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

[Oofta]

I think this is where we have disagreed in the past, Oofta.

I totally agree that D&D simplifies many things. But I would argue that simplifying how armor works is vastly different than ascribing the values of a culture onto a single race.

I really do believe that scribing the values of a culture onto a single race, whether that's a made up race or not, is racist.

I don't think it's done in D&D in order to be purposefully racist.

But racism doesn't have to be purposeful!

I totally understand that you do not see the practice of ascribing the values of a culture onto a single race as racist. I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise.

I do see it as racist. So in my own D&D games, at my table, I make sure cultures are not defined by race. There might be a dominant race (this village of artisanal muffin bakers is mostly tortles), but I'm going to make sure that every Tortle is not an artisanal muffin baker.

I actually think WotC believes the same thing! But in the effort to keep D&D simple and fantasy oriented, they sometimes fall back on old, harmful practices.

The culture or alignment of any race (or other monsters) in the books are just the defaults. There have to be some base assumptions. I think the nature of the game requires easily identifiable bad guys for most people.

Beyond that, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[fearsomepirate]

When I was a kid, some poor woman got completely lost in our neighborhood, saw us playing with a bunch of other kids, and asked if we knew where some street was. We didn't, and she drove on.

The neighborhood gossip, a woman who was always upset about some imminent doom or another, lived across the street from us, was told be her boys that somebody had asked them for directions, and raised a panic about strangers abducting children. There were multiple parental meetings, phones ringing off the hook and total hysterics in the neighborhood. If you weren't on board with it, you didn't care about Stranger Danger. You were part of the reason millions of kids get abducted every year. Tales continued to spiral out of control, I remember my mother telling me that she heard from another parent that somebody got out of a car, grabbed me by the arm, and tried to take me with them. The police even came and questioned people about it.

If you know somebody's child has been abducted, you should call the cops. Definitely. No doubt about that. Yep.

 

[Stormonu]

My only thought is:

”Warning: The State of California has determined that reading, discussing or playing Dungeons and Dragons can cause cancer.”

 

[wingsandsword]

There might be a dominant race (this village of artisanal muffin bakers is mostly tortles), but I'm going to make sure that every Tortle is not an artisanal muffin baker.

D&D has already been like that for decades.

It hasn't presumed that each and every last member of every fantasy race is nothing but a stereotype.

In 2000, in 3e, we got descriptors of "always" or "usually" or "often" with alignments to describe how often they lived up to typical alignments. In 3e, orcs were "often chaotic evil", meaning they could be any alignment, and more were chaotic evil than any other alignment, but many would be other alignments. . .and removing arbitrary racial restrictions on character classes meant there was nothing saying you couldn't have a Lawful Good Orc Paladin. They'd be uncommon, but it could happen.

If anything, D&D has long encouraged the idea that even among heavily stereotyped fictional races, there are always exceptions to the stereotypes. . .the whole Drizzt Do'Urden series is built on that idea.

 

[Mistwell]

I think both of you have a point.

I think you are right in that using someone's age or skin color as a reason to not listen to them is rather silly and dismissive. Everyone can have a say.

But at the same time I think Umbran is right in that if you aren't a part of a group that is claiming a problem, your voice doesn't get to have more power in the conversation in order to say the problem isn't real. We should take your outsider status to this conversation with a grain of salt. I'm not saying your voice shouldn't be heard... but we should at least acknowledge that you aren't necessarily seeing things truly as they are because you aren't inside the situation. And hopefully (general) you can recognize that while you might try to visualize walking in another person's shoes... you aren't ever going to be actually wearing them, so don't make definitive statements on whether or not they fit.

Who said their opinion should have more power in the conversation? I am just saying give them a fair listen before judging their opinion without even hearing it. That's not more power - that should be the floor level of consideration for a complete stranger you know nothing about other than the color of their skin and rough age level.

You cannot know what their perspective is, whether they really are outsiders to the conversation or are not really in the situation, without at least hearing what they say. It's not like bigotry only takes a couple of forms. There are people who have experienced deep, immense levels of discrimination in their lives but you wouldn't possibly know it from simply looking at them (my grandparents were that). And then there are people who have lived very privileged lives but you also wouldn't know it from looking at them. You're essentially arguing Umbran is able to assess a person's life experiences from the color of their skin and age in some meaningful way.

I hope to live in a society where we in the very least we're willing to hear what the dissent thinks, without dismissing them because they are the dissent. That is how bubbles of thought are created, where we don't value differing perspectives and limit our information to only the perspective we already started with. Certainly you can dismiss dissent after you've heard what it is and have objections to it - but dismissing it because it's dissent and comes from someone of a certain skin color or age seems at best unproductive and at worst harmful to growth.

 

[BookTenTiger]

D&D has already been like that for decades.

It hasn't presumed that each and every last member of every fantasy race is nothing but a stereotype.

In 2000, in 3e, we got descriptors of "always" or "usually" or "often" with alignments to describe how often they lived up to typical alignments. In 3e, orcs were "often chaotic evil", meaning they could be any alignment, and more were chaotic evil than any other alignment, but many would be other alignments. . .and removing arbitrary racial restrictions on character classes meant there was nothing saying you couldn't have a Lawful Good Orc Paladin. They'd be uncommon, but it could happen.

If anything, D&D has long encouraged the idea that even among heavily stereotyped fictional races, there are always exceptions to the stereotypes. . .the whole Drizzt Do'Urden series is built on that idea.

Yep, I agree with this! I think D&D has been moving in the right direction for a while.

It just boggles my mind when some people defend how it used to be, as if that's how it is now.

 

[Alzrius]

Yep, I agree with this! I think D&D has been moving in the right direction for a while.

It just boggles my mind when some people defend how it used to be, as if that's how it is now.

But the 5E orc doesn't have the alignment qualifier that the 3.5E orc has.

 

[Umbran]

We're geeks, we're outcasts, we're the kind who take in fellow outcasts. . .we're not bigots.

We are geeks. We were outcasts¹. We are ready, willing, and able to turn virtually anything into "Us vs Them". We are happy to define outgroups to make ourselves feel strong.

"Fake geek girl" and "not D&D" or "not real roleplaying" put the lie to the idea that we have been particularly welcoming.




1. Not really any more - maybe many older gamers were outcasts in their time, but what was once outcast-geekery is now normalized.

 

[Oofta]

But the 5E orc doesn't have the alignment qualifier that the 3.5E orc has.

It does, it's just buried in the intro to the MM.

 

[turnip_farmer]

But the 5E orc doesn't have the alignment qualifier that the 3.5E orc has.

The introduction to the 5e Monster Manual says this, however

"The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster's alignment to suit the needs of your campaign. If you want a good-aligned green dragon or an evil storm giant, there's nothing stopping you."