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DoomHat
2015-01-07, 07:15 AM
Has anyone else noticed that orcs are being portrayed less and less as murderous Always Chaotic Evil idiots?
It seems to me that the standard Tolkien based troupe has been subverted so hard so often the standard orc is more like an honorable Klingon then a ravenous morlock.

What do you folks think about this? Personally, I enjoy playing half-orcs that are flavored as just strait up orcs, but on the other hand I can appreciate the appeal of an irredeemable hoard of monster people that you can fight and kill without remorse other then more &@#ing zombies.

Yora
2015-01-07, 07:25 AM
Both heroes and villains are much more interesting if they have a distinct ability and do the things they do because they chose to, and not because it's their nature.

And I think enemies you can kill without second thought are boring enemies as well.

You still can have an evil orc warlord with his big gang of evil marauders who slaughter and burn everything. The single step of showing that this particular orcs are terrible monsters instead of assuming that all orcs are automatically terrible monster really isn't such a huge burden to justify all orcs automatically being brainless evil.

BWR
2015-01-07, 07:47 AM
Variation is nice. Sometimes you want to show a traditionally evil race can be something more. Sometimes you just want easy targets for the heroes to kill.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-07, 08:02 AM
Alignment: Often chaotic evilHm, curious...


Alignment
This line gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to the species as a whole.

Seems the idea of them being Always Chaotic Evil is just wishful thinking.

Knaight
2015-01-07, 08:11 AM
I generally find the entire concept of the monstrous intelligent species all sorts of boring. People have been warring over all sorts of things for a very long time, and smaller scale conflicts are even more prevalent. Some inherently evil force just isn't necessary, and generally smacks of laziness in setting design; a more complex perspective tends to lead to more complex and interesting conflicts. As such, the trend is entirely welcome, as it generally opens up options.

This gets particularly true as orcs within LotR have some specific considerations. They were elves which were deliberately altered by Morgoth and Sauron, which carry out the will of a particular character which is actually complex. There's still a complex character which isn't just a representative of some evil species at the heart of things. Absent that, the role of orcs is basically that of zombies, minus a whole bunch of the things that create the appeal in the first place. That is to say, the appeal is role is basically a watered down version of characters that deserve the term so little that they are often better compared to natural disasters and background setting, and which are generally explicitly mindless to boot.

For an intelligent species in a setting, that seems like a waste. I might have unusually high standards for the inclusion of non-human species, but that only really applies to the Klingon like orcs, not the zombie like ones.


Hm, curious...
Seems the idea of them being Always Chaotic Evil is just wishful thinking.

This isn't a D&D specific thread, and even if it were, the 3e SRD isn't particularly definitive for anything other than one point that can be looked at regarding the trend. 3e is also recent enough for that to be expected, it would be 1e having text like that that would call into question the original state, and even then it's trumped by what actual play looked like.

Red Fel
2015-01-07, 09:38 AM
I'm inclined to agree with the people who find always-evil Orcs to be boring. While I appreciate the use of morally unambiguous cannon fodder in a given campaign (sometimes, as Freud wouldn't ever actually say, a baddy is just a baddy), I like my named NPCs to have more complexity in their motivations. I like to put my PCs in a position where they have to think, not just assume. When you see a bunch of blood-stained Orcs, foaming at the mouth, wearing spiky armor and riding spiky wolves, waving their axes around and gnawing on baby limbs, it's safe to assume they're villains. When you see an Orc in plain brown monastic robes, tending an herb garden and playing with small children, it may throw some players, but it seems fairly clear that he's probably not evil. And it's a nice, refreshing change. And when you see an Orc in black robes, it's just plain unclear - is he a Wizard, crafting spells for the greater good? Is he an evil cultist, consorting with demons? Or is he just on his way to the bathhouse, and you should bloody well leave him be? I like throwing away preconceptions like that.

I also dislike the idea of monolithic races generally. The idea that all Orcs are near-mindless bloodthirsty savages, that all Elves are enlightened tree-hugging swordsman arcanists, that all Dwarves are drunken Scottish hammer-wielding blacksmiths, but every human is a unique sodding snowflake, drives me nuts. N-V-T-S nuts. It's like the whole Star Trek-style "Planet of the X People," where every planet has a single, uniform, homogenous population. Of course people vary from place to place. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So, peoples is peoples. Okay?

They don't have to be Drizz't, here, but they don't all have to be monolithically evil, either. At least, not in my games.

goto124
2015-01-07, 09:41 AM
While I appreciate the use of morally unambiguous cannon fodder in a given campaign, I like my named NPCs to have more complexity in their motivations.

I guess you have both in your games, with a side of My Species Doth Protest Too Much (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch)?

Caution: Tvtropes page.

123456789blaaa
2015-01-07, 09:48 AM
I enjoy both if done well. I do actually think inserting "morally ambiguous" into ALL works would actually lessen the quality of some of them. Morally ambiguous Skaven? :smalleek: No just...no.

Does cancer need to be morally ambiguous? Do demons need to be (and yes, I know some good works have had morally ambiguous demons)? Sometimes the narrative purpose of intelligent creatures is to be obstacles and/or to get across some message.

Broken Twin
2015-01-07, 09:50 AM
It's in our nature to explore a popular trope, then subvert it, deconstruct it, and eventually reconstruct it.

Orcs started as murderous Evil savages, fit only for killing. Once that became the common expectation, subversions started showing up, like hippy orcs. Then it was deconstructed, and their savage side was developed into a tribal honor structure, where their morality was different, but not necessarily worse, than the civilized races. If anything, 5E partially reconstructs it, with the idea that Gruumsh's murderous impulses are constantly influencing their thoughts, thereby justifying why the majority of them turn to Evil.

(As an aside note, I'm not too fond of the 5E rendition, which is essentially stating that orcs as a species are mentally ill. But anyway...)

Personally, I'm not overly fond of the concept of single morality mortal species. Just seems like lazy worldbuilding.

Red Fel
2015-01-07, 10:02 AM
Does cancer need to be morally ambiguous? Do demons need to be (and yes, I know some good works have had morally ambiguous demons)? Sometimes the narrative purpose of intelligent creatures is to be obstacles and/or to get across some message.

See, here's the thing. While I like morally ambiguous villains, they are ultimately villains. Sure, sometimes I may play up a sympathetic villain, or even one who could very well be a hero from a certain point of view, most of my villains are ultimately villainous.

But let me be clear one one thing: to be a villain, at my table, means somebody made a conscious choice. I can understand, for example, why 5e made Orcs universally brain-dead Evil - because it eliminates moral ambiguity and turns them into a simple combat encounter. But I don't like it. They're no longer villains, they're robots. My villains choose their actions. My demons and similar beings may be Evil by default, but they still embrace it. They revel in it. They like Evil. They're intelligent, and open to diplomacy and negotiations, but generally speaking, if the hero is dumb enough to say "You've been a boon to us; won't you fight for the side of Good?" My demons will laugh, say, "No," and kill him.

On second thought, they'll kill him, and then say, "No."

Evil is just too much fun, y'see.

Knaight
2015-01-07, 10:11 AM
Does cancer need to be morally ambiguous? Do demons need to be (and yes, I know some good works have had morally ambiguous demons)? Sometimes the narrative purpose of intelligent creatures is to be obstacles and/or to get across some message.

Sure, but this pretty much never needs to be a species, and when it is it is almost always just laziness. A particular group composed of intelligent people can easily be an obstacle or get across a message just fine even when the group is entirely human. I'd even say that it's generally more effective. As for the cancer comparison, cancer isn't a moral agent at all.

Looking to literary analysis, one method of categorizing stories is by their central conflict, with the big three being person-versus-person, person-versus-the-environment, and person-versus-self. The cancer example is generally person versus the environment, though it can be a catalyst for one of the other two. What works for that is very different than what works for person-versus-person, and generally the point of having a species comprised of people being the main source of conflict is the person-versus-person set. There are some edge cases, such as zombies, which are usually either a person-versus-the-environment thing or a hostile scenario that sets up a person-versus-person or person-versus-self where none of the people involved are zombies. For orcs, that doesn't really seem to apply as much, and when it does there's generally no need for it to be all orcs everywhere.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-07, 10:19 AM
I have never used, nor will I ever use, a mindless automatically evil race that you can just kill without concern. I do not approve of fostering the idea that killing is an enjoyable activity that should be undertaken thoughtlessly.

Which is why I am so glad we're moving forward towards non-evil races. I am really hoping traditional undead will be next (not just the pretty ones like vampires and ghosts).

I am also a big fan of these races being playable, and integrated as a part of the world just like any other. It's always fun to come up with ways to integrate orcs and other traditional antagonists as ordinary NPCs and realms in the campaign setting.

Jay R
2015-01-07, 10:38 AM
In my current game, I warned everyone in advance:


DO NOT assume that you know anything about any fantasy creatures. I will re-write many monsters and races, introduce some not in D&D, and eliminate some. The purpose is to make the world strange and mysterious. It will allow (require) PCs to learn, by trial and error, what works. Most of these changes I will not tell you in advance. Here are a couple, just to give you some idea what I mean.
1. Dragons are not color-coded for the benefits of the PCs.
2. Of elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, kobolds, goblins, and orcs, at least one does not exist, at least one is slightly different from the books, and at least one is wildly different.
3. Several monsters have different alignments from the books.
4. The name of an Undead will not tell you what will or won’t hurt it.
5. The first time you see a member of a humanoid race, I will describe it as a “vaguely man-shaped creature.” This could be a kobold, an elf, or an Umber Hulk until you learn what they are.

The party has met orcs exactly once so far. They were attacking a town. But the party has no idea yet what orcs are like when they don't have ogres behind them demanding that they attack the town.

By contrast, they've met goblins lots of times. My goblins are disorganized and semi-sentient, but very good at following basic orders. When there's a gnoll directing them, they have good battle tactics. When they are riding wargs, they try to cut one party member away from the rest to carry off - the way wolves attack sheep or cows.

But when they are alone, the goblins just come jumping in with their crudely-made clubs and spears with no order or plan.

After the first time they defeated a small unit of goblins, the party asked, "Is their gear worth anything?"

I responded, "Consider the implications of the phrase, 'crudely-made club'."

Joe the Rat
2015-01-07, 10:52 AM
They make convenient villains. So do bandits and cultists and opposing nations. But we don't slaughter them wholesale while calling ourselves the good guys. Humanoids are all about the strange icky uncivilized folk to the north/south/east/west/whichever direction is opposite this really cool wall we built. Making them not look like us makes them easier to not identify with.

Look at the "player" races in most fantasy games. You have humans, which are whatever you want to be, and then the other races, which are more like "ideals" of a concept. Elves are Grace and Nobility, often with a side of Tree Hugging or Vulcanism(ala Star Trek). Dwarves are Rough, Crude, Crafty, and Valorous. Usually with bit of Viking, Celt, or Vulcanism(ala Roman Mythology). Halflings are the Ultimate Common Folk. Every race ends up with a Hat, even if the individual characters don't wear them.

And each is "attractive" in a particular way - lean, robust, cuddly, etc.

Now look at the "Monster" Races. The are, in general, ugly. Weird skin tones, skin textures, noses, teeth... often heading into more bestial territory - particularly when you hit the [creature]folk types. They don't look right, and look dangerous or scary. They look like the bad guys, and they are given characterization to match. Or they are given a characterization, and given the look to match.

But then we get to the weird looking PCs. Giant bugs or lizards or robots or heaven forbid humanoids. This sort of opens the door to the idea that being that different on the outside doesn't mean you have to be as different on the inside. This makes the "traditional" monster races victims of circumstance rather than biology, and raises the dilemma of whether or not you should wipe them out. But you probably weren't doing in regards to your human opponents. Why not? Because they chose to be evil. But that choice may be as environmentally driven as the orc's. So we get good (or at least neutral) orc societies, and evil elf and dwarf races (because you couldn't have a regular elf be evil...), and good-powered undead (as opposed to the friendly neighborhood lycanthrope). But we've had rules for evil characters all along, with the caveat that playing one is bad and you should feel bad, and here's your incentives for being bad.

Hell, we've had entire game systems devoted to playing monsters, to see what being a monster is about, and if you can still be "human" or at least human-friendly. Or if you should be human friendly.

The best justification for any race being "generally evil" is viewing morality as a bit of a slope. It's easy to be evil. It's hard to be good.


If anything, 5E partially reconstructs it, with the idea that Gruumsh's murderous impulses are constantly influencing their thoughts, thereby justifying why the majority of them turn to Evil.

(As an aside note, I'm not too fond of the 5E rendition, which is essentially stating that orcs as a species are mentally ill. But anyway...)

Personally, I'm not overly fond of the concept of single morality mortal species. Just seems like lazy worldbuilding.

5e has brought it back to Tolkein. Why are the orcs being a big nasty marauding horde of an army? Mental domination by the All-Seeing Eye. They don't necessarily want to be there, and the tribes certainly don't get along. They'd rather be crude and cruel elsewhere. Perhaps not "good," but at least less antagonistic. And when the Eye falls, they scatter. It might be easier to picture Gruumsh's influence in this regard. If you could remove that influence, you might be able to "civilize" them. Really, all of the bad guy races have this - responding to influence (or fear of) their creator deities. Arguably, the same pressures exist for the "Good" races, but we don't talk about it because why would we have to explain why a race is "Always Good"?

And yes, it is lazy world-building to make a race almost always evil for no reason. Don't make them all evil, or give it a reason.

Tarlek Flamehai
2015-01-07, 10:53 AM
Tolkien orcs, and the orcs of many campaign settings, are created to be evil, trained to be evil, and led by evil. If your campaign setting has an origin for orcs that is rooted in evil, then it makes sense for orcs to be evil. If your campaign setting has a different kind of origin, then it would make sense for your setting to have a different kind of orc.

hamishspence
2015-01-07, 10:58 AM
Arguably, the same pressures exist for the "Good" races, but we don't talk about it because why would we have to explain why a race is "Always Good"?

5E says that, because being Good is at least partly about respecting free will - the Good deities don't exert pressure.

sktarq
2015-01-07, 10:58 AM
I don't really see much of an issue or even difference between the old 2E chaotic evil orcs and the more "Klingon" type you claim to be something different. A society based of a minimal amount of law, take what you can grab and defend, and high levels of violence would generally be described as chaotic and evil-and would thus be filled with chaotic evil members. . . If anything it is a drift away from chaotic stupid orcs to chaotic evil ones.

Look at the amount of law and structure to many elven or Norse civs in the game (many, if not most, being portrayed as CG) and make evil equivalents and you have a mostly CE race.

Solaris
2015-01-07, 10:59 AM
In my Dragon Realms setting, an orc is reasonably intelligent, though not particularly logical or even reasonable, but isn't much more dangerous than an average human. He may not like you, but he's not gonna chop your head off and make it his puppet just for the evil shiggles.
Orcs, on the other hand, are dangerous. Get them together in a pack, and they're prone to get it in their heads that doing something stupid and violent would be a great idea. They're bad influences on each other, you see. Imagine stereotypical college frat boys - get them alone and they might be decent, but in large groups they're going to fall into the mold.

In my Clockwork Avalon setting, orcs have their genesis as proto-dwarves infected a healthy dose of demon blood. They're psychotic and evil, almost mindlessly violent, and all the more tragic because they might have been the greatest of all the races were it not for Gruumsh, their demon-god, stealing them from their true creator and warping them into his image (and in that setting, Gruumsh has a fertility goddess for a bride - they switch control over the orcs, leading to periods where the orcs breed like mad and periods where the orcs go mad). There they're less characters/races and more forces of nature, raw and primal.

123456789blaaa
2015-01-07, 11:30 AM
<snip>
Personally, I'm not overly fond of the concept of single morality mortal species. Just seems like lazy worldbuilding.

So you're okay with single morality immortal species. Why?


See, here's the thing. While I like morally ambiguous villains, they are ultimately villains. Sure, sometimes I may play up a sympathetic villain, or even one who could very well be a hero from a certain point of view, most of my villains are ultimately villainous.

But let me be clear one one thing: to be a villain, at my table, means somebody made a conscious choice. I can understand, for example, why 5e made Orcs universally brain-dead Evil - because it eliminates moral ambiguity and turns them into a simple combat encounter. But I don't like it. They're no longer villains, they're robots. My villains choose their actions. My demons and similar beings may be Evil by default, but they still embrace it. They revel in it. They like Evil. They're intelligent, and open to diplomacy and negotiations, but generally speaking, if the hero is dumb enough to say "You've been a boon to us; won't you fight for the side of Good?" My demons will laugh, say, "No," and kill him.

On second thought, they'll kill him, and then say, "No."

Evil is just too much fun, y'see.

What do you think of a species that could do "good" actions but simply do not derive pleasure from them. Doing "good" acts-for whatever reason- simply does not give them any feel-good rush. There is 0 appeal. On the other hand, doing actions a person would generally consider "evil" gives them an enhanced rush. Thus they all do evil and no good unless it benefits them more.

Here we have a species that is "always evil" but they do technically choose to be evil. Do they meet your criteria for interesting villains?


Sure, but this pretty much never needs to be a species, and when it is it is almost always just laziness. A particular group composed of intelligent people can easily be an obstacle or get across a message just fine even when the group is entirely human. I'd even say that it's generally more effective. As for the cancer comparison, cancer isn't a moral agent at all.

Looking to literary analysis, one method of categorizing stories is by their central conflict, with the big three being person-versus-person, person-versus-the-environment, and person-versus-self. The cancer example is generally person versus the environment, though it can be a catalyst for one of the other two. What works for that is very different than what works for person-versus-person, and generally the point of having a species comprised of people being the main source of conflict is the person-versus-person set. There are some edge cases, such as zombies, which are usually either a person-versus-the-environment thing or a hostile scenario that sets up a person-versus-person or person-versus-self where none of the people involved are zombies. For orcs, that doesn't really seem to apply as much, and when it does there's generally no need for it to be all orcs everywhere.

Well I'm not talking about just orcs (forgetting even that "orc" can be a pretty broad label in the first place).

The "3 central conflicts" is a great shorthand but ultimately very fuzzy in specifics. I mean, in real life we haven't come to a clear consensus of when something becomes a "person". How much harder does this get when you bring in the practically infinite variations of fiction?

One could make the argument that for example "incarnations of humanities darkest and most depraved thoughts put into meat-suits" aren't "people" but are instead a particularly tricky environmental hazard. Are they right? Does it matter? And perhaps like zombies, they're used as a set-up for human's to interact with other humans in a particular way. Can you really not think of any justified circumstances in a story that would require them to be a species :smallconfused:

And you can't think of stories where exchanging the group of intelligent people with humans would lessen the story?

How many examples of these would I have to give you for you to retract you statements?

Lord Raziere
2015-01-07, 11:49 AM
Has anyone else noticed that orcs are being portrayed less and less as murderous Always Chaotic Evil idiots?
It seems to me that the standard Tolkien based troupe has been subverted so hard so often the standard orc is more like an honorable Klingon then a ravenous morlock.

What do you folks think about this? Personally, I enjoy playing half-orcs that are flavored as just strait up orcs, but on the other hand I can appreciate the appeal of an irredeemable hoard of monster people that you can fight and kill without remorse other then more &@#ing zombies.

I think its a good trend that should continue. and I don't need a specific race to kill evil things without remorse. thats what evil in general is for.

Red Fel
2015-01-07, 11:53 AM
What do you think of a species that could do "good" actions but simply do not derive pleasure from them. Doing "good" acts-for whatever reason- simply does not give them any feel-good rush. There is 0 appeal. On the other hand, doing actions a person would generally consider "evil" gives them an enhanced rush. Thus they all do evil and no good unless it benefits them more.

I think that's another example of a robot, and I loathe it. Taking no joy from your actions but performing them anyway strikes me as dissonant. Instead, I would have a species that feels compelled to do good, but enjoys it, much like my demon-types enjoy Evil. That's how I play my angel-types. They're genuinely happy to operate as cosmic manifestations of their respective definitions of Good. The LG sword-and-fire types feel that their actions in judging the wicked are of profound value, and take immense satisfaction in it; the CG free-wheeling types take pleasure in promoting freedom, love, and beauty; the NG ones get a sense of tremendous satisfaction sharing their love and compassion with those in need.

I don't see why Evil alone has to give you a rush. Different strokes for different folks, and all. Evil just looks better while doing it.


Here we have a species that is "always evil" but they do technically choose to be evil. Do they meet your criteria for interesting villains?

They can. Few of my rules are absolutes. Even the idea of acting out a morality without thought isn't an absolute, if applied to something without a mind, such as a robot. I mentioned above that I love the idea of an Evil race that's Evil because it chooses to be. Because it loves it. I already explained that part.

My issue is having a near-universally Evil race without good reason for it to be so. Look, demons are an obvious choice - they're cosmic Evil given physical form. Similarly, if Orcs in your setting are the offspring of X and demons, I could see them having a strong hereditary predisposition towards Evil. Where I find it harder to grasp the idea of an "always evil race" is where there is no tendency towards Evil in the blood; that is, where it is cultural, or simply authorial fiat. I can see a tendency towards amorality within a culture, sure, but for an entire culture to be monolithically Evil stretches credulity, for me. Sure, it could go through a period - a generation or two - where a cultural revolution has resulted in an Evil administration, promoting and indoctrinating Evil ideals. We've seen that happen in real life, and need not discuss it. But for an entire society to be Evil, socially but not genetically, and to have been so for multiple generations, defies logic. You'd think there would have been a few independent thinkers, a revolution, a war as rival nations rise up as a whole to crush an Evil regime, something. And once that society collapses, so too would the societal impetus for Evil.

That said, being Evil by choice is a factor in creating an interesting villain, but alone it is not sufficient. An interesting villain, for me, is a holistic creature; many jagged parts coming together to form a complete and mystical whole. A villain is many things, and reducing it to one-word descriptors like "Evil" just fails, for me.

123456789blaaa
2015-01-07, 12:09 PM
I think that's another example of a robot, and I loathe it. Taking no joy from your actions but performing them anyway strikes me as dissonant. Instead, I would have a species that feels compelled to do good, but enjoys it, much like my demon-types enjoy Evil. That's how I play my angel-types. They're genuinely happy to operate as cosmic manifestations of their respective definitions of Good. The LG sword-and-fire types feel that their actions in judging the wicked are of profound value, and take immense satisfaction in it; the CG free-wheeling types take pleasure in promoting freedom, love, and beauty; the NG ones get a sense of tremendous satisfaction sharing their love and compassion with those in need.

I don't see why Evil alone has to give you a rush. Different strokes for different folks, and all. Evil just looks better while doing it.

I think you may be misunderstanding. I'm saying they don't do "good" actions because they don't get any joy from them. Instead they do evil actions because it gives them an enhanced rush. A big reward for doing one thing and no reward for doing another. The choice isn't hard.

As for the reason? Well there are plenty to pick from. Perhaps they were genetically engineered by some scientist in order to prove a philosophical point. Perhaps they evolved that way in whatever warped dimension they came from because it was the best way to survive. Perhaps etc etc etc


They can. Few of my rules are absolutes. Even the idea of acting out a morality without thought isn't an absolute, if applied to something without a mind, such as a robot. I mentioned above that I love the idea of an Evil race that's Evil because it chooses to be. Because it loves it. I already explained that part.

My issue is having a near-universally Evil race without good reason for it to be so. Look, demons are an obvious choice - they're cosmic Evil given physical form. Similarly, if Orcs in your setting are the offspring of X and demons, I could see them having a strong hereditary predisposition towards Evil. Where I find it harder to grasp the idea of an "always evil race" is where there is no tendency towards Evil in the blood; that is, where it is cultural, or simply authorial fiat. I can see a tendency towards amorality within a culture, sure, but for an entire culture to be monolithically Evil stretches credulity, for me. Sure, it could go through a period - a generation or two - where a cultural revolution has resulted in an Evil administration, promoting and indoctrinating Evil ideals. We've seen that happen in real life, and need not discuss it. But for an entire society to be Evil, socially but not genetically, and to have been so for multiple generations, defies logic. You'd think there would have been a few independent thinkers, a revolution, a war as rival nations rise up as a whole to crush an Evil regime, something. And once that society collapses, so too would the societal impetus for Evil.

That said, being Evil by choice is a factor in creating an interesting villain, but alone it is not sufficient. An interesting villain, for me, is a holistic creature; many jagged parts coming together to form a complete and mystical whole. A villain is many things, and reducing it to one-word descriptors like "Evil" just fails, for me.

I have absolutely no problem with what you're saying here. I agree with it fully. What I'm arguing against is the notion that even with a good reason, it would be better for the story if the race had the potential to be "good". I think there are plenty of stories in which doing so makes it worse.

the_david
2015-01-07, 12:09 PM
Has anyone else noticed that orcs are being portrayed less and less as murderous Always Chaotic Evil idiots?
It seems to me that the standard Tolkien based troupe has been subverted so hard so often the standard orc is more like an honorable Klingon then a ravenous morlock.

What do you folks think about this? Personally, I enjoy playing half-orcs that are flavored as just strait up orcs, but on the other hand I can appreciate the appeal of an irredeemable hoard of monster people that you can fight and kill without remorse other then more &@#ing zombies.

You know, Orcs used to be Lawful Evil. Gruumsh can still be found on the infernal battlefields of Acheron, the plane between the 9 hells of Baator and the clockwork nirvana of Mechanus.

Beta Centauri
2015-01-07, 12:11 PM
Has anyone else noticed that orcs are being portrayed less and less as murderous Always Chaotic Evil idiots?
It seems to me that the standard Tolkien based troupe has been subverted so hard so often the standard orc is more like an honorable Klingon then a ravenous morlock.

What do you folks think about this? I'm cool with it. Absolutes, and repeated tropes have a way of engendering opposing examples.

All drow are evil... except all these ones over here who were created to counter that. Now the "reformed drow" (or vampire, or werewolf, or Klingon, or assassin) is its own trope.

1337 b4k4
2015-01-07, 12:22 PM
There's nothing inherently wrong with the "always evil, always good for killing" orcs. Someone upthread mentioned that when they're portrayed that way, they're more like a force of nature than a species and that's something of the point to that portrayal. The underlying theme in a lot of such portrayals is less "good vs evil" but more "civilization vs chaos and the wild" (in fact, consider that the original D&D alignment system was Law vs Chaos and not Good vs Evil). Mindless orcs are more like forces of nature precisely because they're supposed to model the chaos that civilization and law fights against. It's also what makes the trope subversion work, as orcs become less like a force of nature, they become more civilized. The comparison to zombies is also note worthy as zombies have (in modern story telling) taken up the role that was previously occupied by orcs and goblins, that of the scary evil, intelligent (but not civilized) force of nature lurking just past the city walls. And in fact I would expect to see within the next say 10 years, a trend towards "humanizing" zombies (in as much as they can be humanized and still recognized as a zombie). We've already done it to vampires and werewolves, and to a small degree we've already started on zombies (think Plants Vs Zombies portrayal or ZoHaS from Sluggy Freelance).

And it's also worth remembering that sometimes, monsters are there to serve a mechanical rather than thematic purpose. Some games are not better served by the morally ambiguous orc trope anymore than say Dynasty Warriors would be a better game if it explored the consequences of war on the peasants you spend the game mowing down or Zelda games would be better served by exploring the morality of Chuus. Orcs in these sort of games are obstacles to be overcome, not morality lessons to be learned.

I also think to some degree, the more you humanize and make a monster morally ambiguous, the more you take it off the table as an obstacle except in specifically highlighted "you can kill these guys" moments. Consider that both elves and dwarves and humans have monster manual entries. When was the last time your DM threw you up against a marauding hoard of elves? We (royal) had to specifically make "dark" elves and "dark" dwarves in order to give us throw away monsters we could use to fill that niche. Similarly, with humans, you might go up against bandits and assassins but unless you're playing a warring kingdoms or historical game, you're not likely to wind up wading through a dungeon populated by human "monsters" unless they're "cultists" or something else.

I've got no problems with either portrayal ultimately, if you want your orcs to be morally ambiguous, as long as the game is fun, I don't really care. Likewise, if your story requires simplifying orcs to "the bad guys", then again, as long as it's fun, I don't care.

JusticeZero
2015-01-07, 02:26 PM
Old Orcs seemed to be something of a tusked picture of the indians in the old cowboy movies. Savage and bloodthirsty villains to be mowed down. Nowadays, we remember all that stuff, but those people that our old heroes mowed down in a hail of gunfire are working down the hall in your office.
"Once upon a time, heroes ventured into the darkness to battle monsters. Nowadays, there's no real darkness. We've discovered we're all monsters." -Unknown

BWR
2015-01-07, 04:11 PM
Some settings like to play around with the tropes. Orcs in Mystara were created when the gods Immortals decided to punish a whole bunch of evildoers by reincarnating them into a race of violent brutes whose purpose was to be slaughtered. Goodness knows why they thought this would be a good idea other than for a lark, but that's where the goblinoid races came from. The gods themselves made them the short end of the stick and pure survival instinct and being hated and hunted by everyone else makes them meaner. They are violent tribes, not particularly bright and typical D&D orcs. They also have a tendency adopt any abandoned child they find, regardless of race (though it helps if you look orcish).

Then you have the group of orcs that tried to raid a big elven nation, were repulsed and trapped behind enemy lines and decided to join the winning team. The elves were a bit non-plussed but let the orcs stay, and the orcs started a rather successful firm. Everyone else is a bit bemused by the whole situation.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-07, 04:20 PM
Old Orcs seemed to be something of a tusked picture of the indians in the old cowboy movies. Savage and bloodthirsty villains to be mowed down. Nowadays, we remember all that stuff, but those people that our old heroes mowed down in a hail of gunfire are working down the hall in your office.
"Once upon a time, heroes ventured into the darkness to battle monsters. Nowadays, there's no real darkness. We've discovered we're all monsters." -Unknown

I've long maintained that most of D&D is just westerns in fantasy drag, and that the attitude towards "humanoids" (orcs, hobgoblins, etc., as opposed to demi-humans like elves and dwarves) is similar to various eras and their attitude towards Native Americans in their Westerns. 40s and 50s Westerns were very much "The only good Indian is a dead Indian", while later material tended to take a more nuanced view.

When people question that orcs are evil, or even "most likely going to be evil", I point out that they are the special creation of an evil deity; most stories have them being literally created from his body. That evil deity, and his evil family-pantheon, oversees and interferes in the lives of almost all orcs so, while it's possible that an orc will be non-evil, it's quite unlikely.

Yukitsu
2015-01-07, 04:30 PM
Personally, I always figured that you may as well just make it an all human game if you're just going to say orcs are funny looking humans. If they aren't brutal, bred for violence and vicious for malice's own sake, they don't seem to have any role other than being funny looking people. Same with all of the races, them filling some form of niche within the world rather than just being humans is kind of why they exist in myth or literature. If they were just more humans, that wouldn't have made a very good story, and to a large degree, those games where orcs are just more people are rarely good or interesting stories.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-07, 04:49 PM
Personally, I always figured that you may as well just make it an all human game if you're just going to say orcs are funny looking humans. If they aren't brutal, bred for violence and vicious for malice's own sake, they don't seem to have any role other than being funny looking people. Same with all of the races, them filling some form of niche within the world rather than just being humans is kind of why they exist in myth or literature. If they were just more humans, that wouldn't have made a very good story, and to a large degree, those games where orcs are just more people are rarely good or interesting stories.

Why is dehumanisation inherently more valuable? Races that are not allowed the full spectrum of human behaviour/emotion end up being incomplete, hollow beings. You're playing with fragments who have been programmed to play a part, creatures that, by their very nature, can never be your equals. They're all simply there to make the heroes shine, since only they and some select NPCs get to be real people.

It all feels like self-indulgent puppetry to me.

AMFV
2015-01-07, 04:55 PM
I think you may be misunderstanding. I'm saying they don't do "good" actions because they don't get any joy from them. Instead they do evil actions because it gives them an enhanced rush. A big reward for doing one thing and no reward for doing another. The choice isn't hard.

This is actually very similar to the way that I like to portray evil in general. It's like an addiction, because people generally want to be good (at least in my experience), the type of things that are required to push people to evil is effectively it's seductive and addictive properties. It's always being able to do whatever you need to get what you want, disregarding the needs of others. It's easier and more gratifying, and like many addictions there is a natural progression of escalation, where once a person has justified an evil, then they need greater evils to achieve the same rush later.

So I actually apply your idea, in general principle to all evil and good. Things that are good are not easy, and evil is all about easy gratification.

jedipotter
2015-01-07, 04:57 PM
Has anyone else noticed that orcs are being portrayed less and less as murderous Always Chaotic Evil idiots?
What do you folks think about this?

It's just the changing times and the way a lot of people think.


I don't mind the variety a little bit, but it often goes to far.

It's Objective vs Relative. Objective says ''X is evil'', Relative says ''anyone can be anything''.

Objective works best for most adversarial combat adventure games. You need to have ''bad guys''.

If your playing a story based game, Relative is fine.

AMFV
2015-01-07, 05:07 PM
It's just the changing times and the way a lot of people think.


I don't mind the variety a little bit, but it often goes to far.

It's Objective vs Relative. Objective says ''X is evil'', Relative says ''anyone can be anything''.

Objective works best for most adversarial combat adventure games. You need to have ''bad guys''.

If your playing a story based game, Relative is fine.

You can have a bad guy in a game where anybody can be anything. Some people (and Orcs) will choose that direction. Even Tolkien was deeply concerned with the question of the eventual possibility of redemption for the Orcs. What happened to the Orcs in his setting was a tragedy, that made them violent and terrible. And so it was acceptable to respond to that with violence, but at the same token they were not probably not all completely evil.

I agree that not having a strong objective morality (or any sense of morality at all), can make games in my opinion boring. I find the shades of gray type thing to be unrealistic and deeply, profoundly boring. But I don't like to have irredeemable evil either.

Yukitsu
2015-01-07, 05:18 PM
Why is dehumanisation inherently more valuable?


Yeah, this is kind of the thing that perplexes me. This is like asking why I dehumanize lions. It's because they aren't human. You can't dehumanize something that isn't a human. I'm opposed to the humanization of things like lions because if you go far enough on that, they're just humans that look funny which is less interesting than a world that has both humans and lions that are not just humans in fur.


Races that are not allowed the full spectrum of human behaviour/emotion end up being incomplete, hollow beings. You're playing with fragments who have been programmed to play a part, creatures that, by their very nature, can never be your equals. They're all simply there to make the heroes shine, since only they and some select NPCs get to be real people.


A pet dog has not got any real human traits, other than the ones we decide to project on them, but they aren't incomplete, hollow or uninteresting. And even that aside, talking about sapient creatures, a sapient creature that we could theoretically find wouldn't be any lesser just because it didn't think like a human. The difficulty is in creating an entire reason for being that paints their entire psyche that they would experience, not just project our human ideals into an inhuman life.

DoomHat
2015-01-07, 06:20 PM
Something no one's really touched on yet specifically is that, whether or not you like your orcs evil, the word "evil" alone does not a motivation make. A funny thing too many writers forget about villains (both fictional and historical) is that they are all pretty much convinced that they're the good guys. In fact, more often then not, their conviction to their "noble" ideals is totally unshakable, even in the face of all evidence that their actions are doing massively more harm then good. That's why paladins make such excellent/easy villains.

I think my favorite 'evil orcs' are a play the technologically sophisticated Tolkien orcs.
-"They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones."
When using evil orcs in a campaign setting, I run them as a cruel supernaturally generated parody of humanity, with a massive 'functioning in spite of itself' industrial bureaucracy. Add in a heaping helping of British Colonialism and Terry Gillian style pitch black humor and we're off to the races.


Personally, I always figured that you may as well just make it an all human game if you're just going to say orcs are funny looking humans. If they aren't brutal, bred for violence and vicious for malice's own sake, they don't seem to have any role other than being funny looking people. Same with all of the races, them filling some form of niche within the world rather than just being humans is kind of why they exist in myth or literature. If they were just more humans, that wouldn't have made a very good story, and to a large degree, those games where orcs are just more people are rarely good or interesting stories.

On the other hand, some people like playing big ugly brutes, but the only race tailored for that is Half-orcs. I just can't wrap my head around why bother half-assing your orcs? If orcs aren't necessarily evil or mentally handy capped, then you can play up all kinds of fun/interesting big ugly brute troupes. Anything from standard overgrown bully, to 'noble savage', to gentle giant.
Along those lines, personally, my ideal orc is played by Ron Perlman, Mickey Rourke, Mick Foley, or... come to think of it, I could name a lot a of really talented pro-wrestlers and charismatic athletes.

On a slightly silly note:
Can the mind cope with the staggering awesomeness of having to face the wrath of Warboss Macho-Orc Raandol the Savage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klGRVTTntoI)??

jedipotter
2015-01-07, 06:52 PM
Something no one's really touched on yet specifically is that, whether or not you like your orcs evil, the word "evil" alone does not a motivation make. A funny thing too many writers forget about villains (both fictional and historical) is that they are all pretty much convinced that they're the good guys. In fact, more often then not, their conviction to their "noble" ideals is totally unshakable, even in the face of all evidence that their actions are doing massively more harm then good.

This is more The Problem With Fiction.

All most all writers think they are good and positive and right. So when they make a fantasy race that is good and positive and right, they make the rice based on what the writer thinks in good and positive and right.

Tolken is the classic. Halflings are super good and right, as they live a simple life with hand crafts and ''fire''. Orcs are evil and wrong as they destroy nature and live the complex life of the industrial revolution with things like technology.

The Avatar people are good as they just live in harmony in the wild. The humans are evil as they want to pave paradise and build a parking lot.

The Federation of Star Trek is good as they only want peace. The Dominion is evil as they only want war and power.

Hiro Protagonest
2015-01-07, 07:02 PM
Something no one's really touched on yet specifically is that, whether or not you like your orcs evil, the word "evil" alone does not a motivation make. A funny thing too many writers forget about villains (both fictional and historical) is that they are all pretty much convinced that they're the good guys. In fact, more often then not, their conviction to their "noble" ideals is totally unshakable, even in the face of all evidence that their actions are doing massively more harm then good. That's why paladins make such excellent/easy villains.

That's why Tai Lung is such a good villain. When the writers of Kung Fu Panda were showing it to the higher-ups (I dunno if it was their first presentable writing draft, or if it was when the movie was nearly finished, or what), one of the things they got for feedback was "he's too sympathetic". So they added in a bit more exposition for the flashback, saying he destroyed buildings and killed villagers in the Valley of Peace.

The movie is actually Tai Lung's third act.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-07, 09:39 PM
I don't know how many other people this is true for, but if I need mooks to be mowed down, zombies work just fine for me. Plenty of people I've played with enjoy the whole undead thing (maybe too much when they start cackling about undead minions, but oh well) and well...Don't need orcs in that role, but that is a matter of personal taste.

Broken Twin
2015-01-08, 10:26 AM
So you're okay with single morality immortal species. Why?

Before I respond here, I want to clarify that by immortal, I mean not-of-this-world, ala angels, demons, stuff like that. If it's born of flesh and blood, then I consider it mortal.

A big part of it is the idea that non-mortal species can be conceptual entities. If demons are literally the embodiment of hatred and destruction, then I've got no problem with the entire group acting in that fashion. Attempting to convert one to Good would be impossible, because to do so you'd need to change who and what it is on a fundamental level.

On the other hand, it's a reasonable argument that any species with an unchangeable programmed morality are not sapient in the true sense, since they are incapable of evolving their moral 'code'.

And for the record, I have no problem with cultures having blue and orange morality. I mostly just have a problem with supposedly sapient species doing the whole 'evil for Evil's sake' schtick. An orc raised in human culture shouldn't automatically grow up to be the same chaotic evil monster his genetic siblings are. I've got no problem with them having a disposition towards certain traits, but a 100% "You will grow up to be this" just doesn't sit right with me. Who you are should not be entirely defined by what you are.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-08, 04:20 PM
Yeah, this is kind of the thing that perplexes me. This is like asking why I dehumanize lions. It's because they aren't human. You can't dehumanize something that isn't a human. I'm opposed to the humanization of things like lions because if you go far enough on that, they're just humans that look funny which is less interesting than a world that has both humans and lions that are not just humans in fur.

Lions do not have human-like societies, look humanoid at all, or behave in human-like ways. Orcs do. That's the entire point. It strikes me as a very disturbing thing to do to take a human-like creature and then dehumanise it in order to kill it without remorse (bonus points for adding traits to them found in other humans, like a tribal culture or an "uncivilised" look. That's not horrifying at all!).

Lathund
2015-01-08, 05:10 PM
It's not just orcs or half-orcs. All around, formerly good guys and bad guys suddenly get moral depth. Superman, once a fairly one-dimensional poster boy for Good, now has internal struggles. Or take a film like Maleficent, where the evil faerie suddenly is a misunderstood friend.

I think we, throughout all of the western world, are starting to think less in terms of 'good' and 'evil' than before. And it is reflected in our art and culture, including fantasy games.

mephnick
2015-01-08, 05:30 PM
I deal with shades of grey all day long, from real people and media. It's exhausting.

Give me my objective evil back. Thanks.

Talakeal
2015-01-08, 06:52 PM
I find that portraying non human characters comes with two pitfalls.

One, to treat them simply as humans in funny hats.

The second is non treating them as individuals.


This gets tough because the two are often in contrast with one another. If you give them alien traits they will simply become mindless kill machines, while if you give each orc and individual personality and outlook he will likely just become a human in green makeup.

Even if orcs, say, have a base drive to kill all humans, there will still be individuals who don't engage in the behavior and have a non evil alignment, just like there are humans who are masochistic, asexual, anorexic, suicidal, atheistic, etc. in spite of what the majority of the species considers to be their basic needs.

SiuiS
2015-01-08, 06:54 PM
Has anyone else noticed that orcs are being portrayed less and less as murderous Always Chaotic Evil idiots?
It seems to me that the standard Tolkien based troupe has been subverted so hard so often the standard orc is more like an honorable Klingon then a ravenous morlock.

What do you folks think about this? Personally, I enjoy playing half-orcs that are flavored as just strait up orcs, but on the other hand I can appreciate the appeal of an irredeemable hoard of monster people that you can fight and kill without remorse other then more &@#ing zombies.

There have been numerous threads about it over the last six months. My stance is 'examine both sides critically instead of picking one, choose the stance that achieves the goals of the specific game or world, and that's it'.


Hm, curious...



Seems the idea of them being Always Chaotic Evil is just wishful thinking.

That's funny, because the older text of the silmarilion contradicts your point, as does previous monster manuals. :smallwink:

Not to mention, the knights of the dinner table and doke tower adaptations are completely on the side of mindless evil...

This isn't media discussion, so not all media is relevant, but the question isn't about orcs exactly. It is noticing a trend to add depth to villains, add shades of grey to heroes, and a look at why and how and also why. That's much cooler and much more worth talking about than if we could just say "Welp, some guy with a half understanding of the genre said not always, we can go home. Discussion over".


I generally find the entire concept of the monstrous intelligent species all sorts of boring. People have been warring over all sorts of things for a very long time, and smaller scale conflicts are even more prevalent. Some inherently evil force just isn't necessary, and generally smacks of laziness in setting design; a more complex perspective tends to lead to more complex and interesting conflicts. As such, the trend is entirely welcome, as it generally opens up options.


This isn't a D&D specific thread, and even if it were, the 3e SRD isn't particularly definitive for anything other than one point that can be looked at regarding the trend. 3e is also recent enough for that to be expected, it would be 1e having text like that that would call into question the original state, and even then it's trumped by what actual play looked like.

These things. :)

Hiro Protagonest
2015-01-08, 06:57 PM
I deal with shades of grey all day long, from real people and media. It's exhausting.

Give me my objective evil back. Thanks.

Sure. Play a video game. The combat in those is a lot more fun.

mephnick
2015-01-08, 07:38 PM
Sure. Play a video game. The combat in those is a lot more fun.

Ah, yes. I forgot TTRPGs can only be enjoyed by first year philosophy students. I should take my simple mind back to the TV.

Yukitsu
2015-01-08, 08:32 PM
Lions do not have human-like societies, look humanoid at all, or behave in human-like ways. Orcs do. That's the entire point. It strikes me as a very disturbing thing to do to take a human-like creature and then dehumanise it in order to kill it without remorse (bonus points for adding traits to them found in other humans, like a tribal culture or an "uncivilised" look. That's not horrifying at all!).

Yes, but orcs aren't human like. They're orc like. Making them just a tribal society of humans, you may as well just be using a tribal society of humans. Making them wholly alien from what a human is or believes in at the very least provides a sense of contrast. Besides, I wouldn't be able to kill a lion without remorse, I like lions.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-08, 09:12 PM
Yes, but orcs aren't human like. They're orc like. Making them just a tribal society of humans, you may as well just be using a tribal society of humans. Making them wholly alien from what a human is or believes in at the very least provides a sense of contrast. Besides, I wouldn't be able to kill a lion without remorse, I like lions.

Orcs look human, act human, they are capable of language, they use tools, they dress, they live in societies, they have social systems, they engage in the vast majority of human behaviour.

When something is effectively human but you deny them the condition of humanity based on whatever justification, you are literally dehumanising them, that's the actual definition of the term.

Solaris
2015-01-08, 09:18 PM
Orcs look human, act human, they are capable of language, they use tools, they dress, they live in societies, they have social systems, they engage in the vast majority of human behaviour.

When something is effectively human but you deny them the condition of humanity based on whatever justification, you are literally dehumanising them, that's the actual definition of the term.

They're humanoids with the orc subtype.
Humans have the human subtype.

Orcs engage in human-like behavior, the degree of which depends on the setting, but that doesn't make them human. Ants, apes, elephants, dogs, and dolphins all engage in human-like behavior to one degree or another, but that doesn't make them human either. Orcs are a distorted mirror of humanity - but that still doesn't make them fully human.

Yukitsu
2015-01-08, 09:21 PM
Orcs look human, act human, they are capable of language, they use tools, they dress, they live in societies, they have social systems, they engage in the vast majority of human behaviour.

All of those also apply to certain species of apes, except perhaps the last thing and the clothes thing. Having them engage in that last, extremely nebulous thing isn't actually true in most stories or settings that have them, they don't engage in the vast majority of human behavior, or "human behavior" in this case is so wide as to be the exact same thing as ape like behavior.


When something is effectively human but you deny them the condition of humanity based on whatever justification, you are literally dehumanising them, that's the actual definition of the term.

Yes, and just like how dehumanizing an ape doesn't have any substance as a phrase, dehumanizing literally anything that isn't human also has no real substance. Hell, if there actually existed other sapient life that was not human, the very idea that "dehumanizing them" as though humanity is the only way that sapient life holds value would be incredibly crass and egocentric.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-08, 09:27 PM
They're humanoids with the orc subtype.
Humans have the human subtype.

This thread is not about 3.5e.


Orcs engage in human-like behavior, the degree of which depends on the setting, but that doesn't make them human. Ants, apes, elephants, dogs, and dolphins all engage in human-like behavior to one degree or another, but that doesn't make them human either. Orcs are a distorted mirror of humanity - but that still doesn't make them fully human.


All of those also apply to certain species of apes, except perhaps the last thing and the clothes thing. Having them engage in that last, extremely nebulous thing isn't actually true in most stories or settings that have them, they don't engage in the vast majority of human behavior, or "human behavior" in this case is so wide as to be the exact same thing as ape like behavior.

You can apply the exact same rationale to actual humans, that does not excuse dehumanisation either. Not all humans engage in the full spectrum of human activities/behaviours.


Yes, and just like how dehumanizing an ape doesn't have any substance as a phrase, dehumanizing literally anything that isn't human also has no real substance. Hell, if there actually existed other sapient life that was not human, the very idea that "dehumanizing them" as though humanity is the only way that sapient life holds value would be incredibly crass and egocentric.

You are using dehumanisation as a way to justify the dehumanisation itself. "I dehumanised them, so they're not human, so you can't accuse me of dehumanisation." It's a circular, self-sustaining logic that isn't based in actual evidence.

Yukitsu
2015-01-08, 09:35 PM
You can apply the exact same rationale to actual humans, that does not excuse dehumanisation either. Not all humans engage in the full spectrum of human activities/behaviours.



You are using dehumanisation as a way to justify the dehumanisation itself. "I dehumanised them, so they're not human, so you can't accuse me of dehumanisation." It's a circular, self-sustaining logic that isn't based in actual evidence.

They are by literal definition not human, and as long as that is true, your accusation of circular logic is poorly used. Or are you trying to take the position that orcs just are humans? Because I've said before, that sort of thing just makes the point of the word orc meaningless.

In other words, no, I'm not using dehumanization as a justification, I'm using the fact that they literally don't belong to the category of human to argue that the term "dehumanization" has no relevant content.

If you want to start telling me that literally everything that is sapient is in fact, just a human please make that clear here.

Solaris
2015-01-08, 09:41 PM
No, the thread's not about 3.5E - but I was being facetious in pointing out that we're talking about a fantasy race that is explicitly not human. If orcs were humans, they'd be called humans. If we wanted humans, we'd be using humans. We don't want humans, because you can do things with orcs that you can't do with humans.

Like I said, they're human-like. They've been written (not evolved) as a distorted mirror of humanity, the violent and destructive aspects. It's not like we're talking about, say, the American Indians or the French. We're talking about something invented from whole cloth by authors as something which is explicitly inhuman. We can't dehumanize them because they're not human, any more than we can dehumanize an elephant (which are pretty inarguably sapient and sentient) because they are, again, not human.

We've established that acting human in some ways doesn't necessarily make something human. The normal range of orc behavior falls outside the normal range of human behavior (while not completely without precedent in the historical record, they are massively aberrant when human standards are applied and arguably completely non-functional as a human society). While an orc can 'act human', doing so would be as aberrant for orc psychology as being an amoral killer is for us. How do you justify humanizing orcs? Chaotic evil as a culture really isn't something humans have done, ever. The closest I can find is small groups of bandits who're pretty much poster children for aberrant behavior, or bands of nomads that are possibly chaotic neutral.

Do you have similar objections to efforts at distancing elves and dwarves from humans?

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-08, 09:46 PM
I have to ask, if you want objective evil, why not go for zombies and demons? They're already dehumanized! Is it the lack of tactics? A lack of variation in enemy types? Heck, aberrations are about as inhuman as you can get, so why not use them?

Red Fel
2015-01-08, 09:53 PM
I have to ask, if you want objective evil, why not go for zombies and demons? They're already dehumanized! Is it the lack of tactics? A lack of variation in enemy types? Heck, aberrations are about as inhuman as you can get, so why not use them?

Because killing objective Evil, engaging in guilt-free slaughter, is boring. People like existential strife. It makes them feel alive. Wondering whether the monsters are the things you just killed, or the one who killed them, makes for personal development. Emotional scars build character.

There is a sort of twisted, visceral pleasure in killing NPCs who might not have been unambiguously Evil. A certain perverse gratification that emerges from knowing that maybe, just maybe, there might be a better way to deal with your enemies, one that doesn't involve bloodshed. And then killing them anyway.

Of course, I, personally, would never espouse such beliefs. That would be monstrous.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-08, 10:03 PM
I deal with shades of grey all day long, from real people and media. It's exhausting.

Give me my objective evil back. Thanks.

Not for this guy, hence the question. I prefer games of questionable shades of grey, but I am curious what orcs offer over other options.

Solaris
2015-01-08, 10:15 PM
I have to ask, if you want objective evil, why not go for zombies and demons? They're already dehumanized! Is it the lack of tactics? A lack of variation in enemy types? Heck, aberrations are about as inhuman as you can get, so why not use them?

'Cause I don't want the cleric to steamroll the encounter, and there's a distressing lack of low-CR fiends that actually qualify as sapient. Carnage demons make for great orc replacements, but they're CR 4 - hardly suitable for a group of 1st-level characters.

That, and (as the DM), it does give me the opportunity to throw the players for a loop by having the orcs be either the lesser of two evils (and thus allow for the possibility of a team-up against a greater threat) or by having them be the victims themselves. Orcs fill a niche of 'usually, but not always, evil' - as opposed to the 'barely evil' goblinoids and the 'murderously psychotic evil' drow. They also offer a certain aspect of wildness and primal quality absent from the other races, which makes them useful for certain 'industry-vs-nature' plotlines I've used in my steampunk settings.

Orcs aren't exactly my go-to for preferred monster types, and almost invariably I write the tribes that the players are going to be attacking in as having provoked the attack through a raid and thus continue to pose a threat to the human villagers - not as needing killed just because they're orcs. Generally, the goal is to take out the chieftain who's organizing them, and then the natural tendencies of the orcs neutralizes the rest of the threat. About one-third of the time, though, I have them as being threatened by something else and thus an easy and (relatively) peaceful solution is to go kill whatever nasty thing chased the orcs out of their caves.

I do find it somewhat... telling, though, that the players in each of my unrelated groups tend to disregard the concept of negotiating with savage humanoids, or even the concept that they shouldn't be all murdered on sight. I am the only player I know of who's not gone out of his way to kill 'em all - my elf character having released a bunch of goblin captives from an orc encampment and then not letting the rest of the party kill them drew shocked reactions from the group.
Of course, that one was the same sort of group where if you play an elf, you evidently deserve the mockery and derision you get both IC and OOC for not playing a human (or planetouched).

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-08, 10:51 PM
This thread bothers me a little because in some places it seems like an attempt to sink my preferences. I like my orcs irredeemably evil. If I want a morally ambiguous creature, something that struggles with its nature in the manner of a mental illness, I'll include a half-orc.

That said, I don't think anyone here pointed out that the orcs a la Tolkien are basically the damned. They're supposed to be akin to fallen men, whose appearances and behaviours match their souls. For variety we could include orcs who effectively just squeaked into perdition and so are not necessarily 100% evil, but are working on it, and orcs who richly deserved damnation and are on their way to climbing the ribby ladders towards command in the pit.

If they're not as-if-fallen men, then either they are non-judged humans in monster drag, or they are animals.

SiuiS
2015-01-08, 10:57 PM
They are by literal definition not human, and as long as that is true, your accusation of circular logic is poorly used. Or are you trying to take the position that orcs just are humans? Because I've said before, that sort of thing just makes the point of the word orc meaningless.

In other words, no, I'm not using dehumanization as a justification, I'm using the fact that they literally don't belong to the category of human to argue that the term "dehumanization" has no relevant content.

If you want to start telling me that literally everything that is sapient is in fact, just a human please make that clear here.

You're misconstruing. Human and homo Sapiens sapiens are not the same thing. The trait "humanity", as in to be humane, has nothing to do with a species and everything to do with values and capacity. Humans are capable of human-like behavior and acting humanely. So are, in theory, orcs. They have hardware which allows them to process choice, empathize with other non-orcs, and make decisions based on that processing and empathy. Those traits are labeled as human traits. It may be a silly name for it but it does what it is intended; it self perpetuates.

Calling orcs human like allows you to empathize with them enough to see they are capable of and deserving of humane action. Pointing out that the name of the words is unfortunate via some technicalities isn't an argument. Everyone knows this. They expect a basic enough grasp of English to move past that as a defense. It's akin to trying to win an argument because of a spelling mistake.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-08, 10:59 PM
In other words, no, I'm not using dehumanization as a justification, I'm using the fact that they literally don't belong to the category of human to argue that the term "dehumanization" has no relevant content.

If you want to start telling me that literally everything that is sapient is in fact, just a human please make that clear here.

Here's the gist of it: We're obviously never going to convince each other, because I personally cannot trust the arguments of someone in favour of dehumanisation. To me, everything a defender of that position says is just a way to justify an outlook. They decide that X is not human/people, and then they come up with the reasons afterwards.

To me, if it looks like a human, acts like a human, and is in all but name a human, it's still a human. And attempts to argue otherwise sound to me like excuses to enact guilt-free violence on humans.


Do you have similar objections to efforts at distancing elves and dwarves from humans?

Yes. The same goes for pretty much anything even remotely human-like. I do not approve of creating human-like beings and then dehumanise them simply to vent antisocial behaviour upon them.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-08, 11:02 PM
I dunno. I'm getting an idea for a setting of a race that physically resembles elves, but are actually mobile parts of a somewhat intelligent plant or fungus.

SiuiS
2015-01-08, 11:08 PM
This thread bothers me a little because in some places it seems like an attempt to sink my preferences. I like my orcs irredeemably evil. If I want a morally ambiguous creature, something that struggles with its nature in the manner of a mental illness, I'll include a half-orc.

That said, I don't think anyone here pointed out that the orcs a la Tolkien are basically the damned. They're supposed to be akin to fallen men, whose appearances and behaviours match their souls. For variety we could include orcs who effectively just squeaked into perdition and so are not necessarily 100% evil, but are working on it, and orcs who richly deserved damnation and are on their way to climbing the ribby ladders towards command in the pit.

If they're not as-if-fallen men, then either they are non-judged humans in monster drag, or they are animals.

Tolkien himself felt he did a bad job and that orcs were and should have been more than portrayed. It's disingenuous to use his orcs – which he did not want to be irredeemably evil or damned – as peoof they should be irredeemably evil or damned.


Shadowknight12: you're also rationalizing your position. That's the basic function of human thought. Logic is a fun diversion we use to make our preferences seem legit, but it's not the basis of thought and decision without intentional self programming.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-08, 11:10 PM
Shadowknight12: you're also rationalizing your position. That's the basic function of human thought. Logic is a fun diversion we use to make our preferences seem legit, but it's not the basis of thought and decision without intentional self programming.

The direction is the inverse, though. I don't start at the goal and work backwards, I start with the evidence and then work my way to the conclusion, whichever it may be. Now granted, I admit I'm speculating wildly about people's motives, but I've seen it enough times to consider it a safe assumption.

Yukitsu
2015-01-09, 12:08 AM
You're misconstruing. Human and homo Sapiens sapiens are not the same thing. The trait "humanity", as in to be humane, has nothing to do with a species and everything to do with values and capacity. Humans are capable of human-like behavior and acting humanely. So are, in theory, orcs. They have hardware which allows them to process choice, empathize with other non-orcs, and make decisions based on that processing and empathy. Those traits are labeled as human traits. It may be a silly name for it but it does what it is intended; it self perpetuates.

Calling orcs human like allows you to empathize with them enough to see they are capable of and deserving of humane action. Pointing out that the name of the words is unfortunate via some technicalities isn't an argument. Everyone knows this. They expect a basic enough grasp of English to move past that as a defense. It's akin to trying to win an argument because of a spelling mistake.

In this context, that is entirely not true, nor is that clearly true in a dictionary sense. Human is the listing used most commonly in games to describe us as a species as homo sapiens. Even in a dictionary a human being is defined strictly on terms of being a homo sapiens. The term human is very nearly always used in that context so trying to stretch it to mean "humane" rather than saying "humane" when you mean "humane" seems odd. Humane means something a little different from being human.

What's worse, are you incapable of empathy for anything that isn't human? Can or should we butcher dolphins and not feel bad about it just because we haven't bothered humanizing something which clearly isn't human? That sounds insane to me, whether or not something is or is not human should have no bearing on whether or not we feel empathy to it, nor should I feel empathy for someone just because they are human.


Here's the gist of it: We're obviously never going to convince each other, because I personally cannot trust the arguments of someone in favour of dehumanisation. To me, everything a defender of that position says is just a way to justify an outlook. They decide that X is not human/people, and then they come up with the reasons afterwards.

To me, if it looks like a human, acts like a human, and is in all but name a human, it's still a human. And attempts to argue otherwise sound to me like excuses to enact guilt-free violence on humans.

I'm not in favour of dehumanization, and you have to prove that something is human before you can accuse someone of dehumanizing it. If you've got systems in place where they cannot be differentiated in any way from humans, I would indeed agree that they are humans, but orcs as written in fiction and in games are not identical in either mentality or appearance to humans.

Alberic Strein
2015-01-09, 12:30 AM
This thread bothers me a little because in some places it seems like an attempt to sink my preferences. I like my orcs irredeemably evil. If I want a morally ambiguous creature, something that struggles with its nature in the manner of a mental illness, I'll include a half-orc.

That said, I don't think anyone here pointed out that the orcs a la Tolkien are basically the damned. They're supposed to be akin to fallen men, whose appearances and behaviours match their souls. For variety we could include orcs who effectively just squeaked into perdition and so are not necessarily 100% evil, but are working on it, and orcs who richly deserved damnation and are on their way to climbing the ribby ladders towards command in the pit.

If they're not as-if-fallen men, then either they are non-judged humans in monster drag, or they are animals.

Don't you just hate it when you play an ******** protagonist and the game enforces some two bit moral bull**** about the kidnapping parasitic creatures not being truly evil but slaves to necessity?

Anyway, you like your orcs favored black.

Let's keep that thought in the back of our heads for now and please, think of a troll.

Yup. A troll.

All done? Well, while a significant number of us thought about the classic D&D troll who can only be killed with acid or fire, a number of us also had wildly different trolls pop into their heads. Because under the name, there are a lot of different creatures cohabitating.

Orcs are pretty much the same. Orcs are big greenskined, tusked, tough, strong, and most likely not the most subtle people around. But besides that? Each and every author had its own spin on the tale.

While SiuiS noted that Tolkien didn't do an as good job as he would have wanted with his orcs, the orcs as "damned" members of another race being irremediably evil suits well with me.

Any orc newborn in a classic D&D setting pinging on the evil radar by virtue of being born in an always chaotic evil race doesn't. What do you know, I'm not a big fan of determinism.

So, if we pick out some of the more exotic natures for orcs, for example in Warhammer Fantasy they are -sorta- born from some kind of fungi, we can spin an existence which would justify the always chaotic evil bit. For example, orcs are not born but evil members of other races are susceptible to be parasited by a fungus which will feed on their evil and when the victim crosses the point of no return, completes the transformation into an orc.

However, if orcs are merely a race, with sapience, newborns, a society, etc, unless they are explicitely fiends painted green (and even then) there is no reason for them to be irremedialy evil. Sure, the non-evil members will be rejects in their society, but they can still be thus.

There are a lot of stories of beings somehow evil aligned, for exemple who could only feel pleasure when hurting others, who still lived decent lives (at least for 30+ years) or who sided with Good. For the hell of it.

And examples of dark elves who decided to be good. Redemption is not restricted to the attractive.

Basically there are enough kinds of orcs for anyone, whip out the ones you want. You like your orcs black? Help yourself. You like yours gray? Ditto. There is no "orcs, which are actually a huge number of distinct races all put together because they sorta look alike should act in an unanimous manner."


As for the conversation about humanity and all... It is highly interesting, however unluckily since Humanity has yet to encounter another intelligent race, there is no way of knowing what is "human" for sure. Are those behaviours limited to humans? To sapient creatures? To sentient ones? What is the difference between a sentient human-looking being and a human? We have no idea, because the only sentient beings looking like humans we know are humans.

Edit:

@Yukitsu:
That sounds insane to me, whether or not something is or is not human should have no bearing on whether or not we feel empathy to it, nor should I feel empathy for someone just because they are human.
While your opinion is logical and makes sense, unluckily this is EXACTLY how empathy works. We see a reaction in another and we liken it to ours. And the closer the other is to is physically and mentally the easier the process is.

I'm not claiming it's not insane however.


I'm not in favour of dehumanization

I am all in favor of dehumanization of fantasy creatures. I'm not going to call it fantasy dehumanization but god is it hard to resist the temptation. Fantasy is beautiful in that it can force unnatural laws on the world and cause all kinds of funny shenanigans, such as homonculi, being with a mind and body, but no soul. Are they humans then? What of humans with living healthy bodies but broken non-functional minds, are they still human?

It's good strife for PCs, that's for sure.

johnbragg
2015-01-09, 01:18 AM
For a while I've kicked around the idea of orcs more as a culture than as a race. A culture marked by a complete lack of empathy and by taking joy in violence and sadism, Lord of the Flies crossed with Shades of Gray. Most orcs were born as humans, captured as babies or children, and those who survive to adolescence or adulthood are broken beyond redemption. The fearsome appearance comes not from different colored skin or animalistic facial features but from extreme scarification, tattoos and mutilation.

In a fantasy setting, you can easily add in the idea that the orcs' appearance also becomes more bestial over the decade or two of an orc's short, violent lifespan.

You can also bring in capital-E-Evil as a game mechanic, where captial-E-Evil creatures get physical sensation from inflicting pain and suffering.

jedipotter
2015-01-09, 01:26 AM
Orcs look human, act human, they are capable of language, they use tools, they dress, they live in societies, they have social systems, they engage in the vast majority of human behaviour.

When something is effectively human but you deny them the condition of humanity based on whatever justification, you are literally dehumanising them, that's the actual definition of the term.

This is more a real world problem. In the real world humans are unique. No other creature is exactly like humans.

But this is not true in fantasy. There are lots of other races. You can not say orcs have ''human like behavior'' as human is no longer the unique race. It's like comparing Dogs(Humans) and Wolves(orcs). Both are unique. You would never say ''wolves growl when angry in a very dog like behavior''. It's a very wolf like behavior. The same way you would not say a ''robin flies with a very sea gull like behavior.'' They both ''fly'' unique.

And all the ''human factors'' break down in fantasy. Dragons don't dress. Dragons don't ''live in societies''. Dragons don't use tools. And so on.

You can ''dehumanize'' when human is on long unique and special. Human is just ''one race of many'' in fantasy and Sci-Fi.

hamishspence
2015-01-09, 03:17 AM
It's like comparing Dogs(Humans) and Wolves(orcs). Both are unique.

That's a pretty good comparison. Dogs were selectively bred from wolves, are still capable of hybridising with them, and have very similar instincts and social organization.

Orcs as "early humans" works pretty well.

Solaris
2015-01-09, 09:55 AM
Tolkien himself felt he did a bad job and that orcs were and should have been more than portrayed. It's disingenuous to use his orcs – which he did not want to be irredeemably evil or damned – as peoof they should be irredeemably evil or damned.

I recall reading that, 'off-screen', there were some orcs and goblins who fought against Morgoth and Sauron. They were mentioned offhanded at best, but when asked Tolkien agreed that yes, there were good orcs.

hamishspence
2015-01-09, 11:01 AM
In (I think) Elrond's description of the War at the end of the second age (that, or The Silmarillion's), it says "beings of every kind were on both sides, except the elves who were united against Sauron".

That might be what's being referred to.

Jay R
2015-01-09, 11:12 AM
"Orc" is not a well-known name like "goblin", "troll", "ogre", etc. Everything we think about orcs really started with Tolkien.

The word "orc" existed centuries before Tolkien, and meant "demon". Then it disappeared for centuries, and appeared rarely in the 17th and 18th century as a demon. I'm told it was used in the 19th century in Germanic folklore, but I have no evidence, and it did not become a popular word in English fantasy from that. Nor did we inherit any idea of what they are like from that.

Tolkien wrote, 'the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc "demon", but only because of its phonetic suitability'.

So our tradition of orcs as man-like creatures goes only as far back as Tolkien, although I suspect D&D has had more to do with defining what it means.

Solaris
2015-01-09, 11:40 AM
In (I think) Elrond's description of the War at the end of the second age (that, or The Silmarillion's), it says "beings of every kind were on both sides, except the elves who were united against Sauron".

That might be what's being referred to.

That's the exact in-text quote I was thinking of. It's not exactly the smoking gun, but when you take into account Tolkien's personal beliefs it's a pretty strong argument.
I may, however, be misremembering the bit about Tolkien confirming it directly out-of-text.

Morty
2015-01-09, 12:48 PM
It does seem like the idea of certain fictional species being a uniform mass of conveniently evil strawpeople seems to become less dominant. A prospect I'm very happy about.

mephnick
2015-01-09, 02:11 PM
This thread bothers me a little because in some places it seems like an attempt to sink my preferences.

Get used to it. Objectively morality seems to be a no-no these days, despite D&D being based on the concept.

Kami2awa
2015-01-09, 04:54 PM
Not everything pretty need be good ... beauty can be deceiving, that's why "glamour" acquired it's more modern meanings.

Orcs are muscular, assertive, dominant and take no **** from anyone. That easily could presented as good or bad. They're the biker gangs of the road that goes e'er on and on.

JusticeZero
2015-01-09, 05:28 PM
The trope of a sentient cannon fodder race leaves a bad taste in peoples mouth more and more, especially if you might have someone at your table who actually is a member of an IRL cannon fodder race. As a result, things have shifted.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-09, 05:31 PM
Perhaps tangential, but it is interesting to see that many people (and it seems, those debating NOT to have Orcs as an always evil race) have decided to represent themselves with a member of a monster race. Or whatever Yora's avatar is, I don't really know.

AstralFire
2015-01-09, 05:38 PM
Perhaps tangential, but it is interesting to see that many people (and it seems, those debating NOT to have Orcs as an always evil race) have decided to represent themselves with a member of a monster race. Or whatever Yora's avatar is, I don't really know.

Well, I pretty much always play a "pretty" race, and generally one of the standards. Even so, not really a fan of the "orcs are an evil race" stuff. I'm not even really a fan of "demons are evil." I tend to leave out clear designated good/evil aesthetics as a whole, neither consistently playing it straight nor consistently inverting it with black hat good, white hat bad. I prefer to let my PCs determine whether or not something should be fought on its own merits, and allow creatures to decide how they view themselves.

I really liked 4E's alignments.

Jay R
2015-01-09, 06:16 PM
It does seem like the idea of certain fictional species being a uniform mass of conveniently evil strawpeople seems to become less dominant. A prospect I'm very happy about.

Based on the forums here, it looks like the number of races people think are automatically bad is constant. More and more people want to rehabilitate orcs even as more and more people are down on all elves.

Yora
2015-01-09, 06:28 PM
Perhaps tangential, but it is interesting to see that many people (and it seems, those debating NOT to have Orcs as an always evil race) have decided to represent themselves with a member of a monster race. Or whatever Yora's avatar is, I don't really know.

I actually don't know either, but it's awesome.
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs6/i/2005/097/9/3/Azaezelbunny_by_ursulav.jpg
Link (http://ursulav.deviantart.com/art/Azaezelbunny-16960756)

mephnick
2015-01-09, 06:38 PM
I dub it the "Ramrabbit" and will be the first homebrew race in my campaign.

AstralFire
2015-01-09, 06:52 PM
Based on the forums here, it looks like the number of races people think are automatically bad is constant. More and more people want to rehabilitate orcs even as more and more people are down on all elves.

I generally see more "elves tend to be boring" than "elves are bad", and 4E managed to reinspire my interest in elves a bit, with the Eladrin and the feywild.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-09, 06:56 PM
I don't dislike elves. I dislike players who like elves a little too much and try to give them crazy powers. Oddly, I've yet to see players of orcs do that one.

Bulldog Psion
2015-01-09, 07:11 PM
Give me a large helping of "no evil races," please. There's more than enough reason for conflict in a story without that kind of tired weirdness in it. And it's utterly dull, too.

Lord Raziere
2015-01-09, 07:20 PM
Perhaps tangential, but it is interesting to see that many people (and it seems, those debating NOT to have Orcs as an always evil race) have decided to represent themselves with a member of a monster race. Or whatever Yora's avatar is, I don't really know.

hey, I like both elves and orcs. its just that elves are often done badly, so people hate them. I know myself that well-written characters matter more than some half-done racial description. I'm no longer in the "subvert tropes for the sake of it" stage, I now see all tropes as tools, from the orc to the elf, and I prefer my tools to be well made with depth and thought rather than some racial stereotype making the race a bunch of pseudo-angels that everyone hates for being arrogant jerks or pseudo-demons everyone kills because they don't like thinking. if I want that kind of morality, there is already angels and demons, why go for the lite versions with a bunch of weird horrible racial implications that make no sense?

and as for things you can kill without regrets, but varied, humanoid and intelligent: Imitator Demons. They imitate other races in hordes then go on murder sprees. could be elf, could be dwarf, could be human, could be orc. but you know that they're not the real one by the fact that their eyes are different....you can just see it in their eyes...

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-09, 08:18 PM
Tolkien himself felt he did a bad job and that orcs were and should have been more than portrayed. It's disingenuous to use his orcs – which he did not want to be irredeemably evil or damned – as peoof they should be irredeemably evil or damned.

I'd like to read more about that. Do you have a reference?

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-09, 08:22 PM
Get used to it. Objectively morality seems to be a no-no these days, despite D&D being based on the concept.

Indeed, I read a book on LotR once that held up the "return" referred to in RotK being the hegemonic return of Reason into the world of men. I see the subjective morality concept as a passing cloud obscuring the stars.

Solaris
2015-01-09, 08:56 PM
Perhaps tangential, but it is interesting to see that many people (and it seems, those debating NOT to have Orcs as an always evil race) have decided to represent themselves with a member of a monster race. Or whatever Yora's avatar is, I don't really know.

... And the guys arguing that it's okay to use orcs as an evil race are a LE dragon and a mindless undead zombie.
You guys are just pikers when it comes to Evil, is all.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-09, 08:57 PM
Two things which few people want to make good-aligned, through there are some. I still find it interesting that the more humanized ones get used for avatars.

hamishspence
2015-01-10, 03:51 AM
"Orc" is not a well-known name like "goblin", "troll", "ogre", etc. Everything we think about orcs really started with Tolkien.

The word "orc" existed centuries before Tolkien, and meant "demon". Then it disappeared for centuries, and appeared rarely in the 17th and 18th century as a demon. I'm told it was used in the 19th century in Germanic folklore, but I have no evidence, and it did not become a popular word in English fantasy from that. Nor did we inherit any idea of what they are like from that.

Keep in mind that Tolkien orcs were goblins in The Hobbit, and he drew somewhat on goblin tropes from mythology and folklore. He tended to use the terms interchangeably - even in LoTR Saruman's soldiers are sometimes called goblins.

GloatingSwine
2015-01-10, 06:13 AM
Orcs don't even need to be predominantly evil to be, well, orcs as they are often portrayed.

A vast amount of human history is filled with raiding and pillaging people who couldn't fight back and were sufficiently far away to not matter for regular trade relations.

So y'know, orcs can have just as wide a range of alignments as anyone else and still be raiding and pillaging on the frontiers of "civilised" society.

golentan
2015-01-10, 06:23 AM
My two cents: Dehumanization may be a terrible word for what's being talked about, but it's an accurate concept. Especially as orcs as seen in DnD usually draw on a lot of "savage" cultural practices from real world cultures.

I like my orcs evil. I hate my orcs intrinsically, irredeemably evil. I figure that the combination of lack of farming and high fertility seen in most Orc depictions is going to put them at odds with "civilized" neighbors more often than not, as hunger and other needs drive the frequently nomadic or poor orcs to raid farmsteads and towns for food, mates, slaves, prestige, and metals. If a culture is by and large violent when they could choose not to be, that's as good a reason to call them evil as any other, especially if you mix in a hatred for the "soft" humans, elves, whatever the local raidees are. But that doesn't mean orcs are evil by nature, it means they've got a culture that thrives by evil, reinforced by religions (gruumsh, sauron, whoever, in fantasy worlds gods of evil provide tangible benefits to their worshippers in the form of dark miracles) that encourage them to fight and abuse each other and outsiders for standing and wealth. Probably some of this is biology (as mentioned, the orcs typically have high fertility and high aggression in their racial statblock equivalent, but aggression isn't evil unless it's applied to the innocent even if it inclines someone that way), but I still bet that if you raised an orc baby in a stereotypical gnomish home they're not much more likely to turn evil than a gnome in the same house, though they may find themselves drawn to a more violent profession. Like a paladin.

So, if that orc army is bearing down on your town, axes gleaming and torches burning, you don't have to feel guilty for shredding them (at least until they break ranks and start to retreat). Same with if you're on the road and a group of orc bandits jumps out of the underbrush and swing for your neck. But if you start taking out your frustrations on the civilians tending the cookfires back in their camp/village, start killing babies, or greet an unarmed orc with an arrow through the neck for setting foot in your territory, you've jumped off the slippery slope, and besides chances are good that that orc wasn't evil, or even if they might have been willing to be they were still as much victims of Orcish culture as Jenkins who lost his farm to a raid the other day. Plus, during times of peace, it's probably a better idea to trade with them and teach them that there are better ways to make a living than assaulting the city walls, better gods to worship, better ways to negotiate with other humanoids than at swordpoint, since if you change the culture the Orcs won't be evil anymore.

Jay R
2015-01-10, 09:18 AM
Keep in mind that Tolkien orcs were goblins in The Hobbit, and he drew somewhat on goblin tropes from mythology and folklore. He tended to use the terms interchangeably - even in LoTR Saruman's soldiers are sometimes called goblins.

Of course. Nonetheless, when we use the word "orc", we are thinking of Tolkien's orcs - and derivatives, like D&D.

I suspect that Ral Partha had a lot to do with defining the modern orc.

Morty
2015-01-10, 10:56 AM
Orcs don't even need to be predominantly evil to be, well, orcs as they are often portrayed.

A vast amount of human history is filled with raiding and pillaging people who couldn't fight back and were sufficiently far away to not matter for regular trade relations.

So y'know, orcs can have just as wide a range of alignments as anyone else and still be raiding and pillaging on the frontiers of "civilised" society.

That's what it comes down to, in the end. You can have plenty of conflict, with varying degrees of nuance, without passing sweeping mortal judgements on entire species of people.

Knaight
2015-01-10, 11:55 AM
Get used to it. Objectively morality seems to be a no-no these days, despite D&D being based on the concept.

Objectivity and moral homogenity across a large group are still entirely unrelated concepts. Trying to paint everyone who dislikes the latter as opposed to the former is disingenuous.

Yora
2015-01-10, 12:01 PM
That's what it comes down to, in the end. You can have plenty of conflict, with varying degrees of nuance, without passing sweeping mortal judgements on entire species of people.

But then you first have to stop and think if those people you see are posing a threat or deserve death for what they did in the past before you can smite them.
Booooring!

Knaight
2015-01-10, 12:14 PM
But then you first have to stop and think if those people you see are posing a threat or deserve death for what they did in the past before you can smite them.
Booooring!

In practice, it's often so incredibly obvious in most games that this is negligible. Plus, there are plenty of examples of obviously evil characters where whether just killing them is acceptable is dubious at best. For instance, in a game I'm currently GMing, an NPC has (among other things) tried to pay someone a lot of money to stop providing medical care to workers on one plantation for workplace injuries (which can be pretty bad, it's a machete heavy place), so as to benefit another, followed by some outright threats when they refused. That character is clearly a horrible horrible person, as are basically the rest of the higher ups in Galactic Fruit*. The guy is pretty unambiguously evil. Yet whether just killing him is acceptable is somewhat less clear.

*Yes, this is an obvious future expy of United Fruit, and yes, the campaign is in many ways inspired by the uglier parts of United Fruit's past. So there are some really horrible people involved.

dysike
2015-01-10, 12:30 PM
One thing I think would be a mistake is to assume that certain human characteristics are universal of sapient species. One quite good example I've used is the aggression instinct. Elves in my setting evolved as essentially flight animals, their thin, agile bodies make fleeing in a densely wooded area very easy and would probably have been their primary survival tactic when they were first evolving, what they wouldn't have had a reason to evolve as humans did was the fight half of the fight-or-flight instinct and so their response to a threat is never to destroy it, they can still reason that would be the best solution, they can as humans do choose to ignore their instinct but they still prefer ranged combat, like archery, or indirect means of fighting, like magic.

I haven't used a similar method of reasoning for Orcs but if I had to I probably would have said that they would likely be the top predator in their own environment by virtue of their strength and natural weapons like tusks. This means that survival is no longer in question due to external threats so the main factor becomes in-species competition, in this circumstance you can easily see how they may have developed a 'rule of the strong' culture where everyone has to try and survive on their own strength or their not worth having around. Once again they can ignore their instincts using reason and work together but they aren't by nature social animals in the way humans needed to be to survive.

sktarq
2015-01-10, 01:41 PM
Well also I think a lot of the change has to do with how willing people are to explore the ideas of evil in general and other non "in-group good/out-group bad" definitions of other in their fantasy. Frankly most of the alignment system in most games that have one doesn't deal with this very well-hell in 2E the system didn't allow for any variation. So as is so often the case I think the idea of trying to plug alignments in the world has caused yet more disruption and argument to game. Joy

AMFV
2015-01-10, 04:08 PM
One thing I think would be a mistake is to assume that certain human characteristics are universal of sapient species. One quite good example I've used is the aggression instinct. Elves in my setting evolved as essentially flight animals, their thin, agile bodies make fleeing in a densely wooded area very easy and would probably have been their primary survival tactic when they were first evolving, what they wouldn't have had a reason to evolve as humans did was the fight half of the fight-or-flight instinct and so their response to a threat is never to destroy it, they can still reason that would be the best solution, they can as humans do choose to ignore their instinct but they still prefer ranged combat, like archery, or indirect means of fighting, like magic.

I haven't used a similar method of reasoning for Orcs but if I had to I probably would have said that they would likely be the top predator in their own environment by virtue of their strength and natural weapons like tusks. This means that survival is no longer in question due to external threats so the main factor becomes in-species competition, in this circumstance you can easily see how they may have developed a 'rule of the strong' culture where everyone has to try and survive on their own strength or their not worth having around. Once again they can ignore their instincts using reason and work together but they aren't by nature social animals in the way humans needed to be to survive.

It's important to note that Humans evolved as the top predator in their environment. So a predatory Orcish race would probably act very much like Humans do, in fact they'd be more human.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-10, 04:28 PM
If humans can breed quite easily with both elves and orcs...Would they be all that different from those races? I wonder what having orcs or elves all be one alignment mean for their hybrid offspring.

Yora
2015-01-10, 04:44 PM
It's important to note that Humans evolved as the top predator in their environment. So a predatory Orcish race would probably act very much like Humans do, in fact they'd be more human.
I believe that only pack predators are actually able to develop societies. Prey animals don't need to develop any complex thinking that goes beyond "run away" and "stay with the group", while solitary animals would be pretty much unable to share any discovery they make with others.

jedipotter
2015-01-10, 05:12 PM
It does seem like the idea of certain fictional species being a uniform mass of conveniently evil strawpeople seems to become less dominant. A prospect I'm very happy about.

Sure there is reality, but fiction is not reality. If even reality is reality.

In fiction when you have an adversary type plot, you need a bad guy or bad race. You could just say ''they are bad'' and get on with telling your story....or you could, sigh, write a whole other story about how the bad guys of the one race in your story are just a small handful of crazy radicals and have nothing to do with the race as a whole and every member of the race is a special snowflake and can be anything. so even as your other story has a member of the race being bad, there are a billion being good, and everything else, all the time. *Whew deep breath*

Though that just gets crazy.

And when you get into fiction, you get lots of good and evil problems.

Take Elven Empire: Should any Elf ''do bad'', they are not to blame. They are ''taken into custody'' and ''helped'', but never, ever hurt or harmed or killed.

Take Orc Empire: Should any orc ''do bad'', they are killed on the spot. As long as there is a single witness to the ''bad'', everyone just nods and life goes on.

So are both good empires? Is one evil and one good? If both are good, how does the elf empire handle the daily slaughter in the orc Empire? Do they just ignore it? Do they just say ''oh, there good is different?'' Do they separate ''elf good' from ''orc good''?

awa
2015-01-10, 05:13 PM
I don't believe that's the case just look at chimps and elephants neither are pack hunters

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-10, 05:27 PM
Chimps actually do hunt in groups. And since they hunt monkeys, I assume they need some coordination. Elephants are still odd, but it could be to defend young against predators. Which could apply to a humanoid species, especially if protein requirements are no longer a factor.

Roxxy
2015-01-10, 06:44 PM
I quite like this trend. I treat all my character races as different races of human, so an orc is as much a complex person as anyone else, and is going to think and act like the human being it is. I don't really like pegging a whole race as bad. It just doesn't sit right with me.


Sure there is reality, but fiction is not reality. If even reality is reality.

In fiction when you have an adversary type plot, you need a bad guy or bad race. You could just say ''they are bad'' and get on with telling your story....or you could, sigh, write a whole other story about how the bad guys of the one race in your story are just a small handful of crazy radicals and have nothing to do with the race as a whole and every member of the race is a special snowflake and can be anything. so even as your other story has a member of the race being bad, there are a billion being good, and everything else, all the time. *Whew deep breath*You could just portray more than one member of that race. For example, within my campaign setting there is no race with a tendency to be good or bad. If a drow becomes a necromancer, that drow is bad and needs to be fought. The magics of playing with corpses are fueled by human sacrifice, so you cannot raise zombies without being an evil person. However, if the PCs go to a store for supplies before hunting for the necromancer, they might well encounter a drow shopkeeper who happily sells them what they need, and a drow shopkeeper is not portrayed as a strange thing to encounter. Now it is clear that drow are not a totally evil race without having to go on any longwinded explanations or calling the necromancer a crazy radical or anything. The setting has shown that drow can be evil, and that drow can be normal people with normal jobs.


Though that just gets crazy.

And when you get into fiction, you get lots of good and evil problems.

Take Elven Empire: Should any Elf ''do bad'', they are not to blame. They are ''taken into custody'' and ''helped'', but never, ever hurt or harmed or killed.

Take Orc Empire: Should any orc ''do bad'', they are killed on the spot. As long as there is a single witness to the ''bad'', everyone just nods and life goes on.

So are both good empires? Is one evil and one good? If both are good, how does the elf empire handle the daily slaughter in the orc Empire? Do they just ignore it? Do they just say ''oh, there good is different?'' Do they separate ''elf good' from ''orc good''?Good and evil doesn't need to come into it. It's a complex philosophical question, and I would portray elves as not having a good answer. Some elves don't really care about what the orcs do one way or the other, some elves think orcs are in the wrong but are allowed to rule themselves as they see fit and think elves have no right to interfere (or think interference comes with too high a cost), some elves think the orc empire is acting in an unacceptable manner and needs to be sanctioned or otherwise punished, and some elves aren't sure or have some other opinion. The actions of the elven empire depends on which factions have the most influence.

AMFV
2015-01-10, 07:05 PM
In answer to the OP. I find the trend to be quite refreshing. Personally for me, any creature that has sentience should be redeemable, that's my personal view. It doesn't really have much to do with game stuff. So much as my own personal religious views and my opinions on freewill. I can't obviously get into the specifics of those in this venue, but I can talk about the why.

For the depths of evil to be visible in a race, they need to be capable of good. Because in a sense the act of ultimate evil is to choose it, to reject what it is good. That is more evil than being a robot. If a rock falls on somebody and crushes them, it's not evil, it's merely a force of nature. If a person is eaten by a wolf, very few people would argue that the animal is evil (although that characteristic has been attributed to some animals). The presence of evil requires the capacity for good, at least in my opinion.

Also this gives us a valuable contrast. Instead of having a species of ax-murderers, you can have a species where there are exceptions. You can create contrast.

Lastly, this makes combat more significant, emotionally and morally. You can fight Orcs, still, since they are aggressors. But now you have to fight becoming Orcs as well. You have to fight to keep yourself above their level. And that struggle is something I think shouldn't be avoided.

Talakeal
2015-01-10, 07:43 PM
I quite like this trend. I treat all my character races as different races of human, so an orc is as much a complex person as anyone else, and is going to think and act like the human being it is. I don't really like pegging a whole race as bad. It just doesn't sit right with me.

You could just portray more than one member of that race. For example, within my campaign setting there is no race with a tendency to be good or bad. If a drow becomes a necromancer, that drow is bad and needs to be fought. The magics of playing with corpses are fueled by human sacrifice, so you cannot raise zombies without being an evil person. However, if the PCs go to a store for supplies before hunting for the necromancer, they might well encounter a drow shopkeeper who happily sells them what they need, and a drow shopkeeper is not portrayed as a strange thing to encounter. Now it is clear that drow are not a totally evil race without having to go on any longwinded explanations or calling the necromancer a crazy radical or anything. The setting has shown that drow can be evil, and that drow can be normal people with normal jobs.

Good and evil doesn't need to come into it. It's a complex philosophical question, and I would portray elves as not having a good answer. Some elves don't really care about what the orcs do one way or the other, some elves think orcs are in the wrong but are allowed to rule themselves as they see fit and think elves have no right to interfere (or think interference comes with too high a cost), some elves think the orc empire is acting in an unacceptable manner and needs to be sanctioned or otherwise punished, and some elves aren't sure or have some other opinion. The actions of the elven empire depends on which factions have the most influence.

I find your ideas on sacrifice powered necromancy morally fascinating. Would you mind giving some more specifics about how that works? How do you handle it mechanically at the table?

Lord Raziere
2015-01-10, 08:04 PM
Well here is my thought on the whole "evil race, can they be redeemed or not" and blah blah blah:

Human sees an orc paladin killing a bunch of other orcs
Human: hey don't you feel bad about killing your own kind?
Orc:.....no, why would I? I mean sure, I regret the necessity, but it has to be done.
Human: but....your clearly not evil, shouldn't you be trying to redeem them?
Orc: I don't see the need. redemption cares not for your skin color, and war is not a time for redemption. I wish I could but there is simply no time for such action to be reasonable. Its either kill them so that I may do good another day or allow myself to die so that they do evil another day. One of these choices I cannot accept, guess which.
Human:....but I feel guilty over killing humans that are evil and slaughtering people
Orc: why? they're evil, kill them
Human:.....because they're they're human! I just can't kill them without guilt or whatever! they're like me!
Orc: I'm confused, how are orcs not like you?
Human:......uuuuuuuh......because um.....
Orc: Me, I don't feel guilty over killing any evil person that poses a threat to the good. They're all evil, they're all dangerous, you get rid of them. To me, humans seem just like orcs: you kill, you fight, you conquer....you just do slightly less of it, and really are no different in my eyes. So I'm honestly confused as to why your guilty over this, all races fight. All races conquer. All races might as well be evil by that measure. I don't see how a few random descriptive traits have to do with any of that. now if you'll excuse me, I have more orcs to kill, hopefully if I kill enough, the last of them will fear me too much to continue and surrender.
The orc paladin then continues killing enemy orcs without batting an eye.

awa
2015-01-10, 09:02 PM
from what i recall chimps do hunt but not for calories they only go hunting after their caloric needs are met becuase meat is a luxury and they are not very coordinated in there hunting not nearly enough to be considered pack hunters.

also crows are very social and are also not pack hunters

while i don't know for sure i would be very surprised if the reason for elephant groups was defense of young one adult elephant is basically big enough to stop any predator

golentan
2015-01-10, 09:14 PM
In answer to the OP. I find the trend to be quite refreshing. Personally for me, any creature that has sentience should be redeemable, that's my personal view. It doesn't really have much to do with game stuff. So much as my own personal religious views and my opinions on freewill. I can't obviously get into the specifics of those in this venue, but I can talk about the why.

For the depths of evil to be visible in a race, they need to be capable of good. Because in a sense the act of ultimate evil is to choose it, to reject what it is good. That is more evil than being a robot. If a rock falls on somebody and crushes them, it's not evil, it's merely a force of nature. If a person is eaten by a wolf, very few people would argue that the animal is evil (although that characteristic has been attributed to some animals). The presence of evil requires the capacity for good, at least in my opinion.

Also this gives us a valuable contrast. Instead of having a species of ax-murderers, you can have a species where there are exceptions. You can create contrast.

Lastly, this makes combat more significant, emotionally and morally. You can fight Orcs, still, since they are aggressors. But now you have to fight becoming Orcs as well. You have to fight to keep yourself above their level. And that struggle is something I think shouldn't be avoided.

I agree with this so much...

goto124
2015-01-10, 09:30 PM
So, if that human army is bearing down on your town, axes gleaming and torches burning, you don't have to feel guilty for shredding them (at least until they break ranks and start to retreat). Same with if you're on the road and a group of human bandits jumps out of the underbrush and swing for your neck. But if you start taking out your frustrations on the human civilians tending the cookfires back in their camp/village, start killing babies...

golentan
2015-01-10, 10:11 PM
So, if that human army is bearing down on your town, axes gleaming and torches burning, you don't have to feel guilty for shredding them (at least until they break ranks and start to retreat). Same with if you're on the road and a group of human bandits jumps out of the underbrush and swing for your neck. But if you start taking out your frustrations on the human civilians tending the cookfires back in their camp/village, start killing babies...

I'm sorry, how is this at all different from the point I was trying to make?

SiuiS
2015-01-10, 11:01 PM
The direction is the inverse, though. I don't start at the goal and work backwards, I start with the evidence and then work my way to the conclusion, whichever it may be. Now granted, I admit I'm speculating wildly about people's motives, but I've seen it enough times to consider it a safe assumption.

I'm sure you believe that, but then, that's how rationalization works.

Not to really cast aspersions on your stance in any way. Just to say that the other side has valid points too, and may not be as objectively bad, ironically, as it seems.


In this context, that is entirely not true, nor is that clearly true in a dictionary sense. Human is the listing used most commonly in games to describe us as a species as homo sapiens.

We aren't talking games terms whatsoever. This is obfuscation. We are talking the colloquial use of 'human' to mean a thing which can be anthropomorphised and broadly empathized with based on it's heuristic or actual functions. How most games use the word never enters into that understanding.



What's worse, are you incapable of empathy for anything that isn't human?

Backwards processing. You automatically attribute humanity to things you empathize with. So all things you empathize with are human in their own way.

I don't disagree with your broad point, though. I just think you're quibbling a flawed premise.


Don't you just hate it when you play an ******** protagonist and the game enforces some two bit moral bull**** about the kidnapping parasitic creatures not being truly evil but slaves to necessity?

Uh... What?



@Yukitsu:
While your opinion is logical and makes sense, unluckily this is EXACTLY how empathy works. We see a reaction in another and we liken it to ours. And the closer the other is to is physically and mentally the easier the process is.

I'm not claiming it's not insane however.[/wuote]

Ayup.

[quote]
I am all in favor of dehumanization of fantasy creatures. I'm not going to call it fantasy dehumanization but god is it hard to resist the temptation. Fantasy is beautiful in that it can force unnatural laws on the world and cause all kinds of funny shenanigans, such as homonculi, being with a mind and body, but no soul. Are they humans then? What of humans with living healthy bodies but broken non-functional minds, are they still human?

It's good strife for PCs, that's for sure.

P-zombies? Really? :smallbiggrin:


For a while I've kicked around the idea of orcs more as a culture than as a race. A culture marked by a complete lack of empathy and by taking joy in violence and sadism, Lord of the Flies crossed with Shades of Gray. Most orcs were born as humans, captured as babies or children, and those who survive to adolescence or adulthood are broken beyond redemption. The fearsome appearance comes not from different colored skin or animalistic facial features but from extreme scarification, tattoos and mutilation.

In a fantasy setting, you can easily add in the idea that the orcs' appearance also becomes more bestial over the decade or two of an orc's short, violent lifespan.

You can also bring in capital-E-Evil as a game mechanic, where captial-E-Evil creatures get physical sensation from inflicting pain and suffering.

That's basically how they work now. They're just preprogrammed. Programs can be bucked, but the preprogramming exists is all.


Get used to it. Objectively morality seems to be a no-no these days, despite D&D being based on the concept.

Aye.


I'd like to read more about that. Do you have a reference?

Mostly been usig the thread in media discussions about LotR, actually. Check there!


Indeed, I read a book on LotR once that held up the "return" referred to in RotK being the hegemonic return of Reason into the world of men. I see the subjective morality concept as a passing cloud obscuring the stars.

That's interesting but strikes me as doubtful.


My two cents: Dehumanization may be a terrible word for what's being talked about, but it's an accurate concept. Especially as orcs as seen in DnD usually draw on a lot of "savage" cultural practices from real world cultures.

I like my orcs evil. I hate my orcs intrinsically, irredeemably evil. I figure that the combination of lack of farming and high fertility seen in most Orc depictions is going to put them at odds with "civilized" neighbors more often than not, as hunger and other needs drive the frequently nomadic or poor orcs to raid farmsteads and towns for food, mates, slaves, prestige, and metals. If a culture is by and large violent when they could choose not to be, that's as good a reason to call them evil as any other, especially if you mix in a hatred for the "soft" humans, elves, whatever the local raidees are. But that doesn't mean orcs are evil by nature, it means they've got a culture that thrives by evil, reinforced by religions (gruumsh, sauron, whoever, in fantasy worlds gods of evil provide tangible benefits to their worshippers in the form of dark miracles) that encourage them to fight and abuse each other and outsiders for standing and wealth. Probably some of this is biology (as mentioned, the orcs typically have high fertility and high aggression in their racial statblock equivalent, but aggression isn't evil unless it's applied to the innocent even if it inclines someone that way), but I still bet that if you raised an orc baby in a stereotypical gnomish home they're not much more likely to turn evil than a gnome in the same house, though they may find themselves drawn to a more violent profession. Like a paladin.

So, if that orc army is bearing down on your town, axes gleaming and torches burning, you don't have to feel guilty for shredding them (at least until they break ranks and start to retreat). Same with if you're on the road and a group of orc bandits jumps out of the underbrush and swing for your neck. But if you start taking out your frustrations on the civilians tending the cookfires back in their camp/village, start killing babies, or greet an unarmed orc with an arrow through the neck for setting foot in your territory, you've jumped off the slippery slope, and besides chances are good that that orc wasn't evil, or even if they might have been willing to be they were still as much victims of Orcish culture as Jenkins who lost his farm to a raid the other day. Plus, during times of peace, it's probably a better idea to trade with them and teach them that there are better ways to make a living than assaulting the city walls, better gods to worship, better ways to negotiate with other humanoids than at swordpoint, since if you change the culture the Orcs won't be evil anymore.

All this!


One thing I think would be a mistake is to assume that certain human characteristics are universal of sapient species. One quite good example I've used is the aggression instinct. Elves in my setting evolved as essentially flight animals, their thin, agile bodies make fleeing in a densely wooded area very easy and would probably have been their primary survival tactic when they were first evolving, what they wouldn't have had a reason to evolve as humans did was the fight half of the fight-or-flight instinct and so their response to a threat is never to destroy it, they can still reason that would be the best solution, they can as humans do choose to ignore their instinct but they still prefer ranged combat, like archery, or indirect means of fighting, like magic.

I haven't used a similar method of reasoning for Orcs but if I had to I probably would have said that they would likely be the top predator in their own environment by virtue of their strength and natural weapons like tusks. This means that survival is no longer in question due to external threats so the main factor becomes in-species competition, in this circumstance you can easily see how they may have developed a 'rule of the strong' culture where everyone has to try and survive on their own strength or their not worth having around. Once again they can ignore their instincts using reason and work together but they aren't by nature social animals in the way humans needed to be to survive.

Fails the 'created as in in similar mold' test.


Well also I think a lot of the change has to do with how willing people are to explore the ideas of evil in general and other non "in-group good/out-group bad" definitions of other in their fantasy. Frankly most of the alignment system in most games that have one doesn't deal with this very well-hell in 2E the system didn't allow for any variation. So as is so often the case I think the idea of trying to plug alignments in the world has caused yet more disruption and argument to game. Joy

Alignment was never morality. The 1e material is actually pretty good.

jedipotter
2015-01-10, 11:15 PM
I quite like this trend. I treat all my character races as different races of human, so an orc is as much a complex person as anyone else, and is going to think and act like the human being it is. I don't really like pegging a whole race as bad. It just doesn't sit right with me.

In general, only 15%-20% of a race is bad. And if you ask a person of the said race they will say and insist it's like .001% Even if you showed someone of the race direct evidence of ''more then .001%'', they would brush it off or not believe it or spin it someway. And then you will get bogged down in ''what is bad anyway''.

You can take the ''evil'' orc empire. Well, the ''evil'' part is mostly the government, a couple of rich orcs and a couple of religious leaders and their direct followers. The seven million strong orc army is mostly just made of orcs who follow orders. The same way the hundred thousand worker orcs are not ''evil'', as they don't do much other then their work everyday.

So when someone says ''the orcs are an evil race'', well they are just talking about that less then 25% of the orcs.

golentan
2015-01-10, 11:27 PM
In general, only 15%-20% of a race is bad. And if you ask a person of the said race they will say and insist it's like .001% Even if you showed someone of the race direct evidence of ''more then .001%'', they would brush it off or not believe it or spin it someway. And then you will get bogged down in ''what is bad anyway''.

You can take the ''evil'' orc empire. Well, the ''evil'' part is mostly the government, a couple of rich orcs and a couple of religious leaders and their direct followers. The seven million strong orc army is mostly just made of orcs who follow orders. The same way the hundred thousand worker orcs are not ''evil'', as they don't do much other then their work everyday.

So when someone says ''the orcs are an evil race'', well they are just talking about that less then 25% of the orcs.

Hmm... Naaah.

Look, it's okay to have unabashed evil in the world, objective, black and white evil, that's not entirely on the big guy pulling the strings. Orcs, like the vikings of old, often burn, pillage, and rape, not necessarily in that order, engaging in wanton destruction above and beyond their orders and mission objectives. Plus, way more than 15-20% of any race is likely to engage in morally dubious acts given the chance, and if you ask an elf who he hates in his village he probably has a story about mean old lady Silusia and her circle of wicked cohorts and the despicable things they do when they can get away with it, he's not going to claim that only one elf in a million is evil even if he holds that elves are better than humans and humans are better than orcs. And that's the thing, it's okay to call a group as a whole evil as long as you don't assume that everyone in that category is.

AMFV
2015-01-10, 11:36 PM
from what i recall chimps do hunt but not for calories they only go hunting after their caloric needs are met becuase meat is a luxury and they are not very coordinated in there hunting not nearly enough to be considered pack hunters.

also crows are very social and are also not pack hunters

while i don't know for sure i would be very surprised if the reason for elephant groups was defense of young one adult elephant is basically big enough to stop any predator

Chimps commit infanticide and form war parties to drive rival groups out of their region. I would call terror tactics and warfare definitely a sign of social organization.

SiuiS
2015-01-10, 11:45 PM
I'm sure you believe that, but then, that's how rationalization works.

Not to really cast aspersions on your stance in any way. Just to say that the other side has valid points too, and may not be as objectively bad, ironically, as it seems.

Not even that. What I think I'm trying to say is, knowing both sides are rationalizations leaves you Free. You can come to know and understand the other person's stance and even see it as valid without ever having to agree with it. You can use whatever suits you, at that point. Even if what suits you is only your own stance ever. It's still freeing to make that a choice instead of a default.

AstralFire
2015-01-11, 06:44 AM
I believe that only pack predators are actually able to develop societies. Prey animals don't need to develop any complex thinking that goes beyond "run away" and "stay with the group", while solitary animals would be pretty much unable to share any discovery they make with others.

Elephants. IDK if your statement applies to "prey" animals that are bloody dangerous themselves. I think herbivore whales and other herd prey animals exhibit complex societies too.

hamishspence
2015-01-11, 07:05 AM
Elephants. IDK if your statement applies to "prey" animals that are bloody dangerous themselves. I think herbivore whales and other herd prey animals exhibit complex societies too.

All whales are technically carnivores - but some eat prey that doesn't move much - grey whales, for example, which scoop up sediments full of crustaceans.

Gracht Grabmaw
2015-01-11, 07:39 AM
The trend of non-evil orcs isn't about subverting anything, it's about adding complexity and depth to a game world. In a good game there should never be a purely evil or purely good race, nation or community, because that limits what you can do with that whole element of your world and your story and you never want to limit your story.

Also stop using the word "trope" as if it means anything.

NichG
2015-01-11, 08:59 AM
On the other hand, saying 'everything must be grey' is also very limiting. Having access to absolutes is a useful tool as well.

Absolutes work best in contrast. Have a 'tends-evil' foe that is actually complex and grey, and then put them against a backdrop against a truly implacable force. That way both seem distinctive. If everything's an incomprehensible demon or everything's a funny-looking person, it gives you less to work with.

Tragak
2015-01-11, 12:39 PM
I think that if a system ever designates "Good races" versus "Evil races" in a fictional world, then humans should be on the "Evil" side for coming up with the list.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-11, 12:48 PM
I think that if a system ever designates "Good races" versus "Evil races" in a fictional world, then humans should be on the "Evil" side for coming up with the list.

Would an evil race even know what good is? Sort like how an unreasoning race won't know what reason is. Only the good and reasoning races, respectively, would be a in a position to judge.

hamishspence
2015-01-11, 12:56 PM
Would an evil race even know what good is? Sort like how an unreasoning race won't know what reason is. Only the good and reasoning races, respectively, would be a in a position to judge.

The orcs in Tolkien clearly have some things they disapprove of - like "abandoning your fellows in a monster's lair" (they say "Typical elvish trick"). Of course, it turns out they do it too.

Tragak
2015-01-11, 01:24 PM
Would an evil race even know what good is? My understanding is that (non-cartoonish) Evil people can be very quick to judge themselves "Good" and their enemies "Evil".

Red Fel
2015-01-11, 01:39 PM
My understanding is that (non-cartoonish) Evil people can be very quick to judge themselves "Good" and their enemies "Evil".

Or, they don't use the terminology at all.

I'm going to use D&D as my base, here, because it has graced us with a convenient (if irritating) source of absolute morality. Good and Evil don't just mean Good and Evil, respectively. Good can refer to compassion, to selflessness, to charity and virtue. Evil, by contrast, can refer to power, to selfishness at the expense of others, to hard-heartedness, and to ambition and ruthless self-promotion.

You'll note that these latter concepts aren't inherently bad things, when taken with moderation instead of extremity. The use of power to ensure adherence to laws is common; ruthlessness is a valuable skill in business, but not damning if taken with a dose of compassion; ambition is necessary to get anywhere in life, really.

That's the point. Evil doesn't have to consider itself Evil. It doesn't have to consider itself Good, either. It can look at itself in terms of other things. Here are a few examples. I do what I have to do. What must be done. For the sake of my people, our culture and our survival. For the sake of everything for which we stand. And that's why this war will continue until all who oppose us, all who threaten us, all who could ever challenge our way of life are dead. So what if your precious town has to pull up stakes and move? You're, what, a hundred people? I represent thousands of shareholders, whose fortunes can be made or broken by this railroad. And those people matter more to me than a bunch of strangers in a town in which I've never set foot. Now, you and your little friends had better pack up and go, before my friends here decide to show you the way out of town by force. How can you possibly understand? You preach generosity, and compassion. You've never had to struggle! You've never had to fight, every day, for survival! What I did, what life made me do, I did out of necessity! Life has made me cold, but that cold has given me strength! And it is a strength you will never understand!
These are all speeches that could easily be given by an Evil character. But he's not looking at himself as Evil or Good. Concepts like a desire for power, or the rule of the strong; a valuation of profits over human suffering; a desire for vengeance and bloodshed; people who espouse these beliefs don't see themselves as Evil, necessarily.

Solaris
2015-01-12, 11:47 AM
It's important to note that Humans evolved as the top predator in their environment. So a predatory Orcish race would probably act very much like Humans do, in fact they'd be more human.

Eh. We weren't top predators until well after H. sapiens had evolved - pretty much clear up until civilization started making us overpowering, we were prey animals.
Humans evolved as sneaky, cunning scavengers, not as top predators. In a D&D world, we definitely didn't evolve as top predators. The 'best' we could do was second-rate hunters who had to hope one of the big predators didn't decide they were hungry for some long pork.

Broken Twin
2015-01-12, 12:47 PM
Also stop using the word "trope" as if it means anything.

I'm utterly confused by what you mean by this. It's a word; by definition, it has meaning.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-12, 05:41 PM
Eh. We weren't top predators until well after H. sapiens had evolved - pretty much clear up until civilization started making us overpowering, we were prey animals.
Humans evolved as sneaky, cunning scavengers, not as top predators. In a D&D world, we definitely didn't evolve as top predators. The 'best' we could do was second-rate hunters who had to hope one of the big predators didn't decide they were hungry for some long pork.

Of course, with fantasy worlds, humans might not have evolved... and, as such, orcs might not have, either. The traditional D&D story is that they're the literal flesh and blood of Gruumsh, a deity of great evil... so they might not have much good in them to start with.

As for "There's nothing you can do with a race that's all evil", that's not true. Heck, Drizz't Do'Urden is built on the "one exception to an otherwise evil race" trope, to the point where it's a long-running joke that there are more misunderstood good drow rebelling against their evil cousins (http://www.goblinscomic.org/07112005/) than there are actual drow. There's also the option of exploring what evil looks like when there's no good, or an evil individual interacting with those who don't understand (or don't conceive of) evil. These stories are pretty well cut off when you have "everyone's just people, and no one is naturally evil" as a world element, too.

AstralFire
2015-01-12, 05:46 PM
Of course, with fantasy worlds, humans might not have evolved... and, as such, orcs might not have, either. The traditional D&D story is that they're the literal flesh and blood of Gruumsh, a deity of great evil... so they might not have much good in them to start with.

As for "There's nothing you can do with a race that's all evil", that's not true. Heck, Drizz't Do'Urden is built on the "one exception to an otherwise evil race" trope, to the point where it's a long-running joke that there are more misunderstood good drow rebelling against their evil cousins (http://www.goblinscomic.org/07112005/) than there are actual drow. There's also the option of exploring what evil looks like when there's no good, or an evil individual interacting with those who don't understand (or don't conceive of) evil. These stories are pretty well cut off when you have "everyone's just people, and no one is naturally evil" as a world element, too.

Drizzt's existence means that the Drow are, inherently, not a race that is monolithic evil.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-12, 06:06 PM
Drizzt's existence means that the Drow are, inherently, not a race that is monolithic evil.

By the 3.x definition of Always Chaotic Evil, they still would be (were it limited to Drizz't; things have grown beyond that, at this point).

AstralFire
2015-01-12, 06:08 PM
By the 3.x definition of Always Chaotic Evil, they still would be (were it limited to Drizz't; things have grown beyond that, at this point).

We've had a few people speak in support of evil humanoid races, just that it has to be a conscious choice or result of culture rather than being basically evil robots. Drow (for as ridiculous as their society is in FR/Greyhawk) aren't robotic at all, and I don't believe ever have been.

Segev
2015-01-12, 06:31 PM
Let's consider for a moment the nature of evil, and why a race might be so alien to humans while still being recognizably sentient that "evil" would be the norm. So much so that they have fewer "good" people than humans do "evil" ones.

First, the reason why "good" and "law" are generally considered positive things is because order and cooperation actually, in the end, yield more overall goods and services for all involved. While individuals who engage in theft and violence to take things unearned may, for themselves, get more than they could by working honestly and cooperating with others (giving and taking and trading in turn), if even a plurality of a society is engaged in such things, much wealth is either left un-generated or wasted on increased security.

Un-generated, because if your stuff is just going to be stolen, you generally don't strive as hard to make it. Worse, the conflict over property leads to destruction and distraction from productive work, thus diminishing time spent making things (and ruining things before they can be completed).

Thus, the concept of "enlightened self-interest" is such that even evil humans have an interest in a certain amount of cooperation and order. They make and keep deals because it creates greater wealth overall, and leads to more people willing to work with them. Evil is ruthless - don't get me wrong - and there are evil people who aren't so enlightened. Enlightened evil individuals will do destructive things that diminish the greater potential of society, but only as much as they HAVE to in order to make sure they get as much of the pie as possible. They know they don't want the pie itself to shrink, unless shrinking it gets them MORE pie, personally, even if there's less overall.


With me so far?


Now, let's look at what might be changed in an always evil race. Something about them must be such that they actually do not get less and less out of more and more self-centered, violent destruction of goods. That wealth-generation through cooperation and order is not more effective than violence, theft, and slavery.

This can happen in a couple of ways that I can think of:

1) The orcs - our evil race in the title of this thread - may just be mentally incapable of enlightenment. They are particularly cunning beasts, but they cannot plan nor really understand well enough to work to produce anything. They are predators, parasites, and plunderers.

This interpretation fits well with their Int and Wis penalties, and depiction as savages, but is somewhat unsatisfying. It implies that orcs are just lesser than other races. While that could be a good way to handle it (and would be a sound reason for morals to dictate that killing them is okay...heck, that enslaving them might be an uplifting thing. Unfortunate implications abound, here), it is probably going to make people uncomfortable, and it makes one wonder why they're considered a threat.

2) Somehow, orcs actually gain more overall, as a people, through the selfish acquisition of goods and power of an individual, even absent other races on whom to prey.

Perhaps the orcish metabolism is such that they can eat until stuffed, and then instead of it digesting into fat and wasted calories, it makes them grow. So they can fit even more into their stomachs, and grow larger. Gorging a single orc leads to a more powerful physical specimine per pound of food consumed than one gets from sharing that pound of food between two orcs, no matter how satiated the orcs in question are.

This would mean that the most powerful tribes have a few mighty champions and a lot of weaker slaves who exist only to keep the food flowing to their masters. The larger, more powerful orcs would also be able to do more work, producing more personally than would be possible for the same food distributed amongst weaker ones. Thus, allowing the mightiest to gorge themselves consistently and give the leftovers to the others would result in more overall productivity (and thus more overall scraps leftover, which would lead to more orcs getting larger).

The cycle of upward spiral would be one of internal strife and contest, but the mightiest breaking their enemies and taking all for themselves truly is more efficient, thanks to their monstrous biology.

For such a race, "good" attitudes of charity and sharing would, most of the time, be genuinely weak, and woudl lead to a risk of downward spiral as it weakened the most productive and did not create equal amounts of productivity in the lesser ones, per pound of goods shared. Thus, Good-aligned behaviors would be bad for the race, and would thus be harshly discouraged.


This could lead to interesting dynamics, trying to find the balance for, say, half-orcs living in human societies. They truly are more efficient places to expend resources, giving more back to their family than their weaker brothers and sisters, but humans don't, as a whole, function well under the orcish system, so the greater production to feed the half-orc's greater strength would still be achieved through Good treatment of human friends and family. There would be a balance somehwere, but it would be a source of tension and drama trying to determine what it was. Especially since the humans likely don't really understand the orcish biology, and the half-orc's instincts are little different than a selfish human's. And even he doesn't KNOW that it's actually better for his social group if he has more.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-12, 06:48 PM
We've had a few people speak in support of evil humanoid races, just that it has to be a conscious choice or result of culture rather than being basically evil robots. Drow (for as ridiculous as their society is in FR/Greyhawk) aren't robotic at all, and I don't believe ever have been.

I don't think it necessarily has to be a conscious choice or down to culture. I think, in D&D world, you can have races that are simply evil. They are born evil, with evil souls roiling in their bodies. Given the opportunity, their young will kill and steal. They are descended of an evil god, and so do not partake of good in the same way we do... it might be physically painful for them, or they may just see altruism in much the same way we see unprovoked murder.

Even if you have a race of naturally evil beings (orcs, for example), there might be some who are good. They might be raised so as to encourage the few non-evil parts of their nature; they might be trained to think of those parts of them that are evil as somehow undesirable or shameful. And you might have a rare few who simply "get it" and can be Good despite their entire race being evil... but they're rare. They're the orcish equivalent of human psychopaths and sociopaths... people who see nothing wrong with using and abusing others to serve their ends.

After all, when everyone is evil, good is a mental illness (and dangerous to take part in, since a good person in an evil society is very much at risk of being taken advantage of).

BWR
2015-01-12, 06:56 PM
I think that if a system ever designates "Good races" versus "Evil races" in a fictional world, then humans should be on the "Evil" side for coming up with the list.

???
Say you had a race of puppy-kicking, kitten-canning baby-rapers. Every single member of the race desirea to indulge in these pastimes, and the morals of the setting say this is Evil. Would humans be evil for putting them on the Evil list?

Morty
2015-01-12, 07:04 PM
The number of logical hoops people will jump through for the convenience of having nominally sentient opponents who are nonetheless morally clean to kill wholesale is moderately astounding.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-12, 07:35 PM
The number of logical hoops people will jump through for the convenience of having nominally sentient opponents who are nonetheless morally clean to kill wholesale is moderately astounding.

I don't think there are any particular hoops to jump through, given other boundary conditions of the universe... i.e. evil (and law and good and chaos) as a objective force, evil deities creating races for their own purposes, often from their own bodies, etc.

1337 b4k4
2015-01-12, 09:24 PM
The number of logical hoops people will jump through for the convenience of having nominally sentient opponents who are nonetheless morally clean to kill wholesale is moderately astounding.

The thing is, I rarely see this sort of thinking held consistently. One person's evil race of orcs is another's evil race of undead. Or gaggle of storm troopers. Or demons and devils. I mean frankly speaking if "sentience" is the threshold we're going for here, you can't even use wolves (an animal which until modern times was often killed on sight by many societies because of the extreme danger they posed to the people and the livestock). Again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to play in a shades of grey world, but there's likewise nothing wrong with wanting to play in a world where orcs or any other monster, designed as a mirror to the worst and most savage parts of human nature, are universally and unequivocally evil. If you're playing a simple hack and slash game, there's no reason to stop and query the life story of every creature you meet to determine how acceptable it is to kill them, especially when chances are they're trying to kill you too. It's a game. And it's pretend and not reality. Drawing moral conclusions about the people playing based on some arbitrary standard like "allows a sentient creature to be considered universally evil" is ... well trying too hard. Not every pastime need be a morality play.

SiuiS
2015-01-12, 11:50 PM
I'm utterly confused by what you mean by this. It's a word; by definition, it has meaning.

Trope as a word is used as if it were an entire argument. It's also a matter of context, connotation and verbal execution. When someone renders a long multi paragraph explanation into a trope, it's dismissive and homogenizing. By nature, all Jerk-Asses With Hearts of Gold are the same, because they are all jerkasses with hearts of gold and, if that's where you stop your description, that's it. You've decided because one facte of a character fits a trope, the character is that trope. The label is limiting, and discussion by way of tropes is an inherently limiting discussion. All the decisions have already been made. There's no life and no point to it.


Drizzt's existence means that the Drow are, inherently, not a race that is monolithic evil.

This is only true if the existence of, say, Cyclops or Nightcrawlsr means humanity is not an inherently monolithically human species. Outliers are outliers for a reason. They are oddities and can often define the rule by their seeming denial of it.

jedipotter
2015-01-13, 12:10 AM
I think that if a system ever designates "Good races" versus "Evil races" in a fictional world, then humans should be on the "Evil" side for coming up with the list.

That only works if the ''Humans'' think they ''must be'' Good for some odd reason.

I'd say for example, ''OK, Humans are evil'' and not blink.

BWR
2015-01-13, 03:15 AM
I don't think there are any particular hoops to jump through, given other boundary conditions of the universe... i.e. evil (and law and good and chaos) as a objective force, evil deities creating races for their own purposes, often from their own bodies, etc.

Exactly.
It doesn't matter what the player or the PC might think is good/evil, what matters is what the setting thinks. If the game setting explicitly says 'x is evil' then x is Evil. It's not harder than that. Trying to bring in real world morality to a game discussion is futile. Sure, at some point most in-game morality is in some way based on what some designer or GM believes, but it doesn't need to be that way.
Game morality can be objective, whatever said objective morality says about stuff is the case, regardless of what people IRL might think. If said game morality says orcs are always irredeemably evil, then they are no matter what real world sensibilities this offends. If said game holds that slavery is ok, then it isn't evil in that game.

golentan
2015-01-13, 04:37 AM
Exactly.
It doesn't matter what the player or the PC might think is good/evil, what matters is what the setting thinks. If the game setting explicitly says 'x is evil' then x is Evil. It's not harder than that. Trying to bring in real world morality to a game discussion is futile. Sure, at some point most in-game morality is in some way based on what some designer or GM believes, but it doesn't need to be that way.
Game morality can be objective, whatever said objective morality says about stuff is the case, regardless of what people IRL might think. If said game morality says orcs are always irredeemably evil, then they are no matter what real world sensibilities this offends. If said game holds that slavery is ok, then it isn't evil in that game.

I'd argue exactly the opposite. It doesn't matter what the setting thinks, it matters what the group playing it thinks.

Games are cooperative between the players and GM. If the players and GM think something, their opinion of it is what matters more than any rule. A fiend might detect evil, smite evil might work on them just fine, and when they die they might go straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars but that doesn't mean diddly compared to the opinion of them in the minds of the players who interact with them.

Take Exalted. Holy is a mechanical effect. It's written into the laws of physics of the universe. Apply holy to an unholy creature and deal nastier damage to them. It's also a political distinction. A creature is holy because the king of the Gods has judged it so, and unholy for the same reason, and in some games he may be right and justified to unleash the holy smiting on his enemies, and in some games using the word holy to describe why your cause is just may be the equivalent of wearing a swastika and talking about the manifest destiny of the master race. It's up to the group whether "mechanics of morality" reflect morality accurately.

AstralFire
2015-01-13, 05:18 AM
This is only true if the existence of, say, Cyclops or Nightcrawlsr means humanity is not an inherently monolithically human species. Outliers are outliers for a reason. They are oddities and can often define the rule by their seeming denial of it.

I would venture to say that the incredible prevalence of mutants would lean towards dismissal of the notion of monolithic humanity in Marvel Comics, but it's not really an apt analogy unless Drizzt has been analyzed to be fundamentally different from other drow biologically, and that biological difference is what led to his different worldview. Which I find unlikely since Drizzt is far from the only good drow.

Nagash
2015-01-13, 06:04 AM
Theres a lot of world building to this question. And is just that. Fantasy world building.

There are no orcs to be offended by being always evil. There are no elves to be vindicated by being always good.

Both are just amalgams of numerous writers perceptions of creatures from various fantasy elements put together into our collective conscious at this point.

And every GM is his own fantasy writer making his own fantasy world. So he has the intrinsic right to write them however he wants and there is absolutely 0 real world morality to any interpretation.

So anyone trying to assign one needs to take a long step back and ask themselves with all the real suffering, in the real world by real people, why they give a **** about made up orcs.

Go volunteer at your local shelter if your so keen on loving humanity. Real human beings who actually are alive today will appreciate it.

The fantasy orcs wont.

I like my fantasy races very different. Different worlds have different justifications but i hate the humans in funny costumes concept that this thread represents. Thats just boring to me. Whats the fun of having 20 different humans dressed funny when you could just have humans? If your gonna go that route why go to the hassle of having multiple species at all?

Each one should be very different. Different mental and physical biology, different culture and religion, different goals.

Having 2 arms, 2 legs and a head is not sufficient to make you "human" IMO. So I like my aliens (and they are aliens) to be friggin alien. Different and hard to comprehend.

Lord Raziere
2015-01-13, 06:06 AM
I would venture to say that the incredible prevalence of mutants would lean towards dismissal of the notion of monolithic humanity in Marvel Comics, but it's not really an apt analogy unless Drizzt has been analyzed to be fundamentally different from other drow biologically, and that biological difference is what led to his different worldview. Which I find unlikely since Drizzt is far from the only good drow.

that and "they're only good because they're biological mutants in the head" makes me feel skeevy, morally speaking.

like imagine someone had a stereotype about wherever you came from, then when you buck that stereotype just because your living your life, and y'know not even making a focused effort to do so, and in response they say your clearly biologically mutated away from them. as if your DNA is the only determinant in whether or not you decide whether or not your an individual or different from the crowd or something like that.

I mean what is that saying, that the person has a "morality gene" or something, that is stupid. stupid and social darwinistic. we're individuals because of our choices and circumstances. I say this as an officially diagnosed high-functioning autistic. My brain may be wired differently, but thats like nowhere near as big a thing as you think it might be, its only one factor of many that makes me who I am, and every autistic is very much different from the rest, you can't generalize this sort of thing. I am shaped more by how I have decided to build myself from what I started with, how I took my greatest disadvantage- my lack of social skills- and made it my goal to improve myself so that I better understand humanity and the people around me to best function in this world. Who I am is a creation in response to the circumstances I see, not just of the circumstances themselves.

same with this. if the race is truly just as intelligent as you or I, their morality is not solely determined by dna, but by the circumstances and how they respond to overcome them. I am not an exception because I was born so, but because how I made myself so.

@ Nagash:
there is that old "if you want to humanize them so much, why not just make them humans" question. allow to me answer:

because humans are boring. thats simply not my taste. its like saying "if your going to play a dwarf, why not just play a norse guy" or something. sure I could play a norse guy, but it wouldn't be the same. dwarfs as they are is different enough for me, but a human who is just seems very similar to one? nope. a dwarf who thinks like a human is awesome for me, a human who thinks a lot like a dwarf is boring to me, can't explain why. an orc who thinks human-ish? awesome! a human who thinks a lot like an orc? nope, not doing anything for me, I can't explain it. one is awesome, the other is just kind of fail.

while completely alien races is like.....wat. the closest I can think of being completely alien is making up words to refer to things and concepts that don't exist and that I myself don't understand. because there is no other way to be truly alien other than to invent entire concepts that humanity has never thought up of before, so there is no use to it, and would probably make flat uninteresting characters anyways.

so yeah, give me my "human" orcs or whatever, but don't make all races human, that doesn't make any sense. thats like throwing away all the paint for water or something, you can't make a good picture without the colors. best I can explain it. or to answer your question with another question: why not just eat rice everyday?

golentan
2015-01-13, 06:18 AM
Theres a lot of world building to this question. And is just that. Fantasy world building.

There are no orcs to be offended by being always evil. There are no elves to be vindicated by being always good.

Both are just amalgams of numerous writers perceptions of creatures from various fantasy elements put together into our collective conscious at this point.

And every GM is his own fantasy writer making his own fantasy world. So he has the intrinsic right to write them however he wants and there is absolutely 0 real world morality to any interpretation.

There's the DM's morality, and the player's morality.


So anyone trying to assign one needs to take a long step back and ask themselves with all the real suffering, in the real world by real people, why they give a **** about made up orcs.

Go volunteer at your local shelter if your so keen on loving humanity. Real human beings who actually are alive today will appreciate it.

The fantasy orcs wont.

Ever hear of the fallacy of relative privation? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation) Because I didn't expect to be told to shut up based on it with regards to a game, and by invoking it you've undermined yourself.

I do volunteer. I can't spend all my time volunteering: I need to eat, sleep, unwind. Games are how I unwind, relax, and enjoy myself as well as put some of the things I deal with in an emotional context that's easier to deal with.

If you don't care for the discussion? That's fine, but attacking us for doing so when we could be volunteering is pretty facile. Why just think, in the time you wasted composing this post criticizing us for not volunteering 100% of our waking hours you could have been working yourself to death fixing the world!


I like my fantasy races very different. Different worlds have different justifications but i hate the humans in funny costumes concept that this thread represents. Thats just boring to me. Whats the fun of having 20 different humans dressed funny when you could just have humans? If your gonna go that route why go to the hassle of having multiple species at all?

Each one should be very different. Different mental and physical biology, different culture and religion, different goals.

Having 2 arms, 2 legs and a head is not sufficient to make you "human" IMO. So I like my aliens (and they are aliens) to be friggin alien. Different and hard to comprehend.

Yeah, me too. I like my races different. I like them logically consistent with their differences. If you think different is evil, though, you and me gonna have even more problems.

BWR
2015-01-13, 06:57 AM
I'd argue exactly the opposite. It doesn't matter what the setting thinks, it matters what the group playing it thinks.


Which basically boils down to the GM saying "X is good in this setting, Y isn't". The setting determines what is good or not, and it will likely have some significant degree of overlap with what the designer and/or GM feels IRL. I already said this
The thing is, as I keep trying to get across, that in game morality can be whatever you want, never mind RL morality. Saying "in game morality system is wrong in game because of RL issues" is entirely missing the point. In a game you can do whatever you wish, you don't have to be beholden to real world issues. Heck, we already tell real world physics to shut up and sit down in a multitude of ways in a game and ignore complaints about "that's not how it works IRL"; why can't people do the same for something that is already a subjective construction like morality?

If you want to play your game where morality is basically the same as whatever real world morality you ascribe to, fine. Games and settings where morality is not the same as your RL morality are not wrong because they disagree with you.

Alberic Strein
2015-01-13, 07:08 AM
There's the DM's morality, and the player's morality.
Not really sure the players are relevant as far as the nature of a whole race in concerned.
DM: All orcs are always chaotic evil. No exception. No redemption.
Players: But that makes no sense! Why?!
DM: Honestly? Your characters have no frakking idea. What they know is that since the dawn of times, all orcs have always been irremediably and unrepentingly evil. And that every single human who didn't slaughter them on sight regretted it. Now roll for initiative.

How they view the orc NPCs they met has no impact, I feel.


Yeah, me too. I like my races different. I like them logically consistent with their differences. If you think different is evil, though, you and me gonna have even more problems.
But aren't inconsistencies the point of Fantasy? As far as we know, the only working recipe for sentient species is mankind. In real life there are no race of sentient beings which is irremediably evil as a race, hence why creating a race which is irremediably evil per default is an interesting setting and has been used for a while now.

And why have so many different quasi-humans? Why make stereotypes into races?

Because... God! Do humans love their xenos. We fear and hate them too, of course, but heavenly hell it's crazy how in love we are with them. If one stereotype about humans in Fantasy game is true it's how curious we are. How much the unknown passionates us. How much we crave knowing what is beyond human.

And at the end of the day, all we ever have are humans in funny costumes, no matter how elaborately we did our thing, no matter how much detail we put into our xenos, it's still the product of a human mind, with human sensibilities, bearing the human mark and bound by human limitations.

But striving for the xenos is a long-time fetish of humanity, hence its popularity.

AstralFire
2015-01-13, 07:19 AM
No, Fantasy is not about inconsistency. Quite the opposite, all storytelling is about consistency. The notion of suspension of disbelief operates on the idea that there is a logical level at which your audience will accept things as making a kind of sense. We expect fire to be hot, and when it isn't hot, we expect there to be a consistent rule that explains why it is not.

Avoiding purely evil races can arise from the standpoint of immersion, or it can come from a moral notion that it is best to avoid stories wherein people might practice conceiving of others as not-people; this isn't entirely groundless in psychology and sociology.

Personally, I don't begrudge others their "always evil" sapients, but I tend to consider it a bit of a demerit to any setting I'm considering using.

Alberic Strein
2015-01-13, 07:46 AM
No, Fantasy is not about inconsistency. Quite the opposite, all storytelling is about consistency. The notion of suspension of disbelief operates on the idea that there is a logical level at which your audience will accept things as making a kind of sense. We expect fire to be hot, and when it isn't hot, we expect there to be a consistent rule that explains why it is not.
And thus we play with the willing suspension of disbelief. It's not about making things consistent, it's about how much inconsistency (arrival of the Big Damn Heroes at JUST the right moment, sudden burst of power, stroke of luck, theatrical scenes) you can get away with.

Of course you try to make the world as consistent as possible, as realistic, hell, as real as possible, but it's because you are already introducing, by creating the world and the story of this world, inconsistencies and you need some leeway regarding the willing suspension of disbelief and the rest of your plot.

We dream of worlds filled with fantasms, things that can't exist in the real world, things that are inconsistent with our perception of the world.

What do you mean playing with words? I would never do that!


Avoiding purely evil races can arise from the standpoint of immersion, or it can come from a moral notion that it is best to avoid stories wherein people might practice conceiving of others as not-people; this isn't entirely groundless in psychology and sociology.
So we could settle for "mainly groundless"?

Anyway, your argument can go both ways. Purely evil races can be immersion breaking, since it's not "realistic" as far as we know. But it can also be immersion inducing, when trying to create and introduce your world, and marking it as different from the one we know of.


Personally, I don't begrudge others their "always evil" sapients, but I tend to consider it a bit of a demerit to any setting I'm considering using.
It's your opinion, my fellow human, and it's definitely as good as mine. I even wholeheartedly agree with you that some forced "evil" alignment are cringe worthy and hamper my fun when trying to play an exotic race. Yet I can't help but remember some "always evil" races which are the most useful and hilarious things around for me as a DM and if they didn't exist, or existed in a "politically correct" version, my love for them would irremediably disappear, and I whould have just lost my favorite memories as a DM.

AstralFire
2015-01-13, 07:55 AM
So we could settle for "mainly groundless"?

No. I used understatement because it's a complex point that merits pages and pages of cited discussion which I don't think this thread can or should really handle, and I'd prefer it to be avoided entirely to keep the accusations of immoral behavior low. Suffice to say that there are legitimate ways to argue the point on both ends.

Alberic Strein
2015-01-13, 08:04 AM
No. I used understatement because it's a complex point that merits pages and pages of cited discussion which I don't think this thread can or should really handle, and I'd prefer it to be avoided entirely to keep the accusations of immoral behavior low. Suffice to say that there are legitimate ways to argue the point on both ends.

Then let's leave it at that. But I think we're a bit late in limiting the whole "accusation of immoral behavior" mess, with the little "debate" about dehumanization a few pages back.

But if dropping that particular subject helps prevent the return of that, then I'm all for it.
Still calling bullsh*t on the whole immoral shebang though.

Segev
2015-01-13, 08:18 AM
Another possible way for orcs to be "always evil" would be for them to literally lack free will. It need not be an overt robotic slavishness, but as a species, they are truly unable to choose "good" options. They are different from zombies in that they are not necessarily mind-slaves to a single powerful will, but they are created with a purpose and are actively disfunctional and self-destructive enough to pursue the wrong, nasty, harm-causing choice even if it would personally benefit them not to. Only the perception that their compliance with a more powerful being will let them cause more destruction and pain than they currently do would let them even consider choosing a "good" option like keeping their word or doing something on behalf of somebody else.

This variant would be inherently inferior to humans, being a race without the ability to choose. To rise above their nature.

Half-orcs, in such a setting, would probably have to have free will if they're a playable race, but would have to probably be as orcish as one can be without losing free will in order to maintain the balance of "always evil orcs." That is, a half-orc that breeds with an orc produces, for all intents and purposes, an orc (and likely produces humans for all intents and purposes when breeding with humans). That way, the half-orc is really just a human in a near-orc body.

One could push it a bit further, but that would require borrowing a Taint of Evil mechanic from somewhere. Orcs are tainted and thus cannot help but be evil. They're "lost" to it. Half-orcs would be more susceptible to taint (and maybe gain more strength by drawing upon it), but would lose their free will and become more evil if they gave in.

golentan
2015-01-13, 08:26 AM
And we're back to P-zombies...

Brendanicus
2015-01-13, 08:30 AM
Orcs aren't depicted as always-evil these days because Orcs are a victim of their own popularity. D&D allows Half-Orcs as a base race, and popular games like World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls have allowed playable Orcs for years. This is mainly because Orcs are really popular antagonists who fit the role of "tough guy race" quite well.

Also, this trend is expediated by the fact that these days, there are a lot of races who always fit the bill of "evil marauding tribal race" quite well who are much more evil your average Orc. Yes, many Orcs practice cannibalism and Slavery, but Gnoll society depends on it much more than Orcs do. Bugbears are huge, muscular, terrifying, and LOVE killing adventurers.

Alberic Strein
2015-01-13, 08:59 AM
And we're back to P-zombies...
Well, it seems hardly avoidable, since a P-zombie is a human lacking one of the definitive features of a human being, and we're talking about a non-humane humanoid race.

For argument's sake, though, is there anything wrong with P-zombies anyway?

golentan
2015-01-13, 09:23 AM
See dehumanization. P-Zombies are a way of defining something that looks like a person, talks like a person, and to all outside senses thinks like a person as not a person. If you cut them, they don't hurt even if they act like they do. The point of P-zombies in most arguments is to highlight how ridiculous the concept of a P-zombie is and make people realize the common humanity of each other. Or in this case orciness? The idea of a world where non-p-zombie people exist alongside the zombies is fairly ridiculous.

It's an upsetting if interesting concept, but in general I gotta be of the opinion that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and lays eggs like a duck it's as much a duck as any of the others. Indeed, arguably if an orc isn't capable of acts of will it's not evil for the same reason that animals and animal intelligence monsters in DnD are always neutral until they gain the intelligence to act willfully and in an informed manner. Arguably the same applies to mindless undead save as extensions of whatever force animates them and picks their targets (you can't really argue your finger isn't evil for killing someone because it was your brain that gave the command).

If they're independent and sapient, they can be evil independently, but then they have to have free will, so they're not P-zombies, and while they may be prone to evil to be really evil I gotta believe they choose it, no matter how much coercion or nature influences the choice. And orcs are pretty smart. Maybe not human smart depending on the work, but they're pretty bright bulbs what with the language and tools and sometimes magic.

And again we've gotta go to the sources. If we keep carving away traits from an orc until we can justify them being always evil one way or another, at what point are we talking about something that's not an orc but rather something else in an orc suit? Back to P-zombies: if you carve away characterization from a human long enough... Anyway, sources. Tolkien, DnD, and the modern fantasy descended from both generally gives Orcs intelligence, independence, and an understanding of where the moral line is even if they cross it without overmuch thought as a matter of routine. And they are redeemable to at least some extent.

Alberic Strein
2015-01-13, 10:08 AM
snip

But in that case, isn't the use of the term "p-zombies" abusive? Unless one is seriously drunk, it's not like one could mistake an orc for a human. They have some clear physical differences, and one of the most enduring traits of orcs is that they refuse the concept of federation, a concept that is difficult to avoid while speaking of humans, builder of kingdoms and empires.

So in this case we would have on one hand a cat, and on the other a wolf, sure both are four legged, mamals, covered un fur, have slitted eyes, and many other similitudes, but they are also definitely different.

Also, you may need to consider it a necessary evil of multiple races RPGs. Those systems are basically designed by ducks, for ducks, who will play characters, incarnate characters even, who will thus quack like ducks, think like ducks, walk like ducks, etc... Well, technically it won't quite look like a duck, and this will be the main difference. You'll have the small yet manly duck, which is completely different from the manly average-sized duck, and the small and unmanly duck. Forget races, all those ducks aren't even from the same species for the most part! And yet they are duck-like beings with slight physical differences, but with the voice, brains, and sensibilities of the duck that plays them.

So in the end, we need to draw the line somewhere and say: This is a duck. This is not a duck but a wereduck. Because of X, X being an arbitrary catch-all distinction.

For the free will bit, indeed if orcs don't have a choice in the matter, then they can't be considered evil for their actions which they don't choose to accomplish, no? But at the same time, the race would be recognized as a force of evil, and if they have sapience (even without free will) then they are capable of cruelty, which puts them apart from animals and cataclysms. In which case, even if an individual orc can't really be considered evil, if the entire race is considered as nothing but evil by every other sapient race, aren't orcs evil? A cog in a murder machine which is aware of being a cog in a murder machine and enjoying it while being unable to even comprehend that it may be something else, is it evil?

As for being free willed, I think you're going a bit fast there. What about a free willed orc with a) an immoral moral code and b) absolutely no empathy whatsoever and thus no ability to shift that moral code to something the rest of the sapient races wouldn't consider evil? In this case the orc is free to do absolutely everything he wants, but he still can't comprehend "good" and has no opportunity to be anything but evil, no?

As for sources... I'm all for sources! I love sources! However, the fantasy genre became so grossly overbloated that I'm not sure it means anything anymore. Orcs are tough, green and tusked. Besides that? All bets are off.

Segev
2015-01-13, 10:22 AM
If we keep carving away traits from an orc until we can justify them being always evil one way or another, at what point are we talking about something that's not an orc but rather something else in an orc suit?

There are actually two questions here. The one that is definitely consciously being asked is, "How can we make orcs 'always evil' without cutting them apart until they're uninteresting as characters?"

I agree that taking the "lack of will to do other than evil" approach is a diminishment. That's why my first effort, a page or few back, was to instead come up with some difference in orc physiology that makes their needs sufficiently different from those of humans that evil behavior is actually objectively superior for their prosperity as individuals AND as a society.


The second question is, "How much can we change orcs while still leaving them orcs?" That question is harder, because it's so very subjective. Orcs differ more than just about any fantasy race from depiction to depiction. Early D&D had them as pig-headed humans. Tolkien had them as hideously deformed elves. The movies based on Tolkien's works makes them ogre-like, bald, and hideously scarred with mottled pale hides. Warcraft makes them green-skinned, tusked piles of muscle that could be considered less than ugly. Warhammer does much the same.

Answering that second question is thus difficult. What constitutes being "an orc" that cannot be changed? What is so much not "an orc" that it cannot be part of them and have them be still called orcs?


In one campaign I ran, I had orcs have a PrC that transformed them into ogres. Ogres in that setting were all orcs who'd taken that class and developed their natural prowess.

Are those still orcs, if they can become ogres?

Jay R
2015-01-13, 10:25 AM
In the middle of a war, you have to treat all of the other side as your enemy. This doesn't inherently mean that they are evil, but as soon as you see one, you have to assume that they are out to kill you, or you will die before you find out. (This doesn't necessarily mean shooting them on sight, either. Ducking for cover and offering them some food is also a viable option. But duck for cover first.)

In most games, there is in fact a long-term war going on between orcs and humans, at least on the level of occasional raids. The way that humans treat orcs when they see them is therefore perfectly normal and reasonable.

The dehumanizing aspect is an alignment system that assumes that there are individuals or races who are Good and individuals or races who are Evil, rather than individuals who are currently committing a good action and individuals who are currently committing an evil action.

The true p-zombies are anybody with an Alignment, rather than a point of view and a set of motivations.

"There are no judges, only men judging; no tramps, only men tramping . . ."
-- Lewis Browne

"The world is not filled with blacks and whites, but with ever-shifting greys."
-- Professor X (Stan Lee)

123456789blaaa
2015-01-13, 10:41 AM
In the middle of a war, you have to treat all of the other side as your enemy. This doesn't inherently mean that they are evil, but as soon as you see one, you have to assume that they are out to kill you, or you will die before you find out. (This doesn't necessarily mean shooting them on sight, either. Ducking for cover and offering them some food is also a viable option. But duck for cover first.)

In most games, there is in fact a long-term war going on between orcs and humans, at least on the level of occasional raids. The way that humans treat orcs when they see them is therefore perfectly normal and reasonable.

The dehumanizing aspect is an alignment system that assumes that there are individuals or races who are Good and individuals or races who are Evil, rather than individuals who are currently committing a good action and individuals who are currently committing an evil action.

The true p-zombies are anybody with an Alignment, rather than a point of view and a set of motivations.

"There are no judges, only men judging; no tramps, only men tramping . . ."
-- Lewis Browne

"The world is not filled with blacks and whites, but with ever-shifting greys."
-- Professor X (Stan Lee)

People with Alignments can't have points of view and motivations? :smallconfused:

I mean, they may be limited to some particular POV's and motivations but I have seen very little fiction wherein they have none. I mean ,for example, you really can't tell the POV and motivation of some Evil-Aligned orc?

And as for your quotes...isn't part of the whole point of fiction to imagine worlds which differ from the Real World? I enjoy having "humans in different hats" type races in my games from time to time but I absolutely hate the notion that people who do it different are engaging in badwrongfun.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-13, 03:46 PM
Exactly.
It doesn't matter what the player or the PC might think is good/evil, what matters is what the setting thinks. If the game setting explicitly says 'x is evil' then x is Evil. It's not harder than that. Trying to bring in real world morality to a game discussion is futile. Sure, at some point most in-game morality is in some way based on what some designer or GM believes, but it doesn't need to be that way.


I'd argue exactly the opposite. It doesn't matter what the setting thinks, it matters what the group playing it thinks.


I don't think these two are inherently at odds. Because the setting is, at its core, a compromise between the setting as written, the setting as the DM interprets it, and the setting as the players are willing to tolerate.

If your setting contains a feature (for example, slavery is accepted and normal, and not necessarily evil), the GM may interpret this straight, while the players may find it repugnant and bring their own views into the game, leading to a game about ending slavery. Or maybe the GM interprets it as evil, and so starts putting Alignment Infraction Points on players who buy slaves. If the players and the GM are too far at odds, then the game will likely run into problems.

The same comes down to orcs who are or are not inherently evil... if orcs are inherently evil (even with the noted exceptions; the conditioned and the crazy), and players don't accept that feature, depending on how important it is to the GM, it could break the fellowship which allows the game to be played. If the GM is expecting PCs to get their jollies bashing in baby goblin heads, and the players are trying to find homes for the orphans they just made, there's going to be conflict. If the players expect to be able to toss orc whelps on spears and remain paladins, and the GM causes their fall from murdering children, there's going to be a conflict.*

I don't think one way is inherently superior to the other, and I tend to mix them a bit (some races are almost impossible to raise as good; others will be just fine if raised normally). But I don't think it's a particular stretch to say "The Dark One made goblins in his image; they are evil, but lawful, creating societies and structures which reward the powerful at the expense of the weak. A rare few might be good, but they are born evil."

*Game story: The PCs orphaned a bunch of goblin whelps... well, mostly. The goblins ran away. The players interrogated me as to whether or not goblins were inherently evil... i.e. "If we kill them, are we evil?" I kept them to in-character knowledge... most are considered completely, irredeemably evil, but there are stories of those who were heroes. They decided to take the goblins, smuggles them into town, and deposit them at the Temple of the Caregiver. The ballsiness of it got them some fame and honor.

Yukitsu
2015-01-13, 04:02 PM
No, Fantasy is not about inconsistency. Quite the opposite, all storytelling is about consistency. The notion of suspension of disbelief operates on the idea that there is a logical level at which your audience will accept things as making a kind of sense. We expect fire to be hot, and when it isn't hot, we expect there to be a consistent rule that explains why it is not.

Avoiding purely evil races can arise from the standpoint of immersion, or it can come from a moral notion that it is best to avoid stories wherein people might practice conceiving of others as not-people; this isn't entirely groundless in psychology and sociology.

Personally, I don't begrudge others their "always evil" sapients, but I tend to consider it a bit of a demerit to any setting I'm considering using.

Well, at least as far as D&D, Tolkien and Warhammer goes, it'd be awfully inconsistent for a race bred and created by a malicious and evil deity for the sole purpose of spiting all other living things to be capable of any semblance of anything other than evil. At the very least, them being anything other than evil would completely break my suspension of disbelief.

Talakeal
2015-01-13, 05:07 PM
Well, at least as far as D&D, Tolkien and Warhammer goes, it'd be awfully inconsistent for a race bred and created by a malicious and evil deity for the sole purpose of spiting all other living things to be capable of any semblance of anything other than evil. At the very least, them being anything other than evil would completely break my suspension of disbelief.

Does that cut both ways? If the demi-human races are made by a benevolent creator god do you refuse to accept evil men?

Yukitsu
2015-01-13, 05:51 PM
Does that cut both ways? If the demi-human races are made by a benevolent creator god do you refuse to accept evil men?

Yes, although I can't honestly think of many that fit that description. Most traditionally "good" deities aren't very nice people. Tolkien's creator Diety, Warhammer's old ones, D&D's Correlon, Moradin and Yondalla aren't at all capital G good, most of them are scraping the bottom of it, although if some deity of actual pure good created a race and wasn't the racial supremacist deity of them, I could easily fathom them kicking around as an unambiguously good guy race.

Those deities also differ in what they make their race to be. The orcs in Tolkien's work were created simply to be anathema to all the other peoples in the world but Dwarves were made only because their God had seen the elves and wanted to make something as well. He didn't intend for them to be unambiguously good or anything of that bent whereas the orcs were created to be and to do evil. Similar can be said for Gods in other settings.

Jay R
2015-01-13, 06:29 PM
Does that cut both ways? If the demi-human races are made by a benevolent creator god do you refuse to accept evil men?

If free will is considered to be beneficial, then that logic doesn't apply.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-13, 06:50 PM
You might also have it that some gods took a gamble... perhaps, freely chosen good (or evil) is more spiritually valuable than mandatory... but mandatory evil still has value. So, do you go with the free choice and the bigger score, or the smaller score and the lack of choice?

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-13, 08:08 PM
It could also be that mandatory evil means easily controllable minions. Mandatory good without free will or the ability to understand with those who do evil might result in them being evil, but with good intentions.

Talakeal
2015-01-13, 08:48 PM
If free will is considered to be beneficial, then that logic doesn't apply.

That opens up a whole other can of worms.

Still, a chaotic or neutral evil god might consider rebellion to be a virtue and equip his creations with free will as well.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-13, 08:51 PM
That opens up a whole other can of worms.

Still, a chaotic or neutral evil god might consider rebellion to be a virtue and equip his creations with free will as well.

Conversely, a chaotic deity may take the POV "I made them, they're going to obey ME."

goto124
2015-01-13, 08:54 PM
Doesn't really sound chaotic.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-13, 09:07 PM
Doesn't really sound chaotic.

"Freedom is for ME. These are MY STUFF. MY STUFF isn't free, and if they REALLY wanted to be free, they'd make themselves free."

Chaotic doesn't mean you mind controlling other people.

goto124
2015-01-13, 09:27 PM
So that's like... the god himself is chaotic, but doesn't want his followers to be chaotic?

Talakeal
2015-01-13, 09:47 PM
IMO people can easily be hypocrites, gods not so much. Law and Chaos are encoded into their very nature.

I think that lawful deities would be more likely to create beings without free will while chaotic beings are more likely to create them with. I don't feel that good or evil factor into it too much.

Either way, it is just my feelings towards tendencies, hardly a strict rule in any case.

Jay R
2015-01-13, 10:10 PM
So that's like... the god himself is chaotic, but doesn't want his followers to be chaotic?

All too many gods want their followers to be Lawful My-Way.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-13, 11:09 PM
So that's like... the god himself is chaotic, but doesn't want his followers to be chaotic?

He doesn't mind them being chaotic, so long as they do what he says. Doing what he says doesn't make them lawful... they do what he says because he'll kick their butts if they don't.

Roxxy
2015-01-13, 11:11 PM
I find your ideas on sacrifice powered necromancy morally fascinating. Would you mind giving some more specifics about how that works? How do you handle it mechanically at the table?I generally assume that reanimating a zombie needs blood and flesh of a human as a spell component (aside from the corpses to be raised), but how many a zombies necromancer can create from blood and flesh harvested from one body is generally determined by plot (I don't assume more than a dozen or so). I run games for the kingdoms' monster hunters, so the PCs are the good guys and don't use that kind magic, and raising zombies takes too long to do in combat. As a result, I haven't actually needed mechanics aside from the stats for the monsters themselves.

What I do assume is that if you are playing with corpses and magic, you are going to have to perform human sacrifice (That includes Raise Dead type spells, which never go as planned. Assuming you can find a book that instructs one in how to cast such magics, which is incredibly difficult, roll D20. 1-3 the caster dies, 4-7 it brings back a mentally damaged individual [bring out Heroes of Horror at this point], 8-16 it brings back a powerful undead, and 17-20 it brings back a demon (If it has the Evil Outsider subtype, I call it a demon. The game intends that a dead character is going to stay dead, but plots about attempted resurrection going horribly wrong sound like fun, so I left the potential there.). That's what it costs to access that sort of power, and nobody really understands it, which is why it gets portrayed as bad to play with.

Nagash
2015-01-13, 11:56 PM
There's the DM's morality, and the player's morality.

No there isnt. There is no morality to your perception of or treatment of made up creatures. Its literally no different then playing diablo and not stopping to ponder why your not trying to make friends with the bull people instead of just wasting them.

They arent real. They dont have thoughts and feelings, because they arent real. Only real people have those things. So we can paint them however we want to create any feel or setting we want and there is no morality to it.

Its like "why were werewolves always evil in the old stories"?

Because they were CREATED to be the mirror image of the savage beast inside of every man. Most gothic monsters were created to mirror some dark aspect of humanity.

Hell most fantasy monsters in general were created originally to exemplify some darkness or danger in humanity or nature.

They dont need good sides or shades of grey. Having those screws up the whole point of the creature existing in the first place.




Ever hear of the fallacy of relative privation? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation)

Yes, like most so called fallacies thrown around online its a giant load of crap and should be utterly ignored by thinking beings.


I do volunteer. I can't spend all my time volunteering: I need to eat, sleep, unwind. Games are how I unwind, relax, and enjoy myself as well as put some of the things I deal with in an emotional context that's easier to deal with.

Great, why do you get to force your morality about made up creatures on the rest of your group and what makes you think you have the moral highground to throw judgements around about people who dont feel the need to moralize fantasy monsters?


If you don't care for the discussion? That's fine, but attacking us for doing so when we could be volunteering is pretty facile.

And acting like disagreeing with the validity of your point is somehow attacking you is juvenile and kind of sad. Also it scores no points.



Why just think, in the time you wasted composing this post criticizing us for not volunteering 100% of our waking hours you could have been working yourself to death fixing the world!

True, but then i could give a crap less about fixing the world, its going on 7 billion years old now and doing just fine, its gonna be just fine tomorrow too. And if i wasnt doing this i would be drinking, gambling, or indulging in some other sinful pastime instead. So in a way, i am making the world just a little bit better this way.




Yeah, me too. I like my races different. I like them logically consistent with their differences. If you think different is evil, though, you and me gonna have even more problems.

What you described did not have any logical consistency.

Zarrgon
2015-01-14, 12:12 AM
Tolkien, DnD, and the modern fantasy descended from both generally gives Orcs intelligence, independence, and an understanding of where the moral line is even if they cross it without overmuch thought as a matter of routine. And they are redeemable to at least some extent.

Though there is the point of: What is good and what is evil?

Now first off, when talking about a fictional race being described by someone else, you have writer bias. If the writer thinks X is good, then they will make X good in the fantasy frame work. Same for Z evil things.

Second, you have the Cosmic Alignment vs. What People Say the Alignment is at the Moment. Even in a fantasy frame work world this is not clear.

And third you get the different ways people think.

Example:

The elves of Olda found the colony of Newa. There are halfling tribes already living there, but the evles don't consider them people. So they trick, kill and out right slaughter the halflings for the land.

Now most elves of this time and they will say ''elves are good'' and the ''actions of Newa are good''.

The elves create huge farms and magic factories, but need lots of workers. So they import orc slaves from Orku. The orc nations of the other land are always at war and always enslaving each other. And selling orc slaves to the elves too.

Now ask most elves of this time and they will say ''elves are good'' and the ''actions of Newa are good''.

Newa develops a different culture then Olda and rebels. It's a long and bloody war lasting years, but Newa wins it's freedom from Olda.

Now ask most elves of this time and they will say ''elves are good'' and the ''actions of Newa and Olda are good''.

A great awakening grips Newa as elves come to see slavery as evil and wrong. It's a struggle that leads to war, but in the end all the orc slaves of Newa are set free. From this point on, Newa officially says slavery is evil.

Now ask most elves of this time and they will say ''elves are good'' and the ''actions of Newa are good''.

Ok, but both Olda and Orku have orc slaves.....so that makes them evil to Newa.
But Olda does not think that Orku or Newa are evil.
And Orku does not think Newa or Olda are evil.

So who is right about what good is?
Is slavery a cosmic evil act? If so then that makes Newa evil when they had slaves, even though all the Newa elves thought they were good. And Olda and Orku evil too.

How much do you tag good or evil to a race anyway? If Newa is good and Olda is evil, then what alignment are the elves? If there is a orc ilsand of free slaves, and Orku is still evil, what alignment are orcs?

Newa passes a law that says all elves and orcs must work. Elves think it's good. But orcs see it as slavery returned. Who is right? Is forcing the orcs to work from sun up to sun down, but not calling it slavery, good?

Newa only allows high elves to vote, gray elves are not citizens. Does that make elves good or bad?

And what about the poor forgotten halflings?

So what is good and what is evil.

Solaris
2015-01-14, 12:18 AM
No there isnt. There is no morality to your perception of or treatment of made up creatures. Its literally no different then playing diablo and not stopping to ponder why your not trying to make friends with the bull people instead of just wasting them.

They arent real. They dont have thoughts and feelings, because they arent real. Only real people have those things. So we can paint them however we want to create any feel or setting we want and there is no morality to it.

Its like "why were werewolves always evil in the old stories"?

Because they were CREATED to be the mirror image of the savage beast inside of every man. Most gothic monsters were created to mirror some dark aspect of humanity.

Hell most fantasy monsters in general were created originally to exemplify some darkness or danger in humanity or nature.

They dont need good sides or shades of grey. Having those screws up the whole point of the creature existing in the first place.

That would have been a much better post without everything that came after this part.
This part was good and is a pretty decent point to be making about a use of orcs (just because it's my preferred use for them doesn't mean other people can't have different preferences, of course... even if those preferences are wrong). Everything afterwards looks like you have a real axe to grind against golentan.

I mean, it's not his fault his mere presence shatters reality and sanity.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-14, 12:25 AM
I would actually disagree that by representing evil with the monsters, this means they should be completely and utterly evil. Because a lot of evil doesn't work that way. Sure, there's probably plenty of examples of completely evil people out there, but evil people can be evil without being wholly without humanity. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. If they don't have that capacity for goodness, the occasional glimmer of something good, something worthwhile, then they don't mirror the evil in all of us, they just become alien.

Nagash
2015-01-14, 12:43 AM
That would have been a much better post without everything that came after this part.
This part was good and is a pretty decent point to be making about a use of orcs (just because it's my preferred use for them doesn't mean other people can't have different preferences, of course... even if those preferences are wrong). Everything afterwards looks like you have a real axe to grind against golentan.

I mean, it's not his fault his mere presence shatters reality and sanity.

LOL I suppose i can grudgingly accept thats not his fault

Rogue Shadows
2015-01-14, 12:52 AM
In fairness, even in Tolkien orcs are rarely shown as being particularly evil in their own right. They've always got a driving force behind them - Sarumon, Sauron, Morgoth, take your pick. There has never been a great leader of Orcs who answered to no one above him the way Men and Elves and Dwarves have generally had their own agency.

Rogue Shadows
2015-01-14, 12:55 AM
Anyway. With regard to why Orcs act the way they do and tend towards Evil, I'm a fan of the Races of War (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/A_World_at_War#Orcs:_The_Endless_War) explanation:


Orcs are the product of a generations-long war against the other races. Unfortunately, they haven’t realized that they’ve lost this war. Why the war starts is simple: orcs are, as a race, stupid, ugly, and weak willed, but very strong. Being stupid, ugly and weak willed means that other races tend to always get the upper hand on them and tend to always get the better end of any deal, and other races also tend to not want Orcs around. Orc goods are always a little worse than goods produced by other races, and orcs are generally a little rowdier and less pleasant to be around.

At some point the orcs realize that they are much better in battle than other races, and they decide to fight for a little respect and fair treatment. Then the war is on. The only problem is that orcs win battles, but lose wars. Other races have natural advantages or just greater intelligence, so any war tends to go badly for the orcs in the long run. Powerful melee combat ability doesn’t mean much when elves attack from the bushes with longbows and then run way and all the races have superior battle plans and ability to lead their troops.

Once the war has been decisively won, the orcs are driven out of their lands and pushed into some badland, hinterland, or some other undesirable terrain far away from trade routes and civilization and usually full of monsters. The other races then go back to their lives, but here’s the trick: the orcs don’t. As far as the orcs are concerned, the war is still on because the orcs are still stuck in the worst land in their area, scraping by in the wilderness with minimal natural resources and almost no access to the products of civilization like arable farmlands, centuries-old cities, and trade goods like the products of skilled craftsmen from other lands (which can include magic items).

All of orc culture comes back to this issue. Orcs are constantly warring on other races not out of innate need for violence or evil inclinations, but because they are fighting for their survival as a race in lands considered undesirable by every other major race. Orc raids are not only for food and booty, but for all the things that orc culture cannot produce like tools and weapons. Without these things they cannot survive in the wilderness, and they cannot produce them in the wilderness living as nomads who hunt and gather for survival.

Orc hordes are not an indication of warlike racial tendencies, but of population issues. Once the orcish population in the badlands grows too large to be supportable, they must conquer new lands or else face death by famine and disease. Hordes are formed of "excess" young males that are sent off to carve out new lands or die trying... both results ease the burden on the few resources in the badlands.

The fact that orcs are constantly in a war footing means that they easily offend other races with their tactics. Rather than fight elven guerilla fighters who sap their resources and manpower, they’ll burn the forest down, and rather than fight dwarves in their millennia-old and heavily entrenched deepnesses filled with traps, the orcs will collapse the tunnels and dig the booty out of the rubble. The fact that most races fight defensively means that orcs only gain tactical advantage by being extremely offensively-minded. The fact that orcs do not have supplies coming from the badlands means that while they have no supply trains to cut, they must conduct blitzkrieg-style war or face starvation, and they cannot afford to hold troops in reserve. They often just don’t have the resources needed to conduct honorable or civilized war, and their attacks seldom have finesse or timing on their side, meaning that they only win battles through overwhelming force. Night raids are their specialty, as they have darkvision and are sensitive to light.

I also love Races of War's take of the Sahuagin: they already won ages ago and can't for the life of them figure out why none of the surface races seem to notice or care, and are convinced that somewhere on the surface world is the Last Alliance of Air-Breathers who will one day take back the world from the Sahuagin overlords.

CarpeGuitarrem
2015-01-14, 12:57 AM
I really wish I could find the specific Letter referenced, because I know that the concept of Orcs as Always Evil was something Tolkien actually struggled with. There was one Catholic bookseller in particular who often wrote him, and the trouble of a stock of person that ostensibly did not possess free will was raised. Tolkien didn't have a clear answer.

I tend to like the solution implied by Burning Wheel (a very Tolkienesque game in its own right): orcs are victims, both of a supernatural Hatred which has been infused into their essence and of a cycle of vicious abuse and cruelty that marks their existence. They commit evil because evil and cruelty and hatred are the only things which they have experienced.

That presents an in-game moral problem with no easy solutions. It's not as simple as "teach them to be good", because the evil they commit is ingrained much deeper than "bad habits". You'd have to completely rehabilitate a single orc with great effort over the span of years, and that still wouldn't cleanse the supernatural element. You can never truly be healed (not unlike the wound which haunted Frodo), and a relapse is always waiting to happen.

So you have entire populations who are like this, perpetuating the cycle of evil that was passed on to them. But can you really blame them? It's not like you can say that they deserve death. They're the sort of person you could become, only they never got the chance to be anything else.

I find that to be a lot more satisfying than the Drizzt solution.

Nagash
2015-01-14, 01:10 AM
I would actually disagree that by representing evil with the monsters, this means they should be completely and utterly evil. Because a lot of evil doesn't work that way. Sure, there's probably plenty of examples of completely evil people out there, but evil people can be evil without being wholly without humanity. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. If they don't have that capacity for goodness, the occasional glimmer of something good, something worthwhile, then they don't mirror the evil in all of us, they just become alien.

Sure theres definitely room for nuanced villains. And most villains are probably more interesting with well done nuance. But theres also room for un-nuanced villains that are simply monsters to be killed.

Take HANNIBAL LECTOR

Well crafted, nuanced villain? Absolutely. Total classic. Good for a D&D game? Depends on your group.

Some will play detective and try to learn all about him and dig into the backstory and learn about all that nuance, or even try to meet him and have a good chat where you can do the creepy genius thing. Awesome villain.

And some groups will just focus on learning where he's hiding, kicking his door in and sticking an axe in his face. And all your complicated, well written nuance is broken down to "well you got the killer, good job guys, XP time" because really, he's got an axe in his face. Not a good time for complex dialog or villain backstory. So kind of a suck villain. Lector was hardly the sort to be able to stand toe to toe with a adventuring party.

On the other hand take the family from Texas chainsaw massacre or the hills have eyes.

Good villains? Sure, its a scary as hell situation to be in, real cannibals can and do exist and kill and eat people (rare sure but it happens) and the whole mutant/ psycho angle is creepy but still believable.

Deep immersion investigation group? Well they will probably find it a bit shallow. Theres some weird history and you could easily alter the nuclear experiment to a magical one to lead to a government cover up but all in all its about chopping up a group of nutballs before they chop you up. So maybe not a great villain.

Action hack and slash group? Well hello, you chop them up before they chop you up. Maybe save some kidnapped villagers if you want a heroic angle, or even go into the darker rape for breeding stuff if you have that kind of group. No matter what perfect villain.

The creatures from the Aliens movies, Zerg, Thing, etc etc.

A ruthless force of destructive nature. Do these things have some intelligence? Certainly. Sometimes very high intelligence. However they have no desire at all to communicate. They exist only to consume, destroy and breed. Any attempt to humanize or negotiate with them is a brief sojourn into stupidity before a bloody death.

Good villains? I say yes. Either group can enjoy this. Constant ruthless battle? check for the hack and slash group. Infiltrators, mysterious origins and unknown powers and weaknesses to discover? Check for the thinkers.

ORCS (Or similar critters)

I see a bit as the 2nd kind of villain but more as the third kind. And I dont think that diminishes them in the slightest. It simply alters their place in a games narrative

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-14, 01:14 AM
That wasn't exactly what I was saying. What I was saying that if they are a dark mirror of humanity, they need some aspects of what makes us good people. They're still evil, but they need to be human.

I have no issue with the smash-n-grab style of play. But I doubt these groups would enjoy or be amused at the idea of villains being a dark mirror of humanity in the first place, so I'd say the two don't always belong in the same game.

Rogue Shadows
2015-01-14, 01:27 AM
II find that to be a lot more satisfying than the Drizzt solution.

In fairness to Wizards of the Coast, they came right out and said in Drow of the Underdark that drow society should have imploded ages ago, and only Lolth's direct intervention prevents it. Hang on, I'm gonna post something from 4Chan's /tg/, paraphrased for language.


See, if you read the origins trilogy for our purple-eyed guy, you will find that he just doesn't get drow society. He feels wounded and betrayed when someone backstabs him, he talks back to women, he trusts people, he finds killing the babies of your enemy appalling instead of pragmatic. Basically, he has Dark Elf Autism, complete with his very own Autism Rain Man Superpower of swordplay. That is literally the only thing he cares about and the only thing he is good at, but damn is he good at it. What we get from this is that he is a burden to his House, but they put up with him because he makes for great cannon fodder. Eventually he gets fed up with the drow society that he just can't understand, so he runs away from home after disgracing his House. In order to keep their status, they hunt him down, only for him to get extremely friggin' lucky and eventually cause his own House to be purged.

Now this is where things get interesting. One of the books claims that due to all the upset this one autismal elf brought Drow society, Lolth has personally blessed him as her champion. Can you grasp the ramifications of this? Of the Goddess of Chaos making a lawful good ranger/paladin her Champion of Chaos? That would be like if the Westboro Baptist Church version of Jesus gave a gay-married liberal transgender Muslim his personal blessing. That right there is some Mythical Greek pantheon level of being a ****. We basically have Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory who bazinga'd so hard he caused America to collapse and then God Himself personally blessed him to keep doing that to the rest of the world.

It just goes to show how beautifully messed up Drow society really is, how it can only exist thanks to the will of its goddess and how that very same goddess is actively working against it. I think if more writers and DMs acknowledged just how bat**** insane and messed-up Menzoberranzan and other such Drow cities are in concept, we could get a lot more interesting stories out of the place instead of people constantly trying to make a society of paranoid misandrists based off of the Sicilian Mafia (according to R.A. Salvatore himself) into a legitimate and reasonable culture.

Personally speaking I figured this all out years before Drow of the Underdark came out, and prior to 4th Edition being published and Eilistraee and Vhaerun being killed off I had two entire campaigns I wanted to run based off of the idea that Drow society does not work and cannot work and sooner or later is going to get so messed up that it just explodes:

Auzkovyn Clan Drow in Cormanthor actually take steps to establish a surface drow nation. They're still largely evil or at best neutral, but they finally begin to acknowledge that they won't be able to push the elves out of Cormanthor, and certainly won't stand a chance if the Dales unite against them. So they send an official envoy to the Dale Council establishing their borders, outlining that they don't have any particular interest in Myth Drannor, impressing on the Dalesfolk that they're not going anywhere, but also establishing that they don't really care about the Dales and just want to be left alone except for trade. This emphatically isn't an attempt at reunification with their surface elf cousins, but it also isn't any kind of attempt at conquest. Only now - what if word of this gets back to Drow cities in the underdark? Cities like Ched Nassed, Sschindylryn, and Menzoberranzan. Common drow learn that a group of drow have established and maintained a surface nation, seemingly taking land from the surface elves in the process - in other words, what Drow propaganda promises is the eventual goal of the Drow race. The Houses didn't accomplish this, the Auzkovyn did. So why the Hell are the Houses in charge?
In Menzoberranzan, Sschindylryn, and other drow cities, the common Drow have been stirring, their anger at their oppression and status as mere pawns - the lowest pawns at that - in the games of the Great Houses has finally begun to seriously boil over. What happens is basically Drow French Revolution, with the noble Houses being thrown down in favor of a Directorate, equality for men, lots of death and destruction, declaring war on all their neighbors, worship of Lolth being rejected, etc. Of course, the inevitable next result of this is Drow Napoleon...

Nagash
2015-01-14, 01:40 AM
That wasn't exactly what I was saying. What I was saying that if they are a dark mirror of humanity, they need some aspects of what makes us good people. They're still evil, but they need to be human.

I have no issue with the smash-n-grab style of play. But I doubt these groups would enjoy or be amused at the idea of villains being a dark mirror of humanity in the first place, so I'd say the two don't always belong in the same game.

I think you could call having a society (craftsmen, healers, priests, etc etc), having family units and theoretically caring for their young ( this is rarely touched on in anything i've read but assuming they do) having an organized religion to be mirrors.

To me they could very much be human (or maybe dwarven) society through a mirror darkly. Humanity if we chose selfishness instead of unity in effort, if we chose violence over compassion, anarchy over desire to create order, and ultimately if we gave in to the darker primitive in all of us that feels like might makes right, and wants to lash out when thwarted rather then thinking or talking through a solution.

Why orcs became the way they are isnt relevant. It can very easily be lost to history because its been this way for so long. What matters is that they can be both us, in our darkest moments and surrendering to our blackest passions, and still alien, and different, unknowable and hard to predict and impossible to redeem or negotiate with.

To me thats still a complex, thought out and compelling, but always evil and an enemy race.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-14, 01:59 AM
I don't think a society makes for humanity. Devils have a society and they're wholly evil. Obeying some semblance of law or tradition does not make them good or human.

Nagash
2015-01-14, 03:10 AM
I don't think a society makes for humanity. Devils have a society and they're wholly evil. Obeying some semblance of law or tradition does not make them good or human.

Then we have to define what does make for humanity. Something which hasnt been done in this thread.

golentan
2015-01-14, 05:04 AM
No there isnt. There is no morality to your perception of or treatment of made up creatures. Its literally no different then playing diablo and not stopping to ponder why your not trying to make friends with the bull people instead of just wasting them.

They arent real. They dont have thoughts and feelings, because they arent real. Only real people have those things. So we can paint them however we want to create any feel or setting we want and there is no morality to it.

Its like "why were werewolves always evil in the old stories"?

Because they were CREATED to be the mirror image of the savage beast inside of every man. Most gothic monsters were created to mirror some dark aspect of humanity.

Hell most fantasy monsters in general were created originally to exemplify some darkness or danger in humanity or nature.

They dont need good sides or shades of grey. Having those screws up the whole point of the creature existing in the first place.

A valid point. The counterargument is twofold: Orcs weren't created that way, when tolkien realized they could be read the way you imply he jossed it pretty hard. Orcs have the deck stacked against them when it comes to being good, sure, but they have souls and minds and they have a choice. Second, times change. Vampires can be sympathetic, and we don't even have to invoke a certain sparkly variety that need not be named for you to be unable to swing a dead cat without hitting a friendly neighborhood vampire. Same with werewolves, and all sorts of other monsters, and just because the victorians did something is no reason to ignore the evolution of the body of work of the fantastic genre since those days.


Great, why do you get to force your morality about made up creatures on the rest of your group and what makes you think you have the moral highground to throw judgements around about people who dont feel the need to moralize fantasy monsters?

Because most of my group agrees it makes them and the game more interesting to use more than one color in the palate. "Forcing?"

Making a lot of assumptions here...

All of which doesn't change that the point of this thread is to discuss the evil or lack thereof of orcs, and you told everyone who felt that was a worthwhile use of their time to shut up and do something else.


And acting like disagreeing with the validity of your point is somehow attacking you is juvenile and kind of sad. Also it scores no points.

You didn't argue with the validity of the point, you tried to shut down discussion with a logical fallacy because you felt the discussion wasn't worth having.

I'm pro-evil orc, you... :smallfurious:

Just not unremittingly evil. What's so hard to understand with the idea that "sentient beings have a choice to make, and orcs are depicted as sentient?"


True, but then i could give a crap less about fixing the world, its going on 7 billion years old now and doing just fine, its gonna be just fine tomorrow too. And if i wasnt doing this i would be drinking, gambling, or indulging in some other sinful pastime instead. So in a way, i am making the world just a little bit better this way.

4 billion. Minor nitpick. My big nitpick of this is that just because you don't do moral introspection? Doesn't mean it's not a valuable pastime. Hypocrisy? Not so much.


What you described did not have any logical consistency.

Yes, like most so called fallacies thrown around online its a giant load of crap and should be utterly ignored by thinking beings.

Just going to let these two comments speak for themselves as far as your ability to recognize logical consistency goes.

Nagash
2015-01-14, 05:59 AM
A valid point. The counterargument is twofold: Orcs weren't created that way, when tolkien realized they could be read the way you imply he jossed it pretty hard.

Counterpoint.

Tolkien didnt create orcs.

The word orc is from old english which died around the 12th century and referred to orcus the god of the underworld.

Tolkien simply took an obscure, but known fairy tale creature named after the evil god of the underworld and made out of them a vicious monster who lives underground and fears the sunlight.

A coincidence? I think not.


Orcs have the deck stacked against them when it comes to being good, sure, but they have souls and minds and they have a choice.

This is neither established nor supported anywhere in the fantasy before the warcraft games came out. Or if it is, its obscure and marginalized because of its rarity.


Second, times change.

Change is not evolution. Change can be and often is bad.



Vampires can be sympathetic, and we don't even have to invoke a certain sparkly variety that need not be named for you to be unable to swing a dead cat without hitting a friendly neighborhood vampire. Same with werewolves, and all sorts of other monsters, and just because the victorians did something is no reason to ignore the evolution of the body of work of the fantastic genre since those days.

Again change is not evolution.

Turning vampires from flawed human beings and damned predators into weirdos who want to go back to highschool after centuries of existence for insipid books and movies is not evolution. Its attempting to pander to the human desire for fear, danger and exotic contacts while in a safe, sane package in an effort to sell books and movies to pre teen girls.

And that **** can take a long walk off a short pier when it comes to my fantasy.





Because most of my group agrees it makes them and the game more interesting to use more than one color in the palate.

You should agree with me then. All you've done in this thread is push a one color fits all mindset about other species.

No matter how many shades of grey you have, its still grey.




All of which doesn't change that the point of this thread is to discuss the evil or lack thereof of orcs, and you told everyone who felt that was a worthwhile use of their time to shut up and do something else.

No i did not.

YOU basically said everyone who doesnt agree with you on a fantasy race was a bad person and a racist IRL and had something wrong with them.

YOU connected this silly game convention to real life peoples personalities. Not me.

If you dont cant handle disagreement I would suggest you not throw a bunch of stones in your glass house.






What's so hard to understand with the idea that "sentient beings have a choice to make, and orcs are depicted as sentient?"

Seriously? Where to even begin?

First off there are no monolithic "orcs" in fantasy. They run the gamut from always evil to overly idealized shamanistic primitive humans.

And second why would you even begin to equate sentience to morality? Thats absurd.

Morality aka alignment is a complex blend of culture, upbringing, genetics and personal choice.

There are entire human cultures who for hundreds, maybe thousands of years endorsed things modern westerners would think of us evil.

There are ancient cultures that focused on peace, learning and science that we would view as good.

And lets not BS, there's a modern culture right now based in the old fertile crescent thats a death worshipping murder cult that any sane human being would consider evil.

ALL consider themselves good. Most of the most evil rulers in human history considered themselves good.

And thats just the breadth of the human brain. Nevermind these things arent human (or real)

This isnt asians and south americans, this isnt races.

This is Lions and wolves. SPECIES.

Somehow twisting the logic into assuming a completely alien species which may or may not be directly created by an evil diety with the sole purpose of creating suffering in the world can somehow NOT just be evil simply by the fact it has the sentience to do simple math and understand that it lives, dies and can feel pain is ludicrous.




4 billion. Minor nitpick. My big nitpick of this is that just because you don't do moral introspection? Doesn't mean it's not a valuable pastime. Hypocrisy? Not so much.

No the fact that its not a worthwhile pastime makes it not a worthwhile pastime irrespective of my opinion on it. Its like gravity. I could say things fall up, they will still fall down, and you can say this nonsense is worthwhile, and it still wont be, no matter what either of us think about it.

Svata
2015-01-14, 06:16 AM
For the love of all that is good and holy, Nagash, all people are saying is that it can be (and IMHO, generally is) more interesting to have a touch of nuance and/or ambiguity, rather that having all orcs hit the exact same note of "Rawr evil smash face" all. the. time. Can we agree on that? Failing that, can we agree to disagree, at the very least?

golentan
2015-01-14, 06:29 AM
Okay, if you're going to accuse me of positions I didn't take, can the strawman you're swinging at at least resemble me?

Alberic Strein
2015-01-14, 06:34 AM
I really, really don't want to agree with either of you at this point, but I still feel the need to nitpick at this:


What's so hard to understand with the idea that "sentient beings have a choice to make, and orcs are depicted as sentient?"
Technically I already made my rebuttal about this opinion, but I want to nitpick about the "have to".

Sentient beings "can" have a choice to make regarding their adherance to good and/or evil. They are free to position themselves on the axis. This doesn't mean they are able to even perceive the axis. What choice did any of us make in making time go from beginning to the end in a uniform manner? We didn't, it's just the way the world goes, and we can't imagine us being able to decide to rewind time on a whim. Just because we can.

The same way you can, without breaking suspension of disbelief, make sentient creatures unable to comprehend the concept of veering away from the dark side. They can still have opinions, their thoughts, likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc... They just never even thought that "evil" is something they could change about themselves.

Hell, I believe my previous point still stands, so here it is again.
1) IRL humans (sentient beings) can have varying degrees of empathy. Some, whichend up usually considered irregular or even mentally ill may even feel no, or close to no empathy.
2) IRL humans can feel enjoyment from different sources. Some, which are usually considered deviants, feel enjoyment from inflicted pain and suffering.*

Those two traits do not hamper their classification as sentient beings free of will. Those two traits mixed in however, make one completely moralizationproof. To them there is no link between the pain the feel, and dislike, when being hurt, and the pleasure they feel, and like, when inflicting hurt.

Orcs possessing sentience and those two traits can only be evil and not deviate from it. They can't see the other person's point of view, they can't put their appetites in question, they can't recognize others as equal, living, sentient beings. There is them, the world around them, the like when the world is hurting around them and hate it when the world hurts them, and that's as far as they can go as far as morality is concerned. While still being completely functional sentient beings.

edit for clarification:

*: I am speaking of sociopathic behaviours here, real physical and powerful hurting, as well as crushing suffering shaking us at our core, not S&M play.

The parallel is so atrociously out of place it didn't even occur to me at first, but just in case this sentence is interpreted wrongly, here is the clarification.

Nagash
2015-01-14, 06:35 AM
For the love of all that is good and holy, Nagash, all people are saying is that it can be (and IMHO, generally is) more interesting to have a touch of nuance and/or ambiguity, rather that having all orcs hit the exact same note of "Rawr evil smash face" all. the. time. Can we agree on that? Failing that, can we agree to disagree, at the very least?

The thing is thats NOT whats being said.

In many of these posts there has been a strong implication that anyone who plays differently is very, very wrong.

There were multiple posts that anyone who "dehumanizes" a fantasy character makes them uncomfortable and they would have to leave that group and assess the GM's MOTIVATIONS.

Uncomfortable? Motivations?

Just how is this NOT an attack on our characters as actual human beings if you need to judge our motivations on our depiction of a fantasy race?

The clear implication is that we are somehow morally deficient people who need to learn better.

And we have a right to defend that as viciously as we were attacked. Something i have not done. But have a right to.

DoomHat
2015-01-14, 06:37 AM
I fear I have unleashed a terrible monster upon the forum. A great flame breathing colossus.
I have killed a horse, and distributed beating sticks.

Truly, is the thread the monster, or am I..?

Alberic Strein
2015-01-14, 06:42 AM
I fear I have unleashed a terrible monster upon the forum. A great flame breathing colossus.
I have killed a horse, and distributed beating sticks.

Truly, is the thread the monster, or am I..?

Can you be the monster, choose to be an orc, and then tell us if you feel compelled to absolute evil without an hearsay in the matter, or if you have room for more nuances, please?

golentan
2015-01-14, 06:53 AM
I really, really don't want to agree with either of you at this point, but I still feel the need to nitpick at this:


Technically I already made my rebuttal about this opinion, but I want to nitpick about the "have to".

Sentient beings "can" have a choice to make regarding their adherance to good and/or evil. They are free to position themselves on the axis. This doesn't mean they are able to even perceive the axis. What choice did any of us make in making time go from beginning to the end in a uniform manner? We didn't, it's just the way the world goes, and we can't imagine us being able to decide to rewind time on a whim. Just because we can.

The same way you can, without breaking suspension of disbelief, make sentient creatures unable to comprehend the concept of veering away from the dark side. They can still have opinions, their thoughts, likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc... They just never even thought that "evil" is something they could change about themselves.

Hell, I believe my previous point still stands, so here it is again.
1) IRL humans (sentient beings) can have varying degrees of empathy. Some, which we consider irregular and mentally ill may even feel no, or close to no empathy.
2) IRL humans can feel enjoyment from different sources. Some, which we consider deviants, feel enjoyment from inflicted pain and suffering.

Those two traits do not hamper their classification as sentient beings free of will. Those two traits mixed in however, make one completely moralizationproof. To them there is no link between the pain the feel, and dislike, when being hurt, and the pleasure they feel, and like, when inflicting hurt.

Orcs possessing sentience and those two traits can only be evil and not deviate from it. They can't see the other person's point of view, they can't put their appetites in question, they can't recognize others as equal, living, sentient beings. There is them, the world around them, the like when the world is hurting around them and hate it when the world hurts them, and that's as far as they can go as far as morality is concerned. While still being completely functional sentient beings.

And such people still have a choice to make, and still deserve to be treated as people by virtue of nothing more than their sentience. I know decent sadists. I know decent sociopaths. They're by far the minority of the people like that I know, but I know a sometimes disturbing number of sociopaths through my experience with the mental health system and it's come up enough that I don't immediately assume that sociopathy means that you should break out the smitey sticks. Kinda like orcs, people with those tendencies have the deck stacked against them but can make the rational decision that life is easier to deal with and likely to be longer when you find socially acceptable outlets for those proclivities.

So. Evil, legitimate evil, is a thing that can and should exist, but making everyone of group A irredeemably evil rubs me the wrong way because of the people I know, there have been plenty of folks who choose to transcend or fail to live up to their nature one way or another.

"Orcs are evil by nature" isn't necessarily exclusive with "not all orcs are evil."

Nagash, of the opinions presented on this thread, yours is the only one that I feel I can't speak to without being compelled to break forum rules to express how I feel about it. I'm not going to reply to you further.

hamishspence
2015-01-14, 06:56 AM
Tolkien took from fairytale myths of goblins, ogres, possibly demons as well, combined them - added a bit of his own ("corrupted elves/humans"), and gave them a name - orcs.

golentan
2015-01-14, 07:05 AM
Tolkien took from fairytale myths of goblins, ogres, possibly demons as well, combined them - added a bit of his own ("corrupted elves/humans"), and gave them a name - orcs.

Exactly. The name Orc may have ancient roots, but orcs as they exist for the past century are a tolkien creation.

hamishspence
2015-01-14, 07:10 AM
And recently - there's been a move to make them much less "intrinsically evil" - Warcraft, D&D 3rd ed with its "often Chaotic evil" and so forth.

The OPs question was "What do you think about this trend?"

Personally, I think it goes well both with the original fairytales (in which goblins and ogres are mixed - mostly bad, but not always - there's fairytales about friendly goblins, and less malicious ogres) and with Tolkien's later writings.

golentan
2015-01-14, 07:16 AM
And recently - there's been a move to make them much less "intrinsically evil" - Warcraft, D&D 3rd ed with its "often Chaotic evil" and so forth.

The OPs question was "What do you think about this trend?"

Personally, I think it goes well both with the original fairytales (in which goblins and ogres are mixed - mostly bad, but not always - there's fairytales about friendly goblins, and less malicious ogres) and with Tolkien's later writings.

Hooray for often evil! Preach it! :smalltongue:

Yukitsu
2015-01-14, 02:37 PM
And recently - there's been a move to make them much less "intrinsically evil" - Warcraft, D&D 3rd ed with its "often Chaotic evil" and so forth.

The OPs question was "What do you think about this trend?"

Personally, I think it goes well both with the original fairytales (in which goblins and ogres are mixed - mostly bad, but not always - there's fairytales about friendly goblins, and less malicious ogres) and with Tolkien's later writings.

To be fair though, absolutely none of those critters in myth were meant to have comprehensible or human morality, nor is it safe to say that something that is friendly is not also evil.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-14, 03:30 PM
Now I have a question of when someone in the original myths balked at killing a goblin, ogre or a non-helpful fey when they got a bit murderous.

Segev
2015-01-14, 03:40 PM
Now I have a question of when someone in the original myths balked at killing a goblin, ogre or a non-helpful fey when they got a bit murderous.

You're unlikely to find such. The original myths come from times when unhelpful and hostile human characters were summarily dealt with via violence. It was considered heroic and justified.

jedipotter
2015-01-14, 03:54 PM
So. Evil, legitimate evil, is a thing that can and should exist, but making everyone of group A irredeemably evil rubs me the wrong way because of the people I know, there have been plenty of folks who choose to transcend or fail to live up to their nature one way or another.


Well, what about when everyone of a race agrees with something, and that something is evil? Are they an evil race then?

Now, going by Earth numbers, the world population is only 400,000. So, we will just say 100,000 orcs. Now how many orcs have to think ''something different'' before the whole race is not evil? 10? 20? 100? Half? So lets say 95,800 orcs worldwide think ''other races are just food, kill them'', but 200 worldwide think ''other races are people''. So when anyone meets any orc, they will likely meet the ''yum food!'' type....


You also get the negative/positive twist. If your an orc, you will never agree to say ''all orcs are bad'', as because both you don't think your bad and you know plenty of good orcs.

But if someone was to say something positive, like all orcs are brave, the orc would willing apply it to both themselves as they think/want to be called brave and they know brave orcs. And they like to think of thier race as brave, But you won't see the backlash where orc will say thing like ''oh, you can't say all orcs are brave'' or ''the brave are just a small community'' .

Coidzor
2015-01-14, 03:57 PM
Does that cut both ways? If the demi-human races are made by a benevolent creator god do you refuse to accept evil men?

Yes. If they were created to be Good rather than have the choice to be Good, then, yes, it should be a significant thing to find someone who has broken that mold and become Evil.

Similarly if a race is created to be Evil then it should be significant to run into a Good member of that race.

So Drizzt should be a notable exception to the general thrust of the Drow population rather than having the majority of the population be Drizzt Clones with the actual played-straight Drow being an ethnic minority against whom the majority are rebelling.


IMO people can easily be hypocrites, gods not so much. Law and Chaos are encoded into their very nature.

I have read the fluff on deities in various game settings as well as read about the gods in various works of fiction that have provided fodder for game settings and their gods. Your statement is fundamentally flawed by being so absolute.

Even taking poor editing into account and thus discounting little easter egg explanations for inconsistencies like Pelor of the Burning Hate in 3.X, there's still too much of a body of examples to support your assertion that gods can't be hypocrites.

Tragak
2015-01-14, 04:42 PM
Now I have a question of when someone in the original myths balked at killing a goblin, ogre or a non-helpful fey when they got a bit murderous. According to the alignment rules that I've always read, killing somebody because "she was going to kill me first" is different from killing somebody because "my species is better than hers."

SiuiS
2015-01-14, 04:42 PM
I would venture to say that the incredible prevalence of mutants would lean towards dismissal of the notion of monolithic humanity in Marvel Comics, but it's not really an apt analogy unless Drizzt has been analyzed to be fundamentally different from other drow biologically, and that biological difference is what led to his different worldview. Which I find unlikely since Drizzt is far from the only good drow.

If we accept that a fantasy world has a body which contains hardware that constrains function of a creature and also a soul or spirit which also contains hardware which constrains function of a creature, then you're not looking at the whole picture.

Driz'zt is a mutant. His spirit is different from that of his peers. That's an explicit point. Rather than him being "just a mutant", he's one of the first few to not have an atrophied... Whatever the soul component is for his difference. He's not a genetic mutant, but he's still an outlier who contrasts by his existence rather than diluting.



I do volunteer. I can't spend all my time volunteering: I need to eat, sleep, unwind. Games are how I unwind, relax, and enjoy myself as well as put some of the things I deal with in an emotional context that's easier to deal with.

If you don't care for the discussion? That's fine, but attacking us for doing so when we could be volunteering is pretty facile. Why just think, in the time you wasted composing this post criticizing us for not volunteering 100% of our waking hours you could have been working yourself to death fixing the world!


Indeed. As the saying goes, you affix your oxygen mask first and then affix your child's. Constant volunteering does far, far less than keeping yourself in good health and putting in optimal volunteer time.

Anything past that does not create in me an obligation.



No, Fantasy is not about inconsistency. Quite the opposite, all storytelling is about consistency.

Mm. I don't know, this goes back and forth. Often, consistency of a story is a trick to establish that something different is interesting. The fun parts, the interesting and plot relevant is always an inconsistency.

That's stylistic and based on perception. I don't want to argue with you about your main point, I just think it's an interesting and relevant tangent that a lot of how this stuff comes together is by perception and to taste. You're right that consistency is part of good writing, but I wouldn't say it's a part of good storytelling. It well, I'm not qualified to say, I suppose. Hmm.



Well, it seems hardly avoidable, since a P-zombie is a human lacking one of the definitive features of a human being, and we're talking about a non-humane humanoid race.

For argument's sake, though, is there anything wrong with P-zombies anyway?

Yes, or no, depending. Here;


A p-zombie is short for philosophical zombie. It's an object indistinguishable from a human being, with all the appropriate responses to external stimuli, but no internal consciousness.


They didn't. That's the point. If something has neither soul or mind, or any other way you want to phrase it, but acts exactly like it does, how is it ever going to be possible to tell and what are the ethical implications of such a being? That's the central question of a philosophical zombie. Also the question is raised: how do you know the people around you are people? How do you know you're a person rather than just repeating "I think therefore I am?" What is the nature of thought?


Nah, it's just another word for person. If you want to treat p-zombies as different from people, they've conned you. The point is, you can't tell unless you can see the soul. Which is to say, unless you are Ghod, or have his blessing.


It's not that p zombies are people too, it's that people are all p zombies and there is no relevant distinction. It's basically " so what if solipsism was valid sorta?"

P-zombies are an interesting tangent but not one I give much credence. I'm too old to consider every possible philosophical musing to be of equal weight. The question of what if someone wasn't a person but you didn't know? Isn't that interesting a question on it's face, it's about the metafaculties involved. Beyond examining your own preconceptions, it's not that interesting.

No one here has really engaged in 'orcs are pure evil!' Without examining those preconceptions. The question is about whether they want to share and examine their processes to get to that point.

hamishspence
2015-01-14, 04:56 PM
Driz'zt is a mutant. His spirit is different from that of his peers. That's an explicit point. Rather than him being "just a mutant", he's one of the first few to not have an atrophied... Whatever the soul component is for his difference. He's not a genetic mutant, but he's still an outlier who contrasts by his existence rather than diluting.


His father Zaknafein was similar, and his sister (the only other child Zak fathered by Malice) while succumbing to the pressure of her peers, is implied to have been a lot nicer than Drizzt's half-sisters (fathered by people other than Zak.

Lolth's daughter Eilistraee, however, has been involved in fostering nonevilness in other drow, chronologically long before Drizzt arrives on the scene.

SiuiS
2015-01-14, 05:14 PM
Ellistrae is interesting. The entire history of the drow before the weird arrival of other gods is, though that's a whole different thread. Ellistrae is from pre-fall of the drow, in one timeline, but not sure where she comes from in the demon spider timeline.

I presume you want to point out that there is a generic component? But then, people distant enough from genesis still bear demonic taint long after there's no possible chance of demonic genetics being present, so we know spiritual taint continues despite genetics, not as part of it. Hell, look at elves! It's possible to taint a human line enough that elven blood will spring up virtually forever.

Segev
2015-01-14, 06:15 PM
Lolth's daughter Eilistraee, however, has been involved in fostering nonevilness in other drow, chronologically long before Drizzt arrives on the scene.

So... Lolth has a rebellious teenaged daughter who drives her mother to distraction wither her ne'er-do-bad ways?

hamishspence
2015-01-14, 06:21 PM
Most of the backstory is in the Evermeet novel.

Lolth rebels against Corellon - Lolth frames Eilistraee as Corellon's would-be assassin (enchanting one of Eilistraee's arrows in the middle of the battle so it hits him)- while Corellon knows Eilistraee isn't guilty - she talks him into exiling her anyway - so that she can be in a position to be a "beacon of good within reach" for those few drow that try to redeem themselves:

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Eilistraee

Rogue Shadows
2015-01-14, 11:15 PM
Of course, she's dead now, so...

Svata
2015-01-15, 01:16 AM
Nope. Never happened.

Envyus
2015-01-15, 03:40 AM
Actually according to 5e she is back now though nothing has been done with her.


Anyway my view

Orc due to Gruumsh's influence are more chaotic and aggressive then the base making them lean that way a bit. The part that makes lots of them evil is their culture which is barbaric, savage and celebrates war and bloodshed. Orcs that don't grow up in their culture it depends on how they were raised but are more likely to be aggressive and or chaotic then a normal human raised in that same situation.

Take 3.5 for example is how I see the Orcs as whole alignment wise. According the how alignment numbers were described this is how it works.

Always X Alignment: At least 99% of this species is that alignment and they start that way from birth. In some cases their alignment could change but it's feels against their nature. As a result few or none of this species don't have this alignment.

Usually X Alignment: At least 50% of this species is that Alignmet, aka the majority and those that do stray from this alignment are generally close to it. For example Drow are Usually Neutral Evil, the 2nd most common Alignment among them is Chaotic Evil. Kobolds as another example are Usually Lawful Evil but it points out they tend more towards Lawful then Evil and Lawful neutral is the 2nd most common alignment.) Pretty much most of this species is this alignment but their are a number of exceptions.

Often X Alignment: 49% or Below Enough that they don't have a majority, but is still the highest chosen one.

Orcs are Often Chaotic Evil. Leaning towards chaos with Chaotic Neutral being the 2nd most common alignment. Aka less then 50% of Orcs are Chaotic Evil according to D&D 3rd edition.

Rogue Shadows
2015-01-15, 08:29 AM
Actually according to 5e she is back now though nothing has been done with her.

Source? I know that Ascendancy of the Last left ample room for her to come back if need be, but I wasn't aware that her actually being alive has been confirmed...and frankly, I'd rather she stay dead. However lackluster the trilogy that killed her off was, for death to have any meaning it sometimes has to be permanent. Bhaal's back, but the method by which he came back was first laid down in 1997, and it's taken seventeen years real-time for his plan to return to come to fruition, and the way it's come to fruition makes perfect sense given the larger lore surrounding the dead god.

Eilistraee coming back would be...I'm trying to think of a better word than contrived, but...