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

[Mecheon]

I, as with most things, blame Neverwinter Nights for my enjoyment of gnolls at least.

Orcs in that game look, hecka doofy. The phrase 'Mickey Mouse ears' came up a lot and there's dozens of attempts to make them look better
Bugbears were fine, hobgoblins were eh, and goblins, also a bit eh.
Lizardmen had their teeth always showing (although technically they were sarrukh?)
But then there were just gnolls which, unlike the other ones, had just a vibe to them. They looked serious, like they could mess you up. Like they were things that were dangerous to fight.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I underutilized them myself, until I started designing a post-apocalyptic homebrew. They were perfect for being one of the main remaining powers.

…then 4Ed got announced.

But then there were just gnolls which, unlike the other ones, had just a vibe to them. They looked serious, like they could mess you up. Like they were things that were dangerous to fight.

You reminded me- the other major reason I chose Gnolls for that homebrew was Rakham miniatures had a 28mm scale miniatures wargame that was VERY similar to the D&D miniatures game.* And their Wolfen sculpts were fantastic! Very good stand-ins in size and flavor for Gnolls as I thought of them.

Here’s a few:

Spoiler: Rackham Wolfen

https://cadwallon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/rh-80701_copy.jpg

* I had actually started a conversion project to mix & match

 

[Mirtek]

Wherever they want it to.

But who is "they"?

WotC certainly does give a %$#@!.

They want to earn the most Profit, nothing else. So as long as people keep pestering them they'll just shrug and do the least to avoid a shitstorm and go on with business as usual

 

[squibbles]

I like the idea of "punching Nazi's". There are a lot of folks I don't trust to identify who is actually a Nazi though. [Edit: Clearly consequences vs. no consequences is different from physical violences vs. no physical violence.]

I've seen street posters advocating that. Bad idea that's what they want. Escalates the violence ultimately making people pick sides.

Yeah, punching Nazis is foolish (even accurately identified ones)--it makes it easy for them to play the victim or present false equivalencies. The reason scrupulous non-violence is so effective is because of how easy it makes it for uncommitted and uninterested people to tell who is in the wrong.

[...] If I was WotC though, this would be what I would do:

1. Keep the disclaimers. They raise awareness. They aren't the be all and end all, but, they do serve a function. There's no reason not to do it, frankly.

2. I would hire a genre historian, like, say, Amy H. Sturgis to write a regular column in Dragon+ talking about the history of the genre and about how that intersects with D&D. This would be an ongoing column.

3. I would not go back into the library and start editing material. The historical argument is a very strong one and I don't think it serves a purpose to try to rewrite history.

4. Related to 3 - However, since profiting off of this material is pretty icky, I would take the entire library of Pre-WotC, TSR, and put it online for free in some sort of format like Anyflip (where you can't just download it, at least pay lip service to protecting the material) for historical purposes. That way the material is there, it can be referenced, but, no one is profiting from it. And, it links back to 2 where it becomes very easy to clearly demonstrate where the problematic material is.

Anyway, I was asked what I would do, and, yeah, if I had the power, this is my solution.

That sounds pretty close to what I would have suggested prior to reading the thread, especially #4.

The whole enterprise becomes less ethically suspect when they're saying "Hey, here's some cool IP from the past that we have. Peruse it at your leisure, some of it could be questionable" instead of "Hey, wanna give me 10 bucks for some old game books... but first read this disclaimer"

But obviously I can see why a for profit company prefers the latter.

 

[Alzrius]

See also, "95% of quotes on the internet are made up." -Abraham Lincoln

Why does that sound familiar-

Hey, wait a minute!

 

[BrokenTwin]

It warms my heart to see more people defending gnolls. I kinda liked gnolls up until 4E, where I absolutely fell in love with them for reasons I still don't even know. Then 5E used them as their new always-evil monsters (since orcs were no longer an option), and I was NOT happy. Especially since I like to think of them as a badass matriarchal society where the women are large and in charge, which is just a nice bit of variety from the standard.

Beholders I have no problem with being non-evil, but mindflayers literally need to eat the brains of other sentient creatures to survive. You can't do that and not be evil. I do think the response to their text being modified is overblown though.

As to the whole "punch Nazis" thing... violence shouldn't be the first response, but saying it's never the appropriate response is just as wrong. And that's as close to that political landmine as I'm willing to get on an RPG message board.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That actually comes from waaay early in AD&D. There was an article in Dragon #63 that talks about their origins as the creations of demon prince Yeenoghu (unlike the other humanoids, who have actual gods) and has the 1e stats for the shoosuvas. I guess that for 5e they really leaned into that origin and dialed it up a few notches.

Personally, I'm kind of torn. If the 5e gnolls were called anything other than gnolls (and were officially fiends rather than humanoids), I'd be fine with them. But I like gnolls as a people too much.

Its a peculiar piece of random early game lore to cling to, though.

 

[Gradine]

Beholders I have no problem with being non-evil, but mindflayers literally need to eat the brains of other sentient creatures to survive.

Is the hungry tiger that mauls a human evil?

I've used neutral mindflayers to great effect in my campaigns. Of course those campaigns were also set in Eberron, where alignment is handled fairly differently in general.

 

[Faolyn]

Heck, Gnoll Fangs of Yeenoghu from the Monster Manual are already classified as Fiends, so if they want "Demon Gnolls" while still giving the fanbase playable gnolls, they can literally just do both. I'm not sure why WotC doesn't think that they can't have their cake and eat it too with this matter, because they absolutely can.

I'm guessing they didn't want to make that big a change to a standard humanoid race.

Also, I think they wanted to do something "new" with them, so that gnolls weren't just another evil Medium humanoid race (like orcs and hobgoblins), but underestimated how popular they were.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Is the hungry tiger that mauls a human evil?

If you're the one being mauled, does it matter?