I would also like to point out, to all of the people who have decided for themselves that racism doesnt matter/exist for the people who actually see and experience it; this thread is not a debate. We have already won without any sort of fight, and wizards has already decided to alter their work.
If you don't like it that much then maybe this isnt the game, and most certainly isnt the community, for you.
This is a ridiculous subject. These are not real races, thus cannot be subject to the label "minority group". There is no ethics, no rights, nor any reason to even consider equality or representation of fictive/imaginative "races". It's like people invent issues for the sake and of complaining.
I think before you say something like this you should read a little bit more than the most recent comment. It has already been thoroughly explained and no one needs to keep wasting their breath repeating why to those who wish not to educate themselves
How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.
Addressing Drag0n77, because this thread is kind of a mosh pit at this point:
Have you checked out Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, the new official Exandria book? Matthew Mercer , James Haeck, James Introcaso, and Chris Lockey, alongside many other talented folks, did just exactly what you suggested and built a new setting in which there was no inherent, endemic always-on racism. The 'monstrous' nation of Xhorhas is a different land with different peoples that live different lives, and while they are at war with the more humanocentric Dwendalian Empire, neither side is considered 'evil' - save by their enemy, of course.
And of course Eberron is much the same way, with dozens of nations and splinter factions all vying to improve their lots - some of them misguided, greedy, or outright wicked, but only because of choices they made, not their core genetics.
I, for one, am never running a game in Faerun again, or playing in one if I can remotely help it. Between Eberron and Exandria, we have two splendid places to play where 'evil' is either an active choice or a forcible corruption imposed from outside, rather than endemic to a species' being. Both of these books make for much better games than anything they bother with in Faerun these days, I highly recommend both.
Addressing Drag0n77, because this thread is kind of a mosh pit at this point:
Have you checked out Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, the new official Exandria book? Matthew Mercer , James Haeck, James Introcaso, and Chris Lockey, alongside many other talented folks, did just exactly what you suggested and built a new setting in which there was no inherent, endemic always-on racism. The 'monstrous' nation of Xhorhas is a different land with different peoples that live different lives, and while they are at war with the more humanocentric Dwendalian Empire, neither side is considered 'evil' - save by their enemy, of course.
And of course Eberron is much the same way, with dozens of nations and splinter factions all vying to improve their lots - some of them misguided, greedy, or outright wicked, but only because of choices they made, not their core genetics.
I, for one, am never running a game in Faerun again, or playing in one if I can remotely help it. Between Eberron and Exandria, we have two splendid places to play where 'evil' is either an active choice or a forcible corruption imposed from outside, rather than endemic to a species' being. Both of these books make for much better games than anything they bother with in Faerun these days, I highly recommend both.
I do not have it yet, but I plan to get it the next time there is a sale/coupon. But it illustrates my point pretty nicely. Trying to go back in time and retcon the events and facts of the past doesn't solve the problem. For evidence of that, look no further than all the time travel shenanigans that Blizzard tried over the years to the storyline of WoW. You just piss everyone off and create ethics debates where none existed and a whole host of other things that don't achieve anything.
Just start over and reboot. The mechanics of the game actively encourage the possibility. Why not use it?
Yeah, it's the difference between creating a world that has essentialism baked into it and one that acknowledges people as people, fully capable of making their own decisions abut themselves, even if they are from a particular culture.
If the problem with a given race is how they are presented in a given setting, shouldn't that setting be retired, and a new setting be created? Because as we go back and forth on this and everyone goes around the circle, nobody seems to be addressing the Tarrasque in the room that is the setting itself. A given race having the "average Alignment" of being either evil or good is a worldbuilding issue, not a genetic one. The societies that are primarily composed of that race will have a shared history of interactions with other races, or even within their own race as disparate groups emerge (if they do).
Because let's be clear, the only reason DnD Orcs have an "average Alignment" of Evil is because they are written that way. They devote their lives to extolling the virtues of their brutal gods that demand the spoils of war as a form of worship. Their society naturally forms around those virtues, and the peoples within that society embody those ideals. It would be rather easy to change that. Create a new setting, and in that setting, the Orcs that live there have different gods. The societies those Orcs have built over their existence might have a similar devotion to these new gods, or their societies might be agnostic of the Orcish pantheon and look nothing like a theocracy.
I would definitely have a problem with retconning existing lore to suddenly make the "average Alignment" of the Orcs as a whole change from Evil to Neutral -- or worse, Good -- because it is a retcon. It would mean that the established lore of the primary setting is arbitrary and vulnerable to the winds of shifts in current opinion. But I wouldn't have any problem at all with the focus of the game having a change of venue to a different setting. Such a break would allow WotC to change all the "racist" things they want all at once and effectively start fresh, if it is determined such a thing is needed.
Preserving the integrity of the Lore is a pretty unstable hill to plant your flag on. The Forgotten Realms lore fabric has been unwoven and reworked quite a bit since the original boxed set.
But if lore is your thing, there could well be room some sort of reckoning moment that moves the social consciousness of many of the Realms powers, at least among the Lords Alliance and Harpers, recognizing the common personhood and dignity of all humanoids.
Honestly, I've been thinking of "going there" in my own campaign once we finish with Descent into Avernus. The currency of the soul coin was a novel interesting thing to me, and find a synergy between that an the UA Phantom rogue subclass (who as written can produce token which are basically mini soul coins). Coming out of Avernus, I'm contemplating a Realms and Planes traveling epic where universality of the soul/personhood is worked through and how it plays into the power struggles of the Outer Planes. Since WOTC's recent announcements I'm wondering if a similar "impact event" is actually planned for the official lore.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The idea of some sort of ideal of 'objectivity' in a debate is the ideal state to aspire to is somewhat loaded. Many times the argument is used to tone police victims of the subtler forms of harassment and invalidating their actual hurt because they dare to get heated or express their pain. Emotions and their expressions are valid forms of communication and don't negate someone's rationality.
Also, pointing to the western enlightenment period as if it solved all illogic is ... suspect at best.
I think it's fair to say it solved a lot of the problems facing mankind and continues to go on to solve a lot of problems facing mankind. Directly from the Enlightenment we've developed:
Free Markets, which saw the reduction of extreme poverty reduce from nearly 90% in 1820 to about 10% today. And you can watch when countries liberalise their ecnomies-- like India which opened their markets with the fall of Communism which saw an explosion of wealth across the board. Obviously when Deng Xiaoping started his economic reforms in China, we also saw an economic explosion that, while it hasn't eliminated poverty, has seen about a 75% reduction in extreme poverty since 2000.
We've seen almost every country in the world adopt democracy. We have adopted universal human rights. We've seen many of the advances of feminism and in reductions of racist policies thanks to Enlightenment philosophy. The whole "Everyone was born equal", which was revolutionary at the time, is an Enlightenment slogan. The American constitution, if you're into that, absolutely a document whose values stem from the centre of the Enlightenment. The idea that people should be free and equal is not something that has existed forever and it was spoken at a time where Feudalism and aristocratic society were not a distant memory. If you don't think the Enlightenment didn't solve everything, may I ask if you are looking for a plot of land to become a serf on?
Maybe you attribute some of these advances to science. Well, science and the scientific method are also extensions of the enlightenment project. The idea that things in this world should be arranged rationally and not based on divine law or arbitrary rule, that we should find the truths of nature (physics, biology, chemistry) and use those to build a rational system that was truly open to anyone who had a functioning brain to see how things were done and why they were done: the end of arbitrariness and in many ways authority. It was a democratic moment like no other in history because it was the moment where the idea that a guy with a book could tell you what to do. No-one had a monopoly on wisdom or knowledge or information, but instead, it was laid out in the open and if you understood how it functioned in Europe, you understood how it functioned in America or in Asia. Or on the moon. Because it isn't a system affected by human beings. If you tell me the experiment you ran and I can replicate those results without ever talking to you directly or participating. That's a revolutionary idea. We didn't get a new priest class, but rather we destroyed the possibility of a priesthood as it had existed throughout history as the gatekeepers of knowledge.
No, of course the 18th century wasn't a paradise. No one is claiming that. No one is claiming that Ancient Athens was great place to live either, but we still remember Socrates for his wisdom. We still talk about Pythagoras and Euclid and their societies were much worse than 18th century Europe. And we still talk about Kant and Rousseau and Hegel and John Locke and Adam Smith because they made huge steps from making their world considerably better than the world they inherited.
Even though we have some rough patches these days, we live in a pretty great period of human existence. Arguably the best by far if you ask some of the 1.2 billion (1,200,000,000) people who were raised out of extreme poverty in the last thirty years (yeah, in 1990 there was 1.9 billion people in extreme poverty. Today, there is only about 700 million) and the foundation for all of our progress was constructed back then in the 18th century. History takes time to develop and not every development is significant only for the era in which it first happened: the first animals started to adapt to the land 530 million years ago, but I am, and I suspect many other people here can see the benefit of their long gone actions.
You need to change your Username to Candide, if you were aware of the irony.
What your narrative proclaiming we live in the best of all possible worlds trajectory misses is that after whatever great society the enlightenment established, women and people of color still had to fight for equitable inclusion and agency and are still in that fight. You admit that the world has evolved or advanced the englightment ideals you hold dear, and seem to admit that things could still be made better. The editorial decision of WOTC, in their view participates in that advancement, but for some reason you've staked a flag on the conservative hill in this debate. I scratch my head at that as much as your move to dismiss the "we're arguing about a game when there's real world problems" belittling, yet you write so much in this thread.
Yes, that's what progress means. It means a process that begins somewhere and gradually changes over time. Like in the example of poverty: it's not that we have no extreme poverty left. It's not that we've stopped working on extreme poverty. It's that 20 years ago, things used to be worse and they're trending better. The same thing with racism and feminism. Anyone who tells you we haven't improved on matters of racism, doesn't understand what slavery is. Does that mean we are in a good place with racism? No. Are we in a better place in comparison with 200 years ago? I invite you to deny it.
I don't take marching orders, especially not from a corporation. So, that's how I can take a position against WotC. I've never said "we're talking about a game when there is real world problems". My position is consistently has been this: if one wants to be taken seriously, one needs an argument based on reason. There is a sub-argument which goes: D&D makes no sense and trying to map your experiences and humanity on something that is not human is arbitrary and a foolish thing to do; especially in the face of any number of examples that are equally egregious. That's mostly just a counter-argument to people who say, while talking about a game with magic and supernatural beings, that the portrayal of orcs is unrealistic.
And can we stop a second and question that WotC decided a month after the protests started that "Oh, I have to make these small, token changes" that are ultimately meaningless? I mean, did you stop and consider this is a market ploy and acting like they're morally aligned with your sensibilities is just, and maybe purely cynically so, good business sense. Anyone who thinks that a corporation is being brave to "take a stand" by saying something they knew was going to be popular and get them plenty of good press is naive.
This is stupid decision on WotC's part. Orcs are not real. Drow are not real. They are not fictionalized representations of real peoples. This decision creates more problems that it solves and it solves nothing.
That's not an argument for change, that's an argument for the status quo. Orcs are already evil and what's being argued is that they should be good. Using your own argument, wouldn't it mean that we don't need to change them at all? I mean, in your game they don't need to be brutal raiders and servants of a dark god, but as of right now, they're listed as having chaotic evil as an alignment. Changing that doesn't make the game more open. You already have access to them as a player race through Volos, so how does changing how orcs behave make the game more open? It provides players and GMs with zero new tools to express their agency. D&D doesn't even force core rules onto your campaign and there is no one policing settings or modules (quite the opposite. They encourage players to make those worlds their own), so it has stopped exactly zero people from playing or creating a world with good orcs.
If the players are gaining no new options or paths, how does it make D&D more open to change this?
If you can't understand the difference between "This breed of people is always evil, always bad, always your enemy, and should generally be killed or driven off on sight, unless your DM makes a specific exception and gives them permission to be real people" and "This breed of people has these traits, this culture, and this history; they've long been at odds with this other group of people, but they're still real people unless your DM decides they've been hit with a species-wide curse or some such", then I doubt there's anything I can say that would change your mind.
Suffice it to say that some people don't like the notion of an entire category of sapient individuals who are capable of speech, reason, and imagination being declared Always Chaotic Evil and perfectly acceptable targets to genocide on sight, worry-free. There are plenty of really good reasons why that's not really a good idea, and it's one of the reasons I'm so incredibly thrilled by the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and its treatment of interspecies, international relations and politics.
I can understand the difference, but I don't live in a world of absolute extremes where I assume a make-believe is so inflexible as to brook no tampering. We live in a world in which drow are evil, but Drizzt still exists. If you are viewing the world in such absolutes that ... did you think that they were all chaotic too? Did you assume all elves are good? Did you assume that all elves had to be chaotic good unless the GM gave explicit permission to treat them as evil? Do you feel compelled to talk to an elf or human or dwarf even when they're murderers or assassins? "I know you're trying to kill this person I'm protecting, but because of your innate goodness, I must seek a non-violent solution"?
I'm guessing the answer is no, so why you hold up a higher restriction for orcs? I mean I was never so restricted by the generic fantasy tropes written in a players handbook.
I don't like the idea that orcs are basically human with a different skin colour that sees the world like you or I might because I don't have the imagination to consider that intelligent life might not resemble me or people I think are like me. That you treat them like people (or elves or dwarves or Gith) is actually, were they real, deeply racist. You're forcing and projecting your identity and sensibilities on an alien being who would have developed along different cultural and biological lines (I'm guessing orcish endocrinology would be nothing resembling our own.) In the end, it's not about the orcs: its about you and your assumptions of this world. Yeah, it would be a miserable thing to say "this group of humans is evil by their nature" (or even by their culture) but when you try to map your humanity onto what could only realistically be an alien psychology, you deny the orcs their own identity because you are uncomfortable with that identity as presented. I don't know what skin colour you have, but that almost seems like an attempt to be a white saviour to a fictional people. I apologise for that comment because it seems too much like an insult. I don't mean it like that. I mean that it seems to me a flawed world view when it is forced to live up to the expectations it holds for other people.
Lastly, popular doesn't necessarily mean right. Just because a bunch of people think or feel something, doesn't mean it has merit. Your assumption that all people are innately good but learn to be evil (which is what I assume what you mean by being uncomfortable with intelligent beings being innately evil) is you universalising your experience with human beings. We aren't talking about Homo Sapiens here and assuming that your psychology maps to all other sapient life and rejecting sapient life that doesn't fit your theory of intelligence is just as discriminatory and oppressive as any other generalisation based on biology. We are absolutely talking about a fictional people but you are trying to define them just as much as the definition you are objecting to. You just prefer your own definition.
Just say you like racism and leave, dang
There it is. "I don't agree with you, so you must stand for everything I hate." People like you are why we had the Cold War. I didn't say anything racist, but I must be a racist because you don't like racists. It's not like I haven't been hearing this my whole life from every small-minded jerk: Are you a communist? Well, I must be a fascist. If you're a fascist, then I have to be a communist. I am so ******* tired of xenophobes who can't see the world in anything but extremes: it's either with us or against us, right? Love it or leave it? Is this the sort of community you want to cultivate? Tolerant only to people who are exactly like me? I don't care if you feel you are right-- EVERYONE feels they are right. Feeling you are right is no reason to declare people as the enemy for thought crimes. I mean, bonus points for claiming to champion inclusivity while telling people to get out of the community though. That's super classy.
How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.
That's not an argument for change, that's an argument for the status quo. Orcs are already evil and what's being argued is that they should be good. Using your own argument, wouldn't it mean that we don't need to change them at all? I mean, in your game they don't need to be brutal raiders and servants of a dark god, but as of right now, they're listed as having chaotic evil as an alignment. Changing that doesn't make the game more open. You already have access to them as a player race through Volos, so how does changing how orcs behave make the game more open? It provides players and GMs with zero new tools to express their agency. D&D doesn't even force core rules onto your campaign and there is no one policing settings or modules (quite the opposite. They encourage players to make those worlds their own), so it has stopped exactly zero people from playing or creating a world with good orcs.
If the players are gaining no new options or paths, how does it make D&D more open to change this?
If you can't understand the difference between "This breed of people is always evil, always bad, always your enemy, and should generally be killed or driven off on sight, unless your DM makes a specific exception and gives them permission to be real people" and "This breed of people has these traits, this culture, and this history; they've long been at odds with this other group of people, but they're still real people unless your DM decides they've been hit with a species-wide curse or some such", then I doubt there's anything I can say that would change your mind.
Suffice it to say that some people don't like the notion of an entire category of sapient individuals who are capable of speech, reason, and imagination being declared Always Chaotic Evil and perfectly acceptable targets to genocide on sight, worry-free. There are plenty of really good reasons why that's not really a good idea, and it's one of the reasons I'm so incredibly thrilled by the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and its treatment of interspecies, international relations and politics.
I can understand the difference, but I don't live in a world of absolute extremes where I assume a make-believe is so inflexible as to brook no tampering. We live in a world in which drow are evil, but Drizzt still exists. If you are viewing the world in such absolutes that ... did you think that they were all chaotic too? Did you assume all elves are good? Did you assume that all elves had to be chaotic good unless the GM gave explicit permission to treat them as evil? Do you feel compelled to talk to an elf or human or dwarf even when they're murderers or assassins? "I know you're trying to kill this person I'm protecting, but because of your innate goodness, I must seek a non-violent solution"?
I'm guessing the answer is no, so why you hold up a higher restriction for orcs? I mean I was never so restricted by the generic fantasy tropes written in a players handbook.
I don't like the idea that orcs are basically human with a different skin colour that sees the world like you or I might because I don't have the imagination to consider that intelligent life might not resemble me or people I think are like me. That you treat them like people (or elves or dwarves or Gith) is actually, were they real, deeply racist. You're forcing and projecting your identity and sensibilities on an alien being who would have developed along different cultural and biological lines (I'm guessing orcish endocrinology would be nothing resembling our own.) In the end, it's not about the orcs: its about you and your assumptions of this world. Yeah, it would be a miserable thing to say "this group of humans is evil by their nature" (or even by their culture) but when you try to map your humanity onto what could only realistically be an alien psychology, you deny the orcs their own identity because you are uncomfortable with that identity as presented. I don't know what skin colour you have, but that almost seems like an attempt to be a white saviour to a fictional people. I apologise for that comment because it seems too much like an insult. I don't mean it like that. I mean that it seems to me a flawed world view when it is forced to live up to the expectations it holds for other people.
Lastly, popular doesn't necessarily mean right. Just because a bunch of people think or feel something, doesn't mean it has merit. Your assumption that all people are innately good but learn to be evil (which is what I assume what you mean by being uncomfortable with intelligent beings being innately evil) is you universalising your experience with human beings. We aren't talking about Homo Sapiens here and assuming that your psychology maps to all other sapient life and rejecting sapient life that doesn't fit your theory of intelligence is just as discriminatory and oppressive as any other generalisation based on biology. We are absolutely talking about a fictional people but you are trying to define them just as much as the definition you are objecting to. You just prefer your own definition.
Just say you like racism and leave, dang
There it is. "I don't agree with you, so you must stand for everything I hate." People like you are why we had the Cold War. I didn't say anything racist, but I must be a racist because you don't like racists. It's not like I haven't been hearing this my whole life from every small-minded jerk: Are you a communist? Well, I must be a fascist. If you're a fascist, then I have to be a communist. I am so ******* tired of xenophobes who can't see the world in anything but extremes: it's either with us or against us, right? Love it or leave it? Is this the sort of community you want to cultivate? Tolerant only to people who are exactly like me? I don't care if you feel you are right-- EVERYONE feels they are right. Feeling you are right is no reason to declare people as the enemy for thought crimes. I mean, bonus points for claiming to champion inclusivity while telling people to get out of the community though. That's super classy.
If a BIPOC says "Hey, I don't like the wording WotC uses to describe x/y/z races because it is the same discriminatory language used by racists to speak poorly of minorities" is your response going to be "Get over it! Orcs aren't real" or are you going to find some other way to brush off their concerns?
How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.
How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.
Why can't a fictional race be evil by nature? and why can't it be evil by nature without people complaining about some fake link to a RL minority?
So if the words used to describe this "evil by nature" race are the same words white supremacists used to put down minorities, is that okay? Because the very idea of "evil by nature" is deeply rooted in real world racism and generational trauma.
It may not be offensive to you, but I'm guessing you're white. Vast portions of the world still have to deal with people believing they are "evil by nature."
Racial existentialism is racist whether it is happening in real life or in a game.
How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.
Why can't a fictional race be evil by nature? and why can't it be evil by nature without people complaining about some fake link to a RL minority?
Im sorry that i have had people be racist against me and that i see similarities to the real life experience to how certain things are written in the game. I will do my best to not be discriminated against in the future if that makes you feel more comfortable
If a BIPOC says "Hey, I don't like the wording WotC uses to describe x/y/z races because it is the same discriminatory language used by racists to speak poorly of minorities....
I think I figured out where the disconnect is for many people, including myself. For many it seems like the reasoning is backwards. I feel like it should be more accurate to say “Hey, I don’t like the wording racists use to describe minorities because it is the same language D&D uses to describe evil Orcs and Drow.”
For many people, it seems perfectly reasonable to be offended by the offensive language used to describe any actual people. But changing the description of Orcs and Drow appears to do little to change the diatribes of racists. Some posts in this thread are evidence of that. If the racists didn’t use that language to describe people, then the descriptions of Orcs would not have the parallels.
So changing Orcs does nothing to change the racists, but changing the racist makes the language used to describe Orcs no longer relevant. So why are we changing Orcs and not racists? I think that is what is confusing so many people. Does that make sense?
How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.
Why can't a fictional race be evil by nature? and why can't it be evil by nature without people complaining about some fake link to a RL minority?
Because it's not "fake". The racial tropes of sword and sorcery fantasy, including Tolkien which heavily influenced the traditional D&D settings, have been called out as at best problematic since like the 1970s. Just type in "Tolkien and race" into a search engine of your choosing and there's everything from serious literary scholarship, to mainstream criticism, to discussions by generations of fantasy writers after Tolkien. Really, when a bunch of people are voicing something, and you don't understand that something, is "it's not a thing" the best conclusion?
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
If a BIPOC says "Hey, I don't like the wording WotC uses to describe x/y/z races because it is the same discriminatory language used by racists to speak poorly of minorities....
I think I figured out where the disconnect is for many people, including myself. For many it seems like the reasoning is backwards. I feel like it should be more accurate to say “Hey, I don’t like the wording racists use to describe minorities because it is the same language D&D uses to describe evil Orcs and Drow.”
For many people, it seems perfectly reasonable to be offended by the offensive language used to describe any actual people. But changing the description of Orcs and Drow appears to do little to change the diatribes of racists. Some posts in this thread are evidence of that. If the racists didn’t use that language to describe people, then the descriptions of Orcs would not have the parallels.
So changing Orcs does nothing to change the racists, but changing the racist makes the language used to describe Orcs no longer relevant. So why are we changing Orcs and not racists? I think that is what is confusing so many people. Does that make sense?
Because it's not WotC's job to change racists. What they can do, however, is not use racist language/ideas in their products - which is exactly what they're doing.
And by eliminating the racist language/ideas, they are firmly making the stance that they do not endorse or tolerate racism within their products. If racists get upset and want to forsake D&D, then that's their loss. They are not welcome within this community. If, on the other hand, that makes racists pause and reconsider anything, then hey WotC is taking steps to change racists.
If they allowed racist language/ideas to persist within D&D, while they would not necessarily be directly condoning racism, they would be complicit in it.
This all sounds like "looking for problems". I get real-world stuff, but, I don't think I've ever met a single race of Orcs, or Goblins, Or Ogres, or dragon kind etc. These are made up. I think if we start to think too much about stuff that is NOT real and trying to paint into something that "resembles" real we will end up just neutering art altogether. I think this can go way too far to the point of losing what fantasy is. We should just play a game where all characters are lifeless Blue Lego's, you know, so we don't somehow mistake it for real life.
The issue, Sposta, is that nobody can change racists. You can pass all the laws you want, you can encourage all the social growth you like, and you can condemn all the racial violence and intolerance you can stomach, but it doesn't ever actually change a racist's mind. Nobody on this planet can convince someone to stop being racist. Half the time you can't even convince someone they're being racist in the first place. That's the entire point behind the idea of 'privilege' - the idea that subconscious racial bias exists and is fiendishly hard to ferret out and eliminate.
Wizards has no ability to change those people. It can change how it presents its material, and how it speaks and talks about that material. It can stop portraying sapient peoples who are different from human norm as always completely irredeemable monstrosities that must be expunged from the world. Nobody is trying to say that games should stop having evil orcs, or evil cultists, or evil whatevers. I enjoy exploring issues of tension between species in my own games, and I expect a DM to have NPCs give me shit when I play a tiefling (which I all too frequently do), but those tensions should come from a place where each side is given room to exist.
Any D&D setting is a world in which humanity is just one sapient species amongst many. A world where humanity's viewpoint is automatically correct and virtuous simply because the people playing the game happen to be human is not only uncomfortable for people who see that exact same phenomenon in the real world, just with 'white' substituted for 'human'...but it's also a whole lot less interesting than a world where everybody has a point somehow, ne?
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I would also like to point out, to all of the people who have decided for themselves that racism doesnt matter/exist for the people who actually see and experience it; this thread is not a debate. We have already won without any sort of fight, and wizards has already decided to alter their work.
If you don't like it that much then maybe this isnt the game, and most certainly isnt the community, for you.
I think before you say something like this you should read a little bit more than the most recent comment. It has already been thoroughly explained and no one needs to keep wasting their breath repeating why to those who wish not to educate themselves
How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.
Addressing Drag0n77, because this thread is kind of a mosh pit at this point:
Have you checked out Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, the new official Exandria book? Matthew Mercer , James Haeck, James Introcaso, and Chris Lockey, alongside many other talented folks, did just exactly what you suggested and built a new setting in which there was no inherent, endemic always-on racism. The 'monstrous' nation of Xhorhas is a different land with different peoples that live different lives, and while they are at war with the more humanocentric Dwendalian Empire, neither side is considered 'evil' - save by their enemy, of course.
And of course Eberron is much the same way, with dozens of nations and splinter factions all vying to improve their lots - some of them misguided, greedy, or outright wicked, but only because of choices they made, not their core genetics.
I, for one, am never running a game in Faerun again, or playing in one if I can remotely help it. Between Eberron and Exandria, we have two splendid places to play where 'evil' is either an active choice or a forcible corruption imposed from outside, rather than endemic to a species' being. Both of these books make for much better games than anything they bother with in Faerun these days, I highly recommend both.
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I do not have it yet, but I plan to get it the next time there is a sale/coupon. But it illustrates my point pretty nicely. Trying to go back in time and retcon the events and facts of the past doesn't solve the problem. For evidence of that, look no further than all the time travel shenanigans that Blizzard tried over the years to the storyline of WoW. You just piss everyone off and create ethics debates where none existed and a whole host of other things that don't achieve anything.
Just start over and reboot. The mechanics of the game actively encourage the possibility. Why not use it?
Preserving the integrity of the Lore is a pretty unstable hill to plant your flag on. The Forgotten Realms lore fabric has been unwoven and reworked quite a bit since the original boxed set.
But if lore is your thing, there could well be room some sort of reckoning moment that moves the social consciousness of many of the Realms powers, at least among the Lords Alliance and Harpers, recognizing the common personhood and dignity of all humanoids.
Honestly, I've been thinking of "going there" in my own campaign once we finish with Descent into Avernus. The currency of the soul coin was a novel interesting thing to me, and find a synergy between that an the UA Phantom rogue subclass (who as written can produce token which are basically mini soul coins). Coming out of Avernus, I'm contemplating a Realms and Planes traveling epic where universality of the soul/personhood is worked through and how it plays into the power struggles of the Outer Planes. Since WOTC's recent announcements I'm wondering if a similar "impact event" is actually planned for the official lore.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yes, that's what progress means. It means a process that begins somewhere and gradually changes over time. Like in the example of poverty: it's not that we have no extreme poverty left. It's not that we've stopped working on extreme poverty. It's that 20 years ago, things used to be worse and they're trending better. The same thing with racism and feminism. Anyone who tells you we haven't improved on matters of racism, doesn't understand what slavery is. Does that mean we are in a good place with racism? No. Are we in a better place in comparison with 200 years ago? I invite you to deny it.
I don't take marching orders, especially not from a corporation. So, that's how I can take a position against WotC. I've never said "we're talking about a game when there is real world problems". My position is consistently has been this: if one wants to be taken seriously, one needs an argument based on reason. There is a sub-argument which goes: D&D makes no sense and trying to map your experiences and humanity on something that is not human is arbitrary and a foolish thing to do; especially in the face of any number of examples that are equally egregious. That's mostly just a counter-argument to people who say, while talking about a game with magic and supernatural beings, that the portrayal of orcs is unrealistic.
And can we stop a second and question that WotC decided a month after the protests started that "Oh, I have to make these small, token changes" that are ultimately meaningless? I mean, did you stop and consider this is a market ploy and acting like they're morally aligned with your sensibilities is just, and maybe purely cynically so, good business sense. Anyone who thinks that a corporation is being brave to "take a stand" by saying something they knew was going to be popular and get them plenty of good press is naive.
And no, I have no idea what candide refer to.
Candide is a character from a book by Voltaire. Candide.
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This is stupid decision on WotC's part. Orcs are not real. Drow are not real. They are not fictionalized representations of real peoples. This decision creates more problems that it solves and it solves nothing.
There it is. "I don't agree with you, so you must stand for everything I hate." People like you are why we had the Cold War. I didn't say anything racist, but I must be a racist because you don't like racists. It's not like I haven't been hearing this my whole life from every small-minded jerk: Are you a communist? Well, I must be a fascist. If you're a fascist, then I have to be a communist. I am so ******* tired of xenophobes who can't see the world in anything but extremes: it's either with us or against us, right? Love it or leave it? Is this the sort of community you want to cultivate? Tolerant only to people who are exactly like me? I don't care if you feel you are right-- EVERYONE feels they are right. Feeling you are right is no reason to declare people as the enemy for thought crimes. I mean, bonus points for claiming to champion inclusivity while telling people to get out of the community though. That's super classy.
If a BIPOC says "Hey, I don't like the wording WotC uses to describe x/y/z races because it is the same discriminatory language used by racists to speak poorly of minorities" is your response going to be "Get over it! Orcs aren't real" or are you going to find some other way to brush off their concerns?
Why can't a fictional race be evil by nature? and why can't it be evil by nature without people complaining about some fake link to a RL minority?
So if the words used to describe this "evil by nature" race are the same words white supremacists used to put down minorities, is that okay? Because the very idea of "evil by nature" is deeply rooted in real world racism and generational trauma.
It may not be offensive to you, but I'm guessing you're white. Vast portions of the world still have to deal with people believing they are "evil by nature."
Racial existentialism is racist whether it is happening in real life or in a game.
Im sorry that i have had people be racist against me and that i see similarities to the real life experience to how certain things are written in the game. I will do my best to not be discriminated against in the future if that makes you feel more comfortable
I think I figured out where the disconnect is for many people, including myself. For many it seems like the reasoning is backwards. I feel like it should be more accurate to say “Hey, I don’t like the wording racists use to describe minorities because it is the same language D&D uses to describe evil Orcs and Drow.”
For many people, it seems perfectly reasonable to be offended by the offensive language used to describe any actual people. But changing the description of Orcs and Drow appears to do little to change the diatribes of racists. Some posts in this thread are evidence of that. If the racists didn’t use that language to describe people, then the descriptions of Orcs would not have the parallels.
So changing Orcs does nothing to change the racists, but changing the racist makes the language used to describe Orcs no longer relevant. So why are we changing Orcs and not racists? I think that is what is confusing so many people. Does that make sense?
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Because it's not "fake". The racial tropes of sword and sorcery fantasy, including Tolkien which heavily influenced the traditional D&D settings, have been called out as at best problematic since like the 1970s. Just type in "Tolkien and race" into a search engine of your choosing and there's everything from serious literary scholarship, to mainstream criticism, to discussions by generations of fantasy writers after Tolkien. Really, when a bunch of people are voicing something, and you don't understand that something, is "it's not a thing" the best conclusion?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Because it's not WotC's job to change racists. What they can do, however, is not use racist language/ideas in their products - which is exactly what they're doing.
And by eliminating the racist language/ideas, they are firmly making the stance that they do not endorse or tolerate racism within their products. If racists get upset and want to forsake D&D, then that's their loss. They are not welcome within this community. If, on the other hand, that makes racists pause and reconsider anything, then hey WotC is taking steps to change racists.
If they allowed racist language/ideas to persist within D&D, while they would not necessarily be directly condoning racism, they would be complicit in it.
I hope that explains my point better.
This all sounds like "looking for problems". I get real-world stuff, but, I don't think I've ever met a single race of Orcs, or Goblins, Or Ogres, or dragon kind etc. These are made up. I think if we start to think too much about stuff that is NOT real and trying to paint into something that "resembles" real we will end up just neutering art altogether. I think this can go way too far to the point of losing what fantasy is. We should just play a game where all characters are lifeless Blue Lego's, you know, so we don't somehow mistake it for real life.
The issue, Sposta, is that nobody can change racists. You can pass all the laws you want, you can encourage all the social growth you like, and you can condemn all the racial violence and intolerance you can stomach, but it doesn't ever actually change a racist's mind. Nobody on this planet can convince someone to stop being racist. Half the time you can't even convince someone they're being racist in the first place. That's the entire point behind the idea of 'privilege' - the idea that subconscious racial bias exists and is fiendishly hard to ferret out and eliminate.
Wizards has no ability to change those people. It can change how it presents its material, and how it speaks and talks about that material. It can stop portraying sapient peoples who are different from human norm as always completely irredeemable monstrosities that must be expunged from the world. Nobody is trying to say that games should stop having evil orcs, or evil cultists, or evil whatevers. I enjoy exploring issues of tension between species in my own games, and I expect a DM to have NPCs give me shit when I play a tiefling (which I all too frequently do), but those tensions should come from a place where each side is given room to exist.
Any D&D setting is a world in which humanity is just one sapient species amongst many. A world where humanity's viewpoint is automatically correct and virtuous simply because the people playing the game happen to be human is not only uncomfortable for people who see that exact same phenomenon in the real world, just with 'white' substituted for 'human'...but it's also a whole lot less interesting than a world where everybody has a point somehow, ne?
Please do not contact or message me.