I came up with the idea for people to replace race, because selecting your character's race is answering the question "What is your character's race?" and changing the term race to people changes the question to "Who are your character's people?", if your character is a human and you are in your character's hometown your character could say, "These humans are me people.
That makes it worse, because if you're from a mixed community, are you saying only the humans are your people.
Poor choice of words on my part. I think a half-elf would say in their hometown could say "These are my people". Is that better?
But when being used as a term to explain differences between an Elf, a Human and a Half Elf, that loses utility.
What term do you think the ingame people would use as the term for the category that consist of human, elf, and dwarf? I think it would be people as in the dwarven people, the elven people, the human people.
What term do you think the ingame people would use as the term for the category that consist of human, elf, and dwarf?
In-game, depends extensively on politics and demographics and there's a pretty good chance of inconsistency (i.e. if you took a survey for "Is a dwarf a person" , you might wind up with "50% yes, 30% no, 20% unsure", or some such).
Robert E. Howard, whose Conan stories include commentary on "civilization" and how it is but "a whim of circumstance." These stories depict barbarian tribes and tribal societies, one analogous with Pre-Columbian America among them, as having more wisdom, integrity, and humanity than do the corrupt cities of "civilization," while never straying into condescending "noble savage" territory.
Michael Moorcock, whose Eternal Champion series chronicles the adventures of more than one non-white paladin of Balance, who has always been an ardent critic of J. R. R. Tolkien for his glorification of a mythical Golden Age and his attitudes towards progress and political change, and who is arguably the most anti-racist and anti-sexist writer one is likely to encounter in the genre.
APPENDIX N is also home to Andre Norton, whose Simsa is a sympathetic blue-black-skinned heroine that likely played some part in the conception of the drow. She would also write the first D&D tie-in novel.
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INSPIRATIONS:Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
What term do you think the ingame people would use as the term for the category that consist of human, elf, and dwarf?
In-game, depends extensively on politics and demographics and there's a pretty good chance of inconsistency (i.e. if you took a survey for "Is a dwarf a person" , you might wind up with "50% yes, 30% no, 20% unsure", or some such).
By ingame I mean the same thing as inside the setting.
Robert E. Howard, whose Conan stories include commentary on "civilization" and how it is but "a whim of circumstance." These stories depict barbarian tribes and tribal societies, one analogous with Pre-Columbian America among them, as having more wisdom, integrity, and humanity than do the corrupt cities of "civilization," while never straying into condescending "noble savage" territory.
Michael Moorcock, whose Eternal Champion series chronicles the adventures of more than one non-white paladin of Balance, who has always been an ardent critic of J. R. R. Tolkien for his glorification of a mythical Golden Age and his attitudes towards progress and political change, and who is arguably the most anti-racist and anti-sexist writer one is likely to encounter in the genre.
APPENDIX N is also home to Andre Norton, whose Simsa is a sympathetic blue-black-skinned heroine that likely played some part in the conception of the drow. She would also write the first D&D tie-in novel.
I'm not sure that I'd go quite that far with RE Howard either. RE Howard was what I like to call "an equal opportunity offender." His continents were filled with racial stereotypes of all sorts from the Zamorans (Spanish) who were all thieves to the Darfari (dark African tribals) who were cannibals to the Stygians (Egyptians) who were serpent and demon worshippers. There wasn't a civilization including around (including Europeans) who escaped his sharp criticism.
I'm not sure that I'd go quite that far with RE Howard either. RE Howard was what I like to call "an equal opportunity offender." His continents were filled with racial stereotypes of all sorts from the Zamorans (Spanish) who were all thieves to the Darfari (dark African tribals) who were cannibals to the Stygians (Egyptians) who were serpent and demon worshippers. There wasn't a civilization including around (including Europeans) who escaped his sharp criticism.
True. But I was responding to the assertion Gygax saw tribal societies as inferior to others. He, just like Howard, did not. Early TSR products often depicted cities modeled on those of medieval Europe to be full of treachery, corruption, and malfeasance.
Gygax's eldest daughter played the game. TSR employed more than one woman who played the game. Whether or not Gygax once claimed women "can't"—more than likely a sardonic response to the stereotype about D&D being "for boys"—is beside the point when he obviously did not believe that, either. He might have had a history of saying really dumb things. But reducing his entire life and work to this is just bad form. Facta, non verba.
INSPIRATIONS:Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
Whether or not Gygax was a racist ******* is irrelevant. Whether or not Gygax was a sainted superhero who invented the very concept of Fun and saved humanity from the endless doldrum malaise of dreary existence is also irrelevant.
What is relevant is that for nearly fifty years, D&D and its various owners have not been as open, inviting, or welcoming as they could have been. There has been exclusion. People have been disinvited from the table. And now, any time the current owners try to do literally anything to ameliorate that exclusionism, we get a constant flow of people snapping and snarling and objecting and claiming that there has never once been anything wrong with D&D ever and any attempt to fix it is Against The Soul Of The Game and Absolutely Unacceptable Forever. We can't even change one single freaking word to something less charged. ONE WORD is too much for people to tolerate, and it leaves me despairing that this game will ever actually open its doors to everyone in the world and allow anyone who wishes one a seat at the table.
Here, on the thirty-sixth page of a thread in which dozens and dozens and dozens of people have fought hard to retain exclusionism and seek to actively disinvite people from the game against the pushback of maybe five hard-headed folks with more determination than sense Holding The Line, I will ask this.
Is one single word really going to Ruin D&D Forever? Don't slippery-slope me, don't "what will they change next if we let them change this?!" me. Don't give me any of those garbage arguments that rely on invalid fearmongering. Tell me - will changing THIS ONE SINGLE WORD ruin D&D forever? Will this single decision, with no regard whatsoever for factors unrelated to this change, Ruin D&D Forever?
[REDACTED]
You can ask for a different word. Wizards is taking suggestions for Different Words. But you don't get to keep the original no matter how miserable you try to make everyone else. Nobody cares what Gygax may or may not have said on the matter - the one people care about is dead and the one we have left is a hyper-racist walking armpit stain whose opinion is irrelevant to everything. What matters is what we can do, right now today, as a collective whole to make D&D a game where fewer people are disinvited from the table. You can help, or you can stand in the way. I can't stop you from standing in the way, if you decide changing one word will somehow Ruin D&D Forever. But I certainly can and will think less of you for it, and I won't be alone in doing so.
Notes: It is expected that users treat one another with respect, even if they disagree.
Will changing one single word cause the world to all join hands and come together? No. The game book hasn't chased potential players away. Prove otherwise.
What has driven people away, to the extent that anybody has been driven away, is what happens at tables, not what's written in the book.
Actually not only do I have proof to contradict this stance, I have direct evidence from a primary source. HERE is an account from another user on this forum about how the writing in the book drove them off from the game. Not an experience at the table, but the writing itself and how it came off as very alienating and hurtful to them.
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!
Will changing one single word cause the world to all join hands and come together? No. The game book hasn't chased potential players away. Prove otherwise.
What has driven people away, to the extent that anybody has been driven away, is what happens at tables, not what's written in the book.
Actually not only do I have proof to contradict this stance, I have direct evidence from a primary source. HERE is an account from another user on this forum about how the writing in the book drove them off from the game. Not an experience at the table, but the writing itself and how it came off as very alienating and hurtful to them.
I don't know about you, but coming from someone who has experienced what it is like for all the "signals" to be against me, I feel like it's a luxury to be able to afford to hate virtue signaling.
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!
I don't know about you, but coming from someone who has experienced what it is like for all the "signals" to be against me, I feel like it's a luxury to be able to afford to hate virtue signaling.
I am of mixed raced and started playing D&D probably before you were even born. I personally find some of the more recent decisions to be more offensive and repellent than anything that came before them.
How is it "open, inviting, or welcoming" for WotC to turn the game into one that will only appeal to those who think the same way about things? To people filled with hatred for those who just see things differently?
There is nothing "open, inviting, or welcoming" about that. It divides the player-base. It ultimately tells potential players they have to share the company's creed or go away.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
INSPIRATIONS:Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
Will changing one single word cause the world to all join hands and come together? No. The game book hasn't chased potential players away. Prove otherwise.
What has driven people away, to the extent that anybody has been driven away, is what happens at tables, not what's written in the book.
Actually not only do I have proof to contradict this stance, I have direct evidence from a primary source. HERE is an account from another user on this forum about how the writing in the book drove them off from the game. Not an experience at the table, but the writing itself and how it came off as very alienating and hurtful to them.
An anecdote is not proof.
You made the universal claim that "the game book hasn't chased potential players away" and I provided you evidence of one example that disproves such a universal claim. If you're going to dismiss it, then you are moving the goalpost in some way, unless you'd like to retract anything about your claim? I mean otherwise you really have no leg to stand on in this argument and are just making illogical noises.
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!
Ok sure, and to the merit of your argument I'm not invalidating that what happens at the table has more personal impact, but what is written in the book also matters and can turn people away. Like how I wouldn't touch Oriental Adventures with a telescoping ten foot pole despite never having played anything from it at any of my tables. I never said that what happens at the table is of no consequence, but to say that what's written in the book has never turned anyone away is easily disproven.
When WOTC made their statement about the historic use of "race" being problematic and discontinuing it, I applauded it. I knew it was true that they had gotten comments from people that it was hurtful because Iwas one of those people giving those comments.
So to me it wasn't some sort of empty platitude, it was a direct response to feedback.
Instead of comparing scars and acting like they are signs of privilege
This is puzzling to me. It's not that our scars are not signs of privilege. It's that people who are not scarred in the same ways we are have privilege in those areas. Having experienced discrimination is not a privilege, but it does for sure give experience and thus authority to speak about those experiences.
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!
As this conversation is continuously devolving into personal attacks, politics, and other rule-violating behavior despite multiple warnings from moderators, this thread will now be locked.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat On - Mod Hat Off
What term do you think the ingame people would use as the term for the category that consist of human, elf, and dwarf?
I think it would be people as in the dwarven people, the elven people, the human people.
In-game, depends extensively on politics and demographics and there's a pretty good chance of inconsistency (i.e. if you took a survey for "Is a dwarf a person" , you might wind up with "50% yes, 30% no, 20% unsure", or some such).
Gary Gygax read and loved the works of ...
Robert E. Howard, whose Conan stories include commentary on "civilization" and how it is but "a whim of circumstance." These stories depict barbarian tribes and tribal societies, one analogous with Pre-Columbian America among them, as having more wisdom, integrity, and humanity than do the corrupt cities of "civilization," while never straying into condescending "noble savage" territory.
Michael Moorcock, whose Eternal Champion series chronicles the adventures of more than one non-white paladin of Balance, who has always been an ardent critic of J. R. R. Tolkien for his glorification of a mythical Golden Age and his attitudes towards progress and political change, and who is arguably the most anti-racist and anti-sexist writer one is likely to encounter in the genre.
APPENDIX N is also home to Andre Norton, whose Simsa is a sympathetic blue-black-skinned heroine that likely played some part in the conception of the drow. She would also write the first D&D tie-in novel.
INSPIRATIONS: Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
SYSTEMS: ShadowDark, C&C, AD&D.
GEAR: pencils, graph paper, dice.
By ingame I mean the same thing as inside the setting.
I'm not sure that I'd go quite that far with RE Howard either. RE Howard was what I like to call "an equal opportunity offender." His continents were filled with racial stereotypes of all sorts from the Zamorans (Spanish) who were all thieves to the Darfari (dark African tribals) who were cannibals to the Stygians (Egyptians) who were serpent and demon worshippers. There wasn't a civilization including around (including Europeans) who escaped his sharp criticism.
True. But I was responding to the assertion Gygax saw tribal societies as inferior to others. He, just like Howard, did not. Early TSR products often depicted cities modeled on those of medieval Europe to be full of treachery, corruption, and malfeasance.
Gygax's eldest daughter played the game. TSR employed more than one woman who played the game. Whether or not Gygax once claimed women "can't"—more than likely a sardonic response to the stereotype about D&D being "for boys"—is beside the point when he obviously did not believe that, either. He might have had a history of saying really dumb things. But reducing his entire life and work to this is just bad form. Facta, non verba.
INSPIRATIONS: Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
SYSTEMS: ShadowDark, C&C, AD&D.
GEAR: pencils, graph paper, dice.
Whether or not Gygax was a racist ******* is irrelevant. Whether or not Gygax was a sainted superhero who invented the very concept of Fun and saved humanity from the endless doldrum malaise of dreary existence is also irrelevant.
What is relevant is that for nearly fifty years, D&D and its various owners have not been as open, inviting, or welcoming as they could have been. There has been exclusion. People have been disinvited from the table. And now, any time the current owners try to do literally anything to ameliorate that exclusionism, we get a constant flow of people snapping and snarling and objecting and claiming that there has never once been anything wrong with D&D ever and any attempt to fix it is Against The Soul Of The Game and Absolutely Unacceptable Forever. We can't even change one single freaking word to something less charged. ONE WORD is too much for people to tolerate, and it leaves me despairing that this game will ever actually open its doors to everyone in the world and allow anyone who wishes one a seat at the table.
Here, on the thirty-sixth page of a thread in which dozens and dozens and dozens of people have fought hard to retain exclusionism and seek to actively disinvite people from the game against the pushback of maybe five hard-headed folks with more determination than sense Holding The Line, I will ask this.
Is one single word really going to Ruin D&D Forever? Don't slippery-slope me, don't "what will they change next if we let them change this?!" me. Don't give me any of those garbage arguments that rely on invalid fearmongering. Tell me - will changing THIS ONE SINGLE WORD ruin D&D forever? Will this single decision, with no regard whatsoever for factors unrelated to this change, Ruin D&D Forever?
[REDACTED]
You can ask for a different word. Wizards is taking suggestions for Different Words. But you don't get to keep the original no matter how miserable you try to make everyone else. Nobody cares what Gygax may or may not have said on the matter - the one people care about is dead and the one we have left is a hyper-racist walking armpit stain whose opinion is irrelevant to everything. What matters is what we can do, right now today, as a collective whole to make D&D a game where fewer people are disinvited from the table. You can help, or you can stand in the way. I can't stop you from standing in the way, if you decide changing one word will somehow Ruin D&D Forever. But I certainly can and will think less of you for it, and I won't be alone in doing so.
Please do not contact or message me.
Actually not only do I have proof to contradict this stance, I have direct evidence from a primary source. HERE is an account from another user on this forum about how the writing in the book drove them off from the game. Not an experience at the table, but the writing itself and how it came off as very alienating and hurtful to them.
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!
Anecdotes are not proof https://thelogicofscience.com/2016/02/10/5-reasons-why-anecdotes-are-totally-worthless/#:~:text=In summary, using anecdotes as,anecdotes are worthless as evidence.
I don't know about you, but coming from someone who has experienced what it is like for all the "signals" to be against me, I feel like it's a luxury to be able to afford to hate virtue signaling.
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 am of mixed raced and started playing D&D probably before you were even born. I personally find some of the more recent decisions to be more offensive and repellent than anything that came before them.
How is it "open, inviting, or welcoming" for WotC to turn the game into one that will only appeal to those who think the same way about things? To people filled with hatred for those who just see things differently?
There is nothing "open, inviting, or welcoming" about that. It divides the player-base. It ultimately tells potential players they have to share the company's creed or go away.
INSPIRATIONS: Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
SYSTEMS: ShadowDark, C&C, AD&D.
GEAR: pencils, graph paper, dice.
You made the universal claim that "the game book hasn't chased potential players away" and I provided you evidence of one example that disproves such a universal claim. If you're going to dismiss it, then you are moving the goalpost in some way, unless you'd like to retract anything about your claim? I mean otherwise you really have no leg to stand on in this argument and are just making illogical noises.
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!
Ok sure, and to the merit of your argument I'm not invalidating that what happens at the table has more personal impact, but what is written in the book also matters and can turn people away. Like how I wouldn't touch Oriental Adventures with a telescoping ten foot pole despite never having played anything from it at any of my tables. I never said that what happens at the table is of no consequence, but to say that what's written in the book has never turned anyone away is easily disproven.
When WOTC made their statement about the historic use of "race" being problematic and discontinuing it, I applauded it. I knew it was true that they had gotten comments from people that it was hurtful because I was one of those people giving those comments.
So to me it wasn't some sort of empty platitude, it was a direct response to feedback.
This is puzzling to me. It's not that our scars are not signs of privilege. It's that people who are not scarred in the same ways we are have privilege in those areas. Having experienced discrimination is not a privilege, but it does for sure give experience and thus authority to speak about those experiences.
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!
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ModeratorAs this conversation is continuously devolving into personal attacks, politics, and other rule-violating behavior despite multiple warnings from moderators, this thread will now be locked.
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