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

[Justice and Rule]

Don't put words in my mouth. I'm not condoning the 80's but that's what it was like eg with AIDs.

Well don't worry since I absolutely didn't say that! You seem to have completely missed the point of my comparison, though.

There were bigger problems back then people cared about and they got way more attention than Orcs of Thar which was a fairly typical product (cf various 80's movies for example).

Look at other pop culture stuff from the time. Very few outside the scientific community were overly concerned about global warming (although it was picking up steam). Apartheid was still a thing and that was a contemporary high profile issue.

So was the fear of nuclear war both pop culture and wider movements.

Did some people think differently absolutely but its disingenuous to claim they were representative of those times. That's all I'm claiming. Alot of things sucked a lot.

Dude, this is terrible reasoning. The idea that "there were bigger problems back in the day" misses that we're currently in a world-spanning viral crisis that has killed millions of people, and yet somehow people have still managed to care about these sorts of things.

The reason people didn't care was that it was easy to write this stuff off in a less-connected world. It was easier to not care about things when you didn't have to put a face to it, which was the point I made with AIDS: people in the early 80's didn't care about it until it had started to get widespread enough for people to start seeing it themselves.

In this case, it's not that people didn't know this stuff was bad. I could have told you this was bad when I was a child. This stuff is utterly crude and it's dumb to think that this sort of stuff was acceptable in the late 80's. What allowed this to sail past was that the hobby was smaller and more insular, and thus it was either unknown to a lot of people or it was easy to write off very crude stuff because you likely didn't know anyone who it was actually affecting.

What puzzles me is people's expectations of 1988. I would be more surprised if Orcs of Thar wasn't produced in the 80's.

Maybe your personal expectations are not in-line with people here?

 

[Scott Christian]

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.)

I think there is something to point out here.

It is your place to judge. Agree.
It is your place to call out something you feel is racist. Agree.
It is your place to actively do something about racism in our hobby. Agree.
It is your place to pass judgement on others. Disagree.

The fact that you say, "I won't use names" then call these people names is wrong. We've been through this before. I ask you to point out specific examples of when people on these forums defended the artwork in this GAZ. The facts - no one has. Which means you are making up a "villain" to A) promote your beliefs (which are just) & B) virtue signal.

Perhaps the best way to approach this is to analyze the GAZ and explain why it is wrong. And then be cognizant of whether someone is disagreeing with that claim or a separate claim, which often comes up because that is the nature of discussions.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Has anyone brought up the point yet that maybe the reason that the GAZ10 supplement is obscure even to the "old school" long term DnD fans is that it was a poorly made and quickly forgotten piece of garbage?

100 pages of handwriting about how horrible a thing is....but that nobody had seen, read, or heard of until it came time to shart upon it.

I admire OPs attention to detail and scholarly manner of critiquing GAZ10 but I'm still struggling how all this discussion is going to somehow turn into real world improvements.

You can't say "Everyone knew this was bad when it came out" and at the same time say "we need to talk about these things so people can learn why they are bad".

 

[Morrus]

B) virtue signal.

Oops. Careless. You'll be leaving the thread, Scott. In the meantime, please review the rules regarding derogatory terms like this.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Is there a less ableist word choice to one true way with? (Inane is my current go to).

The point of an insult is to BE negative, and all insults have to refer to some thing or trait. Insults are, in and of themselves, ableist in their nature.

So, no.

 

[MGibster]

What puzzles me is people's expectations of 1988. I would be more surprised if Orcs of Thar wasn't produced in the 80's.

I don't find each of the individual components to be surprising. Like I said earlier, Chief Sitting Drool sounds like the type of juvenile joke we would have seen on the likes of Garbage Pail Kids. But when you add it all up it becomes more than the sum of its parts. I'm sometimes surprised when I revisit works that I haven't seen in years (sometimes pleasantly surprised) but I'm usually not shocked. This one kind of shocked me.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well don't worry since I absolutely didn't say that! You seem to have completely missed the point of my comparison, though.



Dude, this is terrible reasoning. The idea that "there were bigger problems back in the day" misses that we're currently in a world-spanning viral crisis that has killed millions of people, and yet somehow people have still managed to care about these sorts of things.

The reason people didn't care was that it was easy to write this stuff off in a less-connected world. It was easier to not care about things when you didn't have to put a face to it, which was the point I made with AIDS: people in the early 80's didn't care about it until it had started to get widespread enough for people to start seeing it themselves.

In this case, it's not that people didn't know this stuff was bad. I could have told you this was bad when I was a child. This stuff is utterly crude and it's dumb to think that this sort of stuff was acceptable in the late 80's. What allowed this to sail past was that the hobby was smaller and more insular, and thus it was either unknown to a lot of people or it was easy to write off very crude stuff because you likely didn't know anyone who it was actually affecting.



Maybe your personal expectations are not in-line with people here?

Well look at the movies made in the 80's or the struggles now. If it's bad now it was worse back then.

There was a backlash against the events of the 70's. Mirningin America the tide was flowing in a different direction.

Look at the various problematic movies made. If you look at the 80&s objectively culturally, politically that explains why Ircs of Thar was made.

Season oneor two of Married With Children. It's fact this stuff got made. Why and how did movies like Police Academy, National Lampoon, Porkies etc get made if things weren't different? That's fact and they were popular.

 

[Cadence]

The point of a negative word is to BE negative, and all negative words have to refer to some archetype or a personality trait. Insults are, in and of themselves, ableist in their nature.

So, no.

That doesn't seem to fit with the definitions of ableism I've seen, and websites and blogposts full of alternatives that avoid phrases and ideas commonly used to disparage folks with disabilities.

For example this document from augsburg.edu : Redirect Notice

 

[Mordhau]

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.

These are all good points, but earlier in the thread people were specifically talking about the author and not the work.

 

[Scott Christian]

Oops. Careless. You'll be leaving the thread, Scott. In the meantime, please review the rules regarding derogatory terms like this.

My apologies. I honestly had no idea. I will review the forum rules.