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

[Dannyalcatraz]

Wizards did create GAZ10. Wizards is the sole legal continuation of TSR, Inc.

No, that is factually and legally incorrect. WotC is TSR’s successor in interest regarding this project. GAZ10 was created by TSR in 1988, and is part of the IP WotC purchased when they bought the company.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Apparently Wizards/Hasbro does view itself as an educational institution. On the GAZ10: Orcs of Thar product page, Wizards/Hasbro states:

"Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible."

D&D is apparently here to teach me/us.

1) that is a description of the product, not the company.

2) any institution can educate, that does not transform it into an educational institution.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I think people like to dunk on Orcs of Thar because:

1) It's fun
2) It's a way to demonstrate that you're against racism ('cause Orcs of Thar is obviously pretty cringey).
3) It's a way to signal membership in your tribe (I hate racism...me too!) and get social kudos.
4) It's a quick way to try and make the world a better place (all it takes is a social media post).

That's what you think.

It was not super fun to comb through GAZ10 and make a detailed presentation. I was impelled to do so after I was "roughed up" by a couple of fellow Mystara aficionados over on the Mystara Piazza.

The various "reasons" you give are pretty invalidating.

I do think that if we want to help indigenous people in a substantial way, that dunking on Orcs of Thar is not going to make that much of an impact, again because it's just a quickie way to raise awareness (social media posts take 5 minutes).

What the OP is doing by donating to the Lakota School at Pine Ridge is probably making a real difference, because it increases educational opportunities for kids who are suffering from significant poverty, and are still dealing with the aftermath of being subjugated 130 years ago.

If you really wanted to make a difference, don't post on enworld, don't edit D&D books, take a year off and go volunteer to work at that school. Live in a trailer, get paid next to nothing, deal with kids with emotional problems (due to poverty and bad family dynamics), while occasionally being told that "you don't belong here" by some of the more salty locals.

I speak from experience.

It's hard to argue with that. So I won't.
Nevertheless, I could say the same to you: "Gee cowpie, in the five minutes it took to post on ENWorld, you could've done paying work for 5 minutes and donated that to an indigenous charity."
It's invalidating. Life isn't a zero sum ledger.

 

[Yaarel]

DRAGON+ has lots of purposes, including teaching that "diversity is strength." It's not always about 5E crunch, but also about building goodwill toward the D&D brand as a whole.

DRAGON+ Issue #37 features amendatory statements on the drow:

"Everyone—aboveground and below—knows that all drow elves live in the Underdark and worship the Spider Queen.

"And everyone… is wrong.
[...]
"While these actions drove a wedge into the family tree of elvenkind, the drow that built Menzoberranzan are but a splinter group. The Forgotten Realms is about to learn a truth that has remained secret since Lolth’s initial betrayal.

“The spider-inspired ‘udadrow’ expression of the drow elves that D&D fans currently know is based on Lolth’s influence over a pocket of elves who became isolationist, cutting themselves off from the rest of drow culture,” explains Franchise Creative Director Jeremy Jarvis. “There are whole societies of drow that did not follow Lolth into the Underdark. Two such groups are the ‘aevendrow’ and the ‘lorendrow’, or the starlight elves and the greenshadow elves respectively.”
[...]
"As part of this worldbuilding we had to show that Drizzt was hardly unique as an udadrow who isn’t evil."

***
The article also features an interview with R.A. Salvatore where he touches on the amendatory new direction he's going with the drow.

As far as I can tell, the recent erratum to the Players Handbook suggests, the drow didnt "follow Lolth into the Underdark".

Rather, the elf variants adapted magically to their respective environments, whence the drow elf variant adapted to their Underdark environment. Thus all drow are part of the Underdark and as such can magically create darkness and light. Lolth only corrupted some of these original drow.



"
As a drow, you are infused with the magic of the Underdark, an underground realm of wonders and horrors rarely seen on the surface above. You are at home in shadows and, thanks to your innate magic, learn to conjure forth both light and darkness.

Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues.

The cult of the god Lolth, Queen of Spiders, has corrupted some of the oldest drow cities, especially in the worlds of Oerth and Toril. Eberron, Krynn, and other realms have escaped the cult’s influence − for now.

Wherever the cult lurks, drow heroes stand on the front lines in the war against it, seeking to sunder Lolth’s web.

"



I like this nuance better. The drow are naturally gray-skinned and are native to the Underdark. Evil Lolth is superfluous.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Note: the moderators of the Mystara Piazza have repeatedly shut down anyone who speaks of racial prejudice in GAZ10. And have allowed the same posters to dogpile on anyone who attempts to address this. Any person who says that GAZ10 contains racist content is publicly chastised by the moderators as being "political", while those who say GAZ10 isn't at all racist, and join in to dogpile and "rough up" the original poster, are not chastised.

August 2020
June 2021
December 2021 (I started this thread.)

 

[el-remmen]

Note: the moderators of the Mystara Piazza have repeatedly shut down anyone who speaks of racial prejudice in GAZ10. And the same posters have dogpiled on anyone who attempts to address this. Any person who says that GAZ10 contains racist content is publicly chastised by the moderators as being "political", while those who say GAZ10 isn't at all racist, and join in to dogpile and "rough up" the original poster, are not chastised.

June 2021 (I was not previously aware of this thread till just now.)
December 2021 (I started this thread.)

Looked over some of that earlier thread and Wow. The fact that there are people who see GAZ10 as an "improvement" over previous representation is just . I should never be surprised at this point, but sometimes I still am.

 

[Mirtek]

Apparently Wizards/Hasbro does view itself as an educational institution. On the GAZ10: Orcs of Thar product page, Wizards/Hasbro states:

"Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible."

D&D is apparently here to teach me/us.

Either that or it's simply their variant of Generic Brand Video

Just about every company has one of those nowadays and 99% just have them because you're supposed to have one and no one at the company cares a bit about it.

I work in a medium company, ~11k employees worldwide, doing a boring product for a boring industry and of course we have our mission and values leaflet and ever couple of years pay a couple of ten thousand dollars to some PR company to refresh it. Mostly just slightly rewording the same empty statements and replace a background of a green forest with a background of a clean river, etc.

Really just a fig leaf that someone believes investors are requiring you to have. Or investors, that don't really care either, believing they have to require it from their investments

 

[Zardnaar]

Note: the moderators of the Mystara Piazza have repeatedly shut down anyone who speaks of racial prejudice in GAZ10. And the same posters have dogpiled on anyone who attempts to address this. Any person who says that GAZ10 contains racist content is publicly chastised by the moderators as being "political", while those who say GAZ10 isn't at all racist, and join in to dogpile and "rough up" the original poster, are not chastised.

June 2021 (I was not previously aware of this thread till just now.)
December 2021 (I started this thread.)

Probably because it just fractures the community and by its nature they're fans of Mystara.

If you go there you're essentially dumping over their yum. Their house their castle.

Note I'm not a Mystara fan as such I like parts of it and I like B/X mechanics.

It's not rocket science if your gonna go dump over stuff they like you're gonna get push back.

I haven't gone and bought any OSR product for years (pre 5E) but neither do I go to places they like hanging out to argue with them.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Note: the moderators of the Mystara Piazza have repeatedly shut down anyone who speaks of racial prejudice in GAZ10. And the same posters have dogpiled on anyone who attempts to address this. Any person who says that GAZ10 contains racist content is publicly chastised by the moderators as being "political", while those who say GAZ10 isn't at all racist, and join in to dogpile and "rough up" the original poster, are not chastised.

June 2021 (I was not previously aware of this thread till just now.)
December 2021 (I started this thread.)

Mod Note:

Because it’s tangentially relevant to provide context, I’m letting this stand. But I am issuing this reminder that generally, ENWorld does not support importing drama from other boards. So tread carefully.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Wizards did create GAZ10. Wizards is the sole legal continuation of TSR, Inc.

No, they acquired it. You can take them to task for continuing to publish it, but they didn't create it. That was a different team, time, and company.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Still, I'm not here to argue whether Native American or American Indian is the only "right" term. Because they both have their place, with some indigenous individuals preferring one or the other. "Indigenous American" or "Indigenous North American" or "First Peoples" are other options which I sometimes tap. And, like others have mentioned, the ideal is to refer to the specific nation.

It's not the same in every country. A few generations ago, in Canada (or at least the french-speaking part of it) the common term people used moved from Indians to Amerindians. Nowadays we use the term First Nations or autochtones which basically means Indigenous in English. It's just mind-blowing to me how the term Indian could still be used. We have a law here called something like (translating again) the Indian Act and there's a ton of discussions about updating it and changing the name.

There's also the matter of the names that the french gave to several cultures and the name they gave themselves. Many people still use the european terms (like montagnais) whereas they refer to themselves as Innus.

 

[Yaarel]

There is serious talk about a 5e Mystara setting. (Surveys have mentioned it.) I appreciate how this thread highlights some of the landmines that need to be cleared from Mystara before it happens.

 

[Krachek]

I don't think there's an answer to that. I think any fictional culture we create will likely act as a Rorschach test in that different people will see a different group reflected in it. Who do the Ferengi of Star Trek resemble most? In the first episode they appeared in, they were specifically compared to "Yankee traders" who were a somewhat unsavory group of merchants and drug smugglers from the New England area of the United States.

You’re kind right. We got innate detector for our native and neighbor culture, and thus a simple name, wording, clothing will be easily notice, and we will feel : he’s one of us or he’s one of them. But its not always accurate. I quote this from wikipedia:

Shimerman addressed the issue when asked at a question-and-answer session at a Star Trek convention. He stated that:
In America, people ask 'Do the Ferengi represent Jews?' In England, they ask 'Do the Ferengi represent the Irish?' In Australia, they ask if the Ferengi represent the Chinese[...] The Ferengi represent the outcast... it's the person who lives among us that we don't fully understand.[30]

So when we see a depiction of outcast, our innate detector scan for : is he depicted as one of us? If not, it’s certainly one of them!

 

[Zardnaar]

You’re kind right. We got innate detector for our native and neighbor culture, and thus a simple name, wording, clothing will be easily notice, and we will feel : he’s one of us or he’s one of them. But its not always accurate. I quote this from wikipedia:

Shimerman addressed the issue when asked at a question-and-answer session at a Star Trek convention. He stated that:
In America, people ask 'Do the Ferengi represent Jews?' In England, they ask 'Do the Ferengi represent the Irish?' In Australia, they ask if the Ferengi represent the Chinese[...] The Ferengi represent the outcast... it's the person who lives among us that we don't fully understand.[30]

So when we see a depiction of outcast, our innate detector scan for : is he depicted as one of us? If not, it’s certainly one of them!

I thought the Ferengi were satire of unbridled capitalism.

Don't shoot me watched DS9 in it's entirety first time last year iirc.

 

[Yaarel]

I thought the Ferengi were satire of unbridled capitalism.

Don't shoot me watched DS9 in it's entirety first time last year iirc.

Ferengi = capitalism

That was my impression too.

 

[Mordhau]

A lot of the non-human species fill structural roles.

Eg Orcs in Forgotten realms North don't really resemble Native Americans (or at least they don't from the material I remember), but they fill a structural role on the frontier that Native Americans filled in old stories.

In fact one of the things they do is allow old kinds of stories like western frontier raids to continue to be told without specifically targetting the original group.

This isn't necessarily a good thing. It can be argued that continuing to retell these kinds of stories means continuing to reinforce the thinking behind them. And of course once you give something a structural role, it doesn't take much for people to start filling in those gaps with actual problematic content (which I think is probably what happened in the book in question in this thread).

Or in other words they become containers in which people fill in their own ideas of what they represent.

 

[Ashtagon]

Looked over some of that earlier thread and Wow. The fact that there are people who see GAZ10 as an "improvement" over previous representation is just . I should never be surprised at this point, but sometimes I still am.

Considering that 16th century Spanish colonisers (eg Antonio Montesinos) openly discussed whether or not American Indians even had souls and thus qualified to be considered as better than livestock animals, GAZ 10 is an improvement on that. Not by much, and certainly not by enough to ever boast about, but it's there. GAZ10 being an improvement doesn't speak of the quality of the book, but of how low the bar actually was.

Granted, that's not about portrayal in RPGs specifically. Depictions of American Indians in an RPG context before the D&D Gazetteer series are thin on the ground (I couldn't find any), but there are several wargames that cover them. I've highlighted a few below, but the portrayal varies from terrible stereotypes, through to awful barbarians to NPCs.

There's the Big Chief tabletop game, variously dated as 1938 or 1950, which contains all the bad tropes common to the time. The game 7th Cavalry (1976) features units called squaws and chiefs (illustrated with feather war bonnets); American Indian units are referred to in the rules as "hostiles", contrasted with "U.S. units". Apache (1981) has the following text: "rampaging Indian tribes pillage and burn ranches, settlements, stage coaches", and oytright refers to American Indians as "red men". Top Totem (1959) features a totem pole, which appears to be grossly misrepresented in terms of its cultural meaning.

1938 Big Chief Game Board by Milton Bradley Vintage Game Board - Etsy UK

This Board Games item by VintageCreekside has 6 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Ships from United States. Listed on 13 Jun, 2019

www.etsy.com

Big Chief

Listed in American Games, #4183. Circa 1950s, Western, Board Game. Object of game: the object of the game is to move along the game board. In some cases this requires doing it 2 or three times while trying to acquire 5 feather cards. At the beginning of the game the first 8 spaces have actual...

boardgamegeek.com

7th Cavalry

First page of the rulebook

rpggeek.com

Apache: A Game of the Old West

Image for Apache: A Game of the Old West

rpggeek.com

Top! Totem

The board represents a grid map of 8 columns x 9 rows with a central zone comprising six central squares and a totem pole in the center! Each player has 12 pawns and 3 riders. Each pawn moves one step forward or sideways, only the rider can go back. Riders are always moved after the pawns. All...

rpggeek.com

Please note that this isn't praise of GAZ10. I am simply highlighting just how low the bar actually was.

 

[Malmuria]

Considering that 16th century Spanish colonisers (eg Antonio Montesinos) openly discussed whether or not American Indians even had souls and thus qualified to be considered as better than livestock animals, GAZ 10 is an improvement on that. Not by much, and certainly not by enough to ever boast about, but it's there. GAZ10 being an improvement doesn't speak of the quality of the book, but of how low the bar actually was.


Please note that this isn't praise of GAZ10. I am simply highlighting just how low the bar actually was.

So, you're saying that a fantasy rpg supplement from the 1980s is less racist than the ideology of people engaged in genocide four centuries ago. The effect of this is a an apology for something that is still racist, and is a part of an ongoing history of racism inaugurated all those centuries ago. Combined with how the piazza shuts down any conversation and analysis as to how it might be racist, it certainly seems like there are a bunch of fans who just want to stick their head in the sand and not having anyone complicate their relationship to their rpg toys.

 

[Zardnaar]

So, you're saying that a fantasy rpg supplement from the 1980s is less racist than the ideology of people engaged in genocide four centuries ago. The effect of this is a an apology for something that is still racist, and is a part of an ongoing history of racism inaugurated all those centuries ago. Combined with how the piazza shuts down any conversation and analysis as to how it might be racist, it certainly seems like there are a bunch of fans who just want to stick their head in the sand and not having anyone complicate their relationship to their rpg toys.

It's like people have different opinions. ENworlds a bubble so is that one.

Side effect of mod enforced rules is it creates bubbles.

Do you go to a different country with different cultural views and dump all over them when you're there?

Similar scenario.

 

[The Glen]

I've been reading this thread with some interest but I have to chime in as the OP has...forgotten a lot of details about the setting he's calling racist. Not once has he mentioned the Ethengar or Atruaghin, the Mystaran equivalents of the Mongolians and Native Americans, and the fact that orcs in Mystara assimilate the cultures of the people they fight against the most. There's another clan of orcs in the Broken Lands that emulate the Roman legions, but apparently copying the Romans is fine. The Ethengar book is considered one of the best gazetteers in the line, while the Atruaghin book was notoriously rushed.

By removing the context behind the races you remove what made those orcs unique to the setting. The Red orcs dress and act that way because they fought for centuries against the Horse Clan before they were separated by an act of divine magic. But the Red orcs still copy the culture of the people that fought them to a standstill. The yellow orcs still fight the Ethengar, and believe by using their tactics and copying their customs they will gain a measure of their opponent's power. The black orcs dress in vaguely Thyatian gear, march in formation, and try to fight like the Legions that they witnessed crush all before them years ago. Orcs copy cultures in Mystara. The beastmen races were created by a jealous Immortal to throw down the kingdoms of men and demi-humans, and she did this by reincarnating the souls of the evilest mortals into a new race who over the years evolved into the various humanoid races.

The Aztec styled humanoids are a bit more complicated because they worship Atzanteotl, the patron of corruption and betrayal. He came from a culture similar to the Aztecs, and tries to corrupt other races into his worship. Every race he corrupts he has take up the culture of his original people. The Oinkmarians are just one of the groups he's corrupted. The schattenalfen, the original Azcan of the Hollow World, and the Tiger Clan of the Atruaghin also fell under his sway, and all have adopted Aztec trappings. Aztanteotl then tells his different followers that they are his true worshipers and to kill anybody who claims that they are his true followers. Meaning all the groups hate each other. He's a bit of a jerk.

The Piazza has a standing rule if you don't like something then give an example of how to change the lore to make it positive. The setting is rife with continuity problems. Thorfinn has spent years getting the errors in cartography right. It's an incredibly welcoming and friendly board as long as people obey the rules. The first rule is if something is problematic, give a suggestion on how to fix it. People have dumped near doctoral theses on that page explaining the problem and their suggestion on the solution and gotten equality long diatribes in response. It's often funny, and quite entertaining. But they take the whole of the setting into consideration, without cherry-picking.