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

[Malmuria]

Pretty much exactly that.

For the better or for the worse, D&D has cultivated a certain image of its peoples and monsters that help define the line as part of the D&D experience. Dwarves are short people that live underground or otherwise associated with mountains and caves. Elves are elegant and live in forests or secluded, wonderful cities, etc. This was helpful to give a good idea of what D&D was, beyond the rules. To create recognizable archetypes, you need stereotypes. Either you use existing ones, or you create your own, because stereotypes are models, a norm, and you want to create a brand that is recognisable.

Now, D&D is getting more and more varied in scope and settings. Greyhawk and Forgotten realms and Mystara and all the early setting pretty much all used the same assumptions (read stereotypes) about its people, but there are other models now, such as Eberron and Dark Sun. But even in these news settings, the classic stereotype is often broken just to create another. The elf of Greyhawk, the elf of Dark Sun, and the elf from Eberron are all different from one another, but they are all defined by their own setting's stereotypes.

By using "typically" WotC still abide by those setting stereotypes as guidelines to create a recognisable baseline, but legitimize variations from the norm.

This gets back to the worldbuilding issues I described earlier. Archetypes work in middle earth, for example, because there is a care and specificity to them. The wood elves live in this specific region and have their own history, and in that way it makes sense that ancestry and culture are so closely identified.

FR-style worldbuilding takes that limited and particular geography and copy-paste spams it all over the map or even over the whole multiverse. It does not make sense to me that you can take wood elves from two disparate and disconnected forests and they would share the same features, customs, languages, etc. What's needed is a real development of distinct cultures within and among ancestries.

Gus L said it best:

Forgotten Realms was the worst thing to happen to D&D, a terrible setting that reeks of bathos and takes itself far too seriously. It plunders everything cliched and overused from Tolkien but abandons all the strange sadness and the mythological references. It fills the land with huge civilized bastions of good/order like Waterdeep and exhaustively defines their systems of governance, but allows these nations to be plagued by trifling enemies like goblin tribes. Forgotten Realms embraces a pedantic faux-medievalism, but then uses a contemporary positivist understanding to explain magic that allows for cutesy magical technology to gloss over the inconvenient aspects of the pre-modern. Most offensively, most objectionably, Forgotten Realms is a dense, full, world - so steeped in cliched lore and laid out so extensively in dull gazetteers that there is no room for a GM's creativity without excising some of the existing setting and map.

 

[Laurefindel]

This gets back to the worldbuilding issues I described earlier. Archetypes work in middle earth, for example, because there is a care and specificity to them. The wood elves live in this specific region and have their own history, and in that way it makes sense that ancestry and culture are so closely identified.

FR-style worldbuilding takes that limited and particular geography and copy-paste spams it all over the map or even over the whole multiverse. It does not make sense to me that you can take wood elves from two disparate and disconnected forests and they would share the same features, customs, languages, etc. What's needed is a real development of distinct cultures within and among ancestries.

Gus L said it best:

Not sure if I agree, neither with you nor with Gus whom you quote.

FR is part of the evolution of D&D and RPG in general. Going through other (real-life) cultures to create a world that is relatable despite being high fantasy, however clumsy and disrespectful (in hindsight) it was, was among the the first stages of cultural exploration on a greater scale in RPG. FR didn’t make me play a faithful and respectful pseudo-Chinese Shou, but it made me want to play and explore playing a Shou. You can’t get it perfect the first time. And this is still relevant today, if only to provoke these discussions.

multi-culture and pan-culture started with humans in FR while the rest remained monocultural. Great! Start from there, there’s still space for design. And from what I can see, that’s what they’re doing, or trying to.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's fair enough, and in my opinion, they are wrong.

But one person is not a thing. It is not a movement. That is why I specifically asked for any person to step forward and say they do not a lore motive, or an environmental motive, or a character motive. I am curious, but I think that might just be one rogue person who does not represent any of the RPG communities out there. Maybe that is naive of me, but it is how I feel.

I'm saying it's been a lot more than one person. I don't want to stir up cross-forum drama (particularly since at least two of the users in question have been banned from said other forum), but I can think of at least three people who openly and explicitly sought this out. And, beyond that, there's been plenty of people in all the threads about "they're making alignment POINTLESS?!" we had last year who have explicitly said it bothers them that this move is taking away easy automatic target creatures, or that they'd rather delete orcs entirely than water down alignment, or that they have no problem with "evil monsters no matter what form they take or what fluff is given." (That last one, incidentally, is a post you yourself liked, hence why I'm a little gobsmacked you seem to think this is a rare one-off opinion, rather than the semi-common but far from universal opinion it appears to be.)

Now, maybe most of them also give fig-leaf excuses...but you should keep in mind, as noted earlier in this thread, that real-world people have been using fig-leaf excuses like that to justify IRL atrocities for a very, very long time. We call it "dehumanization" for a reason. It's part of what makes this whole thing so tricky; we have literally thousands of years (and, for the US in specific, the vast majority of our history) of classifying certain groups of real people as either non-people, inferior people, or officially acceptable targets (e.g. the "Curse of Ham" explanation for why it was supposedly okay, even righteous, to enslave Africans. )

 

[FrogReaver]

For most of my life, whenever I've remarked that some media representation (usually in a popular film or tv show) was racist or derogatory in some way, the most common reaction, especially among my white friends, was to dismiss the concern as not relevant--"it's just a movie"--or to get defensive about any kind of critique (I'm a person of color in the US, fwiw).

I'm sure that happens alot, but have you really thought about why? Maybe it would be good to really think through the implications of such statements.

If a media representation is really racist or derogatory -> now that your white friends know this why are they continuing to watch this, buy it or consume whatever product is associated -> and if they don't stop watching this (etc) after being told it's racist and derogatory doesn't that make them people that condone whatever depiction is being portrayed?

Isn't this the end implication of telling someone white in the U.S. that something they watch/do/etc is racist or derogatory - that either must stop watching it/doing it/being around it or they themselves condone it? I'll probably get flamed for say this next part but it seems so pertinent to the disucssion that I can't leave it unsaid - just maybe you are somewhat insulated from the full weight of those implications because you are not white in the U.S - i mean if a non-white person chooses to watch and like a movie with a racist depiction in it, so what? But if a white person does...?

In each instance, it was sort of annoying, but yes I would say cumulatively, it was hurtful, as it made me feel like an outsider even among friends (and I never considered them racist, just uncaring in that moment). The sentiment was along the lines of "how are you not seeing this?"

I think you bring up a great point about something being annoying and bad only after it is repeatedly done. Like if was done once then maybe you laughed with it. I'm from rural south in the Appalachians in the U.S. and I've seen several horrendous depictions of people from my area. But my area gets stereotyped rarely enough that I tend to laugh at those depictions. I think @Hussar earlier brought up laughing the first time something hurtful happened to him - but it only became hurtful after it was repeatedly done nearly every time he went out.

Anyway, would I say colonialist language in dnd is hurtful or harmful? In each instance, no. I would describe it as tiresome and annoying for me personally. I like dnd, and I have a group where we can make a comment about how something is colonialist or racist or sexist, roll our eyes while remembering OA or Kara Tur or Al Qadim or the 1e dmg, and then get on it with playing a game that doesn't replicate the things we don't like about it. Because I find those aspects of dnd representation tiresome and annoying, however, I wouldn't join a group that used them, or at least used them with no recognition or irony. And I am not going to buy an rpg product that contains that sort of material (I did buy Volo's, then read it, promptly sold it on ebay, and that was the last wotc book I purchased).

I think colonialism is harmful. More I want to say here but i've got to go.

 

[Scott Christian]

I'm saying it's been a lot more than one person. I don't want to stir up cross-forum drama (particularly since at least two of the users in question have been banned from said other forum), but I can think of at least three people who openly and explicitly sought this out. And, beyond that, there's been plenty of people in all the threads about "they're making alignment POINTLESS?!" we had last year who have explicitly said it bothers them that this move is taking away easy automatic target creatures, or that they'd rather delete orcs entirely than water down alignment, or that they have no problem with "evil monsters no matter what form they take or what fluff is given." (That last one, incidentally, is a post you yourself liked, hence why I'm a little gobsmacked you seem to think this is a rare one-off opinion, rather than the semi-common but far from universal opinion it appears to be.)

Now, maybe most of them also give fig-leaf excuses...but you should keep in mind, as noted earlier in this thread, that real-world people have been using fig-leaf excuses like that to justify IRL atrocities for a very, very long time. We call it "dehumanization" for a reason. It's part of what makes this whole thing so tricky; we have literally thousands of years (and, for the US in specific, the vast majority of our history) of classifying certain groups of real people as either non-people, inferior people, or officially acceptable targets (e.g. the "Curse of Ham" explanation for why it was supposedly okay, even righteous, to enslave Africans. )

No offense, but how is anything Hexmage or OOfta or Imaculata said in those quotes proving your claim?

The claim is inherent evil + language used that connotes past atrocities = bad.

Hexmage says he would rather keep the alignment mechanic than orcs. That's it. That is his preference. There are no racist tones. He likes alignment. Are you now saying alignment is the problem?

And the only thing Oofta said (the one I liked) was it is difficult to write up something evil (in this case Redcaps) without using some past language that may have been used elsewhere. He said it is difficult, and I think the very fact we have 5e, that was made in 2014 that still did it, is functional proof he is correct.

And Imaculata stated that fictional worlds often have very simple moralities. He compares orcs to stormtroopers - there to fill a purpose for his game.

Sorry, but you cherry picking one liners and avoiding all context does this thread a disservice.

And again, if you want to help, rewrite the orc with language that is inoffensive to all groups. Make it inclusive.

If you don't want to help, and just want to espouse that people should never use just evil orcs - then say it. Say, "No one should be allowed to have orcs that are just evil - even if the language is fixed."

Either way - be clear.

 

[Hussar]

I'll probably get flamed for say this next part but it seems so pertinent to the disucssion that I can't leave it unsaid - just maybe you are somewhat insulated from the full weight of those implications because you are not white in the U.S - i mean if a non-white person chooses to watch and like a movie with a racist depiction in it, so what? But if a white person does...?

Here's the thing though. What are the results of a white person watching something racist? Up until very, very recently, nothing. I grew up with Andrew Dice Clay and various other unbelievably racist things that people not only watched but applauded. There was pretty much zero negative results from a white person watching something racist.

The fact that there might be some mild inconvenience now isn't really much of an implication or result.

-----
Edit to add.

See, the thing is @FrogReaver, what you are not understanding here is that when you are a minority in a country racism and cultural insensitivity isn't rare. It's not something that pops up once in a while. It's something you have to deal with every single time you open a newspaper, turn on the television and pretty much every single time you leave your house. There is always something. Every day. Whether it's some news article in the paper where the mayor is saying that foreigners should be kept under surveillance because if there is an emergency, foreigners will be the ones looting and killing. ((Actual quote from the mayor of Tokyo by the way)) It's people screaming at you while you walk down the street. It's being followed by sales people the entire time you are in a store because they are "just being careful". On and on and on.

It never stops. And, as a minority in a country, you must never, ever forget it. The second you do, it will bite you on the ass very hard.

THAT'S the reality of living as a minority.

So, when you talk about a white person liking a movie with racism in it, you're not actually saying anything out of the ordinary. People in the majority like things that make minorities look bad all the time. One only has to watch the news to see that. The only difference is that now, at least in some countries like Canada and the US and others, where you have such a huge minority population, it's slowly, very, very, very slowly becoming socially unacceptable.

 

[Malmuria]

Here's the thing though. What are the results of a white person watching something racist? Up until very, very recently, nothing. I grew up with Andrew Dice Clay and various other unbelievably racist things that people not only watched but applauded. There was pretty much zero negative results from a white person watching something racist.

The fact that there might be some mild inconvenience now isn't really much of an implication or result.

Yeah, I don't think watching something racist (or sexist or homophobic) means that the viewer avows the description. But I find the lack of acknowledgment to be stifling. Especially when I was a young person, it makes you feel like you are crazy to see things in popular media (or everyday life) that no one around you sees (and btw I was similar in other regards; I remember a long conversation with a friend in college as to whether American Beauty had sexist undertones. It does, and I can't believe I didn't see it that way at the time).

 

[Hussar]

Really that is the only way forward. We keep talking. Keep engaging. Keep examining.

 

[FrogReaver]

See, the thing is @FrogReaver, what you are not understanding here is that when you are a minority in a country racism and cultural insensitivity isn't rare. It's not something that pops up once in a while. It's something you have to deal with every single time you open a newspaper, turn on the television and pretty much every single time you leave your house. There is always something. Every day. Whether it's some news article in the paper where the mayor is saying that foreigners should be kept under surveillance because if there is an emergency, foreigners will be the ones looting and killing. ((Actual quote from the mayor of Tokyo by the way)) It's people screaming at you while you walk down the street. It's being followed by sales people the entire time you are in a store because they are "just being careful". On and on and on.

Hussar, besides your tone toward me here this is something I understand and I agree with. It was the very point I was bringing up when I contrasted negative stereotypes sometimes being used against me and negative stereotypes 'always' being used against other groups. And while I didn't say it at the time, my thought was 'i don't think I can really imagine how bad it would be if all I ever saw was those negative sterotypes of me or if people always reacted to me in annoying ways because of those stereotpes'. I can laugh at my stereotypes only because it happens so rarely (though as a side point - those negative stereotypes that can apply to me do seem to be on the rise).

I know you had some other points, and I may respond to those later in a separate post, but I think this one needs to be addressed standalone.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah, I don't think watching something racist (or sexist or homophobic) means that the viewer avows the description. But I find the lack of acknowledgment to be stifling. Especially when I was a young person, it makes you feel like you are crazy to see things in popular media (or everyday life) that no one around you sees (and btw I was similar in other regards; I remember a long conversation with a friend in college as to whether American Beauty had sexist undertones. It does, and I can't believe I didn't see it that way at the time).

IMO. True acknolwedgment has much bigger stakes. It sounds simple but it's intertwined with so much else. It's like starting out as a child and learning how to interact with the world all over again.

1. How do I determine if something is racist/sexist/homophobic/etc?
2. What actions are acceptable/required if it is?
3. What actions are acceptable/required if it isn't but someone claims it is?
4. What actions are acceptable/required if it is but someone claims it isn't?
5. Are the acceptable/required actions changed depending on the race of person making the claim compared to my race?
6. If I do or say something wrong on this (even accidently), what are the consequences?

If you really want acknowledgment about the racist/sexist/homophobic then help people figure out the answers to these questions.