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.

  • Venus [she/her]
    ·
    11 months ago

    I'm currently playing through that game and though it's better than Wizards of the Coast it still kinda sucks on this point. At least early on, I just finished ARR, so I'll see if it gets better later.

    In particular I'm thinking of a part of the game where one of the faction leaders is talking about the beastfolk menace and another npc goes "they're literally just defending their homes, you broke the peace treaty you had with them" and the faction leader is just like "yes that is correct. anyway, about the beastfolk menace--"

    • CrushKillDestroySwag
      ·
      11 months ago

      There's a bit later on where Emperor Galvus calls all of the Alliance leaders hypocrites to their faces for how they've dealt with the beast races, which is a really cathartic moment even if comes from a guy whose explicitly committed genocides. Without spoiling too much I'll say that it never really gets resolved but it does get better over time.

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        Sounds like a good excuse to link this article:

        Voldemort does the same thing. He exploits the injustices upon which the Wizarding World is based – the oppression of elves, goblins, giants, etc. – but which it never talks about or faces up to. He acknowledges the existence of social class, aristocracy, biological racism and unaccountable, undemocratic politics within Wizarding society – something that beneficent wizards like Dumbledore are prepared to countenance in silence, with the occasional homily about how wizards have behaved badly. Like Richard, his villainy stems from his awareness and his lack of hypocrisy. Like the others, he exists to be silenced. Like the others, he lets the radical howl be heard, even if in a distant and garbled form.

        These characters exist to raise challenges that cannot be safely ignored forever, then to be ritually crushed and silenced so that the status quo can be resumed with an untroubled feeling of virtue triumphant. The challenge is assimilated and digested, made into nutrition and the excreted, keeping the organism going. The wizards keep their house elves; Gotham City gets the chance to build some new orphanages and stave off its reckoning indefinitely. Sauron brings back the king. Shinzon tries to lead his people to freedom and just ends up helping the Federation make peace with the Empire that enslaved him. We should be allowed to sympathise with the leader of a slave rebellion against an empire, but Star Trek Nemesis makes Spartacus into a mass-murderer [...] But even so, it lets Spartacus in – just for a moment.

      • AdmiralDoohickey@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        11 months ago

        Also later you see those same beast races in another planet where their relations with the more human-like races developed differently, and no-one really treats them any differently so the game reinforces the point that their treatment in most of the game is due to colonialism and nothing more. The game suffers from being written by multiple people really, because that expansion was pretty left-leaning compared to the previous ones with class consciousness and the handling of climate change by the 1st world as themes among other things.

        • RustCat [he/him]
          ·
          11 months ago

          God I wish I could forget everything and play Shadowbringers again