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

[Argyle King]

Jack Chick? He was pretty much against everything, so he really doesn't count.

I think it's easy to say that now and laugh at it.

It wasn't so easy when concerns about the game were covered on national news networks.

You can probably still find the 60-Minutes episodes on YouTube.

 

[ad_hoc]

I feel everyone here can agree that the intentional mocking of a real person for their intellectual handicap is abhorrible. It is the lowest of the low. And, thank goodness, my friends and I never played that way - even as teens. But, presenting a doltish person with other traits as a fantasy character - I think that is where the community becomes split?

I see from some people is this idea that 'intelligence' is this objective thing and innate to our being rather than a product of traits and behaviours we've learned throughout our lives and what we consider 'intelligence' is a product of our culture and what it values.

Instead of playing a "dolt" play a character who doesn't care about learning facts and doesn't have patience for thinking through problems. Or whatever. Give the character some traits and behaviours. Don't just say 'well this character is stupid, I need to come up with stupid things for them to do and since it is innate to their being there is no growth or learning to be had'.

Another thing is to not just make the character 'stupid' in all aspects. People can be below average at some cognitive tasks while being average, good, or great at others. Let the character have strokes of genius particularly when something interests them.

Intelligence is not a monolith, even though our characters have a score for it. D&D has trained us to see characters, and by extension real people, this way. That's not how it works for real life people.

Here is an anecdote - My mother was terrible at math throughout high school. To the point where she had borderline failing marks in each course. When she went to nursing school she was among the best in the class for all of the math related tasks because it was something she was interested in and could visualize it better when she was actually doing something with it.

Isn't it? Portraying a below average Int score seems to be the primary driver of the conversation.

The thing is, the below average Int score does not actually do what many people envision it does. People greatly exaggerate it and then say 'well my character has to be that way because ability score'.

It means the character has a slightly worse ability to memorize and recall facts and a slightly lower cognitive resilience.

Even if it did all the things people attribute to it, it would make for unrealistic 2 dimensional characters made up of harmful stereotypes.

Thankfully it doesn't but it really needs to be renamed. If we're renaming races let's rename these ability scores.

 

[Charlaquin]

If we're renaming races let's rename these ability scores.

Yeah, if they were named based on what they actually do in 5e, they’d be like…

Athletics
Agility
Constitution
Memory (or maybe Recall)
Perception (or maybe Awareness)
Charisma

 

[Faolyn]

Your latter example with the lever to me represents low Wisdom, not low Intelligence; the character knows what the lever will do and pulls it anyway. A truly low-Intelligence character might pull the lever at random or by mistake while wandering around the room, and maybe not even be able to read the warning, but probably wouldn't do so deliberately.

Right. But the character is probably being played by someone with relatively average IQ who is deliberately acting dumb and isn't differentiating between low Int and low Wis.

Example:

Dumb PC: Huh, I wonder what this lever does. <reaches out to touch the lever>

Other PCs: Don't touch it! If you pull the lever, the sign says it'll summon demons.

Dumb PC #1: Whoops, better not touch it. <this player is playing a not-smart, illiterate character, but isn't being a jerk about it.>

Dumb PC #2: Dur-hurh, I'm so dumb, I'll pull it anyway. <this character is being a jerk about it, by doing the dumb thing deliberately>

Now, in this case, Dumb PC #2 isn't necessarily making fun of real people who aren't "smart," but they are being disruptive. Even my chaotic neutral, 10 Int character doesn't deliberately do things just to be disruptive. (I swear, she didn't mean to start a riot; it just happened!)

Now, if they had a good, in-character reason to pull the lever (someone they trusted told them to or said that it summoned candy, etc.) that'd be one thing.

 

[Faolyn]

All good until here, as there seems to be a very strong undercurrent in this thread discouraging that rogue's player from playing it - and characterizing it - as a numbskull in the first place; and while I can't speak for others, that's where my objection lies.

Right, and mine too (that rogue is based on my own character, although nobody has called her a numbskull; I did get a stern in-character lecture from the cleric though).

I'm not quite seeing that undercurrent, though. What I'm seeing is, especially from folks like Charlaquin, is that if your actions are actually bothering someone else, don't do those actions.

For me, I asked the DM to tell me if my character was ever getting disruptive, and he swears my character is doing just fine. But I have actual, legitimate in-game reasons for any in-game actions, and I often explain those reasons out of character. I don't do things just because it's funny. And as I see it, the people who are making fun of others usually don't have in-game reasons for their actions.

I mean, OK, I can see how "don't do those actions" also turns into "don't build characters that exemplify those actions." So, don't build a character that makes fun of people.

 

[Scott Christian]

My other thing, though, is that I think it's fully possible to play a doltish character without actually making fun of real people. It's the difference between playing a character who is gullible, makes dumb choices, or misunderstands things and does things like this

and playing a character who goes out of their way to do stupid (and often game-disruptive) things like saying "Hur dur, I'm so dumb I think I'll pull this lever that says 'pull this lever to summon a a hoard of demons'."

I agree. But it should be pointed out that in all my years of playing D&D, I have never seen your latter example. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I have a pretty broad base with different places and types of players. Maybe I am just lucky.

But in the end, we agree.

 

[Scott Christian]

Imagine you have a bunch of guys, drinking beer and talking. And they start trading around some really sleazy, misogynistic crap. Now, add in playing poker. Or bowling. Or smoking cigars. Or watching football. In all these cases, you have a group normalizing misogyny among themselves - they develop and reinforce the habit that tells them that this behavior is okay. They protect and encourage each other to think this way.

I imagine that if that is your experience with friends, then you need new friends.

But again, your definition of sleazy and misogynistic need to be concrete, as what is misogynistic to some means absolutely nothing to others; and that includes women. Same with the definition of sleazy. I get you mean derogatory, but just like this whole thread, it is the eye of the beholder, and the beholder's eye can only be viewed from other eyes.

 

[Scott Christian]

In any case, whilst I obviously agree that mocking portrayals of neurodivergent people should be avoided, is this actually a commonly occurring problem?

In my experience, not even in the slightest.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Isn't it? Portraying a below average Int score seems to be the primary driver of the conversation.

For context, the likely inciting incident for this thread would be the one where it was insisted by some that a 'below average INT should be portrayed like Forrest Gump in a context that suggested this was a penalty for dumping INT.

 

[CleverNickName]

Imagine you have a bunch of guys, drinking beer and talking. And they start trading around some really sleazy, misogynistic crap. Now, add in playing poker. Or bowling. Or smoking cigars. Or watching football. In all these cases, you have a group normalizing misogyny among themselves - they develop and reinforce the habit that tells them that this behavior is okay. They protect and encourage each other to think this way.

If you have them playing D&D instead, it's still normalizing misogynistic crap. What game they are playing isn't the issue - it is the social normalization of the behavior that is concerning.

And I think that is the root of the counter-argument. There's a rather large group of people who want that misogynistic crap to stay normal, and they are pushing back against efforts to change it. They want havens where they can continue to "act normally" and not have to worry about being judged by others for their normalized misogynistic (or racist, or transphobic, etc) behavior. These days, there's a lot more social pressure to change those normalized toxic behaviors, and that pressure is usually met with...well, we have 27 pages of examples.