I was there too, and some of these things really still don't bother me.
I don't play D&D the way I act in real life.
For that matter, I don't play Diplomacy the way I act in real life.
For that matter, I don't play D&D the way I play some other RPGs.
And if I played in a Conan RPG, I certainly wouldn't act in real life the way I would in that game.
Some of these issues were even discussed "way back then" in the cultural background of the time.
And part of the answer was, "It's just a game."
Yes, things that once were acceptable are no longer, and that's good. But frankly, if any of my players starts handwringing about "Why is it OK to kill Orcs"...
"It's just a game."
I've played SS Panzer troops in miniatures wargames. I do not support them or their ideas in the slightest. It's just a game.
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
Now sometimes, especially since it's become fashionable for women, a cigar is a nine-inch brown phallic symbol that a pretty young woman puts in her mouth repeatedly, but that's a different column.
I guess the message here is that Protestant white men have done a lot of cool things - not only did they go to the moon, they invented D&D too!
Except that as I understand it Gary Gygax was actually a lapsed Catholic.
Oh well, he was still white. Close enough.
Edit: If the Soviets had reached the moon first, they'd have quoted Marx. If the Muslims had reached the Moon first, they'd have quoted the Koran. Which is how it should be. American Christians land on the moon, they're going to quote the Bible. That doesn't somehow 'exclude' us atheists. *tcch*
Yeah, I'm not really buying the premise that D&D and its creators been naively lacking in cultural premise introspection from the start. I mean, these are the same guys who published Tekumel next to white box OD&D. Leaving questions like this to the DM and players was intentional, to my mind. If you wanted your rationales prefab you could pick up Tekumel, which had coherent reasons for dungeoncrawling decades before Earthdawn.
"There have been thousands of cultures in Human history, and there are ample ideas for creating more realistic and believable non-human cultures in D&D, but no one does that, at least no one that I can call to mind off the top of my head. So when you are thinking about turning the idea of D&D on its head, remember to start at the beginning. Build a culture, and not just a collection of stereotypes. "
"Decent people shouldn't live in Gotham. They'd be happier someplace else." - Jack Nicholson as "The Joker"
People who want to build realistic and believeable models of ANY sort of culture shouldn't use D&D -- they'd be happier using something else. Doing this in D&D is rather like using a hammer to pound in screws. It will probably work, but it's not the best way to do things.
I'm totally serious.
In fact, "What IS D&D modeled after anyway?" is one of my subjects for "Tales from the Fortress of Geezertude", so I suppose I need to get my fat ass into gear.
It's true. The harder you look at oldschool D&D the uglier it looks. It's a game about killing dusky subhumans and taking their stuff.
As time has gone by, new writers have tried to make it genuinely heroic, but it's an uphill battle. D&D's generic setting leaves it up the GMs to provide the Evil Overlords and other justifications for violence. The books as written have almost nothing about why the PCs do what they do.
It's very easy for a game to revert to the PCs simply looking around for killable monsters. And "killable" is largely determined by skin color. If it's pink, you talk to it. If it's green, it dies.
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Now, from the maker of the Crack-o-matic, it's the Monster Awesomizer! Current Project:Cursed World, a D&D tribute using Fate. Old school setting meets new school mechanics.
:2 (Bahama'at,Tanka); 
Linear Mode
