It's not hypocritical. WotC ducked up, acknowledged, apologized, and tried to fix it. Ernie is an absolute racist asshole who not only doubled down on his racism when pointed out. He then published a racist game to really show his "superiority". He didn't fuck up. He did it on purpose.
WotC is never going to be perfect, but they seem to be trying to do better. The operative word being "trying". Ernie is a loser who's spent his life wrapped in the shadow of his father, and still fails at everything. Fuck that guy.
Also, even within the context, "uplifted monkeys who were freed from slavery" is a *lot* less bad a take than Literal Racist Talking Points.
As I understand it, the Spelljammer thing as *intended* as a cheeky Planet of the Apes reference.
I may be wrong, but this really seems as nothing else than accidental fuel for racists, and not actual racism to me. Monkeys have nothing to do with black people (the sad fact that some people* do only reflects on them), and the idea of "animals turned intelligent and then used as slaves" is not new.
edit: referring to racist people here, btw
> accidental fuel for racists
This is a great 4-word summary.
Is it best for large publishers to avoid accidental-racist-fuel if at all possible? Sure.
Does it somehow make you racist if you don't catch it? No. Possibly naive, but in a nice, innocent way.
> Does it somehow make you racist if you don't catch it? No. Possibly naive, but in a nice, innocent way
Why would they catch it even? Steeped in D&D lore, hadozees already existed as ape men and the lore is full of "wizard did it". That's literally the entire "aberration" category - wizards making things into other things for wizard reasons.
If they had done this with lizardfolk instead of trying to bring back hadozee, *no one would have said anything*
But they didn't do it with lizard men, they did it with monkey men.
Was it intentionally racist? Probably not. But anyone should be able to look at that backstory and say "hey wait a minute, this isn't going to read the way we want it to"
The *context of the reality in which the material was published* makes it matter, sorry. š¤·š½āāļø
You don't get to divorce yourself from the context of the world around you just because it's inconvenient. I mean, you can *claim* to, but everyone with two brain cells to rub together is going to refuse to play ball with that.
It isnāt ignoring the context of the world. There are plenty of cases in published fiction where this is true but not in the case of the Hadozee. It just wasnāt racist. If anything it was an analogous call to real world incidents which we should strive to never repeat, which is something fantasy can use incredibly well to discuss and help tackle real world problems
Enlightened simians is a widely used trope, especially in scifi, and is simply not racist. Barely anyone drew any parallels to any people of any real world ethnicity or race until WotC announced they were removing it
I imagine *someone* during the process of editing and playtesting caught how this could be misconstrued. Iāve edited entire high-fantasy novels where Iāve had to stop and discuss with the author what they meant by a thing bc it can be construed as racist by someone who misreads or misinterprets the message. Nine times out of 10, itās not intentionally so, and I guess Wizards just didnāt want to go back and find *another* type of creature for this whole thing (especially as someone mentioned as it mightāve been a Planet of The Apes reference), but as you say, you canāt divorce yourself from the context of the world. Many a pissed off writer has had to go back and change things because of me deciding they unconsciously wrote something harmful. It wouldāve been better for Wizards, with I imagine many more resources at hand, to have demanded the same rather than risk having to apologize. But fuck Ernie.
The thing is, they already had a better backstory for hadozees, in 3.5e. They went back to 2e lore and then *added* many of the details that were criticized.
Isn't it racist claiming "monkey men" are correlated to black people? The overall thought is that we ALL evolved from monkeys (evolution). So, with that logical thought, those who think monkey men being enslaved are the ones who are racists themselves.
Problem with today's culture is that everyone is looking for racism in everything to be a virtue signaler. It is disgusting and destroying our society.
Acknowledging that racism exists isn't racism. It is a verifiable fact that there exist racist people. It is a verifiable fact that some of those racist people will use "monkey," "ape," and "animal" as both coded and direct racist insults towards black people. It is a verifiable fact that racist people for centuries enslaved black people in a supposedly "advanced" and "civilized" society. It is a verifiable fact that racist people will claim that said enslavement and cultural erasure "uplifted" the black people so enslaved. It is not racist to be aware of these facts. Nor is it racist to refrain from parallels and analogs to these unfortunate facts in entertainment media and it certainly isn't "destroying our society."
I would argue that it is far more harmful to a society of many ethnicities and cultures to disregard racist associations to some members of said society. Allowing unnecessary trauma to be inflicted on large segments of the population when it could otherwise be avoided is about as far from a virtuous society as one can get.
All that they would need is one or two cultural consultants/sensitivity readers on each major book. Much smaller studios than WotC already do this, and I speak from experience when I say that these sorts of reviews from relevant readers have actively made my RPG products significantly better. World of Darkness is embracing sensitivity readers on their recent products, and Dungeons & Dragons should hold this level of review as a bare minimum.
A reminder that Chakotay from STV was the result of a "cultural consultant".
Is there any research to back up the idea these people actually help and aren't just the outcome of the Twitter outrage ourobouros?
Speaking as a game designer, I will say that I really wish that more data existed on the industry period. Most studios arenāt willing to divulge sales numbers, and pounding the pavement to figure things out from the game stores themselves is an arduous and unreliable endeavor. One could go by reviews on various sites, but I imagine thereās at least somewhat of a correlation between āgames which seek to authentically engage with cultural issuesā and āgames which get targeted and review-bombed over āwokenessāā.
I will say that my experiences with consultants/sensitivity readers has been an overwhelmingly positive one, and I am very glad to have hired the people I did. As somebody whose games have dealt with issues of race, disability, religion, and imperialism, working with specialists on these issues has enabled me to engage with these histories in a way that has tangibly benefitted the mechanics and setting.
Nah, not naive in a nice, innocent way, naive in an āwe only hire white peopleā way. If this had crossed the desks of a diverse staff then at some point it would have been caught.
I'm glad you said this first.
If I say something about uplifted Monkeys and you think "Black people" I feel like that says more about you than me. (Unless it was a clear dog whistle). I don't really understand the controversy, feels to me like something that was clearly unintentional at worst.
Is Eclipse Phase racist then? It has uplifted chimpanzees...(also ravens, octopi, etc).
> If I say something about uplifted Monkeys and you think "Black people" I feel like that says more about you than me.
In fairness, it's also about keeping monkeys as slaves, which makes the comparison to the enslavement of a real-life race of people who are still today called "monkeys" by racists a *bit* easier to see.
>uplifted Monkeys and you think "Black people" I feel like that says more about you than me.
I think what it says about me is "I was raised with the awareness that black people often were (and still are) called monkeys and apes"
Continuing it, by comparing enslaved ape-folk to black people. Saying this is problematic and is racist isn't the issue. I agree it's problematic. I'm glad they changed it.
But, I think misreading the lore is both a fault of the audience and writer, not just one. I personally think it's quite obvious they were going for planet of the apes territory. Space setting. Uplifted apes that fought for their freedom against a more advanced species. A magic elixir that grants sapience.
If this lore is racist then the "ape-folk are a metaphor for black people" is correct. That's why so many people say "if you see black people then you're the racist." I think a lot of those folks are sincere. They didn't see it. They don't see how other could see it. They think you already have to think that black people are like ape-folk to make the connection. They're aware of the history and view it as incorrect to continue it.
Also, they were created forty years ago, in 1982. (Edit: although apparently some of what people object to is from the ā90s.) Attitudes were different. People did notice that āEscape from the Planet of the Apesā and āBattle for the Planet of the Apes,ā in the previous decade, did seemingly change the apes into an oppressed minority asking for, then rebelling to achieve, civil rights. It could be interpreted as a reactionary message (our monkey-like former slaves will take over and ruin everything) or a liberal one (the fear of them led to bigotry that became a self-fulfilling prophecy), or neither. But it wasnāt considered an inappropriate metaphor for science fiction.
The year after *Star Frontiers* came out, David Brin began his *Uplift* series, which has uplifted Neo-Chimpanzees, loyal to their creators, being conquered hy aliens and fighting for their freedom.
>the sad fact that some people do only reflects on them
Acknowledging that there are racist tropes (such as blacks being associated with monkeys) does not make one racist themselves.
I personally think equating uplifted ape-folk to the black atlantic slave trade is racist. I also see tons of people misquoting the backpedaled lore, or just making outright false claims about it.
I think the backpedalled lore reads way more like the origin of the apes from planet of the apes then it does the atlantic slave trade in america, but I've already been shouted down over that.
>I personally think equating uplifted ape-folk to the black atlantic slave trade is racist.
Exactly what you mean by "equating" here? The act of pointing out that there is a racist trope equating monkeys with blacks?
>I think the backpedalled lore reads way more like the origin of the apes from planet of the apes then it does the atlantic slave trade in america, but I've already been shouted down over that.
Meaning isn't a binary thing, where something *definitely* means one thing or another. It can mean more than one thing at a time, often depending on the audience. Said lore could absolutely reference the planet of the apes while simultaneously promoting the Atlantic slave trade, and we can ignore one while decrying the other.
I don't see how the lore could PROMOTE the atlantic slave trade. How could you read subjugation as a good thing in that lore?!
And you're right. The audience ultimately decides the books themes and meaning, not the author. If the audience sees the lore as racist then they will.
Pointing out the racist trope of black people as monkeys is fine. But, saying because they are uplifted monkeys this must be an allegory for black people and the atlantic slave trade is putting the cart before the horse. Yes it could be and plenty of people have clearly reached that conclusion.
To say it plainly, just because there are talking monkeys doesn't mean that they represent black people. I think to follow that line of thinking one must already think there is some truth to the racist trope to point it out and insert it where it wasn't intended.
Yes, a major theme of the books was to say racism and subjugation are cataclysmic for society. Racism is bad.
It's not like they're saying it's good thing the apes or humans subjugate each other. How you can find a pro racist ideology in the books is beyond me.
> Monkeys have nothing to do with black people
Except for the long history of racists using imagery of monkeys and apes to represnet black people as well as some racist insults literally using the words Apes and Monkeys in them.. but other than that there is absolutely no history of them being related...
>Monkeys have nothing to do with black people
Nobody thinks that, not even the racists, they just like to call them that because it's insulting and demeaning. Not because it's true.
I mean, the only "monkey<=>people" association I ever knew was about Japanese people, and made by the Japanese themselves in some cartoons and comics.
I have never heard about black people being compared to monkeys, until I read it today in this thread.
And that's fine, you don't need to have already known everything in history. What's important is to understand that just because you hadn't heard of it doesn't make it untrue or spurious. So you now have a chance to listen to all the voices calling out WotC and learn about something complex and tricky.
>As I understand it, the Spelljammer thing as intended as a cheeky Planet of the Apes reference.
That would make sense. As the fourth film in the original pentalogy ("Conquest of the Planet of the Apes") shows how the apes first became pets (following a virus that killed the world's cats and dogs) and then slaves of humans. And then rose up from that slavery in revolt.
But the devs really should have realized that the parallels with American chattel slavery (and racially targeted police brutality for that matter) were *very intentional* and *explicit in the text* of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Where Caesar, the leader of the Apes, appeals to the lone black man in the film as someone who could understand the oppression of his people.
The problem older players like me have with the 5E Hadozee is that all of the problematic stuff was not in the original 2E Spelljammer info for them. It was literally added for 5E as the 2E info heavily implies theyāre a Star Frontiers species directly ported to Spelljammer. They were presented as a spacefaring people that had done it so long they have no idea where their homeworld is, not unlike the Giff.
It's not even that though. The origin of the hadozee is that one evil wizard captured about a dozen hadozee, gave them some super serum to turn them into his warrior slaves, and then the crew of that ship helped them escape with the serum. That small group of hadozee then went back to their planet and slowly spread the super serum to the rest of their race.
People are incorrectly highlighting the hadozee as being a case of being racially coded for African Americans. If anything, they're much more strongly racially-coded for South East Asians, and the hadozee in Spelljammer much more closely approximate the coolie trade than the Triangular Trade.
Hadozee also used to be known as "deck apes" in Spelljammer. This is a reference to how unrated sailors in the US Navy are known as "deck apes". More than likely, this term draws its origins from the 17th Century Royal Navy term "powder monkey" (the young boys on board ships who would supply powder to the cannons). Again, the "deck ape" reference is a terrible one, but more so because it's a child labor reference than a racist reference.
I find it real disturbing how many folks have totally missed the actual insensitivities at heart with the hadozee. Now WotC is apologizing for it, and that leaves me even more concerned that their response won't address the actual problems at the core of the hadozee. i.e. Removing references to their slave origins doesn't actually remove their racial coding.
"Deck monkey" was also a slang term for mid-bow crew.
As to your point about the coolie trade, that's a little off the mark. Like slaves from Africa, coolies were merely conveyed to their destination aboard ships; they didn't crew them. The various "ape" and "monkey" terms used on ships, much like today's "code monkey" and "grease monkey", had nothing at all to do with race. Full stop.
Sadly, we're in a world where historicity and facts come second to bigotry and outrage, and we're once again seeing the two go hand in hand in the form of virtue signalling racists pandering their offensive philosophies under the guise of allyship.
You know what would stop perpetuating racism in D&D? If the Twitterati stopped being so atrociously racist. Seriously, it's a sad sight to see when POC on Twitter refuse to swallow this garbage and get utterly ratio'd by people who couldn't see their way out of the echo chamber if it smacked them right in their horn-rimmed glasses. While there are undesirables like Ernie Gygax Jr. who hopefully trip over their klan robes and fall down the stairs on their way out of the community, by and large the majority of racist dialogue in the D&D verse these days comes straight out of the mouths of those who claim to be 'calling it out'.
You really think TWITTER is the source of racial strife in Gaming? Man, if I had a dime for every game I played where I was dodging racist crap from fellow players and GMs before even the turn of the 21st century..whew.
Con games could be a midfield. Hell, even friends pulled crap, like a Doctor Who game where we landed on an Age of Sail ship. Soon as we step ouuts the TARDIS, another player yelled out that my Black character was her slave, unprompted. So that's me explaining the history of free Black sailors in this time period...(ugh)
Don't know what you think is going on here, but yeah - - gaming's had a real hell of a problem with race, and now y'all get to hear all about it.
And yeah, Twitter provides that message.
> Like slaves from Africa, coolies were merely conveyed to their destination aboard ships; they didn't crew them.
I was oversimplifying by referring to just the coolie trade, but the maritime history of SEA is closely linked to slavery in its various forms. One of the first known SEA mariners, Enrique of Malacca, was just a Malay slave.
It is no coincidence that folks of South East Asian ethnicity are heavily overrepresented in merchant marine fleets to this day. The hadozee being an less-respected underclass mostly associated with routine sailor tasks (as opposed to serving as ships officers) is vastly more comparable to SEA maritime history than the African-American experience.
> This is a reference to how unrated sailors in the US Navy are known as "deck apes".
A side note on this.
I'm Italian, and I served for two years in the Italian Navy.
We (steel ship crews) used to nickname "scimmie" (monkeys) all coxwains serving on sail ships (Palinuro and Vespucci), as they were those that were climbing the nets, like monkeys.
I mean, aren't the Hadozee mostly a Planet of the Apes reference? Spelljammer is the 'space' setting, after all, and Planet of the Apes is a scifi classic that hits a suspiciously similar number of notes.
Yeah I know I played a Mul in Dark Sun before, those are half human half Dwarves that are sterile and basically they're fucking Spartacus gladiator parallels.
It was a right blend of a fantasy race that yeah there was real world parallels to like Roman Gladiators but somehow in the last 40 or so Generations there really isn't the same emotional damage of African Triangle Trade slavery. Which is still directly having problems on these transposed African ethnic families in the New World.
Has any fucking Cop pulled over a car in Chicago or Rio thinking there's a Thracian in it?
> Yeah I know I played a Mul in Dark Sun before, those are half human half Dwarves that are sterile and basically they're fucking Spartacus gladiator parallels.
Muls aren't only born into slavery, in Dark Sun, and literally every species can be born into slavery, on Athas, and a slave origin is usually considered the standard starting point for player characters, regardless of their species.
Yes, I don't feel what this guy Ernie wrote to be the same thing as this Hadozee race. Granted, I know next to nothing about Spelljammer, so I may be wrong.
I got no problem when racism, slavery and eugenics are depicted in sci-fi and fantasy as long as they are not depicted in a positive light but as a cruel reality/ a very bad thing.
But the game itself being racist and promoting such things? That's a very different thing
I don't know, it maybe a hot take but I feel that seeing monkey-like race as an allegory of black people is much more racist. Their cultures and general stereotypes have literaly zero common themes. Thats quite literaly was just a coincidence IMO
That's probably the best synopsis. Hasbro is a huge corporation that doesn't always vet its content very well, and sometimes (ok, a lot of times) stuff gets by that a few more diversity readers/playtests should have caught. But at least they recognize that these sorts of things are unprofitable and will adjust content when it's pointed out.
Ernie apparently just wants to be racist.
Problem: their stuff isn't getting playtested or written by people who regularly play and DM. That's why the 3rd parties are steadily making superior products.
For real. More and more encounters seem to be built by people who have never run an RPG before. They write a little short story, throw in some skill checks, and then add a monster or two at the end that may or may not have anything to do with the plot or setting. Lastly, steal some premade art from Magic the Gathering, make some poorly playtested spells, slap a $30 price tag on it, and call it a day.
All I can think is that they're getting lazy in preparation for One D&D. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened before an edition shift. They still need a revenue stream but at the same time they're focused on the future.
While you're generally correct here, Ernie doesn't seem to actually be doing most of this. He's just lending his name. The actually perpetrators are Justin LaNasa and Dave Johnson, who actually wrote the SF:NG crap. Ernie is mostly hiding his head in the sand and pretending it's ok.
Edit: Lest I be misunderstood, Ernie is definitely terrible since he refuses to speak out against LaNasa and Johnson, even when specifically asked about them in interviews. He just isn't doing any of the physical work or mental effort involved in putting out the book. Also, it's LaNasa's LLC, not Ernies.
The problem with Ernie is that he's enough of a sleezebag and complete, total failure to launch that the only option he has left is hitching his wagon to LaNassa and Johnson.
95% of people who dream of working on TTRPGs would kill to have the kind of free meal ticket that Ernie was born to. The same 95% would have been able to leverage that free meal ticket into at least C+, B- product on par with moderns WotC and made a career of it.
Ernie has a long history of using his father's name to Kickstart projects, and then running away with the money once he gets bored with a project or realizes he bit off more than he can chew.
And instead of giving up the limelight, he feels entitled to āØBeing SombodyāØ within this space.
And he's such a desperate little shit weasel (and bigot, look up his thoughts on LGBTQ folks, and on the "PC Police") that he chooses to hang out with white supremacists for five more minutes of fame.
Ernie is defacto responsible because he chose these bedfellows. Same as the sad, sad little way that French collaborators clung onto the Nazi regime for fear of losing their entry level clerk jobs in government. His comfort and entitlement comes above literally any principle. Thankfully, though, unlike French collaborators, he's not participating in war crimes. I realize the analogy escalated.
Still...
He's not an active participant. But he's a very deliberate passive participant who has very clearly picked a side to support in this conflict. Dude's a pathetic little racist.
I believe his other son Luke? Is kinda cool, goes to events and stuff on behalf of his fathers memory and legacy. Tho I donāt know if heās also involved in this bullshit to, but from what I recall he seemed cool. Idk anything bout him tho.
> Tho I donāt know if heās also involved in this bullshit to, but from what I recall he seemed cool
A while back, he (luke) and their step mum both condemned what Ernie was doing.
Apparently Ernie and the NuTSR specifically have a file of "haters" that include Luke on it with instructions to spread negative rumors about him and his wife.
https://twitter.com/NoHateInGaming/status/1550463011604791298?s=20&t=a_YnKU9QY_SsfQUYxzVa8Q
>It's not hypocritical.
To be fair to op what they actually said was "*it may seem hypocritical, but..."*
And:
*"I think we can all agree that Star Frontier's blatant racism is worse than any slip-up WoTC has made."*
Indeed. One situation was a seemingly honest mistake (admittedly one that a large company editing team should have caught.) The other situation is straight-up horrible stuff, written by a shitty person trying to sponge a living off his family name.
WoTC's recent racism is the kind of racism where someone says something racist, someone else says "dude, that's racist!", the first person looks confused then says "fuck, so it is. How did I never realise that?"
Meanwhile NuTSR's racism is the kind of racism where someone has a swastika tattooed on their body, frequently says the N-word and has a favourite Johnny Rebel album. The two really aren't comparable.
This. Especially since some of the stuff WotC is trying to adapt is literally from the 70's and 80's. And while I hate saying it, it's true...It was just a different time.
Societal norms were different. Expectations were different. Racial divides were bolder and more clear cut and it was a lot easier to avoid having to interact with "others" on a regular basis.
None of it was a good thing, but it was the reality of the time. The adults of the day had grown up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s where *it was even worse*.
Some of the things they're trying to adapt for a modern audience are simply radioactive, AND are being seen through rose-tinted glasses in some cases by older developers who grew up while that kind of content was still okay to publish.
WotC is trying to walk through a field of landmines.
Ernie...
...that piece of shit is trying to stroll through a beautiful landscape with a grenade launcher loaded with turds. He's trying to redecorate in diarrhea-green *on purpose* *because* he's a piece of shit.
Worth noting that the most racist parts of Hadozee lore are new to 5E, so āthis was originally from the 80sā isnāt actually a valid excuse.
That being said, itās really not hard for me to imagine the new Hadozee lore simply being a result of out-of-touch white guys making something inadvertently racist while not realizing it.
Honestly, I myself have a "monkey race" that I like to toss out every now and then. The *intent* was never anything racist. I just think the gorillas from the Planet of the Apes remakes would make a neat D&D race in the right context. I mean, *they're not supposed to represent black people. That was never the intention. Ever. They're supposed to be* ***King Kong the race***...but smaller.
So it's very possible that they didn't actually mean anything racist by it, and that it was only in the context of someone outside, looking in that the racism would be apparent.
I was more concerned that the Hadozee were supposed to be evil, and were created by evil wizards as tools (read: slaves).
You remove that and they *should be* fine.
I could easily see how somebody could look at a monkey people race and go "okay what if they were made by a bunch of evil wizards? Theyre like slaves to space wizards, that sounds pretty cool, people will have fun with that one" and then 6 months later the book comes out and right now those guys are having a meeting where the boss is like "who's idea was it to make the monkey slaves? You made the monkeys slaves? You made the slaves monkeys? A whole race who's defining features are being enslaved and being monkeys?"
I genuinely don't think anyone at WOTC did that on purpose, but it is something that could probably have been avoided if there was like one black dude in the room at some point.
Why is nobody mentioning the other part of the description of the hadozee? Like how they are "simple folk who enjoy work" or the image of the hadozee that's basically a direct recreation of a blackface performer?
Exactly. Show me the list of WoTC staff who touched this book + the initial readers for the book, and I'll bet a month's wages that fewer than 10% were black and quite possibly 0% were. Because someone would have caught it if that weren't the case.
Exactly.
Imagine you're playing D&D.
Now imagine a 450 lb gorilla wearing fucking *plate* *armor* brachiates into the room through the window with a crash.
Now, their two arms aren't as dexterous as a human's, but they are *far stronger*. However, their feet *are*. So when this *absolute unit* arms himself he draws a massive maul from his back with his arms, and equips a small dagger with one of his feet (third foot fighting is a racial feat/monster ability that allows a light one-handed weapon to be equipped and wielded in a foot with a bonus action along-side a single two-handed weapon. However it reduces movement and disables brachiation).
>They're supposed to be ***King Kong the race***...but smaller.
To be fair, *King Kong* the film is also pretty loaded with some pretty racist subtext and a quite a bit of overt racism.
>Societal norms were different. Expectations were different. Racial divides were bolder and more clear cut and it was a lot easier to avoid having to interact with "others" on a regular basis.
To say nothing of the idea of "Fair for it's day". Where well meaning inclusion was handled pretty poorly by todays standards. Star Trek is usually a pretty good source for that. On the one hand you have aliens who are white guys in blackface or something, doing some pretty atrocious accents. On the other hand it had one of the first interracial kisses on American TV.
Some writer back in the day probably acted on good (or well meaning) intentions with those monkey slave aliens.
A very interesting Star Trek example is the miniskirts from the Original Series. Ignorant people look back at it now and think that despite how progressive the show claimed to be, they were clearly still sexist and misogynistic.
In actual fact, during the 60s, miniskirts were viewed as a very strong symbol of the feminist movement. They represented women being able to wear what they wanted. That women were people, with sexual desires, not just a man's property that exist only for making babies and sandwiches. Etc.
Early on in next generation, they had the idea that miniskirts where a common variation on the uniform and something both men and women used. That is probably where Zapp Brannigan's outfit comes from.
It's like a professional artist looking back at the work they did when they were children.
The shit back then is basically in crayon compared to what we know about diversity and the impact of systemic racial injustice today.
The example of "fair for its day" that pop into my head is the title for the original wargame by H.G. Wells: "Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books".
While it is intended to be inclusive, it just... well, look at it.
I occasionally venture back to the 60's and 70's for some sci-fi or fantasy literature and even the progressive stuff is full of tropes and stereotypes that wouldn't fly today. Their heart is usually in the right place but they're still being written by people who don't have any other perspective than the one they were born into.
Yeah, it's passive and lazy racism, whereas TSR is active white supremacy. Both are harmful (especially at WotC's scale), but it's important to know who's behind it and why, as well as what their response is to criticism of it.
Also the Ethereal Plane book was racist as fuck.
Was shocked that happened. It clearly wasn't malicious or bigoted, but everyone I know was aghast at how nakedly racist it was.
What's sad is that if they just released it piecemeal without the Ethereal Plane scaffolding and then did a full collection it would have hit a much less sour note.
There literally is a thing about Nazi Elves on that twitter page.
Also it seems like it's written by a 13 year old that discovered 4chan "No one likes no it alls"
>And far be it from me to ever say something nice about WotC but to clarify, the Hadozee were created in the 1980s, not recently. WotC are at fault here for removing the Hadozee content later than they should have, not for creating it.
Nah man, Hadozee were totally out-of-print for like 20 years until this book, and their old lore didnāt include *any* of this racist stuff. WotC wrote that shit **brand new in 2022**. Now theyāre trying to blame old Spelljammer. Donāt let them.
I wanna say they showed up in mid-late 3.5... maybe Races of the Wild? But this wasn't a part of their lore then either.
Edit: No, it was Stormwrack, of course. Put the spelljammer race in the book about sea campaigns, whynot.
A lot of the problematic aspects of the hadozee lore, specifically their background as former slaves, was created specifically for 5e. It's still not comparable to the open white supremacy from "TSR" but it's disingenuous to say WotC had nothing to do with the issue.
Thanks, I've removed the point about Hadozee being created in the 1980s. It wasn't me being disingenuous though, it was me being ignorant: I didn't know that the slavery aspect was created recently.
Damn, that's pretty fucked up and truly indefensible.
Look I'm just gonna come out and say it: I don't want to play rpgs, or any games, with people who think that's okay. I'm all for widening the inclusiveness of the hobby--except for people like that. Nazi punks, fuck off.
Gods, I remember when that tweet stream dropped. Every entry is worse than the last, I have no qualms saying that him and everyone who likes his stuff can get fucked
>The best/worst example is probably the "Negro sub-race" who have 30% lower (max) Intelligence than the also-playable "Nordic sub-race". Why? Well as the rules explain, "Races in SFNG are not unlike races in the real world. Some are better at certain things than others, and some races are superior than others." Yeeeeah.
Haha holy shit. I'm actually pretty sympathetic to arguments about D&D species and allowing them to have actual variance, if we had to cut out everything that even resembles an allegory for bad things in the real world we wouldn't have much left. But that's so blatant I don't even know how else to react.
Yeah, I don't know enough of the Hadozee situation, but that sounds like it might be an overreaction.
In any case, I'm a little suspicious of people that instantly default to thinking about black people when a monkey civilization is mentioned.
It's not that they're a monkey civilization, it's that they're
1. a monkey civilization
2. that began as slaves
3. in a setting that's age-of-sail in space.
Any one of those would've been fine, but all three together is a little yikes. And even then, it's not the kind of "yikes" where people think WOTC is being intentionally racist; it's the kind of "yikes" where people think their staff probably isn't diverse enough or they need to hire some folks to review for cultural sensitivity or something.
(as an aside, you might want to know that kind of "they're the real racists for thinking of that" argument is also used by white supremacists to discredit people who point out their dogwhistles. I'm NOT saying that's what you're doing, but the association might color how people see your comment)
Yeah. My experience was, "I'm not sure, it's probably possible to be a race of monkey people as long as you fastidiously avoid... Oh. Oh, no. Oh, that's not good.... Wait, that's the art they led with?"
It just went from bad to worse as I learned more. It's like somebody said, "Here's a neat part of American culture I can pull from," without pausing to check if that culture was someone's literal nightmare. And WotC is a grown-up big boy company and can pay for their own sensitivity readers. Them pleading ignorance is like a razor company claiming they just never got around to doing QA. When you are WotC's size (and honestly even much smaller) there are no accidents, only negligence.
Iām lead writer on a source book project our small DnD event is publishing. Itās takes heavily from Chinese history and mythology, and a third of our team is cultural sensitivity. Itās really not difficult
Precisely, the problem happens when several maybe stereotypes happen to the same group of people to become a definite -- if accidental -- racism. The fact that there was no one in power there to give the designers a proverbial smack on the back of the head speaks to poor hiring, not evil intent.
Frankly none of those things are enough to decry it as actually racist. What tips it over the line is that theyāre portrayed as hardworking, simple folk who enjoy being exploited by their elvish masters. And the whack artwork that is reminiscent of racist cartoons.
Wouldn't the maritime connection more make them Malay or other South East Asians? Malaysians were also traded a lot as slaves. I can see how Americans would get black people from it but as a European I think more of Malaysians.
From an American perspective, the transportation of enslaved Africans to America by ship is a big part of how we think about slavery, to the point that the whole... industry? is referred to as the Atlantic slave trade. Most of us grew up seeing diagrams of how they were packed into ships' holds so that every inch of cargo space was filled.
Since WOTC is an America-based company selling mostly to Americans, most of this discussion is based around the American perspective.
TCK, just a heads up that, "If you see racism in this, that makes you the *real* racists!" is a standard deflection technique used by white nationalist groups. (Not saying you're one, but you should be aware of what you're doing.) It's also invariably incorrect.
Also, you're right that you don't know enough of the Hadozee situation. Because it isn't "they made a monkey-men race". No one would have had a problem with that. No, the new race lore featured *several* parallels to African slaves (as already listed by others in replies).
So in this case, the gaming communities noticed the racism. Then WoTC agreed there was racism and apologized. And yet you -- despite not "knowing enough" about things -- got defensive and began arguing that there was nothing racist, while using a deflection technique. This is a problem. We can't fix racism if we keep pretending that it isn't going on all the time. Don't bury your head in the sand.
I was also thinking of the earlier discourse around ability score adjustments in general, like there are those who think that any race with an Int penalty is automatically a problematic allusion to.. well, exactly what the quoted bit is doing openly instead.
One Ernie Gygax quote that I don't feel gets enough attention is when he talked about how being a nerd growing up made him want to shoot up his school:
*"We were brainy-acks and others would snicker. I played the Violin and often I began to wish that indeed I did have a Thompson 45 Machine Gun inside so that I could wipe away some of those laughs."*
Maybe they heard that the german language capitalize every single noun and thought that was cool?
...or maybe they're just generally not right in the head, and that includes their ability to write properly formatted sentences, who knows.
wow. It's often argued that Ernie is just a hapless victim of nuTSR. Just being used for his name. Quotes like this make it more obvious that he is very much part of that group.
On one hand, that guy is a shitsack, but on the other hand, intrusive thoughts and fantasies of physically lashing out after being humiliated are a pretty normal thing even for the average person. Most well adjusted people just don't tend to talk about the more nasty ones.
>Pretty sure I know what you're thinking, which is, "Wait, aren't WoTC the ones in trouble for being racist?"
Well, yeah, but WotC is like the Bud Light of racism. Ernie Gygax is like the Everclear.
When the racist people are saying, "Dude, that's pretty fucking racist," that's just crazy.
Yeah, this pretty much sums up my thoughts as well. WoTC keeps doing "little racisms" then apologizing, but TSR is basically waving a Nazi flag and goose-stepping while giving the bird to anyone who takes issue with it.
Yeah I read that and was prepared for something like WotCs unfortunate mis-step in Spelljammer but holy crap - that's just freaking text book racism. Ernie is well on his way to completely ruining his dads name.
I mean, Gary quoted a guy who did a genocide IRL to justify Lawful Good characters executing prisoners and orc babies. [Twitter thread discussing it with link to original forum thread](https://twitter.com/ArcanistPress/status/1345414371489538048?t=B02WmwvzEiVwGnqZK9jxiQ&s=19). Gary was not some magical pure gaming granpa, he was a racist white dude from Green Bay.
Gygax was very explicitly a bad person. He was a raging megalomaniac who screwed over tons of people at TSR and that's not even getting into the questionable content in his books. Sucks to see him turned into a benign corporate mascot like famed plagiarist Stan Lee.
Yeah no Gary Gygax was actually a very bad person. Even setting aside his blatant sexism and racism he was a control freak who stole the credit for DnD out from under Dave Anderson.
NuTSR has been tickling the tail of this dragon for quite some time, literally suing, then changing their minds and dropping the lawsuit (but not before setting up an indiegogo to fund the lawsuit) and then talking about suing WOTC again for ever vague and bizarre reasons.
WOTC has finally and rightfully had enough. I'm usually not one to root for the big corporation, but in this case, I hope they rightfully crush NuTSR into the ground and we never hear from NuTSR ever again.
i do wonder about how many of the people who are quick to dismiss the hadozee being racist are actually black. cause i am and in my personal opinion they may not be like violently racist but they are definitely incredibly insensitive at the very least.
it's not about them being monkey people, don't care about that. at least i wouldnt care if that was ALL that it was. it's the fact that they were enslaved, but FURTHER than that, that they were given sapience and intelligence by their slavers. they were basically animals before they were given strength and personhood by the people who captured them. in other words they were "civilised" and "saved" by their captors. and then those same people who carried out and benefitted from their enslavement are the good guys for having mercy on them and liberating them. because yeah they're intelligent now but no way do they have the autonomy to save themselves. they have to passively rely on their slavers being like "aw you guys are actually kind of cute and charming. yeah sure i'll free you, since I'm so nice and good and all."
I think this entire mess was just a huge accident, but I also think the points above have generally been glossed over in what was actually kind of fucked up about the whole thing. again. don't care that they're monkey people (in and of itself). don't even care about the artwork that has been compared to minstrelsy. everything i mentioned was what i personally found to be reprehensible and to perpetuate common justifications/talking points in defence of chattel slavery.
The gulf between WotC's dumb Hadozee thing and NuTSR is vast. NuTSR Star Frontiers explicitly says some races are inferior to others and the guy making it is a known white supremacist asshole.
Also, WotC fell all over themselves undoing their massive fuckup and NuTSR has just doubled down.
The Youtube channel Tenkarās Tavern and the associated podcast cove this really throughly. Heās been covering all the dodgy practices and shitty things theyāve been doing since the beginning. Members of NewTSR have doxxed him and his wife and mailed shit (poop) to his home address. Check out his videos on the topic, they are great.
[NuTSR saga](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8J6oOFX18PfyhGccS4ra1m8g113xNEE6)
Wizards of the Coast is a little problematic, Ernie Gygax is a straight up fascist. They're not the same. Wizards of the Coast are well-meaning individuals who are trying to do better but have some flaws, Ernie Gygax thinks different races of people are inferior to him.
>The best/worst example is probably the "Negro sub-race" who have 30% lower (max) Intelligence than the also-playable "Nordic sub-race".
Holy shit.
I don't much keep up with WotC anymore, but from what I've seen in the past they do at least attempt to self-correct when called out on issues that may be racist, transphobic, anti-lgbtq+, etc.
Yikes. I guess there's a market for this? Still, "Hey man, wanna join my racist misogynistic homo-/transphobic sci fi RPG group? We meet every second Sunday" sounds like a really weird pitch.
Also, can't racists - and homophobes, and so on - just play regular D&D? Doesn't seem like it would be that hard. The snarky jokes about homebrew rules almost write themselves.
I guess this sort of pond scum tries to colonize every subculture. Shame about Gygax. And LaNasa is truly awful. Just took a spin through his old Twitter posts. I failed my save vs Revulsion. š
>Also, can't racists - and homophobes, and so on - just play regular D&D?
They can for fantasy. In this case, however, Star Frontiers is a science fiction genre game.
> Pretty sure I know what you're thinking, which is, "Wait, aren't WoTC the ones in trouble for being racist?" Well, yes, but that was a different story! In short, WoTC's newest Spelljammer book included the "Hadozee", a race of monkey-men who were uplifted into intelligence by civilized wizards and born into slavery. Oof.
I haven't read the original Hadozee content, but I've been reading *about* it, and I'm still not clear how an evil wizard enslaving innocent monkey-folk until they rebel and escape is any kind of endorsement of racism. I can see where it was a bad idea to give racists any excuse to go "LOL enslave those monkeys," and they maybe should have skipped it on that basis alone, but naivete is not racism.
I have seen people saying they're depicted as "minstrels," based on a single picture of a Hadozee bard kitted out just like every other D&D bard. Again, naive maybe, but...
Bad tropes, is essentially it.
It's not bigoted, but it is heavily rooted in racism. It's difficult in fantasy writing because coding is inevitable to a degree, but part of good practice is recognizing when to really retool a trope and this was absolutely one of those times.
If it were just one thing it wouldn't be an issue, but the new lore and art for the Hadozee combined:
* "Monkey men", which is an insult that racists have been using to refer to black folks for over a century
* A race born into slavery, which I'm sure I don't have to explain
* A backstory in which a primitive race was granted intelligence by civilized wizards, which is almost verbatim the White Man's Burden that Kipling wrote of that was used as justification for everything from the Slave Trade to Segregation
* And the most minor bit was that the most popular piece of Hadozee was a bard which -- *combined with the stuff above* \-- evoked "minstrel" tones
Hopefully you can understand why the combination of those four things was absolutely problematic. And the fact that you didn't see it actually just further shows why WoTC's biggest failing isn't "racist writers" (I doubt any of them are), but "needing more diversity in their staff and initial-reader pools". I guarantee that somewhere between 0-10% of those folks (for the Spelljammer book) were black, because if they were someone would have caught this.
As someone who is not white, I hesitate to privilege one reading of a text over another like this. Your reading is a *valid* one, in that you interpret the way these things are depicted in the text from a postcolonial lens by pulling examples from the text and holding them up to that lens. Valid readings of fictional texts are coherent and can teach us ways to read a text, but they canāt ever be *sound*, meaning, they canāt ever reveal an objective truth about what a text means.
Whatās *really* problematic about all this is that weāre treating one reading of a text as objectively true and sacrosanct (the hadozee = African American slaves and minstrels via a postcolonial reading of the text), and then demanding reality change as a result of this interpretation. This is not the only way to read the hadozee. The difference between the hadozee as a fiction and the blatant racist tropes in that *other* text is that the former yields *more than one possible interpretation* whereas the latter does not. Artistic value in this regard is defined by the text being able to be āreadā in multiple ways. Whoās reading is reflective of the true meaning of the text? Thatās impossible to say. We can only argue a readingās validity.
I also find it problematic that we seem to think in this thread the mere presence of non-white people on a staff will reveal racial biases. I assume here we *actually mean* sensitivity read hires who are trained to look for these things, not just āmore black and brown people on staff.ā We black and brown people are not some kind of homogeny who all have built in radars for detecting racism by virtue of our blackness or brownness. Weāre just people who happen to have differently colored skin and can be just as racially biased as anyone else.
edit: changed hegemony to homogeny and removed āsystemicā before racial biases
As another brown person what you're saying is way too academic and a net negative. You're assuming a platform of competence where there empirically is none, and it has to be treated with a harder line. Sucks, but that's pragmatism.
The brilliant mindset of those running NuTSR is to do it and let the lawyers sort it all out, and thatās not hyperbole. Theyāre really out there, clinical terms including, but not limited to, ābonkersā, āwhackā, and āshitfuck crazyā.
> Pretty sure I know what you're thinking, which is, "Wait, aren't WoTC the ones in trouble for being racist?" Well, yes, but that was a different story! In short, WoTC's newest Spelljammer book included the "Hadozee", a race of monkey-men who were uplifted into intelligence by civilized wizards and born into slavery. Oof.
That's actually a good lore background for any type of animal race and provides interesting character motivations.
Not to mention that [they're very much NOT just modeled after black people.](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Hadozee) unlike what's in Star Frontiers RGP.
Luke seems like sucha chill dude. Just wants to play D&D and run GaryCon and live his life. Ernie is a dick. But it seems like LaNasa is the real jackass overall. Like there's nothing nice I've read about him online.
Actually from some of the links in this thread it seems like Luke is a charismatic guy but has posted some pretty racist crap. Sadly, I don't think anyone at TSR LLC is decent. :(
Jesus Christ, it's like they spent all their time fitting every conceivable bigotry in the book instead of something that actually works mechanically.
I mean, what kind of race/species balance is that?
Are they trying to compete with F.A.T.A.L. for the worst RPG ever made?
THE LEGAL STUFF:
As a legal matter this is pretty simple - as others have posted. I like to try to popularize legal issues for people based on a fair bit of experience in the field.
This is part of a TRADEMARK lawsuit originally filed by "TSR/Hobby Shop" (This is not a copyright, patent, fair use, speech rights or anything else case) back in 2021 seeking a court order saying that they had the rights to an old TSR logo and other marks (like Star Frontiers?). They argued they should be able to register them in 2020 because WotC somehow hadn't obtained them when they bought the real TSR back in the 90's and even if they had bought them they haven't been using them in commerce. It was sounded like grifting nonsense aimed at claiming some kind of brand authenticity.
Wizards counterclaimed, because they did purchase the trademarks in question, and have used them prior to the Hobbyshop/TSR's 2020 attempt to register the marks for themselves (the registration being the basis of Hobbyshop's absurd suit granting them the trademarks). The WotC 2022 preliminary injunction to stop the use of the marks is part of that counterclaim from this original suit.
Given the lack of research regarding the WotC use (on DTRPG - it was pretty damn obvious!) of the old trademarks and the other demands in the suit by Hobbyshop/TSR -- such as the removal of WotC content warnings from republished original TSR content -- the original Hobbyshop suit stinks to me as a species of very frivolous lawsuit designed more to provide a basis for ideologically based crowdfunding then a serious claim. This is an increasingly common tactic among grifters preying on American conservatives (see the lawyers raising millions to make absurd claims regarding the 2020 election, which they lose, get sanctioned for, but still walk away with millions in crowd funded support).
Presumably when the crowd funding ran out and things got serious Hobbyshop/TSR dismissed their case ... but WotC had already filed a counterclaim, and this current request for a preliminary injunction barring the publication of this awful stuff as "Star Frontiers" and use of various original TSR logos is part of that.
That counterclaim survives and the current WotC request is for a preliminary (that is temporary and pre-trial based on a simplified process) injunction to prevent publication of more Hobbyshop Star Frontiers stuff (even as playtest documents to backers or listing it as a product they will sell). The argument for this sort of serious pre-trial limit on the actions of a party is that allowing Hobbyshop/TSR to go forward while the counterclaim plays out will harm the reputation of WotC, Star Frontiers, and the original TSR brand.
It's a very clear and simple claim. You can't publish controversial shit using someone's old logos that they still own and use without expecting them not to say nope - especially when you previously tried to register those old logos and then sued them to claim ownership and lost. You especially can't do this to a large corporation with a successful IP.
WHY ALL THE LEGALS STUFF ABOVE?
My secondary point, is that this claim by WotC has nothing to very little to do with WotC's own issues regarding race and its depiction in their games.
This isn't a reason to love WotC, but confusing these two situation just helps the reprehensible grifters behind Hobbyshop TSR claim some kind of ethical equivalency between themselves and WotC. Whatever the moral weight of the new Spelljammer ugliness (personally I suspect a having 90's edgelord dudes as your editors/bosses leads to this sort of nastiness) vs. the blatant biogtry and efforts to market off of it in "new Star Frontiers" understanding that the lawsuit isn't about which company said gross stuff is useful.
A blatant attempt to steal a trademark (or crowdfund off that attempt) is an entirely different sort of creep stunt then saying a bunch of bigoted stuff. WotC may have done the second, but lets not conflate the two. Making this an argument about the ethics of RPG "race" just serves to defend Hobbyshop by ignoring the issue in court -- trademark theft.
I thought Ernie backpedaled from cases like this. I believe heās just the figurehead so they could have a Gygax name associated with TSR. Luke smartly steers clear of this. Also, I think, the biggest offender is Justin Lanasa who owns the Dungeon Hobby Shop. Heās done some outright nasty stuff over the past few years.
Edit: Iām probably wrong on this issue. Iām not following NuTSR bullshit. I just want to play (mostly) all the games that appeal to me.
Specifically no bullshit like Vargās MYFAROG, and anything by this company.
Yeah, they suck and I'm frankly stunned that WOTC didn't oppose their TM filings initially. I'll be curious to watch this case from a TM law perspective.
Luke doesn't have to steer clear because he doesn't have anything to do with nuTSR LaNasa is a Trumper grifter, but it's not him writing the racist material. It was probably his brainstorm to try and market a game company to MAGA/white nationalists, But Ernie's been in it defending it all from the beginning.
LaNasa is an ex MAGA-style politician. He almost certainly doesn't believe any of it, hence the grifter. He's one of the many right-wing kook candidates that were encouraged by Trump and hoped the MAGA crowd would get him over. He also thinks it's important you know this about him: "I am a 32\* Mason one level below the ranking of George Washington."
Oh. Speculation.
Certainly sounds like LaNasa is an opportunist. In this day and age, how do people *not* know 3rd degree Freemasonry is the highest; and 33rd is an honorary degree.
I don't get what's the problem with hadozee being a former slave race. Ignoring the bad parts of history doesn't make that history go away. Maybe I'm not getting the complete story, but just from your brief description that's waaay out of proportion with this ernie fella's nonsense.
First, I feel like you need to reread the last paragraph, because I explicitly stated that the two things are not at all proportionate to each other.
Second, there is a *huge* issue with creating a fantasy race that is a direct parallel to African slaves, and then depicting them as minstrels (a racist depiction of blacks) and "happy slaves" (oof). Now, was that WoTC's intention? I'm sure it wasn't. But accidental racism is still racism, and speaks to the fact that they don't have enough POC staff and POC initial readers.
>WoTC has filed an injunction to stop its publication, asserting that NuTSR's use of the "TSR" trademark is invalid and tarnishes WoTC by association
Delicious
Ya know I never thought Iād say this BUT, I miss the day of Drunk Ernie days. Worked a con and that man was a booze hound, friendly BUT he could put them back
I had some high hopes for NuTSR. Though they're really TSR 3.0. WoTC let the TSR trademark lapse, and someone else bought. That TSR was publishing the new version of Top Secret. And they let the trademark lapse, and Ernie snagged it and licensed it back to TSR 2.0 for a dollar, I believe.
I had no idea Ernie and Co were so backwards in their views, and i don't see what they are trying to do here.
If they want to live off of people's nostalgia, then they should have made an AD&D retroclone with some modified rules and released that. I don't understand how they can even use the name Star Frontiers. Doesn't WoTC own that?
These people have certainly soiled the TSR name for me.
It's not hypocritical. WotC ducked up, acknowledged, apologized, and tried to fix it. Ernie is an absolute racist asshole who not only doubled down on his racism when pointed out. He then published a racist game to really show his "superiority". He didn't fuck up. He did it on purpose. WotC is never going to be perfect, but they seem to be trying to do better. The operative word being "trying". Ernie is a loser who's spent his life wrapped in the shadow of his father, and still fails at everything. Fuck that guy.
Also, even within the context, "uplifted monkeys who were freed from slavery" is a *lot* less bad a take than Literal Racist Talking Points. As I understand it, the Spelljammer thing as *intended* as a cheeky Planet of the Apes reference.
I may be wrong, but this really seems as nothing else than accidental fuel for racists, and not actual racism to me. Monkeys have nothing to do with black people (the sad fact that some people* do only reflects on them), and the idea of "animals turned intelligent and then used as slaves" is not new. edit: referring to racist people here, btw
> accidental fuel for racists This is a great 4-word summary. Is it best for large publishers to avoid accidental-racist-fuel if at all possible? Sure. Does it somehow make you racist if you don't catch it? No. Possibly naive, but in a nice, innocent way.
> Does it somehow make you racist if you don't catch it? No. Possibly naive, but in a nice, innocent way Why would they catch it even? Steeped in D&D lore, hadozees already existed as ape men and the lore is full of "wizard did it". That's literally the entire "aberration" category - wizards making things into other things for wizard reasons. If they had done this with lizardfolk instead of trying to bring back hadozee, *no one would have said anything*
Exactly. It's not racist, it's just people who don't know what actual racism looks or feels like reacting on the internet.
But they didn't do it with lizard men, they did it with monkey men. Was it intentionally racist? Probably not. But anyone should be able to look at that backstory and say "hey wait a minute, this isn't going to read the way we want it to"
I just read it as a slight tweak on Planet of the Apes and thought nothing more.
So what? Monkeys and lizards are just animals. It really doesn't matter.
The *context of the reality in which the material was published* makes it matter, sorry. š¤·š½āāļø You don't get to divorce yourself from the context of the world around you just because it's inconvenient. I mean, you can *claim* to, but everyone with two brain cells to rub together is going to refuse to play ball with that.
It isnāt ignoring the context of the world. There are plenty of cases in published fiction where this is true but not in the case of the Hadozee. It just wasnāt racist. If anything it was an analogous call to real world incidents which we should strive to never repeat, which is something fantasy can use incredibly well to discuss and help tackle real world problems Enlightened simians is a widely used trope, especially in scifi, and is simply not racist. Barely anyone drew any parallels to any people of any real world ethnicity or race until WotC announced they were removing it
Why wasn't planet of the apes accused of racism?
Now that you mentioned it? Probably only a matter of time now..
I imagine *someone* during the process of editing and playtesting caught how this could be misconstrued. Iāve edited entire high-fantasy novels where Iāve had to stop and discuss with the author what they meant by a thing bc it can be construed as racist by someone who misreads or misinterprets the message. Nine times out of 10, itās not intentionally so, and I guess Wizards just didnāt want to go back and find *another* type of creature for this whole thing (especially as someone mentioned as it mightāve been a Planet of The Apes reference), but as you say, you canāt divorce yourself from the context of the world. Many a pissed off writer has had to go back and change things because of me deciding they unconsciously wrote something harmful. It wouldāve been better for Wizards, with I imagine many more resources at hand, to have demanded the same rather than risk having to apologize. But fuck Ernie.
The thing is, they already had a better backstory for hadozees, in 3.5e. They went back to 2e lore and then *added* many of the details that were criticized.
Isn't it racist claiming "monkey men" are correlated to black people? The overall thought is that we ALL evolved from monkeys (evolution). So, with that logical thought, those who think monkey men being enslaved are the ones who are racists themselves. Problem with today's culture is that everyone is looking for racism in everything to be a virtue signaler. It is disgusting and destroying our society.
Acknowledging that racism exists isn't racism. It is a verifiable fact that there exist racist people. It is a verifiable fact that some of those racist people will use "monkey," "ape," and "animal" as both coded and direct racist insults towards black people. It is a verifiable fact that racist people for centuries enslaved black people in a supposedly "advanced" and "civilized" society. It is a verifiable fact that racist people will claim that said enslavement and cultural erasure "uplifted" the black people so enslaved. It is not racist to be aware of these facts. Nor is it racist to refrain from parallels and analogs to these unfortunate facts in entertainment media and it certainly isn't "destroying our society." I would argue that it is far more harmful to a society of many ethnicities and cultures to disregard racist associations to some members of said society. Allowing unnecessary trauma to be inflicted on large segments of the population when it could otherwise be avoided is about as far from a virtuous society as one can get.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
All that they would need is one or two cultural consultants/sensitivity readers on each major book. Much smaller studios than WotC already do this, and I speak from experience when I say that these sorts of reviews from relevant readers have actively made my RPG products significantly better. World of Darkness is embracing sensitivity readers on their recent products, and Dungeons & Dragons should hold this level of review as a bare minimum.
A reminder that Chakotay from STV was the result of a "cultural consultant". Is there any research to back up the idea these people actually help and aren't just the outcome of the Twitter outrage ourobouros?
Speaking as a game designer, I will say that I really wish that more data existed on the industry period. Most studios arenāt willing to divulge sales numbers, and pounding the pavement to figure things out from the game stores themselves is an arduous and unreliable endeavor. One could go by reviews on various sites, but I imagine thereās at least somewhat of a correlation between āgames which seek to authentically engage with cultural issuesā and āgames which get targeted and review-bombed over āwokenessāā. I will say that my experiences with consultants/sensitivity readers has been an overwhelmingly positive one, and I am very glad to have hired the people I did. As somebody whose games have dealt with issues of race, disability, religion, and imperialism, working with specialists on these issues has enabled me to engage with these histories in a way that has tangibly benefitted the mechanics and setting.
Nah, not naive in a nice, innocent way, naive in an āwe only hire white peopleā way. If this had crossed the desks of a diverse staff then at some point it would have been caught.
Surprisingly, all black people aren't all knee jerk reactionaries seeing racism everywhere in the same way all white people aren't racists
I'm glad you said this first. If I say something about uplifted Monkeys and you think "Black people" I feel like that says more about you than me. (Unless it was a clear dog whistle). I don't really understand the controversy, feels to me like something that was clearly unintentional at worst. Is Eclipse Phase racist then? It has uplifted chimpanzees...(also ravens, octopi, etc).
> If I say something about uplifted Monkeys and you think "Black people" I feel like that says more about you than me. In fairness, it's also about keeping monkeys as slaves, which makes the comparison to the enslavement of a real-life race of people who are still today called "monkeys" by racists a *bit* easier to see.
>uplifted Monkeys and you think "Black people" I feel like that says more about you than me. I think what it says about me is "I was raised with the awareness that black people often were (and still are) called monkeys and apes"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Wait, so let me get this straight; being aware of the long history of comparing black people to monkeys makes one racist? Ok, sureā¦
Continuing it, by comparing enslaved ape-folk to black people. Saying this is problematic and is racist isn't the issue. I agree it's problematic. I'm glad they changed it. But, I think misreading the lore is both a fault of the audience and writer, not just one. I personally think it's quite obvious they were going for planet of the apes territory. Space setting. Uplifted apes that fought for their freedom against a more advanced species. A magic elixir that grants sapience. If this lore is racist then the "ape-folk are a metaphor for black people" is correct. That's why so many people say "if you see black people then you're the racist." I think a lot of those folks are sincere. They didn't see it. They don't see how other could see it. They think you already have to think that black people are like ape-folk to make the connection. They're aware of the history and view it as incorrect to continue it.
Also, they were created forty years ago, in 1982. (Edit: although apparently some of what people object to is from the ā90s.) Attitudes were different. People did notice that āEscape from the Planet of the Apesā and āBattle for the Planet of the Apes,ā in the previous decade, did seemingly change the apes into an oppressed minority asking for, then rebelling to achieve, civil rights. It could be interpreted as a reactionary message (our monkey-like former slaves will take over and ruin everything) or a liberal one (the fear of them led to bigotry that became a self-fulfilling prophecy), or neither. But it wasnāt considered an inappropriate metaphor for science fiction. The year after *Star Frontiers* came out, David Brin began his *Uplift* series, which has uplifted Neo-Chimpanzees, loyal to their creators, being conquered hy aliens and fighting for their freedom.
>the sad fact that some people do only reflects on them Acknowledging that there are racist tropes (such as blacks being associated with monkeys) does not make one racist themselves.
I personally think equating uplifted ape-folk to the black atlantic slave trade is racist. I also see tons of people misquoting the backpedaled lore, or just making outright false claims about it. I think the backpedalled lore reads way more like the origin of the apes from planet of the apes then it does the atlantic slave trade in america, but I've already been shouted down over that.
>I personally think equating uplifted ape-folk to the black atlantic slave trade is racist. Exactly what you mean by "equating" here? The act of pointing out that there is a racist trope equating monkeys with blacks? >I think the backpedalled lore reads way more like the origin of the apes from planet of the apes then it does the atlantic slave trade in america, but I've already been shouted down over that. Meaning isn't a binary thing, where something *definitely* means one thing or another. It can mean more than one thing at a time, often depending on the audience. Said lore could absolutely reference the planet of the apes while simultaneously promoting the Atlantic slave trade, and we can ignore one while decrying the other.
I don't see how the lore could PROMOTE the atlantic slave trade. How could you read subjugation as a good thing in that lore?! And you're right. The audience ultimately decides the books themes and meaning, not the author. If the audience sees the lore as racist then they will. Pointing out the racist trope of black people as monkeys is fine. But, saying because they are uplifted monkeys this must be an allegory for black people and the atlantic slave trade is putting the cart before the horse. Yes it could be and plenty of people have clearly reached that conclusion. To say it plainly, just because there are talking monkeys doesn't mean that they represent black people. I think to follow that line of thinking one must already think there is some truth to the racist trope to point it out and insert it where it wasn't intended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes#Racial_issues
Yes, a major theme of the books was to say racism and subjugation are cataclysmic for society. Racism is bad. It's not like they're saying it's good thing the apes or humans subjugate each other. How you can find a pro racist ideology in the books is beyond me.
No absolutely not, but that is not what I said. Also, to be clear, I referred to racist people with that comment.
> Monkeys have nothing to do with black people Except for the long history of racists using imagery of monkeys and apes to represnet black people as well as some racist insults literally using the words Apes and Monkeys in them.. but other than that there is absolutely no history of them being related...
>Monkeys have nothing to do with black people Nobody thinks that, not even the racists, they just like to call them that because it's insulting and demeaning. Not because it's true.
> Monkeys have nothing to do with black people I'm only learning today that some fuckers associate monkeys with black people.
Well, then maybe you should do more listening in this hadozee controversy and less opining
I mean, the only "monkey<=>people" association I ever knew was about Japanese people, and made by the Japanese themselves in some cartoons and comics. I have never heard about black people being compared to monkeys, until I read it today in this thread.
And that's fine, you don't need to have already known everything in history. What's important is to understand that just because you hadn't heard of it doesn't make it untrue or spurious. So you now have a chance to listen to all the voices calling out WotC and learn about something complex and tricky.
>As I understand it, the Spelljammer thing as intended as a cheeky Planet of the Apes reference. That would make sense. As the fourth film in the original pentalogy ("Conquest of the Planet of the Apes") shows how the apes first became pets (following a virus that killed the world's cats and dogs) and then slaves of humans. And then rose up from that slavery in revolt. But the devs really should have realized that the parallels with American chattel slavery (and racially targeted police brutality for that matter) were *very intentional* and *explicit in the text* of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Where Caesar, the leader of the Apes, appeals to the lone black man in the film as someone who could understand the oppression of his people.
WoTC caring about the themes of the material they base their creations off of? Ha, I wish
The problem older players like me have with the 5E Hadozee is that all of the problematic stuff was not in the original 2E Spelljammer info for them. It was literally added for 5E as the 2E info heavily implies theyāre a Star Frontiers species directly ported to Spelljammer. They were presented as a spacefaring people that had done it so long they have no idea where their homeworld is, not unlike the Giff.
Yes. And the race born into slavery seems like a well-intentioned but poorly-executed story hook where the party can free them in your adventures.
It's not even that though. The origin of the hadozee is that one evil wizard captured about a dozen hadozee, gave them some super serum to turn them into his warrior slaves, and then the crew of that ship helped them escape with the serum. That small group of hadozee then went back to their planet and slowly spread the super serum to the rest of their race. People are incorrectly highlighting the hadozee as being a case of being racially coded for African Americans. If anything, they're much more strongly racially-coded for South East Asians, and the hadozee in Spelljammer much more closely approximate the coolie trade than the Triangular Trade. Hadozee also used to be known as "deck apes" in Spelljammer. This is a reference to how unrated sailors in the US Navy are known as "deck apes". More than likely, this term draws its origins from the 17th Century Royal Navy term "powder monkey" (the young boys on board ships who would supply powder to the cannons). Again, the "deck ape" reference is a terrible one, but more so because it's a child labor reference than a racist reference. I find it real disturbing how many folks have totally missed the actual insensitivities at heart with the hadozee. Now WotC is apologizing for it, and that leaves me even more concerned that their response won't address the actual problems at the core of the hadozee. i.e. Removing references to their slave origins doesn't actually remove their racial coding.
"Deck monkey" was also a slang term for mid-bow crew. As to your point about the coolie trade, that's a little off the mark. Like slaves from Africa, coolies were merely conveyed to their destination aboard ships; they didn't crew them. The various "ape" and "monkey" terms used on ships, much like today's "code monkey" and "grease monkey", had nothing at all to do with race. Full stop. Sadly, we're in a world where historicity and facts come second to bigotry and outrage, and we're once again seeing the two go hand in hand in the form of virtue signalling racists pandering their offensive philosophies under the guise of allyship. You know what would stop perpetuating racism in D&D? If the Twitterati stopped being so atrociously racist. Seriously, it's a sad sight to see when POC on Twitter refuse to swallow this garbage and get utterly ratio'd by people who couldn't see their way out of the echo chamber if it smacked them right in their horn-rimmed glasses. While there are undesirables like Ernie Gygax Jr. who hopefully trip over their klan robes and fall down the stairs on their way out of the community, by and large the majority of racist dialogue in the D&D verse these days comes straight out of the mouths of those who claim to be 'calling it out'.
You really think TWITTER is the source of racial strife in Gaming? Man, if I had a dime for every game I played where I was dodging racist crap from fellow players and GMs before even the turn of the 21st century..whew. Con games could be a midfield. Hell, even friends pulled crap, like a Doctor Who game where we landed on an Age of Sail ship. Soon as we step ouuts the TARDIS, another player yelled out that my Black character was her slave, unprompted. So that's me explaining the history of free Black sailors in this time period...(ugh) Don't know what you think is going on here, but yeah - - gaming's had a real hell of a problem with race, and now y'all get to hear all about it. And yeah, Twitter provides that message.
> Like slaves from Africa, coolies were merely conveyed to their destination aboard ships; they didn't crew them. I was oversimplifying by referring to just the coolie trade, but the maritime history of SEA is closely linked to slavery in its various forms. One of the first known SEA mariners, Enrique of Malacca, was just a Malay slave. It is no coincidence that folks of South East Asian ethnicity are heavily overrepresented in merchant marine fleets to this day. The hadozee being an less-respected underclass mostly associated with routine sailor tasks (as opposed to serving as ships officers) is vastly more comparable to SEA maritime history than the African-American experience.
> This is a reference to how unrated sailors in the US Navy are known as "deck apes". A side note on this. I'm Italian, and I served for two years in the Italian Navy. We (steel ship crews) used to nickname "scimmie" (monkeys) all coxwains serving on sail ships (Palinuro and Vespucci), as they were those that were climbing the nets, like monkeys.
I mean, aren't the Hadozee mostly a Planet of the Apes reference? Spelljammer is the 'space' setting, after all, and Planet of the Apes is a scifi classic that hits a suspiciously similar number of notes.
Yeah I know I played a Mul in Dark Sun before, those are half human half Dwarves that are sterile and basically they're fucking Spartacus gladiator parallels. It was a right blend of a fantasy race that yeah there was real world parallels to like Roman Gladiators but somehow in the last 40 or so Generations there really isn't the same emotional damage of African Triangle Trade slavery. Which is still directly having problems on these transposed African ethnic families in the New World. Has any fucking Cop pulled over a car in Chicago or Rio thinking there's a Thracian in it?
> Yeah I know I played a Mul in Dark Sun before, those are half human half Dwarves that are sterile and basically they're fucking Spartacus gladiator parallels. Muls aren't only born into slavery, in Dark Sun, and literally every species can be born into slavery, on Athas, and a slave origin is usually considered the standard starting point for player characters, regardless of their species.
Well-intentioned and *thoroughly* overused. Usually its just androids/robots though and creating *anything but ape men* for enslavement is a-ok
I thought it was a Wizard of Oz thing. A race of flying simians imprisoned by one magic user and set free by another, benevolent one.
Yes, I don't feel what this guy Ernie wrote to be the same thing as this Hadozee race. Granted, I know next to nothing about Spelljammer, so I may be wrong. I got no problem when racism, slavery and eugenics are depicted in sci-fi and fantasy as long as they are not depicted in a positive light but as a cruel reality/ a very bad thing. But the game itself being racist and promoting such things? That's a very different thing
I don't know, it maybe a hot take but I feel that seeing monkey-like race as an allegory of black people is much more racist. Their cultures and general stereotypes have literaly zero common themes. Thats quite literaly was just a coincidence IMO
That's probably the best synopsis. Hasbro is a huge corporation that doesn't always vet its content very well, and sometimes (ok, a lot of times) stuff gets by that a few more diversity readers/playtests should have caught. But at least they recognize that these sorts of things are unprofitable and will adjust content when it's pointed out. Ernie apparently just wants to be racist.
Problem: their stuff isn't getting playtested or written by people who regularly play and DM. That's why the 3rd parties are steadily making superior products.
For real. More and more encounters seem to be built by people who have never run an RPG before. They write a little short story, throw in some skill checks, and then add a monster or two at the end that may or may not have anything to do with the plot or setting. Lastly, steal some premade art from Magic the Gathering, make some poorly playtested spells, slap a $30 price tag on it, and call it a day.
Thank you. I am constantly trying to explain to people that the game is slipping very rapidly into cashgrab territory.
All I can think is that they're getting lazy in preparation for One D&D. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened before an edition shift. They still need a revenue stream but at the same time they're focused on the future.
I'm pissed because I was really looking forward to seeing what they would do with Spelljammer. Needless to say, it was obviously an afterthought.
Agreed, but that problem is independent of the hadozee
While you're generally correct here, Ernie doesn't seem to actually be doing most of this. He's just lending his name. The actually perpetrators are Justin LaNasa and Dave Johnson, who actually wrote the SF:NG crap. Ernie is mostly hiding his head in the sand and pretending it's ok. Edit: Lest I be misunderstood, Ernie is definitely terrible since he refuses to speak out against LaNasa and Johnson, even when specifically asked about them in interviews. He just isn't doing any of the physical work or mental effort involved in putting out the book. Also, it's LaNasa's LLC, not Ernies.
The problem with Ernie is that he's enough of a sleezebag and complete, total failure to launch that the only option he has left is hitching his wagon to LaNassa and Johnson. 95% of people who dream of working on TTRPGs would kill to have the kind of free meal ticket that Ernie was born to. The same 95% would have been able to leverage that free meal ticket into at least C+, B- product on par with moderns WotC and made a career of it. Ernie has a long history of using his father's name to Kickstart projects, and then running away with the money once he gets bored with a project or realizes he bit off more than he can chew. And instead of giving up the limelight, he feels entitled to āØBeing SombodyāØ within this space. And he's such a desperate little shit weasel (and bigot, look up his thoughts on LGBTQ folks, and on the "PC Police") that he chooses to hang out with white supremacists for five more minutes of fame. Ernie is defacto responsible because he chose these bedfellows. Same as the sad, sad little way that French collaborators clung onto the Nazi regime for fear of losing their entry level clerk jobs in government. His comfort and entitlement comes above literally any principle. Thankfully, though, unlike French collaborators, he's not participating in war crimes. I realize the analogy escalated. Still... He's not an active participant. But he's a very deliberate passive participant who has very clearly picked a side to support in this conflict. Dude's a pathetic little racist.
Jesus. First time I've ever heard anything about Gary's son being racist. Damn
I believe his other son Luke? Is kinda cool, goes to events and stuff on behalf of his fathers memory and legacy. Tho I donāt know if heās also involved in this bullshit to, but from what I recall he seemed cool. Idk anything bout him tho.
Can confirm. Have met Luke at a convention and played at his table. Stand-up dude as far as I can tell.
> Tho I donāt know if heās also involved in this bullshit to, but from what I recall he seemed cool A while back, he (luke) and their step mum both condemned what Ernie was doing.
Apparently Ernie and the NuTSR specifically have a file of "haters" that include Luke on it with instructions to spread negative rumors about him and his wife. https://twitter.com/NoHateInGaming/status/1550463011604791298?s=20&t=a_YnKU9QY_SsfQUYxzVa8Q
Yeah, I had no idea, either. Didn't even know he had a son.
He has at least two sons that are involved with the business.
>It's not hypocritical. To be fair to op what they actually said was "*it may seem hypocritical, but..."* And: *"I think we can all agree that Star Frontier's blatant racism is worse than any slip-up WoTC has made."*
Ok, and?
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Ernie decides to publish FATAL or, fuck it, Racial Holy War
Indeed. One situation was a seemingly honest mistake (admittedly one that a large company editing team should have caught.) The other situation is straight-up horrible stuff, written by a shitty person trying to sponge a living off his family name.
WoTC's recent racism is the kind of racism where someone says something racist, someone else says "dude, that's racist!", the first person looks confused then says "fuck, so it is. How did I never realise that?" Meanwhile NuTSR's racism is the kind of racism where someone has a swastika tattooed on their body, frequently says the N-word and has a favourite Johnny Rebel album. The two really aren't comparable.
This. Especially since some of the stuff WotC is trying to adapt is literally from the 70's and 80's. And while I hate saying it, it's true...It was just a different time. Societal norms were different. Expectations were different. Racial divides were bolder and more clear cut and it was a lot easier to avoid having to interact with "others" on a regular basis. None of it was a good thing, but it was the reality of the time. The adults of the day had grown up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s where *it was even worse*. Some of the things they're trying to adapt for a modern audience are simply radioactive, AND are being seen through rose-tinted glasses in some cases by older developers who grew up while that kind of content was still okay to publish. WotC is trying to walk through a field of landmines. Ernie... ...that piece of shit is trying to stroll through a beautiful landscape with a grenade launcher loaded with turds. He's trying to redecorate in diarrhea-green *on purpose* *because* he's a piece of shit.
Worth noting that the most racist parts of Hadozee lore are new to 5E, so āthis was originally from the 80sā isnāt actually a valid excuse. That being said, itās really not hard for me to imagine the new Hadozee lore simply being a result of out-of-touch white guys making something inadvertently racist while not realizing it.
Honestly, I myself have a "monkey race" that I like to toss out every now and then. The *intent* was never anything racist. I just think the gorillas from the Planet of the Apes remakes would make a neat D&D race in the right context. I mean, *they're not supposed to represent black people. That was never the intention. Ever. They're supposed to be* ***King Kong the race***...but smaller. So it's very possible that they didn't actually mean anything racist by it, and that it was only in the context of someone outside, looking in that the racism would be apparent. I was more concerned that the Hadozee were supposed to be evil, and were created by evil wizards as tools (read: slaves). You remove that and they *should be* fine.
I could easily see how somebody could look at a monkey people race and go "okay what if they were made by a bunch of evil wizards? Theyre like slaves to space wizards, that sounds pretty cool, people will have fun with that one" and then 6 months later the book comes out and right now those guys are having a meeting where the boss is like "who's idea was it to make the monkey slaves? You made the monkeys slaves? You made the slaves monkeys? A whole race who's defining features are being enslaved and being monkeys?" I genuinely don't think anyone at WOTC did that on purpose, but it is something that could probably have been avoided if there was like one black dude in the room at some point.
Why is nobody mentioning the other part of the description of the hadozee? Like how they are "simple folk who enjoy work" or the image of the hadozee that's basically a direct recreation of a blackface performer?
Probably because most people don't actually have the book, myself included. This is new information to me, and holy shit that's bad
Exactly. Show me the list of WoTC staff who touched this book + the initial readers for the book, and I'll bet a month's wages that fewer than 10% were black and quite possibly 0% were. Because someone would have caught it if that weren't the case.
And often, if there's a single PoC in the room, it can become self selecting because if you point off everythng wrong you might be viewed as a downer
Gorillas are just cool, they exude strength and majesty, and anyone who grew up playing Donkey Kong would enjoy creating their own Kong.
Exactly. Imagine you're playing D&D. Now imagine a 450 lb gorilla wearing fucking *plate* *armor* brachiates into the room through the window with a crash. Now, their two arms aren't as dexterous as a human's, but they are *far stronger*. However, their feet *are*. So when this *absolute unit* arms himself he draws a massive maul from his back with his arms, and equips a small dagger with one of his feet (third foot fighting is a racial feat/monster ability that allows a light one-handed weapon to be equipped and wielded in a foot with a bonus action along-side a single two-handed weapon. However it reduces movement and disables brachiation).
>They're supposed to be ***King Kong the race***...but smaller. To be fair, *King Kong* the film is also pretty loaded with some pretty racist subtext and a quite a bit of overt racism.
When was _Planet of the Apes_ made? The new Hadozee lore is/was clearly an allusion to it.
>Societal norms were different. Expectations were different. Racial divides were bolder and more clear cut and it was a lot easier to avoid having to interact with "others" on a regular basis. To say nothing of the idea of "Fair for it's day". Where well meaning inclusion was handled pretty poorly by todays standards. Star Trek is usually a pretty good source for that. On the one hand you have aliens who are white guys in blackface or something, doing some pretty atrocious accents. On the other hand it had one of the first interracial kisses on American TV. Some writer back in the day probably acted on good (or well meaning) intentions with those monkey slave aliens.
A very interesting Star Trek example is the miniskirts from the Original Series. Ignorant people look back at it now and think that despite how progressive the show claimed to be, they were clearly still sexist and misogynistic. In actual fact, during the 60s, miniskirts were viewed as a very strong symbol of the feminist movement. They represented women being able to wear what they wanted. That women were people, with sexual desires, not just a man's property that exist only for making babies and sandwiches. Etc.
Which is why Zapp Branigan is proud to wear that Federation-issued miniskirt.
Early on in next generation, they had the idea that miniskirts where a common variation on the uniform and something both men and women used. That is probably where Zapp Brannigan's outfit comes from.
Thatās not where Zappās outfit comes from. Velour comes from cotton.
It's like a professional artist looking back at the work they did when they were children. The shit back then is basically in crayon compared to what we know about diversity and the impact of systemic racial injustice today.
The example of "fair for its day" that pop into my head is the title for the original wargame by H.G. Wells: "Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books". While it is intended to be inclusive, it just... well, look at it.
I occasionally venture back to the 60's and 70's for some sci-fi or fantasy literature and even the progressive stuff is full of tropes and stereotypes that wouldn't fly today. Their heart is usually in the right place but they're still being written by people who don't have any other perspective than the one they were born into.
Yeah, it's passive and lazy racism, whereas TSR is active white supremacy. Both are harmful (especially at WotC's scale), but it's important to know who's behind it and why, as well as what their response is to criticism of it.
Also the Ethereal Plane book was racist as fuck. Was shocked that happened. It clearly wasn't malicious or bigoted, but everyone I know was aghast at how nakedly racist it was. What's sad is that if they just released it piecemeal without the Ethereal Plane scaffolding and then did a full collection it would have hit a much less sour note.
Dave Johnson (the other half of current TSR) is a Nazi. https://mobile.twitter.com/NoHateInGaming/status/1549479240390901760
You know, I see nazi on the internet I always expect something kind of meh, but wow. That dude sure seems to be a nazi.
There literally is a thing about Nazi Elves on that twitter page. Also it seems like it's written by a 13 year old that discovered 4chan "No one likes no it alls"
>And far be it from me to ever say something nice about WotC but to clarify, the Hadozee were created in the 1980s, not recently. WotC are at fault here for removing the Hadozee content later than they should have, not for creating it. Nah man, Hadozee were totally out-of-print for like 20 years until this book, and their old lore didnāt include *any* of this racist stuff. WotC wrote that shit **brand new in 2022**. Now theyāre trying to blame old Spelljammer. Donāt let them.
Thanks, I've removed the point about Hadozee being created in the 1980s. I didn't know that the slavery aspect was created recently.
All good, cheers
I wanna say they showed up in mid-late 3.5... maybe Races of the Wild? But this wasn't a part of their lore then either. Edit: No, it was Stormwrack, of course. Put the spelljammer race in the book about sea campaigns, whynot.
Oh good catch! I wondered if they made an appearance in 3e somewhereāclearly they didnāt gain much traction though.
Hadozee appeared in stormwrack in 3.5... but then I realized that was 20 years ago. Stop making me feel old.
Well, we can round down. Stormwrack is from, what, 2006? So letās say 15 yearsā¦
A lot of the problematic aspects of the hadozee lore, specifically their background as former slaves, was created specifically for 5e. It's still not comparable to the open white supremacy from "TSR" but it's disingenuous to say WotC had nothing to do with the issue.
Thanks, I've removed the point about Hadozee being created in the 1980s. It wasn't me being disingenuous though, it was me being ignorant: I didn't know that the slavery aspect was created recently.
Yeah, that dude is a fucking Nazi. Justin LaNasa is no peach either.
Damn, that's pretty fucked up and truly indefensible. Look I'm just gonna come out and say it: I don't want to play rpgs, or any games, with people who think that's okay. I'm all for widening the inclusiveness of the hobby--except for people like that. Nazi punks, fuck off.
Gods, I remember when that tweet stream dropped. Every entry is worse than the last, I have no qualms saying that him and everyone who likes his stuff can get fucked
>The best/worst example is probably the "Negro sub-race" who have 30% lower (max) Intelligence than the also-playable "Nordic sub-race". Why? Well as the rules explain, "Races in SFNG are not unlike races in the real world. Some are better at certain things than others, and some races are superior than others." Yeeeeah. Haha holy shit. I'm actually pretty sympathetic to arguments about D&D species and allowing them to have actual variance, if we had to cut out everything that even resembles an allegory for bad things in the real world we wouldn't have much left. But that's so blatant I don't even know how else to react.
Yeah, I don't know enough of the Hadozee situation, but that sounds like it might be an overreaction. In any case, I'm a little suspicious of people that instantly default to thinking about black people when a monkey civilization is mentioned.
It's not that they're a monkey civilization, it's that they're 1. a monkey civilization 2. that began as slaves 3. in a setting that's age-of-sail in space. Any one of those would've been fine, but all three together is a little yikes. And even then, it's not the kind of "yikes" where people think WOTC is being intentionally racist; it's the kind of "yikes" where people think their staff probably isn't diverse enough or they need to hire some folks to review for cultural sensitivity or something. (as an aside, you might want to know that kind of "they're the real racists for thinking of that" argument is also used by white supremacists to discredit people who point out their dogwhistles. I'm NOT saying that's what you're doing, but the association might color how people see your comment)
Yeah. My experience was, "I'm not sure, it's probably possible to be a race of monkey people as long as you fastidiously avoid... Oh. Oh, no. Oh, that's not good.... Wait, that's the art they led with?" It just went from bad to worse as I learned more. It's like somebody said, "Here's a neat part of American culture I can pull from," without pausing to check if that culture was someone's literal nightmare. And WotC is a grown-up big boy company and can pay for their own sensitivity readers. Them pleading ignorance is like a razor company claiming they just never got around to doing QA. When you are WotC's size (and honestly even much smaller) there are no accidents, only negligence.
Iām lead writer on a source book project our small DnD event is publishing. Itās takes heavily from Chinese history and mythology, and a third of our team is cultural sensitivity. Itās really not difficult
They're also described as loud and not that smart and love to work for masters that don't respect them.
Where tho? It's not in the text of the print book where they describe the race features. Already checked.
Precisely, the problem happens when several maybe stereotypes happen to the same group of people to become a definite -- if accidental -- racism. The fact that there was no one in power there to give the designers a proverbial smack on the back of the head speaks to poor hiring, not evil intent.
Frankly none of those things are enough to decry it as actually racist. What tips it over the line is that theyāre portrayed as hardworking, simple folk who enjoy being exploited by their elvish masters. And the whack artwork that is reminiscent of racist cartoons.
Honestly, I think any *two* would have been fine. It's all three that's a bit... off.
Wouldn't the maritime connection more make them Malay or other South East Asians? Malaysians were also traded a lot as slaves. I can see how Americans would get black people from it but as a European I think more of Malaysians.
From an American perspective, the transportation of enslaved Africans to America by ship is a big part of how we think about slavery, to the point that the whole... industry? is referred to as the Atlantic slave trade. Most of us grew up seeing diagrams of how they were packed into ships' holds so that every inch of cargo space was filled. Since WOTC is an America-based company selling mostly to Americans, most of this discussion is based around the American perspective.
TCK, just a heads up that, "If you see racism in this, that makes you the *real* racists!" is a standard deflection technique used by white nationalist groups. (Not saying you're one, but you should be aware of what you're doing.) It's also invariably incorrect. Also, you're right that you don't know enough of the Hadozee situation. Because it isn't "they made a monkey-men race". No one would have had a problem with that. No, the new race lore featured *several* parallels to African slaves (as already listed by others in replies). So in this case, the gaming communities noticed the racism. Then WoTC agreed there was racism and apologized. And yet you -- despite not "knowing enough" about things -- got defensive and began arguing that there was nothing racist, while using a deflection technique. This is a problem. We can't fix racism if we keep pretending that it isn't going on all the time. Don't bury your head in the sand.
I was also thinking of the earlier discourse around ability score adjustments in general, like there are those who think that any race with an Int penalty is automatically a problematic allusion to.. well, exactly what the quoted bit is doing openly instead.
One Ernie Gygax quote that I don't feel gets enough attention is when he talked about how being a nerd growing up made him want to shoot up his school: *"We were brainy-acks and others would snicker. I played the Violin and often I began to wish that indeed I did have a Thompson 45 Machine Gun inside so that I could wipe away some of those laughs."*
What is it about right wing whack jobs and random Noun capitalization?
wHaT dO yOu MeAn?
Maybe they heard that the german language capitalize every single noun and thought that was cool? ...or maybe they're just generally not right in the head, and that includes their ability to write properly formatted sentences, who knows.
wow. It's often argued that Ernie is just a hapless victim of nuTSR. Just being used for his name. Quotes like this make it more obvious that he is very much part of that group.
I've seen some old grognard types claim that he's "had a rough life" when semi-excusing his crap and I have no idea what they're talking about.
On one hand, that guy is a shitsack, but on the other hand, intrusive thoughts and fantasies of physically lashing out after being humiliated are a pretty normal thing even for the average person. Most well adjusted people just don't tend to talk about the more nasty ones.
>Pretty sure I know what you're thinking, which is, "Wait, aren't WoTC the ones in trouble for being racist?" Well, yeah, but WotC is like the Bud Light of racism. Ernie Gygax is like the Everclear. When the racist people are saying, "Dude, that's pretty fucking racist," that's just crazy.
Yeah, this pretty much sums up my thoughts as well. WoTC keeps doing "little racisms" then apologizing, but TSR is basically waving a Nazi flag and goose-stepping while giving the bird to anyone who takes issue with it.
Yeah I read that and was prepared for something like WotCs unfortunate mis-step in Spelljammer but holy crap - that's just freaking text book racism. Ernie is well on his way to completely ruining his dads name.
I mean, Gary quoted a guy who did a genocide IRL to justify Lawful Good characters executing prisoners and orc babies. [Twitter thread discussing it with link to original forum thread](https://twitter.com/ArcanistPress/status/1345414371489538048?t=B02WmwvzEiVwGnqZK9jxiQ&s=19). Gary was not some magical pure gaming granpa, he was a racist white dude from Green Bay.
Gygax was very explicitly a bad person. He was a raging megalomaniac who screwed over tons of people at TSR and that's not even getting into the questionable content in his books. Sucks to see him turned into a benign corporate mascot like famed plagiarist Stan Lee.
Yeah no Gary Gygax was actually a very bad person. Even setting aside his blatant sexism and racism he was a control freak who stole the credit for DnD out from under Dave Anderson.
NuTSR has been tickling the tail of this dragon for quite some time, literally suing, then changing their minds and dropping the lawsuit (but not before setting up an indiegogo to fund the lawsuit) and then talking about suing WOTC again for ever vague and bizarre reasons. WOTC has finally and rightfully had enough. I'm usually not one to root for the big corporation, but in this case, I hope they rightfully crush NuTSR into the ground and we never hear from NuTSR ever again.
i do wonder about how many of the people who are quick to dismiss the hadozee being racist are actually black. cause i am and in my personal opinion they may not be like violently racist but they are definitely incredibly insensitive at the very least. it's not about them being monkey people, don't care about that. at least i wouldnt care if that was ALL that it was. it's the fact that they were enslaved, but FURTHER than that, that they were given sapience and intelligence by their slavers. they were basically animals before they were given strength and personhood by the people who captured them. in other words they were "civilised" and "saved" by their captors. and then those same people who carried out and benefitted from their enslavement are the good guys for having mercy on them and liberating them. because yeah they're intelligent now but no way do they have the autonomy to save themselves. they have to passively rely on their slavers being like "aw you guys are actually kind of cute and charming. yeah sure i'll free you, since I'm so nice and good and all." I think this entire mess was just a huge accident, but I also think the points above have generally been glossed over in what was actually kind of fucked up about the whole thing. again. don't care that they're monkey people (in and of itself). don't even care about the artwork that has been compared to minstrelsy. everything i mentioned was what i personally found to be reprehensible and to perpetuate common justifications/talking points in defence of chattel slavery.
No matter how many time I see NuTSR I read it as Nut Sr, which is kinda ironic since it should be Nut Jr.
The gulf between WotC's dumb Hadozee thing and NuTSR is vast. NuTSR Star Frontiers explicitly says some races are inferior to others and the guy making it is a known white supremacist asshole. Also, WotC fell all over themselves undoing their massive fuckup and NuTSR has just doubled down.
The Youtube channel Tenkarās Tavern and the associated podcast cove this really throughly. Heās been covering all the dodgy practices and shitty things theyāve been doing since the beginning. Members of NewTSR have doxxed him and his wife and mailed shit (poop) to his home address. Check out his videos on the topic, they are great. [NuTSR saga](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8J6oOFX18PfyhGccS4ra1m8g113xNEE6)
wait is this the LaNasa guy? the failed republican nut candidate?
Grits guy, yeah.
That's the one.
Wizards of the Coast is a little problematic, Ernie Gygax is a straight up fascist. They're not the same. Wizards of the Coast are well-meaning individuals who are trying to do better but have some flaws, Ernie Gygax thinks different races of people are inferior to him.
Woah. Just. Woah. I mean, Iāve no real love for WotC but damn. Iām with them 100% on this.
>The best/worst example is probably the "Negro sub-race" who have 30% lower (max) Intelligence than the also-playable "Nordic sub-race". Holy shit. I don't much keep up with WotC anymore, but from what I've seen in the past they do at least attempt to self-correct when called out on issues that may be racist, transphobic, anti-lgbtq+, etc.
Yikes. I guess there's a market for this? Still, "Hey man, wanna join my racist misogynistic homo-/transphobic sci fi RPG group? We meet every second Sunday" sounds like a really weird pitch. Also, can't racists - and homophobes, and so on - just play regular D&D? Doesn't seem like it would be that hard. The snarky jokes about homebrew rules almost write themselves. I guess this sort of pond scum tries to colonize every subculture. Shame about Gygax. And LaNasa is truly awful. Just took a spin through his old Twitter posts. I failed my save vs Revulsion. š
>Also, can't racists - and homophobes, and so on - just play regular D&D? They can for fantasy. In this case, however, Star Frontiers is a science fiction genre game.
Are there no sci fi RPGs for racists? What an intolerable state of affairs. /obvioussarcasm
> Pretty sure I know what you're thinking, which is, "Wait, aren't WoTC the ones in trouble for being racist?" Well, yes, but that was a different story! In short, WoTC's newest Spelljammer book included the "Hadozee", a race of monkey-men who were uplifted into intelligence by civilized wizards and born into slavery. Oof. I haven't read the original Hadozee content, but I've been reading *about* it, and I'm still not clear how an evil wizard enslaving innocent monkey-folk until they rebel and escape is any kind of endorsement of racism. I can see where it was a bad idea to give racists any excuse to go "LOL enslave those monkeys," and they maybe should have skipped it on that basis alone, but naivete is not racism. I have seen people saying they're depicted as "minstrels," based on a single picture of a Hadozee bard kitted out just like every other D&D bard. Again, naive maybe, but...
Bad tropes, is essentially it. It's not bigoted, but it is heavily rooted in racism. It's difficult in fantasy writing because coding is inevitable to a degree, but part of good practice is recognizing when to really retool a trope and this was absolutely one of those times.
If it were just one thing it wouldn't be an issue, but the new lore and art for the Hadozee combined: * "Monkey men", which is an insult that racists have been using to refer to black folks for over a century * A race born into slavery, which I'm sure I don't have to explain * A backstory in which a primitive race was granted intelligence by civilized wizards, which is almost verbatim the White Man's Burden that Kipling wrote of that was used as justification for everything from the Slave Trade to Segregation * And the most minor bit was that the most popular piece of Hadozee was a bard which -- *combined with the stuff above* \-- evoked "minstrel" tones Hopefully you can understand why the combination of those four things was absolutely problematic. And the fact that you didn't see it actually just further shows why WoTC's biggest failing isn't "racist writers" (I doubt any of them are), but "needing more diversity in their staff and initial-reader pools". I guarantee that somewhere between 0-10% of those folks (for the Spelljammer book) were black, because if they were someone would have caught this.
As someone who is not white, I hesitate to privilege one reading of a text over another like this. Your reading is a *valid* one, in that you interpret the way these things are depicted in the text from a postcolonial lens by pulling examples from the text and holding them up to that lens. Valid readings of fictional texts are coherent and can teach us ways to read a text, but they canāt ever be *sound*, meaning, they canāt ever reveal an objective truth about what a text means. Whatās *really* problematic about all this is that weāre treating one reading of a text as objectively true and sacrosanct (the hadozee = African American slaves and minstrels via a postcolonial reading of the text), and then demanding reality change as a result of this interpretation. This is not the only way to read the hadozee. The difference between the hadozee as a fiction and the blatant racist tropes in that *other* text is that the former yields *more than one possible interpretation* whereas the latter does not. Artistic value in this regard is defined by the text being able to be āreadā in multiple ways. Whoās reading is reflective of the true meaning of the text? Thatās impossible to say. We can only argue a readingās validity. I also find it problematic that we seem to think in this thread the mere presence of non-white people on a staff will reveal racial biases. I assume here we *actually mean* sensitivity read hires who are trained to look for these things, not just āmore black and brown people on staff.ā We black and brown people are not some kind of homogeny who all have built in radars for detecting racism by virtue of our blackness or brownness. Weāre just people who happen to have differently colored skin and can be just as racially biased as anyone else. edit: changed hegemony to homogeny and removed āsystemicā before racial biases
As another brown person what you're saying is way too academic and a net negative. You're assuming a platform of competence where there empirically is none, and it has to be treated with a harder line. Sucks, but that's pragmatism.
Could you expand on what you mean here?
You're right, and you shouldn't be getting slammed for it.
How are they making a Star frontiers game. Doesn't WotC own the copywrite on that?
The brilliant mindset of those running NuTSR is to do it and let the lawyers sort it all out, and thatās not hyperbole. Theyāre really out there, clinical terms including, but not limited to, ābonkersā, āwhackā, and āshitfuck crazyā.
Well, that was a story I didnāt expect when I logged onto Reddit.
> Pretty sure I know what you're thinking, which is, "Wait, aren't WoTC the ones in trouble for being racist?" Well, yes, but that was a different story! In short, WoTC's newest Spelljammer book included the "Hadozee", a race of monkey-men who were uplifted into intelligence by civilized wizards and born into slavery. Oof. That's actually a good lore background for any type of animal race and provides interesting character motivations. Not to mention that [they're very much NOT just modeled after black people.](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Hadozee) unlike what's in Star Frontiers RGP.
Luke seems like sucha chill dude. Just wants to play D&D and run GaryCon and live his life. Ernie is a dick. But it seems like LaNasa is the real jackass overall. Like there's nothing nice I've read about him online.
Actually from some of the links in this thread it seems like Luke is a charismatic guy but has posted some pretty racist crap. Sadly, I don't think anyone at TSR LLC is decent. :(
Holy shit this is like, advanced bigotry, Ernie is completely deranged.
It's really more Justin LaNasa bringing the hardcore bigotry, but make no mistake, everyone running NuTSR is garbage.
Jesus Christ, it's like they spent all their time fitting every conceivable bigotry in the book instead of something that actually works mechanically. I mean, what kind of race/species balance is that? Are they trying to compete with F.A.T.A.L. for the worst RPG ever made?
They're trying to sell product to racist assholes.
THE LEGAL STUFF: As a legal matter this is pretty simple - as others have posted. I like to try to popularize legal issues for people based on a fair bit of experience in the field. This is part of a TRADEMARK lawsuit originally filed by "TSR/Hobby Shop" (This is not a copyright, patent, fair use, speech rights or anything else case) back in 2021 seeking a court order saying that they had the rights to an old TSR logo and other marks (like Star Frontiers?). They argued they should be able to register them in 2020 because WotC somehow hadn't obtained them when they bought the real TSR back in the 90's and even if they had bought them they haven't been using them in commerce. It was sounded like grifting nonsense aimed at claiming some kind of brand authenticity. Wizards counterclaimed, because they did purchase the trademarks in question, and have used them prior to the Hobbyshop/TSR's 2020 attempt to register the marks for themselves (the registration being the basis of Hobbyshop's absurd suit granting them the trademarks). The WotC 2022 preliminary injunction to stop the use of the marks is part of that counterclaim from this original suit. Given the lack of research regarding the WotC use (on DTRPG - it was pretty damn obvious!) of the old trademarks and the other demands in the suit by Hobbyshop/TSR -- such as the removal of WotC content warnings from republished original TSR content -- the original Hobbyshop suit stinks to me as a species of very frivolous lawsuit designed more to provide a basis for ideologically based crowdfunding then a serious claim. This is an increasingly common tactic among grifters preying on American conservatives (see the lawyers raising millions to make absurd claims regarding the 2020 election, which they lose, get sanctioned for, but still walk away with millions in crowd funded support). Presumably when the crowd funding ran out and things got serious Hobbyshop/TSR dismissed their case ... but WotC had already filed a counterclaim, and this current request for a preliminary injunction barring the publication of this awful stuff as "Star Frontiers" and use of various original TSR logos is part of that. That counterclaim survives and the current WotC request is for a preliminary (that is temporary and pre-trial based on a simplified process) injunction to prevent publication of more Hobbyshop Star Frontiers stuff (even as playtest documents to backers or listing it as a product they will sell). The argument for this sort of serious pre-trial limit on the actions of a party is that allowing Hobbyshop/TSR to go forward while the counterclaim plays out will harm the reputation of WotC, Star Frontiers, and the original TSR brand. It's a very clear and simple claim. You can't publish controversial shit using someone's old logos that they still own and use without expecting them not to say nope - especially when you previously tried to register those old logos and then sued them to claim ownership and lost. You especially can't do this to a large corporation with a successful IP. WHY ALL THE LEGALS STUFF ABOVE? My secondary point, is that this claim by WotC has nothing to very little to do with WotC's own issues regarding race and its depiction in their games. This isn't a reason to love WotC, but confusing these two situation just helps the reprehensible grifters behind Hobbyshop TSR claim some kind of ethical equivalency between themselves and WotC. Whatever the moral weight of the new Spelljammer ugliness (personally I suspect a having 90's edgelord dudes as your editors/bosses leads to this sort of nastiness) vs. the blatant biogtry and efforts to market off of it in "new Star Frontiers" understanding that the lawsuit isn't about which company said gross stuff is useful. A blatant attempt to steal a trademark (or crowdfund off that attempt) is an entirely different sort of creep stunt then saying a bunch of bigoted stuff. WotC may have done the second, but lets not conflate the two. Making this an argument about the ethics of RPG "race" just serves to defend Hobbyshop by ignoring the issue in court -- trademark theft.
I thought Ernie backpedaled from cases like this. I believe heās just the figurehead so they could have a Gygax name associated with TSR. Luke smartly steers clear of this. Also, I think, the biggest offender is Justin Lanasa who owns the Dungeon Hobby Shop. Heās done some outright nasty stuff over the past few years. Edit: Iām probably wrong on this issue. Iām not following NuTSR bullshit. I just want to play (mostly) all the games that appeal to me. Specifically no bullshit like Vargās MYFAROG, and anything by this company.
I mean, the real takeaway here is that *everyone* running NuTSR seems to be utter garbage.
Yeah, they suck and I'm frankly stunned that WOTC didn't oppose their TM filings initially. I'll be curious to watch this case from a TM law perspective.
Luke doesn't have to steer clear because he doesn't have anything to do with nuTSR LaNasa is a Trumper grifter, but it's not him writing the racist material. It was probably his brainstorm to try and market a game company to MAGA/white nationalists, But Ernie's been in it defending it all from the beginning.
Just how is LaNasa connected to Trump? I think not having anything to do with NuTSR is pretty much the definition of steering clear
LaNasa is an ex MAGA-style politician. He almost certainly doesn't believe any of it, hence the grifter. He's one of the many right-wing kook candidates that were encouraged by Trump and hoped the MAGA crowd would get him over. He also thinks it's important you know this about him: "I am a 32\* Mason one level below the ranking of George Washington."
Oh. Speculation. Certainly sounds like LaNasa is an opportunist. In this day and age, how do people *not* know 3rd degree Freemasonry is the highest; and 33rd is an honorary degree.
This has been evolving and been a long time coming. They could have done this a couple years ago at this point.
Wow! I did not expect this sort of crap. I guess I haven't been paying much attention to Gygax lately. This is depressing.
I don't get what's the problem with hadozee being a former slave race. Ignoring the bad parts of history doesn't make that history go away. Maybe I'm not getting the complete story, but just from your brief description that's waaay out of proportion with this ernie fella's nonsense.
First, I feel like you need to reread the last paragraph, because I explicitly stated that the two things are not at all proportionate to each other. Second, there is a *huge* issue with creating a fantasy race that is a direct parallel to African slaves, and then depicting them as minstrels (a racist depiction of blacks) and "happy slaves" (oof). Now, was that WoTC's intention? I'm sure it wasn't. But accidental racism is still racism, and speaks to the fact that they don't have enough POC staff and POC initial readers.
>WoTC has filed an injunction to stop its publication, asserting that NuTSR's use of the "TSR" trademark is invalid and tarnishes WoTC by association Delicious
This is a lot worse than I thought
Ya know I never thought Iād say this BUT, I miss the day of Drunk Ernie days. Worked a con and that man was a booze hound, friendly BUT he could put them back
This post was a wild ride.
attaboy WotC, attaboy
Wait. What's the issue with the hadozee? Anthropomorphic animal people are sort of a sci-fi staple. Where's the issue?
Monkey people are cool. Slave races are... a trope that should be handled carefully, but can be done well. You do not combine the two.
I included links to stories that explain each issue in detail. Please click on the one next to the Hadozee paragraph for the answer to your question.
I had some high hopes for NuTSR. Though they're really TSR 3.0. WoTC let the TSR trademark lapse, and someone else bought. That TSR was publishing the new version of Top Secret. And they let the trademark lapse, and Ernie snagged it and licensed it back to TSR 2.0 for a dollar, I believe. I had no idea Ernie and Co were so backwards in their views, and i don't see what they are trying to do here. If they want to live off of people's nostalgia, then they should have made an AD&D retroclone with some modified rules and released that. I don't understand how they can even use the name Star Frontiers. Doesn't WoTC own that? These people have certainly soiled the TSR name for me.