RefinedBean
First Post
Wrong edition. Elves have plenty of constitution now
Yeah, but it's hard to forget the classics. The new racial bonuses don't allow for blatant stereotyping, by gum.
On the matter of half-orcs
- Thread starter Kzach
- Start date
Yeah, but it's hard to forget the classics. The new racial bonuses don't allow for blatant stereotyping, by gum.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
The famous Tanis, IIRC, was the son of an elven princess and a human who raped her.
It's just easier to see a romantic relationship between an elf and a human.
Arscott said:
Progeny.
While many/most elves might be disgusted by the idea of mating with a human, if doing so is far more likely to result in offspring than elf/elf mating, some elves might go for that. (Of course, this implies that none of these elves fell in love with humans, which could be the case, depending on the setting.)
pawsplay
Hero
Maybe Mialee realized she didn't have a date for prom night.
Getting back to the original line of discussion... it bothered me when they banished half-orcs from AD&D because it did seem squeamish. But I didn't see D&D as being intentionally marketed toward children. And for the young people who were interested in it, I didn't think it should be edited out, any more than a teenager should be protected from studying Vitenam or reading Camus's The Stranger.
But D&D 4e is clearly intended for a mainstream audience. You can't simply point at the source material and say, "Look, this kind of stuff happened in Conan and Dragonlance, and heck, the Arthurian stories, all the time," and be safe. D&D 4e is intended to sell at Borders so I think it makes sense to produce something palatable. So no half-orcs in the core book. But by the same token, I find it difficult to imagine avoiding the topic altogether. As I pointed out above, human-orc interbreeding is possible, then you are going to have half-orcs who came about as a result of rape. Because orcs are usually evil, in fact, they are often psychopathic marauders. I don't think you can sustain the PG-rated version of D&D through too many expansions before it starts to wear thin.
So yes, some young people do play D&D. And yes, you have to keep a wide audience in mind. But in a game with swords-and-sorcery roots, you have to leave some room for discussing some adult topics. D&D may be "just for fun" but it's an imaginative game and if you aren't willing to take some things somewhat seriously, there is not much point.
I wouldn't use this scenario to sell D&D on a big marketing display in Border's, but let's imagine one of the modules features a character who has lost fingers as a result of racketeering. In real life, organized crime and the use of mutilation as a fear tactic is real, does affect many people, and may trigger emotional responses from some gamers. But I wouldn't take that as a reason to say that nowhere should D&D mention the chopping off of hands by gansters.
Ditto any scenario that mentions slavery.
You could make a really long list of potentially explosive topics, and if you removed them all, you would be left with something with less moral scope than the animated D&D cartoon. But I think it's perfectly legitimate to market your core products with the idea of making them palatable to a wide audience and respectful of some real world issues.
So maybe the core rulebook shouldn't have half-orcs, or prices for slaves, or mentions of mutilation tactics, or a sample adventure involving Rosemary's baby, etc. But trying to write around the rape issue entirely is trying too hard. It's just too hard to imagine orcs marauding a village and not engaging in a variety of vile acts, ranging from rape to man-eating to torture to desecration and all the rest. They are, after all, evil.
SHARK
First Post
Greetings!
Well, I'm not quite sure why whatever minimally-flavoured race text supplied in the PHB is seemingly regarded as so authoritative in regards to the origins, culture, and society of any particular race open to player characters and NPC's alike.
Don't most DM's tweak and fit such races into their own campaigns with their own particular history, culture, religion, and so on?
In my own campaigns, Half-Orcs are easily explained;
(1) Throughout history, various human barbarian tribes have mated with and intermixed with tribes of Orcs, thus producing half-orc offspring. Obviously, some half-orcs are born to the human barbarian tribes, and some are born to the orc tribes.
(2) Gradually, over time, various groups of half-orcs gathered together and united different individuals and small family-groups of other half-orcs, as well as some full humans and full orcs and developed their own small tribes of half-orcs. In some regions, small frontier settlements of villages and such communities of half-orcs have been formed. In all such cases, occasional new membership of humans and orcs have added new bloodlines to the various half-orc tribes or small frontier communities. Eventually, the pure-blood infusions of orc or human contributions mix with more generations of half-orcs, thus helping to strengthen and perpetuate the half-orc communities.
(3) Various units of Orc mercenaries have been used in wars throughout the lands, allowing for additional contact and intermixing with neighboring humans.
(4) Some human kingdoms have made orc tribes defeated in battle into slaves. Over time, the orc slaves breed with, entertain, or otherwise intermix with humans, leading to more half-orcs.
(5) Small communities of half-orcs within various human villages, towns, or cities often willingly interbreed with other humans, orcs, and half-orcs--all are welcome. From such customs, more half-orcs develop and grow in number.
Thus, there are many ways that humans and orcs interbreed, and half-orcs increase in number and develop throughout the campaign.
Rape wasn't even mentioned, nor does it need to be.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Well, I'm not quite sure why whatever minimally-flavoured race text supplied in the PHB is seemingly regarded as so authoritative in regards to the origins, culture, and society of any particular race open to player characters and NPC's alike.
Don't most DM's tweak and fit such races into their own campaigns with their own particular history, culture, religion, and so on?
In my own campaigns, Half-Orcs are easily explained;
(1) Throughout history, various human barbarian tribes have mated with and intermixed with tribes of Orcs, thus producing half-orc offspring. Obviously, some half-orcs are born to the human barbarian tribes, and some are born to the orc tribes.
(2) Gradually, over time, various groups of half-orcs gathered together and united different individuals and small family-groups of other half-orcs, as well as some full humans and full orcs and developed their own small tribes of half-orcs. In some regions, small frontier settlements of villages and such communities of half-orcs have been formed. In all such cases, occasional new membership of humans and orcs have added new bloodlines to the various half-orc tribes or small frontier communities. Eventually, the pure-blood infusions of orc or human contributions mix with more generations of half-orcs, thus helping to strengthen and perpetuate the half-orc communities.
(3) Various units of Orc mercenaries have been used in wars throughout the lands, allowing for additional contact and intermixing with neighboring humans.
(4) Some human kingdoms have made orc tribes defeated in battle into slaves. Over time, the orc slaves breed with, entertain, or otherwise intermix with humans, leading to more half-orcs.
(5) Small communities of half-orcs within various human villages, towns, or cities often willingly interbreed with other humans, orcs, and half-orcs--all are welcome. From such customs, more half-orcs develop and grow in number.
Thus, there are many ways that humans and orcs interbreed, and half-orcs increase in number and develop throughout the campaign.
Rape wasn't even mentioned, nor does it need to be.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
arscott
First Post
Most people can imagine rape-free orcs just fine, Pawsplay. You seem to be the exception.
The problem with rape isn't just that it's a horrible act that still happens today. It's also an act that is, to some extent, trivialized. Especially in those areas of society in which men are an overwhelming majority (such as, say, the D&D table).
When your D&D badguys engage in cannibalism and slavery, then cannibalism and slavery get trivialized. That's not really a problem, because neither of those things is present in our society--it's okay that we don't take them seriously.
Rape, though, still takes place. It's something that ought to be taken seriously, and when it shows up in a D&D game, it never is.
Truth be told, slavery still takes place as well.
I for one do not worry about such things being trivialized in my gametable, partly because my players are mature enough to weave them in our story.
Still, I do believe that when people think about the origins of half-orcs, unless there is a specific setting reason for them, most will think of them as the product of rape. Partly it is because we know orcs as creatures who raid and pillage but I think part is also because our culturally ingrained obscession with beauty makes the thought of willing intercourse with something that looks like an orc seem unlikely.
pawsplay
Hero
There are plenty of people only six generations out of slavery, so I assure you it's a topic to take seriously. Aside from the historical question, slavery is still practiced in every part of the world, including the USA. One typical situation involves allowing a young woman to pay you to help her illegally enter the US on the pretext of finding employment; then you steal her documents and force her into prostitution or domestic slavery.
As for cannibalism... China experienced a famine rather recently. By some accounts, cannibalism happened fairly frequently. Several changes of regime
in China have also been marked by violence, including cannibalism. Meanwhile, many places in Africa are in a state of nearly continuous warfare, which has bred warlords of the vilest character, including self-admitted cannibals.
I could go on, but it's problem enough to observe that mugging, grave-robbing, the acquisition of dangerous weaponizable secrets, and religious strife are ongoing issues in the world that should, ideally, be handled with some level of respect and tact.
Rape certainly does place. I don't think that its appearance in a D&D game "trivializes" it. In fact, one of the hardest things about such events is the culture of shame that surrounds it. To this day, it is easier to admit to being the victim of life-threatening violence than to rape. I think it's a good policy to simply state that if it does appear in a D&D game, it should not be trivialized.
D&D is obviously not a treatise on social justice, but at the same time, I find the proposition that D&D somehow should and must be suitable for the Saturday matinee to be insulting. Have you read or watched Sin City? A guy eats somebody's arm while it's still attached. That's pretty messed up. And yet Sin City is arguable "light" entertainment. But I don't think being entertainment means something has to be entirely mindless or that it has to suspend the moral awareness of the people being entertained. It's about something.
Just like Charlie Brown deals with issues of rejection and self-worth and self-actualization, D&D deals with violence and glory and evil and all that.
ki11erDM
Explorer
The fact that someone had to make this statement about my hobby is good enough reason to make the change in story.
These discussions always make me cringe, particularly during the parts where people try to rationally explain how, if its ok to roleplay about murder and slavery and stuffing someone's soul into a sword, then it should be ok to roleplay about rape.
My wife just finished watching an episode of Monk. Its a comedy detective show where a neurotic, obsessive compulsive detective solves murders. Its funny, or at least reasonably so. The murders are often quirky, the detective twice as quirky, you get the idea. Its got a bit of an emotional yo-yo effect going on, in that its a comedy about murder, but its decent. I... can't really imagine a tv show about rape that worked that way. You know, with a wacky rapist, an unsympathetic victim, and a light hearted attitude. Just don't think it would work.
Its a cultural taboo. Sure. Its not going to be 100% defensible. Objectively, killing someone is a lot worse than rape. I agree. And we joke about that all the time. But, well, welcome to western civilization. Chances are you're going to be staying a while, so you might want to familiarize yourself with some of the cultural mores you'll be encountering during your visit. One is that rape is kind of one of those things you don't joke about in polite company (4chan = not polite company). We have other taboos, just in case you were wondering. We don't like it if you pay your daughter for sex, no matter how fancy of a libertarian defense you construct for consensual, non-procreational incest and prostitution. We hate it if you do naughty things with animals, even though killing them and eating them is probably less pleasant for the, I dunno, wombat or whatever, and we'll mostly let you do that.
Its just how we roll around here.
My wife just finished watching an episode of Monk. Its a comedy detective show where a neurotic, obsessive compulsive detective solves murders. Its funny, or at least reasonably so. The murders are often quirky, the detective twice as quirky, you get the idea. Its got a bit of an emotional yo-yo effect going on, in that its a comedy about murder, but its decent. I... can't really imagine a tv show about rape that worked that way. You know, with a wacky rapist, an unsympathetic victim, and a light hearted attitude. Just don't think it would work.
Its a cultural taboo. Sure. Its not going to be 100% defensible. Objectively, killing someone is a lot worse than rape. I agree. And we joke about that all the time. But, well, welcome to western civilization. Chances are you're going to be staying a while, so you might want to familiarize yourself with some of the cultural mores you'll be encountering during your visit. One is that rape is kind of one of those things you don't joke about in polite company (4chan = not polite company). We have other taboos, just in case you were wondering. We don't like it if you pay your daughter for sex, no matter how fancy of a libertarian defense you construct for consensual, non-procreational incest and prostitution. We hate it if you do naughty things with animals, even though killing them and eating them is probably less pleasant for the, I dunno, wombat or whatever, and we'll mostly let you do that.
Its just how we roll around here.
Nifft
Penguin Herder
I suspect you could say the same thing about torture: it'd be hard to write a lighthearted comedy about wacky torturers. Murder gets a bit of a pass since the victim is no longer around to elicit sympathy.
Anyway, yeah: I'm in favor of low-rape settings. Preferably even rape-free.
Cheers, -- N
Similar Threads
