This is my 2 pence worth and you are free to agree or disagree as you deem fit, apologies in advance, its beocme a long post.....
1) We are all human, regardless of gender, sexuality, political or religious affliation, area of the planet we were born on, from where we may have migratrated to/from or what strata of the socio-economc divide we fall on.
2) Shouting at or shouting over some one else to drown out what they are saying, does not give your argument any more truth, gravitas. authority, sense or moral superiorty.
3) Being offended by something does not make you right and the source of your offence wrong.
4) Diversity means: the state of being diverse and a a wide range of opinions. Bigotry menas: stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own. (Defibnitions obtained frm dictionary.com). Ergo, if you are intolerant of anything, even what I have written here, you can be considered to be a bigot.
5) Discussion in a reasoned way with examples to illustrate your point is a better way to change opinion than the aforementioned shouting. Emotional appeals will not sway the opinions of those which do not share you opinion. Do not accept just one point of view, it is down to each individual to formulate their own opinions, research their own arguments and address any inconsistencies they find, whether that be in their own opinions or those of others.
6) Thoughts/Thinking and Belief/Believing at no the same thing. Your thoughts are your own, these can change easily over time with the accumulation of information, ideas and the exposure to new environemnts, people etc. Beliefs are, quite literally in some, set in stone, they govern what you do and how you do it and are usually immutable and unchangable without some consequences being involved.
Ok, so thats more 6 pence worth....
For context, as I've mention in a couple of other threads when I need clarification about some youthful vernacular, I am a 43yr old White British man, Am I a bigot? Yes....because I am an atheist, I do not believe in the mythology of the Judeao/Christian/Islamic religions and think the world would be better without them. Does this mean I go around protesting their exsistance or wanting their buildings and statuary torn down? No, because I respect the rights of other people to think or believe whatever they want and am willing to look at the historical context and otherwise go about my day, but if I am stopped in the street by someone Lay Preaching or if they knock on my door I'm happy to sit down with them and have a discussion about what they believe and what I think. Does my atheism extend beyond the "western" religions, at present yes, because I've not had the chance/oppotunity to discuss or look into the finer points of other religions and look into the validity of their believes but should that change then my opinions may change.
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Back to D&D......
If you can find it I do recommend trying to get hold of the 2e/ad&d Dungeon Masters Guide, it has a whole chapter about alignment broken up into: Player Character Alignment, Roleplaying Alignment, NPC Alignment and the Limits of NPC Alignment, Society Alignment, Using Area Alignments and Varying Social Alignments to say how a particular geographic area is governed/behaves, Alignments fo Religions, Alignments of Magical Items, Magically Changing Alignment, Alignment as a World View, Alignments in Conflict, Alignment as a Tool, Detecting Alignment, Changing Alignment (via deeds not magic) and the effects of Changing Alignment.....As you can see, it was considerably more indepth than the current edition.
I made a genuine post about genocide shouldn't be used casually to describe anything but genocide and it was auto-marked spam. It absolutely wasn't spam and that's a curious development.
I don't recall ever seeing any propaganda about any real life race worshiping an evil spider god and living underground enslaving other races to do their work. Musta missed that day in social studies. And being evil or good doesn't make one superior to another. There are good gods (Bahamut) as well as evil ones (Tiamat) that are of equal power.
The drow are primarily a sexist analogy (they're the black widow archetype -- evil man-eating spider-women), giving them dark skin is just the racist cherry on the top.
They are a photo negative version of an elf and, surprise, but if you take a photo negative of a "black" person, they'll still end up looking like a drow with black-blue skin and white hair. I'm sorry if nature doesn't fit your theory of race.
All of them have plenty of reason to turn to evil and it just shows either a complete lack of imagination or the designers just bending over backwards to try to force them to be PC races. I can tell you why every single one of them, a perfectly normal and average member of their society, would be incredibly evil.
Lex Luthor, is that you? You seem to be repeating his argument as to why Clarke Kent cannot be Superman, that there is no way that someone with superman's power would ever act that humble.
Dragonborn: If anything, conventional wisdom is that, by game mechanics, this is an underpowered race. On what basis are you insisting they would feel superior, or especially automatically feel superior? Plus if you are going with traditional alignments, you are insisting that the average metallic Dragonborn would be evil.
Dwarves: Your argument seems to be 'Because stereotype, therefore stereotype.' Tautologies are not valid arguments. If you accept that they are individuals and the stereotype does not automatically apply, then your conclusion of 'evil' does not apply.
Gnomes: Again, you are starting with stereotypes. However the concepts of property rights and defense of home are not considered evil. Territorialism can be evil when it is expansionistic, but merely the concept of having property? Not.
Halflings: Most of the residents of Hobbiton stayed at home minding their own business. There were evil halflings in Hobbiton (the Sacksville-Baggins family, at a minimum), but the majority were clearly not. Bilbo was signed on as a thief not because he actually was a thief or wanted to be a thief and never actually stole anything. He found the ring, which was sentient and, IIRC, according to Gandalf likely choose on its own to switch 'owners' and then won the riddle contest against Smeagol. Halflings make good thieves based on stats, but there is nothing at all in any edition (other than some joking around) suggesting the majority of Halflings pursue that at all.
Aarakocra: Where are you getting this fanatic territorialism? There is no such thing in their PHB race description. Again defending one's home is not actually evil. You seem to be taking the position that others have a right to occupy Aarakocra (and/or Gnome) homes. On what basis, exactly?
Aasimar can be evil, just as Tieflings can be good, but "every single one of them, a perfectly normal and average member of their society, would be incredibly evil?" You aren't even trying to make your case here.
Changelings are based on legends that Changelings steal babies? All cats (regardless of whether that includes Tabaxi or not) are evil? Listen to yourself....
Did you miss the entire point of what I was posting.
Every single race that is listed as "usually" and "almost always" good is just utter arbitrary nonsense on behalf of the designers to make the complete easily categorized as "the good guys" and thus as PC races. Thus they all get listed as these moral master races according to humans that humans could only possibly dream of aspiring too. And by utter circumstance, all of them that have human skin tones are always Caucasian.
But every single one of them-- every last one-- just by taking a moment to imagine what it is like to either be in their shoes, what it would be like to have a whole nation of people who have the traits associated with the race-- and have those people exist side-by-side with humans? The whole "Almost always good-- maybe there is one lone crazy guy who is acting entirely on his own without any support of the entire rest of the race, but that's 1%. All of the others are perfectly, flawlessly good guys all of the time." It just falls apart. It is lazy writing.
Every single one of them can be just as much a "monster" and just as much "the bad guy" as any Orc or Drow or Rakshasha or Bugbear-- all one need change is the presupposition that they all love humans more than themselves and will absolutely bend to the will and needs and well-beings of all humans they encounter, recognize humans as the proper rulers of the worlds and only wish to be of use to humans-- particularly those armed wandering murder hobos that aimlessly roam around the countryside killing people, often at the behest of other people, and taking their stuff. Remove that one incredibly dumb and suicidal aspect from them, let them actually care about the well being of their own people above all else, let them treat humans as a neutral race that is as likely to be bad as good-- and every single one of them is going to be perfectly capable of being the "bad guys" without changing a single other thing about them.
In regard to the Dragonborn-- are you really such a munchkin that you can't see beyond the numbers that got slapped onto the PC version in terms of raw stats to what they would functionally be within the narrative story itself. They are 7' tall, universally muscular, have claws as sharp as daggers, have scaly hide that could stand in for armor-- none of which makes it to the PC stats simply so that they can be called a PC race and not be overwhelmingly powerful compared to all the others. But if one were to take the concept of "Dragon-people" and put them in the monster manual, just one of them would be rated a CR3 to CR5 creature. If people are going to say that Kobolds might remotely have slight egos because they might possibly be descended from dragons, then those who go around as out-and-out dragon people, visibly and obviously physically and mentally superior to all these mammalian beings-- they are expected to deal with.
And Dragonborn is a terribly designed race in general. There are no Dragonborn cities, there is no Dragonborn culture beyond a few random piecemeal sentences scribbled in two PHBs, they have never been integrated into any world. They pretty much just poofed into existence out of thin air without ever having been integrated into the plot of any adventure previously. There is nothing at all to say about what they want, what the general consensus opinions on things are among them, what their society expects of them and what resources their society needs and what long-term goals it has. They have virtually no defined traits-- positive or negative. Its really just someone who downloaded the new DLC race that was added on because the game designer thought it was fun and just popped into the world out of the void as a level 1 PC with no history, no motivation and no other appearances of this add-on DLC race throughout the entire game world. It is dumb-- and it is immersion-breaking. Thus, all there is to say about them has to come from the previous Dragonpeople who were in the D&D worlds. And they were all very powerful, all very much opposed to the non-draconic races and all very much "evil"-- or at least opposed to the interests of humans. Dragonborns are just having those previous races neutered beyond suspension of disbelief in addition to chopping off their wings and tails in a desperate bid to sell them as "not too powerful to be a level 1 PC". All one can do to figure out how they should act is look back at how the dragonpeople were always portrayed before this neutered, dismembered mess was dumped into the game, because there has not been one word written as to why they should be one bit different than the previous ones.
Your arguments against Dwarfs and Gnomes EVER being allowed to be "the bad guys" because it plays on the stereotypes about them rings hollow. The evil Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Drow-- they can all adhere entirely to the stereotypes and MUST be evil, but because Dwarfs and Gnomes can never, ever, ever, ever be "the bad guys" because that would be "stereotypical"-- even though the stereotypes about them have been seen the labeled as "always good except for a single once in a blue moon bad apple"? That's just dumb. The "always good" Dwarfs and Gnomes are stereotypes, a community or force of them that played up their negative traits to the extreme would be no more so-- in fact it would be rather original in comparison because we have virtually never seen it in 50 years of D&D.
The Hobbits/Halflings in the Shire were those that were living in farmlands and content to stay home. And even then, the main guy was a Burglar who was hired because of his specific skills at breaking into homes, sneaking around and swiping their stuff. His particular skills were useful for a particular mission-- but if you had a whole lot of those guys running around a city, no one is going to regard them as a "virtually always good, kind-hearted race". No-- they are going to be regarded as a bunch of lazy gutter rats who will break into your home and swipe all your stuff if you are away from home for too long and don't put in enough security measures. Sure-- when you leave them on the farm and there is nothing shiny around for them to swipe, maybe their laziness can mean they live a generally peaceful existence. But how many Halflings in D&D are you going to encounter who are the "stay on the farm and smoke tobacco because I've got no ambitions" type and how many are the ones who make it to the city and are going to be making it by on swindling, pick pocketing and black marketeering? Nah-- Halflings can absolutely be "the bad guys" in at least a significant series of adventures, if not an entire campaign.
Aakocra have every reason to shoot your party dead when your heavily armored and armored party of sell sword/murder hobos comes trouncing up along their mountain. And in D&D-- everything that kills you on sight for invading their homes is labeled "evil". There is no reason for them to be any less evil than any of the others.
And, yes, Changelings entire concept-- the very reason the race exist-- is based on old fairy tales of a creature that steals babies and replaces them with their own. It is literally the only trait they are known for, the sole reason they were placed into the game. So the idea that they would ALWAYS be good guys and can NEVER be the bad guy is ridiculous. It took something out of folklore that is fundamentally a horroric monster and reinterpreted to be fangless-- which is fine in Eberron where there are no "monsters" per se, but if you were going to transport them to any other campaign setting where the default supposition isn't that everyone is good? Then they would absolutely revert back to their mythological origins.
And you don't think cats are evil?
Tell you what. I want you to go capture a feral adult cat. Go ahead and feed it until it is full so it absolutely is not looking for food. Then I want to you stick that feral cat into a room with a bunch of baby bunnies and song birds. If you think for one second that the answer isn't "its going to rip them all to shred for fun" then I really do want you to go ahead and do this experiment so you can prove to everyone that the most natural cat of all is a morally superior angelic being.
But, if you understand that the cat is going to kill just for fun because that's what cats are specialized in doing and why we humans have kept cats arounds-- then I don't need to "listen to myself", you just need to stop constantly lying to yourself and actually think. Tabaxi would be be a great campaign villain, because you just know that the head of the town watch in such a campaign once you actually caught the circle of Tabaxi serial killers after losing half the party in the attempt would be just like you-- they would grab the leader by the cheeks, stick their face in that of the killer and say "Who slit the family's throat, ate their face and dumped their bodies on the town watch's doorstep?! Waz eet yooooou?! Waz eet yoooou, my fluffy-wuffy oopsie-boopsie! Waz yoou a bad keettie? Waz yoouu a bad keetie?!..... Awww... I can'ts stay mad at yoooou!!" then pat it on the head and send it on its way with a "Now you be a good keetie dis time!!"
And that's why cat-people would totally tend towards evil.
I don't recall ever seeing any propaganda about any real life race worshiping an evil spider god and living underground enslaving other races to do their work. Musta missed that day in social studies. And being evil or good doesn't make one superior to another. There are good gods (Bahamut) as well as evil ones (Tiamat) that are of equal power.
The drow are primarily a sexist analogy (they're the black widow archetype -- evil man-eating spider-women), giving them dark skin is just the racist cherry on the top.
They are a photo negative version of an elf and, surprise, but if you take a photo negative of a "black" person, they'll still end up looking like a drow with black-blue skin and white hair. I'm sorry if nature doesn't fit your theory of race.
1) Why the quotation marks?
2) If you take someone and dress them up in costume and makeup, they can look completely different. What point, if any, are you trying to make, exactly?
Because a black person isn't black. They're brown. This distinction matters when you are talking about photo negatives, because if their skin was actually black, they would have white skin the negative.
My point is that a drow is just as much an inversion of a black person's skin colour as it is of a white person's skin colour. Therefore, anyone who say "drow skin colour represents blackness" are making a statement contrary to nature.
I'm all for adding other races to the mix in fantasy, as much to point out that trying to say racism is dumb because it doesn't matter how different we are, we all want the same things and we all deserve to be treated with respect, but she raises a very valid point about the ... stagnation ... of the fantasy genre, that it either has to be european-based, or a white power fantasy, or most publishing houses won't touch it or will demand watering down the political and social commentary until you're basically LotR, but one of the main characters is black and maybe gay if you're lucky.
My point is that a drow is just as much an inversion of a black person's skin colour as it is of a white person's skin colour. Therefore, anyone who say "drow skin colour represents blackness" are making a statement contrary to nature.
First of all, illustrations of drow are not photographic negatives; they're not really a color mix found in any real human population, but they aren't generally as blue as a true color inversion (generally they're a fairly neutral dark grey, though I've seen them with both hints of blue and hints of brown) and they certainly don't have inverted shadows.
Secondly, so what? A person in blackface isn't the same color as a real black person either, but that doesn't make it not racist.
"Think about that. Creatures that look like people, but aren’t really. Kinda-sorta-people, who aren’t worthy of even the most basic moral considerations, like the right to exist. Only way to deal with them is to control them utterly a la slavery, or wipe them all out. Hmm. Sounds familiar"
I think this quote from that article pretty much sums up how i feel about it.
"Think about that. Creatures that look like people, but aren’t really. Kinda-sorta-people, who aren’t worthy of even the most basic moral considerations, like the right to exist. Only way to deal with them is to control them utterly a la slavery, or wipe them all out. Hmm. Sounds familiar"
I think this quote from that article pretty much sums up how i feel about it.
I don't buy it. That would throw a large chunk of the monster manual out the window. Whats the point of that? If you want to have heroes fighting evil you need to some evil, evil comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Drow are elves except they are "darker skinned than their cousins and evil" so could be touchy.
But orcs, goblins, kobolds, giants, gnolls, duergar, the list goes on, very diverse group.
"Think about that. Creatures that look like people, but aren’t really. Kinda-sorta-people, who aren’t worthy of even the most basic moral considerations, like the right to exist. Only way to deal with them is to control them utterly a la slavery, or wipe them all out. Hmm. Sounds familiar"
I think this quote from that article pretty much sums up how i feel about it.
I don't buy it. That would throw a large chunk of the monster manual out the window. Whats the point of that? If you want to have heroes fighting evil you need to some evil, evil comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Drow are elves except they are "darker skinned than their cousins and evil" so could be touchy.
But orcs, goblins, kobolds, giants, gnolls, duergar, the list goes on, very diverse group.
If you cant make a satisfying and compelling villain or evil group in your dnd campaign without relying on WotC to write in evil for you, by leaning heavily on real world racist themes, then you are a failure of a Dungeon Master
Because you could have the PCs fighting anything. Literally anything without needing fall back on Standard Badguy Race A.
Soldiers and agents of rival kingdoms or factions, crooked merchant bands hiring amoral mercenaries, fiendish cultists and brain-washed zealots. Hell, misguided civilians, starving refugees and panicked mobs makes an even more compelling battle because you've got to try and stop them without killing them, and even then, you've beaten the hell out of civilians to achieve your goal, and that has consequences.
Having the entities in the monster manuals being, if they are humanoids or sapient ((and not Outsiders, Undead or other creatures that are literally hard-coded to a certain alignment)) be either allies or enemies not because of their race, but their religion, their nationality or their society is a change D&D has desperately needed for years now.
An argument I have long made is that you can't make up an original society because Humans have, over the centuries, made so many of their own that any fictional one you create will inevitably mimic at least traits of a few of them, even if you don't intend to. Thus it is important that all societies in the game have something respectable about them, and that we don't make only the caucasian/european ones the inherently good/successful societies, that we actively try to avoid the racist caricatures and stereotypes in opposing societies and factions and races that the players may face.
undead being evil is racist! Since they have a pale skin color and make up the majority of creatures in the monster manual its obvious they are code for white people! Just a joke but we can honestly claim anything is racist from a certain point of view we need to draw a line somewhere otherwise we will be left with sourcebooks with zero interior pages
undead being evil is racist! Since they have a pale skin color and make up the majority of creatures in the monster manual its obvious they are code for white people! Just a joke but we can honestly claim anything is racist from a certain point of view we need to draw a line somewhere otherwise we will be left with sourcebooks with zero interior pages
Ya heard it here first people. Without racism dungeons and dragons doesnt exist. We cracked to code. Guess it time to pack up in leave
D&D isn't racist unless you want it to be. As far as i know none of the D&D races are 'all evil'. Changing D&D doesn't help prevent racism it just lowers awareness. As part of a minority group i honestly just don't play with people who portray specific groups or races as all evil. The press needs to focus on ending racism not criticizing an RPG.
This is my 2 pence worth and you are free to agree or disagree as you deem fit, apologies in advance, its beocme a long post.....
1) We are all human, regardless of gender, sexuality, political or religious affliation, area of the planet we were born on, from where we may have migratrated to/from or what strata of the socio-economc divide we fall on.
2) Shouting at or shouting over some one else to drown out what they are saying, does not give your argument any more truth, gravitas. authority, sense or moral superiorty.
3) Being offended by something does not make you right and the source of your offence wrong.
4) Diversity means: the state of being diverse and a a wide range of opinions. Bigotry menas: stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own. (Defibnitions obtained frm dictionary.com). Ergo, if you are intolerant of anything, even what I have written here, you can be considered to be a bigot.
5) Discussion in a reasoned way with examples to illustrate your point is a better way to change opinion than the aforementioned shouting. Emotional appeals will not sway the opinions of those which do not share you opinion. Do not accept just one point of view, it is down to each individual to formulate their own opinions, research their own arguments and address any inconsistencies they find, whether that be in their own opinions or those of others.
6) Thoughts/Thinking and Belief/Believing at no the same thing. Your thoughts are your own, these can change easily over time with the accumulation of information, ideas and the exposure to new environemnts, people etc. Beliefs are, quite literally in some, set in stone, they govern what you do and how you do it and are usually immutable and unchangable without some consequences being involved.
Ok, so thats more 6 pence worth....
For context, as I've mention in a couple of other threads when I need clarification about some youthful vernacular, I am a 43yr old White British man, Am I a bigot? Yes....because I am an atheist, I do not believe in the mythology of the Judeao/Christian/Islamic religions and think the world would be better without them. Does this mean I go around protesting their exsistance or wanting their buildings and statuary torn down? No, because I respect the rights of other people to think or believe whatever they want and am willing to look at the historical context and otherwise go about my day, but if I am stopped in the street by someone Lay Preaching or if they knock on my door I'm happy to sit down with them and have a discussion about what they believe and what I think. Does my atheism extend beyond the "western" religions, at present yes, because I've not had the chance/oppotunity to discuss or look into the finer points of other religions and look into the validity of their believes but should that change then my opinions may change.
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Back to D&D......
If you can find it I do recommend trying to get hold of the 2e/ad&d Dungeon Masters Guide, it has a whole chapter about alignment broken up into: Player Character Alignment, Roleplaying Alignment, NPC Alignment and the Limits of NPC Alignment, Society Alignment, Using Area Alignments and Varying Social Alignments to say how a particular geographic area is governed/behaves, Alignments fo Religions, Alignments of Magical Items, Magically Changing Alignment, Alignment as a World View, Alignments in Conflict, Alignment as a Tool, Detecting Alignment, Changing Alignment (via deeds not magic) and the effects of Changing Alignment.....As you can see, it was considerably more indepth than the current edition.
I made a genuine post about genocide shouldn't be used casually to describe anything but genocide and it was auto-marked spam. It absolutely wasn't spam and that's a curious development.
They are a photo negative version of an elf and, surprise, but if you take a photo negative of a "black" person, they'll still end up looking like a drow with black-blue skin and white hair. I'm sorry if nature doesn't fit your theory of race.
Did you miss the entire point of what I was posting.
Every single race that is listed as "usually" and "almost always" good is just utter arbitrary nonsense on behalf of the designers to make the complete easily categorized as "the good guys" and thus as PC races. Thus they all get listed as these moral master races according to humans that humans could only possibly dream of aspiring too. And by utter circumstance, all of them that have human skin tones are always Caucasian.
But every single one of them-- every last one-- just by taking a moment to imagine what it is like to either be in their shoes, what it would be like to have a whole nation of people who have the traits associated with the race-- and have those people exist side-by-side with humans? The whole "Almost always good-- maybe there is one lone crazy guy who is acting entirely on his own without any support of the entire rest of the race, but that's 1%. All of the others are perfectly, flawlessly good guys all of the time." It just falls apart. It is lazy writing.
Every single one of them can be just as much a "monster" and just as much "the bad guy" as any Orc or Drow or Rakshasha or Bugbear-- all one need change is the presupposition that they all love humans more than themselves and will absolutely bend to the will and needs and well-beings of all humans they encounter, recognize humans as the proper rulers of the worlds and only wish to be of use to humans-- particularly those armed wandering murder hobos that aimlessly roam around the countryside killing people, often at the behest of other people, and taking their stuff. Remove that one incredibly dumb and suicidal aspect from them, let them actually care about the well being of their own people above all else, let them treat humans as a neutral race that is as likely to be bad as good-- and every single one of them is going to be perfectly capable of being the "bad guys" without changing a single other thing about them.
In regard to the Dragonborn-- are you really such a munchkin that you can't see beyond the numbers that got slapped onto the PC version in terms of raw stats to what they would functionally be within the narrative story itself. They are 7' tall, universally muscular, have claws as sharp as daggers, have scaly hide that could stand in for armor-- none of which makes it to the PC stats simply so that they can be called a PC race and not be overwhelmingly powerful compared to all the others. But if one were to take the concept of "Dragon-people" and put them in the monster manual, just one of them would be rated a CR3 to CR5 creature. If people are going to say that Kobolds might remotely have slight egos because they might possibly be descended from dragons, then those who go around as out-and-out dragon people, visibly and obviously physically and mentally superior to all these mammalian beings-- they are expected to deal with.
And Dragonborn is a terribly designed race in general. There are no Dragonborn cities, there is no Dragonborn culture beyond a few random piecemeal sentences scribbled in two PHBs, they have never been integrated into any world. They pretty much just poofed into existence out of thin air without ever having been integrated into the plot of any adventure previously. There is nothing at all to say about what they want, what the general consensus opinions on things are among them, what their society expects of them and what resources their society needs and what long-term goals it has. They have virtually no defined traits-- positive or negative. Its really just someone who downloaded the new DLC race that was added on because the game designer thought it was fun and just popped into the world out of the void as a level 1 PC with no history, no motivation and no other appearances of this add-on DLC race throughout the entire game world. It is dumb-- and it is immersion-breaking. Thus, all there is to say about them has to come from the previous Dragonpeople who were in the D&D worlds. And they were all very powerful, all very much opposed to the non-draconic races and all very much "evil"-- or at least opposed to the interests of humans. Dragonborns are just having those previous races neutered beyond suspension of disbelief in addition to chopping off their wings and tails in a desperate bid to sell them as "not too powerful to be a level 1 PC". All one can do to figure out how they should act is look back at how the dragonpeople were always portrayed before this neutered, dismembered mess was dumped into the game, because there has not been one word written as to why they should be one bit different than the previous ones.
Your arguments against Dwarfs and Gnomes EVER being allowed to be "the bad guys" because it plays on the stereotypes about them rings hollow. The evil Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Drow-- they can all adhere entirely to the stereotypes and MUST be evil, but because Dwarfs and Gnomes can never, ever, ever, ever be "the bad guys" because that would be "stereotypical"-- even though the stereotypes about them have been seen the labeled as "always good except for a single once in a blue moon bad apple"? That's just dumb. The "always good" Dwarfs and Gnomes are stereotypes, a community or force of them that played up their negative traits to the extreme would be no more so-- in fact it would be rather original in comparison because we have virtually never seen it in 50 years of D&D.
The Hobbits/Halflings in the Shire were those that were living in farmlands and content to stay home. And even then, the main guy was a Burglar who was hired because of his specific skills at breaking into homes, sneaking around and swiping their stuff. His particular skills were useful for a particular mission-- but if you had a whole lot of those guys running around a city, no one is going to regard them as a "virtually always good, kind-hearted race". No-- they are going to be regarded as a bunch of lazy gutter rats who will break into your home and swipe all your stuff if you are away from home for too long and don't put in enough security measures. Sure-- when you leave them on the farm and there is nothing shiny around for them to swipe, maybe their laziness can mean they live a generally peaceful existence. But how many Halflings in D&D are you going to encounter who are the "stay on the farm and smoke tobacco because I've got no ambitions" type and how many are the ones who make it to the city and are going to be making it by on swindling, pick pocketing and black marketeering? Nah-- Halflings can absolutely be "the bad guys" in at least a significant series of adventures, if not an entire campaign.
Aakocra have every reason to shoot your party dead when your heavily armored and armored party of sell sword/murder hobos comes trouncing up along their mountain. And in D&D-- everything that kills you on sight for invading their homes is labeled "evil". There is no reason for them to be any less evil than any of the others.
And, yes, Changelings entire concept-- the very reason the race exist-- is based on old fairy tales of a creature that steals babies and replaces them with their own. It is literally the only trait they are known for, the sole reason they were placed into the game. So the idea that they would ALWAYS be good guys and can NEVER be the bad guy is ridiculous. It took something out of folklore that is fundamentally a horroric monster and reinterpreted to be fangless-- which is fine in Eberron where there are no "monsters" per se, but if you were going to transport them to any other campaign setting where the default supposition isn't that everyone is good? Then they would absolutely revert back to their mythological origins.
And you don't think cats are evil?
Tell you what. I want you to go capture a feral adult cat. Go ahead and feed it until it is full so it absolutely is not looking for food. Then I want to you stick that feral cat into a room with a bunch of baby bunnies and song birds. If you think for one second that the answer isn't "its going to rip them all to shred for fun" then I really do want you to go ahead and do this experiment so you can prove to everyone that the most natural cat of all is a morally superior angelic being.
But, if you understand that the cat is going to kill just for fun because that's what cats are specialized in doing and why we humans have kept cats arounds-- then I don't need to "listen to myself", you just need to stop constantly lying to yourself and actually think. Tabaxi would be be a great campaign villain, because you just know that the head of the town watch in such a campaign once you actually caught the circle of Tabaxi serial killers after losing half the party in the attempt would be just like you-- they would grab the leader by the cheeks, stick their face in that of the killer and say "Who slit the family's throat, ate their face and dumped their bodies on the town watch's doorstep?! Waz eet yooooou?! Waz eet yoooou, my fluffy-wuffy oopsie-boopsie! Waz yoou a bad keettie? Waz yoouu a bad keetie?!..... Awww... I can'ts stay mad at yoooou!!" then pat it on the head and send it on its way with a "Now you be a good keetie dis time!!"
And that's why cat-people would totally tend towards evil.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Thanks for sharing this; I really like the works of Jemisin, and am interested to see her viewpoint on this subject.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Because a black person isn't black. They're brown. This distinction matters when you are talking about photo negatives, because if their skin was actually black, they would have white skin the negative.
My point is that a drow is just as much an inversion of a black person's skin colour as it is of a white person's skin colour. Therefore, anyone who say "drow skin colour represents blackness" are making a statement contrary to nature.
That is a bloody good point they make.
I'm all for adding other races to the mix in fantasy, as much to point out that trying to say racism is dumb because it doesn't matter how different we are, we all want the same things and we all deserve to be treated with respect, but she raises a very valid point about the ... stagnation ... of the fantasy genre, that it either has to be european-based, or a white power fantasy, or most publishing houses won't touch it or will demand watering down the political and social commentary until you're basically LotR, but one of the main characters is black and maybe gay if you're lucky.
First of all, illustrations of drow are not photographic negatives; they're not really a color mix found in any real human population, but they aren't generally as blue as a true color inversion (generally they're a fairly neutral dark grey, though I've seen them with both hints of blue and hints of brown) and they certainly don't have inverted shadows.
Secondly, so what? A person in blackface isn't the same color as a real black person either, but that doesn't make it not racist.
"Think about that. Creatures that look like people, but aren’t really. Kinda-sorta-people, who aren’t worthy of even the most basic moral considerations, like the right to exist. Only way to deal with them is to control them utterly a la slavery, or wipe them all out. Hmm. Sounds familiar"
I think this quote from that article pretty much sums up how i feel about it.
I don't buy it. That would throw a large chunk of the monster manual out the window. Whats the point of that? If you want to have heroes fighting evil you need to some evil, evil comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Drow are elves except they are "darker skinned than their cousins and evil" so could be touchy.
But orcs, goblins, kobolds, giants, gnolls, duergar, the list goes on, very diverse group.
If you cant make a satisfying and compelling villain or evil group in your dnd campaign without relying on WotC to write in evil for you, by leaning heavily on real world racist themes, then you are a failure of a Dungeon Master
Because you could have the PCs fighting anything. Literally anything without needing fall back on Standard Badguy Race A.
Soldiers and agents of rival kingdoms or factions, crooked merchant bands hiring amoral mercenaries, fiendish cultists and brain-washed zealots. Hell, misguided civilians, starving refugees and panicked mobs makes an even more compelling battle because you've got to try and stop them without killing them, and even then, you've beaten the hell out of civilians to achieve your goal, and that has consequences.
Having the entities in the monster manuals being, if they are humanoids or sapient ((and not Outsiders, Undead or other creatures that are literally hard-coded to a certain alignment)) be either allies or enemies not because of their race, but their religion, their nationality or their society is a change D&D has desperately needed for years now.
An argument I have long made is that you can't make up an original society because Humans have, over the centuries, made so many of their own that any fictional one you create will inevitably mimic at least traits of a few of them, even if you don't intend to. Thus it is important that all societies in the game have something respectable about them, and that we don't make only the caucasian/european ones the inherently good/successful societies, that we actively try to avoid the racist caricatures and stereotypes in opposing societies and factions and races that the players may face.
undead being evil is racist! Since they have a pale skin color and make up the majority of creatures in the monster manual its obvious they are code for white people! Just a joke but we can honestly claim anything is racist from a certain point of view we need to draw a line somewhere otherwise we will be left with sourcebooks with zero interior pages
Ya heard it here first people. Without racism dungeons and dragons doesnt exist. We cracked to code. Guess it time to pack up in leave
Who knew that without poorly thought-out analogies mirroring real-world racism that the world would just wink out of existence?
That person I guess?
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D&D isn't racist unless you want it to be. As far as i know none of the D&D races are 'all evil'. Changing D&D doesn't help prevent racism it just lowers awareness. As part of a minority group i honestly just don't play with people who portray specific groups or races as all evil. The press needs to focus on ending racism not criticizing an RPG.
There is no dawn after eternal night.
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Okay, folks, enough with the personal insults. The mods WILL come down on that.
Thank you.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System