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

[Hussar]

I like authors such as HP Lovecraft and I recognize that they were 'problematic'. But what exactly does that do? Nothing about my...

You bolded the wrong part of your quote. "Oh, yes, I know it's racist .... but..." is pretty much the entire issue.

 

[Hussar]

Didn't Pathfinder just announce that they're dropping slavery as a plotline in future books?

I get the idea that slavery = bad, but, given the absolute predominence of slave races in the 5e Monster Manual, I do kinda see where @Vaalingrade is going with this.

 

[CleverNickName]

I think people who can pick up a work like Lovecraft (or Poe, or Kipling, or Howard, or Doc Smith, etc.) are already smart enough to figure this out. We need to get over the current social trend of trying to control the narrative on everything.

You're equating intellect with sensitivity. Did you do that on purpose?

It's a Legacy Disclaimer. It's not a "social trend," nor is it an attempt "to control the narrative on everything."

 

[CleverNickName]

Thats... wow.

Just wow.

Yeah, it was pretty awful. The Orcs of Thar was one of the first Gazetteers I bought, and even as a rural teenager in 1988 it was really off-putting. They took that angle and went hard with it, artwork and everything.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah, it was pretty awful. The Orcs of Thar was one of the first Gazetteers I bought, and even as a rural teenager in 1988 it was really off-putting. They took that angle and went hard with it, artwork and everything.

I'm very happy to have never heard of it before. It would have utterly dismayed me. Still does a little.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I find At the Mountains of Madness to be one of the sloggy ones.

When the PCs in my Traveller game were excavating an alien installation frozen in ice, which they were suspecting might have strange psionic tendencies and lurking dangers, I suggested to one of the players who reads a lot of sci-fi that he should read At the Mountains of Madness to get into the zone. I don't know if he's forgiven me yet for that particular bit of advice . . .

There are things that humankind was not meant to experience . . . like long accounts of Antarctic latitudes and longitudes, and page-long descriptions of Pabodie's amazing drill.

And oddly I find those bits make the story feel more like an account of a thing that actually happened and less like a piece of fiction.

 

[Zardnaar]

You tell us? What conclusion should we draw? You seem to know what the right answer is. Should we be protesting the pyramids? Steadfastly ignoring anything that exists by the power of human suffering? Closing our eyes to media produced more than 10 years ago? Where's your line?

Personally I don't worry about ancient wonders etc. Slavery was very common not that long ago.

The imperialist British empire wiped it out here.

 

[Zardnaar]

Umm . . . yes, but they're also practically always evil (except Large Luigi and Gnome Ceremorphs, I guess). There's no problem with having them enslave others and experiment on them, because they're almost always the villains.

I seriously can't see what the problem is here. And I'm one of the posters on this site that has been for every pro-inclusivity change discussed at length on this site in the past couple of years. Removing Aberrations is not that, and having Neogi, Illithids, and Aboleths be slaves isn't a bad thing.

(I mentioned that in my last post, when I said that it could be argued that the Mind Flayers are stand-ins for white supremacists/imperialists, and maybe fascists. They're a world-conquering species with superior technology to those that they're conquering, commit eugenics on their thralls and themselves, oppress the religions of their subjects, are extremely racist, and completely obey every command of their colony leaders. If they're a stand-in for anyone, it's imperialists/white supremacists/fascists.)

Interesting take can't disagree to much how you could draw that conclusion.

Mind flayers to me while not representing ultimate evil they essentially rape you to reproduce and feed on sentients as part of their lifecycle. Sentient parasites kinda?

Would be virtually impossible for them to be not evil unless a particularly enlightened one found a way around it's dietary requirements and essentially chose to make it's species extinct.

That's where nuance comes into it.

 

[Mind of tempest]

D&D could lose 80% of its slaver races and slavery would still be the prevalent mode of economics in the D&D world.

It's like the designers could only think of 4 villains types: corrupt leader, slaver, cult and raiding horde. And the other three usually have slaves. Somehow it's slaves all the way down and it's frankly obnoxious.

Edit: Also early mindflayers all had a clearly East Asian veneer to them.

do you have a list of at least four more villain types as I can only do two a both are bad ideas for children's games?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Really? I point you to @Filthy Lucre's posts then,

Mod Note:

This is making it personal. Please don’t do that going forward.