Morally correct adventure creation.

Context 

A couple nights ago, I watched a video by PaladinProse (link here) about Black Lodge Games (BLG) and what it means to "be a man" online. In the video, Mr. Prose highlights how BLG made a supplement for Shadowdark about a brothel (that doesn't shy away from being misogynistic), despite Kelsey being openly lesbian. It got me thinking about when you create a supplement or adventure for someone else's system. Is the act of creating the adventure an act of standing with the original author's stated beliefs or is it a case of replacing the author's stated beliefs with your own? 

From PaladinProse

Surprise! It's Nuanced and a Moral Grey Area!

This is something I don't hear much about because there is nuance and edge cases and two games can have a completely different answer. For small, brand new indie games, when someone releases a supplement it is a message that the author of the supplement is part of the indie game's community and therefore has the same beliefs. Meanwhile for larger games like Pathfinder, you can find all kinds of people making stuff for it even if they disagree in terms of beliefs as the game is used as a platform for others to send a message. You also get some games that are in the middle like Shadowdark that started with a community that rejected sexism and yet BLG was able to have commercial success (within the context of indie ttrpgs) with the Shucked Oyster. 

 

A drunken idea I had the night before writing this was to make a hack of Racial Holy War (a game made by a white supremacist group that is incredibly racist and should be Googled with discretion) and completely change it to be as anti-racist as possible. The issue I had with this once I sobered up was it feels like fighting fire with fire which is ineffective. It would be like those cyberpunk 5e hacks that still smell of a high fantasy elf-kissing engine. I feel that the game is small enough that even making the supplement about defiance, I end up making the original game more known and spread it's hateful ideology further.

From the Quickstart Guide

Moreover, I want to create a Helldivers style hack of a game called Marching Order and I don't want to drown out the message of a creator I respect but I might have to in order to fit my creative vision. It's the primary motivation of why I want to be a better game designer and examine the messages of the games that I love so dearly. Do any of this matter at the end of the day? I don't want bad actors to steal the spotlight of a marginalised creator. But I also want to create using whatever tools are required to manifest their creative vision. 

 

Personally I think the answer of the question stated above is that a creator moves their belief into the adventure and the adventure causes a death of two authors. One author dies once the work is released (as Marcia B. has noticed) and one where the intent of the author gets diluted further until it isn't there at all. Now that I know what happens, I will grapple on whether or not it is okay or if it even matters at all. 

Clickables!

I haven't posted in a while as I am now in college. Expect them to be more or less frequent, I am not sure yet. I am filled with ides but I am too tired to blog. 

Patchwork Paladin sketches a d20 

Gem Room Games overloads the faction relationship 

HiskiH does some dice math on systems like Daggerheart's crit system 

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