So I was reading a thing, longer than this even, but good stuff. Got a few things to click for me about what's been in my D&D forever and ever, particularly when re-reading some of the old D&D books after.
https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/ ... ial-terror
https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/ ... -not-human
Like, he mentions 5th edition racism in part, but looking through a few MMs, 1st edition AD&D is racist as shit and they've never really fixed it. And I never really got that until now. They weren't accidentally this way, at all. Gary was into imaginary killing black children because they could never be saved, and by proxy so was most everyone that played it.
This is super long, go read the super long links instead if you don't like reading mine. He's probably much better at it anyway.
1st edition AD&D 1979 MM says ...
- Humans are all, at best, Mediterranean and Northern European, there's no African or Asian or even Mid-Eastern humans in AD&D. Oriental Adventures came later, intended for the "Asian market", even though it's full of racist crap about Asians.
- Goblins are the yellow peril. They're yellow, short, they squint in sunlight, and are best known for being sneaky.
- Bugbears are bigger goblins, literally, yellow, big and fat and hairy, waddle about, but still squinty eyed and sneaky, hello Sumo. Asians are Goblins and Bugbears.
- Hobgoblins are Mongolians, clearly so in the art. Reddish-brown skin and stuff. Ghengis Hobgoblin, Atilla the Hob, honourable martial type.
- Um, and Hobgoblins, their big version is literally bloodthirsty apes. FFS, Gary.
- Orcs are black people. Africans, only roaming about in gangs here trying to steal your women. Like, dark brown skin with pink flashes, and dark bristly hair. And he made them pigs, just for fun. That's not good, Gary.
- Ogres are big Orcs, still black people, but I guess these ones play football. Africans are pig-Orcs and Ogres in AD&D.
- Kobolds are Arabs. Like, rusty brown skin and tribal culture based on gens.
- Should I mention Drow? They're the "Black EIves" and thus the evil ones.
- Like, Gnomes are Jews, and they and Arabs kill each other on sight. AD&D is that bad.
Bad things in the monsters that come from racist ideology
- Warrior race, it's colonialist garbage.
- Noble savage, more colonialist garbage.
- Always internal squabbles without "strong leader", fuck off.
- All the "strong leaders" are elite humans, is super racist.
- Breeding things and where some can "pass as men". Fff.
- Where the bad guys are all dark brown and yellow and red, but the good guys are all fair and tan and ruddy.
- Bad guy races in place of human societies, fuck no.
- Where the bad guys have "big" versions, but the good guys have "little" versions.
- Modern race wars duplicated, for fuck's sake, don't do that.
- Perfectly accurate historical racism simulators are racist.
- These ones are all stupid/strong/clumsy/etc. No, bad.
Here's a Fake Q&A for a bunch of the arguments I've been on either side of for a while now. Hopefully somewhat enjoyable here and there given the heaviness of the topic.
The elf, human, orc, goblinoid ring species, is that a thing, or isn't it?
[*]Been going away, best if it's not a thing at all any more.
But half-elves and half-men and half-orcs? They are classic!
[*]They are classic racism. Being mulatto was a thing, it made you half as good as a white person. There's just nothing salvageable in the leader of the (Blacks) Orcs being smarter and more capable of leadership because he's (half-white) Half-Mens, that was always exceptionally nasty racism.
[*]Particularly nasty in that you're not really black because you're half-white, and you're definitely not white because you're half-black. At least D&D is inclusive in what you get for that stuff these days.
Can they be salvaged as ... magical crossbreeds?
[*]Some orcs can pass as men is always racist, it's what racism did, made people pass as white, being very careful to avoid a tan, because white people are treated well and black people are not. It is the essence of racism, that if people would only stop looking black they could be treated well. Anything else you gain is probably also racist, read on.
Super breeds of orcs? Tolkien had them too, more carefully engineered elves.
[*]Now you're getting into ableism plus racism. Mongoliods was a term for people with Down Syndrome and people from the north of Asia were Mongolians (who were thus, all degenerate white people). So if orcs are just broken elves, we're straight back into racism. Yes, Tolkien is very racist, this is where all this shit came from, it's standard British military "the people we're going to have you shoot at, they aren't really people" stuff from the early 20th century world wars, that Tolkien lived through.
But, different types of orcs with different stats, leaders?
[*]The leaders of Mens are the high level classes, in D&D, so the leaders of Orcs should be the high level classes too. But not fucking Evil Human Wizards and shit! Just high level Orcs. They look like Orcs in the same way high level Mens look like us, maybe covered in coloured lights from all the magic, maybe smoking fiery eyes from the curses, maybe some are bigger. This is mostly already true in modern editions.
OK, but like orcs can be strong and dumb, right?
[*]No. I mean, the strong race in AD&D is Humans, because white power, but making Orcs the strong race later on, that's where black people are mostly famous for playing sport, so the media image is ... more racism.
[*]To a large extent you probably shouldn't have intellectually inferior races that evoke humanity in their stance. Semi-smart horses and dogs and piles of claws or tentacles, those things are safer, read on.
But they should be primitive, like Lizardfolk, yeah?
[*]No. Saying a race is primitive is what racist people said while committing genocide on various societies in colonial times, even while those societies adapted to the new technology in a matter of days. They still do it in Australia, openly. It's not a crime to have weaver birds, but Australopithecus is dodgy as fuck because racist people like to say some modern humans are still like them in some ways. That was a key fake-science racism principle back in Tolkien's day, before the out of Africa theory happened.
[*]Like, if you expect to have an opponent who is smart enough to compete with humans in battle, they're human brained, and -2 Int when we give Horses a 4, Dolphins a 6, and Humans a 10 is just racist bullshit. Orcs slightly smarter than Horses? Hello horrible, horrible racism.
OK, but average PC-type humans could be better educated, right?
[*]So long as PC-type orcs could be and often are better educated too, yes. None of the societies we're touching on with these races lacked an education system for their wealthy folk. You can't have a universally uneducated or uneducatable race in contact with educated ones without being racist. Not educating disadvantaged groups within a society ("because it's a waste of time") is a big part of modern racism, and your game should not be a racism simulator.
But simulation! Racism was and is real, it might be important to my game!
[*]It's important to Nazis. They'll take your racist game elements, strip them of context, and post them as a pepe meme, and hurl shit at minority players with it too. It's not OK in the game. If you have something important to run, and you've consulted your players, probably you're still a bit racist, but that's on you.
Uh, aren't we all playing war crimes, though? Like, murder-hobos?
[*]No. That's a metaphor, generally you're simulating a pre-modern society without a police force or standing army which is also full of impossibly powerful monsters, folks need superheroes and wizards to protect them. You fundamentally play para-military police special forces, dealing with environmental and criminal problems through personified skirmishes. Yeah, it's violent, but it's toy voilence, they started it, and ... yeah, we'll be careful with that too, because cops and fascism are very close things.
I have all this art already done for Mongolian themed Hobs, HALP!
[*]Hobs can live in Mongolia, it's fine, probably better if they do, they just live there with the Mens in Mongolia, and they also live other places. They might even be most commonly found in Mongolia, but there can still be a Scottish Hob and a Mongolian Gnome and that'll all be fine. Local Hobs are probably the ones you're fighting for and against though, and not all of them will be recent immigrants.
So I can do an Asian accent for my Hob, right, because he's Asian?
[*]Oh, hi. If you are an Asian person who doesn't naturally speak with such, you're still gunna need to ask the other Asian people who might overhear, if that's OK with them. If you're a group of white people, just skip it, or do Texan accents or something. Always, always, always appropriate from your own culture first. If that somehow feels wrong, or embarrassing, yeah, that you noticed.
Racist people will just take all this and do racist stuff with it anyway.
[*]That is true. People who participate or see such games will know who is doing that if it is not in the game by default. It's also much easier to ask someone to not put racism in the game, than it is to ask someone to take it out; asking for less effort is just safer. See also sexism and ablism and so on.
OK, hear me out, this is not sustainable in terms of species, competition should lead to extinction and bla de bla.
[*]Right. But the setting has gods who like them, and so it turns out they do fine. It's a kitchen sink fantasy, they're all there, just is. If anyone goes about trying to commit genocide, just kick them out of your game, and then have a God squish their former character. Conceptual problem solved.
Hey, Gods doing anything prevents player agency!
[*]Oh, fuck off and go shit in someone else's cornflakes.
Didn't you, like, expel them to the underworld and stuff?
[*]Yep, and that works too, just not on it's own. Plus some stuff needs to be in the regular game world because a lot of mythological stories they come from, that was all they had. You can even leave it vague too if there's a separate reality of underworld or it's just when you go digging the rules change, or a bit of both.
Oho! But, what about this thing where they can't see well in daylight!
[*]Do you know why goblins, who are Asians as you'll recall, have difficulty in bright light? It's so they'll squint. Little squint-eyed yellow goblins. Like, cats get -0 to hit in daylight and +0 to hit in starlight, no one fucking cares, leave it out.
Can we save half elves and half orcs?
[*]Every attempt thus far has still been pretty racist. Like, how you can learn a few tricks of the elves because your grandma was an elf, and not otherwise, even though you live with humans, that's not good. Remember how primitive is just racism? That complimentary stuff isn't really better.
[*]Your best bet would have strong cultural associations built into areas where races are prominent, and then all the people from those cultures would share the same benefits. If Elftown in the forest gives you bows and swords, then Dwarves and Humans and Gobs from Elftown also get bows and swords.
[*]What's a "Half Elf" but a man from Elftown? Does all the things you want out of Half Elves, even with a whole lot more variety available, carries the thing of being uncomfortable in both Elftown and in other primarily Mens areas.
Oh, come oooooon, haaaaalf ooooorcs.
[*]Well, maybe. But listen up. If Elves, Humans, Orcs, and Hobs/Gobs can interbreed up and down the chain a step, they're all Human. They all look like humans. They have the same stats. That thing I said about half elves is basically true for all of them, you make a Half-Mens by buying both one primary-Human cultural baggage and one primary-Orc cultural baggage, and Elves are just the men who live in forests and have a somewhat unique culture.
[*]But then you have Humans that you're calling Orcs, and "Orcs" has a shit tonne of baggage from other games in most people's headspace, and now you can't stand them next to Humans as a differentiating hint because they already are Human, it's less good. Really, if your Orcs are just humans from hot places, I see problems.
But there's five different kinds of elves!
[*]No there isn't. Don't do that, really. Five different elf cultures is fine, the woods ones, glacier ones, black forest ones, ... etc, go for it. Also, fix the fucking Drow, properly.
So, no elves have dark skin?
[*]Those ones live where the dark skinned humans do. For the same reason, equatorial sun levels and plentiful protien in the diet.
Um, my Orcs aren't racist, they're aqua-coloured and just fight because they're supernaturally angry.
[*]In racist theories, Black people fought back against colonialist slavery and refused their rightful masters because they were supernaturally angry, literally cursed by God as a descendant of Cain. Orcs are based on that. That's why the Orcish resistance fails to coordinate unless lead by a white savior in D&D, but even then that white man turns out to be evil and true heroes will defeat him and his Orcs. It's all racist all the way down, including races that just fight all the time for reasons.
[*]Even if you colour them sky blue. Even if you call them spirits. Even if they're from the underworld. Even if the boss is an Orc too. So much baggage.
My Fighty McFight humanoids are called Porcs, and they're not a race, they're a heritage, no one will connect any of that!
[*]Fuckin, it's not the words. Also, Nazis talk about their heritage instead of their race now, because it's not the words, it's the meaning behind them, which you didn't change. Tolkien changed the names on his racist caricatures, Gygax made them uniquely American in prejudices and put pig heads on them, other people made them green, but they are what they are. It's still there. It still promotes racist ideologies. Let's just stop being racist.
Well how can I have Orcs at all!?! Fuckin.
[*]D&D is kitchen sink fantasy. So it has Orcs, and Goblins, and every other thing. That list of bad at the top, that is what Orcs are not. They can be everything else, there's lots of other Orc stuff in D&D history that is not inherently racist. They're not primitive or noble savages, they're not a born warrior race, they're not severely disabled (also, we will not be randomly murdering disabled people), they don't need a white saviour, they don't have tragically racist inter-tribal battle rituals, but they can be everything else. That will need carefully line edited, but it's doable.
For instance?
[*]OK, I'll try an Orc thing, accepting and cleaning up their classic African origin. Even though I'm a pasty redhead and shit.
-- The area where Orcs are found most commonly, let's call it Sacrifa, has extensive and ancient trade networks across the land but limited sea trade due to abundant sea monsters. There are extensive mines in suitable dry areas, but most groups are pastoral farmers in good land, or herdsman in marginal, with seasonally productive lands left wild, and large lakes are surrounded by fishers. Natural seasonal flood irrigation produces large, well-fed cities on low hills near the great rivers.
-- A difficult farming climate and limited soil fertility with varying multi-decadal drought cycles regularly sees groups across the region abandon settlements and even take up raiding as a way to gain capital for a transition to the next stable society. Successful warlords may take up protection rackets as their sole income long after these periods settle, and light unmounted raiders can venture far from their homelands carrying little but weapons, waterskins, and tokens of their faith.
-- In contrast, after long periods of stability and mild droughts, large armies may emerge from the river cities as a new king attempts to forge an empire to protect the most distant trade routes and encourage more caravans.
-- Orcs are largely nocturnal, and survive easier in the harsher environments with careful sheltering from the sun, making up most of the local mining communities. Mens stand most of the day with airy clothing design, mostly living in wetter climes, but shelter the nights around slow burning fires. Rainforests are largely the province of Elfs, who aggressively defend against any raids as their own food supply dwindles quickly in the dry. Elfs and Orcs are often the target of racist abuse and deadly threats in each other's territories, though Mens trade freely with both.
-- Long droughts and associated societal shifts can greatly lower life expectancy in some generations, and vicious cults may grow in prominence therein and persist long after.
-- A difficult farming climate and limited soil fertility with varying multi-decadal drought cycles regularly sees groups across the region abandon settlements and even take up raiding as a way to gain capital for a transition to the next stable society. Successful warlords may take up protection rackets as their sole income long after these periods settle, and light unmounted raiders can venture far from their homelands carrying little but weapons, waterskins, and tokens of their faith.
-- In contrast, after long periods of stability and mild droughts, large armies may emerge from the river cities as a new king attempts to forge an empire to protect the most distant trade routes and encourage more caravans.
-- Orcs are largely nocturnal, and survive easier in the harsher environments with careful sheltering from the sun, making up most of the local mining communities. Mens stand most of the day with airy clothing design, mostly living in wetter climes, but shelter the nights around slow burning fires. Rainforests are largely the province of Elfs, who aggressively defend against any raids as their own food supply dwindles quickly in the dry. Elfs and Orcs are often the target of racist abuse and deadly threats in each other's territories, though Mens trade freely with both.
-- Long droughts and associated societal shifts can greatly lower life expectancy in some generations, and vicious cults may grow in prominence therein and persist long after.
[*]Greenish skin, floppy ears, star-trek face mods, pretty much covers it, strip it way back for the monster manual entry. The nocturnal/diurnal split is normally how two super-predators can live in the same place at the same time, with nocturnal activity favouring the hotter regions and thereby being more prone to social disruption in drought cycles. Allows nearby societies to have a split culture. Elves can be crepuscular.
[*]The key thing there, is everything that makes them Orcs is basically there, but it's there in a way that can be shared with whoever they live next to. It's a set of universal problems arising naturally, but the not-racist non-human feature of Orcs (nocturnal) makes it all more prevalent with them. Any particular Orc can have none of those features and it would be fine.
And as I was writing, apparently Ariel the Mermaid will be played by a black woman in the live action movie and racist people everywhere are burning their Disney DVDs in response because, of course, "Mermaids can't be not white."
Note that actual Mermaids are a west African legend, and also a separate Pacific legend. Entered western legends through Syria. So they're all not white, and cartoon Ariel is actually pretty dark skinned in most of the movie. Racism, it is everywhere.
Best response thus far, "They think this is bad, wait 'till they meet Jesus."
Note that actual Mermaids are a west African legend, and also a separate Pacific legend. Entered western legends through Syria. So they're all not white, and cartoon Ariel is actually pretty dark skinned in most of the movie. Racism, it is everywhere.
Best response thus far, "They think this is bad, wait 'till they meet Jesus."
