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

[Krachek]

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

I agree, the caricatural way to depict humanoid races is a thing from the past.

 

[Krachek]

Taking a step from the thread line, I was thinking of WoW and how they integrate cultural material into their universe.
The mist of Panderia was an acclaimed extension, despite they depict Chinese People into panda like monk. They receive approval from Chinese official.
More close to this thread, WoW use native American culture to build up the Tauren race. In my view it was make in a much more respectful way, but I wonder how you view this case.

 

[Cadence]

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".

Thank you for the very thoughtful reply!

One of my previous posts was asking what if they just made it available for scholarly research or whatnot (because they didn't want it widely associated with them).

Who gets to determine the appropriate cost of older material?

Is it bad for Disney to occasionally rotate things off sale, for example? (Is it different if they aren't planning to permanently take it off line)?

Is it different if the individual author doesn't want it for sale instead of a corporate entity?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Thank you for the very thoughtful reply!

One of my previous posts was asking what if they just made it available for scholarly research or whatnot (because they didn't want it widely associated with them).

Who gets to determine the appropriate cost of older material?

Is it bad for Disney to occasionally rotate things off sale, for example? (Is it different if they aren't planning to permanently take it off line)?

Is it different if the individual author doesn't want it for sale instead of a corporate entity?

So I'm happy to answer your questions, and I'll do it fairly quickly with my own opinions, before I get to the more important point (to me, at least).

Who gets to determine the appropriate cost of older material? The rights-holder.

Is it bad for Disney to occasionally rotate things off sale, for example? The whole "artificial scarcity to boost desirability" was annoying, but that was a business model for them with physical media. Obviously, Disney+ appears to have changed that equation for now.

Is it different if the individual author doesn't want it for sale instead of a corporate entity? That's a variation of the age-old, "How much should Lucas get to edit his old movies?" question, or, if you prefer, "Do you like guns or walkie talkies in your E.T.?" I don't think the question is actually different between people and corporations, personally, although I tend to be more sympathetic to people because I try to approximate human emotions on occasion. It's part of my T2000 programming.

Okay, now for the main point- I don't think the interesting question is about the rights holders, or the libraries. I really don't. It's like asking in the 80s, "Who gets to decide what labels are put on music?" I think that this tends to hide the actual problems, because in the end, someone will always be able to make a decision to restrict access.

Instead, I think the real questions should be asked of ourselves. What do we want? More importantly, when do we think it should be proper to lobby rights holders to remove legacy products? What am I really doing, and what precedent do I set, when I believe that I should try and force companies to only sell products that I find acceptable? Do I draw a distinction between old products and what the company is currently doing, and if not, why not?

I am not saying that these questions necessarily have easy answers. But I think that too many people get caught up in the rhetoric of what is allowable (trying to pressure companies to "do the right thing," with the "right thing" varying depending on your beliefs) with what is right (recognizing that the past is a foreign country and does not live up to the standards of the present, and being okay with that).

In my opinion, people do far too little self-interrogation on this. There can be nuances, and I'm not saying I am always correct, or that this is always easy. Here-

Company makes product A that is racist. Company also allows on-line store to sell Product B, from 40 years ago, that is racist. I would argue that it is right and proper to pressure Company to stop selling product A (and/or revise it), while it would be improper to pressure company to make Product B completely unavailable.

Or, how about this-
Disney+ has almost the entire catalog of Disney available for streaming. But Song of the South is not available from any official Disney source in hard copy, and Disney has stated that it will not be available on Disney+ (even with a disclaimer). Do I think Disney should be required or obligated to carry it? Heck no! Do I even lose the tiniest bit of sleep over it not being there?* Of course not. On the other hand, if Disney+ did carry it (with VERY STRONG disclaimers), I would be against efforts to remove it.

And I hope those examples illustrate why this might not be easy, and why (for me), many of these certainties should die away.


*Full disclosure- I also can't imagine using or reading GAZ10, and since I'm not a Mystara person, I doubt I'd ever use it for historical research. This is about the principle, and the concern that given the very low profits involved, enough of these controversies will just cause Hasbro to yank the older IP completely.

 

[Yaarel]

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.

I doubt GAZ10 can be "fixed". It would need to be rewritten from scratch, from the bottom up.

There are humans with virtually humans (elf, aasimar, goliath, etcetera) and then there are monstrous humans (orc, goblin, tiefling, etcetera). Basing a monstrous human on a reallife ethnicity is problematic − sensitive at best and easily racist. Whether Japanese hobgoblin or Native orc, it is troublesome.



I am unsure how to go about it.

The monstrous humans are playable, thus have choice and culture. In the past, D&D often portrayed monster cultures as "primitive" "tribal" "savages" whence its own kind of full-blown racism.

How does one present a monstrous human culture in a way that isnt racist?

What should these cultures look like?

 

[Yaarel]

Taking a step from the thread line, I was thinking of WoW and how they integrate cultural material into their universe.
The mist of Panderia was an acclaimed extension, despite they depict Chinese People into panda like monk. They receive approval from Chinese official.
More close to this thread, WoW use native American culture to build up the Tauren race. In my view it was make in a much more respectful way, but I wonder how you view this case.

Certain animals are beloved mascots. Maybe bald eagle for US, cayote for Native, panda for Chinese, lion for South Sudan, etcetera. Such anthro animals might be able to model a reallife culture with cultural approval.

But even then caution is necessary. France may or may not like being portrayed as a dog, but Saudia would take strong offense.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How does one present a monstrous human culture in a way that isnt racist?

I mean, it's pretty easy isn't it? You just don't assign them a bunch of negative characteristics that line up with racist portrayals of Earth cultures? And try to avoid ripping off Earth cultures which have been oppressed/negatively regarded and assigning their characteristic to the humanoids (which is the old D&D term for "monstrous human" - "humanoid" - the other lot are "demihumans").

I mean, a simple example of how to avoid problems even if you do insist on using an Earth culture is Taladas - where the steppe horse nomads (a group subject to tons of racism IRL, particularly re: their appearance and intelligence), roughly equivalent to the Huns, are Elves and Half-Elves - two demihuman races known for being attractive and smart. The immediately means the basic Earth-racist approach doesn't work, and means something more complicated is going on.

That's just a crude example, but I think this is pretty easy. Don't lean in to negative stereotypes.

(One place I feel like Taladas kind of screwed up here is Armach. Here basically some Silvanaes elves from Anaslon ended up in Taladas, landing in a region populated by tribal humans. The elves assuming tribal = evil (this is text, not subtext, note), attacked the humans, and ended up chopping a kingdom out of the area, and the humans never got organised enough to defeat them. Eventually they started allying with the humans, but the elves run what is basically an apartheid state (right down to miscegenation laws) with the humans (who are dark-skinned, which doesn't help the optics) and other races (centaurs and Marak kender) around them, all in a confederation. The book is very clear that the apartheid state and the laws it runs on are a bad thing, including for the elves, and that the elves messed up when attacking the humans, but at the same time talks about the "superior culture" (verbatim) of the elves allowing them to win and so on, and the whole thing doesn't look great. It's heavily implied that to have any future the elves will have drop their apartheid state, because they're slowly dying out and their state is full of empty villas and untended fields (no non-elf is allowed to enter it), and we're reminded that they screwed up because they also have a problem with the vengeful ghosts of the humans they killed, so the future of this culture is clearly some kind of opening up and healing, if it has one. But it's still not a great look to have a bunch of pale-skinned smarty-pants elves bullying a bunch of dark-skinned humans, and the language used is... er... very much not what I think Zeb Cook would use today. I'd love to ask him what he was thinking exactly there. I suspect the answer is "demonstrating the folly of colonial aggression and blood purity", but I don't think it quite worked.)

 

[Yaarel]

I mean, it's pretty easy isn't it? You just don't assign them a bunch of negative characteristics that line up with racist portrayals of Earth cultures? And try to avoid ripping off Earth cultures which have been oppressed/negatively regarded and assigning their characteristic to the humanoids (which is the old D&D term for "monstrous human" - "humanoid" - the other lot are "demihumans").

I mean, a simple example of how to avoid problems even if you do insist on using an Earth culture is Taladas - where the steppe horse nomads (a group subject to tons of racism IRL, particularly re: their appearance and intelligence), roughly equivalent to the Huns, are Elves and Half-Elves - two demihuman races known for being attractive and smart. The immediately means the basic Earth-racist approach doesn't work, and means something more complicated is going on.

That's just a crude example, but I think this is pretty easy. Don't lean in to negative stereotypes.

I see what youre getting at. But. The monstrosity is itself a negative.

I think it would feel off if, for example, the South Korean culture was a beautiful superhuman and the Japanese one was an Oni ogre.



By the way, I feel it impossible to not implement reallife cultures. We are humans who think like humans. The only question is whether it is recognizably a specific culture or else a less obvious remix of several cultures.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What I find the most disturbing is that there seems to be no realization that if WotC's writers are not allowed to put out the fiction and the books they want to put out using their IP then that is itself censorship. And the attempt to say that orcs as described by WotC's writers in 2021 must be the same as orcs as described by WotC's in 2005 and also the same as orcs as described by TSR's in 1989 is the biggest element of censorship I am seeing here.

I expect future generations to occasionally re-edit me if they choose to reprint my works. I also expect them not to create a team of ninjas that stealthily go from house to house stealing books. And if there are discrepancies in the edits those themselves are interesting.

And no, WotC are not banning all references to orcs being evil.

Of course they can put out whatever they want. The difference here is that they are literally changing what they wrote before, instead of writing new stuff. Given the choice between contradicting the past and rewriting the past, I vote option 1 every time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Adding a disclaimer is fine. Making new products is fine. Retroactively changing old products much less so.