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

[Wicked Woodpecker]

That's one of those moral dilemmas were it's really impossible to say who's right or wrong. Lots of people going to die regardless of what choice you make.

Now TBH there was always option of conditional honorable surrender, rather than unconditional one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's expanding the definition of racism so widely that it can be applied to virtually any depiction. Give me half an hour with such a broad brush and I'll come back here with a persuasive argument that gnomes are anti-semitic.

We're back to the argument that depicting any group with strongly defined traits = morally harmful. And if that's your cause, you aren't fighting against the colonial hegemony of racist Western culture; you're fighting against how humans tell stories. You'll have to re-imagine every saga, myth, and drama in every culture. That'll be a heck of a fight.

No we aren't, and you're just arguing in bad faith now. I'm talking about extremely well-established racist stereotyping and messaging. If you want to put your head in the sand, and the pretend that 19th and 20th century racism didn't happen, go ahead, no-one can stop you, but intentional ignorance is not a valid argument. You're literally dismissing stuff I've been reading actual research on (not activist stuff) days ago. It's ridiculous and conceited in the worst kind of way.

Also, as I suspect you know gnomes have been used as a weakly anti-semitic trope, just not the D&D kind, largely through lazy "banker = jewish person stuff" connected to the "gnomes of zurich" and so on (which traditionally just refers to any bankers in Switzerland). It's not the same kind of widespread libel though. If you didn't know that, maybe this is a good time for you to butt out of a conversation you aren't interesting learning enough about to have?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They also talk like people that shared the most traumatic experience of Tolkien's life (the Battle of the Somme) with him.

Negatively characterise but not dehumanise. You're not meant to like orcs - but Mordor and Isengard made the orcs what they were rather than the other way. I'm not arguing he liked orcs or thought they were good people.

Yeah, both groups shared that traumatic experience, though, didn't they? The ones who talked like hobbits, and the ones who talked like orcs. And one group is lionized, the other demonized.

I agree that he's not trying to dehumanise them, but it's kind of weird, because lore surrounding them does dehumanize them deeply, so it's like he wants to make them human and really, really bad. Not entirely sure what's going on there, not entirely sure Tolkien knew either.

 

[Zardnaar]

Now TBH there was always option of conditional honorable surrender, rather than unconditional one.

Wasn't going to happen as the Japanese demands were incompatible with what the allies were willing to give them.

They wanted to keep Korea and Manchuria. No occupation.

Kinda like letting Germany surrender with gains in Poland and pre war gains in Austria/Sudetenland.

Rock met hard place civilians in middle.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It isn't lawful evil AT ALL.

They are neither amoral nor are they following the laws of the land. Of course they aren't, laws forbid murder and such.

If someone has no problem in killing someone in order to achieve a goal, yes they are clearly not good. But this isn't the scenario at hand. They are killing in order to achieve a good, to prevent evil. Probably at great cost to themselves and to others. They may be wrong, but being Good in the context of D&D does not and never has implied that all your choices be the correct ones.

People of the same exact alignment can be viciously and violently opposed to one another. Two good nations can go to war because each of them believes themselves to be right.

Your moral absolutism may be one way of playing D&D but it isn't supported in RAW nor, frankly, does it even work intellectually if you think about it for more than 2 seconds.

I love that the guy justifying child murder is complaining about "moral absolutism" in Dungeons and Dragons. This is amazing.

 

[Oofta]

Counter arguement is women and children were going to die anyway.

I had to cover this in University. The question was if their use was justified.

I let the class decide that but pointed out with the death toll in the war if they shortened the war by one-two weeks they saved lives.

Otherwise from a moral PoV you're make my a decision who lives who dies. Japanese civilians or Chinese mostly due to starvation etc.

The other context is why they were used. The IJA marched their own civilians off cliffs so if the Allies had to invade it's a blood bath.

Best case scenario in alternative universe Japan surrenders in the next week or two. If they don't the nukes saved lives.

That's one of those moral dilemmas were it's really impossible to say who's right or wrong. Lots of people going to die regardless of what choice you make.

In effect you get to chose who dies and how many. You also lack the knowledge to determine exact numbers but all estimates are terrible. Pick your poison.

I don't think war is ever "good" in reality. It may be deemed necessary, but "good"? No. War is messy and cruel. Innocent people die and often for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

If the historians are to be believed (and history is written by the victors) Japan was ready to fight a very long, very bloody war with women pushing baby carriages full of explosives to the beach and so on.

Which ... the reason I'm writing this is because real world war is horrible. I don't want the reality of war in my D&D game. I want truly evil enemies not child soldiers that were conscripted, "good" wars, the fantasy of being heroes without the reality. It's a game.

 

[HJFudge]

I love that the guy justifying child murder is complaining about "moral absolutism" in Dungeons and Dragons. This is amazing.

Can you provide the quote where I say 'killing a child is okay/justified'?

Or are you, once again, making stuff up?

This IS amazing but not at all for the reasons you think it is

 

[Maxperson]

Counter arguement is women and children were going to die anyway.

I had to cover this in University. The question was if their use was justified.

I let the class decide that but pointed out with the death toll in the war if they shortened the war by one-two weeks they saved lives.

Otherwise from a moral PoV you're make my a decision who lives who dies. Japanese civilians or Chinese mostly due to starvation etc.

The other context is why they were used. The IJA marched their own civilians off cliffs so if the Allies had to invade it's a blood bath.

Best case scenario in alternative universe Japan surrenders in the next week or two. If they don't the nukes saved lives.

That's one of those moral dilemmas were it's really impossible to say who's right or wrong. Lots of people going to die regardless of what choice you make.

In effect you get to chose who dies and how many. You also lack the knowledge to determine exact numbers but all estimates are terrible. Pick your poison.

The U.S. wasn't responsible for any starvation deaths in China. Those don't get put on us. The difference with the use of the bombs is that if the war went on, we'd see more military deaths as we carved our way into Japan. Using the bombs, though, were almost entirely on the civilians of Japan. That's evil no matter how you slice it.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think war is ever "good" in reality. It may be deemed necessary, but "good"? No. War is messy and cruel. Innocent people die and often for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

If the historians are to be believed (and history is written by the victors) Japan was ready to fight a very long, very bloody war with women pushing baby carriages full of explosives to the beach and so on.

Which ... the reason I'm writing this is because real world war is horrible. I don't want the reality of war in my D&D game. I want truly evil enemies not child soldiers that were conscripted, "good" wars, the fantasy of being heroes without the reality. It's a game.

I did something like this on a vastly smaller scale. Basically the pCs couldn't be in two places at once pick your poison.

Wasn't fun though so not going to do it again anytime soon.

 

[Zardnaar]

The U.S. wasn't responsible for any starvation deaths in China. Those don't get put on us. The difference with the use of the bombs is that if the war went on, we'd see more military deaths as we carved our way into Japan. Using the bombs, though, were almost entirely on the civilians of Japan. That's evil no matter how you slice it.

No the deaths are on the Japanese.

Truman made his decision with the information they had. They had no spies in the internal workings of the Japanese high command. He had three options.

1. Do nothing hope for the best. Japan surrenders in a week or two best case scenario. Japan probably doesn't surrender in that time frame.

2. Use the bombs.

3. Invade Japan in a few months ( by then the death toll already exceeded the bombs deathtoll).

An average of 100k died per week in Asia and that was accelerating.

Estimates for death toll were extrapolated from Saipan/Iwo Jima/Okinawa.

Also the allied PoWs.

So he had 3 bad choices on limited information. What's the technical term for that?