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

[Minigiant]

I don't have a problem with the Barbarian name. I like the name.

The issue is tying the Barbarian to the "dumb foreigner who rages and smashes".

4e had the Thaneborn barbarian. A barbarian who is strong in mind and is valuable in mental challenges. 5e had 10 years to make a smart,wise, or charismatic barbarian but didn't.

That's core issue.

If you are not willing to display a fantasy archetpe of having any mental strenght, it better not have any ties to real life. ZERO.
if you want stupid orcs who are mostly raiders, you better design them from scratch and not touch anything for Real Earth.

That's the issue for WOTC. Their designers are either:
1) Unable to design cultures from scratch
2) Afraid to design cultures because they fear they have internal biases and blindspots and the design team are almost all the same demo
and/or
3) Afraid to redesign old cultures of of fear of upsetting old school fans.

That's why the orcs in the playtest and MOTM are bland as poop and they are trying to remove it half orcs.

It's not the "half" part. That's just a name. They are willing to rename "race".

No. It's because the Head Designers do trust neither their staff nor themselves to rewrite orc lore and hybrid race lore.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's particularly frustrating that, in a golden age of access to cultural sensitivity consultants and writers from diverse backgrounds, they don't seem willing to do the kind of research and verification that even amateur hobbyist writers sometimes go through. Perhaps some sort of budgeting or annual bonus protection thing?

 

[Guest 85555]

I don't have a problem with the Barbarian name. I like the name.

The issue is tying the Barbarian to the "dumb foreigner who rages and smashes".

4e had the Thaneborn barbarian. A barbarian who is strong in mind and is valuable in mental challenges. 5e had 10 years to make a smart,wise, or charismatic barbarian but didn't.

That's core issue.

If you are not willing to display a fantasy archetpe of having any mental strenght, it better not have any ties to real life. ZERO.
if you want stupid orcs who are mostly raiders, you better design them from scratch and not touch anything for Real Earth.

That's the issue for WOTC. Their designers are either:
1) Unable to design cultures from scratch
2) Afraid to design cultures because they fear they have internal biases and blindspots and the design team are almost all the same demo
and/or
3) Afraid to redesign old cultures of of fear of upsetting old school fans.

That's why the orcs in the playtest and MOTM are bland as poop and they are trying to remove it half orcs.

It's not the "half" part. That's just a name. They are willing to rename "race".

No. It's because the Head Designers do trust neither their staff nor themselves to rewrite orc lore and hybrid race lore.

I don't think we disagree that much that things have grown bland in many regards. I think where we do disagree is it probably has less to do to with the designers themselves (though it is possible) and more to do with what I was saying before about the present environment constraining creativity (they have no choice but to second guess constantly if they want to avoid controversy of any kind at all).

 

[Minigiant]

I don't think we disagree that much that things have grown bland in many regards. I think where we do disagree is it probably has less to do to with the designers themselves (though it is possible) and more to do with what I was saying before about the present environment constraining creativity (they have no choice but to second guess constantly if they want to avoid controversy of any kind at all).

But that's on the designers.

If they can' t design for a diverse audience but want D&D to have diverse customers, they need to hire people who can do the job.

 

[Guest 85555]

But that's on the designers.

If they can' t design for a diverse audience but want D&D to have diverse customers, they need to hire people who can do the job.

Honestly I think it isn't just about reaching a diverse audience, but I get that we disagree on some fundamentals, so I don't think it is gong to be extremely productive to get too deep into that again. I just would add that I believe whether they can or not, won't matter because it isn't so much about diversity as it is about the social climate, and that is going to be in a heightened state of critique and sensitivity until the cultural moment passes (and I do think it is starting to pass). So they could be fully capable of that, but people would start to be critical of other elements or elements enlightened people haven't yet explored as critically. I think it has more to do with the role of social media and the fact that we are still getting used to one of the biggest advances in communication technology in a long time than the cultural issues that have become the focus of the discussion (if this were happening in 1995 or 1985, the anger against designers may have taken a different form but it would still be present I think----it is about a significant change in technology).

 

[Minigiant]

Honestly I think it isn't just about reaching a diverse audience, but I get that we disagree on some fundamentals, so I don't think it is gong to be extremely productive to get too deep into that again. I just would add that I believe whether they can or not, won't matter because it isn't so much about diversity as it is about the social climate, and that is going to be in a heightened state of critique and sensitivity until the cultural moment passes (and I do think it is starting to pass). So they could be fully capable of that, but people would start to be critical of other elements or elements enlightened people haven't yet explored as critically. I think it has more to do with the role of social media and the fact that we are still getting used to one of the biggest advances in communication technology in a long time than the cultural issues that have become the focus of the discussion (if this were happening in 1995 or 1985, the anger against designers may have taken a different form but it would still be present I think----it is about a significant change in technology).

That's where I disagree. These issues aren't new. It's isn't a social climate issue. The social climate just brought it up.

There is no waiting it out. The issues wont go away. And more will come with time.

That is the burden of a very old but alive IP.

 

[Guest 85555]

That's where I disagree. These issues aren't new. It's isn't a social climate issue. The social climate just brought it up.

And that's fair I don't expect you to agree. This is just how I perceive things. I will say I am not saying people are raising new issues, I just think the social climate could have given primacy to any number of concerns.

There is no waiting it out. The issues wont go away. And more will come with time.

This is part of my point. I think this is an ongoing thing that if it doesn't pass, intensifies and will increasingly find things that are objectionable.

 

[Blue Orange]

'Dumb Conan' came, as far as I can tell, from the Schwarzenegger movie where he doesn't talk much, on account of Arnie's thick acccent.

The irony is Schwarzenegger actually was a skillful businessman and campaigner (I'll leave the judgment of his tenure as governor aside), he just couldn't sound smart in a movie. So a smart guy sounding dumb while playing a smart character produced a dumb archetype. The arts are funny sometimes.

 

[Maxperson]

Conan was smart. The D&D barbarian says its based on Conan but was designed to play like the outsider caricature form xenophopic cultures.

Are you talking about the books or the movie? The D&D barbarian was based on the Conan movie entering D&D the year Conan came out. Conan in the movie was suspicious of and disliked magic,

The monk was rumored to be based on the Kung Fu tv series and not actual martial arts movies.

Same difference. A martial arts TV show and not a movie. Still not based on what you said. You said, "copy and pasted real history or false retellings of real history" neither of which apply to a TV show that is not real history or a false retelling of real history.

Saying it was based on the TV show is also either wrong or at the very least partially wrong. There was no quivering palm in the TV show. There was quivering palm in the movies. Kwai Chang also never had any of the other 1e monk abilities, some of which are reminiscent of kung fu movie abilities. Nor did Kwai Chang have the ability to move faster, hit harder than tank, etc. Those are Kung Fu movie based. In fact, other than having the name Monk, I see nothing else in common with the TV show.

I'd say that rumor is false and that the class was based on Kung Fu movies.

and the hobgoblin racial paint is my point. They painted Japanese over hobgoblins so you can tell the difference between the 2 raider monster humaniods.

The hobgoblins is not "copy and pasted real history or false retellings of real history." It has a superficial resemblance in part to asians, but that's as far as it goes. If a superficial resemblance is all it takes to be a copy/paste of real history or a false retelling of real history, then every RPG ever made does this and can't possibly remove it.

TSR and WOTC just repeated these idea year after year with no thought into them unless they hit scandal or did 4e-style sacred cow slaughter.

If by repeat you mean never used them, you are correct. The 3.5 hobgoblin has no asian appearance whatsoever and the barbarian doesn't even distrust magic, let alone hate it to the point of destroying it. Further, there's nothing at all that would even imply that a 3.5 barbarian is part of some sort of xenophobic culture. The 3.5 monk is similarly not based on the Kung Fu TV show, but has more in common with the movies.

There wasn't much lore back then. That's the point. They just painted the nonhumans and not-advanced nonEmpire humans in in the dress of nonEuropeans.

You can't be a copy/paste of history OR a false retelling of real history without a bunch of lore that retells or falsely retells it.

 

[Minigiant]

Are you talking about the books or the movie? The D&D barbarian was based on the Conan movie entering D&D the year Conan came out. Conan in the movie was suspicious of and disliked magic,

The books. That's kinda the problem.

The class's mechanics were first based on the Conan movie.
The class's lore and name is based on the ideas of how a xenophobic culture saw other cultures.
The class's inspiration is the Conan books.

The game however never put them together in a logical unit.

The game is still telling new players to read Conan to get the barbarian. But the barbarian is nothing like Book Conan.

The lore and mechanics of many aspects of D&D are not put together in cohesive units.

So decdes later when issues arise, we have to remove parts of a mess that already has holes.