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

[Vaalingrade]

Relating Lovecraft back to D&D . . . D&D has quite a few "Lovecraftian" monsters, but as far as I can tell, none of them are stolen straight from his works. Mind Flayers, Beholders, Aboleths, Star/Core Spawn, Locathah/Kuo-Toa, Gibbering Mouthers, the Sibriex and other Obyriths, and so on are all based off his stories, but none of them are straight up stolen from it (at least not in D&D 5e, unless you count the mention of Cthulhu in the GOOlock description text).

D&D's "Lovecraftian" monsters draw heavily from the vague themes of Lovecraft's Cosmic Horror, but don't outright steal the context of those stories. Locathah/Kuo-Toa aren't tied to the whole "inter-race breeding" theme of the Deep Ones of Innsmouth, for example. D&D has already left behind most of the baggage of HP Lovecraft's works. Mind Flayers aren't stand-ins for any real world marginalized peoples (they could be seen as stand-ins for imperialists/white supremacists, however). The same applies to Aboleths, Beholders, Star Spawn, Obyriths, and so on.

D&D has baggage, but I don't think that the Lovecraft-inspired monsters are a part of it. Lovecraft's name being in the credits for D&D's rulebooks? Sure. That can be dropped. The monsters? No. At least, not the iconic ones.

Aren't most of the Lovecraft rippoffs slavers though? illithid, negogi, aboleths, beholders?

As much as I'd love to think the only legacy of Lovecraft is just the tentacle-philia, the rot's still there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Current understanding is (and has been for a while) that pyramids were not built by slaves. Not that whether they were or not has anything to do with their status as an engineering marvel.

Apparently how it was built does inform its status as an engineering marvel. I would have thought the science would stand on it's own.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You tell us? What conclusion should we draw? You seem to know what the right answer is. Should we be protesting the pyramids? Steadfastly ignoring anything that exists by the power of human suffering? Closing our eyes to media produced more than 10 years ago? Where's your line?

Posting angry hyperbole to avoid actually addressing the problematic elements, obviously.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Aren't most of the Lovecraft rippoffs slavers though? illithid, negogi, aboleths, beholders?

As much as I'd love to think the only legacy of Lovecraft is just the tentacle-philia, the rot's still there.

Which monsters would you cut from the monster manual?

Posting angry hyperbole to avoid actually addressing the problematic elements, obviously.

How is it hyperbole though? What's the principled difference Between those things and HPL?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Which monsters would you cut from the monster manuel?

Bring honest here, I'd cut all the aberrations and the far Realm and it would have nothing to do with Lovecraft sucking and everything to do with me hating cosmic horror poking its ubiquitous lust for mentally ill seafood into my fantasy.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Bring honest here, I'd cut all the aberrations and the far Realm and it would have nothing to do with Lovecraft sucking and everything to do with me hating cosmic horror poking its ubiquitous lust for mentally ill seafood into my fantasy.

Shucks - literally all my favorite elements/monsters. I don't think I've run or enjoyed a single game of D&D that wasn't thick with weird fiction elements, eldritch cults, and aberrations.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Aren't most of the Lovecraft rippoffs slavers though? illithid, negogi, aboleths, beholders?

As much as I'd love to think the only legacy of Lovecraft is just the tentacle-philia, the rot's still there.

Umm . . . yes, but they're also practically always evil (except Large Luigi and Gnome Ceremorphs, I guess). There's no problem with having them enslave others and experiment on them, because they're almost always the villains.

I seriously can't see what the problem is here. And I'm one of the posters on this site that has been for every pro-inclusivity change discussed at length on this site in the past couple of years. Removing Aberrations is not that, and having Neogi, Illithids, and Aboleths be slaves isn't a bad thing.

(I mentioned that in my last post, when I said that it could be argued that the Mind Flayers are stand-ins for white supremacists/imperialists, and maybe fascists. They're a world-conquering species with superior technology to those that they're conquering, commit eugenics on their thralls and themselves, oppress the religions of their subjects, are extremely racist, and completely obey every command of their colony leaders. If they're a stand-in for anyone, it's imperialists/white supremacists/fascists.)

 

[Filthy Lucre]

(I mentioned that in my last post, when I said that it could be argued that the Mind Flayers are stand-ins for white supremacists/imperialists, and maybe fascists. They're a world-conquering species with superior technology to those that they're conquering, commit eugenics on their thralls and themselves, oppress the religions of their subjects, are extremely racist, and completely obey every command of their colony leaders. If they're a stand-in for anyone, it's imperialists/white supremacists/fascists.)

What are the odds that they were intentionally created to represent white colonial imperialists vs. the odds they're just really evil monsters who someone thought would be really spooky a long time ago.

If we can read into things new elements, I don't see why we can't read them out as well. If the meaning and interpretation of HPLs work crystalized the moment he wrote it, why would mind flayers be different - i.e. your interpretation is almost certainly false given what we know of the early designers of D&D creatures.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Umm . . . yes, but they're also practically always evil (except Large Luigi and Gnome Ceremorphs, I guess). There's no problem with having them enslave others and experiment on them, because they're almost always the villains.

D&D could lose 80% of its slaver races and slavery would still be the prevalent mode of economics in the D&D world.

It's like the designers could only think of 4 villains types: corrupt leader, slaver, cult and raiding horde. And the other three usually have slaves. Somehow it's slaves all the way down and it's frankly obnoxious.

Edit: Also early mindflayers all had a clearly East Asian veneer to them.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

D&D could lose 80% of its slaver races and slavery would still be the prevalent mode of economics in the D&D world.

It's like the designers could only think of 4 villains types: corrupt leader, slaver, cult and raiding horde. And the other three usually have slaves. Somehow it's slaves all the way down and it's frankly obnoxious.

Edit: Also early mindflayers all had a clearly East Asian veneer to them.

Gosh I wonder why all these villains archetypes seem to have slaves... hmm... HMM could it be that slavery is considered one of the greatest and vilest of all evils??