D&D 5E 50th Anniversary and beyond

[Oofta]

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.

I get that people like that exist. There are all types.

Big difference between that and people "usually" having evil races so that encounters like you describe are accepted as normal and casual.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

I agree re: only a small minority of people supporting that at this point. Back in the 1990s it seemed like it was a fairly sizeable minority but a minority nonetheless. By well into 3E it seemed to be fairly few people and it's even smaller now.

As for the other two comments, I'm not sure if they're aimed at me, or if you're quoting someone I can't see. The middle one seems to be aimed at me, and yeah, that's factual, if you have intelligent races where there's no way to deal with them except genocide, you are kind of agreeing with Gygax. The thing is, if you're not supporting genocide/infanticide, you don't have "all-evil" races (aside possibly from supernatural entities), you only have "mostly-evil" races, which is disagreeing with Gygax.

Not sure if "give me a break" etc. is aimed at me, I'm not really clear on what it relates to if so. Certainly I don't see anything in my post "lumping everyone together". Quoting Freud doesn't make sense if you mean my post, because he's talking about the unconscious, whereas I'm talking about stuff people have conscious control over. Yeah, if you have some evil orcs and everyone has to fight them and no good orcs are mentioned, but they're also not explicitly ruled out, I actually agree, that's "just a cigar" in this sense. If, OTOH, you do like Gygax and either rule good orcs out explicitly, and/or insist on placing non-combatants and kids in places the PCs will have to fight through, well, I think maybe don't do that? Or if you know the players will be kind and helpful because you know your players, I guess it's fine.

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

I guess the thing thing with orcs is their history in Middle Earth which obviously influenced D&D. Orcs were an unnatural species made by the Dark Lord Melkor from tortured Elves. In Middle Earth it is clear cut that they are irredeemable evil creatures. D&D orcs in the Forgotten Realms are influenced by Grumsh which corrupts their nature although this is certainly more of a grey area compared to Middle Earth

 

[Bacon Bits]

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.

I think there's a vast difference between a person taking a black-and-white morality as given in a world and drawing conclusions based on that, and saying that the real world person actual believes that.

Like I can look at the Warhammer 40K universe and say what I think a space marine would do if he found a bunch of children of any other race. He'd exterminate them, call it a righteous act, thank the emperor for the chance, and be rewarded by his chapter for the deed. I think that space marine would absolutely agree with the same statement that Gygax quoted, too. That doesn't mean I think it's righteous, or moral, or just, or any of that. That's acting out how someone else might respond. Roleplaying, remember?

Even if he's not roleplaying, you still can't claim intent. It's like how sometimes Crawford will answer with RAW or RAI. I don't think it's clear at all that Gygax is giving a RAI answer. I think you have to consider that he's just giving the RAW answer, and verifying that there are some very incorrect results that the game allows as written. 1: The paladin kills evil. 2: The orc children are evil. 3: Therefore, the paladin can kill orc children. That's just looking at the system and seeing 1 + 2 = 3. I don't think that's an incorrect interpretation of AD&D as presented circa 1980. A Paladin could justifying themselves that way in-universe, including with that quote Gygax mentions. That doesn't mean it's actually morally correct. It also doesn't mean that that's what Gygax's personal beliefs are. It's just what the books say, which is exactly what was asked of him to address. 2005 Gygax can't do anything about what 1980 Gygax put into his books.

Yes, there are issues with a game system that has those results. That's why it's changing. This is the same reason that Games Workshop released their anti-hate statement. However, you'll note that this statement was released less than 30 days ago. It's dated November 19, 2021. They are just now, well after WotC has made their changes, coming out and saying, "Hey, all this ultranationalism and racial hatred in our game that came out in 1987 is wrong and you shouldn't actually want to do that. It's a fictional game based on an ultra dark future." Warhammer 40K has much more problematic morality in it, too. We're talking explicit religious wars of genocide on unimaginable scales constantly with the books filled with in-universe propaganda calling those wars righteous and correct.

So I don't really get pointing at the corner cases in AD&D that have horrific results and then claiming the original author's intent was malicious. And, yes, it's a corner case. There are no AD&D modules billing themselves on the "adventure" of the moral complexity of encountering orc children.

In other words, I think Gary could simply be agreeing that if you take the simple morality system he wrote up 25 years prior to his statements that you end up with "good" characters that have no problem doing horrific things based on that morality and calling it "good". I don't think he cared because he wasn't playing D&D to make social commentary about racism, colonialism, or systemic oppression. So he's not upset that the toy morality system he invented 25+ years prior doesn't work when you put even a trivial amount of pressure on it, because the point of the toy morality system is not to replicate real world morality. It's to serve the straightforward goal of the game: to provide a reason to have conflicts that are easily solved by PCs, particularly with violence. AD&D is a game about fighting monsters. It's not trying to generate some complex analogy for your actual real world beliefs to map to.

Now, I agree, you don't need to create a game that does this kind of thing. You obviously shouldn't have that as a morality system. It's not a good design because it can be co-opted, it alienates people, it dehumanizes people, and people will see those horrific parallels. You shouldn't be selling a game that has a morality system in a game where "good" is capable of such horrific results. Yes, the modern game is better and is improving with the changes being made. That doesn't mean that Gygax's goal with the system was those horrific results. That just means the morality system in AD&D is braindead and too simple. It's unable to handle complexity of any kind. The point of alignment is not to punish the paladin while the DM invents gotchas to the inconsistent morality system. It's to have a reason to adventure into a dungeon and fight dragons. That's why the orc children scenario is stupid. It doesn't belong in AD&D because it's morality system is very clearly unable to handle it. The fact that you've had a DM who was so juvenile that they put that in the game doesn't mean that that is the goal. It means you had a bad DM.

But if we're going to sit down and point out the horrible design choices that were made in AD&D, the alignment system and monster design have a lot of company. Bad design is not an aspect of AD&D's game mechanics unique to alignment. Hit points and damage also do stupid things. Weapons and armor don't always make sense. Heck, look at the fire rate you can achieve with a heavy crossbow in 5e. That's a modern design for the core component of the game, and it's completely absurd. Or look at how stealth works with a halfling rogue, or just how hiding vs standing behind cover works. Again, that's all total nonsense, and it's explicitly the kind of thing the game is about!

I just can't buy it that when you evaluate old alignment systems and end up with contradictory results for situations that usually don't come up that the conclusion is the contradictory results must have been the goal. That doesn't follow to me. Nothing from AD&D says that it's was designed to represent and portray realistic or complex morality systems. It's not! It's designed to generate conflict and adventure in ways that PCs can participate in! The morality system serves that first and foremost.

It's a game. It's not supposed to be real. We absolutely should fix it when it's doing things that are offensively incorrect, but it's still a game whose primary purpose is being a game.

 

[Azzy]

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

Yikes on several bikes!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think it's clear at all that Gygax is giving a RAI answer.

No I think it was extremely clear in the quotes I saw from him. There was no hint whatsoever that this was "just RAW", indeed the vehemence and even anger in his argument spoke to the direct contrary.

I may dig up the exact comment later, it's late here, but there's no possibility he was just talking about the game in a purely academic way. That doesn't mean he believed it re: real-world races, but he did specifically quote a rather horrific real-world racist's to support his argument. Specifically someone urging the genocide of Native Americans - a group of peoples characterised as "evil" by the sources of the era of the person he was quoting.

 

[Bacon Bits]

No I think it was extremely clear in the quotes I saw from him. There was no hint whatsoever that this was "just RAW", indeed the vehemence and even anger in his argument spoke to the direct contrary.

I may dig up the exact comment later, it's late here, but there's no possibility he was just talking about the game in a purely academic way. That doesn't mean he believed it re: real-world races, but he did specifically quote a rather horrific real-world racist's to support his argument. Specifically someone urging the genocide of Native Americans - a group of peoples characterised as "evil" by the sources of the era of the person he was quoting.

I believe I found it.

This is the inciting question, with his first response immediately after. Here is his first follow-up I think is actually relevant, and contains the first reference to the offensive idiom, with the next 8 to 10 or so posts following that up with more detailed answers.

If that's what you're referencing, I entirely disagree with your reading. I think Gary is very explicitly talking about the alignment system in the game and what a paladin would believe would be Lawful Good. It reads very much as, "this is how I would run the scenario," and not remotely like, "this is how the real world works." I have great difficulty taking what is said there and and calling it Gygax's personal philosophy and not just how the game is set up.

There are plenty of other examples that show Gary as clearly a man of his own generation at best, but I just don't see it here unless you're reaching for that conclusion from the start. Even then, I don't really think it's all that useful to take everything we don't like about the game and sweep it under the rug of, "Gary Gygax wasn't a very progressive individual." It feels like trying to exonerate it. I'd rather just take the game as it is or was, with blame falling on players who missed the problems as much as on any misguidance of the creators. That's kind of what that platitude about "it was wrong then as it is wrong now" means when you take it to heart.

 

[teitan]

interesting, who do you think is bullying who?

You see, I thought I was clear and I am checking out of this part of the conversation before the moderators come in and put down the hammer on us so... I was clear, it's over. Thank you.

 

[teitan]

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.

I'm wondering why someone talking about their experience as a person would be wrong for even a single episode unless it was their experience being evil as a person and enjoyment of doing harm to others.

 

[teitan]

I guess the thing thing with orcs is their history in Middle Earth which obviously influenced D&D. Orcs were an unnatural species made by the Dark Lord Melkor from tortured Elves. In Middle Earth it is clear cut that they are irredeemable evil creatures. D&D orcs in the Forgotten Realms are influenced by Grumsh which corrupts their nature although this is certainly more of a grey area compared to Middle Earth

This aspect of Gruumsh corrupting their nature is also new. Before it was just religious tenets in the same way that some cults of Kali in India created the Thugee. Gruumsh though was universally considered the Orc god, with PCs as the expected exception along with those NPC orcs called out in stat blocks as following a different deity when needed. There wasn't a curse or corruption, it just was. The curse or corruption, the first time I saw it, was in World of Warcraft, to explain why Orcs became brutal savages but were able to be played as good people because the corruption was broken. I could be misremembering the specifics there. But they were expected to be evil because... Orcs. In my homebrew they are akin to Beast men and the Orcs of Middle Earth, the reborn souls of irredeemably corrupted Elves, cursed to live in hideous forms and Half-orcs aren't really orcish but men who once served a warlock king and their blood was magically altered and now they breed true and while most still serve the remnants of this warlock king's servants, leaving the race as a whole in a position of distrust, they have no particular alignment and resemble the classic D&D Orc/Half-Orc look while Orcs are pig faced monstrosities, serving the Wild Hunt (evil pantheon). I get my evil orcs and the modern orc as well in this way. I am building an old school campaign with modern sensibilities for my next 5e campaign for after my Starfinder game.