I don't know what is so intrinsically valuable to you about a paragraph and a half of shoddy text that you clearly already know by heart and don't need to reference anymore, but whatever it is you're so keeen to keep? It's already gone. It's not coming back. If you cannot understand why despite Wizards themselves telling you why and despite dozens of posts explaining it in this very thread, then that's on you, not on us. Think of it this way - even if you see absolutely nothing wrong with the removed text, enough people did that Wizards removed the text less than a month after the books release and issued a public apology. Rather than trying to convince all of those people that they're just not looking at all this right, consider why a company would publicly admit a mistake like this in one of its most hotly anticipated products.
Nobody is calling you racist. What people are saying is Wizards' intent doesn't matter. What matters is what they printed, and what they printed was tone deaf in the extreme. This is not a hill worth dying on. This is not a windmill worth tilting at. It's not like the lore as written was even good, or useful - nobody was going to hang a character concept on "my ancient ancestors were uplifted by an evil wizards but the evil wizard's less-evil apprentices decided to help them out instead of being evil". That bit of text was entirely unnecessary when all a player needs is "my species used to be ground-bound at the mercy of terrible predators on my super violent homeworld, but now I'm a Space Monkey because we figured out how to Spelljam and couldn't get out of that hellhole fast enough." Escaping a Kaiju Deathscape is plenty of motivation for any species, and also a pretty damn good story hook for a DM that wants the players to have an adventure centered around escaping a Kaiju Deathscape. The particulars of how hadozee did so aren't important enough to pin down, and can easily be left to individual table discretion if those particulars ever matter to a given game. Which they almost never will.
This is not an argument you're ever going to win, and To-The-Death insistence on championing this particular cause isn't going to end well for anybody involved. Please. Enough. Davyd's already told people to knock it off, ne?
This cannot be looked at as unconnected with history. It is a product. It needs to be viewed in the context of the markets that it's going to be released to; in the context of the people it's going to be released to. Further I would argue there is no such thing as complete fiction, or even if there ever was it isn't possible in this day and age; everything is inspired by what has been seen, felt, or come before it. Neither our minds nor our creativity develop in a vacuum.
Now, I want to note here that whether Wizards intent was racist or malicious or intended to parallel such matters will never be known. They certainly wouldn't ever come out to say that it was. That has no real bearing however, on whether the content was still problematic. I am not saying that Wizards is racist. I am not saying that Wizards needs to be racist for the material to be a problem. I am not saying that the material being a problem means that Wizards is racist.
So...you yourself agreed that the content was negligent. By that very statement you are in agreement that either Wizards wrote that content with intent, or that this did in fact "slip under the radar". People are seeing racism through the parallels because those parallels exist; it does not take perseverance to see that, and it only takes willingness in the sense of prior knowledge/awareness. The parallels are obvious. The parallels are glaring. As you state above, you're in agreement the parallels exist. Wizards recognizes this too; they screwed up, and they are admitting they screwed up, and they are removing their mistake. Through that action, Wizards agrees that they were negligent, that this somehow slipped under the radar, and they are saying they don't want it out there now that it's been brought to their attention. Meanwhile, you are currently arguing that yes, it was negligent...yes, the parallels are there....yes, Wizards admits they made a mistake...but despite all of that, if you're not actively forcing yourself to forget every bit of historical and societal context that you know then you're just being willingly obstinate in wanting to see a problem with it.
In short: It being fiction does not absolve it. Particularly in the instance of something that is supposed to be a fun, typically lighthearted and inclusive social/family game reaching all(?) ages and cultures.
We had trouble conceiving, it was a very painful time for us. We really wanted kids, desperately, but it wasn't happening. One year, it was Father's Day, and the Church leader organised for little presents to be handed out. What did he say during the meeting?
"Will all the fathers please stand up so the children of the congregation can hand out the gifts."
There's a reason why the normal thing to say is men over 18, and that's what he was supposed to say. Instead, without thinking, it came out as "fathers". I was already hurting from the fact that I couldn't be a father at that time. I was already in pain, then he reminded me that there was a, even if unconsciously formed, clique ti which I was not invited. Fatherhood was celebrated, but I wasn't, and it wasn't by my choice.
Did he mean to hurt me? No.
Did he mean to marginalise me, emphasise that I wasn't in the in-crowd, or do anything negative or hurtful or even remotely harmful in any shape or form to anyone in congregation? I know the man, and for all his faults, there is not a doubt in my mind that had nothing but the best of intentions.
It still hurt.
That's why it's important to be careful of what we say and do. What we say and do can hurt regardless of our intentions, and being considerate is important. I don't harbour ill feelings towards that man. He did, however, say "men 18 and over" the next year, because he realised what effects what he'd said and how he'd said it were on the congregation. By then, I was a father, and I'm unaware of anyone in the congregation that could have been hurt by it, but that's not the point - he learned that people can be hurt by doing things a certain way, even if unintentionally, and there was an easy fix.
There is one beef I have with the lore being removed. It needs to be replaced, not just cut out. New lore needs to be put in its place. Unfortuantely, given how WotC has behaved in the past, I have little faith in them to actually fix this.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
There is one beef I have with the lore being removed. It needs to be replaced, not just cut out. New lore needs to be put in its place. Unfortuantely, given how WotC has behaved in the past, I have little faith in them to actually fix this.
They did replace it. Not with as much, but it HAS been replaced.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
My understanding was that they just basically took it out?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The offending text was removed, and the passage rewritten to scan without its presence. The lore, as given, is very thin. It amounts to "hadozee used to be the size of housecats and at the mercy of their planet's predators. They evolved away from this and now they're in space, eager to stop getting eaten explore its many wonders."
It's admittedly a little broken and not great. But it's also, as I said before, enough. "Not Getting Eaten" is a powerful motivator indeed.
"Stop getting eaten" is about as intelligent as saying Humans moved into space to stop getting eaten.
Curiosity is a better reason. Or at least use overpopulation as a logical reason. Or kidnapped by a space fairing race and turned into slaves if not outright slaves then simply intelligent cheap labor, later forgotten about. Kind of like Star Gate.
I stand by what I said, in a vacuum this is not racist. It only becomes racist if you attribute racism to it. I understand your argument entirely and I always have, but I have not been looking at this issue solely from the perspective the the American whites, or American blacks. I have been looking at this solely from a perspective devoid of American history and socio-politics. Does that make me or my argument racist?
Maybe this will help.
No work of art, no publication, no game exists in a vacuum. History and socio-politics are everywhere, especially in the stories we tell. The people who wrote it know what they did (even if it was by accident), and the people who read it know what WotC did (even if it was by accident), and the change has been made, for existing, non-vacuum reasons. Why would WotC care about people who don't understand the problem, or who ignore it?
If they had replaced the previous lore with more, different, vetted lore, would you still be complaining?
But I do see the three races being altered and included into Spelljammer. Drelasites are plasmoids, Vrusk are Thri-Kin, and the Hadozee are the Yazarian. None are direct crossovers and the Thri-krin were introduced in D&D.
Nothing else of the original Star Frontiers game is there.
I've started assuming that others see me as racist because I have been insinuated to be one for defending neutral ground. I can see parallels as well as anyone but correlation does not imply causation. Two things may look similar but may not be related at all. My arguments are based on looking at this like it is unconnected with American history, not as if it were a parallel of it. I see it as complete fiction that may have unintentionally appeared in a manner which could be misconstrued as racism, even if it wasn't. It makes more sense to me from a business standpoint, and from a logical standpoint, that all of this was the result of a series of unfortunate coincidental mistakes and misunderstandings and the internets inherent ability to overreact to things rather than an inherently racist idea from the get go. This has likely cost WotC a significant sum of money and probably a few potential customers and the already tumultuous peace of those they had. Considering the societal climate of the recent years and the main stream prominence of the company as a whole it doesn't make sense that this would just "slip under a radar". It's entirely possible that people are seeing racism through the parallels because of a perseverance and willingness to do so.
Racism can be unintentional. Unintentional racism is still racism. Unintentional racism is still harmful. People are responsible for their racist actions, words, and art even if they didn't intend on being racist.
Simply by dint of being raised in modern society, which has racism hard coded into it, I am a racist. As is basically everyone else. You have to let go of this defensiveness over being called racist. It's a failing that basically all humans have in common and something we all have to fight against, just as we all have to fight against the human tendency to confirmation bias and other illogical modes of thought.
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!
There is one beef I have with the lore being removed. It needs to be replaced, not just cut out. New lore needs to be put in its place. Unfortuantely, given how WotC has behaved in the past, I have little faith in them to actually fix this.
My understanding was that they just basically took it out?
It was replaced with a new blurb. The new blurb contains significantly fewer words/less content, but it is more than zero words/content. If I could do so without being hit with infraction points and having my post eaten, I'd delineate the changes for you. In any case, if you click the link in the post at the top of this thread and scroll down, there's an errata link to a PDF with the new blurb.
It's entirely possible that people are seeing racism through the parallels because of a perseverance and willingness to do so.
I think not only is this possible, but it's exactly what is happening.
In general, the kind of people who do not realize the ubiquitousness of racism are those for whom their race has never really been a source of systemic hurt. It is a privilege that causes a blind spot. Many of us do not have that privilege.
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!
It's entirely possible that people are seeing racism through the parallels because of a perseverance and willingness to do so.
I think not only is this possible, but it's exactly what is happening.
In general, the kind of people who do not realize the ubiquitousness of racism are those for whom their race has never really been a source of systemic hurt. It is a privilege that causes a blind spot. Many of us do not have that privilege.
Nah, sorry, that kind of logic doesn't make too much sense either...
Nah, sorry, that kind of logic doesn't make too much sense either...
It's (currently) apparently against forum rules for me to link you directly to literature about racism, but I highly suggest you read The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad if you want keener insight into widespread racism in modern fantasy.
If you look at an entirely made-up race and immediately think real life certain race of people, I got some news for you... you might be the racist here.
Unless said race is a caricature of real life racial sterotypes, and done with artwork based on classic racial sterotypes.
So what do racists call people from Africa? What have Racists used for the justification of slavery? Who do Racists credit for freeing the slave, and the motivation of those people? Go down the list of USA history of racism and sterotypes, and look at the modern reboot of the Hadozee. Before they were a bit insensitive, but more or less fine, the reboot just jumped both feet in on the worst racial sterotypes from the last 200 years.
What if we made a race, pure fantasy mind you no barring on reality. Of big eared greedy capitalists slavers gave them whips as a main weapon, made them really dumb, and annoying, with bad teeth and short goblin like looks. No one would complain? Oh wait... Star Trek TNG did just that, and people were not amused.
It's entirely possible that people are seeing racism through the parallels because of a perseverance and willingness to do so.
I think not only is this possible, but it's exactly what is happening.
In general, the kind of people who do not realize the ubiquitousness of racism are those for whom their race has never really been a source of systemic hurt. It is a privilege that causes a blind spot. Many of us do not have that privilege.
Nah, sorry, that kind of logic doesn't make too much sense either...
Grammatically, both MrPC0X and AllenEdg are correct - folks are seeing the inherent racism of the Hadozee because they are willing to open their eyes and see something that does, in fact, exist. The problem with institutionalised racism - the kind of racism which allows something so directly parallel to real world hate to pass design - is that folks are not willing to see it. Engaging in basic empathy, we can see that there are problems all around us, such as a game company, founded by a racist, having a staff that lacks representation or training necessary to question a pretty darn obvious historical parallel to hate.
So, thank goodness folks were “seeing racism” and have a “willingness to do so”—far too much racism hides in the shadows of our systems and institutions, and only by being willing to engage in critical introspection are we able to stamp out the vestiges remaining in society.
Now, I know that is not what they were saying - they were trying to say that folks were looking for racism where it does not exist. That, however, betrays a lack of empathy and knowledge of how systems are created at best, and something far more sinister at worst—I make no comment on what side of the spectrum these folks fall upon.
PC0X, you need to stop.
I don't know what is so intrinsically valuable to you about a paragraph and a half of shoddy text that you clearly already know by heart and don't need to reference anymore, but whatever it is you're so keeen to keep? It's already gone. It's not coming back. If you cannot understand why despite Wizards themselves telling you why and despite dozens of posts explaining it in this very thread, then that's on you, not on us. Think of it this way - even if you see absolutely nothing wrong with the removed text, enough people did that Wizards removed the text less than a month after the books release and issued a public apology. Rather than trying to convince all of those people that they're just not looking at all this right, consider why a company would publicly admit a mistake like this in one of its most hotly anticipated products.
Nobody is calling you racist. What people are saying is Wizards' intent doesn't matter. What matters is what they printed, and what they printed was tone deaf in the extreme. This is not a hill worth dying on. This is not a windmill worth tilting at. It's not like the lore as written was even good, or useful - nobody was going to hang a character concept on "my ancient ancestors were uplifted by an evil wizards but the evil wizard's less-evil apprentices decided to help them out instead of being evil". That bit of text was entirely unnecessary when all a player needs is "my species used to be ground-bound at the mercy of terrible predators on my super violent homeworld, but now I'm a Space Monkey because we figured out how to Spelljam and couldn't get out of that hellhole fast enough." Escaping a Kaiju Deathscape is plenty of motivation for any species, and also a pretty damn good story hook for a DM that wants the players to have an adventure centered around escaping a Kaiju Deathscape. The particulars of how hadozee did so aren't important enough to pin down, and can easily be left to individual table discretion if those particulars ever matter to a given game. Which they almost never will.
This is not an argument you're ever going to win, and To-The-Death insistence on championing this particular cause isn't going to end well for anybody involved. Please. Enough. Davyd's already told people to knock it off, ne?
Please do not contact or message me.
This cannot be looked at as unconnected with history. It is a product. It needs to be viewed in the context of the markets that it's going to be released to; in the context of the people it's going to be released to. Further I would argue there is no such thing as complete fiction, or even if there ever was it isn't possible in this day and age; everything is inspired by what has been seen, felt, or come before it. Neither our minds nor our creativity develop in a vacuum.
Now, I want to note here that whether Wizards intent was racist or malicious or intended to parallel such matters will never be known. They certainly wouldn't ever come out to say that it was. That has no real bearing however, on whether the content was still problematic. I am not saying that Wizards is racist. I am not saying that Wizards needs to be racist for the material to be a problem. I am not saying that the material being a problem means that Wizards is racist.
So...you yourself agreed that the content was negligent. By that very statement you are in agreement that either Wizards wrote that content with intent, or that this did in fact "slip under the radar". People are seeing racism through the parallels because those parallels exist; it does not take perseverance to see that, and it only takes willingness in the sense of prior knowledge/awareness. The parallels are obvious. The parallels are glaring. As you state above, you're in agreement the parallels exist. Wizards recognizes this too; they screwed up, and they are admitting they screwed up, and they are removing their mistake. Through that action, Wizards agrees that they were negligent, that this somehow slipped under the radar, and they are saying they don't want it out there now that it's been brought to their attention. Meanwhile, you are currently arguing that yes, it was negligent...yes, the parallels are there....yes, Wizards admits they made a mistake...but despite all of that, if you're not actively forcing yourself to forget every bit of historical and societal context that you know then you're just being willingly obstinate in wanting to see a problem with it.
In short: It being fiction does not absolve it. Particularly in the instance of something that is supposed to be a fun, typically lighthearted and inclusive social/family game reaching all(?) ages and cultures.
We had trouble conceiving, it was a very painful time for us. We really wanted kids, desperately, but it wasn't happening. One year, it was Father's Day, and the Church leader organised for little presents to be handed out. What did he say during the meeting?
"Will all the fathers please stand up so the children of the congregation can hand out the gifts."
There's a reason why the normal thing to say is men over 18, and that's what he was supposed to say. Instead, without thinking, it came out as "fathers". I was already hurting from the fact that I couldn't be a father at that time. I was already in pain, then he reminded me that there was a, even if unconsciously formed, clique ti which I was not invited. Fatherhood was celebrated, but I wasn't, and it wasn't by my choice.
Did he mean to hurt me? No.
Did he mean to marginalise me, emphasise that I wasn't in the in-crowd, or do anything negative or hurtful or even remotely harmful in any shape or form to anyone in congregation? I know the man, and for all his faults, there is not a doubt in my mind that had nothing but the best of intentions.
It still hurt.
That's why it's important to be careful of what we say and do. What we say and do can hurt regardless of our intentions, and being considerate is important. I don't harbour ill feelings towards that man. He did, however, say "men 18 and over" the next year, because he realised what effects what he'd said and how he'd said it were on the congregation. By then, I was a father, and I'm unaware of anyone in the congregation that could have been hurt by it, but that's not the point - he learned that people can be hurt by doing things a certain way, even if unintentionally, and there was an easy fix.
There is one beef I have with the lore being removed. It needs to be replaced, not just cut out. New lore needs to be put in its place. Unfortuantely, given how WotC has behaved in the past, I have little faith in them to actually fix this.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
They did replace it. Not with as much, but it HAS been replaced.
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
My understanding was that they just basically took it out?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The offending text was removed, and the passage rewritten to scan without its presence. The lore, as given, is very thin. It amounts to "hadozee used to be the size of housecats and at the mercy of their planet's predators. They evolved away from this and now they're in space, eager to
stop getting eatenexplore its many wonders."It's admittedly a little broken and not great. But it's also, as I said before, enough. "Not Getting Eaten" is a powerful motivator indeed.
Please do not contact or message me.
Are we all talking about the race originally created in the game Star Fronteirs?
Are we saying that WotC is so pathetic that they are recycling content from other games to fill and sell books in D&D?
Drop the whole race in D&D and bring back Star Frontiers for me. In fact I still have the original game and most of the modules.
"Stop getting eaten" is about as intelligent as saying Humans moved into space to stop getting eaten.
Curiosity is a better reason. Or at least use overpopulation as a logical reason. Or kidnapped by a space fairing race and turned into slaves if not outright slaves then simply intelligent cheap labor, later forgotten about. Kind of like Star Gate.
Maybe this will help.
No work of art, no publication, no game exists in a vacuum. History and socio-politics are everywhere, especially in the stories we tell. The people who wrote it know what they did (even if it was by accident), and the people who read it know what WotC did (even if it was by accident), and the change has been made, for existing, non-vacuum reasons. Why would WotC care about people who don't understand the problem, or who ignore it?
If they had replaced the previous lore with more, different, vetted lore, would you still be complaining?
Star Fronteirs was already recycled by TSR in the 80s when they first published Spelljammer. The writers and artists at TSR wrote both.
I can not see this.
But I do see the three races being altered and included into Spelljammer. Drelasites are plasmoids, Vrusk are Thri-Kin, and the Hadozee are the Yazarian. None are direct crossovers and the Thri-krin were introduced in D&D.
Nothing else of the original Star Frontiers game is there.
Racism can be unintentional. Unintentional racism is still racism. Unintentional racism is still harmful. People are responsible for their racist actions, words, and art even if they didn't intend on being racist.
Simply by dint of being raised in modern society, which has racism hard coded into it, I am a racist. As is basically everyone else. You have to let go of this defensiveness over being called racist. It's a failing that basically all humans have in common and something we all have to fight against, just as we all have to fight against the human tendency to confirmation bias and other illogical modes of thought.
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!
It was replaced with a new blurb. The new blurb contains significantly fewer words/less content, but it is more than zero words/content. If I could do so without being hit with infraction points and having my post eaten, I'd delineate the changes for you. In any case, if you click the link in the post at the top of this thread and scroll down, there's an errata link to a PDF with the new blurb.
I think not only is this possible, but it's exactly what is happening.
In general, the kind of people who do not realize the ubiquitousness of racism are those for whom their race has never really been a source of systemic hurt. It is a privilege that causes a blind spot. Many of us do not have that privilege.
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!
Nah, sorry, that kind of logic doesn't make too much sense either...
It's (currently) apparently against forum rules for me to link you directly to literature about racism, but I highly suggest you read The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad if you want keener insight into widespread racism in modern fantasy.
It's entirely possible that that's because of perseverance and willingness for it not to do so.
Unless said race is a caricature of real life racial sterotypes, and done with artwork based on classic racial sterotypes.
So what do racists call people from Africa? What have Racists used for the justification of slavery? Who do Racists credit for freeing the slave, and the motivation of those people? Go down the list of USA history of racism and sterotypes, and look at the modern reboot of the Hadozee. Before they were a bit insensitive, but more or less fine, the reboot just jumped both feet in on the worst racial sterotypes from the last 200 years.
What if we made a race, pure fantasy mind you no barring on reality. Of big eared greedy capitalists slavers gave them whips as a main weapon, made them really dumb, and annoying, with bad teeth and short goblin like looks. No one would complain? Oh wait... Star Trek TNG did just that, and people were not amused.
Grammatically, both MrPC0X and AllenEdg are correct - folks are seeing the inherent racism of the Hadozee because they are willing to open their eyes and see something that does, in fact, exist. The problem with institutionalised racism - the kind of racism which allows something so directly parallel to real world hate to pass design - is that folks are not willing to see it. Engaging in basic empathy, we can see that there are problems all around us, such as a game company, founded by a racist, having a staff that lacks representation or training necessary to question a pretty darn obvious historical parallel to hate.
So, thank goodness folks were “seeing racism” and have a “willingness to do so”—far too much racism hides in the shadows of our systems and institutions, and only by being willing to engage in critical introspection are we able to stamp out the vestiges remaining in society.
Now, I know that is not what they were saying - they were trying to say that folks were looking for racism where it does not exist. That, however, betrays a lack of empathy and knowledge of how systems are created at best, and something far more sinister at worst—I make no comment on what side of the spectrum these folks fall upon.