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

[Mind of tempest]

well, this is going to be unpleasant for them, we going to get a product recall or something?

 

[Reynard]

Even if it is accidental on the part of the artist it still speaks to.embedded cultural racism and should have been caught.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Actually, has this stuff been around for a bit now? (I don't care for Spelljammer anyway so I haven't been following any of it).

Are people just starting to notice something that offends them?

 

[Cadence]

I mean... yeah... But it's also the -same- instrument in both pictures. Just with a shorter neck for the Hadozee.

Same instrument as the Halfling on page 26 of the PHB - but the Hadozee is relatively bigger. (The hat make me wonder more than the instrument...).

But that's why I'm curious what the artist used for inspiration and if they were told to make it a bard.

 

[Mind of tempest]

you would think they would have a cultural sensitivity department by now like just a bunch of people with degrees sitting in a room who reviews stuff to make sure it does not have any problem with it?

 

[Malmuria]

Wow. I noticed this on twitter and at first I thought it was just bad form to have a race that has a slavery narrative. But looking at parts of the description people are posting...wow. This is Nu-TSR level stuff...

 

[Remathilis]

Sigh...

My proposal for 5.5. No lore. No art. Just rules and statblocks.

They can produce a thousand Radiant Citadels, but this is what they will be remembered for...

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Even if it is accidental on the part of the artist it still speaks to.embedded cultural racism and should have been caught.

How did they not have a Sensitivity Reader for this book?! They knew Spelljammer had some bad stuff in it before. They (wisely) left the Gromman and Aperusa in the past and didn't even mention them in these books (unless I missed something). One would think that if you know that a setting previously had some pretty racist content in it, they would make certain that they had a Sensitivity Reader working on this project to catch anything racist that snuck into the product that they might have missed.

This isn't a good look. It really isn't. They seemed like they were going in the right direction recently, with the changes to Ravenloft to get rid of the Caliban and fix the Vistani and the recent Radiant Citadel book being written by BIPOC. But this looks bad. Really bad. I'm worried about Dragonlance now that they've proven that racist BS like this can still get in their products.

 

[Cadence]

Wow. I noticed this on twitter and at first I thought it was just bad form to have a race that has a slavery narrative. But looking at parts of the description people are posting...wow. This is Nu-TSR level stuff...

Gack! Where is that personality one from. I didn't see that in the spelljammer Adventurer's guide or Menagerie. :-/

 

[Alzrius]

Same instrument as the Halfling on page 26 of the PHB - but the Hadozee is relatively bigger. (The hat make me wonder more than the instrument...).

But that's why I'm curious what the artist used for inspiration and if they were told to make it a bard.

I dunno if they were told to make a bard or not, but in all honesty when I look at that picture I get the impression that their inspiration was the bard character from The Gamers: Dorkness Rising.