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

[Scribe]

Why is there an "or" in that sentence and not an "and"?

The problem is that the descriptions are the same as the ones that described actual, existing peoples.

If they had not been applied with misguided negative intent, now laden with racism after decades of colonialism and genocide, would it matter if you called your Orcs that live in mud/stick homes, primitive? Can we describe a FICTIONAL group of beings which are distinctly not human, as savage, or brutal, or are these things now forbidden simply because someone applied the words wrong before?

Can we have a society which is seen by some as lawless, or because that was falsely used to describe a real peoples, thats now simply not to be done?

TLDR: Are we as thinking people able to identify when something was wrong before, and understand that it's use in a fictional sense, is not the same as when it was wrongly used before.

 

[FrogReaver]

What happens when you humanize orcs and hobgoblins and the like? For example, maybe the hobgoblin leader is a war mongerer, and the hobgoblin army violent towards civilians in general; but there are also hobgoblin towns with ordinary people, individuals who are uninvolved with the war, or against it, and hobgoblin soldiers who are "just following orders." Similarly, maybe not all orcs but this particular group of orcs are indeed bandits who are harassing the local settlement and disrupting merchants; and maybe there is another group of orcs that steps in to protect the merchants, or maybe the town is built on a site of importance to the orcs who have been displaced.

For the DM, the above requires worldbuilding. Creating complex factions in your world that are anchored into the setting with established relationships to each other. What does this faction want? What does it not want? What are its methods? Are there internal disagreements?

For the players, doing this prompts roleplaying. Now the orc or hobgoblin threat is a problem to be solved, with combat being one of many options on the table.

I'd say there's pros and cons to building a world that way. You've listed many of the pros and virtually none of the cons. Likewise you've only listed the cons of worldbuilding where there are actually evil races and none of the pros.

I understand that the tactical combat aspects of dnd are appealing, and an overly nuanced narrative can get in the way of that. But I find the more the players are invested in their characters and in seeing the world through that lens, the less likely they are to default to combat, and the more that fantasy-massacre will feel inappropriate. Not necessarily because of the real-world analogy, though that's there too, but because they don't want to play characters who massacre sapient beings. Killing everyone in the hypothetical goblin village is not escapism, because now they feel bad that they didn't come up with a better solution to the problem (and if the DM is doing their job, perhaps the goblin-massacre leads to more problems for the PCs).

The 5e monster manual lore and dmg advice, extensive and verbose as it is, doesn't really do much to afford this style of play. It defines PCs being "heroic" as using their superpower, high magic abilities to progress through a series of balanced encounters culminating in a "boss fight." My personal opinion is that this is really shallow worldbuilding and unsatisfying for roleplaying.

And it's what D&D is at it's core. Which maybe suggests that D&D in general isn't necessarily a good choice of RPG for players not wanting to kill sapient beings - because it has no guardrails other than the DM when it comes to such things.

 

[FrogReaver]

Also I just wanted to add - Thanks everyone for keeping this thread respectful.

 

[DarkMantle]

TLDR: Are we as thinking people able to identify when something was wrong before, and understand that it's use in a fictional sense, is not the same as when it was wrongly used before.

My understanding is that, well, in the most generous light possible, they were conflated

But I think conflation is the most generous term you could possibly use in this scenario (for those who are having trouble accepting why/how)

Anyway, once a concept or thing is associated with something as serious as racism, whether you view the linkage as conflation or something far more systemic or intentional, it just becomes serious enough that the taint (and the pain associated with it) will never go away

 

[Scribe]

Anyway, once a concept or thing is associated with something as serious as racism, whether you view the linkage as conflation or something far more systemic or intentional, it just becomes serious enough that the taint (and the pain associated with it) will never go away

So Primitive, Tribal, Savage, Brutal, Lawless, Aggressive, I mean the list can go on and on and on about things people have said about other groups.

So if thats how it is? OK then.

 

[Cadence]

So Primitive, Tribal, Savage, Brutal, Lawless, Aggressive, I mean the list can go on and on and on about things people have said about other groups.

So if thats how it is? OK then.

It feels like it's still ok for some groups - say a cult or gang or mercenary company.

 

[FrogReaver]

So Primitive, Tribal, Savage, Brutal, Lawless, Aggressive, I mean the list can go on and on and on about things people have said about other groups.

So if thats how it is? OK then.

Most of those words apply to the worst gangs out there. I doubt many if even any here have problems describing those gangs that way. IMO this demonstrates that it's not actually that such words that once were used to wrongly describe a racial group. There's something more going on there.

 

[Malmuria]

it's what D&D is at it's core. Which maybe suggests that D&D in general isn't necessarily a good choice of RPG for players not wanting to kill sapient beings - because it has no guardrails other than the DM when it comes to such things.

I don’t think massacring (which is the word I used) sapient beings just because they are “inherently evil” is at the core of dnd. What I’m talking about is adding context when presenting players with a decision, which prompts them to engage with their character’s perspective and background as well as their own creativity when deciding how to approach a problem. Because of the interaction between dm and players, dnd affords such open ended role play possibilities. I’m also including here the combat-as-war and combat-as-fail-state sensibilities of the OSR, which are the result of unbalanced encounters (so the PCs can’t brute force their way through every problem) and xp-for-gold instead of for combat (to orient the game around exploration).

 

[FrogReaver]

Does it somehow justify the racism and bigotry of the genre because Romans did it? I mean, I'm certainly not going to look to the Romans for a source of morality.

Do you actually believe I am justifying racism and bigotry or are you just grandstanding?

 

[Cadence]

Most of those words apply to the worst gangs out there. I doubt many if even any here have problems describing those gangs that way. IMO this demonstrates that it's not actually that such words that once were used to wrongly describe a racial group. There's something more going on there.

It feels like it's the describing an entire race of beings who can, say, interbreed with humans as those things and labeling them sub-human and killable, that gets brought up as objectionable, because that's close to what happened to a lot of real world people.

For some other words it's that they are often used in the place of slurs by some and have become tainted (Savage against 1st Nations, Thug against young African American males).