D&D 5E D&D Races: Evolution, Fantasy Stereotypes & Escapism

[Ruin Explorer]

I have always wondered even in high magic settings why do we always get nothing but monarchies or couples not even the modern is more or less a republic but has a superfluous king/queen at its head?

You do see the latter occasionally, it's just that everything but the monarch will be lightly-sketched at most.

I think the reason is very simply effort required.

Creating a monarch means creating a single individual. That's extremely easy. Every individual you add is potentially almost as much effort again. So the temptation to simply make places monarchies and only create other individuals as needed, and make them all below the monarch is pretty strong.

 

[FrogReaver]

Orcs are evil because they are just like black people (or at least, that's the language that was very often being used) is a problem.

This may be retreading ground a bit but IMO its important. IMO this is an incorrect logical inference. The correct logical inference to be made isn't that Orcs are evil because they are just like black people. Instead it would be that any group that can truthfully be described as orcs are described are evil. Black people cannot be truthfully described as orcs are described and therefore they are not evil.

((Note, @FrogReaver - I am not pointing at you for any of this. I'm using your comment as a jumping off point. I just reread what I wrote and it sounds accusatory and that is totally not what I'm going for here.))

Thank you

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As an aside, I've been thinking about why it's acceptable, still, to slaughter zombies, vampires, etc. even ones which are sentient, and the answer is that, I think, there really haven't been many, perhaps not any ethnicities or the like characterised as literally predators on all of humanity - stuff like Blood Libel and accusations of cannibalism have absolutely bordered on that (indeed some vampire portrayals skid dangerously close to Blood Libel) - but by and large, no-one actually thinks "X people are literally gonna eat me!" or "Y people are literally going to drink my blood and turn me into one of them" (tbf I may be underestimating conspiracy theorists but I don't think that's ever got mainstream).

So I think it's still broadly acceptable to have for the slaughter:

1) Beings that basically want to eat humans (and human-like beings), either out of necessity or simply because they like it. Vampires, mind-flayers and their ilk. As soon as you put in something which means they don't have to, though, it gets more morally complex.

2) Beings that want to transform humans (and human-like beings) into more of them (zombies, the Borg, etc.), though depending on whether anything is retained this can get more complicated. But even on the Enterprise-D nobody was crying when the Borg Cube self-destructed, even if they were disappointed that there wasn't a peaceful or less fatal solution.

3) Beings without free will that are designed to kill or harm humans (typically some kinds of robot).

4) Beings who are inimical to human existence and impinging on it by choice. This is a weird thing that rarely comes up in D&D, but we're basically talking being who like, damage reality, or just cause humans to sicken and die by their presence, or want to terraform the planet or the like.

 

[Cadence]

4) Beings who are inimical to human existence and impinging on it by choice. This is a weird thing that rarely comes up in D&D, but we're basically talking being who like, damage reality, or just cause humans to sicken and die by their presence, or want to terraform the planet or the like.

Is this a common way of portraying the far realms things?

 

[FrogReaver]

Define "acceptable".

Also, maybe ask yourself "Is this the right question?" because I would say it is not the right question. Is it like, legal, and probably within the bounds of morality and ethics to do what you describe? I would say yes. It might push the bounds of good taste and end up raising some uncomfortable questions, but sure, it's "acceptable" in the broadest sense of the word.

I think you could narrow down the acceptability to quite a more narrow sense of the word. But I'm trying to avoid semantic arguments and I think that's where this part is heading so I won't spend more time on it.

But WotC and for that matter any profit-making company that isn't harshly ideological isn't just looking at "acceptable", they're looking at "attractive", "reasonable", "in good taste", and so on. Is it likely that making a race of creatures that look like people (including "ugly people" or "pretty people"), live like people (born, grow, have kids, raise kids, die, etc.), talk like people, appear to have some sort of free will and so on, but have inherent negative characteristics, and thus "need to get genocided" likely to be "in good taste"? I would suggest no. We live in a post-Holocaust, post-slavery (mostly) society. It isn't 1500 or whatever. The idea of intentionally setting up a scenario so a sapient, human-like race needs to "get genocided", even if it's "true" in-setting that they do, is not going to sit well with people, and not going to cause people to admire the company involved.

Sure. I don't think wotc can do what they want for whatever reasons they want is a very interesting discussion. Of course they can. The question is more about whether they should, whether the community or society at large should be having issues with such things in the first place. Is it right/fair/just that they do so?

The TLDR of it is that you could do that, but it would be in terrible terrible taste, and it would attract the "wrong" kind of people (alongside some perfectly reasonable ones I'm sure),

I think that's a bit of an illogical leap (about the 'wrong' kind of people) and certainly not born out by any kind of data or even anecdotal summaries about players that people play with.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The question is more about whether they should, whether the community or society at large should be having issues with such things in the first place. Is it right/fair/just that they do so?

I think it is absolutely fair and right that people should have issues with it, yes, because what you're describing is not something unprecedented, indeeed, it's been something that's happened, intentionally and unintentionally, a lot of times, including within 5E.

And it ends in tears.

I think that's a bit of an illogical leap (about the 'wrong' kind of people) and certainly not born out by any kind of data or even anecdotal summaries about players that people play with.

I'm not suggesting anyone here would be playing with these people, but I am absolutely 100% suggesting, based on past examples, including the really recent example of Games Workshop having to explain "The Empire are BADDIES TOO you dumb donkeys! Stop lionizing them! If you do think they're great your head is screwed on wrong!", that "the wrong kind of people" would adopt and celebrate D&D if D&D put out a setting where say, there was an entirely fictional race of D&D beings who closely aligned with say, negative stereotypes of Jewish people, or Black people, or Orientalist takes on Asian people, or the like.

Is it not acceptable in fantasy to explore non-human races that actually possess such negative characteristics in the fantasy world as opposed to reality where such negative characteristics are falsely applied to a human race?

And that's what you were proposing here, no?

I mean, I guess maybe you mean to separate out the traits so you wouldn't have a fantasy race that exactly mirrored any real-world racism, but the trouble is real-world racism is so broad-brush and overlapping I think that'd be very hard to do without getting yourself into extremely hot water, because you'd basically written RAHOWA only with killing Hoborclins instead of humans. It's particularly risky because "kill them and take their stuff" games already exist kind of dangerously close to RAHOWA.

 

[Scott Christian]

Part of the issue is something I've literally never understood, not even since I first started playing back in 1989, which is that some groups are totally happy to slaughter "orcs" or "goblins", but get all, I dunno, pathetic when it comes to slaughtering equally-bad humans or demihumans. My main group has never suffered from this, and indeed most people I haven't played with IRL or even online don't, but it's clear there's some subset of D&D players who do. I think they're probably outdated though - I suspect the current bulk of D&D players is more concerned by what makes them baddies in terms of their actions rather than their origin.

I have a very hard time reading this and not thinking this is a misrepresentation of every player I have ever met.

In a campaign where two warring kingdoms, both human, are fighting, the PCs have absolutely no problem whatsoever slaughtering the opposing side.
In a campaign where there's a raging hoard of human barbarians overtaking small villages, the PCs had no problem slaughtering the human barbarians.
In a campaign where a group of human cultists are kidnapping people and experimenting on them, the PCs have no problem slaughtering them.
In a campaign where human slavers were going into the unprotected frontier and snatching everyone they could, the PCs had no problem slaughtering them.

It just seems like such a misrepresentation of player motives.

 

[Mind of tempest]

As an aside, I've been thinking about why it's acceptable, still, to slaughter zombies, vampires, etc. even ones which are sentient, and the answer is that, I think, there really haven't been many, perhaps not any ethnicities or the like characterised as literally predators on all of humanity - stuff like Blood Libel and accusations of cannibalism have absolutely bordered on that (indeed some vampire portrayals skid dangerously close to Blood Libel) - but by and large, no-one actually thinks "X people are literally gonna eat me!" or "Y people are literally going to drink my blood and turn me into one of them" (tbf I may be underestimating conspiracy theorists but I don't think that's ever got mainstream).

So I think it's still broadly acceptable to have for the slaughter:

1) Beings that basically want to eat humans (and human-like beings), either out of necessity or simply because they like it. Vampires, mind-flayers and their ilk. As soon as you put in something which means they don't have to, though, it gets more morally complex.

2) Beings that want to transform humans (and human-like beings) into more of them (zombies, the Borg, etc.), though depending on whether anything is retained this can get more complicated. But even on the Enterprise-D nobody was crying when the Borg Cube self-destructed, even if they were disappointed that there wasn't a peaceful or less fatal solution.

3) Beings without free will that are designed to kill or harm humans (typically some kinds of robot).

4) Beings who are inimical to human existence and impinging on it by choice. This is a weird thing that rarely comes up in D&D, but we're basically talking being who like, damage reality, or just cause humans to sicken and die by their presence, or want to terraform the planet or the like.

would a case of four be world eaters like a swarm of things that slowly eat a planet down to the core?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have a very hard time reading this and not thinking this is a misrepresentation of every player I have ever met.

In a campaign where two warring kingdoms, both human, are fighting, the PCs have absolutely no problem whatsoever slaughtering the opposing side.
In a campaign where there's a raging hoard of human barbarians overtaking small villages, the PCs had no problem slaughtering the human barbarians.
In a campaign where a group of human cultists are kidnapping people and experimenting on them, the PCs have no problem slaughtering them.
In a campaign where human slavers were going into the unprotected frontier and snatching everyone they could, the PCs had no problem slaughtering them.

It just seems like such a misrepresentation of player motives.

Perhaps it doesn't apply to your group, but I've seen it happen. Very rare in groups I actually play with, but still. There is definitely an impetus toward "non-human? Turn brain off, just enjoy murderating them. Wait, those are humans? Okay so we have to be really sure they deserve this and need to consider other options before we go nuclear."

I mean, we don't even need to look very far to see this in action. The whole trope of "will you kill this orc baby" or related things literally cannot have meaningful force or impact unless orcs are presumed "kill on sight" and humans aren't. You have to have a climate of presuming humans are nuanced and complicated, always needing contextual reasons to kill them, while assuming orcs are simple and uniform, needing no more reason than "they exist."

Heck, after a fashion, your examples demonstrate a consistent pattern of needing a justification for violence directed at humans: they're slavers (something most humans regard as inherently evil), or kidnappers with intent to perform live human experimentation (committing crimes and mutilating), or they're enemies in wartime (where violence is permitted to protect or advance one's country), or they're pillagers actively rampaging through innocent villages. Those are all "this group has done evil and must be stopped ASAP" or "this group is our active enemy in an official war, and we generally obey the laws of war."

For a lot of folks, the only reason you need for killing an orc is that it's an orc. E.g. I know someone on here has their orcs as essentially biological androids constructed by the forces of darkness to be disposable foot soldiers. They don't reproduce, they don't engage in relationships or have art or trade or any kind of culture, and aren't so much "alive" as "meat puppets animated by darkness." And this was done, IIRC, specifically so that all the pesky moral quandaries would be gone. Orcs, in this paradigm, aren't moral beings in either sense of the term, they aren't sapient or able to make moral decisions because they're almost biological robots of evil, and they hold no moral weight, not even what an animal might possess, because they're totally artificial and only exist to be biological weapons used on whomever the forces of darkness are targeting today.

If humans and orcs were near-universally treated the same way, there would be no need to explain why presumptive KOS status is okay, because presumptive KOS status wouldn't be a thing.

 

[DarkMantle]

We live in a post-Holocaust, post-slavery (mostly) society. It isn't 1500 or whatever. The idea of intentionally setting up a scenario so a sapient, human-like race needs to "get genocided", even if it's "true" in-setting that they do, is not going to sit well with people, and not going to cause people to admire the company involved.

emphasis mine

Um.

You've referenced the Holocaust a couple times now. I appreciate your intent in raising awareness regarding the Holocaust as a real-life example of the dangers of "othering".

On the other hand, frivolous Holocaust analogies has got to be among the top hot button political/cultural issues. And what does a post-Holocaust society have to do with regular ordinary D&D players?

On the other hand, I thought I'm likely over-reacting. I didn't read an explicit comparison between A) the Holocaust atrocities against entirely innocent real-life victims and B) your denouncement of certain hypothetical D&D players roleplaying fictional murder of in-fiction mindlessly Evil creatures.

On the other hand, you sound like a fierce advocate for culture sensitivities on a thread about respecting cultural sensitivities, and this seems like a very poor case of leading by example.

I'm not sure if I should be asking for an express apology from you at this point or not. Thoughts?