It will change nothing. In fact, it will probably only make things worse. The only way to face a problem is by recognizing it. Art (like storytelling) is what shows us the world. If we make art not show us things, those things don’t go away. All it does is make us less prepared to recognize the actual problems.
If supremacists didn’t use language like “savage, brutal, stupid, fecund--i.e. having lots of offspring” to describe POC, then we would not be having this conversation because those words would not have the attached connotations from society. The same with the whole “Thug” debate. If we stop society from placing those connotations of those words in racist speech, then those words in D&D stop being a problem. I would rather society change than D&D. D&D is a game that has been proven to promote inclusion and diversity within the community. So clearly the game is not the problem.
And words by themselves cannot be hurtful, only their meaning and usage. I am a member of the LGBT comunity. I was physically assaulted by some men once while they continually berated me as a “queer.” I find that word has particularly been made to feel insulting and hurtful to me. I am offended by its very usage. But for many people they self-identify as “queer.” Should I have the right to insist that the entire LGBTQ comunity stop using that word because I find it hurtful and offensive?!? Absolutely not. The word never hurt me, the ******* with the steel-toed boots did.
One core fact is that POC are not Orcs, Drow or any other fictional race. They ARE Human. Just like in the real world, All Humans are equal in D&D. If we let the words and actions of racists define how we view the world and by extension D&D, then then we let them drive the narrative and that gives them power.
I think that the game did not intentionally make any non-human race to represent any real life minority race. The people that created the game were kind of hippie liberals, though they were probably a bit sexist. (I hear the sex parties among early employees was fantastic - along with the drug use. At least until they went corporate.)
The game was built on real life legends and myths, that were part of an earlier time. Those earlier times were FULL of racism, and it is clearly reflected in the legends and myths. Clearly some strong racist and prejudiced elements were inadvertently included.
The game creators however have not added any racism and in the past 20 years clearly have taken steps to reduce/eliminate it. Drow, Orcs, etc. are all PLAYABLE races now, not assumed to be the bad guys.
But the game is also played as if 99% of the cultures are themselves CLEARLY racist. Races hate each other and think it is fine to kill each other solely based on race. " Kill them all. Including the babies." is a common theme. This does not mean the game is racist, but many of the non-player characters clearly are racist. The players can choose for themselves whether they want to be racist.
In general I believe that playing the game REDUCES real life prejudice. If you play on-line you are extremely likely to play with white, black, asian, homosexuals, women, jews, muslims, hippies, marines, people from other countries. I have personally played in majority black games and majority white games.My current game has jews, christians, homosexuals, an asian and an African American. No women, and I do admit that female players are still rare.
It also presents ethical and moral dilemmas that educate players. Lots of people have stopped and thought "why am I killing a baby - just because of the species?".
In my personal opinion, the game is a product of a racist world but does FAR more good than bad.
One core fact is that POC are not Orcs, Drow or any other fictional race. They ARE Human. Just like in the real world, All Humans are equal in D&D. If we let the words and actions of racists define how we view the world and by extension D&D, then then we let them drive the narrative and that gives them power.
This^^
Changing D&D does not solve racism, it just sweeps it under the rug, or sprays it with Fabreze. Do you know what happens if you sweep a pile of turds under a rug? It still stinks, but it makes it harder to find and eliminate the problem. Do you know what happens if you spray a pile of shit with Febreze? It just smells like shit and Febreze. Instead, we need to remove the turd of racism from our society. Not just cover it up.
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.
Google drow and see how many pages you need to go through before you find a description that doesn't include "dark-skinned." Many of them are wikis and other things made by players, not ignorant outsiders. Maybe drow are pale in your campaigns, but that is not conventional wisdom and it's not even regular canon.
This argument is echoed across so many facets of society right now, but it all boils down to the same thing for me. If something causes one African-American kid to feel bad because the dark-skinned elves are officially stated to be the bad guys, then it needs to go. Because that kid is real and none of the rest of this is real. I can still play D&D however I want. I am totally unaffected. If traditions are hurtful, just let them go. They aren't that important. They aren't worth hurting real people.
And if you think changing D&D does nothing, you need to educate yourself about institutional racism. It is subtle and insidious and the only way to beat it is to ferret it out of every corner of society, including this one.
It will change nothing. In fact, it will probably only make things worse. The only way to face a problem is by recognizing it. Art (like storytelling) is what shows us the world. If we make art not show us things, those things don’t go away. All it does is make us less prepared to recognize the actual problems.
If supremacists didn’t use language like “savage, brutal, stupid, fecund--i.e. having lots of offspring” to describe POC, then we would not be having this conversation because those words would not have the attached connotations from society. The same with the whole “Thug” debate. If we stop society from placing those connotations of those words in racist speech, then those words in D&D stop being a problem. I would rather society change than D&D. D&D is a game that has been proven to promote inclusion and diversity within the community. So clearly the game is not the problem.
And words by themselves cannot be hurtful, only their meaning and usage. I am a member of the LGBT comunity. I was physically assaulted by some men once while they continually berated me as a “queer.” I find that word has particularly been made to feel insulting and hurtful to me. I am offended by its very usage. But for many people they self-identify as “queer.” Should I have the right to insist that the entire LGBTQ comunity stop using that word because I find it hurtful and offensive?!? Absolutely not. The word never hurt me, the ******* with the steel-toed boots did.
No-one is going to ask that you stop using any words at your game at your table. But to use your own example, if the D&D game used the word queer in its core book, you might not have felt very comfortable while reading it, or have wanted to play it. If Wizards then said “we understand that word is hurtful to some folks, so we’ve decided not to use it in our books”, it wouldn’t stop anyone who has reclaimed that label using it for themselves, but perhaps it would make you feel more comfortable - and hearing that they were removing it, you would also know that they care about you and other folks who find it painful. And those who used it to hurt you would know that the people making the game explicitly do not approve of them. No-one would have to stop using the word at their own tables, of course, but you could go to a game with a much higher degree of confidence that you wouldn’t hear it and have to ask for it not to be used in the first place.
That’s what’s happening here. There’s no down side. No racists will see this as a victory, as you seem to be arguing. And it certainly won’t make things worse.
If your concern is that D&D becomes less able to function as an allegory for problems of racism and so on, I’d argue the reverse: the closer the allegory is to our world, the better it works. So if instead of using old-fashioned language from a time when harmful ideas about race were being invented - if the book doesn’t present it as fact that orcs are primitive, savage and brutal by nature, as it still does in this edition, with only half-orcs spared - but instead presents them as more nuanced and complex, with humans who believe those things about them, that is much better for what you say D&D can do.
And for those who want uncomplicated or at least unambiguous evils to fight - there are plenty of actual non-human evils to fight. Orcs and other “humanoid” peoples are still people, after all, but in this game you can fight mind-flayers, beholders, evil dragons, and any number of demons or evil gods and the cults of evil-by-choice people who follow them, all of whom have no similarity to real human cultures, intentional or otherwise.
It will change nothing. In fact, it will probably only make things worse. The only way to face a problem is by recognizing it. Art (like storytelling) is what shows us the world. If we make art not show us things, those things don’t go away. All it does is make us less prepared to recognize the actual problems.
If supremacists didn’t use language like “savage, brutal, stupid, fecund--i.e. having lots of offspring” to describe POC, then we would not be having this conversation because those words would not have the attached connotations from society. The same with the whole “Thug” debate. If we stop society from placing those connotations of those words in racist speech, then those words in D&D stop being a problem. I would rather society change than D&D. D&D is a game that has been proven to promote inclusion and diversity within the community. So clearly the game is not the problem.
And words by themselves cannot be hurtful, only their meaning and usage. I am a member of the LGBT comunity. I was physically assaulted by some men once while they continually berated me as a “queer.” I find that word has particularly been made to feel insulting and hurtful to me. I am offended by its very usage. But for many people they self-identify as “queer.” Should I have the right to insist that the entire LGBTQ comunity stop using that word because I find it hurtful and offensive?!? Absolutely not. The word never hurt me, the ******* with the steel-toed boots did.
I am very sorry you were attacked. This should not have happened, and those who did it were wrong and did a great evil. I am sorry you have to deal with name-calling and threats. I appreciate the reminder that not everyone hears or experiences "queer" (and by extension other language) in the same way.
Where I'm confused by your statement here is the apparent assumption that WOTC is telling others how they can use language: They've made a decision about how they want to use language going forward. Nothing in those decisions means that everyone who plays D&D has to make the same choices WOTC does; they aren't going to police people's tables or tell them how they can and can't play D&D. Nor am I.
I agree with the idea that in order to face a problem we have to recognize it. I disagree that what WOTC is doing is to "not show it." I see it instead as an acknowledgement of the problem, and an encouragement to face the problem in art/gaming. Perhaps most people in a given campaign setting assume that all orcs are evil, and persecute them/discriminate against them. The changes WOTC has made to the entries on orcs in Eberron and Wildemount give those players and DMs who care to do so more support to tell stories where the party gets to see beyond those assumptions and challenge their own conceptions of orcs and potentially the way some NPCS view orcs. At the same time, DMs can still have a tribe of orcs who pillage and raid and have to be stopped.
While we have some significant points of disagreement here, I want to thank you for engaging in the conversation, for telling your story, and for all the help you provide to users on these forums. I appreciate your contributions very much.
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?
And words by themselves cannot be hurtful, only their meaning and usage. I am a member of the LGBT comunity. I was physically assaulted by some men once while they continually berated me as a “queer.” I find that word has particularly been made to feel insulting and hurtful to me. I am offended by its very usage. But for many people they self-identify as “queer.” Should I have the right to insist that the entire LGBTQ comunity stop using that word because I find it hurtful and offensive?!? Absolutely not. The word never hurt me, the ******* with the steel-toed boots did.
No-one is going to ask that you stop using any words at your game at your table. But to use your own example, if the D&D game used the word queer in its core book, you might not have felt very comfortable while reading it, or have wanted to play it. If Wizards then said “we understand that word is hurtful to some folks, so we’ve decided not to use it in our books”, it wouldn’t stop anyone who has reclaimed that label using it for themselves, but perhaps it would make you feel more comfortable - and hearing that they were removing it, you would also know that they care about you and other folks who find it painful. And those who used it to hurt you would know that the people making the game explicitly do not approve of them. No-one would have to stop using the word at their own tables, of course, but you could go to a game with a much higher degree of confidence that you wouldn’t hear it and have to ask for it not to be used in the first place.
I have to face it every time someone adds the “Q” at the end of “LGBT.” I literally have to face it every day of my life. Not just in D&D, but IRL. Every day. Every news story about the comunity. Every social gathering when someone introduces themselves, their preferred pronouns, and their chosen identity like: “Hi, my name is X, my preferred pronouns are Y/Z, and I identify as queer.” Every time I hear that I just want to shake the person and scream “You are not unusual or strange!! You are a human being!! There are 7,000,000,000 of us and I guarantee that there are many others like you!!! There is nothing about you that should ever be considered “abnormal” by anyone!! Stop letting society tell you you are weird! ARGH!!!”
Is it really reasonable for me to expect the world to change? No. It is up to me to realize that the word itself is not the problem, my personal associations with that word are what makes me feel uncomfortable. Forcing people to not use the word solves nothing. Ending systematic discrimination and rampant homophobia solves something. Because without those, the word stops hurting me.
I think a bigger deal is made of the article than is really necessary. Back in November of 2019, Unearthed Arcana released a massive Class Variant Features article which many believed would be part of a Xanathar-esque book. Wizards hasn't said they're going to completely retcon everything they've made so far, just make a few minor changes to Chult from ToA and to the Vistani from Curse of Strahd. From the sound of it, it will be mostly fluff changes, the modules will still play out exactly the same. As for racial variant features, it's not all that different from the Class Variant features from UA. I don't know how many people in the community actually read the articles they post online, so a lot of them will probably be more interested in the book itself.
It is starting to hurt though, I just don't want to look at Twitter or the news anymore, you kind of lose your faith in humanity to do the right thing.
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?
And words by themselves cannot be hurtful, only their meaning and usage. I am a member of the LGBT comunity. I was physically assaulted by some men once while they continually berated me as a “queer.” I find that word has particularly been made to feel insulting and hurtful to me. I am offended by its very usage. But for many people they self-identify as “queer.” Should I have the right to insist that the entire LGBTQ comunity stop using that word because I find it hurtful and offensive?!? Absolutely not. The word never hurt me, the ******* with the steel-toed boots did.
No-one is going to ask that you stop using any words at your game at your table. But to use your own example, if the D&D game used the word queer in its core book, you might not have felt very comfortable while reading it, or have wanted to play it. If Wizards then said “we understand that word is hurtful to some folks, so we’ve decided not to use it in our books”, it wouldn’t stop anyone who has reclaimed that label using it for themselves, but perhaps it would make you feel more comfortable - and hearing that they were removing it, you would also know that they care about you and other folks who find it painful. And those who used it to hurt you would know that the people making the game explicitly do not approve of them. No-one would have to stop using the word at their own tables, of course, but you could go to a game with a much higher degree of confidence that you wouldn’t hear it and have to ask for it not to be used in the first place.
I have to face it every time someone adds the “Q” at the end of “LGBT.” I literally have to face it every day of my life. Not just in D&D, but IRL. Every day. Every news story about the comunity. Every social gathering when someone introduces themselves, their preferred pronouns, and their chosen identity like: “Hi, my name is X, my preferred pronouns are Y/Z, and I identify as queer.” Every time I hear that I just want to shake the person and scream “You are not unusual or strange!! You are a human being!! There are 7,000,000,000 of us and I guarantee that there are many others like you!!! There is nothing about you that should ever be considered “abnormal” by anyone!! Stop letting society tell you you are weird! ARGH!!!”
Is it really reasonable for me to expect the world to change? No. It is up to me to realize that the word itself is not the problem, my personal associations with that word are what makes me feel uncomfortable. Forcing people to not use the word solves nothing. Ending systematic discrimination and rampant homophobia solves something. Because without those, the word stops hurting me.
You’re right in that ending systematic discrimination and homophobia are the solution, as is ending systematic and systemic racism. And I apologise - I was out of line using your personal experience.
But again, no-one is forcing anyone to do anything. Wizards of the Coast are making voluntary - and minor - changes to their own fiction. That change brings to light the harmful history behind the words being removed, and sends a message about the sensitivity and values of the makers of the game. Both are steps towards ending racism within our part of our cultures. Small steps to be sure, but if we take no steps because we are afraid they will be too small, we never get any closer. I don’t see how this can be a step in the wrong direction.
And no-one said you can’t have evil orcs, or anything else. But we can’t pretend that a humanoid whose only real difference from a human is the colour of their skin and a few other minor physical attributes is really anything other than a (very) different kind of person. So orcs are a special case because of their similarity to humans, and the specific words used to describe them.
It’s obviously not going to be the case that illithids will be re-written with redeeming qualities - they are superficially humanoid but otherwise entirely fantastical creatures whose existence is predicated on killing intelligent beings and transforming them into more mind flayers. They have a fictional culture which, while mostly divorced from anything in reality, on some levels does function as an allegory for things like racism and colonisation. They don’t need to change. Neither do beholders or dragons, for similar reasons.
As for goblins and goblinoids, they’ve already been through this change, as we’ve seen in Eberron and the multiple settings where goblins are a popular playable option.
Alignment at a species level is a general problem, sure, especially for intelligent creatures, but the de-emphasis of it in 5E is already a good step in fixing that problem. The result we’re talking about is along the lines of, “this group of goblins are devoted to evil and we can’t reason with them” instead of “all goblins are inherently evil by nature and should be killed on sight”. For practical purposes it isn’t that big a change, And doesn’t preclude doing any of the stuff you do in a game. What it does is offer so many more story opportunities, and a better chance to examine these issues through play, if you want.
And still - if you don’t want to use the changes - okay. Don’t. The existing lore isn’t being deleted from existence, just no longer used by the default setting, giving a different set of assumptions to new players. Again - something that has already happened in one way or another in every edition of the game as it has evolved over time. We saw it in this edition at the start with explicit language separating sex and gender and asking players to consider those things when making characters. We’ve seen it in the inclusion of same-sex relationships in published adventures. And that has - at least among people I know - made folks more comfortable to participate in games, and made it clear that discrimination and prejudice on that basis isn’t welcome by the makers of the game.
It will change nothing. In fact, it will probably only make things worse. The only way to face a problem is by recognizing it. Art (like storytelling) is what shows us the world. If we make art not show us things, those things don’t go away. All it does is make us less prepared to recognize the actual problems.
If supremacists didn’t use language like “savage, brutal, stupid, fecund--i.e. having lots of offspring” to describe POC, then we would not be having this conversation because those words would not have the attached connotations from society. The same with the whole “Thug” debate. If we stop society from placing those connotations of those words in racist speech, then those words in D&D stop being a problem. I would rather society change than D&D. D&D is a game that has been proven to promote inclusion and diversity within the community. So clearly the game is not the problem.
And words by themselves cannot be hurtful, only their meaning and usage. I am a member of the LGBT comunity. I was physically assaulted by some men once while they continually berated me as a “queer.” I find that word has particularly been made to feel insulting and hurtful to me. I am offended by its very usage. But for many people they self-identify as “queer.” Should I have the right to insist that the entire LGBTQ comunity stop using that word because I find it hurtful and offensive?!? Absolutely not. The word never hurt me, the ******* with the steel-toed boots did.
I am very sorry you were attacked. This should not have happened, and those who did it were wrong and did a great evil. I am sorry you have to deal with name-calling and threats. I appreciate the reminder that not everyone hears or experiences "queer" (and by extension other language) in the same way.
Where I'm confused by your statement here is the apparent assumption that WOTC is telling others how they can use language: They've made a decision about how they want to use language going forward. Nothing in those decisions means that everyone who plays D&D has to make the same choices WOTC does; they aren't going to police people's tables or tell them how they can and can't play D&D. Nor am I.
I agree with the idea that in order to face a problem we have to recognize it. I disagree that what WOTC is doing is to "not show it." I see it instead as an acknowledgement of the problem, and an encouragement to face the problem in art/gaming. Perhaps most people in a given campaign setting assume that all orcs are evil, and persecute them/discriminate against them. The changes WOTC has made to the entries on orcs in Eberron and Wildemount give those players and DMs who care to do so more support to tell stories where the party gets to see beyond those assumptions and challenge their own conceptions of orcs and potentially the way some NPCS view orcs. At the same time, DMs can still have a tribe of orcs who pillage and raid and have to be stopped.
While we have some significant points of disagreement here, I want to thank you for engaging in the conversation, for telling your story, and for all the help you provide to users on these forums. I appreciate your contributions very much.
Thank you. Thank you for your understanding and your kind words. Truly.
I would like to say point blank that I personally do not use Orcs (or any sentient race) as purely evil in my campaign world, nor have I in almost 30 years of D&D.
One of the major reasons that I use the OD&D world of Mystara as my preferred setting is because in the Known World (main continent of the world) there is specifically a group of nations comprised entirely of “monstrous demihumans humanoids.”
I was the first DM in my group (back in the ‘90s) to allow Orcs, Half-Orcs, Goblins, Half-Goblinus, Hobgoblins, Half-Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Half-Ogres, (among others) as PC races that were not inherently evil. As well as Half-Dwarves, and Half-Gnomes. In fact, one of my favorite story points is to present a peaceful Orc fishing village persecuted by “good” humans simply because of their race. I specifically use D&D as a means of exploring the social issues of systematic racism through narrative. That becomes impossible if those “evil” races stop being portrayed as “evil” in cannon. The impact of that juxtaposition is lost. The ability to showcase the problems becomes lost. The possibility of us all becoming better people through that learning is lost.
If there is no racism, then there is no racism to overcome. By homogenizing the various races of D&D, we limit our ability to learn about diversity as well as injustice. What will happen in a few generations without that capacity?
Marvel comics used the plight of the Mutant population as an analogue for the social justice movement. Through that, Stan Lee did more to change the attitudes of generations of readers than we will ever know. Society is less broken today than it was in the 1960s because of the narratives of discrimination and injustice portrayed and explored through that art form. If we take away that foil from D&D, where will people learn not to be *****?
So what if WotC changes things around, I'll still use my old material on the drow and what not. No big deal to me and WotC has to make money, so what better way to do that then issues a new book on old races.
My wife and I are the most cool liberal open minded, all inclusive people on the planet.
Yet I myself was completely caught off guard at how fast the world is changing and the completely different views of kids going into college now.
If you have a daughter going to a arts high school you would understand.
We are no longer cool, no longer liberal, no longer open minded (compared to the kids).
Drow was cool as a kid and had nothing to do with race. But Drow are no longer cool unless the Drow is trans.
Sorry but old straight white men can't understand the world now and so reject it.
There are several things going on here.
There is your belief that you personally are as good as others of your generation. Just because you personally do not understand the world and reject it does not mean all do. Some of us old folks keep up with the times. You may not, but that does not mean no one does. Yes, as you age, the world tends to get ahead of you, but you CAN keep up if you work at it. I know I have.
Your belief that the new kids are right about EVERYTHING. Each age has the the new progressives reject the old ideas and come up with new ones. SOME, but not all of those new ideas will end up being adopted. Others will not. For example during the 60s and 70's people that the 'new' acceptance of LSD was an improvement. Nope. Most of those cool new liberal ideas about drugs ended up being rejected. Yes, pot eventually became legalized, but LSD did not and is still not mainstreamed. Some of the cool new liberal ideas your kids come back with will end up being rejected. They will have gone to far. For example, I feel that the confederate statues are evil beyond belief, but the removal of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who clearly owned slaves (a despicable act) are a step too far. The fact that kids disagree does not automatically mean they are right and I "don't get it". We won't know for a decade or so. Once the test of time comes about we may very well discover that like me, people can respect the flawed men that made this country great despite their slave ownership, while at the same time despising the TRAITORS that fought for slavery.
Drow are still cool. Whether they are straight, gay, trans, queer, or whatever.
One more point - this game is expressly about Good vs. Evil. You can not portray an epic battle of Good vs Evil without portraying some one as Evil. It is part of the game, not a flaw, and not something WOTC approves of.
this is just another attempt to make the argument that cultivation theory explains systemic racism when there is zero evidence to support it. Show me a study that shows playing dnd or heck any leisure activity that causes an increase in racism and I will buy in hook line and sinker. Until there is evidence nothing should be done since without proof there is no harm. We all have the right to feel how we feel but that doesn't mean feelings = fact. As a society we need to stop making decisions based on feeling. Wise choices are made on the basis of facts/science. Mind you I am not saying racism doesn't exist of course it does. But we need to acknowledge the fact that these perceptions from game descriptions may not necessarily be wholly from the written text. It could also at least be in part due to our own bias/racist/prejudice views being projected on the subject. Everyone is racist its just to what degree and awareness of its existence. Without exception everyone's persona is formed by our past experiences both positive and negative. So if a monster's written description causes you to think of a certain race/ethnicity it may be that you are the source of racism but you can't come to terms with it so you project it onto a piece of writing instead. From my understanding this is not a nefarious process but rather a subconscious one. However, it is your failure to be aware of your own bias that is the cause. You should ask yourself, "why when I read these words I think of this type of person?"
That is like saying 'If there is no systematic racism, how will we know it is bad?' Do you need someone to punch you in the face to understand that being punched in the face is bad?
Much lake an animal that has never encountered a hunter with a shotgun has no idea that it is dangerous. People only know getting punched in the face hurts because people have punched each other in the face. If it had never happened, how would any of us know it hurts?
If the party was to lead an in game effort against racism, would you ensure they failed simply because if they succeeded they would be 'sweeping racism under the rug?'
No, in fact quite the opposite. Clearly you have missed my point. Have you ever heard the adage: “Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them?”
Stories, like the ones we tell each other in D&D are the ways people teach each other those lessons from history. If we stop telling those stories, those lessons are lost, and we are then doomed to repeat those mistakes.If we take away the possibility of teaching each other through these stories by hand waving away the history, then we make ourselves weaker, and the bigotry will inevitably rise again. Only by keeping the history alive do we have any hope to overcome it.
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.
Google drow and see how many pages you need to go through before you find a description that doesn't include "dark-skinned." Many of them are wikis and other things made by players, not ignorant outsiders. Maybe drow are pale in your campaigns, but that is not conventional wisdom and it's not even regular canon.
This argument is echoed across so many facets of society right now, but it all boils down to the same thing for me. If something causes one African-American kid to feel bad because the dark-skinned elves are officially stated to be the bad guys, then it needs to go. Because that kid is real and none of the rest of this is real. I can still play D&D however I want. I am totally unaffected. If traditions are hurtful, just let them go. They aren't that important. They aren't worth hurting real people.
And if you think changing D&D does nothing, you need to educate yourself about institutional racism. It is subtle and insidious and the only way to beat it is to ferret it out of every corner of society, including this one.
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.
If making an entire race not genetically evil and just part of an evil society ruins your ability to use them, that's on you dude.
The advantage of having, as you call it, "genetically evil" races like the Drow and Ocrs classically used to be, is that it gives the party carte blanche to slay them in battle and not have to worry about the ethics of the situation. Now not everyone necessarily wants to run a game like that, but this is the reason why Orcs and Drow and Goblins were, originally, branded as an entire race of chaotic evil beings. So that players could kill them without qualms. So that the DM didn't have to begin every single blasted encounter with providing the players a moral justification why they would kill these creatures. There are plenty of other races (like Dwarves, Elves, Humans) who can be "any alignment" that you can use for adventures with moral dilemmas. Gygax wanted to give us some creatures like the Drow that we knew could be "killed on sight" (KOS) without needing to feel bad about it.
Because let's face it, a large chunk of D&D has always been getting into battle and killing things. And not everyone wants to RP having to angst over the morality of killing enemies. In. every. freaking. encounter.
I'm not in favor of designing motifs that would make people feel bad. And if the current design is dong that, WOTC needs to look at how to deal with it. But there is a real advantage in game terms to having some KOS humanoids, so that they can act and behave in recognizable ways to us (which monstrosities, demons, etc, might not, being so far removed from regular mortal living), but are still creatures we don't have to feel bad about killing.
While I know a lot of discussion has occurred since this post, I vehemently disagree with the ideas presented in it. Encouraging your players to slaughter every goblin, orc, kobold, and hobgoblin they meet seems just as bad as murderhoboes. Your argument that "other races exist that are not kill on sight" doesn't really make sense to me. I don't think that providing moral justification to kill something should be a chore. It is an integral part of making a coherent story, and just saying "its a goblin you have permission to murder it" feels like lazy dming.
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It will change nothing. In fact, it will probably only make things worse. The only way to face a problem is by recognizing it. Art (like storytelling) is what shows us the world. If we make art not show us things, those things don’t go away. All it does is make us less prepared to recognize the actual problems.
If supremacists didn’t use language like “savage, brutal, stupid, fecund--i.e. having lots of offspring” to describe POC, then we would not be having this conversation because those words would not have the attached connotations from society. The same with the whole “Thug” debate. If we stop society from placing those connotations of those words in racist speech, then those words in D&D stop being a problem. I would rather society change than D&D. D&D is a game that has been proven to promote inclusion and diversity within the community. So clearly the game is not the problem.
And words by themselves cannot be hurtful, only their meaning and usage. I am a member of the LGBT comunity. I was physically assaulted by some men once while they continually berated me as a “queer.” I find that word has particularly been made to feel insulting and hurtful to me. I am offended by its very usage. But for many people they self-identify as “queer.” Should I have the right to insist that the entire LGBTQ comunity stop using that word because I find it hurtful and offensive?!? Absolutely not. The word never hurt me, the ******* with the steel-toed boots did.
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One core fact is that POC are not Orcs, Drow or any other fictional race. They ARE Human. Just like in the real world, All Humans are equal in D&D. If we let the words and actions of racists define how we view the world and by extension D&D, then then we let them drive the narrative and that gives them power.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I think that the game did not intentionally make any non-human race to represent any real life minority race. The people that created the game were kind of hippie liberals, though they were probably a bit sexist. (I hear the sex parties among early employees was fantastic - along with the drug use. At least until they went corporate.)
The game was built on real life legends and myths, that were part of an earlier time. Those earlier times were FULL of racism, and it is clearly reflected in the legends and myths. Clearly some strong racist and prejudiced elements were inadvertently included.
The game creators however have not added any racism and in the past 20 years clearly have taken steps to reduce/eliminate it. Drow, Orcs, etc. are all PLAYABLE races now, not assumed to be the bad guys.
But the game is also played as if 99% of the cultures are themselves CLEARLY racist. Races hate each other and think it is fine to kill each other solely based on race. " Kill them all. Including the babies." is a common theme. This does not mean the game is racist, but many of the non-player characters clearly are racist. The players can choose for themselves whether they want to be racist.
In general I believe that playing the game REDUCES real life prejudice. If you play on-line you are extremely likely to play with white, black, asian, homosexuals, women, jews, muslims, hippies, marines, people from other countries. I have personally played in majority black games and majority white games.My current game has jews, christians, homosexuals, an asian and an African American. No women, and I do admit that female players are still rare.
It also presents ethical and moral dilemmas that educate players. Lots of people have stopped and thought "why am I killing a baby - just because of the species?".
In my personal opinion, the game is a product of a racist world but does FAR more good than bad.
This^^
Changing D&D does not solve racism, it just sweeps it under the rug, or sprays it with Fabreze. Do you know what happens if you sweep a pile of turds under a rug? It still stinks, but it makes it harder to find and eliminate the problem. Do you know what happens if you spray a pile of shit with Febreze? It just smells like shit and Febreze. Instead, we need to remove the turd of racism from our society. Not just cover it up.
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Google drow and see how many pages you need to go through before you find a description that doesn't include "dark-skinned." Many of them are wikis and other things made by players, not ignorant outsiders. Maybe drow are pale in your campaigns, but that is not conventional wisdom and it's not even regular canon.
This argument is echoed across so many facets of society right now, but it all boils down to the same thing for me. If something causes one African-American kid to feel bad because the dark-skinned elves are officially stated to be the bad guys, then it needs to go. Because that kid is real and none of the rest of this is real. I can still play D&D however I want. I am totally unaffected. If traditions are hurtful, just let them go. They aren't that important. They aren't worth hurting real people.
And if you think changing D&D does nothing, you need to educate yourself about institutional racism. It is subtle and insidious and the only way to beat it is to ferret it out of every corner of society, including this one.
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No-one is going to ask that you stop using any words at your game at your table. But to use your own example, if the D&D game used the word queer in its core book, you might not have felt very comfortable while reading it, or have wanted to play it. If Wizards then said “we understand that word is hurtful to some folks, so we’ve decided not to use it in our books”, it wouldn’t stop anyone who has reclaimed that label using it for themselves, but perhaps it would make you feel more comfortable - and hearing that they were removing it, you would also know that they care about you and other folks who find it painful. And those who used it to hurt you would know that the people making the game explicitly do not approve of them. No-one would have to stop using the word at their own tables, of course, but you could go to a game with a much higher degree of confidence that you wouldn’t hear it and have to ask for it not to be used in the first place.
That’s what’s happening here. There’s no down side. No racists will see this as a victory, as you seem to be arguing. And it certainly won’t make things worse.
If your concern is that D&D becomes less able to function as an allegory for problems of racism and so on, I’d argue the reverse: the closer the allegory is to our world, the better it works. So if instead of using old-fashioned language from a time when harmful ideas about race were being invented - if the book doesn’t present it as fact that orcs are primitive, savage and brutal by nature, as it still does in this edition, with only half-orcs spared - but instead presents them as more nuanced and complex, with humans who believe those things about them, that is much better for what you say D&D can do.
And for those who want uncomplicated or at least unambiguous evils to fight - there are plenty of actual non-human evils to fight. Orcs and other “humanoid” peoples are still people, after all, but in this game you can fight mind-flayers, beholders, evil dragons, and any number of demons or evil gods and the cults of evil-by-choice people who follow them, all of whom have no similarity to real human cultures, intentional or otherwise.
I am very sorry you were attacked. This should not have happened, and those who did it were wrong and did a great evil. I am sorry you have to deal with name-calling and threats. I appreciate the reminder that not everyone hears or experiences "queer" (and by extension other language) in the same way.
Where I'm confused by your statement here is the apparent assumption that WOTC is telling others how they can use language: They've made a decision about how they want to use language going forward. Nothing in those decisions means that everyone who plays D&D has to make the same choices WOTC does; they aren't going to police people's tables or tell them how they can and can't play D&D. Nor am I.
I agree with the idea that in order to face a problem we have to recognize it. I disagree that what WOTC is doing is to "not show it." I see it instead as an acknowledgement of the problem, and an encouragement to face the problem in art/gaming. Perhaps most people in a given campaign setting assume that all orcs are evil, and persecute them/discriminate against them. The changes WOTC has made to the entries on orcs in Eberron and Wildemount give those players and DMs who care to do so more support to tell stories where the party gets to see beyond those assumptions and challenge their own conceptions of orcs and potentially the way some NPCS view orcs. At the same time, DMs can still have a tribe of orcs who pillage and raid and have to be stopped.
While we have some significant points of disagreement here, I want to thank you for engaging in the conversation, for telling your story, and for all the help you provide to users on these forums. I appreciate your contributions very much.
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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?
I have to face it every time someone adds the “Q” at the end of “LGBT.” I literally have to face it every day of my life. Not just in D&D, but IRL. Every day. Every news story about the comunity. Every social gathering when someone introduces themselves, their preferred pronouns, and their chosen identity like: “Hi, my name is X, my preferred pronouns are Y/Z, and I identify as queer.” Every time I hear that I just want to shake the person and scream “You are not unusual or strange!! You are a human being!! There are 7,000,000,000 of us and I guarantee that there are many others like you!!! There is nothing about you that should ever be considered “abnormal” by anyone!! Stop letting society tell you you are weird! ARGH!!!”
Is it really reasonable for me to expect the world to change? No. It is up to me to realize that the word itself is not the problem, my personal associations with that word are what makes me feel uncomfortable. Forcing people to not use the word solves nothing. Ending systematic discrimination and rampant homophobia solves something. Because without those, the word stops hurting me.
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I think a bigger deal is made of the article than is really necessary. Back in November of 2019, Unearthed Arcana released a massive Class Variant Features article which many believed would be part of a Xanathar-esque book. Wizards hasn't said they're going to completely retcon everything they've made so far, just make a few minor changes to Chult from ToA and to the Vistani from Curse of Strahd. From the sound of it, it will be mostly fluff changes, the modules will still play out exactly the same. As for racial variant features, it's not all that different from the Class Variant features from UA. I don't know how many people in the community actually read the articles they post online, so a lot of them will probably be more interested in the book itself.
My wife and I are the most cool liberal open minded, all inclusive people on the planet.
Yet I myself was completely caught off guard at how fast the world is changing and the completely different views of kids going into college now.
If you have a daughter going to a arts high school you would understand.
We are no longer cool, no longer liberal, no longer open minded (compared to the kids).
Drow was cool as a kid and had nothing to do with race. But Drow are no longer cool unless the Drow is trans.
Sorry but old straight white men can't understand the world now and so reject it.
I have changed quickly thanks to the kids.
I now understand what White Privilege is.
I understand where there is Systemic Racism.
I understand what women face in eSports.
I understand that J.K.Rowling was wrong.
It is starting to hurt though, I just don't want to look at Twitter or the news anymore, you kind of lose your faith in humanity to do the right thing.
You’re right in that ending systematic discrimination and homophobia are the solution, as is ending systematic and systemic racism. And I apologise - I was out of line using your personal experience.
But again, no-one is forcing anyone to do anything. Wizards of the Coast are making voluntary - and minor - changes to their own fiction. That change brings to light the harmful history behind the words being removed, and sends a message about the sensitivity and values of the makers of the game. Both are steps towards ending racism within our part of our cultures. Small steps to be sure, but if we take no steps because we are afraid they will be too small, we never get any closer. I don’t see how this can be a step in the wrong direction.
And no-one said you can’t have evil orcs, or anything else. But we can’t pretend that a humanoid whose only real difference from a human is the colour of their skin and a few other minor physical attributes is really anything other than a (very) different kind of person. So orcs are a special case because of their similarity to humans, and the specific words used to describe them.
It’s obviously not going to be the case that illithids will be re-written with redeeming qualities - they are superficially humanoid but otherwise entirely fantastical creatures whose existence is predicated on killing intelligent beings and transforming them into more mind flayers. They have a fictional culture which, while mostly divorced from anything in reality, on some levels does function as an allegory for things like racism and colonisation. They don’t need to change. Neither do beholders or dragons, for similar reasons.
As for goblins and goblinoids, they’ve already been through this change, as we’ve seen in Eberron and the multiple settings where goblins are a popular playable option.
Alignment at a species level is a general problem, sure, especially for intelligent creatures, but the de-emphasis of it in 5E is already a good step in fixing that problem. The result we’re talking about is along the lines of, “this group of goblins are devoted to evil and we can’t reason with them” instead of “all goblins are inherently evil by nature and should be killed on sight”. For practical purposes it isn’t that big a change, And doesn’t preclude doing any of the stuff you do in a game. What it does is offer so many more story opportunities, and a better chance to examine these issues through play, if you want.
And still - if you don’t want to use the changes - okay. Don’t. The existing lore isn’t being deleted from existence, just no longer used by the default setting, giving a different set of assumptions to new players. Again - something that has already happened in one way or another in every edition of the game as it has evolved over time. We saw it in this edition at the start with explicit language separating sex and gender and asking players to consider those things when making characters. We’ve seen it in the inclusion of same-sex relationships in published adventures. And that has - at least among people I know - made folks more comfortable to participate in games, and made it clear that discrimination and prejudice on that basis isn’t welcome by the makers of the game.
Thank you. Thank you for your understanding and your kind words. Truly.
I would like to say point blank that I personally do not use Orcs (or any sentient race) as purely evil in my campaign world, nor have I in almost 30 years of D&D.
One of the major reasons that I use the OD&D world of Mystara as my preferred setting is because in the Known World (main continent of the world) there is specifically a group of nations comprised entirely of “monstrous
demihumanshumanoids.”I was the first DM in my group (back in the ‘90s) to allow Orcs, Half-Orcs, Goblins, Half-Goblinus, Hobgoblins, Half-Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Half-Ogres, (among others) as PC races that were not inherently evil. As well as Half-Dwarves, and Half-Gnomes. In fact, one of my favorite story points is to present a peaceful Orc fishing village persecuted by “good” humans simply because of their race. I specifically use D&D as a means of exploring the social issues of systematic racism through narrative. That becomes impossible if those “evil” races stop being portrayed as “evil” in cannon. The impact of that juxtaposition is lost. The ability to showcase the problems becomes lost. The possibility of us all becoming better people through that learning is lost.
If there is no racism, then there is no racism to overcome. By homogenizing the various races of D&D, we limit our ability to learn about diversity as well as injustice. What will happen in a few generations without that capacity?
Marvel comics used the plight of the Mutant population as an analogue for the social justice movement. Through that, Stan Lee did more to change the attitudes of generations of readers than we will ever know. Society is less broken today than it was in the 1960s because of the narratives of discrimination and injustice portrayed and explored through that art form. If we take away that foil from D&D, where will people learn not to be *****?
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So what if WotC changes things around, I'll still use my old material on the drow and what not. No big deal to me and WotC has to make money, so what better way to do that then issues a new book on old races.
There are several things going on here.
One more point - this game is expressly about Good vs. Evil. You can not portray an epic battle of Good vs Evil without portraying some one as Evil. It is part of the game, not a flaw, and not something WOTC approves of.
I think over all, the best part of this thread is that everyone posting seems to hate real world racism.
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this is just another attempt to make the argument that cultivation theory explains systemic racism when there is zero evidence to support it. Show me a study that shows playing dnd or heck any leisure activity that causes an increase in racism and I will buy in hook line and sinker. Until there is evidence nothing should be done since without proof there is no harm. We all have the right to feel how we feel but that doesn't mean feelings = fact. As a society we need to stop making decisions based on feeling. Wise choices are made on the basis of facts/science. Mind you I am not saying racism doesn't exist of course it does. But we need to acknowledge the fact that these perceptions from game descriptions may not necessarily be wholly from the written text. It could also at least be in part due to our own bias/racist/prejudice views being projected on the subject. Everyone is racist its just to what degree and awareness of its existence. Without exception everyone's persona is formed by our past experiences both positive and negative. So if a monster's written description causes you to think of a certain race/ethnicity it may be that you are the source of racism but you can't come to terms with it so you project it onto a piece of writing instead. From my understanding this is not a nefarious process but rather a subconscious one. However, it is your failure to be aware of your own bias that is the cause. You should ask yourself, "why when I read these words I think of this type of person?"
Much lake an animal that has never encountered a hunter with a shotgun has no idea that it is dangerous. People only know getting punched in the face hurts because people have punched each other in the face. If it had never happened, how would any of us know it hurts?
No, in fact quite the opposite. Clearly you have missed my point. Have you ever heard the adage: “Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them?”
Stories, like the ones we tell each other in D&D are the ways people teach each other those lessons from history. If we stop telling those stories, those lessons are lost, and we are then doomed to repeat those mistakes.If we take away the possibility of teaching each other through these stories by hand waving away the history, then we make ourselves weaker, and the bigotry will inevitably rise again. Only by keeping the history alive do we have any hope to overcome it.
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And yet
https://imgur.com/a/782oT6H
While I know a lot of discussion has occurred since this post, I vehemently disagree with the ideas presented in it. Encouraging your players to slaughter every goblin, orc, kobold, and hobgoblin they meet seems just as bad as murderhoboes. Your argument that "other races exist that are not kill on sight" doesn't really make sense to me. I don't think that providing moral justification to kill something should be a chore. It is an integral part of making a coherent story, and just saying "its a goblin you have permission to murder it" feels like lazy dming.
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