D&D 5E (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

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It is mystifying to see someone saying on one hand that the game and community don't have an issue with race while at the same time contributing the ongoing hissy fit over WotC daring the call attention to the one time in 50 YEARS that a product was produced by a fully PoC team.

And being shocked that people might have an issue with saying they shouldn't talk about it and to keep the very idea on the down low.

That's it. That's the thing. That's the problem with race in the hobby. The thing you re saying.
 

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It isn't hard to make bad guys, it isn't hard to make bad guys who go hard. You don't need racial slurs or slavery to do it. As CHILDREN'S SHOWS have shown us.
Pretty sure my favourite franchise (Bionicle) growing up didn't have any racism, but it did end up pretty dark sometimes and had plenty of villains.

Also I'm fully aware that you don't need racism to make a setting. My homebrew setting doesn't utilise it either.

I'm just pointing out it's one possible tool or many a DM can use to make a 'bad guy'. One bad guy might be a murderer, one might be a slaver, one might be attacking other races, one might want to explode the world, one might want to get immortality via becoming a liche. It's all justification to point your players at a bad guy to either go and bring them in, or stab them 37 times in the chest.

And DnD as a game is 'dark' by its very definition. It's literally a game where the players walk around stabbing/shooting/burning people. Unless you play without combat, or rework combat to only knock people and not actually hurt them that is.

I've not used racism as the tool to make the bad guys 'bad' in my setting, as in that world it doesn't exist in any notable form. I just don't believe that having racism exist in the setting automatically makes you a racist.
 

I was asking your opinions.


So basically, keep the minorities in the background so it doesn't lower the property game's value.

See, when I realize a product is made by people who are different than me, my first thought is, huh, OK. What I don't think that it was a diversity hire made to fill out a quota or entice the "woke" crowd, and I don't automatically wonder if they're qualified or not to do their jobs well. What I do assume is that, if it's a big company like WotC, or a smaller gaming company that produces good work in general, that whoever this person is, they must have done work good enough to get them this job.

IMO, if a person sees a creator who is different than they are and their first thought is that it was done to be more marketable or that the creator may not be qualified, then that person needs to work on being less bigoted. And I honestly don't care if bigots don't get their gaming whims catered to.


I also vote with my wallet. If I see a game relying on evil slaver races because it can't be bothered to come up with more interesting motivations for the bad guys, or has sexism or racism in the name of "verisimilitude," or other junk like that, I don't buy it. I really don't care if those things were popular for a few decades. Lots of things were popular for long periods of time but still deserve to go die on a trash heap.


So above, you were saying that diversity hires should be kept quiet because people might not think they're qualified to writers and were just hired to be marketable. Here you're saying that people who may qualified to be editors but may have no other experience should become game designers.

Uh-huh.

So which is it? Should non-white people be creators or not? Is it OK if non-white people are creators as long as nobody knows they're creators? Should we also go back to the days when women who wrote SF used initials so nobody would realize they had a feminine first name?


So... I can't even begin to tell you why this is ridiculous.

While I'm not going to say that everyone needs a college education, I am going to say that what you're saying is horribly bigoted: "if you want to get minorities to buy these books, get uneducated people to write them." I mean, seriously?" While also saying that minority employees may cause readers to doubt they were hired for any reason other than marketability?


I'm not sure what the existence of game stores has to do with non-white/straight/male creators, unless you think TSR/WotC owns all the stores and only opens them in particular areas.

I mean, I live in literally one of the most diverse, heavily populated, and wealthiest counties in the US, in a very diverse, populated, and wealthy state (even though I'm poor af), and there are still barely any gaming stores here. Also, in this day and age, brick-and-mortar stores are not nearly as popular as buying online, and pdfs are cheaper than dead tree books. I can count the number of actual, physical books I've bought since the start of last year on one hand, but I've bought tons of different pdfs--if you count the games I got as part of itchio charity bundles or humble bundle sales, well over a thousand, in fact.

Young people who have an interest in RPGs will almost certainly discover what sales are going on right now through gaming subreddits or facebook pages or discord channels.


I literally have no idea what you mean about "charitable conversations" here.

Also, for the most part, people aren't accused of racism just because they disagree with a particular thing. If they're accused of racism, it's nearly always because they've actually said or done something racist.

It's just that a lot of people have internalized racism or other forms of bigotry to the point where it's normal for them, so they see someone say something "normal" and get upset when it's pointed out that no, it's actually bigoted. And they get upset because to them, those thoughts are normal.


I don't think any important women or minority designers have been glossed over.

But the fact that there were one or two such designers for every twenty or fifty white male designers simply isn't enough. You can't say "here's a woman, that means we're not sexist!" If you don't want to be bigoted then the number of woman, non-binary people, non-white people, gay people, transgender people, etc., who work in this field needs to increase until it's no longer noteworthy that they exist.

And before you get the wrong idea, I'm definitely not saying "get rid of the white male designers." I'm saying "get more non-white, non-male designers."


You keep saying that the games now are childish. I'd love a few examples. Games which are marketed to adults in which it's assumed you're playing as an adult, I mean, not settings like Strixhaven where you're assumed to be playing a teenager, I mean. Because that's one setting out of... a lot.

Could it just be that writing styles have changed all over and you just haven't gotten used to it? I like comics, but older comics were a heck of a lot wordier than modern comics are, which (rightly) let the art take some of the storytelling burden and don't assume the readers need to have everything spelled out.
Just wanna say this is perhaps the most aggressively uncharitable interpretation of a post that I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s pretty out of pocket.
 

And DnD as a game is 'dark' by its very definition. It's literally a game where the players walk around stabbing/shooting/burning people. Unless you play without combat, or rework combat to only knock people and not actually hurt them that is.
I am mostly a pacifist in real life. Real world violence is a terrible thing to witness or be a part of in my opinion (though I do understand real life is also complicated and there are times where peace would be a self destructive option). But I do enjoy violent media. However if we are going to examine the ethics of it, I would argue stripping out the grit and focusing on the heroism exclusively, would be more concerning if I were worried about the impact of RPG violence on culture (I am not worried about it but many of the critiques in these threads seem to be coming from a concern about media's impact on culture and behavior). Heroic violence is probably the single biggest propaganda piece you see in media around the world to justify violence against the enemy. When you create a world that focuses on the positive heroic violence against tyranny, that can be thrilling, but it is also the basic plot of most propaganda movies. Now I love movies about getting revenge against powerful evils, but the value of things like moral gray, playing evil characters and outcasts, it injects more moral complexity into these stories. Make no mistake, if you are shooting/burning people heroically, you are still shooting/burning people. Trying to make shooting/burning people an optimistic tale of found family and banding together, I think glosses over the details of what is being done. If on top of that, you are watering down the evils in the world, so the violence you are inflicting is against people who do all the evil save the ones that people in the present deeply dislike, I think it is worse because the justified violence is even less justifiable.

Again, I don't particularly worry about this stuff. I think violence in RPGs serves a cathartic effect and won't lead to real world violence, just like dwarves hating elves won't lead to real world racism. But I mention this because if we are going to take moral lenses to these arguments, the ones being advanced would also have a number of issues.
 

Who wants Dark Sun? I mean, me, sure, but I'm waaaay outside WotC's core demographic for D&D. And practically speaking, removing any mention of bigotry from the entries in the PHB isn't going to change how the game is actually played. In all my years, I can't recall ever seeing an adventure where a PC experienced some form of discrimination because they were a half-elf, elf, dwarf, or something else except maybe in Ravenloft. But even there is was mostly because they were outsiders not because of their species. Of the changes to D&D over the years, I literally can't think of one that has less of a consequence so far as game play is concerned.

I have seen plenty of adventures where bigotry played a role (and not usually in an edgelordy way but just as a natural product of the setting). And a setting like ravenloft featured it heavily because in most domains all demihumans were viewed with suspicion.

Who wants Dark Sun? I think a lot of people, judging from the very strong reaction the statement about it from WOTC received. I also was prompted by these conversations to go back to the original boxed set and read it again for the first time in years. I think it is truly a magnificent work. Just in terms of how to build a setting and the history of settings in D&D, it is definitely something designers should examine and revisit and something I think would appeal to a lot of game groups right now (and lets not forget it isn't like Dark Sun is a property that was dead for 30 years, they revived it in 4E and even people who couldn't stand 4E often had very good things to say about 4E Dark Sun: how close it was to the original I don't know as I only played in a 4E dark sun campaign and never read the 4E version of the rules).

A lot of the reactions to these seemingly minor changes is "what is the big deal?" or "just do X instead". I think that overlooks how these things have become essential features of the game for a reason. The half elf in particular because that is something that changed over time and the concept of the half elf as the outcast who lives between two worlds resonated really strongly with people. Each time you take a little thing like this away, my argument is that is indeed a step towards more pablum content (especially since the stated aim is removing flavor people might object to-----if you are applying the same process to cuisine, you likely end up with something approaching gruel in the end). Nothing wrong with gruel. I happen to like it. But I also like many other flavor palettes and spices in the cabinet.
 

I just don't believe that having racism exist in the setting automatically makes you a racist.
Something absolutely no one has said.

Participating in a racist system or liking a thing that is problematic doesn't make you racist. People act like they' being called racist when these issues are pointed out because they'd developed a parasocial relationship with those things and have have connected liking those things to their persona, so a perceived attack on that thing is 'clearly' an attack on them.

And those people need to stop and take a good, hard look in the mirror and maybe not go off on tirades about how it's the people who don't want to experience slavery in-game are bad actually or pop off with some dumb stuff about how emotional or historical trauma don't matter because it's not physical wounds like we were back in the day before science and empathy were invented.
 

I'm not sure what the existence of game stores has to do with non-white/straight/male creators, unless you think TSR/WotC owns all the stores and only opens them in particular areas.

Missed this point but feel it is important. Perhaps game stores are not as important as they once were. So that specific part of the post could be a bad example, but I mentioned it mainly to say there are places with a lot of economic and racial diversity where gaming culture doesn't have a strong presence. While WOTC and other companies don't open game stores, and game stores are probably on their way out, they do still decide where and how to interact with the public. There are a lot of cool public events in the city I was in (we lived there for years until last week). I think hosting more game events in those kind of public places would be a great way to draw a wider audience with more diverse experiences.

I mean, I live in literally one of the most diverse, heavily populated, and wealthiest counties in the US, in a very diverse, populated, and wealthy state (even though I'm poor af), and there are still barely any gaming stores here. Also, in this day and age, brick-and-mortar stores are not nearly as popular as buying online, and pdfs are cheaper than dead tree books. I can count the number of actual, physical books I've bought since the start of last year on one hand, but I've bought tons of different pdfs--if you count the games I got as part of itchio charity bundles or humble bundle sales, well over a thousand, in fact.

I am sure there are plenty of exceptions. But at one point I was looking to open a game store and the two things every business adviser told me to look for were the presence of colleges in the area and a very high median income level. In my area this pans out, games stores are either in cities near colleges, or in suburbs. But the same isn't true of comic stores. Where I lived you did have many comic stores, so my point is it seems there is a potential audience not being served.

Young people who have an interest in RPGs will almost certainly discover what sales are going on right now through gaming subreddits or facebook pages or discord channels.

People still live in the real world though. Online isn't everything (it is important). But people still go to conventions, other public events, and regularly socialize out in the world. I am almost a shut in, so I like being able to do most of my gaming online. But I also understand I would reach a much bigger audience if I did demos at conventions, games stores and other types of venues.
 

Something absolutely no one has said.

Participating in a racist system or liking a thing that is problematic doesn't make you racist. People act like they' being called racist when these issues are pointed out because they'd developed a parasocial relationship with those things and have have connected liking those things to their persona, so a perceived attack on that thing is 'clearly' an attack on them.

And those people need to stop and take a good, hard look in the mirror and maybe not go off on tirades about how it's the people who don't want to experience slavery in-game are bad actually or pop off with some dumb stuff about how emotional or historical trauma don't matter because it's not physical wounds like we were back in the day before science and empathy were invented.
Except we're not talking about forcing topics like slavery on people wanting to play the game. DnD is now fully focused on the settings which are not about slavery, racism, or that sort of topic. And imo that's the correct path to take, the main settings should not be covering and focusing all these controversial topics which make a lot of people uncomfortable.

If a Dark Sun setting book came out, people wouldn't be forced to go and buy it and play in that setting, because it would be one of many official settings and people who don't want those topics could pick one of the others instead. But now settings like Dark Sun are unable to exist at all, because if WotC published them they would get a massive amount of criticism and lash-back from the public.
 

Overall I think D&D leans on the same types of foes over and over too much.

GW's Warhammer makes a living off of have 21+ flavors of evil by letting every faction lean on a possibly of a vice. So there is always some faction you are mentally okay with slaughtering. If you don't like slavery, don't play Dark Elf/Eldar or Skaven. There are the Papa Nurgle's Children and Crazy Vampire Pirates.

If D&D is to appeal to a diverse audience, it has to stop being so weak creatively and keep trying to reprint old stuff or port over the MTG's team creatively.
 

Let's take that Dark Sun thing. WoTC has stated they don't want to remake Dark Sun because pretty much the entire setting is based around slavery. Everything functions because of slavery. But, WoTC has also released Theros, a world steeped in Greek Myths with major drivers of the plot being the fickle gods and their relationships with the mortals. Are we less entertained by Theros?
Yes. 100%. I am less entertained by Theros than Dark Sun. No contest there.
 

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