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

[Remathilis]

Part of me wonders what this discussion would be like if 5E had kept the Primal power source from 4E instead of ditching everything. 4E, with its focus on "Points of Light", explicitly made societies of barbarians, druids, shamans, and wardens as examples of these Points of Light (the book "Primal Power" especially focused on this). There was a pantheon of primal spirits independent of the gods. Monsters weren't the only creatures to live in tribes; humans and elves and other creatures did, too.

I'm sure at least some of what was written about the Primal power source, the classes, and the pantheon of spirits wouldn't fly today, but I'm curious what it would look like if done right.

Even 5e Realms has barbarian tribes, wild and wood elves, goliaths, Rashemi and other"tribal" peoples who were not violent raiders. If course, they got pegged as "noble savages" which is it's own can of worms so you can't win for losing...

 

[Steampunkette]

@Hexmage-EN no one wants to get rid of Evil Monsters. There's no forum threads about Leucrotta getting the short end of the stick on being evil, or how Black Dragons should be good and heroic or at least not "Always Evil" or whatever.

What people want to get rid of is the idea that a whole race of people can be evil, and that demonstrating the ways they're evil relies on stereotypes applied to minorities for the past 500 years.

And flipping the script on it (Noble Savage) doesn't actually help the issue, either.

Antagonistic Races? Sure. Have the Elves be xenophobes who keep their forests from Humans and Dwarves with their axes. The Elves aren't -evil- they're just antagonistic.

Evil Societies? Sure. The city of Sepfar is ruled by the Priest-King of an evil deity and dissent is met with violence so the city itself has been whittled down to the cruel and hateful cultists of that dark god.

But all Orcs are Evil? They're evil because they're ignorant savages who dress in hides and love to commit sexual violence spawning half-breeds that are only slightly more acceptable in civilized lands? There you have a problem. A big one.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

What people want to get rid of is the idea that a whole race of people can be evil, and that demonstrating the ways they're evil relies on stereotypes applied to minorities for the past 500 years.

If the problem is that evilness is based on stereotypes applied to minorities, then just shift the focus to making their evilness based on European cultures instead. There's plenty of historical examples of Europeans being ignorant, greedy, filthy, and murderous. Swap out samurai-inspired hobgoblin armor for something like a Roman legionnaire or a Spanish conquistador, for example.

And flipping the script on it (Noble Savage) doesn't actually help the issue, either.

That's why I said to base it on European tribal cultures rather than any other culture. To avoid cultural appropriation of non-European cultures.

If the stance is that tribal cultures of any kind can't be depicted at all (evil tribe = othering, good tribe = noble savage), then that's another thing.

 

[Umbran]

Not really, no. Savage, violent, and lacking in self-discipline could be applied to anything.

That's not the point.

They WERE applied to African and Native Americans. For CENTURIES. Folks whose demographics were not so treated may be able to ignore that, but it is rather harder to ignore if you are still fighting inequitable treatment.

This argument amounts to, "Yeah, we did that to real people for a long time. But it could be applied to other things, so we will, even if that causes others to see echoes of a brutal past that we haven't fully addressed to this day."

Deciding not to care about what those who have been mistreated think sure looks a lot like not caring that they were mistreated.

 

[Argyle King]

So here is my simple* test for that validity: show me the evidence that Asian women are claiming the depiction of elves is harming them. I want to see real voices of the afflicted claiming the specific harm done. We've had poc who have discussed the harm orcs and drow have done, and Roma who have discussed the harm of the a Vistani. Heck, the have been Asian voices who have been critical of D&D, but mostly about Oriental Adventures and hobgoblin armor, not elves demeaning Asian women. The threshold should be actual harm, not "sorta looks like it might harm, we should change it'.

Not all correlation is causation. Or as Freud once put it when questioned by a student about the phallic-shaped object he was about to put in his mouth, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."


* Realizing nothing is simple

I can see a few sides of that.

From one perspective I would say that the volume of a voice doesn't necessarily dictate amount of offense or that something is/was real or harmful. (Otherwise, that seems to imply that people being abused doesn't count if they don't speak up about it.)

From another perspective, I agree with some of what you're saying. I remember a lot of outrage over Matt Damon being in The Great Wall. Despite the fact that most of the outrage did not come from the group of people who were allegedly harmed/offended (and Damon being specifically chosen for the role,) he was still accused of racism and whitewashing a movie.

From a slightly more personal perspective, I have mixed heritage. On a different rpg forum, I was reprimanded for having a different opinion on an issue than what I perceive the political leanings of the mods there deem correct. Long story short, I took the responses I got from questioning the decision as meaning I wasn't considered a valid enough member of a particular community to comment on issues pertaining to it. I felt as though I was living through a simulation of One True Scotsman. On one hand I laughed to myself; on the other it rubbed me the wrong way that I counted enough sometimes but not enough other times -depending on what was convenient for the views of the other person. In the end, I gave the benefit of the doubt that the person didn't mean offense (at least I hope so,) but I also decided that such a community where that was the culture of the moderators wasn't a place I wanted to be anymore.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

That's not the point.

They WERE applied to African and Native Americans. For CENTURIES. Folks whose demographics were not so treated may be able to ignore that, but it is rather harder to ignore if you are still fighting inequitable treatment.

This argument amounts to, "Yeah, we did that to real people for a long time. But it could be applied to other things, so we will, even if that causes others to see echoes of a brutal past that we haven't fully addressed to this day."

Deciding not to care about what those who have been mistreated think sure looks a lot like not caring that they were mistreated.

That's why I went on to essentially say "make evilness European-coded instead, drawing upon historical examples".

To emphasize that I'm not being flippant here, I actually would be curious to see media where historical European actions were demonized and dealt with as a threat. I was initially intrigued by the game This Land is My Land, where Native Americans attack Europeans settlers/invaders to drive them away, but apparently no Native Americans worked on the game. I'd also like to see the recent Mexican historical drama Hernan when I can to view how a Mexican-made depiction of the invasion of Hernan Cortes and the Fall of Tenochtitlan is portrayed.

 

[Remathilis]

Hexmage-EN no one wants to get rid of Evil Monsters. There's no forum threads about Leucrotta getting the short end of the stick on being evil, or how Black Dragons should be good and heroic or at least not "Always Evil" or whatever.

Funny. I can think of several counter-examples to this. Especially in the Fizban alignment thread debate. I think it's safe to say YOU don't want to get rid of evil monsters, but I don't think "no one" does. On contraire, I think there is a group that does want all monsters that aren't mindless to be equally capable of good or evil, be it giants, dragons, beholders pit fiends, or liches.

Believe me, if the threshold was "humanoids shouldn't be evil" it l the debate would have simmered down some by not. The fact we're debating the redcap shows that this doesn't end at orcs and drow shows a willingness to move the goalposts to include all manner of sentient beings, so much so the term "monster" will no longer be applicable.

 

[Umbran]

That's why I went on to essentially say "make evilness European-coded instead, drawing upon historical examples".

That's one approach, but it is still holding to stereotyping large groups as evil. Why not make evil individual?

 

[Hexmage-EN]

That's one approach, but it is still holding to stereotyping large groups as evil. Why not make evil individual?

Because there have historically been evil societies of mostly evil people. I don't think it's stereotyping to call the people who fought for or were complicit in Manifest Destiny evil.

 

[Remathilis]

That's one approach, but it is still holding to stereotyping large groups as evil. Why not make evil individual?

Are we going to take that down to each individual red dragon, individual beholder, Individual lich and individual Balor?