D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Lineages & New Race/Culture Distinction

The latest Unearthed Arcana contains the Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood races. The Dhampir is a half-vampire; the Hexblood is a character which has made a pact with a hag; and the Reborn is somebody brought back to life.

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Perhaps the bigger news is this declaration on how race is to be handled in future D&D books as it joins other games by stating that:

"...the race options in this article and in future D&D books lack the Ability Score Increase trait, the Language trait, the Alignment trait, and any other trait that is purely cultural. Racial traits henceforth reflect only the physical or magical realities of being a player character who’s a member of a particular lineage. Such traits include things like darkvision, a breath weapon (as in the dragonborn), or innate magical ability (as in the forest gnome). Such traits don’t include cultural characteristics, like language or training with a weapon or a tool, and the traits also don’t include an alignment suggestion, since alignment is a choice for each individual, not a characteristic shared by a lineage."

 

[Scribe]

I'm not suggesting that these things be removed, changed or censored, I'm asking if you can emulate the style of sword-and-planet romance without making it offensive and then what do you do it prevent it.

Honestly people continue to say we are jumping to conclusions, seeing something that isnt there or whatever.

This is the fact of it though. There are genres that are no longer acceptable, as the deconstruction of the tropes or stereotypes renders the final product something that it wasnt. The eventual product following a deconstruction simply isnt the same.

Some people are ok with that, some people dont see the need to keep it like it was, others kick back against it and push for a reset button (4e to 5e lore?) because its no longer what they enjoyed.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There's a difference between deconstruction and simply changing up tropes. Deconstructions take those tropes and play with them to ostensibly 'logical extremes' -- So a Deconstruction of a Great White Savior story like John Carter or Avatar would have the protagonist to on to colonize and destroy the natives they 'saved'.

Meanwhile, a rewriting of the story to not be so... 1920's... or 2018... would be to make it so the protagonist is an observer rather than catalyst; that the friendly natives have to correct their view of their cultures and their problems, that the native cultures not be completely derivative of existing Native populations, etc, etc.

 

[Morrus]

Humanity has a natural urge to label and categorize info to make sense of it.

We are also unique in our ability to not act on our urges.

 

[Remathilis]

We are also unique in our ability to not act on our urges.

True, and I wasn't implying otherwise. Merely things like tropes, archetypes, or memes exist because we like to connect new information to old to make sense of it.

 

[Remathilis]

There's a difference between deconstruction and simply changing up tropes. Deconstructions take those tropes and play with them to ostensibly 'logical extremes' -- So a Deconstruction of a Great White Savior story like John Carter or Avatar would have the protagonist to on to colonize and destroy the natives they 'saved'.

Meanwhile, a rewriting of the story to not be so... 1920's... or 2018... would be to make it so the protagonist is an observer rather than catalyst; that the friendly natives have to correct their view of their cultures and their problems, that the native cultures not be completely derivative of existing Native populations, etc, etc.

From a purely literally perspective though, to make John Carter an observer rather than catalyst is to remove his agency as the protagonist. To put another example, ask anyone who is the most important person in The Great Gatsby and nobody says Nick, even though he is our narrator and in every scene of the book.

But as to the former, I think there will come a time when much of the tropes of pulp, sci-fi, horror and fantasy will no longer be acceptable for that reason.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I was just drawing the difference rather than trying to actually rewrite John Carter. Mostly because I read that book in 5th grade and it's hard to remember the cuniform.

 

[Mind of tempest]

From a purely literally perspective though, to make John Carter an observer rather than catalyst is to remove his agency as the protagonist. To put another example, ask anyone who is the most important person in The Great Gatsby and nobody says Nick, even though he is our narrator and in every scene of the book.

But as to the former, I think there will come a time when much of the tropes of pulp, sci-fi, horror and fantasy will no longer be acceptable for that reason.

that will really depend on what tomorrow will be like, I fundamentally doubt that even if the genres as we know die that they will not gain successor genres if only because humans love to dream about how things could have been.

 

[Arial Black]

Highlanders aren't Black.

Nor are orcs.

 

[Scribe]

lol where does that garbage* even come from.

Never in my life, MY WHOLE 40ish year life, have I associated a fantasy race, with a real group of people.

Not one time.

 

[squibbles]

Martian society, on the whole, is also depicted as exotic, savage, decadent, decaying, dying, and in need of saving by the intervention of the foreign white male protagonist. It's not exactly a coincidence, for example, that John Carter goes from fighting American Indians on Earth to waking up on Mars and finding himself among various color-coded peoples, including the "Red Men of Mars." While not every Barsoomian society maps neatly onto real world cultures, ERB's narratives are transparently rooted in the aforementioned colonial stories set in the American "Wild West," the "Orient," and "Darkest Africa."


I personally enjoyed the Barsoom Chronicles as a young teenager, and I still have fond memories of the story, with occasional re-reads. But let's not pretend that that there are not racist, colonialist tropes in the books that have found their way through transmission, influence, and the like into D&D.

Curious.

I got a very strong vibe that the red men of Mars are supposed to be an idealized honorable aristocratic culture, very much like the lost cause narrative the American south tells about itself--it's why John Carter fits in with them; they have basically have the same values that he has. The Zodangans, for example, are described as nobly fighting to the last man to protect their way of life as they are conquered.

Not that I want to rewrite the past, but let's borrow this as an example: how do you change Barsoom to be less dependent on those racist and colonial tropes? It sounds like you could easily change John Carter's history prior to going to Mars to remove the confederacy and Indian-fighting elements, but you literally make it sound that the entire premise is inherently flawed and there is nothing that can be done. If someone wanted to use JCoM as a template for a game or other media work, they couldn't avoid repeating the same mistakes.

That's what really worries me. I'm a big proponent of archetypes (both in the Jung and Campbell models, though I relegate it to fictional analysis) and increasingly, it feels that these archetypes themselves are the problem, the Original Sin that cannot be cleansed but also must not be allowed. Can something like Barsoom be used in a non-offensive way or is the inherent premise flawed from the core?

I have very much the same objection to your argument as Remathilis's @Aldarc

If the encountering lost civilizations and strife in a warlike land plotting of JCoM doesn't broadly map onto real world cultures--even if it is informed by western colonialism--why is it objectionable? (and feel free to state which societies on Barsoom map to what real world cultures, if I'm being obtuse here)

I feel like a plot structure and style of narrative itself can't be racist if there are no racial judgments being made or objectionable race politics within the cast of characters (aka. the mighty whitey issue, which I mentioned previously).

And as a reminder, I am not saying that nothing in the series is objectionable. I just think it isn't the type of story itself.