Quote Originally Posted by JusticeZero View Post
Orcs have regularly portrayed as basically people in my family album with weird dental stuff for a long time, so I want to point out that I have been cringing every time I hear a variant on that for the past what, four decades?

I go to therapy every other week for PTSD because I grew up as a human equivalent of someone whose family was viewed as worshipping a Gruumsh analogue. Because my family was seen as not following the "good" religion, it was acceptable to commit any number of atrocities. I honestly wouldn't have blamed them for picking up a magic greataxe and going raiding.

So basically your GM, a person who I will assume does not have my particular ethnic history and background, rigged your encounter that the orcs would act in certain awful ways.

Do you not see how this
1) reflects on.... your GM's handling of things, and
2) might be more than a little bit uncomfortable to people who might be at your table who orcs have regularly been created to be stereotypes of?

If I was in an OSR campaign built with the Bad Old Days ideas baked in, me personally as a player would most likely be defined as happily following an Evil god and a member of an Always Evil race. I'm culturally deviant in ways that I have no power to change. And that isn't necessarily obvious to others at the table.
A huge part of the Bad Old Days is creating a fantasy that the Other is Evil, then going out of its way to fulfill and justify that idea.

I'm sick of it.

I'd like to be able to play in a game sometimes without knowing that there's a good chance I will be reminded that I'm an evil monster. But people keep claiming that it's vitally important that these harmful tropes have to be repeated in ways that directly feeds into a power fantasy that some players have experience with being inherently on the wrong end of.

It was never okay. It was always a bad trope. It needs to be taken to the vets office for one last time. I'm sorry that some people miss it and feel attached to it, but y'all literally scare me and my friends and that's not great for the hobby as a whole. And because we're scared of this stuff, we probably won't tell you... we just sneak away and stop playing.
I do not have your background. My own troubles with being the Other is ways less physical or obvious than that.

But I agree with you. I have seen too much, and know too much to see it any differently. and due to how my mind works, what was I raised on, I cannot look at this trope as something positive. If people are being scared away because of such a trope....is this not proof enough? Its all fun and games until someone sees themselves in something being demonized. That, and valuing a fictional trope's existence over actual people and how its affecting them isn't a good set of priorities to me.