That’s part of my problem with the game! They were so scared of offending anyone and yet shit like that still flies under the radar sorta shows how totally misaligned their values are.

Bethesda couldn’t write an engaging story if they tried. It’s always an afterthought. They focus on world design first, then write stories around it to explain things.

“flat, flavourless and bland.”  Spot ON!!!

Most modders I’m following on Nexus switched to Starfield for about a couple of weeks but have all gone back to Skyrim, I haven’t seen a new Starfield mod in my notifications in weeks and I follow quite a few modders.

The group that made the Skyrim multiplayer mod already gave up on Starfield lol

Yep, that was my impression from the dozen or so hours I spent with the game, that as a work of speculative fiction it was aggressively mid and derivative. You’re in the future, you travel to other solar systems, but when you get to other planets they’re just office parks and malls. And also wild west-style frontier…

Yes, Cyberpunk’s early issues were clear mistakes. The developers clearly didn’t intend for cars to be falling from the sky or NPC’s to be taking off on invisible motorcycles. CDPR’s response to 2077's disastrous launch was that it needed to be fixed.

Yes, and it’s not that complicated to fix. Even as a kid, when my group played 1st and 2nd edition D&D/AD&D, we referred to “race” as “species”. Even as pre-teens, we knew the correct term.

Is this a joke? Sounds more like your writing career is a joke, as this is as witty and “smart” as you can get. The above article is very whiny, dry and “what about me?” Play another game? Maybe make a game? Talk to friends about making a game? Instead, you write crying articles about changing something responsible…

jesus christ, i woud hate to be in a game with you as a player or as a gm lol “welcome to my world, where no one has any negative thoughts or feelings and the bad guy just needs a hug but you cant hug him because that would violate his safe space, figure that one out team”

she’s not gonna fuck you

Is this exclusive to D&D, or do you also want Vulcans, Wookiees, and Flora Colossus to just be skins too, otherwise identical to humans? Droids too? No Vulcan Nerve Pinch? Wookiees no stronger than humans? Metal takes damage just like flesh? Again it’s fine for you to play that way, or create your own RPG. I might…

I’m perfectly happy for you to design a campaign or rpg that does that. I’ve played many an adventure when there was no killing. But why would you seek to impose that on everyone? That, by definition, would be “monolithic.”

Yes, I know it’s your job. Most people’s jobs involve solving problems. Yours involves conjuring them where they don’t exist. There is real racism and bigotry in the world and here you are, wasting your time taking potshots at a roleplaying game. This might be enough to convince yourself that you’re making a…

It must be nice to have so few problems in life to be able to devote time and effort into something like this. In the 80's D&D was supposedly turning people into satanists, now it’s supposedly turning them into racists. Progress?

There is nothing weaker and less creative than “any species can be anything”. Let's not have lore books then and just do our own thing (which I do most of the time anyway, I guess).

Next up: “Why is killing tolerated in D&D? It’s time for RPGs to eschew this appalling legacy and require characters to find peaceful solutions”

Let me answer the question posed by the title of the Article.
Race is still a problem in D&D because in terms of the game it really refers to “Species”, and most of you don’t understand that.

But you may need to say that an entire race is evil so as to allow your players to enter their lair and kill them. If you start giving henchmen family lives, the whole story becomes a moral quagmire and certainly no fun.

Let’s get one thing out of the way, because someone is going to jump down my throat: it is good to identify racial stereotypes *that connect to real life* and change them. Some ideas, like ASI are great. I am not going to comment on women having lower stats (or a Beauty stat)!