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

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

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

Orcs of Thar was from AD&D, wasn't it?

This is pretty racially insensitive, but it's definitely not as bad as Orcs of Thar, which actually used racial slurs.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Orcs of Thar was from AD&D, wasn't it?

This is pretty racially insensitive, but it's definitely not as bad as Orcs of Thar, which actually used racial slurs.

Orcs aren't real and never used (as far as I know) as a slur against a set of people. Unlike enslaved dancing monkeys.

 

[Rabulias]

Orcs of Thar was from AD&D, wasn't it?

The Orcs of Thar (1988) (The Orcs of Thar - Wikipedia) was for Basic D&D, not AD&D, and was part of the Known World Gazetteer series.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

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

The new slave lore and the minstrel artwork are from the new 5E Spelljammer. The "personality" description was from a Forgotten Realms wiki which drew heavily from Stormwrack in 3E. The Twitter posters didn't do themselves any favors by including screenshots of that content along with the stuff from the new book since I had to actually go reference the new book to make sure which they were referring to was new and not from an older edition.

 

[Parmandur]

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

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

I mean, the really problematic stuff is allusions to the AD&D material.

 

[Eubani]

If you look for a problem chances are you will find one. In regards to slavery in fiction, it is not a problem as long as it is not glorified and viewed as harmful to the enslaved and something to be stood against.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Orcs aren't real and never used (as far as I know) as a slur against a set of people. Unlike enslaved dancing monkeys.

I didn't say "Orc" was the racial slur. The term "yellow" being applied to caricatured stand-ins of Mongolians and "red" for caricatured stand-ins for Native Americans is indeed using racial slurs in a D&D product. However, @Rabulias pointed out that the product was for Basic D&D, not AD&D, so my statement was inaccurate. However, I'm pretty sure that if you were to search through enough AD&D products (probably Ravenloft), you could fairly easily find content worse than the allusions in this product. I'm not defending this product, I'm just rejecting your statement that this is worse than the problematic parts of D&D's past.

Yeah, this Hadozee is definitely racially insensitive. But there's a world between that and some of the terrible stuff published 30-40 years ago in Basic and Advanced D&D products.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

If you look for a problem chances are you will find one. In regards to slavery in fiction, it is not a problem as long as it is not glorified and viewed as harmful to the enslaved and something to be stood against.

"These people used to be uncivilized monkeys until an outsider civilized and enslaved them. And then that outsider was killed by his own people, who then freed these enslaved monkey people."

Slavery is a touchy subject. It needs to be approached carefully. This was not that.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I didn't say "Orc" was the racial slur. The term "yellow" being applied to caricatured stand-ins of Mongolians and "red" for caricatured stand-ins for Native Americans is indeed using racial slurs in a D&D product. However, @Rabulias pointed out that the product was for Basic D&D, not AD&D, so my statement was inaccurate. However, I'm pretty sure that if you were to search through enough AD&D products (probably Ravenloft), you could fairly easily find content worse than the allusions in this product. I'm not defending this product, I'm just rejecting your statement that this is worse than the problematic parts of D&D's past.

Yeah, this Hadozee is definitely racially insensitive. But there's a world between that and some of the terrible stuff published 30-40 years ago in Basic and Advanced D&D products.

Wow thats crazy

 

[ReshiIRE]

I already refuse to buy any WoTC stuff considering the past racist incidents from WoTC. This... this is just another disgusting thing on top.

I think I won't comment on anything else to do with 5e, not until WoTC stops this shite.