Quote from: Arkansan;1134395At this point I'm so checked out of official D&D I don't really give a rat's ass what they do with it. 5e has been a significant disappointment to me in many other ways than the political pandering (namely the Paizoesque adventure path model).

I've got OSR stuff to provide me with all the D&D I want, just the way I want it.

But we had fun times in my PbP, I hope!

Never bought anything from WotC 5e, only used their Basic 5e, and that was enough to putter around some DIY fun. Still I end up back with my happy TSR/OSR. I prefer the old skool threat level and bare core with optional add-on levers; 5e simplifies a lot, but there is still some 'baked into the cake' stuff I want to cut-out to get a nice and plain canvas.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1134427Edit, I too fell into the sarchasm.

I think I want to marry this portmanteau..... AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Quote from: Opaopajr;1134469 But we had fun times in my PbP, I hope!

The people demand more Opaopajr PbPs!

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1134470The people demand more Opaopajr PbPs!

More PbP or you riot? Will you burn down gronan's hamburger joint in the 8th lvl of the dungeon?

The Reddit thread on this has gone belly-up, with most of the controversial posts now deleted. Well, at least the controversial posts that are dismissive of this whole D&D-is-racist thing.

I was just given a two-week ban, not sure why. For one of the following posts I assume. The quoted bit is another user, my responses are immediately after the quote. I apologize for the size of this comment. I thought there was a "Spoiler" tag to hide all the text, but no such luck.

 

Quote"When they're not in battle, xxx spend much of their time resting or dozing. They don't engage in crafting or agriculture to any great extent, or otherwise produce anything of value. They bully weaker creatures into doing their bidding, so they can take it easy. When a superior force tries to intimidate xxxx into service, they will try to escape rather than perform the work or confront the foe. Even when subsumed into a host and drawn into war, bugbears must often be roused from naps and bribed to get them to do their duties. This indolence offers no clue to how vicious the creatures are. Bugbears are capable of bouts of incredible ferocity, using their muscular bodies to exact swift and ruthless violence."

Reading this you might think it is from some 19th century colonialist talking about Africa, and all I did was remove the words "bugbear" and "goblinoid". There is some seriously messed up stuff in officially published books.

Well, first of all, only a racist 19th century colonialist would describe Africans that way.

And second of all, Bugbears are fantasy creatures, and comparing Africans to them is foolish. People who are not racist would not read that description and then think: "Huh, just like Africans." Bugbears are divorced from any real-world racism for the majority of players. Of course, now that your racist butt is drawing these comparisons I now have that connection in my mind, which is annoying and does no one any good. Thankfully I will forget about it soon enough and move on with my life.

QuoteHuh, isn't it weird how all the evil races are dark skinned or otherwise coded as being eastern, African, and Native American. Also isn't it weird that there isn't a single evil race that is coded as western European. Strange huh?

That's your definition. You're drawing these conclusions and then pointing out that there is this terribly racist problem, based on your conclusions. This whole way of thinking is cancerous.

QuoteThe thing that everyone here seems to be ignoring so they argue about "ugh pc culture ruins my dnd" is that a lot of the evil races are based on racist stereotypes and that can make people who belong to those groups very uncomfortable and not wanna play

QuoteExactly this. (friendly heads-up, discussion of extremely racist language follows) When I started playing in the 90's (yes, I'm old) the commmon vernacular about drow was "they're n****r elves." World of Warcraft forums had racist tropes about the Naga as well for obvious phonetic reasons. It's not to say that Ed or Bob was racist or had ill intent, it's just that the game was made and played by mostly white dudes, who didn't put a lot of thought put into the racial implications at the time. Most of us didn't understand the systemic nature of racism and our responsibility to remove ourselves from that cycle.

We do now, so we try to be better.

Being white in the '90s is no excuse for calling Drow nigger-elves, that's just dumb. I expect you were in the minority with that description, considering that it never appeared anywhere in any published game material and is an unpleasant thing to say.

QuoteThe thing that everyone here seems to be ignoring so they argue about "ugh pc culture ruins my dnd" is that a lot of the evil races are based on racist stereotypes and that can make people who belong to those groups very uncomfortable and not wanna play

It is not your or my or anyone else's responsibility to make sure that every single person out there is comfortable with our fantasy games. That's impossible and a ludicrous goal. If you don't think that's true, then EXHIBIT A: my parents who think D&D is morally bad for me because of its "spellcasting". Do we remove spellcasting so that they are comfortable with the game and willing to play it? No, we do not, 'cause who the fuck cares.

The only thing that matters is making sure that the people we play with are all having a good time and happy to be playing. If they are not having a good time, we can talk about it, and if the problem is that they don't like that the game has drow*, then they can go find another group. Anyone who expects more than that from me is over-stepping all expected bounds of a free society.

*This will never happen by the way, black people don't care that the game has Drow anymore than I care that the game has pale-skinned vampires.

Everyone calling Drow Nword elves seems like it should be in the vault of things that never happened.  I think that guy made that up.  I would not say no one ever said that, i just think he is lying and saying he heard it, ever.   Well, unless he was the one saying it all the time.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134495Everyone calling Drow Nword elves seems like it should be in the vault of things that never happened.  I think that guy made that up.  I would not say no one ever said that, i just think he is lying and saying he heard it, ever.   Well, unless he was the one saying it all the time.

In fairness, I have heard (or rather read, since it was online) people can dark elves "ni@@3r elves" multiple times. But it was never that prevalent and it's not like dark elves are exactly an oppressed, inferior race. If anything they're the opposite: they're underground, racial supremacist elves who are more powerful than regular elves (or at least used to be before 5e), and enslave other races and brutalize them.

But of course, that is racist, because dark elves are dark skinned, which obviously means that they are "coded" black (as opposed to, you know, being a FICTIONAL species unrelated to humans). So they were obviously included in the game to portray all 'people of colour' in a negative light, cuz the common white supremacist agitprop against black is that they're a racially superior species that oppresses others (rather than the other way around).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134499In fairness, I have heard (or rather read, since it was online) people can dark elves "ni@@3r elves" multiple times. But it was never that prevalent and it's not like dark elves are exactly an oppressed, inferior race. If anything they're the opposite: they're underground, racial supremacist elves who are more powerful than regular elves (or at least used to be before 5e), and enslave other races and brutalize them.

But of course, that is racist, because dark elves are dark skinned, which obviously means that they are "coded" black (as opposed to, you know, being a FICTIONAL species unrelated to humans). So they were obviously included in the game to portray all 'people of colour' in a negative light, cuz the common white supremacist agitprop against black is that they're a racially superior species that oppresses others (rather than the other way around).

   I have seen all sorts of shit online that never, ever passed for "common vernacular" as that guy was telling his story about.  I try to assume online postings are not even close to how people would talk in real life when dealing with edgy stuff.  I am pretty sure they spout stuff like that because they would not say it in real life, and even if so, common vernacular everyone is tossing around the Game store?  Unless it is at a Klan meeting, nope.

I wonder what the difference between Drow and Nigger Drow is?

Maybe this quote can answer that question:

Quote"When they're not in battle, Nigger Drow spend much of their time resting or dozing. They don't engage in crafting or agriculture to any great extent, or otherwise produce anything of value. They bully weaker creatures into doing their bidding, so they can take it easy. When a superior force tries to intimidate Nigger Drow into service, they will try to escape rather than perform the work or confront the foe. Even when subsumed into a host and drawn into war, Nigger Drow must often be roused from naps and bribed to get them to do their duties. This indolence offers no clue to how vicious the creatures are.

Yup, seems legit.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134425people always leave out the debauchery.  Wine, music and orgies all the time.   I guess the adventurer types break away from this.

The write-up for elves in Questers of the Middle Realms nailed it though:

QuoteThey look like tall, slim, well-proportioned, attractive humans with slightly pointed ears and a superior attitude. Elves were the first intelligent species created by the gods, and they are immortal. This turned out to be a very bad idea. The elves are not completely adapted to their immortality, so as the years drag on they become desperate for any diversion to chase away the tedium. Most engage in debaucheries of all kinds, and they have a reputation for it.

...

Weaknesses:

Reputation - in social situations where morals or integrity are involved, like getting someone to trust you. (Even other elves. They know what you're like.)

Quote from: tenbones;1134400It's only going to get worse.

Put that on a t-shirt!!!

Quote from: oggsmash;1134424And even that is debatable, as everyone, everywhere, knows full well you can do anything you really want to do, just by wanting to do it a whole lot and working very hard.

I know what you're saying (pro-athletes, etc) , but "working very hard" does achieve success for most professions. There's a lot of truth in the old joke "I'm a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the luckier I get!"

Quote from: Shasarak;1134502I wonder what the difference between Drow and Nigger Drow is?

The presence or absence of dorkass teenagers in the vicinity.

Teens are monsters and no amount of SJW concern trolling is going to change the essential nature of teens loving to say "dangerous" stuff that could shock their moms.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1134442Don't give SJWs an inch or even the satisfaction of rattling your cage even if you end up rejecting their premise later.

Tolkien Elves were better at humans at just about everything but that came from fatelink->world v1.0. When world 1.0 started to suck because of Morgoth introducing 'Fuck Yall' malware elves started to suck as well. Humans were patched in later to sort of fix the system without this flaw even if it mean they had no innate fate ink to world 1.0 and where mortal, and would enter some unknown project of Illuvitar later. The entire question of LOTR was wether the humans would at least patch most of 'Fuck' yall or if the malware would cause world v1.0 to be a bug addled mess until the maneframe fried.
As a patch Job humans were never meant to compete with elves fate link because that would make them susceptible to the same sort of corruption the elves where.

SJWs don't give a shit about all this and want something new to destroy because they hate nuance.

And that's why D&D was meant to be primarily about humans in the first place. Race = class in D&D and level maximums in AD&D were not accidents.

Quote from: Arkansan;1134395(namely the Paizoesque adventure path model).

Except WOTC has not put out any adventure paths yet. All their adventures have been bog standard modules. Several have been of the campaign sort. But sorry. No. That is not an adventure path.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134402A lot of early art had dark elves depicted as brown skinned, like black people.

er... Where? I have never seen any TSR art with drow as brown skinned. Are you sure yoy arent mixing them up with Valley or Wood elves? I know one of those was once described with a copper, tanned, or brown skin way back?

Quote from: oggsmash;1134418You would think living in your prime for hundreds of years you would pick up a few things.. I guess that is a way to make them smarter without saying they are born smarter.  BUT the logical extrapolation from that is they must all be lazy fucks.  Otherwise they would the absolute masters of magic, sword fighting, strategy, anything that takes a bit of time to master.

No. The logical extrapolation is that they have a learning plateau just like humans do. Forgotten Realms elves actually struggle to retain knowlege. This is part of what their rest period is spent on. Hanging onto memories.

Long life does not = unlimited learning.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1134537The presence or absence of dorkass teenagers in the vicinity.

Teens are monsters and no amount of SJW concern trolling is going to change the essential nature of teens loving to say "dangerous" stuff that could shock their moms.

Oh so very true. During the onset of homophobia back in the 70-80s was pretty common to see all sorts of wretched behavior from teens. Just to be offensive because they knew it was offensive and would piss someone off.