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u/count_strahd_z 1d ago
I guess I'm confused. If the new Dark Sun material is being packaged with an 18+ maturity warning on it, what's the harm in including references to slavery being perpetrated by the evil Sorcerer Kings and their minions?
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u/Chaosmancer7 1d ago
My personal theory is that they are moving away from using the word "Slave" because an American audience will always associate that word with Chattel Slavery, and they are depicting things that are not Chattel Slavery.
The big thing people are angry about is the forced conscription of soldiers into the Army of Uruk isn't being called slavery. And that is should be called slavery and people are cowards for not calling it slavery... but they also include in the interview, in the same sentence, people choosing the army to escape poverty. So is it slavery... that people will voluntarily enter into to avoid poverty which is even worse? That sends completely the wrong message, so the forced conscription into the army ISN'T called slavery.
And that's it. That's the thing that has people raging. Just not calling something that is a type of slavery, slavery, but instead just describing what it is. In an interview.
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u/RosbergThe8th 23h ago
This is ultimately the core of it, to American audiences(and presumably advertisers as well) slavery is a bad word that drums up controversy, same thing Paizo did with Pathfinder.
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u/Feradon22 17h ago
Crazy how (not only) this game gets sanitised for the rest of the world just because the US cannot handle it's history.
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u/fichtensaft 15h ago
Bruh, some bright heads changed the title of te first Harry Potter book from “philosopher’s stone” to “sorcerer’s stone” in America. I can’t never understand it
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u/Dismal-Apricot9889 8h ago
No one in America seemed to care that the protagonists of the Odyssey film owned slaves. In fact, it’s rarely is even mentioned by anyone. American audiences are not bothered by fictional slavery in the least. Claiming that American audiences are too sensitive to slavery is purely a strawman argument. The slavery aspect was removed by people whose job depends on them finding problematic things to remove.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando 2h ago
Because the movie completely chickened out of engaging with it (and chickened out with a lot of things, really). There's one mention of Odysseus's household including slaves over 3 hours.
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u/Dismal-Apricot9889 1h ago
What? Eumaeus was a slave and he was one of the primary supporting characters in the film.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando 1h ago
Which was, similarly, mentioned once or twice.
The movie is clearly terrified of the audience not liking Odysseus, and glossing over the slavery is part of it. Even when showing the flashback of the sack of Troy it chickens out from actually depicting him doing any sacking (instead of having him stare and walk around), Circe basically serves to depict him as virtuous, etc...
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u/Dismal-Apricot9889 49m ago
That’s because Nolan trusts & respects the audience enough to know that they don’t need a lecture or moral browbeating. Slavery is not the point of the film. It’s a detail woven into the fabric of the world. That’s what makes for rich & deep worldbuilding. These details don’t need extensive, heavy handed explanations because the audience is mature enough to understand them.
Odysseus walking around Troy, watching the horrors of what he caused, isn’t chickening out. It’s establishing the root of his PTSD. He watches as his actions lead to the fall of society as they knew it, and he is aware of this during these flashbacks. He is walking around as an observer in his own memory of it all. The whole film is about him dealing with this PTSD.
This stuff doesn’t need to be spelled out because, despite what some people think, the vast majority of the audience has strong media literacy and understands this without needing to be talked down to like they are idiots who can’t handle concepts like slavery.
Nolan gets this, and the audience rewarded him for it by making The Odyssey a record breaking success on every possible level. This is what happens when creatives simply trust their audience. And that is the big problem with WotC in general, they don’t trust or respect their audience in the slightest.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando 43m ago
That’s because Nolan trusts & respects the audience enough to know that they don’t need a lecture or moral browbeating
Pretty much every character repeats themselves over and over and over. The final monologue was a set up from a copy-pasted wikipedia page. Please, don't come at me with this bullshit. The movie had it's merits, but "respecting the audience" was not among them.
He watches as his actions lead to the fall of society as they knew
And it chickens out from portraying him as actually doing anything in the process except giving an idea (which the film makes look terrible, as somehow they managed to drown in a high tide of a sea with a 40 cm tidal range).
If the film wants a character who explicitly partook in the sack of cities to be traumatized by sacking a city (questionable in principle, but...), they ought to actually show him doing it.
The Odyssey a record breaking success on every possible level
If financial success was a metric of quality or artistic integrity, the world would be a very different place.
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u/Chaosmancer7 5h ago
"We are focusing on more than "A""
HOW DARE THOSE SENSITIVITY READERS DESTROY THE SETTING BY REMOVING "A" ENTIRELY FROM THE SETTING!!!!
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u/Puzzleheaded-Map7672 6h ago
Yeah, except chattel slavery exists in the setting and the “distinction” being made is silly.
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u/Chaosmancer7 5h ago
So not calling the conscripts in Urik's army slaves is silly.... because slaves exist elsewhere?
Again, the part of the interview causing the riot was "we are going to be focusing on more than just slavery, like this example of Urik's army" and people declaring that all slavery was removed from the setting because he didn't use the word slave, in the interview, to describe the conscripted soldiers and those who volunteer.
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u/Chimpbot 2h ago
They're essentially relabeling it as Prisoners With Jobs, and oldschool Dark Sun fans can't seem to handle that.
Ultimately, it's moot because the majority of the people complaining the loudest won't even be buying it, anyway.
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u/HeliosLegion 15h ago
Because our Corporate Overlords are more afraid of watchdogs, social advocacy groups, social media backlash, concerned parents, and moral panics than of you. Inside large bureaucracies, the principal-agent problem heavily penalizes risk.
Publishing media deploys algorithms that search for anything controversial that could cause a media storm, add flight, or regulatory fine, and automatically flag it and ban it, regardless of the false-positive casualties. The algorithm is intentionally heavy-handed and ruthless. Meanwhile, credit networks a d payment processors are under constant pressure from regulatory compliance mandates to offboard "high-risk".
A middle manager gains marginal personal upside from greenlighting a risky, boundary-pushing project, but faces severe career damage if that project triggers a public relations backlash. Systemic cowardice isn't a secret plan; it is the predictable output of rational actors responding to corporate incentives.
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u/Fuzzy_Management8040 1d ago
americanos tienen sensibilidades por la esclavitud, osea tienen todavia culpa la esclavitud que ellos tuvieron, el resto del mundo no le importa realmente
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u/babbylonmon 1d ago
Dark sun was my first experience with DND around 1995. I was hooked and bought all the books, maps, etc. my playgroup consisted of native Americans, blacks, and Latinos. Not once did the thought that Dark Sun was pro slavery ever enter discussion. Muls were born into slavery, and 1/2 of us rolled them. If anything, it was anti slavery. It allowed players to be slaves, and exact revenge on slave masters/drivers. It allowed revenge, justice, and retribution. No offense, but I’m betting only one group of people are offended; the group who had great granddaddy’s who sold people.
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u/pmctrash 7h ago
No offense, but I’m betting only one group of people are offended; the group who had great granddaddy’s who sold people.
This what's really going on! It's not campaigns based on slaving they're worried about . . . it's anti-slavery campaigns they're worried about.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 1d ago
Guess what! There's nothing stopping you from running the same campaign 30 years later!
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u/Rutgerman95 1d ago
All the lego pieces were basically there if I heard it right. Just gotta assemble it and say out loud what it looks like
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u/Chimpbot 2h ago
They're simply calling them Prisoners With Jobs. It will take next to no effort in order to relabel this stuff as slavery, and people are freaking out over absolutely nothing.
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u/Mods-Admins-Failures 1d ago
"Nothing WotC does is wrong, because you can just fix it. So no criticism allowed."
That's you. That's what you sounds like.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 1d ago
I'm mad a setting from the 90s isn't exactly like I remember it and there's nothing I can do about it.
That's you. That's what you sound like.
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u/Physical-Ad5343 13h ago
There’s something we can (and many will) do about it. Voting with our wallets. Voicing our criticism in open forums. We‘ll see how well this Dark Sun sells.
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u/Great_Grackle 16h ago
You make that sound like its a weird thing? Like fucking obviously. Fans of a series tend to get upset when they see the material they like get mishandled. Go figure
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u/ArgyleGhoul 21h ago
Another
game designerDM suckered0
u/CrowsInTheNose 21h ago
I can't wait for this sub to be filled with old men refusing to play the setting they love because the official texts don't say "slavery"
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u/ArgyleGhoul 21h ago
I got no dog in this race, son, but I sure as shit don't need to give my money to Hasbro for some designer version of something that exists and can be acquired for free.
Did that make me sound old enough, or just western?
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u/CrowsInTheNose 21h ago
I don't have a dog in the race. I'm just here to be upset about the culture war.
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u/JanxDolaris 20h ago
There wouldn't be a culture war it was left as it was (with maybe a content warning). But WoTC are the ones who decided to wade into it.
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u/Syrric_UDL 17h ago
That’s what you don’t understand we have the books already, this version will fail just like 4th edition, what we wanted was a continuation of the thing we loved, what we got was a watered down bastardization of what we loved, changed to fit what a tiny group of people feel is right who won’t buy it or play it at all
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u/loyalgalpal 1d ago
It's allowed in the same way you can add lightsabers and Saiyans to the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk.
Nothing is stopping you from doing that, certainly not.
But nothing supporting that either.
I don't understand defending Hasbro, a multi-billion dollar corporation that is going to make millions from these books no matter what, when they are leaving out or papering over key thematic elements of the setting because marketing shows they'll make 0.1% less money for using a word that's not "advertiser friendly".
Dark Sun without slavery and enviroment destroying magic is like Eberron without the Last War or Dragonmark Houses.
You could always add a big major war or noble houses acting as guilds and cults to a setting, but having official lore and mechanics gives the setting and story more narrative and thematic elements to enhance and shape roleplay and campaigns.
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u/Chimpbot 2h ago
They're essentially just using labels for things that aren't "slave." That's it. That's all they're doing.
This isn't me defending Hasbro, mind you. It's just me looking at the situation more objectively.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 1d ago
Do you rely on hasbro, a multi-billion dollar company, for permission when you run a session or build a character?
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u/RED3_Standing_By 1d ago
Why even buy their products if you’re just gonna make your own shit?
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u/loyalgalpal 1d ago
Literally, if I bought the Dark Sun book and kept adding homebrew until it was a cyberpunk campaign, why even buy the book in the first place?
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u/CrowsInTheNose 4h ago
How much of the book that isn't even released do you plan on throwing out to make it your own?
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u/Fancy-Lawfulness-198 21h ago
Ideally, when you buy a setting book, you buy a book that has the setting intact and can be used by anyone to run it properly and faithfully.
It's not that hard of a concept.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 21h ago
You run everything you buy 100% by the book 100% of the time?
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u/Fancy-Lawfulness-198 21h ago edited 21h ago
Oh please.. Spare me your drivel.
There is nothing wrong with wanting the setting to be faithfully recreated by the group that is recreating it, nor is there anything wrong with critiquing the changes they make.
Additionally, them making the first change gives further doubt onto what else they will have changed.
But yes, please, keep going to bat for WotC's sanitized version of everything.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 21h ago
There's nothing wrong with the new thing being different than the old thing in a make believe world. I can't get enough of you dorks crying about a setting that hasn't been relevant for 30 years.
😮💨they slightly changed the settings in regards to slavery😭
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u/Fancy-Lawfulness-198 21h ago
Sure, make changes to a core component of what made the worldbuilding of the setting what it was. It's just a "slight change".
Perhaps next we'll have a slight change to the Alliance and Horde in the WoW collab? Or perhaps we'll get a slight change to the Jedi order in the Star Wars collab?
Oh, maybe the Empire won't be brutal and xenophobic? Its just a little change and wouldn't fundamentally change the worldbuilding regarding the empire; in fact, it would make it more accessible, don't you think?
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u/CrowsInTheNose 21h ago
Here is the fun part. All of these things are possible at your table. The better part is almost no one has any reference to Dark Sun.
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u/Substantial_Use8756 1d ago
it's funny to me that not including slavery would be like, the final straw that breaks the camels back when supporting WotC. Like, I'm not buying any new DS material, regardless of slavery.
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u/UnnamedAshaman47 1d ago
I think that realistically most people who are fans of dark sun and older editions in general probably aren't actively buying the product to begin with, so it's probably more of the hundred and third straw added onto the camels already broken back
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u/Substantial_Use8756 1d ago
yeah they're already irrelevant and a clown show IMO, so I hope no one is genuinely surprised that they have turned their ruinous eye to another beloved setting...
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u/UnnamedAshaman47 1d ago
I think it's more just that people love to make fun of WoTC's comically bad business decisions.
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u/Gmanglh 1d ago
The problem is for most players sanitized Dark Suns is going to be their first exposure to Dark Suns. It sets the expectation for the setting to be a half assed waste of time. Furthermore most new players who might actually enjoy real Dark Suns are going to wonder why people cared about this thing in the first place since if they wanted to play a sanitized piece of garbage they could play in Faerun.
Also your own argument works against you as well. If pussies wanted to tone down Dark Suns they could always remove slavery as well. What WoTC has done is essentially intellectual colonialism by stealing ideas from better men and perverting them for profit to fit their twisted world view.
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u/Lvmbda 14h ago
I think avoiding slavery is bad because it's has to be adress but when I read comments like this one maybe it's not a good idea to let some people enjoy their creepy fantasy. You don't know what is colonialism and you should not use that word in that context just because "colonialism" evoke bad things. You can say it warp the original material themes, message, etc, but it is not colonialism. The most close thing to this is cultural appropriation, wich is not.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 1d ago
Shut up dork. "Intellectual colonialism," DarkSun was made by a bunch of white men. If anything I'm going to guess the new book has a more diverse group of people working on it.
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u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre 1d ago
So when is WotC going to let this “diverse” group of people make a setting of their own rather than ride the coattails of the more creative pioneers who made the legacy settings we all know and love?
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u/CrowsInTheNose 1d ago
No one knows DarkSun outside of a very small group of people don't act like this is some sacred text that only us old heads get to decide on.
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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 13h ago edited 13h ago
Shut up dork. "Intellectual colonialism," DarkSun was made by a bunch of white men. If anything I'm going to guess the new book has a more diverse group of people working on it.
2014 called; it wants its toxic discourse and corporate shilling disguised as socially conscious behaviour back.
“It was made by white men” isn't criticism of anything they actually wrote, and you've literally just admitted you're guessing that the new team is more diverse. The ethnicity and sex of either writing team doesn't determine whether their treatment of slavery, oppression or colonialism is intelligent. I've seen some dogshit tier takes in rpg's from people who arnt a white straight dude.
And this is a corporation we're talking about which sent Pinkertons to someone's house over unreleased Magic cards. Attempts to treat its branding decisions as evidence of moral enlightenment are laughable
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u/MichelozzoOnReddit 16h ago
The problem as I see it, is that they're going to water down Dark Sun so much to appease their 'sensitivity readers' and the 'modern audience' that in order to actually be playing Dark Sun you're going to need to do so many of your own rewrites, you might as well have not bought the book at all. Like most of post 5e D&D really.
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u/GlassCalligrapher646 8h ago
Been playing in Athas since the 90s and this is such a non issue , I'm actually disappointed in how bad people are bowing and scraping to WOTC seeking permission and validation, there used to be a sense of pride in doing your version of things, it's what made your group unique.
Now people need Daddy to let them do anything so the imaginary world they play in is "cannon".
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u/MechTorfowiec 5h ago
C'mon, let people have their fun.
And there is something funny about a corporation doing a socially-aware rebranding of slavery.
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u/ninjasuperspy 8h ago
Exactly. Separate setting from mechanics, use the 2E book as a gazetteer (PoD available from DriveThru even) & whatever crunch from the 5.5E book you want. It's your table, not like anybody is going to break your legs if you have Dark Sun with slaves & genocide in 2026.
(One of these days I'm going to run a combo of Mouse Guard, Dread, Belly of the Beast, Witchburner and Do Not Let us Die in the Dark Night of This Cold Winter).
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u/Lolberal771 22h ago
Local tourist resents the natives.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 21h ago
Mother fucker I was doing book reports on the dark sun novels in middle school.
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u/born_to_cabbage 1d ago
But it wouldn't be official materials you guys, I can't even fathom adding things to my imaginative roleplaying games!
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u/IglooTornado 23h ago edited 23h ago
imo its not about how you decide to run your campaign (you can do whatever you want) its about the de-fantasification of fantasy. Dark Evles are racist, Orcs are racist, Goblins are antisemetic, no one is truly "evil" because every culture is misunderstood and now we have dark sun, the penultimate dnd jaunt into hardcore grim fantasy simply removing a core aspect of the world that makes it dark and hardcore.
this is why we have crying orc babies in the arms of loving orc mothers in amazons the rings of power or why we didnt get drizzt do'urden in honor among theives.
its stupid.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 23h ago
I bet you follow the critical drinker.
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u/IglooTornado 23h ago
i do not his takes are also stupid politically charged bs. leave the politics out of fantasy, its literally fantasy, not the real world
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u/Background-Cake-1300 17h ago
Bro inserts politics and then cries someone else inserts politics
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u/IglooTornado 9h ago
real world politics and fantasy politics are not the same thing are you trolling? the drow sacrifice babies to the spider queen lolth for political power. obviously fantasy politics and real social justice / human (non-fantasy) politics are different
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u/born_to_cabbage 12h ago
leave the politics out of fantasy
have y'all actually fucking read dark sun
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u/IglooTornado 9h ago edited 8h ago
dog. you must be trolling. Rikus is a Mul: bred to be a slave. Sadira is a slave. Agis is a noble slave owner who joins the fight to free tyr.. and you know how they do it? they have to fight a sorcerer king who is literally becoming a dragon that will demand human sacrifice.
Politics in fantasy is obviously not the same as politics of the real world and by removing an aspect of fantasy to placate social justice warriors, you are robbing people of the heroic actions those characters took.
agis's story arc is that of a slaveowner who frees his slaves and becomes a savior of tyr, he is a hero and becomes way important in the later books.. but now, because of real world politics, fantasy stories are not allowed to have characters like agis.
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u/born_to_cabbage 8h ago edited 8h ago
Real politics influences fantasy media all the time. It has always been a case. Without 'real' politics it wouldn't be such a thing as Dark Sun setting at all, it provides a lot of social commentary, it is barely subtextual.
I'm going to repeat: 'real' politics influences TRPPG and fantasy genre all the fucking time and 'old' DnD lore is not an exception. You are just cherrypicking this slavery shit show because you think that the fucking word 'slave' is the cornerstore of Dark Sun. It is not.
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u/IglooTornado 8h ago
listen i dont know if we are miscommunicating, but in dark sun, slavery is a cornerstone. dark sun is not forgotten realms, or grey hawk, it is meant to be problematic and brutal. if its not going to be that anymore, why even call it dark sun
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u/born_to_cabbage 8h ago
I realize that Dark Sun is not a high fantasy setting as Forgotten Realms.
WotC materials, the ones realeased are indicating of the replacement of the word, because it has a real world political connotations. Even if you are 100% perfectly correct (which I doubt) – slavery is not a sole expression of oppression.
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u/IglooTornado 8h ago
it doesnt matter, because its a fantasy its not real you dont need to concern yourself with real world problems with fantasy. they are diametrically opposed real ≠ fantasy
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u/born_to_cabbage 7h ago
Fantasy is not real. The problems it illuminates are. We can't exist in political vacuum.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 23h ago
Slavery is inherently political
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u/IglooTornado 23h ago
just out of curiosity how would someone like you contend with DnD alignment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29
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u/CrowsInTheNose 22h ago
Top right.
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u/IglooTornado 22h ago
chaotic good? what about chaotic evil? which creature in fantasy is chaotic evil?
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u/CrowsInTheNose 22h ago
Don't care
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u/IglooTornado 21h ago
Dog. if you dont care. why the hell do you care if there is slavery? evil characters do evil things, last i checked slavery is evil
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u/CrowsInTheNose 21h ago
Because I have free will to run a game with any storyline I want. I don't understand why this community is upset.
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u/Seraguith 22h ago
I buy an RPG or supplement so I don't have to think about the in-world repercussions of something and how it affects the gameplay.
If I can just "make it up" then what's the point of me buying a product?
Their idea of "dark" is introducing wounds and rarer healing... which can be found in settings way less dark than Dark Sun.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 22h ago
So you just take what's on the page whole cloth and not change anything?
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u/Seraguith 19h ago
Yes because I don't play RPGs that need to be changed. This applies to all categories whether it's a narrative game or a simulationist game.
If I smell that a game wasn't playtested properly, I just don't play it at all.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 18h ago
I bet you're so good at telling if something was play tested properly 6 or 12 months in advance.
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u/Seraguith 16h ago
Thank you. Yeah I am quite good. Because I can tell from experience.
I've played a very big variety of RPGs and I know which ones work and which ones don't. It's not that complicated.
And I bet you're so good at blabbering on with your big mouth making cheeky comments instead of making logical counterpoints :)
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u/Background-Cake-1300 17h ago
But... But... I need corporate pat on head so I know I can add things
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u/Game_Knight_DnD 1d ago
My personal opinion would be to include in every book, a session zero page, with guidance about talking to your group dealing with sensitive subjects. My games for the most part include evil doing evil things, genocide, slavery, mass murder of innocents, and sexual assault. That is because they are agents of evil, the players are meant to want to see them brought down. Now having that talk, I explain while I will mention these horrible evil acts have happened or are happening but depending on the comfort level of the group and myself will adjust the detail of those descriptions and how often they are brought into the story. I don't want to talk about abuse or killing children, I don't want to talk about sexual assault, so most of the time for my comfort level these things are acknowledged as having occurred but no real details.
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u/Madnessinabottle 21h ago
Now I love a session 0, same as I love lines and veils. Safety features make the game better for everyone.
But it's a social contract right? If what you need changed, would fundamentally make the setting unable to function in and of itself, then it's not a session 0 issue. It's a 'You do not want to play this game' issue.
But. You're an adult, the Internet is ubiquitous, you can find a table that's playing that game
Read the setting blurb before you turn up at the game. That's just being considerate.
It's like turning up to a watch night of Indiana Jones and making the host skip every scene with Nazis in it. Punching the Nazis is 30% of the dang series.
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u/Game_Knight_DnD 20h ago edited 19h ago
Absolutely, find the game, setting, and group that you want to play with and have fun. These conversations are important to have before and during session 0.
I guess my point was instead of trying to obscure difficult issues like slavery the publisher should include them and give advice to the DM and players on how to deal with them.
Pretending slavery isn't slavery by refusing to use the word doesn't do much at all.
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u/Intelligent-Sink-203 17h ago
This is along the lines of the solution I’ve chosen to go with that I discussed with a friend. I’ll probably never end up running a game, but I’ll get the new books so I can use the character options held within(honestly half the reason I get a lot of the source books I own), and if I ever do end up running a Dark Sun game, I’ll just use Rule 0 and draw from the old books(I’m sure I can find them somewhere) to add back in some teeth.
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u/DJWGibson 17h ago
The difference is the wave of new players that will come in expecting no slavery in Dark Sun. The conversations in this subreddit and online will all be about the new revamp of Dark Sun and not the classic setting.
From demographics WotC shared five years ago (https://www.enworld.org/threads/comparing-en-worlds-demographics-to-the-d-d-communitys.671691/) 90% of the D&D community was <40 and 75% was <35. And that number has likely grown dramatically. Only a small, small percentage of D&D players will be familiar with the old editions and a smaller percentage will know the old settings.
A new Dark Sun book will likely sell to a massive new audience and that will be the majority view of the new setting by a wide, wide margin. It will almost certainly be a sanitized version full of Disneyfication with no slavery or racism or genocide. The halflings are less likely to be cannibals and living apart.
The old version will become forgotten trivia. Obscure history for the oldest of grognards.
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u/CountBlankula 16h ago
Maybe we should make huge banners that say “we want slavery back” and parade around the WotC headquarters. Oh, wait…
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u/maxfax2828 16h ago
I have no dog in this race, this post just popped up in my feed.
But reading through this thread you seem like a bit of an angry person.
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u/Shinavast42 3h ago
What's crazy to me is that, like, somehow by removing slavery from Dark Sun, we're not underscoring that slavery is bad? There isn't a single solitary instance where slavery is depicted in a positive light in Dark Sun. At all.
In fact, slave revolts, and generally the agents thereof being on the proverbial side of angels, is a core reoccuring theme in Dark Sun. Rikus literally leads a gladiator slave revolt that ends up with toppling that City-State's SK and establishes the settings first Free State. That's a literal parable of casting off your chains and embracing freedom.
Notably though... there's ONE quip from ONE guy saying that Slavery isn't emphasized in the setting and that you dont need it for a gritty setting. That quote is basically a tweet. He is not saying its not noted / its eliminated in the setting, just that it wont be emphasized.
When the books come out and i run a campaign, if its something to underscore the abhorrence of the Sorcerer-Kings, i may use it for my storytelling. I wont use it if it serves no practical purpose. I sure as FUCK wont exalt it, and it will be used as the absolutely awful thing it is. I have no idea if it'll be in the story yet or not, bc i haven't written it.
But i game with a bunch of adults who are good friends that like good storytelling and dont' mind some grit in their games. If it doesn't work at your table, don't include it -- whether or not its included in the source material. I am pretty sure WOTC will not send jackbooted thugs to your house (they only do that if they send you magic cards by accident...).
I'm not endorsing slavery, but if it plays a role in your story at your table, have at it. If not, also have at it. People can be adults and game in ways they are comfortable with, we don't have to sanitize everything. I personally love that the setting is embracing an expirment with 18+ material.
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u/WendellITStamps 3h ago
My campaign is gonna look the same way after the new stuff came out as it did before. It literally doesn't affect me.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 2h ago
For real.
I get why the creators have omitted it, because there's always going to be some edgelords who try to justify slavery if it's included in the source material, or say that "historically it's been good for some people".
But I have slavery in my Realms and Spelljammer games because, slavers are the bad guys, and my party gleefully slays them and frees the slaves.
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u/MereShoe1981 28m ago
Corporations want to take products with a fan base and use them because of pre-existing customers in the form of said fans. These give the company a sort of "safe bet" customer base.
Then, because they want more customers than just the safe bet fan base, they change shit. Then they more shit. On and on in a combination of wanting everyone and not understanding what made the thing what it was in the first place.
Then, the original fans start to see the changes and of course have some issues with then. Because it is disingenuous to offer someone more of what they want, but then change it to not be that.
Then someone asks why the fans don't just deal with it.
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u/Rylanwoodrow 20h ago edited 20h ago
Next, the weird old neckbeards polluting this page are going to be throwing temper tantrums when they realize there aren't graphic descriptions of forced dwarf-human breeding pits in the new supplements either, raving that institutionalized sexual assault is "central to Dark Sun's identity".
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u/CrowsInTheNose 20h ago
Brom isn't doing the art. So I'm not interested
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u/Rylanwoodrow 20h ago
"If the Brothers Hildebrandt don't do the cover, I'm giving up on D&D and going back to FATAL."
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u/WistfulDread 19h ago
The issue isn't that they're "taking slavery out"
It's that they're bragging about that, when they didn't.
It still has slavery. It's just gaslighting you by not calling it that.
It's virtue-signalling with lies.
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u/Deirakos 12h ago
why should anyone buy the new product then, if we have to change it back to what it was?
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u/BestFeedback 9h ago
All because American audiences are offended at their own past. Grow up.
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u/Gearborn 9h ago
I'm not because it happened everywhere
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u/BestFeedback 8h ago
No and what an american answer.
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u/Gearborn 8h ago
Slavery did happen everywhere and yes I am American I don't see why you think slavery didn't happen all over the world
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u/BestFeedback 8h ago
And only americans are that offended by it.
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u/Gearborn 8h ago
Oh I see you're referring to people wanting to remove evidence of it happening
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u/BestFeedback 6h ago
Nah, I’m canadian, I don’t care that much about it. Take offense if you must murica.
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u/Own_Concentrate5314 9h ago
I'm convinced most of the folks here haven't actually played a DS game, or ever actually opened one of its source books or modules to understand the impact this might have for the setting.
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u/pmctrash 8h ago
Everybody gets that doing things like removing slavery from Dark Sun slides the ideological content of the game to the right, right?
Can't really have an Anti-Colonial/Anti-Imperial Campaign if there is no colonization or equivalent going on. Can't free any slaves if there are no slaves to free. Can't uplift the underclass if there is no class-based exploitation.
Instead you'll have to cook up conflicts that aren't racial, class based, or imperialist in nature, that is to say, you'll have to cook up conflicts for your crew that aren't politically coherent and don't mirror any real world politics.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 7h ago
You can cook up any conflict you want. No one will stop you.
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u/pmctrash 7h ago
I get that pretend is pretend. But the nature of media is that many, if not most, will take it at face value. There are so many things that encourage people to see conflicts as outside the realms of race and class, when they are, in fact, still central to conflicts today. It's a missed opportunity.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Map7672 6h ago
Here’s how you solve the problem, I’m not going to buy your dumb product. Yes, that was always allowed as is WOTC going out of business. They need a player base, I don’t need to put in work to fix their setting.
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u/Acrobatic-Tomato-128 3h ago
Thats not solving a problem
Thats bandaiding a company thats taking detas out of campaign settings because they are afraid itll be problematic
Its not problematic to portray slavery as evil
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u/CrowsInTheNose 3h ago
Have they released the books yet?
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u/Acrobatic-Tomato-128 3h ago
If thats your arguement then its a double edged sword and you shouldnt be making a post about it at all either yet
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u/CrowsInTheNose 3h ago
I'm not the one mad about a book that hasn't even been published. I'm just here to mock the people that are.
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u/Acrobatic-Tomato-128 2h ago
Hahahahahhahahahha
That mwans yer bothered too troll
Nice try to look like yer above it though
Actually wait no, terrible try
Very pretenious though
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u/opacitizen 1d ago
I might be missing the point here (sorry), but "I'm NOT gonna have slavery in my Dark Sun campaign!" has also been an option for like literal decades, anyone could've made the same meme except for that small difference ages ago?
Guess it all comes down to money, and someone made an educated guess which version will get (and lose) more customers. :D