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

[Yaarel]

well, this is going to be unpleasant for them, we going to get a product recall or something?

Not a bad idea.

The hadozee descriptions deserve a rewrite. Perhaps customers who wish can swap their book for the reprint.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

So you now can't rescue people because you are then a "white saviour"? That is quite a stretch to do in order to fit this into a specific narrative. Was Han a white saviour to Leia? And later was she a white saviour to Han and Luke to her? Not to mention that white saviour also implies that the non-whites are passive and did not help themselves which the story leaves open as it is unclear who killed the wizard.
You are making quite a lot of assumptions to fit the hadozee into the white saviour narrative.

Look, my racist-dar isn't particularly finely tuned, I didn't pick up on the images being problematic or a simian race being particularly problematic until the controversy emerged, but even before that, when I read the text last weekend, I was surprised that they went with a slave narrative, and double surprised that it had such an unselfconscious "white savior" element. I think you are getting hung up on the common name of the trope (as perhaps will some people employing it to argue that the Hadozee are racist).

I don't think members of the "advanced" oppressor group helping members of the "primitive" oppressed group has to always be too problematic for people telling stories to touch. Heavens forfend we should ever be unable to tell stories celebrating that sort of empathy and heroism. It just needs to be touched with sensitivity, and toned down or avoided when there is a confluence of other already problematic things connected to the same narrative.

 

[pukunui]

They didn't really bring her back, especially when MtoF said she was a goddess barely anyones heard of, whose quest is a pipe dream. Or when they cut her temple out of Dungeon of the Mad mage. Hell, in all those articles about revamping the drow, neither WOTC nor R.A Salvator ever mentioned her or her followers. She's still getting kicked to the curb.

What temple got cut from Mad Mage? I'm running that adventure, and the PCs are currently on level 10, where there are two shrines to Eilistraee. She was also specifically brought back during the Sundering, and is a deity granting clerical magic in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and so on. WotC may have tried to erase her during 4e, but they brought her back in 5e, and while they haven't given her much attention, she's definitely still there.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm starting to think Paizo was right to announce that they're not going to include slavery in any form in any of their products anymore . . .

I was thinking the same thing.



Here in 5e Spelljammer, the hadozee are monkey-like not-slaves who enjoy being slaves (on spelljammer ships). They love serving their masters (the elves). But their masters dont even respect the hadozee. It is something like a "voluntary" slave race.

This is sickening.

It isnt that writers cant handle the topic of slavery well. For some reason, the reliance on D&D "traditions" and the immersion in "traditional content" seems to skew the ability to handle these sensitive topics well.

5e has writers that care about these issues. This makes the publication of this slavery content, all that much more glaring.



I suspect the hadozee descriptions got passed the cultural sensitivity consultants because the artwork for the hadozee includes the reallife spectrum of human complexions. There are blond White hadozee as well.

But in this case, it is the narrative itself that is off − and parrots problematic racist tropics when handling the slavery theme.

There was zero reason to inject the creation of a slave race into the origin story of the hadozee. And no reason to have "saviors" liberate them. And no reason for the hadozee to experience "joy" when serving their masters on spelljammer ships. And no reason to have their masters disrespect the hadozee. All of this is such a self-inflicted wounded.

And while not all images of hadozee have human dark complexion, the one they feature does, and with minstrel-esque instrument and costume.

Yikes. There was no reason to go there in the first place. It is like when trying to squash down a racist trope in one part of the D&D tradition it ends up popping back up somewhere else in the D&D tradition.



Maybe it is better to avoid the topic of slavery?

At this point with slavery untouchable, Dark Sun, like the Spelljammer planet Fyreen, might as well be hurled into the blackhole. Which is disappointing, because the Dark Sun setting was one of the last settings that was truly free from the oppressive (and sometimes racist) D&D gods.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Which is exactly the problem. It clearly demonstrates that despite saying they’re aiming to be more diverse and inclusive, evidently “everyone involved” didn’t include any people of color (or if it did they weren’t listened to).

Or those people of color were unaware of the minstrel thing as well. I agree with you they should get some more sensitivity guides for stuff like this, I just doubt anyone there had an idea the minstrel picture was a thing (I also doubt they were even thinking of Hadozee as being like black people).

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Here in 5e Spelljammer, the hadozee are monkey-like not-slaves who enjoy being slaves (on spelljammer ships). They love serving their masters (the elves). But the elves dont actually respect the hadozee.

This is sickening.

That's not current lore. That's lore from Stormwrack which is 17 years old now.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They tried that once, with 4e, and the fans emphatically rejected it.

My biggest issue with 4e was the new rules, not the new everything else. Nerath was cool.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

It needs to be pointed out that the first quote he is making is from the current book. The Second quote is from a fan wiki and not current lore. While the first part is not great, it's not as bad as it seems.

 

[Yaarel]

That's not current lore. That's lore from Stormwrack which is 17 years old now.

I dont have the Spelljammer books yet. But the twitter posts have images with the following quotes.

≈ 5e Slave Race
"Several hundred years ago, a wizard visited the hadozee home world. Apprentices captured dozens of hadozee. The wizard enlarged them and turned them into sapient, bipedal beings, to create an army for sale to the highest bidder."

≈ 5e Savior
"But instead, the wizards apprentices grew fond of the hadozee and helped them escape, and were forced to kill the wizard. With the help of their liberators, the hadozees returned to their homeworld."



≈ pre-5e Happy Slaves
The following seems to come from pre-5e Spelljammer. The image of the text includes imbedded links and footnotes. But this D&D "tradition" of servile slavishness is something that 5e unconsciously leaned into, rather than studiously corrected.

"Personality / Most adozee were unquenchable optimists. Hadozee were not philosophers. They simply wanted to do good and happy work. They took great joy in the simplest of chores. The hadozee had a great love of the elves. The elves did not mutually respect them. Oftentimes, this love resulted in flattery."

"There was a long tradition of hadozee serving the elves of wildspace. The elves realized that the hadozee were more civilized than "nonhumans". The hadozee served happily on elven vessels."

 

[GreyLord]

This is a bad look. In otherwords, this doesn't look good, it looks really bad.

I am not a spelljammer fan, I had no interest in looking over the playtest, the review materials or anything else. It may be that there are others who are not really into spelljammer that would have noticed this straight up if they had been given the chance.

I'm a Star Frontiers fan, but I still had no interest in Spell Jammer, even with the included alluded to races. The Yazirian didn't have this background that I am aware of in SF. They were somewhat similar to the Chewbaca of the films, but with wings.

I do like Dragonlance. I haven't seen things like this thus far in the playtests they've presented (but, I may be blind to it unintentionally? I will try to keep eyes open better) thus far.

But I will say, this really is an icky thing to have been missed. I think even a little self awareness of what was being written could have had someone say...maybe this isn't the best idea to put in print.

It would have been easy just to bypass the entire history thing they included and write up that the Hadozee are creative and curious winged creatures that commonly travel space and are commonly found allied to elves. They are some of the more technically proficient masters of space today, and for most friendly races, will be friendly back.

Something like that and extrapolated probably would have been a much better base of writing a description of the race that what I've read here in this thread about what was found in the SJ book.