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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9360495" data-attributes="member: 7006">I actually can understand and sympathize where [USER=7023887]@Levistus's_Leviathan[/USER] is coming from.  D&D over the years has occasionally changed naming/identity/theming of certain parts of their game based on the evolution of culture over time and what is now no longer considered acceptable to large portions of society.  So the fact that the term 'paladin' (and 'druid' for that matter) have specific cultural origins to certain people does inspire some questioning as to what those term represent and whether they are valid options to use in the game going forward.  I do not begrudge the conversation about it.That being said... in this particular case I do think the word 'paladin' has evolved its definition culturally (with D&D doing its part to assist in that) to the point where it's no longer connected to the Crusades and those atrocities, but rather has become its own identity of the knight-in-shining armor trope.  It's no different than words like 'Knight' or 'Samurai' being elevated to people of stature, even if historically the actual knights and samurai were not nearly as important.  And depending on how 21st century culture changes over time with regards to religion, the word 'Cleric' may become verboten as well.We just never know what words will become offensive to people because oftentimes it seems rather random (I'm sometimes surprised words like 'idiot' or 'dumb' haven't had their champions trying to remove their usage in modern parlance due to their origins as words denoting people with mental or physical challenges like the R-word did.)  So at some point if there is a reckoning to re-examine the Crusades from a specifically non-Western view of the history, who knows how the terms from that time might age?</blockquote>

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