D&D General Two underlying truths: D&D heritage and inclusivity

[Aldarc]

And that is an other side of the problem. Racists will use anything to diminish and remove inclusivity by using arguments like the ones you are describing. D&D has always been inclusive and accepting of people from all walks of life. They will use the words of the bible, the constitutions, a game and whatnot to justify themselves. By caving in to their argument, you're giving credits to their usage of the texts. I will not cave in to these monsters.

If you were a white, straight male, sure. But otherwise? That's not what I have personally heard from other walks of life and their apprehensions and experiences of playing the game. There's a reason why D&D had the reputation of being a boy's club. And being at conventions? Still working on that too.

Also, the "you're just caving into/giving credence to their argument" doesn't really hold water under scrutiny, and that ridiculous argument is not even worth the bucket it's carried in.

I've posted these two previously either or here or in the other two threads when people asked what was going on. They were posted at least a couple other times by other folks. I might have posted them more often, but at some point it feels repetitive.

But why hasn't anyone posted anything?

 

[Lanefan]

I think when a Sahuagin eats an Aarakocra it isn't cannibalism, but it's very close to the line. I don't think a Lizardfolk eating a human isn't "cannabalism" but it is crossing a major line. A dwarf eating an elf is cannabalism, though, IMO. Sure, they're different races/species, but a fleshy creature eating another fleshy should count as cannabalism.

Last I checked, cows and pigs are fleshy and we eat them all the time.

I see cannibalism in the more narrow definition: the act of eating one's own species. Thus, a Dwarf eating an Elf would not be cannibalism (Elf might in fact be standard fare for a Thursday!) but a Dwarf eating a Dwarf would be.

If it's expanded to include the eating of any "kindred" creature, the implication is that those creatures are much more similar than different; and while that does seem to be the general push of late I'm not particularly on board with it.

 

[Oofta]

I've posted these two previously either or here or in the other two threads when people asked what was going on. They were posted at least a couple other times by other folks. I might have posted them more often, but at some point it feels repetitive. They aren't everyone's argument, but they're one of them.

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror — James Mendez Hodes

This is the first installment of a two-article series about the racist origins, nature, and ramifications of orcs, a malevolent humanoid species from English author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy setting. I started researching this article with the hypothesis that a collection of n

jamesmendezhodes.com

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human — James Mendez Hodes

This is the complement to my previous article , “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.” In the previous article, we learned how racist myths from the British academy and army fueled JRR Tolkien’s creation of orcs as an analogue for Asian people. Today

jamesmendezhodes.com

I tried to explain in post #615 in this thread, and a few other times in the other threads. It's all stuff I got from other people in those threads. This arrow should go there:

It's been a long week.

I'm not being clear. This thread was supposed to be to explore if there are any compromises, ideas or thoughts on what could be changed to have both inclusion and heritage. Is there any way to have both? What needs to change to the latter to enable the former without throwing it all out?

Yes, bad things are said about orcs in the MM. Because they're evil. If you are going to have evil monsters, you are probably going to say bad things about those evil monsters.

So how do we make it clear when we say bad things about those evil monsters that we're clear we're talking about imaginary evil monsters and not people?

Some people have made suggestions and I appreciate it even if I don't always agree.

 

[Oofta]

You're looking for comparisons between quotations from genocidal and colonialist racists and the evil humanoids in D&D? Stuff like this?

"The capacity of the crania of the Mongol, Indian, and Negro, and all dark-skinned races, is smaller than that of the pure white man. And this deficiency seems to be especially well-marked in those parts of the brain which have been assigned to the moral and intellectual faculties." - Josiah C Nott, Two Lectures on the Connection Between the Biblical and the Physical History of Man (1849)

I'm working on this type of stuff but it takes time to source the quotations, and I don't know if ENWorld wants more of it. The threads on it tend to get locked. Strictly speaking it's actually thread crapping in this thread, which is supposed to be about solutions.

Yes, bad things have been said about real world people. Bad things are said about monsters because they're monsters.

Some races (and monsters) are more intelligent than human, some are less. There was a post I liked earlier that called orcs "cunning" for example - which makes sense since they're wisdom is higher than the average human.

If you remove all evil monsters (including humanoids) from the MM I think the game becomes bland and boring loses something. YMMV.

EDIT: bland and boring wasn't right

 

[Dire Bare]

Orcs are TNG Klingons?

You joke, but the analogy is actually a pretty good one.

OG Klingons were swarthy, dark-skinned, mustache-twirling villains in OG Trek. Very problematic in the sense we are talking about in this thread. Of course, they were FUN bad guys (racial issues aside) and became popular, so got a major redesign and a LOT of development over the decades of Trek movies and TV shows (not to mention comics, novels, and video games).

Even today, while Klingons are a much more developed and 3-dimensional alien species, they still suffer somewhat from the "warrior race" stereotype and a lot of uncomfortable parallels can be made between how Klingons are portrayed and how Europeans have viewed the "warrior" indigenous folks across the globe. Various Trek stories even address this, or attempt to, in positive ways.

So, should we dump Klingons from Star Trek? Should we redesign their culture to be less savage and warlike? How far do we go with that? I don't hang out in Trek fan forums, but I bet this issue has come up, with back-and-forth not unlike what we are seeing here. And the writers behind Trek certainly have taken effort to make the Klingons a more rounded, more fully dimensional species, with some degree of success.

Orcs are the fantasy version of Klingons. Or perhaps it's the other way around. OG orcs are dark-skinned, savage, warlike, bestial, black-hat wearing villains. But in both D&D and the fantasy genre at large, they have become a very popular race of antagonists, and have undergone the "Klingon Effect" and crossed over to sometimes protagonists. Each fantasy property treats them a little differently, but overall they have become a more rounded and fully dimensional fantasy race, that can still be portrayed problematically. My favorite thing to come out of Warcraft is the very humanistic portrayal of orcs that simultaneously fits into the existing narrative but also flips it on it's head.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Some races (and monsters) are more intelligent than human, some are less.

I'm less concerned about a race like the drow because it doesn't correspond to any real world stereotype. Smart + evil is closest to an antisemite's idea of Jews, but Jews are not usually considered to have dark skin (tho ofc there are dark-skinnned Jews) so, for me, it's a less strong and less important connection.

The degree of correspondence between the low-intelligence evil humanoids and racist ideas about non-white people is amazingly high imo. That's partly because of the fiction D&D uses as a source.

 

[Cadence]

The problem is probably related to newer settings where orcs (and other humanoids) were given a nice leeway out of their usual evil box. Since those settings are more up to date to the world view we have now, people assume that all humanoids from all settings should follow the same pattern. Which was not the case and still is not.

The base game assumes that orcs are of the irremediably evil type with a few exceptions as the DM sees fit. But most people speaks from their setting point of view. We should forget about settings and just concentrate on the core books. Orcs are evil, not by choice, but by design from their god. They can't help themselves. As such, any comparison between orcs and real life ethnicities is irrelevant.

As I tried to describe in #615 in this thread, in reply to you, the requested change is for the game to explicitly raise the possibility of doing things like in those newer settings as a standard option for humanoids. To make "intrinsically evil" no longer the default.

It isn't that some humanoids are necessarily similar to real life groups, it's that the language used to describe them is very like what's been used to other real groups of people and it makes some players uncomfortable. And so, one fix could be to change the MM (one of the core books) to put the more current portrayals in. To not require the humanoids to be evil, but to let all the humanoids have the variety. It doesn't rule out the old style worlds, but it doesn't make them the default.

Does having the core point out to the each DM can have the types of humanoids fill a variety of roles in their world, and providing examples, stop anyone from playing the way they want?

 

[Dire Bare]

It's been a long week.

I'm not being clear. This thread was supposed to be to explore if there are any compromises, ideas or thoughts on what could be changed to have both inclusion and heritage. Is there any way to have both? What needs to change to the latter to enable the former without throwing it all out?

Yes, bad things are said about orcs in the MM. Because they're evil. If you are going to have evil monsters, you are probably going to say bad things about those evil monsters.

So how do we make it clear when we say bad things about those evil monsters that we're clear we're talking about imaginary evil monsters and not people?

Some people have made suggestions and I appreciate it even if I don't always agree.

Sigh.

Really, at this point, why? Why engage with those who continue to even acknowledge the problem? You and others who don't feel that the way D&D treats race is particularly problematic keep asking for evidence. Then you are given evidence, which you ignore and/or dismiss. You ask for solutions. You are given solutions, which you then ignore or dismiss. What's the point of providing evidence and solutions yet again when you guys seem incapable of seeing it?!?!

Luckily, those with this myopic mindset are not in charge of D&D. The current writers and designers in charge of the game WILL be making changes and those who feel this somehow diminishes the game will be left in the dust on the wrong side of history. I'm happy to leave them behind.

 

[Cadence]

It's been a long week.

I hope your week gets better!

So, what downside would you see in this being the change?

I'm imagining a big section in the MM, or perhaps a small separate book, full of humanoids. Maybe some of the current creatures (gnolls? lizard men?) aren't in it if they decide they're actually monstrous instead. But anything that they encourage people to be a PC of, that charm person works on, that you can reincarnate into. It has well thought out art on what they look like, it describes what distinguishes them in terms of attributes, abilities, and description. Says if some are particularly adapted to certain types of terrains - elves to forests, dwarves to underground, lizard men to swamps - or what terrain they're unlikely to be found in - humans underwater. It gives some brief examples of some different civilizations they might be in, maybe three each, chosen from combinations of good-neutral-evil x advanced-primitive x exclusive-mixed with others (maybe highlighting those in particular established worlds in sidebars). And it gives what you need to make them PCs or NPCs.

 

[Umbran]

I've been following along on this and other conversations. When was the last time someone provided a link?

Mod Note:

Allow me reiterate, within just a couple of posts, but in large, bold text so it will not be missed again.

WHEN WE CLOSE A THREAD, WE EXPECT THAT TOPIC TO BE CLOSED. YOU ARE NOT TO CONTINUE UNDER ANOTHER THREAD.

Further re-prosecution of that discussion in the near future is likely to earn you a vacation form EN World. IT. IS. DONE. MOVE ON.

I figure that's about as clear as we can make it.