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D&D Looks To Cut Down On Racial Differences Going Forward
Races and classes have been the central aspects of character creation since the beginning of Dungeons & Dragons – well, not quite the beginning, since Elf used to be a class in original D&D. However, based on a twitter thread by D&D's Jeremy Crawford, it looks like Wizards of the Coast will be moving toward less drastic racial mechanics, especially in regard to races traditionally considered "monster races."
Crawford pointed out the differences between the orcs found in Volo's Guide to Monsters and those found in the Exandria and Eberron settings, saying that the latter reflects the direction that the D&D team is headed in regard to monsters. The Exandria and Eberron orcs lack the -2 penalty to Intelligence and the required evil alignment. This reflects the fact that in these settings orcs are mostly considered another type of people – with all the varieties in personality and temperament that come with that – rather than fodder for player characters to fight.
[...] It is worth noting that this comes on the heels of a Twitter discussion on the racist history of orcs, initially spawned by a screenshot of the description of orcs in Volo's Guide to Monsters. Tolkien initially portrayed orcs as caricatures of Mongolians, and orcs have been racial stereotypes of other races over and over (see World of Warcraft or Bright). Dungeons & Dragons is not immune to this – even outside of the orc issue, races like the Vistani appear as Romani stereotypes.
Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons
Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That's just not right, and it's not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.
See also: Dungeons & Dragons Designers Clarify How Gnolls Differ From Other D&D Creatures
Related: Gender and Appearance Stereotypes Travel to World of Warcraft
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:02PM (5 children)
If they don't believe in it, why are the Grand Wizards changing it?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:20PM
Probably to get ahead of when somebody decides that this is social commentary or that the races in the game are actually analogous to ones in real life. Some people have so few problems that they have to go out and look for problems to have.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:39PM (1 child)
They are afraid of masculine black men, but they are even more afraid of the woke cultural revolution. There's too many cis white males [reddit.com] at the company as it is, and the company is in Seattle, home of the CHOP.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:59PM
They have reason to be fearful having fired Terese Nielsen makes them misogynistic, homophobic and with this latest admission - massive racists too.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @09:21AM (1 child)
Because entertainment detracts from having every spare waking moment devoted entirely to social justice and the progressive agenda. As this is obviously the one and only thing that is worth spending time on in life, this obviously means that all games must be turned into propaganda, so that it is impossible for any to think of anything else. So the creators of these games must be pressed into it, or the employees of the companies that make them must be harassed, smeared, threatened, attacked, and their lives generally ruined until the comply (which might or might not stop it), go bankrupt, or simply kill themselves, which, naturally, the Ministry of Truth will not dwell upon when there is another social justice cause to triumph.
If they didn't, we might, horror of horrors, have entertainment rather than indoctrination!
...you know, I typed those words out of sarcasm, but given some of the dialog I've seen on here there are probably a lot of people on SN who agree with this. Many won't say it, many may not even admit it to themselves... but really, they do.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:29PM
Aside from the sarcastic hyperbole, that's mostly correct. They use whisper networks, take control of the HR dept, intimidate or harass anyone who falls out of line, and do whatever they can to get their enemies to grovel, exit, or commit suicide. Basically turning workplaces and whole industries into a twisted high school cafeteria filled with winos. They need to espouse the social justice agenda or they will get cancelled themselves. The agenda is just a means to grab money and influence, even if they are in short supply.
Tabletop gaming and other escapist hobbies are full of socially inept males who can be easily manipulated or vilified. Corporate leadership already leans woke since they don't want a media firestorm on their hands.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:06PM (19 children)
I wonder why, you have a sub-race of the elves that hate all other elves -- and pretty much anything else. They live under ground and they worship a demonic spider queen. Their entire society is in service of that. To get ahead in their society you pretty much have to kill whom you want to become. Drizzt Du'urden is more or less one of extremely few counter examples to the typical drow.
I guess this is another reason to keep to the original books and rules and not get on this 5th edition bullshit. I'd rather not take a giant shit on Gary Gygax and his legacy cause of current times and "sensitive readers" that feel offended by more or less everything and can't tell reality from fiction.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:42PM (14 children)
Huh, it's almost as if being classified as evil has something to do with what you do almost as much as why you do it.
Did your party slay the goblins because the goblins were planning on slaughtering villagers, or did the party slay them because they saw the goblins as loot containers and XP?
When your party gets to town and some drunk in the tavern spills their beer on them, do they stay calm and brush it off so they don't draw attention to themselves, or do they go full on murder hobo mode and kill everyone that joins in the fight that ensues?
--
As for drow and orcs: When a society is entirely devoted to warfare and slaughters everyone who dares enter their territory or gets in their way, it seems reasonable to classify that society as "evil."
However, the converse is that there can be nuance in individuals in any society. Should someone be classified as evil just because they were raised in that society? What if they hate everything about the evil stuff they do, but haven't been able to get out of it because the rest of the world will kill them if they try to move into a different neighborhood? They're drow, or orc, or whatever and the rest of the world knows how dangerous and evil they are. This individual will probably be mistrusted and possibly attacked simply because of their race.
D&D is a game system. It doesn't have to be realistic or cater to the whims of social mores, but it doesn't have to be rigid and dogmatic by clinging to their origins either. I think they're simply considering the question, "Can we find a better way to handle the complexities of the individual characters in the game?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:56PM (7 children)
What you describe is more or less the story of Drizzt, as I recall it from memory. I think it was his father that grew to hate their, matriarchal, society -- not cause of the female power leadership or the giant demonic spider creatures but due to the constant scheming, backstabbing (both literal and figuratively), assassinations and it just generally being brutal and not fun. All other elves life semi-peaceful lives for eons and the Drow are just to busy slaughtering and sacrificing anything and everything that just crosses their path. But he is more or less the exception so the society is still what it is. He then instill these thoughts and feelings in Drizzt -- who then sort of takes it perhaps a few steps to far for, or being compliant with, Drow society.
A lot of it probably goes back to that D&D and similar games are usually hero tales, the player characters are literally heroes. Which sort of requires a villain and follow fairly traditional heroic story patterns. So you get the usual hero good, villain evil.
The funny thing is that I don't recall that the murder hobo scenario started to happen until computer games came around. It was never something I think we really engaged in as players. But something that sort of came about when you played the games on your own. I recall the summer that the Balder's gate computer game was released. We dragged computers to a friends flat and spent quite a few days there playing it from start to finish. That was probably the first time we actually started to go around towns and just steal everything that you just could -- oh look a chest, mine. Something else you could take, mine. That never really happened in the pen and paper version.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:03PM (4 children)
(edit, in lack of an actual edit function). But it was also I think the early computer rpg's that sort of brought about the whole murder hobo thing. Almost all encounters were and could only be resolved by force. There was few exceptions and lack of programming options or what have you sort of made it like that. If anything that might then later have flowed back into the pen and paper versions. But as I mentioned I don't recall that being the case to start out with. But different experiences for different players perhaps.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:27PM (3 children)
It's come full circle in some computer RPGs. Consider Planescape: Torment, where you can not only negotiate your way out of fights, but you can gain new allies as well. Fail to negotiate what SHOULD have been a simple transaction and be forced to slog through a nasty sewer for less reward than you would have gotten if you had just talked your way through the situation. I never finished it, but I should probably try again. It was pretty awesome.
Another one I haven't played through, but similar: I hear Undertale has options for both pacifist and genocide runs in the game with different endings depending on what you've done.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by loonycyborg on Sunday June 21 2020, @10:49AM
Such games are still extremely rare since just spamming combat for rewards with diminishing returns just to waste people's time is more economically efficient from "business" standpoint. That is it results in more play time in exchange for less developer/writer/voice-actor time. And having inherently "evil" races is necessary for such content factories because it saves time on writing and lets you hire cheaper writers.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:20PM
I remember Planescape: Torment it was sort of a game changer when it came out, so many games before had included text and dialogue but it was quite frankly optional and most people just didn't bother with it since it always more or less ended in the same -- go out and slay something evil and then return to me. In PT you had to read, so you could pick the right dialogue options -- if you picked wrong it might be combat time and you would have a very high risk of dying and as noted for worse rewards. This might be why it wasn't as popular as say Balder's Gate or Icewind Dale since both of those was more about following the now standardized computer RPG formula of killing monsters to gain loot and xp to become more powerful so you could slay more monster for more rewards and better loot (repeat).
I recall some of the first like remakes of (A)D&D games for the computers from SSI/TSR such as Pool of Radiance where the programmers was very lazy. So they had just consulted the monster manual and I recall some fights got ridiculous as it would spawn in things like 1d4 x 100 critters (and Gnolls and such) and such -- so much so that sometime the game would just crash or the fight would take forever and due to designs of how the magic system worked you would quickly run out of spells and then it was just a matter of if the warrior would survive long enough. Champions / Deathknights of Krynn (and the other "Gold box" games) and a few others was probably a core reason why me, and many of my friends, upgraded our A500 machines with 512kb of extra RAM cause it was a requirement of to just run the game.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Kalas on Sunday June 21 2020, @07:39PM
I wholeheartedly recommend Undertale to any fan of RPGs. I can't think of any other game where I can't find anything to nitpick about, and believe me, I love to complain even about things I like. Without writing a whole wall of text about what's to love about it, I will say that is true and more. The true pacifist ending (best possible ending, not obtainable on first playthrough) and genocide get the most attention, but there's a wide range of neutral endings ranging from pacifist to "killed most people in fights you couldn't flee" each with different end results for the player and/or monsters of the underground. And I just adore how the game subverts your expectations of a typical classic RPG in so many ways. Because of that I don't think anyone could fully appreciate it if it was their first RPG experience.
And if you like that there's Deltarune, not as a sequel but more as a re-imagining of the setting and characters, with a different message I'm not quite sure of because I only played Chapter 1. The main thing I got out of it so far is that Ralsei is the cutest fluffball ever to cast a spell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @05:58PM (1 child)
But it was definitely the one that non-nerd society remembers.
Wasteland which was a decade earlier had children in-game that you could murder. It was how you drew out the (something) Ranger, who had the Red Ryder BB Gun, which was one of the best and earliest weapons you could get, if you played your cards right and set up an ambush for him. I also remember some other games of that era allowed it, although many made towns combat free zones and many others still discourage thievery within town in other ways unless it was quest related. Rogue-likes as a class often allowed that however, game balance issues willing.
After Baldur's Gate quite a few games started allowing it more, although in most cases they simply had everyone ganging up on you, even though in a real bar fight it's very likely some would ignore it, some would fight you, and others would take advantage of the chaos. Maybe even one or two really powerful guys would ignore it until they were personally disturbed and then end all fighting either with their commanding presence or by KOing people until the situation is under control. KOs being something almost every game omits, even though many players might want to try less violent approaches than are the norm.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 21 2020, @07:42PM
Didn't Fallout, or was it Fallout 2, also allow it -- killing kids plus you could get a career as a post-apocalyptical-pornstar.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:36PM
Sexy orc and goblin girls are chaotic good.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by krishnoid on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:52PM (4 children)
Sounds like the Klingons. Or maybe the Romulans?
How about if a huge part of income taxes are applied to the military, the military is sent out on excursions rather than defending existing borders, and you cage trespassers at the border instead?
That's probably less evil, but now that you mention it, the alignment system vectors only have orientation, but no magnitude.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Username on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:23PM
I can see Romulans being Drow and Vulcans being other Elves. Klingons, idk, I see them more like Dwarves. They seems to have more dimension to them than just fighting. Clans and honor and whatnot. I see Orcs more like that one Dominion race that was genetically modified to fight and obey the founders. They always need some other race to lead them.
Hum. That does describe the federation. The do like their occasional excursions into the Romulan DMZ, and the unofficial sponsorship of the Maquis violence against Cardassia.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Sunday June 21 2020, @10:25PM (2 children)
This raises a really interesting question for me.
A strong case can be made for several countries IRL to be considered "Evil" (e.g. North Korea, Ceaucescu's Romania, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the USA as it pertains to their foreign policy in South America, Asia and the Middle East), however what we're really talking about there is the leadership. The individuals living in those countries are often good and can be just as much a victim of the leadership.
in D&D terms, if a society is evil, but most of the individuals within that society are not, is it OK to attack them on sight?
(Score: 4, Touché) by takyon on Sunday June 21 2020, @11:04PM
Ask your party's cleric about jihad.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @02:45AM
Evil is just a matter of perspective. It's all subjective, so arguing as if these are concrete terms is unproductive. I've met people who think owning animals is evil, so are Greenpeace terrorists or freedom fighters?
Why did Afghanis keep joining Al Qaeda until we finally gave up and surrendered the country to them last week? I'm sure plenty of people on this site would consider then evil terrorists, but they view Americans the same way, I'd bet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by helel on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:01AM (1 child)
Let's not forget the part where Drow were cursed with black skin to reflect their black hearts. When it comes to real world implications of fantasy races that's not even subtle. Besides, murdering people is, as per the definition in the players handbook, a good deed if your victim is "evil" and as such Drow murdering other Draw is not a problem. It's their murdering people who are members of "good" races that's bad.
If Wizards of the Cost was going back and editing older editions to SJWash the history of the game I'd be offended but they're not. You can still buy the old games* as they existed and still play them. They've changed all kinds of things from one edition to another in both mechanics and setting. Reducing the racist slant of the setting isn't fundamentally different than removing alignment languages or introducing Dragonborn.
* at least the old games published by Wizards. I don't know if they sell the books written for TSR.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:21PM
The trick was, in most situations it was murder in order to save another (or more often, hundreds or thousands) of other lives, which make it go from murder to justified homicide. This of course got glossed over by most people just like the various ways one could shift alignment (ranging from your actions in game, to accidentally picking up and using the wrong loot.) In fact I'm pretty sure there were rules for randomly generating alignment as well so players actually had to ROLE PLAY as something they weren't comfortable with, rather than carefully constructing an idealized character that matched whatever ideals they held helping to break down preconceptions one had by making them experience and take actions in a world much unlike their own. In fact I'm pretty sure this was explicitly alluded to in Chick Trac(ks/ts).
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:10AM (1 child)
let's compare that to our world
see where it gets us
sub-race of the elves that hate all other elves
muslims hate each other and everyone else.
it's in their book
their actions reflect this
I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.
-- and pretty much anything else
again with islam
read the book
They live under ground and they worship a demonic spider queen
they live in a desert and worship a god whose prophet was a pedophile, betrayer, liar, thief, murderer including lying to the father of the last girl child he married by having sexual intercourse with her before menarche when he gave his word he wouldn't
the koran describes allah as the best deceiver there is, a liar who is not above using the same evil and wicked schemes of his opponents
Their entire society is in service of that
islam
To get ahead in their society you pretty much have to kill whom you want to become.
muhammad is seen as the epitome of what a human should be like, the life of whom can serve as a beacon of guidance for people of every walk of life
when your prophet is a raping, murdering, lying, deceiving, child molesting terrorist what can you expect of the followers
Drizzt Du'urden is more or less one of extremely few counter examples to the typical drow.
the gay King Mahmud of Ghazni gave his male lover Malik Ayaz a kingdom if this counts
any of the above can be found by a quick search on the internet with references to evidence and documents
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:50PM
they probably meant the Jews, but Mohammedanism was just a rip off of Judaism anyways so either one is fine.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:06PM (16 children)
with SJW excrement.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:20PM (11 children)
Well I for one think D&D getting politically correct doesn't come one minute too soon: this game has been turning nerdy teenagers into raging Nazis for 50 years and it's high time it stopped.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:22PM (6 children)
Not to mention Satan worshipers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:12AM (1 child)
When I was a kid, D&D was considered Satanic by the authoritarian assholes of my time. Looks like authoritarian assholery is bipartisan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:53PM
if you view the political spectrum as a circle and the top right is libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism and the top left is types of anarchism, then the democrat and republican parties are on the bottom of the circle where all the authoritarianism is.
(Score: 2) by Kalas on Sunday June 21 2020, @10:02AM (2 children)
This delightful parody video [newgrounds.com] was actually my introduction to D&D all those years ago. Thanks for reminding me it existed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:03PM (1 child)
I think they were called Chic Flics or something, but they used to run in that Radio Shack magaine and a few other places, giving these little stories of how the satanic and evil dungeon masters corrupted members of their groups, how people were ignored and shunned when their characters died, etc.
It's some hilarious shit in the same vein as Reefer Madness.
Given the SJWization of D&D maybe it's time to go back and reflect on them and how they relate to the un-caracaturization of standard fantasy races.
(Score: 2) by Kalas on Sunday June 21 2020, @07:48PM
You're thinking of Chick tracts. [wikipedia.org] I wasn't aware he ever covered D&D but it's true and a film [wikipedia.org] was made about it. I'll probably check it out later for shits and giggles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @08:56AM
muslims? yes, but that is not polite to say in public
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:22PM (2 children)
I must have missed the epidemic of nerdy teenagers building their own working gas chambers.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:25PM
You mustn't have entered a teenager's room full of dirty laundry for a long time then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @03:43AM
It says a lot that both the parent and GP were both modded as funny, rather than more appropriate mods. It really isn't amusing to say people are Nazis that aren't advocating actual Nazi policies or at least pushing for racial purity.
(Score: 3, Touché) by RamiK on Sunday June 21 2020, @01:02AM
Well... [wikipedia.org]
compiling...
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:44AM
Oooh, a whiny man child that didn't RTFA and grt a clue. Oh well, the rest if humanity will move on and you'll be arrested in 5-20 years for taking your anger out on others.
I doubt the judge will care about your 3.5 rules and how you went into a berserker rage and should be let off with a nerdy insanity plea.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:57AM (2 children)
The puritans who hated that game were never Christians. They were 'karens'. They used Christianity as a device to show outrage. They have taken upon themselves a new cause. The cause of 'justice'. The only problem is their form of justice is one of hatred and dividing people into ever smaller groups. Remember it is not about you. It is about them showing to others how pure they are. They have also found a new method to 'fixing' things. Put yourself in the jobs that allow you to 'fix it'. Then kick out anyone who disagrees with you. Why not it worked for the brown shirts and red guard.
Repent now sinners! You have offended their sense of justice!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday June 21 2020, @05:03AM
yep, the Divine Justice Warriors.
People should wrap their head around the concept of evil having no ideology whatsoever. If praising Jesus advance their agenda, they do it. If it's satan time, they switch.
Good people instead see their cherished models of the world destroyed in one second and they enter the denial - rage - bargaining - acceptance phase. No, you should have a trigger to weed out noise. As soon as the traitors reveal, you simply find the most inconvenient way and time to stop supporting them.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:59PM
except all this cultural marxism is actually a tool for white genocide.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Es3WG7JKJUGB/ [bitchute.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:35PM (6 children)
》...how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated
One way is to continue to use hateful adjectives like "denigrate" that are offensive to Black people.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:37PM (1 child)
Adjective? It's a verb, and if you think it's hateful you are one ignorant nigra.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:12PM
Come on now, don't be niggardly [wikipedia.org] with your criticism. Tell us how you really feel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:43PM
Call Webster's to have the word changed to "deafricanamericante".
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Sunday June 21 2020, @05:07AM (2 children)
It's obvious you are not comfortable with Latin, you islamojewnigger troll. De-nigrate is "to remove nigritude". If removing nigritude is semantically bad, it follows that nigritude is semantically GOOD, duh.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Sunday June 21 2020, @08:52AM (1 child)
I have bad news for you, Bot:
https://www.online-latin-dictionary.com/latin-english-dictionary.php?lemma=DENIGRO100 [online-latin-dictionary.com]
Denigro
1 to blacken, to make black
2 to colour very black, to blacken utterly
3 to asperse, to defame
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday June 21 2020, @11:50AM
In truth, I'd be more shaken if my interpretation of denigrate had been accurate.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:39PM (7 children)
Meh. The race mechanic was just a playing shorthand, a convenience. Like Anime character tropes. So you could spend more time playing and less time figuring out who/what you were dealing with. You see a pack of orcs, you can sort of skip forward rather than asking them if they are on the way to the great wizard's library in Elfendale across the mountains.
What's next? Red dragons that hate Gems and Gold? Mermen that hang out in volcanoes? Evil Unicorns that.... (Oh wait, D3/Whimseydale, been there done that, got the wings)
I don't recall ever confusing (or even associating) any of the game races with any real-life human phenotypes or hearing it done by others. It was just never a thing.
I guess the new normal if you see a pack of humanoids approaching, the DMs will just tell you what they are wearing "Dresses(Casters), Metal Armor (Melee types), etc. and you'll do things based on that.
Or more people will just not bother upgrading. I haven't updated my books since AD&D came out anyway.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Sunday June 21 2020, @01:58AM
Playing in a mixed black/white crowd, this was also my gaming experience. Sometimes, we just wanted to slay bad guys. Other times, we were more nuanced.
I think one of the benefits to having races or classes like orcs, elves, Klingons, or Romulans is that you can either use the groups for an us-vs-them battle or they can be used to explore the us-vs-them hatred that festers in our community today. In either case, the idea of us-vs-them is central.
And for each of the races I mention in my last paragraph, there have been many stories that have turned the "that race is bad" stereotype on its head. Lord of the Rings (from which came up with the idea of the orc) is a pretty good example. The elves, dwarves, humans, and hobbits weren't very friendly to one another. And yet, they came together for a common goal, learned about each other, and forged closed bonds in the process. Of course, since there are epic battles, an us-vs-them scenario must exist, so some group had to be the bad guy. Better for it to be some fictional group than something real. Let it be orcs. (Even the article states that Tolkien, who invented the orcs, never meant for it represent any real race. He purposely wanted something fictional.) But now Orcs are racists because some side book of DnD said orcs have a lower IQ?
Discworld is a great counter balance to this: One of the most racist guys possible winds up successfully leading a police force that contains the most diverse set of employees (dwarves including one who is human sized, werewolves who have to deal with their "monthly cycle", trolls, zombies, golems, "igors", gargoyles, and loyal idiots who struggle in the modern world) and in the process finds out that maybe the other races aren't so bad. The separate races / classes of people often (but not always) have certain attributes and experiences that the other races / classes don't possess. This mirrored real life very well: athletes and nerds are very similar to each other except when they're not. Dogs and cats are similar to one another except when they're not. Men and women are very similar to one another except when they're not. People from one country are similar to people of another country except when they're not.
But the point is, as soon as there is more than just one bad guy, an us-vs-them scenario is inevitable. But an us-vs-them scenario doesn't make a game (or movie or book) automatically racists. And yet, that seems to be the argument people are utilizing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Sunday June 21 2020, @04:11AM (1 child)
A group of merpeople who live around a sporadically active volcanic island, I'm guessing. Some occasionally have to leave their homes in the river delta and trek up near the vent to take measurements. It's not easy to move about on land with a tail that amounts to a pair of fused legs, let alone climb a mountain. But eventually they figured out how to alternate moving one hand and the fluke forward with pushing the pelvis forward, leaving the other hand free to carry things.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:32PM
In the midst of their observations of the volcano, the merfolk stumble upon the murky lair of Cerisia, an adolescent red dragon. It is, strangely, a giant pile of ash and charred plant matter, rather than gold and gems, the dragon resides upon. Her red skin has enough soot coverage that she will likely be initially mistaken as an acid breathing aquatically capable black dragon by the party (which would make more sense in the island environment.)
Cerisia has forsaken the sturdy glitter and glam type possessions usually sought by her kind and instead seeks beauty in nature - e.g. flowers, butterflies and trees.
The dragon is engaged in study of ways to interact with nature that don't involve lighting it aflame, but is routinely disappointed as her body heat and breath routinely destroy any greenery, flowers and critters in her vicinity. Her activities in the volcano cause periodic instability and result in it threatening the Mermen's nearby underwater cities.
As a hatchling Cerisia played with a traveling wizard for some years who cast farsight for her allowing her to virtually enjoy the beautiful gardens and parks of a nearby kingdom, which she fell in love with, and eventually visited and unwittingly destroyed some decades later. Destroying what she had always loved caused her deep long-lasting psychological trauma, as well as a spate of toasted hors d'heroes for a few years thereafter. If the players are able to discern the dragon's desire and enable it in some fashion (she may generate a related quest) she will react favorably and possibly even leave the volcano or stop her investigations thereby sparing the merfolk.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday June 21 2020, @07:18AM (2 children)
No. It wasn't. The whole point of D&D was to escape reality to a different reality that was explicitly fantasy. You got to role play, which is literally to act out the fantasy according to their role. We call these people actors, and nobody confuses the actors in a play with their characters in real life, nor do they assume the hypothetical reality is real. It's like the disclaimer in videos that nothing in the video has any relation to a real person, blah, blah, blah.
From the beginning, at it's foundation, the organized need to apply the bullshit, labels, containers, grievances, and demands that one group be catered to, are illogical and inane. It's a fucking game. Nobody reasonable thinks that orcs represent any parallel to the real world and that the orc/half-orc-human dynamic represents the systemic racism and class warfare present in the contempoarya..adf..ga.43 jeesu fucking christ right? Again, a fucking game. The orcs are inherently evil fuckers that like burning down our corn crops. Kill them for XP, lols, and honor. Go :)
This is a quasi-Anthropomorphizing behavior, that always comes back to the primary question. Back to first principles. Does a person have the ability to distinguish between the game, the role playing, and the real world? That goes back to the 80's with arcade games. Same arguments by people that love to control what people can do and enjoy.
We played D&D to get away from the judgment and bullshit of the real world, and to role play as wizards, half-orcs, and beserk crazed barbarians. It had no relation to real life whatsoever.
This bullshit right here. Real-world racism has no place in our fantasy worlds. Likewise, real world bullshit like getting butt-hurt over prejudice towards the orc has no place in any decision making regarding the game. We can create worlds where an explicit evil (like Melkor level demi-god evil) can give birth to a race that is inherently evil. It's understood why, because that is part of the whole backstory. We have origin stories for the races.
What's next? Not all Mindflayers are pyscopathic assholes, and they need more range and nuance? Like a trans-Mindflayer bar owner that obsesses over the feelings of others, cries frequently, and strongly identifies as a gay Wood Elf. Fuck no. We like to role play, not play out something patently ridiculous. Only way that could possibly be true is if some god-like level Enchanter got mad and decided to make the Mindflayer an example. You need a reallllly strong back story for that demand for nuance to counteract the origin story of the Mindflayer. Evil beyond time and space and all that shit. It literally makes no sense to have Mindflayers exist in the entire range of human sensitivities and behavior.
How orcs are treated in this game has no relation to real life whatsoever, except for the need for some people to use it a social vehicle. I support social progress and treating people better, but it's fucking insane to start controlling how we can role play, and what kind of role playing is more correct than others.
We should be careful before we start judging each other's role playing and fantasy worlds, because those are explicitly all equal as a form of art.
Fucking Art Nazis, man.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:05PM
The Left wants you to forever roleplay their fantasy game.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @02:50AM
Drizzt was a Drow that went good and his story is ridiculously popular.
"Even more worrying than individual racial stereotypes is the use of biological determinalism – the idea that orcs are naturally “savage” and even when “domesticated” lack the capacity to care that other races do. The idea that a race of people with free will and the capacity to make decisions are naturally inclined toward evil or low intelligence is central to real-world racism, and it is a good sign that Wizards of the Coast is adding more nuance to D&D races."
I see that as nothing more than expanding the possibilities of the D&D universe. You can still craft stories with evil Orcs and Gnolls, but players can create characters that aren't inhibited by the stereotypical roles of any given race.
"How orcs are treated in this game has no relation to real life whatsoever"
That is not really true, every imaginative act is done by a real person, every set of game rules imparts a concept of how the world does/should/might work. Races set in stone as evil are an affront to the concept of free will and imagination.
Hopefully WotC will work in mechanics like "as an Orc choose your path/deity" and you get modifiers based on which path you choose. That way they can keep the -2 int along with some strength or whatever modifier.
We all take comfort in our traditions, and for gamers/geeks/nerds the traditions are rooted in the games/comics/books we grew up with. Change is uncomfortable and scary, that is normal; but don't let the fear grip you so tightly you lash out in anger without just cause.
D&D is a game built on imagination, and DMs frequently alter the standard rule set. This is a whopping big nothing burger, but it comes after a massive shift in cultural priorities which understandably makes a lot of sheltered people uncomfortable.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday June 22 2020, @04:43AM
Let's face it - combat is a big part of roleplaying. As fun as it is to play diplomat and work out peaceful resolutions to the challenges thrown up by the DM, sometimes we all want to just run in with a sword and roll natural 20's.
Races that are inherently evil help the game by removing the need for Paladins, good Clerics etc to moralize about the motivations of their opponents etc. If we took the current trend to the logical extreme, all combat in D&D would eventually be considered wrongthink and we'd all end up playing My Little Pony RPGtm.
Fortunately, the group that I'm DMing at the moment is playing the Pathfinder Campaign "Hell's Rebels [paizo.com]" - fighting against the church of Asmodeus, a few serial killers and a whole lot of Devils. I hope that we can all agree that those beings born of the essence of the Nine Hells can still be evil, right?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:59PM (10 children)
It now has burning houses, looted hotels, and two extra card decks for a free welfare card and get-out-of-jail card on every move.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:06PM
Here's what happened the last time they tried that:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/ms-monopoly-is-supposed-to-empower-women-critics-abound.html [cnbc.com]
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/05/i-played-ms-monopoly-board-game-feminism/611725/ [theatlantic.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:16PM (3 children)
What makes it even funnier is that those Monopoly boardgame clones already exist, or possibly existed since I don't know if they are still around since Hasbro sued for all the $$$. But it is (or was) called Ghettopoly. Then there was a few other similar once as I recall -- I think it was called Slumlord and then I think Hasbro themselves got on the train with a "socialist" edition of Monopoly where you cooperate with the other players.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:20PM (2 children)
I've seen "Minneapolis-St. Paul-opoly". They probably exist for other cities as well.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:32PM (1 child)
Is that the one where property prices plummet when the defund the police card is played?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:41PM
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21105/minneapolis-st-paul-opolygame [boardgamegeek.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @01:19AM (1 child)
and Deutsche Banker.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:25AM
DUKE NUKEM is going to be replaced with a gay transvestite that identifies as straight, armed with a butterfly net. Monsters will be replaced with Teletubbies.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday June 21 2020, @09:43AM (1 child)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:08PM
At least one part is still accurate, the game of monopoly still isn't fun. Monopoly-rage is real.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @03:46AM
Perhaps before revising the game, people could try playing the game by the fucking rules. Seriously, if you play by the rules the game is a lot faster, a lot more fun, and actually has some minor reflection of actual capitalism.
That being said, there's now a completely card-based version available as well as a version for cheaters.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:01PM
Just wait until they figure out that most of the historical monsters were literally based on racial stereotypes and used as excuses for genocide.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:11PM
Obviously, the Modrons were created to be caricatures of those afflicted with OCD demanding order in all things. When will WOTC correct this insensitive depiction of the mentally different?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:15PM (3 children)
People at WOTC equate Orcs with Blacks and has for years and is suddenly afraid that their company will get cancelled so they are going to make Orcs the good guys?
I just assumed anybody who wanted to be themselves in DnD who was black and wanted to play as such would put "dark" under their skin tone at the top of the character sheet, or at least thats what the people I meet at convention do. Although in all fairness I came across few people who bothered to enter that information.
Is there something in DnD that stipulates that humans or elves or whatever have to be white? Ive read the books cover to cover for multiples of editions and never come across this. A good change to remedy the situation and be more inclusive would be to have human/whatever races pictures in the core rule books be different colors.
The changes suggested by the article would also require a complete rework of the alignment system. We should probably have atheist options added for clerics as well so that they can get their divine spells from their own empowerment.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by helel on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:19AM (2 children)
The artwork in most editions would certainly imply that the good races are all white. If fourth edition the artwork got a little more inclusive and the description of every single player race went out of it's way to say you could have whatever skin/hair/eye color you wanted.
As for the alignment system - I've always felt it was lacking. The Good vs Evil thing works fine for a Tolkien style adventure but it falls apart fast when racial alignment meets the existence of orc babies. You've got a heroic group of adventures who've defeated the orcs and gotten to the heart of their village to find the orc nursery full of orc children. Do you slaughter the defenseless younglings? That seems pretty evil no matter how you slice it but if you leave them alone they likely start to death and any that grow up will be a threat to your village in the future. On the other hand even if you try to raise and care for the orc children they will still turn out evil and be a menace to your people, as per rules as written.
Honestly, get rid of racial alignment and just replace "Good vs Evil" on the alignment with "Empathic vs Callus" and most things can remain the same while avoiding the orc baby problem. Even if the young orcs grow up "Callus" they can still be virtuous members of your village in a way that "Evil" orcs can't.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:36PM
The artwork might have more to do with the setting of the game, it's no big secret that Forgotten Realms / Faerun and World of Greyhawk are more or less norther-european, sort of the classic fantasy world ala Tolkien if you wish -- you can probably even pick out the characters and find the equivalent in and from each setting -- Elminister is Gandalf (or pretty much any setting with a main mage, I guess he could also be like Merlin if you wish), settings so you would expect to see a lot of white people of any race really. While other settings such as say Dark Sun would have more or less no, or less, white people at all -- they would all be olive skinned since it's a harsh desert world. Ravenloft being mostly Dracula-fantasy so more white people there, this is also where you have the gypsy-issue then as mentioned in the original post. The oriental games would have more people looking like that and so on.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:31PM
It's an anime/manga that deals with EXACTLY this moral quandry and shows the full effects.
Basically the goblins in the fantasy world (which covers the full range of mythical beasts, although goblins are the primary villains) steal and rape human (and maybe demi-human) women in order to produce more goblins. No one has so far managed to keep a goblin good, and most of the people who tried found themselves murdered and the cause of a goblin army attacking the adjacent region.
The protagonist in this case was horribly scarred by watching his sister experience this firsthand in the process of saving him from the massacre of his village, and his sole tether to sanity is a childhood friend who narrowly avoided the same fate, ending up on her Uncles farm in a nearby village.
It's a little campy since it does some videogame style 'levelling' of some of the monsters, but the basic storyline premise is an excellent introspection into the fantasy genres ignored motivations of various monster groups and gives ways to refute people who claim they should be treated the same way as other demi-human races, despite their alien and violence fueled reproductive and lifecycles.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:58PM (16 children)
"It is worth noting that this comes on the heels of a Twitter discussion on the racist history of orcs, initially spawned by a screenshot of the description of orcs in Volo's Guide to Monsters. Tolkien initially portrayed orcs as caricatures of Mongolians, and orcs have been racial stereotypes of other races over and over (see World of Warcraft or Bright)"
That's not true. Tolkiens Orcs have nothing to do with Mongols. They are Elves that have been twisted and forced into servitude by Sauron. They aren't human, and they aren't related to humans. They certainly don't represent any human group. They exist to show Sauron's power - even the Eldar, the mighty Elves, are not immune to his power, even they can be corrupted under his influence to be unrecognizable, vicious brutes nothing like the Elves as they were created. And they also contrast in that way with Humans - Humans being so much lower than the Elves, yet we are more flexible, more adaptable. Elves had to be twisted into Orcs before they were proper servants for evil, but he had no need to treat Men similarly. Men can serve both Evil or Good, just as we are. Elves must be thoroughly corrupted.
The predecessors to the Mongols would have been among the Easterlings, the men of Rhûn and/or Khand, if they appear at all. Remember he focuses on Middle Earth (Mediterranea) and lands outside of that aren't filled in too well. There are men to the south as well, and the 'dark' ones are the Haradrim. Those from Near Harad (roughly North Africa today) resembled Arabs, while those from Far Harad (sub-saharan Africa) are black, and also extremely rare in the story due to geography and distance. None of these humans are portrayed as inherently evil or different from the paler Europeans that are his heroes - it's only bad luck, essentially, that Sauron has conquered the east and the south first.
Romani stereotypes? Really? What if I told you Tolkien was modelling the Irish travelers, whose lifestyle bore great resemblance to the British Romani but who were not in any way related to them?
This is tendentious nonsense, the currently fashionable tendency to read current (and anachronistic) notions of "race" into anything and everything one comes across, with no concern for logic, reason, or human decency. This is the mindset that desperately clings to racism and keeps it alive, even while disparaging anyone and anything that disagrees with them as racist. Talk about projection!
"Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated."
There's a huge difference, however. Orcs are an "actual" (though fictional) race. So are Drow. The various human ethnic groups are not; they're all Men. The fundamental mistake we make here is in covering up our caste distinctions with a 'racial' mythology. The world of D&D, before this idiocy took hold, at least, was a wonderful antidote to such nonsense. Having genuine racial differences in the game made it more clear and obvious that there are no racial differences between humans.
But no, throw it all out, rewrite it until it's politically correct.
And then go out of business, because no one wants to buy this crap. Seriously. The people that lobby for this are virtually all people that don't even play it. So great, make them happy, find yourself with no customers, go out of business. The sooner the better. Make room in the market for someone that actually knows what they're doing. WotC lost the plot years ago, and the sooner they disappear the better.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:05AM
#hashtagsmattertoo
(Score: 2, Informative) by Sulla on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:11AM
So said 1st edition players about anyone playing 2nd or later
So said 2nd edition players about anyone playing 3rd or later
So said 3rd edition players about anyone playing 3.5 or later
So said 3.5 players about ayone playing 4th or later
Nobody cares what 4th or later players think because fuck them
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:16AM
Don't rationalize it. [psychologytoday.com] In reality they're responding to memes used during the European migrant crisis. [pics.me.me] What they don't understand is (that to the limited extent the memes hold true [jihadwatch.org]) they're validating them. We all know the sane and anti-racist response would be to simply point out it's a fictional game but wokesters gonna woke. Just get a load of this blatant xenophobia. [freeforums.net]
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday June 21 2020, @01:00AM (6 children)
First most everything you wrote was correct... except
"Elves had to be twisted into Orcs before they were proper servants for evil"
Have you not read the Silmarillion. Tolkien's elves were NOT the innately 'lawful good' entities that made it into D&D. They were frequently selfish, jealous, murderous bastards. :)
And for what it's worth i have no issue with racial distinctions being removed from D&D. Very little is 'innately evil'. And players can do what they want, always have and always will. If someone want's to play a gentle orc raised by monks... who am i to say they can't?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Sunday June 21 2020, @01:59AM (2 children)
I wasn't saying they were. "Lawful Good" is a D&Dism, but I wasn't referencing it.
Elves are not necessarily always good in the way we would prefer to use the term, and some of them can be downright nasty individuals. But as a race, they're the firstborn of Ilúvatar, they're tied to the essence of /Tolkien/'s idea of Good. They're still individuals, but they are of a higher order. They're more like angels than humans, and of course we have legends of evil angels as well, but if you just ask 'are angels good' most would answer 'yes.'
"Have you not read the Silmarillion."
It only took me a moment to find it again.
On the origin of the Orcs, from the Silmarillon; "[...]all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes."
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday June 21 2020, @10:08PM (1 child)
I wasn't disputing the origin of Orcs. I was pointing at the Silmarillion as a source of tales about of Elves who were not "good"; and not isolated individuals who fell from grace. It was more nuanced -- Feanor and his clan declared war on Melkor ("evil") and the Valar ("good") at the same time.
I'm not sure I entirely agree. I definitely partially agree. I think they're closest to some sort of Tolkien sense of clean and pure and light, but not necessarily "good"; although good is associated with that. I think Babylon 5 played on the same idea with the Vorlons vs the Shadows; the Vorlon's were also associated with light and order (and even 'angels')... but they weren't necessarily, in the final anlsysis "good". I think Tolkien's are the same.
That's kind of murky; and really depends on what your definitions are; one might argue that 'angles' are by definition 'good' -- and 'fallen' angles become demons or devils. Ie... an "evil angel" loses it's angelic status, and isn't an "angel" anymore. Satan of course is some time's considered an angel... and sometimes not... for example.
Whereas I'd argue that Elves, as portrayed in the Silmarillion do not cease to be Elves, no matter how evil their actions.
But yes, the notion of angels who aren't good is also a thing that has been played with in film and literature. Walken's Gabriel in the Prophecy; is very much in the spirit of Feanor.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday June 21 2020, @10:59PM
Clearly within the broader category I would say. Just as Melkor does not cease to be a Vala when he rebels, Satan is often referred to as an Angel, albeit one who has "fallen."
"the Vorlons vs the Shadows"
Ok, I don't remember Tolkien ever going very far down that road but I can see the resemblance.
This may be in part influence from the ancient folk tales he was familiar with, in which the deities certainly don't tend to fit neatly into our modern preconceptions of good and evil. The sun gives life, but in a drought it takes it away. The annual flooding of the Nile makes the crops grow - but if it floods too much it can wash them all away. This sort of reality undergirds most of ancient mythology.
"Whereas I'd argue that Elves, as portrayed in the Silmarillion do not cease to be Elves, no matter how evil their actions."
Except for the singular example of the Orcs, which we were discussing.
Of course in that case, it was not merely a result of a bad individual taking evil actions, but a result of Melkor (the closest Tolkien equivalent to Satan himself) capturing them and altering them over a long period of time.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:04AM (1 child)
And how about making Westerns where everyone hates guns and instead settle their differences through group therapy?
Look, it's genre role-playing. A genre has assumptions and expectations built in because they let the participant "get into" the game quicker. Frankly, it's also familiar so the audience knows it will be something they will probably like. All genres are built on this.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @04:07PM
Familiar is quick, and popular with the majority, but the familiar world also promoted racial stereotypes, regardless of whether people were conscious of it or not. Today, it's pretty unanimously agreed upon that JRR Tolkien was vehemently xenophobic, and a racist. He was also one of the most popular and influential writers of the 20th century, so his legacy has been taken and reinterpreted in myriad ways. I don't think there's anything wrong with WoC recognizing that aspects of the lore are problematic and taking steps to make their world more complex than good white guys (and/or token black elf) that kill the uncivilized colored monsters who usually stole something or want to steal something, or just because they're over there, too close to our women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @05:43PM
It'll know kung fu and kick ass. The monks in D&D aren't Catholic monastic tradition pacifists ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:09AM
The humans and other races under Sauron /are/ explicitly said to be evil, and there is no characterization that changes that viewpoint at all.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:57AM (1 child)
You're missing something I think. D&D used to be played with imagination. It started out with physical dice and not random number generators. The Dungeon Master created the world, and they did it according to templates. Meaning, they stuck to the theme of the world. Of course the orcs where evil. It went without question, that Mindflayers were epic level assholes. The greatest distinction was you weren't playing as NPCs, and you couldn't play as the orc. When you're moving around in this imaginary world, the only "people" that can be offended are at the table with you. Everybody is role playing, which is why you had alignments and races. You were very much acting, and agreeing to act within your role. If you came upon orcs it was understood that they were evil.
Take today though. With MMO's it has changed so much. Everybody can be everything or anything they want somewhere. Instead of the orc acting within its original parameters, it can be an actual player. You're not playing with imagination as much as you are socializing with other people in a virtual setting. It's less role playing, and more real world bullshit.
So of course they're going to bring the bullshit from daily life into it. D&D is just a theme, a backdrop, to modern social gatherings. It's not the game it used to be, and hasn't for a long time.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:25AM
You're missing something. D&D is still played the same way. Yes, MMOs exist, but they're not D&D.
"The Dungeon Master created the world, and they did it according to templates. Meaning, they stuck to the theme of the world. Of course the orcs where evil. It went without question, that Mindflayers were epic level assholes. The greatest distinction was you weren't playing as NPCs, and you couldn't play as the orc."
Well, not with original boxed set you couldn't, that's true. But that was a totally different game too. You got experience points from accomplishing your missions, not from engaging in combat; which was extremely risky and usually resulted in permanent loss of your character.
It was also extremely limited and left a lot that the DM had to fill in. House rules and interpretations exploded, long before AD&D was released, and explicitly sanctioned many of these. And even without explicit sanction, the DM and the players can do whatever they want.
So your template may be the same as that of another campaign. Orcs don't always have to be evil, D&D orcs don't really resemble Tolkiens anyway. "Official" rules from decades ago allowed for half-orc and half-ogre PCs, and house rules would often go further if you had a good story. I had a half-ogre mage for awhile and she was just an awesome character, everyone loved her.
Well, everyone except the NPCs. Villagers with pitchforks got angry a few times, until she had an enormous burka made for adventuring, which mostly solved the problem.
"When you're moving around in this imaginary world, the only "people" that can be offended are at the table with you."
But nowadays people that don't play and haven't even got the books can just look them up online and find something to be offended about.
"With MMO's it has changed so much. Everybody can be everything or anything they want somewhere. Instead of the orc acting within its original parameters, it can be an actual player. You're not playing with imagination as much as you are socializing with other people in a virtual setting. It's less role playing, and more real world bullshit."
Again, MMOs aren't D&D. They very rarely seem to have any element of roleplay at all. That's why I don't play them, and I don't think their market and the market for D&D have much overlap. They're totally different games, from the ground up, despite any surface similarities.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:22PM
Better to be honest and accept for what it is. The book and the author are both products of his time.
Accept the good with the bad. Don't try so hard to twist things up just so that you can lie to yourself.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Lagg on Sunday June 21 2020, @09:00PM (1 child)
Firstly I love the talk of the deeper lore and world and a few posts in this thread were pretty fun to read especially when I see people's opinions on Tolkien's inspirations. He strikes me as someone that tried very hard to not model anything overtly on the real world when it made sense, and that's my assumption of his work always. But I find the ideas interesting. Same with the drizzt/D&D lore posts. Prior to this pointless antagonism what parts I did know of the basic LOTR world (one day I'm going to get fully into the silmarillion I swear) struck me as him just pulling things he finds interesting and flavorful to populate his universe and exercise his nerdy tendencies on - you know like authors and artist are wont to do. Like... You might as well say Frank Herbert is racist cause of the names and religions in Dune at this rate. I can kind of see why people think the haradrim and those other far-flung races of men are "bad" because they're the antagonists. But I mean... We established previously that the primordial embodiment of vicious willful self-destruction conquered them. Which might have been better than the alternative in the poo-sandwich they were in.
Secondly, I have angerthas moria (except I overcorrected myself and used the erebor 's'/< rune after rechecking wikipedia + third party cheat sheets and confusing myself, but otherwise moria, and the s rune is basically interchangeable anyway) on my arms which was part of a project I've been wanting to get done since I was a kid. A few months ago I discovered this advisory on one of those ADL-affiliate sites that has a library full of pages upon pages of "hate symbols". Among them the Coors logo and "nordic runes". I didn't know wtf these were until I discovered that advisory. So you know, potential documentary-topic I could have running in the background promptly ruined. I guess other nordic stuff like Thor's blond-generic-hunk ass and very-nordic shit like the hammer aren't racist tho.
I haven't had anyone in real life actually call my runes nordic, or say anything mean to me about it. Being latino and also having tengwar might be relevant. But it's now one of those things that are in the back of my mind now every time I look at them. Then all this... Bizarre shit about Tolkien's alleged racism started up. And I must say this is stupid and weird to me. He may have been a naive catholic in a lot of ways but this is the guy that told a nazi publisher off in one of the best examples of gentlemanly fuck-you letters of all time. I'm not even going to waste time with all this crap about orcs and dwarves because the logic at play with all this is deeply confusing. Trying to tackle it just does disservice to the man that for me is the epitome of the storytelling grandpa.
So now all that stupid baggage is attached to stuff I found cool and grew up loving. I grew up in the southwest with plenty of stupid fucking rednecks, and though they did say some pretty stupid things the worst I ever saw related to D&D is the usual christian-satan stuff. Which made the games of Magic and D&D I've played be counted in spans of low single digits every year. But even then none of them were this dumb to cross wires in such a fashion. I don't even know what to call this besides crossed wires. Like someone else mentioned here I think this crap is some bizarre reflection of the satanic panic. Right down to knee-jerk fear of arcane runes and tabletop nerds & their DM books.
I really don't even get the point with all 3 of these things I just mentioned, collectively or on their own. I can't even reckon any agenda it serves unless I start entertaining vast conspiracies that one look at real life will tell you no one - especially those in upper echelon "leadership" - have the competence to do. Or force of will. The satanic panic had some degree of identifiable agenda because it was rooted in Christian fervor and insanity, it fed into a feedback loop that they already were prone to. But this is allegedly in the name of progressiveness.
So... What the fuck is the ecosystem going on here. Or are we just going to deteriorate to aimless insanity on all fronts. I mean I'm fine with it at this point but it'll be nice to have a definitive "On this day of MM/DD/2020, we finally went full retard" that I can carve into a headstone somewhere. In cirth. Then cry on it.
I wish they were "Our enemies" as it were so I can then draw my axe stoically and roll initiative to take down the bitches on the other side of the door. But man that is just giving them too much credit and lending too much narrative to the world. They're scared children reacting to basic stimuli and trained responses. It keeps going until it starts cascading into nonsensical. How do you call scared children shitting themselves because they ran out of ideas for games to play with their toys "our enemies"? That's the depressing part about all this honestly. I hear the cascade is extending out into other nerd stuff too. My condolences to those affected. Use it as an opportunity to spur new dialog and art.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @09:42PM
It's all over the place and has been going on for years. Anything related to entertainment is extremely susceptible. Just know that you're not alone. It's impossible to sneak in these changes anymore because the intrusion is well recognized and immediately called out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:49AM (1 child)
Why, amidst all the frantic backpedaling and long overdue introspection, now even in the world of nerds (not that we should be exempt), is nobody demanding Lucas’ apology for Jar Jar?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:41PM
Or Admiral Akbar.
Or oh so many characters in Indiana Jones.
I mean if we start down this rabbithole, we're at the Ministry of Truth rewriting every fact to coincide with the new worldview, and oh which a new change has come in we have to start reediting all our truths once again.
There is a reason Latin is a dead language, and yet oh so alive in usage: Because fact changing bullshit like that is harder to do to something that is dead and published immutably.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:07AM
Fucking omni-insultees are ruining the world.
(Score: 2) by Kymation on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:21AM (1 child)
They should probably look up the root of "denigrate" = "to blacken". Isn't that an ethnic slur?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:54AM
No. I hope you're just pretending to be a retard to fit in with the rest of the redhats, but I strongly doubt you are.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:56AM
Fixed your topic.
If you want to know what race stands in for black, brown, indigenous, or whatever other group of humans, it's black, brown, indigenous, or whatever humans. All the great variety of humans are present in the game, plus more besides, if you are creative enough.
Orcs aren't humans. Orcs are stupid, brutish, and evil because Gruumsh made them that way. Gruumsh was angry at the other gods and when the gods created humanoids, he created a race designed to torment the others. Gnolls are the same way, except they're cursed by a different god for a different reason, but they're still cursed by a god.
If you decide to change orcs so that they're really just like humans, except humans oppressed them and didn't understand their culture and that's what made them "evil," then congratulations, you've just created the colonialist narrative you think you're "fixing."
I had the misfortune of having this same discussion with a typical leftist idiot and I compared orcs to Neanderthals. (Of course, we don't really know how smart Neanderthals were, but we know they were a lot stronger than humans). And, true to his
idiotologyideology, he was simply incapable of comprehending it. He said that all sentient beings had the same abilities and that if the science said Neanderthals were different, it must have been wrong. Funny how today's leftists have exactly the same way of thinking as the white supremacists of the past.No, he didn't. People just say he did. What actually happened is that in early discussions for a movie license, the person he was negotiating with insisted on portraying orcs as tiny, sparkly little fairies. Eventually Tolkien lost his temper and said "OK, you idiot, if you can't understand what orcs are, just pretend they're Chinese, you can probably understand that." He was guilty of talking down to his reader, whom he correctly assumed would have the typical racist attitudes popular in Britain of the time (this was during the "yellow peril") but which Tolkien himself did not share. When Tolkien intends for his fantasy races to stand in for human ones - as the Dwarves represented Jews and the Hobbits represented the English - you don't have to go looking for it. It's right there.
But if you don't agree, it still doesn't matter what Tolkien did, because D&D is not Middle-Earth licensed material. D&D's orcs, elves, and dwarves have similarities to Tolkien's, but they are not the same.
The only race that needs "fixing" in D&D is the Drow. In my game, Drow are albinos, almost translucent, as real cave-dwelling species are, and aren't tied to any particular elvish "ethnicity." The elves that followed Lolth became Drow, and the others didn't. It was a choice they made and their skin color didn't have anything to do with it.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday June 21 2020, @07:36AM (5 children)
How to Destroy America [frostywooldridge.com]
old article that is still as valid and insightful as it was the day it was written and Lamm's speech given.
I always think of what Lamm said when I read about this or that company/group "Addressing Racial & Ethnic Issues"
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 5, Touché) by loonycyborg on Sunday June 21 2020, @08:11AM (4 children)
Yep. America got totally invaded by foreign speakers. Its real languages has been mostly lost. This is totally evil. All speakers of English, Spanish, French etc don't belong there. They should return whence they came. And we should stop further immigration. If you want to stay you need to learn America's own language such as Apache or Navaho, depending on territory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:00PM (1 child)
OK.
What about Europe where the Caucasians are the native race? Do they get to kick out the invading races and should they stop taking them in? It's their continent, right? CRICKETS.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @03:45PM
First they have to play musical chairs, every group moving back to where they came from (NO ONE is native to their area in a really true sense). Eventually we'll all be converging to fight it out over Africa.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @04:33PM (1 child)
Why do you think the Mongoloids are more indigenous than Caucasoids? It's not true. Whites were everywhere first. Who in the fuck do you think built the pyramids all over the world? Aliens? The hunter gatherer Mongoloids who hadn't developed anything more than nomadic tribes? Wake the fuck up! The Mongoloids genocided the ancient Whites who were here already, and/or migrated in during the same time as the Mongoloids. Then they got genocided when the modern Europeans came in. This is how most borders were drawn in the past.
This is covered up as a means to align all people against Whites to further (((their))) agenda for mongrellization of all races except their own. Read their own writings on the subject.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @05:09PM
Next episode of Ancient Aliens.