D&D General PETITION: Acknowledge Hasbro's hurtful content (Black orcs, Asian yellow orcs, Native American red orcs)—through an Amendatory Bundle [+ thread]

[Umbran]

manifesto of the cancel culture...

Racism is an idiot's idea regardless...

Mod Note:

If the violation of the (+) thread didn't do it, the violation of our inclusivity policy did.

You are done in this discussion.

 

[mamba]

I do not think there is an issue worth fixing here. Not that the book is not racist, but it is irrelevant as no one is interested in it, so nothing needs to be done.

Look up the Streisand effect sometime, because this is what this attempt feels like to me.

 

[Umbran]

That is child's view.

And shame on you boys that are happy with such a racist property up for sale.

Mod Note:

I'm going to have to ask you to stop making this personal. Please address what was said, not the person who said it.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

Listen up, folks!

Some of you here are apparently unaware of the concept of a (+) thread. Please allow me to enlighten you. I a (+) thread, it is assumed that everyone posting is on board with the basic premise of the thread. `Every one of you who are posting to the effect of "Nah, this is a bad idea and people shouldn't do this," are effectively threadcrapping.

If you want to talk about how this is a bad idea, you may start another thread. But you can't do it here.

So, please stop the various attempts to tell the OP to shut up. Shouting others down isn't a good look anyway.

Thanks, all.

 

[Cadence]

(I think this is a dangerous tangent. There are actually strong arguments that can be made that commercial entities no longer wanting to make their works available should release those works to public domain. And bringing in that seem like would be derailing this completely off topic..)

I will respect that it is a tangent and would derail.

 

[Umbran]

We can still dissent, right?

In a (+) thread, you might dissent about methods of approaching the topic, but not about whether the topic should not be approached at all. Please go find another thread if all you have to say about this is bascially "No."

Mein Kampf is for sale

And here we go folks. We come perilously close to Godwinning already on Page 2!

Please stop naysaying the OP, with reference to Nazis or otherwise. Thanks.

Tell you what super mature knight:

How about you up your game and not insult people for having different opinions from you. You don't have to worry about this being a (+) thread, as you're being removed from the discussion for being insulting.

 

[Umbran]

Just a note: I don't think we have "A-Game threads" at ENWorld. That's an RPG.net thing, not an ENWorld thing.

We do not explicitly have A-game threads. However, on controversial topics, the moderator's threshold for acting may become less tolerant of shenanigans.

Everyone may consider that a warning at this point.

 

[Steampunkette]

I'm down to sign.

I kinda feel like we should culturally acknowledge just how racist and bigoted our roots are and be aware of it. Sometimes that means providing context, sometimes that means re-doing material to remove the legacy of hatred and putting in notes about how much had to change, and why. That it's especially important in gaming and other leisure activities where a history of exclusion and quiet bigotry are generally shouted down as "Bringing Politics" into leisure activities.

Like nah, chief. The politics were already there. You just don't -mind- the bigotry involved being there and mind the disruption of the status quo that is pointing out the bigotry that has existed this whole time. Y'all're looking for a peace that is the absence of tension, not peace that is the presence of goodness. But just because you don't feel the tension, personally, doesn't mean it isn't there.

Not anyone in this thread specifically, obviously. Just the general backlash against acknowledging problems in anything that isn't outright politicians arguing about bills. Whether it's TTRPGs, Videogames, Sports, or whatever.

I'm behind the use of content warnings, too, though. But it needs to be a LOT more comprehensive than WotC's boilerplate "We didn't write this bigoted content, but we're sure gonna make money off it!" BS.

WotC needs to do better.

 

[Alzrius]

What is an "A-game" thread?

They define them over here. It's one of those things that looks good on its face, but ends up encouraging self-righteousness and stifling dissent.

 

[Dausuul]

Will you sign the petition?

As written: No, I would not.

I would, however, consider signing a petition asking Hasbro to improve its "content flags," which right now (AFAIK) consist of a blanket note on all old-edition material. That note should remain, but there could be an additional designation for specific works -- basically, "Hey, we know this here is particularly bad, for reasons X, Y, and Z" -- and committing to donate profits from the sale of those works to an appropriate charity.

That still leaves the question of who identifies the works that would get this flag. TSR cranked out a lot of stuff back in the day and I'm not sure it'd be feasible to pay someone to go through all of it. (The Gazetteer example demonstrates how tricky it can be; it's not like you could have found the problem with the orcs by a keyword search.) So perhaps something a bit like the mod system here, where fans can "report" a particular work, describe the problem, and then someone at Wizards has the job of reviewing those reports and determining if the work should indeed be flagged.

Another thing Wizards could do would be to crowdsource the fix, perhaps through the DM's Guild. Encourage fan creation of "cleaned-up" versions of old material, and let fans submit them to be approved for sale alongside the original, so when you go looking for the Gazetteer, it shows you both the old version (with a big ol' warning flag) and the cleaned-up version.