I'm probably going to regret stepping into this thread, but you are raising an issue that is clearly important to you, racism in general is an issue that needs to be discussed, and you deserve to have it met with thoughtful feedback. This is intended as constructive criticism (about tone and reasonableness of your ask) and as good-faith discussion (on the rest of your points) and I hope it is received that way.
A. Concerns About Tone
The responses in this thread in favor of the petition have largely identified the problems with tone in some of the responses you received; however, please allow me to point out that your tone has not been impeccable either.
Hi, I labeled this a [+positive] thread. Please enjoy other threads at ENWorld. Thank you!
You may feel that the FAQ your wrote adequately addressed these concerns, but clearly MonsterEnvy did not (yes, his post was dismissive of your FAQ, and should have given more details), but the readiness to immediately dismiss towards those who don't agree with you does not really help your case, and calling for a "+ positive thread" does not mean you should expect that your stance on the topic of racism (a topic of discussion which is likely to be fraught with disagreement as it is a hot-button issue for many people), no matter how "right" you feel you are, should make criticism of your ideas off-limits. A better response might have been to point out that you have already explained why you feel the current disclaimer is inadequate and ask MonsterEnvy for a more detailed rebuttal of your FAQ to explain why they feel the disclaimer is enough. Posts like this make a reader who is sensitive about racism, and might be receptive to your views (like me) feel that you are relinquishing the moral high ground here.
And shame on you boys that are happy with such a racist property up for sale.
I am no moderator either, but SirLancelot, this post is quite literally an attempt to shame those with whom you don't agree - hardly putting our best foot forward as a community. Rather than assuming your view is right and leveling ad hominem attacks, I think explaining why you disagree with them would be better.
B. Unreasonable Ask of the Thread Audience
As MGibster mentions upthread, you are asking people to have a comprehensive familiarity with your positions on this issue, either by being familiar with your previous posts on the issue or by reading a 48-page you linked to in the first post. Now, I happen to be someone who is both familiar with your previous posts and read the 48-page document, but he's right to call out that this is not a reasonable ask in a thread like this one. You ought to have put out a summary of your concerns and your proposed solutions. (MGibster note you did that later in the thread, but he's not quite correct, that was another poster who published the list of items you desire - those who agree with your position are likely to call them "appropriate solutions" and those who do not may refer to them as "demands" but in the interest of finding neutral language, I will refer to them as "proposed action items.")
- Apologize for the hateful and hurtful depictions and racial slurs found in its GAZ10 PDF product.
- Donate all of the past proceeds of this PDF—dating all the way back to July 29th, 2014, when the PDF was first offered for sale—to one or more appropriate cultural charities, such as the Lakota Waldorf School.
- From henceforth, make the PDF "pay what you will," with all proceeds going to such charities, in perpetuity.
- Note: let it be known to all that I have never called for 'censorship.' Rather than divide the community by yanking and hiding this title in a vault (in the manner of Disney's Song of the South), I call on Hasbro to humbly unite the community in this way:
- Hire one or more external cultural consultants with real academic credentials, to comb through the book and make a report of the exact nature of its wrongs. Hasbro's own boilerplate disclaimer claims that Hasbro "teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible. This part of our work will never end." So, if Hasbro is here to "teach" us, then let's have the "teaching" done by real teachers with real credentials.
- Henceforth, bundle this new scholarly report with the GAZ10 PDF, as an educational "teaching."
- Also make amends from an "in-world" (fictional) perspective: by hiring one or more culturally informed designers (who are either themselves experts in the World of Mystara, or in collaboration with aficionados of that world) to write at least a short re-imagining of the Broken Lands of Thar, whereby the racist crudities found in GAZ10 are revealed to be totally false propaganda by enemies of the peoples of Thar. There are any number of ways in which all of the problematic facets can be completely amended, while creatively preserving and enhancing the existence of the peoples of Thar within the fictional Known World of Mystara.
- Note: GAZ10 is also advertised as being compatible with the Forgotten Realms and the World of Greyhawk, with a suggested placement in Faerûn's "region of Thar," and/or a magical portal to there, and also to the "WORLD OF GREYHAWK Goblins of the Pomarj, or to Iuz." And so these amendatory actions apply not only to the World of Mystara, but also secondarily to those two worlds as well.
- Henceforth bundle this amended re-envisioning of the Land of Thar with the GAZ10 PDF, along with the academic/educational report.
If I may, I will respond to these items one at a time. Some of your proposed action items I tend to agree with; others, I do not, and I will try to briefly explain why in both cases. Let's get started.
1. Apologize for the hateful and hurtful depictions and racial slurs found in its GAZ10 PDF product
I believe WotC has a responsibility to take special care to make specific apologies for incidents that occur under its watch - for example, the recent example of the Hazodee in the Spelljammer setting. However, I do not feel the same level of specificity in apology should be applied to GAZ 10; while I agree that there are racial slurs in this product, I do not believe anyone involved in its production is still employed at TSR/WotC today (35 years after the product was written). There are other problematic depictions throughout legacy material from the TSR era (Romani stand-ins in Ravenloft, for example); since there are many such issues, I find the "boilerplate disclaimer" that some legacy products may contain material that would not be appropriate today is sufficient - I do not think it is reasonable to expect that a bespoke disclaimer for each problematic product must be drafted. I hope we can agree that WotC has made steps to recognize and apologize for their error through the inclusion of the disclaimer language, though I think we can also agree that whether or not the language disclaimer is sufficient is a
subjective call where there is no empirically correct answer.
I happen to disagree with you on this point, but acknowledge you feel more is needed and you are not wrong - we just have differing opinions.
2. Donate all past proceeds of this PDF... to ... appropriate local charities...
If WotC feels as strongly about ensuring D&D is an open and inclusive environment as they claimed to during, say, the discussion of the OGL last month, then I think this is an entirely appropriate request. I might also note that I have a minor nitpick on your facts, though...
This digital product was published in 2014.
While the title was added to DriveThruRPG in July 2014, the title was actually made available at least as early as October, 2003 through WotC's "ESD" scanning program with svgames.com and Bastion Press (see
ESD scanning program). Their entire ESD catalog was taken offline in April 2009 (see
No More D&D PDFs, Wizards of the Coast Sues 8 File Sharers - Slashdot ) and they started re-scanning and re-releasing them in 2013 (see
WotC Releases Old Dungeons & Dragons Catalog As PDFs - Slashdot ). So while the particular scan on DriveThruRPG has been around since July 2014, WotC released the title in a lower-resolution scan at least a decade earlier.
All that said, it is not likely that WotC has easy access to sales figures of this PDF in particular between 2003 and 2009 and probably don't have easy access to print sales figures going back to 1988 (depending on their records retention policy, these records might have already been destroyed) so I think asking them to go back to the DriveThruRPG release in 2014 to track their profits is reasonable, so I agree with you on this time frame.
3. From henceforth, make the PDF "pay what you will," with all proceeds going to such charities, in perpetuity.
Actually, I'm going to push back on this one. Making this PDF into a "pay what you will" is most likely to result in "what you will" being $0 which means the depictions in the PDF will be widely distributed (the demand for "free" product is at least a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the demand for a product with even a nominal price such as $.01) but the charities are unlikely to see much revenue. I feel it is a much better idea to leave the price point where it is.
4. Note: let it be known to all that I have never called for 'censorship.' Rather than divide the community by yanking and hiding this title in a vault (in the manner of Disney's Song of the South), I call on Hasbro to humbly unite the community in this way:
There isn't a specific ask here (it comes in the next few points), though I will note that in general I agree with the idea that we should not call for censorship. While I may not agree with all of the sentiments expressed by LordEntrails and Hussar, I do agree with them on the specific points quoted below:
Personally I find attempts to revise and hide the past distasteful.
Orcs of Thar is an important historical document for the hobby. When people claim that racism has never existed in the hobby, that things like orcs have never been problematic because they are fictional (a word for word quote of an oft made argument) having something like Orcs of Thar right there to point to, complete with the disclaimer, allows the conversation to point to concrete examples of the inherent bigotry in the genre and the game.
Rewriting it for modern sensibilities is entirely missing the point of having works like this available.
5. Hire one or more external cultural consultants ... to comb through the book and make a report of the exact nature of its wrongs...
Hi, it may be noted that I (an unpaid independent researcher) have already done most of the "combing" work for them.
I hope you will not be too offended if I point out that these two statements, taken together, might well encourage an observer to conclude that an ulterior goal of these demands (perhaps an unconscious one, given your history of passionate advocacy regarding the issues in this product) is that WotC provide you specifically with validation that would come from them agreeing with your particular set of complaints about this product.
I guess I do have one question for you about this - would you be satisfied if a panel of expert cultural consultants was hired and then produced a report document that was much less comprehensive than your own, in which they did not find issues with some of the items you did take issue with? Or if the panel of consultants said, "the current boilerplate disclaimer is sufficient and a separate report is not needed?"
6. Henceforth, bundle this new scholarly report with the GAZ10 PDF, as an educational "teaching."
This is an interesting ask. Given the content of this book, I am not opposed to bundling it with something that provides commentary on some of the depictions in order to make sure they are not presented without context. Similar to whether the current disclaimer is "enough" being a subjective thing, I think whether or not some sort of counterbalancing document presenting context is necessary is subjective as well. Will it be read? I don't know, but again, I don't think the inclusion of such a thing would hurt.
7. Also make amends from an "in-world" (fictional) perspective ... write at least a short re-imagining of the Broken Lands ... while creatively preserving and enhancing the existence of the peoples of Thar within the fictional Known World of Mystara.
Unless my memory is tricking me, support for the Mystara setting in the way of new product ceased even before WotC purchased TSR, so the setting hasn't been supported for 20+ years. I don't think it's reasonable at this point to ask WotC to go back and support a product line they were never involved in and that hasn't had official support for over 20+ years, even in the form of a "short re-imagining."
There's also the concern, particularly with the Mystaran setting, of "scope creep" once this sort of rewriting starts - to fix the Red Orcs, you also have to fix the Atruaghin since it is their proximity to the "Red Orcs" that is said to give rise to the Red Orc tradition (some culture swapping between groups in close proximity to each other is realistic) and similarly you have to fix the Ethengari if you're going to fix the Yellow Orcs. Then there's the Shadow Elves, who leave radiation-deformed elf babies out for the humanoids of Thar to adopt...
No, that way lies madness. Let's instead point out the racist issues that plague it and spend the time and energy that would have been spent rewriting this long-obsolete product on writing new, relevant products that do not suffer from these issues.
8. GAZ10 is also advertised as being compatible with the Forgotten Realms and the World of Greyhawk ... so these amendatory actions apply not only to the World of Mystara, but also secondarily to those two worlds as well.
What you're asking for in this bullet point was already done (with 3e setting book releases) over 20 years ago. Based on the references portion of
Thar and
Pomarj - Greyhawk Wiki it seems like the Land of Thar in Faerun and Pomarj in Oerth were both somewhat re-imagined in terms of lore and setting with the release of 3rd edition, and have possibly been re-imagined multiple times, since this GAZ10 was published 35 years ago, meaning GAZ10 is not even applicable to these settings any more.
For all the effort you did on researching the origins of some of the racist entries in the book, it seems an odd oversight that you made a request for a rewrite on these settings without checking to see if it had already been done. Is it possible this reflects a degree of tunnel vision with regards to the offenses you see in this product (or did you check and just not happen to find the rewrites)?
9. Henceforth bundle this amended re-envisioning of the Land of Thar with the GAZ10 PDF, along with the academic/educational report.
I don't think this re-envisioning is necessary in Mystara due to the world not being supported for 20+ years, and the re-envisioning for the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk settings is not necessary considering it has already been done in sourcebooks published after GAZ10. So no, I don't find this necessary at all.
C. One Other Thought
Is there anything worth saving from GAZ10?
Yes. The idea of "you know, monsters might not just be hordes of things to kill, they might have the same complexity as any elf, dwarf, human, etc. so maybe we should consider how you could run them as player characters to see things from their point of view."
D. My Current Take on the Whole Topic
WotC has said they are dedicated to making gaming open and inclusive and welcoming. I agree that there are problematic racist presentations in the Orcs of Thar. If they're serious about their dedication, they probably should donate the proceeds of the sale of this work since 2014 to a worthy charity or charities as a show of good faith.
If they feel the need to do include some sort of supplemental document with the PDF bundles that explains some of the problems with racist content the document, I don't see any harm in that... but I have to stop short of saying it's something they
should do.
I do not feel they need to add an additional disclaimer to this document beyond the boilerplate, nor do I think it is wise that they change it to a "pay what you want" model. I also don't think they need to come up with a "re-imagining" of a portion of a book for a campaign setting they haven't touched for over 20 years.
So, in the end, while I agree that you raise some good points, I also find many areas in which we do not agree (mostly subjective calls like, "is the boilerplate good enough" or "is it worth the effort to rewrite portions of an obsolete product") and hopefully I have articulated my reasoning as to why in a thoughtful and respectful manner. I am genuinely curious about your thoughts on the paragraph I highlighted in red text because I think it will help me better understand where your line for "enough that you are satisfied" sits and whether or not you have left any room to consider that others might in good faith not agree with all of your subjective judgements about this product.
