D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Faolyn]

This is again not a very charitable rephrasing. Yes killing orcs can be fun. But the use of ‘race’ in that phrasing you are using is a pretty strong equivocation

They are literally a race. A playable race, even. And you think killing them is fun.

Why not kill elves and take their stuff? What is it about orcs that's fun to kill? Because they're not as pretty as elves? Because ages and ages ago, some people decided that they were OK to kill and you don't want to question that?

You don't like the word race here because it suddenly turns orcs from "fun thing to kill" into "people." And people are individuals, not faceless hordes that exist only to be killed.

Further you couldn’t be more wrong about play styles. I hardly ever run campaigns like this, and use a broad range of adventure styles, usually with heavy emphasis on RP. Still I understand why dungeon crawls and wilderness exploration where you kill monsters like orcs, goblins and kobolds forms a big part of play for people. I can also see the value it has to making them game function easily

Earlier you said:

It absolutely impacts play to remove going to dungeons and wilderness, killing monsters and taking their stuff. Other things can be done, but this is like 80% of how people play the game. Again, I think framing it as "killing the native population" is just a way to connect it to colonialism, as killing monsters and taking their stuff can cover a broad range of situations.

And you just said that killing orcs and goblins is fun.

So, 80% of people play this way--going into dungeons and killing orcs--and you have fun killing them, but all of a sudden, you hardly ever run campaigns like this? I guess you're not part of that 80%, which kind of makes me wonder where you got this number from, and why you seem to have a hard time grokking those of us who, like you claim, play games with a heavy emphasis on RP and on coming up with motivations for the bad guys beyond "they exist."

Something funny: on another thread (the NuTSR thread) I posted this image taken from the 1e Monster Manual in response to LaNasa, admitted bigot, stealing this description nearly word-for-word for a game he claims to be producing:

"Particularly disgusting because of their brown skin."

(Basically, it's kind of funny that I get to post the same image on two different threads within a day or so.)

Of course, the 1e PHB has this to say about half-orcs, which is echoed in the next paragraph of the orc's MM description:

"Mongrels." "Passing as human."

(And you wonder why some people have said that orcs are racist.)

Now, by the time 2e rolled along, orcs had been changed: they were now green-gray, not "disgusting brown." I guess this begs a question: were whoever wrote the entries for the 2e Monstrous Compendium being stifled or otherwise doing a disservice to the gaming community because at some time between 1977 and 1989 they realized that maybe describing brown skin as being disgusting wasn't actually acceptable?

"But they're not real! They're a fantasy people!" you might say, as you've said that in the past. And sure. There aren't any orcs in real life. There aren't any elves or halflings in real life, and yet very few gamers (except for elf-haters like Snarf) would consider it "fun" to go around killing them and taking their stuff. There are humans in real life, of course, but I'm pretty sure that any PC who went around murdering human NPCs (or elves and halflings) and looting their stuff in the way that, according to you, 80% of players do to orcs, those PCs would likely be looking at an alignment change to evil.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I am not concern trolling. I am just giving my opinion

Those are not mutually exclusive. Fretting over "mob mentality" and being "cancelled" is absolutely concern trolling because it just isn't a threat with what we are talking about. All this worry is just an argument to try and stifle the other side by saying "But look how many people are worried about releasing their works!" It's just nonsense.

In terms of this bit, I am not advocating for an orthodoxy (i don' want the hobby to just be about dungeon crawls and killing things and taking their stuff). I want the new elements too. I just don't want to discard these very useful elements because people think they are tropes tainted by history or racism (when I think that just isn't the case).

Dude, when people start moving past something, trying to keep it in is arguing for orthodoxy. You're trying to keep a status quo that is moving away from you. I'm sorry but that is the reality of it.

Times change doesn't justify everything. History isn't a straight upward trend towards the good. New bad ideas emerge even after old bad ideas are eliminated or abandoned (and old bad ideas come back, new bad ideas die, etc). True you make a valid point that just because people wouldn't have entertained these criticisms a decade or two ago, that doesn't mean they aren't valid. I suppose my point there was people understood those critiques in an academic way. But when they moved into the broader culture, they became extremely simplified and you started seeing things like equating dungeon delving with colonialism (which I think is a very big simplification and reductive). So fair enough, it not being a thing twenty years ago, doesn't make it bad, but it being a thing now also doesn't make it good. Times change doesn't justify anything we happen to do in the present.

Times change justifies a lot, to be honest. History isn't always an upward trend towards good, but that's just trying to muddy the waters and doesn't really defend your point well.

People don't necessarily see "dungeon delving" as colonialism as much as classic "We come in, kill them, and take their stuff" as colonialism because, well, it kind of is, especially when we're talking about it in terms of "There are good races and bad races, and these bad races we can just kill on sight." Now that might frustrate you, but that doesn't make those critiques "simplified" or "reductive". I'd say they're pretty on-point. The problem is that you enjoy that style of play and feel attacked by those critiques.

Really, this whole argument that "time doesn't mean better" seems dangerously close to

 

[MGibster]

They are literally a race. A playable race, even. And you think killing them is fun.

Well, yeah. Killings things and taking their stuff is literally the backbone of D&D's gameplay mechanics.

Why not kill elves and take their stuff? What is it about orcs that's fun to kill? Because they're not as pretty as elves? Because ages and ages ago, some people decided that they were OK to kill and you don't want to question that?

Typically elves aren't the ones raiding nearby villages and doing evil stuff. But if it were elves, sure, I'd be just as happy to kick down their doors, kill 'em, and take their stuff.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Clearly despite you breaking everything into tiny posts, you don't read them as carefully as you could. "Sometimes for generations" means that they may be passing through? Pretty long journey if they have been settled in the same lands for multiple decades but are just "passing through" Or invaders, you know what we call invaders who have been in the land for multiple generations? Citizens.

If I miss anything feel free to point it out. It is very easy to misread posts when the thread is moving this fast. And I am not the spring chicken I once was.

Fair enough, if they'v been there for generations, maybe they are natives. But my point is in wilderness exploration you are encountering monsters who are there for all kinds of reasons (from having lived there for a long time to being invaders themselves or roaming raiders).

And why don't you get to be native people if you live in a dungeon? There are entire ecosystems in the Underdark, why are they "residents of the lair" just because they are underground instead of above ground? We don't call dwarf cities "lairs" just because they are underground.

Sure you could be. I just think you are kind of forcing that term on all these creatures when it is only going to be the case some of the time (which I think is important because we are debating how much of a colonialist trope this stuff really is). Sometimes the inhabitants of a dungeon aren't what I would call natives, but residents, because the dungeon is more like a big home than a society. If you are talking about something on the scale of the under dark, sure that is different. It depends on the specifics

And let's run that scenario for a bit. You are hired by dwarves to clear out monsters that 70 years ago killed the dwarves and took over an underground city, So you roll up, slaughter the lot of them, and the dwarves take over the underground city... So what do you do in ten years when the "monsters" ask to hire you to kill the invaders who slaughtered the inhabitants of the dungeon and are presently controlling it? This is the problem people are posing. If you take one step further in IRL logic, and take the beings we are told are sentient and intelligent and give them the same motivations as people.... then you see immediately that there is a problem. After all, if the dwarves demanded you slaughter a group of humans who violently took over their home 70 years ago, most groups would hesitate. This makes it a rather obvious double standard. And we have been looking askance as double standards for a long while now, asking why they are still allowed to stand.

Sure and this would be a great thought experiment for a lot of campaigns. I am not saying you can't think these things through. But a lot of tables aren't doing that. They are just there for a night of taking back the dungeon that was stripped from their dwarven ancestors by orcs. It isn't some nefarious thing that needs to be called out or changed. Which isn't to say we shouldn't also be doing other things in the game.

And I agree, there is double standard. Because orcs are monsters. Some campaigns humanize them more. And that is fine (I do that in my own worlds). But in a game where the point is to adventure and slay the monsters, monsters are going to be more fair game than your dwarven allies or your human allies

It is how some people describe the game. But the most recent ad for DnD from JoCat certainly doesn't describe it that way. The 5e PHB doesn't describe it that way. I've never seriously pitched a game of DnD to anyone that way.

So maybe.... "kill things and take their stuff" has fallen to the wayside in the favor of "Go on a grand adventure" or "Become the heroes of your own fantasy story"

Part of my point is the game inevitably goes back to kick down the dungeon door, because that works. And I am not so sure this style of gaming is on the way out.

Also kill things and take their stuff is a bit facetious. Like I said, there is obviously more to it than that, and a lot of the fun of the game is taking things beyond those very simple approaches. But I do think at its core, D&D is about exploring dungeons and fighting monsters. The game can do different things though for sure. I was a big Ravenloft GM and gravitated towards settings and systems that were different. At the same time I remember how much things click whenever you go back to those basics of dungeons and wilderness filled with monstrous threats.

And again, despite you trying to paint it as such, no one is saying you can't go into the wilderness. No one is saying you can't go into dungeons. No one is saying you can't kill monsters.

You might not, but there have definitely been people making that argument in previous threads on this subject.

What I am saying is that going into the wilderness specifically to find intelligent people, killing them for their money, and then acting like it is a great time does seem like it has some serious problems to it.

And I would say it is just a dice game where players are killing fictional monsters, no matter how intelligent they are. I don't think it is the problem you and others are making it out to be

 

[Bedrockgames]

People don't necessarily see "dungeon delving" as colonialism as much as classic "We come in, kill them, and take their stuff" as colonialism because, well, it kind of is, especially when we're talking about it in terms of "There are good races and bad races, and these bad races we can just kill on sight." Now that might frustrate you, but that doesn't make those critiques "simplified" or "reductive". I'd say they're pretty on-point. The problem is that you enjoy that style of play and feel attacked by those critiques.

I would say an adventure going into the dungeon and killing a monster with green skin that is visibly not human to take gold, is a very far cry from from powerful kingdoms and empires taking over whole nations of people, setting up colonies, exploiting local resources and imposing their culture on the people. Yes I can see the connection you are making. I don't think it is particularly strong. And even if you could draw a line, playing such a campaign has zero effect on the world in terms of colonialism. No one is going to start doing colonialism again because they killed orcs in D&D, and people aren't going to view colonialism in history differently because they did some dungeon delving. I can easily play a game of D&D that is strictly about killing green skinned monsters and taking their stuff, and also understand the history of colonialism and what it meant. Those two things don't have to connect.

 

[Mecheon]

There aren't any elves or halflings in real life, and yet very few gamers (except for elf-haters like Snarf) would consider it "fun" to go around killing them and taking their stuff.

I mean, my go-to want for a Warcraft expansion involves a Silvermoon City raid where we break into Silvermoon. Alternate universe they're still High Elves Silvermoon

i mean we're probably freeing a dragon or stoping them from stealing all the world's magic and it may actually be a ploy to get an updated Silvermoon in the main timeline but, elf-murder is a practiced Warcraft thing

 

[Bedrockgames]

They are literally a race. A playable race, even. And you think killing them is fun.

They are a race in the sense that they are distinct species. They aren't a human racial group. My point was your useage was equivocating on those two meanings for its intended effect.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And you just said that killing orcs and goblins is fun.

So, 80% of people play this way--going into dungeons and killing orcs--and you have fun killing them, but all of a sudden, you hardly ever run campaigns like this? I guess you're not part of that 80%, which kind of makes me wonder where you got this number from, and why you seem to have a hard time grokking those of us who, like you claim, play games with a heavy emphasis on RP and on coming up with motivations for the bad guys beyond "they exist."

Yes, I prefer other styles of campaign but I can enjoy a good dungeon delve that involves killing orcs too.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I would say an adventure going into the dungeon and killing a monster with green skin that is visibly not human to take gold, is a very far cry from from powerful kingdoms and empires taking over whole nations of people, setting up colonies, exploiting local resources and imposing their culture on the people. Yes I can see the connection you are making. I don't think it is particularly strong. And even if you could draw a line, playing such a campaign has zero effect on the world in terms of colonialism. No one is going to start doing colonialism again because they killed orcs in D&D, and people aren't going to view colonialism in history differently because they did some dungeon delving. I can easily play a game of D&D that is strictly about killing green skinned monsters and taking their stuff, and also understand the history of colonialism and what it meant. Those two things don't have to connect.

Saying they are "visibly not human" is doing a lot of work there, especially with the modern conception of Orcs. But even if they don't look like people to you doesn't mean they aren't sapient creatures. Even if it were lizardmen, if you're just there to take their stuff it doesn't change that you are taking it thinking beings.

Also it's not particularly honest to try and depersonalize colonialism as something that must be about entire kingdoms, when what you are describing is just "killing people and taking their stuff" repeated over and over. Colonialism is not just something that only exists at the scale of an Europa Universalis game where you press buttons and a Colonialism happens. It's people who go into places, kill the people and take their land, largely because they think they can since the people they are taking it from aren't fully people from their perspective.

 

[Bedrockgames]

They are literally a race. A playable race, even. And you think killing them is fun.

Why not kill elves and take their stuff? What is it about orcs that's fun to kill? Because they're not as pretty as elves? Because ages and ages ago, some people decided that they were OK to kill and you don't want to question that?

You don't like the word race here because it suddenly turns orcs from "fun thing to kill" into "people." And people are individuals, not faceless hordes that exist only to be killed.


Earlier you said:


And you just said that killing orcs and goblins is fun.

So, 80% of people play this way--going into dungeons and killing orcs--and you have fun killing them, but all of a sudden, you hardly ever run campaigns like this? I guess you're not part of that 80%, which kind of makes me wonder where you got this number from, and why you seem to have a hard time grokking those of us who, like you claim, play games with a heavy emphasis on RP and on coming up with motivations for the bad guys beyond "they exist."

Something funny: on another thread (the NuTSR thread) I posted this image taken from the 1e Monster Manual in response to LaNasa, admitted bigot, stealing this description nearly word-for-word for a game he claims to be producing:

View attachment 282150

"Particularly disgusting because of their brown skin."

First off, I am not interested in anything Nu-TSR is doing. I think in the context of the time it wasn't trying to make any connection to human skin color (that could have been done directly when the AD&D books were written).

(Basically, it's kind of funny that I get to post the same image on two different threads within a day or so.)

Of course, the 1e PHB has this to say about half-orcs, which is echoed in the next paragraph of the orc's MM description:

View attachment 282149

"Mongrels." "Passing as human."

Again, I don't think orcs are a stand in for black people so I don't really have an issue with some half orcs passing for human. I do think mongrel is pretty outdated and wouldn't be used now.

Now, by the time 2e rolled along, orcs had been changed: they were now green-gray, not "disgusting brown." I guess this begs a question: were whoever wrote the entries for the 2e Monstrous Compendium being stifled or otherwise doing a disservice to the gaming community because at some time between 1977 and 1989 they realized that maybe describing brown skin as being disgusting wasn't actually acceptable?

Orcs changed a lot over the editions. I like the 2E entries in many instances. I prefer the older very pig like orcs personally

Whoever worked on the 2E monstrous manual was definitely stifled because they were doing so during the satanic panic. I doubt the overriding concern was racial sensitivity and more like they were worried about angering Christian and parents groups. I don't know why they changed the orc's skin color in edition but it may have simply been an aesthetic choice. But it is possible they felt it was racist and wanted to move away from it. I don't know. My point is less about the history of the monsters and more about what people actually see and think when they imagine them now.

"But they're not real! They're a fantasy people!" you might say, as you've said that in the past. And sure. There aren't any orcs in real life. There aren't any elves or halflings in real life, and yet very few gamers (except for elf-haters like Snarf) would consider it "fun" to go around killing them and taking their stuff. There are humans in real life, of course, but I'm pretty sure that any PC who went around murdering human NPCs (or elves and halflings) and looting their stuff in the way that, according to you, 80% of players do to orcs, those PCs would likely be looking at an alignment change to evil.

Again, this is pretty important. These are fictional monsters. I don't think most players are making connections between them and real world races and ethnicities (now obviously because of conversations like this, that happens more, but I don't think it is necessarily a good thing that people are actively connecting the two.