D&D's Problematic Lore That Still Needs Fixing
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It will never be enough.
Progressives: No culture is superior or inherently evil.
Also Progressives: Any culture that isn't western liberalism is inherently evil and inferior.
Whoa whoa whoa, let's unpack this.
Are you saying that other cultures have racism and sexism? Well, I'll have you know I've visited resorts, business meetings, and airports all over the world, and never once has one of the helpful African American poolboys in Kenya called me a racial slur. One of them even laughed with all the exaggerated swagger of an African American teen and called me a mafuta kijinga, which I think means they understand and appreciate our beautiful differences.
I'm a very qualified and intellectual judge of character and honestly I'm better than most people, though for some reason plebs like my ex and my landlord aren't educated enough to appreciate that fact. All they ever harp on about is " I told you not to text me when I'm with Jason," and "where is your rent Noah" Fucking fascist bootlickers, my landlord is an antivaxxer, Biden should put that bitch in a camp.
Anyway, I can say as an objective first hand source that minorities are honestly so much better than whites. Like 95 percent of minorities are vaxxed, and only like 5 percent of whites are, so duh, yeah. Basic science people. Maybe if you read a book once in your life you'd know this.
Any harmful aspects of marginalized culture are transitory and imposed by outside forces like white Imperialism. Once they see how brilliant we are, they will abandon their silly folksy ideas about life and join hands with me in white upper middle class liberalism.
Also, when that doesn't happen, the blame lays squarely on rethuglicans, Russians, and the Taliban, the only three groups on earth that constantly and consistently choose to be evil for absolutely no reason.
Checkmate christards.
*golf clap*
I love how they don't even try to mesh sexism, racism and slavery being always evil with the drow.
They just can't square 'always evil' being racist in the case of drow/orcs with the reality that the cultures, as written, are evil.
Sexism, homophobia and racism have almost no meaning anymore. It is also not the job of the game to decide that this are evil by themselves. If they are then let the game show not tell.
Is actually a lot more interesting to make appealing characters that are also racist. Elves and dwarves think poorly of others, this is interesting. It is racism? maybe but is not the all out evil the author thinks it is.
Racism as barely defined as it is today it is not evil, maybe slightly ignorant.
I still laugh at the wokists looking at DnD orcs and going: 'these are black.'
Excuse me? The rapist warmongers who are extreme barbarian stereotypes.... are coded black...? According to whom?
Says more about them and their views on black people than it does about orcs.
I've got a bookshelf full of RPG books for various systems, mostly 3.5, call of cthuluhu and 2.x Exalted.
I own a 5e player's manual. That's it. My interest in buying in through D&D Beyond is zero. The odds of me wanting a 6e player's handbook? Also zero.
If they want to cater to progressive fuckwits, they don't need my support.
Why 5'th edition? I struggle a bit with why anyone plays it, other then being new. AD&D has a lot more charm, I enjoy how deadly it used to be. 3.5 has so much customization, skills and feats and prestige classes.
Both have more material to work with then you are realistically going to play in your life time.
What does 5'th edition offer that the others do not? For me it looks like a simplified version fo 3.5. I kind of liked the caster changes at first but now is meh, neither interesting nor new.
"Deadly" is not good. If you want "deadly", play a difficult video game. Punish stupid decisions with deadly encounters, but a player that's doing everything correctly should not overly fear death unless the dice really fuck them over. Most of my sessions are just pure roleplay and in-character conversations anyway.
To each their own. I'm not a fan of roleplay. I'm also a firm believer in having the players lose a couple of characters early own. Makes the game a lot more interesting and their characters special. It takes more then just skill and good stats to be a hero, you also need luck.
In addition, the world must be dangerous in order to justify having heroes. If a group of 4-5 heroes can effortless solve everything then you do not need heroes. The world must feel unbalanced in favor of the monsters, many heroes and innocent people find their end in this world, it makes being a hero so much more deserving of praise.
This is why I like AD&D, a lot of save or death, low level monsters that can paralyze and character death is common, actual death not dying and then stabling and all that.
But everyone plays how they feel they want to, that is the beauty of DnD.
And of course, the characters are encouraged to look for alternative ways to deal with encounters that make some encounters easier or skippable. Investigation is necessary and unfortunately this does lead to role playing.
3'd edition is great as well, you can play it on a the harder side and it works great.
Objectively 3d edition is the best.
Buddy, nobody enjoyed the level 1 experience in Baldur's Gate of having to save scum each and every single encounter with a gibberling. You've got some weird goggles on.
Maybe I'm in a minority but I like early levels but not first level. The point was that even later some ghouls can wipe out a party via paralyze attacks. Kind of cool. Keeps things interesting.
I get it that you guys like roleplaying, is fine. I'm ok with roleplaying to some extent but I think combat should be the main part of the game and heroes should not be superheroes. Clearly my ideas are not popular, :)) but honestly I do not care.
Happy new years.
That sounds just terrible. I'm glad you enjoy/enjoyed it, but that sounds like a DM trying to flex how powerful he is (no shit, he's basically a god) due to his own insecurities. 4-5 heroes can't effortlessly save everything, 4-5 heroes can save everything if they do almost everything right and are charismatic and competent at diplomacy (and that's fully roleplayed out, not something you can roll for).
It's basically a social game more than anything. Complex stories and in-depth conversations with interesting NPCs that last for hours upon hours, discussions of strategy where players negotiate the help that influential people can lend them, etc.
Much more engaging than a video game but with dice and cardboard cutouts.
Is basically what you want, combat vs roleplaying. DnD is great because it can offer both and you can chose how you want to run. Most people have like 1/3 combat, 1/3 investigation, 1/3 role playing but you can mix and match however you want.
Boy, they'd be mad at my homebrew setting. There's a couple countries that are importing scab workers from the orc kingdom because they killed most of their own peasants for a socialist style, Jacquerie uprising.
Said orcs are also contributing to crime and are rightly being made to live in ghettos.
Its like these people dont even know homebrew exist and that we are just going to ignore whatever bullshit lore they come up with. I have two different campaigns I am running that we just flip between whatever we feel like doing.
One is set in a Renaissance sort of era (firearms are present and a threat, but still fairly rare outside of Dwarven lands, early industry is present, trade is growing, etc). One kingdom had a law that actively discriminated against magic users until recently, with the party being partly responsible for that change. The Dragonborn Kingdom has an actively enforced caste system where those who are closest to Dragons are treated the best (Lizard Folk, Dragonborn, Dragonkin, and Dragons, with Kobolds being slaves and untouchables). Orcs are literally just Warhammer Orcs. The Drow have their own subterranean empire and are responsible for the vast, overwhelming majority of the black market and slave trade in the world, but there is a small group rebelling and trying to take the empire down because they follow Eilistraee, the only good Drow goddess. And the overall threat is presented by Demons, whos goal is the destruction of all life, lead by the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypses. Famine (a man who silver tongued his way into achieving demonhood), War (a woman who seeked strength, made a pact with demons, and then killed the demons and took her place in demonhood when they came to collect), Pestilence (who killed many demons with a plague and only gave them the antidote if they gave him demonhood), and Death (who is an eldritch being who is unknown to even the Demons).
The other game is set in a magi-tech, Steampunk Wild West sort of world. I made and balanced guns to be the main form of combat, trains are the main form of long distance travel (although airships are the luxury way of travel long distance). There is easy movement between nations, but outlaws still inhabit the outlands. One nation is the United States with all that implies for 1880's America. The Southern Continent used to be enslaved to the Elves, but they launched a violent revolt with the help of the Dwarves, and eventually drove the Elves back. But the Elves set off what was basically a Magical Nuke as they retreated into their homeland, and it still causes significant magical disruption to this day. The Elves have now become violently isolationist due to this. Orcs are more like Elder Scrolls Orcs, where they are still warriors, but they have a code of honor and can live in general society with varying levels of discrimination. And the Drow are still Drow as outlined above.
SJWs would probably need the vapors seeing either of my worlds, especially since I dont hold back and you will absolutely hear normal people complaining about "Those filthy knife-eared bastards" or "Those degenerate scaled beast". But DAMN, we have fun. And my party has done some really strange BS over the years, but it makes for fun games with interesting narratives.
That is an interesting setting, I went for an after war vs demons world where resources are scarce and humans are fighting for survival with demons still lingering and now great armies of undead are marching from the mist marshes led by 7 fallen lords, the undead having their own society, rankings and aspirations.
Sadly not as based as yours. I also do not have orcs and elves and dwarves are very rare with all player characters starting as human until they reach dwarven or elven enclaves, then they can roll new characters if they want.
The only based thing I went for is cultural homogeneity, the importance of family and merit. Nothing like impending doom to bring families and communities together.