Let me posit a scenario. Let’s say that every time you reference something, let’s call it X, and X can be described many ways, your detractors say that you are actually speaking in code and using slur. “Sorry mate, won’t do it again”, is it?
I won’t deny there are some goofballs in the Facebook group complaining that when they look at desert elves, they see “Romani”. That’s a problem that is better dealt with methods such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy than by changing yourself to suit their hallucinations.
Kyle Brink is right. What you are asking for cannot be done while maintaining any semblance of the Dark Sun setting. Sure, it will be called Dark Sun, but it will be a different thing. And by the time you are done sanitising it, the goal posts will have moved and now you will be the racist.
At some point these people simply have to be shut down. “Athasian elves are not stand-ins for Romani. That’s a misconception by racists and bigots”.
This is a direct quote from someone, who was in a place to know at Wizards, to my inquiries:
There were a couple issues that steered us away from DARK SUN. Psionics are a pretty important component of the DS setting, and we weren’t confident in our ability to satisfy DS fans with our treatment of psionics. (We were opposed to the idea of making psionics its own separate system, as it was in previous editions. Most 5E fans preferred our tighter, more unified approach to game mechanics.) More importantly, slavery is an important part of the setting, and we decided that topic wasn’t appropriate for our particular flavor of D&D. I’m sure we could have solved the psionics problem, but the slavery issue was tougher. It wouldn’t have been difficult to excise slavery from the setting, but in our experience, D&D is attacked more often for what appears in older material than what the current products actually say. In other words, even with slavery removed from the setting, we were sure to see a lot of press re-hashing DARK SUN’s past, clouding any hypothetical launch. In the end, we decided the risk wasn’t worth the reward.
I asked if they had considered alternatives like just leaving it to the DMsGuild or creating a new region without slavery and they replied:
We talked through a lot of alternatives. Again, our primary concern wasn’t what would appear in our hypothetical product, but the certainty the press would relitigate all the earlier products.
Thanks. If slavery is conceptually difficult due to “inclusivity ethics” at WotC, trying to make slavery work within the Dark Sun context implicitly means attempting to whitewash slavery.
I don’t think there is any “sensitive” way to deal with slavery, just like you couldn’t deal sensitively with certain serious crimes.
Rather, you proceed from the premise that slavery is distasteful and go on from there in creating content. But WotC cannot do that. There is no such situation as 40+ year old grognards holding back Dark Sun from some hypothetical future in which WotC wants to publish Dark Sun material, if not for those backwards and dastardly grognards.
Remember when the OK symbol meant OK until a 4chan trolling campaign turned it into a “white supremacist” symbol? And then “sensitive” people did what was predicted and turned it into an actual hate symbol? This is happening to Dark Sun now. Either pushback like the Harry Potter fandom is doing against “goblins are Jews”, or face the prospect of the same in every aspect of Dark Sun, not just slavery.
I don’t think that every critique is intelligent or in good faith. Intelligent, good faith people should say no.
The original boxed set specifically notes that slavery is wrong and that you can not be good aligned and have slaves.
I was around, and playing, during the satanic panic era, and caught some of the flak from being a gamer back then. It almost feels like a return to those days, but instead of being a satanic panic, its more a problematic panic.
That isn’t to say there aren’t issues or problems that can be looked at, but at times it feels like an overzealousness that stifles discussions or even looking at the problems. And Dark Sun seems to be the latest casualty.
Shutting down dumb arguments I agree with, and here it is the way to go. But nobody has ever gotten anywhere in an argument by saying “Calling x is racist is itself racist.” It’s far better to say “You’re using a surface analysis as the basis of your argument. If you did any looking into the details of this, you’d know better. Any resemblance between the Elves and Roma is coincidental. Frankly, it could just as easily be American businessmen…”
If we’re going to be working with an old setting, we need to be aware that the sensibilities of our current culture may have changed over time, and we need to be prepared to discuss the issue with those who do not understand. This is why I’ll be adding a text box handling these issues into any updated products we do for Athas.org so people don’t have to do the explaining themselves (which can get tiring). If people cannot listen to reason then this game is simply not for them. But for people who worry about aspects of the setting the explanation will be welcome and will make newcomers more comfortable and willing to have fun in our setting.
This is not anything to get angry about, it’s just how the generations have changed over time.
That’s interesting. It likely means Dark Sun will never see the light of day again in a WotC release. It brings me back to the question: “Will you please just let us go, Wizards??? You clearly don’t want us, so just give us the license to go our own way with this!”
Passing the buck of a problematic product would not be ethical. I don’t agree with WotC, but even I can see why someone that truly believes the product is problematic would want to lock it away.
There is no way to pay lip service to any of this narrative and see Dark Sun published in the future in a manner that is faithful to the setting. In relation to -isms, all we can do is say that it isn’t -ist and the people that are saying it are wrong. None of them are interested in rational discourse anyway. None of them ever describe any manner in which these topics can be dealt with tactfully, or when they do, they just describe what is already the case.
Its 99% an American problem for Americans to sort out. I just wish people from other countries weren’t caught up in it. The downside of American cultural hegemony, I guess.
Another possibility is that they have a long view. Although they view the Dark Sun IP as problematic in the current media landscape (or whatever), they want to keep their options open for the future. It’s reasonable to believe that the cultural milieu is going to be very different in 10 or 20 years. I don’t know how it will be different, but I’m very confident it will be very different, because it always is. If they hold onto the IP, it’s probably because they’re open to possibilities in the future, and why it’s all the more important to Keep Hope Alive and attract new fans in the meantime.
But isn’t this the point of having evil to overcome in classic D&D campaign structures? Using a setting where evil is in power gives a wonderful framework for telling epic stories of struggle and overcoming. The key is for the campaign (and DM) to clearly portray themes like slavery and oppression as fundamentally evil. That they exists in a fantasy setting is not an endorsement any more than it would be when Abyssal Lords engage in human sacrifice or whatever profane acts they perform. Or vampires feed. Or greedy merchants traffic sentient creatures. Or Sauron oppresses middle earth. Or The White Walkers slaughter innocents. The key, for me, is in abhorring such evil as a clear force to be overthrown. Resisted. Destroyed.
This post is absolutely right though. Settings can and will evolve, as well they should. But it’s fairly clear some older fans will never want to hear that. That’s fine. They can play the game as they wish to play, and power to them for that. But they are not the main demographic for new generations of product. That’s how it goes with games, really.
Raddu’s explanation above is closest to the truth-- WotC is worried about public perceptions no matter what they do with Dark Sun. So that’s just where they are.
At the Pristine Tower Dev Group, we’ll do all we can do-- continue making products for the community anyway, and we’ll win people over the hard way, by demonstrating the setting can be and is fun for anyone who wants to play it.
Yeah, ive seen no one defending those activities. If any players are disturbed enough to want to attempt them, they will do so irregardless of setting.
I can see how the framing of that statement can be interpreted as straw man, yes. But people have been saying “They’re banning Dark Sun because of slavery”, which as we’ve discussed at length here is only partially true. And there have been a modest but vocal number of people who have been literally defending the presence and use of slavery and geocide in the setting. (Have a look at the Facebook Dark Sun group. There are three recent posts on the subject.)
My statement above was inferring that we’re talking about the presence of such content of the game itself. I don’t think they meant people literally defending the concept of slavery itself, but how we discuss it in the game can always be more gracefully handled.
And we still keep finding examples that need improving. The Prison State of Eldaarich manuscript which we’ve been working on had some rape references we had to remove. Similarly, the “Working Too Hard” slavery supplement was never publicly released for a reason.
So yes, we can always do better. And we should. That’s called quality control.
You are talking about something that isn’t on the table. Listen again to what KB is saying. I understand it. It makes sense to me. I disagree with it, but its rational. What you are saying doesn’t make sense at all. Sorry.
Ah. Ok. I read the transcript of what he said, but I haven’t listened to the whole interview. I’ll give it a listen next chance I get. I’ve responded already to the part that’s in the transcript, but maybe there’s more there I didn’t hear.
WotC believes that Dark Sun is problematic and does not align with the inclusivity ethics of WotC. Given this, the position of WotC is entirely rational and understandable, even though I do not agree with the underlying logic of it. People like the twitter user that I posted are complaining that WotC are not good enough at whitewashing problematic content. This amazes me, and further stuns me that he/him takes an accusatory tone with other people. I’m absolutely flabbergasted by it.
Yeah. That’s what I thought he said. Now I get where you’re coming from. Thank you for clarifying.
I think there are different levels of the argument here, and differentiating between them is where the mixup happened. I agree with you that I can understand WotC’s decision, but I don’t agree or like it either.
As for the whitewashing, that’s where I think you’re going a bit slippery slope with the argument. I will steadfastly contend that it is possible to improve the setting without “whitewashing” it. But that is a separate discussion I suppose (beyond the scope of the original post).
