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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 8022530" data-attributes="member: 59082">Good point.Yes, I get it. I understand the concerns people have, and can look at D&D through that lens of interpretation. Where we disagree is whether or not this is problematic, or to what degree it is problematic--and why. I see the problem being less about orcs (for example) sharing traits with racist stereotypes, and more arising from equating Fantasy Land with real-world socio-cultural dynamics. If the assumption is made that Fantasy Land is an allegory for the real world, with direct correspondences and representations, then we can make all kinds of connections and the "path of purification" will be endless. Orcs will be replaced with goblins will be replaced with...well, there would be no end to it.But that is all based upon an underlying--and largely unquestioned--assumption about the relationship of Fantasy Land and the real world, and the nature of fantasy itself.For instance, if I were to create a world with an inherently evil race, I would be doing so merely to play with that idea in a fantasy venue. A speculative exercise, if you will: What would a truly evil race be like? What would its origins be? How would it make sense in a fantasy world? Isn't that one of the key qualities and strengths of fantasy, that differentiates it from mimetic media? That we create--to use Tolkien's term--a secondary world that has its own laws, its own coherency, and provides us with an imaginative environment to play within?This is similar to the idea that D&D non-humans must be more realistic, more nuanced, and less caricature-ish. They don't need to be because it is fantasy! Its a game, not mimetic lierature or even an allegory of real-world social dynamics (unless that is your intention, but it has never been the default mode). What we do with it is up to us, but the default basis of D&D has been mythology and folklore, as well as modern heroic fantasy literature and film.Or to put it another way, let's look at the basic heroic fantasy narrative in two ways (among others):Psychological-Mythic narrative (ala Joseph Campbell or CG Jung): the Hero (individual self) goes into the Wilderness (unknown/depths of self) to fight the Monster (his or her own inner demons) to find the Treasure (self-actualization, healing, enlightenment, liberation).Colonial narrative: The hero (colonizer) goes into the Wilderness (other lands) to fight the Monster (other; person not of the colonizer's people) to find the Treasure (power, property, dominance over others).Both are interpretive frameworks, obviously, but fantasy has stronger roots in the former. As I see it, the mythic is universal--or nearly so--and should be preserved. The problem arises when we overly apply the colonial narrative onto it. This is not to say that the colonial narrative doesn't have value--it most certainly does, especially in the real world (Howard Zinn is must-reading, especially for Americans, imo). And I even agree that it has some value in applying it to D&D...but the problem is when we fuse that "map" to the "territory," and forget that it is a map. My concern is that "cognitive fusion," which is a kind of "over-concrete-ization."If anything, why not strengthen the idea that D&D is fantasy--it is a game of myth and imagination, and the ideas presented within it are--if we must interpret them--more archetypal than analogous? See, for instance, Ursula K Le Guin's seminal talk <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7rzOQ7Qtm1TbEZpNlhaNldOeFU/edit" target="_blank">"Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?"</a> from 1974 (an auspicious coincidence!), and her emphasis on fantasy being symbolic rather than allegorical (she actually says that the prime use of fantasy is "pleasure and delight"). If it is allegorical then, yes, those real world equations make sense, although still require a particular interpretive framework; if it is symbolic, then the ideas are more archetypal and without a fixed meaning; orcs are not stand-ins for a real world group--they are symbols of our own "orcishness."This is not to say that changes shouldn't happen, as I've been saying, or that current and future depicitions shouldn't be more culturally sensitive. As I've said, and explicated <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/book-idea-to-broaden-the-scope-of-d-d-thematic-toolbox-listen-up-wotc.672903/" target="_blank">here</a>, I like the idea of broadening the scope of D&D to facilitate a wider array of thematic material, and to play with the underlying assumptions of the game. One of those themes could actually be a more allegorical type of game play, or one exploring socio-cultural dynamics, narratives around colonialism, etc. But by slapping the colonial narrative on to D&D is like looking at the world with a very specific lens, that will see some things more sharply and not see other things at all. In a way it is like analyzing an illustration from the lens of fine art theory.</blockquote>

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