There’s been something bothering me for awhile now. Basically ever since I started playing TTRPGs, so less than a year, but pretty much immediately since then.
I was reminded of it last night when I watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey for the first time in probably over ten years.
Earlier this year, I took it upon myself to rip every Blu-ray and DVD I own to MKV files, and do it with the highest quality presets possible, as well as all the extras. I have hundreds of movies, so as you might imagine, it took a while to do so and is not something I ever want to do again. Or will.
But what it allows me to do now is have a home theatre PC in my bedroom that has all of my movies on it available whenever I want them, and I have managed to watch many more of them over the last six months or so than I have over the past few years. Just because it’s so convenient now to watch them in the evening. I don’t even have to get up and put something in the player. My entire library is right there at my fingertips.
Anyway, back to the point, I actually really liked The Hobbit movies, as I like The Hobbit book more than The Lord of the Rings, of which I like a lot as well. Including the movies. The Hobbit to me just seems like the tighter story. The book at least.
But one of the things I did not like about The Hobbit movies was the gratuitous violence towards the orcs and goblins. They are basically just there as cannon fodder and I think it cheapens the story a lot to simply have the heroes mow them down without a thought just because they represent evil. Mowing down evil without a care can reach the level of also being evil.
And that made me think of something I read in the Vagabond TTRPG core rulebook, which made me roll my eyes when I read it. And so I thought I would write my thoughts down about it while the movie is still fresh in my mind. Because I have ambivalent feelings about this topic.
In the Vagabond core rulebook (which is not a bad book, for the record), on page 5, under the heading “Core Expectations”, reads the following lines: “Nor is it a justification for mirroring real-world bigotry. Players are expected to take on the role of Heroes. We consider violence against evil-doers as meaningfully different from violence to ‘rid the world of all orcs.’ Killing something just because it was born as what it is potentially leans into mirrors [sic?] of real-world bigotry and justifications of genocide.”
Umm, okay. Thank you for the lesson.
On the very next page, under the heading “Avoid Stereotypes and Tropes” read the following lines: “Tolkien used ancestries in fantasy to break down social barriers, as showcased with the friendship of Gimli and Legolas.”
I just mention that to show that it at least appears that the authors are familiar with Tolkien.
And I think that Tolkien is actually part of the discussion, because he’s the one who popularized orcs, for example, and that tradition of having elves and men and dwarves be the good guys and orcs and goblins and trolls be the bad guys, started with him. So those lines on page 5 are basically an indictment of the Tolkien branch of fantasy. Even though on the very next page they point out the different species in Middlearth are there as stand-ins of real-world issues, not necessarily to be taken literally.
And so the orcs in Tolkien are also not an exercise in bigotry either. They aren’t there to teach people to hate others who don’t look like them or whatever. They are simply a way to personify evil, and to do so in a way that doesn’t resemble any real-world people, and this in spite of the fact that a lot of modern-day race grifters, including those in academia, would have you believe otherwise.
Tolkien created the orcs and made them so outlandish so as to avoid any semblance of real people, but also to try to communicate that they simply represented evil. They are caricatures, not characters. I guess the author/s of Vagabond would disapprove of them as stereotypes.
(And they are also a metaphor for the mechanization of warfare and its dehumanizing effects that Tolkien himself witnessed in World War I, but that’s a different discussion.)
That’s what sort of bothers me about these lines on page 5, because they can only be read either as the writing of someone who simply doesn’t get it, or as someone who is simply virtue signaling.
Or trying to, at least. I assume he (or they?) means Tolkien type fantasy, but it is a little vague, as most virtue signals are. And he also mentions something about Tolkien type fantasy as being like a zoo, and what he calls fantasy pulp as being like a safari. I have no idea what he means by this, but I do think it shows that whoever wrote this is thinking about Tolkien.
But that would hardly be grounds for discussion, if this type of virtue signaling wasn’t endemic in the entire TTRPG community. Ever since I started playing these games, it seems that every rulebook for whatever system has to give a lecture about social issues in the first few pages.
For example, in Vaesen by Free League, which is otherwise a great book, maybe my favorite, on page 19, under the “Gender Roles” sidebar, read the following lines: “The real 19th century was a patriarchal society where men had power over women, and women were constrained in what they could do, say, and what jobs they could hold.”
Excuse me?
I guess they’ve forgotten about Queen Victoria of England, Queen Isabella II of Spain, and even Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who ruled for seventy years.
And in the United States at least, women did not have equal rights, but they certainly had the freedom of speech, and men certainly did not have “power” over them. Women could inherit property, buy it on their own, and even be landlords. There were women who were worth the equivalent of what would be billions of dollars today in US currency, and who made it on their own. They had the right to contract; they had the right to petition the courts for redress of wrongs and to enforce those contracts. And they did.
This idea that men had power over women is simply bunk. Whoever wrote that needs to be sent to bed without supper. Repeatedly.
Here’s another chestnut, from another Free League title, Frontier Scum, inscribed on the inside front cover: “Frontier Scum is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game; just as games may draw inspiration from sword and bow times, this game also draws inspiration from gun and hat times. It is not a vehicle with which to propagate the racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted stereotypes and tropes of the Old West or any other era.”
Holy virtue-signal, Batman!
I could go on. Don’t get me started on corporate D&D. What a colossal disappointment that IP turned out to be. After all these years of thinking the Devil himself would turn up if I opened one of those books, instead I was greeted with safety rules.
But what worries me the most about all these virtue signals, and all of these “lines” and “veils”, is that maybe they are needed.
Maybe everyone who plays TTRPGs is such a goober that they don’t realize you don’t say things to offend your fellow players or hurt their feelings. Maybe they are just so socially inept that they don’t instinctively know to avoid certain topics of conversation in mixed company. Maybe they don’t get that no one wants to see them act out whatever strange psychologies they have at the gaming table. Everyone is there to have fun, as a group.
That’s actually what I am most worried about. Maybe all these authors are right.
I actually don’t know, because I play RPGs of all types solo, but I’m beginning to wonder. And I don’t want to be like those tourists who come into different fandoms and try to change everything. I can’t stand those people.
Anyway, I think it’s something the TTRPG community needs to work on, whatever happens to be correct.
And I would assume that people would at least have heard of the concept of grace, and to extend it to people who are trying to act out different characters in extremely trying situations and who are bound to get some things wrong and say some inartful things.
There’s my lecture.
PS. I backed the Deathbringer TTRPG. Thank God for that guy.