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

[doctorbadwolf]

Yet.

Listen, I want to see inclusiveness be a part of the hobby, but I do question how much of the game will change to accommodate it. I'm assured by others that it will be fine if we remove the alignment tag off orcs or allow races to put ability score mods where they please, but tomorrow another thing must change to allow inclusiveness. The lineage UA has already implied that future races (er lineages) will lack racial ASI, proficiencies, alignment tendency and languages.

Today we say orcs are no longer majority evil. Tomorrow we say ogres perpetuate the same tropes and they must treated similarly. Maybe vampirism or lycanthropy becomes a metaphor for chronic illness or disability, or the succubus a symbol of mysoginy. I don't think I'm over-exaggerating to wonder what's next and to think on how to future-proof things. And to wonder, despite reassurance that "ze game will remain ze same", what else will need to change to fix those deep seated issues.

Okay, but...so what?

Seriously, so what if succubi are changed to make them less misogynist? So what if vampires become more like Anne Rice vamps, rarely good by possessed of free will?

making D&D demons capable of good would be like making fire elementals capable of turning into water, but if we say that they can change and that when they do they become a different creature type, I’m fine with that.

also, what @Charlaquin said

 

[The Green Hermit]

Okay, but...so what?

Seriously, so what if succubi are changed to make them less misogynist? So what if vampires become more like Anne Rice vamps, rarely good by possessed of free will?

making D&D demons capable of good would be like making fire elementals capable of turning into water, but if we say that they can change and that when they do they become a different creature type, I’m fine with that.

also, what @Charlaquin said

Actually, there is a fair amount of lore that has demons not be inherently evil, usually yes, but not always.

 

[Lanefan]

Irrelevant. You can subvert what a ghoul is for a given world, but that doesn’t change what it is in general.

Ditto for Orcs - in your own campaign you can make 'em what you like but that doesn't change the default.

The core books talk about the general case.
That D&D Devils aren’t a species or a lineage or any other such type of thing isn’t a preference, it’s the default lore for D&D. Orcs, otoh, are a species of living creature that breed like RL mammals, have familial and other attachments, raise their children, etc.
The two are inherently different cases.

Yes and no.

The default lore for both (and for a bunch of other creatures/monsters) is that they're generally evil; though they come by it in a variety of different ways.

The default lore for various other creatures/monsters is that they're generally good, for whatever reasons. Still others default to generally neutral; or average out as neutral. A few default to being generally lawful or chaotic. And some are too mindless to even have an alignment or ethos.

Except for the truly mindless creatures e.g. oozes, skeletons, etc., within the population there's almost always exceptions to the societal or speci-al norm or default; but that's by no means a valid reason for dropping defaults entirely.

And I for one am cool with all of this.

 

[Lanefan]

I believe that would be a highly desirable outcome.

I don't, in that I don't much like the idea of every creature under the sun potentially being a playable PC.

Seven playable species (Hum, Dwf, Elf, Gnm, Hbt, HEl, HOr) is enough, if not more than enough; Gnome and Half-Orc could come out and I'd not miss 'em too much (though my players would, which is why I've kept 'em in so far). Some other oddball creature becoming a PC on a very rare and random basis is fine, but that's it - unless one sees one's world as similar to Tatooine where all sorts of creatures intermingle and no one culture is really dominant anywhere.

 

[Lanefan]

1e was also the edition with gender-based strength limits, race-class restrictions, ability score prerequisites, race-class level limits, and so on.

Gender-based stat limits are crap, nothing changes by taking them out. Race-class level limits can be taken out IF one tones down some of the benefits those races get in play. Race-class restrictions and ability score prerequisites (for class) are things I fully endorse.

If the game wanted to maximize DM control, why alignments in the Monster Manual at all? Sure, it makes sense for undead, celestials, fiends, and so on... but why the humanoids?

If one wants to change things it helps if one knows what one is trying to change. If alignment guidelines were never given for the monsters I for one wouldn't have known for a lot of 'em what they were intended to be, either due to lack of familiarity with their original source (until playing D&D I'd never heard of a Ki-rin, for example) or because D&D was their original source (e.g. bulette, mind flayer).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ditto for Orcs - in your own campaign you can make 'em what you like but that doesn't change the default.

Yes, that is my point. The default is what matters in these discussions.

Yes and no.

The default lore for both (and for a bunch of other creatures/monsters) is that they're generally evil; though they come by it in a variety of different ways.

The default lore for various other creatures/monsters is that they're generally good, for whatever reasons. Still others default to generally neutral; or average out as neutral. A few default to being generally lawful or chaotic. And some are too mindless to even have an alignment or ethos.

Except for the truly mindless creatures e.g. oozes, skeletons, etc., within the population there's almost always exceptions to the societal or speci-al norm or default; but that's by no means a valid reason for dropping defaults entirely.

I’m not sure what point you’re heading toward. Can you elaborate on what in my post you agreed and disagreed with?

And I for one am cool with all of this.

Okay

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Actually, there is a fair amount of lore that has demons not be inherently evil, usually yes, but not always.

In D&D?

 

[Charlaquin]

Because change is scary.

Fair enough, and more honest than most,

Change too much and the game no longer honors it's ancestry,

If such change is needed, then perhaps it isn’t an ancestry worth honoring.

you split the fanbase and you get the civil wars that are consuming other media properties (Star Wars for a good example). Change too little and you aren't helping those who need it.

At the risk of derailing the thread by talking about Star Wars... When they made bold changes, they made the best Star Wars movie since Empire. When they tried to walk them back to placate a portion of the fanbase, they made the worst Star Wars movie.

5e is a good system, true to it's roots while being accessable to many. WotC sought to make it an evergreen edition. But I fear the drumbeat demanding change will hasten WotC to make a new edition to satisfy it's critics, and that new edition may make the same mistakes 4e made about sweeping radical change to mechanics and lore.

And I very much hope it does.

So yeah, I'm concerned about what the ripple effect is going to look like. In an era where most of my interests and fandoms dating back to childhood have recently become battlefields for culture wars, you'll have to excuse me being a little anxious.

You’re excused.

 

[Mort]

And I very much hope it does.

This is one of those be careful what you wish for situations. Progress is good, but change based on response to the loudest critics may not be.

That was the point of the 4e comparison. Loud critics were clamoring for change of many 3e sacred cows and WoTC went all in with 4e. Slaughtering more sacred cows than it had with any prior edition - it did not go over well! Now that's a bit of an oversimplification, 4e had many issues but It's not exaggerating to say that too many changes at once really did not help the edition.

I suspect WoTC will be much more gradual to introduce changes this time around.

 

[prabe]

This is one of those be careful what you wish for situations. Progress is good, but change based on response to the loudest critics may not be.

That was the point of the 4e comparison. Loud critics were clamoring for change of many 3e sacred cows and WoTC went all in with 4e. Slaughtering more sacred cows than it had with any prior edition - it did not go over well! Now that's a bit of an oversimplification, 4e had many issues but It's not exaggerating to say that too many changes at once really did not help the edition.

I suspect WoTC will be much more gradual to introduce changes this time around.

I suspect WotC has learned that changing the game too much, too soon, generates schism, and they might well be concerned that many of the newest recruits to the game might not be invested enough in D&D to continue across a wide edition gap. It seems most-probable to me that since the lore is what isn't fitting with the cultural zeitgeist, it's the lore that will be changed (as well as the mechanics around PC race); they might take the opportunity to tighten up some mechanics elsewhere in the system, but at this point I expect any such changes to be localized and/or minor.