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

[Justice and Rule]

Grey can be neutral because he is a mortal (if a potentially extremely long lived one). This is an explicit aspect of that world, that mortals are defined by free will, while many supernatural creatures have their drives and personality defined by their nature, even if that nature is rooted in some choice made long ago.

Cambions should probably have free will in D&D . Demons needn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with saying Orcus could become a good guy theoretically, but there is also nothing wrong with saying he cannot.

I mean, Noctitula in Pathfinder is a former Demonlord who managed to redeem herself. When handled well, there are interesting possibilities.

But the "handled well" is perhaps the most important part.

 

[Argyle King]

It doesn’t matter if the rules support free will for demons and beholders. They’re elemental constructs that mimic life.

Arguing that it’s the same thing as depicting actual mortal, living, sentient, species of people as always evil is insultingly absurd, and seems designed only to derail and delegitimize the actual discussion about racism in D&D .

I disagree.

I believe it is relevant because it looks at what we consider to be validly sentient and how we, as a society, choose to apply negative bias based upon how much something looks or lives like us.

 

[Oofta]

It doesn’t matter if the rules support free will for demons and beholders. They’re elemental constructs that mimic life.

Arguing that it’s the same thing as depicting actual mortal, living, sentient, species of people as always evil is insultingly absurd, and seems designed only to derail and delegitimize the actual discussion about racism in D&D .

So it's okay to label creatures as evil because they're different enough from you? Who gets to decide what different enough is? Is a person that has different color skin enough?

 

[Justice and Rule]

I’ve tried to explain to you that the backlash against D&D and other violent fantasy at that time content wasn’t just religious. Teachers, principals, child psychologists in my educated, urban, Canadian city had what they thought was evidence that boys indulging in this media were becoming withdrawn, violent, and suicidal. That it was unhealthy and potentially dangerous. These were educated, well-intentioned authorities - not bible-thumpers. Many of them were progressive (my hippy art teacher forbade us from drawing D&D characters and monsters in class). And they pointed to depression, drug abuse, and suicide of teenagers as real consequences of immersion in violent fantasy worlds, not phantom pedophile rituals.

You don't have to be a bible-thumper to be religious, and these things reached the mainstream. But however it filtered down, the Satanic Panic itself is what started it and the wilder claims are what started getting the coverage of D&D and such. That it filtered down in different ways to different people doesn't really negate what it was about in the first place.

 

[Remathilis]

.By expecting it @Remathilis you are undermining the credible elements that seek to revise the game in practical terms that might make a difference.

This isn't my first time doing this. Believe me, I am closer to where you are than not, but I'm seeing the writing on the wall. Alignment is a dying concept and it's going to die to the push for inclusiveness. It's collateral damage, but gone just the same.

 

[TheSword]

Deciding you want angels to fall, gold dragons to betray, and Lords of the Nine to reform may make good stories. The monster manual has already made it clear that alignments are defaults.

But please, please don’t pretend these three examples have any impact on race relations or diversity.

It isn’t inclusivity. It’s just extremism.

WOC have kept default alignment for monsters and any alignment for humanoids in products since their inclusivity statement.

I’d be very interested to be signposted to arguments for the complete removal of alignment on grounds of inclusivity.

 

[Deset Gled]

Personally, I have zero issue accepting the fact that D&D has a racist history. And I am 100% in approval of trying to make D&D more inclusive. But it's still jarring when someone tells me I'm racist because I like the fact that 3e dwarves have a +2 Con -2 Cha modifier.

No, I get it, and I get why they are defensive. I know I was at one point, and then I started talk to other people about it. It's one of those things where you don't just flick a switch, but it's a journey where you become more aware of how other people view stuff. Though c'mon with that last sentence.

That last sentence is less hyperbolic than you think. I have been told (on these very boards) that using STR modifiers for an orc's attack and DEX modifiers for a gnome's attack is not being "inclusive". I have been told that using racial ability modifiers means D&D is inherently prejudiced, to the point where it cannot be fixed.

There are extremists on both sides. I am not going to say they are equally bad - racist extremists are definitely worse, by a wide margin. But there are definitely people who weaponize inclusivity as well.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's somewhat arguable.

There are cases of Angels "falling" and a case of a Succubus Paladin in D&D lore. This would seem to imply there is some possibility that any D&D creature could be "good."

Which isn't to say that I think you're wrong. I'm simply attempting to explore the mental space of how this discussion appears to be approaching the subject.

It has also been suggested by others that we should ignore the established in-game/in-world way things work and judge things through the lens of our real-life world.

Does that lead to PCs being evil?

PCs tend toward killing creatures and hoarding wealth.

This is exactly the problem with engaging with that asinine, backward, distraction of an argument about demons. It does not matter, but it is becoming what the thread is about anyway, purely via repetition.

It’s pure BS whataboutist nonsense.

As for the “are PCs evil” thing, it depends on what they’re actually doing. I’ve never played in or run a game of D&D where the PCs just went into old ruins full of sentient people to genocide them and take their stuff.

That sort of thing isn’t what modern D&D adventures are written to be about, either.

Instead, PCs are solving problems. Raiders are attacking villages. The PCs are hired to stop them. The PCs get a reward and also get to keep any valuables they find, hopefully returning at least some of it to those it was taken from, but the villagers know when they agree to the terms that the somewhat merc PCs will probably keep the good stuff.

Or, my current rogue PC is an adventurer because a Wizard killed his ships crew in order to make them his undead thralls in order to win a fight with another Wizard over territory, and that Wizard then became a lich, and is at the head of a cult that seeks to end the world in demonic fire and rule over the ashes.

Treasure is very much a secondary concern.

The PCs of Dragonlance are trying to save the world from evil dragon armies and bring back the gods.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No one is disputing that fighting enemy combatants in a recognized war is acceptable in this thread. I hope no one is advocating for mass murder of orc civilians or not accepting that murdering surrendering foes in cold blood is acceptable in any games—seems like war crimes might fall into the clearly evil side of the alignment chart!

Yeah I thought about replying to that pointing out that no one is suggesting D&D have no enemies, but I don’t think it’s a good faith argument to begin with.

I mean, Noctitula in Pathfinder is a former Demonlord who managed to redeem herself. When handled well, there are interesting possibilities.

But the "handled well" is perhaps the most important part.

Sure, but that is a wholly separate topic from racism in D&D.

I disagree.

I believe it is relevant because it looks at what we consider to be validly sentient and how we, as a society, choose to apply negative bias based upon how much something looks or lives like us.

No, it doesn’t. It’s a puerile fallacy, at best.

So it's okay to label creatures as evil because they're different enough from you? Who gets to decide what different enough is? Is a person that has different color skin enough?

This is unacceptable. You should be ashamed to have even typed that out. Stop trying to distract from the actual discussion about race in D&D with this crap.

Deciding you want angels to fall, gold dragons to betray, and Lords of the Nine to reform may make good stories. The monster manual has already made it clear that alignments are defaults.

Please, please don’t pretend these three examples have any impact on race relations.

Exactly.

 

[MGibster]

Evil from the point of view of the dominant society.

Perhaps the orcs have a very good reason for raiding the settlement.

Well, no. Good and evil were objective forces in past editions of D&D. When you cast detect evil, the results were the same regardless of what culture you were from. But I will admit that I have never looked to D&D to provide a nuanced look into such issues that might have moral shades of grey. For me, It's always been a high fantasy game of good versus evil with little in the way of moral ambiguity. There were no baby goblin dilemmas in my campaigns.