I think it is important to recognize the nature of D&D as a game, which isn't quite the same thing as an art form. Certainly D&D has a major artistic component, but the nature of a game is quite different than, say, a novel or painting. A game is (generally) more dynamic, less static. Furthermore, whereas one experiences an art form created by someone else and usually doesn't alter it, each of us that play D&D make it our own. In a sense, the D&D rules are like the tools a painter uses--paints, canvas, brushes, etc--and each of us becomes the artist, in an ongoing act of creativity.
A novel or painting is an artifact: once finished, it is "done," set in stone, if you will. A game, however--especially one with multiple editions like D&D--is evolving. It changes over time, for a variety or reasons and in different ways.
In a way, D&D--as a game--is less like a form of art, and more like an artist. An artists changes over time, their skills develop, the themes evolve. It isn't necessarily "worse to better," and is sometimes just from one thing to another (that is, different). To cite one example, some U2 fans think the band peaked and essentially ended after The Joshua Tree, while others felt Achtung Baby represented a new octave (I'm ambivalent as I'm not a big U2 fan, but it is a good example of a huge artist that radically changed their style mid-stream).
We could look at two general categories of change: One is how the game itself changes relative to itself. Meaning, the rules, the settings, the ideas presented within the game. One element of this is expansion: more and more stuff comes out, more worlds, stories, creatures, etc. The body of material becomes larger and larger. Another element is the way the game itself changes or morphs. Ideally it becomes "better" at accomplishing the task at hand: to facilitate D&D play. Of course this leads to endless arguments, and--at the least--there's a lot of subjectivity involved in terms of what works "best."
Another category of change is how the game is influenced by cultural trends--that is, from without. This also relates to the idea that everything is contextually situated; a film of 1972 arises within a very different context than one of 2022.
Now one way in which D&D is similar to other forms of art is that as soon as something is published, it becomes an artifact. This is even more so the case when a new edition comes out. WotC is no longer publishing 4E materials, so the entire body of 4E is "complete" (in terms of official, published material). In that sense, we can look at past editions in a somewhat similar manner to other works of art: they are frozen in time, even as the game itself moves on--just as we, as human beings, move on.
When an artist completes a project, they move on to the next. Now some will endlessly tinker, even to the point of never finishing anything. Tolkien actually wrote an allegorical story about this, and his own tendency to endlessly tinker: Leaf by Niggle. Of course, to Tolkien, the artifacts of his project were less important than the project itself: that is, Middle-earth itself, its stories and languages.
This brings us to one of the key questions of this discussion: What to do with the artifacts of the past? Specifically, D&D's past? Occasionally artists re-do old works, whether simply through remastering or actually re-writing or re-creating. But for the most part, they move on to the next piece: the next album, painting, book, poem, etc.
And more specifically, what do we do with artifacts of the past that are objectionable to some?
Now I'm fairly certain that no one, at least no one here, is suggesting that we either change or even erase the artistic artifacts of the past. In other contexts, this actually has been done; one edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn infamously removed a certain word, one that is probably the most well-known racist epithet. There is a certain irony here, because Twain himself said he used the word to demonstrate the prevalence of racial prejudice. In other words, one could argue that removing the word actually is counter-productive in that the point of the word being there in the first place was to bring awareness of racism. Of course even then, that was just one edition (afaik), and the original version still remains in print and is the main version people go to.
My guess is that the vast majority of people don't want the artifacts of D&D past to be changed or edited and reissued, if only because it would involve a lot of work for very little payout. I mean, how many people are actively using Orcs of Thar?
I would suggest that the best course of action is actually to leave the artifacts of the past as they are, and to "do better" in the present and future. In fact, leaving the artifacts as they are helps us do better, because we get a sense of where we come from.
I mean, it is similar to how we can all look at our own parents and see certain attitudes they have that we find dated or even bigoted. So we "do better" in our own lives. We may even have discussions with them about it, because unlike an artistic artifact, they are still expressing said attitudes (assuming they are alive). But, I would argue, our focus should be on our own actions: on doing better ourselves, now and in the future.
So we look at past editions and say, "This is where we've been, where we've come from." That helps us decide where we want to be and go. Even if HP Lovecraft isn't representative of the typical person's attitudes towards race in 1925, he still existed in a context in which his ideas could be published as such. That is meaningful data for us, to understand our own history.
I think it should go without saying, but reading Lovecraft in 2022 doesn't mean one espouses or even condones his attitudes. And this applies to a lot of things in our lives. Remember that old saying, "We vote with our dollar?" I would never tell someone how to vote. I mean, I struggle with this myself. When I buy a D&D book on Amazon for $30 I save $20, yet I'm supporting a company that not only has a significant share of responsibility for the decline of small game stores, but has displayed business practices that I find objectionable. But it is so convenient, and cheap! This is the dilemma we all find ourselves in, if not with Amazon then something else.
Is there one right way to vote? Or to even think on these things? If someone claims there is, I'd be instantly suspicious of them. It is an ongoing conversation, and all any of us can do is...do better, in our own lives, now and in the future. And what "better" means may differ. Or more to the point, two people can have underlying agreement on certain things--that racism is bad, that D&D should be inclusive, etc etc--but still disagree on what to do about it, or even to what degree something is "problematic."
Where I become concerned is when the judgement of opposing views becomes louder than the discussion of it, which often obfuscates underlying agreement. What too-often happens is that an association is made, a label assigned, and what is actually being said is obfuscated. I mean, how many times has a public figure said something that was taken out of context, then they were labeled as this or that, and from that moment on, they couldn't escape that label? It happens all the time, and it isn't simply a matter of "there are consequences for our actions." It is a kind of quick and sloppy judgement and mob mentality that clouds real discussion and understanding.
In the context of such conversations around D&D, what I see arise a lot is some variation of, "You don't agree with me on this, therefore must be on the other side." Which leads to an unwillingness to actually hear what is being said, or to understand how the other person actually thinks about an issue. "If you're not with us, you're with them!"
And of course none of us in this thread, as far as I know, works for WotC or has a significant say in what and how they publish. All we can do is have the conversation, and let our voices be heard. WotC will hold their finger to the wind and proceed accordingly.
