D&D: WotC’s New Lore Changes Raise Questions Among Players

Quote from Third_Sundering >>

Quote from mjsoctober >>

snapping at people for "calling him racist" when he argued that orcs were orcs, not people, and orcs being evil had nothing to do with real-world stereotypes.  He leaned hard on that bad-faith argument.

It's not a bad faith argument. D&D Orcs are not an analog for real world people, but some people keep trying to make it so.

Here's a good article to read: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/checkpoints/202004/no-orcs-arent-racist

*emphasis mine*

Oh, have I got a thread for you. Case-in-point:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/red-orc-american-indians-and-yellow-orc-mongolians-in-d-d.684780/page-2#post-8488556

This is from an old D&D sourcebook for the long-abandoned setting of Mystara. 

If you can read that post and still say that "orcs [were] never an analog for real world people in D&D", you're lying. Yes they were. Yes, they continue to be through the existence of those products and the racist stereotypes that were attached to them. 

There have been depictions of Orcs and Half-Orcs in D&D that have been undeniably racist. Those products are proof. You are wrong. You may have been ignorant of this before, which isn't your fault, but there are a ton of people denying the history of the game because they don't want to get their feelings hurt over a hobby they have attached their own self-esteem to. 

That depiction (and others) of Orcs in an official D&D product was racist. Orcs have been a stand-in for many different groups of real-world peoples in D&D worlds for decades. Denying that is a flat-out lie. 

 That's a horrible thing to do to someone, forcing them to confront racism in a 30-year-old parody that's still technically a part of one of their favorite things.  I hope you realized that when you did it.  Oh, and you got his claim wrong; he didn't say that orcs never were an analog for real-world people, he said they aren't.  

My hurt feelings (and those of everyone else to click on that damn link) aside, apparently the kobolds there were Italian.  If they spoke-a like-a this-a and couldn't build a tower without it leaning, I'll assume that everything was like that and so give them a pass on the orcs and goblinoids--not that it still matters 30 years and approximately four editions later.  

And now back to the post I started working on around this time yesterday.  

Quote from Merigold00Yahoo >>

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Then what's the solution?

New players simply aren't interested in the Forgotten Realms.  The Forgotten Realms are simply too dense, too impossible to break into, and everyone who plays games steeped in the Forgotten Realms is enormously hostile to new players.  They can keep supporting the Forgotten Realms as the only setting they want anyone to play in - which Wizards has openly stated they're not going to do, they want to switch to a more versatile structure with multiple concurrently supported settings - or they can release books that people say nobody will buy because they're not Forgotten Realms books.

What's the solution?  You can't hook new players into the Realms, and you can't get old players to not play in the Realms.  How do you reconcile that?

 I have to disagree.  I love FR and the new players in my campaign are having fun in the Moonshaes, with brief trips to Amn and Candlekeep.  I am willing to play anywhere, as a longtime player. I have done Greyhawk as well. I think you do a disservice when you make sweeping generalizations about the habits of millions of players worldwide.

Let's talk about your fidelity to the Forgotten Realms.  What sources do you. use?  The fan community maintained wikis?  The old grey boxed set and. the huge catalog of gazeteers or whatever they called the books, Moonshae being the second one after I believe Waterdeep?  Does DR _really matter_ in your game?  Do you have the various iterations of the pantheon via the sunderings and god wars and what not, and do they _really matter_ to your game?  

There are people who maintain a deep fidelity to the Forgotten Realms, and are willing to gulp up the settings massive retcons that have beset it over the years and editions and pretend that setting volatility is a rich history (not a diss, but a logic leap must be made to say a mess is actually consistency).  There are also people who see the Forgotten Realms as a giant map, pick a spot on the map and say "I want to play there" and set up a game around a quick glance at the wiki and going off the environmental details suggested by said map (far north = cold, far south = hot, some places have more trees, others a lot of sand that get everywhere).  Even the "politics" of the game represented in the five secret society "factions" ... they work best as bodies of the stereotypes they represent, rather than requiring a multi century long recitation of their various intrigues over the history of TSR / WotC game production.

What Yurei was pointing out, I believe, is that TSR's Forgotten Realms publishing juggernaut exists in a very different form in 5e.  Most 5e adventures are nominally set in the Forgotten Realms, but you don't really need to know anything about the Forgotten Realms outside the minimal context they provide.  And even a setting as iconic as Candlekeep comes with the claim "this anthology could easily be reset in any other setting."  This thread was started by recognizing, albeit with hostility, WotC practice of removing or at least undermining "lore" some players feel are integral to their games.  There's no reason that lore still can't be integral to their games, it's just not integral to "the" game.  Consequently, FR just doesn't have the level of support prior editions gave it with game resources and novels and the like.   

Yet more people are buying into D&D now more than ever (Matt Colville recently speculated  the "long history" of D&D and TTRPG will be split between before streaming and after streaming, as the technology allowed a much wider audience to "get it" and "get into it" than ever before). WotC is literally capitalizing on this moment by being everclear that they want to produce books that are broadly accessible and available to all players no matter their game world. It's on the DM to decide whether the tools offered in these books is worth their while.   

But this business practice isn't some Orwellian silencing of the past.  While there may be disclaimers about how a lot of products aren't in line with present cultural sensitivities (just like we say many tv shows, movies, and books from the 80s "haven't aged well") WotC still makes everything they and TSR published under the D&D brand (with the exception of the original copyright problematic Deities and Demigods) via DMsGuild for anyone who wants to mine the past for lore and inspiration.  As I've written elsewhere since this errata, and has been explained in this thread, whatever was "lost" in the Volo's errata is easily recovered elsewhere through community support of "legacy" content and or, you know the imagination that is supposed to drive these games.

The points in those last two paragraphs have me feeling we're living in a golden age of TTRPG, particularly in regards to D&D.  As a result I just don't understand BoLS reading reactionaries and their ilk taking grand offense to any editorial move by WotC to make the game accessible to broader audiences or to broaden the way the game can be played by taking down some of these precious lore parameters.

Just a general comment. There is no argument that many of our modern fantasy tropes were originally inspired by really bad takes on "foreign" cultures. As any history professor will tell you, however, you cannot judge the past by modern standards. Culture advances, and though we are still far from perfect, we have made great strides against racism as a culture. Although a particular fantasy race may once have been a representative example of a racist stereotype, I am not believer that they are still racist stereotypes. Orcs, kobolds, etc. have been developed to the point in the last 30 years that they've long left behind their racist origins.

And if you don't believe that modern society is capable of and prone to ignoring the past origin of a particular something, making it something modern and our own, let me present Christmas as an example. Although historians will tell you that Christmas is a religious observance in the Christian religion (and, yes, there is a lot of incorporation of other religious and cultural practices in Christmas), the modern take on Christmas is a very secular holiday. Most people enjoy the lights, Santa, etc. which have nothing to do with the Christian celebration. Christmas is now a modern holiday with only a small portion of people celebrating it for what it originally was.

Quote from FossMaNo1 >>

And if you don't believe that modern society is capable of and prone to ignoring the past origin of a particular something, making it something modern and our own, let me present Christmas as an example. Although historians will tell you that Christmas is a religious observance in the Christian religion (and, yes, there is a lot of incorporation of other religious and cultural practices in Christmas), the modern take on Christmas is a very secular holiday. Most people enjoy the lights, Santa, etc. which have nothing to do with the Christian celebration. Christmas is now a modern holiday with only a small portion of people celebrating it for what it originally was.

... because Christmas is now a modern holiday, and really nothing like what it originally was. I absolutely agree people can move past some of the problematic facets of early D&D, but you're really making the argument that this will be accomplished by changing and modernizing them.  

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from Merigold00Yahoo >>

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Then what's the solution?

New players simply aren't interested in the Forgotten Realms.  The Forgotten Realms are simply too dense, too impossible to break into, and everyone who plays games steeped in the Forgotten Realms is enormously hostile to new players.  They can keep supporting the Forgotten Realms as the only setting they want anyone to play in - which Wizards has openly stated they're not going to do, they want to switch to a more versatile structure with multiple concurrently supported settings - or they can release books that people say nobody will buy because they're not Forgotten Realms books.

What's the solution?  You can't hook new players into the Realms, and you can't get old players to not play in the Realms.  How do you reconcile that?

 I have to disagree.  I love FR and the new players in my campaign are having fun in the Moonshaes, with brief trips to Amn and Candlekeep.  I am willing to play anywhere, as a longtime player. I have done Greyhawk as well. I think you do a disservice when you make sweeping generalizations about the habits of millions of players worldwide.

 

As a long time player, you have enough personally invested in those settings that your players can learn them through you. How much of the Realms have they learned through sourcebooks rather than through your DM'ing? 

 What does that matter?  I chose to start in the FR, particularly the Moonshaes because the people that are in my group all tend to like Celtic history or Viking history and the Moonshaes offers that pretty well.  One of the players in my group is brand new, and he wants to start DMing soon.  May not be in the 'Shaes but I would be willing to bet it is in FR. I could have started anywhere and found out if it was a setting to their liking. If I did a good job as DM, it probably would have turned out just as well, so to my way of thinking, the players would not have learned any more or less about any other setting, and their unwillingness to "break into" a setting would not have changed.

Quote from FossMaNo1 >>

Just a general comment. There is no argument that many of our modern fantasy tropes were originally inspired by really bad takes on "foreign" cultures. As any history professor will tell you, however, you cannot judge the past by modern standards. Culture advances, and though we are still far from perfect, we have made great strides against racism as a culture. Although a particular fantasy race may once have been a representative example of a racist stereotype, I am not believer that they are still racist stereotypes. Orcs, kobolds, etc. have been developed to the point in the last 30 years that they've long left behind their racist origins.

They're trying to leave the racist origins behind.  Threads like this one are proof of how that hasn't completely happened yet and in fact, some people are opposed to that happening.

Quote from Matthias_von_Schwarzwald >>

Quote from Third_Sundering >>

Quote from mjsoctober >>

snapping at people for "calling him racist" when he argued that orcs were orcs, not people, and orcs being evil had nothing to do with real-world stereotypes.  He leaned hard on that bad-faith argument.

It's not a bad faith argument. D&D Orcs are not an analog for real world people, but some people keep trying to make it so.

Here's a good article to read: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/checkpoints/202004/no-orcs-arent-racist

*emphasis mine*

Oh, have I got a thread for you. Case-in-point:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/red-orc-american-indians-and-yellow-orc-mongolians-in-d-d.684780/page-2#post-8488556

This is from an old D&D sourcebook for the long-abandoned setting of Mystara. 

If you can read that post and still say that "orcs [were] never an analog for real world people in D&D", you're lying. Yes they were. Yes, they continue to be through the existence of those products and the racist stereotypes that were attached to them. 

There have been depictions of Orcs and Half-Orcs in D&D that have been undeniably racist. Those products are proof. You are wrong. You may have been ignorant of this before, which isn't your fault, but there are a ton of people denying the history of the game because they don't want to get their feelings hurt over a hobby they have attached their own self-esteem to. 

That depiction (and others) of Orcs in an official D&D product was racist. Orcs have been a stand-in for many different groups of real-world peoples in D&D worlds for decades. Denying that is a flat-out lie. 

 That's a horrible thing to do to someone, forcing them to confront racism in a 30-year-old parody that's still technically a part of one of their favorite things.  I hope you realized that when you did it.  Oh, and you got his claim wrong; he didn't say that orcs never were an analog for real-world people, he said they aren't.  

My hurt feelings (and those of everyone else to click on that damn link) aside, apparently the kobolds there were Italian.  If they spoke-a like-a this-a and couldn't build a tower without it leaning, I'll assume that everything was like that and so give them a pass on the orcs and goblinoids--not that it still matters 30 years and approximately four editions later.  

That link hurt your feeling? And not because you're a member of any of the communities being disparaged by it? That's on you. That's wholly and entirely your fault. If it hurts your feelings to find out that there were racist elements of D&D while you were supporting the person that said that there absolutely weren't, that is completely on you. And not only are you trying to victimize yourself due to your ignorance around the racist elements of D&D, you're trying to compare that to the harm that those racist stereotypes can have in the first place. 

Being called racist is not a bad as having people be racist towards you (and let's be clear, I was not and am not calling you racist, I'm using this phrase as an example). Discovering that your hobby used to be racist is not at all comparable to the pain that those kinds of products caused to people of those marginalized communities. 

You think that me trying to educate people about the racist past of D&D is a "horrible thing to do to someone"? No, it isn't. Writing those racist things were horrible, uncalled for things to do to someone. @mjsoctober was asking for me to prove them wrong. Those racist caricatures of real world people from that Mystara supplement were uncalled for. Stop trying to compare your discomfort of discovering racist caricatures in an official D&D product to the harm that those kinds of products can cause. When people say "chronic victim syndrome", this is what they mean. You are not victimized by learning those things that I posted, and your pain is not comparable to that of the people disparaged by those products. 

(And, no, I'm not going to argue semantics with you. Saying "Orcs are not a stand-in for real world people", then being proven wrong, and then trying to shift the goal posts to "he never said that they never were stand-ins for real world people" is disingenuous at best, and being an apologist for racist stereotypes at worst. I will not debate the "are"/"were" semantics, because it's besides the point, and is only a red herring meant to distract away from the problem as a whole.)

I'm thinking maybe if we nudge the discussion back into what WotC is trying to accomplish with these errata and whether past lore is essential to the game, we may continue to have a more productive conversation than debating who or what gets framed as racist, who or what isn't racist, and which articles hurt us.

Like I said, in my other posts, these errata weren't solely about "fixing" "objectionable" content, they were many about eliminating some lore parameters that seemed to assert "thou must place creature X as this" when that's never been the case.  The errata just makes that a lot more clearer and supports the DMs who surprise players who think they've mastered the meta and cry foul when a monster's behavior or persona defies expectations predicated on prior lore.  That's really what we're talking about, as well as cutting out some, but not all, of the "darker material" that's been stewing in the game for some time.

I don't know why anyone has a problem with someone playing in a game whose world works differently than yours.  It's sorta like 40k players who insist paint schemes need to be up to certain standards, but 40k sort of encourages that. WotC, if it ever did encourage that mindset, has moved away from it, if not before definitely in D&D, and I'd argue that it's been good overall for the hobby.

Quote from FossMaNo1 >>

Just a general comment. There is no argument that many of our modern fantasy tropes were originally inspired by really bad takes on "foreign" cultures. As any history professor will tell you, however, you cannot judge the past by modern standards. Culture advances, and though we are still far from perfect, we have made great strides against racism as a culture. Although a particular fantasy race may once have been a representative example of a racist stereotype, I am not believer that they are still racist stereotypes. Orcs, kobolds, etc. have been developed to the point in the last 30 years that they've long left behind their racist origins.

Sounds nice, but this is not what I've experienced as a person of color in modern society. This sounds like the same kind of argument I heard after Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out and people dismissed the idea that the Nemoidians were a racist stereotype. Sure, they weren't called Asians, but when you have the stereotypical accent, the stereotypical mannerisms, and the stereotypical tropes all put together it's basically the old Yellow Peril racism in alien drag. It hurts just the same, but it's insidious because it's hidden juuuuust enough that people, usually people who haven't and don't suffer from harmful stereotypes, can dismiss you as being hysterical or accuse of looking to be offended. As if that's what I want to spend my time doing.

I'm pretty sure you'll find that your experience of the game is not going to change significantly. Making things more accessible to people that normally would be hedged out, whether due to physical obstructions or mental trauma, does nothing to bar those people who already had access in the first place.

Quote from Ophidimancer >>

Quote from FossMaNo1 >>

Just a general comment. There is no argument that many of our modern fantasy tropes were originally inspired by really bad takes on "foreign" cultures. As any history professor will tell you, however, you cannot judge the past by modern standards. Culture advances, and though we are still far from perfect, we have made great strides against racism as a culture. Although a particular fantasy race may once have been a representative example of a racist stereotype, I am not believer that they are still racist stereotypes. Orcs, kobolds, etc. have been developed to the point in the last 30 years that they've long left behind their racist origins.

Sounds nice, but this is not what I've experienced as a person of color in modern society. This sounds like the same kind of argument I heard after Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out and people dismissed the idea that the Nemoidians were a racist stereotype. Sure, they weren't called Asians, but when you have the stereotypical accent, the stereotypical mannerisms, and the stereotypical tropes all put together it's basically the old Yellow Peril racism in alien drag. It hurts just the same, but it's insidious because it's hidden juuuuust enough that people, usually people who haven't and don't suffer from harmful stereotypes, can dismiss you as being hysterical or accuse of looking to be offended. As if that's what I want to spend my time doing.

I'm pretty sure you'll find that your experience of the game is not going to change significantly. Making things more accessible to people that normally would be hedged out, whether due to physical obstructions or mental trauma, does nothing to bar those people who already had access in the first place.

Yup. It's exactly the same argument. If you look up debates online about whether or not the Neimoidians were racist, you'll find people making the exact same goddam argument as those arguing against the recent changes to D&D's races. "They can't be racist because those races/species don't exist in the real world". It's full of BS, especially because all racism is rooted in a false premise, but it's extremely frustrating that it's so pervasive of an argument and it seems impossible to change anyone's minds about this. 

(If anyone wants a historical example of racism in the fairly-recent real world, look up the Tokio Monster from American Propaganda during World War 2, as well as the Nazi Propaganda's depictions of Jews. Racism is always rooted in dehumanizing other people. It's kind of, you know, the definition of racism, so it should be no surprise to anyone that racists will use fantasy/sci-fi species to perpetuate their racist views. That's where you get stuff like Mystara's Gazetteer Number 10, the Neimoidians, and similar examples.)

To say that it makes a lot of people uncomfortable is a massive assumption to make at best. Has WoTC surveyed their audience to see if these changes would be well received? Do they actually care what their players think about their game? It seems to me that they love to make these changes on behalf of people without their consent to pose for political points, not to improve their product. Every single TTRPG community I have played with has been overwhelmingly welcoming to people from every category you can sort people by. Wizards are the only company that try to showboat their "Diversity" without actually showing respect to their players. 

Quote from ThePellboy >>

Who honestly feels that way? To say that it makes a a lot of people uncomfortable is a massive assumption to make at best. Has WoTC surveyed their audience to see if these changes would be well received? Do they actually care what their players think about their game? It seems to me that they love to make these changes on behalf of people without their consent to pose for political points, not to improve their product. Every single TTRPG community I have played with has been overwhelmingly welcoming to people from every category you can sort people by. Wizards are the only company that try to showboat their "Diversity" without actually showing respect to their players. 

 Did you read post #213 or 214?

I see people using examples from Starwars, in which aliens have racial stereotypical accents. He's talking about a movie created through the direction and vision of a few people, if not a single man. I saw no examples from d&d, or any traditional fantasy product for that matter. If your DM puts on a racist accent to portray a race in one of your games by all means, call them out on it. I've called people out for more serious offences in my games.

Can I just observe what an utterly lost cause it is to attempt to "un-monster" literal monsters?  Last I checked: Mindflayers for one reproduce by inserting tadpoles into sentient creatures and eating their brain matter from the inside out.  I'm not sure what sort of disturbed person actively identifies with these things..  Then again there were people "identifying" with Pennywise for a while so who knows.  The Tyranid is not a moral actor: any more than a shark is: it wants to eat you, and you'd rather it didn't.  Ironically: making monsters "less monsterous" makes the entire affair more morally dubious as opposed to less if you think about it in anything but an utterly superficial way.

And before anyone jumps down my throat of "you're just saying that because you are ignorant etc etc etc" I'm First Nations (that's Canada-speak for Native American): I think I know a bit about ACTUAL racism.

Before this incredibly stupid era in which we live, the one of "identity politics" I promise you the number of people who looked at a raiding orc and went "yeah: that's a black person!" were in the single digits.  But now apparently the "truth has been improved" 1984 style to "have always been the case".  This is supposedly an "improvement"?  I'm not sure how.

Call me "gate-keeper-y" all you want: but MAYBE, just maybe; if you're put off by swords and sorcery, and you don't like combat of any sort, and literal demons are too morally complicated for you, you're upset to the point of tears if numbers on a piece of paper don't go your way, and you are made uncomfortable by the imagined existence of things that do not now, never have, and never will exist... then maybe D&D just isn't for you.

Quote from ThePellboy >>

I see people using examples from Starwars, in which aliens have racial stereotypical accents. He's talking about a movie created through the direction and vision of a few people, if not a single man. I saw no examples from d&d, or any traditional fantasy product for that matter. If your DM puts on a racist accent to portray a race in one of your games by all means, call them out on it. I've called people out for more serious offences in my games.

And this is what happens when you don't read the thread. Read this post, and you'll understand why there are actually racial issues in D&D that have reasons for being addressed. 

D&D's problem is not "stereotypical accents" (and that wasn't the whole issue with the Neimoidians, either), that's a problem from table-to-table and WotC can't really do anything about it. The problem that people are talking about is a long history of marginalized peoples continuing to have harmful stereotypes and depictions of them (and their cultures) being spread through the media. It happened in older D&D products like the GAZ10 for Mystara, and the effects of linking real world people to fictional races/species in a racist manner has been an issue for a lot longer than that. That's the problem that WotC is trying to address with much of these errata (not all of them, though, some changed for entirely different reasons). And the problem also isn't "offense", it's perpetuating and supporting harmful stereotypes and derogatory language. 

It's a mixture of a history of being marginalized by the people with the power to influence the opinions of the public, appropriating and mocking the cultures that are/have been marginalized, and spreading harmful stereotypes about these people through the usage of language and imagery similar to those used to disparage these marginalized communities. It's not to score political points or try to tote their "wokeness" (whatever that means), as this issue is not political and Wizards of the Coast is not running for some public office.

It's about the legitimate harm that D&D products have caused in the past, and trying to rectify that and prevent similar examples from happening in the future. That's the issue. That's what most of this Errata and the recent direction of D&D has been about, and it's for the betterment of the hobby and the inclusiveness of the game. It's not the "second Satanic Panic", like so many out-of-touch older gamers have been saying, but it's instead about real, actual, historical harm that D&D has helped perpetuate. Does that make sense? 

Quote from Third_Sundering >>

It's about the legitimate harm that D&D products have caused in the past, and trying to rectify that and prevent similar examples from happening in the future. That's the issue. That's what most of this Errata and the recent direction of D&D has been about, and it's for the betterment of the hobby and the inclusiveness of the game. It's not the "second Satanic Panic", like so many out-of-touch older gamers have been saying, but it's instead about real, actual, historical harm that D&D has helped perpetuate. Does that make sense? 

Oh please; arbiter of all that is true, tell me, where this unspeakable "real harm" is?  Because this sure SOUNDS like the "D&D allows your kids to summon demons with the devil's dice!" level of hysteria.

Last I checked; I was fighting hypothetical monsters, through a hypothetical avatar, in a hypothetical world, that does not now, and will never exist.  I somehow fail to see how Strahd Von Zarovich "does real harm" to the proud people of Romania any more than his direct inspiration does, IE: none, at least, none for several centuries.

The "cultural appropriation" argument is one that I deeply despise; because the simple fact is, cultures bouncing off one another is how we get interesting things.  Anime was spawned from post-war Japan seeing what Disney was doing state-side, Rock and Roll was born out of Jazz and Country mixing, even "questionable" things like the works of HP Lovecraft lead to this: if we didn't have Horrible Phobias Lovecraft, we wouldn't have Guillermo Del Toro, or Bloodborne, or most of D&D's aberrations.

I am not "harmed" by Blizzard using my people's culture as one of the visual inspirations for the Tauren, nor am I "harmed" by RPGs that use "spirit animal" mechanics.  I'm not that pathetic.

So is the big to-do simply that Wizards have removed alignment guidelines from humanoids?
Is that it?

I mean i get it kind of ... remove blanket statements about character/motive from anything vaguely humanoid and leave it to DM's/Players to RP all that ... I mean races traditionally "evil" can still be played that way but not all members of that race need to be locked into that if the players/DMs dont want to.

I do like that racial bonuses to attibutes remain ... this just slants the average position of races against each other in some characteristics that match real life ... Elves can be more dextrous on average over other races (doesnt mean that those races can not reach 20 dex) .. Str/Dex/Con is reasonably black and white there.  Intelligence may prove more problematic.  But the same remains .. on average some races may have a higher intelligence than others but that doesnt preclude you hitting 20.

There are physiological differences between different races in humans in real life .. this is not racism .. just reality.  Even studies on IQ and race have been conducted and generated results for discussion. 

As long as the game is played respectfully then what more can we really ask.

That article very quickly moves beyond parody, "saying goblins are evil is a racist statement because it robs goblins of their agency" they are subjects of a work of fiction, not real people or analogues of real people If you want to draw contrived parallels between reality and fantasy that's your choice. 

What harmful or derogatory language exists in d&d? Any slurs for Elves? Orcs? Gnomes? 

I see a lot of talk about real world harm, but never any examples.

The rules have always been up to interpretation with some games deviating heavily from established lore. I've played games that completely homebrew their lore concerning races. It is entirely political that Wizards have made these changes to their books because anyone with a scrap of common sense that thought the content was problematic probably dismissed it in favour of their own take. If it's no big deal for them to remove content because we're all free to play how we want then why was it ever a problem that the content was there to begin with.

Like I asked before, did they consult the players? Or did they just make changes to the lore and then tried claiming that it was done on behalf of marginalized people who didn't ask for these changes?

Quote from ThePellboy >>

That article very quickly moves beyond parody, "saying goblins are evil is a racist statement because it robs goblins of their agency" they are subjects of a work of fiction, not real people or analogues of real people If you want to draw contrived parallels between reality and fantasy that's your choice. 

What harmful or derogatory language exists in d&d? Any slurs for Elves? Orcs? Gnomes? 

I see a lot of talk about real world harm, but never any examples.

The rules have always been up to interpretation with some games deviating heavily from established lore. I've played games that completely homebrew their lore concerning races. It is entirely political that Wizards have made these changes to their books because anyone with a scrap of common sense that thought the content was problematic probably dismissed it in favour of their own take. If it's no big deal for them to remove content because we're all free to play how we want then why was it ever a problem that the content was there to begin with.

Like I asked before, did they consult the players? Or did they just make changes to the lore and then tried claiming that it was done on behalf of marginalized people who didn't ask for these changes?

 If you don’t see examples of real world harm in this very discussion, it’s because you are not reading. Yurei kindly provided two such examples.

Really though, it’s a rather sad comment on humanity that some people are incapable of understanding that a thing does not have to harm them to be harmful to another. Nor do other people have to justify to you what they find harmful. A decent person listens to the report of injury and endeavours not to engage in causing further harm. Any other response means you are a bad person and you should feel bad.

Report away. I hope lots of nasty people see themselves called out before my banination because someone needs to say it to them. Be better people and none of this will bother you.

Quote from CaptainCorvid>>

Quote from Third_Sundering>>

It's about the legitimate harm that D&D products have caused in the past, and trying to rectify that and prevent similar examples from happening in the future. That's the issue. That's what most of this Errata and the recent direction of D&D has been about, and it's for the betterment of the hobby and the inclusiveness of the game. It's not the "second Satanic Panic", like so many out-of-touch older gamers have been saying, but it's instead about real, actual, historical harm that D&D has helped perpetuate. Does that make sense? 

Oh please; arbiter of all that is true, tell me, where this unspeakable "real harm" is? 

Are you saying that basing orcish cultures in D&D books after marginalized peoples in a mocking tone is not harmful? Because that's definitely a "strange" stance to take. 

(P.S. If you think that the "real harm" that we're referring to is "unspeakable", maybe you should read more about what we're posting. We've given examples. It's not our job to make sure that you make the effort to understand it.)

Because this sure SOUNDS like the "D&D allows your kids to summon demons with the devil's dice!" level of hysteria.

No, it doesn't. The Satanic Panic was a bunch of hysterical fundamental Christians that thought including Demons, Devils, and similar content in D&D would somehow make their children commit suicide and become Satanists. It was not based in reality, and the people involved in censoring D&D back then knew next-to-nothing about the hobby. The calls for change in how D&D approaches races in its books and settings is largely by people that have actually played the game and read the products that they're using as examples of bad ways to treat races in D&D. 

Saying that this is the "new Satanic Panic" or "woke SJWs are trying to destroy D&D" is 100% a false equivalency and a strawman argument. 

Last I checked; I was fighting hypothetical monsters, through a hypothetical avatar, in a hypothetical world, that does not now, and will never exist.  I somehow fail to see how Strahd Von Zarovich "does real harm" to the proud people of Romania any more than his direct inspiration does, IE: none, at least, none for several centuries.

No one is complaining about Strahd Von Zarovich. No one. They're complaining about the racist depictions of Vistani (and, yes, their depictions in Curse of Strahd and earlier Ravenloft books were racist), and similar examples. So, this is a strawman (not actually correctly representing the other side's arguments). 

The "cultural appropriation" argument is one that I deeply despise; because the simple fact is, cultures bouncing off one another is how we get interesting things.  Anime was spawned from post-war Japan seeing what Disney was doing state-side, Rock and Roll was born out of Jazz and Country mixing, even "questionable" things like the works of HP Lovecraft lead to this: if we didn't have Horrible Phobias Lovecraft, we wouldn't have Guillermo Del Toro, or Bloodborne, or most of D&D's aberrations.

There's a difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. For example, the Pixar movie Coco is a great example of cultural appreciation. However, the usage of bastardized and mocking versions of Native American, African American, and Asian cultures in the Mystaran Gazetteer Number 10 is cultural appropriation. 

"Is it respectful" is the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. Coco is respectful and a beautiful movie, while the Gazetteer Number 10 is a mocking and racist book. 

Complain all you want about whether or not you think D&D has done cultural appropriation or if the majority of accusations of this type are valid, but cultural appropriation is almost always a bad thing, and is a valid complaint as a whole. 

I am not "harmed" by Blizzard using my people's culture as one of the visual inspirations for the Tauren, nor am I "harmed" by RPGs that use "spirit animal" mechanics.  I'm not that pathetic.

That's your personal experience. Don't try to apply it to everyone else of every marginalized ethnic group/culture that has had their culture appropriated by others. And making an attack against those that aren't on-board with that is . . . as you say, "pathetic".