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

[Umbran]

... before you decided to enjoy some tea and cake with Jim Crow

Mod Note:
1) You attribute the quote to Justice & Rule, but the words were written by Chaosmancer.

2) This comes off as pretty dismissive and rude. If this is the way your engagement is going to turn, that's going to become a problem. If you don't want to deal with that problem, please keep it respectful.

Thanks.

 

[Incenjucar]

Not every setting is as fantastic as the one you just sketched out. Most aren't, in fact. The one from the new movie might be.

Not every setting is chock full of racism. Why should "fantastic" be less of a default than "bigoted" in a fantasy game for which there are books for toddlers?

 

[Deset Gled]

I just don't like the idea of effectively removing "half" races from the game just to satisfy some "woke" agenda, when they have their own mechanical and thematic niches in the game that aren't filled by just "you're a human with green skin and tusks."

Like seriously the “you’re really either European or Native, regardless of how you look” solution is just flat out unacceptable.

I plan on being in their faces about it until the day the damn books go to print, if necessary, and they will absolutely lose every cent of future money from me if they don’t figure out how to actually represent mixed folks in a at that doesn’t erase, ya know, my grandmother.

When a rules change can be both racist and pandering to anti-racists at the same time, that's very... I don't really know what that is. But whatever it is, it's a lot of it.

 

[Incenjucar]

When a rules change can be both racist and pandering to anti-racists at the same time, that's very... I don't really know what that is. But whatever it is, it's a lot of it.

This is quite normal for an identity topic and is an inherent complication of it. There is both a need to respect and acknowledge someone's expression of their identity and to not demand that they fulfill that identity in a specific manner and while being careful not to allow someone to appropriate an identity that they have no reasonable claim to which is SUPER complicated and full of gray areas that are used disingenuously by people who want to fight back against having to know people as individuals instead of as categories.

 

[Faolyn]

Both possibilities are valid, and a hundred more besides, and I have nothing against creating a world without slavery or racism. But I also have nothing against creating a world that does have those things.

I agree with all of that. I just also think that it's ok for a published campaign setting to have that same kind of bigotry in it somewhere. It doesn't have to be relegated to an individual home game, even if you keep it out of the core books (which is fine by me).

But why is it OK? What does baked-in racial bigotry do that any other sort of conflict doesn't do? How is racial bigotry even interesting?

People often complain that the nonhumans races are just humans with rubber masks. Wouldn't racial bigotry just be part of that mask?

 

[Faolyn]

Really, shouldn’t that at the very least be a flaw? I’d probably prefer it to be something you are rather than something you are subjected to.

Hey, here’s these game perks for being the victim of racism and bigotry is not really something I want in the game.

It could be a generic "underdog" background, which could have any number of reasons for it besides being the victim of racism. You could be the underdog because you were bullied for being a nerd and now you want to stand up and fight those who bully nerds.

Personally, I'd think game perks may the way to go, because otherwise you'd be saying that your flaw affects how other people think about you (which is not only a bit victim-blaming, but also borders on a magical charm effect), whereas flaws in D&D have tended to be about how you yourself think or act.

 

[Vaalingrade]

As a reminder: 'woke' is a term dating back to the 1920's to denote someone who has become aware or awakened to the reality of racial injustice and inequality in the world. It is not a an 'agenda' it is a state of specific knowledge that some people want to deny, often to preserve the status quo rather than confront and address that knowledge.

 

[Faolyn]

Goodness. The point I was trying to make before you decided to enjoy some tea and cake with Jim Crow, was that each fantastical race has different flavours to bring to the table - humans are generic/your standard, while races like orcs bring an additional internal struggle to fight off their inherent nature, gnolls are even far more codified as their alignment is built in thanks to their origins, elves are blessed with longevity so their perspective on others and life could be skewed, halfs such half-orcs, half-elves must decide who they are and where they fit into the world - the struggle for acceptance is as much an outer as it is an inner battle, tieflings are no better as their tainted blood is betrayed in their appearance - mistrust of them is all too common but unlike halfs they dont have a people, dragonborn are seen as alien and out of place - how much of that reptilian mind is the deciding factor within their everyday lives?...etc

Oh, wow. Do you not realize how that makes everything worse? You are literally making the bigotry against a person their entire personality and turning them into a professional victim. Wow. Also, a lot of those are incredibly bigoted. "Inherent nature"? "Built in alignment"? "Tainted blood betrayed in their appearance"? "Decide who they are"? Except for the alignment, since those don't exist in real life, each of those are things that have been used by real-life bigots against other real-life people.

And not just racists, either. As an example, many people expect bisexuals to decide if they're gay or straight, because bi-erasure is a thing and so, apparently, is being of mixed heritage. I can point out how your orcs above are also insulting to people who, like me, are neurodivergent and have to "struggle to fight off their inherent nature." I spent a lifetime wondering what was wrong with me and desperately trying to be normal, whatever that was, before I got my autism and ADHD diagnoses at the age of 38, because girls didn't get these types of diagnoses when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s.

But hey, it's cool because it makes for a fun character for you to play, right?

Each race brings something different and wonderful to the table. Instead of celebrating that, we're worried that some of them may not be human enough for us to enjoy the game.

There is nothing wonderful about any of these. They're just crass stereotypes.

Oh, but the elves are blessed and only may have a skewed perspective on life. I'm sure they wipe their tears away with hundred dollar bills.

 

[Faolyn]

No. I'm not saying that. I'm saying the racial write-up provides conflicts right out the door. There is nothing unique about fighting over lands. Any people, even the same type of people have those conflicts.
The elven/orc relationship is unique because it stems back to the history between their creators, and now their children are wrapped up in it. Then orcs themselves are tainted with the Mark of Gruumsh which itself is a curse and a blessing.

Which is stupid for other reasons, not the least of it being that not everyone uses Corellon and Gruumsh, or uses them in the way that the books say. The world I made has those two gods but neither of them are creators of the elves or orcs. There's no such thing as a "mark of Gruumsh" in my world because I loathe racial alignments plus, as I said in an earlier post, that phrase has connotations in it that make me not want to use it.

It is also pretty cool that these two races that are so divided by hate,

How? How is that cool.

are the only ones that have the halfs (half-orc, half-elf) - none of the others. This brings the humans into the conflict and could spell more story-lines between a half-orc and a half-elf.


I'm a huge fan of flipped script. What if there was a tribe of orcs that had indeed made peace with an elven clan.

What if most orcs and elves were pretty neutral with each other, and some were even allied or at least traded with each other, except for that one group of orcs and that one group of elves who are warring over land or religious issues or an ancient insult?

Because what you're proposing isn't a flipped script. It's just an exception to the "cool" hatred.

 

[Faolyn]

Why, when people, in this very thread even, actively and explicitly give their reasons for being bothered by these depictions, do you not believe what they are saying?

No, our ability to say "hey, this fictional bad thing is exactly like this real-life bad thing" just means we're looking to be offended.