People with green skin in sandboxes

[akiyama]

Recently, I have become uncomfortable with the assumption in D&D that the world is divided into humans (including elves, dwarves and hobbits) and subhumans (everybody else, basically). If you kill humans, people will regard you as murderers, but if you kill subhumans people will regard you as heroes.

When there is a kobold lair, or a room full of kobolds in a dungeon, the unspoken assumption is that the PCs are expected to kill them, even if the only reason for doing so is that they might have treasure that the party can take. Even if the kobolds are not known to be murderous bandits or minions of evil and just happen to be living there, they are still kobolds and so it's okay to kill them. This never used to bother me, but it does now.

I wouldn't mind running a Blue Rose style game, where the assumption is that everybody, even the people with green skin and tusks, is basically good (or at least neutral), and problems are the result of a few thoroughly evil people who manipulate others with lies and threats, or of people blindly following unenlightened ideologies. I think the idea in Blue Rose is that the PCs - motivated by high ideals rather than money - will be using roleplaying and problem-solving skills most of the time and only kill unintelligent or demonic monsters, or really evil people.

The thing is, though, that's a rather different style of play to classic D&D. In some ways, I find the idea very attractive, but it's not the sort of style I'm used to, and I would find it difficult to come up with good adventures. I can easily design a dungeon-crawl or hex-crawl but I find anything more complicated than that requires a great deal of thought. Also, I can imagine running a series of adventures, or a long campaign, in which players fight some imminent threat to civilisation form the Forces of Evil (justifying the slaughter of their enemies), but I imagine this would necessarily limit the players choice of action - and I would generally prefer to allow the players to run their characters how they like and to do what they want.

So . . . if you were to abandon the idea that it's morally acceptable to kill subhumans, just because they are subhumans, could you still have an interesting megadungeon or sandbox campaign? I mean, you could get rid of intelligent foes altogether, but that would just be boring, wouldn't it? To put it another way - suppose there were no orcs, goblins, ogres etc. in the world, only humans. Could you run a megadungeon or a sandbox game in this world, without the PCs all being murderous Chaotic types?

[coffee]

Sure.

It all boils down to context.

In 'standard' D&D (whatever that means), the party is assumed to be the good guys and the orcs and such are assumed to be the bad guys. I've been in games where the latter assumption did not hold true, but that didn't stop the slaughter. What's needed is context.

We represented the incoming forces of good and decency, and were fighting against the existing empire which was basically evil. We were revolutionaries. We pledged our lives and our sacred honor for the cause -- and we eventually prevailed.

Orcs in this game were not evil; instead they were communists. Not evil Soviet Union/KGB type communists, but more like really buff hippies.

So, yeah, if you have the right context, you can still have conflict and even combat without necessarily demonizing the green guys.

But it's a lot easier if you can point to them and say "An orc! Kill it!"

[Stonegiant]

See in our campaign the humanoids are intelligent creatures but they are supernatural creatures at the same time. Goblins are formed out of the Stygian blackness in the dark places of the earth and are made out of all that is evil. There are no little goblins running around and no amount of evangelizing is going to change them either.

[philotomy]

Jul 4, 2008 2:41:35 GMT -6 Stonegiant said:

See in our campaign the humanoids are intelligent creatures but they are supernatural creatures at the same time. Goblins are formed out of the Stygian blackness in the dark places of the earth and are made out of all that is evil. There are no little goblins running around and no amount of evangelizing is going to change them either.

My approach is the same. However, I *do* have the pitter-patter of little humanoids running around. It's not that they're innocent and uncorrupted versions of the full-grown kind, it's more like a cruel trick to sucker gullible types. You spare them and take them in to nurture them in a positive environment, and some night they slit your belly to eat your liver.

That's not to say that a "humanoids are people too" approach isn't a valid way to approach the game, it's just not my cup of tea.

[philotomy]

I posted on this, before, over at Knights-n-Knaves. I'm re-posting it because I'm fond of the post.

I, too, prefer my humanoids as inherently twisted, evil beings that spawn and lurk in darkness, waiting to leap out and steal your babies for their stew-pots. Hell, goblins probably don't even breed; I bet they grow in fleshy pods deep underground, or burble about in black pools until they're strong enough to drag their dripping frames from the mire.

In general, my humanoids aren't misunderstood people that "look different and didn't have the same opportunities as you." They're vicious, dangerous monsters that will slit your belly to steal your liver if you cut them any slack at all.

[coffee]

I think part of the appeal of Philotomy's viewpoint is the escapism angle.

In the real world, it's often difficult to know who our real enemies are. And even if we do, it's not always possible to deal with them in a terminal way.

That's why, in a game like D&D, I like being able to say "An orc! Kill it!" and proceed to do just that. It provides me with a sense of order that the real world frequently lacks.


In short, I play games to escape the real world. I don't want to play the same thing I have to live.

[akiyama]

But I like the possibility of PCs being able to negotiate with or forge temporary alliances with some humanoids; the possibility of small numbers of humanoids existing in cities alongside humans (as servants or slaves, probably) the possibility of humanoids having their own civilisations capable of supporting towns, citadels and armies, and the possibility that someone other than demon-worshippers or insane wizards would ally themselves with humanoids or hire them as minions.

All of which means, I think, that humanoids in my world can't be beings of pure evil, utterly incapable of anything other than sadism or selfishness. I can see the appeal of this approach, but I think it excludes certain possibilities that can make the game-world a more interesting place.

Killing orcs is fun. Killing orc babies is not fun. I don't want a "black and white" moral universe. But I don't want the players to have to deal with moral dilemmas every other encounter. What I would like is to have my cake and eat it too, but perhaps that's not possible.

[jjarvis]

Jul 4, 2008 1:52:16 GMT -6 akiyama said:

Recently, I have become uncomfortable with the assumption in D&D that the world is divided into humans (including elves, dwarves and hobbits) and subhumans (everybody else, basically).

It's Lawfuls vs Chaotics.

When there is a kobold lair, or a room full of kobolds in a dungeon, the unspoken assumption is that the PCs are expected to kill them, even if the only reason for doing so is that they might have treasure that the party can take. Even if the kobolds are not known to be murderous bandits or minions of evil and just happen to be living there, they are still kobolds and so it's okay to kill them.

They are known to be murderous bandits and minions of evil because they are kobolds. The dont' just happen to be anywhere they are part of the cancer of chaos/evil.

So . . . if you were to abandon the idea that it's morally acceptable to kill subhumans, just because they are subhumans, could you still have an interesting megadungeon or sandbox campaign?

possibly, but why bother with nonhumans/subhumans if they are just people in funny suits?

Could you run a megadungeon or a sandbox game in this world, without the PCs all being murderous Chaotic types?

Mine were usually heroic Lawfuls or mercenary neutrals. Yeah, you could have a sandbox campaign without the default lawful rqace/chaotic races scheme.

[dwayanu]

I don't see a problem with ditching "color coding." It has never been the case in D&D that all humans are good, and OD&D allowed for Neutral as well as Chaotic orcs.

If you're running a dungeon, then you pretty much need "bad guys." That does not IMO mean they must (after Tolkien's fashion) be born bad.

That said, much emphasis on Evil Ones being reformable, or having children (innocent or otherwise) at the battle front, presents moral quandaries that may be more a distraction from the fun of the game than an addition to it. YMMV!

[dwayanu]

The Trolls of RuneQuest's Glorantha are among the best developed alien species (and cultures) in all of gaming.

Less developed but more strikingly exotic are the Herd Men kept by the Morokanth of Prax. Although they look like humans, they are but beasts -- and the human tribes of Prax treat them just so. Outsiders tell tales of cannibalism based on misunderstanding the matter.

[Deleted]

I travel the same route Stonegiant mentioned. Goblins, orcs, etc. are just "born" of the murky darkness that is chaos. No little goblins runnin' around in my world. It's clear cut & simple. I don't really want to delve into moral relatives in my games. Sure, PC's can "negotiate" with NPC's, & why not? If there is something to be gained from it, from both sides, then go for it. Delving any deeper than that just doesn't sit well with me, or more importantly, my players.

But can you run a game "Blue Rose" style using OD&D? Absolutely you can. It's all your own personal taste, & that of your players. As to how to approach it, I haven't the foggiest...

[Deleted]

Another thing to keep in mind is that Gygax thought of OD&D as a game and many rules elements are not meant to simulate the real world or even a fantasy world with verisimilitude. I know he addresses that in an early issue of The Dragon, though which one it was escapes me. Also, in the 1st Edition DMG he writes, "Of course the ultimate reason and justification is a playable and interesting game, and how much rationalization can actually go into a fantasy game? . . . [AD&D] does not stress any realism . . . it does little to attempt to simulate anything either. . . . the reader should understand that AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pasttime . . . but in no case something to be taken seriously."

So, basically, D&D was never meant to be more than what most video games offer today, something to do for fun with a group of friends. So killing monsters doesn't really pose a moral question because they are just elements in a game. In chess you don't spend much time ruminating about whether or not your church Bishop should be killing the peasant Pawn. You just capture the piece and move on. However, if you and your players enjoy this type of moral deliberation, then obviously you can make it part of your games.

[philotomy]

FWIW, humans would be my "go-to" choice for exploring moral deliberation and ambiguity. In D&D, I view humans as special and set apart in certain ways (and the game rules tend to support that approach). They burn bright and furiously in their relatively short lives, choosing their path freely; they're more independent, in some way. They're not as closely bound to the cosmic fabric as the old races.

That's just my spin, of course. (Heavily influenced by pulp S&S and fantasy fiction, the tropes of traditional D&D, et cetera.)

[dwayanu]

I just downloaded and looked over the Blue Rose Fast Play document, and found no indication of anything unusual rules-wise. It's apparently just a stripped-down D20 System D&D. If there's anything more exotic in the full version, I missed mention of it.

If my appraisal is accurate, I reckon OD&D should make about as fit a basis for such a game. Most mechanical elements are concerned with fighting, leaving role-playing to a more "free style" approach.

In my opinion, that is usually the best way to go about it.

I once ran a scenario for a home-brewed superhero game that played on expectations raised by stereotypes of the physically alien, and on knee-jerk interpretations of certain events. As it happened, the players "fell for it" with dramatic results.

If they'd figured out more, there could still have been drama -- but of a different tenor. Alternatively, it could have become a minor episode rather than taking up a whole session.

Although this was a very story-oriented scenario (designed to make great use of the literary element called theme), the brief rule-set was all about the usual "bam-pow-zap!" stuff. I don't recall at any point thinking that I needed to add rules; the players' own thoughts, feelings and choices were plenty to make the game a powerful experience.

My point is that one does not really need rules for role-playing. They can be effective in an appropriate context; IMO, Traits and Passions are a big part of the fun in King Arthur Pendragon. However, in general they are not necessary -- and may even get in the way.

[dwayanu]

I tend not to use humanoids, or at least not the full range of them, in my D&D games. The reason is that they do not figure much in the classic "sword and sorcery" fiction that chiefly inspires me. They are in my mind too strongly associated with Tolkien, and his tales are far removed in tone from my usual preference as an OD&D DM. (AD&D feels lacking to me without them!)

Besides mundane human evil, it's common in S&S to encounter supernatural evil. Lovecraftian Things Man Was Not Meant to Know fit in quite well. The "gods" of the Hyborian Age seem mainly to be beings of that sort; Mitra, the most notable exception, may be but a figment of men's imagination.

Such "devils" can corrupt those who "sell their souls." They can twist the natural into thoroughly unnatural and inimical forms, and nature itself is hardly benevolent to mankind (or even necessarily aware of us).

There's plenty of scope for Good and Evil without dwarfs, elves, goblins, trolls and so on -- or with them as free-willed as humans.

[jimlotfp]

Jul 4, 2008 21:45:33 GMT -6 @ptingler said:

Another thing to keep in mind is that Gygax thought of OD&D as a game and many rules elements are not meant to simulate the real world or even a fantasy world with verisimilitude. I know he addresses that in an early issue of The Dragon, though which one it was escapes me. Also, in the 1st Edition DMG he writes, "Of course the ultimate reason and justification is a playable and interesting game, and how much rationalization can actually go into a fantasy game? . . . [AD&D] does not stress any realism . . . it does little to attempt to simulate anything either. . . . the reader should understand that AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pasttime . . . but in no case something to be taken seriously."

So, basically, D&D was never meant to be more than what most video games offer today, something to do for fun with a group of friends. So killing monsters doesn't really pose a moral question because they are just elements in a game. In chess you don't spend much time ruminating about whether or not your church Bishop should be killing the peasant Pawn. You just capture the piece and move on. However, if you and your players enjoy this type of moral deliberation, then obviously you can make it part of your games.

When did the religious crusades against D&D begin? Because what Gygax says in that passage about D&D is completely contradicted by the actual content of the books. I wonder if he wasn't just exhibiting CYA behavior. I mean, pages 237 - 239 of that same book (for just one example) wouldn't belong in a game that wasn't attempting to simulate anything, or a game that makes a player so far removed from the game world that taking action is like making a move in chess.

As for the original poster:

akiyama said:

When there is a kobold lair, or a room full of kobolds in a dungeon, the unspoken assumption is that the PCs are expected to kill them, even if the only reason for doing so is that they might have treasure that the party can take. Even if the kobolds are not known to be murderous bandits or minions of evil and just happen to be living there, they are still kobolds and so it's okay to kill them. This never used to bother me, but it does now.

Good. Good! Don't shy away from this, but don't water down the issue by just making the humanoids simply "misunderstood," either. Milk it for all the drama that it's worth.

Humanoid children... well, Keep on the Borderlands is a fantastic precedent: They exist as far as Gygax was concerned. The fact that half orcs exist should also settle the matter.

As for the morality of killing them... well... I always like to make my players sweat, so of COURSE I don't say that they're all irredeemably evil by nature. And if humanoid children aren't evil by nature, then slaughtering them is an evil act. As is leaving them in the lair amidst the gore of their slaughtered relatives after you've dealt with the combatants.

True evil gamemastering: Magic-user casts sleep on a group of humanoid guards in a lair. Just as the sleeping foes are about to be "dealt with," in comes a child, clutching the equivalent of a teddy bear (make it some stuffed human baby if you really want to make the whole situation truly macabre and bizarre), saying in broken common, "What are you doing to my daddy?"

There is a ridiculous amount of referee pride when a group of players starts thinking in terms of, "We've got to get the <macguffin> out of the orc lair with a minimal loss of life!"

Of course "not irredeemably evil" doesn't mean "just people that look different." What if humanoids had, ahhh, nutritional requirements that are a bit... distasteful or unacceptable? Think of how the doctor rewarded Bub to make him behave in Day of the Dead... so you can have little bits such as the warlike nature of humanoids is just a psychological defense because if they thought of their food as people, many of them wouldn't eat, and that's it for the race. Introduce little bits like most of the tribe not speaking common, and the ones that do will be smaller with less hit points due to not being properly nourished, because they couldn't bring themselves to eat anything that was begging for mercy... but they'll still support the success of their tribe so they'll still stick you if they have the chance.

Have an inn at the edge of civilization, and have the innkeeper pay bounties for humanoid scalps. Extra money and xp for killing gobbos! Then they find out their "complimentary breakfast" is made of orc meat... see how the players react.

Play the Slavers series (I know this is an OD&D board, but if the guy I quoted can reference AD&D... ) but replace all the humanoid henchmen with humans, and make all the slaves humanoid.

(then there's the Danger at Dunwater example...)

Or sometimes I just take all the incidences of "orc" and just replace them with "savage" humans. You invade their lair, and human women and children are realizing their way of life is going to disappear if they don't fight... what does your character do when there's a six year old kid trying to kill them? What, you thought invading a tribe's home was going to be a simple slice and dice affair?

Remember the battle of Helm's Deep? All the kids being suited up? And what would have happened if the orcs won and broke through to the caves below? When you invade a lair, you are the orcs to the natives, be they human or not.

You know what makes players confused? Evil elves. Not drow. I mean making regular everyday elves hostile towards humans. Screw this "our time is past, and we are the wise old buddies of these newfangled humans who shall inherit the world." Nope. "It's not to late to reclaim this world which was once ours!"

Usually when I introduce this element into a campaign (and I always do, sooner or later), the first thing that happens is the players want to stop dealing with it altogether and go fight bestial enemies or true EVIL (undead!) things instead. Which works for me.

[Deleted]

Jul 5, 2008 3:19:51 GMT -6 jimlotfp said:

Magic-user casts sleep on a group of humanoid guards in a lair. Just as the sleeping foes are about to be "dealt with," in comes a child, clutching the equivalent of a teddy bear (make it some stuffed human baby if you really want to make the whole situation truly macabre and bizarre), saying in broken common, "What are you doing to my daddy?"

Wow...now that's pretty frosty.

Jul 5, 2008 3:19:51 GMT -6 jimlotfp said:

Have an inn at the edge of civilization, and have the innkeeper pay bounties for humanoid scalps. Extra money and xp for killing gobbos! Then they find out their "complimentary breakfast" is made of orc meat... see how the players react.

Yum!!! Makes me want to try & convince the missus to finally move to Truckee, CA. & open "The Donner Party Eatery" -- Finger Foods & all that. ;D

And an EXALT for you sir...

[Finarvyn]

I think that the Tolkien effect is one prime example of "us" versus "them" and in this way older Chainmail campaigns began as "good guys" versus "bad guys" so OD&D simply continued this spirit.

I see a couple of events which diverged from this philosophy:
(1) Being able to play a half-orc contributed to the "orcs are people, too" idea.
(2) Drizz't (sp) the Happy Jolly Drow did the same.

In both of these examples, a race designed to bepure evil-nasty found itself to be humanized and gradually has eroded away their evil-nasty-ness.

Tolkien never named his Nazgul because he didn't want them to become too familliar or have the reader identify with them. If he had, we'd probably have rules for playing a Happy-Jolly Nazgul as well. :-)

[jjarvis]

Jul 5, 2008 3:19:51 GMT -6 jimlotfp said:

Remember the battle of Helm's Deep? All the kids being suited up? And what would have happened if the orcs won and broke through to the caves below? When you invade a lair, you are the orcs to the natives, be they human or not.

You are not the orc invaders if you aren't orcs. When attacking an orc lair the orcs aren't defending themselves in what could be the last few days of humanity. When assaulting an orc stronghold a people of courage, honor, deep tradition and promise aren't in danger of being exterminated...they are orcs. Orcs are openly cannibalistic (yes they eat each other), predatory, hostile, thieving despoilers not a people with as much scope and capability as humans.

If you want different people with a different viewpoint, use people. If you want foul disgusting humanoids use orcs and kin.

The evil elf spin is a good one and does remind players not to make foolish assumptions about everything. It also has mythical support, not all elves have been good or friendly with humanity in all traditions.

[dwayanu]

I have a DMG with only 236 pages, and another in which pp. 237-240 collect various tables for quick reference. I suppose that Jim meant that those tables indicate a relevant quality of "simulation."

Tolkien seems pretty much to have forgotten the Nazgul over most of TLOTR. Sauron has these awesome henchmen, but does not deploy them effectively. I wonder what they're doing for most of the War of the Ring and the Quest of the Fellowship. (Perhaps it's a fault of my memory, as I have not read the books in years.)

[jjarvis]

Of the Nazgul one is known by title: The Witch King of Angmar. Another by name - Khamu'l (could be a title too).

What they do- They take over a few kingdoms. They hunt for Baggins of the Shire. They stab Frodo at weathertop. Their horses are drowned when they are swept away in the river Bruinen. They show up for the big battle the witch king is slain, the 8 others rush to mt doom to stop Frodo and are destroyed as the ring is.

They do a heck of a lot of traveling about really, that has to take up a lot of their usefulness as henchmen.

[Deleted]

Jul 5, 2008 3:19:51 GMT -6 jimlotfp said:

When did the religious crusades against D&D begin? Because what Gygax says in that passage about D&D is completely contradicted by the actual content of the books. I wonder if he wasn't just exhibiting CYA behavior. I mean, pages 237 - 239 of that same book (for just one example) wouldn't belong in a game that wasn't attempting to simulate anything, or a game that makes a player so far removed from the game world that taking action is like making a move in chess.

Jul 5, 2008 8:30:44 GMT -6 dwayanu said:

I have a DMG with only 236 pages, and another in which pp. 237-240 collect various tables for quick reference. I suppose that Jim meant that those tables indicate a relevant quality of "simulation."

The DMG refers to simulation in the context of the simulation vs. game school of thought that was brewing at the time (and more recently in the form of the GNS stuff out of the Forge). To see the two different approaches taken during the 1970's, look at Chivalry and Sorcery versus OD&D. You'll see a much stronger move towards simulation with C&S than was being done with OD&D.

Strategic Review #2 (from 1975) states in an editorial about TSR by Brian Blume that "Some attempt to down-grade the game aspect of our hobby and pretend to simulate reality. We at TSR believe that it is impossible to simulate real-life situations, although some of the excitement and challenge of reality can be reflected in a game, although a game always remains a game." The underlined emphasis is in the original.

Regarding the religious uproar and public controversies, I was only a child at that time so I went ahead and looked up some information on Wikipedia. The information on there seems to indicate that the whole BADD thing started in 1982 and that the Jack Chick literature started in 1984. So both issues were well after the original publishing and writing of 1st Edition AD&D.

[jimlotfp]

Jul 5, 2008 8:30:44 GMT -6 dwayanu said:

I have a DMG with only 236 pages, and another in which pp. 237-240 collect various tables for quick reference. I suppose that Jim meant that those tables indicate a relevant quality of "simulation."

That was just one example. If they're going to include tables with over a dozen different ways to randomly determine personality, if we're supposed to care about height and weight and such, I'm going to expect that they expect players to interact with the game world as if it's not just all make-believe.

For me, it's the setting that's most important, and any game elements are added on top of that. And for me, D&D is a great fit for my setting.

[ewilen]

I don't personally dig the "mind f***" (wait can I say that here?) aspect of tossing in orc kids after the players have been set up with the default expectation of "all orcs/goblins/etc. are evil". YMMV of course.

However if you erase the default expectation, it doesn't smack of being a deliberately no-win moral hypothetical.

I have to say that Gary Gygax probably set me on the road to seeing things this way. Regardless of other details throughout D&D/AD&D, the portrayal of humanoids in the Monster Manual, probably the references to females and young, somehow got me to thinking of them as "Injuns" in the Wild West sense, and from there you have the entire spectrum of fictional approaches from the unsavory and outdated portrayals to noble savages.

And from there the next step (historically) probably is Runequest, where human cultures can be just as diverse as humanoid ones, and almost nobody is objectively "evil" even though they have good reasons for killing each other. Other games/settings also developed this idea but I don't want to go too far off-topic for the board.

Going to back to the original post, in the last dungeon I ran, I didn't include any womenfolk or kiddies with the goblins, but I basically played them up as more "chaotic" than "evil" per se. (It was a Basic game, but like OD&D, there's no Good-Evil axis in alignment.) So they were chaotic in the sense of being barbaric raiders, uncivilized, and generally unfriendly to humans. The party in turn wasn't really all that "good"--they were opportunistic adventurers looking to get rich, not rid the world of bad stuff. So although they killed a couple isolated goblins by surprise, they ended up using guile to trick the rest, and they walked off with the big treasure without killing any more than really necessary.

[redpriest]

I was just thinking the other day that I don't get to deal with moral dilemmas nearly often enough in my everyday life, so thought that maybe any number of my gaming alter egos should have in on the fun as well. Not! I can appreciate that some gamers really like to delve deeply into the the immersion aspect of RPGs, but there's a point where you just start sliding into Vampire: The Posing. For me, there's no doubt that a sword & sorcery world is too savage, and unforgiving, a place to attempt to indulge in 21st century Earth sensitivities.

I agree however, up to a point, that not all green-skinned beings are made for killing. Some of them are made for other activities.

[Thorulfr]

Jul 5, 2008 12:34:23 GMT -6 @ptingler said:

Regarding the religious uproar and public controversies, I was only a child at that time so I went ahead and looked up some information on Wikipedia. The information on there seems to indicate that the whole BADD thing started in 1982 and that the Jack Chick literature started in 1984. So both issues were well after the original publishing and writing of 1st Edition AD&D.

I can remember the backlash starting at least as early as 1981: Several role-playing groups used to meet in the upstairs room at the city-run 'teen center', and sometime during 1980-81 they had to stop allowing us to play D&D, due to "concerns" from some of the parents. (Fortunately, the ban didn't include Traveller, Morrow Project, or cutthroat games of Diplomacy.)

[philotomy]

One of the schools I attended in the early 80s banned the play of D&D at school -- we'd been playing at lunch or during recess (officially it was banned because it was "disruptive," but I think there was some of the "evil influence" factor involved, too). We promptly invented a new game called "Castle," and wrote up our own rules. Of course, "Castle" was pretty much a D&D clone (although we did create some new rules, spells, magic items, and such).

[driver]

Jul 7, 2008 16:11:34 GMT -6 Thorulfr said:

Several role-playing groups used to meet in the upstairs room at the city-run 'teen center', and sometime during 1980-81 they had to stop allowing us to play D&D, due to "concerns" from some of the parents. (Fortunately, the ban didn't include Traveller, Morrow Project, or cutthroat games of Diplomacy.)

LOL, this mirrors my experience ... the public library wouldn't let us play D&D, but they let us play the hell out of RuneQuest, which was about ten times as bloody, and ridiculously detailed regarding its heathen cults.

[jimlotfp]

Jul 7, 2008 14:52:33 GMT -6 redpriest said:

For me, there's no doubt that a sword & sorcery world is too savage, and unforgiving, a place to attempt to indulge in 21st century Earth sensitivities.

That's the fun of it. If they role-play with modern-day moral sensibilities, instead of something appropriate to the setting, they're screwed.

[calithena]

Driver - sad but hilarious similar true story from my own neck of the woods - a friend's mom literally burned his D&D books but let him keep his Arduin Grimoires.