D&D "Negroes"

Anyone notice that in D&D, aside from humans which are neutral, almost every species is seperate into a pure good, white skinned race. And an evil, black skinned race?

Not only that, but of those said species, the white GOOD folk are all just called by the name of their species (eg. elves), and the black evil ones are called black+name of species (eg. black elves).

You have it for elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc etc etc.
This always made me wonder if gygax was mayhap "a tad" biggoted.

I still have no idea what the green skinned pure evil species are supposed to represent (notice how every single one of the greenskins is evil...).

 

Just lack of imagination I think, The most dangerous humanoid on Crin* are the White Mon Yar, as aposed to just Mon Yar (who are also dangerous) because when I was creating my world most of the evil underground creatures were white, logic being that they never saw the sun, like those blind white cave fish.

The white Mor Yar are esentially Drow but loopy, so chaotic that they might be lawfull. there are only 5 races of elves on Crin, 3 of dwarfs, 5 orcish, 2 troll, 2 gnome and 1 human, all of which are fully interbreedable.

The greenskins got to Crin by a magical accident so on Crin, they're all Cracked races.

*My world no copying

 

yea, the vast majority of worlds which include underground societies have them as completely white, and usually blind.

 

The only races that have evil versions are elves (Drow which are black-skinned, but it's coal black, rather than any natural skin tone and are sometimes called "Dark Elves" but I've never seen them referred to as "Black Elves") and dwarves (Dueregar, who are gray-skinned.) There are no evil versions of halflings or gnomes that I'm aware of. (Svirfnelbin, the deep gnomes, are generally neutral, IIRC, but certainly not evil.) So one race out of the dozens of evil races happens to have (non-occuring in the real world) black skin. Doesn't seem like any kind of agenda to me.

 

I disagree...

...it's got nothing to do with bigotry. There are only so many colors to choose from. And there is evil and good to be found in every manner of creature and race that is sentient. Granted, it is predominantly one way or another, the occasional 'good' orc or 'evil' dwarf being an exception and not the rule.

I think in a fantasy world it is we who bring the predjudice, regardless of what the designers intended.

 

Indeed...

...the lizard men were being pushed out of their habitat by an evil race of salt-water dwelling aquatics...the sahuagin. Legend has it they were spawned from a race of sea elves similar to the drow; they resemble man-sized sea monkeys. The Kou-toans are distinctly more fish-like, and those remaining were driven to the lightless caverns of the underdark via the sea, where they once dwelt along the shores and islands of the coast.

Nice shot from memory, though!

8^)

Sure would love a chance at them again, ToEE style...Queen of the Spiders would absolutely be the "dogs bawls"...!

 

Or 'the cat's ass'

 

Well, the fact is that the d&d world (and tolkein's, and a bunch of other fantasy/mythology settings) is populated by good races and bad races, and the bad races are usually described as bad/subhuman, and worthy of lots of retributive/righteous slaughtering. Which, if you think about it in those terms, is, by the definition of the word, 'racist' (dividing the world into good and bad along the lines of the various qualities of races). I mean, haven't you, halfway through the temple, thought about all the little bugbears whose mommies and daddies you've left rotting on the floor?

At the same time, I don't think it has much to do specifically with American racism, as a way to make killing fun and acceptable. Which is to say, it's a game, and I don't find it objectionable, but it is worth thinking about, if you feel like it.

That said, Taltamir, you might enjoy a book by Toni Morrison (I forget the title now, I'm sure if you look her name up at Amazon you'll find it no problem) which goes through the history of American literature and shows the way black is consistently used for 'bad' and white for 'good'. It's an interesting read, and she makes the point on the semantic use of the word black, not on the specific shade, so she would probably look at the drow and have no problem seeing racism.

 

Lots of old stuff...

...turns up on this page:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads

You might find U3 here sometime.


Back to racism: I for one have had no trouble slaughtering hordes of things in D&D regardless of what kind of monster they are, including a great many humans in the camps of the opposing forces. The only deciding factor was whose side they were on. I sleep fine at night, 'cause this is a game, and there are no such things as bugbears. And if I ever gave their offspring a thought, it was in regards as to how best to re-unite them with their progenitors in the hereafter without causing the game to bog down. The Drow? Well, anyone can look at them and cry foul in agreement with some dated stereotype; that's easy. It's much harder to look at one's self and speculate as to why we're really buying someone's book to figure out why. Racism is a learned behavior, and it has been learned well. I just think we ought to leave it outside the gate we travel through to enter the realm of fantasy. It's the only time we will ever truly be rid of it; and if it gets in, it is we who brought it.

 

Lord Spike,

please don't misunderstand: I am NOT saying any of us who play this game are racist, or that Gygax, Arneson, Tolkein, or those old ladies up at night telling stories to their kids in Finland 1000 years ago, are.

I love this game. I've loved it for a long time. I've played with people with all sorts of skin tones, they've never cared, we never thought a second about it. What I am saying is that building powerful people (in your imagination, in your stories, or in your games) and killing baddies is a powerful human urge. But killing people leads to problems, like the fact that you've killed someone, another human being. I'm combining that with the fact that the usual way one country gets its soldiers to kill another country's soldiers is to portray the other country as sub-human, not worthy of the respect we are all taught other people deserve. So we have a game with actual other races who are uniformly bad. I just think that the real-world application of this way of seeing (aka propaganda--you ever see an American WWI propaganda poster's depiction of a German, for example?) has had an impact on the way d & d was set up. And a good impact. I like the way it is, it makes it fun, because the real-world use of it is to make game-like something that isn't a game--war. I think the adaption of this sort of thing is part of the genius of D & D. I was just responding to Taltamir's question as an intellectual consideration, one of many threads to be considered. Please, don't misunderstand.

That said, of course bugbears don't really exist. I was going to write 'pixillated little bugbears' at first, but left it at 'little bugbears', since I thought what I said seemed tongue-in-cheek enough.

Anyway, to be honest, I'm not that interested in this topic. I'd much rather hear you elucidate on the history of Greyhawk!

 

Hmm....

I do believe that the Suloise, who are blonde haired and blue-eyed humans, are the ancient bad guys of Greyhawk, while the Bakluni, who are Semetic peoples in description, were actually the wronged party in the ancient Suloise-Bakluni War. Its most definite that the modern pure-strain Suloise tend to be either evil or anti-social in the extreme. The Ice/Frost/Snow Barbarrians are a good example of the latter while the Scarlet Brotherhood are a fine example of the former.

 

No worries...

...I just wished to comment further, and your responses were interesting to me; but I wasn't mindful that I had thus singled you out as a result. My apologies.



BTW, I've hated bugbears since the "Keep on the Borderlands"...

...is it soooo wrong to hate?

 

Actually, I always thought about how the murdering of dragons, beings far more sentient then humans, is glorified.

I hate the term racist personally (its not a seperate race if they can interbreed and create viable ofsprings), and I can't stand all the incessant whining some people do. I am really not into the whole bleeding heart debate of the poor sad black people and how they were abused by the evil white man of america. For one thing, I am not an american and this is a non issue in my home country (israel).

Yet I made the observation mentioned above!
While there are many OTHER races in the game, The MAIN races are humans, elves, and dwarves.. with gnomes/halflings comming up right next.
Those are the archetypical PLAYER races. The various other species are rather inconsequential.
I find it interesting that that main PLAYER races are split into the "good" white ones, and the evil "black" ones. Elves and dwarves being the key examples. 99% of the time, a person will play either a human, an elf, a dwarf, or an halfing (written in order of likelihood of being played). In all of those except the human they are split into pure good white folk and pure evil (or the case of the halflings, just "not good") black folk.


Oh, and as for the bug bears... I wouldn't be bothered at all by the little baby bugbears with no parents... since I had killed them in self defense, and if their parents were stupid enough to challange me... well... natural selection. But all jesting aside, it was you or them, and the logical choice is you. This whole bleeding heart liberlistic view of "oh their poor children" is, well, silly. (I can't decide if I disdain liberalism or conservatism more XP, I would probably have been a druid...)

I AM worried about the GOOD bugbears that are slaughtered mercillessly by adventurers day in and day out because of their species.

If I was really in a DnD world I would kill only in self defense until I could afford googles of detect evil (or maybe detect good, and spare any good creatre... neutrals who attack me are just asking for it XP)