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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 8740845" data-attributes="member: 18182">One thing I appreciate about the discussion in this thread, most everybody seems to be trying to move towards a better representation of race, culture, and language in our fantasy elf games. But still, a few seem intent on not just disagreeing, but tearing down the arguments and opinions of others. Ah well, it's what we do . . .The problem facing the D&D designers, and our discussion here, as I see it, is how confusing the concept of race is. In the real world, race is a term scientists don't like because it's vague, loaded, and confuses genetics and culture. When we port it over to the fantasy game, it gets worse by blending in mythic tropes of fairy creatures.I've come to view the traditional D&D view towards race as (unwittingly) super-ethnicity. Elves aren't really another species from human, but humans with a different culture, different language, and greater physiological differences than merely skin color or hair texture. As the designers try to leave the hidden negative tropes of race behind in the game, they are getting hung up on exactly how to do it without fundamentally changing the game. Crawford (was it Crawford?) states outright in the One D&D video that they are trying to make the elfiest elf, the dwarfiest dwarf . . . they are deliberately leaning into classic fantasy tropes, while simultaneously trying to leave negative tropes about race behind . . . . and that's a tall order. I agree with [USER=11760]@Whizbang Dustyboots[/USER] that they've stepped backwards with language and background here. I think it comes from a good place, but ends up taking us in a circle. If we try to separate the orcish language from the orcish people, not only does that not make much intuitive sense, but when you give the language to all gladiators . . . . and yes, even with custom backgrounds being the default, and the provided examples being just that, examples, we are still world-building here in an unintentionally harmful way.What is the best solution? I don't know, but I hope WotC keeps trying and moves away from this particular choice.In Tolkien's world, elves were not a monolithic culture with a single language, they had cultural and linguistic diversity. Perhaps not as much as humans do in the real world, but representing real world diversity is tough, because it's complicated and huge. I wouldn't mind D&D moving towards a more Tolkieneque approach on this however, even if it puts more world-building detail in the core books (vs in the various setting books). Get rid of the monolithic racial languages, and give us three languages commonly spoken by elves in the world, seven dwarven languages, and four orcish tongues . . . or something like that. I think WotC needs to admit that the D&D core IS a world with setting assumptions and lean into it, and be careful with it.</blockquote>

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