Category: From elsewhere on the web

Dark Sun: only nice, polite tyranny here

So, this week the Internet learned that Dark Sun, the D&D setting where the world is a scorching wasteland ruled by evil sorcerer-kings, is getting a new edition that removes the presence of slavery, because you see, some people find the idea of slavery upsetting. The Internet, quite understandably, was… unamused.

Now, when discussing things of this nature, I wish to be precise. It is always too easy to join in with knee-jerk poo-pooing of anything that you don’t like, and that just contributes to polarisation and a general dumbing down of the discussion. So be patient with me as I take the long way around, to try to make sure you understand just where I am coming from.

From the contents of this blog, it should be pretty clear that I’m a child of the 90s and that I love me some grimdark. I like games where things are kind of horrible and you just have to make the best of the hand you’re dealt (because, well, that’s basically what life is like, and sometimes I want the encouragement). I like games with antiheroes – not baby-eating psychopaths or anything, I do have some standards, but antiheroes, people who might do good things or bad things depending on the situation and their specific priorities. I like setting the players up with a choice between two things that are wrong, or between two mutually exclusive things that are right.

But, you know, I’m not married to grimdark. Not only is it not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s not even the cup of tea I’m always in the mood for myself. Sometimes you don’t want a somber, bitter brew, you want a fizzy drink – something bright and bubbly and fun. And I’m at home for that too! I am deeply infatuated with Twilight Sword. I was a big My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic guy back when it was airing, and I own a copy of Equestrian Tails. I was big on Blue Rose for a long time for all its flaws, the foremost one actually being that it’s not soft and cuddly enough but just has a thin layer of softness and cuddliness on top of a standard D&D-ish hack fest. I have the same interest, and the same issues, with Pugmire. I even made my own mini-RPG that I set out to make as twee and kid-friendly as possible, and I’m still quite fond of how it turned out. We could do with more chicken-soup-for-the-soul type games, I feel, the market is definitely underserved with them.

You know what I can’t stand, though? Wishy-washy blandness. Creative cowardice. Taking something grimdark, removing anything that is in any way grim and/or dark, and then presenting it with a big, simpering smile: “there, I fixed it! Now it only has nice, wholesome, uplifting brutality and horror!”

This is offensive to me on a creative level, because it’s taking something I might have enjoyed and turned it into something bland and not worth bothering with. It means that I have been made poorer than I was. And yes, I am aware that the old material hasn’t gone away, but the new material is still what’s likely to get played, and thus what I may conceivably have the opportunity to play – I don’t always have the option of staying in the past because the present is moving in a direction I don’t like (much as you can tell from my obsessing over 90s games that I often try to). Let’s not pretend that there’s an infinite supply of players and GMs out there, especially not for the more niche games.

And you know what, it’s even kind of offensive to me on a moral level, because it supports the unspoken (but sadly omnipresent) assumption that there are some ways to hurt people that are okay and that there are some people that it’s okay to hurt. And, having spent much of my life being kicked around by the world and told that any harm I suffered didn’t quite count, wasn’t really important, was maybe kinda-sorta unfortunate but wasn’t something that was worth discussing… I have a big freaking problem with that.

Again, not because I think that you should never harm anyone, at all, under any circumstances! There is just no way to go through life without stepping on a few toes. And that goes double for harming people within the context of a game of make-believe, where no actual human being gets hurt. Kicking imaginary ass is fun, and fun is a good thing (and it’s a little depressing that I feel like I have to point that out). But people’s pain should either matter or not matter, should either be cause for regret or the sort of thing you callously shrug off. There should be no such thing as politically correct villainy, and if there is, then something is very wrong with our current definition of what’s politically correct.

So, am I livid about the Dark Sun thing, up in arms? Well… no, actually, not per se. Because I don’t actually care that much about Dark Sun. I’ve never been sufficiently into D&D to get invested in any particular setting, so while Dark Sun and Ravenloft are the ones that I like the look of the most – no surprise there – I can’t claim any particular attachment. Hasbro hasn’t lost a sale by alienating me, because I was never going to buy the new edition of Dark Sun in the first place. Which doesn’t give them a whole lot of incentive to care what my opinion is, I’ll freely admit.

But if you are one of the people who do care about Dark Sun, and you’re fuming right now? Yeah, I feel ya, man. I’ve been there. I support you in principle even if I don’t have a particular dog in the race. It sucks when they neuter something interesting to keep it from offending people who should – and probably do – play something else if the mere existence of anything with a sharp edge or a dark tone is going to depress them.

And the really insane thing is, of course, that this isn’t actually one of those games full of moral compromise and thoroughly stained protagonists that I’m a sucker for. In Dark Sun, the slavers are, y’know, the bad guys. The mobs. The people you’re supposed to run up to and hit with your sword until they run out of HP. They’re slavers because that makes them immediately unsympathetic – hey, I’m all for sympathy for the devil, and even I think that when you shackle and flog someone, you forfit any claim to mercy from him; the moment some heroic type launches a slave rebellion, you’ll be on the chopping block, and you honestly won’t be able to say it’s anything but the natural consequence of your actions. Surely, even in these divided times, one thing we can all agree on is that breaking shackles and overthrowing cruel taskmasters is cool?

But no, apparently they want to focus on “subtler” evils like… mandatory military service. Which sounds to me less like the sort of unambiguous evil that it’s fun to fight against, and more like something that’s maybe kind of bad, on balance, depending on the circumstances. Like, I’m not sure I want to pick up a sword and storm the dark citadels of the overlord to end the practice of general conscription. Writing a strongly worded letter of some sort seems like a more appropriate response. After I have done a cursory sociological study to make sure that the policy was genuinely flawed rather than just unpopoular, of course.

Like I said, I’m not the target group. But I’m honestly not sure who the target group for this is even supposed to be. If it fails dismally, it won’t change my life, but I’ll still consider it a victory for sanity and taste.

Hot take on the Suethulhu Files

For some reason I took to rereading The Suethulhu Files this week. Much like The Binder of Shame, it’s the sort of trainwreck that just endlessly amuses the geeky mind. But I have to admit that the years have changed my view on it a bit over the years. These days, I’d describe it like this:

It’s the story of how the worst kind of GM runs a game for the worst kind of player in the worst kind of setting, and how it drives both of them crazy.

Now, the first and the last part of that is simply the text as written. The GM (referred to as “Marty”) does just about every single thing that GMs ought not to but that most GMs invariably end up doing when first starting out. He not only railroads, but railroads ineptly, creating scenarios that are ridiculously fragile and kept together solely by GM fiat. He takes everything personally and uses his control over the world to stomp down on anyone he doesn’t like. He is firmly opposed to the players actually doing stuff, seeing their role as just fawning over the majestic awesomeness of his settings and his NPCs. And he thinks he’s much, much smarter than he actually is.

And the setting… well, it’s CthulhuTech, which may just be the gold standard for games that learned all the wrong things from the World of Darkness. It’s really no wonder that Marty took to it, because it seems to have been created by a whole bunch of Martys. The whole thing is a constant, breathless gushing about the omnipotence of clandestine organisations, with the players existing to be tiny cogs in the machine, at best. A lot of people consider it to be depressing, because the players can’t save anyone. I consider it to be boring, because it’s so abundantly clear that the players don’t have to save anyone – the writers aren’t going to let their pet NPCs fail, so the world will be saved without the players’ involvement. Proper dark fantasy games call on you to be a hero, because if you don’t do it, no one else will. In CthulhuTech, your best bet is really to hunker down somewhere and wait for the Ashcroft Foundation to fix everything.

So that much I’m on board with, but honestly now… the narrator (“ZeRoller”) is no prize either. In fact, he seems like the sort of player who’d make my grey hairs multiply. He nitpicks. He scoffs. He demands to short-circuit the GM’s scenarios through what he considers super-clever solutions, and treats it as an outrage when he can’t. He behaves, all in all, as every bit as much of a control freak as Marty – it’s just that while Marty is a lazy, self-satisfied control freak, ZeRoller is a neurotic, overzealous one. Neither sounds like they’d be much fun.

Now, I think that ZeRoller would probably defend himself here, and claim that he’s not normally like that, but Marty’s smug insistence that his shoddy worldbuilding is the work of GENIUS!!! just drove him up the wall and made him want to disprove it. And I can absolutely believe that! Marty no doubt brought out the worst in him… but I wonder if he didn’t bring out the worst in Marty, too. If I ran a game for someone and they kept trying to break the setting by invoking bits of science that I simply had no clue about (and that they might not understand as well as they thought – ZeRoller admits himself in a few places that he was actually mistaken about something he argued for), I’d start itching to take them down a peg. That’s no excuse for Marty, of course, because just because you’re tempted to abuse your position it doesn’t mean you should, but yeah… I may not condone, but I sympathise.

In particular, ZeRoller keeps claiming that what drove him into those apparently endless arguments about the finer points of chemistry and physics with Marty was that Marty just wouldn’t back down and admit that ZeRoller’s ideas would work, but that it’d be a lot more convenient for the game if he just pretended not to have thought of it. And again, that would definitely have been the mature way to do it.

But.

But if some odious know-it-all was all up in my face and insisting that there was obviously a way to break a setting I’d poured my heart and soul into crafting… I’d need to swallow my pride pretty hard to agree with him. It’d feel like… “yes, it’s true, you’re much smarter than me, but please take pity on my poor, feeble intellect and treat me with kid gloves!”

I mean… I’m forty-five years old, and the idea still sets my teeth on edge. Marty was still in college at the time, presumably absolutely bubbling with youthful testosterone. I’m… not really surprised that his reaction was more like, “oh yeah? Bring it on, bro! Do your worst! My man-brain can beat your man-brain with one hemisphere behind its back!” Again, it’s not what a wiser man would have done, but… yeah.

All the same, like I said, it’s absolutely worth going back and reading more than ones. We can all use the reminder to not be like Marty. And ZeRoller… well, at least he’s entertaining, I have to give him that much!