Knights & Knaves Alehouse

If this is a site violation nuke it BP. I'm honestly not sure. I think the change in tempo of AD&D warrants its discussion, but don't want it to go political.

One of the other threads reminded me of how some of the really cool stuff about 1E AD&D (circa 78'-81') eventually got tainted or ruined by modern day garbage pop culture leaking in (the worst being what would eventually be referred to as "political correctness"). What happened to the druid (which when I first started playing was my favorite class) hit me the hardest. It became the "tree hugger" save the wild character in many of our games (certainly how it was portrayed in art) to the point, no one would take it anymore not wanting that mental image. Chicks in the game suddenly became "female warriors" I mean, give me a break. Girls that I know that are in great shape aren't going to be running around in armor that only covers their more interesting assets. Then that even became sexist, and we were forced to look at chicks dressed in furs with feathers (this is late 1E stuff). Anyway, curious to know if this crap managed to sink into your game (as it did ours). I think we didn't shake this garbage until probably the early to mid 90s when we went back to the three core books, the MM2 the FF and a handful of the classic modules.

Short answer: No

Longer answer: demons, prostitutes, slaves, genocide and drug use have all been known to make the occasional appearance.

I remember one scenario from Dungeon Magazine that our DM ran us through. We were hired by some human or elven authorities (I don’t remember, exactly) to take out an Ogre Mob Boss. After the obligatory token linear wilderness adventure we arrived at the Ogre’s cave. It turned out that the Ogre wasn’t actually in the wrong, and we shouldn’t assume just because of his race that he was evil, blah blah blah. Now, I have no problem with facing moral questions from time to time in D&D, if they come up naturally, but it can’t be planned out by the DM as a preachy message like that. That just kills the adventuring spirit.

No, I rejected that trend.

I've intentionally gone against the "P-C" trend. Had a particularly "sensitive" player at one time express disgust that the barkeep owned a slave. Oh, well...

People with aesthetic tastes in gaming that varied from my own eventually did start to pop up in games that I played once I stopped gaming with just the core group of friends I grew up with in middle/high school. I don't know if their style is what I would refer to as "political correctness", but it was different and I didn't like it. I chose not to play with those people and found others who shared my aesthetic tastes eventually. It wasn't really a problem I gave a lot of thought to.

AxeMental wrote:What happened to the druid (which when I first started playing was my favorite class) hit me the hardest. It became the "tree hugger"...

The evisceration of the druid is especially hard to take. Gary's druids are not happy-dappy tree-huggers:

"Druids serve only themselves and nature, they occasionally make human sacrifice, but on the other hand they aid the folk in agriculture and animal husbandry. Druids are, therefore, neutral — although slightly predisposed towards evil actions." (from Gary Gygax's "The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons & Dragons and Their Relationships to Good and Evil" in The Strategic Review #6, page 5)

TheRedPriest wrote:Short answer: No

Longer answer: demons, prostitutes, slaves, genocide and drug use have all been known to make the occasional appearance.

Hell yes, sex drugs and rock n' role were def. part of the 70s experience that made its way into 1E and helped define it, and make it worth playing. Dealing with these "adult" themes were one of the attractions of the game for us kids (didn't mean we were going to start trying to summon demons in real life or start selling drugs because our PCs did).

austinjimm wrote:I've intentionally gone against the "P-C" trend. Had a particularly "sensitive" player at one time express disgust that the barkeep owned a slave. Oh, well...

Wouldn't the proper response be to kill the barkeep and take his stuff, then ? If you see something you don't like, you make it dead!

The woman warrior has always had a place in pulp. Agnes de Chastillon and Red Sonya are two Howard characters that come to mind.
Gary was a pulp guy. He wrote and approved what he liked and the material in his era initially reflected that.
Later there was a definite shift in tone, but it was not entirely unjustified. Gary started out writing for college-aged, or older, players with a background similar to his, and that was the earliest base, but it quickly got popular with high school and middle school kids. I think the late 70s – early 80s stuff handled this mixed audience well. There were some products that obviously targeted the younger gamers, but the game, as a whole, hadn’t been neutered. After Gary, there was a big change. I wouldn’t call it politically correct; the shift occurred years before PC became all the rage. I’d say it was an overreaction to the ‘D&D is evil’ thing that was happening coupled with a more profit driven leadership that had no real gamer/pulp background.
I don’t understand the druid bashing. Can somebody point me to something in the game that indicates druids are supposed to be happy happy tree huggers? They’re nature priests. They’ve always been nature priests. They started out as ‘monsters’, but as a PC option I don’t recall any major change in their nature. Where did the evisceration occur?

I think probably some political correctness did creep into my games in the early years for a while, but I would be hard pressed to point towards it. Likely it was a mixed result of watching Star Trek, reading TSR novels, and the general vibe of the early to mid 90s, but in any case it did not last long. Almost certainly by the time I was fifteen I had grown tired of such silliness and was looking towards "grittier" more vigorous fantasy and history. As far as druids go, I think I have always thought they were a lame class.

It was never an issue in games I’ve run or played in. I think me and the DMs that I’ve played with all started in the Gygax era and we had pretty strong pulp-type backgrounds, and even though some of them moved to 2E, the ‘PC’ lameness that was injected into the game was ignored.

Sometimes modern sensibilities have intruded on my game, but never a conscious desire for political correctness. Sometimes political correctness can be difficult to distinguish. For instance, if a galley has slave rowers, would your players feel bad, wanting to free the slaves, or is slavery merely par for the course and to be expected? Now, let's say that the galley is run by orcs, and they have men for slaves -- a completely different mindset creeps in, because it has no historical precedent. These are men, slaves to monsters! Heroes would want to free them.

Matthew wrote:I think probably some political correctness did creep into my games in the early years for a while, but I would be hard pressed to point towards it. Likely it was a mixed result of watching Star Trek, reading TSR novels, and the general vibe of the early to mid 90s, but in any case it did not last long. Almost certainly by the time I was fifteen I had grown tired of such silliness and was looking towards "grittier" more vigorous fantasy and history. As far as druids go, I think I have always thought they were a lame class.

Star Trek? Oh. You must mean that ST imposter TNG.

ScottyG wrote:The woman warrior has always had a place in pulp. Agnes de Chastillon and Red Sonya are two Howard characters that come to mind.
Gary was a pulp guy. He wrote and approved what he liked and the material in his era initially reflected that.
Later there was a definite shift in tone, but it was not entirely unjustified. Gary started out writing for college-aged, or older, players with a background similar to his, and that was the earliest base, but it quickly got popular with high school and middle school kids. I think the late 70s – early 80s stuff handled this mixed audience well. There were some products that obviously targeted the younger gamers, but the game, as a whole, hadn’t been neutered. After Gary, there was a big change. I wouldn’t call it politically correct; the shift occurred years before PC became all the rage. I’d say it was an overreaction to the ‘D&D is evil’ thing that was happening coupled with a more profit driven leadership that had no real gamer/pulp background.
I don’t understand the druid bashing. Can somebody point me to something in the game that indicates druids are supposed to be happy happy tree huggers? They’re nature priests. They’ve always been nature priests. They started out as ‘monsters’, but as a PC option I don’t recall any major change in their nature. Where did the evisceration occur?

Scotty, I think you miss-read my post (or I miss-stated it). Hell yes to deadly chicks in high boots wearing next to nothing. What I'm talking about is the PC movement (not yet called that) which found that pulp version offensive. Having to treat woman as equals to men turned my stomach. And yeah, I agree with you on the druid thing too. I prefer druids to be spell casters out for adventure, not evangelical environmentalists out to save the forest (which was totaly off topic). You only have to look at late TSR and later to see how the class was ickifide. I always pictured druids dressed similar to rangers, but with spells. I hated the "guy in robe with wild beard and dirty hair swinging a scimitar" image. Just because they live with animals doesn't mean they have to look like one.