QuoteAnd soon the Tolkienesque template of D&D began to chafe, as did the varied inheritors of Tolkien's literary imaginings. (The other great influence on D&D's world-building, Robert E. Howard, especially his Conan works, held no appeal for me whatsoever, as there was no beauty, no grace, no romance—just blood, brutality, butchery, and overt racism.) As much as I loved Middle-earth, it was still a world where lordship was borne in the blood, where inheriting country gentry were served faithfully by loving and dutiful servants, of the uncertain triumph of "Western civilization" over the dark and fallen peoples who stood against it. And while Tolkien's orcs and their filmic, gaming, and media iterations have been shaped by and expanded on savagist anti-Black and anti-Asian stereotypes, they're also informed by stereotypical ideas about Indigenous primitivism (as are his Drúedain, the reclusive Woses who aid the Rohirrim on their way to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields).
Quote from: cavalier973 on May 15, 2024, 07:03:48 AMI thought the cartoon characters were officially in the Forgotten Realms. Have they moved to Greyhawk?
QuoteEven so, when I started to create my characters, it wasn't the brash (white) warriors who appealed to me, or the dignified (white) princelings seeking to regain their thrones, or the noble (white) paladins charging down the dragons to rescue the swooning (white) maidens in distress. These weren't characters who reflected where we lived or where we came from. I struggled with shame about my little mountain town, far from what I envisioned as the center of culture, art, and intellectual achievement, but I loved the place, too; and so, to manage the cognitive dissonance, I began imagining myself in worlds of magic and mystery where difference was valued, not despised, where the game's explicit insistence on the dungeon master's (DM's) ultimate authority as storyteller made it possible to ignore the parts that wounded and enhance those that empowered, no matter what the canonical rule books might otherwise state. The DM was the ultimate creator of worlds through story, and that was something I understood at a visceral level.
Quote from: RNGm on May 15, 2024, 08:25:03 PMThe important thing is that Mordekainen can finally be zim/zir true authentic self as a disabled rainbow birthing elf of color and there is nothing you bigots can do about it!
Quote from: ForgottenF on May 15, 2024, 07:13:44 PMQuote from: THE_Leopold on May 15, 2024, 04:31:00 PMIf it keeps them away from Dark Sun, Mystara, and Birthright they can go ahead and devour the hell out of this setting as the locusts they resemble will.
There was a time when I thought Wokies of the Coast would never touch Dark Sun, that the setting was just too inherently edgy, and they couldn't possibly sanitize it without changing it so much it'd be unrecognizable and would lose all of its marketable appeal.
Now I realize that isn't how the Wokies think. They don't care about theme; they don't care about faithfulness, and increasingly, they don't even care about marketability. The current left would look at wokifying Dark Sun as all the more rewarding for how thoroughly they'd have to ruin it. The biggest of all trophies to hang on their wall.
At this point, I fully expect Woke Dark Sun to be something the world will be forced to endure within the next 5 years.
Quote from: THE_Leopold on May 15, 2024, 04:31:00 PMIf it keeps them away from Dark Sun, Mystara, and Birthright they can go ahead and devour the hell out of this setting as the locusts they resemble will.