D&D General Two underlying truths: D&D heritage and inclusivity

[Xenonnonex]

No, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that according to the MM WotC considers non-humanoids to be people and there's nothing that says that aliens are inherently non-people, so you can't exclude them simply based on the MM language.

We have the MM stating that non-humanoids are people, and nothing that says that Abberations are not among them.

Issue that is though. Big one. You want to argue aberrations are people. For others. But you do not consider them people in your games. Too much disconnect. Also illogical argument.

The MM considers aberrations utterly alien beings. Distinction. And definition is there. Already.
Other types are considered with their own definitions.
What you are doing is making arbitrary decisions.

 

[Cadence]

I'm not going to slog through hundreds of pages of other threads looking for this support you mentioned.

There are some lined up quotes at:

D&D 5E - WotC's Jeremy Crawford on D&D Races Going Forward

On Twitter, Jeremy Crawford discussed the treatment of orcs, Vistani, drow and others in D&D, and how WotC plans to treat the idea of 'race' in D&D going forward. In recent products (Eberron and Wildemount), the mandatory evil alignment was dropped from orcs, as was the Intelligence penalty...

www.enworld.org

Here are some other links (that include that one) that have some things to think about:

D&D General - WotC’s Official Announcement About Diversity, Races, and D&D

Following up on recent discussions on social media, WotC has made an official announcement about diversity and the treatment of ‘race’ in D&D. Notably, the word ‘race’ is not used; in its place are the words ‘people’ and 'folk'. Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only...

www.enworld.org

Those are both by @Doug McCrae who may have some more sitting handy.

I assume you saw the two blog posts by James Mendes Hodes as well:

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror — James Mendez Hodes

This is the first installment of a two-article series about the racist origins, nature, and ramifications of orcs, a malevolent humanoid species from English author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy setting. I started researching this article with the hypothesis that a collection of n

jamesmendezhodes.com

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human — James Mendez Hodes

This is the complement to my previous article , “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.” In the previous article, we learned how racist myths from the British academy and army fueled JRR Tolkien’s creation of orcs as an analogue for Asian people. Today

jamesmendezhodes.com

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not sure where the line is. Is looking at spells like "Charm Person" useful? Or should they change the name? I've posted before it's interesting to see how reincarnate has changed over time.

I don't think that they should change the name. The MM clearly shows that WotC considers all of the humanoids to be main peoples and those are what Charm Person targets. They used to have Charm Monster to differentiate the two, and that targeted different kinds of creatures. That division always struck me as having more to do with the typical power level of the targets, rather than really being about type. The humanoid races were typically less than 1 hit die to a few hit dice. Those with class levels or the equivalent being the exeptions.

5e still has Hold Person and Hold Monster. Hold Monster exempts undead, but otherwise has no restrictions. Maybe only undead are not people in the eyes of WotC.

The arguments about type and what we value shows up in lots of other places too, and I'm not sure it's ever clean. What animals count as pets? What animals are ok to eat? Is it worse to eat an ape or a monkey than a squirrel? Are horses different than cows? Dolphins (the mammal) than mahi-mahi? What should one conclude about the farmer in Babe?

If you look at the real world, those answers are answered culturally. In some areas of the world monkeys and dogs are on the menu. In others those would be considered disgusting. Same with horse and cow.

 

[Maxperson]

Issue that is though. Big one. You want to argue aberrations are people. For others. But you do not consider them people in your games. Too much disconnect. Also illogical argument.

There is neither a disconnect, nor illogic involved.

It's possible to argue what a book is talking about, even if you have a different view from the book. We pretty much all do that here on virtually a daily basis when we talk about RAW vs. RAI vs. how we run things in our personal games.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

The argument of who is people is total opinion. You can argue animals are people too. Once again, this seems like a great in-game conversation that two characters are having: "Are aberrations self-aware? Just because we don't understand them, does it mean we should just kill them?"

Objectively speaking, Lions aren't evil. They are carnivores and, therefore, predators. They have social behaviors and their species follows certain rules: one mature male per pride, rules around challenging the leader for control of the pride, females do the hunting etc... so you can argue they have a culture. Sure, they aren't 'smart' but I could argue they are sentient and, therefore, people. (but I'm not going to, because it's beside the point - see below)

To the gazelle, though, Lions are a thing of nightmares. The evil beast that lives only to terrorize and stalk the herd and kill and make off with the children. A gazelle cares nothing for the feelings, habits or culture of lions except for their penchant for murder and the gazelle must learn the habits of their enemy, lest they become the lion's next meal. In fact, learning how to protect themselves is so ingrained in their being, it is likely a part of gazelle culture: stick together, never get caught alone, adults surround the youngins, make sure at least two adults are on watch for danger, never let your guard down etc... I imagine that, if a gazelle could communicate their opinions and feelings of lions in a way humans could understand it, it wouldn't be very politically correct.

It's up to the DM to decide which side the PCs are on: the lion side or the gazelle side. It's up to the PCs to decide how 'woke' they are to empathize with the other side. If the Illithid is the lion, and the PCs are the gazelle, can a PC forgive it for enslaving his/her race because that's its nature?

Whether or not the MM points to one theory or another is the debate you are having - but I don't see as either wrong. Do what you think is best for your game. WotC may or may not clarify some of the points that have been made by both sides of the debate.

 

[Xenonnonex]

There is neither a disconnect, nor illogic involved.

It's possible to argue what a book is talking about, even if you have a different view from the book. We pretty much all do that here on virtually a daily basis when we talk about RAW vs. RAI vs. how we run things in our personal games.

There is. You are arguing for arbitrary decisions. And arbitrary definitions. That you seem to think are there.
Reread the MM. And Volo's.

Realize peoples means of a group of people. Which is restricted to what is defined in the humanoid type. Reason there is why the other types are defined in their own entries.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm not going to slog through hundreds of pages of other threads looking for this support you mentioned.

Post #640 in this thread provides a quotation from Josiah Nott about the inferior “moral and intellectual faculties” of non-white peoples. This corresponds with the evil alignment and lower intelligence or wisdom scores of orcs, goblins, bugbears, kobolds, gnolls, and lizardfolk* (among others) in D&D.

Post #2156 is about the use of the word “mongrel” by racists and a possible pathway for its transmission into 1e/2e AD&D.

Post #472 provides some quotations from 19th and early 20th century genocidal racists describing non-white people in animalistic terms.

Post #1559 notes parallels between the writings of early 20th century race "scientists" Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant and descriptions of orcs in D&D.

Post #546 in a thread from Mar 2019 notes parallels between the “Brute” racial caricature and orcs.

Post #586 in the same thread notes many similarities between colonialist racism directed at Native Americans and a number of D&D humanoid creatures.

EDIT: *Technically lizardfolk are neutral but I'm considering them to be evil for reasons given upthread.

 

[Maxperson]

There are some lined up quotes at:

D&D 5E - WotC's Jeremy Crawford on D&D Races Going Forward

On Twitter, Jeremy Crawford discussed the treatment of orcs, Vistani, drow and others in D&D, and how WotC plans to treat the idea of 'race' in D&D going forward. In recent products (Eberron and Wildemount), the mandatory evil alignment was dropped from orcs, as was the Intelligence penalty...

www.enworld.org

Here are some other links (that include that one) that have some things to think about:

D&D General - WotC’s Official Announcement About Diversity, Races, and D&D

Following up on recent discussions on social media, WotC has made an official announcement about diversity and the treatment of ‘race’ in D&D. Notably, the word ‘race’ is not used; in its place are the words ‘people’ and 'folk'. Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is strength, for only...

www.enworld.org

Those are both by @Doug McCrae who may have some more sitting handy.

I assume you saw the two blog posts by James Mendes Hodes as well:

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror — James Mendez Hodes

This is the first installment of a two-article series about the racist origins, nature, and ramifications of orcs, a malevolent humanoid species from English author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy setting. I started researching this article with the hypothesis that a collection of n

jamesmendezhodes.com

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They're Not Human — James Mendez Hodes

This is the complement to my previous article , “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.” In the previous article, we learned how racist myths from the British academy and army fueled JRR Tolkien’s creation of orcs as an analogue for Asian people. Today

jamesmendezhodes.com

Thanks for the links. Still going through them.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay. I finished going through those links and I've changed my position. I still don't completely agree and think it doesn't match up to the degree those of you on the other side of this issue do, but I can see your side of it better now. It's not the long stretch of the prior examples given to me. I no longer have an issue with the core orcs being changed.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But, yeah, there's some cool ideas. I really like the idea of Gruumsh as a sort of tempter god, parasitically feeding off of orcs by inculcating evil cults. I don't recall any resolutions for other races, but, then again, like I said, the signal to noise ratio can become pretty overwhelming after a while.

My favorite solution is still to make Orcs a PC race, take Gruumsh into a neutral god with maybe a few questionable dogmas (I tend to make him a bit misogynistic because of the orc lore that only the women can use magic, but also the women aren't allowed to fight or heal) then go from there

I honestly do that with quite a few of the races. The Elves are a Rome/Sparta equivalent for me, acting under the command from Corellon to protect the world, which is of course best done if they own it all first. (By the "present" day of my setting, that has led to them getting wrecked so many times Elves are down to small enclaves)

My Genasi are a servant race, essentially taking the idea of Buttling and ownership from Genies and applying it to the entire people. Which has a lot of different play both good and bad.


I find adding nuance by making the extremes something other than "good" or "evil" tends to be interesting.

You can't claim that dragons are people, and mindflayers are not. They build entire cities, wear clothing, and absolutely have a culture. You can't say any of that about dragons. Mindflayers are people more so than dragons imo. They may be evil, but so are plenty of dragons.

But this raises only more questions for me. Is the way dragons are color coded, and what this means in regards to their alignment problematic? And what about the mere concept of mindflayers enslaving other creatures?

You might not have seen my post, but I do provide answer for Mindflayers.

They aren't people because they are tools, a hive-mind which uses the individual mind-flayer as practically a drone in a nest. A mindflayer city looks like a real city, but every mindflayer in it is doing exactly what the Elder Brain has ordered it to do. And, some deep lore I heard once, seemed to say that even the Elder Brains are just part of a larger hive network.

Their culture is an illusion almost. Likely the result of the Elder Brain taking shortcuts to keep things running smoothly



As for color-coded dragons it is both problematic and stupid. Dragons are actually the other classic example, where people discover a clutch of dragon eggs and the debate comes on. They are Blue Dragons, can you raise them to be good, or will they always turn out evil. Is it safer to kill them as babies now so they don't kill later, ect ect ect.

Also, if a dragon lands outside of town, I don't want the color of it's scales to tell people whether or not it is an ally.

So, instead, I made them practically elementals. You don't see a Red Dragon or a Gold Dragon, you see a dragon of boiling rock and writhing flames, stone-like scales wrapped around a white-hot core. Prevents a whole lot of issues.

I'll have a look - seems interesting. I've never been a huge fan of racial bonuses, but not for the reasons that have been stated here. Mostly because the munchkin in me screams when I make subpar character choices for the sake of story. I'd rather keep stat boosts out of the decision making when making a character.

This is one of the unsung benefits of this move in my opinion. I love the idea that I might start seeing more Gnome Fighters or Goliath clerics with these changes to ASIs. There is actually a big thread over at GiTP where a lot of people are against it, claiming munchkinism will run rampant, but the opening up of races to classes players normally wouldn't play is a huge boon for me.

There's nothing there that talks about breeding orcs just right or taming orcs. Hell, it doesn't even talk about human blood making them smarter. It also specifically says that half-orcs are often disadvantaged and end up dead. This is the kind of stretching that I'm talking about.

It might help if you didn't read the text 100% literally, looking for the word "breeding"

It says half-orcs who are weaker end up dead, but that human blood often gives them cunning (more intelligence) and self-discipline (implying orcs are unable to control themselves) to go far.

That is the type of stuff we are talking about. Not stating it outright in plain language, but with the implications of what is said.

Okay. I finished going through those links and I've changed my position. I still don't completely agree and think it doesn't match up to the degree those of you on the other side of this issue do, but I can see your side of it better now. It's not the long stretch of the prior examples given to me. I no longer have an issue with the core orcs being changed.

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