D&D 5E WOTC Possibly Removing "Druids" for Religious/Cultural Sensitivity Reasons

[Gradine]

Thanks for the censor bar but you might want to Spoiler that too for good measure...

 

[MGibster]

Thanks for the censor bar but you might want to Spoiler that too for good measure...

Censor bar? I'm prettysure that amazon suffered a battle injury and those are red bandages.

 

[Alzrius]

0e D&D Men and Magic?
Sexist?
It's not like it was full of chainmail bikinis, or....
View attachment 306798
...or...oh...um.....

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Fun fact: According to our own @Gronan of Simmerya, those pictures were drawn by Cookie Corey, wife of Bill Corey from the original Lake Geneva gaming group.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fun fact: According to our own @Gronan of Simmerya, those pictures were drawn by Cookie Corey, wife of Bill Corey from the original Lake Geneva gaming group.

That is fun, thanks.
Personally I've always found paleo-D&D line art charming. One of the things I didn't much care for was the full color art in 2e and later editions. I'm just weird that way.

But I assume you can picture someone, back then or now, frowning on that illo, regardless of the anatomical sex or gender identity or marital status of the artist.

 

[Remathilis]

Shaman needs to go. It's a colonialist term that takes a diverse set of religious practices across the globe and tries to simplify them into a single concept. The term was specific to indigenous peoples in Siberia, but I don't know if they still exist culturally and if they do, do they care about the misappropriation of the term? But I do know that many folks whose practices are lumped into shamanism are not fond of the word.

Druid? Modern neopagan druids don't own the term any more or any less than the fantasy genre. I'm not worried about offending ancient druids from the past (again, they're dead), and I'm not really concerned about offending other modern folks who've appropriated the term, just as it has been for gaming and fantasy. And, is there a hue and cry from modern neopagans over the use of the word? Perhaps, I don't know.

There is no clear line between when it is okay to appropriate a term and when it isn't. It's messy, confusing, and not everyone will agree term-by-term. But the conversations are important to have in good faith, and to not be shut down by selfish folks who just don't want to give up their use of a word, or who want to ignore the real harm sometimes done by insensitive (or ignorant) cultural appropriation.

The issue really is that "Druid" is being used to cover a wide swath of religious practices that would have been considered "shamans" as well. D&D views druids as nature priests who tend not follow established deities or religions (the whole Old Gods thing) and it has absorbed animists, nature worship, spirits, and other faiths that aren't considered "deity worship".

To wit, I was doing some research recently on both vodun and skinwalkers for some adventures, and in an attempt to make sure I was being sensitive to both cultures, I did a little deep-diving and the biggest thing I gathered was that both could easily be modeled using druids as the base class. (The skinwalker being an evil shapechanging magic user, the vodun being a healer and channeler of spirits). However, it feels kinda... bad? to say that both are part of the Celtic Pagan class, even though D&D's mechanics fit them both well enough.

I had considered long ago that the druid is a bad name because it takes a lot of ideas that are universal (nature worship, spirits, shapechanging, green magic) and gives it a western-European name. If we ever get the point the class names are no longer sacrosanct, I think moving the druid to a more generic name that fits better with cultures that aren't western European would be a wise move. It would also open said new class to model ideas that previously would have been labeled "shamen" in D&D.

But don't ask me what said class would be called. If I knew, I'd be using it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

But don't ask me what said class would be called. If I knew, I'd be using it.

Animist is the best I've found so far. A term not tied to any particular culture or region, but is pretty broad and covers most of what a druid would be anyway. It's the term I use anyway

 

[Dire Bare]

Animist is the best I've found so far. A term not tied to any particular culture or region, but is pretty broad and covers most of what a druid would be anyway. It's the term I use anyway

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Currently, I'm working (slowly and sporadically) on a more general divine class called the "mystic". D&D has used that term for a monk-like character in BECMI, and an psychic type character in the playtests . . . but I think the word works well for a divine caster. My (eventual) mystic would include druid and shaman subclasses, although I'd not use the word "shaman".

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Doubt. The 2024 version would be the time, but I doubt it.

I think the push to get ride of Druid will fail, mostly for the same reason the OLYMPIC and Elysium and Hades and Tartarus are in still despite Zeus being called "A Storm God". There is simply some stuff the designers are not allowed to remove for business reasons.

And because you can't get rid of Druid in the PHB, it's likely they will get rid of Druid in MtG, it'd look really weird and raise too many questions.

Now Shaman they might get rid of in MtG, it's not a PHB class, and already Shaman was the MtG subin for Sorcerer, so it'd be super early to just replace Shaman with Sorcerer and in fact I think they may have been thinking along those lines anyways, otherwise why make what seems like a very unconnected archetypes stand in for each other, it's prep for replacing Shaman with Sorcerer, because honest Sorcerer fits as the red mage class better anyways, then the very Green sounding Shaman.

 

[Scribe]

I think the push to get ride of Druid will fail, mostly for the same reason the OLYMPIC and Elysium and Hades and Tartarus are in still despite Zeus being called "A Storm God". There is simply some stuff the designers are not allowed to remove for business reasons.

Yeah I mean this thread is nonsense, but I would say the Druid has more inertia in D&D (5e) than the rest of that combined. Its not going anywhere.

 

[MGibster]

I've been considering a campaign to end WotC's use of the word kobold. A kobold is not a little lizard/draconic man, it's a little house spirit that helps out with chores but is an occsional jerk hiding your favorite tools from you.