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Message: <blockquote data-quote="transmission89" data-source="post: 8328952" data-attributes="member: 6688441">These are a collection of truly appallingquotes when applied to people, and are out dated racial views of people of different ethnicities. There’s no question that this view has no place in a modern world, and should not be applied to people.But again, the link lies on the assumption that orcs and goblins are a stand in for people, that they are anything but a monstrous creature.  If words like “fecund”, “hordes” and concepts like “fast breeding being a threat” are to be struck because they have historically been deployed in an appalling manner against people, then you’re going to have a problem with many descriptions of the rabbit threat in Australia.Looked through this lens, Mass Effect (a sci fi video game) is clearly a racist parable as the horde of reapers descend on the citadel, intent on wiping out good, progressive civilisation. The collectors clearly an embodiment of the trope of black men coming to steal your women away from you. (I don’t believe this is case, just pointing out that an over extension of literary analysis and trope exploration has the potential to limit fiction).In game terms, Gary wanted a clearly defined evil race of humanoids to fill that same fictitious space as the Nazi (that players could could wantonly engage in combat with, and come out feeing heroic without moralistic issues of having killed many people).In a tweet, Ed Greenwood stated:“I talked with Gary Gygax about "baked-in evil" (orcs, drow, etc.) and (though admitting D&D was whitebread, middle-class, and Christian-rooted) he said he HAD to have evil-labelled races to fight (=kill gorily) or the game would have been banned in much of the USA at that time.”Games stats wise, the individual goblin is weak. So how can we fictionally make it a threat to the dwarven kingdoms, the realms of Elves and men? Well, a goblin must therefore have numbers to present a threat. What are the implications of having large numbers?Now if you choose to play Orcs as people, to have a D&D game where you play as a cornucopia of fantastical races and explore what it means to be human and what humanity is, you’re going to run into these issues, implications and associations. This is rich and fertile ground to be, and has been explored in western and global fantasy sci fi literature. But it is why, personally, I think that approach to the game as a game  is a mistake. But far be it from me to dictate how you play at the table or the stories you tell. The closer it is played straight to the original expression of the game (not necessarily in rules set, but fictional presentation) of the classic struggles of good peoples vs evil monsters and the occasional wicked man/ woman, the less chance you will have of these implications.Or to clarify, let monsters be monsters and when we present fictional peoples, let that be respectful and not resort to sexist/racist tropes of those people.</blockquote>

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