# Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?



## VelvetViolet

So I see people online claiming that orcs (or drow or any other savage humanoid race) often unconsciously represent cruel stereotypes of people of color and promote a colonialist narrative. I also see plenty of people claiming that orcs do not and never have represented racial minorities, and that even suggesting such is itself racist. This question is very much politicized. How much truth is there to this assumption? Are there any academic analyses of such comparisons? Is there an ironclad argument either way?


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## Celebrim

You've done some editing so I'm going to back off a bit.

My answer is still "No."

But when you start addressing something as broad as "gaming", things get complicated.


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## Eltab

I have observed that the most energetic purveyors of the claim "__A__ in D&D is a symbol of __B__", where A is an evil / villainous / monstrous race and B is any real-life social-critique sin (racism, sexist, imperialist, &c) have no intentions of making a positive contribution to the gaming community - nor of playing the game themselves.  

These go-rounds are exercises in proving to their own satisfaction their superior self-righteousness.  Pay them only enough attention to be sure you are not accidentally hit by somebody else's mutual _Fireball_ contest.

*Mod Note:* Folks, we have rules now against dismissing people's positions by classifying them as "virtue signalling".  And don't get the idea that we cannot see the idea when you don't use those exact words.  This is trying to dismiss someone because you think you know *why* they are doing an thing, and don't find that worthy.  This is effectively _ad hominem_, and should not enter your discussion.  Thanks.  ~Umbran

You and we have better things to do - collect some friends and start up a game session!


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## The Crimson Binome

The only time I've heard this complaint directly, it was in regards to the Martians in Space 1889, and that's a game which intentionally goes for the colonialist aesthetic.

I see how some people might have that sort of complaint, in other sorts of games, but I don't believe that the concern is always well-founded. As long as the writer/designer/GM isn't intentionally doing it, and as long as they stop to ask themselves whether it might unintentionally be coming off that way, then it should still be possible to include savage humanoid races without them necessarily being analogous to anything. Sometimes an orc is just an orc.


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## Immortal Sun

Without any specific demonstration of these "claims" I couldn't begin to address them.  Given the times, and the authors, it's entirely possible.  In the past what we regard now as racist thinking was just _thinking_.


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## MGibster

I don't think it's entirely unfair to make comparisons between colonial propaganda and how orcs or other races have been portrayed in Dungeons & Dragons.  Just thinking about how many groups have been portrayed throughout American history as being brutish, immoral, less intelligent, possessing few positive traits, and being dangerous I can certainly see some parallels.  I don't believe anyone who created D&D sat down and decided to use Orcs or Drow as a stand in for some real life group.  

I don't think it's unfair to characterize those players who have some problems with this as being the type who will make no positive contributions to gaming.  We _have_ had some terrible examples of gaming products that were hurtful to real life people.  White Wolfe's Gypsy source book for World of Darkness comes to mind.  And while I'm not super sensitive to some of these issues I can't help but think those who try to create an environment where a more diverse range of gamers feels comfortable is a good thing.


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## Gradine

Eh. It can? I wouldn't argue that it generally doesn't; I'm not fond of always-evil sentient humanoids as a concept, but "faceless, human(oid) goons" is a storytelling trope for a reason, many reasons really. While I find an uncritical approach to mowing down actual living, thinking creatures troubling; I wouldn't go so far as accuse the trope as generally leading to more negative attitudes about race/nationality/culture, let alone more negative actual outcomes (namely, actual violence). We generally know that Orcs are Orcs and not, say, stand-ins for a real-world group.

Now, some time ago on this board a person wanted to create a fascilime of our real, historical Earth, with the Orcs specifically serving as a stand-in for Mongols. Which was a... er-- well, that's a certainly a _choice_. Not one I would have considered _intentionally_ supporting a very negative worldview, but as a choice it... certainly _does_ make a statement, one that I'd consider more borderline indicative of a colonialist perspective.


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## Dannyalcatraz

There have been elements of some of the “always evil” races’ treatment in early FRPGs- especially D&D- that could definitely be said to echo some of the racism present in the early pulp and genre fiction that inspired the founders of the hobby.  But as time has passed, those elements have been somewhat reduced, and the various races have been fleshed out a bit more realistically by subsequent game designers.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Thing is, depending on the campaign in question, fictionalized racism- even if it echoes the real world stuff- isn’t necessarily bad.  I once had a discussion on this board about how the Drow might refer to the schism from other elves as “The War of Surface Aggression” and that their sun-dwelling cousins “senselessly” abhor their “peculiar institution“ of enslaving others.

IOW, a straight-up reskinning of the American Civil War...except in the fantasy setting, the Drow were merely marginalized, not completely defeated.  IOW, they could (literally) rise again.

In the right hands, with the right players, that’s a virtually limitless source for plot lines.

And Harry Turtledove did a _brilliant_ series of novels that were essentially a retelling of the stories of WWII in a fantasy setting, right down to all the nasty racist stuff perpetrated during it.

If nothing else, that particular brand of evil would represent a relatively fresh storyline distinct from those more common in fantasy settings- total or partial nihilism, killing all the spellcasters, killing all the non-spellcasters, etc.


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## Hussar

Let's be honest here, and I think [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] hits it right off, fantasy as a genre started off pretty deep into racist territory.  The grand daddy's of fantasy (and a large amount of science fiction as well) weren't exactly the most tolerant of men.  And, yup, I'm saying men, since the writers of spec fiction up until the latter half of the 20th century (and WELL into the latter half) were almost universally men.  

Whether you want to point to Lovecraft or Howard or Burroughs or a host of others, a lot of the initial ideas for fantasy were pretty heavily grounded in strongly racist and misogynistic tendencies.  This isn't a secret.  So, it's not really surprising when you can see elements of that in D&D.

I mean, sure, Drow are just dark skinned evil elves...  in BDSM gear... matriarchal, dark skinned, men hating elves in BDSM gear...  

It's not really a stretch here.

IMO, the key is to recognize the origins of these things, don't pretend that they aren't there, but, also, as DannyA mentions, there are things that can be redeemed out of material and brought into the open.


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## Staffan

Yeah, having "always evil" humanoids does have some problematic issues. My "favorite" example is Burnt Offerings, the first Pathfinder adventure (back when they were still doing 3.5 adventures). The adventure starts in a frontier town where people have gathered to dedicate a cathedral to some of the gods. The celebrations are interrupted by an attack by goblins, who are described as *utterly savage*: they lack discipline, they eat babies, they burn everything they can, they sing horrible songs of savagery while assaulting the town, and so on. Eventually it turns out that the goblins are lead by both someone from town and an outsider, because of course they couldn't pull something like this off without human(ish) leadership.

I mean, the only redeeming values the goblins have in that adventure are the XP value and comedic value. They are utterly evil. But at the same time, Sandpoint could easily have been placed in the American west and the goblins replaced with Indians, and you'd have an old-school Western movie.

One of my least-favorite parts of 5e is the way it doubles down on this attitude, by saying that certain people are born evil because their gods want them that way, and thus it's OK to kill them by the dozen.

That's one of the reasons Eberron is my favorite setting - humanoids (and plenty of other monsters) don't have fixed alignments. You have orc paladin orders who have been holding patrolling the borders of the area where most of the archfiends are imprisoned, and they scoff at the newcomer humans who think they understand the Binding Flame. You have oppressed goblins in the cities of Khorvaire being considered second-class citizens. You have clans of treacherous elves who hired out their services as mercenaries during the Last War, and after a while decided to conquer a large swath of the country they were supposed to be defending instead.


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## ccs

BoxCrayonTales said:


> How much truth is there to this assumption?




As much as you bring to the table.


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## billd91

Gradine said:


> Eh. It can? I wouldn't argue that it generally doesn't; I'm not fond of always-evil sentient humanoids as a concept, but "faceless, human(oid) goons" is a storytelling trope for a reason, many reasons really. While I find an uncritical approach to mowing down actual living, thinking creatures troubling; I wouldn't go so far as accuse the trope as generally leading to more negative attitudes about race/nationality/culture, let alone more negative actual outcomes (namely, actual violence). We generally know that Orcs are Orcs and not, say, stand-ins for a real-world group.




I'm not too bothered by having a stock pool of bad guys to pull from - particularly when dealing with creatures like orcs. One thing I've always liked about orcs and their literary origin with Tolkien is they derive from elves. Evil can't create very well - just copy or corrupt. Trolls were a bad copy of ents, orcs were corrupted elves. These evil races are dark mirrors or doppelgangers of the decent folk in the stories. It seems a fitting opposition.


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## Dannyalcatraz

If, in your campaign, that’s the origins of the “evil” species in question, then it makes sense that there’d at least be MORE evil members than the uncorrupted species.  (And I _do_ like the corruption angle- I just don’t use it often.)


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## LuisCarlos17f

I am Spanish, and here in my land we are used to listen we were the evil empire. (it is curious, but now USA is following the same steps and suffering their own black enemy created by propaganda by rival powers). 

To help against racism I guess I can say this: After the fall of Roman empire when visigoths arrived to Spain "without the green card" the relation with native Hispanolatins wasn't good. Both communities had got their own legal codes and mixed marriages were forbidden, bit by bit this started to be allowed, and in the end Hispanogoths and Hispanolatins become a single group, only Spanish. Even king Wanda could stop a Muslim invasion before 711. 

Reporting racism isn't enough, we also to defend the respect of the human dignity, the base of our rights. Without this we would be like Joffrey Baratheon or Ramsay Bolton from "Games of Thrones".


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## Hussar

billd91 said:


> I'm not too bothered by having a stock pool of bad guys to pull from - particularly when dealing with creatures like orcs. One thing I've always liked about orcs and their literary origin with Tolkien is they derive from elves. Evil can't create very well - just copy or corrupt. Trolls were a bad copy of ents, orcs were corrupted elves. These evil races are dark mirrors or doppelgangers of the decent folk in the stories. It seems a fitting opposition.




Yeah, but, that line "dark mirrors" kinda is the problem, no?  The purely good white, shining race is corrupted and becomes dark, brutish and evil.  It's not a totally out there interpretation to see issues here.  Particularly when that sort of thing is so ingrained in English speaking speculative fiction.  

It's just something to keep an eye on and understand that while you (or I for that matter) don't really have an issue with it, other people might not see it that way and they're not just pulling interpretations out of thin air.


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## Aiden_Keller_

What many consider as standard Orc...off colored skin (grey, green and yes even black) as well as aggressive tendencies and tribalistic nature is not the ORIGINAL Orc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(Middle-earth)

Original Orcs, made by Tolkien, were "made of slime through the sorcery of Morgoth: 'bred from the heats and slimes of the earth..."

Tolkien also described them as "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."

From this I would say that their original does not appear to be racist....but their description could be...as well as the fact that he does say that Europeans would find them repulsive...

I wrote a paper in college about the original races from LOTR and how they fit with traditional/normal races in the real world.

A few professors could not agree on the "Orc in the room"...


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## S'mon

They represent what you want them to.

Tolkien's orcs definitely didn't represent any colonialist* narrative on his part. Arguably they represented a fear of the urban industrial Proletariat. Other sources may vary.

*Admittedly there are some really weird uses of the word "colonialist" these days. I don't see how fear of invading Mongol hordes who trashed a good chunk of Europe and the Middle East is 'colonialist' - the Mongols were the 'colonisers'. Likewise Moorish invasion of Spain and Turkish invasion of Europe. Whereas invading 'native' areas to kill them and take their stuff is 'colonialist'.


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## pemerton

I think the connection between JRRT's orcs and certain stereotypical presentations of "eastern"/Turkic peoples is fairly self-evident.

And what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] have said about the pulp origins of contemporary fantasy is likewise pretty evident.

Then there are peculiarities that are distinctive to D&D, like Gygax's Monster Manual describing dwarves as brown but nearly all D&D art depicting them as white.


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## Hussar

S'mon said:


> They represent what you want them to.
> 
> Tolkien's orcs definitely didn't represent any colonialist* narrative on his part. Arguably they represented a fear of the urban industrial Proletariat. Other sources may vary.
> 
> *Admittedly there are some really weird uses of the word "colonialist" these days. I don't see how fear of invading Mongol hordes who trashed a good chunk of Europe and the Middle East is 'colonialist' - the Mongols were the 'colonisers'. Likewise Moorish invasion of Spain and Turkish invasion of Europe. Whereas invading 'native' areas to kill them and take their stuff is 'colonialist'.




Mongol, in early 20th century English, didn't really refer to Ghengis Khan, unless you were specifically talking about history.  Mongol in the vernacular tends to be a pretty negative term for Asians - thus we get terms like Mongoloid as a perjorative for those with Down's Syndrome.  The description certainly isn't _flattering_.

And, again, we have to be careful in interpretations not to be dismissive of those who might view things differently.  This is literature.  There are very, very few "correct" interpretations.  So long as you can support the interpretation in the text, then the interpretation, while different, is valid.   Simply brushing off criticisms of racism in Tolkien because he's not talking about 12th century Mongols isn't really going to get anywhere.  

At the time of Tolkien writing, terms that we would consider pretty pejorative, such as, "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types" today were not particularly analyzed.  However, several decades later, well, when your evil race looks like ugly northern Asians, it's quite possible to ruffle some feathers.

And, really, it's so indicative of the general tone of early to mid 20th century Spec Fic.  The casual racism of the day bleeds into the text.  And, when we draw from those texts, it can be pretty off putting if we're not very, very careful.


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## Dannyalcatraz

pemerton said:


> Then there are peculiarities that are distinctive to D&D, like Gygax's Monster Manual describing dwarves as brown but nearly all D&D art depicting them as white.




Well, whitewashed art in D&D products were all too common for far too long.  Remember these?
View attachment 101953

View attachment 101952


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## wingsandsword

The idea of a hostile, primitive, uncivilized outsider people just beyond the borders of your land, ready to do you harm. . .is pretty much as old as civilization itself.

The very term "barbarian" comes from ancient Rome and their term for non-Roman peoples they considered unable to interact with them in a civilized fashion (which usually meant the Germanic peoples of central and western Europe).

The same concept of "We're civilized and peaceful, but those people over there are hostile, brutal, uncivilized and barely even count as people" appears in the Old Testament, it appears in the histories of pretty much all the known ancient civilizations.  Similar concepts appear everywhere from the Roman Empire to China and Japan, and everywhere in between.

It's hardly "colonialist", more like it's a very, very longstanding trend in how humans view outsider groups.

Orcs exist as a narrative device, a metaphor, a way of embodying that hostile, uncivilized, not-quite-human way that humans have of interpreting outsiders.

After all, you COULD tell just about every D&D story that involves orcs by substituting in some made-up in-story foreign ethnicity. . .but "orc" is a great shorthand for it that sidesteps issues of human race/ethnicity/nationality and substitutes in a completely non-human one and lets players know "these are the bad guys, or at least ones everyone generally presumes to be bad guys".


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## pemerton

Dannyalcatraz said:


> View attachment 101952



Where's this one from?


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## pemerton

wingsandsword said:


> The idea of a hostile, primitive, uncivilized outsider people just beyond the borders of your land, ready to do you harm. . .is pretty much as old as civilization itself.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's hardly "colonialist", more like it's a very, very longstanding trend in how humans view outsider groups.



Supposing your first sentence to be true, that doesn't support your second sentence. Because _rests on a xenophobic view of "outsiders"_ doesn't entail _not part of a colonialist outlook_.



wingsandsword said:


> Orcs exist as a narrative device, a metaphor, a way of embodying that hostile, uncivilized, not-quite-human way that humans have of interpreting outsiders.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> "orc" is a great shorthand for it that sidesteps issues of human race/ethnicity/nationality and substitutes in a completely non-human one and lets players know "these are the bad guys, or at least ones everyone generally presumes to be bad guys".



When orcs (as in JRRT) are dark-skinned, wield scimitars, and have "bandy" legs, they don't _sidestep_ issues of human race/ethnicity/nationality. They instantiate a particular stereotype in respect of such things.



Hussar said:


> At the time of Tolkien writing, terms that we would consider pretty pejorative, such as, "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types" today were not particularly analyzed.  However, several decades later, well, when your evil race looks like ugly northern Asians, it's quite possible to ruffle some feathers.
> 
> And, really, it's so indicative of the general tone of early to mid 20th century Spec Fic.  The casual racism of the day bleeds into the text.  And, when we draw from those texts, it can be pretty off putting if we're not very, very careful.



I certainly agree about casual racism bleeding into pulp literature and related genres. I don't quite agree that the racist language was "not particularly analysed" - people of colour at the time often noticed what was going on!


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## Dannyalcatraz

pemerton said:


> Where's this one from?




As I recall, it’s the splash page introducing 2Ed’s Egyptian pantheon in Legend & Lore.  Could be wrong about the particular book- it’s been a while since I looked at that piece in context.


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## wingsandsword

pemerton said:


> Supposing your first sentence to be true, that doesn't support your second sentence. Because _rests on a xenophobic view of "outsiders"_ doesn't entail _not part of a colonialist outlook_.



Except that "colonialist" is entirely a modern 20th/21st century pejorative referring to modern politics.

If you can point to the ancient world and see the exact same mindset and attitudes there, that's pretty much conclusive proof that it isn't something whipped up within the last century or so.


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## pemerton

wingsandsword said:


> Except that "colonialist" is entirely a modern 20th/21st century pejorative referring to modern politics.
> 
> If you can point to the ancient world and see the exact same mindset and attitudes there, that's pretty much conclusive proof that it isn't something whipped up within the last century or so.



I don't think you can look at the ancient world and see the _exact_ same "mindset and attitudes" as nineteenth century racism of the sort found in pulp and other modern fantasy writings.

But even if you could, that wouldn't be any reason to suppose that those mindsets and attitudes, in the nineteenth century and since, aren't components of, and/or causes of, and/or ideological underpinnings of, colonialist ideas.


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## pemerton

Dannyalcatraz said:


> As I recall, it’s the splash page introducing 2Ed’s Egyptian pantheon in Legend & Lore.  Could be wrong about the particular book- it’s been a while since I looked at that piece in context.



I don't think I've ever seen 2nd ed L&L in it's full "glory" (I have an electronic text version that I'm pretty sure was a legal download from the TSR/WotC webpage years ago). Which explains why I don't recognise it.


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## Hussar

wingsandsword said:


> The idea of a hostile, primitive, uncivilized outsider people just beyond the borders of your land, ready to do you harm. . .is pretty much as old as civilization itself.
> 
> The very term "barbarian" comes from ancient Rome and their term for non-Roman peoples they considered unable to interact with them in a civilized fashion (which usually meant the Germanic peoples of central and western Europe).
> 
> The same concept of "We're civilized and peaceful, but those people over there are hostile, brutal, uncivilized and barely even count as people" appears in the Old Testament, it appears in the histories of pretty much all the known ancient civilizations.  Similar concepts appear everywhere from the Roman Empire to China and Japan, and everywhere in between.
> 
> It's hardly "colonialist", more like it's a very, very longstanding trend in how humans view outsider groups.
> 
> Orcs exist as a narrative device, a metaphor, a way of embodying that hostile, uncivilized, not-quite-human way that humans have of interpreting outsiders.
> 
> After all, you COULD tell just about every D&D story that involves orcs by substituting in some made-up in-story foreign ethnicity. . .but "orc" is a great shorthand for it that sidesteps issues of human race/ethnicity/nationality and substitutes in a completely non-human one and lets players know "these are the bad guys, or at least ones everyone generally presumes to be bad guys".




Except there is one key issue that you're leaving out here - that every good race is white and every bad race isn't.  I mean, how often are the "barbarians" described as beautiful?  The civilized race as ugly?  

Look, I'm trying to tread REALLY lightly here because it is a very short step from "I interpret it this way" to "Your interpretation is an attack on me".  I don't doubt that there are certainly valid interpretations of orc as "these are the bad guys".  Fair enough.  

But, in the same way, you have to recognize that this isn't the only interpretation, nor is it the "right" one.  There ISN'T a "right" interpretation.  There are all sorts of interpretations and they are ALL valid, so long as you can support them with the text.  And, again, even if we want to leave Tolkien out of the discussion, there are MANY examples of far more egregious works in the genre.  

5e D&D, for example, has taken a HUGE step forward by making alignment largely simply descriptive.  There's almost no mechanics associated with alignment.  Saying a race is good or evil doesn't really mean a whole lot on 5e and you can easily swap out other descriptions.  The concept of Orc in D&D varies HUGELY depending on the setting.  I mean, Forgotten Realms now has a civilized orc nation.


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## S'mon

Hussar said:


> Mongol, in early 20th century English, didn't really refer to Ghengis Khan, unless you were specifically talking about history.  Mongol in the vernacular tends to be a pretty negative term for Asians - thus we get terms like Mongoloid as a perjorative for those with Down's Syndrome.  The description certainly isn't _flattering_.
> 
> And, again, we have to be careful in interpretations not to be dismissive of those who might view things differently.  This is literature.  There are very, very few "correct" interpretations.  So long as you can support the interpretation in the text, then the interpretation, while different, is valid.   Simply brushing off criticisms of racism in Tolkien because he's not talking about 12th century Mongols isn't really going to get anywhere.
> 
> At the time of Tolkien writing, terms that we would consider pretty pejorative, such as, "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types" today were not particularly analyzed.  However, several decades later, well, when your evil race looks like ugly northern Asians, it's quite possible to ruffle some feathers.
> 
> And, really, it's so indicative of the general tone of early to mid 20th century Spec Fic.  The casual racism of the day bleeds into the text.  And, when we draw from those texts, it can be pretty off putting if we're not very, very careful.




I don't think "colonialist" should be used as a synonym for "racist".


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## S'mon

Hussar said:


> Except there is one key issue that you're leaving out here - that every good race is white and every bad race isn't.  I mean, how often are the "barbarians" described as beautiful?  The civilized race as ugly?




*cough* Conan *cough*

Edit: GMing Primeval Thule now, it's amazing how much difference it makes not to have any orcs/goblins/ogres in a setting. When the PCs kill people, almost always they are killing *people*. Even the Frazetta-Man 'Beastmen' Neanderthals who are explicitly the 'orcs of the setting' clearly have enough humanity in them to induce somewhat queasy feelings when they're slaughtered.


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## Bedrockgames

Not really wading into this topic, as I've had the 'orcs areX' argument too many times to count. But I think it is worth cautioning people: anti-colonialist media has its own downsides, like a tendency toward nationalist messages. Just something you observe if you watch a lot of movies and read a lot of books with strong anti-colonialist viewpoints. The remedy offered for colonialism is often nationalism, even ethno-nationalism.


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## Nagol

S'mon said:


> *cough* Conan *cough*
> 
> Edit: GMing Primeval Thule now, it's amazing how much difference it makes not to have any orcs/goblins/ogres in a setting. When the PCs kill people, almost always they are killing *people*. Even the Frazetta-Man 'Beastmen' Neanderthals who are explicitly the 'orcs of the setting' clearly have enough humanity in them to induce somewhat queasy feelings when they're slaughtered.




I suspect that depends a lot on the audience.  I saw little difference in player reaction when playing _Pendragon_ compared with the more fantastical _Runequest_, for example.


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## billd91

S'mon said:


> I don't think "colonialist" should be used as a synonym for "racist".




I have to agree that "colonialist" smacks of some kind of rhetorical escalation when xenophobic and/or racist will do. I'm not really seeing a subjugational or exploitational subtext to most treatment of orcs. They're definitely "others" and while that may be an important element to justify colonization and domination, it isn't synonymous.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> *cough* Conan *cough*



I tend to find that the thematic elements of Conan - which reflect broader Nietzschean-type views held by REH - are often underplayed or even ignored in the transition to Conan-influenced fantasy RPGing. Even D&D in its classic form - which is meant to be heavily REH-inspired - tends to laud the trappings of civilisation rather than present them as enfeebling and leeching of vitality.



S'mon said:


> GMing Primeval Thule now, it's amazing how much difference it makes not to have any orcs/goblins/ogres in a setting. When the PCs kill people, almost always they are killing *people*. Even the Frazetta-Man 'Beastmen' Neanderthals who are explicitly the 'orcs of the setting' clearly have enough humanity in them to induce somewhat queasy feelings when they're slaughtered.



I've run games with orcs that have achieved a similar feel, but not using D&D. Using RM - which already makes combat more vicceral - plus rather rich and richly presented cultural backstory. The absence of alignment certainly didn't hurt in this respect either!


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## Doug McCrae

Yes, there are parallels between orcs in gaming and racist ideas that were used to justify colonialism and imperialism. But that doesn't go far enough. The idea of orcs and other 'savage humanoids' derive in part from 19th and early 20th century notions of race. Not deliberately, and not always directly, but via the unexamined use of Appendix N authors, Westerns, and so forth.

Have a look at 19th century cartoonist Thomas Nast's racist depictions of the Irish. They look remarkably similar to orcs. 



BoxCrayonTales said:


> I also see plenty of people claiming that orcs do not and never have represented racial minorities, and that even suggesting such is itself racist.



It isn't racist because we're not saying that orcs correspond to colonised peoples. We're saying they correspond to a coloniser's idea of colonised peoples.


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## Doug McCrae

billd91 said:


> I have to agree that "colonialist" smacks of some kind of rhetorical escalation when xenophobic and/or racist will do. I'm not really seeing a subjugational or exploitational subtext to most treatment of orcs. They're definitely "others" and while that may be an important element to justify colonization and domination, it isn't synonymous.




What about the idea in early editions of D&D that the PCs would clear the wilderness of monsters and build a stronghold there?


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> I tend to find that the thematic elements of Conan - which reflect broader Nietzschean-type views held by REH - are often underplayed or even ignored in the transition to Conan-influenced fantasy RPGing. Even D&D in its classic form - which is meant to be heavily REH-inspired - tends to laud the trappings of civilisation rather than present them as enfeebling and leeching of vitality.
> 
> I've run games with orcs that have achieved a similar feel, but not using D&D. Using RM - which already makes combat more vicceral - plus rather rich and richly presented cultural backstory. The absence of alignment certainly didn't hurt in this respect either!




Re the beastmen, I think them being so human does make a difference to me and some of my players. Certainly the pc who had nookie with the hairy beastman shamaness to steal her magic ring...

Re Conan I agree. Gygaxian fantasy aesthetics are those of the Old West not Hyborea. In Hyborea the Picts are destined to destroy the civilised races, not vice versa - and REH seems to see this as a pretty good thing!


----------



## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> What about the idea in early editions of D&D that the PCs would clear the wilderness of monsters and build a stronghold there?




Just worth pointing out, having a frontier or wild region doesn't automatically equate to being drawn from 19th century colonialism. A lot of gaming is based on ancient history and medieval history. There are plenty of places in previous eras that had frontiers. The south in Chinese history for example. Rome too had regions it regarded as wild beyond its frontier (and built forts in many of these places).


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## Doug McCrae

wingsandsword said:


> It's hardly "colonialist", more like it's a very, very longstanding trend in how humans view outsider groups.



These ideas have changed over time. We see, starting I think with Linnaeus in the 18th century, something new - the notion that the mentally and morally inferior other is that way, not because of climate or culture (as Aristotle believed), but because of their biological makeup.

This is the same as the idea of race in D&D, particularly in early editions.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> Just worth pointing out, having a frontier or wild region doesn't automatically equate to being drawn from 19th century colonialism. A lot of gaming is based on ancient history and medieval history.



D&D has medieval trappings but it's really set in the Wild West.


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## S'mon

Doug McCrae said:


> What about the idea in early editions of D&D that the PCs would clear the wilderness of monsters and build a stronghold there?




What could be more colonialist than planting a colony in the wilderness, yep. Certainly a more accurate use than decolonisation as the replacing of European history in European University courses, the last time I saw the word used. Before that was in Black Panther.


----------



## wingsandsword

While yes, many of the classic fantasy and pulp authors reflected the casual racism of their eras, how exactly are you supposed to create a monstrous, villainous humanoid race that cannot in any way be seen as any kind of racial or ethnic metaphor?

Unless you make them look utterly inhuman, you're working with the established palette of human skin tones, hair types, facial features, builds ect.

You're trying to create something that will convey menace and threat to the audience, to be that dangerous, primitive and different-looking and strangely acting outsider/foreigner that has been an element of human culture since antiquity.

If you make it _too _inhuman, you lose that metaphor, if you make it something that has no resemblance to humanity, that allusion is lost and it becomes just a generic monster race.

So, how exactly was Tolkien, or any other author, supposed to convey the idea of a bestial, foreign, hostile, barbaric people that are recognizably similar to humans, yet alien, without being anything that could be construed as potentially offensive to any real-world race or ethnicity?

The only alternative would be to make Orcs that were totally inhuman.  I've seen it done, with orcs treated in some sources as having green skin and pig-like features with snouts, treating them as greenskinned anthropomorphic pigs/boars. . .but that tends to lose the more "realistic" aspects of fantasy.

Personally, I never read those stories and thought they were an obvious stand-in for ANY specific real world race or ethnicity, simply that they were meant to look brutal, barbaric, and hostile to the intended audience.  Depending on the audience, they could be the Philistines to the ancient Israelites.  It could be the Celts or Goths to the ancient Romans.  They could be Mongols or Manchus to the ancient Chinese.  They could be the Ainu to the ancient Japanese.  They could be Native Americans to the 18th and 19th century United States. . .they could be the Europeans to the Ottoman Turks, or the Spaniards to the Moors.


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## pemerton

[MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] - a great series of posts that cut through to the key points!


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## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> D&D has medieval trappings but it's really set in the Wild West.




Is it? I don't know that it is. I think it draws on lots of genres, which includes westerns for sure. But fantasy definitely has strong medieval and ancient history traces. I think there are lots of other historical sources of inspiration here beyond westerns. It is just part of the mix I think.


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## pemerton

wingsandsword said:


> While yes, many of the classic fantasy and pulp authors reflected the casual racism of their eras, how exactly are you supposed to create a monstrous, villainous humanoid race that cannot in any way be seen as any kind of racial or ethnic metaphor?
> 
> Unless you make them look utterly inhuman, you're working with the established palette of human skin tones, hair types, facial features, builds ect.
> 
> You're trying to create something that will convey menace and threat to the audience, to be that dangerous, primitive and different-looking and strangely acting outsider/foreigner that has been an element of human culture since antiquity.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So, how exactly was Tolkien, or any other author, supposed to convey the idea of a bestial, foreign, hostile, barbaric people that are recognizably similar to humans, yet alien, without being anything that could be construed as potentially offensive to any real-world race or ethnicity?



Well, it's not a given that _wanting to create a monstrous, villainous humanoid race_ can avoid the sorts of political overtones that are being discussed in this thread.

And when you do it by making that race (say) Turkic, or East Asian, or whatever, in appearance, broad cultural tropes, etc - well, I'm not sure that's a _defence_ against suggestions of racism.

I've watched the LotR movies with people of colour. They have noticed that all the protagonists are white (I don't think _all_ here is an exaggeration) and that the Uruk-hai are played by people of colour (Maori in particular). That didn't stop them enjoying the films, but it didn't facilitate it either!


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## Umbran

BoxCrayonTales said:


> How much truth is there to this assumption?




There are actually three questions here.

1) Did the author *intend* for orcs (or any other race) to stand in for a real-world race group?
2) Did the author unconsciously mold orcs to be a stand in for a real-world race group?
3) Are there sufficient similarities that, regardless of the author, is it reasonable for us to see them as a stand-in for a real-world race group?

To answer (1), we must ask the author.
To answer (2), we must play armchair psychologist.  Imho, it would not really be fair to the author to do this unless you can cite multiple disparate elements in their works over time that suggest they have an unconscious tendency to such.  
To answer (3), we must look inside our own minds.

(1) and (2) are really about trying to figure out what kind of person the author is/was like.  

(3) is more about whether we should use these elements as-is in our games.


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## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> There are actually three questions here.
> 
> 1) Did the author *intend* for orcs (or any other race) to stand in for a real-world race group?
> 2) Did the author unconsciously mold orcs to be a stand in for a real-world race group?
> 3) Are there sufficient similarities that, regardless of the author, is it reasonable for us to see them as a stand-in for a real-world race group?
> 
> To answer (1), we must ask the author.
> To answer (2), we must play armchair psychologist.  Imho, it would not really be fair to the author to do this unless you can cite multiple disparate elements in their works over time that suggest they have an unconscious tendency to such.
> To answer (3), we must look inside our own minds.
> 
> (1) and (2) are really about trying to figure out what kind of person the author is/was like.
> 
> (3) is more about whether we should use these elements as-is in our games.




If we are getting introspective about our own settings, I use Ronnie James Dio as my model for barbaric orcs---just something about that hair (and I use the Romans as my model for the civilized orcs). But I tend to run fantasy settings with more of a Mediterranean feel to them.


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## VelvetViolet

The responses so far have proven very educational. Thank you.

So this sort of, I don’t know what to call it, race building is very disturbing to me. You are writing a race whose sole purpose is to be killed by the heroes, and justly killed at that rather than the heroes being vicious psychopaths. I prefer to avoid that if I can.

I did some thinking about how to reclaim the savage humanoid horde trope and in my opinion to comes down to two extremes. On one end, you can depict them as people with the same depth as humans and demihumans (i.e. elves dwarves, halflings, tieflings, dragonborn, etc), although that often unfortunately results in replacing negative stereotypes with positive(?) stereotypes (e.g. all elves are beautiful, all dwarves are good workers, all halflings live in the shire, etc). But I digress.

On the other end, you could strip away any semblance of humanity and write them as essentially aliens or bioweapons. Warhammer 40k does this: the orcs are an invasive ecosystem engineered to fight robot space Egyptians. In 13th Age, orcs are apparently born as adults holding weapons from rifts in the earth; they’re sterile and half-orcs are caused by environmental conditions.

What do you think?

P.S. Whether D&D owes more to westerns or not varies by campaign setting. Settings with big frontiers to explore dotted with occasional towns (or crashed alien spaceships) are clearly channeling westerns (or post-apocalyptic) with pseudo-medieval window dressing.


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## wingsandsword

Bedrockgames said:


> If we are getting introspective about our own settings, I use Ronnie James Dio as my model for barbaric orcs---just something about that hair (and I use the Romans as my model for the civilized orcs). But I tend to run fantasy settings with more of a Mediterranean feel to them.




Personally, I go with Orcs having skin in various shades of green, from forest green to deep olive drab, and large framed bodies (either muscular and gorilla-like for warrior orcs, or more flabby and porcine for civilian orcs) with faces that are vaguely piglike, with snouts and tusks and rough, almost bristle-like hair that's sometimes in long, shaggy manes and sometimes in short mohawks.

Given that Orcs have been depicted as both LE and CE in various editions, I split the difference. . .Orcish society itself tends towards CE, but Orcish armies are very LE, very regimented and have downright brutal discipline and the most lawful element of Orc society.

If I've needed an Orcish language for anything, I've always used Klingon as a stand-in for it.  I always figured Klingons are basically sci-fi Orcs anyway.

What little of Orc society ever shows up is _loosely _based on vikings, or at least cliches of them.


----------



## Aiden_Keller_

Dannyalcatraz said:


> As I recall, it’s the splash page introducing 2Ed’s Egyptian pantheon in Legend & Lore.  Could be wrong about the particular book- it’s been a while since I looked at that piece in context.




Regardless of context...pretty sure they would be darker than that...even if they were European's living in Egypt...simple sun tan would have darker those two!


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## Celebrim

I have no orcs in my setting.

The role of orcs in my setting is held by 'goblinkind'.  Goblinkind is one of the six races of mortal free peoples.  Their chief Maglubiyet the Flame-Eyed God is the eldest deity, and is in a sense the senior deity of all creation.  Certainly he thinks himself the rightful king for the universe.

After the gods-war, which was started by a quarrel between the god Uman and his son Usurl, and basically erupted into a cosmic family feud, the surviving deities met to discuss a truce and what was to be done with the now wrecked universe.   One of the things that was purposed as a solution is that the gods would abandon Sartha, the World, and that in their place the gods make for themselves a servant, after the fashion and stature of the lesser fey but mortal, who they would be responsible for repairing Sartha in the absence of the gods.  None of the gods trusted the other gods to allow their existing servants free access to Sartha, and so this new servant would be given the right or power to freely choose which of the instructions of the gods it would obey.  The problem was that the gods could not agree on a design for this new creature, and so ultimately they ended up adopting six different designs - one each roughly corresponding to the six families of gods.   These six designs are goblins, elves, humans, dwarves, orine, and idreth, and along with fey are collectively referred to as the 'free peoples'.  

Sometime after this plan was adopted, goblins withdrew from the world.  When they returned, they were 'changed' from the original design, and were creatures of horn and hide and fang.  Goblinkind remains to this day a species which is the product of selective breeding and perhaps magical manipulation.  They are divided into physical/social castes in a way that the other species are not.  They've pretty much openly dropped any pretense of existing to carry out a purpose of repairing the world, and have the purpose of conquering it.  

a) The new 'changed' goblins are carnivores, and they greedily will devour the other free peoples.
b) The new 'changed' goblins are less free, in that they only worship Maglubiyet's clan or else are generally impious.  They basically show no interest in deities that don't show fealty to the Flame Eyed God. 
c) The new 'changed' goblins are repulsive, even to themselves.  They don't show a lot of concern for aesthetics, but to the extent that they do, they don't like the way they look.

There are philosophical quarrels among scholars as to whether the new goblins are really 'free people' at all, and are instead frequently viewed as 'lesser servitors' in as much as they seem to be loyal to only one deity.  I have my own view of this as the story creator and game master, but I prefer to let the players come to their own conclusions and animate their own characters without word from on high as to what right and wrong are.

Goblins are earth toned, and their skin can take basically any shade that rocks can - from limestone white, to feldspar yellows and pinks, slate blacks, to sandstone red.  Jade like green skin is rare, but considered attractive, by other goblins at least, in as much as they find each other attractive at all.  

On a meta level, in no fashion are any of the races or ethnic groups of my world intended to be allegories for any real world ethnic group.  While I can't avoid there being cultural influences in the architecture, dress, and other cultural trappings of a race, I do not intend these associations to be allegorical.   For example, the prominent human Har ethnic group are not meant to be perceived as inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent nor as Hanseatic Europeans, despite drawing influences from medieval India and the Hanseatic League of Europe, and their North African appearance is meant as no more than a representation of their diverse ethnic roots located at the center of many cultural influences and not as commentary on any Mediterranean people.   If some commenter tried to connect goblins or Har or Idreth to any real world people group, I'd consider it a failure of either their imagination or my own - either for them not being able to understand that I had more to talk about that real world racial conflicts or for me not conveying how distinctive and I intend all this to be.  I resist any attempt to insert your experience of reading my work and use it to supplant my intentions.  One of us is failing to communicate in that situation.

While I do think racism is a worthy topic of exploration in a fantasy setting, I consider racism in the abstract a much more interesting topic than any individual real world ethnic conflict.   If I wanted to talk about European colonialism I would do so directly in world where Europe and European colonialism actually existed, and not talk about it via analogy by creating a fantasy world.  What I wish to talk about is the infinite number of ways humans justify their hatred and inhumanity toward each other, but that's only one thing that I wish to talk about.

As for the 'uglies' like goblins, they exist for numerous reasons.  First, as a nod to traditional fantasy tropes as conventional bad guys and to let me reach into all that prior creation and mythic archetypes when I want to.   Secondly, to subvert traditional fantasy tropes, which I can only do if they appear to be one-dimensional 'orcs'.  Goblins as I present them let me explore an alien concept, of a not quite free people conditioned to expect tyranny.   As I explained by giving the backstory, many of the objections to the concept of 'orcs' depend on the assumption that orcs have a parallel backstory to humans, but by making that not quite true I can explore concepts that I couldn't if everything was just different sorts of people with bumps on their forehead.

Contrast also something like gnolls and minotaurs, which in my setting are 'lesser servitors' and are races without free will - they can't choose to overcome their instincts.  They are essentially mortal demons, in the service of monstrous beings.

Finally, all of this is hugely subjective and I'm annoyed by how much subjective assessments seem to override the author's obvious intent, much less that some groups think their subjective impressions are objective fact.  I'll risk an example, despite the controversy it will likely cause.   I recently watched 'Black Panther' with my daughter.  She is not 'woke'.  She's not trained to see color.   For the first half of her life she was raised in a predominantly black neighborhood.  She goes to a church that is probably 1/3rd African American.  One of her best friends is black.   She's not by inclination someone who is sensitive to racial issues, by design.  About 3/4s of the way into the movie 'Black Panther' she made a devastating one sentence observation about the movie that absolutely stunned me:

"These people can imagine black people with advanced technology and education, but they can't imagine black people who don't act like animals."

That's a direct quote.  She made it, not offended, but laughing at what she perceived as the silly irrational behavior of the characters - this was just after T'Challa is confronted by Killmonger.  You see, what's devastating about that quote is how it penetrates the veneer of the movie to get to its underlying assumptions.   Technically sophisticated sure, but still having politics that are locked in a notion of leadership and that basically exactly matches a bull animal fighting over a harem.  Tribes that see themselves as animal analogies, and who behave accordingly.   It's devastating because when T'Challa is first confronted by Killmonger in the throne room, it's actually the climax of the story.  The conflict the movie sets up is primarily an intellectual one, and so we expect that conflict to be primarily resolved in an intellectual space - that is in a debate between the protagonist and the antagonist where the vision of the two is actually examined and held up to appropriate criticism.   T'Challa's main duty here is to explain why Killmonger is wrong, and there are a ton of things he possibly can say using only the information he has at hand.  But T'Challa does not engage Killmonger in the intellectual battleground that is present, and instead retreats to a physical battleground where might makes right.   From then on, we have only falling action and a long wrap up where we show T'Challa after some set backs defeats Killmonger in a battle of might.

Imagine how different the story would be if it wasn't just one about animals fighting, and where the topic was given the intellectual seriousness it deserves.  Of course, this is itself a subjective impression.  Fill free to be appalled that I didn't "get it".

Does that mean 'Black Panther' is racist or demeaning to dark skinned people?  No, of course not.  Quite obviously the intention of the writer is quite the opposite of that, and quite obviously most people recognize that and respond positively to it.  On the net, even I agree it's more positive than negative.   And despite the flaws lots of things to admire about the script and the production, including truly strong female characters that aren't tokens plugged into those roles and some initially strong writing setting up the conflict (to say nothing of T'Challa even if it isn't with much explanation taking what I perceive as the correct course in the end).  What it means simply is that it perhaps doesn't serve the purpose it was created for as well as it could, or as well as the ideas involved deserve.   Bad writing doesn't make a movie racist, and in general the writer's intent should always be viewed charitably.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> I've watched the LotR movies with people of colour. They have noticed that all the protagonists are white (I don't think _all_ here is an exaggeration) and that the Uruk-hai are played by people of colour (Maori in particular).




Jackson's Maori Orcs are definitely quite striking! I suspect an English director would have gone more for JRRT's original classist theme, mirrored more recently in the Games Workshop cockney orcs.


----------



## S'mon

BoxCrayonTales said:


> On the other end, you could strip away any semblance of humanity and write them as essentially aliens or bioweapons.




I recommend 'The House on the Borderland' by William Hope Hodgson - Orcs as Cthulu-esque alien horrors!


----------



## billd91

BoxCrayonTales said:


> I did some thinking about how to reclaim the savage humanoid horde trope and in my opinion to comes down to two extremes. On one end, you can depict them as people with the same depth as humans and demihumans (i.e. elves dwarves, halflings, tieflings, dragonborn, etc), although that often unfortunately results in replacing negative stereotypes with positive(?) stereotypes (e.g. all elves are beautiful, all dwarves are good workers, all halflings live in the shire, etc). But I digress.




There's nothing wrong with certain amounts of stereotyping. After all, these are supposed to be *different* cultures/races from our current norms. Without some kind of difference, there's not much point to them being from different cultures and you need some way to communicate how they differ from us as players. All you have to do is say that these things tend to be averages or cultural values - not that every individual needs to conform to them. Halflings may generally be confined to a particular enclave or set of enclaves (remember that there were also Hobbits in Bree, outside of the Shire). Elves may tend toward being more beautiful in the eyes of humans. Dwarven society may put a high value on hard work and the self-esteem it brings. None of that mandates all individuals are like that any more than saying that Mongols tended to be nomadic people dependent on their horses for getting around (which is true even if not all Mongols fit that profile). Nor is it in any way reductive or racist. You just have to be aware of how you frame the description.


----------



## Umbran

BoxCrayonTales said:


> So this sort of, I don’t know what to call it, race building is very disturbing to me. You are writing a race whose sole purpose is to be killed by the heroes, and justly killed at that rather than the heroes being vicious psychopaths. I prefer to avoid that if I can.




Well, remember that we are playing a game, not building an actual world.  The elements in the game world do not actually have a purpose other than to serve the game, and the plaery's goals for the game.  If their goals do not include particularly deep consideration of the morality of violence, then yes, the bad guys are just going to be bad, and we are not supposed to feel much for them when they come to harm at the hands of the PCs.  

You have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, right?  The bad guys are there to be a difficulty for Indiana Jones to overcome, often by punching or shooting them.  And they come to a bad end, because they are *bad*.

If, for example,  you want a deeper consideration of the morality of violence in your game, then yeah, this doesn't work for you.  If the PCs are supposed to worry about whether it is okay to stab the enemy, you need some deeper consideration.  




> What do you think?


----------



## Aldarc

billd91 said:


> I'm not too bothered by having a stock pool of bad guys to pull from - particularly when dealing with creatures like orcs. One thing I've always liked about orcs and their literary origin with Tolkien is they derive from elves. Evil can't create very well - just copy or corrupt. Trolls were a bad copy of ents, orcs were corrupted elves. These evil races are dark mirrors or doppelgangers of the decent folk in the stories. It seems a fitting opposition.



From what I vaguely recall reading, even Tolkien in his later life began backing away from his own depiction that orcs were inherently evil creatures. The moral quality of it increasingly grew at odds with his Roman Catholic faith that redemption and goodness was possible for everyone. Though this says nothing about whether Tolkien employed, whether intentionally or not, casual racism in his depiction of the orcs, only that he recognized that one aspect of his depiction of orcs was morally problematic.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

wingsandsword said:


> You're trying to create something that will convey menace and threat to the audience, to be that dangerous, primitive and different-looking and strangely acting outsider/foreigner that has been an element of human culture since antiquity.
> 
> If you make it _too _inhuman, you lose that metaphor, if you make it something that has no resemblance to humanity, that allusion is lost and it becomes just a generic monster race.
> 
> *So, how exactly was Tolkien, or any other author, supposed to convey the idea of a bestial, foreign, hostile, barbaric people that are recognizably similar to humans, yet alien, without being anything that could be construed as potentially offensive to any real-world race or ethnicity?*
> 
> The only alternative would be to make Orcs that were totally inhuman.  I've seen it done, with orcs treated in some sources as having green skin and pig-like features with snouts, treating them as greenskinned anthropomorphic pigs/boars. . .but that tends to lose the more "realistic" aspects of fantasy.



(Emphasis mine.)
Step one: when describing your antagonists, don’t use any of the language used in the negative stereotypes of real-world races or ethnicities.  

Step two: see step one.

By the time JRRT and most of the other early giants of genre fiction were writing, humanity was well aware that Earthly evolution had produced cousins that either died out naturally or were wiped out by our species.  Remember, most of these writers were _very_ educated people.  Giving them a pass on perpetuating hurtful attitudes towards their fellow man is a bit...lame.

A simple description based on Neanderthals would have done just fine.  Add in a bit of the biblical “there were giants in the earth in those days” (from Genesis) and maybe a simple skin color/texture change and you’re there without stepping into the quagmire of real-world inhumanity to humans.  

Hell, look at H.G. Wells’s _Island of Dr. Moreau_: actual animal-men- while only being the creation of the ACTUAL antagonist- were less stereotypical than some of the foes penned by REH and others.  Even some writers for certain comics showed better sense when they followed HGW’s example and had the High Evolutionary be surrounded by his Ani-Men, or created a species of hyper intelligent gorillas as the source for The Flash.




> *Personally, I never read those stories and thought they were an obvious stand-in for ANY specific real world race or ethnicity,* simply that they were meant to look brutal, barbaric, and hostile to the intended audience.  Depending on the audience, they could be the Philistines to the ancient Israelites.  It could be the Celts or Goths to the ancient Romans.  They could be Mongols or Manchus to the ancient Chinese.  They could be the Ainu to the ancient Japanese.  They could be Native Americans to the 18th and 19th century United States. . .they could be the Europeans to the Ottoman Turks, or the Spaniards to the Moors.



(Emphasis mine.)
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s because you’re not a member of any group that has been negatively stereotyped in such a way.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Aiden_Keller_ said:


> Regardless of context...pretty sure they would be darker than that...even if they were European's living in Egypt...simple sun tan would have darker those two!




I was just saying I couldn’t remember what book they were in with 100% certainty.  The image was definitely asssociated with some take on Egypt within the game.


----------



## Celebrim

Aldarc said:


> From what I vaguely recall reading, even Tolkien in his later life began backing away from his own depiction that orcs were inherently evil creatures.




Actually, the opposite.



> The moral quality of it increasingly grew at odds with his Roman Catholic faith that redemption and goodness was possible for everyone. Though this says nothing about whether Tolkien employed, whether intentionally or not, casual racism in his depiction of the orcs, only that he recognized that one aspect of his depiction of orcs was morally problematic.




That he realized his depiction of Orcs was morally problematic is true, but his solution to the problem was not to go in the direction of a more humanized redeemable creature, but rather to go in the exact opposite direction - to present Orcs as less human creature which was entirely a puppet of the will of its evil master/creator.   

Tolkien's fundamental issue was he never expected anyone to take his books particularly seriously, and when they did, it frightened him.  Maybe someone reading his imperfect theology would be misled by it.

One particular area that bothered him about the orcs as he'd written them thus far was that he'd envisioned them as corrupted elves (or corrupted men, or corrupted elf/men hybrids).  But it bothered him immensely that evil had the capacity to triumph so thoroughly than any part of the creator's creation could become completely unredeemable.  At the same time, he also recognized that he couldn't reconcile the Northern European pagan trope of gleefully slaughtering foes in battle which represented one of his two major influences, with a Judeo-Christian view of violence and empathy, if in fact those orcs had any shot of redemption.  So the solution that he wanted to adopt was the one he suggested with Trolls, that orcs weren't corrupted beings, but things created in the mockery of things that are good.  Rather than going in the direction of making the orcs more human, he wanted to explicitly render them soulless puppets - akin to what the Dwarfs might have been had not Illuvatar blessed their creation.

However, the more he tried to make all his theological dominoes line up, the more it turned his writing from the vigorous imaginative thing it had been, into something that he had always despised and avoided - allegory.  The more he tried to make the story perfectly congruent to the things that he believed, the less creative and the more didactic it became.  You started having writing that resembled less his own, and more that of C.S. Lewis with his parables and analogies.  And as a result, the more it got this way, the more he as the perfectionist he was struggled with it and despised his own work.  Late in life, it's really painful to observe him tearing down the foundations of everything he had built, completely unhappy with his ability to get it to both work as a story and not have some sort of message that could be misunderstood.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> These people can imagine black people with advanced technology and education, but they can't imagine black people who don't act like animals.




The only things that save Black Panther from being a truly racist take in this are:

1) we know from the character’s inception back in the 1960s that he was created in part as a response to the racist attitudes on open display in the USA at the time, just like Superman was an answer to the concept of the Nazi aryan übermensch and

2) the genre convention of superheroes means you’re going to be solving problems with fights, not diplomacy.

And I’m sure your friend knows some of this at least casually.  It is still nonetheless a tad rueful that Stan Lee and subsequent writers couldn’t fully escape the whole animal skins & claws aesthetics, tribalism, shamanism and totemic imagery, etc. that still cling to depictions of the Wakandans.  To be clear, I’m talking the comics AND the movies, not just the movie, which did a LOT better.  You don’t see the people of Kinshasa, Abuja or other major African population centers dressing or acting like that today, and you didn’t see it in the 1960s, either.







This is not to say that ancient attire isn’t still in use- see Daniel Laine’s excellent photobook on African Kings for images like this:


But that’s ceremonial garb, not the day-to day stuff.

And again in all fairness, _Black Panther _is a superhero movie, an action subgenre.  That means that we EXPECT there to be action.  Would there even be a _Die Hard _franchise if John McClane has successfully negotiated the peaceful surrender of the terrorists in the first movie?  

Would the _Taken_ franchise be so much fun if Bryan Mills’ “very particular set of skills” been a deep understanding of negotiations and applied psychology from the FBI/Interpol, etc.?


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Jackson's Maori Orcs are definitely quite striking! I suspect an English director would have gone more for JRRT's original classist theme, mirrored more recently in the Games Workshop cockney orcs.



I don't know how much of it is about aesthetic vision, and how much of it is the realities of casting in New Zealand. I'm sure Jackson and co must have discussed this somewhere, but I've not looked into it very much. But I found it noticeable when I saw the films! (And to be clear, I'm not saying it's _wrong_. Nor that it's not wrong, for that matter. I'm saying it's a _thing_.)


----------



## Immortal Sun

Umbran said:


> Well, remember that we are playing a game, not building an actual world.  The elements in the game world do not actually have a purpose other than to serve the game, and the plaery's goals for the game.  If their goals do not include particularly deep consideration of the morality of violence, then yes, the bad guys are just going to be bad, and we are not supposed to feel much for them when they come to harm at the hands of the PCs.
> 
> You have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, right?  The bad guys are there to be a difficulty for Indiana Jones to overcome, often by punching or shooting them.  And they come to a bad end, because they are *bad*.
> 
> If, for example,  you want a deeper consideration of the morality of violence in your game, then yeah, this doesn't work for you.  If the PCs are supposed to worry about whether it is okay to stab the enemy, you need some deeper consideration.




This is a terrible, terrible comment.  To the first part: many people _are_ engaging in world-building, while yes some people build deeper worlds than others, many folks across this board regularly express the desire to create an internally consistent fantasy world.  So lets just chuck the whole "not building an actual world" statement right out.

Secondly, the "bad guys" in Raiders of the Lost Ark were Nazis!  They weren't "bad" because they were token enemies put in Indy's path to make his adventure more dangerous, they were Nazis!  Nazis who, I should remind you, wanted to use the Covenant to command God's power to kill people.  It wasn't "some guy who wanted to use the Covenant for personal gain" or "some guy who wanted to sell it for money" or "some guy who was just kinda a jerk".  Nazis have an established non-fictional "bad guy" tag to them.  It isn't some two-dimensional fictional enemy who may or ma not be representative of some non-fictional real people, it's a depiction of a group of people who were IRL, "bad guys".

Yeesh.


----------



## pemerton

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The only things that save Black Panther from being a truly racist take in this are:
> 
> 1) we know from the character’s inception back in the 1960s that he was created in part as a response to the racist attitudes on open display in the USA at the time, just like Superman was an answer to the concept of the Nazi aryan übermensch and
> 
> 2) the genre convention of superheroes means you’re going to be solving problems with fights, not diplomacy.



Your (2) is very true for the superhero genre.

My sense from talking to (middle class ie movie-going) Africans recently about this - so an anecdotal sense, but no reason to think of the people I was hanging out with as especially unique - is that Black Panther (the film) was hugely popular because (i) the case was overwhelmingly black and African as well as African-American, and (ii) it was set in and about Africa without the "tragic/suffering Africa" stereotype.

I'm pretty sympathetic to some of the critical commentary on the film (eg Teju Cole) but that sort of analysis didn't get much traction with the people I was talking to, because of the relatively overwhelming power of (i) and (ii).


----------



## S'mon

It's noticeable that WoTC adventures especially in 4e era on moved very much to having Demon Cultists as the enemy - ideological, not racial opponents. I did something similar in my Wilderlands campaign with the very Nazi-esque Black Sun of Neo-Nerath as the primary long term villains. Unlike 
demon cultists though, they had pretty comprehensible motivations - they just wanted to Make Nerath Great Again.  Sadly, restoring the Shining Light of Nerathi civilisation would require exterminating the barbaric Altanian Nomads - the PCs' faction.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Your (2) is very true for the superhero genre.
> 
> My sense from talking to (middle class ie movie-going) Africans recently about this - so an anecdotal sense, but no reason to think of the people I was hanging out with as especially unique - is that Black Panther (the film) was hugely popular because (i) the case was overwhelmingly black and African as well as African-American, and (ii) it was set in and about Africa without the "tragic/suffering Africa" stereotype.




Yeah, my African-African friends - former grad students mostly - loved Black Panther as much as I did; I'm sure these were major reasons.


----------



## Celebrim

Dannyalcatraz said:


> And again in all fairness, _Black Panther _is a superhero movie, an action subgenre.  That means that we EXPECT there to be action.  Would there even be a _Die Hard _franchise if John McClane has successfully negotiated the peaceful surrender of the terrorists in the first movie?




I think you misunderstand me. 

I don't think anyone denies that 'Black Panther' takes on a serious issue, and that it has at its heart and intellectual disagreement that has echoes of serious real world intellectual disagreements.  The fighting is how the movie works on a superficial level, but the things that elevate the movie from just being another superhero movie are its willingness to take on deep and important real world issues through the medium of the comic book superheroes.  One of the things that have made the Marvel movies so successful is that, at their best, they work on multiple levels and involve problems that leave their heroes deeply and emotionally conflicted.

In the context of the movie, 'Black Panther' takes on its own setting, and introspectively inquires into Wakanda's isolationism.  Is it right and proper for Wakanda to take a sort of 'Prime Directive' approach to the rest of the world, observing it, but prioritizing its own safety and perceived moral purity over its opportunity to intervene in the world with the attendant ugliness that getting involved in world politics would entail.   It also has a question over the proper response to injustice, which echoes debates within the African American community (and within the African community).  One take that I think works on 'Black Panther' is to see T'Challa and Eric as divided over how to respond to injustice in the same way that W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were divided, or more recently in a way similar to how Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were divided.   

This ethical dilemma and not whether Eric Killmonger is a better warrior than T'Challa is at the real heart of the movie, and for 2/3rds of the movie it carries the story very well - in part because however you come down on this argument, it's easy up to some point to have some sympathy for anyone whose anger is motivated by a sense of compassion for those that are victims of injustice.  Actually, I personally wish that Killmonger had been presented as a more nuanced villain, as I really think that they missed a toss by showing Killmonger being completely ruthless up to that point.  By doing so, they eliminate much need to be thoughtful about the problem.

But in any event, when Killmonger challenges T'Challa in the throne room, he first does it in the intellectual sphere.  He first tosses in the face of the assembled 'wise folk' of the Kingdom that they are immoral, indifferent, self-centered and slothful.   To these accusations, they have no response.   Neither does T'Challa.   T'Challa only sits back and acts stunned, before barking out that he will accept the challenge to physical combat.   But there are plenty of things that T'Challa could have said, using only the knowledge he has at that moment that would have saved lives. 

For example, he could have noted Killmonger's deception.  Killmonger only has the political support he needs to plunge the nation into civil war because he's lying to T'Challa's best friend.  T'Challa could easily counter that the only reason T'Challa did not succeed in bringing the criminal to justice, is that Killmonger rescued him.  Further, he knows now because the CIA told him so that this is the son of the man who killed his father's best friend by working with that same criminal, and further the son Eric has himself been working with that criminal for some time.  

Nor does he challenge any of Killmonger's assumptions.  Nor does the movie challenge his assumptions.   One of the worst of these is the assumption that everyone with dark skin would rise up immediately and kill his neighbors if only he were sufficiently armed.  Eric renders everyone with dark skin into a very ugly stereotype that harkens back to the notion that oppressing Africans is justified because of their inherent violent natures.  But rather than overturning this stereotype, it becomes critical to a major plot point of the story.  When Eric becomes king, he orders that Wakandan intelligence cells be armed with high tech weaponry to distribute to the African diaspora.  At no point does the story question whether the African diaspora actually wants high tech weaponry to commit murder with.  So engrained is the assumption that they do to the movie, that the 'good guys' order the White ally to shoot down the airships that are delivering these weapons (along with any innocent pilots that might be aboard) before they leave Wakandan airspace as if it was hugely important that these devices not reach their destinations.  A good third of the final act is absorbed with this problem, and it's left to the one White ally in the story to make the one truly counter-instinctual decision allowed the heroes, namely ignoring the risk to his own life which he might otherwise save without suffering shame, to complete his mission.   And it's all bogus to begin with, because it would you would normally expect take time to recruit violent followers, train them, and plan operations.  The movie leaves us with the sense that masses of violent Africans will riot as soon as they get their super-weapons.

I'm not trying to say a villain like Eric Killmonger could be talked down with diplomacy.  I am trying to say that T'Challa doesn't attack Killmonger's assumptions, leaving the audience with some sort of nebulous sense that Killmonger was basically right, just not the right man for the job, rather than being fundamentally wrong about almost everything.

One example of how this really rang wrong for me is Killmonger's death speech where he says, "Bury me at sea, with my ancestors who jumped overboard rather than accepting bondage."  Powerful defiant words... and also as completely and utterly wrong as they could be.  T'Challa misses the response: "Your ancestors were not the ones that jumped overboard and died.  They were the ones that choose to live.  You have chosen the broad and easy path, cousin, and you have left me the harder one."

I offer up in comparison the best scene of a movie I liked less well: "The Dark Night".  Again, the real core of this movie is a philosophical question being offered up by the Joker - is humanity worth saving.  And the Joker tests humanity by setting up a trial wherein two passenger ships must choose whether to blow one another up, or be blown up themselves.  Consider how much weaker this super hero story would have been had The Batman resolved the problem purely in the physical realm, rather than first showing how the passengers resolves the philosophical dilemma in the intellectual realm.  The Joker is actually defeated by the passengers.  The Batman at that point is merely cleaning up loose ends.


----------



## Immortal Sun

S'mon said:


> It's noticeable that WoTC adventures especially in 4e era on moved very much to having Demon Cultists as the enemy - ideological, not racial opponents. I did something similar in my Wilderlands campaign with the very Nazi-esque Black Sun of Neo-Nerath as the primary long term villains.




In the long run, "kill them because they're going to destroy the world" gets more traction with more people than "kill them because they're green and green people are going to destroy the world."

Even if someone is looking for a simple game of "kill the orc" you can just as quickly ascribe an evil motivation "these are fanatical orc cultists" and never even show a "good orc" and get the same game without the genocidal overtones.

Also, if you start off playing "whack an orc" and transition into something more, that _teeeeny_ bit of effort leaves your world with a lot of room for better content, instead of saddling your world with the idea that "green people must die".


----------



## S'mon

Celebrim said:


> Nor does he challenge any of Killmonger's assumptions.  Nor does the movie challenge his assumptions.   One of the worst of these is the assumption that everyone with dark skin would rise up immediately and kill his neighbors if only he were sufficiently armed.   Eric renders everyone with dark skin into a very ugly stereotype that harkens back to the notion that oppressing Africans is justified because of their inherent violent natures.  But rather than overturning this stereotype, it becomes critical to a major plot point of the story.  When Eric becomes king, he orders that Wakandan intelligence cells be armed with high tech weaponry to distribute to the African diaspora.  At no point does the story question whether the African diaspora actually wants high tech weaponry to commit murder with.  So engrained is the assumption that they do to the movie, that the 'good guys' order the White ally to shoot down the airships that are delivering these weapons (along with any innocent pilots that might be aboard) before they leave Wakandan airspace as if it was hugely important that these devices not reach their destinations.




I don't think this is really accurate. In the film only two of Wakanda's many intelligence cells are prepared to take the weapons and try to start uprisings - that's why there are only two transports to shoot down. And there is no real indication within the film that Killmonger's plan to establish an "Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets" will have any real chance of success (unless maybe it escalates to total war of World vs Wakanda - I think this is Killmonger's real plan). More likely a small number of Wakanda-armed terrorists would wreak a lot of havoc before being defeated, much like ISIL IRL. Stopping mass destruction via Wakandan weaponry & consequent political fallout is still an important goal though.


----------



## S'mon

Celebrim said:


> I'm not trying to say a villain like Eric Killmonger could be talked down with diplomacy.  I am trying to say that T'Challa doesn't attack Killmonger's assumptions, leaving the audience with some sort of nebulous sense that Killmonger was basically right, just not the right man for the job, rather than being fundamentally wrong about almost everything.




I certainly got the impression the Director was pretty sympathetic to Killmonger's 'Black Hitler' position - but I also thought that this sympathetic portrayal was what made him a powerful villain, as opposed to the usual Hollywood Nazi stereotypes. You see the same effect with Magneto sometimes.


----------



## Celebrim

S'mon said:


> Stopping mass destruction via Wakandan weaponry & consequent political fallout is still an important goal though.




I never got the sense that was so from the movie.  To me the center of the conflict was who was the rightful king, and if you wrap that up successfully it's a simple act to countermand Eric's order before any death and destruction occurs (considering an hour or two flight to London at supersonic speed, plus a couple hours to get organized, because no military operation just happens instantly).  And on the other hand, if you don't wrap that up successfully, then Eric can just try again.

Frankly, I thought the writer's just hadn't given it much thought.  They felt the need to find something for the white guy to do in the finale, and concocted something that never felt particularly tense and didn't add to the story, and I still insist leaves up in the air whether Erik's view of humanity is in any way justifiable.  The whole fight is staged as if it was Red Skull's weapons of mass destruction flying toward New York, and not merely high tech small arms headed to intelligence cells.  

Killmonger explicitly wants to escalate to a total war of World vs. African Diaspora.  Killmonger's plan is not, "We arm our operatives."  Killmonger's plan is, "We send arms to our operatives and they will in turn arm the 2 billion persons with skin color like ours."


----------



## S'mon

Celebrim said:


> Killmonger explicitly wants to escalate to a total war of World vs. African Diaspora.  Killmonger's plan is not, "We arm our operatives."  Killmonger's plan is, "We send arms to our operatives and they will in turn arm the 2 billion persons with skin color like ours."




Sure. I've heard plenty of similar rhetoric from white Neo-Nazis - everyone else really thinks like us, we just need to wake them up - so I found Killmonger perfectly credible as a Hitler-esque villain. I agree the film gave him a lot of leeway but I don't think it fully validated his position.


----------



## Celebrim

S'mon said:


> I certainly got the impression the Director was pretty sympathetic to Killmonger's 'Black Hitler' position...




Oh wow.  Ok... I don't even know how to respond to that, other than to say I hope you are wrong, and I hope more in the audience didn't have a take away that extreme.



> but I also thought that this sympathetic portrayal was what made him a powerful villain, as opposed to the usual Hollywood Nazi stereotypes.




Yet, comparable to Hitler?  I think Erik could have made a much more powerful villain had he been more sympathetically portrayed and been more nuanced.  I had sympathy for the character owing to his background and his anger over injustice.  I had no sympathy for his actions at any point.   I sincerely hope we don't live in a world where the over the top unsympathetic portrayal of the character - shooting his own allies for example, cowardice when confronted by T'Challa at the end - was necessary because otherwise the sympathy for his actions would be too great.


----------



## S'mon

Celebrim said:


> Oh wow.  Ok... I don't even know how to respond to that, other than to say I hope you are wrong, and I hope more in the audience didn't have a take away that extreme.




Hm, the more common reaction I saw in Internet discussion when I called Killmonger Hitler-esque, was "Killmonger's not that bad a guy really, he had a point, just a bit over-enthusiastic..." - and this is in discussion typically with mostly-white fellow D&D nerds.

Getting back on topic, personally I thought the film was a clever inversion of white colonialist 
tropes, right down to Black Paternalist Saviour (T'Challa) saves the helpless Whites from the Racist Black 
Hitler (Killmonger).


----------



## Celebrim

S'mon said:


> Hm, the more common reaction I saw in Internet discussion when I called Killmonger Hitler-esque, was "Killmonger's not that bad a guy really, he had a point, just a bit over-enthusiastic..." - and this is in discussion typically with mostly-white fellow D&D nerds.




Well then, I rest my case.



> Getting back on topic...




I insist I'm not actually off topic, but that it is necessary to establish a few points before I attack some points that are axiomatically assumed by the earlier discussion.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]

I didn’t miss any of that.  I think you’re missing my point- raised by your friend: Wakanda- an advanced nation that escaped the yoke of European colonialism- still had visual aesthetics and internal dynamics that played into very old, stereotypical narratives.  Killmonger didn’t sue.  T’challa wasn’t under a threat of impeachment.  Instead of a codified, legalistic approach, the struggle between the two was “settled” by personal combat.

AFAIK, the last time this was proposed in Africa was in 1978 when hulking former Olympic boxer (and accused cannibal) General Idi Amin challenged the much older and frailer President Julius Nyerere to a boxing match to settle the war between Uganda and Tanzania.

Not necessarily the best context into which the Killmonger/T’Challa fight nestles.  It’s jarring.

BUT, because it’s a superhero movie in a superhero context, that doesn’t matter.  We handwave it away *because comics.*


----------



## Celebrim

Dannyalcatraz said:


> [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]
> 
> I didn’t miss any of that.  I think you’re missing my point- raised by your friend: Wakanda- an advanced nation that escaped the yoke of European colonialism- still had visual aesthetics and internal dynamics that played into very old, stereotypical narratives.  Killmonger didn’t sue.  T’challa wasn’t under a threat of impeachment.  Instead of a codified, legalistic approach, the struggle between the two was “settled” by personal combat.
> 
> AFAIK, the last time this was proposed in Africa was in 1978 when hulking former Olympic boxer (and accused cannibal) General Idi Amin challenged the much older and frailer President Julius Nyerere to a boxing match to settle the war between Uganda and Tanzania.
> 
> Not necessarily the best context into which the Killmonger/T’Challa fight nestles.  It’s jarring.
> 
> BUT, because it’s a superhero movie in a superhero context, that doesn’t matter.  We handwave it away *because comics.*




My friend, I handwave nothing away. 

And ok, with that further explanation, I think we are actually on pretty close to the same ground.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Yeah!

I mean, if you take away the comic book genre and look at the story as straight up sci-fi?  That fight between the two is profoundly disappointing.  How is it that, in one of the most advanced nations on the planet, the question of who gets to lead the country is settled in a fistfight?  Oh yeah, and it’s an African country.

Ouch!

But within superheroic genre conventions, we wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see that in any other fictionalized nation regardless of continent or ethnicity.  (I mean, Latervia has a straight up quasi-medieval power structure, and Doom would probably HAVE to be removed by personal combat.)


----------



## pemerton

Umbran said:


> There are actually three questions here.
> 
> 1) Did the author *intend* for orcs (or any other race) to stand in for a real-world race group?
> 2) Did the author unconsciously mold orcs to be a stand in for a real-world race group?
> 3) Are there sufficient similarities that, regardless of the author, is it reasonable for us to see them as a stand-in for a real-world race group?
> 
> To answer (1), we must ask the author.
> To answer (2), we must play armchair psychologist. Imho, it would not really be fair to the author to do this unless you can cite multiple disparate elements in their works over time that suggest they have an unconscious tendency to such.
> To answer (3), we must look inside our own minds.
> 
> (1) and (2) are really about trying to figure out what kind of person the author is/was like.
> 
> (3) is more about whether we should use these elements as-is in our games.



I think you may have left out (4) Did the author deploy certain racially/culturally-laden tropes?

JRRT may or may not have intended (whether consciousuy or unconsciously) orcs to stand in for generic "eastern hordes" - that is a question of individual pscyhology which I'll leave to his biographers.

But whatever his intentions, I suggest that it is crystal-clear what the anser to(4) is - he absolutely did deploy certain tropes which are very racially and culurally-laden.

The contrast between (1) and (2) on the one hand, and (4) on the other, is not just of relevance in relation to past authors. I live in a country (Australia) where satirical cartoonists fairly regularly produce derogatory depictions of people of colour (especially Black people). The defence that they and their publishers run is always (1) and (2) - 	_they're not bad people_. Whereas the criticism being levied at them pertains to (4) - they are drawing on and perpetuating a racist body of ideas and tropes, and appear quite  indifferent to, or even exult in, doing so. This is the phenomenon of "casual racism", and of "structural racism", at work.


----------



## ParanoydStyle

*scans thread title*

Wow, I didn't realize I'd accidentally navigated to RPG.net.

(In all seriousness, there's probably some meat to this topic. I'll engage when I have time to be anything but snarky.)


----------



## S'mon

ParanoydStyle said:


> *scans thread title*
> 
> Wow, I didn't realize I'd accidentally navigated to RPG.net.
> 
> (In all seriousness, there's probably some meat to this topic. I'll engage when I have time to be anything but snarky.)




It's really not a bad thread (so far!).


----------



## Hussar

Celebrim said:
			
		

> I resist any attempt to insert your experience of reading my work and use it to supplant my intentions. One of us is failing to communicate in that situation.




Yup.  You.

You don't get to dictate how others interpret your work.  You are completely and utterly unimportant when it comes to interpreting your work.  Your views and what you intended are irrelevant.  All that really matters is what you produced and what interpretations can be taken from it.

This authorial intent thing is just so bizarre.  This notion that the author's intent was somehow integral to interpreting a work died decades ago.  Authors lie, author's change their minds and authors are very often wrong.  "Oh, I didn't mean for this to be interpreted like X" is a complete cop out.  The fact that the work can be interpreted in some fashion is all that really matters.

Can Black Panther be interpreted that Killmonger is right?  Of course it can.  That's why it's a decent piece of fiction.  It sparks debate.  It creates a message that can be used to discuss an issue.  It's not preaching from the mountain that "THIS is the one true word and must be interpreted in this and only this way, lest you go astray!"

The fact that your daughter found a different message in the movie is the whole point and should be encouraged.  I would quickly condemn any message that purports to be The Truth as Told By ____.  That's not what art or creation is ever about.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I wouldn’t say authorial intent is dead.  I think it matters.  It just isn’t dispositive.  Other readings may also valid.

And just like authors, reviewers may bring their own biases to the analysis.  They’re equally capable of lying about what they write.


----------



## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> Yup.  You.
> 
> You don't get to dictate how others interpret your work.




No I don't, but I do get to laugh at them - or mourn for them - depending on how much they get it wrong.  Communication is a two way street, and I am not solely responsible for it occurring.



> You are completely and utterly unimportant when it comes to interpreting your work.  Your views and what you intended are irrelevant.




No, I am not.  You can recite that sort of crap all you like, but it doesn't make it true.  At the very least, this is a point which is well recognized as debateable and over which reasonable people can and have disagreed, so presenting it as if it was some sort of incontrivertable objective fact that doesn't need to be supported does not reflect well upon you.

Indeed, I think the whole line of reasoning behind that statement, which was conveyed to you through some means (because I doubt you would have made the leap on your own), in my opinion doesn't reflect well on those that made it.  

If you want to put forth that argument, feel free and muster your logic and evidence, but on no account expect me to accept such statements axiomatically.



> This authorial intent thing is just so bizarre.  This notion that the author's intent was somehow integral to interpreting a work died decades ago.




In the minds of some.  You act as if this one small part of the academic community somehow established this as a matter of scientific fact through emphirical observation, instead of basically saying, "Well that's your opinion man.", in some The Dude like fashion.   Well, that's their opinion man, and I don't agree.


----------



## Hussar

Celebrim said:


> No I don't, but I do get to laugh at them - or mourn for them - depending on how much they get it wrong.  Communication is a two way street, and I am not solely responsible for it occurring.




How do you get to declare them "wrong"?  It's a two way street right?  Or, is it a one way street - your way?




> No, I am not.  You can recite that sort of crap all you like, but it doesn't make it true.  At the very least, this is a point which is well recognized as debateable and over which reasonable people can and have disagreed, so presenting it as if it was some sort of incontrivertable objective fact that doesn't need to be supported does not reflect well upon you.
> 
> Indeed, I think the whole line of reasoning behind that statement, which was conveyed to you through some means (because I doubt you would have made the leap on your own), in my opinion doesn't reflect well on those that made it.
> 
> If you want to put forth that argument, feel free and muster your logic and evidence, but on no account expect me to accept such statements axiomatically.




Pretty much any post modern interpretation of any work pretty much says that authorial intent is largely unimportant.  I mean, this is English 101 stuff.  Any first year university student can tell you the same thing.  The notion that the author is a sole or even important element in interpretation died decades ago.



> In the minds of some.  You act as if this one small part of the academic community somehow established this as a matter of scientific fact through emphirical observation, instead of basically saying, "Well that's your opinion man.", in some The Dude like fashion.   Well, that's their opinion man, and I don't agree.




You can disagree all you like.  Free country and all that.  Doesn't matter.  When the author steps up and says, "My work means X", his or her word is no more important than anyone else's.  Support your interpretation with the work.  If the work supports your interpretation, fair enough.  But, even if it does, that's not the only interpretation possible and if someone else can look at the work and support a differing interpretation, your position as the author grants your interpretation absolutely no more value than that other interpretation.  

Like I said, it's just so bizarre to see someone try to claim authority here.  I'm frankly baffled that anyone, today, would try to claim authorial intent as a thing.   

Again, it's a total cop out is the primary reason I reject it.  "Oh, I didn't mean that." is the mating cry of the Internet Troll, not someone who actually wants to be taken seriously.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> How do you get to declare them "wrong"?  It's a two way street right?  Or, is it a one way street - your way?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pretty much any post modern interpretation of any work pretty much says that authorial intent is largely unimportant.  I mean, this is English 101 stuff.  Any first year university student can tell you the same thing.  The notion that the author is a sole or even important element in interpretation died decades ago.
> 
> 
> 
> You can disagree all you like.  Free country and all that.  Doesn't matter.  When the author steps up and says, "My work means X", his or her word is no more important than anyone else's.  Support your interpretation with the work.  If the work supports your interpretation, fair enough.  But, even if it does, that's not the only interpretation possible and if someone else can look at the work and support a differing interpretation, your position as the author grants your interpretation absolutely no more value than that other interpretation.
> 
> Like I said, it's just so bizarre to see someone try to claim authority here.  I'm frankly baffled that anyone, today, would try to claim authorial intent as a thing.
> 
> Again, it's a total cop out is the primary reason I reject it.  "Oh, I didn't mean that." is the mating cry of the Internet Troll, not someone who actually wants to be taken seriously.




I don't really want to get into this topic. But I think it is fair to point out here that postmodernism isn't quite as influential as it was in say the 90s. I think a lot of people, outside and inside academia, have come to reject a lot of the ideas you are expressing here. Or at least considerably more these days. Postmodernism definitely has its share of critics. I think it is fine to be a postmodernist, but to balk at the idea that a person might not be one? That seems oddly self assured for someone expressing faith in a philosophy premised on questioning the certainty of our knowledge.


----------



## Hussar

Fair 'enough [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION].  

However, the issue of authorial intent is extremely problematic.  There are 3 basic reasons to reject it:

1.  What to do after the author dies.  How do we critique a work if we cannot question the author?  After all, it's not like we can talk to Shakespeare and ask what he meant in Line 15 Scene 3 of The Tempest.  Does that mean we can no longer analyze Shakespeare?  Of course not.  

2.  What do we do when the author changes interpretations.  Using Tolkien as the example above, we know that he changed his views on the work more than once over the years.  That's very well documented.  So, which interpretation is valid?  The last one?  Only the last one?  All of them?

3.  By placing the author in this privileged position to tell other people what the "real" interpretation is, we grant the author power that is very troubling.  "Oh, you thought that was offensive?  Well, I didn't mean it to be offensive, so, you aren't allowed to be offended" is a real problem.  Heck, we see it in this thread - people pointing to alternative interpretations of various groups as if this somehow invalidates the offensive interpretation.  

I do find it rather hard to believe that people willing grant other people such incredible powers over what they are allowed to think.  If a teacher told you, "No, you are wrong, you must think this way" that would be a terrible teacher.  If anyone else did it, we'd immediately rebel.  But, just because someone created it, we allow them to tell us what to think?  

I certainly don't.


----------



## Bedrockgames

> 1.  What to do after the author dies.  How do we critique a work if we cannot question the author?  After all, it's not like we can talk to Shakespeare and ask what he meant in Line 15 Scene 3 of The Tempest.  Does that mean we can no longer analyze Shakespeare?  Of course not.




This is why history is a discipline. Obviously we can't ask Shakespeare, but we can be guided by an honest attempt to understand his intent (and hopefully have a debate or dialogue about it). It is like anything else where uncertainty is involved, people will need to make good arguments for why a particular interpretation matches his intent. No one is saying certainty will be achieved, but figuring out the intent and the truth can still serve as a guidepost (i'd argue a better one than just throwing up our hands and saying 'its unknowable so only subjective interpretations are valid now'). 



> 2.  What do we do when the author changes interpretations.  Using Tolkien as the example above, we know that he changed his views on the work more than once over the years.  That's very well documented.  So, which interpretation is valid?  The last one?  Only the last one?  All of them?




You include that in your analysis. And then make a good argument for your conclusions. Obviously humans are complicated. But that doesn't mean they are not driven by intent. IN the case of an author shifting over time, I'd probably try to figure out what the intent was at the time of writing. If the shift led to revisions later, then I think that means we have a text with conflicting intent by the author. That doesn't strip away intent, that just makes the intent more interesting (and I don't know the particulars of Tolkien's shifting intent, so not making an argument about him specifically here). 



> 3.  By placing the author in this privileged position to tell other people what the "real" interpretation is, we grant the author power that is very troubling.  "Oh, you thought that was offensive?  Well, I didn't mean it to be offensive, so, you aren't allowed to be offended" is a real problem.  Heck, we see it in this thread - people pointing to alternative interpretations of various groups as if this somehow invalidates the offensive interpretation.




I don't find this very persuasive at all. Intent does matter. What you are pointing to isn't a lack of intent, but a deceptive rhetorical trick by the author where they intend to be offensive, then claim they were not actually intending to be so after the fact to escape blame. I think a better approach here than death of the author, is to accept that authorial intent matters, but understand that authors can lie or even fail to understand their own intentions. Intent of the author, doesn't mean only the author gets to decide what the author intended. It means what the author intended matters. But we don't have to drop our brains at the gates of the conversation. 



> I do find it rather hard to believe that people willing grant other people such incredible powers over what they are allowed to think.  If a teacher told you, "No, you are wrong, you must think this way" that would be a terrible teacher.  If anyone else did it, we'd immediately rebel.  But, just because someone created it, we allow them to tell us what to think?




This is a straw man. No one is granting the author power to tell you what to think. I am not even saying other intrpeations of a work can't be of value. I am just saying authorial intent, in my view, exists, can be deciphered to an extent, and is probably one of the more important aspects of a work. But acknowledging all that, doesn't mean the author can tell me what to think. I can still think the author's work is terrible. Acting as if intent doesn't matter though, it ignores the whole reason the person created the thing in the first place. And that matters a lot because it helps explain the historical context. Obviously that isn't the end of the conversation though. There is intent, but there is also impact. And impact is important too.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't really want to get into this topic. *But I think it is fair to point out here that postmodernism* isn't quite as influential as it was in say the 90s. I think a lot of people, outside and inside academia, have come to reject a lot of the ideas you are expressing here. Or at least considerably more these days. Postmodernism definitely has its share of critics. I think it is fine to be a postmodernist, but to balk at the idea that a person might not be one? That seems oddly self assured for someone expressing faith in a philosophy premised on questioning the certainty of our knowledge.



I would not say that "La mort de l'auteur" is postmodernism. Roland Barthes came largely out of the late Structuralists and influenced Post-Structuralists, but Postmodernism was a different, albeit parallel, movement. Postmodernists =! Structuralists =! Post-Structuralists =! Deconstructionists. (Overlapping? Yes. Identical? No.) I would also argue that the thrust of postmodernism was less about its pop culture sense of "questioning the certainty of our knowledge" or ultimate subjectivity, but, rather, postmodernism is defined by its rejection of meta-narratives. I know Postmodernism commonly gets lumped into "Commie thought," for example, but Communism is a movement within modernism that imposed a meta-narrative (i.e., history is defined as a class struggle) and postmodernists rejected these sort of meta-narratives. The point being is that there is often a lot of misunderstanding of terms around postmodernism, deconstruction, and the death of the author. But Death of the Author is still pretty damn popular in academic circles and even fandom communities (see debates about JK Rowling).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I would not say that "La mort de l'auteur" is postmodernism. Roland Barthes came largely out of the late Structuralists and influenced Post-Structuralists, but Postmodernism was a different, albeit parallel, movement. Postmodernists =! Structuralists =! Post-Structuralists =! Deconstructionists. (Overlapping? Yes. Identical? No.) I would also argue that the thrust of postmodernism was less about its pop culture sense of "questioning the certainty of our knowledge" or ultimate subjectivity, but, rather, postmodernism is defined by its rejection of meta-narratives. I know Postmodernism commonly gets lumped into "Commie thought," for example, but Communism is a movement within modernism that imposed a meta-narrative (i.e., history is defined as a class struggle) and postmodernists rejected these sort of meta-narratives. The point being is that there is often a lot of misunderstanding of terms around postmodernism, deconstruction, and the death of the author. But Death of the Author is still pretty damn popular in academic circles and even fandom communities (see debates about JK Rowling).




I have zero interest in how best to categorize postmodernism. I was responding to Hussar who invoked it as part of the reason for taking Death of the Author seriously. So I was responding to that. I never mentioned communism in my response. So I am not sure why that is getting brought up. For the record, if given a choice between the company of communists or postmodernists, while I am no communist myself, I'd take the company of communists any day of the week (because they at least make tangible assertions and arguments that you can decipher). 

I realize post modernism can mean different things to different people (and to different disciplines). I encountered it as a history student, and for us, it was part of what we called the Linguistic Turn. I am not saying all of postmodernism is about questioning certainty but just going by memory with all the different essays and papers I had to read that were classified at the time as postmodern, questioning certainty certainly seemed like a big part of it. But that was mainly just said as a joke for humorous effect (which I think Hussar got and was why he included a smiley face in his response). If people want to debate what postmodernism really, truly is, I will leave that to other posters. I will admit though, I found I had very little use for postmodernism the more of it I actually read and understood.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I have zero interest in how best to categorize postmodernism.



I also think that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is wrong in attributing "death of the author" to postmodernism, but your post was the one that caught my eye, perhaps unfairly so. 



> I never mentioned communism in my response. So I am not sure why that is getting brought up.



I never said that you did, and I thought my reasons for bringing it up were apparent enough: it is one example (among many) of a common misconception people have of postmodernists while also illustrating the wider postmodern program of rejecting meta-narratives. It was certainly not to make value judgments about the relative worth of either Communism or Postmodernism.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I also think that [MENTION=22779]
> I never said that you did, and I thought my reasons for bringing it up were apparent enough: it is one example (among many) of a common misconception people have of postmodernists while also illustrating the wider postmodern program of rejecting meta-narratives. It was certainly not to make value judgments about the relative worth of either Communism or Postmodernism.




I don't understand why people would confuse communism and postmodernism, but one of the distinguishing features of Postmodernism I remember from when I was in school was just how difficult it was to pin down (and often times its advocates seemed to contradict each other about what postmodernism was exactly). I remember asking different professors in different fields (philosophy, religion, history, communications, and English) for definitions and getting strikingly different answers. All I know, is I am glad I don't have to read another line of Foucault or Derrida.


----------



## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> How do you get to declare them "wrong"?




Just like this, "They are wrong."  See how easy that was.  If you like, and you didn't get it the first time, I can demonstrate it again.



> It's a two way street right?  Or, is it a one way street - your way?




Oh sure, they can disagree.  They can say I'm wrong.  But if they even as much say that I'm wrong, it suggests their argument is something that they don't understand and is unsustainable in the long run.  It may be a two way street or it may not be, but you can't have it both ways.  



> Pretty much any post modern interpretation of any work pretty much says that authorial intent is largely unimportant.  I mean, this is English 101 stuff.  Any first year university student can tell you the same thing.




Sure.  Any freshmen University student can regurgitate the things that they were told uncritically, because that's all you would expect of a first year university student.  I don't know what Professor you had for English 101, but they really should have broadened your horizons a bit.



> The notion that the author is a sole or even important element in interpretation died decades ago.




No it didn't.  I mean, is the best you got are arguments like "everyone knows this" (band wagon) and "it's what they teach in the university" (argument from authority), then I'm really starting to think your university years were wasted.



> Like I said, it's just so bizarre to see someone try to claim authority here.  I'm frankly baffled that anyone, today, would try to claim authorial intent as a thing.




I see this is as a confession of your weakness and not mine. 



> Again, it's a total cop out is the primary reason I reject it.  "Oh, I didn't mean that." is the mating cry of the Internet Troll, not someone who actually wants to be taken seriously.




Err... that's your problem?  That's the strongest argument you can offer?  For one thing, the problem with a statement like "I'm joking" or "I didn't mean that" is that usually you can reasonably determine whether the original statements actually contradict the claims.  For another, you've actually offered up two very separate arguments and conflated them.  It's one thing to claim that the author has to be able to defend and support his intent by referencing his own words to show that his intent and his statements are congruent.  That's all fine and reasonable.  An author ought to be able to show that he either expressed himself well or that admit that he expressed himself poorly.

But it's quite another to say that the author's intent is irrelevant to the meaning of his words, or that anyone and everyone's interpretation of what the author said is equally valid regardless of what that interpretation is.  The author's intent may not be everything, but it's pretty important and very helpful for understanding what you read and hear.  "What do you mean by that?" is very important and very valid question, and a person who consistently argues that they can always answer that question without recourse to research of some sort is a narcissist.   And a person who consistently argues that only what they heard is the important part of a conversation is likewise a narcissist.  

In my experience no one believes that they can communicate and always perfectly express themselves.  No one believes that they can communicate and not be misunderstand.  But all persons who communicate do so with the expectation that the can and ought to be understood.  If they did not believe that, then they wouldn't bother to try to communicate.  And all good readers, because they are good readers, and all good listeners, because they are listeners care deeply about what the person on the other end of the communication is trying to say.  If you think you can just make up anything on the basis of what you heard, without referencing what was on the other end, you've conveniently divorced yourself from having any responsibility in the conversation.  Communication was attempted, and it failed to be received on your end, because you didn't want to do the work to try to understand.  

Speaking as someone who writes with a great deal of passion, if you don't want to understand what I'm saying, don't flatter yourself and do injustice to me by making up crap using my words when you could make up the very same crap using words of your own.  Leave my words out of your literary masturbation.

The whole thing cannot be sustained on two grounds - one moral, and the other intellectual.

As a general moral principle, no one should treat with others as they would not want to be treated with themselves.  Yet I find in my experience no one who writes or who speaks, who is not offended, or irritated, frustrated or at least amused when the person that they are communicating with misunderstands them.  Sometimes they may admit on reflection, that they didn't communicate as clearly as they should have, and so the misunderstanding is understandable.  But there comes a point where everyone feels that they've been wrongly used by the hearer.  And in my experience no one who writes or speaks is not offended to some degree when a person grossly misconstrues them, misreports their words, and libels them.  Everyone wants to be understood and acts as if they ought to be understood.  Therefore, everyone ought to extend the same curtesy to the speaker or writer and do their best to understand them according to their intent.   Indeed, all of rational debate depends upon this principle of charity.  

Further, we cannot intellectually assent to your argument either.  For everyone that speaks or writes has some sort of effect that they are trying to create in mind when they do it, and quite often they have a specific idea in mind when they say what they do.  They may make that idea imperfectly, and we may see that idea imperfectly but it is there.  Authors in particular shed blood and tears putting many words on paper in the hopes of producing an effect and communicating ideas.  I put it to you that no one does this with the idea that there intent and meaning doesn't matter.  If anyone thought that communicating their intent and meaning was a hopeless pursuit, they wouldn't bother writing.

So for myself, I cannot believe these ideas because I see no one with the courage of their convictions to act as if they were true.  I see people willing to prioritize their own readings and meanings for those of others, but if you talk to these people and test them by going way out in left field and misconstruing them, they argue and debate with you in full hypocrisy because with respect to their own words they do think that their intent matters.  It could truly be that somewhere out there is some one who sincerely believes this crap and has the courage of their convictions to actually put it into practice, but if there is we shall never hear form them.   Personally though, I find any idea that is so ridiculous that it can only exist as a mental exercise and not only can it not be put into practice, but no one actually does put it into practice, to unworthy to spend more than the time it takes to recognize how ridiculous it is.  I consider those that teach the young to think that only the reader's understanding matters no more than charlatans.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

S'mon said:


> Yeah, my African-African friends - former grad students mostly - loved Black Panther as much as I did; I'm sure these were major reasons.



My first generation Diaspora internet friends loved the film, including the usage of traditional costume and weaponry elements in a futuristic setting, and the fact that Eric is right in his grievances, but wrong in his goal. He is someone who could have been a Good Guy, and T’Challa is so much someone who could have been very bad, and they are such perfect fools. 

IME, it’s almoat exclusively white folks interpreting the film the way certain posters here seem to have done. 



Immortal Sun said:


> In the long run, "kill them because they're going to destroy the world" gets more traction with more people than "kill them because they're green and green people are going to destroy the world."
> 
> Even if someone is looking for a simple game of "kill the orc" you can just as quickly ascribe an evil motivation "these are fanatical orc cultists" and never even show a "good orc" and get the same game without the genocidal overtones.
> 
> Also, if you start off playing "whack an orc" and transition into something more, that _teeeeny_ bit of effort leaves your world with a lot of room for better content, instead of saddling your world with the idea that "green people must die".




My best friend’s world features orcs who were bred by pseudo nazis from goblins and humans, to make the perfect soldier. They were strong, fast, unrelenting, completely disciplined, and possessed of no cultural loyalties to confuse their purpose. 

They were so effective that the holy empire they went to war with invented Warforged, and were shocked when they seemed possess souls. 

And then the orcs realized they were stronger than their masters, and a war between nations became a war of Orcs against everyone else. These days, 15 years after that war ended, the orcs control the Northern Churtaine Steppe, and seem content with that for now. 

I find stories like that much more fun than “classic” marauding orcs.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> /snip
> This is a straw man. No one is granting the author power to tell you what to think. I am not even saying other intrpeations of a work can't be of value. I am just saying authorial intent, in my view, exists, can be deciphered to an extent, and is probably one of the more important aspects of a work. But acknowledging all that, doesn't mean the author can tell me what to think. I can still think the author's work is terrible. Acting as if intent doesn't matter though, it ignores the whole reason the person created the thing in the first place. And that matters a lot because it helps explain the historical context. Obviously that isn't the end of the conversation though. There is intent, but there is also impact. And impact is important too.




Ummm...



			
				Celebrim said:
			
		

> Just like this, "They are wrong." See how easy that was. If you like, and you didn't get it the first time, I can demonstrate it again.
> 
> Oh sure, they can disagree. They can say I'm wrong. But if they even as much say that I'm wrong, it suggests their argument is something that they don't understand and is unsustainable in the long run. It may be a two way street or it may not be, but you can't have it both ways.




There's someone right there telling me that I'm either flat out wrong or not understanding his point, either way, it's not possible for my interpretation to be right.  Would you like to take back the strawman thing now [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

doctorbadwolf said:


> My first generation Diaspora internet friends loved the film, including the usage of traditional costume and weaponry elements in a futuristic setting, and the fact that Eric is right in his grievances, but wrong in his goal. He is someone who could have been a Good Guy, and T’Challa is so much someone who could have been very bad, and they are such perfect fools.
> 
> IME, it’s almoat exclusively white folks interpreting the film the way certain posters here seem to have done.



Which way is that?  Not asking you to point out posters, just clarify which interpretation of the film in here seems prevalent among the Caucasians you know.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> It's noticeable that WoTC adventures especially in 4e era on moved very much to having Demon Cultists as the enemy - ideological, not racial opponents. I did something similar in my Wilderlands campaign



Since the late 80s I've mostly used either religious/cultist or political opponents (sometimes combining the two), rather than more traditional "humanoids". My 4e game had hints of the latter, but even there the goblins and hobgoblins were framed in political/religious terms (Bane-ites) and in some cases surrendered and hence were spared (and one shocking moment at the table was when one of the PCs murdered two surrendered hobgoblins in an act of unilateral vengeance). And the gnolls were demon cultists.



S'mon said:


> I certainly got the impression the Director was pretty sympathetic to Killmonger's 'Black Hitler' position - but I also thought that this sympathetic portrayal was what made him a powerful villain, as opposed to the usual Hollywood Nazi stereotypes. You see the same effect with Magneto sometimes.





S'mon said:


> I've heard plenty of similar rhetoric from white Neo-Nazis - everyone else really thinks like us, we just need to wake them up - so I found Killmonger perfectly credible as a Hitler-esque villain. I agree the film gave him a lot of leeway but I don't think it fully validated his position.



The comparison to Magneto is (in my view) highly salient - I have a (Black) friend who sees Magneto as the real hero of the X-Men movies (though sometimes hard-done by by the script writers), and who was disappointed in the different treatment meted out to Killmonger (ie death rather than the possibility of validation).

The idea that the film is somehow wronging the African diaspora by implying that they would resist racism if only they had the resources/capacity to do so is not one that I've come across either in personal conversation with people of colour, or in the commentary I've read on the film.


----------



## 5ekyu

BoxCrayonTales said:


> So I see people online claiming that orcs (or drow or any other savage humanoid race) often unconsciously represent cruel stereotypes of people of color and promote a colonialist narrative. I also see plenty of people claiming that orcs do not and never have represented racial minorities, and that even suggesting such is itself racist. This question is very much politicized. How much truth is there to this assumption? Are there any academic analyses of such comparisons? Is there an ironclad argument either way?



Huh... late to the party but werent orcs ariginslly in LotR z dur on communism? Political baiting, not race baiting?

I remember one of the first reviews of StarTrek: Next Gen which concluded "Klingons are no longer slur at communists, but against african-americans."

But, as for what happens "in gaming" mostly anything happens in gaming somewhere. 

Me, I have used historical political and societal models for part of the foundations for NPCs many times. But usually, its just one seed among many growing into that NPC culture's characterization.


----------



## 5ekyu

doctorbadwolf said:


> My first generation Diaspora internet friends loved the film, including the usage of traditional costume and weaponry elements in a futuristic setting, and the fact that Eric is right in his grievances, but wrong in his goal. He is someone who could have been a Good Guy, and T’Challa is so much someone who could have been very bad, and they are such perfect fools.
> 
> IME, it’s almoat exclusively white folks interpreting the film the way certain posters here seem to have done.
> 
> 
> 
> My best friend’s world features orcs who were bred by pseudo nazis from goblins and humans, to make the perfect soldier. They were strong, fast, unrelenting, completely disciplined, and possessed of no cultural loyalties to confuse their purpose.
> 
> They were so effective that the holy empire they went to war with invented Warforged, and were shocked when they seemed possess souls.
> 
> And then the orcs realized they were stronger than their masters, and a war between nations became a war of Orcs against everyone else. These days, 15 years after that war ended, the orcs control the Northern Churtaine Steppe, and seem content with that for now.
> 
> I find stories like that much more fun than “classic” marauding orcs.



Hmmm... imagining an off-shoot...

Ages later, after the War-forged and the Orcs both turned on their creators, you have a perpetual war between orcs and War-forged still going on with a more cyber-punk blasted landscape and a bit of meat vs metal thrown in with nomadic bands of survivors of the other races.


----------



## Hussar

5ekyu said:


> Huh... late to the party but werent orcs ariginslly in LotR z dur on communism? Political baiting, not race baiting?
> 
> I remember one of the first reviews of StarTrek: Next Gen which concluded "Klingons are no longer slur at communists, but against african-americans."
> 
> But, as for what happens "in gaming" mostly anything happens in gaming somewhere.
> 
> Me, I have used historical political and societal models for part of the foundations for NPCs many times. But usually, its just one seed among many growing into that NPC culture's characterization.



.

Sorry,  [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION], but, I really have no idea what you just said.  Could you please type a little more carefully.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't understand why people would confuse communism and postmodernism,



I did not say that. But when you have certain *ahem* public personalities lambasting a fictive "Postmodern Cultural Marxism" (it doesn't exist), then regardless of whether I understand why people would confuse the two, I am compelled to acknowledge that people did and have intertwined the two. 



> All I know, is I am glad I don't have to read another line of Foucault or Derrida.



I felt that way once before. I was exceptionally critical of the utterly incoherent nonsense that Foucault and Derrida espoused. Then I found myself engaged in deconstruction. Nowhere near to their extent, but deconstruction nonetheless. I realized that they had "won" - the paradigm shift had occurred! - and so I went back and revisited their work. But I found myself less predisposed against what they had to say at the outset this time. (Undoubtedly still a tough read though.) 

That said, none of this really has much to do with orcs and the depiction thereof.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I felt that way once before. I was exceptionally critical of the utterly incoherent nonsense that Foucault and Derrida espoused. Then I found myself engaged in deconstruction. Nowhere near to their extent, but deconstruction nonetheless. I realized that they had "won" - the paradigm shift had occurred! - and so I went back and revisited their work. But I found myself less predisposed against what they had to say at the outset this time. (Undoubtedly still a tough read though.)
> 
> That said, none of this really has much to do with orcs and the depiction thereof.




I had the opposite experience. I got very into the stuff and believed it for a time. But eventually I just saw it as a dead end philosophically (and came to see it as blowing a lot of smoke). But way off topic at this point.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> There's someone right there telling me that I'm either flat out wrong or not understanding his point, either way, it's not possible for my interpretation to be right.  Would you like to take back the strawman thing now [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]?




If you direct back to the full quote so I can see what Celebrim is saying. My point wasn't about individual posters on this thread though. It was about the idea of authorial intent.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> The idea that the film is somehow wronging the African diaspora by implying that they would resist racism if only they had the resources/capacity to do so is not one that I've come across either in personal conversation with people of colour, or in the commentary I've read on the film.




I would hope not!  Enough of us know that white people were not solely to blame for enslaving Africans.  A large percentage of African slaves were placed in European hands by fellow Africans who had defeated their people in battle.


----------



## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> There's someone right there telling me that I'm either flat out wrong or not understanding his point, either way, it's not possible for my interpretation to be right.  Would you like to take back the strawman thing now [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]?




I think you should read through that again, because you're misunderstanding.

The points go like this. 

a) I declare someone else's interpretation is wrong.
b) That person responds by declaring my interpretation is wrong.
c) But that person who just asserted I was wrong cannot also and at the same time believe everyone's interpretation is right.   Somehow they have to believe that both interpretations are right even when they are contradictory.  So either they can believe I am wrong, or they can believe everyone is right, but they can't do both.

I then assert that in practice, no one acts as if they believed that the meaning of something was solely the province of the receiver of the communication, and that in practice everyone acts as if the reader ought to be able to develop an understanding that comes close to their own intent.  Therefore, since no one really follows through on the implications of the argument that authorial intent doesn't matter, it's actually an argument that is only used uncharitably with respect to other people's works.


----------



## Celebrim

Aldarc said:


> I did not say that. But when you have certain *ahem* public personalities lambasting a fictive "Postmodern Cultural Marxism" (it doesn't exist)...




Regardless of whether they are mislabeling or demonizing, those personalities are referring to Postmodern critical social theory which does exist.  We have even a few strident supporters of it on the boards.


----------



## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> Speaking as someone who writes with a great deal of passion...





*Too much passion.  And not enough cognizance that you are speaking to another human being.  Keeping to highfalutin' language does not keep you from going over the line several times.  Insulting their schooling as a cause for their disagreement with you, and referring to their writing as "literary masturbation" is pretty much tops for arrogance, making it personal, and being dismissive.  

It is time for you to step away from the discussion.  Do not post in the thread again.*


----------



## Celebrim

Anyway, back on target, I think I've covered the points that I need to make in order to start going after the things that were axiomatically assumed earlier in the thread.

First, the author's intent does matter.  It's irresponsible to go up to a work, merely react to it, and then assert that somehow your reaction to it was anything more than your reaction to it.  Your reaction may be important, but it doesn't in and of itself say anything about the meaning of the work.  The intent of the work does matter, and you still have a responsibility to explore it.

Secondly, even with respect to a very sympathetic portrayal of a minority that had a strong intent to be uplifting - such as 'Black Panther' - it's possible to dissect the work and look at parts of it in isolation and make criticisms of its method.  Some of those criticisms might even be fair.  But none of them are fair if at some point you don't draw back and look at the larger intent and impact of the work.  It's not enough to just 'proof text' this one part of the work in isolation, show that you can react to that part of the work negatively, and then assert from that something like the author is racist or even that the work is racist.

Simplistic claims like, "The drow are an evil dark skinned matriarchy.  That's so racist and sexist.", are almost always wrong.  The drow are a matriarchy not because Gygax was terrified of women, but because female spiders are often several times the size of male spiders and are known for their habit of devouring males.  The drow are led by a spider goddess not because the initial intent was to find some symbol for the evil of women, but to reach for some symbol of predatory cunning and artistry - such as a spider's web.   Can I prove that?  No, I'd have to go research Gygax's original intent and find evidence of it, but it is I think an entirely reasonable and charitable approach to the material.

Where I will assert that I could prove something to the contrary, was an earlier claim lumping Burroughs in with Lovecraft and Howard.   Lovecraft and Howard are we can tell from their personal writings racist, and we can look at their body of works as a whole and show how they reflect these beliefs.   But with Burroughs, investigation will show that the was a member of a leading progressive abolitionist family, and that a close reading of his works will find that Burroughs intent is often to subversively undermine the prevailing racism of his day.   For example, in his Martian tales, one of the traits that is most useful to the protagonist John Carter is that he holds no racial prejudices toward the martians, nor is he subject to them himself.   The Martians on the other hand have all sorts of racial animosities against each other and grievances, and John Carter spends much of the story healing these racial divisions.  Indeed, pretty much everywhere John Carter goes he finds someone with a different shade of skin from himself who proves to be a noble and loyal friend.   The only race of Martians in which he finds no one with honor, are the white skinned Martians that look most like him, and these White racist bigots prove to his longest running and most tenacious adversary.   Most of the Barsoom stories are about the evils of racism, and at several points in the story he has characters like Dejah Thoris and John Carter give speeches that are aimed at the racist theories proposed by racists of Burroughs day.   Burroughs isn't racist, nor are his stories intended as such.  And to the extent that you could choose to react to them as racist, because the protagonist is white or because the people of Africa in the 1920's are frequently depicted as primitive or savage, see also the savage and primitive depictions of people in Africa in the Black Panther.   You have to look at the work as a whole and the author's intent to really understand it.


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## Bedrockgames

Celebrim, you might want to delete that post. I think you missed the warning from Umbran saying not to post in this thread again (just don't want you to get in trouble if you didn't catch it).


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## lowkey13

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## doctorbadwolf

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Which way is that?  Not asking you to point out posters, just clarify which interpretation of the film in here seems prevalent among the Caucasians you know




not prevelent, by any means, but the few people I’ve seen espousing what celebrim seems to claim as basically axiomatic have been exclusively white. 



5ekyu said:


> Hmmm... imagining an off-shoot...
> 
> Ages later, after the War-forged and the Orcs both turned on their creators, you have a perpetual war between orcs and War-forged still going on with a more cyber-punk blasted landscape and a bit of meat vs metal thrown in with nomadic bands of survivors of the other races.




Wouldn’t work in this setting, where the warforged were made free citizens of the empire as soon as their sentience was discovered, but certainly a fun setting concept!


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## Gradine

Oh goody, it's time to talk about the "Death of the Author" 

I'm of two minds on this, but ultimately I think that the concept of the "Death or the Author" is pretty rubbish. First, we need to separate it from a related but adjacent context: the idea of "intent vs. impact" (though we'll get back to that in a bit). People tend to quote Barthes et. al. in those arguments, but what Barthes is talking about isn't that. The "Death of the Author", as Barthes argues, is very specifically related to literary (though it can extrapolated to all creative endeavors) criticism that says we shouldn't take what the author's stated intent or biographical information into account when conducting criticism of the work itself; that we should focus on the "text" solely. That this argument didn't really start to pick up steam until women and artists of color were starting to gain prominence and credibility in artistic and literary circles is, I'm _sure,_ merely a coincidence. But I think the argument falls flat on its face, even if we do ironically ignore the context surrounding it. See, context matters; and there are some who argue that the sum total of an author's writings, personal statements, and biography are all inextricably part of the _text_ as well. Literature is a definitionally messy way to convey a point; if it were completely and entirely straightforward it would be an essay. It does not take much to convincingly subvert or pervert an author's original meaning beyond or even against their own original intent. This is true even _when_ people are speaking straightforwardly, let alone metaphorically through literature. Context helps us understand and critique what we're reading; why the author made the choices that they made. The "Death of the Author" doesn't _improve_ our understanding of the work; it specifically _removes_ information that would be useful to helping our understanding.

On the other hand, I wouldn't argue that our own interpretations matter any less. We shouldn't _ignore_ what the author says about their own work, but we also shouldn't necessarily take it at face value either. Authorial intent, biographical information; these are additional pieces to the puzzle, which we should examine as critically as the work itself. This is why many argue that "everything is text"; those who espouse the Death of the Author would have us throw away half of the puzzle pieces.

This brings us back to the "intent vs. impact" argument, which is not really (or at least I should say not _always,_ this did come up in a thread primarily about fantasy literature and Tolkein more specifically) about literary or artistic criticism, but about the real-world impact of problematic statements or content, and how much (if it all) the owner of the statement intended those consequences to happen. I would argue that the we could apply the same level of reasoning. I think it's wrong to say intent doesn't matter; it's just that the impact matters _far more._ We would, as a people, treat differently a man who stabbed somebody accidentally (say, they trip while holding knife) versus somebody who stabbed somebody on purpose. However, in both instances we would also acknowledge that harm was done (somebody got stabbed), that a specific person was responsible for that, and that _something_ ought to be done for reparations. We wouldn't charge the tripper with attempted murder or even assault, necessarily, but we would recognize that some form of apology is owed; that the person ought to attempt to make amends. We ought to carry the same sort of reasoning when the harm done is not necessarily physical (I would hope we could skip past childish and demonstrably false arguments that words cannot cause harm). That is, just because Tolkein nor Jackson intended their Middle-Earth Orcs to be racist caricatures doesn't not excuse them from the fact they kind of are, but we wouldn't lump these men in with, say, Lovecraft or Vox Day. Nor should that stop us from putting more thought into how we can utilize the tropes Fantasy has held on to in spite of drawing their origins in writings that were ignorantly harmful at best and outright malicious at worst.

And in many ways, we've already moved on from that. I'm not certain Tolkein is even the foremost touchstone for "orc" in our culture anymore; I would argue that distinction belongs to Warcraft, which at least since Warcraft 3 (and especially World of Warcraft) have presented orcs in a very different light than the typical purely evil, vaguely racially-tinged creation of Tolkein that most canonical D&D (outside some outliers like Eberron) still stubbornly clings too. I'd still wager that at most tables these days, however, orcs (and goblins and the like) hew much closer to their presentation in WoW than in Volo's Guide.


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## lowkey13

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## jasper

Hussar…I mean, this is English 101 stuff. Any first year university student can tell you the same thing. The notion that the author is a sole or even important element in interpretation died decades ago….
I still laugh at this. Especially since college English teachers must publish something or lose their jobs. And first years have to do term papers in a way that sucks up to said teachers. English teachers ruining good stories and making them boring because they can. 
If the author said my work means x. I will believe him. She wrote it. They were in the room typing it up.  Robert Frost stated his “Stopping by woods” was just a poem he wrote to describe the event. Isaac Asimov took various letters in his magazine to task about his symbolism. It is nice to know they were internet trolls before the internet. I think authors after replying to repeated questions just change their answers to go along with the interviewer.
Hussar… with edits
3. By placing the author in this privileged position to tell other people what the real interpretation is, we grant the author power that is very troubling. "Oh, you thought that was offensive? Well, I didn't mean it to be offensive.. (cut the rest of the paragraph) Add the following. A Period…. 
If you find fault, that is up to you. Go forth and be offended. But buy the author’s book so he can offend you more. 
Celebrim … claims like, "The drow are an evil dark skinned matriarchy. That's so racist and sexist.", are almost always wrong. The drow are a matriarchy not because Gygax… 
Gee a science fact about spiders. Did Gary know this? Or was just because a matriarchy would be something totally different from the norms at the time of publishing?


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## Gradine

lowkey13 said:


> I really don't want to get into this on a TTRPG site, but this isn't right (even if many people have this vague recollection of S/Z from undergrad).
> 
> Modern critical theory (or, as you call it, the death of the author) really dates back to the beginning of the 20th Century with Russian Formalism.
> 
> But you can easily see the antecedent in the New Criticism (which, of course, has its antecedents in the 19th century) in America, which was separate from the type of close reading that occured in France and also predated Barthes.
> 
> By the time La mort de l'auteur rolled around in 1967, these ideas were old hat.
> 
> Anyway, this is important because during the rise of the intentional fallacy (1954), we were still looking at a superstructure that was dominated by, and served the interests of, white men. Jus' sayin'.
> 
> PS- The rise of modern literary criticism happened to coincide with rise of modernism in literature.




Barthes may not have proposed it, but he certainly popularized it. The fact that he is so often credited for that suggests that while those ideas may been percolating for a while, they did not become the predominant social position of literary critics until at least _l'Morte._

It may or may not be worth pointing out that Ellison's _Invisible Man_ predates _The Verbal Icon_ by two years.

Again, I'm not arguing that there was ill intent behind the philosophy (it certainly makes a kind of sense, even though it's wrong); but that the idea of having to take women and POC authors as seriously as their works almost certainly contributed to the idea gaining popularity.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Gradine

lowkey13 said:


> Um .... okay, not going to agree on that. The big work is not Barthes, it's the Intentional Fallacy (1954).
> 
> Barthes' work is one of many, after that, that take remove the authors' intention out of the work.




I disagree, or else most people would refer to the "intentionally fallacy" rather than the "death of the author" when referring to the concept. This is unarguably not the case.



> I don't know how to respond when someone says that the publication of the _Invisible Man_ means that POC had run of the intellectual sphere. It's like, "Hey, remember Viriginia Woolf? Women RULE the literary field now."




That is not what I meant and you know it. But the fact that Ellison's work _was_ lauded in many circles (including winning the 1953 National Book Award for Fiction, over such works as Hemingway's _The Old Man and the Sea_ and Steinbeck's _East of Eden_) _had to have_ stuck in the craw of _many_ influential literary critics of the time. And Ellison just happens to be the most historically recognizable examples; Zora Neale Hurston's career began in the 1920's, nor that any of these authors had any great deal of cultural capital within the larger field of literary criticism, nor were they some monolithic block that had a singular vision to impart upon the field, even were it in their power to do so (Ellison was not a particular of Hurtson's works, for instance).



> Agree to disagree. I think it's more of the same- old white men, many of them French, but not all of them, counting angels on the head of a pin.




You'll have to excuse me if I find it more than a bit naive to think that racial animus had entirely no impact on the fields of either philosophy or literary criticism at the dawn of the Civil Rights' movement.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Sadras

wingsandsword said:


> The very term "barbarian" comes from ancient Rome and their term for non-Roman peoples they considered unable to interact with them in a civilized fashion (which usually meant the Germanic peoples of central and western Europe).




Just a quibble, the term originates from the Ancient Greeks for those who did not speak Greek and follow Greek customs. I haven't read the entire thread so I might have been ninja'd.


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## Gradine

lowkey13 said:


> I guess it depends on what *class*of people you hang out with?
> 
> *shrug* Intentional fallacy works because you can use it to refer to multiple media for criticism. But hey, you do your thing.




I'm going to act as if your use of this word is not as dismissive and condescending as it comes across. 



> I ... can't even. Other than cherrypicking one single example, did you look at the people we are discussing? You know, the academy and the critics?
> 
> Or, for that matter, the difference between America (that you are dismissing, except when it is convenient to cite Ellison) and France (that you are using for later dates, except when you want to use America's civil rights movement).




It's not cherry-picking, it's using examples to make a point. And, apologies to the cultural differences between the U.S. and France, but globalism was a thing. You don't think the French weren't reading Ellison or Hurtson? Or that Americans weren't reading Barthes? Or that the French were unaware of the Civil Rights movement or in fact the broader global movement for racial justice, which was also, of course, happening in France? 

Or that I didn't notice that _The Verbal Icon_ was written by Americans? 



> Yes, racial animus did have a role to play; not always a great one.




That is the extent of my point, nothing more. I think where we may be disagreeing is to the degree.


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## Doug McCrae

Tolkien’s orcs are dark-skinned and “slant-eyed”.

"His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red."​"There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands."​"A grim dark band, four score at least of large, swart, slant-eyed Orcs."​
“Swart” is an archaic term for swarthy, meaning dark-skinned.

They are organised in tribes.

"Apparently the members of two or three quite different tribes were present, and they could not understand one another’s orc-speech."​"And these creatures, being filled with malice, hating even their own kind, quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements of their race, so that their Orkish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between different tribes."​
Almost all beings described as swart or swarthy in The Lord of the Rings are evil, with one exception – the men of Lossarnach and Lebennin, which is part of Gondor. All tribal beings are evil.

Orcs in 1e AD&D are “brown or brownish green with a bluish sheen”, live in tribes, and have witch doctors. “Witch doctors are tribal cleric/magic-users.” Orcs are of lawful evil alignment and have intelligence of “average (low)”. “Orcs are cruel and hate living things in general... They take slaves for work, food, and entertainment (torture, etc.)” Half-orcs are described as “mongrels”, and it should be noted that this word isn’t used for half-elves. “Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily.”

The term “witch doctor” was first used as an alternative for cunning man – a European folk healer and magician. However its coupling with the word “tribal” suggests that it instead refers to African witch doctors, a staple of colonial adventure fiction such as King Solomon’s Mines and Tarzan.

“Mongrel” is a pejorative term for someone who is biracial.

"It is scarcely necessary to cite the universal distrust, often contempt, that the half-breed between two sharply contrasted races inspires the world over. Belonging physically and spiritually to the lower race, but aspiring to recognition as one of the higher race, the unfortunate mongrel, in addition to a disharmonic physique, often inherits from one parent an unstable brain which is stimulated and at times overexcited by flashes of brilliancy from the other." - Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916)​
"There must have been nearly a hundred mongrel celebrants in the throng… all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type." - HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1928)​
Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden (1899) describes Filipinos as “Half-devil and half-child.” This seems an apt description of orcs, given they are both evil and of low intelligence.

The following four quotes are all from Ben Kiernan’s Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide (2007).

'Men of “position” declared “that the blackfellow was not a human being and that there was no more guilt in shooting him than in shooting a native dog”.' This is in the context of the Bathurst War in Australia, 1824.​'A juror called blacks “a set of monkies and the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better”.' Myall Creek Massacre, 1838.​'Defending the Black Hills in 1876, Lakota warriors killed Custer and 225 of his soldiers at the Little Big Horn. The San Francisco Chronicle now urged “no treating or temporizing with the red brutes,” whose “fiendish atrocities” made them “worse than wild beasts.”'​'Conservative Party spokesmen… described the Herero as “blood-thirsty beasts in the form of humans”.' German Southwest Africa, 1907.​
There are parallels with orcs here, both in their nature and in the way they are treated by PCs (and are expected to be treated.)


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## Hussar

I'd argue that Drow make for a perfect example of why we don't treat the author's intent as particularly important.  Does anyone think Gygax was particularly misogynistic?  I certainly don't.  There's no evidence of it as far as I know.  I imagine most people reading this probably don't think so either.

But, that doesn't change the fact that the only matriarchy described in D&D is a bunch of men enslaving women in BDSM outfits who worship, and this is a pretty key symbol, not a just spider goddess, but a specifically black widow spider, complete with hourglass symbol.  The symbology here is pretty blatant.

IOW, is it really much of a stretch to look at drow and see misogyny?  By adding in authorial intent, now we start making excuses - oh, it's not really a black widow symbol, but, an _empowering_ symbol of female strength because female spiders are bigger than male spiders.  

While that's true, it's kinda missing the bigger picture here.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> IOW, is it really much of a stretch to look at drow and see misogyny?  By adding in authorial intent, now we start making excuses - oh, it's not really a black widow symbol, but, an _empowering_ symbol of female strength because female spiders are bigger than male spiders.




I don't know the intent Gygax had with Drow, and I am hazy on the development of Drow mythology in the game (I am pretty sure it wasn't that fleshed out from the outset but I could be wrong). My feeling is the authors intent should still be considered here. It doesn't have to be the only thing that gets weighed. But we should at least be able to consider what the author was trying to achieve (we always have the option of saying the author failed to achieve that, or that the times have changed so much the message is lost on most readers). But I think if we can't even attempt to see things from the author's point of view we miss out on a huge aspect of it (and again, I am offering no conclusions on what Gygax intended here). I think an approach where you only weigh the author's intent is limiting, but so is one where we only weigh our own reactions. I am particularly concerned about the latter because I think it starts to limit our ability to handle media and text from other times and cultures.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

Author's intent presumably matters to whether or not we judge an author to be morally flawed.

But I take [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] to be talking about _the meaning of the work_. What tropes does it embody and express? What ideas does it draw upon, and evoke? And what is the political/moral significance of these things?

I don't know what JRRT had in mind when he wrote the passages that [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] has quoted just upthread. And I don't really care. Those are questions about his biography. But this thread is about the significance of those passages, and similar ideas, as they have been received into fantasy RPGing. And frankly I think they speak for themselves.


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## Gradine

Bedrockgames said:


> I am particularly concerned about the latter because I think it starts to limit our ability to handle media and text from other times and cultures.




One caveat to this is that it is very, very easy to fall into the trap of excusing attitudes or beliefs as being just a "product of the culture" or that "everyone was like that back then." This erases large swaths of people who may or may not have been "ahead of their time" but were/are certainly fighting for justice and raising a stink about it, regardless of their numbers or overall impact. 

Context is, of course, always important, but it's important not to shy away from or give a free pass to individuals for holding harmful beliefs or engaging in harmful behaviors.


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## Bedrockgames

Gradine said:


> One caveat to this is that it is very, very easy to fall into the trap of excusing attitudes or beliefs as being just a "product of the culture" or that "everyone was like that back then." This erases large swaths of people who may or may not have been "ahead of their time" but were/are certainly fighting for justice and raising a stink about it, regardless of their numbers or overall impact.
> 
> Context is, of course, always important, but it's important not to shy away from or give a free pass to individuals for holding harmful beliefs or engaging in harmful behaviors.




I understand that. But I also think what the writer actually believes does matter. Of course context is important. You shouldn't strip out context either. I just think there is an emerging lack of worldliness around this, where people can't seem to handle media that comes from perspectives that are out of step with our present culture. I am not saying folks need to accept all the messaging. It just reminds me of the the way for example, many Christian thinkers used to have a lot of difficulty reconciling their Christian culture with the texts of the classical world. To me there is a big difference between someone who is deliberately advocating for misogyny and someone who uses a trope people later regard as misogynistic, but who doesn't hold misogynistic. 

I think we also have to ask ourselves, if we get rid of this stuff, what we might be losing in the process. A lot of art doesn't hold to the values of later eras. This is particularly true if intent is ignored. But erasing it, or eliminating aspects of it we consider problematic strikes me as somewhat iconoclastic in the very old fashioned sense of the word. I mainly just encouraging some amount of caution here.


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## Hussar

It’s not about erasing anything though. It’s about taking those ideas and pulling out the good stuff. 

So we get Cthulhu mythos stuff which is good without the rampant racism which is bad. 

We get a broader drow culture which is far more nuanced which is good instead of a product of the times which is bad. 

We get orcs which are less “kill on sight because it’s evil” and so on. 

It’s not about erasing. It’s about redeeming.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> It’s not about erasing anything though. It’s about taking those ideas and pulling out the good stuff.
> 
> So we get Cthulhu mythos stuff which is good without the rampant racism which is bad.
> 
> We get a broader drow culture which is far more nuanced which is good instead of a product of the times which is bad.
> 
> We get orcs which are less “kill on sight because it’s evil” and so on.
> 
> It’s not about erasing. It’s about redeeming.




But you are still necessarily taking things out. Those things are being erased. Right? I think in the case of D&D it is a bit different because, we are really talking about evolution of a concept over time. But what if WOTC re-releases some of the original material again? Do we need to make changes to it for it to be safe for consumption? 

Redemptive language like that, makes me very uneasy where art and expression are concerned.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> We get orcs which are less “kill on sight because it’s evil” and so on.
> 
> .




By why can't we have both? I like more nuanced orcs. I use them myself. But I think there is some value in the thought experiment of a cosmology where you have moral forces that are tied to the creation of whole species. It doesn't mean you have to take those concepts and apply them to real world races. It is interesting in the way that Angels not having free will is interesting in terms of setting. By all means, I'd like to see other things done. I just feel like we are getting into very rigid territory about what is allowed and what isn't creatively. And that is especially concerning if we are removing authorial intent from consideration (what if someone makes such a setting to level a valid critic about racism in the modern world?)


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## Hussar

Well the reason we probably shouldn't use original orcs is being elucidated in this thread - the origin of orcs is grounded pretty strongly in racist depictions of various peoples.  Intentional or not, it's part of the history of the concept.  

The bigger question to me is, why would we bring back this concept?  What's the value here?  Is it worth it to perpetuate the ideas?  

And, as far as using fantasy to make a criticism of racism in the real world, again, who cares what the author intended?  The work needs to stand on its own.  If I'm reading the setting, it should be pretty obvious that this is meant to be allegory and read as such.  I really don't see the need to include the author in this.  If the work is so weak that it can't actually stand on its own, no amount of authorial intent is going to save it.  

"Don't be racist" is hardly "very rigid territory" is it?


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Well the reason we probably shouldn't use original orcs is being elucidated in this thread - the origin of orcs is grounded pretty strongly in racist depictions of various peoples.  Intentional or not, it's part of the history of the concept.
> 
> The bigger question to me is, why would we bring back this concept?  What's the value here?  Is it worth it to perpetuate the ideas?
> 
> And, as far as using fantasy to make a criticism of racism in the real world, again, who cares what the author intended?  The work needs to stand on its own.  If I'm reading the setting, it should be pretty obvious that this is meant to be allegory and read as such.  I really don't see the need to include the author in this.  If the work is so weak that it can't actually stand on its own, no amount of authorial intent is going to save it.
> 
> "Don't be racist" is hardly "very rigid territory" is it?




I think there is a lot here. But I think when we engage in this kind of dialogue, where its simply assumed disagreeing over orcs is the product of racism, rather than a genuine disagreement about what the orcs themselves actually represent, it is difficult to have a real conversation. It feels more like moralizing than dialogue. I suspect you and I probably are not that far apart politically and socially. But in terms of how we see art, history and the role of the author, we clearly differ. I don't assume that difference is a product of you being morally inferior to me. I assume it is a product of you reaching different conclusions through well intentioned reasoning. What concerns me here, is I see more and more rules being laid down about what is acceptable in a fantasy gaming setting. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for differences in interpretation. You say the author's intent shouldn't matter, but I don't think we can just limit this to our own subjective reactions. There is a world that exists outside of us. We have to reach beyond our own minds and see what the intention behind the creation was. Like I said though, your are free to disagree with the author's statements, or to say the author didn't achieve what they set out to do. I am just a bit worried because people are so quick to draw conclusions, and so fast to insist others share their conclusions. And often times we don't even disagree on the underlying points behind about society, we just disagree on what the art means.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Hussar said:


> I'd argue that Drow make for a perfect example of why we don't treat the author's intent as particularly important.  Does anyone think Gygax was particularly misogynistic?  I certainly don't.  There's no evidence of it as far as I know.  I imagine most people reading this probably don't think so either.
> 
> But, that doesn't change the fact that the only matriarchy described in D&D is a bunch of men enslaving women in BDSM outfits who worship, and this is a pretty key symbol, not a just spider goddess, but a specifically black widow spider, complete with hourglass symbol.  The symbology here is pretty blatant.
> 
> IOW, is it really much of a stretch to look at drow and see misogyny?  By adding in authorial intent, now we start making excuses - oh, it's not really a black widow symbol, but, an _empowering_ symbol of female strength because female spiders are bigger than male spiders.
> 
> While that's true, it's kinda missing the bigger picture here.




I have always felt the core “hidden” idea of the Drow had less in common with standard misogyny and more in common with the biology of spiders- particularly those of the Black Widow variety.


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## Dannyalcatraz

> Those things are being erased. Right?




You could look at it that way.  You could also look at it as “new discoveries have forced us to re-evaluate our concept that _________ are inherently and irredeemably evil.” within the cultures of the game world reality.  

In which case, it’s not erasure so much as revision and refinement of thinking in the light of new evidence.


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## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> You could look at it that way.  You could also look at it as “new discoveries have forced us to re-evaluate our concept that _________ are inherently and irredeemably evil.” within the cultures of the game world reality.
> 
> In which case, it’s not erasure so much as revision and refinement of thinking in the light of new evidence.




But this thread is talking about orcs in gaming as a whole, not just say D&D (where you expect the concept to get refined from edition to edition). Again all I am saying here, is there is a clear point of view being expressed that these kinds of approaches to orcs should not be accepted in gaming culture. And I feel like the room for disagreement being allowed is incredibly narrow. I can totally appreciate where Hussar is coming from, and if Hussar doesn't want those kinds of tropes in his game, I can respect that. But should all creators of orcs in all settings have to abide by Hussar's conclusions on this? I think there is a lot more room for reasonable disagreement on this topic (on whether orcs really are a colonialist trope, whether they are racist, on what impact they even have on the broader culture). I just don't understand why we are all expected to reach the same conclusion here. I do hear what Hussar is saying. I don't agree with his conclusions. I think more nuanced orcs are great. I think it would be a shame though if that is all anyone did, and there were not games that included orcs as evil. It is a trope that is very mythic, and I think can work. It doesn't have to be a bad thing.


----------



## Hussar

I think you're missing my point.

I'm certainly not saying your interpretation is wrong.  It's not.  it's a quite valid interpretation.  However, the racist underpinnings is also a valid interpretation.

IOW, there is no "right" interpretation of orcs. There is no single thing that orcs "actually represent".

The question is, how do we balance these different interpretations?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> I think you're missing my point.
> 
> I'm certainly not saying your interpretation is wrong.  It's not.  it's a quite valid interpretation.  However, the racist underpinnings is also a valid interpretation.
> 
> IOW, there is no "right" interpretation of orcs. There is no single thing that orcs "actually represent".
> 
> The question is, how do we balance these different interpretations?




I don't know that we have to arrive at one balanced conclusion. There isn't a single orc we all have to share. There is room for all kinds of approaches to orcs in the hobby. Do we really need a single guideline that everyone abides by (even if it is a balance of the various interpretations)? And again, I am saying this as someone who tried to make more nuanced orcs, and specifically set out to make my orcs in Sertorius as having both highly advanced cultures and less advanced cultures (some of them are hill tribes, but some are operating at the level of Rome at its height). I like that stuff. But I feel like we are establishing new standards and I am not sure it is wise to jettison the idea of irredeemably evil orcs.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> By why can't we have both? I like more nuanced orcs. I use them myself. But I think there is some value in the thought experiment of a cosmology where you have moral forces that are tied to the creation of whole species. It doesn't mean you have to take those concepts and apply them to real world races. It is interesting in the way that Angels not having free will is interesting in terms of setting. By all means, I'd like to see other things done. I just feel like we are getting into very rigid territory about what is allowed and what isn't creatively. And that is especially concerning if we are removing authorial intent from consideration (what if someone makes such a setting to level a valid critic about racism in the modern world?)



Sure, but, as you suggest, we don't have to play into racist-coding to do so. 

I'm not here to win points for originality, just to contribute another "my orcs are different." I was asked by my players to describe the orcs in my upcoming vaguely Greco-Roman Underworld game using Black Hack. And I will admit that the more that I played around with this setting idea, the more absurd certain parts became, and my orcs were one such element. So I told them, "They are pale-skinned pig-faced orcs who serve the Demon Prince of Carnage, Bloodlust, and Conquest. Think about that guy on the internet who gets a raging boner about 'This is SPARTA!', Imperial Rome, or the Vikings. They represent an unbridled over the top machismo. In-game, they are dangerous. But as players, please don't take them seriously, and just have fun with it."


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Sure, but, as you suggest, we don't have to play into racist-coding to do so.




Of course we don't. But my point was that people are going to have honest disagreements over whether something is racially coded, whether it is a problem, etc. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes we can get too caught up in making things as wholesome as possible, and miss some of the rough contours. Your orcs would be an example. I could actually see people having issues with "This is Sparta Style orcs" on a number of grounds. Personally I think they sound very entertaining to have in a campaign. I wouldn't want people to start thinking the orcs you proposed should be off limits, because the over the top masculinity could be a problematic trope.


----------



## Immortal Sun

Bedrockgames said:


> Of course we don't. But my point was that people are going to have honest disagreements over whether something is racially coded, whether it is a problem, etc. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes we can get too caught up in making things as wholesome as possible, and miss some of the rough contours. Your orcs would be an example. I could actually see people having issues with "This is Sparta Style orcs" on a number of grounds. Personally I think they sound very entertaining to have in a campaign. I wouldn't want people to start thinking the orcs you proposed should be off limits, because the over the top masculinity could be a problematic trope.




There also exists the perennial problem that outside of humans (though rarely depicted) and possibly elves (assuming you include such material) there is little depiction of internal diversity within a species.  It's something I've endevored to include in any games playing on a "rule of 3" that each species should have at least 3 notable variants.  Generally I include brown desert-dwelling nomadic or arab-styled orcs, green "jungle" savage or islander sailor orcs, and "black" militaristic or generally LE orcs.  

So it can sometimes be rather *glaring* when an entire species is a play on a single racial or cultural trope.  Especially when by comparison, the typical primary player race (humans) has been shown at length to have cultural, racial and physical (at least superficial) diversity both in the game material and in the settings themselves (exampled by having multiple different human civilizations with different cultures and sometimes physical appearances).  

IE: It's one thing to have drunken scottsman parody dwarves.  It's another thing to have those be the _only kind of dwarves_.  

I'm not saying everyone _must_ do this or that it's appropriate for every game.  Only that it's worth asking the question: if humans are so diverse, why isn't eveyone?

Counter IE: I recently made a futuristic Drow-centric campaign.  I stuck to my "rule of 3" but kept it narrower.  There are "light Drow" running a rather monochrome grey-to-black spectrum.  There are (self proclaimed) "high-Drow" running a purplish spectrum, and "common drow" running a royal blue (that almost indigo color) spectrum.  Their society answered the question of "why don't they have a wide array of diversity by now?" with "they practice strict breeding programs, utilizing both social pressure and government incentives to produce more or less of one ethnicity than another.  It's not a _nice_ answer, but it is an _appropriate_ one.  

Sometimes the answers to important questions _aren't_ nice.  That doesn't necessarily make them _wrong_, but attempting to answer these questions with an answer other than "they just *are*" can be a god way to stem off potential perception problems.


----------



## pemerton

A concrete example: I was re-reading the Iliad a little while ago. Women are being taken as booty, divided up (as spoils) among the Acheans, etc. How would I teach this to a contemporary literature class - which, in my country at least, will be more than 50% women in their late teens or early 20s (ie examples of the very spoils at issue in the story).

Am I just meant to observe that Homer and his (male?) audience didn't object to rape in war and move on? I'm not sure that's going to cut it.

Another example: the pulps are full of highly gendered sexual fantasy. Patrice Louinet, in the critical notes to his critical edition of REH's Conan stories, discusses this aspect of REH's writing and how it related to magazine covers of semi-naked women (which promoted sales). And this aspect of the pulps very obviously bleeds into D&D, and not just in respect of art work. The "random harlot" sub-table to the City/Town Encounter Matrix in Appendix C of Gygax's DMG isn't just an homage to the pulps: it's a reproduction of the sexual fantasy that those earlier swords & sorcery "harlots" were evoking.

If WotC has decided it wants to market D&D to an audience of women as well as men, it makes sense to re-consider whether it still wants its works to reproduce those particular tropes and ideas.

And if we, as hobby participants, are reflecting on the sorts of tropes and ideas we want to be taken as standard for our shared fictions, do we want pulp-era "random harlots" or not? This isn't about "erasure" - no one is burning old copies of the DMG, nor disputing the pulp origins of much modern fantasy. It's about what aesthetic and broader values we want to express in the works of art that we, here and now, are creating.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

The last Orcish variants I made for a homebrew included a lift from Nehwon Ghouls- transparent flesh.  The subspecies were distinguished by the color of their bones (red, black, green).

Racist _stereotypes_ not really possible.  Racism still viable as a plot device.


----------



## Lanefan

Hussar said:


> IOW, there is no "right" interpretation of orcs. There is no single thing that orcs "actually represent".



Other than guardians of pie, of course.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Lanefan said:


> Other than guardians of pie, of course.




“_*grrrrrrr*_  You there!  Know that I am Kursk Gorespear of the Pieguard Tribe.  Unhand that pastry...or I will unhand *you*!”


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> And if we, as hobby participants, are reflecting on the sorts of tropes and ideas we want to be taken as standard for our shared fictions, do we want pulp-era "random harlots" or not?




In my Tuesday Thule game running 'Beyond the Shadow of a Dream' from White Dwarf #61, the PCs ended up spending a good deal of time in Clouds brothel. With my 11 year old son in the group, much polite conversation ensued!!


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I think when we engage in this kind of dialogue, where its simply assumed disagreeing over orcs is the product of racism, rather than a genuine disagreement about what the orcs themselves actually represent, it is difficult to have a real conversation.



Who is saying that disagreement over orcs is the product of racism? In this thread I (and others) have claimed that _orcs_ as presented by JRRT and as inherited by D&D are expressions of racist tropes and ideas.

I think some who disagree with that are themselves trapped within (perhaps rather similar) racist tropes and attitudes. In my experience it's not uncommon for some white people to not be very sensitive to the way certain received elements of (say) British or American culture express and reproduce racist tropes.

Some others who disagree may be very capable at analysing racist tropes and disagree. For instance, if I recall correctly Bryan Magee in his book Wagner and Philosophy argues that Wagner's dwarves in his Ring Cycle are _not_ anti-Semitic caricatures. I tend to think Magee is wrong, but I don't think Magee is insensitive to the expression of anti-Semitic tropes. (I think he may have been led a bit astray by his evident admiration for Wagner.)



Bedrockgames said:


> What concerns me here, is I see more and more rules being laid down about what is acceptable in a fantasy gaming setting. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for differences in interpretation. You say the author's intent shouldn't matter, but I don't think we can just limit this to our own subjective reactions. There is a world that exists outside of us. We have to reach beyond our own minds and see what the intention behind the creation was.



To be honest, this reads like special pleading -_why can't I still have my jungle savages and my harlots without anyone judging me for it?_

I don't care what Gygax intended with his random harlot table. Was his intention to pander to juvenile male fantasies about readily available sex? Was his intention to emulate and evoke the world of the fantasy pulps? Was his intention to celebrate the contribution made to humanity by sex workers? I am talking about _the work he produced_, not the work he hoped or wanted to produce. And this, as I take it, is [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point: we are not discussing what authors hoped to do, we are discussing what authors have actually done in producing _these works_ with _these tropes_ and evoking _these ideas_. If they didn't know what they were doing, or didn't care, or thought it was just innocent fun - well, that tells me something about them and their personal history, but it doesn't tell me anything about their work.

If someone wants to defend the presence of a random harlot table in their FRPG, then _do that_. Don't explain to me that Gygax meant no harm by it. _Explain to me why it does no harm; why it is a good thing_. After all, if you think there is such reason, that justifies Gygax's decision to include it, then you should be able to reproduce it. And if you can't adduce such a reason, then that pretty much speaks for itself, doesn't it?

To reiterate a point I made upthread, I am saying these things as a citizen of a country in which it is routine for prominent national newspapers to publish blatantly racist cartoons, and when criticised for doing so to hide behind arguments of _we didn't mean it_ and _free speech_. But free speech is a red herring - no one is threatening to censor your latest RPG project that features inherently evil swarthy, scimitar-wielding orcs. And the fact that you didn't mean it - well, lot's of people do and don't mean lots of things, but the complaint is about the work produced, not the intention behind it.



Bedrockgames said:


> I am just a bit worried because people are so quick to draw conclusions, and so fast to insist others share their conclusions. And often times we don't even disagree on the underlying points behind about society, we just disagree on what the art means.



Welcome to the world - often people disagree.

But you present this as if you are being asked to give something up - _no more swarthy sword-fodder orcs_ - by unreasonable others. You're completely ignoring that _you_ are asking others to give something up - you're asking others to tolerate the widespread presence in the shared gaming culture of tropes and ideas that directly draw upon and evoke racist sentiments about them. And why should they do that? Why should they yield to your preferences when you aren't prepared to yield to theirs?

If you now turn around an insist that they are wrong - that, say, these inherently evil swarthy orcs _don't_ draw upon and evoke racist sentiment - well, now you're doing exactly what you've criticised others for doing, namely, insisting that everyone should accept your aesthetic judgement.

Appeals to toleration, or mutuality, or reciprocity, are at best ineffective and at worst hypocritical until a proper acknowledgement and account is given _on all side_ of what people are being asked to give up, or to tolerate. And that's precisely what a thread like this is trying to unpack.



Bedrockgames said:


> people are going to have honest disagreements over whether something is racially coded, whether it is a problem, etc. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes we can get too caught up in making things as wholesome as possible, and miss some of the rough contours.



So if a cigar sometimes is just a cigar, are you asserting that JRRT's orcs _do not_ draw upon and express racist tropes and ideas? If not, then what's the point of that remark.

And of course there can be honest disagreements over what is racially coded. But the judgements of people of colour on these things are generally where one would start. And I've not seen anyone actually present an argument, let alone a good one, that the stuff [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] quoted is _not_ racially coded. Nor have I seen anyone explain how authorial intention is relevant to that. How is Gygax's opinion on what _he_ believed to be the significance of the use of the word "mongrel" to describe half-orcs possibly relevant to whether or not he was reproducing racist tropes and evoking racist ideas?


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> In my Tuesday Thule game running 'Beyond the Shadow of a Dream' from White Dwarf #61, the PCs ended up spending a good deal of time in Clouds brothel. With my 11 year old son in the group, much polite conversation ensued!!



I'm not 100% sure where you're inviting me to go with this anecdote, so I'll just respond with the thought it provokes in me - what would I do if one of my daughters (of a similar age to your son) pulled my DMG of the shelf and asked me what a Brazen Strumpet, Saucy Tart or Wanton Wench is? What's the answer to that question that explains how this random table is contributing something valuable to the FRPG hobby?

Admittedly I haven't thought as hard about an answer to that question as some other questions I've pondered in my life - but no obvious answer is springing to mind! What I have thought of, though, is that it is harder to explain its presence in the DMG than to explain (say) certain elements of REH stories that my kids might come across if they were to pull my Conan books of the shelf. After all, if they read Conan saying something of that sort to a woman I can always explain it's a depiction of a character whom, perhaps, one wouldn't want to emulate in all respects; _and_ I can explain that the author of that character had views that, perhaps, one wouldn't want to emulate in all respects.

But the DMG table isn't in the voice of a character. It's a recommendation or a procedure for the creation of our own fictions, which (presumably) we want to be proud of rather than need to explain away in embarrassment. So why does it include advice about including Wanton Wenches in our fiction?


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> W
> I don't care what Gygax intended with his random harlot table. Was his intention to pander to juvenile male fantasies about readily available sex? Was his intention to emulate and evoke the world of the fantasy pulps? Was his intention to celebrate the contribution made to humanity by sex workers?




I expect the first two; but mostly the second.

IMC I just used a lot of euphemisms like "ladies who entertain gentlemen".

I don't think I've ever used that 1e AD&D table. I remember back when Gygax was alive, having a jokey dig at him on these boards for his including it in the DMG - I think this might have been my only interaction with him! He took it in good spirit.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> I'm not 100% sure where you're inviting me to go with this anecdote




Possibly a slight chuckle, especially if you remember that adventure, which is from 1985! BTW it treats the prostitute characters respectfully; the tone is quite adult, in the grown-up sense.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I expect the first two; but mostly the second.



That seems right to me, too.



S'mon said:


> Possibly a slight chuckle, especially if you remember that adventure, which is from 1985! BTW it treats the prostitute characters respectfully; the tone is quite adult, in the grown-up sense.



I don't know the adventure. But do you know the early ones republished in BoWD? I think it might be The Lichway (which was "emulated" without acknowledgement in Death Frost Doom, but that's another story) that has a very "pandering to juvenile fantasty" room in it, I think with an evil cleric who will readily doff her armour! (Or maybe MU? but I seem to recall Cleric). So if the 1985 one is grown-up about it, well that's an improvement at least.



S'mon said:


> I don't think I've ever used that 1e AD&D table. I remember back when Gygax was alive, having a jokey dig at him on these boards for his including it in the DMG - I think this might have been my only interaction with him! He took it in good spirit.



I never interacted with Gygax at all. As far as the table is concerned, I don't think I've ever actually used it but I can't recall for certain. I don't know if you remember the bit about the harlot having a 20% chance to be a thief - I do know that, at some stage in the 1980s when I was in a completist mood, I made a note beneath that paragraph that there is also a 10% chance for her to be a Houri (lest we forget that other questionable contribution to the game).


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> That seems right to me, too.
> 
> I don't know the adventure. But do you know the early ones republished in BoWD? I think it might be The Lichway (which was "emulated" without acknowledgement in Death Frost Doom, but that's another story) that has a very "pandering to juvenile fantasty" room in it, I think with an evil cleric who will readily doff her armour! (Or maybe MU? but I seem to recall Cleric). So if the 1985 one is grown-up about it, well that's an improvement at least.




I just checked the adventure - Dark Odo, the 'saturnine' villain M-U in Licheway, survived & became a major NPC IMC as the Enchantress of Carchimish - I didn't remember her being slutty. Looks like you are thinking rather of the captive M-U Pinella, but it (the scene) is actually quite a lot worse than you remember and not at all grandma-friendly.



_S'mon's Dark Odo - a result of googling 'saturnine'
_

Edit: Actually I see the adventure does refer to "an earthen pot containing the ashes of Dark Odo's  past lovers" - clearly she is a Strong Empowered Woman!


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Looks like you are thinking rather of the captive M-U Pinella, but it (the scene) is actually quite a lot worse than you remember and not at all grandma-friendly.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Actually I see the adventure does refer to "an earthen pot containing the ashes of Dark Odo's  past lovers" - clearly she is a Strong Empowered Woman!



I'm going to have to pull this one off the shelf over the weekend and adjust my memories to fit with the realities.

The _ashes of past lovers thing_ is just . . . I'm not quite sure what the right word is, but it's like a pulp caricature taken to the next level.

Last weekend I watched Star Wars (Episode IV) with my daughters, as one had been lobbying for a while to re-watch it. Some of Han Solo's dialogue - "Either I'm going to kill her, or I'm beginning to like her . . ." (have I got that right?) and "Still, do you think a princess and a guy like me . . ." - takes on a different complexion (for me, at least) in that viewing company. It's been a few years since I last watched the Bogart detective classics (The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon) but, at least in my memory (and now maybe my love for Bogart and noir is distorting my recollections!), they have slightly deeper characterisation to help give some context to, or at least slightly ameliorate, the pulp tropes.

I've got nothing against romance and sex in my RPGing (subject to general concerns of good taste). While it's rarely at the forefront of my games it's often a part of them, and I don't mind filing down some of the rougher corners that can be part of this stuff in real life - these are fantasy games after all! But can't we just have some flirtation and/or bonking without these weird lurid overtones?


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> The _ashes of past lovers thing_ is just . . . I'm not quite sure what the right word is, but it's like a pulp caricature taken to the next level...
> 
> ...But can't we just have some flirtation and/or bonking without these weird lurid overtones?




We can... Personally I like weird lurid overtones _sometimes
_ - depends on the game & setting, and what's appropriate for the audience. In the Primeval Thule website designers' notes they say they specifically wanted it to evoke the lurid (their word) pulp tropes of bygone days - although the actual published stuff is considerably less lurid than their stated intent. So going over _The Licheway_ this morning I have quite the desire to run modified versions of it, and maybe Halls of Tizun Thane too, again, this time in Thule. I think I'll run it in the Thule group NOT including my son though. 

Edit: Also, since it goes beyond PG-13 I think I'll put a content warning on the Meetup announcement.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I don't care what Gygax intended with his random harlot table. Was his intention to pander to juvenile male fantasies about readily available sex? Was his intention to emulate and evoke the world of the fantasy pulps? Was his intention to celebrate the contribution made to humanity by sex workers? I am talking about _the work he produced_, not the work he hoped or wanted to produce. And this, as I take it, is [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point: we are not discussing what authors hoped to do, we are discussing what authors have actually done in producing _these works_ with _these tropes_ and evoking _these ideas_. If they didn't know what they were doing, or didn't care, or thought it was just innocent fun - well, that tells me something about them and their personal history, but it doesn't tell me anything about their work.




But here I think intentions matter a lot. If someone is seeking to call back to the pulp genre, it may not be to your sensibilities, but I think is leagues different than if he is doing it because he has a disdain for women (and I think reasonable readers can see that distinction and make a judgement on their own about). I am not making any conclusion about Gygax (as I mentioned I wasn't informed enough to do so). But if the intent is clear, I don't think this kind of element needs to be excised from the hobby (I can certainly see why it wouldn't be in a new edition of D&D, but this thread isn't just about D&D). And I am not saying people have to like random harlots in their tables. What I'd hope is there can be games that have that kind stuff, and their can be games that don't, and people make up their own minds. What it feels like to me is people are trying to establish a norm in the gaming culture where that stuff is just deemed wholly impermissible or always automatically bad. And I think a large part of that is because we are moving so far from even considering the intent of the author. Certainly the impact of a work should be considered. I just don't get why the other half of the equation shouldn't be factored. Just to bring it to Tolkien's orcs, there it seems intent matters a lot to both sides of the argument (because people are drawing on his personal letters where some of the possible racial connections seem more clear (and for the record I don't know where I stand on Tolkien's orcs, as I just haven't sorted through all the info on them). But I think in that instance too, what he intended should be a big factor in our conclusions.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Who is saying that disagreement over orcs is the product of racism? In this thread I (and others) have claimed that _orcs_ as presented by JRRT and as inherited by D&D are expressions of racist tropes and ideas.




I was responding to a post by Hussar, where I took that to be the implication (but it is an argument I have encountered many times in these discussions, where reaching a different conclusion about whether orcs are racist or colonialist, is perceived as evidence of a person being racist).


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I think some who disagree with that are themselves trapped within (perhaps rather similar) racist tropes and attitudes. In my experience it's not uncommon for some white people to not be very sensitive to the way certain received elements of (say) British or American culture express and reproduce racist tropes.




I am not particularly invested in the trope myself. As I said, when I use orcs in my own campaigns, I tend to treat them like human cultures, with a wide variety of types. So they don't really fall in line with the Tolkien Orcs or the D&D orcs as evil. I also tend to have orcs that are pretty advanced as well as hill tribe orcs. So they pretty much operate like humans (and in my setting they are cleaner because they have a heightened sense of smell and value good hygiene). And to be clear, I get that the concept in D&D has evolved. I have no objection to D&D shifting the concept to be more appealing to the widest possible audience. But this thread is about the hobby as a whole and fantasy as a whole. And I think we are establishing guidelines that are well intentioned but maybe misguided. I can totally understand trying to eliminate unsavory and racist themes or concepts from one's work (I do that myself, I don't want to be racist toward anyone). But when we start looking for things that are not immediately obvious unless you dive into the history of a genre, then I think it gets a lot sketchier. I can definitely see how the way it was done in the Lord of the Rings movie (which you mentioned) is going to resonate as viewers as racial (I thought it did when I saw it). But when I see standard orcs in most game books today, I don't think the connection to colonialism or racism is at all as clear. Obviously if you go back to the pulp stuff, you will see more of that (but you will see racism in those books in general because the times were so much more racist---it isn't just the monsters, often the writers will just clearly state racist sentiments). But that will be true of anything. Any trope that comes from a culture is going to have traces of something bad from that culture initially. How pure do we need to make every trope? Right now we are focused on colonialism and racism, but you can look at any cultural legend or myth under a microscope and start dissecting it for problematic content. And that is the issue I am having with some of this stuff. So much of requires an advanced understanding of the history, of the critical arguments, etc. It isn't stuff you just automatically understand in most instances looking at the material. Especially with the colonialist stuff. And one of the larger problems is it feels like the content isn't getting better or more interesting, it is just getting cleaner and less problematic.


----------



## S'mon

Bedrockgames said:


> But when I see standard orcs in most game books today, I don't think the connection to colonialism or racism is at all as clear.




I don't think anyone could credibly make a claim that the pink-snouted green militaristic orcs in the 1983 D&D Cartoon, derived from the 1977 1e AD&D MM, evoked any colonialist tropes. Ironically the claim is much stronger with WotC's barbaric 3e D&D+ Orcs of 2000+.

Likewise comparing Ralph Bakshi's LoTR orcs to Jackson's LotR Maori orcs, used for both Saruman's Uruk-Hai and (to a lesser extent) Sauron's Black Orcs of Mordor.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> So if a cigar sometimes is just a cigar, are you asserting that JRRT's orcs _do not_ draw upon and express racist tropes and ideas? If not, then what's the point of that remark.




I am not asserting anything about JRR Tolkien’s orcs. As I said, I haven’t formed a conclusion on his orcs specifically. But having been in these discussions before and seen the evidence before (text pointed to here as well as rebuttal text) I think it is much more cloudy in his case than people are making it out to be. A lot of the stuff people are posting are limited quotes from Wikipedia. With JRR Tolkien, I think it is even more murky because in most accounts I’ve read of him personally he fidnt seem particularly racist by the standards of the time. Again though I could be missing something.

Part of what troubles me about this debate though, is the level of intense scrutiny required to make these arguments. It is been a while since I read Lird of the Rings but just by memory, it seems like that connection isn’t clear from the book alone. That you need to build a case drawingbon letters, ideas about racial coding, etc. And this isn’t information most people have when they open the monster manual and see an orc for the first time. So it feels like there is a split in the community that is based on education levels or how academically minded one is. I’ve felt for a long while there is a divide in this hobby between the people with advanced degrees and those of us without them. And we seem to speak a very different language on these issues. Obviously it isn’t always literally about the degrees (some people are just very well read on a particular topic). And do the bar to entry up creatively engage the material in a way that is regarded as ethically okay, seems to privilege people with Masters degrees and more. I realize this may seem like a silly argument but I definitely feel like there is a complex etiquette emerging in this stuff that demands a deep understanding of pretty  academic terms.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> To reiterate a point I made upthread, I am saying these things as a citizen of a country in which it is routine for prominent national newspapers to publish blatantly racist cartoons, and when criticised for doing so to hide behind arguments of _we didn't mean it_ and _free speech_. But free speech is a red herring - no one is threatening to censor your latest RPG project that features inherently evil swarthy, scimitar-wielding orcs. And the fact that you didn't mean it - well, lot's of people do and don't mean lots of things, but the complaint is about the work produced, not the intention behind it.




I just want to be clear here, I don't want to put out books that feature "inherently evil swarthy, scimitar wielding orcs".

I don't know what people are calling for. But if they are not calling for substantive change in what is permissible, what is the purpose of the thread? When these debates first started, people said things like 'its okay to like problematic things', and that seemed pretty reasonable. It is one thing to analyze something for content deemed problematic, and another to call for it to be censored. But it feels like things are shifting and it is becoming less and less acceptable to creatively engage things that some might see as problematic. Again, i am not sure what is being called for here (a paradigm shift?). But ether I think it is important for all viewpoints to weigh in because at the very least, we are moving into something culturally that are all going to all have to operate under (for good or bad). If it were the 90s or early 2000s a conversation like this might have much less impact on actual content. But in the age of social media it is very easy for individual products to get caught up in this stuff. And it is also very easy for publishers to alter what they put out, even if it is entirely legitimate, out of fear that it might be perceived by even just a few people as having a colonialist element. To my point in the other post, for people with the background in these ideas, that might be easy to navigate. I consider myself pretty educated, but I have to admit I find this stuff very difficult to navigate. It is like you don't know where to step and what is going to be deemed an issue. And I do think that stifles creativity .


----------



## Bedrockgames

Immortal Sun said:


> So it can sometimes be rather *glaring* when an entire species is a play on a single racial or cultural trope.  Especially when by comparison, the typical primary player race (humans) has been shown at length to have cultural, racial and physical (at least superficial) diversity both in the game material and in the settings themselves (exampled by having multiple different human civilizations with different cultures and sometimes physical appearances).
> .




I think the tendency toward monocultures is just to make them easier to use in the setting (and possibly easier to handle in the design phase too). But I don't think monoculture races are as ubiquitous as they once were. 

In terms of the orcs being a stand in for one racial group. I think it isn't just one racial trope being put into orcs here. Obviously most of the cultural features of anything in a fantasy setting will have some basis in reality. Orcs support a lot of different kinds of cultures. Some orcs I've encountered in games seem vaguely Mongolian in culture, but I've just as frequently seen orcs that are more like vikings or celts. And the visual depiction varies a lot too. I just don't think it is that crazy for most people to see an orc and not see the racial or historical issues people are invoking. 

I think it is also important for us to keep in mind, drawing on a real world culture to paint something vividly in a gaming context, doesn't automatically mean it is a commentary. And again, I think this is where we are starting to get a led a bit astray by completely throwing out authorial intent, and saying only our reactions to the stuff matters. If someone is drawing on a cultural feature because it is aesthetically interesting for the group being described in the setting, should they limit themselves to only elements that can be perceived as a positive or neutral? Is it okay to have 'warlike' anything in a setting or is that too problematic. Or can only certain things be warlike? And it feels like a lot of what is being called for would almost naturally lead to a colonialist setting (because everything is being framed in terms of colonialism, so it becomes a matter of just making sure our settings are morally appropriate commentaries on colonialism----it will still be playing out the colonialist tropes, just with our sympathies weighted toward the colonized. But i think few gamers actually have colonialism in mind at all when they sit down to play a fantasy gaming setting.


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## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> A lot of the stuff people are posting are limited quotes from Wikipedia...
> 
> Part of what troubles me about this debate though, is the level of intense scrutiny required to make these arguments. It is been a while since I read Lird of the Rings but just by memory, it seems like that connection isn’t clear from the book alone. That you need to build a case drawingbon letters, ideas about racial coding, etc.



The quotes in my previous post were all from The Lord of the Rings, one of the most popular books ever written. Repeated below.

"His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red."​"There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands."​"A grim dark band, four score at least of large, swart, slant-eyed Orcs."​
While "swart", meaning dark-skinned, is obscure, I'm pretty sure everyone understands the meaning of "slant-eyed".


----------



## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> The quotes in my previous post were all from The Lord of the Rings, one of the most popular books ever written. Repeated below.
> "His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red."​"There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands."​"A grim dark band, four score at least of large, swart, slant-eyed Orcs."​
> While "swart", meaning dark-skinned, is obscure, I'm pretty sure everyone understands the meaning of "slant-eyed".




I see that. But I can also see how people would reach different conclusions about it. And to be honest I didn’t notice it myself until very recently when it was pointed out to me (and I read the trilogy about three times). I am not saying your conclusion is incorrect. I haven’t read lord of the Rings in years, and I am not a someone who has read much about it beyond the trilogy and the hobbit. But this doesn’t all rest on Tolkien. We are also talking about current day depictions of orcs.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> So going over _The Licheway_ this morning I have quite the desire to run modified versions of it, and maybe Halls of Tizun Thane too, again, this time in Thule. I think I'll run it in the Thule group NOT including my son though.



All I remmember about Halls at the moment is the mirrors and the Guan-Deeko (sp?). I'll have to check it for luridness (are you also working from BoWD scenarios v1?).

I find the apparent lack of luridness in some of this early stuff . . . weird? oddly fetishistic? Even random harlots would stand out less, or less strikingly, if there was some suggestion somewhere that sex and sexuality (and women!) might figure in the lives of PCs in other ways.


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## Immortal Sun

Bedrockgames said:


> ...But i think few gamers actually have colonialism in mind at all when they sit down to play a fantasy gaming setting.




Skipping ahead since I don't have much else to say other than "i agree", I just want to reply to this part:  I REALLY want to play Dragons Conquer America.


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## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> But I can also see how people would reach different conclusions about it.



Afaict the only other reference to similar eye shape in LotR is "Bill Ferny's squint-eyed companion", the southerner spy.

"Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a sallow face with sly, slanting eyes; but it vanished at once.
 ‘So that’s where that southerner is hiding!’ he thought. ‘He looks more than half like a goblin.’"​
I don't know what conclusion can be drawn other than that the text is associating a particular eye shape, corresponding to that of East Asians, with evil.


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## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> Afaict the only other reference to similar eye shape in the text is "Bill Ferny's squint-eyed companion", the southerner spy.
> 
> "Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a sallow face with sly, slanting eyes; but it vanished at once.
> ‘So that’s where that southerner is hiding!’ he thought. ‘He looks more than half like a goblin.’"​
> I don't know what conclusion can be drawn other than that a particular eye shape, corresponding to that of East Asians, is being associated with evil.




And southern hobbits apparently as well. It is a shape of an eye. Asian people are not the only ones in the planet who could be described that way (there are europeans with this kind of eye feature as well, as well as many other groups). I am not saying its this enormous reach for you to get to that conclusion. I am just saying, can see where someone might think he is invoking something else, or simply drawing on the shape for convenience/aesthetics, without any thought that it is meant to the group of people it might be associated with. I gave a bunch of religious zealots in my campaign blonde hair. It was an entirely arbitrary decision. I knew it was a feature associated with northern europeans but I didn't intend it to invoke them in any particular. I just borrowed that feature. This is why I do think intent is important. If we looked into Tolkien's life and found all kinds of troubling thoughts about race, then sure, I can see it being a more closed case. But the accounts I've seen of him have painted a man with a great deal of empathy for other people who seemed to hold racism in disdain. So I think that does shape how I am going to read what the purpose is there. 

And again, I am not saying you have to agree. I just think this isn't as clear as people are making it out to be.


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## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> I gave a bunch of religious zealots in my campaign blonde hair. It was an entirely arbitrary decision. I knew it was a feature associated with northern europeans but I didn't intend it to invoke them in any particular. I just borrowed that feature. This is why I do think intent is important.



In a superhero scenario I wrote the only black NPC, out of about thirty, was a catgirl. That's a racist association - black people and animals - even though it didn't occur to me at the time, only years later. That's one reason, among many, why I think intent isn't important.


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## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> In a superhero scenario I wrote the only black NPC, out of about thirty, was a catgirl. That's a racist association - black people and animals - even though it didn't occur to me at the time, only years later. That's one reason, among many, why I think intent isn't important.




But your intent was important. You were not intentionally making that association (cat woman has been portrayed by both black and white actresses, I would have assumed you were inspired by that).


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## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> But your intent was important.



No because what matters is what I've put out into the world. The text is accessible to others. My mind is not. The text is racist, purely because of the associations of ideas it contains. When I say ideas I'm not talking about ideas in the head of the author. The ideas are in the words, because words have meaning. What gives them meaning is not the author, or the reader, but the wider community of language users.

Intent sometimes matters. We may want to try to understand what is in the author's head for a number of reasons. But it doesn't matter when deciding whether or not a text is racist.


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## Doug McCrae

Some further thoughts about intent:

The minds of others are ultimately unknowable so calls to consider intent are really calls to examine a wider range of texts or other media before determining meaning. These media - personal diaries, internet message board posts, interviews with the author - are probably going to be much less accessible than rpgs and popular novels.

If we need to consider intent before judging a text to be racist do we also need to do so before judging it to be anti-racist? For example, ignoring intent allows me to easily say that Gary Gygax's Scarlet Brotherhood - an evil organisation of white supremacists from the World of Greyhawk - is an anti-racist creation. I don't need to try to figure out what was going on in the creator's head.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> No because what matters is what I've put out into the world. The text is accessible to others. My mind is not. The text is racist, purely because of the associations of ideas it contains. When I say ideas I'm not talking about ideas in the head of the author. The ideas are in the words, because words have meaning. What gives them meaning is not the author, or the reader, but the wider community of language users.
> 
> Intent sometimes matters. We may want to try to understand what is in the author's head for a number of reasons. But it doesn't matter when deciding whether or not a text is racist.




But we are always trying to decipher intent. We don’t just leap to conclusions. We say to ourselves ‘was he saying something about black people with this?’


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## billd91

pemerton said:


> But the DMG table isn't in the voice of a character. It's a recommendation or a procedure for the creation of our own fictions, which (presumably) we want to be proud of rather than need to explain away in embarrassment. So why does it include advice about including Wanton Wenches in our fiction?




1) It's kind of humorous - that there is a table of random people involved in the prostitution biz - and a little humorous aside in a rulebook is entirely reasonable
2) While injecting that bit of humor - a belabored list of random people in the sex industry - it nevertheless uses a rich vocabulary to succinctly evoke different characters rather than just having a "prostitute" entry on the random table. *This* is why the random prostitute table is such a fun find in the DMG.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## GrahamWills

pemerton said:


> A concrete example: I was re-reading the Iliad a little while ago. Women are being taken as booty, divided up (as spoils) among the Acheans, etc. How would I teach this to a contemporary literature class - which, in my country at least, will be more than 50% women in their late teens or early 20s (ie examples of the very spoils at issue in the story).




One suggestion would be to pair it with the representation of another culture. For example, the Tain (1st century Irish saga) which is all matriarchy. The most powerful character is the queen, Medb, who raises an army to attack the men of the north. The opposing army is cursed so that all the men will feel the pain of childbirth for several months. 

The main hero, Cuchalainn, is male, but he was trained by warrior women, aided by the war goddess Morrigan, and is very clearly not a leader. The society is strongly matriarchal. Medb is very much the top dog.


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## billd91

lowkey13 said:


> That said, they did reflect the heavy-metal, fantasy, misogynistic 1970s, especially with regards to the art. There's a reason that the efreet on the cover of the DMG is holding a scantily clad female.




True - but at least that painting doesn't qualify as a worst offender. She may be scantily clad and in trouble, but she's not a passive, shrinking violet either. She's armed and still fighting to that puts it a few steps ahead of some of the other art around in those days. I got really turned off by other art in use by TSR because of passivity added on to cheesecake. Cheesecake may exploit but passivity subjugates.


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> All I remmember about Halls at the moment is the mirrors and the Guan-Deeko (sp?). I'll have to check it for luridness (are you also working from BoWD scenarios v1?).




Yup, though I have the original WDs too. If you doubt there is luridness in Tizun Thane then look at the BoWD cover, which depicts the ogre & slave girl encounter.

On reflection I spent a lot of time running Tizun Thane in Labyrinth Lord, so will prob leave that out for now, but I do want to run the Lichway. It will need some editing eg to change Xvarts to Tcho-Tco. And I'll need to consider how to approach the implied-rape scene.


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## pemerton

billd91 said:


> 1) It's kind of humorous - that there is a table of random people involved in the prostitution biz - and a little humorous aside in a rulebook is entirely reasonable
> 2) While injecting that bit of humor - a belabored list of random people in the sex industry - it nevertheless uses a rich vocabulary to succinctly evoke different characters rather than just having a "prostitute" entry on the random table. *This* is why the random prostitute table is such a fun find in the DMG.



I first read the DMG as a 12 year old boy. Is the random harlot table really going to be a "fun find" for my 12 year old daughter? I'm not sure about that.


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> I first read the DMG as a 12 year old boy. Is the random harlot table really going to be a "fun find" for my 12 year old daughter? I'm not sure about that.




How many 12 year old girls read the 1e DMG in 1978? Probably just EGG's daughter.


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Yup, though I have the original WDs too. If you doubt there is luridness in Tizun Thane then look at the BoWD cover, which depicts the ogre & slave girl encounter.



If I still have the cover - which is no longer attached to the magazine itself - I don't know where I've stored it. But I had a quick scan of the adventure and saw the harem girls. Who - just to make sure there's no doubt or confusion - have a 5% chance of being houris!


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## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't know what people are calling for. But if they are not calling for substantive change in what is permissible, what is the purpose of the thread?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It is one thing to analyze something for content deemed problematic, and another to call for it to be censored. But it feels like things are shifting and it is becoming less and less acceptable to creatively engage things that some might see as problematic.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I consider myself pretty educated, but I have to admit I find this stuff very difficult to navigate. It is like you don't know where to step and what is going to be deemed an issue. And I do think that stifles creativity .



I think it's fairly obvious what the purpose of the thread is - it's to discuss the question asked in the title ie _do orcs in fantasy gamaing display parallels to colonialist proganda_?

As far as you, as an author, not knowing how to avoid "problematic" material eg racist and sexist tropes, well that's one of the perils of authorship.

But I think your use of "acceptability" is misplaced. The racism of the pulps wasn't _acceptable_ to people of colour at that time. It's just that few white people listened to them when they voiced their objections. There's an extent to which that state of affairs has now changed, and objections by people of colour to racist tropes are being taken more seriously by a wider range of white people. Are you saying you wish this wasn't so? If not, then what are you saying?



Bedrockgames said:


> If someone is seeking to call back to the pulp genre, it may not be to your sensibilities, but I think is leagues different than if he is doing it because he has a disdain for women (and I think reasonable readers can see that distinction and make a judgement on their own about).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But if the intent is clear, I don't think this kind of element needs to be excised from the hobby (I can certainly see why it wouldn't be in a new edition of D&D, but this thread isn't just about D&D). And I am not saying people have to like random harlots in their tables. What I'd hope is there can be games that have that kind stuff, and their can be games that don't, and people make up their own minds.



If someone wants to call back to a racist and sexist literature, why is that a good thing?

Or if you think it's _not_ sexist and/or racist, then make that case.

An homage doesn't become in good taste, or cleverly ironic, or respectably nostalgic, or whatever else it might be, just because an author wishes it to be so. Pointing to an author's desires isn't a defence of the work as a work.



Bedrockgames said:


> It is been a while since I read Lird of the Rings but just by memory, it seems like that connection isn’t clear from the book alone.



Huh? The stuff about orcs is all in the books. I've not read any Tolkien letters or biography and have no real interest in doing so. But it's not rocket science to read a book in which (i) blood and inheritance are central obsessions and (ii) the heroic types are from "the west" and predominantly white and (iii) the largely nameless hordes of evil are dark-skinned, bandy-legged and scimitar wielding, and notice that those tropes have fairly obvious racist overtones.



Bedrockgames said:


> With JRR Tolkien, I think it is even more murky because in most accounts I’ve read of him personally he fidnt seem particularly racist by the standards of the time. Again though I could be missing something.





Bedrockgames said:


> I am just saying, can see where someone might think he is invoking something else, or simply drawing on the shape for convenience/aesthetics, without any thought that it is meant to the group of people it might be associated with.



This is why - like [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] - I am not interested in JRRT's mental states. I'm not trying to decide whether or not he was a racist. I am talking about his works, which - I think quite obviously - draw upon and reproduce tropes of dark-skinned scimitar-wielding vicious and violent hordes.

I mean, perhaps for convenience and without any thought about it, JRRT decided that describing his villains as dark-skinned and "slanty eyed" would clearly evoke a recognition of their villainy in his audience. But how is that a _refutation_ of the claim that he is drawing on racist tropes that evoke racist ideas? It's an acknowledgement of that very fact!



Bedrockgames said:


> I think we are establishing guidelines that are well intentioned but maybe misguided. I can totally understand trying to eliminate unsavory and racist themes or concepts from one's work (I do that myself, I don't want to be racist toward anyone). But when we start looking for things that are not immediately obvious unless you dive into the history of a genre, then I think it gets a lot sketchier.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Any trope that comes from a culture is going to have traces of something bad from that culture initially. How pure do we need to make every trope?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And one of the larger problems is it feels like the content isn't getting better or more interesting, it is just getting cleaner and less problematic.



I've honed in on the sentences because I'm trying to identify what you are actually claiming.

It seems that you are saying eliminating racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) tropes will make fiction less interesting. If that _is_ your claim, maybe you could make it a bit more clearly and provide some reasons. If that's not your claim, and if the question _How pure do we need to make every trope?_ is intended as a genuine question rather than a rhetorical one, then can you clarify what you are claiming and what you are puzzled about? And what is misguided about trying to avoid certain tropes that are evocative of racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) ideas?


----------



## Bedrockgames

lowkey13 said:


> Allow me to quote my earlier post-
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Before even getting into issues of intent, I think the issue with the conversation is when you start labeling a text as "racist." A text might have racist themes, a text might reflect the broader racism of the culture of the time, a text might have racist stereotypes, and so on, but the text itself isn't racist.
> 
> 
> And because of that, the intent of the author really doesn't matter in terms of what the text contains.* And what I was getting to above, is that a lot of people end up getting heated about these subjects because they adopt the following logical analysis:
> 
> 1. If a person shows that the text has racist stereotypes, then that means they are saying the author is racist; and
> 2. I don't want the author to be racist, therefore I will demand proof that the author intended that the text be racist; and
> 3. Absent compelling and unequivocal proof that the author was a racist** then the author couldn't have intended the text to be racist; therefore
> 4. The text doesn't have racist stereotypes.
> 
> Which is why these discussions are rarely fruitful, and often heated.
> 
> 
> 
> *To be clear, since people often misunderstand each other, I completely agree with you that, inter alia, LoTR contains some racist stereotypes, and you have accurately quoted them.
> 
> **Assumedly, either a) twiddling their mustache while saying, "Ima racist and I like to write racist stuff," or b) being HP Lovecraft.




I don’t feel the reasons you listed explain the reaction from the other side of the debate. I think there are just genuinely different approaches to interpreting this stuff going on. Part of our interpretation of text is the authors intent. It seems so strange to me that we would entirely divorce the author from the text that way. Like I said before, it isn’t the only thing that matters. But whenever you read something a person wrote, a part of your brain tried to decipher the intent behind the literal words. That is a really important part if communication, otherwise we would take everything written literally. If you fail to understand intent you can miss humor, irony, etc. in the case of racism you can take a statement that isn’t meant to be racist and cast it as racist. That doesn’t mean it still couldn’t be racist. A person might not mean to be racist, and still say something racist or employ a racist concept. But none of this stuff rests in a vacuum divorced from intent in my mind..


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I think it's fairly obvious what the purpose of the thread is - it's to discuss the question asked in the title ie _do orcs in fantasy gamaing display parallels to colonialist proganda_?
> 
> As far as you, as an author, not knowing how to avoid "problematic" material eg racist and sexist tropes, well that's one of the perils of authorship.
> 
> But I think your use of "acceptability" is misplaced. The racism of the pulps wasn't _acceptable_ to people of colour at that time. It's just that few white people listened to them when they voiced their objections. There's an extent to which that state of affairs has now changed, and objections by people of colour to racist tropes are being taken more seriously by a wider range of white people. Are you saying you wish this wasn't so? If not, then what are you saying?
> 
> If someone wants to call back to a racist and sexist literature, why is that a good thing?
> 
> Or if you think it's _not_ sexist and/or racist, then make that case.
> 
> An homage doesn't become in good taste, or cleverly ironic, or respectably nostalgic, or whatever else it might be, just because an author wishes it to be so. Pointing to an author's desires isn't a defence of the work as a work.
> 
> Huh? The stuff about orcs is all in the books. I've not read any Tolkien letters or biography and have no real interest in doing so. But it's not rocket science to read a book in which (i) blood and inheritance are central obsessions and (ii) the heroic types are from "the west" and predominantly white and (iii) the largely nameless hordes of evil are dark-skinned, bandy-legged and scimitar wielding, and notice that those tropes have fairly obvious racist overtones.
> 
> 
> This is why - like [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] - I am not interested in JRRT's mental states. I'm not trying to decide whether or not he was a racist. I am talking about his works, which - I think quite obviously - draw upon and reproduce tropes of dark-skinned scimitar-wielding vicious and violent hordes.
> 
> I mean, perhaps for convenience and without any thought about it, JRRT decided that describing his villains as dark-skinned and "slanty eyed" would clearly evoke a recognition of their villainy in his audience. But how is that a _refutation_ of the claim that he is drawing on racist tropes that evoke racist ideas? It's an acknowledgement of that very fact!
> 
> I've honed in on the sentences because I'm trying to identify what you are actually claiming.
> 
> It seems that you are saying eliminating racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) tropes will make fiction less interesting. If that _is_ your claim, maybe you could make it a bit more clearly and provide some reasons. If that's not your claim, and if the question _How pure do we need to make every trope?_ is intended as a genuine question rather than a rhetorical one, then can you clarify what you are claiming and what you are puzzled about? And what is misguided about trying to avoid certain tropes that are evocative of racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) ideas?




I feel like you are putting words in my mouth. I am saying people disagree on what tropes are racist or colonialist, and I am wary of where that bar is being set. Further I think some of what people are identifying as colonialist or racist is only so under a deep microscope. I think those kinds of tropes are very different from more pronounced and clear examples of racism. It is like when critics used to call all kinds of movies fascist (just because the hero used a gun or something). To me it feels like we can lose tropes that are not really a problem and in the process diminish the power of important words like Racism.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I've worked out which adventure I was thinking of. Not The Lichway, and not Halls, but Pool of the Standing Stones.

Braken the LE cleric "has had a special suit of plate forged which allows the molestation of females without removal". By default he is in "the fur-draped four poster bed . . . with one of the village maidens". Fully armoured, natch, due to his armourer's ingenious design.

Meanwhile in the "Boudoir Area" (cf "Braken's Bedroom") we have Prisilla the LE female MU (her sex is called out expressly; Braken's is left to be inferred from pronouns). She is "sually to be found in [her] bed - sometimes but not always alone".

It's almost like there's some sort of recurring patern here . . .  maybe even a trope  . . .


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> people disagree on what tropes are racist or colonialist, and I am wary of where that bar is being set.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> To me it feels like we can lose tropes that are not really a problem and in the process diminish the power of important words like Racism.



And to other people - particular those who actually suffer under those tropes - it may feel like you aren't noticing, or perhaps don't care about, what they are acutely aware of.

How to resolve this impasse? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it _won't_ be resolved simply by you asking them to accept in good faith that you don't notice the racism in things they find racist.

I would also add - you have said more than once that you don't have a view about JRRT's orcs, in response to others who are telling you that they think the matter is pretty clear-cut. What are you inviting those who think it is clear to do in response to your professed uncertainty? Wait for you to make up your mind? Change their minds? Or what?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> And to other people - particular those who actually suffer under those tropes - it may feel like you aren't noticing, or perhaps don't care about, what they are acutely aware of.
> 
> How to resolve this impasse? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it _won't_ be resolved simply by you asking them to accept in good faith that you don't notice the racism in things they find racist.
> 
> I would also add - you have said more than once that you don't have a view about JRRT's orcs, in response to others who are telling you that they think the matter is pretty clear-cut. What are you inviting those who think it is clear to do in response to your professed uncertainty? Wait for you to make up your mind? Change their minds? Or what?




I don’t think you speak for everyonecaffected by tropes, there are problematic tropes I am personally impacted by, and my responses to them may not be what people expect. When I have asked people about these kinds of topics, I get a range of responses. I think we should certainly talk to everyone impacted by stuff, but we can still make our own decisions about whether something is in fact a problem. Sometimes there is a problem, sometimes we are finding one that isn’t there, sometimes we make a mountain out of a mole hill. 

My point about Tolkien is what is said: I can see how people would have genuinely different reactions and interpretations. I personally would lean toward saying it is on the cusp.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames

lowkey13 said:


> I'm going to be very honest with you.
> 
> I think it might be helpful for you to explore why you just have a "genuinely different approach[] to interpreting this stuff[.]"
> 
> Really think about it.
> 
> Because a lot of this is pretty clear cut.
> 
> In the end, you have to make peace with certain things. I remain a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan, and I always will be. I love 1e, despite the many ways it reflects its times (esp. wrt. causal misogyny). Heck, I will always think Chinatown is a masterpiece. And it still hurts when I realize that something I loved uncritically has ... well, issues.
> 
> But I start by listening and acknowledging the issues (whether its in the text, with the author, or both) instead of leaping to defend something and tying myself into knots about exactly how much intent there was for "swarthy" and "slant-eyed" and "Mongol-types."




I think you are projecting things on to what I am saying. When it comes to Livecraft, I hugely agree: he was very racist. I still read Lovecraft but I can absolutely see the valid argument in the claim that he is racist. But we’re talking about whether evil orcs are racist or colonialist. I think that is far less clear and totally open to debate.


----------



## Umbran

pemerton said:


> How to resolve this impasse? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it _won't_ be resolved simply by you asking them to accept in good faith that you don't notice the racism in things they find racist.




Moreover, whether you notice it or not isn't much of an excuse.

Let us say you are out about town, wearing heavy boots.  Someone else is wearing sandals, and you step on their foot, and don't notice.

The fact that you don't notice, and that it wasn't your intent, does not change the fact that their toe got stomped upon, and they are in pain.  

And, are you going to argue, "No, sir, since I didn't notice your toe got stepped on, and it clearly wasn't my intent to step on your toe, I am going to reject your suggestions on how to avoid stepping on toes with my big old boots!"


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> I first read the DMG as a 12 year old boy. Is the random harlot table really going to be a "fun find" for my 12 year old daughter? I'm not sure about that.




I don't think everything needs to be boiled down to the suitability of a 12 year old - whether boy or girl.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Re: the claim “eliminating racist/stereotypical tropes constrains creativity”

I’d say not relying on stereotypes _increases_ creativity, because you’re not depending on the discredited ideas of others.  IOW, you are forced out of lazy reliance on harmful falsehoods, and must perforce create newer and different ways of depicting your antagonists.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> Huh? The stuff about orcs is all in the books. I've not read any Tolkien letters or biography and have no real interest in doing so. But it's not rocket science to read a book in which (i) blood and inheritance are central obsessions and (ii) the heroic types are from "the west" and predominantly white and (iii) the largely nameless hordes of evil are dark-skinned, bandy-legged and scimitar wielding, and notice that those tropes have fairly obvious racist overtones.




Sure, inheritance is a big deal for Lord of the Rings, particularly within and around the character of Aragorn. But to what purpose? You may be looking at it as a source of racial/racist overtones, but that's also a fairly shallow observation. Inheritance is an important aspect of Aragorn because a central theme around him is that Right makes Might. Why is he able to wrest control of the palantir from Sauron? Because it's his by right and that gives him strength over it. Same with the dealing with the dead at the Stone of Erech - he has a right to the fealty of the oathbreakers and so they come to his call. Sauron just has might. Moreover, Aragorn redeems the failing west - the heroes may come from there, but they are also a source of virtually all the problems in Middle Earth as well by their own sins of pride and jealousy - by taking his inheritance, his rights, and exercising them appropriately - morally and justly.


----------



## Umbran

billd91 said:


> I don't think everything needs to be boiled down to the suitability of a 12 year old - whether boy or girl.




So, the argument is that it was cool language, so we should forgive the fact that it would add to the unfortunate sexual objectifying of women that thousands of 12 years olds were exposed to?

And how about the women well over 12, for whom that was just one more element of objectification that kept them out of an awesome hobby?  For whom it added to the cultural bias of gamers against women?  You want to tell them "You aren't 12, so all the talk of prostitutes in the game is something you should ignore, 'cause the language is neat-o!"

'Cause Gygax couldn't have put his cool language into *something else*?  

There is a larger question at hand here - what to do with problematic works of the past.  Stepping past gaming for just a second, we can look at _Gone With the Wind_ as an example of a formative work of literature that has deeply problematic elements to it.

For sake of understanding our literature, you can't just never have anyone read the book ever again.  And there's a solid argument that, even despite the problematic parts of the work, it still has substantial literary value.  So, no, you can't just expunge it from existence.  That's not constructive, and does not build understanding.

But, what you don't do, is dismiss or ignore the fact that it has problematic bits.  If you want to continue to get value out of it, ethically, you have to call out and _own the fact_ that those bits are problematic.

This table in the book, for some reason, needs to be defended?  As gaming content, it is junk!  We can't bring ourselves to say, "Yeah, Gygax was a visionary, but flawed, and this bit sucked, and the game would have been better if it weren't there, and sure as heck we don't use that crud these days?"


----------



## Bedrockgames

lowkey13 said:


> Ask yourself why you're having this debate. People bring out multiple textual examples of the origins of orcs. This shouldn't be a big shock to you (I would hope) but the origins of orcs, both in Tolkien and in 1e have very specific, racial overtones. Like a lot of stuff back then. And the point you keep trying to make is that you refuse to accept any of this fairly obvious information, that people have quoted at you, unless ... what, they provide specific information that the author intended it to be racist? Because otherwise ... it might be a joke, or a parody?




Because I think it is important for gamers to weigh in on topics like that. They shape what content gets produced. The shape the boundaries of what is considered acceptable and what is considered over the line. I think if we set those boundaries too tightly, even if it is well intentioned, then it is going to lead to a really dull gaming culture. I get that you have a different point of view than me. That is fine. I just wish you could hear my viewpoint without seeming to assume the worst about me (or talking to me like I am a student in need of an education). 

But I think you are mischaracterizing the what I am saying. I don't think the 1E orcs, at least as I remember them, have strong racial overtones (could be wrong, been a bit since I read the entry). And I definitely don't think the racial overtones of Tolkien are obvious (like I told Pemerton, if you are going to insist I take a position on them, I would say they are on the cusp but there is plenty of room for doubt in my mind). But that said, I don't think they are approaching anything near what you see in Lovecraft for example (where racial ideas are intended to be carried into the material). With Tolkien, I think when you factor in what we know of him, the struggles he himself had with the question of these evil creature, the final picture is just less resounding and no where close to as final as I think a lot of people in this thread believe. More importantly though I disagree that any of the potential residue from Tolkien is carried over to today. I think you can make a small case that he may have invoked real world races (though to be honest he could have had other things in mind when used that language than people), but orcs have become something very different from what Tolkien envisioned. Even evil orcs. 

Obviously I am just one voice in the conversation, that is just my opinion. And it is my real opinion. And I think a lot of people see threads like "are orcs colonialist tropes" and they genuinely scratch their head. I understand there is a way of seeing the world where that is just an obvious conclusion. I think for most people it really, truly isn't. It is the kind of conclusion that strikes me as something you have to be educated into. And I think too often people don't give their real opinion in these discussions because they are concerned about the responses like you ones you are giving me (where your character almost gets called into question for reaching a different conclusion about a trope). I get that there are other voices weighing in here (and certainly am welcoming viewpoints like your's and Hussars). And again, I think chances are, you and I are probably much closer politically and socially than you realize. Just because I think the evil orc trope isn't racist, that doesn't mean I hold racist views, lack empathy or am a bad person. I just disagree with your conclusions on this.


----------



## dragoner

Absolutely Orcs are racist. As a middle aged white male that was raised between two heavily racist societies, I think we have all imbued from the bitter cup of racism, for both good and bad. This is why intent plays such a big part in divining good from bad. Were Orcs, as designed to foster racism, was that the intent behind them? No, I don't think so.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames

lowkey13 said:


> For example, why is it a more important value to worry about being seen as a "bad person" than it is to try and understand how factors, subtle and not so subtle, impact people that are different than us?
> .




But this is the kind of loaded question I was pointing to. Do you really think I don't care about how things impact people? Of course I do. But I can disagree about whether a given reaction to something is reasonable.  I don't have to agree with every assertion people make on a forum when it comes to whether something is a problem. I am not very concerned about evil orcs, because I think their impact in the world is minimal and I think when we focus our attention on evil orcs, and call them racist, it actually makes fighting racism out in the real world that much harder (it is something I've seen first hadn't where people dismiss a valid complaint about racism with 'well people think orcs are racist too now'). This isn't about not caring about people. It is about some of us disagreeing with the underlying assumptions, and the impact this stuff has on the broader society. 

And I don't see the two issues you raise in this question as related at all. I can juggle both concerns.


----------



## Bedrockgames

lowkey13 said:


> You didn't quote, or respond, to the lengthy section I included regarding misogyny and the illustrations in 1e; I didn't include that for my fun. I was hoping that might help you understand a little bit about what I view as the issue.




Because that is a whole other topic, I don't want to get derailed since I am fielding a lot of different response. I perused it, but I skimmed so I am not 100% sure what you were looking for. I do imagine we probably draw the line around what constitutes misogynistic art very differently, and we probably have very different views on what impact that kind of art has on people and society. I think what a lot of this stuff achieves is the veneer of a wholesome society, but like a lot of communities obsessed with wholesome appearances, I think it actually just makes it harder to find the real problems.


----------



## Lanefan

Dannyalcatraz said:


> “_*grrrrrrr*_  You there!  Know that I am Kursk Gorespear of the Pieguard Tribe.  Unhand that pastry...or I will unhand *you*!”



**Unhands pastry by throwing it at orc's face in an attempt to temporarily blind it while I flee**


----------



## Bedrockgames

lowkey13 said:


> I'm not questioning your character or your good faith. I do think that there is a lot of value into looking inward and asking why we question things.
> .




Can you understand why it appears that way to me? A lot of the questions and responses I am getting (including your's) are an awful lot like "Maybe you should ask yourself why you don't care as much about babies dying as having evil orcs in your game."


----------



## billd91

Umbran said:


> So, the argument is that it was cool language, so we should forgive the fact that it would add to the unfortunate sexual objectifying of women that thousands of 12 years olds were exposed to?
> 
> And how about the women well over 12, for whom that was just one more element of objectification that kept them out of an awesome hobby?  For whom it added to the cultural bias of gamers against women?  You want to tell them "You aren't 12, so all the talk of prostitutes in the game is something you should ignore, 'cause the language is neat-o!"
> 
> 'Cause Gygax couldn't have put his cool language into *something else*?




Or we can recognize that adult material (in this case prostitution) is something that might realistically appear in a fantasy town, that a few words of description can substantially change the nature of the character encountered, and humor can target adults even in works a 12 year old might read. Aside from the use of description, it’s not like the random harlot table runs throughout the book like slavery and southern apologetics do in Gone with the Wind


----------



## S'mon

billd91 said:


> I don't think everything needs to be boiled down to the suitability of a 12 year old - whether boy or girl.




When my sister was 12 she was reading those 'teen' magazines - with vastly more explicit sexual content than even the most lurid of pulps, never mind the 1e DMG! I think that what we dads are comfy with is more the issue.


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## S'mon

Double


----------



## Umbran

S'mon said:


> When my sister was 12 she was reading those 'teen' magazines - with vastly more explicit sexual content than even the most lurid of pulps, never mind the 1e DMG!




And, there's a strong argument that, historically, those have also been damaging to our culture's approach to women.  "My 12 year old read worse stuff," doesn't actually say that any of it is okay!  The presence of something worse does not justify the presence of something that isn't good.

I mean, would you say... "There's a bowl of cyanide.  Since that is on the table, it is okay for me to eat this salad contaminated with _E. coli_!"  Probably not.


----------



## S'mon

Umbran said:


> And, there's a strong argument that, historically, those have also been damaging to our culture's approach to women.  "My 12 year old read worse stuff," doesn't actually say that any of it is okay!  The presence of something worse does not justify the presence of something that isn't good.
> 
> I mean, would you say... "There's a bowl of cyanide.  Since that is on the table, it is okay for me to eat this salad contaminated with _E. coli_!"  Probably not.




I'm sure they are worse. I just doubt the harlot table will do any harm, other than embarrass her dad.


----------



## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> In the end, you have to make peace with certain things. I remain a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan,* and I always will be.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But I start by listening and acknowledging the issues (whether its in the text, with the author, or both)



I agree with this. In my case it's not HPL, who I find has some interesting ideas but whose writing I find almost unreadable.

But I have 4 volumes of REH Conan and Kull on my shelves, and I re-read them from time to time; and I re-read JRRT quit often. They shape my thinking about the fantasy genre. But there can be no denying the racist etc elements.

For what it's worth, I also love Wagner's Ring Cycle.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> Or we can recognize that adult material (in this case prostitution) is something that might realistically appear in a fantasy town, that a few words of description can substantially change the nature of the character encountered, and humor can target adults even in works a 12 year old might read. Aside from the use of description, it’s not like the random harlot table runs throughout the book like slavery and southern apologetics do in Gone with the Wind





S'mon said:


> When my sister was 12 she was reading those 'teen' magazines - with vastly more explicit sexual content than even the most lurid of pulps, never mind the 1e DMG! I think that what we dads are comfy with is more the issue.



I think it's not just comfort of dads. There are things to be said about teen magazines (is it still Dolly?), but they're different from the harlot table.

Is it humorous to distignuish Saucy Tarts from Wanton Wenches from Brazen Strumpets from Slovenly Trolls? And who's in on the joke, and who's being made fun of?

This goes back to my comment up thread about romance and sex in games - I've got nothing against it, but does it have to involve primarily, or even exclusively, harlots and evil clerics with specially modified plate mail? I assert that that is a somewhat distorted presentation of the issue, particularly oriented to cater to a certain male fantasy (I'll say tentatively along the lines of "they want it, but they won't give it to us, but we'll take it from them" - I'm going to flag  [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] for this because he may want to moderate it for board rules reasons).



S'mon said:


> I'm sure they are worse. I just doubt the harlot table will do any harm, other than embarrass her dad.



For me it's not so much about harm - although internatlisation of certain self-conceptions is a real thing - but about _what it suggests about the work and those who enjoy/expound it_. (Which I guess is what you are calling embarrassment.)

It suggest the work is puerile and prurient pandering to the male fantasy I've just described.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> I feel like you are putting words in my mouth. I am saying people disagree on what tropes are racist or colonialist, and I am wary of where that bar is being set. Further I think some of what people are identifying as colonialist or racist is only so under a deep microscope. I think those kinds of tropes are very different from more pronounced and clear examples of racism. It is like when critics used to call all kinds of movies fascist (just because the hero used a gun or something). To me it feels like we can lose tropes that are not really a problem and in the process diminish the power of important words like Racism.




It seems to me that you want people to be able to present a clear cut dividing line.  "If the work has X, Y or Z, then it is unacceptable, anything else is fair game".  

That's unrealistic.  Judgement will always be fuzzy, messy and ultimately subjective.  Judgement will change from person to person, year to year, sometimes day to day.  Things that were culturally acceptable even a year or two ago will no longer be.  It happens.  It's constantly changing.

I mean, I'm running my first 5e adventure path - Dragon Heist.  Now, DH is more a setting guide than adventure, to be fair (180+ named NPC's in a 5 level adventure  ) .  But, as an older gamer who is perhaps a bit behind the times, I did find the rather large number of non-binary and LGBT characters in the module to be a bit surprising.  I'm just not used to seeing that in a module.  

Does that mean that all the modules I used in the past were "bad"?  No, of course not.  There is very little "bad".  There is only "doing better".


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> It seems to me that you want people to be able to present a clear cut dividing line.  "If the work has X, Y or Z, then it is unacceptable, anything else is fair game".




No, I am not saying that. I am saying that is what we are in danger of doing. I am trying to emphasize that people will have reasonable disagreements over this stuff.


----------



## Hussar

I'd also like to say that I wish you folks would stop saying stuff that I agree with so much or is very well thought out.  I'm getting tired of refreshing my browser so I can posrep more posts per page.  

You folks suck.  ((Heh, does authorial intent matter here? ))


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

pemerton said:


> I agree with this. In my case it's not HPL, who I find has some interesting ideas but whose writing I find almost unreadable.
> 
> But I have 4 volumes of REH Conan and Kull on my shelves, and I re-read them from time to time; and I re-read JRRT quit often. They shape my thinking about the fantasy genre. But there can be no denying the racist etc elements.
> 
> For what it's worth, I also love Wagner's Ring Cycle.




FWIW, let me say that I am from NOLA and because of that, I am Human Gumbo.  AKA Crayola 64.  A mix of all kinds of stuff from at least 4 continents.  My DNA report would probably match my hat (see below):



In the USA, that makes me black.*

I say all of that to say this: while I recognize racist tropes & stereotypes in creative works of the past- even fairly recent ones- I have never and hopefull will never seek to have those works sanitized.  I’m committed enough to this that when I found out that a publisher was going to release revised editions of certain classics from authors like Mark Twain (and others) sans offensive words like...well..._you know_, I went out and bought new copies of my favorites in their unaltered original forms.

Supporting the altered editions seemed too _1984/Fahrenheit 451_ to me.






* the term I grew up with and still use, because I don’t really care for “African American”.


----------



## pemerton

A friend of mine, who is Black, discovered a copy of Little Black Sambo at her local library, in the children's section. She spoke to the librarian, and explained how much hurt she had suffered from that book as a child. She told the librarian that she didn't want it removed from the library but wanted it shelved differently, so that a new generation wouldn't accidentally stumble across it and have the experience she did. (The bigger context for this being that, when my friend was a child she was one of the few Black people in her Australian suburb, whereas today there are many.)

The librarian saw her point and arranged for it to be so.

What I am trying to get at is that the notion that _care_ and _respect_ = _censorship_ is in my view far too narrow. This is what I understand [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] to be saying also.

That's not to say that people of good will can always agree on how to go forward and how to engage with the past and the artefacts that it has left us. This is culture, and politics, and so of course there will be passion and disagreement and sometimes harsh words. Even among the like-minded.

What I'm trying to get at is that a response of "censorship" or "loss of creatitivy" or "erasure" is one that more often derials than furthers our human endeavours.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

_Sambo_ is one of those tough ones.  For those who don’t know- the story itself is actually _positive_: a small black child outwits a group of tigers, and comes home with the butter they transmogrified into in their efforts to catch him.

The ISSUE is that many times, the story has been portrayed using pickaninny/blackface caricatures.  The copy _I_ had as a child was depicted in beautiful, colorful illustrations on a par with some of the best books of the era.  

Wish I still had it.  I have many of my best children’s books to this day except two: this one, and my early edition of _Where the Wild Things Are._ _Wild Things _ was chewed up by one of our puppies- pages scattered all over the yard.  The other simply disappeared.

Replacing it would cost $90 or so...
https://ergodebooks.com/index.php?r...MI6LeAiIf04AIVgkBpCh28RgxrEAQYASABEgKDUvD_BwE


----------



## Hussar

And, this brings up a good point as it relates to D&D.

D&D is advertised for 12 and up (or thereabouts, depends on the edition).  So, the target audience certainly includes 12 year old girls.  If we're going to go all in on an edition that is ... hmm.... how to put this ... based on the tropes and concepts common in the past, then shouldn't it be made clear that this isn't for a younger audience?

Just like shelving Sambo in a different area means that 5 year old kids aren't going to be slapped in the face with clearly racist imagery.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> For me it's not so much about harm - although internatlisation of certain self-conceptions is a real thing - but about _what it suggests about the work and those who enjoy/expound it_. (Which I guess is what you are calling embarrassment.)
> 
> It suggest the work is puerile and prurient pandering to the male fantasy I've just described.




Yes. The 1970s had a lot of works that were puerile and prurient in pandering to male fantasy. More than before or since. I'm always struck by how much more mature - non-puerile - the attitudes of 1930s swords & sorcery are, when compared to the 1970s revival.

The adventures in BOWDS 1 definitely have a 'sniggering teenage boys' tone about them. At the same time Fiore's Licheway & Tizun Thane are incredibly atmospheric and have well deserved reputations as classics of the genre (Standing Stones doesn't).

I guess it's the same with the orcs - works of merit can have problematic elements. Cultural context is also important; I see a lot of reactions from US and Australian etc readers of British-authored works where there is a different cultural context and readers in bringing their own cultural baggage have a different reaction than a British reader would. I find this particularly noticeable around the possibiloty of racist depiction towards east-Asians. The US especially has a history of racism towards east-Asians which colours American reactions towards certain tropes. A tangential example would be Edward Said's "Orientalism" - Said cared about European depictions of Middle Eastern cultures, but Americans typically see the concept as about cultural & racial depiction of east-Asians.


----------



## Hussar

S'mon said:
			
		

> The US especially has a history of racism towards east-Asians which colours American reactions towards certain tropes.




Not really sure I'll buy that one.  

See Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu for a pretty clear example.

/editted to change to Sax Rohmer, which has led to a rather odd quoting by [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION].  Totally my fault.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> Not really sure I'll buy that one.
> 
> See Arthur Conan Doyle for numerous examples of quite blatant east-Asian racism.




Or Fu Manchu. But Chinese people in Britain have not suffered from racial discrimination in the same way the Chinese in the USA once did.


----------



## Hussar

I was reading the Tor.com site and came across the following quote as it relates to the remake of the Dune movie that is apparently in the works:



> All works of art, especially ones that we hold in high esteem, should be so carefully considered. Not because we need to tear them down or, conversely, enshrine them, but because we should all want to be more knowledgeable and thoughtful about how the stories we love contribute to our world, and the ways in which they choose to reflect it.




From here

I think that quote, right there, says it all.

Continued reading the article and there's another fantastic quote about world building that I think is very apropos:



> Dune’s worldbuilding is complex, but that doesn’t make it beyond reproach. Personal bias is a difficult thing to avoid, and how you construct a universe from scratch says a lot about how you personally view the world. Author and editor Mimi Mondal breaks this concept down beautifully in her recent article about the inherently political nature of worldbuilding:
> 
> In a world where all fundamental laws can be rewritten, it is also illuminating which of them aren’t. The author’s priorities are more openly on display when a culture of non-humans is still patriarchal, there are no queer people in a far-future society, or in an alternate universe the heroes and saviours are still white. Is the villain in the story a repulsively depicted fat person? Is a disabled or disfigured character the monster? Are darker-skinned, non-Western characters either absent or irrelevant, or worse, portrayed with condescension? It’s not sufficient to say that these stereotypes still exist in the real world. In a speculative world, where it is possible to rewrite them, leaving them unchanged is also political.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> I was reading the Tor.com site and came across the following quote as it relates to the remake of the Dune movie that is apparently in the works:
> 
> 
> 
> From here
> 
> I think that quote, right there, says it all.




I hear what people are saying, but I think it isn't always obvious how media and stories impact our world. And I think as well intentioned as this stuff is, you really do run the risk of making wholesomeness prime, and quality second. We can juggle many things at once. But if wholesomeness becomes the benchmark for quality....I think it leads to less interesting stories. Dune is a good case in point. I am not sure how you could change it to take out the elements deemed problematic and have it remain intact. Part of what makes Dune work is the very tropes called into question.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> I hear what people are saying, but I think it isn't always obvious how media and stories impact our world. And I think as well intentioned as this stuff is, you really do run the risk of making wholesomeness prime, and quality second. We can juggle many things at once. But if wholesomeness becomes the benchmark for quality....I think it leads to less interesting stories. Dune is a good case in point. I am not sure how you could change it to take out the elements deemed problematic and have it remain intact. Part of what makes Dune work is the very tropes called into question.




You're missing the point of the quote.

Don't take things out of Dune.  Why would you?  But, also, don't enshrine a work so that it cannot be critiqued.  We're seeing that in this thread with comments about Tolkien and orcs.  No one is saying anything about banning Tolkien or erasing history.

However, the next time a LotR movie gets made, maybe the orcs could all be played by white actors and everyone else by minority actors?  After all, if race is totally unimportant, then a Chinese Frodo shouldn't bother anyone at all.  

But, unfortunately, it will.  See the reaction to the theater production of Harry Potter which cast Hermione as black.


----------



## S'mon

I'm guessing the regular Snagga goblin orcs in LOTR were actually played by white actors? 

Personally I don't think race is unimportant re casting and I don't want a Chinese Frodo (unless the Chinese make their own LOTR of course). I always thought of Tolkien's orcs as ethnically British since that is how they talk, whatever his description, and I found the Maori orcs a bit disconcerting. I don't begrudge actors from taking offered roles. Lots of British actors play villains in Bollywood films.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> Not really sure I'll buy that one.
> 
> See Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu for a pretty clear example.
> 
> /editted to change to Sax Rohmer, which has led to a rather odd quoting by [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION].  Totally my fault.




I couldn't actually remember any racism by ACD but I was willing to take your word for it!


----------



## Hussar

But, that's the issue isn't it [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]?  What would be the problem with having Ronnie Chang play Frodo?  I mean, Elijah Wood isn't English but there was no problem with having him play Frodo.   Does Tolkien even really physically describe hobbits?  Other than big hairy feet and usually curly brown hair, I'm actually struggling to remember much physical description.

So, what's the problem here?  Hassan Minaj as Sam?  ((Ok, I've been watching a lot of Netflix lately.  ))


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> But, that's the issue isn't it [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]?  What would be the problem with having Ronnie Chang play Frodo?  I mean, Elijah Wood isn't English but there was no problem with having him play Frodo.   Does Tolkien even really physically describe hobbits?  Other than big hairy feet and usually curly brown hair, I'm actually struggling to remember much physical description.
> 
> So, what's the problem here?  Hassan Minaj as Sam?  ((Ok, I've been watching a lot of Netflix lately.  ))




I'd like my hobbits to look ethnically English. Note that this is a preference, I am not postulating a moral rule. Certainly if Japan made a live action LOTR I would expect Japanese hobbits, I would not expect them to import British or Anglo actors.

(Likewise the BBC traditionally cast British actors to play Americans and every other ethnicity)


----------



## S'mon

I guess likewise if some one is casting Le Guin's Earthsea I would prefer darker toned actors to fit the book descriptions, though I suppose they could just use make-up. The tendency is to use fair skinned actors. Same with casting Egyptians, they should be darker than Scots.


----------



## pemerton

Hobbits are - both from JRRT's point of view, and from any reading of the work - English, and English in a rather distinctive way. A casting that took a different approach from what JRRT envisaged would (I think) have to be doing something deliberate/self-conscious, whatever that might be. (Eg would a presentation of a Black British hobbit be progressive, or reactionary? I'm not sure I can pursue that question on these boards for the usual reason, but to me it seems that the answer isn't self-evident.)

An even stronger example of the point about casting would be (to move out of fantasy) a casting of The Human Factor or The Quiet American.

On the other hand, I think it should be totally possible to play with casting in a Conan movie and yet fully capture the spirit of REH. It is important thematically that Conan be a barbarian, but his being white is - in my view at least - thematically extraneous (though obviously of great personal importance to REH), provided that the rest of the casting and broader framing properly incorporated Conan into the "civilisation" that was being presented.

To give another non-fantasy illustration of this sort of thing, nothing in Rome and Juliet or The Princess Bride particularly demands white/European casting.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> But, that's the issue isn't it [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]?  What would be the problem with having Ronnie Chang play Frodo?  I mean, Elijah Wood isn't English but there was no problem with having him play Frodo.   Does Tolkien even really physically describe hobbits?  Other than big hairy feet and usually curly brown hair, I'm actually struggling to remember much physical description.
> 
> So, what's the problem here?  Hassan Minaj as Sam?  ((Ok, I've been watching a lot of Netflix lately.  ))




This isn't the stuff I am talking about. I think casting choices can be creative or interesting calls, and I don't think casting outside the expected ethnicity or race (or gender) is a problem at all. Personally I would like to see more Asian American actors cast in major roles because I do think they are a group that don't get taken as seriously as others for leads (it does seem to be changing though in recent years). 

What I am saying is this mindset is making it so you won't see the next Dune. Even as the author of that article explains, as things go, Dune is pretty good in terms of complexity and withstanding critique (though I have to say I've seen some pretty aggressive takedowns of Dune from that point of view). But it still has rough edges. And there are still a lot of people who would take issues with elements of it around some of the kinds of concepts we are talking about (colonialism, cultural appropriation, etc). I think we are taking too fine tooth a comb to this stuff is my point. Without the rough edges is it still Dune, or does it become something more pablum? And I am not saying you can't critique things. By all means do so. But not everyone is going to agree with your conclusions and increasingly my concern is the role that social media is playing in making these kinds of criticisms become standards that can actually be enforced. It is one thing for authors to decide to be more respectful. I try to be respectful in my own writing. But there is a zone where things are more experimental and writers need to take more risks. In that zone, that intention matters a great deal. What I am often seeing in writer and design communities is people becoming afraid to handle anything outside their own culture or experience. I don't think that is engendering greater empathy, it is reducing it. Or they are afraid to engage in a fantasy analogue without it being 100% historical realism so it has a badge of authenticity to it (which often misses the point of genre fiction which tends to be more historical romance). 

So I am listening to what you say and reading your arguments very seriously (I don't dispute important issues are being raised at all and it is good to have a conversation). But i've looked at a lot of the arguments you and others are making and just don't think it leads to where you seem to think it will, or that it is good for art in general. I feel like people on this thread think if they just pointed out X or Y, I'd be on board. But this argument is one I've seen play out over the past several years and have had a lot of time to consider. I think we can still care about some of the same core issues you and others have raised, but think the road there is very different. I just believe very genuinely that this approach isn't going to make things better in the long term. 

Heading out the door presently, so this is a bit of a hasty response. Happy to clarify any points Hussar if you want.


----------



## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> I'd like my hobbits to look ethnically English. Note that this is a preference, I am not postulating a moral rule. Certainly if Japan made a live action LOTR I would expect Japanese hobbits, I would not expect them to import British or Anglo actors.
> 
> (Likewise the BBC traditionally cast British actors to play Americans and every other ethnicity)




I can understand expecting them to be culturally English. i think given that it is a fantasy world, you could still have black or asian hobbits and it they could still be discernibly English. To me it is more about culture than ethnicity or race. Not saying every production would have to have this. I just don't see the problem with it personally.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> On the other hand, I think it should be totally possible to play with casting in a Conan movie and yet fully capture the spirit of REH. It is important thematically that Conan be a barbarian, but his being white is - in my view at least - thematically extraneous (though obviously of great personal importance to REH), provided that the rest of the casting and broader framing properly incorporated Conan into the "civilisation" that was being presented.





One thought on the whole civilization thing in Conan. An aspect of the story I've always liked is that Conan has very little fondness for it and we tend to see it through his eyes. A lot of his internal dialogue is bafflement at the way of life in cities (I may be over-remembering here, as I can't honestly say how many times I've seen this kind of internal dialogue, it just sticks out in my mind).


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I hear what people are saying, but I think it isn't always obvious how media and stories impact our world. And I think as well intentioned as this stuff is, you really do run the risk of making wholesomeness prime, and quality second. We can juggle many things at once. But if wholesomeness becomes the benchmark for quality....I think it leads to less interesting stories. Dune is a good case in point. I am not sure how you could change it to take out the elements deemed problematic and have it remain intact. Part of what makes Dune work is the very tropes called into question.



This, much like a lot of your concerns, seems to lean far too heavily on presenting a hypothetical slippery slope argument as reasonable. But it doesn't seem morally reasonable when you consider that you seem more worried about preserving what you find more "interesting" rather than rectifying what actual people find personally harmful and denigrating (and equating this latter issue with a degrading quality of the works).


----------



## pemerton

I re-read Dune recently. To me it seems to draw rather heavily on Lawrence of Arabia. Its treatment of West/Cenrral Asian people as a hardy but in some senses simple people awaiting a European prophet to lead them to their destined victory didn't strike me as especially original. But I'm not familiar with the range of opinions about the book held by West and Central Asian readers.


----------



## Umbran

Aldarc said:


> This, much like a lot of your concerns, seems to lean far too heavily on presenting a hypothetical slippery slope argument as reasonable.




Yeah.  I am not sure it comes off as reasonable to go from, "having your work laden with racist or sexist stereotypes is a flaw," translates to, "only goodthink allowed".



> But it doesn't seem morally reasonable when you consider that you seem more worried about preserving what you find more "interesting" rather than rectifying what actual people find personally harmful and denigrating (and equating this latter issue with a degrading quality of the works).




As has been mentioned upthread, it seems to me that heavily leaning on stereotypes should, perforce, make a work *less* interesting.  I dunno about the rest of you, but my creative writing teachers would have called such use, "a crutch."  They are literary boilerplate, calling on the audience to fill in the details, rather than thinking up and providing some for yourself.  And that's okay in many instances, but we can probably do without those that are strongly linked to  race, for example.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> This, much like a lot of your concerns, seems to lean far too heavily on presenting a hypothetical slippery slope argument as reasonable. But it doesn't seem morally reasonable when you consider that you seem more worried about preserving what you find more "interesting" rather than rectifying what actual people find personally harmful and denigrating (and equating this latter issue with a degrading quality of the works).




I think this frames it unfairly. You can worry about both. But I just disagree that the intense microscope approach to finding problems in art actually helps reduce harm. And I do think an overemphasis on wholesomeness can lead to bland art. I am not saying kind art degrades quality. I am saying the parameters we are setting appears to be affecting quality and peoples’ ability to express themselves fully. I understand why you are framing it this way. But I think you are barking up the wrong tree. And again, I want to emphasize,you can characterize this as a lack of concern for certain people on my part if you want but that absolutely isn’t what is going on here. Like I said earlier I think this kind of stuff often makes it harder to resolve some of the inequities we are discussing. I also think it approaches infantalization. I don’t fault you for disagreeing. We’ve simply reached different conclusions here. I can tell you are motivated by good intentions. I do wish you could see my good intentions as well.


----------



## generic

Bedrockgames said:


> I think this frames it unfairly. You can worry about both. But I just disagree that the intense microscope approach to finding problems in art actually helps reduce harm. And I do think an overemphasis on wholesomeness can lead to bland art. I am not saying kind art degrades quality. I am saying the parameters we are setting appears to be affecting quality and peoples’ ability to express themselves fully. I understand why you are framing it this way. But I think you are barking up the wrong tree. And again, I want to emphasize,you can characterize this as a lack of concern for certain people on my part if you want but that absolutely isn’t what is going on here. Like I said earlier I think this kind of stuff often makes it harder to resolve some of the inequities we are discussing. I also think it approaches infantalization. I don’t fault you for disagreeing. We’ve simply reached different conclusions here. I can tell you are motivated by good intentions. I do wish you could see my good intentions as well.




I didn't want to get involved in this conversation originally, but it has been fairly stimulating and surprisingly civil, so I have decided to join.  

I agree that the censorship of art can reduce the quality of expression, but I think that you have misunderstood the exact purpose of [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]'s posts.  Aldarc is stating that, in media, it is denigrating and harmful to recreate steryotypes merely because they are "appealing".

Please correct me [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] is I am incorrect.

Best regards, 

Aebir-Toril.


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> I am saying the parameters we are setting appears to be affecting quality and peoples’ ability to express themselves fully.
> 
> ...
> 
> I do wish you could see my good intentions as well.




There has always been a line as to what is acceptable, always, and it has always moved. Standing beyond that accepted line, and saying "this should be acceptable" causes by your own actions people to question your intentions.


----------



## generic

dragoner said:


> There has always been a line as to what is acceptable, always, and it has always moved. Standing beyond that accepted line, and saying "this should be acceptable" causes by your own actions people to question your intentions.




Yup.


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> There has always been a line as to what is acceptable, always, and it has always moved. Standing beyond that accepted line, and saying "this should be acceptable" causes by your own actions people to question your intentions.




So is the line always correctly set? It looks to me like the line is shifting. It hasn't shifted fully yet and we are having a discussion about it. We are arguing about whether evil orcs are a problem or not, and whether they are tainted by colonialism. I think that is much more hazy than some of the other standards out there. And I don't believe this standard is going to achieve what its advocates hope it to achieve. You can freely question my intentions. My intentions are good. And I think if someone starts a thread asking if Orcs are a colonialist trope, people should be able to give their honest opinion that it is or isn't, without being viewed with suspicion. Some of really just disagree on this stuff, even if share other basic assumptions about things like racial equality. I feel like that is really being lost in this discussion, because I am becoming a stand in for something much bigger. My critique is fairly moderate I think.


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> So is the line always correctly set? It looks to me like the line is shifting. It hasn't shifted fully yet and we are having a discussion about it. We are arguing about whether evil orcs are a problem or not, and whether they are tainted by colonialism. I think that is much more hazy than some of the other standards out there. And I don't believe this standard is going to achieve what its advocates hope it to achieve. You can freely question my intentions. My intentions are good. And I think if someone starts a thread asking if Orcs are a colonialist trope, people should be able to give their honest opinion that it is or isn't, without being viewed with suspicion. Some of really just disagree on this stuff, even if share other basic assumptions about things like racial equality. I feel like that is really being lost in this discussion, because I am becoming a stand in for something much bigger. My critique is fairly moderate I think.




Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham City Jail":

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."


----------



## Sadras

Hussar said:


> However, the next time a LotR movie gets made, maybe the orcs could all be played by white actors and everyone else by minority actors?  After all, if race is totally unimportant, then a Chinese Frodo shouldn't bother anyone at all.




I'm still waiting for a hearing-impaired transvestite muslim superman who for health reasons follows a gluten-free diet or for the sinbad role to be played by a Philipino actor.

As for orcs...this is not 1970 or 1980, many people are playing 5e - orcs have nothing to do with colonialism anymore...it's like stereotyping an actual people for all their ills/bad deeds in their past.

EDIT: Some ppl on this thread have posted some amazing story-concepts for orcs. I don't see colonialism, I see so many games/settings/ideas I want to explore.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham City Jail":
> 
> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."




Don't you think that is a bit much? I said my critique was fairly moderate. I don't think Martin Luther King Jr. had this kind of conversation about evil orcs or colonialist orc tropes in mind when he wrote that letter.


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> Don't you think that is a bit much? I said my critique was fairly moderate. I don't think Martin Luther King Jr. had this kind of conversation about evil orcs or colonialist orc tropes in mind when he wrote that letter.




Honestly,  no, I don't consider it a bit much. I think calls for moderation should always consider what they're actually calling for. MLK's admonition is to remember the inherent deleterious values conveyed by such a call for "moderation." This is no different than the other posts here that ask you to consider your motivations (perhaps those that escape your own conscious awareness).


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> Honestly,  no, I don't consider it a bit much. I think calls for moderation should always consider what they're actually calling for. MLK's admonition is to remember the inherent deleterious values conveyed by such a call for "moderation." This is no different than the other posts here that ask you to consider your motivations (perhaps those that escape your own conscious awareness).




I agree with the letter, I don't agree with its application here at all though.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Hussar said:


> But, that's the issue isn't it [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]?  What would be the problem with having Ronnie Chang play Frodo?  I mean, Elijah Wood isn't English but there was no problem with having him play Frodo.   Does Tolkien even really physically describe hobbits?  Other than big hairy feet and usually curly brown hair, I'm actually struggling to remember much physical description.
> 
> So, what's the problem here?  Hassan Minaj as Sam?  ((Ok, I've been watching a lot of Netflix lately.  ))




No, dammit!  *JACKIE freaking CHAN* as Frodo!



Bedrockgames said:


> I can understand expecting them to be culturally English. i think given that it is a fantasy world, you could still have black or asian hobbits and it they could still be discernibly English. To me it is more about culture than ethnicity or race. Not saying every production would have to have this. I just don't see the problem with it personally.



I believe _Eastenders_ had some POC in the cast, soooo...

I mean, a few swarthy hobbits- even in lead roles- won’t turn _LotR_ into _Straight Outta Compton_.



Bedrockgames said:


> Don't you think that is a bit much? I said my critique was fairly moderate. I don't think Martin Luther King Jr. had this kind of conversation about evil orcs or colonialist orc tropes in mind when he wrote that letter.



Probably not- MLK wasn’t a gamer geek.  I’m guessing he’d have liked Paladins, though.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I have to say, the discussion of telling a story like _LotR_ or _Dune_ with a cast of other than the presumptive ethnicities brings to mind the Indian movie version of Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall”*:

[video=youtube;ly25fD8f2JY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly25fD8f2JY[/video]

The multiracial casting in _Romeo Must Die_
[video=youtube;w500paj_MPU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w500paj_MPU[/video]

AND what may be one of the best versions of “King Lear” captured on film, _Ran_:
[video=youtube;AbbfDntoRRk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbbfDntoRRk[/video]

(Honorable mention to _Wrath of Khan_, in which William Shatner is cast as the great white whale.)









* as well as Hollywood’s history of whitewashing, of course.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> We are arguing about whether evil orcs are a problem or not, and whether they are tainted by colonialism. I think that is much more hazy than some of the other standards out there.




It's not hazy, if one replaced the Orc trope with any real world ethnic or religious group as a quick 2 second litmus test, it would be seen as horrible racism in an unqualified manner. It is what it is, Orcs sort of get the pass by tradition and fantasy tropes, I'm not arguing that they should necessarily be removed, except to be sensitive to the fact of what their representation is, is unfortunately racist. That an Orc's traits and capacity for evil is inherent to their race? I really don't see any assumption of how that could be construed in any other way than racism.




> My intentions are good.




"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." As the old saying goes. I think you are mistaken, and I think it's a bad hill to make a stand on. It's better to accept things as they are, and move on.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

lowkey13 said:


> ....take. That. Back.










If I’m honest, though, he probably would have preferred to play a Cleric, what with his commitment to nonviolence.

Malcolm X, though?  Paladins, all day, every day.  Perhaps along the lines of...


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

darkbard said:


> Honestly,  no, I don't consider it a bit much. I think calls for moderation should always consider what they're actually calling for. MLK's admonition is to remember the inherent deleterious values conveyed by such a call for "moderation." This is no different than the other posts here that ask you to consider your motivations (perhaps those that escape your own conscious awareness).



A bible verse he probably had in mind when penning that one’s from Revelations: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

Moderation has a rightful place in civilization and discourse, but it can be problematic if the issue is in the practitioner’s blind spots.


----------



## dragoner

Dannyalcatraz said:


> If I’m honest, though, he probably would have preferred to play a Cleric, what with his commitment to nonviolence.
> 
> Malcolm X, though?  Paladins, all day, every day.  Perhaps along the lines of...





Thinking of MLK and Malcolm X as a Cleric and Paladin, are wonderful ideas that I never thought that would have come out of this thread. Thank you.


----------



## Lychee of the Exch.

"Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda ?"

No.

A good question would be "What is colonialist propaganda ?". The answer is : What is found in a majority of 19th century (the great era of colonization) newspapers re: Africa and the Middle East and Far East, and in the novels of that time period pertaining to those subjects and geographical areas.

The inhabitants of Africa specifically, in that time period, are depicted as "savages", which meant halfway beetween humans and apes. Orcs aren't even human, and have never been human. They're humanoid shaped monsters  - like trolls. Orcs stand for the the inhuman. As such, they aren't "savages", in the 19th century sense, who were *half*-humans.

The monsters of our fairy tales and sagas - of which the Orcs are but one example - have never been savages, which is a modern (post-Enlightment) concept. So they have nothing to do with colonialism.

But if you wanted, on a twisted whim, write a fantasy world were Orcs are stand-ins for colonized people, you could. Since there are exceedingly few such fantasy worlds out there (if any), I posit that Orcs are viewed as a racist or colonialist trope only by racism-obsessed or deluded people, or people with a pseudo-revolutionary agenda (the dimwitted lefties).

I posit that you need to refamiliarize yourself with ENWorld’s stance on non-inclusive behavior.  Hint: “dimwitted lefties” is not acceptable.  Disagreement without being disagreeable IS. Do not post in this thread again.


----------



## Sadras

dragoner said:


> It is what it is, Orcs sort of get the pass by tradition and fantasy tropes, I'm not arguing that they should necessarily be removed, except to be sensitive to the fact of what their representation is, is unfortunately racist.




So roleplaying thrill-seeking-murderhobo-looters is ok, but let's be sensitive to the fact that we're being racist to orcs. I remember the good ol' days where we could just kill things without having to worry about latent racism.

EDIT: When things get heated on Enworld, we often hear the phrase about posters  _arguing over their imaginary elf game_, but hey in this thread its all about colonialism and racism.


----------



## dragoner

Sadras said:


> So roleplaying thrill-seeking-murderhobo-looters is ok, but let's be sensitive to the fact that we're being racist to orcs. I remember the good ol' days where we could just kill things without having to worry about latent racism.
> 
> EDIT: When things get heated on Enworld, we often hear the phrase about posters  _arguing over their imaginary elf game_, but hey in this thread its all about colonialism and racism.




Because otherwise, the game police will kick in your door and confiscate your game books, right?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> No, dammit!  *JACKIE freaking CHAN* as Frodo!




I'd certainly be interested in Jackie Chan's interpretation of the character. Maybe they recruit Sammo Hung as Samwise. I'd feel a bit bad though given Jackie Chan's statements about how Hollywood handled him. 



> I believe _Eastenders_ had some POC in the cast, soooo...
> 
> 
> 
> I mean, a few swarthy hobbits- even in lead roles- won’t turn _LotR_ into _Straight Outta Compton_.
> 
> .




As far as I am concerned they can do whatever they want casting wise with any future lord of the rings. Heck if they want to set it in a city in the US, and go modern day that might be interesting. I am all for experimentation in that respect.


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> It's not hazy, if one replaced the Orc trope with any real world ethnic or religious group as a quick 2 second litmus test, it would be seen as horrible racism in an unqualified manner. It is what it is, Orcs sort of get the pass by tradition and fantasy tropes, I'm not arguing that they should necessarily be removed, except to be sensitive to the fact of what their representation is, is unfortunately racist. That an Orc's traits and capacity for evil is inherent to their race? I really don't see any assumption of how that could be construed in any other way than racism.




Again, like I said before, I don't think it is at all that clear, particularly when you start talking post-Tolkien orcs. I just don't think this is a settled debate by any stretch. I view the Tolkien Orcs as on the cusp. I mean it isn't even 100% clear to me what group they represent exactly. Someone mentioned East Asians, but that doesn't seem particularly apropos of the  depiction. I could see something vaguely Turkish perhaps, to invoke the Ottoman empire (but again there it is a question of whether he was invoking it purely as short hand or to cast Turks in a certain light). But to me it still seems pretty hazy, particularly when we account for what we know of Tolkien himself. 






> "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." As the old saying goes. I think you are mistaken, and I think it's a bad hill to make a stand on. It's better to accept things as they are, and move on.




Okay, but I think you are mistaken as well. We have a real disagreement over what this stuff means and what people ought to do about it. I don't view this as dying on a hill. I just view it is voicing my opinion and my reaction to a trope.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> I'd certainly be interested in Jackie Chan's interpretation of the character. Maybe they recruit Sammo Hung as Samwise. I'd feel a bit bad though given Jackie Chan's statements about how Hollywood handled him.




Sammo as Samwise opposite Chan as Frodo would be perfect!

A full-on martial arts movie version of LotR would probably be difficult to cast, but probably kick ass. (Quasi-pun intended.)

I mean, just imagine how _awesome_ a wushu battle between Gandalf and Saruman would be!


Hmmm...now I’m thinking I need to buy a copy of the Spirit of 77 rpg and design a blaxploitation/chop socky/buddy cop campaign based on a reskinning of LotR.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Sammo as Samwise opposite Chan as Frodo would be perfect!
> 
> A full-on martial arts movie version of LotR would probably be difficult to cast, but probably kick ass. (Quasi-pun intended.)
> 
> I mean, just imagine how _awesome_ a wushu battle between Gandalf and Saruman would be!
> 
> 
> Hmmm...now I’m thinking I need to buy a copy of the Spirit of 77 rpg and design a blaxploitation/chop socky/buddy cop campaign based on a reskinning of LotR.




They could do it in the style of Buddha's Palm


----------



## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> I mean it isn't even 100% clear to me what group they represent exactly.



It doesn't matter whether "slant-eyed" refers to East Asians, or Siberians, or Turks, or Arabs, or all of them. The point is that a physical characteristic possessed by a distinct group of people in the real world, a group who would be perceived as racially different because of that characteristic and others, is being associated with evil. That's what racism is. The connection of negative mental and moral traits with external physical features shared by a large subset of humanity.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> It doesn't matter whether "slant-eyed" refers to East Asians, or Siberians, or Turks, or Arabs, or all of them. The point is that a physical characteristic possessed by a distinct group of people in the real world, a group who would be perceived as racially different because of that characteristic and others, is being associated with evil. That's what racism is. The connection of negative mental and moral traits with external physical features shared by a large subset of humanity.




But we are talking about a fictional race, that seems to hold a lot of different cultural influence. I am just saying I don't think this is so cut and dry as people are making it. If it isn't even clear if that is a reference to Siberians or Turks (or perhaps not even to people at all) I don't see that it is an obvious racist trope. It is one thing to buy into early 20th century racialist theories (which are awful) but another for an author to borrow cultural and physical features from different groups in order to create a new race of creatures. Like I said before, I do think it is on the cusp. But on the cusp, not blatant. And I can definitely see room for disagreement on the issue. And since the Lord of the Rings, orcs have developed further so now they are just green skinned monsters with no real strong associations to any one group of people (any culture that has a history of skillfully waging war, seems fair game for using as inspiration for orcs).


----------



## generic

I'm sorry [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] I didn't notice that line of Lychee of the Exch.'s post when I XP'd it.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> And since the Lord of the Rings, orcs have developed further so now they are just green skinned monsters with no real strong associations to any one group of people



Yes, they've been largely deracinated in D&D. I couldn't find any reference to skin colour in the 5e entry.

1e - Brown skin, tribes, witch doctors, half-orcs = mongrels.
2e - Grey-green skin, tribes, witch doctors and shamans, half-orcs = mongrels (plus the term "racial stock", which is straight out of early 20th century race "science").
3e - Grey skin, tribes, half-orcs = crossbreeds.
4e - Tribes, no half-orcs.
5e - Tribes, half-orcs = crossbreeds.

"Tribe" is probably less clearly connected with particular peoples now than it would have been for Tolkien, other early Appendix N authors, or the late 19th century authors they'd have read such as H Rider Haggard, but I think it still has connotations of Africa.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> But we are talking about a fictional race, that seems to hold a lot of different cultural influence. I am just saying I don't think this is so cut and dry as people are making it. If it isn't even clear if that is a reference to Siberians or Turks (or perhaps not even to people at all) I don't see that it is an obvious racist trope. It is one thing to buy into early 20th century racialist theories (which are awful) but another for an author to borrow cultural and physical features from different groups in order to create a new race of creatures. Like I said before, I do think it is on the cusp. But on the cusp, not blatant. And I can definitely see room for disagreement on the issue. And since the Lord of the Rings, orcs have developed further so now they are just green skinned monsters with no real strong associations to any one group of people (any culture that has a history of skillfully waging war, seems fair game for using as inspiration for orcs).




Again, though, relying on a descriptive term for your fictional antagonists that is _exactly the same_ as one used perjorstively in the real world is, *at best* lazy and at worst, the exact kind of racist projection that people are criticizing that it may be.

What if, instead of lazily and reflexively using “slant-eyed”, the writer had flexed _one more creative muscle_ and said “slit-irised, like a goat”?  It conveys otherness without being an actual pejorative applied to humans.  It echoes some of the lore about Satan and his allies.

Hell, even the now-cliched “glowing (color) eyes) is better than “slant-eyed”.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Sgain, though, relying on a descriptive term for your fictional antagonists that is _exactly the same_ as one used perjorstively in the real world is, *at best* lazy and at worst, the exact kind of racist projection that people are criticizing that it may be.
> 
> What if, instead of lazily and reflexively using “slant-eyed”, the writer had flexed _one more creative muscle_ and said “slit-irised, like a goat”?  It conveys otherness without being an actual pejorative applied to humans.  It echoes some of the lore about Satan and his allies.
> 
> Hell, even the now-cliched “glowing (color) eyes) is better than “slant-eyed”.




I am not defending the use of that term. That isn't a term I would ever use. I am saying I don't know that it is clear what it is meant to indicate in this case.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Aebir-Toril said:


> I'm sorry [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] I didn't notice that line of Lychee of the Exch.'s post when I XP'd it.




‘S’ok- I missed it until it got reported.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not defending the use of that term. That isn't a term I would ever use. I am saying I don't know that it is clear what it is meant to indicate in this case.



*It doesn’t matter who the pejorative is aimed at.*  It’s offensive to REAL human beings.  Using it risks alienating people.  There’s a reason why it’s getting harder to find “Wop Salad” under its original name in NOLA.

As the saying goes, why borrow trouble?

As I have been saying, be more creative and find other descriptors.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> *It doesn’t matter who the pejorative is aimed at.*  It’s offensive to REAL human beings.  Using it risks alienating people.
> 
> As the saying goes, why borrow trouble?
> 
> As I have been saying, be more creative and find other descriptors.




Again, I said I don't support the use of the term. I don't advocate its use and I don't use it personally or in works myself. I think it is an insulting slur. But we are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind when he used it in the 40s* because the assertion here is that orcs are based on a racial stereotype. Without knowing what he meant by that term, we don't know whether they were meant to depict a particular race or ethnicity. I can't find a history of the slur itself, so I am not 100% sure what it would have meant to him at that time when he used the word to describe orcs. I know in present day use it is a slur. I don't know how common it was then, or if it was in use at that time. I can't tell if it was used to indicate Asian people, or if it was simply used as a descriptor (epicanthic folds are not limited to Asian people by any stretch (heck even some English people have them). That matters because it tells us how much racism is present at the inception of the orc. And who it is directed at matters because that tells us whether this is indeed a racial stereotype or just a mixture of different random cultural and ethnic traits to create flavor. 

*I know it was published in the 50s


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> There’s a reason why it’s getting harder to find “Wop Salad” under its original name in NOLA.




I don' know what that is. But I am not advocating the use of Ethnic slurs. I don't know how much more clear I can be about this.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> Again, I said I don't support the use of the term. I don't advocate its use and I don't use it personally or in works myself. I think it is an insulting slur. But we are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind when he used it in the 40s* because the assertion here is that orcs are based on a racial stereotype. Without knowing what he meant by that term, we don't know whether they were meant to depict a particular race or ethnicity. I can't find a history of the slur itself, so I am not 100% sure what it would have meant to him at that time when he used the word to describe orcs. I know in present day use it is a slur. I don't know how common it was then, or if it was in use at that time. I can't tell if it was used to indicate Asian people, or if it was simply used as a descriptor (epicanthic folds are not limited to Asian people by any stretch (heck even some English people have them). That matters because it tells us how much racism is present at the inception of the orc. And who it is directed at matters because that tells us whether this is indeed a racial stereotype or just a mixture of different random cultural and ethnic traits to create flavor.
> 
> *I know it was published in the 50s




The pejorative “slant eye” dates back to the 1850s.  It has been applied to a wide variety of Asians.

It is extremely difficult for me to accept that- whether he was racist or not- a person as educated as JRRT was would be unaware of its offensive nature.  He probably chose that word KNOWING it would reverberate with his (presumptively predominantly white) audience in a particular way, even if he didn’t feel that way himself.  He likely assumed readers of other ethnicities were either few in number or non-existent, or- like many caucasians of the day- didn’t realize how hurtful it was.

When you’re at the top of the social pyramid, it’s hard to see the problems at the bottom.  In my lifetime, I’ve encountered people who didn’t realize “darkie” was an insult.  DC comics had an Asian character called “Pieface” into the 1980s-90s, until he told the comic’s main character off one day.  You know, kinda like we’re still teaching people about “redskin” and blackface.


----------



## Darth Solo

Orcs are experience points for my players. Period. Never saw them as SJW meat. Can't be "dark-people substitute" because players ran Kushite (Black) PCs.

Orcs are monsters, not races.

Great.  You might want to reconsider future usage of “SJW” and similarly loaded terminology, though.

(And in a thread about the use of language, sheesh!)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> I don' know what that is. But I am not advocating the use of Ethnic slurs. I don't know how much more clear I can be about this.



As I recall, weren’t you the one worried about stifling creativity?  About who gets to say what’s racist?



Bedrockgames said:


> I feel like you are putting words in my mouth. I am saying people disagree on what tropes are racist or colonialist, and I am wary of where that bar is being set. Further I think some of what people are identifying as colonialist or racist is only so under a deep microscope.






Bedrockgames said:


> No, I am not saying that. I am saying that is what we are in danger of doing. I am trying to emphasize that people will have reasonable disagreements over this stuff.






Bedrockgames said:


> I hear what people are saying, but I think it isn't always obvious how media and stories impact our world. And I think as well intentioned as this stuff is, you really do run the risk of making wholesomeness prime, and quality second. We can juggle many things at once. But if wholesomeness becomes the benchmark for quality....I think it leads to less interesting stories. Dune is a good case in point. I am not sure how you could change it to take out the elements deemed problematic and have it remain intact. Part of what makes Dune work is the very tropes called into question.




Yup.

To be 100% clear: I’m NOT calling you racist.  I’m saying you’re pushing back awfully hard on a not particularly defensible hill.

People who are offended by something will (eventually) tell you so. Telling someone not to be offended isn’t a winning position, even in the defense of art.  IMHO, offensive art is at its best when it’s creators are unapologetic- I may not care for the particular message, but I CAN respect the creator’s honesty and integrity.

But regardless, someone who uses offensive words or images will reap the whirlwind they sow, even if they did so innocently.

Remember Aesop’s Fables?



> The Farmer and the Stork
> A Farmer set some traps in a field which he had lately sown with corn, in order to catch the cranes which came to pick up the seed. When he returned to look at his traps he found several cranes caught, and among them a Stork, which begged to be let go, and said, "You ought not to kill me: I am not a crane, but a Stork, as you can easily see by my feathers, and I am the most honest and harmless of birds." But the Farmer replied, "It's nothing to me what you are: I find you among these cranes, who ruin my crops, and, like them, you shall suffer."


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> As I recall, weren’t you the one worried about stifling creativity?  About who gets to say what’s racist?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yup.
> 
> To be 100% clear: I’m NOT calling you racist.  I’m saying you’re pushing back awfully hard on a not particularly defensible hill.
> 
> People who are offended by something will (eventually) tell you so. Telling someone not to be offended isn’t a winning position, even in the defense of art.  IMHO, offensive art is at its best when it’s creators are unapologetic- I may not care for the particular message, but I CAN respect the creator’s honesty and integrity.
> 
> But regardless, someone who uses offensive words or images will reap the whirlwind they sow, even if they did so innocently.
> 
> Remember Aesop’s Fables?




I can worry about putting tropes under an intense microscope that looks for problems like colonialism and how that impacts creativity and still not be defending Ethnic slurs. I don't know. I think the is a perfectly defensible position. I get that you and others might not agree with me. But I don't think it is crazy to say, maybe evil orcs are not racist tropes and maybe they don't have meaningful parallels to colonialist propaganda. People have asked me to introspect, and I have. This isn't a position I take lightly. I understand the stakes. But I think others might also benefit from questioning some of the certainty they are bringing to this discussion. I don't think the morality here is as stark as people claim.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> But I don't think it is crazy to say, maybe evil orcs are not racist tropes and maybe they don't have meaningful parallels to colonialist propaganda.



They may not be 1:1 analogs for any ethnic group- I dare say they are not- but the racist elements people have pointed out are not solely within the minds of the people seeing them.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> They may not be 1:1 analogs for any ethnic group- I dare say they are not- but the racist elements people have pointed out are not solely within the minds of the people seeing them.




I get it isn’t being drawn out of thin air. I don’t think it is immediately obvious though either. And I still think there is room for disagreement over whether the tropes are racist, or colonialist propaganda, whether it is a problem, and if it is a problem, what the best approach forward is. I can respect that you see things differently. I won’t keep pushing it here with you, because I think we’ve reached the repeating ourselves stage of the discussion. I just think differently about this than a lot of the posters here seem to. Like I said before colonialism is a deep topic. I think it is the kind of analysis you have to be educated into.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I think if someone starts a thread asking if Orcs are a colonialist trope, people should be able to give their honest opinion that it is or isn't



And so what is your opinion? And what is it based on?

(This thread has already given some reasons why _Because I've never noticed or felt it to be so_ may not be a good answer to that second question.)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> I think if someone starts a thread asking if Orcs are a colonialist trope, people should be able to give their honest opinion that it is or isn't




Just noticed the wording here.

The thread isn’t about if Orcs *are* a colonialist trope, but whether they “display parallels to colonialist propaganda.”  

It’s a small but important difference.  Perhaps within that difference lies the reason for your position.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> And so what is your opinion? And what is it based on?
> 
> (This thread has already given some reasons why _Because I've never noticed or felt it to be so_ may not be a good answer to that second question.)




I have given my opinion. I don’t think orcs are a particularly colonialist trope. I think you have to squint to see it. And I think criticisms on colonialist grounds require such in depth knowledge of the history that isn’t something most people would see unless they are trained to see it. It seems like an elitist concern to me. So I think it is an odd thing to fixate on as a problem. It is based on my experience playing games with orcs in them, my experience talking to other gamers about this issue, and my assessment of the arguments people have made on this topic in the last several years.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Just noticed the wording here.
> 
> The thread isn’t about if Orcs *are* a colonialist trope, but whether they “display parallels to colonialist propaganda.”
> 
> It’s a small but important difference.  Perhaps within that difference lies the reason for your position.




I don’t find either positions particularly compelling


----------



## pemerton

Doug McCrae said:


> It doesn't matter whether "slant-eyed" refers to East Asians, or Siberians, or Turks, or Arabs, or all of them. The point is that a physical characteristic possessed by a distinct group of people in the real world, a group who would be perceived as racially different because of that characteristic and others, is being associated with evil. That's what racism is. The connection of negative mental and moral traits with external physical features shared by a large subset of humanity.



I've quoted this (1) because I agree (though I don't think that this is _all_ that racism is), and (2) because it provides the context for the following quotes:



Bedrockgames said:


> But we are talking about a fictional race, that seems to hold a lot of different cultural influence. I am just saying I don't think this is so cut and dry as people are making it. If it isn't even clear if that is a reference to Siberians or Turks (or perhaps not even to people at all) I don't see that it is an obvious racist trope.





Bedrockgames said:


> I am not defending the use of that term. That isn't a term I would ever use. I am saying I don't know that it is clear what it is meant to indicate in this case.





Bedrockgames said:


> I can worry about putting tropes under an intense microscope that looks for problems like colonialism





Bedrockgames said:


> I don’t think it is immediately obvious though either.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> colonialism is a deep topic. I think it is the kind of analysis you have to be educated into.



It's nonsense that colonialism and race are deep topics that you need to be educated into. Young children of colour can and do recognise racism, directed at them and their parents; recognise privileged treatment enjoyed by white people; recognise obvious patterns of social domination and subordination.

More generally, if it's not obvious to you what is conveyed by describing an "evil" race as dark and slant-eyed (with scimitars and bandy legs get thrown in for good measure), and furthermore by treating that description as _sufficient grounds_ for inferring their evil (which is what happens between Frodo and the Southerner in Bree, as [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] quoted from LotR upthread), then that's on you. If _you_ need a microscope to be able to notice how that evokes and deploys racist tropes then that tells us something about you, but not much about JRRT's work.



Bedrockgames said:


> we are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind when he used it in the 40s* because the assertion here is that orcs are based on a racial stereotype. Without knowing what he meant by that term, we don't know whether they were meant to depict a particular race or ethnicity.



Perhaps this is what you are trying to do. Doug McCrae and others have already posted that they are not interested in what JRRT had in mind. The point is that he has dipped his pen into a well of ready-to-hand racist tropes and used them in his writing. End of story.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> It seems like an elitist concern to me.



Most people who worry about colonialism aren't elites. They're trying to get out from being at the bottom of the pile. It's the colonists who were the elites.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I've quoted this (1) because I agree (though I don't think that this is _all_ that racism is), and (2) because it provides the context for the following quotes:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's nonsense that colonialism and race are deep topics that you need to be educated into. Young children of colour can and do recognise racism, directed at them and their parents; recognise privileged treatment enjoyed by white people; recognise obvious patterns of social domination and subordination.
> 
> More generally, if it's not obvious to you what is conveyed by describing an "evil" race as dark and slant-eyed (with scimitars and bandy legs get thrown in for good measure), and furthermore by treating that description as _sufficient grounds_ for inferring their evil (which is what happens between Frodo and the Southerner in Bree, as [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] quoted from LotR upthread), then that's on you. If _you_ need a microscope to be able to notice how that evokes and deploys racist tropes then that tells us something about you, but not much about JRRT's work.
> 
> Perhaps this is what you are trying to do. Doug McCrae and others have already posted that they are not interested in what JRRT had in mind. The point is that he has dipped his pen into a well of ready-to-hand racist tropes and used them in his writing. End of story.




Again, I just don’t think it is that cut and dry. And I don’t think I am bad or racist for questioning this fine comb approach.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Most people who worry about colonialism aren't elites. They're trying to get out from being at the bottom of the pile. It's the colonists who were the elites.




I think this is incorrect. Most struggling people are not worried about colonialist tropes. They are worried about things that directly impact their lives and about putting food on the table. Being able to spend hours pouring over academic theories about colonialist tropes is a luxury. And it is in-depth and it is complex.  I know because I had to study colonialism and had to read stuff like Edward Said when I was in school. This stuff isn’t simple at all in my view. Not everyone is as steeped in these discussions and topics as you. And my argument is it is an elite concern that creates a gulf in the hobby between people with advanced degrees (or st least time to bond up on deep dubjevrs) and those without. It is pretty obvious the people who can navigate these discussions are usually very well educated..


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> I get it isn’t being drawn out of thin air. I don’t think it is immediately obvious though either.



Yet a lot of people are pointing out that it was quite obvious to *them*.  Why it isn’t to *you* might be a call for introspection why this is so, not reflexive defense of the work or the person who created it.



> And I still think there is room for disagreement over whether the tropes are racist, or colonialist propaganda, whether it is a problem, and if it is a problem, what the best approach forward is.




I think we would both agree that censorship is NOT the proper answer.  I think we would both agree that future use of such tropes should only be used with great caution.

We _seem_ to disagree about what is racist (or otherwise demeaning), who decides what is racist, and what is problematic.  To that, I say:

1) if someone is telling you that something is bigoted toward them and those like them, *listen*.  Appropriate initial responses are things like “OK.” And “It is?  Tell me why.”  Not anything like, “No it isn’t, because reasons *X,Y,Z*.”  If you hear them out and still don’t believe/understand, you may still be wrong (or right), but you haven’t dismissed their concerns out of hand.

2) if you are a member of the group allegedly being denigrated, you get to decide if something is an insult.  If you’re a member of the group creating the salleged slur, you really just don’t have standing to assert otherwise.

3) if people are telling you something is a problem, it’s problematic.  The only question is one of degree.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Yer a lot of people are pointing out that it was quite obvious to *them*.  Why it isn’t to *you* might be a call for introspection why this is so, not reflexive defense of the work or the person who created it.
> 
> 
> 
> I think we would both agree that censorship is NOT the proper answer.  I think we would both agree that future use of such tropes should only be used with great caution.
> 
> We _seem_ to disagree about what is racist (or otherwise demeaning), who decides what is racist, and what is problematic.  To that, I say:
> 
> 1) if someone is telling you that something is bigoted toward them and those like them, *listen*.  Appropriate initial responses are things like “OK.” And “It is?  Tell me why.”  Not anything like, “No it isn’t, because reasons *X,Y,Z*.”  If you hear them out and still don’t believe/understand, you may still be wrong (or right), but you haven’t dismissed their concerns out of hand.
> 
> 2) if you are a member of the group allegedly being denigrated, you get to decide if something is an insult.  If you’re a member of the group creating the salleged slur, you really just don’t have standing to assert otherwise.
> 
> 3) if people are telling you something is a problem, it’s problematic.  The only question is one of degree.




While I certainly think we should listen to people affected, that doesn’t mean being in that group automatically makes your reaction correct. I have to my due diligence and ask other people in that group beyond the forum (which I have by the way). And then I still need to use my own mind to make a decision. I just can’t accept the idea that people saying something is a problem makes it so. That seems quasi religious to me. People can be wrong, they can overreact, they can misunderstand.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> Most struggling people are not worried about colonialist tropes. They are worried about things that directly impact their lives and about putting food on the table.




How do you define “struggling” and “elitist”?  These images and words affect everyday people every day.

Leaving behind my own personal experiences in the US school system, I know my cousin came home from school (in MA) one day asking her Mom “When do I get to be white?”  She wasn’t into double-digits yet, and had already noticed differential treatment of PoC in school, art, and media.  It was eroding her self esteem.

Do you realize how big a deal it was when minority kids started seeing action figures and dolls that actually looked like them and their family?  Do you understand what kinds of conversations are being had at the dinner tables in minority American households when another depiction of minorities gets whitewashed?  Or how tired we are of white saviors?  Or Magic Negroes?

Let me just say, if this is a field in which you need education, said education for minorites starts as early as kindergarten.  (By that time, I already understood the words that had been painted on the side of our 450sq ft house.)  Kids of all races in the USA start associating darker skin with “being bad” and lighter skin with “being good” early on: between 3-5 years of age, they start applying stereotypes.*



* Erin Winkler  (2009). Children Are Not Colorblind: How Young Children Learn Race. High Reach Learning. PACE 3(3) https://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/africology/faculty/upload/children_colorblind.pdf.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> While I certainly think we should listen to people affected, that doesn’t mean being in that group automatically makes your reaction correct.




Which is why I said one good initial response would be “It is? Tell me why?”  I mean, I said that in the section you quoted.



> I just can’t accept the idea that people saying something is a problem makes it so. That seems quasi religious to me. People can be wrong, they can overreact, they can misunderstand.




Dude, if someone is honestly telling you that something is a problem, it’s at least a problem for _them_- like I said, it’s just a problem of degree.  (Again, in the quoted section.)


----------



## S'mon

Bedrockgames said:


> I'd certainly be interested in Jackie Chan's interpretation of the character. Maybe they recruit Sammo Hung as Samwise. I'd feel a bit bad though given Jackie Chan's statements about how Hollywood handled him.




A Hong Kong cinema version of LoTR with Jackie Chan as Frodo could be cool. I'd be much less keen on the Hollywood version.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] - once again, I appreciate your strong posts on this topic. Although I am white, many of those to whom I am close are not. These issues around representation and racist tropes affect them every day, in just the ways you describe.


----------



## S'mon

Bedrockgames said:


> And my argument is it is an elite concern that creates a gulf in the hobby between people with advanced degrees (or st least time to bond up on deep dubjevrs) and those without. It is pretty obvious the people who can navigate these discussions are usually very well educated..




I agree, many traps are laid for the ordinary folks, but unlike you, most people who don't feel up to navigating these mine-laden waters avoid engaging with discussions like this one (especially the last 19 pages or so).


----------



## S'mon

When reading the products of different (even related) cultures, I think people should be a bit more wary of their first subjective impressions, and stop to consider what it might mean within the home culture. 

A common one I'm familiar with is that British people think they know about racism and what Americans mean by racism, but really most of us do not have any real experience with American racism, its strength and extent.  British people who rely on Hollywood/US media and on possible experience of racism in Britain are culturally not really familiar at all with what racism actually implies in the USA (generally, something much stronger and more pervasive). To a lesser extent this is also true of regional variation within the USA, and even within the UK.

A lighter example, I knew an American woman from California who visited Yorkshire in the late 1990s and decided she was being sexually harrassed by all the men who called her "Love". I explained they called _me_ Love too - that the term had no sexual connotation in that culture. She preferred to prioritise her subjective experience - her feelings - ie she didn't listen. I'd say that was a mistake.

Another example [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] might be interested in - I had an undergrad student, originally from east-central Europe (Romania, possibly) who took a sabbatical in Australia, working with Aboriginal people, providing legal aid. She came back telling me that "Even the white Liberal Australians are very racist - they kept talking derogatorily about the Aboriginal people, calling them _Bogans_!" 
I tried to tell her that Bogan was a derogatory term for the Australian rural white lower class - again she did not listen, as it did not fit within her existing mental frame.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I think this frames it unfairly. You can worry about both.



Just because you _can_ worry about both does not mean that you _should_. They do not hold equal moral weight. I'm sorry but even if something leads to "duller" art but the alternative is harmful to actual people, then I will take the "duller" art every time. Because one is a moral position concerned with respecting the integrity of the human person and the other is not. If I am cooking a big dish for a group then I have to be mindful of their allergies and diets even if that leads to "duller-tasting food." Why? Because that is the bare minimum of decency for even a quarter-decent human being. 



Bedrockgames said:


> I don’t think it is immediately obvious though either.



For YOU. Though why you still hold to this position after being "educated" about it is beyond me. 



> And I still think there is room for disagreement over whether the tropes are racist, or colonialist propaganda, whether it is a problem, and if it is a problem, what the best approach forward is.



There may be room for disagreement, but I don't think that you are operating in that space. 



> I think it is the kind of analysis you have to be educated into.



Nah, I think that this is the kind of answer that attempts to stifle analysis and discussion. 



Bedrockgames said:


> I don’t think orcs are a particularly colonialist trope. I think you have to squint to see it.



Coded-Language: "If I have to squint to see the letters on the ophthalmologist's Snellen chart that everyone else sees, then the problem is not with my eyesight but with the chart." 



> And I think criticisms on colonialist grounds require such in depth knowledge of the history that isn’t something most people would see unless they are trained to see it.



Coded-Language: "Scheiße. How are the untrained 'common folk' actually now seeing this as an issue when they should be ignorant and quiet about it like they were before?" 



> It seems like an elitist concern to me.



Coded-Language: "It is a non-issue and you should ignore the 'academics' and 'elites' who are making something out of nothing."



> So I think it is an odd thing to fixate on as a problem.



Coded-Language: "Don't think on the issue because I also don't want to be forced into a position where I have 'to think' about the issue." 



> It is based on my experience playing games with orcs in them, my experience talking to other gamers about this issue, and my assessment of the arguments people have made on this topic in the last several years.



Coded-Language: "If my bubble of contacts is fine with it then there is no problem."


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## S'mon

Aldarc said:


> Coded-Language...Coded-Language...Coded-Language...Coded-Language...Coded-Language...




I think you are being unfair to Brendan and putting words in his mouth.
I confess to a certain sense of Schadenfreude, since I _feel_ (subjective experience!) that he has done the same to me many times over the years, elsewhere on the Internet.
Still, having been on the other side of this, I would advocate erring towards taking the most charitable, rather than least charitable, reading of someone's position.


----------



## Aldarc

S'mon said:


> I think you are being unfair to Brendan and putting words in his mouth.
> 
> Still, having been on the other side of this, I would advocate erring towards taking the most charitable, rather than least charitable, reading of someone's position.



I am affording him as much fairness and charity as he has afforded this topic. However, this sort of coded double-speak when it comes to discussing these sort of issues is far too common to ignore. If he does not mean these things, then he has the good charity to clarify himself. But these are certainly not his first words on the topic, but a summation of his opinions regarding the topic following 25+ pages of discussion, and given that others also took issue with that post, then I am not alone in my criticisms of that summation.


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## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Dude, if someone is honestly telling you that something is a problem, it’s at least a problem for _them_- like I said, it’s just a problem of degree.  (Again, in the quoted section.)




But it doesn't mean they are right that it is a problem for the broader culture. I could be really bothered by something, but my reaction might be a very unreasonable one. I am not saying we should ignore peoples' concerns, dismiss them, or lack empathy. I am saying we should not give up our responsibility to think for ourselves.


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## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Coded-Language: "Scheiße. How are the untrained 'common folk' actually now seeing this as an issue when they should be ignorant and quiet about it like they were before?"




You are completely putting words my mouth now


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## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I am affording him as much fairness and charity as he has afforded this topic. However, this sort of coded double-speak when it comes to discussing these sort of issues is far too common to ignore. If he does not mean these things, then he has the good charity to clarify himself. But these are certainly not his first words on the topic, but a summation of his opinions regarding the topic following 25+ pages of discussion, and given that others also took issue with that post, then I am not alone in my criticisms of that summation.




I have stated the same basic opinion over the course fo the thread and it keeps getting reframed or recharacterized. I have no problem being pinned to actual positions that I express (though obviously an opinion could be expressed inelegantly and require clarification). But I keep getting responses like "so why don't you care about group X, or why do you think your X is more important than the dying babies". These responses feel like they are twisting my words. Now you are literally looking for coded language (coded language I know for a fact I am not using). I'd also point out many of the posters tearing apart my position (including yourself) are a group of posters I have longstanding disagreements with over other topics (sometimes very intense disagreements about playstyle). I would ask them how objective they really think they are being in evaluating my position.


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## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> How do you define “struggling” and “elitist”?  These images and words affect everyday people every day.
> 
> Leaving behind my own personal experiences in the US school system, I know my cousin came home from school (in MA) one day asking her Mom “When do I get to be white?”  She wasn’t into double-digits yet, and had already noticed differential treatment of PoC in school, art, and media.  It was eroding her self esteem.




I grew up most of my life in Boston, and spent five years in a pretty racist small town out west for part of it, I don't disagree with there being major racial issues in Massachusetts. And I can totally see how this would happen because I remember how kids in the METCO Program often got treated by the white students or teachers (I am forty two  though so this was the 80s and 90s---I can't speak as much to the present day situation). I also live in Lynn, which is pretty racially diverse, and since the election I've seen a lot of troubling things happen here toward immigrant groups. I am not unconcerned about these issues. A lot of the issues being raised have personal impact for me. I am just saying, I don't think evil orcs are a particularly problematic trope, and I think we are putting undo emphasis on media content you really have to dig deeply into to find to be a problem (or media that is debatable as a problem). At the same time, I think we have to be careful about always assuming racism is the cause of something, and training people to see racism in everything. Racism is a problem. There is often an issue with racism in media. But some of the complaints about things like orcs, or complaints that D&D is colonialist in a variety of ways, seem really more of a stretch to me. And as much as I feel for a child in the situation you just described, I can't be dishonest in giving you my opinion that something is or is not a problem. I have to give my real opinion. And I think a lot of people are not doing that in these conversation because, as we can see, there is a big cost for even stepping a little bit outside the box.


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## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> I agree, many traps are laid for the ordinary folks, but unlike you, most people who don't feel up to navigating these mine-laden waters avoid engaging with discussions like this one (especially the last 19 pages or so).




I don't particularly feel up to it either. I don't enjoy online debates any more like I used to. I find them exhausting and have other things I'd rather discuss. I just think it is important to weigh in because I didn't realize how much the conversation had shifted and I think it is being shifted in a misguided (but well intentioned) direction.


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## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> How do you define “struggling” and “elitist”?  These images and words affect everyday people every day.
> .




I was responding to Pemerton, and assumed he was talking about people living in oppressive circumstances or at the bottom of society. By elitist I basically mean people who have good jobs and/or have master degrees or doctorates (or the equivalent elsewhere). Full disclosure, I have a BA degree, but it took me many years to obtain. One thing I've noticed is how out of your depth one can feel n these conversations when you don't have the more advanced degrees other posters have. Not because you feel like you are wrong and trying to BS, but in situations where you really feel like you are in the right, but you just are not steeped in the discourse or rhetoric enough to know where the landmines are. I have also just noticed gaming culture in general seems very split between those with masters degrees and those without. I think you are even beginning to see it at the designer level, where more and more game designers do seem to have masters degrees (I could be wrong, it is based on subjective impression). So it just feels to me like the hobby is becoming more and more elitist. And some of the really academic critiques being leveled at fantasy gaming seem like an elite concern to me. It isn't stuff I see at the table of regular gaming. It is stuff you have to know about arguments around colonialist tropes to really even see sometimes. I remember when arguments about racist orcs, or about dungeon delving and exploration being tied to colonialism first emerged and how most people seemed to find them kind of silly. But now they are gaining traction because I think a lot of these ideas have filtered down and are being taken up by more regular folk.

Believe me, I don't want to go toe to toe with someone like Pemerton over this stuff. I am not as skilled at debate, nor am I as educated, but I genuinely feel this stuff is misguided, causes more harm than good, and is not beneficial to the quality of artistic expression. And I think we are closing the doors around a lot of interesting things. For instance misogyny was brought up in this thread, and you can see in many peoples responses that just plain sexiness or displays of sexuality are sometimes being treated as terrible through that lens. I think there is room for disagreement over this stuff. But if I don't agree down the line with the program everyone on this thread seems to have signed up for, I am somehow labeled a bad person or my intentions are called into questions (despite a plethora of posters also stating our intentions never matter).


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## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> I have to give my real opinion. And I think a lot of people are not doing that in these conversation because, as we can see, there is a big cost for even stepping a little bit outside the box.




I see: you are somehow being compelled to post the truth here. And the rest of us are likewise compelled to participate in this conversation but somehow won't represent how we really feel for fear of some kind of reprisal. Yeah, that must be it.


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## darkbard

Also, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], you really seem to have a chip on your shoulder about your level of education and that of others. You shouldn't: your posts here demonstrate you to be plenty smart, and degrees are merely pieces of paper, not the be-all-end-all measure of cognitive ability. That said, many times you post about academics or intellectuals as if they are not too part of your "real world." Do you not see how that might come across as dismissive and offensive (plus, just plain wrong!)?


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## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> Also, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], you really seem to have a chip on your shoulder about your level of education and that of others. You shouldn't: your posts here demonstrate you to be plenty smart, and degrees are merely pieces of paper, not the be-all-end-all measure of cognitive ability. That said, many times you post about academics or intellectuals as if they are not too part of your "real world." Do you not see how that might come across as dismissive and offensive (plus, just plain wrong!)?




I am not trying to come off as having a chip on my shoulder. I worked hard for my education and respect the teachers who helped educate me. I just think there is a narrow wing of academia represented in this conversation (one more from the literary criticism side perhaps). That isn’t the only way to look at the world. And while I don’t have a chip, I think people don’t realize some of these concepts are complex for those not trained in them (just coming from a different discipline where words sometimes mean different things, it has taken me years to really understand some of these arguments). But I do think there is s tendency in the gaming community give people value based on education or perceived intelligence. And I do find that troubling sometimes. I think being intelligent is a great trait. But isn’t the only thing that gives people value. And when it is abused, it can be very harmful. A lot of the sneering we see in these discussions is because people have reached a different conclusion about trope. I think a lot of that stems from the issues I raised. You can even be morally right about something but abuse that position. I remember shattering my grandfather’s view of Columbus when I first went to school and I learned about his atrocities. My grandfather was coming from a very different place (he was s proud Italian who grew up very poor, without much education and believed Columbus was a hero), but not a bad place. I did have a morally defensive position in that discussion. But I was cruel about. I think people are failing to see their own cruelty in these discussions.


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## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> I see: you are somehow being compelled to post the truth here. And the rest of us are likewise compelled to participate in this conversation but somehow won't represent how we really feel for fear of some kind of reprisal. Yeah, that must be it.




I think it is important, given what happens in history when bad ideas take hold and people don’t speak up because they don’t want to appear stupid or be attacked, for people to give their real opinion on big issues like this. A lot of people share my view but are not saying anything because they are afraid of being dog piled by smart posters who are very skilled at debate.


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## S'mon

darkbard said:


> Also, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], you really seem to have a chip on your shoulder about your level of education and that of others. You shouldn't: your posts here demonstrate you to be plenty smart, and degrees are merely pieces of paper, not the be-all-end-all measure of cognitive ability.




I guess conversely we academics, who like playing with ideas, and sometimes taking a bit of a devil's-advocate position, could maybe stand to be more cognisant of how our words may be taken by those outside our milieu.


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## Doug McCrae

The problem with The Lord of the Rings goes well beyond orcs' physical characteristics. It contains references to many real world historical events, languages and cultures. It also has absolute evil and absolute good, and these are associated with real world peoples. Yes the Haradrim, Easterlings and other groups of men aren't pure evil, but they fight on its side.

Some examples:
The Shire is based on rural England.
Anglo-Saxon represents the language of the Riders of Rohan.
The Corsairs of Umbar are a reference to the Barbary pirates.
The mumakil of the Haradrim derive from African elephants.
Gondor derives in part from the Byzantine Empire.
Minas Ithil, conquered by Sauron's forces and renamed Minas Morgul, references Constantinople/Istanbul.
The Battle of the Pelennor Fields is partly based on the 1683 Battle of Vienna which was decided by a Polish cavalry charge.
The Battle of Helm's Deep is based partly on the 1565 Siege of Malta where a small force of the Knights Hospitaller defended the island against the Ottoman Empire.

"Bradford's account of the climax of the siege has a mine exploding with a huge blast, breaching the town walls and causing stone and dust to fall into the ditch, with the Turks charging even as the debris was still falling. He also has the 70-year-old de Valette saving the day by leading towards the Turks some hundred troops that had been waiting in the Piazza of Birgu." - From the Wikipedia article.​


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## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> I see: you are somehow being compelled to post the truth here. And the rest of us are likewise compelled to participate in this conversation but somehow won't represent how we really feel for fear of some kind of reprisal. Yeah, that must be it.




No one is forcing me. I am forcing myself. I don’t want to be in this position. I don’t like it and it is very risky. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose. And it is clear the vast majority of posters disagree with me. But the majority can be wrong and I think we have a responsibility to say when we think it is wrong.


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## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> No one is forcing me. I am forcing myself. I don’t want to be in this position. I don’t like it and it is very risky. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose. And it is clear the vast majority of posters disagree with me. But the majority can be wrong and I think we have a responsibility to say when we think it is wrong.




The part of your post that precipitated mine was your charge that those of us posting in favor of the possibility of reading orcs as partaking in racist tropes, etc. are somehow disingenuously refraining from showing you how we really feel about the matter. That we are cowardly and hiding behind groupthink, whereas you are the lone, bold champion of truth.


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## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I have stated the same basic opinion over the course fo the thread and it keeps getting reframed or recharacterized. I have no problem being pinned to actual positions that I express (though obviously an opinion could be expressed inelegantly and require clarification). But I keep getting responses like "so why don't you care about group X, or why do you think your X is more important than the dying babies". These responses feel like they are twisting my words. Now you are literally looking for coded language (coded language I know for a fact I am not using).



I'm not sure if the tone and content of your posts have endeared yourself to warrant much else. You have indeed not shown much regard about others who are harmed by the issue or find it offensive. You believe it is a non-issue, that others are looking for offense where it does not exist, and both of these propositions ignore direct evidence to the contrary of posters who are legitimately offended, including by those who exist within the demographics targeted, whether directly or indirectly, by these depictions. Even giving you a generous reading, this makes you at least tone deaf to the offense others have received, if not suspiciously turning a blind eye to the problem when presented with contrary evidence. Perhaps when you do show that you care, then we could begin to say that these responses are inappropriate. 

Add onto this your position has repeatedly sought to drown this topic in ambiguity so as to remove the issue of colonial undertones of orcs from (1) any reproach, and thereby (2) prevent it from being subsequently addressed. When you constantly ask "But where do we draw the line?" then little to nothing can actually be done to address the problem, because it seeks to force the discussion to be about the parameters of the line (that is also intentionally being blurred) rather than the substance of the issues at stake. 



> I'd also point out many of the posters tearing apart my position (including yourself) are a group of posters I have longstanding disagreements with over other topics (sometimes very intense disagreements about playstyle). I would ask them how objective they really think they are being in evaluating my position.



Then I'd naturally point out that this is a circumstantial ad hominem that seeks to discredit those, including myself, from making criticisms about your argument or the subject in question as if we are just somehow predisposed to disagree with you rather than engage the merits of the arguments presented.  



Bedrockgames said:


> You are completely putting words my mouth now



If only 1 out of 5 missed the mark, that's a good bout of Battleship.


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## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> The part of your post that precipitated mine was your charge that those of us posting in favor of the possibility of reading orcs as partaking in racist tropes, etc. are somehow disingenuously refraining from showing you how we really feel about the matter. That we are cowardly and hiding behind groupthink, whereas you are the lone, bold champion of truth.




I wasn’t saying that at all. I think you clearly believe what you say and you are well intentioned. But I know for a fact many people agree with me and are afraid to weigh in (because I’ve spoken to such people). This happens on social media all the time. Normally most people ignore it to avoid the headache. But bad ideas and bad ideologies can take root that way. So I think it is increasingly important for people to give their honest opinion and not just the opinion that is good for business or keeps them out of trouble. That is why I said to Hussar that I welcomed his viewpoint even if I disagreed.


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## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> The part of your post that precipitated mine was your charge that those of us posting in favor of the possibility of reading orcs as partaking in racist tropes, etc. are somehow disingenuously refraining from showing you how we really feel about the matter. That we are cowardly and hiding behind groupthink, whereas you are the lone, bold champion of truth.




This is the post I meant to quote in my previous post. Will fix when I get to computer. Sorry for any confusion


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I tried to tell her that Bogan was a derogatory term for the Australian rural white lower class - again she did not listen, as it did not fit within her existing mental frame.



I would suggest "outer suburban" rather than "rural", at least in current usage.

A lot could be said about race and racism in Australia, but this is probably not the thread for it, as I don't know of any gaming or gaming-related texts that deal with or express it.

While I agree with you that cultural norms can vary, and sometimes unexpected, I also think that sometimes their meaning is relativelyi evident. To go back to the JRRT example, there is no cultural norm that explains why JRRT was _not_ evoking racist tropes in those passages.

And if we go back to the OP, do orcs - in the sense of non-urban, warrior cultured, village-dwellers who prey upon (typically white) "good"/"civilised" farms and townships express a colonialist idea? My view is that it is fairly clear that they do. And of course it woudl be quite possible, in principle, to have fantasy stories about pastoralist and village folk fighting off exploitative conquerors who displace them from their lands (an inverse of "Beyond the Black River", my least favourite Conan story although I think that puts me in a minority). But that is not a standard D&D trope.

Whether the FRPG treatment of orcs should be looked at through the lens of Orientalism, or colonisation in Africa, or the Western (in this thread, [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] has suggested both) is a further question, about the way these tropes have been developed and expressed in different literary traditions.

And what follows from this fact about FRPG orcs, eg about game play and the design of game elements, is something I don't have a firm view about - that's not an easy question to answer (in my view). But my uncertainty in relation to this last question doesn't make me doubt my view that there is a _fact_ here.


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## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Add onto this your position has repeatedly sought to drown this topic in ambiguity so as to remove the issue of colonial undertones of orcs from (1) any reproach, and thereby (2) prevent it from being subsequently addressed. When you constantly ask "But where do we draw the line?" then little to nothing can actually be done to address the problem, because it seeks to force the discussion to be about the parameters of the line (that is also intentionally being blurred) rather than the substance of the issues at stake.




I haven't been drowning anyone out. I am one poster and for every post I make it seems there are 3-5 that disagree with me. But obviously I disagree that this is a problem, so I am going to take the position that we should be wary of the solution (especially when I think the solution is producing more negative than positive consequences). This is starting to have a big impact on what gets made and what people are comfortable writing. I think the solutions you are seeing promoted on places like Twitter are constricting what is creatively possible, and the boundaries are getting tighter and tighter, often in ways that seem crazy if you are not steeped in this stuff. Like for example the claim that D&D is colonialist propaganda. What I am saying is the bar for entry to be creative in this hobby is being set way too high because it is based around, what for most people, are obscure academic arguments. Most people don't look at D&D as being tied to colonialism (most people don't walk around thinking about colonialism all that much). And most people don't worry about borrowing from a historical battle in their campaign or their book, because it might be problematic in some way, under a certain lens. But now, if you follow these conversations, it is becoming clear you almost need a masters degree or be an expert in a given subject to publish and not run into problems. I don't think you realize how stifled a lot of people are feeling about this. No one really knows where to step. And there large groups of people online just waiting to tear you down if you step somewhere they've decided is off limits (and often those parameters just feel strange). 



> If only 1 out of 5 missed the mark, that's a good bout of Battleship.




It wasn't. I just opted to respond to one rather than all five.


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## S'mon

Doug McCrae said:


> The problem with The Lord of the Rings goes well beyond orcs' physical characteristics. It contains references to many real world historical events...




Do you object to Bollywood movies referencing real world historical events, where 
white-skinned & red-coated British Empire villains murder and oppress Indians before meeting their 
well-deserved end on the hero's blade?


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> And if we go back to the OP, do orcs - in the sense of non-urban, warrior cultured, village-dwellers who prey upon (typically white) "good"/"civilised" farms and townships express a colonialist idea? My view is that it is fairly clear that they do.




My feeling is that:

The Siege of Vienna is not a colonialist trope. You can call Tolkien's orcs racist although I might disagree; you cannot legitimately call them colonialist.

Same goes, to a slightly more debatable extent, to the Minions of Evil orcs in the 1e MM and 
1983 D&D cartoon. These are the Armies of the Dark Lord, and that is not a colonialist trope. The whole point of Colonialism is that 'we' are the expanding, civilised and civilising force; 'they' are the  declining, savage race whose territories & resources should be taken, and 'they' either killed or civilised. In Tolkien's (& Tolkienesque) conservative fantasy, 'they' are the organised force coming to colonise, enslave and kill _us_. Hence all the people who thought he was writing a parable for the Second World War, with Nazis as orcs and Hitler as Sauron.

Conversely, from at least the time of Keep on the Borderlands, the territorial-development themes in the 1e DMG, and getting much stronger with the "Savage Barbarian" orcs exemplified by the 3e MM depiction, there _are_ actual colonialist (or very similar, US 'Old West') tropes in D&D.


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## Aldarc

S'mon said:


> Do you object to Bollywood movies referencing real world historical events, where
> white-skinned & red-coated British Empire villains murder and oppress Indians before meeting their well-deserved end on the hero's blade?



It's a problem relativized by imbalances in power and colonial history. Satire and parody, for example, in the hands of the marginal power targeted against the dominant power is a means to fight oppression. However, satire and parody in the hands of a dominant power targeted against the marginal power is a means of oppression. So while we may say that these Bollywood movies referencing real world historical events have problematic elements in their depiction of their ex-colonial overlords, you must admit that it would look radically different if we were talking about the inverse situation: British movies referencing real world events, where darker-skinned & turban-wearing Indian villains murder and oppress white British citizens before meeting their end on the hero's blade.


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## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> But it doesn't mean they are right that it is a problem for the broader culture. I could be really bothered by something, but my reaction might be a very unreasonable one.



So imagine that you are introducing a young friend or relative to LotR, and you come to this passage (quoted upthread by   [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION]):

"Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a sallow face with sly, slanting eyes; but it vanished at once.
‘So that’s where that southerner is hiding!’ he thought. ‘He looks more than half like a goblin.’"​
You wouldn't be any more self-conscious reading that to a child of East or Central Asian background, than to someone who was white? You wouldn't be self-conscious at all?

You think it's an _unreasonable_ response to see racist ideas in the notion of _sly, slanting eye_ in a _sallow_ (= yellow/brown) face, which - apparently in virtue of these features, as nothing else is mentioned - _looks more than half like a goblin_, that is, looks sinister and evil?

Btw, this has absolutely _nothing_ to do with academic debates and literary criticism. As   [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] already mentioned upthread, this is something that 5 year old children of colour will notice. Nor is it particularly related to _offence_. Who knows, and who cares, whether or not JRRT intended to give offence - I suspect he didn't much think about that at all. And some people of colour may be offended by this, but others may not be - perhaps they're pretty used to it, and maybe they even find JRRT rather tame compared to other experiences they have had. The point that I (and others) have made is about the _meaning_ that JRRT is conveying, and the tropes used to convey it. These present a certain sort of person as of inherently or naturally sly and evil appearance. It is this idea that is racist, and (in some, perhaps loose, sense) an element of "colonialist propaganda" insofar as it is an element of a larger body of 19th and first half of the 20th century racist ideologies.



Bedrockgames said:


> I have no problem being pinned to actual positions that I express





Bedrockgames said:


> misogyny was brought up in this thread, and you can see in many peoples responses that just plain sexiness or displays of sexuality are sometimes being treated as terrible through that lens.



Whose responses? Which "many people"? I've read the whole thread (other than a small number of posts from people who have me blocked - mostly Celebrim in this thread, I believe). I didn't see these "many" responses.

And frankly, this is why you are getting pushback. Instead of making clear assertions and defending them, you refer in oblique terms to these barely articulated threats to your artistic preferences.

So let's go back to misogyny. As far as I know I'm the one who brought it up, with reference to the random harlot table, and particular reference to Brazen Strumpets, Wanton Wenches and Saucy Tarts. Do you think that in suggesting this stuff is sexist crap that the DMG would be better off without, I am opposing sexiness in RPGing? Is there no way of presenting sex and sexiness in our games beyond fantasies about prostitutes who _really, really_ want it?

With both your discussion of JRRT, and your allusion to the DMG, tell us - _what are you actually defending here?_


----------



## S'mon

Aldarc said:


> It's a problem relativized by imbalances in power and colonial history. Satire and parody, for example, in the hands of the marginal power targeted against the dominant power is a means to fight oppression. However, satire and parody in the hands of a dominant power targeted against the marginal power is a means of oppression. So while we may say that these Bollywood movies referencing real world historical events have problematic elements in their depiction of their ex-colonial overlords, you must admit that it would look radically different if we were talking about the inverse situation: British movies referencing real world events, where darker-skinned & turban-wearing Indian villains murder and oppress white British citizens before meeting their end on the hero's blade.




But Indians are dominant in India! Both cases concern historical events. White Europeans aren't a magical permanent oppressor class, they can be on top or not at different times. During the Seljuk and Ottoman expansions they certainly weren't on top.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> So imagine that you are introducing a young friend or relative to LotR, and you come to this passage (quoted upthread by [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION]):
> 
> "Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a sallow face with sly, slanting eyes; but it vanished at once.
> ‘So that’s where that southerner is hiding!’ he thought. ‘He looks more than half like a goblin.’"​
> You wouldn't be any more self-conscious reading that to a child of East or Central Asian background, than to someone who was white? You wouldn't be self-conscious at all?




Well my son has a bit of an epicanthic fold due to Finnish ancestry, it certainly wouldn't have occurred to me (or him) to worry about this stuff until you brought it up. But again it's a cultural issue - if he was getting teased at school then it might well be an issue. If east-Asian children are being bullied over their looks, then their looks become an issue. Likewise white or black kids in east Asia - Barack Obama apparently suffered a lot of racist bullying as a school child in Indonesia.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> So imagine that you are introducing a young friend or relative to LotR, and you come to this passage (quoted upthread by @_*Doug McCrae*_):
> "Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a sallow face with sly, slanting eyes; but it vanished at once.
> ‘So that’s where that southerner is hiding!’ he thought. ‘He looks more than half like a goblin.’"​
> You wouldn't be any more self-conscious reading that to a child of East or Central Asian background, than to someone who was white? You wouldn't be self-conscious at all?
> 
> You think it's an _unreasonable_ response to see racist ideas in the notion of _sly, slanting eye_ in a _sallow_ (= yellow/brown) face, which - apparently in virtue of these features, as nothing lelse is mentioned - _looks more than half like a goblin_, that is, looks sinister and evil?
> [/I]




Please stop putting words in my mouth like "You think it's an _unreasonable_ response to see racist ideas in the notion of _sly, slanting eye_ in a _sallow_ (= yellow/brown) face, which - apparently in virtue of these features, as nothing lelse is mentioned - _looks more than half like a goblin_, that is, looks sinister and evil?". I never said that. 

I would be self conscious with that passage regardless of who I am reading it to but particularly if the person was Asian. Of course I would pause at such a passage and wouldn't be callous about the topic. Like I said I not defending the use of the slur. And that slur is one I find particularly troubling. I am talking about what Tolkien intended, what the tropes mean today, and if a concept like Evil Orc is something that is a problem (or related to colonialism). I feel the nuance of what I am saying is getting lost here. He was writing in a very different time, and you do have to put that into the conversation. That isn't a passage that I remembered being int he book. It doesn't surprise me it is. But I do think there is huge difference between the way things like race appear in LoTR and the way it appears in other works (like the works of Lovecraft). With Tolkien, I don't get the sense that any of it is ill-mentioned or even deliberate. And I think that matters. I don't think Tolkien was a racist. Especially when I read things like the letter he wrote to a German publisher. I do think he was a person of his time and used language that was much more common. And so I don't think the trope is as loaded as ones that are crafted with nefarious racial intent.

And again, my point is, I don't know that the intent is obvious from those reasons. He could have just been using a handy word to describe narrow eyes. I don't know that he had asians in mind (particularly since he is talking, if I follow, about another hobbit). I think you can be sensitive to the way that word would be perceived now, but understand that Tolkien's intentions at the time were probably not bad.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> The Siege of Vienna is not a colonialist trope. You can call Tolkien's orcs racist although I might disagree; you cannot legitimately call them colonialist.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The whole point of Colonialism is that 'we' are the expanding, civilised and civilising force; 'they' are the  declining, savage race whose territories & resources should be taken, and 'they' either killed or civilised. In Tolkien's (& Tolkienesque) conservative fantasy, 'they' are the organised force coming to colonise, enslave and kill _us_. Hence all the people who thought he was writing a parable for the Second World War, with Nazis as orcs and Hitler as Sauron.



I think you are disregarding some of the ideas that underpin the self-conceived legitimacy of a settler colony. (Such as the one I live in.)

A recurring idea that justified "dispersing the natives" (that is the term that was widely used in Australia; I'm not sure what the American or East African analogues are, but I'm sure they existed) is that they are coming to kill us and destory our civilisation. A recurring idea that justfied the White Australia Policy (which I assert counts as a colonialist project) was the need to protect this outpost of British civilisation from "Asiatic hordes". (And the conception of such hordes, as it figured in Austrralian politics of the time and to the extent that it continues to figure in Australian politics, does not draw subtle distinctins such as between the history of Turkish attacks on Vienna and Sax Rohmer fantasies about China.)

These idea, of civilisation under attack and having to defend itself against these "savages", lives alongside the ones you mention - about declining races, etc. How the two sets of ideas are reconciled in a coherent national narrative is something of a puzzle, but many national narratives contain prima facie conflicting elements.

Your post also prompted me to recall another example of paradox/contradiction in colonial conceptions of civilisation and "native" - a photograph of a British settler in New Zealand with a wall mounted with _many_, _many_ Maori heads. (Google has turned up the photograph - a warning that some may find it graphic and/or disturbing.) Yet in the British and American pulp and proto-pulp literature it is the "natives" who are headhunters, and the civilised people whose heads are in danger.


----------



## Aldarc

S'mon said:


> But Indians are dominant in India! Both cases concern historical events. White Europeans aren't a magical permanent oppressor class, they can be on top or not at different times. During the Seljuk and Ottoman expansions they certainly weren't on top.



Is it that you _can't_ see how these two cases are different or that you _won't_ see how they are different?


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I disagree that this is a problem, so I am going to take the position that we should be wary of the solution



What solution? I don't believe anyone in this thread has proposed a solution - so what exactly are you saying we should be "wary' of?


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> What solution? I don't believe anyone in this thread has proposed a solution - so what exactly are you saying we should be "wary' of?



 [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] did propose diversifying our depictions of "evil," such as using glowing eyes, which is something that could not be linked to particular human demographics. So apparently we should be wary of the great harm that would befall our noble hobby should such nefarious solutions ever saw the light of day.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Whose responses? Which "many people"? I've read the whole thread (other than a small number of posts from people who have me blocked - mostly Celebrim in this thread, I believe). I didn't see these "many" responses.




Perhaps it was just some. I don't know the number. I was going by memory and impression when it came up. Seem to recall discussion of the table and of chainmail bikini type art. 



> And frankly, this is why you are getting pushback. Instead of making clear assertions and defending them, you refer in oblique terms to these barely articulated threats to your artistic preferences.




I've been as clear as I know how to be Pemerton. This is me giving full attention to communicating what I am thinking. I think you and I just have different ideas about how these kinds of discussions need to play out. You want me to make a very academic debate style post. That isn't what I am interested in doing. Like I said, I find this stuff exhausting and I recognize you are much better at debating than I am on these subjects. But that doesn't make you right. It just makes you educated and smart. 



> So let's go back to misogyny. As far as I know I'm the one who brought it up, with reference to the random harlot table, and particular reference to Brazen Strumpets, Wanton Wenches and Saucy Tarts. Do you think that in suggesting this stuff is sexist crap that the DMG would be better off without, I am opposing sexiness in RPGing? Is there no way of presenting sex and sexiness in our games beyond fantasies about prostitutes who _really, really_ want it?




I am saying people are being a bit puritanical about this stuff in my mind. I think the obvious humor and playfulness is being missed. And I think the presence of sexy chainmail bikini art isn't bad. I don't think it is always called for, and probably not suitable for what D&D has become. But I think those kind of rough edges actually make the 1E material a bit more interesting than some of the stuff coming out today. 



> With both your discussion of JRRT, and your allusion to the DMG, tell us - _what are you actually defending here?_




All I am saying is we may want to chill out a bit and realize how some of this stuff is built on layered assumptions that come from pretty deep academic arguments, and that there are other ways to see these things. I am not advocating to do bad things. I am saying we can disagree on what is valid material in art, and we can set the bar for what is acceptable or not too high (as well as too low). My posts are all pretty clear. I've basically been restating the same opinion over and over. I think we just disagree. I would like to point out though, your postings here feel very accusatorial. Like I am on trial for saying I don't find orcs to be a colonialist trope.  I think the vast majority of people probably think that is pretty crazy. I think a lot of people are afraid to say they think it is crazy because they see what happens in threads like this. I am getting painted in an extremely negative light, and I don't think my position is all that extreme at all (and just to be clear here because I am sure there are people wondering what my politics, I am left and liberal and voted for Obama  and Hillary----and will vote against Trump in the next election). Don't believe in the wall. Believe in reforming our criminal justice system and making it more equitable. I'm mentioning that not because I think being a conservative makes you bad, but because that so often seems to be an undertone in these debates in gaming and I want to be clear. I think being racially sensitive is important, but I also think free expression is important. I am reaching different conclusions than you. That doesn't make me a bad person.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] did propose diversifying our depictions of "evil," such as using glowing eyes, which is something that could not be linked to particular human demographics. So apparently we should be wary of the great harm that would befall our noble hobby should such nefarious solutions ever saw the light of day.




Dude, I am not saying give orcs eyes associated with a particular of people. Please don't put words in my mouth. You want to have glowing eyed orcs, I am all for that. I don't think it is the only way to do orcs. But it is a perfectly valid approach.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> *Dude, I am not saying give orcs eyes associated with a particular of people. *Please don't put words in my mouth. You want to have glowing eyed orcs, I am all for that. I don't think it is the only way to do orcs. But it is a perfectly valid approach.



I didn't say that you did.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> What solution? I don't believe anyone in this thread has proposed a solution - so what exactly are you saying we should be "wary' of?




The solutions I am seeing are things like automatically accept peoples reactions to things because of what group they belong to. But I think there are also just solutions to this kind of discussion playing out on social media. And that is the constriction of creativity I am talking about (for instance you can see it in debates about cultural appropriation and fantasy settings-----which I think is getting much harder to navigate).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I didn't say that you did.




It seemed implied to me, but if you didn't I retract.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I would be self conscious with that passage regardless of who I am reading it to but particularly if the person was Asian. Of course I would pause at such a passage and wouldn't be callous about the topic. Like I said I not defending the use of the slur. And that slur is one I find particularly troubling.



So, then, who do you think yoiu are disagreeing with in this thread with respect to this particular issue - that is, the way that JRRT presents orcs in LotR?



Bedrockgames said:


> I am talking about <snippage> what the tropes mean today, and if a concept like Evil Orc is something that is a problem (or related to colonialism).



These are three different things.

The trope of a "slant-eyed, sallow face therefore half-goblin" I think means the same today as it did when JRRT wrote it.

Whether the FRPG notiont of an orc is related to "colonialist propaganda", ie the sort of racist ideas that are presented as legitimising the colonialist endeavour, is a different thing. I think the origin is fairly clear. I think it remains pretty clear in Gygax's Monster Manual. Frankly I think it remains pretty clear in the 4e Monster Manual. I don't have a copy of the 5e one, so can't comment on that.

Is this fact about the orc trope a _problem_? As I've said already upthread, I don't know. It may not be possible to give a general answer to that question. 



Bedrockgames said:


> I don't know that he had asians in mind (particularly since he is talking, if I follow, about another hobbit).



JRRT is not talking about a hobbit. He is talking about a southerner (a "man" in JRRT's vocabulary) who is hagning out with another "man" (Bill Ferny, a petty bad guy). And to be frank it is crystal clear what and who he had in mind, given his presentations of Easterlings and Southrons.



Bedrockgames said:


> what Tolkien intended
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I feel the nuance of what I am saying is getting lost here. He was writing in a very different time, and you do have to put that into the conversation.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I do think there is huge difference between the way things like race appear in LoTR and the way it appears in other works (like the works of Lovecraft). With Tolkien, I don't get the sense that any of it is ill-mentioned or even deliberate. And I think that matters. I don't think Tolkien was a racist.



I've not read very much Tolkien biography. (Only what one picks up in some of the critical work on LotR.) It seems unlikely - for statistical if no other reasons - that he was not virulently racist like HPL. For the same (statistical) reasons it seems likely that he was racist, in the sense of viewing non-white people as tending to be inferior in character and accomplishment to Europeans. This was, after all, a fairy common viewpoint among English people, including educated English people, of his time. They lived as part of, and from time to time took significant steps to defend, an Empire that was based very heavily on racist ideas and was governed very extensively along racial lines.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that JRRT was devoid of any racist judgement, and happened to include a passage equating Central/East Asian appearance with goblinness just out of habit or carelessness or received literary style - _that wouldn't change anything about the passage_.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] did propose diversifying our depictions of "evil," such as using glowing eyes, which is something that could not be linked to particular human demographics.




I want more depictions of things. These kinds of proposals are fine. What bothers me is when people start creating a list of acceptable ways to handle this stuff. It gets very stuffy very quickly. Like I said, it is all very well intentioned, but you see this now all the time on twitter. I.e. "When handling colonialist tropes, consider the following". I don't think that is a great environment for creativity. And this hobby is a creative hobby. To me, it just feels very 1950s. And I agree with people who say constraints can force you to be more creative. But I would also point to the explosion of great cinema in the early 70s as restrictions were lowered, where people were more free to experiment. There is value in giving people room to explore and not always assuming the worst intentions.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> The solutions I am seeing are things like automatically accept peoples reactions to things because of what group they belong to.



I'm not sure what you think that is a "solution" to.

It's a suggestion that the best way to find out if a trope or idea is racist is to see what people of colour believe about it. Do you think that's bad advice?


----------



## Doug McCrae

pemerton said:


> Yet in the British and American pulp and proto-pulp literature it is the "natives" who are headhunters, and the civilised people whose heads are in danger.



There's a similar inversion in LotR. During the attack on Minas Tirith Sauron's army uses catapults to fire the decapitated heads of the defenders' dead comrades over the city walls. But in the Siege of Malta this was actually done by the defenders - the European knights - using cannon, though it should be noted that was in response to an act of similar barbarism by the Ottomans.

"Then among the greater casts there fell another hail, less ruinous but more horrible. All about the streets and lanes behind the Gate it tumbled down, small round shot that did not burn. But when men ran to learn what it might be, they cried aloud or wept. For the enemy was flinging into the City all the heads of those who had fallen fighting at Osgiliath, or on the Rammas, or in the fields." - The Return of the King.​
"Mustafa had the bodies of the knights decapitated and their bodies floated across the bay on mock crucifixes. In response, de Valette beheaded all his Turkish prisoners, loaded their heads into his cannons and fired them into the Turkish camp." - Wikipedia article.​


----------



## generic

Where exactly in this thread did the converstion switch from D&D and gaming to J.R.R. Tolkein's works?


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't find orcs to be a colonialist trope.  I think the vast majority of people probably think that is pretty crazy.



Including the vast majority in Kenya, Iran and India?

Including the vast majority of Indigenous Australians, Native Americans and Maoris?

I was recently talking to a friend who was born in South Asia but now lives in Australia. She was expressing shock at the ignorance of British colonialism in Australia (itself an offshoot of British colonialism) compared to the country where she was educated.

When I speak to East Africans, they are not unfamiliar with concepts and imagery of colonialism. It might surprise you, but when they talk about Hollywood stars they focus almost exclusively, and quite unselfconsciously, on Black actors.

I haven't done any sort of systematic survey on any of this - it's not really my field of study - but my anecdotal experience makes me think that your "vast majority" may be located within a rather particular sample of humanity.



Bedrockgames said:


> Seem to recall discussion of the table and of chainmail bikini type art.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I am saying people are being a bit puritanical about this stuff in my mind. I think the obvious humor and playfulness is being missed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> All I am saying is we may want to chill out a bit and realize how some of this stuff is built on layered assumptions that come from pretty deep academic arguments



Frankly, I don't think it requires deep academic argument to note the character of a book that has nothing to say about sex, and frankly almost nothing to say about _women_, except that cities and towns all have their fair share of Wanton Wenches et al waiting for (one assumes male) adventurers to do them.

That's playful in the same sense that a Playboy centrefold is playful. I mean, maybe it is, but it's a rather distinctive sort of playfulness, and surelyt it's no great surprise that not everyone sees it quite that way. And of course that latter thought is only compounded by the male rape fantasies found in some of those early White Dwarf adventures that were being discussed upthread.

Is it really puritanical to suggest that RPGing might engage sex and sexuality other than by fantasising about prostitutes who are _really_ into it?


----------



## S'mon

Aldarc said:


> Is it that you _can't_ see how these two cases are different or that you _won't_ see how they are different?




I think (white) Americans are very lucky not to have been oppressed by anyone since George III - and that was about the mildest oppression possible. And they tend to project their experience onto other Europeans.

(As for Australians, they dodged a bullet in WW2 thanks to MacArthur, so I guess their position is similar)


----------



## generic

pemerton said:


> Including the vast majority in Kenya, Iran and India?
> 
> Including the vast majority of Indigenous Australians, Native Americans and Maoris?




 @_*pemerton*_, I don't agree with @_*Bedrockgames*_ on all topics that he/she/they have mentioned in this thread, but this seems like a pretty unfair interpretation of his/her/their words.


----------



## S'mon

Aebir-Toril said:


> @_*pemerton*_, I don't agree with @_*Bedrockgames*_ on all topics that he/she/they have mentioned in this thred, but this seems like a pretty unfair interpretation of his/her/their words.




I was away from ENW for a few years.

...It seems that the regulars spent those years arguing with BedrockBrendan.


----------



## Derren

pemerton said:


> Including the vast majority in Kenya, Iran and India?
> 
> Including the vast majority of Indigenous Australians, Native Americans and Maoris?




Have you asked them?

The concept of barbarians at the border is pretty universal. From Rome, both before and after the expansion to China and Japan and their respective northern neighbours.
The mesoamerican nations probably didn't had a high opinion of some nomadic tribes in the north and the Zulu were not really all that nice either to to bushmen they found when they moved to south africa.

So why would orcs resemble people that got colonized and not one of the many examples of barbarians which occasionally raided cities like the Huns, Mongols or other tribes from the middle east or even just the myriads of "more primitive people than us on the other side of the border" which existed basically everywhere in some form and would be a much better fit?


----------



## generic

S'mon said:


> I was away from ENW for a few years.
> 
> ...It seems that the regulars spent those years arguing with BedrockBrendan.




Hmm...


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> A recurring idea that justified "dispersing the natives" (that is the term that was widely used in Australia; I'm not sure what the American or East African analogues are, but I'm sure they existed) is that they are coming to kill us and destory our civilisation.




As a point of interest, did anyone _ever_ claim that Australian Aboriginals were coming to kill you and destroy your civilisation? I highly doubt it. What I do see often is the Terra Nullius claim that the land was 'unowned'; combined with the rather more plausible claim that if Britain hadn't taken it first, someone else would have taken it later - and that they probably wouldn't have behaved any better.

(Plus a lot of "We're colonising them for their own benefit")


----------



## pemerton

Aebir-Toril said:


> @_*pemerton*_, I don't agree with @_*Bedrockgames*_ on all topics that he/she/they have mentioned in this thred, but this seems like a pretty unfair interpretation of his/her/their words.



Well, if by "a vast majority of people" is meant _a vast majority of people I hang out with_, or even _a vast majority of white Americans_, then why not say that?

I get fed up with appeals to what some unidentified, unsurveyed but intuited and imputed "majority" thinks about these issues. In my experience it's mostly a rhetorical device intended to get people who disagree with the speaker to shut up about it.


----------



## generic

pemerton said:


> Well, if by "a vast majority of people" is meant _a vast majority of people I hang out with_, or even _a vast majority of white Americans_, then why not say that?
> 
> I get fed up with appeals to what some unidentified, unsurveyed but intuited and imputed "majority" thinks about these issues. In my experience it's mostly a rhetorical device intended to get people who disagree with the speaker to shut up about it.




That's understandable.  I hadn't been keeping track of all of your interactions throughout the thread.


----------



## Derren

pemerton said:


> I get fed up with appeals to what some unidentified, unsurveyed but intuited and imputed "majority" thinks about these issues. In my experience it's mostly a rhetorical device intended to get people who disagree with the speaker to shut up about it.




So you counter it by unidentified, unsurveyed minority thoughts?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what you think that is a "solution" to.
> 
> It's a suggestion that the best way to find out if a trope or idea is racist is to see what people of colour believe about it. Do you think that's bad advice?




I think it is incomplete advice and possibly reductive. POC is a very broad term encompassing many different people. I think you definitely need to weigh the views of people from the affected group(s). But you shouldn’t stop there. You have to weigh other people’s opinions and your own. We have to have a conversation and decide for ourselves based on that, and the evidence. And we have to account for our own principles as we do so.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> As a point of interest, did anyone _ever_ claim that Australian Aboriginals were coming to kill you and destroy your civilisation? I highly doubt it.



The claim that Indigenous Tasmanian were criminal marauders attacking British colonists was defended most recenlty in Keith Windschuttle's book _The Fabrication of Aboriginal History_ (2002).

The publication of this book, and the responses to it, were major events in Australian politics at that time.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> The solutions I am seeing are things like automatically accept peoples reactions to things because of what group they belong to. But I think there are also just solutions to this kind of discussion playing out on social media. And that is the constriction of creativity I am talking about (for instance you can see it in debates about cultural appropriation and fantasy settings-----which I think is getting much harder to navigate).



When someone tells me that I stepped on their toes, I tend to accept their word for it and attempt to be more mindful of my step going forth. Are the bounds my feet can traverse being "constricted" now? Sure, technically, but there is still plenty of space for me to walk freely, comfortably, and ably. The only thing that has really changed is that people are actually a little less tolerable about having their toes brazenly stepped upon and have a greater platform to voice their issues regarding my indifference, neglect, or even malice to their discomfort. 

But let us consider this as well. Are the published works that we are seeing now in the RPG more or less diverse in their creative fantasy than they were before? I would actually wager that we are seeing a far greater diversity of tropes, imaginations, and settings than what we saw before. Even looking across the different settings of D&D, most fall within a "mostly the same" set of overlapping tropes. Some undoubtedly break the mold, but most reinforce it. So is this what unbridled creativity looks like? Greyhawk, Mystara, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Generic Fantasylandia no. 5? 

Many of these newer works do not tread as heavily or often on toes as prior works. So I think that your worries about the "constriction of creativity" are misapplied, as it only applies to a small, problematic subset of fantasy rather than on the whole. But sure, if your preferred mode of fantasy RPG lies within that limited scope, then I could see how you would feel that your entire world is coming under assault. But for many who are effortlessly creating new fantasy works outside of that smaller subset, then it comes across as an unfounded complaint that is insensitive to the problems other people have experienced therein. 

And it may genuinely be difficult for you to navigate this changing world. IME, it is important that we that try to the best of our abilities, showing good will and patience to others, being mindful of where we step. However, the answer to stepping repeatedly on people's toes is not to deny that we are doing it or that it is the fault of others. We should show a willingness to accept error, apologize, and learn from our mistakes. We will naturally step on toes from time to time. And sometimes if we look around, we may realize that we were walking unnecessarily close on top of people where we actually had a ballroom available at our leisure to dance. 



S'mon said:


> I think (white) Americans are very lucky not to have been oppressed by anyone since George III - and that was about the mildest oppression possible. And they tend to project their experience onto other Europeans.



As a white native born and bred in the American South, with native family extending back to the time before the American Revolution, I am not particularly concerned with any imagined oppression my ancestors experienced, but, rather, with the long, dark legacy and consequences of the real racism, colonialism, and oppression that they enabled, performed, and defended. I will carry this albatross with me to my grave.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> The claim that Indigenous Tasmanian were criminal marauders attacking British colonists was defended most recenlty in Keith Windschuttle's book _The Fabrication of Aboriginal History_ (2002).
> 
> The publication of this book, and the responses to it, were major events in Australian politics at that time.




Ah, right. Was this given as a justification for wiping out the Tasmanians?


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> That doesn't make me a bad person.




I don't think you would have to say this if not for the Olympic amount of mental gymnastics needed to defend the indefensible.

What I can say is that I'm glad that I don't do denial in order to believe in something.

“Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night


----------



## S'mon

Aldarc said:


> As a white native born and bred in the American South, with native family extending back to the time before the American Revolution, I am not particularly concerned with any imagined oppression my ancestors experienced, but, rather, with the long, dark legacy and consequences of the real racism, colonialism, and oppression that they enabled, performed, and defended. I will carry this albatross with me to my grave.




Indeed - that was my point.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Ah, right. Was this given as a justification for wiping out the Tasmanians?



Sort of. It was part of an attack on more mainstream historical accounts of frontier violence - what are called, in the Australian lexicon, "massacres".

The book was sponsored by a small but culturally and politically very important magazine called Quadrant. (Although I would suggest that the importance of Quadrant has declined over the past decade or so, due primarily to poor editorial leadership.) At the time, the Prime Minister of the country described Quadrant as his favourite magazine, and the Murdoch press (which dominates Australian media) was championing Windschuttle's book.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Bedrockgames

That isn’t what I am saying. But obviously I don’t subscribe to the worldview you are espousing. I don’t believe in relinquishingbour responsibility to think for ourselves. Absolutely we should listen to people affected. We shouldn’t reduce everyone in the conversation to their skin color or identity.


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> I don't think you would have to say this if not for the Olympic amount of mental gymnastics needed to defend the indefensible.
> 
> What I can say is that I'm glad that I don't do denial in order to believe in something.
> 
> “Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.”
> ― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night




You think believing evil orcs are not a racist or colonialist  trope is indefensible?


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> You think believing evil orcs are not a racist or colonialist  trope is indefensible?




Facts are true whether you believe in them or not.


----------



## dragoner

S'mon said:


> Indeed - that was my point.




There is no point there, honestly. It doesn't matter who you are, it's the representation of the Orcs that's an issue. If you simply changed the name from Orc to Pakistani in your pub games, how soon would you be compared to Tommy Robinson? Fairly quick and you know it. So with all things considered, it's the representation of the Orcs that's wrong.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> But it doesn't mean they are right that it is a problem for the broader culture. I could be really bothered by something, but my reaction might be a very unreasonable one. I am not saying we should ignore peoples' concerns, dismiss them, or lack empathy. I am saying we should not give up our responsibility to think for ourselves.



Are you having a comprehension problem?  

Because I am NOT saying you automatically believe the complainer or stop thinking for yourself.  

Spelling it out: I am saying that if someone complains that there is a problem, then there is a problem for at least one person.  You must then investigate whether the issue is unique to them or more widely spread; whether things are being accurately reported or not.

What you DON’T do is immediately, reflexively respond with “it’s not a problem because __________” or other dismissive positions.

If, after rejecting a single claim, you receive similar complaints of the same nature, then you need to reinvestigate, because your initial rejection may have been wrong (for a variety of reasons).


----------



## Bedrockgames

lowkey13 said:


> I know you don't mean the implications of your statement. Because I know you are well-meaning.
> 
> But this is roughly the equivalent of-
> 
> "Sure, I know that the people in positions of power have completely ignored and marginalized your voices for years, decades, and centuries. But now that you finally have something of a platform, however small ...
> 
> I'd really like it if you can stop and think for a second about how your complaints affect me. And wouldn't it be nice if instead of me listening to you, how about you listen to me? How about we weigh my opinions too? Sure, you've had centuries of oppression, and stuff like that. I mean, things probably suck today, too. But what about my concerns? I mean, there are things I like, and things I do, and I don't want that to be ruined. I'd like to be able to do things, and read things, and talk about things without feeling bad."
> 
> Again, I know you mean well. I just think you might be a little bit blind to how your arguments might appear.
> 
> I agree that a lot of this is difficult- difficult to talk about, difficult to deal with.
> 
> But when you're arguing against listening to people who haven't had the same life experience as you have as "reductive," you might want to examine your _a priori_ reasons for arguing, and perhaps what your real goal is?
> 
> To bring it back to TTRPG; yeah, I appreciate the nostalgia value of running B2. But I'd have to be blind to not understand the antecedents.




I think we are both politically similar but subscribe to very different worldview. Understand that, to me this language sounds like salvation religion rather than discussion of subjective interpretations of media tropes.


----------



## Aldarc

Derren said:


> So why would orcs resemble people that got colonized and not one of the many examples of barbarians which occasionally raided cities like the Huns, Mongols or other tribes from the middle east or even just the myriads of "more primitive people than us on the other side of the border" which existed basically everywhere in some form and would be a much better fit?



Notably all of your examples of comparison (1) do commonly represent (to Euro-America at least) the dangerous, foreign other from the East who poses a threat to the "civilized West," and (2) these resemblances are indeed used in many depictions of the orcs, including Tolkien's, and (3) these are resemblances are problematic for reasons that have already been elucidated in this thread. 



S'mon said:


> Indeed - that was my point.



And are the citizens of the UK not burdened by any albatrosses of their own? It seems short-sighted to suggest that this is just an Australian or American problem, while ignoring British culpability in these matters and beyond.


----------



## S'mon

dragoner said:


> There is no point there, honestly. It doesn't matter who you are, it's the representation of the Orcs that's an issue. If you simply changed the name from Orc to Pakistani in your pub games...




And if I changed "Orc" to "Nazi"? What then?

I think this sort of hypothetical is a silly argument. You have to take the Orc as an Orc, before 
you can judge whether it evokes colonialist tropes - which I think it can, but moreso in recent 
usage. AFAICS WotC D&D's 3e-4e-5e orcs 'evoke colonialist tropes' much more than does Tolkien.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Are you having a comprehension problem?
> 
> Because I am NOT saying you automatically believe the complainer or stop thinking for yourself.
> 
> Spelling it out: I am saying that if someone complains that there is a problem, then I here is a problem for at least one person.  You must then investigate whether the issue is unique to them or more widely spread; whether things are being accurately reported or not.
> 
> What you DON’T do is immediately, reflexively respond with “it’s not a problem because __________” or other dismissive positions.
> 
> If, after rejecting a single claim, you receive similar complaints of the same nature, then you need to reinvestigate, because your initial rejection may have been wrong (for a variety of reasons).




If I misunderstood you, I apologize. But I think what I am saying hasn’t been received as well. Fair enough. But this is an old discussion. Like I said, I have explored this problem and asked other people about and these are the conclusions I have reached. I don’t really know what else to say, except I just don’t feel or believe the same was as others on this thread do.


----------



## dragoner

S'mon said:


> And if I changed "Orc" to "Nazi"? What then?
> 
> I think this sort of hypothetical is a silly argument. You have to take the Orc as an Orc, before
> you can judge whether it evokes colonialist tropes - which I think it can, but moreso in recent
> usage. AFAICS WotC D&D's 3e-4e-5e orcs 'evoke colonialist tropes' much more than does Tolkien.




It doesn't matter, the Falsifiability remains, it's basic logic.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> If, after rejecting a single claim, you receive similar complaints of the same nature, then you need to reinvestigate, because your initial rejection may have been wrong (for a variety of reasons).




This seems a bit extreme to me. I certainly understand listening to people. But I mean you can't reinvestigate the whole topic every single time you see a new person complain about it. You would be locked in an endless amount of research and re-research. At a certain point you've covered the topic as much as you can. Again, I am not arguing that we should be mean, insensitive, etc. I am just saying I've looked into this and I don't see it. i think you have to examine it really deeply to get there (and our extensive conversation about Tolkien is strong evidence of that to me). I just think it is a tenuous claim.


----------



## S'mon

Aldarc said:


> And are the citizens of the UK not burdened by any albatrosses of their own? It seems short-sighted to suggest that this is just an Australian or American problem, while ignoring British culpability in these matters and beyond.




I'm familiar with Marxist power-relationship arguments. I think they found particularly fertile soil in Euro-American society because of that society's relative safety and security. Which security is orthogonal to oppression - Americans oppressed people, but the safe & secure Swedes did not, in recent history, but are at least equally susceptible to the same arguments. (Of course, US sailors were being slave-raided by Barbary pirates into the 19th century, but outside of 'Shores of Tripoli' Americans seem to have forgotten about that.)

As for myself, I could bemoan the terrible oppression my Celtic ancestors have suffered at the hands of the terrible Anglo-Saxon oppressors (heck, living in England I've even gotten it myself a few times); but I'm not going to.

As far as I'm concerned, the Indians have every right to make stories about British imperial oppression, and Tolkien had every right to make a story evoking the Fall of Constantinople and the Siege of Vienna. With orcs.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> I just think there is a narrow wing of academia represented in this conversation (one more from the literary criticism side perhaps). That isn’t the only way to look at the world.




Why do you think it’s narrow?

As I recall, S’mon is a professor of law in the UK.

My background is...complicated.  Double major (9 hours short of double BA) in philosophy and economics, with minors in English lit, Art, and Art History.  Law degree.  MBA in marketing.  Training in mediation techniques.  Learned a few instruments along the way as well, one at a pro level.  Etc.

Why?  Because my family believed in a broad educational base.  All 4 of my grandparents were teachers- 2 college profs, 2 elementary teachers- and Mom taught in HS.  I was basically in school year round from 3rd grade until I passed the bar.

So my personal reaction to thinking of this area as needing special education is that this isn’t STEM.  THIS IS SPARTA!

..._errrrr_...


This- initially- is asking a simple question of whether fictional characters display certain characteristics with problematic real-world stereotypical depictions of human beings.  And these depictions are part of our culture.

This is an “anyone with eyes” kind of comparison, not quantum physics.


----------



## S'mon

Bedrockgames said:


> This seems a bit extreme to me. I certainly understand listening to people. But I mean you can't reinvestigate the whole topic every single time you see a new person complain about it.




I think if a lot of people complain about something it's worth taking more seriously than if only one person ever complained about it.


----------



## Doug McCrae

The World of Greyhawk (1983) is another example of concepts from late 19th and early 20th century race theory making their way into D&D. Even reading it as a youth I found its obsession with race to be weird.

“For two centuries the Oerid and Suel battled each other and the fragmenting humanoid hordes for possession of the central area of the Flanaess, incidentally engaging the Flannish and demi-humans. In a few places the two racial stocks intermixed – notably the Sheldomar Valley where, except for the Hold of the Sea Princes, the peoples of the Kingdom of Keoland, Gran March, the Ulek States and nearby petty lands are mixed Oerid-Suel stock.”​
“People of the Duchy of Tenh are pure Flan, proud of their bronze color. Geoff and Sterich, despite mixture, show strong Flan racial influence. The Rovers of the Barrens are of the copper-toned sort of Flannae, although the western tribes show the golden skin color of the Baklunish due to interbreeding with the Wolf Nomad tribes. The people of the Hold of Stone Fist and the citizens of the Theocracy of the Pale are primarily hybrids, the former Flan/Suel, the latter Flan/Oeridian. The inhabitants of the Pale are particularly handsome.”​
There’s literally over a page and a half more of this in exactly the same vein.

I’m pretty sure Gary was riffing off of Robert E Howard’s essay The Hyborian Age (1936), replicating its language and some of its ideas.

"Only in the province of Gunderland, where the people keep no slaves, is the pure Hyborian stock found unblemished. But the barbarians have kept their bloodstream pure; the Cimmerians are tall and powerful, with dark hair and blue or grey eyes."​
“The Stygians are tall and well made, dusky, straight-featured - at least the ruling classes are of that type. The lower classes are a down-trodden mongrel horde, a mixture of negroid, Stygian, Shemitish, even Hyborian bloods.”​
Compare with Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy (1920)

“The heroes of the revolution—Bolívar, Miranda, San Martín, and the rest—were aristocrats of pure-white blood."​
“Analyses of these hybrid stocks show remarkable similarities to the mongrel chaos of the declining Roman Empire.”​
“To be sure, where members of the same race-stock intermarry (as English and Swedish Nordics, or French and British Mediterraneans), there seems to be genuine amalgamation. In most other cases, however, the result is not a blend but a mechanical mixture.”​


----------



## S'mon

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Why do you think it’s narrow?
> 
> As I recall, S’mon is a professor of law in the UK.




Yeah, and Pemerton is a legal academic in Australia, likewise. 
Lawyers tend to be argumentative, and academics tend to be argumentative, so legal academics are the _worst_.


----------



## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> I think if a lot of people complain about something it's worth taking more seriously than if only one person ever complained about it.




I would agree. But large groups can still be wrong which is why I say we have a responsibility to think for ourselves.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> The solutions I am seeing are things like automatically accept peoples reactions to things because of what group they belong to.




If that is what you’re seeing, I have to say that I think you’re misunderstanding some people.  Me at the very least.


----------



## S'mon

Doug McCrae said:


> The World of Greyhawk (1983) is another example of concepts from late 19th and early 20th century race theory making their way into D&D...
> 
> ...Compare with Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy (1920)




Or you could compare it with Maddison Grant's _The Passing of the Great Race _for maximum Evilness. 

Of course, unlike Grant's Nordicism, in Gygax's Greyhawk the bronze-skinned folk (Flannae, Oerid) tend to be the good guys (_pace _The Great Kingdom), and the fair-skinned Sueloise the Nazi-esque bad guys. Indeed WoG's 'Sage' has a very negative description of the Suel, in pretty racial-essentialist terms.

So overall it felt rather that Gygax was doing more an inversion of 1930s tropes, than simply copying them.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

S'mon said:


> As far as I'm concerned, the Indians have every right to make stories about British imperial oppression, and Tolkien had every right to make a story evoking the Fall of Constantinople and the Siege of Vienna. With orcs.




I agree.

But problems arise when anyone- regardless of ethnicity or status- starts to rely on discredited stereotypes to tell their stories.  Especially if the stories are not period pieces.  It’s one thing for a character in a period story to use racial stereotypes of his place and time, it’s another to import them into a completely fictionalized setting.


----------



## S'mon

Bedrockgames said:


> I would agree. But large groups can still be wrong which is why I say we have a responsibility to think for ourselves.




I guess I think these things are pretty much entirely about subjective experiences. We should probably accept that people's claimed subjective experiences are genuinely held, by and large (people could be lying or exaggerating, but this is fairly rare I think). Even when it doesn't fit our own experiences.

It may be worth pointing out genuine cultural misunderstandings, such as my example upthread of the American woman being called 'Love' in Yorkshire.  Even then it may not do much good.

I would say there is a big step from "I have understood you" to "I will do what you want". The Pieds Noir French settlers in Algeria cheered deGaulle when he said "I have understood you" - right before he abandoned them.

I once ca 2013 had a female player object to a picture of a female fighter pregen PC in a halter top, in a sword & sorcery inflected D&D game. If this happened frequently I'd stop using such pictures (I offered her alternate pictures, which she rejected). In the event this has never happened since, and many female players seem to enjoy the chance to play wearing-less-than-Xena type characters, so I now regard that player as an outlier. But I'm at any rate aware that such a reaction is possible and that has moderated my behaviour somewhat. Last year I had a black, female player ask to take over playing a blonde, topless (with pic) Amazon warrior NPC as her new PC in my Wilderlands campaign. I was happy to agree, but I'd not have handed her the Amazon as a pregen and said "Here, play this."


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Why do you think it’s narrow?




Just based on my recollection of being school this wasn't stuff you tended to encounter in geology courses, in history (which was my major), etc. I was a viewpoint that seemed much more prevalent in communications, literature and critical studies departments. Maybe things have changed. Ether way, I think it is bit advanced, as I know I have difficulty with a lot of the language and I have a degree myself. 



> As I recall, S’mon is a professor of law in the UK.
> 
> My background is...complicated.  Double major (9 hours short of double BA) in philosophy and economics, with minors in English lit, Art, and Art History.  Law degree.  MBA in marketing.  Training in mediation techniques.  Learned a few instruments along the way as well, one at a pro level.  Etc.




Okay, this just helps make my point though that there is a divide in the hobby between people with advanced degrees who are steeped in academia and those who are not. You and S'mon are both very educated. Which is good but can be bad if you are failing to appreciate others don't see the world the way you do. 



> Why?  Because my family believed in a broad educational base.  All 4 of my grandparents were teachers- 2 college profs, 2 elementary teachers- and Mom taught in HS.  I was basically in school year round from 3rd grade until I passed the bar.




That is good, but can you see how much that sets you in advance of other people when it comes these things? My dad went to college (a state school associated with working class families, which I also went to). He was salesman. But mother didn't have a college degree. None of my grandparents went to college. My dad's father was a truck driver, my mom's father was a stone mason. Most of my family is not college educated. Most work service or construction type jobs. I am very happy for you that you have achieved great things with your education, but I do think this is still illustrating my point a bit. 



> So my personal reaction to thinking of this area as needing special education is that this isn’t STEM.  THIS IS SPARTA!




To you it may not be complicated. I think it is very complicated to other people who are not as accustomed to this stuff. 





> This- initially- is asking a simple question of whether fictional characters display certain characteristics with problematic real-world stereotypical depictions of human beings.  And these depictions are part of our culture.
> 
> This is an “anyone with eyes” kind of comparison, not quantum physics.




It was initially about whether orcs are a colonialist propaganda parallel. I don't think that question you raise is quantum physics. But I do think the in depth analysis of the trope we are having is complicated. If you find it simple, that is great. I don't find it very simple at all. For instance, even looking at the text where Tolkien talks about eye shape there were lots of questions that led to in my mind that needed to be explored (one of which you answered, which am thankful for). Like i mentioned, my background is history, so I think the contextualization of what Tolkien was trying to do, what the world was like at the time, and then how the trope itself evolved are all important factors. That is why I said it is on the cusp in the case of Tolkien, and I think the association with anything nefarious becomes more tenuous over time.


----------



## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> I guess I think these things are pretty much entirely about subjective experiences. We should probably accept that people's claimed subjective experiences are genuinely held, by and large (people could be lying or exaggerating, but this is fairly rare I think). Even when it doesn't fit our own experiences.
> .




I don't doubt this. But there are better and worse reactions we can have to things. It is one thing if a person sees a trope, it is clearly racist and they react accordingly. but if they've been educated and trained to constantly search for any hint of racism, and then react profoundly when they see, I think that isn't a very healthy way to approach world (not saying people are doing that here, but that is something I've encountered in these kinds of discussions).


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> I would agree. But large groups can still be wrong which is why I say we have a responsibility to think for ourselves.




But, failing to re-examine is pointedly *not* thinking.

You posed the question of, "Is this a problem for the broader culture?"

How many complaints do you need to get before your answer to the question becomes, "Yes"?  Purely statistically, you should accept that accumulated complaints eventually constitute data, rather than isolated personal anecdotes.  How many people have to report pain in their feet before you accept that toes are, in fact, getting stepped on?

So long as you are looking at, and dismissing, complaints individually, you are apt to fail to see the pattern.  Moreso if you have an emotional interest in *not* accepting it as an issue for the broader culture.  Those of us with privilege generally have such an interest, because not accepting it as an issue means we get to ignore it and not take action.  If we accept it as an issue, then morally and ethically we really ought to *do* something about it, and perhaps recognize our own small part in the issue, which would be uncomfortable.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> If that is what you’re seeing, I have to say that I think you’re misunderstanding some people.  Me at the very least.




I don't think you and I have been at odds as much on this as me and some of the other posters. I've found most of your posts to be quite reasonable even when I disagree.


----------



## Doug McCrae

S'mon said:


> So overall it felt rather that Gygax was doing more an inversion of 1930s tropes, than simply copying them.



Yes, unlike Stoddard and Howard, Gary isn't saying that people of colour are inferior and he isn't saying that race "mixture" is a bad thing. However he's replicating their language, he's saying that race* is important (purely by the amount of space he spends discussing it), and he's oddly expressing an aesthetic preference regarding people of certain races.



> Or you could compare it with Maddison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race for maximum Evilness.



I already quoted it upthread. I like to keep things fresh.

*Not ideas about race but the external physical features.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> But, failing to re-examine is pointedly *not* thinking.
> 
> You posed the question of, "Is this a problem for the broader culture?"
> 
> How many complaints do you need to get before your answer to the question becomes, "Yes"?  Purely statistically, you should accept that accumulated complaints eventually constitute data, rather than isolated personal anecdotes.  How many people have to report pain in their feet before you accept that toes are, in fact, getting stepped on?
> 
> So long as you are looking at, and dismissing, complaints individually, you are apt to fail to see the pattern.  Moreso if you have an emotional interest in *not* accepting it as an issue for the broader culture.  Those of us with privilege generally have such an interest, because not accepting it as an issue means we get to ignore it and not take action.  If we accept it as an issue, then morally and ethically we really ought to *do* something about it, and perhaps recognize our own small part in the issue, which would be uncomfortable.




I see a lot of different reactions to these kinds of tropes Umbran I don't think the reaction among people affected by this stuff is as one sided as you think. And again, all we know about people in this thread, beyond what they volunteer, is their screen name. We don't know peoples identities unless they give them, what their circumstances are, and how much they've suffered. And I think there is a danger in what you are advocating because you can start to infantilize people based on what group they belong (and also a danger that you ignore the experiences of other people because you think they have privilege in the discussion). I don't think I need to treat anyone with kid gloves. I do think I need to be respectful though. And I do think we have weigh things when they are relevant (like if an african american person tells me they are bothered by orcs, I am going to listen to them----I am simply saying if I've already talked to 100 people affected by the trope, I am not going to re-evaluate all of the evidence once again (which we've seen is a pretty big undertaken) because of one new voice, but very similar complaint).


----------



## S'mon

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't doubt this. But there are better and worse reactions we can have to things. It is one thing if a person sees a trope, it is clearly racist and they react accordingly. but if they've been educated and trained to constantly search for any hint of racism, and then react profoundly when they see, I think that isn't a very healthy way to approach world




I do think it's sad when people have been educated to take offence where none was (edit) intended. Couple of my east-Asian friends were sharing a video a year or two back about how it's offensive to ask "Where are you from?" - the clueless well-meaning whites asking Asians & Asian-Americans about their national origin were being given as examples of unconscious racism. In discouraging communication I think that kind of thing is actively harmful.

Or, well, some of the things I've said in the past that offended you, Brendan, I didn't mean to 
be offensive but I spoke (wrote) too casually, and didn't think about my likely readership. 
For one thing British humour often doesn't translate well across the pond; for another, the written word tends to strip out nuance compared to speech. My initial reaction to your strongly stated offence has generally been "Why is he persecuting me?!" - but on reflection I should have put more weight on where you were likely coming from.


----------



## S'mon

Doug McCrae said:


> I already quoted it upthread. I like to keep things fresh.




I was pretty shocked reading Stoddard that (as best I recall) there was pretty much nothing about superiority/inferiority, and that he saw the end of "White World Supremacy" as inevitable, and not particularly a bad thing. I could see why he didn't like the Nazis at all (and vice versa).

Whereas Maddison Grant comes across as pretty much a cartoon villain.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> I've not read very much Tolkien biography. (Only what one picks up in some of the critical work on LotR.) It seems unlikely - for statistical if no other reasons - that he was not virulently racist like HPL. For the same (statistical) reasons it seems likely that he was racist, in the sense of viewing non-white people as tending to be inferior in character and accomplishment to Europeans. This was, after all, a fairy common viewpoint among English people, including educated English people, of his time. They lived as part of, and from time to time took significant steps to defend, an Empire that was based very heavily on racist ideas and was governed very extensively along racial lines.




Woah, there. Dangerous territory, painting people with the broad brush. Tolkien seems to have been no fan of the British Empire. "I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust.”  - a quote that seems to be from a letter in 1945, and it isn't alone. He was no fan of the Commonwealth either, and he wrote in criticism of the racist state of his birth - South Africa. 



pemerton said:


> But suppose, for the sake of argument, that JRRT was devoid of any racist judgement, and happened to include a passage equating Central/East Asian appearance with goblinness just out of habit or carelessness or received literary style - _that wouldn't change anything about the passage_.




That may be, but jumping to conclusions about the rest does neither the argument nor Tolkien anything but disservice. He's a way more complicated individual - one who felt a great deal of respect for northern european culture and its contributions to language, myth, and legend while also opposing using said traditions for an explicitly racist agenda in his strident opposition to the Nazis. Yet also one who harnessed prevailing racist tropes to mark the enemies of his protagonists as different, alien, other.


----------



## Derren

Aldarc said:


> Notably all of your examples of comparison (1) do commonly represent (to Euro-America at least) the dangerous, foreign other from the East who poses a threat to the "civilized West," and (2) these resemblances are indeed used in many depictions of the orcs, including Tolkien's, and (3) these are resemblances are problematic for reasons that have already been elucidated in this thread.




Why do you only limit it to Europe? This is entirely your choice.
The Chinese (and Koreans) had "barbarians in the north" as had the Japanese which did not treat the Ainu pretty well. Not to mention that the Mongols were not only a threat to Europeans but also to many Asian and Middle Eastern nations. After all who ended the period of Islamic scientific leadership by razing Baghdad? It wasn't the Europeans. And there were also the tribes of Timur who conquered large territories. And why couldn't orcs symbolize Vikings?

So as I said, the barbarian raider stereotype existed around the world in all cultures and has nothing specifically to do with European colonialism. And even if you want to limit it European history you still need to explain why orcs would be related to the colonial era of Europe instead of those times when Europe was attacked by tribal societies (Mongols, Huns, Germanics, Turkish tribes, Vikings, ...)


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> his strident opposition to the Nazis



Australia went to war against the Nazis while fiercely maintaing the White Australia Policy. Churchill went to war against the Nazis while resolutely desiring to maintain the British Empire.

_Opposed/fought the Nazis_ doesn't show that someone, or some political outlook, isn't racist.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I do think it's sad when people have been educated to take offence where none was offended. Couple of my east-Asian friends were sharing a video a year or two back about how it's offensive to ask "Where are you from?" - the clueless well-meaning whites asking Asians & Asian-Americans about their national origin were being given as examples of unconscious racism. In discouraging communication I think that kind of thing is actively harmful.



I can't speak for your friends. But I can report that, in Australia, white Australians - including white Australian who are Bitish migrants or children of British migrants (or similarly pale northern/western Europeans) - almost never get asked "Where do you come from?", while people of colour (including, in this context, many southern/eastern Europeans), even if born in Australia to Australian parents, very frequently get asked "Where do you come from?"

If the answer given is the (truthful) _Melbourne_, that can tend to provoke more insistent questioning. Which just reinforces the point.

The question betrays an assumption that people of colour are, in some sense, "exotic" or not (fully? really?) Australian. I personally don't know anyone who doesn't find it tiresome at best.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> The question betrays an assumption that people of colour are, in some sense, "exotic" or not (fully? really?) Australian.




It certainly betrays an assumption that they're exotic _from the POV of the questioner_.

I dunno about Australia, but here white people with discernible accents certainly get asked where they're from too.

For some reason, IRL* I seem to have a great knack for not giving offence. When I told my 
half Chinese American friend "Oh, I thought you were Native American!", when I told my Indian friend "Oh, I thought you were half British!" and when I recently told a Greek player "Oh, I thought you were German!" - they all seemed flattered! 

*Very unlike on the Internet!


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## dragoner

S'mon said:


> I guess I think these things are pretty much entirely about subjective experiences.




No, objectively wrong remains wrong, saying it is subjective is only an attempt to nullify the truth.

You mentioned nazis up thread, and I as being mostly Slavic and Jewish, with a large part of my family being murdered by the nazis in the Holocaust, I despise nazis. However, I had to write a paper on "Inglorious Basterds" for an English class in Business School, wound up criticizing the movie for being wrong as a base revenge fantasy. Personally I don't care about revenge, because the 38 members of my family that died, it won't bring them back; what I want is the truth to be told. Vassily Grossman stated in a "Writer at War," that what happened in the East could have only happened with the help of the local population. Ellie Wiesel stated that they saw British Recon aircraft overflights at Auschwitz and know that the Western Allies were indifferent to our fate, and that there were not Einsatzgruppen in France, because the French Police and Army helped to round up Jews for the nazis. The guilt is spread farther than merely the nazis. 







http://ww2today.com/23rd-january-1943-the-battle-of-marseille

Two wrongs do not make a right, objective truth remains truth. Orcs are wrong due to the way they are represented, there is not any subjective truth to it. Inherent evil or the capacity for evil as a racial quality, is racist. Compounding on that the killing of females, and children for extra experience points ... it would be just as wrong to do to Germans or nazis.


----------



## S'mon

dragoner said:


> Orcs are wrong due to the way they are represented, there is not any subjective truth to it. Inherent evil or the capacity for evil as a racial quality, is racist. Compounding on that the killing of females, and children for extra experience points ... it would be just as wrong to do to Germans or nazis.




What do you think is the best approach? Get rid of "Always Chaotic Evil" races?

Are Always-CE Undead ok? How about demons?

I'm not joking; I am increasingly inclined to think RPGs can do without orcs and suchlike.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Tolkien drew on a vast range of sources in creating his literary works, many of them medieval or referencing the medieval, such as William Morris's The House of the Wolfings. But he also drew on colonialist era writers like H Rider Haggard and James Fenimore Cooper.

Gygax and the other creators of D&D mostly used much more recent sources - late 19th or 20th century - which explains why 1e and 2e D&D's orcs have witch doctors and half-orcs are described using the language of people who measure skulls. They've become more of a colonialist trope.

And they've moved from Asia to Africa. Tolkien's orcs are inspired by the Ottoman Empire, and perhaps other nomadic warriors who travelled west out of Asia and attacked Europe - Attila the Hun, the Arabs, and the Mongols. Gygax's orcs are inspired (indirectly) by the late 19th century Scramble for Africa.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

S'mon said:


> I do think it's sad when people have been educated to take offence where none was (edit) intended. Couple of my east-Asian friends were sharing a video a year or two back about how it's offensive to ask "Where are you from?" - the clueless well-meaning whites asking Asians & Asian-Americans about their national origin were being given as examples of unconscious racism. In discouraging communication I think that kind of thing is actively harmful.




I’ve seen that one, too.  Drives me nuts.  I mean, it’s just something people ask people they don’t know.  I get asked that all the time.

Now, if the _follow-up_ questions betray obvious bigotry or ignorance, THEN it’s time to get ruffled.  Example: An incident from my father’s adolescence involved an older white gentleman seeing news involving a diplomat from somewhere in francophone Africa, prompting the exclamation, “Imagine that!  N_____s speaking French!”

At least his mind grew a little bit that day.



> Or, well, some of the things I've said in the past that offended you, Brendan, I didn't mean to
> be offensive but *I spoke (wrote) too casually*, and *didn't think about my likely readership.*
> For one thing British humour often doesn't translate well across the pond; for another, the written word tends to strip out nuance compared to speech. My initial reaction to your strongly stated offence has generally been "Why is he persecuting me?!" - but on reflection *I should have put more weight on where you were likely coming from.*



(Emphasis mine.)

I think you’ve encapsulated some of the things a few of us are pointing out.

While AFAICT, nobody in here is accusing JRRT of being a racist, we _are_ saying that some of his writings contain racist stereotypes.  We acknowledge that he probably didn’t intend to use them to offend, but he still used offensive tropes when he didn’t have to.  I mean, the man _invented languages_ for his nonhuman characters, but he occasionally mailed it it when it came time to be descriptive of antagonists.

And increasingly, we have to consider our potential audiences as multicultural, multiethnic, gender diverse, multi-aged, etc.  So we have to be more cognizant of when we toss around faux insults in our fiction lest we actually insult real people.  We don’t have to agree with complainants, but we also can’t handwave away complaints without at least a modicum of questing for the truth.


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## Dannyalcatraz

pemerton said:


> Australia went to war against the Nazis while fiercely maintaing the White Australia Policy. Churchill went to war against the Nazis while resolutely desiring to maintain the British Empire.
> 
> _Opposed/fought the Nazis_ doesn't show that someone, or some political outlook, isn't racist.




Greece, too, was on the side of the allies, even though the predominant political hierarchy had a great deal in common with the Nazis.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

S'mon said:


> What do you think is the best approach? Get rid of "Always Chaotic Evil" races?
> 
> Are Always-CE Undead ok? How about demons?
> 
> I'm not joking; I am increasingly inclined to think RPGs can do without orcs and suchlike.




My personal take: if it’s a mortal, corporeal, sapient race, “always evil” is probably not a good option.  Too cartoonish.  Lazy.  That closer they are to humans, the worse such a design becomes.

If it’s a sapient species of extraplanar or otherwise “unnatural” origins- demons, godlings, elementals, spirits, most undead, etc., having a more monolithic ethos makes sense...at least, moreso than for normal beings.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> And increasingly, we have to consider our potential audiences as multicultural, multiethnic, gender diverse, multi-aged, etc. So we have to be more cognizant of when we toss around faux insults in our fiction lest we actually insult real people. We don’t have to agree with complainants, but we also can’t handwave away complaints without at least a modicum of questing for the truth.




My words here just triggered a thought in me.  Between me, [MENTION=16984]Smon[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I think _the sun essentially does not set on this thread.  _I mean, I KNOW it’s the internet, and it’s open 24/7, but between the three of us, we cover 3 pretty widely spaced locations within what used to be the British Empire.


----------



## dragoner

S'mon said:


> What do you think is the best approach? Get rid of "Always Chaotic Evil" races?
> 
> Are Always-CE Undead ok? How about demons?
> 
> I'm not joking; I am increasingly inclined to think RPGs can do without orcs and suchlike.




Accept the truth and move on, I'm no fan of sanitizing the past. D&D gets by due to the tropes being traditional and ingrained in fantasy. Orcs or evil races don't delight me in games, though they aren't an automatic deal breaker either. It is what it is. Supernatural evil is something different, it doesn't have the Gygaxian ecology that Orcs have. I'm more interested in playing games like Mythras, I converted "Caverns of Thracia" to Mythras and we played that out until a TPK, and the idea of some good vs evil, never actually came up. The players were a band of adventurers out of Constantinople, exploring Cyrene.


----------



## Doug McCrae

S'mon said:


> What do you think is the best approach?



My approach isn't going to be popular - never run D&D again! I just feel it's so grounded in the idea of race determining personality, ethical stance and capabilities and that that idea isn't a useful one, either in art or reality.


----------



## generic

Doug McCrae said:


> My approach isn't going to be popular - never run D&D again! I just feel it's so grounded in the idea of a being's race determining its personality and capabilities and that that idea isn't a useful one, either in art or reality.




What would you prefer, a game with no mechanics to simulate the biological differences between *species*, as Orcs are not really a "Race"?  Eventually, this becomes ridiculous.


----------



## S'mon

Doug McCrae said:


> My approach isn't going to be popular - never run D&D again! I just feel it's so grounded in the idea of a being's race determining its personality and capabilities and that that idea isn't a useful one, either in art or reality.




It's funny, running a D&D campaign now in Howard-esque Primeval Thule, that seems much much less the case than in traditional Tolkienesque D&D. The Beastmen may be thought of as 'orcs' by the local homo sapiens sapiens, but it's clear to the reader that they're really Neanderthals, just as Thule is really Greenland (and north is really west, so Hyperborea is really northern Canada!). Even the Serpentmen dwell peacefully alongside humans in the city of Ikath, and a relatively benevolent serpentman sage or artificer is easily imaginable.

Swords & Sorcery really does not have the Tolkienesque Good Race vs Evil Race thing going on - if only because everyone is pretty bad - and does not seem grounded in racial conflict the way Tolkienesque fantasy is.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Aebir-Toril said:


> What would you prefer, a game with no mechanics to simulate the biological differences between *species*, as Orcs are not really a "Race"?  Eventually, this becomes ridiculous.



Orcs as an artistic concept went wrong from the beginning. They ought to have represented all evil, including the evil in us. But instead the evil got placed in Those People.


----------



## Doug McCrae

S'mon said:


> I was pretty shocked reading Stoddard that (as best I recall) there was pretty much nothing about superiority/inferiority, and that he saw the end of "White World Supremacy" as inevitable, and not particularly a bad thing.



I don’t agree with either of these assessments. He has a whole complex crazy system. There’s a hierarchy of intellectual ability with “Nordics” at the top and black people at the bottom. He believes black people are physically superior. Worst of all are certain “mongrels” because they combine all the negative attributes and none of the positives.

“As explained in the Introduction [written by Madison Grant], the white race divides into three main sub-species—the Nordics, the Alpines, and the Mediterraneans. All three are good stocks, ranking in genetic worth well above the various colored races. However, there seems to be no question that the Nordic is far and away the most valuable type; standing, indeed, at the head of the whole human genus. As Madison Grant well expresses it, the Nordic is ‘The Great Race.’”​
“Although the white race displays sustained constructive power to an unrivalled degree, particularly in its Nordic branches, the brown and yellow peoples have contributed greatly to the civilization of the world and have profoundly influenced human progress. The negro, on the contrary, has contributed virtually nothing. Left to himself, he remained a savage… The originating powers of the European and the Asiatic are not in him.”​
“There can be no doubt that the Indian is superior to the negro. The negro, even when quickened by foreign influences, never built up anything approaching a real civilization; whereas the Indian… evolved genuine polities and cultures like the Aztec of Mexico, the Inca of Peru, and the Maya of Yucatan.”​
“The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality. In this he easily surpasses all other races. To it... is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders.”*​
“Professor Agassiz wrote: ‘Let any one who doubts the evil of this mixture of races… come to Brazil. He cannot deny the deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races… which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian, leaving a mongrel, nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy.’”​
He thinks that if white people cease to exist then it will be an utter catastrophe for the world.

“If white civilization goes down, the white race is irretrievably ruined. It will be swamped by the triumphant colored races, who will obliterate the white man by elimination or absorption... If the present drift be not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed.”​
“And that would mean that the race obviously endowed with the greatest creative ability, the race which had achieved most in the past and which gave the richer promise for the future, had passed away, carrying with it to the grave those potencies upon which the realization of man’s highest hopes depends. A million years of human evolution might go uncrowned, and earth’s supreme life-product, man, might never fulfil his potential destiny. This is why we to-day face ‘The Crisis of the Ages.’”​
The above quotes are all from Lothrop Stoddard's The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy (1920).

*Very interesting similarity to orcs here, one that hasn’t been raised in the thread up until now afaik.


----------



## S'mon

Guess I remembered wrong then! I recalled the Maddison Grant intro having a very different tone from the rest of the book by Stoddard.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> Again, I said I don't support the use of the term. I don't advocate its use and I don't use it personally or in works myself. I think it is an insulting slur. But we are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind when he used it in the 40s* because the assertion here is that orcs are based on a racial stereotype. /snip




No.  You are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind.

Me, I couldn't care less.

/edit - whoops, sorry, didn't realize how much this thread had moved on.  Please ignore.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> I wasn’t saying that at all. I think you clearly believe what you say and you are well intentioned. But I know for a fact many people agree with me and are afraid to weigh in (because I’ve spoken to such people). This happens on social media all the time. Normally most people ignore it to avoid the headache. But bad ideas and bad ideologies can take root that way. So I think it is increasingly important for people to give their honest opinion and not just the opinion that is good for business or keeps them out of trouble. That is why I said to Hussar that I welcomed his viewpoint even if I disagreed.




Perhaps these folks are too afraid to weigh in because the only people who have weighed in to support your point apparently cannot do so without relying on terms and phrases that break board rules?  It always surprises me that folks are apparently incapable of discussing these issues without dehumanizing or otherwise insulting the other side of the conversation - either by questioning their morality, their ethics, their intelligence or their motivations and often all of the above.


----------



## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> I do think it's sad when people have been educated to take offence where none was (edit) intended. Couple of my east-Asian friends were sharing a video a year or two back about how it's offensive to ask "Where are you from?" - the clueless well-meaning whites asking Asians & Asian-Americans about their national origin were being given as examples of unconscious racism. In discouraging communication I think that kind of thing is actively harmful.
> 
> Or, well, some of the things I've said in the past that offended you, Brendan, I didn't mean to
> be offensive but I spoke (wrote) too casually, and didn't think about my likely readership.
> For one thing British humour often doesn't translate well across the pond; for another, the written word tends to strip out nuance compared to speech. My initial reaction to your strongly stated offence has generally been "Why is he persecuting me?!" - but on reflection I should have put more weight on where you were likely coming from.




I am sending you a PM S'mon. The reason is this warrants a well considered reply and I don't want to engage in cross forum drama (trying to be respectful to this forum and the other one involved). In my PM I will clarify further but here I will say, yes I can always be wrong, in that particular case it may be hard to persuade me I was wrong about what was stated, but I don't believe people should be punished forever for what they say online (and I don't consider myself the judge of anyone). And I've never been very happy with how that whole discussion played out.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Perhaps these folks are too afraid to weigh in because the only people who have weighed in to support your point apparently cannot do so without relying on terms and phrases that break board rules?  It always surprises me that folks are apparently incapable of discussing these issues without dehumanizing or otherwise insulting the other side of the conversation - either by questioning their morality, their ethics, their intelligence or their motivations and often all of the above.




I think people are just nervous about getting dogpiled and called out. I can assure you, this is not a comfortable subject to weigh in on if you disagree with the premise of the OP


----------



## Hussar

S'mon said:


> I do think it's sad when people have been educated to take offence where none was (edit) intended. Couple of my east-Asian friends were sharing a video a year or two back about how it's offensive to ask "Where are you from?" - the clueless well-meaning whites asking Asians & Asian-Americans about their national origin were being given as examples of unconscious racism. In discouraging communication I think that kind of thing is actively harmful.
> 
> Or, well, some of the things I've said in the past that offended you, Brendan, I didn't mean to
> be offensive but I spoke (wrote) too casually, and didn't think about my likely readership.
> For one thing British humour often doesn't translate well across the pond; for another, the written word tends to strip out nuance compared to speech. My initial reaction to your strongly stated offence has generally been "Why is he persecuting me?!" - but on reflection I should have put more weight on where you were likely coming from.




Having seen this video and lived in Japan and Korea most of my adult life, it does resonate very, very strongly.  The fetishism of asian people (particularly women) is a real thing and it's deeply, deeply embedded in racist attitudes.  It really is offensive as all get out.


----------



## Hussar

Derren said:


> Why do you only limit it to Europe? This is entirely your choice.
> The Chinese (and Koreans) had "barbarians in the north" as had the Japanese which did not treat the Ainu pretty well. Not to mention that the Mongols were not only a threat to Europeans but also to many Asian and Middle Eastern nations. After all who ended the period of Islamic scientific leadership by razing Baghdad? It wasn't the Europeans. And there were also the tribes of Timur who conquered large territories. And why couldn't orcs symbolize Vikings?
> 
> So as I said, the barbarian raider stereotype existed around the world in all cultures and has nothing specifically to do with European colonialism. And even if you want to limit it European history you still need to explain why orcs would be related to the colonial era of Europe instead of those times when Europe was attacked by tribal societies (Mongols, Huns, Germanics, Turkish tribes, Vikings, ...)




So, because everyone is racist it's okay?

Orcs don't symbolize Vikings because orcs aren't described as blond and blue eyed.  No.  They are SPECIFICALLY described as Asiatic, and leaning hard on Turkic.  Sure, they could be symbolizing something else, if you choose to ignore what it actually says in the books.


----------



## Hussar

S'mon said:


> It's funny, running a D&D campaign now in Howard-esque Primeval Thule, that seems much much less the case than in traditional Tolkienesque D&D. The Beastmen may be thought of as 'orcs' by the local homo sapiens sapiens, but it's clear to the reader that they're really Neanderthals, just as Thule is really Greenland (and north is really west, so Hyperborea is really northern Canada!). Even the Serpentmen dwell peacefully alongside humans in the city of Ikath, and a relatively benevolent serpentman sage or artificer is easily imaginable.
> 
> Swords & Sorcery really does not have the Tolkienesque Good Race vs Evil Race thing going on - if only because everyone is pretty bad - and does not seem grounded in racial conflict the way Tolkienesque fantasy is.




However, even Thule kinda suffers under unspoken racism.  In a setting that is purportedly real world Greenland (however, it's fantasy from just before the last Ice Age), every human civilization on the island save one is white, European.  There is one invader group that is black, but, everyone else is European.  

Not a single native group to be found.  It was something that did stand out to me running the setting.  

And, I say this as a huge, gushing fanboy of the setting.  It really is fantastic and I love it to pieces.  There's a six foot map of Thule hanging above my computer as I type this.  So, yeah, the setting is great.  

Does that make Thule racist?  No, of course not.  But, would it have been better for having included a couple of native groups - maybe a mythological Inuit people, perhaps?  I think so.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> What do you think is the best approach? Get rid of "Always Chaotic Evil" races?
> 
> Are Always-CE Undead ok? How about demons?
> 
> I'm not joking; I am increasingly inclined to think RPGs can do without orcs and suchlike.



My own response to this isn't as firm as [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION]'s.

When I ran a long-running Rolemaster game set in GH, I had (i) rolled orcs, hobgoblins and goblins into a single people, and (ii) presented them as warrior pastoralist-types living on the borders of the human nations, having been displaced by te migrations described by Gygax in his intro to the World of GH. There was no assumption of "always evil": I was influenced in D&D methodology by the Dragon 101 article "For King and Countery"; and, by default and as we played it, RM doesn't use alignment. Over the course of that campaign we had some orc PCs and an ogre PC - the latter in particular was a prominent character. The orcs and ogres co-existed, both in the fiction of the gameworld and also in our roster of PCs, with human people of colour (East Asian from the Scarlet Brotherhood, and African from Hepmonaland, both of which are departures from how Gygax presents the campaign world).

My 4e game has used alignment as a loose personality descriptor but has not pushed it too hard. Eg when the PCs capture goblins and hobgobinls and parole them, I take it for granted that the NPCs keep their word and cease killing civilians etc ("Let it Ride" as a resolution technique). This game had less sociological/historical depth than the GH one (not to say that the latter was deep, but just that, in these respects, the 4e one was shallower), but the framing of goblins and gnolls (the two "humanoid" races that I used - no orcs or kobold in that game) was as worshippers of Bane and Yeenoghu respectively, so the conflict was framed as religious as much as or more than racial.

As a general rule for the last 30-odd years I have tended to use cultists and demons and evil spirits as the principal antagonists in my generic fantasy RPGing, and to frame conflict in ways that broadly enliven norms of self-defence - ie the goblins and gnolls are soldiers who are being fought in self-defence, rather than a merely abstract or possible threat whose homes are being raided in a search for treasure.


----------



## Hussar

IMO, the "best approach" has already been put forth:  simply present more nuanced versions of problematic races.  So, yes, you can still have your marauding orcs, sure.  But, you also have these other orcs too.  So, it's not that orcs maraud because they are orcs, they maraud because that particular group of orcs is a bunch of nasty buggers.  Present a more nuanced race and most of the issues go away because now you remove the connection between race and behavior.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> IMO, the "best approach" has already been put forth:  simply present more nuanced versions of problematic races.  So, yes, you can still have your marauding orcs, sure.  But, you also have these other orcs too.  So, it's not that orcs maraud because they are orcs, they maraud because that particular group of orcs is a bunch of nasty buggers.  Present a more nuanced race and most of the issues go away because now you remove the connection between race and behavior.




This is honestly what I do in my campaigns. I don't do it to keep my settings ethically clean, I just do it because I don't generally find evil races to be my cup of tea. But I just don't really have a problem with people doing something more in the style of Three Hearts, Three Lions or any literature where you have these cosmological forces colliding. I think as long you are treating it as a thought experiment in a fantasy setting, and not applying it to the real world, it is fine. Angels and Demons type stuff. 

I think I just don't see content as equalling the message in a lot of these cases. Obviously if the orcs were clear stand ins for real races (which I don't think they are, but I realize some do) and humans were basically nazis or something that would be different.


----------



## Derren

Hussar said:


> So, because everyone is racist it's okay?
> 
> Orcs don't symbolize Vikings because orcs aren't described as blond and blue eyed.  No.  They are SPECIFICALLY described as Asiatic, and leaning hard on Turkic.  Sure, they could be symbolizing something else, if you choose to ignore what it actually says in the books.




I played D&D for years and have never seen orks as being specifically asian or middle eastern.
And again, even if you limit it to this part of history because you want to, it has nothing to do with colonialism but with a very common worldview which at several times during history was rather justified.
When horse nomads swarm your country and demand that you surrender or die which they mean quite literally or, when the ones that conquered you steal your children to train them into fanatical warriors for their cause, it is quite understandable that in this situation you see the enemy as CE. And it are those events that got translated into fantasy.


----------



## Hussar

To be honest, I have no problem with allegory.  The campaign where  I played a paladin and the DM portrayed his orcs as Native peoples being pushed out of their lands by colonial powers had pretty obvious allegories going on.    But, it was fantastic.  Nuanced, interesting, and a ton of fun.

And, frankly, one of the most interesting campaigns I've ever played in.


----------



## Man in the Funny Hat

My orcs are deliberately based more on Star Trek Klingons than anything else.  Klingons were initially based on the USSR.  My orcs are still inherently and reliably evil.  So how racist am I?


----------



## Hussar

Derren said:


> I played D&D for years and have never seen orks as being specifically asian or middle eastern.
> And again, even if you limit it to this part of history because you want to, it has nothing to do with colonialism but with a very common worldview which at several times during history was rather justified.
> When horse nomads swarm your country and demand that you surrender or die which they mean quite literally or, when the ones that conquered you steal your children to train them into fanatical warriors for their cause, it is quite understandable that in this situation you see the enemy as CE. And it are those events that got translated into fantasy.




And, that would be perfectly fine if orcs were described as horse nomads.

But, they're not.  They're not described as vikings either.

They are being described, rather specifically, as a particular racial stereotype. 

But, let's unpack that first sentence shall we?  You've never seen orcs as being specifically asian or middle eastern.  Fair enough.  But, we have direct quotes from Lord of the Rings which does paint them as such.  Does your particular experience invalidate that reading?  D&D orcs are obviously based pretty heavily on LotR.  That's indisputable.  If LotR orcs are based on some fairly racist elements, then, well, by association, so are D&D orcs.  

And, again, it's not like these are bizarre interpretations that require you to stand on your head under a full moon on the third Wednesday of August.  Orcs as "the savages it's okay to murder" is pretty well established in D&D.  And, that has some pretty uncomfortable parallels to real world strains of thought, as has been demonstrated in this thread.  

See, the problem I'm really having with this discussion isn't the fact that we are having issues talking about what to do going forward.  No, my problem is that we've now spent 40 some pages just having to justify having the conversation in the first place.  Good grief, how much evidence has to be presented here?  If you don't see a problem, fair enough.  But, instead of repeatedly insisting that we have to justify that the problem exists at all, why not focus on resolution?  

Does anyone really have an issue with the notion that fantasy elements in the game which are linked to racist underpinnings from the past, be given a broader treatment going forward and presented in a more nuanced fashion?  

Is that seriously a problem for people?


----------



## Hussar

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> My orcs are deliberately based more on Star Trek Klingons than anything else.  Klingons were initially based on the USSR.  My orcs are still inherently and reliably evil.  So how racist am I?




Well there's a perfect example. 

Even in Star Trek, Klingons were never inherently or reliably evil.  And, as Star Trek has progressed through the years, we've gotten a much (sometimes to ad nauseum) broader treatment of Klingons that presents Klingons as a broad range of behaviors from noble to reprehensible.

Would Star Trek be better if Klingons were nothing but mustache twirling villains?


----------



## Man in the Funny Hat

Hussar said:


> Would Star Trek be better if Klingons were nothing but mustache twirling villains?



Was Star Trek so much worse when they largely were?


----------



## Hussar

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Was Star Trek so much worse when they largely were?




I would argue that they almost never were.  Even in TOS, you have episodes like Day of the Dove.  But, apart from that?  Yes, it was worse.  A simplistic caricature, one note race is worse than a deep, nuanced, multifaceted one.


----------



## Hussar

I realize I answered that question wrong. My personal preference isn’t the issue here. 

A better question is, does a more nuanced presentation of orcs (or Klingons) make it impossible for you to run simpler orcs?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> Obviously if the orcs were clear stand ins for real races (which I don't think they are, but I realize some do) and humans were basically nazis or something that would be different.




I honestly don’t think they’re a stand-in for any real-world race in particular.  I think they have been described in terms that have been used as slurs for real-world races.  That’s lazy writing and unnecessarily hurtful, even if unintentional, thus problematic.

Imagine, if you will, a case in which *nobody* would assert that a fantasy race were an analog for a real-world race: a writer uses the word “n____r” as an in-setting derogatory term for the tall, blonde fey who rule the most powerful quasi-European kingdom on the planet.  And they’re NOT cast as the antagonists in the main storyline.  It’s just that some people in the setting don’t like them, and that’s what they call them.

I think it would still be fair to criticize that author for using real-world racist terminology unnecessarily.  He may not be aracist, but he’s definitely being provocative in away that violates The Wheaton Rule.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> Australia went to war against the Nazis while fiercely maintaing the White Australia Policy. Churchill went to war against the Nazis while resolutely desiring to maintain the British Empire.
> 
> _Opposed/fought the Nazis_ doesn't show that someone, or some political outlook, isn't racist.




Yeah, and the US did so with a segregated military. 

I didn't say that he wasn't a racist because of his opposition to the Nazis - rather that he opposed using the accomplishments of the northern european culture for racist ends as the Nazis did - which suggests, to me, that his goal in writing an alternative mythology based on northern european culture wasn't in pursuit of racist goals even if his description of orcs and treatment of other cultures is questionable.

And that he's substantially more complicated than your *statistical* estimation of him. And given Australia's history, you'd probably not like us doing the same statistical estimation of you either.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> However, even Thule kinda suffers under unspoken racism.  In a setting that is purportedly real world Greenland (however, it's fantasy from just before the last Ice Age), every human civilization on the island save one is white, European.  There is one invader group that is black, but, everyone else is European.
> 
> Not a single native group to be found.  It was something that did stand out to me running the setting.
> 
> And, I say this as a huge, gushing fanboy of the setting.  It really is fantastic and I love it to pieces.  There's a six foot map of Thule hanging above my computer as I type this.  So, yeah, the setting is great.
> 
> Does that make Thule racist?  No, of course not.  But, would it have been better for having included a couple of native groups - maybe a mythological Inuit people, perhaps?  I think so.




The physical description of the Kalay is east-Asian, though this doesn't really get reflected in the art.

There's no indication of whether the Daray (generic European) Nimothans (Scandinavian) or Kalay(east-Asian) are more or less native, ie who arrived first - the Serpentmen presumably arrived before any of them. The Lomari and Atlanteans are noted as arriving more recently, with the African-descended Lomari the most recent arrivals, as you note.

IRL the Inuit only reached the area very recently, wiping out the Paleo-Eskimos, and possibly 
wiping out the Greenland Norse, though the latter is uncertain. Thule is set in a mythical past of 
course, but IRL 25,000* years ago most modern population groups didn't exist yet. Caucasians & east-Asians were only starting to diverge as the last Glacial Maximum made central-north Asia uninhabitable.

Anyway my point was that racial conflict in the setting is not Good Race vs Evil Race, and I rather like that. It's also a relatively minor theme compared to typical Tolkienesque Orcs-vs-Elves D&D.

*I settled on 25,000 years ago since that was the last time there was a significant climate cooling so it seemed to make the most sense for when Thule becomes glaciated, 25,000-22,000 years BP. IRL Greenland was last ice-free more like 75,000 years ago, from what I recall, but that seemed too early, while setting it at the end of the last Ice Age ca 12,000 years ago seemed too recent and not fitting the glaciation theme.


----------



## S'mon

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> My orcs are deliberately based more on Star Trek Klingons than anything else.  Klingons were initially based on the USSR.  My orcs are still inherently and reliably evil.  So how racist am I?




I think Hobgoblins have taken over the Klingon role in recent years!


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> he's substantially more complicated than your *statistical* estimation of him



This is true of nearly everyone.



billd91 said:


> which suggests, to me, that his goal in writing an alternative mythology based on northern european culture wasn't in pursuit of racist goals



And no one has suggested otherwise in this thread. I certainly have not said anything about JRRT's intentions except that I'm indifferent to them.

I did conjecture some beliefs/attitudes that JRRT likely held, given his social, historical, cultural etc context. I didn't and don't conjecture that these shaped his intentions in writing his book. I did and continue to conjecture that these are likely to help explain his use of racist tropes to help present orcs, southerners etc as evil.


----------



## Zardnaar

Never read LOTR tried a few times just couldn't get into it.

 My Orcs are just Orcs. I rarely use real life cultures in my games. If I do I usually base them on an organization. Elves might be imperialist based on the East India Company. A country might be based on the Teutonic Knights. Most players won't recognise the tie in or I steal from obscure sources.


----------



## S'mon

I think the majority view is that it's best not to have natural races/species who are Always Chaotic Evil (or Always Lawful Good?) and players should go by what is actually a threat, not by labels. 
So basically more like Runequest.

I think this supports my view that having Good and Evil Alignments in D&D is not really a good thing either. I've always thought it worked better to stick with Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic for Moorcock/Anderson type settings, and the majority of settings can happily do without Alignment entirely.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> Having seen this video and lived in Japan and Korea most of my adult life, it does resonate very, very strongly.  The fetishism of asian people (particularly women) is a real thing and it's deeply, deeply embedded in racist attitudes.  It really is offensive as all get out.




I have a friend who could be described as having an east-Asian fetish, Japan specifically (Weaboo, I think the term is). I don't think there is a racist bone in her body, and she is highly respectful of Japanese culture.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> So basically more like Runequest.



This is often the best path!


----------



## Hussar

S'mon said:


> I have a friend who could be described as having an east-Asian fetish, Japan specifically (Weaboo, I think the term is). I don't think there is a racist bone in her body, and she is highly respectful of Japanese culture.




There's more to it than that though.  Even [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION], who I believe is black, when asked where is he from, would not be repeatedly questioned when he answered New Orleans.  No one else seems to get this blank stare of disbelief as when an Asian American or Asian Canadian states that they are Canadian.  Like I said, that video resonates really, really well.  It's an ongoing thing and it happens all the time.

I mean, sure, people in Canada have asked me where I'm from.  But, when I say Toronto, they don't then keep asking.  Have you ever had complete strangers question you on your nationality?  I've seen it repeatedly.  And it only ever seems to happen to people of Asian decent.

It really is offensive as hell.  If you feel the need to question someone's nationality, remember, that person may very well have been questioned fifteen times previously that week and just might not appreciate the sixteenth time.

Again, I don't give a fetid dingo's kidney about your friends.  Really, really don't.  I'm telling you, in no uncertain terms, people of (particularly East Asian) decent get questioned on their nationality very, very often.  It's almost like there's a strain of white people that cannot fathom that someone's ancestors came from Japan or China and emigrated to America a hundred years ago or more.


----------



## Aldarc

Derren said:


> Why do you only limit it to Europe? This is entirely your choice.
> The Chinese (and Koreans) had "barbarians in the north" as had the Japanese which did not treat the Ainu pretty well. Not to mention that the Mongols were not only a threat to Europeans but also to many Asian and Middle Eastern nations. After all who ended the period of Islamic scientific leadership by razing Baghdad? It wasn't the Europeans. And there were also the tribes of Timur who conquered large territories. And why couldn't orcs symbolize Vikings?
> 
> So as I said, the barbarian raider stereotype existed around the world in all cultures and has nothing specifically to do with European colonialism. And even if you want to limit it European history you still need to explain why orcs would be related to the colonial era of Europe instead of those times when Europe was attacked by tribal societies (Mongols, Huns, Germanics, Turkish tribes, Vikings, ...)



Because the conceptual history of orcs in Euro-American media have connections to racist Euro-American colonial imagery, terms, and cognitive associations of various non-European groups from the colonial era, particularly Asia and Africa. The answer does not even require that we engage in any Whataboutism like the above.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> I'm telling you, in no uncertain terms, people of (particularly East Asian) decent get questioned on their nationality very, very often.  It's almost like there's a strain of white people that cannot fathom that someone's ancestors came from Japan or China and emigrated to America a hundred years ago or more.




Would you find "What's your ethnicity?" less offensive than "Where are you from?"

You can advocate for "Don't ask don't tell" and for offence-taking all you like, but it's still a bad idea IMO.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> Again, I don't give a fetid dingo's kidney about your friends.  Really, really don't.




This rather sounds like you're trying to be offensive.


----------



## Hussar

S'mon said:


> Would you find "What's your ethnicity?" less offensive than "Where are you from?"
> 
> You can advocate for "Don't ask don't tell" and for offence-taking all you like, but it's still a bad idea IMO.






S'mon said:


> This rather sounds like you're trying to be offensive.




Going to take this in reverse order.

Sorry.  You are absolutely right.  I let my mouth get ahead of me.  There's no need for that.  It's just that, as both my children are half-Japanese, it's a very, very touchy subject for me.  Because, my kids are Canadian and are as Canadian as anyone else.  So, when they repeatedly get questioned about their nationality, it's insulting as all get out.  Because, I'm going to tell you, no one else ever gets questioned like this.

As to the first quote, do you often ask strangers their ethnicity?  Do you often ask anyone their ethnicity?  How often do you ask white friends, "So, where are you from?" and when they say, "England", or whatever country, do you then repeat the question until you drill down where their ancestors were born?  Do you do this repeatedly?

Because, that's what happens when you are Asian in many Western countries.  Saying, "I'm Canadian" is apparently never quite good enough.

So, yeah, I wouldn't blame anyone for getting incredibly offended when strangers somehow feel that they are entitled to ask my ethnicity.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> As to the first quote, do you often ask strangers their ethnicity?  Do you often ask anyone their ethnicity?  How often do you ask white friends, "So, where are you from?" and when they say, "England", or whatever country, do you then repeat the question until you drill down where their ancestors were born?  Do you do this repeatedly?




I ask white friends/acquaintances who don't appear to be ethnic English where they are from, yes. If someone has eg an Irish accent I may ask which part of Ireland. I asked my player who turned out to be Greek where she was from, a couple weeks ago.

I think "Where are you from?" is better than "What's your ethnicity". I understand why the interaction of various cultural elements in Anglo settler countries (USA, Australia, Canada, NZ) has caused the offence-taking to arise. That doesn't make it a good thing.

I think I should recuse myself from this thread now. I had a good discussion and learned a fair bit.


----------



## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> I ask white friends/acquaintances who don't appear to be ethnic English where they are from, yes. If someone has eg an Irish accent I may ask which part of Ireland. I asked my player who turned out to be Greek where she was from, a couple weeks ago.
> 
> I think "Where are you from?" is better than "What's your ethnicity". I understand why the interaction of various cultural elements in Anglo settler countries (USA, Australia, Canada, NZ) has caused the offence-taking to arise. That doesn't make it a good thing.
> 
> I think I should recuse myself from this thread now. I had a good discussion and learned a fair bit.




It is possible this is a US thing, but it is generally something we don't do here, or we know you are not supposed to do. I think it is largely because the US is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic place, but Asians are the ones who always seem to get asked this question. So that is why they did that video. I am sure if it happened to other groups all the time, there would be a video for them as well. There is a difference though between people born here and people who immigrated here. My wife isn't from the US and she doesn't mind if people ask where she is from (but she has an accent). When I was a kid, you saw more of this kind of thing. But these days it is definitely something most people would know is going to be an issue if you ask.

EDIT: Also the US is huge, so this stuff might vary a lot from one state to another. The concerns in Massachusetts are different from Denver and different from Hawaii or Minnesota. Here is Boston for example, it is still very common for people to ask about your ethnic heritage right off the bat (and people carry those ethnic more than they seem to in the midwest or California (at least in my experience). But even here, asking an Asian person 'where are you from' would be bad form.


----------



## Hussar

S'mon said:


> I ask white friends/acquaintances who don't appear to be ethnic English where they are from, yes. If someone has eg an Irish accent I may ask which part of Ireland. I asked my player who turned out to be Greek where she was from, a couple weeks ago.
> 
> I think "Where are you from?" is better than "What's your ethnicity". I understand why the interaction of various cultural elements in Anglo settler countries (USA, Australia, Canada, NZ) has caused the offence-taking to arise. That doesn't make it a good thing.
> 
> I think I should recuse myself from this thread now. I had a good discussion and learned a fair bit.




*Takes a very deep breath.*

I'm really sorry  [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION].  I value your contribution to the thread and I certainly don't want to chase you away.  Again, totally letting my own hang ups get the better of me.  You in no way deserved that.  This is a really touchy subject for me, and I reacted poorly.

/edit - weird multipost stuff corrected.

I'd also point out that the video makes it really, really clear that the two people don't know each other.  It's one thing to ask a friend/acquaintance - that's kinda just polite conversation.  It's very much another when someone does it to a stranger, which is what the video is talking about.   The presumption that anyone who looks Asian must be born in another country is, unfortunately, very common and for some reason, being Asian seems to attract this sort of thing far more often than it should.

Imagine if, on a reasonably frequent basis, complete strangers accosted you to question whether or not you are a "real" ((insert whatever country you live in)).  It gets very tired, very quickly.


----------



## Doug McCrae

A few years ago I was working in Glasgow with a black man. I thought I could detect both Caribbean and London in his accent. I considered asking him where he was from but I decided not to because I thought it might make him unhappy, for exactly the reasons Hussar has given. And there was no need for me to know.


----------



## S'mon

Hussar said:


> Imagine if, on a reasonably frequent basis, complete strangers accosted you to question whether or not you are a "real" ((insert whatever country you live in)).  It gets very tired, very quickly.




Until I moved to London I got this very frequently due to my Northern Irish accent - nobody asks if you're a "real Londoner" though!


----------



## Riley37

I've had the experience of someone pushing past my initial answer, to get at my ancestry, only a few times. *That* seems rude to me. The most recent time, the asker had friendly intent; she was an immigrant from Latin America to the USA, she thought I was another such immigrant (we were chatting in Spanish), and she was looking for common ground. Even so, if I answer with the city where I was raised and attended high school, then *that's my answer*, dammit, and the most polite response is to accept my answer as final. I'm *willing* to explain the mix of my ancestry, even to a stranger met on the road, but I take that as a more personal question than my hometown.

That's my experience as a white American. If I had Hussar's experience - people persistently questioning my children, in a way they don't do to white children - in a way which implies "you look like a foreigner, so what kind of foreigner are you?" - then I would get annoyed, and eventually angry.

If I ever meet Malia Obama, and she tells me that she's from Chicago, I'm going to accept that as her answer. I'm not going to push until I get to the Kenyan part of her ancestry. S'mon, can you see how it might be a touchy topic, not worth pushing past her initial answer?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> I've had the experience of someone pushing past my initial answer, to get at my ancestry, only a few times. *That* seems rude to me. The most recent time, the asker had friendly intent; she was an immigrant from Latin America to the USA, she thought I was another such immigrant (we were chatting in Spanish), and she was looking for common ground. Even so, if I answer with the city where I was raised and attended high school, then *that's my answer*, dammit, and the most polite response is to accept my answer as final. I'm *willing* to explain the mix of my ancestry, even to a stranger met on the road, but I take that as a more personal question than my hometown.
> 
> That's my experience as a white American.




This seems like a regional thing to me. I spent five years in southern California as a kid and ethnic ancestry didn't seem to come up as much (and I sensed some amount of discomfort around the idea that someone would be anything other than a given race or and an American. But in the North East, at least where I live, people ask about ancestry all the time (and no one tells you they are white, they say they are Scottish, German, Italian, Irish, etc). The thing S'mon brought up would still be a line though. And when you do ask about ethnicity you don't ask where someone is from (because you are generally assuming they are third or even fourth generation). You just ask what they are. And again, across racial lines it would be a lot more touchy.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> I'd also point out that the video makes it really, really clear that the two people don't know each other.  It's one thing to ask a friend/acquaintance - that's kinda just polite conversation.  It's very much another when someone does it to a stranger, which is what the video is talking about.   The presumption that anyone who looks Asian must be born in another country is, unfortunately, very common and for some reason, being Asian seems to attract this sort of thing far more often than it should.
> 
> Imagine if, on a reasonably frequent basis, complete strangers accosted you to question whether or not you are a "real" ((insert whatever country you live in)).  It gets very tired, very quickly.




That is another good point about the video. In the video I think, if I remember, someone accosts an Asian person who is getting on a bicycle and asks the question. So it is clearly different from people who have an existing friendship. It is sort of like asking someone their religion based soley on their appearance. 

Hussar, you had mentioned your experience in Japan and Korea informing your thoughts on this. I am just curious what that experience was if you don't mind sharing.


----------



## Umbran

S'mon said:


> Would you find "What's your ethnicity?" less offensive than "Where are you from?"
> 
> You can advocate for "Don't ask don't tell" and for offence-taking all you like, but it's still a bad idea IMO.




Right.  Check the logic here for a moment.

It isn't generally your, or my, or anyone else's business what someone else's ethnicity is.  But goodness, it is a bad idea to respond negatively to the probing question on something that isn't our business!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Hussar said:


> There's more to it than that though.  Even @<i><b><u><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=19675" target="_blank">Dannyalcatraz</a></u></b></i>, who I believe is black, when asked where is he from, would not be repeatedly questioned when he answered New Orleans.  No one else seems to get this blank stare of disbelief as when an Asian American or Asian Canadian states that they are Canadian.  Like I said, that video resonates really, really well.  It's an ongoing thing and it happens all the time.
> 
> I mean, sure, people in Canada have asked me where I'm from.  But, when I say Toronto, they don't then keep asking.  Have you ever had complete strangers question you on your nationality?  I've seen it repeatedly.  And it only ever seems to happen to people of Asian decent.
> 
> It really is offensive as hell.  If you feel the need to question someone's nationality, remember, that person may very well have been questioned fifteen times previously that week and just might not appreciate the sixteenth time.
> 
> Again, I don't give a fetid dingo's kidney about your friends.  Really, really don't.  I'm telling you, in no uncertain terms, people of (particularly East Asian) decent get questioned on their nationality very, very often.  It's almost like there's a strain of white people that cannot fathom that someone's ancestors came from Japan or China and emigrated to America a hundred years ago or more.




I remember Henry Cho’s career from almost his first televised appearances.  For those who don’t know, he’s a Korean-American stand up comedian from Knoxville, Tennessee.  His first words in those early routines were, “How y’all doin’?  (pause) Blew your mind, didn’t I?”  I mean, close your eyes & listen, and there’s no question as to where he’s from.

[video=youtube;WH8E_nkDNDo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH8E_nkDNDo[/video]


----------



## Sadras

Hussar said:


> It's just that, as both my children are half-Japanese, it's a very, very touchy subject for me.  Because, my kids are Canadian and are as Canadian as anyone else.  So, when they repeatedly get questioned about their nationality, it's insulting as all get out.  Because, I'm going to tell you, no one else ever gets questioned like this.
> 
> As to the first quote, do you often ask strangers their ethnicity?  Do you often ask anyone their ethnicity?  How often do you ask white friends, "So, where are you from?" and when they say, "England", or whatever country, do you then repeat the question until you drill down where their ancestors were born?  Do you do this repeatedly?
> 
> Because, that's what happens when you are Asian in many Western countries.  Saying, "I'm Canadian" is apparently never quite good enough.




Hussar I'm not going to pretend to know how it feels or how often your children get asked, but I pretty much have drilled down friends and people I have recently met as part of an organic conversation with no ill intent. I can only speak for myself, I find that an immensely interesting fact about people, as much as say the reason for a person emigrating, the work they did, how they got the work (if it is particularly different/unique to me) and all the rest that goes with it.

When it comes to Asian people I might ask where they are from as I have never been fortunate to travel to the east and my questions would be to learn directly about their specific homeland. I live in South Africa so you have plenty of African tribes/people - Venda, Zulu, Sotho, Matebele, Xhosa...etc I do the same there as I do with Caucasians. 

To note, and this is interesting I have never been asked by an Asian or Black person where I'm from or where my parents are from. The general mentality here (and obviously somewhat politicised) is that whites are from Europe and that is that.

EDIT: Maybe my curiosity comes from growing up with one of those earth globes and studying it when I was kid.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

“Where are you from?” as polite conversation is probably more common in some areas than others.  I know it’s pretty common where I am, and I don’t just mean directed at me.  I ask all the time because I’m...well...interested in where people are from, and like in a lot of big cities, I get to hear all kinds of accents.

Hell, I’ve even been able to pick out a couple of South Africans, Ukrainians and Finns based on accents.

But I’ve never gone into interrogation mode of trying to figure out if people are REAL Americans.  I just want to know about other cultures & places.

I posted my picture: as a Creole outside of Louisiana, I get asked if I’m Arabic, Polynesian, Indian, Mexican- any ethnicity of darker skin other than black because I’m lighter skinned than most blacks in Texas.

Mom- whose father was from Aricebo- sometimes gets earfuls from the Hispanics who accuse her of trying to pass or being embarrassed about her heritage because she won’t speak to them in Spanish.  To which she responds that she speaks English, French, and German.  Her language skills have no relationship to their accusations- French is a common second language in Louisiana; learning German is a valuable skill for living in Germany for 3 years.

When I visited Russia, I had already had my mind blown by news a couple years prior that a small town in Kamchatka had elected its first mayor of African descent.  (It made the news in the USA, which is semi damning, I suppose.)  So I knew that the Africans-descended population in Russia had reached a certain critical mass.

And yet, it still caught me off guard when, in a mall near Red Square, I saw a mixed-race couple, and the dark-skinned, dreadlocked dude in the backwards Chicago Bulls hat, Michael Jordan Bulls jersey over a white T, sagging Bulls shorts and Air Jordan Nikes was speaking flawless Moscovite Russian to his boo.


----------



## darkbard

May I just say how impressed I am that, despite a very few obviously baiting remarks intended to inflame, this conversation has remained as civil as it has! (Knocks wood.) So many similar conversations here have been derailed and shut down because of a lack of serious intent, and I'm delighted that hasn't really happened here.


----------



## Derren

Hussar said:


> And, that would be perfectly fine if orcs were described as horse nomads.
> 
> But, they're not.  They're not described as vikings either.
> 
> They are being described, rather specifically, as a particular racial stereotype.
> 
> But, let's unpack that first sentence shall we?  You've never seen orcs as being specifically asian or middle eastern.  Fair enough.  But, we have direct quotes from Lord of the Rings which does paint them as such.  Does your particular experience invalidate that reading?  D&D orcs are obviously based pretty heavily on LotR.  That's indisputable.  If LotR orcs are based on some fairly racist elements, then, well, by association, so are D&D orcs.
> 
> And, again, it's not like these are bizarre interpretations that require you to stand on your head under a full moon on the third Wednesday of August.  Orcs as "the savages it's okay to murder" is pretty well established in D&D.  And, that has some pretty uncomfortable parallels to real world strains of thought, as has been demonstrated in this thread.
> 
> See, the problem I'm really having with this discussion isn't the fact that we are having issues talking about what to do going forward.  No, my problem is that we've now spent 40 some pages just having to justify having the conversation in the first place.  Good grief, how much evidence has to be presented here?  If you don't see a problem, fair enough.  But, instead of repeatedly insisting that we have to justify that the problem exists at all, why not focus on resolution?
> 
> Does anyone really have an issue with the notion that fantasy elements in the game which are linked to racist underpinnings from the past, be given a broader treatment going forward and presented in a more nuanced fashion?
> 
> Is that seriously a problem for people?




Why should I focus on the resolution for a problem that does not exist?
You think D&D orcs are asian just because of association with LotR orcs which you think are asian stereotypes?
I disagree. When you want to argue that D&D orcs are somehow intended to represent a specific ethnicy then you have to point out, using D&D orcs, that this association is in fact correct instead of pointing at something completely different.

So, which Monster Manual entry makes you think that Orcs are intended to stand for "a particular racial stereotype"?


----------



## Umbran

Dannyalcatraz said:


> “Where are you from?” as polite conversation is probably more common in some areas than others.  I know it’s pretty common where I am, and I don’t just mean directed at me.  I ask all the time because I’m...well...interested in where people are from, and like in a lot of big cities, I get to hear all kinds of accents.
> 
> ...
> 
> But I’ve never gone into interrogation mode of trying to figure out if people are REAL Americans.  I just want to know about other cultures & places.




As with most things in human interaction, context matters.  In current America, a white person asking (or worse, pressing) such a question of a member of a minority is going to smack of racist-gatekeeping.

Similarly, on context:  In the real world, I'm a big blond, blue-eyed guy.  I'm told I read as pretty standard Anglo-Saxon.  But, my folks where immigrants from a country nobody hears about, so I have a weird name.  The reception I get on the phone, from those struggling with the name, can be markedly different from those speaking to me face-to-face.


----------



## Riley37

Bedrockgames said:


> This seems like a regional thing to me. I spent five years in southern California as a kid and ethnic ancestry didn't seem to come up as much…




I take your word on your experience as a child. I grew up near San Francisco, and fellow children occasionally asked me, in a friendly tone, if I had mixed ancestry. The only one with an explicitly expressed negative reaction was an adult. (I have genes from Asia, but via the Trans-Bering Migration, and they first mixed with European genes in the New England colonies in the 1700s. More phenotypically prominent in my face as a child, than as an adult.)

That said, in California during the 1941 Internment, “is your ancestry Chinese or Japanese” determined which native-born USA citizens were detained in camps, and often lost their homes and farms to white take-overs. Which leads me to another of your points…



Bedrockgames said:


> …across racial lines it would be a lot more touchy.




I’m glad to hear you recognize that factor. I’m white, so if I’m the one pressing the question, then that echoes the history of white people, in authority roles, with badges and guns, demanding answers from people with Asian features, and imposing consequences.

Anyways, yes, you get to disagree, you get to see the world as round when everyone else sees it as flat, or vice versa. That said… if you ever find yourself reading “Lord of the Rings” to a group of children at a library… and you reach the passage about the sallow-skinned, slant-eyed guy looking like a half-breed with goblin ancestry… and if any of the children are sallow-skinned and slant-eyed, or any of their parents might be, or any of their friends might be… then please, please handle that passage with more care than JRRT did.

It doesn’t have to be a reference to a specific race, to do harm. Even if the child got the slanted eyes from a Finnish grandmother, hearing “hey, you look like a goblin!” from the other kids on the playground afterwards is STILL gonna hurt. And no, that’s not particularly YOUR fault; but you can prevent it, so please do.

Is that a reasonable request? Well, it’s a set-up: now I’m gonna ask you to practice the same level of caution, the same recognition that something that isn’t YOUR fault, could still be something you can handle in a way which does more harm or less harm. If someone who looks like DannyAlcatraz sits at your table, and chooses to play a half-orc, please don’t push him (or her or them) to play up the savage, hot-tempered, and intensely physical aspects of half-orcs. Because, *not your fault*, he’s been stereotyped that way, since he was a child, *not by you*, and maybe he’s using D&D to play against stereotype. (Maybe without even realizing that consciously. Respect it anyways.)

This is a request. Insofar as I’m setting a standard, you’re free to disregard that standard. I’m not the Gaming Police showing up at your door with a warrant. (Nor will Gary Gygax show up to enforce his rulings about dwarven women and facial hair, no matter how strongly he expressed opinions on that one, back in the 1980s.) If you attend a TRPG convention, then yeah, the convention might have expectations - that’s up to whoever plans the convention. The convention planners might even be influenced by this very conversation on En World. But your table is yours; I have no power there. Not even if I expressed the request in more academic language. (Which I could, but that seems less likely to go over well with you.)


----------



## Riley37

darkbard said:


> May I just say how impressed I am that, despite a very few obviously baiting remarks intended to inflame, this conversation has remained as civil as it has! (Knocks wood.) So many similar conversations here have been derailed and shut down because of a lack of serious intent, and I'm delighted that hasn't really happened here.




Me too. In the first ten pages, I wanted to respond, but restrained myself because maybe someone else had already made the same point. I was pleased to reach page 44 and find the thread still taking responses. I expected it to have already ended with a mod's ruling of "Okay, we're done here." (I had a strong response to a post on page 35 or so, so now I'm gonna wade back until I find it again.)

I'm gonna quibble on a minor nuance: I think that a few of the usual derailers DO have serious intent. Not one that I respect, but one which they hold seriously. (shrug) It's not my place to say which of my fellow posters has what intent, but I can say this much: Thanks, mods!


----------



## darkbard

Riley37 said:


> I'm gonna quibble on a minor nuance: I think that a few of the usual derailers DO have serious intent. Not one that I respect, but one which they hold seriously. (shrug) It's not my place to say which of my fellow posters has what intent, but I can say this much: Thanks, mods!




For sure, and, in fact, I though about going back and editing my language immediately after posting. When I say "lack of serious intent," read "said intent being the thoughtful analysis of these difficult questions" rather than the "serious intent of derailing conversations in an attempt to obfuscate, demean, or otherwise exhibit the lesser qualities of human interaction."


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Umbran said:


> As with most things in human interaction, context matters.  In current America, a white person asking (or worse, pressing) such a question of a member of a minority is going to smack of racist-gatekeeping.



Yes, it can and often does.  Though as I point out, IME, whether it’s innocent curiosity or gatekeeping is usually revealed in the subsequent questions and/or behavior.  See the recent rash of people leaving anti-LatinX messages on the tip line of their recipts _in Mexican restaurants._








> Similarly, on context:  In the real world, I'm a big blond, blue-eyed guy.  I'm told I read as pretty standard Anglo-Saxon.  But, my folks where immigrants from a country nobody hears about, so I have a weird name.  The reception I get on the phone, from those struggling with the name, can be markedly different from those speaking to me face-to-face.




Where are you from?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> If someone who looks like DannyAlcatraz sits at your table, and chooses to play a half-orc, please don’t push him (or her or them) to play up the savage, hot-tempered, and intensely physical aspects of half-orcs.




Side note: the last two half-Orcs I played were a male Bounty Hunter (Ranger, with humans and Orcs as his favored enemies) and a female Paladin- a foundling adopted by an old fisherman, who then apprenticed as a mason when she outgrew the fishing skiff.


----------



## Riley37

S'mon said:


> And if I changed "Orc" to "Nazi"? What then?
> 
> I think this sort of hypothetical is a silly argument. You have to take the Orc as an Orc, before
> you can judge whether it evokes colonialist tropes - which I think it can, but moreso in recent
> usage. AFAICS WotC D&D's 3e-4e-5e orcs 'evoke colonialist tropes' much more than does Tolkien.




I am open to arguments on the comparison between WotC orcs versus JRRT orcs. I predict they'll end with apples and oranges, unless someone can quantify colonialist tropes.

That said, if someone took JRRT's passage about Bill Ferny's neighbor, and changed just the ending, from "looks half a goblin" to "looks half a Paki", then I'd call racist shenanigans. Yeah, Pakistanis don't tend to have slanted eyes, but people expressing racial hatred sometimes get the details wrong, such as the people who attacked Sikhs while calling them Muslims.

If someone took the same passage and changed the ending to "looks half a Nazi", then I'd respond with "hunh"? I'm quite familiar with people presenting National Socialists as The Bad Guys, but never on the basis of their sallow skin and slanted eyes. (Nor bandy legs, use of scimitars, etc.)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I remember Henry Cho’s career from almost his first televised appearances.  For those who don’t know, he’s a Korean-American stand up comedian from Knoxville, Tennessee.  His first words in those early routines were, “How y’all doin’?  (pause) Blew your mind, didn’t I?”  I mean, close your eyes & listen, and there’s no question as to where he’s from.
> 
> [video=youtube;WH8E_nkDNDo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH8E_nkDNDo[/video]




For any interested in this particular tangent, here’s one of Cho’s appearances from 1989.
[video=youtube;bvI-oxtEfJQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvI-oxtEfJQ[/video]

Note:

1) the boots
2) the mullet
3) the use of “retards” getting a laugh
4) name-dropping Bill Engvall _before_ Bill started getting any real attention.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> I take your word on your experience as a child. I grew up near San Francisco, and fellow children occasionally asked me, in a friendly tone, if I had mixed ancestry. The only one with an explicitly expressed negative reaction was an adult. (I have genes from Asia, but via the Trans-Bering Migration, and they first mixed with European genes in the New England colonies in the 1700s. More phenotypically prominent in my face as a child, than as an adult.)




I think you misunderstood my point. I wasn't saying race didn't matter in southern california (it actually seemed to matter a great deal). But ethnicity among whites didn't seem to matter, and people didn't seem to really care what your heritage was. On the east coast it was totally different.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> I’m glad to hear you recognize that factor. I’m white, so if I’m the one pressing the question, then that echoes the history of white people, in authority roles, with badges and guns, demanding answers from people with Asian features, and imposing consequences.




I don't know if you read my full post, but I was saying in the US you shouldn't go around asking Asian people where they are from. I wasn't at all suggesting people should do that. I was just weighing on something another person said, and stating that in Boston people asking about your ethnic heritage isn't all that uncommon. 






> Anyways, yes, you get to disagree, you get to see the world as round when everyone else sees it as flat, or vice versa. That said… if you ever find yourself reading “Lord of the Rings” to a group of children at a library… and you reach the passage about the sallow-skinned, slant-eyed guy looking like a half-breed with goblin ancestry… and if any of the children are sallow-skinned and slant-eyed, or any of their parents might be, or any of their friends might be… then please, please handle that passage with more care than JRRT did.




This is actually a bit irritating to read. I think I said about five times, I would be very mindful in that situation, and I wouldn't even use that slur. I haven't even used it in my posts in response to the quoted text. My wife is Asian, so I don't throw terms like that around (and my mom never let us use racial or ethnic slurs in the household). 



> Is that a reasonable request? Well, it’s a set-up: now I’m gonna ask you to practice the same level of caution, the same recognition that something that isn’t YOUR fault, could still be something you can handle in a way which does more harm or less harm. If someone who looks like DannyAlcatraz sits at your table, and chooses to play a half-orc, please don’t push him (or her or them) to play up the savage, hot-tempered, and intensely physical aspects of half-orcs. Because, *not your fault*, he’s been stereotyped that way, since he was a child, *not by you*, and maybe he’s using D&D to play against stereotype. (Maybe without even realizing that consciously. Respect it anyways.)




I don't even know why you are bringing this up, why would I even suggest that to Danny if he were at my table? I think you believe I hold position that I've never stated in the course of this thread. 



> This is a request. Insofar as I’m setting a standard, you’re free to disregard that standard. I’m not the Gaming Police showing up at your door with a warrant. (Nor will Gary Gygax show up to enforce his rulings about dwarven women and facial hair, no matter how strongly he expressed opinions on that one, back in the 1980s.) If you attend a TRPG convention, then yeah, the convention might have expectations - that’s up to whoever plans the convention. The convention planners might even be influenced by this very conversation on En World. But your table is yours; I have no power there. Not even if I expressed the request in more academic language. (Which I could, but that seems less likely to go over well with you.)




I don't know what sort of person you are under the impression I am. But I can assure you, you are barking up the wrong tree here.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> “Where are you from?” as polite conversation is probably more common in some areas than others.  I know it’s pretty common where I am, and I don’t just mean directed at me.  I ask all the time because I’m...well...interested in where people are from, and like in a lot of big cities, I get to hear all kinds of accents.
> .




When you travel around, asking people where they are from is a great conversation starter, because most people like talking about their home town. I think this is one of those things where what bothers Asian people is there is no visible reason to think they are not American and they often get asked that question to mean "what part of Asia are you from?".


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> When you travel around, asking people where they are from is a great conversation starter, because most people like talking about their home town. I think this is one of those things where what bothers Asian people is there is no visible reason to think they are not American and they often get asked that question to mean "what part of Asia are you from?".




I get that, but...

I’m an Army Brat, so I moved around every 1-3 years.  Where I lived most of my life, there was a better than 30% chance that a given person I was in school with me was not actually a local.

Where I live NOW, there’s a couple dozen cities and towns all smashed together, and a large international population.  And I spend a lot of time on a few forums with global appeal.  So I frequently find myself asking where someone is from- or where they live- in order to talk about those places in comparison to here.  ESPECIALLY in the context of cuisine, guitar gear or other product availability- knowing where someone is from can be _vital_ to the convo.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> That is another good point about the video. In the video I think, if I remember, someone accosts an Asian person who is getting on a bicycle and asks the question. So it is clearly different from people who have an existing friendship. It is sort of like asking someone their religion based soley on their appearance.
> 
> Hussar, you had mentioned your experience in Japan and Korea informing your thoughts on this. I am just curious what that experience was if you don't mind sharing.




Let's just say that I have a pretty good sense of what minorities go through.  Not to an extreme, but, I'm certainly sympthetic.



Bedrockgames said:


> When you travel around, asking people where they are from is a great conversation starter, because most people like talking about their home town. I think this is one of those things where what bothers Asian people is there is no visible reason to think they are not American and they often get asked that question to mean "what part of Asia are you from?".




Yup.  This.

 [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] - the question has been asked and answered.  I don't feel a need to repeat the answers.


----------



## Umbran

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Where are you from?




Currently, Boston, MA.  Originally, Long Island, suburbs of NYC.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Umbran said:


> Currently, Boston, MA.  Originally, Long Island, suburbs of NYC.




Truly, a stranger from a strange land.

_[HenryCho]_Hey, Piratecat lives in Boston as I recall.  You should go hang out with him!_[/HenryCho]_


----------



## pemerton

Hussar said:


> I'm going to tell you, no one else ever gets questioned like this.



Hussar, thanks for this post. I just wanted to say that, in Australia, being Black (especially obviously non-Indigenous Black) or of apparent South Asian heritage will also trigger questions, in exactly the way you describe. And the resuting issues of insult and tiresomeness and a sense of exclusion/alienation are all as you describe.


----------



## pemerton

Derren said:


> which Monster Manual entry makes you think that Orcs are intended to stand for "a particular racial stereotype"?



This was already answered by [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] before you joined the thread: the AD&D rules have orcs who live in "tribes" and have "witch doctors". It's a pulp-y conception of generic "natives".


----------



## Riley37

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't know what sort of person you are under the impression I am. But I can assure you, you are barking up the wrong tree here.




I was under the impression that you are deeply concerned - even afraid - about what might happen if anyone closely examines orcs in gaming for parallels with colonialist propaganda. You've expressed concerns that after such examination, we might set standards, and then impose those standards on others.

Well, this is what happens: We note the overlap between LotR orcs (also known as goblins) and traits associated mostly with Asian or Turkik populations. We note the overlap between WotC orcs and common American stereotypes of black people. We encourage mindful compassion about how those stereotypes might feel to players (and children) with relevant ancestry. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS. That's what you've been SO worried about.

After all those posts of concern, you apparently agreed with us (or at least me and Danny), *all along*, about how to apply those principles in the specific scenarios which I described. I guess it wasn't so bad after all?

There's a possibility that one individual will say something along the lines of "you shouldn't play D&D, you should play some less racist TRPG." That person will be alone in their outlier position; the rest of us won't join that person to dog-pile you. (If you WANT a TRPG with fewer racist images in its text and illustrations, then you can start a new thread with that question, and I'd happily suggest some. In the meantime, if you're happy with D&D, then I'm not gonna second-guess your gaming preferences, not even if you play the edition which I hate.)


----------



## Sadras

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't even know why you are bringing this up, why would I even suggest that to Danny if he were at my table?




Agree, if Danny is at your table, the only question that's relevant is if it's his turn to cater because then you're in for a treat.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I want to point out that in this long and meandering thread about RW stereotypes being used in genre literature and the games inspired by it, I think we should all remember Hanlon’s Razor:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

That’s the original formulation, but in this case, I doubt “stupidity “ is the actual foible in question.  Instead, maybe it is “ignorance”, in the nonjudgmental sense of “being uninformed” about something- a gap in awareness.  Perhaps even “indifference”.  

IOW, I don’t see any evidence of an intent to denigrate on the part of most of the figures discussed herin.  I honestly don’t think anyone’s calling JRRT, EGG, (most) other authors and game designers,  or any fellow ENWorlders posting here as being actual racists.  I think some if not most of the pushback seen here is coming from honest disbelief or lack of information, not genuine antagonism.  I know _I_ really haven’t felt anything like that much here.


----------



## Hussar

pemerton said:


> This was already answered by [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] before you joined the thread: the AD&D rules have orcs who live in "tribes" and have "witch doctors". It's a pulp-y conception of generic "natives".




Let's not forget that half-orcs are described as "mongrels" (a term which pointedly doesn't apply to half-elves).  

Is it extreme or blatant or a massive problem?  Nope.  It really isn't.  But, it is something that should be, and I believe has been, addressed.  By creating a more nuanced view of orcs - giving them an actual culture, history, whatnot, and moving away from the earlier tropes of orcs, it does help.  Someone mentioned earlier that modules now rarely feature (at least from WotC) the whole "Defend the border colony from the rampaging xxxx".  It's a lot more evil cults and whatnot.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> I want to point out that in this long and meandering thread about RW stereotypes being used in genre literature and the games inspired by it, I think we should all remember Hanlon’s Razor:
> 
> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
> 
> That’s the original formulation, but in this case, I doubt “stupidity “ is the actual foible in question.  Instead, maybe it is “ignorance”, in the nonjudgmental sense of “being uninformed” about something- a gap in awareness.  Perhaps even “indifference”.
> 
> IOW, I don’t see any evidence of an intent to denigrate on the part of most of the figures discussed herin.  I honestly don’t think anyone’s calling JRRT, EGG, (most) other authors and game designers,  or any fellow ENWorlders posting here as being actual racists.  I think some if not most of the pushback seen here is coming from honest disbelief or lack of information, not genuine antagonism.  I know _I_ really haven’t felt anything like that much here.




QFT.  Totally this.

Not to bang the drum here, but, it is one of the advantages of divorcing the work from the creator.  By saying, "This in such and such work is objectionable" I'm, in no way, passing any judgment on the creator.  OTOH, if you insist that the creator and the work are indelibly linked, then anything that someone finds objectionable is automatically casting shade on the creator and we have to dive down the rabbit hole of intent.  

Far simpler to just look at the work itself, in context, rather than try to guess what's in someone's mind.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I don’t divorce the artist from the work.  I think artistic intent matters, even if it isn’t necessarily the whole story.

But I CAN divorce my feelings about the creators from my feelings about the merits of their creations.  Regardless of how I feel about the human beings that made them, I can still enjoy my HPL Mythos stories, listen to my Bill Cosby and Michael Jackson albums.  Etc.


----------



## Riley37

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I honestly don’t think anyone’s calling JRRT, EGG, (most) other authors and game designers,  or any fellow ENWorlders posting here as being actual racists. I think some if not most of the pushback seen here is coming from honest disbelief or lack of information, not genuine antagonism.




I agree in spirit. If by "racist" you mean someone with conscious, intentional malice, then I agree in detail. No one here is taking a position along the lines of "the only good Eloi is a dead Eloi".

I have what might be an oddball understanding on this topic. If you asked me "Riley, are you honest or dishonest?" then my answer is somewhere in between; maybe 90% honesty? Same for laziness... and same for racism; I cannot claim to have *never* made a racist assumption, or never acted on bias. I try to cultivate and improve my honesty, and I try to cultivate and improve my non-racism (into active anti-racism). So if you asked me whether I'm racist... I would not give a simple, binary, clear-cut "no". (shrug) There are 206 bones in the adult human body, and if my left clavicle is racist, then that's less than 1% but I still fail the "not a racist bone in his body" test.

(If I arrived in Oz, and the Munchkins asked me whether I was a Good Witch or a Bad Witch: in Oz, good witches are beautiful and bad witches are ugly, so the answer should be obvious.)


----------



## Derren

pemerton said:


> This was already answered by [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] before you joined the thread: the AD&D rules have orcs who live in "tribes" and have "witch doctors". It's a pulp-y conception of generic "natives".




So you have to go back 40 years and 3 editions to find something to support your theory.
And why is this relevant today? Seems it has already been corrected.


----------



## Hussar

Derren said:


> So you have to go back 40 years and 3 editions to find something to support your theory.
> And why is this relevant today? Seems it has already been corrected.




 [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION], once again this has been asked and answered.  IIRC, more than once.  It would help if you would go back and read the thread before asking us to repeat what's already been discussed.  It makes it difficult, and honestly, rather frustrating, to keep having to justify why we're having this discussion every five pages or so whenever someone else comes in the door.

Why not presume that we've actually already discussed this, and presume good faith?  The same presumption we should extend to you and not presume that you are simply trying to derail the thread, no?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Hussar said:


> Derren said:
> 
> 
> 
> So you have to go back 40 years and 3 editions to find something to support your theory.
> And why is this relevant today? Seems it has already been corrected.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION], once again this has been asked and answered.  IIRC, more than once.  It would help if you would go back and read the thread before asking us to repeat what's already been discussed.  It makes it difficult, and honestly, rather frustrating, to keep having to justify why we're having this discussion every five pages or so whenever someone else comes in the door.
> 
> Why not presume that we've actually already discussed this, and presume good faith?  The same presumption we should extend to you and not presume that you are simply trying to derail the thread, no?
Click to expand...



Some of us were discussing this on pg1:


Dannyalcatraz said:


> There have been elements of some of the “always evil” races’ treatment in early FRPGs- especially D&D- that could definitely be said to echo some of the racism present in the early pulp and genre fiction that inspired the founders of the hobby.  But as time has passed, those elements have been somewhat reduced, and the various races have been fleshed out a bit more realistically by subsequent game designers.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Orcish features that correspond to 19th and 20th century European ideas about black Africans:

Dark skin
Tribes
Primitive
Savage
Combine human and animal traits
Cannibalism (in the sense of eating other humanoids)
Witch doctors (2e and earlier)
Low intelligence
Physically superior (3e and onward)
Fecundity (1e, 2e and 5e)

They live in villages, which suggests they're not steppe nomads or plains Indians.

The barbarian rage and use of axes introduced in 3e was probably inspired by Fafhrd and vikings, and does muddy the waters a bit.


----------



## Aldarc

Doug McCrae said:


> Here's a list of orcish features that correspond to 19th and 20th century European ideas about black Africans.



While also being depicted as a dangerous chaotic threat to "the West" representing Law, the (quasi) Medieval European society, and a predominately white-drawn cast of characters. This point does not necessarily reflect 19th and 20th century Europe, but the overlay between what you list and the mostly "European" perspective of orcs in the game cannot be ignored either.


----------



## Doug McCrae

On the similarities between the fecundity of D&D orcs and early 20th century race "scientists" notions about black people.

Orcs reproduce more quickly than other humanoids.

“Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility and wife of Gruumsh, demands that orcs procreate often and indiscriminately so that orc hordes swell generation after generation. The orcs' drive to reproduce runs stronger than any other humanoid race, and they readily crossbreed with other races.” - 5e D&D Monster Manual​
Black people are believed to reproduce faster than other races.

“Treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would appear that whites tend to double in eighty years, yellows and browns in sixty years, blacks in forty years.” - Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920)​
“The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality... To it... is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders.” - Stoddard again​
Orcish traits are dominant.

“Half-orcs tend to favor the orcish strain heavily and as such are basically orcs, although 10% of these offspring can pass as ugly humans.” - 2e AD&D Monster Manual​
"Lower types" are dominant.

“The result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the… lower type… the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro” - Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916)​


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> I was under the impression that you are deeply concerned - even afraid - about what might happen if anyone closely examines orcs in gaming for parallels with colonialist propaganda. You've expressed concerns that after such examination, we might set standards, and then impose those standards on others.
> 
> Well, this is what happens: We note the overlap between LotR orcs (also known as goblins) and traits associated mostly with Asian or Turkik populations. We note the overlap between WotC orcs and common American stereotypes of black people. We encourage mindful compassion about how those stereotypes might feel to players (and children) with relevant ancestry. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS. That's what you've been SO worried about.
> 
> After all those posts of concern, you apparently agreed with us (or at least me and Danny), *all along*, about how to apply those principles in the specific scenarios which I described. I guess it wasn't so bad after all?
> 
> There's a possibility that one individual will say something along the lines of "you shouldn't play D&D, you should play some less racist TRPG." That person will be alone in their outlier position; the rest of us won't join that person to dog-pile you. (If you WANT a TRPG with fewer racist images in its text and illustrations, then you can start a new thread with that question, and I'd happily suggest some. In the meantime, if you're happy with D&D, then I'm not gonna second-guess your gaming preferences, not even if you play the edition which I hate.)




Your misunderstanding my position. I think I've been clear. It is early and I am too tired to try to rephrase it. But like I said before, I don't think the evil orc trope, or evil orcs in fantasy RPGs are racist. And I don' think the tie to colonialism is super obvious. My main contention was taking a fine tooth comb to this stuff, in my view, doesn't really help, and when that mindset is actually put into action (in say places like twitter) I think the outcome is a lot nastier and more censorious than people intend. And I think this kind of academic critical approach is crating a gulf in the hobby between people with advanced degrees and people without (and that is part of why I say it stifled creativity, because if you are not versed in this new etiquette, which is quite complex in my opinion, you get hammered if you don't handle these kinds of tropes in exactly the right way). I basically don't agree with a certain approach to analyzing media content. And I think there are other points of view, that take slightly different positions about the meaning of media, how we ought to react to it, etc, that are useful and not the rightwing viewpoint that some posters seem to think any criticism of this idea represents. I don't think the approach people are advocating here achieves the desired result and I think it is increasingly leading to a throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. But that doesn't mean I hold racist views, am right wing, etc. And it doesn't mean I want to see people get hurt. I just have a difference of opinion about some of the fundamental assumptions at work in this thread. I believe those assumptions come from a good place, but I don't think they lead to a good place. And me holding these views certainly doesn't mean I would recite an ethnic slur in front of a group of children. We were examining Tolkien's use of the word, and how it informed the orc. There is a big difference between an adult today using that label and a person from Tolkien's era using it as an easy way to describe a monster's eye (who we have very strong evidence wasn't a racist because of things like his letter to his German publisher in which he denounces the kinds of theories people are concerned about). The way he is using it sounds like it is meant to simply be descriptive and not as the slur (to my eyes). Doesn't mean I'd just read it off the page to a group of kids though. But I think a group of adults can have a discussion about it, and see some nuance rather than a black and white this trope is bad conclusion. My honest opinion of Tolkien's description is it on the cusp, but not at all clear. All we have is that word and 'swarthy' to go on, and a lot of the other attributes are things you would find among any conquering tribal group of nomadic group. To me, as much as an issue that kind of language could be, it is clear Tolkien wasn't trying to make some kind of 19th century racialist argument. I don't think that was the intent at all. I think he just wanted an evil race in the way that demons are evil because he was operating off of the hierarchy of being as a concept and trying to explain the existence of evil in the setting. That he agonized over this detail, and changed his mind on how to approach over time, I think shows this wasn't a person who was given to the kind of thinking people are concerned is embodied in the trope. If there is anything nasty in there, it is entirely unintentional and I think that matters because there would be a big difference it was crafted as intentional racial or colonialist propaganda (the book would have made active efforts to perused readers to that point of view). Hopefully I am not missing any details of what I've said here. I believe these are all the points I made summed up.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I want to point out that in this long and meandering thread about RW stereotypes being used in genre literature and the games inspired by it, I think we should all remember Hanlon’s Razor:
> 
> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
> 
> That’s the original formulation, but in this case, I doubt “stupidity “ is the actual foible in question.  Instead, maybe it is “ignorance”, in the nonjudgmental sense of “being uninformed” about something- a gap in awareness.  Perhaps even “indifference”.
> 
> IOW, I don’t see any evidence of an intent to denigrate on the part of most of the figures discussed herin.  I honestly don’t think anyone’s calling JRRT, EGG, (most) other authors and game designers,  or any fellow ENWorlders posting here as being actual racists.  I think some if not most of the pushback seen here is coming from honest disbelief or lack of information, not genuine antagonism.  I know _I_ really haven’t felt anything like that much here.




I think from posters like you and Hussar, the response has felt like you describe: I feel you are reacting to what I actually say. But I have to be truthful here, I think some of the other posts have strongly implied racism as a motive on my part (or at least advised a serious need for me to reform my ways). Many of the reactions were in my view unfair rhetorical tactics like (paraphrasing) “why do you care more for your precious orc tropes than the harm experienced by marginalized groups”. Or I would get a lot of ‘you should reflect on it is you really think that’—-suggesting that I have racist beliefs deep down. What troubles me, and this isn’t directed st you because I have found your posts to be very empathetic, is for all the talk of empathy, compassion and not hurting people, the cruel streak visible in some posts once people decide you don’t have the right idea about analyzing colonialist tropes (a derp and complicated topic in my view with plenty of room for more than two simple extremes).


----------



## Doug McCrae

I wouldn't want to give the impression that the racist ideas I mentioned above are purely a thing of the past. 19th century race science is still being peddled by prominent Youtubers. The notion that dark-skinned men represent a sexual threat to white women and that dark-skinned people are outbreeding white people are a significant influence on our current politics. The white idea of black physical superiority is a major theme of the recent movie Get Out.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Great thread with many thoughtful responses.

I've not much to add except that the cultural "rehabilitation" of orcs (or Klingons, for that matter), comes through applying a kind of "Noble Savage" or "Honorable Warrior" template - itself, another colonialist trope.

Re JRRT:

_"out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues."_

Tolkien wrote an essay called _Sigelwara Land_ (an Old English term for Aethiopia) and postulates that this early construction has relicts of a pre-Christian image of Muspelheim with demons "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks and faces black as soot."

In some early maps, Harad appears as _Sunharrowland_, of similar construction.


----------



## Sadras

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Greece, too, was on the side of the allies, even though the predominant political hierarchy had a great deal in common with the Nazis.




And some of the religious hierarchy, specifically the monks of Mount Athos.
But there were others that were extraordinarily brave.


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> It is early and I am too tired to try to rephrase it. But like I said before, I don't think the evil orc trope, or evil orcs in fantasy RPGs are racist. And I don' think the tie to colonialism is super obvious.




I think you've been clear about that.  The issue isn't that you are unclear.  The issue is that several folks here think you are *simply wrong*.

And... so... what do you want?  



> My main contention was taking a fine tooth comb to this stuff, in my view, doesn't really help...




Again, I think you've been clear.  The issue here isn't that you are unclear, but that folks *do not agree with your points*.  

So again - Every communication has some (occasionally implicit) purpose, and some intended audience.  Who are you writing to, and why?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> So again - Every communication has some (occasionally implicit) purpose, and some intended audience.  Who are you writing to, and why?




This is the kind of response i am talking about. I've just made a promise to myself due to things I have seen happen online in the past several years, to always give my honest opinion, whether most people in a thread hold the view or not (particularly in the gaming community because I value the gaming community). My purpose is simply to push back on some of the assumptions in the thread, because I don't think it is leading to a good place (even though I think it is very well intended). We can have disagreements about this stuff. I realize there is a prevailing view on the thread, that doesn't mean it is correct. I am simply trying to give my take on the OP. 

I can totally accept people don't agree with my points. I think good people can have honest disagreements about what all this means. And I think there have been a number of posters on this thread I've had good exchanges with in that respect. But I do think some of the posters are seeing things in my posts that simply are not there. It is one thing to disagree with my points. It is another thing to characterize them in a way that doesn't really match what I am saying or imply things about my character because I take a slightly different view than you about media tropes. Again we are talking about subjective reactions to media tropes, and I'm getting responses that are things like quoting Martin Luther King Jr.'s invocation of White Moderates. I just find some of these reactions a bit odd.


----------



## Gradine

S'mon said:


> What do you think is the best approach? Get rid of "Always Chaotic Evil" races?
> 
> Are Always-CE Undead ok? How about demons?
> 
> I'm not joking; I am increasingly inclined to think RPGs can do without orcs and suchlike.




I'm a few days late here, but can I introduce you to Eberron?

Note that in Eberron there _are_ always-evil creatures, but they are entirely immortal and/or supernatural/extraplanar in nature (undead, fiends, celestials, aberrations, etc.). But this is only because they technically lack the free will afforded mortal races (including monstrous races, such as medusas, harpies, etc.) 

Note that in Eberron even these creatures can change their alignment, but doing so fundamentally changes their nature; ie, a fallen angel becoming a radiant idol. 

Note that the mortal monstrous races, as depicted in Eberron, are still seen as fundamentally different from the rest of civilization; they have different values, different cultures, different powers; but there is nothing that compels to them evil and most have at least a few members living peacefully in the setting's largest metropolis.


----------



## sd_jasper

So (shifting gears a bit here), what do folks here think about the Reavers from _Firefly_ / _Serenity_? The whole setting of this show and movie has many parallels of the American West (and post-Civil War reconstruction... which makes our "heroes" confederates... but that's another story).

The reavers are the "savages at the edge of space". What did our heroes of western drama fight at the edge of the frontier? The native peoples, a.k.a (in western period fiction) "Indians". So are reavers a racial stereotype? Is Joss Wheaton a racist?

My take is, no he is not. I do think old-west stories do have a one-sided if not right out racists view of native peoples. But I don't think that transforming those stories into a new format... using the narrative trope is the same as disparaging the people today.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Darth Solo

This goes to what a "savage" is. Orcs have historically, within the hobby, been described as "monsters". Aka "savage". Orcs are experience points for players; evil monsters that need to be put down. 

I've never identified Orcs as Native-Americans or African-Americans because both peoples were more civil than war-like Orcs. The whole "colonisation" thing was mostly SJW propaganda. 

I ran "black" PCs back in the early 80's, because I'm "black/African-American". Killing Orcs was slaying monsters. Just that. Based in everything I've read from or by E.G. Gygax, he was no racist. But, I have noticed SJWs try and make him that. 

D&D was once "human-centric" where the human colonies battled demi-human (Orc, Goblin, Drow, ECT.) advancement. Orcs were one monster group among many. 

So as was posted, this thread can be a trap of a sort where people try to communicate Orcs as "non-monster" giving them status accordant to "ethnic minority", but at least for me, monsters are not equivalent to humanity. Again, an Orc has never been more than player X.P.

Speaking of “as was posted”, another poster has already been booted from this thread and another nearly so for forgetting the ENWorld’s ToS note that “SJW” and similarly loaded politicized name-calling is not acceptable here.  Disagree freely, but don’t be disagreeable.  Don’t make that mistake again.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

While there are undeniable echoes with the American frontier and its lore, JW successfully and completely subverts the potentially racist tropes with the ultimate reveal that the Reavers were _created_ by experimental behavioral modification science gone horribly wrong.

[video=youtube;5PM8VcTCPqQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PM8VcTCPqQ[/video]


----------



## Darth Solo

I love my hobby. I've spent thousands of dollars and years of work in it. My thing is protecting it from people who want to tear it down, and I run into moderators who don't have that same motivation. 

So within the censored language of THIS forum, Orcs are in the Monster Manual. They gave an X.P. value. Yes, you can kill them. The Orc Cleric in the party? Work with him/her/it. I, as GM, have had PCs kill each other and ask for X.P. 

These forums are fine sounding boards, but there will always be a "level of disconnect" between what sounds good on a forum & what really happened in-game. Guess that's the essence of having moderators. 

But, sometimes moderation censors reality. I've been chatting online long enough to get that. I appreciate the Mods, when they represent the RPG hobby.


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> Again we are talking about subjective reactions to media tropes, and I'm getting responses that are things like quoting Martin Luther King Jr.'s invocation of White Moderates. I just find some of these reactions a bit odd.




You find it odd that, in a thread analyzing the parallels between orcs and colonialist progaganda with regard to racial stereotyping, you make repeated calls for moderation and I posted one of the most famous statements in history about calls for moderation in the face of racial injustice?


----------



## sd_jasper

Dannyalcatraz said:


> While there are undeniable echoes with the American frontier and its lore, JW successfully and completely subverts the potentially racist tropes with the ultimate reveal that the Reavers were _created_ by experimental behavioral modification science gone horribly wrong.




I agree. And, shifting back to the orcs, they were created from tortured/corrupted elves. But both still fill the literary trope of "savage" or "barbarian". So I think this is a pretty good example to compare to.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Orcs, and other evil humanoids in rpgs, are a fictional construct. Racist ideas about people of colour are also a fictional construct. We are comparing one work of fiction with another (and noting many similarities).


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Darth Solo said:


> I love my hobby. I've spent thousands of dollars and years of work in it. My thing is protecting it from people who want to tear it down, and I run into moderators who don't have that same motivation.
> 
> So within the censored language of THIS forum, Orcs are in the Monster Manual. They gave an X.P. value. Yes, you can kill them. The Orc Cleric in the party? Work with him/her/it. I, as GM, have had PCs kill each other and ask for X.P.
> 
> These forums are fine sounding boards, but there will always be a "level of disconnect" between what sounds good on a forum & what really happened in-game. Guess that's the essence of having moderators.
> 
> But, sometimes moderation censors reality. I've been chatting online long enough to get that. I appreciate the Mods, when they represent the RPG hobby.




1) *nobody* here has accused Gygax of racism.  People have pointed out he used language with origins within racist  ideologies.  There’s a difference.  Language and symbology can get very tricky.  Gestures, too.  WW2 had at least 3 different excellent examples of this.  2 changed the way people interacted with certain symbols, one globally, one in the USA.  And another showed how the same INTENT was conveyed with similar but opposite gestures in 2 different cultures.

2) appointing yourself as the sole true defender of the hobby isn’t a good look

3) commenting on moderation in thread is expressly against site rules.  You have an issue with moderation, take it to Meta or send a PM.  Besides, nobody is suppressing your ideas, just asking you not to be an ass while doing so.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> You find it odd that, in a thread analyzing the parallels between orcs and colonialist progaganda with regard to racial stereotyping, you make repeated calls for moderation and I posted one of the most famous statements in history about calls for moderation in the face of racial injustice?




I found the use of that letter very odd, yes. Because I merely used the words 'my critique is fairly moderate' and you used that to bring up Martin Luther King Jr's rebuke of White Moderates during the Civil Rights Struggle. I don't think the connective tissue is there. In fact, I will say I know it isn't. Because I know myself and my thoughts. And I know where I stand in terms of the letter. But we are talking about media tropes.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:
			
		

> I don't think the evil orc trope, or evil orcs in fantasy RPGs are racist. And I don' think the tie to colonialism is super obvious. My main contention was taking a fine tooth comb to this stuff, in my view, doesn't really help,




But, how is directly linking the descriptions of these races in the text "taking a fine tooth comb" to this stuff.  I mean, the quotes from the Monster Manual are contained within a couple of paragraphs - they aren't buried in some appendix of some later publication.  They're RIGHT THERE.

In Tolkien's case, physical descriptions are often not particularly repeated, but, the only examples we have of physical descriptions of orcs rest pretty squarely on racist concepts.  There are no other descriptions.  Again, this isn't "taking a fine tooth comb" to the work.  No one is claiming that LotR is a racist work.

No, what is being claimed is that the concept of orc (a small subset of the number of concepts in fantasy) rely on some pretty racist foundations.

IOW, if you want to bring up counter points, or why you don't think these tropes rely on racist underpinnings, you need to provide proof.  "I don't think so" is not proof.  Evidence has been presented.  Pretty clear and repeated evidence.  If you cannot provide counter evidence, why would we accept your opinion?


----------



## Hussar

sd_jasper said:


> /snip
> 
> Is Joss Wheaton a racist?
> 
> /snip




See, this right here?  This is why we have such a hard time having any sort of constructive discussion.  

Who here has accused ANY ARTIST of being racist?  Can you find a single quote in this almost 500 post long thread that has made a single accusation that having possibly racist imagery in a work makes the artist racist?  

So, why the race to defend the artist?  No one is accusing any artist of anything.  At worst, they are being accused of being a product of their time.  Ohhh noes!! The horror.  

No, what is being said, and I cannot make this clearly enough, is that in the history of ORCS IN FANTASY (again, we're not delving into other depictions, nor are we making any broader statements), the depictions of orcs shares a lot of language with racist concepts of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Again, there have been several examples posted.  A pretty long list that no one seems interested in questioning, so, I'm going to assume that the list is accurate and that the lines have been quoted properly.

If you want to argue the issue, present some counter factuals.  Let's see the evidence of why describing orcs as sallow faced, squint eyed, untrustworthy, mongrels _isn't_ grounded in racist depictions of minorities.  

And, if you cannot, then let's talk about how we can do better going forward.  After 500 posts, can we PLEASE stop having to justify having this conversation?


----------



## generic

Mystra! 

Can we get back on topic.

Like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, it would be more interesting to discuss things than discuss the merits of discussing them.


----------



## Hussar

To be fair, if all we did was discuss what to do going forward, this thread would be two pages long and probably would have died days ago.  

Honestly, jumping on the other side of the fence for a moment, if folks wanted to shut down this sort of conversation, they would be FAR better served by just ignoring it.  It's the back and forth of having to justify why we're having the conversation in the first place that is largely driving the conversation.  

What should we do?  That's pretty easy.  Present humanoid races in more nuanced fashion with broader culture and history and without the link between race (or species if we want to get technical) and morality.  It's perfectly fine to have "evil" demons and undead.  No one gets fussed about that.  Everyone's fine with our adventurers going in and slaughtering demons.  That's groovy.

But when so much of RPG play is world building, underpinning that world building with racist notions of morality becomes problematic.  So, yoink out those underpins, present races which have a culture as actually _having_ a culture and history and everyone wins.

You need marauding humanoids?  No problem.  This particular group is marauding because they cultists, or insane, or aggressively trying to annex land or invade or whatever.  But, don't ONLY present a race as marauding humanoids linked to descriptions grounded in racism or misogyny.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> IOW, if you want to bring up counter points, or why you don't think these tropes rely on racist underpinnings, you need to provide proof.  "I don't think so" is not proof.  Evidence has been presented.  Pretty clear and repeated evidence.  If you cannot provide counter evidence, why would we accept your opinion?




I did. You don't have to agree them (and to be clear I am not trying to shut down a conversation, I am trying to have a conversation). I didn't merely say I don't think so. I explained why in my posts.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> But, how is directly linking the descriptions of these races in the text "taking a fine tooth comb" to this stuff.  I mean, the quotes from the Monster Manual are contained within a couple of paragraphs - they aren't buried in some appendix of some later publication.  They're RIGHT THERE.




Because 'colonialist propaganda parrallel' isn't something that most people think when they see an image of a D&D orc for the first time. You have to go back into the different editions, you have to go back all the way to Tolkien. And while you think it is a clear line, I find it a lot less clear (for the reason I stated). I do think this is fine tooth comb territory because its the sort of thing you need to be educated into believing before you will generally see it as a problem. And this is just one corner of the discussion. This concept gets applied to all kinds of things in media and games. And I think the constant searching to find the problematic elements and purify them, is creating a much more complicated landscape for people who want to be creative. And part of that landscape is a divide between the people with an advanced education and those who don't have one (. Remember the original question was whether evil orcs are a colonialist or racist trope. I don't think they are. And I think to make that case, you really have to dig deep into the history of the orc as a concept (and I don't find the case particularly convincing). 

And I am not saying don't make more interesting orcs. By all means do so. But if someone makes a game with an evil goblinoid creature, is it really that bad of a thing? Again, content does not equal the message. And what happens when all of our RPGs are virtuous? Do you really think it is going to change anything substantive about the culture and society?


----------



## sd_jasper

Hussar said:


> See, this right here?  This is why we have such a hard time having any sort of constructive discussion.




Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that anyone here was making accusations, or put words in your or anyone's mouths.

I was just trying to draw what I feel is a similar example of a stereotype or trope used to create something new, in a different context and more recent history. And if this was viewed as more or less problematic.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Bedrockgames said:
			
		

> its the sort of thing you need to be educated into believing before you will generally see it as a problem.




I don't think this is a question of belief. It seems fairly self-evident to me. But nor do I necessarily view it as a problem - it just _is_. You seem to be implying that it is somehow...unnecessary?...undesirable?...to discover the roots of ideas; which elements comprise the signs in our heads, and why?

I find ideas which inform the aetiology of the Orc to be fascinating.

Don't you think the OP's question was rather rhetorical?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Sepulchrave II said:


> I don't think this is a question of belief. It seems fairly self-evident to me. But nor do I necessarily view it as a problem - it just _is_. You seem to be implying that it is somehow...unnecessary?...undesirable?...to discover the roots of ideas; which elements comprise the signs in our heads, and why?
> 
> I find ideas which inform the aetiology of the Orc to be fascinating.




I am sure to do find it fascinating. I think most people just see an orc.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Sepulchrave II said:


> Don't you think the OP's question was rather rhetorical?




I didn't find it to be, but I could have missed something.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bedrockgames said:


> Because 'colonialist propaganda parrallel' isn't something that most people think when they see an image of a D&D orc for the first time. You have to go back into the different editions, you have to go back all the way to Tolkien.



1. Maybe “most people” don’t notice it, but that doesn’t negate its presence.  Most people didn’t notice the coelacanths were still alive until 50 or so years ago.
2. Doug McCrae (disappointingly) just a few hours ago posted an exemplar from 5Ed in post #475.  Things are better, but not as good as they could be.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

sd_jasper said:


> Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that anyone here was making accusations, or put words in your or anyone's mouths.
> 
> I was just trying to draw what I feel is a similar example of a stereotype or trope used to create something new, in a different context and more recent history. And if this was viewed as more or less problematic.



Well, considering the only actual accusation of racism was of HPL- whose racism is pretty much not in question- the way you phrased your question was...awkward.


----------



## Riley37

sd_jasper said:


> Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that anyone here was making accusations, or put words in your or anyone's mouths.
> 
> I was just trying to draw what I feel is a similar example of a stereotype or trope used to create something new, in a different context and more recent history. And if this was viewed as more or less problematic.




Thanks. My opinion and I hope Hussar agrees:

Any examination of tropes - in D&D, in Firefly, and elsewhere - will be a LOT easier and a LOT safer, if you consciously and carefully refrain from raising the question of which authors we do or don't designate as racist. If you wanna call out Lovecraft (or the author of the RaHoWa TRPG) as racist, then that's low-hanging fruit, but otherwise, that question generally leads to derails, and to "How dare you accuse that author of being a BAD PERSON", and so forth, which doesn't actually help us make TRPG less toxic for those who are harmed by real-world racism.

It also makes people scared that even participants in the conversation will be Called Out, and dog piled, and condemned as a racist. Bedrockgames has (repeatedly) mentioned Twitter, where sometimes people mix legitimate concerns with the savage joy of taking down a target in a pack attack. (Or so I hear.)

I would love to have a face-to-face conversation with Mr. Whedon, perhaps over a beer, about his use of certain tropes involving race and gender. Same with JRRT, and with Kipling, if they were still alive. I'd like to have those conversations in a way which results in them saying "You have a point, and I'll be more careful about that, next time I create a work of fiction which delights and inspires you". Since those are not available options, let's just discuss the imagery, but not as a "Good Witch or Bad Witch" judgement. We can include context - yes, it matters that the British Empire enriched people such as JRRT, at the widespread expense of people who looked like his description of Bill Ferny's neighbor - without torches and pitchforks.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> Because 'colonialist propaganda parrallel' isn't something that most people think when they see an image of a D&D orc for the first time. You have to go back into the different editions, you have to go back all the way to Tolkien. And while you think it is a clear line, I find it a lot less clear (for the reason I stated). I do think this is fine tooth comb territory because its the sort of thing you need to be educated into believing before you will generally see it as a problem. And this is just one corner of the discussion. This concept gets applied to all kinds of things in media and games. And I think the constant searching to find the problematic elements and purify them, is creating a much more complicated landscape for people who want to be creative. And part of that landscape is a divide between the people with an advanced education and those who don't have one (. Remember the original question was whether evil orcs are a colonialist or racist trope. I don't think they are. And I think to make that case, you really have to dig deep into the history of the orc as a concept (and I don't find the case particularly convincing).
> 
> And I am not saying don't make more interesting orcs. By all means do so. But if someone makes a game with an evil goblinoid creature, is it really that bad of a thing? Again, content does not equal the message. And what happens when all of our RPGs are virtuous? Do you really think it is going to change anything substantive about the culture and society?




I'm going to have to jump on you here a bit BRG.  Sorry.

What and who are "most people"?  That's a really indefensible position to take.  I mean, the problems with fantasy and race are well documented and go back decades.  This isn't some new idea that's just sprung out.  You can go all the way back to the 60's and the original criticisms of Tolkien and find examples of people seeing the problem.

Arguing that "most people" don't have a problem is pretty much precisely the problem when we're talking about issues with minorities.  

Can you have a game with an evil goblinoid?   Of course you can.  Knock yourself out.  

Now, should you have a game where the goblinoids are only evil because they are goblinoids, live in small tribal groups on the fringe of civilization and are constantly attacking that civilization while being described in terms that are directly linked to racist depictions of minorities?

Probably not.


----------



## Riley37

Hello, Bedrockgames. For clarity and context: I’m not calling you a racist. I didn’t even need you telling me about your marriage, or how you’ve voted (which, by the way, I discourage, because how each of us votes is “political”, it’s quite literally political). I’m not calling for torches and pitchforks. There’s a Monty Python line, “We have found a witch! May we burn her?”. I leave “We have found a racist! May we ban him?” to the mods. If you were on Twitter, your fear of pack-attack Call Outs would make sense, but this isn’t Twitter; again, because EnWorld has active moderation.

I gave you the advice which you found annoying, to make a point, which you apparently missed. What we’re calling for, AS AN ACTUAL OUTCOME, is no different than what you’d already do, because you were raised not to use racial slurs.

Further advice: don’t drink rubbing alcohol as a beverage. You already weren’t gonna do that, right? But there’s a warning labels on bottles of rubbing alcohol which says “Not for internal use”. Because SOME people do that, and it’s a problem. Also: there ARE gamers who WOULD encourage Danny to play up the savage, physical aspects of his half-orc characters, without considering how that might land on a sore spot. I’ve met those gamers at conventions. You’re not one of them. They still exist.



Bedrockgames said:


> Because 'colonialist propaganda parrallel' isn't something that most people think when they see an image of a D&D orc for the first time.




That’s true. Most people don’t think about it.
Also, *most* fans of the football team in Washington DC don’t think about whether the name of that team sounds like colonialist propaganda.
People who have actually been called by that name, however, tend to think about it. Some of those people apply a “fine-toothed comb” to the history of that word. 



Bedrockgames said:


> And what happens when all of our RPGs are virtuous? Do you really think it is going to change anything substantive about the culture and society?




Now THAT is an important question!

Sometimes change happens systematically, for example the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Sometimes change happens gradually, piece by piece, person by person. If you don’t know the story of Derek Black, look him up.
I know one person whose experience of D&D was changed, because WOTC chose “virtuous” for 5E D&D.
He’s a black man, who walked into a gaming store to try 5E (back when it was new). I was hosting Adventurer’s League. He told me that he wanted to play a human cleric. When I showed him the “Human” pages in the 5E Player’s Handbook, which list various kinds of human, he asked if the setting included “humans” who looked like he did. So I pointed out the paragraph on Rashemi, and the illustrations on page 70 and 112.

His face lit up with joy. He said “Okay, that’s where my character is from.” He stayed for the session, and he came back the following week.

That one gamer’s experience was “substantive”. 

He still gets turned down for jobs, he still gets pulled over by police, people still look away if he walks hand in hand with a white woman. I can’t change those things. I do what I can, where I can. Welcoming him to D&D matters to me.


----------



## Riley37

sd_jasper said:


> And, shifting back to the orcs, they were created from tortured/corrupted elves. But both still fill the literary trope of "savage" or "barbarian". So I think this is a pretty good example to compare to.




Here's a significant difference, in the course of that comparison:

In JRRT's setting, when Morgoth tortures and corrupts elves, their physical appearance changes.

On the input side: elves are "the fairest creatures in Arda". The Quenya word "Vanyar", translated as "fair", refers to their light-coloured hair. When their eye color is mentioned, it's gray. Some Elves have brown hair, but JRRT wrote, in these words, "no Elf had absolute black hair".

On the output side: we've already quoted physical descriptions and established which human populations match those descriptions.

Meanwhile, in the 'Verse, the process which tortures and corrupts ordinary humans into Reavers changes their minds, and NOT their physical appearance. In the episode "Bushwacked", we see a person on both ends of the process. I could have played that character, because in the 'Verse, an ordinary humans can have black hair, and as a Reaver will still have black hair.

I could not play an elf whom Morgoth corrupts into an orc, because no Elf ever has my hair color. I could only play the output side of that process. Apparently the process which turns a good person into a bad person, also makes a fair-haired person look... more like me? Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it?

Whedon took a trope which was common in Westerns, and *made it not about race*. IMO that's a good change.


----------



## Libramarian

Hussar said:


> As to the first quote, do you often ask strangers their ethnicity? Do you often ask anyone their ethnicity? How often do you ask white friends, "So, where are you from?" and when they say, "England", or whatever country, do you then repeat the question until you drill down where their ancestors were born? Do you do this repeatedly?
> 
> Because, that's what happens when you are Asian in many Western countries. Saying, "I'm Canadian" is apparently never quite good enough.
> 
> So, yeah, I wouldn't blame anyone for getting incredibly offended when strangers somehow feel that they are entitled to ask my ethnicity.




Just skimming through the thread - Canadian white people ask each other about their ethnic background all the time. Actually they seem more interested in this topic the higher status they are. Just a couple weeks ago I went to lunch with my boss and his boss who flew in from Montreal - a department director in the federal government - and we started talking about our ethnic backgrounds and he (my boss's boss) shared his Ancestry DNA test results. I found it a slightly odd topic of conversation tbh, but they didn't seem to at all.

Wrt to Orcs...I'm pretty sure I find the concept of an inimical "savage" race - cunning but incorrigibly and mercilessly warlike - to be kinda scary and cool *independent* of its real-world historical associations. That is to say, if we were on an alternate Earth where every civilization developed technologically at exactly the same rate and colonialism never happened and we never recognized and developed language and stereotypes for this distinction between civilized races and savage/barbarian races, I *think* I would still find it an interesting concept for fantasy roleplaying. Maybe more interesting.


----------



## Libramarian

Riley37 said:


> Here's a significant difference, in the course of that comparison:
> 
> In JRRT's setting, when Morgoth tortures and corrupts elves, their physical appearance changes.
> 
> On the input side: elves are "the fairest creatures in Arda". The Quenya word "Vanyar", translated as "fair", refers to their light-coloured hair. When their eye color is mentioned, it's gray. Some Elves have brown hair, but JRRT wrote, in these words, "no Elf had absolute black hair".
> 
> On the output side: we've already quoted physical descriptions and established which human populations match those descriptions.
> 
> Meanwhile, in the 'Verse, the process which tortures and corrupts ordinary humans into Reavers changes their minds, and NOT their physical appearance. In the episode "Bushwacked", we see a person on both ends of the process. I could have played that character, because in the 'Verse, an ordinary humans can have black hair, and as a Reaver will still have black hair.
> 
> I could not play an elf whom Morgoth corrupts into an orc, because no Elf ever has my hair color. I could only play the output side of that process. Apparently the process which turns a good person into a bad person, also makes a fair-haired person look... more like me? Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it?



I think the association between fairness and beauty (and beauty and goodness) runs deeper than racism. Last I checked it's considered scientifically plausible that blond hair, blue eyes and even pale skin evolved primarily due to sexual selection rather than any environmental advantage.


----------



## Hussar

Libramarian said:


> I think the association between fairness and beauty (and beauty and goodness) runs deeper than racism. Last I checked it's considered scientifically plausible that blond hair, blue eyes and even pale skin evolved primarily due to sexual selection rather than any environmental advantage.




Well, I guess the question to ask would then be, do we see the same association between fairness and goodness in other societies where there is much less variation than in Northern Europe?

IOW, are there fairy tales and myths in, say, Kenyan or Native American cultures where being fair skinned is equated with goodness?


----------



## Riley37

Libramarian said:


> Just skimming through the thread - Canadian white people ask each other about their ethnic background all the time. Actually they seem more interested in this topic the higher status they are.




People whose ancestry and features have never put them on the short end of a power dynamic, are comfortable exploring the minor variations within their genetic common ground... and that's different from the comfort level of those whose ancestors would have (in the USA) been on the short end of the Internment of 1941, or the Naturalization Act of 1790 (which restricted citizenship to "any alien, being a free white person"). Rather predictable, actually. Meanwhile, anyone among the bosses who was less white, would get a reminder of their outlier status. "We're all Aryan here, but who's Nordic and who's Persian? Oh, all of us excepting you, Carlos, no offense meant."



Libramarian said:


> Wrt to Orcs...I'm pretty sure I find the concept of an inimical "savage" race - cunning but incorrigibly and mercilessly warlike - to be kinda scary and cool *independent* of its real-world historical associations. That is to say, if we were on an alternate Earth where every civilization developed technologically at exactly the same rate and colonialism never happened and we never recognized and developed language and stereotypes for this distinction between civilized races and savage/barbarian races, I *think* I would still find it an interesting concept for fantasy roleplaying. Maybe more interesting.




Yes, would still be an interesting concept, kinda like the Warrior class in Niven's "Mote in God's Eye". (Deadly warriors, tactically sharp, not as useful for farming or engineering.)

In that alternate universe, we would have no grounds for concern about whether our fantasy stories were adding insult to injury. No one would adapt Andrew Jackson's famous saying about Indians into an equivalent opinion about goblins, because Andrew Jackson's saying would not be part of our history. If you can bring us a copy of that universe's version of D&D, please do!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Riley37 said:


> People whose ancestry and features have never put them on the short end of a power dynamic, are comfortable exploring the minor variations within their genetic common ground... and that's different from the comfort level of those whose ancestors would have (in the USA) been on the short end of the Internment of 1941, or the Naturalization Act of 1790 (which restricted citizenship to "any alien, being a free white person"). Rather predictable, actually. Meanwhile, anyone among the bosses who was less white, would get a reminder of their outlier status. "We're all Aryan here, but who's Nordic and who's Persian? Oh, all of us excepting you, Carlos, no offense meant."




Caveat: in the USA, even certain Caucasian Europeans have faced their own versions of bigotry.  “Irish Need Not Apply” signs were popular, once upon a time.  And Eastern Europeans were not so well received when they first started coming to these shores in big numbers.

Not saying it was equivalent to the mistreatment of nonwhites, but it was still of a similar nature- the prejudice of imagined innate superiority.


----------



## Riley37

Libramarian said:


> I think the association between fairness and beauty (and beauty and goodness) runs deeper than racism.




You have your opinion, I have mine. I say that the association between fair-skinned people and good people, runs EXACTLY as deep as racism.

If I showed you 100 photos of people, chosen randomly from the 7 billion humans, and asked you to sort them, in order, from Best Human to Worst Human... and you acted on that association... then you would sort those 100 photos from fairest and best person, to darkest and worst person.

If you assess Carol Bundy as fairer, and prettier, and in turn *a better person*, than Harriet Tubman, then we'll just have to disagree.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> Hello, Bedrockgames. For clarity and context: I’m not calling you a racist. I didn’t even need you telling me about your marriage, or how you’ve voted (which, by the way, I discourage, because how each of us votes is “political”, it’s quite literally political). I’m not calling for torches and pitchforks. There’s a Monty Python line, “We have found a witch! May we burn her?”. I leave “We have found a racist! May we ban him?” to the mods. If you were on Twitter, your fear of pack-attack Call Outs would make sense, but this isn’t Twitter; again, because EnWorld has active moderation.




These kinds of conversations tend to make their way onto twitter, so I figured the clarifications were important.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Now, should you have a game where the goblinoids are only evil because they are goblinoids, live in small tribal groups on the fringe of civilization and are constantly attacking that civilization while being described in terms that are directly linked to racist depictions of minorities?
> .




I wasn't arguing it this way. I was just saying an evil goblin (which could have any cultural features the writer thinks are interesting). Heck they could be based off the Nazis if you want them to. I wasn't even thinking about what cultural details would yet be involved (I think as long as the cultural details are incidental it is fine, if you are trying to paint an image of all people who share a cultural trait as evil, then sure it is bad------but most inspiration is going to come from some real world cultures just by the nature of human creativity)


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> I'm going to have to jump on you here a bit BRG.  Sorry.
> 
> What and who are "most people"?  That's a really indefensible position to take.  I mean, the problems with fantasy and race are well documented and go back decades.  This isn't some new idea that's just sprung out.  You can go all the way back to the 60's and the original criticisms of Tolkien and find examples of people seeing the problem.




By most people I am stating an opinion: I think most people don't really notice this stuff. I could be wrong. But it is just based on my impression talking to people. Again, I get that you are pointing to an academic debate on this topic, but most people are not steeped in that debate. And I think often times in academics mountains get made out of mole hills. Maybe people were saying Tolkien was racist in the 60s, I do recall there being an essay by MM calling Tolkien Fascist, which I think isn't a very valid argument and the kind of academic argument I have in mind when I am skeptical (there was a similar argument among film critics when we were kids labeling movies where heroes used guns as fascist----even Robocop got the label). I think sometimes these hyper critical lenses find problems most people don't really see (which is why I say this is something you need to squint to observe and why I call it taking a fine tooth comb). By the way, I am not talking about other aspects of S&S. Obviously if you read HPL and if you read Conan, the racial stuff is way more obvious and troubling (like I said, I noticed that about Lovecraft when I was a kid reading him). I think Howard, at least in my experience is not nearly as bad as Lovecraft, but the stuff is still there. With Tolkien, none of it feels intentional at all. And a lot of it, like the eye description and 'swarthy' bit, feel like they could be pointing to other things. I think we are just starting to repeat ourselves. But in the case of orcs, I just don't think it is the closed case you believe it to be, and I think most people really do just see a green skinned monster and don't think of it as  stand-in for another race (and certainly most people don't have colonialist propaganda in mind unless they've read a lot of criticism that invokes things like colonialism and orientalism). This is one of these things that I just think requires a bit of training to become aware of.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Arguing that "most people" don't have a problem is pretty much precisely the problem when we're talking about issues with minorities.
> .




I am including everyone in that most people. Again, I think this has a lot more to do with educational background. One thing that frequently surprises me about this is how often people in minority groups have a very different opinion about this stuff than I might think if I just went by this thread. So this isn't about just listening to white people or something. But again, at the end of the day, i think we have to weigh what different people say, and still retain our own mind and decision making about it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> That’s true. Most people don’t think about it.
> Also, *most* fans of the football team in Washington DC don’t think about whether the name of that team sounds like colonialist propaganda.
> People who have actually been called by that name, however, tend to think about it. Some of those people apply a “fine-toothed comb” to the history of that word.





I don't watch football so this isn't an issue I follow much (for example I don't know what the opinion of the team name is among Native Americans in polls). But I see a clear difference here. This is a team name that is using an actual ethnic slur of a real people as its name. If orcs were instead called something like that as their name, sure that would be pretty hard to ignore. Instead we are going by two lines in a description from tolkien, and again, it isn't clear to me if he was pointing to an actual race or not in that description. I just think it is a lot more murky.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> Further advice: don’t drink rubbing alcohol as a beverage. You already weren’t gonna do that, right? But there’s a warning labels on bottles of rubbing alcohol which says “Not for internal use”. Because SOME people do that, and it’s a problem. Also: there ARE gamers who WOULD encourage Danny to play up the savage, physical aspects of his half-orc characters, without considering how that might land on a sore spot. I’ve met those gamers at conventions. You’re not one of them. They still exist.
> .




My issue with this is you stated it as a request to me. It just made it sound like you thought I was at risk of doing that sort of thing. That is like me asking you to please not murder any children. Can you see how I would feel the need to weigh in defensively? I would never treat a player that way at my table.


----------



## Riley37

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Caveat: in the USA, even certain Caucasian Europeans have faced their own versions of bigotry.  “Irish Need Not Apply” signs were popular, once upon a time.  And Eastern Europeans were not so well received when they first started coming to these shores in big numbers.




True. Also Italians, as you're well aware. Some Jewish people are white, some are not; the Neo-Nazis target both Ashkenazim and Sephardim.

Not to mention Charles Trevelyan. I'll just stop right there.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> People whose ancestry and features have never put them on the short end of a power dynamic, are comfortable exploring the minor variations within their genetic common ground... and that's different from the comfort level of those whose ancestors would have (in the USA) been on the short end of the Internment of 1941, or the Naturalization Act of 1790 (which restricted citizenship to "any alien, being a free white person"). Rather predictable, actually. Meanwhile, anyone among the bosses who was less white, would get a reminder of their outlier status. "We're all Aryan here, but who's Nordic and who's Persian? Oh, all of us excepting you, Carlos, no offense meant."




I think this is an oversimplification. Like I mentioned in the north east asking about ethnic heritage is pretty common. Most of my friends growing up were Jewish and they would ask that question as much as anyone (and obviously Jewish people were subject to exactly the sort of thing you invoke). This is just something that crops up I think when you have a lot of immigrant groups living in close proximity and parts of the cultures still remain even after 2-3 generations.


----------



## ccs

Riley37 said:


> Here's a significant difference, in the course of that comparison:
> 
> In JRRT's setting, when Morgoth tortures and corrupts elves, their physical appearance changes.
> 
> On the input side: elves are "the fairest creatures in Arda". The Quenya word "Vanyar", translated as "fair", refers to their light-coloured hair. When their eye color is mentioned, it's gray. Some Elves have brown hair, but JRRT wrote, in these words, "no Elf had absolute black hair".
> 
> On the output side: we've already quoted physical descriptions and established which human populations match those descriptions.
> 
> Meanwhile, in the 'Verse, the process which tortures and corrupts ordinary humans into Reavers changes their minds, and NOT their physical appearance. In the episode "Bushwacked", we see a person on both ends of the process. I could have played that character, because in the 'Verse, an ordinary humans can have black hair, and as a Reaver will still have black hair.
> 
> I could not play an elf whom Morgoth corrupts into an orc, because no Elf ever has my hair color. I could only play the output side of that process. Apparently the process which turns a good person into a bad person, also makes a fair-haired person look... more like me? Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it?




Sorry, I think I've missed something.  Why would you having black hair IRL prevent you from playing a Tolkien elf?
If it's in a game?  Well, I doubt many of us have ever matched most of our characters descriptions....
If you're talking about as an actor?  Dude, we have hair dye, wigs, & CGI for that.


----------



## Sadras

ccs said:


> Sorry, I think I've missed something.  Why would you having black hair IRL prevent you from playing a Tolkien elf?
> If it's in a game?  Well, I doubt many of us have ever matched most of our characters descriptions....
> If you're talking about as an actor?  Dude, we have hair dye, wigs, & CGI for that.




I believe this is an example of the _fine tooth comb_ Bedrockgames has been referring to.


----------



## Hussar

ccs said:


> Sorry, I think I've missed something.  Why would you having black hair IRL prevent you from playing a Tolkien elf?
> If it's in a game?  Well, I doubt many of us have ever matched most of our characters descriptions....
> If you're talking about as an actor?  Dude, we have hair dye, wigs, & CGI for that.




So, you see absolutely no issue with the fact that I'd have to dye my hair to be considered "good" in a Tolkien universe?  That without changing my appearance, there is no way I could be considered part of the best "good" race?

Really, you think that's not an issue?

Heh, I remember when that awful D&D movie came out and the elf was black and this was actually an issue.  So, it's not like this is ancient history.


----------



## Riley37

Bedrockgames said:


> I think this is an oversimplification.




I was responding to one person's description of one event, and inferring dynamics from context.

In general, yes, there are many situations in which people ask each other about ancestry and heritage, routinely, with goodwill. Such as the friends you mention. There's a way of asking "Where are you from?" which gets the answer "I'm from Newton" and another way which gets the answer "My people are from Krakow".

If the person from Newton is Jewish, then "my people are from Krakow" probably involves a story with tragic aspects. I speculate that your friends knew, and trusted, that you'd handle that with compassion and respect.

I also believe Hussar about people asking "Where are you from?" and then *insisting* on drilling down to ancestry. The insistence is rude.


----------



## Riley37

ccs said:


> Sorry, I think I've missed something.




Yes. Yes, you have.


----------



## Sadras

Hussar said:


> So, you see absolutely no issue with the fact that I'd have to dye my hair to be considered "good" in a Tolkien universe?  That without changing my appearance, there is no way I could be considered part of the best "good" race?
> 
> Really, you think that's not an issue?




But Hussar, this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good, and yes some rooted in the ideas and thought of that time by the author. But if you really want to stretch it, in RL people are not born with elven ears. None of us, whatever hair colour, make _good_ elves, Tolkien or otherwise. There is a point where this reassessing goes too far and I think we might be there. Don't you?


----------



## Hussar

The issue I have with the "fine tooth comb" argument is that, intentionally or not, it's incredibly dismissive.  It's essentially saying, "I don't have this issue and people in my circle don't have this issue, therefore, this is only an issue if you go hunting for something to complain about.  Otherwise, my circle of people would be aware of this issue and would talk about it."

It's an easy way to dismiss an issue without ever having to actually engage with it.

I mean, as written, no actor of color can EVER play an Elf in Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit.  Not without changing the text.  When your world building is such that it precludes entire peoples from playing characters, that's probably a good place to start when making some changes going forward.

Heck, see the viral tweet that's now been proven to be fake that the Amazon version of LotR will include elves played by actors of color to see just how far we REALLY need to go.

Tell me again how the treatment of minorities in LotR isn't a problem today.

For Reference about how the tweet was faked


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> If the person from Newton is Jewish, then "my people are from Krakow" probably involves a story with tragic aspects. I speculate that your friends knew, and trusted, that you'd handle that with compassion and respect.




Where I grew up it was mainly Jewish, Italian and Irish. So it was one of the first things that tended to come up. It was never done disrespectfully, but it wasn't particularly touchy feely either. In Boston people are generally pretty rough with each other, but in a way that is meant to be friendly busting of chops. I think that kind of cultural detail is one that gets lost in these debates (and one I think Dannyalcatraz was pointing to when he mentioned that 'where are you from' is more common where he comes from. 

Anyone who actually had ties to the holocaust, that was generally taken pretty seriously (in fact my high school had a lot of courses that we took (or at least segments of courses) on the holocaust. And I even met survivors working at a local Jewish bakery (but one of the first things I was asked by them is if I was Jewish or Italian). Those kinds of meetings were not something taken lightly.  



> I also believe Hussar about people asking "Where are you from?" and then *insisting* on drilling down to ancestry. The insistence is rude.




Of course it is. My first comment on this topic was to explain why I thought it was particularly insulting for Asian people (because they get asked where they are from when other groups don't). I was just adding a note in there about people asking about ethnic backgrounds in the north east (because my experience out west was people thought more in terms of race there than ethnic groups).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> The issue I have with the "fine tooth comb" argument is that, intentionally or not, it's incredibly dismissive.  It's essentially saying, "I don't have this issue and people in my circle don't have this issue, therefore, this is only an issue if you go hunting for something to complain about.  Otherwise, my circle of people would be aware of this issue and would talk about it."
> 
> It's an easy way to dismiss an issue without ever having to actually engage with it.
> 
> I mean, as written, no actor of color can EVER play an Elf in Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit.  Not without changing the text.  When your world building is such that it precludes entire peoples from playing characters, that's probably a good place to start when making some changes going forward.
> 
> Heck, see the viral tweet that's now been proven to be fake that the Amazon version of LotR will include elves played by actors of color to see just how far we REALLY need to go.
> 
> Tell me again how the treatment of minorities in LotR isn't a problem today.
> 
> For Reference about how the tweet was faked




But I am not being dismissive, and I said in this thread I am fine them casting whoever they want as hobbits (or elves). If they want to cast black actors as elves, I don't see a problem (and you don't have to change the text). At the same time, I don't think it is a crime for a writer to assign some kind of features to fantasy groups. I wouldn't complain if the elves were generally dark skinned, nor would I complain if they were light skinned (especially if lore is being drawn upon). I think that is the sort of thing that is up to the world designer. And I think if we insist one way or another, it removes a lot of possibilities, not because those possibilities are themselves racist, but because there is possibility they could be in some cases. You are not giving people the ability to explore this stuff (for whatever reason) if you establish this long list of guidelines that people are expected to adhere to. I get we don't want Varg Vikerness style settings. But what I am saying is I've read plenty of fantasy stories where clearly groups operate on similar principles to ethnicity in the real world (this group from this area is generally X or Y). But I've also read fantasy stories where that assumption wasn't in play (Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty books kind of do this, where a lot of the setting is asian inspired but physical features of characters are all over the map (and I am pretty sure he stated he did that to move away from focusing on ethnicity). I like that both of these possibilities exist because fantasy worlds are thought experiments. And if always assume bad faith when people experiment with this stuff, I think we can miss out on some amazing settings, books, etc. This is why I say I get you are coming from a very well intentioned place. I just don't think it leads us to a better place in the long run.


----------



## Hussar

Heck, I've been an expat most of my adult life.  "Where are you from" is about as common between my peers as shaking hands.  It's because we know (or at least have a darn good idea) that we're all not from here.  

Context does matter of course.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> True. Also Italians, as you're well aware. Some Jewish people are white, some are not; the Neo-Nazis target both Ashkenazim and Sephardim.




My grandfather was a boxer in the 30s and 40s, and Italian. On his boxing license there is an entry for "Complexion", and it is listed as "Medium". I never was able to confirm why that was there, but I assumed it had something to do with fighting in Jim Crow areas of the country. Because there isn't really much of a reason to mark down a boxer's complexion that I can think of.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> /snip
> 
> (and you don't have to change the text). /snip.




But, you do.  These characters are described as white.  There's no question about them being white.  The non-white characters are evil.  Some of the white characters are evil, but, all of the non-white characters are evil.

So, yes, you have to change the text.


----------



## Hussar

Sadras said:


> But Hussar, this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good, and yes some rooted in the ideas and thought of that time by the author. But if you really want to stretch it, in RL people are not born with elven ears. None of us, whatever hair colour, make _good_ elves, Tolkien or otherwise. There is a point where this reassessing goes too far and I think we might be there. Don't you?




I posted, quite a few pages back, an excellent essay about world building.  What we choose to include and exclude matter.  When ALL your non-white characters are evil, and only white characters can be good or evil, that matters.

Again, the fact that you see Twitter exploding at the mere suggestion that they might cast elves using actors of color shows pretty darn clearly that this isn't just a "fine tooth comb" issue that no one cares about.


----------



## Sadras

Hussar said:


> I mean, as written, no actor of color can EVER play an Elf in Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit.  *Not without changing the text.*  When your world building is such that it precludes entire peoples from playing characters, that's probably a good place to start when making some changes going forward.




I'm pretty sure BBC/Netflix did not change any text in the Iliad or Odyssey when they cast two PoC as Zeus and Achilles.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> So, yes, you have to change the text.




I would just reiterate what Sadras said. This isn't changing the text. This is making an casting choice that either disregards what the text says or reinterprets it (I am not able to remember how all the other races are described in Lord of the Rings, so don't know which category such a casting choice would fall into). But either way, I really don't care who they cast. I think the best thing is for the director to be able to realize a creative visions and for people to not always assume they are either trying to ruin their childhood or be mean to the world. I could totally see value in going against expectations here. I could also see value in shifting location like they've done with Shakespeare  in a lot of cases (the first performance I ever saw of Shakespeare was Hamlet with all black actors and it was, I believe, set in modern day Africa----I was young so I don't remember all the details----this had to be the very late 70s or very early 80s). Also, sometimes you just want the right actor for the role regardless of the skin color of the character. It is acting. People should be able to act in roles that are outside their own identity.


----------



## Sadras

Hussar said:


> I posted, quite a few pages back, an excellent essay about world building.  What we choose to include and exclude matter.  When ALL your non-white characters are evil, and only white characters can be good or evil, that matters.
> 
> Again, the fact that you see Twitter exploding at the mere suggestion that they might cast elves using actors of color shows pretty darn clearly that this isn't just a "fine tooth comb" issue that no one cares about.




Okay I will admit I'm a bit of traditionalist, so I also would not want to see blonde Vulcans.

I believe the answer to your post is, for the WotC/community to create more awesome dudes like Duke Ulder Ravenguard, Marshall of the Flaming Fist in our D&D mythos. Why complain and attempt to rewrite (correct) the past when you control the present and future? And why are we obsessing with Tolkien, black hair and darker skinned elves are allowed in FR and many other settings.

Do we really need PoC to play every role possible? Vikings? Kerrigan? Mario Brothers? Can fiction just not be?


----------



## sd_jasper

Riley37 said:


> Here's a significant difference, in the course of that comparison:
> <snip>
> I could not play an elf whom Morgoth corrupts into an orc, because no Elf ever has my hair color. I could only play the output side of that process. Apparently the process which turns a good person into a bad person, also makes a fair-haired person look... more like me? Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it?
> 
> Whedon took a trope which was common in Westerns, and *made it not about race*. IMO that's a good change.




Thank you, you make good points. And I apologize if this was stated earlier and I missed it, I jumped into this conversation a bit late. I'm not sure I agree that you "could not play" a character that differs in appearance than you, but your point still stands.

I guess where I differ is that I haven't played games that are directly based on LotR. Orcs in my games have had pig-like faces, or more recently appear like the typical "war-craft" orc. They have had skin colors of various shades of green, blue, and red. To me they don't resemble any human race to exist. Maybe a bit Neanderthal, but even that is a stretch. (And I usually give them "cockney" accents, fwiw).

Now, I get that these "modern" orcs are still based on JRRT orcs... but through the years they have evolved into something new, in the same way that "reavers" evolved from the "Indians" of Old West fiction.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

I still use pig faced orcs that are Chaotic (really LE) and made in the image of Grummish. They lack the free will that was granted to the children of gods of good for the most part. Grummish hates free will.  As does Maglubiyet, and most of the other evil deities so their creations are stunted in that way though there have been "defective" orcs that find themselves with that free will.  Grummish is much better at destroying than creating after all so he screws up sometimes.  They are pig faced and green, with pink noses. They speak in squeals for the most part.  They do have tribes and shaman/witch doctors though they will cowardly serve anything more powerful then them.  I use Roger Moore's work in Dragon on my evil humanoids for the most part, love those articles.


----------



## Psyzhran2357

And the discussion for the last 55 pages was why that may or may not be the best of ideas, so thanks for sharing I guess...?


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Psyzhran2357 said:


> And the discussion for the last 55 pages was why that may or may not be the best of ideas, so thanks for sharing I guess...?




You are very welcome!

My players and I enjoy it and honestly nobody has ever mentioned how using elements of real world cultures, aka the concepts of shaman/witch doctors in primitive societies, is making them into a racist statement on any real world culture. I can't say I base gaming decisions on anything other than what my table will find enjoyable.  Trying to redefine D&D monsters though a lense of social and racial justice has never been a drive of ours as we have never tried to use them as a stand in for anything other than foes to be overcome. They need some kind of basic culture to use when making descriptions so unless writers come up with something truly alien they end up using elements of real world cultures. We don't look at orcs as stand in for whatever group you want to say they are a stand in for, they are just orcs. Obviously other feel differently and that's fine.  Play how you want.


----------



## Riley37

sd_jasper said:


> Thank you, you make good points. And I apologize if this was stated earlier and I missed it, I jumped into this conversation a bit late. I'm not sure I agree that you "could not play" a character that differs in appearance than you, but your point still stands.




The origin story of orcs might have been mentioned before, but you gave me an opportunity to consider its ethical implications more deeply, and you prompted me to look up details on LotR elves; I wasn't aware of the bit about black hair until yesterday. Also, the comparison between Firefly and D&D encouraged emotional willingness to consider "this work which I love has a message which I question", for me, anyways (I love both LotR and Firefly, some people don't, tastes vary).

D&D orcs diverged from LotR orcs, in terms of their different origin stories, when D&D invented Gruumsh, creator god of orcs. (Maybe in the AD&D Deities & Demigods book, back before Second Edition). The pig-faced appearance goes back to the AD&D Monster Manual. World of Warcraft reinforced the divergence, and may have influenced the imagery of 4E and 5E D&D. There's an back-and-forth of artistic influence between tabletop games and computer games. And movies. We could consider the WoW movie, if that sparks useful ideas. (Does WoW have yet another orc origin?)

So my point about turning a good race into a bad race, and in the process turning a fair-haired race into a swarthy or sallow-skinned race, applies more directly to LotR than to D&D.

Ideas about the divine creation of the races have sometimes been a hot topic in the real world. Judges in the USA have referred explicitly to their understanding of that process, in legal rulings affirming segregation and prohibiting inter-racial marriage, and I'll leave it at that. 

It is also true that I could play both the "before" and "after" with a wig, or with suspension of disbelief. There are ongoing conversations about cross-race casting and cross-race cosplay. As Hussar has observed, those conversations include (and reveal) some strong disagreements in core values involving race. Here's a thought on that topic, from a different fantasy story involving race and prejudice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDCzeU1w93g


----------



## Riley37

Bedrockgames said:


> My issue with this is you stated it as a request to me. It just made it sound like you thought I was at risk of doing that sort of thing. That is like me asking you to please not murder any children. Can you see how I would feel the need to weigh in defensively? I would never treat a player that way at my table.




Fair. I assumed you'd take my point: what we're asking for, doesn't require YOU to change. We talk more about the details and nuances, the background and the context, than you do. Perhaps we defy racism with intellect and you defy racism with intuition? Wizards versus clerics, but with the same alignment?



Bedrockgames said:


> This is why I say I get you are coming from a very well intentioned place. I just don't think it leads us to a better place in the long run.




Can you see how I would feel the need to weigh in defensively? (Though that was to Hussar, not to me individually.)

Insofar as you're worried about call-out swarms, and public take-downs, and libraries pulling "Huck Finn" off the shelves: so am I. They'll have to take my copy of Kipling's "Kim" from my cold, dead hands. Danny said something similar. I don't think that's the *same* as what we're doing here.

I hear your warnings about not leading to a better place. I'm still standing by my story about how the illustrations on Players Handbook 5E, pages 70 and 112, helped a newcomer to D&D feel welcome, included, comfortable. (Perhaps even more welcome at the game store table, than elsewhere in his life.) Do we disagree on whether that story counts as an example of "a better place"?


----------



## Doug McCrae

The Brute racial caricature. An article by Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology at Ferris State University.

“The brute caricature portrays black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal -- deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace. Black brutes are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially white women. Charles H. Smith (1893), writing in the 1890s, claimed, ‘A bad negro is the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless’ (p. 181). Clifton R. Breckinridge (1900), a contemporary of Smith's, said of the black race, ‘when it produces a brute, he is the worst and most insatiate brute that exists in human form’ (p. 174).

George T. Winston (1901), another ‘Negrophobic’ writer, claimed:
‘When a knock is heard at the door [a White woman] shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance.’ (pp. 108-109)”

5e D&D Monster Manual:
“Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks.”
“Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility and wife of Gruumsh, demands that orcs procreate often and indiscriminately… The orcs' drive to reproduce runs stronger than any other humanoid race, and they readily crossbreed with other races.”
“Orcs… satisfy their bloodlust by plundering villages, devouring or driving off roaming herds, and slaying any humanoids that stand against them.”
They possess a “lust for slaughter”.

4e D&D Monster Manual:
“Orcs… are savage, bloodthirsty marauders.”
“Orcs… delight in slaughter and destruction.”


----------



## ccs

Hussar said:


> So, you see absolutely no issue with the fact that I'd have to dye my hair to be considered "good" in a Tolkien universe?  That without changing my appearance, there is no way I could be considered part of the best "good" race?
> 
> Really, you think that's not an issue?
> 
> Heh, I remember when that awful D&D movie came out and the elf was black and this was actually an issue.  So, it's not like this is ancient history.




In general, nope.

If the Tolkien universe were a real place, & you were an elf in it, there wouldn't be an issue.  Because you'd automatically come with fair hair and that's just how elves are there.  

If you're talking about being in an RPG?  Go talk it over with your DM.

If you're talking about being an actor who's unwilling to dress the part though?
{2 assumptions for our fictional Tolkien elf role here:
1 - Elves are fair haired & that'll be represented, including by your character,
2 - You were unable to negotiate any change to that}
Then even if yours was the best elf audition on the planet I'd have no problem with you being rejected.


----------



## Sadras

Doug McCrae said:


> “The Brute” racial caricature. An article by Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology at Ferris State University.
> 
> “The brute caricature portrays black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal -- deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace. Black brutes are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially white women. Charles H. Smith (1893), writing in the 1890s, claimed, ‘A bad negro is the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless’ (p. 181). Clifton R. Breckinridge (1900), a contemporary of Smith's, said of the black race, ‘when it produces a brute, he is the worst and most insatiate brute that exists in human form’ (p. 174).
> 
> George T. Winston (1901), another ‘Negrophobic’ writer, claimed:
> ‘When a knock is heard at the door [a White woman] shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance.’ (pp. 108-109)”
> 
> 5e D&D Monster Manual:
> “Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks.”
> “Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility and wife of Gruumsh, demands that orcs procreate often and indiscriminately… The orcs' drive to reproduce runs stronger than any other humanoid race, and they readily crossbreed with other races.”
> “Orcs… satisfy their bloodlust by plundering villages, devouring or driving off roaming herds, and slaying any humanoids that stand against them.”
> They possess a “lust for slaughter”.
> 
> 4e D&D Monster Manual:
> “Orcs… are savage, bloodthirsty marauders.”
> “Orcs… delight in slaughter and destruction.”




Essentially you're polluting younger generation's minds with these posts whereas before many players never made orc- RL black person association. Why the flowers would they?

Thanks, you're doing a swell job. Keep up the good work. Freedom of speech and all, so feel free to quote more vile passages.


----------



## Lanefan

Two quick observations:

Re Orcish fecundity: as a D&D race they generally have much shorter potential lifespans than most - never mind the many who never live to old age due to mishap and adventurers - and thus in order to preserve their numbers (and to generate lots of warriors) it only makes sense that they'd breed like rabbits relative to the longer-lived races.

Re the Washington NFL team: what are the odds of getting their name changed to the Washington Orcs?


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Sadras said:


> Essentially you're polluting younger generation's minds with these posts whereas before many players never made orc- RL black person association. Why the flowers would they?
> 
> Thanks, you're doing a swell job. Keep up the good work. Freedom of speech and all, so feel free to quote more vile passages.




Now watch, D&D playing will spike among Klan members!


----------



## Gradine

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't watch football so this isn't an issue I follow much (for example I don't know what the opinion of the team name is among Native Americans in polls). But I see a clear difference here. This is a team name that is using an actual ethnic slur of a real people as its name. If orcs were instead called something like that as their name, sure that would be pretty hard to ignore. Instead we are going by two lines in a description from tolkien, and again, it isn't clear to me if he was pointing to an actual race or not in that description. I just think it is a lot more murky.




CW: Racial slurs

I'm not sure how one can make the argument that [sblock]



Spoiler



redskin


[/sblock] is clearly an unacceptable racial slur but [sblock]



Spoiler



slant-eyed


[/sblock] somehow isn't. This isn't apples to oranges; this is, at most, red delicious* to granny smith**; they're both apples and they're both awful.

You keep making the argument that you don't believe JRRT _intended_ that passage to be racist, but (a) nobody's arguing that he did and (b) he very clearly leaned on a number of all-to-common racialized tropes at the time to flesh out the description of his "irredeemably evil" creatures. That is, at best, an indifferent perpetuation of actually harmful stereotypes. The intention here isn't really all that relevant; the impact is what is. We can argue all we want about the extent of that impact; I'm not sure that I'd go quite as far as others have on either the historical impact nor the modern legacy of the same, but I'll add my voice to those saying "it's not clear that the was actually drawing on real-world racial tropes" in JRRT's description of orcs is a completely indefensible position.



*"Red Delicious - At Least We Got The Red Part Right!"
**Granny Smith apples are more than acceptable for baking, at least.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Sadras said:


> Essentially you're polluting younger generation's minds with these posts whereas before many players never made orc- RL black person association. Why the flowers would they?



I'm not associating orcs with real life black people. I'm associating orcs with racist ideas about black people.


----------



## Riley37

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Now watch, D&D playing will spike among Klan members!




It's certainly a fast-growing market. Hate groups have surged in the USA since "Unite the Right" in Charlottesville. Perhaps WOTC missed an opportunity, by failing to set up an outreach booth for that event? Were there lots of drop-ins, that week, at the Adventurers League session of the friendly local game store? Could WOTC break into a market dominated by RaHoWa?

If you want to know about the RaHoWa TRPG, a search for "rahowa 1d4chan" will get you there, but warning, the description includes quotes from the game itself, and that means a LOT of offensive language including slurs.

Flexor recognizes that the Klan still exists. Sadras writes as if racism is over, a thing of the past, and today's young generation could grow up in complete innocence, as long as we hide unpleasant history from them. Why the flowers *would* Dylann Roof describe black people in the same vile terms as his 19th-century and 20th-century predecessors? For the people at that Bible study session, the more painful question isn't why he *would*, but why he *did*.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Gradine said:


> CW: Racial slurs
> 
> I'm not sure how one can make the argument that [sblock]
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> redskin
> 
> 
> [/sblock] is clearly an unacceptable racial slur but [sblock]
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> slant-eyed
> 
> 
> [/sblock] somehow isn't. This isn't apples to oranges; this is, at most, red delicious* to granny smith**; they're both apples and they're both awful.
> 
> You keep making the argument that you don't believe JRRT _intended_ that passage to be racist, but (a) nobody's arguing that he did and (b) he very clearly leaned on a number of all-to-common racialized tropes at the time to flesh out the description of his "irredeemably evil" creatures. That is, at best, an indifferent perpetuation of actually harmful stereotypes. The intention here isn't really all that relevant; the impact is what is. We can argue all we want about the extent of that impact; I'm not sure that I'd go quite as far as others have on either the historical impact nor the modern legacy of the same, but I'll add my voice to those saying "it's not clear that the was actually drawing on real-world racial tropes" in JRRT's description of orcs is a completely indefensible position.
> 
> 
> 
> *"Red Delicious - At Least We Got The Red Part Right!"
> **Granny Smith apples are more than acceptable for baking, at least.




That wasn’t my argument. I said many times that it’s an ethnic slur and I don’t use it. But my argument was the football team name itself is a slur. In the case of orcs the name isn’t a slur. It was merely part of the language Tolkien used to describe them (and my point about that was I can’t tell if he has an ethnic group in mind or is just using it to describe an eye shape)


----------



## Gradine

Bedrockgames said:


> That wasn’t my argument. I said many times that it’s an ethnic slur and I don’t use it. But my argument was the football team name itself is a slur. In the case of orcs the name isn’t a slur. It was merely part of the language Tolkien used to describe them (and my point about that was I can’t tell if he has an ethnic group in mind or is just using it to describe an eye shape)




I’ll give you a hint; nobody in the history of anything, EVER, has used _that_ term to refer to “just” an eye shape.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Riley37 said:


> I hear your warnings about not leading to a better place. I'm still standing by my story about how the illustrations on Players Handbook 5E, pages 70 and 112, helped a newcomer to D&D feel welcome, included, comfortable. (Perhaps even more welcome at the game store table, than elsewhere in his life.) Do we disagree on whether that story counts as an example of "a better place"?




I am not feeling very well tonight so I can't respond to this one in as much depth as I would like (I found this post to be very well stated and to raise a number of interesting points). Just want to respond to this as best I can at the moment. 

We do not disagree on the fundamental point here. I want people to feel welcome, and I don't want to exclude anyone. Obviously it is good your friend felt welcomed by that imagery. And I think for a game like D&D, which is The Game as far as RPGs go, I think it is good for their art to reflect a diversity of people. All I am saying is that isn't the only way to make a book, and there are more kinds of games out there than just D&D alone. And that there are reasons other than racism for books to have less diversity in their art. In some instances, the 5E approach will make a lot of sense. I can definitely see cases though where you might want the characters to reflect the demographics of a given setting (and that might be less diverse). I guess my only point here, is what you describe is good. I don't think it should always be the standard though. I want there to be what you are describing here, but I also hope we can leave room for other approaches because there might be valid reasons for it. Basically let people experiment with different approaches and ideas.


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not feeling very well tonight so I can't respond to this one in as much depth as I would like.




Feel better, Brendan! I may disagree with you on this and other issues, but I certainly don't wish you ill!


----------



## Hussar

Sadras said:


> Okay I will admit I'm a bit of traditionalist, so I also would not want to see blonde Vulcans.
> 
> I believe the answer to your post is, for the WotC/community to create more awesome dudes like Duke Ulder Ravenguard, Marshall of the Flaming Fist in our D&D mythos. Why complain and attempt to rewrite (correct) the past when you control the present and future? And why are we obsessing with Tolkien, black hair and darker skinned elves are allowed in FR and many other settings.
> 
> Do we really need PoC to play every role possible? Vikings? Kerrigan? Mario Brothers? Can fiction just not be?




Nope.  But, we do need the option.  Juliet of Romeo and Juliet was played by a boy for a long, long time.  Does that mean that every single stage and movie production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet must feature a boy playing Juliet?

We're obsessing with Tolkien because invoking Tolkien is pretty much the same as Godwinning a thread.  It must be obsessed over.    But, if you'd like, we can point to a swath of works all the way up to current day showing the direct connection between "brutish humanoid" and depictions of various minorities.

The fact that suggesting that PoC play elves in the new Amazon version of LotR creates a storm of folks coming out of the woodwork to decry it, shows that this isn't just some academic issue that only a few people know about.

It shouldn't matter one whit that PoC play elves in Tolkien.  If they want to have Idris Alba play Elrond, it shouldn't matter at all.  

But it does.  And that's the problem.



Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I still use pig faced orcs that are Chaotic (really LE) and made in the image of Grummish. They lack the free will that was granted to the children of gods of good for the most part. Grummish hates free will.  As does Maglubiyet, and most of the other evil deities so their creations are stunted in that way though there have been "defective" orcs that find themselves with that free will.  Grummish is much better at destroying than creating after all so he screws up sometimes.  They are pig faced and green, with pink noses. They speak in squeals for the most part.  They do have tribes and shaman/witch doctors though they will cowardly serve anything more powerful then them.  I use Roger Moore's work in Dragon on my evil humanoids for the most part, love those articles.




So, when a player declares that he's slaughtering the non-combatants, orc babies for example, you have zero problem?  It's perfectly acceptable to commit genocide on these creatures?   After all, they have no free will.  They aren't capable of anything but evil, so, killing them is perfectly fine, regardless of circumstance.

I don't know about you, but, that notion makes my skin crawl.  Why not just use demons?  After all, that's what you've done - made demons (unredeemable evil) and put them in meat suits that are linked to racist depictions of minorities.

You really have no idea why someone seeing that might have an issue?


----------



## Libramarian

Hussar said:


> Well, I guess the question to ask would then be, do we see the same association between fairness and goodness in other societies where there is much less variation than in Northern Europe?
> 
> IOW, are there fairy tales and myths in, say, Kenyan or Native American cultures where being fair skinned is equated with goodness?




Absolutely yes. In Indian mythology Devas ('angels') are traditionally depicted as light-skinned and Asuras ('demons') as dark-skinned.







And of course, almost every society considers fair skin more attractive (at least in women). Skin-whitening creams are popular all over the world, including in areas that were never colonized by European nations.


----------



## Libramarian

Doug McCrae said:


> I'm not associating orcs with real life black people. I'm associating orcs with racist ideas about black people.




OK, but are you implying that those who like orcs in D&D are indulging repressed racist beliefs? I don't think so. I think "The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance."...describes a worthy fantasy roleplay monster, regardless of whether some hysterical white people 120 years ago thought of black people like this.


----------



## Riley37

Libramarian said:


> OK, but are you implying that those who like orcs in D&D are indulging repressed racist beliefs? I don't think so. I think "The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance."...describes a worthy fantasy roleplay monster, regardless of whether some hysterical white people 120 years ago thought of black people like this.




On one hand, many of those terms could also apply to Grendel, a mix of human and monster, and AFAIK not a stand-in for humans of any particular race.
On another hand, the part about lust, and the woman trembling in fear, is a significant element, non-overlapping with the threats posed by bulls and tigers.
Tolkien does not describe orcs as sexually lustful. But if I had to bet, whether the Uruk-Hai had human fathers and orc mothers, or vice versa...

On yet another hand, why do you specify "120 years ago", when it's only five years since Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson used similar language to describe Mike Brown? In his testimony, Wilson describes Brown as "like a demon, that's how angry he looked", which is quite close to "His ferocity is almost demoniacal". Wilson also described Brown "hulking up" to shrug off bullets. I'm not taking a position on the shooting itself. Just pointing out that Wilson's imagery and vocabulary, in the 21st century, is a lot like the terms in that passage you quoted.


----------



## Hussar

Libramarian said:


> OK, but are you implying that those who like orcs in D&D are indulging repressed racist beliefs? I don't think so. I think "The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance."...describes a worthy fantasy roleplay monster, regardless of whether some hysterical white people 120 years ago thought of black people like this.




See, this is the danger of this conversation.

No one, throughout this thread, has pointed the slightest finger.  At worst, comments have been pointedly directed towards drilling down to the source of different opinions, but, no one has ever claimed that liking orcs is "indulging in repressed racist beliefs". 

For the overwhelming majority, I'd say that those who like orcs do so despite the racist background, not because of it.  Same way we can enjoy Mythos ideas without losing sight that Lovecraft was a bigot.  And, again, as depictions of orcs and other humanoids have become more nuanced and broader in published works, the connection between orcs and any real world racism becomes more and more tenuous.  Far more people know orcs from Warcraft than Tolkien these days and Warcraft orcs are certainly not born evil.  They have a rich culture, language and are seen as pretty much as an equal to the humans in the game.  

There's a reason you can PLAY orcs in Warcraft.  There was virtually no sense in the games that orcs were inherently evil.  They might serve an evil master (depending on what campaign you play) but, that wasn't the be all and end all of "orc".  

No one is saying you can't have evil orcs.  Of course you can.  They make pretty cool bad guys.  No different than you can have evil humans.  Or evil dwarves.  Or evil elves.  I mean, you can go back to Dragonlance and see the "noble elf" trope get turned over.  Elves in Dragonlance aren't good.  Some are and some aren't.


----------



## Sadras

> There was virtually no sense in the games that orcs were inherently evil.




 @_*Hussar*_ I agree with your above post,  I just have issue with the above quote and so have to ask if it makes no sense have orcs as inherently evil* then what is your take on gnolls?

*And I'm not arguing for either way, for me playing them inherently evil or misunderstood or misled is a matter of taste for the campaign mythos or otherwise. Cause essentially you're skirting very close to saying there is a badwrongfun way for playing orcs.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good, and yes some rooted in the ideas and thought of that time by the author.





Bedrockgames said:


> I think that is the sort of thing that is up to the world designer. And I think if we insist one way or another, it removes a lot of possibilities, not because those possibilities are themselves racist, but because there is possibility they could be in some cases.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> fantasy worlds are thought experiments



If someone wants to write a story in which savage dark-skinned predators lust after virginal pale-skinned damsels, of course that's their prerogative. But if they get called out for deploying blatanly racist imagery, who's going to have much sympathy for them?

JRRT is not egaged in a "though experiement: - _Gee, what would it be like to imagine all the good people being fair-skinned and all the evil people being swarthy, so that their loyalties and morality were literally written on their faces?_ He is writing a story where he draws on ideas that he finds ready-to-hand, and these include the tropes of swarthy, "slant-eyed", scimitar-wielding Asiatic hordes.

You don't get a free pass on deploying ready-to-hand racist tropes simply because you stipulate that your story is about an imaginary place. (Especially when, in JRRT's case, its actually not about an imaginary place at all but about an imagined pre-historic Earth.)



Bedrockgames said:


> Because 'colonialist propaganda parrallel' isn't something that most people think when they see an image of a D&D orc for the first time.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> its the sort of thing you need to be educated into believing before you will generally see it as a problem.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> divide between the people with an advanced education and those who don't have one
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But if someone makes a game with an evil goblinoid creature, is it really that bad of a thing?



If someone wants to produce an opera in which two of the primary antagonists are portrayed as short, unattractive, inspid and money-grubbing, is that really that bad of a thing? Well, some people think that those dwarves in Wagner's most famour opera are an anti-Semitic caricature. Do you not agree? Then knock yourself out producing The Ring. Will some people decline to come and see it because they object to what they see as racist tropes? Probably - do you think they're _obliged_ to share your opinion of the matter?

Are there ways of producing The Ring that try to downplay or ameliorate possible hints of anti-Semitism? Clearly yes. But it won't occur to someone to do this if they don't think about the issue in the first place.

As far as your claims about "advanced education" are concerned, frankly they're nonsense. People don't need advanced education to notice racist tropes as part of their larger life experience. Youug children of colour - who obviously have not benefitted from advanced education - do this day-in, day-out.



Bedrockgames said:


> I get that you are pointing to an academic debate on this topic, but most people are not steeped in that debate.



I have many people whom I'm close to for whom this is not an academic debate. It's real life. Just asn one example: some people I know, as primary school kids, had to confront questions and expectations about jungles and headhunters and the like. Unsurprisingly, none of these people is white.

The fact that you continue to disregard this _despite_ having had multiple posters (not just me) make the point makes me doubt your broader protestations of good intentions.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> If someone wants to write a story in which savage dark-skinned predators lust after virginal pale-skinned damsels, of course that's their prerogative. But if they get called out for deploying blatanly racist imagery, who's going to have much sympathy for them?
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> You don't get a free pass on deploying ready-to-hand racist tropes simply because you stipulate that your story is about an imaginary place.




Yes, because that is what I was defending and those are the games I run.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Yes, because that is what I was saying and those are the games I run.



I thought you were arguing that it's unfair to call out JRRT's racist tropes (pale heroic elves vs swarthy evil goblins) because it's just a fiction:



Sadras said:


> Hussar said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So, you see absolutely no issue with the fact that I'd have to dye my hair to be considered "good" in a Tolkien universe? That without changing my appearance, there is no way I could be considered part of the best "good" race?
> 
> Really, you think that's not an issue?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But Hussar, this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good, and yes some rooted in the ideas and thought of that time by the author.
Click to expand...


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I thought you were arguing that it's unfair to call out JRRT's racist tropes (pale heroic elves vs swarthy evil goblins) because it's just a fiction:




My full quote.



			
				Sadras said:
			
		

> But Hussar, this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good, and yes some rooted in the ideas and thought of that time by the author. But if you really want to stretch it, in RL people are not born with elven ears. None of us, whatever hair colour, make good elves, Tolkien or otherwise. There is a point where this reassessing goes too far and I think we might be there. Don't you?




If you followed the debate it was along the lines of casting and/or roleplaying x race in the game because the author never included black skinned/haired elves thereby limiting PoC whether in RL to get the elf acting job or wanting to roleplay a dark skinned/haired elf.
Maybe I was not clear, but I was defending the position of the author (whoever it may be) of not having to think up in their fictional universe how to include everyone of hair/skin/eye colour. I thought the conversation had reached a certain level of ridiculousness hence my _fine tooth comb_ comment. 

As for rapey-orcs, it is not a topic I have explored in my games even though the half-orc is one of the playable races in the PHBs. My first instance of rape in D&D fantasy that I can recall reading about is in _Tanis, the Shadow Years_ by Barbara Siegel, a human raping a female elf.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I was defending the position of the author (whoever it may be) of not having to think up in their fictional universe how to include everyone of hair/skin/eye colour.



If an author thinks only of white protagonists, I'll draw the appropriate inferences. The fact that the author's universe is (notionally) fictional won't change that.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> If an author thinks only of white protagonists, I'll draw the appropriate inferences. The fact that the author's universe is (notionally) fictional won't change that.




So what is your take on Harry Potter?

EDIT: And are you ok with an all Asian or Black cast? What if the book was written in Asia or Africa respectively?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> So what is your take on Harry Potter?



I've never read it. I understand some people got upset when, in a theatrical version, Hermione was cast as Black; but that the author said there was nothing in the books to suggest she wasn't Black.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I've never read it. I understand some people got upset when, in a theatrical version, Hermione was cast as Black; but that the author said there was nothing in the books to suggest she wasn't Black.




I think some people are missing basic human preferences and it gets lumped as racism.

Some people do not want to see a black Zeus or Achilles.
Some people do not like the new take on the Klingons in Star Trek Discovery.
Some people do not want to see a transvestite Superman.
Some people do not want to see the Drow loose their matriarchy status.
Some people did not like Timothy Dalton as a James Bond because maybe he was too real and lacked the charm/grace of the previous Bonds (i.e. he went against cannon)
Some people did not like 4e.

So if someone does not want to see darker-skinned Tolkien elves or a black Hermione it likely has nothing to do with racism.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> As far as your claims about "advanced education" are concerned, frankly they're nonsense. People don't need advanced education to notice racist tropes as part of their larger life experience. Youug children of colour - who obviously have not benefitted from advanced education - do this day-in, day-out.
> 
> .




I agree there are plenty of media tropes that are obviously racist and don't require any schooling or training to see. I don't think that is the case with things like D&D orcs. When I see arguments about orcs and colonialism, or dungeon delving as a form of colonialism, you can see the academic lens of that point and it isn't something most people walk around with. 

The rest of your post completely mischaracterizes what I am saying, so I am not even going to respond to it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I
> 
> I have many people whom I'm close to for whom this is not an academic debate. It's real life. Just asn one example: some people I know, as primary school kids, had to confront questions and expectations about jungles and headhunters and the like. Unsurprisingly, none of these people is white.
> 
> The fact that you continue to disregard this _despite_ having had multiple posters (not just me) make the point makes me doubt your broader protestations of good intentions.




I feel the posts above generally mischaracterize or frame my positions in the worst conceivable light, so I am not responding. But this I want to respond to. You are very good at debate pemerton. I am going to acknowledge I have reached my limit in terms of being able to debate this topic with you (not because I am wrong, but simply because I am not as smart, practiced, or educated as you). But I will say this, I think you are seriously underestimating the educational divide here and I think you are unfairly calling my intentions into question. I know what goes on in my own head, you don't. I know how I was raised, and I know how I feel about people. I think it is entirely possible not to see an issue with evil goblinoid races in games and have perfectly good intentions. I also think the point of view you are expressing, is one I mainly encounter in well-to-do, very white, suburban communities. I live in a poor neighborhood (wasn't born poor, but I am poor due to disability), and most of the people that I am around, particularly minorities and immigrants that I know, think more like I do about this subject than you do (and none of us feel race isn't a pressing issue in society, we just don't spend a lot of our times worrying about stuff like whether orcs are a colonialist trope). I live in an area where gunshots are a pretty regular occurrence (or at least a too frequent occurrence in my opinion). I've seen racism play out here in my daily life in pretty horrifying ways. I don't dismiss it as a real concern. I take it very seriously. I don't want to get into these personal aspects of my life, but if you are going to call my intentions into question the way you are, I feel it is someone necessary to explain the point of view I am coming from. All I am saying is I think evil goblins are fine, and I think you have to build a deep argument that goes back to Tolkien and looks closely at the text to make this case. I don't think that is a stretch at all for me to say and I think that is why, up until very recently, threads like this were not taken very seriously (I will say I think things are shifting and the ideas you are talking about are working their way into the broader online culture, but even there I would maintain the people who tend to be at the top of that conversation are the highly educated and those without advanced degrees are the ones who tend to have to tread a lot more carefully). I am not sure this trend, however well intentioned is good. And I think a lot of people, even people on this thread, are using the sense of moral righteousness this issue gives them, as en excuse for cruelty. Again, want to point out, all I am saying is I think there is room for evil goblinoids and orcs in RPGs. And I also said I think it is good that something like D&D has more diverse art. My contention has basically been lets make sure there is room for a lot of interesting and entertaining ideas.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I think some people are missing basic human preferences and it gets lumped as racism.
> 
> Some people do not want to see a black Zeus or Achilles.
> Some people do not like the new take on the Klingons in Star Trek Discovery.
> Some people do not want to see a transvestite Superman.
> Some people do not want to see the Drow loose their matriarchy status.
> Some people did not like Timothy Dalton as a James Bond because maybe he was too real and lacked the charm/grace of the previous Bonds (i.e. he went against cannon)
> Some people did not like 4e.
> 
> So if someone does not want to see darker-skinned Tolkien elves or a black Hermione it likely has nothing to do with racism.



If the colour of a protagonist is never specified (is that the case for Hermoine? I believe that the author has said as much, but I've not read her books), then why would someone protest because that character - in a theatrical or movie versi - is cast as Black or otherwise non-white?

I can't think of any reason that doesn't pertain to something in the neighbourhood (at least) of racism - eg an assumption that protagonists are, by default, white unless expressly called out otherwise.

But in any event, I wasn't talking about casting: you said that _this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good_, and I am saying that if the customs that the author imagines in writing his/her fiction express, reflect, or correspond with racial tropes, then the author can hardly complain if some audience members notice and comment on this.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> Feel better, Brendan! I may disagree with you on this and other issues, but I certainly don't wish you ill!




Thanks Darkbard, very much appreciate the kind thoughts.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I think it is entirely possible not to see an issue with evil goblinoid races in games and have perfectly good intentions.



Has anyone in this thread denied this? I haven't. You are the poster who keeps wanting to talk about intentions, when I (and others) have repeatedly posted that we are not talking about them and are not interested in them.

What I'm denying is a different claim of yours: that only those with a certain "advanced education" will notice this. That claim is false. I've posted counterexamples - people who do not have such "advanced education" and yet can recognise and feel the significance of the trope of evil orcs who dwell as violent predators on the borders of "civilisation". You are ignoring what I'm saying. Why? Do you think I'm making it up?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> What I'm denying is a different claim of yours: that only those with a certain "advanced education" will notice this. That claim is false. I've posted counterexamples - people who do not have such "advanced education" and yet can recognise and feel the significance of the trope of evil orcs who dwell as violent predators on the borders of "civilisation". You are ignoring what I'm saying. Why? Do you think I'm making it up?




I am not saying only people with advanced degrees notice this stuff. I am saying it is primarily people with advanced degrees who make these observations (or people sufficiently practiced in the language of this topic that has filtered into online culture). I can't comment on the people you've met who say things. I am saying there is a real divide here, and I'm giving you my personal observations on the issue. I also acknowledged that this stuff has filtered into the broader culture. And I recognized there are tropes that are much more obvious that anyone can see on their own. But yes, I think seeing an orc as currently presented in say 5E as parallel colonialist propaganda, generally does require a good bit of knowledge to see. And even if it doesn't, I don't think it is one of these things that is so cut and dry. I am not saying you have to agree with me Pemerton. But your post does call my intentions into question. And I bring intention up because it has been getting mentioned or hinted at by many of the responses. In some cases, I clarified with people and it was fine. But it has definitely come up (and not just from me).


----------



## Hussar

Sadras said:


> I think some people are missing basic human preferences and it gets lumped as racism.
> 
> Some people do not want to see a black Zeus or Achilles.
> Some people do not like the new take on the Klingons in Star Trek Discovery.
> Some people do not want to see a transvestite Superman.
> Some people do not want to see the Drow loose their matriarchy status.
> Some people did not like Timothy Dalton as a James Bond because maybe he was too real and lacked the charm/grace of the previous Bonds (i.e. he went against cannon)
> Some people did not like 4e.
> 
> So if someone does not want to see darker-skinned Tolkien elves or a black Hermione it likely has nothing to do with racism.




I'm not about to start playing mind reading games.  The fact that Tolkien wrote the elves as fair skinned and orcs as dark is grounded in pretty racist ideas.  This has been shown with more than a few quotes from the books.  This isn't something that people have just made up.  It's right there in the books.

Which means, if you defend this choice, you are, in fact, defending racist ideas.  There's no way around that.  You can frame it as "traditionalist" or however you like, but, at the end of the day, there's no escaping the fact that the person is defending racism.  

Pretending that simple taste issues (whether I like 4e or not, or Timothy Dalton as Bond) is whitewashing the issue and again, really dismissive.  It's great that you don't have this issue.  Fantastic for you.  Wonderful.  But, why does your lack of taking issue mean that I'm somehow wrong for doing so?

The fact that you'd actually defend criticisms of a black Hermione as having "nothing" to do with racism is, frankly, pretty blind.  Are you seriously saying that all the criticisms of the play had nothing to do with racism?  Not a single person who raised the issue had a single racist bone in their body?  That the Twitter storm over casting black actors as elves has absolutely nothing to do with racism?  Not a single person complained because of racism?

Like I said, I'm not a mind reader.  If someone is defending racist concepts, they are defending racist concepts.  _Why _ they are choosing to do so is not my problem.  I really, really don't care.  I'm not going to play the whole "Well, I'm not really a racist but" game with people.  And, if someone chooses to defend concepts that are pretty clearly racist, they cannot escape criticism.  Sorry, but, that's the way it is.  Playing the "badwrongfun" card doesn't excuse using racist tropes in your game.  I'm sure people have fun with it.  Bully for them.  Just because they enjoy it doesn't suddenly make it not racist.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not saying only people with advanced degrees notice this stuff. I am saying it is primarily people with advanced degrees who make these observations (or people sufficiently practiced in the language of this topic that has filtered into online culture). I can't comment on the people you've met who say things. I am saying there is a real divide here, and I'm giving you my personal observations on the issue. I also acknowledged that this stuff has filtered into the broader culture. And I recognized there are tropes that are much more obvious that anyone can see on their own. But yes, I think seeing an orc as currently presented in say 5E as parallel colonialist propaganda, generally does require a good bit of knowledge to see. And even if it doesn't, I don't think it is one of these things that is so cut and dry. I am not saying you have to agree with me Pemerton. But your post does call my intentions into question. And I bring intention up because it has been getting mentioned or hinted at by many of the responses. In some cases, I clarified with people and it was fine. But it has definitely come up (and not just from me).




 [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] - ok, you're claiming that this is a corner issue that only comes up with very small groups of academics.  Your evidence is that your circle of friends and acquaintances don't seem to have this issue.

On the flip side, I can point to thousands of Twitter posts, mere hours after someone makes a fake claim about PoC playing elves in the new Amazon LotR series.  Additionally, I can point to international headlines about protests when a theater company casts Hermione with a black actor.  On and on and on.  Heck, the fact that they might cast a black actor as James Bond, and this actually matters, is in the news right now.

On and on and on.  Race is in the news in our genre all the time.  I'm having a really hard time thinking that this is only limited to academics.  Again, you need to produce some evidence to back up your opinion.  Because, honestly, from where I'm standing, your opinion isn't carrying a lot of weight.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] - ok, you're claiming that this is a corner issue that only comes up with very small groups of academics.  Your evidence is that your circle of friends and acquaintances don't seem to have this issue.
> 
> On the flip side, I can point to thousands of Twitter posts, mere hours after someone makes a fake claim about PoC playing elves in the new Amazon LotR series.  Additionally, I can point to international headlines about protests when a theater company casts Hermione with a black actor.  On and on and on.  Heck, the fact that they might cast a black actor as James Bond, and this actually matters, is in the news right now.
> 
> On and on and on.  Race is in the news in our genre all the time.  I'm having a really hard time thinking that this is only limited to academics.  Again, you need to produce some evidence to back up your opinion.  Because, honestly, from where I'm standing, your opinion isn't carrying a lot of weight.




I never said race isn’t in the news, nor did I say racism wasn’t a problem. I am saying arguments about orcs or dungeons being colonialist tropes are highly academic (though I did state they’ve filtered into the broader online culture). Like I said above, we are repeating ourselves. I have given my point of view and I am not an academic, so I am not going to pull out quotes from sociology text books. And yes this stuff plays out on Twitter. I don’t know that is a healthy thing though. I have certainly noticed any time a movie comes out, it gets framed online along these kinds of issues. I think it is pretty crazy to get worked up because elves might be black in s newLord of the Rings (also think it’s crazy when people act like your a bad personality if you don’t like the newest ghost busters). I get that media has been made the place where these ideas get battled for some strange reason. I don’t think it resolves anything for us to take the battle there. We would be much better off using talented minds like Prmerton’s to directly confront things like the human biodiversity movement than confronting people who agree with him politically but don’t see a problem with media that is deemed problematic. Honestly I really could have used good arguments against the alt right and human biodiversity when I found myself contending with their defenders. At the time I found it very easy to seek out arguments on why orcs are problematic but not on why human biodiversity is misguided. I just don’t think going after people’s entertainment will get the results people want here.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not saying only people with advanced degrees notice this stuff. I am saying it is primarily people with advanced degrees who make these observations (or people sufficiently practiced in the language of this topic that has filtered into online culture). I can't comment on the people you've met who say things. I am saying there is a real divide here, and I'm giving you my personal observations on the issue.



I'm giving my personal observations too. This has nothing to do with "online culture". I am talking about people who were children in the 1970s and 1980s and could recognise that "evil savage" tropes placed them in a different frame from the white people around them.

This is a real thing, and I don't understand why you will not acknowledge it.



Bedrockgames said:


> But yes, I think seeing an orc as currently presented in say 5E as parallel colonialist propaganda, generally does require a good bit of knowledge to see. And even if it doesn't, I don't think it is one of these things that is so cut and dry. I am not saying you have to agree with me Pemerton. But your post does call my intentions into question.



Yes. Because you seem to think that I am obliged to honour and even accede to your "personal observations", but you appear to disregard mine. I hope you can appreciate why that makes it hard to accept your professions of sincerity.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> If the colour of a protagonist is never specified (is that the case for Hermoine? I believe that the author has said as much, but I've not read her books), then why would someone protest because that character - in a theatrical or movie versi - is cast as Black or otherwise non-white?




Maybe, and this is a complete guess on my part, because that person may believe Hermione to be white in the books due to the movies? Because maybe the movies established them as cannon in her mind. I really don't know. TBH I have not read the books myself. I have not read any Star Trek material, my preconception of things is based entirely on the movies and the series, so I was quite taken aback by the new monstrous (hands) Klingon look in Discovery. 
I didn't care for it. I mind less now after watching a season and a half in.



> I can't think of any reason that doesn't pertain to something in the neighbourhood (at least) of racism - eg an assumption that protagonists are, by default, white unless expressly called out otherwise.




In general I think we jump to that label to quick, having said that I think each case is different.



> But in any event, I wasn't talking about casting: you said that _this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good_, and I am saying that if the customs that the author imagines in writing his/her fiction express, reflect, or correspond with racial tropes, then the author can hardly complain if some audience members notice and comment on this.




In general I agree with you and I'm certainly not here to defend JRRT, but the specific topic was about the _blonde haired and blue eyed_ trope, which I believe, is much older than Nazism and probably pre-colonialism. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on this, I haven't really done any research on this, but the golden-haired child equating it to blonde hair is a common feature in somes stories, _Goldilocks_ comes to mind.
It seems perfectly natural that JRRT equated this with his graceful/angelic elves. There are plenty of white people with dark hair, was JRRT being hairist in that regard? Because that is where the general conversation was going.


----------



## Hussar

Sadras said:


> /snip
> 
> I have not read any Star Trek material, my preconception of things is based entirely on the movies and the series, so I was quite taken aback by the new monstrous (hands) Klingon look in Discovery.
> I didn't care for it. I mind less now after watching a season and a half in.
> 
> /snip




But, the appearance of Klingons has never been tied to any particular race.  We've had actors of all colors playing Klingons over the years.  Your preferences here are your own and there's no problem to be found.

OTOH, things like Tolkien's Elves and Orcs ARE problematic.  In fact I can point to examples where it IS problematic.  It's not a case of simple personal preference because the entire issue is indelibly linked to issues of race.  You can't avoid it.  And you certainly can't avoid it by saying, "Well, I like it, so, it's not problematic".


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> /snip
> 
> also think it’s crazy when people act like your a bad personality if you don’t like the newest ghost busters).
> 
> /snip




But, like the old 4e edition wars, there's a difference between someone stating, "I really don't like the newest Ghostbusters" and someone who jumps into every single conversation screaming from the top of their lungs how the newest Ghostbusters has ruined their childhood, destroyed humanity and kicked puppies.

It's the difference between saying, "Hey, I don't like X" and making a seven hour Youtube video about how X is the worst thing ever.

It's the difference between saying "Hey, I don't like X" and doxxing some poor actor with thousands of death and rape threats.  

Which, unfortunately, means that if you do say, "Hey, I don't like X" you are going to get painted with the same brush as those mouth breathing Neanderthals.  Unfortunate, but true.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I'm giving my personal observations too. This has nothing to do with "online culture". I am talking about people who were children in the 1970s and 1980s and could recognise that "evil savage" tropes placed them in a different frame from the white people around them.




I get what you are saying. I am not suggesting you are making stuff up. I grew up in the late 70s and early 80s as well, so I know what you are referring to. I do think there is a difference though between the state of 70s and 80s media and today. And while I can certainly see that often times groups were depicted as the savage. I don't think that means the savage trope needs to be taken off the table. And I think we can handle media that contains things that make us a bit uncomfortable or that we have to look at closely to make a determination about what its message is. My only real point here is I do think it is a mistake to take out intention completely as a factor because what it seems to be leading to is a situation where people assume the worst possible case regardless of what the author was trying to do (and I think that really does matter, because it colors the rest of the work and shades the meaning of the trope). I just feel like we are losing some nuance here. And I think we are losing out ability to separate content from message. Those are not always the same thing, and in this conversation there seems to be a mindset that 'if something can be X, then it must be X". I just don't think that is correct. I think we have to take these things on a case by case basis. And if we don't, I do believe that leads to pablum.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Sean P Harvey, Ideas of Race in Early America (2016):

“Charges of human sacrifice and cannibalism, which Catholic and Protestant invaders leveled against numerous inhabitants of the Americas, were especially damning.”​
“Summing up an expansive view of savagery, one colonist [the English cleric, Samuel Purchas] described, ‘so good a Countrey, so bad people, having little of Humanitie but shape, ignorant of Civilitie, of Arts, of Religion; more brutish than the beasts they hunt, more wild and unmanly than the unmanned wild Countrey, which they range rather than inhabite; captivated also to Satans tyranny in foolish pieties, mad impieties, wicked idlenesse, busie and bloudy wickednesse.’”​
“President Andrew Jackson defended Indian removal in a message to Congress by calling attention to the ‘monuments and fortifications … the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes.’”​
Columbus Day video posted on the DailyWire’s website in 2017. It presents Native Americans as primitive cannibals and claims all technological innovations were due to Europeans.

Except where noted the following quotes are all from the 5e D&D Monster Manual.

Cannibalism, humanoid sacrifice, “Satans tyranny” and “mad impieties”:

“The yuan-ti were once humans who thrived in the earliest days of civilization and worshiped serpents as totem animals… The yuan-ti religion grew more fanatical in its devotion. Cults bound themselves to the worship of the serpent gods and imitated their ways, indulging in cannibalism and humanoid sacrifice.”​
“Lizard folk are omnivorous, but they have a taste for humanoid flesh. Prisoners are often taken back to their camps to become the centerpieces of great feasts and rites involving dancing, storytelling, and ritual combat. Victims are either cooked and eaten by the tribe, or are sacrificed to Semuanya, the lizardfolk god.”​
“When an orc slays an elf in Gruumsh's name and offers the corpse of its foe as a sacrifice to the god of slaughter, an aspect of the god might appear.”​
"Bloodthirsty marauders and cannibals, orcs venerate Gruumsh and thereby delight in slaughter and destruction." - 4e D&D Monster Manual​
“They range rather than inhabite”, “wicked idlenesse”, they do not build but use the creations of others, technologically backward:

“They [orcs] seldom settle permanently, instead converting ruins, cavern complexes, and defeated foes' villages into fortified camps and strongholds.”​
“Orcs don’t build settlements of their own, instead improving existing shelters with crude fortifications. They prefer to settle in natural caves or structures abandoned by other, more skillful races. Orcs can manage simple ironwork and stonework, but they are lazy and grasping, preferring to take by force the tools, weapons, and goods other folk make.” - 4e D&D Monster Manual​
“Goblins are lazy and undisciplined”​
“They [bullywugs] wear crude armor and wield simple weapons”​
“They [hobgoblins] protect their strongholds with... crude catapults”​
“Lizardfolk are primitive reptilian humanoids”​


----------



## generic

Oops! Double post.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Which, unfortunately, means that if you do say, "Hey, I don't like X" you are going to get painted with the same brush as those mouth breathing Neanderthals.  Unfortunate, but true.




Can you see how that isn't good for media or for society? Heck I waited six months to watch the new star wars so I wouldn't be affected by all the online discussion about it when I saw it (and I am very glad I did). I honestly didn't understand the reactions from anyone when I actually saw the thing.


----------



## Sadras

Hussar said:


> I'm not about to start playing mind reading games.  The fact that Tolkien wrote the elves as fair skinned and orcs as dark is grounded in pretty racist ideas.  This has been shown with more than a few quotes from the books.  This isn't something that people have just made up.  It's right there in the books.




I'm not denying that JRRT injected some racial thinking in his works. I repeat, I'm not denying that JRRT injected some racial thinking in his works, but the purity trope of _blonde hair_ is an old one and it does not need skin colour to be exclusionary. 



> Pretending that simple taste issues (whether I like 4e or not, or Timothy Dalton as Bond) is whitewashing the issue and again, really dismissive.




No, you have misunderstood me. It is not taste issues, it is about internally *established cannon*. Many people do not like change.  



> Are you seriously saying that *all* the criticisms of the play had *nothing* to do with racism?  *Not a single* person who raised the issue had *a single* racist bone in their body? That the Twitter storm over casting black actors as elves has *absolutely nothing* to do with racism?  *Not a single* person complained because of racism?




Bold emphasis mine. 
Can you see how you phrase the argument. My wife sometimes does this when we disagree - she uses words like always, never and ever. 

I'm saying many of these issues are because people have internally established cannon.
For instance - there is a vast difference between elves as presented by Tolkien and elves as presented in Mystara (which is one of my favourite settings probably due to nostalgia). In Mystara elves are shorter than humans, on average, weaker and considered lazy/fickle and there are so many many more differences. It took me a while, when I read the the Kingdom of Alfheim Gazetteer to accept that for the elves of one of my favourite settings, because that is not how I was originally introduced to elves. It still bothers me.

You definitely have racist trolls out there [AND I"M NOT HERE DEFENDING THEM] but many other protests, are because of what they see as canonical changes.

I completely dislike who they selected as Lois Lane in the movies because Amy Adams does not fit the look of Lois Lane I personally envision, and one of those reasons is the hair. I grew up with the dark-haired Teri Hatcher which is more the look I'm acquainted for her character and those of the comic. Dean Cain on the other hand was ok, but his look is no Christopher Reeves. Tall, strong jaw, more masculine looking etc - as depicted in the comics. 
On the other hand I completely love Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, but I never had much exposure to him in the comics so it was never an issue for me. That isn't just taste it's about how our preconceptions were enforced by our exposure to things originally.  



> Playing the "badwrongfun" card doesn't excuse using racist tropes in your game.  I'm sure people have fun with it.  Bully for them.  Just because they enjoy it doesn't suddenly make it not racist.




I'm going to ask this question, are you saying WoTC are defending racist tropes in D&D? I'm not sure which racists tropes you are referring to? If someone plays in the LotR setting are they defending racist tropes if they stick to cannon in terms of race description? Or are we talking about Orcs in general, like if you don't roleplay them like elves (free will) then you're suddenly defending a racist trope? Personally I think that is pretty harsh blanket of judgement. 

Finally, you know if it weren't for these roleplaying boards I would have never made the historical connection between orcs and racial tropes even though I have read plenty of orc descriptions over the years. I'm not saying this to discount what you and others have said, I'm just stating that, those ideas have never entered my mind.
In one way i see it as a good thing, I've learned something which I was otherwise oblivious to. In another way, I'm thinking it is sad to have made that connection because I cannot undo what I have learned. I'm now forever going to look at the orc entry and think racial stereotypes, which brings an ugly into my favourite hobby.

EDIT: Hussar I just saw your other post, I'm not going to respond to it as I feel I might be retreading ground I have already covered here being the issue of established cannon. Just to reiterate some protesters on these social media sites might not want darker skinned elves because of established canon not because of JRRT's influences/biases. They're purists not racist, kinda like the issue I had with the Klingons.

I do not believe anyone here is defending racists.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't think that means the savage trope needs to be taken off the table.



I haven't said it should be taken off the table. I have said that it carries a certain meaning. If you're playing with that trope, and you're aware of that meaning, or have it drawn to your attention, presumably you think you have some reason to play with it nevertheless.

I think that what I've just said is similar to what Hussar has said:



Hussar said:


> things like Tolkien's Elves and Orcs ARE problematic.  In fact I can point to examples where it IS problematic.  It's not a case of simple personal preference because the entire issue is indelibly linked to issues of race.  You can't avoid it.  And you certainly can't avoid it by saying, "Well, I like it, so, it's not problematic".





Hussar said:


> And, if someone chooses to defend concepts that are pretty clearly racist, they cannot escape criticism.  Sorry, but, that's the way it is.  Playing the "badwrongfun" card doesn't excuse using racist tropes in your game.  I'm sure people have fun with it.  Bully for them.  Just because they enjoy it doesn't suddenly make it not racist.





Bedrockgames said:


> I do believe that leads to pablum.



But to build on what Hussar said, this isn't a reason to doubt that JRRT is drawing on racist tropes; to doubt that D&D "evil humanoids" draw on tropes of "evil, brutish savages" who threaten "civilisation".

If your argument is that, in fact, it is impossible to create interesting fantasy fiction without entertaining racially-laden tropes, then come out and say it! If that's not your argument, then why keep raising this red herring?



Bedrockgames said:


> I think we can handle media that contains things that make us a bit uncomfortable or that we have to look at closely to make a determination about what its message is.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think we have to take these things on a case by case basis.



Upthred you _complained_ about "fine tooth combs", but here you seem to be advocating for them.

What makes you think I haven't looked closely at the cases I'm referring to? What's your actual reason for thinking the message is different?

You continued repetation of this point, while not actually engaging with the close reading that [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] in particular has put forward, comes across as a debating tactic rather than sincere engagement with others' posts.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> But, like the old 4e edition wars, there's a difference between someone stating, "I really don't like the newest Ghostbusters" and someone who jumps into every single conversation screaming from the top of their lungs how the newest Ghostbusters has ruined their childhood, destroyed humanity and kicked puppies.




I just want to say, I think the 4E debates are a whole other category of thing. Those were not at all about issues pertaining to race and so forth. That was an edition war that got very heated. I don't really care anymore, but I was not a fan of 4E and said so, and I don't think that puts me in the same category as online trolls trying to get Rose Tico out of star wars or something. I am not saying there wasn't bad behavior in those arguments, but both camps were pretty negative toward each other. I can see the bad behavior that arose on my side, I hope you can also see the bad behavior that arose on your's.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> If your argument is that, in fact, it is impossible to create interesting fantasy fiction without entertaining racially-laden tropes, then come out and say it! If that's not your argument, then why keep raising this red herring?
> .




This isn't my argument Pemerton.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> This isn't my argument Pemerton.



So then why keep brining up the "pablum" red herring?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> You continued repetation of this point, while not actually engaging with the close reading that @_*Doug McCrae*_ in particular has put forward, comes across as a debating tactic rather than sincere engagement with others' posts.




Pemerton, I am just not finding his quotes compelling, and I think they are an example of the kind of fine toothed comb approach I've been critical of. He is doing the academic thing I am complaining out, which is taking selective quotes from various sources (which can easily be cherry picked, and are not necessarily evidence of anything except another person's opinion or conclusion) and pairing that with passages from D&D. Frankly his posts look like the kind of stuff I see conspiracy theorists say. I don't find this approach very persuasive.

EDIT: Also, just a note I think the connections between the passages he quotes and the text from D&D is often tenuous. In the one about savages, the D&D text description could easily be applied to any conquering tribal group in history as described from the point of view of the people being invaded. It is just super common stuff you see if you read a lot of history where settled groups who perceive themselves as civilized describe the people around them who pose a threat as non-civilized. I think having barbarian and uncivilized tropes is fine.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> So then why keep brining up the "pablum" red herring?




I am not going to answer a question framed this way. 

Edit: And you know perfectly well I am not saying that making good media requires the use of racist tropes. Please don't put words in my mouth. My argument about Pablum is valid in my mind. But that isn't what it is. I think you are being extremely disingenuous Pemerton. And I think you are enjoying this process far too much. Like I said earlier, I've reached a point in the conversation where I do feel I am ill-equipped to debate you because I can sense the chess game going on on your side (whereas on mine I am just trying to make my viewpoint clear). That doesn't mean I am wrong. And I am not going to be manuevered into saying something distasteful that I don't believe, simply because you are good at rhetoric.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Upthred you _complained_ about "fine tooth combs", but here you seem to be advocating for them.
> .




Because the fine toothed comb is a hyper critical one that labels things X and doesn't remove that label. I am arguing for nuance. Saying things are greatly dependent on their context. And understanding nuance of a movie's message isn't nearly as intense or involved as combing through sociology texts, examining the history of a trope, etc to make an argument about it.


----------



## Aldarc

Riley37 said:


> Does WoW have yet another orc origin?



It has been retconned over the years. Their backstory changed between Warcraft 1 to Warcraft 2 to Warcraft 3, which then becomes the primary background for WoW. However, WoW and its past, present, and future lore is also a mess. Blizzard has attempted to repackage the lore several times, most notably with the _World of Warcraft: Chronicle_ lore book series. They only really received a biogensis origin as of Chronicle, though it was implied in WoW: Warlords of Draenor. 

Officially, orcs are the quasi-evolutionary descendants of Grond, a gigantic earth elemental created by the Titans* to essentially be a weed-killer on the planet of Draenor. The giant "offspring" of Grond gradually "degenerated" into other lesser giants and eventually orcs. So Grond -> Colossals -> Magnaron -> Gronn -> Ogron -> Ogre -> Orc. Orcish skin tones were orginally earthen shades of brown and black. Their skin tones only became green following their exposure to demonic fel magic. Though they later rejected demonic warlock practices in favor of their historical shamanistic practices, their skin tones remained green. 

Conceptually, orc cutlure in WoW seems rooted in hodge-podge of Subsaharan Africa, Vikings, and the Huns or Mongols. They began Warcraft 1 & 2 by trying to conquer the Eastern Continents for _Lebensraum_ (their homeworld of Draenor was dying). The Eastern Continents were composed primarily of quasi-medieval European human, dwarf, gnomish, and elvish kingdoms,* who formed the Noble Alliance to oppose them. (Yes, they were all white. Let me repeat myself here: human cultures in Warcraft are entirely white, and they are all descended from Norse-themed half-giants.) The Eastern Continent also included the "savage" Trolls, who kinda have an Aztec thing going on and who allied with the Orcish Horde. Then in Warcraft 3 the orcs discarded their demonic overlords, and the orcs were led by their Green Moses across the sea, where they finally conquered their own region that is analogous to Subsaharan Africa. And they also allied with Caribbean/Mesoamerican jungle trolls, and Plains Indian minotaurs. The orcs, however, do get the opportunity to be heroes and have complex depictions, but Blizzard predominately likes to use them as agitators of conflict with the peace-loving Alliance. So yeah... there is definitely some casual racism at play in Warcraft. 

*  Titans are basically "space gods" born from the spirits of planets who are dedicated to fostering life and bringing order to the cosmos. Titans were also indirectly responsible for creating the seed species on the world of Azeroth that would later become humans, dwarves, and gnomes. Elves, however, are actually magically-mutated descendants of trolls, who themselves were born from the magical energies of the planet. 

And that was my TED talk. 



Libramarian said:


> And of course, almost every society considers fair skin more attractive (at least in women). Skin-whitening creams are popular all over the world, including in areas that were never colonized by European nations.



This was not always the case, but it increasingly became so as Euro-America reduced their old fashioned colonialism in favor of exporting their media. Anthropologists have observed how non-white cultures have changed their own attitudes regarding skin tones in conjunction with new Euro-American media.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> Frankly his posts look like the kind of stuff I see conspiracy theorists say. I don't find this approach very persuasive.



It's surely not a conspiracy theory to say that colonialist narratives and other racist ideas informed the authors of Appendix N works, and other 20th century media such as Westerns, and that those ideas made their way into 5e D&D both directly (ie from those media) and by way of earlier editions.

Also the thread title merely asks whether there are parallels with colonialist propaganda, which is a lesser claim. Frex there is a parallel between Warhammer's skaven and Nazi ideology but it's almost certainly merely an unfortunate coincidence.


----------



## Sadras

Doug McCrae said:


> /snip“The yuan-ti were once humans who thrived in the earliest days of civilization and worshiped serpents as totem animals… The yuan-ti religion grew more fanatical in its devotion. Cults bound themselves to the worship of the serpent gods and imitated their ways, indulging in cannibalism and humanoid sacrifice.”​“Lizard folk are omnivorous, but they have a taste for humanoid flesh. Prisoners are often taken back to their camps to become the centerpieces of great feasts and rites involving dancing, storytelling, and ritual combat. Victims are either cooked and eaten by the tribe, or are sacrificed to Semuanya, the lizardfolk god.”​“When an orc slays an elf in Gruumsh's name and offers the corpse of its foe as a sacrifice to the god of slaughter, an aspect of the god might appear.”​"Bloodthirsty marauders and cannibals, orcs venerate Gruumsh and thereby delight in slaughter and destruction." - 4e D&D Monster Manual​
> “They range rather than inhabite”, “wicked idlenesse”, they do not build but use the creations of others, technologically backward:“They [orcs] seldom settle permanently, instead converting ruins, cavern complexes, and defeated foes' villages into fortified camps and strongholds.”​“Orcs don’t build settlements of their own, instead improving existing shelters with crude fortifications. They prefer to settle in natural caves or structures abandoned by other, more skillful races. Orcs can manage simple ironwork and stonework, but they are lazy and grasping, preferring to take by force the tools, weapons, and goods other folk make.” - 4e D&D Monster Manual​“Goblins are lazy and undisciplined”​“They [bullywugs] wear crude armor and wield simple weapons”​“They [hobgoblins] protect their strongholds with... crude catapults”​“Lizardfolk are primitive reptilian humanoids”​




At this rate we will be left with a few choice entries like the Solar, the Water Elemental and an Elk but once @_*Doug McCrae*_ starts quoting from religious/wiccan and vegan texts we might find our Monster Manual reduced to non-hierarchical, equal pay, non-binary Modrons. In fact, the book's name will have to be altered to just Manual because somewhere someone called somebody a _Monster_ so that's no good.

What was TSR/WotC thinking using such an inflammatory word?!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Doug McCrae said:


> Also the thread title merely asks whether there are parallels with colonialist propaganda, which is a lesser claim.




This.


----------



## Doug McCrae

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] I'm mostly just trying to answer the questions posed by the OP -



> Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda? So I see people online claiming that orcs (or drow or any other savage humanoid race) often unconsciously represent cruel stereotypes of people of color and promote a colonialist narrative.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> It's surely not a conspiracy theory to say that colonialist narratives and other racist ideas informed the authors of Appendix N works, and other 20th century media such as Westerns, and that those ideas made their way into 5e D&D both directly (ie from those media) and by way of earlier editions.
> 
> Also the thread title merely asks whether there are parallels with colonialist propaganda, which is a lesser claim. Frex there is a parallel between Warhammer's skaven and Nazi ideology but it's almost certainly merely an unfortunate coincidence.




Look at the OP again. It isn’t merely about whether parallels exist. It is about whether orcs promote a colonialist narrative.


----------



## Michael Silverbane

Doug McCrae said:


> It's surely not a conspiracy theory to say that colonialist narratives and other racist ideas informed the authors of Appendix N works, and other 20th century media such as Westerns, and that those ideas made their way into 5e D&D both directly (ie from those media) and by way of earlier editions.
> 
> Also the thread title merely asks whether there are parallels with colonialist propaganda, which is a lesser claim. Frex there is a parallel between Warhammer's skaven and Nazi ideology but it's almost certainly merely an unfortunate coincidence.




While there are parallels, the intent, context, and effects are highly different.

Racist propaganda are not works of fiction. They are lies deliberately crafted to obscure or refute the truth and to create a negative view of real people and presented as the truth.

Fictional accounts of orcs and other creatures are explicitly not those things.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> Look at the OP again. It isn’t merely about whether parallels exist. It is about whether orcs promote a colonialist narrative.



They do. But not intentionally.


----------



## Sadras

Doug McCrae said:


> @_*Sadras*_ I'm mostly just trying to answer the questions posed by the OP -




Ofcourse, and I'm mostly just trying to state that in order for one to not see influences of colonialism, western bias and 19-20th century thought of what is unknown and monstrous you'd be left with maybe modrons (a relatively mechanical and futuristic being free of racial entanglements). I think we are on the same page, no?


----------



## Doug McCrae

Bedrockgames said:


> It is just super common stuff you see if you read a lot of history where settled groups who perceive themselves as civilized describe the people around them who pose a threat as non-civilized.



D&D wasn't inspired by a wide reading of history. The only history that went into it was some medieval military history, which gets you polearms, plate mail, etc. Most of it is from Tolkien, Howard, Lovecraft, Burroughs and other relatively recent (ie last hundred years or so) fantasy and sci-fi novels, comic books, tv shows, movies, and the wider cultural environment. We know this because we know D&D's sources. Vampires are from Hammer horror. Walking skeletons are from Harryhausen, etc. We know all this stuff, it's been covered in great detail on social media for years.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Doug McCrae said:


> D&D wasn't inspired by a wide reading of history. The only history that went into it was some medieval military history, which gets you polearms, plate mail, etc. Most of it is from Tolkien, Howard, Lovecraft, Burroughs and other relatively recent (ie last hundred years or so) fantasy and sci-fi novels, comic books, tv shows, movies, and the wider cultural environment. We know this because we know D&D's sources. Vampires are from Hammer horror. Walking skeletons are from Harryhausen, etc. We know all this stuff, it's been covered in great detail on social media for years.




But all those sources were inspired by a wide reading of history. Conan certainly was. Harryhausen certainly was. Not to mention so many of the other writers on Appendix N. Even if you just stick with vaguely European, a lot of these tropes about non-civilized and savage invaders can be applied to groups like Vikings, Celts and Germanic tribes as well.

EDIT: Also D&D is much bigger than Appendix N now. We are not just talking about orcs as they were conceived by Tolkien, or Gygax, we are talking about what they mean in D&D today and in RPGs in general today.


----------



## Sadras

You know on the flipside of this argument...
Given the burning bloodlust, powergame-y, stat-dumped, critical-hitting, raging, murderbobo-ing, looting, pilfering, intimidating, deceitful, unethical, overly-righteous, preachy, delusional, power-hungry, boozing attitude of many PCs, I'd have to seriously question the idea that they are civilised any more so than the orcs.

The savage invader moniker can easily be turned onto the PC since he is the one who is constantly invading, exacting savagery for the primary purposes of becoming better at it. In order to shake this idea of the PCs being colonialists we need to play more nuanced more enlightened characters otherwise we perpetuate this colonial spirit.

Any moment now @_*Doug McCrae*_ will post excerpts from prominent colonialists and compare them to various texts within the Player's Handbook.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Sadras said:


> You know on the flipside of this argument...
> Given the burning bloodlust, powergame-y, stat-dumped, critical-hitting, raging, murderbobo-ing, looting, pilfering, intimidating, deceitful, unethical, overly-righteous, preachy, delusional, power-hungry, boozing attitude of many PCs, I'd have to seriously question the idea that they are civilised any more so than the orcs.




That is a completely cool approach to play. And it is one where you might need to employ the orc trope in order to make your point.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Hussar said:


> Nope.  But, we do need the option.  Juliet of Romeo and Juliet was played by a boy for a long, long time.  Does that mean that every single stage and movie production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet must feature a boy playing Juliet?
> 
> We're obsessing with Tolkien because invoking Tolkien is pretty much the same as Godwinning a thread.  It must be obsessed over.    But, if you'd like, we can point to a swath of works all the way up to current day showing the direct connection between "brutish humanoid" and depictions of various minorities.
> 
> The fact that suggesting that PoC play elves in the new Amazon version of LotR creates a storm of folks coming out of the woodwork to decry it, shows that this isn't just some academic issue that only a few people know about.
> 
> It shouldn't matter one whit that PoC play elves in Tolkien.  If they want to have Idris Alba play Elrond, it shouldn't matter at all.
> 
> But it does.  And that's the problem.
> 
> 
> 
> So, when a player declares that he's slaughtering the non-combatants, orc babies for example, you have zero problem?  It's perfectly acceptable to commit genocide on these creatures?   After all, they have no free will.  They aren't capable of anything but evil, so, killing them is perfectly fine, regardless of circumstance.
> 
> I don't know about you, but, that notion makes my skin crawl.  Why not just use demons?  After all, that's what you've done - made demons (unredeemable evil) and put them in meat suits that are linked to racist depictions of minorities.
> 
> You really have no idea why someone seeing that might have an issue?




It more I don't care if the someone online  has an issue as at our table orcs are just evil orcs. Having 1-2 HD demons swarming around the Prime material plane with the same frequency doesn't work with the fiction of the setting.  And honestly until this thread I had never had anyone say to me that orcs were a stand in for blacks or some other ethnicity and it never occurred to me.  If some view them that way fine, I encounter those who find offense and various -ism's pretty much everywhere, sometimes validly. But good old 1e out of the MM orcs work just fine for our game of dungeon bashing and loot taking and everyone at the table just view it as a game of maybe heroic adventurers, fantastic locations, and the monsters who are holding their loot.  The monsters are just monsters.  Orcs are orcs, gnolls are gnolls, etc.  So do I get it that people have used bestial language to describe real life ethnic groups?  Of course.  Does that mean I'm going to avoid using bestial descriptions of chaotic monsters in my games? Of course not. Again orcs are orcs and they are creatures of chaos and evil.   Not as pure concentrated evil as demons but fundamentally tainted by design. 

As for the wee orcs. Doesn't come up that much in the game since usually they don't encounter the massive tribe, just warrior raiding outposts.   But I'd give 1 XP for the orclings.  Most of the XP is in loot anyway.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Sadras

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> But I'd give 1 XP for the orclings.




The laugh is for this comment, otherwise I'd have given you an XP. 
You seriously give 1XP for orclings, so you're incentivising them to become baby-slayers in your game? Very King Herod/Joffrey of you 

I suppose it is like those video-games that incentivise bad behaviour. Usually when I have done that it (introduced wee-folk) it is to raise a complication/dilemma. Once a PC druid retired his character by declaring that his druid would take and raise the surviving 4 wee-gnolls in an attempt to extinguish their inherent evil taint.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Sadras said:


> The laugh is for this comment, otherwise I'd have given you an XP.
> You seriously give 1XP for orclings, so you're incentivising them to become baby-slayers in your game? Very King Herod/Joffrey of you
> 
> I suppose it is like those video-games that incentivise bad behaviour. Usually when I have done that it (introduced wee-folk) it is to raise a complication/dilemma. Once a PC druid retired his character by declaring that his druid would take and raise the surviving 4 wee-gnolls in an attempt to extinguish their inherent evil taint.




I was kind of joking there.  though if you were taking it out to the logical extreme killing orclings before they can become full sized evil pig nosed brutes you are really just making your job easier on yourself so it should be full XP.


----------



## dragoner

lowkey13 said:


> Let's see.
> 
> @_*Doug McCrae*_ makes reasoned arguments, citing the source material. And notes that he is saying, per the OP, that this is about-
> 
> "Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda? So I see people online claiming that orcs (or drow or any other savage humanoid race) often unconsciously represent cruel stereotypes of people of color and promote a colonialist narrative."
> 
> You know ... parallels .... unconscious representations. Not that every D&D player and DM ever is a racist.
> 
> 
> Meanwhile, other people are all like -Nah. That's a bunch of academic gibberish. Working class people in Boston when I was growing up were never racist.*
> 
> Or variants of, BUT WHAT ABOUT VIKINGS!**
> 
> Good talk.
> 
> 
> *I'm guessing it wasn't Roxbury. Not to put too fine a point on it, but from Charles Stuart to Adam Jones, it's not common to use the Hub as the go-to example for color-blind bona fides.
> 
> **Yeah, I am simplifying and parodying positions here, but ... well, look at the last few posts. It's hard to move forward if you can't even acknowledge the past.




You also have to understand where these people are coming from, such as where Holocaust denial is fine as "Free Speech," and their leader posts threads about supporting neo-nazis as they assault women, gays, etc., plus Rosa Parks is evil; and if you dissent, you are banned. Just saying. We're giving them a much better chance, or forum for their views then they would ever give us.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## dragoner

lowkey13 said:


> Well ... I wouldn't go that far.
> 
> I can't speak for everyone in this thread (and there were a few dubious posts earlier), but I think some people struggle with some of these ideas. Mostly ... well, mostly old white guys.
> 
> And I can somewhat sympathize with that, being an older white guy. It's hard to come to terms with things you took for granted for a long time. I mean, I want to think that I've done well in life because I'm awesome and smart and amazing and good looking and people like me.
> 
> THEY REALLY REALLY LIKE ME!
> 
> But it's also true that I've had a lot of things break my way, because of ... well, you know ...
> 
> And it's not just that. I mean, I like the things that I like! I don't want to think that some of those things might be ... well, maybe not wholesome? Not perfect in every way? Thinking about that makes me uncomfortable, and I don't like to feel uncomfortable.
> 
> Also? I'm used to having my opinion and voice heard. And so I don't understand when my opinion of how other people feel isn't valued. I wish I was totally joking here ... but I'm not.
> 
> Things change. I'm trying to change, too. I'm hoping that impulse includes more of our friends, here.




I was just stating my experience with some of them.

Sure, I hope people change. TBH, I don't expect people to be perfect, but if they double down on the dumbness, well ...

You are right, there is  a situational awareness to it all.


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## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> You also have to understand where these people are coming from, such as where Holocaust denial is fine as "Free Speech," and their leader posts threads about supporting neo-nazis as they assault women, gays, etc., plus Rosa Parks is evil; and if you dissent, you are banned. Just saying. We're giving them a much better chance, or forum for their views then they would ever give us.




I am not interested in getting into cross forum drama but anyone who saw my posts as those topics came up would see, with the exception of things like free speech (which I believe in very strongly) I was opposed to each of those things. And very vocal about my opinion.


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## Sadras

dragoner said:


> You also have to understand where these people are coming from, such as where Holocaust denial is fine as "Free Speech," and their leader posts threads about supporting neo-nazis as they assault women, gays, etc., plus Rosa Parks is evil; and if you dissent, you are banned. Just saying. We're giving them a much better chance, or forum for their views then they would ever give us.




So if people don't agree with everything, they will be equated to the vilest RL people of history. Seems fair, nothing wrong with that, carry on regardless. I wonder how many will take issue with this post.


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## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not interested in getting into cross forum drama but anyone who saw my posts as those topics came up would see, with the exception of things like free speech (which I believe in very strongly) I was opposed to each of those things. And very vocal about my opinion.




I'm not interested in the drama either, you survive because you are a mod there. Still it behooves the subject to merely state the truth of the matter.


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## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> I'm not interested in the drama either, you survive because you are a mod there. Still it behooves the subject to merely state the truth of the matter.




I am not a mod there anymore Dragoner


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## Sadras

dragoner said:


> I'm not interested in the drama either, you survive because you are a mod there. Still it behooves the subject to merely state the truth of the matter.




Don't believe he is a mod. I just checked if I could ignore BRG and it is possible, which means he is not a mod.


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## Bedrockgames

Sadras. He was saying I was a mod at TheRPGsite, not here.


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## Flexor the Mighty!

Sadras said:


> So if people don't agree with everything, they will be equated to the vilest RL people of history. Seems fair, nothing wrong with that, carry on regardless. I wonder how many will take issue with this post.




You have to realize that to a large portion of the modern left anyone to the right of Karl Marx is a Nazi. Just look at social media when even mainstream Jewish conservatives are labeled as nazis.

but at least now the thread got to the only place it could ever had ended up.


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## dragoner

Sadras said:


> Don't believe he is a mod. I just checked if I could ignore BRG and it is possible, which means he is not a mod.




He was when I was banned for being a "SJW" there; it doesn't really matter (though I'm sure there is a parallel thread there) it is quite humorous that you call them the "vilest people in history." lol I don't think I'd go exactly that far calling them that. Though as you can see, calling them out for their bad behavior, they play victim or whatever. If the shoe fits ...

 [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] is correct in citing the historical parallels between the race writing and Orcs, so far the most scholarly posts. In the face of that and basic logic, the point is well proved where the imagery was drawn from. I don't have, nor do I think anyone's intent is to call Tolkien or Gygax racists, I think just as flies caught in amber, their writings are of their times.


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## Umbran

Folks, really?

Do I have to hand out week-long bans to get people to realize that drifting away from discussion of a particular piece of relevant media into making generalizations about "the left" and "the right" is over the line?

Because you've put us in the position of having a choice - close the thread because you folks can't seem to keep your heads in the game without someone looming over you with a banhammer, or just using the banhammer.

Think before posting next time, people.

Thread closed.


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