Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Todd Roybark" data-source="post: 7925926" data-attributes="member: 6920677">It is not as if the past just disappears, strains of thought going back to the 6th century BC are still very active today.  If one takes a Solomon Kane story set in Africa, and replace the dark skinned African tribesman with Bullywogs, have we then sufficiently sanitized the material, or is it now just a ‘dog whistle’?Is it easy to accept the setup of a tribe of Orcs living in an ancient ruins that are too advanced to have been built by the primitive orcs, because that strain of thought has been with us for centuries.  I would argue books from Eric Von Daniken, like Chariots of the Gods are premised off the idea that no way could the indigenous people Possibly have created wonders like Machu Picchu.Is substituting Orcs and Bullywogs for humans, truly changing the situation or just masking the racism underneath?To be honest I do not have a clear answer.  I honestly, do not think there is a simple answer to these questions, which is why truly fearless questions and examinations should performed.I myself, am grappling with these type of questions since picking up a copy of the complete stories of Solomon Kane, a week ago.   While certainly not settled, the most recent information would seem to indicate besides interbreeding with Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Neanderthals likely had similar levels of material culture, larger cranial capacity, and frankly contributed a significant portion of Human genes.As did other Homo Sapiens lines not discovered.Neanderthals as dumb brutes was a fairly common portrayal in the past, and still present today.Isn’t Orcs are evil  as a trope more inline with  the trope Neanderthals are primitive brutes?Especially given that orcs and humans can interbreed in D&D?Atavism can take many forms.Now the easy part is the 1e Half Orc had caps to almost all stats beyond Str and Con.  To be fair, all ‘demi-human’ ,(the actual 1e term),races did, but the half orc had much more stringent maximums.</blockquote>

Verification