“What Was So Bad About Spelljammer's Hadozee?” A Good Faith Answer
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
- As we’re in the middle of yet another Wizards of the Coast controversy, let’s look back at their big ol’ whoopsie-goof from Spelljammer’s 5e release.
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CW: Racially-insensitive character art and descriptions
Chapters:
00:00 - The History of the Hadozee
05:18 - “For No Reason”
09:45 - Slavery in D&D
13:28 - A Word From Our Sponsor
15:22 - Planet of the Apes
16:19 - Wizards of the Coast’s Responsibilities
18:57 - Bias
21:33 - Outro
Three Black Halflings reviews AD&D Spelljammer:
open.spotify.com/episode/3Zkv...
Three Black Halflings reviews 5e Spelljammer:
open.spotify.com/episode/0kgn...
Three Black Halflings speaks with Kyle Brink:
• Wizards of the Coast E...
Cave Trulls discusses the Hadozee Controversy - discussion begins at 40:48:
open.spotify.com/episode/1gc6...
The Geek Pantheon discusses Spelljammer’s ship combat rules:
• Why Are People So Mad ...
Counterpoint: Jordphan's review of Spelljammer: • The Spelljammer Letdown
Sinfonia Number 5 Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
#spelljammer #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #ttrpg #rpg #wizardsofthecoast
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If you created a hadozee character, what would your character be?
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100% some sort of space deckhand, wanna go full Treasure Planet vibes. So likely a rogue or a bladesinger
I think a Hadozee makes a great platform for a swashbuckler, though if I built one as such, I'd not use the Swashbuckler sub-class but would instead write him up as a Battlemaster fighter.
@@braedenmclean5304 yup. By itself it would have likely flown under the radar as just a goofy bard pose, but in the context of all the other details it just served to reinforce the overall racism in the original depiction of this version of the Hadozee.
That Hadozee pose is 100% the same pose so many racist caricatures used in our past.
I doubt it was done intentionally, but it certainly shows a certain tone deafness.
Like Mike said, they could have chosen ANY other pose and instrument to use for a Hadozee bard, but they went with this one.
If I did play a Hadozee Character, I think a Monk would be a fun time. As doing a glide kick like Batman would do in the Arkham games would be fun.
Though outside of that, if I had a silly idea based on existing characters like Sun Wukong, Donkey//Diddy Kong, Gorilla Grodd and even Dragon Ball Saiyan Characters I think would be fun with a Hadozee in some way. Outside of that I think doing a Polymorph Build where a Hadozee Polymorphs themself into a Giant Ape would also be fun.
@@braedenmclean5304 considering I found it in about 30 seconds on Google you really must not have looked all that hard.
Hearing that they had a sensitivity reader but only had them read the things they found necessary is so weird. Wouldn't you be hiring a sensitivity reader for the purpose of catching the things that you miss? Makes me wonder how bad the things they did send must have been.
Sounds more like the sensitivity reader is struggling to fined excuses to keep employment
And the guy who included the monkey slave trade in Spelljammer, Chris Perkins, is still gainfully employed by the company. 🤷🏻♂️
@@chimerakaitno it sounds like the sensitivity reader wasn’t presented with the whole book. And if those racist things were added in the 11th hour it probably never even reached the sensitivity reader.
@@chimerakait the mental gymnastics needed to look at an example of why sensitivity readers are important and come out with the exact opposite conclusion is astounding
I would not hire A sensitivity reader at all. I'd hire a team, they'd be as diverse as I could possibly make them, and they'd be part of the proof reading team.
Hiring "A" sensitivity reader isnt' going to help a damn thing you're at that point asking for a single person to give their opinion - which will have blind spots because the person is a person - on whether other people's opinions are ok or not.
No single human, by definition, can pull that off.
If you think they can, then you've missed the *entire point* of the idea that has led to the creation of the sensitivity role in the first place and are just handing the corps tools to help them 'greenwash' their various social faux pas not to mention greenlighting the idea of holding you one sensitivity reader accountable for every corporate misstep. Sacrificial lambs, basically.
Teams. Teams of sensitivity readers, separate from the writing team, ideally involved at concept stage, then again at pre-publishing stage.
Otherwise you're just handing the corps a nice human shield.
I assumed they were meant to be a reference to the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, and that's why they had wings. (This does not excuse anything else about their writing or presentation, it just explains why they have wings)
That’s a great point! I hadn’t even thought about that, given how far Wizard of Oz is from most other movies/media with Spelljammer vibes, but you’re probably exactly right
Hadozee came from Star Frontiers, the "wings" aren't wings, but skin flaps similar to flying squirrels - they are intended for gliding. Hadozee would use them in low-g environments to essentially "fall with style" and avoid taking damage.
In Star Frontiers I do not recall them having any racialized stereotypes, just being the stand-in for humanoid animal aliens among the default species.
@@TheBahamaat the honorable but prone to anger, iirc kinda like the new klingons
Side note, what amazes me how modern DMs and gamers dont know the history
Btw I run Yazarians in both traveller and a couole other games
Oh, and Flash Gordon that was inspired by the Wizard of Oz.
@@jubalrahl really I thought Flash was based on the ealrier Buck Rogers, and the novel "when worlds collide "
Wait, so they revised the Hadozee lore specifically because the original was deemed problematic and insensitive, and then DIDN'T run the final product past the sensitivity coach? It makes me wonder what content they DO get reviewed.
Also they clearly didn't understand what about the 2e version was problematic, since by this description they made it worse... I suspect they use the sensitivity review as something "extra", without really integrating it into the overall process.
It would also help if WotC and the D&D team were more diverse - it seems to have gotten worse on that front as the years have gone on. It wasn't this bad even in 3rd & 4th.
My understanding is that. It was 1st cleaned up by the sensitivity coach and then an old spell jammer playing executive thought it wasn't spelled jammer enough and put the african american references back in. This is the equivalent to responding to being nursed because you're o p by finding ways to get your old power level back
Yeah the story about the fan of the old version coming in last minute and adding more context to make an even more direct parallel to real world black slavery seems pretty blatant to me. If true, I find it hard to believe that one guy didn't know what he was doing, even if it went over everyone else's head.
@@Puzzles-Pins If the person was an exec, or otherwise outranked the team, they'd have to include it, even if they did see what was happening. Executive meddling at its finest.
Sensitivity coach lmao
If they wanted a wizard to make a sentient race, I feel like the plasmoids would have been a perfect choice.
So true!!
As a side note: I had a player want to play a Plasmoid in my campaign. At first I was going to say no as there are no plasmoids in my world. Then she said she wanted to be an awakened sea snail using the plasmoid stats. Since my campaign was sea based with the most successful country being run by seafolk THAT idea was perfect! :D
From a dawn of time evolutionary standpoint, the Plasmoid is the race least likely to need a wizard to grant it sentience. They're literally, "What if one day the primordial ooze got up and started talking?" as a player race. It feels like Plasmoids should have been the first race on the scene.
First, there was goo. Then fish. Then the Aboleths got uppity. Then, some of the fish crawled out of the sea to escape the aboleths. Then, those land fish discovered the lands were already overcrowded by fifty thousand different versions of elves created by a fickle half stoned god who couldn't stick to a decent coherent theme to save their life.
The Spelljammers books can't include proper travel rules but they accidentally throw in a monkey race with a savior complex. Juuuuusssttttttt wonderful. xP
And an Ancient Aliens x Wizard Did It origin, because why tf not 🙄
Cause the Lizards of the Coast have Lizard Brains.
I want to add about old Spelljammer lore is that it kinda assumed readers will automatically side with Elves in the Inhuman Wars. Which was basically a war of Astral Elves deciding to "purge" the space of "evil races" like Orcs and Goblins. The way it was written was...let's just say there is a reason why many people familiar with the old lore sometimes refer to Astral Elves as "Space Nazis".
Good point. One thing new Spelljammer deserves some credit for was making the villain an empire of Astral Elves. Particularly they went for some of the tropes of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers which were very racist orientalist ones and made the evil emperor blonde. Spelljammer is a setting that could handle issues of colonialism well or badly but was always going to have to engage with some of the subject because Age of Sail stories just come with that baggage. Considering the appalling original Spelljammer conquistadors artwork it definitely needed care, they did well with the white blonde monarchy evil emperor, pity they tripped up still.
Granted old edition was prety balck and white. Not much of shades of gray there.
The Imperium of Man has entered the chat
Damn. This really lines up with something I've been doing for myself called the "Nazi Test": if you can take Nazi talking points, make them about a fantasy race, and then in universe those talking points are considered good, then there's something SERIOUSLY wrong with it.
@@notanotaku1101 That is super flawed logic and sounds like you're just trying to make all fantasy (except for the really shitty, boring stuff) sound bad.
The one thing that has always bothered me about the Hadozee that has nothing to do with the controversy.....how the hell do they put on pants?!! The wing "skin" is connected at their ankles and wrists! It's mind boggling!
The real questions. Fer real Fer real.
It could be a two piece thing with a zipper along the sides of the legs
Zippers and velcro cuffs/buttons. Or, usually, they don't bother with pants and wear specially-designed caftans, or nothing at all since their fur protects them from the elements somewhat.
Congratulations, you have just started to ask the questions of Furgonomics; Or, how does clothes work on all these different Anthros. A personal favorite concept that somewhat relates to this is the idea that Bat Anthros who have big wing arms of some kind and not separate arms and wings basically wear poncho shirts that maybe have buttons to fasten them on tighter
They really are one bad step from a wardrobe malfunction
WotC: *shits on the floor and steps right in it* "This is not our fault."
The hadozee came from the game Star Frontiers, where they were the Yazirian. Incidentally, the plasmoids were Dralasites, the rastipedes were Vrusk, and the syllix were the sathar. The hadozee homeworld is not lost; it was briefly described but not named in Complete Spacefairer's Handbook. The "lost homeworld" trope better applies to the Giff, Dracons, and probably neogi.
It's like a game of Telephone, if the person at the head of the chain was also trying to dodge copyright lawsuits 😅
@@mandisaw TSR (the OG TSR) published both Star Frontiers and Spelljammer. No copyright lawsuits to dodge
@@adammiller8617 Doesn't necessarily mean all content rights to both went to Wizards. There are a lot of "holes", or places where specific IP was only licensed to TSR, but ownership was retained by the author. Think how Salvatore & Hickman still own their chars.
@@mandisaw it's a pity then that the group that tried to rebrand itself as NuTSR and relaunch Star Frontiers was headed by a white supremacist who couldn't get his act together and couldn't secure any of the rights to Star Frontiers.
You know, there are 2 things I always about your videos. Of course, you always present intelligent, interesting and insightful discussions. I adore how well you are able to empatheticly engage different perspectives. Secondly, your willingness to step forward with your own failings and vulnerably say *mia culpa* when needed. So often sensitive topics are discussed with pointed fingers and outrage insted of insight and nuance. I'm inevitably impressed with your approach.
Thank you so much, BKBW ☺️
Couldn’t agree more
Man, in an online world where it feels rare to find good faith discussion of questions about these topics, Mike's channel is a beacon of hope
Agreed, I absolutely love how Mike approaches these topics, like in the Tiberius video, or this one.
Read this as a bacon of hope and yknow? I still agree lmao
Honestly, if you HAD to use some kind of real-world reference for the Hadozee... like, the Vanara are right there! A race of shapeshifters in Hindu literature, often depicted with monkey or ape-like traits, who helped Rama defeat Ravana in the Ramayana epic. They're even stated as having indestructible skin and bones, which matches up with the Hadozee's heightened defenses in-game!
Instead of the Hadozee traits coming from magic slavery, they could be viewed as divine blessings and/or inherited from a notable hero in their own culture, such as Hinduism's legends about Hanuman. And since Vanara are described as being honest, adventurous, loyal, courageous, but also childish and "mildly irritating," maybe Hadozee are known to just... invite themselves along on an adventuring party's quest? This could be out of wanting to repay a favour or past kindness, prove their strength, settle a bet, or because they decided that it's time for a space road trip and the party's ship is the coolest-looking one so far.
And of course, run all this by some sensitivity readers, because I'm still white as kleenex and would want to make sure this is all depicted fairly and respectfully.
Not one hundred percent, but I think the old 3rd or 3.5 book Oriental Adventures actually had a race of humanoid monkeys named the Vanara. Cool to hear they may have been based on real world mythology...no idea if it was handled sensitively, haven't read the book in years.
And Pathfinder 2e has vanara, and they're super cool
For some reason “mildly irritating” got a chuckle out of me.
I really love the pathfinder Vanara. They are so cool.
Also, oddly enough, Zeb Cook, TSR alum who was a heavy contributor to Star Frontiers but also wrote X1 Isle of Dread seems to have been terrorized by flying monkeys in his childhood (my head canon) because in the span of two years or so, he created the Phanaton, flying lemur dudes AND the Yazirians (who became the Hadozee) who were flying money people.
Zeb, please tell us how The Wizard of Oz hurt you?
I feel like you just outlined how lol 😆
Taken directly from the AD&ED 2E expansion book The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook pages 19 & 20. (I THINK I got all the funky copy/paste formatting issues):
Hadozee, or "deck apes," are tall, slender, tailless apelike humanoids. They are covered with brown hair, including a shaggy mane that surrounds their face. The hadozee mouth is a protruding muzzle with several long fangs.
Hadozee have a broad flap of skin that runs from the creatures arms to its legs. This flap can be drawn tight by raising the arms, giving the hadozee a limited gliding ability.
Hadozee are rude, reserving their coarse commentary only in the presence of elves and the hadozee's employers. When outside these controlling influences, however, they can utter a continuous stream of insults and derision, with tongues sharp enough to make the most seasoned spelljammer take notice. However, the hadozee are extremely diligent workers and are respected throughout the Known Spheres for their willingness to work as hard as is needed to get the job done. They do not shirk their responsibilities in combat, either, and most hadozee work both as crewmen and as mercenaries.
Hadozee prefer to join the crews of other nations. They are particularly fond of elves as employers. A group of young adult hadozee of both sexes will sign on with a single captain, training together and forming a traveling company of 20-30 individuals.
The hadozee homeworld is temperate and warm, and has a climate like that of most human worlds. Hadozee generally wear no clothing (except in cold weather), as most clothing would interfere with their gliding membranes. They wear special caftans with slit sides on ceremonial occasions, or when in an unfamiliar port.
Hadozee may be clerics (maximum 8th level). fighters (maximum 5th level), or thieves (maximum 15th level). In addition. they may also choose to be multi-classed fighter/thieves or fighter/clerics.
Hadozee have traveled the spaceways for generations, working for masters of many different races, and are familiar with most of the languages heard in space. The initial languages a hadozee can learn are hadozee. common. dwarf, elf, gnome, goblin, orc. and any others the DM allows. The actual number of languages is limited by the Intelligence of the character (see Table 4 in the Player's Handbook) or by the number of proficiency slots allotted to languages (if that optional system is used).
A hadozee can glide through the air by spreading its gliding flaps, traveling 1’ forward for every 1’ of height it loses. When gliding, hadozee have a movement rate of 18 and a maneuverability class of D.
Hadozee are born warriors, thoroughly at home in melee combat. They can use all weapons that humans can, wielding a weapon in each hand -or in a hand and a foot- without penalty for two-handed combat, as if they had the Ambidexterity weapon proficiency (see Chapter 5 of this book). Their preferred weapons include long swords, shields, and halberds. Because they cannot wear shields on their arms (their gliding membranes get in the way), hadozee employ only bucklers.
Hadozee are very nimble, so they add I to their Dexterity scores and receive +20% to all climbing rolls. Their basic rudeness and disrespect for others result in a subtraction of 2 from their Charisma scores. (end official text)
I am leaving my own thoughts about this out of this comment as I want people to be able to see the official text as it was printed in 2E..
Awesome! Lots of mechanical flexibility and plenty of flavorful lore hooks for storytelling. Far from a "one-hat" race, and even their place in the stars & ships reads as a classic-pulp "race of adventurers".
If they couldn't translate this easy-win properly, then I'm starting to see why they opted to skip Dark Sun altogether.
And from Star Frontiers (TSR RPG) before that.
I never played 2e; were maximum class levels common? Elves could only reach level 7 of barbarian, orcs level 5 wizards, etc?
@@kaitlynhathaway5093 Before 3e it was common for different classes & races to have different level-progressions and level-caps, yeah. That was partly a means of balancing/countering the "Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards" issue, and partly "because Gary said so".
@@kaitlynhathaway5093 yes, and if you multiclassed, each piece could level at different ways. You got X experience, which you could decide which class to put the XP into. Further, most classes gace XP bonuses if your prime attribute, based off class, was above a 15 or so. You would get a bonus 10% experience. Not ALL classes did this, but most did.
2E did a good job of expanding max levels vs 1E in terms of class/race or race/gender
Thanks for this one. I got into D&D in 5E so I didn't know the lore history of the Hadozee, and when the Spelljammer books came out I was lost on what the issue was. This video breaks it down clearly for someone like me who comes to it without any prior knowledge. Keep making great content, I look forward to it every week.
The Hadozee were a port-in from TSR's classic scifi game Star Frontiers. the came into the game in 2E Spelljammer and had a life in 3E as well. I'm sure you know all of this, except maybe the Star Frontiers connection.
The only part of the new, troublesome lore that is expressed in the earlier Spelljammer monster listings (not a player race) is the part of the elves recognizing that they were civilized and cultured above the orcs and their subsequence alliance. The Hadozee were popular among elven crews because of their unique physical abilities that made them adept as able-bodied crew. That's it. No uplift, no mad wizard. They were a race in their own right. They they were written to become adventurers as they had a sort of wonder and wanderlust that pulled them into "space".
I mean, if they really felt the need to rewrite them to be more apt for player characters, they already had the ground work in their original form from Star Frontiers as the Yazirians. Yaz were the simultaneously the smartest of the core races in that game as well as the most combative. They had life-foes which could take any form from a fight to a business rival to a scientist declaring a virus as his life-foe, dedicating his life to its eradication.
And as for the patagium they had, this was a way to build them as a PC race who could fly while limiting them so it didn't become overpowered. The wings were attached to their arms and so gliding while wielding weapons was not really a thing they could do (at least not easily). They also had a light sensitivity that meant they often wore dark glasses and visors when in daylight.
I totally agree that the racism in the original Spelljammer listing is a "comedy" of errors in that no one thing about them really screams racist trope but put them all together and you have OOPSE!
Also, the Fan Wiki entry for the Yazirians has a note about a possible origin as the Hadozee, but this is totally fan canon and nothing ever expressed in official material, at least to my knowledge.
I suspect there's some legal-rights issue with the original Star Frontiers, hence the original transition to Spelljammer. For all that TSR was so letigious, they were awfully free with other people's IP, and post-Hasbro WotC seem to have pushed to clean all that up (or at least make it harder to draw direct lines).
That said, learning that the current writers/mgmt team actually made it *more* racist than the original pulp version seems pretty on-brand for things nowadays. Racism & sexism in SF/Fantasy seem to ebb-and-flow with the prevailing social context, and in the US, it was arguably better on those fronts (in media, at least) in the 90s.
@@mandisaw Not really. Star Frontiers was killed by Williams who favored trying to develop the Buck Rogers license her family held.
The use of Star Frontiers races in Spelljammer wouldn't have been any sort of rights issue as they were created by TSR for a TSR game. More likely it was the same creative decision making that also pulled from other sci-fi sources for Spelljammer. anime, the Alien franchise, and other inspirations were used.
The use of TSR scifi races in a TSR space fantasy really is just good recycling of material.
@@mandisaw I mean the earlier versions weren't really racist at all.
@@elfbait3774 I meant that some of the individual content in the book(s) may not have carried over from TSR to Wizards. Some 2e authors retained ownership of their work, and only licensed it to TSR (which would have expired, unless explicitly renewed or otherwise negotiated).
I always thought the Hadozees where a reference to the Wizard of Oz and the flying monkeys.
I think that’s why a wizard has them enslaved and modified. And it explains why they’d be resistant to pain and stuff like that. I hadn’t caught on the Planet of the Apes stuff.
Still, this is so tone deaf to do this. As you said, having one or two traits like that would be fine, but the accumulation of those traits is so jarring, so embarrassingly awful, it’s a real wonder how no one ever stopped to ask if this was a good idea or not. Especially if it’s the doing of one lone person, whatever rank in the company they may have.
That’s why consultants on those matters should be hired, so that we can avoid this completely unacceptable and unnecessary real world racism in our fantasy game.
Both Wizard of Oz (book) and Planet of the Apes (original film) had their own very strong political messages, deconstructing some of these very tropes.
But the problem comes when folks are only familiar with the more diluted/toothless versions, so you get the racist imagery & basic setup, without the part that questioned/challenged the racism.
They come from Star Frontiers Yazarians, if you want more information, there is a somewhat thriving Star Frontiers presence out there
The monkees themselves were likely meant to represent Native Americans.
> I always thought the Hadozees where a reference to the Wizard of Oz and the flying monkeys.
So still a reference to enslaved, exploited, trafficked, and "uplifted" (aka Christianized) people in the US.
So I know nothing about the Hadozee, never gotten into spelljammers, but the design of them as ape people with wings looks really cool to me. It gives me flash backs to the old cartoon Pirates of Dark Water where there is a race of bird ape hybrids literally just called Monkeybirds and as a kid the monkeybird on the crew was one of my favorite characters. I remember almost nothing about the show so I'm prepared to hear that they were a very racist stereotype that hasn't aged well, but ya even just hearing this video as you go on about the Hadozee lore I'm just sitting here yelling "HOW?!?"
Which comes back around to Planet of the Apes because the monkeybird in the original Dark Water miniseries was voiced by Roddy McDowall.
Amazon's got the whole Dark Water series. In the early eps, they join a resistance movement on the monkeybird's home-island. Single ep manages to cram in multiple angles of Caribbean-flavored slavery & servitude, incl both overt brutality and passive apathy, cultural erasure, and "house" vs "field" treatment and how that can cause internalized racism. (Essentially you get folks who aid in their own oppression to "side with the victors", it's still a problem IRL today.)
Obviously the writers for that show 30yrs ago were just better at their job than whoever's left at WotC. That, and people actually learned about US/world history & racism in the 60s-80s. A lot of schools dropped history along with literature, art, and music.
@@mandisaw That's honestly pretty good to hear because more often than not when rewatching old shows I grew up with I'm doing double takes and sayin "How did that sound ok even then?"
The yazarians from star frontiers always felt like that to me as well
What would make an epic game is the hunt fornthe lost world and the reason for the exodus,
This new back story by WOTC is, well..cr@p
@@davidmoore2279 It all comes down to who was handling editorial, and what their values were. By the time you're talking US 80s/90s broadcast TV, there were the FCC Standards & Practices folks. Admittedly, they were often more concerned about making sure the A-Team didn't show anyone bloodied/dead, but there was a sense that they wanted children's TV to reflect every kid watching.
It was of course a sentiment echoed by the *real* bosses, the advertisers, who wanted every kid to see themselves playing with those toys 😂 For all the current whining about "woke companies", 80s ad-based cartoons went out of their way to be super-diverse, chasing that bag same as today.
As a DM, the part about cutting content and changing it hits hard. It feels like almost every book since 2018 needs a “fix”
The most "ick" part for me has to be the "one of the good ones" detail. *shiver* That is some 1950s level stuff. I've never really seen the connections between fantasy races and IRL groups before (mostly because of my background in mythology), but this...I don't know if it was intentional, subconscious bias, or what, but something is...off here.
The "one of the good ones" trope comes up often in D&D lore and fiction, the most famous might be Drizzt DoUrden, originally pitched as the only good alignment Drow.
@@hongkongzorro That is entirely a different scenario, though, and not the "model minority" trope. The Drow's entire story is that they were led away by Lolth millenia ago and Drizzt was one of the first to go, "Wait a minute, something's not right." It's much more akin to a group belonging to one religion for generations and then someone realizing that said religion is corrupt. The Drow aren't painted as bad because they're a minority group, but because they literally worship an evil goddess. Now, that's a different issue entirely as "evil gods" aren't a thing in real life (as much as far too many Christians try to demonize Islam or paganism. I'm a Christian and I find that kind of erasure/demonization incredibly idiotic). So a group of people following an evil entity doesn't really have a real-world correlation. Drizzt could be compared to Kira Carsen from Star Wars: The Old Republic. Kira was raised as a Sith (an unequivocally evil faction), but from a young age realized that the Sith weren't good and so ran off to join the Jedi. This is why I struggle with these real-life comparisons, because there are things in fantasy worlds (magic, dark lords, good and evil as forces of nature, literal different sentient species, etc.) that have little-to-no connection to real life. HOWEVER, there are cases in which bias can slip into these things (like straight-up making your evil religion just a pastiche of Islam or Judaism or whatever, or actively using racist stereotypes(note:Actively) in your fantasy peoples (there's a LOOOT of that with Romani people I've notoced)), so we should be cautious in our world-building. The Drow aren't really that case as Lolth's religion is basically spiders and BDSM. Unless there's some religion out there that worships spider dominatrixes that I don't know about....
Right now im playing a hadozee, but his story follows nothing of the original lore. He lived out in a jungle with his people as a city guard, sleeping in trees, doing gliding monkey things, before getting infected by a fungus.
He is now a lovely moldy monkey spore druid, and a blast to play. Going up and gliding over towns to spread a lil fungus while exploring some islands far away from home.
Regarding the slavery subject, I'll fully admit slavery is a part of my homebrew world, specifically in the Norse Viking inspired area, because historically Vikings did practice that. However, I also acknowledge that this is a sensitive subject in the real world especially with the current political climate. So before my current game started, I actually had a discussion about it with my players via session 0 and how they felt about it. One of my players is African American, and he was actually cool with the fact that it's in the world because he also acknowledges that it was a part of real world history not just in America but all over.
From there though we all continued to discuss it and we agreed that so long as it's never portrayed as being 'Okay' or 'A good thing', we'd be okay with it being present in the game. We've been doing this campaign for over a year and a half now and things are still going strong, and because of that discussion it actually ended up expanding a piece of worldbuilding involving the end of slavery in the campaign's region.
Point being, it's always good to double check with your players, and beyond, before you include sensitive subjects like slavery in your games, even if it's only mentioned in passing.
Personally, I think that if the patagia (wing membranes) of the Hadozee are key aspects of their design, they should be based more on flying squirrels or sugar gliders than primates! They can be a hybrid looking creature sure but it would have made more sense to me if they were more based on flying squirrels
Of course, that is perhaps the least of their issues lol,,, I can only wonder what they were honestly thinking
I'm pretty sure they're based on the colugos aka flying lemur
Love the video! It’s ridiculous that they had a sensitivity reader and didn’t use them.
Thanks! I really didn’t see this as a problem but didn’t look into…strange as we are Native Americans but didn’t see it. Been playing since 79’. We really were impressed with your style of addressing this issue. Since the OGL OriginalGM has started creating a new TTRPG. We will be looking into a Sensitivity Reader for our system now that we watched this.
I would have pulled a Tabaxi and made a Monkey God (think Sun Wukong) who all of his followers come from a mountainous planet, then just make it some sort of "Monkey God gave them wisdom and a long life" which basically leads them to being tricksters and tinkerers, weirdly survivable as well, basically an originator god like what elves or orcs, I'm p sure tabaxi have that or maybe I'm just thinking of the TES Khajiit
simple stuff like that, there's so many other routes to go and I only described one
Actually a fun fact about the Tabaxi is the origin of their name. There was a dumb adventurer who was shown the Tabaxi tribes of cat worshipping humans that wore the hides of big cats. He mistakenly took the word to mean catfolk when it is technically the name of a specific tribe that includes both humans and catfolk
The gith were also enslaved, but you don't hear much about that. Perhaps because they have agency in their story. It starts with them braking free from their oppressors, the mindflayers, and focuses on how they proceed from there, and the division caused by that.
I mean the fact that they now practice slavery isn’t a really good luck though.
The hadozee should have had some saiyan inspiration. Made them soldiers for hire instead of slave soldiers. (Not saying the only change needed, just one sprout.)
I mean that's where my mind went when I initially heard of the hadozee.
I also wouldn't have made a connection to the art and minstrel shows until someone posted art from a minstrel show flyer... which was particularly bad because the pose was literally the same, just mirrored left to right. (It honestly, looked like the Spelljammer are was based of the art from the flyer... but like you mention it may have not been intended to be racist but more accidental. You search for minstrel and it comes up. You think there's a fun energetic pose and completely miss the context of what you were looking at. Honestly, accidental racism comes from ignorance not malice, but to better ourselves and our world we need to be exposed to this stuff better. We've bleached history too much and we are the worse for it.)
Though note there is a difference between minstrel shows and the minstrels we imagine in fantasy worlds which also likely contributes to the issue.
If and when you're ready to discuss the matter of slavery as an element of competent storytelling, _please_ mention the Gith. Very much of their early history parallels that of the Hadozee, with a key difference: the Illithid are still a clear and present danger, and the Gith's battle against them continues to the present day.
OK Hi I am a Black American of African ancestry and have been playing TTRPG (D&D) for 25+ years. I am genuinely trying to understand all of this. In my late teens I ran a Dark Sun campaign with all Black guys. And the Slavery aspect of the world was not an issue. No one had any mental Breakdowns. Now as for the Hadozee… if a Monkey standing upright reminds someone of a Black person, well that’s just their mind at work. The reality is they probably have never truly had an interaction with either one. Inclosing to whom it may concern Black people are not really insulted or affected by what well meaning White people think we are. All in All these type of Video topics need to happen so thanks Cheers!
stop speaking for all black people, we are not a monolith. You are also oversimplifying the issue in this video without even watching it
Very thoughtful video, Mike, as usual. I have so many thoughts and most of it simply comes down to “What was WOTC thinking??” Short answer is that they weren’t thinking or worse, didn’t care. I’m still waiting to see if they actually do better or everything they’ve said is just lip service. I guess we will see.
Side note, Treasure Planet is a great movie that people are really missing out on if they haven’t seen it. It’s a great example of what space DND could look like!
Great video! You articulate complex and sensitive topics so well!
I'm glad to see other people saw the wizard of oz connection in the comments. The backstory with the wizards "enhancing" simple apes is straight out of the wizard of oz. Regardless, having your one and only ape based race being a slave race isn't great. I definitely wouldn't have spotted it without someone explaining, so thanks for being that someone (I haven't been following spelljammer stuff at all tbh)
I don't understand why you'd even bother having sensitive readers if you're only going to have them look at the stuff you think might be bad.
10:30 "What is the purpose of slavery in D&D?"
Me: "To justify stabbing and killing slavers?"
I'd actually love your take on Dark Sun, Matt, because that game is all about the idea of oppressed peoples overthrowing the slave lords of the region and ushering in an age of freedom.
How have your videos never popped up on my feed before? You are a brilliant speaker with well prepared and well reasoned material. +1 subscription
When I first read about the Hadozee in spelljammer lore and the recent controversy. There’s no denying the negative associations it brings up. Flying monkeys reference the wizard of oz and the enslavement / gratifying servitude to the elves was just extremely cringy and just blindly not thinking how people of color and oppressed people feel just really rubs me the wrong way that wizards just decided to include those older references all on one higher ups nostalgia.
The use of slavery or the oppression of a society or other heavy topics doesn’t need to be eliminated from a campaign it can be a strong antagonistic factor of a setting or be a truly in a grim dark esthetic in a story of done respectfully especially when dealing with the latter. This would of course need to be expressed fully with your players well ahead.
Never really cared about Spelljammer, then you said Treasure Planet
Right?!
For the record, Deck Ape is still a commonly used reference for deck hands on military vessels. When I was a Seaman on a Coast Guard Cutter, we celebrated the title.
It was an extremely bad move to publish that and I'm glad it was changed. What absolutely baffles me is that people are up in arms about the change even when they have been the given very clear and obvious explanation about WHY it was a problem.
some people be racist. They hear that "Compay X" changed something because issues of insensitivity and tactlessness, and be like: "ThE LeEefTis WOOookE BrigadE is AT IT AGaiN!!!! ThIs is WHy..." and goes ranting about something entirely unrelated from the fantasy make-belive game we play for fun.
This 100%
@@tunafour-shoes4618 I'll give it like a 60/40 split between historical/social ignorance & either overt or internalized racism. Unfortunately even in the US, even among minority groups, a *lot* of people do not learn about the shittier parts of history, especially if they are connected to modern depictions or pop-culture icons.
Add to that the issue of US History & Social Studies just being straight dropped/limited in the K-12 curriculum for the past 20-25yrs (or more, in some places), and you get a lot of people learning about the Tulsa Massacre of Black Wall Street or redlining from an HBO show (or a RUclips video) instead of a school teacher. No wonder then that they say, "it doesn't look like anything to me".
@@mandisaw I think it's important to really sit with the fact that we ALL have some internalized racism just based on the society we were raised and currently live in. Unpacking that is an ongoing thing. This also applies to homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, etc..... Especially for people who aren't part of the impacted group. We need to keep our minds open and LEARN. And a lot of people seem to be allergic to doing that.
@@starsapart9311 💯 Just a smh situation - folks can accept that a beefy Conan-type could be obliterated by a +6 wand of magic missile, but "hey, this creature writeup/art seems kinda racist" is just beyond their ability to comprehend. 😅😩
I'd also add that there's gonna be a lot of old D&D race material that'll be problematic, but unlike the Hadozee they'll be a lot harder to remove.
For example, the Goblin. Their depictions, as greedy, long nosed, deceitful, ugly, etc... they are modeled on Jewish stereotypes. J.K. Rowling got in hot water because her depiction was uncomfortably close to those stereotypes.
I think we'll keep running into these issues as old info is remembered and it comes to light. But in the end, we've got the solution that's been going through since the 90s. Forgotten Realms have added more moral and alignment ambiguity to the races, which I believe is a step in the right direction. Any race can have people with the potential for good or evil.
This is what blows my mind. Tabletop as a hobby, and sci-fi/fantasy writing, art, and comics more broadly, have already been wrestling with these issues for decades, with varying amounts of success. There's still more to be done, but it seems like some of these current books are going backwards (not just WotC, but some of the indie stuff published as OSR as well).
I grew up with pulp & epic fantasy, I used to pore over D&D modules and posters from the 80s onwards. IMO it's actually gotten worse as the ambient social context has grown more hostile and less empathetic.
@@mandisaw There has to be room in our games to say, 'These bad things exist and happen. How do we as a group handle it?'
@@1nONLY_DRock I mean, there doesn't *have* to be. Every table - and every system - can set it's own parameters for how gnarly they want things to get. Maybe your magical-girl themed game is all about finding lost kittens and being in the school play, while some other group is going full battle-royale, in the vein of Mai-HiMe (or Madoka Magica).
My point was that these problems were already being raised & addressed 20+ yrs ago. You could have vanilla-D&D and Dark Sun, or all the variants of World of Darkness, depending on what sort of rabbit hole you are looking to drop down into.
No man, it's not the Goblins who are modeled on Jewish stereotypes. It's that both the Goblins and the Jews in the mind of dumb antisemites are depicted with traits considered unpleasant. The Goblins are depicted as unpleasant and ugly because they're one of the traditional evil people from classic fantasy, and the Jews were depicted as that by nasty racists.
Goblins are not an Jewish stereotype, good Lord.
It’s odd that anytime we get an animal hybrid race the lorn normally depicts them as that animal like tabaxis liking to roam and collect things while this race is specifically designed with racism, slurs, and slavery in their lore
Agreed, but there have definitely been other *humanoid* races with racist overtones, like orcs and kender. It's kind of gross that racism has snuck into common folklore like that to the point where anyone on the outside looking in can be completely unaware.
@@tepmurt9981 I mean even the origins of goblins in folklore was a antisemitic thing unfortunately
If i made a Monkey race, I'd have given them the ol extra hands via feet. Gimme Hitmonkey Hadozee.
I know this is a heavy topic, but when you said "don't do a racism", I spit out my water.
Did no one who worked on this catch these issues?
Edit: I guess I need to watch the full video, but someone still should have caught this
if they had noticed any of these issues, I reckon they wouldn't have left them in the book
I was rather critical of some points you made in another video, but I just wanted to say I think this video was amazing. One of the best laid out discussions I've heard on this topic. Back when I was still all in on D&D, I was so excited about Spelljammer before release, that teaser trailer blew me away, the Treasure Planet vibes getting me so hyped. I was so disgusted upon reading over the content, seeing what they had done with the Hadozee. It definitely caused me to get one foot out the door when it came to D&D.
For the artwork, look up "the coal black rose". The inspiration ... is pretty clear.
I can see why some may treat the argument like it’s not very clear. It’s very easy to treat these problematic bits as purely coincidental if you refuse to look at the picture as a whole.
Excellent video, Mike. I hadn't dug into any of the Hadozee issue at all (just not into spelljammer), but dayum, this was just... bad. (And also, props for the "Alan Smithee" reference :D )
Treasure Planet is EXACTLY how I sold it to my players!
What really sucks is when people are more offended by the idea of calling something racist more than actual racism. I think “races” overall will always have a bit of accidental coding in them until they really are pivot into being more of mythologies or tribes one people.
A TON of black people in my circles do recognize it as racist. Non-white people in my circles recognize it as racist or at least are more open to hearing those it is affecting.
It’s not in my place to say it isn’t racist, but a good rule of thumb is if a marginalized group is feeling poorly represented, stereotyped, or hurt and a dominant group is saying a spectrum from agreement or “nah”, that marginalized group is probably worth listening to with more weight.
I’m black, I grew up in black areas, I’ve had many friends of many backgrounds, firstly monkey people is a staple in anime which black kids are fond of, mainly dragonball, secondly, anyone who I’ve asked about this in person usually looks at the monkey people and goes “and?”, even when given information they simply do not care.
A minstrel was a medieval European entertainer. Originally describing any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool, the term later came to mean a specialist entertainer who sang songs and played musical instruments
I often wonder who will be our Shepard when Uncle Matt decides to retire or gods forbid passes on, and it’s good to know that Mike will be a river to his people.
Super kind of you!!
Thank you Mike, I didn’t know any of this. I completely agree with you that the very on the nose “backstory” of the Hadozee race. Apart from the visually stupid wings they have the idea that they are joyfully subservient can come off easily as a racist trope. If they were flying squirrels not apes. I think that would easily distance themselves from the racist tropes of the Atlantic slave trade. Also wow did wizards, the company claiming to be all inclusive and blah blah blah miss the glaring mistake with the background of this group
It's an obscure corner of lore I guess, and only tangentially related to this video, but I keep wondering why nobody mentions that the hadozee are actually the Star Frontiers Yazirians with the serial numbers filed off, presumably for trademark-shenanigans reasons.
I can’t imagine it’s a trademark thing. Star Frontiers is/was a T$R game (and one of the reasons I moved towards GDW and ICE games back then)
As a non American, I had to check what was the issue of the minstrel artwork. For me it was a reference to the intelligent marmosets that play music (like in Nobody's Boy Remi) in street shows.
I gess I learnt something today 😅
Regarding the wing membrane, my friend has a Hadozee character that they reflavor as a Sugar Glider. It helps make the wing membrane make more sense
This hadozee lore is a real hadoozy
Thanks for the helpful insight. As someone who is white and not American, there were a few things that sailed over my head until you pointed them out. E.g. the image that immediately comes to my mind at the mention of a minstrel is a medieval white person like Will Scarlet. I may never have noticed the parallel with more recent minstrel shows.
The S wizard version of they’re history in 5e only exists in 5e only, the lore from 2e/the unhuman wars is the original version of the Hadozee lore
I don't pay much notice to internet controversy, especially for games I don't play. That being said, I continue to be impressed by your willingness to address these topics with an open but respectful effort. Good job Mike.
Mike, I went into this video disagreeing with your point of view, and by the time it was done, you'd changed my mind. These conversations are often very difficult to have, for so many more reasons that I can list in a comment. But one of the big ones is the tendency of things to become personal. I'm certainly guilty of that, on both sides. You handle difficult and sensitive topics with grace and aplomb. Thank you for that.
When stuff like this happens i hear a lot of people complainig like "why are you seeing a connection when there isnt one" or "they didnt mean to so its not an issue". The thing is, humans recognize patterns. We have evolved to do this really well. So even when you didnt mean to make your space monekys a slave race akin to slavery in the USA, humans recognize patterns and WILL read that allegory into it. That isnt the fault of the creator, necessarily, but it is their responsibility.
I knew a lot of this about the issues with the lore, but didn’t know anything about the bard portrayal. I’m so glad you covered this!
As to why more people were frequently referencing Star Trek and never Treasure Planet, AD&D 2nd Edition Spelljammer existed for years before Treasure Planet came into being. In fact, when Treasure Planet was released we were into 3e and didn't have a current edition version of Spelljammer. But when we played Spelljammer, we did have Star Trek. Everyone I knew saw the elven fleet in Spelljammer as being essentially Vulcans, and a lot of what was published reinforced that. And the Second Unhuman War as the ongoing campaign theme with published modules made the orcs and goblinoids into a Klingon tribute.
Separately, the best hadozee artwork was in 3e.
I always use treasure planet to describe the core concept of spelljammer to people who’ve never heard of it
Because the topic of slavery is such a sensitive issue, slavery is illegal to the point that slave traders can be killed on sight in the vast majority of my homebrew setting. Then the only major empire that has slavery is such a brutal place that in most campaigns the party would actively avoid going there. If I were to ever allow players to visit that area, the whole campaign would need to be based around it, I would have to know the players fairly well, and we'd still need to discuss how it would be handled.
Why even have that empire if players aren't suppose to travel and play in that empire?
@@blackhawk8920 There are storylines that could play out there. It's just that the players would either need to all be humans, or need to be very careful. Typically big evils are added to the world because, at least theoretically, the players can defeat it.
They’re originally from Star Frontiers, a TSR game that was parallel with OD&D, or the line that followed from Basic D&D. There was also Villains & Vigilantes for supers, Top Secret for espionage, and Gamma World for post-apocalyptic. In Star Frontiers, the playable aliens with ptagia were Yazirians, and the giant amoeba aliens were Dralasites, along with the insectoid Vrusk (Thri-Kreen are from Dark•Sun). The playable species were generally named after their home planets, similar to how Earthling refers to humans.
As far as their appearance in the original Spelljammer of 2e AD&D, I didn’t play it, or Planescape, Dark•Sun, etc. because it was hard enough to play any RPGs growing up in the southeastern US with a s.baptist stepmother who believed the satanic panic garbage. After moving out I got to read the stuff at least, though by then I was in the Air Force. Anyway, the original Yazirians were their own people, but somewhat like a mix of Klingon and Wookiee tropes.
As to depictions of slavery in fantasy games, Warforged were originally built as enslaved soldiers sold to the various sides of a century-long civil war. I think they were handled more responsibly, and the point I got out of it was the fact that a military draft could be seen as a form of slavery.
First edition Pathfinder dealt with the topic of slavery too, and not always well. The leadership of the nation of Cheliax served Asmodeus and enslaved people, as did other nations and factions who were generally villains. Andoran was a nation that had split from an empire, but unlike America, they were quicker to get the abolition of slavery part right. They were a popular playable faction in the Pathfinder Society organized play, but unfortunately, one of the sourcebooks had ‘slave’ on the equipment list, and since PvP wasn’t allowed, the only way an Andoran-aligned character could deal with someone bringing that crap to the table was to leave the group. Because of that, my local PFS group had banned that equipment list in the games they ran. Thankfully, Paizo removed that crap from PF2e.
21:13 - An analogy about systemic abuse (of nonhuman animals in this case, but still) is maybe not the best phrase to use, given part of the topic is about cleaning up harmful bits left in common culture. I’m not pointing this out as an attack, just saying that indeed, it’s easy to repeat phrases like that without thinking about where they came from. It’s a process and I think the point is continued improvement.
Sometime you can look at something and just SMELL the fact that there were no Black people involved.
Great video as always, Mike! I always appreciate your responses to heavier topics like this one, they’re always so empathetic💙
This channel is so refreshing. Just hearing a creator being progressive, acknowledging mistake without being defensive, even the smallest, is amazing.
I wasn't aware of that controversy, amd what the actual heck? How was that even possible?
The people driving WotC are so removed amd privileged, they don't even think they could make mistakes, apparently, and somehow keep making more, and making them worst.
I cannot wait for critrole and DMCM game to be out.
Thank you for making this video and Well Said.
My initial reaction to the racist hadozee thing was that it was an overreaction, but I think your making some good points. 👏
Great video as always!
Came into this one blind and good god it just kept getting worse as it went on. Wizards sprinting for the world record of lowering the bar.
Thank you @supergeekmike so much for this very fair and informative video. I was someone who was asking the question in good faith regarding the hadozee. You gave a full and complete breakdown of what went wrong with this particular topic, and I learned about things like "minstrelsy" that I genuinely cannot believe ever existed, much less ever being considered an art form (which is completely repulsive to me). Having no interest in Spelljammer - past or present - I had not yet bothered to take the time to research the lore and gain any understanding as to what went so terribly wrong here. At a passing glance, I only thought of The Wizard of Oz flying monkeys, so it seemed like people just once again making a non-issue into a problem. Now I understand how I misjudged the whole thing. Oh, and you're also right that Spelljammer should just be Treasure Planet as a D&D setting...but I can't imagine anyone doing that without getting the ever-litigious House of Mouse taking Hasbro and WotC to court (at least not without getting a substantial cut of any profits). Thank you, truly for helping to educate so eloquently on this very difficult topic.
In my homebrew world, Hadozee are a sub-lineage of what are colloquially known as “Wildfolk”, these include Leonin, Tabaxi and basically any other “animal-like” lineage. These Wildfolk used to be regular animals who were exposed to the magics of the Feywild, granting them advanced intelligence and emotional understanding allowing them to form communities of Wildfolk that live in harmony, despite some being evolved from predators and some being evolved from prey. Hadozee in my world tend to be incredibly skilled artisans and crafters of pottery, clothing and musical instruments which gives me as the GM the opportunity to lean into the right elements of African culture and art as inspiration instead of focusing on the Americanised version of how a minority was treated based on one country’s culture and history.
Not only does this paint the Hadozee as an integral and equal part of a wider community, it also allows them to have their own unique identity within the communities they form with other Wildfolk. Some Wildfolk communities are made up of a diverse number of many Wildfolk while others are made up of purely of one.
There are many ways to fix harmful stereotypes in D&D in your home games, but I feel as though leaning into the idea that these lineages embrace their own unique sense of culture and the diversity included within is a great way of doing so. I also believe that doing research into the real world cultures of minorities you wish to represent favourably and in good faith is absolutely essential to making sure that you do the representation justice. This is just my way of correcting the lore and making it much more inclusive and favourable, I’m sure people won’t fully agree but that’s exactly why we should have these kinds of discussions.
Just started watching but on the wing membranes point - if they wanted to reference an Earth creature, things like sugar gliders were RIGHT THERE.
The Glide path of 5 feet to 1 foot was the most heated outrage. The second most outrage was the price to lack of content. It took about 45 days before the lore became the outrage.
The space combat rules are. 1 you drop out warp if you get within 1 mile of anything 1 Ton or greater. 2. Close with ship weapons range. 3. Close within boarding range. 4. Board.
The Hadozee incident makes the WOTC OGL "we were doing it to stop hateful content" excuse ring hollow. Do we really trust the company that, at best, accidentally included a cocktail of racism in their space D&D book?
☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️This
8:41 Correction, this is a misconception that's still taught to doctors in the US and the UK :)
Oof yes that’s a very good point
Hi, adding on to this, in Germany too
Admittedly I was one of those "whats the big deal" people but 10 minutes in now... yeah i see what the fuss was lol. Definately warranted
Very cool to learn about the ship to ship combat rules. I bought the set and after a few flip-throughs to look at the pretty art, I honestly have just let it sit on my shelf.
This is actually my first time hearing about the Hadozee, but hearing all of this stuff, especially being Black is like OOF after OOF... ONE Black person in a place of authority in the room and half of this stuff would have been struck down on sight
Braeden, the issue isn’t that people hear “monkey” and think “Black people.” As I said in the video, there is no problem with ape-people or monkey-people in D&D. What matters is always the context.
And, for the record, even if you’re correct and most people don’t think about correlations between Black people and monkeys, it kind of doesn’t matter - if Black people are sensitive to it because it’s been used as a slur for centuries, and the rest of the content is as thoughtless as the Hadozee lore, that’s more than enough of a reason to change it.
@@braedenmclean5304 you’re telling me, a black person, that the issue here is that I hear monkey and think of my own people? My guy be serious….
@@braedenmclean5304 I have never IN MY LIFE heard anybody argue that "we have to protect Black people because they don't understand they are being insulted." That is absolute hogwash. PoC were the people who noticed this, as they often are with many of these issues.
But the reason you see white people advocating for these changes so often, is because PoC voices get minimized and harassed, especially through algorithms like Twitter and RUclips. This exact same thing happened this weekend on Twitter, when the latest D&D drama led to more harassment of PoC who spoke on the subject, but when white creators like myself and Bob World Builde weighed in, we got none of the same vitriol. So, trust me, the issue is absolutely NOT that white people are the only ones noticing these things and speaking up about them "on behalf of Black people." There were a lot of Black people who talked about the hadozee immediately, but the social media engines we communicate on just didn't carry their voices to everyone.
Also, I was pretty clear in the video that I NEVER ascribed this as a deliberate intent on the behalf of the writers. It was a accident, pure and simple. But you still have to clean up your mistakes, even when they're accidents.
European with political science and game design experience here: observing this from the outside is *extremely* interesting.
This might only be partially relevant, but it kinda came up to me on "things there could be tools for the sensitive handling of". D&D, being a combat game can involve a lot of killing things. Especially also sentient things (for the sake of being less bland enemies). Which then that can easily involve justifications for killing certain creatures on sight ... borderline in a racial (special?) profiling sense. (Though of course scores of the soulless undead exist.) I've been encountering this reflecting on a game that has had us go against literal dozens of ratfolk, that do occasionally have personality, speech, etc. and been unsure how to work through/come to terms with that. I understand that non-lethal D&D isn't exactly common, which has brought me to the topic of how to deal with the implications of cannon fodder minions.
There have been tons of articles about this over the decades. You could try searching the old Dragon & Dungeon magazine indexes, especially in the late-3e and 4e eras, and there might be some good forum threads over in the EnWorld archives.
There used to be more blog posts, or even the Paizo forums, exploring how to update D&D to be more inclusive, but unfortunately a fair bit of those places have been overrun with bad-take/bad-faith folks. So you could try digging around, but be critical of what you find.
I can see why a brachiator might evolve glide surfaces to like never touch the forest floor.
you know the glider apes are from star frontiers
To be fair to the more “apathetic” side I’ve seen it said that by pulling things out of the dustbin of history and effectively putting it on display keeps it more relevant and in a way empowers it kinda like a mosquito bite.
Is this the best time for such an argument? Probably not, but I can’t say it is unfounded.
Thank you for covering and explaining this topic with such care and attention to context. I teach social justice issues and appreciate the work you're doing to help inform people. Your videos are so thoughtful. May the Pinkertons never come for you.
Mike, no one compares it to Treasure Planet because only the cool kids watched Treasure Planet.
2:50 Dude I’d love to see a video about that ^^ also thank you for talking about this I genuinely wasn’t quite sure why this was bad annnnnd asking around didn’t help much :’)
I love the idea of playing a monkey, and the fact that someone took “flying monkey” and did /that/ with them made me never trust wotc again.
I always heard this but never knew what was originally wrong
I think a main reason these things weren't caught is simple - they're pretty clearly based off the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz, so the idea that they might have some otherwise uncouth stereotypes could literally never have entered thr designers' minds.
Which is why people writing these things have to have a degree of media literacy. The flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz have the same problems with mimicing white supremacist ideas, but both the books and the film were made in a time when that kind of racism was highly normalized in the English speaking world, and in America in particular. Adopting the tropes from the flying monkies from Oz without reflection and editing means adopting the racist ideas that were baked into that part of the Oz universe, whether you intend (or even notice) that or not.
@@braedenmclean5304 It must be easy living in a delusion that things that happened hundreds of years ago just stopped having consequences.
@@braedenmclean5304 It's more that "one racist guy did it 100 years ago, and it became so popular that people are still doing the same racism today." Just because you don't want to see it, that doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
@@braedenmclean5304 you are tone deaf.
@@braedenmclean5304 1- Racism clearly isn't dead, or locked away in the past, since both individual & systemic racism still impacts people & nations today. 2- If the idea is to make the world/hobby *better* with your contributions, then why not go through life trying to smooth off the spiky-bits that hurt ppl, or even just interfere with their fun?
I do really appreciate the video because I'd already heard the spelljammer book was a little disappointing for completely unrelated reasons. That meant I never saw the Hadozee lore for myself, and only knew it'd caused backlash. Hearing it now, I definitely might have even missed it if I HAD read it. I completely get how it's a problem now, listening to you Mike, that I might not have otherwise.
I didn’t even know this was a thing. I didn’t buy the book so I didn’t even know about the hadozee but I’m glad changes were made.
8:20 I’m so happy to see you speak on this… I’m biracial and I live in the south …went to the doc last week due to chronic things and broke down crying to the RN explaining how I’m just wanting to feel better and tired of being belittled over my pain/struggles due to race/gender.
i think it was on 4chan people discussing this, someone suggested they keep this lore but only add "this is all a frabriation. in truth the hadozee where the ones who uplifted the elves to use them as proxy in they war against some more misterious enemy. the hadozee world is not lost, but secret. and anyone who discores a glympse of a clue of it's location gets themselves disapeared with their crew, their loved ones and close aquaintances"
This may be minimally helpful but I did play 2e Spelljammer in highschool in the nineties and the lore mentioned did sound familiar to my recollection. I can't strongly vouch for that memory though since it was about 25 years ago and the spelljammer stuff was just haphazardly mixed in with everything else and the only bit that got used regularly was the Thri-kreen.
I think the thri-kreen are from Dark Sun, or at least they are prominently used in that setting.