D&D General New WOTC racism allegations regarding Hadozee and Spelljammer

[grimslade]

This shows a fundamental problem with the D&D design crew. They were trying to create an homage to Planet of the Apes with the Hadozee, but failed to recognize the underlying themes being addressed in the SciFi novel and movies. They handle racial themes and the struggle for civil rights clumsily, but not subtly. Not recognizing that in the lore design is a big warning klaxon. The historical lore of the Hadozee in 3.5e and 2e not being addressed and held up as another warning flag to write carefully is another failure. The art is just bad and would have been immediately questioned by a more culturally aware group.
If you wanted to use an homage to the Planet of the Apes, you needed to be super aware of what you are doing and this was not.
Needs to be addressed and needs to be fixed.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, given how much they've been stripping lore out of creatures in 5e, I think it's weird that when they do decide to add some new stuff in, it's just instantly sooo problematic.

So here is my thought...

Spelljammer is a love letter to old-school Scif-Fi. Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Killer Clowns from Outer Space. They wanted a Planet of the Apes reference. They tried to shoehorn one in on the Hadozee's and absolutely botched it. And they botched it because I don't think they stopped to think how problematic that old Sci-Fi was. It's absolutely LOADED with weird racist tropes, cultural appropriation, and a sprinkle of misogyny on top. The current sci-fi scene is a warzone of people debating how to best handle concepts like alien races or planetary colonization. Nearly any discussion on the topic of any classic sci-fi will eventually descend into how problematic it is. The idea of marrying the multitude of problems with fantasy with the myriad of problems in Sci-fi, is... well, I guess I'm surprised this is the only problem found so far.

 

[Gradine]

Fantasy and Sci-fi are absolutely LOADED with these kinds of minefields now. I can't imagine even with sufficient sensitivity readers; they could manage to navigate the current standards.

It's actually incredibly easy, and WotC had even done it successfully! Like a month ago!

This "nothing will be good enough", "impossible standards", "people looking for things to find"; these are extremely harmful and absolutely demonstrably false tropes that only serve to discredit the work that people are doing to educate and support content creators.

So knock it off.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, at least Star Trek got it right with the Ferengi, right? Right??

I mean, somehow they managed to scrabble it back so they're sorta-totally-racist but also somehow not really, and quite widely loved. That took a hell of a lot of work from DS9 though (even with "making the world a worse place" aberrations like Profit & Lace, good god that was bad). They're safe enough that the very right-on kid's series featuring Janeway has a Ferengi in it for a few episodes.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This shows a fundamental problem with the D&D design crew. They were trying to create an homage to Planet of the Apes with the Hadozee, but failed to recognize the underlying themes being addressed in the SciFi novel and movies. They handle racial themes and the struggle for civil rights clumsily, but not subtly. Not recognizing that in the lore design is a big warning klaxon.

someone said it on Tic Tok, no where did any POC have there hand in this. As much as they claim to (and at least it looks like they try) want to become more diverse, but it is still old white men makeing the final choices

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Honestly, this I don't see being too bad given Tremorsense is, Tremorsense. You've just got a connection to the earth itself due to dwarves being, dwarves, and taht's just their magical thing. Probably not something they all use, but I don't see it being too bad. Certainly a neater way to handle that sort of connection than D&D's historic "The ability to detect very slight inclines"

It's not the Tremorsense that bothers me. I love Dwarves having Tremorsense. They should have had that from the beginning, and it should always be active. However, the "you're automatically proficient with one of these tools because Moradin mandates it even in settings where he doesn't exist" is a problem.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I've been watching this unfold all day, and I suppose my position is, "What are the people who are being impacted by this saying, because they should probably be listened to. Cuz they are the impacted ones and all that."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Fantasy and Sci-fi are absolutely LOADED with these kinds of minefields now. I can't imagine even with sufficient sensitivity readers; they could manage to navigate the current standards.

They absolutely could navigate them. They're not that difficult to deal with at all.

The reality is, most stuff that makes at least a few people mad is mad about is ultimately a "dud", if there's a minefield, literally 80% of the mines don't actually go off. So yeah a handful of people on Twitter will get mad, but it'll go nowhere. Maybe this isn't obvious to you, but I follow leftist RPG Twitter to some extent and people get mad about WotC stuff quite regularly, but like I said, most of the time it goes nowhere, because it's not very compelling. This, on the other hand, is obviously full facepalm, so it is going somewhere.

And most of the mines that will explode are painted red, have a flashing light on them, and aren't buried. That's stuff like this. This is stuff you don't need a sensitivity reader to detect. This is stuff numbnuts like me can detect.

The sensitivity reader should have picked this up. But it's a monkey-race, you always have to check those carefully, just like any animal associated with propaganda, stereotypes or insults about humans. It's genuinely not hard.

It's like, WotC don't need to get an "A+" on this stuff to "navigate the current standards", they need maybe a C+. But this sort of thing is a flat out fail.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

This shows a fundamental problem with the D&D design crew. They were trying to create an homage to Planet of the Apes with the Hadozee, but failed to recognize the underlying themes being addressed in the SciFi novel and movies.

It reminds me of this quote from Roger Ebert about Battlefield Earth:

The director, Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why.

That's one of the core problems here. WotC thought Planet of the Apes was cool (it is), but didn't understand why. So they took part of it out of context and added it to a new lore context that made it appear to be thinly-veiled racism.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

It's not the Tremorsense that bothers me. I love Dwarves having Tremorsense. They should have had that from the beginning, and it should always be active. However, the "you're automatically proficient with one of these tools because Moradin mandates it even in settings where he doesn't exist" is a problem.

Agreed. I think that "we included tool proficiencies in the race write-up because it is a big part of their culture" is actually less problematic and essentialist than "the Gods made them that way" especially since something like "Tender of the Forge" could be a Background/Feat combo.