Fantasy Tropes/Cliches that Annoy You

[Deepbluediver]

Remember that for much of the times and areas 'generic' fantasy draws from, soldiers had to provide their own equipment. Because of this, the majority of an army was drawn from people well enough off to afford useful weapons.

I've heard that was how the army in ancient Rome worked, and knights or samurai of course, but not for peasants of either European or any other cultures. The difference was that Rome had a standing army, and those people provided their own weapons because they were professional, full-time, soldiers. And medieval Europe had mercenaries of course, but they're not what I'd call "peasants" either. I could be wrong, though, but I'd ask you to provide a source so I can see what it says or what I'm missing.

[Bohandas]

You're not going to find many depictions of mages running around in polyester making poultices of dandelions and ragweed and scrounging around in garbage or dirt trying to find common materials. BEHOLD! I have found sand! Fear my magical might as I use this component for a ritual!

As amusing as the Trashomancer is, I think that's one fantasy trope I'm okay with.

Didn't Ponder Stibbons from Discworld summon the grim reaper using only eggshells and part of a mouse?

[Enixon]

I'm honestly trying to think of a work wherein peasants wielding swords is anything but a rarity, and I can't think of any. Warcraft III, maybe,

Nah, the when you turned your Peasants into Militia they grabbed axes not swords.

[Kitten Champion]

Nah, the when you turned your Peasants into Militia they grabbed axes not swords.

Oh, you're right. That makes sense too since they're lumberjacks a lot of the time.

I had this image in my head of them wielding swords, probably because they're holding shields and shield + axe combination isn't used much.

[Agrippa]

If you don't like the idea of peasants with swords try giving them messers instead.

[Cosi]

But ethnostates make a lot of sense in the kind of tech level and time period that D&D and other fantasy settings try to evoke.

So? There are lots of things we don't include even though they make sense given the tech level and time period (for example, sexism, witch burnings, and slavery). If the goal really is to not send a message, the best way to do that is avoiding dissonance with people's expectations.

Look at MTG. They manage to do fantasy setting without having to have ethnostates "because it just makes sense".

Ixalan (being a tribal set) has a fairly strong race/culture alignment, but even then there are only a few non-Human races (Merfolk, Orcs, and Goblins IIRC), and except the Merfolk they're part of a culture that also includes Humans. Even the Merfolk were aligned with one group of Humans previously.

Amonkhet has a city that includes Humans, Aven (bird people), Minotaurs, Naga and Khenra (jackal people).

Kaladesh has a culture that includes Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Vedalken, and Aetherborn (elemental-ish people). I think, I'm not completely clear on how the political situation works there.

Innistrad is a horror riff, so it's non-human races are all either infected humans (Werewolves, Vampires) or undead humans (Spirits, Zombies).

Zendikar is very much "everyone versus Cthulhu".

Tarkir has a bunch of different cultures, all of which are multi-racial to some degree. There's even explicit overlap between the various cultures (for example, there are both Mardu and Abzan Orcs in the Khans timeline).

Looking at older sets, there are some examples of what you're talking about (for example, Mirrodin seems to mostly have single-race cultures), but there are plenty of times when it isn't the case (for example, none of Ravnica's guilds are "the Human Guild" or "the Elven Guild").

It is very easy to write fantasy settings where ethnostates are not the norm, and the same company that makes D&D manages to produce them at a rate of one a year, give or take.

That's a culture, not a race. IIRC, the Romani were actually particularly open to adopting individuals regardless of ethnicity, even if they had an initial primary genetic stock as their starting point.

And cultural stereotypes are somehow better?

Don't be silly. Only melanin-challenged homo sapiens sapiens are capable of racism at all.

Has it occurred to you that making "jokes" like this is not helping you convince people that you genuinely care about racial issues?

Can you give some specific examples of how Eberron (for example) is "utterly dissonant" from its rules? I'm not disputing the possibility, but I'm curious what you see.

There's some discussion of that in this thread.

My big objection is that Eberron is nominally "the magic industrial revolution", but instead of considering what that would actually look like with existing abilities (for example, undead factories) they just wrote a bunch of new abilities.

Bill Gates is not most humans.

But Bill Gates is a human (as are others like him, such as Steve Jobs or Carlos Slim), and we wouldn't necessarily expect that dragons would have the same distribution of preferences as people. It's quite possible that dragons simply end up with whatever traits make Bill Gates Bill Gates at a much higher rate than humans do.

[Deepbluediver]

It all started, as many things did, with the Battle of Hastings. At least in Europe.

Something about a particularly effective bit of wood and a tiny steel arrowhead really just did the trick on medieval fighting tactics.

I missed this post last night.

Ok, yes, sometime archers would provide their own bows, but in many cases that's still culture-specific. The english longbow has a history of being the weapon that allowed a common man to take down a knight (circumstances vary, there may be caveats or other factors at work here) but I've heard that in Japan, the bow was almost exclusively a samurai weapon. Despite all the pop-culture references to the katana, everything I've read said that the Samurai of the medieval period preferred to fight at range when possible.

[Max_Killjoy]

I missed this post last night.

Ok, yes, sometime archers would provide their own bows, but in many cases that's still culture-specific. The english longbow has a history of being the weapon that allowed a common man to take down a knight (circumstances vary, there may be caveats or other factors at work here) but I've heard that in Japan, the bow was almost exclusively a samurai weapon. Despite all the pop-culture references to the katana, everything I've read said that the Samurai of the medieval preferred to fight at range when possible.

A lot of what's commonly "known" about the samurai as war-fighters is politically-retconned "history" from a time long after the samurai had become mainly administrators and dilettantes.

Spoiler

Show

https://thegoldeneggs.wordpress.com/
https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagakure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamamoto_Tsunetomo
http://historum.com/asian-history/12...e-samurai.html

Etc.

"Bushido" and "chivalry" have a bit in common as mythological "warrior codes" that have more to do with the imaginations and agendas of those who came after, than they do with the reality of the time and place they supposedly arose in.

[BRC]

I missed this post last night.

Ok, yes, sometime archers would provide their own bows, but in many cases that's still culture-specific. The english longbow has a history of being the weapon that allowed a common man to take down a knight (circumstances vary, there may be caveats or other factors at work here) but I've heard that in Japan, the bow was almost exclusively a samurai weapon. Despite all the pop-culture references to the katana, everything I've read said that the Samurai of the medieval preferred to fight at range when possible.

IIRC, a lot of the mythology behind the Sword as the symbol of the Samurai came from an era of relative peace, when the Samurai were more like landed gentry than professional warriors. They were the only ones allowed to carry Swords, hence the association.

[Zombimode]

There's some discussion of that in this thread.

I've read through this thread (until it stops being about Eberron). For me it seems the objections can roughly categorized like this:
1. A dislike of the themes/style/aesthectics of the Setting. This is not criticism (even if it is presented as such) but a statement of preference.
2. The resulting disappointment of the difference in the expectation of what the setting is about and what the setting is actually about. This is criticism but not about the setting itself.
3. Criticism about the execution on how the Setting tries to achieve its design goals. This is actual criticism, but sometimes verges into preference as well.
4. Compains about the Setting would "break down" (an undefined term) by the abuse of certain spells/abilities.

Lets talk about the 4th Point for a bit, since complains like this can be seen quite often in Forums, and they are often raised quickly without much explanation (like "As soon as someone discovers Fabricate the setting will break down"). The last point is important since such complains posit in essence something like a Butterfly effect: something small (the existence of a spell) will have these specific huge consequences. In any moderately complex System, proofing that a specific small Thing will have specific large consequences is not trivial. If such development is stated in an Argument without much elaboration it is quite suspicious.

Thus, whenever a question like "Wait, doesnt X (small) mean that Y and thus the Setting doesn't work anymore?" arises (inlcuding from myself) I usualy go through the following questions:

"Well, does it?" Is Y actually after careful consideration the necessary consequence of X?
If yes then "Is Y actually detrimental to the setting's core ideas and/or your enjoyment of the setting?"
If yes then "If X is so small it is really so hard for you to ignore it for the sake of the enjoyment of this work of fiction?" Pretty much all fiction require a certain ammount of willing suspension of disbelief.
If the answer is still yes I will accept it. But I think it is important to go through these questions instead of dismissing something out of Hand.

[Scripten]

Ok, yes, sometime archers would provide their own bows, but in many cases that's still culture-specific. The english longbow has a history of being the weapon that allowed a common man to take down a knight (circumstances vary, there may be caveats or other factors at work here)

Oh yeah, that's entirely what I was saying. Sorry if I wasn't clear there.

[Max_Killjoy]

As an aside, regarding my upthread dismissal of TED talks as a source...

Spoiler

Show

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro..._in_talks.html
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2...s-of-all-time/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopo...orst-ted-talks
http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/17/...have-censored/
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...talk-about-ted
http://disinfo.com/2014/01/ted-talks...tific-garbage/
https://newrepublic.com/article/1057...the-ted-khanna

[pwykersotz]

So? There are lots of things we don't include even though they make sense given the tech level and time period (for example, sexism, witch burnings, and slavery). If the goal really is to not send a message, the best way to do that is avoiding dissonance with people's expectations.

You don't include those things? Weird. I kind of know what you mean though, just in reverse. I had to add more sexism to my game because it's a hot button issue for me and I was causing dissonance in my players by not including it. It wasn't that they wanted it for its own sake, it's that certain gray societies that I would set up didn't feel accurate without it. Me being overly sensitive to the issue removed pieces of gameplay that would naturally be there.

[Deepbluediver]

A lot of what's commonly "known" about the samurai as war-fighters is politically-retconned "history" from a time long after the samurai had become mainly administrators and dilettantes.

Spoiler

Show

https://thegoldeneggs.wordpress.com/
https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagakure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamamoto_Tsunetomo
http://historum.com/asian-history/12...e-samurai.html

Etc.

"Bushido" and "chivalry" have a bit in common as mythological "warrior codes" that have more to do with the imaginations and agendas of those who came after, than they do with the reality of the time and place they supposedly arose in.

IIRC, a lot of the mythology behind the Sword as the symbol of the Samurai came from an era of relative peace, when the Samurai were more like landed gentry than professional warriors. They were the only ones allowed to carry Swords, hence the association.

I honestly can't tell if either of you are trying to disagree with me, offer supporting evidence, or just clarify some parts of my post.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You don't include those things? Weird. I kind of know what you mean though, just in reverse. I had to add more sexism to my game because it's a hot button issue for me and I was causing dissonance in my players by not including it. It wasn't that they wanted it for its own sake, it's that certain gray societies that I would set up didn't feel accurate without it. Me being overly sensitive to the issue removed pieces of gameplay that would naturally be there.

Agreed. Personally it would be weird to have a society without such bad things in it. I didn't tie it to specific races (more like specific cultures of each race, of which there are several cultures), but certainly there is bigotry, racism, sexism, etc present in the setting.

For example, the halflings of the Council Lands experienced significant genetic bottlenecking due to a cataclysmic event. As a result of that and magical effects, they're dominantly female (with significant size differences between males and females) and have an infertile caste (somewhat like bees, but much less pronounced). In their society, men are often considered weak and useless. This has no mechanical effect (since I wasn't going to do that for PCs), but certainly a halfling matriarch is usually going to not respond as well to a halfling male as to a female halfling.

Another example--the Stone Throne is populated by humans (with some elf blood), half-elves (with > 50% elf blood), a few dwarves, and serpent-kin (magically altered humans with snake DNA mechanically represented by yuan-ti). Humans and half-elves are considered "clean;" serpent-kin are considered "unclean" and are second-class citizens. Not brutally repressed but pitied and not considered fit for spouses of nobility or for high social-standing posts. They know of dragonborn, but have a reflexive tendency to treat them as serpent-kin unless prompted otherwise.

A third culture is ruled by dragonborn, but orcs and goblinoids are full citizens. They're mostly tolerant of other races, but those are few and far between and so draw attention, especially in outlying areas.

I've explicitly put adventurers (which includes but is not limited to PCs) as a separate social class with international standing (as long as they're in good favor with the Federated Nations council that sponsors them). This allows PCs to mingle freely with only minimal official effects due to their intrinsic weirdness (what? an unmarried dwarf? A religious Bysian? what madness is this?).

[Max_Killjoy]

I honestly can't tell if either of you are trying to disagree with me, offer supporting evidence, or just clarify some parts of my post.

Expounding / expanding.

[BRC]

You don't include those things? Weird. I kind of know what you mean though, just in reverse. I had to add more sexism to my game because it's a hot button issue for me and I was causing dissonance in my players by not including it. It wasn't that they wanted it for its own sake, it's that certain gray societies that I would set up didn't feel accurate without it. Me being overly sensitive to the issue removed pieces of gameplay that would naturally be there.

When this discussion comes up, I like to bring up Dysentery.
Somebody is like "Yes, my pseudo-medieval Europe fantasy world has to feature (Sexism/Racism/Witch Burnings/Whatever) anything else would be Innacurate!"

Well, do you know what was very historically prevalent? Dysentery. Dysentery is also gross, deeply unpleasant, and not something people generally want in their escapist fantasy works.

I don't think anybody is complaining about a lack of dysentery in fantasy worlds.

Accuracy is overrated.

[PhoenixPhyre]

When this discussion comes up, I like to bring up Dysentery.
Somebody is like "Yes, my pseudo-medieval Europe fantasy world has to feature (Sexism/Racism/Witch Burnings/Whatever) anything else would be Innacurate!"

Well, do you know what was very historically prevalent? Dysentery. Dysentery is also gross, deeply unpleasant, and not something people generally want in their escapist fantasy works.

I don't think anybody is complaining about a lack of dysentery in fantasy worlds.

Accuracy is overrated.

I agree that accuracy is overrated, but some elements are more important than others. And people vary on which elements are important. That's a matter of taste, not a matter of quality. I find that basic human nature (both good and bad) elements make a big difference for me. For example, a world without love (either caritas or eros) would feel very strange and hard to get into. It could work, but it would require significant alterations and structure. Same for a world without greed, sexism, racism or what have you on the negative side.

I'm not making a medieval world, I'm making a human world. My world doesn't even have the germ theory of disease, so things like dysentery will act very differently there than here. It does have people, and those people do have similar drives, fears, hopes, etc as the ones here.

[pwykersotz]

When this discussion comes up, I like to bring up Dysentery.
Somebody is like "Yes, my pseudo-medieval Europe fantasy world has to feature (Sexism/Racism/Witch Burnings/Whatever) anything else would be Innacurate!"

Well, do you know what was very historically prevalent? Dysentery. Dysentery is also gross, deeply unpleasant, and not something people generally want in their escapist fantasy works.

I don't think anybody is complaining about a lack of dysentery in fantasy worlds.

Accuracy is overrated.

Accuracy is overrated by some perhaps, but that's not to say it doesn't have its place. How weird would it be for your fantasy world to lack disease? Very. Even in "escapist fantasy works". I'm actually working on building disease into my world right now, because it was such a huge part of human history, and it doesn't feel right to have it be as non-existent as I have sometimes made it. That's not to say every game will by a dysentery filled gross-out fest, nor to say that all the other things mentioned take up exceptional amounts of game time either. But they are present.

[Scripten]

I had a player catch a fantastical food poisoning from a botched nature roll while looking for fungi to eat. This was very early on and it's still an event that the party likes to bring up.

But that's really just my group. Some people don't go for the mundane stuff as much.

[Max_Killjoy]

When this discussion comes up, I like to bring up Dysentery.
Somebody is like "Yes, my pseudo-medieval Europe fantasy world has to feature (Sexism/Racism/Witch Burnings/Whatever) anything else would be Innacurate!"

Well, do you know what was very historically prevalent? Dysentery. Dysentery is also gross, deeply unpleasant, and not something people generally want in their escapist fantasy works.

I don't think anybody is complaining about a lack of dysentery in fantasy worlds.

Accuracy is overrated.

I don't think the problem is when you're not including something because including it makes your game less fun.

What people are looking sideways at is not including it for the sake of pandering to a 2017 social agenda, under the horrible false dichotomy that anything not actively, aggressively part of the prescribed "solution" is part of the problem.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't think the problem is when you're not including something because including it makes your game less fun.

What people are looking sideways at is not including it for the sake of pandering to a 2017 social agenda.

And to me there's a big difference between not including an element in game play because it's not fun (but still having it present in universe and just glossed over like bodily functions) and not including it in universe at all.

[Deepbluediver]

I had a player catch a fantastical food poisoning from a botched nature roll while looking for fungi to eat. This was very early on and it's still an event that the party likes to bring up.

But that's really just my group. Some people don't go for the mundane stuff as much.

I think there's a difference between things that add depth to the game world and have amusing effects, and demands that something can't or must happen because of "realism". I was pretty sure we abandoned the whole "realism" line of thinking when we introduced dragons and magic.

Personally, my view of the fantasy-race-and-gender politics debate is that on the whole it's kinda silly. This is a FANTASY world; we are literally in control of it 100% and we can build it in whatever way we want. If anyone has a complaint, then "X must be Y because of realism" is an invalid argument- for EITHER side. If I want to design a fantasy race who's whole shtick is that they are *******s, then I should be free to do so. Whether it's orcs or elves or gnomes or kobolds or treants or a hyper-intelligent cloud of methane gas, these creatures are NOT HUMAN. And even the humans in our fantasy setting are not human-like-us because they live in a different world with different rules and a different history and all that junk.

Personally, I view fantasy as entertainment. Trying to use fantasy to draw some parallel to real-world social issues seems like a bad idea, because whatever message you want to get across is way-to-easily lost in the messy scramble of wizards and undead and prophecy and people-sized bug monsters.

[BRC]

I agree that accuracy is overrated, but some elements are more important than others. And people vary on which elements are important. That's a matter of taste, not a matter of quality. I find that basic human nature (both good and bad) elements make a big difference for me. For example, a world without love (either caritas or eros) would feel very strange and hard to get into. It could work, but it would require significant alterations and structure. Same for a world without greed, sexism, racism or what have you on the negative side.

I'm not making a medieval world, I'm making a human world. My world doesn't even have the germ theory of disease, so things like dysentery will act very differently there than here. It does have people, and those people do have similar drives, fears, hopes, etc as the ones here.

Sure.

Okay, let me break things down.

Putting something in because it's Interesting means that you feel it adds something to the story and/or world. Including it makes the story Better.

Putting something in because it's Consistent means that you feel that, in the context of some other piece of the setting, this thing needs to be there. Not including it would make the story Worse.

Putting something in because it's Accurate means that you're doing it because that's the way you think things were during whatever time period most closely matches your setting.

For example, when asked the question "Why are all your nations hereditary Monarchies"

An Interesting justification would be "I want to tell an international political drama. By making the relevant nations hereditary monarchies, I don't need to explain their political systems, and I can keep most of the focus on a handful of key characters in each nation."
A Consistent Justification would be "I've already established that the Divine Right is literally true. Each nation has a patron god who has blessed a specific family with wisdom and power, and commanded them to be the rightful rulers".
The Accurate Justification would be "Because it looks like Medieval Europe, and Medieval Europe had hereditary monarchies". This is really only the case if your story/setting is supposed to be historical or pseudohistorical. If it's a fantasy world that just happens to resemble some point in history, "Accuracy" by itself is irrelevant.


There is a lot of overlap between the three, and not every feature of the setting NEEDS to be justified under these principles.

I just hate it whenever something that hurts the setting or story is put in under the guise of "Accuracy", like the writer was powerless to change the world they created.

Like, put sexism into your story because you want to explore it as a theme, or because it informs some character's story arc, or because you're doing something more interesting with gender roles than just mimicking the real world. Don't just say "Well yeah, I HAD to write this society as deeply sexist. You can't have swords and castles without the patriarchy".

I don't think the problem is when you're not including something because including it makes your game less fun.

What people are looking sideways at is not including it for the sake of pandering to a 2017 social agenda, under the horrible false dichotomy that anything not actively, aggressively part of the prescribed "solution" is part of the problem.

Except the thing is this kind of assumes that, say, Sexism is the "Default" for all stories, and simply by writing a story that does not feature a sexist society, the writer is "Pandering to a 2017 Social Agenda".

Spoiler: A bit of a Rant

Show

This assumption that fictional worlds should mirror the real world when it comes to stuff like Gender is so ingrained that simply not working with that assumption becomes a radical statement.

When Star Trek put a black woman as part of the bridge crew, treated by her peers and the narrative as a capable officer, it was a huge deal. Really, all they did was remove the (At the time common) assumption that a black woman couldn't hold such a position.

There's a difference between, say, A Mulan-esque tale of a woman confronting and disproving the sexist assumptions of her society, and a story about a society which doesn't discriminate based on gender.

Write a book that doesn't question the sexism in it's fictional society, and nobody blinks an eye.
Write a book featuring a non-sexist society, and you're accused of pushing some agenda.

Admittedly, this is pretty uncommon these days. There are plenty of Genre fiction featuring, if not total gender equality, at least a culture that approximates modern views on gender and doesn't drag down the story by reveling in how sexist the culture is.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Sure.

Okay, let me break things down.

Putting something in because it's Interesting means that you feel it adds something to the story and/or world. Including it makes the story Better.

Putting something in because it's Consistent means that you feel that, in the context of some other piece of the setting, this thing needs to be there. Not including it would make the story Worse.

Putting something in because it's Accurate means that you're doing it because that's the way you think things were during whatever time period most closely matches your setting.

For example, when asked the question "Why are all your nations hereditary Monarchies"

An Interesting justification would be "I want to tell an international political drama. By making the relevant nations hereditary monarchies, I don't need to explain their political systems, and I can keep most of the focus on a handful of key characters in each nation."
A Consistent Justification would be "I've already established that the Divine Right is literally true. Each nation has a patron god who has blessed a specific family with wisdom and power, and commanded them to be the rightful rulers".
The Accurate Justification would be "Because it looks like Medieval Europe, and Medieval Europe had hereditary monarchies". This is really only the case if your story/setting is supposed to be historical or pseudohistorical. If it's a fantasy world that just happens to resemble some point in history, "Accuracy" by itself is irrelevant.


There is a lot of overlap between the three, and not every feature of the setting NEEDS to be justified under these principles.

I just hate it whenever something that hurts the setting or story is put in under the guise of "Accuracy", like the writer was powerless to change the world they created.

Like, put sexism into your story because you want to explore it as a theme, or because it informs some character's story arc, or because you're doing something more interesting with gender roles than just mimicking the real world. Don't just say "Well yeah, I HAD to write this society as deeply sexist. You can't have swords and castles without the patriarchy".

While I've never actually seen a justification like your last statement, I definitely agree that accuracy for the sake of accuracy (which usually isn't really accurate, more like Hollywood accurate) is often used harmfully. But that applies to lots of things beyond just sexism/racism/etc. I've seen people use "period-accurate" swords in a way that gets in the way of the story being told. I've seen people obsess on "real" physics and have to do a song-and-dance to justify the elements they want to include.

Edit: and I don't read anyone as saying that they stress or dwell on sexism/racism/etc, just that they're present in the setting. As they are generally for most peoples throughout history. Explicitly omitting (as opposed to just not mentioning) such details can often feel forced or anvilicious, preachy if you will. This is not always the case, but things can be conspicuous by their absence as well as by their presence. And either way, the visibility of the thing is raised.

[Segev]

Which takes us to another fantasy trope I hate:

Evil gods are active, and do stuff, and make plans. Good gods are passive, and give platitudes, and just react.

(And yet evil always loses... because.)

We rarely see one of the good gods telling their followers, "You there, go gather up those drow orphans, and protect them from hate, and raise them with care and generosity and fairness, and show the world that I am greater than Llllothllththh!"

I'd argue that evil tends to lose because, even with active gods of evil backing it up, it is that inherently self-sabotaging. But that is a very particular take and a bit of an Aesop, so for more interesting stories it might be neat to see an idyllic society that only works because Correllon Larathean is actively involved in keeping the High Elves from actually tipping over into arrogance and decadence.

On the other hand, there's the argument that the reason the good gods are more hands-off is because they're more likely to value the agency of their worshippers. But if we're honest, that should divide more along the law/chaos axis, with law being more hands-on. But Lolth is Chaotic, which belies that pattern. Of course, she runs a highly Chaotic society that is SO Chaotic that it would crumble without her direct involvement.

Though as well? Her direct involvement is limited to orders to her priestesses and enforcing her whims by removing or granting their clerical powers as long as they obey her ever-shifting "rules." The society maintains stability because of rule-of-the-strong, and Lolth's direct involvement is mostly in choosing who actually gets to be strong. So while she's an actively involved goddess, she doesn't actually project more POWER into her chosen society than the good gods, now that I think about it.

"Bushido" and "chivalry" have a bit in common as mythological "warrior codes" that have more to do with the imaginations and agendas of those who came after, than they do with the reality of the time and place they supposedly arose in.

They do, however, make for some great fun in stories and games.

[Lord Raziere]

I think there's a difference between things that add depth to the game world and have amusing effects, and demands that something can't or must happen because of "realism". I was pretty sure we abandoned the whole "realism" line of thinking when we introduced dragons and magic.

Personally, my view of the fantasy-race-and-gender politics debate is that on the whole it's kinda silly. This is a FANTASY world; we are literally in control of it 100% and we can build it in whatever way we want. If anyone has a complaint, then "X must be Y because of realism" is an invalid argument- for EITHER side. If I want to design a fantasy race who's whole shtick is that they are *******s, then I should be free to do so. Whether it's orcs or elves or gnomes or kobolds or treants or a hyper-intelligent cloud of methane gas, these creatures are NOT HUMAN. And even the humans in our fantasy setting are not human-like-us because they live in a different world with different rules and a different history and all that junk.

Arguments cuts both ways. If you can be free to do that without complaint, I can be free to make races as human, grey-morality and complex as I want without complaint. and therefore the argument is irrelevant because both of our complaints about the other are invalid. what goes around comes around, and if you say screw that thing, I can say screw your thing back in return. a very bad way of doing things if I say so myself, feels too negative.

[Segev]

Has it occurred to you that making "jokes" like this is not helping you convince people that you genuinely care about racial issues?

Only with those who are already convinced that any deviation from their racist views is failure to care about racial issues.

I refuse to apologize for my skin color, nor to treat anybody else any differently because of theirs. Where I see it happening, I oppose it. Including when it's supposed champions of anti-racism who are doing it.

I'm not the one conflating culture and race to the point that a fantasy non-human humanoid having a particular culture must mean that it represents a particular real-world race.

Edit: Actually, let's address something fairly directly here. You call it a quote-joke-unquote, implying that it is not one.

What, to you, makes it not a joke? There are a number of possible interpretations; I'm curious which one is yours. If you want multiple choice, I can provide several possible ways I could interpret it, but I prefer not to bias you.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Arguments cuts both ways. If you can be free to do that without complaint, I can be free to make races as human, grey-morality and complex as I want without complaint. and therefore the argument is irrelevant because both of our complaints about the other are invalid. what goes around comes around, and if you say screw that thing, I can say screw your thing back in return. a very bad way of doing things if I say so myself, feels too negative.

And here we get to the good old rules:

"Things I like" =/= "Things that are objectively good"

AND

"Things I dislike" =/= "Things that are objectively bad"

Taste is important. But neither good nor bad. Internet discussions often (usually?) blur the lines between taste/value judgements and objective judgements.

[BRC]

While I've never actually seen a justification like your last statement, I definitely agree that accuracy for the sake of accuracy (which usually isn't really accurate, more like Hollywood accurate) is often used harmfully. But that applies to lots of things beyond just sexism/racism/etc. I've seen people use "period-accurate" swords in a way that gets in the way of the story being told. I've seen people obsess on "real" physics and have to do a song-and-dance to justify the elements they want to include.

I was strawmanning there, but I've seen plenty of people say things along those lines, usually for more egregious inclusions than just sexism.

Like, for example (I'm paraphrasing a discussion that I think was about Game of Thrones)

Person A: I hate how much Rape happens in the story. There are other ways to establish a character is cruel, and it just comes across as sensationalist. It makes it difficult for me to sympathize with characters when they're so casual about it.
Person B: Well, they're just being Historically Accurate.