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

[TiQuinn]

Given how dismissive people are about real-world violence inflicted on those in other countries and so on, maybe we should though? I think movies like that absolutely do contribute to desensitization towards that, even glamourization of it and the people who do it.

D&D isn't a big issue here, but there is an uncomfortable issue with the fact that race-war creeps like it a little bit too much (albeit I think they've increasingly moved to OSR games rather than D&D, which they see as "woke", especially now).

I think both can co-exist, and the problem with ones that don’t humanize their villains is that inevitably, it becomes stale anyways even as we become desensitized to it. Like any genre, too much becomes simply derivative and we seek something more interesting including smart thrillers that make their villains more than something to shoot at.

But even back in the 80s, I think back on the ridiculousness of something like the G.I. Joe cartoon which took great pains to let the kids know that no Cobra soldiers “were harmed in the shooting of this film”, as they would always bail out of their exploding vehicle safely. Ditto, the A-Team, which despite being a target for TV violence hawks was actually one of the more conscientious about showing the bad guys alive and somewhat unharmed at the end of the episode. I don’t think that really moved any needles.

 

[TwoSix]

I mean, if that was going to happen, it'd have already have happened with vampires, but whilst they're often protagonists, they're still stock enemies too.

Depending on the portrayal, things can be (and often are) both. "How do you square monstrousness with sapience?" is one of the oldest fantasy story hooks in existence.

Making a monster (or category of monsters) more humanlike is pretty easy. The more difficult trick, right now, is how to insert cunning, "troop-like" enemies with a narrative hook that allows players to ignore their relative "humanity" and engage in unambiguous violence (like a video game, as mentioned above).

 

[Remathilis]

I don't blame them for trying, either. Unfortunately, I consider their efforts to be an abject failure, worse than if they'd done nothing at all.

Doing nothing at all wasn't an option. So you either end up with a world where every creature is an unthinking drone or a world where a pit fiend can be your local baker. Not good options on either side. B

 

[Ruin Explorer]

24 Was about the war on terror, which is why I mentioned that one though. I didn't mention the two movies you did because I don't know if he has seen them (but he has certainly seen movies like those). I wasn't trying to avoid your examples. I just thought it best to stick to films I know he has seen

how is it complicated. If you believe in pacifism. Don't commit or endorse violence, but you can sit back and watch a film about violence. I really don't see the problem

It's complicated in that if something endorses something gross sufficiently aggressively, it becomes quite hard to take.

24 is a great example (I didn't see your post re: that earlier), so let's use that. I was in a similar position - I disagreed with the politics of the show, but enjoyed it. I've seen every episode of the Jack Bauer ones.

But I definitely enjoyed it less and less when it moved from being a show which was about some crazy nonsense going down over 24 hours, into a show that was ideologically committed to certain ideas. Now, the good thing about 24 is that it was mostly completely inconsistent and incoherent, politically, because the writers and showrunner were clearly not aligned! If every season had had the ideological commitment to certain ideas that S7 had, for example, it'd have been unwatchable and awful (like S7 was), because it'd have just been mostly gross cheap propaganda (which is what a lot of S7 is - I think it's S7 anyway, the one with redheaded female Jack Bauer wannabe/sidekick).

I did a rewatch recently. S1 and S2 are pretty cool, because they're nuts and intentionally complicate and self-undermine ideological stuff (like S2 has Muslim terrorists, but it also has Muslim good guys*, and Western bad guys too, and just a lot of crazy conflicting plot lines). Whereas S3's gross and lazy stuff with the drug dealers, which never even really makes sense makes it quite hard to watch, and was where I ended up stopping my rewatch.

Predator is militarist, but in a dim and incoherent way that doesn't really say much. Whereas Zero Dark Thirty, well let's not talk about it too much lest we enter Da Politix Zone (forbidden), but has a insanely more coherently rendered ideology, one which is potentially much more objectionable should one disagree.

Re: violence there are movies where violence happens and it's cool and whoa, but there are also much more rarely movies which actually, genuinely, endorse violence, ideologically, which is a step beyond mere glorification.

D&D doesn't really endorse violence in an ideological way, particularly not colonial violence anymore, but I do think it's flirted with that before, especially in 1E.

* = To be clear, there is some real racism in S2 of 24, no denying it, just flat racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, but they are at least trying to mitigate and complicate it. Whereas in S3 they seem to leaning in so hard to every cheap stereotype it actually becomes boring as well as gross.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm saying the fact we enjoy D&D doesn't excuse it from it's unhealthy parts, nor should we ignore those parts because we like it and if we like something unhealthy that is a reflection on us.

So you want people (and yourself?) To feel bad about themselves for enjoying something that depicts morally questionable behavior as fiction? It seems like that's what you're saying to me, since its pretty clear that violence as depicted in D&D is generally unhealthy (if you remove the fictional lense, but maybe even if you don't?) and you're saying enjoying that is a reflection on the person doing so.

 

[Mistwell]

Why is it a roadblock?
It is a couple of creatures that have full write ups in the PHB. Did we honestly need a stat block just to add dark vision to an NPC?

Any one who is DMing for the first time read the PHB first.

And what do we do about the other topics I mentioned, like the two other abilities for orcs or the one other 2014 ability for orcs? Does that change the CR or not? It's not like I didn't just rant about that issue for a majority of what you just quoted and then misrepresented as being about darkvision.

 

[TiQuinn]

There is no reason you can't treat orcs that way. It is only when we choose to apply personhood to a thing THEN treat it as something worthy of eradication that things get problematic.

Think out it this way: orcs, over the years, have evolved into "people" RPG-wise (thanks WoW!). Currently, there are a few games and other media with skeletons and zombies with personhood. If that catches on, culturally, undead will be off the "stock enemies" list too.

I agree. My thinking though is there are monsters and there are playable species. Don’t cross the streams. You want to kill with impunity, fine, but don’t ask me to play that creature either. It’s forever an NPC creature type.

 

[TwoSix]

Doing nothing at all wasn't an option. So you either end up with a world where every creature is an unthinking drone or a world where a pit fiend can be your local baker. Not good options on either side. B

I hate that option, Burtharagon constantly chars the bottom of the bread and puts walnuts in his cinnamon rolls. He is evil.

 

[delericho]

Doing nothing at all wasn't an option. So you either end up with a world where every creature is an unthinking drone or a world where a pit fiend can be your local baker. Not good options on either side. B

So literally the only possibilities are "unthinking drones", "pit fiend bakers", or exactly what they've done with now? I don't believe that. I especially don't believe that when I look at Eberron.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Making a monster (or category of monsters) more humanlike is pretty easy. The more difficult trick, right now, is how to insert cunning, "troop-like" enemies with a narrative hook that allows players to ignore their relative "humanity" and engage in unambiguous violence (like a video game, as mentioned above).

I think there are fairly easy ways to have the latter, just have them be cloned and programmed and so on. Resist the urge to humanize them much. If you keep humanizing them and showing there are "exceptions" and so on, you're just going to end up making them like a species in Star Trek. Or make them demons or whatever - beings who inherently seek to do harm and don't have human-like life cycles.

The trouble for D&D is that it's humanized and made playable almost every race out there! And not even recently! In 1989, in Taladas, we had playable, humanized goblins, ogres, minotaurs, lizardmen, and so on! 1989! Hell the goblins and ogres were considerably more sympathetic than the biggest group of elves in that setting!