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

[Azzy]

Its fascinating that while China is running concentration camps to exterminate the Uyghurs, clearly genocide of a race. The focus on the youth today is whether dead authors had racist thoughts in the creation of fantasy monsters.

That's a wrap, folks—we're not allowed to be concerned about or to take action about racist materials in RPG because China's commiting genocide. Everything else must be put on hold until we gamers make China stop.

 

[Zardnaar]

Now this, my friend, all relates to the thorny, prickly, kudzu that is the pros and cons of digital ownership, which I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, beyond to say that backups are never a bad idea.

An amusing anecdote actually; I recently found my own Kindle Fire, which I used long ago to play Knights of the Old Republic on. I had more recently deleted the file for space, and when I tried to download it again I found it had been delisted from the Kindle store, and it wouldn't let me download it.

Digital ownership can be a load of horse, is what I'm saying.

My new Xbox runs my old Xbox games it's nice played my hardcopy KoToR I and II not to long ago. I also own them in steam and can get then on game pass iirc. I have multiple ways of accessing them it's good.

WitC let the genie out if the bottle though when they started selling old material. I don't care if they can't/won't release everything.

I do care if they remove what they have made available (see 4E launch). I still have to redownload sine older PDFs predating that decision.

I don't care about disclaimer labels nor do they offend me I do find them a bit condescending. For me the publication date is the warning.

 

[Mercurius]

No, because that's just a reductio ad absurdum argument. The problematic nature of something is individualized to that thing and is extremely dependent on context, thus the idea of "Would we get rid of everything?" is nonsense. No one has argued just because someone is offended by something we should get rid of it without any sort of examination, hence why I talked about giving them the benefit of the doubt and not just buying it wholesale.

This seems reasonable. Of course, give them the benefit of the doubt. But again, that doesn't mean that simply because a person is offended, action should be taken (or that their offense is reasonable, or justifies action).

Why not put disclaimers? What is the problem with this? Why not recognize when things are bad and explain why they are so people understand why people thought these things were offensive? "Just moving forwards" misses that we can at least warn people about what we did in the past and why they were wrong. @Dungeonosophy 's outline for what they'd want to happen is utterly reasonable. What's the reason to not do these things?

I'm not arguing against disclaimers - but I'm also not arguing for them. To be honest, I'm mixed. As someone said, the disclaimer on Oriental Adventures seems to have a positive effect, if only in that it calmed the situation down. But it didn't solve anything, really.

What do you mean by "signaling"? Are you saying we're just virtue signaling?

Because honestly, I haven't seen that at all in these threads and it feels like a whole lot of projection.

Your words, not mine - and please don't bait me. That's not what I said. How about "expressing to the proper level of outrage," if you prefer. But I have seen that the lack of a certain response seems to breed a certain backlash.

Oh for the...

There is a difference between feeling emotions and being emotional. You are conflating the two. When you are offended, you are feeling an emotion. But you can also outline logically why you feel that way, and why it's doing that. When people talk about being offended by the Orcs of Thar, they can outline why these things make them feel that way.

BEING EMOTIONAL is colloquially used when you are not using logic. When someone feels like they are being attacked because they are taking alignment out of the game or are being called racist because of why people want it out of the game, that is them being emotional. It's not about how they are feeling, but how they are justifying those feelings. Someone feeling like they are getting called a racist because they like alignment despite people continually saying that is not the case is a good example.

The whole point is that the people who are offended can justify why they are in a way that those who feel like they are being called racists can't.

To quote the Dude, that's just like your opinion, man. I see good and bad justifications, emotions and rationality (and rationalizations) on both "sides." We're emotional beings, and it is a non-argument to say, "The other side is just being emotional," even trending towards an ad hominem argument.

Not to mention, that expressing emotion doesn't mean one's argument is bad.

I mean, when someone disagrees with you, whether they are emotionally upset or not, when has it ever worked to say, "You're not being rational and just being emotional"? And again, it is an easy way to write someone off and ignore the content of what they're actually saying.

 

[Gradine]

My new Xbox runs my old Xbox games it's nice played my hardcopy KoToR I and II not to long ago. I also own them in steam and can get then on game pass iirc. I have multiple ways of accessing them it's good.

WitC let the genie out if the bottle though when they started selling old material. I don't care if they can't/won't release everything.

I do care if they remove what they have made available (see 4E launch). I still have to redownload sine older PDFs predating that decision.

I don't care about disclaimer labels nor do they offend me I do find them a bit condescending. For me the publication date is the warning.

Oh, I've been quite happy playing KoToR on my Kindle Fire recently!

I'm quite certain that promoting illegal activity is against this forum's rules, so I'll just say

Delisting might be shady, but it's a fact of life in every digital marketplace, whether its reared its ugly head yet or not.

 

[Justice and Rule]

What metric do you use to determine when apathy is allowed vs. when it's not allowed?

I'd have to know the specific context of the situation. Talking about hypotheticals that you can modify to immediately fit whatever situation you want is useless.

reductio ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy, formal or otherwise. It's a kind of argument. So what do you mean by the qualifier "that's just"? Are you trying to say that all arguments via reductio ad absurdum are fallacious? invalid? What do you mean?

Because the reduction itself is absurd. That we do it to one thing, what's to stop us from doing it to everything? Why, everything else. I mean, I suppose more accurate to claim that it's a slippery slope, which you'll probably say is also "a kind of argument", but misses that it also often used fallaciously.

This seems reasonable. Of course, give them the benefit of the doubt. But again, that doesn't mean that simply because a person is offended, action should be taken (or that their offense is reasonable, or justifies action).

Which is why you judge it on the context and don't make absurd slippery slope projections. I don't find it useful to argue about "how far you go" when I can only know when I hit the situation.

I'm not arguing against disclaimers - but I'm also not arguing for them. To be honest, I'm mixed. As someone said, the disclaimer on Oriental Adventures seems to have a positive effect, if only in that it calmed the situation down. But it didn't solve anything, really.

It's a necessary but not sufficient solution. But you're mixed and being coy: what's the argument against a disclaimer? I want to know, because you have yet to actually give one.

Your words, not mine - and please don't bait me. That's not what I said. How about "expressing to the proper level of outrage," if you prefer. But I have seen that the lack of a certain response seems to breed a certain backlash.

I'm not baiting you, you're saying it without saying it. I mean, how else does one take that statement?

To quote the Dude, that's just like your opinion, man. I see good and bad justifications, emotions and rationality (and rationalizations) on both "sides." We're emotional beings, and it is a non-argument to say, "The other side is just being emotional," even trending towards an ad hominem argument.

Not to mention, that expressing emotion doesn't mean one's argument is bad.

I mean, when someone disagrees with you, whether they are emotionally upset or not, when has it ever worked to say, "You're not being rational and just being emotional"? And again, it is an easy way to write someone off and ignore the content of what they're actually saying.

No, not really. Again, there's a difference in expression and justification, and you're just trying to remove all context to make it seem more even when it isn't. People being reactive because they think they are being called racist when they aren't isn't the same as people being offended by legitimately racist content.

 

[Mercurius]

As respectfully as I can, in text form, please provide proof of this claim. It strikes me as rather absurd, and I can guarantee you that I exist in no bubbles or echo chambers that would insulate me from such things, as I am very much surrounded by extreme views in daily life, and while my online life is curated to avoid interacting with the worst of the internet such as nazis, I too often delve into comment sections and the like where the most extreme statements on all sides of an argument dwell.

I'd rather not single anyone out in this thread, but in some sense this whole discussion is predicated on "What's the proper degree of outrage," because outrage leads to action - and if you don't agree with certain actions, you're not outraged enough.

What does this have to do with the discussion of whether the discussion in general relies on or inherently exhibits or indicates outrage, or whether those criticizing the work are outraged?

Because what I'm saying, again, is that there isn't necessarily a proper degree of outrage, or a singular way to think about or respond to such things. Take Lovecraft, for instance. One can recognize his racism but still think nothing or very little needs to be done.

What on Earth are you responding to, though? Please show me where anyone has told anyone else how to think.
What is actually happening is that we are discussing whether it would be appropriate to put a disclaimer in a work that it contains blatant bigotry. No one has suggested that such a disclaimer need include sermonizing about how the reader needs to feel about the work.

A disclaimer implies that one should feel or think about something in a certain way. And several folks have said what people "should" think or feel about something.

Great. No one criticising Lovecraft or the various dnd products is trying to do the latter.

Well, I disagree, obviously. I think there's a strong push towards a consensus, even singular "true way to see things." Not from everyone, but from quite a few.

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh, I've been quite happy playing KoToR on my Kindle Fire recently!

I'm quite certain that promoting illegal activity is against this forum's rules, so I'll just say

Delisting might be shady, but it's a fact of life in every digital marketplace, whether its reared its ugly head yet or not.

I'm not one to judge. NZ culture trait "she'll be right". Except if the All Blacks lose. To Australia. Or UK. Or France. I don't even like rugby.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I never felt they owed me anything.

I felt they specifically removed access to all their older D&D PDFs in an attempt to drive me and as many gamers as they could to 4e.

This was a switch on their part from a mutually beneficial relationship with me as an ongoing customer (I was buying about $25 worth of old D&D PDFs per month at the time) to an adversarial one where they tried to specifically make things worse for me (and lots of other D&D gamers too) to get me (and other gamers) to shift to buy expensive hardcopy then-current 4e books.

That was why I resented WotC's actions in that period.

After they pulled access my gaming budget switched to all OGL and non-D&D PDF products for a long while.

But they...definitely did none of this with you specifically in mind. And again, they owed you nothing. If you had paid for products that they didn't give you, I would see where resentment could come into the picture, but this is just...they stopped selling a thing that they had every right to stop selling.

I feel like I'm missing some crucial thing, here, that informs your take on the situation.

Heck, I can see why some 4e players are resentful that wotc fully pulled the plug on the character builder instead of leaving it up. They paid for that service for years, and it was a service that they paid for often instead of buying books. But even then, we got every single month of access that we paid for, and it's not like they tried to delete people's pdfs of the magizine issues, so while I get why folks are resentful, I don't really agree that said resentment is caused by wotc doing anything they had no ethical right to do.

 

[Gradine]

I'm not one to judge. NZ culture trait "she'll be right". Except if the All Blacks lose. To Australia. Or UK. Or France. I don't even like rugby.

 

[Mercurius]

Which is why you judge it on the context and don't make absurd slippery slope projections. I don't find it useful to argue about "how far you go" when I can only know when I hit the situation.

Yet slippery slopes are a real thing. Every heard that quote "First they came for...and I did nothing, then they came for..."?

This is the problem with censorship of any kind, regardless of whether it is veiled as in the "private sphere." One thing easily leads to the next. If they censor people that you don't like, then that opens to censoring people you do like. Otherwise you end up in a death by small cuts situation or, to add yet another metaphor, the frog in slowly heating water.

It's a necessary but not sufficient solution. But you're mixed and being coy: what's the argument against a disclaimer? I want to know, because you have yet to actually give one.

That's because I'm not arguing against it! You could give me the benefit of the doubt, and take me on my word: I'm not being coy, I just haven't made up my mind or come to what I think is the best solution.

But one thing that comes to mind is the problem with deciding what gets a disclaimer and what doesn't. There might be some works that are blatantly problematic, but the vast majority--at least among D&D products--are varying shades of gray, and subject to interpretation and how much one reads into it.

I do think Orcs of Thar warrants a disclaimer - it is pretty blatant. But as you said, I think it is on a case-by-case basis, I just think it can get, um, rather slippery and depends a lot on the subjective determination of who is deciding and what their values are.

I'm not baiting you, you're saying it without saying it. I mean, how else does one take that statement?

I used a word and I probably should have used another because of association, but it is just a word that can be used in different contexts - not the phrase you used. Again, I merely meant expressing a certain degree of outrage.

No, not really. Again, there's a difference in expression and justification, and you're just trying to remove all context to make it seem more even when it isn't. People being reactive because they think they are being called racist when they aren't isn't the same as people being offended by legitimately racist content.

That's not what I'm comparing. I'm comparing overall views, not teased out (cherry-picked) elements of those views.

I'm saying that the degree of emotional involvement and coloring of rationality by emotion isn't solely, or necessarily even mostly, weighted towards one side or the other. Or, at the least, that I've seen it on both "sides" (again, I dislike "sides" because it implies that there are only two sides, when one of my main arguments is that there are many gradations and variations of perspective).

What I hear you saying is that "your side" is rational and above emotion and the "other side" is not. That is obviously problematic.