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

[Justice and Rule]

I'm not claiming it's right or wrong that's what it was like. I lived through it iirc you're 19 or so you weren't there.

The reason no one cared that much was the cultural zeitgeist was different and the actual bad stuff happening back then was what people focused on. I posted some if the bad stuff but it's to graphic.

You can jump up and down going la la la as much as you want. Why do you think the nihilism of the 90's happened for example?

The 80's kids grew up and it was a collective F you to the olde generations and the 80's (greed is good).

Consider that the stuff I saw with my own eyes, observed and saw the consequences of up to an including people dying is to graphic for these forums.

Look at the movies from that era and what else was happening. That's why. Is Orcs of Thar offensive absolutely. Compared to what else was going on at the time it wasn't that bad.

And the 60's and 70's were worse than that going by my mother's stories along with my friends mother.

They weren't worried about things like that back then it was AIDs, gay rights (not marriage), legal protections for women, crack cocaine, just say no etc.

And a few of those things turned out to be disasters. You weren't even born yet. Orcs of Thar offensive in 88 I was more concerned that year with my parents divorce, the old man's boozing, getting clobbered at school and my sister getting kicked out of home such is a 10 year olds life. That was easy compared to others. That's the PG recap of 1988. Didn't have the privilege of a nice 2010's upbringing and social media.

lmao, the argument that "Things were so bad that we couldn't concentrate on this sort of stuff" is utterly hysterical and totally nonsense. We're in the midst of a global pandemic, supply shortages, probably the most unstable geopolitical situation since the fall of the Soviet Union, among a variety of incredibly dangerous domestic political situations. I grew up in the 80's and the 90's, and right now feels like the most dangerous time I've ever lived through and somehow we still manage to pay attention to this stuff.

And this is why people push back on the "it was a different time" argument: there is an argument to be made there, but it takes nuance that is definitely not being used here. Instead, it's basically being used as a heavy-handed bludgeon to try and end any sort of discussion on the manner. "It was a different time, so we don't talk about it" and let's add in some "If you weren't there, you wouldn't understand" in there because Argument from Authority/Personal Experience totally isn't a fallacy when it's about age.

In fact, you basically completely disarm your own argument by bringing up a great example of something no one cared about until they were forced to interact with it: AIDS. For a good portion of the 80's it was basically ignored until it became widespread enough that people actually had to start to interact with people infected with it, through family, friends, coworkers... what happens is that people are brought into contact with these things and suddenly they have a face put to it, so that they can no longer just ignore it and write it off as something that doesn't affect them. You can trace this through a bunch of issues: a good modern version would be police violence, where the proliferation of video cameras has basically brought about a real demand for police reform that wasn't there before because it was abstracted for many people.

And that's what we have here. No one noticed Orcs of Thar is not because of how much was going on, but because it was a niche product in a niche hobby in a time where things wouldn't widely get noticed because we simply weren't as interconnected as we are now. This is not an argument about "colonialist language" or more subtle things, but just blatant offensive racial stereotype stuff. It's the sort of stuff that would have been offensive enough that my grandmother probably would have taken notice and not bought me any more D&D products. It's not because the world of the 1980's were so utterly terrible that no one would possibly notice.

 

[Voadam]

Nope. Understanding a work does not mean you need to know the first thing about the author and I can prove it in three words.

James Tiptree Jr.

For those who don't know, James Tiptree Jr. is a seminal author of SF. One of the founders of the genre really. Won all sorts of accolades, to the point where one one the highest SF awards you can win is the Jame Tiptree Jr award. (Now renamed as the Sheldon Award.)

However, James Tiptree Jr. is a pen name for Alison Bradley Sheldon and never existed. Not only did James Tiptree Jr. never exist, but, no one actually knew who James Tiptree Jr. was for a decade or more. Yet, James Tiptree Jr. won all sorts of SF awards, was widely read and critiqued.

Now, according to those who claim that the author is important, it would be impossible to actually understand the works because we don't know the author. Yet, apparently, it wasn't all that difficult to understand.

So, no, the author is the least important element in understanding and critiquing a work. This is basic Lit Crit 101 stuff. I mean, if you don't like this example, then tell me this. Without looking it up, who wrote The Wrath of Khan? Could you understand the work without knowing the author? Empire Strikes back? The Matrix? Any of a hundred other works that you can talk about without having the first clue who wrote it?

Counterpoint.

There are a lot of Conan novels written by creator R.E. Howard and a lot written after his death by various other authors. The writing varies greatly in quality and style but it mostly varies by which specific author did the writing. You can read and talk about them outside of the context of the specific author, but you miss some significant relevant context.

Frank Herbert's Dune books versus the non-Frank follow on ones.

I believe the FR Time of Troubles trilogy is written by different authors under the same pen name. Knowing that type of setup helps in understanding and critiquing such a trilogy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Things don't just become okay because everyone else was a scumbag or cowed by scumbags. Accepting the 'zeitgeist' is how we slide back into scumbaggery.

Again, we're pretending that not being awful was some recent scientific discovery and the people of the past are innocent because they were too dumb to know better rather than profiting off it, not wanting to rock the boat or wanting to rock the boat only to be murdered for it but the MASSIVE number of people in the other camps.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Things don't just become okay because everyone else was a scumbag or cowed by scumbags. Accepting the 'zeitgeist' is how we slide back into scumbaggery.

Again, we're pretending that not being awful was some recent scientific discovery and the people of the past are innocent because they were too dumb to know better rather than profiting off it, not wanting to rock the boat or wanting to rock the boat only to be murdered for it but the MASSIVE number of people in the other camps.

Yeah it’s like when people don’t want to acknowledge that certain American founding fathers were especially bad people. Like, these folks got criticism from their peers. They were aware of the arguments against their actions.

Lovecraft’s entire mindset was defined by racism. He was more racist than most people of his time and place. We aren’t being unfair to anyone by calling him a scumbag.

 

[Umbran]

No but a few posters like to project modern values back into the past. The zeitgeist was very different.

When talking about the past, of course we are. Because even what people thought of as basic human decency has hardly been a constant.

So, here's the problem: The cruelty is part of the point.

Again - they didn't call him "Chief Sitting Drool" because they didn't know is was hurtful. They knew - the point of such "humor" is to be hurtful, to tear down others in order to make yourself look and feel superior.

The difference in zeitgeist isn't that it was okay back then. The difference in the zeitgeist was that a white guy could get away with it without repercussions. Not exactly a moral high ground.

And, by the way, invoking "the zeitgeist" is invoking a majority position. Of course the majority position will excuse the behavior of the majority! If the majority is demonstrably racist, you are invoking racism to defend racism. In essence, you are assuming your conclusion.

 

[Remathilis]

Things don't just become okay because everyone else was a scumbag or cowed by scumbags. Accepting the 'zeitgeist' is how we slide back into scumbaggery.

Again, we're pretending that not being awful was some recent scientific discovery and the people of the past are innocent because they were too dumb to know better rather than profiting off it, not wanting to rock the boat or wanting to rock the boat only to be murdered for it but the MASSIVE number of people in the other camps.

I think people are weighing the difference of intent. I hardly suspect any D&D book was designed with malicious intent to spread lies and hate about RW minority groups, but I am old enough to remember a LOT of RPGs cribbed culture notes from non-mainstream-American cultures (using hollywood or similar interpretations of said cultures) as a shorthand to easily describe fantastical beings to others. It's hard to explain the nunances of a unique orc culture to someone not familiar with your setting, it's easy to say, "they're boar-riding Mongols" and let decades of media paint the picture for them. I'm not saying that is right, merely it was easy and for decades it wasn't called out due to the echo chamber of culture D&D primarily existed in.

Ergo, a lot of people are willing to cut slack to them for being oblivious rather than malicious. I guess if you're only weighing by result (people got hurt) then that is a distinction without difference: ignorance is not an excuse. Most people do see shades of gray though, and I think it's fair to say Bruce Heard wasn't aiming for slander when authoring his book but opted for the easy path of playing on existing tropes and stereotypes rather than creating whole-cloth material. (Mystara is notorious for this design concept; nearly every land in the Known World and Hollow World, even the Savage Coast, is a thin pastiche of a RW culture or lifted from Tolkien in the case of demihumans. It makes Mystara a very easy world to grasp because you can describe whole kingdoms in one sentence, but that also works to its detriment when every kingdom is full of cliches and stereotypes).

 

[pemerton]

When I say that REH's Conan stories are racist, I am not making a moral judgement about REH - although perhaps some moral implications follow from what I'm saying, at least if that is conjoined with some readily-available further premises.

I'm making an observation about (i) the content of the stories, and (ii) the relationship of that content to, and the place of that content within, social and cultural structures that express a suite of ideas that perform various functions - functions of subordination, and also ideological functions.

I think most critics and historians, if they say the work is racist, are intending something broadly similar to what I've described.

Analysing and criticising these works probably will not do very much to directly change/reduce/eliminate the subordination function of the social and cultural structures. But it can help change/reduce/eliminate the ideological function, and in that way may indirectly affect the subordination function.

In this way it is analogous to, although not the same as, some forms of consciousness raising.

 

[Mercurius]

I think people are weighing the difference of intent. I hardly suspect any D&D book was designed with malicious intent to spread lies and hate about RW minority groups, but I am old enough to remember a LOT of RPGs cribbed culture notes from non-mainstream-American cultures (using hollywood or similar interpretations of said cultures) as a shorthand to easily describe fantastical beings to others. It's hard to explain the nunances of a unique orc culture to someone not familiar with your setting, it's easy to say, "they're boar-riding Mongols" and let decades of media paint the picture for them. I'm not saying that is right, merely it was easy and for decades it wasn't called out due to the echo chamber of culture D&D primarily existed in.

Ergo, a lot of people are willing to cut slack to them for being oblivious rather than malicious. I guess if you're only weighing by result (people got hurt) then that is a distinction without difference: ignorance is not an excuse. Most people do see shades of gray though, and I think it's fair to say Bruce Heard wasn't aiming for slander when authoring his book but opted for the easy path of playing on existing tropes and stereotypes rather than creating whole-cloth material. (Mystara is notorious for this design concept; nearly every land in the Known World and Hollow World, even the Savage Coast, is a thin pastiche of a RW culture or lifted from Tolkien in the case of demihumans. It makes Mystara a very easy world to grasp because you can describe whole kingdoms in one sentence, but that also works to its detriment when every kingdom is full of cliches and stereotypes).

This is a really good point. I wonder just how much of allegedly "problematic elements" of past RPG products are actually just due to lazy world-building. And as you say, it isn't always lazy but more a matter of convenience. I mean, it is virtually impossible to create something fantastical without referring to, or at least being influenced by, something in the real world. And it is all-too-easy to associate fantasy stuff to real-world stuff, due to superficial commonalities.

That said, while I've only skimmed a handful of pages in this thread and have never owned or even looked at Orcs of Thar, it does seem that it went a bit beyond this into deliberate mockery or, at least, clueless callousness. Chief Sitting Drool goes a bit beyond lazy world-building. Of course unless the author, Bruce Heard, has a history of such things, it could be an instance of temporary error in judgment or poorly conceived "humor;" I wouldn't want to blacklist him for one product.

Meaning, this is not to say that all such instances are just due to laziness or moments of poor judgment, but the waters are pretty muddy, so much so that we should be hesitant to jump to conclusions. And unlike what someone said upthread, I don't think Orcs of Thar ends the debate on whether or not orcs etc are racist surrogates for real-world peoples. Just because one product, one author, seemingly used them as such, doesn't mean that's how they were conceived of over thousands of products and by hundreds of authors. Anything can be misused. If anything, I think it supports the idea that there is a wide range of how orcs and such have been depicted, and because this product stands out so much, it gives us an example of actual "problematic usage," and makes everything else be put into context.

Or to put it another way, if you broaden the definition of "red" to include orange and yellow, then you'll see red almost everywhere. But when you actually have an instance of red, it allows you to better differentiate it from orange and yellow.

 

[Mercurius]

When I say that REH's Conan stories are racist, I am not making a moral judgement about REH - although perhaps some moral implications follow from what I'm saying, at least if that is conjoined with some readily-available further premises.

I'm making an observation about (i) the content of the stories, and (ii) the relationship of that content to, and the place of that content within, social and cultural structures that express a suite of ideas that perform various functions - functions of subordination, and also ideological functions.

I think most critics and historians, if they say the work is racist, are intending something broadly similar to what I've described.

Analysing and criticising these works probably will not do very much to directly change/reduce/eliminate the subordination function of the social and cultural structures. But it can help change/reduce/eliminate the ideological function, and in that way may indirectly affect the subordination function.

In this way it is analogous to, although not the same as, some forms of consciousness raising.

I think this is a valid and important distinction, and may help to diffuse some of the defensiveness a fan of REH's might feel unless, of course, you're suggesting that reading Howard today perpetuates the "functions of subordination," etc.

But here's a question I have been wondering: For those who are interested in the project of analyzing authors and artists from the past from a certain contemporary lens of what is and is not problematic, where is the line between an author or work being "blacklisted" and when you can still enjoy them, in spite of the problematic content?

I imagine the line is different for everyone, but that's kind of my question. Where is the line for you? And if there's a line for that, is there also a line for where you not only don't want to read them, but also would support their work being pulled out of circulation?

I ask because we all make this sort of decision all the time: we choose to support things that we might find reprehensible, if only out of our own ignorance, intentional or not. We all give money to companies that do things that we don't like, sometimes terrible things. And is that any different that reading an author, some of whose views we find problematic? (aside from the fact that I don't think I've ever come across an author--or person, really--whose views I 100% agree with).

I personally don't have an issue with reading a book or author whose views I don't agree with, or even find reprehensible. For one, it is rare that everything they say is reprehensible or that their work can be entirely reduced to the problematic elements. I'm sure there is stuff out there that would fit that criteria, but I haven't found it - and probably wouldn't enjoy it if I did find it (although, as an aside, when I worked at a big used bookstore back in the 90s, I would come across some pretty wild stuff, but it was rather rare).

So where is the line where thou cannot pass? (By "you" I don't only mean pemerton, but anyone reading this). And if there's a line in which it becomes too much that you won't read it or cannot enjoy it, is there another line where you think more public action should be taken?

 

[Faolyn]

Interestingly, that seemed to be a holdover from 4e's design paradigm where you had "elite" monsters with unique abilities; goblin boss, drow priestess, Eye of Gruumsh, etc. I guess if we are going to treat goblins, orcs, and drow as PC races (note the lack of PHB PC races in the MM) you could cut a lot of humanoids out and plop them in with dual-purpose PC/NPC stats.

The full statblocks, yeah. I know in 2e there'd be a line in the description that would read "for every 30 goblins, there is one goblin lieutenant with 2 hit dice" or something like that. Which is all that really should be needed. Or in 5e+ terms, goblin bandit captain, goblin veteran, goblin cultist, etc.

You are right, however, in that if goblins et al are going to be PC races, or at least treated as people instead of as pure monsters, then they probably shouldn't be in the MM. Maybe there should be a chapter on building these people as NPCs/NPC antagonists--in which case all races, including humans--should get explained:

​

Goblins: Goblin NPCs get the Nimble Escape and Fury of the Small trait. Since goblins are typically very agile, consider giving NPC goblins a +2 or higher bonus to Dexterity.​

​

A typical goblin village will have up to 1000 individuals. There will be 20-30 warriors (guards) and 1-2 lieutenants (bandit captains) per 50 people, and 1 captain (veteran) for every 10 lieutenants. There will also be 1-2 acolytes and 1-2 alchemists per 100 people, 1 priest for every 5 acolytes, and 1 druid for every two priests. The rest will be commoners, but goblin commoners, especially those that live in wilderness villages, are proficient in spears, shortswords, and light armor.​

Or something like this.