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

[Chaosmancer]

Yes. 100%. I am less entertained by Theros than Dark Sun. No contest there.

Okay, cool. So WoTC should be forced to make Dark Sun to entertain you? They shouldn't be allowed to work on another property until they have released a Dark Sun product that meets your standards?

Or are they allowed to make decisions about the types of properties they want to make?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Imperial Officer: "Where are you going with that... thing?"

Princess Leia: "Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?"

Okay, I didn't remember those lines. Do they make the movie better? Should more people have referred to Chewie as a non-person to really make the Star Wars movie cinema masterpieces?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Again i think the whole issue is due to lack of creativity of the D&D 5e designers and running away from the good ideas of 4e.

For example, 5e took away the traditionalist history of half orcs being born of sexual assault of human by the always evil orcs. In it's place it offers little story. Half Orcs are the result of human and orc tribes or gangs cementing alliances via marriage. A half orc makes abetter chief than an orc due to their high intelligence.

Well isn't the intelligent orc, the orog?
And we aren't doing ability penalties. So what's the difference between orc and half orc now?

WOTC: IDK. Just pretend your orc had a human dad.

4e did half orc better offering new ways half-orcs could be seen.

1. Half Orc are transformed humans doused by Gruumsh's blood when Corellon gouged out his eye.
2. The hobgoblin empire had orc troops and magically created half orcs to lead them.
3. Kord created half orcs own his own, copying the best elements of orcs and humans.

Beyond that Half Orcs were more agile whereas Orcs were tougher. Eveen through barbarians where in the same book Half Orcs appeared, they weren't linked to them. The suggested classes were fighter ranger, and rogue. The sample half orcs were rogue, warden, and ranger. Half Orcs were short tempered but they could read the situation and remain calm whereas an orc would fly off the handle.

5e just made Half Orc the Orc stand in and a +2 STR race.

With Orcs in the 2024 PHB and Racial ASI out, WotC just dropped half orcs rather than create or reuse lore and mechanics for them.

This is not necessarily true. 4e was actually the edition where I had a new player to DnD specifically ask me if they could change their half-orc to an orc, because the lore of the origins of the half-orc made them uncomfortable. Also, note that the hobgoblin empire didn't "magically" create the half-orcs, it just says they created them. Which, you know, since there was also the line about human barbarians breeding with orcs for strength, is a bit obvious.


And frankly, I kept "half-orcs are just orcs" for the entirety of 5e, and no one had a problem with it. The biggest problem was for me, when Orcs were made and they mechanically sucked.

 

[Aldarc]

Okay, I didn't remember those lines. Do they make the movie better? Should more people have referred to Chewie as a non-person to really make the Star Wars movie cinema masterpieces?

These are pretty quotable lines. I also forgot Leia's iconic line, "I'd just as soon kiss a wookie" in response to Han Solo's line "Afraid that I was gonna leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?"

These quotes give us a pretty good sense that humans, on the whole, look down on wookies or consider them equals, essentially as sub-humans. That general condescension stands in contrast with the close relationship that Han has with Chewbacca, so that gives us a deeper sense of his character as well.

Does it make the movie better? Who can say? Does it tell us about the world and its characters with greater depth through "less is more" pieces of dialogue? I would say that it does.

 

[Faolyn]

Okay, I didn't remember those lines. Do they make the movie better? Should more people have referred to Chewie as a non-person to really make the Star Wars movie cinema masterpieces?

Star Wars is a weird case, because both the the officer and Leia were rude about Chewie. So if the idea was to show that the Empire is The Bad Guy through racism, they didn't do it well because Leia was also rude. If they were trying to show that aliens are rare and humans in general don't think of them as people, they did a bad job because of the cantina scene, which showed that aliens were everywhere and intermingled with humans quite easily.

I think it's possible they were trying to say that maybe the "upper class" people were all humans and non-humans were relegated to the lower classes: the Imperial officer and the Princess Senator versus people slumming it in a scummy, villainous bar.

But in reality, it's mostly a given that Lucas just kept thinking of Chewie as Han's loyal pet rather than a person--unlike Greedo, Chewie didn't even get subtitles--and didn't really think about how Leia's line could come across to those who saw Chewie as a person.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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.

Did you quote the wrong person?

Because this has no relation to what was quoted, just a retread of that idea that people should be able to do whatever they want except criticize people for saying and doing dumb or terrible things, which is the most wrong thing you can do.

 

[Minigiant]

This is not necessarily true. 4e was actually the edition where I had a new player to DnD specifically ask me if they could change their half-orc to an orc, because the lore of the origins of the half-orc made them uncomfortable. Also, note that the hobgoblin empire didn't "magically" create the half-orcs, it just says they created them. Which, you know, since there was also the line about human barbarians breeding with orcs for strength, is a bit obvious.


And frankly, I kept "half-orcs are just orcs" for the entirety of 5e, and no one had a problem with it. The biggest problem was for me, when Orcs were made and they mechanically sucked.

Well the lore also said hobgoblins created common goblins and that process was magical. So it is also valid to think they did the same with half orcs.

And its not like anyone knows the true origin. There is no canon origin for 4e POL half orcs. They are just a race with a mix of orc and human traits.

But to WOTC, Half-orc were the PC orcs and Orcs the NPCs orcs. With the rules changes, WOTC has no idea how to differentiate them, refused to create one, and more or less gave up.

 

[Guest 85555]

Some time ago, I was reading a story on a forum, and the co-author was writing a side fiction. In this side fiction an old british soldier/spy showed up, styled all over the former slave/repressed minority who was running a new government division, and then started solving the problems of the foreign nation he was in. A fellow reader pointed out that that was... kind of messed up? Like, having a British person showing up minorities by ignoring the laws of the foreign land and solving their problems for them REALLY reminded this reader of all the imperialism britain did, especially since this old man was old enough to have been alive at the time of that imperialism.

The co-author broke down, said that their work was worthless, that they didn't know why they thought they could write anything, and then flipped on a dime and called the reader who pointed out the negative trope in their story a vicious troll who was just trying to tear them down.

I only have a short amount of time at the moment, so I will try to take as much of this post as I can, starting with this point. I may be brief though.

On that particular trope. Again, personally I don't have an issue with it once in a while. I loved the miniseries shogun for example and the book. And there are similar works like that. I can certainly see the complaint. But at the same time, I think it is about the individual work, and while the complaint may have some validity to it, where I tend to take issue is with the idea that a trope needs to be completely eliminated. I also find in these discussions people get very reductive about the tropes and about the stories involved.

That said, I have no issue with someone criticizing a story on a forum. I think provided it wasn't insanely ruthless or something, and just part of a conversation that is fine. If it veered into other territory that might be different.

Based on your synopsis it is hard to say what was going on because at first the writer felt their work was no good, but then turned on the poster. So I feel like some emotional beats are missing and I don't have the full context. But not a great reaction. At the same time, reactions have been heightened by the state of internet discourse, so I am pretty dulled when I see someone freak out, and I usually forget about it later and don't judge the poster.

My response? As a fellow writer?

If a single person's criticism of a legitimate problematic trope is enough to get you to stop making art, then you need to stop, because you don't have the will to keep making art. Because, guess what? There was a Trans activist recently who made content with Budweiser, and was the response from their critics a pointed comment? No, actually one of their critics pulled out a semi-automatic rifle and emptied a magazine into the product. Black Jazz artists recieved death threats, and were MURDERED for their art.... and Jazz still exists.

Sure, a single critique shouldn't stop an artist. And death threats are clearly something I was pointing to earlier as unacceptable efforts to silence artists and writers. I see that as the ultimate expression of censorship (a person feeling so threatened by an idea, a piece of art, or feeling it is so evil and destructive the only solution is to kill someone).

The point about black jazz, that is why I feel the way I do about art. At least it is one of the reasons, and why I generally don't side with mass movements to censor. Saying people shouldn't care about these efforts to bring art down, because other artists died for their free expression is in my view missing the point of that history lesson. You don't look at something like the cultural revolution for example, which was massive in terms of scale and intensity, and very destructive to art and culture, and human lives, and then point to someone whose life was ruined by a handful of critics and internet trolls (say someone who lost work and is now unable to work in the industry they were part of) by pointing out how much worse the cultural revolution was. Those pieces of history are the lessons informing our concern about these kinds of efforts to stifle creative expression and to impose a one true way approach.

Yes, if I see something in a product that I don't like and see as a legitimate thing to protest, I'll protest it. And I'm not going to care one iota if it might maybe make some artist question themselves, because if they don't question themselves there was no point in the telling them what I saw as a problem. And since the other side is more than willing to threaten death and violence to shut up artists they don't like? I think the artists whom I'm saying "hey, you should do better" can suck it up.

And I said, protest is free expression too so that is your right. If someone were trying to stop you from protesting I would be against that as well. My only point is don't fall into the trap of "Protest=good" because it doesn't. People protest things all the times in destructive ways, and protest can and has been used to repress art.

 

[Guest 85555]

Exactly, in the face of death threats the art wasn't stopped. So mild criticism and pointing out problems should not irreparably damage art for all time and space. And if an artist really is coming at it from a good angle, then people are going to notice and hear that message.

Thankfully Piss Christ still exists. But his career was affected, his life was impacted. He lost grant money which means work. And he was a practicing Catholic who was condemned as a blasphemer by people from his own religion and from other branches of Christianity. So it isn't like he or Piss Christ came out unscathed. After that incident, you couldn't just find prints of it anywhere. Those kinds of cultural moments get very intense. But it doesn't follow that because death threats didn't stop one instance of art (they have certainly stopped it in other instances) that lesser attempts at censorship have no effect. Again, we live in an age where episodes of telivision shows routinely get taken off streaming platforms over these kinds of protests.

As for actual mild criticism. I am not particularly worried about it. I am worried about some of the more intense criticism and activism against content that doesn't even give people a chance to talk and deliberate.

But they might also have thought it was a good angle... and been wrong. And what do you propose we do about that? Just let them go forward in ignorance that they got it wrong?

Sure, like I said, say what you have to say. But I would emphasize more charitable interpretations of art. A lot of times when I see this, the artist has one take, and some people online react in a very harsh and strong way to something they perceive as a problem. But not everyone is going to agree it is a problem. You are assuming the person is going forward in ignorance if they don't hear your wisdom. Maybe they aren't ignorant. You should also consider the possibility you might be wrong, that the artist is right

The most useless criticism you can ever receive is "this is fine". Because that means you cannot change to make it good, because you don't know what the problem is. And an artist who can't take earnest criticism, isn't worth my time to care about. Not when there are artists who face literal secret police from their home countries trying to murder them, and those people keep doing art. A mild comment about how an artist should try and improve their message is nothing compared to that.

I would agree the most useless criticism can be it is fine (though there are times it can be helpful). And if you are giving earnest criticism, again I have no issue. I have more of an issue when there are calls for content, tropes, etc not to appear in media ever again, or for people to completely freak out when such a trope emerges. And I am generally against efforts to cancel creators, ruin them, etc (which often follow from these kinds of criticisms).

And again, I think you are missing the lesson to be learned about artists in other countries facing secret police and repressive authoritarian governments. I've met artists from such countries, usually their message to artists in places where we have freedom but the censorship is more self imposed is to be brave in the face of it, because they understand the stakes more than anyone.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Did you quote the wrong person?

Because this has no relation to what was quoted, just a retread of that idea that people should be able to do whatever they want except criticize people for saying and doing dumb or terrible things, which is the most wrong thing you can do.

It was directly related to what you said. Just maybe articulated badly.

Me: People are being called out simply for making settings including controversial topics.
You: That's not happening and no one is saying that.
Me: Settings like Dark Sun are literally being dropped because WotC is no longer able to handle the topics it contains without controversy.

Edit: I just want to make it clear, I don't think every setting needs those topics. I fact I think that the 'main' setting and even the majority of official settings shouldn't force players to deal with racism and slavery and other painful topics.