I am sorry if this is something basic that has been discussed to death before but I feel like I need to get this out of my system before I ruin friendships by wishing centuries of humiliation on people for the way they play pretend.
I had a casual chat with a friend and fellow GM about our current campaigns and worldbuilding. At some point beast races come up and I mention I like gnolls and give a few short details about their society in my setting. In response I get an explanation that he can't have this kind of characterization because of Goebbles level bullshittery about how beastmen are inherently savage and destructive and basically a swarm of pests that has to be put down. And how this is necessary in order to address the moral issues of what to do with beastmen non-combatants. Essentially giving players moral license to commit genocide and still be considered "good" in-universe.
It felt so fucking unreal seeing how normally chill people can almost reproduce word for word the vile shit that Zionists are using right fucking now as a justification for mass murder and not have a single moment of "oh shit wait wtf am I saying". I had to step away from the keyboard and calm down. I hate how concept of "sapient creatures that are completely and irredeemably evil and are specifically designed to be slaughtered" is seen as something completely normal and even expected. Gygax was a piece of shit genocide enthusiast who deserves to rot in hell and it's high time that we move on from colonial plunder sims with dragons and obligatory others that exist only to be killed and looted.
You are building an imaginary world and there are no limits. The genre is literally called imagination. There is no excuse for consciously designing entire species that are designated for slaughter and reproducing some of the vilest ideologies ever thought up by humans as a pillar of your worldbuilding.
That's it I guess. That's the rant. Thanks for reading. I am doing my best trying to give positive portrayals of non-human societies in my games and also trying to get my friends to play other games that aren't built from around breaking into others' homes to kill them and take their stuff.
I had one of those. My table killed an orc hunting party. Who were simply hunting to feed their family. This resulted in a border war between the orc people and the nearby settled kingoms. The running joke for a while was them being paid by both sides to find who did these murders and bring them to justice to help with the peace process.
Lol that’s cool.
Mine was right before Obama in like peak Iraq war times and it was a fucking struggle to plan anything that didn’t seem ripped from the headlines.
Tbh probably same for a person trying to fuck with their party now. “If they weren’t enemy combatants then why were they in the dungeon?” “Mf what’s a dungeon? This is a bugbear camp”