Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Racist Tropes on Drow STOP IT

You didn't answer my question.

Conan the Barbarian is the key thing people point to as calling the class that. But day to day speech of "Barbaric" or "Barbarian" and phrases like "Barbarians at the Gates" is largely insulting. Even if the use of the word has started to become less in recent decades, it is still actively used as that in things like political speeches and the like. And forgive me if I feel the existence of certain fiction does not outweigh the actual use of the word in real life.

Also, it's just conceptually limiting to be honest.

There's no reason you can't have a person from a more advanced culture who lives with all the available amenities and comforts and perhaps even coming from a comfortable, noble lifestyle who has that same skill set and approach to things. And again, yeah, you can fluff it that way already, but it is very irritating that all the imagery of the class bends toward the 18th / 19th century concept of the Noble Savage which is a lot about "oh look how unspoiled these people are by civilization and how close to nature they are, blah blah... and was used for literal centuries as a way to condescend to people"

Howard almost certainly was reacting to things he'd heard in his life, as he apparently experienced a lot of anti-Irish prejudice and it basically comes across as "you call me a barbarian, fine then."

But everything that falls under that word can be easily used with the much more neutral "Outlander" background and the skill set referred to as "Warrior" encouraging a much broader spectrums of backgrounds and upbringings for people in the class.

For example, a knight templar-inspired Warrior who summons guardian angels to empower him as a variant of the Totem warrior... which, btw, is a word drawn from an actual living religion currently being practiced.

So if I told you that Drow are not necessarily evil and if one simply chose not to worship Lolth they wouldn't be predisposed to evil at all, you'd be totally cool with how Drow are presented, like you're cool with how demons are?

EDIT: It should be said through that Asmodeus isn't a Celestial and never was. At least in 2e, he was one of the serpents which created the universe and posed as a celestial for a time after his fall. And your suggestion that a demon may transform into something else if its alignment changes is not, as far as I'm aware, how it works in Forgotten Realms.

You still didn't answer my question.

Do you KNOW that the tropes you're talking about are driving away prospective players, or are you just saying that because you heard it said by others?

Myself directly, with Barbarian, nope. I have experienced some condescension and been referred to by equivalent terms in other languages while living in other countries (fortunately a rare occurence) and have avoided Barbarian even when the mechanics match my concepts because the concept of the noble savage does not match what I want and because it does not the culture I have in mind for that culture.

Which is going get "Well that's just your personal experience" and dismissed.

Couple of things here.

There are very real issues in real life that should not be dismissed, are part of a long history of building tragedy on tragedy and are heavily tangled into everyday things. It's a serious subject matter.

The existence of different species of beings does not automatically justify people hating each other over differences.

And there is a big difference between representing the existence of racism within the fiction of the universe and building the game and setting itself embedded with concepts that support the sort of thinking that racism has merit.

Certainly you can have a long history of elves and orcs hating each other, that's historically represented in our own existence. But you shouldn't present it as a natural thing that is inherent or can never be amended. The gods in this setting are individuals and characters, not vaguely distant forces that may or may not exist... and the gods are not infallible. Corellon and Gruumsh pushing their personal grudge onto their followers as an example. Again, real life has lots of examples of a feud between two people resulting into a bloody conflict between groups.

The setting can have racism, especially if you want to explore that story arc, but it by no means needs it.

Plus you have things like the Barbarian class.

Barbarian is not a statement describing a skill set, it is a cultural term and it is a term used for a foreign culture in a demeaning fashion... and it's modern use is overwhelming that mode insult. Add to that the art for "Barbarian" is a mix of First Nations and Viking stereotypes along with a mix of other low tech cultures.

You can certainly have people with the skill-set of the class from any culture, not just low-tech cultures, and yes, you can build such a character if you want, but the fact that all the art and characterization of the class is that is an example of things that encourage real world bad behavior.

Likewise, the treatment as goblins and orcs as always savage or cowardly or sneaky or whatever else is equally damaging. It's the "this is their natural state" part of depictions that is harmful. It can be the culture that has developed, but it shouldn't be represented as the only possible way they could exist.

No, you can't control what is done in a home game, but you shouldn't encourage or turn a blind eye to such things, because some asshole will take it as tacit approval for such behavior.

"It's what my character would do" "my alignment says I should kill orcs" etc....

It's minor in comparison to people literally getting killed unnecessarily, but it's still a problem... and it scares off possible newcomers to the hobby.

When you publish, you have to be careful over how you might encourage people to behave.

What does evil even mean? Evil as defined by whom, because of what exactly? Good and evil are in reality subjective terms, and they have meant a whole lot of different things throughout history. It used to be that simply not worshipping the right god in the right way was a sign of blasphemy and thus evil. It still is like that in some parts of the world. Apostasy is punishable by death here and there.

If we're going to get this "real" in a gaming board discussion then we should probably not complete skate over what "evil" actually means. But this is usually done for expediency in any gaming context, because good just is, and so is evil. And that's okay, because playing a game usually means trying to work our way through a story rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of philosophy.
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What does evil even mean? Evil as defined by whom, because of what exactly? Good and evil are in reality subjective terms, and they have meant a whole lot of different things throughout history. It used to be that simply not worshipping the right god in the right way was a sign of blasphemy and thus evil. It still is like that in some parts of the world. Apostasy is punishable by death here and there.

If we're going to get this "real" in a gaming board discussion then we should probably not complete skate over what "evil" actually means. But this is usually done for expediency in any gaming context, because good just is, and so is evil. And that's okay, because playing a game usually means trying to work our way through a story rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of philosophy.

If we can arbitrarily define that all demons are just evil, whatever that word means, and a bunch of deities are simply good, whatever good means, then it hardly seems appropriate to get completely bent out of shape that, say, orcs are considered evil at a racial level. Whatever evil happens to arbitrarily have been defined to mean in that context, obviously.

To clarify, I do not mind drow or greenies or other races, humanoid or non-humanoid, getting fleshed out more. But the assertion that no single intelligent race can ever be described as "evil" from the perspective of the arbitrarily defined "goodly" races strikes me as forcibly anthropologizing the entire setting. And that's too much. We are not the only creature in the world, not are we so interesting that absolutely every story ever should only involve humans in every single role, even for the non-humans. It is okay for other beings to be something other than human and one would not expect non-humans to necessarily think, feel, or behave in ways that we humans would consider "good". Whatever that may be.

Short version, by all means do nuance the drow more, but please don't let it get to the point where butchering orcs is "evil" and only asking them over for a nice cup of tea and biscuits is "good". If I wanted that much social realism, I wouldn't be playing a fantasy RPG.

In the last couple of years the news media and social media channels has been strongly acting agains tropes, work conditions, harrassments, gender discriminations on working place etc etc.

What happeneds then is that most people are going passionate about it. The social media channels going hot and debates are all over the place.
Nobody wants people to get hurt by such horrible conditions, behavior etc you name it.
For a Game in such times it can be devastating at release when people changed but the games content didnt reflect the change humanity to the better.
A game wont sell itself good an often enough to honor the work beeing put into it.
So with no further writing, i do link this article and you read yourself:

D&D’s Drizzt books were built...tore wants to change that. - Polygon.com

In my best hope, i suggest that all text in BG3 will be changed to reflect our humankinds best behavior.
Even when we are talking about games and play games, i am sure we can avoid having such discussions which end in a way that BG3 will be missunderstood and gets the worst rankings as a game,
because of said problems we face in reality and are currently all over the place in the newsmedia.
Recall the latest media fuzz babout UBIsoft, CDPR and now Activision Blizzards problems.
Then of course this article about Drizzt and Drow...

I would be very disspointed if BG3 wont be a success because the Dialogs, Cutscenes and Text have not been rechecked again.
Just to avoid a backlash on tropes and games again and the gaming community suffers again and Larian wont have success with BG3

We can do better ...
All wars are started with words.
So change words for peace and success of BG3.

How about we have demons and devils who aren't evil too? Why can't we have a society of demons who don't live in the abyss and don't want to take anyone's souls? Must they be forever defined by Orcus? Having demons only be evil is so lazy and boring!