NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 8499796" data-attributes="member: 59082">This is a really good point. I wonder just how much of allegedly "problematic elements" of past RPG products are actually just due to lazy world-building. And as you say, it isn't always lazy but more a matter of convenience. I mean, it is virtually impossible to create something fantastical without referring to, or at least being influenced by, something in the real world. And it is all-too-easy to associate fantasy stuff to real-world stuff, due to superficial commonalities.That said, while I've only skimmed a handful of pages in this thread and have never owned or even looked at Orcs of Thar, it does seem that it went a bit beyond this into deliberate mockery or, at least, clueless callousness. Chief Sitting Drool goes a bit beyond lazy world-building. Of course unless the author, Bruce Heard, has a history of such things, it could be an instance of temporary error in judgment or poorly conceived "humor;" I wouldn't want to blacklist him for one product. Meaning, this is not to say that all such instances are just due to laziness or moments of poor judgment, but the waters are pretty muddy, so much so that we should be hesitant to jump to conclusions. And unlike what someone said upthread, I don't think Orcs of Thar ends the debate on whether or not orcs etc are racist surrogates for real-world peoples. Just because one product, one author, seemingly used them as such, doesn't mean that's how they were conceived of over thousands of products and by hundreds of authors. Anything can be misused. If anything, I think it supports the idea that there is a wide range of how orcs and such have been depicted, and because this product stands out so much, it gives us an example of actual "problematic usage," and makes everything else be put into context. Or to put it another way, if you broaden the definition of "red" to include orange and yellow, then you'll see red almost everywhere. But when you actually have an instance of red, it allows you to better differentiate it from orange and yellow.</blockquote>

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