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).

I'm convinced this stupid motherfucker has never read The Lord of the Rings, let alone any other part of Tolkien's legendarium to spout such dishonest pseudo-inllectual bullshit. Never mind the fact he sounds like someone that probably bullied real D&D players in high school and only 'saw the light' when he figured out he could grift.

Back in junior high I had a friend who's parents bought him just about everything for D&D.  Then he went to Christian school, the first year he was fine, the next he was going through the books looking for "satanic" content and then tore up what was probably $1000 in books in 1983.  This article is the first time I've seen such ridiculous stretching matched and I used to be a regular on rpg.net.

Gygax's efforts to use available figures to represent fantasy races was racist?  What about his use of vikings to represent Fire Giants and Frost Giants does that represent deep seated hatred for Scandinavians?  Dwarves and Elves and Halflings were weaker than Humans?  Because they have level limits but are better for the only levels you ever actually play from first level forward?

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?

They have moved from Mystara to FR to who knows where a few times.

Whoo boy is this one a mess. A friend recently pointed this out to me from a Reddit post they saw.

https://www.rascal.news/hack-the-orcs-loot-the-tomb-and-take-the-land/

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.

So another 50th Anniversary of D&D book thats a cover for some woke screed.

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!

I'm betting Mordenkaenen will be bi-sexual and one of the fucking assholes at WoTC will have him fucking one the characters that Gary's kids, watch.  WotC staff can't be bothered reading source material, they will most likely continue on with the crap that WotC did to Greyhawk with Iuz basically conquering too much land creating an imbalanced campaign world.  Its more of a war campaign with how WotC wrote it with armies marching everywhere.

The 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 PM

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.

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.

Its a game setting. The only ones forced to endure it are those foolish enough pay for it or play games using it. For the rest of the sane world it can be easily ignored.

I mean, one of their public facing employees publicaly stated that Dark Sun was too problematic, and their spelljammer maps had a section in one of them called "Athas Space", with the implication (later rolled back) being that Dark Sun had been blasted to bits somehow, with the salvageable and marketable monsters hanging out in that section of the setting instead.

Now, that didn't enter their full canon like that, but you can tell they were considering it.  Consider how much hatred they must have for a huge setting like that, one of their most popular ever, being canonically obliterated, just because it had slavery that, while obviously evil and abhorent, wasn't a pile of anti-white bleating and George Floydisms.

But yea, I think they are more likely to destroy it in a different way; something like, have someone go back in time and rewrite history.  Maybe some other weird self-insert like the autistic paladin they decided made the deck of many things (or however it went).  That seems more likely than actually wiping out something so marketable, even for them.

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.

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: GeekyBugle on May 14, 2024, 07:08:36 PMYou totally need to see the Crow, the original one with Brandon Lee (RIP). Totally worth it and holds up really well.

The original is going to be back in theaters later this month (May 29th and 30th), so you may be able to see it on the big screen (!).

https://www.cinemark.com/movies/the-crow-30th-anniversary