D&D General Drow & Orcs Removed from the Monster Manual

[Azzy]

What? A noble fey actually going to the mortal realm and (gasp) touching a mewling humanspawn? Perish the thought!

Now, if the noble fey did do that, there's some story potential... Why come personally and why this particular child?

 

[Maxperson]

Yup. That's EXACTLY how statistics work.

Or, to put it another way, you've played with about .0001% of gamers out there. But, sure, your personal circle of friends and acquaintances represent a significant sampling of the total population of gamers.

200+ consecutive people who aren't like that. So what percentage of folks do you think have this issue? 1 in 6? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? And the odds of my hitting 200+ people in a row without running into even 1 in 20 are very low. The chances hit 99% at a mere 90 people.

This is not a common problem. People don't run around treating people in real life like they're orcs just because of orc lore in a game they play. They don't look at orc lore and draw inspiration for how to treat people from it. They don't look at orc lore and fantasize about treating people like orcs. Well, there might be a few out there who want to dress someone up like an orc, but that's their business.

 

[Bedrockgames]

200+ consecutive people who aren't like that. So what percentage of folks do you think have this issue? 1 in 6? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? And the odds of my hitting 200+ people in a row without running into even 1 in 20 are very low. The chances hit 99% at a mere 90 people.

This is not a common problem. People don't run around treating people in real life like they're orcs just because of orc lore in a game they play. They don't look at orc lore and draw inspiration for how to treat people from it. They don't look at orc lore and fantasize about treating people like orcs. Well, there might be a few out there who want to dress someone up like an orc, but that's their business.

“but he looked like an orc your honor”

 

[Warpiglet-7]

200+ consecutive people who aren't like that. So what percentage of folks do you think have this issue? 1 in 6? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? And the odds of my hitting 200+ people in a row without running into even 1 in 20 are very low. The chances hit 99% at a mere 90 people.

This is not a common problem. People don't run around treating people in real life like they're orcs just because of orc lore in a game they play. They don't look at orc lore and draw inspiration for how to treat people from it. They don't look at orc lore and fantasize about treating people like orcs. Well, there might be a few out there who want to dress someone up like an orc, but that's their business.

You are not going to prove anything.

Rather ask what proof do you have that D&D causes bad behavior?

After reviewing the evidence I don’t think your answer will change.

The scant literature on this suggests generally good things; but I have found people are not generally interested in things that don’t confirm their beliefs about the game.

Since there really is not a ton of research in this area we have to draw on a variety of things…do video games make people violent? And so on.

But let’s be real. This stuff was not changed due to compelling proof of anything one way or the other.

No doubt our sample are biased…people are not randomly assigned to groups, there are all kinds of uncontrolled variables at play.

All of that said I would love to know if there is anything that shows bad aliens, bad orcs or whatever is significantly correlated with any genuine harm. We know the answer.

People do the best they can and make a call. Sometimes as individuals we do things that are not based on facts. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we mean well and overreact. In this case…

 

[Maxperson]

You are not going to prove anything.

Rather ask what proof do you have that D&D causes bad behavior?

After reviewing the evidence I don’t think your answer will change.

The scant literature on this suggests generally good things; but I have found people are not generally interested in things that don’t confirm their beliefs about the game.

Since there really is not a ton of research in this area we have to draw on a variety of things…do video games make people violent? And so on.

But let’s be real. This stuff was not changed due to compelling proof of anything one way or the other.

No doubt our sample are biased…people are not randomly assigned to groups, there are all kinds of uncontrolled variables at play.

All of that said I would love to know if there is anything that shows bad aliens, bad orcs or whatever is significantly correlated with any genuine harm. We know the answer.

People do the best they can and make a call. Sometimes as individuals we do things that are not based on facts. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we mean well and overreact. In this case…

Yep. The whole idea that orc lore or other D&D lore causes/inspires real life bad behavior is just another version of the Satanic Panic. The Satanic Panic made the exact same claim with similar amounts of evidence to back it up.

 

[TiQuinn]

People don't run around treating people in real life like they're orcs just because of orc lore in a game they play. They don't look at orc lore and draw inspiration for how to treat people from it.

Those two sentences together really make me think that you don't understand the objection that people had to the representation and depictions used with orcs in D&D.

 

[Echohawk]

The whole idea that orc lore or other D&D lore causes/inspires real life bad behavior is just another version of the Satanic Panic.

I found this interview with R.A. Salvatore quite helpful to my personal understanding of why the historical portrayal of drow and orcs is problematic.

 

[Maxperson]

Those two sentences together really make me think that you don't understand the objection that people had to the representation and depictions used with orcs in D&D.

I do, but I don't believe those other objections, because literally anything negative you can say about a race will have been done to some group(probably many groups) of people in the real world some time in the past. Correlation does not equal causation. Nothing has been shown(other than that one really old product on orcs that I forget the name of) that proves or even strongly indicates that the orc language is really associated with any real life group of people.

People are built to look for patterns and we often find patterns that aren't really there. "Every time I've been mocked, I had an ice cream cone in my back pocket, therefore ice cream causes people to mock others and needs to be banned!"

Even so, they could have easily just altered that language and left orcs in. And there have also been posts in this thread about the language causing/inspiring bad behavior in real life, so that language not "the objection that people had to the representation..." It's one objection.

I don't buy the real world associations, and I don't buy the argument that it causes real world bad behaviors. At least not in any amounts caused by the game. It's rare enough behavior to be a people problem, not a game problem. Removing orcs and/or orc lore is just going to result in those kinds of people finding some other excuse to be the way they are.

 

[AnotherGuy]

People don't run around treating people in real life like they're orcs just because of orc lore in a game they play. They don't look at orc lore and draw inspiration for how to treat people from it. They don't look at orc lore and fantasize about treating people like orcs. Well, there might be a few out there who want to dress someone up like an orc, but that's their business.

The only Orc issue I have is that the Americans totally screwed me out of a second Warcraft movie. What's wrong with you lot? Even with a strong Chinese attendance we didn't have enough for a sequel.

 

[MGibster]

Yep. The whole idea that orc lore or other D&D lore causes/inspires real life bad behavior is just another version of the Satanic Panic. The Satanic Panic made the exact same claim with similar amounts of evidence to back it up.

The objections to orcs in D&D was mainly that their depictions resembled depictions we humans used to describe other humans we considered inferior. I cannot recall anyone being genuinely worried D&D players were ready to treat anyone like orcs. In a way I think WotC just did something even worse. They changed gnolls from humanoid to fiends, demonstrating that all we need to do is reclassify a group to make it okay to kill them with impunity.