Memories of Connor's Adventures

Orlando the Adventurer pulled a Scimitar from beneath his Robes and smiled...

Tuesday 7 July 2020

Dungeon Mastery: sanitizing D&D is a mistake

I'm not sure changes to D&D to eliminate evil orcs, or lawful-good paladins, or weaknesses and superiority of species is a good thing because D&D is based on fantastical creatures whose origin is founded in the thousands of years of bigotry of humanity. Dwarves are considered non-humans to be despised because those shorter than we were willing to accept as normal were austracised into extinction or isolation from the central human group while those who were abnormally larger were feared as giants and ogres. Elves are prettier than humans because they fall further within our own human limits and represent an inward trending preference thanks to human self-loathing.
They and D&D are important object lessons about where humanity has come from over tens of thousands of years and where we are headed as a species. That makes Dungeons & Dragons a culturally significant teaching tool that is significant in a way that is more important than the short term need to sanitize the offensive nature of humanity it presents.

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