Warning: This article discusses topics that are for mature readers. The ideas presented herein are intended to encourage a frank and mature discussion about adding darker, seedier topics to games with mature players. These ideas are being presented in the context of an imaginary, fantasy, role-playing game and are in no way intended to encourage, promote or glamourize them.
Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, Slavery. These are not the kind of things you generally think about including in a typical D&D game. After all, in a fantasy world why not preserve the fantasy and keep things idyllic? The only Evil (with a capital “E”) in most D&D campaigns are the monsters and NPCs bent on ruling or destroying the world. These are things the heroes can deal with, often at the end of a sword. Throwing more complicated Evils into a campaign setting, problems like substances abuse and slavery, for example, are not generally the kinds of things that can a) be handled by the PCs alone, or b) resolved in a single adventure. These are “big picture” problems that would just muddy the waters of most D&D campaign settings. Yet they are problems and issues that would certainly be present in most campaign settings. After all, these are problems that almost every society on Earth has faced and still does face in one way or another. So why not add them to your role-playing games and give the players a chance to try to do something about it?
A lot of gamers (I’d even go so far as to say most gamers) are unlikely to want these kind of big picture topics to be relevant to their adventures. They add little or no value to the normal exploration and monster combat that makes up so much of D&D adventures. Players want their PC’s to explore ancient runes, delve the deepest dungeons, rescue the princess, and slay the dragon. They don’t want to deal with the problems that drug abuse can have on individuals or on a society. They only want to focus on the positive aspects of the game and the positive aspects of the gaming world.
But just because these kinds of problems are not described or explored in most games doesn’t mean that they don’t (or couldn’t) exist if the DM chose to make them more prominent. These Evils are not things that I would encourage most people to add to their campaign world, but for gamers with years of experience exploring these issues in-game could add something that we’ve always lacked in our game – a dose of gritty reality.
The Sex Trade
In a world with so many different races and exotic creatures there are certainly sexual encounters between many of the various races. After all we have Half-Elves so we know that the Humans and Elves interbred liberally at some point in their cultures’ past. It seems naive to believe that none of the other races fooled around. It’s unlikely that many of these unusual pairings led to offspring, but there was certainly interracial sexual exploration.
In real life there is a thriving sex trade where a lot of people make a lot of money. I don’t see thing being any different in a fantasy camping setting. At the most basic level, fantasy settings usually have brothels and strip clubs. After all, the curiosity factor would likely draw a lot of visitors. On the rare occasions when these settings were included in games I’ve played, the DM always descried the employees of these locales as willing participants. Encounters in-game were always consensual; the employees provided a service for which they were handsomely compensated. There was never any violence or hint that someone was doing this against their will. After all this is a fantasy setting. So is there any value in exploring the grittier, dirtier, more realistic angle of how the sex trade would likely run in a fantasy setting?
Drugs and Alcohol
Substance abuse is a problem that has plagued mankind for centuries. Yet in most D&D setting there is no mention of illicit drugs. The only substance that even comes close is alcohol. However, no one is ever seen as having a problem with booze. Sure the Dwarves as a race like their ale a bit more than most others, and every tavern my PCs ever visit always have at least one NPC described as the local drunk, but never have we had to deal with an in-game alcoholic or the problems related to their substance abuse. Perhaps this is because alcohol is seen as more socially acceptable. In-game alcohol consumption is usually seen as funny and a way to let PCs do crazy things without fear of consequence, but even then the actions are usually more playful than harmful.
When it comes to more traditional hard drugs I’ve never encountered anyone in a fantasy RPG who cultivated, sold, distributed or consumed drugs, aside from the occasional NPC with pipeweed (which we always played as tobacco despite Tolkien’s allusion to it being more potent). Yet if we think about all of the fantastic plants and animals that make up most campaign worlds there are certainly all kinds of things that will get you high. Many articles have been written about various poisons available in D&D, so you know that there is a thriving market (although usually an illegal market) for these poisons. Someone is obviously doing some experimentation to determine which substances are dangerous and documenting the effects. It’s not too difficult to imagine that during this experimentation some of the substances identified are basically drugs.
Substance abuse is a real problem that has devastating effects on the people who use and the people in their lives. No one takes drugs with the intention of becoming an addict, but they all felt that they had a good reason to start. In a fantasy world it’s possible that some drugs in the campaign might actually provide mechanical benefits to users. This might explain why PCs would want to try them. However, most drugs are incredibly addictive so there is always risk.
Wherever there are drugs and alcohol there are people making money off of them. If the drugs are cultivated from plants then territories where they grow will be controlled by the people making money. Likewise if a creature’s fluids, scales, horns, or organs are ingredients for drugs then those creatures will be hunted or bred for profit.
Slavery
Slavery is actually some thing that we do see in some D&D adventures, but when we do it’s lesser, monstrous races like Goblins or Kobolds that are usually the enslaved creatures. This is deemed acceptable to a certain extent because these are monsters and not people. Occasionally adventurs will require that the PCs rescue victims from civilized society who were kidnapped and forced into some kind of slave labour. But these are usually one-off scenarios where a group of bandits needs workers to help them transport goods or a renegade miner is looking for unpaid labourers to work his mine. Very few games have sentient races enslaving other sentient races as a way of life; Dark Sun being one of the few notable exceptions.
Yet it is possible, and highly probable, that some races and cultures in a fantasy setting would have entire economies built on slavery and ownership of others. It might be the Humans enslaving all the other non-human races or that Dwarves enslave the Elves. Regardless of the specifics, buying, selling and owning slaves is deemed acceptable in the context of these societies and that’s just the way things are. In Eberron House Cannith created artificial beings as warriors but eventually the Warforged attained a level of sentience that required they be granted their freedom. Until then, owning Warforged wasn’t any different from owning a sword. Attitudes will be very different in these game worlds where slavery is commonplace than they are in real life.
Keeping Up The Fantasy
Fantasy gaming is a form of escape. People play D&D and other fantasy RPGs to play heroic characters that can do extraordinary things. Players want to face conflicts they can defeat and then move on. Very few are interested in playing in any setting where NPCs are forced into the sex trade, towns have rampant drug abuse, and slavery is acceptable. These are just a few topics that, although they could be included into any setting, are not generally something we want to include. After all, most of us get enough reality in real life; we play games to have fun and enjoy the experience.
Role-playing an encounter where the PCs are powerless to stop a death from a drug overdose, or have to interact with the alcoholic who beats his kids, or must traffic in slaves to get the money they need to complete their quest, isn’t something most of us want to experience. Yet some gamers, especially those who have played for a long time and are looking to add some realism and grit to their campaigns, might want to see how things would change by talking about the things we never talk about in D&D. They’re not doing it so that their characters can partake in these deplorable acts; they just want to see the fantasy world without the romanticism and rose-coloured glasses. I’m not saying that the games will be better or worse, but adding any of these elements will certainly change the kind of adventures your PCs will participate in if there is more Evil in the game world.
Gritty Fantasy Fiction
Now that I’ve had my say I open the floor to your feedback and comments. Do you think that there is any benefit to adding these bigger picture problems and issues to D&D? Should fantasy role-playing games remain idyllic and romantic and simply ignore that any of these things could possible exist? How have these elements, or other Evils, been portrayed in your games? Do you romanticize them or just exclude them all together?
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1 2 3 4 Next »I always have those elements in my games I dm. My players don't run heroic missions.
You might want to play Eberron ;) Substance abuse is part of the setting from simple criminal organizations distributing standard chemical substances to main villain organizations bend on world domination using magical enhanced drugs that open the users mind to mental influence. It is also hinted at as a potenial problem/source of adventure in FR, in the lawful good nation of Cormyr of all places, although those references are indeed somewhat hidden and definitely new.
I am definitely surprised, that you never encountered slavery in a typical D&D campaign, since that is part and parcel for many official settings since before 1st edition. Think of settings like Dark Sun, but even Mystara and the Forgotten Realms include non-evil human civilizations where slavery is part of the economy system. I admit rarely having been in a campaign, besides a Dark Sun game, in which it took a central role. The fact is that long term social problems are not something that can be solved by adventurers.
The only thing that I indeed rarely, if ever, have seen is the abuses of the sex trade, and I suspect that out of the three (I would btw make it four and add racism) it is the one that is actually a real taboo. The few games were brothels are part of the game, they tend to be comic diversion in between adventures.
I think what makes dealing with these issues in game so hard is that many people have very polarizing convictions about things like prostitution and drug use. Often when these issues come up in social life it can cause even the most mild mannered people to don a "moral policemen's cap" due to some relgious, philosophical or political stance that they have and people start getting labeled and judged by their peers for thier own convictions, which doesn't make cooperative story telling easier.
That being said I think RPGs might be the best place possible for people to work out their stigmas and rough feelings about some of these topics, as after all it's just a game and the degree of seperation from real life can be a useful safety. As is the case with most practices that are frowned upon by the larger society there is a lot of misinformation and ignorence, and you might discover upon testing the waters that you were a secert bigot towards prostitutes. Or maybe you learn that you don't actually know anything about drug use, and the way that you have looked down upon it since your parents told you not to do drugs as a kid doesn't quite hold up.
I guess it most people's leasure time they don't want to be confronted, challenged or forced to examine their personal values too seriously, which is what the complex issues mentioned in this article do. For a lot of people that's not their idea of fun.
I kind of see both sides of the coin here. Personally, I would love to tackle those types of topics in an RPG setting. I know I crave these in other forms of entertainment. A good example would be Punisher MAX. That comic book series really took a unique, dark, and gritty angle with storytelling you would not find anywhere else.
I want to put my PCs in more morally ambiguous and gritty settings where there is no obvious right or wrong answer. I think putting PCs in an uncomfortable position where they truly have to parse out a solution is just good gaming.
I do also see that some of these issues can bring out the person's own morality and values more than their characters. While most of us are probably against slavery, exploitation of women, and heavy drug use, we may disagree about how to solve the problem. I could easily see people clashing in and out of game over differing morality, values, social norms, and even political ideologies.
Add to this the fact that you're having to smash Kobolds in the face, you are setting up a really charged environment. This could elevate the game to new and interesting heights or devolve into an episode of Jerry Springer.
Interesting and thought provoking article, though. I look forward to seeing where the discussion takes us.
Running a Dark Sun game, I'd say the slavery bit is ever-present.
I definitely think there's a benefit to adding these kinds of issues, as long as they're treated seriously. The strong feelings that these situations can create help improve immersion and investment in a setting and its characters. It also gives people a chance to approach some of them in a safe space, where their characters are empowered to do something about it. I wrote a post about something similar last week, which I've linked below.
In Eberron, Changelings are often involved in the sex trade at varying levels of willingness. For a grey area, think about a changeling that dislikes prostituion but chooses that because it's the only way to make enough money to deal with another problem.
In at one published adventure series there is a side-quest dealing with an exotic brothel where the prostitues have been changed with biomancy. I'm running it to where they can leave at any time and be considered freaks, or they can work to pay for changing themselves back. Of course this is the company store problem where it would take decades to get free.
As for slavery and D&D, I can't stop thinking about an entry from the 3.5e Monster Manual III. If you have it handy, turn to page 83 and read the paragraph "Harsaafs in Eberron". This establishes them as a race enslaved by humanity (even though they mention this is humanity from Sarlona, this is before the inspired took over). Then read the mechanics of the race.
For those without a book handy, Harsaafs are a 6 HD monstrous humanoid race with DR5/Bludgeoning, SR 17, Fast healing 3, with a flaming aura and a 1/day blast that damages and blinds anybody around. Oh, and they can turn into a pile of mobile sand that can fit through gaps or crevices less than one-quarter inch wide.
This is a slave race? Enslaved by mere humans?
I think you make some very good points in this article, but you don't take it far enough. For each issue, you seem to simply to restate what it is and why it would exist in a game world.
That's good, but what I'd like to see are concrete ways regarding how you can add these to your game without offending people, and what form it'd take. Possibly some further analysis regarding why these freak people out and how to deal with them.
Admittedly, the above are exceptionally difficult to write about, since they get into issues that are different around every game table, but I can't help but feel like there's more to be said on these topics.
Gnolls are notorious slavers, but then again you have the same problem with the ones performing evil acts as being a monstrous race.
@MadFox11: Good call on the issue of racism. It's something that should theoretically be ever-present in most settings, and not in the Dwarf and Elf bickering like an old couple sort of way. And yet it's rarely discussed at all, and certainly not in a way that is likely to directly affect the players.
I've always used these sorts of elements in my games. Even from the stance of playing characters I make sure to know at least what their opinions are on the subjects. But then I usually prefer to play in settings that are inherently morally ambiguous, like White Wolf's World of Darkness or Exalted, among others.
The latest story arc with the Drow has all sorts of slavery inherent in it. The first adventure of the current Encounters season featured Drow taking townsfolk away as slaves. The recently published Into the Unknown: Dungeon Survival Guide even features a background where you are an escaped slave, and it goes into detail about the various mental effects you might suffer from having been a slave. Then there are races like the Githyanki & Kalashtar, both of whom are escaped slaves from other realms. And yes, Dark Sun is pretty much all about slavery.
I think many fantasy campaigns try to take real-world problems and use them, at worst, as background things that may exist in the world, but only as backstory. Or they're solved through non-PC actions resulting from PC action... you free the prince from the goblins, and then he takes the throne and implements reforms that make slavery illegal in his formerly dark nation. Or it's an add-on to an existing villain... you happen into the vampire lair, interrupt him cutting a deal with a local slaver from that evil nation in the west, oh and also there are crates of the illegal hallucinogen "Feyleaf" in his warehouse... man, is he EVIL.
The issue I run into is that while there are plenty of ways to sidestep these darker themes, many of the players at my home game table are therapists or counselors in real life, so they often seek out these problems to try and help... like trying to counsel the evil cult leader after they've captured him, or want to specifically seek out slavers to attack, just because they're slavers. As a result, I've had to create more complicated political situations to make these problems less clear-cut, but still accessible if they want to seek it out.
And if my players are looking for some moral gray areas, sometimes I put them in the middle of it. For instance, they killed the bandit group Tantalus (lead by a halfling) on the road into town, then met a young halfling boy who was working as an apprentice to a chef to hopefully make enough money so that some day he could find his dad and help him stop his life of crime. So it was clear that poverty was an issue, but the party found themselves in a less-than-optimal situation... which lead to lots of great roleplaying.
Darker issues are avoidable, but sometimes they might be worth using to a limited degree.