Reducing D&D's cast of characters to the safety of Star Trek's "humans with funky foreheads" is a cheapening of the alienness both fantasy and science fiction can deliver. The latter does it because it is a literary device to constrain possibilities to the most approachable as it is trying to teach a philosophical moment through shared competence (like original Twilight Zone a lot of Star Trek has didactic strains). The former, which has a lot of literary parents in its fantastic tropes, is trying to be an open ended game where you can do as you like amidst the great unknown and maybe teach yourself.

A game of pretend is not literature, the structures' demands on agency are opposing. It's fine if orcs are setting dependent. But a Monster Manual comes in two major flavors: General Game Line Index, and Setting Index. It's a blatant cash grab to put it in the sub-index and omit it from the larger general index.

Stop making this WotC move more noble or complicated than it is. It's bad, full stop. Assume mature adults can understand the principles of examples and individual variance in populations, and laugh off those who read game texts as holy writ.

Quote from: Opaopajr on February 20, 2025, 05:51:04 AMAssume mature adults can understand the principles of examples and individual variance in populations,

A lot of the 'modern audience' can't do that, though.

Quote from: jhkim on February 19, 2025, 01:16:14 PMWhat I do care about is actual gamers completely changing around their gaming on the basis of whatever WotC is doing, either way. It's bad if gamers think that WotC is pure good, and change their games to follow whatever WotC says. It's also bad if gamers suddenly upend logic and change their games because whatever WotC says is now verboten communism.

Wizards of the Coast blazed into the culture war like a raging barbarian, rainbow lubed greatdildo held in two hands and screaming about muh wiyt prifludge and muh represuntashun.

When they tried to revoke the OGL (by claiming the right to issue a new one that meant the old one was no longer valid, and removing most of what made the new one functional), this is how they sold it: 
https://www.polygon.com/23529385/one-dnd-scandal-ogl-srd-crypto-nft-intellectual-property
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1432-starting-the-ogl-playtest 

QuoteDeauthorizing OGL 1.0a. We know this is a big concern. The Creative Commons license and the open terms of 1.2 are intended to help with that. One key reason why we have to deauthorize: We can't use the protective options in 1.2 if someone can just choose to publish harmful, discriminatory, or illegal content under 1.0a.

This was the buy-in they offered the social justice warrior / woke / whatever-you-want-to-call it crowd.  The people who are bought into liberal-style identity politics and whose political victories are entirely pvp based ("it's good if it makes a chud suffer"), and have no constructive values at all.  These are the people being offered a buy-in to this incredible land grab.  Now, it didn't work.  Liberals like you saw through this absurdity, and have called them out for their corporate greed.  But from their perspective, they EXPECTED it to work.  This was part of their strategy- point to a group of conservatives, say it was being done to hurt them, and expect support from reddit and twitter.

This isn't the first time Wizards had used identity politics to try to get support, make money, or, more likely, simply serve their paymasters, who want to push these politics no matter the cost (and they pay the bills).
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/depictions-racism-magic-2020-06-10
Here they even think they can go back in time and change card numbers.  It's insane, but no matter!

https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/races-alignments-lore-removed
https://archive.is/OObYS#selection-2651.19-2655.20
Here's the famous time when they edited all the "online" books you "own" to remove alignment and descriptions from creatures.  Surely you remember this right?  All correct-thinking gamers have been mad about this since they announced it.
The DMG has entire subsections about culture and races removed by errata (no version missing the text will ever be published, and the 5.5 DMG has no such section, so the change was entirely for political compliance).

There is absolutely no defending Wizards here man.

Now,

Quote from: jhkim on February 18, 2025, 12:15:41 PMOrcs are now being treated exactly the same as how other PC races were treated in the 2014 edition.

There's like two big problems here. 

Orcs are fundamentally evil, base, stupid creatures.  Their evil is inherent to them, it's genetic, their breeding is poor, they are fecund, disgusting, and wholly willing to rape and murder.  That's the base conception of orcs, and it's a great one for any fantasy villain race.
By making orcs into a PC race (and making them substantially more like green humans that even the 10% of half-orcs that can pass for human were in older editions), they are actually deleting orcs, and adding something that is maybe like 12.5% orc to their game and calling it an orc.  This GIVES THEM THE EXCUSE to delete them from the monster manual.
It's also part of a larger push to remove evil humanoids- generally they are either reclassified to a type of demon, or more likely pushed into fey in 5.5.  This is being done for political reasons, not gameplay reasons. 

There are two great reasons to not care about dwarves and elves being removed from the monster manual in 5.0- as you said, you can just make your own from character classes, or use stock statblocks for guards or whatever.  And secondly, player races being villains has always been its own thing- a bunch of robbers from normally good races, for instance- while grabbing stock monsters like orcs, ogres, goblins, etc. has never needed such customization from its baseline (though all versions have allowed it). 

In 5.5, this is quite different. First, there's a huge push against using character classes as NPCs in the community, so leaving out statblocks (or directing you to generic ones) is a large disservice.  Second, of course, is the fact that this is OBVIOUSLY and UNARGUABLY being done for real-world-identity-politics reasons.  It's not being done for a good reason, or an in-game reason. 

Similar to trying to shove racial stat modifiers into backgrounds and removing them from races- it's total garbage.  Same with renaming "race" to "species" or "ancestry" (this is a hard red line for me these days).

Anyone doing these renames, or pushing this stuff, is doing really shitty hateful politics.  They are selling the idea that they are pissing off real gamers as the product, and it's thankfully not selling that well.

But people should be mad, and they shouldn't let your excuses deradicalize them on this topic.

Orcs aren't stupid and they aren't necessarily green either.

Quote from: Spobo on February 20, 2025, 01:51:25 PMOrcs aren't stupid and they aren't necessarily green either.

Wow. That served as much of a contribution to the discussion as a fart in the wind.

Quote from: Venka on February 20, 2025, 01:47:12 PMOrcs are

Orcs were

Quote from: jhkim on February 19, 2025, 08:12:16 PM

Quote from: SHARK on February 19, 2025, 07:59:40 PMI'm not "Ree Reeing" about anything, Jhkim. What I discussed is an accurate, factual description and analysis of what has become of the leadership and the most prominent writers and developers that work at WOTC and control the D&D brand.

SHARK, as I understand it, you have run a lot of games using the 2014 D&D 5E rules. Right?

Do you think that the 2014 game - as published - is fundamentally broken as far as race because it doesn't have a "Dwarf" (or "Elf" etc.) entry in the Monster Manual? Have you had any problem with that lack?

Greetings!

Yes, Jhkim, I have run many games of 5E. I still have a 5E campaign going.

As far as the Monster Manual, yeah, Jhkim, I have always thought that every kind of creature should be included in the Monster Manual. Just like 1EAD&D man.

I still have all of my original D&D books--Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and more. *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Venka on February 20, 2025, 01:47:12 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 19, 2025, 01:16:14 PMWhat I do care about is actual gamers completely changing around their gaming on the basis of whatever WotC is doing, either way. It's bad if gamers think that WotC is pure good, and change their games to follow whatever WotC says. It's also bad if gamers suddenly upend logic and change their games because whatever WotC says is now verboten communism.

Wizards of the Coast blazed into the culture war like a raging barbarian, rainbow lubed greatdildo held in two hands and screaming about muh wiyt prifludge and muh represuntashun.

When they tried to revoke the OGL (by claiming the right to issue a new one that meant the old one was no longer valid, and removing most of what made the new one functional), this is how they sold it: 
https://www.polygon.com/23529385/one-dnd-scandal-ogl-srd-crypto-nft-intellectual-property
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1432-starting-the-ogl-playtest 

QuoteDeauthorizing OGL 1.0a. We know this is a big concern. The Creative Commons license and the open terms of 1.2 are intended to help with that. One key reason why we have to deauthorize: We can't use the protective options in 1.2 if someone can just choose to publish harmful, discriminatory, or illegal content under 1.0a.

This was the buy-in they offered the social justice warrior / woke / whatever-you-want-to-call it crowd.  The people who are bought into liberal-style identity politics and whose political victories are entirely pvp based ("it's good if it makes a chud suffer"), and have no constructive values at all.  These are the people being offered a buy-in to this incredible land grab.  Now, it didn't work.  Liberals like you saw through this absurdity, and have called them out for their corporate greed.  But from their perspective, they EXPECTED it to work.  This was part of their strategy- point to a group of conservatives, say it was being done to hurt them, and expect support from reddit and twitter.

This isn't the first time Wizards had used identity politics to try to get support, make money, or, more likely, simply serve their paymasters, who want to push these politics no matter the cost (and they pay the bills).
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/depictions-racism-magic-2020-06-10
Here they even think they can go back in time and change card numbers.  It's insane, but no matter!

https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/races-alignments-lore-removed
https://archive.is/OObYS#selection-2651.19-2655.20
Here's the famous time when they edited all the "online" books you "own" to remove alignment and descriptions from creatures.  Surely you remember this right?  All correct-thinking gamers have been mad about this since they announced it.
The DMG has entire subsections about culture and races removed by errata (no version missing the text will ever be published, and the 5.5 DMG has no such section, so the change was entirely for political compliance).

There is absolutely no defending Wizards here man.

Now,

Quote from: jhkim on February 18, 2025, 12:15:41 PMOrcs are now being treated exactly the same as how other PC races were treated in the 2014 edition.

There's like two big problems here. 

Orcs are fundamentally evil, base, stupid creatures.  Their evil is inherent to them, it's genetic, their breeding is poor, they are fecund, disgusting, and wholly willing to rape and murder.  That's the base conception of orcs, and it's a great one for any fantasy villain race.
By making orcs into a PC race (and making them substantially more like green humans that even the 10% of half-orcs that can pass for human were in older editions), they are actually deleting orcs, and adding something that is maybe like 12.5% orc to their game and calling it an orc.  This GIVES THEM THE EXCUSE to delete them from the monster manual.
It's also part of a larger push to remove evil humanoids- generally they are either reclassified to a type of demon, or more likely pushed into fey in 5.5.  This is being done for political reasons, not gameplay reasons. 

There are two great reasons to not care about dwarves and elves being removed from the monster manual in 5.0- as you said, you can just make your own from character classes, or use stock statblocks for guards or whatever.  And secondly, player races being villains has always been its own thing- a bunch of robbers from normally good races, for instance- while grabbing stock monsters like orcs, ogres, goblins, etc. has never needed such customization from its baseline (though all versions have allowed it). 

In 5.5, this is quite different. First, there's a huge push against using character classes as NPCs in the community, so leaving out statblocks (or directing you to generic ones) is a large disservice.  Second, of course, is the fact that this is OBVIOUSLY and UNARGUABLY being done for real-world-identity-politics reasons.  It's not being done for a good reason, or an in-game reason. 

Similar to trying to shove racial stat modifiers into backgrounds and removing them from races- it's total garbage.  Same with renaming "race" to "species" or "ancestry" (this is a hard red line for me these days).

Anyone doing these renames, or pushing this stuff, is doing really shitty hateful politics.  They are selling the idea that they are pissing off real gamers as the product, and it's thankfully not selling that well.

But people should be mad, and they shouldn't let your excuses deradicalize them on this topic.

Greetings!

BOOM Absolutely spot on, man! PREACH!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 04, 2025, 09:59:59 AM

Quote from: Domina on February 03, 2025, 11:57:07 PMNo they shouldn't. The foreign words sound cooler.

They're not actually speaking English, so arbitrarily pulling words from other languages is nonsensical. If I was doing the worldbuilding, then I would have their speech rendered as Anglish to give the desired feel to readers. So no words from Romance or African languages.

Therefore, the Anglish translation would be "soul jug", "walking lich" (reanimated corpse), and "undead wizard king".

EDIT: and "bewitched boneframe" (reanimated skeleton). More examples here: https://anglish.fandom.com/

Doesn't matter if it's nonsensical. No one cares.

Quote from: SHARK on February 20, 2025, 03:18:34 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 19, 2025, 08:12:16 PMSHARK, as I understand it, you have run a lot of games using the 2014 D&D 5E rules. Right?

Do you think that the 2014 game - as published - is fundamentally broken as far as race because it doesn't have a "Dwarf" (or "Elf" etc.) entry in the Monster Manual? Have you had any problem with that lack?

Yes, Jhkim, I have run many games of 5E. I still have a 5E campaign going.

As far as the Monster Manual, yeah, Jhkim, I have always thought that every kind of creature should be included in the Monster Manual. Just like 1EAD&D man.

Thanks, SHARK. That doesn't answer my question, though.

You might prefer it otherwise, but how has the lack of a "Dwarf" entry in the 2014 Monster Manual affected your game? Has it caused serious problems?

I wouldn't have minded adding in a "Dwarf" entry, but I don't feel the lack caused any problems for my 5E games.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 08:48:17 PM

Quote from: SHARK on February 20, 2025, 03:18:34 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 19, 2025, 08:12:16 PMSHARK, as I understand it, you have run a lot of games using the 2014 D&D 5E rules. Right?

Do you think that the 2014 game - as published - is fundamentally broken as far as race because it doesn't have a "Dwarf" (or "Elf" etc.) entry in the Monster Manual? Have you had any problem with that lack?

Yes, Jhkim, I have run many games of 5E. I still have a 5E campaign going.

As far as the Monster Manual, yeah, Jhkim, I have always thought that every kind of creature should be included in the Monster Manual. Just like 1EAD&D man.

Thanks, SHARK. That doesn't answer my question, though.

You might prefer it otherwise, but how has the lack of a "Dwarf" entry in the 2014 Monster Manual affected your game? Has it caused serious problems?

I wouldn't have minded adding in a "Dwarf" entry, but I don't feel the lack caused any problems for my 5E games.

Greetings!

Well, Jhkim, I thought I answered your question just fine. I think the Monster Manual should have more or less generic entries for every race and creature--including the Player Character races from the PLayer's Handbook.

The fact that the 5E Player's Handbook had Dwarves in it--but did not include them in the 5E Monster Manual--that was disappointing, and annoying. Did it cause me serious problems as a DM? Jhkim, I have been playing D&D since 1978. I have run campaigns typically lasting *years* in duration, with some into decades. So, no, I just made up various DM documents on my computer for NPC Encounters in Thandor. I can do all of this in my sleep practically, in an evening of campaign work.

The Monster Manual doesn't have ELF, Strumpet; or DWARF, Merchant; or GNOME, Massage Girl, either. So, I simply made those up, with appropriate skills, racial modifiers, and cultural and professional packages. It is what it is.

At the end of the day, I as the DM have to typically alter, add to, erase, and otherwise modify whatever races and NPC stat blocks to suit my world of Thandor.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: blackstone on February 20, 2025, 02:11:52 PM

Quote from: Spobo on February 20, 2025, 01:51:25 PMOrcs aren't stupid and they aren't necessarily green either.

Wow. That served as much of a contribution to the discussion as a fart in the wind.

I was responding to Venka. I think it is a key point that when people think of canonical orcs as Warcraft orcs or Warhammer orcs they're off. Orcs are supposed to be cunning and skilled at creating engines of war and weapons. They aren't necessarily great craftsmen but they do pretty well as far as armies go. Being dumb and brutish (or big or green) isn't an important part of their character.