D&D 5E D&D Races: Evolution, Fantasy Stereotypes & Escapism

[Malmuria]

Look, do you believe these are equal to referring to a group of fantasy beings as savage?

If you are playing tomb of annihilation or fantasy Africa, and the dm starts leveraging those tropes in the fiction, the obvious point of reference will be the “dark continent” tropes that I referenced above. And yes, those were part of an ideology and culture that led to horrific violence in our very recent past.

 

[Scribe]

For example, would you

• include a graphic torture scene in your game, or skip past it?
• include a sexual assault scene in your game?
• if running a modern game, say Call of Cthulhu, play characters who use racial or religious slurs?

Again, are these the same? Considering your last response, I guess you believe so. I certainly dont.

Do "primitive" orcs also have a rich tradition of handicrafts and oral history, an important kinship system, an animist or pantheistic religion, and live in general isolation from "civilized" people do, as per the actual (albeit no longer used) anthropological definition of "primitive"?

Or is it in reference to technological development, or basic, simple tools and/or structures?

Is it bad to call them savage?

Depends on if they are aggressive, violent, and ferocious in behavior?

If the above doesnt make it clear, you all are using the words, in a colonial fashion, but that simply isnt how the words need be used.

Then again "7 words..."

 

[Malmuria]

Again, are these the same? Considering your last response, I guess you believe so. I certainly dont.

The point I’m trying to make is that the fact that the game is fiction, even in the fantasy genre, does not mean that players might not want the fiction to go into particular topics. This does not mean that they cannot “tell fantasy from reality,” as stated above, but rather that fiction (even fantasy) necessarily reflects on reality. I chose more extreme examples to illustrate this point, but in general context is very important, and yes some things are worse than others. There are some things, that if they happened in the fiction without any discussion I would stand up and walk out of the room immediately. There are others, where I might mention after the game or privately to other players that I was bothered. And there are others that I might let slide. I’m not saying all of those things are the same.

 

[Scars Unseen]

It sounded like the argument was that "it's fantasy and not reality and we can tell them apart' covered everything, and I was checking if that was what was meant.

I took it to mean that fantasy is not reality, and so arguments do not have equal weight in each. That there are lines that people won't cross in either should be obvious, but that they should be the same lines regardless is not. To take your argument to the other end of the spectrum, even the way many PCs talk to NPCs would be beyond what most of us would were it a real life conversation. But because NPCs aren't real and aren't depicted as being real, we have no problem being rude, haughty and threatening to them. Most have no problem with what could at best be considered justifiable homicide.

Beyond that, there's a threshold for everyone where people aren't comfortable including something in their game. That threshold is not the same for everyone, and people whose threshold lies beyond or in different areas than your own aren't better or worse people than you because of it. Because it's fantasy.

 

[Malmuria]

Because I play with friends, there is already a level of trust established. So if some of these words or issues come up, it’s enough for us to make a sarcastic comment, or have some side chatter and jokes about how dnd is colonialist, and then proceed to play. I think we instinctively steer away from certain kinds of graphic violence; as I said above my players aren’t really combat-first anyway, they’d usually rather negotiate or sneak or run away, etc. It’s not the end of the world when these things come up, but it’s helpful to be able to talk about them at the table, and would be helpful to talk about them as a hobby. I was glad that Van Richten guide had advice on running horror, for example, and sad to see that it was mocked on that account by some online.

I posted a Matt Coleville video in this thread (or another one on a similar topic…) about “the sociology of dnd.” In it, he makes a useful observation that the mostly likely way someone will respond to something that makes them uncomfortable is just to stop playing. They probably won’t want to disrupt your game or cause drama, they’ll just feel unwelcome and go away. I think those are the stakes of being aware or not about some of these issues. It’s not that anyone is barging into your game demanding that you stop using certain words or depicting creatures in a particular way, it’s just that some people will decide that dnd is not for them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Fantasy vs Reality - I can separate the 2.

Wow.

Remember when we were talking about civility?

 

[Scribe]

I’m not saying all of those things are the same.

From my perspective this kind of comparison does a real disservice to your argument/position.

 

[Malmuria]

From my perspective this kind of comparison does a real disservice to your argument/position.

Can you explain? I don’t think these things are universally acknowledged. There was a very high profile case of an actual play in which the dm forced a sex scene, that was actually an assault scene, into the narrative without any of the players’ consent. It was a sci-fi game, and the scene was literally a data transfer of some kind but described in a highly sexualized way. Many people online had the reaction of ‘it’s just fiction, what’s the big deal.’ My point is that that is not a good argument, because what is lighthearted fiction to one person (in this case the dm) was a real violation of trust to another (the player).

 

[Hussar]

If you (and most others) can separate fantasy from reality then why does it matter whether what happens in fantasy is similar to what happens in reality?
/snip

If you honestly don't know the answer to this question, you really, really need to do some homework.

But, hey, we've now sauntered back into the whataboudid part of our regularly schedule program of endless nit picking and whatnot and there's just not much else to say. It's been explained, as clearly and plainly as possible. That you personally don't find the explanations compelling is frankly not my problem.

I'm just tired of having to endlessly explain the blindingly obvious. Don't use racist crap in the genre. The genre has been full of racist crap for a century. It's time to get rid of the crap. Endless naysaying, and gainsaying isn't productive and I can be fairly content knowing that those who don't think it matters aren't the ones calling the shots anymore.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I restate on observation I've made regarding this before: it is horrible how words relating to loosely-organised low-tech societies have been stigmatised. Such societies have historically been seen as inferior and bad and words used to describe them have been marred with the same racist connotations. And it is rather shocking that this is so ingrained, that it is hard to even find neutral words to describe things.

My current setting is rather low tech, and I have often hard time describing things in a manner that wouldn't sound questionable, or alternatively very jargony. (And I actually wasn't aware that 'tribe' is being considered inappropriate as well, though I still see it used a lot, even in some people self describing...)