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

[Scott Christian]

The conclusion itself isn't the problem. It is the framing around the conclusion.

Yes, good people can act terribly. That happens. Yes, bad things can happen to good, innocent people. That happens.

But, how we frame those events adds another layer, and the framing in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is not just that the Dwarves blamed the Duergar for their plight, but that the Dwarves were not wrong to do so.

We both agree that this course of action was ugly and wrong, but the book presents the story as though the dwarves did the right thing. That what they did was not ugly and wrong, after all, the Duergar are the bad guys and the Dwarves are the good guys. The Duergar are greedy now, they do hate Moradin now, so they must have been greedy and hateful back then, and that is why they were enslaved and tortured.

We are not meant to see the Dwarves choice to cast them out as morally wrong, but morally right.

And that is the problem. You have an event that was ugly, cruel and needless, and it is being framed as the correct course of action for the good dwarves to have taken.

And remember, this is not presented to us as "the dwarven side of the story" this is presented to us from an impartial third party point of view.

I get where you are coming from on the Dwarven story inside MToF. I just don't agree. Could the Dwarven leaders have stepped away, and the rest of the society followed due to their lawful leanings? I mean, maybe it was a question of lawful vs good?

Overall, maybe I just don't have the same smarts or experience or depth of knowledge that you do. I concede that you are probably right, even though I see other variables, including the "impartial point of view." But, you are probably right. If it ever comes up at my table, I will try to listen and maybe then I'll see it. But for now, thank you for explaining it to me. It is appreciated.

 

[Hussar]

Some past material is up for a change. Also, Oriental Adventures is being asked to be pulled from the shelves. Everything you mentioned in your post before that is just a repetition of things you've said about my posts and have completely missed the mark.


I never said this. I never said you have a problem or that I don't see the problem. Try reading it without thinking I'm disagreeing with you and then maybe you'll understand. Otherwise, it's pretty pointless.

Oriental Adventures is a pretty good example. Have you ever actually READ the original 1e Oriental Adventures book? It's incredibly racist. It's eye bleedlingly racist. It's not even shy about it's racism. It's very, VERY much a product of its time. There are bigoted, racist references to REAL WORLD PEOPLE all through the book. It's not like this is the first time OA has been held up as a particularly egregious example of racism in the game.

The only difference is this time around, it's actually getting taken seriously.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So should you no longer have stories about child abduction or child abuse or are these stories only acceptable if the villain is doing it? What if someone is the victim of child abuse, should the book be changed or taken down?

Is it wrong or even in bad taste to have a book that glorifies torture and killing? Are there no discussions to be had? Is a book to be changed or shelved because it is morally depraved? To me, That conversation, in itself, is worth having.

I'm not sure Mercurius is saying we should divorce our own experience and morality or that of society from the book. I think he's saying that something isn't inherently immoral just because it depicts immoral/amoral behavior.

Just because literature depicts something that people find offensive, must it be changed?

Missing the point.

Maybe Mercurius will defend his view himself, but he is not putting any kind of nuance in his statement. If it is a fictional story, you cannot judge anything in it by real world morality. That is the end of his sentence usually. We cannot judge it.

I'd also like to point out the bolded section, can you point me to a good version of child abuse? Honestly curious because in my mind, you aren't a good person if you abuse a child, by default that is an evil action.

And that gets right back into the problem Mercurius's point has. Let us say that you write a hero, a paladin just for giggles. Great guy, pillar of his community, helps old ladies cross the street. Then, after we've followed him around seeing how great he is, a dirty streetkid comes up to beg for some coin. And the guy beats the kid, viciously, teeth go flying. In public. An no one bats an eye.

Doesn't that disconnect say something about the world being presented? Isn't that dissonance meaningful to the story being told?

But, if I can't bring real-world morality in to judge those actions, then I can saying nothing bad about this paladin. My real world ethics do not apply. I can't say that the story is about child abuse, I can't say that it is about mistreatment of the poor, or how those in power threaten and use that power to make others view them as good. I can say nothing about any of that.

To talk about the italicized part, that is never what I have been saying. No one is saying that the depiction of an immoral act makes the material itself immmoral.

The depiction of an immoral act, framed and presented to us as a moral action, makes the material immoral. If the author of that paladin story wanted us to come away thinking that the poor should be beaten into submission as is the right of the world, then he would have written a material that is immoral.

So, again, it isn't that there is evil in the world, or that evil is simplistic that I have been having a problem with. It is that good has been shown as doing evil, but we are being told the evil they did was actually perfectly fine and good. That is a the problem.

It's been stated several times that 'only orcs and drow' are going to be changed so people should just stop arguing and that discussing things like Necromancers isn't an issue so stop playing gotcha.

The issue is that sensibilities change. Today it's Orcs and Drow but what about in five years? It really is an issue if the answer to #1 is, change it, take it off the shelves and censor it. That limits discussion. It sets a precedent as well. Today, Necromancers(or goblins, or Giants) aren't a big deal but it doesn't mean they won't be in the future. It just might be the thing you didn't think was offensive. Will there be no room for your opinions or sensibilities when they change it?

What kind of effect will it have on published materials if writers must worry about their stories being changed or censored because it no longer fits the sensibilities of the day, or a specific group? Does it limit the material we will have access to? That is a personal concern for me. Who should be the judge of what material I'm allowed to read? Whoever shouts the loudest?

So it is alright to offend and kick people, because in the future if you stop people from offending each other, then they will decide you are offensive and stop that?

Well, in the future you might be the one being discriminated against, so maybe you should advocate for less discrimination instead of saying that you can't argue for inclusion and compassion. Because, you know, it might be you who is facing that in the future. Times change.

Honestly, this fear mongering about the future gets so silly.

You know what used to be a cure for toothaches? Cocaine. They gave it to children.

Imagine that person using this argument "The government wants us to stop giving our children cocaine for their teeth? You can't argue for that, letting the government control you will just lead to them doing more in the future. Next they will remove peanut butter because kids are allergic to that. Then apples because they are too hard. And eventually everyone will be eating mush."

I am sorry Chaosmancer, I really don't get it. I know you are against the bolded. That real world ethics do apply. But my take is some real world ethics apply to some fantasy cultures. Other fantasy cultures, not so much. That's why fantasy is unique. It is why exploring other cultures in real life is interesting. Sometimes their ethics bring unique points of view.
In your example you cannot say it is right or wrong. I know in real life we can. But, depending on the point of view in this fantasy story, it may be right. It may be wrong. Again, in fantasy, good people can do bad things for good reasons; bad people can do good things for bad reasons. Ethical parameters all depends on who is telling the tale...
Have you read Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James? (Excellent fantasy book!) It is a great example of this.

Yes, exactly. That I do not have a problem with at all.

I have not read that book, but it doesn't matter, because you hit the nail on the head. The bolded part is fine.

The issue is that Mercurius seems to be of the opinion that a reader cannot decide what is good or bad. That you must rely solely on the narrator or the framing, and then accept that whatever happened was good or bad.

Good, upstanding soldiers burning a town to the ground and cooking people alive? That isn't a story about war crimes, or good people doing bad things, that is a story of good people doing the right thing, because you were presented with it being the right thing, and this is a fantasy story so we can't bring real world ethics in and say they are wrong.

But, the entire point of a story of that is to emphasize the horror of it, to emphasize how terrible and wrong it is. You expect unspeakable acts from bad people, seeing them from good people is jarring and makes you question things.

This is also why the theif with a heart of gold is such a recurringly powerful trope. Because they are a bad person who does bad things.... but they are also a kind and compassionate person, so we need to balance that perception, to dig deeper, to ask why.

 

[Lem23]

Surely if a story involves child abuse, then the person doing it is a villain? In what possible world would they not be?

 

[Bagpuss]

I think that it means that we shouldn’t talk about most creatures in a way reminiscent of how white supremacists talk about fellow humans. I’m not sure why people have such difficulty with stepping over a bar as low as that.

So we can't use words like... what?

aggressive, violent, savage, primitive

These words seem to cause offense when used to describe Orcs, but exactly the same words can and are used for Ogres and Trolls without causing an issue.

Or is it just because these words combined with orcs description of low forehead, prominent teeth both of which illustrations of ogres often show, but actually don't appear in the description but do for orcs (looking back through several editions). They are both terms that have been used in racist descriptions in the past.

In which case it seems to me at least from what we have been hearing from WotC they are tackling the wrong end of the problem. Eberron book has actually no mention of how orcs appear, so one has to assume they look the same and have the same racists signifiers. They are still "aggressive", still "primal" still basically chaotic.

Seems to me it doesn't solve the issue if you still have a description of orcs that have those racist racial signifiers, and the description of orcs isn't what they seem to be changing.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Missing the point.

Maybe Mercurius will defend his view himself, but he is not putting any kind of nuance in his statement. If it is a fictional story, you cannot judge anything in it by real world morality. That is the end of his sentence usually. We cannot judge it.

I'd also like to point out the bolded section, can you point me to a good version of child abuse? Honestly curious because in my mind, you aren't a good person if you abuse a child, by default that is an evil action.

I'm assuming the 'you' in this statement isn't referring to 'me' personally, so I'll move on.

Your view seems simplistic to me - let me explain.

So, again, it isn't that there is evil in the world, or that evil is simplistic that I have been having a problem with. It is that good has been shown as doing evil, but we are being told the evil they did was actually perfectly fine and good. That is a the problem.

I could describe Of Mice and Men as a book about people abusing a people with disabilities and they feel it's perfectly fine to do so. In that context, you could also say those people are evil and the book is inappropriate.

In Of Mice and Men, Lenny is constantly abused and humiliated by everyone around him. Are the people in the story evil? Or is it that people's perceptions of mental disabilities, in the story, are different than what we know today? Is that a discussion worth having or is that is that a straight no-go? George murders Lenny (sorry, spoiler). Is George a villain? You could argue he was being compassionate. Is it wrong to argue so? Does it mean I'm prejudice against people with disabilities? Does it mean we should never have any new stories that show people abusing people with disabilities?

I'm not implying that the books or Orcs or whatever shouldn't change. I'm challenging the view that there is only one method to be inclusive. I want to hear people's ideas of how to be inclusive in relation to all D&D tropes and explore how it might change the game. I want to explore other parts of the game that can be construed as insensitive and explore solutions. I'm not just talking race. I'm talking disabilities, ageism, sexism etc.. I find it interesting. It seems taboo to even talk about where people see the future of the game. From your post, it seems that you feel the game will change with people's attitudes. That's great. Why not say that instead of insisting that I'm an anti-change racist?

In the end, WotC is a gaming company so why should they have to tackle hard topics? It should be light and fun. They don't owe anyone challenging stories. If there is 'an established right' and 'wrong' in the real world, it is much safer and comfortable for people if their fiction or fantasy mirrors their own world view.

 

[Mercurius]

You seem to want to erect this massive wall between "fantasy" and "reality" and no judgement can pass through that wall. But this misses the point so utterly, that I can't even find the words to explain it to you.

If I accept your premise as true, that you (As in any reader of any fantasy) cannot apply real world perspectives, ethics, or ideology to a fantasy story, then fantasy stories are worthless, meaningless, and boring.

Analogies are always a terrible idea, but let me go ahead and just start throwing them around.

I have on my shelf a "superhero" story. It falls under fantasy in that it is not real. Superheroes do not exist, superpowers do not exist. Within this story the main organization for superheroes abducts children with powers and trains them to be child soldiers, sent on kill missions against any hero that leaves the organization, because that person is a villain (by the way, this is the Velveteen Vs. series if people are interested)

Is this organization right to do so? Wrong to do so? By your premise, I cannot say. I literally cannot say that training children to kill traitors is wrong, or evil, or good, or anything. It is a fantasy story. Real World Ethics do not apply.

I have another story, (Starlight by Brandon Sanderson) in this story, an alien who is under judgement for whether or not it should be born, risks its future existence by defying orders to fight against a space monster and save trillions of lives on a space station.

Is this person brave? Cowardly? Good? Evil? Again, by your premise, I cannot say. I cannot say that choosing to risk your own life to protect the lives of others is good or brave or despicable. It is a fantasy story. Real World Ethics do not apply.


Now, perhaps you will say that I am meant to judge these actions within the context of the story, is the story presented in such a way, to tell me how to view that action. That tells me whether or not these actions were good or evil.


That means that I am meant to judge actions, based on the narrators judgement. Which leads me to a third book.

In this book, which I do not remember the name of, nor will I give the author any business if I could, a man recieves a message in his brain that he will gain power if he kills three people in the next minute. He hates people, so he does so. And he is reborn with the ability to control insects. He is a tiny gemstone, buried underground. He gains more power by killing more living things. At the climax of the story, he is controlling a swarm of wasps to torture and kill a family of five. He takes great pleasure in doing so, and finds the act very rewarding. Funny too since he has the insects stalk them for about a day, and the people are completely unaware that he exists, or that these are anything other than normal wasps.

Judging this story based solely on the morality it presents, in this world of the book, murder and torture are fulfilling and amusing actions that have great rewards attached to them. This is truth, because it is presented to us in this story, and this is a fantasy story, so only the morality within the story applies.



This is why your continued assertions fall apart Mercurius. We have to be able to apply real world ethics and reasoning to our stories. Otherwise every author would have to explain why kindness is good and torture is bad.

And yes, we also have to judge the story by the story, by the assumptions it makes. The Addams family is a comedy, their actions which would be horrific and deadly in the real world are nothing more than silly antics within their own world. But, that is the power of comedic stories. They can break the rules, and set new ones. But, if you want me to take your fantasy story seriously, instead of as a poorly written comedy, then you need to apply enough reality to make it grounded.

You're not understanding me, Chaosmancer. I'm not saying that reality and fantasy have no relationship, but that a fantasy world is its own microcosm that has its own internal coherency that differs from our own world to varying degrees.

Of course we can look at it through the lens of our morality or, if we must, that of critical theory. We can look for signs of racism, cultural appropriation, colonialist thinking, and sensititivity faux pas of all kinds. But in so doing, not only are we being rather myopic and narrow in our perception, we're missing the primary purpose of the fantasy experience: to experience it as itself, to immerse ourselves within it and see the world from within. Mind you, I don't think applying such analytic lenses is completely without value, but we should be able to "take off the lens," to both look through other lenses, but also--and most importantly--experience the world without a lens. That is, as itself.

Or let me ask you this: When you go to another country, do you judge others by your own ethical and cultural standards, or do you try to understand how others feel and think? What their cultural ethos is and, most importantly, how each person sees the world as an individual?

Or what about animals. Do you have a cat? Do you judge your cat by your own morality? If so, your cat is likely a psychopath. Or do you recognize that a cat has a completely different experience of life?

Or reading an author from a different era. Do you judge that author according to contemporary ethics? Or do you try to understand the "soil" from which they grew out of?

This is not to say that we cannot relate our own morality or worldview to any of these "other worlds"--be they other cultures, animals, historical eras, or fantasy worlds--or come up with, say, a conception of universal human rights. But that to overly do so is a mis-application. It is a fusion of our own reality with an "other world" and, ironically, somewhat of a colonialist act.

EDIT: I just read your bit about the paladin. I think we are talking past each other, because you and I both agree...somewhat. I think the problem is that the paladin breaks his own code--such an act doesn't fit within that of his LG code of ethics (assuming he is LG), unless, of course, his order says "you can beat street kids if you want, because they're unclean and thus unholy." Of course then he probably wouldn't be LG but LN or even LE. WotC has expanded paladins so they don't have to be LG, but they do have to follow their own code--whatever that is. So the key is coherency, internal consistency.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm not sure Mercurius is saying we should divorce our own experience and morality or that of society from the book. I think he's saying that something isn't inherently immoral just because it depicts immoral/amoral behavior.

Yes, this. I should probably have included this in my reply, but this is part of what I'm trying to get at.

 

[Mercurius]

These were all conversations that past writers and publishers for D&D have faced in their own time as well about various related issues (e.g. misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc.) and the hobby has survived with little difficulty. We should not spend our time worrying where to draw the arbitrary line in the sand about “what’s next?” and let the game evolve with the sentiments of the changing body of people who play it. The game is for the people, not the people for the game.

Yes, in a general sense. But which people? You've got a range of perspectives and people. It isn't just "the people want it." There's a spectrum from "no change whatsoever; in fact, let's go back to pre-Dragonlance when everything was purely Gygaxian" to "Let's remake the game to fit our own current ideology, and remove anything that we choose to interpret as offensive."

Thankfully most people are somewhere in-between, and ultimately WotC has to find a middle-ground somewhere.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm not sure how these two positions are meant to represent diametrically opposing views with a middle ground.