1) Freedom of speech in that context refers to punishment by governments, not merely being held accountable by private citizens and platforms. You don't have total freedom of speech here on this forum either.
2) The CC is a form of disassociation, sure, but we have yet to see the effectiveness of that tested by true hate speech. It's possible an incident of some kind will arise between now and the creation of the 6e SRD, and if it does, that will likely have an impact on the license they choose to publish it under. I think they jumped the gun personally, but again SRD 5.1 was their property, so we'll have to wait and see.
When Star Wars IX: Duel of the Fates came out I found myself very uncomfortable with the portrayal of the Nemoidians. It took a little while for me to even understand why it was that they made me uncomfortable because it was so ... insidiously hidden. The Nemoidians are portrayed in similar enough ways to the very old and racist depictions of Asians that it was hurtful to those of us who have been subject to that kind of thing, but they were just different enough from real life that people who were privileged enough to not ever have experienced that particular kind of racism completely missed it. The real poison from this kind of subtle racism is that is makes you question if you even want to bring it up because you would get so easily shouted down.
Do I think the Nemoidians are Asian? No. Do I think I am a Nemoidian? No. But did I still twist in my seat with a lump in my gut because I felt like I was being made fun of? Oh yes. It's not a problem of separating fantasy from reality. It's a problem that sometimes things hit to close to home even if they aren't meant to. Then to make it worse, these themes are ideas are repeated or used in more personal situations, like in a TTRPG with friends. Unwitting friends who use stereotypes and tropes in ways not meant to be harmful, because they don't know, and then all of a sudden your friend group no longer feels safe. Because if they can think this way about them, do they maybe secretly think that way about me? I have been blindsided by well meaning racism from friends before and it's almost worse than badly intended racism because it chips away at the security you feel around your friends.
This was my experience with a space fantasy franchise, and it is similar to things I have heard from people about orcs or drow in D&D. They made people uncomfortable and unsafe. Not because they are directly connecting orcs or drow with real life peoples, but because the language used to describe people directly mirrors, echoes, triggers, etc. language that we are subject to in real life and is thus hurtful.
Is that understandable?
Thank you for your story, I can understand it and appreciate it, even if my own experience has been different from yours, however I would point out that you referred to how the Nemoidans were using asian stereotypes and this was the issue. And I would agree with you! I can say that, though I am not Asian, when I read your story I could hear the dialogue in my mind, and it made me cringe.
The Vistani in CoS are a racist portrayal of real world Romani. The old Oriental Adventures book is also problematic. In those cases those fictional versions of those people were inappropriate.
But the Orcs of 5e D&D are not fictional versions of real life people using real-life tropes. They are described as "Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." They are clearly not humans,
Again, we know they are not humans, that's not the point. The point is that talking about people this way is hurtful because that same kind of language has been used against real peoples. If you accept my experience of how one portrayal of a fictional peoples is hurtful why don't you accept the experience of those who have said that the portrayal of orcs is hurtful in the same way? Can you not accept that some people can legitimately be hurt by that? There have been people who have posted on these very forums talking about how that portrayal hurt them or turned them off D&D and here is an author talking about orcs almost as a genre.
and it is possible to be a good, non-racist person, who uses orcs in their game without them being analogues for anyone in the real world.
I have said many times before that I think everyone is racist, including myself. I think racism is endemic to the human condition, a weakness of the human brain that we are all susceptible to and something that we have to work against constantly. Being racist doesn't make you bad, because then everyone would be bad. Being racist just makes you human. Not doing what you can to uproot and fight against racist programming that we all get from society might be a moral mark against you, though.
"Being analogues for anyone in the real world" is so close yet not on the mark. The hurtful thing is that not we think orcs are stand ins for one particular real world group, it's that the language used about them mirrors language used against a real world group. If you changed that, of course things would be different. If you talked about orcs as just another group of people with self determination and a diverse range of cultures and behaviors, of course you could use orcs and they wouldn't be hurtful.
At the same time all PC's or playable peoples must be treated as analogue for their real world players because that is the vulnerability that in inherent in roleplaying.
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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!
When Star Wars IX: Duel of the Fates came out I found myself very uncomfortable with the portrayal of the Nemoidians. It took a little while for me to even understand why it was that they made me uncomfortable because it was so ... insidiously hidden. The Nemoidians are portrayed in similar enough ways to the very old and racist depictions of Asians that it was hurtful to those of us who have been subject to that kind of thing, but they were just different enough from real life that people who were privileged enough to not ever have experienced that particular kind of racism completely missed it. The real poison from this kind of subtle racism is that is makes you question if you even want to bring it up because you would get so easily shouted down.
Do I think the Nemoidians are Asian? No. Do I think I am a Nemoidian? No. But did I still twist in my seat with a lump in my gut because I felt like I was being made fun of? Oh yes. It's not a problem of separating fantasy from reality. It's a problem that sometimes things hit to close to home even if they aren't meant to. Then to make it worse, these themes are ideas are repeated or used in more personal situations, like in a TTRPG with friends. Unwitting friends who use stereotypes and tropes in ways not meant to be harmful, because they don't know, and then all of a sudden your friend group no longer feels safe. Because if they can think this way about them, do they maybe secretly think that way about me? I have been blindsided by well meaning racism from friends before and it's almost worse than badly intended racism because it chips away at the security you feel around your friends.
This was my experience with a space fantasy franchise, and it is similar to things I have heard from people about orcs or drow in D&D. They made people uncomfortable and unsafe. Not because they are directly connecting orcs or drow with real life peoples, but because the language used to describe people directly mirrors, echoes, triggers, etc. language that we are subject to in real life and is thus hurtful.
Is that understandable?
While i can understand the feeling, here is the issue with things like your Nemoidian issue That's 100% impossible to prevent. People are going to see thing in various images that only they see (or few others), based upon their life's history. And people are going to see thing that may look bad to them while it doesn't look that way to anyone else. No way around that... there just isn't. There are too few variations you can create vs the vast number of ways people can see things.
While you are correct that there is no way to make art that is 100% free of the possibility of hurting someone, there is something as taking reasonable precautions and doing due diligence to research one's material. Our standard and responsibility shouldn't be trying to make something that is 100% never going to harm someone, but rather to do our best to be sensitive to our audience. It's not like my feelings about the Nemoidians was unique, by the way, it was something that was noted by a lot of Asian Americans. It wasn't just a me thing.
So there has to be an acceptance of what was done and how we choose to see it.. and it is a choice. We can assume the worse or we can assume not the worse. We can note the similarities and understand that it's just how WE are seeing things.. and not demand others see them the say way. Yes, there are things that are obviously done a certain way that most/all see... those we deal with. But the rest, we just accept that it's on us and we learn to move past it.. to, maybe, not always see the worst of things.
I am very tired of people who cannot see or experience the kinds of things I have to put up with telling me I need to suck it up and take people for their intentions. Intentions do not absolve you from a responsibility to not go around hurting people. This is not the way.
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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!
When Star Wars IX: Duel of the Fates came out I found myself very uncomfortable with the portrayal of the Nemoidians. It took a little while for me to even understand why it was that they made me uncomfortable because it was so ... insidiously hidden. The Nemoidians are portrayed in similar enough ways to the very old and racist depictions of Asians that it was hurtful to those of us who have been subject to that kind of thing, but they were just different enough from real life that people who were privileged enough to not ever have experienced that particular kind of racism completely missed it. The real poison from this kind of subtle racism is that is makes you question if you even want to bring it up because you would get so easily shouted down.
Do I think the Nemoidians are Asian? No. Do I think I am a Nemoidian? No. But did I still twist in my seat with a lump in my gut because I felt like I was being made fun of? Oh yes. It's not a problem of separating fantasy from reality. It's a problem that sometimes things hit to close to home even if they aren't meant to. Then to make it worse, these themes are ideas are repeated or used in more personal situations, like in a TTRPG with friends. Unwitting friends who use stereotypes and tropes in ways not meant to be harmful, because they don't know, and then all of a sudden your friend group no longer feels safe. Because if they can think this way about them, do they maybe secretly think that way about me? I have been blindsided by well meaning racism from friends before and it's almost worse than badly intended racism because it chips away at the security you feel around your friends.
This was my experience with a space fantasy franchise, and it is similar to things I have heard from people about orcs or drow in D&D. They made people uncomfortable and unsafe. Not because they are directly connecting orcs or drow with real life peoples, but because the language used to describe people directly mirrors, echoes, triggers, etc. language that we are subject to in real life and is thus hurtful.
Is that understandable?
Thank you for your story, I can understand it and appreciate it, even if my own experience has been different from yours, however I would point out that you referred to how the Nemoidans were using asian stereotypes and this was the issue. And I would agree with you! I can say that, though I am not Asian, when I read your story I could hear the dialogue in my mind, and it made me cringe.
The Vistani in CoS are a racist portrayal of real world Romani. The old Oriental Adventures book is also problematic. In those cases those fictional versions of those people were inappropriate.
But the Orcs of 5e D&D are not fictional versions of real life people using real-life tropes. They are described as "Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." They are clearly not humans,
Again, we know they are not humans, that's not the point. The point is that talking about people this way is hurtful because that same kind of language has been used against real peoples. If you accept my experience of how one portrayal of a fictional peoples is hurtful why don't you accept the experience of those who have said that the portrayal of orcs is hurtful in the same way? Can you not accept that some people can legitimately be hurt by that? There have been people who have posted on these very forums talking about how that portrayal hurt them or turned them off D&D and here is an author talking about orcs almost as a genre.
and it is possible to be a good, non-racist person, who uses orcs in their game without them being analogues for anyone in the real world.
I have said many times before that I think everyone is racist, including myself. I think racism is endemic to the human condition, a weakness of the human brain that we are all susceptible to and something that we have to work against constantly. Being racist doesn't make you bad, because then everyone would be bad. Being racist just makes you human. Not doing what you can to uproot and fight against racist programming that we all get from society might be a moral mark against you, though.
"Being analogues for anyone in the real world" is so close yet not on the mark. The hurtful thing is that not we think orcs are stand ins for one particular real world group, it's that the language used about them mirrors language used against a real world group. If you changed that, of course things would be different. If you talked about orcs as just another group of people with self determination and a diverse range of cultures and behaviors, of course you could use orcs and they wouldn't be hurtful.
At the same time all PC's or playable peoples must be treated as analogue for their real world players because that is the vulnerability that in inherent in roleplaying.
I can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
Given the community just won a massive victory AGAINST this kind of thing being introduced (admittedly a small part of the overall outcry, but it was in the mix for certain), let's go with no. We don't need/want biased arbitration over what is or isn't harmful content.
And again, you have failed to read through the post you just commented on. This point has been brought up already.
I can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
You know, it is work on my part, but being asked to come up with productive ideas is a breath of fresh air compared to the combative and antagonistic tone of the rest of this thread. That being said, I think this question would be worth it's own thread. You can start it if you like, and I will participate.
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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 can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
A new thread might be a good idea, but it's also worth addressing here so people can see it. There's a lot of nuance and getting-it-right that goes into the answer that's worth discussing, but the very shortest version is:
Make them bad guys because of their choices, not because of their natures. Maybe your bad-guy orcs and goblins are bandits from a more prosperous/upstanding nation nearby, or are defectors from a more professional and disciplined army. Whichever the eventual reason, if they're bad guys because they're bad guys and not because they're orcs or goblins, it goes a ways towards getting you out of the doghouse
I am once again stepping in (albeit on a different thread) to remind people to keep the conversation respectful, even if you disagree. If you cannot, then walk away. Continuation of the inflammatory conversations will result in this thread being locked as well.
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How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat On - Mod Hat Off
I can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
A new thread might be a good idea, but it's also worth addressing here so people can see it. There's a lot of nuance and getting-it-right that goes into the answer that's worth discussing, but the very shortest version is:
Make them bad guys because of their choices, not because of their natures. Maybe your bad-guy orcs and goblins are bandits from a more prosperous/upstanding nation nearby, or are defectors from a more professional and disciplined army. Whichever the eventual reason, if they're bad guys because they're bad guys and not because they're orcs or goblins, it goes a ways towards getting you out of the doghouse
Building on this - give them a culture that is compelling. Let’s look at the traditional D&D orc - they were based on tribal societies. That historically meant beautiful oral traditions, various types of art such as totems, weaving, and jewellery. A rich and living culture beyond the “evil savages that are a threat to the civilised folks” that certain people want to paint them as.
Add to that a compelling reason for them to fight. Resource scarcity is always a good one—something forcing them into conflict because their traditional homelands are no longer habitable (also a great way to bring in a more interesting, higher level evil entity such as a demon, Elder Evil, etc., though simple changes in climate or their having overhunted could also work if you want to keep it relatively mundane).
Basically, just treat them as you would any other nation - a collection of individuals with a shared culture (but not always total agreement on how that culture should manifest). Don’t treat them as a mass of faceless evil and you’ll be doing better than most.
I believe that I am capable of holding two opposing views in my mind, and not being the worse for it. I am capable of telling a make-believe story where a make-believe evil god can create a make-believe evil sentient species, while also holding to be true the heartfelt belief that in real life all human beings are, and should be, equal. I do not believe that any member of the human race should be categorized as "all X".
In all honesty, you may be able to enjoy a story like this, but many other players who may stumble across it if you publish it Online won't. The reason for this is because many of those people have to deal with racist and hurtful stereotypes like that in real life, and they don't necessarily want to encounter that when they are playing in a fantasy game and trying to take a break from the stressors in the real world.
Wanting to create content like this is understandable, but it should come with a trigger warning at a minimum, because it might not be safe for some people. Ultimately however, there are going to be things that are a lot worse than this published under the Open Game License without some form of an anti-bigotry clause. Third-party products like this would likely not be the ones that are "censored", but Open Game Content that attracted a lot more attention and hurt lots of people is way more likely to be modified or removed.
Also, you asked me earlier when I thought something should be removed or modified. In general, my answer is that something is considered hurtful when a sizable number of people (relative to how big the community in question is) are genuinely hurt by something. When situations like this arise, the product in question should usually be modified or altered to avoid hurting people, because taking a few minutes to make some minor tweaks in order to not harm others is always a valuable goal. With all this being said, there are situations that would prove exceptions to this rule, and that's why I think there should be some sort of panel or independent judge to settle these disputes.
Incorrect assumption, I read as much of the thread as I cared to.
You clearly didn't read very much then. In the very first post here, I talked about how the anti-bigotry measures didn't need to rely on the sole judgement of Wizards of the Coast. In a later post, I offered various suggestions on how to implement this clause without allowing it to be enforced by people who are extremely biased. It's understandable not to read that much before posting, but it is still really annoying. Please, if you have a point to bring to the discussion, it would be nice to see whether or not the point is actually relevent.
Also, it matters very much that this is not what we are discussing, since countering nonexistent points is the very definition of a strawman fallacy.
I am once again stepping in (albeit on a different thread) to remind people to keep the conversation respectful, even if you disagree. If you cannot, then walk away. Continuation of the inflammatory conversations will result in this thread being locked as well.
Thank you Sillva. I would like to echo this sentiment, since it has been quite depressing to see my thread descend into angry bickering, name calling, and rudeness.
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I can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
A new thread might be a good idea, but it's also worth addressing here so people can see it. There's a lot of nuance and getting-it-right that goes into the answer that's worth discussing, but the very shortest version is:
Make them bad guys because of their choices, not because of their natures. Maybe your bad-guy orcs and goblins are bandits from a more prosperous/upstanding nation nearby, or are defectors from a more professional and disciplined army. Whichever the eventual reason, if they're bad guys because they're bad guys and not because they're orcs or goblins, it goes a ways towards getting you out of the doghouse
A doghouse constructed out of inferences many do not agree with.
What, in your estimation, would "Any Reasonable Person" make of a role-playing game in which there was a non-playable species called terflings, unmistakably satirizing terfs, and this species was presented as irredeemably evil and intended as little more than "fodder enemies"?
Because that is definitely the sort of irreverent, dark-humored—if morally questionable—game that some publishers would put out.
Now what if a not-for-profit said it was misogynist and made noise enough to convince Wizards of this, and its author, who was trans, had their right to use the OGL taken away from them?
Considering I had to look up the definition of 'Terf' just now, sure. Since you're not going to relent on this until I answer, here's your answer.
I cannot speak to the "Any Reasonable Person" standard as I am not a lawyer. I will say that I would consider such a bald-facedly hostile and bandwagony stunt to be juvenile and unbecoming, the sort of thing I'd associate with the sort of angry, bitter trans people who make their trans identity everyone else's problem and are actively looking to pick fights over it. Were Wizards to block such a book on anti-hate grounds? Well, that depends on the contents of the book, doesn't it? Because one throwaway sentence does not encompass an entire book. But in general I would be annoyed, I would wonder why Wizards cared, but I also wouldn't consider the book any great loss because that kind of petty target practice only serves to make everything worse in the first place. I don't believe in the Genetically Evil thing, I never have, and I would consider the book a lesson in trying to sell your personal grudges as a consumer product.
EDIT: Y'know what? Nah. I wouldn't oppose the sort of book that actively villifies and takes cheap shots at a given societal stance being knocked down a few pegs. "Inclusivity" is not about spreading hate back in the opposite direction, it's about stopping hate, and trans folk are just as capable of hate as anyone else. Is the 'Terf' position reprehensible? Yes. Doesn't mean they're an acceptable target for murder, even simulated murder, and building an entire species of people around a single frustrating and hateful ideology isn't how you make a worthwhile product. Ophidimancer is right - a people have self determination and will, and telling players they don't is wrong no matter which societal axis you're doing it on. END EDIT:
Worth noting: the author would not "lose their right to the OGL". That one work would have been blocked, and unless the author (or, being realistic, authors - no gaming book is a single-person deal) was the kind of outspoken ******* that forces a business's hand they would be perfectly able to publish other books. They would likely be under increased scrutiny for a while, but nothing about even the proposed 1.2 document said that someone lost their ability to use the license. The license is given to a work, not a person. It cannopt be taken away from a given author.
You know, this explains so much about your position. I've spent a lot of time wondering why a trans women would be so vehimently in favor of a morality clause, and finding out that you had to go look up what a TERF makes it crystal clear.
You haven't been paying attention.
Morality laws, Obscentity laws, and morality and obscentity clauses are being weaponized against queer people, especially trans people EVERY FREAKING DAY in the US and UK. It's becoming fashionable to hate us again, and if you don't think that most corporations will follow that fashion, you haven't been paying attetion.
Hateful RPG content is going to happen. RaHoWa, Mayfarog, Star Frontiers: New Genesis, all happened without the OGL being involved, so no morality clause would have mattered. The Hadozeen came right from Wizards who you want to be the arbitars of morality in this case, the Gnolls in Kobold Press' Midgard setting happened under the OGL and are still being published to this day without any outcry or fix despite being straight up minstrel show stereotypes, so how could we expect a morality clause to matter when no one seems to care?
But we do have examples of Wizards stomping all over sexual content. The title they pulled from the DM's Guild for some vaguely homoerotic art. The Book of Erotic Fantasy, which Wizards completely flipped out about and made changes to their guidelines for using the D20 logo.
God, please, I am begging you to educate yourself on how this *ALWAYS* goes. Someone screams "think of the children" and we get the Hays code, or the Comic Code Authority. The list goes on and on, and in the end, the tools are never used to stop racist content, they are always turned into the tools of bigots to surprise the voices and expression of marginalized communities.
Has it ever been considered that some of these issues are uniquely US problems and the fall-out from that unique history should not be aired in an international community. And how much should that international community be required to bend to those US foibles and internal divisions.
If you think racism is a uniquely US problem you have inadequate understanding of the rest of the world.
Racism is not a uniquely US problem but the perspective and dialogue about racism in the United States is unique.
The discussion of this topic is already happening in the OGL to be left Untouched thread, and both sides of the argument have already been laid out.
We are never going to agree on this, especially as long as some users see it as a Black & White dichotomy rather than a nuanced issue with multiple sides. It's not as simple as those in favour of clause are virtuous and pure, and those against are evil bigots and racists. It's an unfair distinction to both sides.
I believe in creating a safe place to game, but many of us disagree fundamentally on what constitutes Hatred. Some users insist that anything that offends at least one person is enough to be considered hurtful, hateful, and in need of change, and that is the problem. Not everything is as clear cut as that.
It's also just a nonissue.
Can someone send me links to the droves upon droves of hateful D&D content that's being published en masse and so plentiful that I've just never managed to come across any of it in all my time of gaming? Because I sure would love to see it actually existing before we tie ourselves in knots deciding if we want to open up the can of worms that is editing the OGL in order to fix what may really be a nonissue.
Like - the 'hateful content' I've seen in gaming are things like... That one Nazi who managed to slip in some secret iconography and references to Nazi stuff in that White Wolf book, and they went to great lengths and costs to recall those books and fix it so that it didn't exist like that when they found out about it [another publisher, not even D&D] or like, the occasional out-of-date reference to how all Orcs are evil and now as a society we've kind of progressed past the idea that your race/species makes you inherently evil, but also literally no one would reasonably throw a fit about that especially since they already talked about how they're updating it for future versions of the game. These are the scant few instances of 'hateful content' that I've interacted with in the last few years, one of which literally was another publisher, and was instantly removed once discovered. That isn't a rats nest of hateful bigotry and disparaging content, that is a healthy community that already does PLENTY to pluck the weeds as they crop up - and they don't seem to need legal clauses to do it. They kinda just do it because it's the right thing to do anyway, from what I've noticed.
I can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
Vikings. If you want Orc and Goblin cultures that you can use as clear and defined bad guys, make them Vikings, and put your heroes in the role of a culture that was getting hit by Viking Raiders. Vikings had a rich, deep culture, they had loving familiar, a strong set of laws and standards of justice. They had art and technology and all the staples of civilication, and at the same time, they were a people who violently looted from others around them. You want clear, unambiguosly bad villains, without the "The whole race is evil" trope, make your Orc and Goblin badies Vikings. Then, have some Orcs and Goblins from a different culture fighting along side your heroes.
I can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
Vikings. If you want Orc and Goblin cultures that you can use as clear and defined bad guys, make them Vikings, and put your heroes in the role of a culture that was getting hit by Viking Raiders. Vikings had a rich, deep culture, they had loving familiar, a strong set of laws and standards of justice. They had art and technology and all the staples of civilication, and at the same time, they were a people who violently looted from others around them. You want clear, unambiguosly bad villains, without the "The whole race is evil" trope, make your Orc and Goblin badies Vikings. Then, have some Orcs and Goblins from a different culture fighting along side your heroes.
Every culture has looted from others violently when push comes to shove over one resource or another at points in history. Vikings portrayed primarily as savage raiders is just another stereotype pushed by selective editing of history by another part of Europe that was waging a war to expand their empire against the 'barbarians' or 'savages'.
I don't, but some of the specific complaints are. For instance in another medium a non-american publication used the term 'red-line' in the context of pushing the boundaries of an engine to it's maximum and drew some ire due to the uniquely US historical use of the term...
Language and history are not universal. The downside of this kind of indiscriminate attempts at censorship of unrelated things is it harms your credibility and makes me leary of any form of 'hate' clause that would be heavily influenced by one culture.
It is an issue not limited to the US but in my limited experience predominantly so and many people seem to forget that context matters.
Again in fairness my exposure to these things may be the exception rather than the rule, I am not a voracious imbiber of all the interwebs have to offer. And I figured it was at least worth airing.
Reconcile this for me. Some of us here are no strangers to the purpose and consequence of real-world colonialism. Have firsthand experience with what happens when those with wealth and with privilege work real hard to "do their best" to replace how a community thinks with what it thinks is best for them. We are talking about an American multinational corporation, and I am old enough to remember when anyone with a sense of justice had little to no trust in such entities. But here you're insisting a panel of "experts" representing the interests of one such entity ought be granted global reach to decide what's best for players and publishers the world over. So you're saying anything in a game that might so much as risk promoting injustice in the real world needs to be dealt with but if that means here in the real world you've got to act like every imperialist jerk ever to walk the earth and deeply offend others that's just fine. Do I have that right?
First of all, maybe cool it with the antagonism.
What I think is that formalized policies to help protect the disenfranchised is a good thing, that'll be my thesis statement. I looked at the originally proposed 6F clause and thought that it was not implemented very well and was trying to think of alternatives, one of which was having some sort of body to oversee content and flag stuff that's harmful. Whether that would be the cultural consultants that they already employ or possibly some other group is something I was discussing, not deciding for everyone.
Either way, it all goes back to my opinion that formalized policies to help protect people is a good thing. What form that takes is still to be determined. I think most people think that a "morality clause" is not the way to go, including the OP. I think a more viable alternative, if we're talking about something like an OGL, is to establish a group that is meant to oversee that kind of thing.
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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!
Every culture has looted from others violently when push comes to shove over one resource or another at points in history. Vikings portrayed primarily as savage raiders is just another stereotype pushed by selective editing of history by another part of Europe that was waging a war to expand their empire against the 'barbarians' or 'savages'.
I would note that one of the easiest ways to have a certain group be the 'bad guys' is if the main way you encounter them is in the form of raiding parties -- the ones back at home might be perfectly fine people, but the ones burning down farmhouses so they can more easily search the ashes for gold are probably worthy of smiting.
This does, however, cause problems for dungeons, because, well, PCs going into dungeons to slaughter the inhabitants and come out with loot look an awful lot like a raiding party...
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1) Freedom of speech in that context refers to punishment by governments, not merely being held accountable by private citizens and platforms. You don't have total freedom of speech here on this forum either.
2) The CC is a form of disassociation, sure, but we have yet to see the effectiveness of that tested by true hate speech. It's possible an incident of some kind will arise between now and the creation of the 6e SRD, and if it does, that will likely have an impact on the license they choose to publish it under. I think they jumped the gun personally, but again SRD 5.1 was their property, so we'll have to wait and see.
Again, we know they are not humans, that's not the point. The point is that talking about people this way is hurtful because that same kind of language has been used against real peoples. If you accept my experience of how one portrayal of a fictional peoples is hurtful why don't you accept the experience of those who have said that the portrayal of orcs is hurtful in the same way? Can you not accept that some people can legitimately be hurt by that? There have been people who have posted on these very forums talking about how that portrayal hurt them or turned them off D&D and here is an author talking about orcs almost as a genre.
I have said many times before that I think everyone is racist, including myself. I think racism is endemic to the human condition, a weakness of the human brain that we are all susceptible to and something that we have to work against constantly. Being racist doesn't make you bad, because then everyone would be bad. Being racist just makes you human. Not doing what you can to uproot and fight against racist programming that we all get from society might be a moral mark against you, though.
"Being analogues for anyone in the real world" is so close yet not on the mark. The hurtful thing is that not we think orcs are stand ins for one particular real world group, it's that the language used about them mirrors language used against a real world group. If you changed that, of course things would be different. If you talked about orcs as just another group of people with self determination and a diverse range of cultures and behaviors, of course you could use orcs and they wouldn't be hurtful.
At the same time all PC's or playable peoples must be treated as analogue for their real world players because that is the vulnerability that in inherent in roleplaying.
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!
While you are correct that there is no way to make art that is 100% free of the possibility of hurting someone, there is something as taking reasonable precautions and doing due diligence to research one's material. Our standard and responsibility shouldn't be trying to make something that is 100% never going to harm someone, but rather to do our best to be sensitive to our audience. It's not like my feelings about the Nemoidians was unique, by the way, it was something that was noted by a lot of Asian Americans. It wasn't just a me thing.
I am very tired of people who cannot see or experience the kinds of things I have to put up with telling me I need to suck it up and take people for their intentions. Intentions do not absolve you from a responsibility to not go around hurting people. This is not the way.
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 can sympathise with your experiences, though as a white guy I obviously don't face much racism myself. Just as a hypothetical, however: if I wanted to include goblins and orcs in my games as clear and defined bad guys, whilst also avoiding any sort of depictions that have also been used to oppress real people, how would I? This is an issue I've had recently; I want to throw goblins and orcs at my players, without feeling like I'm contributing (for lack of a better word) to harmful stereotypes.
Feel free to ignore this. I don't want to come off as though I'm asking you (or anyone for that matter) to justify their existence. It's just an issue I've been thinking out recently.
[REDACTED]
And again, you have failed to read through the post you just commented on. This point has been brought up already.
[REDACTED]
You know, it is work on my part, but being asked to come up with productive ideas is a breath of fresh air compared to the combative and antagonistic tone of the rest of this thread. That being said, I think this question would be worth it's own thread. You can start it if you like, and I will participate.
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!
A new thread might be a good idea, but it's also worth addressing here so people can see it. There's a lot of nuance and getting-it-right that goes into the answer that's worth discussing, but the very shortest version is:
Make them bad guys because of their choices, not because of their natures. Maybe your bad-guy orcs and goblins are bandits from a more prosperous/upstanding nation nearby, or are defectors from a more professional and disciplined army. Whichever the eventual reason, if they're bad guys because they're bad guys and not because they're orcs or goblins, it goes a ways towards getting you out of the doghouse
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Building on this - give them a culture that is compelling. Let’s look at the traditional D&D orc - they were based on tribal societies. That historically meant beautiful oral traditions, various types of art such as totems, weaving, and jewellery. A rich and living culture beyond the “evil savages that are a threat to the civilised folks” that certain people want to paint them as.
Add to that a compelling reason for them to fight. Resource scarcity is always a good one—something forcing them into conflict because their traditional homelands are no longer habitable (also a great way to bring in a more interesting, higher level evil entity such as a demon, Elder Evil, etc., though simple changes in climate or their having overhunted could also work if you want to keep it relatively mundane).
Basically, just treat them as you would any other nation - a collection of individuals with a shared culture (but not always total agreement on how that culture should manifest). Don’t treat them as a mass of faceless evil and you’ll be doing better than most.
Having non-bad orcs and goblins as part of regular society elsewhere also helps to establish that they are not a monoculture.
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!
In all honesty, you may be able to enjoy a story like this, but many other players who may stumble across it if you publish it Online won't. The reason for this is because many of those people have to deal with racist and hurtful stereotypes like that in real life, and they don't necessarily want to encounter that when they are playing in a fantasy game and trying to take a break from the stressors in the real world.
Wanting to create content like this is understandable, but it should come with a trigger warning at a minimum, because it might not be safe for some people. Ultimately however, there are going to be things that are a lot worse than this published under the Open Game License without some form of an anti-bigotry clause. Third-party products like this would likely not be the ones that are "censored", but Open Game Content that attracted a lot more attention and hurt lots of people is way more likely to be modified or removed.
Also, you asked me earlier when I thought something should be removed or modified. In general, my answer is that something is considered hurtful when a sizable number of people (relative to how big the community in question is) are genuinely hurt by something. When situations like this arise, the product in question should usually be modified or altered to avoid hurting people, because taking a few minutes to make some minor tweaks in order to not harm others is always a valuable goal. With all this being said, there are situations that would prove exceptions to this rule, and that's why I think there should be some sort of panel or independent judge to settle these disputes.
You clearly didn't read very much then. In the very first post here, I talked about how the anti-bigotry measures didn't need to rely on the sole judgement of Wizards of the Coast. In a later post, I offered various suggestions on how to implement this clause without allowing it to be enforced by people who are extremely biased. It's understandable not to read that much before posting, but it is still really annoying. Please, if you have a point to bring to the discussion, it would be nice to see whether or not the point is actually relevent.
Also, it matters very much that this is not what we are discussing, since countering nonexistent points is the very definition of a strawman fallacy.
Thank you Sillva. I would like to echo this sentiment, since it has been quite depressing to see my thread descend into angry bickering, name calling, and rudeness.
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HERE.A doghouse constructed out of inferences many do not agree with.
You know, this explains so much about your position. I've spent a lot of time wondering why a trans women would be so vehimently in favor of a morality clause, and finding out that you had to go look up what a TERF makes it crystal clear.
You haven't been paying attention.
Morality laws, Obscentity laws, and morality and obscentity clauses are being weaponized against queer people, especially trans people EVERY FREAKING DAY in the US and UK. It's becoming fashionable to hate us again, and if you don't think that most corporations will follow that fashion, you haven't been paying attetion.
Hateful RPG content is going to happen. RaHoWa, Mayfarog, Star Frontiers: New Genesis, all happened without the OGL being involved, so no morality clause would have mattered. The Hadozeen came right from Wizards who you want to be the arbitars of morality in this case, the Gnolls in Kobold Press' Midgard setting happened under the OGL and are still being published to this day without any outcry or fix despite being straight up minstrel show stereotypes, so how could we expect a morality clause to matter when no one seems to care?
But we do have examples of Wizards stomping all over sexual content. The title they pulled from the DM's Guild for some vaguely homoerotic art. The Book of Erotic Fantasy, which Wizards completely flipped out about and made changes to their guidelines for using the D20 logo.
God, please, I am begging you to educate yourself on how this *ALWAYS* goes. Someone screams "think of the children" and we get the Hays code, or the Comic Code Authority. The list goes on and on, and in the end, the tools are never used to stop racist content, they are always turned into the tools of bigots to surprise the voices and expression of marginalized communities.
Racism is not a uniquely US problem but the perspective and dialogue about racism in the United States is unique.
It's also just a nonissue.
Can someone send me links to the droves upon droves of hateful D&D content that's being published en masse and so plentiful that I've just never managed to come across any of it in all my time of gaming? Because I sure would love to see it actually existing before we tie ourselves in knots deciding if we want to open up the can of worms that is editing the OGL in order to fix what may really be a nonissue.
Like - the 'hateful content' I've seen in gaming are things like... That one Nazi who managed to slip in some secret iconography and references to Nazi stuff in that White Wolf book, and they went to great lengths and costs to recall those books and fix it so that it didn't exist like that when they found out about it [another publisher, not even D&D] or like, the occasional out-of-date reference to how all Orcs are evil and now as a society we've kind of progressed past the idea that your race/species makes you inherently evil, but also literally no one would reasonably throw a fit about that especially since they already talked about how they're updating it for future versions of the game. These are the scant few instances of 'hateful content' that I've interacted with in the last few years, one of which literally was another publisher, and was instantly removed once discovered. That isn't a rats nest of hateful bigotry and disparaging content, that is a healthy community that already does PLENTY to pluck the weeds as they crop up - and they don't seem to need legal clauses to do it. They kinda just do it because it's the right thing to do anyway, from what I've noticed.
Vikings. If you want Orc and Goblin cultures that you can use as clear and defined bad guys, make them Vikings, and put your heroes in the role of a culture that was getting hit by Viking Raiders. Vikings had a rich, deep culture, they had loving familiar, a strong set of laws and standards of justice. They had art and technology and all the staples of civilication, and at the same time, they were a people who violently looted from others around them. You want clear, unambiguosly bad villains, without the "The whole race is evil" trope, make your Orc and Goblin badies Vikings. Then, have some Orcs and Goblins from a different culture fighting along side your heroes.
Every culture has looted from others violently when push comes to shove over one resource or another at points in history. Vikings portrayed primarily as savage raiders is just another stereotype pushed by selective editing of history by another part of Europe that was waging a war to expand their empire against the 'barbarians' or 'savages'.
I don't, but some of the specific complaints are. For instance in another medium a non-american publication used the term 'red-line' in the context of pushing the boundaries of an engine to it's maximum and drew some ire due to the uniquely US historical use of the term...
Language and history are not universal. The downside of this kind of indiscriminate attempts at censorship of unrelated things is it harms your credibility and makes me leary of any form of 'hate' clause that would be heavily influenced by one culture.
It is an issue not limited to the US but in my limited experience predominantly so and many people seem to forget that context matters.
Again in fairness my exposure to these things may be the exception rather than the rule, I am not a voracious imbiber of all the interwebs have to offer. And I figured it was at least worth airing.
First of all, maybe cool it with the antagonism.
What I think is that formalized policies to help protect the disenfranchised is a good thing, that'll be my thesis statement. I looked at the originally proposed 6F clause and thought that it was not implemented very well and was trying to think of alternatives, one of which was having some sort of body to oversee content and flag stuff that's harmful. Whether that would be the cultural consultants that they already employ or possibly some other group is something I was discussing, not deciding for everyone.
Either way, it all goes back to my opinion that formalized policies to help protect people is a good thing. What form that takes is still to be determined. I think most people think that a "morality clause" is not the way to go, including the OP. I think a more viable alternative, if we're talking about something like an OGL, is to establish a group that is meant to oversee that kind of thing.
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 would note that one of the easiest ways to have a certain group be the 'bad guys' is if the main way you encounter them is in the form of raiding parties -- the ones back at home might be perfectly fine people, but the ones burning down farmhouses so they can more easily search the ashes for gold are probably worthy of smiting.
This does, however, cause problems for dungeons, because, well, PCs going into dungeons to slaughter the inhabitants and come out with loot look an awful lot like a raiding party...