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

[Crimson Longinus]

Wow, height and weight tables are the new hill to die on? Good grief, I didn't know anyone actually used those. And, frankly, everyone ignores it anyway - no one cares that that halfling is the size of the three year old. It has nearly no mechanical impact and no one cares.

Do you really need to know the exact height and weight range of a race for it to be considered to have lore?

It merely illustrates how utterly lacking the content is. They literally are unable to even define how large the species physically is. Doing that would be some sort of obvious bare minimum, but they didn't do even that. Why would I pay for "It is some sort of rabbit person, I guess, make stuff up!"

 

[MGibster]

Do you really need to know the exact height and weight range of a race for it to be considered to have lore?

It's a known fact that the more weight and volume a race has the more lore can fit into it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One must be careful not to let biases color perception.

After all, the old Dragon Magazine had an audience in the 3e days of maybe 50000 readers. How many downloads does Dragon+ get? How many people does it reach? And, wouldn't adding something like these Ecologies address the notion that it's a worthless bundle of advertisements?

I admit I'd love to see the tagline, "Dragon+! Now with content!"

 

[Cadence]

Wow, height and weight tables are the new hill to die on? Good grief, I didn't know anyone actually used those. And, frankly, everyone ignores it anyway - no one cares that that halfling is the size of the three year old. It has nearly no mechanical impact and no one cares.

I care...

 

[Voadam]

But, even if this was true, that doesn't exactly make it any less racist does it?

Even if this was true? You quoted a statement by me of how Watto struck me.

"He struck me as evoking specifically Arab stereotypical traits/caricature."

So yes, even if I was not lying about how Watto struck me as a different derogatory ethnic caricature . . . , correct. A different derogatory ethnic caricature is still a derogatory ethnic caricature.

The way you phrased the question seems like you thought I was arguing that because I felt Watto is not based on a derogatory Jewish caricature but an Arab one that it is not problematic. Which seems to me a bizarre inference out of what I wrote.

The greedy evil slave owning Arab trope seems self-evidently problematic to me.

But I also thought the Orcs of Thar picture of the heavy set dark skinned big lipped woman with a bone was obviously problematic and the OP originally asked why I thought so as he did not want the thread to involve mere criticisms of general silliness. So interpretations of what is obviously problematic can vary.

 

[Mordhau]

It's a known fact that the more weight and volume a race has the more lore can fit into it.

All that unused space Goliaths have more lore!

 

[Faolyn]

So, then the idea is to provide a "pick your orc" option? Present the classic savage-tribal orc alongside the Eberron orc, the Many-Arrows orc, the Ondonti, and scro (spelljammer) orcs. Or provide the Unudrow, Aevendrow, Lorendrow, Vulkoor, Sulatar, Umbragen and Devkarin in the drow section. Each culture gets a paragraph of explanation and that's it. Then a DM picks the one they are using and it's off to the races.

Yep. Or the DM can pick more than one, or none, or just use them as inspiration. Or even decide that they like the concept of the Devkarin drow, but think it'd be cooler if they were a hobgoblin culture instead. Having them all there in the PH or MM would make it easy for the DM to bring in new people or flesh out a new world quickly. And it would allow for people who like Always Evil races to have them and it'd be just as canon as the more nuanced versions.

And yeah, unless WotC fully embraces the race/culture divide and gives stats to the cultures, I think this would work well. Now, I'm all for the race/culture divide, but how they do it is another thing entirely.

Honestly, though, the scro are really just vampire orcs but are trying to fool everyone by spelling their name backwards. They travel in space because it's always night there.

Its an interesitng options, although, I really detest the idea of any sort of online component required to get the full picture. A lot of 4e material was paywalled behind D&D Insider and in Dragon, and it's lost to time now unless you had the foresight to save it or resort to unsavory means of acquiring it. Put it in the book or don't bother with it.

I agree. But who knows what the future will bring. Maybe instead of extra stuff being online only (which is only a guess on my part anyway) they'll do POD as well.

 

[Hussar]

Even if this was true? You quoted a statement by me of how Watto struck me.

"He struck me as evoking specifically Arab stereotypical traits/caricature."

So yes, even if I was not lying about how Watto struck me as a different derogatory ethnic caricature . . . , correct. A different derogatory ethnic caricature is still a derogatory ethnic caricature.

The way you phrased the question seems like you thought I was arguing that because I felt Watto is not based on a derogatory Jewish caricature but an Arab one that it is not problematic. Which seems to me a bizarre inference out of what I wrote.

The greedy evil slave owning Arab trope seems self-evidently problematic to me.

But I also thought the Orcs of Thar picture of the heavy set dark skinned big lipped woman with a bone was obviously problematic and the OP originally asked why I thought so as he did not want the thread to involve mere criticisms of general silliness. So interpretations of what is obviously problematic can vary.

Sorry, my bad. You called it a trope, so, I misunderstood.

 

[Hussar]

It merely illustrates how utterly lacking the content is. They literally are unable to even define how large the species physically is. Doing that would be some sort of obvious bare minimum, but they didn't do even that. Why would I pay for "It is some sort of rabbit person, I guess, make stuff up!"

Aren't the sizes ranged between small and medium? IIRC, that's the size range of all PC races now. So, IOW, it's up to you to decide how big your individual character is, pretty much the way it has been all the way along. How is this different?

Look, I'll be the first to admit, I haven't really paid any attention to Strixhaven. It's just not my thing, so, for these specific issues, I really don't know. But, I look at what's happened to the drow - massive expansion of lore, the orcs - massive expansion of lore and think, hrm, yeah, we're seeing pretty big explosions of lore based on bringing more nuanced versions of race to the table.

AFAIK, only the Owlin are officially added to the game right? The rabbit person appears in a UA article and not meant as the final product. To be fair - I just took a peek at the Owlin writeup and I totally agree - that's seriously lacking. Wow, that's just a complete non-race. I have to admit that I hope that we'll see more expansion later on down the road.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Aren't the sizes ranged between small and medium? IIRC, that's the size range of all PC races now. So, IOW, it's up to you to decide how big your individual character is, pretty much the way it has been all the way along. How is this different?

Look, I'll be the first to admit, I haven't really paid any attention to Strixhaven. It's just not my thing, so, for these specific issues, I really don't know. But, I look at what's happened to the drow - massive expansion of lore, the orcs - massive expansion of lore and think, hrm, yeah, we're seeing pretty big explosions of lore based on bringing more nuanced versions of race to the table.

AFAIK, only the Owlin are officially added to the game right? The rabbit person appears in a UA article and not meant as the final product. To be fair - I just took a peek at the Owlin writeup and I totally agree - that's seriously lacking. Wow, that's just a complete non-race. I have to admit that I hope that we'll see more expansion later on down the road.

The rabbit-person and the generic fairy are in Witchlight. Just as lacking in lore as the Owlin.

And where is this "massive explosion" of orc and Drow lore? What books is it in?