Yes, it was used to contrast the "sophisticated" style of 19th c. French painters with the "naive" style of people of color. It is completely dismissive of non (elite) European culture (at least until it was time for European modernists to appropriate primitivist aesthetics).Then you might want to check the dictionary again.
of or denoting a simple, naive style of art that deliberately rejects sophisticated artistic techniques.
So again, the world primitive fits with how the word is used as a neutral description of the art style.
That was not his wording, but my gloss on what he was trying to communicate, per his blog post. His actual wording will probably never be available because wotc owns the copyright.The change to primitive could simply have happened to give players a clearer image of how their art looks like as "meaningful and important, but different" is very nondescriptive.
That the author does not want his name added to the work is his right but its not evidence for anything.
When all of this went down I went through a did a word count on several of the adventures in the book. This particular adventure is one of the shortest, coming in at 6000 ish words. Other adventures are 8-10k words. The problem that the author had with the editing is not just the inclusion of this word, but the fact that they cut out a lot of necessary context that made the lore of the adventure richer.Yeah, it looks like you are now(?) just arguing for arguments sake. Do you really expect adventures to provide a detailed historic justification for the current state found in said adventure? A treatise about the socio-economical circumstances which made a specific tribe of goblins live in the same cave structure as a beholder?
No you don't, because it is not relevant for the adventure which describes the current snapshot in time the adventurers are confronted with. Only now you suddenly want this requirement because you failed to argue that "primitive" is an inherently racist word used to degrade entire societies instead of just describing the state of technological development (or artistic style).
Btw, if wotc had a decent editing process they would have caught this particular problem (use of the word primitive) before the adventure was published. Contemporary editors have to consider how a text will be interpreted by a variety of readers. Even small indie ttrpg designers hire sensitivity readers.
In terms of arguing for argument sake, if you take a step back this thread is a bunch of people trying to think through issues of race and colonialism in fantasy gaming in a nuanced and informed way. And then there is one person--you--who is telling everyone else their extremely well researched positions are mere fabrications. What is your investment in this discussion? Why is it not possible for you to accept that people who are not you might interpret a text differently?