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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8573597" data-attributes="member: 22779">And, if you think about it, there's REALLY good reasons for this.Cultural evils aren't inherent.  No one denies that people do bad things.  That's where the whole "slippery slope" thing falls off a cliff.  "Oh, if you remove bits from Kender because of their similarities to Romani people, then you'll have to remove all evil from the game" doesn't track because it ignores the whole reason why there's a problem with the Kender in the first place.Having a society that steals isn't a problem.  No one is saying that Thieves Guilds and Xanathar should be removed from the game.  Why would they?  We have real world examples of these.  Lots of cultures have organized crime.But imagine that your Waterdavian thieves guild is now hereditary.  Only those of a specific race (using the DND definition of race) can be thieves.  No one else can because only this specific race are thieves.  Additionally, all those thieves have no concept of ownership, like to move around a lot and have a penchant for music.  Or, alternatively, maybe they all share a skin tone and a prediliction for certain foods.  So on and so forth.  Still haven't called them by any proper nouns, so, obviously any real world analogues you might be thinking of are 100% on you and cannot possibly be taken as offensive.  Obviously it's stupid right?  Everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about and, even if it was done 100% innocently and without a shred of malice, it would still be wrong.So, having a group of halflings, let's call them Kender, some of whom wander around, some of whom stay home, some of whom do this and some of whom do that, is not a problem.  Even if you have a group of bad kender that deliberately steal and cause trouble, it's still not a problem because it's a CHOICE, not inherent.  That's where all the snide, "Oh, it will be a real shame when things change" comments really have it so wrong.  Because these kinds of comments just show a rather shocking lack of understanding of the issues.  To put it really basically - if the racial description of a fantasy race can map pretty much directly onto the stereotyped, racist description of a real world people, and all you really have to do is change the proper nouns, then that description needs to change.  OTOH, if the description DOESN'T map directly onto a sterotyped, racist description of a real world people, then you are pretty much good to go.It utterly baffles me how this is a difficult concept to understand.</blockquote>

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