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Author Topic: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons  (Read 18986 times)

hedgehobbit

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #75 on: September 21, 2022, 01:08:54 PM »
I do think that the depiction of orcs and other humanoids in earlier editions of D&D when it was more obviously influenced by westerns and pulp fiction did have roots in Old West propaganda against native americans. That said, I don't think anybody sane will use the depictions of frontier settings in speculative fiction to argue that what happened to native americans was remotely moral. People can distinguish reality from fiction. I think most people can agree that fictional frontiers make excellent adventuring settings. I'm sure everybody knows the real frontier was a horrible campaign of genocide against innocent ill-equipped native tribes that could hardly advocate for themselves against our evil racist white ancestors.

I know this is a common mistake, but D&D was written in the 1970s, not the 1870s. 

hedgehobbit

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #76 on: September 21, 2022, 01:14:09 PM »
Minmaxing is a universal constant, the only question is how much do the rules reward it.

I found that randomly generating race as well as ability scores eliminates min maxing.

This is also a deviation, IMO, between old school and modern RPGs. Going from playing what you rolled to creating a character from a concept. Playing D&D with my kids really opened my eyes to the potential of playing something random and how unimportant the modern concept of "role playing" is the the appeal of the game. I think that the main problem with RPGs today is that the people writing the RPG rules have been playing the game so long that they've forgotten how to use their imaginations. They are, essentially, bored with the game and so they need all these extra, exotic, character types just to have something different. Like when a guy decides to replay Skyrim by making an all-unarmed character or a magic-only character.

Darkwind

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #77 on: September 21, 2022, 01:29:15 PM »
I was thinking about this on my walk this morning.  What's fascinating to me is that what the SJWs usually push have exactly the opposite effect of what they claim they want.  Consider the following:

Once upon a time, you would see necessarily diverse parties built because someone needed to be good at spotting secret doors, someone needed to be good at hiding, someone needed to be good at detecting grades and understanding stonework, etc.  Meaning, invariably, that someone would make sure there was an elf, a halfling, and a dwarf in the party.  Diversity!  Required due to having different things that we were good at and then coming together as a team.

Are these people just willfully stupid?  (rhetorical)

Stupid does not assign the proper malice and aforethought of intention. They are far more dangerous than stupid.

"Diversity" is not, and has never been the goal. Total conformity and lockstep of speech & thought is the true goal. "Opposite Rule of Leftism".  You MUST think like I do, but you can look any you want = Diversity.  Black guy who has an opinion different than mine? "White Supremacist"

Why so many people give these people so much thought and ink also mystifies me. Ignore them or start the 'party' already and take this entire clown world to its only logical conclusion.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #78 on: September 21, 2022, 01:32:58 PM »
I do think that the depiction of orcs and other humanoids in earlier editions of D&D when it was more obviously influenced by westerns and pulp fiction did have roots in Old West propaganda against native americans. That said, I don't think anybody sane will use the depictions of frontier settings in speculative fiction to argue that what happened to native americans was remotely moral. People can distinguish reality from fiction. I think most people can agree that fictional frontiers make excellent adventuring settings. I'm sure everybody knows the real frontier was a horrible campaign of genocide against innocent ill-equipped native tribes that could hardly advocate for themselves against our evil racist white ancestors.

I know this is a common mistake, but D&D was written in the 1970s, not the 1870s.
So Keep on the Borderlands wasn't influenced by the westerns of the 40s and 50s or by the pulp serials of the 20s, 30s and 40s?

jhkim

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #79 on: September 21, 2022, 01:41:14 PM »
EDITED TO ADD: In general, I don't think the racial attribute adjustments have all that big a practical effect on games. If that elf had a 16 Dex instead of a 17 Dex, it is a slight adjustment - but for the most part, I think the game would go almost exactly the same. What I like about it is that it cuts down on the urge among many players to min-max - i.e. "I'm a half-orc fighter because I want that +2 Str."

Now I know you're clowning. I've seen plenty of builds throughout my time with 3e, and more recently with 5e, that place the highest score to stack with the racial bonus, and sometimes then give the character a Feat to push it higher (usually to hit that coveted score of 20). Racial ability adjustments ABSOLUTELY encourage min-maxing. Just because you've been lucky enough to play in groups that don't, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Sorry I wasn't clear here. I absolutely agreeing that racial ability adjustments encourage min-maxing, even though the practical difference is minimal, because it's one of the main levers by which players can make min-max choices.

This isn't regarding your point over minimum/maximum scores. It's regarding other posters who have said that if racial ability adjustments were removed, then it would completely change the game and remove all difference between races. I think that if an elf character has 16 Dex instead of 18 Dex, it makes little practical difference to the game, except to reduce min-maxing.


Okay, but that doesn't answer the question. If not all of the players want Amazonian blood or want to drink from the same magic spring, you're going to either accept all their characters or say no to some of them.

But I made my point, which was to get you to admit that exceptional situations require exceptional justifications within the setting. Bringing this back to the main issue, racial differences (and gender differences too, if that's pertinent to the setting) matter.

I agree that racial differences matter - as does social class, country of origin, religion, and many other aspects to player characters. The question is what should be encoded in the rules. I don't think that +1 or +2 ability adjustments are the main part of representing an elf or dwarf, and they serve primarily to drive min-maxing rather than interesting role-play. I am OK with racial ability adjustments for random-roll abilities in order and random race selection, like HarnMaster, but in roll-and-assign or other ability score schemes, I don't like them.

PCs are *generally* exceptional rather than run-of-the-mill. The question is what level of exceptionality is needed to say it's off-limits and requires overriding the rules. In high-magic D&D settings (like Eberron or Faerun or my own setting), the PCs encounter multiple weird, exceptional things in every adventure - most likely weirder in-game than someone with an ability score one or two points beyond expected. In a low-magic and/or historical campaign, then it is harder to explain -- but it would also take just as much justification to have a PC wizard.

jhkim

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #80 on: September 21, 2022, 01:55:46 PM »
This is also a deviation, IMO, between old school and modern RPGs. Going from playing what you rolled to creating a character from a concept. Playing D&D with my kids really opened my eyes to the potential of playing something random and how unimportant the modern concept of "role playing" is the the appeal of the game. I think that the main problem with RPGs today is that the people writing the RPG rules have been playing the game so long that they've forgotten how to use their imaginations. They are, essentially, bored with the game and so they need all these extra, exotic, character types just to have something different. Like when a guy decides to replay Skyrim by making an all-unarmed character or a magic-only character.

I've played lots of non-random character creation since I became a teenager in 1983. In the 1980s I played lots of games like Champions, James Bond 007, The Fantasy Trip, Ars Magica, GURPS, and Star Wars D6 - all of them using non-random character creation. I feel like it's bizarre to call these 1980s games "modern".

I sometimes enjoy random-roll character creation as well, like in HarnMaster and Call of Cthulhu. I don't think either random or non-random character creation is lacking in imagination, though.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #81 on: September 21, 2022, 02:25:42 PM »
I found that randomly generating race as well as ability scores eliminates min maxing.

This is also a deviation, IMO, between old school and modern RPGs. Going from playing what you rolled to creating a character from a concept. Playing D&D with my kids really opened my eyes to the potential of playing something random and how unimportant the modern concept of "role playing" is the the appeal of the game. I think that the main problem with RPGs today is that the people writing the RPG rules have been playing the game so long that they've forgotten how to use their imaginations. They are, essentially, bored with the game and so they need all these extra, exotic, character types just to have something different. Like when a guy decides to replay Skyrim by making an all-unarmed character or a magic-only character.

I find that players who can make something fun out of being handed a randomly generated character will do a better job in any game where they have more control, compared to other players lacking that experience.  At least for some time, as there can be some backsliding if complete control goes on too long.  The exact length depends on the player, and how much they've consciously absorbed what running with a random character means. 

The opposite is seldom true.  So in my experience, this is a one-way street. 

For my table, I don't insist that all players, all the time, play in systems where random characters are the only way.  I do insist that they be capable of doing so when that is what we are playing, both for the enjoyment of others in the group and for the way the experience helps them make better characters in all games going forward.

KindaMeh

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #82 on: September 21, 2022, 02:45:50 PM »
I kinda feel like if anything there should be more racial differences in stats in 5e. A somewhat above average roll on a gnome for strength can have a noticeably higher strength stat than a minotaur with a moderately below average roll even without Tasha’s. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Even if you let the players assign their stats or use point buy, an equally strength focused minotaur should flex on a gnome no problem. This is not even going into how little say a +2 to strength score (+1 mod)  means statistically in a roll off where that’s the main difference. Hell, even a +4 to strength score is kinda wimpy in its impact compared to random chance. To the point where on average it is beaten by, the guidance cantrip.

Effete

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #83 on: September 21, 2022, 03:16:04 PM »
... This is not even going into how little say a +2 to strength score (+1 mod)  means statistically in a roll off where that’s the main difference. Hell, even a +4 to strength score is kinda wimpy in its impact compared to random chance. To the point where on average it is beaten by, the guidance cantrip.

This is a problem with over-reliance on game mechanics and not enough focus on capturing the essence of a role-playing game. Mechanically, a +2 Str means +1 on damage rolls, or being 5% better at climbing or breaking down doors. But if 10 is the average strength for a human and 20 is the absolute peak of physical prowess, a +2 adjustment is actually 20% of the way to peak. This is something the mechanics don't emulate very well, considering the d20 granularizes each +1 as 5% improvement. It's not very coherent.

Those discrepancies are only exacerbated by the disparity between smaller races and larger ones. Yeah, a minotaur of any strength should totally flex on a gnome of "high" strength. Some versions of the game tried to address this by giving smaller races lower carrying capacities, but that's where they petered off. No decreased chance to break things, no penalty to arm-wrestling. These are things a GM needed to use "common sense" for, but the game system ITSELF pushed an over-reliance on rules over rulings (complete opposite of the hobby's early days), so a pitiful few GMs ever made such distinctions.

I don't think the answer, necessarily, is adding more rules. Indeed, maybe less rules and more GM freedom is the better approach.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2022, 03:18:01 PM by Effete »

KindaMeh

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #84 on: September 21, 2022, 03:29:59 PM »
... This is not even going into how little say a +2 to strength score (+1 mod)  means statistically in a roll off where that’s the main difference. Hell, even a +4 to strength score is kinda wimpy in its impact compared to random chance. To the point where on average it is beaten by, the guidance cantrip.

This is a problem with over-reliance on game mechanics and not enough focus on capturing the essence of a role-playing game. Mechanically, a +2 Str means +1 on damage rolls, or being 5% better at climbing or breaking down doors. But if 10 is the average strength for a human and 20 is the absolute peak of physical prowess, a +2 adjustment is actually 20% of the way to peak. This is something the mechanics don't emulate very well, considering the d20 granularizes each +1 as 5% improvement. It's not very coherent.

Those discrepancies are only exacerbated by the disparity between smaller races and larger ones. Yeah, a minotaur of any strength should totally flex on a gnome of "high" strength. Some versions of the game tried to address this by giving smaller races lower carrying capacities, but that's where they petered off. No decreased chance to break things, no penalty to arm-wrestling. These are things a GM needed to use "common sense" for, but the game system ITSELF pushed an over-reliance on rules over rulings (complete opposite of the hobby's early days), so a pitiful few GMs ever made such distinctions.

I don't think the answer, necessarily, is adding more rules. Indeed, maybe less rules and more GM freedom is the better approach.

That’s one solution, and not necessarily a bad one at all. That said, I do like when mechanics of a game fit the fluff, or make logical coherent sense as published. I also like it when, as in Ascendant (tried that one recently),  the mechanics and stats are comprehensive and comprehensible in real world terms to some extent. I’m a simulationist gamer to some degree, so sue me.  ;D

jhkim

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #85 on: September 21, 2022, 04:54:13 PM »
... This is not even going into how little say a +2 to strength score (+1 mod)  means statistically in a roll off where that’s the main difference. Hell, even a +4 to strength score is kinda wimpy in its impact compared to random chance. To the point where on average it is beaten by, the guidance cantrip.

Yeah, a minotaur of any strength should totally flex on a gnome of "high" strength. Some versions of the game tried to address this by giving smaller races lower carrying capacities, but that's where they petered off. No decreased chance to break things, no penalty to arm-wrestling. These are things a GM needed to use "common sense" for, but the game system ITSELF pushed an over-reliance on rules over rulings (complete opposite of the hobby's early days), so a pitiful few GMs ever made such distinctions.

I don't think the answer, necessarily, is adding more rules. Indeed, maybe less rules and more GM freedom is the better approach.

Well, D&D and many other RPGs are deliberately high randomness. It's the same feature that gives a human a chance fighting a dragon that allows a halfling to contend well with a human. Everyone has a chance, which in a game means its more passing around of the spotlight and less getting stuck for not having the right specialist. There are only a handful of low-randomness and diceless RPGs that go against this trend.

But in general, I also prefer the philosophy of less rules and more GM freedom.

That's why I didn't feel it was better to have more rules for races so that the GM didn't have to say "no" to a player, but instead the GM could say "yes" in making an exception to the rules. Especially if the rules don't have a major effect on play, I'd prefer to simplify and put more in the hands of the GM.

Lunamancer

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #86 on: September 21, 2022, 08:25:53 PM »
I do think that the depiction of orcs and other humanoids in earlier editions of D&D when it was more obviously influenced by westerns and pulp fiction did have roots in Old West propaganda against native americans.

The earlier editions of D&D are readily available in electronic format. It's not that hard to go directly to the source. That you would raise speculative inferences as to the influences rather than go to the source suggests to me one of two things. Either you are entirely unfamiliar with the early edition material and are speaking out of school. Or you felt the need to cite supporting evidence that backs a racist interpretation of the early edition because you are fully aware how often people can read it and not find any racism present at all. Either way, it's an extremely weak sauce statement.

I use what's actually in the old school D&D books to reliably refute claims of the hobby's "problematic roots." I'm familiar with what the books actually say and specifically where the claims are mistaken or just plain factually wrong.

And I also must chime in in agreement with hedgehobbit's quip:

I know this is a common mistake, but D&D was written in the 1970s, not the 1870s. 

I think this has more substance than it seems. Unlike with old school D&D, it's much harder to go back to the original material with old films. John Wayne, of course, starred in far more than his fair share of Westerns. But a lot of his movies just aren't available for a variety of reasons. For instance, his family pulled anything where John Wayne is smoking on screen. There may have been others that have just been sanitizes for modern sensibilities. So unlike with D&D, I can't just say, "Hey, idiot, stop being a mentally obese sack of shit and just go through the original fucking material for Christ's sake!" I do have to resort to making a case via related facts.

And the story as I hear it goes, as we know, in the first half of the 20th century, film was born and bloomed into a massive industry, and there were two world wars. In light of this, at least one of the propaganda agendas at the time was to promote North American unity, and as such there was a concerted effort to show Mexicans and Native Americans in a positive light in the old Westerns. And from what westerns I have seen, they are at least consistent with this thesis.

I do think people who are sloppy thinkers and sloppy at synthesizing knowledge probably get this confused with the popular dime novels of the 1800's where anti-Native propaganda helped the agenda of western expansion of the US, and in particular the building of the railroads. And this is where the bulk of the genocide took place. Government offered land grants to private outfits to get the railroads built. And this is where you get the slaughtering of the buffalo in an attempt to starve out the indigenous peoples. (The American Buffalo, by the way, is the only surviving evolutionary descendent in North America of the large land animals of the ice age--their extinction would have also been a great tragedy perpetrated by the US government.)

Prior to that, there were certainly instances of hostilities between the settlers and the natives. The Plymouth colonists nearly wiped out the Pequots--though it's worth mentioning the colonists had the help of their alliance with the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. The relations between the white man and the Indians were a lot more nuanced than PC revisionist history would suggest.

So Keep on the Borderlands wasn't influenced by the westerns of the 40s and 50s or by the pulp serials of the 20s, 30s and 40s?

Obviously there's a good amount of pulp era fiction listed in Appendix N as inspirational for the game in general. But can you actually point to anything specific in Keep on the Borderlands that indicates its influenced by Indian genocide propaganda?

There are certain things that jump out at you when you have a good working familiarity with a lot of Gary Gygax's works. One quick thing I'll let you know if you do decide to go back to the original descriptions of orcs and other humanoids and demi-humans, Gary had an obsession with colors. He's very precise and systematic in his descriptions with regard to colors. A less precise, less original author--like a typical gamer--might not be able to create an original race without linking it to their conception of something in the real world. But Gary was not so limited.

There's a colored cave complex in his Isle of the Ape module. I've heard gamers complain that he offers no clues as to what the right path is. I nailed the right path 100% correctly my first time through. Because I understand Gary's obsession with colors.

Gary was also big into play-on-words. And I think "Keep on the Borderlands" was meant to be a play on words. The title is telling you to keep, as in stay, on the borderlands. Because if you bear in mind the underlying assumptions of the game, especially old school, where the idea is some day you would become a king by your own hand, clear your own hex, build your own stronghold, that requires there be vacant land up for grabs. But you still need a civilization to go back to. Trainers to level up. Shops to buy stuff. Bars to recruit mercenaries. If you want to maximize your D&D experience, you should keep on the borderlands. In my opinion, that's exactly what the module is about.
That's my two cents anyway. Carry on, crawler.

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David Johansen

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #87 on: September 22, 2022, 12:19:32 AM »
Oddly enough, when I was ten I didn't know what a "keep" was so I immediately assumed that you had to walk the line between two dangerous powers.
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Armchair Gamer

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #88 on: September 22, 2022, 08:36:14 AM »
I do think that the depiction of orcs and other humanoids in earlier editions of D&D when it was more obviously influenced by westerns and pulp fiction did have roots in Old West propaganda against native americans.

The earlier editions of D&D are readily available in electronic format. It's not that hard to go directly to the source. That you would raise speculative inferences as to the influences rather than go to the source suggests to me one of two things. Either you are entirely unfamiliar with the early edition material and are speaking out of school. Or you felt the need to cite supporting evidence that backs a racist interpretation of the early edition because you are fully aware how often people can read it and not find any racism present at all. Either way, it's an extremely weak sauce statement.

   I think part of the issue is also the tendency to lump all the early source material together. I wonder how much of the assumptions about D&D's 'coding' of humanoids comes from taking GAZ10 The Orcs of Thar--which does make some racial and historical references, but is done with a largely parodic tone that allows for PC humanoids--and projecting that back onto all the old material, including the stuff where humanoids are an irredeemable, implacable threat. I do have a copy of GAZ10, but it would take a braver soul than me to do a deep dive into it in an online environment. :)

Slambo

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #89 on: September 22, 2022, 09:50:50 AM »
I do think that the depiction of orcs and other humanoids in earlier editions of D&D when it was more obviously influenced by westerns and pulp fiction did have roots in Old West propaganda against native americans.

The earlier editions of D&D are readily available in electronic format. It's not that hard to go directly to the source. That you would raise speculative inferences as to the influences rather than go to the source suggests to me one of two things. Either you are entirely unfamiliar with the early edition material and are speaking out of school. Or you felt the need to cite supporting evidence that backs a racist interpretation of the early edition because you are fully aware how often people can read it and not find any racism present at all. Either way, it's an extremely weak sauce statement.

   I think part of the issue is also the tendency to lump all the early source material together. I wonder how much of the assumptions about D&D's 'coding' of humanoids comes from taking GAZ10 The Orcs of Thar--which does make some racial and historical references, but is done with a largely parodic tone that allows for PC humanoids--and projecting that back onto all the old material, including the stuff where humanoids are an irredeemable, implacable threat. I do have a copy of GAZ10, but it would take a braver soul than me to do a deep dive into it in an online environment. :)

I know a couple youtubers that did, the book looked likenitd be funny so i got a copy.