Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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D&D Beyond FoundersI've seen several posts saying, "I don't believe that..." or, "In my experience..." and .... just stop for a moment - please.
If your personal experiences do not include being part of a marginalised group, whose experiences are being discussed, please just stop and listen to the experiences of those who are from that group. It's entirely possible that you've never seen, or heard of, experiences others are discussing. This doesn't mean they aren't real.
Something I would like for everyone to understand - all of us hold some form of privilege - some more than others.
Use that for good, by listening to those who have less privilege, and believing them when they talk about their life experiences.
Asking people to evidence claims of trauma is a horrific thing to do.
Please don't ever be that person.
Thank you all 💗
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Asking people to cite which paragraphs in current 5e books they find problematic and why is not the same as asking them to evidence trauma. That's a bad faith take if there ever was one.
But you do you, I guess
Kotath, that's not what I am referring to at all!
No, I was speaking to those who have been wronged, mistreated, mischaracterized, or otherwise treated poorly. The onus of proving such treatment is on them. Does it suck? Yup, but that's how life works. You can't expect results from blanket statements made from one group to another. That's how we got to the vestigial racism we see today. Folks have been content for so long with wrong and incomplete takes on foreign cultures, not pushing for correct depictions. We all need specifics of what has been bad-wrong. And I'm glad to see that there have been great examples of this on this thread. Yurei1453 gave good examples back early on (page 1). Those examples allowed me to ponder and consider the mistreatment. But for that to happen, both Yurei and I had to be willing to communicate. That was great!
C. Foster Payne
"If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around."
To add on to Kotath, Let's also recognize further flaws in the "legal" analogy just floated. The private publishing entity can do whatever they want, and they've done so perhaps out of a moral sense of social responsiblity, the "Diversity and Dragons" statement is definitely written to make folks think that, but these changes were most definitely out of what they feel as good business sense ("who wouldn't want as broad a market for D&D as possible and if that means changing some content to reflect social trends and norms? let's do it" to that one poster in this discussion who maintaining the "were the players ever consulted?" I mean, you know what market research is, right?). Those practices are the precedent in the universe of fact those who wannabe litigate must content with. What the complainants, who in this case are those arguing against the changes, must do is prove some damage done to them by these changes.
As I've written elsewhere in this thread when we werew still actually talking about the specific changes in the most recent errata, and not full on embracing Bell of Lost Souls alarm baiting, I see no harm done. The Volo's changes remove some content that push past standards regarding slavery, cannibalism, and let's call it "rapacious eugnenics" that may be a bit much for the broader D&D market WotC is trying to capture. You can still "go there" if you're really tied into lore that embraced those aspects of Fire Giants, Yuan-Ti and Orcs, but WotC will no longer be drawing you a specific map or license to do so. The rest of the Volo's excisions simply remove role playing dictates for a variety of monsters, dictates I'd argue aren't even really adhered to well in 5e or prior canon anyway. I suppose the Drow color shift would be shocking ... if you haven't been aware of Drow art direction throughout 5e.
So again, for those of you who are complaining, how does any of this harm your game? If the removed descriptors were so essential to your game, I'm guessing it's already well established if not entrenched in your present game so no need to worry or worst case, take notes, as you should for your campaigns anyway.
It's been said, and I'll repeat there are no "lore police" who are going to force you to play different if you want to make broken back jokes in your game's slave trade, have cannibalism an explicit part of your Yuan Ti settlements, or have your Orcs consider "breeding stock" when they reproduce. Personally, none of that is really my thing (I guess I like my "edgelordness" a bit more existential/philosophical) but play on. No one can stop you.
While there are no "lore police", it does seem there are "lore revanchists" that seem to show up to air these arguments (and nothing else) on these forums. Not once have I ever read anyone in any iteration of these arguments demonstrate to the forum how their game was harmed through a WotC editorial change. As such, the rhetorical volume some of these complaints reach is literally incredible.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You seem to be under the impression that everything should be treated as if it were a court case and that is not the case. Some changes can, and should, come about with the need for a literal trial. For one thing it would take forever for anything to get done, even in the US we don't depend on the judicial system for everything, that's why we have the other two branches. For a second thing, we don't always need to be so adversarial about everything. You say that if specific examples aren't used that people will automatically feel attacked and I object and posit that people don't automatically need to feel attacked when things change, I think it says something about you if you automatically assume that to be the natural response to things.
Also, Wizards of the Coast doesn't have any sort of obligation, legal or otherwise, to make any sort of case for these changes they are making. It is a product they make for sale for the public. As long as they follow the legal safety guidelines (like ... they don't print it on poisonous paper or something) they don't have to get the approval of the public to alter their product.
Anyway, I believe my link is to the actual specific example of what Yurei was talking about on the first page. I could give more examples: Like how uncomfortable the Oriental Adventures books makes me because of how stereotypically it portrays Asian culture even if it's meant to be fictional and not Asia at all.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I'll take the selfish route here. Inclusivity means more fans and users. More fans and users means more content. More content means the game grows and the dice roll. I bet by being more inclusive most groups or organizations grow more than they lose. It seems, to me, that this is not a great hill to die on when we want more for our games. And, and this is the real crazy part, there is probably an audience for the type of game you want to play, because the rules are more like guidelines and you can do anything you want and be who you want in D&D. The fantasy of playing as someone completely different from you, or someone with your traits that can accomplish more than you think you can is something just about anyone can appreciate.
If you're against changes to the game that might bring in more people to the game I can't really help you. And that makes me sad.
... how is modern racism in any way vestigial?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
How many times? To whom? Do they need photographic proof? I mean no; how many times does one need to relive the abuse because somebody asks for proof. Is it going to be like Anubis weighing the proof like a heart with a feather?
Asking which sections of the book is problematic is not asking you to relive abuse though, is it?
Asking, "Which parts of this book makes you uncomfortable?", directly asks you to think about the abuse you have suffered. I don't understand how it is that you can't see this.
Ophidimancer, I argue that most racism we see in D&D is vestigial based on the following definition from Google: "forming a very small remnant of something that was once much larger or more noticeable. 'he felt a vestigial flicker of anger from last night'"
I do not believe the racism we see in D&D is intentional, nor is it meant to be antagonistic. The racism we see is passive acceptance of tropes that are inherently mischaracterizations of a culture or lifestyle. It was the bane of the 80s & 90s to create caricatures of things we didn't fully understand, especially in the entertainment industry. Is it perhaps sloppy? Absolutely! But I don't believe that most of these caricatures were intentionally antagonistic. Did they display prejudice? Yes, indeed. But it wasn't malicious. It was... lazy. Still, prejudice is a piece of racism (by definition) and should not be ignored. The racism we see in D&D today is vestigial in that it is merely an acceptance of old tropes. WotC is taking steps to rectify this by rewriting established lore. That's good. It's good to revisit old material and update it. But, I think it would be wrong to assume that any racism in old material is based in malice. Ignorance is a poor defense, but that is truly what I believe most such racism in D&D's past was and still is today.
And, honestly, I think most racism we see in modern society follows this as well. I, as a white male, am being told I am a racist by default, to which I automatically recoil. Do I have racist tendencies in my thinking? Looking inward, I'd have to say I probably do. I think everyone does. I'd argue, however, that mine and yours and most everyone else's are more of the prejudicial kind, not the antagonistic. I absolutely do not think I am better than anyone else. I doubt you do either. Let's assume best intentions of each other and we might find a better avenue toward healthy communication.
C. Foster Payne
"If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around."
What many consider to be systemic or structural racism endemic in global and many national power and privilege structures are often dismissed as "vestigial" or "not as bad as it was a generation or seven generations ago" by folks who don't want to acknowledge the perspective that's been exhaustively provided ... outside this thread beyond these forums.
To use vestigial (i.e. "well, it's not as bad as it used to be") in this context is insensitive to folks who do regularly suffer from prejudice in the contemporary moment. It's unthinking blowhard word choice pretending to be high minded.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
That isn't what you did, though. What you did was ask for personal testimony of trauma, which I provided, but which also is a traumatizing thing to do, per me and Stormknight, etc.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Intent does not excuse effect. That's why the reparative work was done instead of just allowing to stand. I don't think Ophidmancer or anyone else has accused D&D's history as intentional hate mongering.* That said, renderings were harmful. You acknowledge that, where you trip over yourself is when you minimize the effect with word choice like "merely". I mean be Panglossian in your present moment, but other folks see work has been done and more work is needed to be done.
*That's the thing about racist and oppressive systems, it grants the privileged of the system license to be literally inconsiderate of the marginal and/or oppressed, literally disregarding the human worth of those put down or into the margins. Of course D&D wasn't intentionally designed as a tool of oppression or racist propagation, there was little thought to it at all beyond mining unexamined tropes of "bad," "evil," "monstrousness," etc. because a set of folks at the time thought it'd be fun. It wasn't until the popularity of the game spread and diversified where broader considerations started to be called for. Folks can throw around some pseudo-legal thinking, but this is actually pretty elementary stuff.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Fresh back from Christmas vacation down with the family; time to get back to my 'favorite' forum threads.
Question for you: are you asking for specific page counts and paragraph numbers so you can better understand what's wrong and help make it right? Or are you asking for those things so you can patiently, calmly, and with a great show of empathy point-by-point explain to whoever provides such a reference why the particular passage in question doesn't actually have any rwcist content in it at all and anyone who thinks otherwise is just being unreasonable?
Because that second one is what people have been doing ever since Diversity and Dragons was published. They dig for "specifics", try and find a specific set of words that give people gas. When they get that set of words, they painstakingly go over why it's "Not [X]ist", and then say "is that all? Because if that's what was giving you problems, and I just explained why it shouldn't, then you should have no more problems and you can kindly stop ******* up my lore please, thanks."
Here's the deal. I'm not gonna give you a page number. I'm not gonna give you a paragraph number. Because those aren't important. I'm going to link to an excellent essay written by successful fiction author N. K. Jemisin on why she never includes orcs in her works. It explains much of the issue better than I could. Here: The Unbearable Baggage of Orcs It's a fascinating read, and it gets into the meat of how racism (in this case) can permeate an entire idea - in this case, the idea of 'Orcs' - without there ever being a single overtly racist word written.
You're looking for 'proof' of overt, unmistakable [X]ism. That's not how it works. As others have said and I will support: nobody's accusing anybody of overt, intentional racism, sexism, creedism, or any other 'ism' you wish to name. All people are saying ia that these things exist, without intent or malice, within the work and that corrective measures to reduce their presence and impact do help. Some people see that as hacking away at the Traditions of D&D, as summed up by Pangurjan's fantastic post on Black Pete. That without the Traditions of grapist-without-the-G orcs, jet-black slavermongering drow, fixed ability modifiers for species, negative traits associated with 'bad' species, or any of the other thousand and one irritants that people have spent the last year and a half complaining about, D&D just stops being D&D.
Female characters used to suffer severe penalties to Strength, and they had a "Seduction" score rather than a Charisma score. Both of those traits were eliminated in older editions despite being Cherished Traditions, and somehow? D&D survived just fine. It will also survive more nuance in its worldbuilding than Pale People Gud, Dark People Bad.
Please do not contact or message me.
And not just that, but when we have given specific examples of how D&D has had absolutely, purely bigoted content, these examples have been ignored, downplayed, and been insulted for including those examples.
D&D has a very bigoted past. Gary Gygax was an old cishet white man with some very, very problematic thoughts and statements (how he thought that women's brains were hardwired to make them not enjoy Roleplaying Games, his usage of the awful phrase "nits make lice" that he took from a genocidal maniac, and other sexist and racist tendencies that he had), as were many of his co-workers at early TSR. And much like how HP Lovecraft's racist ideas heavily influenced his work, Gygax and Co's bigoted ideas made their way into not just the lore and art of the game, but even the mechanics of the game (Strength Caps for Women, negative modifiers to Intelligence and Charisma for races that they coded as real world marginalized peoples, Oriental Adventures and the Honor System, and so on).
Yes, D&D has left much of this behind as the editions have passed on, the older creators stopped being the people who created content for D&D, and the newer designers modified the rule system and lore of the game. However, the impacts of the decisions of the early versions of D&D are still felt. The way Orcs were originally described in Volo's Guide to Monsters echoes how they were described back when they were clearly coded for marginalized real world people. Gully Dwarves are confirmed to exist in D&D 5e through art from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, despite their extremely problematic and ableist connotations. Drow still have the baggage of "matriarchal societies bad, patriarchal societies gud". The Vistani still existed much as they did in early Ravenloft in Curse of Strahd (not really a surprise, as the creators of Ravenloft were the ones in charge of writing much of CoS). The dark-skinned people of Chult in Tomb of Annihilation were still described as "savages".
This errata and earlier ones that did similar changes to D&D 5e products are Wizards of the Coast's way of apologizing and revising that content so that they no longer have those issues for the people that buy them in the future. It's not "book burning", it's not "political virtue signaling", and it's not "destroying D&D" like so many have claimed. It's trying to fix the many problems from early D&D that have made their way into D&D 5e, and while the changes to the books have been controversial (to say the least), they have been largely successful at getting rid of the most glaring examples of problematic content.
So, to those that have asked for examples over and over and refused to take any evidence as proof of our goal working, stop it. Seriously, stop it. We've given you examples not just in this thread, but in the dozens of previous threads of the same core topic, and there's no need to make the people who have been harmed by these problems in the products to keep reliving that pain. That's not considerate, and it's not beneficial to anyone in any way to do that. It's not necessary, and is making people continue to relive the harm that they've experienced. As someone on the Autism Spectrum, I know how much it can hurt to just recall the moments of people abusing you (verbally or physically). I've lived through that and still feel the pain every time I hear or read the worlds "freak", "******", and "autistic". That terrible pain in my chest, the quivering of my body, and the defense mechanism my brain uses to try and find a safe space so I can stop being hurt, over and over again. That is what you're trying to making people relive when you ask them endlessly "but what exactly is a problem here!" while not trying to fix the problem, but to try and attack their experience because you don't understand it.
You don't understand it, and can't understand it, so stop it. You're causing needless pain again, and you need to use your empathy and stop questioning "what" and start asking "how can we help". Because if you're not doing the latter and are instead doing the former, you are a part of the problem.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
These changes are a solution looking for a problem. Nothing more.
Yes, people can continue to play the game as they wish, but it's a shame that many new players will never know the original lore of iconic creatures like the beholder.
Just some white washed version, where anything that might potentially offend someone somewhere is being removed.
Apparently multiple threads across multiple years with multiple posters explaining literally about our own experiences with hurtful narratives and portrayals isn't enough to convince you that what we're talking about is real and not just 'potentially' 'offensive.' Seriously ... it's not potential, it's actual. And it's not 'offensive" it's harmful. Are you not following the conversation with all the receipts we've been bringing?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Funny, other than the "Roleplaying a Beholder" paragraph, everything in Volo's and the Monster Manual still exists reflective of past lore. And the idea that past editions' iterations of the Beholder are somehow lost to the contemporary imagination is laughable given the extensive fan documentation of Beholder lore, as well as the existence of all other TSR/WotC iterations of the Beholder on DMs Guild.
Why don't you read through what was actually changed or removed, and while you're at it maybe realize editorial changes are not simply done out of whimsy but actual conversation regarding consideration of audience.
I don't think you can allege solutions lacking problems when what you're providing is an assessment with no perspective grounded in the texts being discussed, nothing more.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
D&D has humans as a race. That's what we are. There is no prescribed alignment for humans in D&D and as far as I know there never was. *Humans* are meant to be played diversely.
Everything else is not human and *fiction*. People who see themselves in fictional races much less game monsters to the point of being offended may be taking the game too seriously.
The silliness of not being able to have clear bad guys in a story game is silly beyond compare.
I'm rolling my eyes at sessions taking twice as long, especially at a convention, as a table hems and haws over if the orcs are actually bad or just misunderstood. Or the GM at said game now having to go the extra length to spell it out. "No, they're actually bad. It's ok, we can have some combat before we get back to operating the espresso stand in Strixhaven".