🔥Avery🏴

yall spend too much time thinking of republicans as your only enemy when this entire government is irredeemable

so many things in this world are bleak and depressing but my God when you think about HIV/AIDS research

I just want to cry

it was a death sentence for so long

people lost so much

whole generations of queer elders were lost

now we have basically a vaccine

Oh certainly, that’s actually even more depressing lol

Reminds me of how in ultima VI, the game wouldn’t aggregate items you found, and there was a bug that caused chests and treasure to be full of spears, so you would just find “a spear, a spear, a spear, a spear, a spear, etc.”

I can’t believe it, flabbergasted even. /s

"Sure, ICE is bad, but we need to deport illegal immigrants"

No you don't.

If immigration enforcement leads to concentration camps and roving death squads, maybe it's time to just get rid of the concept of illegal immigration entirely. You've tried it, it's a bad idea in practice, so bin it.

No problem!

Little error in the article. Richard Dawkins is named as a “fellow physicist” with reference to Lawrence Krauss, he is actually an evolutionary biologist

Sorry if I’ve been overly long winded by the way. I’m trying to be careful with my wording. I don’t want to step on any toes

And finally though it’s a reproduction of AD&D, they’ve not been shy about altering other aspects of the game (I.e. combat) and those were well done! It isn’t necessary for a retro-clone to be faithful to the games problematic aspects. Especially since these games are still available for purchase.

Back after some sleep. I guess in summary, I think that osric is trying to have its cake and eat it insofar as addressing the issue of evil humanoids, but not changing it in any meaningful way. So simply, I think humanizing these creatures, and dropping the associated stereotypes is best practice

I may come back to this in the morning. I apologize, it’s late and I’m starting to doze off lol. I do have a few directions that I’m mulling over though. Thanks for asking!

Idk in the context of re-compiling AD&D of course, I guess I would just try and humanize these creatures more, and maybe make them a little more three dimensional. Label their alignment as “variable”.

I usually just use a 3 point alignment system (law, neutral, chaos) and typically I characterize different groups in different regions as having differing cultures, so kobold in one area are one way, and kobolds elsewhere are another. So even that doesn’t really appeal to me.

In my personal view, I’d probably change group alignment for monsters generally, at the very least dropping the “good” or “evil” aspect, maybe noting “chaotic” or “lawful” tendencies but leaving the good and evil aspect up to specific circumstance.

i got a few "i don't get it, ICE might be going too far but don't we have to have a way of removing illegal immigrants?" type responses to my charity drive announcement video and the answer there is no you do not. nobody illegal. don't care what the law says

and finally:
- YES I will probably run a game of this, I like AD&D. I criticize things I like all the time! It is good to be conscious and critical of the media you consume, and it bothers me deeply when folks criticize these aspects of D&D only to have them respond with "it's just a game".

Also, I will state at the end of this:
- No, I don't think the authors are bad for writing this,
- No, I don't think that OSRIC 3.0 is bad in it's entirety cause of this.
- YES this is relevant to the game, cause it's in the core rule-book.

the creatures in question to begin with. I respect the INTENT of this statement, But I really think the authors have kinda missed the point of what people criticize about the portrayals of these creatures in these old games. Intent of the portrayal isin't a concern, it's the portrayal itself. [END]

Now, the final statement here about humanoids serving to "pick up on the folkloric theme" of the "invading enemy" again runs into the issue of intent not being the problem. It doesn't matter that the intent is to do this or that. The problem people have is the base characterization of [12/?]

And I certainly don't think I would argue that "the colonialist era" has even ended today (see Palestine and Venezuela for current examples). I'm not a historian of course, so I can only provide my opinion, such as it is. I simply think that their statement reads as a bit naive. [11/?]

I don't know if this is a historical term referring to a vague period but I can't find any mention in specific anywhere that colonialism ended in or around 1948, so I'm not exactly sure what that's in reference to. MANY nations remained under colonial rule well into the 1960s - 1980s [10/?]

"A lot of the original terminology of AD&D was taken from reference books written during or shortly after the colonialist era (ending around 1948), and in many cases Gary Gygax (writing in the late 1970s) used terms that seemed general at the time - but turned out to be ancestrally charged or much more specific to a culture than he probably realized. It's those specific terms that create the link to indigenous peoples of the colonial and post-colonial era; other than that, the stereotypes are a standard set that was attributed to countless "invaders" from history by the targets of the invasion. The "invading other" is a standard trope of history and folklore, and the human-like monsters of OSRIC are intended to pick up on the folkloric theme, not on any historical reality. They certainly aren't intended to be analogized to the *victims* of an invasion or colonization.

Alright, now this is the part where I kinda get really perplexed. I only have so much room to type here so I'm gonna kinda blaze through this to the best of my abilities.

Firstly, the statement that the "colonialist era" ended around 1948 seems completely incorrect to me? [9/?]

This point is more minor, at least in my opinion, but I still feel as if they've missed the mark with this in certain places.

Ill place the third (and final) image in my next post
[8/?]

"To avoid making the humanoid monsters too human-like, and also to avoid social analogies to indigenous cultures, some of the terminology from AD&D (and OSRIC 2.0) has been altered for OSRIC 3.0. "Witch-Doctor" is now "Witch-crafter", and "Shaman" is now "Witch-Priest," as a couple of examples. A lot of the original terminology of AD&D-" End of transcript.

Now this section kinda also confuses me. It is GOOD to change the mentioned terminology, but as stated above, much of the original characterization of the humanoid monsters in this game has remained (plus the term tribe/band is still used to describe their social structure, etc). [7/?]

and not the portrayal of these creatures and the characteristics given to them.

I have a couple other posts I wish to make about different sections

(and yes, I apologize for not having alt-text on the first one, I didn't realize until 3 posts in, I will have alt-text for my succeeding posts [6/?]

indigenous peoples, we shouldn't worry about it, because it wasn't intended. I don't really think this is how that works? I mean, look, I know these writers mean well but this doesn't seem like the right way to address this. This moreso feels like they read the INTENT as the problem [5/?]

"it is worth noting that the orcs and goblins of OSRIC are not intended to be analogized to any human societies, races, or ethnicities."
Now, to me this reads as slightly odd. They seem to be saying here that even though these monsters bear characteristics that are in line with stereotypes of [4/?]

My issue starts thusly - The implication here seems to be that the listed characteristics are all accurate portrayals of the mentioned creatures. They go on to point out that these are classic stereotypes of indigenous peoples. My issue then is that the paragraph ends with the statement [3/?]

Before I say anything, I wanna make it clear I don't think anyone designing this game is saying any of this out of ill will. I think it would be ridiculous to make that claim. At the same point, it's present in the games GMs guide, and is apart of the system, so ill talk about it. [2/?]