WotC: "We want to avoid hateful content, that's all!"
Also WotC: creates highly racist caricatures of an enslaved race (Hadozee) in an official book
Also WotC: creates highly racist caricatures of an enslaved race (Hadozee) in an official book
I really don’t follow this, on a similar absurd reasoning one could claim elves in lotr are racist because the have light skin.
It’s just a story set in a fantasy world. If you mean to it’s always possible to twist anything into being offensive.
I mean I don't care that much but it was a little tone deaf.
The real problem was there was a rules bug that let them move insanely fast
Didn't stop generations of racists from making offensive comparisons. Doesn't stop them from continuing to do so.
Racism's value system doesn't care about rationality or truth.
> On a similar absurd reasoning one could claim elves in lotr are racist because the have light skin.
Amusingly enough, Tolkien did in fact hold racist beliefs, despite his fervent opposition to the Nazis during WWII. Both of those things can be and are true. His elves are very explicitly Old Norse expys (read his letters if you don't believe me) and his constant fawning over them (as pale, beautiful, skilled, and wise) in contrast to orcs (as dark-skinned, ugly, brutish, and enslaved) was criticized then and is still criticized now.
> If you mean to it's always possible to twist anything into being offensive.
It is justified to take offense at something that is, in fact, offensive.
However, I think the elves were straight up alfar with their leaders (Gandalf, Elrond, Celbrimbor, Galadriel, the wood elf king - I never remember his name) drawn from the vanir.
I think the Rohirrim were Anglo-Saxon expys though, and I think the Hobbits were English expys. I also think Tolkien put more than a little of himself in both Theoden and Bilbo. Theoden says 'A lesser son of great sires am I'. Also, the relationship between Bilbo (who stays home, too old to fight the war against Mordor) and Frodo (the young effectively son who goes to fight the evil in foreign dark lands) a parallel to him and Christopher Tolkien.
Place names, language, all of that is evocative of Anglo-Saxons (the early vikings, later they came from Sweden and Denmark), except horses.
Wikipedia says "Tolkien grounded Rohan in elements inspired by Anglo-Saxon tradition, poetry, and linguistics, specifically in its Mercian dialect, in everything but its use of horses. Tolkien used Old English for the kingdom's language and names, pretending that this was in translation of Rohirric. Meduseld, the hall of King Théoden, is modelled on Heorot, the great hall in Beowulf." (available under CC-AS)
Wait, that says nothing of vikings...
But, "The name "Anglo Saxon" refers to the Germanic people who invaded and occupied West England from c. 500-1066 AD. These people arrived first from Saxony (NW Germany) and later (800-1066) from Sweden and Denmark. We refer to these last groups as "Vikings", and this is where Beowulf originates and takes place." - from 'Intro to Beowulf' (https://webpages.uidaho.edu/engl257/Anglo%20Saxon/intro_to_b...)
To be fair, some authors lump Anglo-Saxons in with Vikings, some keep them distinct.
AskMiddleEarth is a great site, and has a nice map of Rohan in an article: https://askmiddlearth.tumblr.com/post/104445771679/settlemen...
I believe the wood elf you’re thinking of is Thranduil.
I think what people find racist about this situation is that the scenario is obviously mirroring black slavery (fine, it still needs to be discussed), and that the race the authors chose to stand in for blacks are a racial caricature of blacks (monkeys, real world racist dehumanization as used by real world white supremacists and real world history, generally considered sub-human). End result is you get to discuss slavery and racism of sub-humans, which probably isn't what the creators intended, but the sort of thing we got wrong in the 90s. And probably should be fixed in updates like this if you want to keep your IP and franchise alive and not join the masses of media that 'hasn't aged well'.
With one notable exception: if it's merely the starting point of a campaign to enact major change (perhaps also if used as a vehicle to display how bad the system really is).
That said, I"m fairly sure you'd have to change a number of things to make "goblins/orcs" match up with real world Germans (such as the cannibalism) But it's been some years since I read LOTR.
[1]: https://www.polygon.com/23330621/dnd-spelljammer-hadozee-rac...
Is it dark? Yes, and I think it's meant to be.
If anything, I think it's actually great that they're doing this because I believe RPG games are a great and safe mediums to acquaint people with these difficult subjects. I can't be the only person with this opinion?
Are people calling Marvel racists or anti-Semitic because Hydra was inspires by some parts of the Nazi military being obsessed with the supernatural?
I think calling these racists (or xist) is a failure of imagination; kinda weird to see it come from the RPG community, too
I think people just don't want to deal with slavery and race bullshit in their fantasy setting, which I understand.
So it's just annoying and tone deaf and doesn't add anything, plus the fact they are simian and transported on tall ships and auctioned off as slaves.
If you can't see why someone would would say "wow, a slave monkey race transported on ships. That sucks." Then you aren't arguing in good faith. It is not that much of a stretch to see it as a little demeaning.
Depictions od people of color as animalistic is undeniably a thing people used to do to be demeaning to them.
So I would argue you are having a failing of imagination.
I honestly doubt someone wrote this because they want to degraded black people using a far fetched analogy. It feels to me like a small group of people really wants this to be perceived as racist for some reason.
Like, don't get me wrong. I'm familiar with racist rednecks calling black people "monkeys," but I see no reason we need to give so much power to some small part of American culture and let it transfer into a fantasy world. What's infuriating is that those racist reprobates are probably not even aware of this situation, and we gave them so much influence.
Anyway, I wanted to write a more extensive reply initially, but then I felt like you've probably already painted me as a witch/heretic/racist in your head, and don't care about what I have to say. So, let's just agree to disagree and move on with our lives.
Contrast that with the gith, another slave race that broke their bonds. Just as gritty, but not racist.
Also, at the risk of being painted a heretic/racists/whatever. I'm not sure why the focus is so much on just black slavery; is it because it was most recent, or is it because of the current zeitgeist? Is it an American thing? Is it the "monkey" part and because some racist rednecks call black people monkeys? I find it mortifying we're giving those people so much influence over a fantasy world they're probably not even aware of.
Ding! You hit the nail on the head! To be succinct, if you hear monkey and think black people, then you are a racist regardless of any good intentions you may or may not have.
It reminds me of the ok hand emoji kerfuffle; where it was briefly racist/taboo to use it.
I think it's total madness to let people I disagree with influence my fantasy world games. Why give them that power? Maybe I don't get it because I'm not American and this is a cultural issue specific to the US (and the majority of people here, I assume, are American).
If you had read the article provided, you'd have also seen that Wizards agrees with the opinion and has modified their backstory: https://www.polygon.com/23339180/dnd-spelljammer-racist-hado...
So, no, you just have stuff to say about who is making the opinion and that it's "not a productive use of your time" to argue about it.
For something not being a productive use of your time, you sure are dedicating an awful lot of time being contrarian to it.
Either you don’t care, in which case you wouldn’t bother to continuing to reply, or you do actually care but just don’t want to express what you know is an unpopular opinion, and are just side-stepping it with this whole “I’m better than this argument” attitude.
if you were willing to rephrase whatever opinions you assimilated from plural Polygon articles into your own words and ask what I think about them, then I might have been slightly more likely to engage with them (your opinions). but merely repeatedly linking to something someone else wrote and saying "so what do you think about that, huh?" is not exactly interesting discourse. there is no "intellectual curiosity" (HN rules) happening here, just weak attempts at baiting the same old tired Internet arguments from the past decade, which many people, myself included, are long since exhausted with.
what do you expect to gain from this continued exchange?
(note that I'm posing a question to you, inviting you to reply to me, if you so choose, and, if you do, I won't mock or belittle you for replying, because this is a discussion website, and that would be silly.)
It's very hard to pretend to not care when you write multiple impassioned paragraphs about what you consider interesting discourse and what is beneath you. Your continued insistence of this "I'm better than you and this argument" does nothing but show that you do, indeed continue to care.
So maybe put all of this time that is so beneath you to read the article, and then you can proceed to insult it rather than just insulting the lowly people beneath you and our petty arguments.
Yet, here you are, continuing to reply. Maybe you should stop stooping to the clearly awfully low bar and falling for my schtick. It obviously isn't intellectually stimulating enough or worthy enough of your precious time.
You think that telling people their opinion doesn’t matter because they chose to have an article state it for them is helpful?
You think that constantly implying and downright saying the people you are interacting with are below you, your intelligence and your time, are providing benefit to the discourse on the site?
You’re just as bad if not worse and you certainly don’t come from a place where you can even remotely tell others when they “blatantly disregard the rules of this website” when your first comment throws them out the window and the rest are acting as if they’re in a different dimension.
In other words, get off that high horse.
Next time, engage by actually listening to another person, whether it’s their words or an article they provide, and comment on that. Not whatever bullshit game you think you’re playing by pretending to be above it all.
yes. imagine if everyone here posted blogpost URLs in place of comments, as if that constituted a valid discussion—this site would be a wreck. encouraging the minimal amount of critical thinking necessary to show that you have internalized something you have read to the point where you can restate it in your own words is a generally good idea for a good-faith discussion-based website. the best discussions on this website involve people putting effort into conveying their thoughts and rhetoric, instead of linking to the thoughts and rhetoric of others and instructing them to read it in its entirety before replying, such that they have to put effort into formulating and then conveying their own counter-opinion, while you had to do no such thing. that doesn't really sound like a good-faith discussion, does it? this is all I was trying to convey.
I never said anyone was below me or my intellect or anything like that, I said that I don't care to read what Polygon has to say comparing fantasy races to real-world ones, nor argue about anything like that. you seem to have taken this personally, and for that I apologize—I did not mean to impugn you as a person at all (until you began the "aha I baited you into replying" schtick, which is always frustrating and an easy indicator that the person doing such things never actually wanted to have a good-faith discussion to begin with). you mistook a couple of remarks I made as personal attacks, or something (even though you didn't post any opinions of your own, so I'm not sure how I was supposed to do that…), and that was not my intent whatsoever.