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

[Frozen_Heart]

From what I can see in the official adventures I'm scanning through, combat against orc/goblins happens due to said individuals attacking and raiding caravans and villages. So the adventurers are hired to go and kill them.

What's more, said encampments the players go to are simply war camps, with only fighting individuals there. There aren't civilians or children around. You could literally drop in humans or dwarves or elves and it still works fine. They're bandits no matter what species you give them.

So I'm not sure who is making these advantures where you go to orc villages full of childen and let the players go full Anakin Skywalker on them.

 

[Justice and Rule]

From what I can see in the official adventures I'm scanning through, combat against orc/goblins happens due to said individuals attacking and raiding caravans and villages. So the adventurers are hired to go and kill them.

What's more, said encampments the players go to are simply war camps, with only fighting individuals there. There aren't civilians or children around. You could literally drop in humans or dwarves or elves and it still works fine. They're bandits no matter what species you give them.

So I'm not sure who is making these advantures where you go to orc villages full of childen and let the players go full Anakin Skywalker on them.

We're not talking about official adventures but a style of play being described by certain posters. It's not really reflected in official adventures anymore.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It doesn't describe war in general, but it definitely can describe a specific kind of war, especially when it's people going into a wilderness and killing people they find to "not resemble humans". You say it's not because of how they look, but you are the one who brought up their looks in the first place as a reason. Also talking about how they are "monsters" misses that they can be mated with and can even be part of a player's parentage.

It can describe anything from viking raids, The Second Punic War, The Gallic Wars, to the Gothic invasion of Rome, to the expansion of the Islamic Caliphate, the Mongol Siege of Baghdad, Pirate Raids, the southward expansion of the Han Dynasty, the Mongol Conquest of China, etc. It describes any number of conquests, some colonialist, some not.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

We're not talking about official adventures but a style of play being described by certain posters. It's not really reflected in official adventures anymore.

That's probably why I'm so confused. I only really got into DnD in 5e (I played 3.5 very briefly but we had no clue what we were doing).

I've spent a lot of time looking into the mechanics of older editions, and no time looking into the lore and adventures for those editions.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Your version of colonialism is so focused on the top-end of things that it misses what happens below it. You're abstracting it so deeply that it loses the actual meaning of what's happening. It's not just that you are killing goblins, but you are going into their lands, killing them, and taking their stuff. That they are the "enemy" or "evil" misses that plenty of victims of colonialism were branded similarly.

I am describing what colonialism is. What happens on the ground, is largely what happens in any conflict (pillage, killing etc). With colonialism the distinctions on the ground are setting up an actual colony, taking control of local resources, imposing culture on the populatio, etc (though even the last two occur in all kinds of warfare). Again, I can see how someone could draw a line there. Certainly a setting that uses these conflicts to make that point would be interesting. But I don't think the default activity of D&D is in any real way colonialist.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So why are they monsters but Drow aren't? After all, much like Hill Dwarves Drow are a playable subrace in the PHB. Dryads aren't? Dryads aren't playable (unlike orcs and goblins) but they aren't slaughtered on sight. Couatls are also not killed on sight, even if they are found in a dungeon.

Drow used to be monsters. But I Drizzt made people realize Drow were a potentially cool PC race and I think that changed things. Personally I am not a huge fan of PC drow. I think once in a while it works. But they aren't a race I would have included in the PHB personally

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not reading minds, I'm reading the room. Why do you think many people have moved on from this style? People have become less and less comfortable with it for exactly these sorts of reasons: they are killing things that feel like people rather than monsters. When you have a heritage that is half-Orc, how do you expect people to dissociate them with sapient beings? The whole point is that as time has gone on, these "evil creatures" and how you go to their homes, kill them, and take their stuff has started to feel bad as people start to really look at it. That's not a stretch, that's just people doing basic critical examination of gameplay.

Again you don't know what is going on in peoples minds here.

 

[Justice and Rule]

It can describe anything from viking raids, The Second Punic War, The Gallic Wars, to the Gothic invasion of Rome, to the expansion of the Islamic Caliphate, the Mongol Siege of Baghdad, Pirate Raids, the southward expansion of the Han Dynasty, the Mongol Conquest of China, etc. It describes any number of conquests, some colonialist, some not.

Weird that you didn't use the obvious touchstone that Gary went to with his quote: the American West, which is very much a big touchstone for how adventuring parties work often times in the frontier. But again, there are plenty of aspects in the context of D&D and this style of play that go into why this comes off as colonialism, particularly relating to the people you are killing and why.

I am describing what colonialism is. What happens on the ground, is largely what happens in any conflict (pillage, killing etc). With colonialism the distinctions on the ground are setting up an actual colony, taking control of local resources, imposing culture on the populatio, etc (though even the last two occur in all kinds of warfare). Again, I can see how someone could draw a line there. Certainly a setting that uses these conflicts to make that point would be interesting. But I don't think the default activity of D&D is in any real way colonialist.

What you are describing are all the different facets of colonialism, but just because they are not all at play does not mean suddenly something is not colonialist. There are plenty of people involved in colonialism who have no interest in any of those things and are simply there for the loot: staying in the area is only a means to an end, not an end to itself for these people. Acting like it must fulfill all these parts on the checklist misses that most colonialist actions don't do all those things at once.

Again you don't know what is going on in peoples minds here.

I'm not trying to, I'm judging trends and things that people have been saying for a while. This isn't reading minds, this is just listening to people.

 

[Remathilis]

That's probably why I'm so confused. I only really got into DnD in 5e (I played 3.5 very briefly but we had no clue what we were doing).

I've spent a lot of time looking into the mechanics of older editions, and no time looking into the lore and adventures for those editions.

The classic "women and children non-combatants" stem from the Keep on the Borderlands and Against the Giants (the latter being a bit of a subvert as even their "non-combatants" were powerful enough to kill a PC). Those aren't the only examples, but probably the most iconic ones.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

The classic "women and children non-combatants" stem from the Keep on the Borderlands and Against the Giants (the latter being a bit of a subvert as even their "non-combatants" were powerful enough to kill a PC). Those aren't the only examples, but probably the most iconic ones.

I'm very glad 5e has moved away from that. The orcs and goblins in lost mine of phandelver work as bad guys due to clearly being bandits. So players don't end up going into a peaceful encampment and massacring children.

You could replace every orc and goblin with humans and halflings, the adventure still works. You could replace the drow with a wood elf, and it still works. Wood elves are annoyed about the dwarves mining in what they see as elven lands works as a good reason for the main bad guy being a wood elf.