A variant on the victimized beneficiary (twice, no less) and the Hypotheticals aren’t real thesis.

come at me, but be original and not early 18th century with D&D veneer, please. 

As I said, carry on, carry on.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

come at me, but be original

Considering how many times this argument has been rehashed here, I wouldn't bet on that.

Quote from Mezzurah >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

come at me, but be original

 

Considering how many times this argument has been rehashed here, I wouldn't bet on that.

 
I never bet on people seeing it in themselves, only on them seeing it in others.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Quote from Short_term_user >>

Quote from PsyrenXY >>

Quote from CorpseCandle666 >>

It seems to come down to whether someone has the capacity to disassociate fiction from reality when it comes to ability score mods. Appreciate not everyone is capable of doing that.

The main value to fiction is what it can teach us about reality. None of us will ever be or meet elves and orcs. But elves and orcs can teach us things about how we relate to our fellow human beings. Appreciate that not everyone is capable of grasping allegory and symbolism though.

 Orcs:  First noted in fiction was with Tolkien in some of his unfinished works in 1917, later fleshed out in later books. Tolkien wrote them as creatures that were created by incredibly powerful, and evil entities, and yes, Orcs were ALL created evil. That is right out the fiction originated by Tolkien. There is no allegory, no symbolism.

Oh, and you don't have to take my word for it. You have the great author himself to quote (reference included below):

"And again, in a letter to one Mr. Straight in 1956, he pressed again the non-allegorical nature of his works: “I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is the key-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable. There is no 'allegory', moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all…I think that [the] fairy story has its own mode of reflecting 'truth', different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or 'realism', and in some ways more powerful. I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors.”

So, I will take the word of the creator of Orcs and modern day fantasy elves that there is no allegory or symbolism in said imaginary creatures.

https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/5502-war-not-allegory-wwi-tolkien-and-the-lord-of-the-rings.html

 Tolkien was an outspoken anti-racist who did things like tell the Nazis to take their dirty publishing money and sod off, who actively invited folks to race-swap his characters, and who added an entire subplot to LotR about how stupid racism was.

Gary Gygax was an outspoken eugenicist--decades after the 1940s showed the evils behind eugenics--who took Tolkien's rather straightforward and simple orcs and added Gygax's particular views on the inferiority of tribal culture, and who did things like add the stat blocks to orc children to his books (while not adding stat blocks for human children), because he actively wanted folks to consider killing all the innocents in an orc settlement to eradicate them from the world (something he saw as perfectly acceptable for a Lawful Good character)

So, you can take Tolkien's word for Tolkien--but you look pretty silly trying to take Tolkien's word for Gygax.  They are, as I assume you already know, different people.

 
i would’ve just pointed out that D&D orcs are not Tolkien orcs, but this was well pointed if slightly personal.

D&D may have gotten the idea for them from him, but that was it. Even in 1e, and I am staring right at it, they were already pointedly not Tolkien orcs.

I borrowed an idea for a magic metal that stores energy from a book about an assassin. I suppose I can use her stuff to defend my use of it to support my bad ideas?

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

 Tolkien was an outspoken anti-racist who did things like tell the Nazis to take their dirty publishing money and sod off, who actively invited folks to race-swap his characters, and who added an entire subplot to LotR about how stupid racism was.

 I know its not super relevant to the discussion, but thats just ******* awesome, always brings a smile to my face

Tolkien's orcs don't even have children, right? Aren't they basically dug out of the earth as adults? Or, I guess they might have been elf children, when they were children? D&D orcs haven't ever been like that, to my knowledge. And I don't remember Gruumsh from Tolkien's works, either, come to think of it. So, if I may be so snarky...

Remind me, who is baselessly claiming that D&D's orcs represent something?

Quote from AEDorsay >>

A variant on the victimized beneficiary (twice, no less) and the Hypotheticals aren’t real thesis.

come at me, but be original and not early 18th century with D&D veneer, please. 

As I said, carry on, carry on.

 Ad hominem and a faulty premise

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Quote from Short_term_user >>

Quote from PsyrenXY >>

Quote from CorpseCandle666 >>

It seems to come down to whether someone has the capacity to disassociate fiction from reality when it comes to ability score mods. Appreciate not everyone is capable of doing that.

The main value to fiction is what it can teach us about reality. None of us will ever be or meet elves and orcs. But elves and orcs can teach us things about how we relate to our fellow human beings. Appreciate that not everyone is capable of grasping allegory and symbolism though.

 Orcs:  First noted in fiction was with Tolkien in some of his unfinished works in 1917, later fleshed out in later books. Tolkien wrote them as creatures that were created by incredibly powerful, and evil entities, and yes, Orcs were ALL created evil. That is right out the fiction originated by Tolkien. There is no allegory, no symbolism.

Oh, and you don't have to take my word for it. You have the great author himself to quote (reference included below):

"And again, in a letter to one Mr. Straight in 1956, he pressed again the non-allegorical nature of his works: “I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is the key-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable. There is no 'allegory', moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all…I think that [the] fairy story has its own mode of reflecting 'truth', different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or 'realism', and in some ways more powerful. I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors.”

So, I will take the word of the creator of Orcs and modern day fantasy elves that there is no allegory or symbolism in said imaginary creatures.

https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/5502-war-not-allegory-wwi-tolkien-and-the-lord-of-the-rings.html

 Tolkien was an outspoken anti-racist who did things like tell the Nazis to take their dirty publishing money and sod off, who actively invited folks to race-swap his characters, and who added an entire subplot to LotR about how stupid racism was.

Gary Gygax was an outspoken eugenicist--decades after the 1940s showed the evils behind eugenics--who took Tolkien's rather straightforward and simple orcs and added Gygax's particular views on the inferiority of tribal culture, and who did things like add the stat blocks to orc children to his books (while not adding stat blocks for human children), because he actively wanted folks to consider killing all the innocents in an orc settlement to eradicate them from the world (something he saw as perfectly acceptable for a Lawful Good character)

So, you can take Tolkien's word for Tolkien--but you look pretty silly trying to take Tolkien's word for Gygax.  They are, as I assume you already know, different people.

 Please, enlighten me about his support of eugenics. Can you point to me where he proposed eugenics was a thing that we should do? I'm not taking the word of anyone on a charge like that without concrete evidence. Can you also point out his attacks on tribal societies? Also, do you think that Gygax viewed orcs as innocent? And, how much Gary Gygax have you read? Do you understand how he viewed his alignment system? Do you believe he endorsed the "lawful good" alignment as described in his GAME as a way a real person should live?

Is it possible your frame of reference is built on out-of-context inferences? 

Seriously, I would like to see what the evidence is. If it boils down to his portrayals of orcs in the monster manual and his comment about how ruthless a lawful good character can be, that's not much.

Quote from Salgoud >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

A variant on the victimized beneficiary (twice, no less) and the Hypotheticals aren’t real thesis.

come at me, but be original and not early 18th century with D&D veneer, please. 

As I said, carry on, carry on.

 Ad hominem and a faulty premise

 
query: Do you work for my company? Or have a contract with us?

No? 

query: As I make my living addressing such stuff across a wide range of intersections, we’re you looking to hire me?

No?

cool, cool. Carry on, carry on…

you have exhausted your number of attempts at baiting.

 I provided a scholarly citation. Please do the same for your claims about Gary Gygax. But the point remains the same. Tolkien created the Orcs as a non-allegorical creature of fiction, and Gygax lifted them from LOTR. Tolkien's Orcs's were indeed straightfoward and simple...and evil.

As for Orc children, can you tell me what book has the stat block for Orc children?

 I am curious about this as well.  Because the line was that Gary was ‘outspoken’ eugenicist. So being ‘outspoken’ you’d think there would be some quotes. My impression was he thought of DnD like Risk. You could raid the dungeon, kick in the doors, get a horde of gold… but if you were broke before playing you were still broke after playing, just like if you conquered the world in Risk you strangely enough still had to pay rent/mortgages even though you were an imaginary world conquerer…

Morgoth kidnapped tortured and twisted elves making the first orcs, as he was technically one of the Valar he could have used his power to ensure they could be fruitful and multiply.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

Tolkien's orcs don't even have children, right? Aren't they basically dug out of the earth as adults? Or, I guess they might have been elf children, when they were children? D&D orcs haven't ever been like that, to my knowledge. And I don't remember Gruumsh from Tolkien's works, either, come to think of it. So, if I may be so snarky...

Remind me, who is baselessly claiming that D&D's orcs represent something?

 That's a film thing, we see Saruman (via proxy) digging out Uruk-Hai. In the books, they're mentioned as being (or speculated to be, I'm cuddling my child at the moment so I can't check) orcs bred with men to make them capable of withstanding daylight, as Kotath says. Regardless of whether that was intended to be true or just wrong, it implies normal biological reproduction.

As an aside, I'm guessing the reason for the change is to give a different impression - in the books, Saruman had fallen years prior, but only recently decided to abandon his cover. That gave plenty of time for him to breed the Uruk-Hai normally and create the armies of Isengard. In the films, it's portrayed as a fairly recent conversion, and that meant to get 10,000 Uruk-Hai, he'd have to have another method of creating them. Plus I think Jackson wanted to show how Saruman created them, and show them to be unnatural abominations.

Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer, Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History, (New York: Ten Speed Press, 2018), 15. — note that orcs are Turks, ogres are native Americans on table maps featuring miniatures by Gygax. Also notes his support for eugenics, backhandedly.

his old dragon magazine articles had tons of quirky crap in it. His Paladin killing a prisoner is still lawful good argument is often cited in internet boards.

but, to the specific point, it references B2 and 1e MM and then his response when pushed about his saying it was completely permissible for a good aligned character to massacre non-combatants who were orcs, including children, because (and here is your google search term) “nits makes lice” — ie, the babies will grow up to be just as bad as the adults, and in his schema, it was permissible for a good character to do this because orcs are utterly evil and nonredeemable and are there to be killed.

stat blocks is a pretty present day take on terminology, but the descriptions are still there in my 1st Ed book. 

in a different thread I note I don’t deal with most fantasy books. The reason is that all works of fiction — including settings, and including my own many, many variants over the years — represent and portray all the biases, prejudices, and hostilities (anxiety, aversion, animus, and apathy) of their authors. This is especially true of systems — that is, rulesets. And that means a lot of racism. I have issues with that. I have never been torn between any of the ancestries and heritages I have — I embrace them all equally. But half elves are torn — that, right there, comes from a racist structure tied to the blood quanta myth.

no work created by people on this planet can escape that. Gygax was middle of the road in the 80’s, when I was off killing people in South America or working at the base of the Berlin Wall. The knowledge that ostracism and stigma can cause substantive harm to both the body and the mind was just beginning to be studied, the effects of trauma as a result of racism were just beginning to be seen, and people were still saying that people of mixed race like me shouldn’t be born and that was a mistake, and the last major legal fight over theCivil Rights Act had finished — and people were really, really angry about having to stop saying mailman and waitress and stewardess because women should just stop complaining.

all of that fed into D&D. The fact that racial attributes are directly tied to very specific cultural attributes is literally lifted whole cloth from what were still pretty mainstream white supremacist tracts and ideas (ex. Is The Lost Cause). And that is ignoring the very concept of race as it has stood with any kind of ability score bonus or penalty. Looking for eugenics, look to the original, cut and paste from a description of mixed race folks for half orcs. Or those aforementioned ability score mods.

so he absolutely was that bad, and he did talk about the acceptable outcomes of the village encounter — which can be handled in many ways — as including the slaughter of the non-combatants, primarily females and children (which, given he said women can’t play D&D more than a few times, including in dragon’s predecessor, is not surprising), and even if he didn’t include a line about AC and hit points (d4, btw, in the original printing or at least first three runs), he still was basically saying it was cool.

when he ran B2, they killed the entire village. No penalty, just great XP.

sorry, but using him to defend an already lame diegetic argument is pretty questionable, and ultimately the argument presented regarding him stands up.

the simple truth is that he and many others did not see orcs as people, and that gave them permission to apply all the worst things of whoever they didn’t like to them. After all, they are just fantasy, with no real world impact, right?

the Bleeping game is played in the real world with real people (well, unless chatbot gets involved and then who knows) and if it does that, it has an impact and an effect.

now, for your personal game, as ever, use whatever rules you want. Yes, even racist ones. It is your game, your players will — what’s the phrase the kids use these days? Follow market forces and vote with their seats, feet’s, pcs — let you know.

but the rule books, if D&D is going to keep growing, have to move away from it. The published settings, the published adventures, the related stuff — that all has to go.

worst part? Using Species still keeps the racism in place.

so no, the lore removed probably won’t return as it was. The missing subraces likely will after review, stuff like that. 

sorry, sorry, my bad, my bad, carry on, carry on…

Ah yes. B2. I played B2 as a kid. You know the presence of children actually halted the indiscriminate slaughter we’d been engaged in. My friends and I were 9 years old, happily kicking in doors and slaying everything and then we came across these non combatants and there was this horrible moment where our child imaginations tried to reconcile our status as heroes with the atrocities of our imaginary actions. I believe the equally ‘innocent’ DM solved this by letting us lead them into the forest where they could set up a settlement. The DM had them thanking us profusely, and I remember thinking, “Wait, would we be thanking someone who just killed our dads?”

But I quickly brushed the thought aside. We wanted to get back to our power fantasy of slaying monsters and forget this random text entry that made us think and feel uncomfortable for a moment.

In hindsight it wasn’t actually bad we were forced to think a bit and be pulled out of our power fantasy for just a moment.

Even something like killing a dragon, if you think about it really, is this horrible, horrible atrocity. You have this century old, majestic and intelligent creature and the basic justification for killing it in game is, “Well it’s habitat overlapped with ours and so it just *had* to go…”

BUT Gygax using minis that were probably readily available at the store or having his character do horrible things in a game of imagination does not make him an outspoken proponent of anything. Otherwise we could say, “Frank over there is a greedy moneybags who bankrupts people and leaves them destitute… I played Monopoly with him last week and he bankrupted me… Yes, I understand it is just a game, but obviously this proves that is what he *would* do to people if he had the money…”

Years after B2 many of us also played Blizzards groundbreaking Warcraft game. In there we happily mouse clicked away as we cleared the map of orcs. Then, when the game told us, we scoured maps to eliminate every filthy human we could find as we played through the orc campaign. We also do things in our imagination like randomly meet people on the streets and fight with them (Street Fighter) or even take it to the extreme by ripping out their spines after they are defeated (Mortal Kombat). And of course first person shooters, etc, etc, etc.

 I remember once, again being young, laughing as a bunch of mooks were offed in an Indiana Jones movie in a funny way and suddenly thinking, “but wait. Didn’t the entire audience just witness something horrible? All those people just died and some of them probably didn’t even want to be in that car… and we are all laughing?” But then my brain quickly categorized the event as fictional to stave off a traumatic response.

The point is the mind knows how to separate reality from fiction and so I feel, when we decide to cast judgement on someone, it should be based on real things and real events and not be extrapolated by something they did in a game of imagination.

Quote from Salgoud >>

...if the differences between human beings were the same as the differences between human beings and, say, orcs in traditional conceptions. Fantasy races are... a fantasy. They are not real. They don't need to be equated to anything real. If I do not make the same inferences as you do, then I do not give "orcs being equal" or "orcs being stronger and less intelligent than humans" as being racist. And I don't have to make the same inferences as you do. "Race" in fantasy and "race" in real-world culture do not have to be the same thing. If I want my players to view orcs as evil monsters in my setting, I have harmed no one. If I have a player that has a problem with that, I can be accommodating but I expect them to respect my perspective as much as they expect me to respect theirs.

(I know you weren't replying to me, but this is worth saying.)

Media, especially fantasy and scifi media, is chock full of examples of "fantasy races" and "alien species" being obvious allegories of stereotypical human ethnicities. This is undeniable, and clearly true in D&D as well.

But sure, lets set that aside and pretend it doesn't exist, and ignore D&D's history.

The underlying point isn't really about fictional "races" being allegorical. It's a problem with nature-over-nurture. The idea that everyone in a race or culture or species has the same definitive (essential as in essentialist) traits. That your identity and capabilities are ultimately determined and limited by your birth. "You're american, so you'll never be as good at cooking as the best french chef." "The bravest frenchman will never be as brave as the bravest british soldier." "Women aren't as strong as men." "Humans can't be as logical as vulcans." "All ferengi are greedy." "Orcs aren't as wise as elves." Etc.

(This is not to discount the specific issues with D&D's portrayal of orcs, drow, etc.)

The problem with ability scores, always chaotic evil etc. is the fact that they are THERE, and if even one person sees them and thinks "this game of make-believe is making me uncomfortable", those elements need to go. We don't really need them anyway to make evil orcs in our campaigns. I am a strong opponent of DM's having to answer for what they put in their game to anyone other than their players. But the rulebooks are read by everyone, and they must be free of any potentially troubling associations. I personally have mostly evil orcs in my world, I'm sorry to see the term race go etc. but I am from a 99% white Slavic country and have never been exposed to racism except in western media. I do believe we need different races/species/whatever in the game because it offers additional customization and eases roleplaying of something other than yourself, but I would be satisfied with a more varied Custom Lineage as well. That said, we do need to allow DMs and their players to explore themes of racism and oppression in their own home games, so I hope no one here is advocating the complete removal of negative themes from all games, because there would be no campaign worth playing in that case. Again, I never said I wanted the old completely racist lore back, but I would really prefer to have official WotC support on ANY lore for races.

I mean, Star Trek is somewhat infamous for excessive use of the “Planet of the Hats” trope. Also, there’s other ways to reflect intrinsic differences than just ASI’s; a lot of the traditionally brawny races have traits that reflect it, such as all Goliaths having Athletics prof and counting as Large for lifting, pulling, etc. Preserves the spirit without pushing them towards STR based classes.

Quote from Short_term_user >>

Quote from PsyrenXY >>

Quote from CorpseCandle666 >>

It seems to come down to whether someone has the capacity to disassociate fiction from reality when it comes to ability score mods. Appreciate not everyone is capable of doing that.

The main value to fiction is what it can teach us about reality. None of us will ever be or meet elves and orcs. But elves and orcs can teach us things about how we relate to our fellow human beings. Appreciate that not everyone is capable of grasping allegory and symbolism though.

 Orcs:  First noted in fiction was with Tolkien in some of his unfinished works in 1917, later fleshed out in later books. Tolkien wrote them as creatures that were created by incredibly powerful, and evil entities, and yes, Orcs were ALL created evil. That is right out the fiction originated by Tolkien. There is no allegory, no symbolism.

Oh, and you don't have to take my word for it. You have the great author himself to quote (reference included below):

"And again, in a letter to one Mr. Straight in 1956, he pressed again the non-allegorical nature of his works: “I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is the key-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable. There is no 'allegory', moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all…I think that [the] fairy story has its own mode of reflecting 'truth', different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or 'realism', and in some ways more powerful. I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors.”

So, I will take the word of the creator of Orcs and modern day fantasy elves that there is no allegory or symbolism in said imaginary creatures.

https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/5502-war-not-allegory-wwi-tolkien-and-the-lord-of-the-rings.html

 Do you really want to go back into the racist history of Tolkien's Orcs? About how he based them on ethnic minorities of his day?

The thing about symbolism/coding is that it doesn't have to be intentional on the part of the author in order to be harmful, or worth addressing. D&D (and Pathfinder) are doing that, and that is to be applauded.

Quote from SpikedSpiegel >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Really funny thing to me...

Ability modifiers for different Species is racism in action. But because of how racism, as a system, operates in the real world, people aren't realizing that the stat removal is part of stripping racism from the game, and they are putting them back in and sometimes even thinking they aren't contributing to the problem.

making me chuckle, because it is an awesome example of not only how deep racism runs in the game and in our respective societies in real life, but also how incredibly invisible it is to most people.

sorry, silly observation. Carry on.

 

Your Honour, the Devil's advocate here.

<snip>

You're Honor, the Devil is innocent. The defense rests.

 

That is a beautiful bit of work and I applaud you for effort and the energy and the time you took to write it. Seriously.

To answer the OP. The "lore" in 6e will be "because magic". This will explain literally everything no matter how nonsensical it is. If you doubt this, you need look no further than the Giff.