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!
... how is modern racism in any way vestigial?
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 truly what I believe most such racism in D&D's past was and still is today.
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.
Asking which sections of the book is problematic is not asking you to relive abuse though, is it?
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.
Asking which sections of the book is problematic is not asking you to relive abuse though, is it?
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.
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.
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.
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?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
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.
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.
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".
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".
This claim, although it has been repeated dozens of times, has been thoroughly debunked.
Yes, Orcs, Drow, Hobgoblins, Neimoidians, and other sci-fi/fantasy races are fictional. We all know that. You can stop pretending that we're all toddlers that don't have a sense of reality yet. We know that. However, they often have stereotypes and cultural elements from real world peoples attached to them. That is the problem.
Just, seriously, read those posts. The thread isn't that long. You could at least have the decency of reading through it before posting stuff that has been rebutted multiple times already.
Please and thank you.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
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".
Derrick, I served with Susumu Kodai on the Yamato with the Black Tigers, during our interstellar voyages Derrick grew from an angry young man to a courageous and valiant and sensitive leader. Derrick Wildstar was a friend of mine. You sir, are no Derrick Wildstar.
So your catapaulting off the Argo's flight deck with the presumption that fictional constructions are somehow innocuous by nature flies in the face of generations of production efforts where fictional and particularly fantastically set fictions are brought up to be more reflective of broader cultural sensibilities; and as an argument crashes like that time Wildstar tried to take his bespoke fighter off the Argo in a cosmic cyclone only to wreck it against the gun decks.
There's nothing in the RAW or even present lore that prevents a DM from defining "clear cut" bad guys. There's a lot of reasons a particular table, especially a convention event may not be a given player's cup of tea. In my experience, meeting the group before committing and carefully reading the program event description usually gives me an idea of what I'm in for before I launch into it. Sorta like discussions online.
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".
I think I said it before, but the whole notion that this is a thing is what I'd say is silly beyond compare. I've never been in a game where the DM had to make an extra effort to point out that X monster or Y character was evil or bad. Any and all adventure I can recall already made a point of that, regardless of invisible "EVIL" pancartes hanging over entire demographics of critters. Nobody ever had to tell themselves "orcs are evil, the lot of them" to justify taking action against orcs because if there were orcs and the party was meant to fight them those orcs would have been shown to be slavers or looters or robbers or an invading warlord's elite shock troops or all of the above. Evil never had to be implied by metagame knowledge, it was always explicit if the story wanted it to be. Sessions aren't going to take longer. There's not going to be any doubt unless the DM actually wants it for their story. DMs aren't going to have to tell you that yes, those things are evil, have at it without blemishing your pure white Goody-Good souls. Thinking that tha's going to change, that's silly.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
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.
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.
Yes the lore won't be lost, but those who don't know it exists, won't seek it out. It is what it is. I really don't care. I just said it's a shame.
Conversations with who, a few squeaky wheels?
In this case, WoTC got scared into complying with the demands of a relatively small number of people.
How many people have you personally met that have been offended by D&D?...
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.
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.
Yes the lore won't be lost, but those who don't know it exists, won't seek it out. It is what it is. I really don't care. I just said it's a shame.
I'm thinking you don't really care because you know it's a bunk argument. There's a story and lore section in this very forum where new players and more experienced players have extended discussions about prior edition lore and portrayal. Like comic book continuity debate level stuff. This is more to my point that you don't seem to know what "is" is regarding the accessibility of lore and new players use of said material.
Conversations with who, a few squeaky wheels?
In this case, WoTC got scared into complying with the demands of a relatively small number of people.
How many people have you personally met that have been offended by D&D?...
That's also just not true. It is a story spread by outlets like BolS to get the "Lore Revanchists" all up in arms. You can continue to pretend that editorial decisions have been made to bow to some threatening "minority" of players, when in reality these, like all changes to popular pastime production, were made to draw more folks into the game.
Personally, every gamer I've discussed content changes with in person likes the changes being done, to a one seeing them as ways to do more with the game. They also like that the publisher is taking more steps to being more cultural responsible and diversity open because it makes running the game easier. Not sure whether you thought your elliptical challenge was supposed to frustrate me or something. It's only in online spaces do I find people making proclamations of shame and sadness over paragraph excisions they don't seem to actually be familiar with.
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.
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.
Yes the lore won't be lost, but those who don't know it exists, won't seek it out. It is what it is. I really don't care. I just said it's a shame.
Conversations with who, a few squeaky wheels?
In this case, WoTC got scared into complying with the demands of a relatively small number of people.
How many people have you personally met that have been offended by D&D?...
This is really a silly statement. There are current players and potential players that WotC, as a business, should be trying to engage with their product. Even if there were currently a small number of people who are players and who expressed concern for some objectionable lore, it would be foolish to ignore the possibility that D&D may not have appeal to a great number of potential payers for these same concerning reasons. As I have said many times over several days: an IP has to remain relevant to continue to thrive. [REDACTED]
And several people across a few threads have given concrete, anecdotal examples from real life people who found some D&D content offensive. In fact, Third_Sundering linked some examples on this very page. How many times will this ask be made, only to ignore it and ask again later?
Notes: Generalizing one group in defense of the generalizations of another is neither just nor respectful.
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.
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.
Yes the lore won't be lost, but those who don't know it exists, won't seek it out. It is what it is. I really don't care. I just said it's a shame.
Conversations with who, a few squeaky wheels?
In this case, WoTC got scared into complying with the demands of a relatively small number of people.
How many people have you personally met that have been offended by D&D?...
The minority appears to be those complaining about the errata, but time will tell I guess.
Maybe a new edition would have gone better, maybe not. If they're anticipating this to hit their sales, they might decide to do it with 5.0 and have the controversy largely forgotten by the time 5.5 (or whatever it is) comes out in 2024 that will have a fresh start and not have the negative associations of this controversy, not being the edition that was PC or whatever.
Is that correct and it would be beneficial to do it now? Is that their line of thinking? We have no idea. It could just be a rush to get in on the tail end of BLM. Who knows. Not anyone that would be able to tell us.
DND absolutely is optimised for violence. That's what the whole system is built around. Oh, okay, I guess you can magic your way out, but it sure as heck isn't built to encourage social interaction. Sure, there are one roll pass/fail options for social encounters but the game is not optimised for them. And yes, you can use words but that only makes my point - if you're not articulate and social encounters rely on IRL words, what kind of character are you going to choose?
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.
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.
Yes the lore won't be lost, but those who don't know it exists, won't seek it out. It is what it is. I really don't care. I just said it's a shame.
Conversations with who, a few squeaky wheels?
In this case, WoTC got scared into complying with the demands of a relatively small number of people.
How many people have you personally met that have been offended by D&D?...
The minority appears to be those complaining about the errata, but time will tell I guess.
Even if that is the case shouldn't we want them to still enjoy the game and not try and downplay how they feel?
I'll be honest I've sat the last couple of days out cause I asked for a personal opinion, which opened a technical issue, resounded to how the technical issue could be resolved and got hit with contractual BS which I had said I didn't want to hear about and that really made me believe that people here don't even want to consider someone else's opinion and just want those they believe are wrong to shut up and sit down.
Too many are participating in this discussion with the intent of "convincing" others to assume their beliefs and/or dismissing others that won't. The purpose of allowing this thread to remain open is to allow individuals to share their thoughts and reasoning for why they feel the way that they do.
Anything and everything else needs to be taken to Private Message, as contributions that do not promote a respectful, welcoming atmosphere will not be permitted.
The minority appears to be those complaining about the errata, but time will tell I guess.
Even if that is the case shouldn't we want them to still enjoy the game and not try and downplay how they feel?
It seems very much the case looking at this and a few other boards. Regardless of your skepticism, to your question precisely how do these errata prohibit the players, for whom you claim to be advocating, from playing the game the way they've been playing?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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".
This claim, although it has been repeated dozens of times, has been thoroughly debunked.
Please read this post, this post, this post, this post, this post, and this post.
Yes, Orcs, Drow, Hobgoblins, Neimoidians, and other sci-fi/fantasy races are fictional. We all know that. You can stop pretending that we're all toddlers that don't have a sense of reality yet. We know that. However, they often have stereotypes and cultural elements from real world peoples attached to them. That is the problem.
Just, seriously, read those posts. The thread isn't that long. You could at least have the decency of reading through it before posting stuff that has been rebutted multiple times already.
Please and thank you.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Derrick, I served with Susumu Kodai on the Yamato with the Black Tigers, during our interstellar voyages Derrick grew from an angry young man to a courageous and valiant and sensitive leader. Derrick Wildstar was a friend of mine. You sir, are no Derrick Wildstar.
So your catapaulting off the Argo's flight deck with the presumption that fictional constructions are somehow innocuous by nature flies in the face of generations of production efforts where fictional and particularly fantastically set fictions are brought up to be more reflective of broader cultural sensibilities; and as an argument crashes like that time Wildstar tried to take his bespoke fighter off the Argo in a cosmic cyclone only to wreck it against the gun decks.
There's nothing in the RAW or even present lore that prevents a DM from defining "clear cut" bad guys. There's a lot of reasons a particular table, especially a convention event may not be a given player's cup of tea. In my experience, meeting the group before committing and carefully reading the program event description usually gives me an idea of what I'm in for before I launch into it. Sorta like discussions online.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think I said it before, but the whole notion that this is a thing is what I'd say is silly beyond compare. I've never been in a game where the DM had to make an extra effort to point out that X monster or Y character was evil or bad. Any and all adventure I can recall already made a point of that, regardless of invisible "EVIL" pancartes hanging over entire demographics of critters. Nobody ever had to tell themselves "orcs are evil, the lot of them" to justify taking action against orcs because if there were orcs and the party was meant to fight them those orcs would have been shown to be slavers or looters or robbers or an invading warlord's elite shock troops or all of the above. Evil never had to be implied by metagame knowledge, it was always explicit if the story wanted it to be. Sessions aren't going to take longer. There's not going to be any doubt unless the DM actually wants it for their story. DMs aren't going to have to tell you that yes, those things are evil, have at it without blemishing your pure white Goody-Good souls. Thinking that tha's going to change, that's silly.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Yes the lore won't be lost, but those who don't know it exists, won't seek it out. It is what it is. I really don't care. I just said it's a shame.
Conversations with who, a few squeaky wheels?
In this case, WoTC got scared into complying with the demands of a relatively small number of people.
How many people have you personally met that have been offended by D&D?...
Uh hello ... *raises hand*
Also: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/95854-design-direction-changes-for-race-in-d-d-5e?comment=398
Also: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/108237-is-wotc-treading-an-insensitive-line-concerning?comment=27
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!
My mistake Kotath. I reread your comment and I see what you are trying to get at. Apologies!
I'm thinking you don't really care because you know it's a bunk argument. There's a story and lore section in this very forum where new players and more experienced players have extended discussions about prior edition lore and portrayal. Like comic book continuity debate level stuff. This is more to my point that you don't seem to know what "is" is regarding the accessibility of lore and new players use of said material.
That's also just not true. It is a story spread by outlets like BolS to get the "Lore Revanchists" all up in arms. You can continue to pretend that editorial decisions have been made to bow to some threatening "minority" of players, when in reality these, like all changes to popular pastime production, were made to draw more folks into the game.
Personally, every gamer I've discussed content changes with in person likes the changes being done, to a one seeing them as ways to do more with the game. They also like that the publisher is taking more steps to being more cultural responsible and diversity open because it makes running the game easier. Not sure whether you thought your elliptical challenge was supposed to frustrate me or something. It's only in online spaces do I find people making proclamations of shame and sadness over paragraph excisions they don't seem to actually be familiar with.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
This is really a silly statement. There are current players and potential players that WotC, as a business, should be trying to engage with their product. Even if there were currently a small number of people who are players and who expressed concern for some objectionable lore, it would be foolish to ignore the possibility that D&D may not have appeal to a great number of potential payers for these same concerning reasons. As I have said many times over several days: an IP has to remain relevant to continue to thrive. [REDACTED]
And several people across a few threads have given concrete, anecdotal examples from real life people who found some D&D content offensive. In fact, Third_Sundering linked some examples on this very page. How many times will this ask be made, only to ignore it and ask again later?
DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form | He/Him/They/Them
EXTENDED SIGNATURE!
Doctor/Published Scholar/Science and Healthcare Advocate/Critter/Trekkie/Gandalf with a Glock
Try DDB free: Free Rules (2024), premade PCs, adventures, one shots, encounters, SC, homebrew, more
Answers: physical books, purchases, and subbing.
Check out my life-changing
The minority appears to be those complaining about the errata, but time will tell I guess.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
DND absolutely is optimised for violence. That's what the whole system is built around. Oh, okay, I guess you can magic your way out, but it sure as heck isn't built to encourage social interaction. Sure, there are one roll pass/fail options for social encounters but the game is not optimised for them. And yes, you can use words but that only makes my point - if you're not articulate and social encounters rely on IRL words, what kind of character are you going to choose?
Even if that is the case shouldn't we want them to still enjoy the game and not try and downplay how they feel?
I'll be honest I've sat the last couple of days out cause I asked for a personal opinion, which opened a technical issue, resounded to how the technical issue could be resolved and got hit with contractual BS which I had said I didn't want to hear about and that really made me believe that people here don't even want to consider someone else's opinion and just want those they believe are wrong to shut up and sit down.
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
Too many are participating in this discussion with the intent of "convincing" others to assume their beliefs and/or dismissing others that won't. The purpose of allowing this thread to remain open is to allow individuals to share their thoughts and reasoning for why they feel the way that they do.
Anything and everything else needs to be taken to Private Message, as contributions that do not promote a respectful, welcoming atmosphere will not be permitted.
Thank you.
It seems very much the case looking at this and a few other boards. Regardless of your skepticism, to your question precisely how do these errata prohibit the players, for whom you claim to be advocating, from playing the game the way they've been playing?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.