Reaction to WotC announcements re: Vistani (Drow, orcs, etc.

[ewancummins]

There's some other bizarre stuff in the announcements, though, mostly about drow and orcs. The designers are badly confused if they think these monsters have anything to do with real world ethnic groups or social issues.

A psychologist even disproved the "orcs are racist" stance.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog ... ent-racist

Personally, I feel that if you look at orcs and think they are anything other than a fantasy race and that they are representative of any real world culture, you may be racist yourself.

Yeah.

Mostly I think they are just virtue signalling. But it could be that some guys at WizBros look at orcs and see a real world racial/ ethnic minority. That does seem racist. Ditto drow ( nobody at WizBros reads the Eddas, I guess)


With the Vistani, I get it. They are called gypsies in-game and are indeed based in part on literary and film depictions of Romani people. I think there's no ill intent in the design and no cause for a controversy, but I don't think it's nutty to make a connection when there really is a connection.

[ewancummins]

Some of this appears to be WotC copying Pathfinder 2E, with "ancestry" replacing "race."


But it seems that to some extent what they are describing was done in the Player's Option rules back in the later 1990s. You get points and can buy options listed for racial traits.
That was not marketted as politically correct. It was just part of add on books series with tubloads of modular chargen options for players who liked fiddly bits but wanted to play AD&D and not Rolemaster, Fantasy Hero, GURPS, etc.

The stuff about removing orc INT penalties seems silly to me.

A monster or player race can be smarter than humans but not dumber? Why?

Perhaps "species" or "kind" would be a better label than race. But the trend of adding hybrids to the game weakens the idea of the races as distinct species.

(In the elf pamphlet e-book I recently wrote , elves cannot breed with humans. Half-elves are changelings that breed true, creating a new race in certain regions of elf/ human contact.)

[tomokaicho]

I had a long post ready to go, but decided to delete it. I've been to places like North Korea. I've lived in China and other 'authoritarian' states. The environment of social pressure is WORSE in the West than those places.

[Dion of the Fraternity]

Re: the two future books with Vistani.

I'm thinking that they might not even be Ravenloft books. Remember that in 4E, D&D basically divorced the Vistani from the campaign setting and made them interplanar nomads.

[Strahdsbuddy]

Re: the two future books with Vistani.

I'm thinking that they might not even be Ravenloft books. Remember that in 4E, D&D basically divorced the Vistani from the campaign setting and made them interplanar nomads.

Sadly I fear you are correct. Wizards has certainly seemed to go away from specific campaign settings like spelljammer, dark sun, and of course Ravenloft. They picked the misty corpse clean of what they thought they could use genetically. My favorite slight to us was the idea that Barovia existed on the plane of Innistrad when they did the crossover. Surely, the reverse is true!

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

Problems also may arise from naturalism, treating monsters as races of people: If goblins are just little green people who are evil, are goblin babies evil? Are all goblins automatically evil? Irredeemably so? Why? Should we kill them all?

One solution which I've used in a game is to ditch naturalism. Goblins aren't a kind of natural people. They are supernatural/unnatural monsters. They do not have babies. They might coalesce out of the darkness of the Underworld, or possess and warp the bodies of human children, or come into being in some otehr spooky way.

In the Monster Manual for 4e, it is suggested that hobgoblins created goblins and bugbears to be servitor races. I tend to use this interpretation, which makes hobgoblins seem cooler to me. The option still exists for goblins to grow into an actual race by allowing them to breed true, escape direct control by hobgoblins, and gain the power of self-determination. However, they can also be just a slave class of genetically modified organisms. That solves the problem of why goblins are evil, but it leaves questions about why hobgoblins are evil.

I think it is also worth noting that most of these classically evil races worship evil forces, like dark gods and demon lords. Orcs have Gruumsh, goblinoids have Maglubiyet and Hruggek, gnolls have Yeenoghu, drow have Lolth, and so on. Rather than being inherently evil creatures, it could be argued their cultures are strongly influenced by evil religions. Outside of the Mists, the existence of gods in a campaign setting is usually verifiable fact, and clerics in a community are direct evidence of divine power. When the young orcs in the tribe see their shaman call down fire from Gruumsh, there is not much room to doubt that their violent culture has divine support, thus reinforcing their indoctrination into evil.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I'm thinking that they might not even be Ravenloft books.

"might" isn't strong enough. If they are branded as Ravenloft books, I'll eat my (Ravenloft) hat. We're long since past that phase of the setting, I think.

The whole concept of race in fantasy is a thorny one. If they are meant to be different species, how are there half-orcs and the like? If they are meant to be branching parts of interconnected species, then it is kind of unsettling to say, Drow are just like Elves but black-skinned and evil, (with rare heroic exceptions). Then of course, if every humanoid is fully capable of the full range of behavior, then what's a DM to do when he just wants some cannon-fodder for the heroes to smack down without any moral quandaries? Yes, it's all fantasy, but everything has connotations beyond what's explicitly on the page.

I see nothing wrong with running things by a sensitivity reader, which is basically just another editing pass to check, "hey did we put anything in there that seems fine to us, but is going to be offensive to somebody else?" It's certainly possible to go too far down that road of covering every possible angle of offense, but it's not a huge price to pay to have someone look things over with a critical eye towards these things. I've heard enough people turned off from the game by connotations that the writers saw nothing wrong with, and I'd rather have more players out there than fewer.

[ewancummins]

You cannot please everybody.

As for the rest, I tend to agree about Ravenloft the setting not coming back into print with new 'official' books. But I'm not disappointed. The Demiplane of Dread is in the hands of those who really care for it and have worked on it and played in it over the years; developing, expanding, reimagining. Just look in The Library and the Forums here on FoS and see what I mean.

[Jester of the FoS]

WotC is responding to a lot of talk from the community.

They received a fair number of complaints regarding negative stereotypes in Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation back when those were published. And issues with the drow have been around for decades.
And the conversation regarding fantasy "races" has been one going on in the background of the hobby for many years. Pathfinder didn't just decide to drop the term "race" for no reason, and D&D might have gone that route too had they not been so concerned about trying to get back to the game's roots with 5e after practically killing the game with 4e. But even during the playtest I heard some concerns about the blending of ethnicity and culture and ability scores.
(Heck, concerns about orcs being racist caricatures dates back to the publication of Lord of the Rings in the mid-1950s.)

If you feel like educating yourself a little, during the recently D&D Live weekend event, WotC gave a few African American creatives and community members a platform to talk about whatever they wanted, including BLM, being a black nerd, and the portray of race in D&D.

You can find it at:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/655703514

[kourkenko]

I had a long post ready to go, but decided to delete it. I've been to places like North Korea. I've lived in China and other 'authoritarian' states. The environment of social pressure is WORSE in the West than those places.

I grew up in a communist country led by a military dictator and i agree with you. I think people looking at orc and seeing black people have a serious mental health problem but it's just my opinion of course. Soon goblins will be chinese, kobolds koreans and gnolls arabs. But we aren't here to speak about this...

Back on topic, i don't think WotC will make new Ravenloft books, sadly, but i think they just want to create campaign and that's it. At best they will be a race in a new setting.

[tomokaicho]

(Heck, concerns about orcs being racist caricatures dates back to the publication of Lord of the Rings in the mid-1950s.)

You could also say that Orcs were reframed as racial caricatures by some people way back in the 1950s, who then raised their 'concerns'.

This is a pointless discussion anyway. We all know that a discussion about these issues can only go one way so lets not even pretend it can be discussed rationally.

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

Tolkien’s orcs were allegories for working class men leaving work in the factories of the Black Country and being covered in soot, losing all sense of identity. Mordor was an allegory for the destruction of the countryside due to the expansion of industrial cities like Birmingham.

Any connections to real world races has been added later by primarily American authors.

[Jester of the FoS]

I don't personally find orcs to be racist. And I'm okay with ability score increases, as I view the non-human peoples of fantasy games to be other species. Like Star Trek aliens. Vulcans are just stronger than human.

But it doesn't matter what I think because one person doesn't get to decide if something is offensive solely by talking with someone who isn't upset. You need to hear multiple voices and decide if the people being offended are being reasonable.

It's like bullying. Which I have to deal with a lot as I work in an Elementary school.
There's two excuses given when someone is caught bullying. The first is "they deserved it" and the more common second excuse was "it was just a joke/ I was just kidding." But the person making the "joke" doesn't get to decide for the other kid what they find funny. If both of them aren't laughing it wasn't a joke, it was being mean.

The same thing applies to offensive content. The only people who get to decide if something is offensive are the people being offended.

And in this case it's the people of colour who have been told their entire lives that they're less smart than white people, or more suited to physical labour, or are less able to control their temper. Who then see the same things said about orcs.
The people who read fantasy books or watch fantasy movies and the only people who aren't solid white are the savage bad guys.

So while I know orcs aren't remotely intended to be racist—by Tolkien or D&D—I also acknowledge that their portrayal is making people feel bad by bringing up unpleasant experiences they've had throughout their lives. And that D&D is meant to be fun, and as a fan of D&D I really, really want as many people as possible to play the game, be accepted into the community, and have fun.
Changing how certain races are portrayed doesn't affect the game itself. And it doesn't affect my table, as I can always change the lore as I wish (and often do). But it makes it more accessible for other people.

So what's the downside?

[Mistmaster]

I am rewriting Ravenloft on the principle monsters aren't born they are made and they choose to become monsters, and on the idea that freewill, not racial alignement is what matters, even if 5 ed has made a huge step backwards introducing lot of pressure un several creature fluff. So I agree. You will find evil individuals not evil races in my campaigns.

[tomokaicho]

So what's the downside?

I will trust that I won't be banned for answering your question. The downside is that your hobby is going in the direction of the comic book industry. The material produced will be much like the New Warriors, as subtle as a sledgehammer and pedantic too. Hasbro/WotC is in a purity spiral of endless escalation and gaslighting. If you think the slippery slope is a logical fallacy, wait until you see what happens next.

The same thing applies to offensive content. The only people who get to decide if something is offensive are the people being offended.

This could be considered sarcasm if I didn't believe that you meant it. Would you stake your livelihood or freedom on it? There was a recent incident at NASCAR where a driver saw a noose in his garage are, which as an African American he took to be racial intimidation. He perceived it as offensive, as a threat. NASCAR started investigating, and there was a panic. It turns out the 'noose' was garage door pull-down with a hand loop, and all the garages at NASCAR have them.

I have been a victim of police brutality. The same thing happened to me as happened to Freddie Gray. The police brutality wasn't racially motivated, but if it happened to an African American, they would almost certainly perceive a racial motive behind what the police did. They may even perceive normal interactions with police as racially motivated harassment. Any negative experience could be ascribed to racial reasons. Like the 'noose' incident I detailed above, offence was perceived, but the map is not the territory.

Relying on individual perceptions is very dangerous for maintaining civilized standards in society. Its not a society I would like to live in. I much prefer China and Japan to the West, to be honest.

But it makes it more accessible for other people.

Lowering the cost of their products would make the game more accessible to PoC, but that is literally the one thing Hasbro/WotC will never do.