D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[MGibster]

When it's costing them nothing to do so? I think at the very least it's a good thing to do so.

As I said earlier, this is not analogous to keeping a book in print. There's no production involved and no cost.

While I think it's a good thing to do as well, I don't believe WotC or any IP holder has a responsibility to ensure a product is available in perpetuity. Even if digital media is relatively inexpensive to keep available, there's still a cost and they might not want to go through the effort.

 

[Thomas Shey]

While I think it's a good thing to do as well, I don't believe WotC or any IP holder has a responsibility to ensure a product is available in perpetuity. Even if digital media is relatively inexpensive to keep available, there's still a cost and they might not want to go through the effort.

I don't think they necessarily have an obligation to keep it available with any overhead themselves, but at that point I also don't think they have a moral right to get upset if someone else does. Having it both ways I consider a plague on both the distribution of culture and knowledge.

But then, I consider the modern view of IP to be kind of a plague unto itself, and when it turns into squatting I have not tolerance for it at all.

 

[CleverNickName]

Lots of strongly-worded terms floating around..."forced," "required," "obligation," etc. What's with all the flex?

Wizards of the Coast is not being strong-armed into any course of action. They've added a disclaimer to their legacy products, and they've started making changes to their new products, and there's no reason to believe they are being coerced to do any of this against their will.

 

[Krachek]

Since Mystara have been announce by Wotc, some are wondering if we can see the raise from dead of the Orcs of Thar for 5ed. I got my own copy now, so we can take a look at that.

It’s a big document. 142 pages pdf.

The illustrations. Complete rework there. Racist, bad, bad and racist. The front cover can be kept but I would ask to remove the feathers and review the drawing by an expert to avoid any misinterpretation.

The text. The main offenses came from 2 sections. The 3 pages that describe the Tribes of Thar. It’s there that we find the Red orc, The yellow Orc and others offensive and racist references. The other section is 3 pages for naming characters that use reference to Native American and other cultures. Those two section need a complete rework.
The offensive names and naming construction used in those sections are also spread all around the document naming the tribes and characters. That would require a cleanup but can leave some unwanted names.

In this thread we have been aware of a doubtful use of the gri-gri term.
The document also use the terms Shaman and Wicca that can be replace by Cleric and Sorcerer or more neutral terms.
We also been aware of the usage of the name of an actual sacred territory.
There is one usage of “A good orc is a dead orc“ that need to be remove.

Otherwise there are the crude and gross manners of orcs, goblins and others but that seem acceptable for DnD. The rest seem Orc things of the same level. I didn’t scan the entire document for hidden reference. And finally there are all the crunch to be adapted for 5ed, but it’s not the subject here.

Even if most of the document is reusable and the edition work feasible, I estimate to 0% the chance that Orcs of Thar been adapted to 5ed.

 

[Umbran]

WOTC is banning selected language from the books, which is a partial ban.

Mod Note:
Right, so now we are trying to say that... by choosing what they want to present in properties they own, they are... doing something wrong?

That is such a complete trolling piece of dogwhistle logic. Get the heck out of this thread!

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Nothing to see here.

 

[Zardnaar]

Since Mystara have been announce by Wotc, some are wondering if we can see the raise from dead of the Orcs of Thar for 5ed. I got my own copy now, so we can take a look at that.

It’s a big document. 142 pages pdf.

The illustrations. Complete rework there. Racist, bad, bad and racist. The front cover can be kept but I would ask to remove the feathers and review the drawing by an expert to avoid any misinterpretation.

The text. The main offenses came from 2 sections. The 3 pages that describe the Tribes of Thar. It’s there that we find the Red orc, The yellow Orc and others offensive and racist references. The other section is 3 pages for naming characters that use reference to Native American and other cultures. Those two section need a complete rework.
The offensive names and naming construction used in those sections are also spread all around the document naming the tribes and characters. That would require a cleanup but can leave some unwanted names.

In this thread we have been aware of a doubtful use of the gri-gri term.
The document also use the terms Shaman and Wicca that can be replace by Cleric and Sorcerer or more neutral terms.
We also been aware of the usage of the name of an actual sacred territory.
There is one usage of “A good orc is a dead orc“ that need to be remove.

Otherwise there are the crude and gross manners of orcs, goblins and others but that seem acceptable for DnD. The rest seem Orc things of the same level. I didn’t scan the entire document for hidden reference. And finally there are all the crunch to be adapted for 5ed, but it’s not the subject here.

Even if most of the document is reusable and the edition work feasible, I estimate to 0% the chance that Orcs of Thar been adapted to 5ed.

They won't be doing orcs of that for 5E regardless.b

 

[Ashtagon]

So, there's a campaign setting that I wrote once. It's mostly complete, but because I'm not really happy with it in its current form, it has never seen the light of day.

By the rules that anti-censorship aficionados in this thread here have put out, it seems that I am now guilty of censorship and have no leg to stand on if ever I complain about anyone else censoring stuff. This is not what censorship is about.

Edit: This was uncalled for, and I apologise. Please do not follow on from this.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So, there's a campaign setting that I wrote once. It's mostly complete, but because I'm not really happy with it in its current form, it has never seen the light of day.

By the rules that anti-censorship aficionados in this thread here have put out, it seems that I am now guilty of censorship and have no leg to stand on if ever I complain about anyone else censoring stuff. This is not what censorship is about.

Mod Note:

You felt the need to add fuel to this thread’s fire? To what end? Don’t do it again, please, and nobody follow that lead.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Should IP owners be forced to keep every edition of everything continually available?

I think the problem people have is that these things aren't binary, and that a lot of questions (like this one) are both illuminating and obfuscating. Let me provide an example to show you why-

Think of a library. A library should be able to choose what books it has on the shelves, and what it doesn't, right? For example, sometimes a books gets worn out, or there just isn't space, or whatever, and the library will discard the book or sell it off (a "Friend of the Library" sale). I think most people would agree that libraries should not be forced to keep every book that they've ever had continually available, right? That's crazytown!

On the other hand, imagine that there's a book that's controversial and some people want the library to remove it. It's a perfectly good copy of the book- the people want the library to remove it because of the content. You can make the example as sympathetic (Melissa) or as unsympathetic (Mein Kampf) as you want. My gut feeling is that regardless of the example thought of, most people would probably feel a little uneasy about this. In fact, this is what most people refer to as "banning" a book (even though you can probably buy it or travel elsewhere to get it).

So if you ask, "Should libraries be forced to keep every book that they have ever had continually available forever?" ...I think most people would say no. If you said, "Should people pressure libraries to remove books because they disagree with the content?" ... I think you would likely get a different response. But both are fundamentally about the libraries' control of what it carries- just whether it should be exercised independently.

Now what you're probably thinking is, "Woah. Libraries aren't (usually) profit-driven corporations! You're trying to pull a fast one, Snarf!" No, I'm not. I'm using the analogy to show how analogies (and hypotheticals) both illuminate and obfuscate.

For your question, the corporate owner of legacy IP is very similar to the library.* Because a lot of it is in the way the question is phrased- no, of course there is no duty or obligation to make all their IP available to everyone, forever. In fact, until very recently the problem was almost always the opposite; because of issues of cost (physical products, lawyers love to say no, etc.), it was often very hard to get hold of older IP, if you could at all. Only the rise of digitization and the distribution model of the internet allowed this. But the question you ask is similar to the one about the library- by asking the question, you are conflating forcing a library to keep a book on the shelf indefinitely with allowing people to force libraries to take books off the shelf because they disagree with what is in the book, which are two different things.

That said, I believe that this only applies to legacy products. Obviously, what the company is making now is completely within their control because ... that's their product! I think reasonable distinctions can, and should, be made between what a company is doing in the present, and the past media of a rights-holder that you access. Finally, I don't think that any of this is necessarily binary. I think a lot of people are struggling with some of these distinctions- what is public, and what is private? When do we want to apply the principles of free speech (not the law, but the principles) to corporations like Hasbro and its offerings? As more media moves to the cloud or is "on-demand," how much should we worry about edits and changes made to older media (or should we)?

Most of this is novel, and while I have certain opinions, I don't necessarily think that they are all correct. But I do still feel strongly that products should be made available (with disclaimers, as necessary) so that people like the OP can dig into them and critique them, and so that people from Peterson to Appelcline can access older material as needed, and quickly.**


*There is a separate, and unfortunate, issue that in many places in this country, due to various cutbacks, many people are much more likely to be able to access older content at nominal prices through corporate means than they are through a library system, but that's neither here nor there.

**I would add that I appreciate it as well, but I just write long and meandering posts that might mention a little history in order to have a long acrostic that ends up with "USMELTITUDEALTIT".