For quite a few people, diving into a session of Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying as an invented character is a great form of escapism. You're imagining yourself exploring a fantasy world filled with exotic locations, usually tailor-made by the DM to accomodate everyone around the table. However, if you've ever joined a group of friends who are already midway through a campaign, it can be a little bit difficult to adapt, as was the case with a vegan player who was pretty upset with their group's world upon playing for the first time.
First shared to the Dungeons & Dragons subreddit a few days ago, EmotionalMacaroon calls upon the community for help trying to accomodate the vegan player and make their world a little more suitable for them. The player apparently had concerns over the inclusion of detailed descriptions of hunting and preparing meat along with several instances of injured or starving animals. She explains that because she's subject to animal cruelty on a daily basis, she's not comfortable with seeing it in a fantasy world primarily designed for escapism.
Worried about potentially making the world they'd created boring to accomodate the player, EmotionalMacaroon turned to the community for suggestions. Thousands of comments came flooding in, and while there are quite a lot of people rather callously telling the DM to cut her from the group entirely, quite a few people came together and offered up ways in which the game could be made vegan-friendly without having to sacrifice any excitement.
Now it seems like a healthy compromise was reached, according to a follow-up post from EmotionalMacaroon. Instead of including gorey descriptions of food being prepared, the group has instead decided to mask all talk of meat under a "veil" to make things less explicit. Rather than go with specific descriptions of certain items, the DM will now refer to meals as 'stews' or 'curries' and let each individual player interpret the ingredients however they wish.
Instead of including stories and quests that involve injured dogs or other realistic animals, the DM has altered the world to include more exotic beasts like Owlbears and dragons to further detatch it from reality, giving the players the chance to save any mistreated animals they come across. They're even using the opportunity to come up with some nasty hybrid beasts such as "hellish flame boars" and experiment with their attacks, something they wouldn't have been able to do previously.
It's a lovely example of a group of adults just sitting down and coming to a compromise instead of jumping to the most extreme solution right out of the gates. It's the mark of a great DM if they try to adapt their worlds to accomodate new players, and now everyone can enjoy a world that includes a lot less injured puppers and a whole lot more gold dragon wyrmlings. Sounds fun.