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Author Topic: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?  (Read 19054 times)

Abraxus

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #180 on: September 16, 2020, 10:14:50 AM »
The one thing SJWs don't seem to want to get let alone understand is that unlike gaming forums especially the SJW echo chamber style one is that it gives them a sense of invincibility. Behind a keyboard and screen one can call everyone, everything, anything, anyone a racist etc.. In public at a gamers home that kind of behavior will get someone shown the door and kicked out of the campaign. One is not going to strut into an existing campaign and simply start spouting racist and racism and the rest of the group is simply going to nod and change their ways.


Unless i make my own campaign world. Then I will change Orcs, goblins etc into something other than evil. For now I run them by the Bestiaries and how I have always run them. Absolutely non-negotiable or up for any form of debate. If a player does not like they can leave.




tenbones

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #181 on: September 16, 2020, 10:26:12 AM »
I don’t have a dog in this fight. You don’t need to obsess over me.

What do you want me to say? “Anyone who thinks there are any similarities whatsoever between the depictions of humanoids in D&D and any real life racist propaganda is a racist.”

Okay.

Anybody who thinks any depiction of goblins shares any traits with antisemitic caricatures (e.g. money grubbing, power hungry, small, miserly w/ dark ugly features, large ears and huge nose, corrosive and subversive) is a racist.

Anybody who thinks any depiction of orcs shares any traits with any propaganda humans throw at each other since time immemorial (e.g. violent thugs, subhuman, stupid, rapists, cannibals, barbarians, raiders, savages, explosive breeders, deserve extermination, target practice) is a racist.

Damn any man who sympathizes with humanoids. Kill and scalp all, big and little, nits make lice.

Are we good now? The mental effort to stay invested in this tangent has been very exhausting and stressful for me. I got diarrhea.


Well if you ask a question without conceding the root of the reasoning behind the question might be flawed, or overthought, and aren't willing to entertain you might be wrong from the start, then that might be your first big problem.


I mean let me ask you a simple question in the formulation of your position - rather than jump to "RACISM"...


Can you show me an example of an author, any author, that hasn't used some kind of trope about telling a story where the enemy doesn't have some characteristic that has NO negative connotation in your mind which YOU associate with a specific culture?


Because that's exactly how you're formulating it without context. Case in point - when I talk about Lord of the Rings, I'm talking about the books. When you were talking about the Lords of the Rings, you specifically cited that to you they were mongol-inspired etc... from the movies. But the discussion about "Orcs being Blacks" is directly an attack at Tolkien... not Peter Jackson. There is *nothing* in the books that leads me to believe the Orcs have anything in particular to do with any analog culture in the real world.


They're supposed to be "savage". Well that means something. If you, and others associate "savagery" with 'blacks' in your own minds... it says more about the people that make those associations than anything else. I come from a "savage" culture. I GET IT. A hundred years ago my people were actively (and some say they continue to do it down south) headhunting and eating the long-pork. Am I ashamed of it? Nope.


But that's because I'm civilized. I find it really weird that the associations of "savagery" and "uncivilized culture" is such a hand-wringing issue for white-leftists here in Western European culture. This is where the whole "unconscious bias" thing glares. Tribalism with people that aren't that bright leads to violent behavior. This is not a sociological secret.


I no more look at the savages in the Philippines that gang-bang in the jungle and shoot each other with bows, and hack at each other with their SWEET Igorot Axes and collect one another's heads, as socially and in many ways behaviorally different than gangbangers I knew living in LA, who busted on one another with guns over resources and territory and perceived slights in similar fashion. They also behaviorally similar my Cajun cousins in Louisiana that are also very territorial and do stupid behaviors within their culture in many aspects.


Behaviors, not culture. The specifics matter. Where the biased racism comes in is the blanket statement, free of cultural context that indeed Orcs (who are typically shown as savage in culture) are immediately assumed to be stand-in's for "blacks". Well if you're an ignorant numbskull that looks at blacks as "savages", then I can't help you. Every denomination of American ethnicity is going to have their outliers. But using a blanket statement in this manner is not going to get you any agreement free of real argument.


But that's not the REAL issue here. The real issue is it's not about "racism" - it's about the pogrom of deconstructing Western cultural iconography by calling it racist and the useful idiots to march in line with such deconstructions. Guilt by association being a favorite. Even across translations like the movies-from-books.


And where can we NOT apply this bad logic? Conversely where are the modern epic fantasy fictions from Africa? They may exist, but there is a reason Tolkien is targetted and not R.A. Salvatore, isn't there?


Why is that, you think?

Ghostmaker

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #182 on: September 16, 2020, 01:16:34 PM »
I am running Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign and in one of the books their are Orcs guarding the ruins of a haunted castle. Which imo does not really mesh well with the encounters in the castle. It's a haunted castle populated by undead under guard by a bunch of Orcs. Essentially the Orcs in the area overran the castle and during the battle a curse fell upon it due to all the deaths and agony etc.. All the Orc invaders except one die and the one that does escape has his skin permanently turned white from the encounter.


The premise for the Orcs is that they are the descendants of the surviving Orc keeping an eye on the castle except it also contradicts that the Orcs want nothing to do with the castle. Imo it felt like the writer of the part of the Adventure Path wanted to throw Orcs at the players when imo it should have been Undead. I am planning to have the players just either bypass the Orcs or come to some kind of diplomatic agreement. The Orcs are their to make sure to keep Orcs and anything evil from escaping the castle. No reason they would have to attack the players. Just because they are Evil does mean they have to be stupid.

Huh? You can guard something without wanting anything to do with it. It's why we put fences around nuclear test sites.


What surprises me is that it's -orcs- doing the guarding. I'd swap them out for hobgoblins; better discipline and intellectual capacity for 'containment' options. Heck, the hobs are probably more likely to parley with an adventuring party (the logic being, if they fail, one less band of adventurers to get in their way, and if they succeed, the hobs can move on to something more worthwhile).

Ratman_tf

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #183 on: September 16, 2020, 04:15:54 PM »
Are we good now? The mental effort to stay invested in this tangent has been very exhausting and stressful for me. I got diarrhea.


You know, when I left RPG.net I had a similar reaction. (Sans diarrhea) Having and defending unpopular ideas in a forum critical to them is exhausting. I'll give you some advice from hindsight.


1. Maybe you're right and we're wrong. People are allowed to be wrong. Maybe we'll catch up someday. Maybe we'll go to our graves being wrong. Who knows. You can't expect to convince everyone on the internet all at once.


2. Maybe you're wrong and we're right. Can you entertain the notion that you might be in error? That the evidence you have is not convincing? That the ideas you espouse are not well thought out? There's no shame in being wrong. (Though I was shamed for being wrong at RPG.net, and that's part of the reason why I left.)


3. We're all just a bunch of people arguing on the internet. People get into nasty, personal arguments over how many turbolaser gun turrets are on a Star Destroyer. Try not to take it personally, or seriously. Even if the other person gets personal and serious. That's their problem.
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BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #184 on: September 16, 2020, 06:21:21 PM »
Are we good now? The mental effort to stay invested in this tangent has been very exhausting and stressful for me. I got diarrhea.


You know, when I left RPG.net I had a similar reaction. (Sans diarrhea) Having and defending unpopular ideas in a forum critical to them is exhausting. I'll give you some advice from hindsight.


1. Maybe you're right and we're wrong. People are allowed to be wrong. Maybe we'll catch up someday. Maybe we'll go to our graves being wrong. Who knows. You can't expect to convince everyone on the internet all at once.


2. Maybe you're wrong and we're right. Can you entertain the notion that you might be in error? That the evidence you have is not convincing? That the ideas you espouse are not well thought out? There's no shame in being wrong. (Though I was shamed for being wrong at RPG.net, and that's part of the reason why I left.)


3. We're all just a bunch of people arguing on the internet. People get into nasty, personal arguments over how many turbolaser gun turrets are on a Star Destroyer. Try not to take it personally, or seriously. Even if the other person gets personal and serious. That's their problem.


I don't know what's right or wrong in this situation.


I don't think orcs are racist. They're bags of XP and loots that PCs are expected to slaughter in order to advance. That's how the game works. Nobody wants to get bogged down in pointless debates about whether it's moral to kill an imaginary game construct.


I do think that some descriptions of orcs can resemble colonialist and racist propaganda used in real history to justify genocide. Some people find that, if not offensive, then really disturbing? I saw these parallels once they were explained to me and I can't very well unsee them.


But outside of that hubpages post, I never heard any anecdotes about parties going on genuine genocide sprees against orc villages. That seems more like a joke in D&D-based web shows or an abstract example used in nerdy philosophical debates than an actual thing that happens at gaming tables.


As far as I've heard, orcs only exist as evil raiders and dungeon squatting bandits to be killed for XP and loot. They don't have any society or infrastructure, never onscreen anyhow. Who wants to kill orc villages, anyway? I've never heard of any DM expecting their players to butcher villages.


It's a nerd argument that I like picking at because I'm autistic and bored, not because I'm a lunatic who thinks anybody who plays WarCraft is a racist.

Ratman_tf

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #185 on: September 16, 2020, 08:12:30 PM »
Are we good now? The mental effort to stay invested in this tangent has been very exhausting and stressful for me. I got diarrhea.


You know, when I left RPG.net I had a similar reaction. (Sans diarrhea) Having and defending unpopular ideas in a forum critical to them is exhausting. I'll give you some advice from hindsight.


1. Maybe you're right and we're wrong. People are allowed to be wrong. Maybe we'll catch up someday. Maybe we'll go to our graves being wrong. Who knows. You can't expect to convince everyone on the internet all at once.


2. Maybe you're wrong and we're right. Can you entertain the notion that you might be in error? That the evidence you have is not convincing? That the ideas you espouse are not well thought out? There's no shame in being wrong. (Though I was shamed for being wrong at RPG.net, and that's part of the reason why I left.)


3. We're all just a bunch of people arguing on the internet. People get into nasty, personal arguments over how many turbolaser gun turrets are on a Star Destroyer. Try not to take it personally, or seriously. Even if the other person gets personal and serious. That's their problem.


I don't know what's right or wrong in this situation.


I don't think orcs are racist. They're bags of XP and loots that PCs are expected to slaughter in order to advance. That's how the game works. Nobody wants to get bogged down in pointless debates about whether it's moral to kill an imaginary game construct.


I do think that some descriptions of orcs can resemble colonialist and racist propaganda used in real history to justify genocide. Some people find that, if not offensive, then really disturbing? I saw these parallels once they were explained to me and I can't very well unsee them.


But outside of that hubpages post, I never heard any anecdotes about parties going on genuine genocide sprees against orc villages. That seems more like a joke in D&D-based web shows or an abstract example used in nerdy philosophical debates than an actual thing that happens at gaming tables.


As far as I've heard, orcs only exist as evil raiders and dungeon squatting bandits to be killed for XP and loot. They don't have any society or infrastructure, never onscreen anyhow. Who wants to kill orc villages, anyway? I've never heard of any DM expecting their players to butcher villages.


It's a nerd argument that I like picking at because I'm autistic and bored, not because I'm a lunatic who thinks anybody who plays WarCraft is a racist.


Yes, yes. It's not that we don't understand your points. It's that we disagree with them. In part or in full or on some specifics.
The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
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Spinachcat

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #186 on: September 17, 2020, 04:49:05 AM »
I saw these parallels once they were explained to me and I can't very well unsee them.


Did you give up sex after seeing Alien?


If not, then apparently you CAN "unsee" real world parallels involving a fictional monster built on metaphors to be used as a primary villain.


And don't blame autism. I taught autistic kids and everyone of them could find their ass with both hands AND differentiate imaginary bogeymen from their black classmates.


Also, if you''re using any monster as a disposable XP bag, don't do that. It's a video game trope that might be fine for kids playing D&D, but for adult gamers, every monster should have some depth beyond their XP/loot value.


Ghostmaker

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #187 on: September 17, 2020, 08:21:53 AM »
Did you give up sex after seeing Alien?

Give up sex? Hell, it gave me some new ideas. :D

tenbones

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #188 on: September 17, 2020, 01:12:14 PM »

I don't know what's right or wrong in this situation.


This alone has a lot to unpack. You don't know the difference between "right" and "wrong"? Or you don't know how to decouple or transcend the Post-Modern mechanic of viewing things from your eyes. This is not to say there is no value to holding opposites in tension with one another to suss out nuanced values. The problem that most people have with it - is lack of context with the values themselves and what their intrinsic properties are in proportion to *everything else*.


This creates what is known as the "pre-trans" fallacy. Where ones will conflate a lesser value (relatively outlier) to a higher value (relatively normative), or take a higher value (relatively normative) and deflate it down to the lesser value (relatively outlier). For those that *can't* see this fallacy in play, it blinds you to the differences between the two positions entirely.


SJW's are cultists that have been consumed by this fallacy and now operate directly from it. So nothing ultimately has a value - because everything gets reduced to one thing: power. They've invented an entire language around it, created definitions that go directly against reality to justify itself in a gross solipsism.


There is *nothing* that can't be reduced do meaninglessness by pathological post-modernism, because it is largely not self-aware of anything other than what is directly in front of its face.


That's precisely how one is unable to know "right from wrong" - because you're unable to determine contextually outside of the Post-Modern (pathological variety) the values of the things you're looking at.


Your solution is to go back to formula and start asking yourself basic questions like the Greeks did: Competing virtues. Taxonomy of ethics (Greater good principles vs. individual liberty). etc. You're staring at the bark of the tree in a massive jungle of greater things.


I don't think orcs are racist. They're bags of XP and loots that PCs are expected to slaughter in order to advance. That's how the game works. Nobody wants to get bogged down in pointless debates about whether it's moral to kill an imaginary game construct.


But that is precisely what the problem is. Just like you're saying "no one wants to get bogged down in pointless debates on the morality of "killing imaginary game constructs" - the construct of calling someone a racist because of their creation of something imaginary is EQUALLY a projection of the imagination.

NO ONE DIES/IS RAPED/ENSLAVED/<fill in immoral/unethical act of choice> in a work of fiction. Removing that reality and projecting your belief that engaging in such fictions imparts actionable beliefs on behalf of the people engaging and creating these things is UNETHICAL and illogical. Because where it might happen are extreme outliers at best. Conflating an outlier to be "normal" is the very problem.

I do think that some descriptions of orcs can resemble colonialist and racist propaganda used in real history to justify genocide. Some people find that, if not offensive, then really disturbing? I saw these parallels once they were explained to me and I can't very well unsee them.


Your very terminology begs for debate. It reeks of unspoken claims. Allow me to give you an example..


Without "colonialism" I would probably be a grass-skirt wearing, bone-in-the-nose headhunter. Because of colonialism - I'm a very well-to-do, educated, father, philosopher, husband, writer, with a strong ethical and moral compass that is utterly humbled by the expanse of history not just of my own material culture (filipino) but I'm *staggered* by the emergent qualities of Greco-Roman culture which has given me most of the tools I use today to navigate reality.


And I see people born to this culture - that are blind to the monumental fragile struggles that could have derailed all of this that go us here, so they can wring their hands over culturally relative issues in the past they refuse to look at in context.


No, the propaganda is one of your own making. Not of historical reality. Any black American can go back to Africa if they really wanted to. There is a damn good reason why they don't (and conversely since you like to play around with the Post-Modernist mechanism) why Africans largely want to come *here*.


But outside of that hubpages post, I never heard any anecdotes about parties going on genuine genocide sprees against orc villages. That seems more like a joke in D&D-based web shows or an abstract example used in nerdy philosophical debates than an actual thing that happens at gaming tables.


I've made many references in posts about what I've allowed in my campaigns - Genocide is on that list *every time* because it's happened in my campaigns (2.1 million drow dead via biological warfare and forced volcano-explosion in the Underdark! alongside the death of several hundred-thousand mountain dwarves). At the hands of the PC's decisions ultimately. That counts as genocide. Was it intended? No - but it was emergent do the context and circumstances of the game. There is nothing philosophical about the discussion of it - because I don't prohibit my players from doing anything in the game. Are their repercussions? *of course* that's called "The Game".


And no one in my gaming group has ever advocated the genocide of another race. Or raped anyone. Or enslaved anyone. Or murdered anyone. You'd think after 40+ years of GMing I'd get at least ONE murderer based on your concerns... alas I haven't rolled my Natural 20 on that one yet.


As far as I've heard, orcs only exist as evil raiders and dungeon squatting bandits to be killed for XP and loot. They don't have any society or infrastructure, never onscreen anyhow. Who wants to kill orc villages, anyway? I've never heard of any DM expecting their players to butcher villages.


/Shrug. Me either. But yet "savagery" has a meaning that doesn't necessarily tie it to a specific culture. And there are plenty of historical examples of "civilized" people resorting to the same tactics in order to combat "savagery". That Orcs, who almost by definition in D&D and most fictional representations ARE savage... they will have behaviors that are associated with primitive cultures that most violent primitive cultures share. If someone wants to draw upon real world examples of such behaviors - it's not hard. That doesn't mean Orcs are black people. If YOU want to believe that, then it's on you.

It's a nerd argument that I like picking at because I'm autistic and bored, not because I'm a lunatic who thinks anybody who plays WarCraft is a racist.


Well I hope you're not bored with me. That would be insulting.

Ghostmaker

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #189 on: September 17, 2020, 01:43:56 PM »
You know, there's a solution to this kind of round and round.


Set up or use a setting where orcs aren't barely-literate evil barbarian savages.


Exhibit A: Eberron!

tenbones

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #190 on: September 17, 2020, 05:46:34 PM »
But then you'll see the "real issue" -


ANY form of culture they read into as being "non-Western European" without giving that culture primacy in the setting, can and will be seen as racist. The real issue here is that because these people (SJW's) lack any kind of perspective outside of the Pathological Post-Modernist "perspective" - they have been taught to be consumed with self-loathing of their own culture.


Note that none of these people criticize the insane civil abuses, bigotry and racism as practiced by the Chinese *instututionally* as well as culturally. They don't get outraged at their Government representatives that take money from the Chinese and other authoritarian regimes, they don't boycott companies that do business with China, openly displaying their own corporate racist policies (see Disney, Nike, and most of your big banking institutions as mere examples). They don't protest *open slavery* currently alive and well in Libya and other parts of Western and Eastern Africa. They don't protest the insane pogroms against LGBT people in the Middle-East and eastern Europe. Instead they find these relatively tiny outliers here in America and pretend to be truly outraged.


But give up their shoes, their iPhones, their support of Hollywood, the big banking institutions? Their support of overtly bigoted politicians (looking at you Kamala Harris "Biden is racist... until he nominates me for VP. Because you know, it's just politics." No way! We'd rather riot and pretend we're freedom fighters...


You know because voting your rights away, voting in Authoritarians whose goals are to strip what little wealth is left in the lower, middle, and upper class, for the purposes of keeping everyone equal in terms of poverty, who pal'ed around with Corporatists that sent our jobs overseas with the tacit support of the extreme nobility in the political/corporate class, and burning down ones own neighborhood and pretending you're fighting "muh-Fascism" using actual Fascism is preferable to facing reality... in THE ONE PLACE ON EARTH WITH THE FREEDOM (for now) that would allow this bullshit to even happen. The lack of self-awareness is astounding.


Either way we, as a nation lose.


Well... *I* am not going to lose. I dunno about these SJW's... If it all comes down, I remember what it's like to live in savage-mode. I guarantee you these soft Antifa-LARP-kiddies don't.




Ratman_tf

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #191 on: September 17, 2020, 05:49:22 PM »
You know, there's a solution to this kind of round and round.


Set up or use a setting where orcs aren't barely-literate evil barbarian savages.


Exhibit A: Eberron!


Yeah, but that becomes a problematic trope. The "Noble Savage". You can't win. Everything is problematic.


The only silver lining is that critical theory will deconstruct itself eventually. The dark cloud is that it will take a lot of culture down along the way.
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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #192 on: September 17, 2020, 07:09:12 PM »
You know, there's a solution to this kind of round and round.


Set up or use a setting where orcs aren't barely-literate evil barbarian savages.


Exhibit A: Eberron!

Or Al-Qadim. Even Forgotten Realms had an orc tribe that had non-evil orcs who weren’t complete raiding savages, IIRC. Warcraft comes to mind as well—granted, they started out as raiders, but later evolved to develop greater nuance—and there was 3e supplement to Warcraft in D&D. I could probably think of many more examples if I bothered to check, but point is they exist, and in great numbers.

But ALL of this has been brought up before numerous times in any of several threads where this same discussion has come up, yet crayon always falls back to making sweeping statements like these...

As far as I've heard, orcs only exist as evil raiders and dungeon squatting bandits to be killed for XP and loot. They don't have any society or infrastructure, never onscreen anyhow.

...and many others that imply that orcs are only ever bags of XP and never given any nuance in any work of fiction or game table. Except they have—over and over again. There’s orc nuance EVERYWHERE. There are D&D supplements dedicated to describing orc society and infrastructure. I have included orc and goblin children in my games numerous times, and back when I gave any credence to alignment (decades ago) if you killed a goblinoid kid (which came up a few times) you would shift alignment to evil instantly. If your character was a paladin they would lose their paladinhood immediately. And they would still lose their paladinhood now even though I no longer care about alignment.

Crayon’s entire line of argument and reasoning is without context to their very core. Almost NONE of these claims are true, and are based entirely on an out of context hyperbolic reality that ignores everything that contradicts it, which is plenty.

Ghostmaker

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #193 on: September 18, 2020, 08:18:36 AM »

Or Al-Qadim. Even Forgotten Realms had an orc tribe that had non-evil orcs who weren’t complete raiding savages, IIRC. Warcraft comes to mind as well—granted, they started out as raiders, but later evolved to develop greater nuance—and there was 3e supplement to Warcraft in D&D. I could probably think of many more examples if I bothered to check, but point is they exist, and in great numbers.

But ALL of this has been brought up before numerous times in any of several threads where this same discussion has come up, yet crayon always falls back to making sweeping statements like these...

As far as I've heard, orcs only exist as evil raiders and dungeon squatting bandits to be killed for XP and loot. They don't have any society or infrastructure, never onscreen anyhow.

...and many others that imply that orcs are only ever bags of XP and never given any nuance in any work of fiction or game table. Except they have—over and over again. There’s orc nuance EVERYWHERE. There are D&D supplements dedicated to describing orc society and infrastructure. I have included orc and goblin children in my games numerous times, and back when I gave any credence to alignment (decades ago) if you killed a goblinoid kid (which came up a few times) you would shift alignment to evil instantly. If your character was a paladin they would lose their paladinhood immediately. And they would still lose their paladinhood now even though I no longer care about alignment.

Crayon’s entire line of argument and reasoning is without context to their very core. Almost NONE of these claims are true, and are based entirely on an out of context hyperbolic reality that ignores everything that contradicts it, which is plenty.
IIRC, Warcraft's orcs were fleeing a demonic invasion of their homeworld. So it was less 'We're raiding you for the lulz' and a LOT more 'we're moving in because we LITERALLY have no place else to go.'


Heck, WoW had an expansion where you got to explore an alternate timeline where the orcs didn't accidentally release the Burning Legions onto their homeworld.


But it gives the socjus types that cheap dopamine rush to play these games.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Is there any monster the SJWs don't see as Black People?
« Reply #194 on: September 18, 2020, 05:41:14 PM »
And you lost me again.


Have you ever played "cowboys and indians"? Do you recognize that the history the game is based on is very fucked up? Can you still stomach the game while knowing its horrific roots?


We can apply similar logic to D&D. It's an American game whose world building took cues from the colonization of the American West. There were tons of racist tracts saying that indigenous peoples were inferior and should be exterminated. Saying that the way humanoids are depicted resembles racist tracts should be a value-neutral statement, if it is indeed accurate and that will vary by setting, not an indictment of players and designers.