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

[Weiley31]

Am I the only one who kept on thinking DND Orcs were green? Aside from the Blue/Greyish tint of the Orcus Black Orc variant breed from Frog God Games/Horrors Unbound?

 

[TheSword]

Gatekeeping? Really? You're going there? Just because I suggested that maybe your line of discussion was dangerous for the thread's lifespan, after a mod warned us? I'm not gatekeeping you, I'm trying to stop you from threadcrapping.
I'm not going to indulge you any further in this argument.

That is your prerogative. I will certainly make no personal insults, accuse people of bad faith, or go off on wild tangents. Which I believe are the reasons other threads go shut down.

However I won’t have the impression that Husser or Xen are lone voices in this debate. I’ll support a position where I agree with it or counter it as I disagree. None of it is personal. Though statements like squeaky wheel and big foot are.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Clearly the solution is to now use frat culture as the base for Orcs.

 

[FrogReaver]

IMO it seems like 2-3 people here are trying to turn this thread into a flamewar. From my perspective, they take great offense at nearly everything said by twisting it into something they can yell and scream about. IMO, they essentially accuse others of being racist, not for any actual racist action, but for explaining their disagreement both about orcs and their disagreement about their words being twisted.

I suggest the rest of you do what I've done from the beginning - don't take the bait. You can't say anything of value because it's going to be twisted beyond belief. So really anything more than stating you disagree can and will be twisted and used against you. Don't give them the opportunity.

 

[Oofta]

I think one piece of heritage of D&D is that there is good and evil for those who want to try to play that style of game. There are other RPGs where everything is explicitly gray, there is no hope or everybody is one of the bad guys. D&D can be and frequently is about the good guys saving the day and being victorious. Yes, it's playing to tropes and wish fulfillment but that's part of the fun. The good thing is that the game can also be as dark and depressing as you want.

So that's why I personally push back on the thought that there can never be evil races. Sometimes I want that simplicity and clarity.

Which is my question - is there any room to have an always evil race that is not fiendish in nature? I get tired of "the devil made me do it" campaigns if that's my only option for an (effectively) always evil bad guy or threat.

Let's say I come up with a new monster. Human intelligence with language and culture, but I don't want any correlation to real world. So I come up with the Tsocul. Basically human-size grasshoppers, an medium sized evil Jiminy Cricket. They're green, they have a 4 legs and 2 arms an exoskeleton, mandibles instead of a mouth. Much like their locust inspiration, they form destructive swarms that live only to wage war and destroy. They're particularly fond of elf flesh.

So far so good?

Except ... it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean bug people are cool and all but we already have thri-kreen and honestly I just can't see bug people anywhere but where it's warm.

So I tweak them a bit. They maintain the basic grasshopper shape, green 4 legs, mandibles but lose the exoskeleton and make them not insects. That's better. But the 4 legs? Eh, they don't really need it so make them bipedal. Keep the green skin ... but mandibles? Eh. Change those to tusks.

Oops, I just made orcs again. At what point did my locust person become something that represents real world people? I know of no ethnicity that has green skins or tusks, yet people insist that the correlation is there. What if the were pig faced? What if they had 4 arms instead of 2? Is there any way to create a humanoid race (bipedal, has a language, not inherently magical) that will not be considered racist? What about giant grasshopper people?

 

[TheSword]

I think one piece of heritage of D&D is that there is good and evil for those who want to try to play that style of game. There are other RPGs where everything is explicitly gray, there is no hope or everybody is one of the bad guys. D&D can be and frequently is about the good guys saving the day and being victorious. Yes, it's playing to tropes and wish fulfillment but that's part of the fun. The good thing is that the game can also be as dark and depressing as you want.

So that's why I personally push back on the thought that there can never be evil races. Sometimes I want that simplicity and clarity.

Which is my question - is there any room to have an always evil race that is not fiendish in nature? I get tired of "the devil made me do it" campaigns if that's my only option for an (effectively) always evil bad guy or threat.

Let's say I come up with a new monster. Human intelligence with language and culture, but I don't want any correlation to real world. So I come up with the Tsocul. Basically human-size grasshoppers, an medium sized evil Jiminy Cricket. They're green, they have a 4 legs and 2 arms an exoskeleton, mandibles instead of a mouth. Much like their locust inspiration, they form destructive swarms that live only to wage war and destroy. They're particularly fond of elf flesh.

So far so good?

Except ... it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean bug people are cool and all but we already have thri-kreen and honestly I just can't see bug people anywhere but where it's warm.

So I tweak them a bit. They maintain the basic grasshopper shape, green 4 legs, mandibles but lose the exoskeleton and make them not insects. That's better. But the 4 legs? Eh, they don't really need it so make them bipedal. Keep the green skin ... but mandibles? Eh. Change those to tusks.

Oops, I just made orcs again. At what point did my locust person become something that represents real world people? I know of no ethnicity that has green skins or tusks, yet people insist that the correlation is there. What if the were pig faced? What if they had 4 arms instead of 2? Is there any way to create a humanoid race (bipedal, has a language, not inherently magical) that will not be considered racist? What about giant grasshopper people?

Yes, don’t make it remind real world people of racism they have experienced in the real world. Simple.

Unless it’s for your home game and you’re pretty sure no one will be offended, in which case do what you like.

 

[reelo]

Clearly the solution is to now use frat culture as the base for Orcs.

What's wrong with good old-fashioned pig-faced orcs?

 

[Aldarc]

@Oofta, the problem is not the orcs per de but, rather, how the rhetoric the game uses to describe and talk about orcs has parallels (if not links via roots in colonialist literature) to the rhetoric that white supremacists use/have used about non-whites. A significant part of the calls for change pertain to changing the rhetoric for orcs and other “monstrous” humanoids.

To answer your question about evil forces that players can face with little qualms - here noting that this would not be the first (nor I imagine the last) time that people have given you acceptable answers for you to discard - undead, aberrations, abominations, and the like are still available even if one does not want to use fiends.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think one piece of heritage of D&D is that there is good and evil for those who want to try to play that style of game. There are other RPGs where everything is explicitly gray, there is no hope or everybody is one of the bad guys. D&D can be and frequently is about the good guys saving the day and being victorious. Yes, it's playing to tropes and wish fulfillment but that's part of the fun. The good thing is that the game can also be as dark and depressing as you want.

So that's why I personally push back on the thought that there can never be evil races. Sometimes I want that simplicity and clarity.

Which is my question - is there any room to have an always evil race that is not fiendish in nature? I get tired of "the devil made me do it" campaigns if that's my only option for an (effectively) always evil bad guy or threat.

Let's say I come up with a new monster. Human intelligence with language and culture, but I don't want any correlation to real world. So I come up with the Tsocul. Basically human-size grasshoppers, an medium sized evil Jiminy Cricket. They're green, they have a 4 legs and 2 arms an exoskeleton, mandibles instead of a mouth. Much like their locust inspiration, they form destructive swarms that live only to wage war and destroy. They're particularly fond of elf flesh.

So far so good?

Except ... it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean bug people are cool and all but we already have thri-kreen and honestly I just can't see bug people anywhere but where it's warm.

So I tweak them a bit. They maintain the basic grasshopper shape, green 4 legs, mandibles but lose the exoskeleton and make them not insects. That's better. But the 4 legs? Eh, they don't really need it so make them bipedal. Keep the green skin ... but mandibles? Eh. Change those to tusks.

Oops, I just made orcs again. At what point did my locust person become something that represents real world people? I know of no ethnicity that has green skins or tusks, yet people insist that the correlation is there. What if the were pig faced? What if they had 4 arms instead of 2? Is there any way to create a humanoid race (bipedal, has a language, not inherently magical) that will not be considered racist? What about giant grasshopper people?

I think you raise an existential question for this matter. Is it even possible to use the creative process to create content about savages, war loving people, completely evil races, dumber than average races, etc without having that content be offensive? Or are those topics simply off limits? I mean so far, the only solutions I've seen are to simply remove those elements (let's make orcs not dumb, let's make orcs not evil).

 

[Aldarc]

So what if they were off-limits if it meant more people enjoyed the game by their absence than those defending their presence?