Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?

[dragoner]

And if I changed "Orc" to "Nazi"? What then?

I think this sort of hypothetical is a silly argument. You have to take the Orc as an Orc, before
you can judge whether it evokes colonialist tropes - which I think it can, but moreso in recent
usage. AFAICS WotC D&D's 3e-4e-5e orcs 'evoke colonialist tropes' much more than does Tolkien.

It doesn't matter, the Falsifiability remains, it's basic logic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If, after rejecting a single claim, you receive similar complaints of the same nature, then you need to reinvestigate, because your initial rejection may have been wrong (for a variety of reasons).

This seems a bit extreme to me. I certainly understand listening to people. But I mean you can't reinvestigate the whole topic every single time you see a new person complain about it. You would be locked in an endless amount of research and re-research. At a certain point you've covered the topic as much as you can. Again, I am not arguing that we should be mean, insensitive, etc. I am just saying I've looked into this and I don't see it. i think you have to examine it really deeply to get there (and our extensive conversation about Tolkien is strong evidence of that to me). I just think it is a tenuous claim.

 

[S'mon]

And are the citizens of the UK not burdened by any albatrosses of their own? It seems short-sighted to suggest that this is just an Australian or American problem, while ignoring British culpability in these matters and beyond.

I'm familiar with Marxist power-relationship arguments. I think they found particularly fertile soil in Euro-American society because of that society's relative safety and security. Which security is orthogonal to oppression - Americans oppressed people, but the safe & secure Swedes did not, in recent history, but are at least equally susceptible to the same arguments. (Of course, US sailors were being slave-raided by Barbary pirates into the 19th century, but outside of 'Shores of Tripoli' Americans seem to have forgotten about that.)

As for myself, I could bemoan the terrible oppression my Celtic ancestors have suffered at the hands of the terrible Anglo-Saxon oppressors (heck, living in England I've even gotten it myself a few times); but I'm not going to.

As far as I'm concerned, the Indians have every right to make stories about British imperial oppression, and Tolkien had every right to make a story evoking the Fall of Constantinople and the Siege of Vienna. With orcs.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I just think there is a narrow wing of academia represented in this conversation (one more from the literary criticism side perhaps). That isn’t the only way to look at the world.

Why do you think it’s narrow?

As I recall, S’mon is a professor of law in the UK.

My background is...complicated. Double major (9 hours short of double BA) in philosophy and economics, with minors in English lit, Art, and Art History. Law degree. MBA in marketing. Training in mediation techniques. Learned a few instruments along the way as well, one at a pro level. Etc.

Why? Because my family believed in a broad educational base. All 4 of my grandparents were teachers- 2 college profs, 2 elementary teachers- and Mom taught in HS. I was basically in school year round from 3rd grade until I passed the bar.

So my personal reaction to thinking of this area as needing special education is that this isn’t STEM. THIS IS SPARTA!

...errrrr...


This- initially- is asking a simple question of whether fictional characters display certain characteristics with problematic real-world stereotypical depictions of human beings. And these depictions are part of our culture.

This is an “anyone with eyes” kind of comparison, not quantum physics.

 

[S'mon]

This seems a bit extreme to me. I certainly understand listening to people. But I mean you can't reinvestigate the whole topic every single time you see a new person complain about it.

I think if a lot of people complain about something it's worth taking more seriously than if only one person ever complained about it.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The World of Greyhawk (1983) is another example of concepts from late 19th and early 20th century race theory making their way into D&D. Even reading it as a youth I found its obsession with race to be weird.

“For two centuries the Oerid and Suel battled each other and the fragmenting humanoid hordes for possession of the central area of the Flanaess, incidentally engaging the Flannish and demi-humans. In a few places the two racial stocks intermixed – notably the Sheldomar Valley where, except for the Hold of the Sea Princes, the peoples of the Kingdom of Keoland, Gran March, the Ulek States and nearby petty lands are mixed Oerid-Suel stock.”​

“People of the Duchy of Tenh are pure Flan, proud of their bronze color. Geoff and Sterich, despite mixture, show strong Flan racial influence. The Rovers of the Barrens are of the copper-toned sort of Flannae, although the western tribes show the golden skin color of the Baklunish due to interbreeding with the Wolf Nomad tribes. The people of the Hold of Stone Fist and the citizens of the Theocracy of the Pale are primarily hybrids, the former Flan/Suel, the latter Flan/Oeridian. The inhabitants of the Pale are particularly handsome.”​

There’s literally over a page and a half more of this in exactly the same vein.

I’m pretty sure Gary was riffing off of Robert E Howard’s essay The Hyborian Age (1936), replicating its language and some of its ideas.

"Only in the province of Gunderland, where the people keep no slaves, is the pure Hyborian stock found unblemished. But the barbarians have kept their bloodstream pure; the Cimmerians are tall and powerful, with dark hair and blue or grey eyes."​

“The Stygians are tall and well made, dusky, straight-featured - at least the ruling classes are of that type. The lower classes are a down-trodden mongrel horde, a mixture of negroid, Stygian, Shemitish, even Hyborian bloods.”​

Compare with Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy (1920)

“The heroes of the revolution—Bolívar, Miranda, San Martín, and the rest—were aristocrats of pure-white blood."​

“Analyses of these hybrid stocks show remarkable similarities to the mongrel chaos of the declining Roman Empire.”​

“To be sure, where members of the same race-stock intermarry (as English and Swedish Nordics, or French and British Mediterraneans), there seems to be genuine amalgamation. In most other cases, however, the result is not a blend but a mechanical mixture.”​

 

[S'mon]

Why do you think it’s narrow?

As I recall, S’mon is a professor of law in the UK.

Yeah, and Pemerton is a legal academic in Australia, likewise.
Lawyers tend to be argumentative, and academics tend to be argumentative, so legal academics are the worst.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think if a lot of people complain about something it's worth taking more seriously than if only one person ever complained about it.

I would agree. But large groups can still be wrong which is why I say we have a responsibility to think for ourselves.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The solutions I am seeing are things like automatically accept peoples reactions to things because of what group they belong to.

If that is what you’re seeing, I have to say that I think you’re misunderstanding some people. Me at the very least.

 

[S'mon]

The World of Greyhawk (1983) is another example of concepts from late 19th and early 20th century race theory making their way into D&D...

...Compare with Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy (1920)

Or you could compare it with Maddison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race for maximum Evilness.

Of course, unlike Grant's Nordicism, in Gygax's Greyhawk the bronze-skinned folk (Flannae, Oerid) tend to be the good guys (pace The Great Kingdom), and the fair-skinned Sueloise the Nazi-esque bad guys. Indeed WoG's 'Sage' has a very negative description of the Suel, in pretty racial-essentialist terms.

So overall it felt rather that Gygax was doing more an inversion of 1930s tropes, than simply copying them.