D&D 5E Do you think we'll see revised core books in 2024? (And why I think we will)

[pemerton]

part of the problem is an act of association that is taken as absolute and intrinsic to the phenomena itself (namely, orcs), which can be at least partially be addressed by WotC, the publishers of orcs and other such "problematic" ideas, saying "No, these are fantasy creatures and not meant to represent anything from the real world."

<snip>

I think it is the wrong direction to crystalize the association that orcs are stand-ins for indigenous or people of color in our world.

<snip>

WotC should clarify that no race is inherently evil as a biological species, but cultures can be.

I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to construct a presentation of an inherently evil culture/people by drawing upon the tropes that were readily available to 19th and early 20th century writers - who were steeped in a certain way of presenting the non-European peoples that Europe was in the process of conquering/colonising - and then simply try and stipulate that no association is intended. The work itself manifests a certain conception of what it is to be "savage", a "brute", and "inherently evil"; and it's hardly a subtle conception.

I'm sure that not all of those sci-fi films and TV shows in which the majority of people of the ship crew or "the Federation" or the far-flung worlds of the galaxy are white are trying to present a conception of a white supremacist utopia. That doesn't mean that they can't be called to account for presenting a certain conception of what it is to a human of the future.

If the author/creator didn't intend the connotations of the work - if it didn't occur to him/her that presenting all humans as white; or presenting people whose cultures are predominantly non-urban and who are hostile to frontier colonisers as "inherently evil"; was a perpetuation of racist tropes - well that's the author's or creator's problem for not thinking stuff through. It doesn't mean they suddenly get to disown the meanings of their work.

And really I think these points are pretty basic. Why are we still debating them?

 

[Sithlord]

I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to construct a presentation of an inherently evil culture/people by drawing upon the tropes that were readily available to 19th and early 20th century writers - who were steeped in a certain way of presenting the non-European peoples that Europe was in the process of conquering/colonising - and then simply try and stipulate that no association is intended. The work itself manifests a certain conception of what it is to be "savage", a "brute", and "inherently evil"; and it's hardly a subtle conception.

I'm sure that not all of those sci-fi films and TV shows in which the majority of people of the ship crew or "the Federation" or the far-flung worlds of the galaxy are white are trying to present a conception of a white supremacist utopia. That doesn't mean that they can't be called to account for presenting a certain conception of what it is to a human of the future.

If the author/creator didn't intend the connotations of the work - if it didn't occur to him/her that presenting all humans as white; or presenting people whose cultures are predominantly non-urban and who are hostile to frontier colonisers as "inherently evil"; was a perpetuation of racist tropes - well that's the author's or creator's problem for not thinking stuff through. It doesn't mean they

I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to construct a presentation of an inherently evil culture/people by drawing upon the tropes that were readily available to 19th and early 20th century writers - who were steeped in a certain way of presenting the non-European peoples that Europe was in the process of conquering/colonising - and then simply try and stipulate that no association is intended. The work itself manifests a certain conception of what it is to be "savage", a "brute", and "inherently evil"; and it's hardly a subtle conception.

I'm sure that not all of those sci-fi films and TV shows in which the majority of people of the ship crew or "the Federation" or the far-flung worlds of the galaxy are white are trying to present a conception of a white supremacist utopia. That doesn't mean that they can't be called to account for presenting a certain conception of what it is to a human of the future.

If the author/creator didn't intend the connotations of the work - if it didn't occur to him/her that presenting all humans as white; or presenting people whose cultures are predominantly non-urban and who are hostile to frontier colonisers as "inherently evil"; was a perpetuation of racist tropes - well that's the author's or creator's problem for not thinking stuff through. It doesn't mean they suddenly get to disown the meanings of their work.

And really I think these points are pretty basic. Why are we still debating them?

of course I completely 100% agree with you. This is completely not debatable. And anyone who would try to debate this should be banned and removed from the board.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Interesting point, particularly since one of the criticisms I often see levied against 5e from gamers raised on 3e and 4e is "There's nothing to do with gold!"

Yeah it’s an odd dynamic. The DMG has all this advice for loot and treasure, but there is no...actual need for any of it beyond “folks like having magic items and getting coin.”

In the abstract, I do prefer to have magic items and other power-ups disconnected from the mundane economy. In practice, doing so would probably also require reducing the amount of expected loot, or at least provide a bunch of things to spend it on. There's also the issue that reducing the amount of magic items available generally hurts martial characters more than it does casters (because martials rely on items to do anything special), so you probably want to keep a fair influx of items into your game, but that then asks the question "If all these items are around, where do they come from, and why isn't there a market for them?"

Yeah I generally either have a world where more or less uncommon and common items are part of the economy, and rare and higher items are treated like fine art, OR I have very few magic items and PCs might have 1-3 items that are very personal and/or tie strongly in to the world.

 

[Staffan]

Yeah it’s an odd dynamic. The DMG has all this advice for loot and treasure, but there is no...actual need for any of it beyond “folks like having magic items and getting coin.”

Well, for many magic items the benefit is giving new abilities. And that's not a benefit to be sneezed at in a system where martial characters in particular generally only get abilities that make them Hit Hard. I do find items with actual on-use abilities to be more interesting than those with just numerical upgrades. I do remember the 3.5e Magic Item Compendium which added a whole lot of low-level items that could be activated to do Cool Things, and it would be great to see more things like that for 5e. Things like "3 times per day, Dash as a bonus action" or "2 times per day, misty step" or "1/day as a reaction, negate all damage from one source."

Yeah I generally either have a world where more or less uncommon and common items are part of the economy, and rare and higher items are treated like fine art, OR I have very few magic items and PCs might have 1-3 items that are very personal and/or tie strongly in to the world.

I was considering the fine art angle, but it runs into one problem: art (particularly the high-end art that goes for millions of dollars) is more-or-less useless. Well, that's harsh – art fills a lot of very important functions in society, but they're not useful in the same way that a pair of winged boots are. So aristocrats aren't likely to hoard powerful items as tax shelters the way fine art is in the real world. If you acquire a magic item, you do so because you intend to use it, or at least place it in a position where it would potentially be used. Really powerful things might be kept in reserve, but that's very different from the way art is handled.

 

[Mercurius]

I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to construct a presentation of an inherently evil culture/people by drawing upon the tropes that were readily available to 19th and early 20th century writers - who were steeped in a certain way of presenting the non-European peoples that Europe was in the process of conquering/colonising - and then simply try and stipulate that no association is intended. The work itself manifests a certain conception of what it is to be "savage", a "brute", and "inherently evil"; and it's hardly a subtle conception.

You're making a leap here, which I think is common and part of what has generated "Orcgate." You are saying that the creators of D&D drew upon the tropes of racism. This isn't really or necessarily correct, as far as I understand it. Rather, the 19th-20th century writers and the creators and designers of D&D drew from the same archetype, that of the "brutish, evil twisted person." It is a mythic archetype, and goes hundreds, even thousands, of years before the 19th century.

Meaning, an orc is a modern fantasy version of a mythic archetype. It isn't that the creators of D&D said, "the orc is a stand-in for the non-white other," it is that those earlier racist writers said "non-white people are orcs."

This is a subtle, but crucial difference that I think is at the heart of "Orcgate."

I'm sure that not all of those sci-fi films and TV shows in which the majority of people of the ship crew or "the Federation" or the far-flung worlds of the galaxy are white are trying to present a conception of a white supremacist utopia. That doesn't mean that they can't be called to account for presenting a certain conception of what it is to a human of the future.

If the author/creator didn't intend the connotations of the work - if it didn't occur to him/her that presenting all humans as white; or presenting people whose cultures are predominantly non-urban and who are hostile to frontier colonisers as "inherently evil"; was a perpetuation of racist tropes - well that's the author's or creator's problem for not thinking stuff through. It doesn't mean they suddenly get to disown the meanings of their work.

You will not find any disagreement from me that more diverse representation in TV and film is a good thing, although it also depends upon the premise and context of the show. If it is a story based on Northern European mythology like Lord of the Rings, it makes sense to remain true to the artist's vision. That's what Peter Jackson pretty much said, that he wasn't interested in injecting his own political view into the LotR films but trying to re-create Tolkien's own vision. So rather than "diversify LotR," I would suggest leaving it as an expression from a specific cultural milieu and author and instead create new expressions that draw from other cultures. What about an African epic? Or a Mesoamerican one? Etc. There is a world of mythology out there.

So yes, a Federation should be very diverse - it is derived from a future global culture, one that has largely moved beyond issues like racism and xenophobia, at least within humanity. But mythic proto-Europe, ala Middle-earth? It makes sense that all or most of the actors are from European descent.

As for "connotations," see my comment above. A D&D orc is drawn from a mythic archetype, which racist writers also drew from in their depiction of non-white people. That does not connect the orc to the racist depiction, it just means that they are both expressions of the same mythic archetype. The "connotation" is making an erroneous "lateral" leap, rather than recognizing the actual causal relation. An orc is an expression of a mythic archetype, not a racial stereotype.

And really I think these points are pretty basic. Why are we still debating them?

Because these basic points are coming from a specific hermeneutic angle and disregarding any other. It is an interpretation of the phenomena, not the phenomena itself. Whether or not this perspective is useful and has validity (I think it does, to a point) doesn't diminish the benefit of considering other perspectives. In truth, without considering other hermeneutics, we run the risk of a kind of mono-perspectival dogmatism, as if there is "one true way" to interpret everything.

So the points you make, and others have made, are pretty basic...from within a specific interpretative framework. By why not expand it and consider other perspectives? No hermeneutic is absolute, but I would suggest that we take a more dialectic approach, rather than the endless head-butting of one mono-perspective vs. the other.

 

[pemerton]

You're making a leap here, which I think is common and part of what has generated "Orcgate." You are saying that the creators of D&D drew upon the tropes of racism. This isn't really or necessarily correct, as far as I understand it. Rather, the 19th-20th century writers and the creators and designers of D&D drew from the same archetype, that of the "brutish, evil twisted person." It is a mythic archetype, and goes hundreds, even thousands, of years before the 19th century.

On these boards, @Doug McCrae has done the exegetical work. I'm not going to try to repeat it, and am not going to provide all the links.

But here are some links.

(And it's not as if Doug McCrae was the first to notice this. In 1987 I read a book which noted that, when Tolkien needed visual elements for his evil people, he deployed stereotyped images of Asian and Turkic peoples.)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But mythic proto-Europe, ala Middle-earth? It makes sense that all or most of the actors are from European descent.

Not really. Europe has literally never been all white, and a “mythic” Europe that the author imagined as being a secret ancient history of Britain has no legitimate need to be all white.

 

[pemerton]

If it is a story based on Northern European mythology like Lord of the Rings, it makes sense to remain true to the artist's vision

<snip>

But mythic proto-Europe, ala Middle-earth? It makes sense that all or most of the actors are from European descent.

Huh? Perhaps the numerically largest group of performers in Jackson's LotR films are of Maori descent. They play the inherently evil people.

In skin tone and eye shape, if not genealogy, this more-or-less fits JRRT's stories which feature many non-European persons and peoples.

 

[Mercurius]

On these boards, @Doug McCrae has done the exegetical work. I'm not going to try to repeat it, and am not going to provide all the links.

But here are some links.

(And it's not as if Doug McCrae was the first to notice this. In 1987 I read a book which noted that, when Tolkien needed visual elements for his evil people, he deployed stereotyped images of Asian and Turkic peoples.)

You don't need to repeat it because not only it is it the main show these days, at least here and in similar contexts, but I understand it and even see it as partially valid, just rather narrow and monological. And yes, I remember McCrae's "exegesis." What I find baffling and troublesome is how advocates of this perspective, by and large, don't really consider others, as if it is either/or. Multi-perspectivism is, unfortunately, rather rare these days. But alas, that's just how it goes, I guess.

 

[Mercurius]

Not really. Europe has literally never been all white, and a “mythic” Europe that the author imagined as being a secret ancient history of Britain has no legitimate need to be all white.

Note that I wrote of European descent. You switched that to "white." And I even said most of, which you switched to "all."

Huh? Perhaps the numerically largest group of performers in Jackson's LotR films are of Maori descent. They play the inherently evil people.

In skin tone and eye shape, if not genealogy, this more-or-less fits JRRT's stories which feature many non-European persons and peoples.

Presumably that's because he wanted to give jobs to the people living in New Zealand!

Most, if not all, of the actors playing major roles were European, which makes sense considering that the venue of Middle-earth is basically "Mythic Europe." One could argue, though, that the people of Gondor should have been played by southern Europeans (Mediterranean).