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

[Ruin Explorer]

That is an opinion, one shared by many, but definitely not a "fact." I was around for those originals, but they, like most of 2e, never really spoke to me. I really only got into those settings with 5e. And with a world of information at my finger tips I can go back (and have) and get the information about older versions pretty easily. In most chases I don't really find things have changed much (though there is a lot more lore), in some cases I have preferred the 5e version to the 2e original, and in a few cases I haver preferred the original version.

But did you get into them because they were changed in ways that improved them for you?

Or because you were at a different time in your life and a different person? Or your group was more open-minded?

Because Spelljammer is basically not changed meaningfully from 2E (imho - the mechanical specifics a bit but not really) - it's a nearly identical setting, but just with less detail. If it's not "objectively worse", it's perilously close to being so.

 

[payn]

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.

Yes, buuuut I do see a certain Monopoly effect with D&D. I know this isnt going to go over well with some folks, but I do feel some of the traditions make D&D as much as the traditions make Monopoly the board game. Could Monopoly be improved as a Euro? Sure, it would likely be a much better strategy game, but would it feel like Monopoly anymore? It's not something I want changed or should say be interested in. Folks who feel differently just go on to play one of a myriad of alternatives.

D&D, however, is not exactly the same. It's not as solidified as a single complete product, its nature is evolving and more specifically cultural. What makes the problem even worse, is the hobby is not big enough for popular alternatives. So, instead of D&D just being the Monopoly of RPGs, it has to be the cultural center or the flagship of the hobby. That puts a lot of pressure on the competing viewpoints of tradition versus evolution. Which is why there is an ever running culture war amongst the players.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

What it comes down to is "vibes", and then people try and rationalize it, and so they come up with "historical realism" even though the art is extremely unrealistic from a historical/medieval perspective. Like, I'm sorry guys, medieval ladies were usually wearing like five layers of heavy, mostly wollen clothing, not the outfit an questionably-themed exotic dancer comes on to stage in like they are in a lot of Caldwell's work. It's not like his work is always uncool or horny either - sometimes it's stuff like this:

Badass/iconic, imho.

But "historical realism" it ain't.

I think if people focused more on what they did like that modern art doesn't always do - like "more use of actual models to paint" from, "actually physically painting rather than using digital tools", "moody lighting and mysterious imagery" (as opposed to the more action-y art we often see now), "mysterious or troubled characters" (as opposed to the friendly/relatable or steadfast characters more common now), conversations about art could be more productive.

But people so often want to translate vibes into rationalizations rather than thinking about it in a bit more depth.

 

[Bae'zel]

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.

I was a kid in the 80s, so I'm right in there for nostalgia.

My heart swells when I look at the original Dragonlance covers by Larry Elmore.

But it sinks into cringe territory when I look at old Drizzt images (you know the ones, where he's an old man with giant puffy hair and a golden forehead... plate thing?). UGH

Nothing was perfect, we have to acknowledge that.

 

[Bae'zel]

But people so often want to translate vibes into rationalizations rather than thinking about it in a bit more depth.

"Vibes" is a good word for it, yeah.

I dig it. Hell, I bought a copy of Against the Darkmaster solely because I loved the "vibe" of the artwork. So I get it.

Self reflection is key. Admitting that you like older material from a franchise is OK. And good news; instead of spending time getting angry at the latest takes on the material, there are plenty of people out there making NEW stuff in those old vibes, art and all.

 

[payn]

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

For me its the same definition as PC. Treating people with dignity and respect.

As old Nick Lowe once said, "whats so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

 

[AnotherGuy]

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.

Thank you for linking his post. I must admit when I read it, I completely empathised with his outlook on Dragonborn. I felt they just did not belong in the traditional D&D settings I played. I still treat them as rare in the Sword Coast (current campaign setting).

HOWEVER

I can easily imagine them in different settings.
I can envision a setting where Tieflings are not rare, where spillover occurred in a world and fiends entered through a portal and by the time it was closed by the old heroes of that world, a new species had emerged, the Tieflings.
I can easily see Dragonborn existing as the dominant species in Magic the Gathering's Zendikar, joined with Goliaths.
And of course there is the Nentir Valley as your standard D&D setting where Dragonborn provide a link to a lost past.

Often what we, as people, like we identify it as part of our core so when someone has a view which teases, ridicules or belittles it, we can get quite offended.
I'm sure now his views would have changed. Humans adapt as do their preferences.

What I find interesting about his post are not the new races and classes he struggled to accept but some of the settings which he classified as not D&D. I myself couldn't wrap my head around why people liked Spelljammer. I held this view for at least 2 decades, but here I am including parts of Spelljammer lore in my current campaign.
We are constantly changing...some faster than others I guess. It helps to be patient and charitable.

 

[dragoner]

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.

I think a lot was done to sanitize medieval Europe as well. Serfs come from slavery, the name servus in Latin, is slave, the modern word slave, comes from enslaving Slavic people, using them as galley, and plantation slaves. In turn the word for Gulag, comes from the Belarus-Russian-Ukrainian word Katorga, a transliteration of a Greek and Turkish word for galley, as in the ship. The Genonese slave-raiding colonies, Garazia, was in constant warfare with the Mongols from the 13th to 15th centuries. In one siege the Mongols used artillery to launch Black Plague infected corpses over the walls of Kaffa, likely a vector of how it entered Europe.

Then one gets to the expulsion of the Jews in the 15th and 16th century, places like Judenburg Austria has a caricature of a Jewish person in their coat of arms still: Judenburg - Wikipedia even though they were expelled. Gone east, into Slavic lands, and what eventually forms the Pale of Settlement.

There were sumptuary laws, by class, telling people how they could dress, and peasants would have worn more raw natural cloth, much of this is due to industry. Dyes are more of a 19th century thing, tying into industrial development on the Rhine, and ultimately, chemistry, to WW1 and high explosives. Arms and armor as well, there was not a science behind it, the classic plate, comes from being cheaply made after the invention and spread of the trip hammer, and armor acted as durable uniform.

You are right though, a lot of the romanticism of the middle ages is from the 19th century, and D&D inherited that.

Nevertheless, it isn't a society I would have liked living in.

 

[mamba]

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.

maybe not all that differently from how he felt then

“Fourth Edition, however, shocked me. I never imagined I would find dragonborn and tieflings in the Player’s Handbook. What about the gnome? Where did the half-orc go? D&D; had gone and reinvented itself without consulting me! Imagine my horror. Why did the marshal deserve to be in the Player’s Handbook in place of the druid or the bard? Everything I knew to be true about D&D; had been shaken up, and I was left puzzled and a bit upset—not enough to explode in nerdrage, but enough that I was uneasy.

I was so certain and so confident the dragonborn didn’t belong in D&D;, I figured my players would reject the race as I did and choose something more in line with the D&D; we’d always played. Imagine my surprise when one of my younger players, who was 19 at the time, immediately latched onto the dragonborn and warlord. Imagine my continued surprise when game after game my players ventured further afield than the classic array of classes and races. What I realized was that although dragonborn seemed ridiculous to me, the race had a great deal of appeal to my gaming group—the cantankerous, vulgar, twinkie group of players that they are. And if these old dudes could climb on board the tiefling, drow, dragonborn, wilden, shardmind train, then there must be people for whom these elements are fantasy for them. In the end, I made my peace with the weirder races and classes”

he made peace with them, he understands that some people like them, so why not offer them

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We are constantly changing...some faster than others I guess. It helps to be patient and charitable.

It's been almost 20 years, chief. When does reasonable patience end? Do I really need to be charitable when someone says, point-blank, that they need to appease both the people who just want to play the things they think are cool and which have been part of official D&D before, and people who are actively campaigning to exclude all of those things in order to keep D&D "pure" or whatever other nonsense?

Why should I have to defend any inclusion at all of my preferences in the edition that explicitly billed itself as the "big tent" that would welcome fans of every edition?

I understand that if you want respect, you need to give respect. But when someone point-blank tells you, when trying to be supportive, "Be glad you got anything at all"...there's only so far a plea for patience and charity can be stretched before it becomes "please be quiet, you're being inconvenient to me."