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

[Maxperson]

Well, how do you hold anyone accountable for behavior that is not strictly illegal, but is still not acceptable? By denying them the fruits of their bad behavior. Now, what with him being dead, and most of his works being public domain, we cannot deny him financial fruits. But what do dead people still have?

Dead people have nothing at all, except maybe worms and maggots. Their "legacy" is only for their heirs, and those heirs are often decent people, or at least not bad ones. By going after a legacy, you don't hold those dead who are guilty of racism or other socially unacceptable behaviors accountable, you just potentially hurt the living who may not have done anything worthy of losing income that they may be relying on.

That's why I also don't boycott places like Papa John's or Chick-fil-A(not that I eat there anyway since I'm allergic to chicken). I can't hurt the owners who would still be set for longer than life if their income dropped to 0 tomorrow, but those boycotts do potentially hurt the poor and minority workers on the front line who would have jobs and hours cut if the boycott is successful. I'm all for speaking out against those who engage in race and gender discrimination and holding them accountable in other ways, but I'm not willing to sacrifice innocent people to do it.

 

[MGibster]

Well, how do you hold anyone accountable for behavior that is not strictly illegal, but is still not acceptable? By denying them the fruits of their bad behavior. Now, what with him being dead, and most of his works being public domain, we cannot deny him financial fruits. But what do dead people still have?

Herodotus writes of a meeting between Solon, the great lawmaker and statesman of Athens, and Croesus who was king of Lydia and fabulously wealthy. Croesus did his best to impress his guest by showing him all the opulence he enjoyed and regaling him with tales of all the territory he gained over the years but Solon was unimpressed. Angrily, Croesus asked if Solon had ever known a happier man in all his travels?

Solon: Tellus of Athens.
Croesus: How was he happier?
Solon: Tellus wasn't rich or poor, but he lived to see all his children give birth to their own and he died old and respected volunteering to fight for his country.

Solon is able to give other examples of common people he's met who were happier than Croesus which further infuriates the king.

Croesus: Am I so despised that you compare my happiness as less worthy than common men?
Solon: You are rich beyond measure, and I am sure at this moment no man may fulfill his every fantasy quite so well as you in the whole world. But I have seen men just as rich as you die more ignoble deaths than that the poorest of men. You should count no man as happy until he dies.

Lovecraft's legacy, the legacy that he knew at least, was that of a near destitute, unsuccessful, largely unknown writer who died of cancer at a young age. His writing barely allowed him to eek out a living and he had no idea much more successful writers like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman would count Lovecraft as one of their influences. As far as Lovecraft was aware, his legacy was that of a failure.

So, making it so that whenever people hear "Lovecraft" among their first thoughts are, "oh, that racist shmuck who wrote horror," takes the good name.

Except I don't think it really does. So long as people play Call of Cthulhu or are influenced by his writing, his legacy lives on. Maybe people recognize that he was a racist shmuck, but his legacy is largely intact.

Lovecraft Country takes his work, and turns it around and makes the targets of his racism into the protagonists. It makes people like Lovecraft himself into villains of the piece. Lovecraftian themes used in ways Lovecraft himself would not agree with, and indeed to counter his own ideas. It helps to have better written prose than Lovecraft, which admittedly isn't that hard. These things rob him of the propagation of the problem into the future.

It doesn't rob Lovecraft of anything. He's dead. And I wonder how many people read/watched Lovecraft Country and went over and started reading Lovecraft? Lovecraft Country elevates Lovecraft in many ways. Despite knowing about his racism, the main character still enjoys reading his work. It's kind of like how even anti-war movies seem to glorify war.

 

[MGibster]

Also the book is solid and likely to continue to be well-regarded. Further, it's not alone. It's part of a broader reckoning with Lovecraft's work, and that reckoning and reclamation is happening because, fundamentally, Lovecraft's stuff was interesting, original, and influential, but also incredibly problematic, yet he's more tragic the villainous.

I stopped trying to predict what would stand the test of time a long time ago. But I thought Lovecraft Country was a pretty good book with compelling characters, a good plot, and an interesting premise. I don't think it's a good addition to the mythos, but it stands on its own merits. If a sequel is written I'll happily read it.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

So I've been going over older issues of Dragon Magazine for inspiration and just realized that if WotC really wanted to make the various races of D&D more nuanced they could probably best do it in articles for Dragon+ or on their developer's blog or something rather than having to fit it in published books with limited page counts.

For example, I'm looking right now at an article called "Minotaurs: Tangled Origins and Mysterious Clans" that details the general rules for how clans work in minotaur culture and then gives short examples of four different clans.

Cliffnotes version:

• Minotaurs view mazes as an allegory for life, believing that each decision must be examined carefully before embarking on it.
• Minotaur clans usually take their name for a great leader or philosopher they can trace their ancestry back to.
• Each clan has its own unique maze symbol that minotaurs can identify easily, but peoples of other races find confusing.
• Clan Kranos is descended from a hero that defeated corrupt minotaur leaders. It demands that leaders prove they are worth following rather than claim leadership through accident of birth.
• Clan Sentune is a nomadic clan whose namesake was a philosopher that advocated for experimentation and exploration. Members of the clan separate for a time and reconvene to share what they have learned, and as a result the clan has great diversity in the character of its members.
• Clan Thavok was tasked with guarding and developing the defenses of a minotaur city only for one of their own to betray them and lead the city's enemies through the defenses the clan had created. They now live in self-imposed exile.
• The Narrow Way is a clan that has rejected the allegory of the maze and strictly teaches its members that there is only one correct way to do anything, even mundane tasks, and that only one god is worthy of worship. They are isolationist and shun the chaotic outside world save for those few individuals who leave their community with a naive hope to steer the rest of the world to the Narrow Way.

Something like this would be too much to fit in the Monster Manual and of limited utility to a lot of DMs, but putting it online would at least mean alternate ways of using or portraying minotaurs would be available.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

I think if one is picking up and reusing Lovecraftian themes, knowing the full historical context in which that work was developed is important (though, in his case, the racism is fairly apparent in many of the stories). What that looks like will vary, whether it means just avoiding particular types of representation, acknowledging the deficits of the source material and then moving on, or creating something at tries to subvert those themes. Especially because your audience very well might not be aware of historical or biographical details. I'm not sure accountability is the word that I would use; it's more about being intentional and thoughtful when you engage with various themes, tropes, etc. Same with dnd.

edit: Harlem Unbound is a book I've been wanting to pick up that seems to be intentional in this regard

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If it didn't make a difference what the overall society and your local culture looked like, history would be a lot different. I'm not going to compare everyone who grew up being dragged around cowtowns in Texas in the 20's and 30's to the best people of that time and place. If you don't contextualize things, 99% of the human race across most of history seems terrible, and if that's how other people want to see it, that's on them, but I'm not going to forget when people were steeped in expectations that this stuff was okay, especially when they apparently got better about it over time.

There is no background or time that didn’t also include people that saw Black folks as moral equals to themselves.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't want to describe it on thread, but explain Sunset Towns to me then.

It wasn't just a few lucky bigots that hit the power lottery, it was society writ large to the point where the enlightened folk were afraid to rock the boat.

Very good point. A point that is important to put alongside it is; there are and we’re people in sunset towns who knew that the attitudes and actions of thier neighbors toward Black folks was wrong.

They tended to protect themselves and their entire families by not speaking out, but they were there.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So I've been going over older issues of Dragon Magazine for inspiration and just realized that if WotC really wanted to make the various races of D&D more nuanced they could probably best do it in articles for Dragon+ or on their developer's blog or something rather than having to fit it in published books with limited page counts.

For example, I'm looking right now at an article called "Minotaurs: Tangled Origins and Mysterious Clans" that details the general rules for how clans work in minotaur culture and then gives short examples of four different clans.

Cliffnotes version:

• Minotaurs view mazes as an allegory for life, believing that each decision must be examined carefully before embarking on it.
• Minotaur clans usually take their name for a great leader or philosopher they can trace their ancestry back to.
• Each clan has its own unique maze symbol that minotaurs can identify easily, but peoples of other races find confusing.
• Clan Kranos is descended from a hero that defeated corrupt minotaur leaders. It demands that leaders prove they are worth following rather than claim leadership through accident of birth.
• Clan Sentune is a nomadic clan whose namesake was a philosopher that advocated for experimentation and exploration. Members of the clan separate for a time and reconvene to share what they have learned, and as a result the clan has great diversity in the character of its members.
• Clan Thavok was tasked with guarding and developing the defenses of a minotaur city only for one of their own to betray them and lead the city's enemies through the defenses the clan had created. They now live in self-imposed exile.
• The Narrow Way is a clan that has rejected the allegory of the maze and strictly teaches its members that there is only one correct way to do anything, even mundane tasks, and that only one god is worthy of worship. They are isolationist and shun the chaotic outside world save for those few individuals who leave their community with a naive hope to steer the rest of the world to the Narrow Way.

Something like this would be too much to fit in the Monster Manual and of limited utility to a lot of DMs, but putting it online would at least mean alternate ways of using or portraying minotaurs would be available.

I agree, to a certain extent. That’s some good stuff, and too much for something like a MM entry…as they do them currently.

But I can’t say I’m a big fan of deeper supplementation that is only available online.

Perhaps…paring down the plethora of critters included in the MMs and giving them deeper, broader entries would be the way to go?

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Perhaps…paring down the plethora of critters included in the MMs and giving them deeper, broader entries would be the way to go?

I'm not against giving D&D species more diversity, but I'm also a bit curious about how useful that would be for the majority of DMs. I'm unaware of any metrics concerning how likely it is for a DM to primarily use the Monster Manual as a means for finding interesting things for their PCs to fight and to read lore facilitated to creating reasons for PCs to need to fight them versus wanting to use them as more fleshed-out NPCs that aren't automatically antagonists. I have no idea how many DMs would be pleased to have more lore and possibilities presented for a smaller number of creatures versus having a larger selection of statblocks to use against their players. A DM who wants to feature minotaurs prominently and have multiple distinct minotaur cultures might appreciate spending for time on minotaur lore versus just a statblock, but a DM who mainly just wants to run combat encounters will be annoyed that the darkmantle or water weird or whatever was cut out of the Monster Manual for extraneous minotaur lore they'll never use. In the end, every creature in the Monster Manual is primarily a statblock of game mechanics useful for combat with flavor text to give a reason why this collection of stats represents something different from other statblocks in the book.

I do know at least that removing alignment was popular enough a sentiment that WotC tried it out for a short time but that ultimately they decided to reinstate it with the qualifier "typically", citing backlash to its removal as a reason for bringing it back. I'm curious to see what other changes WotC attempts in the coming years and how many end up sticking in the long term.

 

[Remathilis]

I agree, to a certain extent. That’s some good stuff, and too much for something like a MM entry…as they do them currently.

But I can’t say I’m a big fan of deeper supplementation that is only available online.

Perhaps…paring down the plethora of critters included in the MMs and giving them deeper, broader entries would be the way to go?

The issue becomes... what do you cut?

Already, the 5e MM has a rather pathetic selection of 11+ Challenge monsters. Furthermore, most people will want the "classic staple" monsters they are used to (4e reserved some classics for MM2 and it was not well received). The 5e MM is overstuffed with monsters and it barely feels like enough, I don't care how good the lore is, I don't imagine most people would trade five separate monsters for a five-page spread on different types of orcs or drow, especially for settings they might not use or care about.

Now, if D&D were interested in cutting back on the sheer number of humanoids, dragons, giants, etc. that it has in favor of detailed and comprehensive write-ups on a hundred or so of them, but I don't think that will be a popular move, no matter how good seven different tribes of minotaurs are detailed.