Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="PsyzhranV2" data-source="post: 8182263" data-attributes="member: 7015332">I'm seeing responses ranging from "cautiously optimistic" to "absolutely enthusiastic" from the creators I'm following on social media; from the D&D hype-men/shills, yes, but also from some of WotC's fiercest critics on this issue. A lot of these people were let down by Tasha's minimal treatment of the subject, and at the very least are happy that WotC is presenting a more coherent and less vague direction that they're planning to move in.From the Wired articles I linked in one of my earlier posts:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It's not racist (or intentionally racist, depending on how wide a net you're casting with your definition of "racist", YMMV), but it's still setting an overly broad and calcified framework for what is expected of members of that race, both in terms of the stereotype and the expected "exceptional" ways to buck it. And the framework that they mandate might not be true in certain worlds, or cultures within those worlds at that.I disagree that there has to be a "core cultural presentation" at all. In fact, I disagree that there should be well-defined ethnocultures, one to a (sub)race at all, except perhaps as historical footnotes. With that in mind, best leave the worldbuilding to the setting guides.At risk of treading too close to the waters of real life politics, this falls into the same vein as broad strokes statements such as "Black people are good at sports" or "East Asians are good at maths". That's certainly an impression one might draw from an anecdotal observation, but with it comes the risk of mistakenly assuming that those qualities are something intrinsic to those ethnic groups, rather than a product of historical and socioeconomic factors. This creates the stereotype that puts pressure on people who either try but fail to live up to the artificial standard imposed on them from outside, or who simply aren't interested in whatever field is expected of them in the first place. And these stereotypes may be internalized by the groups they're imposed on, sometimes in a humorous way/with good intentions (Subtle Asian Traits anyone? ... Just me? Okay...). But even that can lead to undue pressure on members of these ethnic and cultural groups to conform, potentially facing mockery and ostracism if they don't.</blockquote>

Verification