For the same reasons why it often did not in the real world. Pick one.
The word primitive describes the current situation, not the reasons which resulted in said situation.
The problem with Evil races is not what you think
The word primitive describes the current situation, not the reasons which resulted in said situation.
Aldarc
Legend
I think that this is where Western perspectives use a selection of other pejorative terms to describe non-Western nations: e.g., Byzantine, decadent, despotic, oppressive, etc.
I think that there is also the issue of "essentialism" when it comes to Grippli. It's not just that they are described as "primitive" when living near Cormyr, but, rather, that they are commonly depicted as "primitive" regardless of geography, history, or circumstances. They are stuck in their primitive depictions as if their primitiveness is somehow an essential quality to their species.
Well this is entirely my point. And is borne out by @Ixal's post just upthread of yours. There's no attempt, in the fiction, to consider any actual social/historical processes which might explain the distribution of, and differences in, technologies.
Instead we have an authorial stipulation that Grippli are "primitive" just because. It's racist tropes through-and-through.
Thank you very much for all of your posting on this.
I think what might help me personally is having a list of adjectives and short phrases that would be ok to describe the following in terms of mental and technological states.
(Grippy 1) - Imagine a "frog humanoidish" species that might be thought of as picturing a frog who's been magically crossed with a chimpanzee (although they might just have evolved or whatnot). So they're social like many types of frogs, better at burrowing than the small tree frogs if that's helpful, have hands to build shelters with if that works better, and have tool using ability like a chimpanzee might since they have opposable thumbs and somewhat more relevantly evolved brains. [Not a PC available species]
(Grippy 2) Imagine a "frog humanoidish" species that's essentially like halflings with lots of tree frog characteristics. Unlike the halflings who unobtrusively shelter with many communities of demi-humans in the bad times (war with orcs or goblins? go shelter with the dwarves or humans if they find our shire), the extra level of non-humanness has made this hard for the Grippy 2 and so many groups of them over the ages have sheltered by finding less and less hospitable and hidden areas. Historically this has made it harder for them to build some kinds of infrastructure (large farms, large mills, large smelters, etc...) and to have much less trade with other species, and so they might not share the same armor and weapons tech that is the default for many of the other humanoid races. There are some populations of Grippy 2 that have found acceptance near other species and they will typically have the standard suite of default demi-human magic and tech available (in addition to specialized items that work just for them). [May or may not be a PC available species].
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Yeah, it looks like you are now(?) just arguing for arguments sake. Do you really expect adventures to provide a detailed historic justification for the current state found in said adventure? A treatise about the socio-economical circumstances which made a specific tribe of goblins live in the same cave structure as a beholder?
No you don't, because it is not relevant for the adventure which describes the current snapshot in time the adventurers are confronted with. Only now you suddenly want this requirement because you failed to argue that "primitive" is an inherently racist word used to degrade entire societies instead of just describing the state of technological development (or artistic style).
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What I would focus on is what is going on with your fiction? What's it for? As in, what's its point?
Eg if your fiction posits an essentially human people who live adjacent to, and in contact with, pseudo-High Mediaeval France but have technology comparable to Australia at the same period, what is going on? What are you trying to achieve or communicate?
Describing these people as primitive seems to reinforce the sort of essentialist idea that @Aldarc described upthread. I just don't see what it adds.
Eg if you want to say that a particular language is not normally written down, I think maybe you just say that. Again, though, the question might be why? What are we meant to take away from this fiction? I can imagine a culture that, for some reason - in the context of a FRPG, perhaps reinforced by supernatural imperatives - rejects the written word. But then we are not talking about "primitives" - we're talking about traditions or taboos.
And of course the Cormyr-type peoples probably have traditions or taboos too - presenting them as normatively typical, while presenting the non-literate culture as "primitive" or deviant, seems like a way to reinforce racialised ideas.
I don't know if this is quite the answer you were looking for, but I hope it is a contribution to the conversation.
"Some folks think word A is used to other, has a bunch of negative irl uses, and argue it has a lot more connotations than intended when trying to describe what I think it does. I'd rather defend the right to not pay attention to how others interpret things than pick another word or use something more precise."
Right. I was hoping for free labor in coming up with some good words for examples like those to.
How are chimpanzees described compared to humans or monkeys in terms of intelligence?
Are non-metal working, oral (not written) traditions, local material/non-milled construction, wildlife inspired designs, and bartering economy all the kind of thing you'd recommend for my Gripy2 example?
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Doug McCrae
Legend
You're right, I think, that H Rider Haggard is really important here. There's a throughline from the idea that Great Zimbabwe wasn't built by black people, its popularisation by Haggard in King Solomon’s Mines (1885), to the Lost World genre, particularly Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan (and possibly also Tolkien), and from there to the Sueloise ruins in Greyhawk (and many similar D&D adventure locations built by lost races).
Daniel Tangri, Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy (1990):
Haggard believed that the local Bantu were too primitive to have produced anything monumental, and opted in favor of Mediterranean colonists.
This message was simple; Phoenicia had once been a great imperial power in southern Africa, much in the same way as Britain was in the nineteenth century. Britain, then, was legally and morally entitled to colonize the region, as it was the successor of Phoenicia.
This topic deserves a much more detailed treatment than I've given it in this short post.
Doug McCrae
Legend
A similar myth developed about the 5000+ year old burial mounds built in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, Ohio River valley, and Mississippi River valley.
Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings (2003):
The discovery of Indian burial mounds led to the idea that North America had once supported a nascent civilization, perhaps equivalent to those of Mexico and Peru. This quasi-civilization had, however, declined and fallen, as had those of the Incas and Mexicans. Because they did not construct mounds, existing Indians, it was often claimed, were either the degenerate offspring of the mound builders or an altogether different race. According to the second possibility, the Indians were the barbarian destroyers of the perhaps white race that had constructed the mounds.
President Andrew Jackson contended that the government was only doing to the Indians what they had done to the earlier, mysterious, quite possibly white race of mound builders.
President Andrew Jackson, second annual message to Congress (1830):
"In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes."
Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation (1992):
"These speculations [about the mounds and other North American ruins] harmonized with the "lost race" fantasies produced in the same period by Burroughs, and earlier by writers like H. Rider Haggard."
