Art is always a servant of ideology. Realism and Photorealism have ideologies associated with them. Photography often involves politics, social inequality. If art has a message, that message is part of an ideology. And it is weird, you keep limiting the power of art, saying it can't do things, but at the same time you absolutely want to prevent it from being used for purposes it has always been used for.
As I said before I don't share this assumption about art. For me actually the most important thing about art isn't message at all but how it moves and makes people feel. That is where I think art is most interesting. I am not saying art can't have a political message or that art has no power. I just think there are other aspects of society that have considerably more direct power on our lives and art is often just a means of people expressing themselves.
Where it does have power though, I would say that is an argument in favor of being less rather than more restrictive. I still that power is vastly overblown. Ideas need fertile ground to take root in. You can't just show propaganda films and expect them to act accordingly, you need to be speaking to ideas, fears and hatreds that are already present.
Usually efforts to control art, whether official, academic, through criticism in media, often end up serving the interests of the powerful (i.e. it is very easy to start with good reasons for why things ought to be controlled in art----Fahrenheit 451 starts with this premise actually----but it often just ends up being a lever exploited by other people down the road. And I realize people here aren't calling for official censorship, but we are talking about whether things ought or should be able to be in a book.
All the above, to be clear is speaking much more generally on the topic and not necessarily related to the more ground level conversation we are having. Where we are just talking about whether people find certain tropes in a fantasy book repugnant or compelling, I think the criticisms often miss the mark and mistake content for message, or read the worst possible interpretation, and that leaves out a lot of interesting content in my opinion. I'm finding the direction people seem to be advocating for, one that just doesn't seem as interesting or as gameable to me, and I think it over prioritizes the concerns being expressed.
And there is no "state" here. There is no government reaching down and trying to reshape this art into something better. It is people. It is the community. Those of us who are looking and not seeing what we want to see. And expressing that, even when told we shall bring about the downfall of society...
I get that, which is why I said ideology or state. I was speaking generally.
And fair enough but understand others of us are looking and doing the same and giving the same kind of reactions about what we'd like to see.
And I think the most frustrating thing, while we have been quibbling over details, is that you still haven't proven your claim. You still have provided nothing to demonstrate that us asking for racism to be removed from the core books of this game and this product will lead to the entirety of art across society being made bland. You are just arguing slippery slope, that if we do this one thing, inevitably this terrible disaster will occur. But we aren't limiting movies, we aren't limiting home games, we aren't limiting novels. Those are different media with different standards, we are limiting the core books of DnD. That's it.
I have offered plenty of reasons, evidence, etc. I don't think you've found it compelling, which is fair. You don't have to. Perhaps I am not making a strong argument to support what I feel I see going on. But I never said you asking for content to be removed from RPG books is going to need to the entirety of art across society being bland (I do think we are in a period of extremely bland and forgettable media with a handful of exceptions, because of trends like this in broader society----but I wouldn't limit that issue to just this one subject, I think it also to do more widely with the way creators and producers are responding to the internet and not necessarily the specific issues involved).
Again, the slippery slope can still happen. And I think we have certainly seen it happen in the RPG hobby. Originally there were just some minor rumblings about orcs and how its okay to like problematic things, but this has very rapidly I would say become an overriding obsession where it covers anything now from exploration adventures where you kill things and take their stuff and attaching that to colonialism, to all sorts of things we've had any number of discussions on here. Perhaps you don't see it as a slope, maybe you see it as a golden path forward to a better hobby. And fair enough. If I agreed with all your suppositions here, I'd probably feel the same way. But I don't. I think these things are leading us to worse content. When I look at where D&D is going in terms of how they are navigating this, it just doesn't look interesting or gameable to me (and of course that is preference, others might have a totally different reaction). For example, I didn't find the new Ravenloft all that compelling. I found the art, the illustrations and some of the ideas great. But I think it paled compared to Curse of Strahd or the original setting material.
Because the "nuance of artistic expression" has bluntly been used to forgive things and convince us to keep them when we don't want them. But even deeper, you are the defender of artistic nuance in this instance, right? But you haven't been able to actually provide answers to what artistic value is under threat.
I would say the ability to express ideas in a way that is genuine and not filled with second guessing or trying to always read an imaginary audiences mind is under threat. So I would say this is threatening artistic expression at its core. Because everything gets put under this microscope and virtually anything is found to be a problem. All you have to do is look back on the pages of this thread and similar ones to see how constraining that might be.
And again, maybe you don't share my concern. That is fine. But I can tell you honestly, both as a player of RPGs and as a designer, I don't think I've ever felt such a chilled atmosphere for creativity.
Yes, some people have stated that they feel the initial change is bad, because of their identity. Others have come forward and said it is good because of the exact same identity. So completely removing all mixed race people from the game would clearly be a mistake.... but they didn't do that. They removed the mechanics. And there are good, non-ideological reasons they might have done that. But even if they did decide to do that... you are policing their decision. Claiming that they cannot possibly have come to that conclusion on their own, but that it MUST be this new culture that throws away all tradition with no consideration for why it exists. But we do consider it. They considered it. And they came to an answer. And you protest. Exactly like we are. You just see us as a threat, because we disagree with you.
I don't see you as a threat at all. I see some of the trends in RPGs right now, especially those stemming from some of these cultural debates, as very well intentioned but ultimately leading to not great content and not a great environment to be creative in as a designer.
In terms of the mechanics, to me the way they've handled it really feels muddled. One I think having mechanical weight is important here. I also think one of the things that really makes D&D work is those initial choices of race and class, including, if you have them, the half elf and half orc being part of that.
But to get that nuance, nuance has to be presented. And it is far too easy for things like DnD tropes to be part of a larger trend, that removes nuance instead of adding it. I want to add nuance. I want to present all people fairly, not just some people. And there are limits, it may be impossible to achieve perfection, but "better than this" is usually possible.
And I don't see D&D as being about portraying people in the real world. I am all for having settings that are diverse, and all for not doing offensive things (though we probably disagree on what qualifies as offensive). But I don't want this to be the priority of design. Don't get me wrong I like books and games that are written by different people from different backgrounds, I think it is good to have more creators from different backgrounds, but I don't think we should make that the reason for doing things if that makes sense. It should be one reason among many, not the overriding one. But the way this issue has unfolded in the hobby it often seems like we are exclusively focused on this, sometimes so much so, to its own determent.
I am also not interested in moral perfection of a product. We aren't making bibles or creating study material for school children. We are making games set in fantasy worlds that I think benefit from being messy and weird sometimes.
