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

[Zardnaar]

I don't think I agree with @Zardnaar. But I can understand where he (? I believe this is the right pronoun) is coming from.

I am in Australia. I have friends who moved here from New Zealand. One reason that some give is that they found NZ too insular. On the other hand, a common phrase among more left-liberal middle class Australians who want to express despair about the political conditions here is to say "I will escape to New Zealand." At the same time that NZ had one of the most Thatcherite governments in the predominantly English-speaking world, it was also banning US warships, the victim of French government terrorism against Greenpeace, and rediscovering and operationalising the Treaty of Waitangi.

In more recent years, NZ has taken many refugees who have been held in camps on Nauru or in PNG by the Australian government. And the NZ PM's response to a white supremacist mass shooting in Christchurch by an Australian generated widespread praise and respect in Australia, especially among more left-liberal Australians.

On the other hand, I have seen Maori activists speak - in Australia - in very hostile terms about the "anti-terrorism" raids that took place in NZ in 2007: 2007 New Zealand police raids - Wikipedia

It seems likely that no country or society is perfect. And many basic social structures are common across many places. But countries and societies are also different.

That's what passes as a heavy handed police response here. The "terrorists" were Tame Iti and a few friends probably shooting bottles in the forest.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I don't think I agree with @Zardnaar. But I can understand where he (? I believe this is the right pronoun) is coming from.

I am in Australia. I have friends who moved here from New Zealand. One reason that some give is that they found NZ too insular. On the other hand, a common phrase among more left-liberal middle class Australians who want to express despair about the political conditions here is to say "I will escape to New Zealand." At the same time that NZ had one of the most Thatcherite governments in the predominantly English-speaking world, it was also banning US warships, the victim of French government terrorism against Greenpeace, and rediscovering and operationalising the Treaty of Waitangi.

In more recent years, NZ has taken many refugees who have been held in camps on Nauru or in PNG by the Australian government. And the NZ PM's response to a white supremacist mass shooting in Christchurch by an Australian generated widespread praise and respect in Australia, especially among more left-liberal Australians.

On the other hand, I have seen Maori activists speak - in Australia - in very hostile terms about the "anti-terrorism" raids that took place in NZ in 2007: 2007 New Zealand police raids - Wikipedia

It seems likely that no country or society is perfect. And many basic social structures are common across many places. But countries and societies are also different.

Nah, totally. America has a lot of problems, but I think we are generally more open about our problems than a lot of critics. Not open enough, but few places are. But I find the argument combined with the view of the topic we are discussing (the Orcs of Thar) to be... dissonant, to say the least.

Problem here is ideas imported from the USA. The big one was the prevailing economic theory in the 1980's (greed is good), more recently US social media cancer.


We can process the homegrown stuff.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nah, totally. America has a lot of problems, but I think we are generally more open about our problems than a lot of critics. Not open enough, but few places are. But I find the argument combined with the view of the topic we are discussing (the Orcs of Thar) to be... dissonant, to say the least.

We're generally not shooting each other over things. Even here though things are constrained by the powers that be.

 

[pemerton]

I have no idea what ethnicity your kids are, but I think it is valuable for ALL kids to understand our history of racism, at least once they are old enough to process it. Why is that controversial?

Do you really think that the way to educate children who are not white about "our" history of racism is to have them encounter HPL or REH's caricatures and pejoratives on the shelf of their local public library?

My view is that when someone lives their life having the sorts of encounters that @AbdulAlhazred described upthread, they don't need further "education" of that sort.

Where did I imply that your kids should need you to protect them? I don't see how this follows as a response to anything said. I'm merely saying that I think a parent should have more of a say in what their kid can read than a governmental agency, or some approved list or section of the library.

Again, I'm not really sure how you're connecting this to anything I've said. And I'm not clear what your suggestion is with regards to Howard and Lovecraft in a public library. You want a special section for all books that don't fit today's standards? And whose standards? Who decides?

I said that I think these works are better catalogued and shelved as "literature of historical significance" - from memory that would be somewhere in the 800s; the same general place, for instance, where one might find Marquis de Sade - than under juvenile fiction.

We wouldn't have books telling white kids that they are "mongrels" or sub-human, as if that was a completely uncontroversial proposition, shelved in the ordinary juvenile fiction section. Why should other children have to be subjected to that, or need to have their parents protecting them from encountering racist stuff?

Who decides? I assume librarians are up to this task. Cataloguing books is part of what they are trained to do. And If a parent thinks its important that their kids read REH or HPL they can always track it down for them - a few months ago I encouraged one of my children to read Tower of the Elephant as I think it is REH's best story and a model of the fantasy short story.

Are these open-ended questions that you're entertaining, or are you just be contrarian to whatever I happen to say, even if it is in basic agreement with something you said?

I was reiterating that I had not made a normative statement. Casting LotR is not trivial, because the work portrays a particular, morally-laden conception, of human peoples and the human condition. I don't know how much Peter Jackson thought about it, but he was in a difficult position, both in terms of presenting the story he was setting out to present, and also providing opportunities for actors and extras in NZ.

To choose a quite different example that still has some resemblances: imagine if we cast The Quiet American being indifferent to the race of the actor playing Phuong. Something might be lost. But presenting Greene's conception would not be straightforward either, in part because Greene's vision was complicated (I like this essay by Zadie Smith: Zadie Smith on the genius of Graham Greene).

Thankfully I don't find myself having to cast films! I have different practical problems, arising from my professional and personal life, that push me to move from analysis to normatively-informed decision.

 

[Cadence]

<off topic>

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Man, this thread sure went on a tangent or two (or more).

 

[MGibster]

I said that I think these works are better catalogued and shelved as "literature of historical significance" - from memory that would be somewhere in the 800s; the same general place, for instance, where one might find Marquis de Sade - than under juvenile fiction.

In which American libraries is Lovecraft's body of work filed under juvenile fiction?

 

[Justice and Rule]

Man, this thread sure went on a tangent or two (or more).

I mean, that's how these threads go: at a certain point one side basically concedes the greater point and retreats to sub-topics and tangents that are more easily defensible.

 

[Cadence]

I mean, that's how these threads go: at a certain point one side basically concedes the greater point and retreats to sub-topics and tangents that are more easily defensible.

I think a number of people who agree with the main point from the start often get annoyed or flabbergasted by some of the tangents or arguments that spring up along the way too. <Insert rant on the choice of the word retreat>

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's also worth noting that much of the 5e changes came after the 4e backlash, and they wanted to go back to a "back to basics" mentality that Pathfinder had tapped into and would be serviceable if 5e never took off and remained a legacy/life-support product (there was a point where we were considering it lucky if we got three books per year). They went for the simplest option: goblins and orcs are always evil pawns of evil gods. 5e's success changed all that. It brought in new eyes, increased the publishing schedule, and required a more nuanced look of things because creating "the last edition of D&D" was no longer the primary goal of WotC anymore.

Yeah, they bet on the wrong option (the legacy/simplistic one) assuming D&D was going to remain a fairly niche phenomenon that could slide on nostalgia. When D&D became hot girl sh!t, it found that wasn't going to cut it and hence the mid-edition corrections we've seen.

I wouldn't say they bet on the wrong option. If they hadn't designed 5e as a legacy game, would it have become as popular, and drawn as much attention? I know if they doubled down on 4e I wouldn't have stuck around.