Let's remove racial stereotypes... from D'n'D! Say what now?

Talk about being beyond dumb. Wouldn't want to be racist towards completely fictitious people! Heaven forbid! *facepalm x1000*

Orcs can not be less intelligent !

I have long known WoTC are incompetent but i hope they do not sanitize then entirety of DnD just because some "fantasy" creatures has traits they do not like, you have to do some ridiculous mental gymnastics for that to make any sense.

There's no need to ruin over 40 years of world building over this nonsense, i mean it is fantasy and not real world.

Yeah, I have no delusions this thread won't become a toxic dumpster fire, but I have to agree (and when I agree with Mr. Mumbles you know shit hit the fan). This is complete lunacy, and I can't see this as anything but ruination of D&D at the very core.

I mean, removing fixed alignment for races may not be a bad idea, but I'm not a big fan of alignments in general. Then again they are so intrinsic to D&D that the correct response to not liking them is "play something else" rather then "mess with alignments in D&D".

Removing racial bonuses is just plain idiotic though - the whole point of an RPG is to have varied characters anda dynamic team of differing idividuals. If there are to be no differences between dwarves and orcs etc. anymore, what's the point of even including races at all? Let's just all play as amorpheus, inoffensive blobs of indeterminate color and gender. Fun!

"In the name of diversity we can have not have diverse races in AD&D".

But they're not "completely fictitious" TSR then WotC borrowed heavily from real world cultures when making these Races.

Also, using polarised, cliché stereotypes is piss poor storytelling

If you ever wanted to play a Lawful Good Undead Lich, I guess now's your time to shine! Sure, I mean it's necromancy, but in a good way.

Well, beyond stupid but not really surprising, because of course we cannot have fictional races in a game taking place in a fictional place without having some morons drawing parallels to real world politics and find ways to be offended by it.

If it continues like that I am sure that in a couple of years Baldur's Gate III will be considered problematic because of the negative stereotypes it propagate against the misunderstood Illithids minority. (also know by the highly racists and problematic term of "mind flayers") They are called "differently living" you livingist bigot.

No matter what race you claim inspired orcs, you're going to sound like the racist here.

The OP makes it sound like this kind of crap is new and that this is an isolated incident. But there's nothing new about it at all, and more games are ruined by stuff like this than aren't. It's been that way for many years now already.

A very common example is how almost all games from major or semi-major publishers now draw their female characters so that they are extremely masculine and unpleasant to look at, because pretty and/or feminine and/or sexy women are very offensive to SJW-types who now successfully dictate what is and isn't allowed to be put into games.

Ugh...what is with all the political stupidity these days?

"Well, that's a decade or two out of date", I thought, as this article brought to mind Warcraft 3, where (SPOILERS?) the Orcs turn out to not really be the bad guys.
Then it made me think, if Warcraft 3 came out today, people would be complaining about how it is all about "white hatred" and "Beating on Europeans and caucasians!"

Sigh...

To be fair, it's not exactly a new thing, nor a bad one by definition. There's plenty of examples of such tropes being re-examined, subverted or parodied. Doing so is one the pillars of Discworld, which went from being a parody of other fantasy (including very much the classic D&D) to being one of the most popular and beloved fantasy settings in its own right. It's all about how it's done, where an why. Pratchett was a master storyteller and a wise man with tremendous insight and uncompromising vision. This on the other hand is a knee-jerk reaction of company willing to break their flagship product for the sake of a note from the PR department.

The J'naii ( [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcast_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29]link[/url] ) where meant to be a warning; not a roadmap.

edit
if a mod an fix the freaking link: be my guest; I got bored of trying.

Sure, as babark mentions above Warcraft successfully changed the orcs background, very successfully in fact. WC3 remains my favorite rts to this day, in large part because of its story and atmosphere. WoW even somewhat managed to do the same with the undead, or at least a faction of the undead.

So no arguments there. Truthfully I was and am more concerned for the Tolkien and Warhammer universes, where the evil races are afaik(?) pretty irredeemably evil and/or monotone in other ways - like all-male astartes which bothers some people.

Rather inexcusably I'll admit, I've only read one of Pratchett's books :\

Writing links that this forum can parse is a martial art that takes years to master ;P