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

[TaranTheWanderer]

Imagine, if you will, a world in which humans, demi-humans, and humanoids are all created by the heads of their pantheons. However, the gods that created humanoids are a greedy lot, and wanted to include a reason for them to not wander - they make it so their races can only get divine magic from within their respective pantheon.

So, they are free willed, not intrinsically evil. However, in their communities, the clerical power (so, healing in the community) comes from people willing to do the bidding of these gods, which is going to include keeping the flock in line, and influencing the community in the direction the gods prefer.

One of the issues I have with Volo's Guide is the colonialist aspect. That it's the culture but even orcs raised outside of it are still always angry but can turn only turn out good if they reject their true nature.

So I want an external source (backed up by the clergy as Umbran said) that makes them evil and less intelligent, not that they are evil or less intelligent by nature. If we can do that then we can maintain heritage while maybe breaking some of the bad connotations.

That still leaves room for nuance in the culture for different campaigns. Yes, the orcs that worship Gruumsh are evil, the orcs that worship different gods may not be. It also side-steps the "people of this ethnicity are cool unless they worship this religion" that we see in the real world.

Or it's just because I've been watching Brightburn where

Spoiler

Ma and Pa Kent stand-ins adopt superman but when he begins adolescence the evil voices make him evil.

Did I not talk about this exact thing several posts up? See my comment below.

I'm not a big fan of alignment at all and usually reserve it for outsiders. I find it interesting that they may be making Gnolls fiendish.

How I do it:

• Have your mortal races which make up all the various sentient creatures/monstrous and otherwise. You cannot attach alignment to them. To them good and evil is subjective and related to their values and experience.
• Have extra-planar creatures like angels demons and gods, Inevitables etc...(outsiders)

For Outsiders, they are a product of their plane. You cannot have an evil angel or a chaotic modron because 'evil' and 'good', chaos and Law is not a subjective or a behavior but, instead a designation of their status. Essentially, a warm blooded creature cannot be a reptile. If it ever a mammal became cold-blooded, it would no longer be a mammal, it would be a reptile. Hence the same with angels and devils, good/evil.

Now, mortal races are going to emulate certain entities and value specific traits of those entities.
Orcs who were created by Grumsh will tend to emulate and value the traits that embody Grumsh. To most of Orc society, those traits and values are good. The things that Grumsh hates are 'evil'. It Doesn't mean all Orcs are evil or that all orcs emulate or respect those values to the same degree - or at all. Those traits will seem evil to elves though.

If they are adding Gnolls as fiendish, I'd have those, more broadly, a product of their nature(not nurture): they'd be evil in the perspective of almost all other mortal's sensibilities.

 

[Oofta]

Did I not talk about this exact thing several posts up? See my comment below.

Very similar, yes. I was just adding in a spin because the "created by Gruumsh" doesn't seem to be enough.

 

[Imaculata]

I'm a bit confused by the orc discussion. In my understanding, a humanoid creature is one that is some what like a human (walks upright on 2 legs, with 2 arms), but it isn't a human. A monster can be humanoid for example. I always thought that is what orcs were: monsters that are humanoid in appearance, but still monsters.

 

[Oofta]

I'm a bit confused by the orc discussion. In my understanding, a humanoid creature is one that is some what like a human (walks upright on 2 legs, with 2 arms), but it isn't a human. A monster can be humanoid for example. I always thought that is what orcs were: monsters that are humanoid in appearance, but still monsters.

People are saying their depiction is racist. Whether or not I agree with that, this thread is about how to address the impression and still maintain the basic heritage of D&D or if we can.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

People are saying their depiction is racist. Whether or not I agree with that, this thread is about how to address the impression and still maintain the basic heritage of D&D or if we can.

Well, based on the WoTC announcement, it seems like they've moved from the specific issue of racist depictions of Orcs and Drow to a generalized remedy of having humanoids ("folk" or "people" in the release) no longer be bound by alignment, but have the same moral freedoms and ambiguities as humans.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Well, Giants-types(ogres and giants) are humanoid in shape. Are they going to get the same treatment?

 

[Umbran]

Well, Giants-types(ogres and giants) are humanoid in shape. Are they going to get the same treatment?

"Humanoid" in this case is more specific than "having general human shape". Owlbears have two arms, two legs, and one head, but I don't expect anyone is worried about their depiction.

I don't think WotC has said anything about giants, specifically, so, we don't know what treatment they'll get.

 

[Dire Bare]

I'm a bit confused by the orc discussion. In my understanding, a humanoid creature is one that is some what like a human (walks upright on 2 legs, with 2 arms), but it isn't a human. A monster can be humanoid for example. I always thought that is what orcs were: monsters that are humanoid in appearance, but still monsters.

The term "humanoid" has different meanings depending on context. Within D&D, it refers to creatures or races that are near-human, not just human-shaped. Going back further into the game's history, humanoid referred to the evil, savage near-humans like orcs, goblins, gnolls, etc . . . while "demihuman" referred to the "good" near-humans like elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. The term demihuman has been dropped and humanoid now seems to cover all near-human races. Also in D&D currently, humanoid seems to be a synonym for "people" or sentient race.

A more sci-fi meaning of the term humanoid would refer to human-shaped creatures and is a broader definition.

I personally don't like the term and find it ambiguous and imprecise, but it's part of the language of D&D.

So, we are basically arguing . . . are the near-human fantasy races of D&D, particularly orcs and drow, portrayed using racist imagery and language? How big of a problem is that, and what should we do (or not do) about it?

 

[Oofta]

"Humanoid" in this case is more specific than "having general human shape". Owlbears have two arms, two legs, and one head, but I don't expect anyone is worried about their depiction.

I don't think WotC has said anything about giants, specifically, so, we don't know what treatment they'll get.

I don't disagree with that's how people interpret it. However according to the MM

Humanoids are the main peoples of the D&D world, both civilized and savage, including humans and a tremendous variety of other species. They have language and culture, few if any innate magical abilities (though most humanoids can learn spellcasting), and a bipedal form.​

​

Non humans are separate species according to this definition. For that matter, we can have humanoid robots in the real world.

Owlbears are monstrosities because they don't have a language and so on.

 

[Mercurius]

We don't really have to be terribly concerned about other races and whatnot because, well, no one is complaining about them. If we change orcs and people are happy, then job done. If we change orcs and then people move on to goblins, well, we can deal with that then. I don't see why we need to carve out one answer to rule them all forevermore right now. Let's just deal with what's the problem right now.

Good point.

Let's be fair here. The non-humans are caricatures. They aren't meant to be fully fleshed out. They are simply conceits in a story. And, really, so much of those conceits are grounded in people's own experiences and biases. I mean, is it really terribly hard to believe that an upper class English professor at Oxford, writing in the 1930's might hold a few ideas that are less than socially aware by today's standards? No one is accusing Tolkien of being a raging bigot writing KKK screeds. Of course not. What is being said is that because we are holding onto concepts that were written at that point in time, perhaps they aren't quite as socially conscious as they could be. Which brings me to Gygax:...snip

Yes, I get it. I understand the concerns people have, and can look at D&D through that lens of interpretation. Where we disagree is whether or not this is problematic, or to what degree it is problematic--and why. I see the problem being less about orcs (for example) sharing traits with racist stereotypes, and more arising from equating Fantasy Land with real-world socio-cultural dynamics. If the assumption is made that Fantasy Land is an allegory for the real world, with direct correspondences and representations, then we can make all kinds of connections and the "path of purification" will be endless. Orcs will be replaced with goblins will be replaced with...well, there would be no end to it.

But that is all based upon an underlying--and largely unquestioned--assumption about the relationship of Fantasy Land and the real world, and the nature of fantasy itself.

For instance, if I were to create a world with an inherently evil race, I would be doing so merely to play with that idea in a fantasy venue. A speculative exercise, if you will: What would a truly evil race be like? What would its origins be? How would it make sense in a fantasy world? Isn't that one of the key qualities and strengths of fantasy, that differentiates it from mimetic media? That we create--to use Tolkien's term--a secondary world that has its own laws, its own coherency, and provides us with an imaginative environment to play within?

This is similar to the idea that D&D non-humans must be more realistic, more nuanced, and less caricature-ish. They don't need to be because it is fantasy! Its a game, not mimetic lierature or even an allegory of real-world social dynamics (unless that is your intention, but it has never been the default mode). What we do with it is up to us, but the default basis of D&D has been mythology and folklore, as well as modern heroic fantasy literature and film.

Or to put it another way, let's look at the basic heroic fantasy narrative in two ways (among others):

Psychological-Mythic narrative (ala Joseph Campbell or CG Jung): the Hero (individual self) goes into the Wilderness (unknown/depths of self) to fight the Monster (his or her own inner demons) to find the Treasure (self-actualization, healing, enlightenment, liberation).

Colonial narrative: The hero (colonizer) goes into the Wilderness (other lands) to fight the Monster (other; person not of the colonizer's people) to find the Treasure (power, property, dominance over others).

Both are interpretive frameworks, obviously, but fantasy has stronger roots in the former. As I see it, the mythic is universal--or nearly so--and should be preserved. The problem arises when we overly apply the colonial narrative onto it. This is not to say that the colonial narrative doesn't have value--it most certainly does, especially in the real world (Howard Zinn is must-reading, especially for Americans, imo). And I even agree that it has some value in applying it to D&D...but the problem is when we fuse that "map" to the "territory," and forget that it is a map. My concern is that "cognitive fusion," which is a kind of "over-concrete-ization."

If anything, why not strengthen the idea that D&D is fantasy--it is a game of myth and imagination, and the ideas presented within it are--if we must interpret them--more archetypal than analogous? See, for instance, Ursula K Le Guin's seminal talk "Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" from 1974 (an auspicious coincidence!), and her emphasis on fantasy being symbolic rather than allegorical (she actually says that the prime use of fantasy is "pleasure and delight"). If it is allegorical then, yes, those real world equations make sense, although still require a particular interpretive framework; if it is symbolic, then the ideas are more archetypal and without a fixed meaning; orcs are not stand-ins for a real world group--they are symbols of our own "orcishness."

This is not to say that changes shouldn't happen, as I've been saying, or that current and future depicitions shouldn't be more culturally sensitive. As I've said, and explicated here, I like the idea of broadening the scope of D&D to facilitate a wider array of thematic material, and to play with the underlying assumptions of the game. One of those themes could actually be a more allegorical type of game play, or one exploring socio-cultural dynamics, narratives around colonialism, etc. But by slapping the colonial narrative on to D&D is like looking at the world with a very specific lens, that will see some things more sharply and not see other things at all. In a way it is like analyzing an illustration from the lens of fine art theory.