saw the image before the product was released but didn't see the problem until it was pointed out. At which point realisation hit me like a ten-ton truck.
I had to look up which image and I still don’t think it’s a legit complaint, tbh. The story elements, yes, but the image is literally just a simian glider person bard.
Don't dither on the issue... if you want to call Perkins racist then just do it. Don't just imply it so you can give yourself an out if you get challenged on it.
After years on these forums, I am certain that if
@Parmandur wanted to call someone racist, he just would do that.
My friend who is planning on running Spelljammer has been ranting about how horrible and racist the hadozee were and had decided to not use them. If it was as bad as he says they were, I'm really surprised that nobody caught it before print.
Have you read the writeup and seen the imagery in question? It’s not at all blatant or egregious. It should have been caught, sure, but it’s not at all surprising that a team of people whose minds weren’t on the subject of sensitivity would not make the connection. This is not at all on the level of Volo’s orcs or CoS Vistani.
Apparently, because Hadozee have a simian look, it was felt necessary to include a statement "they evolved from smaller mammals" and "evolved wing-like flaps". D&D is full of races that come into the fantasy milleniu fully formed and developed without having to have "evolved" from some lesser creature.
Evolved. No need for quotations. It’s a factual part of the natural world.
And they’re a race with no progenitor deity. Good. The multiverse should have things that aren’t the same as all the other things in the same category.
Oh, and there is no validity to the notion of “lesser” species. We are all just animals. Full stop. I say this as a theist.
Why did they feel compelled to pull in a subject that has real-world contention?
There is no real world contention. The world is (roughly) round, species evolve over time, gravity generally pulls stuff toward eachother. None of this is controversial, nor is any of it something that companies need to keep out of their products.
They removed the other bits, why couldn't they remove the portions calling back to evolution. Just because of my faith, am I supposed to just gloss over it and ignore it?
I don’t know your faith, but I somehow doubt evolution existing, of all things, is a bigger deal than black magic wielded by good people, divine nature that is wildly different from any RL faith, humans being created in an extraplanar city run by a goddess of pain, etc.
And this is NOT something I am joking around with.
I’m sorry, but it just isn’t comparable in any way to actual bigotry.