It doesn't bother me in the least, to see images of a diverse nature.  That's totally fine. 

I don't like a rewriting of what actually existed, or else preachy text about modern societal stuff, in my Medieval-flavored RPGs.

Create something different, and put whatever you want in it.  New Coke was a failure, because people didn't want that.  It never should have completely replaced, Original Coke.  Create something new and different, without walking all over existing products.  Offer an alternative, not a replacement.

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2025, 02:50:58 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 10, 2025, 02:31:23 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2025, 01:52:17 PMThe D&D cartoon starting in 1983 featured a black girl as one of its core characters.

Including women or non-whites isn't automatically woke.

Gender/race bending is.

Speaking about "too much white straight men" is woke.

Including a black girl as a core character in the D&D series was unquestionably an intentional choice of ethnic diversity in the cast, just like other 1980s series like Captain Planet and the Planeteers.



This sort of planned ethnic diversity is clearly ideologically connected to the diversity of characters in 3E and later.

You could call it "pre-woke" or something by drawing the line differently, but I think it's obviously connected.

Fortunately, Captain Planet has nothing to do with the 80s.  It's a 90s series.

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2025, 05:10:04 PMWhat are you claiming the percentages show? The D&D characters were random American kids on an amusement park ride, while the Planeteers came from all over the world. It would be ridiculous for the Planeteers to be 83% white.

If anything, the D&D group seems more forced. If I looked at groups of kids going on an amusement park ride in the U.S. in 1983 - it would be quite rare to see that mix of age, ethnicity, and gender as Diana and the others.

The show Captain Planet SPECIFICALLY was designed to promote "diversity", that is my point. And yes, I don't know where you grew up, but when I was younger there was always a token black kid in the friend group so it made perfect sense to me. D&D didn't seem forced whatsoever.

EDIT: And honestly, this is all stupid, anyway. Maybe the people who made the cartoon wanted to have an attractive minority (hell, two girls!) to promote the idea that ANYONE could play it, not just us nerds. I know I would not have minded if some buxom cheerleaders or gymnasts played D&D with us during lunch...so yeah, this isn't "woke", it's just good marketing. Just a group of normal friends and the kid brother, nothing more. To address the original question, I think when they removed all the devils and stuff to appease the retarded Pat Robertson nonsense (my mom was in that group...and STILL IS) was the beginning of the end. You start kowtowing to morons, you will do it more and more even when they are not a legitimate threat. The current state of the US just demonstrates that braying fucktards can get a lot done even when they legitimately do not give one fuck about a product.

You can call it "Proto-woke", "pre-woke", feminism, or political correctness; but whatever you call it, the ROT goes back much further in the hobby than people think...

The busybodies were ragging on Gygax even in the 0e days:


His masterful troll response has been used as a bludgeon against him in recent times by people incapable of understanding sarcasm.

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2025, 02:50:58 PMYou could call it "pre-woke" or something by drawing the line differently, but I think it's obviously connected.

Jhkim is right.

That's right, I said it.


And we all know now with hindsight that as the hobby grew, the weirdo's within it also grew:

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 10, 2025, 11:02:44 AMThe infiltration was underway even under TSR, IMHO the first sign was an article in Dragon about Chainmail Bikinis. Sadly I can't remember the issue.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 10, 2025, 12:07:05 PMThat depends on how one defines 'woke' and the degree of infection. One of the first issues of Dragon I ever bought (#168, April 1991) included a Forum letter decrying the 'game racism' of painting goblinoids as purely evil and only enemies, and included thoughts on alternative ways to use them. (It didn't draw the parallels to real racism.) ...

And Armchair gamer hits the nail on the head::

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 10, 2025, 12:07:05 PMThere have been differences of opinion about the game from the beginning. If I were to identify a tipping point at when 'official D&D' began to tilt in a more progressive/revolutionary direction away from its roots, it would be the acquisition of TSR by WotC and the resulting shift in the game's local and corporate culture.

Jonathan Tweet straight-up bragged about this in a series of articles on ENWorld. It's no secret.

D&D will not become "un-woke" until the ownership changes hands.

Luckily we do not need "official D&D" for anything. Plenty of alternatives out there that do exactly the same thing, only better.

Like ACKSII*...


* This fanboy shilling was completely unsolicited by anyone associated with ACKSII.

Quote from: Jaeger on January 10, 2025, 06:08:07 PMLike ACKSII*...

* This fanboy shilling was completely unsolicited by anyone associated with ACKSII.

I asked about this in another thread, can you please make a new one that goes over the content? I am debating on whether or not to drop $$$$ on a thousand page RPG...

Not to discredit the proto-woke additions to D&D, but I sincerely doubt that the woke infiltration could have been so pervasive or seen as so supported by fans without the Internet being a vital contributing factor. So, let's confine this timeline to 2000 and forward which corresponds to the publishing of DnD 3.0 (I also think that the OGL contributed as it allowed people to create DnD their way).

Quote from: jeff37923 on January 10, 2025, 07:07:11 PMNot to discredit the proto-woke additions to D&D, but I sincerely doubt that the woke infiltration could have been so pervasive or seen as so supported by fans without the Internet being a vital contributing factor. So, let's confine this timeline to 2000 and forward which corresponds to the publishing of DnD 3.0 (I also think that the OGL contributed as it allowed people to create DnD their way).

If that's the criteria then Armchair gamer got it in one:

The: "...tipping point at when 'official D&D' began to tilt in a more progressive/revolutionary direction away from its roots, it would be the acquisition of TSR by WotC and the resulting shift in the game's local and corporate culture."

And I can give receipts with quotes for this upon request.

Quote from: Jaeger on January 10, 2025, 07:16:07 PM

Quote from: jeff37923 on January 10, 2025, 07:07:11 PMNot to discredit the proto-woke additions to D&D, but I sincerely doubt that the woke infiltration could have been so pervasive or seen as so supported by fans without the Internet being a vital contributing factor. So, let's confine this timeline to 2000 and forward which corresponds to the publishing of DnD 3.0 (I also think that the OGL contributed as it allowed people to create DnD their way).

If that's the criteria then Armchair gamer got it in one:

The: "...tipping point at when 'official D&D' began to tilt in a more progressive/revolutionary direction away from its roots, it would be the acquisition of TSR by WotC and the resulting shift in the game's local and corporate culture."

And I can give receipts with quotes for this upon request.

Please, do! I think that this is an important process to nail down in one location while it is still fresh in our minds.

I wouldn't call this a "Woke Infiltration." Infiltration implies they were being covert or manipulative, when in fact the Wokification of RPGs was a quite intentional top-down policy decision at WotC, Hasbro, and GenCon. I also think that the majority of posters here completely miss why this was an intentional top-down decision; this was not politics. It was an anti-competitive form of soft regulatory capture, but it was phrased like it was a political posturing specifically because the Woke liberals at places RPG.Net are historically anti-capitalistic, but they are also anatomically capable of observing anti-competitive behavior in their own ranks. It falls into a blindside if you make it look political.

In this case, Wokeness creates barriers to entry with things like diverse creative teams, and creates opportunities to eliminate opposition with things like setting flavor being guilty of cultural appropriation and such. Once you see Wokeness as a cudgel to fabricate excuses to ostracize and eliminate competition, you can't unsee it.

When did someone realize this? I imagine it was around the time Sarkeesian started posting, which was actually 2009. However, it took time to realize the opportunity and to implement it.

Quote from: Krazz on January 10, 2025, 05:08:35 PM

Quote from: bat on January 10, 2025, 04:24:55 PMI do not believe that ethnic diversity is 'woke', it is saying anyone can join without being condescending. My players since the 80s have been of different colours, females have been at my table, and with a variety of backgrounds, to this day, why do they not deserve examples? Welcoming and forcing are two entirely different approaches. I have a Chinese player, a Mexican and a black guy, along with a couple of white guys, is this a problem for anyone? They are all great players and good friends.

Your players' races and their characters' races are entirely different things. Players should be accepted regardless of race; characters, not so much. If the setting is faux-medieval England, I'd expect every character to be white, with possibly the odd exception. Similarly in campaigns set in faux-Shogun Japan, or faux-Zululand or faux-Incan Empire. If a large medieval setting looks like downtown Seattle everywhere the players go, verisimilitude is lost for me.

My players do not insert themselves into the game, my female Mexican player is usually a white male halfling for example. My point is that I don't see the problem in people seeing diversity in a game. We mostly play sword and sorcery or vanilla fantasy. Could people seeing various people accepting others in a game be a bad thing? Who the players decide to be in the game is up to them.

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2025, 01:52:17 PMThat said, I'd agree that 2E released in 1989 intentionally also had all-white character illustrations - as well as cutting out demons and devils and other sanitizing. So 3E was really the earliest edition that featured less white guys.

Still, both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms have always had a lot of non-white guys. They were designed as broad settings with lots of different ethnicities, not just European. But until 3rd edition, non-white characters weren't featured in the core rulebooks.

Also in 2E Mystara had a ton of non-European areas. And there was an attempt with Oriental Adventures. I could be wrong but it seems that when Wizards of the Coast took over they stopped creating non-proto-European settings.

Also we should all remember that the D&D cartoon was Gygax's one success in his Hollywood days.

We shouldn't be letting racial diversity in the game distract us to the point of "orcs are racist". I'd venture that comparing orcs to blacks wasn't even considered until The Fellowship of the Ring movie came out and people saw the Uruk-Hai orcs of Saruman as dark skinned. Remember, before that orcs in media looked more like these below:

Greetings!

You know, all of these Woke morons are fucking idiots.

My Thandor world has many humanoid animal races. An amphibious, humanoid crawfish race, and an amphibious humanoid Shark race. There is an amphibious Orange-Coloured Coy race, and an amphibious humanoid Salmon race. There are several humanoid reptilian races. Then, there are humanoid races that have bright, lemon-yellow skin, bright, Orange skin, Lilac-coloured skin, and aquamarine-coloured skin. Being even remotely concerned about black or brown-skinned humans is fucking laughable. Humans need to think about being united to survive to avoid being fucking exterminated.

Thandor has some very real and mind-blowing racial diversity that makes all of this look so absolutely petty and stupid. Not being arrogant, as I am sure many DM's likewise have detailed campaign worlds that embrace fantastic racial diversity, that again, makes all of this crying pathetic, stupid, and honestly unhinged from what actually is possible and likely in many fantasy worlds.

This kind of ideological argument is so post-modern and ham-fisted shoved into the fantasy game world where when you actually think about the different potential racial conflicts, crazy diversity, the very different religions, all of the fantastic stuff--these modernistic ideas and arguments really do seem entirely inappropriate, ill-fitting, and out of touch. It does make me wonder though, how do any of these people around these fucking Marxist idiots take these people seriously? Their entire world view is laughable and pathetic.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jeff37923 on January 10, 2025, 11:25:12 PMWe shouldn't be letting racial diversity in the game distract us to the point of "orcs are racist". I'd venture that comparing orcs to blacks wasn't even considered until The Fellowship of the Ring movie came out and people saw the Uruk-Hai orcs of Saruman as dark skinned. Remember, before that orcs in media looked more like these below:

Greetings!

*Laughing*! That's right, Jeff! "WHERE THERE'S A WHIP, THERE'S A WAY!"

I love it!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Gamers have never been hard right individuals going back to my first exposure to gaming.  I would even go so far as to say that they leaned slightly left in the aggregate by the standards of the day.  (I don't even think the median position of gamers has changed on most political and social issues but the way they are viewed in relation to left /right has.) Gaming certainly had a majority white male participation, but every table I was ever at was always welcome to anyone that wanted to play.

I have been in and around gaming spaces since 1979 and I remember oddballs that pushed ideologies that would be considered woke now back in the early 80s.  They weren't in control of anything back then.  There were letters in magazines, fanzines, and occasionally some supplement that had been photocopied to death that would try to nudge players to consider more "enlightened" views both in game and IRL. 

I've actually had a chance to go through some mid-to-late 80s gaming material recently and I have noticed that there has been things of progressive ideology put in many of them.  Dark Sun is clearly an environmentalism allegory for example.  The biggest change I see is that we were allowed to ignore all this and play the way we wanted vs now where they want to control our gaming. 

I think what separates the "Woke" crowd from earlier progressives is the effort to force people to comply with there views rather than trying to convert.  There were always those that were like this but they generally were seen as an annoyance, even by those that shared some of their beliefs.

White Wolf's World of Darkness books in the early 90s was the first place where I noticed a major product that had material that we'd consider woke today.  The Werewolves books were some of the clearest examples of this that I remember.  By the mid 90s, the WOD crowd had become toxic in and around the Puget Sound with them bullying other gamers and even hobby shops if they didn't fall in line with their views.