My argument is that such questions don't just miss akey difference between 'Dark' content and loathesome content, they miss the key difference. People want a definition of hateful content? I gave one in the post I wrote back to you - content which deliberately seeks to normalize, glorify, or otherwise celebrate actions, attitudes and behaviors that any reasonable person** understands would lead to the harm, ostracization, or diminishment of a group or people based on factors and circumstances of lifestyle, birth, or rearing, or content that is so grossly negligent in its construction as to result in the same end.
The word "deliberately" is critical there. As is the "Any Reasonable Person" wording - that's not "whichever random yaybo". 'Any Reasonable Person' is a well-defined legal term/standard used in a lot of cases like this which fundamentally rely on subjective judgment. In short (and Caerwyn, if I have this wrong please let me know and correct me), 'Any Reasonable Person' is a standard that seeks to take into account the average opinion of an average citizen of the region in which the prospective offense took place, as understood through polling, news, and other means of gauging the collective opinion of an area. Regardless, that's the key differentiator. 'Dark' content, which utilizes horrible themes that are given their due gravity and diligence, does not seek to normalize or glorify such actions, attitudes, or behaviors. Even when the horrible themes are considered 'normal' within the world.
Everybody's favorite example is Athas, the world of Dark Sun, where slavery, cannibalism, tyranny, and general awfulness are all considered the average norm. Arguments against constraints on hate like to say that Athas/Dark Sun would not be possible in a D&D where hateful content was restricted. Here's the thing - Athas is not held up as a shining example of a splendid world we should all aspire to. Athas is portrayed as a burned, dying miserable hellscape and an absolutely horrible place to live. Athas/Dark Sun is not hateful content, it is dark content. Those two are not and have never been the same thing. Nor even all that close, to be honest. I love dark content, I'm all in on shit like Grim Hollow and Van Richten's Guide. I think that stuff can make for incredible stories.
It's one of the reasons why I get so angry when bad-faith jerks try to use dark content as a shield for hateful content. Those two DO NOT COMPARE, they NEVER HAVE, and even the most basic understanding of how hate works should be enough to make that distinction. But I keep seeing the same damn argument over and over and over.
I have been told in other threads that I am a bad person because if something offends or hurts even one person then we should not allow it. That you are not offended by Dark Sun doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't be.
So, if someone told you that the racism and slavery of the Dark Sun setting were hurtful to them, would you be okay with Dark Sun being banned/cancelled?
Why/how is that different from the EVIL god Gruumsh using his godly powers to create a species of sentient evil creatures - Orcs? We are NOT holding the Forgotten Realms, orcs or Gruumsh up as a shining example of how the world should be, but those of us who defend having evil orcs are called racist.
It seems like, as long as it's something you like, it's okay.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
My argument is that such questions don't just miss akey difference between 'Dark' content and loathesome content, they miss the key difference. People want a definition of hateful content? I gave one in the post I wrote back to you - content which deliberately seeks to normalize, glorify, or otherwise celebrate actions, attitudes and behaviors that any reasonable person** understands would lead to the harm, ostracization, or diminishment of a group or people based on factors and circumstances of lifestyle, birth, or rearing, or content that is so grossly negligent in its construction as to result in the same end.
The word "deliberately" is critical there. As is the "Any Reasonable Person" wording - that's not "whichever random yaybo". 'Any Reasonable Person' is a well-defined legal term/standard used in a lot of cases like this which fundamentally rely on subjective judgment. In short (and Caerwyn, if I have this wrong please let me know and correct me), 'Any Reasonable Person' is a standard that seeks to take into account the average opinion of an average citizen of the region in which the prospective offense took place, as understood through polling, news, and other means of gauging the collective opinion of an area. Regardless, that's the key differentiator. 'Dark' content, which utilizes horrible themes that are given their due gravity and diligence, does not seek to normalize or glorify such actions, attitudes, or behaviors. Even when the horrible themes are considered 'normal' within the world.
Everybody's favorite example is Athas, the world of Dark Sun, where slavery, cannibalism, tyranny, and general awfulness are all considered the average norm. Arguments against constraints on hate like to say that Athas/Dark Sun would not be possible in a D&D where hateful content was restricted. Here's the thing - Athas is not held up as a shining example of a splendid world we should all aspire to. Athas is portrayed as a burned, dying miserable hellscape and an absolutely horrible place to live. Athas/Dark Sun is not hateful content, it is dark content. Those two are not and have never been the same thing. Nor even all that close, to be honest. I love dark content, I'm all in on shit like Grim Hollow and Van Richten's Guide. I think that stuff can make for incredible stories.
It's one of the reasons why I get so angry when bad-faith jerks try to use dark content as a shield for hateful content. Those two DO NOT COMPARE, they NEVER HAVE, and even the most basic understanding of how hate works should be enough to make that distinction. But I keep seeing the same damn argument over and over and over.
I have been told in other threads that I am a bad person because if something offends or hurts even one person then we should not allow it. That you are not offended by Dark Sun doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't be.
So, if someone told you that the racism and slavery of the Dark Sun setting were hurtful to them, would you be okay with Dark Sun being banned/cancelled?
Why/how is that different from the EVIL god Gruumsh using his godly powers to create a species of sentient evil creatures - Orcs? We are NOT holding the Forgotten Realms, orcs or Gruumsh up as a shining example of how the world should be, but those of us who defend having evil orcs are called racist.
It seems like, as long as it's something you like, it's okay.
Easy distinction: The idea of strictly evil orcs comes from the fact that Gary Gygax was a racist who believed that tribal cultures were evil and deserved to be genocided. They ran with that in Forgotten Realms because that’s just “how it always was” - it doesn’t change the fact that it was born of racism.
Lots of folks don’t know this about Orcs - they assume Gygax just took the “they’re always evil” from Tolkien and run with that (it should be noted, Tolkien specifically tied the orcs to the corrupted West of WWI; it was Gygax who added all the tribalism and “here are stats for killing baby orcs during a genocide” and “let me quote a guy ordering the genocide of Native Americans when asked how a ‘lawful good’ character should approach orcs”). Which is fine to think in the absence of additional information - it is ignorant and wrong, bit being ignorant of something just means one hasn’t learned about it yet. Ignorance only becomes a problem when someone learns the truth and wilfully chooses to double down on ignorance instead of changing their perspective.
It also is why slavery as a concept is not going anywhere in D&D. Adding slavery to a world does not make that world racist. It might offend people who are sensitive to those things, but it only becomes racist when it either is willfull yea it’s (as with Gygax and orcs) or so negligent that someone should have caught that the context would seem incredibly racist (such as Hadozee and using almost word-for-word statements from pre-Civil War slaveholders to justify the Hadozee’s enslavement).
But, of course, you know this. You know that Gygax was hardly a saint and that twisted orcs to be racist because you have been informed of this before. You know that there is something fundamentally different between intentional and strongly negligent racism and dealing with a complex topic.
Okay, so what would a realistic, useful method look like for protecting the community, the brand, and content creators look like? If we're going to argue that sort of clause is required, then we should at least try to come up with some useful ideas.
I think at a minimum there should/could be a set of guidelines for any content creator to follow.
Ironically, any attempt to do something like this, even with numerous examples, numerous rules, and even anindependent appeals board to judge rejections, will make it less likely that certain content will ever be published under any OGL with that kind of clause. This includes things that may be considered by many, including myself, as racist, sexist homophobic etc but also things that include things like body horror, sexual themes, and LGBTQ content. The reason for this is obvious: merely by including a 'moral clause' you change the risk/reward calculation tremendously for these 3PPs.
MY THOUGHTS: Interesting thought process here. I was just running a module in which several of the characters were on the LGBTQ spectrum. I have absolutely no problem with that (except for the fact that a character that was always one gender before is now identified as a different gender and it is inconsistent in the setting), but would that not offend a lot of people who are not for the LGBTQ lifestyle? Same module gave character pronouns. In America right now, that will offend someone. I will leave the question of if they should be offended out of the conversation, but with the 'moral clause' would that material be allowed to be published?
Now people will vehemently insist that this will never happen or be extremely unlikely. I don't necessarily agree with that but regardless what you or I think, we're not the ones putting hundreds of hours and emotional investments, not to mention our livings, at stake. It's every 3PP who has to look at a morals clause and wonder how much they're willing to risk. So merely by having a clause like this, no matter how well intentioned, you will eliminate a lot of this content by default without ever having to actually invoke the clause.
Maybe I'm wrong but just imagine a certain segment of the media that has a certain take on everything from M&M advertising mascots to XBox power savings options picking up on an OGL product called, for instance, "Thirsty Sword Lesbians." Now imagine you were the 3PP ready to publish that and you're trying to calculate the risk of releasing it under an OGL with this cause. I would think we would agree that 3PP will be nervous about it at best and probably just not publish it (at least under OGL) at worst.
Looking at all of these threads, I think that had WotC included the 'reasonable person' standard, and allowed for correction of the offensive content and/or allowed the 3PP to contest their decisions in court if it became obvious they were just abusing their power many fewer people would have had an issue with the clause. Some still would, but then as you've pointed out before there will always be people who only want power and will argue in bad faith for their position on whichever side of an argument they are on.
Heh.
Man.
If only folks like Caerwyn and I were on record as saying that 6f, as written, was over-broad and provided Wizards with too much leeway to act rashly and the clause needed to be revised in the next draft of 1.2 before the document was acceptable.
You sound like you might be willing to listen to some honest well meant feedback, so I'll try my best at it. I generally avoid personal engagement on the internet when people are getting heated about a topic, my experience is that it isn't helpful and makes people feel attacked, which isn't something I want to do. I'll address the two things you said that I have bolded because the stood out to me in reverse order.
You clearly have very strong opinions in favor of Wotc having the ability to censor arbitrary material they don't like. I find the majority of you posts on the topic have a very strident tone and generally feel very hostile towards anyone who disagrees with you in anyway. I am not very familiar with this forum, I'm only a reluctant user of dndbeyond at all because some great people I play with wanted to use it for remote campaigns during the pandemic. It does its job well enough for that, but I don't know how to work any features very well because I have only used it when my group asked me to for character sheets. Because wotc seemed to be using it as their official communication platform when the whole ogl revision thing blew up, I started actually paying attention to these forums. There may be some way to just ignore users on the forums but if there is I am ignorant of how this feature works for dnd beyond. [REDACTED]. I haven't learned anything by trying to read and understand them I just see the same things repeated over and over in the same hostile tone. The post i'm replying to is the first thing by you I have read that feels like it has some humility and empathy, which makes me willing to take a chance and try to respond. I haven't been filling your inbox with angry denunciations, I don't use slurs awful or otherwise (is there even any other kind?), but I have generally found your positions ill considered and your posts hateful in tone and more offensive with each repetition. Some percentage of humanity does respond to offense with awful slurs, which I suspect is where your inbox problem is coming from. I believe you don't intend to be actively hateful, but some reflection and an effort to put more empathy into what you write on the internet may help you avoid feeling deliberately hateful to those who read your words.
Back to the first point I bolded, you favor giving wotc the power to censor arbitrary content by third parties. I would not frame this as suppressing the little guy, although it is very common for the little guy to feel the worst effects of such a power. You seem to think that given such a power Wotc would only use it to suppress people who are "bad' in some way that not even you can define, but you feel confident you would agree with. I am aware of no historical examples of such a power being used responsibly and every time this argument comes up people cite relevant examples of it being abused (the Hays code comes up frequently for example), to the detriment of the little guy, which is why a reasonable person might frame your arguments as being in favor of suppressing the little guy.
Sigh.
Okay.
First of all: ignoring someone on DDB. It's actually very easy. Hover your mouse over the name of the person you want to ignore on one of their posts, and you'll get a drop-down message with options for interacting with that user. One of the options is "Ignore User", at the bottom. Click it and you won't see that user's posts directly anymore. You will still see them when someone else quotes them so it's not a perfect shield, but it's something. Here (note I am not ignoring Caerwyn, I just used his name because I couldn't demonstrate with my own name and using the name of someone else I'm arguing with seemed in very poor taste. Sorry, Caerwyn):
Second of all. I do have very strong opinions on the matter. I believe hate should not be spread. A lot of people say that there's no need for any sort of controls on the matter because hateful content is self-defeating, i.e. "nobody will buy this garbage". They say that hate is unprofitable and cannot spread if people of good conscience don't allow it to do so.
I'm sorry. Years of social media, years of fighting the same fight dozens of times over on this board, years of being a citizen of the Internet in general? They've all taught me that I cannot trust "people of good conscience". People Of Good Conscience are dramatically outnumbered by - since I'm not allowed to use colorful invective without people snarling at me over it - we'll call them "People of Bad Conscience." With all the vicious backlash against the LGBT+ community these days, do you think there's not a market for D&D adventures where a party of rebellious straight characters defeat the Gay Overlord or some other such garbage? I am 100% convinced that such a book, were it made with any degree of production quality, would absolutely find a market and sell well, and that would be to the detriment of everyone else who loves this hobby.
Do I think Clause 6f was acceptable as written? No. I would've liked to see an "Any Reasonable Person" standard applied to any form of veto Wizards retained over third-party content, since such a standard would've taken much of the decision out of Wizards' hands. The onus would be on Wizards, in any court case (and no, I did not agree with the whole "you can't sue us" bit, nor do I think that was actually enforceable), to prove that the content they dislicensed would have been considered hateful by an Any Reasonable Person standard, which would remove their ability to cut third-party content for any reasonb they wished and simply lie and call it "hateful content". Which struck me as the thing people were most afraid of - Wizards using 6f as a blanket hammer against anything they saw as too successful or too competitive. Some of the community calls to replace a negative system (i.e. striking down hateful content) and replace it with a positive one (i.e. applying an "Inclusive Content" badge to works that passed inspection) are not without merit, either. I think a lot of smaller third-party creators wouldn't like such a system, since it invariably involves more expenses attached to a product that already has pretty slim margins, but it's not without merit.
I do not and cannot, however, agree that nothing is the right amount of protection against the spread of hate. I am not a student of history, I cannot speak to things like the Hayes Code, and I do not doubt that bungling the implementation has a good chance of doing more harm than good. I'm just confused and concerned as to why so many people seem to believe that doing absolutely nothing, allowing hate to be published and sold absolutely freely without even so much as a single "no don't" tweet,won't ALSO end up doing more harm than good. And because I'm me, i.e. a spicy Internet ***** with a ferocious temper and a thing for writing, I put a lot of words on the Internet to that effect.
I'm sorry I've caused you distress. If it's any consolation, I've been getting raked over the coals for the last two, two and a half weeks over this whole mess. Nevertheless. Go ahead and put me on Ignore, and if you need to try and figure out a website function in the future feel free to PM a mod, or most any user with a thousand or more posts. They'll help get you sorted.
The onus would be on Wizards, in any court case (and no, I did not agree with the whole "you can't sue us" bit, nor do I think that was actually enforceable), to prove that the content they dislicensed would have been considered hateful by an Any Reasonable Person standard, which would remove their ability to cut third-party content for any reasonb they wished and simply lie and call it "hateful content".
The problem with that is that Hasbro/WotC has billions of dollars and expensive lawyers. The majority of 3PPs would simply never be able to afford taking them to court to contest having their license revoked.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Your suggestion doesn't seem to allow for the nuances of some ideas if the panel is only made of sensitivity and cultural experts.
Wait, who else are we supposed to refer to with questions about a subject if not the experts? We are now debating about a lot of definitions and scenarios, but it's not like most of us have spent time and effort studying the subject, though I do have some on the job experience with DEI. Wouldn't it make sense for this matter to be overseen by people who have? It would be like fast forwarding through all of this useless arguing on the internet because they've already been through it and have some backing from whatever body of knowledge that humanity has already collected on it.
Who else would you suggest putting on this panel?
My fear is that such a panel will decree "X" to be racist even though that thing might not be racist, or the application of it in story can be justified.
1) Why do you fear this, specifically? 2) What is your working definition of racism?
We disagree fundamentally on some of these definitions of what constitutes racist, hated, or bigotry. There seems to be an assumption in these threads that there is a consensus on these things and there's not, or that one group has a consensus and assume they are right.
I mean sure there's some disagreement on some things, but generally when we want to learn something we go to the people and institutions that study such things. For me I would point to something like the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a starting point. Then there are other groups who have made it their focus to study things like racism, many of them having a vested interest in understanding it because they represent groups who suffer from it, so it makes sense that they'd want to understand it well, like the NAACP for example. And then you have legal groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, who study racism and bigotry because they deal with such cases in the legal system. Even the Wikipedia article on Racism is pretty well cited and links to other resources, which is a decent place to start researching the topic.
While there may still be some grey areas around the edges, there is a pretty general consensus among people who study racism that it is systemic discrimination against people for perceived racial differences. And even for me I struggled for awhile coming to an understanding of that "systemic" part.
I don't know what you mean by "one group" because who else is there besides those who make an effort to study the subject?
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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!
My argument is that such questions don't just miss akey difference between 'Dark' content and loathesome content, they miss the key difference. People want a definition of hateful content? I gave one in the post I wrote back to you - content which deliberately seeks to normalize, glorify, or otherwise celebrate actions, attitudes and behaviors that any reasonable person** understands would lead to the harm, ostracization, or diminishment of a group or people based on factors and circumstances of lifestyle, birth, or rearing, or content that is so grossly negligent in its construction as to result in the same end.
The word "deliberately" is critical there. As is the "Any Reasonable Person" wording - that's not "whichever random yaybo". 'Any Reasonable Person' is a well-defined legal term/standard used in a lot of cases like this which fundamentally rely on subjective judgment. In short (and Caerwyn, if I have this wrong please let me know and correct me), 'Any Reasonable Person' is a standard that seeks to take into account the average opinion of an average citizen of the region in which the prospective offense took place, as understood through polling, news, and other means of gauging the collective opinion of an area. Regardless, that's the key differentiator. 'Dark' content, which utilizes horrible themes that are given their due gravity and diligence, does not seek to normalize or glorify such actions, attitudes, or behaviors. Even when the horrible themes are considered 'normal' within the world.
Everybody's favorite example is Athas, the world of Dark Sun, where slavery, cannibalism, tyranny, and general awfulness are all considered the average norm. Arguments against constraints on hate like to say that Athas/Dark Sun would not be possible in a D&D where hateful content was restricted. Here's the thing - Athas is not held up as a shining example of a splendid world we should all aspire to. Athas is portrayed as a burned, dying miserable hellscape and an absolutely horrible place to live. Athas/Dark Sun is not hateful content, it is dark content. Those two are not and have never been the same thing. Nor even all that close, to be honest. I love dark content, I'm all in on shit like Grim Hollow and Van Richten's Guide. I think that stuff can make for incredible stories.
It's one of the reasons why I get so angry when bad-faith jerks try to use dark content as a shield for hateful content. Those two DO NOT COMPARE, they NEVER HAVE, and even the most basic understanding of how hate works should be enough to make that distinction. But I keep seeing the same damn argument over and over and over.
I have been told in other threads that I am a bad person because if something offends or hurts even one person then we should not allow it. That you are not offended by Dark Sun doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't be.
So, if someone told you that the racism and slavery of the Dark Sun setting were hurtful to them, would you be okay with Dark Sun being banned/cancelled?
Why/how is that different from the EVIL god Gruumsh using his godly powers to create a species of sentient evil creatures - Orcs? We are NOT holding the Forgotten Realms, orcs or Gruumsh up as a shining example of how the world should be, but those of us who defend having evil orcs are called racist.
It seems like, as long as it's something you like, it's okay.
Easy distinction: The idea of strictly evil orcs comes from the fact that Gary Gygax was a racist who believed that tribal cultures were evil and deserved to be genocided. They ran with that in Forgotten Realms because that’s just “how it always was” - it doesn’t change the fact that it was born of racism.
Lots of folks don’t know this about Orcs - they assume Gygax just took the “they’re always evil” from Tolkien and run with that (it should be noted, Tolkien specifically tied the orcs to the corrupted West of WWI; it was Gygax who added all the tribalism and “here are stats for killing baby orcs during a genocide” and “let me quote a guy ordering the genocide of Native Americans when asked how a ‘lawful good’ character should approach orcs”). Which is fine to think in the absence of additional information - it is ignorant and wrong, bit being ignorant of something just means one hasn’t learned about it yet. Ignorance only becomes a problem when someone learns the truth and wilfully chooses to double down on ignorance instead of changing their perspective.
It also is why slavery as a concept is not going anywhere in D&D. Adding slavery to a world does not make that world racist. It might offend people who are sensitive to those things, but it only becomes racist when it either is willfull yea it’s (as with Gygax and orcs) or so negligent that someone should have caught that the context would seem incredibly racist (such as Hadozee and using almost word-for-word statements from pre-Civil War slaveholders to justify the Hadozee’s enslavement).
But, of course, you know this. You know that Gygax was hardly a saint and that twisted orcs to be racist because you have been informed of this before. You know that there is something fundamentally different between intentional and strongly negligent racism and dealing with a complex topic.
I have not seen these things about Gygax you are saying here, but even if it were true that Gygax's orcs were based on racist beliefs, that doesn't mean that the concept of a fictional evil god creating a fictional evil sentient species is racist. The two can be mutually exclusive.
The point about Orcs is that people have now drawn a line in the sand saying they are racist because of some cultural baggage (some of it legitimate, some of it not), but if you take the concept, and give them different names so that there is no cultural baggage, are they suddenly okay?
If I create a new D&D monster called the Crona, and say that they were created be an evil mad wizard as an evil species of warriors to take over the world, is that now okay, or is it still racist?
Is it the idea of a fictional species all being evil, or is it just orcs?
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
October, that is irrelevant to this discussion. Leave your longstanding pet peeve at the door, nobody is talking about the stupid ******* Genetically Evil thing. I tried to give you what you've been constantly demanding through this entire ordeal - a definition of what qualifies as hateful content. True to form, you immediately twisted it, clawed at it, and tried to deform it into support for your constant constant constant constant constant CONSTANT!!!! harping on and on and on and on about the Genetically Evil Orcs thing.
It. Is. Not. Relevant. You wanna genocide all the green people in your game, do it up. Murder every last single living creature on the face of Faerun that isn't human. You have my explicit permission to do whatever you like at your table. I don't understand why you need my permission but apparently you need the entirety of the D&D community to give you permission to genocide the green people. If it gets you to shut up about it and stop trrying to wrench this and every other thread off course, you can have mine. Only however-many-million D&D players left to go.
October, that is irrelevant to this discussion. Leave your longstanding pet peeve at the door, nobody is talking about the stupid ******* Genetically Evil thing. I tried to give you what you've been constantly demanding through this entire ordeal - a definition of what qualifies as hateful content. True to form, you immediately twisted it, clawed at it, and tried to deform it into support for your constant constant constant constant constant CONSTANT!!!! harping on and on and on and on about the Genetically Evil Orcs thing.
It. Is. Not. Relevant. You wanna genocide all the green people in your game, do it up. Murder every last single living creature on the face of Faerun that isn't human. You have my explicit permission to do whatever you like at your table. I don't understand why you need my permission but apparently you need the entirety of the D&D community to give you permission to genocide the green people. If it gets you to shut up about it and stop trrying to wrench this and every other thread off course, you can have mine. Only however-many-million D&D players left to go.
It is relevant if a 3PP wants to create a product compatible with D&D that has a species that is all evil in it. According to you and others, that constitutes racism, and I would infer that with a morality clause you would expect that such a product would be denied by WotC.
That we disagree fundamentally on whether or not that constitutes racism is core to the issue of having such a clause.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
If I create a new D&D monster called the Crona, and say that they were created be an evil mad wizard as an evil species of warriors to take over the world, is that now okay, or is it still racist?
Is it the idea of a fictional species all being evil, or is it just orcs?
Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. ... We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do. ...
Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we’ve not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show—working with a Romani consultant—the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.
So as you can see the standing attitude of Wizards of the Coast, at least for their own material, is that anyone to be regarded as people are to have their own self determination and morality and not have an alignment forced on them as an intrinsic thing that is out of their choice. And also, at least to me, the standard that is applied is whether or not something echoes depictions of real life people. So it's not about what the author intended, but whether or not it could come off to people reading it as being people.
So that's the standard that I think we come in to this scenario with: Does your fictional species come off to others as people, and if so, do you allow them the choice of their own alignment? If the answers are yes and no, in that order, then you have a problem.
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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!
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.
If such a panel isn't to consist of people from different cultures—provided the hobby does—and isn't to allow room for nuance and to be impartial then it is about as trustworthy as a Soviet "people's court."
Yes, I can agree with that.
What is my working definition of racism? It is anything that reduces anyone to the color of his or her skin or to his or her ethnicity. Why? Because that is an affront to the very notion of human dignity. What is yours?
Generally like I posted above, "systemic discrimination against people for perceived racial differences." Which is actually a definition I struggled with for awhile, because for a long time I came from the place of the dictionary definition of purely just discrimination against someone for their race. It was only after long discussions with people from various other disenfranchised groups that I came to understand the importance and significance of both the "systemic" part as well as the "perceived" part.
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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!
If I create a new D&D monster called the Crona, and say that they were created be an evil mad wizard as an evil species of warriors to take over the world, is that now okay, or is it still racist?
Is it the idea of a fictional species all being evil, or is it just orcs?
Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. ... We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do. ...
Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we’ve not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show—working with a Romani consultant—the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.
So as you can see the standing attitude of Wizards of the Coast, at least for their own material, is that anyone to be regarded as people are to have their own self determination and morality and not have an alignment forced on them as an intrinsic thing that is out of their choice. And also, at least to me, the standard that is applied is whether or not something echoes depictions of real life people. So it's not about what the author intended, but whether or not it could come off to people reading it as being people.
So that's the standard that I think we come in to this scenario with: Does your fictional species come off to others as people, and if so, do you allow them the choice of their own alignment? If the answers are yes and no, in that order, then you have a problem.
I am considering them a sentient species. Does that make them people? What are people? Do I see them as analogues for humans? No.
I also disagree with WotCs statement about Orcs and Drow. Despite their statement, I have not been convinced. It seems to me the problem isn't that orcs and drow are "people" in some special way, but that players have come to identify themselves with these fictional species, and anthropomorphized them into something that weren't.
Are bugbears people? Kobolds? Mind Flayers? Perytons (Int 9)? Rakshasas? At what point does something become a "person"? Is it only when enough people start cosplaying it, or drawing art of it in personal ways? Is it not a person unless someone identifies with it, and then it becomes a "person".
We're talking about a game were literal Evil and Good exist as tangible things that can inhabit something.
I believe that you can play a game with concepts that are not analogues for the real world, and that you can tell the difference between them.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
MY THOUGHTS: Interesting thought process here. I was just running a module in which several of the characters were on the LGBTQ spectrum. I have absolutely no problem with that (except for the fact that a character that was always one gender before is now identified as a different gender and it is inconsistent in the setting), but would that not offend a lot of people who are not for the LGBTQ lifestyle? Same module gave character pronouns. In America right now, that will offend someone. I will leave the question of if they should be offended out of the conversation, but with the 'moral clause' would that material be allowed to be published?
On, the now defunct 1.2's, paper? Yes they absolutely would have. The clause's definition was so broad and its restrictions (agreeing not to contest it in anyway including lawsuit or arbitration) so onerous that what's 'hateful' could literally anything that Hasbro wanted. For example, A dirtbag cousin-in-law called me a misogynist because I posted something on Facebook mocking anti-trans bathroom bills. I bring this up to show that even 'inclusive' beliefs and statements can be twisted around and used to fall under 'hateful' and the like.
Now, as people have noted, the odds of Hasbro doing something like this are low judging by the make up of their player base and the years they've spent trying to make the game more inclusive. But the odds are not impossible. Beyond some uh...questionablecontent that Wizards themselves put out there was an incident where they took down LGBTQ oriented content from DM's Guild which is much more restrictive license than OGL.
Again, what you or I think what Wizards would do is a lot less relevant than what the 3pp who put out that module you used would think. They would have to look at the risk of having that kind of clause used against them. If they feel the risk is too great they won't spend a lot of time creating something that they're afraid will be nuked. They'll just make it for another system entirely with an actual open license or just not make it at all. This (sadly) also goes for other fringe stuff like body horror, sexual themes, and (less sadly) products that could be considered bigoted by large segments of the population though I note again I haven't really heard of any blatantly bigoted product made under the OGL in the past 23 years that caused a stir though it's certainly possible some were made that flew under the radar.
So while the flip side of the coin is that there may be 3PP of LGBTQ content that may feel more safe with the clause in there, the fact remains if it's merely included, in any form broad or restrictive, you've changed that risk/reward calculation for any 3PP and probably reduced the potential amount of 3PP content. The only real way to know for sure is if such a clause is included in 1DnD/6e and we can try and measure the amount of 3PP that ends up getting published under it. Still, my gut is that 3PPs of this kind of content would just not bother or go to another system.
One of WotC's stated goals for the new OGL was to be able to stop hateful conduct. Then they put in a bunch of other stuff that literally no one liked. When people pushed back on the stuff no one liked, they decided to reverse on EVERYTHING, and actually released their SRD content under a much more permissible license. So, let me ask a question: how much did WotC actually care care about hateful conduct in the first place?
I mentioned this in the other thread, that they could have released an OGL that only added a hateful conduct provision. Even without unauthorizing previous OGLs, this new one could have been a signal to the publishers, and consumers (and broader community) that they DO care about hateful content, and would have provided buyers with a "hate-free" content label to help people make better decisions about their purchases. Even if they couldn't legally stop someone from making hateful content under OGL 1.0a, at least they could help drive their vision and ideals in the market place.
But, it seems that the hateful conduct wasn't actually that important to the company. They wanted the other stuff in the OGL just as bad if not more, and when they couldn't get it, they tossed the baby out with the bathwater.
----
If you truly believe that such a provision is needed to stop hate against marginalized folks, then you have to be able to see that WotC failed their test to uphold those ideals. The VERY FIRST TIME it came up against their bottom line they decided it wasn't worth fighting for.
Now we're at a point where even if they had a permissible OGL with such a provision, it's pretty clear that WotC shouldn't be the stewards of what is considered hateful content. Probably no corporation should. I'm sure plenty of employees want what is best for marginalized people, but corporations are beholden to profits above all else, and it's not difficult to envision a situation where such power is used against their original stated purpose because it would be better for their bottom line.
I'm not against some independent expert group determining what is hateful content and forcing WotC and 3PP to be beholden to their ruling, but it's pretty difficult to imagine WotC (or any company) ceding that kind of control to a council that they have no power over.
One of WotC's stated goals for the new OGL was to be able to stop hateful conduct. Then they put in a bunch of other stuff that literally no one liked. When people pushed back on the stuff no one liked, they decided to reverse on EVERYTHING, and actually released their SRD content under a much more permissible license. So, let me ask a question: how much did WotC actually care care about hateful conduct in the first place?
I mentioned this in the other thread, that they could have released an OGL that only added a hateful conduct provision. Even without unauthorizing previous OGLs, this new one could have been a signal to the publishers, and consumers (and broader community) that they DO care about hateful content, and would have provided buyers with a "hate-free" content label to help people make better decisions about their purchases. Even if they couldn't legally stop someone from making hateful content under OGL 1.0a, at least they could help drive their vision and ideals in the market place.
But, it seems that the hateful conduct wasn't actually that important to the company. They wanted the other stuff in the OGL just as bad if not more, and when they couldn't get it, they tossed the baby out with the bathwater.
----
If you truly believe that such a provision is needed to stop hate against marginalized folks, then you have to be able to see that WotC failed their test to uphold those ideals. The VERY FIRST TIME it came up against their bottom line they decided it wasn't worth fighting for.
Now we're at a point where even if they had a permissible OGL with such a provision, it's pretty clear that WotC shouldn't be the stewards of what is considered hateful content. Probably no corporation should. I'm sure plenty of employees want what is best for marginalized people, but corporations are beholden to profits above all else, and it's not difficult to envision a situation where such power is used against their original stated purpose because it would be better for their bottom line.
I'm not against some independent expert group determining what is hateful content and forcing WotC and 3PP to be beholden to their ruling, but it's pretty difficult to imagine WotC (or any company) ceding that kind of control to a council that they have no power over.
Exactly this. WotC/Hasbro threw the Anti-Hate platform under the bus without a second thought. If they truly cared, they wouldn't have decided to leave it to us to police each other.
This was a ploy from the beginning to try to build support for 1.1 and 1.2, or to split the community that was protesting.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Just for the record to the people saying this was a ploy or whatever I think there are to possibilities:
1) Hasbro are a bunch of bumbling idiots who made a ton of bumbling idiotic moves that forced their hand into doing the opposite of their original intent.
2) Hasbro are a bunch of sneaky brilliant bastards who were willing to make themelves look like bumbling idiots in order to make a bunch of people on YouTube and the rest of the internet argue with them as well as each other.
I have to tell you, I'll never know for sure but I'm going to say #1 is the more likely possibility.
So that's the standard that I think we come in to this scenario with: Does your fictional species come off to others as people, and if so, do you allow them the choice of their own alignment? If the answers are yes and no, in that order, then you have a problem.
I am considering them a sentient species. Does that make them people? What are people? Do I see them as analogues for humans? No.
So again my bar there was "Do they come off as people to others?" Generally if you're calling them sentient then I would think most audiences would think of them as people, just like we think of Vulcans, Klingons, Elves, Dwarves, and Dragonborn as people. Do we think they are human? No, but we do think of them as people. Also, generally as soon as something is playable by a player, they basically have to be treated as people, because they act as vehicles for people and we have to treat them as such.
I also disagree with WotCs statement about Orcs and Drow. Despite their statement, I have not been convinced. It seems to me the problem isn't that orcs and drow are "people" in some special way, but that players have come to identify themselves with these fictional species, and anthropomorphized them into something that weren't.
So you basically disagree with the fundamental premise that orcs and drow are people? Hmm ... that's a pretty fundamental difference. I mean what's the difference? Do you only think humans are people? Like, do you not include dwarves and elves and gnomes and dragonborn as people?
Are bugbears people? Kobolds? Mind Flayers? Perytons (Int 9)? Rakshasas? At what point does something become a "person"? Is it only when enough people start cosplaying it, or drawing art of it in personal ways? Is it not a person unless someone identifies with it, and then it becomes a "person".
Part of this is of course purely definitional. WOTC has defined orcs and drow as people, which they have every right to as the creators of the content. The rest is pretty highly philosophical, which I have no problem getting into a someone who has about two classes short of a philosophy minor, but I gotta say it's a conversation that gets pretty into the weeds of philosophy of thought and ethics of personhood.
We're talking about a game were literal Evil and Good exist as tangible things that can inhabit something.
Sorta? I mean in 5E they have those extra planar beings to represent those forces, but they moved back from the various people having mechanically discernible alignments, so again it comes down to personhood.
I believe that you can play a game with concepts that are not analogues for the real world, and that you can tell the difference between them.
Sure, and I agree. But being able to tell the difference doesn't mean that it can't harm people to have their traumas echoed back at them. And the relevant discussion is not about highly personal, "go see your therapist" traumas. It's about traumas that target entire groups of people over centuries. I don't know how to explain to you if you've never experienced it, but the kind of real world denigration that they talk about in that Diversity and Dragons statement isn't even something you feel like you can talk it out and get over as a personal thing because it's so pervasive and incessant. I know for me that statement was an almost physical relief. I knew it didn't fix everything, but it was a statement of solidarity and a commitment to change in ways that would make the game, and the community, safer and more comfortable for me to exist in.
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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!
The new announcement that Wizards of the Coast is going to roll with Open Game License 1.0 as is honestly disappoints me. The reason for this is that 1.0 has no clause that prevents hate, racism, and bigoted works from being released under the License. 1.0 effectively provides bigots with a shield, because they are publishing under an official legal permission that grants them the right to do what they want with a lot of D&D content.
...
You have it backwards. The shield that allows "bigots" to publish whatever they want is called a Bill of Rights. A morality clause in a publishing license would instead be a hammer to attack whomever the publisher deems immoral that uses their license.
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“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
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I have been told in other threads that I am a bad person because if something offends or hurts even one person then we should not allow it. That you are not offended by Dark Sun doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't be.
So, if someone told you that the racism and slavery of the Dark Sun setting were hurtful to them, would you be okay with Dark Sun being banned/cancelled?
Why/how is that different from the EVIL god Gruumsh using his godly powers to create a species of sentient evil creatures - Orcs? We are NOT holding the Forgotten Realms, orcs or Gruumsh up as a shining example of how the world should be, but those of us who defend having evil orcs are called racist.
It seems like, as long as it's something you like, it's okay.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Easy distinction: The idea of strictly evil orcs comes from the fact that Gary Gygax was a racist who believed that tribal cultures were evil and deserved to be genocided. They ran with that in Forgotten Realms because that’s just “how it always was” - it doesn’t change the fact that it was born of racism.
Lots of folks don’t know this about Orcs - they assume Gygax just took the “they’re always evil” from Tolkien and run with that (it should be noted, Tolkien specifically tied the orcs to the corrupted West of WWI; it was Gygax who added all the tribalism and “here are stats for killing baby orcs during a genocide” and “let me quote a guy ordering the genocide of Native Americans when asked how a ‘lawful good’ character should approach orcs”). Which is fine to think in the absence of additional information - it is ignorant and wrong, bit being ignorant of something just means one hasn’t learned about it yet. Ignorance only becomes a problem when someone learns the truth and wilfully chooses to double down on ignorance instead of changing their perspective.
It also is why slavery as a concept is not going anywhere in D&D. Adding slavery to a world does not make that world racist. It might offend people who are sensitive to those things, but it only becomes racist when it either is willfull yea it’s (as with Gygax and orcs) or so negligent that someone should have caught that the context would seem incredibly racist (such as Hadozee and using almost word-for-word statements from pre-Civil War slaveholders to justify the Hadozee’s enslavement).
But, of course, you know this. You know that Gygax was hardly a saint and that twisted orcs to be racist because you have been informed of this before. You know that there is something fundamentally different between intentional and strongly negligent racism and dealing with a complex topic.
Heh.
Man.
If only folks like Caerwyn and I were on record as saying that 6f, as written, was over-broad and provided Wizards with too much leeway to act rashly and the clause needed to be revised in the next draft of 1.2 before the document was acceptable.
Oh, wait...
Sigh.
Okay.
First of all: ignoring someone on DDB. It's actually very easy. Hover your mouse over the name of the person you want to ignore on one of their posts, and you'll get a drop-down message with options for interacting with that user. One of the options is "Ignore User", at the bottom. Click it and you won't see that user's posts directly anymore. You will still see them when someone else quotes them so it's not a perfect shield, but it's something. Here (note I am not ignoring Caerwyn, I just used his name because I couldn't demonstrate with my own name and using the name of someone else I'm arguing with seemed in very poor taste. Sorry, Caerwyn):
Second of all. I do have very strong opinions on the matter. I believe hate should not be spread. A lot of people say that there's no need for any sort of controls on the matter because hateful content is self-defeating, i.e. "nobody will buy this garbage". They say that hate is unprofitable and cannot spread if people of good conscience don't allow it to do so.
I'm sorry. Years of social media, years of fighting the same fight dozens of times over on this board, years of being a citizen of the Internet in general? They've all taught me that I cannot trust "people of good conscience". People Of Good Conscience are dramatically outnumbered by - since I'm not allowed to use colorful invective without people snarling at me over it - we'll call them "People of Bad Conscience." With all the vicious backlash against the LGBT+ community these days, do you think there's not a market for D&D adventures where a party of rebellious straight characters defeat the Gay Overlord or some other such garbage? I am 100% convinced that such a book, were it made with any degree of production quality, would absolutely find a market and sell well, and that would be to the detriment of everyone else who loves this hobby.
Do I think Clause 6f was acceptable as written? No. I would've liked to see an "Any Reasonable Person" standard applied to any form of veto Wizards retained over third-party content, since such a standard would've taken much of the decision out of Wizards' hands. The onus would be on Wizards, in any court case (and no, I did not agree with the whole "you can't sue us" bit, nor do I think that was actually enforceable), to prove that the content they dislicensed would have been considered hateful by an Any Reasonable Person standard, which would remove their ability to cut third-party content for any reasonb they wished and simply lie and call it "hateful content". Which struck me as the thing people were most afraid of - Wizards using 6f as a blanket hammer against anything they saw as too successful or too competitive. Some of the community calls to replace a negative system (i.e. striking down hateful content) and replace it with a positive one (i.e. applying an "Inclusive Content" badge to works that passed inspection) are not without merit, either. I think a lot of smaller third-party creators wouldn't like such a system, since it invariably involves more expenses attached to a product that already has pretty slim margins, but it's not without merit.
I do not and cannot, however, agree that nothing is the right amount of protection against the spread of hate. I am not a student of history, I cannot speak to things like the Hayes Code, and I do not doubt that bungling the implementation has a good chance of doing more harm than good. I'm just confused and concerned as to why so many people seem to believe that doing absolutely nothing, allowing hate to be published and sold absolutely freely without even so much as a single "no don't" tweet, won't ALSO end up doing more harm than good. And because I'm me, i.e. a spicy Internet ***** with a ferocious temper and a thing for writing, I put a lot of words on the Internet to that effect.
I'm sorry I've caused you distress. If it's any consolation, I've been getting raked over the coals for the last two, two and a half weeks over this whole mess. Nevertheless. Go ahead and put me on Ignore, and if you need to try and figure out a website function in the future feel free to PM a mod, or most any user with a thousand or more posts. They'll help get you sorted.
Please do not contact or message me.
The problem with that is that Hasbro/WotC has billions of dollars and expensive lawyers. The majority of 3PPs would simply never be able to afford taking them to court to contest having their license revoked.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Wait, who else are we supposed to refer to with questions about a subject if not the experts? We are now debating about a lot of definitions and scenarios, but it's not like most of us have spent time and effort studying the subject, though I do have some on the job experience with DEI. Wouldn't it make sense for this matter to be overseen by people who have? It would be like fast forwarding through all of this useless arguing on the internet because they've already been through it and have some backing from whatever body of knowledge that humanity has already collected on it.
Who else would you suggest putting on this panel?
1) Why do you fear this, specifically?
2) What is your working definition of racism?
I mean sure there's some disagreement on some things, but generally when we want to learn something we go to the people and institutions that study such things. For me I would point to something like the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a starting point. Then there are other groups who have made it their focus to study things like racism, many of them having a vested interest in understanding it because they represent groups who suffer from it, so it makes sense that they'd want to understand it well, like the NAACP for example. And then you have legal groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, who study racism and bigotry because they deal with such cases in the legal system. Even the Wikipedia article on Racism is pretty well cited and links to other resources, which is a decent place to start researching the topic.
While there may still be some grey areas around the edges, there is a pretty general consensus among people who study racism that it is systemic discrimination against people for perceived racial differences. And even for me I struggled for awhile coming to an understanding of that "systemic" part.
I don't know what you mean by "one group" because who else is there besides those who make an effort to study the subject?
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 have not seen these things about Gygax you are saying here, but even if it were true that Gygax's orcs were based on racist beliefs, that doesn't mean that the concept of a fictional evil god creating a fictional evil sentient species is racist. The two can be mutually exclusive.
The point about Orcs is that people have now drawn a line in the sand saying they are racist because of some cultural baggage (some of it legitimate, some of it not), but if you take the concept, and give them different names so that there is no cultural baggage, are they suddenly okay?
If I create a new D&D monster called the Crona, and say that they were created be an evil mad wizard as an evil species of warriors to take over the world, is that now okay, or is it still racist?
Is it the idea of a fictional species all being evil, or is it just orcs?
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
October, that is irrelevant to this discussion. Leave your longstanding pet peeve at the door, nobody is talking about the stupid ******* Genetically Evil thing. I tried to give you what you've been constantly demanding through this entire ordeal - a definition of what qualifies as hateful content. True to form, you immediately twisted it, clawed at it, and tried to deform it into support for your constant constant constant constant constant CONSTANT!!!! harping on and on and on and on about the Genetically Evil Orcs thing.
It. Is. Not. Relevant. You wanna genocide all the green people in your game, do it up. Murder every last single living creature on the face of Faerun that isn't human. You have my explicit permission to do whatever you like at your table. I don't understand why you need my permission but apparently you need the entirety of the D&D community to give you permission to genocide the green people. If it gets you to shut up about it and stop trrying to wrench this and every other thread off course, you can have mine. Only however-many-million D&D players left to go.
Please do not contact or message me.
It is relevant if a 3PP wants to create a product compatible with D&D that has a species that is all evil in it. According to you and others, that constitutes racism, and I would infer that with a morality clause you would expect that such a product would be denied by WotC.
That we disagree fundamentally on whether or not that constitutes racism is core to the issue of having such a clause.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
So the thing it hinges on is whether your Crona are considered people or not. As per the Diversity and Dragons Statement from 2020:
So as you can see the standing attitude of Wizards of the Coast, at least for their own material, is that anyone to be regarded as people are to have their own self determination and morality and not have an alignment forced on them as an intrinsic thing that is out of their choice. And also, at least to me, the standard that is applied is whether or not something echoes depictions of real life people. So it's not about what the author intended, but whether or not it could come off to people reading it as being people.
So that's the standard that I think we come in to this scenario with: Does your fictional species come off to others as people, and if so, do you allow them the choice of their own alignment? If the answers are yes and no, in that order, then you have a problem.
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!
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 alsowouldn'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.
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Yes, I can agree with that.
Generally like I posted above, "systemic discrimination against people for perceived racial differences." Which is actually a definition I struggled with for awhile, because for a long time I came from the place of the dictionary definition of purely just discrimination against someone for their race. It was only after long discussions with people from various other disenfranchised groups that I came to understand the importance and significance of both the "systemic" part as well as the "perceived" part.
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 considering them a sentient species. Does that make them people? What are people? Do I see them as analogues for humans? No.
I also disagree with WotCs statement about Orcs and Drow. Despite their statement, I have not been convinced. It seems to me the problem isn't that orcs and drow are "people" in some special way, but that players have come to identify themselves with these fictional species, and anthropomorphized them into something that weren't.
Are bugbears people? Kobolds? Mind Flayers? Perytons (Int 9)? Rakshasas? At what point does something become a "person"? Is it only when enough people start cosplaying it, or drawing art of it in personal ways? Is it not a person unless someone identifies with it, and then it becomes a "person".
We're talking about a game were literal Evil and Good exist as tangible things that can inhabit something.
I believe that you can play a game with concepts that are not analogues for the real world, and that you can tell the difference between them.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
On, the now defunct 1.2's, paper? Yes they absolutely would have. The clause's definition was so broad and its restrictions (agreeing not to contest it in anyway including lawsuit or arbitration) so onerous that what's 'hateful' could literally anything that Hasbro wanted. For example, A dirtbag cousin-in-law called me a misogynist because I posted something on Facebook mocking anti-trans bathroom bills. I bring this up to show that even 'inclusive' beliefs and statements can be twisted around and used to fall under 'hateful' and the like.
Now, as people have noted, the odds of Hasbro doing something like this are low judging by the make up of their player base and the years they've spent trying to make the game more inclusive. But the odds are not impossible. Beyond some uh...questionable content that Wizards themselves put out there was an incident where they took down LGBTQ oriented content from DM's Guild which is much more restrictive license than OGL.
Again, what you or I think what Wizards would do is a lot less relevant than what the 3pp who put out that module you used would think. They would have to look at the risk of having that kind of clause used against them. If they feel the risk is too great they won't spend a lot of time creating something that they're afraid will be nuked. They'll just make it for another system entirely with an actual open license or just not make it at all. This (sadly) also goes for other fringe stuff like body horror, sexual themes, and (less sadly) products that could be considered bigoted by large segments of the population though I note again I haven't really heard of any blatantly bigoted product made under the OGL in the past 23 years that caused a stir though it's certainly possible some were made that flew under the radar.
So while the flip side of the coin is that there may be 3PP of LGBTQ content that may feel more safe with the clause in there, the fact remains if it's merely included, in any form broad or restrictive, you've changed that risk/reward calculation for any 3PP and probably reduced the potential amount of 3PP content. The only real way to know for sure is if such a clause is included in 1DnD/6e and we can try and measure the amount of 3PP that ends up getting published under it. Still, my gut is that 3PPs of this kind of content would just not bother or go to another system.
One of WotC's stated goals for the new OGL was to be able to stop hateful conduct. Then they put in a bunch of other stuff that literally no one liked. When people pushed back on the stuff no one liked, they decided to reverse on EVERYTHING, and actually released their SRD content under a much more permissible license. So, let me ask a question: how much did WotC actually care care about hateful conduct in the first place?
I mentioned this in the other thread, that they could have released an OGL that only added a hateful conduct provision. Even without unauthorizing previous OGLs, this new one could have been a signal to the publishers, and consumers (and broader community) that they DO care about hateful content, and would have provided buyers with a "hate-free" content label to help people make better decisions about their purchases. Even if they couldn't legally stop someone from making hateful content under OGL 1.0a, at least they could help drive their vision and ideals in the market place.
But, it seems that the hateful conduct wasn't actually that important to the company. They wanted the other stuff in the OGL just as bad if not more, and when they couldn't get it, they tossed the baby out with the bathwater.
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If you truly believe that such a provision is needed to stop hate against marginalized folks, then you have to be able to see that WotC failed their test to uphold those ideals. The VERY FIRST TIME it came up against their bottom line they decided it wasn't worth fighting for.
Now we're at a point where even if they had a permissible OGL with such a provision, it's pretty clear that WotC shouldn't be the stewards of what is considered hateful content. Probably no corporation should. I'm sure plenty of employees want what is best for marginalized people, but corporations are beholden to profits above all else, and it's not difficult to envision a situation where such power is used against their original stated purpose because it would be better for their bottom line.
I'm not against some independent expert group determining what is hateful content and forcing WotC and 3PP to be beholden to their ruling, but it's pretty difficult to imagine WotC (or any company) ceding that kind of control to a council that they have no power over.
Exactly this. WotC/Hasbro threw the Anti-Hate platform under the bus without a second thought. If they truly cared, they wouldn't have decided to leave it to us to police each other.
This was a ploy from the beginning to try to build support for 1.1 and 1.2, or to split the community that was protesting.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Just for the record to the people saying this was a ploy or whatever I think there are to possibilities:
1) Hasbro are a bunch of bumbling idiots who made a ton of bumbling idiotic moves that forced their hand into doing the opposite of their original intent.
2) Hasbro are a bunch of sneaky brilliant bastards who were willing to make themelves look like bumbling idiots in order to make a bunch of people on YouTube and the rest of the internet argue with them as well as each other.
I have to tell you, I'll never know for sure but I'm going to say #1 is the more likely possibility.
So again my bar there was "Do they come off as people to others?" Generally if you're calling them sentient then I would think most audiences would think of them as people, just like we think of Vulcans, Klingons, Elves, Dwarves, and Dragonborn as people. Do we think they are human? No, but we do think of them as people. Also, generally as soon as something is playable by a player, they basically have to be treated as people, because they act as vehicles for people and we have to treat them as such.
So you basically disagree with the fundamental premise that orcs and drow are people? Hmm ... that's a pretty fundamental difference. I mean what's the difference? Do you only think humans are people? Like, do you not include dwarves and elves and gnomes and dragonborn as people?
Part of this is of course purely definitional. WOTC has defined orcs and drow as people, which they have every right to as the creators of the content. The rest is pretty highly philosophical, which I have no problem getting into a someone who has about two classes short of a philosophy minor, but I gotta say it's a conversation that gets pretty into the weeds of philosophy of thought and ethics of personhood.
Sorta? I mean in 5E they have those extra planar beings to represent those forces, but they moved back from the various people having mechanically discernible alignments, so again it comes down to personhood.
Sure, and I agree. But being able to tell the difference doesn't mean that it can't harm people to have their traumas echoed back at them. And the relevant discussion is not about highly personal, "go see your therapist" traumas. It's about traumas that target entire groups of people over centuries. I don't know how to explain to you if you've never experienced it, but the kind of real world denigration that they talk about in that Diversity and Dragons statement isn't even something you feel like you can talk it out and get over as a personal thing because it's so pervasive and incessant. I know for me that statement was an almost physical relief. I knew it didn't fix everything, but it was a statement of solidarity and a commitment to change in ways that would make the game, and the community, safer and more comfortable for me to exist in.
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!
You have it backwards. The shield that allows "bigots" to publish whatever they want is called a Bill of Rights. A morality clause in a publishing license would instead be a hammer to attack whomever the publisher deems immoral that uses their license.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie