D&D General Drow & Orcs Removed from the Monster Manual

[Bedrockgames]

D&D had all manner of problematic elements baked into it's core, the biggest being a moral justification to kill sapient beings and take their stuff. I can point out a number of examples where people who believed they had a moral rational for exterminating groups of people and acquire their wealth, but I don't want another red text reminder.

But if we keep the violence to inhuman beings that may look but don't think or act like us, we can keep a veneer that D&D's core game loop isn't a war crime.

Anyway, way off topic.

But this is exactly why people push back so hard on topics like this. The reasoning behind this kind of analysis of D&D eventually leads you to the logical conclusion that D&D to its core, perhaps even RPGs in general, is an immoral activity. I think there are deeply flaws assumptions behind this kind of thinking that just weaken our ability to make interesting and entertaining art or games

 

[TiQuinn]

I disagree, both with the violence being a problem and with no one wanting to discuss it.

The violence is the point, because performative/symbolic rejections of values that we do, in fact, hold dear are cathartic means whereby we relieve stress. Interpreting this as actual rejections of those values is the real problem, since that interpretation is almost always wrong.

I just think it’s simple. We enjoy it and we don’t think about how maybe some of those bad guys who James Bond shoots every movie had families too. It’s not pertinent unless we want to make it pertinent and that’s going to be dependent on each table. It’s a game where the vast majority of the rules are ways to hurt, kill or incapacitate monsters. The other rules - the other pillars - are relatively scant in comparison. Trying to make the game not about killing monsters is to try to make it something other than what its original purpose and design drives towards. It’s doable, and maybe even easy, but still at some level antithetical to the game’s goals.

 

[AnotherGuy]

D&D had all manner of problematic elements baked into it's core, the biggest being a moral justification to kill sapient beings and take their stuff. I can point out a number of examples where people who believed they had a moral rationale for exterminating groups of people and acquiring their accumulated wealth, but I don't want another red text reminder.

But if we keep the violence to inhuman beings that may look but don't think or act like us, we can keep a veneer that D&D's core game loop isn't a war crime.

I think you are right, I think many of our real life leaders are actually secretly D&D players and that is why we have seen a proliferation of wars since 1974 when this game came out.
Damn you Gygax and Arneson! Look at this hellscape you have created with this beautiful addictive war-crime infested game!

 

[ezo]

The aret is deifnitely better. And there are some improvements in some of the statblocks. Not enough for my tastes, but some.

Better art is subjective, of course, and I find all the art in the 2024 inferior frankly. So, there is no appeal to me there.

As for improvements in statblocks, again nothing I've seen so far is an approvement. For example, changing dragon bite and claw to a single "rend" is not an improvement.

Adding saves next to mods is pointless 90% of the time as the saves are the exact save as the modifiers since so few creatures have save proficiencies.

But there will be a lot to see and review, and I am sure not enough for my tastes, either.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We enjoy it and we don’t think about how maybe someone of those bad guys who James Bond shoots every movie had families too.

Have you seen Black Doves (Netflix)?

 

[AlViking]

My problem is that in their own setting, Eberron, gnolls aren't fiends and goblins aren't fey. It takes like one sentence to fix a lot of this stuff and they did it for minotaurs and to a lesser degree with lizardfolk.

Well, if you want to know how Keith is handling gnolls in Eberron perhaps start with his blog. iFAQ: Fiendish Gnolls in Eberron? explains how he's handling it. It's change in lore so is there a way to keep his lore while also changing to follow the new rules? I was going to paraphrase, but instead let's just read what he said.

"So first of all, in making gnolls fiends, I would emphasize the horror of that concept. The 2025 Monster Manual calls them Fiends in Feral Flesh, and I’d really double down on that. The point is that these aren’t just humanoids that have decided to be cruel—they are shells housing ravenous immortal spirits of pure evil. I would go straight to The Exorcist and play up the deeply unnatural nature of this. In describing fiendish gnolls, I’d depict the fiend within twisting their bodies—hearing bones snap and reknit as their jaws extend to impossible width, emphasizing their unnatural ability to ignore pain and fight until they’re torn apart, their ability to consume impossible amounts of flesh. Beyond the physical, I’d consider other things that make them feel unnatural. I’ve talked before about gnoll mimicry; with fiendish gnolls, I’d straight up have them speak with the voices of people the adventurers have lost in war (because they’re fiends of Rak Tulkhesh), or have a troop of gnolls all speak with one voice. I’d consider having a gnoll with a distinctive personality who engages with the adventurers, who keeps coming back in the body of different gnolls. Because to me, the point is that the individual GNOLL isn’t a fiend; it’s a mortal creature of flesh and blood. But that mortal creature has no will or identity of its own; it’s just a vessel for an immortal fiend."

 

[TiQuinn]

Have you seen Black Doves (Netflix)?

Yep.

 

[Remathilis]

But this is exactly why people push back so hard on topics like this. The reasoning behind this kind of analysis of D&D eventually leads you to the logical conclusion that D&D to its core, perhaps even RPGs in general, is an immoral activity. I think there are deeply flaws assumptions behind this kind of thinking that just weaken our ability to make interesting and entertaining art or games

Yeah, yeah. People don't like being told their hobby is built on colonialist tropes. It's the same reason why we don't teach history as it happened but as we wanted it to happen. We can't stand to look in the mirror and realize we too enjoy things that when viewed though an objective lens and be seen as harmful because that reflects on who we think we are. The people of Rome probably felt they were a civilized, peaceful people as they went to the Colosseum to watch men be torn apart.

That said, enjoy your game. Clearly, WotC is bending over backwards to allow you to kill goblins without too much n moral dilemma. I understand that is fun; I play this game too ya know. But I don't harbor any illusions that D&D is absolutely not modeling a healthy way to handle conflict between peoples, and even my noblest paladin is as soaked in blood as the most brutal despot. And if it helps people to rationalize that by making goblins less human, so be it.

 

[Remathilis]

I think you are right, I think many of our real life leaders are actually secretly D&D players and that is why we have seen a proliferation of wars since 1974 when this game came out.
Damn you Gygax and Arneson! Look at this hellscape you have created with this beautiful addictive war-crime infested game!

Art reflects life. D&D reflects dreams of power, wealth, and danger, all with a gooey violent glaze on top. It's part of our nature. It doesn't make us any more violent than video games or football does, it just presses the same dopamine as they do.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Interpreting this as actual rejections of those values is the real problem, since that interpretation is almost always wrong.

Whilst I broadly agree with what you're saying, there is an issue in that whilst you say "almost always wrong", it's not actually always wrong, and I think "almost always" is probably a slight overstatement. More like "usually wrong".

Also the degree to which people endorse the underlying colonialist violence of typical D&D-like "kill them and take their stuff"-style play really varies. I think there's actually quite a lot of "soft endorsement" out there, like, maybe as many as 20% of people who play don't really believe that in the sense of applying it to the real world normally, but definitely are kind of soft on that idea, and basically selectively support colonialist violence, even whilst perhaps paying lip-service to the idea that its bad. Further, there's like, 5%, in my experience, who absolutely do think the colonialist violence is the point and a good thing. That figure used to be hugely higher. Gary Gygax, for example, absolutely 100%, even in the 2000s, thought brutal colonialist violence and even genocide was right in-game and used RL examples for why it was (!!! perhaps not too surprising for a man who was a Kentucky Colonel in the 1970s, they only cleaned up their act relatively recently).

D&D is a game founded in colonialist violence, and again, whilst I agree that's not really why like, the vast majority of people play it, I think it's a bit too easy to sweep it under the rug.

Content isn’t message. You can enjoy cathartic violence on screen or in a game and be a pacifist in life. I don’t believe in using violence to solve conflict in life but I love mafia movies, Kung fu and Wuxia, other violent action films and violence in my RPGs. I was raised by a pacifist who could enjoy a movie like Aliens or Pulp Fiction.

Aliens doesn't conflict with pacificism in any way I can see. Pulp Fiction only lightly, given the people are supposed terrible criminals, not role models or heroes.

More telling would be something like Black Hawk Down or Zero Dark Thirty or even, away from real-world-based events, something like Extraction. I would be pretty surprised if a committed pacificist enjoyed any of those very much. I'm not saying I'd judge them or that it's "not allowed", just that I'd be surprised.

And whilst I agree that content isn't inherently message, I do think there is a bit of an issue, historically, with D&D being rooted in endorsing brutal colonialist violence, and moving away from that to er, violence that isn't colonial and/or doesn't seem colonial is probably a good thing.

It's also good we're seeing more RPGs move away from violence entirely, but obviously D&D's whole deal isn't that, nor does it need to be.