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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8369483" data-attributes="member: 7025508">Look, you know this is not some gotcha to smuggle in evil orcs or some BS like that. But as you note, it gets weird when we apply biological essentialism, a concept that is mainly used about humans, to actually different species. And it is technically biological essentialism to say that birds have wings, just like it is to say that humans are smarter than chimps. It just happens to be that some of these things have been said about real groups of people while some (probably) have not. And yeah, it is pretty easy to spot things that are unlikely to come across as problematic, such as wings or breathweapon or some purely cosmetic things. (Though closer we get to things that actual people have or are describes as that too gets problematic. Drow skin colour is just cosmetic, but it definitely is not an insignificant issue!) But it is far from clear cut. You mentioned changeling shapeshifting. Not necessarily so innocuous, as 'others' that look like us infiltrating our society definitely is a racist trope. And then there of course are things that just measure capability in other way. Due how D&D mechanics work speed is not dependent on ability scores, but that doesn't make being fast conceptually different to being strong. And if being depicted strong is problematic biological essentialism, then it doesn't matter whether it is done via strength score, powerful build or even just in the lore. D&D mechanics are not social justice issue, what they depict might be. Even pretty trivial seeming things may seem problematic to some. A while ago there was discussion (here? somewhere...) about whether goliaths were 'black-coded' due their overt physicality.I was creating my current setting a while ago when the great orc flame wars raged here, and I thought about this quite a bit. I fully agree that we should endeavour to remove clearly problematic elements and I have been complaining about D&D's racist depictions of certain things (orcs and drow mainly) at least since the 3rd edition. However, I also came to the conclusion that if the standard is "would this be racist if it was said about human ethnic group" then we pretty much cannot (and shouldn't) have non-humans. Anything that would be left would be some cosmetics and perhaps some superpowers*. Eberron is usually considered to be very good with these things, so lets look at its orcs "The orcs of Eberron weren't formed by Gruumsh, and they aren't inherently driven to evil. However, they are an extremely passionate and primal race, given to powerful emotions and deep faith." If I was to describe a real life human ethnic group thusly (ignoring the Gruumsh part obviously) it would be incredibly racist. Ultimately the issue is, that in order to describe non-humans, we have to describe how they're different from humans or at least stereotype then into some sort of extreme form humans. But describing any real human group that way would be racist. Even things like "industruous, holds grudges and loves gold" would be problematic.* And for a game that needs to be balanced, even superpowers might be an issue, as having them necessitates that the group is worse than humans at something.</blockquote>

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