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

[TheSword]

Why stop at humanoids?

Common sense? Who cares if creatures utterly devoid from the real world like mindflayers or dragons are evil or not.

 

[Oofta]

Common sense? Who cares if creatures utterly devoid from the real world like mindflayers or dragons are evil or not.

Last time I checked goblins are no more or less real than mindflayers.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Common sense? Who cares if creatures utterly devoid from the real world like mindflayers or dragons are evil or not.

Well, RotFM has Chaotic Neutral gnomeflayers.

 

[Oofta]

totally can. Is anyone saying you can't play your game with inherent evil humanoids if you want?

If you change all humanoids (and again, why limit to humanoids?) to "any alignment", I think the game loses something for a lot of people. Alignment is a handy shortcut that gives you a general idea of how someone will react. If you have a default, you have a 10,000 ft view of how that creature is going to react which is good enough most of the time.

Make it clear that alignment is just the default? Sure. Discuss options? Maybe, but then that gets into page count. Make it "any alignment"? It puts a lot of unnecessary burden on many DMs.

In any case this just goes round and round. I think it should be clarified that alignments are just defaults, culture (for all races, including the ones in the PHB) is just a starting point.

But D&D works for many because of simplicity. Part of that simplicity is the alignment system. Games like D&D are centered around combat and you will always need enemies.

 

[Horwath]

Last time I checked goblins are no more or less real than mindflayers.

so are Orcs, and Drows and Bugbears. And yet, here we are...

 

[Sacrosanct]

If you change all humanoids (and again, why limit to humanoids?)

Because many of those humanoid races were based off of caricatures of real racist stereotypes in folklore. Mindflayers? Not so much.

to "any alignment", I think the game loses something for a lot of people....It puts a lot of unnecessary burden on many DMs.

I feel this is nonsense. Too much extra burden? All you're doing is "Ok, in my game they are evil." How is that any effort whatsoever? And making humanoids no default alignment loses too much for some people? That speaks more about them than anyone else, because what are you losing? You can still make them evil if you want. The only thing you're losing is to make them evil for everyone else's table as well; to have your preferences as the default everyone else has to modify. needless to say, I am not a fan of people who think the way they want to play should be the way everyone else does too and/or anyone who plays differently than you (general you) are the ones who have to make the changes, and not you.

 

[Horwath]

Because many of those humanoid races were based off of caricatures of real racist stereotypes in folklore. Mindflayers? Not so much.

This is a bit of a stretch and mostly is: you see racism,because you want to see racism.

What racist stereotype are Drow filling in?

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'll admit I'm struggling to see the logic or consistency with some of the arguments I'm seeing. In this thread, I'm seeing that orcs describe as this (from the 1e MM):

ALIGNMENT: Lawful evil
Orc tribes are fiercely competitive, and when they meet it is 75% likely that
they will fight each other unless a strong leader (such as a wizard, evil
priest, evil lord) with sufficient force behind him is on hand to control the
orcs. Being bullies, the stronger will always intimidate and dominate the
weaker.
Orcs are cruel and hate living things in general, but they particularly hate
elves and will always attack them in preference to other creatures. They
take slaves for work, food, and entertainment (torture, etc.) but not elves
whom they kill immediately
As orcs will breed with anything, there are any number of
unsavory mongrels with orcish blood, particularly orc-goblins, orc-hobgoblins,
and orc-humans.

Doesn't always mean they are like that, and you can totally make exceptions and have decent orcs. however, orcs described as this:

Alignment: Any Alignment

Suddenly means you can't have most or all orcs in your campaign be evil because "rules", or that it's too much effort to do so, or that suddenly the game loses too much.

Can't have it both ways. You can't on one hand say that you should make exceptions for a good orc (which requires more work based on how they are described) while on the other hand say it's too much work to make them all evil (which requires the least work of the two scenarios because you're not overriding their entire fluff block like you are in the first scenario).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

What racist stereotype are Drow filling in?

 

[prabe]

This is a bit of a stretch and mostly is: you see racism,because you want to see racism.

What racist stereotype are Drow filling in?

In the US it is hard to escape the obvious, when a race of rabidly evil elves are described as having black skin. I realize that A) the drow are drawing on older legends and B) there is some thinking that the drow are so dark because the surface elves are so fair--but that opens an entirely other box of woes. It's easy enough to have evil be less-well-correlated with dark skin.