• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

D&D (2024) (+) New Edition Changes for Inclusivity (discuss possibilities)

Status
Not open for further replies.
My thinking was more "leave the names of gods as a setting detail" - but that gets to a question of whether there needs to be a defaults setting. Which is off-topic for this thread.

Well, I think it has a small place in this discussion.

When I first read the 3.5 PHB, I was introduced to the "gods of DnD", and it was only years later that I learned that those were the gods of Greyhawk. Which, is fine, but if I was trying to play in FR, I didn't have any FR deities to reference.

I think 5e did a lot better in this regard by giving the domains, but they still have some really big problems with how they were written (how many people remember how messed up Tempest Clerics are supposed to be) because they are still trying to make a direct reference to certain deities and stories, while ignoring the fact that those gods might not exist in the particular setting.

This might not be inclusive per se to groups of people, but it would be more inclusive to various settings if we could try and avoid more of that in the future.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Well, I think it has a small place in this discussion.

When I first read the 3.5 PHB, I was introduced to the "gods of DnD", and it was only years later that I learned that those were the gods of Greyhawk. Which, is fine, but if I was trying to play in FR, I didn't have any FR deities to reference.

I think 5e did a lot better in this regard by giving the domains, but they still have some really big problems with how they were written (how many people remember how messed up Tempest Clerics are supposed to be) because they are still trying to make a direct reference to certain deities and stories, while ignoring the fact that those gods might not exist in the particular setting.

This might not be inclusive per se to groups of people, but it would be more inclusive to various settings if we could try and avoid more of that in the future.

Some deities are multispheric (exist in more than one setting), but have different lore around them. For example, there was an FR source book (can't exactly remember which one off the top of my head) that listed Lolth, but as she also existed in Greyhawk, there was a box that described the differences between the two Lolths. Other deities only exist in one setting. I think they were going for the more "universal" approach, but that means you also run the risk of getting rid of unique deity lore (cough Mordenkenian's Tome of Foes).
 

This violates several rules, we can't just pick one.
That actually has been disproven, with the discovery of fossils in IIRC 2017 of horses from much later than that, as well as sightings of Natives with horse in the Carolinas in numbers before horses could possibly have gotten to there from escaped or lost Spanish horses, which would have had required the horses to escape or be lost, travel from what is now Mexico City, and repopulate, in 2 years or less.

In other words, the entire narrative that Europeans reintroduced natives to horses has always been bunk “science” based on Western biases.

Edit: a quick google helped me find a good article with links to sources. I’ll do the work for you this time, because I enjoy reading about it anyway.


Calling a common scientific consensus to be "bunk science" and offering your "proof" as an article that offers up as evidence-- a single eye-witness account from "the Carolinas" which is found among hundreds of accounts of Native American behavior that includes everything from devil worship to cannibalism (but the claim about seeing one guy on a horse one time fits the writer's agenda, so that's the one and only account to be called credible), "oral histories" that literally could have been made-up yesterday to fit their political agenda and just claimed to have been said for "countless generations" with no possible way to distinguish one from the other and.... a fossil found in one cave that could charitably be called a horse and was supposedly dated past when people thought they were extinct.

And the article itself puts the claim on exactly the same footing as the claim that Native Americans popped into existence out of thin air and are no way related to the rest of humanity because some scraps were found on a 100,000 year old mammoth bone that one scientist thought could have been made by some hominid species.

I really don't think you comprehend what "bunk science" is. It isn't "any science that goes against my creationist mythos". Singular eye witness testimony is never much evidence for anything-- and stories passed on 10th+ hand with no way to verify that it is even what was originally said is meaningless.

Horses are not inherently something related to Europeans. In fact-- both domesticated horse species in use today were domesticated by Asians. One was domesticated around 3500 BC in China and the other in 2000 BC in Mongolia and almost certainly done in response to the Chinese having horses. The thing is-- the last time migration by land was possible to the Americas was a full 10,000 years prior to either of those species being domesticated. And while domestication could have happened even earlier, 10,000 years earlier is quite a stretch. So unless there was a more recent migration of Mongolians into the Americas, they wouldn't have been able to bring horses. But-- if they did-- why did they not also bring over knowledge of how to make metals?

Which would mean that any supposed Native American horse species would have to be of an entirely separate lineage from both of the main two lineages. And 10,000 years more of genetic diversion would be super easy to verify with a simple genetic test. And not only that-- but that the Native Americans chose to domesticate the exact same genus of animal in the exact same way for the exact same purpose using the exact same tools independently of those who were doing it on the other side of the Pacific. So if we are to believe that any of these supposed Native American horse lineages that supposedly were bred in the thousands and spread across the entire continent are to have any descendants today, a simple genetic test would show conclusive evidence of this. If they were all extinct-- then there should be hundreds of skeletons of horses dating from 13,000 BC to 1200 AD. Not one bone found in one cave-- hundreds of virtually entirely intact skeletons scattered across the continent.

There have been found whole lineages of giant sloths as well as American cheetahs and camels, and giant versions of beavers, armadillos, wolves and bears-- how could the remains of all these animals be found multiple times, but no one has ever found the vast numbers of remains of horses? No-- let me guess-- it is some giant conspiratorial cover-up by the "scientific community" (as if scientists love anything more than to prove one another wrong) to hide the fact that creationism is real. :rolleyes:

I am not opposed to the idea inherently-- but when someone throws down what is clearly, on its face, crap "science" and blatant creationist propaganda and think they have proved something-- that needs to be called out.

May as well believe that all ancient human sites were created by aliens or that Native Americans are the lost tribe of Israel or some other wild, unsupported idea because one guy claimed it once.

And-- you know-- on a certain level I get the suspicion on behalf of the tribes. After all-- U.S. schools aren't really in the habit of telling children that Native Americans had their own dog breeds or reasonably large cities and vast trade networks, or that Native Americans excelled at agriculture and were responsible for breeding many of the grains and vegetables that have become staple foods for people around the world. But-- thing is-- the scientific community never opposed any of those ideas, it was the politics of those who got to decide what got taught in school that decided to bury those things and only those who really focused on studying those particular fields that knew about it. But these are things that actually happened. Enough study has been done to uncover and demonstrate all of that. And yet.... what has never been found? Pre-1500s horse breeding and riding.

Going the other way and asserting that creation myths and tribal propaganda that no one can demonstrate wasn't just made up one day during the last 200 years are all necessarily true is insane. That is truly bunk. Just like every time the remains of anyone from prehistory is found, every single tribe claims that individual is their personal ancestor in order to further this agenda in claiming they have "always" been there-- as if it actually matters if they have lived in the region for 15,000 years or infinite years actually changes anything about their current situation at all.
 

Why don’t we forget all the angst and concentrate on real world harm and how we can avoid encouraging it or making people relive it in their published games?

And, now you see exactly what I've been talking about. 10% discussion on reasonable, real world problems, 80% tail chasing hypotheticals, 10% denial that any problem exists at all.
 

The Spanish never proved that introduced, or later reintroduced, horses to North America. They just claimed it and it was accepted by Western scholarship as truth.

I agree that claims of history and archaeology and zoology and the like need to be judged based on the evidence. And, if there is little or no evidence, unrefuted things should be state as conjucture or supposition.

If someone today were interested in whether Armadillos have lived continuously above the Rio Grande, the fossil record and the like could be consulted (apparently nothing after about 10,000 BC until the 1800s) and since it was recent enough then the DNA of that record can be compared to those currently here (at least the same genus). One can also look for evidence in the art and artifacts of those living there (lots of unambiguous Armadillos from a variety of times from numerous cultures in numerous countries south of the Rio Grande, none above it) and the written record (no reports before 1830s above the Rio Grande). This doesn't seem to have led to any controversy, and presumably could be done for any animal.

At some point, as far as I can find, the fossil record for horses apparently stops, say, around 11k years ago. (And I can't see what paleontologists and the like gain by not finding horses a few k more recent than 11k years ago, since it disrupts no particular theory and several other megafauna have more recent dates).

I imagine that the dating of several earlier horse related artifacts were more than slightly affected by the theory that horses were (re)introduced by the Spanish, so those dates would need to be adjusted. But, say there's nothing in particular to tie anything to horses between 11k years ago and year x sometime in the past 2,000 years, and around some year y after year x there is a lot in the record. (And the DNA evidence is apparently leaning towards the pre-11k horses being the same species as the horses the Spanish brought, so conservationally, I guess they'd be considered reintroduced at worst?)

The next question feels like it's if there was a continuous presence that avoided the fossil and artifactual record or if there a reintroduction? So, is there an explanation for the gap in the fossil record? Are there older artifacts for some animals but not others that makes it plausible that horses would be avoided until year x? Is it plausible they lived in some region for millenia that we haven't found fossils in (a coast? an area we don't look at?) that we haven't found fossils in and they got out in away that makes them appear en masse around year y? If they were always here and lived in a small area and weren't driven to extinction, should there be genetic markers that can be found in the DNA of some modern horses in North America that aren't present anywhere else? If they were introduced, then when and from where? Siberia? China? Vikings? Spanish?

Assuming the dates on the evidence actually went that way -- Are there people who would never accept any scientific consensus that showed there was no continual presence? Are there people who would never believe any scientific consensus that said the reintroduction was before some particular year? Are there people who would never believe any scientific consensus that there was a reintroduction in or after 1492? Is it possible for anyone in any of those three groups to actually be seeking the truth?
 
Last edited:

And, just to add a point - First Nations people most certainly DID use horses for draft animals as soon as they were introduced. Farming around the Five Nations region (think Southwestern Ontario and Northwestern New Yorkish) drastically changed as soon as horses were introduced.

And, considering there was trade between the Five Nations and Central American native groups, you'd think some bright spark might have brought horses to Mexico at some point in the thousands of years. Yet the Aztecs had no knowledge whatsoever of horses.

But, gack, look at me - chasing down some pointless rabbit hole. Sorry.
 


Is Appendix E (Inspirational Readings) still really short on non-European inspired selections? Is it missing any obvious female authors and stories with female protagonists? My knowledge of fantasy literature in the last 30 years is abysmal, are there any books with major LGBTQ+ characters listed and what obvious ones are missing? Should we remove some books, remove some to a different section, or give warnings for some (Lovecraft? Lieber?).
 


Agreed.

All this, "Well, then you can't use X..." shows people have not heard (or in the heat of argument, have forgotten) the point.

It isn't that you cannot borrow from real-world traditions. It is that you shouldn't do so willy-nilly, after reading a page of wikipedia thinking that makes you an expert. Inspiration can be taken respectfully, conscientiously, with a bit of scholarship, and perhaps the involvement of folks from the culture you're taking inspiration from.

Isn't the problem though that one person's respectful scholarship is another's irresponsible perpetuation of harm? I mean, I'm sure Gygax and Cook thought they were being respectful, even having folks from the culture review Oriental Adventures in 1985, but 35 years later there were calls to remove it. They did the best they could in 1985, and apparently it wasn't good enough. This thread alone shows that a plurality, let alone consensus on what constitutes inclusion is hard to come by beyond the mission statement "we should be as inclusive as possible". The suggestions of what that looks like varies widely and it seems it's really easy to find issue with things in the game but far harder to suggest how to fix them.

And to be honest, I see why people feel they are walking on eggshells. Not because they are racist gorillas hell-bent on gatekeeping but because they aren't sure if what they thought was a respectable use of inspiration is in fact going to viewed as that.

To whit: go check out the UA thread about the college of Spirits. There was a discussion on whether the "fortune teller medium" archetype it emulates further harmful stereotypes of Romani as "carnival gypsy fortune tellers" with Tarot cards and crystal balls. I'm fairly sure that wasn't the vibe WotC was going for, but after Curse of Strahd, people are far more alert to that potential it might be taken as offensive.

Personally, I don't feel I know where these new boundaries are. I don't want to offend or drive anyone from the game, but until three months ago I viewed orcs as not a problem as well. And these discussions keep happening: orcs, racial alignment, shaman, OA, Vistani, ability score bumps, etc. I have a hard time believing that TSR and WotC set out to perpetuate these issues, but here we are anyway. Tomorrow it could be how druids promote Eurocentrism or how having stats for Odin is disrespectful to neopagans.

In short, it is beginning to feel like good faith attempts aren't good enough and some topics should best be avoided so as to not invite controversy.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.

Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top