D&D 5E Don't play "stupid" characters. It is ableist.

[Bolares]

Isn't it? Portraying a below average Int score seems to be the primary driver of the conversation.

Exactly. It's not about having low stats, but how you portray and roleplay them. People tried to shift the goalspoast by saying "So now no one can make a 8 Int Character?!" when that is really not what the OP was saying.

 

[Weiley31]

Well, it is about stats; and that some of the rules surrounding such are ludicrous (e.g. your example above) doesn't change that.

5e's carrying-capacity rules in general...well, the less said the better.

I can't tell ya how often at times I completely hand-wave the 5E carrying-capacity rules. And the one time I decided to be a smart donkey about it to the Ranger player, he said "Well that bandit camp DID have a spare carriage that didn't get destroyed by the gunpowder explosion."

I was then like "Oh yeah that's right: touche."

 

[Weiley31]

"So now no one can make a 8 Int Character?!"

At least the 9 INT character is safe.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In any case, whilst I obviously agree that mocking portrayals of neurodivergent people should be avoided, is this actually a commonly occurring problem? I've seen a lot of int 8 (or thereabouts) characters being played and have played such myself, and frankly, I can't remember anyone ever doing it in that way. Usually they're some action heroes that might not exactly be deep thinkers, but I really can't recall any 'dumb and dumber' style comedy attempts. Perhaps closest to that might be some NPCs, 'a stupid ogre' that says things like "Trog smash puny human" or something like that, but I'm not sure that stereotype is really rooted in ableism either. Though I guess such an argument could be made.

 

[Weiley31]

Perhaps closest to that might be some NPCs, 'a stupid ogre'

At the rate with how convos and stuff go about Orcs and Drows, that's almost stretching it a bit.

 

[Lanefan]

Easy: You'd need to actually assault or kill someone before a play experience is considered real.

Or, as an example: In a recent session of my game, they encountered a BBEG who--according to my notes--was going to flee if reduced to half hp or below. Welp, apparently hexblades can do a metric ton of damage on a critical smite and so the BBEG left pretty quickly, leaving his expendable guards to their squishy deaths at the PCs' hands. And so the party--especially the hexblade--has decided that this BBEG is a coward and are making fun of him for it, calling him a pathetic coward and the like. Just wait until he returns. <evil DM laughter>

This is in-game mockery. This is making fun of a specific individual for a specific perceived trait that the BBEG demonstrated.

But this thread is about making fun of a group of of real world people for an inborn trait. It's not about people who are saying, "How many times have we told you not to touch everything you see, you numbskull?!" to the party's rogue.

All good until here, as there seems to be a very strong undercurrent in this thread discouraging that rogue's player from playing it - and characterizing it - as a numbskull in the first place; and while I can't speak for others, that's where my objection lies.

 

[Lanefan]

Life is not fair, that is true.

Which is why we must ensure that life is as fair as possible and people have as good as possible of a life, free from violence, discrimination, and hate... no?

And tackle the sources of unfairness, such as wealth inequality? And those who would style themselves as our masters?

In real life? Sure. All day long.

In the game world? Hell, no. Life isn't fair there either; violence there is a way of life, wealth inequality comes from whose stuff you've just taken, and often the PCs eventually end up becoming the masters........at which point the campaign usually ends, before they can put that mastership to any good use.

 

[Weiley31]

In real life? Sure. All day long.

In the game world? Hell, no. Life isn't fair there either; violence there is a way of life, wealth inequality comes from whose stuff you've just taken, and often the PCs eventually end up becoming the masters........at which point the campaign usually ends, before they can put that mastership to any good use.

This.

 

[Argyle King]

So, the point here is that the issue at hand isn't the interactive play experience being too real.

Imagine you have a bunch of guys, drinking beer and talking. And they start trading around some really sleazy, misogynistic crap. Now, add in playing poker. Or bowling. Or smoking cigars. Or watching football. In all these cases, you have a group normalizing misogyny among themselves - they develop and reinforce the habit that tells them that this behavior is okay. They protect and encourage each other to think this way.

If you have them playing D&D instead, it's still normalizing misogynistic crap. What game they are playing isn't the issue - it is the social normalization of the behavior that is concerning.

Right.

And what I'm saying is that the behavior, as described, comes independently of the game -not because of it.

That's a very different issue than playing a character.

Conflating the two and wording things in a way which could suggest that the game creates the behavior is where I see similarities to the moral concerns of the 80s and 90s.

It's more than just semantics, and I don't believe concerns about how the position is worded can be brushed off as a slippery-slope when there have been real-life examples of how things can go.

 

[Lanefan]

My other thing, though, is that I think it's fully possible to play a doltish character without actually making fun of real people. It's the difference between playing a character who is gullible, makes dumb choices, or misunderstands things and does things like this

View attachment 147313

and playing a character who goes out of their way to do stupid (and often game-disruptive) things like saying "Hur dur, I'm so dumb I think I'll pull this lever that says 'pull this lever to summon a a hoard of demons'."

Your latter example with the lever to me represents low Wisdom, not low Intelligence; the character knows what the lever will do and pulls it anyway. A truly low-Intelligence character might pull the lever at random or by mistake while wandering around the room, and maybe not even be able to read the warning, but probably wouldn't do so deliberately.

Come to think of it, both examples show low Wisdom rather than low Intelligence.