D&D 5E Don't play "stupid" characters. It is ableist.

[Charlaquin]

That's fair. I suspect when most of us sit down for a recreational activity we're not examining it through one critical lens or another. Though it's certainly valid to do so.

I think your suspicion is most likely correct. One of the great things about forums like this is that they provide us an opportunity to take a step back from the activity itself and potentially apply a critical lens to it, and perhaps learn something we might use to better our recreational activities when we return to them.

 

[MGibster]

I think your suspicion is most likely correct. One of the great things about forums like this is that they provide us an opportunity to take a step back from the activity itself and potentially apply a critical lens to it, and perhaps learn something we might use to better our recreational activities when we return to them.

You just found a fancy way to say we're nerds. While I do agree with you, I think sometimes we can overanalyze things. But who knows? Maybe this is a big problem at a lot of tables.

 

[Charlaquin]

You just found a fancy way to say we're nerds. While I do agree with you, I think sometimes we can overanalyze things. But who knows? Maybe this is a big problem at a lot of tables.

I don’t think it’s a big problem at many tables at all. I do think it’s a problem with the broader D&D playing culture, which can really only be addressed by changing behaviors at the table-to-table level.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I played a lot of hockey when I was younger. I aslo played football (the sissy kind with the pads) as well as a ton of other sports. I fear that many of the posters here would run screaming from their first practice or the first game, when the trash-talking starts.

I can out trash-talk any jock (although some of my insults tend to pass over their heads - their reflexes are not fast enough). I would run screaming from the physical activity though.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Here you go.

Nice attempt but circular logic is a fail in my books.

 

[AnotherGuy]

In reality, though, I'd bet most people who are going to be playing a "stupid" character are actually doing lolrandom stuff like going out of their way to deliberately trigger traps or pour that full jug of water over the angry archmage the party was negotiating with because "that's what stupid people are like." And this is also offensive, and disruptive to boot.

Out of interest why is this offensive?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Tropic Thunder comes to mind with two different things to avoid as an RPer.

That is a fantastic movie. Definitely worth an owlbear Hoot!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Once again, you are failing to misunderstand the basic premise of the original post.

The original post uses language that is at best confrontational, and at worst is is itself highly prejudiced.

Stupid is as stupid does. There are all different kinds of stupid. A genius can still be stupid.

No, you seem to be interpreting it as saying "take care not to portray characters with low intelligence scores as offensive caricatures of people with learning difficulties". Which is fair enough, if obvious. But that's not actually what the OP says: they are themselves conflating learning difficulties with stupidity.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I can't even recall the last time I played a straight white able-bodied male character.

My second last character had cerebral palsy (-3 Dex gave me the idea). He wanted to be a wizard but couldn't do the vocal and somantic components reliably. So he sought out ancient teachers and became a Psion. He tended to talk mostly in telepathy as it was easier for him. I tend to be the most talkative at the table, so it gives others a chance to jump in and interact with NPCs.

Character before that was an elderly dwarven fighter who was a lesbian. She married a gay dwarven man in order to fulfill her duty to her clan. Raised her kids as per her duty. Neither of them were closeted, the dwarves don't care what your preference is, as long as you do what is traditionally expected of you. Now that the kid were adults she could finally go and become the hero she always wanted to be. Her platonic love-story with her husband was some of the most touching RP we have had at the table. She was mother figure of the adventuring party.

Character before that was an Arabian-nights themed harem slave with PTSD. She made a Warlock pact with an elder succubus to kill her master and give her dominion over men. She was a man-hating femme-fatale who would put herself in positions to be potentially abused, so she could kill the abuser and send their damned souls to her infernal patron as an offering. Took the other PCs a while to reign in her worst tendencies.

Ability, mental health, age, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, trauma, I think I've won appropriation bingo.

There is an absolute ocean of richness here! Love it - your DM is very fortunate.

 

[squibbles]

While I acknowledge that some people are playing in public venues, there are a part of us who plays with friends (and engage in other activities than roleplaying with them) and, being part of this demographic, I am offended by any attempt to advise what I do inside my private property, outside of the views of anyone. I am ready to discuss whether there is a problem in anything game-related, including discussion on whether say, playing a Nazi character ingrain Nazi reflexes into the players, but starting by telling "don't do X" isn't the best way to engage with me. It might come as the conclusion of a reasoning on a topic, or be presented as an advice, but in general, any imperative on the behavior I should comply with at home will be seen in a bad view, even if I am amenable to it. Exemple: "Don't blow your nose on your curtains" will elicit an anwers "My curtains, my way" (despite not blowing my nose in them in the first place). I guess I wasn't in the target audience of the OP since he didn't select the appropriate debating technique to engage me.

This is the reaction that the title of the thread gave me as well, i.e. "don't tell me what to do."

Having now read 15 pages of the thread, it seems like a lot of contentious conversation is just driven by that: posters who feel like they make a good faith effort to be kind to fellow players and within the hobby, are reacting to the combative tone of the OP--though they would probably mostly agree that crude impersonations of 'stupid' people aren't the best.

And then there's the inevitable switchtracking where one party is making the don't tell me what to do argument and another party is making the inclusion argument.

I don’t agree that D&D is a hobby we play with small groups of people who all know each other any more. Or at least, it’s not just that. Yes, that is a way D&D is played. But it’s also played in public game stores, at conventions, on play-by-post forums, on virtual tabletops, over livestreams, in massive Discord servers, often with random strangers. And, people engage with D&D in more ways than just playing. We read novels set in its worlds, we talk about it on forums, we play video games based on it, we watch our favorite streamers play it, there’s about to be a movie and a streaming series, and a cartoon, and probably a whole lot more on the way.

D&D is not just a game you play privately with friends any more, it’s an expansive multimedia brand. If the hobby remains neutral towards tasteless portrayals of harmful stereotypes, it will remain a haven for people who make the hobby unwelcoming for underprivileged people. I don’t care what anyone does in the privacy of their home games as long as everyone involved consents to it. But I do care that the hobby as a whole is welcoming to diverse people, which means fostering a culture that does not tolerate intolerance.

That's a good point. And I think that people playing in a public setting or playing in front of a massive audience have higher standards of behavior to adhere to than those playing among a close group of friends. The ambit of good taste is more restrictive.

Not that people should be obnoxious and crass among friends--everybody always needs to exercise good judgment in what they say--but only the people in the room can read the room and understand, for example, when an impolitic statement is intended as satire or as farce.

I think you could easily rename intelligence and wisdom to knowledge and awareness, and it would make pretty decent sense. Not that I really have a huge problem with their current names.

Those are exactly the ones I'd go with! They're PC traits instead of player traits, and they significantly more accurately represent what those abilities do (well, except Wis saves /sigh). I'd be happy if that change was made; it'd render a lot of the contentiousness of mental ability scores moot.

I didn't disappear on purpose, I just work 12 hour shifts. Let me see if I can vaguely comment on some things.

The thread isn't about playing characters with severe cognitive impairments. If that is what you're doing, well you know what you're doing. (side note too - Those people are usually a lot 'smarter' than people give them credit for. They often get infantilized and treated as less than human and that is something we should be challenging within ourselves as well).

The thread is about how the concept of 'intelligence' as understood colloquially is a bunch of nonsense. Yes "IQ" and "G Intelligence" too.

The concept we have of intelligence in our culture is so ingrained that people take it for granted. A truism.

Multiple people have have referred to intelligence as inherent, going so far as to say it's something a person is born with. This is dangerous thinking which has been used to support eugenics (not saying that is what people meant by it when posting).

It has been pointed out that Intelligence originally in D&D was thought to correlate to the IQ scale. The IQ scale is a load of nonsense and so is D&D's original concept of intelligence. Thankfully in 5e intelligence is very narrow. Part of the point of the OP is to not draw broad conclusions of the character because of what the trait of 'intelligence' is called but to look instead at what it actually does in game.

Many cognitive traits and abilities our culture values we label as intelligence and then we label those who are lacking in those traits as 'stupid'.

Even if we were to grant that what our culture values is inherently good and right and we call some of that intelligence it still isn't correct to say it is inherent. There are countless factors both internal and external that are going to change, sometimes drastically, how intelligent a person is perceived to be.

A lot of "intelligence" is actually either a measurement of accumulated knowledge or the result of behaviours. This is why I listed a few traits and behaviours in the OP. Some people responded 'but that isn't what intelligence is.' And that is the point. Those traits and behaviours can make someone appear to us as unintelligent. Someone made reference to ADHD and said something along the lines of that doesn't make someone 'stupid' they just have traits and behaviours which make it difficult to succeed in our culture which expects different things from them. Many people with ADHD have reported that they thought of themselves as 'stupid' before their diagnosis. That's the problem, that's the harm.

There are numerous others. Find something someone is internally motivated to learn and they're going to have a much easier time learning it. Teach things in different ways - esp. different than in books - and a lot of people will do better. People who can learn from books tend to have a lot more accumulated knowledge because that is what we have valued. Now thankfully with new technologies many people have access to different ways to learn. Sometimes it's a matter of addressing cognitive distortions which inhibit learning. These are often learned and reinforced and can be addressed. It might be a matter of teaching someone from a different culture what the culture they're in values and how to learn and adapt to it. Maybe it's a matter of addressing 'learned helplessness' where the person doesn't apply themselves or attempt to accumulate knowledge because they have a negative self image wherein they believe they are incapable of doing so. Etc. Etc.

I didn't create this thread because something catastrophic happened. This is a result of seeing hundreds of threads about 'how to play PC or NPC with X intelligence' and other such things and seeing what people view as 'smart' and 'stupid'. I'm just challenging the common framing, that's all.

It's not about being 'offended' by what someone does in their basement. It's about how they think of other people and how they reinforce their beliefs. The roleplaying as an event in their basement isn't harmful. It's what they do after. It's not about directly treating people poorly (but please don't), it's about reinforcing harmful beliefs and attitudes which hurt others.

Our culture views some people as 'lesser' and we should fight that wherever we can.

So, don't play a 'stupid' character but do give a character traits and behaviours that get in the way.

Please don't take this post as being exhaustive on the topic. This was a rambling post too where I'm responding to various ideas in this thread, there is no central thesis that is being argued coherently throughout. It's not a research paper.

This feels like a bit of an odd turn based on where this thread started (and all the lovely places it has gone). But I find the topic interesting and am happy to follow along.

You seem conversant about IQ research (you mention G factor, i.e. general intelligence), which makes it puzzling that you take such a hardline view on it. My understanding is that there is a large body of good faith scientific research that identifies a durable, reliably measurable characteristic that can (probabilistically) predict a lot of different task and life outcomes. There are a lot of mysteries about it, such as the Flynn effect, and there are many challenges to it, and many complications that have been added to it over the past 100 years, but general intelligence, as of 2021, is still (to the best of my knowledge) a topic of credible scientific endeavor.

A lot of the things you list as confounding perceptions of intelligence--accumulated knowledge, personal motivation, learning styles, culture, learned helplessness--are separable from general intelligence. They can all color how people are perceived, and mess with the results of IQ tests (you might also add stereotype threat to the list) but, when measuring general intelligence, researchers invest a great deal of effort into minimizing those variables. That's why, for example, true IQ tests tend to be picture-pattern logic puzzles with no substantive subject content or written text (apart from the test format). The elements you list can all unfairly affect how a person is viewed, but that doesn't mean general intelligence doesn't exist (it may or may not, debate persists).

Oh, a thing I left out which may explain where I'm coming from.

A person isn't stupid but they can do stupid things.

They don't have the inherent nature of 'stupid' but they are capable of acting in stupid ways.

I improved my life when I stopped telling myself "I'm dumb" and instead said to myself "I did a dumb thing."

Ultimately, regardless of what is true of intelligence, growth mindset is the best way to think about it in one's own life.

But though thinking about fictional D&D characters from that more empathetic perspective could make them deeper and more realized, it's probably not necessary all of the time, among friends, over beer and pretzels. Failing to do so certainly doesn't preclude anyone from treating 'stupid' people with human dignity in their daily lives.