Nah I can remember people rightfully pointing out prior to 2017 that the only race of dark skinned elves being by default evil in dnd was kinda weird, among other such things. Idk if that’s just when it collided with the discourse culture of the internet but people were arguing about that stuff in forums and on reddit subs since I’ve been into dnd which goes back to at least 2012 or so.
I feel like it’s just part of the long slow culture shift and more and more poc voices being in rpg/fantasy communities
Ah yeah, that's a good point. I was never into those settings where Dark Elves were literally dark skinned (I've never played D&D). That's probably why I didn't notice.
I mean I think the biggest issue with it is the concept of “evil races” themselves echoes racist bioessentialist race science that has and continues to harm minorities. Drows are an example but virtually all fantasy is downwind of tolkien and is an inherent part of the genre that is pretty consistently critiqued by POC fans.
I hate the evil races thing, it's very much not necessary. I can understand monsters like a mindflayer and a beholder, because they would have a completely different sense of morality, but intelligent humanoid races, that live in contact with one another (at least sort of), yeah, you're telling me that they are all inherently evil? Yeah, I don't like that. Also, fuck alignment, it's ridiculously simple and doesn't bring anything cool to the game, besides maybe a few memes
Nah I can remember people rightfully pointing out prior to 2017 that the only race of dark skinned elves being by default evil in dnd was kinda weird, among other such things. Idk if that’s just when it collided with the discourse culture of the internet but people were arguing about that stuff in forums and on reddit subs since I’ve been into dnd which goes back to at least 2012 or so.
I feel like it’s just part of the long slow culture shift and more and more poc voices being in rpg/fantasy communities
Ah yeah, that's a good point. I was never into those settings where Dark Elves were literally dark skinned (I've never played D&D). That's probably why I didn't notice.
I mean I think the biggest issue with it is the concept of “evil races” themselves echoes racist bioessentialist race science that has and continues to harm minorities. Drows are an example but virtually all fantasy is downwind of tolkien and is an inherent part of the genre that is pretty consistently critiqued by POC fans.
I hate the evil races thing, it's very much not necessary. I can understand monsters like a mindflayer and a beholder, because they would have a completely different sense of morality, but intelligent humanoid races, that live in contact with one another (at least sort of), yeah, you're telling me that they are all inherently evil? Yeah, I don't like that. Also, fuck alignment, it's ridiculously simple and doesn't bring anything cool to the game, besides maybe a few memes