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

[TheSword]

@Oofta I agree with you on almost every point on these boards. However in this case I hope you can see the difference between a mindflayer and someone who walks, talks, mates, eats, matures, Builds, forms societies and acts... not to mention superficially looks like a person.

It costs us nothing... nothing. And needs have absolutely no impact on the way we play the game. Yet if it encourages even a handful of people playing the game then totally worth it.

Two words on the stat block. “Any alignment”, job done.

The great Bard says it best...

“Hath not a xxxxx eyes? Hath not a xxxxxx hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a xxxxx is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

[Edited to remove real world references]

 

[Sacrosanct]

This is a bit of a stretch and mostly is: you see racism,because you want to see racism.

What racist stereotype are Drow filling in?

I didn't say all, I said many. Which is true. Looking at how many goblins and other humanoid creatures we have called monsters in our history, many of them share the same racist caricatures that we have used to degrade other people. Look at how goblins have been depicted, and look at how Jews were depicted by people who hated jews. Many of the features are exactly the same.

Re: Drow, as I mentioned upthread, when you have just about every dark skinned humanoid race = evil, that's a problem. An obvious one that I don't think needs explaining.

 

[Oofta]

Because many of those humanoid races were based off of caricatures of real racist stereotypes in folklore. Mindflayers? Not so much.


I feel this is nonsense. Too much extra burden? All you're doing is "Ok, in my game they are evil." How is that any effort whatsoever? And making humanoids no default alignment loses too much for some people? That speaks more about them than anyone else, because what are you losing? You can still make them evil if you want. The only thing you're losing is to make them evil for everyone else's table as well; to have your preferences as the default everyone else has to modify. needless to say, I am not a fan of people who think the way they want to play should be the way everyone else does too and/or anyone who plays differently than you (general you) are the ones who have to make the changes, and not you.

Seems quite arbitrary to me to say that categorization is bad in some cases but not others.

For many people, alignment is handy. If you see "usually CE" for an orc or "usually LE" for duergar those two little letters have told me a lot about how most creatures of that type they approach the world.

A MM with no alignments I believe would be confusing for a lot of people.

I don't see anything new here.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

My players found the portrayal of Duergar in RotFM somewhat racist. They called it out by suggesting vey all speak vit Russian accent.

 

[Scribe]

Other than the Hair Metal style, what's the issue here?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Other than the Hair Metal style, what's the issue here?

Well ...,.

shakes head

Never mind. I'll let someone else explain this one. Because if you don't see it already, I'm not sure I really want to have this conversation.

 

[prabe]

@Snarf Zagyg What year is that from? Just for my own context.

I have a sinking feeling it's official, and probably from late 1E?

 

[Oofta]

@Oofta I agree with you on almost every point on these boards. However in this case I hope you can see the difference between a mindflayer and someone who walks, talks, mates, eats, matures, Builds, forms societies and acts... not to mention superficially looks like a person.

It costs us nothing... nothing. And needs have absolutely no impact on the way we play the game. Yet if it encourages even a handful of people playing the game then totally worth it.

Two words on the stat block. “Any alignment”, job done.

I think it does cost the game something - we'd be losing a level of simplicity for those who want it. If you know nothing about Grung, right now I can look at the VGtM and see that they're LE. That gives me a starting point on their behavior. Not everyone knows what a kobold is. Now expand that to every monster in the book.

If you want to ignore that alignment it costs nothing (and again, it should be clear that you can ignore it), but take it away? Take it away and it's just one more step towards every humanoid being a human in a rubber mask.

Some things we're just going to disagree on.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Snarf Zagyg What year is that from? Just for my own context.

I have a sinking feeling it's official, and probably from late 1E?

1986- it's the compilation for GDQ.

EDIT- I often assume more familiarity with these older materials.

This was the official compilation of the GDQ set. "Queen of the Spiders," released as 128 page super-module in 1986.

That's the cover art by Keith Parkinson that is ... we will say an artifact of its times.

 

[Scribe]

For sure it's old, or is trying to look old. Looks like a metal cover from that period.