D&D General “‘Scantily Clad and Well Proportioned’: Sexism and Gender Stereotyping in the Gaming Worlds of TSR and Dungeons & Dragons.”

[Crimson Longinus]

Isn't this necessary for it to be a toolkit, though?

What you're asking for is the game to lay down the one and only way that elves can be elves, that dwarves can be dwarves, etc. No designer in their right mind would do that for a product meant to be generic and embrace the wide variety in fantasy fiction.

You can't have a "Vulcans have a very distinctive culture" and simultaneously "you can do whatever you want and incorporate stuff from any fantastical work you know" in the same game. Either the game is made for one specific taste and everyone else has to like it, lump it, or exhaustively rewrite it; or the game has to stay vague so each table can figure out what elf-ness and dragonborn-ness means for them.

I just think that offering basically nothing is boring and bland, and will not stimulate imagination. Even if one would disagree with the default portrayal of particular species and would choose to change it for their game, at least it would offer and starting point, and introduce the idea that the species should be somehow defined and distinct. I just don't see the point of fantasy species that are just a skin and some barely meaningful rules-widget.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Isn't this necessary for it to be a toolkit, though?

What you're asking for is the game to lay down the one and only way that elves can be elves, that dwarves can be dwarves, etc. No designer in their right mind would do that for a product meant to be generic and embrace the wide variety in fantasy fiction.

How do you imagine the write up of the non-humans should be dealt with within the PHB so that they satisfy gamers such as @Crimson Longinus and myself who want something defined (as a base) and also satisfy the use of a toolkit.

I think a sidebar in the PHB would help as well as a write-up in the DMG for the homebrewing of one's own setting would adequately suffice, right?

 

[Bagpuss]

But orcs are an actual species.

No they aren't they are a fictional construct, they aren't real.

Now saying that, I will give you the nature of orcs has changed since they became a playable race, thanks to games like WoW. I suspect this is the main issue, people want different things out of them now than they were original created for.

They are not humans who decided to be orcs.

Ah well now humans (players) are deciding to be orcs. So rather than being just a thing to represent evil, they are having to become something they weren't originally written to be, they are needing to be more complex to represent those human players, rather than just one aspect of humanity, as a fictional tool.

That way they utterly fail as a representation of human evil and become (hopefully unintentional) racist representation, embodying the idea that some groups of people are just "born bad."

Well yes if you treat them as a rounded diverse group of people, there are going to be issues. Because people aren't "born bad", where as fictional tools to explore the dark side of humanity and absolute evil can be.

In my game both do happen. But again, no one is saying that evil should not exist in the fantasy world, just that it should not be directly linked by one's species. At the point when you can tell who's "evil" not by the emblems on their uniform but by the tone of their skin things have gone wrong.

I think if you are judging people as evil just by the emblems on their uniform you are also on morally questionable grounds. It reminds me of that scene in Saving Private Ryan, where what appear to be German soldiers come out of a bunker to surrender and are gunned down, all the while they are trying to explain they aren't German they are Czech conscripts.

Which is the whole point of orcs, they aren't human, they aren't a real intelligent species, they aren't capable of the full ranged of emotions or thought processes. They are a fictional construct.

I rather feel that the default assumption in a mass market game sold to teens should be that sexual assault is not present. Shocking, I know.

It's not like it is heavily pushed, or encouraged, the vast majority of the time it isn't going to come up. Although again this is something that has changed as orcs have become more popular as a player race, not something they were originally written for. So fair enough if the game needs and the orc needs to change to be something it wasn't meant to be.

I do. But if you don't then there are easy and non-racist ways to designate the enemies. Or alternatively just accept, that the morality is not black and white, and whilst your character might see the orcs as "evil monsters" they will see your human paladin in the same way and neither is objectively right or wrong.

I don't want have to have a moral debate about if I'm playing the bad guy or not. Not in my escapist fantasy.

People certainly have managed to fight and kill each other for several millennia just fine, without any heritage being "inherently evil."

Really? Why do you think we dehumanise the enemy in times of war and these racist stereotypes exist. Because it isn't easy to kill an enemy you sympathise with and recognise as human. Part of the reason they switch to targets with people painted on was to get troops use to killing people, if they trained on paper targets they would frequently subconsciously aim to miss. Personally I don't want to wonder if the orc my character is killing is only at war because of a famine back home, or because he's press-ganged into it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't want have to have a moral debate about if I'm playing the bad guy or not. Not in my escapist fantasy.

You do you. My escapist fantasy does not involve pretending to be a good guy whilst committing racially motivated violence.

 

[AnotherGuy]

You do you. My escapist fantasy does not involve pretending to be a good guy whilst committing racially motivated violence.

I think many of us play a variety of campaigns where one campaign may be nuanced setting with character development and another maybe beat the dungeon.
The former will likely treat the orc with depth, the latter maybe more as an obstacle/challenge to be overcome via violence.
The Core Books are there to embrace all our various campaign styles - we need not paint each other as good guys committing racially motivated violence.

 

[Steampunkette]

I think that when it comes to sexist or racist tropes, a key point of discussion that come ups is the aggregate pattern, and therein also lies the solution. It's about moving away from singular or monolithic tropes but instead to present peoples with greater diversity, complexity, and nuance. It doesn't necessarily erase these other tropes, but it creates room for other tropes and pictures to create a more enriching aggregate pattern.

In theory... maybe?

In practice, adding more options alongside a ton of sexist tropes and ideas does nothing to reduce those sexist tropes and ideas or their impact on the atmosphere itself. And, in fact, sexist storytelling and tropes are more likely to spread than remain contained. After all if you add in a bunch of new societies and creatures that aren't rapacious monsters, the rapacious monsters are probably going to go after them, too, within the narrative.

And all the other aspects that contribute to the atmosphere that pushes people out will still be there, with plenty of "Old Guard" sticking with them and refusing to move on from them, using them as a signal of unity and identity within the community. Like people who say that Orcs -should- universally be evil from birth so that killing them, even as infants, isn't an evil act.

Think of it like ripping a hot fart in an elevator. If you do it in a bigger elevator the smell is more diffuse but it's still not going to be pleasant for the other passengers.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The one thing that actually makes some races genuinely pretty alien compared to humans is never actually given meaningful attention in D&D, and that difference is lifespan. Lifespan differences should make dwarves and elves very different from orcs, humans, dragonborn, etc. Instead....it's basically written off as "yeah they just take life at a slower pace but are otherwise the same."

I feel this is worthy of its own thread.

 

[Aldarc]

In theory... maybe?

In practice, adding more options alongside a ton of sexist tropes and ideas does nothing to reduce those sexist tropes and ideas or their impact on the atmosphere itself. And, in fact, sexist storytelling and tropes are more likely to spread than remain contained. After all if you add in a bunch of new societies and creatures that aren't rapacious monsters, the rapacious monsters are probably going to go after them, too, within the narrative.

And all the other aspects that contribute to the atmosphere that pushes people out will still be there, with plenty of "Old Guard" sticking with them and refusing to move on from them, using them as a signal of unity and identity within the community. Like people who say that Orcs -should- universally be evil from birth so that killing them, even as infants, isn't an evil act.

Think of it like ripping a hot fart in an elevator. If you do it in a bigger elevator the smell is more diffuse but it's still not going to be pleasant for the other passengers.

What I have in mind is more like single woman in an ensemble who has to be relegated to "the Chick," which often means putting a lot of tropes onto a single character. But creating a more diverse cast also means that there is not just "the Chick" who has to be all things "feminine" to the audience. Instead, there get to be differences between female characters and different tropes that permit a greater diversity of characterizations. Katara in ATLA, for example, was pretty much "the Chick" in Season 1. But the introduction of many more female characters in Season 2 - Toph, Azula, Mai, Ty Lee, etc. - meant not only that we got to see different types of female characters, but also that Katara could stop being relegated to just "the Chick" in the line-up.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Isn't this necessary for it to be a toolkit, though?

What you're asking for is the game to lay down the one and only way that elves can be elves, that dwarves can be dwarves, etc. No designer in their right mind would do that for a product meant to be generic and embrace the wide variety in fantasy fiction.

You can't have a "Vulcans have a very distinctive culture" and simultaneously "you can do whatever you want and incorporate stuff from any fantastical work you know" in the same game. Either the game is made for one specific taste and everyone else has to like it, lump it, or exhaustively rewrite it; or the game has to stay vague so each table can figure out what elf-ness and dragonborn-ness means for them.

I would go further. In the 2024 PHB, I think it’s OK that the write-ups don’t go into detail about the races. That is better suited to the setting books. That way, Eberron halflings can be different from Dark Sun halflings can be different from Greyhawk halflings.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I would go further. In the 2024 PHB, I think it’s OK that the write-ups don’t go into detail about the races. That is better suited to the setting books. That way, Eberron halflings can be different from Dark Sun halflings can be different from Greyhawk halflings.

Will there be setting books?