D&D 5E 50th Anniversary and beyond

[HammerMan]

He didn't say anyone's doing it to "get their jollies murdering evil children", he's saying that having an entire race be evil is a convenient justification for killing the kids without feeling guilty about it. This is not entirely unfounded. It's exactly what Gary Gygax was saying with his "nits make lice" reference to Chivington in 2005.

some one somewhere did or said something bad so I can paint with a broad brush and say that is the reason...

In my opinion what Gary was talking about was an easy/lazy way out of dealing with situations like he presents players with in the Caves of Chaos in B2.

I agree

He gives you a bunch of humanoid antagonists, and in his nod to Gygaxian Realism, the lairs include a bunch of noncombatant women and children.

I mean the way better and easier is to leave noncombatants 'off screen'

In real play groups can choose to deal with this numerous ways. DMs can choose to elide the kids. DMs can run the women also as combatants, or rule that they are peaceable and ask for truce, swear to leave the area, etc. OR, in the "nits make lice" approach, players can just exterminate the vermin and be reassured that the creatures were never capable of peaceful negotiation or growing up to be nice and non-threatening adults, so the players don't have to feel guilty or worry about their characters no longer being Lawful Good.

 

[Mannahnin]

same.

it is black and white gaming vs shades of grey gaming

Yeah, I don't understand why everything has to be vilified by the side that wants shades of grey IN game...

As far as I can tell, Gygax was taking an anti-shades of grey approach.

If you are running a shades of grey game, with tough moral choices, the Caves of Chaos give ample opportunity for wrestling over the moral question of what to do with the women and kids!

But Gary's explanation of how to deal with it eliminates that moral question. If the Orc young are irredeemable predators, inherently inimical to human life, then it's perfectly moral to just put them to the sword.

"Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice."
— - Col. John Milton Chivington, talking about why he eradicated all of the children at a military inquiry

 

[Bolares]

So if you can remember roughly when this span was, we could (for example) count whether it was indeed 20 episodes, and confirm whether during that span every single guest was a POC or gay. It might turn out that the actual number was significantly shorter, but that the subjective feeling was exaggerated.

I regularly listen to dragontalk. The 20 episode thing is completelly false. And leaves me wondering, even if it was true, why would that bother someone so much to be their prime example of diversity going wrong.

 

[Oofta]

Oofta, these are two different things.

He didn't say anyone's doing it to "get their jollies murdering evil children", he's saying that having an entire race be evil is a convenient justification for killing the kids without feeling guilty about it. Not that they're LOOKING FOR opportunities to kill kids. More that, if the scenario puts kids in the way, they don't want to have to wrestle with a moral dilemma and wind up feeling guilty. This is not entirely unfounded. It's exactly what Gary Gygax was saying with his "nits make lice" reference to Chivington in 2005 (link below).

In my opinion what Gary was talking about was an easy/lazy way out of dealing with situations like he presents players with in the Caves of Chaos in B2. He gives you a bunch of humanoid antagonists, and in his nod to Gygaxian Realism, the lairs include a bunch of noncombatant women and children. In real play groups can choose to deal with this numerous ways. DMs can choose to elide the kids. DMs can run the women also as combatants, or rule that they are peaceable and ask for truce, swear to leave the area, etc. OR, in the "nits make lice" approach, players can just exterminate the vermin and be reassured that the creatures were never capable of peaceful negotiation or growing up to be nice and non-threatening adults, so the players don't have to feel guilty or worry about their characters no longer being Lawful Good.

Q&A with Gary Gygax, Part II - Page 3 - Dragonsfoot

www.dragonsfoot.org

I'm not discussing the role of evil races in games. I don't care what Gygax did or did not say, I don't think I ever did.

But the quote I object to is: "Calling a race evil is usually only an excuse for adventurers to attack on sight or slaughteting the "evil" children without feeling guilty..." It's quite clear. People who have evil races usually do it for the express purpose of supporting guilt free infanticide. It's insulting.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I regularly listen to dragontalk. The 20 episode thing is completelly false. And leaves me wondering, even if it was true, why would that bother someone so much to be their prime example of diversity going wrong.

I think the discomfort some folks feel is a deliberate byproduct of centuries of oppression and cultural dominance. For example, I was raised in an American suburb. I had very little exposure to non-white culture. As I have learned more about redlining, I've found out that this segregation was a deliberate design by those who created suburbs.

If someone raised in the suburbs, purposefully kept away from non-white cultures, feels uncomfortable when exposed to non-white cultures... It helps those who want to maintain the status quo oppression.

 

[HammerMan]

As far as I can tell, Gygax was taking an anti-shades of grey approach.

that is correct, he was tlaking black and white, there are cosmic forces of good and evil so you can literally be born evil.

If you are running a shades of grey game, with tough moral choices, the Caves of Chaos give ample opportunity for wrestling over the moral question of what to do with the women and kids!

yup.

But Gary's explanation of how to deal with it eliminates that moral question. If the Orc young are irredeemable predators, inherently inimical to human life, then it's perfectly moral to just put them to the sword.

correct, again, he is saying black and white, good and evil are cosmic forces.

 

[Bolares]

I think the discomfort some folks feel is a deliberate byproduct of centuries of oppression and cultural dominance. For example, I was raised in an American suburb. I had very little exposure to non-white culture. As I have learned more about redlining, I've found out that this segregation was a deliberate design by those who created suburbs.

If someone raised in the suburbs, purposefully kept away from non-white cultures, feels uncomfortable when exposed to non-white cultures... It helps those who want to maintain the status quo oppression.

I get that, I really do. But it's hard to accept it when someone uses there being (allegedly) 20 dragontalks in a row where black or queer people were guests and talked about their identities as an example of bad diversity. So how much gay or black quota is acceptable. How much can we be in the same places as straight white people before we are wrong for simply being in a podcast?

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm not discussing the role of evil races in games. I don't care what Gygax did or did not say, I don't think I ever did.

But the quote I object to is: "Calling a race evil is usually only an excuse for adventurers to attack on sight or slaughteting the "evil" children without feeling guilty..." It's quite clear. People who have evil races usually do it for the express purpose of supporting guilt free infanticide. It's insulting.

I think you're interpreting something as insulting that was not intended to be.

I think his intent was to express that having inherently evil humanoids is "usually only an excuse" to negate the moral dilemma of how to handle the young, as Gary specifically described. He used the inflammatory words to be honest about what this entails, if you reject the premise of inherent evil.

Whether this is in fact "usually" the reason people make Orcs inherently evil is implicitly his subjective opinion, and doesn't necessarily include you, because he wrote "usually", rather than "always".

 

[HammerMan]

I think his intent was to express that having inherently evil humanoids is "usually only an excuse" to negate the moral dilemma of how to handle the young,

I don't know if that is any better. I doubt many people have young in there games weather they are useing evil races or nor...

Whether this is in fact "usually" the reason people make Orcs inherently evil is implicitly his subjective opinion, and doesn't necessarily include you, because he wrote "usually", rather than "always".

I still call BS that the 'usual' way to run is to have orc children at all come up

 

[Mannahnin]

I don't know if that is any better. I doubt many people have young in there games weather they are useing evil races or nor...

I still call BS that the 'usual' way to run is to have orc children at all come up

You may be right. Especially nowadays. Of course, at the height of its popularity Keep on the Borderlands was selling around 750,000 copies a year, so even if that were the only published module ever to raise the issue, that was certainly enough basis to fuel a lot of these debates over the ensuing years.

I do think it's been relatively common over the decades to have monster young in games. The whole Gygaxian Naturalism school of design, Richard Gilbert's classic "Let There Be a Method to Your Madness" dungeon design article in Dragon #10, the years-long classic Ecology of the [blank] series of articles in Dragon putting various monsters in context within a naturalistic ecosystem (which the 2E Monstrous Compendium built on)... The idea of a logical world where monsters are living beings with certain core needs and desires common to humans or animals is really widespread, IME.

Tons of writers and designers over the years, and certainly TSR for most of its existence and WotC since it took over D&D, have espoused this kind of naturalistic take on monsters. The idea that they have young at all naturally leads to game table situations where the question of the young comes up.