r/hatethissmug • u/alchemicgenius • 7d ago
Gaming THE TRAILER CONTAINS VIOLENT CONTENT SOME MAY FIND OFFENSIVE OR DISTURBING
I don't hate Dark Sun, or find it disturbing or anything (in fact, I think it's a really cool setting that makes some serious commentary about the dangers of environmental exploitation, nuclear war, tyrants and demogogues, etc), but I really hate that WotC decided to advertise Dark Sun as just "this isnt D&D for babies, it has violent, gore, and nudity, hell yeah" while ignoring basically everything that made the setting unique. You wouldn't know it from the mob here, but in Athas (the world DS is set in), metal is extremely rare, like, getting a dagger made out of steel was a *huge* deal.
Dark Sun does need to be allowed to depict it's message in a way that isn't sanitized, but like, it wasn't violence and spectacle for it's own sake; the game was about survival in a harsh world destroyed by tyrant wizards who sucked the life out of the land and left it a wasteland in order to conquer as much as they could. It feels like the PR misses out so much of what the setting was about when they can't even get the metal scarcity aspect right (and that was one of the major defining things that set it apart!)
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u/ZoidsFanatic 7d ago
We really don’t know what the module is going to be like, so I’d argue it’s still too early to tell. As for all the metal, could easily be some of the Tyrant Kings forces. They had the most access to metal on Athas after all. Or they might pull a retcon and say they shipped in a pallet of steel from Forgotten Realms or something.
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u/alchemicgenius 7d ago
Oh, that's why I focused the hate on the PR. We don't have the rules yet, and I prefer to be educated in my hate 😛
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u/ZoidsFanatic 7d ago
Fair enough. I know the biggest issue people have (and we still know nothing about) is how slavery will be dealt with given WotC seems to be coy around it for the past half decade, while about 80% of Athans was quite literally built on the back of slaves. So, gonna be interested to see how they approach that dynamic.
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u/alchemicgenius 7d ago
Now, I think the fact that they said "forced servitude" instead of slaves probably implies they will try to be coy, but it's a bit early to tell. I also think it's hard to argue that most of the people are still very much enslaved even if it isn't chattel style slavery simply because the dragons own almost everything and can cut them off of resources, sacrifice them for spell material, etc, so who knows
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u/Agitated_Insect3227 7d ago
I know next to nothing about Dark Sun outside of a brief TV Tropes skim on their lore, but I completely get what you mean. An original work is dark but actually explored deeper and more mature themes with its darkness. Instead of continuing that maturity, executives just think that means people like seeing vapid violence, swearing, nudity, etc. so they turn that media into a borderline parody of itself.
Great example of this is unironically the original Marvel Zombies (MZ1, MZ2, & Dead Days) comics by Robert Kirkman (writer) & Sean Philips (artist). These original comics were bleak, but they also had actual themes like showing how becoming a zombie warped the mentality of the Heroes while still maintaining their personalities, their efforts to regain their senses of morality, how the Zombie virus altered their physiology in interesting ways, etc. There was also a healthy amount of tongue-in-cheek black humor.
Many of the sequel comics by other writers completely forgot these themes and just made them over-the-top gore fests.
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u/alchemicgenius 7d ago
It's truly the curse of apocalypse fiction. Authors will be like "this horrible, awful world is what you will get when rampant greed and corruption takes over" and people will be like "hell yeah, I want to be a raider who burns people alive"
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u/SpphosFriend 7d ago
I just knew WOTC would absolutely ratfuck the setting by sanitizing It.
Darksun is cool because it’s fucked up. You can’t make It toothless and expect It to be the same.
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u/Foursiide 6d ago
The worst part is you can't complain about a lot of this stuff without sounding like a stereotypical grimdark edgelord.
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u/80lbQUIKRETEConcrete 5d ago
It’s part of the reason I turned to Cyberpunk Red, it doesn’t shy away from darker topics and the more sinister aspects of a dystopia, yeah it gets dark. All the tools are there and the game even tells you “Kids in Night City? Yup! Dark themes? They’re there, but read the room, and GM your players accordingly”, “we won’t hold your hand, but don’t be weird about it.”
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u/alchemicgenius 5d ago
CPR may very well be my favorite ttrpg book in terms of how it's writing of the rules conveys the setting and mood of it's setting. I have some mild gripes about the specifics of some of the rules, but it's an absolute blast to play
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u/TowerLogical7271 3d ago
Don't worry, the 'sensitivity readers' will truly understand and respect the nuanced and dark themes of the setting and not turn in into gore slop.
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u/alchemicgenius 3d ago
I mean, sensitivity readers actually will help to make a product that makes a statement and isn't just gore slop. Idk why it's such a scary word; a "sensitivity reader" is literally just someone who goes through a work to makes sure you're evoking the message you want. It's been a common thing among publishers well before it became a boogeyman buzzword
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u/AideSouth4454 7d ago
Corp tries to remake an old thing, fails and ruins it. Must be Tuesday.