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Fantasy eugenics? Sign me up! Something as simple as this could drive a whole series of military fantasy novels.

I can totally agree with that. Forced pregnancy is horrible, inherently misogynistic, and it’s lazily overused in the fantasy genre for shock value. Which is why I prefer the trope of monsters which lay their eggs inside people regardless of sex, like the xill. It preserves the horror while...

Impregnated by pollen carried on the wind? That’s one way to sidestep the stereotypical backstory of half-orcs.

This is why I discarded good/evil alignment and use law/chaos instead. Moorcock had the right idea and D&D just made it stupid.

Technically the vikings were not an ethnic group. They were a specific social class.

Can’t you solve this by simply stating orcs pop out of holes in the ground, adult and holding weapons? That’s what 13th Age does and it’s great.

That would encourage piracy. The controversy is increasing sales of OA.

Which is why I don’t understand the backlash. Nobody is arguing that you can’t depict colonialist atrocities (evil campaigns are a thing) or speculate on the psychology/biology of a non-human species. What they are arguing is that orcs, drow, vistani, mongrelfolk, etc are drawing in whole or...

I would argue that orcs, at least in D&D, draw more from colonialist propaganda about indigenous peoples.

Don’t forget The Netbook of Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

Right. I don’t understand how people keep missing this. I keep seeing youtuber after youtuber saying “you think orcs are black people? You’re the real racist!”

If I understand correctly, then the point of contention is noticeable resemblance to specific real world stereotypes. Using spawn points would address a couple points of similarity, such as “they want our women” and “kill the children.” If I understand correctly, then the reason this is even a...

Goblins don’t need to be sexually dimorphic, nor to have two sexes. I’m quite partial to goblins being spontaneously generated, summoned from fairyland, or reproducing like plants.

I think a key “problematic” bit is that their backstory resembles the Curse of Ham. That is, they were cursed with black skin for being evil. They’re also the only elves with dark skin. I’m sure that rubs some people the wrong way. But I’m no expert on these matters.

Exoticizing as a verb is supposed to be synonymous with Othering as a verb.

That is a really bad example.

Okay, there seems to be a miscommunication here. I was never trying to argue that all depictions of goblins draw from antisemitic caricature. I should have made that clear and I apologize for failing to do so. I intended to point out that some goblins fit into multiple criteria for antisemitic...

I think everybody in this thread is guilty of making leaps at some point, myself included. I apologize. I think that, ultimately, creators should strive to be conscientious of whether their work contains content that could be perceived as "problematic" (dear god, I hate that word). For...

I wasn't talking about Tolkien specifically, and his work has its own problems. Firstly, depicting the dwarves as semitic received its own backlash. Secondly, Tolkien described orcs as "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive...

Yeah, I totally hate censorship. Anyway, you might like reading this article: http://analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/how-dungeons-dragons-appropriated-the-orient/