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

[Dannyalcatraz]

There are wrsatz Romans in other products.

I can't recall the art that much either way as it's been to long.

I remember PCs raising an army and invading Thyatis and winning a few battles with 4000 troops.

Struggling to remember the name of said product but the Emperor's name was Thincol and he was having an affair with an immortal named Vanya.

This was 1995 or so perhaps.

I wasn’t concerned about the existence of ersatz Romans, but rather, if they were or were not presented in bigoted terms and imagery.

Because the product in question clearly used RW bigotry as a foundation of how certain cultures were depicted, any complaints of ripping/riffing off other civilizations loses strength if those other cultures are not similarly denigrated.

 

[Zardnaar]

Cicero was pissed at Brutus for a few reasons. Namely because Cicero had set the usury cap at 12% but also because it was illegal as hell for Romans in the capital to lend to provincials. Brutus arranged for his "friends" to make the loan but it was actually him. Remember, this is someone largely thought of as "honorable" who used his position to fleece and coerce the people of Cyprus for his own personal benefit.

Heh who was that rich oligarch who raised his own army and died vs Parthia?

I remember my classics lecturer telling me reading the ancient stuff "these guys were psychopaths".

Alot of pip culture stuff is loosely based on Tacitus and Suetonius iirc. Cruel world.

 

[MGibster]

Heh who was that rich oligarch who raised his own army and died vs Parthia?

Crassus! I barely studied Rome in history courses, but I sure read a lot of historical fiction sent in Rome. Thank you Coleen McCullough.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

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

I am a "native" of the "country" of the Mystaran forums. I've been a participant in the Mystara Piazza since it was created, and I participated in the Mystara Mailing List and Mystara Message Board before that, going back over 20 years.

How is it that all of a sudden, I'm not a "nice and good Mystara fan" when I broach the topic of problematic depictions, such as racial epithets? Even when I try very hard to present it in an informative, well-researched way.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

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

Earlier in the thread, I say as much.

The fact that the disclaimer is a bland, platitudinous boilerplate in no way stops me from voicing concerns, or from calling on Wizards to step up and bring their words to life.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've been a participant in the Mystara Piazza since it was created, and I participated in the Mystara Mailing List and Mystara Message Board before that, going back over 20 years.

How is it that all of a sudden, I'm not a "nice and good Mystara fan" when I broach the topic of problematic depictions, such as racial epithets? Even when I try very hard to present it in an informative, well-researched way.

Right?
Funny* how that works.




*not really funny at all

 

[Zardnaar]

I am a "native" of the "country" of the Mystaran forums. I've been a participant in the Mystara Piazza since it was created, and I participated in the Mystara Mailing List and Mystara Message Board before that, going back over 20 years.

How is it that all of a sudden, I'm not a "nice and good Mystara fan" when I broach the topic of problematic depictions, such as racial epithets? Even when I try very hard to present it in an informative, well-researched way.

I'm not familiar with the rules that place gas but generally most places online it's "their house their castle".

If it's against the rules the mods will ping you. If I had to guess it's probably just to avoid arguements on the forums that just gonna piss people off kinda like no edition wars here.

 

[AtomicPope]

The interior logic of the setting is not the most relevant context here. What we are talking about is the context of a set of representations produced in the United States, a country built on stolen land, and how the representations in this particular supplement connect to other popular and racist representations of indigenous people.

If the land is "stolen" then immigrants, migrants, and refugees have no right to move to the United States.

 

[MGibster]

If the land is "stolen" then immigrants, migrants, and refugees have no right to move to the United States.

We should probably take care to make sure this thread doesn't veer into modern politics that aren't directly applicable to gaming.

 

[AtomicPope]

We should probably take care to make sure this thread doesn't veer into modern politics that aren't directly applicable to gaming.

Maybe you should take that up with the person I'm replying to.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

That seem to me as a wicked strategy!
I’m sure you don’t hope that Wotc sell that much Gaz10 pdf, but at the same time you will hope better funding for the school.
Asmodeus could not offer you better deal!

Hi Krachek, as I stated earlier: I proposed a suite of remedies, not just one thing.

1) A cultural amends team studies the product, and gathers the specific instances of "ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice."
2) That report is boiled down to a DRAGON+ amends article.
3) Ideally, in the DRAGON+ article, the original author or other living member of the original design team is tapped to voice some beautiful words of amends, like R.A. Salvatore did recently with the drow.
4) The DriveThruRPG product page is updated with a permanent link to the DRAGON+ amends article, so that future generations of D&D players may be "educated" by the D&D principle that "diversity is strength."
5) A significant portion of the sales of that product is perpetually donated to an array of appropriate charities which specifically relate to the problematic facets of the product (i.e. specific ethnonational, racial, and gender communities).

Maybe you just saw the part about donating a portion of the proceeds, but didn't notice the other facets of my proposal.

 

[BookTenTiger]

If the land is "stolen" then immigrants, migrants, and refugees have no right to move to the United States.

I'm not quite sure what your intention with this statement is, but here's a useful list of Broken Treaties the US Made with Native Peoples.

Here's an example:

In this treaty, signed at Fort Laramie and other military posts in what is now Wyoming, the U.S. government recognized the Black Hills of Dakota as the Great Sioux Reservation, the exclusive territory of the Sioux (Dakota, Lakota and Nakota) and Arapaho people. But after gold was discovered in the Black Hills, miners and settlers began moving onto the land en masse.

Native resistance to the treaty’s violation culminated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, after which government troops flooded the region. By that time, Congress had ended the nearly 100-year-old practice of making treaties with individual Native American tribes, declaring in 1871 that “henceforth, no Indian nation or tribe...shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty.”

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were illegally confiscated, and awarded the Sioux more than $100 million in reparations. Sioux leaders rejected the payment, saying the land had never been for sale. Controversy continues over the sacred land—as well as other broken treaties.

So even the Supreme Court agrees this land was stolen.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

1) ENWorld‘s no politics policy gets bent when it is germane to the discussion of the hobby, but it’s gone too far in this thread. The broken treaties, immigration policy and other stuff stops NOW.

2) As noted before, ENWorld is not the place to rehash drama from other forums. This will also stop NOW.

Failure to take note of this post’s admonitions could result in the application of my aforementioned bon hammer.

 

[Helldritch]

Real world politic is booooring. Fantasy politics on the other hand...

Re read the Orcs of Thar to see the OP points. From a modern point of view, he is 100% right. From an 80s point of view, it is highly debatable that it was solely depictions of or real world ethnicities.

Taken separately, these points seems quite clear. When you take the whole into account, not so. It is clearly stated that the orcs try to emulate their most successful and nobler foes, but failing to succeed in that respect. If the red orcs are trying to emulate the nobler and more successful humans it does mean that the author were respecting the nation the orcs were trying to emulate...

The orcs here are a parody and has always been. But it is clear that they fail to emulate more nobler and successful nations. But it can lead to confusion and that is understandable.

Maybe such line put the product in a better light, maybe not. For me, that book never was such a good one as one paragraph does not justify the amount of parodies we can see and that paragraph can easily be passed over or forgotten. A clear warning is/would've been much better in that case.

 

[Mirtek]

The main problem with Roman settings is, hilariously, that virtually all of them tone DOWN how horrifying a lot of elements of Roman culture were, rather than even presenting them accurately, let alone demonizing them.

Same in RL. All summer you'll find plenty of roman reenactments all across Germany where we celebrate and idealize the invaders that subjucated our ancestors. And the general opinion about those ancestors it that they were stupid savages that s##t in the woods.

Just about no one cares about mocking the ancient germans. While the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is hailed, that's more of an exception in how the roman conquest of Germany is seen. The general view is that it was a good thing for us and actually a shame that the roman empire didn't manage to conquer even further into the east of Germany.

​

 

[AnotherGuy]

Hi Krachek, as I stated earlier: I proposed a suite of remedies, not just one thing.

1) A cultural amends team studies the product, and gathers the specific instances of "ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice."
2) That report is boiled down to a DRAGON+ amends article.
3) Ideally, in the DRAGON+ article, the original author or other living member of the original design team is tapped to voice some beautiful words of amends, like R.A. Salvatore did recently with the drow.
4) The DriveThruRPG product page is updated with a permanent link to the DRAGON+ amends article, so that future generations of D&D players may be "educated" by the D&D principle that "diversity is strength."
5) A significant portion of the sales of that product is perpetually donated to an array of appropriate charities which specifically relate to the problematic facets of the product (i.e. specific ethnonational, racial, and gender communities).

Maybe you just saw the part about donating a portion of the proceeds, but didn't notice the other facets of my proposal.

Just a question that popped into my head. We do not sanitize religious texts which pretty much are supposed to imprint one's core-beliefs, why is there a push to sanitize historical RPG books? The evolution of the game already provides updated correctness on many troublesome issues.

 

[AnotherGuy]

What, are you a prophet? You're speaking pretty authoritatively for someone who's not a representative of Wizards of the Coast.

No he is not a prophet, however we have seen entire episodes pulled from certain Netflix series instead of just posting a disclaimer.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Same in RL. All summer you'll find plenty of roman reenactments all across Germany where we celebrate and idealize the invaders that subjucated our ancestors. And the general opinion about those ancestors it that they were stupid savages that s##t in the woods.

THEY DO WHAT?!?!?!

In Germany?!?! But you guys kicked their ass in the end!

Wow.

I would never have expected that. Where's Arminius when you need him? Teutoburg Forest is so famous I didn't even have to think what his name was. It was the highlight, the absolute highlight of when I did Ancient History at GCSE, finally these cocky Romans got their arses handed to them on a platter. It was even better than Boudicca in some ways, because of the whole vanishing in the forest deal - "Quintili Vare, legiones redde!", and because there wasn't a horrible massacre of the rebels in the end.

And the Romans were absolutely horrible to the Germanic peoples, like vile. Worse than to the British, and they weren't great here (they were also pretty awful to the Gauls - the Hardcore History guy has a genuinely great podcast on it rather provocatively titled "The Celtic Holocaust"). When loads of refugees came needing help, the Romans basically rounded them up and slaughtered them later on. Of course that helped lead to the fall of Rome.

Anyway, I'm actually genuinely IRL shocked to hear that. And sorry too, I'm with you on being disappointed in your countrymen.

We have the same issue in the UK to some extent, relentless pro-Roman propaganda, which was really not because the Romans did anything great for Britain (they didn't, or nothing that lasted past the Saxons), but because the British Empire idolized and aped the Romans so hard (using them as a model and an excuse), that they basically built propaganda into our educational system for centuries and we're still not fully rid of it. Luckily we have Boudicca and thus there's at least some mixed feelings about it.

Anyway, you have my sympathies.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No he is not a prophet, however we have seen entire episodes pulled from certain Netflix series instead of just posting a disclaimer.

We've also seen that a lot of those episodes of shows that get pulled later quietly walk back on with a disclaimer.

Actually it's pretty reliable as to whether they do, there's almost all a rule:

• Is the show on a service that's owned by the people who made it/own the IP/rights? If so, the episode will reappear with a disclaimer, or they may even get ahead of the game and add a disclaimer before they even have to.

You can see this with Disney shows on Disney+ or BBC shows on BBC iPlayer. They get pulled, get a disclaimer, come back.

• Is the show on a service which is just "renting" the show from the actual owner? If so the episode will probably disappear for the duration of the rental.

As Netflix is just "renting" all the episodes in question, I don't expect them to come back whilst those shows are on Netflix.

As WotC own the IP in this case, I think The Orcs of Thar still being available shows they're not going to take something down permanently. Same with OA, which attracted huge attention.

 

[AnotherGuy]

We have the same issue in the UK to some extent, relentless pro-Roman propaganda, which was really not because the Romans did anything great for Britain (they didn't, or nothing that lasted past the Saxons), but because the British Empire idolized and aped the Romans so hard (using them as a model and an excuse), that they basically built propaganda into our educational system for centuries and we're still not fully rid of it.

I suspect (I'm not a history buff) that it may have to do with the spread of Christianity that the Roman Empire is viewed positively within the UK.