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

[Yaarel]

I'd argue that this tension is caused by the game originally being more sword and sorcery and having mechanics to support that. Narratives of the game have moved on from that but the gameplay really hasn't, causing dissonance.

And if a lot of the game is about combat and killing, then I think it is more honest to just accept that the world is not enlightened and the characters are not morally perfect. You may call it "embracing evil", I'd just call it roleplaying an era without all our modern morals and the privilege that lets us afford them. To me that is far less jarring than continuing the bloodbath but concocting spurious reasons why this actually is totally morally enlightened thing to do.

Employing the "Bloodied Condition" as a mechanic, makes nonlethal combat easier, and helps gamers who want to explore other kinds of stories.

I am still experimenting with the Bloodied Condition. For example, Wisdom (Intimidation) checks determine Morale if becoming Bloodied. Often a hostile fleeing can end the encounter. Also, combat ending effects, like Stunned, I prefer to only become possible against Bloodied targets. In short, it is possible to win a combat encounter without death. Meanwhile, nonlethal zero hit points means helpless, but without death saves.

The main difficulty is convenience. Sometimes, the players need to drag an unwilling hostile around for some time, before being able to hand the hostile in to authorities, or similar. I find it hard to think of ways to make this chore fun.

 

[Yaarel]

Spoiler

A schlorp had their sun fading, so they "fueled" it with the lifeforce of other worlds, including the PCs'. At the end of the adventure, the players are expected to destroy the life-sucking device, nova'ing the schlorp's sun. Which is explained as destroying entirely the schlorp's homeworld. It is more palatable if that schlorp was "always, irredeemably evil", not "people desperate for survival who put their own survival by condemning others". If they are not always evil, then the expected outcome of the adventure is player comitting genocide on a Alderande scale, and the PC not being better than the ones who designed the life-sucking device in the first place. This is made even worse because not blowing the device means destruction of the PC's homeworld, and the adventure suggesting the PC could next race to save a few people from their world with their spelljamming ship.

@codo: how would your group deal with this kind of proposed ending in a recent published adventure?

For me as DM, I would change any adventure that required players to commit genocide.

Besides, I like the Astral Elves. Their solar themes and skyey locale feel closer to the way my Norse heritage views elves.

 

[Vaalingrade]

People are reading way too much into a person's personal morality and ethics based on views of tropes.

This is exactly and precisely NOT what I am doing.

I'm saying a thing a person likes can be racist or problematic without that person being racist or problematic.

This issue arises when people become blinded by their affinity for that thing that they ignore everyone else's feelings and soldier on, put their head down nd charge in, denying, mocking and belittling everyone else in the defense of that thing.

 

[Vaalingrade]

My claim is simple, it's hypocritical. And as a side note, throw out the god debate then. Use plane-touched. Use a curse from a witch. Use a virus that was implanted in the species and passed down through DNA. None of those things are attached to a racist trope. Can those be used?

It's all doing a lot of backbreaking labor to get to 'this group of people is okay to harm based on right of birth -- ie their race' and is still literally racist.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is exactly and precisely NOT what I am doing.

I'm saying a thing a person likes can be racist or problematic without that person being racist or problematic.

This issue arises when people become blinded by their affinity for that thing that they ignore everyone else's feelings and soldier on, put their head down nd charge in, denying, mocking and belittling everyone else in the defense of that thing.

Again it’s reasonable to disagree on if the trope is racist or problematic. But quips like “you just like racist tropes” are not neutral statements. And takes your subjective opinion about a trope and presents it as objective fact. I don’t think your response to that poster was at all polite. And there is a degree of judgment because racist isn’t a neutral word. It still carries a charge to it and it tends to sully the person you affix it to (even if you are just saying they like racist tropes). I think people are way too certain about their conclusions about media tropes here. There have been a lot of snipes like this in this thread, not just from you, and it is frankly tiring because it feels like posters think they can be unkind or sour with one another over this issue.

On some of these topics we are going to just disagree. But there needs to be an agree you disagree of some form. The sniping and belittling is not going to work in these threads.

 

[Scott Christian]

It's all doing a lot of backbreaking labor to get to 'this group of people is okay to harm based on right of birth -- ie their race' and is still literally racist.

Fair enough. That is your take. Although it still doesn't take into account the planetouched. They were just born on the wrong plane. It has tainted them in some weird magical way. Not the entire species, but those that grew up on that plane. But, if even that is too racist for you, then I respect your opinion. I disagree with it, but I will respect it.

I have a general question for everyone here: Video games still use these tropes all the time. Any thoughts on them being held to a D&D standard, since, in effect, they are trying to simulate D&D by letting you create a character and participate in a choice-based adventure?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Again it’s reasonable to disagree on if the trope is racist or problematic. But quips like “you just like racist tropes” are not neutral statements.

I mean yeah, that would be is that's what were actually being said.

Most people like things that are in some way problematic. It's just how we've grown up and how popular culture works.

The important thing si for us to realize that we are not our hobbies. Something you like can be racist without you being racist as long as the racist part isn't what you like about it. Look at the works of Lovecraft: it's just plain built on racism and classism, but people like the nihilism and spooky deep sea imagery and they're not racist for that. Or Mickey Mouse, born in the mage of the Minstrel Show.

Where problems happen is when people can't just listen to criticism of a thing the like without taking it as a personal attack and coming out with HOW DARE YOU CALL ME RACIST.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Fair enough. That is your take. Although it still doesn't take into account the planetouched. They were just born on the wrong plane. It has tainted them in some weird magical way. Not the entire species, but those that grew up on that plane. But, if even that is too racist for you, then I respect your opinion. I disagree with it, but I will respect it.

Something new has been added.

Something that makes a hell of a difference. Like an Everything Bagel without the rat poison.

 

[Cadence]

Something new has been added.

Something that makes a hell of a difference. Like an Everything Bagel without the rat poison.

Why would you ruin perfectly could rat poison!?!

#TeamJalapenoBagel

 

[Bill Zebub]

I have a general question for everyone here: Video games still use these tropes all the time. Any thoughts on them being held to a D&D standard, since, in effect, they are trying to simulate D&D by letting you create a character and participate in a choice-based adventure?

I don’t know enough about what’s in video games to speak with any kind of authority, but I would hazard a guess that a big difference is that video games don’t have as much text backstory. You might mow down orcs in a video game, and they might appear as crazed primitive savages, but is there a block of text describing them, as a species, as universally brutish, stupid, violent, and promiscuous? Or is it left to the player to infer whether it’s all of them, or just the ones I’m fighting?