D&D (2024) What new jargon do you want to replace "Race"?

[Crimson Longinus]

Just stop with the childish and silly "acceptable targets for kill-on-sight". You can have some like the mindless undead, but overall the game is better if the antagonists have actual motivations.

Also, it helps if we can accept that a bunch of wandering vigilantes don't necessarily need to be flawless paragons of virtue.

 

[codo]

I agree. So they will just try to find a new way to do it that is "acceptable." They'll probably say this species on this plane is infected or the plane itself slowly causes a person to a specific alignment. I mean, if they went with the plane actually cursing the species, would anyone have an objection?
I can't think of any real life situation where humans have used a plane (like shadowfell) as the reason for their racist tropes. So will there be an objection to that?


The answer is...


There will be a bunch of objections.

The thing you are missing is that you don't need to make All of a species a certain way. Especially if you say all of a species is a certain way except for the PCs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can see a problem with real world religions doing that. But again, that is not the debate. Same with someone's setting being racist. That is a problem. But you are taking a tremendously large leap from: In this setting this one evil god cursed these halflings and now they are evil to the author's real-world implications is that all short people are evil.

The point I am making is not a Thermian Argument because I am not justifying anything harmful in a text. The language used that reflected real world racism needed to change. What I am pointing out the hypocrisy of other's logic. Mind flayers have free will, no? Yet, we're okay with them being evil. Frost giants have free will and a culture to boot. Yet we are okay with them being evil. Dragons, certainly with their immense power, have freewill. Yet we are okay with them being either good or evil. So it is silly, maybe even hypocritical to say, halflings can't have a natural tendency due to be evil.

Apparently WotC thinks the difference is "creature type: humanoid". Change that, and Bob's your uncle!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't really understand why arbitrarily classifying things as non-humanoids would matter.

I don't either, but WotC seems to. Look at the gnolls, or the draconians. Apparently you can slap a "monstrosity" label on just about anything and now its ok to kill it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I know this is beside the point, but probably not. It’s pretty strongly implied that they’re at least being manipulated if not outright mind controlled by the elder brains.

There are plenty of stories in D&D where that's not the case, and even if it were, do elder brains have free will? You just moved the question level up.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Mind flayers are good villains. It doesn't really matter whether they're "really evil"; in any case we are unlikely to reach an amicable compromise on whether my brains are breakfast or not.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Mind flayers have free will, no? Yet, we're okay with them being evil.

As far as I am aware, no part of the depiction of Mind Flayers closely parallels a depiction that has been used to justify the subjugation of real world people, especially real world people who are still suffering the effects of it.

If there were an ethnic group that currently suffers discrimination based on a false but enduring myth that they had mental powers that allowed them to enslave others and eat their brains, I would feel differently.*

That's the difference.

*And even if there were, the argument against that portrayal would NOT be "Mind Flayers are meant to represent Bridge and Tunnel People." It pains me that I have to say that, but apparently I do.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't really understand why arbitrarily classifying things as non-humanoids would matter.

It shouldn't, except that when writers want to portray mortal humanoids as inherently evil the tropes they invariably turn to are problematic. Extra-planar monsters are easier to portray as evil without resorting to that.

 

[Charlaquin]

There are plenty of stories in D&D where that's not the case, and even if it were, do elder brains have free will? You just moved the question level up.

True. I was just picking nits. Bad habit of mine.

 

[Scott Christian]

The thing you are missing is that you don't need to make All of a species a certain way. Especially if you say all of a species is a certain way except for the PCs.

In the above example (the planar example) it is not all of a species. It is the species that exists on that plane. Since D&D is a menagerie of planes, then there are bound to be others of the species that are not cursed.

Just stop with the childish and silly "acceptable targets for kill-on-sight". You can have some like the mindless undead, but overall the game is better if the antagonists have actual motivations.

I will state this again - no one here is saying that. It is a made-up argument. Most of the time, even when my group does encounter an evil species that is sentient, they don't kill it on sight. They haggled with an evil hag one session. And if anything should be a kill on sight target, it should be a hag. (Which, I will point out, some look like people and are all evil.)