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

[Dire Bare]

Most of the press regarding WotC's announcement about "evil races" has been simply to repeat what was in the press release. But here's an article from Forbes that goes a little further.

The relevant thesis quote is:

D&D’s elimination of evil races isn’t a storytelling limitation, but a shift in perspective that can only lead to more interesting, complex narratives.

I couldn't agree more!

 

[Chaosmancer]

As far as the evil from birth, that's why I proposed having a supernatural explanation that transforms them at a certain point if it's an issue for people. Kind of like the orc version of a Bat Mitzvah except marking the point where they're bound to Gruumsh instead of just entering adulthood. I also don't understand the gnoll thing. The first, original gnolls were hyenas but those are long dead*. Every living gnoll was born evil according to the lore in the MM.

It avoids the baby Hitler dilemma. Well, except that if you could go back in time why not just slip some birth control into Hitler's mother's tea starting about 10 months before Hitler was born. Stopping the pregnancy in the first place seems a lot more ethical to me.

*Or are they? Are there still primordial gnolls, the progenitors of the species still around exerting evil influence on their descendants.

Check the Gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu and the Volo's write-up. They indicate that this is still how gnolls are created.


And the magical transformation at puberty doesn't really help the underlying issue, does it? Picture an Orcish 8 yr old. That kid is going to turn evil when he turns 16. It isn't his fault, he doesn't want to, he won't make that choice. But it will happen. 16 yrs old, and a switch will flip and he will start killing people.

So why not kill him now? Unless, he can choose to not turn evil. And in that case, why make it a mystical choice at all? Just make it a choice like every other race. Followers of Bane are evil , followers of Gruumsh are evil. We don't need humans to be bound to Bane at the age of 16 to justify them being evil, why do we need it for Orcs?

Honestly, I think you are sidestepping the issue completely (from my point of view) using definitional rhetoric.

Why are aboleths evil? Mind flayers? Dragons?

Ettercaps?

Meenlocks?

What about medusa? We are playing into both human-centric and (TBH, I am not trolling) misongynistic rhetoric with medusa that has long been repeated.

The poor Yeti? Or Harpy? What about a Beholder?

I could keep going, but you should get the idea. And it's not just "classical orcs and goblins," it orcs, goblins, yuan-ti, wererats, xvarts, nagpas, meazels, kuo toa, kobolds, grung (WHO WILL THINK OF THE GRUNG!) ...

the Githyanki, the Duregar, Bullywugs, and so on.

Again, if you want to make the aspirational argument (every intelligent creature can, unless possessed etc., make choices), that's fine! But there are a LOT of creatures to be changed.

Which, again, may be fine. I'm not sure. The game is changing, and I think that's a good thing. But I'm pretty sure @Dire Bare already pointed this out some time ago.

I get the point, but I also have to say that a lot of this is avoided by the definitions.

Meenlocks are born of fear and exist only to spread fear. They are fey spirits of nightmares. They exist as the personification of an idea, even within the game world. So, there is no problem with killing them. they are literally fear given flesh and you don't have to feel bad about killing fear.

Duergar though as super problematic, and I've just removed them from the game entirely. Their lore makes them the heroes who are in the right as far as I'm concerned, and I'd much rather just say those events with Moradin never happened and move on.

I treat Ettercaps just like spiders, only weird fey spiders. Likely servants of the Queen of Air and Darkness, so evil servants of an evil force. I could see them being created by dark magic infecting normal spiders.


Meazels and Nagpa are interesting. Nagpa are a group of 13 cursed evil wizards, not a race, and Meazels are a group that chose to hermitage and were warped to be evil and hateful by the shadowfell. Neither was born that way.

And we can keep going on. A lot of these creatures either lack anything to define them beyond monsters, are formed from the essence of evil, or are the result of dark magics (add Nothics to this list) and the choices those people made. So, there are actually much fewer instances to worry about than you seem to indicate.

 

[Dire Bare]

I can't get away with that in public games though.

That's the point of stereotypes, to make communication and thought easier. Problem is, stereotyping tends to ignore how complicated life is, and easily leads to racism, as is the case with the portrayal of the drow.

Can you run a public game and play around with the classic D&D stereotypes? You sure can! Avoiding the use of stereotypes, especially ones that are a longstanding part of the game, isn't easy . . . but totally doable.

It'll be even easier when WotC publishes their changes to the various "evil races". Of course we'll have to wait and see what those changes will actually be, whether they will be substantial and meaningful, and whether we will like and accept them.

 

[Aldarc]

Do the people who are arguing "but what about X race?" or "aren't these people 'humanoid' too?" genuinely have a problem with how those creatures are presented or are they arguing it simply for the sake of arguing (in effect) the preservation of orcs as written? If it's the latter, then I'm not sure why we are bothering to entertain this line of discussion as long as we have.

 

[Umbran]

This is easiest when you think of SciFi; canonically, you have the generic Star Trek Humanoid; an alien that looks remarkably similar to us (with maybe some more stuff on their forehead), living on a single planet that has a monolithic culture, and is defined by some traits that are an exaggeration of a human trait or two.

Yep. That's a very useful thing to have... when you are using them in the way sci fi typically did - creating a morality play.

However, I'm pretty sure drow weren't used for too many D&D morality plays, so...

So what did Drow bring? An unknowable...

Stop right there.

There's nothing "unknowable" about the drow. The traditional drow we are talking about, you know them in a couple of paragraphs. You can't have "monoculture defined by some traits that are an exageration of a human trait or two" and "unknowable" at the same time. The simplified monoculture is used because it is easy to grasp!

...evil, counterpart to the typical elves; an implacable, violent, enemy to shock and terrorize the PCs.

Interesting. Seeing as rapacious humans do all that very, very well.

A subversion of everything that most players were comfortable with (tra la la good elves in the forest).

Oh, so... Unseelie court. Not exactly unknowable there, either.

So it can become easy to see how the use of a SciFi/Fantasy trope might quickly delve into a raical/racist trope.

Yeah. Especially since the drow are pretty clearly lifted whole cloth from the John Carter of Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs (there seen as "Black Martians"), and while Burroughs was many things, his writing was kind of filled with Great White Savior stuff.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Do the people who are arguing "but what about X race?" or "aren't these people 'humanoid' too?" genuinely have a problem with how those creatures are presented or are they arguing it simply for the sake of arguing (in effect) the preservation of orcs as written? If it's the latter, then I'm not sure why we are bothering to entertain this line of discussion as long as we have.

Yeah, that's my point. The fact that they're doing this is a bit infuriating, but it is a valid question and discussion, but probably not on topic here.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Stop right there.

There's nothing "unknowable" about the drow.

You said-

"Since the origins of drow, we could ask, "What did you gain by using drow instead of humans?" and the answer was substantively the same in 1980 as it is today."

To remind you, 1980 was before Fiend Folio. There was only D1, D2, and D3 expanding upon their first appearance in G3.

As for the rest, I will agree to disagree on it. It's obviously wrong from what I know and has been documented, from the Unseelie Court to the "Black Martians."

You can look at Dragon #31 if you want more details, but you don't seem interested in accuracy.

 

[Oofta]

Do the people who are arguing "but what about X race?" or "aren't these people 'humanoid' too?" genuinely have a problem with how those creatures are presented or are they arguing it simply for the sake of arguing (in effect) the preservation of orcs as written? If it's the latter, then I'm not sure why we are bothering to entertain this line of discussion as long as we have.

I can't speak for anyone else, but there were several pages of arguments about what a person is. In my opinion either it's wrong for an intelligent self aware creature to be always evil or it's not.

As for "do I really have a problem", well no. I can see that there are some specific issues with depiction of orcs. I just don't have a problem with evil monsters, even the intelligent self aware ones. It's not reality, it's not attempting to be reality. It's a game.

 

[Umbran]

With things as they are now, you gain a common language. If I describe a drow to my players, they know something about that being that relates to the mythology of the world.

Okay, yes, that's one thing you actually lose - shorthand.

Mind you, that only applies to experienced players who have already been heavily exposed to the tropes. When 40% of the D&D population is under 25... I am not sure that shorthand is all that useful.

There's a lot of information in being a drow that doesn't have to be communicated and helps make the world feel more realized.

So, this may be personal preference, but relying on player assumptions does not, to me, make the world feel more realized. It makes the fictional world feel like a facade. It is quickly painted in broad strokes, like a stage set facade, giving me the implication of the background so that I don't have to worry too much about it, and I can concentrate on the action at hand.

Relying on standard tropes is the author/GM saying, "Don't worry about this, it is unimportant."

And if it is unimportant, then I could replace it, and it wouldn't really impact much.

 

[Oofta]

Honest question to those arguing against this change:

How does your point relate to the original post? Is Heritage or Inclusivity more important? Currently, it seems like you're arguing that heritage is more important.

Why bother even asking? There are certain posters, such as myself, that accept that while all orcs are evil is a vast over-simplification of the real world, that's okay. D&D is chock full of vast over-simplifications. It's not the real world and neither are orcs. If there's specific wording or imagery that is problematic, fix it but taking away the concept of evil creatures (whether humanoid or not) would be adding needless complexity.

If you want the extra complexity in your campaign, add it in by the bucket load. Maybe there should be more info in the MM or a section in the DMG on monster alignments. Something more than a single paragraph in the MM intro that nobody reads.

On the other end you have people where it seems that they will only be satisfied if no intelligent creature has an alignment with possible exceptions based on the creature's fluff description. That in effect all humanoids are basically humans with a different masks and possibly unique cultures. That anything less is racism.

The problem that I have with that is that there is no room for compromise or inclusion of huge chunks of D&D's heritage. I mean, sure individual orcs can be evil, but the same can be said for individual humans as well. If you start saying specific cultural groups are evil no matter what race you are talking about I think you get into another type of bigotry.

So that's where it is after thousands of posts and where it will stand. WOTC will make their changes and we'll move on.