Context: This is a thread asking about what the dark age of RPGs was or is considered.
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WVEXPAT said:
I started playing D&D in 1986, essentially right in the middle of the Satanic Panic. I lived in Indiana at the time (the same state that in the recent past almost made it legal to discriminate against the LBGTQ+ community based upon religious principles) and I was surrounded by a very 'churchy' environment. Yet, the D&D community thrived. Thankfully, my parents were also rational human beings. When I relocated to Arizona the community was even bigger and I got my first real game shop experience at Waterloo Games in Gilbert, Arizona. Honestly, I remember reading about the controversy in the news, and of course, it was somewhat part and parcel of regular TV coverage at the time. That being said, I was never challenged on an individual basis by parents, students and peers, teachers, etc. I relocated to Maryland for my last two years of high school (my dad was in the army). I got to experience more good local game shops and a Games Workshop for the first time at Laurel Mall, and then went off to WVU for BA work, and honestly since Maryland (1990) I've seen nothing but a surge in gamer and D&D culture. Keep in mind it was the 'dark times' that most people refer to when RPGs, D&D specifically, and gamer culture exploded; controversy can do that.
I was a little shocked by the coddling in 2nd Edition, just as I am put off by the politicalization of 5E. However, none of the shifts in the content of the game, in all instances in my opinion done not out of any real moral sense of duty, but more as a method of increasing profits and positive press in certain outlets, has changed my love for it. Demons are demons, devils are devils, Goblinoids, Duergar, and Drow are opposed to Humans, Dwarves, High Elves, Wood Elves, etc., and the Dragons are a mixed lot. Morality (good and evil) are matters of perspective, and if nothing, this game has gone a considerable length to prove that on a practical a philosophical level. I remember having LGBTQ+ gamers and every sort of other person in our community from high school forward, and I have never personally witnessed any real racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., outside of internet trolls (which also weirdly have strange reiterative abilities).
In the end, this game will always have some sort of controversy surrounding it. There are plenty of people who still view it as 'Satanic', but after 35 years I have still failed to summon a demon (am I doing something wrong?) I've seen this game as a positive and constructive force, and I imagine it will continue to be so regardless of its polarity swings from time to time.
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BcAugust54 said:
Moderator Text:
Hi there. You apparently haven't read either the thread or the rules of this forum. Your post breaks them in multiple ways(the denial of racism, the edition warring, the sexism). So, we are banning you from the thread and strongly suggest you read and follow the rules for the rest of your posting career here or face time off.
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Full disclosure: I don't know the first person and have never communicated with them in any venue. I don't know the second person and have never communicated with them in any venue.
So this second person, who is a moderator for the site (a job requiring the qualifications of a fry cook at McDonalds), has their head so far up their own ass, they don't understand that the purpose of the entire thread would be shitting on the era of an edition, possibly multiple. Also there's some incredibly reflexive ugliness required to call someone racist/sexist based on an assertion of anecdotal evidence. This person is a reflexive reactionary psychopath and that may also be on the requirements for being a RPGnet moderator nowadays.
I once frequented RPGnet (in the late 00s), and the site wasn't great on free speech then, and is so much fucking worse now. I'd report the moderator if I didn't know any better, because this reaction is an overstepping based on suppositions and thoughtcrime rather than anything substantial (just read the post, there's nothing suggesting anything the moderator is purporting). But this is the normal for these people. There is a right way and wrong way to think. And that wrongness is punished. This is why zero intelligent discourse actually happens on RPGnet nowadays - mods either banned or ran off anyone who can actually present it. The only people left? Shitlibs. Dull, uninteresting, inoffensive, boring, passionless, soulless, dry, callous, weak-willed, uncreative, unproductive, dickless, anti-fun shitlibs. RPGnet went from mediocre RPG discourse site to the most miserable place on the internet in just a few short years.
After I left but sometime before now, they began a campaign of rooting out troublemakers who didn't break the rules but didn't post "in the spirit of the rules". Basically this meant they were hunting for people like me who could decimate an argument over and over again to the point where the person posting the argument felt like a fucking idiot for believing it. You can now be banned for something as ill-defined as "excessive negativity". This was the last nail in the coffin of free speech on their site - you can't even disagree anymore there and not expect reprisal of some sort (see above).
The above is an example of Shitlib 101, they burn you for perceived shit instead of what you actually said. Hell the first person is a goddamn shitlib but isn't shitlib enough for the moderator, because he dared mention the obvious politicization that has happened to 5E over time which IS a problem and IS worth talking about (and therefore is protected under the rules of RPGnet because they have that offended content is meaningful content bullshit clause of their own rules). Don't get it twisted, he's getting thoughtcrimed for that shit, not whatever bullshit the mod is spewing.
The problem with RPGnet is and always has been moderation. I myself left upon receiving a short and entirely unjustified ban there (where the moderation broke their own rules to ban me), putting me in a subcategory (the temporarily banned) with roughly 75% of their userbase.
I clicked on one thread with multiple hundreds of posts, the first one I came across, and easily found an example of bad moderation. That's exactly how prevalent it is. That's where the above example came from. It took me all of 5 minutes to find if I'm being generous.
It will never be a place worth going until they dump the shitlib mentality and revise their rules to allow intelligent discourse regardless of point of view. Fuck, they're still stupid and short-sighted enough to believe Gamergate isn't about ethics in games journalism.
Ben Franklin said it best: Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. RPGnet doesn't allow reason to be free, hence their erroneous opinions can't be tolerated by reasonable people.
Fuck that place.
Today I learned the guy who moderated me isn't a moderator anymore and the guy who banned me is permabanned. Hilarious.
UPDATE 1/10/2025: I looked back at RPGnet today and found a thread about KC's new Ashes Without Number. It was literally the only thread I entered, so if course I ran into a ban there. One random user made an extremely tame joke about calling a refresh of KC's Spears of the Dawn "Africas Without Number" and was given a 3 day ban and threadban for it due to "being offensive". That's not really the interesting part. The interesting part is the moderator who did it was a sock account, a generic "The RPGnet Admins" account. They can't even stand by their own rulings anymore, can't be called out for being fucking pricks one at a time by name. They have to hide like little bitches behind a sockpuppet. What massive, censorious pussies. Can't do anything to me here, can you, you cock-smokers?
