I think that Demons and other fiends should be almost completely evil, but given the fact that Angels and celestials can fall, why can't demons and devils have agency to rise? Sure, they're beings of evil, but they have personalities and ideals as well.
There's that whole Negative Planes and Positive Planes to things. The idea is that the Negative side consumes and the Positive side provides. It's easy to stop giving. It's harder to start giving without something to give.
That stated, the idea is not an impossible one - a difficult one and extraordinarily rare - but still possible. Falling can be done on one's own, but I cannot picture a situation where rising to grace wouldn't require help.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
So Orcs and Drow stop being evil. Then that must also extend to: Goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, Ogres, grimlocks, illithid, duergar, beholders, dragons, basically every race with an Int above 5. So what’s left? Once the game has been gutted to the point where everything is generic and basically interchangeable, what happens to diversity?
bandit group of an orc, an elf, a dwarf, and dragonborn is more diversity than fighting a group of 4 orcs.
That is not what diversity is, at all, and I am no expert. I''ve never heard someone arguing that demons should not all be evil, or orcs. If they are, I would say now we are being silly.
Diversity is representation of people of color and LGBTQ in DMSguild & WOTC content.
I asked on reddit if there were famous Forgotten Realms POC/LGBTQ people I could use as image art for my (public facing) project.
The response from 50% of the redditers was outrage that I could ask such a question, that I was "making trouble" suggesting that D&D was not diverse. The other 50% gave me what I needed, mostly from very recent years where WOTC has become more diverse in their writing.
The stock response is "you can do whatever you want, so D&D is diverse, just do it in your game, don't bother us with discussions of diversity".
It is still a touchy subject as you can see from this thread.
I understand that you have your own personal crusade, and that's all well and good. I am all for it,
But your demand of laying exclusive claim to a word that has existed for 600 years in common parlance so that it can be applied narrowly to your own personal crusade and attacking people for even using that word you think should be yours and yours alone is no way to keep allies in that cause.
The conversation you decide to object to has nothing to do with various physical and sexual traits of the person behind the DM screen.
The conversation entirely involved one person objecting to the idea that more and more things were labeled as "can't be a bad guy" and thus the number of options for kinds of opponents they could present to the players was limited. And I responded that the number of shapes and colors of not only those opponents, but of the people you meet in town, is actually greater not smaller when one erases the line between strictly "good" and strictly "evil" races.
That is by definition greater diversity as much as you want to make that word apply exclusively to sexuality.
There is no particular shortage of dark skinned human people in Faerun. Vajra Safahr, Dove Falconhand, Shandie and Hexxat are four I found right away with even the most cursory google search of Forgotten Realms characters on the list of famous women in the setting. And that is putting aside that there are entire nations/continents of non-white coded people on Faerun. It makes me think that you didn't even do the most cursory before both assuming and declaring that no such thing existed.
Yes that is pretty much an example response from reddit, outrage while not even reading what I wrote. No where did I say diversity is exclusive to sexuality. No where did I say "no such thing existed". I was only looking for examples, specifically art from covers of books or modules that would be recognized as diverse.
I never said "all", nobody is arguing "every single last one". And naturally you can create a campaign where orcs are good and handsome. WOTC can do that too. Nobody cares.
But anyone who watched the lord of the rings movie, and read all the D&D content produced over 40 years, they have always been depicted as evil.
You did say 'all' though. I just underlined and bolded it so you can see it better in the quote of your post.
And yes, they have been typically depicted as universally evil in both. Listen to yourself though. You say that you never said 'all' (even though you did), but then go on to essentially say 'but they all have been for 40 years,' implying that they should stay that way.
Plus what the blazes does 'handsome' have to do with anything? Or are you also equating 'good' with 'good looking' and 'ugly' with 'evil?'
I like all food, never been a picky eater.
Do I mean every single last possible culinary item?
When someone says "this hurts me", our first response should always be to stop doing it immediately. Any discussion about why it hurts and how important it is to find some version of it that works for everyone comes after that. This is Wizards' way of stopping doing something they understand hurts people. That alone is enough for me to see it as a good step forward.
This gets incisively at the heart of the matter. For me, here's how it breaks down logically:
Premise 1: These things hurt some people.
Premise 2: It matters whether these things hurt some people.
Premise 3: Changing these things prevents more harm than it causes.
As I look at it:
There's ample evidence, in this very thread and elsewhere, for premise 1. I accept premise 1.
Whether to accept premise 2 is a moral judgement. I accept premise 2.
Thusfar, in 11 pages of posts, I have yet to see anyone present any argument I find to be convincing to refute premise 3. I accept premise 3.
Therefore:
Conclusion: Change these things.
To reach a different conclusion, you have to reject one or more of the premises:
Reject Premise 1) These things do not hurt anybody.
Reject Premise 2) It does not matter whether these things hurt anybody.
Reject Premise 3) The harm caused by changing these things outweighs the benefit.
I have seen very little argument here against premise 1. It seems like a couple of people do think the controversy is, essentially, fake, but that view does not seem to be widespread, and I disagree with it based on the evidence available, including people's discussions of their personal experiences in this thread.
I don't recall seeing many people arguing against premise 2. As a moral question, to the extent there is any disagreement on whether harm to others matters, it's unlikely to be resolved in a venue like this forum, so this seems like inherent "agree to disagree" territory.
That leaves premise 3, which is where most of the dispute seems to center. But I don't find the arguments against it very persuasive. In fact, I mostly don't find them at all. I am getting the impression that at least several people think this change causes harm. But I'm very perplexed by what that harm actually is. It's more official options for players and DMs, and better, more nuanced representations. I genuinely can't find the harm there.
I do see a lot of arguments that change is (or at least can be) inherently bad, also phrased as "This particular change doesn't seem to matter, but what if the next one does?" But looking back at 40+ years of D&D, I can't think of any game that has changed more. So it doesn't seem like that's an argument that carries the day in this context. There will be more changes. Some people will go along with them happily. Some people will go along with them reluctantly. Some people will switch to Lamentations of the Flame Princess or something like it, more firmly rooted in the past. Some new people will be brought in by the changes.
Might D&D someday make a change I can't live with? Well, they already did. (The entirety of 4th edition.) They may again. But for now, Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Kate Welch, and the rest of the D&D team have earned a lot of my trust.
There's also a fair amount of "The way things are doesn't hurt me" and its close corollary "This change doesn't benefit me." And maybe that's the case. But D&D isn't just for you. It is possible and allowed for WOTC to work on improving the game for other people. WOTC has spent way more time and effort trying to make psionics work in 5e than they have on this. I can't see that ever making it into a form that my group uses. Should I protest WOTC spending effort on adding a bunch of stuff to the game that doesn't benefit me at all? Or can I accept that some people really want that change and that WOTC serves a larger audience than just me?
The main problem I have with it as well is that their complaints are factually false. Psychologists have studied the impact of rpgs on racism and have consistently found that those who play rpgs tend to show improved socialization and good moral development. If their complaints had any merit this would not be the case. We need to get back to a world where facts and stats are what matters again. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202004/no-orcs-arent-racist
I would be careful quoting Ferguson as a source, he's a biological essentialist and believes that race determines intelligence potential, he regularly conflates sex with gender, and he believes that beating your children is the only sure way to discipline them.
Wanted to resurface this earlier post since the Youtube video just posted relies on the same source.
Thanks Sposta. Most of the time I thankfully don't I have to deal with it, but when it happens it gets bad; sometimes worse than I described. Last year I had to cut a very old and dear friend from my life (and my table) because she kept falling deeper and deeper into racism, to the point where she started spouting nazi shit. That was ******* rough.
Thanks Sposta. Most of the time I thankfully don't I have to deal with it, but when it happens it gets bad; sometimes worse than I described. Last year I had to cut a very old and dear friend from my life (and my table) because she kept falling deeper and deeper into racism, to the point where she started spouting nazi shit. That was ******* rough.
One failing this subject has is its not an apples to apples comparison. Race IRL VS Race in game are 2 entirely different things. Race in life is a sub category of the human species indicating ethnicity whereas Race as a game term really refers to an entirely different species. This is an incredibly important distinction that is being ignored because it invalidates the argument.
cheers and unfortunately lost in the thread - they should drop the use of race and call it what it is - a species.
I had this conversation with someone in one of these forums who actually said: “Why’s it gotta be the dark elves that are evil and live underground?!?” When I explained that Drow were actually a pale, ashen grey color they were flabbergasted. They literally had no idea that “dark elves” in no way referenced their skin pigmentation. It seems this argument comes from ignorance more than actual morality.
There's also the fact that they are based on the dokkalfar/svartalfar from ancient norse and germaic lore and they were assuredly /not nice/. Many of the books describe the drow as being obsidian though, rather than gray. The best thing they could do imo to quash this would be to ret-con them all to dark grey (because nobody complains about grey dwarves being evil), and turn the sun elves dark brown (even though canon FR has dark brown "dark elves" who aren't evil).
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I would like to recognise that for many of us, these kinds of changes feel hard. I get that. But I want to encourage you to really think about why that is.
Wizards of the Coast is, explicitly, changing things so that previously evil races of people in the official default Dungeons & Dragons universe are no longer described that way. They are also revising their depictions of certain human peoples that rely on old, racist stereotypes of real-world cultures. And they are seeking to get input from a diverse range of people to make sure they don’t replicate harmful messages in any future products.
That’s what their announcement says, in a nutshell. It doesn’t say they’re revising anything else. It is not censorship - that requires laws and for things to be banned. Another company can - and indeed plenty already have - write their own fantasy roleplaying game that fully embraces the ideas Wizards are choosing to leave out. They are choosing to do better because they have been alerted that some of the things in the game are hurtful.
I understand it feels like this may be telling us what we have enjoyed at our game tables is somehow wrong or harmful. And that’s because...that’s exactly what it is doing. But we - and by we, I mean those of us who aren’t people of colour, who aren’t of Romani or Traveller background - haven’t been wronged. We’re being told that things we have enjoyed have, without us knowing, or at least without us thinking about it, hurt others.
Yes, the game book is fiction. But when you use it to interact with other people, those people are real. When you all agree to play in a fantasy world where you are heroes, and part of that world is accepting as fact that some “races of people” are inherently evil, or brutal, or stupid, or criminal, or violent, or ugly...well those are all things that have been said, and still are, in the real world. You can dress it up by saying humans are all the same and can have any human skin colour or appearance you like, and that the “bad” races have fangs, or pointy ears, or skin colours no real world human has - but it’s still presented as fact in the world you’re being asked to engage with. (See note at the end about this.)
It is hard to be told something we love is hurtful or even just offensive (and there is a difference) to others. Our first instinct is often to say “no it isn’t!” or “I don’t think those things!” or “this isn’t fair!” But we have to go beyond that first instinct and really try and imagine how those ideas and concepts make someone feel who is playing the game and has to deal with them in real life.
I‘ve been bullied, sure. D&D never asks me to imagine I am powerless and being targeted by much stronger, cruel people just because it makes them feel better about themselves. If there’s a villain who is more powerful, I will rise in power through the game and find a way to defeat them and there will be many victories and setbacks along the way but I will never feel powerless and alone the way I did in real life when I was bullied. If I encounter that in the game it is because my group decided to make it a theme of our story.
But for a person who is Romani, playing Curse of Strahd means seeing a stereotypical idea of your people, and seeing them all - or nearly all - labelled collaborators with an evil oppressive regime. The Romani in the real world were rounded up and killed by nazis during World War II. That’s a horrible way to twist the story of that people.
And we can see how race relations in the world right now are still horrendous. I can’t speak much of America, I’ve only been there once, but my home country of Australia still hasn’t dealt with our racist past. Our own Prime Minister refuses to admit our country was built on slavery (the colonisers called it ”black birding” here), or properly address the numerous problems caused by the large scale murder and displacement of the Aboriginal peoples here. The colonisers felt they had the right to kill them and take their land because instead of making an effort to understand them, they instead saw they were different and described them as a race who were stupid, lazy, criminal and so on. They were thought of as primitive and savage...and that’s exactly the language used about orcs.
I can’t imagine introducing Dungeons & Dragons to a bunch of Aboriginal kids without making damn sure I took out all the depictions of orcs and Drow that will only remind them of how their own people have been treated, and which has still not been properly addressed by the white folks of my country.
And once I started to think about it, I realised that it’s not okay to use those concepts with other white folks either. Because those concepts are harmful and awful and reductive. I feel guilty about the kids to whom I have taught this game without addressing those things.
If we want to address racism in our games then the games have to have a similar setup to real life when it comes to race. And right now, they don’t - because right now, in the default setting, some races are inherently evil, violent or criminal. Individuals of any people can be those things, but the game says some of them are born that way because of their race. That’s playing in a world that functions the way racist thinkers believe our world really does.
It is hard to confront that and say “I was wrong to do it this way”. Wizards have done it in little ways in the past, and are doing it in a bigger way now. I hope we can all do the hard work of looking at something we love and realising that some of its flaws are not just bits of game design or writing that can be improved, but have carried harmful ideas from the real world into the fiction. It has to change in a way that might make us question things we accepted without thinking about them. And that can be very difficult, and upsetting. But it is important, and I believe we owe to those who are hurt by these things to do it.
(A further note about culture as presented in D&D: in the default setting humans are mostly presented culturally as varieties of European, and it is the non-human races who are given traits and cultural trappings inspired by non-European peoples. That’s part of what is being revised about Chult. This is part of a broader tradition of fantasy and sci-fi making all “races” culturally monolithic, except for humans - something that Europeans did when it came to comparing themselves with the peoples they encountered elsewhere. It is also worth noting that when non-European human cultures do appear in fantasy fiction, they too are often based on blends of old-fashioned stereotypes, used to make somewhere “exotic” for people to visit. I don’t know about Al-Quadim or Kara-Tur but I do know that even my favourite fantasy author, Terry Pratchett, used horrible stereotypes with racist origins when writing his fictional versions of Middle Eastern or Asian nations - ones I laughed at in ignorance of how wrong and harmful they were.)
I had this conversation with someone in one of these forums who actually said: “Why’s it gotta be the dark elves that are evil and live underground?!?” When I explained that Drow were actually a pale, ashen grey color they were flabbergasted. They literally had no idea that “dark elves” in no way referenced their skin pigmentation. It seems this argument comes from ignorance more than actual morality.
There's also the fact that they are based on the dokkalfar/svartalfar from ancient norse and germaic lore and they were assuredly /not nice/. Many of the books describe the drow as being obsidian though, rather than gray. The best thing they could do imo to quash this would be to ret-con them all to dark grey (because nobody complains about grey dwarves being evil), and turn the sun elves dark brown (even though canon FR has dark brown "dark elves" who aren't evil).
The idea for a dark-skinned race of subterranean elves came from the svartalfar, yes, but the similarities stop there, the depiction of drow in D&D, especially in the Forgotten Realms, is very far removed from that. Saying that recoloring dark elves to be grey, or or yellow, or purple with pink stripes is completely missing the point of why there are complaints. Grey dwarves don't attract complaints because grey dwarves don't code so strongly for unfortunate racial (and gender) stereotypes and also because grey dwarves aren't featured in anywhere near the prominence that dark elves are.
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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.
I don't feel that drow code strongly towards any racial stereotypes either, unless that's what someone is WANTING to see there. To me they code as anti-Tolkien elves. Period.
I'm going to just nope out of notifications on this thread, because...this discussion is not worth participating in.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Orcs have always been gray/green and yet the racist issues with their depiction are still loud and clear. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there, especially if you're not a member of the group that's been subject to the negative stereotypes.
I think that Demons and other fiends should be almost completely evil, but given the fact that Angels and celestials can fall, why can't demons and devils have agency to rise? Sure, they're beings of evil, but they have personalities and ideals as well.
This is a solid point. In Catholic scripture, shades of the dead who have been condemned to hell are entitled to another chance during judgement day. Although demons are not traditionally formed from souls of living beings, but from angels fallen from grace, I don't see why they would be entirely exempt from a similar second judgement in a world where deities are much more fallible than in Catholic dogma. I mean, BG:DiA makes this central to the plot for Zariel. Also, no doubt many of the angels who followed Asmodeus were conned into the act, convinced that his methods were the proper way to enforce cosmic law. Imagine how pissed they'd be having to deal with Mammon's cesspit?
One failing this subject has is its not an apples to apples comparison. Race IRL VS Race in game are 2 entirely different things. Race in life is a sub category of the human species indicating ethnicity whereas Race as a game term really refers to an entirely different species. This is an incredibly important distinction that is being ignored because it invalidates the argument.
cheers and unfortunately lost in the thread - they should drop the use of race and call it what it is - a species.
I agree that they should be called species, and the subraces just "race" but most people think this is too sciency.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I hope this 'no more evil races' things means they'll nix that awful gnoll retcon they did for 5e.
There's that whole Negative Planes and Positive Planes to things. The idea is that the Negative side consumes and the Positive side provides. It's easy to stop giving. It's harder to start giving without something to give.
That stated, the idea is not an impossible one - a difficult one and extraordinarily rare - but still possible. Falling can be done on one's own, but I cannot picture a situation where rising to grace wouldn't require help.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Yes that is pretty much an example response from reddit, outrage while not even reading what I wrote. No where did I say diversity is exclusive to sexuality. No where did I say "no such thing existed". I was only looking for examples, specifically art from covers of books or modules that would be recognized as diverse.
And then people like you get all mad.
I like all food, never been a picky eater.
Do I mean every single last possible culinary item?
Clearly not.
This gets incisively at the heart of the matter. For me, here's how it breaks down logically:
Premise 1: These things hurt some people.
Premise 2: It matters whether these things hurt some people.
Premise 3: Changing these things prevents more harm than it causes.
As I look at it:
There's ample evidence, in this very thread and elsewhere, for premise 1. I accept premise 1.
Whether to accept premise 2 is a moral judgement. I accept premise 2.
Thusfar, in 11 pages of posts, I have yet to see anyone present any argument I find to be convincing to refute premise 3. I accept premise 3.
Therefore:
Conclusion: Change these things.
To reach a different conclusion, you have to reject one or more of the premises:
Reject Premise 1) These things do not hurt anybody.
Reject Premise 2) It does not matter whether these things hurt anybody.
Reject Premise 3) The harm caused by changing these things outweighs the benefit.
I have seen very little argument here against premise 1. It seems like a couple of people do think the controversy is, essentially, fake, but that view does not seem to be widespread, and I disagree with it based on the evidence available, including people's discussions of their personal experiences in this thread.
I don't recall seeing many people arguing against premise 2. As a moral question, to the extent there is any disagreement on whether harm to others matters, it's unlikely to be resolved in a venue like this forum, so this seems like inherent "agree to disagree" territory.
That leaves premise 3, which is where most of the dispute seems to center. But I don't find the arguments against it very persuasive. In fact, I mostly don't find them at all. I am getting the impression that at least several people think this change causes harm. But I'm very perplexed by what that harm actually is. It's more official options for players and DMs, and better, more nuanced representations. I genuinely can't find the harm there.
I do see a lot of arguments that change is (or at least can be) inherently bad, also phrased as "This particular change doesn't seem to matter, but what if the next one does?" But looking back at 40+ years of D&D, I can't think of any game that has changed more. So it doesn't seem like that's an argument that carries the day in this context. There will be more changes. Some people will go along with them happily. Some people will go along with them reluctantly. Some people will switch to Lamentations of the Flame Princess or something like it, more firmly rooted in the past. Some new people will be brought in by the changes.
Might D&D someday make a change I can't live with? Well, they already did. (The entirety of 4th edition.) They may again. But for now, Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Kate Welch, and the rest of the D&D team have earned a lot of my trust.
There's also a fair amount of "The way things are doesn't hurt me" and its close corollary "This change doesn't benefit me." And maybe that's the case. But D&D isn't just for you. It is possible and allowed for WOTC to work on improving the game for other people. WOTC has spent way more time and effort trying to make psionics work in 5e than they have on this. I can't see that ever making it into a form that my group uses. Should I protest WOTC spending effort on adding a bunch of stuff to the game that doesn't benefit me at all? Or can I accept that some people really want that change and that WOTC serves a larger audience than just me?
Because it turns out I'm fine with it.
"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Kain de Frostberg- Dark Knight - (Vengeance Pal3/ Hexblade 9), Port Mourn
Kain de Draakberg-Dark Knight lvl8-Avergreen(DitA)
Wanted to resurface this earlier post since the Youtube video just posted relies on the same source.
Just a reminder to try to avoid name calling and personal attacks. This thread is starting to stray from its original purpose.
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Starting?! This thread stopped being on topic a long time ago.
SAUCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They were talking about something specific and being vague and polite.
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Thanks Sposta. Most of the time I thankfully don't I have to deal with it, but when it happens it gets bad; sometimes worse than I described. Last year I had to cut a very old and dear friend from my life (and my table) because she kept falling deeper and deeper into racism, to the point where she started spouting nazi shit. That was ******* rough.
I can’t imagine.
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cheers and unfortunately lost in the thread - they should drop the use of race and call it what it is - a species.
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Deck of Decks
There's also the fact that they are based on the dokkalfar/svartalfar from ancient norse and germaic lore and they were assuredly /not nice/. Many of the books describe the drow as being obsidian though, rather than gray. The best thing they could do imo to quash this would be to ret-con them all to dark grey (because nobody complains about grey dwarves being evil), and turn the sun elves dark brown (even though canon FR has dark brown "dark elves" who aren't evil).
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_elf
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I would like to recognise that for many of us, these kinds of changes feel hard. I get that. But I want to encourage you to really think about why that is.
Wizards of the Coast is, explicitly, changing things so that previously evil races of people in the official default Dungeons & Dragons universe are no longer described that way. They are also revising their depictions of certain human peoples that rely on old, racist stereotypes of real-world cultures. And they are seeking to get input from a diverse range of people to make sure they don’t replicate harmful messages in any future products.
That’s what their announcement says, in a nutshell. It doesn’t say they’re revising anything else. It is not censorship - that requires laws and for things to be banned. Another company can - and indeed plenty already have - write their own fantasy roleplaying game that fully embraces the ideas Wizards are choosing to leave out. They are choosing to do better because they have been alerted that some of the things in the game are hurtful.
I understand it feels like this may be telling us what we have enjoyed at our game tables is somehow wrong or harmful. And that’s because...that’s exactly what it is doing. But we - and by we, I mean those of us who aren’t people of colour, who aren’t of Romani or Traveller background - haven’t been wronged. We’re being told that things we have enjoyed have, without us knowing, or at least without us thinking about it, hurt others.
Yes, the game book is fiction. But when you use it to interact with other people, those people are real. When you all agree to play in a fantasy world where you are heroes, and part of that world is accepting as fact that some “races of people” are inherently evil, or brutal, or stupid, or criminal, or violent, or ugly...well those are all things that have been said, and still are, in the real world. You can dress it up by saying humans are all the same and can have any human skin colour or appearance you like, and that the “bad” races have fangs, or pointy ears, or skin colours no real world human has - but it’s still presented as fact in the world you’re being asked to engage with. (See note at the end about this.)
It is hard to be told something we love is hurtful or even just offensive (and there is a difference) to others. Our first instinct is often to say “no it isn’t!” or “I don’t think those things!” or “this isn’t fair!” But we have to go beyond that first instinct and really try and imagine how those ideas and concepts make someone feel who is playing the game and has to deal with them in real life.
I‘ve been bullied, sure. D&D never asks me to imagine I am powerless and being targeted by much stronger, cruel people just because it makes them feel better about themselves. If there’s a villain who is more powerful, I will rise in power through the game and find a way to defeat them and there will be many victories and setbacks along the way but I will never feel powerless and alone the way I did in real life when I was bullied. If I encounter that in the game it is because my group decided to make it a theme of our story.
But for a person who is Romani, playing Curse of Strahd means seeing a stereotypical idea of your people, and seeing them all - or nearly all - labelled collaborators with an evil oppressive regime. The Romani in the real world were rounded up and killed by nazis during World War II. That’s a horrible way to twist the story of that people.
And we can see how race relations in the world right now are still horrendous. I can’t speak much of America, I’ve only been there once, but my home country of Australia still hasn’t dealt with our racist past. Our own Prime Minister refuses to admit our country was built on slavery (the colonisers called it ”black birding” here), or properly address the numerous problems caused by the large scale murder and displacement of the Aboriginal peoples here. The colonisers felt they had the right to kill them and take their land because instead of making an effort to understand them, they instead saw they were different and described them as a race who were stupid, lazy, criminal and so on. They were thought of as primitive and savage...and that’s exactly the language used about orcs.
I can’t imagine introducing Dungeons & Dragons to a bunch of Aboriginal kids without making damn sure I took out all the depictions of orcs and Drow that will only remind them of how their own people have been treated, and which has still not been properly addressed by the white folks of my country.
And once I started to think about it, I realised that it’s not okay to use those concepts with other white folks either. Because those concepts are harmful and awful and reductive. I feel guilty about the kids to whom I have taught this game without addressing those things.
If we want to address racism in our games then the games have to have a similar setup to real life when it comes to race. And right now, they don’t - because right now, in the default setting, some races are inherently evil, violent or criminal. Individuals of any people can be those things, but the game says some of them are born that way because of their race. That’s playing in a world that functions the way racist thinkers believe our world really does.
It is hard to confront that and say “I was wrong to do it this way”. Wizards have done it in little ways in the past, and are doing it in a bigger way now. I hope we can all do the hard work of looking at something we love and realising that some of its flaws are not just bits of game design or writing that can be improved, but have carried harmful ideas from the real world into the fiction. It has to change in a way that might make us question things we accepted without thinking about them. And that can be very difficult, and upsetting. But it is important, and I believe we owe to those who are hurt by these things to do it.
(A further note about culture as presented in D&D: in the default setting humans are mostly presented culturally as varieties of European, and it is the non-human races who are given traits and cultural trappings inspired by non-European peoples. That’s part of what is being revised about Chult. This is part of a broader tradition of fantasy and sci-fi making all “races” culturally monolithic, except for humans - something that Europeans did when it came to comparing themselves with the peoples they encountered elsewhere. It is also worth noting that when non-European human cultures do appear in fantasy fiction, they too are often based on blends of old-fashioned stereotypes, used to make somewhere “exotic” for people to visit. I don’t know about Al-Quadim or Kara-Tur but I do know that even my favourite fantasy author, Terry Pratchett, used horrible stereotypes with racist origins when writing his fictional versions of Middle Eastern or Asian nations - ones I laughed at in ignorance of how wrong and harmful they were.)
The idea for a dark-skinned race of subterranean elves came from the svartalfar, yes, but the similarities stop there, the depiction of drow in D&D, especially in the Forgotten Realms, is very far removed from that. Saying that recoloring dark elves to be grey, or or yellow, or purple with pink stripes is completely missing the point of why there are complaints. Grey dwarves don't attract complaints because grey dwarves don't code so strongly for unfortunate racial (and gender) stereotypes and also because grey dwarves aren't featured in anywhere near the prominence that dark elves are.
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.
I don't feel that drow code strongly towards any racial stereotypes either, unless that's what someone is WANTING to see there. To me they code as anti-Tolkien elves. Period.
I'm going to just nope out of notifications on this thread, because...this discussion is not worth participating in.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Orcs have always been gray/green and yet the racist issues with their depiction are still loud and clear. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there, especially if you're not a member of the group that's been subject to the negative stereotypes.
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.
This is a solid point. In Catholic scripture, shades of the dead who have been condemned to hell are entitled to another chance during judgement day. Although demons are not traditionally formed from souls of living beings, but from angels fallen from grace, I don't see why they would be entirely exempt from a similar second judgement in a world where deities are much more fallible than in Catholic dogma. I mean, BG:DiA makes this central to the plot for Zariel. Also, no doubt many of the angels who followed Asmodeus were conned into the act, convinced that his methods were the proper way to enforce cosmic law. Imagine how pissed they'd be having to deal with Mammon's cesspit?
I agree that they should be called species, and the subraces just "race" but most people think this is too sciency.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms