Grandfathering the Gothic Earth Setting

[Siobhan]

The Gothic Earth setting is all kinds of problematic. Its mechanical inconsistencies are one thing, but the blatant eurocentrism and imperialism that it imposes on its view of the world is something that I have no interest in exploring on PotM, because frankly, we already have topics locked for small things like mechanics disagreements. I do not think this community is a place to address a holy war between real world religions, for example.

For example, Christianity is defined as “any Good” alignment in the setting, whereas Islam is defined as “any Lawful”. In 2022, three decades after the setting was written, I hope we can all agree on how ludicrously silly applying this is and how ridiculous it is to have the DM team pass judgment on what is appropriate for a cleric to express.

My proposal is to have the mists no longer accept new characters from Gothic Earth. I know there are many characters who have leaned into these borrowed cultures and adapted them to Ravenloft. To be very clear, I am suggesting that they continue on as they have been and further develop their stories in Ravenloft. Just that no new injections are added in, so that whatever the players build continues to expand and take on its own character as it continues to diverge from the problematic tropes of the Gothic Earth setting.

[Vissy]

Yes. Agreed. Do it.

[ladylena]

Considering how GE characters can not know common that could make sense, but I'd echo what (I think) I recall with suggesting that it be a application to ensure that players wont play a detrimental character. I do not know a whole lot about the GE setting but I have had a lot of great experiences with characters from that setting. So perhaps it could stand to have either some restrictions applied or clearer guidelines on what is acceptable, or just remove it as a valid setting. While I've had only good experiences with those playing these character settings, it may be less troublesome to have it restricted to application only.

[Myrza]

I've met well-played GE characters but to me, it doesn't change the fact that the setting itself is problematic for most of the modern players' expectations. Nowadays I see GE as just another made-up setting. But there are really weird situations that come to mind that, as far as I know, were avoided but I don't know how. Like we have Christians as a faction but what if there was a Muslim faction? Would they fight a full-on religious war in Ravenloft? I can't be the only one who thinks that it would not be pleasant to see.

[Lex Talionis]

I wouldn't mind seeing it disappear.  The characters I've seen from Gothic Earth, generally speaking have done a pretty good job. That is the ones that hang around for awhile.  However it does open up a lot of issues of misrepresentation.  If it's decided that the setting should remain, I would recommend stricter guidelines for play, perhaps applications, and avoiding real life religions in game.

[apeppertoo]

I don't want to shut off an entire setting just because it's difficult to play well or it offends sensibilities. In fact, I'm extremely resistant to that idea because that sort of creep doesn't stop. More than once I've heard rumblings that other parts of the module, from Dark Lords to entire domains, should be tweaked or removed because they're offensive and taking steps like this makes it harder to draw a line.

The offense is the price of admission for a setting like this. Portrayal is not endorsement. Players have a great number of tools available to avoid seeing depictions they don't want to see. If a malicious player is clearly trying to skirt the server's good faith, that's another matter.

I really doubt that there'll ever be enough GE characters to fight a full on conflict in Ravenloft. They'd need converts, a lot of them, for it to be anything more than small scale PVP - and that'd be quite a coup, RP-wise, and I think there's lots of potential for good storytelling there.

[Spazzer]

I wouldn't mind seeing it disappear.  The characters I've seen from Gothic Earth, generally speaking have done a pretty good job. That is the ones that hang around for awhile.  However it does open up a lot of issues of misrepresentation.  If it's decided that the setting should remain, I would recommend stricter guidelines for play, perhaps applications, and avoiding real life religions in game.

religion and most of early history go hand and hand, it is rather hard to play say, a peasant from the 1200's. Avoiding anything religious with a GE character would look rather odd.

[Maffa]

i have played in the Christian faction for a long while. Now I dont because I moved to other factions, but I still share time with them and I think I am a good friend to them.

In this server, we are called to be excellent one another. No matter the setting and the lore, we are called to uphold this rule. Characters coming from GE are no different.

I had once a concept of a character that lent heavily into counter reform christianity, a dominican friar. I played it for a whole two weeks, before surrendering to the fact that it was not a playable character, because all the "interesting spins" I imagined for him would have resolved to be potential issues for other players that were looking for a bit of escapism.

I was and still am looking for meaningful roleplay. That concept was not viable, so i shelved it.

Why wont I play a sufi or a chinese merchant or an indonesian pirate? Because i don't know anything about these cultures. Simple as that. I am european, and I know what I know. I play what I am confident playing. The whole concept of medieval fantasy we play in is eurocentric.

Luckily, in this server power fantasies only occupy a fraction of populace. we have people that create characters for their stories, be them peasants or humble healers.

Coming from a problematic setting does not condone problematic behaviour. I believe that if someone cannot behave better, they need to be educated or reported.

[EO]

Gothic Earth has been supported for the past 16 years and the number of problematic characters is extremely low, just like other settings. I always favor trusting players rather than restricting; and we can tackle the problematic portrayals when they come up (and those are hardly exclusive to Gothic Earth).

[Favee]

The Gothic Earth books and resources are rife with hugely incorrect and hurtful stereotypes, and is overall a ridiculously insensitive fever dream of real world history, culture and religion.

As a playable setting it injects hugely abrupt and confused real world baggage and adds nothing to our community except a hodgepodge of concepts that have to tiptoe around the subjects it's based on at best.  And at worst you get concepts and roleplay that are like the Gothic Earth Source Material, which is insensitive and bigoted in it's very instruction.

We have more than enough great options available that don't carry the baggage that Gothic Earth does.  I'd rather see a mist camp full of bears and fully warded Slaads than be forced to navigate my character through another real-life religious summer camp.

I don't want to shut off an entire setting just because it's difficult to play well or it offends sensibilities. In fact, I'm extremely resistant to that idea because that sort of creep doesn't stop. More than once I've heard rumblings that other parts of the module, from Dark Lords to entire domains, should be tweaked or removed because they're offensive and taking steps like this makes it harder to draw a line.

The offense is the price of admission for a setting like this.

This is a bleak take on improving upon obviously biased and terrible writing from the 80's. But maybe you're right, we should all see the Good aligned Rape-ape as one (of many) examples of price to entry here.

[Erikat]

Barring just the conversation about religion, the caricature of cultures is pretty crappy too. I can recall a number of times I've seen terrible stereotypical portrayals of various cultures. Frankly speaking, GE is too often used for joke characters that mock various connected faiths and cultures in our real life. The last couple NCE's were rife with it, and particularly lacking a conversation about handling it.

It's been supported for sixteen years, and I'm sure it'll be supported for another set amount of years, with people cracking poor taste jokes that ride under the radar. As much as I cannot stand the app procedure, I think GE ought to be app'd to least have players show the basic understanding of the limitations of GE and that the portrayal they plan to do, is at least attempted to not be an utter embarrassment.

[Siobhan]

I do agree that the deeply problematic “meme” characters get weeded out, like every setting. Gothic Earth is particularly vulnerable to that in NCEs in my experience. Each time one rolls around, it seems like there is a new group of religious zealots ready to crusade through the Mists to have their memes, then vanish.

——

Basically, I think saying Lawful Evil is acceptable for Muslim faith, but not Christianity is a real life position on religion that I don’t think that Prisoners of the Mists is the place to have that conversation on, at all. And this but one example, we could continue digging through the various Gothic Earth pantheons to find more.

Grandfathering is my suggestion as a solution. I am certain there are other ways to remove out of character judgements on the relative moralities of real life religions, but grandfathering seems the cleanest to me, since it doesn’t involve trying to detangle history from religion.

[Favee]

Gothic Earth has been supported for the past 16 years and the number of problematic characters is extremely low, just like other settings. I always favor trusting players rather than restricting; and we can tackle the problematic portrayals when they come up (and those are hardly exclusive to Gothic Earth).

I appreciate the swiftness and seriousness the team takes with reports on highly problematic portrayals.  However, there are a lot of concepts and roleplay surrounding Gothic earth that's just greatly immersion breaking, yet not really worth reporting.

I've said in the past the best Gothic earth characters are those you cannot tell are from Gothic earth.  And I think it's mostly true.

[Maffa]

People... NCE is a huge joke. You cannot bar a whole concept because of a few outliers.

They are not mechanically more powerful than other characters, and they are bound to the same standard of quality as anyone else.

What else is there to add?

[apeppertoo]

I don't want to shut off an entire setting just because it's difficult to play well or it offends sensibilities. In fact, I'm extremely resistant to that idea because that sort of creep doesn't stop. More than once I've heard rumblings that other parts of the module, from Dark Lords to entire domains, should be tweaked or removed because they're offensive and taking steps like this makes it harder to draw a line.

The offense is the price of admission for a setting like this.

This is a bleak take on improving upon obviously biased and terrible writing from the 80's. But maybe you're right, we should all see the Good aligned Rape-ape as one (of many) examples of price to entry here.

I find the censorious instinct bleak. I'm not interested in every aspect of the setting becoming watered down and palatable to every possible sensibility. As I wrote before, we have a great amount of control over the subjects we see on POTM. We shouldn't need to worry about other players provided we are all operating on good faith. Those who aren't are a problem to be disciplined, but just drumming out a setting because it has uncomfortable or incorrect concepts isn't my idea of improving the server.

[Mailbox-2100]

 Speaking as a GE player, and a fellow of many others.. I find this offensive. I've not seen these alleged stereotypes you harp on. The setting itself withstanding- I know so little about it specifically. But the same might be said of any other setting I play off. I've never been told I've done a poor stereotype, and that has not been my experience either.

 EO already said the problems are not especial to that setting itself. This really just feels unwarranted and discriminatory against, well... us.

 I don't wish to be insensitive, however, and I've heard a lot of bad things about the GE setting portraying ugly stereotypes, but without examples its hard for me to justify Grandfathering a setting. I'm not against it if warranted, as I don't suffer from that, but... it feels like the beginning of a bad precedent for me.

 As for alignment being a measure of faith- its preposterous. Christian is just a title, and people have historically used it to further atrocities on others, just like they do in the name of many other things. I won't get into a religious apologetics here, I just wanted to be clear that -anything- can be corrupted and played as a meme. If religious crusaders are a problem they should be killed on sight- and to that I mean cycled through the proper mediums of bureaucracy. This machine should be well oiled by now. And with these concepts growing in the public conscience, I trust that things will improve in these sectors rather than atrophy...

 My two pence.

[Phantasia]

I have said this many times in the past, but not publicly at least, that Gothic Earth characters can scratch a certain relatable itch that can greatly enhance roleplay if done correctly.

However, there is always more than one bad egg that is going to draw negative attention to an otherwise serviceable setting (I have seen them, believe me). Masque of the Red Death was designed the way it was intentionally. Gothic Horror literature is rife with difficult subject matter and is not strictly composed of spooky landscapes, constant dread, and monsters. Mankind often devours itself as much as the beast does, and all the ugliness in society that is associated with it comes boiling to a head in many portrayals of the genre.

Perhaps a simple "re-branding" of the setting will dissociate the observed trend that MotRD is just Earth 2.0 (it's really not), and better community guides outlining roleplay expectations regarding the setting could also be drafted before we consider removing this setting.

Quite frankly I can think of far more immersion-shattering settings for players to be from that we allow rather than "Gothic Earth."

[Siobhan]

 Speaking as a GE player, and a fellow of many others.. I find this offensive. I've not seen these alleged stereotypes you harp on. The setting itself withstanding- I know so little about it specifically. But the same might be said of any other setting I play off. I've never been told I've done a poor stereotype, and that has not been my experience either.

 EO already said the problems are not especial to that setting itself. This really just feels unwarranted and discriminatory against, well... us.

 I don't wish to be insensitive, however, and I've heard a lot of bad things about the GE setting portraying ugly stereotypes, but without examples its hard for me to justify Grandfathering a setting. I'm not against it if warranted, as I don't suffer from that, but... it feels like the beginning of a bad precedent for me.

 As for alignment being a measure of faith- its preposterous. Christian is just a title, and people have historically used it to further atrocities on others, just like they do in the name of many other things. I won't get into a religious apologetics here, I just wanted to be clear that -anything- can be corrupted and played as a meme. If religious crusaders are a problem they should be killed on sight- and to that I mean cycled through the proper mediums of bureaucracy. This machine should be well oiled by now. And with these concepts growing in the public conscience, I trust that things will improve in these sectors rather than atrophy...

 My two pence.

I’m not saying that Gothic Earth players have done wrong. Not at all, they are like any other player on the server.

What I am pointing out is that the setting of Gothic Earth makes moral statements on real world religions that are incorrect and that it is a problem.

Saying Christians are Good and Muslims are Lawful is not a statement that we should have enshrined in our mechanics.

[Ringnar]

I am whole heartedly against removing it, not without replacing it with just..... earth.... I have played and enjoyed playing with GE characters, and would be greatly disheartened to have it removed. Reworked maybe, but not removed. Reworking religion alignments if that's a sticking point should be doable, heck id apply to do it myself if the Dev team is open to such a thing and it can smooth some things over, but removing it completely? I cant agree.

[zDark Shadowz]

[Looks at Gothic Earth with "hurtful stereotypes and racism." Looks at Ravenloft with "hurtful stereotypes and racism."]

I see no difference here.

~~~

Players can be problematic, but that's the player, not the source material. They would use a different medium, and taint something else. You don't need to be from GE to be a donkey.

~~~

I refuse to board the "woke" train and start rescinding and stripping away fictional material simply because it is controversial in today's teachings. It's a fantasy setting. We aren't all going to be dancing around a campfire hand-in-hand with goblyns, in the same vein that we aren't all going to believe the same things. Don't be so SELECTIVE in your anti-racism and irreligious oppositions. It's hypocritical and embarrassing.

Keep it IC. If they're offending you *as their character* that's good. Conflict is good. Oppose their ideals, teach them better ways, shun those you don't approve of. It's an opportunity for driving story and defining your own stance and strength of character.

Denying it from character creation doesn't generate content. They'll just use a different fantasy setting to draw their conflict from, NO SETTING is exempt from religious and racial strife. Deal with it IC.

~~~

Or, we can start removing stuff that's in Ravenloft first, right? Remove gundarakite oppression, replace Dementlieu with equal rights shadow fey instead of the social and economic divide. Make Hazlan "great again" and free the slaves. Azalin Rex offers tea parties at noon on Wednesdays. Convert the gypsy-like Vistani into not-gypsies. Loup du Noir-type werewolves are just kind-hearted furries playing dress-up once a month.

[Lion El'Jonson]

I'm not seeing how Gothic Earth setting down alignment restrictions for religions is any worse than 1940s Germany-parody Falkovnia. At the end of the day it's all fiction and Ravenloft in particular has us confronting many offensive topics (as is the nature of Gothic Horror and Grimdark settings), I don't see any reason why this particular setting (Gothic Earth) needs to be outright banned because of a couple insensitive alignment choices from 80s writers, especially seeing as I can't think of an example where this has actually caused an issue.

Instead of suggesting it be banned entirely, why not suggest that this alignment ruling be changed for the server?

[KovosDatch]

i have played in the Christian faction for a long while. Now I dont because I moved to other factions, but I still share time with them and I think I am a good friend to them.

In this server, we are called to be excellent one another. No matter the setting and the lore, we are called to uphold this rule. Characters coming from GE are no different.

I had once a concept of a character that lent heavily into counter reform christianity, a dominican friar. I played it for a whole two weeks, before surrendering to the fact that it was not a playable character, because all the "interesting spins" I imagined for him would have resolved to be potential issues for other players that were looking for a bit of escapism.

I was and still am looking for meaningful roleplay. That concept was not viable, so i shelved it.

Why wont I play a sufi or a chinese merchant or an indonesian pirate? Because i don't know anything about these cultures. Simple as that. I am european, and I know what I know. I play what I am confident playing. The whole concept of medieval fantasy we play in is eurocentric.

Luckily, in this server power fantasies only occupy a fraction of populace. we have people that create characters for their stories, be them peasants or humble healers.

Coming from a problematic setting does not condone problematic behaviour. I believe that if someone cannot behave better, they need to be educated or reported.

I am going to echo this. I have played with GE characters before (and still do!) and have seen it done very well. Those who can't abide by it often times either fall by the wayside or are reported.

Just because something isn't to your liking doesn't make it less viable or valid.

[Siobhan]

I'm not seeing how Gothic Earth setting down alignment restrictions for religions is any worse than 1940s Germany-parody Falkovnia. At the end of the day it's all fiction and Ravenloft in particular has us confronting many offensive topics (as is the nature of Gothic Horror and Grimdark settings), I don't see any reason why this particular setting (Gothic Earth) needs to be outright banned because of a couple insensitive alignment choices from 80s writers, especially seeing as I can't think of an example where this has actually caused an issue.

Instead of suggesting it be banned entirely, why not suggest that this alignment ruling be changed for the server?

I’ve explained why I think grandfathering, which is different from banning, is my suggestion for a clean fix. There are more involved solutions to detangle history from religion, or even going back to “pure” Gothic Earth where there is no clerical divine magic, rather than the homebrew PotM version that we have.

Falknovians being an analog for an era of German history is one thing. The literal statement of “a cleric blackguard of Islam is okay, but a cleric blackguard of Christianity would fall” is entirely different, because it performs an OOC judgement call by DMs on real world faiths.

[eddymakaveli]

As someone who has to face real life racism and issues like that, coming into Ravenloft and seeing racist tropes against dark skinned people and literal slavers from GE — is really awesome. It adds a lot to my experience and enriches my enjoyment of the setting as a whole when Portuguese slavers ask a dark-skinned Drow who their master is. I am for keeping the setting.

[Famous Seamus]

Hello again. Current head of the Christian faction here.

I feel as though there's a lot to say, but I'm running short on time. Many of my thoughts on these subjects are captured in this post (https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=61725.msg718267#msg718267) from the last time something like this came up.

Speaking as someone who has consistently played a Christian convert character for the past two years, I would very much be in favor of the Team retooling the alignment restrictions for all Gothic Earth religions if that's an option on the table. I've often thought about how poorly RL faiths translate into D&D's alignment system (and how reductive D&D's alignment system is in general, but that's a topic for another thread).

There has been tension between GE religions on the server in the past. For the sake of integrity, I won't point to any specific ones, but in each case, it's been fascinating and worthwhile RP. (I'm speaking purely in terms of game interactions, not glorifying any such tensions in the real world.) Characters who engage in it know exactly what they're getting into, and the "opponents" I've interacted with have always been respectful.

If anything, I've seen more immersion-breaking tensions from random Faerunians/Eberronians/Oerthians suddenly trying to aggro GE characters over faiths that they haven't been exposed to but seem to know a lot about. (Again, an observation, not a criticism.) Similarly, my character (a former Tormite) has had far more caricaturish hostilities with, say, Banites than he has any GE religion.

While we're on the subject of stereotypes, least anyone think me a GE simp, I find the reductionist and caricaturish re-skinning of RL faiths and cultures in Ravenloft, Mystara, and the like to be in equally poor taste as Gothic Earth.

Finally, on the subject of a "religious summer camp" and all similar arguments, these are reductive, un-excellent, and--frankly--hurtful remarks about characters and players who patently aren't playing a GE faith for that reason (as stated in the FAQ on this post: https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=17133.msg703057#msg703057). I'm not currently aware of any player seeking to play a GE/RL religion for the sake of proselytizing. That's not why we're here.