Wizards of the Coast Is Addressing Racist Stereotypes In Dungeons & Dragons (polygon.com) 385
AmiMoJo shares a report from Polygon: Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast has acknowledged the existence of racist stereotypes in its sourcebooks, and pledged to make changes to ameliorate the issue. In a blog post published on June 17 titled "Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons," Wizards of the Coast said that depicting a diverse array of human beings -- beyond "fantasy versions of northern Europeans" -- is "one of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D." The developers noted that while they want to feature characters "who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs," the game still contains problematic depictions of fantasy races.
Among these races are the orcs, who are often characterized as a savage horde of creatures who lust for battle, and the drow, an evil dark-skinned subrace of elves who dwell in a subterranean matriarchy. Wizards of the Coast specifically addressed these two groups in laying out recent and future changes to D&D products: "We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do." They add: "Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character's origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own." The publisher also said "it's adjusting material that maligns or stereotypes real-world ethnic groups like the Roma," reports Polygon. "The company has revised the adventure Curse of Strahd, which includes a people known as the Vistani that 'echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world.'"
"In addition, the publisher said two future books will be written with a Romani consultant so as to characterize the Vistani 'in a way that doesn't rely on reductive tropes.'"
Among these races are the orcs, who are often characterized as a savage horde of creatures who lust for battle, and the drow, an evil dark-skinned subrace of elves who dwell in a subterranean matriarchy. Wizards of the Coast specifically addressed these two groups in laying out recent and future changes to D&D products: "We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do." They add: "Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character's origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own." The publisher also said "it's adjusting material that maligns or stereotypes real-world ethnic groups like the Roma," reports Polygon. "The company has revised the adventure Curse of Strahd, which includes a people known as the Vistani that 'echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world.'"
"In addition, the publisher said two future books will be written with a Romani consultant so as to characterize the Vistani 'in a way that doesn't rely on reductive tropes.'"
About Time! (Score:5, Funny)
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#ORCLIVESMATTER
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Because Trolls have high regeneration.
Re:Sodomize yourself with a railroad spike, AmiMoJ (Score:4, Funny)
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All the race titles will still exist.
However they will all have the same statistics.
All will be any alignment.
None will have any racial tendencies towareds any alignment.
Lawful good drow palidans are just as likely as human warriors.
All will be able to use any weapon.
All will be able to wear any armor.
All will deal the same damage.
No weapon will gain bonuses against any 'race' or from being used by any race.
Cheers.
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All the race titles will still exist.
However they will all have the same statistics.
Actually, the "intelligence" attribute will cease to exist, as all intelligence tests are racist and used to further marginalise people of colour.
Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but if you look at an Orc, Troll, etc and think "Black Person", it's YOU who are the racist.
The whole point of the game is to give you enemies who aren't necessarily other PEOPLE to fight.
This is stupid virtue signaling, turned up to 11, and nothing more.
Look at what this woke crap has done to other industries, like comics.
Sure, the MOVIES make zillions.
But the actual comics industry is now in the toilet, in the process of being flushed.
And it's starting to metastatize in gaming.
Oh well. A 40-odd year player of D&D. I won't subsidize this sort of idiocy.
Oh well, I guess I now have the misfortune of having spare cash for other things...
Sigh....
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Furthermore the orcs are a people that comes from somewhere else to wage war with the humans who were already there. Turned up even more in Warcraft where they literally come to a New World and start battling the natives.
The orcs are the Europeans in the 1500s.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Informative)
The orcs are the Europeans in the 1500s.
Or the Huns in the V century, or the muslims circa 700-1800 AD [wikipedia.org], or the Mongols , or the Bantu [wikipedia.org]... we could go on and on
More seriously, the Orcs are usually depicted as tribal and less technological than the Humans, so they are a bad fit for Spanish conquistadores of Portuguese adventurers.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the Muslims aren't a good fit, because they were as technologically as advanced as both Europe and the Byzantine Empire (and were more limited by more mundane problems like long supply lines and having to leave considerable forces in conquered regions). Huns, maybe, though again, the Huns weren't that far behind the Romans, but by and large, because they were a confederacy of numerous tribes; some from the Asian Steppe, some from Eastern Europe and the Urals, and Germanic tribes as well, so in the end while they could do a lot of damage, it wasn't a sustained invasion in the long run.
Probably the best parallels might be the Germanic tribes of the 1st century, who definitely were not as advanced as the Romans. Other possible parallels might be confederacies like the Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age, or possibly earlier groups like the various hill peoples north and east of Mesopotamia in the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age periods, who were a constant scourge on the civilizations of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, who definitely were not as materially advanced, but numerous enough to be a constant danger against the nascent city states and kingdoms of the time.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Interesting)
âoeRacism was not a problem on the Discworld, becauseâ"what with trolls and dwarfs and so onâ"speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.â
Didn't hold later with Rimwards Howondaland but still ....
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't racism. I know you really, really, really want it to be racism, but it's not. You're stretching really hard to make it taht.
WOTC changing this does nothing to people who want to keep using it for "racist analogies", whatever the fuck that means. Sounds like you're trying to police how people play the game. Fuck off.
Yes, SJWs are a problem. It's a fucking cult. And trying to equate this to actual racism is really disgusting and shameful. I can't tell if you're a weird extremist or just some troll; functionally, there's really no difference.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Your whining about "SJWs"
It's important to remember that they used to call themselves "social justice warriors." The name wasn't invented for them, it was invented BY them. Tumblr was infested with them.
Their over-the-top screetching about every microaggression imaginable made them ridiculous, and when formerly normal people start acting like SJWs, calling them SJWs isn't a dog whistle or a sekret Internet code. It's accurate, and descriptive.
You may be too young to remember, but at one time anybody who said something like "man, modern pop music is pretty degenerate" would be called a member of the Moral Majority. This was an actual thing whose members got agitated if Prince sang about how he liked to bone women. It got turned into an insult because of how crazy the organization was. I can only assume that if you got zapped back to 1984 you would be angry about misusing the Moral Majority label too.
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It certainly looks like we're seeing the beginning of real revolution, I'll grant you that. This has been a long-time in the making. We really should have seen this 30 years ago, after Rodney King. I guess we still had some growing up to do.
The good news is that it won't be the Khmer Rouge -- quite the opposite. (Unless you think it's your side that's going to emulate the Khmer Rouge. That makes a lot more sense, but that's probably not what you mean. Of course, that's a fantasy as well. If we've lea
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Look at what this woke crap has done to other industries, like comics.
Sure, the MOVIES make zillions.
But the actual comics industry is now in the toilet, in the process of being flushed.
And it's starting to metastatize in gaming.
The PC Patrol hit Cards Against Humanity today. A co-founder was forced out because he fostered a bad work culture if you can believe that. I guess the complainers never saw the company product before accepting that job.
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I'm honestly waiting for the first "Ork lives matter" painted on some walls in Phlan.
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Interesting)
Tolkien's orcs were a *classist* trope. Tolkien had a splendid ear for dialect, his heroes speak in hifaltun' dialect because it sets them apart, not because he couldn't write differently. T.A. Shippey points out two characters in Tolkiens' published works speak in a completely modern dialect: Saruman and Smaug. They sound like 20th Century politicians.
So when Tolkien makes his orcs sound, well, working class, it's not an accident. It's alright to be a rural bumpkin, but anything that suggests you might earn your bread in a factory is the Mark of Cain.
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Society's global lack of philosophical maturity makes it hard for fictitious creations to not be compared inevitably to some marginalized group.
It's too bad humans are so primitive, such that we can't discuss fictitious creations without worrying about whom we're offending.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
no, you didn't read his premise.
YOU are the one comparing Orcs to black people not the people creating the orc race as a foe to be defeated in a fantasy environment.
If you are going to bitch about that, why are you not also bitching about all of the other actual racism being intentionally put on display. This is a fantasy environment and eventually people will just move to a more subtle form of it just to rile you up. The old fashion half-elf racism, the elf vs dwarf racism... or how about the demon race or angel race, I mean you fucking name it... racism is all over the fucking place.
It's one thing to avoid direct implications of racism by removing cards made by an actual racist that look like klan clothes and another to make up racist links where none exists because your own mind can fabricate racism in a situation.
Are you actually wanting racism to go away? Or are you looking to keep the issue front and center and make sure that anything you don't like gets a cleansing from the public eye like the CCP?
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, I see enough of this crap IRL.
And while I agree we're better off without racism, I'm sick of ideologues preaching to me in my passtimes.
And yes, I read the premise.
I've also seen the original arguments.
And you CANNOT control what people do in the privacy of their own lives.
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:3)
Eat a big cock.
Wizards is going to destroy this product. This happens with companies enjoying too many profits with another.
Donâ(TM)t worry, they are destroying their magic base too.
Get woke; go broke could be written as a law at this point.
The vocal minority do not buy the products they infiltrate.
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A company is changing it's product. Don't like it? Well don't buy it then. That's the way the free market works.
People are exercising their speech to criticize the decision and form of the change, and the company making it. Don't like it? read a different page, or scroll on by.
And if there's a big enough market for republican-aligned tabletop gaming, then someone will enter that niche and rake in the sweet dollars. If there isn't then you've proven that the WotC made a sound business decision to move away from that niche.
What the heck have Republicans got to do with anything here? Liberalism (as in, a love of liberty - where you're not being told how to act, think, feel etc by ideologues) isn't specific to Republicans or to the right.
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Yeah, and they also have white hair. Do we construct a bit of ageism into that now, too?
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Just because you assigned the comparison to a straw man of your own invention doesn't mean you didn't make it. You absolutely, literally did; then you tried to distance yourself from it. Since you created both the comparison and the people who believe it, whose idea is it? It sure wasn't mine. Whose pro
"there are black people, and then there are ni... (Score:3)
Not only did you, but you said you think that not because of their complexion, but because they are "incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type."
That's what you said. Nobody else said that. You said you think they represent black people because they are "incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type", not because they have dark skin.
And you're talking abo
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Orcs are a "a stock or store of money or valued objects, typically one that is secret or carefully guarde"?? Who would have thought that an Orc horde was a hidden stock of valuables???
Yes, "hoard" and "horde" mean different things....
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Like you, couched in second hand non-cited aspersions. Like just now.
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That's because "racism" has become these people's "42" (the answer to everything).
Good morning! RACISM!
1+1 is NOT 11! RACISM!
I agree with most of what you say, but points 3, 5 and 7 need more nuance. RACISM!
It's irritating having you label everyone a racist. That's because you're a RACIST!
Yet what're we seeing with "equality" movements. Segregation and privilege according to race...
I don't wanna have to deal with this during my free time.
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You can discriminate based on race without being racist
You might find this enlightening [psypost.org]
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, but if people equate a certain group of people with low level monsters in a RPG whose main reason to exist is to provide combat experience to player parties, it's not the RPG monsters that have problems and are in dire need of a change...
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Peak SJW; virtue signalling so hard, so desperate to find fault in others, that they become the very thing they supposedly hate.
Racism is alive and well in the US, but it's socially acceptable because it's the "right" kind of people doing it ( like our friend AmiMoJo here ). Don't get me started on systemic racism ( politely termed "affirmative action" ).
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4)
if you want a "complex morality" race, there's nothing wrong with that
if you want a one-dimensional punching bag, there's nothing wrong with that, except maybe taking writer shortcuts
what do you think zombies and skeletons are? they are hero fodder, a stand-up cardboard cutout for Shit What You Beat Up, the absolutely simplest easiest (and not PC-able except by hollow virtue theater) most direct route to crafting a Bad Guy shell, utilitarian minimalistic spartan bare single-purpose "role"
back in the day we also used nazis as disposable BadGuyz, a super-shallow vacuum with nothing inside, zero research zero effort zero "complexity", so i'm curious as to whether anyone is lining up to "address" that doublebad problem
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Interesting)
And there's nothing wrong with taking the one dimensional hero fodder and playing it as a robust, complicated society.
I have fond memories of creating a lizard man campaign where the PCs played as the one-dimensional lizard men. Except we built a society for them. Culture. Habits. Likes and dislikes. Conflict with the other races. They'd start the morning sunning themselves on the beach, then go looking for merchant ships to pirate. (They swam really well, so they didn't bother with their own ships. Just swam up and swarmed over the sides.)
When the local merchant fleet got tired of that they launched an invasion against the lizard men, and treated them like one dimensional hero fodder. But that was vicious and cruel and women and children were murdered, and it drove the PCs to take their people deep into the swamp, and then had to revert to hunting and gathering to keep from starving. But they rallied, and led their people into the sewers under the local city, and created a new empire there. Ultimately they undermined the city and sank it into the sewers, and drove the humans out, and claimed it for their own.
I've also run a campaign of a secret cabal of vampires keeping a town (and their secret) safe for centuries. Sure, they needed to regularly feed on the people in the town, but they are incredibly powerful and keep the town an idyllic, quaint backwater. But the world around them is rough, and kingdoms rise and fall, armies march, and the one-dimensional hero fodder comes at the town. But through it all the vampires valiantly fight to keep the town safe. Until the townspeople start to figure out their secret, and decide to uncover and kill the vampires in their midst.
And I've run elves as the eco-taliban trying to kill the other races around them. Ruthlessly slaughtering humans, dwarves, and halflings to keep them from farming and mining and building roads. They became the anti-progress, death to the infidels, militant enemy of all people. Launching raids under the cover of darkness, burning towns and crops, drawing in the wild animals to prey upon any who dared to light a fire or cut down a tree. Enslaving the other races, and putting them to work rewilding what they had domesticated.
On one hand I absolutely abhor the fact that WOTC is doing this. Good DMs and players did this decades ago. On the other hand, there's no exam to pass before you can use their materials. And good DMs and players are few and far between. It kills me that they had to, but god if I don't know the base. And they had to.
Glad they did it. But they could have saved a bunch of work if they had just asked a bunch of us a decade or two ago for some ideas about fleshing out those races to make them more interesting.
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We're talking about a game featuring literal monsters that want to tear down civilization and eat humans. They do not represent any extant group of humans, they are literal monsters. They exist in the game so players have unambiguous enemies they can fight without feeling guilty. Because it is a game. For fun. Not a complex moral a
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Again, you forget that he's a troll, and trolls have high regeneration. You need fire to kill trolls, not small cuts with bladed weapons. Everyone knows that.
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Years ago they made a kind of starter pack adventure with a companion CD. The CD had actors playing the roles of the pre made characters. Not a terrible idea really.
Anyway our DM wanted to work it into our campaign but didn't realise the character who threatened to slit someone's throat on the CD was replaced by a hammer welding paladin in our party.
In hindsight it wasn't that funny but we had a good chuckle at the over the top acting, especially the reaction to the giant spider.
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You are aware that we're talking about a fantasy world and the "people" are orcs and trolls, yes?
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Ok, then your comment really doesn't make any sense, maybe you could elaborate.
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Sorry, I've been having this shit preached to me my entire life.
I, personally don't care what color your skin is, what your reproductive equipment looks like, who you love (exception for Pedophiles), how you love them, etc.
NONE OF THAT SHIT is important to me.
I just care that you're a good human being who tries to get along with others, follow the law, and generally tries to leave the world a slightly nicer place than you found it.
If you can simply answer "Yep!" when I ask you about that, good enough.
But th
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Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
"Black skin" is about the only feature a Drow has in common with a black skinned human. White hair, red eyes, purple teeth, slightly shorter than the average elf, generally incredibly slender...
Am I really the only one who never even came up with the idea to equate a Drow to a black human person?
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It's not freaking new. Dark Elves were always depicted as _Elves_ with dark skin black as night with a blue|purple hue, -- such a tone of color doesn't exist at all in humans.
What's next, *Lolth [fandom.com] the Queen of Spiders or the Queen of the Demonweb Pits is not evil she's just misunderstood.
(*) Lolth -- the most influential goddess of the drow, within the pantheon of the Dark Seldarine.
Trolls Lives Matter! (Score:3)
Though they never did do an anti posting spell.
WOTC - WHAT? (Score:5, Insightful)
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having to take into consideration the advantages and disadvantages that come with your choice
Maybe that is it. No disadvantage or advantage to playing as any given species (you are beyond race at this point) every being is equal.
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Why bother playing the game, then?
Communism imagined everyone being equal, by the way.
Re: WOTC - WHAT? (Score:2)
If you can say "racial bonus" in a mixed crowd of non-gamers with no shame then you go right ahead and keep on keeping on.
For the rest of us, this isn't a new thing, and it does feel as shameful as it always has.
If you play a warrior in WoW, a warrior was a warrior, the racial differences were watered down to nothingsauce like +5 to axe throwing on a scale that goes to millions or something. The whole premise of the game also being that the Horde isn't simply evil.
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If you can say "racial bonus" in a mixed crowd of non-gamers with no shame then you go right ahead and keep on keeping on.
Now wait a second. The real world has "racial bonuses" just as well. Backed up by science, no less. For example, the ability to stay under the sun for a longer period of time. It's an advantage of darker skin color. This is a racial trait and I personally feel I am at a disadvantage here, because if I stay in the sun without protection for 3+ hours I am bound to have health issues. So there, racial difference.
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Alright, so my halfling hill giant rogue can both hide in a narrow alley AND break down the castle walls with his fists.
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While at it, why should we have different values on cards at all? All should be the same for the wonderful end goal of equity.
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It'll only be equal when all characters are 5 feet high, androgynous, a +6 special award to everything for being a player, and all stats as 12.
You'll start at maximum level with average gear (there isn't anything with any other stat bonus, so it's equal), and everyone knows the same skills (there are only a limited set, which everyone can learn, to make sure it's all equal).
If you really want the other side, read "There and never ever back again". Odd writing style, but it's from the side of the dark overl
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It's all optional, just like the house rule that you can re roll that 3 when generating your character.
This has actually been there for ages anyway, e.g. Dritz. He was a half dark elf but only so he could break the mold. With a bit more imagination he could have just been a dark elf who wasn't the usual pure evil.
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Re: WOTC - WHAT? (Score:2)
Why can't I role play a nice orc?
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The concept of the orc is pretty much lifted right out of Tolkien, and Tolkien did use some imagery (they were "swarthy", and in at least one letter he referred to them as looking like Mongols). I don't think Tolkien intended any overt racism, but used the language of his day to describe how they appeared. In his mythos, they were likely Elves corrupted by the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, and thus have an origin explicitly different than Mortal man. Of course, D&D just lifted those races in a one dimension
Always loved the way the Elder Scrolls handled it (Score:4, Interesting)
Try reading pulp fantasy (Score:5, Insightful)
The morality is unambiguous. Some beings are evil, some are good. It makes it much simpler when the hero of the story slaughters a hundred goblins when they are inherently corrupt and irredeemable. In a fantasy world the mechanics are very different from this ambiguous and complicated world. It also makes the politics simpler, simple enough for a child to understand.
Dark fantasy is where the neat lines of pulp fantasy are erased, everything is shades of grey. Is the protagonist an anti-hero? Are some characters neither good nor evil? This is a very different sort of story and attracts a different sort of reader.
I guess D&D needs to decide what it wants to be.
P.S. make evil characters have black skin was messed up. I prefer the Burroughs' Great White Apes of Barsoom as sort of an evil monster race. You know they were bad because of their behavior, not their color.
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Evil races had all colours of skin. Drow was just one set. And one thing about them was they absolutely excelled at what they did.
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D&D came from Tolkien ("Hobbits" needed to be replaced with "Halflings" in the early product history), who was unambiguous that LoTR was theological allegory.
"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."
--Tolkien
I'm willing to bet that the new "P.C. allowed" grey versus grey implementation is going to end up being a whole lot more boring.
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I prefer the Burroughs' Great White Apes of Barsoom as sort of an evil monster race.
I'm not sure I'd use Burroughs as an example. While I do like his stories and have read pretty much everything he wrote, he was definitely one hell of a racist bastard and that comes across in pretty much everything he writes, including the John Carter novels.
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D&D can be both. All they are doing is giving you options, you can still have your cavern full of goblins to plough through but if you want, as your campaign and stories develop, there is more there to explore.
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Well, Burroughs also had the Black Martians, who were bad guys. But then he also had the White Martians, who were even worse bad guys.
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In a fantasy world the mechanics are very different from this ambiguous and complicated world. It also makes the politics simpler, simple enough for a child to understand.
The problem arises when those children start thinking that's the way the world actually works.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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why not scales? or iridescent skin laced with lethal cnidocytes like Jellyfish?
You seem to make it sound like it's the notion of specific color that is a problem. Why? What's so special about colors? Lots of animals have specific colors.
Its just...not something I categorically identify as special enough to immediately mean bad.
Is it supposed to? I'm not familiar with the DnD universe; is there supposed to be an implication that it's the color that makes them bad?
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Humans who are deprived of sunlight for years get almost translucent skin - that ALONE would have been terrifying enough for the drow, these undead-looking but not actually undead evil elves.
Re: I was never comfy with this description (Score:2)
Re:I was never comfy with this description (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the thing...
Color of skin may be superficial, but it is damn difficult to describe what something that has it actually looks like without at least bringing it up.
Yes, Drow have dark skin. Yes, they are evil. One has as much to do with the other as whether you are left or right handed is determined by the number of siblings that your parents happen to have. It's not lazy writing to say what something looks like if you are, you know, trying to describe what something looks like.
<rant on>
Arguing that they were allegedly deliberately colored black so as to be associated with evil, or that this was some sort of subconscious decision, is I think. a disingenuous argument, and at best falsely projecting a speculative notion that is tailored to be a kind of appeal to emotion, banking on the the disgust that people should rightly have with actual racism to overwhelm the realization that the underlying argument doesn't actually have the backing of any real facts about the matter.
Alas, the creator is no longer alive to defend this creative decision, but it sickens me to the core that people are actually giving this idea any credibility.
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Not sure I get the... (Score:2)
Not sure if I get the Drow and Orc part here. It's been my experience that Orcs come in all kinds of colors and Drow are blue/grey in color so nothing really analogous to any ethnicity of real life human for either of them there.
Don't get me wrong, making either of those races more complex in their behavior probably makes for better fiction but I don't see what that has to do with their current diversity drive.
Re:Not sure I get the... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see what that has to do with their current diversity drive.
Nobody does. It's virtue signaling for the sake of virtue signaling.
I doubt a single person complained (Score:4, Insightful)
This is almost certainly the brainchild of some woke corporate arse coverers who like their brethren elsewhere imagine problems that dont exist in order to assuage their personal feelings of manufactured white guilt and to score points with spineless management who are terrified than some idiot will complain and there'll be negative PR from it. They dont understand how utterly stupid it will make them look because they dont think like normal people.
D&D was always to stereotypical (Score:3, Insightful)
I welcome this kind of changes. D&D was always way too stereotypical. Dark Elf => Bastard. Orc => Brute. Elf => Wise.
Even the alignment system used to be quite strictly interpret, leaving little room for interpretation in many cases.
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Most famous dark elf? Drizzt Do'Urden anyone? The game itself wasn't "stereotypical". It was a set of rules by which you could tell stories.
If they came out stereotypical, then that's the problem of the GM and/or the players. Rolemaster said it best when it said "If a rule doesn't fit with the story, the rule can be ignored.".
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Yeah, let's make it like in those anime series, where a woman-looking emaciated dude holds a 400 pound sword on his shoulder with ease. Perfection!
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In my experience everyone wanted to be true neutral. Alignment kind of made sense as quick way to decide what an NPC would do but was too restrictive for players.
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I've yet to meet someone who can actually pull off true neutral.
Most players want to play a chaotic good character. Or rather, most players play their character that way.
Yes there is clear racism in D&D!! (Score:2, Funny)
Apparently I am not allowed to use charm person on a rock. That is a very blatant case of seeing the rock as something less than a person.
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Cast stone to flesh first.
If there's specific tropes/references... (Score:4)
..then it makes sense to clean them up. There's clearly some fiction inspired by real life racism, and you might as well fix that.
But I'm not fond of the idea that fictional groups all need to all be interchangeable - or that they all need to end up with some similar or compatible concept of correct/moral behavior.
Like, if you think it'll make your game better to have dwarves and pixies start off with the same strength... fine, go ahead. But I don't think it's wrong to go the other way. Maybe it makes your characters/game more interesting/varied if pixies are small, and that's just how it is? Maybe they can't lift big things, but they're also hard to hit? I don't think it hurts anyone to have a game/fiction like that.
Or, like, it's cool that Klingons or Ferengi have got to be more complex characters over time. They were more interesting when they were fleshed out. But the Borg stories kind of went the opposite direction - they were more interesting when they were mindless assimilation machines. I think there's place for both. If they decide Orcs are better with more variety... cool? But I'd hate to see this equivalence be taken as some general rule for fantasy settings.
So yeah.. my bold, bold take is that it's OK if your fictional groups are the same, and it's OK if they're different?
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This is why if you want mindless hordes to fight (Score:2)
You should go with science fiction.
Use Robots (unless you consider remote controlled mindless hordes as some kind of allegory for political or religious organizations) not some representative non-human race. /s
"Once you go robo, you don't gogo back to human or bonobo."
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You obviously didn't watch Solo, or you'd know that robot lives matter now, too.
I'll stick with 1st and 2nd edition (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, my campaigns will still have evil orcs, gnolls and goblins. This crap is going too far. I was thinking about buying the latest editions, but I won't waste my money on this 'woke' culture nonsense.
Some of us can distinguish between problems with racism and sexism in the real world, and imaginary evil monsters for heroes to defeat -- and no, I don't see an orc as a black person, or a goblin as a [pick-your-person].
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This is an RPG system, not an operating system. You can't really force your users to switch by degrading it to the point where it's no longer usable, they will simply not switch to your crappy version and stick to what they know works and instead patch whatever add-ons you release to fit into their working system, or they simply forgo your additional content altogether.
Remember: (Score:2)
Orc lives matter!
Somebody call the BLM organizers quick! (Score:2)
I’m sure they’ll be thrilled we managed to solve the core issue of systemic racism and abuse of power by police by editing D&D. We just need to explain that rangers are basically police. Put the signs away and go home, we’ve done good here, pats on the back all around.
Please stop distracting from the core issue. Fix the police first, then we can worry about fluffy, look how woke I am, nonsense like this.
You need evil NPCs (Score:5, Insightful)
Fantasy exists on the good/evil dichotomy. If you don't like that, play RPGs with a more ambiguous morality standard like World of Darkness where nobody is actually good and even the player characters are essentially monsters who, at best, manage to justify their monstrous behaviour with the other monsters being (at least subjectively) even worse.
If you do not have evil characters the players can fight, well, they are essentially murderers. Because that's what goes down in most dungeon crawls and other RPG that the purists and elitists would consider "low roll-play": You walk into the environment of someone else and slaughter him for his treasure. That's essentially what your party of heroes is doing when going down the kobold tunnels to loot their treasure hoard: You break into the home of some group of NPCs, murder them to rob their stuff.
The only justification there really is is that, well, they are evil. And they stole it from us first so we only take back what is ours. If you do not have that justification, it's a bit like going down into the middle east to liberate us some oil. Which is only ok for pretty much the same reason, the ones having it now are evil, ok?
So if kobolds, orcs and trolls are no longer evil, well, your characters are not really any better than you are, and who'd want to play that?
I remember what Gary wrote (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember first picking up those books at about age 9 and recall reading a passage by Gygax near the beginning of either the PHB or DMG that specifically said he was only using "him" and "her" for the sake of ease and to keep in mind that everyone can play.
I've played some games with people who knew and worked with Gary, and I always had the impression that D&D was diverse to begin with. We were all just outcast weirdo nerds, and while we've grown up to be imperfect too I've always had a soft spot for the outcast and have never had issues with diversity in these sorts of things.
Also, a friend of mine who plays Magic in the tournament circuit says he feels that players don't seem to care, nd they mostly see it as stupid virtue signalling by a company owned by a larger toy company (Hasbro, I think?)
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Good job Iron Crown is still around with Rolemaster. Where whatever you are, you can be whatever you really want. Frequently dead, because it can hurt, but it beats D&D hands down.
There's that old saying that used to do the rounds "If you go looking for trouble, you're fairly much guaranteed to find it.". If you go looking for racism in everything, you're sure to be able to find something you can say is (whether it is or not, but hey, post structural world ya know, what actually exists doesn't count,
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There is nothing racist in D&D -- not even the Drow
As I pointed out above, I'm not familiar with the DnD universe, but what seems to be the case here is that the Drow are supposed to be inherently evil by birth. The purest definition of racism is that you assume the existence of distinctive immutable hereditary traits like this one.
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