jackfirecat ([info]jackfirecat) wrote,
2009-05-10 21:35:00
  • Previous
  • Memorize
  • Share
  • Next

D&D as RaceFail

The new RaceFail

[ If you aren't familiar with it, I think the issue is best addressed by Rushthatspeaks]

reminds me of D&D.

The set-up of the original game was that you existed in a town/city in the midst of a 'wilderness'. And you, after dungeons, went out and fought monsters in that wilderness, and then built castles. The wilderness was not owned by any existing authority, it was only inhabited by bandits and monsters. You could carve out a fiefdom. This puzzled me more the more I thought about it*, and as a result the last D&D campaign I ran had gnolls as Native Americans and not 'evil' at all really just seen as that by the colonists, and opposed to the settlement of their lands, and violent about it, as a 'reveal' - you start out with the gnolls as the enemy, assumed, it's the culture you come from, but come to understand during the campaign that your starting point was incorrect, and where do you go from that.

* I think it's a troublesome concept for a British person, because we are aware that in our Empire, there were clearly people there already. It's also true of the American colonies, but as Churchill said to Roosevelt, there are 200 million Indians in India alive today (or whatever it was at the time) and you have how many? (As a way of establishing that we, looked down up on by Americans at the time for being colonialists, had been a hell of a lot better with the native populations than the Americans, colonialists too, had been.)
Only an American would posit an empty land which is free to be colonized without thinking twice, because the modern history of America for many, most?, Americans begins with the colonists, whereas we remember 1066. Damn that Norman French/Viking upper-class! (of which I'm a descendent), Anglo-Saxon wroth still felt. (let alone original Briton, i.e. Welsh wroth. They should be much angrier really.)

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    switch
     
    Help
  • 38 comments

Anonymous

May 10 2009, 23:01:26 UTC 3 years ago

Here via naraht

It reminds me a lot of D&D.

The major published D&D campaign settings are...particularly weird about indigenous american populations. The Olmans in Greyhawk are a little awkward because they're using fictionalized versions of real world gods in a fictional setting. Of course, there's other pantheon borrowing in D&D, but this is pretty blatant.

The Forgotten Realms analogy to various Central American empires was Maztica. I say was because just last year they sent the entire continent to another dimension and replaced it with a new magical continent filled with dragon-people. Yeah, really.

[info]kynn

May 11 2009, 01:13:38 UTC 3 years ago

Re: Here via naraht

I don't even want to think about what's up with Zakhara in the new FRCS.

[info]jackfirecat

May 11 2009, 20:35:36 UTC 3 years ago

Re: Here via naraht

I understood all the words except 'Zakhara' and 'FRCS'.

[info]kynn

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]jackfirecat

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]kynn

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]jackfirecat

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]kynn

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]kynn

May 11 2009, 01:09:36 UTC 3 years ago

This puzzled me more the more I thought about it*, and as a result the last D&D campaign I ran had gnolls as Native Americans and not 'evil' at all really just seen as that by the colonists, and opposed to the settlement of their lands, and violent about it, as a 'reveal' - you start out with the gnolls as the enemy, assumed, it's the culture you come from, but come to understand during the campaign that your starting point was incorrect, and where do you go from that.

D&D is actually surprisingly good -- once you discard alignments attached to race/culture -- at this kind of reveal. I've done it several times in my campaigns!

The fact that D&D is set up with this kind of stuff from the beginning is exactly what makes it so good at turning the tables, and getting people to think.

I did a whole online D&D campaign about imperialism for a year and a half.

[info]yeloson

May 11 2009, 02:03:21 UTC 3 years ago Edited:  May 11 2009, 02:03:33 UTC

I don't know, I've generally found that most people who are big into D&D have a particular mindset already in mind.

I mean, just 4 years ago they released "The Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard", where one dungeon's enemies were all "half drow" who were the progeny of "Evil Humans" + Drow, whose only crime, as far as was described, was miscegenation.

And while certainly there's been improvements from 3rd edition onwards in terms of representation, even the folks who worked at TSR and then WOTC were pretty up front that there was an "affirmative action for white representation" policy in effect (http://montecook.livejournal.com/150303.html).

[info]kynn

May 11 2009, 02:47:26 UTC 3 years ago

I tend to play with people who are open to subverting and challenging the privilege and biases which are quite apparent in D&D-as-published.

In other words, you can only do the "dismantling the bad stuff" scenarios because you already have bad stuff to start with in D&D. That's why I say it's well-suited for this stuff; the bad stuff crumbles pretty easily. :)

I don't deny that the by the books, it's a fucked up game!

[info]jackfirecat

May 11 2009, 20:41:43 UTC 3 years ago

Well done. Yes, there is really no way around the alignment thing is there? The race is all evil, therefore it's Ok to kill them on sight, has to, even amongst teenagers, begin to raise some questions about the orc in front of you is talking to you, so it's conscious, so couldn't it be a 'good' orc if it wanted to be? Maybe it is? (no, that's not allowed) but it says it has a husband and children who it loves and wants to get back to rather than being killed ...

(reaminds me of Austin Powers - didn't that have cut-aways to the henchpeople beging killed becuase they were in the way, but had lives/ were human too?)

[info]agrumer

May 12 2009, 02:09:09 UTC 3 years ago

I don't remember Austin Powers well enough, but there was a bit like that in the comic The Invisibles. In the first issue the heroes break into the bad guys' complex to rescue someone, and the main hero does one of those typical action-hero things where he kills a bunch of henchmen in a hail of gunfire. Then, a bunch of issues later, we get a whole story about this one guy growing up and getting recruited into this organization and finally getting killed by the hero.

[info]jackfirecat

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]the_eleven

May 12 2009, 23:02:23 UTC 3 years ago

The trick in D&D of course is that alignment is real and can be revealed with magic spells such as Know Alignment. So yes, maybe the orc is presenting well in a way that works on your good tendencies towards mercy etc., but if you expose her to a magic light that only burns Evil Creaturestm and she burns...what then, tears or no?

Especially if you're a paladin. No discomfiting historical analogies to the case under question there of course. 0-o

[info]jackfirecat

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]the_eleven

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]jackfirecat

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]damned_colonial

May 11 2009, 06:17:45 UTC 3 years ago

Here via metafandom.

Only an American would posit an empty land which is free to be colonized without thinking twice

Errr. That's exactly the legal basis on which Australia was colonised: the doctrine of Terra Nullius basically said "nobody's using this land, so it's ours." It basically posited that the Australian Aboriginal people weren't people at all, because they were so "uncivilised" that they didn't have cities, farms, etc. Aboriginal people weren't granted citizenship until the 1960s, and I remember things from my childhood that equated Aboriginal people with native animals like kangaroos and emus. I wrote about this stuff a bit the other day over here.

[info]jackfirecat

May 11 2009, 09:18:27 UTC 3 years ago

o yeah. Not such a great record there. And of course when the American colonists began wiping out Native Americans they, the colonists, were British.

What I meant was 'today, only an American ..' etc. But I don't really think that of course - was overstating for effect / to be rude, it should be clear.

[info]burkesworks

May 11 2009, 07:56:17 UTC 3 years ago

gnolls

Are they grassy?

[info]zengineer

May 11 2009, 08:19:55 UTC 3 years ago

Surely as British born we are descended by and large from those who didn't go out colonise. I also fail to see why people should be blamed for the actions of ancestors who died before they were born.
On the TV last night Out of Africa. What must it have been like to be the first tribe to arrive in the Arabian gulf 70000 years ago?

[info]jackfirecat

May 11 2009, 09:26:41 UTC 3 years ago

>What must it have been like to be the first tribe to arrive in the Arabian gulf 70000 years ago?

Being as they were fully modern humans and would have been just as intelligent as we are, and have emotions and temprements just as ours..

they were probably constantly worried that the world was coming to an end; there was considerable irk and quite some sulking when it was discovered that there weren't many mammoths.

[info]zengineer

May 11 2009, 15:40:41 UTC 3 years ago

I've just realised that there were probably primitive hominids already there so actually it was not too dissimilar to your Gnoll scenario. It looks like our primitive colonialists eliminated the opposition using superior physique and weapons technology.

[info]jackfirecat

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]anselmo_b

May 11 2009, 16:29:07 UTC 3 years ago

Surely it's not people, individuals that is, who are blamed for the sins of their ancestors. It is peoples or cultures who are. And as far as those peoples or cultures persist through time, I don't see a reason not to. We certainly shouldn't be made responsible for what other people did, dead or alive, but we should be aware of what we might have been, or might still become, part of. After all, we share in the spoils or losses that ensue from the acts of our culture, past and present.

[info]jackfirecat

May 11 2009, 20:14:23 UTC 3 years ago

indeed. 'Be Aware' might be an accurate summary of the whole complaint. Although it would have been said more like 'Could you be a bit less *Aware* for fuck's sake?' in many (but not all) of the posts about it.

the tone argument again? yes

[info]anselmo_b

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]zengineer

May 13 2009, 08:15:34 UTC 3 years ago

I certainly think that we should be made aware of what happened. During the Boer war the British in South Africa institued a system of concentration camps and the knowledge that this happened should make all British people aware that this must not be repeated. The Nazis also used concentration camps but if the German people collectively are blamed for this - and particularly if reparations are involved - there will be an urge to deny the seriousness of what happened.
I suppose I am wary of ascribing something to culture that is the collective actions of a particular group of people at a particular time in history. To me it is a bit close to denying individual responsibility.

[info]undyingking

May 11 2009, 13:17:26 UTC 3 years ago

in our Empire, there were clearly people there already

Not in Australia, which was legally explicitly declared to be empty of habitation, and so entirely up for grabs. Maybe the British just had a lower threshold for indigenous people being worthy of consideration -- a quantitative, not a qualitiative, difference.

I like your campaing idea though. That would have blown my mind, had I run across it as a youngster.

[info]jackfirecat

May 11 2009, 20:07:09 UTC 3 years ago

>Not in Australia

oops. indeed. and it was agit prop anyway, ahem, and see above re they (the American colonists) were British for a time there anyway.

Difference was prob. just practical at root, no matter how they spun it to themselves: in N America we needed allies, there were other colonials there; in Australia we had it to ourselves.

>I like your campaing idea though.

Thank you. I was fond of my Gnoll rangers (who were trying to do some sort of the right thing).

[info]celestialweasel

May 12 2009, 21:39:09 UTC 3 years ago

Yesbutnobut. You are almost certainly right that the D&D set up reflects an American (or even Mid-West?) world-view, but clearly given the absurdity of the dungeon this is straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.
Then again, because of the well known rule that 'fighters are linear, mages are quadratic' (see here) why is the D&D world not an oppressive mageocracy?

[info]jackfirecat

May 13 2009, 20:28:41 UTC 3 years ago

indeed, it is all a bit bizarre as a world, but I don't think that renders all questions of how people behave in that world null - would you torture people for information; would you torture people you knew/assumed to be evil for information, is the question different? and so on. And if you did so, would you see yourself as 'good' or 'evil'.

Just as physics questions can be explored with thought-experiments, so can questions of morality/ correct behaviour, surely?

Alignment doesn't help, but neither does it entirely take the questions away since one could change alignement if one wanted to.

oh dear, some humour from talking about D&D seriously. I feel uncomfortable. But NEVERTHELESS...

[info]jackfirecat

May 13 2009, 20:34:20 UTC 3 years ago

PS thanks for the link, "Willow was still solidly in the Quadratic camp"

[info]juggzy

3 years ago

  • Loading...

[info]jackfirecat

3 years ago

  • Loading...

Anonymous

September 11 2009, 21:33:25 UTC 2 years ago

more of same inside

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-6911-RPG-Examiner~y2009m9d10-American-fantasy-in-roleplaying-games

[info]jackfirecat

February 15 2010, 21:07:00 UTC 2 years ago

Reading my back pages

Didn't see this at the time, somehow. Thank you! That's interesting. D&D as the Banking Crisis!
Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Facebook Twitter More login options
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…