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

[MGibster]

We can hold his legacy accountable. By mentioning the point every darned time we reference his work. By making sure that every time we do use his work as inspiration, we upend some parts of it that are problematic in some way. By using his work in the study of racism in culture, making him the lesson of what not to do.

And I suspect this is why people have a problem coming to grips with seminal work that are problematic today. How do you hold his legacy accountable while simultaneously using his work as inspiration? Even a book deconstructing Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" like Ruthanna Emrys Winter Tide ends up exalting it in a way. As long as Lovecraft's body of work continues to influence writers and pop culture it's hard for me to think that his legacy has been held accountable. But the idea of holding someone legacy accountable for anything is a foreign concept to me. I can hold a person accountable, but a legacy? Lovecraft's racism is just a part of his overall legacy so far as I'm concerned.

 

[Umbran]

And I suspect this is why people have a problem coming to grips with seminal work that are problematic today. How do you hold his legacy accountable while simultaneously using his work as inspiration?

Lovecraft Country is a fairly recent example.

 

[MGibster]

Lovecraft Country is a fairly recent example.

I read it and I enjoyed it but I still don't see how it held Lovecraft's legacy accountable. Partly because I don't understand what it means to hold someone's legacy accountable. I'm not trying to be obtuse here but I am genuinely in the dark here. If it's as simple as acknowledging his racism and how it crept into his work, okay. I don't know how that holds his legacy accountable, but okay.

It's not either/or. One can reclaim the ideas while consigning Lovecraft himself to the dustbin of history. It's not like we need to lionize him. Including him in the works of "inspirational D&D reading" for example. Or plastering his name everywhere whenever we talk about Mythos stories. Separate out the works from the person and, well, leave the rather horrid person in the past where he belongs.

And that strikes me as being just as problematic as lionizing someone without acknowledging their faults. To purposely hide where ideas came from strikes me as intellectually dishonest.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Definitely not for this forum... BUT, I actually think there is something to the idea of a new "moral panic" very broadly speaking especially where liberalism is being challenged conceptually.

Ehhhh... maybe I'm taking what you are saying wrong, but typically speaking I think "moral panic" is misused, especially when coming from the more conservative side of things.

To keep things on-topic, complaints of "moral panic" on D&D are almost always linked to the satanic panic of the 1980's, regardless of the critique. It's less of a real comparison and more a tool to stifle conversation and delegitimize arguments because D&D has been unfairly targeted in the past. It's also why these threads can be so frustrating, because it constantly gets brought up and you have to debunk it every time.

Don't even get me started on the immunity to criticism 5e has enjoyed for an unusual amount of time.

I was basically told to shut up on multiple forums about issues in the core design and to super shut up about Volo being xenophobic. For Volos, the vibe made me feel like people were so happy to actually have some new content, they didn't want WotC to get sad and not give them another splat. It was like 'quiet or we won't get fed! It might be gruel, but it's food!'

I don't think I debated the nature of Volo's Guide, but I know that I used to be more apologetic for 5E back in the day. I don't think I told anyone to shut up, but I definitely made excuses for 5E's shortcomings.

I say things like that all the darn time.

And my answer is that all humans have their breaking points. With luck, most never even get near them. Because those who do are capable of doing monstrous things.

Lathander knows how many times I've told people that it's okay to like problematic things as long as you recognize them as problematic and push for improvement. Too many people take a critique of the system as an attack on themselves because they don't see the critique and thus feel like they themselves are being called out. It's immensely frustrating and generally seems to be unavoidable in these sorts of discussions.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I read it and I enjoyed it but I still don't see how it held Lovecraft's legacy accountable.

I watched the Lovecraft Country series and was actually a bit surprised how little it had to do with Lovecraft at all. IIRC the most explicit things are the main character having a dream that features Cthulhu at the start of the first episode and a short conversation in that same episode with his dad where it's established he likes Lovecraft's stories but that his dad also made him read racist essays Lovecraft put out. The show itself definitely wasn't in the cosmic horror genre and was more inspired by other works of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. I will give them credit for a very Lovecraftian reimagining of the nine-tailed fox, though.

EDIT: Out of curiosity I looked to see if any details about the cancelled second season of Lovecraft Country (which would be completely original and not based on a pre-existing work) had been released and am now VERY curious what they had in mind, because apparently it involved a massive zombie outbreak and the breakdown of the US.

 

[Zardnaar]

If your solution to a problem amounts to doing nothing about it, then you are part of the problem.

People say 'for their time' like there weren't people back then that knew this crap was wrong.

Like science and basic human decency was invented in 2005.

It's not that but whatcha gonna do go back and remove all the problem stuff pre 2005/2015 or whatever?

And even if you could do that who gets to judge?

That's what it was like back then. There's way worse.

 

[Justice and Rule]

It's not that but whatcha gonna do go back and remove all the problem stuff pre 2005/2015 or whatever?

And even if you could do that who gets to judge?

That's what it was like back then. There's way worse.

That's not the point either is making. @Aldarc is talking about how it's a faulty and bad argument that the solution is "making things worse". Their point is that whole argument is just concern trolling to try and avoid having to do something.

@Vaalingrade 's point is that it wasn't that we suddenly learned these things were wrong, but rather that people talked about how these things were wrong and they were simply disregarded. It's not part of the same argumentation, and neither are talking about removing stuff from the past as much as fighting back against the idea that we are "moving too fast" or that "we didn't know better".

The whole point is that we do know better, and what stopped people from moving in the past on these things are the same concern-trolling arguments that people are making now.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's not the point either is making. @Aldarc is talking about how it's a faulty and bad argument that the solution is "making things worse". Their point is that whole argument is just concern trolling to try and avoid having to do something.

@Vaalingrade 's point is that it wasn't that we suddenly learned these things were wrong, but rather that people talked about how these things were wrong and they were simply disregarded. It's not part of the same argumentation, and neither are talking about removing stuff from the past as much as fighting back against the idea that we are "moving too fast" or that "we didn't know better".

The whole point is that we do know better, and what stopped people from moving in the past on these things are the same concern-trolling arguments that people are making now.

And they've done something about it. Warning labels and what they're doing in 5E.

Only thing they can really do is remove it from sale is that what you're advocating? Just to be clear.

 

[Justice and Rule]

And they've done something about it. Warning labels and what they're doing in 5E.

Only thing they can really do is remove it from sale is that what you're advocating? Just to be clear.

Just to be clear, you're talking about an issue that no one is really bringing up. Those posters are largely referring to arguments being made by community members in this thread, not to what Wizards is doing. I don't even know how you construe what they are talking about to be associated with Wizards, given that with @Aldarc 's post you can clearly see the conversation they were having with another poster.

As to what Wizards is doing, it's a start. The fix of "We're blaming it on Volo!" is not exactly great, but Wizards is bigger and thus slower to change than smaller outfits. I hope that they will indeed change how they write their products in the future so that we don't have to "milkshake duck" Mordenkainen as well, but all we can do is wait in that regard.

 

[Hussar]

I read it and I enjoyed it but I still don't see how it held Lovecraft's legacy accountable. Partly because I don't understand what it means to hold someone's legacy accountable. I'm not trying to be obtuse here but I am genuinely in the dark here. If it's as simple as acknowledging his racism and how it crept into his work, okay. I don't know how that holds his legacy accountable, but okay.


And that strikes me as being just as problematic as lionizing someone without acknowledging their faults. To purposely hide where ideas came from strikes me as intellectually dishonest.

Honestly, and 100% not intended as an attack or anything like that? It's okay that you don't get it. That's perfectly fine. You don't have to, to be honest. Just understand that those of us who do get it, are pretty happy with the results.

As far as "hiding" anything, that's not the point. You don't have to talk about Lovecraft to talk about the Mythos stories. You can talk about Mythos stories and tropes and themes without talking about Lovecraft at all. The author is largely unimportant, really, when discussing a body of work. We don't generally have to discuss Tolkien the person when discussing Lord of the Rings, after all. It's one point of view, but, hardly an important one. You look at the text itself and work from that, just like you do with any other body of work.

I mean, we have Sherlock Holmes without the misogyny and racism. Doyle's personal life is almost never referenced at all when we talk about Holmes stories. Heck, the recent Robert Downey Jr. versions of Holmes would have had Doyle absolutely spinning in his grave. But, we don't really care, do we?

Same way as we can have a female, Chinese protagonist (to pick a purely random example) in a remake of Shadows over Innsmouth and no one would bat an eye.

Frankly, the author is generally the least important element of any body of work.