Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday June 20 2020, @09:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the orc-lives-matter dept.

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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday June 21 2020, @09:43AM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Sunday June 21 2020, @09:43AM (#1010617) Journal
    Monopoly has always been a propaganda vehicle. It was originally The Landlord's Game, which had two modes, one in which you cooperated and was intended to demonstrate the benefits of living in a socialist society, the other in which you competed and was intended to demonstrate that a capitalist society inherently ends up collecting all of the wealth in the hands of a small subset of the population. The capitalist game mode was (since this was a propaganda game, after all), explicitly designed not to be fun to play. Once the patent expired on the game, Hasbro created Monopoly, which had only the capitalist game mode. It's an odd quirk of history that a game that was created from the start to not be fun has been one of the best selling board games of all time.
    --
    sudo mod me up
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:08PM

    by looorg (578) on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:08PM (#1010645)

    At least one part is still accurate, the game of monopoly still isn't fun. Monopoly-rage is real.