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

[Filthy Lucre]

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.

Oof, you're disappointing me.

Hypotheticals are absolutely, and fundamentally, important whenever you're trying to come up with explicable rules/guidelines/or morals. Hypotheticals help flesh out whether or not an axiom is working the way that it is intended to work.

So if I have a principle "It is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering" we can pose hypothetical situations to test whether or not this maxim will generate counter-interpretive examples. Remember, if I say all geese are white, you only need to find one black goose to break that claim/show that it's false.

If you know what causes something to have property X, (in this case, X = need to be censored/removed), then you should be able to formulate some kind of rule to expresses that.

If you can't do that, then it doesn't seem like you actually have a complete understanding of property X is or what causes it. Your mode of "I know it when I see it" is useless because it doesn't allow us to predict ahead of time what might have property X.

 

[Mordhau]

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

They are. They're just not logical in any formal way. That doesn't mean they are actually wrong. It depends on circumstance.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

This doesn't actually necessarily follow, it's just a line of thinking that you're coming to and applying to everyone/the situation as a whole. I genuinely have no seen a single statement or group of statements in this thread that suggest what you claim is the thrust of the whole thread.

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.

Okay. So what? Publishers will agree with one or the other, and go from there. A disclaimer just lets readers make the informed decision more easily. That's all it does.

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.

No, it does not.

I mean, a specific one can, but it is not at all inherent to the medium.

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.

Where? I normally don't push on stuff like this, but I think that you are accusing a nebulous "people in this thread" of something that I, at least, find absolutely disgusting on an ethical level. What's more, I've read the whole thread, minus a few people I have on ignore (most of whom are more on the "whats the problem" or "how dare you cancel dead people whose work I like!?" side of the discussion spectrum), and I have seen not a single statement or post that even loosely implies what you are claiming.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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

That is an egregious misuse of that quotation. What is being described in that quote is not a slippery slope. It's a warning against ignoring the persecution of others, and ultimately a variation on "none of us are free until all of us are free" and/or "there is no peace in the absence of justice/equality". It's a statement that reminds us that there is no such thing as "not my problem" when it comes to people around you being persecuted, marginalized, oppressed, etc.

It's not a slippery slope argument.

Further, even if it were, this would be a wildly inappropriate usage of a slippery slope argument, using one of modern history's greatest tragedies to make a very minor issue seem much bigger than it is, and try to push other people's emotions into a place that makes it harder to disagree with your position.

 

[Azzy]

Oof, you're disappointing me.

Hypotheticals are absolutely, and fundamentally, important whenever you're trying to come up with explicable rules/guidelines/or morals. Hypotheticals help flesh out whether or not an axiom is working the way that it is intended to work.

So if I have a principle "It is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering" we can pose hypothetical situations to test whether or not this maxim will generate counter-interpretive examples. Remember, if I say all geese are white, you only need to find one black goose to break that claim/show that it's false.

If you know what causes something to have property X, (in this case, X = need to be censored/removed), then you should be able to formulate some kind of rule to expresses that.

If you can't do that, then it doesn't seem like you actually have a complete understanding of property X is or what causes it. Your mode of "I know it when I see it" is useless because it doesn't allow us to predict ahead of time what might have property X.

Life and and human interactions are rarely ever as cut and dry as mathematical equations. Oftimes, one size does NOT fit all and trying to make it fit is as much an object lesson in futility as trying to square a circle.

 

[Voadam]

what's the argument against a disclaimer?

There could be many.

They are applied indiscriminately, you cannot tell whether an individual product with a disclaimer has problematic material or not. Orcs of Thar has the same disclaimer as books of maps such as The Forgotten Realms Atlas.

They are applied to only non-current edition products.

They are unnecessary added verbiage.

They don't do much that is actually useful.

It can be taken as empty posturing.

It can be taken as an empty whitewashing effort.

Boilerplate and omnipresent means invisible and useless.

The arguments can vary on whether the argument is about whether WotC should put them up, whether WotC as a private corporate actor can choose to put them up, or whether the argument is should disclaimers be universal.

 

[Justice and Rule]

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

Are you seriously comparing that to Orcs of Thar? Because slippery slopes live and die on their likelihood: Italy invading more places was likely because they were a warlike power. Do you really think we're in danger of banning everything here?

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.

Again, there's no reason to take it to an absurd level without proof that we're actually on that track. You're making alarmist slippery slope arguments with no evidence that we'll go that far. This is why the slippery slope is often used as an unofficial fallacy.

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.

If something is "mixed", that means there's something to both sides. If you have nothing to the other side, then... it's not mixed. I'd give you the benefit of the doubt, but I also have to take your words at face value.

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.

We judge everything individually within its individual contexts. This is just a continuation of the slippery slope: what do we judge and what not? How do we know we won't put it on everything?

Well, how about we try it first. There's no reason to fear action here, otherwise how will you know? You figure things out by trying them and seeing what works, not fretting and doing nothing.

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.

And I think that we come to that when we come to that. Orcs of Thar is Orcs of Thar and you can take it individually. You don't need to plan out every step in a journey, and there are certainly no pitfalls so bad that it is worse than no action at all.

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.

Yeah, and I just don't see that here. I've been in plenty of these arguments on these boards, and I just don't see that. People don't get called racist, people don't get hit for not expressing the proper level of outrage. I see way more absurdities about "banning everything" from the other side.

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.

I don't work in "overall views" because the specific is what I care about because that's where I can actually judge the values and justifications, hence why I've made a values judgement on the arguments of the other side. If you remove all context from that, yes, it looks worse than when I specific spell out why I think the other side is not really expressing themselves rationally.

That's why I'm being specific. I don't think we need to talk about upper-level stuff because I think that strips away all the useful information. That I think I'm rational is predicated on the specific facts of the situation and not some vague, general idea that I'm right and they are wrong. Fun fact: I don't think everyone that holds a different view to me is necessarily irrational or wrong. I judge them as they come. But in this case, yes I find the other side to more emotional in their argument because I specifically find them to be. That's not cherry-picking, that's justifying one's view to the specifics we are talking about.

 

[bennet]

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.

the original guy that complained about orcs being racist admitted he doesn't even play D&D. Its like that now, someone says something then everyone repeats it until it becomes the new "truth". very little thinking left in the world tbh, almost zero research, just lazy tweets.

It was like that for Dave Chappelle being called transphobic, and when his close personal trans friend Daphne Dorman stuck up for him because she said it was not true, they turned on her, attacked and ostracized, and she commit suicide.

 

[Malmuria]

Oof, you're disappointing me.

Hypotheticals are absolutely, and fundamentally, important whenever you're trying to come up with explicable rules/guidelines/or morals. Hypotheticals help flesh out whether or not an axiom is working the way that it is intended to work.

So if I have a principle "It is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering" we can pose hypothetical situations to test whether or not this maxim will generate counter-interpretive examples. Remember, if I say all geese are white, you only need to find one black goose to break that claim/show that it's false.

If you know what causes something to have property X, (in this case, X = need to be censored/removed), then you should be able to formulate some kind of rule to expresses that.

If you can't do that, then it doesn't seem like you actually have a complete understanding of property X is or what causes it. Your mode of "I know it when I see it" is useless because it doesn't allow us to predict ahead of time what might have property X.

There's a reason the supreme court still hears cases. It's because even if a law (as an enforceable principle) has been around for sometime, and even if there is a common interpretation of that law, there will arise situations that are not easy to interpret. And, when submitted to a variety of judges (experts (hopefully) in the law), they come, reasonable, to different conclusions as to how those principles should be interpreted. Culture is like this, but more complex by orders of magnitude, because you aren't dealing with a single legal framework. So trying to reduce forms of representation to a binary is this or is this not problematic test, as many people (including corporations) would like to do is not possible. Instead, you need discussion and conversation.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Just bemused that you would think it worth responding with contradiction without engagement.

I did engage. Why are you now pretending that I didn't?