Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Lore problems

i'm not an expert on the lore, but the forgotten realms wiki and the recents source books explain a lot, there is even novels about Yuan-ti being nice and not stupid assholes defined by their nature. just think about the real world with people changing there ideas of other people over time (like slavery of black people existed 2 hundred ago, now it doesn't) like in the real worlds some event happened to move the lore, nothing must be set in stone, or dnd would have been given upon a long time ago, you would have the same bland situation over and over a game, that is what i call pretty boring.

There are so many things wrong with this worldview that I can't even begin to describe it...

With the exception of creatures from the outer planes (those related to alignment) an individual can have any alignment.
Some societies tend strongly to one alignment and most members of those have this alignment (and those who don't have big problems there) but some individuals choose to leave, are kicked out or were never part of the usual society of their race to begin with. Those can have the alignment they chose themselves or the alignment of the society they are part of (in case it is not the one that is typical for their race).

That's just my opinion.
But I think it is wrong to say "All members of race x automatically have alignment y."

Nobody is saying that though.
What we are sayin is that "An overwheming majority of members of race x automatically tend towards alignment y."

I read the PHB again.

Surface drow are mentioned at least twice, one of them even when they start talking about races.

The tieflings in the game look like in the PHB. It is also mentioned that some people (of the game World, not players) fear them because they mistake them with fiends.

We may like some things or not, but many things people complain about in this forum are exactly like WotC designed it.
There are many differences too (I dislike some rule changes) but please read the official books before complaining.

I would also feel the druids have problems with refugees, not with the tiefling race in general. Maybe it would be better to have some tiefling druids and non tiefling refugees. Else playing a tiefling druid may give inconsistent reactions.

Read through most of this - but to get the point:

The OP is upset because racism isn't ingrained into Faerun - which means that the actual game structure doesn't reflect racist values where different races are fundamentally different from one another in behavior. They want an earlier period of very poor writing that didn't think out the motivations of mystical beings and just used lazy tropes. In fact, the Drow were incredibly racist at first - rather than being purple or blue skinned, they were black - and not Mr Popo black, like they were just black elves - so the bad elves were the black people of the elf community. It reinforced real world racism (http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/redesigning-the-tabletop/). But that is not how actual beings work and are just fantasies created to paint enemies and those you wish to exploit. Racism grew from Spanish colonialism in the New World where it became a profit threat to say that it's just okay to enslave non-Christians - because slaves were converting and religion was a changeable attribute. So the idea of other people being lesser by virtue of something they cannot change took root - to create a basis to exploit people perpetually.

In fact, people of color existed in Medieval Europe and even classical Europe - trade leads people places and while the French may have a specific hatred of Germans, they would have no more hate for a black man than they would of someone from Panonia or Ireland, especially if they adopted the local culture and religion.

The game does show the racism that individuals may hold personally, which is realistic - people do fear the Drow because most of them worship Lolth and they do hold grievance against Tieflings for their infernal blood, but only culture can hold them to act a certain way outside of the norms because the norms of social animals like humans (and as would apply to elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, Drow, tieflings, etc) are guided by group selection and there isn't a natural tendency for people to be antisocial monsters going around killing everyone who is different than them. Shadowheart has a specific problem with Githyanki - and she lets that be known and it is a lot harder to get her to go along with you if you are a Githyanki - but someone like Gale or Astarion have no such beef so they are going to be much more reasonable in dealing with a Githyanki. They have to fulfill societal roles and just being plain assholes is going to get the group killed. You have to create characters from a realistic mindset and with decades of DnD development, silly racist tropes have been pushed aside - along with the 1st edition rule that all adventurers must be male. There are stupid creatures out there who are just abominations - you won't see a Basilisk act like that.

Fantasy asks us to suspend disbelief - and it best does that when the fantastical elements make internal sense and are limited to what is necessary. We believe the magic pulling elements from one plane into the material and being weld by a large number of individuals, and we believe in apex predators like dragons terrorizing the countryside - burninating all the peasants - burninating all the people - in their thatched roof cottages. But when you start turning everything that isn't human into vile monsters you start losing that ability to suspend disbelief unless you believe in the fantasy of racial supremacy in real life. Human-like creatures are going to act like humans more or less. If they live in a society, they should have a pretty humanlike existence - with those enthralled by a cult like Lolth's being sparse exceptions.

Fact:
In the real world humans are the only sentient species and all humans are just humans, there are not several distinct races of humans.
The only context in which the term race makes sense in the real world is when we talk about domesticated animals, and those races were created by humans. Even many animals (like dogs) do not belong to one race but they are a mix of all kinds of origins.
This does not stop some idiot humans from being racists.

My opinion :
DnD is a fantasy setting with many different races. I guess there are as many differences within one race as there are differences between real world humans and it looks like almost all sentient races can mix, so the population in most areas (except some remote villages and some fanatic cults) is a wild mix of all kinds of races. Under these conditions racism makes less sense than in the real world.
I would expect that only isolated communities and members of some evil groups who are described as racist (like Gith following queen Vlakith or drow worshipping Lolth) show strong racism. I assume racism is evil but not all evil groups are racist, some care only about power or they try to create chaos, tyranny, pain, suffering, destruction and so on.

Finally, this game is about an epic journey to save (or maybe destroy or conquer) the world, not about analyzing the social structure of a fictional society. Racism can be a part of the game, but it's not the main focus.

It's more understandable if you think about historical races of men. Let me quote from a campaign setting I'm working on:

OK, if we talk about Neandertalers and so on then the term "human races" could make sense. In a hypothetical RPG 50k years ago, the difference between them and humans may be similar to the differences between humans and elves in a fantasy setting.

I think of races in DnD similar to races of dogs in the real world. There are many people who belong clearly to one race, some of them have influences from other races so they look like a member of one race that looks a bit different and there are some people who are such a mix of races that it is hard to put a name on it.
In the end "race" is just a tag you put on a creature in order to define their stats and skills.

Finally my definition of racism:
For me racism means that somebody believes there are several distinct races and some of them are superior to others. Usually the racists believe that they belong to the superior race.

My ultimate example for racism is in Disco Elysium.

Can we stop talking about boring racism and start talking about exciting lore?

No. Because the demand for lore is a demand for racism being introduced into game mechanics. Such things teach players to think in such generalities and leads to real world racism. We cannot earnestly discuss this without discussing the racism implicit in the request, whether or not the OP is aware of it.

Showing the negativity of racism can also be a deterrent to racism. You can’t show the negative effects of racism without having racism in the game.

But I never believed games influenced people that much in their private lives. Games that show murder doesn’t condone murder. Games that have stealing doesn’t condone stealing. Drug use in games doesn’t promote drugs.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What exactly are these statements based on? I recognize that "condone" and "promote" can mean very different things in this context and that there is a difference between the maker of a game e.g. suggesting that stealing is ok and the audience of that game being more likely to see stealing as acceptable as a result of playing the game.

There is a claim I've heard repeated enough from sources I feel are reliable that the widespread casual smoking in Tolkien's writing led to a significant increase in the number of smokers in the world. Obviously, this is a little fuzzy - so I'm not trying to present it as fact. But if it's true, it seems to speak against what you're suggesting. A very quick search didn't turn up satisfying supporting evidence - is anyone out there familiar with this and can point me to a reliable accounting of what happened (or something that debunks this story)?

You know you’re right. Video games should stop all violence, drug use, criminal actions since it will lead to a significant increase in bad behavior. Because apparently we are all monkey see monkey do.

Indeed, but the OP is not asking for there to be people who are racist, but rather that racist tropes about fictional creatures be integrated into the game rules so that the game is racist, as opposed to displaying people expressing racism, as it does now. These are two different levels. In other words: there is a difference between having characters express racist values, as it does now (Shadowheart using a racial slur "flatnose," the racism expressed against drow and tieflings) and the game actually making all of those races exactly like those racist tropes as the OP is requesting.

Hell, I made a 3.5 homebrew race where the general trend of the members is to be racist against elves, dwarves, and half-orcs to varying degrees. But while they may think dwarves cursed by their goddess for improper breeding, that doesn't make that the truth behind dwarves. The OP is requesting that the racist trope that people hold be made definitive.

I think this is where we will have to agree to disagree.

In my decades of D&D never did I consider any of the monster races an analog of actual humans, since humans already had different ethnicities in the game. They were monsters to defeat before they accomplished their evil plans. The good monsters were the rare exceptions and not the norm. Could I sympathize with the few who wanted change? Absolutely but their numbers were so small, their struggles with acceptance would continue. So perhaps my view of fantasy races are more black and white.

The tropes are cruel and unkind to the monster races. But that’s what makes the exceptions so much more interesting.

I'm entirely unsure what you're telling me I'm right about. At no point did I say that we should stop showing things - I'm just suggesting that the manner in which they are displayed can have an impact on people. The presence of a "vice" and how we treat it are two different things.

I think this game can be designed in a way where everyone else is just an obstacle to plow through or a resource to use, or they can make efforts to help build empathy for other people in the world. Probably there will be some balance of the two.

I was being sarcastic. I’ll try to be more clear on my position.

If video games are able to influence people regarding racism then it most certainly can influence people regarding violence, sex, drugs, other vices such as smoking (as you implied with Tolkien). Then all these things should be toned down or removed. You are picking and choosing what’s right and wrong in a video game.

I think people are far more complex than that. I don’t think a video game has all that much influence in a persons world view. I think people come into games with a world view already set depending upon their own personal experiences and environments. They don’t change because a video game told them they are wrong.

Do I like the GTA series? It’s a fun game for what it is. Does that mean I’m a crazy carjacker/criminal/murderer? Should we ban GTA because it’s not empathetic towards people? Absolutely not.

Just tell a good story. Does it have racism, brutal violence? If that’s what the author wants. I just don’t like demanding changes because my world view doesn’t match with what the author wants in their story.

Threads that cannot avoid bringing real-life racism into discussions about a fantasy game usually end up being locked. This is a gaming forum, and we do not want it giving room to real-life political arguments.

Step carefully.

Real life and fictional works have always been heavily intertwined. There is a large body of work that exists on such issues.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/blackcamera.10.1.12

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2005rgq

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/blackcamera.10.1.11

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/fronjwomestud.39.1.0112

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv193rr0q

If Larian is taking a stance that they are refusing to allow discussion of racism as it applies to their game, they're asking for a PR nightmare that I imagine would culminate in their rights to even making this game being pulled as Wizards of the Coast has worked hard to remove racism and other forms of oppression from Dungeons and Dragons itself and is likely covered under some sort of morality clause. Is Larian deciding to go down that wormhole?