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.

  • Smeagolicious [they/them]
    ·
    11 months ago

    I can't begin to describe how much it makes me want to strangle someone when I say the racial elements in DnD (etc.) are off putting and reminiscent of real life discriminatory ideas, and they respond

    "What about Orcs/Goblins/Kobolds/etc. make them like black people /Jews/indigenous peoples/etc?? Sounds like you're the real racist smuglord "

    • MelianPretext [they/them]
      ·
      11 months ago

      I had a migraine session on reddit back when hogwarts legacy was released from arguing how blatant the racial coding of the goblins was. The game actually encapsulates how mindless it has become for this "head empty, genocide ready" mentality for designated "evil" races in modern fantasy to be readily used by writers and accepted wholesale by apparently most of the audience.

      Beyond the already odious Jewish caricature borrowed from the original Harry Potter representation as greedy moneylenders, classic subconscious British liberal chauvinism by JKR, the game went further by making the goblins an antagonistic faction which uses militant means to secure their species rights. This is viewed by the protagonists through the same light that liberals view real world armed resistance groups of marginalized peoples like the Black Panthers and, of course, Palestinians.

      The goblins canonically live in an apartheid state where they're relegated as financial serfs for the humans, with restrictions on magic use and unable to access the same educational institutions that humans do. Yet, because Ranrok (their leader) chose violence (along with doing plot nonsense bad things to justify their elimination), the usual liberal exclamation of "they've gone too far and ruined the purity of their victimhood" comes up. There is literally a comprador goblin by the name of Arn who opposes Ranrok's movement and bemoans (in a chud dialogue scene) that "While I would like to see goblinkind treated by wizards as equals, bloodshed is not the answer."

      This typical liberal sentiment, the same one even MLK denounced in his Birmingham Jail letter, is wildly hilarious when applied to the Harry Potter universe. Ranrok is defeated, so certainly his violent ways must be disproven by a vindication of the liberal "peaceful gradualism" theory right? Except the game is set a full century before the books, and so we know that canonically absolutely nothing has changed in human-goblin race relations nor would goblin rights improve even a single inch. Dumbass comprador Arn's fantasy of a "diplomatic end to the discord with wizardkind" still has predictably made zero progress in a hundred years, and ever onwards considering J.K. "Elves love slavery" Rowling never cared about addressing the racial apartheid of the setting.

      Also, the protagonist is a full blown psychotic terrorist who literally shouts "Your blood is on Ranrok's hands" as they murder goblinfolk- all while being an underage Hogwarts student. This last bit tore apart the cognitive dissonance far enough that even the reddit crowd started memeing about it (and of course, there were the customary apologists in there explainbroing how this was all still OK and kosher).