Can't We All Just Get Along?
Considering the Inquisition of the Week is ‘Races’ I thought I’d look at an issue that has personally caused me fair share of incredulous chuckles and uncomfortable examinations: race in Dungeons & Dragons. At first blush, D&D is a harmless fantasy game of heroes and villains, black & white. This article will examine the phenomena, offer some explanations as to its implications, and suggest how I have, anecdotally, approached the quandary of race in Dungeons & Dragons.
Orcs are just stand-ins for the hordes of mooks from action cinema, they just happen to look different than us. After all, every evil villain needs his flunkies, and the tradition of fantasy has those flunkies inevitably appear as inhuman beasts. But then, consider how D&D has evolved and how vastly different it is than the action movies I compare them to. In those movies, the protagonist can’t enter a bar, sense that an off-duty mook is there, and unceremoniously bash his face in. They are just normal guys that work for a bad guy (a fact that the Venture Brothers show loves to toy with). Now, let’s consider the scenario in D&D. The party walks into a bar in a normal town, sees an Orcish gathering, and a dwarf unlimbers his axe and goes to town on them. My point isn’t to argue whether or not that a ‘good guy’ would do that, but just that the Players, based on typical source material provided by Wizards of the Coast, would consider such an action reasonable, if not prudent. After all, Orcs are evil.
Not only are they evil, but they have a genetic predisposition to heightened strength and health. I guess that makes them good athletes too, right? And man, they sure can take a lot of punishment thanks to that Encounter power! And it’s not just Orcs, it is every race. Just consider the underlying assumptions PCs make every time they encounter a humanoid they are familiar with. The underlying implication, that you know something about a person based on their race, is anathema to the state ethos of our modern society, yet we play a game that not only enforces this notion, but thrives on it. There are a few plausible reactions to this kind of inherent racism.
First and foremost, some may choose to dismiss this line of thought because we are admittedly speaking about a fantasy game. Part of the game is succinctly describing to players what their characters are experiencing. Races, and their standard modus operandi, are valuable shorthand for the players and DM. What may be inappropriate for real life (hey there Jew, be my lawyer!) works well in a fantasy role playing context. Moreover, races that have different rules provide different play options and interesting decisions in character building, both of which are good things. On the other hand, it’s inescapable that race in D&D exists to justify the annihilation and pillaging from lesser beings. After all, how often are PCs challenged to consider the morality in plunging through a goblin warren, taking all valuables, and leaving cowering goblin children and infants with nothing? I suspect such things are infrequently considered. What’s more is this kind of chilling logic serves as an eerie mirror into classic justifications for expansion in modern human history (such as the American West or Hitler’s Third Reich).
As a DM I embrace D&D for what is, a game, but I refuse to allow the players lazy, albeit justified, racism act as an excuse for what would otherwise be poor behavior. Typically I use NPCs and occasions where races act “against the grain”, such as the peaceable goblins that find their homey warren invaded by overzealous dwarven miners. What’s more, I categorically reject the notion that monster types or races are unequivocally of a certain alignment. PCs learn rather quickly from this and find that although they can predict combat tactics and the like based on race they should be weary in assuming that they can ‘heroically’ attack the bugbears. All in all, I think that the D&D can promote a sort of racist laziness in players that I find both boring and disturbing. Rather than railing against its propensity for causing this I find that tailoring my style to be aware of this tendency acts as a sufficient curb on the greatest excesses D&D racism can cause.
Nice & insightful post.
It gives interesting story ideas to explore.
– Peaceful group of Orcs under regular assault from human thieves ask help from the group.
– A room in a dungeon being cleared by the PCs where all the scared women, children and elderly are hiding from the murderous creatures that have invaded their home.
Eric Maziade´s last post: Scepter Tower of Spellgard Prequel Report – Area 4
Reminds me of the old “does the party wipe out the orc children because they could grow up to be evil” scenario. For me, I despise “black and white” in D&D. I much prefer shades of gray. It makes for a more interesting world. In my campaigns, none of the monsters alignments are automatic. It’s all based upon actions, not stat block.
Tony Law´s last post: Eberron PbP Story Hour – Chapter 3: Sharn rain is a hard rain
Interesting post.
I think you also have to remember that what we think of as different races in real life, are still the same species. Not so with D&D races. In D&D, they don’t give, say, black humans a +2 to Strength and asian humans a +2 to Intelligence. They all get the same bonuses, regardless of skin color, because they are all human.
Orcs are not human, elves are not human, and elves are not orcs. They are entirely different species, just like chimpanzees are not human, and have different strengths and weaknesses. No one says that arguing that chimps are stronger but less intelligent than humans is racist, because they are a different species. If you walked into a room and saw a chimp, you would interact with it differently than with a human. I’m not saying that orcs and elves are inferior to humans the way we consider chimps to be, just using that as an example, since there are no other sentient humanoids on this planet.
@Swordgleam – True but if I were to interact with a sentient being on any level, I would not jump to conclusions on how it will act. I would reserve judgement until after it’s actions, real world or fantasy.
I’ve seen too many people, in a fantasy setting, interact with other races and automatically assume they fit the cookie-cutter mold described in the PHB or MM. As far as I can tell, that’s the gist of this article.
Tony Law´s last post: Eberron PbP Story Hour – Chapter 3: Sharn rain is a hard rain
@Swordgleam: That’s an excellent point and one that I considered before I wrote the article. However, I think that the use of aliens and fantasy races in Sci Fi/Fantasy has so often been used as stand-ins for homosexuals and modern ‘race issues’ that the fantasy racism I speak of doesn’t quite get a pass. It boils down to me having a problem with, “Hey you look different, I get to treat you like shit…” based on species or race!
“What may be inappropriate for real life (hey there Jew, be my lawyer!) works well in a fantasy role playing context.”
This also works incredibly well in all kinds of literature and narrative, and has for a long long time. Why do you think that The Merchant of Venice is a Jew? Because it was excellent short-hand for avaricious money-lender.
Indeed, however ‘wrong’ it may seem, this kind of stereotyping is what people do. People are quick to categorize others and take assumptions based on that. There is nothing inherently wrong with stereotyping. It’s only when you assume that an individual must conform to a stereotype that you get in trouble.
…I’m sure I’m going to get into trouble for this though :p
I think you’re playing the game for a different reason than I am, and probably most of the gaming population.
Your arguments are actually rather tired and boring. Anybody can look at anything and find something that offends them if they choose to. Being offended by monsters being treated badly in game is your choice, not the intent of the game or the designers.
Gygax did not create the Drow to represent black people in the game, and make them evil because he hated blacks. When I sit down to DM or play, I don’t tell my players that they have to kill the orcs because they are different. Orcs do not exist in the game as an analogy or as a euphemism for anything other than a monster to fight, it is a fantasy game after all.
Sure, plenty of arguments have been made that Tolkein wrote the LotR as an analogy of WWII and that orcs and golbins represented the Nazi’s. Frankly I don’t care because when I read it, I see the minions of Sauron as the antagonist and the elves and humans as the protagonist, just like any other story has.
In essence, you are creating the racism in fantasy. You are pointing out similarities between real world stereotypes and fantasy tropes that most people do not see, care about or agree with. Insisting that they exist only serves the purpose to prove your acceptance of them, not the actual existence of any real ‘racism’.
The MM lists orcs as Chaotic Evil. This defines the general attitude and intention of orcs as a creature type. They do not recognize law as a way of life and kill for the pleasure. If you want to have orcs be unaligned or even good in your game, it’s your game have at it. But a MM full of unaligned or good creatures makes for a very boring game in general. It doesn’t match the flavor of D&D or heroic fantasy.
Maybe your just playing the wrong game.
Crater´s last post: Do RPG bloggers represent the hobby?
In Second Ed. every adventurer pictured was a WASP.
Larry Elmore never drew a black adventurer back in the day…
Not calling the 2nd Ed. guys racists… but it is funny…
Blacks and hispanics didn’t adventure unless they were from Meztica or some other niche continent….
…not that this has anything to do with your post, but it came to mind…
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I’ve been toying with my current players with a similar line of thinking, they were all prepared to wipe out a goblin camp until the rogue messed up and got everyone caught. Then they found out that things were not as they seemed.
This black and white is something that has always bothered me about most fantasy settings
As a player I once played the Dwarven Wizard that drank wine instead of grog. Oh… and seemed to have more eleven friends then dwarven friends! Talk about going against stereotypes. I think it is easier as a player.
@The Main Event: This is something that’s always bothered me too. As a result, I try to mix things up when I DM, and as a player, I tend to question before unslinging weapons.
@Crater: While I respect your opinion and play preference as a way to keep things simple in game, I am going to nitpick one point. Unless you are the late Mr. Gygax, (and if you are – congrats on transcending death to post this,) or have had a personal conversation with him regarding his intentions, then you can’t say one way or the other what he had in mind when the foundations were being laid. Aside from this, I appreciate seeing a post that proffers a different opinion and doesn’t digress into “u r teh sux!!!1!111!!!1eleventy!”
I’m sorry, but this discussion has been floating around RPG discussions for decades. I’m going to call it what it is, a weak attempt at getting comments and hits by stirring up an old and tired argument. A more venerable version of “4e Sucks”.
RPG’s are either very complicated systems for telling stories, or very simplified systems for simulating the real world. Often they are both at the same time.
In either case, though, they rely on some “shorthand”tricks that storytellers of all types have been using for thousands of years, in many different contexts. General descriptions of racial (really, species in this case) traits is one of those things.
You say you’re an aspiring writer, so you’ve never used any character who fit a “racial” or, as you seem to think “racist”stereotype? No athletic black characters, or intelligent asian characters, or racist white characters? Ever?
I’m sure that some of the people, at some time, who were involved with the development of the fantasy genre or RPG’s were racist. Heck, almost anyone from the early part of the century was hella-racist compared with what we think is appropriate now. But does that mean that Gygax was implying that all black people were evil when he created the Drow?
Don’t make me fucking laugh. He was trying to differentiate them visually from regular elves by making them negative reflections of real elves. And he may have been drawing on Scandinavian dokkalfar mythology at the same time. I’m sorry if the standard dwarven stereotype is insulting to your scottish and engineering ancestors, but I think you are wrong in insinuating that differentiating by species in RPG’s is “racist”, and I think that any game that doesn’t address the moral issues involved in wholesale slaughter, even slaughter that doesn’t involve the defenseless is childish but not evil.
Or maybe it’s just that some people like to roll dice and pretend to hit things and not worry about ethics and morality and political correctness and race politics for a few hours a week. I’m just sayin.
Although I have also seen this argument dozens of times, I too believe that the idea is interesting. But then again, I spent my college years writing papers on race and sex issues in literature, so maybe this is just the type of issue that gets my gears turning.
If this is something you like reading about, you should check out the two or three most recent R.A. Salvatore books. Yes, Drizzt breaks racial stereotypes and the issue has come up from time to time in Salvatore’s writing since the very beginning, but the issue has really become the focus since Obould Many-Arrows came onto the scene.
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@Highbulp: Your point about literature is a very solid one, but your example (The Merchant of Venice) isn’t quite on point because it was written hundreds of years ago by Shakespeare in a time when racism wasn’t treated QUITE the same way…
@Crater: I think you may be bringing some baggage to this article. First, with any creative endeavor, part of the issue is how its perceived and received by the masses. So, my opinion is perfectly valid. You blog about the worthlessness of most blog posts, but you seem to have been sucked into something that’s ‘tired and boring.’ If that’s the case I feel sorry for you being unable to pull yourself away from articles you hate. Personally, I don’t have the time to waste on tired/boring writing. No where does this article call for the ‘abolition’ of races in D&D. In fact, I acknowledge the usefulness of this kind of ‘shorthand.’ If you read my conclusion, I in fact DO change the ‘always evil’ nonsense. If you’d like some opinions as to how ‘boring’ my games have been ask TheGame, TheO, Original Sultan, or Bartoneus how they felt about my many campaigns and they’ll be happy to tell you. Judging by the comments here, a lot of people seem to agree with my tired and boring method of play.
@WickedMurphy: There is no reason you would have been aware of this, but I have no ownership stake in this website. I write for my own edification and as a favor to my friends that run it, so the thought of this being a ‘weak attempt’ to get hits does not make sense. Secondly, never did I say that racism was the INTENTION of the D&D’s creators. Again, I’m speaking about the results I have observed after years of play. I believe that stereotyping is LAZY and UNINTELLIGENT when it comes to meeting actual people and apply that belief to my games. Kill the cackling goblin brandishing a spear in the evil temple, but for the love of pete don’t jack up the one peaceably wandering around town. If you pick the black guy first to play basketball on your team and have never seen him play, more power to you, but I’ll generally pick someone I’ve seen play and know is good. Its 2009 and if you want to just run 5 room dungeon blow outs chock full of treasure, then go ahead and wipe out the whole goblin nation. It really doesn’t bother me and 4E is well suited for that style of play moreso than any previous edition of D&D. On the other hand, if you want players to be in a living breathing world where thoughtful actions are rewarded and there are consequences to wanton unprovoked slaughter, consider my suggestions. Neither style is wrong, its just a thought on how to change things up!
Yeah, sorry Murph, but I understand that while it’s a touchy subject that may be well-tread upon ground, that’s no reason to ascribe other motives. I asked for something to go with our theme of “Races” this week, and that happened to be what sprang to mind for TME. If I just wanted hits, I’d have made up a bunch of junk “revealed” at D&D XP and post that.
I also found it interesting that the stuff about Drow was brought up in multiple comments, but wasn’t referenced at all in the article, nor connected really.
Tolkien is quoted several times as saying that he hated allegory in literature and that was not his intent in any part of LOTR. I tend to disagree with him, and just think that he was deluding himself a bit, but felt his thoughts on his own writing are relevant to some of the previous comments here.
I’m also really curious about Drow showing up in the comments, especially in relation to black people, when nothing was mentioned about them in the post itself.
@WickedMurph: “I’m sorry, but this discussion has been floating around RPG discussions for decades. I’m going to call it what it is, a weak attempt at getting comments and hits by stirring up an old and tired argument. A more venerable version of “4e Sucks”.”
AND YOU SO FELL FOR IT! Walked right into the trap. If you’re truly a proponent of not ever talking about something that’s been discussed before, then I hope you strongly consider taking up a vow of silence and not arguing about anything.
Ehh…
So, one of the things to keep in mind is that in DnD in particular you are dealing with a universe of moral absolutes. There IS definable and quantifiable good and evil. The real world is a lot more murky on that subject. You are also attempting to map modern sensibilities onto a world that is (generally) not modern. Admittedly we tend to have a lot of modern societal anachronism in games, but it’s not necessarily a 1 to 1 mapping.
Additionally, I’d disagree that in a game system (which is an abstraction to begin with) that stereotypes are lazy or unintelligent. It’s more about efficiency of how to convey the standard/default assumption for the setting. In a game system when we say “Elves are dexterous” and “Dwarves are hearty” we can back that up with mechanical values. +2 to dex, +2 to con. We /know/ that it’s true because the rules tell us. There can always be exceptions, even in a standard setting, but there is a norm and the easiest way to convey that is through what you are labeling as “stereotypes”.
Orcs (and other such creatures) don’t represent just the thug/mook dynamic. They are raiders and heathens, being from outside society who, as a group, are out to destroy you and all you hold dear. Is that simplistic? Yeah. Is it ethnocentric? Sure. Is it morally right? Eh, depends on the moral structure you are using. Is it racist? I’d say no, it’s not because by default it’s true. (then there is the whole racist vs species-ist argument thing… )
That all said, I don’t run a standard game. I tend to ignore alignment. My monsters have reasons for being where they are, and do not exist in vacuums for the adventures to fight.
edit: (re: drow… they are references in some of the link out stuff in the main article. And they are often used as examples in the “Dnd is racist” arguments so by touching on this subject you get all the baggage that comes with it.)
justaguy´s last post: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology…
If anything, I’d say that D&D (and many other P&PRPGs out there) lump cultural and societal features in with racial ones, simply because it makes the race slightly more coherent. I don’t like it myself, and I enjoyed the concept of Regional Benefits that the Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide included, but I can understand why it was done – by building and catering to the images and stereotypes of races that both players and characters have, it means that worldbuilders don’t have to explain each and every NPC’s intentions, moral outlook, baby-killing tendencies, physique, hair colour, skin hue and so on.
Mitch´s last post: Race, Culture and Alignment
A couple of people called this discussion old and tired, yet there is still a plethora of words posted as comments.
And being a good-natured orc myself (at least when I was alive), I resent the PCs entering my brethren’s lairs without probable cause. Where are our 4th amendment rights, anyway?
I didn’t “fall for it”, I knew I was getting sucked into a difficult and contentious discussion when I made the post. I like arguing about things, though – even tired things. However, I do retract the “just to get posts” bit, with apologies. It was unwarranted, and I stand rightly rebuked.
However, I stand by the rest of my post. Stereotyping can be lazy or unintelligent, when it’s used to make yourself feel better or more superior to someone. But I don’t think it’s valid to identify only one use of stereotyping out of a game, hell a genre of games, that is rife with it and imply that it’s somehow racist. RPG’s use shorthands and stereotyping for everything. They have to – it’s the only way to make something this complicated simple enough to even approximate with a mechanical model. Classes are stereotypes, even statistics are just stereotypical approximations of real-world characterists. Do you argue that RPG’s are “elitist” because characters with high stats are better than weak ones?
I also agree with you that to run an interesting game, most GM’s will probably try to present a somewhat more nuanced depiction of other races, even the “mook” races, than a “you orc, we kill” worldview. Although we’ve all had players who are happy with that, haven’t we? Presenting interesting and believable characters is critical to maintaining an interesting campaign, and adding moral and ethical questions can add a great deal to a game, if the players are into that sort of thing.
I guess my big beef with this post, and the reason that I reacted so strongly to it, is that I feel that you, The Main Event, used a title that misrepresents your main argument, and one that will intentionally cause a strong reaction. Your post really isn’t about racism. It’s about the importance of not succumbing to stereotyping when creating characters, and about not allowing players to use assumed in-game racism as an excuse for doing what they want.
No worries, murph.
Now to work on my next article, “Dungeons & Dragons & Sexism & Political Parties & Religion.”
“No one says that arguing that chimps are stronger but less intelligent than humans is racist”
No, it would be specist. Thought few, there are people that fight against specism and for animal rights. No that they defend animals are as inteligent as humans, but they do defend they should have their own rights (against exploration such as done with horses, agaisnt bad treatment, and specially against pointless killing).
But, returning to the main discussion, certainly there is racism in D&D. As there was (even more) in LoTR, and in The Chronicles of Narnya, for example. Theses two are passed worlds akin to Europe, and peoples from other cultures were downright evil and inferior: easterlings, southrons, calormans… I love Tolkien’s work, but there’s no point arguing there’s no racism in it. Dúnedain were superior men, as recognized by the Valar themselves, and had the right to rule over other men.
In D&D, I usually handle the racism in a different way when I DM a game. I try to make the world more “realistic”, and so I introduce a lot of prejudice and racism ingame. So, humans in the world generally feel all elves are sorcerous, even the woodelves that hate magic as much as they do. There’s any trouble in the town? It has to be the Tiefling’s fault. I assume the world is viewed by the point of view of specific people, and I made it clear that these people think this way, but it need not be the true – in short, the characters are racist, not the players.
Also, I do not like to use a lot of mindless monsters and different races or fights against evil. Usually I make the players fight another men, in conflicts where there’s not one right and one wrong party – simple enemies, or people with different points of view.
Now, about the prejudice, I find it much more disturbing about religion. It’s possible to have an orc or a drow that is good, but not a cleric from an evil deity. If you meet a cleric of Vecna, he will be evil and you may kill him on sight and do the world a favor. That’s why I also abolished deity alignment in my campaign setting, making gods more complex than simply good or evil.
I frankly applaud the article. I also think Elda King makes a valid point in that the literary background that has inspired and been transcribed onto the FRP /D&D template was wonderful but flawed by some chronologically-based racism.
My contribution is that FRP’s allow us, as we grow and mature ourselves, to change the games we play to address these issues if they bother a GM or player (while hopefully not affecting the fun aspect of the game). Like Justaguy, I removed absolute alignment years ago, as I find it a crutch for players and GM’s alike. And as Elda King mentioned, it makes little sense for deities, as well.
One of the things I consiously tackled in my setting was the racism issue, but specifically having a race vs. culture conflict, setting the campaign time period at a point where the orcash and gartier (orcs and bugbears) are being slowly assimilated into society, but dealing with racial tensions within the societies themselves.
I know it is all just a game and we play to have fun. But in the creation of a setting and a world, it can be very rewarding to deal with real issues head on. And I believe that the original post was written in that spirit.
LordVreeg´s last post: Celtrician Worship
This is a tired argument that has been better stated in the past.
If you try to look at this pulpy game through the lens of social justice and morality you are doing a disservice to the game and to morality. All games that have combat at their center are basically making entertainment out of imagined murder and manslaughter which seems horrible if you look at it like that, but it is an innocent game, not an attempt to make light of the evils of the world.
So spend your time working towards social justice in the real world and play in your fantasy world.
Eberron gets around a lot of this by NOT having the moral absolutes of standard D&D (which is the main reason that there’s no reason to have any real restraint when dealing with orcs – born evil, die evil). Shoot, they’re not even positive the gods exist. There, you’re just as likely to share a train car with bugbear mine workers and goblin wine stewards. One of the many reasons we think it’s by far the best setting ever done for D&D.
While this debate might be decades old, that doesn’t mean it should be buried in the archives. There is still plenty of room for discussion on the subject.
I remember one campaign our PCs met a group of Duegar, who are supposed to be evil. As I was playing a Dwarf I was gun-ho to take them out. What we quickly learned was that we needed to ally with the Duegar in order to accomplish our larger objective. As this alliance developed we learned that the Duegar were waging a centuries old holy war against demonic forces and that they were loosing. Certainly not the typical history that I associated with Duegar.
Like Wayne, I enjoy the Eberron setting for it’s lack of absolutes and how it has redefined how civilized races view monstrous races and vice versa.
Whether racism exists in D&D is in large part a matter of perspective, IMO. If you believe that there is no absolute good or evil and that actions determine everything, then the alignments in D&D would seem to suggest that it is stereotyped / racist. But if you believe that there is an absolute good or evil, that good or evil is for some things inherent, then the alignments for certain races are completely justified. It goes back to the whole nature / nurture thing.
Consider Tolkien. Many scholars argue that the orcs and goblins are NOT analogies to the Nazis, or to any other stereotyped “evil” human empires / peoples over the years, but are instead analogies to demons. As in like, from hell. If that is the case, then at least to Tolkien, the evil nature of orcs and goblins is inherent and absolute. Compare that to the nature of Elves, which to Tolkien is essentially good (some have argued a loose analogy to angels), or to the nature of Men, which is more gray and capable of both good and evil. If different races / species are simply ‘created’ good or evil by nature, then it is perfectly acceptable to stereotype them.
Now, maybe in your campaign world you don’t accept that reasoning. Or maybe that reasoning clashes with your personal beliefs. That’s fine. There is no right or wrong way to play D&D, or any other role playing game. But a world where good and evil are not absolute and everything is gray, well, that’s just one way to play. I don’t think it is necessarily better or worse than going with a more absolutist / creationist world (like Tolkien’s) where by definition, certain races or species are either good or evil. Just different.