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

[Oofta]

That's just official sanction to change the mechanics then. What if the alignment text and mechanic is garbage in the first place? Saying "the game gives you permission to change it" isn't that much stronger a defense than "you can just change it" when you're taking a critical look at the concept of alignment itself. Or any other piece of mechanics or fluff.

So official rules in the book are not really official rules?

I think alignment as a general indicator of behavior is pretty integral to the style of game that many people enjoy. If you don't, don't use it. I don't want a reality simulator, I want a fantasy game that lets me put reality behind now and then.

Different people want different things.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't care what you do with your campaign. I do think the fact that alignment (and culture of all races for that matter) is just the default should have been clearer.

But you were the one who told me that my opinion is wrong:




I've always been quite clear that what I do is only for my campaign and my reasons for doing so. So why so adamant that I'm doing something wrong because I use the default?

I think it's fine if all ghouls are evil but orcs can be any alignment in your campaign. I just don't think the "justification" of why one fictional creature is evil while the other is not holds any water. Ghouls are evil in your campaign because you decided they are. Orcs are evil in my campaign because I've decided they are.

In the Fallout games ghouls are just people that have been transformed by magical radiation. Yet I don't go around telling people that having evil ghouls in their game is "nonsense".

I didn’t tell you that your use of orcs was wrong, I told you that your specific argument about fictional enemies was nonsensical, because it is.

 

[Oofta]

I didn’t tell you that your use of orcs was wrong, I told you that your specific argument about fictional enemies was nonsensical, because it is.

Right. I'm not saying you're an stupid, just that what you say is stupid.

We disagree. Go away.

 

[Minigiant]

It's not just motivation that matters, its representation.

So, we say, "you can't kill an orc because it's an orc" (the grosses oversimplification you can make). We'll accept that at bare minimum.

You place a group of orcs as the villains of your adventure. They are raiders coming from the mountains who are lashing out at the farmlands because they want to feast on the bread and hogs the farmers produce, steal thier treasures and tools, and sacrifice the farmers to thier depraved god of battle and slaughter (those who aren't kept at slaves or breeding stock that is, those half-orc adventures need an origin...)

Classic fantasy right, but also the very excuses that has been used to justify genocide, racism, and other forms of oppression.

So, we say, "Ok these orcs are bad for whatever reason, but not ALL orcs are!" There are good orcs and bad orcs, and not orcs are like this. We remove the "CE" alignment off the generic orc statblock, remove the alignment section out of the orc race. Maybe we move Gruumsh from "God of Orcs" to "God of Slaughter" and make him worshipped by all manner of sentient beings from elves to ogres. Mission accomplished, pop the elven wine, right?

... Where are those good orcs?

Where are peaceful orc tribes? The orcs who have settled and built towns and villages? The orc blacksmiths, guards and scholars living in working the major cities? The orc merchants who hire adventurers to guard their caravans against halfling bandits and raiders? The orc high priests and archmages? The orc nobles and royalty?

It doesn't do any good to say "orcs CAN be any alignment" but continue to use classic "raiders and pillagers" trope because that is an easy motivation that allows PCs to put the orcs to the sword.

Let's take another example, maybe those orc raiders were driven out of thier ancestral homelands by human settlers who turned their sacred lands into farms. Hiding in the mountains with little resources and on the verge of starvation, the orcs mount an attack to claim their ancient homeland back as well as claim reciprocity for the theft and murder of thier ancestors. Except the townsfolk, fearing the orcs who they were told were savage raiders by thier elders to justify the taking of their lands, hire the PCs to go and stop the orcs from lashing out at thier farmlands...

Still ready to slay orcs and take thier pie?

As D&D approaches a more nuanced perspective, the rationale of their actions because harder and harder to justify. Is the Keep on the Borderlands the last bastion of order against the forces of Evil and Chaos that seek to snuff it out, or is it the tip of the spear from conquering forces who seek to reap the riches of marginalized native peoples and ostracized religions? What if it's both?

One of the tropes of Old Roleplaying Fantasy was that the evil races were created by evil gods and corrupted/controlled sothey couldn't be anything but evil. The good races were made by good gods. The evil races attempt to corrupt the good racesbut the good races don't attempt toredeem the evil races. Monocultures existed because gods control and influenced their races towards their ideas in a divine game of chess.

However this is very limiting. So people changed it. However once you do this, a lot of the logic falls apart and the actions of humaniods becomes problematic as the monsters become people.

This is why most of the baddies in modern games are undead, demons, unthinking beasts, other nonhumaniods, outright terrorists, or just evil cultists of evil religion #3.

 

[prabe]

But how do your players know the humans they are fighting can be killed, compared to other humans?

In my campaigns, it's been because either the humans are spouting polyglot gibberish, or they've been caught acting in league with a demon or devil. Of course, I haven't deployed orcs as villains, while having two different parties run into at least somewhat sympathetic groups of orcs.

 

[Charlaquin]

Close enough. If the drow are a stand in for a certain group of humans living on Earth, it stands to reason they can be compared to another group of humans living on Earth.

More to the point though, you've proven my demographics concern. The issue isn't whether all, most, some, or even one group of orcs is evil, it's if all the game ever shows is the evil ones, you aren't doing anything by saying "well, some AREN'T" evil, they're just off camera. If we are really serious about this, we are going to have to treat orcs, goblins, any other sentient race with the same opportunities as elves, dwarves, and halflings. Orc towns are going to have to ask adventurers to defend their town against dwarven bandit. Goblin mages are going to ask PCs to go adventure into forgotten tombs overrun by halflings. You are going to have to make room for orc and goblin towns and kingdoms. The map or Oreth, Faerun, and such are going to have to change.

Anything else is a half-measure.

I mean, I’d be down for that.

 

[bedir than]

D&D is not going to have a major cultural impact. The tail is not going to wag the dog.

As long as you ignore every roleplaying game, an entire many billion dollar sector of video games, 100s of movies, 1000s of books, the power of its players in the technology business, its players in government, its players in the arts - you would be correct.

We may have been hiding in basements in the 70s and 80s, but that's not the case any more. It's time to embrace the 21st century.

 

[Alzrius]

So where does this show up in D&D?

This is where I disagree with your point. You cite several aspects of D&D that, presuming I'm understanding you correctly, you see as being informed by the "distinctly American" views on race by way of the culture surrounding chattel slavery. However, the examples you list don't seem to have any direct parallels to said culture, with most instead being directly lifted from non-American sources.

Humans are the "default race," and all the other races are defined by how they vary from humans. Sometimes this is physical (pointy ears, wings, etc).

Right, but this isn't an issue of "othering" in terms of doctrines of racial supremacy. It's because humans are the ones playing D&D, and so they represent a natural baseline against which to compare fictional races. Gary Gygax says this out-and-out in the AD&D 1E Dungeon Master's Guide (from "The Monster As A Player Character"):

The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for all players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with.

Often though, other "races" vary from humans culturally. Dwarves are traditional, halflings are plucky, orcs are savage.

This is going off on a tangent, but I've always wondered if the "cultural" aspects of demihumans and humanoids is really cultural at all. If we consider the idea that "God made man in His own image" and apply it to fantasy races - all of which have their own creator deities (e.g. Moradin for dwarves, Corellon for elves, Gruumsh for orcs, etc.) - then all of a sudden the idea of an elf (for example) being good with a longbow even if they were raised by dwarves and never saw a longbow in their life makes a lot more sense; it's not something they ever learned because they never needed to learn it; Corellon made them that way. The fact that humans don't have a creator deity under the D&D tradition, and have no such inherent traits, suddenly takes on new meaning as well.

And if you are half of one of those races? You still carry those stereotypes. You are defined as a half-orc, a half-elf.

That definition comes from Tolkien, however. Elrond was only one of several half-elves in the Professor's Legendarium, and that's where we get half-orcs from as well. It's no coincidence that D&D doesn't have "half-dwarves" or "half-gnomes" in that regard; it imported a British, rather than American, take on the subject.

This, then, is what I find very American about race in D&D. It's used as an othering tool. It's used to conflate physical differences and cultural differences. And it's used to define how player characters get to treat others. And it's tied inexorably to skin color!

You can kill a drow because they are evil. How do you know they are evil? They are cursed with black skin!

Which I'm pretty sure is an explicit reference to the Norse Dökkálfar.

 

[Alzrius]

Okay. Let's do that then. Is it that hard?

A lot of people do treat "Realms-Shaking Event" as a pejorative...

 

[Umbran]

So official rules in the book are not really official rules?

"Official," is not a synonym for, "good thing to have in a notable bit of culture." Is "WotC said it officially, so it is okay, really," only works if WOtC is considered a moral authority. Much as we might prefer to dismiss it all as "they are fictional, so they don't matter," that argument kind of falls apart - by that logic, any fiction depicting racism, or abuse, is okay because "the characters aren't real, and it isn't the real world."

Stories are not "just stories". They are also one of the tools we use to propagate our cultural ideas. So, it pays to at least consider that aspect of the issue.