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

[Chaosmancer]

I never said it was. I said I was not concerned about the kinds of changes and concerns being raised in decades ago in the 80s, or even just 15 years ago. What concerns me is the shift in focus to language, to searching for hidden meanings (a lot of criticism of RPGs now reminds me of LIster's Crypto-fascism* complaints in Red Dwarf), its use of lazy narratives around these issues, to the intensity of the self improvement efforts (sometimes this frankly feels like it has become a religion in the hobby). It just feels like when we've reached the point that the dungeon delve is being talked about as a colonialist trope, we've jumped the shark. Criticism has reached a level where it does actually make the game somewhat untenable because you have to second guess every creative act, and it is an open question whether you should be going around at all, killing things, and taking their stuff

*I know this isn't where the term was coined but it reminds me of his particular use, where he is calling everything crypto-fascist.

No, you don't need to second-guess every creative decision. No, it isn't a religion and it is really weird how you keep trying to frame this as some sort of zealous religious quest for purity.

 

[Chaosmancer]

For the record, I think comedians who pin their material too much to the cultural moment, are not that funny (whether that is all their material is geared to mocking political correctness or promoting it, or commenting on other comedians who do). I think some who do that can still be funny, but I think it tends to lower the quality of their work (Anthony Jesselnik and Dave Chapelle are both perfect and complimentary examples of that, where both of their recent specials, while funny, were less funny than their earlier work in my opinion because they were spending too much time commenting on our times). Some comedians can do that well, like George Carlin. Chapelle has always commented, but now I feel like I can predict the jokes.

That said, I am not bothered by screw ball 80s comedies either.




But that is largely who these concerns are catering too as well. I am not saying go back to doing outrageously offensive stereotype. But I do think this is more about white middle class sensibilities than anything else. And there is polling data that backs that up as well (that these kinds of cultural politeness issues are more a concern of well-to-do white people). I don't think any of that matters though. People have what sensibilities they have. I watch movies with my wife all the time, and she is from another culture. She simply doesn't have these concerns. If something is funny and breaks the tension, she says it. Doesn't mean there is any real meaning behind it. I find this to be true with lots of different people and it is mostly in middle and upper middle class white places where I see the sorts of concerns we are talking about being raised obsessively (people still have concerns outside that space, and have criticisms, but they don't seem nearly as focused on the minutiae of it). And obviously no group is monolithic.



Part of my issue with how stuff like this is talked about is characters like Ripley get downplayed because of the panties. We had bad-ass female characters. That isn't a new thing. I don't think every female character should be like that, just like every male character shouldn't. It is also good to have characters who are vulnerable or who balance strength and vulnerability. I am not particularly interested in aspirational characters (this is why I also have concerns about things swinging the other way, as I am not into either camps view of aspirational media). I want interesting characters. My favorite woman in cinema is Devil Grandma from Magic Blade. She is a terrible human being, who eats people, and I like that about her as a character. I don't want writers to be concerns about the optics when they make a character, I just want them focused on making characters who excited them, that their creativity honestly and genuinely takes them too. That doesn't mean I want something grossly offensive, but I also don't need a vessel for a lecture or lesson about society (sometimes that is okay but I don't need it every time).

I like wuxia and kung Fu movies, and there are a lot of strong female characters in those (especially in the 60s and into early 70s just before the kung fu craze explosion and in the 90s with movies like Wing Chun (which actually has a feminist message, and I think a great movie). I did a whole thread here on Cheng Pei-Pei movies here when she died because she is one of the great cinematic heroines. So I am all for strong heroines. And I am also fine with Ripley in panties too (I think in that case it was more of a decision based on the themes of the movie, but that is a discussion for another day). My favorite wuxia and kung fu movie usually have female leads (I am a big fan for example of Kara Hui films, Angela Mao movies and Michelle Yeoh movies, and Polly Kwan movies always make me laugh).

I also like new strong female leads. I was a big fan of Rey when the Star Wars movies came out. I liked that she was physically believable in the role (she has a very athletic physique that I thought added to the character). I didn't need her to strip or be in panties. She was very convincing because she clearly had been training for the role.



I just don't buy this 'equality feels like oppression' line. To be clear, there is nothing oppressive in my opinion about people changing something like phylactery. But I think it is a deeply flawed assumption that things can't go horribly wrong in the other direction. And I think it is too dismissive of legitimate concerns people are raising. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about the need for striking the write balance when seeking progress and I think she was right. In terms of media, I don't want to exclude anyone. Period.



Or maybe we don't and just go back to making good art and following our intuition and artistic vision. Again, this mantra of 'do better'. It just sounds like moralizing to me. I'd much rather let people make what they make and be more charitable in my reading of it. If something is outrageous, sure, we can complain. But when we are at the David Lister level of calling everything crypto-fascist, I don't think we are actually making anything better

I'm perfectly fine excluding some people from the media landscape. Do you know how many video games there are, that the only thing I know about them is that the main character is a woman who is "too ugly" and that the "gamer" in question feels personally offended that there isn't someone boobily breasting about their screen while they play?

Did you know there was a "Critic" just a few weeks ago who was raging about Lois Lane in the new Superman movie because she wasn't pretty enough.... like the AI altered image of a former female lead that they compared her to?

New Spider-Man series is out, lot of "critics" declaring it full of racial swaps (they made the Osborne's black and that is about it) and that all the women are really Trans. Evidence? Well, the one woman is taller than the guy, so CLEARLY she's not a real woman in their eyes. Because she is tall.

You may not buy the "equality feels like oppression", but when a character whose race doesn't matter being shown as a minority is enough to get a project review bombed and death threats sent to the creators, and Tall Women are seen as signs of a Trans-Activist agenda to destroy the whatever it is those people are scared it will destroy... I think it is a theory with some teeth. When something as minor as a name change can get calls foretelling the destruction of creativity as we know it... I think there is still a long way to go.

 

[Scribe]

They may say that, but words and deeds often tell different stories.

In some cases, I'm sure. I dont know that anyone is trolling here.

I think the reality may be closer to the potential that your definition of bigotry, is perhaps not shared around the world, by everyone.

 

[gban007]

In some cases, I'm sure. I dont know that anyone is trolling here.

I think the reality may be closer to the potential that your definition of bigotry, is perhaps not shared around the world, by everyone.

Ignoring certain people / cultures, i think there is reasonable differences in opinion on the word phylactery, though i feel enough concerns that i understand why WOTC and others have moved away from the term but you put through a comment earlier on how one out of three examples was different to the others, but there is one poster in this thread who I get definite impression from that they feel that all 3 should be in dnd.

 

[Chaosmancer]

and there is concern that portraying any civilization with a wide brush will gloss over these exceptions and reads. That said, why not just include all civilizations in the Monster Manual and be clear that there exists moral variation? You could even offer a number of hooks that discuss several ways to play the civilization with perhaps political or religious drivers causing the civilization to behave in a certain way. And then point out that there exist outliers within that overall tsunami of behavior.

Anyways, just food for thought. Carry on.

Because there isn't room, and we aren't dealing with a single setting.

In Keith Baker's books, he does a brief overview of a culture in about 5 pages. Doesn't sound like a lot, right?

Well, there are at least ten playable species, except those have cultural variations within them. So you are probably looking at 14 more realisitically. Then there are about another ten cultures for things not in the PHB which could be pretty vital. So to make the math easier let's say 25 cultures, 5 pages each. That is 125 pages of material.... except, that has each species as a monolith, and you'd want some more variation than that. And it only accounts for a single setting and we have about four or five settings that are pretty big, some of those would also pull in more species that are important for that setting...

And now you are looking at, what? 375 pages of material? That's an entire second book's worth of material. Instead of more naturally filtering that information through setting books and wikis.

Cause, right, this is 2025 and if you want to know something, you can google it and pull up a wiki with MORE THAN ENOUGH information.

So, that's why not.

 

[Faolyn]

To correct the issue, Comeliness originally appeared in Dragon magazine during 1e, was reprinted in 1983 in the World of Greyhawk boxed set, then in 1985 in the 1e Unearthed Arcana, and then later in 1985 in the 1e Oriental Adventures. It never appeared again to my knowledge (it wasn't in the 3e OA).

Thanks! So it's quite likely that they only included it in 1e's OA because they had just included it in the UA. I wonder if it got poor reception in those two books and that's why they chose to not include it in any other 1e books.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My argument is phylactery is not a problematic term and that we should spend less energy sifting for problematic language, and more energy focused on having flavorful content. I don't think the lich was doing anything particularly bad, prior to these changes. If you have to explain to people why a term is bad, and it isn't striking people as bad, I think you are overthinking the problems. Antisemitism is a very serious problem in the real world. But I don't think Lich is contributing to it

Yeah, why didn't the new MM add new undead spellcasters to round out the lich's niche.... oh, they did that?

Well, why didn't they include a list of soul cage ideas to inspire DMs.... oh, they did that too?

Okay, but instead they could have made new monsters that we've never.... oh, they did that as well?

Well what about changing old monsters to revitalize them as new... right, like the cyclops... oh, they did?

Well, I'm certain if they hadn't made this minor change to the flavor text of a single monster then we could have had so much more, think of the vague lost opportunity cost?! Think of how you were robbed of something you cannot measure, have no clue if it existed, and may or may not have liked if they just hadn't spent so much time (which is obviously a lot of time!) on this!?!

 

[Faolyn]

As I said...


It goes both ways.

Which is why I felt this:

is the best way.

Since nobody is coming to your house to take your books, it is all additive. Soul jar, or whatever the term is, is just another word of phylactery. I mean, do you really think that everyone in-setting uses the same word for everything?

Every single thing in D&D is still there. New lore adds to it, even if the book says "we're changing things to X isn't true anymore; instead, Y is true." Because as I said, nobody is taking your stuff away. If you feel like trying to adapt THAC0 to 5e, go ahead. Nobody is going to stop you.

 

[Faolyn]

Because there isn't room, and we aren't dealing with a single setting.

In Keith Baker's books, he does a brief overview of a culture in about 5 pages. Doesn't sound like a lot, right?

Well, there are at least ten playable species, except those have cultural variations within them. So you are probably looking at 14 more realisitically. Then there are about another ten cultures for things not in the PHB which could be pretty vital. So to make the math easier let's say 25 cultures, 5 pages each. That is 125 pages of material.... except, that has each species as a monolith, and you'd want some more variation than that. And it only accounts for a single setting and we have about four or five settings that are pretty big, some of those would also pull in more species that are important for that setting...

And now you are looking at, what? 375 pages of material? That's an entire second book's worth of material. Instead of more naturally filtering that information through setting books and wikis.

Cause, right, this is 2025 and if you want to know something, you can google it and pull up a wiki with MORE THAN ENOUGH information.

So, that's why not.

For an MM, you don't need a lot of room. Back in 3.x, there would sometimes be "Monster X in the Realms" and "Monster X in Eberron" sections in the MMs that were about a paragraph long. But you honestly don't need that much, and you certainly don't need to be as in-depth as Keith Baker was for an MM--that's a setting book thing.

All you really need is a few non-setting-specific examples of what cultures could be, possibly with a name-drop of something from a specific setting. Maybe a couple of sentences each.

Culture 1: Some groups of Monster lives in small hunter-gatherer tribes. These Monsters are highly territorial, but are willing to be peaceful, if wary, towards people who can prove good intentions and provide sufficient gifts. In some cases, they've been betrayed by outsiders they thought they could trust; these Monsters refuse to be fooled again and so will nearly always attack intruders. The Monsters of the Forgotten Realms often have this type of culture.

Culture 2: Some groups of Monster take up farming and ranching, raising herds of <unusual food animal> and riding <riding animal>. They live in small villages which are hidden among the underbrush. They typically have good trading relations with neighboring villages and towns, regardless of those villages' makeup, although they rarely associate with them for leisure. They are known to be extremely violent towards <food animal> rustlers and are often suspicious of strangers they see getting too close to their livestock or fields. The Monsters of Eberron often have this type of culture.

And so on. Obviously, this was me just blue-skying; if I sat down and really thought about it, I could probably write mini-cultures that have more hooks to them.

There would actually more room in the book, if they'd shrink the art a tad.

 

[Chaltab]

The conversation has gotten kind of uh... intense... for a single word being changed in a stat block.