D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[TiQuinn]

I don't consider myself a conservative gamer but I do consider myself a grognard of sorts with a D&D history going back 40 years. I consider myself inclusive and cosmopolitan in real life and in my gaming. However, I do find that in D&D (and role-playing in general) as well as modern society that doesn't sit well with me on some level.

The experience and advice of long time role-players is often ignored by the newer generation. Here on these very forums twenty years ago I tried to offer advice to new players who came here asking for it, and I was repeatedly told that (and I quote) "Your experience is not relevant". At the time 3rd edition had brought in a lot of new blood to the hobby which was great but my intuition was that it brought in people from the growing MMO community where optimisation and being the best of the best was how you played. They weren't interested in how the game was played or advice from that those who played before. They played the way they wanted and D&D has changed because of it. How people play now has changed and it does feel like us older player have been somewhat left behind and forgotten. I'm pleased that the hobby continues to draw in more and more new players paving the way to the future but it's obvious why us older role-players can get grumpy over what can be perceived as unnecessary changes in direction.

As shown in a recent thread on here, art is subjective too. Like all of us, I know what I like and what I don't. I used to like the old B&W artwork because it felt like it captured the essence of D&D perfectly. Aesthetics have changed now and D&D doesn't resemble a faux medieval world any more. It's more like World of Warcraft or League of Legends. I know players who really don't like the art direction now and how it doesn't fit their view of D&D (I hated the Dungeonpunk of 3rd edition for example). For myself, I'll take the artwork as a guideline and my setting will look like how I want it to - which for reference has changed, and in recent years has been influenced by Arcane and the LoL art style. Even I've changed.

Then you get the (and I hate this term) the "Woke" factor. Species instead of race. Male mariliths, hag's, dryads, banshees...etc. Vistani are apparently racist despite being an archetype within a game setting (I never saw the old WoD Gypsies book as racist either for the same reason). Concepts that don't always sit right with those of us from an older generation. Society is changing for the better but does it need to impact D&D? In some places yes, and in others no. Despite what is in the Monster Manual, my games will continue to showcase things as we always have done but then my games are not public so it has no effect on others. But again, I can see where the more conservative players might feel these changes being forced unnecessarily out there.

I see both sides and rather than heated discussions where neither side seems willing to understand the other's view point, I think that we need to understand that the blessing and curse of role-playing games is that we all play them different and we desire different things from it.

Hopefully this came across in a positive way.

First, it’s very forward even on a game forum to suggest to someone that they’re playing a game incorrectly and that you have the right answer due to experience when no one asked for the advice. There’s probably a half dozen Simpsons memes that can be deployed here: “No, it’s the children who are wrong.” “Old man shouts at cloud.”

No one has ever said you can’t like whatever artwork one likes. But again, the problem is not about personal freedoms, likes, and dislikes. It’s about not having the game reflect one’s worldview despite, as you said, the game having decades of artwork in the style of your preference set in a faux medieval milieu, and that other publishers continue to create work in this style.

It is not about accessibility to this style of game, it’s that D&D specifically no longer uses it that rankles some. These are exceptionally entitled people, to be sure.

And the funny thing about “woke” is that when people are asked to define it, they have to contort themselves in ways that don’t make them sound like terrible people.

 

[BrokenTwin]

If I may, allow me to give one of the prime examples of the position I referred to above, the kinds of jokes folks made at the expense of anyone who prefers certain kinds of things (and, being one such person, I was thus being made fun of).

There was an official "D&D Next" blog post (long since deleted because they've nuked their own website like two or three times since then) talking about dragonborn. I'm a big fan of dragonborn, if you didn't already know this. (You almost certainly already knew this.)

The post....basically spent the entire first half talking about how the author (Robert Schwalb) had had a pretty fixed idea of what D&D was...and that dragonborn and tieflings and warlords were so obviously unfit to such a thing, he couldn't conceive of how people could do that. He made multiple cracks about these things, and implied that it was youth that made people interested in such things.

It wasn't meant to be mean--he referenced without using a sticking-out-tongue emoji to "soften" the preceding statements--but it was quite clearly coming from a position of "I don't understand you, I can't understand you, I don't think I ever will understand you, but I have learned to put up with you being so weird."

And this was then 100% seriously used to justify ghettoizing some races as "uncommon" or "rare". Something I outright hate. Mr. Schwalb used "these weren't around when I started playing, so they're obviously weird" as a justification for actively reifying the idea that traditional things are just more important, more worthy, than non-traditional ones.

And if you think I'm exaggerating, you can read the post yourself (I finally dug it up via the Internet Archive). It's from the account "evil_reverend", but that username was used by Robert Schwalb.

I can tell you right now, this was NOT well-received by people who were fans of dragonborn--it presented denigration as "compromise", and active support for people who passionately hate dragonborn as some kind of fairness.

This is precisely the sort of mockery, with the disingenuous "well I don't really MEAN it like that", that I will never get any form of apology about. Because the people who fervently hate my preferences even being allowed in D&D were a critical demographic that couldn't be antagonized.

I find that interesting that the article was written by Schwalb, considering his modern works (specifically Shadow of the Weird Wizard) are absolutely filled to the brim with "non-standard" ancestry options. I'm kind of curious how he feels about that article now, looking back.

 

[Remathilis]

Focusing just on this one specific thing: You aren't going nearly far enough (though I'm sure you know this).

It's not only never been a faux-medieval world, it has been almost exclusively driven by provably, objectively false narratives about medieval European culture, art, knowledge/science/tech, social expectations, etc., etc. Very, very little of D&D actually resembles anything at all in human history even if you completely screen out 100% of the fantasy elements.

The idea that most people were deeply, fanatically racist and that torches-and-pitchforks would be pulled out the moment they saw something unusual? Absolutely the hell not. Plenty of medieval Europeans did trade with "Moors" (read: black Africans), Arabs, all sorts of things. One of King Arthur's knights, Feirefiz, was canonically bi-racial (albeit in a way that...reflected the rather flawed understanding of biology of medieval Europe, making a black man with a dramatic case of vitiligo, not...y'know, what an actual biracial person would look like.)

The idea that medieval Europe was drab, depressing, and almost exclusively oppressive to anyone who wasn't nobility, is equally ridiculous. Medieval Europe used all sorts of bright, colorful dyes; while being a serf wasn't great, it wasn't uniformly terrible; plenty of people weren't even serfs or nobles, but something else (e.g. guild members); trade and economics were quite important.

Huge one is simply the types of armor and weapons, which are completely, utterly ridiculous and anti-historical. Europe had cannon and handguns before it had plate armor. King Arthur would never have worn plate armor--if he ever lived, he certainly lived at least 800 years too early. The kinds of heavy armor we talk about were only popular in Renaissance Europe. Rapiers and bucklers and all that stuff is also Renaissance, as superior metallurgy enabled such gear. Etc., etc., etc.

The "medieval" world of D&D is, and has always been, an almost-totally-constructed thing, full of completely made-up elements, actively anti-historical elements, and a patchwork of historical bits that came from across over a thousand years of IRL history. Even if you deleted every single supernatural element, it would still resemble literally no part of Earth history ever.

Folks defending the "traditional" way D&D has done things aren't even remotely defending historical accuracy. At all. They're defending one particular fantastical approach, which is as full of completely-invented, completely-false, and ridiculously mish-mashed elements as any other approach.

That's ignoring things like, ya know, polytheism and the role of religion in medieval society.

 

[dragoner]

And the funny thing about “woke” is that when people are asked to define it, they have to contort themselves in ways that don’t make them sound like terrible people.

Their use of the word says it all, it's not even in my vocabulary, last time someone used it in a forum post to me, not too long ago, they started complaining about Disney. The reality is it said more about the entire forum, I just decided I'm gonna have to pull a Steve McQueen, bailed.

 

[payn]

I find that interesting that the article was written by Schwalb, considering his modern works (specifically Shadow of the Weird Wizard) are absolutely filled to the brim with "non-standard" ancestry options. I'm kind of curious how he feels about that article now, looking back.

Im curious if the take was in the D&D space. There is a lot of tradition and folks have a sort of dont mess with it attitude about D&D. I mean, look at the constantly brought up "4E would have been fine, if it was a separate product, but called D&D tactics instead..." There is an idea that things have a time and place, and that time and place is formed and limited when it comes to D&D.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Im curious if the take was in the D&D space. There is a lot of tradition and folks have a sort of dont mess with it attitude about D&D. I mean, look at the constantly brought up "4E would have been fine, if it was a separate product, but called D&D tactics instead..." There is an idea that things have a time and place, and that time and place is formed and limited when it comes to D&D.

Minor correction: There is an idea that things have a time and place, and that time and place is formed and limited to when any given person first started playing D&D. Because that's always the way of it, for people drawing lines in the sand about what D&D is or isn't allowed to be. It's always whatever was formative. Thankfully, there are plenty of old-school fans or players who have no such exclusionary attitudes--but we are in an absolute flourishing of such attitudes, because WotC has actively courted those who want to exclude anything that doesn't fit the prescribed box they've built for "D&D."

That's the issue here. It's not the idea that "D&D" means a thing in a historical context, which is a milquetoast truism so mild no one could object to it. That's the motte. The bailey of this argument is that "D&D" means a thing in one specific historical context, and isn't allowed to ever mean anything else, to anyone else. And, as with any motte-and-bailey argument, the bailey is nearly indefensible without looking like a pretty big jerk--but the motte is nearly unassailable without looking like a pretty big jerk.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And the funny thing about “woke” is that when people are asked to define it, they have to contort themselves in ways that don’t make them sound like terrible people.

It's easy: it means "not a racist".

 

[CreamCloud0]

I mean, Thac0 as a mechanic was considered confusing and counterintuitive when it was the default combat resolution. It was only used because it was less space intensive than full table matrixes. I've been in the gamer space for 30+ years and never heard anyone opine fondly for the mechanic. Well, not until WotC opted to make it's first jest about it but putting it in the 2014 PHB index. Then, mocking Thac0 started becoming an act of violence against the OS community. There was no great revelation about the mechanic, no hidden brilliance was discovered. Thac0 just became a bloody shirt people who disliked newer editions used to prove how oppressed they are.

if you reread my post you'll notice that i never actually mentioned anything about Thac0 being a good or bad mechanic, only that it is one recognizably associated with the earlier editions, and so by naming him thusly and with the rest of his description they are un-subtly associating the type of (not exactly great) person he is with the people who played earlier editions.

 

[Bae'zel]

I dunno, I see very little historical accuracy in my old TSR "The Art of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Game" artbook.

Clyde Caldwell, in particular. Geez Louise. I love it, but his stuff is arguably as far from "real" medieval accuracy as much as the most recent stuff.

Methinks some older gamers have rose tinted glasses.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

if you reread my post you'll notice that i never actually mentioned anything about Thac0 being a good or bad mechanic, only that it is one recognizably associated with the earlier editions, and so by naming him thusly and with the rest of his description they are un-subtly associating the type of (not great) person he is with the people who played earlier editions.

Are they "associating the type of (not great) person he is with the people who played earlier editions"?

Or are they simply talking about a topic that is, as a simple matter of historical fact, only present in the rules of one edition and thus...impossible to reference without referencing that specific game?

I'm not saying "Thaco the Clown" was a wise move. I'm simply saying that there's a jumping to conclusions here. In order to assert that Thaco the Clown is meant to represent 2e players in general, you need quite a bit more, I should think.

I dunno, I see very little historical accuracy in my old TSR "The Art of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Game artbook.

Clyde Caldwell, in particular. Geez Louise. I love it, but his stuff is arguably as far from "real" medieval accuracy as much as the most recent stuff.

Methinks some older gamers have rose tinted glasses.

They've got double-tinted bifocals. Rose for reading the things they hold near and dear to their hearts. Jade-tinted for everything they keep as far away as possible.