Clownfish TV: Audio Edition
Dungeons & Dragons Orcs are MEXICAN Now?! You Made it WORSE, WotC...
The new Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook has been revealed, and they’ve finally banished racism... by adding MORE racism? Or something. Orcs are no longer Black people, they’re Mexican tropes. Then we talk about how DnD 6e (?) will focus more on making an OC fanfic than playing a game. ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 Wizards of the Coast’s controversial changes to Dungeons & Dragons, including portraying Orcs as Mexican and focusing on tragic backstories, have sparked backlash and criticism from fans. 00:00 Wizards of the Coast replaced racism in Dungeons and Dragons with another form of racism in the new players handbook, sparking backlash. 03:11 Dungeons & Dragons is facing backlash for making Orcs Mexican, with the speaker suggesting they could have been portrayed as Aztec Orcs instead. 06:13 Wizards of the Coast is making controversial changes to D&D, focusing on tragic backstories and trying to be more progressive in their portrayal of orcs. 08:23 Wizards of the Coast bought TSR and then got gobbled up by Hasbro, not caring much about Dungeons and Dragons. 09:30 Dungeons & Dragons is changing character creation, emphasizing background over race, upsetting many fans. 11:33 Dungeons & Dragons now considers racial backgrounds and abilities for character creation, while addressing concerns of racism in the game. 13:13 The speaker criticizes changes to racial modifiers in Dungeons & Dragons, arguing it takes away from unique characteristics, and suggests quicker character creation. 15:07 Video game company introduces Mexican Orcs in Dungeons & Dragons, criticized for straying too far from the original game and replacing one kind of racism with another. About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer’s point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Games #DnD #TTRPG #DungeonsAndDragons #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech
Hey guys, this is the audio edition of clownfish TV. If you guys are unfamiliar with clownfish TV, please check out the video versions of these episodes on the clownfish TV YouTube channel and also on the clownfish gaming YouTube channel. Please subscribe for more podcast. Check out D-Res, that's our other podcast. The episode will begin in a couple of seconds. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hey guys, welcome back to clownfish TV. This is Neon. I'm not here with geeky sparkles in this video. We're gonna talk about Dungeons and Dragons. We're gonna talk about the new player's handbook from Wizards of the Coast. And we're gonna talk about how Wizards of the Coast has successfully banished racism from the game. And they've exchanged it for another kind of racism. We're gonna talk about the new player's handbook and some of the backlash. This is an actual image, an actual image from the new player's handbook. And look, I'm not shading the artist of this, but this is pretty much everything wrong with Dungeons and Dragons all in one place. We're gonna talk about it before you do it any further. Please subscribe for more pop culture news, views, and rants, guys. So we are working on our own game engine. It's I'd be ready for a while. We're actually play testing right now. And that's Adventure Engine, which is coming your way sometime within the next year or two, I guess, 'cause again, we are play testing it before we drop it on people. And it is kind of a throwback too. It's not, I wouldn't call it an OSR, but it is kind of a throwback too. I would say the basic set from Dungeons and Dragons, that's kind of what we're going for, but modernized a bit. It plays a bit faster. It's easier to understand for younger players or new players, but we are working on that. We've been working on that. That being said, I don't have any illusions or to be a competitor, a legit competitor to Hasbro, which is the largest toy company in the world. There's no way we're gonna compete with them, but I think more and more people are offering alternatives to Dungeons and Dragons because of just how silly it's gotten over the last couple of years. But yeah, so we've done multiple videos talking about racism and D&D and how it has to be eliminated. And this means that the Drow have to have like light purple skin now, they can't have dark black skin, even though I don't think anybody was ever confusing the Drow with black people, but whatever. And mostly orcs, orcs were a problem. Orcs were supposed to be a stand in for black people, which if you think that, that's a you problem. Like I've literally never thought of an orc as being a minority. I thought of them, frankly, as being mindless XP fodder. They're just basic bad guys that you kill to get XP and gold and whatever crap they have in their layers, right? I mean, they're just, they're obstacles to overcome. But no, no, no, they have cultures and personalities and families now. And it's problematic to associate orcs with racist tropes except now orcs are apparently Mexican. Is that what's going on now? Like, this is an official image from the new player's handbook. Wow, this is something else. You know, I would have expected to see an image like this on like a can of coffee or something. This is Juan Valdez over here. I don't know. This is just like, this is crazy. This is like, what are you doing? They're, they're, it's a Western. They're, they're, we've got a side shave on this very buff cowboy bootwear and orc. Oh my God, this kid down here's got purple hair. Like I said, this is all of current year D&D, all in one place. They're free range orcs. This one's got blonde hair. But they're, they're shown as being kind hunters. They've got their, their falcons. We've got a plus sized orc on Pride Rock here. And yeah, this is, this is something else entirely. This is where D&D is going guys. Like I, we're going to talk a little bit. I don't have a copy of the new player's handbook. I have no interest in Watson current year. And so weird because the audience that they're appealing to or trying to appeal to is, is ditching them anyway for a number of reasons. The OGL debacle, just corporate greed, AI art. Now this apparently was painted by a guy 'cause he said, hey, this is my painting for D&D. Isn't it cool? And people were like, yeah, it's something else. Yeah, I mean, that's something else. But I have to get a hat tip to geeky bugle, who I believe is from Mexico. So yeah, I think he, they, them, I believe it's he, is, is definitely, definitely in a position to criticize this. Remember the whole orcs are black and you're a racist for not noticing it. Well, the grand wizards of the KKK, his words not mine, fixed it by making the orcs Mexican. Wow. Yeah, so this is, this is something else entirely. I mean, they could have done cool badass Mexican orcs. Yeah, we could have done like Aztec orcs, but they chose to make them lame and gay. For instance, the image below looks cool and badass. That is true. This actually does look pretty good. They could have made the Aztecs battle orcs. So we have orcs in adventure engine, but they're bad. I'm just gonna come around and say, they're not black people. They're not Mexican people. They're just bad. The orcs are just bad. Just like they used to, they're just bad. Now there's a little bit of a different spin on our orcs versus traditional Tolkien orcs, but that was, that was one of the first things that we came up with. We're like, no, just the orcs are bad guys. End of discussion, they're not redeemable. They're not, they're not your misunderstood bestie. They're not running a coffee shop. They're not baristas. They're just, they're monsters that you kill. So let's talk about this, because the new D&D player's handbook is going to flip character creation on its head. Basically, basically D&D is for theater kids now, I guess. What they're doing with it, as I understand it, is when you create your character, instead of it just being a bunch of stats, and then you developing the character as you play the game, you come up with the backstory first, and your character's tragic backstory informs what they start with. That was, you know, again, this is very contrary to how D&D was created and how it was played back in the day where you took that page full of numbers and you gave life to it. You turned that page full of numbers, that hand that you were dealt, you turned them into a character after repeated play. And remember, D&D grew out of war games and war games. It was just all about numbers. It was very crunchy. It was all about the numbers. And now we've gotten away from the war game element completely, and it's like, yeah, we can't even kill the orcs now, because they're minorities. And, you know, we're going to have coffee shop adventures and prom, I'm not even kidding. Like, I don't even know what the hell is going on with D&D. And then to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D&D, they turned the warrior from the red box, the classic image from the red box painted by Larry Elmore. Everybody knows, even if you don't know Dungeons and Dragons, you know that image with the red dragon and the warrior with his back turned to you. They turned that warrior into an obese brown woman to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D&D. And then we had people working at Wizards of the Coast, essentially throwing the creators of D&D under the bus, saying that, you know, well, they were just a bunch of ignorant, you know, rednecks from the flyover states back in the day. And, you know, they had no better, but we're a lot more progressive at Wizards now. So we're not going to be as racist. We're not going to be as racist at Wizards of the Coast current year as those chuds from the flyover states were back in the day. Yeah, they really do not like Gary Gygax. He was very libertarian. He owned a lot of guns. He liked weapons. They really don't like them. It's the same thing kind of with Disney and Walt Disney. They try to distance themselves from the man Walt Disney. They love his name 'cause it's IP. Walt Disney's name is IP now, that's all it is, but they don't like the man very much 'cause he was pretty conservative. He testified against commies back in the day, you know? I mean, that's who he was. And they like to forget that. That's the same with Wizards, with D&D, something they did not create, by the way. I know a lot of you are probably too young to remember, but back in the day Dungeons and Dragons was created by a company called TSR. And it was TSR all throughout the '70s and '80s. And then in the '90s, Wizards of the Coast bought TSR. And then TSR got, or Wizards of the Coast rather got gobbled up by Hasbro because of Magic the Gathering, not because it's Dungeons and Dragons. I don't think they cared about Dungeons and Dragons at all. I think it just kind of came along for the ride, but they gobbled up Magic because Magic was huge in the '90s and early 2000s. And they got D&D as a bonus. Now they're trying to milk this franchise too, but got this guy. This guy, this is crazy. So yeah, anyway, they're gonna flip character creation on its head. Back story is more important than ever. Says the lead rules designer, Jeremy Crawford. The new player's handbook, which got its own series of deep dive video reveals this week on the official D&D YouTube channel and get a lot of views compared to people that actually play D&D on YouTube. It's so weird. It goes one step further, flipping character creation and one of the best tabletop RPGs on its head. Yeah, it's a good idea. When fans are already angry about the state of Dungeons and Dragons, let's just change everything. Let's just change everything about it. Yeah, let's do that and see how it works for you. At the heart of that change is the character origin, what casual players might refer to as a back story. In the 2014 player's handbook already outdated, it's like a decade old and that's like, oh my God, it's racism and bigotry. Character backgrounds are something of an afterthought. That's the way it's always been. They're listed on page 127 long after you've made your way through the choice of races and classes and consist of a small set of additional skills and proficiencies, maybe another language alongside minor features, connections to nobility and affinity with pirates, more vaguely and epiphany that only you have received. That many tables might not even come, but all depending on the setting and the characters you encounter. In the new handbook, you'll actually choose your class first and then choose a character background before a species even rears its head, which entirely flips around the order from the 2014 source books. I'm sure people are gonna love that. No, the people that are gonna love it are the people that have never played D&D before. They're gonna be like, yes, this is what I imagined D&D to be like in my head, it's my OC, it's my OC. And there's a much larger emphasis on what impact your background or previous professional location and community has on your abilities rather than the type of species you are. 'Cause again, remember guys, it's racist to say someone's a half, a half elf, even though in dragon lands, we literally had a character whose name was half elven, but yeah, it's racist. It's racist to have half anything anymore, right? If you're a mixed race in the human world, people do say like, I'm half Latino or I'm half black. My brothers are half Latino, they're half Mexican. My stepdad's from Mexico. And no, he does not have a hat like this. He does have a mustache though. He's always had a mustache, so I'll give him that. They got that part right, but God, this is such bullshit. All right, so they said, yeah, background has far more weight for your character than it did in the 2014 rules. Says the lead rules designer Crawford in addition to giving you proficiencies as backgrounds previously did. Backgrounds also now give you a feat at level one. They also determine the ability score bonuses for when you create your character. So you're OC, you're OC, you're making your OC. It's an OC generator. Those ability score bonuses are quite different from what they were in Tasha's, which just came out, didn't it? The Tasha's cauldron of something, something, something. Racism and bigotry, go away, book, or even playtest last year where backgrounds came with a set of ability score bonuses. Something that Crawford said, hard lock the backgrounds to specific classes when we wanted people to feel free to mix and match. And now each background comes with a set of three scores. You can each split those bonuses between whether you want to put one point in each score split to the one across two options, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a big change from the racial modifier seen in the game previously, shifting the focus away from what elves might generally be good at and toward what you've learned in the process of growing up and entering the world. Yes, but biologically, this is what irritates me. Elves are not humans. They're not a stand-in for another race of humans. They're not humans. They're going to be better at some things than humans. They're going to live longer than humans. They're gonna be better at magic than humans. Dwarves are gonna be stronger than humans. I mean, that was, you know what I'm saying? 'Cause it was based off of Tolkien, but Tolkien's problematic now. We had make sure we got lots of diverse hobbits in here too. Yeah. (laughs) But we can't call them hobbits, they're halflings. Oh my God. Not only what you did prior to becoming an adventurer, but where you did it. Were you a sailor, were you a criminal, were you an act of light in a temple, were you a sage? Does it matter? Because a lot of times, one of the things I loved about old-school D&D was your character was a blank slate. You rolled up a character and you just started adventuring and then you figured it out as you went. I don't like the fact that it takes like three or four hours to make a freaking character now and start playing the game. I think that's ridiculous. And that's one thing that we are addressing in the adventure engine. I'm not gonna tip my hand too much as to what we're doing, but basically we want you to be able to roll up a character and start playing within half an hour, 45 minutes. And then you figure it out as you go, what your character is, where they came from, whatever. You can come up with all that shit on your own, but people don't have a lot of time, you know? So we're like, just you roll up a character and you start playing. Very simple stuff, but this is, God, again, this just shows the emphasis on fan fiction, I think. I don't know, I just, I don't care. This isn't Dungeons and Dragons. They've strayed so far from it. I feel the same way about D&D as I do Star Wars and Doctor Who at this point, where it's like, this is a pale imitation of what I grew up with. And if you like it, good for you, fantastic. I'm not gonna be buying it. This is, I guess this is 60 or 5.5 year or whatever, but like, I don't even, I don't even recognize this game. Like, I tried playing 5E with my kids and I went back to basic fantasy 'cause I'm like, I don't even recognize this game. I don't recognize these rules. This doesn't make any damn sense to me. This is a completely different game. We would have called this a completely different game system. Back in the day, whereas with D&D and even AD&D, it was an extension of the original rules. And yes, it did evolve over time, but they were still, it was still pretty much the same rule system. Now, like, each iteration of D&D seems like it's so different from the last one, it might as well just be a completely different system altogether. It's like turning monopoly into risk or something. You know what I'm saying? Like, they're both board games, right? But yeah, this would have been a completely different system. Back in the day, but you know, the D&D brand is worth something that has broke. 'Cause you're gonna milk it for video games. Now, this matters anyway. You guys are playing the tabletop version, it doesn't matter all they're interested in or video games. And apparently you're gonna see Mexican works in a video game. So good news, everybody. We got rid of one kind of racism and now we've just got tropes in D&D. So good luck with that. This is the game you wanted, right? 'Cause all you Tumblr writes, you criticized every damn thing in Dungeons and Dragons for years, you wrote hit pieces on it and you complained about it. And this is what you get. You're gonna get a game that doesn't look anything like D&D anymore. And good luck with that. I'm gonna wrap it up. Please subscribe. We'll talk later. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Thanks again for listening. More news and videos are available on our website at www.clownfishtv.com and on our YouTube channel, clownfishtv. You can buy official merchandise, clownfish comic books and more at shopclownfish.com. 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