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

[Ruin Explorer]

Have times changed, or have they stayed the same?

Nowadays it's very risky to be this level of racist, because you're going to get in a lot of hot water.

But people still do come out with products which are pretty damn racist, and it happened quite a lot up even past 2010, though it's usually some random wildly racist element in an otherwise-sane setting.

Thankfully consistent opposition to this kind of stuff is making it rarer. But even with 5E there are serious mistakes from time to time. For example, with Orcs, the very negative description of them in Volo's unfortunately basically exactly matched how some ultra-racist pre-1960s textbooks described Black people. Was it conscious or intentional? Almost certainly not. Was the result of people growing up in racist culture and internalizing certain stuff unconsciously? Yeah quite likely. So it still happens a bit.

 

[cowpie]

I don't agree that it wasn't mainstream. It just wasn't dominant. Those are different things. And 1988 was not 1984, culturally, especially with regards to racism.

Also I'm a bit confused, Reagan's primary platform was economic rather than social, and AFAICT race wasn't a huge part of that particular election (unlike some others). So I don't really see how that supports your point. Looking at the media of the US from 1980 to 1988 you can see a pretty clear decline in racism, and attempts to move away from racist stereotypes.

This is two years before Dances With Wolves for goodness sake. And you're trying to tell me people would have thought "Big Chief Sitting Drool" the "Red Orc" would have totally A-okay in 1988 even when it very clearly would not have in 1990? Because I'm not really buying that.

Agreed, Big Chief Sitting Drool is beyond stupid, and there were a lot of people at the time who would have looked at it, and while they might not have acted outraged, would have found it racist and in extremely poor taste.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nowadays it's very risky to be this level of racist, because you're going to get in a lot of hot water.

But people still do come out with products which are pretty damn racist, and it happened quite a lot up even past 2010, though it's usually some random wildly racist element in an otherwise-sane setting.

Thankfully consistent opposition to this kind of stuff is making it rarer. But even with 5E there are serious mistakes from time to time. For example, with Orcs, the very negative description of them in Volo's unfortunately basically exactly matched how some ultra-racist pre-1960s textbooks described Black people. Was it conscious or intentional? Almost certainly not. Was the result of people growing up in racist culture and internalizing certain stuff unconsciously? Yeah quite likely. So it still happens a bit.

I tends to be on a vastly smaller scale now. Less of it and it's not on the cover eg X8 Drums of Fire Mountain.

 

[CleverNickName]

I would also like to gently point out that there isn't anything inherently wrong with drawing real-world inspiration for works of fiction.

Just understand that it will be impossible to do so without some degree of appropriation and/or misrepresentation...otherwise, it would no longer be a work of fiction. So when you write, do it carefully and thoughtfully, with lots of research and feedback, or you will run into problems. And if your intent from the beginning is to mock, disenfranchise, or "joke around about" a real-world group of people, you should scrap the idea completely.

 

[Zardnaar]

Agreed, Big Chief Sitting Drool is beyond stupid, and there were a lot of people at the time who would have looked at it, and while they might not have acted outraged, would have found it racist and in extremely poor taste.

I didn't see a lot of Mystara stuff until the mid 90's. I thought it was poor taste/Stupid.

Fart jokes in print form. We had the RC but not the Mystara line the Ylaraum book was the first GAZ I saw and yeah.

Didn't get to read the rest until pdfs were a thing.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't agree that it wasn't mainstream. It just wasn't dominant. Those are different things. And 1988 was not 1984, culturally, especially with regards to racism.

Also I'm a bit confused, Reagan's primary platform was economic rather than social, and AFAICT race wasn't a huge part of that particular election (unlike some others). So I don't really see how that supports your point. Looking at the media of the US from 1980 to 1988 you can see a pretty clear decline in racism, and attempts to move away from racist stereotypes.

This is two years before Dances With Wolves for goodness sake. And you're trying to tell me people would have thought "Big Chief Sitting Drool" the "Red Orc" would have totally A-okay in 1988 even when it very clearly would not have in 1990? Because I'm not really buying that.

Hollywood skews differently than USA as a whole.

See the 1950's or anti Vietnam War movies late 70's and 80's.

Just something to be aware of.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

See that's the thing:

If you do it, you are bound to get some things wrong. We all have biases we don't even realize we have. Some of those wrong things could be quite offensive.

If you don't do it, you don't do the research that increases your knowledge of other cultures, every game is fantasy generic Europe.

Research is hard. Just knowing how to research is hard.

I'm not saying that to excuse not doing the right thing. But I can see how if you both don't want to cause offense and don't want to work yourself too hard one might choose sticking to the cultures you don't have to worry about.

 

[CleverNickName]

We had the RC but not the Mystara line the Ylaraum book was the first GAZ I saw and yeah.

You're gonna think I'm pulling your leg, but I had just pulled down my copy of GAZ2 from the bookshelf to compare it to this one.

The differences between Emirates of Ylaruam and The Orcs of Thar are night-and-day...the tone, the artwork, even the the use of real-world names and historical events were done in a much more vibrant (and tasteful) manner. It's really not a fair comparison.

 

[cowpie]

I didn't see a lot of Mystara stuff until the mid 90's. I thought it was poor taste/Stupid.

Fart jokes in print form. We had the RC but not the Mystara line the Ylaraum book was the first GAZ I saw and yeah.

Didn't get to read the rest until pdfs were a thing.

I pretty much skipped these for the same reason -- a lot of the subject matter seemed racist, the bad ideas in some of the products (like the fart jokes) and the general trend of TSR pumping out subpar products meant that I didn't want to buy any of this stuff.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I didn't see a lot of Mystara stuff until the mid 90's. I thought it was poor taste/Stupid.

The first Mystara thing I came across was the Shadow Elves thing, with cool underground elves being poisoned by what is basically a nuclear reactor and it was kind of badass/amazing plus I loved the Shadow Elves themselves.

So my bro and I picked up more Mystara stuff. And it was like that meme with the kid grinning and then his jaw drops and he looks upset. Because wooooow most of Mystara was not up to that quality level, it seemed to be basically "Stereotypical presentation of Earth culture with animal-people!" or "Stereotypical presentation of Earth culture with demihumans or humans!" and so on, just like, endlessly.

All these stereotyped cultures from different periods just sitting right next to each other with some dodgy races assigned to them.

We were what, 12-14? And we thought it was dumb as hell. It doesn't look any smarter from 43.

But I'll always have the Shadow Elves!