Oh, it gets worse.
Don’t look up what blessing Gruumsh’s wife gave to the orcs.
Tried looking that up but can’t really find anything, what is the controversy there?
I guess you do need some background information, especially because Wizards sure doesn’t like spelling it out anymore.
In older editions it was assumed nearly all half-orcs were the offspring of rape, and “the blessing of Luthic” was given to make orcs fertile with nearly every other race.
The implications were clear, even more once you start diving into things like orcish society being a rigid patriarchy with a slave economy and one of Luthic’s domains being not just servitude, but specifically female servitude.
so, the evil version of big booba goblins?
Is that a thing?
you’re asking if horny people had the idea to give massive honkers to the small green people and make their whole schtick to bonk everyone they see?
if that’s a question that needs to be asked you should treasure your innocence
In early DnD’s defense, monster races were objectively, comically evil, and players were pretty heavily incentivised to pick humans (and assumed to be played by extremely nerdy guys), so it wasn’t supposed to come up that much.
The fantasy was in killing the cannibal rape monsters, freeing their slaves, and not having to ask yourself “Are we the baddies doing an imperialism?” for burning down the orc village.
My dad used to play red box D&D (which I believe was the first edition ever released). Still has some manuals, which I got the chance to read.
Not only it was encouraged to play humans, it was assumed! You didn’t get to pick a race, only a class. And while the classes of “elf” (think like 5e’s ranger) and “dwarf” (5e’s barbarian, sort of) were a thing, all of the other classes assumed for the player to be a human. You couldn’t play an elf wizard: you either are an elf OR a wizard. Wild stuff, compared to some of the crazy stuff we get to do in modern D&D.
If your first-level halfling is wearing plate mail, you may be playing Red Box D&D.
So, like DCC?
Like these?
Early DND sounds a lot like pulp comics.
Could not really find anything but that Luthic is a fertility goddess of sorts. Which seems rather normal.
Wait, is this real? Surely this is parody, right?
No this was the lore.
Hell one of 3.5 edition’s strongest monsters, from the the published books, was the undead, aborted, fetus, that was the product of the rape of another god, or celestial/hell/abyssal creature, by a god of opposing alignment, like an angel raped by an evil god.
They were just keeping with the strong tradition established by the Greeks and Romans of gods that rape everyone and everything.
Not really sure what the hubub is. It’s lore for a dark thing in a fantasy world. It’s like an unpopular opinion on c/unpopularopinion . You don’t like it, persay, but it’s effective content.
There are a number of really weird things with old D&D lore.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
“Some incredibly unhinged shit…”
Lolth is an edgelord that makes all the other gods cringe.
Umm, what? Anything that has gestation similar to a human is probably incapable of this. Could you imagine these fucking alien beans duckin’ and dodgin’ in utero to slaughter each other with nubby hands and fingers? Lmao this is some Morrowind concept art shit
More like The Binding of Isaac. Only game in which aborting yourself can result in a positive outcome.
My favourite bit on drow related lore is from 2E. Non-drow followers of Eilistraee would do black face and travel the world as part of an effort to show drow could be peaceful. There is something hilarious to me about how well intentioned the author seems to be but completely oblivious to what it looks like.
Folks could get away with so much edgy bulshit back then…
Sad how hard it is now.
Nah, it’s good that it’s hard. People who want to use with heavy themes, they gotta earn it.
