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

[Hussar]

Yeah I just don’t see why they needed yet another slave race in the game. Just no. Yazirians weren’t slaves. This was just unnecessary and then dropping a minstrel image at the end is just a very bad idea.

There’s no need to draw from other sources. This was dumb enough.

 

[overgeeked]

This is why I don't think we will ever get 5e Dark Sun.

Well, to be fair, there is a world of difference between problematic slavery existing in Dark Sun and...checks notes...an uplifted flying monkey species that was enslaved and has art that depicts a member of that species in a literal Minstrel Show pose.

 

[Hussar]

Well, to be fair, there is a world of difference between problematic slavery existing in Dark Sun and...checks notes...an uplifted flying monkey species that was enslaved and has art that depicts a member of that species in a literal Minstrel Show pose.

Oh and let’s not forget enslaved for profit as an added bonus. Oh and uplifted slaves who, prior to being enslaved, were just animals.

yikes.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

In the original YouTube thread on the video and in a parallel Facebook thread some folks were saying that they a monkey race is inherently a non-starter for them and they find the entire concept problematic even if the race was themed differently. I didn't see any mentions of this in reaction to the playtest or older versions of the race in previous editions, but WOTC needs to find a way to get this stuff in front of people in the D&D community who are new to the edition and don't look at playtest material (who are a lot of folks for various reasons) but might have that sort of reaction once it is available to the general public.

If a monkey race inherently bothers enough people because of unfortunate historical reasons maybe this sort of discussion was always inevitable.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Yeah I just don’t see why they needed yet another slave race in the game. Just no. Yazirians weren’t slaves. This was just unnecessary and then dropping a minstrel image at the end is just a very bad idea.

There’s no need to draw from other sources. This was dumb enough.

I think there's a fair point that, cultural sensitivity issues aside, it's just going back to an overused well to make another freed slave race and they didn't do anything interesting with it.

Here they also had a perfectly fine, reasonably interesting, narrative of them being lab animals who overthrew the researcher, but then decided to throw an explicit slave narrative into the mix. Possibly it was just an attempt to not make it too obvious of a Planet of the Apes reference.

I was also surprised they went back to the "a wizard did it" well once more, when they could have had the researcher be, say, a crazed druid awakening them, or something.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Here they also had a perfectly fine, reasonably interesting, narrative of them being lab animals who overthrew the researcher, but then decided to throw an explicit slave narrative into the mix. Possibly it was just an attempt to not make it too obvious of a Planet of the Apes referrence.

It probably would have worked better with rats, or even turtles.

 

[Bitbrain]

Several hundred years ago, a wizard visited Yazir, the hadozee home world, with a small fleet of spelljamming ships. Under the wizard’s direction, apprentices laid magic traps and captured dozens of hadozees. The wizard fed the captives an experimental elixir that enlarged them and turned them into sapient, bipedal beings. The elixir had the side effect of intensifying the hadozees’ panic response, making them more resilient when harmed.

I’m suddenly very glad that I didn’t purchase this book.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

It probably would have worked better with rats, or even turtles.

I think the problem there was that it's Spelljammer and they wanted to reference Planet of the Apes. If the Rats of NIMH had had their own planet (Earth all along, or otherwise) we might be looking at a ratfolk race.

 

[TerraDave]

Minstrel show - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I think we gotten to the bottom of this. Its not from the new book.

But what makes a "minstrel" in this sense is not someone with a lute.

Its someone in blackface.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Wow. Can't even say AD&D had something so blatant.

Guess they can wait a year and toss that Legacy warning on there.