D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Bedrockgames]

oops. posted too soon. am editing.

You sir, know how to build anticipation and suspense

 

[Bedrockgames]

I was hoping that one of the things that the work of Peterson, et al., would do would be to curtail the essentialist narratives.

Early D&D was just as (if not) more diverse in terms of approaches and playstyles than we have today, depending on when and where you were. It was not just about "beating a dungeon, and was more viewed as a toolkit to enable play in the 70s. It is simply error to try and incorporate our views from today back then; even people who grew up playing in the 80s have a very poor view of what the game was like in the 70s.

In other words, most of this just isn't true. The Elusive Shift explores this in more depth, and there have been numerous threads on the subject.

I find it really hard to go back to a particular time and say "This is what D&D was". I mean there were trends, but I didn't really notice much homogeneity until the d20 boom (and even then I think that is fading). during that period I encountered a lot of groups who played D&D in the same way, in the same style. Prior to that, it seemed like every table was different (it also seemed like there was a more mainstream appetite for other systems and games). I started in '86, on the west coast (wasn't born there but spent five years there), and I gamed with three different groups of friends. Every group approached the game differently because you had to read these books and then figure out how they worked in practice. Then I moved back to the east coast, and again every group of friends, even within the same school, was different. Each group definitely had its style: because that style was formed reading the books, experimenting and talking about how the game is played. But even inside those groups, each GM was quite different. Then when we started playing with people in other towns, all kinds of variety.

 

[Willie the Duck]

You sir, know how to build anticipation and suspense

I know how to accidentally hit enter.
Anyways, it is finished.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

While you're not wrong, even early on this started varying locally based on game culture spread. But the game sure gave you no help.

Yeah, all good generalizations fail, which may actually be a feature .

Deeper characterization was uncommon. There was plenty of 'cartoon' level stuff. As evidence pretty much every group experienced 'Grog', the really dumb half-orc 'barbarian' fighter. I mean, you can poll the thread, my brother ran it in our group. The name might vary (but Grog is extremely common, must be the 'John' of half-orc culture) etc. but the character is the same 'toon' give or take. Likewise the cleric never actually had any specified deity it worshiped, or even any sign of actual worship! The standard magic-user was basically 'trope wizard in a bottle', etc.

Now, through plot and exposition, and usually with some retrospective application of motives, characters usually acquired SOME traits. Even so, were they really seriously role-played in any systematic way? Not IME. I don't recall that 2e made any real difference on that either, though players got very interested in explaining how whatever they did was worth XP...

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think always-evil villain species are possible. It works for non-humanoids (manticores, giant scorpions, stirges, etc.). They don't even have to be 'evil incarnate' things like demons or devils. What does have to happen, however, is that you keep this unflinchingly consistent across the IP (and, for D&D, the inspired works, since clearly WoW and Warhammer and various D&D inspired webcomics, manga, and computer games influence how people see orcs). The ship has sailed for orcs, but WotC with 5e tried to make gnolls the resident 'it's always okay to fight these guys' monster, and it has sorta worked (minus a few people who had favorite gnoll PCs or the like. Honestly it would have been better to introduce a completely new monster for this role).

I think you can do both. To me part of what bothers me in these discussions isn't calls for more nuanced orcs (more nuanced orcs can be very cool), it is this sense I get that we should only be doing nuanced orcs (or in your terms, that it should be consistent across all IP). With D&D being a game meant to appeal to the broadest audience possible, I think it needs to have some flexibility so you can do both.

And I also think, it isn't like there is only one reading of these things that we have to have and have to limit ourselves to enjoying. As an outside example, I love Nightbreed. When that movie came out, I thought it was great. The whole way it inverts things so the humans are the real monsters, and that the evil is trying to eliminate the monsters, was intriguing and had a lot of interesting subtext. But I also love Halloween, and I like movies about evil monsters that humans have to contend with if they are going to survive. People forget we had a whole sympathetic monster period in the 90s. And I think what happened, like with all trends, people wanted a return to simpler, evil monsters (and so you had the back to the dungeon approach in 3E). These things always come in and out of fashion. I expect there to be trends in the hobby. But lately a lot of these discussions feel like an 'end of history' debate where we either need to end up with orcs that are always evil or orcs that are basically just green humans. I like it best when all of these options are available to the people making settings and games. I don't like it when its "it has to be this way because 'its important' or 'because your evil if you like evil orcs'. Personally, I am very tired of being told how to think and feel about this stuff by other people.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think it's about class as such, but rather anti-modernist sensibilities as such.

I would say that 'birthright' and associated 'virtue through birth and heritage' is the core pillar of the intellectual edifice of classism. The ruling elite is ordained to be who it is and to rule by virtue of birth and nothing else, essentially. Obviously we've somewhat discarded that way of thinking, in some cultures, though it always seems to lurk beneath the surface. It is a very easy and convenient story to support whomever happens to be in charge today, even if they weren't born to it, surely their progeny are.

It's very much about conformity to the will of the divine; and the closely-related workings of providence. So no one's heritage or social situation is a meaningless accident.

I personally don't get any nihilistic vibe; that's something I associate with REH's Conan, which is utterly modernist despite the trappings. (The closest to an exception is The Hour of the Dragon.)

Yeah, Tolkien is really very mainstream Christian in his overall philosophy, though obviously the cosmology of ME uses a bit different mythological framework to facilitate exploration of myths rooted in pre-Christian belief systems.

 

[Scott Christian]

It's a pretty mixed bag. The Looney Toons reruns included the ones with 'Indian attacking the settlers or wagon train' adventure points well into the 90s. Stagecoach definitely exemplified an era where Native Americans were the villains counter to cowboys. There was probably move towards sympathetic instead of unsympathetic with the rise to prominence of revisionist westerns in the 60s and 70s with things like Chief Dan George's turn in Little Big Man and The Outlaw Josey Wales and similar.

I could agree with the mixed bag message in cartoons. But not movies and tv. From the 70's on, it seemed that they were anything but villains. But the point is that is the exact opposite of how orcs were in the primary texts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's a pretty mixed bag. The Looney Toons reruns included the ones with 'Indian attacking the settlers or wagon train' adventure points well into the 90s. Stagecoach definitely exemplified an era where Native Americans were the villains counter to cowboys. There was probably move towards sympathetic instead of unsympathetic with the rise to prominence of revisionist westerns in the 60s and 70s with things like Chief Dan George's turn in Little Big Man and The Outlaw Josey Wales and similar.

Not the biggest western fan so take my view here with a grain of salt. On the Looney Toons stuff, I think the key part is those were reruns from a much earlier era (unless they were making new ones that did that during that time). I think the posters point though was just that there was a big difference between growing up on say 1950s cowboy shows and movies and growing up in the 80s. Like I said I wasn't a fan, but anyone my parents age or grandparents age was into those old westerns and they were on in the house. And just going from that, I do remember the native americans just kind of being there as a stalk enemy. At the same time, you did have stuff like the Lone Ranger where his side kick was Tonto (didn't watch the show, and I am sure it would be a portrayal criticized by today's standards, but the point is he was one of the good guys and not fodder). But more sympathetic portrayals did seem to be more the norm for when I was growing up (I was born in the 70s as well).

That said I think people should always go back and see these things for themselves. A lot of times when you go back and watch older movies and shows, you do realize there is more there than we often remember, and sometimes a lot more nuance. A lot of times things get summed up for us in pop culture, and that summary isn't necessarily the take away you would have if you went and saw it for yourself. I have had this experience when I have gone back and watched classic movies

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's a pretty mixed bag. The Looney Toons reruns included the ones with 'Indian attacking the settlers or wagon train' adventure points well into the 90s. Stagecoach definitely exemplified an era where Native Americans were the villains counter to cowboys. There was probably move towards sympathetic instead of unsympathetic with the rise to prominence of revisionist westerns in the 60s and 70s with things like Chief Dan George's turn in Little Big Man and The Outlaw Josey Wales and similar.

Something that has always struck me is when I talk with people from the 90s and people my age who grew up in the 80s and even the 70s, is it feels like we had a much different relationship with the media we watched as children. I just have this sense that we became very wary of messaging from the shows we watched (because we grew up with very very heavy handed "a very special episode" style sitcoms, and with stuff like Just Say No, that often exaggerated problems or didn't represent them in an accurate way. I could be wrong, but I always sense a lot more sincerity and enthusiasm and enthusiasm for their shows messages when I talk to people who grew up in the 90s instead,. I think maybe we were a little more cynical about that kind of thing.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yeah, all good generalizations fail, which may actually be a feature .

Deeper characterization was uncommon. There was plenty of 'cartoon' level stuff. As evidence pretty much every group experienced 'Grog', the really dumb half-orc 'barbarian' fighter. I mean, you can poll the thread, my brother ran it in our group. ...

Again, this is inaccurate. Instead of generalizing from you and your brother in the 80s to everyone else, I would recommend reading more complete accounts of the gaming in the 70s that relies on contemporary accounts as I mentioned before.

You don’t even need to poll.