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Lorfarius

By Lorfarius
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Graham S

Graham S

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I think D&D has a structural problem with racism. Race essentialism is built into the game and a lot of the material that inspired it. A lot of the sourcebooks and adventures of the past look pretty racist and colonialist to modern eyes. A significant component of the fanbase is/was pretty racist, or at minimum was very resistant and insensitive to the attempts to change any of this. WOTC doesn't have a great record of employing and keeping a diverse set of writers on board.

 

Set against this many modern fans and streamers are pretty diverse and right on, WOTC seem to be doing their best to address what they can with rewrites and commissions and thinking about representation, and although there seem to be semi-regular dramas that get some people online upset, I think they have good intentions and have done good work. 

 

I think that the fairly common trope of roleplaying racism when a PC of an uncommon race rocks up in a small town is pretty hackneyed. I can imagine it makes some people pretty uncomfortable, I can imagine some awkward and unpleasant situations at the table if people get it wrong. I would pretty much steer clear of it I think. Definitely the sort of thing safety tools were invented for. We have freedom to imagine whatever we like in a fantasy world, we're not obliged to model racism if we don't want to.

 

That being said, given that we're all inventing a story on the fly, and that a DM has to come up with a load of voices and accents and drama for characters who aren't all middle aged white guys, to a certain extent we need to give ourselves permission to not be hypersensitive, and trust that our friends at the table have good intentions, and that we can use safety tools if something is going wrong, or indeed, find a different group to play with.

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Captain Kelsten

Captain Kelsten

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I remember when I first started playing Pathfinder, I wanted to play a half-orc alchemist but my GM told me I couldn't, because the first chunk of story was set in a town where half-orcs were second class citizens and racially abused so it 'wouldn't make sense' for me to play a half-orc. 

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Lying Cat

Lying Cat

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Racism in TTRPGs is a desperately thorny issue - mostly because as much as we might like to think it's possible you can't fully isolate your character from yourself and slurs at the table directed at a character sheet can have a real world impact on players who may have lived experience of such things, or are simply made uncomfortable by such things. The problem for me as a GM is that racism is a trait that people can have, and when I run something like Vampire where the characters and the NPCs they interact with can be measuring their lifespan in centuries, it's hard to believe that all of these entities would exhibit purely progressive, modern attitudes.

 

The way I've gotten around it is checking in Session Zero that nobody has any real sensitivities to it, and if we manage to get over that hurdle, explain that Racism and Sexism will never be glorified and always presented as something negative - a facet of attitudes that are rightfully dying out, and that there will eventually be consequences for it. I prefer NPCs that are smart enough not to just spit out slurs and instead be subtle in their actions. Vampire again makes this easy. The specific disadvantaging of black neighbourhoods in Chicago by white, old, heterosexual men in power is narratively more useful than me having to drop racist epithets which make me uncomfortable too.
 

Regardless and no matter what, there's always a set of football cards at the table. You wave a yellow, we don't pursue that any further. Pick up the red and we rewind and do things different. The comfort of the characters is absolutely irrelevant in the face of the comfort of the players as far as I'm concerned.

 

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with characters being disadvantaged based on some inherent characteristic of theirs, provided the players are given the opportunity to rise above it and correct it, even if it's just a local battle in a wider struggle. If it's simply used as a beat-stick to deny people stuff then it's just horseshit because you're directly impacting the ability of a player at the table to have fun.

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Retroid

Retroid

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So I've recently got into DnD and after my RL boss gave up DMing so I threw my hat in the ring. It's a lot of work, perhaps because of the lack of prep time but I do enjoy making the maps. Here's the one from the last session which tied together a few one-shots we've been doing. Feel free to use it if you need a map in a hurry.

 

mUSHROOMYsm.png

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Aluco

Aluco

Posted
Posted
22 hours ago, Retroid said:

So I've recently got into DnD and after my RL boss gave up DMing so I threw my hat in the ring. It's a lot of work, perhaps because of the lack of prep time but I do enjoy making the maps. Here's the one from the last session which tied together a few one-shots we've been doing. Feel free to use it if you need a map in a hurry.

 

mUSHROOMYsm.png

 

Nice work. That looks great.

I get a lot of satisfaction from creating good maps. I recommend to everyone  Dungeondraft, which you may have used for that. I am also a patron of Forgotten Adventures, which provide epic quantities of assets to build from. Another recommendation for those who like doing this sort of thing. Their tokens are good too.

 

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MDY

MDY

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Posted
11 hours ago, Aluco said:

 

Nice work. That looks great.

I get a lot of satisfaction from creating good maps. I recommend to everyone  Dungeondraft, which you may have used for that. I am also a patron of Forgotten Adventures, which provide epic quantities of assets to build from. Another recommendation for those who like doing this sort of thing. Their tokens are good too.

 

 

Thankfully you don't have to delve too deeply into the vile pit of Reddit to find tons of good free maps..

There's one for maps made in the aforementioned Dungeondraft as well as Battlemaps which has posts going back years..

 

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Spatial

Spatial

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That looks... kinda fun.

 

I have very awful memories of that 2000's D&D film with Irons Jeremy chewing the scenery. I went to the cinema to watch it too (think I must have lost my mind at the start of the millennia tbh).

 

This looks like it might be the Remove Curse spell that film needs!

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Cyhwuhx

Cyhwuhx

Posted
Posted
18 minutes ago, Alask said:

Is that meant to be a druid shapeshifting into an owlbear? Owlbears are monstrosities, not animals. Druid's can't shapeshift into them! :quote::quote:

 

The Director Master is allowing homebrew.

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Kzo

Kzo

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Posted

Looks pretty fun, could be just the right amount of ridiculous to work. Looks like they've done some homework too (wildshape shenanigans aside) - saw a black dragon with acid breath and someone definitely misty stepped.

 

Pine as a bard is pretty fitting, I enjoyed his little hop at the end :D

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Retroid

Retroid

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New week, new map. It was a fun session, tbh I was troubled in thinking how to naturally entice the players to go down and engage the Bullywugs but I didn't even need to. The Barbarian cast speak to animals and heard a Raven shouting for help and with him now seeking vengeance for the trapped Raven the Barbarian charged into battle. :lol:

 

(The Raven was just a bit of flavour - originally there for a absent Shadar-kai to carry favor for the Raven Queen.)

 

949692005_Merchtownsm.thumb.png.78e90e8720697b33d9af02fc57b1f6f8.png

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moosegrinder

moosegrinder

Posted
Posted

So my nephew has joined a D&D session saying his class is wizard, but basically his character is the greatest liar ever. He absolutely is not a Wizard. He's a gnome rogue who uses sleight of hand to trick people into thinking he's performing magic. He's basically a street magician. However,m his success at lying has gone to his head so now he claims he's a mighty wizard when he cant actually do magic. Very popular at childrens parties but now swept into actual adventures due to his claims. The only person who knows this is the DM. The other players have no idea.

 

I am in awe of this shit. I can't come up with stuff like this. Anyway they've only played one session and I wanted to share it because holy shit:


manzini.JPG.a52fd4ef86619696a2fa44d363d58715.JPG
 

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