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russdm
2013-10-09, 12:04 AM
So, people requested a new thread.

Discuss 5th Edition here, at Kitchen Stadium! Let Iron Chef Begin!!!!

obryn
2013-10-09, 12:41 AM
Here's the paragraph in question:

By contrast, the 3rd Edition Monster Manual listed orcs as "often chaotic evil." Even setting aside the question of the orc babies, that seems to raise a lot of moral questions. How do I know that any particular orc band is evil? I can't just stumble into an orc lair and start killing them. I need to make sure they're evil. I need to observe their actions and verify that they're doing evil things. And even then, maybe I should be more concerned with rehabilitating them than with killing them. Basically, orcs are people, too. Orcs in this view aren't a corruption of nature, evil by virtue of their very existence. They're criminals, or an enemy nation. Their culture is evil, they're raised to be evil, but they don't have to be evil. So slaughtering their babies is evil, too.

That's not fantasy, frankly, at least not in its classic sense. That's the sciences of anthropology and psychology.


Monsters are monsters, not people.

While this may not be true for all Fantasy games, it's probably best to be held true in D&D. Leave the moralizing to less-mainstream games and individual DM prerogative.
This only applies to Orcs sitting around doing nothing.

In a D&D-style fantasy, is it really hard to have those Orcs pose an active threat against someone or something? Behaving in evil and destructive ways, as opposed to just "being Evil."

Not everybody is looking for introspective soul-searching and philosophy in D&D. But it's hardly a stretch to say, "these guys need sworded because of a specific threat they pose," and "eh, the Monster Manual says 'evil' so let's just kill 'em." That's just an excuse for lazy adventure writing, IMO.

-O

Flickerdart
2013-10-09, 01:02 AM
The writer is clearly missing a huge thing about alignment - being evil is not punishable by death. A pickpocket stealing from a poor merchant might be evil. A cruel drill sergeant might be evil. A work-focused businessman might be evil. Until any of these people have committed crimes that warrant capital punishment, attacking them is illegal.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 01:23 AM
He's also missing the fact that, at least in the Hobbit, Goblin (orc) children are mentioned- Gollum's reminiscing over having caught and ate "a small goblin-imp".

It's only the LoTR movies that's explicit that they "spring into being fully grown" - based on a very old concept that was discarded early on.

Turalisj
2013-10-09, 01:53 AM
I vote for: D&D 5th Edition XIV: Not in my Fantasy Game!

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 02:22 AM
I liked the theory voiced here one or two times- that all the common humanoids descended from a progenitor race- mongrelfolk- but, unwilling to admit this, they insist mongrelfolk are hybrids rather than progenitor survivors.

SiuiS
2013-10-09, 03:42 AM
I only started talking about realism because you had. But, you know what? Fine. You win this argument on the Internet, through the fine art of twisting your opponent's points around. I'm done.

Oh, don't give me that. I never brought up realism, I brought up comparative preparedness, which you turned into realism. My entire point was that a light, fast offensive warrior is not defined by lack of equipment. This isn't a Internet Argument, I'm making an actual point, and am bringing up actual things you've said – my very first statement was "two guys of equal skill, guy with better gear will win";

"Theres a reason for that. Two equally skilled guys, fighting? Guy with armor is gonna win. Guy with shield is gonna win. And mechanically, "really good with fast, light weapon" and "really good with big, heavy weapon" are the same thing. You'd need a separate mechanic to make them different, just like your need armor to be separate from defense."

And my very next statement was about verisimilitude, which is what makes sense in the context of the game, the story, the system and the cultural zeitgeist;

"But it has always striven for verisimilitude until 4e, and early games based the power of monsters off of comparison to realistic troop units, not the other way around. This 'realism' has been a valid point since game inception. Or were you not around for "intelligent enemies will attack the AC 10 head 50% of the time if you aren't wearing a helmet"?"

I also asked a contextual question to clarify how far back you went for your comparison of "what D&D definitely always has been" (:smallamused:). I used 'realism' in little marks for a reason, and used it AFTER you did. There has been no twisting. You said "yeah, if you like realism, but it shouldn't be here" and I said, "realism does not factor into this at all", every time.

So instead if declaring me Forum Anathema as if it were a valid rebuttal; restarting, fresh slate, because despite your animosity and casual dismissal this is a valid discussion which can come to an actual conclusion;

Light weight, fast offence fighters are viable but should not be viable at all levels with nothing more than starting gear. They need additional gear, just like everyone else. This does not invalidate light, fast offence as a warrior type. It does still fit with the idea of preparation and equipment (both mathematical bonuses) being equally important as skill (also a mathematical bonus).

Do you still think this invalidates monks or swashbucklers?


Here's the paragraph in question:

By contrast, the 3rd Edition Monster Manual listed orcs as "often chaotic evil." Even setting aside the question of the orc babies, that seems to raise a lot of moral questions. How do I know that any particular orc band is evil? I can't just stumble into an orc lair and start killing them. I need to make sure they're evil. I need to observe their actions and verify that they're doing evil things. And even then, maybe I should be more concerned with rehabilitating them than with killing them. Basically, orcs are people, too. Orcs in this view aren't a corruption of nature, evil by virtue of their very existence. They're criminals, or an enemy nation. Their culture is evil, they're raised to be evil, but they don't have to be evil. So slaughtering their babies is evil, too.

That's not fantasy, frankly, at least not in its classic sense. That's the sciences of anthropology and psychology.


This only applies to Orcs sitting around doing nothing.

In a D&D-style fantasy, is it really hard to have those Orcs pose an active threat against someone or something? Behaving in evil and destructive ways, as opposed to just "being Evil."

Not everybody is looking for introspective soul-searching and philosophy in D&D. But it's hardly a stretch to say, "these guys need sworded because of a specific threat they pose," and "eh, the Monster Manual says 'evil' so let's just kill 'em." That's just an excuse for lazy adventure writing, IMO.

That's interesting.

I agree. "All orcs are evil" shouldn't mean orcs who just sit there are evil; it means orcs who just sit there are resting during an actively evil, malignant activity. If they can communicate this – make it clear there are no Orc settlements, only roving marauder war camps; there are no innocent orcs, every Orc found is doing evil at the time; orcs aren't people, they are primal manifestations of entropy with animal cunning which spring from the my thing world-borders – then the game tone will be set. You will lose some of the charm of 2/3e, though.

It also works in that you can always opt not to dot his, but then it's one of those changes to your campaign you're supposed to tell the players about, so they should be forewarned.


I liked the theory voiced here one or two times- that all the common humanoids descended from a progenitor race- mongrelfolk- but, unwilling to admit this, they insist mongrelfolk are hybrids rather than progenitor survivors.

Haha. Yeah~

Kurald Galain
2013-10-09, 03:57 AM
The writer is clearly missing a huge thing about alignment - being evil is not punishable by death. A pickpocket stealing from a poor merchant might be evil. A cruel drill sergeant might be evil. A work-focused businessman might be evil. Until any of these people have committed crimes that warrant capital punishment, attacking them is illegal.

That doesn't matter if your paladin is Chaotic Good :smallamused:

Turalisj
2013-10-09, 04:41 AM
That doesn't matter if your paladin is Chaotic Good :smallamused:

Yes. Yes it does.

Lawful Neutral paladin on the other hand, might as well be named Batman.

SiuiS
2013-10-09, 06:20 AM
Yes. Yes it does.

Lawful Neutral paladin on the other hand, might as well be named Batman.

Maybe not. They can't keep grandfathering alignment in. They'll have to pull a 4e and re-write (and redefine) everything.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 06:26 AM
They'll have to pull a 4e and re-write (and redefine) everything.

To quote TV Tropes:

Nothing can be trusted by virtue of its nature or appearance in Points of Light. Metallic Dragons can be evil, elves can be slave traders, orcs can be noble savages, a diabolist might be a staunch defender of the innocent, an eldritch monster from beyond the stars might be granting powers to help avert The End of the World as We Know It ... you have very little way of knowing.

This was what I liked most about it.

I don't like the idea of them going right back to 1e's "monsters exist to be killed by the players" approach.

Kurald Galain
2013-10-09, 06:39 AM
I don't like the idea of them going right back to 1e's "monsters exist to be killed by the players" approach.

But that's 4E's approach as well, to the point where monsters are expected to live for 3-4 combat rounds only, and aren't given any abilities beyond that. How is that going "back" to anything?

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 06:46 AM
I was thinking more in terms of them having dropped "Always X" alignment, made many Evil-Only PRCs into Classes that allow unaligned and good characters, and so on and so forth.

A Morality Kitchen Sink, rather than pure Black And White Morality, so to speak.

Tehnar
2013-10-09, 06:53 AM
Why not just have a morality in roleplaying chapter? Where killing sentients is discussed, and what steps to take in your campaign to get the playstyle you want and its ramification.

Morty
2013-10-09, 07:54 AM
As dubious as I am to get into an alignment debate, I'm not sure if the model of orcs that spring from the ground as murderous cannibal adults can be really called 'evil', anyway. Evil, to me, is a conscious choice to do the wrong thing for your personal gain, material or otherwise. If a creature is hard-wired into being violent and destructive, is it really evil? The same would apply to inherently good creatures, but funnily enough, you don't see those very often. I wonder why... Of course, whether or not we call such a creature evil is really immaterial, because either way, other beings need to defend themselves from them. But describing them as 'evil' isn't really accurate.

Really, the 'inherently evil' orcs, goblinoids and whatnot seem like an attempt to have your cake and eat it too. People want sapient, intelligent enemies capable of forming societies, creating plans and acting strategically, but they also want them to be universally monsters they can kill without compunctions. But trying to combine the two ends in dissonance.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-10-09, 07:59 AM
Why not just have a morality in roleplaying chapter? Where killing sentients is discussed, and what steps to take in your campaign to get the playstyle you want and its ramification.

This would probably be the best solution: Thing is this would require the 5E team to admit there are multiple ways to play the game, and we can't have that.

Clawhound
2013-10-09, 08:12 AM
Just as important: can the team design a game where some characters aren't thrown into moral traps that destroy their character concept?

If you then create such a game, has the game lost an important aspect? Have you lost a tension necessary when playing such a character?

1337 b4k4
2013-10-09, 08:29 AM
If a creature is hard-wired into being violent and destructive, is it really evil? The same would apply to inherently good creatures, but funnily enough, you don't see those very often.

Once again, this is something that D&D got right the first time. Original alignment is Lawful - Neutral - Chaotic and leaves the question of whether an individual creature (or group of creatures) is "evil" or not out of the alignment debate. While it does note that "chaotic behaviors" are often "evil behaviors" it does not that they are not synonymous and that a chaotically aligned individual might just be a "happy go lucky, unpredictable personality"

Person_Man
2013-10-09, 08:33 AM
RE: Alignment

D&D is a game, not a simulation of real life if magic and monsters existed, or a logical treatise on morality.

The point of alignment in the context of a game is to provide a shorthand way of describing your character, NPCs, and monsters. Instead of having to write out a page of back story for orcs in my campaign world, I can just say "Usually Chaotic Evil." This is very important for new and young players, because it helps introduce them to roleplaying without requiring a high level of intellectual sophistication or effort. It's also helpful for players who enjoy "break down the door" campaigns that focus on combat without throwing away everything related to roleplaying.

It allows you to just look orcs and say "oh, orcs are usually Evil" and kill them. And not "hey, these orcs are people too. Perhaps I shouldn't be killing them. I should investigate their culture to find out more about what truly drives them and whether or not my violent actions are justified. And now that I think about it, it's rarely moral to kill anyone unless they're directly threatening me, my family, or my way of life. Perhaps I should return to my home town and invest more in the Profession Skill."

If you don't like that style of play, that's ok. The game is flexible enough that you can easily change the alinement rules, ignore the alignment rules, or add long back stories to anything, without sacrificing or changing 99% of the other rules. But the default rules should be easily understood and usable, not a long moralizing digressions.

Segev
2013-10-09, 08:37 AM
I think the core of the paragraph quoted in green's message is that it's okay to have a dungeon populated by orcs who are a threat because they generically ravage the nearby areas, and not enter into moral quandaries when discussing whether it's "okay" to wipe them out entirely. Orcs are monsters if the DM says they're generally acting like them. D&D isn't exactly emulating modern social mores wherein we quibble over whether the people in that building are ALL members of the terrorist cell, or some are merely human shields.

Orcs are monsters so that we can disregard those questions. There's little need for the concept of "collateral damage" when killing monsters.



Now, for an interesting potential twist, what if you actually changed race when you changed alignment? What if Chaotic Good people morphed into elves as their behavior brought them closer to that ideal? Lawful Neutral people morph into Dwarves, etc. You could make 9-race "families" that are all one species scattered across multiple alignments, even.

A very rough use of the d20srd.org monster filter provides 9 races (and variants) that are small humanoids, and we could arrange it thusly (as an example):

Derro are CE, Goblins are NE, Kobolds are LE, Tallfellow Halflings are LN, Deep Halflings are TN, Lightfoot Halflings are CN, Forest Gnomes are CG, Svirfneblin are NG, and Rock Gnomes are LG.

Obviously, you'd have to rebalance the stats so that there weren't some that are double or sextuple the CR of their other-aligned kin, but it could be an intersting way to set things up.

"That goblin is evil and obviously deserves what's coming to him!" "That's racist!" "No, if he weren't evil, he'd be a halfling or a gnome."

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 08:44 AM
Personally I think The Giant said it best:

"Leave inborn alignment to the overtly supernatural—if it exists at all—and away from biological creatures."

Kurald Galain
2013-10-09, 08:44 AM
It allows you to just look orcs and say "oh, orcs are usually Evil" and kill them. And not "hey, these orcs are people too. Perhaps I shouldn't be killing them.

The writer of a certain popular D&D-based webcomic vehemently disagrees with this notion... :smallamused:

Morty
2013-10-09, 09:13 AM
If you don't like that style of play, that's ok. The game is flexible enough that you can easily change the alinement rules, ignore the alignment rules, or add long back stories to anything, without sacrificing or changing 99% of the other rules. But the default rules should be easily understood and usable, not a long moralizing digressions.

The article we're discussing disagrees with you, since its conclusion seems to be that you can't have fantasy without inherently evil sapient species.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 09:18 AM
In a lot of fantasy, while such beings might exist, the vast majority of the adventurer's time is spent fighting humans- with monsters representing a tiny minority of their opponents.

Conan springs to mind.

obryn
2013-10-09, 09:37 AM
"That goblin is evil and obviously deserves what's coming to him!" "That's racist!" "No, if he weren't evil, he'd be a halfling or a gnome."
Leaving aside how terrible D&D's alignment structure is, this would make every character subject to the same sort of nonsense as Paladins are in some editions.

And also, no.


Personally I think The Giant said it best:

"Leave inborn alignment to the overtly supernatural—if it exists at all—and away from biological creatures."
This is certainly where I have been for years. I have no issues with demons, devils, etc. being supernatural forces of evil. That's fine. It's when you get into orcs, goblinoids, etc. that it becomes kind of troubling if you stop to think about it. (And I think now, in 2013, quite a few people have stopped to think about it already.)

-O

SiuiS
2013-10-09, 11:02 AM
Personally I think The Giant said it best:

"Leave inborn alignment to the overtly supernatural—if it exists at all—and away from biological creatures."

Why aren't orcs supernatural? Marauding pigmen that spring from badlands? Goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls... These are fairy creatures, low grade elemental evil. A bugabear is literally a boogie monster, after all.

I understand the premise of biological (ie natural in the evolutionary sense) monsters not being evil, but I reject the premise that a monster who is a hairy, sharp toothed shadow under a four year old's bed who is only there when the lights go off is a biological monster.

We're checking one assumption, why not others? Why is "I'm assuming monsters are monsters" badc and yet "I'm assuming monsters have an ecosystem and are not supernatural monsters" okay?

Craft (Cheese)
2013-10-09, 11:46 AM
The writer is clearly missing a huge thing about alignment - being evil is not punishable by death. A pickpocket stealing from a poor merchant might be evil. A cruel drill sergeant might be evil. A work-focused businessman might be evil. Until any of these people have committed crimes that warrant capital punishment, attacking them is illegal.

But that makes everything so much easier! When the party spots a group of Orcs drinking, sparring, and singing songs around a campfire, that's an opportunity for an ambush and some easy XP.

Evil as shorthand for "kill this" means you don't have to go through all the trouble of doing boring stuff like establishing context, creating opportunities for meaningful choice, or encouraging well-developed character motivations. You get to the loot and the XP so much faster!

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 11:49 AM
Given how much variation in depiction of them there is in fiction, folklore and so forth- one can't exactly say that "low level elemental evil" is the norm rather than the exception.

Personally I'd make all races something the DM has to put together of their own accord (possibly using Human as a base).

Halflings- Humans with the Short modification.
Dwarves- Humans with the Short and Strong modifications
Elves- Humans with the Fey modification
Orcs- Humans with the Strong and Tough modifications
Sahaugin- Humans with the Fishfolk modification.
Lizardfolk- Humans with the Scaled One modification


And so forth. People who want Evil orcs could give them a Corrupted modification- those who don't, wouldn't.

SiuiS
2013-10-09, 12:18 PM
But that makes everything so much easier! When the party spots a group of Orcs drinking, sparring, and singing songs around a campfire, that's an opportunity for an ambush and some easy XP.

Evil as shorthand for "kill this" means you don't have to go through all the trouble of doing boring stuff like establishing context, creating opportunities for meaningful choice, or encouraging well-developed character motivations. You get to the loot and the XP so much faster!

Or, the DM could be intelligent and not have monsters be humans in funny suits. Why are orcs sitting around a campfire with beers, talking about their bros? This is a terrible example, even as a sarcastic set up. If everyone is going to look the same sitting around a fire talking about their bros and conquests, then there's no reason not to kill them – they're barely caricatures anyway, and exist for whatever the DM contrived at the moment, rather than as a people or culture.


Given how much variation in depiction of them there is in fiction, folklore and so forth- one can't exactly say that "low level elemental evil" is the norm rather than the exception.

Personally I'd make all races something the DM has to put together of their own accord (possibly using Human as a base).

Halflings- Humans with the Short modification.
Dwarves- Humans with the Short and Strong modifications
Elves- Humans with the Fey modification
Orcs- Humans with the Strong and Tough modifications
Sahaugin- Humans with the Fishfolk modification.
Lizardfolk- Humans with the Scaled One modification


And so forth. People who want Evil orcs could give them a Corrupted modification- those who don't, wouldn't.

That is kinda neat, yeah.

Ziegander
2013-10-09, 12:26 PM
Why aren't orcs supernatural? Marauding pigmen that spring from badlands? Goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls... These are fairy creatures, low grade elemental evil. A bugabear is literally a boogie monster, after all.

I understand the premise of biological (ie natural in the evolutionary sense) monsters not being evil, but I reject the premise that a monster who is a hairy, sharp toothed shadow under a four year old's bed who is only there when the lights go off is a biological monster.

It's an interesting point of view, but the reason orcs aren't supernatural is because not once in D&D history have they been presented as anything even close to supernatural.

Do they live on the Material Plane? Yes.
Do they breed true among themselves, producing live offspring? Yes.
Do they need to eat, sleep, and breathe in order to survive? Yes.
Do they bleed and have internal organs? Yes.

So, are they biological?
Is there any evidence to suggest otherwise? No.
Is there a lot of evidence to suggest that they are? Yes.


Or, the DM could be intelligent and not have monsters be humans in funny suits. Why are orcs sitting around a campfire with beers, talking about their bros? This is a terrible example, even as a sarcastic set up.

I'm sorry, but this... I don't even. Why can't Orcs sit around a campfire enjoying the company of their peers like any other intelligent species?

johnbragg
2013-10-09, 01:02 PM
The article we're discussing disagrees with you, since its conclusion seems to be that you can't have fantasy without inherently evil sapient species.

However, even in the canon that highlights that point, there's a difference between goblins in a dungeon and goblins sitting around their usual residence.

Fun product from back in 1st Edition was "Reverse Dungeon." You play the monsters, in a 3-in-1 module. Leveling up as a goblin was, at that point, a foreign concept, so after the first module, you played the second as what we'd nowadays call CR 6-10 monsters, in the 2nd set of dungeon levels, and then the third module was in the 3rd set, with CR 11-20 monsters.

The goblin tribe was the most interesting part--you're sitting around in your caves, hunting and gathering, managing some primitive mushroom-related agriculture. You of course have no concept that the sheep you are often hunting are owned and maintained by particular humans. As far as you know, every so often 4-6 heavily armed low-level humanoid murderhobos just show up and slaughter goblins every once in a while, because humans are just bloodthirsty goblin-hating jerks. Your task is to organize the defense of the tribe against a new party of murderhobos who has arrived in the nearby human village.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 01:05 PM
I'm sorry, but this... I don't even. Why can't Orcs sit around a campfire enjoying the company of their peers like any other intelligent species?

Even Tolkien has Orcs grumpily moaning about their commanders to each other, in a fashion that seems very typical of any two soldiers throughout history.

navar100
2013-10-09, 01:12 PM
Here's the paragraph in question:

By contrast, the 3rd Edition Monster Manual listed orcs as "often chaotic evil." Even setting aside the question of the orc babies, that seems to raise a lot of moral questions. How do I know that any particular orc band is evil? I can't just stumble into an orc lair and start killing them. I need to make sure they're evil. I need to observe their actions and verify that they're doing evil things. And even then, maybe I should be more concerned with rehabilitating them than with killing them. Basically, orcs are people, too. Orcs in this view aren't a corruption of nature, evil by virtue of their very existence. They're criminals, or an enemy nation. Their culture is evil, they're raised to be evil, but they don't have to be evil. So slaughtering their babies is evil, too.

That's not fantasy, frankly, at least not in its classic sense. That's the sciences of anthropology and psychology.


This only applies to Orcs sitting around doing nothing.

In a D&D-style fantasy, is it really hard to have those Orcs pose an active threat against someone or something? Behaving in evil and destructive ways, as opposed to just "being Evil."

Not everybody is looking for introspective soul-searching and philosophy in D&D. But it's hardly a stretch to say, "these guys need sworded because of a specific threat they pose," and "eh, the Monster Manual says 'evil' so let's just kill 'em." That's just an excuse for lazy adventure writing, IMO.

-O

I find the only reason this is a conundrum is because of the paladin. No paladin in the party, kill the orcs with abandon and no one cares even if the party consists only of lawful good clerics. Let there be a paladin in the party, and it's a gotcha to make the paladin fall because he's willfully committing evil, nyah nyah.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 01:19 PM
If so, that would say more about the players than it would about the paladin class.

Person_Man
2013-10-09, 01:19 PM
The article we're discussing disagrees with you, since its conclusion seems to be that you can't have fantasy without inherently evil sapient species.


The writer of a certain popular D&D-based webcomic vehemently disagrees with this notion... :smallamused:

I can't speak for James Wyatt or the Giant. But my observation is that, in the context of discussion on alignment, they are primarily concerned with story telling and world building. In other words, they want their game worlds and the characters, monsters, and events that occur within them to make narrative and/or logical sense. In the context of mythopoeia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia) you generally need empirically GOOD and EVIL creatures. In the context of a story which assumes that sentient intelligence = free will, then any "Always X X" alignment is unworkable.

But I am much more narrowly concerned about the 5E core rules. I want rules which are:


1) Fun to play
2) Create a durable framework for expansions to the rules, so as to allow for a wide variety of different play styles.
3) Be as short and easy to learn and play as possible, so that it can more easily be adopted by old players used to other systems and new players who have never touched D&D before.


In that specific order of importance. If you accept those premises, then my opinion is that the 5E core alignment rules can be a page long or less. Alignment is an indicator of a creature's general morality and attitudes. Players have the option of using it as a starting point for character creation. And DM's have the option of using it to help define NPCs and monsters, and how they might interact with players and the game world. However, alignment is a starting point, not a strait jacket or a requirement. Some players and DMs may wish to take alignment more seriously, making alignment akin to fate. Others may wish to ignore it entirely. And there are many variations in between.

Brief descriptions of the classic 9 alignments.

The end.


This keeps a fun/interesting/classic concept in the game. It allows authors to expand or dispose of it as needed to build their campaign worlds and stories, without straitjacketing them into any specific mechanics, keeps the rules simple enough that any new player can quickly pick up on them, and old players will recognize and generally accept them.

Ziegander
2013-10-09, 01:24 PM
By contrast, the 3rd Edition Monster Manual listed orcs as "often chaotic evil." Even setting aside the question of the orc babies, that seems to raise a lot of moral questions. How do I know that any particular orc band is evil? I can't just stumble into an orc lair and start killing them. I need to make sure they're evil. I need to observe their actions and verify that they're doing evil things. And even then, maybe I should be more concerned with rehabilitating them than with killing them. Basically, orcs are people, too. Orcs in this view aren't a corruption of nature, evil by virtue of their very existence. They're criminals, or an enemy nation. Their culture is evil, they're raised to be evil, but they don't have to be evil. So slaughtering their babies is evil, too.

That's not fantasy, frankly, at least not in its classic sense. That's the sciences of anthropology and psychology.


And, up until those last two sentences, everything was going so well...

I find that final point of view to be pathetic. Do people really play D&D that way? Just roving around aimlessly in the wilderness until the DM says that the PCs notice some creature and then the PCs murder it? Do most people that play the game not have a plot that they're following such that happening upon a group of orcs doing nothing of consequence is not the most important thing going on? Do the designers of the game play that way and expect others to do the same?

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 01:34 PM
The page for the article says Wyatt:

http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20131008

What mystifies me is that he was one of the contributors to BoED, which hammers home the notion that strongly Good characters, Exalted characters, are not supposed to act like murderhobos, but to be a bit more discriminating and careful in their use of violence toward monsters.

And that orcs, goblins, and "even the thoroughly evil drow" are people too.

Morty
2013-10-09, 01:35 PM
I certainly understand the desire for unambiguously monstrous antagonists who need to be stopped no matter what the cost. What I don't understand is the perseverance in dedicating entire species to the role.

Segev
2013-10-09, 01:42 PM
Yes, in fact, some do play "kick-in-the-door" D&D. It's a valid way to do it. It's a light-hearted let-off-steam play style akin to logging on to your favorite FPS or RTS and beating up computer-controlled enemies.

Others still prefer unambiguous good and evil, not wanting to bother with moral quandaries when they're just looking for a nice epic fantasy. The struggle of defeating the evil is enough for them, and trying to justify treating the evil as evil is not fun for their taste at this time. "The orcs have been pillaging the area for weeks; they've made their lair in the abandoned mines," is all you need to give some unequivocal villainy to them. Allowing the orcs to just be monsters, without worrying about whether they have kids back home who need to be fed or wives and mothers who love them, is just fine.

If you WANT moral quandaries, go for it. But insisting that any play style that sidelines them in favor of clear, designated monsters (whether as mindless blocks of stats played by the DM, or as established-as-evil bad guys by a quick hand-wave of "pillaging the local area") is somehow "lazy" or "bad design" or (worst of all) somehow indicative of closet racism and bigotry on the parts of those who want to play it that way is arrogant and wrong-headed. Worse, it's telling people that play styles you don't prefer are badwrongfun and that they should be taking it more srsly.

Ziegander
2013-10-09, 01:47 PM
I certainly understand the desire for unambiguously monstrous antagonists who need to be stopped no matter what the cost. What I don't understand is the perseverance in dedicating entire species to the role.

Sure.

Let me give you a scenario and two possible outcomes:

Scenario: While exploring a dungeon rumored to hide the fabled Eye of Blood, you fall into a pit trap that opens into a tunnel chute through which you land unceremoniously on your butt in the middle of a room filled with orcs.

Outcome 1: The orcs, having been interrupted from various tasks including eating, drinking, smoking, sharpening weapons, etc, are startled by your arrival and eye you suspiciously for a moment until one among them steps forward, pointing a dark green finger at you and says, "Heeeey... 'oo a' yoo?" The others wait nervously, awaiting your response and their leader's reaction.

Outcome 2: The orcs, having been interrupted from various tasks including eating, drinking, smoking, sharpening weapons, etc, are startled for an instant by your arrival before brandishing weapons and knocking over tables, chairs, and each other, competing with one another over the honor of killing you first. Just as you manage to stand you find yourself in mortal danger from multiple angles.

Now, in this scenario, do you a) draw weapons and immediately attack regardless of the outcome? b) engage in conversation in outcome 1 and defend yourself with fury and righteous indignation in outcome 2? or c) try to rehabilitate the orcs regardless of the outcome?

Icewraith
2013-10-09, 01:47 PM
Even Tolkien has Orcs grumpily moaning about their commanders to each other, in a fashion that seems very typical of any two soldiers throughout history.

What about the bit where entire legions of them start killing each other at the drop of a hat mithril chain shirt?

Tolkien's orcs have no qualms about eating or torturing other sentient creatures (in the last set of movies they don't even have qualms about eating other orcs, which is not the case in the books), maintain position almost exclusively via threats of violence, and find immense enjoyment in the painful or unfortunate deaths even of their own kind.

So you might find a band of Tolkien's Orcs sitting around a campfire laughing, but if they're speaking in common or you understand their particular dialect of the Dark Speech, you might get this:

"Oh, guys, remember when we ambushed those human villagers and tortured them to death a few days ago? Good times, good times."

"Oh yeah, do we have any of those babies left? I need a snack."

Now granted, your D&D orcs don't have to be Tolkien orcs. The Dm can subvert the traditional stereotype as necessary to tell the sort of story the DM wants to. But the traditional orc or goblin is ..well.. USUALLY chaotic evil. It's a handy descriptor to have.

Edit: The above example you really should be rolling initiative to see whether the orcs or the unlucky player react first. If the orcs win and you get either of those reactions then you adapt as necessary- if they attack, you defend and if they at least try some sort of diplomacy then you roleplay. I think to improve the question a bit, the scenario has to be: what is your immediate reaction if you fall through a pit trap and land in the middle of a small orc encampment, and you win initiative and recover from your fall before the orcs can react?

russdm
2013-10-09, 01:50 PM
And, up until those last two sentences, everything was going so well...

I find that final point of view to be pathetic. Do people really play D&D that way? Just roving around aimlessly in the wilderness until the DM says that the PCs notice some creature and then the PCs murder it? Do most people that play the game not have a plot that they're following such that happening upon a group of orcs doing nothing of consequence is not the most important thing going on? Do the designers of the game play that way and expect others to do the same?

Well, the PCs have been basically treated as being Murderhobos in previous editions and that was one of the biggest appeals of 3.5, and something that was toned down for 4th, because you could have non-evil orcs, and that was just wrong...not to me, and so the designers are bringing back the murderhoboness of previous editions.

And besides D&D's view of heroic fantasy and being a heroic character is...being a murderhobo. Not say somebody who dies bravely in battle or gloriously charges a dragon. Nope, its going into places like dungeons and murdering the inhabitants simply because they are there; unlike Red Hand of Doom in which you take steps fighting off a horde of goblinoids which is actually pretty heroic mind. The regular dungeon, not so much.

Morty
2013-10-09, 01:52 PM
Sure.

Let me give you a scenario and two possible outcomes:

Scenario: While exploring a dungeon rumored to hide the fabled Eye of Blood, you fall into a pit trap that opens into a tunnel chute through which you land unceremoniously on your butt in the middle of a room filled with orcs.

Outcome 1: The orcs, having been interrupted from various tasks including eating, drinking, smoking, sharpening weapons, etc, are startled by your arrival and eye you suspiciously for a moment until one among them steps forward, pointing a dark green finger at you and says, "Heeeey... 'oo a' yoo?" The others wait nervously, awaiting your response and their leader's reaction.

Outcome 2: The orcs, having been interrupted from various tasks including eating, drinking, smoking, sharpening weapons, etc, are startled for an instant by your arrival before brandishing weapons and knocking over tables, chairs, and each other, competing with one another over the honor of killing you first. Just as you manage to stand you find yourself in mortal danger from multiple angles.

Now, in this scenario, do you a) draw weapons and immediately attack regardless of the outcome? b) engage in conversation in outcome 1 and defend yourself with fury and righteous indignation in outcome 2? or c) try to rehabilitate the orcs regardless of the outcome?

The answer is b, of course, but I'm not entirely sure what your point is here.

Ziegander
2013-10-09, 01:55 PM
The answer is b, of course, but I'm not entirely sure what your point is here.

The point is that, unless PCs have a reason to kill something they don't just automatically kill it. Right? Am I taking crazy pills here? I have not one time, in over 10 years played a game of D&D where a PC (who is not stupid and/or a Dwarf with racist hatred against Orcs) sees an Orc, unrelated in any way to the plot, and before being prompted to roll initiative by the DM for some relevant reason, just goes, "I charge it!"

Icewraith
2013-10-09, 02:00 PM
Well if you have initiative, you can either try to parley or try and take out the biggest threat before you get swarmed. If you do 1, you lose your opportunity to do 2 and things may go worse for you. If you do 2, you will guarantee the hostile reaction.

Depending on how orcs are presented, parleying is either a reasonable option or a complete waste of time.

Ziegander
2013-10-09, 02:05 PM
Edit: The above example you really should be rolling initiative to see whether the orcs or the unlucky player react first.

No. Why would you do that in any outcome other than 2? Would you automatically roll initiative if it were a group of Elves? No, you wouldn't, unless of course the group of elves swarmed you with weapons drawn like in outcome 2. The only reason you are even suggesting to do that with Orcs is because you think that Orcs have to be inherently evil, which is what I'm calling out as being dumb.


I think to improve the question a bit, the scenario has to be: what is your immediate reaction if you fall through a pit trap and land in the middle of a small orc encampment, and you win initiative and recover from your fall before the orcs can react?

That would answer the question, "Do most people think that Orcs are inherently evil and should be killed on sight?" Which is perhaps a relevant question, with a useful answer, but it's a premise I find to be fundamentally flawed.

russdm
2013-10-09, 02:13 PM
The point is that, unless PCs have a reason to kill something they don't just automatically kill it. Right? Am I taking crazy pills here? I have not one time, in over 10 years played a game of D&D where a PC (who is not stupid and/or a Dwarf with racist hatred against Orcs) sees an Orc, unrelated in any way to the plot, and before being prompted to roll initiative by the DM for some relevant reason, just goes, "I charge it!"

The no 'Automatically kill it' philosophy is rare for most groups from my experience of reading posts on the forum and some gameplay. However, a lot of other fantasy material has a different view. I usually would kill things as a player if that were the quest, but then most of the DMs I have had just presents as orcs as monsters.

Personally, I would try to talking out of the problem since you might be to make them like you and help you out. Also, attacking them means that they all engage with you and you end up fighting everything. And defending yourself after being attacked is fine.

Whats not fine to me is how many adventures have you going into a dungeon with some orcs, who were usually not doing anything other than living there and they hadn't been relating with other races at all, and wiping out all the inhabitants. the concept "They're orcs and evil, so just kill them." is a supported through the game, whereas attacking the elves as almost always seen as wrong even if those elves are attacking you.

I feel heroically fighting off an orc horde or a goblin horde or the rampaging dragon. I don't feel heroic invading the home of some kobolds who aren't doing anything or a dungeon whose inhabitants live there, peacefully in that they aren't raiding the nearby villages or something, and whose home I am plundering like some criminal. It just feels, like I am some kind of orc and being just as bad as them.

obryn
2013-10-09, 02:15 PM
If you WANT moral quandaries, go for it. But insisting that any play style that sidelines them in favor of clear, designated monsters (whether as mindless blocks of stats played by the DM, or as established-as-evil bad guys by a quick hand-wave of "pillaging the local area") is somehow "lazy" or "bad design" or (worst of all) somehow indicative of closet racism and bigotry on the parts of those who want to play it that way is arrogant and wrong-headed. Worse, it's telling people that play styles you don't prefer are badwrongfun and that they should be taking it more srsly.
Myself, I'm not advocating for deep moral quandaries. I like moral complexity on occasion, but I also like some good kick-in-the-door action. I'm simply advocating for, "kill the orcs because of what they're doing" rather than "kill the orcs because they're orcs."

That hand-wave you mention about pillaging the local area? That flips the switch to "doing," not "being." That's well enough.

Blowing off steam with imaginary murderhobo'ing is just dandy. I mean, I certainly never think of the bandits' families when I'm hacking through scores of them in Skyrim. And if you want to run D&D like a roguelike, that's your call.

It's just that hardcoding that sort of attitude into a potentially deeper game like D&D (rather than leaving it an open question) is troublesome.

-O

russdm
2013-10-09, 02:23 PM
No. Why would you do that in any outcome other than 2? Would you automatically roll initiative if it were a group of Elves? No, you wouldn't, unless of course the group of elves swarmed you with weapons drawn like in outcome 2. The only reason you are even suggesting to do that with Orcs is because you think that Orcs have to be inherently evil, which is what I'm calling out as being dumb.



That would answer the question, "Do most people think that Orcs are inherently evil and should be killed on sight?" Which is perhaps a relevant question, with a useful answer, but it's a premise I find to be fundamentally flawed.

I second this. Also, elves are always assumed as being friendly by default even if they may not be. I think I should have a game where when the PCs encounter elves, the elves just starting attacking them, that would be interesting. Its something that the game needs to explore frankly because it helps with good storytelling. Unless you would rather play as some murderhobo...

Also, the game has hardcoded killing Orcs just because they are orcs into its system. So, most of your whole argument falls flat, because its "being" for the game, and "doing" as you put it doesn't matter. So, even if the local group of orcs aren't doing anything, the PCs won't have any compunctions against killing them. That's what the game itself encourages mind you and this philosophy has been completely hardwired into the game to everyone's approval. When 4th Edition went away with that, a lot of people hugely complained because of it, along with the other issues, and its getting put back in.

What about kobolds? They usually hang out in their cities and rarely actually go out raiding against the other races, except for the occasional gnome, and yet the PCs will go through and slaughter the bunch of them just because they are kobolds.

The fact that these actions help keep the cycle of violence going is never considered much less seen as being present by most designers or DMs or players. The kobolds have to engage in behaviors to defend themselves because if they do nothing, they still get slaughtered just cause. So the PCs own actions are giving support for them to act the way they do.

A Paladin who uses Detect Evil who then Smites Evil won't fall. It makes sense to give the paladin an ability to Detect Evil and not expect the paladin to kill the detected evil thing. That's just poor judgment then to claim that the paladin falls for using his abilities the way the designers intended.

Segev
2013-10-09, 02:27 PM
Honestly, I think the main dispute seems to be over whether "orcs are bad" stems from the assumption that the players see a band of orcs and just attack because "orcs = evil," or the players see a band of orcs and attack because "quest = kill pillaging horde."

In my experience, the fig leaf of "doing" by virtue of "this dungeon is a threat because its inhabitants are doing bad stuff that we're telling you about to justify going on the dungeon-clearing quest" is bog-standard. The "evil race" is just marked as such because it makes it easy to say, "Pillaging orcs are a problem; go solve it violently," where as saying "Pillaging dwarves are a problem; go solve it violently" might ACTUALLY raise the question of, "wait, WHY are they doing this?"

It's short-hand, because "monster" races are known to be generally evil. It could be that these are evil dwarves, and so they also should be taken down the way you would orcs. But using dwarves signals that there might be something more going on here. Or at least signals that you want to make the players stop and think about it for at least a moment.

Racism? Absolutely. Dwarves aren't "designated monsters." But it's not "badwrongfun." It just makes it easier to tell the story and set the tone. (Reading real-world human "races" into monster/non-monster races is, to me, something in the head of those who choose to be offended over it, unless the writer is going out of his way to ape a particular culture. "Historical perspective" isn't an excuse, either; MOST players of D&D aren't going to be able to say "oh, that's just like this tribe that was ethnic in this way, so it's really telling us it's okay to dehumanize people of that ethnicity.") It just gets tiresome to have everything be "bigoted badwrongfun" if all you WANT is a superficial, let-off-steam story. So if you're not arguing that superficial, let-off-steam games are badwrongfun, I think we're on the same page.

I suppose, really, what I'm saying is: it's a game, and it has a lot of storytelling shorthand. Reading more into it without effort towards stronger allusion on the part of the writers is...silly.

Icewraith
2013-10-09, 02:32 PM
No. Why would you do that in any outcome other than 2? Would you automatically roll initiative if it were a group of Elves? No, you wouldn't, unless of course the group of elves swarmed you with weapons drawn like in outcome 2. The only reason you are even suggesting to do that with Orcs is because you think that Orcs have to be inherently evil, which is what I'm calling out as being dumb.



That would answer the question, "Do most people think that Orcs are inherently evil and should be killed on sight?" Which is perhaps a relevant question, with a useful answer, but it's a premise I find to be fundamentally flawed.

Yes, I would do this with a group of elves (although the circumstances or setting might need to be different), or whenever the player suddenly stumbles upon any group of potentially hostile anythings. (ESPECIALLY Elves, which are usually portrayed as territorial and reclusive) I might even fudge the roll on purpose so the player always has to declare his response (and give him an extra turn to try and save his character if things go south), or never bother rolling and ask the player for their response and then roll initative based on the stated action.

Why?

Because it's a roleplaying game, and you may never get a better opportunity for the player to react in the environment as their character (or at least think about their response vs their character's response, and maybe even call them out on it to make sure they ARE thinking about it) than this.

The other way I'm just deciding for them whether or not this will be a combat encounter and they're reacting passively to it. "How does my character react to a potentially but not immediately hostile situation" is quite often character building/defining roleplaying gold, which is why the question is relevant at all in the first place.

russdm
2013-10-09, 02:36 PM
In my experience, the fig leaf of "doing" by virtue of "this dungeon is a threat because its inhabitants are doing bad stuff that we're telling you about to justify going on the dungeon-clearing quest" is bog-standard. The "evil race" is just marked as such because it makes it easy to say, "Pillaging orcs are a problem; go solve it violently," where as saying "Pillaging dwarves are a problem; go solve it violently" might ACTUALLY raise the question of, "wait, WHY are they doing this?"


Why can't you do the same for a bunch of orcs? Why do the dwarves get a free pass of "solve their problem" where the orcs get "Kill them, that will work"? Why does one group get the implications you need to help them out and the other gets a just kill everything? What does this really say about the players and the game?

It says to me: You are expected to just kill some creatures because of what they are, not what they are doing. In fact, they could be just living peaceful lives of pacifists but they are orcs and should die anyway. Those dwarves on the other hand who are raiding human villages, you should talk to them and see if you can help out, even if they just keep raiding the villages after you do so, because they aren't orcs and you aren't supposed to just kill them.

Does this actually give anyone other than me pause? Or I am simply the only one that actually wants more justification to my murdering than "they happen to be orcs" and want that in game?

Morty
2013-10-09, 02:39 PM
The point is that, unless PCs have a reason to kill something they don't just automatically kill it. Right? Am I taking crazy pills here? I have not one time, in over 10 years played a game of D&D where a PC (who is not stupid and/or a Dwarf with racist hatred against Orcs) sees an Orc, unrelated in any way to the plot, and before being prompted to roll initiative by the DM for some relevant reason, just goes, "I charge it!"

Ah, I see. I was unsure whether you were agreeing with my point or arguing against it. At any rate, I've certainly never seen it in a game, nor done it myself, but it's apparently still alive and kicking among some groups. My own approach is, like I said, to have a group of species with different traits, and make my own antagonists, allies or bystanders from them.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-10-09, 02:43 PM
Do the designers of the game play that way and expect others to do the same?

Apparently, yes.

Segev
2013-10-09, 02:44 PM
Why can't you do the same for a bunch of orcs? Why do the dwarves get a free pass of "solve their problem" where the orcs get "Kill them, that will work"? Why does one group get the implications you need to help them out and the other gets a just kill everything? What does this really say about the players and the game?

It says to me: You are expected to just kill some creatures because of what they are, not what they are doing. In fact, they could be just living peaceful lives of pacifists but they are orcs and should die anyway. Those dwarves on the other hand who are raiding human villages, you should talk to them and see if you can help out, even if they just keep raiding the villages after you do so, because they aren't orcs and you aren't supposed to just kill them.

Does this actually give anyone other than me pause? Or I am simply the only one that actually wants more justification to my murdering than "they happen to be orcs" and want that in game?

That's just it. It's shorthand: as designated monsters, there's probably no larger explanation behind "they're pillaging" than "they're bad guys, and pillaging is what they do for a living."

Dwarves, not being "designated monsters," have more flexibility.

It gives you pause because you're looking to apply some sort of moral framework to it that is not necessary. It's a fictional setting. The DM wants, in one case, a simple, clear-cut foe for the PCs to go out and fight. He wants, in the other, at least a little bit of a question as to whether something more is going on.

Stop and ask yourself: why DOES this shorthand bother you? What do orcs represent, absent anything other than what we get in the MM, that you feel that this "usually evil" tag combined with "doing evil things" is somehow marking a player as a bad person for not bothering to question it in pretendy-fun-times about heroically defending the innocent and becoming a stronger adventurer?


If it comes down to an assumption that any player who would accept that a race in a pretendy-fun-time game is a shorthand for a number of things, you may be being awfully judgmental of other people for little reason.


Note, nothing stops you from treating the "dwarf pillagers" just as you would orcs. But, as narrative shorthand, this is unusual behavior for dwarves, so it could easily raise at least questions.

It's like the difference between hearing, "Wolves have been stealing sheep," and, "Horses have been stealing sheep." Sure, the solution to both is probably to post guards or go hunting for the animals in question to reduce their number and/or drive them away. But the fact that horses are doing it might make you stop and wonder, "wait, what's going on here?" It's weird behavior.



Put another way:

"A red dragon has been stealing the cattle from this town and burning the duke's men who try to stop him. Peasants who brave the foot of his mountain lair get scraps of meat back."

vs.

"A gold dragon has been taking cattle from this town and burning the duke's men who try to stop him. Peasants who brave the foot of his mountain lair get scraps of meat back."


The first is obviously a bad dragon that needs slaughtering. Sure, giving scraps of meat back might raise an eyebrow, but are easily written off to enjoying the grovelling. The second is going to make people really wonder what's up; is this some sort of Robin Hood scenario with an evil and greedy baron starving his peasants?

Ziegander
2013-10-09, 02:46 PM
Yes, I would do this with a group of elves (although the circumstances or setting might need to be different), or whenever the player suddenly stumbles upon any group of potentially hostile anythings. (ESPECIALLY Elves, which are usually portrayed as territorial and reclusive) I might even fudge the roll on purpose so the player always has to declare his response (and give him an extra turn to try and save his character if things go south), or never bother rolling and ask the player for their response and then roll initative based on the stated action.

:smallannoyed:

There's a lot for me to be confused about here. How do you define, "potentially hostile?" Do you roll initiative only for definite combat encounters or "possible" combat encounters? Why would you declare initiative if you are going to fudge it anyway? And that last, "never bother rolling and ask the player for their response and then roll initative based on the stated action," that's pretty much exactly what I was implying should happen in that scenario, regardless of outcome (though in outcome 2, in almost all games, I would simply say, "roll initiative), which you then proceeded to chide me for. Or am I reading wrong?

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 02:51 PM
Eberron took the approach that for the vast majority of creatures (orcs, goblins, etc included) there were no inborn alignment tendencies.

Some other settings might also qualify- or at least, make them not too hard to overcome. Planescape had plenty of redeemed fiends (they have their own general leading them into battle on the side of the celestials).

russdm
2013-10-09, 03:01 PM
It gives you pause because you're looking to apply some sort of moral framework to it that is not necessary. It's a fictional setting. The DM wants, in one case, a simple, clear-cut foe for the PCs to go out and fight. He wants, in the other, at least a little bit of a question as to whether something more is going on.


If the moral framework was unnecessary then it would have not been built into the system, so calling "looking to apply some sort of moral framework to it" as "That is not necessary" when the game itself has a moral framework is just brushing it off. If the framework was not supposed to be part of the game then why use it? So much of D&D is infact tied to its moral framework so if its not necessary, then why not just jettison it completely. Let players act however they care not matter what their class, they don't need that moral framework anyway.

I don't question killing orcs when they are doing evil things or going about trying to do evil things. Its when you are killing simply because they are orcs, not because they are doing evil things that I question. Like when you raid some kobold city where the kobolds aren't even bothering to leave or do anything to any of the races nearby. Why are the players even justified in attacking them because you can't say "They are just kobolds" Because it contains hints of "They are just jews." When those kobolds are raiding local villages, then killing them is fine, because they are doing evil/nasty things. Its when they aren't, and yet, players just kill them because they are kobolds or orcs that I take issue with.

Icewraith
2013-10-09, 03:06 PM
This is actually straight out of the example encounters in the DMG, where you roll initiative for non-combat encounters where action sequence matters.

There's one example where one player wants to do something (pull a lever?) and another player wants to stop them (they think it's trapped), so they roll initiative to see if the intervening PC reacts in time.

There's another example where a PC encounters a completely random stranger in a back alley and both the player and DM delay, but the Player wins initiative and therefore can't delay further than the NPC, so they take a stab at parley instead of whipping out their sword and initiating combat.

Incidentally, if you think a group of (traditional fantasy) elves on their home turf will be any less hostile to most interlopers than a group of orcs, I would argue that you have another thing coming. Especially if the interloper is a half-orc, human, dwarf, any sort of draconic-looking creature, anything planetouched, anything with a drawn weapon (doubly unfortunate for the PC since falling in a pit trap or something similar is not something I'd want to be doing with a two-foot piece of sharp metal)... basically, any member of a race the elves have warred with ever or anything that looks like it might be a summoned outsider or wandering monster or aberration should potentially result in a hostile response.

Especially if the elves are perimeter guards or similar. Elves have an extremely long lifespan to be protective of and a con penalty, and anything that looks or acts hostile needs to be put down or disabled before it can do any damage.

Going back to Tolkien, the Lothlorien elves outright stated (I believe (edit:wrongly)) they probably would have shot the party fleeing from Moria without the (audible) presence of Legolas.Edit: In the original examples, the orcs are initiating contact. Either the leader goes "'ere, who are 'oo?" or they all attack en masse.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 03:09 PM
I don't question killing orcs when they are doing evil things or going about trying to do evil things. Its when you are killing simply because they are orcs, not because they are doing evil things that I question. Like when you raid some kobold city where the kobolds aren't even bothering to leave or do anything to any of the races nearby.

Sometimes it seems like the Evil groups in D&D are far more tolerant of even their worst "racial enemies" than the good ones:

Drow of the Underdark p152:

Nearly anyone who comes to a drow city to trade will be allowed to do so, unless he has been declared an enemy of the state. Drow are considered by all to be a wicked race, but though a dark elf would likely be killed on sight if he approached a surface elf community, those same surface elves could visit a drow city with relative impunity.

russdm
2013-10-09, 03:16 PM
Sometimes it seems like the Evil groups in D&D are far more tolerant of even their worst "racial enemies" than the good ones:

Drow of the Underdark p152:

Nearly anyone who comes to a drow city to trade will be allowed to do so, unless he has been declared an enemy of the state. Drow are considered by all to be a wicked race, but though a dark elf would likely be killed on sight if he approached a surface elf community, those same surface elves could visit a drow city with relative impunity.

This, of course, makes absolutely no sense at all. The "Good" races have a "Kill on Sight" policy, and yet, most of the Evil races don't except for special cases. Isn't a key aspect of Good in the game that you don't kill people/things on sight or because of race? That's always be described a trait belonging to evil races.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 03:17 PM
This, of course, makes absolutely no sense at all. The "Good" races have a "Kill on Sight" policy, and yet, most of the Evil races don't except for special cases. Isn't a key aspect of Good in the game that you don't kill people/things on sight or because of race? That's always be described a trait belonging to evil races.
It has- specifically LE. Elves sometimes seem to bend the alignment system rather.


Going back to Tolkien, the Lothlorien elves outright stated (I believe) they probably would have shot the party fleeing from Moria without the (audible) presence of Legolas.
Legolas stated that it was his presence that caused the elves to "not hinder their crossing"

Then, what Haldir said was:

"we have heard rumours of your coming, for the messengers of Elrond passed by Lorien on their way home up the Dimrill Stair. We had not heard of - hobbits, or halflings, for many a long year, and did not know that any yet dwelt in Middle-earth. You do not look evil! And since you come with an Elf of our kindred, we are willing to befriend you, as Elrond asked; though it is not our custom to lead strangers through our land."

Icewraith
2013-10-09, 03:20 PM
Sometimes it seems like the Evil groups in D&D are far more tolerant of even their worst "racial enemies" than the good ones:

Drow of the Underdark p152:

Nearly anyone who comes to a drow city to trade will be allowed to do so, unless he has been declared an enemy of the state. Drow are considered by all to be a wicked race, but though a dark elf would likely be killed on sight if he approached a surface elf community, those same surface elves could visit a drow city with relative impunity.

Yeah, there's some fluff I'd ignore when it comes to surface elves. Dwarf slavers or something who send a (disposable) envoy to ask permission to enter the city for trade would work, surface elves? Not so much.

Edit: Looks like my memory slightly biffed the elves' reaction bit from Tolkien.

hamishspence
2013-10-09, 03:29 PM
They also made a point of saying "we cannot allow him to pass" about Gimli, before Aragorn talks them into it- with the implication that he would have been sent back across the border.


Dwarf slavers or something who send a (disposable) envoy to ask permission to enter the city for trade would work, surface elves? Not so much.

Probably depends on the city, with some being far more open than others. Sshamath, the City of Dark Weavings in Faerun (run by wizards rather than clerics) has a policy that sophisticated races in general, including surface elves can't be kept as slaves at all by citizens of the city- and on top of that, any such people with wizardly powers, are considered Free there, even if they are in fact escaped slaves from somewhere else.

The Oni
2013-10-09, 07:22 PM
This, of course, makes absolutely no sense at all. The "Good" races have a "Kill on Sight" policy, and yet, most of the Evil races don't except for special cases. Isn't a key aspect of Good in the game that you don't kill people/things on sight or because of race? That's always be described a trait belonging to evil races.

"No, John, YOU are the Orcs!" And then John was a murderhobo.

MukkTB
2013-10-09, 08:07 PM
I recently encountered a Cannibal tribe. There behavior followed a pretty simple script.

#1 Attack whatever.
#2 If immediate attack is impossible for some reason, threaten it, lie to it, and try to trick it into being killed for your pleasure.
#3 When the fight is over, if still alive, eat anything that is dead including fallen comrades.

They were totally irremediable butts. I tried negotiating with them several times and it was like talking to a brick wall. In the end, my party wiped out the entire tribe except for 7 of them. After we left the village those survivors spent their time butchering their buddies'/wives'/children's corpses and ran off. I never saw any little kids so I didn't have to make a moral decision about what to do with them. I don't know what the tribe did with its kids but it probably wasn't pleasant.

There are two points to this story. First these were totally evil guys who turned out to be descended from a cult worshiping a C/E god and deserved to be killed on sight, and they were humans. It took us a few interactions to learn about them, but making them Orcs wasn't required to get the desired effects. Any people can be evil.

Second, we did spend the time to figure out what was up with them in terms of alignment. It was moderately amusing in terms of gameplay and I don't see any problem with dealing with that kind of thing.

Scow2
2013-10-09, 09:19 PM
Wow, these threads ran away from me.


I don't think Orcs deserve to be a manifestation of evil. They're just fugly humanoids who've drawn the short straw and often end up marching under the banner of evil overlords and warlords. Goblins and some of the other 'evil' races get the same deal.

If you want a manifestation of evil to fight there are a ton of options; Undead of every type and color, demons and devils of all sorts, magical beasts, Cthulhu type spawn from the elder gods, necromancers channeling pure evil, and the majestic (but evil) chromatic dragons.

I just don't see the need to turn a humanoid race into some magical manifestation of evil when we're swimming in the things already.Because there needs to be a humanoid manifestation of evil - they are the incarnations of human evil. Not every humanoid needs to be human... and it's a serious disservice that it is treated as such. Halflings are closest to human in thought and action. Goblinoids and Orcs are manifestations of distinctly human Immoral Choices: Goblins being Dishonesty, Hobgoblins being Unjust Law, Bugbears being Bullies, and Orcs being Enemies of Civilization. Orcs are not "Tribal Humans". Tribal Humans are tribal humans. If people can't figure out how to play something that comes from nonhuman sensibilities, it's on them, not the system.

It's also important to have Always-Evil humanoid enemies from a mechanical standpoint - All "Humanoid" means is "It fights like a human" - nothing else. They use weapons, wear armor, might cast spells, can recognizably be of a player class, and play by the same rules as the players in combat (As opposed to, say, shooting spikes out of a tail, or breathing fire, or being immune to whole host of special effects, and other things that make more monstrous monsters special)


Besides, its the point of the fantasy genre to examine real-life concerns in a setting that allows for that without any of the real world ickiness and issues. If you don't really bother to do that, then you are just playing something escapist and you could just read a book or watch a movie or play a video game.No, it absolutely is not. The point of single-creator art is to examine the real world. Gaming, including Roleplaying Gaming, is generally escapism first, social commentary a distant third... at least for Mainstream RPGs (Such as D&D). Leave the social commentary to published settings (And setting-dependent systems), not force it down the throats of those who just want to kick Evil's ass as a demon-slaying naked catgirl or something similarly fantastic.

Rich Burlew dismissed escapism as petty - but in the context, I'm hoping he's referring to being a single-content-creator as escapism. Putting purpose behind your work elevates it from a game or hobby to Art. D&D is best as a game/hobby.


Here's the paragraph in question:

By contrast, the 3rd Edition Monster Manual listed orcs as "often chaotic evil." Even setting aside the question of the orc babies, that seems to raise a lot of moral questions. How do I know that any particular orc band is evil? I can't just stumble into an orc lair and start killing them. I need to make sure they're evil. I need to observe their actions and verify that they're doing evil things. And even then, maybe I should be more concerned with rehabilitating them than with killing them. Basically, orcs are people, too. Orcs in this view aren't a corruption of nature, evil by virtue of their very existence. They're criminals, or an enemy nation. Their culture is evil, they're raised to be evil, but they don't have to be evil. So slaughtering their babies is evil, too.

That's not fantasy, frankly, at least not in its classic sense. That's the sciences of anthropology and psychology.


This only applies to Orcs sitting around doing nothing.

In a D&D-style fantasy, is it really hard to have those Orcs pose an active threat against someone or something? Behaving in evil and destructive ways, as opposed to just "being Evil."

Not everybody is looking for introspective soul-searching and philosophy in D&D. But it's hardly a stretch to say, "these guys need sworded because of a specific threat they pose," and "eh, the Monster Manual says 'evil' so let's just kill 'em." That's just an excuse for lazy adventure writing, IMO.

-OD&D spends a lot of time outlining how orcs are evil, without having to spell out exactly what they are doing. If something is generically Evil (Without explanations why), it's up to the DM to fill them out. To turn the question around, is it really hard to imagine how something described as Savage and Brutal can be Evil?


The writer is clearly missing a huge thing about alignment - being evil is not punishable by death. A pickpocket stealing from a poor merchant might be evil. A cruel drill sergeant might be evil. A work-focused businessman might be evil. Until any of these people have committed crimes that warrant capital punishment, attacking them is illegal.It may not be legal to kill someone who is Evil, but that only matters to people who are Lawful. It is not immoral to kill someone vile enough to detect as 'evil', unless they are protected by a Vetinari paradox. However, most people have protection through said paradox via strong social networking - the good of removing an Evil person from the world isn't worth the pain it inflicts on those connected to that person. Most "Evil" people are actually Neutral or Chaotic.

Flickerdart
2013-10-10, 12:16 AM
Most "Evil" people are actually Neutral or Chaotic.
Nnnno. There is nothing at all to suggest that humans are Evil with any less frequency than they are Good.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 12:56 AM
It may not be legal to kill someone who is Evil, but that only matters to people who are Lawful. It is not immoral to kill someone vile enough to detect as 'evil', unless they are protected by a Vetinari paradox.

Depends who's writing.

Keith Baker, for example:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041122a


In a crowd of ten commoners, odds are good that three will be evil. But that doesn't mean they are monsters or even killers -- each is just a greedy, selfish person who willingly watches others suffer. The sword is no answer here; the paladin is charged to protect these people.

Turalisj
2013-10-10, 01:44 AM
Depends who's writing.

Keith Baker, for example:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041122a

Eberron isn't exactly your typical 3.5 "alignment rules all" setting.

tasw
2013-10-10, 01:44 AM
This, of course, makes absolutely no sense at all. The "Good" races have a "Kill on Sight" policy, and yet, most of the Evil races don't except for special cases. Isn't a key aspect of Good in the game that you don't kill people/things on sight or because of race? That's always be described a trait belonging to evil races.

Actually it makes perfect sense. The "good races" are under constant attack and constant risk of having their women/children/old people enslaved and or murdered by the bad races. And they actually care when this happens, they are GOOD. it bothers them when a wife/mother/child is lost. So they act pre-preemptively to protect those people from the most common perpetrators of violence. They are motivated by love, caring and protective instincts.

Whereas the evil races care mainly about personal wealth, power and satisfaction. So who cares who comes to trade if it makes them money? What those people may do aside from / in addition to, making them wealth is not relevant unless it affects the evil character personally. In which case he will enact vengeance.

Evil (selfish) cultures operate under different rules and assumptions then good ones. Security is the responsibility of the individual alone in an evil culture. In a good one, in a dangerous world we all should contribute to common and personal security but there are state and government policies to enforce it for everyone, because they care about the good of society.

Evil governments and cultures do not care about the good of their society, only about the good of the rulers. So they have a different sort of legal structure.

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 01:58 AM
I don't like the idea of them going right back to 1e's "monsters exist to be killed by the players" approach.
Agreed.


I feel heroically fighting off an orc horde or a goblin horde or the rampaging dragon. I don't feel heroic invading the home of some kobolds who aren't doing anything or a dungeon whose inhabitants live there, peacefully in that they aren't raiding the nearby villages or something, and whose home I am plundering like some criminal. It just feels, like I am some kind of orc and being just as bad as them.
Indeed, D&D Online at least gave context for this in it's major Kobold killing Quests, said Kobolds were usually Evil Cultist or plain militaristic jackasses who were going to become a threat to the city above, the major quest chain revolving around Captives they had kidnapped.

Then there is Home Sweet Sewer, a quest GIVEN by a Kobold so kind he doesn't want you laying a finger on the poor mistreated hunting dogs that have been sicked on his sewer home.

Of course DDO, being an MMO, is spastic to the point of insanity over this.
Purge the Heretics has you working for Silver Flame to kill Sovereign Host worshipers, HUMAN worshipers...


A Paladin who uses Detect Evil who then Smites Evil won't fall. It makes sense to give the paladin an ability to Detect Evil and not expect the paladin to kill the detected evil thing. That's just poor judgment then to claim that the paladin falls for using his abilities the way the designers intended.
...Have you read the Paladin's current "Detect" ability in Next?


It's like the difference between hearing, "Wolves have been stealing sheep," and, "Horses have been stealing sheep." Sure, the solution to both is probably to post guards or go hunting for the animals in question to reduce their number and/or drive them away. But the fact that horses are doing it might make you stop and wonder, "wait, what's going on here?" It's weird behavior.



Put another way:

"A red dragon has been stealing the cattle from this town and burning the duke's men who try to stop him. Peasants who brave the foot of his mountain lair get scraps of meat back."

vs.

"A gold dragon has been taking cattle from this town and burning the duke's men who try to stop him. Peasants who brave the foot of his mountain lair get scraps of meat back."


The first is obviously a bad dragon that needs slaughtering. Sure, giving scraps of meat back might raise an eyebrow, but are easily written off to enjoying the grovelling. The second is going to make people really wonder what's up; is this some sort of Robin Hood scenario with an evil and greedy baron starving his peasants?
No... no there isn't... both are big flying lizards who are eating some dudes Livestock and are apparently wasting enough to feed Peasants...

This is where your Horse and Wolf analogy breaks down as well; Wolves presumably don't just herd away with the sheep, they kill and EAT them...
Horses doing the same would ALSO be an issue that would probably be dealt with violently, perhaps more so because Horses DO NOT naturally eat meat, while both Horses and Wolves simply wandering off with the sheep would warrant investigation.

In both Dragon situations, the next step would be to talk with the Peasant's at the foot of the Mountain, and THAT is where the real context will show up.

Hell, I've had a Campaign Concept that STARTS with the PCs being goaded into killing the local Terrible Red Dragon, only to discover he's ALREADY dead and his hoard has been inherited by his much nicer daughter, and she's actually willing to listen to the plight of the local Villagers much like her own Kobold Servants.


Eberron took the approach that for the vast majority of creatures (orcs, goblins, etc included) there were no inborn alignment tendencies.
Which, along with the Magi-tech, is something I like about that setting.


"No, John, YOU are the Orcs!" And then John was a murderhobo.
We now need a Pre-made Module where the Pre-gen PCs aren't given any Racial Descriptions to work with outside of "Humanoid," then have the Twilight Zone Revel that they were an Orc Warband.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 02:21 AM
Eberron isn't exactly your typical 3.5 "alignment rules all" setting.

It still takes some of the basic principles behind alignment in the example it gives:

Greedy + Selfish + Willingly Watches Others Suffer = Evil.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-10-10, 04:08 AM
This, of course, makes absolutely no sense at all. The "Good" races have a "Kill on Sight" policy, and yet, most of the Evil races don't except for special cases. Isn't a key aspect of Good in the game that you don't kill people/things on sight or because of race? That's always be described a trait belonging to evil races.

No no no, see, you gotta see this from WotC's perspective: This is so PCs (who are invariably Lawful Good) can have an adventure in a Drow city besides "massive battle in the streets vs. waves and waves of drow" without having to resort to something so distasteful and dishonest as adopting a disguise.

Nobody ever plays one of the evil races so the problem doesn't apply in reverse, so Good races can Kill On Sight all they want.

Turalisj
2013-10-10, 04:47 AM
Nobody ever plays one of the evil races so the problem doesn't apply in reverse, so Good races can Kill On Sight all they want.

I think you forgot the blue text there.

Morty
2013-10-10, 06:56 AM
Because there needs to be a humanoid manifestation of evil - they are the incarnations of human evil. Not every humanoid needs to be human... and it's a serious disservice that it is treated as such. Halflings are closest to human in thought and action. Goblinoids and Orcs are manifestations of distinctly human Immoral Choices: Goblins being Dishonesty, Hobgoblins being Unjust Law, Bugbears being Bullies, and Orcs being Enemies of Civilization. Orcs are not "Tribal Humans". Tribal Humans are tribal humans. If people can't figure out how to play something that comes from nonhuman sensibilities, it's on them, not the system.

It's also important to have Always-Evil humanoid enemies from a mechanical standpoint - All "Humanoid" means is "It fights like a human" - nothing else. They use weapons, wear armor, might cast spells, can recognizably be of a player class, and play by the same rules as the players in combat (As opposed to, say, shooting spikes out of a tail, or breathing fire, or being immune to whole host of special effects, and other things that make more monstrous monsters special)


I really think that as a society, we should grow out of trying to externalize our vices and failings. You know who personifies and manifests human evils? Humans.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-10-10, 07:06 AM
I really think that as a society, we should grow out of trying to externalize our vices and failings. You know who personifies and manifests human evils? Humans.

Many authors have used supernatural-elements-as-metaphor to great effect, and I don't think this is something we should exclude from roleplaying games. The irony comes in when we use "Orcs are a metaphor for human savagery" to rationalize human savagery.

Cavelcade
2013-10-10, 07:19 AM
Many authors have used supernatural-elements-as-metaphor to great effect, and I don't think this is something we should exclude from roleplaying games. The irony comes in when we use "Orcs are a metaphor for human savagery" to rationalize human savagery.

Oh my god, thank you! I've been trying to properly word this thought for a long time - can I sig this?

Craft (Cheese)
2013-10-10, 07:24 AM
Sure, go ahead.

Segev
2013-10-10, 07:42 AM
This is where your Horse and Wolf analogy breaks down as well; Wolves presumably don't just herd away with the sheep, they kill and EAT them...
Horses doing the same would ALSO be an issue that would probably be dealt with violently, perhaps more so because Horses DO NOT naturally eat meat, while both Horses and Wolves simply wandering off with the sheep would warrant investigation.No, the analogy doesn't break down here. You are, in fact, making my point for me.

Horses AREN'T normally meat-eaters. But if both horses and wolves are stealing the sheep and the sheep aren't coming back, it's the same problem.

That you accord horses the thought, "well, maybe they're not eating the sheep, because that's not what horses do," makes my point. The dwarven bandits may (or may not) cause the players to wonder, "is there more to this than greedy bandits taking stuff for themselves?" The orcs, like the wolves, would just be assumed to be acting according to type and not warrant much deeper thought unless and until something incongruous came up.

So the analogy doesn't break down at all; it only reveals exactly what it's intended to: the difference in race of creature performing the act shifts it from "expected behavior; handle as standard adventure" to "investigate because something's up."

Of course, there are those who might investigate what's up with wolves stealing sheep and orc banditry, too. Many adventures doubtless would have "more going on" with it than the obvious if it wasn't just a device to get the PCs out and looking in a particular area for a hook into a more interesting plot. But whereas with "horses stealing sheep," you would have people already looking for what's causing this oddity, with "wolves stealing sheep," you'd need to hope that the players look hard enough at it for you to showcase some actual odd behavior that subverts the trope.

Both are valid techniques, and evoke different feels. One is obviously an investigation of something wrong from the get-go; the other is a discovery that there's something wrong.

Morty
2013-10-10, 07:43 AM
Many authors have used supernatural-elements-as-metaphor to great effect, and I don't think this is something we should exclude from roleplaying games. The irony comes in when we use "Orcs are a metaphor for human savagery" to rationalize human savagery.

Pretty much.

Also, there's no doubt that using supernatural as a metaphor can be used to great effect; but making them personify human vices so human and human-ish PCs can feel better in comparison even as they kill them... is not a great effect.

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 08:59 AM
No, the analogy doesn't break down here. You are, in fact, making my point for me.

Horses AREN'T normally meat-eaters. But if both horses and wolves are stealing the sheep and the sheep aren't coming back, it's the same problem.

That you accord horses the thought, "well, maybe they're not eating the sheep, because that's not what horses do," makes my point. The dwarven bandits may (or may not) cause the players to wonder, "is there more to this than greedy bandits taking stuff for themselves?" The orcs, like the wolves, would just be assumed to be acting according to type and not warrant much deeper thought unless and until something incongruous came up.

So the analogy doesn't break down at all; it only reveals exactly what it's intended to: the difference in race of creature performing the act shifts it from "expected behavior; handle as standard adventure" to "investigate because something's up."

Of course, there are those who might investigate what's up with wolves stealing sheep and orc banditry, too. Many adventures doubtless would have "more going on" with it than the obvious if it wasn't just a device to get the PCs out and looking in a particular area for a hook into a more interesting plot. But whereas with "horses stealing sheep," you would have people already looking for what's causing this oddity, with "wolves stealing sheep," you'd need to hope that the players look hard enough at it for you to showcase some actual odd behavior that subverts the trope.

Both are valid techniques, and evoke different feels. One is obviously an investigation of something wrong from the get-go; the other is a discovery that there's something wrong.
No, because again, if they were eating them the Wolves would KILL the sheep outright.
That means sheep blood out in the fields, signs of struggle, and the eventual half eaten sheep carcasses turning up.
There has to be evidence that the wolves are doing something to the sheep, because farmers don’t have the time to go out and kill every potential predator.
So if sheep are just disappearing without a trace it would warrant investigation, since someone might just be rustling the flock.
If people saw the wolves herding away sheep without killing them, that would raise just as many red flags as horses suddenly developing a taste for lamb chops, because the carnivorous wolves simply killing and eating the sheep is something natural.

You see, it’s all about CONTEXT!
Sapient beings becoming bandits may simply be a result of them choosing to steal and pillage, making the only difference between the Orc and Dwarven Bandits their ethnicity.
Could their ethnicity have been an influence in this decision?
It’s very possible, such a thing does happen in reality due to social-economic structures, but then that would be a key element to the fictional world the game is trying to build.

There is a REASON why my Mookerson family of Characters are all True Neutral; They are various City Guards who’s most trusted method of problem solving is to simply kill the offender.
Yes they are slightly racist due to their “human’s are superior” training, but that doesn’t stop them from killing a human thief any less readily than an Orc Raider.

Scow2
2013-10-10, 11:10 AM
I really think that as a society, we should grow out of trying to externalize our vices and failings. You know who personifies and manifests human evils? Humans.And as a transhuman escapist, I think we should stop trying to impose our social agendas on people who just want to play games with their friends to escape the murkiness of the real world. Everyone and everything is simplified and idealized in games, tabletop RPG or otherwise.

Humans don't tend to manifest human failings and vices all the time, though: Humans tend to be either 'basically good, but make some bad choices' or 'basically bad but make some good choices'. Goblins are "Basically Bad and make bad choices". They still exhibit a few human virtues such as camaraderie, fellowship, and simian appearance... but a Goblin has the fantastic trait of almost always choosing the 'wrong' answer to a moral quandry, and learning the wrong lessons from life. They serve two purposes in an RPG and fantasy setting: Mooks to be mowed down, and a cautionary tale: "Don't be a Goblin."

The Giant doesn't want people treating others differently simply based on appearance. But characters in RPGs aren't people, and race is defined by behaviors just as much as appearance.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 11:11 AM
Goblins are "Basically Bad and make bad choices". They still exhibit a few human virtues such as camaraderie, fellowship, and simian appearance... but a Goblin has the fantastic trait of almost always choosing the 'wrong' answer to a moral quandry, and learning the wrong lessons from life. They serve two purposes in an RPG and fantasy setting: Mooks to be mowed down, and a cautionary tale: "Don't be a Goblin."

"Simian appearance" is a virtue?

Scow2
2013-10-10, 11:14 AM
"Simian appearance" is a virtue?To a lot of people. It's one of the key triggers of Empathy.

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 11:16 AM
They serve two purposes in an RPG and fantasy setting: Mooks to be mowed down, and a cautionary tale: "Don't be a Goblin."

The Giant doesn't want people treating others differently simply based on appearance. But characters in RPGs aren't people, and race is defined by behaviors just as much as appearance.
"Don't be a [Insert Nationality Here]."

Yep, nothing offensive about THAT! :eyeroll:

Kurald Galain
2013-10-10, 11:37 AM
"Don't be a [Insert Nationality Here]."

Yep, nothing offensive about THAT! :eyeroll:

Hey, some of my best friends are from [Insert Nationality Here]!

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 11:41 AM
TV Tropes has some interesting things to say about the origin of the word "mooks".

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mooks

Doug Lampert
2013-10-10, 11:44 AM
Eberron isn't exactly your typical 3.5 "alignment rules all" setting.

Yet in non-eberon D&D it's explicit that humans show no tendancy toward any alignment, including nuetral.

Which means that, "In a crowd of ten commoners, odds are good that three will be evil" is NOT Eberon specific. That's the NORMAL RULE.

Similarly, that alignment is about basic attitudes and doesn't require any action at all is in the normal default rules. If it weren't how could a chromatic dragon be born evil? How could a demon that does nothing but fight in the blood-war be evil? The evil is in the attitude, not in being hatched or in killing devils (those creature's only actual actions).

The ONLY alignment rule that differs in any way whatsoever in Eberon is the frequencies of various alignments in some of the non-human races.

Human alignment is as normal, which means that roughly a third of humans are evil and ping as such. Nothing in the Keith Baker quote does not apply in RAW D&D third edition in other settings such as Greyhawk.

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-10, 11:46 AM
On the goblin/orc/murderhobo topic, honestly I think it's best to leave this up to the players. If the players encounter a group of orcs sitting around a campfire, and try to parley, then there's more to them than "always chaotic evil". If they charge up and slaughter them, then obviously the characters have some sort of background, either explicit or implicit, which makes this the proper choice to make in that situation.

A Paladin doesn't charge at a group of orcs sitting around a campfire because they're "always evil", but the group of orcs is evil because the paladin decides upon seeing them that his character has some background reason which dictates that this is how a lawful good character should and will act in this situation.

These are things you develop in your game world. They aren't the same between games or groups. If you've left this part of your game undeveloped, having left out the difference between "being and doing", you need to go with the flow. The characters, after all, grew up in this world, you're just telling their story.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 12:02 PM
Yet in non-eberon D&D it's explicit that humans show no tendancy toward any alignment, including nuetral.

Which means that, "In a crowd of ten commoners, odds are good that three will be evil" is NOT Eberon specific. That's the NORMAL RULE.

Human alignment is as normal, which means that roughly a third of humans are evil and ping as such. Nothing in the Keith Baker quote does not apply in RAW D&D third edition in other settings such as Greyhawk.

The PHB does make TN the "typical" human alignment, but that can be interpreted various ways- of which the simplest is probably to make it very very slightly more common than any of the others.

Another more complicated one might be that it's all environment for humans- so in an exceptionally grimdark setting humans might be 90+% Evil, but far less, in a normal one- yet with "Humans tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral" being true for both.

Segev
2013-10-10, 01:18 PM
"Don't be a [Insert Nationality Here]."

Yep, nothing offensive about THAT! :eyeroll:

Ah, but that's just it. There are no real-world "goblins." You're not telling anybody real that they're a bad person who deserves to be maligned just by virtue of their birth when you say, "don't be a goblin." You are, instead, pointing at a set of stereotyped characteristics that are bad when humans do them and are illustrated in a fictional species that is not human but close enough that we can see ourselves reflected poorly in them, and saying, "don't act like them."

Reading it as racism - of the human-on-human skin-color-based sort - is projection. Goblins and orcs are bad because it's their nature, and this is fine in a pretendy-fun-times game where you go beat up the bad guys. It's like putting the bad guys in an FPS in arm bands with swatikas on them: you know these are bad people, and you don't have to dwell on whether or not they were "good fathers to their kids" or some such guilt trip.

Does the fact that the only people suggesting we should view "don't be a goblin" as equivalent to "don't be [human ethnicity]" are the ones claiming racism against other humans is bad not strike anybody else as...odd?

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-10, 01:21 PM
Does the fact that the only people suggesting we should view "don't be a goblin" as equivalent to "don't be [human ethnicity]" are the ones claiming racism against other humans is bad not strike anybody else as...odd?
Are... are you... are you arguing that racism isn't bad?

Eric Tolle
2013-10-10, 01:22 PM
It's also important to have Always-Evil humanoid enemies from a mechanical standpoint - All "Humanoid" means is "It fights like a human" - nothing else. They use weapons, wear armor, might cast spells, can recognizably be of a player class, and play by the same rules as the players in combat (As opposed to, say, shooting spikes out of a tail, or breathing fire, or being immune to whole host of special effects, and other things that make more monstrous monsters special)

This is why it needs a mechanism to go along with this that measures the likelihood of the always-evil enemy attacking, based on threat level and range. We could call it "aggro", based on how aggravated the orcs are. This way your ranger could "kite" an orc by shooting it and retreating, without alerting the mass of orcs, while on the other hand, a mage tossing a fireball would cause them all to descend on him. This could be easily implemented with a table or simple equation.

Now, if they could only improve D&D's graphics and networking capabilities...

Amidus Drexel
2013-10-10, 01:27 PM
Are... are you... are you arguing that racism isn't bad?

The point of his argument is that fantasy species/races like elves, orcs, goblins, etc. aren't equivalent to human ethnicities/races, and treating them the same way is a misguided way of going about things. (for relatively well-explained reasons)

I don't know what he means by that last bit, though.

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-10, 01:32 PM
The point of his argument is that fantasy species/races like elves, orcs, goblins, etc. aren't equivalent to human ethnicities/races, and treating them the same way is a misguided way of going about things. (for relatively well-explained reasons)

I don't know what he means by that last bit, though.
Yeah, the bit I quoted is what I was replying to, not the entire thing. I don't think there is anyone claiming that racism against other humans is good, yet he finds it odd that people are claiming it is bad?

Honestly I was with him up until that. Some people just want to kill evil, some people want a functioning world with grey areas, both are valid ways to play. I think whatever works in your game is the best way to play it.

Oracle_Hunter
2013-10-10, 01:32 PM
In the hopes that we can stop rehashing Alignment Arguments and write about something else for a bit, here's a link (http://oraclehunter.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/dd-next-final-playtest-packet-review/) to my brief review of the Final 5e Playtest Packet.

Cross-posted below for ease of reading/quoting
Shortly after the final D&D Next Playtest Pack was released, a friend of mine chided me for forming opinions on D&D Next without giving the final packet a thorough read-through. As a result, I used my travel time to-and-from a wedding as an opportunity to read through the packet and do my best to analyze it. While it is obviously not the final product, I hope that the system laid out in this packet will bear some resemblance to the final product; if not, then forming opinions on it is an exercise in futility. For my Analysis, I am focusing on game elements that I found promising enough to include in Gold & Glory, so that I will have something concrete to compare D&D Next to. Each section will have four elements:

Background: A brief description of the mechanic and why I thought it was interesting & valuable enough to include in Gold & Glory

D&D Next: How D&D Next utilizes the mechanic

Gold & Glory: How Gold & Glory utilizes (or will utilize) the mechanic

Analysis: A paragraph in which I highlight the differences between D&D Next's usage and Gold & Glory's usage, and the strengths and weaknesses that those differences represent.

(1) Advantage / Disadvantage (“AD/DA”)
Background: A system for representing situational bonuses or penalties at attempting various tasks. If you have a situational bonus you roll two dice and choose the highest value; if you have a situational penalty you roll two dice and choose the lowest value. There is some interaction between Advantages and Disadvantages when both are present in a given situation. I saw this mechanic as a way to get away from the “bonus calculus” that D&D has acquired since 3rd Edition in which so many different game elements can affect a given action that Players have to spend a lot of time keeping track of their net modifier on a task, even when the task is routine!

D&D Next: You either have Advantage, Disadvantage, or Neither on any given roll. If there is some Advantage and Disadvantage present in any situation (even if in unequal quantities) then Neither is used. Degree of Advantage or Disadvantage is irrelevant; you will only roll up to 2 dice based on this mechanic. Some other mechanics (e.g. the Lucky Feat) permit the AD/DA effect without interacting with the AD/DA mechanic and others (e.g. the Bless spell) which provide situational bonuses that are not AD/DA.

Gold & Glory: All situational or temporary bonuses are expressed as Advantage or Disadvantage. AD/DA stacks in combat up to 3 dice (i.e. “double advantage” or “double disadvantage”) while in Skill Checks it can go as high as +/- 6 dice, due to the central roll that AD/DA plays in the Gold & Glory Skill system. Additionally, contested Skill Checks (e.g. arm-wrestling, holding a door closed) are resolved by subtracting each side's Advantages from the other and letting the one with net Advantage roll with a Difficulty Class (“DC”) equal to 10 + the opponent's Skill Bonus. No mechanic will give AD/DA -like effects without being AD/DA.

Analysis: D&D Next's approach provides easy resolution of AD/DA state in combat compared to Gold & Glory's approach, but it retains the plethora of situational bonuses that it was meant to replace. Additionally, D&D Next includes ways to get AD/DA-like effects without interacting with the AD/DA system – a classic recipe for confusion, particularly as D&D Next introduces new Feats, Classes and Spells with each new expansion. One concern with Gold & Glory's approach is that the AD/DA mechanic has a strong statistical effect on dice rolls, particularly when stacked, which could result in “statistically certain hits & misses” – this, presumably, is why AD/DA in D&D Next does not stack. But, without cautious restraint in granting AD/DA, you can end up with humorous results such as the following: a Blind, Frightened, Intoxicated, Prone and Restrained Raging Barbarian targeting an Invisible, Dodging opponent has as good a chance of hitting as a standing and sober Fighter with Advantage despite there being a 5 Disadvantage gap between the two. Likewise, the most skilled bladesman with countless sources of Advantage has none against a Peasant who is Dodging.

(2) Legendary & Lair
Background: A system for creating monsters capable of challenging a party of adventurers by themselves. The Legendary mechanic allowed you to give monsters additional actions each Round that could be used for extra attacks, extra movement, avoiding bad effects and the like. The Lair mechanic permitted Legendary Monsters to affect the party while the Monster wasn't even in the same room and made fights with Legendary Monsters in their Lairs particularly dangerous. I appreciated the extension of the collective wisdom on building Solo Monsters in 4th Edition D&D and the Lair mechanic provided a simple structure for enhancing the dangerousness of certain monsters, not to mention a way to model dungeon-wide defenses.

D&D Next: I cannot find any mention of the Legendary or Lair mechanics in the latest playtest packet, so I will refer to the Legends & Lore post which first (and last?) mentioned it. The Legendary mechanic explicitly lets Legendary Creatures “Ignore Your Silly Action Economy” by granting them extra “actions” which are either actual actions (e.g. attacks, movement) or can be spent as points to regain limited resources possessed by the Legendary Creature (e.g. Breath Attacks for Dragons). The Lair mechanic is half fluff (e.g. water sources become fouled within 5 miles of a Legendary Black Dragon lair) and half combat resources. Lair Actions include one terrain attack per turn (e.g. surge of water to knock down opponents) and extra options that Legendary Actions can be spent on. Lair Actions can only be used while the Legendary Creature is in the Lair and in the same room as the targets.

Gold & Glory: I divided up Legendary & Lair into a mechanic to be applied to “Solo” Monsters (“Boss Template”) and one to be used more generally in Dungeon construction (“Lair Master”). The Boss Template is a way to upgrade any opponent into a force capable of dealing with a full party of adventurers: The Boss gets a number of “Boss Points” per Round which can be expended to gain Saves against certain effects, additional attacks, and the like. The basic template is a quick-and-dirty way to upgrade an existing monster into something that can be fought on its own; the mechanic can be modified by DMs to make their own Bosses distinctive. The Lair Master mechanic may include “fluff effects” (e.g. despoiling water, turning unsanctified dead into zombies) that extend outside the Lair proper, but mostly is used as a way to help DMs make Lairs which can defend themselves: alarms, patrols, carnivorous plants and the like. This is another quick-and-dirty template that can upgrade a simple Dungeon into a Wizard's Tower and provide tools for DMs to create Monsters that really leave a mark on the lair around them. The Lair Master can directly control the Lair around him in combat as well, but I keep the Lair & Boss Mechanics separate.

Analysis: In truth, I have just taken the D&D Next mechanics and developed them along logical lines. The primary difference between the two is one of philosophy: D&D Next reserves the Legendary Mechanic for “monsters whose very nature is tied to the fabric of the cosmos” whereas Gold & Glory permits the DM to use the Boss Template on anything from the local crime boss to a dragon emperor. As I said before, the Legendary mechanic derives from 4e Solo design and I see no reason to prevent low-level parties from benefiting from encounters that use it. Additionally, Gold & Glory uses the Lair mechanic to influence the feel of the entire Dungeon, not simply the room where the Lair Master happens to be. The Legends & Lore article does grant Legendary Creatures “Regional Effects” but they are more focused on atmosphere rather than mechanics. Where D&D Next has “[s]hadowy mist lightly obscures the land within 5 miles” of a Legendary Black Dragon's Lair, Gold & Glory would reduce the intensity of all light sources within the Lair by one step (e.g. Bright to Dim, Dim to None) so that the Players can feel the difference between the periphery of a Lair and entering its heart.

(3) Exploration Tasks
Background: A system for abstracting the various tasks that a party might do while exploring a place. Each Player can choose a Task for his character to perform while moving about a potentially hostile environment which will contribute to the success and safety of the party as a whole. This is separate from normal skill usage, but may call for a skill check. Since D&D should be as much a Dungeon Exploration Game as a Dragon Fighting Game, I felt it could use some sort of Exploration sub-system and this Task system (and the attendant mechanics) looked like a good start.

D&D Next: Each minute of Dungeon exploration is abstracted as a “Dungeon Turn” in which the Party moves at a given pace (Fast, Moderate or Slow) which impacts their Readiness DC in case of ambush. Unless moving at Fast Pace, each member of the Party may undertake 1 of 3 Tasks (Sneak, Keep Watch, Make a Map). Having multiple people perform the same Task ranges from being very helpful (Keep Watch) to useless (Sneak). Additionally there is a Random Encounter mechanic. The playtest also includes a similar mechanic for “Wilderness Adventuring” which is more complex and explicitly optional.

Gold & Glory: I use the Dungeon Turn as described above with paces but no Readiness DC – mainly because I'm still working on a better way to handle Surprise. Gold & Glory gives more Task options (Scout, Rearguard, Make a Map, Dungeoneer, Be Alert) with explicit rules for multiple PCs performing the same Task. “Random Encounters” are adjudicated by a separate Dungeon Security mechanic and the Scout Task can be used to identify or avoid patrols. Since Gold & Glory's base rules are only for Dungeon Crawling, I don't have a Wilderness Adventuring system.

Analysis: Of all the mechanics I found interesting in D&D Next, the Exploration Tasks are the closest to how I would like to run things in Gold & Glory. That said, D&D Next has included some mechanics I don't think are actually helpful in a modern Dungeon Crawl (e.g. Random Encounters) and has oversimplified some elements that are important (e.g. Sneak permits a Thief leading a cadre of mounted knights to be as stealthy as if he were alone). Additionally, D&D Next sells the Exploration Tasks mechanic short by only having 3 Tasks of which 2 can reasonably be “owned” by specialists. Surely nobody wants every party to consist of one Sneaking Thief, one Watchful Elf and two other guys making maps?

Conclusion
The good news is that there are a lot of novel ideas in D&D Next for anyone looking for a new and different sort of Heroic Fantasy system. While much of the base mechanics undeniably echo the design of 3rd Edition D&D there is enough in D&D Next to distinguish it from its most likely competitor – Paizo's Pathfinder. I certainly see a lot of room for improvement and expansion within these novel mechanics but, as there is yet no date for D&D Next's release, there is plenty of time for the design team to expand either along the lines I envision for Gold & Glory or along their own path. I think the biggest failing of D&D Next at the moment is its failure to make the most out of the Advantage/Disadvantage (“AD/DA”) mechanic. Leaving it as a marginal combat mechanic when AD/DA could bring the benefits of Dice Pools into traditional problem areas for the d20 system is a glaring oversight and one I don't expect to be fixed even by D&D Next's release. The final Playtest packet's skill system basically follows the logic of 3rd Edition and to convert it along the lines of Gold & Glory would require an overhaul of core mechanics which, presumably, D&D Next will not be doing after having released their final playtest packet.

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 01:47 PM
Ah, but that's just it. There are no real-world "goblins." You're not telling anybody real that they're a bad person who deserves to be maligned just by virtue of their birth when you say, "don't be a goblin." You are, instead, pointing at a set of stereotyped characteristics that are bad when humans do them and are illustrated in a fictional species that is not human but close enough that we can see ourselves reflected poorly in them, and saying, "don't act like them."
YEP!
A sub-human characature can in NO way be misconstrued as a real person, especially if its made out of STEREOTYPES... :annoyed:

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-10, 01:58 PM
YEP!
A sub-human characature can in NO way be misconstrued as a real person, especially if its made out of STEREOTYPES... :annoyed:
IF it is is made out of stereotypes. No one is saying they should grab a pamphlet from WWII on "How to spot a Jap" or some Neo-Nazi books on Jews and then write goblins and orcs from that. That'd be pretty f'd up.

Stereotypes are created and applied to human races to create an "Us vs them" mentality, and are over-exaggerations of what is at the time perceived to be negative traits, or traits which justify classifying them as outsiders. In DnD, monsters are monstrous because they have these hosts of negative traits that make them a caricature of the negative sides of humanity. They are the paragon of "Us vs Them", being that they actually aren't US.

The biggest issues here seem to come from people trying to skin their other races as being cultures similar to specific human cultures, and others not being able to overcome the idea that in these contexts that they are not simply "Them". Both ways of writing your world are valid, you just need to make it explicit and internally consistent within your world.

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 02:06 PM
IF it is is made out of stereotypes. No one is saying they should grab a pamphlet from WWII on "How to spot a Jap" or some Neo-Nazi books on Jews and then write goblins and orcs from that. That'd be pretty f'd up.

Stereotypes are created and applied to human races to create an "Us vs them" mentality, and are over-exaggerations of what is at the time perceived to be negative traits, or traits which justify classifying them as outsiders. In DnD, monsters are monstrous because they have these hosts of negative traits that make them a caricature of the negative sides of humanity. They are the paragon of "Us vs Them", being that they actually aren't US.

The biggest issues here seem to come from people trying to skin their other races as being cultures similar to specific human cultures, and others not being able to overcome the idea that in these contexts that they are not simply "Them". Both ways of writing your world are valid, you just need to make it explicit and internally consistent within your world.
I am sorry superior Humanist Comrade, I will not let the filthy Xeno dirty my mind with their foreign inhuman thinking and instead BURN THEM ALL!!!

Rakaydos
2013-10-10, 02:18 PM
I am sorry superior Humanist Comrade, I will not let the filthy Xeno dirty my mind with their foreign inhuman thinking and instead BURN THEM ALL!!!

Can you fight the monsters without becoming the monsters?

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 02:21 PM
Can you fight the monsters without becoming the monsters?
I don't think so, because if you have to make it "Us vs Them" that begs the question, "What seperates one of 'Us' from being one of 'Them'?"

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 02:24 PM
As Kipling put it:

All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We,
And every one else is They,
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We,
As only a sort of They!

obryn
2013-10-10, 02:29 PM
In other playtest news, I'm looking at wrapping things up with Murder in Baldur's Gate perhaps prematurely.

None of my players are huge fans of the rule set compared to numerous other games we could be playing right now, and I'm kind of in the same boat. We're anxious to get back to our 4e Dark Sun campaign, and maybe pepper our gaming with a little bit of Day After Rangarok or Feng Shui in the near future.

For me, the biggest disappointment last night was when a wererat - positioned as kind of an important NPC - went down in two really quick, easy hits from the monk. Combat's just not tactically interesting.

-O

Segev
2013-10-10, 02:47 PM
Are... are you... are you arguing that racism isn't bad?

Not at all. I am, however, arguing that trying to claim that having a fictional, decidedly non-human race that are designated monsters is not functionally equivalent, nor morally comparable, to real-life viewing of other human beings as "lesser."

"Goblins are evil; don't be like them" is NOT functionally equivalent to " are [unworthy in some way], don't be like them." Because unlike real-world humans, goblins [i]are nigh-universally, by nature, bad people. Or, at the least, in any given setting, it is possible for them to be such. And saying "don't be like this nigh-universally evil creature" doesn't make you a bad person. Neither your PC, nor you as a real-world human.

Segev
2013-10-10, 02:51 PM
Yeah, the bit I quoted is what I was replying to, not the entire thing. I don't think there is anyone claiming that racism against other humans is good, yet he finds it odd that people are claiming it is bad?

Honestly I was with him up until that. Some people just want to kill evil, some people want a functioning world with grey areas, both are valid ways to play. I think whatever works in your game is the best way to play it.

No, no. You're mis-reading, or I mis-wrote. I don't find it odd that people find racism to be bad. I find it odd that those who are eager to accuse people of racism - those who seem to want to set themselves up as defenders of the underprivileged-by-virtue-of-their-skin-color in the real world - are the ones who seem most eager to say that a fictional fantasy race must be functionally equivalent to a real-world human ethnicity. That it is those who are most concerned with making sure nobody is being racist against real-world people who are also most likely to claim that XYZ fantasy race is "obviously" representative of specific (discriminated against) ethnicities.

In so doing, these champions of anti-racism are in fact attributing whatever negative traits make the non-human evil fantasy race "designated monsters" to those groups of real-world people they're supposedly defending.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 02:51 PM
Thing is, most D&D settings have been moving away from "nigh-universally" for a while.

Eberron. Faerun. 4E.

It's only Pathfinder that's tended to play it straight.

Scow2
2013-10-10, 02:59 PM
"Don't be a [Insert Nationality Here]."

Yep, nothing offensive about THAT! :eyeroll:"Goblin" is not a nationality nor ethnicity in the sense of the word we know it any more than Bloodsucking Monsters that must kill innocent people to survive is an allegory for the LGBT movement. The notion that you can perceive something that's an embodiment of inhumanity and mockery of true people as an allegory for any real-world ethnic group is highly offensive: Humans are people in the real world, and we don't have any non-humans. There is nobody that will see Goblins and think "That's supposed to be an Ethiopian/Mexican/Jew/Irishman!"

If there's a problem with D&D, its the use of the word "Race" to describe things that are clearly meant to be inhuman. There are other systems (And spin-off settings) that explore more subtle differences between superficially-different people and cultures while respecting them as people. Monsters (Of all varieties and alignments) are meant to be embodiments and exaggerations of aspects of real life.

Of course... with all this said, there will ALWAYS be room for a "Good" band of Orcs/Goblins/Gnolls, even if the former do spring forth fully formed.

Honestly... I think Baseline D&D's 'setting' should have justified "Always Evil" Goblins and Orcs, but other settings for D&D (Like Eberron) can have more nuance in the races.

Rant on Goblin babies:In my campaigns, the stance on Goblin/Orc children slaughter is "If you can raise them to be good, more power to you and Good. But the Cosmic Good won't fault you if you instead choose to speed them to their deity." But, such deliverance should be as swift and painless as possible. A swift death is preferable to years of torture, bullying, 'corrective measures', and other brainwashing inflicted upon the child, among other injustices committed by and against all involved in the process. There's a reason "Sanctify the Wicked" is a controversial spell in D&D.


Thing is, most D&D settings have been moving away from "nigh-universally" for a while.

Eberron. Faerun. 4E.

It's only Pathfinder that's tended to play it straight.

More power to those settings. But they're nice to have as a contrast to Pathfinder and Old-School D&D's approach.

Anyway... we're all WAY off-topic, and have drifted well past Real-World Values and Morally Justified discussion, so...

Any other supporters of D&D Next able to give me ways to try to convince people that the simplified character creation system isn't a detriment? Right now, the biggest complaint I've been recieving is "Nothing Differentiates one character of a class from another"... but with my experience with the system, differences in characters come from the player, not the build.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 03:02 PM
Honestly... I think Baseline D&D's 'setting' should have justified "Always Evil" Goblins and Orcs, but other settings for D&D (Like Eberron) can have more nuance in the races.

I'd prefer the reverse. Adding "Always Evil" to the baseline isn't hard for a DM, and avoids the problems that come with making it standard rather than a DM's Choice option.

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-10, 03:03 PM
No, no. You're mis-reading, or I mis-wrote. I don't find it odd that people find racism to be bad. I find it odd that those who are eager to accuse people of racism - those who seem to want to set themselves up as defenders of the underprivileged-by-virtue-of-their-skin-color in the real world - are the ones who seem most eager to say that a fictional fantasy race must be functionally equivalent to a real-world human ethnicity. That it is those who are most concerned with making sure nobody is being racist against real-world people who are also most likely to claim that XYZ fantasy race is "obviously" representative of specific (discriminated against) ethnicities.

In so doing, these champions of anti-racism are in fact attributing whatever negative traits make the non-human evil fantasy race "designated monsters" to those groups of real-world people they're supposedly defending.
Ah, well in that case we definitely agree, then. I'm honestly not even sure what fictional race is supposed to be what real world group of people. I guess someone at one point said orcs were racist against Mongolians? Although I always thought they had more of a viking raider and some roman-biased goth feeling, but I bet that's based on my own inaccurate knowledge of history.

Granted, I definitely feel awkward going anywhere with some of my friends who LARP when they're decked out in full black-face as Drow. Sure, in context it's not really racist, but the guy at the gas station doesn't know what you're doing and it looks pretty f'd to him.

Segev
2013-10-10, 03:11 PM
I suggest going with the purple-skinned makeup for drow. Not only does it look less unbelievable as a skin tone than midnight-black, but it can't be mistaken for "black-face."

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 03:28 PM
Not at all. I am, however, arguing that trying to claim that having a fictional, decidedly non-human race that are designated monsters is not functionally equivalent, nor morally comparable, to real-life viewing of other human beings as "lesser."

"Goblins are evil; don't be like them" is NOT functionally equivalent to " are [unworthy in some way], don't be like them." Because unlike real-world humans, goblins [i]are nigh-universally, by nature, bad people. Or, at the least, in any given setting, it is possible for them to be such. And saying "don't be like this nigh-universally evil creature" doesn't make you a bad person. Neither your PC, nor you as a real-world human.
"Americans are nigh-universally, by nature, bad people..."

You're not feeling the Cognitive Dissonance of your own argument, are you?

Ok, what MAKES a Goblin evil; a monster fit for nothing more than extermination?
Because you can SAY they are bad?
You can say that about anyone, but that doesn't make it true...

It is their ACTIONS which define them, not color nor form.
Monsters will always act as monsters, no matter the shape they come in, but trying to defend monstrous action done with no impetuous paints YOU as the real Monster.

Or to quote The Scary Door, "Turns out it's man!"


I'd prefer the reverse. Adding "Always Evil" to the baseline isn't hard for a DM, and avoids the problems that come with making it standard rather than a DM's Choice option.
Indeed, since evil can come in any shape or size, why should it be fostered solely upon the grotesque?

Scow2
2013-10-10, 03:28 PM
The PHB does make TN the "typical" human alignment, but that can be interpreted various ways- of which the simplest is probably to make it very very slightly more common than any of the others.

Another more complicated one might be that it's all environment for humans- so in an exceptionally grimdark setting humans might be 90+% Evil, but far less, in a normal one- yet with "Humans tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral" being true for both.Actually, the PHB doesn't have typical humans as Neutral, True or otherwise. But, we're not talking about modern humans. The reason Evil humans aren't kill-on-sight is because the system and society has made those Evil people integral to its function.

Most of that 33% of evil people doesn't operate in normal society anyway. Most are involved in Organized Crime in urban areas (Illicit human trafficking, drug dealing, racketeering, territory violence, and other horrific acts), prowling as Bandits in the wilderness, or worshiping dark gods in secret cults in rural communities. The slightly-greedy merchant isn't one of three-in-ten that's evil: It's the merchant that annexes rivals by killing and seizing their assets, the kindly old granny that has a shrine to Erythnul in her basement, and secretly murders children in bloody sacrifice to her master every month, and the respectable banker who uses an array of contacts to run an underground smuggling ring that distributes deadly and violence/insanity-inducing narcotics to desperate people, kidnaps and enslaves children, and ensures those who oppose him suffer 'unfortunate accidents' (And, when expanding above the 10, the 1/3rd of the town population that is also part of the cult, and 1/3rd of the population that is involved with the banker's scheme... or his rival's).

Killing the granny without proving her cultist nature increases fear and suspicion among the villagers, though, and causes them to cast doubt on the motivation of the killer. Killing a Crime Lord can destabilize the local economy, putting innocent people and victims of his/her shenanigans at risk of greater danger.

Scow2
2013-10-10, 03:39 PM
"Americans are nigh-universally, by nature, bad people..."

You're not feeling the Cognitive Dissonance of your own argument, are you?

Ok, what MAKES a Goblin evil; a monster fit for nothing more than extermination?
Because you can SAY they are bad?
You can say that about anyone, but that doesn't make it true...

It is their ACTIONS which define them, not color nor form.
Monsters will always act as monsters, no matter the shape they come in, but trying to defend monstrous action done with no impetuous paints YOU as the real Monster.

Or to quote The Scary Door, "Turns out it's man!"
Americans aren't Goblins. American is a nationality and culture, not a species. Unlike Goblins. Americans are Humans, Goblins are not. That's the fundamental flaw in your argument. What makes a Goblin a monster is their action, and the way they think: Even if they haven't committed an atrocity yet (because they were just born, for instance), they will commit atrocities eventually and regularly unless you Mind Rape them into being something else (And even that's not guaranteed to work).

Furthermore: the point of Fantasy is to be escapist entertainment. While men are the real monsters in the real world, in fantasy, the monsters are monsters, or monstrous acts by people create true monsters. Each time you kill a goblin, someone in the world chooses to do "the right thing".

Indeed, since evil can come in any shape or size, why should it be fostered solely upon the grotesque?It isn't. There are lots of beautiful and average-looking evil monsters as well. But more importantly... They aren't evil because they're ugly - they're ugly because they're evil. If "True Beauty is on the inside", the True Ugliness of Monsters has is so great that it corrupts the outer form as well.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 03:40 PM
Actually, the PHB doesn't have typical humans as Neutral, True or otherwise.

I'm talking about page 18:


Typical Alignments:
Creatures and members of classes shown in italic type on Table 6-1 are always of the listed alignment. Except for paladins, they are born into that alignment. It is inherent, part of their nature. Usually, a creature with an inherent alignment has some connection (through ancestry, history, or magic) to the Outer Planes or is a magical beast.

For other creatures, races, and classes, the indicated alignment on Table 6-1 is the typical or most common one. Normal sentient creatures can be of any alignment. They may have inherent tendencies toward a particular alignment, but individuals can vary from this norm. Depending on the type of creature, these tendencies may be stronger or weaker. For example, kobolds and beholders are usually lawful evil, but kobolds display more variation in alignment than beholders because their inborn alignment tendency isn't as strong. Also, sentient creatures have cultural tendencies that usually reinforce alignment tendencies.

And, on Table 6-1, Humans are listed in the True Neutral section, alongside halflings and lizardfolk.




Most of that 33% of evil people doesn't operate in normal society anyway. Most are involved in Organized Crime in urban areas (Illicit human trafficking, drug dealing, racketeering, territory violence, and other horrific acts), prowling as Bandits in the wilderness, or worshiping dark gods in secret cults in rural communities. The slightly-greedy merchant isn't one of three-in-ten that's evil: It's the merchant that annexes rivals by killing and seizing their assets, the kindly old granny that has a shrine to Erythnul in her basement, and secretly murders children in bloody sacrifice to her master every month, and the respectable banker who uses an array of contacts to run an underground smuggling ring that distributes deadly and violence/insanity-inducing narcotics to desperate people, kidnaps and enslaves children, and ensures those who oppose him suffer 'unfortunate accidents' (And, when expanding above the 10, the 1/3rd of the town population that is also part of the cult, and 1/3rd of the population that is involved with the banker's scheme... or his rival's).
Source for this?

Whiteagle
2013-10-10, 03:46 PM
It isn't. There are lots of beautiful and average-looking evil monsters as well. But more importantly... They aren't evil because they're ugly - they're ugly because they're evil. If "True Beauty is on the inside", the True Ugliness of Monsters has is so great that it corrupts the outer form as well.
AH!
So the easiest means of Detecting EVIL is arbitrary aesthetic attraction!
Awesome, so lets start purging all those Fuglys for being horrible abominations in the eyes of our gods! :annoyed:

Scow2
2013-10-10, 03:57 PM
I'm talking about page 18:



And, on Table 6-1, Humans are listed in the True Neutral section, alongside halflings and lizardfolk.Ah... the PHB I have says they tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral. But having them be Neutral does reinforce that monstrosity is within everyone, to an extent.


Source for this?Genre convention. :smalltongue:

Small towns have dark evil-cultist secrets. Big Cities have thriving organized crime operating from the most densely-populated sections. Bandits are everywhere.

How many adventures involve cults in rural towns? How many NPCs in that adventure aren't affiliated with the cult? How many Cultists are in that adventure?

1/3rd of all humans are Evil to give the other 2/3rds plenty of adventure plot hooks and mooks to mow down when they're looking for something other than Goblins!

AH!
So the easiest means of Detecting EVIL is arbitrary aesthetic attraction!
Awesome, so lets start purging all those Fuglys for being horrible abominations in the eyes of our gods! :annoyed:Only if you believe that possession of weed-whackers is the easiest indicator of sexual orientation :smallannoyed:

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 03:58 PM
What makes a Goblin a monster is their action, and the way they think: Even if they haven't committed an atrocity yet (because they were just born, for instance), they will commit atrocities eventually and regularly unless you Mind Rape them into being something else (And even that's not guaranteed to work).

Not in core D&D. That's Fiends, and maybe Dragons (some types), that you are describing.


Ah... the PHB I have says they tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral.
Same PHB. Both statements can be true.

Scow2
2013-10-10, 04:09 PM
Not in core D&D. That's Fiends, and maybe Dragons (some types), that you are describing.Fiends and Dragons are incarnations and manifestations of Pure Evil. Goblinoids are more tragic, because they do have some empathy. However, they will always make the wrong choices and learn the wrong lessons from their life experiences without special circumstances.

It's possible for a individual and whole tribes of Goblins to overcome their innate evil, but it's rare (Though the tribes tend to be self-perpetuating). It's also usually pretty obvious when it happens. And while they're still given to their nature, the exact nature of a goblin or tribe of goblins can vary in the nature of its evilness, ranging from "Childish Mischief" to "Horrific Depravity" - but it's pretty easy to see where they fall with just a few seconds of observing them and their behaviors.

And, they CAN change individually as well, but it's not guaranteed nor morally feasible - and even trying to redeem/raise an orphaned "Evil" humanoid to be good raises a "Life or Liberty" dilemma.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 04:17 PM
Fiends and Dragons are incarnations and manifestations of Pure Evil.

And still change alignment a lot, especially in Planescape. There's so many redeemed fiends that they've become an army with their own general (K'rand Vahlix).

Morty
2013-10-10, 04:26 PM
Apart from my ethical opinions and concerns, the version of orcs, goblins et al Scow2 is describing sounds profoundly boring to me. They're one-note, one-dimensional and bland. The only story you can really tell with them is 'those ugly, evil creatures do evil things; go stop them'. If a game gave me such races in its rulebooks, I would simply ignore them, because they're not the least bit interesting to play with. And there's certainly no need to have more than one variety of them - one race of Always Evil humanoid is enough.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 04:29 PM
Indeed. As The Giant puts it:

Let alignment be something assigned by the DM when he places that creature in his campaign. If he wants them to be amoral slavers, he gives them an Evil alignment; if he wants them to be scrappy survivors making the best out of their lot in life, he might give them True Neutral or even Chaotic Good (especially if the civilized nations are Evil Empires). DMs already do that for every human that appears, is it so difficult to imagine doing it for the other races, too?

russdm
2013-10-10, 04:54 PM
Indeed. As The Giant puts it:

Let alignment be something assigned by the DM when he places that creature in his campaign. If he wants them to be amoral slavers, he gives them an Evil alignment; if he wants them to be scrappy survivors making the best out of their lot in life, he might give them True Neutral or even Chaotic Good (especially if the civilized nations are Evil Empires). DMs already do that for every human that appears, is it so difficult to imagine doing it for the other races, too?

No. Because some players need to feel manly by slaying evil creatures and having to think about if they are actually evil and need to die is too much for them. They would rather have entire races consigned to evil then have to explore any kind of moral gray area as it takes away from their manly pursuits of wanton slaughter.

Frankly, this whole issue would have been solved if they used "Species" instead of Races. Or simply allowed DMs to have them be whatever alignment they wanted to use.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 04:55 PM
Maybe we could return to discussing 5E rules rather than 5E background?

Morty
2013-10-10, 04:58 PM
I don't think this discussion is getting us anywhere, so it could be a good idea.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 05:00 PM
Maybe it's the title of the thread that's causing it to some extent? If the OP changes it to something more generic, people will focus on the 5E part of it.

Kornaki
2013-10-10, 05:02 PM
It could be changed to Murderhobos: Evil by Nature or Nurture?

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 05:04 PM
"The Men In the Iron Masks"?

(from the king in the Man in the Iron Mask story being Louis XIV).

russdm
2013-10-10, 05:13 PM
There, Done.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 05:15 PM
Of the previous articles before this one (which has been discussed thoroughly already) are there any that you think need reexamining?

LawfulNifty
2013-10-10, 05:40 PM
I wish we could have more than one 5E thread here so that people who wanted to keep discussing the Wandering Monsters article in question could do so without stepping on those who want to talk about other aspects of the new edition.

For my part, I feel like Next is generally trying to enforce a particular old-school playstyle, and the article (which I read as leaning toward "kill all the orcs because they're all evil") is a good example of the trend. But I'm also seeing it in races, classes, and spell descriptions. For example, I sort of went off in the last survey on a passage from the Animate Dead spell description: "Animating the dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use this spell frequently." Even if we don't play the what-if game with Animate Dead (what if people donate their bodies in their wills and the skeletons are used to protect orphanages from marauding bands of orcs?)...does anyone think it's out of place for spell descriptions to include moral judgments?

Also, orcbabies rant, if anyone wants it:

Personally, I dislike always-evil anything (yes, even fiends). I think having the whole cosmos center around human(oid) morality is strange. Do fiends think of themselves as evil? Do they sit in their lairs cackling about how good it is to be bad? If they lack the capacity to form a self-image, then aren't they just unthinking creatures acting according to their nature? A fiend who eats souls because instinct compels it to isn't anymore evil than a tiger who eats adorable bunny rabbits because his instinct compels him to.

In this regard I much prefer the Elder Scrolls cosmology. They have plenty of god-like and fiend-like entities, but while some of them are worse than others it's not clearly black and white. The Aedra and the Daedra are often incomprehensible to mortals, which I find much more fitting for a being of strange cosmic power than to play them the same as any other corrupt ruler or rampaging murderer, except this time with horns.

Anyway, if you find that your D&D game requires unambiguously killable enemies, the standard game has plenty to choose from. Undead, constructs, and outsiders all work. But if biological creatures can be innately anything, I'd rather keep that out of the "default" D&D. Every time Wizards canonizes something in official fluff I feel like I'm swimming upstream if I want to do something different in my own world. I know that if I'm the DM I can change it, but players form assumptions about the game based on the reading they do on their own. If default D&D says all orcs are kill-on-sight evil, I'm afraid someone is going to show up at my table with a character that heroically slaughters orc babies in their sleep in the name of goodness and justice, and then the campaign I've been planning about morally ambiguous intrigues in the Orclands goes straight out the window.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 05:42 PM
For example, I sort of went off in the last survey on a passage from the Animate Dead spell description: "Animating the dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use this spell frequently."

That's pretty much how it was worded in 2nd ed (and possibly 1st?) when spells didn't have the kind of Alignment Descriptors they did in 3rd.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 06:09 PM
Elder Scrolls is a great example of subjective morality, Morrowind especially, because you get this really great culture-shock between the Dunmer and the rest of the Empire. The Dunmer are the "default" race here, so while the Empire seems a lot more like our real-world culture they also tend to come across as douchenozzles if you examine it closely. (Not that the Dunmer don't have their share of nastiness, of course.)

And then there's the ancestor/necromancy argument, the whole deal with the Ashlanders who distrust everyone including other Dunmer, and the Tribunal (who are definitely NOT nice people).

Also, you get some sense that the Daedra are not *bad*, they're just *weird.* Daedra literally translates to something like "not our ancestors," apparently. They're more in line with less-horrible Lovecraftian gods than devils (although you wouldn't know that from playing Oblivion) and while the majority of them are hostile in one way or another, you really just get the sense that their whole morality is just alien to ours.

Meridia, at least in Skyrim, is a damn good example; to be honest, she kind of seems like she's a very confused something trying her best to be Your Friendly Neighborhood Paladin Goddess and doing a bad job of it.

Icewraith
2013-10-10, 06:38 PM
Ramble!

How do you keep your heroic fantasy heroically fantastic?

As humans, we're clearly trying to imagine a world populated by species similar to us in capability and communication, but supposedly different from us in thought and outlook and physiology.

Where we get tangled up is we have no real-world analogue, so we end up with things that you could argue fall into the categories of star trek aliens (thinly-veiled humans with speech impediments or personality disorders wearing stage makeup), really scary animals (THE Aliens, from Alien), and far realm stuff.

Trying to imagine a sentience like you that isn't actually you in pointy ears nor some sort of inscrutable tentacled horror that gets filed under "things man was not meant to know because our imaginations are seriously breaking down at this point", and getting other people to fully buy in to it, is hard. Even if we manage to build a full-on artificial sentience I don't know if we would be able to make it think any differently than we do. Aditionally, if you squint hard enough at something you can turn it into something else, and when someone describes something to you your brain mainly has images of stuff it's already seen to tell you what you think you're supposed to see if you could see the thing being described to you. What's even worse is that we resort to analogy to describe complex processes.


What I think we're experiencing boils down to an analog vs. digital debate. The tabletop RPG has a lower level of resolution than real life, and so blurred lines become sharply defined, gray areas divided into parts, things that once formed a continuous spectrum now sit next to each other in neatly defined boxes. The lower resolution the system, the less effort it takes to simulate a reality for your imaginary people to run around in. The people arguing for more sharply defined alignment systems are favoring ease of play and system responsiveness. The people arguing for more resolution see the jaggies and pixelization that results from digitization and it is sufficient to diminish their enjoyment of the game.

In the end, I think a basic alignment system is incredibly valuable for defining characters, especially for new or undecided players.

(In which I unintentionally homebrew a domain-based alignment system):

However, effects that depend on deities and such should instead track "for, neutral, and oppose." Anything that isn't specifically for (a cleric, paladin, or outsider of or aligned with a deity) or against (a cleric or paladin or outsider of or allied with an enemy of the deity) gets the neutral effect. The neutral effect should be good enough to make the ability worth using. Somewhere it should state in large, bold font that the alignment system can be dropped completely, but the rules themselves should be baseline. All domains or their equivalents should have opposites, deities that specifically oppose each other should have at least one opposite set of domains. If you wanted to cast 3.5 blasphemy you would pick a domain you oppose to affect. Finally, positive and negative would each be their own domain and have turning/rebuking as their domain power, and all deities would have to pick one or the other.

Scow2
2013-10-10, 06:41 PM
Also, you get some sense that the Daedra are not *bad*, they're just *weird.* Daedra literally translates to something like "not our ancestors," apparently. They're more in line with less-horrible Lovecraftian gods than devils (although you wouldn't know that from playing Oblivion) and while the majority of them are hostile in one way or another, you really just get the sense that their whole morality is just alien to ours.Wait... Molag Bal, Meridia, Boethia, Peryite, Mehrunes Dagon, and Namira are supposed to come off as something other than horrifyingly evil? The only ones that aren't are Meridia ("Psychotic Good") and Azura(Slightly south of Neutral).

The Oni
2013-10-10, 07:19 PM
Namira isn't evil; she genuinely believes that her "blessings" are helping her followers, and the followers agree. Azura's pretty cool.

You're right that Molag Bal and Dagon (I'd add Vaermina to the list) are straight evil, I'd say LE and CE respectively. Peryite...is probably as evil as he needs to be, more L than E. The Outer Planes would probably be a worse place without him.

Boethiah is probably Neutral Evil, but she puts a weird, existentialist spin on it with her whole "I acknowledge deeds not names" thing. She's one of the more interesting Evils, if anything.

Sheogorath and Jyggalag are definitely Lovecraftian in either incarnation, not evil. Sanguine is CN - do what thou wilt and all that.

Hermaeus Mora is a huge ******* and Mephala is practically the Joker - break it just to see if you can. She doesn't even get anything out of it usually, she's just there to ruin your day - so CE I'd guess. Clavicus Vile is probably LN (his deals are nothing if not fair). Hircine is all about natural selection, so probably not Evil, more likely CN. Nocturnal is probably TN; if you don't **** with her, she don't **** with you. Malacath just has a soft spot for his chosen people and pariahs in general, you might even go so far as to paint him as a very Chaotic Good, emphasis on Chaotic.

So really, that's only seven out of seventeen that really qualify as evil.

Karkos
2013-10-10, 07:31 PM
Sweet God.........alignment arguments.


I learned a looooong time ago not to get involved with these. Especially where orc babies are concerned.

:smallwink:

russdm
2013-10-10, 07:54 PM
But the Daedra work because of their completely alien mindset which is for the most part, incompresion. They work pretty well as adversies because of that, though you can get their help. The Daedra aren't natural creatures in the world, but are so in their own world.

Frankly, i think it would be better to do a "Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, Cardassians" thing. These races/species in Star Trek have completely different mindsets to humans and have little in common that is understandable. Each one has different kinds of members, but most follow some set modes and those are pretty confusing to humans.

Take Klingons: The bulk of their cultural identity is about being warriors. They can work both as allies or enemies but they tend to be pretty strange to your average human. They throw themselves into battle in ways that humans would strongly shy away from and have a strongly established culture that works, no matter what their role in the shows.

Its something that D&D should do and how you use monsters should be left to the DM to decide without the players getting preconcieved notions. So much of the monster races have their setup based around being enemies and little is actually done to explore things like the fact that for evil all but Lawful evil societies would collapse pretty quickly and they wouldn't last long.

Monster races work like the Sith, which tend to fail massively. They wreck everything good going for them directly because of how they are setup.

Trying to make it look like a choice but treating it as something that certain races are born with doesn't exactly work well. The orcs need a mindset that makes no sense, and isn't just some one lifted from real humans and then made worse. Its frankly, not making the most potential out of the monster races to do stuff like that. As it is, nearly all monster races are copies of each other and cover the same space.

SiuiS
2013-10-11, 05:25 AM
White eagle, I get the sense you're not trying to see the other side of the argument.


Are... are you... are you arguing that racism isn't bad?

No, it was
"The same people who are saying racism is bad, are being racist by saying [other nationality] like it is bad and Other'".


This is why it needs a mechanism to go along with this that measures the likelihood of the always-evil enemy attacking, based on threat level and range. We could call it "aggro", based on how aggravated the orcs are. This way your ranger could "kite" an orc by shooting it and retreating, without alerting the mass of orcs, while on the other hand, a mage tossing a fireball would cause them all to descend on him. This could be easily implemented with a table or simple equation.

Now, if they could only improve D&D's graphics and networking capabilities...

Those are called reaction rolls, and D&D probably has them tucked away somewhere and no one uses them.


YEP!
A sub-human characature can in NO way be misconstrued as a real person, especially if its made out of STEREOTYPES... :annoyed:

You're doing it backwards. Unless the bogey man in your closet as a kid is a subhuman caricature which shows how you thought about, oh I don't know, Italians?

Goblins are not people unless you make them people. They are green, subterranean, malevolent, pointy eared torsos with sharp teeth like needles in a mouth like a shark's on stumpy legs who are made of solidified nightmare, solely to do evil. That's what "always evil" means. Not that they are some maligned ethnicity.


I don't think so, because if you have to make it "Us vs Them" that begs the question, "What seperates one of 'Us' from being one of 'Them'?"

The Exarchs. The Unity specifically.


In other playtest news, I'm looking at wrapping things up with Murder in Baldur's Gate perhaps prematurely.

None of my players are huge fans of the rule set compared to numerous other games we could be playing right now, and I'm kind of in the same boat. We're anxious to get back to our 4e Dark Sun campaign, and maybe pepper our gaming with a little bit of Day After Rangarok or Feng Shui in the near future.

For me, the biggest disappointment last night was when a wererat - positioned as kind of an important NPC - went down in two really quick, easy hits from the monk. Combat's just not tactically interesting.

Interesting. Quite damning, really.



Indeed, since evil can come in any shape or size, why should it be fostered solely upon the grotesque?

Backwards again. Evil is not fostered on the grotesque. A thing. That is evil will manifest that evil visually.

Goblins are not an ethnicity. They are a species. "Goblins attack humans" isn't racist, because "wolves attack sheep" isn't racist, "scorpions attack frogs" isn't racist (it's a parable!), and "mongoose attacks serpent" isn't racist.

Goblins aren't people until you, as DM, decide they are. Quote frankly, your over-anthropomorphizing them is irritating, and speciesist or racist or whatever. You're erasing a separate alien identity because they must be like humans because it's good to be human (white), and it must be bad and racist to be other than human (other than white). Goblins are allowed to not be human In Any way, just like it's okay to write a story with a black or Mexican protagonist. And it's not racist to allude to the differences in society between an American and a Mexican, because those differences exist and should be celebrated and exalted, not hidden away and whitewashed.

Ziegander
2013-10-11, 06:05 AM
Interesting. Quite damning, really.

Except... no, it isn't. I don't know why everyone acts like Next is a complete game. It's still not. They still want playtest reviews and notes, they still plan to do revision to the game in the several coming months before publication. If you have a problem with the game it can still be fixed. I'm not saying that it will be, but if you're playtesting the latest packet you really ought to at least give them your feedback, however negative. It can't hurt the final product, and hopefully it will help. I didn't think they were listening to feedback at all as I read the many packets before this last one, but I was very pleasantly surprised this time around to see that they do seem to be listening.

SiuiS
2013-10-11, 06:19 AM
No. Because some players need to feel manly by slaying evil creatures and having to think about if they are actually evil and need to die is too much for them. They would rather have entire races consigned to evil then have to explore any kind of moral gray area as it takes away from their manly pursuits of wanton slaughter.

Frankly, this whole issue would have been solved if they used "Species" instead of Races. Or simply allowed DMs to have them be whatever alignment they wanted to use.

Why the obsession with manliness? :smallconfused:
Im a magical fairy unicorn. Manliness is furthest from my concerns.

My concerns do weigh in, however, when the prevailing notion is some form of "you have to have shades of grey or else you're just dumb and stereotypical, idiot!", because by its nature it's divisive. Arguing for the viability of another interpretation has nothing to do with manliness or your projected misunderstanding of the wants of other human beings, it's about not nailing something down too firmly because suddenly, 99% of the fluff of a monster is connected to moral shading and then the other side can't use these monsters without house rules.

Morty makes a valid point, saying that they're bland and he can't figure out a use for them. That's fair. They lend themselves to self indulgence where the focus is on the characters and internal. That's pretty linear after a while.


Maybe we could return to discussing 5E rules rather than 5E background?

Okay!

Such as~?


That's pretty much how it was worded in 2nd ed (and possibly 1st?) when spells didn't have the kind of Alignment Descriptors they did in 3rd.

Yeah. It's how it is worded in 3e too, but everyone ignores it because it's not mechanically reinforced despite the tag.


Except... no, it isn't. I don't know why everyone acts like Next is a complete game. It's still not. They still want playtest reviews and notes, they still plan to do revision to the game in the several coming months before publication. If you have a problem with the game it can still be fixed. I'm not saying that it will be, but if you're playtesting the latest packet you really ought to at least give them your feedback, however negative. It can't hurt the final product, and hopefully it will help. I didn't think they were listening to feedback at all as I read the many packets before this last one, but I was very pleasantly surprised this time around to see that they do seem to be listening.

Ah, but it is damning, not for what was said but who said it. I know Obryn well enough that a pronouncement of blandness and lacking luster has weight.

Truly, everything I've seen in next I can – and do – get elsewhere. I can replicate the entire system with better balance and flavor and a built in setting with ACKS. So... Why would I want Next? I'll play with it, but it hasn't captured my mind or my heart.

Ziegander
2013-10-11, 06:51 AM
Ah, but it is damning, not for what was said but who said it. I know Obryn well enough that a pronouncement of blandness and lacking luster has weight.

Ah, fair enough.


Truly, everything I've seen in next I can – and do – get elsewhere. I can replicate the entire system with better balance and flavor and a built in setting with ACKS. So... Why would I want Next? I'll play with it, but it hasn't captured my mind or my heart.

First, what's ACKS?

Second, well, you don't have to want Next. I just generally assume that most people posting in threads like these ones are interested in it from a positive standpoint, not from the standpoint of encouraging people not to play it. If it never captures your mind or your heart, that's just fine. You can have fun with other games, and that's just fine too. :smallsmile:

SiuiS
2013-10-11, 07:43 AM
Adventurer Conquerer King System - ACKS for short.

And, I am/was positive about next, but as it wears on and they remove the actual unique bits, they are removing the valuable parts. This alignment debate, in 2e would be fun. Here, it's out of place, like a child copying a parent but missing the point. That is, Next alignment seems like it's hearkening back to the surface of old school alignment while missing the depth it originated from.


And I'll be honest; I only check this thread out of habit anymore. It's become a snark thread and the discussion all starts from "what's wrong with next this time?", so I'm surprised you expect people to come here with positive things, myself.

Scow2
2013-10-11, 08:14 AM
I think I figured out a way to ensure we have a race of mooks that fight like humanoids that can be killed without qualm or questioning motives.
Goblins aren't people until you, as DM, decide they are. Quote frankly, your over-anthropomorphizing them is irritating, and speciesist or racist or whatever. You're erasing a separate alien identity because they must be like humans because it's good to be human (white), and it must be bad and racist to be other than human (other than white). Goblins are allowed to not be human In Any way, just like it's okay to write a story with a black or Mexican protagonist. And it's not racist to allude to the differences in society between an American and a Mexican, because those differences exist and should be celebrated and exalted, not hidden away and whitewashed.
Ack! I was with you entirely until this paragraph, which is exactly his kind of logic he's accusing us of using. Fantasy species isn't comparable to culture.

There's a gulf between Goblins and Humans FAR greater than whatever differences there are between Canadians and Mexicans, or African-Americans and European Americans, or Japanese and Iranians. At the end of the day, all real-world ethnicities are still human and have every right to life as any other, despite cultural differences in values. All humans of all nationalities are people just like anyone else.

Goblins, however are not People. They're more like Kender.

obryn
2013-10-11, 08:17 AM
Except... no, it isn't. I don't know why everyone acts like Next is a complete game. It's still not. They still want playtest reviews and notes, they still plan to do revision to the game in the several coming months before publication. If you have a problem with the game it can still be fixed. I'm not saying that it will be, but if you're playtesting the latest packet you really ought to at least give them your feedback, however negative. It can't hurt the final product, and hopefully it will help. I didn't think they were listening to feedback at all as I read the many packets before this last one, but I was very pleasantly surprised this time around to see that they do seem to be listening.
Here's the thing, though - I know it's not a complete game and I plan on giving them feedback. I was actually kind of happy with the two most recent packets, but the actual play experience hasn't lived up to my expectations. If you go back in previous threads, I'm one of the relatively few folks here who've actually given the most recent incarnation a shot and who didn't think the packet itself was terrible.

And it's not terrible, really. I'll 99% certainly end up getting the core set when it's released and give it another try. I'm just not really excited about anything the system can do, right now, compared to every other RPG I could be playing. (And that includes other editions of D&D.)

Go ahead and call me a hack'n'slasher, but knock-down, drag-out fights are one of the things I want out of my RPGs. In their effort to keep combat short, it's become dull. And that's quite an accomplishment - to make fights both quick and boring! Damage, hit points, and accuracy are such a mish-mash, it's pretty much rocket tag.

So let's go back to that wererat encounter. Because Next's philosophy is to eschew abstractions like "swarms", each Rat was its own thing. So each of the 20 or so needed their own die rolls. In a previous packet, rats had Advantage in circumstances like this, but it was awful because that's like 20+ paired d20 rolls - 40 dice out of which you use 20.

They fixed that bit by turning it into a (fiddly) flat, scaling bonus wherein you need to figure out how many rats are within 5'* and use that for a bonus. But even then, the problem wasn't solved; three of my five PCs have ways to inflict Disadvantage on some attack rolls. More often than not, I was still having to roll a few of those terrible paired d20's, like any time I attacked the Enchanter.

The saving grace should have been the wererat, but even with "resistance" to non-magical, non-silver damage ... (1) the monk pokes through that quickly, and (2) really, the best he can get is 32 hp. As a "boss" he wasn't compelling at all.

Also! I have a Wizard with Ray of Frost and a Cleric with Sacred Flame. These are basically the same thing - point at a dude and he takes damage - but one is an attack roll and the other is a saving throw. It's ridiculous; we constantly needed to check which was which, and if I'm rolling a save or they're rolling an attack.

So yeah. I think we're done playtesting in a session or two.

-O

* Oh god don't get me started, because this is honestly my biggest pet peeve of all about Next. The whole idea behind Next is that you don't need a grid and that it's all about Theater of the Mind, but you can pull out a grid if you really want to. But it's terrible at Theater of the Mind because of fiddly BS like this, where you actually need a grid to know how many other rats are nearby. By trying to support both grids and ToTM, they've ended up supporting neither. 3e and 4e were both explicit in needing a grid, which was good, because that's how they run best. BECMI, 1e and 2e were kind of, too, but at least didn't have fiddly "count the rats" crap, so could play ToTM quite adequately. I need to stop because I'm ranting.

Tehnar
2013-10-11, 08:46 AM
Second, well, you don't have to want Next. I just generally assume that most people posting in threads like these ones are interested in it from a positive standpoint, not from the standpoint of encouraging people not to play it. If it never captures your mind or your heart, that's just fine. You can have fun with other games, and that's just fine too. :smallsmile:

Actually I'm posting here because I am convinced 5E is not worth the paper it will be printed on. I also believe that its swift and resounding failure will improve the hobby as a whole.


Here's the thing, though - I know it's not a complete game and I plan on giving them feedback. I was actually kind of happy with the two most recent packets, but the actual play experience hasn't lived up to my expectations. If you go back in previous threads, I'm one of the relatively few folks here who've actually given the most recent incarnation a shot and who didn't think the packet itself was terrible.

And it's not terrible, really. I'll 99% certainly end up getting the core set when it's released and give it another try. I'm just not really excited about anything the system can do, right now, compared to every other RPG I could be playing. (And that includes other editions of D&D.)

Go ahead and call me a hack'n'slasher, but knock-down, drag-out fights are one of the things I want out of my RPGs. In their effort to keep combat short, it's become dull. And that's quite an accomplishment - to make fights both quick and boring! Damage, hit points, and accuracy are such a mish-mash, it's pretty much rocket tag.

So let's go back to that wererat encounter. Because Next's philosophy is to eschew abstractions like "swarms", each Rat was its own thing. So each of the 20 or so needed their own die rolls. In a previous packet, rats had Advantage in circumstances like this, but it was awful because that's like 20+ paired d20 rolls - 40 dice out of which you use 20.

They fixed that bit by turning it into a (fiddly) flat, scaling bonus wherein you need to figure out how many rats are within 5'* and use that for a bonus. But even then, the problem wasn't solved; three of my five PCs have ways to inflict Disadvantage on some attack rolls. More often than not, I was still having to roll a few of those terrible paired d20's, like any time I attacked the Enchanter.

The saving grace should have been the wererat, but even with "resistance" to non-magical, non-silver damage ... (1) the monk pokes through that quickly, and (2) really, the best he can get is 32 hp. As a "boss" he wasn't compelling at all.

Also! I have a Wizard with Ray of Frost and a Cleric with Sacred Flame. These are basically the same thing - point at a dude and he takes damage - but one is an attack roll and the other is a saving throw. It's ridiculous; we constantly needed to check which was which, and if I'm rolling a save or they're rolling an attack.

So yeah. I think we're done playtesting in a session or two.

-O



Thats what happens when they have a bad base resolution system...it gets boring. Or its frustrating to play with, which is even worse.

Scow2
2013-10-11, 09:10 AM
Actually I'm posting here because I am convinced 5E is not worth the paper it will be printed on. I also believe that its swift and resounding failure will improve the hobby as a whole.
It's worth more than 3.-4 is. But, apparently it doesn't handle mass combat with truly large versions of enemies well - at least not small, insignificant ones.

Are rats even affected by the Enchanter's ability?

Balor01
2013-10-11, 09:14 AM
Hey guys,

My players will be soon entering mountains. What sort of terrain-based challenges could I present them with? How does this work in Next?

thanks

obryn
2013-10-11, 09:18 AM
Are rats even affected by the Enchanter's ability?
Yes, because they are not explicitly immune to charm effects.


Thats what happens when they have a bad base resolution system...it gets boring. Or its frustrating to play with, which is even worse.
I can't even lay this at the feet of the resolution system. It's still a d20, and the probabilities aren't that far removed from (for example) 1e. So, attacks against high AC whiff a lot and attacks against low AC hit about 50% of the time. That's not completely awful.

It's the math surrounding that resolution system that's causing problems, like hit points, damage, etc.

-O

Whiteagle
2013-10-11, 01:08 PM
You're doing it backwards. Unless the bogey man in your closet as a kid is a subhuman caricature which shows how you thought about, oh I don't know, Italians?

Goblins are not people unless you make them people. They are green, subterranean, malevolent, pointy eared torsos with sharp teeth like needles in a mouth like a shark's on stumpy legs who are made of solidified nightmare, solely to do evil. That's what "always evil" means. Not that they are some maligned ethnicity.
Wait, how are Goblins, a race of creature that presumably lives and breeds in the material plane in baseline D&D, "made of solidified nightmare?"

There is a term for what you are doing here, it's called "Demonification."
I think a certain high-horse needs to relearn the Magic of Friendship, especially the part where something being different doesn't automatically make it BAD or EEEEEEEVIL!

Plus, if Goblins were "Darkness made manifest," wouldn't they be Evil Outsiders instead of Monstrous Humanoids and ping on a Paladin's Divine Sense?


Goblins are not an ethnicity. They are a species. "Goblins attack humans" isn't racist, because "wolves attack sheep" isn't racist...
Actually that kinda is...
Wovles don't just attack sheep willy-nilly, they HUNT them for FOOD.
More then likely because the sheep displaced their native prey.
Goblins attacking Humans is also extreamly odd from a natural standpoint; Humans are much larger predators, so it's extreamly risky for a Goblin to take on a human for a meal and for very little reward at that.


Goblins aren't people until you, as DM, decide they are. Quote frankly, your over-anthropomorphizing them is irritating, and speciesist or racist or whatever. You're erasing a separate alien identity because they must be like humans because it's good to be human (white), and it must be bad and racist to be other than human (other than white). Goblins are allowed to not be human In Any way, just like it's okay to write a story with a black or Mexican protagonist. And it's not racist to allude to the differences in society between an American and a Mexican, because those differences exist and should be celebrated and exalted, not hidden away and whitewashed.
Hey I'm not against Alien Mindsets!
Hell, I even have a federated nation of Egg-laying Races that distrust vivipary species because, "How can you trust something that doesn't keep its young in a clutch, and instead springs fully formed from its mother?"

Still, just because it's Alien doesn't make it automatically ok to slaughter it wholesale, there needs to be a justifiable reason for murder to be the best solution.


Goblins, however are not People. They're more like Kender.
And what is the REAL problem with Kender?

They are POORLY WRITTEN!

A society of humanoids with a culture emphasizing communal ownership can be pulled off, but this trait was given to the Kender as a hamhanded explaination why they can be a race of thieves that can "Still so totally be Good Guys!"

This all boils down to lazy writers not wanting to take a few minutes to puzzle out the actual rhetoric behind encounters.


So let's go back to that wererat encounter. Because Next's philosophy is to eschew abstractions like "swarms", each Rat was its own thing. So each of the 20 or so needed their own die rolls. In a previous packet, rats had Advantage in circumstances like this, but it was awful because that's like 20+ paired d20 rolls - 40 dice out of which you use 20.

They fixed that bit by turning it into a (fiddly) flat, scaling bonus wherein you need to figure out how many rats are within 5'* and use that for a bonus. But even then, the problem wasn't solved; three of my five PCs have ways to inflict Disadvantage on some attack rolls. More often than not, I was still having to roll a few of those terrible paired d20's, like any time I attacked the Enchanter.
...Were they "Cave Rats" or "Dire Rats?"
Because since Cave Rats only do 1 damage on hit, you could just lump every Rat attacking a single Target into one Attack Roll, then come up with a Roll for the Damage to determine how many actually hit.


The saving grace should have been the wererat, but even with "resistance" to non-magical, non-silver damage ... (1) the monk pokes through that quickly, and (2) really, the best he can get is 32 hp. As a "boss" he wasn't compelling at all.
This is why I like Monster Creation to be backwards compatable with PC Creation, it gives you an idea how your Boss is going to fair against your party.

...Where did you get the stats for the Wererat anyways?

Scow2
2013-10-11, 01:35 PM
Actually that kinda is...
Wovles don't just attack sheep willy-nilly, they HUNT them for FOOD.
More then likely because the sheep displaced their native prey.
Goblins attacking Humans is also extreamly odd from a natural standpoint; Humans are much larger predators, so it's extreamly risky for a Goblin to take on a human for a meal and for very little reward at that.So, how about we use Cats+birds instead of Wolves and Sheep? Cats have been proven to torture and kill for sport, not food.



Hey I'm not against Alien Mindsets!
Hell, I even have a federated nation of Egg-laying Races that distrust vivipary species because, "How can you trust something that doesn't keep its young in a clutch, and instead springs fully formed from its mother?"

Still, just because it's Alien doesn't make it automatically ok to slaughter it wholesale, there needs to be a justifiable reason for murder to be the best solution.That's not truly an alien mindset. A truly alien mindset lacks compassion (For those not of its kind, for example). Such as one that finds the idea of independent thought and autonomy absolutely incomprehensible (By which I mean as fundamentally incapable of percieving individual autonomy as we are of percieving... well, we don't know it exists because we can't even perceive it)



And what is the REAL problem with Kender?

They are POORLY WRITTEN!

A society of humanoids with a culture emphasizing communal ownership can be pulled off, but this trait was given to the Kender as a hamhanded explaination why they can be a race of thieves that can "Still so totally be Good Guys!"I was using Kender as a joke (ANd intending to follow up with "Clearly, adventure modules should use Kender as stock mooks instead of the traditional Goblin to avoid these moral debates."
[/QUOTE]

obryn
2013-10-11, 01:47 PM
...Were they "Cave Rats" or "Dire Rats?"
Because since Cave Rats only do 1 damage on hit, you could just lump every Rat attacking a single Target into one Attack Roll, then come up with a Roll for the Damage to determine how many actually hit.

This is why I like Monster Creation to be backwards compatable with PC Creation, it gives you an idea how your Boss is going to fair against your party.

...Where did you get the stats for the Wererat anyways?
They were all in the Murder in Baldur's Gate Next rules supplement. As for pseudo-swarms... When I'm playtesting, I prefer to use the actual rules so my feedback is more pertinent.

It doesn't seem even like a symmetry issue to me; it's a matter of low hit points combined with high offensive capabilities.

-O

Whiteagle
2013-10-11, 02:06 PM
They were all in the Murder in Baldur's Gate Next rules supplement. As for pseudo-swarms... When I'm playtesting, I prefer to use the actual rules so my feedback is more pertinent.

It doesn't seem even like a symmetry issue to me; it's a matter of low hit points combined with high offensive capabilities.

-O
Ah, it was in the OTHER PDF, ok...


Alright, Ratboy is a Level 3 Encounter at 70 XP, making him a tough opponent for a single Level 2 PC.

You mentioned 20 rats, so that's 200 XP of Level 1 creatures, making your total buget 270-670 XP depending whether you considered ratio of Rats per Character worth increasing an "Easy" Level 6 Encounter to a "Tough" one...

...What Level and how many Characters were in your party?

Lord Raziere
2013-10-11, 02:45 PM
Thought experiment:

say that people developed advanced technology to alter their bodies to the point where they could potentially look like any DnD race possible.

would then, such stereotyping be bad, by pro-chaotic evil arguments?

I mean say a bunch of people decided to take a bunch of alterations to become orclike in real life and identify themselves as such. would then, by the pro-always chaotic evil arguments, be offensive to real people?

and say that the slight probability exists that we might develop this technology.
We already have some technology to surgically alters ones bodies in one way, and we are working on altering said bodies ever further.

therefore, I say that to avoid offending possible future trans-orc culture resulting from such alterations, I will not portray orcs as always chaotic evil.

Furthermore even if they do not become real, if I am to roleplay out a world, I must treat that world while in character as real. and I cannot treat real people in such a xenophobic manner, so even if they are not real people, I must treat them as if they are.

furthermore even if they are not real, they are still extremely similar enough to real world racism problems, that I do not see any difference, and the justification that they are not real is not sufficient, because one could too easily make the same justification of fictional portrayals of real world things. the fictional thing might act look exactly the same but it "doesn't matter" because on inside the fictional thing is "pure evil". I do not see why its ok to portray or be racist against orcs there is very little difference from humanity physically to the point where its probably possible with some greater technology to look like them.

so, I'm going to continue to treat orcs as they should be treated- as equals- rather than sticking to some stupid barbaric stereotype.

obryn
2013-10-11, 02:55 PM
Ah, it was in the OTHER PDF, ok...

Alright, Ratboy is a Level 3 Encounter at 70 XP, making him a tough opponent for a single Level 2 PC.

You mentioned 20 rats, so that's 200 XP of Level 1 creatures, making your total buget 270-670 XP depending whether you considered ratio of Rats per Character worth increasing an "Easy" Level 6 Encounter to a "Tough" one...

...What Level and how many Characters were in your party?
Level 2, 4 PCs could make it Wednesday, so 70 xp per is a "tough" encounter. I used 21 rats and the wererat for a total of 280 xp. It ... wasn't tough.

-O

Scow2
2013-10-11, 03:01 PM
Thought experiment:

say that people developed advanced technology to alter their bodies to the point where they could potentially look like any DnD race possible.

would then, such stereotyping be bad, by pro-chaotic evil arguments?

I mean say a bunch of people decided to take a bunch of alterations to become orclike in real life and identify themselves as such. would then, by the pro-always chaotic evil arguments, be offensive to real people?Just because you look like something doesn't mean you are something. If I were to adjust my body to look like, say, a Holstein Cow, would it be right to meat-process me?

Now, if the people who decided to change themselves to look like Orcs, and fully adopt orc mindsets - with all the selfishness, brutality, and rape that entails (And make them genetically inherited) to the point that human thought and respect for other human life was alien to them, then they are no longer "people" as we understand them, and a menace to the world.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-11, 03:04 PM
Just because you look like something doesn't mean you are something. If I were to adjust my body to look like, say, a Holstein Cow, would it be right to meat-process me?

Now, if the people who decided to change themselves to look like Orcs, and fully adopt orc mindsets - with all the selfishness, brutality, and rape that entails (And make them genetically inherited) to the point that human thought and respect for other human life was alien to them, then they are no longer "people" as we understand them, and a menace to the world.

What mind set? you mean the mindset that you would stereotype upon them when they would just want to look like an orc? thats exactly the kind of mind set that would cause conflict to fellow people sentient beings that deserve respect.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 03:13 PM
Orcs are only Often Chaotic evil, after all- plenty of room for that to be mostly culture rather than inborn. Even the Usually Lawful Evil kobolds have much less "inborn" to their alignment than the also Usually Lawful Evil beholders have.

Scow2
2013-10-11, 03:14 PM
What mind set? you mean the mindset that you would stereotype upon them when they would just want to look like an orc? thats exactly the kind of mind set that would cause conflict to fellow people sentient beings that deserve respect.Looking like something fantastic doesn't make you that something fantastic. Orcs and goblins in D&D are defined by their wickedness first, and appearance second (If at all). If they just want to look like an orc, they're a person that looks like an orc. Just like someone who, say, changes their body to look like a cheetah is still a person, even if they look like a big fluffy kitty.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 03:16 PM
Orcs and goblins in D&D are defined by their wickedness first, and appearance second (If at all).

Depends on the D&D. Certainly isn't the case in Eberron.

"Grummsh is their racial deity, who made them in his image" - maybe - but the LE Zarus is the racial deity of humans- yet humans are not bound by his alignment.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-11, 03:25 PM
Looking like something fantastic doesn't make you that something fantastic. Orcs and goblins in D&D are defined by their wickedness first, and appearance second (If at all). If they just want to look like an orc, they're a person that looks like an orc. Just like someone who, say, changes their body to look like a cheetah is still a person, even if they look like a big fluffy kitty.

no.

a mind set can be held by any mind.

a body in contrast is completely physical and identifiable. an orc is the physical components. if everyone was evil, orcs would still be orcs, because that is their body.

the wickedness you proclaim to define orcs, can show up in any race. you would be saying that someone who looks completely human but has this mindset you speak of, is an orc, which doesn't make any sense at all.

your speaking out against a specific mindset, then there is no reason to call that mind set an orc, and no reason to attach it to the physical features of an orc, since that orc could have a human mind, therefore an orc is not automatically evil.

races are defined by their physical features first, not by their minds, get it right. the physical features have no impact upon their mind because they are people worthy of being respected, and therefore shouldn't be judged just because of their body, their race.

Scow2
2013-10-11, 03:46 PM
Depends on the D&D. Certainly isn't the case in Eberron.Eberron is a non-core setting that kicks the notion to the curb because it doesn't fit with the theme... but still introduces its own form of Goblins and Orcs in the form of Daelkyr aberrations.


"Grummsh is their racial deity, who made them in his image" - maybe - but the LE Zarus is the racial deity of humans- yet humans are not bound by his alignment.Zarus is not the racial deity of humans. He didn't make them, he was merely the first human made. The primary account of human creation have them as a joint creation of all racial gods... which then got destroyed and rebuilt itself in a more imperfect form.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 04:06 PM
Eberron is a non-core setting that kicks the notion to the curb because it doesn't fit with the theme... but still introduces its own form of Goblins and Orcs in the form of Daelkyr aberrations.

If Eberron is too "non-standard" - how about Faerun? In The Orc King, the orcs finally sign a peace treaty with the Silver Marches, and 100 years later (prologue and epilogue to the novel) we fight that Drizzt now protects orc civilians, and brings murderous members of an orc-hating vigilante group to justice when they commit atrocities against orcs.

Scow2
2013-10-11, 04:25 PM
If Eberron is too "non-standard" - how about Faerun? In The Orc King, the orcs finally sign a peace treaty with the Silver Marches, and 100 years later (prologue and epilogue to the novel) we fight that Drizzt now protects orc civilians, and brings murderous members of an orc-hating vigilante group to justice when they commit atrocities against orcs.No, Faerun is also not standard. Nor is Dragonlance.

People say that it's hard to fundamentally change a race from the core books to fit a setting if it contradicts the Monster Manual... but I've found that not to be even remotely true. And most people always try to want to deviate away from the Always Evil instead of toward it - the monster manuals should present the baseline.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 04:27 PM
And the MM at no point labels Orcs "Always Evil". "Often Chaotic Evil" is the only alignment it gives.

One of the later MMs (IV or V) does go into a little more detail- and states that the most common Orc alignment after CE, is CN.

It would be interesting, given how much variation there's been in orcs:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurOrcsAreDifferent

if they choose the "new baseline" as much closer to Neutral than the old one.

Turalisj
2013-10-11, 04:50 PM
If Eberron is too "non-standard" - how about Faerun? In The Orc King, the orcs finally sign a peace treaty with the Silver Marches, and 100 years later (prologue and epilogue to the novel) we fight that Drizzt now protects orc civilians, and brings murderous members of an orc-hating vigilante group to justice when they commit atrocities against orcs.

Try Greyhawk as the standard.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 05:02 PM
And what does 3.5ed Greyhawk say about orcs- and how strongly or weakly biased toward Evil they are- and how much of that is due to the influence of priests of Grummsh rather than anything of the "orc nature"?

oudeis
2013-10-11, 05:34 PM
So is this the wrong thread to discuss our favorite derogatory names for nonhuman RPG races?

Scow2
2013-10-11, 05:44 PM
And what does 3.5ed Greyhawk say about orcs- and how strongly or weakly biased toward Evil they are- and how much of that is due to the influence of priests of Grummsh rather than anything of the "orc nature"?Not priests of Grummsh. Orcs are made by him in his image. However, he's on slightly south side of the border of Chaotic Evil and Chaotic Neutral - one of the fantastic elements of D&D is diefic influence on their creations.

However, some orcs do reject Grummsh and his ways - but they're pretty obvious as such. Half-orcs tend to revere Grummsh, but don't quite 'get' what it means to be a full orc because He doesn't permeate their essence as fully.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 05:52 PM
Not priests of Grummsh. Orcs are made by him in his image.

When it comes to Often X alignment, "nurture" may be a big part in keeping them there. Which is why a human raised by orcs is more likely to be CE according to PHB (page 18) and an orc not raised in the "normal Orc cultural environment" is less likely to be so.

Scow2
2013-10-11, 06:03 PM
When it comes to Often X alignment, "nurture" may be a big part in keeping them there. Which is why a human raised by orcs is more likely to be CE according to PHB (page 18) and an orc not raised in the "normal Orc cultural environment" is less likely to be so.Less likely, yes, because outside values are imposed on the internal ones, and have a chance of taking (Or at least being faked, giving you a High-Functioning Sociopath). They still have the influence of their creator deity in their actions and thought patterns, but they can be forced to fit a different mold.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 06:07 PM
Going by Champions of Ruin, sociopaths who are "equally capable of acts of extreme good or evil" are Evil-aligned.

Not sure if "high-functioning sociopath" is a fair term for a Neutral or Good orc.

1337 b4k4
2013-10-11, 06:19 PM
I can't help but feel this entire discussion is so much arguing about contractors on the Death Star. Whether any particular Orc or set of orcs is good, neutral or evil (can is mention again that I think this would be better solve by changing the alignment system to the OD&D system) is a matter for the DM to decide based on how that decision serves the interests of the story they want to tell. Return of the Jedi would not have been better served by an exploration of the slaughtering of the many contractors sure to have been employed on the Death Star, nor of the eventual hardships faced by those contractor's families as the entire government upon which their livelihoods depended was torn apart by a terrorist organization. Likewise most D&D games would not be better served by a meditation on the effects of nature vs nurture on the Orc tribes surrounding and hassling the villages. Orcs are evil because the book says they are, and this is a world where good and evil are actual detectable and known forces in the universe and where an afterlife is not only known to exist but is in general a "reward" for your particular alignment, and your particular alignment has actual physical effects on you as an individual. Unless the DM wants it to be so, there is no reason why killing an Orc should be any more of a moral quandary than killing a displacer beast or the rats in the cellar or a lich should be. And frankly in my opinion there is no reason for D&D to enforce a morality discussion onto a game simply because some DMs have murder hobo players or project their own latent ethnic troubles onto the D&D milieu.

tasw
2013-10-11, 08:05 PM
no.

a mind set can be held by any mind.

a body in contrast is completely physical and identifiable. an orc is the physical components. if everyone was evil, orcs would still be orcs, because that is their body.

the wickedness you proclaim to define orcs, can show up in any race. you would be saying that someone who looks completely human but has this mindset you speak of, is an orc, which doesn't make any sense at all.

your speaking out against a specific mindset, then there is no reason to call that mind set an orc, and no reason to attach it to the physical features of an orc, since that orc could have a human mind, therefore an orc is not automatically evil.

races are defined by their physical features first, not by their minds, get it right. the physical features have no impact upon their mind because they are people worthy of being respected, and therefore shouldn't be judged just because of their body, their race.

can i have some of what your smoking? It must be awesome.

AuraTwilight
2013-10-11, 08:07 PM
Uh...? He has to be smoking something in order to say that any physical body can end up being inhabited by any possible personality?

Lord Raziere
2013-10-11, 08:48 PM
I don't need to be on drugs to know that mind and body are two separate things, sure to some extent the body influences the mind, but there is no real substantial difference in body structure between humans and orcs to merit any such difference. they both have the same amount of limbs, the same basic body structure, same way of moving and so on, which basically leads to the same basic ways of living and getting food, so there is no possibility for an orc to think in an alien manner from a human.

sure you can insert an alien mind into them, but I argue that a truly alien mind would have difficulty in a human body. including the wicked mind inserted into orcs. to truly have an alien mind, the very basic way of gathering food and fighting in the natural state have to be altered, maybe a race of beings who have claws for hands and their entire body structure is designed to kill and hunt humans would fit this wicked mindset.

humans but with green skin, bigger muscles and tusks though? nope. evolutionarily speaking, there is no reason to think that an orc would think any different from humanity, and even if a god chose to try and create orcs with a wicked mind, they would not be able to avoid the basic logic of how the human body moves, which requires a humanlike mind to understand the best, and the mind would turn out humanlike anyways, because they would have to use humanlike strategies to use the human-like body the best, which leads to even more human-like thinking.

I'd instead study humans, note all their weaknesses then design a race from the ground up to take advantage of those weaknesses as apart of their basic instinct, with natural tools of the body to align with said instincts, and a hunger designed to be sated only by humanlike amounts of food. THAT would be alien.

and no I'm not saying that one's mind is completely shaped by the body, but that in order to adapt to a body, you must follow its basic logic and the strategies that arise from it. If I was suddenly put into an orc body, I'd have no trouble living the life I have now. I'd be an orc, but I'd still do everything I already do, so there is no reason to think that an orc would think differently from a human, because their mind would have to be designed to be human as well. and any personality can be in a body. any humanlike race would have the same or similar range of personalities, and therefore functionally not different from a human.

if I was put in the body of octopus however, I'd be forced to figure out how to get food underwater with lots of flexible tentacles and a completely different body structure, and when I got used to that, I'd be a subtle predator eating fish, and when I got back to my human body I'd still be thinking like that predator.

so yeah. orcs can't be evil to me, cause their body structure is too human to really believe that they can be all that different, but I CAN believe that a race is a completely evil alien race of murderers if they were specifically designed for it evolutionarily to the point where they look nothing like humans and not just humans but with a different skin color- no matter how their minds inside are.

tasw
2013-10-11, 08:57 PM
Uh...? He has to be smoking something in order to say that any physical body can end up being inhabited by any possible personality?

yes. or deeply out of touch with reality for some other reason. But given the day and age we live in drugs is the most likely cause.

Your housecat cannot be Ghandi, the president cannot also be your dog etc etc.

You cannot have any possible personality in any possible body.


On the orc topic. I like my orcs as chaotic evil, primitive savages who are omni-present threats to society who its perfectly fine to sword on sight. Can they behave in some human ways? and not neccesarily kill everything whenever possible? Sure. But they WANT to kill everything on site. Sometimes they just cant or it wouldnt be a good idea.

My favorite orcs are actually warhammer fungus orcs, but i figure they would curbstomp most D&D worlds pretty quickly so I dont often use them in fantasy campaigns.

If I want complex monsters that it might not be okay to kill on site i dont use orcs because the role I want for them in my game is that of the manageable but dangerous threat to civilization.


there is no real substantial difference in body structure between humans and orcs to merit any such difference. they both have the same amount of limbs, the same basic body structure, same way of moving and so on, which basically leads to the same basic ways of living and getting food, so there is no possibility for an orc to think in an alien manner from a human.

You have absolutely no basis for this belief. Having the same basic shape does not mean there are no substantial differences.

There could be MASSIVE physical differences on the inside of the body, in the physical structure of their brain and its chemistry.

Assuming just because 2 things LOOK alike that they must BE alike is the last mistake I would make expect you to make from the other posts of yours I've seen.

AuraTwilight
2013-10-11, 09:06 PM
yes. or deeply out of touch with reality for some other reason. But given the day and age we live in drugs is the most likely cause.

Your housecat cannot be Ghandi, the president cannot also be your dog etc etc.

You cannot have any possible personality in any possible body.

Well, strictly speaking, the president can be like a dog. There's a fetish for that, y'know.

But yes, while your point is valid, I think you're missing the forest for the trees and being pedantic; Raziere was speaking exclusively in regard to sentient beings; he wasn't including animals in his point, so you're being disingenuous and a little bit fallacious.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-11, 09:10 PM
yes. or deeply out of touch with reality for some other reason. But given the day and age we live in drugs is the most likely cause.

Your housecat cannot be Ghandi, the president cannot also be your dog etc etc.

You cannot have any possible personality in any possible body.


Eclipse Phase says hi. also thanks for the Ghandi Cat character idea for Eclipse Phase. he will make a great social character.

also for your info, I hate drugs so much that I honestly wish that all recreational drugs would get destroyed, but hey, what can you do? people like their stupid vices for some reason, pity the Prohibition didn't work at all.

and yes you can. the personality just has to adapt to having four legs and no way to manipulate objects with opposable thumbs, assuming they can still talk. if they can't….well some form of insanity might set in, but that would happen with any personality.

Edit: as for massively different internal stuffs….problem with that is that it would all have to add up to something that still takes advantage of the human body structure. you would still need reasons for why they look human, do humanlike stuff and so on, and therefore the strategies would still have to be humanlike, the outside stuff only develops because its to support the inside stuff, which in turn powers the outside stuff. you can't have inside stuff that is designed do things completely differently from outside stuff, they have to be a workable whole, and therefore to take advantage of it, the humanlike body still has to take advantage of humanlike strategies, thoughts and movements and so on, which leads to humanlike thinking, human logic and so on.

you can't just drop an alien mindset into humans and think it works perfectly fine without alteration, sure any personality can be in a body, but if the body is different enough it still requires a different way of thinking that ends up being just like how others with that body think. its a complex structure, and everything in it affects everything else.

orcs and humans however? they isn't much difference. the only functional difference is the muscle stuff, which might speak of a tendency towards more physical activity but other than that, I don't see any difference between them to merit orcs being alien and treated differently from humans.

Envyus
2013-10-11, 09:47 PM
Just to tell people as well. Often Chaotic evil means that Chaotic Evil is the most popular alignment of the race but they don't have a majority over the other alignments, Chaotic Neutral is also stated to be the 2nd most popular alignment. And this is the standard for all Orcs in all settings unless stated otherwise like in Ebberon.

tasw
2013-10-11, 09:58 PM
Well, strictly speaking, the president can be like a dog. There's a fetish for that, y'know.

But yes, while your point is valid, I think you're missing the forest for the trees and being pedantic; Raziere was speaking exclusively in regard to sentient beings; he wasn't including animals in his point, so you're being disingenuous and a little bit fallacious.

Even with regard to sentient beings this is true.

There are hard and fast medical facts about the human brain that influence your instincts, intelligence, adaptability, impulse control, attraction and repulsion and who knows how much else.

There have been several studies that show that many violent criminals actually have a different structure in the frontal lobes of their brains that physically impairs their ability to learn impulse and emotional control.

Thats a hard and fast physical difference between one human body and another with far reaching, concrete affects on behavior.

If 2 humans can have such concrete, physical differences in the brain that affect personality and behavior it seems very unrealistic to me to assume that a whole different SPECIES couldnt have rock solid physical differences in their brains that make it either extremely unlikely or even impossible to have the same sort of personalities as human beings.

The fact that they also have 2 arms, 2 legs and a head doesnt mean they are just differently shaped humans.

Hell are Orcs even solidly mammals?

tasw
2013-10-11, 10:08 PM
Edit: as for massively different internal stuffs….problem with that is that it would all have to add up to something that still takes advantage of the human body structure. you would still need reasons for why they look human, do humanlike stuff and so on,

Actually given that we dont really know why every step of HUMAN evolution happened other then it presumably offered some advantage, (and whose to say the orcs didnt want that same physical advantage?) no you dont.

Theres really no reason to assume we have to have every step of a fantasy races evolutionary path understood and plotted out.

And since we arent even necessarily talking about a naturally evolving race but one created in a gods image all we need to know is that the god thought it would be a good idea to stand upright and have oposeable thumbs to use tools with and leave it at that.

Gods doing things for mysterious reasons has a pretty firm basis in mythology after all.


and therefore the strategies would still have to be humanlike,


Only in as much as they need to eat, breathe, mate (or not according to 5e) and not be eaten themselves by bigger predators.

Which is pretty much true of every living thing.

Actually now that I think about it that Orcs dont breed thing would have huge effects on them in the game.

Where the hell do they come from? Are they plants now that spring whole from some sort of orc tree? Does Gruumsh crap them out somewhere in the bowels of the earth? Do they simply spring whole into being from thin air?

If they dont breed where the heck do half orcs come from?

Assuming that they are as numerous as in other settings this seems like the sort of thing that would be a major mystery of the world.

Especially with most of them being chaotic evil. Seems like it would take all of 5 minutes for someone to ask "just where they hell do these things keep coming from and how do we stop them from coming here" ?

Scow2
2013-10-11, 10:32 PM
If they dont breed where the heck do half orcs come from?
The answer to this is pretty obvious (And deliberately horrific). It's not about reproduction. It's about power.

tasw
2013-10-11, 10:40 PM
The answer to this is pretty obvious (And deliberately horrific). It's not about reproduction. It's about power.

Sure but that assumes they are physically capable of the act but dont need to actually do it for their own species survival.

Since we got into the idea of evolution and its effects on physical forms though one has to ask if they dont need to breed in fact it seems they are actually incapable of breeding with other orcs why exactly would they evolve the parts to do it in the first place?

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-11, 10:41 PM
The answer to this is pretty obvious (And deliberately horrific). It's not about reproduction. It's about power.
That would mean that they're capable of reproduction, though. The thing that springs to my mind is the episode of Firefly where they find the ship that's been hit by reavers, and there's one survivor who was forced to watch their atrocities until he snapped and became one of them.

Seriously, how 'bout reavers in Firefly? They're undeniably evil, twisted, irredeemable humans that rape, pillage, murder, and eat other humans. They look different, because their insane mindset causes them to mutilate themselves. Sure, they're the result of some terrible drugging of people until they go insane, but they're not a moral quandary are they?

Scow2
2013-10-11, 10:47 PM
Edit: as for massively different internal stuffs….problem with that is that it would all have to add up to something that still takes advantage of the human body structure. you would still need reasons for why they look human, do humanlike stuff and so on, and therefore the strategies would still have to be humanlike, the outside stuff only develops because its to support the inside stuff, which in turn powers the outside stuff. you can't have inside stuff that is designed do things completely differently from outside stuff, they have to be a workable whole, and therefore to take advantage of it, the humanlike body still has to take advantage of humanlike strategies, thoughts and movements and so on, which leads to humanlike thinking, human logic and so on.
What does anthropology and evolution have to do with Fantasy? Grummsh, the one-eyed god of conquest and pillage saw all the other gods making pretty, smooth-skinned bipedal tool-using people of assorted shapes and sizes, from Moradin making the short, stout dwarves to praise him and bring history, records, and law into the world, and Corellon creating the elves to bring art and beauty into it, and Yondalla making the halflings for adventure and to connect the people of the world together through their caravans, and Garl making the Gnomes to bring levity and invention to the world, and all collaborating to make humans, giving up, and having that prototype make a better human. Gruumsh wanted in on that action, and he took the humanoid template, sickened and toughened its skin, gave it horns, and brought forth orcs into the world for the sole purpose to spite and destroy the creations of the other races, and take the work of others for themselves. THAT is why Orcs are chaotic evil. Fortunately, Gruumsh has a few of his own redeeming features that made it into his creation. They're spiteful and self-aggrandizing, but a few have just enough deviation from the norm (remember, deities also embody aspects within one step of each direction of their alignment), and a few are truly aberrant. But it's easy to tell which is which.

tasw
2013-10-11, 10:52 PM
That would mean that they're capable of reproduction, though. The thing that springs to my mind is the episode of Firefly where they find the ship that's been hit by reavers, and there's one survivor who was forced to watch their atrocities until he snapped and became one of them.

Seriously, how 'bout reavers in Firefly? They're undeniably evil, twisted, irredeemable humans that rape, pillage, murder, and eat other humans. They look different, because their insane mindset causes them to mutilate themselves. Sure, they're the result of some terrible drugging of people until they go insane, but they're not a moral quandary are they?

Given that i believe it was incurable, i would say killing reavers is a sort of sad duty rather then a moral quandary. Especially if the character knows that none of their behavior is their fault.

The character might feel bad about the necessity of it, but it is a necessity and not evil.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-11, 10:54 PM
Even with regard to sentient beings this is true.

There are hard and fast medical facts about the human brain that influence your instincts, intelligence, adaptability, impulse control, attraction and repulsion and who knows how much else.

There have been several studies that show that many violent criminals actually have a different structure in the frontal lobes of their brains that physically impairs their ability to learn impulse and emotional control.

Thats a hard and fast physical difference between one human body and another with far reaching, concrete affects on behavior.

If 2 humans can have such concrete, physical differences in the brain that affect personality and behavior it seems very unrealistic to me to assume that a whole different SPECIES couldnt have rock solid physical differences in their brains that make it either extremely unlikely or even impossible to have the same sort of personalities as human beings.

The fact that they also have 2 arms, 2 legs and a head doesnt mean they are just differently shaped humans.

Hell are Orcs even solidly mammals?

:smallannoyed:

and I have aspergers and my brain is wired differently, does that make me incapable of learning social skills? does that make me fundamentally different from humanity? am I suddenly not held to the standards of everyone else? just because I need to learn different things? HM? Well? maybe these criminals need psychologists before they start committing crimes, ever thought of that?

Scow2
2013-10-11, 11:01 PM
:smallannoyed:

and I have aspergers and my brain is wired differently, does that make me incapable of learning social skills? does that make me fundamentally different from humanity? am I suddenly not held to the standards of everyone else? just because I need to learn different things? HM? Well? maybe these criminals need psychologists before they start committing crimes, ever thought of that?Is it fair to hold you to the same standards as everyone else?

My younger cousin has Down syndrome. Is it fair to hold him to the same level of culpability and expected intellectual ability of those who don't? I have a friend who is schizophrenic. Is it right to judge and expect him to be able to conform to a society he can't even perceive? How the hell are we supposed to convince him that the voices talking to him aren't real when they're more real to him than any of ours? Fortunately, we live in a world where treatment and understanding is available for such conditions, so that they aren't a menace to everyone around them.

russdm
2013-10-11, 11:12 PM
I just want to ask for my own clarification: Are we then claiming that orcs are mentally diseased people for whom there is no treatment available?

I'm not sure how much I understand the 'being an octopus' conversation relates to 5E, but it is certainly entertaining.

Do we have anything else to say about 5E? I want to play something like a khajiit because it would be cool. Or maybe an argonian. Lets move beyond the boring 5 races of Humans, half-elves, elves, dwarfs, and Halflings and include some fun races. Lizardfolk would be interesting and maybe kobolds.

Kender, not really, I mean they are cute, but seriously pushed it. A slightly bizzaro race.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-11, 11:13 PM
@ Scow2: Menace? MENACE!?

They are PEOPLE. in need of HEALING. what is WRONG WITH YOU!? :smallmad:

Turalisj
2013-10-11, 11:16 PM
*cough*

On topic people, on topic.


Is there anyone willing to run a short AIM, IRC, or Maptools based DnD Next game to test things out?

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-11, 11:23 PM
@ Scow2: Menace? MENACE!?

They are PEOPLE. in need of HEALING. what is WRONG WITH YOU!? :smallmad:
Yes, and as recently as a century ago we had no idea about any of that nor how to handle people with mental illnesses nor how to treat them, which often left them as a danger to themselves and others. Hence Scow2's point of:

Fortunately, we live in a world where treatment and understanding is available for such conditions, so that they aren't a menace to everyone around them.

Russ, I was simply using the Reavers as an example of an "always chaotic evil" group, where I don't really think there is a right/wrong moral quandary involved. They were a well written threat to all people, it worked great in that setting, and the fact that they didn't reproduce is what made me think of them.

I am also rather enjoying the "being an octopus" conversations that were going on. I'm playing around in a setting where one of the major sentient races is actually octopus-esque. They're a "lawful evil" race, but primarily because their mentality is so incredibly alien. I'm thus far not entirely sure of what to make of them, but in the context of human morality that's where they fall. Judge them for it? No. Treat them the way you'd treat others that acted the way they do? Yes, out of necessity.

tasw
2013-10-11, 11:26 PM
:smallannoyed:

and I have aspergers and my brain is wired differently, does that make me incapable of learning social skills? does that make me fundamentally different from humanity? am I suddenly not held to the standards of everyone else? just because I need to learn different things? HM? Well? maybe these criminals need psychologists before they start committing crimes, ever thought of that?

Psychologists cannot help with a physical medical problem like that. They arent even real doctors. They are counselors basically. And what I'm talking about is not a matter of talking it out and getting better. Something is PHYSICALLY WRONG with their brain. Its like only having 9 fingers or being born with an un-treatable heart condition.

At best some of them could be treated with mood altering drugs to compensate but those are hardly a sure fire fix for anything and as soon as they come off of the drugs they will be exactly how they were before.

Non humans are a separate species. its not like american/mexican or white/black.

Its like Human/ Housecat. Different SPECIES.

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-11, 11:36 PM
On other races, I always liked tieflings, though I've never played one thanks to a lack of character concepts that fit with what I wanted.

I don't quite get the Kender hate, people just have bad experiences with players? Granted, I really don't like half-elves and warforged for flavor reasons myself, so I understand that context.

Turalisj
2013-10-11, 11:40 PM
On other races, I always liked tieflings, though I've never played one thanks to a lack of character concepts that fit with what I wanted.

A fun character while the game lasted, was a tiefling ardent. She was a member of a noble house, but due to her tiefling traits displaying she had her inheritance taken away and was essentially stripped of her station as a member of nobility. She then worked her way up through the chain of the royal guard until becoming Captain Commander of the Royal Guard.

Thrudd
2013-10-11, 11:49 PM
The answer to all these questions about humanoids and morality is very simple. It depends on your setting. There is no right or wrong, here. There is really no such thing as an orc or a goblin, so there is no argument about what they really are or whether or not they are really evil. You could say they are a savage race of primitive near-humans who are only different from humans culturally. You could have them be creations of pure evil spawned by an evil god for the purpose of destroying civilization. They might be the descendants of genetically modified human/animal hybrids that now hunt humans as prey due to hard-coded instinct. Maybe they are beings transplanted from another dimension intent on the genocide or enslavement of all of this realm's natural inhabitants. The moral question and assumptions associated with each of these scenarios is different. None of them is more right than another, the core rules have never clarified what the monstrous humanoids really are or where they come from. It is up to each DM to create an internally consistent setting which will support the type of gameplay they want.
The core rules listing CE under Orc is a starting point, as with everything. Why are they CE? Are they always CE? Is it ok to kill something just because it is CE? What does CE even mean anyway? All questions each DM will individualy address (or not) with no wrong answers.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-12, 12:05 AM
Psychologists cannot help with a physical medical problem like that. They arent even real doctors. They are counselors basically. And what I'm talking about is not a matter of talking it out and getting better. Something is PHYSICALLY WRONG with their brain. Its like only having 9 fingers or being born with an un-treatable heart condition.

At best some of them could be treated with mood altering drugs to compensate but those are hardly a sure fire fix for anything and as soon as they come off of the drugs they will be exactly how they were before.

Non humans are a separate species. its not like american/mexican or white/black.

Its like Human/ Housecat. Different SPECIES.

:smallmad:

There is nothing more for us to say to each other.

AuraTwilight
2013-10-12, 12:32 AM
--

Nevermind; my text-speaker needs a goddamn update.

Rakaydos
2013-10-12, 12:38 AM
Being an octupus?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/470128/posts/544225/image-294548-full.jpg?1374268080
Under Syndic rule, the Ishato were first used as
shock troopers and bodyguards because of their
intimidating appearance. Later, finding themselves
adept at multitasking and administration, many
Ishato transitioned to become bureaucrats and
politicians. The Syndics began to “wrap” these Ishato
in tight-fitting garb. At first, these garments were
simple cloaks with their names or titles in braille,
made to hide the Ishato’s frightening features from
other species. Over time these garments became
more elegant, colorful and baroque as decoration and
a sign of status. The Syndics were said to favor those
Ishato who dressed in more elaborate wraps. Many
Remanence Ishato still dress in overwrought wraps to
curry favor from absent Syndics.
The Ishato are in cultural crisis after the
disappearance of the Syndics. Their cultures were
bent to the Syndic’s needs more than most species,
and their traditions seem empty now that their
patrons have departed. Older Ishato and those of the
Remanence are often traditionalists who cling to the
past. Younger Ishato by contrast, often walk
“naked”, without the traditional cloaks and wraps,
as protest against their former “oppression.” These
younger technocrats are becoming more prominent
within Ishato communities.
Others often view the Ishato as conservative and
primitive, but they are hardly tied to the past. Ishato
scientists have embraced the ideals of the Concord
and the Metanoic Corps, while traditionalist
merchants have risen to the top of the Averlini
Mercantile Group. Despite the stereotypes that
frame them, Ishato can be found in any lifestyle of
the Myriad Worlds.

The Oni
2013-10-12, 12:40 AM
Uh, holy crap, did you just compare Americans/Mexicans and White/Black to Human/Housecat?

That is precisely what he did NOT do. He said Orc is to human is housecat is to human - as opposed to Mexican is to American. Somebody put ranks in Jump (to Conclusions) last level...:smallannoyed:

Stubbazubba
2013-10-12, 01:15 AM
The Reavers example is interesting: In the episode in question, they take the guy in after he attacks Jayne, knowing (presumably) what's likely to become of him but feeling that they had, if not a chance of saving him, then at least an obligation to try. That didn't end well...well, actually, in a way it kind of did, in that it spooked the Alliance off of their backs, but it created a serious threat to the crew and the ancillary benefits certainly couldn't have been foreseen. And that's kind of a theme in Firefly; Mal does the honorable/right thing, and it comes back to bite him in the butt, but everything turns out just barely OK.

Stubbazubba
2013-10-12, 01:18 AM
That is precisely what he did NOT do. He said Orc is to human is housecat is to human - as opposed to Mexican is to American. Somebody put ranks in Jump (to Conclusions) last level...:smallannoyed:

But he did say that having mental illness is the same as a physical difference like those between humans/housecats. His point was that orcs are like humans with a mental illness that makes them irredeemably violent. Obviously characterizing people with mental illness as an inhuman species is, well, wildly uncivil, but this is tasw; that's just Saturday for him.

oudeis
2013-10-12, 01:19 AM
There is a lot of over-identification, over-interpretation, and over-extrapolation going on in this thread, as many have previously and quite cogently pointed out. What if we were to substitute 'aggressive, territorial, instinct-driven, and tribalistic/species-istic' in place of Evil?

Chimpanzees are our closest relatives but I don't think there is a primatologist on the planet who doesn't follow strict precautions when dealing with them, even when they are familiar with each other. I saw a clip of a field researcher getting attacked by a wild chimp for no readily apparent reason. He was an experienced researcher, was known to the chimp and had visited the troop several times over the course of a few years, knew the personalities of the members, and even came bearing an gift of I believe it was bananas, but something he did provoked one of the dominant males and it attacked. Maybe he moved just a little too fast or got a little too close, but whatever he did pissed it off and it swung him around by the ear like a ragdoll. He left the area as fast as he could and counted himself lucky that the encounter only cost him part of his ear.

Given that kind of behavior, I don't think it's at all a stretch to infer that the parallel evolution of competitive intelligent species would result in an inter-species dynamic wherein one deems the other as Always Chaotic Evil. And even if that isn't enough, there's the fact that in fantasy game worlds intelligent species didn't evolve, they were divinely created along with the rest of the world and their natures are usually divinely ordained as well. It doesn't matter if in your life you are the most anti-theistic proponent of evolution on this planet, when you choose to enter Toril or Krynn or Golarion or wherever you have to accept the quaint native customs of a diogenetic (?) world and life-forms, including the intelligent ones. If that bothers you, there isn't anything preventing you from changing the lore or creating your own cosmogony where evolution and determinism hold sway, but getting so worked up over a specious topic like this that you start imputing racist notions to those that disagree with you is completely asinine.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-12, 01:29 AM
But he did say that having mental illness is the same as a physical difference like those between humans/housecats. His point was that orcs are like humans with a mental illness that makes them irredeemably violent. Obviously characterizing people with mental illness as an inhuman species is, well, wildly uncivil, but this is tasw; that's just Saturday for him.

Wat.

Oh, he gets a pass for blatantly insulting people and comparing them to monsters, and people constantly chastise me for when I'm just being stubborn and non-understanding about something?

I don't even. I just don't even. :smallsigh: :smallmad: :smallyuk:

Screw this, I'm out of this discussion, I just can't take this garbage.

hamishspence
2013-10-12, 02:09 AM
Especially with most of them being chaotic evil. Seems like it would take all of 5 minutes for someone to ask "just where they hell do these things keep coming from and how do we stop them from coming here" ?

Most? Between 40% and 50% actually, according to the Monster Manual.

The Oni
2013-10-12, 02:21 AM
Even if Orcs were the equivalent of mentally ill humans, that just means that rather than killing them we should have some high-level Wizard teleport them all very far from civilized society. Or, I dunno, do some high-level mind magic on them.

If a druid can awaken a housecat I would think that ONE of the many spellcasting classes could come up with a spell that would make the Orc go "Hey, suddenly I feel bad about stabbing my buddy in the face, maybe I should go home and rethink my life."

hamishspence
2013-10-12, 02:32 AM
If a druid can awaken a housecat I would think that ONE of the many spellcasting classes could come up with a spell that would make the Orc go "Hey, suddenly I feel bad about stabbing my buddy in the face, maybe I should go home and rethink my life."

There was one in BoED, called Sanctify the Wicked.

However, it's highly controversial because it always works (it puts the character's soul in a gem for a year, where "the spark of good within it is fanned to a raging fire" causing them to repent and turn good).

That, and it turns the victim's alignment to the same as that of the caster- resulting it it being seen as brainwashing. In addition, if the gem is shattered before the year is up, the victim is as they were- but now with a hatred of the caster on top of that.

There's a use of the Diplomacy skill that can move a character's alignment on the Good-Evil axis, toward good, in the BoED. It requires that they be treated exceptionally kindly while it's being used on them.

The late-3.0 book Savage Species also discusses the perspective that evil monsters are people, which don't deserve hatred but sympathy:


With Malice Toward None
(Chaotic/Accepting)

In this campaign model, the prevailing opinion holds that monsters, no matter how foul and evil they may look, are free sentient beings with all the inalienable rights that humans, elves, and every other humanoid species are heir to. The denizens of this campaign are not foolish- they know that many monsters are evil and nefarious. Just the same, they are loath to reject monsters simply because of their origins. The philosophical leaders of this land realize that no medusa or troll really had a choice in how it came into this world, and indeed as oppressed as its upbringing may have been, it is deserving of more sympathy and consideration, not less.

In this world, evil among monsters is largely perceived to be a psychological condition rather than an absolute or genetic one. Most monsters are thought to become creatures of evil or destruction not because of any infernal or diabolic tie, but because of a fear of rejection, loneliness, or some other understandable psychological condition. Even the foulest tanar'ri may in truth be the victim of its own psychoses, and the enlightened people of this world hold out hope that with openness, respect, and even love, the darkest of souls can be redeemed. And who knows? Perhaps they are right.

The Oni
2013-10-12, 04:12 AM
I have to say I've never been a fan of brainwashing people even for their own good. I was the guy who played Mass Effect and was like "reprogram Geth? That sounds creepy aaaaaas hell. No, I'm just gonna blow 'em up and they can die with dignity." And I think that was the Renegade option...WTF, BioWare.

There's got to be a solution that doesn't involve Care Bear Staring your foes into goodness and love. Maybe you could just get a spell that worked like a Point of View gun, like in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? You wouldn't be brainwashing them, you'd just use the gun and suddenly their smallish orc brains would understand the logic that they previously did not. And you might have a good chance of talking to them.

hamishspence
2013-10-12, 04:42 AM
Depending on how you interpret them, the aforementioned Diplomacy rules may qualify.

Jeivar
2013-10-12, 08:25 AM
I'm not sure if I'm overlooking something or if there's a flaw in the playtest rules.

The second level Ranger "Hordeslayer" power states:


When you damage a creature on your turn with a weapon attack, you deal 1d8 extra damage to each other creature you damage later in the same turn.

But the Ranger doesn't GET a second attack until at fifth level. What's the deal here?

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-12, 09:46 AM
I'm not sure if I'm overlooking something or if there's a flaw in the playtest rules.

The second level Ranger "Hordeslayer" power states:



But the Ranger doesn't GET a second attack until at fifth level. What's the deal here?

I may be talking out of my ass here, but it works with TWF iirc. Hit one guy with your primary weapon with the first hit, move on to the next with your secondary weapon?

Eulalios
2013-10-12, 09:59 AM
In a lot of fantasy, while such beings might exist, the vast majority of the adventurer's time is spent fighting humans- with monsters representing a tiny minority of their opponents.

Conan springs to mind.

R.E. Howard, inspired by contemporary cowboy romance and noir literature, presented a fantasy world far grittier and with greater moral complexity than commonly found in the fantasy of the 80s and 90s. He didn't devote many words to discussing all this, but his stories generally are more thought-provoking than other classics of the genre.

hamishspence
2013-10-12, 10:04 AM
David Gemmell books are pretty similar, but more modern.

SiuiS
2013-10-12, 10:22 AM
Ack! I was with you entirely until this paragraph, which is exactly his kind of logic he's accusing us of using. Fantasy species isn't comparable to culture.


That's what I was angling for, but I figured I had to get there by degrees otherwise it wouldn't make sense to Whiteeagle. Fantasy species aren't even comparable to creatures. That is somewhat the point.


Wait, how are Goblins, a race of creature that presumably lives and breeds in the material plane in baseline D&D, "made of solidified nightmare?"

Demons live and breed. (Aha! But not on the material plane!)
Humans live and breed in hell. (Aha! But they didn't start there!)
Goblins are intended to be monsters (Aha! But what you think of something doesn't dictate truth!)
Word of god is that by anthropomorphizing them, and assuming they have human characteristics - including a culture which wants anything other than xenocidal murder, that they have an intellect capable of an emotional spectrum outside of hatefulness, fear, and rage, that they breed at all and do not spring from the earth in dark parts cursed by pagans of old, fully grown and ready to do ill simply because it is their drive to do so - is you making assumptions and houserules, and "they are monsters, who are, MENTALLY, monsters" is the standard. (Aha! but... uh...)


There is a term for what you are doing here, it's called "Demonification."
I think a certain high-horse needs to relearn the Magic of Friendship, especially the part where something being different doesn't automatically make it BAD or EEEEEEEVIL!

Your attributing thoughts of casuation to me does not make these thoughts relevant. Goblins aren't evil because they are different. They are different because they are evil, and the differences stem from that. You cannot demonify a demon. Goblins and their ilk are clearly intended to be demonic (in this sense).

Now, you don't have to like that. you can change it. You can argue against it. But you CANNOT in good conscience say it is wrong, as you have been doing, and you CANNOT say it is not a valid interpretation as you have been doing. No amount of haphazard emotional appeals or rhetorical devices will change the clear truth that these goblins are not a valid, sapient creature worth considering, but instead hollow caricatures - literal, hollow caricatures, this is not a narrative device! - who serve the purpose of giving Evil a face, so that when you realize you can't hurt a metaphysical mental construction until at least Wizard level 23, you can still at fighter level 1 hit evil in some fashion.

Monsters, baseline, that are "Always [alignment]" are not people who are slandered. They are alignment decisions given just enough meat to act on their impulses. Whether this is interesting, or worthwhile, or fun, I don't care; I care about the truth of the idea, that this is the thing that is.


Thought experiment:

say that people developed advanced technology to alter their bodies to the point where they could potentially look like any DnD race possible.

would then, such stereotyping be bad, by pro-chaotic evil arguments?

I mean say a bunch of people decided to take a bunch of alterations to become orclike in real life and identify themselves as such. would then, by the pro-always chaotic evil arguments, be offensive to real people?

No, because they would still be people.


Depends on the D&D. Certainly isn't the case in Eberron.

"Grummsh is their racial deity, who made them in his image" - maybe - but the LE Zarus is the racial deity of humans- yet humans are not bound by his alignment.

Zarus did not make humanity, he simply claimed it after the fact. So did pelor. It's an important ("important") point in D&D that humans don't have the same One True Religion that the other races do. One of the bonuses of 4e; they removed that for the other races. It works for Iluviatar and the elves and humans in Tolkien's work, not so much in a campaign setting guide.

hamishspence
2013-10-12, 10:27 AM
Goblins and their ilk are clearly intended to be demonic (in this sense).

If they were- wouldn't they have the [Evil] subtype, or Always X Alignment?

Rakshasa, are Native Outsiders (so a bit like Tieflings) - don't have the [Evil] subtype, but do have Always LE.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/rakshasa.htm

But not goblins, orcs, and their ilk.



Monsters, baseline, that are "Always [alignment]" are not people who are slandered. They are alignment decisions given just enough meat to act on their impulses. Whether this is interesting, or worthwhile, or fun, I don't care; I care about the truth of the idea, that this is the thing that is.

As The Giant explains in the OoTS forum- just because it is that way in old D&D books, doesn't mean it ought to be that way.

Hence, with a new edition- the opportunity to change it- if the designers are willing to take the plunge.

The Oni
2013-10-12, 01:12 PM
I dunno about D&D but PF chucks that logic clear out the window with the We Be Goblins adventures.

SiuiS
2013-10-12, 01:36 PM
I'm not sure if I'm overlooking something or if there's a flaw in the playtest rules.

The second level Ranger "Hordeslayer" power states:

But the Ranger doesn't GET a second attack until at fifth level. What's the deal here?

Incentivizes two weapon fighting.


If they were- wouldn't they have the [Evil] subtype, or Always X Alignment?

I was specifically discussing monsters with "always chaotic evil" and the like, and goblins were just a choice example, yes.



As The Giant explains in the OoTS forum- just because it is that way in old D&D books, doesn't mean it ought to be that way.

Hence, with a new edition- the opportunity to change it- if the designers are willing to take the plunge.

It's not about is it ought, but possibility. I'm pointing out that the idea is not inherently flawed, it just stems from different assumptions. I am arguing against the idea that monsters being monsters is badwrongfun and you should never do it because it's always wrong. Sure, it's not always worth doig, and sure, when writing a story involving psychology at all, it's worth chucking or analyzing.

But equating "monsters can sometimes just be monsters" with "hi, I'm a dudebro racist" is sort of disingenuous. And so regardless if my own (currently unstated, actually!) personal opinions, I'm fighting against the comparison.






As a campaign basis, I like the idea of Dungeon as Underworld. Natural subterranean areas, left to their own devices, develop into dungeons. Kobolds spawn from the walls and begin excavating the tunnels, becoming mythic janitors and allowing other, chaotic monsters to trickle in. Eventually, the dungeon develops a malevolent presence, suppressing life and goodness of the Lawful Races; monstrous humans can see fine, but elves and dwarves in the party are just as blind without lights as their human partners. Eventually, more... Cthonic monsters develop and climb forth, freed from their hellish prison.

hamishspence
2013-10-12, 01:47 PM
As a campaign basis, I like the idea of Dungeon as Underworld. Natural subterranean areas, left to their own devices, develop into dungeons. Kobolds spawn from the walls and begin excavating the tunnels, becoming mythic janitors and allowing other, chaotic monsters to trickle in. Eventually, the dungeon develops a malevolent presence, suppressing life and goodness of the Lawful Races; monstrous humans can see fine, but elves and dwarves in the party are just as blind without lights as their human partners. Eventually, more... Cthonic monsters develop and climb forth, freed from their hellish prison.

Dungeonscape has a similar idea- in that, the world is a prison for a cosmic evil- which is slowly corrupting it- and that corruption takes the form of dungeons- and it's the job of the heroes to keep going in and pushing the corruption back.

tasw
2013-10-12, 03:00 PM
But he did say that having mental illness is the same as a physical difference like those between humans/housecats. His point was that orcs are like humans with a mental illness that makes them irredeemably violent. Obviously characterizing people with mental illness as an inhuman species is, well, wildly uncivil, but this is tasw; that's just Saturday for him.

I was giving an example of a physical, not cultural or personality based problem that affects an individuals behavior patterns in a way outside of anyones control.

Not all mental problems are something you can just talk out and fix. Some of them are the result of things being actually, physically broken inside of your brain.

Thats part of why theres a difference between psychiatrists (medical doctors who study the physical structure of the brain and its affects on behavior) and psychologists, (people you pay 75$ an hour to pretend to be your friend and chat with you about what your thinking and feeling).

One is literally and legally a medical doctor and the other is not, because there are different sorts of things that can go wrong upstairs requiring very different solutions. And some that have no solution at all.


Most? Between 40% and 50% actually, according to the Monster Manual.

And the rest are chaotic neutral who hang out with chaotic evil ones.

A crowd of intelligent beings is more naturally drawn to the lowest common denomitor in the group then the highest.

Besides, even if it was only half like that the point still stands that people are going to want to know where big murderous creatures are coming from and how to stop it from happening.

Assuming orcs are numerous as in most previous campaign worlds this question would have had to be one of the most burning questions in the history of the world for thousands of years.

And it has literally no answer to be found in the core rules? Thats so unsatisfying of an answer I dont have the words to explain my annoyance and frustration with that sort of lazy designing.

SiuiS
2013-10-12, 03:20 PM
Yeeeaaaaah, I'm gonna have to side with tasw on this one. His posts had his characteristic tone, but didn't actually seem to be saying anything bad, just coming at the problem form multiple angles to explain something via parallel.

Jeivar
2013-10-12, 03:41 PM
As The Giant explains in the OoTS forum- just because it is that way in old D&D books, doesn't mean it ought to be that way.

Hence, with a new edition- the opportunity to change it- if the designers are willing to take the plunge.

My reaction to this school of thought is: What's wrong with having fun? Monster-slaying isn't a real-life issue that needs to be handled with fairness. What's wrong with just playing in a setting where good guys are Good Guys, bad guys are Bad Guys, and the former can vanquish the latter without moral gray areas or icky repercussions? Real life is much, much more complicated than that, but that's exactly why it's good to indulge in a little escapism about true heroes battling unambiguous monsters.

It's a game. I say let's have fun with it. If I want depressing, morally complex issues I can always turn on the news.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-10-12, 04:17 PM
Your attributing thoughts of casuation to me does not make these thoughts relevant. Goblins aren't evil because they are different. They are different because they are evil, and the differences stem from that. You cannot demonify a demon. Goblins and their ilk are clearly intended to be demonic (in this sense).

Considering we're having this discussion, it can't be too clearly.

Kish
2013-10-12, 04:19 PM
My reaction to this school of thought is: What's wrong with having fun?
My reaction to that school of thought is, "What's fun about rolling dice to establish that your murderous no-personality thug will live and the goblin murderous no-personality thugs will die? What happened to roleplaying games?"

Turalisj
2013-10-12, 04:52 PM
My reaction to that school of thought is, "What's fun about rolling dice to establish that your murderous no-personality thug will live and the goblin murderous no-personality thugs will die? What happened to roleplaying games?"

Pretty much my thought too.

Stubbazubba
2013-10-12, 04:54 PM
Wat.

Oh, he gets a pass for blatantly insulting people and comparing them to monsters, and people constantly chastise me for when I'm just being stubborn and non-understanding about something?

I don't even. I just don't even. :smallsigh: :smallmad: :smallyuk:

Screw this, I'm out of this discussion, I just can't take this garbage.

Whoa, whoa, that was not me excusing him! That was me sarcastically implying that no one should even engage with him because he's calling the mentally ill a different species, showing not only extreme insensitivity, but also a completely warped understanding of the word 'species.' And this is not the first time tasw has shown a level of social depravity and disregard for any semblance of civil discourse that makes me draw the conclusion that he's not worth engaging, so I was hinting at that. I'll be less subtle next time.


I was giving an example of a physical, not cultural or personality based problem that affects an individuals behavior patterns in a way outside of anyones control.

Not all mental problems are something you can just talk out and fix. Some of them are the result of things being actually, physically broken inside of your brain.

Thats part of why theres a difference between psychiatrists (medical doctors who study the physical structure of the brain and its affects on behavior) and psychologists, (people you pay 75$ an hour to pretend to be your friend and chat with you about what your thinking and feeling).

One is literally and legally a medical doctor and the other is not, because there are different sorts of things that can go wrong upstairs requiring very different solutions. And some that have no solution at all.

I have one psychiatrist in my home and an autistic brother, I know perfectly well the difference between psychology and psychiatry. That's something we can talk about with regards to Chaotic Evil races, but it is not what I am criticizing you for: I'm criticizing you for comparing the difference between mentally healthy and the mentally ill humans as similar to the physical, species difference between humans and housecats. You lumped housecats, Orcs, and the mentally ill together as inhuman. You need to rethink that.

You're arguing that Orcs being Chaotic Evil by nature can be explained by something similar to a mental illness, and that this reduces the moral quandary of killing them because they're neurochemically irredeemable, not just culturally/psychologically evil. This is an insulting, offensive argument in the first place (equating the mentally ill with an inhuman species), but again, I know that's just how you roll. The deeper issue is that it's still wrong:

Let's just say that, as you say, there is a brain chemistry difference in Orcs and other CE races that makes them the way they are; that doesn't in one wit justify killing them more, anymore than it does killing or mistreating or neglecting or imprisoning the mentally ill, who can be a huge burden if not an outright threat to the people around them on occasion. Once again, defending yourself is always pretty justified, but killing them pre-emptively because they neurologically can't choose Good is as unethical and as wrong as locking the mentally ill up in the asylums of bygone eras because they might hurt someone on an impulse they can't control. We treat mental illness, we try to empower these people to live as independent and as fulfilling a life as possible, and to a large extent we succeed. They may never have anything like a normal adult life, but they are still considered human and worth caring for. By your own analogy, killing Orcs on sight is possibly less justified than if they were merely culturally evil.


Yeeeaaaaah, I'm gonna have to side with tasw on this one. His posts had his characteristic tone, but didn't actually seem to be saying anything bad, just coming at the problem form multiple angles to explain something via parallel.

His parallel reasoning justifies the abuse of the mentally ill, or even just killing them off, because they aren't human enough. That's bad.

Jeivar
2013-10-12, 04:57 PM
My reaction to that school of thought is, "What's fun about rolling dice to establish that your murderous no-personality thug will live and the goblin murderous no-personality thugs will die? What happened to roleplaying games?"

Is your point that roleplayers are doing it wrong if they aren't doing it the same way you are? And you really don't have enough information to call my characters no-personality thugs.

To answer your question: People like different things. And WOTC doesn't hire people to look over your shoulder and make sure you aren't injecting moral complexity in your setting. You are free to do whatever you want with it.

Scow2
2013-10-12, 05:06 PM
If they were- wouldn't they have the [Evil] subtype, or Always X Alignment?

Rakshasa, are Native Outsiders (so a bit like Tieflings) - don't have the [Evil] subtype, but do have Always LE.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/rakshasa.htm

But not goblins, orcs, and their ilk.First off, 3.5 was a move away from the "Always Evil" orcs that 5e's going back to.

In 5e and earlier contexts, Orcs are physical homonculi of an evil deity (That has his own psychosis, and is not made of pure evil), just as Elves are homonculi of a Good deity, and Dwarves the homonculi of a Lawful one. Orcs are manifestations of Cruelty, Barbarism, and Conquest, not manifestations of Pure Evil. An orc lacks the raw, primal malevolence to punch through the untouchable purity of an Angel. The elements that make up an orc may push toward Chaotic Evil, but they also can fit into Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil, Lawful Evil, and True Neutral categories as well.

Likewise, Goblins are manifestations of Thomas Hobbes- and Johnathan Swift-like misanthropy.

They aren't Outsiders because they don't come from any different plane or primal cosmic force - they're at least a step away from Primal Evil (Unlike Rakshasa), and they don't have extraplanar blood in their ancestry(Unlike Planetouched)


Considering we're having this discussion, it can't be too clearly.That is only because you are outright and deliberately ignoring stated designer intent.


My reaction to that school of thought is, "What's fun about rolling dice to establish that your murderous no-personality thug will live and the goblin murderous no-personality thugs will die? What happened to roleplaying games?"The same sort of fun you have with your nondescript arbitrarily-awkwardly maneuvering army capturing the king of the opponent's identical nondescript arbitrarily-awkwardly maneuvering army. Or rolling dice to establish that your nondescript, no-personality nation takes over the world after competing against other's nondescript, no-personality nations. And pointing at your friends and declaring you're a murderous, no-personality cop and have shot down your greedy, no-personality robber friend. Or rolling dice to determine that your avaricious, no-personality real-estate tycoon has driven the other avaricious, no-personality real-estate tycoons into bankruptcy.

Whatever happened to roleplaying games?

And on the whole neurochemical debate... "Orcs are neurochemically different from humans in a manner that makes them extremely violent and anti-social, They have managed to create a culture that works for those with their value... at least in the sense that it's robust and self perpetuating, if not good for any individuals, but none of them have a stated problem with their state of affairs except for their specific place in the heirarchy. However, that culture and these people are fundamentally incompatible with our own. The best, most morally-upright course of action is to completely remove them from this world and force them upon another so that we don't have to deal with them... or individually capture, imprison, and mentally correct them through application of mind-altering drugs and intense resocialization programs that will force them to accept a worldview that completely contradicts their own core thoughts, life experiences, moral, ethical, and values code, and ingrained personal beliefs."

... is that right?

To me, it's more "Given the above nature of our adversaries, the least morally reprehensible course of action is to remove them from our world when they threaten our culture and values, and instead speed them along to the paradise awaiting them with their creator where they can live as they choose for eternity."

Lord Raziere
2013-10-12, 05:45 PM
My reaction to this school of thought is: What's wrong with having fun? Monster-slaying isn't a real-life issue that needs to be handled with fairness. What's wrong with just playing in a setting where good guys are Good Guys, bad guys are Bad Guys, and the former can vanquish the latter without moral gray areas or icky repercussions? Real life is much, much more complicated than that, but that's exactly why it's good to indulge in a little escapism about true heroes battling unambiguous monsters.

It's a game. I say let's have fun with it. If I want depressing, morally complex issues I can always turn on the news.

yeah but here is the thing: by including orcs you actually provoke those morally complex issues.

if say, humans fought other humans because those humans had done something that was unambiguously evil, this wouldn't be a problem.

they did something evil, go kill them.

however, once you include races that inherently evil by design, then you are involving those issues, you can have escapism without needing to make the foes arbitrarily different for no reason. don't see why you need these specific monsters when if your escaping, it doesn't what the race is, the foes you will face will always be unambiguously evil, no matter who it is.

Edit: furthermore I notice that people on the pro-chaotic evil side, spend more time coming up with justifications and explanations for why their escapism is "right" than they do actually escaping. If they truly were about escapism, would they really need these explanations in the first place? after all, your escaping from reality. Why do you need any of these complicated explanations for something thats just plain not real? for a group that desires such simplicity, they certainly do a lot of complex foundation building to uphold it.

which says to me, they actually agree with the morality I espouse, but don't want to admit it. why is that, I wonder?

Kish
2013-10-12, 05:56 PM
Is your point that roleplayers are doing it wrong if they aren't doing it the same way you are? And you really don't have enough information to call my characters no-personality thugs.

I have the information you gave me. You were the one who equated the game being morally simplistic with it being "fun," and any effort to inject any morality beyond "greenskins bad" into it with "[something's] wrong with having fun."


To answer your question: People like different things. And WOTC doesn't hire people to look over your shoulder and make sure you aren't injecting moral complexity in your setting. You are free to do whatever you want with it.
Lovely. Would you like to explain exactly why "monsters are just for killing" should be the default setting, which the DM is Free To Change, and not "nonhumans have actual motivations" being the default setting, which DMs are Free To Change?

Scow2
2013-10-12, 06:06 PM
...All this moral debating aside, I've been running a game of D&D Next over text, and just finished my second session.

Right now... I'm really bothered by the Rogue's +5 to skills, because I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. Is it that they are supposed to be able to breeze through skill-check based encounters, or is it a boost to overcome a niche-protection thing, where traditionally-rogue-only tasks can be 5 points higher than those normal people are expected to do?

My favorite part of the universal, auto-scaling proficiency system is the subtext of "Proficiency means you're good at it." A wizard proficient with a bow shoots just as well as a Fighter (Well, the fighter gets a +1 over it, but it's not insurmountable). A fighter proficient with Thieves Tools should be able to be just as likely to open a lock as anyone else proficient with the tools, rogue or not. 5e makes it difficult to get said proficiency through opportunity cost. Classes should define how you can go above and beyond mere proficiency, and not merely as a "+5". A rogue can reliably hide and sneak around within combat, and gets bonus damage for doing so. He doesn't need a +5 to Stealth on top of that. A rogue also gets more skill and tool proficiencies than other classes, so he can scout, trapmonkey, and ambush on his own, as well as have a few other utilities without needing to waste character-building resources on feats or backgrounds. While a wizard proficient in swords can hit as reliably as a fighter with a sword (At least numerically), the fighter gets multiple sword attacks and other things that increase his practical effectiveness without giving more than a token boost in accuracy.

I wish Spellbooks were a proficiency that granted basic wizardry and spell access... but true wizards would be able to prepare more spells, cast them interchangeably through the spell-slot system, re-prepare faster, and also have their class-specific boosts to spellcasting.

oudeis
2013-10-12, 06:14 PM
Lovely. Would you like to explain exactly why "goblins are just for killing" should be the default setting?'Should' has nothing to do with it. As someone who started back in the days when Advanced D&D was new to the world I can say that automatically evil non-human races that existed so the PCs could gain loot and XP is the default setting. It may be too simplistic or even offensive to you but that is your personal taste. I think it's a safe bet that most people who play games- electronic or tabletop- are in it to have a good time. If you start assessing real-world behavioral standards and applying your psychological judgements to gaming the whole endeavor is going to crumble pretty quickly.

Way too many people in this thread are coming way too close to the kind of Fox News, Daily Mail, Jack Thompson mindset that is responsible for so many morons blaming society's ills on gamers.

Kish
2013-10-12, 06:16 PM
As someone who started back in the days when Advanced D&D was new to the world I can say that automatically evil non-human races that existed so the PCs could gain loot and XP is the default setting.
I started sooner than that, for whatever it's worth. And what it's worth is "very little." The old red Basic D&D set I used to have, with its "goblins are nasty and it's good that you hit him," hasn't defined the "default" D&D setting in a long, long, long time, much less is its existence any reason it should define the default setting in the future.

If you bolded word was "was" rather than "is," you might be right.

Rakaydos
2013-10-12, 06:19 PM
Lovely. Would you like to explain exactly why "monsters are just for killing" should be the default setting, which the DM is Free To Change, and not "nonhumans have actual motivations" being the default setting, which DMs are Free To Change?

Because of the human tendancy to anthropomorphize. It's easier to justify "downgrading" Always Evil, as many posters here are doing, than it is to justify "not doing the race justice" by simplifying the race into Always Evil stereotypes.

By starting with the simplest explanation (Always evil) they allow DMs to layer on complexities. But a DM taking a race with personality and turning them into faceless monsters could be argured to be racist against that (fictional) race. The issues would still be at the table, because the issues are still in the book.

oudeis
2013-10-12, 06:24 PM
The Red Basic set came out after Advanced, and even in 4E and Pathfinder goblins and orcs are still the default bad guys. Individual modules might treat them as more than fodder but the descriptions in the Monster Manual/Bestiary make them evil out of the box and entirely acceptable targets.

Kish
2013-10-12, 06:29 PM
Because of the human tendancy to anthropomorphize. It's easier to justify "downgrading" Always Evil, as many posters here are doing, than it is to justify "not doing the race justice" by simplifying the race into Always Evil stereotypes.
The only way that's ever going to come up, is if people at the table find "greenskins bad" not-fun. And you're arguing that a group which wants nonhumans with motivations should have to do all the work of writing those motivations...so that a DM who wants them without motivations can point to the book and say, "Look, it's not my fault doubleyou-oh-tee-see made them simplistically evil" when her/his players protest? Even if I found that a sound argument, it's unnecessary. For at least thirteen years, orcs have been officially Often Chaotic Evil, meaning between 30% and 50% of them were Chaotic Evil, with Chaotic Neutral being the second most common official alignment; for at least thirteen years, DMs who preferred "greenskins bad" have been making the "it's just the way WotC made them" argument, unimpeded by its lack of factual accuracy.

Scow2
2013-10-12, 06:41 PM
The only way that's ever going to come up, is if people at the table find "greenskins bad" not-fun. And you're arguing that a group which wants nonhumans with motivations should have to do all the work of writing those motivations...so that a DM who wants them without motivations can point to the book and say, "Look, it's not my fault doubleyou-oh-tee-see made them simplistically evil" when her/his players protest? Even if I found that a sound argument, it's unnecessary. For at least thirteen years, orcs have been officially Often Chaotic Evil, meaning between 30% and 50% of them were Chaotic Evil, with Chaotic Neutral being the second most common official alignment; for at least thirteen years, DMs who preferred "greenskins bad" have been making the "it's just the way WotC made them" argument, unimpeded by its lack of factual accuracy.
We don't give a damn how WotC and Hasbro make them, really. They didn't make D&D. They merely officially implemented a number of commonly-used houserules, updated the system to keep up with changing trends in gaming, and make spellcasters stupidly overpowered. Orcs are evil Stock Mooks because that's how Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson made them. Killing them isn't a problem because it makes it easier for you to take their stuff, which is what the game's all about. If Orcs and Goblins weren't supposed to be killed, they wouldn't be carrying around lots of gold pieces and fat loot and living in ridiculously dangerous and over-trapped dungeons.

If it carries treasure or wanders through dungeons, it's meant to die. That extends to PCs too.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-12, 06:57 PM
there is something that does kill monsters, gain loot and level up far better these days.

its called video games. you play them. you don't even need to imagine. turns your brain off and allows you to go around killing things far faster and better. far easier to set up, far easier to get into it, and no need for the hassle of figuring all that math stuff yourself, or look up any rules.

so I don't see why your using an inefficient engine of a tabletop RPG for suboptimal performance of the experience you are looking for. and I'm pretty sure they have multiplayer for lots of this so you don't even to give up whatever nerdy equivalent of a social life you have….

oudeis
2013-10-12, 07:01 PM
So what are your favorite multiplayer fantasy computer or console games where the group actually has some say in the action and some impact on the world, where the individual player's decisions have some actual consequence, and where the world lore isn't wholly unoriginal bull****? Just curious.

Scow2
2013-10-12, 07:04 PM
there is something that does kill monsters, gain loot and level up far better these days.

its called video games. you play them. you don't even need to imagine. turns your brain off and allows you to go around killing things far faster and better. far easier to set up, far easier to get into it, and no need for the hassle of figuring all that math stuff yourself, or look up any rules.

so I don't see why your using an inefficient engine of a tabletop RPG for suboptimal performance of the experience you are looking for. and I'm pretty sure they have multiplayer for lots of this so you don't even to give up whatever nerdy equivalent of a social life you have….Bah. Video Games are shoddy imposters with stunted intelligence and horrendously limited input. Nothing does "Kill Monsters, Gain Loot, Level Up" better than Dungeons&Dragons and other TTRPGs in its vein. Turning brains off is the exact opposite of what you want to do. There's no thrill in mindlessly hacking through stuff, anyway. A squad of four Hobgoblins with pikes can obliterate a level 1 party that doesn't fight with care, as my players last session learned. The challenges and worlds presented in Video games are static and transparent, lacking a human director.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-12, 07:23 PM
So what are your favorite multiplayer fantasy computer or console games where the players actually have some say in the setting and some impact on the world?

so you care enough about the setting to want to define it, yet you don't care enough that you don't want any consequences or issues that arise from defining it?

more power, more consequences. you want an impact? well there will always be unintended consequences of your impacts! thats kind of half the point. otherwise your just a person who wants to make a sweeping change but doesn't want to go through what that actually means.

there is no clean war, there is no clean revolution, there is no change that doesn't have its backlash or its negative side-effects. the point of heroes is that they are challenged, and if they are to have an impact on the world, that means the world must have an impact upon them. villagers won't just automatically forgive you for burning down their tavern to defeat a monster, a king won't just automatically trust you just because you claim your adventurers, and the world won't just turn out OK just because you are in the stark moral right. even if you are? there is still people who don't see it that way, who might even be just as good as you.

you might be able to choose more….but that you have to accept more in return. you have to take what you can dish out. if you dish out wide impacts upon the world, and you can't accept that the world in turn dishes out impacts upon you?
then why are you playing such a game? the least impactful stuff has consequences for actions, its just cause and effect. why do you do think you are entitled to mitigate the consequences you don't like?

because your not. if you want a change the world style of game…that comes with baggage dude. without the baggage, thats just playing god as your immune to every bad thing that results from what you do. play good guys, go ahead, but that doesn't mean your actions are perfect and can cause nothing bad to happen.

you can't have a say, without the other people talking back.

TuggyNE
2013-10-12, 07:27 PM
You know, I started reading this whole long digression about alignment thinking that it's probably most sensible to give orcs/goblins/whatever an innate bent to evil, that, while not impossible to overcome, would still be unusual. But the more I read the arguments for innate evil, the less happy I grew with that, so I'd just like to say: stop talking before I have to change my mind entirely. To whatever the opposite is. :smallsigh:


If it carries treasure or wanders through dungeons, it's meant to die.

Angels, metallic dragons, elves, dwarves, flumphs, and numerous other creatures say what?

Scow2
2013-10-12, 07:51 PM
Angels, metallic dragons, elves, dwarves, flumphs, and numerous other creatures say what?They hang out in dungeons and carry treasure? They're targets too. :smalltongue: Its a Dungeoneer-Kill-Dungeoneer world in here!

Kish
2013-10-12, 07:56 PM
Angels, metallic dragons, elves, dwarves, flumphs, and numerous other creatures say what?
My response would be more along the lines of,

"Yes, I quite agree," chuckled the ancient red dragon, as the last of the group of adventurers who had wandered into his home turned into charred bones and he swept their treasure into his hoard where it could be properly stationary.

Scow2
2013-10-12, 08:00 PM
My response would be more along the lines of,

"Yes, I quite agree," chuckled the ancient red dragon, as the last of the group of adventurers who had wandered into his home turned into charred bones and he swept their treasure into his hoard where it could be properly stationary.But I already mentioned that.

-Indignant Morality Rant-You don't seem to get the concept of Fantasy, do you? We don't accept Reality Checks around here. They are Null and Void, and trying to force Reality onto situations where it is explicitly rejected is unwelcome.



Can we get back to discussing 5e, and not arguing about Orcs? I have questions about why the hell Rogues get a bonus to skills at level 1 that no other class can get until level WayTooHigh.

Kish
2013-10-12, 08:11 PM
If you want to halt a particular discussion thread, it would seem wiser to simply request it be halted, rather than firing a salvo in it and then adding, "But let me get the last word."

Rakaydos
2013-10-12, 08:17 PM
Conversely, if you want a well thought out morality tale, surely there are better tabletop systems than "(Enter) Dungeons And (Slay) Dragons." D&D has themes to maintain, and while those themes have become less popular of late, D+D shouldnt give up it's soul trying to be something it isnt.

But then, I liked 4E, so what do I know. :p

Lord Raziere
2013-10-12, 08:21 PM
We don't accept Reality Checks around here. They are Null and Void, and trying to force Reality onto situations where it is explicitly rejected is unwelcome.


well thats obvious. your signature clearly does not reflect the reality of you at all. :smallamused:

after all, morality doesn't exist unless it is tested, how can you really claim be moral if you have never faced a hard moral decision?

and like it or not, media reflects who we are in a way. maybe not accurately, maybe not fully, but it does say something about you that you have great willingness to so easily condemn creatures to death over a generalization, and I doubt it says anything good. as well your willingness to reject reality so readily and fiercely.

Edit: or on second thought, it reflects the reality of you more than you can possibly realize, but such interpretation heavily depends on how idealistic or cynical of such things you are.

navar100
2013-10-12, 08:28 PM
'Should' has nothing to do with it. As someone who started back in the days when Advanced D&D was new to the world I can say that automatically evil non-human races that existed so the PCs could gain loot and XP is the default setting. It may be too simplistic or even offensive to you but that is your personal taste. I think it's a safe bet that most people who play games- electronic or tabletop- are in it to have a good time. If you start assessing real-world behavioral standards and applying your psychological judgements to gaming the whole endeavor is going to crumble pretty quickly.

Way too many people in this thread are coming way too close to the kind of Fox News, Daily Mail, Jack Thompson mindset that is responsible for so many morons blaming society's ills on gamers.

You had me till there. No need to have brought in your real world biases.

AuraTwilight
2013-10-12, 08:28 PM
You don't seem to get the concept of Fantasy, do you? We don't accept Reality Checks around here. They are Null and Void, and trying to force Reality onto situations where it is explicitly rejected is unwelcome.

Wow, could you be any more rude? Speak for yourself and yourself only.

Also, Eberron is a thing. As is the passage in Savage Species quoted earlier.