The thing I take issue with in Larian's work so far, and the thing I'm concerned about seeing increasingly more of as the game moves forward, is the ingrained nature of racial negativity, in a way that causes everyone around it to act like it's normal and 'okay', and for our own character to be FORCED to go along with it as well. .
I think Niara made the best point and also provided the most fair solution here. Racism in Faerun is a thing - but we should have the ability to confront it / or not - how we see fit.
There is an elegance to this solution in that it doesn't rely on censorship - quite the opposite. Taking advantage of the tools we have available - it being an RPG - we can give people additional roleplaying options.
As a side note -Its interesting that The Absolute has united all these disparate races under a single banner despite there being significant racial tension between them. I mean Lolth Drow are serious racial supremacists. And my own perception of them up to this point was that they represented White Supremacy, Racial Nationalism but with purple/grey skin.
I wonder if I am the only one who ever viewed them that way? Any thoughts?
I have similar thoughts about the yuan-ti. But I doubt it's deliberate. The early game just grabbed a lot of ideas and used them without really considering such ramifications because largely people didn't consider it important. I just think it's a matter of wanting to reflect an evil society and grabbing behaviors you think of as evil in your own society. Eventually some accidental commentary is made.
Maglubiyet is very much desiring to be the one-true-god and destroy all other gods. So is Cyric. And both of those read to me like someone looked at the worst of Abrahamic attitudes deliberately or otherwise.
For Yuan-Ti, I look at them and their behavior, for all that it's covered in evil-cultist decoration, feels very corporate rat-race to me. Ambition and backstabbing among each other, kissing up to your superiors until you can betray them and take their place, and when presented with an external threat showing a united front. The Snake Gods feel very much like executive level positions, especially given that there's a fair amount of shifting of the roster at that level. The four big names (Merrshaulk, Sseth, Zehir, Dendar) are pretty head and shoulders over the lesser snake gods but some of them plot against each other. (Especially given there used to only be one of them) Though I'm not sure Dendar ever sought to be involved and just got discovered accidentally. Dendar IS a GOO after all.
Again, I wouldn't be surprised if its all accidental. We've had decades of bemoaning that sort of culture in our society and it has to leak in eventually.
I like the ability to confront this stuff directly in ways that aren't viable in real life. But again, it is a separation of racism exists in the universe vs some concepts in mechanics and meta are alienating to some players.
The yuan-ti are another case where I could see the vast majority of them are terrible people, because they are still actively engaging in the rituals that were used to create yuan-ti in the first place. And a person who was willing to commit cannibalism in order to gain some modicum of power is not a nice person. But it is also possible to be born a yuan-ti and those don't have any sin applied to them... though being raised in yuan-ti culture will pressure them that way.
I know Eberron has a group of LG yuan-ti (that are sort of full of themselves jerks, but at least well-meaning). And I've heard there are more yuan-ti splitting off here and there from the culture... which makes sense given the hostile nature of the culture, you'd get people peeling off naturally.
The main thing that interests me about the yuan-ti is the lore statements that they do not experience emotions in a normal manner, it sort of appeals to me as someone who is a bit neurodivergent. The struggle to escape a culture that is all about ambition and domination is also interesting.
The Lloth-drow are a bit less interesting to me, Lloth strikes me as someone who just doesn't really have a plan and is just torturing her followers for the heck of it and feeding the racial superiority thing to them as part of that torture. She doesn't seem to ever be pushing her followers to conquer anything, just fight each other for her approval. She's a gameshow host in a real-life game of survivor that gets off on it.
Vhaerun drow are a bit more insidious, not the least because their brand of evil can put on the appearance of being reasonable and friendly. Also because they have motivation to interact outside of their own culture as they strike me as being hella capitalist.
The Absolute feels very much like The Temple of Elemental Evil and certain famous and litigious cult-scams inferring a relationship with science in the real world. It preys on people looking for meaning. But I have barely touched the surface yet.
