Splitting this because the discussion of eliminating meat eating from a game was the topic. Extending that into the real world was not.
Some posts about in game stuff are getting caught in the net because of multiple replies in a single post - feel free to cut out the part of your post that was on topic and repost it in the other thread
Oh, and in defiance of Betteridge’s law of headlines the answer is obviously “yes”
Exactly, did no one read the original thread?
Following the same train of thought but in meatspace:
My reply to the original thread on reddit was pretty simple: sometimes the DM just needs to say “sorry, but I don’t think you’re a good fit for our game/group.”
Actually, just doing that would solve >90% of problems posted on /r/rpghorrorstories.
I agree with everything you wrote, except I would differ a bit here.
The word “demand” in your scenario is doing a lot of heavy lifting and creating a lot of judgement there.
I think it’s totally reasonable for the group to switch to all vegan snacks to make a new vegan player comfortable. It’s not a big ask (most RPG night snacks are already vegan anyway) and this is what inclusion is all about. It’s not “fuck you, majority rules”, it’s “hey friend- yah, we can tweak this tiny thing about our lives to make your life better”.
I’ve never met a vegan would walk into a room and “demand” that everyone stop eating meat in their presence. Not eating meat at a gaming table is about as easy an accommodation as accommodation gets. Why not do it?
In general - D&D should be fun. Different DMs and different players have different play styles. For most things, you should be able to adapt. For others, if the play styles are too different, then maybe it’s not a good fit. And I am not talking about details like serving players pretend ham, I am talking about campaigns that are harsh where one bad roll will kill you, and just because you’re a PC doesn’t mean you are the focus of the story and will live or not have bad things happen to you.
So with small details like this, sure, why not adapt. I played a character that was a recovering addict, so while everyone else would be ordering ale at the bar, I asked for non-alcohol ciders. No big deal. If I had been insistent that no one would drink ale - well - most likely the other characters would have supported me, or at least not do it around me.
Now - what about IRL? That’s going to be up to a group dynamic and how friendly and cool people are. The few vegans I know are fine with others eating what ever, they apply their restrictions to themselves. I have never gamed with a recovering addict, but I would think most would be ok with others having a beer at the table while they have a Coke. Still, if something bothers someone bad enough, maybe compromises are made. That is going to boil down to group dynamic and hopefully it can be worked out.
I still think it’s a bit much to invite everyone to switch to all vegan snacks. Welcome them and include them on the table? Sure. I mean, a lot of your snack foods are vegan anyway: pretzels, potato chips, snack veggies, etc. Personally though as a diabetic, if it weren’t for non-vegan snacks like jerky and pork rinds I wouldn’t be able to snack much at all. Pretty much all non-animal protein snack foods are super high in carbs and not something I can snack on much.
Put another way: I don’t drink alcohol, and I don’t particularly enjoy being around people drinking lots of alcohol. If we’re playing at someone else’s home though, I’m not going to say a thing about them opening up a beer at the table except to politely refuse if they offer me one. I’m probably going to bring some non-alcoholic drinks as well and share them at the table. That’s it, no asking (or demanding) that they not drink alcohol in front of me. If I were hosting the game at my own home I might ask that people not bring alcoholic drinks, but that’s a bit of a different circumstance. If someone was vegan and was hosting a game at their home and politely requested that we not bring any non-vegan foods to the game, I’d respect that as well.
Umm…. Vegetables? Apple slices? How about carrot sticks and hummus? Whole wheat garlic naan? Olives? Stuffed mushrooms? Thai peanut sauce dip with some nice whole bread sticks or crackers? There’s a whole world of snacks that aren’t junk carbs or meat.
That’s your choice. I have recovering alcoholic friends for whom being near alcohol is very difficult and could not make that same choice, so yah, when they are over, it’s a dry house.
Again, these are the world’s tiniest sacrifices to make people (who are your friends by the way) comfortable. If that’s too big an ask for you, I guess I’m glad we’re not friends.
Your attitude is exactly why we’ve had to fight so hard for diversity and inclusion. The notion that accommodating the needs of others is so difficult that we can’t possibly bother is exactly the problem.
I think we’re just disagreeing on whether these are needs, or just wants.
No, see, vegans are weak and can easily be killed by “real” men, who are defined by eating the flesh of other creatures. 
No, we are disagreeing on how important the wants of our friends are.
You are also both disagreeing about the level of accommodation that is reasonable for the situation.
By analogy, if you had a member of the party who was Muslim, we are all agreed that taking pauses from the game so that they could pray at the correct time is reasonable. What is not reasonable is requiring that all the other players join them in those prayers.
That analogy doesn’t hold, because the other people (presumably) do not normally engage in Muslim prayer.
Everyone eats vegan snacks sometimes. Nobody has to eat meat for every snack in every situation in order to be comfortable. People eat veggie plates, nuts, chips, etc, all the time. So the only ask here is a tiny shift in what you eat for a couple of hours, once a month (or whatever) in this gaming group.
Here’s a better analogy- people might make transphobic jokes in cis company. If a trans person joins your group, it’s reasonable to ask everyone to stop making those jokes. I don’t need you to stop. I can take it like a big girl. But I want you to stop because I’ll be a lot more comfortable if you do. If you’re my friend, I don’t even have to ask, much like my vegan friends don’t have to ask for me to not invite them to rib night.
I’m really shocked that not eating meat-based snacks around vegan friends seems like such a burden to people. Good grief. I’m not vegan, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to eat vegan around my vegan friends. Hell it’s better for me anyway.
Thing is, from reading the article (I don’t do reddit, so maybe this was left out there), they were not even asking the players to change their snacking habits, just to change how some things were handled in the campaign.
The GM was fine with it, but wanted to check with the other players and everybody talked it out, everybody gave some ground (it sounds like without any kind of hard feelings) and everything was fine on the end.
So I assume that anyone that is trying to push that here is trying to create a Straw Golem to express their own unrelated prejudices about vegans? 
Would not be the first time.
(I am not a vegan, but I don’t have a problem with them and I would do just about anything to make a friend feel comfortable and welcome, as would my friends… generally especially the vegan ones! Empathy seems to come with it in a package deal. Imagine that!)
It’s perfectly simple.
Person A wants to follow a set of rules.
Of course, as noted above, everyone involved in the actual situation managed to come to a sensible agreement about this themselves, by discussing the situation openly. Would that this were possible for all disagreements.
I would argue that it is
(One of the solutions is “well, I guess this just isn’t for me”, for whoever refuses to move from their set in stone position, but why would you want to interact with anyone that can’t do that anyway?)
Perhaps I’m being too cynical when I’d say that it’s perhaps always possible, but not always likely, because people.
Yeah, some people center themselves in everything, but they end up in the middle of an empty, featureless plane
Most people, I have found, are more flexible and more than willing to give and take. That could be because there are a lot of people that I quickly decide “are not for me” 
Yes, because people are only ever selfish assholes and never do things for others… /s 
Not all of them. Not even a majority, but enough to leave the world like… all of this.
Yah, that’s what the OP is about, but we got off on a tangent about actual players. 
No, you are oversimplifying. “Rules” is a very loaded word.
It’s not a rule that people not make transphobic jokes around me. I’m not the boss of anyone. It’s just polite for them to not do so in my presence, and I appreciate it.
Why is everyone working so hard to be dicks to their own friends? If your friend is uncomfortable around meat, don’t eat it around them. I feel bad for everyone’s friends who’s preferences are so unimportant and burdensome to you that you can’t possibly accommodate them, no matter how easy.
Eating nuts instead of beef jerky at the RPG table is the lowest possible bar to clear for not being an asshole to your own friends. What the actual fuck are you all arguing against here.
