I read "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth." It was disgusting. It reads like the memoir of white nationalist incel.

What was the point of that story? That prejudice against fish people is entirely justified? That we need to exterminate their filthy fish taint from the pure human race?

Gee, that's such a helpful moral considering that fish people don't exist.

I get that Emrys' story isn't very good. It's just a generic "racism is bad" with fish people. But this one wasn't an improvement at all. It was awful in the other direction: it was "racism is good" with fish people. Particularly given that both stories explicitly compare fish people with "non-white" people.

I don't get the appeal of such stories and I don't get the vociferous defense/preference/obsession with such stories. Why is it so important that we need fish people in our stories to be nothing more than ugly evil rapist monsters that we can genocide guilt-free? (Or on the other end, perfect angels who can do no wrong)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 08:56:56 AM
I read "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth." It was disgusting. It reads like the memoir of white nationalist incel.

What was the point of that story? That prejudice against fish people is entirely justified? That we need to exterminate their filthy fish taint from the pure human race?

Gee, that's such a helpful moral considering that fish people don't exist.

Your last sentence is the point of the story. This is a horror tale about some monstrosity that, over and over, tries to infiltrate our race via evil methods - for once fully told by its point of view.

The tale was written when the obsession to "interpret" was not as high pitched as it is today. For millennia you had evil mermaids, ghosts, aliens (the Alien itself, BTW: as lovecraftian as it gets), the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the big ants from "Them!", orcs, trolls, the Mummy, King Kong... All of these where "others". Better yet, "others to humans as a whole, no race, sex, nationality, culture or ethnicity excluded". Nothing more. In some cases they were a real menace, while, every then and now, they were just misunderstood. But the tales were written and meant to be read at face value (as Tolkien so often said).

True, coded is some of them (for sure all the most popular ones) you find the expression of psychological fears. Today is commonly agreed that the original "Pod People" represented the anxieties about being infiltrated by "Communists" in the '50s (notice how the structure of the fear is independent from the specific expression: today it could be Terrorists, or, in small groups the classic "Was someone bitten by a zombie and he is hiding it?") The Alien marvellously incarnates the Freudian concepts of both the "fear of the other" and "fears about sexuality". Factually, it terrorises (and is fought by) men and women of all age groups, races and even androids. It expresses fears common to all humans.

[As an aside, one of the best expression of modern psychological anxiety is, IMHO, the "entity" in David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows". Without spoiling the movie (watch it!) it has been interpreted in turn as a metaphor for AIDS, Fate itself, the fear that your totally normal neighbour is actually a very evil guy with children skeletons in the basement, the fear of betrayal and abandonment from your loved one, the fear of not finding help because no one believes you, the detachment between modern youth and older generations... heck, to me "It" represents the unavoidability of advancing age! I mean, it so clear! Truth is, "It" is a curse with a definite mode of transmission and a definite mode of manifesting, nothing else. The rest is what you bring in the movie, and you, once again, means everybody, with no barriers of race, religion, sex, ethnicity or whatever else.]

If you want to go full (cheap) academic, Umberto Eco once noted: "I spent all my life analysing other's texts. Then I published 'The Name of the Rose' and, for once, I was the one under the microscope. And I read these 'interpretations' by esteemed colleagues about things I, the author, had no clue about. But when I rechecked my own text all the elements needed to support these interpretations were there, black on white! So... there you go."

When you start considering things from this angle, all the above just underlines the strange crypto-racism which you noted and that, apparently, is the first soap block where people like Ruthanna Emrys (and those acclaming her) slips - until, as we will see, you discover the real, abhorrent, intent.

The poor people of Innsmouth are sent to "The same internment camps - Japanese Americans, similarly feared, and similarly locked away."

Really? You look at the people of Innsmouth and you think of the Japanese?! What about the internment of Italian-Americans or of German-Americans? Because those happened too.

But, most importantly, while superficially one could point out how the treatment of Japanese-Americans was motivated by a kind of deep racism that you didn't find in the treatment of Italians and Germans, and it was vastly superior in scale than the other two, why to mix Innsmouthians and Japanese in the same camps in the first place? Why do not send them in their own camps? (Because, as anyone with two neurons working will tell you, the last thing such a Government would want is to mix people from Innsmouth with other humans...)

Truth is, because you wanted to use the real suffering of real people as an easy way to whine about your characters and your ideals. You take a famous black spot in American history and just say: "See, it the same!" Much like, BTW, you took Lovecraft's life-work and name so to say "I took back Lovecraft!" - while, factually, only changing a bunch of things with a spell that turned them woke and then declaring everything "yours".

True, you could have done a lot of in-depth research on the realities of these camps, and create an organic occult/supernatural subtext to underline some topics in a symbolic way. And then write your own novel where you speak about universal issues via a supernatural story set in a Japanese American internment camp. Maybe in 1945, when the atomic bombs shocked not only the Japanese psyche but their very own spiritual tissue, and spiritic beliefs, and...

But... come on! Why do the effort when you can just ride on (in)famous events, with a famous name as your vessel and - presto! - universal acclamage of your progressive work! How easy it is being a writer, isn't it? I wonder why I never was able to reach this peak in my job.

This is why I consider "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" a serious creative effort compared to the criminal inanity of "Winter Tide". It is an evil story, told by an evil guy who isn't totally human, who hates humanity and who revels in acts holy to him even if horrifying to us (but who cares about what horrifies humanity when you are a Deep One?) And that's it. It is creative, funny in a crooked way, rightfully disgusting to us poor human readers, and takes the original tale to the extreme - while, lo!, respecting it. You see "things" in the tale? Good for it, it means that the story is not flat! (I consider it a metaphor of going to your first date only to discover, late in the evening, that your date is a psychopath, go figure...)

So, yes, maybe the main character of "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" is "a crypto- white nationalist incel." But for sure, Ruthanna Emrys is a crock.

Edit: Oh, BTW, in his tale McNaughton makes clear that the connection between Innsmouthians and American-Japanese, the comparison with Nazi Germany and all the other weepy events surrounding Innsmouth are only cheap propaganda created by the Deep Ones themselves. The irony, eh?

Quote from: RPGPundit on June 09, 2021, 07:04:45 PM
The real lie is "we're taking it back".  The people pushing to "subvert" all of western Art, media, stories, games, pop culture, etc are not actually interested in owning any of these things. They just want to kill these things, then peel off their skin and wear it as a suit to pretend they're still the old thing people loved and not  just one more unit of the propaganda machine spilling empty propaganda and nothing more.

Well keep in mind that since D&D cam out the 70s and 90s iterations of this, the moral guardians and politically correct, have set their sights on D&D. So yeah they are "taking it back" or trying to, again. Just this time a-lot more successful than in the 90s.

And the 90s iteration wont vs WOTC and has been cavorting about wearing its skin all along. Its just that, as usual, the old woke are now the new problematic. And they gotta go you know.

Quote from: TJS on June 09, 2021, 09:57:28 PM
Isn't part of the issue here that the Drow are a cartoon society?

A big part of the whole thing of taking the Drow apart and considering them as if they are a real world culture implies that Drow society in some ways resembles a real world culture.

It doesn't, nor was it ever intended to (at least not by Gygax - he wasn't trying to write Tekumel but underground!).

The problem is that saying that if there were a real world society like this they would have dissenters, falls apart because there would never be a real world society like this - and the more you adjust things and rationalise them to resemble a anthropoligcally plausible society the more pointless they become.

This is something the whole SJW movement does so wrong.  It fails to understand basic stuff like metaphor.  It insists we treat non-humans as if they were humans and not as metaphors for aspects of the human condition or aspects of human societies, and then based on that basic functional illiteracy proceeds to pointless erroneous conclusions.

And then we get left with nothing worthwhile.  You have the form of the thing, but not the function and everything gets hollowed out.  The only reason left for non-human races is cosplay costumes for your imaginary avatars.

Not quite cartoon. But an example, originally, of a society that exists because of divine or demonic influence. Which is pretty common.
Though I could be wrong. But were not the original drow from Descent just an example of one possible drow society? Not the whole race? D&D has always been one for outliers and counter examples. If theres good gold dragons then sure enough somewhere theres an evil one.

The problem is that the SJWs and ultra-woke need targets and they can and will hallucinate absolutely anything as being "problematic" because otherwise theres nothing to crusade against and oppress in the guise of "freeing" it from oppression. This combined with a near total lack of creativity. Alot of the modern complaints by the woke are just parroting and copy-pasting complaints from prior iterations. Just with the occasional new buzzword tossed in.

They hate it because someone told them to. Cattle. Just like over on BGG. People will absolutely despise a game or style of play. Simply because someone told them to. Or buy a game for the same reason. And are proud to be cattle.

The other problem is that, again, these loons are increasingly disconnected from reality and as you say, treat fictional creatures as if they were real. BGG example again. A year or so ago we had someone tell a designer that they would not buy his game because "it has leather in it and we are vegetarians." and another were a designer had his game cancelled by the BGG woke because it was about exploring and colonizing Africa and that... "promotes genocide"... I wish I were making these up but this is just the barest depths they can scrape.

"Orcs being bad and killing them is bad because Orcs are people too!"

Why is there no discussion about Drow on Drow crime?

Quote from: Reckall on June 10, 2021, 11:07:30 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 08:56:56 AM
I read "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth." It was disgusting. It reads like the memoir of white nationalist incel.

What was the point of that story? That prejudice against fish people is entirely justified? That we need to exterminate their filthy fish taint from the pure human race?

Gee, that's such a helpful moral considering that fish people don't exist.

Your last sentence is the point of the story. This is a horror tale about some monstrosity that, over and over, tries to infiltrate our race via evil methods - for once fully told by its point of view.

The tale was written when the obsession to "interpret" was not as high pitched as it is today. For millennia you had evil mermaids, ghosts, aliens (the Alien itself, BTW: as lovecraftian as it gets), the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the big ants from "Them!", orcs, trolls, the Mummy, King Kong... All of these where "others". Better yet, "others to humans as a whole, no race, sex, nationality, culture or ethnicity excluded". Nothing more. In some cases they were a real menace, while, every then and now, they were just misunderstood. But the tales were written and meant to be read at face value (as Tolkien so often said).

True, coded is some of them (for sure all the most popular ones) you find the expression of psychological fears. Today is commonly agreed that the original "Pod People" represented the anxieties about being infiltrated by "Communists" in the '50s (notice how the structure of the fear is independent from the specific expression: today it could be Terrorists, or, in small groups the classic "Was someone bitten by a zombie and he is hiding it?") The Alien marvellously incarnates the Freudian concepts of both the "fear of the other" and "fears about sexuality". Factually, it terrorises (and is fought by) men and women of all age groups, races and even androids. It expresses fears common to all humans.

[As an aside, one of the best expression of modern psychological anxiety is, IMHO, the "entity" in David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows". Without spoiling the movie (watch it!) it has been interpreted in turn as a metaphor for AIDS, Fate itself, the fear that your totally normal neighbour is actually a very evil guy with children skeletons in the basement, the fear of betrayal and abandonment from your loved one, the fear of not finding help because no one believes you, the detachment between modern youth and older generations... heck, to me "It" represents the unavoidability of advancing age! I mean, it so clear! Truth is, "It" is a curse with a definite mode of transmission and a definite mode of manifesting, nothing else. The rest is what you bring in the movie, and you, once again, means everybody, with no barriers of race, religion, sex, ethnicity or whatever else.]

If you want to go full (cheap) academic, Umberto Eco once noted: "I spent all my life analysing other's texts. Then I published 'The Name of the Rose' and, for once, I was the one under the microscope. And I read these 'interpretations' by esteemed colleagues about things I, the author, had no clue about. But when I rechecked my own text all the elements needed to support these interpretations were there, black on white! So... there you go."

When you start considering things from this angle, all the above just underlines the strange crypto-racism which you noted and that, apparently, is the first soap block where people like Ruthanna Emrys (and those acclaming her) slips - until, as we will see, you discover the real, abhorrent, intent.

The poor people of Innsmouth are sent to "The same internment camps - Japanese Americans, similarly feared, and similarly locked away."

Really? You look at the people of Innsmouth and you think of the Japanese?! What about the internment of Italian-Americans or of German-Americans? Because those happened too.

But, most importantly, while superficially one could point out how the treatment of Japanese-Americans was motivated by a kind of deep racism that you didn't find in the treatment of Italians and Germans, and it was vastly superior in scale than the other two, why to mix Innsmouthians and Japanese in the same camps in the first place? Why do not send them in their own camps? (Because, as anyone with two neurons working will tell you, the last thing such a Government would want is to mix people from Innsmouth with other humans...)

Truth is, because you wanted to use the real suffering of real people as an easy way to whine about your characters and your ideals. You take a famous black spot in American history and just say: "See, it the same!" Much like, BTW, you took Lovecraft's life-work and name so to say "I took back Lovecraft!" - while, factually, only changing a bunch of things with a spell that turned them woke and then declaring everything "yours".

True, you could have done a lot of in-depth research on the realities of these camps, and create an organic occult/supernatural subtext to underline some topics in a symbolic way. And then write your own novel where you speak about universal issues via a supernatural story set in a Japanese American internment camp. Maybe in 1945, when the atomic bombs shocked not only the Japanese psyche but their very own spiritual tissue, and spiritic beliefs, and...

But... come on! Why do the effort when you can just ride on (in)famous events, with a famous name as your vessel and - presto! - universal acclamage of your progressive work! How easy it is being a writer, isn't it? I wonder why I never was able to reach this peak in my job.

This is why I consider "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" a serious creative effort compared to the criminal inanity of "Winter Tide". It is an evil story, told by an evil guy who isn't totally human, who hates humanity and who revels in acts holy to him even if horrifying to us (but who cares about what horrifies humanity when you are a Deep One?) And that's it. It is creative, funny in a crooked way, rightfully disgusting to us poor human readers, and takes the original tale to the extreme - while, lo!, respecting it. You see "things" in the tale? Good for it, it means that the story is not flat! (I consider it a metaphor of going to your first date only to discover, late in the evening, that your date is a psychopath, go figure...)

So, yes, maybe the main character of "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" is "a crypto- white nationalist incel." But for sure, Ruthanna Emrys is a crock.

Edit: Oh, BTW, in his tale McNaughton makes clear that the connection between Innsmouthians and American-Japanese, the comparison with Nazi Germany and all the other weepy events surrounding Innsmouth are only cheap propaganda created by the Deep Ones themselves. The irony, eh?

The parallels to white nationalist incels are very obvious, or any patriarchal religion for that matter (I won't mention the other obvious comparison that may have sprung to your mind reading this post), or even to the misogynistic racist male feminists on the left. The narrator is racist against ordinary humans, literally calling them "simian" (as Lovecraft was wont to describe black people). He's a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion. The text tries to make the deep one faith out to be equalitarian by invoking "Mother Hydra" and having the narrator treat deep women with basic respect, but it's telling that the killer only targets prostitutes.

It's honestly quite frustrating. I've read the Vang novels from the 80s and they present a terrifying subversive parasitic threat without relying on misogynist and racist tropes like this story does.

For once, I'd like a story that treated deep ones like an actual people with minds of their own rather than caricatures for racist screed from either side of the political isle. I'd like to see Bob and Aphra debate each other, as crazy as that sounds.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 01:17:22 PM
The parallels to white nationalist incels are very obvious,

To whom? I know lots of people that are not white, not nationalists, not incels, nor any combination of those three categories you describe that don't feel that way about this story at all.

Unless you ascribe to a certain ideology that has apriori assumptions about people based on appearance and/or a list of words that are code in this ideology for "bad things" - it seems like you're operating from a very myopic view that is common in college literary interpretation classes today. I get these submissions where people are so consumed with showing racial diversity (i.e. nothing "white") and citing examples of what are essentially racial stereotypes in new dress, they lose sight of the fact they're supposed to be telling a story, not breaking one down for political polemics.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 01:17:22 PMor any patriarchal religion for that matter (I won't mention the other obvious comparison that may have sprung to your mind reading this post), or even to the misogynistic racist male feminists on the left. The narrator is racist against ordinary humans, literally calling them "simian" (as Lovecraft was wont to describe black people). He's a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion. The text tries to make the deep one faith out to be equalitarian by invoking "Mother Hydra" and having the narrator treat deep women with basic respect, but it's telling that the killer only targets prostitutes.

There is this idea commonly seen in Lovecraft that the Mythos is one of alien horror. It's unknowable and unspeakable and evil. This idea of trying to intersect humanity with that alien conceit seems ripe for the whole point of the endeavor - to induce horror. That a male infected with this alien thread participating in a practice that by its very biological reality seeks to perpetuate itself with a tacit acknowledgement of sexual dimorphism seems an obvious choice to induce horror both physically and psychologically. As a Deep One it doesn't see humans as anything OTHER than a means to a larger end. Just like people don't consider the horrors that cows go through when eating their Big Mac, which is essentially extracting some biological utility from the cow for our own purposes.

That's how alien they are as a conceit.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 01:17:22 PMIt's honestly quite frustrating. I've read the Vang novels from the 80s and they present a terrifying subversive parasitic threat without relying on misogynist and racist tropes like this story does.

For once, I'd like a story that treated deep ones like an actual people with minds of their own rather than caricatures for racist screed from either side of the political isle. I'd like to see Bob and Aphra debate each other, as crazy as that sounds.

But what would that even look like without making them Deep Ones? If the idea is they're aliens and parasitical and predatory - would they even be Deep Ones? Would they suffice to be even by Mythos-worthy?

It's like coming up with fanfic for Tolkien and revealing for ones own political ideology that there is another Valinor filled with Asian and African themed elves "because Tolkien was racist".

What is the point of injecting those assumptions into an established fictional universe if not for ulterior intents to destroy and replace it? Which is ironic given the idea that is the very same inverted reasons one might cite for "white nationalist incels".

Edit: As an Asian I'm always amused at how these terms which essentially are about power-dynamics reveal the inherent cache that its practitioners place on "white superiority" by championing some cause of race or gender to both deny and replace that acceptance of "white superiority" with some secondary victim-status without the awareness that their own beliefs are framed based on their acceptance of that their caricature of white-supremacy. Which of course only exist in their own minds.

I mean... I don't see Han Chinese in China having diversity councils. Nor in Japan, or Israel, Saudi-Arabia, Russia, South America or anywhere else outside the west. And I certainly don't see them applying it to their historical fiction. It appears from the outside that the people crying racism are the actual racists.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 01:17:22 PM
The parallels to white nationalist incels are very obvious, or any patriarchal religion for that matter (I won't mention the other obvious comparison that may have sprung to your mind reading this post), or even to the misogynistic racist male feminists on the left. The narrator is racist against ordinary humans, literally calling them "simian" (as Lovecraft was wont to describe black people). He's a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion. The text tries to make the deep one faith out to be equalitarian by invoking "Mother Hydra" and having the narrator treat deep women with basic respect, but it's telling that the killer only targets prostitutes.

Well, this is your interpretation and I'm not going to dispute it. There are, however, two things that I do not understand.

The first is that we are in the mind of a monster, in the most literal meaning of the word. I liked that the realisation came with a sudden twist, after the story lulled you into thinking that it was going in another direction. Like I said, it is like sharing your time with someone you find interesting only to pick up a pillow in his home and finding a demonic symbol made with the bones of infants.

Lovecraft never cut the sympathy you feel for the main character in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" - and, frankly, I never liked that ending. I always found it both tacked on and, at the same time, unable to go "all the way" (it is also perplexing that the Innsmouth people were unable to recognise one of their own). Here, McNaughton says "Yo! We are reading the memories of a monster! Let's try to be realistic!" I'm not surprised that we human are considered "simians". One could wonder, for example, how the Martians from "The War of the Worlds" called us. "Cattle", maybe.

The second thing is that, sure, this guy is "a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion." But it is made very clear that this behaviour (and the rest) is repellent. Nothing in the story justifies it from the point of view of a normal human being. If anything, the plot is a denouncing of the extremes. Are there people who behave this way? Sure. They very often end up incarcerated or on the chair, because any sane society can't accept them (an alternative for them is to be voted in power...)

And notice how, if really we want to go down the rabbit hole of "interpreting", the same happens in the story (and in Lovecraft's): the Government does its best to eradicate these "individuals". They do their best to survive and strike from the shadows.

Nor I see the protagonist attitude against humans as "racist". He is an elevated monster, we are puny humans. As tenbones pointed out, no one is racist towards the cattle we raise to feed Burger King.

Neither I see a "message" hidden in the fact that he only kills prostitutes. He has a practical mind, prostitutes are the easiest target, and the Police will not go against a killer of prostitutes with the same energy used against a killer of daughters of the upper class. Also, notice how his last kill is not a prostitute at all but the best target of opportunity given the situation.

So, you can read "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" as a fun escapist deep dive in the mind of a monster, or as the symbolic description of the psyche of an individual whose acts and beliefs are... clearly presented as repellent, monstrous and totally unacceptable anyway. I really don't see where your problem lies.

All hail the King! The Burger King!

And his Chinese ally - General Tso!

Pop culture was awesome 40 years ago.

Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 01:04:01 PM
Why is there no discussion about Drow on Drow crime?

It is a well known Fact that The Drow are ruled by a benevolent Matriarchy.

Therefore by law, there is no such thing as Drow on Drow crime in Menzoberranzan.

While at times one may see an enlightened Priestess of Lolth discipline a cis-gendered male Drow; This is done to ensure that Drow society does not fall into a state of patriarchy and lawlessness. And is typical of the way that the progressive Drow Matriarchy ensures equality for all.

Outside cultures racist microagressions against Drow society are very notable in their lack of cultural understanding when they describe the method in which the various Great Drow Houses vie for the attention and favor of Lolth as war. In Drow society it is simply understood that Drow houses will from time to time engage in energetic play with each other for the favor of Lolth and greater social equity.

But the most problematic issue facing Drow society today is the very real threat that the Rangers and Right-Wing militias of the Surface world present to Drow lives.

When the Drow engage in Mostly Peaceful trading expeditions to the surface world, they are routinely shot dead For No Reason At All by the arrows of light-skinned Elven and Human Rangers.

The Rangers have proven to be such a threat that many Drow traders feel that they are barely able to breathe in the fresh surface world air before they are set upon by a Ranger trying to kill them just for being in the wrong defenseless rich suburban village at the wrong time.

The surface world needs to recognize that Drow Lives Matter. They need to accept that in making a safe space for the Drow to live among them that the strength and vibrancy of Drow society will be added to their own.

Praise Lolth!  All Glory to the Queen of Spiders!

Despite people whining, I don't feel that drow (or orcs for that matter) have ever really been portrayed as evil as a species in D&D, but evil as a society and religion.  They have fucked up societies and worship fucked up gods, and that's the result.  Drizzt is not the one and only non-evil drow in the setting, there are enough to support an entire not-evil drow goddess and her religion so they aren't that rare.  A minority, but ample enough to point at as evidence that evilness is not a foregone conclusion for drow as a species.  Of course, your average adventuring party doesn't have much business with a peaceful drow village minding its own business, most people are only going to be running across evil drow because they need antagonists to fight.  Helping a bunch of good drow host a bake sale is probably not going to be high on most groups' agendas for their games.

Quote from: Valatar on June 11, 2021, 03:03:02 AM
Despite people whining, I don't feel that drow (or orcs for that matter) have ever really been portrayed as evil as a species in D&D, but evil as a society and religion.  They have fucked up societies and worship fucked up gods, and that's the result.  Drizzt is not the one and only non-evil drow in the setting, there are enough to support an entire not-evil drow goddess and her religion so they aren't that rare.  A minority, but ample enough to point at as evidence that evilness is not a foregone conclusion for drow as a species.  Of course, your average adventuring party doesn't have much business with a peaceful drow village minding its own business, most people are only going to be running across evil drow because they need antagonists to fight.  Helping a bunch of good drow host a bake sale is probably not going to be high on most groups' agendas for their games.

Wait... what universe are you from? Did you read Queen of the Demonweb Pits? By extension the many RPG books about the Underdark? The novels? By 3e Eilistrae was an extreme outlier that had to be worshipped in secret.

This propensity to pick an outlier and pretend it's the norm is one of the major issues of Post-Modern pathology. The fact that an outlier exists does mean they are equal. By forcing that issue it undermines the whole purpose of the exercise (that Drow and Orcs are evil) - which is the real goal.

To what end? It has nothing to do with creating conflict in which to engage the game. It's purely for political ideology. So great we have Good Orcs and Good Drow. Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".

And once everyone is narratively made "Good" in equal amounts... the PC's will ultimately be the bad guy because all they wanna do is stab monsters and get gold. They'll need to make struggle-session mechanics where the Drow corner the PC's to make them understand that this whole time for the last 40+ years of D&D they are the actual monsters denying the Drow, Orcs and Demons their respective "Truths".

(It changes nothing! I draw my blade!)

Quote from: tenbones on June 11, 2021, 09:47:35 AM
Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".

25 years of urban fantasy has normalized this part. Good vampires and demons are super common, and conversely, if you find an angel, it's probably the bad guy.

Quote from: tenbones on June 11, 2021, 09:47:35 AM
Wait... what universe are you from? Did you read Queen of the Demonweb Pits? By extension the many RPG books about the Underdark? The novels? By 3e Eilistrae was an extreme outlier that had to be worshipped in secret.

If anything, the fact that it is an outlier underlines the "evil as normal" in the Drow society. It is, literally, the opposite of "Satan is an outlier" in the average human society.

Quote
This propensity to pick an outlier and pretend it's the norm is one of the major issues of Post-Modern pathology. The fact that an outlier exists does mean they are equal. By forcing that issue it undermines the whole purpose of the exercise (that Drow and Orcs are evil) - which is the real goal.

To what end? It has nothing to do with creating conflict in which to engage the game. It's purely for political ideology. So great we have Good Orcs and Good Drow. Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".

Somehow, I don't think we will see someone choosing the honest way of, then, picking Satan and asking for human society to be rewritten as "the New Evil" because some worship it - even if this is the end target. From here, this need of even more contortions