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

[Perky the Dragon]

Might be worth mentioning Kobold Press' Midgard setting barely has orcs at all, bar a couple of mentions in the setting book and a few entries in the Tome of Beasts entries.

It's notably a darker setting than what WOTC is used to these days and every ancestry is leans towards gray rather explicitly good or evil.

 

[TiQuinn]

I don't have much skin in this game, I don't really care that WotC and others decided not to use phylactery, but I wish they would have picked something besides spirit jar. I'll continue using the word phylactery in my games though because I honestly don't think anyone is offended by it.

Just switching it to Spirit Jar is WotC at its most uncreative. Even JK Rowling was able to come up with her own word for them.

 

[FrozenNorth]

That would've been great. But WoTC decided no orcs at all.

I mean, that’s just incorrect. Are you saying there are no longer any gnomes or elves in D&D because there aren’t elf specific monsters?

 

[Bedrockgames]

The episode was a bit vague as to the true nature of that entity. And recently, Who called out Sutekh as cultural appropriation in show.

i am still catching up to these episodes but that sounded awfully meta when I hear about it. But also no one in Egypt even worships Sutekh these days. Egyptians generally have a complex relationship with ancient Egyptian culture.

But D&D characters can also choose to worship Asmodeus...

I believe in the Bible. I think it is a mistake to push that belief on artists and game designers. People should be allowed to worship freely and believe what they want but we are entering dangerous territory where cultural appropriation is being used as a bludgeon that enables religious people to force their taboos on others

 

[Parmandur]

And, of course, WotC has made a number of pig-ignorant blunders over the years.

Honestly, I much prefer their current hypervigilant approach compared to their traditional practive of ignorantly offending a new group of people every other product.

 

[Alzrius]

While they say that other forms are possible, describing the most common form in terms that sound an awful lot like tefflin raises eyebrows. So, yeah, best to avoid any further links in that direction…

As a member of the tribe, I can tell you that no eyebrows were raised in the Jewish community that I was ever made aware of.

Honestly, the entire idea that "phylactery" is a synonym for "tefillin" is one that's near-totally gentile in nature. While there might be Jewish communities out there that use the term phylactery, it's exceptionally nonstandard for a Greek term to be used, rather than a Hebrew one.

From what I've looked up before, the only reason the word phylactery is associated with teffilin at all is because the ancient Jews essentially stole the idea from the Greeks in the first place. The way I heard it, they encountered Greeks who were wearing amulets with prayers to their gods (or just the gods' names, I'm not sure) on them, and thought "hey, that's pretty cool, we should do this" which eventually became boxes with small prayer verses in them. But the term wasn't brought over.

Or, at this guy puts it:


All of which is to say that the idea of removing the term "phylactery" in an attempt not to offend me and people who identify like me is at best pointless, and at worse patronizing. I haven't spoken to one other Jewish person who's approved of the change, and if there are any out there who think this is a good thing, I feel confident in stating that they're (extreme) outliers.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

i am still catching up to these episodes but that sounded awfully meta when I hear about it.

Doctor Who has always been meta.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Doctor Who has always been meta.

Sure. Again I need to see it in its context, but that just feels very on the nose. We are still working our way through the Jodie Whitaker episodes as I fell off after her first season (just finished Revolution of the Daleks)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sure. Again I need to see it in its context, but that just feels very on the nose. We are still working our way through the Jodie Whitaker episodes as I fell off after her first season (just finished Revolution of the Daleks)

It's for kids. The meta-text was never intended to be obscure. Some of it might seem that way now if you aren't British and/or don't remember the 60s or 70s!

 

[TiQuinn]

As a member of the tribe, I can tell you that no eyebrows were raised in the Jewish community that I was ever made aware of.

Honestly, the entire idea that "phylactery" is a synonym for "tefillin" is one that's near-totally gentile in nature. While there might be Jewish communities out there that use the term phylactery, it's exceptionally nonstandard for a Greek term to be used, rather than a Hebrew one.

From what I've looked up before, the only reason the word phylactery is associated with teffilin at all is because the ancient Jews essentially stole the idea from the Greeks in the first place. The way I heard it, they encountered Greeks who were wearing amulets with prayers to their gods (or just the gods' names, I'm not sure) on them, and thought "hey, that's pretty cool, we should do this" which eventually became boxes with small prayer verses in them. But the term wasn't brought over.

Or, at this guy puts it:


All of which is to say that the idea of removing the term "phylactery" in an attempt not to offend me and people who identify like me is at best pointless, and at worse patronizing. I haven't spoken to one other Jewish person who's approved of the change, and if there are any out there who think this is a good thing, I feel confident in stating that they're (extreme) outliers.

“Wonderful” to see that someone made a whole video in response to people being upset about the use of the word and deciding he needed his own rage video.