Today’s topic is ‘Change’. In real life most changes are not to my liking. Depending on how old you are a guy my age—46 years young—is old enough to be saying “Back in my day…”, but I always felt that would be a phrase I’d be using in my “golden years” somewhere down the line. However, that wasn’t the case. Although I continue in my blind refusal to see the decade of my childhood as a “simpler” time—that’s reserved for the 1950’s in my mind—there is no doubt that most of us who were kids in the 80’s never saw the changes in culture and attitude coming.
Certain aspects of the inclusive culture are fine by me. I’m okay with girls being more comfortable playing—saves me from being a female character…for about two minutes. I never had any racial problems in the hobby—aside from one incident that I detailed in an earlier RPG a Day entry some years back. Although I don’t agree with the various alternative lifestylers out there, I’ve played with many over the years, and have had just as much fun as I would with them as I would anyone else at the table. Most of all, it’s nice to see more and more people not associate roleplaying with devil worship like they did in the 80’s.
However, there are some PC changes that I don’t agree with and they range from simple over correction to outright pandering. Here are a few changes that I hate:
1. Sanitization of terminology—the big one for me is changing the term ‘race’ for ‘legacy’ or whatever other nonsense term they want to use. The human race covers all of humanity as in real-life. The fantasy races—even the humanoid ones—aren’t just culturally different as they are in real-life. These races often have alien minds completely different from a human being. They would kill and eat you—and the god they worship would be honored in their doing so. This also includes the forced “diversity” baked into the rulebooks and lore.
2. Company political statements—I don’t give a rat’s ass. Make games that are fun. Now it seems that every company has to go on their social media account and make an apology tour to possible detractors who were offended by their product while at the same time preaching to the rest of us to be better people. It’s pandering and virtue signaling at its worst. I don’t like the real world creeping into the game. The hobby is there for a distraction from these problems.
3. Company hiring practices—I must acknowledge this because of the infamous stories I’ve read. Talented creators not being hired so that a company can look good by having more diverse creative teams. The companies are worried more about meeting quotas than they are about hiring the best creators for the job.
4. Cancel Culture—the opposite side of number 3. A bunch of SJWs get into an uproar because of something some guy said one time…sometimes years ago. Very often the “offensive” thing said is only offensive to soy boys and snowflakes to begin with. Invariably it seems to me that the companies will often bow to this ultra small percentage of squeaky wheels—many of which had no intention of supporting the product in the first place.
5. General Sanitized Product—I hate how everything now is generally safe and PC. I would also call it generic and bland. With very few exceptions it seems everything now is meant to be made for everybody and we can all sit around and sing songs of peace together with sunshine and rainbows lest we offend someone. Some things should have an edge. I see the same trends in all of my hobbies: wrestling, comic-books, video games and RPGs. All of them to varying degrees are woke and preachy. In other words, they aren’t fun or interesting anymore.
The good thing about RPGs is in spite of all these problems, the DM/GM and the table get to decide how PC they want to be. Barmaids are still getting pinched and groped, orcs are still brutal savages and the world is one spell away from being taken over by devils because some things never change.
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