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

[Guest 85555]

@Bedrockgames
I’m glad you’re still with us.

Online harassment and bullying is real, and it has real effects on real people.

Thank you and to be clear here, I am not saying people who did any of this deserve to be labeled as harasses or bullies. I think there is just a toxic atmosphere and many people who thought they were doing the right thing turned their attention to me because of an unfolding controversy. And I think the only way we get out of this is being charitable to the people we've had bad interactions with in these circumstances. My view is I don't want anyone losing work, losing they social life or happiness over any of these controversies (whether they are on the right side or wrong, or somewhere else: it's too easy for people to get drawn into these things and develop a myopic view of the truth)

 

[Guest 85555]

But one can see how overt racism between "elves and dwarves" perpetuates racist ways of things into the reallife future generations.

No, I really don't. I think that is a strange way to think about racisms between demihumans in a fantasy setting.

One is literally "roleplaying" a racist, psychologically modeling the behaviors.

I wouldn't quite go that far. You are playing a dwarf who distrusts elves, not a white guy who hates black people. I don't think the two things really match. But either way we play all kinds of horrible characters in role playing games. People play thieves, murderers, etc. I don't think anyone seriously believes that playing an assassin is going to lead you to become an assassin down the road. Also the racism that exists between elves and dwarves is so tongue in cheek at this point. It is more like playing ribbing in a comedy duo team than actual hatred (and the trope is really they start out distrusting each other and they eventually see the value in the other's way of life). It isn't that different from something like Enemy Mine. I don't think it is in there to say this stuff is totally okay to do to real people in the real world.

D&D is a playful safe space. One can explore taboo subjects in a play space, like a criminal Rogue or worse, depending on a particular gaming table.

You can, and there is zero chance it is going to turn you into a criminal rogue.

Still, I find it difficult to see how perpetuating a fantasy racist culture as part of a core experience that every D&D player everywhere must engage in, is of any benefit to the D&D game or the WotC corporation.

Moreover we can see how the earlier editions of D&D that did encourage racism − depicted racisms that were not so far away from actual reallife racisms, whether black skin being assumed to signify Evil, Orcs explicitly belittling reallife ethnicities, the representation of slaves as being void of any human dignity or presence, and much more.

Look if there are examples of orcs that veer too closely to something that looks like real world racist caricatures or something, those don't need to be in the game. You can still have evil orcs without anything like that. My mental imagine of orcs is basically pink skinned pig men. But I do think this is also a very precarious road because what seems to happen a lot is people equate using any cultural trappings for flavor as indicating that race is a standing for a specific culture. There I think you are missing out. If there are roman orcs, and viking orcs and mongol orcs, then we should also be able to have native american orcs and so forth (and yeah, take out stuff like Chief Sitting Drool----haven't read that product but I get the concern expressed).

These fantasy racisms lack merit.

 

[Incenjucar]

In any event, I think the threading of the needle is going to require WotC to have "Half-Orc/Half-Human" and "Half-Elf/Half-Human" species with mixed traits minus any bigotry survival powers as examples of an alternative way to mix species other than the introduced method.

 

[gban007]

They could have come up with a name. Instead, you are either a human or an elf in terms of mechanics. You show your heritage by cosmetic appearance.

I liked that the half-elf has special mechanics.

Well yeah, the implementation itself seems flawed, and I think they need to rethink it, and a later post of mine said it would also be good to maintain the two existing mixed races as examples of the new mechanics when they land on them, albeit with different names.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't think any child is going to walk away with that conclusion at all. I grew up with dwarves and elves having misgivings towards one another and it never occurred to me that they were saying racism was good or normal. It never impacted how I saw people in the real world.

Strange, I came away with the idea that the game things racism was not a bad thing, since good people were engaging in it.

Of course, I started with 2e, back when alignments were important and not adhering to it meant that you would shift to a different alignment, with massive penalties attached to it. Being racist wasn't enough to stop someone from being good in-game.

 

[gban007]

I don't think any child is going to walk away with that conclusion at all. I grew up with dwarves and elves having misgivings towards one another and it never occurred to me that they were saying racism was good or normal. It never impacted how I saw people in the real world.

While I don't think it says it is good, if all the settings and the core books have racism in them (these 'misgivings' are pretty well shown as racism really) it does tend to lend itself to the idea that racism is a natural outcome of different races / species existing, and so while we have learnt from the past and improved on it, it could lead to a more relaxed view on the past, with feeling that it was inevitable when I don't think it was.
I don't see that it is inevitable that with multiple species there will be 'misgivings', so I don't think this should necessarily be in core books, but better in setting books where you can better devote time to explaining how the racism came about, and not having to shorthand it should lead to less chance of inadvertently using real life rhetoric to explain it away.
This is why I think the attitude towards half-elves in Dragonlance is fine, as it is built up to see why hams and elves have such animosity, and why both sides would look down on half-elves, and with Tanis' case why his situation makes it even worse.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Not a rare occurrence, really. They’re grasping for a thing they can do right now, but it isn’t a simple problem.

 

[Vaalingrade]

In any event, I think the threading of the needle is going to require WotC to have "Half-Orc/Half-Human" and "Half-Elf/Half-Human" species with mixed traits minus any bigotry survival powers as examples of an alternative way to mix species other than the introduced method.

In the meta, I just wonder if there's a point to the half-orc if you're not going to allow mix-heritage characters of all types if the Orc is now playable.

Plain and simple, the Half-orc has historically been a stop-gap because the orc isn't playable in the core (for... reasons). Now that those... reasons... are cleared and the orc is in play, why have them at all if you're not going to make all mixed heritages more than flavor text?

Edit: Even if one just wants them to be there as a character the DM is encouraged to harass the player with in-character bigotry for taking, Teifling and (likely) Orc will have you covered.

 

[Incenjucar]

In the meta, I just wonder if there's a point to the half-orc if you're not going to allow mix-heritage characters of all types if the Orc is now playable.

Plain and simple, the Half-orc has historically been a stop-gap because the orc isn't playable in the core (for... reasons). Now that those... reasons... are cleared and the orc is in play, why have them at all if you're not going to make all mixed heritages more than flavor text?

Edit: Even if one just wants them to be there as a character the DM is encouraged to harass the player with in-character bigotry for taking, Teifling and (likely) Orc will have you covered.

At this point I think it mostly come down to not wanting to lose what was previously gained and the sentiment attached to it. I don't have that sentiment, personally, but if I had played a half-orc for several years perhaps I would?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But that's not an answer.

Why is racial bigotry interesting and fun?

Why is fighting for territory or religion or to avenge an ancient insult interesting and fun? They're all ways of generating conflict, and none of them should be off the table entirely in published worldbuilding.