D&D General All Dead Generations: "Classic Vs. The Aesthetic"

[Cadence]

Well, last I checked, my dog wasn't writing letters. Just how far down the rabbit hole you want to dive? It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that these two things are equivalent. Sorry, but I can't see this as anything but a bad faith attempt to pretend that farmers are now equivalent to mind flayers.

If Mindflayers are right in their belief that they're as mentally far above us as we are above the various sentient (After 2,500 Studies, It's Time to Declare Animal Sentience Proven (Op-Ed)) animals we raise for food, who are we to judge them?

 

[Hussar]

I feel these types of threads will continue until either the conversation is discussed or D&D bites the bullet and creates an official setting for each "generation/era" of D&D.

To be honest, I can't see that happening. They will never create a setting which leans on the tropes of past fantasy.

Thing is, this is happening genre wide. This conversation that we're having now has been ongoing for a long, long time in genre circles. I remember listening to podcasts like Starship Sofa and Escape Pod talking about this sort of thing twenty years ago and I'm sure it's been going on longer than that.

Thing is, it's finally caught up to D&D. D&D, particularly in light of D&D becoming far more mainstream, finally has to deal with the incredibly racist underpinnings of Appendix N authors that we generally just accepted as "the way things are" for far too long.

Let's be honest here, most of the works on Appendix N are really, really offensive. They're misogynistic, racist and bigotted. That's what fantasy WAS for a very, very long time. Now, we have to try to untangle all that garbage from our hobby, bundle it up and shove it out the airlock so we can move forward with a game that isn't telling about 2/3rds of the planet that they are less valuable than a bunch of white dudes.

 

[Scribe]

Well, last I checked, my dog wasn't writing letters. Just how far down the rabbit hole you want to dive? It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that these two things are equivalent. Sorry, but I can't see this as anything but a bad faith attempt to pretend that farmers are now equivalent to mind flayers.

Its not farmers. Thats not the comparison.

 

[Hussar]

If Mindflayers are right in their belief that they're as mentally far above us as we are above the various sentient (After 2,500 Studies, It's Time to Declare Animal Sentience Proven (Op-Ed)) animals we raise for food, who are we to judge them?

And so it goes...

Let's be 100% clear here. Are you suggesting that mind flayers, as portrayed in D&D are, in any way, shape or form, using imagery or language that is directly tied to bigotry or racism? If so, then let's see your evidence. If not, then you are simply drawing red herrings in a rather obvious attempt to derail the actual conversation.

So, again, which is it? Is the language or imagery surrounding mind flayers in any way directly copying racist texts or images? Yes or no?

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Well, last I checked, my dog wasn't writing letters. Just how far down the rabbit hole you want to dive? It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that these two things are equivalent. Sorry, but I can't see this as anything but a bad faith attempt to pretend that farmers are now equivalent to mind flayers.

Sorry dude, but there are plenty of vegan and vegetarian people who wouldn't see a huge difference between farming people and farming cows. Me? I like dairy, eggs, and meat. But I do see the validity in the ethical arguments put forward by (some) vegans and vegetarians.

BTW: I say "some" vegans/vegetarians as I have met at least a couple of vegetarians who say they hate animals and would be happy for them all to be dead. People be weird.

 

[Hussar]

Isn't the more compelling ethical argument about eating meat that it's incredibly wasteful, bad for the environment and unnecessary?

 

[Minigiant]

To be honest, I can't see that happening. They will never create a setting which leans on the tropes of past fantasy.

Thing is, this is happening genre wide. This conversation that we're having now has been ongoing for a long, long time in genre circles. I remember listening to podcasts like Starship Sofa and Escape Pod talking about this sort of thing twenty years ago and I'm sure it's been going on longer than that.

Thing is, it's finally caught up to D&D. D&D, particularly in light of D&D becoming far more mainstream, finally has to deal with the incredibly racist underpinnings of Appendix N authors that we generally just accepted as "the way things are" for far too long.

Let's be honest here, most of the works on Appendix N are really, really offensive. They're misogynistic, racist and bigotted. That's what fantasy WAS for a very, very long time. Now, we have to try to untangle all that garbage from our hobby, bundle it up and shove it out the airlock so we can move forward with a game that isn't telling about 2/3rds of the planet that they are less valuable than a bunch of white dudes.

For the most part, settings based on the past fantasy already exist so they would have to create them.

However they could create new settings which enforce old tropes with new nonoffensive reasoning.

But the popularity of 5e has made D&D catch up to other genres. And you have different generations/era fighting over representation in it.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Remove default alignment for entire races. Stop describing entire races as “savage” or “uncivilized” or “backward” or any of a dozen other blatantly racist tropes. Treat all intelligent humanoid creatures (the body shape, not the creature category) as having unique, multifaceted cultures all their own. Give multiple examples of any given race and show them having multifaceted and/or distinct cultures. Make a more explicitly cosmopolitan setting that embraces these ideas from the jump. Despite all its Orientalism, Al-Qadim managed to have a multicultural society where literally anyone who accepted the Loregiver’s laws was a full member of society...ogre, kobold, orc, or goblin.

Yup. That'd do it. Mind you, I, and I suspect many others, would want nothing to do with such a game of "swords, sorcery, magic and dragons". What such a drastic change would do for me, is make everything bland and the same. YMMV, but it'd be a hard pass for me and my group.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

So the "Reverse Spiderman"?

Great Power, No Responsibility, No fear the bad guys you ignore kill Uncle Ben but confidence that if you do stop the bad guys, they were 100% bad guys.

Yes and no, I don't think that a lack of consequences overall is an important component-- if you ignore the orcs and they burn your hometown down, that could be a thing that happens. I think its a matter of whether you stand at the center of a moral conflict, or if you're making your way through a larger world.

E.g. you don't have Spiderman's great power, so the bad guys you ignore are the same as the bad guys everyone else in New York are ignoring, the story doesn't hinge on your action until you prove to the story that it should. So in other words, you aren't the first adventurers to enter the Barrowmaze, or the last if you leave permanently or die, so whether the situation with the maze ever actually worsens isn't a commentary on you.

The spiderman world revolves around spiderman, but I think one element of the OSR mercenary-adventurer-treasurehunter thing is that the story doesn't revolve around them until they force it to. Anyone could be the hero, and there are a lot of dead heroes from people trying, so the world isn't waiting for you.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Isn't the more compelling ethical argument about eating meat that it's incredibly wasteful, bad for the environment and unnecessary?

Maybe? I'm not in a position to evaluate the ethical weight of various arguments for veganism/vegetarianism. (My training in ethics is waaaayyyyy too long ago and was pretty basic. Couldn't put together a decent argument if my life depended on it.) How's about we settle on "They are both ethics based arguments for veganism/vegetarianism."

As for mind flayers as villains - I think they make great villains.
Firstly - tentacles. Never trust anything with tentacles.

Secondly they are intelligent and cultured. Who doesn't love a clever, articulate villain? Hans Gruber anyone?

Thirdly they make a great dark mirror. They can present the ethical arguments for why what they do is no worse than what humans do. How much fun is that?

Fourth they are trying to eat you so you're free to fight them.

Fifth, to my knowledge, they have not been presented in ways that (strongly) echo real world racism. I put "strongly" in there because there's always an argument for "the alien" to be seen as an expression of real world xenophobia.