10/24/2022 0 Comments D&d 5e lord of the rings![]() ![]() There are legitimate concerns around race and racism in the United States and across the world, whether Europe, China, or elsewhere. It’s a shame that progressivism seems so intent on repeating it. The moral pearl-clutching of Christian conservatives was ultimately a bad look. #D&d 5e lord of the rings free#But once it was released, removing it in response to moral outrage did nothing to appease critics and only damaged the credibility of Netflix as a guardian of free expression. Granted, there may have been legitimate artistic reasons for either including or excluding the scene. This is a mistake made by the makers of 13 Reasons Why when they removed the graphic suicide scene from their show. ![]() And related, once something is identified as “problematic," those moral entrepreneurs’ appetites will only be whetted, and the list of “problematic” things will only grow exponentially. First, giving in to moral bullying only rewards those moral bullies. We can only hope that the makers of D&D have learned from this episode. Most players just kept including devils and demons anyway, and demons and devils eventually returned to the game officially. Sometimes an orc is just an orc.īack in the '80s, the moral panicking of Christian conservatives did lead to self-censoring of the game as the game makers sought to remove demons and devils and anything else “Satanic” from the game to appease moral crusaders. Is it fair to say “race is socially constructed” when the races exist entirely in fiction and that fiction set out to define them as biologically distinct species? Why stop with orcs? Is the portrayal of Martians as inherently bent on Earth invasion (whether in War of the Worlds or Bugs Bunny cartoons) “racist” in some way? Can you be racist toward a race that doesn’t exist? Many media critics seem to reflexively tie much that’s in fiction back to real-world phenomena, but I’m not sure that’s correct. These inconsistent observations suggest some observers may be projecting their own stereotypes onto orcs. As noted, initial concerns seemed to focus on Asians, but others suggest orcs may trope Africans. If D&D or Lord of the Ring orcs are indulging tropes of an anthropological race, observers can’t seem to agree which race that is. To be fair too, though many tropes certainly do exist for many ethnic and cultural groups, to declare the D&D depiction of orcs as repeating these tropes simply because orcs are inherently evil in the D&D universe, requires significant imagination. Put simply, there’s little empirical reason to suspect that playing Dungeons and Dragons or watching Lord of the Rings is associated with real-life racism. The idea that attitudes can shift from media to real-life is based on a theory called Cultivation Theory, but Cultivation Theory has had a rough road, evidence wise, even for news media. Generally, whether looking at action video games, 13 Reasons Why, even sexualization in media, the evidence suggests that fictional media portrayals simply don’t produce the kind of attitude or behavior changes society’s pearl-clutchers on right and left like to worry about. In fact, evidence suggests that playing Dungeons and Dragons is associated with positive moral development and improved socialization, not increases in racism. ![]() Put simply, there is no evidence that playing Dungeons and Dragons or, for that matter, watching or reading Lord of the Rings contributes to racist attitudes and behaviors in real life. ![]() The first claim regarding D&D is the easiest to consider. ![]()
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