Species.

Now it's racist to claim a kangaroo jumps better than a turtle.

I prefer to move away from depicting intelligent opponents as generically evil and instead focus on their specific values and motives. Some may simply be so alien that peaceful coexistence is impossible. To call them evil is a matter of perspective: if they're trying to kill you, then obviously you'll think they're evil. They may not see it that way. They might see themselves as the heroes for exterminating a pest, or be apathetic to the suffering of other species.

To say "fighting intelligent beings is bad!" sounds like it would make for a really boring game. Even more boring than "all your opponents are evil so you need not feel guilty for slaughtering them." That might be enough for some people, but sometimes I like some moral ambiguity in my fiction, ya know?

Well, it is since I play D&D that I felt we needed two different words to distinguish "races" in, let's say, men, and "races" as in men, elves etc. It was not front and center in my thoughts - a corner of my mind simply found using the same word for two different concepts a bit confusing.

Now wokeism gifted us "species". English is not my first language so I don't know the woke-score of the term. However, the idea by itself fills what I felt was a practical need.

In our new, not racist rpg all characters are equal.  All tasks are treated the same.  You always succeed and you always win.  There is a fixed target number to be awesome.  If you can roll a 6 on a d6 you are spectacularly awesome and can describe your success however you want as long as it is not sexist, racist, ableist, Caucasian, European, or Christian because those things are not awesome.  Our game has 69 genders, 128 hair colours, and hundreds of amazing floral tatoos for you to detail your character with.  In the awesome setting you can attend classes, seminars, and rallies in the collectivist commune where nothing bad ever happens and everyone has just as much as everyone else and there is never any strife or discontent.  This is surely the most groundbreaking and epicly AWESOME role playing game of all time.

Quote from: Reckall on August 25, 2023, 07:27:52 AM
I already thought that species were not monolithic...

To be fair, my setting has a tall race made of stone. They are pretty much by definition "monolithic."

This is doubly hilarious as I can recall old Dragon Magazine letters talking about how to challenge PCs, and one was 'use intelligent opponents'.

Heck, Tucker's Kobolds is a case of making the opposition a little TOO intelligent. But the point stands.

Quote from: Reckall on August 25, 2023, 07:27:52 AM
I already thought that species were not monolithic...

Oh a yeah by 6E's rules, you can have a half lizardman and half warforged and totes mcgotes legit.  Yup lizards can fuck metal and give birth. 

Did you know that Verisimilitude is now racist and white supremacist if you bring it up to critique the race marxists creative endeavors.

I would never bother arguing with this person, because they're obviously a moron, but it'd be funny to see how they'd respond to someone pointing out that they've suggested banning dragons from Dungeons and Dragons. Not to mention vampires, demons, genies, liches, giants, aliens, harpies, Gorgons, werewolves, etc. That's not even asking the question of whether we can still have stats for "town guard" or if they just expect the DM to homebrew every NPC individually.

Also, if all the monsters are unintelligent, doesn't that mean the PCs are just going around slaughtering innocent animals? Doesn't sound very progressive to me...

Funny thing but 99% of people don't know the real definition of racism. 

Here it is from The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language: racism The theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race.

Therefore you can now correctly acuse all FRPG's (to my knowledge) of being racist cucks. Just substitute [race name] for human in the definition.

I split the difference in my current D&D campaign.

I don't use humanoid opponents*, but the setting is ultra human-centric. You want to play a dragonborn? Go ahead, but you'll be the only one, some kind of mutant or curse victim that no one completely trusts. The players got the message quick.

* That said, some of my monsters are effectively orcs in everything except name and appearance. I just make them weird quadrupeds with inhuman faces. I'll bet you a dollar that none of the "orcs are racist" crowd would realize what I'm up to if they sat down at my pleasant little table.  Such superficial, hypocritical killjoys.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 25, 2023, 08:12:43 AM
I prefer to move away from depicting intelligent opponents as generically evil and instead focus on their specific values and motives. Some may simply be so alien that peaceful coexistence is impossible. To call them evil is a matter of perspective: if they're trying to kill you, then obviously you'll think they're evil. They may not see it that way. They might see themselves as the heroes for exterminating a pest, or be apathetic to the suffering of other species.

To say "fighting intelligent beings is bad!" sounds like it would make for a really boring game. Even more boring than "all your opponents are evil so you need not feel guilty for slaughtering them." That might be enough for some people, but sometimes I like some moral ambiguity in my fiction, ya know?

If you look at the "Alex Jone's was Right" jar, it might not be a good idea to state intelligent creatures are not evil.  Evil is self serving.  Lets look at our world.  We have the WEF controlling huge swathes of the West, stealing land from farmers and stopping food production.  Food production we need to keep from killing billions due to starvation.  They state its "climate change", its not climate change they are afraid of non-renewable resources being expended.  They are lying about the reasoning to kill billions from famine, and yes its coming.  Then lets look at the wealthy being caught on Epstein's Island, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew are the noted degenerates.  And then by some miracle Epstein was killed in jail and all the cameras failed and the guards were asleep and no one could say how it happened.  And for some reason not a single one of the John's faces are posted publicly.  I can go to my county newspaper and see the faces of pedophiles, murderers, drug dealers etc caught, but not the billionaires who do the same thing and they will never be charged?

We are talking about generically evil behavior (self serving behaviors leading to famine and pedophelia), oh a yeah we have real world analogs to generic evil operating in the open.  Those orcs are not black men (sorry race marxists), they are Larry Fink and Klaus Schwab.  Depict them accordingly.  I have done that in my campaign to great effect using a Scro invasion of my game world and using WEF type tactics (stop using magic it just made a desert see (the scro did a magic equivalent on a desert to prove their point) and you all need to cut down on farming look at all the plant monsters because your magic polluted your soil and seeds (they dropped shambling mounds) and instead buy and use our Kelpa Fruit it will sustain you (it sterilizes those who eat it) to kill people by famine, all to get a base to hunt Elves.  Fun campaign, seeing as three players were some form of an elf.  And seeing their elvish families dying of famine gave them one hell of an incentive to kill those thieving scumward Scro off the planet.  When the bad guys presented themselves as the Scro Economic Foundation for Good, one of my players said "we are fighting the WEF", I was like yes, then he followed up "genocide them".

The WEF are the same species as us. I think it loses something when you make them a different species and then say it's okay to genocide them.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 25, 2023, 11:42:54 AM
The WEF are the same species as us. I think it loses something when you make them a different species and then say it's okay to genocide them.

That's from the elf and they were being genocided by the Scro Economic Foundation for Good.  Now if you think the WEF considers you human, that's quaint, they view most people as being useless, at least the lead advisor to Schwab does.  Creepy really.  You might consider them human, they don't consider you human,  you don't have enough money for that.  Its more altered carbon for those nutters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZP5lIzGNT8

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 25, 2023, 12:09:07 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 25, 2023, 11:42:54 AM
The WEF are the same species as us. I think it loses something when you make them a different species and then say it's okay to genocide them.

That's from the elf and they were being genocided by the Scro Economic Foundation for Good.  Now if you think the WEF considers you human, that's quaint, they view most people as being useless, at least the lead advisor to Schwab does.  Creepy really.  You might consider them human, they don't consider you human,  you don't have enough money for that.  Its more altered carbon for those nutters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZP5lIzGNT8

Okay, I don't care anymore. Have fun playing your justified genocide simulator.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on August 24, 2023, 09:02:08 PM
i will become MORE racist

I support this decision.