The changes WotC have made, while subtle, are important and a positive step.
Vestani are/were stereotypical gypsies. In many peoples minds, gypsies are lazy drunks who don't work. You can look up the discrimination that Irish Travelers and Romani Gypsies endure today.
The changes to Strahd are as follows (taken from here):
vistani get their own stat blocks in the npc & monsters appendix
rather than wanderers who live outside civilization, they are just wanderers.
phasing about them drinking heavily and being lazy has been removed
one of the vistani characters is not longer so drunk that they are poisoned
a NPC is no longer ashamed of their prosthetic limb.
haunted one changed from him (or her) to them
To the vast majority of people, these changes will make hardly any difference, but to the affected communities (romani, disabled, etc), it shows that WotC does care about their representation, and that it should be more positive than it has been in the past.
Yes its in general a good thing but I feel they might be robbing us of good stories
I question I have for you or anyone in this post is this:
Should only positive representations be allowed and if so why?
Eh. Its iffy, but for someone who is ashamed, only to realize later that there is nothing wrong with their flaws, is a classic story telling plot.
It's an overdone storytelling plot, and it perpetrates the stereotype that people with a disability are defined by the disability.
True. But there is a reason why it's overdone. It honestly works.
To people who actually have the condition that's being depicted it's often seen as patronizing, especially since the target audience is almost never them but people who don't have that condition. It basically reduces them to a sideshow spectacle.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The changes WotC have made, while subtle, are important and a positive step.
Vestani are/were stereotypical gypsies. In many peoples minds, gypsies are lazy drunks who don't work. You can look up the discrimination that Irish Travelers and Romani Gypsies endure today.
The changes to Strahd are as follows (taken from here):
vistani get their own stat blocks in the npc & monsters appendix
rather than wanderers who live outside civilization, they are just wanderers.
phasing about them drinking heavily and being lazy has been removed
one of the vistani characters is not longer so drunk that they are poisoned
a NPC is no longer ashamed of their prosthetic limb.
haunted one changed from him (or her) to them
To the vast majority of people, these changes will make hardly any difference, but to the affected communities (romani, disabled, etc), it shows that WotC does care about their representation, and that it should be more positive than it has been in the past.
Yes its in general a good thing but I feel they might be robbing us of good stories
I question I have for you or anyone in this post is this:
Should only positive representations be allowed and if so why?
Eh. Its iffy, but for someone who is ashamed, only to realize later that there is nothing wrong with their flaws, is a classic story telling plot.
It's an overdone storytelling plot, and it perpetrates the stereotype that people with a disability are defined by the disability.
True. But there is a reason why it's overdone. It honestly works.
To people who actually have the condition that's being depicted it's often seen as patronizing, especially since the target audience is almost never them but people who don't have that condition. It basically reduces them to a sideshow spectacle.
Fair point. That just begs the question, why do we even that trope?
The changes WotC have made, while subtle, are important and a positive step.
Vestani are/were stereotypical gypsies. In many peoples minds, gypsies are lazy drunks who don't work. You can look up the discrimination that Irish Travelers and Romani Gypsies endure today.
The changes to Strahd are as follows (taken from here):
vistani get their own stat blocks in the npc & monsters appendix
rather than wanderers who live outside civilization, they are just wanderers.
phasing about them drinking heavily and being lazy has been removed
one of the vistani characters is not longer so drunk that they are poisoned
a NPC is no longer ashamed of their prosthetic limb.
haunted one changed from him (or her) to them
To the vast majority of people, these changes will make hardly any difference, but to the affected communities (romani, disabled, etc), it shows that WotC does care about their representation, and that it should be more positive than it has been in the past.
Yes its in general a good thing but I feel they might be robbing us of good stories
I question I have for you or anyone in this post is this:
Should only positive representations be allowed and if so why?
Eh. Its iffy, but for someone who is ashamed, only to realize later that there is nothing wrong with their flaws, is a classic story telling plot.
It's an overdone storytelling plot, and it perpetrates the stereotype that people with a disability are defined by the disability.
True. But there is a reason why it's overdone. It honestly works.
To people who actually have the condition that's being depicted it's often seen as patronizing, especially since the target audience is almost never them but people who don't have that condition. It basically reduces them to a sideshow spectacle.
Fair point. That just begs the question, why do we even that trope?
Probably because, it is at least a little bit of representation.
I'm surprised this thread has stayed up for so long. People with irrational political agendas usually don't tolerate dissenting opinions, no matter how well-presented.
I'm surprised this thread has stayed up for so long. People with irrational political agendas usually don't tolerate dissenting opinions, no matter how well-presented.
This is no longer politics, I just talked about how would kenkus mate.
@ Gothyl: In fairness, I can see why they might want to change that. Having a character with a clear disability going out of their way to try and hide it can bring up unpleasant feelings for someone who actually might be disabled and has had difficulty coming to terms with it; not that every person with a disability will have that reaction, but I do have friends who on most days own it pretty well but occasionally encounter something that triggers *very* unpleasant memories to the point where they have to say "I'm sorry, I have to peace out!" I can understand WotC looking back and trying to avoid that.
Yeah I understand very well that feeling. I would still want Ezmerelda story to be told tho. Has potential of being character building and people need that.
I suppose if they made this change what else is not going to make the Sensitivity Editing stage of the creative process of WoTC. We will never know.
In D&D, there is one very specific inequality that can never be fixed: PCs have agency and NPCs don't. If a PC chooses that type of storyline for themselves, great. As you say, it could be a powerful story. You and your party are the only people who will see that. When WOTC creates NPCs, those go worldwide, and wind up in front of a lot of people who share characteristics with those NPCs. If you're in a very small group and you've never seen a character that you feel represents you, and you finally get one, and she's ashamed of herself, how are you going to feel about that? Ouch.
Sure, maybe she's supposed to have this great arc where she learns and grows. (But note that in the original Curse of Strahd, I don't think she did. So you're still arguing against what the text currently says.) But maybe someone in your party makes a crude joke and you never see her again. As an NPC, she has no agency to experience that change unless the players allow it.
Imagine you're DMing at PAX using the adventure they handed you to run, and somebody wheels up in a wheelchair who wants to be a hero for two hours. You didn't get a lot of prep time to look at the adventure, so you're reading this description of this character with a prosthetic leg, and your eyes hit the next line. And you look over at that person who's eagerly waiting to hear about this person who's disabled like them. And that next line says Ezmerelda hides her prosthetic leg because she is ashamed of it. That person in the wheel chair wants two hours... just two hours... where they don't have to think about all the things they can't do, or all the things that you and I do every day without a second thought, but take them twenty minutes and someone's help.
Esmeralda isn't going to grow and change in those two hours. She's a cardboard cutout. A token, if you will.
So do you read that line? Or do you describe to the group in front of you how Ezmerelda smirks at them, swirls her cloak as she turns toward the hills and calls over her shoulder as she sets off, "Try to keep up!"
I know what I'd do. Sounds like WOTC is doing the same.
Also, if you've followed, for example the very excellent Puffin Forrest Curse of Strahd recap ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruqoIF23LV910443_s_j9tygFEotfukE -- HIGHLY recommended) , DMs outside AL can and do make much larger changes to the module than that. There's an entire subreddit devoted to just that. If a DM thinks that such a storyline adds to their group, they can add it.
So, all changing a negative depiction to a positive one by default does is avoid two things:
1) Pushing a story onto people who don't want it. As has already been stated here, some people are just looking to kill stormtroopers and take their stuff.
2) Pushing that story onto people for who it may be hurtful.
It's hard to see how these are not worthwhile goals.
There are two cases where I think you can make the argument for introducing a storyline like the one you're describing (which, I reiterate, is not what's in Curse of Strahd -- you've added the whole "and she learns to overcome her shame" all on your own):
1) If you're a player and you want to explore that through your character over the course of a campaign, and no one at the table has a problem with it.
2) If you're a DM and your group is explicitly looking for that sort of character growth in NPCs. (Even then it's not something I personally would probably ever do, but your table, your game.)
WOTC-published NPCs aren't either of those, so maybe it's fine for Ez's leg to be a part of her character without turning it into a plot point.
I'm surprised this thread has stayed up for so long. People with irrational political agendas usually don't tolerate dissenting opinions, no matter how well-presented.
people have been civil which is a nice.
but I am totalled as in "damage (something, typically a vehicle) beyond repair; wreck." i.e. I am tired and sleepy.
thanks to everyone for the chat it was a good conversation.
I like to think that the level of discourse on this forum is above that of the internet at large.
I don't really see anything irrational about either WotC's action, or people's reaction here. It looks to me like there is just a desire to talk about it and try to understand where people are coming from, which is how it should be.
The changes WotC have made, while subtle, are important and a positive step.
Vestani are/were stereotypical gypsies. In many peoples minds, gypsies are lazy drunks who don't work. You can look up the discrimination that Irish Travelers and Romani Gypsies endure today.
The changes to Strahd are as follows (taken from here):
vistani get their own stat blocks in the npc & monsters appendix
rather than wanderers who live outside civilization, they are just wanderers.
phasing about them drinking heavily and being lazy has been removed
one of the vistani characters is not longer so drunk that they are poisoned
a NPC is no longer ashamed of their prosthetic limb.
haunted one changed from him (or her) to them
To the vast majority of people, these changes will make hardly any difference, but to the affected communities (romani, disabled, etc), it shows that WotC does care about their representation, and that it should be more positive than it has been in the past.
Yes its in general a good thing but I feel they might be robbing us of good stories
I question I have for you or anyone in this post is this:
Should only positive representations be allowed and if so why?
Eh. Its iffy, but for someone who is ashamed, only to realize later that there is nothing wrong with their flaws, is a classic story telling plot.
It's an overdone storytelling plot, and it perpetrates the stereotype that people with a disability are defined by the disability.
True. But there is a reason why it's overdone. It honestly works.
To people who actually have the condition that's being depicted it's often seen as patronizing, especially since the target audience is almost never them but people who don't have that condition. It basically reduces them to a sideshow spectacle.
Fair point. That just begs the question, why do we even that trope?
Probably because, it is at least a little bit of representation.
And probably because there are two ways it can go down. The least accurate representation of amputees (like skyscraper), and the more accurate representation (I want to say how to train your dragon, but I'm not completely sure.)
From my understanding only humanoids are having the alignment changes which is all well and good. The races listed as monsters such as the Illithid are remaining evil, Fiends will still be evil and celestials will be good from my understanding. So they can make a truly monster race that has fiendish blood or whatever to be evil cannon fodder instead of goblins, orcs and such. Races that can never be a PC race meaning they will never have a free will to become good by any means.
The changes WotC have made, while subtle, are important and a positive step.
Vestani are/were stereotypical gypsies. In many peoples minds, gypsies are lazy drunks who don't work. You can look up the discrimination that Irish Travelers and Romani Gypsies endure today.
The changes to Strahd are as follows (taken from here):
vistani get their own stat blocks in the npc & monsters appendix
rather than wanderers who live outside civilization, they are just wanderers.
phasing about them drinking heavily and being lazy has been removed
one of the vistani characters is not longer so drunk that they are poisoned
a NPC is no longer ashamed of their prosthetic limb.
haunted one changed from him (or her) to them
To the vast majority of people, these changes will make hardly any difference, but to the affected communities (romani, disabled, etc), it shows that WotC does care about their representation, and that it should be more positive than it has been in the past.
Yes its in general a good thing but I feel they might be robbing us of good stories
I question I have for you or anyone in this post is this:
Should only positive representations be allowed and if so why?
Eh. Its iffy, but for someone who is ashamed, only to realize later that there is nothing wrong with their flaws, is a classic story telling plot.
It's an overdone storytelling plot, and it perpetrates the stereotype that people with a disability are defined by the disability.
True. But there is a reason why it's overdone. It honestly works.
To people who actually have the condition that's being depicted it's often seen as patronizing, especially since the target audience is almost never them but people who don't have that condition. It basically reduces them to a sideshow spectacle.
Fair point. That just begs the question, why do we even that trope?
For the same reason we have other tropes like the bumbling, cowardly black sidekick or the helpless, screaming damsel: for decades it was the way it was done because neither the writers not the intended audience were black people, women, or people with disabilities and it was considered "normal" to depict people that way.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The whole law vs chaos thing is more or less sourced from the works of Michael Moorcock. It has been a while since I have read them, but I recall that neither side was all that "Good" and either side winning was bad for that multiverse. Balance between the two were a large part of the theme throughout.
As for Orc, from the original Tolkien they can very much be seen as the generalize "them" in the us vs them. Orcs and the lesser mentions of Easterling (swarthy men of the east) while being from an Anglo-eurocentric viewpoint the "faceless soliders of the enemy" are very outdated and while a product of the times that produced them.
We should stand our ground on good story telling and diversity.
Last night my players tore the driver's bubble off of the mechanoid death machine the lovesick gnome archmage* made to get even with them (half Steel Panther, half Apparatus of Kwalish), pulled him out of there, stole the machine, then used it to surf down an avalanche caused by the footsteps of a 200 ft tall giant that was hurling 5' iceballs at them trying to get them off "his" mountain, cutting fully a day and a half off of their travel time at a crucial point.
*Whose girlfriend they more-or-less-accidentally fed to a purple worm way back in 2017. He'd been periodically attacking them with progressively more insane constructs ever since.
All you really need for good storytelling is to wind up a group of engaged players and let 'em run!
In D&D, there is one very specific inequality that can never be fixed: PCs have agency and NPCs don't. If a PC chooses that type of storyline for themselves, great. As you say, it could be a powerful story. You and your party are the only people who will see that. When WOTC creates NPCs, those go worldwide, and wind up in front of a lot of people who share characteristics with those NPCs. If you're in a very small group and you've never seen a character that you feel represents you, and you finally get one, and she's ashamed of herself, how are you going to feel about that? Ouch.
Yeah I get that, but ezmeralda is hardly alone in the representation there hundreds of characters numerous media are like her and represented in a positive light. May be not as much in dnd ... that might be their reasoning who knows?
Sure, maybe she's supposed to have this great arc where she learns and grows. (But note that in the original Curse of Strahd, I don't think she did. So you're still arguing against what the text currently says.) But maybe someone in your party makes a crude joke and you never see her again. As an NPC, she has no agency to experience that change unless the players allow it.
Imagine you're DMing at PAX using the adventure they handed you to run, and somebody wheels up in a wheelchair who wants to be a hero for two hours. You didn't get a lot of prep time to look at the adventure, so you're reading this description of this character with a prosthetic leg, and your eyes hit the next line. And you look over at that person who's eagerly waiting to hear about this person who's disabled like them. And that next line says Ezmerelda hides her prosthetic leg because she is ashamed of it. That person in the wheel chair wants two hours... just two hours... where they don't have to think about all the things they can't do, or all the things that you and I do every day without a second thought, but take them twenty minutes and someone's help.
Esmeralda isn't going to grow and change in those two hours. She's a cardboard cutout. A token, if you will.
Yeah as i said If there was no reason for her to be ashamed yeah I am 100% oke with that being removed if serve no purpose as you put it is probably better she is not ashamed taking example you made on the pax story.
1) Pushing a story onto people who don't want it. As has already been stated here, some people are just looking to kill stormtroopers and take their stuff.
Most of these players won't care and i don't see many creating controversy online about it. other than may be there isnt enough hack and slash
2) Pushing that story onto people for who it may be hurtful.
This is where well with great power comes great responsibility - the ezmerelda example is really powerful; as you demonstrated there sometimes a good reason to omit that was there before but its not always going to be that easy.
People worry that if we stop ourselves from writing things because someone out there is going to feel hurt about it then we will end up not writing at all
It's hard to see how these are not worthwhile goals.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
When do you think they should stop ? May be when they remove something you are care about it? Will you care then? (rhetorical question and the proverbial "you" not directed at you)
These changes WoTC is making a public statement - These depictions are not allowed on their products they are negative and some of their customers will see as such and will think it is right to shame and abuse players that want those depictions on their table.
You said "(Even then it's not something I personally would probably ever do, but your table, your game.)"
Why not? If your group wants to do this would you be oke with it? is it oke? to have evil orcs or evil vistanis?
I am not trying to put you in the spot I am trying make a point.
There is two sides to a coin
If WoTC on their short post they had said something similar or on the lines to what Houligan said on his response
I question I have for you or anyone in this post is this:
Should only positive representations be allowed and if so why?
No, it does not need to be only positive representations, but for the races / groups being talked about, representations have been mostly or all negative until now.
You can have human heroes and human villains; good kingdoms and bad.
WotC wants to add that same nuance to the "evil" races as well, and not have "evil race" heroes be the exception to the rule.
I would be oke with it, But they did not. Which to me is worrying.
From my understanding only humanoids are having the alignment changes which is all well and good. The races listed as monsters such as the Illithid are remaining evil, Fiends will still be evil and celestials will be good from my understanding. So they can make a truly monster race that has fiendish blood or whatever to be evil cannon fodder instead of goblins, orcs and such. Races that can never be a PC race meaning they will never have a free will to become good by any means.
The gnolls, as described in Volo's guide, occupy an interesting, semi-unique position on that spectrum. Very mortal, humanoid, but still fully suffused with demonic evil. Even Volo's, before any changes, took care to distinguish orcs as "a product of their society," different from the inherent evil of the gnolls. That may be as close as 5e gets to a race that's just canonically "KOS" bad.
(Interestingly, I can't think of an occasion when I've ever used gnolls. There's not one straight-up "they're all bad!" race in my current campaign.)
If WoTC on their short post they had said something similar or on the lines to what Houligan said on his response
I would be oke with it, But they did not. Which to me is worrying.
This is Wizard's statement. I feel they do pretty say what I do. Some selected excerpts (though I would encourage you to read the whole thing) And bold emphasis mine, italics are my thoughts
We want everyone to feel at home around the game table and to see positive reflections of themselves within our products.
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. this doesn't mean orcs and drow are meant to be african americans or other minorities, just that they way they are protrayed is similar
And their main points:
We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. 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. this means that there will be good AND bad examples of them.
When every D&D book is reprinted, we have an opportunity to correct errors that we or the broader D&D community discovered in that book. Each year, we use those opportunities to fix a variety of things, including errors in judgment. In recent reprintings of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, for example, we changed text that was racially insensitive.
Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
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.
We've received valuable insights from sensitivity readers on two of our recent books. We are incorporating sensitivity readers into our creative process, and we will continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.
We're proactively seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists. We’ve brought in contributors who reflect the beautiful diversity of the D&D community to work on books coming out in 2021. We're going to invest even more in this approach and add a broad range of new voices to join the chorus of D&D storytelling.
I personally don't understand why so many people are complaining about this. The slipperly slope argument isn't applicable here, and even if it was, the worst thing that happens is D&D now has monsters that aren't universally evil or good based on race. You can still fight wild animals. You can still fight evil individuals, or groups of evil individuals. You can still fight demons, devils, and aberrations. You can still have villains. In your own worlds, you can still have completely evil orcs or drow, if you want to simplify things. I recommend this simplification for people who are new to the game or on the younger side. I certainly did this in my first games, but grew out of it.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
These depictions are not allowed on their products
That's not what they said. They said they choose not to do that themselves.
If they suddenly said "nobody can have evil creatures in their campaigns anymore, all the races now get along." I'm pretty sure everyone would laugh, say "Good one!" and get on with their games as usual.
WOTC has to meet a much, much higher standard than we do. We're each responsible only for our own tables. They're effectively a guest at every D&D table. They are policing no one's behavior and content but their own, trying to be the best guest they can be. Which they have every right to do.
You said "(Even then it's not something I personally would probably ever do, but your table, your game.)"
Why not? If your group wants to do this would you be oke with it? is it oke? to have evil orcs or evil vistanis?
That was specifically in the context of using a NPCs with a disability to make a point to the players. As a person with literally every conceivable advantage it's possible to have, DM'ing for a group of people none of whom are (to my knowledge) disabled, that just doesn't feel like my story to tell.
But if I had a player that specifically wanted to incorporate a disability into their character, I'd fully support them.
It's fine to have evil orcs and evil Vistani. It's just boring to me to say "orc = evil." It's 100% not fine to have Vistani be a 1-dimensional collection of the worst Romani stereotypes condensed into a statblock. (One of those stereotypes being "they're all evil.")
Our campaign is deep and rich and incredibly diverse, and we are able to explore some pretty deep moral questions alongside the bloodbath battles, and we do all of it without pigeonholing anyone into a box that says, "creatures that look like A must act like B."
Nothing Wizards has done nor proposes to do interferes with our ability to tell that story.
D&D is one of the most diverse games ever, with all sorts of races. When I first saw the drow, I didn't think of black people. Now, I don't take sides on politics, but this is just silly. If you don't like something, change it! D&D is about creativity! (I know that doesn't really fit this situation, but whatever)
I know right? And that's what frustrates me the most about this whole thing. Taking a hobby, a safe place from all the politics of real life and just trying to appease the politics in real life.
Respectfully, this isn't about politics. It's about the game's depictions of certain things as offensive to real people. As a benefit to the changes in descriptions to Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, we get a cool racial-ability score-swapping that will make certain character types better to play as.
It's not politics to try to avoid offending people, it's business strategy as well as human decency. If you get offended by something, you're less likely to want to be associated with that thing. It helps sell books to offend as little people as possible. Additionally, it's just kind to try not to offend people for no reason, and if you accidentally do, change that thing.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
To people who actually have the condition that's being depicted it's often seen as patronizing, especially since the target audience is almost never them but people who don't have that condition. It basically reduces them to a sideshow spectacle.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Fair point. That just begs the question, why do we even that trope?
Probably because, it is at least a little bit of representation.
SAUCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm surprised this thread has stayed up for so long. People with irrational political agendas usually don't tolerate dissenting opinions, no matter how well-presented.
"The Epic Level Handbook wasn't that bad, guys.
Guys, pls."
This is no longer politics, I just talked about how would kenkus mate.
SAUCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In D&D, there is one very specific inequality that can never be fixed: PCs have agency and NPCs don't. If a PC chooses that type of storyline for themselves, great. As you say, it could be a powerful story. You and your party are the only people who will see that. When WOTC creates NPCs, those go worldwide, and wind up in front of a lot of people who share characteristics with those NPCs. If you're in a very small group and you've never seen a character that you feel represents you, and you finally get one, and she's ashamed of herself, how are you going to feel about that? Ouch.
Sure, maybe she's supposed to have this great arc where she learns and grows. (But note that in the original Curse of Strahd, I don't think she did. So you're still arguing against what the text currently says.) But maybe someone in your party makes a crude joke and you never see her again. As an NPC, she has no agency to experience that change unless the players allow it.
Imagine you're DMing at PAX using the adventure they handed you to run, and somebody wheels up in a wheelchair who wants to be a hero for two hours. You didn't get a lot of prep time to look at the adventure, so you're reading this description of this character with a prosthetic leg, and your eyes hit the next line. And you look over at that person who's eagerly waiting to hear about this person who's disabled like them. And that next line says Ezmerelda hides her prosthetic leg because she is ashamed of it. That person in the wheel chair wants two hours... just two hours... where they don't have to think about all the things they can't do, or all the things that you and I do every day without a second thought, but take them twenty minutes and someone's help.
Esmeralda isn't going to grow and change in those two hours. She's a cardboard cutout. A token, if you will.
So do you read that line? Or do you describe to the group in front of you how Ezmerelda smirks at them, swirls her cloak as she turns toward the hills and calls over her shoulder as she sets off, "Try to keep up!"
I know what I'd do. Sounds like WOTC is doing the same.
Also, if you've followed, for example the very excellent Puffin Forrest Curse of Strahd recap ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruqoIF23LV910443_s_j9tygFEotfukE -- HIGHLY recommended) , DMs outside AL can and do make much larger changes to the module than that. There's an entire subreddit devoted to just that. If a DM thinks that such a storyline adds to their group, they can add it.
So, all changing a negative depiction to a positive one by default does is avoid two things:
1) Pushing a story onto people who don't want it. As has already been stated here, some people are just looking to kill stormtroopers and take their stuff.
2) Pushing that story onto people for who it may be hurtful.
It's hard to see how these are not worthwhile goals.
There are two cases where I think you can make the argument for introducing a storyline like the one you're describing (which, I reiterate, is not what's in Curse of Strahd -- you've added the whole "and she learns to overcome her shame" all on your own):
1) If you're a player and you want to explore that through your character over the course of a campaign, and no one at the table has a problem with it.
2) If you're a DM and your group is explicitly looking for that sort of character growth in NPCs. (Even then it's not something I personally would probably ever do, but your table, your game.)
WOTC-published NPCs aren't either of those, so maybe it's fine for Ez's leg to be a part of her character without turning it into a plot point.
people have been civil which is a nice.
but I am totalled as in "damage (something, typically a vehicle) beyond repair; wreck." i.e. I am tired and sleepy.
thanks to everyone for the chat it was a good conversation.
I like to think that the level of discourse on this forum is above that of the internet at large.
I don't really see anything irrational about either WotC's action, or people's reaction here. It looks to me like there is just a desire to talk about it and try to understand where people are coming from, which is how it should be.
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And probably because there are two ways it can go down. The least accurate representation of amputees (like skyscraper), and the more accurate representation (I want to say how to train your dragon, but I'm not completely sure.)
From my understanding only humanoids are having the alignment changes which is all well and good. The races listed as monsters such as the Illithid are remaining evil, Fiends will still be evil and celestials will be good from my understanding. So they can make a truly monster race that has fiendish blood or whatever to be evil cannon fodder instead of goblins, orcs and such. Races that can never be a PC race meaning they will never have a free will to become good by any means.
For the same reason we have other tropes like the bumbling, cowardly black sidekick or the helpless, screaming damsel: for decades it was the way it was done because neither the writers not the intended audience were black people, women, or people with disabilities and it was considered "normal" to depict people that way.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The whole law vs chaos thing is more or less sourced from the works of Michael Moorcock. It has been a while since I have read them, but I recall that neither side was all that "Good" and either side winning was bad for that multiverse. Balance between the two were a large part of the theme throughout.
As for Orc, from the original Tolkien they can very much be seen as the generalize "them" in the us vs them. Orcs and the lesser mentions of Easterling (swarthy men of the east) while being from an Anglo-eurocentric viewpoint the "faceless soliders of the enemy" are very outdated and while a product of the times that produced them.
Last night my players tore the driver's bubble off of the mechanoid death machine the lovesick gnome archmage* made to get even with them (half Steel Panther, half Apparatus of Kwalish), pulled him out of there, stole the machine, then used it to surf down an avalanche caused by the footsteps of a 200 ft tall giant that was hurling 5' iceballs at them trying to get them off "his" mountain, cutting fully a day and a half off of their travel time at a crucial point.
*Whose girlfriend they more-or-less-accidentally fed to a purple worm way back in 2017. He'd been periodically attacking them with progressively more insane constructs ever since.
All you really need for good storytelling is to wind up a group of engaged players and let 'em run!
Yeah I get that, but ezmeralda is hardly alone in the representation there hundreds of characters numerous media are like her and represented in a positive light. May be not as much in dnd ... that might be their reasoning who knows?
Yeah as i said If there was no reason for her to be ashamed yeah I am 100% oke with that being removed if serve no purpose as you put it is probably better she is not ashamed taking example you made on the pax story.
Most of these players won't care and i don't see many creating controversy online about it. other than may be there isnt enough hack and slash
This is where well with great power comes great responsibility - the ezmerelda example is really powerful; as you demonstrated there sometimes a good reason to omit that was there before but its not always going to be that easy.
People worry that if we stop ourselves from writing things because someone out there is going to feel hurt about it then we will end up not writing at all
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
When do you think they should stop ? May be when they remove something you are care about it? Will you care then? (rhetorical question and the proverbial "you" not directed at you)
These changes WoTC is making a public statement - These depictions are not allowed on their products they are negative and some of their customers will see as such and will think it is right to shame and abuse players that want those depictions on their table.
You said "(Even then it's not something I personally would probably ever do, but your table, your game.)"
Why not? If your group wants to do this would you be oke with it? is it oke? to have evil orcs or evil vistanis?
I am not trying to put you in the spot I am trying make a point.
There is two sides to a coin
If WoTC on their short post they had said something similar or on the lines to what Houligan said on his response
I would be oke with it, But they did not. Which to me is worrying.
now i am going to bed good night everyone thank you again for the chat
The gnolls, as described in Volo's guide, occupy an interesting, semi-unique position on that spectrum. Very mortal, humanoid, but still fully suffused with demonic evil. Even Volo's, before any changes, took care to distinguish orcs as "a product of their society," different from the inherent evil of the gnolls. That may be as close as 5e gets to a race that's just canonically "KOS" bad.
(Interestingly, I can't think of an occasion when I've ever used gnolls. There's not one straight-up "they're all bad!" race in my current campaign.)
This is Wizard's statement. I feel they do pretty say what I do. Some selected excerpts (though I would encourage you to read the whole thing) And bold emphasis mine, italics are my thoughts
And their main points:
this means that there will be good AND bad examples of them.
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I personally don't understand why so many people are complaining about this. The slipperly slope argument isn't applicable here, and even if it was, the worst thing that happens is D&D now has monsters that aren't universally evil or good based on race. You can still fight wild animals. You can still fight evil individuals, or groups of evil individuals. You can still fight demons, devils, and aberrations. You can still have villains. In your own worlds, you can still have completely evil orcs or drow, if you want to simplify things. I recommend this simplification for people who are new to the game or on the younger side. I certainly did this in my first games, but grew out of it.
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That's not what they said. They said they choose not to do that themselves.
If they suddenly said "nobody can have evil creatures in their campaigns anymore, all the races now get along." I'm pretty sure everyone would laugh, say "Good one!" and get on with their games as usual.
WOTC has to meet a much, much higher standard than we do. We're each responsible only for our own tables. They're effectively a guest at every D&D table. They are policing no one's behavior and content but their own, trying to be the best guest they can be. Which they have every right to do.
That was specifically in the context of using a NPCs with a disability to make a point to the players. As a person with literally every conceivable advantage it's possible to have, DM'ing for a group of people none of whom are (to my knowledge) disabled, that just doesn't feel like my story to tell.
But if I had a player that specifically wanted to incorporate a disability into their character, I'd fully support them.
It's fine to have evil orcs and evil Vistani. It's just boring to me to say "orc = evil." It's 100% not fine to have Vistani be a 1-dimensional collection of the worst Romani stereotypes condensed into a statblock. (One of those stereotypes being "they're all evil.")
Our campaign is deep and rich and incredibly diverse, and we are able to explore some pretty deep moral questions alongside the bloodbath battles, and we do all of it without pigeonholing anyone into a box that says, "creatures that look like A must act like B."
Nothing Wizards has done nor proposes to do interferes with our ability to tell that story.
Respectfully, this isn't about politics. It's about the game's depictions of certain things as offensive to real people. As a benefit to the changes in descriptions to Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, we get a cool racial-ability score-swapping that will make certain character types better to play as.
It's not politics to try to avoid offending people, it's business strategy as well as human decency. If you get offended by something, you're less likely to want to be associated with that thing. It helps sell books to offend as little people as possible. Additionally, it's just kind to try not to offend people for no reason, and if you accidentally do, change that thing.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
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