Hand Wringing and Pearl Clutching

Why is slavery in a role-playing game a bad idea?

Answer:

Incorporating slavery as a theme or element in a role-playing game (RPG) can be a highly sensitive and controversial topic for a variety of reasons. Here are some of the key points to consider:

Historical Context: Slavery has been a tragic and deeply traumatic part of human history. It was marked by immense suffering, abuse, and violations of human rights. Many people find it offensive and disrespectful to trivialize or romanticize such a serious and painful topic in a game setting.

Emotional Impact: Slavery can evoke strong emotions in players, including anger, sadness, and discomfort. Role-playing games are often played for enjoyment and escapism, and incorporating such a heavy topic can disrupt the overall tone and atmosphere of the game, making it difficult for players to have a positive experience.

Ethical Concerns: Addressing slavery in a game can raise ethical questions about the portrayal of sensitive topics and the potential for perpetuating harmful stereotypes or misrepresentations. Games have the power to influence perceptions and attitudes, so it's important to handle such topics with care and sensitivity.

Trauma and Triggers: Many players may have personal connections to slavery due to their own cultural or family histories. Depicting slavery in a game can be triggering for these individuals, causing them distress and negatively impacting their experience.

Lack of Nuance: Games often have limited scope to explore complex historical and social issues like slavery in a nuanced manner. Reducing such a profound topic to game mechanics and storytelling elements might oversimplify the reality and significance of the historical events.

Potential for Misinterpretation: Players might not fully grasp the historical context and gravity of slavery, leading to misunderstandings or inappropriate reactions. This could further contribute to trivializing the topic or causing unintended offense.

Distracting from the Fantasy Setting: Many RPGs are set in fantasy worlds with their own lore, cultures, and conflicts. Introducing a real-world historical theme like slavery might feel out of place or disrupt the consistency of the game world.

Alternatives for Conflict: While conflict is a key element in many RPGs, there are numerous ways to create engaging and compelling stories without resorting to such a sensitive topic. Developing conflicts around other themes can allow for meaningful gameplay without the risk of offending or triggering players.

If game developers do choose to incorporate sensitive topics like slavery, it's important to approach them with extreme caution and respect. This might involve thorough research, consultation with experts, and providing proper context and content warnings to players. In many cases, however, it's advisable to consider other narrative elements that allow for engaging and thought-provoking gameplay without resorting to the use of such a contentious subject.

The above answer was not written by me, or by a traditional "politically correct" pundit.  Admit it, that's where you, dear reader, expected it to come from.  As you skipped to the bottom, you looked for the name of the writer, expecting you'd smile upon recognising the name of the writer.

Except that the source is chatGPT, in answer to my question.  And lest the reader think that chatGPT is way, way off the mark of what the "real world" thinks, I give you this link from reddit.

The program sounds like a PC pundit because it's been deliberately fashioned so as to respect "sensitive and controversial" subjects, since any insensitivity to human beings would be seen as a good reason for banning the program.  The creators wouldn't like that.

Thus, the first two paragraphs are very clear about the key arguments against any mention of things that are culturally "traumatic."  People were hurt; this is something that shouldn't happen any more.

But note the context established: role-playing games either "trivialize" or they "romanticise."  They're played for people to "enjoy" and "escape."  Things that are traumatic, therefore, have no place in an RPG.

YET, "games have the power to influence."  Do books and films not also have the power to influence?  Are not these things sometimes used to discuss slavery directly, even demonstrate the perpetration of slavery in dramatic terms?  Are we saying that these, too, should refrain from addressing the subject — because I'm pretty sure that's exactly what either chatGPT or the politically correct pundit would tell me, if I asked the question.  Without going down that road too far, let me just say that there's been a steadily growing effort — largely on the part of Google, since taking control of the internet — to shut down and close down any search for subject material that isn't considered defacto "approved."

This is not how scholarship is intended to work.  But that is how the internet views it.

Note the argument that a role-playing game simply hasn't the capacity to deal with slavery in a "nuanced" manner.  This, given the game's "power to influence perceptions and attitudes," clearly suggests that the only way that slavery can possibly be depicted through an RPG is to glory in it, to revel in the practice, to trot it out like a prize greyhound ready to run.  Games, the reader will take note, might oversimplify the reality.

Might.

Wow, is that word carrying a lot of water in this context.  Dear reader, no matter what you think, no matter your interpretation of what capacities you have as a DM, don't play with this stuff because it might go awry.  Oh crumpets and cakes, we simply can't have people oversimplifying slavery, not in this culture!  Oh lawd, close the gates and man the walls, someone in this culture might oversimplifying a brutal, traumatic part of human history.

Thank gawd we don't include such subjects in RPGs, or else that might happen somehow in human culture.

I play with a group of people who are fully capable of grasping the historical context of slavery, because they're educated.  Because the consistency of MY slave world is deeply invested in real-world historical themes, it's the absence of slavery that would seem out of place.  I approach my game with level of seriousness that yes, would make many people uncomfortable.  These people aren't welcome to come play ... specifically for the reason that they see an RPG merely in terms of "enjoy" and "escape."

What I want to "enjoy" is a group of people who don't live in fear to discuss the hard subjects; who don't allow their feelings to stand in the way of examining and considering matters of importance and far-reaching consequences.  I strive to "escape" the company of stupid people who use arguments like misinterpretation and distress engendered in their family's history as reasons NOT to engage in  sensitive topics.

I like sensitive subjects ... precisely because expecting players to adapt to subjects that stir an adult's consciousness provides a great deal of satisfaction.  As adults, we've already encountered these themes; they're part and parcel with things we already sweat about.  It provides much better content to mine where building conflict occurs.  Certainly better than a group of adults pretending they can get their blood up over kiddie themes like girding up a sword to go underground and fight stick figures.

As a final point ... why use chatGPT as a foil?  Straw man, anyone?

Because, if the reader understands how chatGPT works — it is a random program, designed to comb the net for a common response engendered by the source material of millions of websites, with no brain of its own — it's really the best foil.  It's better than one pundit.  It's the vast community's expression, the deadbrained amorphous blob arising from a mass of largely uneducated sources who have written something despite knowing next to nothing.  It's the burbling jabberwock, coming all over itself.  Though it can't be killed, it's already dead.  It can only be made more and more insensate with time, as it struggles to produce an answer to things that won't offend any body.

Which can only be, as always, no answer at all.

On Swearing

Is D&D a children's game?  Should it be?  I ask because I stumbled into a fantasy gaming podcast earlier today that started off with the warning, "We're going to use adult language and talk about adult themes" . . . whereupon the swearing commenced.

To be honest, I remain confused about this culture's habitual attitude towards both the use of swearing and its supposed restraint of it.  I swear regularly on this blog, but I abstain from swearing at all in the books I write.  In real life, I swear all the time - my friends swear all the time and most people I meet in passing swear quite comfortably.  But when I walk into the workplace, again, I don't swear at all.  In fact, I had developed a reputation at my last workplace as "the man who doesn't swear."

That is because I can turn it off and on again like a switch.  I can talk quite comfortably all night, rant, go on the verbal attack and debate, all without a swear word even occurring to me.  Yet when I'm relaxed, not putting on a show, swearing comes without thinking.

I am a child of my age.

As a boy, back in '70-'71, at the tender age of six and seven, I remember that every boy swore.  I don't remember if the girls did - boys and girls kept to themselves when I was growing up, at least until junior high school, when all at once they were everywhere.  I remember quite well that the 12 and 13 year old girls that I went to grade 7 with swore with proficiency.  But hell, we didn't think of ourselves as children by then - Beth, who was part of my grade 8 home room, would walk the stroll on 3rd Avenue at 14 for money.  Every kid who knew her knew that - and we didn't care that much.  Not that we volunteered the information to our parents - knowing it would have driven our parents crazy, something that we understood perfectly.

We learned pretty early as children how to dance around issues we knew all about to convey the idea of innocence for our parents.  I learned not to swear around my mother, pretty much the ONLY place in my universe where I couldn't swear.  By '78 even the teachers had accepted that kids were going to swear - and I had several teachers who would themselves.  Teachers who swore were cool.  Everyone thought so.

Here it is, 37 years later, and there is still this silly notion that kids have to be protected from adult language and adult themes . . . as if this shit isn't everywhere on the internet.  Yes, you must be warned about THIS podcast, because we are not like the millions of podcasts that do not bother to warn you.  Nor are we like the easy and available footage of every horrible event going on everywhere in the world.  Yes, kiddies, we're going to use swear words - words you can't possibly even know.

It isn't for the children, is it?  Really, the warning is for that significant number of people who just can't get over the use of words.  Words convey ideas and there are people who aren't comfortable with the ideas behind fucking, cock-sucking and shit.  It isn't that the words are bad, it's those pesky ideas that we don't want pushed into our faces - things we would rather go through our whole day not thinking about.

Funny, but I never think of actual feces when I use or hear the word 'shit.'  I never think of copulation in relation to the word 'fuck.'  I hear frustration, anger, passion, impatience . . . but these are ideas too, aren't they?  Ideas that also bother people, since emotions akin to anger and impatience are very difficult to handle.  Part of the reason that I don't swear at my job is because I don't want any of my co-workers to know when I'm impassioned or frustrated.  In the workplace, passion makes bored or unhappy listeners deeply self-conscious of their misery.  Frustration, on the other hand, suggests incompetence.  By never appearing passionate or frustrated, I have always portrayed an image of perfect ability and perfect respect for my co-workers.  It's all a sham, but it works.

Some people do get very upset when they hear swear words - and in the workplace, where life is harder, I'm willing to spare them this pain.  Out of the workplace, on the other hand, when I am not building a team between my fellow human and myself, fuck it.  Out of the workplace, tell me not to swear at your peril.  Out of the workplace, your inability to handle swearing makes you weak.  Well, it does in the workplace too, but in the workplace I'm willing to tolerate and give support for your weakness.  In the workplace, you're useful to me.  Out of the workplace, your weakness is just annoying.

Is it fair to call you weak because you find swearing difficult to tolerate?  That's difficult, because at times I'm going to swear no matter how it makes the reader feel and at times I'm going to make allowances.  Circumstances dictate my actions.

Coming back to the subject of D&D and children.  I had just written a section in the upcoming book about the value of plunder and murder in role-playing games . . . an intrinsic part of the game that has been reworked and reinvented with marketing terms in order to make palatable for people who cannot reconcile its existence.  There are other aspects too, like the presence of evil or torture, the use of body parts to make potions for spells, and a whole host of concerns about kill-happy players, lust or greed.  The fantasy game is not always pretty - because life itself is not always pretty, because we don't want to condemn the inclusion of things just because they make some people uncomfortable.

There are many games where aspects of life are banned - just as swearing is banned.  I have no problem with this; if everyone at the table agrees that swearing is off the menu, I can support that.  I could easily play in such campaigns, without anyone knowing my out of game habits.

But will I promote such censorship?  No.  The world is out there and whether or not we try to hide from it in our rooms and at our tables, or keep the kids from finding out something they plainly already know, the big bad world is going to remain just as big and just as bad.  The crime isn't committed in being part of that world, it is committed in being afraid of that world.  Afraid to use the words and admit inwardly the ideas upon which the world is founded.

The fear of feeling uncomfortable contributes to a loss of freedom.  We cannot allow ourselves to be ruled by fear or by discomfort.  No matter how hard, we must steel ourselves and be strong.  We should be gracious to the weak; we should encourage them and gain their trust, and help them be strong.  But we can never allow ourselves to be ruled by the same weakness that rules them.

Remember that no one wants to be weak.  Weakness is a jail.  It is a limitation.  Weak people deserve consideration and support, particularly when we need them to be strong for us.  When we build weakness into a virtue, however, we jail everyone.  That is what censorship and banning practices does.  It declares that the weak can never be strong, so the strong will have to forever bow to the weak.

That way madness lies.

It's a Cruel World

Jim of LOTFP has written posts on Sexuality and D&D and D&D and Racism…I suggest that my gentle reader should have a look.

I did not comment on either post, for a number of reasons, first and foremost being the absurd emotional argument that was bound to arise about the modern world, political correctness, approvals, social responsibility and blah, blah, blah.

I have lots to say about that, but not within the subject of D&D. Briefly, I state that I’m opposed. To racism, prejudice, abuse, etc. Who wouldn’t be?

That said, I accept that such things go on in the world; and often I feel responsible for pointing out that they continue regardless of all the sobbing, pontificating, accusing, stamping do-gooders in the world. I don’t dispute that particular method of relating—I do it enough myself, as anyone knows—but I do despise the self-imposed blindness that insists that anything believed now must be retroactively incorporated into any described history dogmatically and without restraint.

That is, if we don’t mass-slaughter people now, we must condemn people who have been dead 400 years repeatedly for having done it. As though somehow that changes the event.

I run a world that is a distorted simulation of Earth history circa 1650. It is distorted in that magic and monsters exist, thus changing many of the borders, historical events and social perceptions.

For example, my 17th century religious leaders don’t burn witches in order to gain their property, since witchcraft is an accepted practice and often necessary for the defense of the state.

However, my 17th century religious leaders DO burn witches who are seen as potentially threatening the state…or the religious authority of those same religious leaders. They also burn non-witches for being “hidden” witches threatening the power structure. This is done gleefully, pragmatically, extensively and methodically. I don’t apologize as a DM for the massacre of hundreds of innocent people, for two reasons. One, it was done, the art reflects the reality, and get over yourself. Two, no one is actually dying. Nor do I think it likely that someone is going to play in my world, rush out, seize a person and burn them just because they heard me describing it in my world.

It is MORE likely that one of them will read the BIBLE, seize a person and burn them for being a witch. So you might want to start your protests with that elephant, and not with me.

Of course, I’m more accessible.

My various emperors, kings, viziers and dukes massacre, assassinate, fornicate and appropriate at will. Being monarchs in a monarchical system, their only opponents are lesser nobles, whose primary interests are in that the King doesn’t get to be the only one massacring and fornicating. I don’t apologize for all this activity, or the fields of dead, staked victims, clogged river courses or other circumstances which I have occasionally had reason to include for dramatic effect. I have also included rampant disease, crippling worldwide poverty and famine. I have yet to have a player decide to do anything about these horrors on any kind of scale, but of course the potential is there. It could be a quest—but then, I don’t give quests.

Nor have I ever heard of a DM suggest, as a quest, that the players should “bring about the welfare of the kingdom” as part of their activities. Oh sure, they might be instructed to remove the Evil Usurper to the throne…but like American foreign policy, it is always assumed that this will instantly produce a kind, considerate ruler and everything will be fine.

Which is really the height of hubris.

Given an environment with this kind of ongoing bastardy, I find it vaguely humorous that players would have trouble with the homosexuality of other players. It might be that I am playing with people who have little interest in sex in my game—not that they don’t talk about it constantly before the game starts, after the game stops or during the necessary convenience store run that must occur at half-time. I play with some fairly young people, in their early 20s, so sex is a major issue for them (it is for me, too, but for different reasons than my being young).

Since I run a 17th century reality, homosexuality wouldn’t last long on the streets if a player pursued it. With clerics wandering around using Know Intent (my version of Know Alignment), which indicates only if a person intends on doing evil, things get freaky pretty fast. A party member would only need to wander in the vicinity of a cathedral where one of the many 3rd-level deacons of the church, sweeping the street at random, was able to discover that the particular homosexual party member was a very nasty creature indeed. A foreigner, too, walking past with all that equipment, nice clothes and probable wealth, all to go automatically into the pocket of the church when that individual is RIGHTLY executed for being a non-approved member of society.

No, I’m not a nice guy.

My societies are repressive. Just like a 17th century world, only WITH the actual magical ability to find out what you’re thinking.

I don’t do this just to be a shit. I do it because I want my players on their toes, because this creates tension, drama, adventure and a real desire to get tougher and stronger, just so the player can do whatever the fuck he or she fucking wants.

You see, the average homosexual gay wannabe player is usually able to do this with no consequences whatsoever, being able to throw out into the game a lot of droll sexual innuendo, lame juvenile attempts at roleplaying and a lot of predictable childishness. Whereas I have this feeling that IF someone wants to play a homosexual in a world, then they ought to be damn well aware that they’re hated, that forces want them fucking DEAD and that those forces are in charge of everything. Creating the sense of mind that a homosexual player just wants to change his/her world enough that they can practice in peace.

This is a much better driver for story than butt cheeks and cum jokes.

The same goes for anyone who is a Jew, a Cathar, a worshipper of Satan, a Hindu in England or a Christian in Borneo. You are fighting the status quo. To win against the status quo will require more than just a lot of stupid jokes. You will have to face prejudice, hatred, abuse, persecution and assassination. If you win against all that, you will feel as a player as though you are on top of the world.

Now, everything I’ve just said above applies to race, as well. Negros are captured and shipped in miserable conditions to America, where they are beaten. While my demi-humans tend to get on with each other (unlike the PHB), there are quite a lot of blood feuds between dwarves and goblins, elves/gnomes and gnolls, orcs and humans, hobgoblins and everyone, and so on. In a few cases, where land has long been in dispute, there are some blood feuds between humans and demi-humans, most notably between the Swedes and the elves over the territory of central Finland. For the most part, however, segregation is the rule and they just don’t live in the same room. Which doesn’t keep them for going to war occasionally just to kill as many as possible.

Which brings me to the subject of women.

In 1650, it was easier to be a woman if you were born to a rich family, or nobility. Joan of Arc, two hundred years earlier, was much rarer than adventurous women in the 17th century.

That doesn’t mean they were respected; only tolerated. I tend to ease up somewhat on my women characters, since for the most part the company they keep is within the party. It is easier for female demi-humans, as the race is seen first and the sex second. It is also mitigated in that most of would-be rapists are considerably lower level that any party member who might venture off on her own.

Given the chance, however, I won’t hesitate to describe the rape of a party member, whatever their sex (orcs are pretty indiscriminate). I have yet to have any such occurrence happen in my world (and it hasn’t with these present players) where it turned out to be funny.

But that is the way I tell the story.

To sum up. I run a world steeped in evil. The ordinary, historical evil that has always been a part of history. I run it indiscriminately and without regret. I run it that way to give the party a chance to rise above it, to feel the indecency and—if they want to—do something about it. I also run it that way so that if the party feels they want to wallow in it, they can. I haven’t noticed that many of the sort of people I call my friends want to wallow in it for very long.

That, too, is the way I tell the story. Because wallowing has its own consequences. Recently a player made the point that the party—by their actions—are more monsters than the monsters. And that she feels that this ought to change, since they seem to be constantly pursued wherever they go by people who hate them.

This is how stories develop. First, the injustice is made clear. After, it might be ignored. Then it becomes too hideous to ignore. And steps begin to do something about it.

I won’t, however, sanitize my world the way people want to sanitize all human history. Fuck that. Let’s have a clear understanding of what we are, as thinking beings, and then let’s play in a world where we’re not afraid to face the evil.

Let’s grow up.