D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

Bagpuss said:

You are just recreating the "problem", at some point anything you create someone will say is a reflection of prejudices to X marginalized group and the process starts again.

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Except there is nothing these which can be used to point towards a marginalised group. Everything I wrote is intentionally separated from any human culture.

The reason orcs and gnolls failed with that is due to being depicted at some point in DnDs history as player species with human-like cultures. To the point where orcs and humans could even breed together to make offspring.

tfw i'm gonna have to stop responding for a few hours. Sight has gone due to a visual migraine.

Frozen_Heart said:

Example features of a species of pre-sapients which can't become a player species, and have legit reasons to fight player species.

• Smarter than apes, less intelligent than player species (int 7).
• They would be classed as beasts, not humanoids.
• Unable to speak (or learn) PC languages, and instead speak using a complex series of calls.
• They are able to build tools, weapons, and shelters from stone, wood, and earth. But have no metalworking.
• They are unable to create fire, but are able to maintain existing fires. Groups with a fire have a huge advantage over those without.
• Fur means they don't use or make clothing.
• They conflict with sapients like humans, as those are their natural prey. They will seek out settlements of sapients and raid them, destroying them for food in a single night to feed the group.
• Back when humans lived in small tribes, only smalls groups of these creatures existed. As humans and other sapients have developed into large societies, the numbers of this species have shot up too.
• Different subtypes which fill different roles. Medium or small sized ones to act as hordes, Large sized ones to act as big strong scary things. Reasoning being that more variation is good for players to fight, as fighting the same few statblocks over and over is boring.
• Any spellcasting is innate, and not learnt.
• As depicting different humans as monkeys or apes has been a common tactic irl against different races, lets make them a different group of mammals. Rodents are close to monkeys and apex, and DnD has no existing rodent species. So lets make them bipedal rodents of unusual size.

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This seems pretty primitive in terms of freely coming up with interesting threats. Plus you are always still going to potentially run into problems which is why how it is done and the intent should matter (rather than just saying it can’t be done). Take the monkey and rodent example. Rats were long used as a way to dehumanize Jews leading up to the Holocaust. And there are plenty of legends and mythologies involving monkeys around the world that have nothing to do with US racial politics (Monkey in Journey to the West for example)

Yaarel said:

Lets use a contemporary analogy.

There is a bully in a high school who is trying to harass and harm an other student.

So the bully generates an AI image that depicts a caricature of the victim. This image is truly offensive. Exaggerating physical appearances, placing them in a situation that bully doesnt want to let the victim forget. Posting the image all over school. You get the idea.

Now, the victim goes to the principle and complains, and tries to get these images taken down, and hopefully even have the principle or the police punish the bully for the crime of defamation.

But the principle says, No. This AI image is just a fantasy. It isnt real. It isnt you. The bully can do whatever the bully wants.

If D&D depicts a distorted image of an other reallife culture, D&D would be this bully.

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It isn't a fair analogy, you need to show malice intent for D&D to be acting as the bully in this instance.

There is no evidence this was done to harass or harm like in your example. The evidence that it even is a caricature of the victim is slim and circumstantial at best.

In this thread, in the case of the "half-elves"/"half-orcs" you even have evidence that the supposed victim rather than seeing it as bullying, see it as representation.

AnotherGuy said:

I'm just going to reply to this for now, as I'm short on time.
Firstly the lore of FR and the lore of Mystara is quite different, even with the humanoids, and the stories I've told there are human-centric.

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I never said they were the same lore? But orcs have been an incredibly common enemy in the game. The lore I found for Mystara states they are incredibly common in Mystara, and you ran FR for a decade. Even if the lore is different, it is really weird you keep saying that you NEVER looked into orcs before this thread.

Though I guess it does help prove you don't need orcs to be enemies, since it seems you never did.

AnotherGuy said:

The Soderfjord campaign was all about the Reformation and their independence from Ostland. The Kamameikan campaign had them deal with the friction between the Thyatians and the Traladarans, an inserted TToEE, as well as take down a network of Lycanthropes. In Darokin it was about the politics and intrigue of the merchant Houses and having to deal with competing adventuring guilds. Orcs would have featured in these campaigns but only as minor obstacles.

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Oh, so it isn't that you never used orcs before, or people didn't encounter orcs before, you just never bothered to read anything about them before using them. They were simply in the game as disposable enemies and you left it at that.

AnotherGuy said:

But let us put that aside, and move to characters - the proposals I made upthread are example of PC goals that I imagined would be realised during play. That is how I imagined it, and it would make sense to have an orc or half-orc PC who would pursue this. Why would my halfling sorcerer or human cleric of Kelemovor care two cents about the lore of Gruumsh?
It would be high level play because in order to deal with ancient lore that deals with deities its not something a 5th level character would be able to pull off.
In the just under 10 years we've playing FR the PCs have come across orcs but mostly as minor antagonists.

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OKay, but this gets very confusing to me. We have brought up the half-orc is problematic. You responded "aha! The Mark of Gruumsh makes this not problematic" So, immediately, you are assuming that a level 1 character would need to know about The Mark of Gruumsh on some level, because it is a fundamental part to this racial write-up and a reason that "civilized" folk, let's say "are cautious" around half-orcs.

But then, I responded to how the Mark of Gruumsh doesn't really solve the problem. Because if you see "Gruumsh is evil and hates everything" as propoganda, as the story told against Gruumsh, and look at his motivations.... it is trivially easy to see him as a heroic figure. To which you then proposed this entire campaign of redemption for Gruumsh and the downfall of the elves, and presented it as though that was the entire point of Gruumsh's forty year old lore, was to allow you to make that story, and that campaign.

And now, you are claiming that the only reason to make that campaign is to have high level play, because the creation myth of the orcs is "ancient lore" (weird, the creation myth of every single other race isn't ancient lore. Do you think the orcs don't know their own religion?) and would require an orcish character... because only orcs can possibly care about the plight of orcs and how they have been mistreated? Why can't a follower of Kelemvor, who believes in balance and judgement, look upon the situation and go "that's messed up"?

Meanwhile, none of this actually gets back to the initial point, which is that the "Mark of Gruumsh" is a thinly-veiled attempt at reducing the obvious racial overtones in how they are talking about a mixed race person in the half-orc entry.

Bagpuss said:

It isn't a fair analogy, you need to show malice intent for D&D to be acting as the bully in this instance.

There is no evidence this was done to harass or harm like in your example. The evidence that it even is a caricature of the victim is slim and circumstantial at best.

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These reallife racist traditions originate from actual malice.

Gamers can continually propagate these malicious stereotypes, even if they are unaware of who the victim is or the harm being done.

Much of the fantasy literature, like Tarzan, Conan, and Lord of the Rings, is rife with actual historical racism. To keep on perpetuating the racist tropes is reckless disregard.

In the analogy, it would be like an other student who doesnt know the victim, but thinks the AI image "funny", and continues to post the image all over town.

Frozen_Heart said:

Except there is nothing these which can be used to point towards a marginalised group. Everything I wrote is intentionally separated from any human culture.

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Really? You see any issues that someone could take with any of the stuff you wrote?

• Smarter than apes, less intelligent than player species (int 7).
• They would be classed as beasts, not humanoids.

So black slaves have never been compared to smart apes, or being non-human?

• Unable to speak (or learn) PC languages, and instead speak using a complex series of calls.

You know like the clicks some African languages use...

• They are able to build tools, weapons, and shelters from stone, wood, and earth. But have no metalworking.

Not at all like any human cultures? I can think of several.

• They conflict with sapients like humans, as those are their natural prey.

Are we liking them to cannibals then?

• As depicting different humans as monkeys or apes has been a common tactic irl against different races, lets make them a different group of mammals. Rodents are close to monkeys and apex, and DnD has no existing rodent species. So lets make them bipedal rodents of unusual size.

Yeah humans have never compared their enemies to rodents in the past... Not going to cause problems at all...

(Oh and get well soon)

Bedrockgames said:

Except it seems to be describing a view of history as a cycle from civilization to decadence to overthrow by barbarians, who then themselves enter the cycle. That is a pretty old idea that has been around for ages in various forms. But it doesn't describe what you have in the united states at all (where you have an ecosystem that cities and rural areas are all part of (farms need cities and cities need farms). This isn't a cycle but an arrangement. And it is one where you have distinct ways of life forming because life in the city is different from life in the country (or for that matter, the suburbs). I've lived mostly in cities and suburbs. But I had relatives who were more rural. And you have this contrast in a lot of places. Again I think Howard did evoke some of these ideas about the cycle of history and decadence in cities but it was, in my view more in service to allowing Conan to be a vessel for a character who embodied more rural values.

Now my own view is neither of these ways of life has 'the answer'. They are both answers to different situations and needs. If you are from the city, it can be jarring to go to the country and if you are from the country it can be jarring to go to the city (and then there are people who like leaving one for the other).

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Right, you are laser-focused on the aspect of the "cycle" but that isn't the only aspect of the Fremen Mirage. The cycle happens because of the moral and martial superiority of the Fremen versus the "city folk". And while sure, you can reinterpret some sort of baseline "each is different" I have grown up in rural areas. I can easily find dozens of movies involving plot of "unhappy city person goes to country, finds love/meaning of life/happiness", I can find another few dozen movies involving "rural person goes to city, and their country charm/moral outlook/direct way leads to them changing the lives of others and making everything better". I have never seen a movie involving a country person becoming more city, and it not be a tragedy or a fall from grace.

This is very rampant in America, and this is what Howard was getting at as well. The sneering city folk are "wrong" but using the term to insult Conan, who is morally superior like all people who are rugged country instead of the cities. And this is a key, initial phase of the Fremen Mirage, because if the Fremen are not morally and martially superior, the mirage falls apart.

Bedrockgames said:

we are getting very deep in the weeds here. I think we will have to agree to disagree on this point (and disagree on the meaning and importance of the points we agree upon. I just don’t see this as a bad trope that has any real world impact.

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Ah, of course, all my points about the real world impacts are completely ignored, because you just don't see it. Just like you don't see the real world impact of ANY trope.

Bedrockgames said:

Except with personhood, the definition can has been used to exclude some because of an exception

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And we all know that was wrong, and people knew it was wrong then too. So, we still know it is wrong.

Chaosmancer said:

Ah, of course, all my points about the real world impacts are completely ignored, because you just don't see it. Just like you don't see the real world impact of ANY trope.

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We see things very differently. I am not ignoring your points. I even addressed a few. I just don’t think we are going to move the needle on this, so I felt agreeing to disagree on them was the way to go. We come from very different points of view when it comes to media and media tropes, and that is entirely okay. Also I am not dismissing your points, if anything I am letting you have the last say so we can move into something else

Bedrockgames said:

So does religion, philosophy, ethics courses, our parents, our schools, etc. We aren’t just all the stories poured into us by media. This is why the whole very special episode failed to change behavior, why just say no failed gif my generation. We aren’t just passive receptacles for art. And I think it actually gets very dangerous when you think you can engineer society by making sure only the right art is acceptable. And there is a difference between full on propaganda and a story not trying to persuade people to action.

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What? Who said you were passive? Who said it was only art and nothing else?

Hey, do you know how the moral values of religion are taught to people? Stories. Parables, morality tales, ect. How do we discuss ethics? We put them in scenarios that demonstrate the issue, AKA a story. How does school teach History? Stories. Math and Science involve story problems. Stories are everywhere.

And while it may be dangerous to think you can engineer society, it is naive to think that art cannot possibly change society. No, not naive. Demonstrably false. The abolition movement received a massive boost from Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was a story. But was also propaganda. The story of the Life of Jesus has shaped western culture.

But that is exactly what you and others keep presenting. This art cannot possibly be affecting the world, it is only art, only a story, not important enough to be shifting perceptions. It is only fiction. Like fiction doesn't reshape our world. Even without a direct call of action, it shapes us.