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

[Justice and Rule]

Oof, you're disappointing me.

Aww, I'm sorry.

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.

Yes, but you can also make them to absolutely fulfill your argument while not actually reflecting real life. I can make up a hypothetical about someone being offended by anything, but that doesn't mean that it is actually germane to our conversation.

If you can't actually come up with real-life examples and defend them, then I just don't see why we don't use them. If you want to faff around with useless imaginary situations instead of actually addressing the real-life situation, then I really don't care. Go create a thread of weird hypotheticals. We have plenty of real situations to draw from here.

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.

No, because these situations are specifically contextually based, hence why hypotheticals are not useful. You can make hypotheticals that contextualize around anything and everything, but we have actual situations we are talking about right now that we can actually look at. Trying to figure out a magical set of rules that applies to everything misses that what we are talking about are almost always extremely situational and will rely on the specifics to dictate the intensity of the solution.

So yeah, I just don't care about whatever situation you want to make up. We don't need to figure an extensive flow-chart to dictate our response. We can come up with it individually because each situation will be individual.

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.

Those aren't arguments against a disclaimer, those are arguments about doing disclaimers badly. Those are not the same.

 

[Azzy]

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.

This thread was started by a fan of Mystara, so that's not the case here. This thread is also the opposite of a lazy tweet with no research, so maybe you're in the wrong thread or something.

 

[Mercurius]

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.

Yeah, I didn't say it is "the thrust of the whole thread," but its an underlying pervasive element: what is the proper paradigm to espouse? (paradigm being the combination of a view and its resulting action). In general, I think this thread has remarkably civil.

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.

I wouldn't say that's "all" it does. And again, I'm not arguing against disclaimers - nor am I arguing for them.

No, it does not.

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

Fair enough. It depends upon how it is framed. For instance, in a hypothetical 5.5E Appendix N, I'd rather see one list with a singular disclaimer that saying something like, "Some of these works maybe be considered..." - but not two separate lists.

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.

Again, I don't want to single people out or get in a tit-for-tat, or "but I didn't mean that." I'm sharing a general impression of something that I see as relatively common, if mostly just implied.

 

[Mercurius]

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.

Oh come on. I wasn't using the tragedy itself, but the logic of the quote. And sorry, but I think it applies. If you're OK with one thing, then you might be kind of OK with the next, which leads to the next...

But yes, I agree that the quote says "not my problem" leads to bad things. And I think that applies not only to persecution etc, but also to censorship, badwrongviews, othering, etc.

But again, you can dislike my usage of that quote, or you can understand what I am saying (or trying to say). If my use of that quote bothers you, then consider the frog in heating water or death-by-a-thousand-cuts.

 

[Justice and Rule]

You know, @squibbles did this already, but I'm going to do this again: the OP brought up a list of things that WOTC could do. Again, here they are:

Yes, GAZ10 is one of those "somes." I've always thought though, that the disclaimer is rather lame corporate-speak. It's only slightly better than nothing. It basically means:

"We're not going to bother looking at the specifics of what's problematic in any of these legacy publications. And we're not going to admit or apologize for any specific thing. It's enough of a symbolic gesture that we put a nicely-worded generic disclaimer on everything pre-5E. We say that's enough. These depictions are wrong, but we're going to continue to rake in $10 for each PDF sale! In the end, it's the bottom line that we care about."

Do I have a specific suggestion for how WotC/Hasbro could make amends?

1) Well, ideally each legacy product which has major "ethnic, racial, or gender prejudice" would be looked at by a team of professional cultural consultants.

2) And their findings would be published in a DRAGON+ article. Where WotC would apologize for specific portrayals.

3) It would be such a healing gesture to bring in the original authors (in this case, Bruce Heard), and editors and artists, and let them apologize on DRAGON+, and say some really beautiful, conciliatory words which are vetted by the cultural amends team. Like R.A. Salvatore's recent words on problematic aspects of the drow, which I think was a beautiful gesture.

4) The DRAGON+ article would then be forever linked to the DriveThruRPG product page. It would be a truly healing gesture.

Like WotC says: "Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible."

Then teach us WotC! Teach us and explain exactly where you (including TSR) failed to practice the principle that "diversity is strength" in the past. And in the present: because GAZ10 and other problematic products are still "D&D products." How are you going to make GAZ10 "as welcoming and inclusive as possible"? "As possible" is a tall order.

WotC's disclaimer ends with the statement:
"This part of our work will never end."

Okay, get crackin'! You said this part of your work will never end. So put together a standing team of cultural consultants, and start the amends process. This would be an ongoing DRAGON+ feature. It'll take years, and that's okay. Because this work will never end!

5) Besides educating folks through the amendatory DRAGON+ articles, I'd also suggest that a large portion of proceeds of problematic legacy PDFs be perpetually donated to an appropriate charity. In the case of GAZ10, I'd personally suggest the Lakota Waldorf School...they could use the money. Yet I'm sure there are plenty of worthy Indigenous American and East Asian charities which WotC could identify, even in the Renton-Seattle area. However, the more specific the better. For example, GAZ10 contains distasteful content specifically related to the Vodun (Voodoo), Lakota (Teton Sioux), Nakota (Assiniboine/Stoney), Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk), Apsáalooke (Crow), Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese, and Bhutanese cultures, and perhaps others. It would not be hard for WotC's cultural amends team to do some web research and find a charity related to each of those cultures. And sort of divvy up the PDF "amends royalties" based on approximately how many distasteful jabs each culture received. (For example, there are only three sentences which buffoonishly refer to Vodun spirituality, but many paragraphs which refer to "Red Orcs.")

I realize that admitting anything would be a courageous opening of a can of worms. Corporations are not always known for their courage. And I realize that it costs money to have cultural consultants comb through legacy books. But sometimes ya gotta put your money where your mouth is.

So to the people arguing about slippery slopes and such, is there a problem with this plan specifically to this situation?

 

[Gradine]

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.

What if I told you... that that's how everything in the world works? Another word for "the subjective determination of who is deciding" is work.

Also, while everything under the sun is subjective and true objectivity is a myth, this is a field that's a hell of a lot more settled than many might suspect. A "sensitivity reader" or "sensitivity distributor" or what have you can go to school and get a relevant degree to prepare them specifically for that work. The field has an academic canon, and while there is still definitely much that is unsettled, and the field changes all of the time, the same could be said of history. Or economics. Or hell, mathematics.

It is a worthy endeavor, and like all worthy endeavors it will have pitfalls and bumps and fumbles and mixed successes and critical hits, and progress will march ever on, if unsteadily.

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

Also, and maybe I'm overstepping something here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Martin Niemöller might take exception with his work being remixed as "First they came for the fascists". I don't know, call me crazy.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You know, @squibbles did this already, but I'm going to do this again: the OP brought up a list of things that WOTC could do. Again, here they are:



So to the people arguing about slippery slopes and such, is there a problem with this plan specifically to this situation?

Yes.

Article here.

Should you heed James Madison’s admonition that "it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties,” and oppose a decision that you might have otherwise supported were it not for your concern about the slippery slope? Or should you accept the immediate benefits of A, and trust that even after A is enacted, B will be avoided? ... This need makes many people impatient with slippery slope arguments. The slippery slope argument, opponents suggest, is the claim that “we ought not make a sound decision today, for fear of having to draw a sound distinction tomorrow.” Exactly why, for instance, would accepting (for instance) a restriction on “ideas we hate” “sooner or later” lead to restrictions on “ideas we cherish”?

I have previously explained my opposition to the remedies proposed. But this thread is very very long.

 

[Voadam]

But they...definitely did none of this with you specifically in mind.

Obviously.

They intentionally and specifically negatively targeted the group of gamers who were buying old D&D PDFs, which included me. They were not significantly aware of me as an individual but I was still in their intended target.

And again, they owed you nothing.

We owed each other nothing. I had goodwill towards them before that. They were not owed that either. I had ill will afterwards.

It seems perfectly understandable to me.

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.

No they specifically were trying to make things worse for the group of people I was in.

They were doing this for economic reasons using the specific method of make things worse for this group of people, it is an economic leverage WotC used to pressure the group of people negatively to attempt to get them to do what WotC wanted.

I owed them no neutrality of emotions in such a situation.

Resenting them for doing so is justified.

That they chose to make things worse for me for economic profit reasons that are legal is not a reason for me to not have been angry at them.

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.

Its not about whether WotC was within its legal right to do so.

Ironically enough I got into 4e late in the cycle when I joined a group that played 4e and so I bought the gift set of PH I & II. I enjoyed it and got into 4e and got the digital tools subscription for a whole year one month before my group decided they were sick of 4e and WotC switched from supporting the offline tools I had bought to online rental access only from then on.

They were within their legal right again to switch things, but it was again a switch from a positive to a negative.

 

[Mercurius]

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?

No, I'm not comparing that to Orcs of Thar. As I said above, I'm talking about the underlying logic of the quote.

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.

I can't offer "proof" without moving into territory that is against the board rules (that is, discussing political and cultural issues).

With D&D, we're only at early stages in the process and could still go in any number of directions. I'm merely expressing concern about going down a certain direction.

As as Filthy Lucre said, there is nothing wrong with considering hypotheticals - that's part of making good decisions.

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.

You're asking me to have a stronger opinion about something that I simply don't have. In some circles, being open-minded and flexible is considered a good thing...

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.

Again, you're presuming that something needs to be done, specific action taken to right the wrongs of the past. I'm not sure that is always the case; sometimes the best action is just understanding, so you can make better choices in the future.

And you keep using slippery slope as an inherent fallacy. Again, I disagree with that, so it doesn't support your point, at least with me.

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.

Again, we're not talking about watching someone be beaten on the streets, where no action is generally a bad thing. We're talking about what to do about often out of print books, or books that were written a century ago.

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.

Not outright, no. But there are innuendos and implications.

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.

Hey, I'm a big picture guy. Obviously I agree that we have to consider specifics, and things in context, but ignoring the big picture is like driving and only looking five feet in front of the car.

My main issue with your second paragraph is that it, again, falls into a two-sideism. I mean, if you really want to stick to specifics, how can you even speak of "the other side?"

 

[Mercurius]

What if I told you... that that's how everything in the world works? Another word for "the subjective determination of who is deciding" is work.

Also, while everything under the sun is subjective and true objectivity is a myth, this is a field that's a hell of a lot more settled than many might suspect. A "sensitivity reader" or "sensitivity distributor" or what have you can go to school and get a relevant degree to prepare them specifically for that work. The field has an academic canon, and while there is still definitely much that is unsettled, and the field changes all of the time, the same could be said of history. Or economics. Or hell, mathematics.

It is a worthy endeavor, and like all worthy endeavors it will have pitfalls and bumps and fumbles and mixed successes and critical hits, and progress will march ever on, if unsteadily.

Wait, what is "settled?" You're talking about an academic field? That's like saying, "the theory of tax collection is settled, therefore we should accept whatever the tax collectors ask of us."

Many academic fields have a specific ideological orientation. It might be settled within that field, but that doesn't mean that everyone outside the field agrees with it.

Also, and maybe I'm overstepping something here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Martin Niemöller might take exception with his work being remixed as "First they came for the fascists". I don't know, call me crazy.

Huh? How is that at all what I'm saying? This is patently absurd. Who are the fascists you're talking about? This is a rather ugly remark, Gradine.