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

[Incenjucar]

This conflation of just an "animal" and "having a reallife human culture" is where racism starts to happen.

Indeed. There are still uncontacted human tribes in the world today who are using stone and wood and bone to survive.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It’s pretty bad, but they did say at the summit IIRC that you can still play the 2014 versions.

As a kid who grew up “the white kid in the brown family” on one side, and “oh you’re actually Mexican aren’t you?” On the other, I’m pretty mad at wotc about this.

We aren’t actually really just one or the other. We are both. Period. Represent that, or this is a waste of time.

Yeah, they seem to be simplifying in a way that erases some important distinctions.

This also seems related to their recent attempts to decouple "culture" from "biology" in your species option and only provide rules for the latter. The differences between a human and an elf are less dramatic than the differences between a centaur and an aarakocra, and these rules are trying to give you the ability to do both.

Maybe they lean into the difference? Like, a tiefling isn't a half-fiend/half-human, mechanically speaking. They don't have half human abiltiies and half "fiend" abiltiies. They're kind of their own thing. Maybe a half-elf or a half-orc could follow the same principle? More...get some ability that feels elf-y or feels orc-y and use that?

 

[Hussar]

This conflation of just an "animal" and "having a reallife human culture" is where racism starts to happen.

To be fair, there’s nothing wrong with a race being a pre-agrarian group of hunter gatherers. That’s fine as far as that goes.

It’s when every group of pre-agrarian hunter gatherers are evil, cruel, destructive and dangerous, lacking in complex culture and all the various other juicy racist elements that the genre has associated with these groups.

It’s pretty darn rare for that hunter gatherer group of no -humans to ever be largely peaceful and good aligned in DnD.

 

[Yaarel]

To be fair, there’s nothing wrong with a race being a pre-agrarian group of hunter gatherers. That’s fine as far as that goes.

It’s when every group of pre-agrarian hunter gatherers are evil, cruel, destructive and dangerous, lacking in complex culture and all the various other juicy racist elements that the genre has associated with these groups.

It’s pretty darn rare for that hunter gatherer group of no -humans to ever be largely peaceful and good aligned in DnD.

In reallife, nomadic hunter-gatherer cultures tend to be extremely peaceful, move to elsewhere away from conflict, and be "Lawful" in the sense of social structure and family group identity.

The big concern is equating recognizable features of a reallife human culture with something in D&D that is "inherently Evil". Such would literally demonize a reallife ethnicity.



But also, there is concern about stereotypes that wrongly equate "early technology" and "shamanism" with being "low Intelligence", "savage", "primitive", "animalistic", and "brutish". These too are historically core racist tropes.

To be fair, Norse animism actually is "animalistic". The Norse shamans intentionally visualize ones own self-identity in the form of an animal to disassociate from ones own human body and to self-induce a trance. Relatedly, one might self-identify ones own body as a corpse for a similar disassociative trance. Hence all the shapeshifting tropes that are core to Norse animistic concepts. But it is easy enough to characterize this kind of Norse animism as sophisticated and involving "high Intelligence".

Diverse reallife animistic cultures around the planet deserve human dignity.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They have the mental capacity to learn how to farm, mine, smith, and grow crops, but at this point in their cultural development they just don't care enough to bother. It's easier to take what they want through brute force, so that's what they do, in general. If presented with an obviously superior force they might be willing to trade or negotiate, but as a group they don't tend to have the patience or forethought for things like alliances or treaties. It's more of a "we won't kill you this time" sort of arrangement.

I'm just going to ignore most of your post, because it feels squicky and focus on this point. Because this point is... wrong. Fundamentally and completely wrong. I know it is your homebrew creation, but your logic is just completely incorrect.

Just to start with the obvious, you claim they are smart enough to farm, but that stealing through brute force is "easier". It isn't. At all. Not only has no one ever died to an arrow through the throat or a firebolt to the face while farming (threats common to raiding, as people fight back) but the amount of food you can get from a successful harvest requires massive wagons to transport. To steal enough food to survive for a year? Impossible to do in a single raid. So you have to steal from multiple settlements, well, those settlements are going to starve to death if they don't get their food back, so they are going to send people to steal it back. So, you are looking at multiple fights for your life. Then, you have only a short window to raid, from the Fall to the Winter, which means you are predictable as well. And if the villages can't steal it back from you and die.... then you have to move, into new, more heavily guarded lands, while also fighting for your life.

And all of this assumes they have weapons and armor... which they would have to steal as well, meaning they are always figting with lower quality equipment.

This is not easier than just farming.

And the no treaties thing also doesn't make sense, because even small children can make alliances.

 

[Chaosmancer]

What the heck is this Fremen Mirage you keep bringing up as if everyone knows what it is? Seems very jargony to me.

I don't know if it is "jargony". It is a term used to describe a narrative trope. The idea that the country dwelling, rough living men are stronger, more morally pure and superior in war to the corrupt, soft, and effemiate men of the cities. It then goes further with the idea of the Fremen overthrowing the cities, only to become decadent, soft and corrupt to be overthrown by new fremen living in the harsh lands.

Basically, any time you see something professing that those that "live off the land" are stronger and have a better moral fiber than city-folk, you are dealing with some variation on this idea. It just makes a convenient shorthand rather than explaining it.

It only makes sense if people buy it. Time will tell I guess.

Yep, and people will buy it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I am knee deep in Pinkerton talk right now. Will get to this. Just want to say Fremen mirage is a simplistic kind of theory about thr cycle of civilizations in history. This is present in Conan, he specifically does get into that idea (so I was m not disputing that). I am saying he just as often is using Conan to contrast country versus city life which isn’t the same thing. That isn’t about a cycle. That is just about rural values versus city values.

How often were the City Values shown to be the correct and good ones?

 

[Guest 85555]

How often were the City Values shown to be the correct and good ones?

They weren’t generally because Conan reflects the rural perspective. but again that doesn’t have to do with a cyclical view of history based on decadence depleting civilization, it has to do with tensions you see all over between city and rural life

 

[Faolyn]

A lot of people still play WotC D&D, so it matters to the community I remain a part of, and what many new players will expect gaming to be like. I don't watch Critical Role or other live plays either, but their effect on the community still matters to me.

But what does it matter? They'll come to their own conclusions and make their own decisions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But what does it matter? They'll come to their own conclusions and make their own decisions.

By that argument, why talk about anything that doesn't affect you personally?