Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book
This isâŠ. An interesting thing to say⊠on this post in particularâŠ.
I think a lot of people reblogging this from @probablybadrpgideas are interpreting this as âthis would be such a funny wacky way to make the table soooo complicatedâ but I mean this as a complaint about the way that so many tabletop players seem to just. completely lack an understanding of ethics. what it actually means to behave ethically and treat others ethically. and i dont mean this as "why do people want to be mean and play as villains? :(" i mean "why are there so many tabletop players that sympathize with outright fascist factions to the point of wondering why theyre listed as 'Lawful Evil' in the book"
can you talk me through why this was a particularly bad or challenging thing for your party to have done
Goblins were in fact, for me, a turning point on this concept. I had a player who wanted to be a goblin, and I forgot about this fact up to the point that the party got a quest to kill goblins. As soon as I was announcing the quest I realized it would be a problem, though I didn't have anything else ready so I went with it. And it was! The players immediately questioned why the mayor was paying mercenaries to kill goblins, and then further questioned his justifications, at which point I realized it would be a better story if the goblins were a scapegoat and not an actual villain. This turned into a terse interrogation where the mayor threatened to put them in jail once their questions got pointed enough that he would have to either field accusations or lie; they then went CSI on the situation and drilled through his political cabinet to get answers. I had to improv pretty much all of it and I don't remember the actual ending (I know they sided with the goblins and the mayor was guilty), but this helped me realize that the Gary Gygax writing style of "certain races are just BAD and that's why they hang out in dungeons" was very short-sighted.
D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."
I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?
Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.
They let the cat out of the bag by making these playable races; because now, they're not cut-and-dry villanous societies. They're people. There are Drow accountants whose lives are about balancing taxes, not worshipping Lolth. There are Yuan-Ti who don't sacrifice babies on altars, and much prefer playing the lute or sewing blankets. Yet we're still expected to read "Chaotic Evil" under the Monster Manual entry for a bugbear and take it seriously.
Reblogging again to add a quick take: as a DM introducing ethics makes your game so much better.
I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn't think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.
Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.
The moral I'm trying to convey is that you need to treat every NPC in your game as a world within themselves. And I mean EVERY NPC. Why are the wolves attacking people? Are they desperately hungry? Mind controlled? Territorial due to poachers? Why are the goblins working for the wizard? Extortion? Promise of riches? If the bandits see that everyone is in armor, why wouldn't they just let the party pass and wait for easier prey? If one of the bandits die, why wouldn't the rest of them run for the hills?
hereâs a couple of articles on the history of racism + xenophobia in tolkien & how that influenced dnd
This is the first installment of a two-article series about the racist origins, nature, and ramifications of orcs, a malevolent humanoid spe
This is the complement to my previous article , âOrcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.â In t
anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times theyâll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.
theyâve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.
highly recommend!!
the amount of people in the notes going "um actually you're the problem for pointing out subconscious biases" is just astouding.
Like I'm sorry to tell you, but if you keep playing shit that tells you some races are inherently evil and deserving of eradication, then yea. That will absolutely seep into your subconscious beliefs and worldview.
Especially with stuff like this, where it already is DEEPLY ingrained in society and all these "evil" races stereotype non-western ethnicities to some degree
btw, the refusal to acknowledge the racism present in modern fantasy and the like, are the product of "the curtains are just blue" mindset.
It's the same ridiculing of the notions that stories and actions may have meaning beyond what it explicitly stated.
