing this because it is listening to players generally and filling a vacuum; not because of the psychologically limited and flawed view on a (dangerously) limited view of resiliency and emotional maturity you present in your post.
Settings and even entire RPG's are content. It's existance doesn't affect anyone; it only affects you and your group when you choose to buy and use it. What some irrelevant minority of racist do with it in their cellars doesn't even begin to approach the statement of "who cares?" Trying to "protect" people by limiting creativity, forcing social rules on creativity and general censorship is always bad.. its bad for business, it's bad for the community, its bad for society. More importantly, censorship only caters to, it does not prevent these irrelevant bigoted minorities from existing. Censorship is their validation. It's their victory. An acknowledgement that they exist and that they are relevant enough to impact D&D..: That is a terrible precedent to set, it's fuel and justification for their existence.
Dark Sun is what it is, if you don't like it, don't buy it and don't use it, and if enough people agree with you, ultimatetly their won't be a market for it, and it will die off on its own.
I think the fear people have is that adult content in D&D and in the hobby as a whole will be popular and embraced by the community. Content some consider questionable and disagree with and people who disagree with something think they are entitled to have it removed. You don't have that privilege.
Wizards of the Coast has that privilege; they can choose not to create/print adult content like this, that's their right but if you look around at the hobby. Dark, Grim and Adult content is extremely popular and for good reason. People like the edgy stuff, it sells well and it does well. Most people that play RPG's are in fact, adults.
That's uncomfortable for some people, but a select groups discomfort is not a justifiable reason to censor anything.
Dark Sun was/is an awesome setting; it's brutal, violent, raw, but it's a story, a fantasy, and not a reflection of people's values. Not the people writing it and not the people playing it. I, for one, hope they do it justice; D&D has become a Disney-fied cartoon (quite boring), and I don't think there is anything wrong with giving us some good, adult content. The purchase of which is, as always, optional and when appropriately labeled should be sufficient to keep it out of the hands of kids with good parenting.
Create the content, publish it, and the community will decide if it's good and/or appropriate or not with their wallets. I suspect the darker they go, the more popular it will be. In my opinion, D&D needs this desperately. How many more franchises have to die and how many more billions have to be lost before people realize that this self-governing censorship is boring the crap out of people!?
I generally agree with your post - that 5.0e was perhaps too risk adverse both in content and lethality of content, that it is a good thing Wizards is taking a risk, and that Wizards controls its content. I even partially agree with the above, insofar as one can choose to add or remove any content they want from their games.
But there is no denying that certain types of official content do have a broader effect on the hobby, and I think it is important to acknowledge that. To be very clear from the start, this post is not to accuse you, OSR4ever, of anything - merely because I think the above sentence opens the door to something that is impotent to recognize about this kind of content.
When official content contains flagrant racism and sexism, as happened uncomfortably often under TSR, that is likewise telling individuals “we in the game design studio do not want you in the game.” I think that is particularly true in a setting like Dark Sun. Dark Sun was always intended to be a political statement - its environmental message is not exactly subtle - which makes the intentional inclusion of some of its stereotypes and exclusionary elements cut deeper. After all, if you’re making a political statement in one category, it is suspiciously weird when certain other types of content still get included.
I think it is worth noting the same is true of the converse. There have been a lot of folks whining recently about how they feel pushed from the game because of Wizards’ recent inclusion of LGBT+ individuals and culturally diverse products. "You are making me feel unwelcome in the game” has been a rallying cry of a certain group… without any sense of irony at the hypocrisy of crying about feeling excluded because others are being included. It is very clear that, no matter what Wizards does, official content will tell some people they are welcome and others they are not. Given the choice between telling folks “we don’t want you” for reasons that are outside of the individual’s control (gender, sexuality, race and culture of birth) and saying “we don’t want you” to those who choose to live exclusionary lives where they get offended over the existence of others? There is a clear right answer.
I think anyone should agree with that sentiment - that you can pick and choose what content you interact with, but you cannot really choose if the game itself is telling you “we don’t want you here.” Acknowledging that sentiment is important, as it ensures developers know their actions have consequences and can be cognizant of the chilling effects their content might have on historically marginalized groups.
Which, at least on this forum, has been sort of the prevalent hope. Folks here want Dark Sun retains a lot of what made it interesting, including its themes and some of its political messaging (some of which is far more relevant today than the early 90s). But that it does so in a way that does not tell the general public that Wizards wants to exclude certain people in the way TSR Dark Sun did. I think Wizards has created a team that can walk that line of dealing with complicated themes without also alienating folks who do not deserve to be alienated, and am excited to see the final product.
1: Let's all chill with the straw-manning please. And if they were honest mistakes in reading someone's intention acknowledge that after careful reading.
2: I have mentioned a friend who doesn't like DarkSun, the "I want fantasy not Prophecy" guy, who has since then reached out and asked "Hey if you buy DarkSun can you shoot me the Psionic stuff in there? I am doing that psychic campaign I told you about." This is someone who hates the setting but is looking forward to the release because of certain aspects of it releasing.
Even if the setting isn't used, some of the classes, mechanics and other things can be valuable to the pool of inspiration and mechanics that can be used in home games.
3: this one is kinda aimed at MacAdams, when you bring up "You insist (anecdotally) that you know edgelords who use this content specifically because they WANT to engage in fantasies of slavery, SA, and torture. To which my response is: Sweet JESUS, what kind of people are y'all hanging around with?"
We don't know they are like that until they mask off. It has been a problem i have been dealing with for like 30 years playing this game. Seemingly normal, chill people, will suddenly show a side of themselves you never would have guessed in a million years that they had.
People can catch you by surprise.
Even then it is a whole feeling out of "Are you actually an irredeemable piece of anal sputum or just trying to indulge in dark impulses in a safe environment" because it can be either of them or both. Because sometimes it is the Latter and they misjudged the table. When I started session 0s and safety tools weren't as widely used if they even existed then.
Had a Player in Darksun who misjudged the table, did some horrid things, then when he realized his mistake told the party to kill his character and he made a new one from the one of the slaves he was terrorizing.
Which all could have been avoided if I had known about better table practices, but hey I was like, 13 or something.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
A property being fictional is not an everything-proof shield against all criticism or evolution. And Dark Sun specifically can be harsh and brutal without reintroducing every last one of the more heinous topics it had before. Dan's job is to capture the core feel of the setting in the modern era, without being thoughtlessly beholden to every vestigial hanging chad of the prior lore that was conceived when the hobby was small and insular, but isn't actually vital to delivering on the setting's core themes. The move to make it an age-restricted product certainly gives them more leeway than they have with their other product lines, but it doesn't absolve them of all responsibility to employ moderation and exercise due care with an update.
Aren't Gith canonically on Athas? And even some Mindflayers were present in Wake of the Ravager 30+ years ago. So playing up the space/multiverse stuff a bit more isn't a big stretch, when a bunch of it is already there.
IIRC, the githyanki went to Athas once, took a single look at it, and permanently noped out.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A very understandable and relatable position.
We’re all about brutal combat, but this is too much
I've never been a fan of "the death of the author" and always found the idea that meaning can be wholly divorced from any intent in what the author had to say to be terribly naive. As just a single example, one can't read Robert Frost's poetry and understand it and all its dark mood and sharp wit without understanding how tragedy shaped Frost's life and outlook on life. People can and indeed often do misinterpret an author's intended meaning, but that doesn't mean there was no meaning there in the first place, nor does it validate uncritically rejecting people's arguments about works being harmful.
For my part, the only people I've ever seen perform being offended as a sport are the ones who complain about everyone else doing it. "I'm offended that you're offended" is cliche projection. I have nothing charitable to say about a worldview arguing that people who raise valid criticisms of works should be actively disregarded and disrespected. Examine the things you love critically and be ready to admit that they can be problematic.
I wonder if one of the issues is the name itself. The old name has a lot of baggage and history. Not all of it good.
There are a mix pf people here that remember when it came out and maybe looked into it. As well as individuals born after it was removed. Maybe even decades later. I assume if they did not have the words "dark sun" This thread might not even exist.
I wouldn't mind a "Dark Sun, but with the serial numbers filed off" product, not least because it would mean a new setting. But at the same time I'd like the proper amount of effort to go into creating a whole new setting. I don't want "welcome to the totally new and different setting: the desert world of Bathas."
Obviously you can judge an author based on the content of their authorship. If they produce bigoted content, and produce it where bigotry as a positive instead of a negative, we can safely assume the author is bigoted. That is what the authors of Dark Sun did when made arguments like “the slaves are better off as slaves than in the savage lands they were taken from”… the literal same arguments actual slaveholders have used to justify the practice of owning humans.
Or let us move to another real world example. When Ernie Gygax made racist Star Frontiers, he did not do it because he was trying to tackle complex issues… he did it because he thought minorities were mentally inferior and showed his bigotry by giving minority races an intelligence penalty. Under your argument, the market should have decided if his horrific content had merit. But whether or not his bigotry was financially successful is beside the point - making money does not change the fact that he engaged in hate speech. That is wrong, and if you want to make an excuse for him… that’s kind of a repugnant position to take.
All folks are asking for is that Wizards try to avoid some of the negative and harmful stereotypes that were prevalent in Dark Sun. That absolutely is something any author should be doing - just being an author does not give you the justification to be hateful - especially if engaging in commercial practice. Obviously Wizards should care if they hurt members of their community through perpetuating negative stereotypes… and your trying to open the door and give them an excuse to do exactly that borders on being an apologist for the worst elements of this hobby’s history.
But, hey. Let’s let the free market decide the question: Should authors be absolved of responsibility for those they hurt with intentional or inadvertent bigotry just because they can hide behind the genera of fantasy (your position)? Or should authors be held accountable for the works they create that spring from their minds, as they were in control of the creation and thus are responsible for the contents (my position)? If the currency of a forum is upvotes, I guess by your logic, we can see which argument the “free market” finds more persuasive.
That is, of course, a silly way to decide an issue of morality - yet is essentially what you are advocating for. So, assuming you stand by your own mechanism for determining merit, I await your concession if the “free market” finds my position more persuasive.
I don't think we need to go any further down the path of corporations not caring about the underlying messages/implications/themes of their products and narratives. Dark Sun having more leeway here doesn't mean they get to throw caution to the wind entirely.
This.
The name is the intellectual property, or at least a major component of it. "Just make a new setting" is a non-starter.
So is the setting the problem or what people do with it?
In my humble opinion, after following the interesting debate created throughout this thread, it's ok if someone doesn't like this setting, and it's totally understandable if they don't wanna play it. However, the fact that some people dislike Dark Sun due to its problematic themes shouldn't lead to its banning. As someone said above, people will decide with their money if the setting is a success or a failure.
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I think the consensus on this thread from those acting in good faith is “the setting historically was a problem for a number of reasons listed. But that does not mean it has to be a problem when we revisit the setting. I am looking forward to seeing how they tackle complex themes without also glorifying evil as the old version did.”
The near totality of posts on this thread have been focused on that position - acknowledging historical flaws and excitedly wondering how the current design team, with its strong background in this kind of grimdark content, is going to handle the setting moving forward.
Yeah, I wasn't pointing at anybody with that statement. I was just saying that, in my opinion, it would be a mistake to say: "Dark Sun has got controversial themes, therefore, they shouldn't publish it."
Fortunately (if my memory serves me well), nobody has said that in this thread.
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Now it's entirely possible I may have missed one or two posts, but I don't recall a single person saying the theme should be banned or WotC should be prevented from publishing it. People seem to like arguing against that viewpoint, but I haven't seen anyone actually take up that particular position.
Read my next post.
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