The Cleansing Wars weren’t racism. They were attempted, and oft successful, genocide. That’s several orders of magnitude greater than racism.
3 Likes
Yeah. Racism is everything from a funny look to just hating everyone of a certain race. It can be nebulous. Sometimes its not even there, just perceived due to paranoia. Genocide is objective and undeniable. The Champions were bad mofos.
Over on the Ravenloft forums it was deemed that the Champions crimes were too banal to become Darklords in Ravenloft.
1 Like
Agreed. Most of the Darklords have committed far more…personal crime. A crime relating to passion or love (Strahd, Thakok An for example). Also, given the torments devised by the Dark Powers, I suspect that Rajaat might have been taken, but only after he’d betrayed the Champions, unleashed Hamanu as his final instrument, and on the verge of total victory.
1 Like
Ravenloft and I don’t jive too well, though I shamelessly mine the setting for ideas. That being said from what I have read, the mists do seem far more interested in very personal and dramatic evil rather than the sheer scope of human misery an individual inflicts. That at least is my rationale for why you don’t have every BBEG getting dragged off there (though to be fair, Ravenloft doesn’t exist in my campaigns).
As for the masks thing, I am not one to pick apart artistic approaches to a setting. But I would say it’s more an emphasis on the savagery and lack of humanity inherent to Dark Sun. Masks do a good job of concealing one’s humanity and often have primal trappings (such as with gladiators or shamans). This isn’t a world of heroes making everything better. Rather everything is pretty terrible in Dark Sun and PCs often are stuck choosing the lesser of two evils and wrestling with constant shades of grey… Where civilization is defined solely by the rule of the strong. A stark reminder of how brutal our own world once was, still is in some places, and might be again if we allow it.
1 Like
This is something I do as well. Really, the thing I appreciate most about Ravenloft is that it demonstrates how difficult forcing horror into d&d games can be. In my experience It’s a matter of player buy-in, not simply rewriting the rules of the game to fuck them over no matter what option they take, which was far too much of what Ravenloft did.
I’d disagree, but also, even if it happened, he’d be out in a week. Rajaat has demonstrated greater powers than many gods, and the Dark Powers could barely hold Vecna as a demigod. (Though if we want to talk Ravenloft, we should make a new thread for it, this thread is already super off topic as is.)
1 Like
Sexism is far more complicated than the mere presence or absence of women in positions of power and authority (though a lack of such, or a very small number, is a blazing red flag).
I’d be happy to hear what you have to say in defense of this, but this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about with regards to differences between how men and women are portrayed. Why exactly would a powerful defiler with mind control magic be classified as a sex object seductress. Why would it be necessary for her to be seductive, much less eye-candy, when she has the magical abilities to get what she wants while fully clothed and mocking people to their face? What logic or purpose does it serve?
Absolutely I’ll explain Asha (the Yuan ti) a lot of her magic was used to increase her charisma and desirability because her role was to go into various city states for the porcelain lady. Her magic was mostly used off camera and then she’d use her mundane persuasive skills to get what she wants. It’s far safer than trying to directly control someone with domination magics where evidence of her defiling could get the Templars notice and could expose her mistresses involvement.
What have people done to remedy the situation?
Have people here actually replaced male setting characters with female ones, and how did that go for your games?
" Genocide is the intentional action to destroy a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. "
That requires hatred of an ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion. The one word for hatred of a race is racism.
‘Hatred’, here, can be any other word on the spectrum of negative feelings, perceptions, and rationalizations about the subject.
Yes and No. My last Dark Sun game was as much Planescape, and ultra-high level, so it was a little bit harder to focus on the micro scale. However, I did create a number of notes and ideas about fixes for another game which never got far for unrelated out-of-game reasons that I would still likely use in other Dark Sun games I run.
I could dig up the doc, maybe, but off the top of my head, the game was set just after Kalak’s death: Primary targets of the fixes were a couple of merchant houses (mostly more competent, non sexualized female leadership), the templar wives of Nibenay (altered their ludicrous dress code, made symbols that differentiate ranks, lack of dress notably does not apply except in the Naggamakan itself), The Villichi were excised entirely, as I didn’t feel up to trying to fix that mess with the time I had.
I brought in Amiska (the avangion) as a secret advisor to Nanda Shatri, who was making an effort to unify the veiled alliance and move many of them to Tyr (Note that in my game, Amiska was also the first Avangion to recreate the metamorphosis without being taught directly by Oronis, though she was basing off of Korgunard’s notes)
There were some other changes to various minor power players, but mostly it was me trying to ensure a more realistic balance of characters based off of Dark Sun lore, and ensuring that.
Oh, and I made it so that Neeva was more important to the rebellion, and not just Rikus’s shadow.
In unrelated changes, I altered the lore to some extent around certain races, mostly notably elves, to avoid them being 95% a thieving, horrible mess of a species that at times gets so bad in the source material that it becomes a serious question if Albeorn should have finished them off for the good of all.
To Be Continued…
…As far as the major power players, Kalid-Ma was female, as was her high templar, and well on her way to getting resurrected, Sielba was still active, if in hiding (though rumors of the lost queen travelled far). I considered switching Dregoth’s name and gender of all things, but I don’t think I ended up doing so.
I decided to go with only one sexualized sorcerer queen instead of all freaking three depending on the source material. Abalach-Re’s reputation was far exaggerated, and mostly because of her experiments into what she could do with dragon-blooded children with the father often being from an equally unusual species. I never got very far with Sielba, but I decided not to go with Rise and Fall’s version.
I made Abalach-Re one of the greatest quite schemers and powers in the tablelands, and in fact she had been slowly siphoning resources out of Raam’s economy and stockpiling them for centuries, and though her city appears to be on the brink of collapse, it was actually more stable then it looked, and was on the brink of being turned into a tremendously formidable weapon, if she could only deal with the little problem of her daughter’s veiled alliance…
I didn’t remove Hamanu’s accomplishments, but I did tone down the “undefeated” rhetoric a little, and added more women of prominence to Urik’s history and Governance. Similarly, I made Nibenay (the city) a bit more of a mess than an extremely well run machine precisely because the sorcerer king no longer seemed to care about running his city. Andropinis I kept relatively the same, though Balic’s fortunes tied strongly into the merchant house changes. Tectuktitlay I made a cowardly, not too bright, if powerful and boastful, individual, who was actually somewhat controlled by his advisors, including several women.
Of the sorcerer queens, Lalali-Puy underwent the largest changes (I might actually put them under Dark Sun heresy)… (to be continued, maybe)
1 Like
As I’ve mentioned previously I have returned Sielba to the region. My campaign is set some 350+ years after Kalaks assassination. In that time Sadira has become the wanderer but is the sorcerer queen of Tyr in practice if not in name. Abalach Re had faked her death to ride out the prism pentad it was a shock to Sadira when she travelled to Raam and found a very living Abalach Re who promptly handed Sadira her ass and chased her out of the city. Finally I have a very unstable Villichi who runs one of the largest raiders tribes she goes by the title of the Ivory General but people call her the mad Villichi behind her back. She’s a very focused telekinetic who is about as bloodthirsty and violent as they come.
Dark Sun is one the most progressive and inclusive settings in D&D, and always has shown a diverse kinds of people of all kind, no matter if it’s man or woman, doing important feats and fighting for their objective in any way they can. Both men and women from all races, classes and social hierarchy have shown great qualities of bravery, cleverness, cleverness, toughness, grace and discipline within their own capabilities, and all of them have influenced to change Athas, wether it is in lore, meta-narrative, or even your own table.
6 Likes
Exactly. Plus in the orginal setting it was highlighted that many baseline humans aren’t exactly baseline any more and have cosmetic mutations (due to millennia of defiling magic running rampant) - it’s hard to be a racial supremacist when there’s no such thing as a ‘pureblood human’.
Also, Athas is an equal opportunities world - any race and any social class can be enslaved, scoured to bone by a sandstorm, choked in a silt basin or eaten by an ambulatory cactus. 
5 Likes
Athas: Planet Equal Opportunity Hater.
5 Likes
Let’s face it. In a setting as brutal as Athas. People will simply value competence over sex. If the most skilled warrior defending your caravan happens to sit down on the toilet rather than stand up in front of it are you really going to care? Sexism is by virtue of the world just not practical.
5 Likes