D&D 5E (+)What Ubiquitous DnD Tropes Get It Totally Wrong?

[Son of the Serpent]

As noted before, "free will" is a meaningless weasel word

I tend to agree.

I also believe freedom of choice is weasel words too though.

Awfully similar idea.

 

[Charlaquin]

Choices dont truly exist in a deterministic world. You cant choose something if your brain is deterministic. Not really.

That’s just not true. You still make the choice, even if what you choose is already determined by outside factors. It doesn’t matter that I wouldn’t make a different choice, my internal experience is that of making a choice, so I have made one.

you would be right. I think either we live in an undeterministic world or there is no such thing as an actual person. Yes.

The difference between wet soggy computers and people is authentic non deterministic consciousness.

Why does deterministic function makes consciousness inauthentic?

By this standard im not convinced there are or arent people.

Probably there arent.

By that standard I don’t think it makes a difference. People, whether their consciousness is what you consider authentic or not, have the experience of consciousness and choice, so for all intents and purposes, they are functionally people, and function is what matters.

Self awareness is often pointed to as the advent of consciousness free will and choices.

Incorrectly so, as I am self-aware whether my will is free or not.

Even it is deterministic. It donates nothing that bucks the pattern.

What donates nothing that bucks what pattern? You’ve lost me.

That is why it doesnt matter. Does it affect things? Yes. Sure. But it does not matter in regard to free will and choices. It doesnt have the power to make either truly exist. That is why i say it "doesnt matter". It doesnt matter in that it does not change the state of things in question.

I’m not entirely sure I follow you, but I think I disagree. Self-awareness does matter, because a self-aware being has the internal experience of making choices, therefore it is making choices, even if the choices it will make are determined by external processes (though its will is not free if they are.) Choice is a quale. Freedom (of will) is an objective quality of will: does the self-aware being have the power to make a different choice than the one it does? If yes, it is free. If no, it is not. Which brings us back to demons. They have self-awareness, they experience the quale of making choices, but if they do not have the power to choose to be good (which if no demon will ever make that choice under any circumstances then they do not), their will is constrained.

 

[Charlaquin]

I tend to agree.

I also believe freedom of choice is weasel words too though.

Awfully similar idea.

Umm... No, “people are saying” is a weasel word. “It has been claimed” is a weasel word. “Some studies have shown” is a weasel word. Free will and freedom of choice are philosophical concepts, albeit vague ones.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Umm... No, “people are saying” is a weasel word. “It has been claimed” is a weasel word. “Some studies have shown” is a weasel word. Free will and freedom of choice are philosophical concepts, albeit vague ones.

Then i may actually be misunderstanding what weasel words means then...

 

[Charlaquin]

Then i may actually be misunderstanding what weasel words means then...

Weasel word - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Bohandas]

Weasel word - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

From the article: "Use of vague or ambiguous euphemisms...Glittering or vague generalizations"

 

[Charlaquin]

From the article: "Use of vague or ambiguous euphemisms...Glittering or vague generalizations"

Free will is neither a euphemism nor a generalization, and it is certainly not used rhetorically to preserve deniability of a claim, as weasel words are.

 

[Hussar]

Listen, I'm done. @Charlaquin I really did mean to answer your post but I'm just tired of the attacks because I run orcs as described in the monster manual.

While I realize that @Oofta has claimed to be leaving the conversation, this post here really does nail the problem.

It doesn't MATTER that @Oofta is following the Monster Manual. What matters is the fact that the Monster Manual, like most of D&D, is based on very racist and bigoted concepts that were rampant in the genre when D&D was originally being written. If following the Monster Manual means perpetuating the stereotype, then the Monster Manual is part of the problem, not the solution.

It doesn't matter if you decide that your orcs in your world are more demonic or whatever. It's still perpetuating the stereotype. Heck, @Oofta recognized that the stereotype exists, so, it's not like it's a secret.

The better solution is to take the Eberron approach, and make orcs (and other humanoids for that matter) more a "living" race and give them a broader culture that isn't quite so grounded in 19th century bigotry.

It's okay that my depiction of race that is grounded in bigoted colonialism because I changed the race from being a "race" to being actual demons, doesn't really change the stereotype. It actually comes across as incredibly tone deaf. And, unfortunately, it's a level of tone deafness that isn't exactly absent from the hobby - you see the same approach being taken in published works as well as genre fiction.

This isn't really a problem that is solved by a quick edit of background. That's just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Until you actually decide to change course, you're still smacking into icebergs.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Just wanna reiterate that, politics aside, humanoids as basically-demons doesn't make sense within the logic of the game. In DnD, things that have families and cultures are sapient people, including several cases that were create to serve a purpose. That doesn't make them humans. Defining them as "human-like" in the context of free will ( which is basically fantasy sapience) and having the aptitude to form and change culture of their own Will does not make them humans.

It's just that our "people" language is largely "human" and it's synonyms, because the only (broadly recognized) people on earth are humans, and we made the language.

But orcs in Eberron are very much not human. Nor are elves. IMO they did less of a good job with Gnomes and Halflings in terms of making them not human, but the Halflings are still really interesting at least, and the Gnomes are...well...there are islander piratey gnomes in Lazaar, and apparently some people like the Zil, so, they have that going for them.

But the reason that orcs are not problematic in Eberron (well, not as problematic. A race that never forms a culture that isn't clannish and druidy/shamanic is still...on a borderline, in a world where said race has half a dozen cultures with little to no connection to one another), is simply that there are many cultures of orc, and they're all different, even though they're all defined by a shared fundamental nature that is rather different from that of humans, so there is no real orcish monolith.

And the same is true for goblins, and to a lesser extent drow.

The other issue I have with the trope of evil humanoid races is that is often relies on logic that should apply to other races, making the distinction nakedly arbitrary, and thus nakedly there to allow there to be humanoids that it's okay to kill on site. Which is...a bit problematic, when the group you can kill without remorse is a race rather than a supernatural creature from beyond the world, or something like an apocalyptic evil cult, or slavers, or something similar to nazis.

Gnolls, orcs, and minotaurs, were made by evil powers. Okay, so were Tieflings. They were made for a singular purpose. Okay, so were warforged. And probably tieflings, really. I mean, there is a trick involved, but they were made by a pact with a devil, where the devil wrote the rules.

So, even ignoring that orcs aren't always evil by actual RAW, including the MM, it would both be a bad thing if they were and it would not make sense.

Jim Davis (webDM) has a world where goblins are a fungus, and the three goblin races are three stages of a life cycle. Do whatever you want in your world.

We're here to discuss tropes, and which ones are bad and dumb.

 

[Bohandas]

While I realize that @Oofta has claimed to be leaving the conversation, this post here really does nail the problem.

It doesn't MATTER that @Oofta is following the Monster Manual. What matters is the fact that the Monster Manual, like most of D&D, is based on very racist and bigoted concepts that were rampant in the genre when D&D was originally being written. If following the Monster Manual means perpetuating the stereotype, then the Monster Manual is part of the problem, not the solution.

It doesn't matter if you decide that your orcs in your world are more demonic or whatever. It's still perpetuating the stereotype. Heck, @Oofta recognized that the stereotype exists, so, it's not like it's a secret.

The better solution is to take the Eberron approach, and make orcs (and other humanoids for that matter) more a "living" race and give them a broader culture that isn't quite so grounded in 19th century bigotry.

It's okay that my depiction of race that is grounded in bigoted colonialism because I changed the race from being a "race" to being actual demons, doesn't really change the stereotype. It actually comes across as incredibly tone deaf. And, unfortunately, it's a level of tone deafness that isn't exactly absent from the hobby - you see the same approach being taken in published works as well as genre fiction.

This isn't really a problem that is solved by a quick edit of background. That's just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Until you actually decide to change course, you're still smacking into icebergs.