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

[Zardnaar]

The narrative of savage fast-breeding barbarians descending on virtuous settled folk and destroying civilization isn't peculiar to European or 20th century. It's a human universal. Every settled corner of the earth has been threatened, raided, and conquered by nomadic people since forever. It's basically the history of the world in a nutshell. The steppes of Asia ('the navel of the world') alone have pulsed out dozens of waves of conquest into China, India, the Near East, and Europe. And the literate people who lived in those regions wrote sagas and myths and histories about the monstrous savages who lurk in the darkness beyond the lantern-light of civilization. The actors change in time and place - it might be the Scythians threatening Persia's frontiers in the 6th century B.C., Celts menacing Italy in the 2nd century B.C., the Saxons invading Britain in the 7th century AD, or the Mongols invading China in the 12th, but the story of the savage horde threatening civilization is a story told a thousand times in a hundred languages.

If some people want to excise that narrative from RPGs and drama, then okay. But it's a global human trope they'll be excising, not a recent or peculiarly Western one.

This I did a paper on the silk road and yeah it's basically human history. Early chinese records complaining about raiders from the steppes.

 

[Charlaquin]

Y’all realize a thing doesn’t have to be modern or Western to be racist, right?

 

[Scribe]

Y’all realize a thing doesn’t have to be modern or Western to be racist, right?

So the concept, a reality across the span of recorded human history, is in and of itself, racist?

Like, lets pretend that we drop a community of Orcs into the middle of the Sword Coast, farmers, and we have Orcs just strolling down the streets of Waterdeep, no problem at all.

Can we have a predominately raiding, nomadic, destructive, region of Orcs at that point?

Like what is your end game here? What is your ideal? Is it Eberron? Is it 'there is no culture of raiding Orcs, only raiders, that are multicultural' how far does it need to go in your eyes?

 

[Zardnaar]

Y’all realize a thing doesn’t have to be modern or Western to be racist, right?

Context and nuance.

See what Mongols got up to and Tamerlane. They did similar things that the Nazis and colonial empires did.

So the fear was very real in the context of the time. Guns in Europe as well.

 

[FireLance]

Honestly, it's getting to the point where before I include a non-human NPC or opponent in an adventure I write, I'd ask myself, "Does it need to be non-human?"

It seems more prudent to replace orcs and hobgoblins with humans that happen to have identical game statistics (except darkvision) as that would sidestep these issues.

 

[Charlaquin]

Honestly, it's getting to the point where before I include a non-human NPC or opponent in an adventure I write, I'd ask myself, "Does it need to be non-human?"

It seems more prudent to replace orcs and hobgoblins with humans that happen to have identical game statistics (except darkvision) as that would sidestep these issues.

Why, do your players have a problem with orc opponents?

 

[Charlaquin]

So the concept, a reality across the span of recorded human history, is in and of itself, racist?

Like, lets pretend that we drop a community of Orcs into the middle of the Sword Coast, farmers, and we have Orcs just strolling down the streets of Waterdeep, no problem at all.

Can we have a predominately raiding, nomadic, destructive, region of Orcs at that point?

Like what is your end game here? What is your ideal? Is it Eberron? Is it 'there is no culture of raiding Orcs, only raiders, that are multicultural' how far does it need to go in your eyes?

We’ve been over this a million times, can’t you just go back and re read my answers from the last time you asked a variation on the same question?

 

[Scribe]

Sorry, I guess I dont get it. We already have canonical in setting examples of 'not savage' orcs. We have whole settings where orcs are not savage.

So, I guess its just never enough until yes, Orcs can be seen as just one of the folks like Humans.

 

[FireLance]

Why, do your players have a problem with orc opponents?

No, but someone else might if I ever get round to publishing the adventures I write.

Why run this risk at all? What value is there in making an NPC or opponent an orc or a hobgoblin, if I can easily replace them with a human that has identical game statistics?

 

[Scribe]

Why run this risk at all? What value is there in making an NPC or opponent an orc or a hobgoblin, if I can easily replace them with a human that has identical game statistics?

Absolutely no reason. If they cannot be written as any other race, outside of something thats got wings, or can see a bit better in the dark, what possible upside is there.