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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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chapotraphouse
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what do you expect from a hobby invented by white boys with literal 'race' mechanics that determine your objective 'alignment' in older editions and still play into racial caricatures to this day ('noble savage' orcs instead of just murdering hordes, elves as even special-er white people) and even in the best case scenario only encourage race-based divisions whether based on stats or just aesthetic, after all its a lot more reasonable to be 'racist' against a species of literal giant green monsters with boar tusks (that even if a 'good guy' is constantly being whispered to by their Evil God that created them, in most DnD lore at least) than it is to be racist against a human with more melanin in their skin. and the usual semi-historical settings come pre-baked with implicit old-timey attitudes, people expect swords and sorcery type settings to maintain the patriarchy and nationalism pop culture associates with our own history for the most part even if Player Characters are the Special Chosen One that Bucks the Trend. I mean even outside of DnD, how many fantasy media products even cricticise monarchy? how many protagonists are the Rightful Heir that needs to reclaim their Tragically Lost Throne from the Evil Guy?
It takes effort to salvage a worthwhile story out of something like that, and a lot of people just do the easiest/laziest thing and play to the genre tropes. it's hard enough running a tabletop RPG without interrogating the system's racial biases, or that of your own writing, and most people simply won't bother. to the average non-politically aware person, the races become a visual shorthand for real life groups or assumed historical groups, 'elves' are 'cultured europeans' (french, english, etc), 'orcs' are 'misguided savages' at best, 'murdering subhuman invaders' at worst (muslims, mongols, slavic people, etc) 'gnomes' are 'incomprehensible insular artisans' (jews), 'halflings' are 'nomadic pastoralists' (roma) 'dwarves' are 'industrious europeans' (german, irish, etc.). It's obviously not the only way to write fantasy, but for most people this is what 'fantasy' means to them, a bunch of cultural and racial caricatures fighting each other with magic and swords, because its the laziest and easiest to write that way in our society, given the cultural context, genre assumptions, and history of development of the fantasy genre.
to be fair, the entire party was siding with the palestinians like, constantly
i'm just shitposting about the system and its origins, not blaming any players as a person of game (truly the most oppressed minority) myself
its still beautiful (or sometimes terrifying) how its the players who make the game. yeah gygax was an old scoot from decades ago making a game. but his assumptions don't really register with a 20 yo from 2024.
appropriate all games and side with the colonized.
Wargaming (which D&D really is, its just pretending to be an RPG) was a mistake. I hate that RPGs have game mechanics and character stats at all.
wargaming could hypothetically be cool in some alternate anti-imperialist timeline where almost any educated person in the west with enough time and resources for it wasn't irrecoverably indoctrinated with fascist neoliberal NATO-ism
it might have issues as the basis of an improvised storytelling-focused enterprise, but Cooler More Complicated Chess is a great idea for an activity, and hypothetically Cooler But Equally Or Less Complicated Chess could be a pretty good improv exercise anyway. I do appreciate rules lite stuff tho, and my favorite system (despite the fact that i have no one irl to play it with) is LANCER which has what i might call 'rules-mid' mecha combat and rules-light options for pilot combat or other dramatic roleplaying moments. it also has mostly 'fluff-neutral' rules and character option descriptions, so your mech (or even your player character) can have whatever limb configuration (if it even has limbs) or whatever weapon mounting style for its equipment as long as it fits within the relatively simple rules.
basically i think the problem is more the west's history of white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, and imperialism, rather than wargaming as a concept
D&D specifically has always been low effort mass market shite, started by just adding Lord of the Rings to a wargame, and expanded by slapping on whatever popular fantasy they can find. The settings largely exist to accomodate very basic stories of goodies and baddies fighting it out without concern for existing in a larger world.
With older editions there were a decent set of mechanics underlying it - not great, but good enough - so you could throw out almost all of the default lore and make a decent setting yourself, but 5e doesn't even have that, so I'll recommend basically any other TTRPG over it.