Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?

[Doug McCrae]

Orcs, and other evil humanoids in rpgs, are a fictional construct. Racist ideas about people of colour are also a fictional construct. We are comparing one work of fiction with another (and noting many similarities).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I love my hobby. I've spent thousands of dollars and years of work in it. My thing is protecting it from people who want to tear it down, and I run into moderators who don't have that same motivation.

So within the censored language of THIS forum, Orcs are in the Monster Manual. They gave an X.P. value. Yes, you can kill them. The Orc Cleric in the party? Work with him/her/it. I, as GM, have had PCs kill each other and ask for X.P.

These forums are fine sounding boards, but there will always be a "level of disconnect" between what sounds good on a forum & what really happened in-game. Guess that's the essence of having moderators.

But, sometimes moderation censors reality. I've been chatting online long enough to get that. I appreciate the Mods, when they represent the RPG hobby.

1) nobody here has accused Gygax of racism. People have pointed out he used language with origins within racist ideologies. There’s a difference. Language and symbology can get very tricky. Gestures, too. WW2 had at least 3 different excellent examples of this. 2 changed the way people interacted with certain symbols, one globally, one in the USA. And another showed how the same INTENT was conveyed with similar but opposite gestures in 2 different cultures.

2) appointing yourself as the sole true defender of the hobby isn’t a good look

3) commenting on moderation in thread is expressly against site rules. You have an issue with moderation, take it to Meta or send a PM. Besides, nobody is suppressing your ideas, just asking you not to be an ass while doing so.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You find it odd that, in a thread analyzing the parallels between orcs and colonialist progaganda with regard to racial stereotyping, you make repeated calls for moderation and I posted one of the most famous statements in history about calls for moderation in the face of racial injustice?

I found the use of that letter very odd, yes. Because I merely used the words 'my critique is fairly moderate' and you used that to bring up Martin Luther King Jr's rebuke of White Moderates during the Civil Rights Struggle. I don't think the connective tissue is there. In fact, I will say I know it isn't. Because I know myself and my thoughts. And I know where I stand in terms of the letter. But we are talking about media tropes.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think the evil orc trope, or evil orcs in fantasy RPGs are racist. And I don' think the tie to colonialism is super obvious. My main contention was taking a fine tooth comb to this stuff, in my view, doesn't really help,

But, how is directly linking the descriptions of these races in the text "taking a fine tooth comb" to this stuff. I mean, the quotes from the Monster Manual are contained within a couple of paragraphs - they aren't buried in some appendix of some later publication. They're RIGHT THERE.

In Tolkien's case, physical descriptions are often not particularly repeated, but, the only examples we have of physical descriptions of orcs rest pretty squarely on racist concepts. There are no other descriptions. Again, this isn't "taking a fine tooth comb" to the work. No one is claiming that LotR is a racist work.

No, what is being claimed is that the concept of orc (a small subset of the number of concepts in fantasy) rely on some pretty racist foundations.

IOW, if you want to bring up counter points, or why you don't think these tropes rely on racist underpinnings, you need to provide proof. "I don't think so" is not proof. Evidence has been presented. Pretty clear and repeated evidence. If you cannot provide counter evidence, why would we accept your opinion?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Is Joss Wheaton a racist?

/snip

See, this right here? This is why we have such a hard time having any sort of constructive discussion.

Who here has accused ANY ARTIST of being racist? Can you find a single quote in this almost 500 post long thread that has made a single accusation that having possibly racist imagery in a work makes the artist racist?

So, why the race to defend the artist? No one is accusing any artist of anything. At worst, they are being accused of being a product of their time. Ohhh noes!! The horror.

No, what is being said, and I cannot make this clearly enough, is that in the history of ORCS IN FANTASY (again, we're not delving into other depictions, nor are we making any broader statements), the depictions of orcs shares a lot of language with racist concepts of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Again, there have been several examples posted. A pretty long list that no one seems interested in questioning, so, I'm going to assume that the list is accurate and that the lines have been quoted properly.

If you want to argue the issue, present some counter factuals. Let's see the evidence of why describing orcs as sallow faced, squint eyed, untrustworthy, mongrels isn't grounded in racist depictions of minorities.

And, if you cannot, then let's talk about how we can do better going forward. After 500 posts, can we PLEASE stop having to justify having this conversation?

 

[generic]

Mystra!

Can we get back on topic.

Like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, it would be more interesting to discuss things than discuss the merits of discussing them.

 

[Hussar]

To be fair, if all we did was discuss what to do going forward, this thread would be two pages long and probably would have died days ago.

Honestly, jumping on the other side of the fence for a moment, if folks wanted to shut down this sort of conversation, they would be FAR better served by just ignoring it. It's the back and forth of having to justify why we're having the conversation in the first place that is largely driving the conversation.

What should we do? That's pretty easy. Present humanoid races in more nuanced fashion with broader culture and history and without the link between race (or species if we want to get technical) and morality. It's perfectly fine to have "evil" demons and undead. No one gets fussed about that. Everyone's fine with our adventurers going in and slaughtering demons. That's groovy.

But when so much of RPG play is world building, underpinning that world building with racist notions of morality becomes problematic. So, yoink out those underpins, present races which have a culture as actually having a culture and history and everyone wins.

You need marauding humanoids? No problem. This particular group is marauding because they cultists, or insane, or aggressively trying to annex land or invade or whatever. But, don't ONLY present a race as marauding humanoids linked to descriptions grounded in racism or misogyny.

 

[Bedrockgames]

IOW, if you want to bring up counter points, or why you don't think these tropes rely on racist underpinnings, you need to provide proof. "I don't think so" is not proof. Evidence has been presented. Pretty clear and repeated evidence. If you cannot provide counter evidence, why would we accept your opinion?

I did. You don't have to agree them (and to be clear I am not trying to shut down a conversation, I am trying to have a conversation). I didn't merely say I don't think so. I explained why in my posts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But, how is directly linking the descriptions of these races in the text "taking a fine tooth comb" to this stuff. I mean, the quotes from the Monster Manual are contained within a couple of paragraphs - they aren't buried in some appendix of some later publication. They're RIGHT THERE.

Because 'colonialist propaganda parrallel' isn't something that most people think when they see an image of a D&D orc for the first time. You have to go back into the different editions, you have to go back all the way to Tolkien. And while you think it is a clear line, I find it a lot less clear (for the reason I stated). I do think this is fine tooth comb territory because its the sort of thing you need to be educated into believing before you will generally see it as a problem. And this is just one corner of the discussion. This concept gets applied to all kinds of things in media and games. And I think the constant searching to find the problematic elements and purify them, is creating a much more complicated landscape for people who want to be creative. And part of that landscape is a divide between the people with an advanced education and those who don't have one (. Remember the original question was whether evil orcs are a colonialist or racist trope. I don't think they are. And I think to make that case, you really have to dig deep into the history of the orc as a concept (and I don't find the case particularly convincing).

And I am not saying don't make more interesting orcs. By all means do so. But if someone makes a game with an evil goblinoid creature, is it really that bad of a thing? Again, content does not equal the message. And what happens when all of our RPGs are virtuous? Do you really think it is going to change anything substantive about the culture and society?

 

[sd_jasper]

See, this right here? This is why we have such a hard time having any sort of constructive discussion.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that anyone here was making accusations, or put words in your or anyone's mouths.

I was just trying to draw what I feel is a similar example of a stereotype or trope used to create something new, in a different context and more recent history. And if this was viewed as more or less problematic.