D&D General Old School DND talks if DND is racist.

[Zardnaar]

Sorry, I absolutely do think Curse of Strahd didn't benefit from Tracey Hickman's consulting. I think it was a stunt to attract/mollify grogs, nothing more. And indeed that's kind of a great example of the problems WotC has had - they hired a consultant but both they and the consultant totally failed to spot stuff that, even to my age group, was pretty dodgy and out-of-line, and I was surprised to see had come back after 4E threw it overboard. So they had to do yet more consulting on Strahd and redo it.

It's easy to say "it's not zero sum game", and I agree, but it is a game where you may have to accept some things you don't like in the name of making the game reach a broader audience and accept that you're more a nice holdover than a major target audience. As for "the bigots are a small proportion amplified by the internet", well, that's half-true, but I've met D&D-playing actual neo-nazis before, in real life, not online. I do think ironically 4E kind of dumped a lot of them (totally unintentionally, I presume, but everyone I knew with nasty opinions went PF - let's be clear I don't think this was because 4E was amazing or PF attracted "bad people", I think it was a very simple case of "new thing bad" for them, hardly surprising), and then 5E, despite the "apologia for 4E" angle was consciously modern in both design and values, right from the get-go so probably dumped even more, and earlier retroclone and OSR stuff swept a lot of them away from mainline D&D too. None of that should be taken as criticisms of OSR or used to make assumptions about players of it in 2021 btw - a lot of modern OSR-rules stuff is hyper-progressive, but in the earlier retroclone/OSR era it was sadly not as hard as one might hope to find people with retrograde opinions to match their retro gaming (still a small minority of course).


You misspelled helpful.

I mean, I'm 42 and as I've got older it's only become more clear to me that there is some validity in that attitude, because over a certain age, people both get more compromised, and more skilled in misrepresenting their agenda and manipulating people. Obviously it's an overstatement, but the values and and agenda of a 25-year-old tend to be a hell of a lot more obvious and open than those of a 45-year-old, in my experience. Age and guile and all that.

Much like

Yep. It’s just another version of the Nazi Bar Rule.

If you let a polite clean cut nazi stay in your bar, he will bring friends who also seem nice, and they will bring friends, and by the time you realize you have a Nazi bar, they’re so entrenched that getting rid of them will almost be harder than just closing up and opening a new bar elsewhere.

Bit of a problem if you don't own the bar.

Local skin heads picked a fight with the local pasifika (and lost). Cops sided with the pasifika and they got run out of town.

Ended up working with a holocaust denier. Didn't even know it was a thing until circa 2004 or so.

Suffice to say you wouldn't pick it.

 

[MGibster]

Yeah there is a reason a lot of folks are suspicious of anyone who is strongly resistant to changing orcs or changing how race works in D&D, and that reason is experience.

It doesn't help that a lot of people, whether old or young, tend to get rather passionate about their views on D&D. How many threads on even seemingly innocuous topics have examples of people losing their cool?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I just had a similar conversation the other day with one of my long time real life and FB friends. He has a ton of friends, and some of them are pretty horrible people who are unabashed racists and bigots (although he is not). When I talked to him about it, he was "I don't censor anything from people, and hear all sides, and maybe they will change their minds (spoiler, they never do)."

My response was, "If you invite all these people into your house, and some of them insist on repeatedly smearing feces on the wall and insulting the other people there, every else will leave and probably think you approve of their behavior. Since, you know, you keep inviting them into your house and all..."

Yep. I had to tell a friend goodbye a few years back, because he wouldn’t stop inviting a guy with a bumper sticker on his truck that referenced lynching the President of the US, to his barbecues and game nights, and expected reasonable people to coexist politely with that guy. No, I won’t play D&D or Pandemic or watch Star Wars with a Nazi.
Eventually, association becomes willful association.

On the flip side, there's guys like Daryl Davis:
Takes a lot of courage to do what he does, though.

I don’t like to think about the crap I’ve heard white supremecists say about him. But, I live in a town where there were confederate and nazi flags on trucks driving up and down downtown last month, the same streets that had BLM protests last year. The conversation about race is pretty urgent, here, which is why I have no patience for the privileged nonsense some folks spout about “well I don’t need to know about neo-nazi codesigns because I just avoid associating with nazis” or whatever.

It doesn't help that a lot of people, whether old or young, tend to get rather passionate about their views on D&D. How many threads on even seemingly innocuous topics have examples of people losing their cool?

Absolutely.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yep. I had to tell a friend goodbye a few years back, because he wouldn’t stop inviting a guy with a bumper sticker on his truck that referenced lynching the President of the US, to his barbecues and game nights, and expected reasonable people to coexist politely with that guy. No, I won’t play D&D or Pandemic or watch Star Wars with a Nazi.
Eventually, association becomes willful association.

I don’t like to think about the crap I’ve heard white supremecists say about him. But, I live in a town where there were confederate and nazi flags on trucks driving up and down downtown last month, the same streets that had BLM protests last year. The conversation about race is pretty urgent, here, which is why I have no patience for the privileged nonsense some folks spout about “well I don’t need to know about neo-nazi codesigns because I just avoid associating with nazis” or whatever.



Absolutely.

Yeah sometimes you don't get a choice.

Had this job at port dealing with stevedores. I could count past ten so got to square the cargo count.

Mighty Mongrel Mob on one side complete with face tats, Blackpower on the other a few Deuschland Uber alles types and Russian boat crew from wrong side of gopnik town in Donetsk via Odessa.

What do you do? G'day guys be respectful.

Rough crowd.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah sometimes you don't get a choice.

Had this job at port dealing with stevedores. I could count past ten so got to square the cargo count.

Mighty Mongrel Mob on one side complete with face tats, Blackpower on the other a few Deuschland Uber alles types and Russian boat crew from wrong side of gopnik town in Donetsk via Odessa.

What do you do? G'day guys be respectful.

Rough crowd.

Sure, yeah. Some of us ain’t ever gonna get to choose to exist in any kind of echo chamber lol.

I work in autoparts, there’s a lot I have to ignore because it doesn’t “cross the line”.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sure, yeah. Some of us ain’t ever gonna get to choose to exist in any kind of echo chamber lol.

I work in autoparts, there’s a lot I have to ignore because it doesn’t “cross the line”.

Farms, trucking, port, construction sites.....

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Farms, trucking, port, construction sites.....

Yep. Gotta work to eat. Gotta eat to live. Otherwise...I’d kick them out at the first sign of an 88 tattoo.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yep. Gotta work to eat. Gotta eat to live. Otherwise...I’d kick them out at the first sign of an 88 tattoo.

Not like that here mostly people saying dumb crap, drug use or some odd beliefs. Met some character's.

Can't really fire them, bosses only care if they're dangerous often to themselves (walking into fork lifts, throwing tools etc).

Not allowed to refuse service either. Once the boss had to come and deal with gang members who gave the young girls grief. Totally different behavior with him.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Not allowed to refuse service either. Once the boss had to come and deal with gang members who gave the young girls grief. Totally different behavior with him.

Not being allowed to refuse service is...rough. I’m lucky to be secure in my job and work for people who understand that sometimes you have to just kick someone out.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not being allowed to refuse service is...rough. I’m lucky to be secure in my job and work for people who understand that sometimes you have to just kick someone out.

I think you have to get a trespass notice. Mate had a gamestore and one guy was a pain but legally couldn't ban him from the store.

At least that's the way it was explained. Did some security as well can't touch anyone eg to remove them from the store or search their bags.

Those reserve the right to search your bags neglect to mention you can reserve the right to say no.