D&D 5E WOTC Possibly Removing "Druids" for Religious/Cultural Sensitivity Reasons

[BookTenTiger]

But the rules can change in different countries. For example a horror story of ghosts could be allowed in Taiwan, but not in China where the censorship is harder.

Let's imagine a space-opera manhua(Chinese wasp) where the evil empire are the "vespanians", antropomorphic wasps from outer space who conquer other planets with the excuse of being their saviors. If I was a WASP I wouldn't feel too confortable. Or let's imagine a fantasy romance Russian webcomic where the good guys are from the Eastern Empire, Usura, and the evil empire are the islands in the North-West, Avalon, and the Avalon nobility is so evil who whorships Devil, enjoy human hunts with children.. and all those horrible things told in the conspirancy theorists.

Is too much to ask a piece of empathy in the name of the good sense? I don't ask you to agree me, but to can understand the point of view of the rest of people.

I suspect there is a serious incoherence when some things are becoming taboo in the name of the politically correction, but others are too tolerated and allowed, even when these are too close to the psychological abuse against the members of certain community.

* Now it would be really strange if the term druid is removed because one of the main characters of the action-live movie is a druid (and she only shapeshiting into owlbear and animals, but no spell was casted).

* If I was a neopagan I wouldn't reject "those tropes" in the speculative fiction, but I would use to hook to make others to know more about my faith. It would be something if my city appears in a Hollywood movie or in a manga, then to use this to promote the tourism in my city. Do you understand what I mean?

* BooktenTiger. I was answered other who said the classic but false trope of Spanish conqueror as bloodthisty destroying all, and they great hipocresy when we only talk about the sins by one group, but totally silent about worse actions by the rest. That bad fame is too injust, and it is worse when others need more humildity and self-criticism. I don't want more speech from people with worse taints in their clothing.

* I wonder if the vampires of Ixatlan are going to be "cancelled" and disappear in the next expasion of "lost caverns of Ixalan". We could see troubles if the pro-Hispanist community in internet is warned. Then those cards with vampires should be bought soon by the speculators.

The term druid is not being removed. This was a clickbait article misrepresenting a quotation.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Please, the Spanish conquistadores aren't like the enemy propaganda told by rival powers says.

Yes, they were. You don’t get to rewrite history just because you don’t like it.

There were some "black sheeps" or "rotten apples" but they weren't worse than others. If you try to use History to cause shame and a guilty feeling, then you can find the answer about your words are worthless when you are totally silent about the horrible things done by others. I don't talk about a "but you more" but "how do you dare to tell that speech when I see your double standars and using two different yardsticks to measure?" Do you know whad did the general Jacob H Smith in Phillipines? Or search in wikipedia about the California genocide, when and who were the responsibles. Or the genocide in Tasmania.

2 things. First, the conquistadors were especially vile conquerors. Second, other genocides don’t make the one being brought up less evil.

I guess you will not mind if a dark lord of Ravenloft is based in the actions of Oliver Cromwells to the cities of in Droghead and Wexford during the invasion of Ireland?

Why would we? Add Thatcher to the list, along with at least a dozen US Presidents.

The crimes of Andrew Jackson don’t fill me with personal shame, they just disgust me on a human level. More than that I can’t get into without touching on current politics.

Or a dark domain whose dark lord is a ersatz based in John Calvin when a strict theocratic regime was established in Geneva.

I don’t know anyone who would care, or see it as problematic, to do so.

Isn't it a double standards, when ones can be offended but others have to be respected? Or a dark lord based in Jean-Baptiste Carrier, responsible of the drownings at Nantes. Or a dark domain whose source of inspiration is Julio Verne's unknown novel "The Count of Chanteleine" (about the bloothbaths in la Vendée, the first genocide in the modern age), and the dark lord based in the antagonist character, Karval.

If a dark lord is famous for saying, “Kill them all, the Gods will know their own.” Before burning a city and every man woman and child in it…seems like a perfectly good dark lord.

Would you wellcome a dark domain in Ravenloft style Phazaria, based in Pakistan(the nightmare of an Islamophic coming true), and his dark lord, Diamabel was an ersatz of any jihadist terrorist leader? It could be potentially problematic, couldn't it be?

Using current political ideas and rhetoric that is currently used to excuse mass violence against Muslims is quite different from using Cortez, who died hundreds of years ago, as inspiration.

The Ottomans are used as villains with no issues, on the other hand.

Then we should clear up the criteria about why somebody should be allowed or banned in the name of political correction. Are they coherent criterias? Can't you realise the speculative fiction can be used for propaganda?

Please, lets imagine a fantasy kingdom ruled by imperialist gnolls, and these are inspired in the African kingdom of Dahomey (let's remember that movie, the "The Woman King", but in the real life they weren't anti-slavery at all, but they attacked their neighbours to catch slaves). Wouldn't be it offensive? Then we should wonder about why something can be allowed but other is now a new taboo. Are we using rational criterias?

Or a cyberpunk manhua (Chinese comic) where all the cities of USA are showed as copies of Detroit. Wouldn't be it a slap to your pride? But it doesn't happen only once, but it stats to be time after time. The good and evil factions are always the same, without positive tokens for members of each community.

Did you know the king Philip II of Spain issued an edict in 1593 establishing an eight-hour workday? Or the steam motor was patented by Jeronimo de Ayanz in 1606. Juan de Sessa or "Juan Latino " was the first Afrodescendent who studied at a European university and who reached a professorship on Grammar and Latin Language at the University of Granada (South-East of Spain), in the century XVI. The famous story of Robison Crusoe was based in a real shipwrecked Spaniard, Pedro Serrano. Do you know the famous story of Pocahontas? Some scholars have speculated those facts were based in the experiencies of Juan Ortiz.

Pocahontas is a story about actually attested real people.

And no, listing off good things Spaniards have done (though Pocahontas is not a good story at all) doesn’t have any effect on how well suited Conquistadors are to being the inspiration for bloodthirsty invasive oppressors come to take everything they can and enslave the locals in a South American inspired continent.

Germans did cool stuff too, as have English and Americans. All three are also where genocidal psychopaths have come from. We don’t use the English, The Germans, or The Americans, as the villains of stories, and Ixalan doesn’t use The Spanish. Specific historic crimes are referenced to inspire fictional villains.

The "Hispanophobia" is not only annoying. It may be even more dangerous than the Islamophia because there is not fear to become monsters when we go beyond certain red lines. And Hispanophobia is not only dangerous for Spaniards, but also against the Hispanoamericans who could suffer the same negative stereotypes.

The closest actual term used by people here is Hispanic, but Latino/Latina and modern Latine/Latinx, Chicano, are preferred by many (possibly most).

Naming the Conquistadores as evil genocidal colonizers of an especially violent and cruel kind is not “Hispanophobia”, and it sure as hell doesn’t endanger Latine and Hispanic Americans. It doesn’t endanger anyone. No one is going around calling rando Spaniards “Conquistador” and threatening them. Nowhere in the Americas are Spanish people being marginalized or otherwise harmed as a group for being Spanish.

The Hispanophobia and the black legend is not only to cover the horrible actions by the rest of powers, but also because the "nordic powers" want to sell us the tale the world is better thanks them, but they could lose a lot of popularity if the rest of the world knew group of people with Mediterranean blood mixed with other origins were living too well without their "guide", and tried to create a civilitation who respected the human dignity of their citizens more others, instead being a toxic predator and raider.

This is a truly wild (and false) claim to make. Colonial Spaniards used slavery just as much as other powers, and “Nordic” powers (who? You know Britain and France aren’t Nordic countries, right?) didn’t invent the evil deeds of Cortez and Caudillo and others.

And before you toot pre-modern Spain’s humanitarian horn too much, maybe ask Sephardic Jews of Spanish descent how kind and concerned with human dignity Spain was when their ancestors were force to flee the country after having their land stolen and their relatives tried in kangaroo courts designed to find them guilty.

It is really increible. WotC worries about the orcs and the drows to avoid possible racism against people from the real life, but the vampires from Ixalan settin wear morrions, the helm used by the Spanish conquerors.

If somebody published in DMGuild or Drivethru an adventure of D&D based in the Cristero war (Mexico, in the begining of XX century), what would be your opinion? And what if in this adventure the fault of the war is by the lodges (secretly controlled by vampires) who wanted to terminate the faith of a church who can't be controlled by them? Would you tolerate a module based in the Spanish reconquest and the fitna of al-Andalus, where the big bad guy is a warlord based in Almanzor and showed as a true monster and a slave trafficker? Or an adventure inspired in the battle of Lepanto. What are your criteria to say when any thing can be tolerated or too offensive?

Considering Al Andalus was a place where Christians and Jews were treated much better than Muslims were in any Christian kingdom, and as far as I know only Spanish historians characterize the Reconquista the way you have here…it would still come down to the modern, current, politics of it, and whether it portrayed a “Warlord” (read: governor, more like) as evil or the entire culture he came from as evil.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Let's imagine a space-opera manhua(Chinese wasp) where the evil empire are the "vespanians", antropomorphic wasps from outer space who conquer other planets with the excuse of being their saviors. If I was a WASP I wouldn't feel too confortable.

This is laughable.

Literally 5 people would cry about it on twitter and no one else would care, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants aren’t being oppressed or marginalized, they’re the dominant socio-economic ethnic group in the most powerful nation on the planet.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If I was a neopagan I wouldn't reject "those tropes" in the speculative fiction

I have never met a neo-pagan who was offended by D&D ‘s paganism. We don’t care.

Shaman isn’t an issue because it’s a word with a real cultural origin. It’s an issue because that word has been innapropriately generwcised by people outside the culture it’s from, in a way that many actual Shamans and people from their cultural groups find objectionable, and D&D doubles down on that.

That’s why I’m one of few people who care that the Bard is divorced from its origins, and no one else cares. It’s not from a surviving culture, it’s from a past that we have vanishingly little connection to in the modern day, and it was generecised by the descendants of that culture. I hate it because I find the 5e Bard thematically bland as cardboard, basically just a less interesting rogue with spells, and the folkloric Bard is actually interesting and could do things other classes don’t do.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Please, the Spanish conquistadores aren't like the enemy propaganda told by rival powers says. There were some "black sheeps" or "rotten apples" but they weren't worse than others.

Mate. Their job description was literally conquest, enslavement, robbery and genocide. People thinking that that was evil is not any more Hispanophobia than thinking that Nazis were evil is Germanophobia; it is merely a sign of at least remotely functioning moral compass.

Yes, a lot of nations have such shameful parts in their past (well, hopefully in the past) and sure, we should call out any of them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Mate. Their job description was literally conquest, enslavement, robbery and genocide. People thinking that was evil is not any more Hispanophobia than thinking Nazis were evil is germanophilia; it is merely a sign of at least remotely functioning moral compass.

Yes, a lot nations have such shameful parts in their past (well, hopefully in the past) and sure, we should call out any of them.

Call out in what way, and for what purpose? Serious question.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Mate. Their job description was literally conquest, enslavement, robbery and genocide.

Yep. Where I live we cut feet off statues of conquistadors. (Really.)

 

[BookTenTiger]

Call out in what way, and for what purpose? Serious question.

"It's bad that people treated others in this way. We shouldn't do that anymore."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yep. Where I live we cut feet off statues of conquistadors. (Really.)

When my oldest had to do his Mission Project (in late elementary school, California kids typically do a historical project and usually a diorama based on one of the California missions), I was so proud when he walked outside of Mission San Juan Capistrano and announced loudly, as he'd just worked it out himself: "They were enslaving the natives!"

Any time you have to physically force people to come back to a location, make them work the land, and kill them if they try to escape, whatever alleged good you're doing "civilizing them" is far outweighed by the evils you're mostly doing.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:
Folks,

How about we spend a little less time trying to beat each other over the head about who exactly were villains in the past*, and spend a little more time considering how we should treat people now.

And that will include the people you are talking to. As in, you need to treat folks here and now, in this thread, with respect and kindness, even if you disagree with them.



*Hint: Pretty much every culture produced villains in the past.