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

[Justice and Rule]

The half-dozen reports per day the thread creates speaks to how maybe it ain't all that polite.

After 90 pages, if nobody's moving, and the thread's still generating lots of reports, we do start thinking it may be an attractive nuisance. Thus the question.

I mean, at the least I feel like we came around to some level of understanding. I'm okay with ending it if others are. Nice to have a good ending for once.

 

[Mercurius]

I mean, there's always the chance you do it badly. But I think there's things you miss if you just be general. Sometimes that stuff is sneaky, y'know? It's a balance you have to find, and talking to some sensitivity readers would probably help.

I just don't think you need to catch everything, explicate everything. Everyone is on their own journey. And what you think in 20 years will be different from what you think now.

Another point for a general approach: You don't lock yourself into something, say an interpretation, that you might eventually change. WotC might feel like they need to say that "inherently evil orcs" is a bad thing now, but perhaps a new perspective emerges that changes that. Or maybe, just maybe, they come to the "big umbrella" approach that I advocate for.

I mean, they own the brand. At some level they have to be, right? Hey, here we are, talking hypotheticals.

View attachment 149409

Ha. Yes, you're playing into my plan to get lost in endless hypotheticals...

I mean, yeah, this is largely what I've always wanted. You can't stop someone from having ethnically-coded evil Orcs at their table, but at the least you can guide away those that might inadvertently do it. At the end of the day, teaching people about broad ideas and options is absolutely what I've advocated for in the past.

See, I'd suggest we shouldn't even want to stop people from such, and that we don't need to guide anyone away from that. That smacks of the One True Xism that I've been talking about. And if you want to teach people, maybe be a teacher (or are you, already?).

Again, I think you can give tools for them to use to get there. I think we've gotten pretty far on this in the last two posts alone. You can't enforce someone's opinion, but you can give them ideas and reasons to change it.

Where I think we've gotten to is better mutual understanding, and clarified a few things, and maybe found some points of meeting, but that doesn't mean either of us are changing our basic positions or moving closer to the other's. But it is nice to find those "touching points," and I think that is key fo mutual understanding and respect. Or as ET says, "Ouch."

So rather than trying to "educate people" or get them to where we're at, maybe that's what we should be going for: finding the places where we already meet. I think that also facilitates deeper understanding, and perhaps even some change, on a person's own accord. But that includes us, as well!

I think of a basic principle of humanistic psychology, and why it was such a revolution from the old depth and behaviorist approaches: It put emphasis on the client's sense of meaning, how they define themselves and what happiness and mental health is for them. So rather than pointing out what their problems are and what they need to do to get to a pre-determined state of health as defined by the therapist's clinical orientation, it was about helping them find a place of wellness with themselves, through self-understanding and acceptance.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OK, how about this quote from Gradine, which you "liked"?

"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."

Please explain how on Earth the above quote suggests the supposed "pervasive element" that I am challenging you on.

I think the point of such a list is to show influences on D&D, so I think it would be important to include even "problematic" authors.

If that is the point of the list, rather than to provide the reader with works they can read to further inspire their games, then I don't see any value to the list, and so I don't care at all what is or isn't on it.

I gave you an example above.

You say that, but it seems more like a random quote that has nothing at all to do with anything even similar to what you are claiming.

That seems pretty rigid, and missing what I'm saying about underlying logic, how this can lead to that. As if a quote can only be used to refer to the same thing the quote is talking about.

So I provided other analogies, but you're hung up on this.

"Hung up" is a silly way to characterize repeating that you used a quote that doesn't show a slippery slope as a supposed example of a real life slippery slope, in response to you continuing to insist that the quote in question is the same as actual examples of a slippery slope. In order to be "hung up", I'd have to keep harping on it after you stop insisting that you used it right.

 

[Mercurius]

Please explain how on Earth the above quote suggests the supposed "pervasive element" that I am challenging you on.

I was confusing you with someone else -- something someone else claimed. My apologies, I confused who I was talking to (I was engaged in several back-and-forths).

If that is the point of the list, rather than to provide the reader with works they can read to further inspire their games, then I don't see any value to the list, and so I don't care at all what is or isn't on it.
You say that, but it seems more like a random quote that has nothing at all to do with anything even similar to what you are claiming.

I think such a list is multi-faceted: Yes, to offer further reading and inspiration, but also show influences on D&D.

"Hung up" is a silly way to characterize repeating that you used a quote that doesn't show a slippery slope as a supposed example of a real life slippery slope, in response to you continuing to insist that the quote in question is the same as actual examples of a slippery slope. In order to be "hung up", I'd have to keep harping on it after you stop insisting that you used it right.

I was saying that you are hung up on my usage of that quote, while ignoring the basic point or the other analogies I made. As I said, I used that quote because it suggests how one thing can lead to worse things.

I hear that you didn't like me using that quote, but I don't see the point in continuing to hammer away at it, rather than address the slippery slope argument from a different angle (or the other analogies I used).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Butting in: if you'll accept my word on it, I was reading a thread on a different gaming forum where I saw two people banned for two weeks because they were having a "dispassionate" discussion about slavery within the confines of the game (GURPS Banestorem) that was being discussed.

Raise your hand if you've actually changed your position on these matters in a substantial way within the past... 20 pages or so.

Well, firstly, convincing others to your position is rarely something anyone in these threads is actually worried about. Secondly, minds aren't changed in a moment, they're changed over time. Asking if anyone's mind has changed in a given thread is a bit strange. Of course no one has, very nearly no one ever does.

Even when someone seems to suddenly change their mind due to a persuasive argument, they've generally heard similar arguments before, and stewed on them a bit, even if only in passing.

If the point of threads needs to be changing minds, and that changing of minds has to happen entirely during the run of that thread, might as well just close the whole forum.

 

[squibbles]

Raise your hand if you've actually changed your position on these matters in a substantial way within the past... 20 pages or so.

I did, I guess.

I started reading at page 75 or something after skimming the first ~3 pages and saw @Voadam posted on page 84 (#1680) referring back to the OP's suggested remedial actions for WotC, which then prompted me to go and look the earlier post up.

I am usually an obnoxious reactionary, but found the suggestions to be thoughtful and not aimed at taking anyone's toys away, leading me to be more positively disposed to that point of view than I might otherwise have been.

I also enjoyed the post by @Snarf Zagyg on page 93 (#1844) which argued pretty convincingly that said suggestions were entirely wrong and I have now possibly changed my mind back. I am apparently quite indecisive.

Maybe those don't count since I am not actively posting in the thread.

----

It feels like there are a lot of thoughtful and effortfully written things being posted here, if sometimes bookended by angry brickthrowers, as in post #1808.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I was confusing you with someone else -- something someone else claimed. My apologies, I confused who I was talking to (I was engaged in several back-and-forths).

Ah, okay. I was sitting here like...que!?

I think such a list is multi-faceted: Yes, to offer further reading and inspiration, but also show influences on D&D.

Fair enough. This particular disagreement isn't especially likely to take us anywhere interesting. I just don't care about preserving lists of what works influenced other works. This is possibly related to my dislike of traditionalism, and further related indifference toward traditions.

I was saying that you are hung up on my usage of that quote, while ignoring the basic point or the other analogies I made. As I said, I used that quote because it suggests how one thing can lead to worse things.

I just...it's not...what the quote means, though. It doesn't suggest that one thing can lead to worse things. It states quite clearly that ignoring harm done to your neighbor is short sighted and foolish. It is not suggesting that had the Nazis changed the order of who they came for things would have gone differently. It is not a slippery slope.

I hear that you didn't like me using that quote, but I don't see the point in continuing to hammer away at it, rather than address the slippery slope argument from a different angle (or the other analogies I used).

Well, to be fair, i find very nearly all arguments for the validity of the slippery slope to be laughable, so I'm not sure there is much discussion to be had, there.

Disclaimers on music albums didn't lead to increased censorship of music, and indeed music has become more and more widely blatant in discussion of sex, drugs, violence, and other once verboten topics in the years since those disclaimers were introduced.

But even if we ignore that, and look at actual cases of escalating action, which is the closest thing I can think of to a non-absurd slippery slope, like the Nazi Bar Rule, or how the nazis took the Rhineland and then looked around furtively to see if they'd get stomped on for it, and then escalated when nothing happened, the idea of comparing any such case to the topic at hand is just....wildly out of proportion. There is no similarity.

 

[Remathilis]

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:

OP's suggestions are great, but to splash some cold water in them, they probably aren't worth* the cost to implement them.

First, the back catalog of D&D books is massive. It would take a team of consultants years to go though it all. That would be at best a full time job for a number of people to do. That costs money.

Second, Dragon+ is a poor vessel for distribution of material. Barely anything of value beyond puff pieces and ad copy gets put in it, it's mostly gated by a (free) app, and I wager less people read it than post in your typical D&D social media site.

Third, getting old authors who no longer work for D&D to issue mea culpas is a longshot. Some might do it for free as a gesture to the community, some might do it as a paid freelance commission (pay your creators, always) and some might not consider it a worthwhile endeavor. Bob Salvatore has books coming out to sell so it makes sense to address the elephants, but what does a creator long removed from some work for hire project gain by doing this. I guarantee few people today under the age of 30 know that Orcs of Thar even exists, let alone Bruce wrote it.

All of this would cost money. And since we still live in a capitalist society, we have to weigh it in terms of value gained. Is having a team of people read old material, publish corrections, and then get the old authors to compose reflections on that going to improve sales? Does it help sell copies of the next D&D book, or even sell copies of Orcs of Thar? Is the cost even equal to the sales it gets on DMs Guild? Is the cost of ignoring it or slapping a boilerplate warning less than this endeavor? Will not doing it hurt sales of the next D&D book? Is it just better to remove the back catalog again?

It's a nice, noble gesture the op is describing, but unless it makes WotC money or at the very least stops wotc from losing a significant amount money, it's not happening.

* Of course, it may have value to those who were offended or demeaned by it, but unless that translates into greater sales, good will only goes so far.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

A lot of stuff

Seems you've taken the latter horn of the dilema then - unpredictability.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Raise your hand if you've actually changed your position on these matters in a substantial way within the past... 20 pages or so.

I'd say that I've gone from rolling my eyes to endorsing the disclaimer option.