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

[Guest 85555]

How are we supposed to change art to remove people hurling slurs and being seen as the heroes for it, if we don't say "this is not acceptable"? How can we get acceptance, if we don't say that non-acceptance isn't acceptable?

You want to stop us from "narrowing the scope of art" because you fear we shall go too far and destroy too much... but you haven't shown any evidence. Meanwhile, we have plenty of evidence of the contrary. Even as someone might lose some money over an outrage... they tend to recover and make even more money afterwards. Very few lives have been destroyed by people calling for us to stop being hateful.

We are currently debating whether it is okay for D&D to do what it started out doing (killing orcs and goblins in dungeons). Dark Sun isn't getting made because WOTC understands doing so would be opening a can of worms in the present culture, we are constantly having discussions about what problematic elements of art, movies, books, shows, etc have to be removed (and as I pointed out, things are being censored for modern sensibilities, shows and movies are being taken down, and there are consequences online for people who don't agree with this stuff). You can say these things aren't having an effect, but they are. And trying to make this about people using slurs, I think blurs the issue here because most of the time it has nothing to do with any of that (and when it does it is something much more understandable like using the term 'half' to describe a 'half-elf'----and in that case, the idea that half is a slur is deeply, deeply contested (often by the very people folks are saying they want to protect). I think it is very hard to honestly look at the state of the hobby and the culture and not see this stuff is having an impact on free expression.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I've skimmed it and missed a lot. Let's call it quarter following that conversation.

Then don't act surprised when someone who has been following it doesn't feel the need to re-litigate 75% of the conversation.

Who said you can't advocate for change? You can, but you should have a reason that stands up. Slavery, especially since it exists and continues to exist in 5e, is not a good reason in my opinion.

1) Bedrock is the person I've been talking to, so make a guess

2) And I've listed the reasons that stand up, so I've done my due diligence.

Do you not understand the difference between "want them to make it" and "demand that they make it?"

What's the difference when you declare that their reasons are invalid?

No. It's because that sentence was written vaguely, but if you don't want to clarify there's nothing that I can comment on.

Okay

 

[Guest 85555]

You've never heard the phrase "Boston Native" before? Or would you find the term inaccurate? Is someone who was born and raised in Boston not a boston native?

Sure I have, and I am a Boston native. But if some thieves from Canada passed through my area of Boston, invaded my home and took my stuff, the news wouldn't say "Boston native attacked" they would say "Resident falls victim to home invasion" or something like that.

 

[Chaosmancer]

From what I can see in the official adventures I'm scanning through, combat against orc/goblins happens due to said individuals attacking and raiding caravans and villages. So the adventurers are hired to go and kill them.

What's more, said encampments the players go to are simply war camps, with only fighting individuals there. There aren't civilians or children around. You could literally drop in humans or dwarves or elves and it still works fine. They're bandits no matter what species you give them.

So I'm not sure who is making these advantures where you go to orc villages full of childen and let the players go full Anakin Skywalker on them.

How many adventures have non-tribal people attacking and raiding caravans and villages?

 

[Guest 85555]

Additionally, I haven't seen your reason for switching from caves and dungeons being "lairs" to being "big homes" yet, but it does seem like that plays into this.

Well they vary but mostly, especially when they have the stereotypical band of orcs or goblins in them, it is more like a bandit headquarters or lair I would say. But that could also be thought of as a home I suppose. My point was it isn't necessary connected to some broader culture of indigenous orcs. They could just be roaming bands of raiding orcs, which they usually are in D&D because for a game that logic works

 

[Chaosmancer]

Porbably for the same reason we saw Captain Kirk fighting with the Klingons and Romulans rather than the Vulcans or Tellerites. Kirk had 99 problems, but Vulcans destroying Federation outposts next to the Neutral Zone wasn't one of 'em. Elves killing intruders encroaching on their territory, cutting down their trees, and probably littering is largely acceptable behavior. The very human Duke of Earl might do the same thing to anyone who dares to cut down the trees in his duchy without permission. Elves, other than the Drow, dont' typically raid your town and slaughter your people just because they want to take some of your stuff.

So, even though "well, technically, you could have those enemies" we... never do. We never see halflings raiding villages and stealing their cattle. It's goblins. We never see dwarves leaving behind a slaughtered caravan of merchants. It's orcs.

Because some enemies are acceptable, and some enemies aren't. And THAT is the problem with the depiction. It is always the same people, the same species, doing it, even when it makes sense that it has to sometimes happen with others.

And anyway, even if orcs aren't kill on sight, killing things and taking their stuff is still the bread & butter of D&D game play.

And there are ways to do that that don't involve slaughtering native populations for the crime of existing nearby, and we can have depictions of orcs and goblins in the core game that aren't just "murdering savages that murder."

 

[Justice and Rule]

Westerns are about all kinds of things. That is a very reductive description of the genre. I mean yes it was set during a time of American expansion, but westerns tend to follow a much similar pattern to wuxia, of a hero wandering into a frontier town beset by bandits or local bullies and has to confront them. It is also important to remember that China had a frontier too. There is also the whole cowboys versus indians you can sometimes get in the genre. But I think part of the problem with these types of arguments is they have to take something like westerns and reduce them to three things that match what colonialism was about. And again, most people playing D&D, even if they are aware of the western themes, are not making a connection to that and colonialism. Like I said, it is so removed. Just like some of the adventure stories that come from genres that were influenced by colonialist narratives, are so removed it doesn't really matter any more.

Obviously you can connect westerns to colonialism. And there is this idea of going into a frontier and confronting what is there that can come from stories about the New World (or from things like the Aeneid, classic sagas, etc). Wherever the ideas are being drawn from they are so removed from the conflicts they were part, and they are only just an influence. If the game were doing something like actually advocating for some form of Neo-colonialism. I could understand the upset. But to me it registers the same as when people complain about violent movies.

Yes, Westerns can be about a lot of things, but the simple matter is that the themes that show through in D&D are ones that deeply connect to colonialism. And I think a lot of people don't need to make a direct connection to colonialism to understand why it's squicky to go to someone's town and kill them off and take their stuff because they are a certain species, or why we've seen the origins of half-Orcs change over time, or just the view of "monster races" over time.

Again, I don't think anyone is really making this connection anymore, and I think it is a fairly simplistic take to be honest. But again, even if you are right, the colonialist themes are so many times removed, it just doesn't matter. Really what you should be worried about, if you are concerned about the influences of media, isn't the esoteric and invisible residue that might somehow be polluting us, but what actual messages and propaganda is being advanced. I know I have seen revenge movies that drew on westerns in order to be militaristic propaganda pieces. I can still enjoy those movies but I am a lot more worried about the militaristic propaganda (often propaganda that distorts history) than I am about the colonialist residue from western media

You say my take is simplistic, but I find the whole "Well, I just don't think anyone sees that" as far more simplistic because it's just dismissive. We can chart the evolution of how the game has progressed, how the style of play has progressed, how views on different "monster races" have progressed, and I'd say that the view is more prominent than ever.

Because those are the things that make it colonialism. We probably just need to move past this point as we obviously aren't going to agree. But I just don't see how if it doesn't have the essential elements of colonialism, and the elements it does have are things that could exist in any other conflict, why it follows that it has to be colonialism. And again, even if you could draw a connection, I don't see why that matters as no one even thinks about it (at least they didn't until these kinds of discussions started happening).

The "essential elements of colonialism" are not present at all times in every action. Many of them would be present in the systems overall, but individual events and actions would not have many of them because they are merely parts of it, not the whole. You are trying to argue that it must be the whole of colonialism to be colonialism, and that standard is just unnecessary.

Again this describes lots of things, not just colonialism. Being there for the loot describes vikings, pirates (and pirates go back well before modern colonialism), people who rob houses, etc. It describes something that happens in most wars and conflict. There are always opportunists looking to exploit situations.

No, because you're trying to remove the context of "kill a certain race we've deemed evil/inferior/uncivilized/bad" part of things. Pirates and burglars don't care about that. That's an aspect that you yourself enunciated and can't take away.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

How many adventures have non-tribal people attacking and raiding caravans and villages?

Well from the adventures I've got, here are some of the none tribal enemies involved. (I'm spoilering this in case people haven't played them):

• Spoiler: Adventure Spoilers

  Lost Mine has the Redbrands taking control of the village and murdering and stealing at will. The leader of those group being a human from the Lord's Alliance.
  [*]It has a drow as an enemy too, who are not tribal.
  [*]Dragon of Icespire Peak has a dragon as its main bad guy.
  [*]Princes of the Apocalypse has organised cults as the main bad guys, who are acting as bandits. Attacking and raiding caravans and villages is part of what they've been doing. These cults are largely made up of species like humans.
  [*]Icewind Dale has Duergar as one of the main enemies, who are definitely not a tribal society. They are sabotaging towns and killing people at will.
  [*]Light of Xaryxis (Spelljammer) has Astral Elves, Neogi, Mind Flayers, Vampirates, Giff, and Gith as raiders. All of which have large and powerful organised societies.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

So, even though "well, technically, you could have those enemies" we... never do. We never see halflings raiding villages and stealing their cattle. It's goblins.

What about Dark Sun? With its cannibal halflings who will hunt, kill, and eat other species.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But elves and fairies were pretty and got bowdlerized into cutesy characters for children's books, while orcs were picked up by Tolkien to be the evil minions of the BBEG.

Um…or elves were always complex and enigmatic, and that’s interesting, so people…find interest in them.

Like elves were also mysterious Fey kings and queens, tricksters and helpful beings (often the same individual elf), malicious forest things and animistic representations of the land and in some places you’re dead great grandad. IOW, they have never been one thing.

Now, sure you could say the same of trolls and huldra, but they weren’t helpful to heroes in stories, and I can’t think of any folklore around trolls helping you kill all the cows because you put out an offering of milk and honey.