D&D General Old School DND talks if DND is racist.

[Ruin Explorer]

I meant more that D&D has made a successful franchise of refreshing and updating previous editions IP. Created in those earlier editions.

Do we honestly think Curse of Strahd didn’t benefit from Tracey Hickman’s consulting?

Developing D&D shouldn’t be a zero sum game, where attracting diversity comes at the cost of our long time loyal fan base. As has been said, the bigots are a small proportion mostly born out of ignorance. Their voice is amplified by the medium of the internet but I think we’re doing a pretty good job of drowning them out.

Look at this thread. Aside from a very small number of exceptions no one is debating whether we progress, just how to do it and how fast.

...that’s progress.

Sorry, I absolutely do think Curse of Strahd didn't benefit from Tracey Hickman's consulting. I think it was a stunt to attract/mollify grogs, nothing more. And indeed that's kind of a great example of the problems WotC has had - they hired a consultant but both they and the consultant totally failed to spot stuff that, even to my age group, was pretty dodgy and out-of-line, and I was surprised to see had come back after 4E threw it overboard. So they had to do yet more consulting on Strahd and redo it.

It's easy to say "it's not zero sum game", and I agree, but it is a game where you may have to accept some things you don't like in the name of making the game reach a broader audience and accept that you're more a nice holdover than a major target audience. As for "the bigots are a small proportion amplified by the internet", well, that's half-true, but I've met D&D-playing actual neo-nazis before, in real life, not online. I do think ironically 4E kind of dumped a lot of them (totally unintentionally, I presume, but everyone I knew with nasty opinions went PF - let's be clear I don't think this was because 4E was amazing or PF attracted "bad people", I think it was a very simple case of "new thing bad" for them, hardly surprising), and then 5E, despite the "apologia for 4E" angle was consciously modern in both design and values, right from the get-go so probably dumped even more, and earlier retroclone and OSR stuff swept a lot of them away from mainline D&D too. None of that should be taken as criticisms of OSR or used to make assumptions about players of it in 2021 btw - a lot of modern OSR-rules stuff is hyper-progressive, but in the earlier retroclone/OSR era it was sadly not as hard as one might hope to find people with retrograde opinions to match their retro gaming (still a small minority of course).

I'm not quite old enough to remember one popular cultural catch-phrase - "You can't trust anyone over 30" - in real time. That sentiment is just as unhelpful today as it was then.

You misspelled helpful.

I mean, I'm 42 and as I've got older it's only become more clear to me that there is some validity in that attitude, because over a certain age, people both get more compromised, and more skilled in misrepresenting their agenda and manipulating people. Obviously it's an overstatement, but the values and and agenda of a 25-year-old tend to be a hell of a lot more obvious and open than those of a 45-year-old, in my experience. Age and guile and all that.

 

[Oofta]

With regard to this topic, discuss and change according to your values.

however, this whole “old school players are x” or “OSR” players are “y” stuff is absurd.

so let’s say there is a higher percentage of that population that behaves a certain way, is it good to ascribe that characteristic to that population?

this is so divisive and stupid. It is stereotyping that hurts the game. The best argument for alienating the older base is always “the new players are younger.” So why did D&D next bother with everyone? And if your whole thing is screw older players we have enough new ones, I suspect the actual purchasing power skews older. I own darn near everything including tons of minis. If it’s only purchasing power that matters I guess I should get 3 votes?

there is prejudice and racism in the human population, there is racism and prejudice in the D&D population. What’s your point? Stamp it out if you encounter it but get out with the broad generalizations.

there is a rather sickening trend of demonizing parts of the player base that goes way back and we don’t have to keep feeding the beast.

Yeah, it seems like any whiff of racism real or imagined gets people up in arms. Which, racism and bigotry is a real issue and should be discussed. I just disagree with some of the suggestions. Which is fine. It should be a discussion, not listening to just those that scream loudest.

But ageism? Perfectly okay. It's those cranky old bastards that need to just go away and stop hurting the hobby.

 

[BookTenTiger]

With regard to this topic, discuss and change according to your values.

however, this whole “old school players are x” or “OSR” players are “y” stuff is absurd.

Who is saying this? Where are you getting this perspective from?

I'm not sure that's the actual conversation that's happening here.

If it were as simple as "x people are racist," then this conversation would be pretty short. "Don't play with racists" is a pretty easy solution.

I believe this topic is more about how systemic racism is or is not present in the game of D&D.

 

[BookTenTiger]

But ageism? Perfectly okay. It's those cranky old bastards that need to just go away and stop hurting the hobby.

Who is saying this?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I haven't watched the video yet, but... a couple of older white men talking about racism? Not sure that's going to be relevatory.

Especially given the title.

Best summary I can give. Some players maybe racists but the Author of the article is just picking on D&D to get notice.

I someone doubt that is remotely a fair description of the article in question.

which is oddly also prevalent in certain kinds of social justice rhetoric,

Lol whataboutism, really? Even if this idea wasn’t full of it, and it is, as it’s based on bad-faith reversals rather than on sound reasoning, it wouldn’t mean anything in relation to racial essentialism being a bad thing.

I'd like to say that in the roughly quarter century I've been a part of the gaming community, it's been one of the most inclusive, tolerant subcultures I've ever known. We're geeks, we're outcasts, we're the kind who take in fellow outcasts. . .we're not bigots.

And I’ve been playing for just as long, and have seen plenty of racism, homophobia, ableism, misogyny, Islamophobia, and transphobia, at D&D tables.

There are just as many bigots in our community as there are in the general population, per capita.

I can't help but notice that KKK titles have, for at least a century and a half, been... strongly evocative... of fantasy and myth: Grand Wizard, Goblins, Cyclops, Ghouls, Hydras, Titans. Maybe it's just that there's a lot of white supremacists who are attracted to reducing complex, thinking populations and nuanced issues into two-dimensional fairy-tale epics where one side is incorruptibly pure and the other is irredeemably evil.

Yeah there is a reason a lot of folks are suspicious of anyone who is strongly resistant to changing orcs or changing how race works in D&D, and that reason is experience.

 

[Lanefan]

1e was all over the place on this.

The 1e DMG and 1e Dragon articles have a number of points about conformity across tables.

True - but even in that quoted passage there's reference to DMs doing their own thing.

Later editions have a lot of rules options for variability of rule system across systems. For example 3.5 had Unearthed Arcana, a whole sourcebook on alternate rule systems different from the core ones.

The 5e DMG is full of variable rules options ranging from healing paces to combat mechanics like what grants advantage.

Both of those examples are heavily curated "variables", though. Neither of them promote or encourage any sort of independent homebrew or kitbash ethic the way earlier editions did right in the core books.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm not quite old enough to remember one popular cultural catch-phrase - "You can't trust anyone over 30" - in real time. That sentiment is just as unhelpful today as it was then.

It's not about just being old. It's about being old, thinking you know best, and thinking your desires is what others should desire.

Just how movies and genre change, D&D attitude might change. What is cool in 1980s D&D gaming might not be cool in 2020s D&D gaming. And until time travel is invent, the young can't judge the old in the old's time about their trends in real time.

Gaming just has it better than Hollywood because there are fewer old masters and sycophants that hog up positions and keep things stale around.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I've booted players for racism and sexism, so yeah, being a gamer is no barrier to intolerance. There are bigots in every sort of scene, subgroup, or subculture, and they have to be rooted out. Because their very presence is corrupting. If you choose to game with bigots, you run the real risk of good people being driven away. And then you're stuck with just the awful.

Yep. It’s just another version of the Nazi Bar Rule.

If you let a polite clean cut nazi stay in your bar, he will bring friends who also seem nice, and they will bring friends, and by the time you realize you have a Nazi bar, they’re so entrenched that getting rid of them will almost be harder than just closing up and opening a new bar elsewhere.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yep. It’s just another version of the Nazi Bar Rule.

If you let a polite clean cut nazi stay in your bar, he will bring friends who also seem nice, and they will bring friends, and by the time you realize you have a Nazi bar, they’re so entrenched that getting rid of them will almost be harder than just closing up and opening a new bar elsewhere.

I just had a similar conversation the other day with one of my long time real life and FB friends. He has a ton of friends, and some of them are pretty horrible people who are unabashed racists and bigots (although he is not). When I talked to him about it, he was "I don't censor anything from people, and hear all sides, and maybe they will change their minds (spoiler, they never do)."

My response was, "If you invite all these people into your house, and some of them insist on repeatedly smearing feces on the wall and insulting the other people there, every else will leave and probably think you approve of their behavior. Since, you know, you keep inviting them into your house and all..."

 

[JEB]

On the flip side, there's guys like Daryl Davis:
Takes a lot of courage to do what he does, though.