Consequences of playing "EVIL" races

[Celebrim]

It also carries the very strong implication-- right or wrong-- that the author also thinks "that's just the way it is" to some extent in the real world. Morality is not an objective metaphysical force in real life; one only makes it so in fiction when trying to say something very specific about morality or when imitating a work that said something very specific about morality.

When you claim that morality is not objective in real life, you are also saying something very specific about morality. Likewise, when you have a setting which features only moral grayness at best, then it seems to me quite likely that - right or wrong - the author is saying "that's just the way it is in the real world". One only writes like that I would think, when you want to say some thing very specific about the real world.

I think it is ridiculous to assert that someone like myself is denying the authorship of my home-brew setting simply because I claim that morality is objective within the setting, and further because the setting has knowable objective metaphysical forces acting within it. This is not an accident. This is not me being somehow clueless about what I'm writing. There is not a lack of intentionality here.

It's hard to tell what you are really saying even with the clarification. Because on the one hand I'm getting this argument that I'm just denying my own agency in my writing. And yet at the same time I'm being told by other posters that what I actually intend doesn't matter, and that their agency as readers and what they want to see in my work is more important than my own agency.

And I'm not even going to get into claims about the metaphysical here because any extensive argument about whether or not what is real has some metaphysical existence or interacts with a metaphysical reality will soon violate board rules.

If fantastic settings are troubling to you with their reified metaphysical entities and reified morality, I have repeatedly suggested that it is quite possible to have more or less this exact same discussion in a hard science fiction setting with no reified metaphysical morality.

But is this conversation really just going to boil down to the idea that all fictional works ought to represent a morality and a reality we are comfortable with? Because once again, the last time I encountered that ideology was a religious fundamentalist.

 

[Maxperson]

What makes them racism is labelling groups based only on the category they're in. Labelling elves good is just as racist as labelling orcs evil.

Racism is a belief in the superiority/inferiority of race. White Supremacy is racist. Labels assigned to race that are designed to promote superiority or inferiority would also be racist.

In D&D, good and evil don't assign the idea of superiority or inferiority to races. They pertain to motives.

 

[Celebrim]

In D&D, good and evil don't assign the idea of superiority or inferiority to races. They pertain to motives.

Well, and behavior, and the other things we generally give some weight to when defining good and evil.

The important thing is that the alignment tag is not an inseparable part of say an elf's being. An elf doesn't have the tag 'chaotic good' if it doesn't behave in a way that is 'chaotic good'. Elves are tagged as 'chaotic good' because the majority of them engage in 'chaotic good' behavior, and not because they are elves.

Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between "elfness" and "Chinese" or "Amerindian" or "Swedish" or (especially) something like "whiteness" or "Asian". When we normally speak of "race" and what it means to have a race we are speaking of something that is at least as much a social construct as it is a product of genetic and biological reality. Racial tags are almost always based on perception of large differences between human racial groups that turn out to not be supported by reality. Thus for example the notion of "blackness" or "whiteness" gets caught up in a lot more things than just melanin. But when we are speaking of an "elf", "dragon", "mindflayer", "klingon", "krogan", or "silurian", and so we are speaking of relatively large differences between these groups that are supported by the theorized reality. Elves and krogans, silurians, and klingons don't actually represent human ethnic groups, and I think it is a mistake to closely align them with human ethnic groups, and a tragedy and a misunderstanding to insist that they do or ought to closely align with human ethnic groups, or to insist that underneath they have basically no real distinctiveness from humans beyond superficial traits like bumps on their forehead.

In it's most benign form this gives us female lizardfolk or dragonkin with mammary glands because we are so uncomfortable with the other that we have to imagine female defined by simian sexual markers. It's its more serious form, this unwillingness to deal with the reality of others, suggests to me a unwillingness to deal mentality with the reality of diversity even in minor forms.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, and behavior, and the other things we generally give some weight to when defining good and evil.

The important thing is that the alignment tag is not an inseparable part of say an elf's being. An elf doesn't have the tag 'chaotic good' if it doesn't behave in a way that is 'chaotic good'. Elves are tagged as 'chaotic good' because the majority of them engage in 'chaotic good' behavior, and not because they are elves.

I agree with this.

In it's most benign form this gives us female lizardfolk or dragonkin with mammary glands because we are so uncomfortable with the other that we have to imagine female defined by simian sexual markers. It's its more serious form, this unwillingness to deal with the reality of others, suggests to me a unwillingness to deal mentality with the reality of diversity even in minor forms.

I don't agree with this. I don't think that lizardfolk are given breasts to avoid discomfort. I think it's a convenience thing. The vast majority of humans can't look at a lizard and tell what sex it is.

In order to differentiate between lizardfolk sexes, they have two options. They can create a new way to tell the difference, such as putting a fin on the top of the head of one sex, but not the other. However, they would then have to teach players how to tell the difference and at least some players would confuse the two. Or they can just put breasts on them for convenience sake and there will be no confusion.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't agree with this. I don't think that lizardfolk are given breasts to avoid discomfort. I think it's a convenience thing. The vast majority of humans can't look at a lizard and tell what sex it is.

I think I'm once again having a failure of communication over this word 'discomfort'. And I think I'll leave it at that.

 

[Lanefan]

Just a guess, but I suspect in this Lizardfolk instance 'discomfort' = 'inconvenience'.

 

[Celebrim]

Just a guess, but I suspect in this Lizardfolk instance 'discomfort' = 'inconvenience'.

Discomfort is almost a straight synonym for inconvenience. Discomfort implies some sort of mild problem of some sort - mild confusion, mild pain, mild unease, mild anxiety, a mild unwanted effort. Anything else than ease is discomfort. If something is inconvenient, it causes mild trouble, mild difficulties, and mild discomfort.

So I'm told that a person disagrees with me that it is to avoid discomfort, but then goes on to explain that it is to avoid mild inconveniences and mild confusions, I don't think we are so far off as the person might suppose.

 

[Maxperson]

Discomfort is almost a straight synonym for inconvenience. Discomfort implies some sort of mild problem of some sort - mild confusion, mild pain, mild unease, mild anxiety, a mild unwanted effort. Anything else than ease is discomfort. If something is inconvenient, it causes mild trouble, mild difficulties, and mild discomfort.

So I'm told that a person disagrees with me that it is to avoid discomfort, but then goes on to explain that it is to avoid mild inconveniences and mild confusions, I don't think we are so far off as the person might suppose.

Discomfort means you are uncomfortable with something. Being at a party with drugs makes me uncomfortable. I don't like it. It does not inconvenience me. Getting a flat tire does inconvenience me, but does not in any way cause me discomfort. While they may be synonyms, synonyms are just words that are close in meaning, not the same in meaning. We wouldn't have the two words "Discomfort" and "inconvenience" if they meant the exact same thing.

 

[Celebrim]

We wouldn't have the two words "Discomfort" and "inconvenience" if they meant the exact same thing.

Well, given that it is English, we do have words that mean the exact same thing.

But in this case, that is indeed why I said the were "almost" straight synonyms.

 

[Todd Roybark]

And I think responsibility for moral content of a piece fully in the hands of the content creator.

So the person that disseminates say, for example, Atomwaffen, type speech bares no culpability if they themselves did not create the message?

I do not want to presume what you think, Umbran, but I certainly hope the example I gave above was not the intended conclusion you wanted people to arrive at, from the single sentence of yours quoted above.

Swords and Sorcery, as a genre, has racist roots, the Solomon Kane stories of Rob E Howard are ample proof of this.

The trope of kicking the door down of ‘Evil or Lesser races’ taking their stuff and being justified in slaughter or sparing them, clearly has some colonial roots in it’s paradigm.

Racial and Gender Attribute maximums as found in 1e, which probably did not seem scandalous at all for Gary G to write, also demonstrates this racist paradigm.