I am sorry if this is something basic that has been discussed to death before but I feel like I need to get this out of my system before I ruin friendships by wishing centuries of humiliation on people for the way they play pretend.
I had a casual chat with a friend and fellow GM about our current campaigns and worldbuilding. At some point beast races come up and I mention I like gnolls and give a few short details about their society in my setting. In response I get an explanation that he can’t have this kind of characterization because of Goebbles level bullshittery about how beastmen are inherently savage and destructive and basically a swarm of pests that has to be put down. And how this is necessary in order to address the moral issues of what to do with beastmen non-combatants. Essentially giving players moral license to commit genocide and still be considered “good” in-universe.
It felt so fucking unreal seeing how normally chill people can almost reproduce word for word the vile shit that Zionists are using right fucking now as a justification for mass murder and not have a single moment of “oh shit wait wtf am I saying”. I had to step away from the keyboard and calm down. I hate how concept of “sapient creatures that are completely and irredeemably evil and are specifically designed to be slaughtered” is seen as something completely normal and even expected. Gygax was a piece of shit genocide enthusiast who deserves to rot in hell and it’s high time that we move on from colonial plunder sims with dragons and obligatory others that exist only to be killed and looted.
You are building an imaginary world and there are no limits. The genre is literally called imagination. There is no excuse for consciously designing entire species that are designated for slaughter and reproducing some of the vilest ideologies ever thought up by humans as a pillar of your worldbuilding.
That’s it I guess. That’s the rant. Thanks for reading. I am doing my best trying to give positive portrayals of non-human societies in my games and also trying to get my friends to play other games that aren’t built from around breaking into others’ homes to kill them and take their stuff.
I say this loving Baldur’s Gate 3, but it was super disturbing to me that all the goblins are treated as straight up evil to the point where you’re allowed to kill goblin children without consequence.
It’s a deeply problematic thing in D&D that they’ve never really bothered too hard to deal with
Even as every other competitor completely blows past them in terms of complexity and nuance
Hell, fuckin’ Pathfinder elevated goblins to one of the playable ancestries, with the alchemist class being represented by a goblin!
Pathfinder started by giving goblins on the whole a base personality beyond “small evil thing”. It might just be “luv fire, luv pickles, 'ate dogs, 'ate 'orses, simple as”, but it’s more culture than FR has ever given them.
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Was very disappointed that I couldn’t really make an evil scheming necromancer, it felt like the only choices were to be nice and recruit companions, or be a murderhobo and piss everybody off.
I can relate to this, I too enjoyed the game overall but was deeply put off by the way goblins were portrayed.