PC (no not that one) is hitting the industry

[Achtung Englander]

Check this out

https://www.pcgamer.com/dandd-is-trying ... ereotypes/

I am genuinely concerned for Lord Of The Rings now.....

Those Orcs might be offended and don't even start with the Hobbits.

[Wrathbone]

I talked about this briefly in the BG3 thread. Positive steps all around.

You mention LOTR, which is kind of where this originated as Tolkien was never entirely comfortable or decisive with his origin for orcs and how/why they were inherently evil. Because make no mistake - in Middle Earth, orcs are always evil, through and through. In various letters he discussed how in his mind, orcs were not simply a species but a state of being in the sense that a human could be an orc if they were suitably narrow-minded, aggressive and disrespectful. He thought of certain politicians and wartime leaders as orcs for that reason. The point is, even back in the 30s, 40s and 50s, this was under consideration by the man who brought fantasy to a modern audience, and the fact that we’re still holding onto the idea that race determines personality or morality is indicative of how far we still have to go.

EDIT - A little more on why this is more important than it might initially seem, because I get that fretting over orcish morality seems a bit silly.

Part of the D&D Live events last weekend was a 90 minute panel of black representatives from the D&D community discussing their experiences and concerns regarding race within the game and the tabletop community. It’s well worth a watch - it was frank and educational. One of the topics raised was the linking of race and morality in the game and how they were pissed off that the shit they have to deal with in real life transfers over to the game they love. The real-world racism of “this person is black so they may be a threat” is echoed far too closely in D&D with things like “this character is a drow, so they must be evil”. That’s why disassociating race from other traits is important. It teaches self-determination rather than racial assumptions.

Here’s the panel:

[Mantis]

As I said in the BG3 thread on this, I think it opens up the possibility of telling better stories to allow races in DnD the flexibility.

Any DM would hopefully have always had a bit of social awareness about them when players from minority ethnic backgrounds are in their group to not single out their character based on whatever race they chose, hopefully that would be the case even before these changes were announced.

But then on the other hand I have no problem with a piece of fiction which wants to clearly demarcate between a good and evil side. It's fiction, there shouldn't be rules. Using Tolkien as an example, I'm not a huge LotR geek but aren't the orcs literally a race of corrupted and fallen elves who were made with evil magic? They exist literally to be evil and serve Sauron. As a story telling device I think that's absolutely fine. Not everything needs to become a battlefield for a race culture war.

[Wrathbone]

Using Tolkien as an example, I'm not a huge LotR geek but aren't the orcs literally a race of corrupted and fallen elves who were made with evil magic? They exist literally to be evil and serve Sauron. As a story telling device I think that's absolutely fine. Not everything needs to become a battlefield for a race culture war.

Tolkien explored and suggested several possible origins for the orcs but never settled on one. The movies went firmly with corrupted elves, which was implied in some of his works. I think one of the biggest quandaries he had over the orcs was that he makes it abundantly clear that in his secondary creation, nothing starts out as evil, and yet here we have a race who are born evil (although it’s not even clear whether they’re born or created in some other way). The obvious answer is that whatever they were originally, Morgoth made them evil, but it still seems contrary to the core ethos of Tolkien’s creation that a sentient being could be evil from the get-go with zero chance of redemption. The issue I believe he had wasn’t that it violated some storytelling or moral rule but that it contradicted the framework of rules he’d created for his own world.

With D&D, WotC aren’t saying nobody can have orcs that are always evil. The whole point of the game is that people make up their own stories - it’s not like Chris Perkins is going to kick down your door and steal your dice if you say that all orcs are evil. The changes they’re making are to consciously stop that line of thinking in their published products so that they’re not actively perpetuating the idea that morality can stem from race.

And this is a battleground, sadly, however much of a fringe case it may seem. The Black AF panel I posted above highlights that - it’s being called out as a problem that non-white players experience, and it doesn’t need to be that way.