Sandbox Discussions

[Kappa]

Not at all. XD

[Aestrix]

I am proud of my part in this accomplishment. :)

[Tulip]

Not at all weird. It has taken actual effort, on the days when the Terraria sandboxes have updated, to hold on to my precommitment to not play Terraria again until 1.3 comes out.

[Bluelantern]

The sandbox makes me want to start playing Minecraft again

Or better yet, that there was some way to combine both games, since I prefer the 3D... ness of minecraft but Terraria looks interesting.

[Adelene]

I would note for anyone who doesn't already own it that Terarria is notably both racist and sexist. The worst of the sexist bits are avoidable if you don't read the NPCs' text, and the worst of the racist stuff doesn't show up until hardmode which you might not want to do anyway, but it's still there.

[Kappa]

I don't think I know about the hardmode stuff.

[Lambda]

I haven't been able to find information on the racism or sexism after a few minutes of searching. Do you happen to have links?

[Adelene]

I haven't been able to find information on the racism or sexism after a few minutes of searching. Do you happen to have links?

No, I have the game myself is how I know.

Examples

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Sexism:

• There are of course the usual amount of issues with gender ratios and gender roles in mainstream video games (of 21 NPCs, only 6 are female and 4 of those have explicitly feminine jobs (nurse, hairstylist, party girl, and dryad); the closest any of the male NPCs come to having a feminine-coded job is the clothier).
• In addition to that, there's a rather gratuitous PMS mechanic - one of the recurring random events is the 'blood moon', when monsters swarm for a night; the NPCs all get different text during it, and the female NPCs get text that's over-the-top crabby ("If you're going to die, do it outside.") or outright irrational ("I don't want you to buy my stuff. I want you to want to buy my stuff, ok?").
• One of the male NPCs has obnoxiously sexist text: "I want what [Nurse] is sellin'. What do you mean, she doesn't sell anything?" and "[Dryad] is a looker. Too bad she's such a prude."
• The king statue/queen statue mechanic is pretty gratuitous with its gendering, too - maybe not sexist all on its own, but in light of the other stuff I'm not super inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. This also means that the would-otherwise-obviously-be-genderless character (truffle) has instead been given a gender.

Racism

• Of the 21 NPCs, only three are PoC and two of them have stereotypical roles (arms dealer and dye trader, third is pirate); there are no WoC.
• The only black character is the one with the sexist text mentioned above.
• And then there's the witch doctor, which, holy racist caricatures Batman. (Also, I thought this was one of the hardmode NPCs, but I see he's not; my bad. He is skippable, though, if you don't mind passing up the tools he sells.)

[Bluelantern]

Okat, I see that (the statue thing, might fall under a different social justice umbrella?) except for the Dryad because it is a mythical creature...?

[DanielH]

For the Arcane-in-summoning-circle sandbox, Arcane could let Keo order Arcane to not give his name away or eat anything while in Elcenia, or to give enforced orders to any Elcenians. That should at least keep him until he leaves Elcenia. Would she be satisfied with that if they were to come up with something for when he left? Would that actually hold against everything except an unusual green-group?

Could Keo make Arcane unable to mentally process enforced orders and unable to give enforced orders, or is that outside the scope of her nigh-arbitrary mental manipulation?

If I were in their situation I would be seeking a compromise of some sort where Arcane had his memory but was no longer a threat. These are just two possibilities I thought of. I would be suspicious of Arcane keeping changing the subject without giving at least a rough timeframe of “they should start getting a bit worried in three hours [insert standard 2-degree conversion conversation], and from there it’ll take them another two to start a gate here, which will take at most 200 hours to settle”.