D&D 5E 50th Anniversary and beyond

[HammerMan]

You may be right. Especially nowadays. Of course, at the height of its popularity Keep on the Borderlands was selling around 750,000 copies a year, so even if that were the only published module ever to raise the issue, that was certainly enough basis to fuel a lot of these debates over the ensuing years.

except it is taking a guy who has nothing to do with D&D since I (an old grognard myself now) started playing in early 90s (just shy of 30 years ago)

 

[Bacon Bits]

I'm not discussing the role of evil races in games. I don't care what Gygax did or did not say, I don't think I ever did.

But the quote I object to is: "Calling a race evil is usually only an excuse for adventurers to attack on sight or slaughteting the "evil" children without feeling guilty..." It's quite clear. People who have evil races usually do it for the express purpose of supporting guilt free infanticide. It's insulting.

I think that's going a little far.

I definitely think people use "evil races" as a way to paint the bad guys with a broad brush. The thing is, I don't think anybody doing this thinks beyond that. Its literally just red team vs blue team. Whether they will begin the encounter as hostile or neutral/friendly. I don't think people are interested in the morality any more than they're interested in the morality of killing a moblin in Zelda or stomping on a goomba or koopa in Mario. They're red team, and you're blue team, and the game is to fight them. Playing D&D like it's a tabletop video game doesn't mean you're explicitly interested in glorifying immoral actions. Not every game of D&D is necessarily roleplaying at all. Lots of tables are still just running it as a dungeon adventure game.

Don't get me wrong. There's absolutely a problem with portrayal of a races as always evil in the materials for the game, especially given the language used. It's a needed improvement to the game to correct that problem. Even so, if you're trying to simulate a real world, you're going to want to avoid all that probably to the extent that your game should not use alignment at all.

And we largely still do "always evil" with things like undead -- even sapient undead -- or certain monsters like beholders or mind flayers, even when we've identified "always evil" races as bad. There are still NPCs that are pretty safely always kill-on-sight. In the case of mind flayers, it's probably a good idea to destroy that elder brain nursery pool, too. It's not like the rest of the game is completely without any dehumanizing elements of the monsters. D&D is a game with sapient monsters. That inherently has some odd side effects. Each table needs to draw that line, but the game itself should avoid dehumanizing whole peoples wherever it can.

Edit: Clarity.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I regularly listen to dragontalk. The 20 episode thing is completelly false. And leaves me wondering, even if it was true, why would that bother someone so much to be their prime example of diversity going wrong.

Well, I was taking him at his word. I've never listened to Dragontalk.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think that's going a little far.

I definitely think people use "evil races" as a way to paint the bad guys with a broad brush. The thing is, I don't think anybody doing this thinks beyond that. Its literally just red team vs blue team. Whether they will begin the encounter as hostile or neutral/friendly. I don't think people are interested in the morality any more than they're interested in the morality of killing a moblin in Zelda or stomping on a goomba or koopa in Mario. They're red team, and you're blue team, and the game is to fight them. Playing D&D like it's a tabletop video game doesn't mean you're explicitly interested in glorifying immoral actions. Not every game of D&D is necessarily roleplaying at all. Lots of tables are still just running it as a dungeon adventure game.

Don't get me wrong. There's absolutely a problem with portrayal of a races as always evil in the materials for the game, especially given the language used. It's a needed improvement to the game to correct that problem. Even so, if you're trying to simulate a real world, you're going to want to avoid all that probably to the extent that your game should not use alignment at all.

And we largely still do "always evil" with things like undead -- even sapient undead -- or certain monsters like beholders or mind flayers, even when we've identified "always evil" races as bad. There are still NPCs that are pretty safely always kill-on-sight. In the case of mind flayers, it's probably a good idea to destroy that elder brain nursery pool, too. It's not like the rest of the game is completely without any dehumanizing elements of the monsters. D&D is a game with sapient monsters. That inherently has some odd side effects. Each table needs to draw that line, but the game itself should avoid dehumanizing whole peoples wherever it can.

Edit: Clarity.

It's also worth noting that Gygax absolutely did believe it was totally right and proper to slaughter the women and children of "evil races", and went as far as to quote a genocidal ultra-racist writer in support of this viewpoint.

So when you say it's "just painting with a broad brush", and "people don't think beyond that", I would strongly question that at least in as far as applies to the whole deal where D&D (unlike a lot of RPGs), has a bunch of "evil races" which have non-supernatural reproduction and growth and so on. I think that Gygax absolutely did think beyond that and was totally happy with that situation.

When people merely carry on this "tradition", yeah I think that tends to be an unconscious replication of the situation, and indeed, if the person is forced to think it through, they may well rejected the Gygaxian "genocide is the answer" approach. But not always. There's an incident I've talked about before early when I was playing D&D, when we had just such a scenario inflicted on us by a 1E DM who had moved to 2E. We fought and killed some orcs and there were orc toddlers, who were just cowering. We the players were all like "Awww sad, we need to take these lil orphans to a monastery or something", and the DM had his DMPC be all like "No thou mustest killst them!" (why the DMPC talked like that I have no idea but there was certainly a lot of "thou") and explained that unless we did we weren't being Good. There was a lengthy argument of all players vs the DM. We all thought he'd gone completely mad, and the DMPC got told "try and stop us", and whilst he could have wiped the group, the DM wisely chose not to, knowing that would be the last time he ever got to DM (spoiler: it was anyway). What we didn't know at the time of course that, according to EGG, he was completely right! Which is funny given a major pillar of our argument was that there was no way D&D was intended to be interpreted that way because it wasn't written by genocidal lunatics (half the group being Jewish probably didn't lay fertile ground for "genocide is cool" either, one might note).

Being online in the early 1990s I saw similar viewpoints promulgated frequently by some DMs, particularly those who still played 1E, or only reluctantly had switched. The majority viewpoint was clearly against them, but I saw lengthy arguments, which clearly were thought-through, about how it was totally righteous to slaughter defenceless women and children.

So whilst I agree that most people who have "evil races" aren't intentionally promulgating some well-considered pro-genocide view, there definitely have been some, including EGG, who absolutely did see it that way. As such it's not surprising that WotC have come out so strongly against this view that they're actually changing how D&D is presented so this view can no longer be attributed to them. They're honestly lucky that some of the stuff EGG said didn't come out nearer the start of 5E, and it still isn't well-known, because the backlash could have been... bad.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Gygax as a biological determinist. Like, I think he is quoted somewhere affirming that literally.

 

[Oofta]

It's also worth noting that Gygax absolutely did believe it was totally right and proper to slaughter the women and children of "evil races", and went as far as to quote a genocidal ultra-racist writer in support of this viewpoint.

So when you say it's "just painting with a broad brush", and "people don't think beyond that", I would strongly question that at least in as far as applies to the whole deal where D&D (unlike a lot of RPGs), has a bunch of "evil races" which have non-supernatural reproduction and growth and so on. I think that Gygax absolutely did think beyond that and was totally happy with that situation.

When people merely carry on this "tradition", yeah I think that tends to be an unconscious replication of the situation, and indeed, if the person is forced to think it through, they may well rejected the Gygaxian "genocide is the answer" approach. But not always. There's an incident I've talked about before early when I was playing D&D, when we had just such a scenario inflicted on us by a 1E DM who had moved to 2E. We fought and killed some orcs and there were orc toddlers, who were just cowering. We the players were all like "Awww sad, we need to take these lil orphans to a monastery or something", and the DM had his DMPC be all like "No thou mustest killst them!" (why the DMPC talked like that I have no idea but there was certainly a lot of "thou") and explained that unless we did we weren't being Good. There was a lengthy argument of all players vs the DM. We all thought he'd gone completely mad, and the DMPC got told "try and stop us", and whilst he could have wiped the group, the DM wisely chose not to, knowing that would be the last time he ever got to DM (spoiler: it was anyway). What we didn't know at the time of course that, according to EGG, he was completely right! Which is funny given a major pillar of our argument was that there was no way D&D was intended to be interpreted that way because it wasn't written by genocidal lunatics (half the group being Jewish probably didn't lay fertile ground for "genocide is cool" either, one might note).

Being online in the early 1990s I saw similar viewpoints promulgated frequently by some DMs, particularly those who still played 1E, or only reluctantly had switched. The majority viewpoint was clearly against them, but I saw lengthy arguments, which clearly were thought-through, about how it was totally righteous to slaughter defenceless women and children.

So whilst I agree that most people who have "evil races" aren't intentionally promulgating some well-considered pro-genocide view, there definitely have been some, including EGG, who absolutely did see it that way. As such it's not surprising that WotC have come out so strongly against this view that they're actually changing how D&D is presented so this view can no longer be attributed to them. They're honestly lucky that some of the stuff EGG said didn't come out nearer the start of 5E, and it still isn't well-known, because the backlash could have been... bad.

As far as I can tell, only a small minority of people support the idea of genocide and infanticide of evil races.

I object to painting everyone who has ever had evil races in their game with the same broad brush, lumping a common game trope in with reprehensible people via vague association. Gygax said some things and quoted a racist so therefore nobody is saying you're a racist if you have evil monsters but ... well you are by proxy agreeing with a racist.

Give me a break. People make all sorts of decisions for their games for all sorts of reason. Just because some people disagree with some of those decisions does not give them the right to lump everyone together. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes monster in a game is just a monster in a game.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

I don't know if that is any better. I doubt many people have young in there games weather they are useing evil races or nor...

I have run several games where, for realism sake, non-combatants of an otherwise antagonistic faction were present. I've never had a PC decide the best course is to slay them all.

 

[HammerMan]

I have run several games where, for realism sake, non-combatants of an otherwise antagonistic faction were present. I've never had a PC decide the best course is to slay them all.

yeah, TBH i have never met anyone who killed children in game and talked about it, and I have never seen it come up even as an option... one exception is the Dragons in 3e (and I don't know what made anyone think having wyrmlings be a threat was a good idea)

 

[Mannahnin]

Gygax as a biological determinist. Like, I think he is quoted somewhere affirming that literally.

He said that in reference to women not being interested in gaming, yes.

Here:

TSR - Q&A with Gary Gygax

This is the multi-year Q&A sessions held by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax here at EN World, beginning in 2002 and running up until his sad pasing in 2008. Gary's username in the thread below is Col_Pladoh, and his first post in this long thread is Post #39.

www.enworld.org

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

yeah, TBH i have never met anyone who killed children in game and talked about it, and I have never seen it come up even as an option... one exception is the Dragons in 3e (and I don't know what made anyone think having wyrmlings be a threat was a good idea)

I have. One of the few times that I've actually been able to be a player instead of the Forever DM was with a friend from college and his cousin. His cousin's character was a Chaotic Stupid Dwarven Barbarian Murder Hobo that's first action in the campaign was to (warning: violence against children and women) murder an infant and its young mother. He got mad at the rest of the table for not being on board with that, and the campaign fell apart after that session.

Granted, that's the only time I've seen a player do anything like that in-game, but it was quite horrific, and does prove that there are players (and, presumably, DMs) out there that do stuff like that.