Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9388019" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Yeah, reactionary politics are rough to deal with. The good news is, they are a sign of progress. It’s a long observed pattern that whenever big strides are made towards social equity, there is pushback in reaction to that progress. Sometimes those reactions can be quite extreme, and it can be rough to live through a period where reactionary politics are on the rise. But in the long term, that pushback eventually subsides, and net progress is made. The road is long, but it bends towards justice.Yeah, this is the part I personally struggle the most with, because I really love a good, classic dungeon delve with iconic monsters as enemies, but that premise has deeply colonial underpinnings. I don’t think there are any easy answers when it comes to decolonizing D&D, but I think it’s a worthwhile goal to pursue. I think this one is a matter of deconstructing “madness” and reconstructing something else to fill its thematic space. Part of how Lovecraft played on the fear of mental illness in his work was to imply that what we consider sanity is really just blissful ignorance, and what we mistake for madness is just deeper insight into truths too horrible to accept. I would recommend those who want to play with themes of cosmic horror lean into that. Glimpsing the horror of the far realm doesn’t “drive you insane,” it’s just deeply traumatic. For a good example of this done well, I look to Bloodborne, where instead of a depleting sanity score, you have an increasing Insight score. With higher Insight, you start to see things that were there all along, but your mind couldn’t accept; and once you see them, and they see you seeing them, they pose a greater threat to you.It’s a shame we’re stuck with the name Barbarian, because I don’t think the class is all that bad at a base mechanical level. A warrior who uses an altered state of consciousness to enhance their fighting abilities is cool, and has plenty of mythical and historical precedent across many cultures. But the name Barbarian and the altered state being called Rage are anchors around the class’s neck.We are seeing a move towards more specially diverse humanoid settlements being depicted in WotC’s settings, which I think is a move in the right direction. Intelligence as a stat is another case where the need to stick with old naming conventions holds us back. It’s functionally just the “pass more knowledge checks” stat, and for wizards rhe “cast spells better” stat, which fits with their story of gaining magic through studious dedication.</blockquote>

Verification