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

[Thomas Shey]

I didn't say the structure itself was a problem. It's an entirely different argument whether using colonialist story structures but removing problematic racial elements remains problematic.

My point was that Orcs may allow the possibility of continuing to use a lot of those story structures without the problematic racial elements - however, because those story structures remain recognisable, sometimes the racial elements start to sneak back in.

It gets into a really complicated issue, because if you remove the problematic elements, it looks a lot like apologism (and, in fact, is at a distance indistinguishable from stories that valorized the practice when it was at its peak). At some points with some things you just have to accept that some things that are fun can be a bad look if you press on them at all or are sensitive to them, and either except that or let them go.

 

[Mordhau]

It gets into a really complicated issue, because if you remove the problematic elements, it looks a lot like apologism (and, in fact, is at a distance indistinguishable from stories that valorized the practice when it was at its peak). At some points with some things you just have to accept that some things that are fun can be a bad look if you press on them at all or are sensitive to them, and either except that or let them go.

Yeah. Which is why I'm basically bracketing it for now and leaving it aside.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I actually don't know what you're talking about at all right now.

You saw this a lot during the D&D 4e period where people would contemptuously describe it as "a video game", when the truth is that tabletop D&D in particular and various computer games have traded tropes and concepts back and forth ever since both existed. The difference is video games aren't particularly shy about their inspiration whereas somehow its Bad with a capable B when it goes the other way.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Lmao we're also talking about a guy who was buddies with Lovecraft - who I love - but he wasn't exactly a civil rights progressive, amirite?
(He was super duper racist)

Actually, unlike Lovecraft, Howard was relatively enlightened for his time and background.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You saw this a lot during the D&D 4e period where people would contemptuously describe it as "a video game", when the truth is that tabletop D&D in particular and various computer games have traded tropes and concepts back and forth ever since both existed. The difference is video games aren't particularly shy about their inspiration whereas somehow its Bad with a capable B when it goes the other way.

It wasn't the tropes in 4E, it was the powers (I think to a lot of people, myself included, the presentation of the powers and the way they worked, felt more l like magic or abilities in a video game----the art probably also lent to some of that impression as well).

Also for me it wasn't contempt. We were trying to find language to explain why 4E landed oddly for some of us. I didn't consider it badly designed (it was pretty obvious the mechanics had a lot of thought behind them). It just felt more video-gamey to me than I felt D&D should feel....and that is a pretty subjective call anyways.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Also for me it wasn't contempt. We were trying to find language to explain why 4E landed oddly for some of us. I didn't consider it badly designed (it was pretty obvious the mechanics had a lot of thought behind them). It just felt more video-gamey to me than I felt D&D should feel....and that is a pretty subjective call anyways.

Over designed I would say. The quirky amateurishness of the early versions of D&D where part of it's charm. 4e felt like three year degree in game design theory.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

[deleted. Posted in wrong thread.]

 

[Thomas Shey]

It wasn't the tropes in 4E, it was the powers (I think to a lot of people, myself included, the presentation of the powers and the way they worked, felt more l like magic or abilities in a video game----the art probably also lent to some of that impression as well).

Also for me it wasn't contempt. We were trying to find language to explain why 4E landed oddly for some of us. I didn't consider it badly designed (it was pretty obvious the mechanics had a lot of thought behind them). It just felt more video-gamey to me than I felt D&D should feel....and that is a pretty subjective call anyways.

You might not have intended it as contempt, but a great number of people clearly did, and you were going to be stuck in with them, like it or not.

Edit: But the point isn't to rekindle that old discussion, but to note its still clearly one-way; you'll never see someone criticize the typical MMO by saying it "feels too much like D&D".

 

[Hexmage-EN]

IMO, saying that a race (or culture, or ethnicity) is Always Good is just as bad as saying it's Always Evil.

But anyway, I've read one criticism of the trope as saying that it's designed to differentiate the "good" savages from the "bad" savages--you could kill/exploit/enslave the bad ones with impunity, but you can't with the good ones. But even the good ones are still savage, and therefore lesser, than the civilized people.

There was some Western that came out a few years ago about an American soldier being assigned to escort a captive Native American chief and his surviving people back to their land. In that movie the bad guys were primarily another group of Native Americans that the ones being escorted described as being particularly violent. Can't recall the title off the top of my head, though. I think it was one word.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Over designed I would say. The quirky amateurishness of the early versions of D&D where part of it's charm. 4e felt like three year degree in game design theory.

Whereas the inconsistency and exception-based design of D&D was exactly what drove a lot of people off, and chronically bothered a pretty fair number of people it didn't.