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

[MGibster]

At the same time, I'll ask what I've asked elsewhere: if approaching game design from the perspective that all sentient beings should be respected, how is that reconciled with a game which often centers around killing said beings and taking their stuff?

In D&D, you're typically killing sentient beings and taking their stuff because they're doing bad things. Those orcs are raiding nearby settlements, those bugbears are in service to an evil sorcerer bent on destruction, or those hill giants have decided Mrs. O'Leary's cows belong to them now. I don't think I've heard anyone argue that it's wrong for adventure games to have violence just that someone shouldn't see an orc and just know it's evil because it's an orc.

 

[Oofta]

Grey can be neutral because he is a mortal (if a potentially extremely long lived one). This is an explicit aspect of that world, that mortals are defined by free will, while many supernatural creatures have their drives and personality defined by their nature, even if that nature is rooted in some choice made long ago.

Cambions should probably have free will in D&D . Demons needn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with saying Orcus could become a good guy theoretically, but there is also nothing wrong with saying he cannot.

I agree. I also think the same thing you say about Orcus could be said about orcs and it should be campaign dependent.

 

[TheSword]

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall take the flack on both sides.

Politics [of D&D] is a strong and slow boring of hard [message] boards..

 

[Mannahnin]

I'll break it to you. A lot of Germans fighting for Hitler in WW2 weren't bad people. They loved their families and their kids. They did as their government ordered and I'm sure many of them knew nothing about the Holocaust. Guess what? Americans shot them just the same. We didn't ask to see their nazi party identification before shooting.

The "myth of the clean Wehrmacht" has been debunked for years. Regular German army often and eagerly participated in war crimes and atrocities. It wasn't just the SS. A lot of folks were motivated to pretend they didn't know, but a lot sure did.

DER SPIEGEL | Online-Nachrichten

www.spiegel.de

 

[hopeless]

So what did I miss?
Sounds like reaching by both sides instead of accepting there are difference between editions but to call some racist that is reaching.
This is why session zero is a thing!

 

[Argyle King]

Well, this is the first I’ve ever heard of anyone suggesting on any level that demons being evil is racist, so...that’s a weird way to start my day.

No, demons being evil is not comparable to a race of mortal people being evil. They are inherently different cases.

That's somewhat arguable.

There are cases of Angels "falling" and a case of a Succubus Paladin in D&D lore. This would seem to imply there is some possibility that any D&D creature could be "good."

Which isn't to say that I think you're wrong. I'm simply attempting to explore the mental space of how this discussion appears to be approaching the subject.

It has also been suggested by others that we should ignore the established in-game/in-world way things work and judge things through the lens of our real-life world.

Does that lead to PCs being evil?

PCs tend toward killing creatures and hoarding wealth.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, I've said it every time these thread start. That any line we draw is completely arbitrary. Either creatures with intelligence close to or exceeding the intelligence of people have at least some free will or they don't.

The odds of a fiend or orc being good may or may not be near zero, that's up to the campaign. That should be reinforced with more than just a sentence or two buried in the intro to thE MM

It doesn’t matter if the rules support free will for demons and beholders. They’re elemental constructs that mimic life.

Arguing that it’s the same thing as depicting actual mortal, living, sentient, species of people as always evil is insultingly absurd, and seems designed only to derail and delegitimize the actual discussion about racism in D&D .

 

[TwoSix]

It looks form here that you are so busy trying to justify a thing with in-world biology and metaphysics that you seem to be missing the fact that, to this day, the exact same logic is used to justify real-world racism and misogyny:

They aren't human. They are sub-human. They aren't people. They don't think like us. They are alien. They aren't intelligent like us. They don't feel like us. They have other drives and instincts that control them...

Now, get your head out of your setting for a moment. Think of this from the real-world perspective.

The exact same logic that is used in the real world, is being used on this fictional symbol - that symbol looks like members of your demographic. The portrayal is like those leveled at your own people in the real world.

How the heck do you figure that looks? How are you not trying to weasel word things to be able to continue the same sexism or racism under an excuse of fictionalization?

I know the exact same logic is used to undergird sexism and racism in the real world. I’m just saying the moral system in the fantasy world can be different than in a real world.

We’ve morally evolved in the real world to decide that dehumanization of other humans is bad. There’s no necessity for a fantasy world to have that same moral reasoning.

 

[Argyle King]

In D&D, you're typically killing sentient beings and taking their stuff because they're doing bad things. Those orcs are raiding nearby settlements, those bugbears are in service to an evil sorcerer bent on destruction, or those hill giants have decided Mrs. O'Leary's cows belong to them now. I don't think I've heard anyone argue that it's wrong for adventure games to have violence just that someone shouldn't see an orc and just know it's evil because it's an orc.

Evil from the point of view of the dominant society.

Perhaps the orcs have a very good reason for raiding the settlement.

 

[hopeless]

I don't see why what happens in your game has to be altered by those not involved?
This just sounds like someone trying to act like we're back in the 80's and those false claims about d&d being satanic again.