D&D (2024) What new jargon do you want to replace "Race"?

[Frozen_Heart]

I think a part of the ASI issue is that 5e's maths assumes a score of 16 in your primary stat at the start. In order to hit that with point buy, you had no choice but to pick a race which had bonuses in that ability. Combined with the bounded accuracy revamp, it made playing a character with a 15 in their primary score rather unpleasant. Much worse than in prior editions.

 

[codo]

And like I said, in specific instances people could use bad stereotypes. I haven't read the product in question but assuming everything I have heard about it here is correct, I would say this is an individual instance (frankly of a product I had never heard of before). But I don't think you need orcs to have negative stereotypes in games in a writer is intent on it and a publisher willing to let it go through.

I do think more broadly the idea that orcs are racially coded is not accurate. I think that is a very advanced media lens people are taking to orcs that most people don't bring to their reading of the creatures.

This "specific instance" was a campaign guide for Mystara, TSR's main campaign setting setting at the time, explaining the place of orcs in the world. It also wasn't just the view of one racist writer. There were artists, editors, and management involved in the project as well. It doesn't look like anyone working at TSR at the time had any problems with it. This was an official project put out by TSR that portrayed orcs as racist, incredibly offensive, bumbling, cartoonish caricatures of native cultures and specific historically leaders.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

This "specific instance" was a campaign guide for Mystara, TSR's main campaign setting setting at the time, explaining the place of orcs in the world. It also wasn't just the view of one racist writer. There were artists, editors, and management involved in the project as well. It doesn't look like anyone working at TSR at the time had any problems with it. This was an official project put out by TSR that portrayed orcs as racist, incredibly offensive, bumbling, cartoonish caricatures of native cultures and specific historically leaders.

I remember seeing pictures from either that or a similar book about orcs.

I had no words for how awful it was. It wasn't even subtle about it, and it was clearly intentionally designed to target native-american culture.

 

[glass]

I've never believed that depictions of orcs and elves have an impact on our ability to dehumanize other people (which we are certainly capable of unfortunately).

Well I do believe it. And more to the point, a lot of people who study the subject and a lot of the people directly affected by it believe it, and I believe them.

The medieval idea of them being snakes can just be chalked up as coming from a time before they invented observation or properly classifying animals: see whales and dolphins being fish.

With the irony that, at least in some interpretations of cladistic taxonomy, whales are back to being fish again (and all the other mammals with them - including humans).

I never found settings where every species is just humans in different hats interesting

Since they are all going to be played by human, "humans in different hats" is pretty much all they can be.

However, if we're talking about D&D, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs are absolutely terrible examples of doing that. Elves and Dwarves are very obviously just Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off.

That may be how they started, but they (especially the elves) had drifted pretty far from their Tolkien roots even by the time OD&D was published.

Aren't all the different levels of a taxonomy clades?

That is the modern view AIUI. I might have got the WEOTS, but I think the whole Kingdom/Order/Phylum order thing is pretty-much deprecated - nature isn't that neat and tidy.

I'm guessing that the idea is that "all orcs are evil" is less complicated plot wise and game management wise than "hmm... each of these groups and individuals have their own motivation that needs to be considered when I run a game."

I am not sure about that. Afterall, if they adventure is about defeating evil orc raiders, then all that matters is whether these particular orcs are evil raiders. There is no requirement for the all orcs in the world to be evil raiders, because the PCs are never going to be fighting all the orcs in the world at once. And by not saying they are, you keep more tools in your toolbox for the next adventure (or even the same one), which might have other orcs in any number of different roles.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Also as another poster pointed out, this particular argument has been hashed out on other threads in the past so it is probably best not to resurrect it here

Which would be great if people stopped performing that part of the ritual to resurrect it where they run into a thread shouting 'orcs aren't real, lol!'.

 

[Charlaquin]

The more that every heritage needs to be thought of as just like humanity, with a wide variety of cultures and dispositions,

Obligatory interjection that having a wide variety of cultures and dispositions does not necessarily make an imaginary species “just like humanity.” If writers can create a variety of fictional species that each individually have a different culture and disposition than humanity, they can create a fictional species that has a variety of different cultures and dispositions, all of which are distinct from humanity.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's generally not what people who are seriously bothered by their characterization would contend they are presented as.

a whole species of “general barbarians” wouldn’t be unproblematic, whether one thinks orcs match that description or not.

 

[Charlaquin]

One issue is that describing the different DnD species in any way at all can be linked at some point to language which racists have used in the past. X species is stronger/smarter/can do this thing which Y species can't do, is classic eugenicist language.

Ultimately the only way around it is to make all playable species completely identical. But then you just have humans in different hats and there is no point having different sapient species at all.

Why make them identical? Just make them diverse.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

A species can have a specieswide physical or mental difference to humans, without all being one giant monoculture.

Even if you blanket statement 'almost all orcs are more aggressive than almost all humans', that doesn't prevent those same orcs from having just as much diversity and unique cultures / beliefs as humans.

 

[Vaalingrade]

With the irony that, at least in some interpretations of cladistic taxonomy, whales are back to being fish again (and all the other mammals with them - including humans).

Neither humans nor whales pair well with tartar sauce. Checkmate.

Salmon is also not a fish by this metric, but it's a hill I will die on.