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

[Umbran]

Mod note:
Folks,

Continuing to poke at the bear that has been told not to bite is not a great idea on your part.

Be thoughtful, kind, and show enlightened self-interest, and let it drop.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It’s not a question of winning a dispute.

You’ve repeatedly universalized your experience.

your experience is not only NOT MINE, but is also contradicted by actual research.

in other words - there is no dispute. You have your own experience but to the extent you keep arguing that this is the way thing were, you are wrong.

I don't recall ever arguing that it was your experience. I'm only suggesting that other people don't necessarily agree with Jon, apparently. I can tell you something about how 1000's of people whom I played with GENERALLY played. I didn't go and seek out any one kind of people to play with, its just a sample of what was on offer in several places in the timeframe we've discussed. I don't think there's going to be any research which can contradict that, its purely what I experienced! I mean, if you literally are saying you cannot believe me and that my experience cannot be true, take a hike! It was the way things were in the places that I know about with whatever numerous random groups of players I ran into at those times.

I really suspect that what we have here is a situation where there were several VERY different and not well-connected 'worlds' of D&D. That was much more possible then than it is now. We just did our little local thing in each group, and all we got was Dragon articles, rumors, and later maybe some time at a con now and then. I'm NOT ARGUING that no other kinds of play existed. I do however think that they may have been less prevalent than you imagine, and that it is quite possible that when you survey they people you know, who play like you played, you get one view of things, but it may be less complete than you imagine. And yes, that applies to everyone, you, me, Jon, and other posters here too. I'd have to go read Jon's book(s) to get a better idea of what exactly he thinks the lay of the land was there anyway, I don't automatically accept or reject 2nd hand accounts. I highly suspect the view that is there is more nuanced.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

See, that's an opinion presented as fact.

How can you objetively meassure the 4e Abyss and Orcus being a corrupted primordial as to being better than the legacy D&D Abyss and Orcus being an evil mortal soul that clawed his way up to demonprince?

It's like saying that this strawberry icecream is objectively better than the previous chocolate chunk ice cream.

I didn't say it WAS better, I said it was genuinely an attempt to improve the game, and by improve I mean to create an enhanced experience for everyone involved. Obviously nobody can say objectively that one form of entertainment is better than another, but objectively there was an attempt to make something that would be more accepted as better, subjectively. I am also not passing judgment on whether that criteria was objectively reached, there's really no point in getting into THAT debate, I'm perfectly willing to accept that many people have marshaled good arguments saying it failed.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Wow. What the hell happened to this thread? Edition wars, the old "offense is voluntary" argument (which is practically a dogwhistle version of calling someone a snowflake now), and off-topic tangents left and right.

I've seen a few people (I don't want to name names) say stuff along the lines of "I'm not aware of the context of the examples people have pointed out in the GAZ 10", or "It's not my place to judge if that's racist/bigoted", and stuff along those lines.

Yes, it is your place to judge. This Gazetteer is a part of our hobby. As members of the same hobby, it is absolutely our place to judge past works of the game, point out its problems, and apologize for this kind of content. The GAZ10's imagery was (and still is) extremely racist. Presenting Orcs in that manner was absolutely not okay, and completely puts an end to the tired-old argument of "Orcs have never been stand-ins for groups of real world peoples!" that so many "anti-woke" people love to claim. This Gazetteer proves that they were, and it was done so in a racist manner towards East Asians, Native Americans, and African Americans. To say "I don't know the context" or "it isn't my place to say whether or not that was wrong" is a cop-out and dismissing the evidence out of hand.

If you are saying "It's not my place to judge that product" or "I'm not aware of the context [while not trying to research/discover more of the context]", you're doing a cop-out and giving a free-pass to other content like this. As a member of the same community and hobby as the one that this product was made for (especially if you played the game back around the time this was released), it is absolutely your place to judge it.

It is our place to judge it. It's a part of our hobby. This product was racist. To say otherwise is either incredibly (and unbelievably) ignorant, but potentially excusing/being an apologist for this kind of racist content. If you can say "it's not my place to judge that kind of content" while talking crap about/criticizing a playstyle, edition of the game, or other D&D product that you don't like, that's extremely telling and hypocritical.

(btw, I've not just seen this kind of behavior in this thread, but also in similar discussions whether or not certain content in a variety of different contexts is racist. It's a frustratingly common and effective means to cop-out of any responsibility of using your moral judgement and empathy.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes. But that doesn't exculpate parts of the 4e crowd from being just as wrong and toxic as parts of the pre-4e crowd

Yeah, but IMHO one should be careful about these kinds of claims of 'equivalency'. IME you get one side which is using these sorts of tactics widely and really is basically THE problem. Then somewhere some idiot who happens to claim to espouse the other side of the argument says something stupid and offensive and its all "See, see! Its all the same, all sides are the same!" when its 99.999% coming from one side. Its not like opinions police themselves either. Once or twice I heard people who claimed to be 4e fans say things that made me roll my eyes, it was like a ratio of about 1 to 1000 that went the other way. My judgment may be somewhat skewed of course, but I think I have at least SOME ability to step back and look at both sides. Sometimes I even find the 'other side' to be pretty sympathetic, but not when its trash talk.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I've seen a few people (I don't want to name names) say stuff along the lines of "I'm not aware of the context of the examples people have pointed out in the GAZ 10", or "It's not my place to judge if that's racist/bigoted", and stuff along those lines.

I want to be clear what I was saying here. I haven't read these books. I don't, as a general rule, weigh in on things definitively, until I have seen them in their full context, but I stated pretty clearly, on first glance it looks like a stereotypical caricature. I've just been in too many discussion where a snippet of something is shown or a bit of text, or a small scene from a movie linked, but you are missing the full context and some crucial meaning was lost. And I always find it is best to fully examine things fully. There is nothing wrong with saying you don't have the full context of something, and that that limits how much you can intelligently weigh in on it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don't recall ever arguing that it was your experience. I'm only suggesting that other people don't necessarily agree with Jon, apparently. I can tell you something about how 1000's of people whom I played with GENERALLY played. I didn't go and seek out any one kind of people to play with, its just a sample of what was on offer in several places in the timeframe we've discussed. I don't think there's going to be any research which can contradict that, its purely what I experienced! I mean, if you literally are saying you cannot believe me and that my experience cannot be true, take a hike! It was the way things were in the places that I know about with whatever numerous random groups of players I ran into at those times.

I really suspect that what we have here is a situation where there were several VERY different and not well-connected 'worlds' of D&D. That was much more possible then than it is now. We just did our little local thing in each group, and all we got was Dragon articles, rumors, and later maybe some time at a con now and then. I'm NOT ARGUING that no other kinds of play existed. I do however think that they may have been less prevalent than you imagine, and that it is quite possible that when you survey they people you know, who play like you played, you get one view of things, but it may be less complete than you imagine. And yes, that applies to everyone, you, me, Jon, and other posters here too. I'd have to go read Jon's book(s) to get a better idea of what exactly he thinks the lay of the land was there anyway, I don't automatically accept or reject 2nd hand accounts. I highly suspect the view that is there is more nuanced.

Read the books or don’t. Your choice. Your prior posts speak for themselves. The last book is nuanced, unlike your posts, and it happens that given that people were writing and discussing their games you can, in fact, understand a lot more about what the various different groups were doing than what you keep saying.

In other words, try and do a little research instead of reflexively disagreeing.

One of the major themes the most recent book is that people keep forgetting that these things were done- that these class versatility’s have been had, that these debates (such as between roleplaying and gamist approaches, or between rules lite and rules heavy) and part of the reason people forget is that you have people who are ignorant of the history, and also people who continuously assert that the past existed in one way- when it didn’t.

It was so much more diverse that you keep painting it - and it’s insulting.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Deleted after seeing Umbran's post.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

1.) "If I could control the universe, it wouldn't be so; Alas, I do not have the power to change it - it is not my opinion but a fact of nature."
If it was in my power to make the world more cosmically fair, I would. This can't be considered an opinion, as facts about one's own beliefs/mental states/qualia can't be examined by outside observers. Subjectivity is the hallmark of mental states.

2.) "If I could control the universe, it wouldn't be so; Alas, I do not have the power to change it - it is not my opinion but a fact of nature."
This part actually is, perhaps, debatable, but I'm not sure how could possibly change the nature of power. Anything that causes or prevents change just is power. It seems that it's conceptually impossible for this to be true. Changing the nature of power just would itself be en exercise of power.

3.) "If I could control the universe, it wouldn't be so; Alas, I do not have the power to change it - it is not my opinion but a fact of nature."
This is actually the conclusion of an argument that isn't presented here, but the point above articulates why this is a fact of nature and not my opinion.

This statement was what you were responding to when you said:

So, which segment of my sentence were you asserting to be "[my] opinion", since you have alleged that I misidentified it?

This is getting a bit far afield, but I think ULTIMATELY what you have identified here is what I have termed "The Logic of Power" in discussions in more serious venues. It is a corollary, an effect of, the system of thought which I have also termed 'Violentism', which sees the world through the lens of conflict and oppositional thinking, rather than through the lens of mutualistic Cooperationist thinking. It is absolutely possible for society to shift from the former, which is quite prevalent in many parts of modern global society, to the later. If each side becomes aware of the advantages of cooperation on a mutualistic level, then they can change the social/cultural milieu to suite. If all you do is shut up and accept defeat, then you've JOINED the Violentist logic of power side, just as the victim. If you HAVE some power, then wouldn't it be foolish NOT to exercise it in the creation of mutual benefit? If one fails to do so, are not others justified in seeing that as an indication that your value system has no concern for them at all, and that you are short-sighted/foolish? I don't see how that is an escapable conclusion... Frankly most people are somewhat lazy, and fear disruptive change, and thus they feel motivated to dismiss any claim that would logically propel them to act.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can say this fairly honestly, having not been particularly a 4e fan at the time (after playing a bit later, I at least can respect what it did, though it wasn't my cuppa): it did not seem that way to me. I virtually never saw a 4e fan hit first, though they might be excessively vitriolic in their counterstrikes.

I saw venom a plenty on both sides of that debate. I do think it makes sense though that the 4E fans were not going to pre-emptively attack criticisms. They were obviously going to be the ones responding to critiques of the game. But that doesn't mean they were always the first to step out of line in the discussion. This is spilled milk at this point, but I can remember countless times seeing 4E fans go after a person in a mean spirited way, and I can remember plenty of times people who didn't like 4E did the same. I really don't see how one can have an honest assessment of that entire flame war where one side comes out more virtuous than the other. It was ugly. It got ugly on both sides. I think anyone telling themselves their side was the just one, is just deluding themselves.