Official OGL Discussion Thread

[OldTrees1]

Paladin didn't exist in Dark Sun for thematic reasons, replaced by the setting specific Gladiator.

In late 3E and all of 5E the Paladin thematic limitations expanded far enough that some would fit into Dark Sun (even if the stereotypical ones don't fit).

So while my Ancients Paladin Lux would not fit Dark Sun, there are dark paladins that would. Sounds like 12/12 are good to go.

[Brookshw]

Ok so it sounds like you do in fact see some sort of distinction here worth mentioning. Apparently, Rajaat wanting to cleanse the world and return it to the halflings is more concerning than any lich king that wants to wipe everyone out, or every archdevil that wants to enslave everyone's soul, or every other generic D&D supervillain that wants to do very evil things to everyone in the world. I guess we will have to disagree on this. I don't think this is a particularly strong exception to take with Dark Sun. The motive appears to be the issue here I guess, which seems very... nitpicky to me.

Oh, sure, I suppose. WoTC has been looking at RL parallels as problematic for its content for a while now, that's been reflected in pretty much everything post-Tasha's. I think you can draw a line to RL from 'purifying the world' and 'some races don't deserve to exist because of their inherent faults' a lot easier than with liches stealing souls or devils nicking cities. I had thought that parallels to RL were a premise of this tangent based on WoTC's previous statements and those earlier here, but I guess that wasn't ever expressly stated.

But it's something I would really have trouble answering. It would have never occurred to meet that the halflings would be considered problematic. These things strike me as arbitrary associations to arrive a predetermined conclusion.

It would have to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, WoTC already told us that the conclusion is that its problematic (at least as far as they're concerned, and theirs is the only conclusion that matters since they're the ones who will publish it or not), they said 42 and now we're working backwards speculating on how they might have got there. Personally I don't see any benefit to saying "well I don't think its 42", because that isn't going to change anything. I've suggested a few things that I think are understandable ways they can arrive at that conclusion, maybe you will spot others.

[KorvinStarmast]

I find the argument against Dark Sun on economic or popularity grounds an odd one, given WotC just released Spelljammer, which was even more niche than Dark Sun back in the 2e days. And Dark Sun had a 4e release as well, which Spelljammer never did, one that was both well received and one of their best sellers for 4e.

If I may second this motion...

[Psyren]

Again, we're hopping around to... which point? I don't know.

Because Kyle didn't say that Dark Sun was too disconcerting for newbies and they needed to settle in first before they were exposed to grimdark. He didn't mention anything about class restrictions. He said it's "problematic". He also said "we know it has a huge fan following", as opposed to "it's just a bunch of grumpy grognards that we should ignore right out".

You asked me to elaborate and I did. If you disagree with my interpretation of Kyle's "problematic" judgment, you're welcome to reach out to him and see if he meant something else, but I'm going to stand by my reading in the meantime.

5E is designed so that you literally don't need any class. You can't be a cleric, and you can't be a paladin. That's it. Artificer is probably out as well, but it sort of has that distinction already.

Bard? Yes.
Barbarian? Yes.
Druid? Yes.
Fighter? Yes.
Monk? Yes.
Ranger? Yes.
Rogue? Yes.
Sorcerer? Yes.
Warlock? I'd say this is probably a good analogue for templars with Sorcerer King Pacts (maybe turn them into divine casters).
Wizard? Yes.

The groups I play with wouldn't bat a single eyelash if someone wanted to run Dark Sun and said "no artificers, clerics, or paladins". Because this type of stuff happens in home games too. I really don't know where you're getting these expectations from.

An individual table/campaign deciding to ban 3-4 base classes, and an entire setting/product line doing it ab initio, are two very different things. Do you truly not see that?

[Segev]

An individual table/campaign deciding to ban 3-4 base classes, and an entire setting/product line doing it ab initio, are two very different things. Do you truly not see that?

Indeed, I do see that distinction. I'll be sure to keep it in mind. I'm glad we can agree that this distinction exists!

[Dr.Samurai]

You asked me to elaborate and I did. If you disagree with my interpretation of Kyle's "problematic" judgment, you're welcome to reach out to him and see if he meant something else, but I'm going to stand by my reading in the meantime.

Yeah sure, and I'll challenge someone's reading if they're engaging with my posts and the reading doesn't make sense to me.

An individual table/campaign deciding to ban 3-4 base classes, and an entire setting/product line doing it ab initio, are two very different things. Do you truly not see that?

What classes have to be banned? Did you miss the post where we went over the classes?

Artificer seems to be the only class that might be out of place. What's the issue? I can see a sidebar on how to play an artificer of the sort of stone age/bronze age era that Dark Sun takes place in.

Warlock and paladin might need some instruction/guidance, but variety is the spice of life. The whole point of a campaign setting is to see the mechanics of the game in different contexts.

[Telok]

If I may second this motion...

Perhaps the "problematic" thing is that the Spelljammer adventure didn't sell well enough for the goons in accounting to greenlight anything else. Although if they'd spent budget on writing instead of art & packaging then sold an actual setting book instead of a padded out adventure it might not have been **** on so hard by people who really wanted to buy an updated Spelljammer setting.

[Brookshw]

Perhaps the "problematic" thing is that the Spelljammer adventure didn't sell well enough for the goons in accounting to greenlight anything else. Although if they'd spent budget on writing instead of art & packaging then sold an actual setting book instead of a padded out adventure it might not have been **** on so hard by people who really wanted to buy an updated Spelljammer setting.

If I may second this motion...

[Dr.Samurai]

Thirding, lol.

[Keltest]

Fourthing. Please release setting books as actual setting books.

[Psyren]

Yeah sure, and I'll challenge someone's reading if they're engaging with my posts and the reading doesn't make sense to me.

Challenge away, though I don't see what doesn't make sense to you. What do you think he meant then?

What classes have to be banned? Did you miss the post where we went over the classes?

Hard ban: Clerics, Paladins, Artificers
Soft ban: Any arcane caster whose activities would result in pitchforks and torches every time they're observed casting. YMMV on how far into the campaign the novelty of that would take to wear off.

Warlock and paladin might need some instruction/guidance, but variety is the spice of life. The whole point of a campaign setting is to see the mechanics of the game in different contexts.

So if the "different context" involved WotC allowing the classes listed above and coming up with ways to leave them predominantly unmolested, you'd be okay with that then?

[Xervous]

Fourthing. Please release setting books as actual setting books.

I’d continue the chain but WotC has already taken the fifth.

[NichG]

It would have to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, WoTC already told us that the conclusion is that its problematic (at least as far as they're concerned, and theirs is the only conclusion that matters since they're the ones who will publish it or not), they said 42 and now we're working backwards speculating on how they might have got there. Personally I don't see any benefit to saying "well I don't think its 42", because that isn't going to change anything. I've suggested a few things that I think are understandable ways they can arrive at that conclusion, maybe you will spot others.

The reason to say 'well I don't think its 42' is to determine how one will relate to WotC's position - for example, in choosing whether to trust them to make the content that one wants or to look elsewhere, whether to buy their products, whether or not to publically criticize their decisions or try to pressure them to change those decisions and if so how, whether to act and create things in alignment with WotC's stated vision or to directly try to oppose and undermine it, whether to revert to older editions or keep converting to new ones, etc. As far as does that matter in practice? Well if WotC is already reacting to (what they believe to be) public sentiment to protect themselves from criticism, then yeah I'd say that adapting the form of that public criticism on the basis of how they seem to be responding to it is absolutely an essential element of that process.

If the direction of community criticism seems to be pushing WotC in a direction that is actually opposite to the underlying ethical and moral justifications for that criticism in the first place, then its pretty important that the community change the message they're sending with their criticism if those goals are sincere. If e.g. people collectively want diversity of representation in games but their message gets passed through a corporate filter that turns it into 'its too risky to portray cultural differences, we will be criticized for doing it wrong', then you either have to message differently or you're going to end up with less diversity in your game as a result of asking for more.

So that's the question that should be relevant to the community: do you agree with WotC's interpretation with your previous criticism, about what is actually problematic? Because if not, you have to say it differently.

On the other hand there isn't really any utility to coming up with some kind of post-hoc justification for how WotC is always right except to WotC.

[animorte]

I’d continue the chain but WotC has already taken the fifth.

I read that as "pleading the fifth" and got a good laugh.

[P. G. Macer]

I read that as "pleading the fifth" and got a good laugh.

I’m pretty sure that was the joke.

Anyways, sixth-ed or seventh-ed.

[Brookshw]

The reason to say 'well I don't think its 42' is to determine how one will relate to WotC's position - for example, in choosing whether to trust them to make the content that one wants or to look elsewhere, whether to buy their products, whether or not to publically criticize their decisions or try to pressure them to change those decisions and if so how, whether to act and create things in alignment with WotC's stated vision or to directly try to oppose and undermine it, whether to revert to older editions or keep converting to new ones, etc. As far as does that matter in practice? Well if WotC is already reacting to (what they believe to be) public sentiment to protect themselves from criticism, then yeah I'd say that adapting the form of that public criticism on the basis of how they seem to be responding to it is absolutely an essential element of that process.

If the direction of community criticism seems to be pushing WotC in a direction that is actually opposite to the underlying ethical and moral justifications for that criticism in the first place, then its pretty important that the community change the message they're sending with their criticism if those goals are sincere. If e.g. people collectively want diversity of representation in games but their message gets passed through a corporate filter that turns it into 'its too risky to portray cultural differences, we will be criticized for doing it wrong', then you either have to message differently or you're going to end up with less diversity in your game as a result of asking for more.

So that's the question that should be relevant to the community: do you agree with WotC's interpretation with your previous criticism, about what is actually problematic? Because if not, you have to say it differently.

On the other hand there isn't really any utility to coming up with some kind of post-hoc justification for how WotC is always right except to WotC.

To your first point, I'm not sure how well you'll be able to accomplish that without understanding what it is that WoTC finds problematic, any of the follow up potential actions you reference are predicated on the existence of that understanding. So, unless and until WoTC says more, it sounds like you're proposing an impossible course of action.

As to community criticism, so you want to community - which utterly disagrees with itself and what it wants - to somehow start singing in perfect harmony so that WoTC gets messaged in a particular fashion? No offense, but that's a hefty ask.

As to the final point about whether there's a value of speculating at potential justifications? Disagree, if you can find justifications that lead to the same conclusion then you can make a judgement call of some type because you have independently verified the result by independent testing, however, without knowing how they achieved their results you cannot reasonably attack that position because you can't identify the factors/data which allowed for the conclusion. I acknowledge this is unsatisfactory because only one type of conclusion can be justified.

I’d continue the chain but WotC has already taken the fifth.

Well played!

[NichG]

To your first point, I'm not sure how well you'll be able to accomplish that without understanding what it is that WoTC finds problematic, any of the follow up potential actions you reference are predicated on the existence of that understanding. So, unless and until WoTC says more, it sounds like you're proposing an impossible course of action.

We don't need to take the position that Dark Sun is 'actually problematic' to observe the interaction between this organization and its community and understand its dynamics. Its much more useful to predicting their behavior to observe e.g. 'they think this is problematic but they don't seem to understand the actual harms or problems justifying that label' than if we assume a stance in which they must always be correct in what they say and its on us to justify that for them.

We can then consider the possibility that, for example, their goals aren't actually about minimizing social harms caused by their products, but rather are about avoiding controversy. Meaning that rather than engaging in positive but risky behavior, they'll minimize risk to themselves even at the cost of leaving social good on the table or causing social harms that they can't easily be criticized for. Which means that creating an atmosphere where things seem 'risky' has inherent cost, and we can understand that predictability of what will get them censured is important to consider over e.g. how strong or how immediate that censure could be.

As to community criticism, so you want to community - which utterly disagrees with itself and what it wants - to somehow start singing in perfect harmony so that WoTC gets messaged in a particular fashion? No offense, but that's a hefty ask.

I mean as a first step I'd like there to be more self-awareness of people in the community about the side-effects of this particular form of influence, and to be critical about the responsible use of this kind of method of feedback. Even just at the individual level, if a couple of people end up thinking more critically about the way in which mob influence functions and what it leads to, that's a better outcome than just letting things be. Clearly this is a powerful force given what happened with the OGL and CC, so its worth thinking carefully about the application of that force and the role it takes in the world. If, say, five people leave this thread just thinking about that carefully - not even necessarily agreeing with my specific position on the ethics of publishing Dark Sun - then that's a win. Even if it doesn't go beyond that, it means that locally the atmosphere of discourse would be just that bit more measured and thoughtful, which has (to me) some value worth the ink.

If in the end those five talk to another five each and so on and so on and it somehow leads to the community as a whole organizing to be more coherent in their feedback, even better! But it'd be outside of the realistic stakes of e.g. this singular discussion to achieve. But shifts do happen, and they're more often collective things of a lot of people making little pushes rather than one person giving the one perfect argument in one perfect place to the exact person who needs to hear it. So while I can't set 'this is what I aim to achieve with this post' as a reasonable thing, as a general pattern of behavior I think its better to post it than to not.

As to the final point about whether there's a value of speculating at potential justifications? Disagree, if you can find justifications that lead to the same conclusion then you can make a judgement call of some type because you have independently verified the result by independent testing, however, without knowing how they achieved their results you cannot reasonably attack that position because you can't identify the factors/data which allowed for the conclusion. I acknowledge this is unsatisfactory because only one type of conclusion can be justified.

To this, I'd say its very important to be aware of the knife edge between comprehension and empathy/sympathy. Its fine to say 'my goal is to understand, and therefore I start from the conclusion and work backwards', but when telling other people that they should approach things the same way you're implicitly saying that their goals are (or should/must be) your goals.

[Devils_Advocate]

Which is one of the reasons I think alignment still has a place. It's nice to have a tool to punish (functionally) evil PCs.

How is alignment useful for that? D&D ain't World of Darkness; there aren't really any special penalties for evil. Violence against your culture's enemies is as viable as in real life.

WoTC D&D is largely about killing for XP, previous D&D was about getting gold/treasure for XP, with some for defeating/killing enemies. Granted, they were certainly headed toward what WotC eventually did in terms of XP awards, but WotC disincentivized the clever play of getting the treasure without having to leave a trail of carnage. There were other choices. WotC D&D is a bit more like Diablo (Blizzard, original game) in that respect.

But either way, when player characters delve into monster-infested ruins of fallen civilizations to claim their lost treasures, they're plunging into enemy territory in order to loot what they can manage. "Is there a way in which they're better than the fanged green raiders of the human village who do the same thing?" feels like a pretty relevant question. So the PCs prefer not to fight, meting out violence only when they meet resistance? Did the orcs go out of their way to kill civilians who were just trying to flee or hide? Maybe they did! That certainly seems like it could make depriving the orcs of resources seem like a heroic act, at least until someone wonders whether they act that way in the first place due to a lack of resources. And of course at the point where humans understandably want to wipe out the orcs, we're right back to "Both sides of this conflict are doing the same things, so it's hard to see a moral difference between them".

It's pretty hard to make characters seem like good guys even in a relative sense because they prefer theft to murder. There's an argument to be made for not trying, and instead telling stories that don't require doing that.

I certainly hope not. They could always do something new that's more in line with their current standards.

A new Eberron, as it were? An intriguing possibility.

[EggKookoo]

How is alignment useful for that? D&D ain't World of Darkness; there aren't really any special penalties for evil. Violence against your culture's enemies is as viable as in real life.

The context of what I was replying to was around murderhoboism. If PCs aren't evil by alignment, then it's easy to explain consequences when they behave in evil ways. Using alignment in your game can help frame that.

As for penalties, they can be roleplaying/social as well as mechanical. A good fighter who acts evil might shift to evil, and NPCs will start to distrust him. Sure, you can do this without alignment, but alignment is helps make it easier to understand.

[Devils_Advocate]

Nope!

You can use "good" and "evil" to mean "behavior that people approve of" and "behavior that people disapprove of" respectively, but a lot of players understand good alignment and evil alignment to be things other than those, so calling those "good" and "evil" is going to be confusing and likely lead to arguments. And if that's not by definition what good and evil are, then whether an act is good or evil is a different matter from how that deed changes your standing in society.

Two civilizations are locked in bitter war. A hero to one side will be tortured and executed by the other side. One's standing in one society is the opposite of one's standing in the other society. Maybe you could encode social status as "honor" and be very clear that a character has different honor relative to different groups, but I wouldn't call that good alignment. In a case like that I would say that most probably neither side of the war is good.

[MoiMagnus]

Nope!

You can use "good" and "evil" to mean "behavior that people approve of" and "behavior that people disapprove of" respectively, but a lot of players understand good alignment and evil alignment to be things other than those, so calling those "good" and "evil" is going to be confusing and likely lead to arguments. And if that's not by definition what good and evil are, then whether an act is good or evil is a different matter from how that deed changes your standing in society.

Theoretically yes, and it happens in practice but I'd say not that often. Most settings have deities that have a specific alignment, and their alignment tend to match how much good they bring to the human's society, so this will have a profound effect on how societies view those behaviours. You should expect the average inhabitant of those world to confuse those two notions and to default to prejudice against "evil" behaviours and support for "good" behaviours.

[NichG]

The context of what I was replying to was around murderhoboism. If PCs aren't evil by alignment, then it's easy to explain consequences when they behave in evil ways. Using alignment in your game can help frame that.

This is very much a double-edged sword, because a lot of the source material explicitly calls out certain forms of murderhoboism as being aligned with Good. And uses real-life quotes of people who were trying to justify genocide in order to justify it in the game materials. Thanks Gygax.

You can impose conduct on players, but I think that should be a metagame table-level thing rather than trying to use an in-character thing for it. And you shouldn't try to impose moral attitudes on players at all, IMO.

[Corvus]

Well then, its obvious that the industry as a whole is problematic and we have no choice but to ban it. For the good of the children.

[Devils_Advocate]

Theoretically yes, and it happens in practice but I'd say not that often. Most settings have deities that have a specific alignment, and their alignment tend to match how much good they bring to the human's society, so this will have a profound effect on how societies view those behaviours. You should expect the average inhabitant of those world to confuse those two notions and to default to prejudice against "evil" behaviours and support for "good" behaviours.

Unfortunately, D&D defaults to basically feudal civilizations where currying favor with a tiny elite is way more useful than currying favor with the populace at large. So the teeming masses of peasants may agree with egalitarian gods who think that the teeming masses of peasants should be treated better, but their rulers are going to go for LN or LE gods of order and hierarchy and such. And the peasants will still want appease these deities, too, out of fear. Maybe being more organized helps everyone to work out a more stable arrangement where the peasants don't have to worry so much about starving and the nobles don't have to worry so much about revolts, but change too much and we're negating setting conceits. Which can be good! It's just by definition not the default.

I don't think that reputation with those who can grant you lands and titles and stuff really strongly correlates with working towards the betterment of sentient beings in general. In fact, disregarding that stuff in favor of being a Hero Of The People will probably earn you the enmity of the nobility, because they make it a habit to identify CG types who will eventually overthrow them in a wave of populism if they don't nip that in the bud, probably by sending the hero on an impossible quest while still young and naive. "Hey kid, do you like proving yourself?" (Yeah, we generally only hear about this when it backfires, but it's safe to assume that this works perfectly well nine times out of ten.)

[Jack of Spades]

Congrats everyone, took 47 pages but we finally got to the inevitable alignment debate. We can close the thread now. ;)

(Didn't scrub through to see if this is actually the convo circling back, because who has the time)

[EggKookoo]

Congrats everyone, took 47 pages but we finally got to the inevitable alignment debate. We can close the thread now. ;)

(Didn't scrub through to see if this is actually the convo circling back, because who has the time)

It's amazing how just an offhand, totally subjective mention of alignment is like a red flag in front of a bull. There's really nothing else like it.

[Devils_Advocate]

I'll admit that I find it difficult to understand others' perspectives on the matter. To me, alignment only makes sense as a setting element. I don't see what it's good for otherwise. But loads of people seem to assume that it doesn't and shouldn't even be or describe character traits, but instead be a metagame thing with no binding fluff, like XP or hit points. (I mean, if we're derailing anyway...)

Anyway, we're approaching page 50 and the original topic kind of stopped really being a matter of concern a while ago, so maybe we should just spin ongoing discussions off into new threads and close up shop here. Can't see much merit to a sequel (which I guess would be rather meta in a "new edition of a thing that has gone on long enough at this point" sort of way).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Corvus
Well then, its obvious that the industry as a whole is problematic and we have no choice but to ban it.

In the forthcoming edition of D&D, the only danger from monsters is that they might hug you too hard. Their CR is equal to their grapple modifier.

You overcome them by making a Diplomacy check to explain consent and personal boundaries.

[Telok]

All the D&D players I see are alignment "kill them all, they'll get the afterlife they deserve, and now they don't need stuff so we can take everything not sufficently nailed down" anyways. Yes, even when the supposed "social blowback" gets talked about. You just kill them all too and end up richer.

Weirdly only really seems a thing in D&D though.

[Xervous]

What other games started as XP for GP, then switched to a combat-as-sport swat team dungeon raid with a loot treadmill?

Haven’t looked in depth at the burning mess that is Shadowrun 6e but... maybe SR6e? I’d need old timers to confirm the karma - nuyen fluidity of older editions.