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

[Maxperson]

But in their fantasy worlds there is. Like James Cameron's Avatar with the Na'vi (translation the people), or with the various Star Trek races treated as people.
Am I misunderstanding somewhere, or is there an argument being made that it is all fantasy, so fantasy racism doesn't match with real life racism, but in these fantasy games only humans can be people because in real life only humans are people?

There are two discussions happening here. How fantasy races in D&D are called people, which makes sense and is something I do. And people in real life incorrectly claiming that people are anything other than human, because they believe elves and/or Bigfoot are real and people.

The latter is wrong. Only humans are people by definition. If someone can produce a real elf, bigfoot or even a space alien for me to meet, I will consider at that point if a change in definition is needed. Until then it's a waste of time to even think about it.

 

[Guest 85555]

The point is that Early D&D/RPG designers copy and pasted real history or false retellings of real history to make the excuses who why intelligent people acted or look like they did.

Not only did this not make sense as only bits and pieces were copied, it was many times offensive to the people or descendants of the people who they copied.

Where I agree is D&D isn’t good history. I don’t go to D&D to learn about history (just like I don’t watch gladiator yo learn about Ancient Rome). I thinks more they are copying myths, legends and movie tropes that are loosely based on history. But definitely D&D does not do history well (in both early and later versions). If people want to learn about history I recommend stuff like Carlo Ginzburg. But D&D is just using highly derivative trappings of history for evocative play

In terms of offensiveness I would take that case by case. I think some instances have been offensive. But I think the case gets wildly overstated to (for example saying any kind of raiding or tribal orc depiction is automatically offensive or targeting a specific group: when they are often taking from tropes heavily removed from history that, when they do borrow, can be everything from Nordic Vikings to Mongols)

But again the point of my above post wasn’t so much about that as much as it was to clarify that Ravenloft was an attempt to answer oddities of early dungeon design and to talk about the more esoteric historical realism concerns expressed online about fantasy world economies

 

[Guest 85555]

There are two discussions happening here. How fantasy races in D&D are called people, which makes sense and is something I do. And people in real life incorrectly claiming that people are anything other than human, because they believe elves and/or Bigfoot are real and people.

The latter is wrong. Only humans are people by definition. If someone can produce a real elf, bigfoot or even a space alien for me to meet, I will consider at that point if a change in definition is needed. Until then it's a waste of time to even think about it.

And for the record I would consider Big Foot a person if we are just going by media depictions. But so far it is just a hypothetical scenario and I think not as important as making sure every individual human being is treated as a person

 

[Incenjucar]

Any monster, including humans and boisterous puppies, can be put into the "it's just a monster don't think about it" box for a casual dungeon delve blood splatter spree. This is extremely unhelpful for other kinds of games which are exceedingly common.

 

[gban007]

There are two discussions happening here. How fantasy races in D&D are called people, which makes sense and is something I do. And people in real life incorrectly claiming that people are anything other than human, because they believe elves and/or Bigfoot are real and people.

The latter is wrong. Only humans are people by definition. If someone can produce a real elf, bigfoot or even a space alien for me to meet, I will consider at that point if a change in definition is needed. Until then it's a waste of time to even think about it.

Thanks, makes sense, with the two discussions I ended up conflating them and getting confused , thanks for the clarification.

 

[Guest 85555]

Any monster, including humans and boisterous puppies, can be put into the "it's just a monster don't think about it" box for a casual dungeon delve blood splatter spree. This is extremely unhelpful for other kinds of games which are exceedingly common.

I could be wrong, but I get the feeling this is more common than people think still. I don't think it is the predominant style, but it is a style and even a gear people like myself (who normally don't play this way) want to be able to shift into on certain nights for lighter faire. And I think a lot of campaigns actually occupy either a middle ground or a mixture

 

[Incenjucar]

I could be wrong, but I get the feeling this is more common than people think still. I don't think it is the predominant style, but it is a style and even a gear people like myself (who normally don't play this way) want to be able to shift into on certain nights for lighter faire. And I think a lot of campaigns actually occupy either a middle ground or a mixture

Without an actual study, we're stuck with confirmation bias, but overall public-facing storytelling in media has been moving toward depth and characterization even of enemies for decades. It is easier to remove context than to design it, so it's better to start with a cohesive world.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Just putting these quotes together as they are related.

I don't know that it is arbitrary. I mean I am disagreeing with Chaosmancer on the finer points of how we define personhood, but I don't get the impression that Chaosmancer and others view the designation of special or the designation of personhood as a subjective and arbitrary act (and I would say I don't either if this is how they feel), that they are extending these concepts to the hypothetical sapient beings our of a sense of there being an ought bigger than human whim. For some this will also be a religious belief. And though I do think that is outside the scope of this forum, as it would get us into real world politics very quickly, it is worth considering that a sizable number of people are religious and believe humanity has some special connection to the divine

I think you could reduce everything to human loyalty. But again the problem with that is the primary concern about personhood isn't as much how we treat as yet unknown sapient life (with say the possible exception of Dolphins and such: I think beings we have determined do deserve some sort of special designation) but how we treat other humans. If you are loyal to humanity in general over other beings, that is all fine, but it doesn't really set aside all human life as deserving of special protection and rights (especially if we take a concept like personhood and define it in a way that enables us to exclude some human beings-----even as it protects as yet unknown alien species)

This brushes against some rules, but the idea that humans have a divine origin and are "special" has existed in almost every single culture, religion, and region in the world since the dawn of history.

Which means every war, every genocide, every atrocity was committed by a society that had the conception that humanity as a whole was special and deserved to be protected. And many of these would claim they were protecting "true humans" from the corruptions, evils, and malices of those who were less human than them.

So whether or not a definition perfectly covers all humans or not, I don't think it really matters. Because people will commit unspeakable acts on other humans for reasons they find "justify" the crime, no matter how we phrase it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There are no non-humans to be people, even under your definition. Bigfoot doesn't exist man. If you're arguing that pretend elf game text is a person, you're wrong. It's not alive. It's not a person.

Glad you agree that only humans are people. See I can do that too!

Then those people need therapy, because they are out of touch with reality. There are no non-humans to be people even under their warped definition.

So, you have definitively proven that no life exists in the universe, besides that found on Earth? Or that intelligent life is impossible to arise anywhere else?

Well, I'll look forward to your nobel prize ceremony.

But, what you actually seem to be saying is that since they aren't on Earth and we've never seen them, they don't matter. And we can blissfully ignore the fact that, if humanity achieves the greatness we want it to achieve, we will inevitably run into the question of this life, and then must act all shocked pikachu face that these intelligent non-humans exist, while scrambling to understand what it means, when back in the Bronze Age, we had stories of non-human people and humans had kind of figured this out.

 

[Minigiant]

Where I agree is D&D isn’t good history. I don’t go to D&D to learn about history (just like I don’t watch gladiator yo learn about Ancient Rome). I thinks more they are copying myths, legends and movie tropes that are loosely based on history. But definitely D&D does not do history well (in both early and later versions). If people want to learn about history I recommend stuff like Carlo Ginzburg. But D&D is just using highly derivative trappings of history for evocative play

In terms of offensiveness I would take that case by case. I think some instances have been offensive. But I think the case gets wildly overstated to (for example saying any kind of raiding or tribal orc depiction is automatically offensive or targeting a specific group: when they are often taking from tropes heavily removed from history that, when they do borrow, can be everything from Nordic Vikings to Mongols)

But again the point of my above post wasn’t so much about that as much as it was to clarify that Ravenloft was an attempt to answer oddities of early dungeon design and to talk about the more esoteric historical realism concerns expressed online about fantasy world economies

What I am saying is that in early fantasy gaming companies like TSR and Games Workshop and later WOTC would make monstrous humiods for player to fight mindlessly.

But they would be boring as they are braincell attackers. So would paint the aspects of no western European culture, images, and events without the history and mentality of those people's. Just to spice them up.


Because of the demographics of audience these companies wanted from the 70s to 90s, no one called them out on it. The players may have thought that the way the enemy humanoids were acting might have been a little bit silly but because of who the players were as a whole as people they would have less identity and knowledge of the subject to point out their parts that didn't make sense accurately. Those who did know were extreme minority in the culture of fantasy gaming.


However in the late '90s when fantasy gaming companies tries to expand the audience they ended up bringing in more people who were of the identities that were used for "painting for spice.and flavor". This course the informed to inform the non-informed and make the entire conversation more open and vocal to the point that the companies would have to remove the paint.

However once you take off the paint you learn left with a flavorless blob that doesn't make sense because it never made sense in the first place. Games Workshop and Warhammer ended up dropping most of the offensive paints that they use and develop in-house new cultures and identities for those races

WOTC and D&D did not.

So going into 2024 Orcs don't have a culture. Half orc don't have a culture. Half elfs don't have a culture. And elves are boring.