D&D 5E I thought WotC was removing biological morals?

[Hussar]

Case in point.

Fair enough. My point is, hijacking the issue is not helping. Obviously wrong arguments can be countered. The fact that this or that poster claims not to be able to see things isn't really a major problem to be honest since, well, most of us CAN see the issue, and the issue is being addressed based on that.

However, the whole biological morals thing is such a huge issue and is very, very nebulous. After all, the argument about eladrin vs other fae becomes mired down in all sorts of things. But, something like that art picture? It's pretty easy to show the points of similarity to racist depictions of Japanese - flat face, the clothing, armor, and, of course, never minding that you also have forty years of OTHER images which ALSO draw on the same racist depictions, make the argument pretty easy to make. That someone can come along and go, "Oh, well, I just don't see it" doesn't really hold a lot of water.

IOW, when we're talking about things like orcs or drow or Vistani, we can point to very concrete examples of why and how we are making this argument. It's far less just a matter of opinion when you can hold up fifteen different examples of why something is problematic.

 

[Gradine]

I’ve yet to see the line drawn differently.

Why would you object to redcaps as-is, substituting the game terminolgy “humanoid” for “Fey”?

I would object to any sort of mortal, intelligent race being characterized as "always evil".

Jenny Everyorc was a baby, with a mother, and a culture that raises her in a certain way. Culture implies free will, which means that Jenny or any of her peers could choose something different, to say nothing of any orcs raised in other cultures.

Replace orc with any mortal humanoid race with any sort of culture, and it still holds true. The idea that any humanoid race simply cannot overcome their nature, no matter the type of nurture involves, (and there is a difference, especially in a D&D world, between violent and evil) implies that some peoples are inherently evil. Even without any sort of overt or implied real-world racism, you are still pushing a worldview (biological essentialism) that aligns with racism.



It's also incredibly lazy and boring worldbuilding, but that's neither here nor there

 

[Charlaquin]

But where do you draw the line between "people" and "spirits of nature"?

I don’t think it’s possible to define a set of universal criteria that wouldn’t have some exceptions. There are certain hallmarks of personhood we can look at - free will, mortality, sexual reproduction and birth, complex social organization, cultural and religious practices, etc. Not every people will exhibit all of these hallmarks, and some types of creature that are not peoples will exhibit some of them. But they still serve as useful evaluative criteria for determining, case by case, if a given type of creature is a people or not. This is generally how any such social constructs are defined.

And if something is on the borderline, does that mean erring towards treating them as people, or spirits of nature? Because the former shouldn't be treated in an essentialist way, but the latter (apparently) can be. It's a crucial difference in approach (or should be).

Again, it kind of needs to be a case-by-case thing. For me, centaurs and satyrs are probably close enough to people that they should be treated as such, but, like, xorns probably aren’t.

I should say, it seems pretty clear to me that Wizards doesn't intend for PC satyrs or eladrin to be treated as anything other than people. Yet, they are definitely fey, and they still have behavioral defaults described both as monsters and as PCs. Is that wrong of them? If so, what's the remedy? If not, why are some defaults OK and others unacceptable?

The language D&D uses to describe its various peoples is generally too, well, generalizing for my taste. I think more use of qualifying terms like “often” when talking about defaults, and more examples of exceptions to those generalities when they are used would be a good start.

Point of order: The OP was asking about how default portrayals have persisted despite the removal of alignment. The issue at hand goes beyond alignment (and in fact demonstrates how removing it didn't really address some folks' concerns about essentialism).

Good clarification, thanks!

 

[Charlaquin]

Fair enough. My point is, hijacking the issue is not helping.

I don’t think it’s hurting. Certainly I think it hurts infinitely more to bicker among ourselves about what is or isn’t “the real issue.” The problem of race in D&D is large and complex, and different people are passionate about different aspects of it. We do better to make our earnest critiques and argue our positions as best we can than we do to dismiss each other’s positions as muddying “the real issue.”

Obviously wrong arguments can be countered. The fact that this or that poster claims not to be able to see things isn't really a major problem to be honest since, well, most of us CAN see the issue, and the issue is being addressed based on that.

Agreed!

However, the whole biological morals thing is such a huge issue and is very, very nebulous. After all, the argument about eladrin vs other fae becomes mired down in all sorts of things. But, something like that art picture? It's pretty easy to show the points of similarity to racist depictions of Japanese - flat face, the clothing, armor, and, of course, never minding that you also have forty years of OTHER images which ALSO draw on the same racist depictions, make the argument pretty easy to make. That someone can come along and go, "Oh, well, I just don't see it" doesn't really hold a lot of water.

IOW, when we're talking about things like orcs or drow or Vistani, we can point to very concrete examples of why and how we are making this argument. It's far less just a matter of opinion when you can hold up fifteen different examples of why something is problematic.

Yeah, I definitely agree that some depictions are clearly and obviously problematic while others are much more complex and subtle in how they are problematic. I don’t think that means we shouldn’t address the latter. The former is definitely the more pressing issue, and I’m certainly not going to stop fighting for them to be addressed, post haste. But nor am I going to stop fighting for the less obvious problems to be addressed. It’s all interconnected.

 

[Charlaquin]

But let’s let @Gradine speak for herself.

*themself. It’s in their title.

 

[JEB]

The language D&D uses to describe its various peoples is generally too, well, generalizing for my taste. I think more use of qualifying terms like “often” when talking about defaults, and more examples of exceptions to those generalities when they are used would be a good start.

I can definitely get behind that as a general principle.

 

[TheSword]

Two monsters down (Orcs and redcaps) seven thousand, six hundred and thirty three to go. The debate that just keeps on giving.

I composed a half dozen responses to this thread but I just don’t want to propagate the debate.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

We need evil monsters in DnD. Sometimes it is difficult to draw the line.
For me giant type monsters are difficult to grasp. On one hand they are mythological creatures which fall into a similar category as fey, on the other hand they resemble humanoids and I could imagine the odd one out that is not evil.

In 3.x there was a distinction between always evil and usually evil. I think that helped.

 

[Azzy]

But where do you draw the line between "people" and "spirits of nature"? And if something is on the borderline, does that mean erring towards treating them as people, or spirits of nature? Because the former shouldn't be treated in an essentialist way, but the latter (apparently) can be. It's a crucial difference in approach (or should be).

Where? I don't know. Personally, if it's a PC race, it should be treated as people. Humanoids and giants, IMO, should also get the people treatment. Others, on a case by case basis. (Basically, if it's intelligent and not affected by detect/protection from evil and good it's a people—seems like a good rule of thumb.) But that's not really my call. WotC has to make the call and they have to base their decisions on what more than just one person's opinion is. I don't envy them because there's not always a clear-cut answer.

I should say, it seems pretty clear to me that Wizards doesn't intend for PC satyrs or eladrin to be treated as anything other than people. Yet, they are definitely fey, and they still have behavioral defaults described both as monsters and as PCs. Is that wrong of them? If so, what's the remedy? If not, why are some defaults OK and others unacceptable?

Again, if it's a PC race, I feel they should be treated as people. Also, it can be setting-specific—say, in Theros, satyrs are people and in some other settings they, like other fey are elemental.

Point of order: The OP was asking about how default portrayals have persisted despite the removal of alignment. The issue at hand goes beyond alignment (and in fact demonstrates how removing it didn't really address some folks' concerns about essentialism).

The OP seems to be under the mistaken impression that WotC is going to remove default assumptions from all monsters. Mind you, with wholesale removal of alignment from Candlekeep and Van Ricten's, this seems to be a fair mistake. What little that we've heard from people at WotC is that it's primarily humanoids (game term) that they want to remove moral defaults from. I don't believe that the OP was particularly concerned about biological essentialism (I didn't read that in their post), but more about what they feel is an inconsistency in regards to WotC seemingly inconsistent handling of how monsters will be handled.

 

[Malmuria]

I disagree.


Nothing in that quote in any way implies to me that the “humanoid”/“fey” distinction is crucial to the reasons behind why “always evil” Redcaps are or are not a problem.

The "fey" category is somewhat meaningful here insofar as it suggests not just a change in creature type (a conceit of the game) but a change in genre. A keep on the borderlands type scenario, at the borders of "civilization," with dangerous humanoid monsters native to the region, places us in a particular type of setting and narrative mode (it's kind of the set up of a western). A faerie story, on the other hand, has different generic conventions and expectations. So I like the description of the redcaps because it gives them a kind of allegorical weight, the moment of hateful murder made real. If they were to start talking about redcap societies, and where they lived, and what sort of things they sold, and what their long history was (as they do with elves), then we would need to have a different discussion. The pastiche that is dnd lore, that it kind of mashes all these things together in the same fictional setting, is part of what creates this dissonance or sense that different creatures are operating under different interpretative rules