Grown Up Fantasy

A theme I see crop up time and time again on RPG forums is one of what subjects are, and are not, acceptable in 'modern' gaming groups.  Over and over again I see contributors make comments along the line of 'no sex', 'no rape', 'don't kill the children', 'orc babies are redeemable', 'I don't want to be in a game where people exercise their weird fantasies'.  There seems to be the opinion that should such topics emerge within a game, that whoever introduces them gets some sort of weird inner satisfaction from it, that it's a perversion, and that sensitive people need protecting from such nastiness.

The group I DM most frequently for have just started through the venerable Slavers series, modules A1 to A4 in the 1E canon. These were originally published way back in 1980-81, when AD&D was at its original peak, and before the crazed US God-Squad helped bring about the more sanitised feel of 2E.  The opening module, Slave Pits of the Undercity, is set in the city of Highport on the Greyhawk peninsular known as the Pomarj.  For those unfamiliar with Greyhawk history, the Pomarj is a near-lawless place, overrun with humanoid tribes - and Highport, one of the few settlements of any size, is a devastated cesspit, destroyed by war, and partially rebuilt using the proceeds of the slave trade.  It is NOT a nice place.

The Greyhawk setting has roots firmly based in medieval Europe, the terminology used in Gygax's writings on his world, the heraldry, the political systems, are all clearly derived from history.  Marry that with the pseudo-historical feel of 1E AD&D, and the world is most definitely not the comic-fantasy melting pot of 5th Edition's Forgotten Realms.  Elves don't like Dwarfs, neither are especially friendly to humans, and nobody really cares about Halflings. Half Elves are supposed to be somewhat uncommon, given that Humans and Elves don't really socialise. And everybody hates Half-Orcs.

The term 'fecund' is used to described Orcs in the racial description of Half Orcs.  Highly fertile.  No niceties, no love, just fertile.  Given that Orcs are naturally evil creatures, it can be assumed that Half Orcs are not the product of any form of loving relationship. 

The 1E world is not a nice place.  And Highport is a foul place by the standards of the world in general, making it truly repulsive. So, what is repulsive, how do you portray an utterly foul place without touching on the topics in the 1st paragraph?  After all, this is a city that is built on the proceeds of the most vile trade of all, that of slavery - where people can be bought and sold, used and abused, beaten, tortured - their lives are meaningless. The lucky ones are the strong and healthy, the others are sold to the temples for sacrifice, or to the humanoid tribes for the cooking pot.  So in answer to my question - you don't!

My party happened upon a band of Gnolls, roasting a headless corpse over a spit.  I described it as small, mutilated beyond recognition - possibly a halfling, a gnome, or a human child.  While in Highport they saw diseased beggars, corpses with whip-scars thrown into alleyways to rot - some of these being those of women and children. They were advised by a contact to stay at 'the only inn which did not have slave meat on the menu'. At the inn a group of drunken revellers tried to buy the party's female fighter because she'd be valuable to the Orcs 'for breeding purposes'.

All pretty vile stuff. But it served a purpose, it fitted the world, most importantly it fitted the nature of the adventuring location and the background to the module series.  It gave the party (and players) a reason to hate the place and to rid the world of the Slavers. It was an excellent gaming session, my players loved it.

Those contributors to online forums would be up in arms. Let them be.