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Yes we should, but I don't think that's what's happening here. There is a big leap between fairy tales and the modern fantasy genre. In fairy tales, "goblins" (I use the term in quotes because every culture has a different name for them, often multiple names) are extremely diverse and range...

This is a common point of debate over the “space jew” trope in general. People disagree over whether fiction draws from stereotypes at all. Does that mean we’re always reading too much into it? I prefer to play it safe and depict goblins as David Bowie and his muppet friends. Or ferengi...

Humans are tribalistic in our psychology. We tend to treat others as homogeneous groups without room for nuance. That’s still racism, isn’t it? I doubt you are arguing we should kill all the German babies. “Should we kill the baby [insert race]?” is a real recurring discussion in D&D fandom for...

Google “goblins antisemitic” if you don’t believe me. Here are some choice links: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceJews Goblins are not inherently antisemitic, but certain depictions were influenced by antisemitic stereotypes. E.g. in Cornish folklore, knockers (a goblin) are...

The thunderbird is literally listed under "thunder gods." http://www.native-languages.org/legends-thunder.htm Are you referring to the fact that different tribes assign different degrees of divinity, ranging from "bird so big its wings make the sound of thunder" to "shapeshifting god who has...

Fair enough. It is a game. I keep receiving conflicting arguments like "justifying genocide against fictional races is kosher," "justifying genocide against fictional races is still morally wrong," and "justifying genocide against fictional races is only morally wrong if they resemble racist...

I don't think "thunderbird" is a good example because it's an umbrella term to refer to multiple deities in a variety of indigenous tribes, not any specific cultural figure. http://www.native-languages.org/thunderbird.htm However, "wendigo" would be a great example because it is a specific...

The problem here is that a surprising number of people don't think there is anything disturbing about depicting the genocide of fictional species as morally good. Because orcs, drow, goblins, terraformars, zentraedi, etc are fictional, then it is okay to arbitrarily kill, enslave, or otherwise...

I suspect it may be due to a combination of imperialist culture separating white people from their heritage, a really shoddy school system that fails to inspire any interest in history, blindness to their own privilege, the endlessly self-iterative mess than nerd culture has degenerated into...

Should authors be discouraged from writing settings that are contrived to justify racism, genocide, and fascism simply because those things are evil in real life and said depictions arbitrarily hurt people's feelings? These situations are extremely circumstantial because power dynamics change...

Likewise, I don't get offended when Japanese authors write pseudo-European fantasy even though I have European ancestry.

What bigotry? Correct me if I am wrong. I got the impression that their argument was "you can't be racist against fictional races, and you're the real racist for equating orcs with black people." EDIT: Here's a link to relevant article by a psychologist...

I think this whole discussion misses something potentially important: Why do we hold fantasy counterpart cultures of non-white cultures (in this case, East Asian) to increasingly higher standards than the rock-bottom standards we currently hold for fantasy counterpart cultures of so-called...

I don’t think they even consume the stereotypes. They seem opposed on principle to anything even remotely “woke”. Saying that entire races are not inherently good or evil doesn’t sound “woke” to me. Nobody is arguing that humans and orcs as races have internalized anti-green bigotry that they...

I’m really surprised by all the people who are upset that the Vistani are being called out as racist stereotypes. World of Darkness: Gypsies was published two and a half decades ago and it was rightly derided as racist nonsense even if the authors weren’t intentionally trying to be racist. How...

So here are some ideas for worlds in a shared setting. "Earth" resembles contemporary Earth. It was inhabited by magical creatures until most left during the Renaissance or around that time, and at the same time magicians lost their power. In more recent years, magical creatures have been...

IIRC, Nephilim actually provided suggestions for doing that. I have no idea how one would go about doing that, tho. I’m no occultist. I do think some of the suggestions could be useful for designing coherent mini-settings. (The Chariot, for example, could be the basis of a...

I just wanted to share something interesting. I looked up the defunct RPG Nephilim and learned that it had about twenty or so fraternities that could be adapted to a more generic usage. Here's the full list: # NAME DESCRIPTION 0 Fool Messianics and the “harmlessly” insane I Magician...

That's a good point. I wonder why it didn't work out for The Everlasting and WitchCraft in the 90s, or why I can't seem to find any other authors that tried anything similar in the years since.