The problem with Evil races is not what you think

[pemerton]

Well this is a bit abstract.

Agreed.

I've tried to make the matter concrete:

To try and get some clarity, here are some passages from the AD&D rulebooks. Are you saying that removing this sort of thing from D&D would make it a "non-game"?

<snip extracts>

Are you asserting that it is important to FRPGing that the fantasy include cruel, fecund people who produce "mongrel" offspring just like them; that it include jungle and island "tribesmen" who take captives to eat them; that its noblewomen be easily mistaken for sex workers?

If not, what is your point?

So is it essential to FRPGing that conflicts consist in the threats to "civilisation" posed by nameless hordes of . . . . ? That the solution to the world's problems is the extermination of those hordes?

And the reply I received was:

No additional clarity is needed. My position is made quite clear in the penultimate two paragraphs of my previous post. Trying to delegitimise these points by purposefully ignoring them and reaching for examples that run counter to what I stated shows a lack of good faith in serious discussion. Continue to make claims of my assertions to harvest likes or for your own entertainment all you want. I don’t see any further value in it. Good day sir/ madam/ however you prefer to be addressed.

Those penultimate two paragraphs were:

Finally, none of this, none of what I’ve said is an argument against progress, nor that we should say, “well, this is just a tangled, complicated mess so why bother”. I find calls of people advocating for these changes of the game that state, “well the world is changing, youll be left behind”, or accusations that I’m trying to keep an old, white dominated world insulting and arrogant, a sense that their argument is automatically right.

We can and will do better. Already, we are seeing much better human interpretations within gaming (see for example Paizo’s new Mwangi book and compare with older writing on the area) as well as better depictions of humans across the spectrum. I applaud this, I value this.

I don't see them as reducing the abstraction. There is a reference to an statement that is not attributed and that I don't belief anyone has made. There is a suggestion that some people think there argument is "automatically" right - I don't know what work the word automatically is supposed to be doing, or what the difference is supposed to be from arguments that are right, but not automatically so.

As far as I can tell the assertion is that it's important to "do better" but that people who disagree with @transmission89 as to what this might consist in, and who make those assertions; or who document through close textual analysis the racialised aspects of the D&D/fantasy heritage; are insulting and arrogant.

 

[Malmuria]

Content Warning: Very racist claims, in quotation

This post is about the way features of D&D orcs and goblins – high fertility rates, dominant 'genetic' traits, large population – replicate racist ideas. These ideas may be found in the writings of late-19th and early-20th century influential race 'scientists' – Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard – and in Yellow Peril fiction and other popular fears about "Asiatic hordes". There are also similarities, though not as strong, with the present day far right "White Genocide" or "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory.

High Fertility Rates

AD&D 1e Players Handbook (1978): "Orcs are fecund and create many cross-breeds." D&D 3.5e Monster Manual (2003): Goblins have "rapid reproduction." D&D 4e Monster Manual (2008): "Goblins breed quickly."

D&D 5e Monster Manual (2014):

Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility and wife of Gruumsh, demands that orcs procreate often and indiscriminately so that orc hordes swell generation after generation. The orcs' drive to reproduce runs stronger than any other humanoid race, and they readily crossbreed with other races.​

D&D 5e Volo's Guide to Monsters (2016): "Orcs breed prodigiously (and they aren't choosy about what they breed with, which is why such creatures as half-orcs and ogrillons are found in the world)."

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899):

Generative power often stands in inverse relation to the nobility of the race… In Europe at the present day we… see the growing predominance of an alien race which… by animal force gradually overpowers the mentally superior race.​

Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920):

Treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would appear that whites tend to double in eighty years, yellows and browns in sixty years, blacks in forty years.​

​

The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality... To it... is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders.​

Dominant 'Genetic' Traits

AD&D 1e Monster Manual (1977): "Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily, so such sorts are basically orcs although they can sometimes (10%) pass themselves off as true creatures of their other stock (goblins, hobgoblins, humans, etc.)." AD&D 1e PHB (1978): "Some one-tenth of orc-human mongrels are sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human." AD&D 2e Monstrous Manual (1993): "Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily and as such are basically orcs, although 10% of these offspring can pass as ugly humans." D&D 5e MM: "When an orc procreates with a non-orc humanoid of similar size and stature (such as a human or a dwarf), the resulting child is either an orc or a half-orc."

Chamberlain: "The negro['s]… generative power and the predominance of his qualities in the descendants are all greater than those of the whites."

Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916):

The result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew.​

Stoddard: "In ethnic crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again."

Large Population

AD&D 2e MM: Goblins "would be merely pests, if not for their great numbers." D&D 3.5e MM: Goblins have "great numbers." D&D 5e MM: "Individually weak, goblins gather in large—sometimes overwhelming—numbers." "Occasionally, a powerful war chief unites scattered orc tribes into a single rampaging horde."

MP Shiel, The Yellow Danger (1898): "The Chinese host was to resemble a flight of locusts, covering the entire sky from horizon to horizon… Yen How's army would consist of the 400,000,000 which formed the population of China."

Federation on Chinese Exclusion, Memorial to Congress (1901):

Civilization in Europe has been frequently attacked and imperiled by the barbaric hordes of Asia. If the little band of Greeks at Marathon had not beaten back ten times their number of Asiatic invaders, it is impossible to estimate the loss to civilization that would have ensued… Attila and his Asiatic hordes threatened central Europe when the Gauls made their successful stand against them… The free immigration of Chinese would be for all purposes an invasion by Asiatic barbarians.​

Jack London, The Unparalleled Invasion (1910):

The real danger lay in the fecundity of her [China's] loins​

​

China's population must be seven hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knew how many millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world… and the world trembled​

John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, Yellow Peril! (2014):

[During the Korean War (1950-1953)] Newspapers across the nation ran headlines such as "Red Hordes Swarm South Korea!" as the Chinese pushed American troops back south. Popular press accounts claimed that the Chinese troops were mere cannon fodder, but their sheer numbers made them invincible.​

The "White Genocide" Conspiracy Theory

Bridge Initiative Team, Factsheet: White Genocide Conspiracy Theory (2020):

Proponents of the white genocide conspiracy theory… claim that the "white race" is under threat due to falling birth rates among white women, the continued growth of "mixed race" marriages, and ongoing immigration of black and brown people into Europe and America. They allege that demographic change will result in white people becoming a minority in the United States in the near future​

​

Brenton Tarrant… attacked two mosques in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand killing 51 Muslims. Tarrant explicitly referenced the white genocide conspiracy theory in his manifesto entitled: "The Great Replacement."​

The parallels here are not as close as they are with the race 'scientists' and fears of "Asiatic hordes". But the general themes of the threat of higher birth rates, being outnumbered, and being replaced are the same.

You should write a book about this!

 

[Aging Bard]

Content Warning: Very racist claims, in quotation

This post is about the way features of D&D orcs and goblins – high fertility rates, dominant 'genetic' traits, large population – replicate racist ideas. These ideas may be found in the writings of late-19th and early-20th century influential race 'scientists' – Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard – and in Yellow Peril fiction and other popular fears about "Asiatic hordes". There are also similarities, though not as strong, with the present day far right "White Genocide" or "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory.

High Fertility Rates

AD&D 1e Players Handbook (1978): "Orcs are fecund and create many cross-breeds." D&D 3.5e Monster Manual (2003): Goblins have "rapid reproduction." D&D 4e Monster Manual (2008): "Goblins breed quickly."

D&D 5e Monster Manual (2014):

Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility and wife of Gruumsh, demands that orcs procreate often and indiscriminately so that orc hordes swell generation after generation. The orcs' drive to reproduce runs stronger than any other humanoid race, and they readily crossbreed with other races.​

D&D 5e Volo's Guide to Monsters (2016): "Orcs breed prodigiously (and they aren't choosy about what they breed with, which is why such creatures as half-orcs and ogrillons are found in the world)."

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899):

Generative power often stands in inverse relation to the nobility of the race… In Europe at the present day we… see the growing predominance of an alien race which… by animal force gradually overpowers the mentally superior race.​

Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920):

Treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would appear that whites tend to double in eighty years, yellows and browns in sixty years, blacks in forty years.​

​

The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality... To it... is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders.​

Dominant 'Genetic' Traits

AD&D 1e Monster Manual (1977): "Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily, so such sorts are basically orcs although they can sometimes (10%) pass themselves off as true creatures of their other stock (goblins, hobgoblins, humans, etc.)." AD&D 1e PHB (1978): "Some one-tenth of orc-human mongrels are sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human." AD&D 2e Monstrous Manual (1993): "Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily and as such are basically orcs, although 10% of these offspring can pass as ugly humans." D&D 5e MM: "When an orc procreates with a non-orc humanoid of similar size and stature (such as a human or a dwarf), the resulting child is either an orc or a half-orc."

Chamberlain: "The negro['s]… generative power and the predominance of his qualities in the descendants are all greater than those of the whites."

Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916):

The result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew.​

Stoddard: "In ethnic crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again."

Large Population

AD&D 2e MM: Goblins "would be merely pests, if not for their great numbers." D&D 3.5e MM: Goblins have "great numbers." D&D 5e MM: "Individually weak, goblins gather in large—sometimes overwhelming—numbers." "Occasionally, a powerful war chief unites scattered orc tribes into a single rampaging horde."

MP Shiel, The Yellow Danger (1898): "The Chinese host was to resemble a flight of locusts, covering the entire sky from horizon to horizon… Yen How's army would consist of the 400,000,000 which formed the population of China."

Federation on Chinese Exclusion, Memorial to Congress (1901):

Civilization in Europe has been frequently attacked and imperiled by the barbaric hordes of Asia. If the little band of Greeks at Marathon had not beaten back ten times their number of Asiatic invaders, it is impossible to estimate the loss to civilization that would have ensued… Attila and his Asiatic hordes threatened central Europe when the Gauls made their successful stand against them… The free immigration of Chinese would be for all purposes an invasion by Asiatic barbarians.​

Jack London, The Unparalleled Invasion (1910):

The real danger lay in the fecundity of her [China's] loins​

​

China's population must be seven hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knew how many millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world… and the world trembled​

John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, Yellow Peril! (2014):

[During the Korean War (1950-1953)] Newspapers across the nation ran headlines such as "Red Hordes Swarm South Korea!" as the Chinese pushed American troops back south. Popular press accounts claimed that the Chinese troops were mere cannon fodder, but their sheer numbers made them invincible.​

The "White Genocide" Conspiracy Theory

Bridge Initiative Team, Factsheet: White Genocide Conspiracy Theory (2020):

Proponents of the white genocide conspiracy theory… claim that the "white race" is under threat due to falling birth rates among white women, the continued growth of "mixed race" marriages, and ongoing immigration of black and brown people into Europe and America. They allege that demographic change will result in white people becoming a minority in the United States in the near future​

​

Brenton Tarrant… attacked two mosques in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand killing 51 Muslims. Tarrant explicitly referenced the white genocide conspiracy theory in his manifesto entitled: "The Great Replacement."​

The parallels here are not as close as they are with the race 'scientists' and fears of "Asiatic hordes". But the general themes of the threat of higher birth rates, being outnumbered, and being replaced are the same.

This is a very good summary and analysis, thanks for posting. One way of adjusting older problematic content is to assume these in-game commentaries are written by outsiders to the target group--usually humans, elves, and/or dwarves--and understand that they are biased and racist. I don't have a problem with racism and bias existing in-game, as long as we acknowledge out-game that these views are immoral. For example, in a medieval-like society, no one would have any real idea about "birth rates". It would all be projection and fear about "hoards of Others" designed to instill fear in those like "Us". Orcs might think exactly the same thing about humans (with good reason!), but we never hear their views somehow.

Thus we discard what might have been the original intent of the writers and substitute a new intent that includes the perspective of the targeted race. This allows for a mix of bigoted and thoughtful NPCs in-game, again as long as this can be handled maturely and everyone is comfortable doing this. NPCs can hold the propaganda-laced views of the older writers and others can challenge those views. If people simply are not comfortable with this sort of fantasy, I would never subject them to it. It's just a game, after all.

 

[Malmuria]

This is a very good summary and analysis, thanks for posting. One way of adjusting older problematic content is to assume these in-game commentaries are written by outsiders to the target group--usually humans, elves, and/or dwarves--and understand that they are biased and racist. I don't have a problem with racism and bias existing in-game, as long as we acknowledge out-game that these views are immoral. For example, in a medieval-like society, no one would have any real idea about "birth rates". It would all be projection and fear about "hoards of Others" designed to instill fear in those like "Us". Orcs might think exactly the same thing about humans (with good reason!), but we never hear their views somehow.

Thus we discard what might have been the original intent of the writers and substitute a new intent that includes the perspective of the targeted race. This allows for a mix of bigoted and thoughtful NPCs in-game, again as long as this can be handled maturely and everyone is comfortable doing this. NPCs can hold the propaganda-laced views of the older writers and others can challenge those views. If people simply are not comfortable with this sort of fantasy, I would never subject them to it. It's just a game, after all.

I love the idea of monster books being written from an in-world perspective, since that's what monster books always were. The advantage of that is that it does a lot of the world building for the dm. This disadvantage is that it does a lot of world building for the dm, leaving other options or interpretations up to homebrew and reskinning.

 

[Aging Bard]

I love the idea of monster books being written from an in-world perspective, since that's what monster books always were. The advantage of that is that it does a lot of the world building for the dm. This disadvantage is that it does a lot of world building for the dm, leaving other options or interpretations up to homebrew and reskinning.

Boy is this a good comment, both the benefits and the problems. Though the DM could and should solicit player input on reskinning where the DM has not yet made a firm call. Why not let players add to a world's lore?

ETA: I just realized that my perspective on this is influenced by the first RPG I ever played: not D&D, but Traveller, and Traveller incorporated the "unreliable narrator" theme from the start. Players had access to Library Data of the Third Imperium, but secret referee information often showed how this data was skewed or even outright lies.

 

[transmission89]

Content Warning: Very racist claims, in quotation

This post is about the way features of D&D orcs and goblins – high fertility rates, dominant 'genetic' traits, and abundant population – replicate racist ideas. These ideas may be found in the writings of late-19th and early-20th century influential race 'scientists' – Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard – and in Yellow Peril fiction and other popular fears about "Asiatic hordes". There are also similarities, though not as strong, with the present day far right "White Genocide" or "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory.

High Fertility Rates

AD&D 1e Players Handbook (1978): "Orcs are fecund and create many cross-breeds." D&D 3.5e Monster Manual (2003): Goblins have "rapid reproduction." D&D 4e Monster Manual (2008): "Goblins breed quickly."

D&D 5e Monster Manual (2014):

Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility and wife of Gruumsh, demands that orcs procreate often and indiscriminately so that orc hordes swell generation after generation. The orcs' drive to reproduce runs stronger than any other humanoid race, and they readily crossbreed with other races.​

D&D 5e Volo's Guide to Monsters (2016): "Orcs breed prodigiously (and they aren't choosy about what they breed with, which is why such creatures as half-orcs and ogrillons are found in the world)."

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899):

Generative power often stands in inverse relation to the nobility of the race… In Europe at the present day we… see the growing predominance of an alien race which… by animal force gradually overpowers the mentally superior race.​

Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920):

Treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would appear that whites tend to double in eighty years, yellows and browns in sixty years, blacks in forty years.​

​

The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality... To it... is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders.​

Dominant 'Genetic' Traits

AD&D 1e Monster Manual (1977): "Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily, so such sorts are basically orcs although they can sometimes (10%) pass themselves off as true creatures of their other stock (goblins, hobgoblins, humans, etc.)." AD&D 1e PHB (1978): "Some one-tenth of orc-human mongrels are sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human." AD&D 2e Monstrous Manual (1993): "Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily and as such are basically orcs, although 10% of these offspring can pass as ugly humans." D&D 5e MM: "When an orc procreates with a non-orc humanoid of similar size and stature (such as a human or a dwarf), the resulting child is either an orc or a half-orc."

Chamberlain: "The negro['s]… generative power and the predominance of his qualities in the descendants are all greater than those of the whites."

Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916):

The result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew.​

Stoddard: "In ethnic crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again."

Abundant Population

AD&D 2e MM: Goblins "would be merely pests, if not for their great numbers." D&D 3.5e MM: Goblins have "great numbers." D&D 5e MM: "Individually weak, goblins gather in large—sometimes overwhelming—numbers." "Occasionally, a powerful war chief unites scattered orc tribes into a single rampaging horde."

MP Shiel, The Yellow Danger (1898): "The Chinese host was to resemble a flight of locusts, covering the entire sky from horizon to horizon… Yen How's army would consist of the 400,000,000 which formed the population of China."

Federation on Chinese Exclusion, Memorial to Congress (1901):

Civilization in Europe has been frequently attacked and imperiled by the barbaric hordes of Asia. If the little band of Greeks at Marathon had not beaten back ten times their number of Asiatic invaders, it is impossible to estimate the loss to civilization that would have ensued… Attila and his Asiatic hordes threatened central Europe when the Gauls made their successful stand against them… The free immigration of Chinese would be for all purposes an invasion by Asiatic barbarians.​

Jack London, The Unparalleled Invasion (1910):

The real danger lay in the fecundity of her [China's] loins​

​

China's population must be seven hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knew how many millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world… and the world trembled​

John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, Yellow Peril! (2014):

[During the Korean War (1950-1953)] Newspapers across the nation ran headlines such as "Red Hordes Swarm South Korea!" as the Chinese pushed American troops back south. Popular press accounts claimed that the Chinese troops were mere cannon fodder, but their sheer numbers made them invincible.​

The "White Genocide" Conspiracy Theory

Bridge Initiative Team, Factsheet: White Genocide Conspiracy Theory (2020):

Proponents of the white genocide conspiracy theory… claim that the "white race" is under threat due to falling birth rates among white women, the continued growth of "mixed race" marriages, and ongoing immigration of black and brown people into Europe and America. They allege that demographic change will result in white people becoming a minority in the United States in the near future​

​

Brenton Tarrant… attacked two mosques in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand killing 51 Muslims. Tarrant explicitly referenced the white genocide conspiracy theory in his manifesto entitled: "The Great Replacement."​

The parallels here are not as close as they are with the race 'scientists' and fears of "Asiatic hordes". But the general themes of the threat of higher birth rates, being outnumbered, and being replaced are the same.

These are a collection of truly appalling
quotes when applied to people, and are out dated racial views of people of different ethnicities. There’s no question that this view has no place in a modern world, and should not be applied to people.

But again, the link lies on the assumption that orcs and goblins are a stand in for people, that they are anything but a monstrous creature. If words like “fecund”, “hordes” and concepts like “fast breeding being a threat” are to be struck because they have historically been deployed in an appalling manner against people, then you’re going to have a problem with many descriptions of the rabbit threat in Australia.

Looked through this lens, Mass Effect (a sci fi video game) is clearly a racist parable as the horde of reapers descend on the citadel, intent on wiping out good, progressive civilisation. The collectors clearly an embodiment of the trope of black men coming to steal your women away from you. (I don’t believe this is case, just pointing out that an over extension of literary analysis and trope exploration has the potential to limit fiction).

In game terms, Gary wanted a clearly defined evil race of humanoids to fill that same fictitious space as the Nazi (that players could could wantonly engage in combat with, and come out feeing heroic without moralistic issues of having killed many people).
In a tweet, Ed Greenwood stated:

“I talked with Gary Gygax about "baked-in evil" (orcs, drow, etc.) and (though admitting D&D was whitebread, middle-class, and Christian-rooted) he said he HAD to have evil-labelled races to fight (=kill gorily) or the game would have been banned in much of the USA at that time.”

Games stats wise, the individual goblin is weak. So how can we fictionally make it a threat to the dwarven kingdoms, the realms of Elves and men? Well, a goblin must therefore have numbers to present a threat. What are the implications of having large numbers?

Now if you choose to play Orcs as people, to have a D&D game where you play as a cornucopia of fantastical races and explore what it means to be human and what humanity is, you’re going to run into these issues, implications and associations. This is rich and fertile ground to be, and has been explored in western and global fantasy sci fi literature. But it is why, personally, I think that approach to the game as a game is a mistake. But far be it from me to dictate how you play at the table or the stories you tell. The closer it is played straight to the original expression of the game (not necessarily in rules set, but fictional presentation) of the classic struggles of good peoples vs evil monsters and the occasional wicked man/ woman, the less chance you will have of these implications.

Or to clarify, let monsters be monsters and when we present fictional peoples, let that be respectful and not resort to sexist/racist tropes of those people.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

These are a collection of truly appalling
quotes when applied to people, and are out dated racial views of people of different ethnicities. There’s no question that this view has no place in a modern world, and should not be applied to people.

But again, the link lies on the assumption that orcs and goblins are a stand in for people, that they are anything but a monstrous creature.

(Emphasis mine.)

No, it doesn’t.

The only assumption is that a certain number of people reading those words will either be familiar with or members of the RW groups vilified in the borrowed descriptions and that they will recognize those stereotypes’ use outside the gaming context.

Which is exactly what has happened.

As gamers who are part of minority groups have entered the hobby in increasing numbers, they’ve read that kind of language and had to ask themselves if they’re really welcome, or if they’re getting into in a hobby surrounded by people who wish them ill. Fortunately, most of them have figured out that the latter is not the case.

(In my several decades in the hobby, I’ve met a few racist gamers, but they are far and away outnumbered by those who aren’t.)

AFAIK, nobody in this thread has accused any of the big names of actually being bigoted, merely that they have used language whose roots in bigotry is easily discoverable if one has the will to expend enough energy to have a single hand type some questions into a search engine.

(Or, you know, ask somebody.)

 

[transmission89]

(Emphasis mine.)

No, it doesn’t.

The only assumption is that a certain number of people reading those words will either be familiar with or members of the RW groups vilified in the borrowed descriptions and that they will recognize those stereotypes’ use outside the gaming context.

Which is exactly what has happened.

As gamers who are part of minority groups have entered the hobby in increasing numbers, they’ve read that kind of language and had to ask themselves if they’re really welcome, or if they’re getting into in a hobby surrounded by people who wish them ill. Fortunately, most of them have figured out that the latter is not the case.

(In my several decades in the hobby, I’ve met a few racist gamers, but they are far and away outnumbered by those who aren’t.)

AFAIK, nobody in this thread has accused any of the big names of actually being bigoted, merely that they have used language whose roots in bigotry is easily discoverable if one has the will to expend enough energy to have a single hand type some questions into a search engine.

(Or, you know, ask somebody.)

(Emphasis mine). Excellent, glad you agree with my point that it’s what we bring to it, the subjectivity, not an innate problem with an orc itself.

On a less glib note, of course, you’re right, there are bad actors in the hobby, just as there are bad actors in any community. Thankfully, the D&D community as a whole has always represented the most progressive, welcoming values within the context of any time period’s wider society.

To answer your post and the constant language association posts, I can think of no better response than this, which was posted on Reddit on a similar discussion a year ago:

“
And what you're ignoring, is the reality that a similarity of form, or sharing of an intellectual ancestor is not criteria for apt comparison. There's two things wrong with the case as you've made it.

1.) The European cultural black mark of eugenics and race science (is not remotely unique to Europe, but that's a side conversation) does in fact share rhetorical structure with some facets of the way DnD has organized the players of it's world.

You must ask yourself though, is that a product of some shadowy specter of racism looming over the cultural products of the West to this day, or is a more apt description that: The particular techniques of organization and codification of patterns and traits into recognizable characters, and employing those as the fundamental structure for understanding the world a ubiquitous and effective technique for conveying information in a manner which is both readily extrapolated from its containing vessel and convenient for reflection of the context in which it is set?

I'm certainly inclined to believe the latter, and that the creations of characters and caricatures alike to embody ideas and perceptions about the world is something not in the least unique to race science, and stretching back across all societies in all stories, in fact it is precisely the fundamental substrate of storytelling to create parties within the stories which embody an idea, and it is stories, especially ones told in this manner, which form the bedrock of all human thought, understanding, wisdom, and culture.

Though not to downplay the contribution of race science in our perceptions on this manner. While absolutely bankrupt on both the moral and scientific fronts, it is absolutely stunning in the manner with which it equipped European culture with the tools to create as figments of fantasy entire peoples and thus by extensions, histories, lores, traditions, and cultures all their own. It was precisely this revolution of storytelling which cultivated the fertile soil for a retelling of the great European mythos into the vast and encompassing universe of Tolkein and Greyhawk alike even to distant fantasies like Star Trek.

You're certainly correct, that the structure of the Canon does in fact hearken back to the race scientists of the eugenics era. It does evoke much of the same tones, but you've failed at the level of analysis. It's not the Canon which sustains the skeletons of our past, from which we may excavate long entombed and dangerous ways of thinking. Instead, it was the race scientists who relied on precisely the same strategies of drama and narrative to pedal their swill to a population yet uninnoculated against the spectacular and revolutionary techniques which would eventually blossom into sweeping lores and worlds that compose Western storytelling today.

2.) The argument was [against the idea of orcs being “problematic” ] was never "it's just fantasy bro" the argument, is, and always should be, "the fantasy encodes a much richer message than your crude reduction" which it does.

Stories and myths are the great repositories of wisdom and lore across time. They teach, warn, deceive, and enrich all across the world every day, as they have from our earliest dawnings tens of thousands of years ago. In Harry Potter, Olivander describes the work of Voldemort as great, great but terrible.

I think is a disgraceful and baldfaced lie, or at the very least blunder of stupendous ignorance to read from a single story one potential untruth in the hands of a spinster and use that as a cudgel with which to beat down the value of any wisdom which may otherwise be extricated or refined. It is even more absurd and shameful, to dismiss an entire canon on the same premise, especially a Canon which has served as the fertile and nurturing bossum of so many great works cultural and personal, in the time it has existed.”

And again, I’m going to capitalise this because I don’t want it being missed:
THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT D&D DOESNT BENEFIT FROM A WIDER PERSPECTIVE OF AUTHORS FROM ALL ETHNICITIES AND WALKS OF LIFE. A DIVERSE SET OF PEOPLES BRINGS A DIVERSE SET OF IDEAS AND PERSPECTIVES THAT CAN ONLY ENRICH THE FANTASY GAME THAT WE KNOW AND LOVE.

 

[pemerton]

The argument was [against the idea of orcs being “problematic” ] was never "it's just fantasy bro" the argument, is, and always should be, "the fantasy encodes a much richer message than your crude reduction" which it does.

Stories and myths are the great repositories of wisdom and lore across time. They teach, warn, deceive, and enrich all across the world every day, as they have from our earliest dawnings tens of thousands of years ago. In Harry Potter, Olivander describes the work of Voldemort as great, great but terrible.

I think is a disgraceful and baldfaced lie, or at the very least blunder of stupendous ignorance to read from a single story one potential untruth in the hands of a spinster and use that as a cudgel with which to beat down the value of any wisdom which may otherwise be extricated or refined. It is even more absurd and shameful, to dismiss an entire canon on the same premise, especially a Canon which has served as the fertile and nurturing bossum of so many great works cultural and personal, in the time it has existed.”

Who are you directing this at?

Which poster(s) are you accusing of "crude reduction"? @Doug McCrae? Me? @Malmuria?

Who are you saying has "dismissed" an entire canon, or "beaten down the value of any wisdom which may otherwise be extricated or refined"?

To be honest, your posts read like rhetorical posturing, and attacks upon unidentified threats to <something important though you don't actually seem to say what>.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

(Emphasis mine). Excellent, glad you agree with my point that it’s what we bring to it, the subjectivity, not an innate problem with an orc itself.

On a less glib note, of course, you’re right, there are bad actors in the hobby, just as there are bad actors in any community. Thankfully, the D&D community as a whole has always represented the most progressive, welcoming values within the context of any time period’s wider society.

To answer your post and the constant language association posts, I can think of no better response than this, which was posted on Reddit on a similar discussion a year ago:

“
And what you're ignoring, is the reality that a similarity of form, or sharing of an intellectual ancestor is not criteria for apt comparison. There's two things wrong with the case as you've made it.

1.) The European cultural black mark of eugenics and race science (is not remotely unique to Europe, but that's a side conversation) does in fact share rhetorical structure with some facets of the way DnD has organized the players of it's world.

You must ask yourself though, is that a product of some shadowy specter of racism looming over the cultural products of the West to this day, or is a more apt description that: The particular techniques of organization and codification of patterns and traits into recognizable characters, and employing those as the fundamental structure for understanding the world a ubiquitous and effective technique for conveying information in a manner which is both readily extrapolated from its containing vessel and convenient for reflection of the context in which it is set?

I'm certainly inclined to believe the latter, and that the creations of characters and caricatures alike to embody ideas and perceptions about the world is something not in the least unique to race science, and stretching back across all societies in all stories, in fact it is precisely the fundamental substrate of storytelling to create parties within the stories which embody an idea, and it is stories, especially ones told in this manner, which form the bedrock of all human thought, understanding, wisdom, and culture.

(Emphasis mine.)

1) As long as RW slurs and stereotypes are used as descriptive language for RPG foes, we don’t agree. Remove that language, and we’re good.

2) I patently disagree, especially since it is demonstrable that use of RW slurs and stereotypes in fiction not actually meant to mirror the real world is completely unnecessary. Many fiction writers- and more now than before- have found ways to avoid the honey trap of attempting to use language laden with negative baggage. Put differently, if your fiction’s setting isn’t a period piece, there’s no reason to use bigoted language that has been used to describe blacks, Asians, Jews, etc. It’s lazy writing, and insults a portion of your audience, even if that wasn’t your intent.

3) My answer is “Yes. Yes it is.”