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

[DEFCON 1]

As I've said before, at the end of the day it doesn't even matter. WotC will make the decision to re-write certain parts of the Player's Handbook in the Races/Peoples/Ancestries section (whatever they end up calling it) that removes default assumptions about the peoples involved that they feel are problematic. That's because that's where the idea of "all" of creature type X are a certain way are usually highlighted for the game as a whole. With a rewrite in this fashion, it will allow new people to the hobby to read these sections and see a New Norm about how most of these races/peoples/ancestries are presented.

Then... in any subsequent book wherein the races/peoples/ancestries are different than this New Norm (like the campaign settings where orcs are irredeemingly evil), that book can highlight the change. Halflings in Athas are cannibals? No reason to note it in the Player's Handbook that this is a thing... let the Dark Sun campaign book point it out.

The fact is... no one who cares about the Heritage of Dungeons & Dragons needs to see it appear in a new Player's Handbook anyway, because those players are going to play their games in the way they like regardless of what it written therein. Whatever appears in the first few paragraphs of the Half-Orc section (if indeed half-orcs even remain in the game instead of being replaced by Orcs themselves) they can be subsequently ignored if it doesn't match up with a player's classic interpretation.

No one will stop you from playing your D&D game that way, which means at the same time you don't need to have your desires catered to in the baseline of the main books. There's really no point, other than you getting a little buzz of good feeling that "Yay, WotC agrees with my worldview!" when you read a couple paragraphs in the PHB. Unfortunately for you though... it doesn't appear that WotC agrees with your worldview of the game anymore. Sorry. You had a good run... 40 years or so... but now you'll have to just play the game the way you want yourself without WotC patting you on the back about it.

 

[delphonso]

This thread: big oof.

I'd say it's worth mentioning that part of the 'heritage' of DnD is that it was often a place for the socially rejected (bullied, nerds, goths, queer) to express and experiment socially during middle/high school. DnD is not only a hobby for adults, it's also a game for kids. Some of my LGBTQ friends first had their characters in homosexual relationships etc before trying it in real life themselves. Roleplay is a generally safe place to learn more about yourself.

This crowd can also be exclusionary, whether from fear of being hurt or a desire to lash out/bully in the way people do when the target of bullying.

But I would hope many of us agree that largely the Heritage of DnD (or really, the practice of roleplaying) IS Inclusivity.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

No they couldn't. The whole current debate was sparked by the fact that up until recently you couldn't play an orc who wasn't evil and stupid, and now you can.

According to The Complete Book of Humanoids (p. 49), an orc has a maximum Intelligence score of 16 and tends to lawful evil. The same source states that PC orcs can be of any alignment. 1e is not my thing, but I'm pretty sure your statement has been wrong for at least 25+ years.

 

[Mark Hope]

According to The Complete Book of Humanoids (p. 49), an orc has a maximum Intelligence score of 16 and tends to lawful evil. The same source states that PC orcs can be of any alignment. 1e is not my thing, but I'm pretty sure your statement has been wrong for at least 25+ years.

Yeah, just on this point alone, AD&D orcs and half-orcs didn't have an Int penalty at all (WotC added that in 3e, and removing it is a good thing) and the Complete Book of Humanoids explicitly says "PC orcs and half-orcs may be of any alignment" (p 49). Evil stupid orc PCs is not a thing in early editions.

 

[Morrus]

According to The Complete Book of Humanoids (p. 49), an orc has a maximum Intelligence score of 16 and tends to lawful evil. The same source states that PC orcs can be of any alignment. 1e is not my thing, but I'm pretty sure your statement has been wrong for at least 25+ years.

In 5E.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

To add something I've not talked about in the two previous threads: I believe a huge part of D&D's appeal, at least for me and my fellow players (and I play/run D&D in a very inclusive environment, not that it matters for the sake of this discussion), rests on the ability to bring to our favorite hobby - not emulate, properly, because D&D does it pretty badly - the tales of Tolkien, Howard, LeGuin*, and many others who could be seen as "problematic" in the current environment.

I see myself strongly in the middle of the way for this discussion because I don't want anyone to feel excluded, but I don't believe what means and what doesn't mean to exclude someone can rest exclusively on how that person feels; there must be space for reasonable dialog, and we must move from there. We moved away from terrible tropes such as the chainmail bikini and the damsel in distress through reasonable discussion. D&D art used to depict drows as black elves, it was reasonable discussion that allowed us to move forward on that.

On a subjective level, anybody is allowed to be offended by anything. The discussion about what must leave the game because it's preventing some people from enjoying it must be grounded on stronger reasons.

*Yeah, even LeGuin. Don't forget she's a white woman writing about a black protagonist.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

In 5E.

Well, they do get an Intelligence penalty, but can achieve the same 20 that any other PC race can, and are described as usually chaotic evil. Balance-wise, I'd say they lean toward bad, but not unplayable bad. Removing the Int penalty would probably help with that.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

At some point you have to exclude those who refuse to change, though. Do you want to be so inclusive that you have a table with a Leftist and an Alt-right and an LGBT ally and a homophobe, etc?

This has nothing to do with the WotC or Dungeons & Dragons. Putting racism aside, you're going to play with people you enjoy playing with and you'll stop playing with people you don't enjoy playing with. If the Leftist and Alt-right keep bringing up their real-world politics and can't get along, they won't play together anymore. OTOH, if the group decides they want to explore challenging subject matter they can explore all kinds of stories that challenge their normal world view. Who knows, maybe people will change their minds on things. But, really, that's up to the people at the table.

I'd say it's worth mentioning that part of the 'heritage' of DnD is that it was often a place for the socially rejected (bullied, nerds, goths, queer) to express and experiment socially during middle/high school. DnD is not only a hobby for adults, it's also a game for kids. Some of my LGBTQ friends first had their characters in homosexual relationships etc before trying it in real life themselves. Roleplay is a generally safe place to learn more about yourself.

This crowd can also be exclusionary, whether from fear of being hurt or a desire to lash out/bully in the way people do when the target of bullying.

But I would hope many of us agree that largely the Heritage of DnD (or really, the practice of roleplaying) IS Inclusivity.

This.

@Hussar It's funny how you perceive Orcish stereotypes. I actually thought Orcs were more Nordic Invader/Celtic Barbarian stereotypes. I'm actually Scottish if you go back far enough and the Celts were crapped on pretty huge by the Romans and then again by the Brits and, generally, considered barbarians, so the colonialist/barbarian stereotype seems to be(by design or by accident) a part of the Orc Theme, especially if it invokes that emotion in people of all kinds of cultural backgrounds. It just depends from what lens you're looking at it. Do you remove it? Well, back to my previous point, it depends what stories you want to explore.

I think there's lots to be said about exploring racism and bigotry as long as you don't glorify it. But people are going to do what what they want to do at their own tables. There's not much WotC can do.

Back to the original post:
What is the responsibility of WotC?

1) D&D Heritage. D&D heritage, as a whole, is meaningful and should be preserved, including the act of creative imagination for its own sake, and the nature of fantasy as distinct from reality.

2) Inclusivity. The D&D game should be welcoming and inclusive to anyone who wants to play it, no matter their ethnicity, gender, sexual preference or identity, ideology, disability, etc.

Some questions to be explored could be:

1) Do you agree that both "truths" are important and worth acknowledging and nourishing? If not, why not? If so, then...

2) How to do so in a way that preserves/nourishes the core of both? What can and should be sacrificed? What shouldn't be?

3) If you adhere to one side or the other, what sort of concessions on your part do you feel are reasonable? What are not reasonable?

So, I was going to type a bunch of stuff but I'd kind of stopped reading the other two threads because I couldn't keep up so now I'm not sure if anything I'm going to type here will rehash things in the other threads.

1 and 2 aren't mutually exclusive. I think that's obvious. Just make mechanics that let people play the game they want to play. People are going to want content, though. It's how you get inspiration - look at Volo's. Give them content but just be sure that it's obvious to new players that they're allowed to change anything they want and that nothing is written in stone.

 

[Oofta]

I think D&D has made great strides over the years to be more inclusive. For a long time it was difficult to find an image of a woman that was not hypersexualized, or where the men were not blond haired and blue eyed. So the heritage of cheesecake art? We can pass.

But inclusivity? It's difficult. In my home campaign I always envision light skinned northern-european types being primarily limited to one corner of the world. But ... then pretty much every campaign is in that corner and when it's not I don't make a huge effort to point out the black hair and darker complexion. All my "hero" minis are still painted with "light tan".

That doesn't really mean much to the broader community or the game, but I do notice the same tendency in much of the published material. I'm not an FR fan, but my impression is that it is dominated by white males with a few token regions for other ethnicities thrown in.

People tend to write what they know and what they see around them. For a long time, D&D has been primarily dominated by one group so consciously or not they've mirrored their own image onto the world. So I think having more diversity of staff, writers and artists is a good thing.

Heritage I think is important because there are certain tropes in D&D that make it work for a lot of people. A lot of people (including my current group which includes people of various ages) like having a fairly clear morality most of the time. If I know that I'm fighting evil monsters, great. I'm fighting evil monsters. It makes those times where I'm fighting someone or something that has gray areas stand out.

There is no one true way, no one vision that is going to work for everyone, I want options (not just in my personal home campaign) that support a wide variety of play styles. Hopefully we can come up with a way forward where we improve things while not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[aco175]

I would like Wizards to make a book with all the player character races in it, maybe call it the Player's Handbook (PHB). These races are used to make characters, call them PCs- (player characters, not politically correct). Another book can contain all the opposing peoples and monsters (if we can use that word). Call this book the Monster Manual (MM). The players have the PHB races and the DM has the MM races, plus is able to use the PHB races as monsters if chosen.

Now if Wizards wants to have certain races, or all the races, in the MM be able to be used as player races they can make it so. They can make a new book for 5e that allows this and gives clarity to how these are different than the 'traditional' found in the MM. Worlds can have some of this as well, like Eberon or Dark Sun with the new or expanded races in their world book.

Now where this gets totally weird is that I can make up my own world for my own fun and populate it with anything I want and play with whomever I want. I can make new rules for any of the races to be used for players or monsters. If I want all my orcs to have +2 Int or -2 Int, I can. When it comes to play, the other players will be playing with me or choose to play someplace else if they do not like they way I made my world or home rules. This will either confirm that what I'm doing is ok, or leave me by myself, hopefully thinking about making changes so I can play nicely with others again.