The collective fantasy of D&D (just like any RPG) is a thing that exists in the consciousness of the player base
No, it is not. Speak for yourself, not the the whole player base.
<snip> I would have thought that this lesson had been learned given how many times TSR and Wizards of the Coast was hit over the head with it over the years. Each generation of D&D thinks D&D is immune to this concept and each generation has been proven wrong, I don't see why this generation will be any different.
WotC is currently learning the "lesson" that D&D is more popular than it ever was, and keeps gaining in popularity as they make it more palatable to more people. That includes the "current direction."
It is not relevant at all, it just so happens that Turok The Orc Slayer is a Ranger who's favored enemy is Orcs and Gnolls.. but I guess next you're going to tell me that the Ranger class is racist?
Orcs are neither people or animals, they are make-believe bad guys in a game, they are the same as toasters, objects that have no real-world value or consideration. They have no relevance in the real world.. hell at least with a toaster you can toast bread.
You do understand that folks are talking about the in-game reality for Turok, right?
For example, if Turok did evil stuff, Turok could be labelled as "evil," even though Turok is imaginary. Similarly, if Turok believed that all Halflings are inferior-trash-that-must-be-eliminated, Turok would be "racist," in the game world, despite all concerned being imaginary. Therefore:
Given that Orcs are "people" in the default setting of current Forgotten Realms (look it up!), not to mention many other published D&D worlds, with free will and choice and personality and all that...
And given that Turok kills orcs because they're there (or whatever Turok's background motivation specifies)...
...Turok could be considered racist against orcs, in game.
Just like how some players may not feel comfortable roleplaying an evil character, some might not want to roleplay a racist character. Some might not want to be "in a party" with a racist character...after all, party cohesion is a thing. Some DMs might not be comfortable with characters like Turok running around being considered a "hero."
What are people's experiences with running tieflings in 5e? Has anyone ever actually had a game where their tiffle was a revilved societal outcast? I know I've actually tried once or twice, but modern DMs don't really seem to vibe on the idea and my tiffle characters have been more-or-less ordinary citizens even in worlds/settings where they ostensibly shouldn't have been. Curious whether anyone's ever actually played a tiffle character who had "shunned by society" as a serious and significant part of their character arc, and what they thought of that game.
Tropes don't change so much as they fall into disuse. They're just storytelling tools. A new sub-trope or sister-trope might emerge, but the old trope doesn't go away. If you want to make a character who just wants to slaughter orcs, you can do that. It's a racist character, and that's your prerogative. You don't get to complain when other people take umbrage with racist characters. Nor can you claim fantasy as a shield because you're fantasizing about being a racist
That is about the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. What you are suggesting is that what I do in a game is a reflection of who I am in the real world, do I have that about right? So when I play Sid Meiers Civilization and I nuke the French, it's because I fantasize about mass murder? When I play Assassins Creed and murder people to complete levels, I'm a psychopath? Or when I play donkey kong and knock him off the building it's because I have a fetish for killing primates?
This is a game.. Orcs don't represent people, seeing that association, is actually super racist. The game does not simulate real life, when you kill monsters in the game it doesn't mean you are psychologically unstable. It doesn't mean anything.. it just means your playing a game.
When you play a game, you play by its conventions. Comparing playing D&D to video game franchises like Civilization and Assassin's Creed is, I think, telling. Those are scripted experiences. You're limited by the game's engine. But not so with D&D. You're only limited by your imagination.
As Ophidimancer has pointed out, all these disparate races are people. Drow and orcs have their own culture, language and traditions. Tieflings may as well be an offshoot, like aasimar and genasi, that can come from anywhere. They're not monsters, and the game doesn't treat them as monsters. That may be a modern convention, but it's still the game's convention going forward. Your insistence otherwise, your refusal to tow the company line, isn't going to change that.
You're actively dehumanizing what the game, the official fiction, refers to as both people and humanoids. And if you can't see how other, real people won't be offended by that, then you're a lost cause.
What are people's experiences with running tieflings in 5e? Has anyone ever actually had a game where their tiffle was a revilved societal outcast? I know I've actually tried once or twice, but modern DMs don't really seem to vibe on the idea and my tiffle characters have been more-or-less ordinary citizens even in worlds/settings where they ostensibly shouldn't have been. Curious whether anyone's ever actually played a tiffle character who had "shunned by society" as a serious and significant part of their character arc, and what they thought of that game.
My experiences with tieflings have been generally wonderful experiences where tieflings are an accepted part of society and are treated no differently than human, elves, dwarves, etc. I did once play a drow where the DM treated me like the social outcast, hated for existing but barely tolerated in society. It was such an unpleasant experience, I changed characters after a few sessions to a human PC to fit their human-centric campaign. I would not choose to play at a table where I am the target of bigotry again, be it as a drow or a tiefling.
The last time I heard of this notion of "collective fantasy" was from that one MrRhexx (D&D Youtube influencer who's big on Forgotten Realms lore, especially older lore) video I watched where he basically talked about why he doesn't want ability score increases to be shifted to backgrounds from races.
My takeaway is that the collective fantasy is a myth. Races, like tieflings, orcs, and so on, are what the DM wants them to be in their world. And that world, whether it is homebrew or even a pre-written world, is going to be to the DM's tastes.
My experiences with tieflings have been generally wonderful experiences where tieflings are an accepted part of society and are treated no differently than human, elves, dwarves, etc. I did once play a drow where the DM treated me like the social outcast, hated for existing but barely tolerated in society. It was such an unpleasant experience, I changed characters after a few sessions to a human PC to fit their human-centric campaign. I would not choose to play at a table where I am the target of bigotry again, be it as a drow or a tiefling.
Hm. Interesting. I do think the 'social outcast' experience can be valuable, but it's a fine line to walk. The DM needs to make it plain that the shunning is being done specifically and solely by the NPCs in the game, rather than the NPCs giving vent to the DM's own feelings. If a DM is using 'Social Outcast' as a means to punish a player for playing a species the DM doesn't care for, then that DM is an ass bastard who deserves to have their DM screen privileges revoked. If a DM and a player can come to accord on 'this is the story we've each agreed to tell' and the DM can play bigoted NPCs without celebrating bigotry above the table, then they can do that. But it is more of an advanced storytelling thing than a lot of people are really ready to manage.
Thinking about it, it's likely for the best that Wizards dispense with species that are automatically 'Social Outcasts'. I have a sneaking fondness for those stories, as much for what they say about society as a whole as what they say about the outcast in question, but it isn't something I'd necessarily trust a novice DM with, yeah. Not without a lot of communication between player and DM, and not without the active and knowing buy-in of the rest of the party either.
Hm. Interesting. I do think the 'social outcast' experience can be valuable, but it's a fine line to walk. The DM needs to make it plain that the shunning is being done specifically and solely by the NPCs in the game, rather than the NPCs giving vent to the DM's own feelings. If a DM is using 'Social Outcast' as a means to punish a player for playing a species the DM doesn't care for, then that DM is an ass bastard who deserves to have their DM screen privileges revoked. If a DM and a player can come to accord on 'this is the story we've each agreed to tell' and the DM can play bigoted NPCs without celebrating bigotry above the table, then they can do that. But it is more of an advanced storytelling thing than a lot of people are really ready to manage.
Thinking about it, it's likely for the best that Wizards dispense with species that are automatically 'Social Outcasts'. I have a sneaking fondness for those stories, as much for what they say about society as a whole as what they say about the outcast in question, but it isn't something I'd necessarily trust a novice DM with, yeah. Not without a lot of communication between player and DM, and not without the active and knowing buy-in of the rest of the party either.
I believe part of the problem was that this experience was thrust upon me without discussion and as the only one playing a drow, was the only recipient of consistently poor NPC interaction. I was very new to D&D at the time and all I knew about the drow is that they looked really cool (and hot) and that they were mostly subterranean. The DM was aware of my build beforehand but did not caution me about how that would impact my play experience. I probably could have done more research myself, but I was a wide-eyed D&D babe with only a single set of polyhedral dice who barely understood where to find things on my character sheet. Fortunately, I had two really positive experiences playing the game beforehand (as two tieflings), so I did not let my drow experience color my view of the game.
As the person who started the thread saying that their experience was this, obviously I have. However, I will also add that this wasn't the DM being racist or, at the least, not them being racist against the player.
First experience I had was an edgelord warlock who lasted a grand total of one session. I'm sure I don't need to go into detail about what their character was like as you can probably figure everything out just by those two words. Thing is, no one in the party was willing to put up with 'the darkness in my soul that threatens to consume me is also the source of my power' either in or out of character and when even the xenophobe paladin that they tried to bait into discriminating outright refused both in and out of character, they left.
The second was that Eldritch Knight subclass IIRC. They were playing a social outcast (though oddly not for racial reasons), but they REVELED in being that outcast... for all of three sessions before they got the dumb idea of mouthing off to a dragon. But they did their absolute best to act like, well, the rebel outcast non-stop.
Third was a bard who really loved singing. While the character didn't like the discrimination (she just wanted to sing) her player (a guy) did. Even asked once for an incident to happen because it was something he wanted to do with his girl despite no one at the table, even xenophobe paladin, really wanting to 'play' to it. Course, the latter may have been because said Paladin actually loved her singing, but it's been so long I don't remember the details. She stayed until campaign end and I think they even got married in the epilogue.
Fourth was, new campaign, a generic edgelord. He lasted to campaign end but we had to constantly stop him from doing stuff like summon demons in obviously evil settings and remind him that the demons wouldn't be on his side just because they were both CE. Only reason he survived was because xenophobe paladin (now playing an all-loving cleric girl. Guy loved his cliche's and had a way of playing them straight while making them, well, fleshed out and likable characters, but we're not talking about him right now) made it his personal challenge to get the guy to survive as a test of his skills.
Fifth was a skyship pirate in an online campaign who enjoyed being free and out in society. Easily the best one I played with. I'd say basically imagine Vyse from Skies of Arcadia but with horns. Likable, fit in with the group well, and in constant trouble with the guards. His race DID factor in; but it was because he became such a menace that the guards were indiscriminately targeting all tieflings on sky ships just to try and catch him. Everyone loved him both in and out of character (except for the guards/officials of course).
Sixth was in a different online campaign. Probably the only one who wasn't an outcast in some form and was actually a noblewoman. My character ended up spending a lot of time with her and becoming her maid. They had a lot of fun together until I left the site.
While my earlier statement wasn't 100% accurate upon reflection, 4/6 did play to the racial discrimination trope with one also playing to discrimination, but not for racial reasons. Only one didn't.
As to the whole 'collective fantasy' thing, I'll say this. There is no reason why any one thing has to be set in stone. While there may be some superficial details (elves having pointy ears and being thin and wirey for example) we've seen elves forming both the upper-crust of society, and being the second-class citizens that get kicked around all the time. I've seen plenty of big, dumb, orcs/half-orcs but I've also seen a half-orc skyship engineer, a half-orc scholar, and an orcish chef. Tusks and green skin were shared between all of them but as people the latter three weren't the stereotype as well. However I do agree that a collective notion of what an 'elf' is DOES exist. You can't give a krogan pointy ears and tell me they're an elf. But then were does the line exist? IMO that's a matter of world-building. When it comes to tieflings though 5/6 of the players I've played with have enjoyed being a tiefling because of discrimination with 4/6 being specifically because they were tieflings. Hence why I felt this was a misstep. While there's nothing saying a dwarf has to drink copiously or have a beard, I'm sure anyone PLAYING a dwarf (even a female dwarf) would insist on having the biggest beard they could have and the biggest cup of ale they could handle. While there may be exceptions on a per-player basis, on the whole it's just not why people play dwarves.
I'm pretty sure I admitted earlier that it was clear I was wrong about tieflings. Even though my experiences have told me people played them with the discrimination/social outcast being part of why, it's clear I am not correct here.
Will admit, my favorite Lady Dwarf trope is that lady dwarves do not necessarily have beards, but that they instead have the sort of sideburns that both Elvis and Odin might envy. Totally down for bearded ladydorfs, but I'll admit I personally vibe on the aesthetic of Wolverine-level sideburns more. Often bound up in warrior's braids, beaded and decorated the same way a typical dwarven beard is.
As for societal outcast stuff? Yeah, think that's best as individual table stories rather than the forced tale of an entire species (or several). It's the sort of thing Wizards is explicitly looking to leave as a matter between the members of any given circle, and the more I read the more I find myself in agreement. Even if I personally find that sort of tale enticing, that personal predilection isn't, and should not be, universal.
I read Wizards of the Coasts "Diversity" statement and honestly, I have never read anything quite so cringy written about D&D. Basically the statement boils down to an admission that the people that created D&D depicted minority cultures as monsters on purpose and for the last 40+ years we have all been playing a game where we murder them for fun because we are all a bunch of racists.
I wonder how much longer this re-invention of D&D history and D&D cultural revolution goes on before we start burning books again. This is the bloody satanic panic all over all again, except this time we don't have Gygax around to flip them the bird. I didn't worry about offending the people trying to kill D&D back then and I'm not worried about offending them now. Different politics, same nonsense.
I read Wizards of the Coasts "Diversity" statement and honestly, I have never read anything quite so cringy written about D&D. Basically the statement boils down to an admission that the people that created D&D depicted minority cultures as monsters on purpose and for the last 40+ years we have all been playing a game where we murder them for fun because we are all a bunch of racists.
I mean yes. We are all a bunch of racists. By sheer dint of having been raised in modern society, which has roots in humanity's unfortunate tendency for tribalism and bigotry, we are all socialized to be varying degrees of racist. It's evident in our media, our laws, our interactions with each other, so of course it would be present in our fantasy fiction as well. As we progress we learn more about ourselves and each other as human beings and how the human condition is wide and diverse while still having a core commonality. As we learn better, we do better, which means we start treating each other with more compassion some of us point out things like, "Hey you know how we have portrayed certain people in media? Some of those ways are hurtful and maybe we should stop doing that."
I wonder how much longer this re-invention of D&D history and D&D cultural revolution goes on before we start burning books again. This is the bloody satanic panic all over all again, except this time we don't have Gygax around to flip them the bird. I didn't worry about offending the people trying to kill D&D back then and I'm not worried about offending them now. Different politics, same nonsense.
I really don't know how anybody can mistake the two. One was rooted in fear and discrimination of "the other" while another is oppressed and disenfranchised minorities speaking up about things that are hurtful.
Honestly your take is very bad and what you want out of D&D is also bad. I'm very glad that you're not in charge and that your style of D&D is going away.
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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!
I read Wizards of the Coasts "Diversity" statement and honestly, I have never read anything quite so cringy written about D&D.
You know what? No matter how cringey you find it, it is the official stance of Wizards of the Coast. Orcs and drow, and tieflings for that matter, are people. Your stance that they are not does not match with the official material. So miss me with that kind of stuff.
Basically the statement boils down to an admission that the people that created D&D depicted minority cultures as monsters on purpose
You misread. The statement says that certain races have been described with language reminiscent of how real world groups are denigrated. That is not saying that writer set out to denigrate real world people through fiction on purpose. That's not what that means at all. It means that the language "is reminiscent" of denigrating language used against people in real life. Which is hurtful to those people. Which is hurtful to me.
"Oh you're saying we do this on purpose!?" is a misdirect and a ploy and I refuse to fall for it.
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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!
I really don't know how anybody can mistake the two. One was rooted in fear and discrimination of "the other" while another is oppressed and disenfranchised minorities speaking up about things that are hurtful.
Christians in the 80's would definitely disagree with you. They demanded the government remove satanic elements from books and the government wouldn't let them. They felt oppressed and disenfranchised.
There is a huge and extremely important difference between "feeling oppressed/disenfranchised because people in charge told you to" (which is exactly why Nazism and other forms of white supremacy and fascism are a problem) and people actually being oppressed and disenfranchised. People of other races/ethnicities in the real world have been and are oppressed/disenfranchised. White Anglo-Saxon Christians largely aren't. And they were the main ones making the fuss in the Satanic Panic.
If you can't see the difference between "these people are actually being oppressed" and "these people are being lied to and told that other people want to/are trying to oppress them", I honestly have no idea how to engage with you. Sure, they're making complaints that look similar on the surface. But nuance is essential to this discussion, and if you choose to ignore it because "they're complaining about things that I think are similar", you're taking a role that validates those that complain about being oppressed without actually being oppressed.
Gentlethem. A reminder that this subject has been "discussed" to death in three thousand other, now-locked threads, and nobody ever budged a soul there either. Please don't let yourselves be dragged off topic. I've tried several times to redirect focus of conversation back towards the idea of tieflings, social discrimination in an in-universe context, and whether or not there's room in D&D for 'Social Outcast" stories (there totally is) and whether those stories belong in the core material (probably best not). Can we try and have that conversation instead of this one, if you would all be so kind?
I do feel there is a very important question here. How much do people actually FOLLOW the source material? Like, we could put that tieflings all walk on their hands, speak in a racist 1820's chinese accent, and engage in tail fencing in the PHB; but that doesn't mean players will actually follow that. I'm pretty sure 90% of people who play goblins play them near-identically to WoW goblins regardless of whatever the lore says.
Guys at my table don't play tieflings (as we usually consider them too hipster), but we like orcs. Tried having traditionally reviled orc PCs in a campaign. Not to say it was oppressive or hurt anyone's feelings, we tend to enjoy occasional fits of bullying, racist jokes, and sporadic violence when one of us RPs a total brute, but conflicts out of nothing that just keep happening all the time, tend to get old and irritating after a while.
That seems to be a common thread I've seen in many places, both my own games and games I've heard about here and elsewhere. It's simply more work than it's worth to remember to constantly treat PCs like outcasts unless you're actually getting something out of it. I've had it happen to my own tieflings, I've been the DM forgetting and eventually giving up on treating an 'outcast' PC properly*, I've heard about it in many other games. If the story if the game isn't centered on the trials of a band of outcast misfits, and everybody is sharing equally in the "can't show my face in town" treatment? Singling out one PC for it just doesn't produce any dividends worth the effort.
Which, frankly? Is kind of a nice message, if you think about it. "Being an exclusionary ****waffle for no reason just isn't worth the effort." I can get behind that idea.
I'm glad that everyone who wants to play a tiefling won't have to have their character be discriminated against. In my opinion at least, the one way the racial discrimination aspect of playing tieflings works is if both the DM and player talk about it before any of those aspects are introduced, and agree that they want to play in a game where tieflings are discriminated against. The other players should also have a say in whether or not they feel comfortable with racial prejudice in game.
If this is a theme that everybody at the table wants to explore, then it can still be explored. But for so many people, the problem they had playing tieflings was the racist way in which other people in-world reacted to their characters. Now I haven't played a tiefling, but I've been in games where people have, and they had loads and loads of fun playing a tiefling who was treated just as any other character would be.
Before, people who wanted to play a tiefling, but not one that was discriminated against, were forced to either not play that race or be discriminated against in game. Yes, you can ignore that part about tieflings. But the DM is in charge of how the NPCs act, so they control that stuff. And too often, when a player asked to play a tiefling that wasn't discriminated against, the DM would say, "Too bad. Don't play a tiefling if you don't want to play them my way."
No, it is not. Speak for yourself, not the the whole player base.
WotC is currently learning the "lesson" that D&D is more popular than it ever was, and keeps gaining in popularity as they make it more palatable to more people. That includes the "current direction."
You do understand that folks are talking about the in-game reality for Turok, right?
For example, if Turok did evil stuff, Turok could be labelled as "evil," even though Turok is imaginary. Similarly, if Turok believed that all Halflings are inferior-trash-that-must-be-eliminated, Turok would be "racist," in the game world, despite all concerned being imaginary. Therefore:
Just like how some players may not feel comfortable roleplaying an evil character, some might not want to roleplay a racist character. Some might not want to be "in a party" with a racist character...after all, party cohesion is a thing. Some DMs might not be comfortable with characters like Turok running around being considered a "hero."
What are people's experiences with running tieflings in 5e? Has anyone ever actually had a game where their tiffle was a revilved societal outcast? I know I've actually tried once or twice, but modern DMs don't really seem to vibe on the idea and my tiffle characters have been more-or-less ordinary citizens even in worlds/settings where they ostensibly shouldn't have been. Curious whether anyone's ever actually played a tiffle character who had "shunned by society" as a serious and significant part of their character arc, and what they thought of that game.
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When you play a game, you play by its conventions. Comparing playing D&D to video game franchises like Civilization and Assassin's Creed is, I think, telling. Those are scripted experiences. You're limited by the game's engine. But not so with D&D. You're only limited by your imagination.
As Ophidimancer has pointed out, all these disparate races are people. Drow and orcs have their own culture, language and traditions. Tieflings may as well be an offshoot, like aasimar and genasi, that can come from anywhere. They're not monsters, and the game doesn't treat them as monsters. That may be a modern convention, but it's still the game's convention going forward. Your insistence otherwise, your refusal to tow the company line, isn't going to change that.
You're actively dehumanizing what the game, the official fiction, refers to as both people and humanoids. And if you can't see how other, real people won't be offended by that, then you're a lost cause.
My experiences with tieflings have been generally wonderful experiences where tieflings are an accepted part of society and are treated no differently than human, elves, dwarves, etc. I did once play a drow where the DM treated me like the social outcast, hated for existing but barely tolerated in society. It was such an unpleasant experience, I changed characters after a few sessions to a human PC to fit their human-centric campaign. I would not choose to play at a table where I am the target of bigotry again, be it as a drow or a tiefling.
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The last time I heard of this notion of "collective fantasy" was from that one MrRhexx (D&D Youtube influencer who's big on Forgotten Realms lore, especially older lore) video I watched where he basically talked about why he doesn't want ability score increases to be shifted to backgrounds from races.
My takeaway is that the collective fantasy is a myth. Races, like tieflings, orcs, and so on, are what the DM wants them to be in their world. And that world, whether it is homebrew or even a pre-written world, is going to be to the DM's tastes.
Hm. Interesting. I do think the 'social outcast' experience can be valuable, but it's a fine line to walk. The DM needs to make it plain that the shunning is being done specifically and solely by the NPCs in the game, rather than the NPCs giving vent to the DM's own feelings. If a DM is using 'Social Outcast' as a means to punish a player for playing a species the DM doesn't care for, then that DM is an ass bastard who deserves to have their DM screen privileges revoked. If a DM and a player can come to accord on 'this is the story we've each agreed to tell' and the DM can play bigoted NPCs without celebrating bigotry above the table, then they can do that. But it is more of an advanced storytelling thing than a lot of people are really ready to manage.
Thinking about it, it's likely for the best that Wizards dispense with species that are automatically 'Social Outcasts'. I have a sneaking fondness for those stories, as much for what they say about society as a whole as what they say about the outcast in question, but it isn't something I'd necessarily trust a novice DM with, yeah. Not without a lot of communication between player and DM, and not without the active and knowing buy-in of the rest of the party either.
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I believe part of the problem was that this experience was thrust upon me without discussion and as the only one playing a drow, was the only recipient of consistently poor NPC interaction. I was very new to D&D at the time and all I knew about the drow is that they looked really cool (and hot) and that they were mostly subterranean. The DM was aware of my build beforehand but did not caution me about how that would impact my play experience. I probably could have done more research myself, but I was a wide-eyed D&D babe with only a single set of polyhedral dice who barely understood where to find things on my character sheet. Fortunately, I had two really positive experiences playing the game beforehand (as two tieflings), so I did not let my drow experience color my view of the game.
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As the person who started the thread saying that their experience was this, obviously I have. However, I will also add that this wasn't the DM being racist or, at the least, not them being racist against the player.
First experience I had was an edgelord warlock who lasted a grand total of one session. I'm sure I don't need to go into detail about what their character was like as you can probably figure everything out just by those two words. Thing is, no one in the party was willing to put up with 'the darkness in my soul that threatens to consume me is also the source of my power' either in or out of character and when even the xenophobe paladin that they tried to bait into discriminating outright refused both in and out of character, they left.
The second was that Eldritch Knight subclass IIRC. They were playing a social outcast (though oddly not for racial reasons), but they REVELED in being that outcast... for all of three sessions before they got the dumb idea of mouthing off to a dragon. But they did their absolute best to act like, well, the rebel outcast non-stop.
Third was a bard who really loved singing. While the character didn't like the discrimination (she just wanted to sing) her player (a guy) did. Even asked once for an incident to happen because it was something he wanted to do with his girl despite no one at the table, even xenophobe paladin, really wanting to 'play' to it. Course, the latter may have been because said Paladin actually loved her singing, but it's been so long I don't remember the details. She stayed until campaign end and I think they even got married in the epilogue.
Fourth was, new campaign, a generic edgelord. He lasted to campaign end but we had to constantly stop him from doing stuff like summon demons in obviously evil settings and remind him that the demons wouldn't be on his side just because they were both CE. Only reason he survived was because xenophobe paladin (now playing an all-loving cleric girl. Guy loved his cliche's and had a way of playing them straight while making them, well, fleshed out and likable characters, but we're not talking about him right now) made it his personal challenge to get the guy to survive as a test of his skills.
Fifth was a skyship pirate in an online campaign who enjoyed being free and out in society. Easily the best one I played with. I'd say basically imagine Vyse from Skies of Arcadia but with horns. Likable, fit in with the group well, and in constant trouble with the guards. His race DID factor in; but it was because he became such a menace that the guards were indiscriminately targeting all tieflings on sky ships just to try and catch him. Everyone loved him both in and out of character (except for the guards/officials of course).
Sixth was in a different online campaign. Probably the only one who wasn't an outcast in some form and was actually a noblewoman. My character ended up spending a lot of time with her and becoming her maid. They had a lot of fun together until I left the site.
While my earlier statement wasn't 100% accurate upon reflection, 4/6 did play to the racial discrimination trope with one also playing to discrimination, but not for racial reasons. Only one didn't.
As to the whole 'collective fantasy' thing, I'll say this. There is no reason why any one thing has to be set in stone. While there may be some superficial details (elves having pointy ears and being thin and wirey for example) we've seen elves forming both the upper-crust of society, and being the second-class citizens that get kicked around all the time. I've seen plenty of big, dumb, orcs/half-orcs but I've also seen a half-orc skyship engineer, a half-orc scholar, and an orcish chef. Tusks and green skin were shared between all of them but as people the latter three weren't the stereotype as well. However I do agree that a collective notion of what an 'elf' is DOES exist. You can't give a krogan pointy ears and tell me they're an elf. But then were does the line exist? IMO that's a matter of world-building. When it comes to tieflings though 5/6 of the players I've played with have enjoyed being a tiefling because of discrimination with 4/6 being specifically because they were tieflings. Hence why I felt this was a misstep. While there's nothing saying a dwarf has to drink copiously or have a beard, I'm sure anyone PLAYING a dwarf (even a female dwarf) would insist on having the biggest beard they could have and the biggest cup of ale they could handle. While there may be exceptions on a per-player basis, on the whole it's just not why people play dwarves.
I'm pretty sure I admitted earlier that it was clear I was wrong about tieflings. Even though my experiences have told me people played them with the discrimination/social outcast being part of why, it's clear I am not correct here.
Will admit, my favorite Lady Dwarf trope is that lady dwarves do not necessarily have beards, but that they instead have the sort of sideburns that both Elvis and Odin might envy. Totally down for bearded ladydorfs, but I'll admit I personally vibe on the aesthetic of Wolverine-level sideburns more. Often bound up in warrior's braids, beaded and decorated the same way a typical dwarven beard is.
As for societal outcast stuff? Yeah, think that's best as individual table stories rather than the forced tale of an entire species (or several). It's the sort of thing Wizards is explicitly looking to leave as a matter between the members of any given circle, and the more I read the more I find myself in agreement. Even if I personally find that sort of tale enticing, that personal predilection isn't, and should not be, universal.
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If you're going to invoke Gygax by name, then you should perhaps defer to the people who knew him in life.
Or just read his own words. Cruel and unusual punishment, and even execution before a crime could be committed, were acceptable to him.
I know we get the term lionize from Richard I, but he was a shite king.
I mean yes. We are all a bunch of racists. By sheer dint of having been raised in modern society, which has roots in humanity's unfortunate tendency for tribalism and bigotry, we are all socialized to be varying degrees of racist. It's evident in our media, our laws, our interactions with each other, so of course it would be present in our fantasy fiction as well. As we progress we learn more about ourselves and each other as human beings and how the human condition is wide and diverse while still having a core commonality. As we learn better, we do better, which means we start treating each other with more compassion some of us point out things like, "Hey you know how we have portrayed certain people in media? Some of those ways are hurtful and maybe we should stop doing that."
I really don't know how anybody can mistake the two. One was rooted in fear and discrimination of "the other" while another is oppressed and disenfranchised minorities speaking up about things that are hurtful.
Honestly your take is very bad and what you want out of D&D is also bad. I'm very glad that you're not in charge and that your style of D&D is going away.
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!
You know what? No matter how cringey you find it, it is the official stance of Wizards of the Coast. Orcs and drow, and tieflings for that matter, are people. Your stance that they are not does not match with the official material. So miss me with that kind of stuff.
You misread. The statement says that certain races have been described with language reminiscent of how real world groups are denigrated. That is not saying that writer set out to denigrate real world people through fiction on purpose. That's not what that means at all. It means that the language "is reminiscent" of denigrating language used against people in real life. Which is hurtful to those people. Which is hurtful to me.
"Oh you're saying we do this on purpose!?" is a misdirect and a ploy and I refuse to fall for it.
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!
There is a huge and extremely important difference between "feeling oppressed/disenfranchised because people in charge told you to" (which is exactly why Nazism and other forms of white supremacy and fascism are a problem) and people actually being oppressed and disenfranchised. People of other races/ethnicities in the real world have been and are oppressed/disenfranchised. White Anglo-Saxon Christians largely aren't. And they were the main ones making the fuss in the Satanic Panic.
If you can't see the difference between "these people are actually being oppressed" and "these people are being lied to and told that other people want to/are trying to oppress them", I honestly have no idea how to engage with you. Sure, they're making complaints that look similar on the surface. But nuance is essential to this discussion, and if you choose to ignore it because "they're complaining about things that I think are similar", you're taking a role that validates those that complain about being oppressed without actually being oppressed.
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Gentlethem. A reminder that this subject has been "discussed" to death in three thousand other, now-locked threads, and nobody ever budged a soul there either. Please don't let yourselves be dragged off topic. I've tried several times to redirect focus of conversation back towards the idea of tieflings, social discrimination in an in-universe context, and whether or not there's room in D&D for 'Social Outcast" stories (there totally is) and whether those stories belong in the core material (probably best not). Can we try and have that conversation instead of this one, if you would all be so kind?
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Agreed.
I do feel there is a very important question here. How much do people actually FOLLOW the source material? Like, we could put that tieflings all walk on their hands, speak in a racist 1820's chinese accent, and engage in tail fencing in the PHB; but that doesn't mean players will actually follow that. I'm pretty sure 90% of people who play goblins play them near-identically to WoW goblins regardless of whatever the lore says.
Guys at my table don't play tieflings (as we usually consider them too hipster), but we like orcs. Tried having traditionally reviled orc PCs in a campaign. Not to say it was oppressive or hurt anyone's feelings, we tend to enjoy occasional fits of bullying, racist jokes, and sporadic violence when one of us RPs a total brute, but conflicts out of nothing that just keep happening all the time, tend to get old and irritating after a while.
That seems to be a common thread I've seen in many places, both my own games and games I've heard about here and elsewhere. It's simply more work than it's worth to remember to constantly treat PCs like outcasts unless you're actually getting something out of it. I've had it happen to my own tieflings, I've been the DM forgetting and eventually giving up on treating an 'outcast' PC properly*, I've heard about it in many other games. If the story if the game isn't centered on the trials of a band of outcast misfits, and everybody is sharing equally in the "can't show my face in town" treatment? Singling out one PC for it just doesn't produce any dividends worth the effort.
Which, frankly? Is kind of a nice message, if you think about it. "Being an exclusionary ****waffle for no reason just isn't worth the effort." I can get behind that idea.
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I'm glad that everyone who wants to play a tiefling won't have to have their character be discriminated against. In my opinion at least, the one way the racial discrimination aspect of playing tieflings works is if both the DM and player talk about it before any of those aspects are introduced, and agree that they want to play in a game where tieflings are discriminated against. The other players should also have a say in whether or not they feel comfortable with racial prejudice in game.
If this is a theme that everybody at the table wants to explore, then it can still be explored. But for so many people, the problem they had playing tieflings was the racist way in which other people in-world reacted to their characters. Now I haven't played a tiefling, but I've been in games where people have, and they had loads and loads of fun playing a tiefling who was treated just as any other character would be.
Before, people who wanted to play a tiefling, but not one that was discriminated against, were forced to either not play that race or be discriminated against in game. Yes, you can ignore that part about tieflings. But the DM is in charge of how the NPCs act, so they control that stuff. And too often, when a player asked to play a tiefling that wasn't discriminated against, the DM would say, "Too bad. Don't play a tiefling if you don't want to play them my way."
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