https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd

Hm. Tell me Mr. Crawford, what use is diversity if everyone is the same?

Quote from: mightybrain;1134828https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd

Hm. Tell me Mr. Crawford, what use is diversity if everyone is the same?

Because their devotion to diversity is literally skin deep.

I guarantee the idea of employing someone with a libertarian or conservative mindset would never, ever occur to them. In their own way, they're as bigoted as any thuggish cop from the 60's who gets his jollies screwing with blacks.

The whole thing kind of rubs me raw because RPGs up until relatively recently have been the solace and refuge for the outcasts, the nerds, the geeks, and the rebels for the most part. It's why I laugh so bitterly at the whole 'white males hate women in gaming'. Motherfucker, PLEASE -- most of us would've committed felonies just to get a girl to talk to us and not treat us like something to scrape off her shoe.

Diversity? You can tell none of these wanking retards ever saw the gag list 'Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies, and Munchkins'. There was always room for different playstyles and by extension, different people. My introduction to D&D was from an Indian friend (dot, not feather). At one point our group was 50/50 guys/girls (which made for some interesting games, I will say. Men and women see things very differently -- viva la difference!).

But somewhere along the way, we became the bad guys. Even though we were the outcasts, willing to take in those who'd been thrown out by the cliques and the popular groups.

Screw them.

Take over and keep the outcasts outcast from their own refuge.

My big early moves away from D&D toward Runequest, Traveller and Arduin (D&D with a different worldview) instilled in me the idea that most any creatures can be PCs and that 'alignment' was mostly relative... whether or not those rules overtly stated such things, it was how I interpreted their approach.
Nothing PC or SJW about it, just that trolls are more interesting if they aren't all the same rampaging sword fodder.
The honorable/sympathetic orcs in Warcraft weren't a new concept to most people, were they?

Quote from: Simlasa;1134841My big early moves away from D&D toward Runequest, Traveller and Arduin (D&D with a different worldview) instilled in me the idea that most any creatures can be PCs and that 'alignment' was mostly relative... whether or not those rules overtly stated such things, it was how I interpreted their approach.
Nothing PC or SJW about it, just that trolls are more interesting if they aren't all the same rampaging sword fodder.
The honorable/sympathetic orcs in Warcraft weren't a new concept to most people, were they?

  I started in the early 90s, stuck with D&D and MERP/Rolemaster for fantasy, and I was already picking up on the possibility of 'good orcs' and the like from the general zeitgeist in Dragon Magazine and TSR products. I think a lot of people are projecting their worst assumptions about the past and about other people onto the history and the vast masses of the hobby.

Quote from: mightybrain;1134828https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd
Hm. Tell me Mr. Crawford, what use is diversity if everyone is the same?

I actually had no idea that "Always Chaotic Evil" was a common trope in most people's games. Even Gary Gygax had Leda the Eclavadra (Drow high priestess) clone whose different nurture meant she turned out Good instead of Evil.

I suspect in the future we will have mostly Warcraft-style Orcs too, but personally I'm more on a pig-faced Orc kick right now.

I have the first edition DMG (the one that Jack Chick loved, with the Efreet holding the lady wearing a bikini) and even there it has a section of monsters as PCs and not being evil AS AN INDIVIDUAL.  It also said expect to be discriminated against at every turn and have the villagers get the torches and pitchforks if you stroll into town.   So the idea of a PC being what they want is not in any way new (1979), but the idea of deciding an entire species/group is new.  Now I would have no issue using a perception and degree method and I prefer it for most game I play.  But, D&D has alignment, and there are absolutes, and these absolutes are presented from a Human, civilized perspective, and everyone is graded on that curve.   So of course barbaric marauders are considered evil.  There is no moral relativism.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134852There is no moral relativism.

That is the issue. These changes to the presentation of races in D&D is driven by moral relativism, which is an intrusion into a game that was originally built to include moral absolutes.

Don't these racists understand that if every race gets a positive Int bonus, but the bonuses are not all the same, they're still identifying certain races as dumber than others?

Like how the NYT will run articles saying Jews have the highest IQ, but their heads explode if you point out that makes them smarter than blacks. (And gentiles, of course, but who cares about those slave masters)

Quote from: RandyB;1134859That is the issue. These changes to the presentation of races in D&D is driven by moral relativism, which is an intrusion into a game that was originally built to include moral absolutes.

Not just moral absolutes but tangible ones.

It's one thing to say things like order, chaos, good and evil exist. It's another for them to be defining forces in the universe, just as real as gravity, magic, and the tendency of buttered toast to land butter-side down.

I remember having a similar roundtable discussion with some friends about the afterlife in D&D. It's hard for us in the 'real world' to comprehend this, but just about everyone knows their souls live on* in D&D/PF settings. Heck, people even come back from the dead, and not just 'was in freezing water for 20 minutes' but 'we had to hang an air freshener around his neck because the wizard ran out of gentle repose spells' dead.

* assuming a wizard doesn't trap it, or a daemon doesn't eat it

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1134869Not just moral absolutes but tangible ones.

It's one thing to say things like order, chaos, good and evil exist. It's another for them to be defining forces in the universe, just as real as gravity, magic, and the tendency of buttered toast to land butter-side down.

I remember having a similar roundtable discussion with some friends about the afterlife in D&D. It's hard for us in the 'real world' to comprehend this, but just about everyone knows their souls live on* in D&D/PF settings. Heck, people even come back from the dead, and not just 'was in freezing water for 20 minutes' but 'we had to hang an air freshener around his neck because the wizard ran out of gentle repose spells' dead.

* assuming a wizard doesn't trap it, or a daemon doesn't eat it

Great point! Tangible cosmic absolutes.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134852I have the first edition DMG (the one that Jack Chick loved, with the Efreet holding the lady wearing a bikini) and even there it has a section of monsters as PCs and not being evil AS AN INDIVIDUAL.  It also said expect to be discriminated against at every turn and have the villagers get the torches and pitchforks if you stroll into town.   So the idea of a PC being what they want is not in any way new (1979), but the idea of deciding an entire species/group is new.  Now I would have no issue using a perception and degree method and I prefer it for most game I play.  But, D&D has alignment, and there are absolutes, and these absolutes are presented from a Human, civilized perspective, and everyone is graded on that curve.   So of course barbaric marauders are considered evil.  There is no moral relativism.

Is D&D alignment tied to humans? I think alignment is intended to be universal, not tied to a particular race or culture.

If there's an evil civilized human empire trying to crush all resistance to it (like Iuz), and the PCs are non-human resistance, that fits just as well as civilized humans fighting barbarians. My last D&D campaign had reversed alignment, for example, where orcs and other humanoids were good aligned - and humans and demi-humans were evil. I didn't change any of the alignment rules.

Quote from: jhkim;1134903Is D&D alignment tied to humans? I think alignment is intended to be universal, not tied to a particular race or culture.

If there's an evil civilized human empire trying to crush all resistance to it (like Iuz), and the PCs are non-human resistance, that fits just as well as civilized humans fighting barbarians. My last D&D campaign had reversed alignment, for example, where orcs and other humanoids were good aligned - and humans and demi-humans were evil. I didn't change any of the alignment rules.

  It is quite obviously written from a human perspective, humans wrote it.   It has to, by default be tied to human culture and behavior.  That is why the acts considered evil are the acts real life humans can say are evil.  It is why the acts humans consider good, are the acts of good in real life.  I am sure if the Drow were real, and had an alignment chart as to what traits were desired (good) they are not going to have themselves written down as evil.  So of course it is universal applied, but not with universal perspectives.

   And it is why humans are not presented as monolithic representations of alignment.  I was not tying civilization to good only, it can of course function as evil, and neutral, but the law does tie to ordered civilization.  Again humans can be any alignment "out in the wild" because the entire alignment system is written from a human perspective.

Reality is a whole lot murkier.  If an armed band of men were to ride up on a nomadic orc camp and start slaughtering them for their lord to expand his lands, I am pretty sure from the Orc perspective, they are on the side of good.   Assuming no prior encounters from these specific groups, Human morality in the now, would also say the Orcs are on the side of right.  Especially when the Lord's Men start riding down the orc toddlers running to and fro.  I think you can play any humanoid group, kingdom, or race any way you want.  But what I see from crawford is not so much saying, hey, make them what ever you want, the book is a guideline.   He is pretty clearly setting a line for moral relativism as canon.   I say go for it.  If it sells great.  If it bombs, great.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1134829But somewhere along the way, we became the bad guys. Even though we were the outcasts, willing to take in those who'd been thrown out by the cliques and the popular groups.

And that hasn't changed. It's the whole point of theRPGsite.

A haven for those who value free speech in hobby that demands no dissent from the dominant narrative.