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

[Maxperson]

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.

This is true, though I'll argue that the barbarian class, barbarian tribes, wild elves, etc. diffuse that a lot in D&D. Savage =/= bad guys in D&D.

 

[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.

I was just watching the 14 Amazons the other day, and that is about the female family members of a Song Dynasty general killed by the Jurchen who venture into the frontier to get revenge (the amazons in the title doesn't refer to savages, just to the women of the Yang family fighting). This would make for very good gaming in my opinion. And you could swap in all kinds of groups (be they human, demi human or monstrous) for the Jurchen in a campaign, without that being any kind of actual commentary on the Jurchen. It is just meant to be cool and interesting I think when you do that type of thing. And you could reverse it too. you could have the players be on the 'Jurchen' side and make the Yang clan into the orcs or whatever. It is just a way to make a threat more menacing in my opinion.

Edit: Think it was western xia, not Jurchen

 

[Yaarel]

This is true, though I'll argue that the barbarian class, barbarian tribes, wild elves, etc. diffuse that a lot in D&D. Savage =/= bad guys in D&D.

The "Barbarian" feels mainly German. I doubt it counts as a "primitive" "savage".

 

[Yaarel]

In the Viking Period and earlier, the Nordic peoples are actually part of the "primitive" animist category.

But because of the way historical German academics have misrepresented Nordics to be as if Germans, Nordics tend to be not be perceived by others this way.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is true, though I'll argue that the barbarian class, barbarian tribes, wild elves, etc. diffuse that a lot in D&D. Savage =/= bad guys in D&D.

Which is why I think getting hung up on orcs is a little misguided. Orcs are used to make any culture seem more dangerous. Orcs can be tribal, but they can also be militaristic romans. But you still have lots of examples of 'savage' characters that are not negative and not orcs. Orcs help make something seem a little more threatening: because they are monsters.

 

[Yaarel]

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.

Some early D&D traditions have Lawful (= civilized) versus Chaotic (= uncivilized) as the main alignment system.

I wonder how much this plays into the racism about the generic "savages" and into the ongoing confusion about what each alignment means.

 

[Maxperson]

The "Barbarian" feels mainly German. I doubt it counts as a "primitive" "savage".

"A tall human tribesman strides through a blizzard, draped in fur and hefting his axe."

"A half-orc snarls at the latest challenger to her authority over their savage tribe, ready to break his neck with her bare hands as she did to the last six rivals."

"People of towns and cities take pride in how their civilized ways set them apart from animals, as if denying one's own nature was a mark of superiority. To a barbarian, though, civilization is no virtue, but a sign of weakness. The strong embrace their animal nature-keen instincts, primal physicality, and ferocious rage."

"They thrive in the wilds of their homelands: the tundra, jungle, or grasslands where their tribes live and hunt."

"Perhaps you were a prisoner of war, brought in chains to "civilized" lands and only now able to win your freedom."

"Many of the lands of the Sword Coast and the North are savage, where day-to-day survival is a struggle. Such lands breed hardy tribes and fierce warriors, such as the Reghed and Uthgardt barbarians of the North and the seafaring Northlanders of the Moonshae Isles and the northernmost reaches of the Sword Coast."

You were saying?

 

[Scott Christian]

I can't speak for @el-remmen. But as a professional academic, whose job is critiquing the work of others and producing my own, I think that authors/creators ultimately have to suck up the interpretations that others put forward of their work. That's not to say that unprofessional behaviour is OK, but critiquing work for (eg) its implications about race and culture is not unprofessional. To give a single example - I'm a great admirer of the work of John Rawls and have devoted a lot of my career to engaging with this work; that doesn't stop me from saying that his relatively brief discussion of secession and the Civil War in his The Law of Peoples is deeply racist, because of the way Black people as members of the community of the South are apparently invisible to him.

Thanks for the feedback and example. It's what I thought, but wanted to clarify, if not from the @el-remmen at least from someone in the field. Thank you again.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Some early D&D traditions have Lawful (= civilized) versus Chaotic (= uncivilized) as the main alignment system.

I wonder how much this plays into the racism about the generic "savages" and into the ongoing confusion about what each alignment means.

I don't think it did. My memory, and I could be wrong as I am not huge into the genre, is it came from stuff like Three Hearts and Three Lions and from Michael Moorecock. Chaos was represented by groups like fairies and stuff. Moorecock was pretty critical of writers like Lovecraft for being racist (and my impression is he was a pretty left leaning writer). I am not a big Elric fan so people who are can weigh in there. I think this is something where you can take a lens and apply it and because you have that lens, you are going to find things. But I am pretty skeptical unless it s something specific (and even in those cases, I really think you need to take a nuanced view and examine what it really means, not just stop at the cultural analogue and the fantasy creation in question being evil or negative and assuming that is the reason why----sometimes things are just done that way because it seems cooler)

Also see my Roman Orc example. There are plenty of settings where Orcs can be used to represent militaristic law. They can be a stand-in for authoritarianism and fascism.

 

[Yaarel]

The descriptions of drow culture (udadrow) feel Neutral Evil. They are as much group-oriented as they are individual-oriented. Perhaps even moreso group-oriented.

I wonder if they are perceived as if "Chaotic" because they have black skin.