D&D (2024) Greyhawk Grognard covers the Greyhawk section of the DMG

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️
I would like to point out that using gender neutral terms (Order instead of Brotherhood) doesn't make a bunch of Suloise militarist spies and assassins less evil than if they used a more gender-loaded term.

The Nazis were the National Socialist German Workers Party. Not a brotherhood, not a fraternal order. And they were evil, racist, and sexist as pretty much anyone you can imagine.

WotC has shifted to the more gender neutral term to keep the game more welcoming to underserved groups of potential players. You all KNOW this. It's been a known priority for more than a decade. Get over it.
 

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TiQuinn

Registered User
One of the nice things about the fantasy genre is you always have plausible deniability. Nazis? No, no. This is the Scarlet Order not Nazis. You're going to be able to find parallels between most fictional evil groups and historically identifiable villains.

I miss the good old days when Nazis could be the bad guys and it didn't upset anyone. When it comes to Nazis, anyone can punch them.

Yeah, but the difference is that Indiana Jones can just show up and say "The Nazis are after the Ark of the Covenant and we have to stop them."

Boom. Done.

You know who the Nazis were. I know who they were. We don't have to go into the Holocaust, or the invasion of Poland or France, or anything else. History took care of that for us. It can be left unsaid.
 


MGibster

Legend
Yeah, but the difference is that Indiana Jones can just show up and say "The Nazis are after the Ark of the Covenant and we have to stop them."

Boom. Done.

You know who the Nazis were. I know who they were. We don't have to go into the Holocaust, or the invasion of Poland or France, or anything else. History took care of that for us. It can be left unsaid.
Never forget means it doesn't get left unsaid.
 

Staffan

Legend
Well, yeah! But someone needs to tell that to the racists.

Evil rarely bothers themselves with science. Except, of course, death rays and sharks with friggin' laser beams on their heads.
That's engineering, not science.
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It is a reallife cultural sensitivity. Norwegians generally, are extremely horrified by how historical N*zis and contemporary racist supremacists have culturally appropriated Norse heritage for their evil ideology.

Associating American racists and German racists with Nordic peoples is horrifically violating.
I think you are getting your squares and rectangles confused.

The Scarlet Order are Suloise supremacists (or were, I'm unclear on how overt that is in the new version). That doesn't mean that Suloise = Scarlet Order member.

I don't believe that having evil people or evil organizations in the setting be racists is necessarily a bad thing. Some players might prefer racism not be a thing in the world, and that's the kind of thing you should discuss at session 0.

If we live in a day and age where Nazis can't be the bad guys because it upsets people, I want a new day and age.
I mean, some people complained about killing nazis in the new version of Castle Wolfenstein.
 

Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Ugh. I don't want to get into this, because ... c'mon, Nazis? I think we have all decided, collectively, that Hogan's Heroes was a bad idea, and moved on to recognizing them as ... the baddies.

But while I think both @TiQuinn and @MGibster make good points, I think it's important to remember that the reason Indiana Jones doesn't have to go into "This is why the Nazis are bad" is because we speak out about the depravity of, inter alia, the Shoah. That's why we cheer that Indy hates Nazis and punches them in the face. I mean ... it was directed by Spielberg, so I think we can all understand that he was being quite specific in why he chose the Nazis as being the evil ones, and why the protagonist hates them, and why the audience has no issue with their Indy takin them out.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend, he/him
Ugh. I don't want to get into this, because ... c'mon, Nazis? I think we have all decided, collectively, that Hogan's Heroes was a bad idea, and moved on to recognizing them as ... the baddies.

But while I think both @TiQuinn and @MGibster make good points, I think it's important to remember that the reason Indiana Jones doesn't have to go into "This is why the Nazis are bad" is because we speak out about the depravity of, inter alia, the Shoah. That's why we cheer that Indy hates Nazis and punches them in the face. I mean ... it was directed by Spielberg, so I think we can all understand that he was being quite specific in why he chose the Nazis as being the evil ones, and why the protagonist hates them, and why the audience has no issue with their Indy takin them out.
Not thwt the Nazis aren't bad, but...that topic is not exactly as escapist in the 21st ventury as it was in the 80s, to not get overly on the nose about it.
 

Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Not thwt the Nazis aren't bad, but...that topic is not exactly as escapist in the 21st ventury as it was in the 80s, to not get overly on the nose about it.

I would argue that this is exactly why we need to make sure that Nazis are the bad guys. Maybe part of the reason that it's not as escapist is because, for whatever reason, there has been a pulling back from the depiction of Nazis as ... um ... you know, NAZIS?
 


TiQuinn

Registered User
Ugh. I don't want to get into this, because ... c'mon, Nazis? I think we have all decided, collectively, that Hogan's Heroes was a bad idea, and moved on to recognizing them as ... the baddies.

But while I think both @TiQuinn and @MGibster make good points, I think it's important to remember that the reason Indiana Jones doesn't have to go into "This is why the Nazis are bad" is because we speak out about the depravity of, inter alia, the Shoah. That's why we cheer that Indy hates Nazis and punches them in the face. I mean ... it was directed by Spielberg, so I think we can all understand that he was being quite specific in why he chose the Nazis as being the evil ones, and why the protagonist hates them, and why the audience has no issue with their Indy takin them out.

Even Steven Spielberg understood there's a difference between a commercial summer action film, and a heavy examination of the horrors of the Holocaust, and that the two things could exist in separate spaces.
 

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