The problem with Evil races is not what you think

[Monadology]

And being offended lies squarely with those people who complain that, in order to better describe a situation where there is a huge technological gap between two groups, the word primitive which fits perfectly to the actual situation.

The notion that the word 'primitive' would fit any actual situation 'perfectly' is an absurd position to take. Do you really think anything is that simple? There are very general words we use despite the inaccuracies that come along with their generality: for example, it seems reasonable and useful to characterize Southern California as 'hot,' but no one would suggest that 'hot' is a perfect descriptor of Southern California. It does get cold at times during the winter, and there are temperate spots like San Diego. But the label is useful because peak and average temperatures are valuable to emphasize for a number of different purposes.

The primitive/advanced distinction is an unsophisticated, general distinction. If there is some reason to use it, it's not because it is an especially precise conceptual tool. There must be a valuable purpose for reducing actual historical nuance to generalities. I asked earlier in this thread: what is that valuable purpose? Why is it important to say 'The British won the Anglo-Zulu war because the Zulu were primitive' rather than 'The British won the Anglo-Zulu war in part because British firearms provided a significant tactical advantage over traditional Zulu weaponry?' The latter is an explanation that can be productively expanded on and discussed. I don't see how the former provides any meaningful insight, since 'primitive' and 'ineffective in war' are not obviously correlated in any robust way. Just look at the effectiveness of booby traps during the Vietnam war: they would surely count as 'primitive' if we are going to be using the primitive/advanced distinction.

As has been pointed out in numerous places in this thread (most recently by pemerton), the distinction certainly had its uses to the British and other colonizers: to rationalize the classification of other cultures as lesser and justify colonization, imperialism and all the horrors that came along with those. Clearly you think it has some other kind of use, one totally divorced from these kinds of uses. So, again, what's the point of keeping it around?

That you bring race into it also makes me wonder how objective you are.

On what grounds is considering the objective historical record of the origins of the contemporary primitive/advanced distinction in evaluating it non-objective? No one is 'bringing race into it.' Race has been in it, for literally centuries. Reams of posts in this thread have provided evidence of this.

 

[Aldarc]

That you bring race into it also makes me wonder how objective you are.

Gaslight much?

 

[Malmuria]

For context if you haven't seen it, here's the author's description of the changes

The Grippli were presented as having had patron deity return and bring them back up to speed with the gift of literacy in their ancient language; they had art, nothing was primitive; I used the terms simple and utilitarian, and the domed mud brick village was filled with colours and decorations. Their village was a mix of new made buildings and impossibly ancient buildings and edifices that had withstood the test of time.

Colonialist language and imagery around the Grippli was inserted as well, moving them from being simple and utilitarian with obvious culture and technology to being “primitives” who “primitively decorate” their thatched huts with crab bits.

Essentially, where you could see the welds and joins before, you could now see the chop marks and bolts. The story was reduced to a simple rescue mission against unmotivated baddies with confusing parts where bits of the original plot flashed up as absent. This was especially notable in that there was no plotline or reason for anything the Yuan-ti were doing; the conflict between the good and evil Yuan-ti was left completely unexplained until a tidbit at the end of the adventure that, without the cut content, made little sense.

The mud brick structures is the only technological element mentioned; everything else has to do with their art and culture. Granted, in 2e, Grippli are (problematically) described as having "primitive culture." Further, the editor took out the villains motivations and reduced them to evil-for-evil sake. Reviews of the book remark on how this is incoherent.

In so far as the word primitive is related to technology (in real world usage), it refers specifically to an "earlier stage of development." In English, it comes into that usage only in the 18th century and most typically as a way for the British to describe indigenous people across the world (previously it just referred to something foundational). That is, it does not simply describe differences between the effectiveness of different technologies for particular tasks, but includes a universalist view of the "progression" of technology in human societies, and it obtained that specific usage in English only when the British needed a vocabulary to talk about the colonies and native peoples. Like I said, mountains of research on this relationship already exist.

Even if one takes a reductive view of technological development as universal and progressivist, and even if one disassociates it from its recent and pervasive colonial usage, it has little use for describing a magical fantasy world like the forgotten realms. If anything, the fantasy of FR is a time that is more inherently cyclical than progressive, and as with much fantasy, there are implications that the past was a magical golden age compared to the present.

btw, thinking of Ernie Gygax's interview comments followed by his claim that 'everyone is welcome at his table.' That kind of statement becomes really empty, including from wotc, when otherwise marginalized people are told that they are 'bringing race/gender/sexuality/disability' into it and should just stop being so offended by things. It reminds me of the good advice in the original post in this thread:

And so we come to Evil races. Old cis-white dudes (which includes me!) need to be very clear that these are not racist or misogynist proxies, and it is NOT unreasonable to suppose this. Goodwill is not the default, it must be earned. That may be disappointing for those wanting to see good in most, but it is the truth that not everyone is good.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's rather terrible how strongly stigmatised certain terms associated with... low-tech, non-city-based (?) societies are. I feel it is actually really difficult to describe such things sometimes, at least in casual narrative manner. Like yeah, I agree that 'primitive' sounds kinda iffy, and 'savage' is right out. Even 'tribal' has somewhat negative connotations. And this is of course due centuries of colonialist perspective portraying such societies as inferior or outright bad. We barely have language to describe such things in a neutral manner.

My current setting is rather low-tech and many societies are rather small and do not have terribly complicated social structures. Basically from stone age hunter-gatherers to early bronze age settled cultures, so I've been thinking about this a bit.

 

[Malmuria]

It's rather terrible how strongly stigmatised certain terms associated with... low-tech, non-city-based (?) societies are. I feel it is actually really difficult to describe such things sometimes, at least in casual narrative manner. Like yeah, I agree that 'primitive' sounds kinda iffy, and 'savage' is right out. Even 'tribal' has somewhat negative connotations. And this is of course due centuries of colonialist perspective portraying such societies as inferior or outright bad. We barely have language to describe such things in a neutral manner.

My current setting is rather low-tech and many societies are rather small and do not have terribly complicated social structures. Basically from stone age hunter-gatherers to early bronze age settled cultures, so I've been thinking about this a bit.

In terms of world building, what counts as progress for some is a complete disaster for others

 

[pemerton]

I have mentioned the Zulu before. Guns are not the only thing they did not adopt from Europeans. And this is just one example in Africa. Generally the technology from Europe did not spread there all that fast, or at all the further you go inland, despite centuries of contact with the islamic community and later European traders.

Have you been to Africa? If you have, you will have noticed that t-shirts, running shoes, mobile phones, cars, and guns are all ubiquitous. That rate of technological change has been one of the highest ever in human history! So Africa hardly serves as an example of non-diffusion.

If we are talking about the pre-modern period, I invite you to compare the design of housing in (say) Fez with that in (say) Stonetown, Zanzibar. The diffusion (via the cultural influence of Islam) of housing technologies is obvious to even a non-expert.

I'll ask again, in the FR how long have the Grippli lived geographically adjacently to Cormyr? And what is the posited explanation for the lack of technological diffusion?

 

[pemerton]

My current setting is rather low-tech and many societies are rather small and do not have terribly complicated social structures. Basically from stone age hunter-gatherers to early bronze age settled cultures, so I've been thinking about this a bit.

Living in small societies that do not use metallurgy is a pretty typical way for humans to live, and in that sense is not out of place in a FRPG.

However, if you are imagining some societies that are agrarian, use metal, etc it seems - to me, at least - worth thinking about why, in your fiction, there is not diffusion of some of that. For instance, your non-agrarian peoples may prefer living as hunter-gatherers or pastoralists; but is there a reason they don't trade for metal tools?

 

[pemerton]

Here is a discussion of processes of diffusion of technologies and attendant aspects of culture - its from Hodgson, The Great Western Transmutation (pp 44 and 46-47 of Rethinking World History):

Spoiler

(I'm pretty confident that the word "cited" in the fifth line of the third paragraph is a typo for "citied".)

This is obviously not the last word on such social processes. My reason for posting it is to show what serious social explanation looks like. It doesn't appeal to notions of "primitiveness" or "progress". It tries to identify what it is about a particular social or economic situation that makes it stable, or unstable, and why such social arrangements might tend to be taken up in other societies (thereby perhaps eliminating the differences between societies).

I wouldn't expect RPG designers to attempt this degree of sophistication in their writing of fiction - the only fantasy author I know of who has tried anything like that is JRRT, and in his case only in respect of languages, not material cultures or relations of production and other social relations beyond those revealed in language-use. RPG designers will rely on a repertoire of available tropes for social life, just as they do for other things (eg dragons, giant spiders, spell casters, etc).

Insofar as some tropes rest upon, or bring with them, presuppositions about various sorts of human beings (eg those which present certain peoples as "primitive" just because) then RPG designers should probably handle them with care.

 

[Ixal]

Have you been to Africa? If you have, you will have noticed that t-shirts, running shoes, mobile phones, cars, and guns are all ubiquitous. That rate of technological change has been one of the highest ever in human history! So Africa hardly serves as an example of non-diffusion.

If we are talking about the pre-modern period, I invite you to compare the design of housing in (say) Fez with that in (say) Stonetown, Zanzibar. The diffusion (via the cultural influence of Islam) of housing technologies is obvious to even a non-expert.

I'll ask again, in the FR how long have the Grippli lived geographically adjacently to Cormyr? And what is the posited explanation for the lack of technological diffusion?

Again you are talking about post-colonial Africa while I talk about pre-colonial sub-saharan Africa, specifically the 15th to 18th century and especially when you go further inland. As I have mentioned before already....
And you remember that I also brought up other examples like pre- and post-contact North America?

 

[pemerton]

Again you are talking about post-colonial Africa while I talk about pre-colonial sub-saharan Africa, specifically the 15th to 18th century and especially when you go further inland. As I have mentioned before already....
And you remember that I also brought up other examples like pre- and post-contact North America?

Pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa has a high degree of diffusion of technology. The houses in Zanzibar weren't built by European colonists!

I believe that post-colonial North America exhibits a high degree of technological diffusion - I would have thought the use of horses is one example. I don't know what pre-colonial example(s) you have in mind.