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

[Mind of tempest]

Probably, having at least one great grandparent, is enough to claim identity within an ethnicity. But obviously, the more assimilated one is out of that ethnicity, the more one needs to find a community to participate in to make an effort to sustain that identity.

Relatedly, an ethnicity has customs to formally adopt an outsider as a member of that ethnicity.

that runs into problems as by that logic I am a non-ethnicity.

I find this argument very confusing. I can see if a given book specifically has red orcs, how that would be a straight line in that case to Native Americans. But I can't see how making a hodgepodge of "all the 'savages'", makes it play out the cowboy and indian trope more. At least I don't see how it would be specifically cowboy and indian. Lots of places have frontiers and lots of places have people outside their settled regions they regarded as hostile and uncivilized. But more than that, I never even really thought of orcs as tribes on the frontier so much as monsters in the unknown. And lots of genres have this idea too (you see it in wuxia for instance). I think the concept of orc is so abstracted that these arguments have never been particularly convincing to me (again barring a case where there is some specific instance of a culture being invoked: but even then there is still ample room to debate what that means and if it is even a commentary or if superficial cultural elements are simply being used for flavor). I feel like we have had this discussion an awful lot. I don't think many people have changed their opinions. I know I still think the whole orcs are racist argument is just not persuasive in the least.

every civilized place said someone was a savage and normally tried to kill them.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: personal heritage

I personally “identify“ as an American, because that sounds…much less complicated than what I am. I’m black- or in the current parlance, “African American“ (bleh)- but have been able to trace Mongolian, Taino, Choctaw, Peruvian, German, French, Eastern European Jewish, Italian, Puerto Rican, and at least 5 “sailors” of indeterminate origins from the British Isles in my ancestry. (Some of that’s from family records, some of that’s from DNA.)

Pretty much, if you have a bigoted insult to toss around, I probably qualify.

So when asked, I tell people I’m “Gumbo”, “Crayola 64” or sometimes “caramello”. Because who has time for all that?

 

[Yaarel]

No. I reject the notion that every use of the word savage in D&D must mean someone of the nations(native american). You've made a claim that D&D orcs are "tend to be played that way", yet no one I know of has ever played that way or to my knowledge encountered someone playing that way. I doubt that I'm unusual in this regard.

I mean, "savages" raiding a "civilized" community, and other cowboys-versus-Indians tropes, are played out via generic orc savages.

 

[Yaarel]

that runs into problems as by that logic I am a non-ethnicity.

I view US American as a distinctive ethnicity, whose multiculturalism is part of what makes the American identity distinctive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, what do you think is implied by "rave reviews"?

There are several reasons why a product might receive positive reviews, and not all of them have to do with it being a great example of the product it's intended to be.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Re: personal heritage

i personally “identify“ as an American, because that sounds…much less complicated than what I am. I’m black- or in the current parlance, “African American“ (bleh)- but have been able to trace Mongolian, Taino, Choctaw, Peruvian, German, French, Eastern European Jewish, Italian, Puerto Rican, and at least 5 “sailors” of indeterminate origins from the British Isles in my ancestry. (Some of that’s from family records, some of that’s from DNA.)

Pretty much, if you have a bigoted insult to toss around, I probably qualify.

So when asked, I tell people I’m “Gumbo”, “Crayola 64” or sometimes “caramello”. Because who has time for all that?

My sense is the answer to this idea varies a lot across the US (I lived on both coasts and it didn't seem to have the same meaning on the west coast as the east). I am Italian, Jewish and Irish, and live in the Boston area (and was born here). I usually just say I am Italian if people ask because that is the ethnic culture I was surrounded by growing up. But I know a little about the Jewish side as well (we celebrated some holidays). I know very little about being Boston Irish but have a lot of cousins who I would say fit that description. All three of those groups are more than just ethnic heritage here. There is a culture that emerged around them. Not the same as being from those actual countries. I think in the US, there are these pockets where local culture was shaped by groups who came here and it still has significance to this day (even if you don't belong to one of those groups you might have grown up in a place where there was a food and way of looking at the world that derived from it).

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, "savages" raiding a "civilized" community, and other cowboys-versus-Indians tropes, are played out via generic orc savages.

Just because there is A trope that is cowboys vs. indians involvig savages raiding civilization, does not make every instance of savages raiding civilization an example of that trope. You keep making that assertion without any hard evidence. Correlation does not equal causation.

In the case of 5e orcs, they aren't even "savages" like the cowboys vs indians trope describes. They are just savage(fierce/violent) raiders and pillagers, just like Vikings were. They're far closer to Vikings than this extremely tenuous connection you've come up with to members of the nations.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I view US American as a distinctive ethnicity, whose multiculturalism is part of what makes the American identity distinctive.

I am technically British as that is where I am from but I was always considered the freak or alien and make very little sense in context I am void of anything but internationalism.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just because there is A trope that is cowboys vs. indians involvig savages raiding civilization, does not make every instance of savages raiding civilization an example of that trope. You keep making that assertion without any hard evidence. Correlation does not equal causation.

In the case of 5e orcs, they aren't even "savages" like the cowboys vs indians trope describes. They are just savage(fierce/violent) raiders and pillagers, just like Vikings were. They're far closer to Vikings than this extremely tenuous connection you've come up with to members of the nations.

I think it is also very easy to fixate on this divide between good guys=settled and civilized people, bad guys equal savage nomads. Whereas most fantasy and gaming these tropes are all mixed up in different kinds of ways. I mean Conan is in many ways the opposite of that trope: he is the outsider, the non-city dweller, and there is frequent commentary by conan on the excesses of civilized life. A lot of these conversations I think reduce these things to very stark groupings of tings that are a lot more fluid at the table. That comes through in a lot of fantasy gaming too.

 

[Yaarel]

D&D portrayals of "primitive" animistic cultures are mainly negative, demonizing, insulting, and racist.

The main exception to the rule is the nonhistorical "Druid" having been reinvented as if a noble savage.

Even the 5e Monster Manual is somewhat disappointing in this regard.