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

[codo]

I won't look at NUTSR because I don't support people who are racist. They don't need a click from me. And, of course there are artists that sneak their crap in. We should not support them. But cursed by evil god is not a trope that equates to racism. Just like cursed by a witch is not a trope people connect to misandry.

The trope of a "Race" being cursed by god to be evil doesn't always equate to racism, but a lot of the time it DOES! Players should never even be put in the spot where they have to question if this is racist of not. People are dealing with a lot of crap in the world right now, they shouldn't be forced to deal with it in a game they are playing to relax.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Assuming One continues types like 5e, then giants are there own creature type (giant) and sprites are of type fey.

Sticking to humanoids ("Humanoids are the main peoples of the D&D world"), the 2014 5e MM currently leaves the language: "Almost as numerous but far more savage and brutal, and almost uniformly evil, are the races of goblinoids [...], orcs, gnolls, lizardfolk, and kobolds."

[Edit: Ok. The below is apparently only in the monster section, not the PC section. I retract and amend that I have no clue where they're going with it.]

But in MMotM the goblinoids have been moved to fey, gnolls are monstrosity, and kobold have been moved to dragon. I'm guessing they'll keep going that way in One.

I don't really understand why arbitrarily classifying things as non-humanoids would matter.

 

[Cadence]

I don't really understand why arbitrarily classifying things as non-humanoids would matter.

It kind of feels icky to have me to have groups of things that are "people" labeled as "the bad ones", "the savage ones", "the not smart ones", etc...

If a demon, or angel, or ooze, or undead, or extraplanar created thing has some universally not-helpful properties, then it doesn't feel as bad. (Of course there certainly are some stories where some of the undead vampires are going for a redemption arc or whatnot...)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It kind of feels icky to have me to have groups of things that are "people" labeled as "the bad ones", "the savage ones", "the not smart ones", etc...

If a demon, or angel, or ooze, or undead, or extraplanar created thing has some universally not-helpful properties, then it doesn't feel as bad. (Of course there certainly are some stories where some of the undead vampires are going for a redemption arc or whatnot...)

But it also feels icky to label things that seem like people as "not people", especially if that is done in order to attach negative labels to them. Like goblins and giants are obviously people, and labelling them as non-humanoids doesn't change that.

 

[Charlaquin]

Mind flayers have free will, no?

I know this is beside the point, but probably not. It’s pretty strongly implied that they’re at least being manipulated if not outright mind controlled by the elder brains.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's less being "humanoid", and more being a PC.

For a lot of people, it is being humanoid. Though there’s probably a strong correlation between that position and wanting all humanoids to be fair game to receive PC rules.

 

[Cadence]

Like goblins and giants are obviously people, and labelling them as non-humanoids doesn't change that.

Are giants like people? (Were they elementals in 4e? More mythological in a lot of books?

That hobogoblins and gnolls would be renamed to just become killable does seem yeuch. And not really doable if we want to play them and want playable things to be humanoids.

And then in Spelljammer you have the insect and the ooze that are people.

::::

Everything except aberrations and outerplane beings? (And then we can argue if we should all be vegetarian? :-/ ).

 

[Scott Christian]

From a company's point of views, their goal is to maximize profit. By removing things, they'll not lose any racist dollar (because I really doubt KKK members or Nazi supporters would stop buying D&D products because of a removal of, say, dark elves from a setting) but they are confronted with a situation where a group of people actively say they don't want to see X in their game (and they might, indeed, stop buying). Therefore, their goal becomes to remove X, even if X isn't extremely logical. What's driving the change isn't the soundness of any argument but its existence and the feeling of their customers.

I agree. So they will just try to find a new way to do it that is "acceptable." They'll probably say this species on this plane is infected or the plane itself slowly causes a person to a specific alignment. I mean, if they went with the plane actually cursing the species, would anyone have an objection?
I can't think of any real life situation where humans have used a plane (like shadowfell) as the reason for their racist tropes. So will there be an objection to that?


The answer is...


There will be a bunch of objections.

 

[Scott Christian]

It's less being "humanoid", and more being a PC.

And again, I get that. But if the PC is the exception to everything, as stated in the PHB, why can't they be the exception in alignment?

 

[Scott Christian]

The trope of a "Race" being cursed by god to be evil doesn't always equate to racism, but a lot of the time it DOES! Players should never even be put in the spot where they have to question if this is racist of not. People are dealing with a lot of crap in the world right now, they shouldn't be forced to deal with it in a game they are playing to relax.

This is a great point. But they are choosing to play a game in which there is creation based on species, world laws, and culture. That too, needs to be considered.