Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?

[pemerton]

I expect the first two; but mostly the second.

That seems right to me, too.

Possibly a slight chuckle, especially if you remember that adventure, which is from 1985! BTW it treats the prostitute characters respectfully; the tone is quite adult, in the grown-up sense.

I don't know the adventure. But do you know the early ones republished in BoWD? I think it might be The Lichway (which was "emulated" without acknowledgement in Death Frost Doom, but that's another story) that has a very "pandering to juvenile fantasty" room in it, I think with an evil cleric who will readily doff her armour! (Or maybe MU? but I seem to recall Cleric). So if the 1985 one is grown-up about it, well that's an improvement at least.

I don't think I've ever used that 1e AD&D table. I remember back when Gygax was alive, having a jokey dig at him on these boards for his including it in the DMG - I think this might have been my only interaction with him! He took it in good spirit.

I never interacted with Gygax at all. As far as the table is concerned, I don't think I've ever actually used it but I can't recall for certain. I don't know if you remember the bit about the harlot having a 20% chance to be a thief - I do know that, at some stage in the 1980s when I was in a completist mood, I made a note beneath that paragraph that there is also a 10% chance for her to be a Houri (lest we forget that other questionable contribution to the game).

 

[S'mon]

That seems right to me, too.

I don't know the adventure. But do you know the early ones republished in BoWD? I think it might be The Lichway (which was "emulated" without acknowledgement in Death Frost Doom, but that's another story) that has a very "pandering to juvenile fantasty" room in it, I think with an evil cleric who will readily doff her armour! (Or maybe MU? but I seem to recall Cleric). So if the 1985 one is grown-up about it, well that's an improvement at least.

I just checked the adventure - Dark Odo, the 'saturnine' villain M-U in Licheway, survived & became a major NPC IMC as the Enchantress of Carchimish - I didn't remember her being slutty. Looks like you are thinking rather of the captive M-U Pinella, but it (the scene) is actually quite a lot worse than you remember and not at all grandma-friendly.


S'mon's Dark Odo - a result of googling 'saturnine'


Edit: Actually I see the adventure does refer to "an earthen pot containing the ashes of Dark Odo's past lovers" - clearly she is a Strong Empowered Woman!

 

[pemerton]

Looks like you are thinking rather of the captive M-U Pinella, but it (the scene) is actually quite a lot worse than you remember and not at all grandma-friendly.

<snip>

Actually I see the adventure does refer to "an earthen pot containing the ashes of Dark Odo's past lovers" - clearly she is a Strong Empowered Woman!

I'm going to have to pull this one off the shelf over the weekend and adjust my memories to fit with the realities.

The ashes of past lovers thing is just . . . I'm not quite sure what the right word is, but it's like a pulp caricature taken to the next level.

Last weekend I watched Star Wars (Episode IV) with my daughters, as one had been lobbying for a while to re-watch it. Some of Han Solo's dialogue - "Either I'm going to kill her, or I'm beginning to like her . . ." (have I got that right?) and "Still, do you think a princess and a guy like me . . ." - takes on a different complexion (for me, at least) in that viewing company. It's been a few years since I last watched the Bogart detective classics (The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon) but, at least in my memory (and now maybe my love for Bogart and noir is distorting my recollections!), they have slightly deeper characterisation to help give some context to, or at least slightly ameliorate, the pulp tropes.

I've got nothing against romance and sex in my RPGing (subject to general concerns of good taste). While it's rarely at the forefront of my games it's often a part of them, and I don't mind filing down some of the rougher corners that can be part of this stuff in real life - these are fantasy games after all! But can't we just have some flirtation and/or bonking without these weird lurid overtones?

 

[S'mon]

The ashes of past lovers thing is just . . . I'm not quite sure what the right word is, but it's like a pulp caricature taken to the next level...

...But can't we just have some flirtation and/or bonking without these weird lurid overtones?

We can... Personally I like weird lurid overtones sometimes
- depends on the game & setting, and what's appropriate for the audience. In the Primeval Thule website designers' notes they say they specifically wanted it to evoke the lurid (their word) pulp tropes of bygone days - although the actual published stuff is considerably less lurid than their stated intent. So going over The Licheway this morning I have quite the desire to run modified versions of it, and maybe Halls of Tizun Thane too, again, this time in Thule. I think I'll run it in the Thule group NOT including my son though.

Edit: Also, since it goes beyond PG-13 I think I'll put a content warning on the Meetup announcement.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't care what Gygax intended with his random harlot table. Was his intention to pander to juvenile male fantasies about readily available sex? Was his intention to emulate and evoke the world of the fantasy pulps? Was his intention to celebrate the contribution made to humanity by sex workers? I am talking about the work he produced, not the work he hoped or wanted to produce. And this, as I take it, is [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point: we are not discussing what authors hoped to do, we are discussing what authors have actually done in producing these works with these tropes and evoking these ideas. If they didn't know what they were doing, or didn't care, or thought it was just innocent fun - well, that tells me something about them and their personal history, but it doesn't tell me anything about their work.

But here I think intentions matter a lot. If someone is seeking to call back to the pulp genre, it may not be to your sensibilities, but I think is leagues different than if he is doing it because he has a disdain for women (and I think reasonable readers can see that distinction and make a judgement on their own about). I am not making any conclusion about Gygax (as I mentioned I wasn't informed enough to do so). But if the intent is clear, I don't think this kind of element needs to be excised from the hobby (I can certainly see why it wouldn't be in a new edition of D&D, but this thread isn't just about D&D). And I am not saying people have to like random harlots in their tables. What I'd hope is there can be games that have that kind stuff, and their can be games that don't, and people make up their own minds. What it feels like to me is people are trying to establish a norm in the gaming culture where that stuff is just deemed wholly impermissible or always automatically bad. And I think a large part of that is because we are moving so far from even considering the intent of the author. Certainly the impact of a work should be considered. I just don't get why the other half of the equation shouldn't be factored. Just to bring it to Tolkien's orcs, there it seems intent matters a lot to both sides of the argument (because people are drawing on his personal letters where some of the possible racial connections seem more clear (and for the record I don't know where I stand on Tolkien's orcs, as I just haven't sorted through all the info on them). But I think in that instance too, what he intended should be a big factor in our conclusions.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Who is saying that disagreement over orcs is the product of racism? In this thread I (and others) have claimed that orcs as presented by JRRT and as inherited by D&D are expressions of racist tropes and ideas.

I was responding to a post by Hussar, where I took that to be the implication (but it is an argument I have encountered many times in these discussions, where reaching a different conclusion about whether orcs are racist or colonialist, is perceived as evidence of a person being racist).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think some who disagree with that are themselves trapped within (perhaps rather similar) racist tropes and attitudes. In my experience it's not uncommon for some white people to not be very sensitive to the way certain received elements of (say) British or American culture express and reproduce racist tropes.

I am not particularly invested in the trope myself. As I said, when I use orcs in my own campaigns, I tend to treat them like human cultures, with a wide variety of types. So they don't really fall in line with the Tolkien Orcs or the D&D orcs as evil. I also tend to have orcs that are pretty advanced as well as hill tribe orcs. So they pretty much operate like humans (and in my setting they are cleaner because they have a heightened sense of smell and value good hygiene). And to be clear, I get that the concept in D&D has evolved. I have no objection to D&D shifting the concept to be more appealing to the widest possible audience. But this thread is about the hobby as a whole and fantasy as a whole. And I think we are establishing guidelines that are well intentioned but maybe misguided. I can totally understand trying to eliminate unsavory and racist themes or concepts from one's work (I do that myself, I don't want to be racist toward anyone). But when we start looking for things that are not immediately obvious unless you dive into the history of a genre, then I think it gets a lot sketchier. I can definitely see how the way it was done in the Lord of the Rings movie (which you mentioned) is going to resonate as viewers as racial (I thought it did when I saw it). But when I see standard orcs in most game books today, I don't think the connection to colonialism or racism is at all as clear. Obviously if you go back to the pulp stuff, you will see more of that (but you will see racism in those books in general because the times were so much more racist---it isn't just the monsters, often the writers will just clearly state racist sentiments). But that will be true of anything. Any trope that comes from a culture is going to have traces of something bad from that culture initially. How pure do we need to make every trope? Right now we are focused on colonialism and racism, but you can look at any cultural legend or myth under a microscope and start dissecting it for problematic content. And that is the issue I am having with some of this stuff. So much of requires an advanced understanding of the history, of the critical arguments, etc. It isn't stuff you just automatically understand in most instances looking at the material. Especially with the colonialist stuff. And one of the larger problems is it feels like the content isn't getting better or more interesting, it is just getting cleaner and less problematic.

 

[S'mon]

But when I see standard orcs in most game books today, I don't think the connection to colonialism or racism is at all as clear.

I don't think anyone could credibly make a claim that the pink-snouted green militaristic orcs in the 1983 D&D Cartoon, derived from the 1977 1e AD&D MM, evoked any colonialist tropes. Ironically the claim is much stronger with WotC's barbaric 3e D&D+ Orcs of 2000+.

Likewise comparing Ralph Bakshi's LoTR orcs to Jackson's LotR Maori orcs, used for both Saruman's Uruk-Hai and (to a lesser extent) Sauron's Black Orcs of Mordor.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So if a cigar sometimes is just a cigar, are you asserting that JRRT's orcs do not draw upon and express racist tropes and ideas? If not, then what's the point of that remark.

I am not asserting anything about JRR Tolkien’s orcs. As I said, I haven’t formed a conclusion on his orcs specifically. But having been in these discussions before and seen the evidence before (text pointed to here as well as rebuttal text) I think it is much more cloudy in his case than people are making it out to be. A lot of the stuff people are posting are limited quotes from Wikipedia. With JRR Tolkien, I think it is even more murky because in most accounts I’ve read of him personally he fidnt seem particularly racist by the standards of the time. Again though I could be missing something.

Part of what troubles me about this debate though, is the level of intense scrutiny required to make these arguments. It is been a while since I read Lird of the Rings but just by memory, it seems like that connection isn’t clear from the book alone. That you need to build a case drawingbon letters, ideas about racial coding, etc. And this isn’t information most people have when they open the monster manual and see an orc for the first time. So it feels like there is a split in the community that is based on education levels or how academically minded one is. I’ve felt for a long while there is a divide in this hobby between the people with advanced degrees and those of us without them. And we seem to speak a very different language on these issues. Obviously it isn’t always literally about the degrees (some people are just very well read on a particular topic). And do the bar to entry up creatively engage the material in a way that is regarded as ethically okay, seems to privilege people with Masters degrees and more. I realize this may seem like a silly argument but I definitely feel like there is a complex etiquette emerging in this stuff that demands a deep understanding of pretty academic terms.

 

[Bedrockgames]

To reiterate a point I made upthread, I am saying these things as a citizen of a country in which it is routine for prominent national newspapers to publish blatantly racist cartoons, and when criticised for doing so to hide behind arguments of we didn't mean it and free speech. But free speech is a red herring - no one is threatening to censor your latest RPG project that features inherently evil swarthy, scimitar-wielding orcs. And the fact that you didn't mean it - well, lot's of people do and don't mean lots of things, but the complaint is about the work produced, not the intention behind it.

I just want to be clear here, I don't want to put out books that feature "inherently evil swarthy, scimitar wielding orcs".

I don't know what people are calling for. But if they are not calling for substantive change in what is permissible, what is the purpose of the thread? When these debates first started, people said things like 'its okay to like problematic things', and that seemed pretty reasonable. It is one thing to analyze something for content deemed problematic, and another to call for it to be censored. But it feels like things are shifting and it is becoming less and less acceptable to creatively engage things that some might see as problematic. Again, i am not sure what is being called for here (a paradigm shift?). But ether I think it is important for all viewpoints to weigh in because at the very least, we are moving into something culturally that are all going to all have to operate under (for good or bad). If it were the 90s or early 2000s a conversation like this might have much less impact on actual content. But in the age of social media it is very easy for individual products to get caught up in this stuff. And it is also very easy for publishers to alter what they put out, even if it is entirely legitimate, out of fear that it might be perceived by even just a few people as having a colonialist element. To my point in the other post, for people with the background in these ideas, that might be easy to navigate. I consider myself pretty educated, but I have to admit I find this stuff very difficult to navigate. It is like you don't know where to step and what is going to be deemed an issue. And I do think that stifles creativity .