D&D General New WOTC racism allegations regarding Hadozee and Spelljammer

[Ruin Explorer]

Ah yes, the joy of ignoring old lore. Celebrate the tossing of old lore because of all of its alleged insensitivity, only to make new crap that is openly worse. Good job, WotC.

The old Hadozee lore was even worse, actually:

Most hadozee were innately and actively curious and were unquenchable optimists. This latter quality lent itself to a tendency to tell dark jokes at inappropriate times. They were expressive—intensely so, resorting to loud whooping, fang-baring, and snarling, depending on the emotion.[3]

Hadozee were naturally as intelligent as humans.[4][1] However, they were not philosophers. They gave little consideration to the ethics and morals of other races; they simply wanted to do good and happy work. They took great joy in the simplest of shipboard tasks and chores.[3]

The hadozee had a great love of the elves. (The elves employed hadozee often, but did not mutually respect them.)[1] Oftentimes, this love of elves resulted in flattery towards them.[3]

If that middle bit isn't making you go "OH GOD NO DON'T GO THERE!", then woof, frankly.

 

[Alexi Lyonhart]

Wait, so the issue is that OLD LORE on A FAN WIKI highlighting some of the badly aged material from over a decade ago is somehow modern WotC's fault?

That's EXTREMELY DISENGENOUS of the writer. WotC has acknowledged its old lore is bad and is trying to distance itself from it. We know about Orc/Drow problem. There are REASONS why WotC has a warning label on all legacy products in DM's Guild. Yes, that lore is terrible, but it's not the MODERN lore. I guess you can squint at that bard art, but the rest doesn't reflect the race as it currently presented.

Which to me tells me that the attempts to rehabilitate Drow, Orcs, and other monster races are doomed to fail because the old lore will always be used to smear attempts to course correct. Unless WotC goes all Lorraine Williams and DMCA's every wiki referencing lore from before 2021, I guess.

The drow don't need rehabilitation. What WOTC needs to do is stop trying to erase Elistrae and her followers and actually DO something with them.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Agreed. I think that "we included tool proficiencies in the race write-up because it is a big part of their culture" is actually less problematic and essentialist than "the Gods made them that way" especially since something like "Tender of the Forge" could be a Background/Feat combo.

Absolutely. "This is the main culture for this race in our main setting, so we're including those cultural traits in the racial stats" isn't problematic. It's annoying for people that don't like the Sword Coast or Greyhawk, but it's not racially problematic.

However, "you are proficient with this weapon/tool because the Gods mandate it" is a problem. That's garbage that WotC should have known to dump years ago. I would prefer Giff to be a bland, generic-big-guy race of hippo people that have the Spelljammer-specific culture of loving firearms than to their ancient gods encoding proficiency in firearms in their genetics (somehow). WotC knew people didn't like cultural traits being in racial mechanics, but didn't realize why, and stumbled into worse racial essentialism than they had before.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Pretty sure both the lore and art is just a coincidence that paints a bad picture. Like pretty sure everyone involved in the art did not know the minstrel thing was even a thing.

 

[Haplo781]

The drow don't need rehabilitation. What WOTC needs to do is stop trying to erase Elistrae and her followers and actually DO something with them.

Just gonna leave this here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Just gonna leave this here.

Really interesting that's from 2012, like, when DND Next was first being thought about and 4E was basically out of commission.

It fits perfectly with the "apology edition" and general retrograde attitudes of early 5E (as so well expressed in now-discontinued Volo's), where WotC seem to have been trying to drag D&D back to 3E or even 1E (and 3E had a bit of that too - 4E didn't, it wanted to take D&D forwards, not backwards, albeit forwards to a weird place maybe not everyone wanted to go).

Thankfully either SCAG or MtoF seems to have reversed it and brought Eilistraee back, but what a dumb thing to do in the first place. Who the hell was asking for that except the very sort of people who don't even play the FR! It's a complete misread of the audience and the era.

 

[Charlaquin]

That picture comparison does not look like coincidence.

But it does sound like classic WotC. Completely oblivious to anything. Though you can't expect anyone but the artist to notice the issue just by looking at the illustration that was handed in.

Mmm… I disagree. I think any sensitivity reader worth their salt should have been expected to notice it.

 

[Alexi Lyonhart]

Really interesting that's from 2012, like, when DND Next was first being thought about and 4E was basically out of commission.

It fits perfectly with the "apology edition" and general retrograde attitudes of early 5E (as so well expressed in now-discontinued Volo's), where WotC seem to have been trying to drag D&D back to 3E or even 1E (and 3E had a bit of that too - 4E didn't, it wanted to take D&D forwards, not backwards, albeit forwards to a weird place maybe not everyone wanted to go).

Thankfully either SCAG or MtoF seems to have reversed it and brought Eilistraee back, but what a dumb thing to do in the first place. Who the hell was asking for that except the very sort of people who don't even play the FR! It's a complete misread of the audience and the era.

They didn't really bring her back, especially when MtoF said she was a goddess barely anyones heard of, whose quest is a pipe dream. Or when they cut her temple out of Dungeon of the Mad mage. Hell, in all those articles about revamping the drow, neither WOTC nor R.A Salvator ever mentioned her or her followers. She's still getting kicked to the curb.

 

[Haplo781]

Really interesting that's from 2012, like, when DND Next was first being thought about and 4E was basically out of commission.

It fits perfectly with the "apology edition" and general retrograde attitudes of early 5E (as so well expressed in now-discontinued Volo's), where WotC seem to have been trying to drag D&D back to 3E or even 1E (and 3E had a bit of that too - 4E didn't, it wanted to take D&D forwards, not backwards, albeit forwards to a weird place maybe not everyone wanted to go).

Thankfully either SCAG or MtoF seems to have reversed it and brought Eilistraee back, but what a dumb thing to do in the first place. Who the hell was asking for that except the very sort of people who don't even play the FR! It's a complete misread of the audience and the era.

The book in question was likely Menzoberranzan, which was one of those "technically 4e but barely had any rules text" books.

 

[Ixal]

I must have missed all those minstrel accusations when the core book with this halfling image came out.

Sometimes someone with a lute is just a iconic bard.