D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Incenjucar]

It really shouldn't be hard to just show the good, neutral, and evil possibilities of each species.

Elves live very long, slow lives! This can lead to individuals or cultures of elves shorter-lived species as meaningless, or especially profound, or even simply make them afraid to grow attached to them because they can only handle their hearts being broken over loss so many times.

 

[Bagpuss]

After reading this entire thread over the past few days, I've noticed you keep making this same argument over and over, that the "quality" of the art/media is bad if it is inclusive. That if we don't include things like racism in the game, it leads to boring design and forces artists to make terrible, derivative art...

And that's just false? Like, completely false.

No it is not. Restrictions on speech, like the comic code, or Hays Code, stifle creativity, it been seen time and time again.

I mean, would the original Star Wars trilogy be better with more racism in it? It doesn't have any that I can think of, no one treats chewie as less than a person because he is a wookie.

Really so did the fact all the Empire were white human men, in uniforms that shared a lot in common with the Nazi army just float over your head? That's the main reason people didn't like Finn as a black stormtrooper, because the Empire was basically a fascist organisation, that inclusivity diluted it. Also Chewbacca while it wasn't obvious in the movie, in the wider lore around, Wookies were made a slave race by the Empire, so year lots of racism in Star Wars.

 

[Faolyn]

Though racism itself might not be needed in DnD, I'd argue that some form of 'bad' is needed in order to be the antagonist for the player characters.

In a game where the players often end up literally stabbing the other side to death, I sure as hell hope that they're fighting 'bad' guys who have done some significant evil in some way.

Dark themes like the bad guys being racists or slavers often just make it easier for the DM to justify why their players want to go and stab said people to death with sharp bits of metal.

Bad, yes. But does an entire people need to be bad? Like, you mention slavers. But D&D has typically had slaver races, like the drow and duergar.

 

[Faolyn]

No it is not. Restrictions on speech, like the comic code, or Hays Code, stifle creativity, it been seen time and time again.

So we should not stifle creativity by encouraging writers to use the same tropes they've already used hundreds of times over the decades, instead of trying for new ideas?

Also, nobody is restricting speech. Nobody is preventing you, personally, from publishing a gaming book filled with slaves and racism if you wanted. WotC is one publisher and they are choosing to not do so.

ETA:

That's the main reason people didn't like Finn as a black stormtrooper, because the Empire was basically a fascist organisation, that inclusivity diluted it.

The people who didn't like Finn were typically racist themselves, not because they wanted the Empire to be "properly" racist itself.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Bad, yes. But does an entire people need to be bad? Like, you mention slavers. But D&D has typically had slaver races, like the drow and duergar.

Yeah I'm against making an entire race innately evil. Especially those two examples which are literally races, not species.

 

[Faolyn]

Yeah I'm against making an entire race innately evil. Especially those two examples which are literally races, not species.

Right. My point was, you can have extremely evil bad guys even if you got rid of all the official racism. You can even have racists if you got rid of the baked-in racism (e.g., all elves are prejudiced against dwarfs). and say this one person or group of people have decided that they think this other group of bad and are bigoted against them.

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah I'm against making an entire race innately evil. Especially those two examples which are literally races, not species.

The issue with evil races really is when a race is treated like rational sentient beings. When the races is stating that thinking like a person in other for them to use advanced tactics but are all evil.

I mean no one gets upset about all evil mind flayers because they are thought to think aberrantly and predatory.

It really shouldn't be hard to just show the good, neutral, and evil possibilities of each species.

Elves live very long, slow lives! This can lead to individuals or cultures of elves shorter-lived species as meaningless, or especially profound, or even simply make them afraid to grow attached to them because they can only handle their hearts being broken over loss so many times.

Elves due to their long lives and low ambition mean they can play the long game and outlive the evidence of the steps of their evil plots.

Dwarven stubbornness and traditionalism can easily translate to some dark ideology.

Halfling family centered mentality can easily other other races.

 

[Guest 85555]

After reading this entire thread over the past few days, I've noticed you keep making this same argument over and over, that the "quality" of the art/media is bad if it is inclusive. That if we don't include things like racism in the game, it leads to boring design and forces artists to make terrible, derivative art...

I want to be clear here, this is not my argument at all. I never said anything about being inclusive makes art bad, or that if art doesn't include racism, it is bad. That isn't my argument at all. Make games and art inclusive if you want to. There is nothing wrong with that. What I am talking about is an increasingly restrictive moral framework built around notions of diversity that I think is leading to less entertaining content (and I would point to the Dark Sun thread as a case in point).

 

[Guest 85555]

The first example I can think of off the top of my head is slightly NSFW, but there is a series (comic and show) called "Interspecies Reviewers". This series has little to no racism in their world. Just... it doesn't exist. No one calls elves "twigs" or "knife-ears", no one calls the beast folk "animals". But there is ONE bit of almost racism that exists, and it is actually the part I want to talk about.

In the setting "fiends" are seen in a negative light. Not like denied services or insulted or anything, but they have a bit of a negative association, people don't seek them out as partners, ect. We only know this because a member of the fiend political party that is trying to raise votes for their platform contacts the main characters and asks them to review a fiend brothel (the entire premise of the series being an ecchi journey of reviewing various brothels). And what they find, almost immediately, is a little known fact about fiends... they take contracts literally. Even spoken ones. So, a man who proposes to a fiend woman and declares "I will make you the happiest woman in the world" gets pissed at the guy if she is not the happiest woman in the world, because they made a deal and he is breaking it. And they spread the word of this, and that misunderstanding is cleared up.

But the world isn't boring. The world is fascinating, with tons of interesting takes on various species and how they can use their special abilities. The only reason the almost milk toast racism of "hmm, fiends have nasty personalities" exists is solely to show this really interesting take on fiends. And I would argue it isn't even really a racism, just a stereotype.

I don't know this comic strip at all so I can't really weigh in on it. But I am not saying that everything being made is boring. And I am not against settings that are utopian in certain ways (Star Trek was a highly progressive show built on a utopian vision of the future). That can totally work. It is more about having a rigid list of things that aren't allowed or can only be approached in extremely esoteric ways, because there is this broadening of what is taboo in art. But the comic strip you point to may well be great. I am not saying those things don't exist or can't. I am saying designers and artists are being constrained and I think most are feeling it at this point. But the world is still populated with talented artists. You are going to have people making great art despite restrictions and you are going to have people making great art that fully embraces the restrictions. I just think when you look back on eras when there was a moral narrowing of what was permissible in media, it shows and it often produces, at least for me, much less interesting content.

But again I want to be clear because people keep painting my position as being against diversity. I am not. I like diversity. I want more people to play RPGs from all kinds of backgrounds. I just think the current efforts to promote it are based on flawed assumptions, often backfire and shield people from content they might otherwise enjoy (all one needs to do is look at episodes of TV shows that disappear on streaming platforms or portions that are edited out to see the effect this has on free expression and our ability to access and view the content we want). People don't have to agree with me. It is certainly possible I am completely wrong. But I don't think it is fair to paint my position in this way when that is clearly not what I am saying.

And this isn't the only world I have encountered, made by an artist, that doesn't use racism or some of these other "negative qualities" to be interesting. You don't have to be offensive to be interesting, or to make good art. I mean, would the original Star Wars trilogy be better with more racism in it? It doesn't have any that I can think of, no one treats chewie as less than a person because he is a wookie. And as a writer and creative person... I don't see it. I don't see this NEED to include these things. You can, if you want, but it isn't NEEDED. There are other ways to be interesting, especially since to be interesting, you usually need to be doing something new, and having people hate other people based on superficial qualities of race/species isn't new. It is old, well-tread ground.

Again my argument isn't, and never has been, worlds are interesting if they have more racism. My argument has been for not limiting designers, artists and writers from handling subjects like that and for people to maybe chill a little and interpret things with a more charitable lens. People in this thread have stated very clearly that WOTC can't include certain things, not even because they are bad, but because they could be perceived as bad or taken the wrong way. This is where I think we are going over the edge.

In the case of Half Elves, I think what I and many others are arguing is that the trope of the outsider who is between two worlds and contends with a range of reactions that can include bigotry, resonates and is interesting to many people (especially to people who have felt that way). But that isn't an argument stating that bigotry has to to exist in all settings for settings to be interesting. It is more an argument for allowing designers some room to do those kinds of things if it feels right, and not always interpreting things in the worst possible light (because we can see how WOTC's fear of making the wrong step in this has led them to simply say Dark Sun can't even be done). I think if the flagship game for Sword and Sorcery can't do basic S&S tropes and sword and sandal tropes, there is an issue of creative constriction going on.

 

[Guest 85555]

No it is not. Restrictions on speech, like the comic code, or Hays Code, stifle creativity, it been seen time and time again.

This is what I am trying to get at. Obviously artists will still operate within that framework. Some of my favorite movies were efforts to work around that. Bride of Frankenstein was affected by the Hayes code if my undertstanding is right. And that is a masterpiece in my opinion. Also a film that gets into very interesting gay themes. But there were many elements that had to be removed or changed because of the Hayes code and one wonders what it may have looked like if the vision of it hadn't been hampered by such rules.