JCC Amph Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies - The Tabletop RPG Discussion Thread

Yeah, probably because Bob Salvatore is pretty open about the fact that despite being constrained by the license he thinks "All [species] are [X]" is silly.

He sort of inadvertently fell backwards into the trap of writing about "one of the good ones" but he definitely meant well.

 

Forgive me if I misremember - it's been a couple of decades - but AFAIR, Drizzt wasn't the only "good one" around in the initial story (a number of them die of being good).

Plus, take away the race, you're still looking at one hell of a terrifying society to live in - something like Nazi Germany mentality, only with a very long-term hold over society, less tech, actual magic, literal monsters, and a psychopathic God overseeing it all. The lack of "good ones" in one such a society isn't a function of race - it's a function of society habitually killing its good elements if they dare try and do something against its rules. And acting against such rules is something very few of our own prove courageous enough to do under the heel of a totalitarian oppressor in our actual history.

If anything, the fact there are still significant amounts of Drow acting against the strictures of their own totalitarianism after millennia of oppression is a testament to their superiority compared with humans...

 

In the initial story he’s already a ranger in Icewind Dale, those books actually about the drow were prequels.

Also I don’t really know what to tell you about there being negative connotations around constantly pointing out how Drizzt is good, unlike most drow. It’s clearly not the point or the intention, but it’s there and it’s painfully reminiscent of how white people still talk about black people they like to this day. Textual reasons for “why” drow society creates those dynamics don’t really fix that association, either, although they are a testament to the fact that Salvatore clearly realized there was an issue.

 

Most cultures had there own myths about fighting demons, casting spell, and killing monsters, not just Europeans.

Why does wizards of the coast have to think orcs and demon monsters are racist stereotypes when they are not?


I sense that D&D is now going to lose a lot of money.

I do support diversity in any franchise, just as long it all about story and not propaganda. I understand that Star Wars had humans and aliens coexisted. Especially when most science fiction is about humans vs aliens


Star Trek and Star Wars is about coexistence.

 

That’s not even what they said in their blandly worded press release that you clearly didn’t read.

 

I hope your right and I do know that YouTube trolls are going to take this out of context.


I just hope D&D will go the Star Wars way of coexistence. On the other hand in many D&D realms, not all drows are evil in the first place before the announcement of changes coming.

 

Racism isn't bad! If not for goblins, how in the hell will level 1 adventurers ever reach level 2?!?

 

That goblins ,evil orcs and drows are evil is portrayed racism towards real minorities when that is not true.

That’s what I think wizards of coast is changing for propaganda purposes instead of overall story.

 

I'll don't really get the issue with the orcs and drow tbh. They're fictional races in a fantasy land, just remove the "always evil" line and you're fine. That being said I'm more than willing to let another person convince me otherwise, but it comes across as WotC looking for a problem that was never there.


Now altering the depictions of the gypsy stereotypes in Curse of Strad, I totally get.

 

Honestly I'm a little disturbed by people who look at Orcs and Drow and immediately think of brown and black people. When i first started playing DnD and reading the books, I never thought "oh wow these drow and orcs are us dark skinned people." And yes, I'm aware that Tolkien was racist and his racism probably seeped into his works, but most people of our generation look at DnD and Elder Scrolls and Shadowrun, etc for our fantasy, and those settings have always had heroic orcs and dark elves, etc.

 

Well let’s just hope that D&D and pathfinder can keep some of its original lore and concepts of Orcs and Goblins. Some of those woke people don’t understand that there are white goblins, white orcs, white demon like monsters, white dragons and even white elves that were evil too.


We sort of live in a golden age of nerd ness as well as being a geek and unfortunately we live in a time were some critics move on top by taking over franchises and are all about propaganda, politics and they don’t care if it ruins successful franchises.

Even when one product is terrible but still makes an earnings of a lot of money, it puts future stories at risk.

Also when woke people face criticism, they insult there customers and fans. And that’s a good indication of boycotting starts like what happened with battlefield 5.

It s like going to store and a manager or an employee insults you for trying to buy something and does not care about customer service. I have been in bars and stores that were like that.

 

Honestly, I don't know anyone over 13 (and/or under 1488) who still plays orcs and drow as naturally evil. There's absolutely no real reason for the game to still use that old trope as the default, other than the usual misguided grognardism.

 

Things will unfortunately with D&D will get worse before they get better, and not worse comes to worse. The fans will speak with there wallets.

I hope I am right.

I understand that not all orcs and goblins were evil before the news of changes to D&D coming.

 

Well, this old grognard takes offense by your statement.

 

I'm actually okay with Drow being largely evil, but I've never felt that Orcs in the fantasy I've read to be portrayed as evil. Orcs are always complicated, kinda like humans (or klingons in TNG era trek). In fact, in my favorite of the Drizzt books (yes I used to read those don't judge me) they're able to end a war between the Orcs and Dwarves very peacefully, and based on the afterword, the peace not only lasts, but Drizzt makes sure to enforce it against racist humans.

 

...and then recent events undid that truce, because "orcs bad grr" and Many-Arrows had to be evil barbarians. This is not happening in a vacuum: it's backlash against certain regression D&D has been suffering recently.

 

Yeah, I definitely just played a NG Orc raised by a Priest order as the librarian's acolyte, training to take over the library because I was ugly and not-very-social but not evil...

 

I have no idea what recent events those were. I stayed with the drizzt books for like 20 of them but at some point I stopped.

 

Why did you stop?

 

Do you have more details? I've been out of the loop for a while.

Full disclosure - I started playing D&D at the dawn of time, relatively speaking (1978, at age 6 1/2), but ended up with having other systems being of more interest (Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, TORG, et al). I finally abandoned D&D completely just prior to the release of 4th edition. I'd like to pretend it was because I recognized that 4th edition was a piece of garbage, but in reality it was because our group wanted to oust a member without a lot of drama, and used the fact that he refused to play anything except D&D against him by never playing it again. And we never did.

That's my long-winded way of saying that I know extremely little about developments in the last, say, 10-15 years with D&D, apart from the little bits of anything involving the Greyhawk or Planescape settings.

 

Huge timeskip in one of the books, a lot of the characters I like no longer being there, and here introduction of an annoying foil to Drizzt.

 

Got to ask - has there at one point been a JCC virtual table playing RPG? ^^

 

Maybe there might possibly be future novels or video games to cover the time gap.


Also to point out maybe when protesting stops and our society cools down from a hard time, some things of dungeons and dragons can go back to normal like what happen when HBO Max brought back Gone with the wind.

I do support goblins and orcs can good guys in D&D, just as long as it’s about the overall story, not woke propaganda.