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

[ECMO3]

I don't think you can really judge things in 80s by today's standards. People in that era just did not care what other people thought about pretty much anything and bigotry was widespread. I don't think it is accurate to say people did not know this was wrong, they just didn't care and for the most part no one else cared either.

I can remember my uncle coming to my parents house over the holidays and talking about how he and some of his friends went "gay bashing" the night before. They picked up a guy at a "gay bar" we all knew about and then rolled him and stole his money. They talked about this over Turkey like it was normal and no one really cared, he even complained about how little the guy was carrying. This same uncle was actually bisexual himself, although we called him "gay" at the time. The term "bisexual" was not used, either you had sex with members of the same sex and you were "gay" (or other slurs used to describe that) or you didn't and then you were not "gay". Whether you also had sex with members of the opposite sex was irrelevant to "being gay" or not.

There was an African-American family that moved into the Italian section of Trenton where a some of my relatives lived and his house burned down. I don't know for a fact it was Arson and it was never investigated by the police, but it was widely believed the residents did it because they did not want them there.

We also had an African-American owned house burn down on my street. My neighborhood was an integrated neighborhood, but a couple of the kids who lived in that house were caught breaking and entering and it was widely believed they were involved in a string of robberies that same summer, so they burned down their house and forced them to move. Again, never investigated.

This kind of stuff was as "normal" as smoking on an airplane or putting your kid in your lap for a long road trip.

Sure, there were activists complaining about this at the time (as there were complaining about smoking and carseats) but they were considered a bunch of "whack jobs" and no one really took them seriously.

In that context I don't find it surprising this was written and I doubt many at the time would have even noticed or cared, including those allegedly targeted. That was life at the time.

 

[Cadence]

I don't think you can really judge things in 80s by today's standards. People in that era just did not care what other people thought about pretty much anything and bigotry was widespread.

<Snip>

This kind of stuff was as "normal" as smoking on an airplane or putting your kid in your lap for a long road trip.

<Snip>.

In that context I don't find it surprising this was written and I doubt many at the time would have even noticed or cared.

I have to say in at least some places in the 80s it certainly wasn't common to do such things, and people would have been horrified if it came out someone had. But in the early part of the decade the words that went with such deeds were common insults the children seemed to have picked up by osmosis :-(

 

[Mordhau]

I suspect that this thread is almost entirely people talking past each other at this point.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What I don't get is the intense vitriol towards Lovecraft

His work is widely praised and held up as Important Work in spec fiction and especially horror.

 

[Micah Sweet]

His work is widely praised and held up as Important Work in spec fiction and especially horror.

Given the number and quality of artists inspired by his works, I'd have to say it is Important Work in spec fiction and especially horror. His personal views (no matter how reprehensible) don't change that.

 

[Remathilis]

There's also marketability to consider. Creating unique cultures, in addition to being a ton of work (if it's even possible), decreases familiarity and potentially reduces your audience. They were and are trying to sell these books to as many people as possible, and using familiar things makes that easier.

Exactly.

One of D&D's greatest strengths is also its weakness: it uses a lot of familiar concepts in not-particularly unique ways. I can describe my character's origin, outlook, and personality in striking detail, but the minute I say his class is "paladin" automatically gives you a certain set of assumptions about him. Likewise, there is a lot of D&D that is easily accessible BECAUSE you can say "Lord of the Rings" or "Mad Max meets Barsoom" or "Universal Monsters" or whatever.

Which is why I worry about the longterm solution to problems like this. The Monster Manual has finite room, and we are asking for multiple unique cultures per humanoid to fit across multiple different D&D settings. That could potentially be hundreds of unique cultures

 

[Justice and Rule]

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

I mean, no? Like, I lived back then. I didn't have to worry about my parents (or until recently, my grandparents) falling sick and dying on a respirator like I do now. Certain things were worse, but at the same time certain things were definitely better for a straight white guy like me. My parents lived through the Detroit Riots of 1967, my mom worked in Detroit through the 80's until the 10's in some seriously bad neighborhoods and she's continually told me that she's never had a more terrifying time in her life than the present. For her, she's seeing a lot of stuff that most white people didn't have to come to terms with until the news really had to start covering it. As I pointed out before, police brutality and reform is an excellent example of this.

And that's just another strike against this whole thing: the people who arguably had it worse are the people being mocked, not the people doing the mocking. Just look at how many people want to return to an idealistic view of the 50's. This whole thing just makes no sense from a perspective of "people had more to worry about" when, arguably, the people who were writing and consuming these things were in a better position back then compared to where they are today.

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

That doesn't really mean anything towards what we are talking about. Your whole view of Reagan that you put forth earlier in the thread makes no sense to me as an American.

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.

This isn't coherent. Those got made because, at the time, the people who were being made fun of weren't able to push back, and thus you could openly make joke about them. It's not that people didn't know that they were rude, but rather because they were rude they took enjoyment with them. You could punch down more easily because you didn't have to be exposed to the humanity of who you were punching. You brought up the AIDS crisis and that is, again, a great example: people didn't care or could openly mock that stuff and get away with it... until it started to come back home to the people in the majority.

In the end, people always knew this stuff was wrong. When I was a kid in the '90's it was easy to call someone a "f*g" because I didn't know any openly gay people at the time. As I grew up and began to interact with gay people, I realized that I used that insult because I could be cruel without consequence, that I could be mean and no one would do anything about it. It's not that I suddenly realized it was wrong, but I always knew it was wrong, but I did it because I could. In all honesty, I think a lot of people feel the same way and it's why they don't like having these sorts of conversations, but that's a whole other discussion.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Given the number and quality of artists inspired by his works, I'd have to say it is Important Work in spec fiction and especially horror. His personal views (no matter how reprehensible) don't change that.

There aren't many Lovecraft stories I still particularly like other than "The Color Out of Space", but I'm definitely a fan of certain others' works that were undeniably inspired by him (a particular favorite being horror manga artist Junji Ito).

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think you can really judge things in 80s by today's standards. People in that era just did not care what other people thought about pretty much anything and bigotry was widespread. I don't think it is accurate to say people did not know this was wrong, they just didn't care and for the most part no one else cared either.

I can remember my uncle coming to my parents house over the holidays and talking about how he and some of his friends went "gay bashing" the night before. They picked up a guy at a "gay bar" we all knew about and then rolled him and stole his money. They talked about this over Turkey like it was normal and no one really cared, he even complained about how little the guy was carrying. This same uncle was actually bisexual himself, although we called him "gay" at the time. The term "bisexual" was not used, either you had sex with members of the same sex and you were "gay" (or other slurs used to describe that) or you didn't and then you were not "gay". Whether you also had sex with members of the opposite sex was irrelevant to "being gay" or not.

There was an African-American family that moved into the Italian section of Trenton where a some of my relatives lived and his house burned down. I don't know for a fact it was Arson and it was never investigated by the police, but it was widely believed the residents did it because they did not want them there.

We also had an African-American owned house burn down on my street. My neighborhood was an integrated neighborhood, but a couple of the kids who lived in that house were caught breaking and entering and it was widely believed they were involved in a string of robberies that same summer, so they burned down their house and forced them to move. Again, never investigated.

This kind of stuff was as "normal" as smoking on an airplane or putting your kid in your lap for a long road trip.

Sure, there were activists complaining about this at the time (as there were complaining about smoking and carseats) but they were considered a bunch of "whack jobs" and no one really took them seriously.

In that context I don't find it surprising this was written and I doubt many at the time would have even noticed or cared, including those allegedly targeted. That was life at the time.

I mean, no? Like, I lived back then. I didn't have to worry about my parents (or until recently, my grandparents) falling sick and dying on a respirator like I do now. Certain things were worse, but at the same time certain things were definitely better for a straight white guy like me. My parents lived through the Detroit Riots of 1967, my mom worked in Detroit through the 80's until the 10's in some seriously bad neighborhoods and she's continually told me that she's never had a more terrifying time in her life than the present. For her, she's seeing a lot of stuff that most white people didn't have to come to terms with until the news really had to start covering it. As I pointed out before, police brutality and reform is an excellent example of this.

And that's just another strike against this whole thing: the people who arguably had it worse are the people being mocked, not the people doing the mocking. Just look at how many people want to return to an idealistic view of the 50's. This whole thing just makes no sense from a perspective of "people had more to worry about" when, arguably, the people who were writing and consuming these things were in a better position back then compared to where they are today.



That doesn't really mean anything towards what we are talking about. Your whole view of Reagan that you put forth earlier in the thread makes no sense to me as an American.



This isn't coherent. Those got made because, at the time, the people who were being made fun of weren't able to push back, and thus you could openly make joke about them. It's not that people didn't know that they were rude, but rather because they were rude they took enjoyment with them. You could punch down more easily because you didn't have to be exposed to the humanity of who you were punching. You brought up the AIDS crisis and that is, again, a great example: people didn't care or could openly mock that stuff and get away with it... until it started to come back home to the people in the majority.

In the end, people always knew this stuff was wrong. When I was a kid in the '90's it was easy to call someone a "f*g" because I didn't know any openly gay people at the time. As I grew up and began to interact with gay people, I realized that I used that insult because I could be cruel without consequence, that I could be mean and no one would do anything about it. It's not that I suddenly realized it was wrong, but I always knew it was wrong, but I did it because I could. In all honesty, I think a lot of people feel the same way and it's why they don't like having these sorts of conversations, but that's a whole other discussion.

It's nitpicking though. The majority of people at the time didn't care. This was pop culture pop culture means popular.

Not claiming it was universal or saying those people effected who didn't have power. I would agree with that statement.

It's against the rules to discuss the wider trends of the times.

I did history at uni we were outright taught to examine things as they were might be different overseas.

Not claiming it's ok or whatever things have changed because of that.

And a lot of things from there are also subjective based in where you grew up. Nice place in New England's going to be different than Missouri or Alabama yes?


Conversations about race etc coming up now we did that here back in the 70's and 80's it's not perfect but generally it's about 20-30 years ahead of the USA. Not on every issue though. You'll get there or you won't.


Distinct lack of rioting etc probably overdue for some last seen 1981 or 51 depending on what counts.

 

[Cadence]

This isn't coherent. Those got made because, at the time, the people who were being made fun of weren't able to push back, and thus you could openly make joke about them. It's not that people didn't know that they were rude, but rather because they were rude they took enjoyment with them. You could punch down more easily because you didn't have to be exposed to the humanity of who you were punching. You brought up the AIDS crisis and that is, again, a great example: people didn't care or could openly mock that stuff and get away with it... until it started to come back home to the people in the majority.

In the end, people always knew this stuff was wrong. When I was a kid in the '90's it was easy to call someone a "f*g" because I didn't know any openly gay people at the time. As I grew up and began to interact with gay people, I realized that I used that insult because I could be cruel without consequence, that I could be mean and no one would do anything about it. It's not that I suddenly realized it was wrong, but I always knew it was wrong, but I did it because I could. In all honesty, I think a lot of people feel the same way and it's why they don't like having these sorts of conversations, but that's a whole other discussion.

I'm pretty sure when we were in grade school in the late 70s, around us we either didn't have a clue or hadn't thought about it at any level when it was first used as an insult. At that stage they were words people were called and you didn't want to be one. I mean, I remember in 1st grade we all thought "punk" was awful, so it's not like the insults started being used for a particular reason. When it did rise to the level of consciousness a lot of us stopped using it and we're uncomfortable when a relative would. I had never thought about how each person's experience using the words (as oppossed to being a target of them) could change how it's viewed.