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

[Remathilis]

As far as I am concerned, yes. I have no issue with AI being used provided a company/person isn't getting paid for the material they use it in. A lot ot people put out free homebrew with AI art. I guess they should all be punished for it?

Yeah, I am glad we established that! Frankly, must of the AI "slop" (as you call it) is superior to the garbage WoTC is putting into the new books. Fortunately, artwork preference is subjective--so you can keep calling it AI slop if you want and I'll keep calling the artwork in the new books garbage. How does that sound? Good? Good.

AI companies steal real artists work to train their models on, often without consent or compensation. Further, it puts real artists out of a job because that art could have been a commission or even exposure for a starting artist. AI art is slop regardless if you are doing or WotC is doing it.

And the fact that the only retort you have is "well, I think that thing you like is garbage!" Tells me all I need to know about your grasp on AI ethics.

 

[AnotherGuy]

To be clear, I am a fan of Pandius and all the effort these unpaid dedicated fans go through to keep the setting and interest alive with their freely issued Magazine. I don't look down upon a people who try celebrate and accept humanity with its history, its flaws and its golden ages. They try impart their passion and interests into their beloved setting - be it music, linguistics, cartography, religion, history...etc

They are not harming anyone, their community is open. It is a shame people prefer to chastise...

 

[AnotherGuy]

3. Further to the last point, what content are you willing to cut to accommodate all these new sidebars?

Much of the DMG should have migrated online by now...
There would be no need to cut content.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I believe that at least one Jewish RPGer was affronted by the fact that one of the few references to a Jewish cultural artefact in the game is in the context of a lich's soul object - I posted the link to D&D Beyond upthread. Why would WotC not want to make that RPGer feel more comfortable in engaging with their books?

This is what I was trying to address with my mafia example earlier.

But to answer this: because that one Jewish person doesn't speak for all Jewish people and it is entirely possible that many Jewish people would be more aggravated by its removal. The change seems overly cautious to me (like a lot the changes that we have had). I get that it can be harder today because with social media, it only takes a few posters to make an issue of something online and spark a controversy. But I think companies have been too reactive to this and I think a lot of the criticisms around these issues we have discussed in D&D are unreasonable ones.

I don't have a study on that or anything, and while I am not Jewish myself, my father essentially is Jewish (it is complicated because he was in a mixed religious household but his mother is Jewish, which basically means he is Jewish in Orthodox Judaism, and half my family on that side is Jewish). So while I am not a Jew, I am sensitive to issues surrounding anti-semitism and I am Jewish enough to have had antisemitism directed at me when I was young. I also hear the opinions of a lot of Jewish people on this concern. And we have had two Jewish posters weighing in. Obviously that is just two posters, it isn't a survey. They could be outliers. And obviously I am only getting a small slice of the world from my vantage point. And I don't think any of this means peoples opinions have more or less weight based on their background. But I do feel like there is a very strong likelihood that what the two posters have said, and what I have also seen and sensed is true, which is this is very much a non-issue for Jewish people. I can certainly see that there might be some who are particularly keyed into the whole discussion around problematic media, and have an issue with it. But some of the concerns in the original article require a great deal of explanation and these aren't intuitive issues. Now if the problem were more obvious (and antisemitic tropes are usually pretty obvious to me) then I would agree. I do think there is an issue of antisemitism in the gaming community at times. I don't think it is at all related to the Lich though or tropes in the game.

 

[Remathilis]

Much of the DMG should have migrated online by now...
There would be no need to cut content.

I'm sure mandatory D&D Beyond integration to get all the rules would have been embraced warmly by the community.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Now I imagine you are imagining my children as white, and that this is part of their moral education. But it's not my duty to remind you that not everyone in the world is white. I just didn't want my children to be exposed to material that might encourage self-hatred or self-alienation, or just make them feel a little bit worse than they need to.

Pemerton I have no idea what your ethnic background or skin color is (I have a vague memory you might be Australian). But online we are all just nicknames. So my imagination has not made an assumption in this case.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Recently I spent a lot of time with someone whose grandparents were tortured by colonial authorities. I don't think this person plays RPGs or video games inspired by them. I don't know if they have even encountered the dungeon motif. I think, though, that they would not be likely to warm to a game that frames "savages" (ie people who live in small villages of relatively simple structures, much like their grandparents did) as violent hordes ripe to be killed to eliminate the threat that they post to "civilised" peoples. That was exactly the language and framing that was used to "justify" the torture of their grandparents.

I think here though, you really have to be careful what you start putting off limits in language and games. Savage evil orcs, are something that resonate with a lot of flavor. I think being able to describe orcs in that way does ad something to the game.But people all over the world suffer terrible things and have all kinds of trauma. You can't just make anything that might upset someone taboo and off limits in art and entertainment, however sad, unfortunate and wrong what happened to them was. This came up with the new Ravenloft book and Falkovnia. There in the old books Vlad Drakov branded and rounded up demi-humans, and he was obviously a mashup of Vlad the Impaler and a kind of Hitler figure. I can certainly understand not running the material for survivors. But a large portion of my group when it came out was Jewish and none of us had any trouble with the character or concept (in fact I think that might have been the attraction to that theme: it allowed us to bring that kind of issue to the setting).

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm sure mandatory D&D Beyond integration to get all the rules would have been embraced warmly by the community.

I'm referring to parts of the DMG (and PHB) which relate to explaining what roleplaying is not the actual tables, options, treasure and rules. And it would be free not locked behind a pay-wall. I mean that section need not be in the DMG anymore, and certainly not in that detail. I mean it has been 50+ years of RPG's already.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It is funny. In the past ten years the industry has absolutely exploded and expanded. To a degree unheard of previously.

And most of that expansion came from groups that previously had never participated in rpg gaming.

While correlation is not causation, it’s not really too much of a stretch to think by making gaming more welcoming to more people, more people have wanted to get into gaming.

It’s really not hard.

I think this correlates more to 5Es launch and a confluence of geek media being in the air, and being geeky becoming more acceptable and cool. Stuff like Stranger Things popularizing D&D to the public again

 

[ezo]

So we should have kept strength caps on women, but just as a sidebar?

It depends on how you use Strength. As a measure of one's ability to utilize the physical power they have? No. As a measure of how much a person can lift, carry, etc.? Yes.

There are many D&D players who want a game based on real-world facts; yes, eventhough it is a fantasy game. The strongest woman in the world is not as strong as the stongest man. So, for an absolute "cap", yes, so the people who enjoy playing this way can.

This "cap" could be done by adjust max lift instead of STR score. It would be like the variant for using Encumbrance instead of a flat STR x15 rule.

What about race as class, but just as a sidebar?

Why not? A lot of people love it and play OSR with it. Offering a sidebar or Appendix "race as class" sure.

We should keep blatently overpowered 3.5 subclasses, just as a sidebar?

I can't really comment since I didn't play 3.5, but I don't see any reason why not. Many players want OP playstyle, including Epic level material.

There are several problems with « keep everything as a sidebar ».
1. Certain elements are mutually exclusive.
2. Not making a decision is also making a decision.
3. Further to the last point, what content are you willing to cut to accommodate all these new sidebars?

1. Then you don't use those two elements in conjunction.
2. No problem with that.
3. How about the overload of artwork? I mean, you don't want the gamebook to be a text book, but you don't need a picture book, either. Alternatively, you just have a larger product.

So, not seeing any problems here.

AI companies steal real artists work to train their models on, often without consent or compensation. Further, it puts real artists out of a job because that art could have been a commission or even exposure for a starting artist. AI art is slop regardless if you are doing or WotC is doing it.

Yes, yes, yes... And many companies DON'T steal and/or pay the artists to help train their AI. Blame the companies that do steal, not the process.

So stop progress, is that it? Plenty of people have lost work due to technological advancement. You aren't going to stop it and frankly you shouldn't IMO.

Again, you calling it "slop" doesn't make it so. In fact, we have an excellent thread here which shows how incredible it can be IMO.

And the fact that the only retort you have is "well, I think that thing you like is garbage!" Tells me all I need to know about your grasp on AI ethics.

No, it isn't my only retort, I've been calling the 2024 artwork garbage from the beginning, whether you like it or not.

I am so glad I have an "expert on AI ethics" to discuss this with. AI "ethics" is no different from every other technological advancement we've had for hundreds, probably thousands, of years: