Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Sensitivity readers are a far cry from censorship. They are what amounts to a very specific kind of editing pass. WotC has voluntarily hired people to perform the read and will still be the ones deciding if they will take the suggestions made by those readers. If it were censorship, some outside group would assign such a reader to WotC, and WotC would have no choice but to use them. And then, WotC would have to do what they say. It's a very big difference.
Also, as far as slavery, from the little snippet in the story, it seems like slavery is very much alive, and just kind of hiding behind some corporate (or maybe sorcerer king) doublespeak. The article has Bilsland saying that you don't have to have slavery to have oppression. Then he goes on to describe one of the city states. And, I guess, the idea is it's meant to be an example of a place oppresses without slavery. However, still uses forced labor and also gets people to "voluntarily give up their freedom." To me, there is precious little difference between that description and slavery (or at least indentured servitude), but there's not really a lot to go on from the article.
So, as I said in my first post, I'm going to reserve judgment until I actually read some reviews, and then, most likely, see the book for myself. I've liked Dark Sun since the first time it came out, and I'm definitely going to want to see what they do with it this time around.
I'm confused on why you think the packaging would need that? This is like every book they publish getting "reviewed by an experienced and diverse development team!" stamped on it, when the credits page (and other recent pronouncements like the D&D Community Advisory Group) accomplish the same thing.
This is even more confusing. Not seeing a need to advertise the sensitivity reviews on the product packaging is somehow bad, but mentioning it online is also bad? They're seemingly too heavy-handed and simultaneously not heavy-handed enough?
And while I don't know the guy personally, I highly doubt Matt Colville shares your views on this, so I'm not sure what purpose invoking him here serves either. I'm willing to bet the video you're vaguely referencing doesn't say what you seem to think it does.
You're of course free to spend your money wherever you like, just like we are.
Other folks have corrected your misapprehensions about sensitivity readers and the box labeling already; I don't need to add to that.
But what I do want to add is that you're only speaking for yourself and as someone who loves Dark Sun (why do you keep pluralizing it??) and has bought it in past editions, I am delighted about WotC using sensitivity readers and very happy to see slavery not given the same pass it was given in previous editions. Let me tell you, if WotC or other publishes started putting "we consulted with sensitivity readers" stickers on their products, I would absolutely see that as a positive and it would influence my buying decision. And slavery is by no means necessary to establish a "brutal grimdark setting," and thinking it is necessary betrays a lack of imagination.
I very much doubt Dark Sun 5.5E is going to be a commercial failure, but even if it is, it won't be because one single person trying to drum up discontent refused to buy it.
No opinion that uses "woke" a pejorative is worth taking seriously, lmao. The same goes for the people criticising WotC for it.
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Define woke
"There are dozens of us....DOZENS"
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Out of morbid curiosity, what part of slavery do you think is so integral to Dark Sun that it absolutely must be present for the product to be acceptable to you?
Not listening to anything ChatGPT says, try coming up with an actual definition yourself rather than relying on something that is designed to literally rot your brain and prevent you from thinking.
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You still haven't defined "woke", instead providing a regurgitated slop response (which is against forum rules btw) that doesn't explain how you are using the term.
As for the 2024 rulebooks, would this "woke" content be related to your desire to procure copies with censored (oh the irony) artwork? Based on my understanding on how people use "woke" as a pejorative, I can only assume you mean depictions of queer relationships, diverse and respectful cultural representation, and representation of people with disabilities.
Your usage of the vague dogwhistle of "woke" seems to imply a position aligned with intolerance, discrimination, and marginalisation. Note I am not stating that is your position, just that you're conducting yourself in an oblique manner that implies an alignment with those positions. If you hope to disabuse myself and others of that impression, it would behove you to be more direct, less vague, and not use nonspecific yet still loaded terms such as "woke".
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If you can’t be bothered to write a definition why should I be bothered to read it?
And what exactly does the setting provide? Surely you can offer a bit more description if it means so much to you.
Who said anything was banned?
As for why it’s not worth reading an AI generated reply, it’s because I don’t find any definition it comes up with compelling. It’s not your opinion, it’s a second hand summary of other people’s opinions that you’re parroting and tells me nothing about what you actually believe.
Now you’ve actually given us your opinion the biggest problem you seem to have is things breaking your immersion, items such as people in wheel chairs that you think shouldn’t exist in your world. So just don’t have them in your world. Simple as that. D&D is a game of imagination so just imagine a world in which wheel chairs don’t exist and slavery does. The “woke” changes you find so offensive, and the sensitivity readers the OP hates so much, are designed so that the books being written aren’t directly hostile to new people entering the hobby, so that people who’ve never played don’t pick up a book and are instantly told “you do not belong here.” It’s to offer them a world they feel they belong in until such time as they can create their own worlds.
But as an experienced player yourself you should have the practice at creativity to create a world you want to play in. Although as you relied on AI to answer a simple question maybe you aren’t that creative
If you don't want to cop a forum warning for hate speech, don't say any hate speech. It's very simple. As for the "W-Word" being banned, if you mean "woke", it's clearly not. If it's not, I don't have any idea what you could be insinuating at, but specificity doesn't seem to be a theme at this point.
Except you were asked to define it, people wanted to know how you were using it. Not the regurgitated, hallucinated, highest probability word match game of some AI. Think for yourself.
And finally a little bit of specificity—you see disability as making someone lesser and you don't like the game lore challenging that view. Someone could be an excellent wizard and use a wheelchair. Perhaps they have excellence in areas of magic that don't afford them access to healing magic. Perhaps the reason they're in a wheelchair is one that can't be healed with magic, such as a congenital condition. Or maybe they don't see the need to "fix" their legs because, due to them being a a master of magical excellence and power, being in a wheelchair doesn't actually hold them back.
I mean, inclusion is a virtue, it's good to not make people feel excluded, at least not because they're disabled. As such, you should signal that's your belief. You presenting this as a bad thing suggest you believe
And if your ability to immerse yourself in fantasy is so fragile that the existence of a disabled character as an equal to an able-bodied character breaks it for you, maybe it's not the genre for you?
All you've done in this thread is vice signal that you don't like changes that make the game more welcoming to people and mitigate the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes and ideas.
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A very... straightforward and clinical list. About the only one of those that seems like it could get specifically axed from a draft rather than simply not being seen as worth iterating out from the general concept of "slave" is Muls, and given that their function is literally just a rehash of the first two, all you're losing is a word and a concept that's barely been present in 5e to begin with. I'll grant that in some works the concept could merit worldbuilding exploration, but 5e's PC and NPC templates don't really have a space to make it significant- if they've got poison resistance and darkvision they're basically just dwarves from a mechanical perspective, take one away and they're just human with a quirk. Beyond that it's a bit of fluff all the diehard old school Dark Sun people can readily reapply and a rather arbitrary and fairly meaningless detail to anyone without the prior context.
“All what old Dark Sun provided…” and it’s just a list of different types of slaves. Did it really offer that little to you? Because I’ve never played a Dark Sun campaign and even I know the world was a lot more complex and deep than just people owning people
I played Dark Sun a bit during my 4e days and the first things I extricated with a vengeance was any notion that the players would even remotely participate with the ownership of people. It seems to be a running theme I see that those who lament Dark Sun being updated for fear of it becoming (the still ill/undefined) "woke" do so because they don't want the slavery apologia removed.
Spanning the entirety of Dark Suns (possessive, not plural) releases, there were some very troubling elements that served to try and "justify" or at the very least normalise the acceptance of slavery within the setting, such as:
It seems that the vocal complainers about the wokification of Dark Sun are most concerned that there won't be rules saying "it's okay to own slaves, as long as......".
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I mean, if they're aiming for 18+ grimdark, the latter two aren't exactly out of place. It's obviously a very delicate topic, but in a setting where it's a notable act of kindness for someone shivved in an alley to be buried/burned rather than left for the rats, being "free" can simply mean the exact same standard of living, expect without the possible cover of attracting ire for intruding into the affairs of the powerful, and people, or even just starving in the gutter because there's few jobs that aren't covered by slave labor. Which is massively screwed up and the exact opposite of how the world should be, which itself is rather the point of an 18+ grimdark setting. And when it's this all-pervasive, people are gonna participate because it's literally the only game in town and even if they are possessed of sufficient decency to eschew the punitive elements of slavery, they don't have the context for another model and the system will likely squash them like a bug if they start trying to disrupt the "proper order"- again, as a function of how badly screwed up the setting is.
If they want to draw a firm line that they're not codifying anything to give players context or guidance for buying slaves because they don't want to present that option, that's great and more power to them. But if they're actually going to write an 18+ grimdark setting, it's rather the point that it's not only the bona fide bad guys PCs are supposed to kill off without thinking twice about it that end up participating in systems that should be- and are outside of a spec-fic concept very thoroughly divorced from reality- intolerable.
If you want to carry water for slavery, do it somewhere else
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I'm not carrying water for slavery as something that should exist. However, if they're going to commit to the idea of 18+ grimdark, that would seem to indicate a setting where things that should not exist/happen do, and you can't just ride in on a white horse, kill everyone doing any of those things, and ride off into the sunset secure in the knowledge that the aftermath will sort itself out into an ideal outcome.
I'm sorry, but that sentence should've stopped before the 'as'. That's like saying "I'm sorry, but...."
See, this was literally not the point ever made and you're clearly not engaging in good faith because this is an absurd straw man that you're propping up so you can hide your position of "Um actually slavery isn't always evil".
I never said slavery shouldn't exist in a setting
I never said that rescuing people from slavery should be trivial or consequence free
What I said, and I'll try and make it as clear as possible so you can either understand what I'm saying without confusion, or so you can't twist it into a strawman, (whichever is applies) is this. D&D books should not, under any circumstances, provide non-diegetic treatment of slavery as anything other than 100% morally reprehensible. I'll loop this back to my three bullet points and try to reiterate that for you.
Mechanics are non-diegetic tools for engaging with the game. Presenting tools for doing something communicates "This is something we endorse the players doing as a default assumption".
This is a non-diegetic justification for dissuading your players from doing the right thing. This text does not exist as a flawed diegetic ideology. This is a statement of fact about the world telling the DM how they should run the world. It says "discourage your players from trying to free slaves, and to do so present them with this objective "fact" that sometimes it's better to be a slave than free"
Alignment exists both diegetically and non-diegetically, but in the context of Athas specifically it is very much non-diegetic because of the whole gods are dead, last world in the multiverse thing. This says "You can own people as property and be anything other than evil", which is untrue. No good or neutral person can own other people as property, end of
There is a difference between saying "Athas is cruel and many freed slaves face harsh fates once liberate" and "It's better to be a slave than free and dead". It's never better to be a slave and the only people who say that are people who think it's okay to own other people as property.
You are being intellectually dishonest by misrepresenting my points in an attempt to peddle slavery apologetics. I have zero tolerance for such bullshit. You can have grim, black label, 18+ settings where slavery is a pervasive and oppressive evil. You don't need to try and justify it though, and the only people who would argue that are the same kind of people who wouldn't stop at trying to justify it in D&D....
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