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Donnadogsoth
2015-01-27, 09:54 PM
I read with a little irritation the recent thread about the trend toward humanising orcs in TRPGs, by a refusal to accept orcs as naturally or irredeemably evil. Instead, according to this trendy view, they must be human in monster drag with comprehensible human motivations, with perhaps some psychological window dressing. I wonder at this trend. Enlighten me: is it part of a general trend in fantasy games to humanise all monsters, so that no monster can simply be evil, but must essentially be a human and find its evilness in terms of its humanity? Is this a robust trend or a probably short-lived one? How much of this trend existed in original/old school TRPG participants and was perhaps overlooked?

Milo v3
2015-01-27, 10:07 PM
It's not about all monsters being human. It's about creatures that are portrayed as sentient, should probably act sentient, maybe not portrayed as human, but sentient beings rather than "I'm evil 'cause LOL". Some creatures are still monsters, like Demons and Undead, but it should make sense for them to be monsters.

A Tad Insane
2015-01-27, 10:10 PM
Depends on how you look at it. There will always be pure evil goblins and orcs for cannon fodder and experience, but the moment you try to do something with them other than kill them, they become so boring that someone will humanize them.

Bob of Mage
2015-01-27, 10:14 PM
First using "men" and not human, leads one to think you are talking about sexism and not racism. Now on to the topic.

I think it would be a reaction to real life views on things like racism and sexism. Back in the day races of humans would get more of a treatment like races in a D&D game. You know how people from Asia have bad eyesight and are good at math. Now as time marchs on the idea that "races" of humans has become outdated (you know things like any two people from any where having 99+% the same DNA). Now it seems these same ideas have entered other areas.

Another change might be the lack of a general villain in real life. In the past many people would have been on one side of the Cold War looking across at someone who was out to get them. For those in the West the Orcs would have been like the USSR, some form of enemy that was out to get them, and their way of life. Now that it appears that peace can be made with anyone, the idea has entered fiction. It might not have been intend by it's my opinion that it might have had an effect. It sure effected Star Trek with the long time villains working with the good guys.

Also can you blame it if you give people an option to play as orcs, and suddenly they become more human like? I mean they are more or less human in green-face.

Red Fel
2015-01-27, 11:02 PM
My view is similar to Milo's.

I'm not opposed to Orcs being Evil. Or any monster being Evil, for that matter. I'm opposed to the idea that a living, intelligent creature, capable of self-determination and agency, is somehow incapable of being anything other than Evil. It's counterintuitive for me.

Yes, some cultures have tendencies towards Evil. Drow are a perfect example. It's hard to imagine someone growing up amongst Drow who wouldn't end up quite Evil, or at least pretty crazy. But as long as a creature has an independent mind and will, it should be able to choose.

Now, some creatures do choose Evil. That's practically a truism. They choose it and they enjoy it. But it's a choice. It's a conscious choice made by a conscious, intelligent mind, capable of making such choices. Evil Orcs, then, would be Orcs who have chosen to revel in their Evil. And that's fine.

What's not fine, from my perspective, is the idea that Orcs can't choose. That they are fundamentally, automatically Evil. Look, creatures like Demons and Devils and other Evil Outsiders are made of Evil, I get that part. But things like Orcs, or Goblins, or similar, are made out of meat. Not out of cosmic Evil, just meat, like Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and possibly Kender. Meat is neither Good nor Evil; it's just meat. And if that meat is capable of thinking, and choosing, then it's not automatically anything. Not Good, not Evil, not Lawful or Chaotic. It just is, until it chooses. And if a creature is capable of choosing Evil, it's capable of choosing Good.

Unless it's Kender.

In short, I don't think it's a "trend," although I note that Tolkien-inspired Orcs were basically fundamentally Evil creatures. But again, Tolkien Orcs weren't normal creatures of the world; they were the result of unnatural perversion created by Morgoth. They were born and bred to be intrinsically Evil. D&D Orcs, despite carrying the name and image, don't carry the origin. Rather, I think it's a result of players and DMs looking at the game, and saying, "Wait, how come some creatures can choose, and some can't? That's messed up."

It's also likely a result of people wanting to play Orcs. Because, duh, Orc.

gom jabbarwocky
2015-01-27, 11:34 PM
It's a free will thing. If a thing is conscious like a human and thus has free will, it has agency to choose to be evil or not. If orcs and goblins and kobolds (oh my!) are supposed to be sentient, then they, just like humans, elves, dwarves, klingons, and whatever else, should be able to choose to be evil or not. Saying they are automatically evil without giving them a compelling and sensible reason for why stresses the suspension of disbelief. Well, it stresses out my suspension of disbelief, but unless your players are a bunch of overeducated liberal arts enthusiasts like yours truly, it's probably not going to bother anyone too much.

I mean, if your monsters are merely dumb animals with limited agency, then if you say they're evil that's fine. No one is out to humanize a tarrasque (that I know of. And if you did, why would you bother?) But if there's a pack of Generic Mooks™ running around pillaging and raising cain, they're not just doing it because they have no choice not to do so. Even kobolds are at least smart enough to syllogize, so what's their reasoning, what's their motivation? It could be something as simple as their society, however it functions, is completely pants-on-head koo-koo for coco puffs (like the Drow). But saying they are just evil " 'cause" is arbitrary and not very creative.

By that same token, if I'm playing D&D and I'm on a dungeon dive, I don't expect the DM to give a compelling and dramatic backstory for every goblin, beholder, and gelatinous cube I come across. In this scenario, it's just baggage and I can reasonably assume that these goblins want to kill me because I'm invading their home and you'd be an ornery little bastard too if you had to live in what amounted to a sewer for your whole life.

jedipotter
2015-01-27, 11:36 PM
is it part of a general trend in fantasy games to humanise all monsters, so that no monster can simply be evil, but must essentially be a human and find its evilness in terms of its humanity? Is this a robust trend or a probably short-lived one? How much of this trend existed in original/old school TRPG participants and was perhaps overlooked?

Some will always want to humanize everything. That is just how some people are. It's not a trend, but there are more of them here on the boards then the people that think otherwise, because reasons.

Old School players are of a different mindset. There is no middle ground between the two.


It's not about all monsters being human. It's about creatures that are portrayed as sentient, should probably act sentient, maybe not portrayed as human, but sentient beings rather than "I'm evil 'cause LOL"..

But everyone mixes ''sentient'' with ''human''.




What's not fine, from my perspective, is the idea that Orcs can't choose. .

What if they do ''choose'', but always ''choose'' evil? So they have all the beautifully choices in the whole wide world...and always choose evil. So you can sit back and say ''well, theoretically'' they had a choice.

Like feed your dog: a 20 oz prime cut steak or a salad. And watch your dog choose steak every time....

Erik Vale
2015-01-27, 11:44 PM
Not all creatures are being humanized, but creatures that are supposed to be sentient are supposed to have some sort of rational. This may or may not be human like.


For example, orcs are supposed to be sentient and have a level of civilization [a low level, but still a level], and beyond that are human playable. While they won't act human, they've got to at this point be comprehendable.
It also helps that before this, they were normally just people with funny hats if you could communicate with them.

However, other creatures don't get it. These creatures however aren't in the humanoid/monstrous humanoid catagory [I.e. Mindflayers, Devils, Seelie.], and are generally less played.

Milo v3
2015-01-27, 11:45 PM
But everyone mixes ''sentient'' with ''human''.
Not everyone, just maybe 90% lot of cases because its ridiculously easier than the alternative.


What if they do ''choose'', but always ''choose'' evil? So they have all the beautifully choices in the whole wide world...and always choose evil. So you can sit back and say ''well, theoretically'' they had a choice.

Like feed your dog: a 20 oz prime cut steak or a salad. And watch your dog choose steak every time....
As long as that choice makes sense from their perspective, then, yeah that's perfectly fine. Like Red Fel said, living in a society like that of the Drow would make you evil, because being good would get you killed within the hour, so who in their right mind would choose to be good.

goto124
2015-01-27, 11:50 PM
*attempts to derail thread into sexism*

SethoMarkus
2015-01-28, 12:05 AM
Like feed your dog: a 20 oz prime cut steak or a salad. And watch your dog choose steak every time....

That's kind of the point, actually. The dog most likely will choose steak every time, but there IS a possibility that it will choose salad. Improbable and unlikely, but possible.

Orc genetics and culture may make it unlikely for them to choose good; they may be psychologically wired to gain pleasure from harming others and engaging in other "evil" acts. They may have a predisposition, a very strong predisposition, towards Evil. However, it is still within the realm of possibility to choose Good.

At least, that is the reasoning that I follow behind all this. Remove an Orc from her culture at a young age, teach her something more than savagery, and you start to have a better chance at raising a Good aligned Orc. It is a difficult choice, yes, but it is not impossible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-onljp50q0).



Back to the OP, I think that a lot of it has been covered. Between changes in our real-world situation, and a couple generations of arbitrary decisions as to which races apparently have free will or not, more gamers are anthropomorphizing the races to make them both more relateable and more realistic (within our sense of the world). Whether or not it is a good thing that Orcs have generally become angry human barbarians in green-face is a whole other question, although I think that it is an improvement to make the fantasy races a bit more sentient.

There was another thread a while back discussing creating truly alien thought processes and psychologies for fantasy races, and the difficulties there-in since we can only process information from a Human perspective. In a way, we can only make humans wearing green-face, or beard-face, or what-not, because that is all we can envision. I beg to differ, though, but concede that it is very, very difficult to maintain that illusion of being alien.

awa
2015-01-28, 12:13 AM
something people sometimes forget is you can be evil without being a straw man. That an evil race is always evil all the time but all you need to do is shove one little old lady in front of a buss to wipe away all the good you did helping other little old laddies across the street previously. Choosing not to do evil only makes you non evil if it represents the vast majority of your choices.

Take a hypothetical species that is kind, caring and loyal with their own people but have an intense competitive drive and innate desire to remove the competition ideally by killing those least able to fight back say woman and children. Now they are intelligent being capable of making choices so he waits till the cost of such an action is sufficiently low. If he is in a position of weakness maybe that means he never kills any one but that still means hes evil becuase he wants to.

You could try raising him among humans but at best you aren't teaching him to be good but to avoid breaking laws for fear of punishment.

Personally for one of mind games that would be a pretty extreme case i do like to make my non humans alien, but that usually means different not evil.

SethoMarkus
2015-01-28, 12:34 AM
Take a hypothetical species that is kind, caring and loyal with their own people but have an intense competitive drive and innate desire to remove the competition ideally by killing those least able to fight back say woman and children. Now they are intelligent being capable of making choices so he waits till the cost of such an action is sufficiently low. If he is in a position of weakness maybe that means he never kills any one but that still means hes evil becuase he wants to.

You could try raising him among humans but at best you aren't teaching him to be good but to avoid breaking laws for fear of punishment.

Definitely a good point, but I was pretty sure that alignment in D&D was based on actions and behavior, not motivation and intention? Feeding a starving man peanuts is still an evil action if he dies from his peanut allergy that you didn't know about.

Feddlefew
2015-01-28, 12:44 AM
D&D Orcs are 1) humanoids that can interbreed with humans and create fertile offspring, and 2) have a culture and similar psychologies to the classic villainous barbarian stereotype according to fluff, so they're close enough to humans that I wouldn't use the word "Humanized" when referring to them.

I like to use Kobolds as my low-level monsters and enemies to avoid the humanizing problem. They're essentially small, flightless bipedal dragoniods, and I make them behave more like dragons than humans. They hoard compulsively*, both on an individual and communal level, and they don't view non-dragoniods as people, which brings them into conflict with nearby humans without them necessarily being evil.


*Not like kleptomania, but like someone obsessively curating a large collection of objects.

Nabirius
2015-01-28, 01:01 AM
I always had a problem with the idea that somehow a sentient free-thinking race is somehow always evil it smacks of genetic predetermination and other unfortunate by-products of latent racism. I understand with demons and devils, they are almost literally made of evil, its not just their attitudes and culture, its what they are. But with a thinking group there will always be dissidents to whatever the dominant culture is (assuming no brainwashing occurs), for better or worse. I think it would be fair to say that orcs perhaps have a hyper-militaristic culture, and see violence as an acceptable or even laudable solution to most problems. Or maybe Hobgoblins have a strict Social Darwinistic philosophy, or whatever. The issue is less that orcs are the villains, but more that orcs can't be anything else. Correct me if I'm wrong but the monster manual says orc are 'almost always evil' not always evil.

I think an interesting counterpoint is Beholders though. Compared to orcs very few people talk about whether or not all beholders are truly evil, even though they are also intelligent. I would again say no, its possible, albeit unlikely for their to be a neutral or even good beholder. I think part of the reason, is that orcs are already human enough to draw parallels, and they form societies, meaning players are sometime instructed to wipe out an orc settlement, which can make people uncomfortable. Whereas Beholder are monstrous solo enemies .

YossarianLives
2015-01-28, 01:06 AM
That's kind of the point, actually. The dog most likely will choose steak every time, but there IS a possibility that it will choose salad. Improbable and unlikely, but possible.
Or the dog eats both and goes for chaotic neutral

Feddlefew
2015-01-28, 01:20 AM
Or the dog eats both and goes for chaotic neutral

The dog will eat the newest thing first, be it steak, salad, shoe or ****. Dogs are more red oval, as apposed to the typical cat's blue triangle.

Arbane
2015-01-28, 05:54 AM
In short, I don't think it's a "trend," although I note that Tolkien-inspired Orcs were basically fundamentally Evil creatures. But again, Tolkien Orcs weren't normal creatures of the world; they were the result of unnatural perversion created by Morgoth. They were born and bred to be intrinsically Evil. D&D Orcs, despite carrying the name and image, don't carry the origin. Rather, I think it's a result of players and DMs looking at the game, and saying, "Wait, how come some creatures can choose, and some can't? That's messed up."

I don't have a PhD in Middle-Earth Studies like some people on the internet, but ISTR that Tolkien himself went back and forth on how much self-determination orcs had.

hamishspence
2015-01-28, 07:26 AM
Definitely a good point, but I was pretty sure that alignment in D&D was based on actions and behavior, not motivation and intention? Feeding a starving man peanuts is still an evil action if he dies from his peanut allergy that you didn't know about.

Nope - BoVD specifically states that actions that "accidentally kill someone" aren't evil unless there is clear negligence involved.

SpectralDerp
2015-01-28, 08:25 AM
I don't get why people want non-evil orcs. To me, orcs are monsters and monsters are evil, the end.

Milo v3
2015-01-28, 08:49 AM
I don't get why people want non-evil orcs. To me, orcs are monsters and monsters are evil, the end.

How are they monsters? They are sentient, sapient, humanoid, and have free-will.

goto124
2015-01-28, 08:53 AM
Nope - BoVD specifically states that actions that "accidentally kill someone" aren't evil unless there is clear negligence involved.

And how many DMs will rule accidental killing as being able to shift someone's alignment towards Evil anyway? Especially with the peanut butter example given.

Tragak
2015-01-28, 09:00 AM
Are Humans a fundamentally "Good" race?

I do love the idea that non-humans can have fundamentally inhuman motivations, in fact I spend a great deal of time writing such motivations for different species (as much for my sci-fi stories as for my RPG campaigns). However, rather than staring with the assumption "Humans are Good, other races are Evil" and then asking "what are the differences in their motivations?" I start instead from the assumption that "humanity's motivation is X, this other species' motivation is Y" and then I ask "which is more evil?"

Oddly enough, I normally end up with a species that's less Evil than humanity. If there are Good people in the Human race, there are even more Good people in almost any other race.

Maslow's Hierarchy is an obsolete psychological model of what motivations humans supposedly care about the most. If somebody's most basic needs aren't being met, then behaviors corresponding to higher needs will be merely means to achieving the baser ends. It's only when we are satisfied in our baser needs that we can afford to pursue higher needs for their own sake.

Physiological needs come first (food, water, oxygen, reproduction), followed by Security (shelter, economy, law enforcement, knowing what to expect from day to day and year to year), Relationships (friends, family, romance), Esteem (feeling that your contributions to the world make you valuable as a person), and the Self-Actualization needs that Maslow placed on top tend to focus on Specialness (art, philosophy, creativity, individuation).

In the real world, psychologists don't consider the Hierarchy to be as useful as they used to, but I've still had fantastic experiences using it for fiction. A lot of sci-fi/fantasy world-building sources recommend thinking about sentient species in terms of "how would this species meet their Maslow's hierarchy differently from how humans do it," but one TV Tropes article I found recommended rearranging the Hierarchy itself, and that's where I've had the most luck.

If we assume that some species' Hierarchy is different than ours, then Food/Water/Reproduction might not be at the bottom, which would mean that "living" is not important to them. This sounds absurd, nonsensical, counter-intuitive, and most importantly: alien and inhuman :smallamused:

Let's say that we have a species that starts with Contribution, then Relationships, Food, Specialness, and Self-Actualization is based on Security, and let's compare that to humanity.

Humans fear Death above all else (Food comes first), stay alive by gathering for strength in numbers (Security/Relationships come next), help others primarily for the sake of getting help in return ("contributing" for the sake of Food/Security instead of for the sake of Contribution), and sacrifice their personal identities for the same of staying in the group's good graces (Specialness comes last) because group loyalty is seen as a matter of life versus death.

Most people work for the sake of giving their families a paycheck instead of for the sake of working, and most self-proclaimed "non-comformists" are merely trading one group for another and then conforming to this new group.

"What about people who give their lives for the sake of others?"

Nathan Hale didn't say "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country" because he loved other people so much that he didn't fear death, he loved other people so much that he feared their deaths more than he feared his own. The fear of death is still the driving force behind even the most selfless human actions.

It sounds like a species could not survive if it didn't try to avoid death, but humans fear death and we kill other groups "just in case" the other group tries to kill us first. We think about groups (Security/Relationships) more than we think about individuals (Specialness), so when we find a group that's not "our" group, we don't take the risk that they want to kill us. The vast majority of human cruelty over the millennia can be summed up as "one group feared death at the hands of another group and killed the others first."

Now let's look at the alien/monster I came up with. These people fear Worthlessness above all else (Contribution comes first), they contribute to the people around them by sharing novel experiences (Food/Relationships), only explore new ideas that lead to something tangible ("creativity" for the sake of Contribution/Relationships instead of for the sake of Specialness), and sacrifice the idea of official institution for the sake of maintaining novelty (Security comes last) as novelty is seen as a matter of worth versus worthlessness.

Most of these people come up with new abstract ideas for the sake of sharing new experiences instead of abstracting for it's own sake, and most self-proclaimed "organizers" are just gathering people who want to do try the same new thing but who won't truly commit.

Humans primarily work for the sake of living, only working for the sake of working when we know our families are not going to die. These people live primarily for the sake of working, only living for the sake of living when they know that their lives matter.

Our theme songs would be "Savages" and "Run This Town", their theme songs would be "Just Dance" and "People Like Us."

Humans wouldn't understand how this species can survive when these people work themselves to death, and these people wouldn't understand how humanity can survive when humans organize to kill each other.

Our primary afterlife would be Acheron, and theirs would be the Beastlands.

Milo v3
2015-01-28, 09:04 AM
Are Humans a fundamentally "Good" race?

This reminds me of a semi-important note, in 3.5e (no idea on other RPG's) humans are specifically not a good race with equal number of evil individuals as they have good individuals.

Bulldog Psion
2015-01-28, 09:25 AM
Or the dog eats both and goes for chaotic neutral

My mom's French bulldog Primrose used to love apples. Especially ones freshly fallen off the trees up in the old orchard behind the house. She loved chasing them, chewing on them, and biting through the skin and then licking the juice that trickled out. If she saw an apple in your hand, she'd start surging back and forth eagerly in anticipation like a miniature basketball player, waiting for you to throw it for her to chase. (Still miss that wrinkly rugrat. A lot.)

Anyway, on the main topic:

With modern understanding of psychology and cognition, it's hard to swallow an entire species of sapients with no variation or choices in their behavior. Especially when we understand now that a lot of "evil" actions come from childhood abuse/brainwashing, etc.

With that said, it's a lot easier to make another species human-like than create a separate psychology for them. I think it's possible to do the latter, but it's a lot of work, and a lot more work than most creators of said species are willing to invest in them.

So we've gone from "cardboard cutouts of villainy and horror" to "reskinned humans." That's an improvement, IMO, but it would be even better if some people went the extra mile and actually gave other species distinctive psychological traits that weren't "good" or "evil" -- just different, and capable of being directed in ways fair, foul, or neutral.

Frozen_Feet
2015-01-28, 09:30 AM
Free will is the ability to choose between two or more options.

Absolutely nothing dictates one of those choices has to be, or even could be, good. Freedom is a spectrum, and it does not contain all the same choices for everyone. You could quite easily have a human with such strong sadistic tendencies that they would always choose to harm another if at all possible, yet be capable of varied self-expression and complex thinking. No existing creature is so absolutely free as the proponents of free will imply, so why should fantastic creatures be?

Mystral
2015-01-28, 10:09 AM
I read with a little irritation the recent thread about the trend toward humanising orcs in TRPGs, by a refusal to accept orcs as naturally or irredeemably evil. Instead, according to this trendy view, they must be human in monster drag with comprehensible human motivations, with perhaps some psychological window dressing. I wonder at this trend. Enlighten me: is it part of a general trend in fantasy games to humanise all monsters, so that no monster can simply be evil, but must essentially be a human and find its evilness in terms of its humanity? Is this a robust trend or a probably short-lived one? How much of this trend existed in original/old school TRPG participants and was perhaps overlooked?

This is what happens when the people who enjoyed killing orks and grabbing their gold grow up.

Either that or they abandon the game alltogether.

JusticeZero
2015-01-28, 10:17 AM
I don't get why people want non-evil orcs. To me, orcs are monsters and monsters are evil, the end.
Look at the old Westerns on TV and movies. "I don't get why people want non-evil r*skins. To me, injuns are monsters and monsters are evil, the end." Then you look across the gaming table and one of your players just came back from potlatching with their family and visiting relatives on the rez. The attitude is going to plow into the ground face first. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people in the gaming community today who ARE the 'orcs' and 'goblins' of our world, and they know it. The monster rhetoric gets really tiresome when you're the monster. We come to a gaming table and we want to get away from being one of the villains, and a lot of our other friends agree with us.
It's a similar argument toward gender equality in games. "I spend all day being stared at, talked down to, and treated as a lesser person because of what's between my legs, and now you want me to come here and play someone being treated the way I can't stand being treated FOR FUN? Seriously?"

gom jabbarwocky
2015-01-28, 10:22 AM
But everyone mixes ''sentient'' with ''human''.

Actually, the proper term would be "sapient", which refers to the ability of a creature to reason or possess wisdom. "Sentience" is just the ability of a creature to possess qualia, which even animals with no self-awareness can do. And, to be fair, as a species we don't really have any other benchmark for sapience than humans (hence the same homo sapiens), so anything sapient is probably going to resemble a human mentally.


Like feed your dog: a 20 oz prime cut steak or a salad. And watch your dog choose steak every time....

Irrelevant. Dogs cannot syllogize and are not sapient. In this case, I can't make an ethical value judgement on the dog for not choosing the vegetarian option any more than I can morally condemn the germs that make me sick. That's just what they do.

Segev
2015-01-28, 10:28 AM
The thing is, in order to have intelligent/sapeint/sentient monsters which do not have human-like motivations, you have to introduce some truly alien aspect to them. A drive, a need, a hunger, a lack of such which humans have, or even a different physical or mental quality that still leaves them...recognizably free-willed and able to be reasoned with at least on a surface level.

This is not easy.

Tragak
2015-01-28, 10:29 AM
Look at the old Westerns on TV and movies. "I don't get why people want non-evil r*skins. To me, injuns are monsters and monsters are evil, the end." Then you look across the gaming table and one of your players just came back from potlatching with their family and visiting relatives on the rez. The attitude is going to plow into the ground face first. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people in the gaming community today who ARE the 'orcs' and 'goblins' of our world, and they know it. The monster rhetoric gets really tiresome when you're the monster. We come to a gaming table and we want to get away from being one of the villains, and a lot of our other friends agree with us.

It's a similar argument toward gender equality in games. "I spend all day being stared at, talked down to, and treated as a lesser person because of what's between my legs, and now you want me to come here and play someone being treated the way I can't stand being treated FOR FUN? Seriously?" This. So much this.


The thing is, in order to have intelligent/sapeint/sentient monsters which do not have human-like motivations, you have to introduce some truly alien aspect to them. A drive, a need, a hunger, a lack of such which humans have, or even a different physical or mental quality that still leaves them...recognizably free-willed and able to be reasoned with at least on a surface level.

This is not easy. No, it's not. But it's always worth it :smallsmile: Would you like to try the exercise I found (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?395255-Must-all-monsters-be-men-now&p=18727072&viewfull=1#post18727072) and see what you can come up with?

Spiryt
2015-01-28, 10:42 AM
At the end of the day there's no reason for Orc/Goblins/Whatever to represent something like, say Tatars from the settled people point of view - brutal, enslaving plague we have to defend against.

Making it 'inhumane' just kinda doesn't work though - the way D&D is written, they can think, talk, have culture etc. so they have to be 'people'.

Even if alien to whoever Players are.

Segev
2015-01-28, 10:46 AM
No, it's not. But it's always worth it :smallsmile: Would you like to try the exercise I found (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?395255-Must-all-monsters-be-men-now&p=18727072&viewfull=1#post18727072) and see what you can come up with?

OH, it's fun, don't get me wrong. I was explaining why the tendency is just to humanize them.

I have a document (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Invq5e0PP9jvzE7syhdpRYFgrS_1siwJdfzZnAoJWrA/edit?usp=sharing) I was working on a week or so ago that attempted this with a few of the PHB-ish races.

It was also based on the Hierarchy of Needs...roughly. So it should be of interest to you.

edit: The link should work now.

mikeejimbo
2015-01-28, 10:49 AM
The most dangerous monsters we have in real life are human, so it makes a good reflection of life. Life is grey.

Tragak
2015-01-28, 10:50 AM
Let me know if it doesn't work, please. I'm definitely interested, but the link didn't work.

Segev
2015-01-28, 10:59 AM
I'm definitely interested, but the link didn't work.

Alright. I opened it on the same computer, and copy/pasted. It worked for me on that one. Thanks for letting me know.

Reverent-One
2015-01-28, 11:04 AM
The most dangerous monsters we have in real life are human, so it makes a good reflection of life. Life is grey.

On the other hand, the game doesn't neccessarily have to reflect life to that extent. If someone prefers a more black-and-white world to set the game in, there's nothing wrong with that. It simply might not be a game you're interested in participating in.

oxybe
2015-01-28, 11:26 AM
I just find it boring when a supposedly intelligent monster is evil just "because". That there is no reasoning behind it, no second thought, it just does "evil" things because... "it's evil".

Even with demons and devils, you can see a line of thought behind their actions if they're ever laid bare: They're vile and repulsive to be sure, but there is a reason they're doing evil instead of good, even if they had the option to do so, if only because they live in a society that it's to your benefit to be an opportunistic monster that rules with power and fear and corrupts others to raise it's standing among it's peers.

But an orc that pushes a mother down and eats a baby in broad daylight, even though it's not hungry and gains no benefit from eating the child other then "it's an evil act" isn't interesting in an encounter. It's a thing that's simply there to do evil and get sworded, with no chance of any deeper interaction.

With the demon above? It has motivation and reason to do it's deeds and you can possibly get it to change it's focus or dissuade it of it's actions because it has motivations and reasons behind those acts. The baby-eating orc doesn't have any motivation other then "doing evil just because" has little room for a PC to intervene, unless that room is the space between it's ribs and the intervention a spear.

I'm not saying every NPC needs to have a backstory 7 pages long, but I would like some motivation behind their actions.

If the group has a certain predilection towards certain acts, like if orcs are more prone to killing because they have alpha-predator like nature and their society views all other forms of life as potential food, due to them having lived in harsh areas where wild game is scarce, so halflings and elves traveling their land became a secondary source of meat, I can see those orcs being evil, but evil with motivation for their acts. If you encounter them, you have some ground to discuss with these guys to get them to not necessarily change their ways overnight, but reach some sort of understanding. It might come to blows if not handled right, but it gives the "evil" race far more depth and makes them more interesting.

"Why did you kill that baby?"
"Because evil."

123456789blaaa
2015-01-28, 11:33 AM
It's not about all monsters being human. It's about creatures that are portrayed as sentient, should probably act sentient, maybe not portrayed as human, but sentient beings rather than "I'm evil 'cause LOL". Some creatures are still monsters, like Demons and Undead, but it should make sense for them to be monsters.

This just seems like a complete red herring. I have never ever seen "evil because LOL" except in the most comedic of games or fiction. Even the stereotypical orcs in DnD usually have the motivation of wanting goodies from the Good races.


How are they monsters? They are sentient, sapient, humanoid, and have free-will.

There are plenty of people who believe that free will is an illusion in real life. It is a major philosophical problem you know? Not automatically true.

Also, what does being humanoid have to do with anything? :smallconfused:. I'm assuming you mean "monster" in the moral sense.


Free will is the ability to choose between two or more options.

Absolutely nothing dictates one of those choices has to be, or even could be, good. Freedom is a spectrum, and it does not contain all the same choices for everyone. You could quite easily have a human with such strong sadistic tendencies that they would always choose to harm another if at all possible, yet be capable of varied self-expression and complex thinking. No existing creature is so absolutely free as the proponents of free will imply, so why should fantastic creatures be?

Yep.

And for those saying that this hypotheical human could theoretically choose to be "good"...yes? I mean, he could also theoretically choose to move entirely by rolling around for the rest of his life. It's at that level of implausibility. I just don't see the relevance. Most of the time, when people say that something cannot choose to be good, they don't mean that it's literally impossible for them to do any action that we would consider "good".


On the other hand, the game doesn't neccessarily have to reflect life to that extent. If someone prefers a more black-and-white world to set the game in, there's nothing wrong with that. It simply might not be a game you're interested in participating in.

Apparently it means you just haven't grown up yet:


This is what happens when the people who enjoyed killing orks and grabbing their gold grow up.

Either that or they abandon the game alltogether.



I just find it boring when a supposedly intelligent monster is evil just "because". That there is no reasoning behind it, no second thought, it just does "evil" things because... "it's evil".
<snip>

I feel like no one is arguing against this and that you may be misinterpreting the OP.

Squark
2015-01-28, 11:34 AM
For that matter, well, Orcs are a particularly bad example compared to, say, goblins, even though they're the iconic example. With goblins or Kobolds, the "not human" argument holds a semblance of weight. But Orcs are human. They can produce viable offspring with "normal" humans, which by definition makes them human- Granted, Human is a bit broader than we once thought it was, since we now know Neanderthals were also part of the human species*, but then, Neanderthals were a lot more "human" in behavior than we give them credit for

*Neanderthals went extinct when they and modern humans interbred to the point that we basically absorbed them into our species.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-28, 11:35 AM
That's kind of the point, actually. The dog most likely will choose steak every time, but there IS a possibility that it will choose salad. Improbable and unlikely, but possible.Not even that unlikely if the dog's master appears to be enjoying the salad more. Dogs are social animals, and look to and trust their superiors' judgment. Most dog owners' dogs will "beg" for "people food," because they see us eating and enjoying it.

123456789blaaa
2015-01-28, 11:36 AM
For that matter, well, Orcs are a particularly bad example compared to, say, goblins, even though they're the iconic example. With goblins or Kobolds, the "not human" argument holds a semblance of weight. But Orcs are human. They can produce viable offspring with "normal" humans, which by definition makes them human (I think. Need to double check with my sister why my quick searches are saying Neanderthals* are a seperate species, even though the definition of species is the largest group able to interbreed)

*Neanderthals went extinct when they began interbreeding with modern humans and they were basically absorbed into the gene pool. The average European got about 4% of their DNA from the Neanderthals.

Last I checked this wasn't the 3.5 section of the boards. Not to mention that in DnD, DRAGONS can produce offspring with humans. It's a fantasy game. RL doesn't neccecarily apply.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-28, 11:37 AM
How are they monsters? They are sentient, sapient, humanoid, and have free-will.

Why can't there be sentient, sapient, humanoid, freely-willed monsters?


I always had a problem with the idea that somehow a sentient free-thinking race is somehow always evil it smacks of genetic predetermination and other unfortunate by-products of latent racism. I understand with demons and devils, they are almost literally made of evil, its not just their attitudes and culture, its what they are. But with a thinking group there will always be dissidents to whatever the dominant culture is (assuming no brainwashing occurs), for better or worse. I think it would be fair to say that orcs perhaps have a hyper-militaristic culture, and see violence as an acceptable or even laudable solution to most problems. Or maybe Hobgoblins have a strict Social Darwinistic philosophy, or whatever. The issue is less that orcs are the villains, but more that orcs can't be anything else. Correct me if I'm wrong but the monster manual says orc are 'almost always evil' not always evil.

Not sure why genetic predetermination (do genomes exist in D&D?) is a bad thing in a fantasy game. Why couldn't there be an entire race of psychopaths? Or the cruel? Or cruel psychopathic? Psychopaths have free will and the rest, but simply genetically don't care about other people, so they rarely bother to act for the good, unless there is some ulterior motive. Why couldn't all orcs be genetic psychopaths? Why couldn't all orcs be genetically cruel? Maybe there's one mutant orc who is existential and sits staring at the pond all day, but he'd get eaten in short order. Darwin and all that.

It seems to me the difference between the orc humanisers and the orc villainisers is that the latter want to play in a game reminiscent of Grimm's Fairy Tales where monsters are wicked and cruel, and the former want to play in an essentially science fiction game revolving around an alien world that happens to look like Middle Earth but in fact is a social experiment between various "races" of what are essentially men--what would be viewed of as men for nearly all practical purposes by a body such as the Federation of Planets.

Squark
2015-01-28, 11:37 AM
Last I checked this wasn't the 3.5 section of the boards. Not to mention that in DnD, DRAGONS can produce offspring with humans. It's a fantasy game.

To my knowledge, half-orcs have been part of every edition of d&d. And Dragons are magic. Orcs are no more supernatural than humans.

Rowan Wolf
2015-01-28, 11:42 AM
My view is similar to Milo's.

I'm not opposed to Orcs being Evil. Or any monster being Evil, for that matter. I'm opposed to the idea that a living, intelligent creature, capable of self-determination and agency, is somehow incapable of being anything other than Evil. It's counterintuitive for me.

Yes, some cultures have tendencies towards Evil. Drow are a perfect example. It's hard to imagine someone growing up amongst Drow who wouldn't end up quite Evil, or at least pretty crazy. But as long as a creature has an independent mind and will, it should be able to choose.

Now, some creatures do choose Evil. That's practically a truism. They choose it and they enjoy it. But it's a choice. It's a conscious choice made by a conscious, intelligent mind, capable of making such choices. Evil Orcs, then, would be Orcs who have chosen to revel in their Evil. And that's fine.

What's not fine, from my perspective, is the idea that Orcs can't choose. That they are fundamentally, automatically Evil. Look, creatures like Demons and Devils and other Evil Outsiders are made of Evil, I get that part. But things like Orcs, or Goblins, or similar, are made out of meat. Not out of cosmic Evil, just meat, like Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and possibly Kender. Meat is neither Good nor Evil; it's just meat. And if that meat is capable of thinking, and choosing, then it's not automatically anything. Not Good, not Evil, not Lawful or Chaotic. It just is, until it chooses. And if a creature is capable of choosing Evil, it's capable of choosing Good.

Unless it's Kender.

In short, I don't think it's a "trend," although I note that Tolkien-inspired Orcs were basically fundamentally Evil creatures. But again, Tolkien Orcs weren't normal creatures of the world; they were the result of unnatural perversion created by Morgoth. They were born and bred to be intrinsically Evil. D&D Orcs, despite carrying the name and image, don't carry the origin. Rather, I think it's a result of players and DMs looking at the game, and saying, "Wait, how come some creatures can choose, and some can't? That's messed up."

It's also likely a result of people wanting to play Orcs. Because, duh, Orc.


Thanks Red now I have Orc: the other Chaotic Meat going in my head.

123456789blaaa
2015-01-28, 11:47 AM
To my knowledge, half-orcs have been part of every edition of d&d. And Dragons are magic. Orcs are no more supernatural than humans.

My point was that this isn't the section for a specific RPG game. There are RPG's in which orcs are fungus-people for cryin out loud.

I am unsure what you mean by "dragons are magic" and "orcs are no more supernatural than humans". That statement means very different things from game to game. And also may not be true at all.

My main point though, is that when taking into account the practically infinite expanses of fiction, always trying to define "human" by whether we can produce offspring with them is very silly. Why transplant something from our world into a world which may work in completely different ways?

mikeejimbo
2015-01-28, 11:59 AM
On the other hand, the game doesn't neccessarily have to reflect life to that extent. If someone prefers a more black-and-white world to set the game in, there's nothing wrong with that. It simply might not be a game you're interested in participating in.

True enough, different styles of game and all. Though some people would dismiss that as petty escapism.

Segev
2015-01-28, 12:27 PM
When discussing game setting design and races with alien, inhuman behaviors, I like to also consider mechanics. (I have not done so in the document linked earlier, save partially for elves, but I do like to do it.) By this, I mean, I like to think of ways to design the game mechanics of the race to encourage players to behave in ways that are recognizable as the stereotypes of that race.

In Exalted, the Fair Folk have long suffered from a fluff description of being ravening, soul-devouring monsters that are dangerous because they glut themselves to excess on human Virtues, due to enjoying it just that much and having need of it to survive in Creation.

Unfortunately, while mechanics existed to encourage them to sup on mortal souls, the actual capacity to store the mechanical points (called "motes" in the game) that they obtained from doing so is very small. The rate at which they burn through them is non-trivial, but still only requires a light nibble to fully recover almost as often as needed.

It made it feasible to desirable to play contrary to stereotype. To play a Fair One who nibbled but lightly and gave gifts and payment worth willingly permitting this mild inconvenience in order to have so powerful a friend, ally, and neighbor. It would sustain them well, and it would remove the need for people to HAVE the fear-based stereotype.

Supposedly, the Fair Folk still overate because "it feels good," but really, it just wouldn't be worth the trouble of having powerful beings descend upon you to kill you for being a murderous monster.

The latest rules released went a good way towards fixing this. Now, when the Fair Folk overeat, they gain massive (but temporary) benefits which are worth it to not only indulge in gaining, but to continue to feed to maintain. You can still play the temperate, good neighbor Raksha, but playing the ravenous god-monster, eater of souls, is much more tempting and rewards the behavior in ways that make it worth doing as a PC.


Similar mechanical incentives for "always evil" races to act within their particular brand of evil could be interesting. Maybe orcs really do gain strength from eating the hearts of their enemies (a +1 to a stat that the foe was particularly potent in, stacking up to +2 to any given stat and fading at a rate of 1 per day/week or something).

You can also expand this to more impressive beings. Perhaps dragons hoard treasure because they gain special powers (Xorvintaal-type abilities?) the more they own, or can gain enchantment-equivalents to their natural bodyparts akin to the value and magic in their hoard.

SpectralDerp
2015-01-28, 12:31 PM
How are they monsters? They are sentient, sapient, humanoid, and have free-will.

So are vampires.

gom jabbarwocky
2015-01-28, 01:01 PM
Look at the old Westerns on TV and movies. "I don't get why people want non-evil r*skins. To me, injuns are monsters and monsters are evil, the end." Then you look across the gaming table and one of your players just came back from potlatching with their family and visiting relatives on the rez. The attitude is going to plow into the ground face first.

You know, I didn't want to be the one to point this out but this is precisely why I'm uncomfortable with quintessentially evil intelligent races. It reminds me too much of old racist stories about the inhuman barbarians who can't be reasoned or negotiated with and are just out to get us, so we should just get them first. I think that's most of the reason for movement towards the non-evil orcs or goblins, because people feel guilty or uncomfortable.


And for those saying that this hypotheical human could theoretically choose to be "good"...yes? I mean, he could also theoretically choose to move entirely by rolling around for the rest of his life. It's at that level of implausibility. I just don't see the relevance. Most of the time, when people say that something cannot choose to be good, they don't mean that it's literally impossible for them to do any action that we would consider "good".

This is a very good point. Nevertheless, I still think that in a group of sapient beings capable of even rudimentary reason would not have out of them a certain percentage that consistently chooses good - because being good is often simply more reasonable than being evil. Granted, I'm looking at this from through an ethics lens, not an epistemological one.

JusticeZero
2015-01-28, 01:06 PM
Races can be presented in ways that make them a clear and present danger to everyone. An earlier game had an invasion of monsters. "Can we reason with them?" "They're invading because they're a hive creature that reproduces by devouring corpses from the inside out." "O-kay then, roll for initiative!"

However, orcs lost that a long time ago. The WH fungal orcs still have it, but the typical fantasy orc is just a race of "savage" people with tusks. And we've moved beyond demonizing "savages", by and large, because there are a lot of them we talk to on a daily basis. The games where the heroes are going and slaughtering orcs en masse just because they are orcs, with orcs being constructed as a civilization in the way that most fantasy does, has a problem at the modern and diverse table. They make a lot of people stop and say something like:
"Wait a minute. That orc resembles some of my grandparents, before they could afford fancy stuff.. i'm an orc! This game is about a bunch of well-equipped privileged people going into *my hometown* and slaughtering everybody in it. And i'm supposed to be rooting for the murderers?"
Then suddenly, it's all flipped around in ways that are extremely uncomfortable in ways that nobody should have to deal with.

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-28, 01:16 PM
The thing is, in order to have intelligent/sapeint/sentient monsters which do not have human-like motivations, you have to introduce some truly alien aspect to them. A drive, a need, a hunger, a lack of such which humans have, or even a different physical or mental quality that still leaves them...recognizably free-willed and able to be reasoned with at least on a surface level.

This is not easy.

And honestly, I think we need more of this, as difficult as it is.

In our haste to humanize monstrous races, they are ultimately reduced to the same problem PC races have...essentially being humans in funny hats. I understand the intention of redeeming the monstrous races to avoid some rather unpleasant implications, but we can do far better than making them behave according to the rather human good/evil divide.

Sentience and free will doesn't mean they have to operate on a human moral spectrum.

I think the problem stems from people reading a racist angle into traditional "disposable" monsters. While a justified concern, this readimg encourages us to try to fix the problem by treating them like human ethnicities rather than separate sentient species.

It kind of cuts down on the variety, so I can see the root of the frustration.

Spiryt
2015-01-28, 01:28 PM
The games where the heroes are going and slaughtering orcs en masse just because they are orcs, with orcs being constructed as a civilization in the way that most fantasy does, has a problem at the modern and diverse table. They make a lot of people stop and say something like:
"Wait a minute. That orc resembles some of my grandparents, before they could afford fancy stuff.. i'm an orc! This game is about a bunch of well-equipped privileged people going into *my hometown* and slaughtering everybody in it. And i'm supposed to be rooting for the murderers?"


Well, again, if said grandfathers were marauding, murderous lot, living mainly out of violence, then yes, it's not that bad comparison.

Don't think that many players actually perform non provoked slaughters a'la 'Start of Darkness' in their games. And most of games actually like that are usually in some morbid humor convention.

So it's not very good comparison.

ReaderAt2046
2015-01-28, 01:39 PM
A point that is often forgotten in these discussions is that it's possible, and even highly desirable, for other races to have goals and motivations that, while comprehensible by humans, are different from the way we think about things.

An extremely good example of this is the Lost Fleet series. During the course of this series, we encounter three distinct alien races, each of which has a rational, internally consistent, and above all alien way of looking at things.

The enigmas are a race which intuitively subscribes to the belief that "Knowledge is Power", and are thus obsessive about ensuring that nobody else knows anything about them, to the point of building their ships and space stations explicity so that they can be self-destructed and vaporize any evidence regarding their biology, technology, or society.

The bear-cows are a herbivorous race, who have exterminated not only all the predators on their worlds, but everything except themselves, the plants that they eat, and a few kinds of animals that they keep as pets. Upon first contact with humans they take a look at our transmission, observe from our teeth that we're carnivorous, and promptly fire nine hundred or so piloted missiles at us. In addition, whenever a bear-cow is taken prisoner by humans, it instantly commits suicide with its brain (they've evolved the ability to flood their system with a lethal dose of endorphins and hallucinogens at will), because they can't conceive of any reason for us to be keeping them alive other than to eat them later.

The third race are the spider-wolves, which seem to think in patterns, seeing the universe as a matrix of interlocking forces which must be kept in balance. They also extend this to their ships (which they build as perfect, featureless, ovoids, despite the fact that this definitely degrades their performance), and to their fleet formations (which are always absolutely gorgeous).

Friv
2015-01-28, 01:43 PM
Well, again, if said grandfathers were marauding, murderous lot, living mainly out of violence, then yes, it's not that bad comparison.

Don't think that many players actually perform non provoked slaughters a'la 'Start of Darkness' in their games. And most of games actually like that are usually in some morbid humor convention.

So it's not very good comparison.

Holy...

No. Nonononono. Noooo.

Look. The whole problem that JusticeZero is pointing out is that, if you look at traditional Western fiction, there's an awful lot of portraying foreigners, particularly aboriginal or black foreigners, as being a maurading, murderous lot living mainly off violence against the peaceful, friendly white settlers who were civilizing their lands.

This is a horrible, racist stereotype, obviously. The problem is that the orc as a concept was basically just that stereotype, but with green skin and tusks. So when you've been exposed to the "native americans are vicious murderers" or "black people are thugs" stereotype, and you go into gaming and see it staring back at you, it's incredibly uncomfortable.

Saying, "Well, stereotypes shouldn't bother you if they aren't true" is basically the most counter-productive approach you could take.

NichG
2015-01-28, 01:48 PM
This isn't quite an answer to the OP's question, but I've found one thing from running a lot of grey morality games: it's very important to have a set of actors within the settings who cannot be reasoned with. Maybe that's orcs, or the tarrasque, or whatever, but it needs to be there.

The reason is, if everyone can be reasoned with then that means that conflicts fall under one of two categories:

- The conflict exists because people on one or both sides were missing the obvious (or have incomplete information, or whatever). This sort of conflict is quasi-stable, in that all it takes is for someone to come up with the missing idea in order to make the conflict collapse.
- The conflict exists because the world creates a problem that cannot be resolved to everybody's benefit. This creates stable conflicts, but too much of this leads to the limit of 'crapsack world' and starts to feel like the DM editorializing.

The reason you need a stable conflict is to support long-term decision making and plotlines. If conflicts are all unstable, it leads to a sort of 'derp of the week' feeling, where everyone in the world but the PCs seems to be terminally stupid.

On the other hand, if you go the other direction and have humanized, sympathetic enemies who are forced to fight by harsh circumstances, then it can lead to PC exhaustion, a feeling that one's actions don't matter, and feelings that trying to be moral 'isn't worth it' or that the world is stacked against moral actors (because once you recognize that these other people are only trying to kill you because its life and death for them, the instinct is going to be 'I should be saving them!' not 'I should be killing them!'). A bit of this can give the campaign drama, but if this is the only kind of conflict that lasts more than one or two sessions, it's going to start to be a drag (and if you have to really contrive the world to make this happen, it makes it feel hollow like some kind of Aesop)

Here's where de-humanization comes in. If you immediately cut off that sympathy, then it creates a set of conflicts which are stable (because you can't reason with them) but at the same time which the moral PCs don't end up feeling bad for not being able to alter that stability. Since you're very up front with 'this is alien, you can't use reasoning' then PCs don't feel as shut down when reasoning fails - because you haven't led them into believing that it should be possible in the first place.

That third category could be done just by using non-sentient monsters, but the thing there is that sentience really is necessary at a certain point for things to continue to be a threat. The Tarrasque can be killed by low-level characters because its has a very specific, limited set of possible responses to provocation. It can't pick up a bow when its enemies realize that they can avoid all of its attacks just by flying. So in order to make the threat credible, its desirable to make it intelligent (of course, you can try to do 'intelligent but not sentient', but that may be too fine a distinction for groups that aren't very philosophical). Which leads us to 'sentient, yet implacable' - e.g. 'always evil orcs' and the like.

BRC
2015-01-28, 01:52 PM
Its an inevitable result of exploring the nature of these "Monsters".

As Humans, it is our instinct to put a human mind behind any sentient being. We try to understand their motivations, which means we ascribe human motivations to them.

It's also a matter of what makes more interesting stories.

Lets go with Orcs attacking a village.
Under the basic "orcs are Monsters" banner, Orcs are attacking this innocent village because they are Monsters. They are evil and want to do evil things. They want to hurt the villagers and take their stuff.
Orcs are now all evil brutes who want to hurt innocents and take their stuff. Would you like to negotiate with the Orcs? Nope, you're Good, so they want to hurt you and take your stuff. Would you like to resolve this conflict? Nope, the Orcs just want to hurt good people and take their stuff, unless you can direct them to better people to hurt with nicer stuff to take, the only way out of this is to use violence to overpower the Orcs.


Under the "Orcs are Humanized" banner: Orcs are from a culture that emphasizes martial strength. The Raids represent both a rite of passage for orcish warriors, and a way for the Orcs to get manufactured goods they do not have the infrastructure to make themselves. Orcs can't settle down to develop the infrastructure because the land they live on forces them into a nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Attempts to secure more fertile land are repulsed by Humans.

Or maybe the Raids are the result of generations of animosity between the Humans and the Orcs, with neither side knowing where it started.

Or maybe the Orcs are being forced to pay tribute to a Dragon, and they can only get what they need by stealing it from the Villagers.

Or Maybe the Villagers are living on land sacred to the Orcish Gods and the Orcs are trying to drive them out.

Or Maybe the Orcs were cursed by demons to become bloodthirsty berserkers compelled to attack everything around them.

Or the Orcs firmly believe that anybody who dies in battle is guaranteed a glorious afterlife in paradise, so they think that by killing people before they have a chance to die of disease or old age they are actually doing them a favor.
Ect Ect.

Any explanation for the Orc's behavior more nuanced (and therefore interesting) than "They are Monsters who want to do evil things" makes them more sympathetic, and therefore more "Humanized".

If all you want is a bunch of thugs to fill a dungeons with, "Orcs want to hurt good people and take their stuff" is fine. But if you're looking to build a living, breathing, dynamic setting, then you need to start giving motivations to various groups.

And here's the thing, you don't have to go very far to find Orc-like behavior among Humans. If the monstrous behavior is "Wants to hurt good people and take their stuff", turn that into something as simple as "Wants stuff without working for it", which is a perfectly Human behavior.
Why did the Huns attack towns, because they wanted stuff. Why did the Romans conquer and enslave, because they wanted stuff. A guy with a ski-mask and a shotgun holding up a convenience store does it because he wants Stuff. Nobody is calling them anything but Human. Heck, your standard issue Fantasy Adventurers are basically just a bunch of vaguely self-righteous murderers looking for things to kill and stuff to take. The main differences between Rothgar the Fighter and Orc Raider #234 are that Rothgar is better looking and we know his backstory.

If you assume some sort of functional society, you eventually get to the point where the "monsters" HAVE to be considered as something besides "An evil thing for adventurers to kill". Unless you want to build a setting where Orcs are just a naturally occurring phenomenon. Appearing out of thin air, armed to the teeth, and heading towards the nearest village.
If we assume the existence of a functional society, and the existence of free will, then we must seek explanation for the "Monstrous" behavior, and in doing so we inevitably humanize them.

That said, Traditional Fantasy still has it's fair share of "Evil-by-Nature" things. Undead that rise from the grave solely to destroy the living. Demons that are literally the essence of evil, ect ect. But with these things you need not assume a functional society OR free will. These things can be evil-by-nature because they're not just a bunch of free-willed bags of meat and genetics like we are.

Spiryt
2015-01-28, 01:55 PM
Holy...

No. Nonononono. Noooo.

Look. The whole problem that JusticeZero is pointing out is that, if you look at traditional Western fiction, there's an awful lot of portraying foreigners, particularly aboriginal or black foreigners, as being a maurading, murderous lot living mainly off violence against the peaceful, friendly white settlers who were civilizing their lands.

This is a horrible, racist stereotype, obviously. The problem is that the orc as a concept was basically just that stereotype, but with green skin and tusks. So when you've been exposed to the "native americans are vicious murderers" or "black people are thugs" stereotype, and you go into gaming and see it staring back at you, it's incredibly uncomfortable.

Saying, "Well, stereotypes shouldn't bother you if they aren't true" is basically the most counter-productive approach you could take.

Uh, why should orc be necessarily ''black people with tusks stereotype' instead of 'white people with tusks stereotype? :smallconfused:

That's pretty much searching trouble by evoking comparisons where there are none.

Point was that, simply, in vast majority of such 'Orc slaying' settings, it's not about some sadistic slaying for fun, but about some people taking a stand against some real, horrible danger.

As in some monsters who, from whatever reason actually are huge danger to PCs people/family/country/hirer/whatever.

Tragak
2015-01-28, 01:59 PM
This isn't quite an answer to the OP's question, but I've found one thing from running a lot of grey morality games: it's very important to have a set of actors within the settings who cannot be reasoned with. Maybe that's orcs, or the tarrasque, or whatever, but it needs to be there.

The reason is, if everyone can be reasoned with then that means that conflicts fall under one of two categories:

- The conflict exists because people on one or both sides were missing the obvious (or have incomplete information, or whatever). This sort of conflict is quasi-stable, in that all it takes is for someone to come up with the missing idea in order to make the conflict collapse.
- The conflict exists because the world creates a problem that cannot be resolved to everybody's benefit. This creates stable conflicts, but too much of this leads to the limit of 'crapsack world' and starts to feel like the DM editorializing.

The reason you need a stable conflict is to support long-term decision making and plotlines. If conflicts are all unstable, it leads to a sort of 'derp of the week' feeling, where everyone in the world but the PCs seems to be terminally stupid.

On the other hand, if you go the other direction and have humanized, sympathetic enemies who are forced to fight by harsh circumstances, then it can lead to PC exhaustion, a feeling that one's actions don't matter, and feelings that trying to be moral 'isn't worth it' or that the world is stacked against moral actors (because once you recognize that these other people are only trying to kill you because its life and death for them, the instinct is going to be 'I should be saving them!' not 'I should be killing them!'). A bit of this can give the campaign drama, but if this is the only kind of conflict that lasts more than one or two sessions, it's going to start to be a drag (and if you have to really contrive the world to make this happen, it makes it feel hollow like some kind of Aesop)

Here's where de-humanization comes in. If you immediately cut off that sympathy, then it creates a set of conflicts which are stable (because you can't reason with them) but at the same time which the moral PCs don't end up feeling bad for not being able to alter that stability. Since you're very up front with 'this is alien, you can't use reasoning' then PCs don't feel as shut down when reasoning fails - because you haven't led them into believing that it should be possible in the first place.

That third category could be done just by using non-sentient monsters, but the thing there is that sentience really is necessary at a certain point for things to continue to be a threat. The Tarrasque can be killed by low-level characters because its has a very specific, limited set of possible responses to provocation. It can't pick up a bow when its enemies realize that they can avoid all of its attacks just by flying. So in order to make the threat credible, its desirable to make it intelligent (of course, you can try to do 'intelligent but not sentient', but that may be too fine a distinction for groups that aren't very philosophical). Which leads us to 'sentient, yet implacable' - e.g. 'always evil orcs' and the like. Or the focus could be on "Villains" rather than "Races."

Is the idea of Good Humans (with Good Human motivations) and Good Orcs (with Good Orc motivations) teaming up against 3-dimensional villains, either Human (with Evil Human motivations) and/or Orc (with Evil Orc motivations), "boring" because the conflict "shouldn't have happened"?

Jay R
2015-01-28, 02:00 PM
The clear answer to the OP, as clearly demonstrated in this thread, is this:

No, they don't "have to" be anything. There is no agreement, and there's not going to be any agreement.

Red Fel
2015-01-28, 02:07 PM
Or the focus could be on "Villains" rather than "Races."

Thank you. So much this.

Look, at the end of the day, I don't want my BBEG to be a mindless automaton. I want my villains to have chosen that destiny, embraced it. I want them to be compelling and terrifying and human and inhuman and glorious and tragic. And I can't have that if they're just auto-Evil.

I have no issue with Good Orcs, alongside Good Dwarves, Elves, and Humans, slaying Evil Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, and Humans, as well as any Kender they find. Race isn't the issue. What makes the monster isn't its race; it's its actions. An Orc is not, inherently, a monster, any more than an Elf or Dwarf is. If an Orc is attacking the village, sure, it's a monster, but I'd say the same thing if a Gnome did it in his war machine. If an Elf is performing an eldritch ritual to achieve apotheosis at the expense of innocent lives, I don't care that he's from an historically heroic Tolkienian race; he's a monster.

And just because characters have nuance and depth doesn't mean they can't be in conflict. Just because my villain has a tragic history and noble intentions doesn't make him any less of a monster. If he crosses that moral event horizon, I don't expect the PCs to try to redeem him rather than kill him. He's a monster, and he needs to go down for the sake of the world. This holds true whether he's a Human, an Orc, an Elf, a Dwarf, or especially a Kender.

Frankly, all of my monsters are "men," as the title phrases it, not because I try to humanize traditionally monstrous races, but because I find that the more humanoid races make far more terrifying monsters. And that's true irrespective of the presence of tusks.

Spiryt
2015-01-28, 02:09 PM
And here's the thing, you don't have to go very far to find Orc-like behavior among Humans. If the monstrous behavior is "Wants to hurt good people and take their stuff", turn that into something as simple as "Wants stuff without working for it", which is a perfectly Human behavior.
.

Well, and this is precisely why you don't really have to even make some 'Orcs' (or whatever) particularly 'alien' to be 'evil' - just some race with even more tendency for violence and being rapidly overpopulating pest of the ecosystem than Human beings have.

Without doubt even simple 'war' setting without possibility of any other contact with 'Orcs' is going to be to blunt, but again, that doesn't really happen that much.

Even simple hack'n'shlashes had some Orcs/goblins minding their own business.

But it doesn't still, it's not unfeasible for most of them to be 'trouble'.



They don't need Dragons, totems, sacred grounds or any other, relatively fancy concepts, just like people didn't need.

It is possible to just want free stuff, slaves, territory and so on.

Raimun
2015-01-28, 02:15 PM
In D&D, orcs are usually Evil. That is, their culture has evolved to be inherently Evil. I mean, how do you call a culture that is based on raiding those weaker than themselves and that actively opposes any kind of decent behavior as anything but Evil?

Do note that Alignment system is not against changing your alignment*. Individual orcs can become Good but any orc that was raised among his kin? Most likely Evil. And those non-Evil orcs who were raised among their kin? They'll most likely get an axe to the head or the back for trying to be decent in a way that matters. Or as they would put it, "going soft".

That's of course only the basic assumption of the monster manual and the basic commercial game settings/worlds that are sold by Wizards of the Coast. There's nothing stopping anyone building their own D&D-setting where the orcs are not Evil but instead Lawful Good, if they really are inclined to do that.

*If you're not undead, construct, animal or an outsider formed by the very stuff of a certain Plane.

hamishspence
2015-01-28, 02:16 PM
In D&D, orcs are usually Evil. That is, their culture has evolved to be inherently Evil. I mean, how do you call a culture that is based on raiding those weaker than themselves and that actively opposes any kind of decent behavior as anything but Evil?

And often Chaotic Evil (with the most common exception being CN rather than NE, according to MM IV).

Grytorm
2015-01-28, 02:36 PM
I read with a little irritation the recent thread about the trend toward humanising orcs in TRPGs, by a refusal to accept orcs as naturally or irredeemably evil. Instead, according to this trendy view, they must be human in monster drag with comprehensible human motivations, with perhaps some psychological window dressing. I wonder at this trend. Enlighten me: is it part of a general trend in fantasy games to humanise all monsters, so that no monster can simply be evil, but must essentially be a human and find its evilness in terms of its humanity? Is this a robust trend or a probably short-lived one? How much of this trend existed in original/old school TRPG participants and was perhaps overlooked?

Just wondering, could you link that thread. It sounds interesting. I just enjoy reading discussions like this. (I fall down on the side that Orcs and the like should be in a way human.)

NichG
2015-01-28, 02:42 PM
Or the focus could be on "Villains" rather than "Races."

Is the idea of Good Humans (with Good Human motivations) and Good Orcs (with Good Orc motivations) teaming up against 3-dimensional villains, either Human (with Evil Human motivations) and/or Orc (with Evil Orc motivations), "boring" because the conflict "shouldn't have happened"?

Its not about "boring", its about the long-term consequences of using only a restricted set of possible threats and challenges.

If the villain is 3-dimensional, then this falls into one of the two types of conflicts that I listed. One outcome is 'the villain was just mistaken, and when we negotiate non-genocidal ways for him to achieve what he wants then he becomes an ally', which is unsatisfying and immersion-breaking if repeated too often because of the idiot-ball issue. The other outcome is 'there are things that cannot be resolved that make this villain our enemy, unless we're willing to make disproportionate sacrifices'. In which case, the first time it happens its 'tragic' and 'dramatic'. The tenth time it happens, its clear that this is just a crapsack world and you have the PC exhaustion and disconnection problems that come from that.

Also, a villain is person-scale, which changes things. You can assassinate a villain. You can't assassinate a nation or a race. These are all useful things that can be exploited to create a diverse array of threats and challenges. The way that a villain creates a stable conflict is fundamentally different than the way that e.g. a nation of always-evil Orcs to the north creates a stable conflict. The villain makes the conflict stable by always staying one step removed from what the PCs see - essentially, it's a game of battleship. Once the villain has become visible, the conflict is at its climax and will generally resolve within one to three sessions.

On the other hand, a nation or race of always-hostile entities can be a visible and persistent threat, because there isn't a simple way to just end the problem with a small number of person-scale actions. That lets you make a different set of conflicts and challenges. Using Game of Thrones for example, the conflict against the White Walkers is a fundamentally different kind of conflict than the succession wars.

Grytorm
2015-01-28, 02:58 PM
On the other hand, a nation or race of always-hostile entities can be a visible and persistent threat, because there isn't a simple way to just end the problem with a small number of person-scale actions. That lets you make a different set of conflicts and challenges. Using Game of Thrones for example, the conflict against the White Walkers is a fundamentally different kind of conflict than the succession wars.

But always hostile if doesn't have to mean ravening always evil. It might be an evil society but it is possible to build depth. If orcs tend to be very aggressive in their youths it can be easy to write things so that the older orcs in leadership maintain their legitimacy and strive to reduce internal struggles turns that violence outward. They may still sometime trade with others but a great deal of time they act aggressively. And they can be good people in a fashion.

Squark
2015-01-28, 03:03 PM
Its not about "boring", its about the long-term consequences of using only a restricted set of possible threats and challenges.

If the villain is 3-dimensional, then this falls into one of the two types of conflicts that I listed. One outcome is 'the villain was just mistaken, and when we negotiate non-genocidal ways for him to achieve what he wants then he becomes an ally', which is unsatisfying and immersion-breaking if repeated too often because of the idiot-ball issue. The other outcome is 'there are things that cannot be resolved that make this villain our enemy, unless we're willing to make disproportionate sacrifices'. In which case, the first time it happens its 'tragic' and 'dramatic'. The tenth time it happens, its clear that this is just a crapsack world and you have the PC exhaustion and disconnection problems that come from that.

Also, a villain is person-scale, which changes things. You can assassinate a villain. You can't assassinate a nation or a race. These are all useful things that can be exploited to create a diverse array of threats and challenges. The way that a villain creates a stable conflict is fundamentally different than the way that e.g. a nation of always-evil Orcs to the north creates a stable conflict. The villain makes the conflict stable by always staying one step removed from what the PCs see - essentially, it's a game of battleship. Once the villain has become visible, the conflict is at its climax and will generally resolve within one to three sessions.

On the other hand, a nation or race of always-hostile entities can be a visible and persistent threat, because there isn't a simple way to just end the problem with a small number of person-scale actions. That lets you make a different set of conflicts and challenges. Using Game of Thrones for example, the conflict against the White Walkers is a fundamentally different kind of conflict than the succession wars.

You can have a group be a persistent threat without resorting to the "always evil" card. Resource Scarcity, hundreds of years of bloodshed on both sides, or ideology can keep a particular group opposed to the party's goals for however long the campaign lasts. And just because the faction has a leader, doesn't mean it disintegrates when they die.

Tragak
2015-01-28, 03:03 PM
If the villain is 3-dimensional, then this falls into one of the two types of conflicts that I listed. One outcome is 'the villain was just mistaken, and when we negotiate non-genocidal ways for him to achieve what he wants then he becomes an ally', which is unsatisfying and immersion-breaking if repeated too often because of the idiot-ball issue. The other outcome is 'there are things that cannot be resolved that make this villain our enemy, unless we're willing to make disproportionate sacrifices'. In which case, the first time it happens its 'tragic' and 'dramatic'. The tenth time it happens, its clear that this is just a crapsack world and you have the PC exhaustion and disconnection problems that come from that. So you see a 3-dimensional character as being "a character who doesn't want to hurt people," and a character who doesn't care about hurting people is being "exhaustingly/disconnectedly" 2-dimensional? That seems like a extremely simplistic view of evil and villainy to me.


Also, a villain is person-scale, which changes things. You can assassinate a villain. You can't assassinate a nation or a race. These are all useful things that can be exploited to create a diverse array of threats and challenges. The way that a villain creates a stable conflict is fundamentally different than the way that e.g. a nation of always-evil Orcs to the north creates a stable conflict. The villain makes the conflict stable by always staying one step removed from what the PCs see - essentially, it's a game of battleship. Once the villain has become visible, the conflict is at its climax and will generally resolve within one to three sessions. Or it's just a story where the heroes know who the villain is and where to find him, but legitimately can't do anything about it for some in-story reason that they would need to overcome first.


On the other hand, a nation or race of always-hostile entities can be a visible and persistent threat, because there isn't a simple way to just end the problem with a small number of person-scale actions. That lets you make a different set of conflicts and challenges. Using Game of Thrones for example, the conflict against the White Walkers is a fundamentally different kind of conflict than the succession wars. Yes, evil organizations can be far more dangerous than evil individuals. I just don't see how that has to lead to "every member of a particular race is automatically a member of said evil organization."

BRC
2015-01-28, 03:05 PM
On the other hand, a nation or race of always-hostile entities can be a visible and persistent threat, because there isn't a simple way to just end the problem with a small number of person-scale actions. That lets you make a different set of conflicts and challenges. Using Game of Thrones for example, the conflict against the White Walkers is a fundamentally different kind of conflict than the succession wars.
But this does not mean that the Evil races must be Evil by their very nature, and it is good that you brought up the idea of something being "Person-Scale".

Let's look at ATLA, and the Fire Nation

The Citizens of the Fire Nation were no more or less "Naturally" evil than any other. However, over the course of centuries a few leaders had built up a toxic culture of ultranationalism and superiority that made the Fire Nation a threat. It wasn't morally questionable for the Heroes to battle against the Fire Nation.

In the case of ATLA, they were only able to end the threat immediately because they had The Avatar, who culturally speaking holds the position of "The Guy Who Beats You Up When You Are Doing Bad Things" AND a sympathetic, intelligent ruler they could put on the throne, who could start working to dismantle to toxic culture.

So, you want to create a stable, visible, and persistent threat that cannot be handled with a small number of person-scale actions. Re-create the Fire Nation, or something similar. Don't give the players Aang or Zuko so they can't solve the problem long-term.

Lets look at Orcs.

"Orcish culture and religion teaches that Orcs were created to rule the world, and all other races were created to serve the Orcs. Grumsh put the Orcs on the world, knowing that by conquering it, they would prove themselves worthy to rule it, and all Orcs are taught to work towards that day."
Oh hey, look at that, a perfectly valid reason for Orcs to be a stable, serious threat that does NOT paint the Orcs as innately evil.
Sure, theoretically the right person could convince the Orcs en-masse to abandon their bloodthirsty ways and give up a life of constant conquest and start them on a path towards peace. But if you don't want that to happen, don't introduce Orc Zuko to the setting. It's not something the PCs can easily achieve, and if they really want to work at changing Orcish culture, why not let them?

And really, what sort of timeframe is your story going to take place over that you need a single, constant threat for that entire time period. You want a nation of Orcs in the north to represent a threat, fine. Are you planning to come back in a few hundred years and do you still want that same nation of orcs to represent that exact same threat? In a few thousand years do you want Orcs armed with plasma axes to be raiding human algae vats?

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-28, 03:09 PM
Maybe it's a generational thing? I didn't grow up on stories where the brutish primitives are the antagonists like in Tarzan or some cowboy stories. I grew up on stories where the evil was Lex Luthor, someone who had a moral choice. Or there was Poison Ivy, someone driven to extremes but with good intentions. I had stories of zombies and xenomorphs (and a whole heap of xenomorph knock offs), creatures with no higher brain functions other then a desire to feed. I also grew up on Star Trek, especially DS9 and TNG, where formerly enemy races became trusted allies. So a lot of stories centered on redemption, diplomacy, empathy of sentient creatures while trying to fend off ones that just could not be reasoned with.

So the stories I am familiar with don't have always evil enemies, and those stories...Well, to me, fall flat and seem pretty shallow nowadays. I assume a lot of other people within my age range (under 30) would have a similar experience if they grew up in the Western World. I can't speak for them, but its hard for me to reconcile a living, breathing world of choice with the idea that an entire race is a-okay to slaughter just because the DM wanted some old-school mooks.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go rewatch Balance of Terror.

Friv
2015-01-28, 03:15 PM
Uh, why should orc be necessarily ''black people with tusks stereotype' instead of 'white people with tusks stereotype? :smallconfused:

That's pretty much searching trouble by evoking comparisons where there are none.

Point was that, simply, in vast majority of such 'Orc slaying' settings, it's not about some sadistic slaying for fun, but about some people taking a stand against some real, horrible danger.

As in some monsters who, from whatever reason actually are huge danger to PCs people/family/country/hirer/whatever.

Because the stereotypes of the orcs - of brutish, vicious tribes of semi-civilized barbarians who storm through civilized lands, pillaging and destroying, and who can't be reasoned with, only fought, is already the stereotype traditionally applied to African and Native American people. It's not even a comparison, it's identical.

SiuiS
2015-01-28, 03:21 PM
It's a spectrum. This forum trends toward the complex motivation end of the spectrum. Other areas of the net trend to other ends. Orcs as viable intelligent nonevil monsters has been around as long as I have – thirty years or more.

Unlike honest Tiefling, I did grow up with antagonists as savages. But rather than elevating the savages to high moral actors, a lot of my fiction looked at what makes high moral actors into savages. This made something clear to me; whether an antagonistis portrayed as a very week thought out choice maker, or simply an implacable force the protagonist struggles against, is a choice that must serve the fiction. Yes, which choice is considered the default says something about the person designing the fiction, and yes, needing to portrayed non-protagonists as mindless objectively wicked savages is unfortunate and has moral implications. But once that becomes a choice, made rationally and for specific reasons rather than 'because that's how it is/should be', then there is no problem.

NichG
2015-01-28, 03:26 PM
You can have a group be a persistent threat without resorting to the "always evil" card. Resource Scarcity, hundreds of years of bloodshed on both sides, or ideology can keep a particular group opposed to the party's goals for however long the campaign lasts. And just because the faction has a leader, doesn't mean it disintegrates when they die.

This divides up into the categories I posted.

If the sustaining factor is ideology, then instead of having an 'always evil' race you have an 'always evil' religion/philosophy/etc. But that does get you Type-3 conflicts, so that can work. Alternately, if the ideology is literally just 'they're misinformed' then you have a Type-1 conflict (e.g. 'exists only because someone has the idiot ball'). This also covers the 'hundreds of years of bloodshed' type factors. Either the desire for vengeance is a cultural imperative (Type-3, but again its similar to 'always evil' type situations because now you have an evil 'culture'), or its just people stone-walling and being stubborn in which case it's Type-1 again.

If the sustaining factor is resource scarcity, then its Type-2 (conflicts driven by the harshness of the world). Great to use sparingly, but if you run only this kind of thing then the PCs generally start to feel helpless and the natural result is that they stop caring about the in-game world (e.g. 'this world is too crappy to bother saving').


So you see a 3-dimensional character as being "a character who doesn't want to hurt people," and a character who doesn't care about hurting people is being fundamentally 2-dimensional? That seems like a extremely simplistic view of evil and villainy to me.

No, I see a 3-dimensional character as someone whom a moral actor could sympathize with. If a villain is sympathetic but irredeemable, then its a Type-2 conflict, that is to say it has the structure of a tragedy. If a villain is sympathetic and redeemable, then you get Type-1 stuff and the corresponding potential pitfalls of instability and stupidity if overused.

2-dimensional characters have their uses. Type-2 conflicts are great, but not all the time. Put in a bit of filler and then the Type-2 stuff is far more poignant when it comes up. If the PCs come up with a smart idea that makes the conflict go away once, that makes them feel really smart. If they do that every time, it makes the rest of the world feel really stupid, and it devalues their achievements. A bit of 2d filler material can help space the deeper things out and make them feel more special.



Or it's just a story where the heroes know who the villain is and where to find him, but legitimately can't do anything about it for some in-story reason that they would need to overcome first.

Yes, evil organizations can be far more dangerous than evil individuals. I just don't see how that has to lead to "every member of a particular race is automatically a member of said evil organization."

Alien-ness is useful in making it clear 'this is not a person, don't treat them as such'.

An evil organization is composed of people who are 'just like the PCs'. Maybe they had some bad thing happen in their life, or maybe there's something a bit wrong with them, or whatever, but in principle each of those people could have ended up being a not-horribly-evil person. That makes them sympathetic. It suggests that things one would do to resolve conflicts with people are a natural structure in which to encode your interactions with them. 'This is a person, so I should talk with them first', 'this is a person, so violence should be my last option', 'this is a person, so I should accept their surrender', etc.

If that evil organization is instead made up of, e.g., robots designed and programmed to exterminate all life (but to do so over a term of a century lets say, and so able to use strategy and other aspects of civilization-level intelligence beyond 'kill what is in front of me'), then there isn't that instinct. You aren't primed to expect that you could negotiate with the kill-bot. Its made very clear that there is no way that your goals and their goals will ever be anything but mutually defeating, and that their goals are intrinsic to them and not to the world. That last bit is what distinguishes it from Type-2 conflicts.

SiuiS
2015-01-28, 03:27 PM
Because the stereotypes of the orcs - of brutish, vicious tribes of semi-civilized barbarians who storm through civilized lands, pillaging and destroying, and who can't be reasoned with, only fought, is already the stereotype traditionally applied to African and Native American people. It's not even a comparison, it's identical.

Eh. It's also how Italians viewed Caucasians. It's also how Caucasians viewed other Caucasians. It's how the English viewed the Scottish. It's how the Irish (and English) viewed the Scandinavians.

Yes. It's unfortunate to assume people not like you are atupid and brutish, but assuming it means color is a weird form of whitewash. EVERY SINGLE CULTURE in the world decided every outside culture was mentally retarded, barely capable of civilization and hell-bent on destroying them. Fighting this issue only from the point of view of 'that's how tribal cultures are presented!' Is a twisted version of White Man's Burden. Every culture had tribal forms at one point. It's not accurate to presume this only ever applies to colored people being degenerated by non colored people.

Segev
2015-01-28, 03:38 PM
I imagine part of the "stupid" part is that "they don't talk good like you and me." It's amazing how stupid you sound when you speak a language brokenly.

The "brutish" part comes from the fact that interactions with the given culture are, frankly, brutal. They're raids and counter-raids.

If you view your way of doing things as "civilized," and don't have a broad perspective to appreciate how the other culture achieves the same ends by their methods, you will likely, upon raiding them, see them failing to behave in "civilized" manners and, when you take prisoners, see them engaged in strange and "barbaric" rituals that make no sense to you and thus must be a result of ignorant superstitions.


That said, there ARE cultures which cannot be reasoned with. Note, I said cultures, not races. Such cultures would respond to an peaceful overtures of, "What is it you really want?" with, "You and all your culture wiped off the face of the Earth or subjected to ours and made to acknowledge our superiority."

Because there exist cultures with that mindset: they're the best, and they should not be content to allow others to think otherwise, nor should they allow anybody who does to continue breathing if it's possible to make them stop.

You can obviously have any sort of race in D&D have such a culture. IT tends to be convenient to give it to the "monster" races for various reasons. But you could easily make it a human culture, or an elven one. Or dwarven, or gnomish, or Aasimar (though it would be unsual for their given alignment preference), or...

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-28, 03:47 PM
Because the stereotypes of the orcs - of brutish, vicious tribes of semi-civilized barbarians who storm through civilized lands, pillaging and destroying, and who can't be reasoned with, only fought, is already the stereotype traditionally applied to African and Native American people. It's not even a comparison, it's identical.

That's way too specific an assumption, and it tries too hard to emphasize a particular type of racism. "Barbaric" tribes have existed across the racial spectrum, and the pagan peoples of Europe immediately spring to mind as well. That's already a clear image in pop culture.

We can't assume that orcs are automatically an analogue for nonwhites, considering the fact that their depiction varies extensively from writer to writer.

It's certainly a form of cultural prejudice in regards to how so-called "uncivilized" cultures are depicted in media, but it is not strictly a racial issue, considering the wide array of "barbaric" stereotypes out there that are not strictly American or African.

Tragak
2015-01-28, 03:56 PM
The reason is, if everyone can be reasoned with then that means that conflicts fall under one of two categories:

- The conflict exists because people on one or both sides were missing the obvious (or have incomplete information, or whatever). This sort of conflict is quasi-stable, in that all it takes is for someone to come up with the missing idea in order to make the conflict collapse.
- The conflict exists because the world creates a problem that cannot be resolved to everybody's benefit. This creates stable conflicts, but too much of this leads to the limit of 'crapsack world' and starts to feel like the DM editorializing. Correction: "if everybody can be reasoned with and don't want to hurt others, therefor are not villains" then the types of conflict described are

-good, intelligent people hurting each other (despite not wanting to) because they have bad information
-good, intelligent people hurting each other (despite not wanting to) because they have bad resources

How does this account for evil, intelligent people who hold power over large groups, but who don't care about hurting others to advance themselves? Do those people not exist in your games?

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-28, 03:56 PM
That's way too specific an assumption, and it tries too hard to emphasize a particular type of racism. "Barbaric" tribes have existed across the racial spectrum, and the pagan peoples of Europe immediately spring to mind as well. That's already a clear image in pop culture.

We can't assume that orcs are automatically an analogue for nonwhites, considering the fact that their depiction varies extensively from writer to writer.

It's certainly a form of cultural prejudice in regards to how so-called "uncivilized" cultures are depicted in media, but it is not strictly a racial issue, considering the wide array of "barbaric" stereotypes out there that are not strictly American or African.

Europeans can correct me, but there are few cultural depictions of European pagans within the last century, probably because of a lack of pagans. The ones that get depicted are probably depicted as devil-worshipers, which tend to be deviant, weak, and insidious, which is a completely different stereotype. However, a culture which is violent, treats women very badly, stupid, and very strong does not encompass all barbaric stereotypes and might not even be intended that way. But when you have that culture, and make it clear that they cannot ever be redeemed or reasoned with because they are a certain race, well...It tends to remind people of very bad fiction.

Bob of Mage
2015-01-28, 04:01 PM
Every culture had tribal forms at one point. It's not accurate to presume this only ever applies to colored people being degenerated by non colored people.

It's more like every human came from the same source. Any normal human follows what they see as a logical path, and while it's lead to a number of paths, all those paths seem to follow the same rough route. The same applies to non-humans such as dogs. All of a dogs actions seem based on what hey think the best course of action is.

So now you have all life as we know it following a number of rules. The chief one is that they try to keep life going. So the have young and gather the fuel needed to not stop.

Mundane monsters (things like orc, and not things like undead) would appear to follow all the rules of Earth-based life. Therefore they need to follow actions that are in their best interest. If they didn't they would die out long ago.

Also never forget all the parts orc are played by humans in green-face because DMs are too racist to hire real orcs!

NichG
2015-01-28, 04:03 PM
And really, what sort of timeframe is your story going to take place over that you need a single, constant threat for that entire time period. You want a nation of Orcs in the north to represent a threat, fine. Are you planning to come back in a few hundred years and do you still want that same nation of orcs to represent that exact same threat? In a few thousand years do you want Orcs armed with plasma axes to be raiding human algae vats?

The natural timeframe for a campaign is in terms of 'game sessions'. When you have PCs walking around with personal power approaching that of small nations, things get done very quickly compared to real-world timescales (or more to the point, they look a lot more like modern timescales than historical ones, so things that would have been stable in historical context quickly fall apart).

"Assassinate a powerful individual" is, for example, roughly a one-game action. That one game could just be a 24 hour period. Or it could be something with months of downtime/travel montage/etc in the middle. "Personally negotiate between two or three recalcitrant, politically empowered NPCs" is also roughly a one-game action. "Acquire a particular object", "Fight off a raid", "Investigate a particular event or situation", etc are roughly one-game actions. "Raid X facility/complex/etc", "Defend X place against an invasion", etc are roughly two-to-three game actions.

Generally I want a bunch of ~5-6 session conflicts and a bunch of ~10-30 session conflicts, and then interleave/overlap/connect them in the context of an overarching theme to make 'the game'. The 5-6 session conflicts provide momentum, and the 10-30 session ones provide consistency. A campaign is usually something like 70 sessions.


Correction: "if everybody can be reasoned with and don't want to hurt others, therefor are not villains" then the types of conflict described are

-good, intelligent people hurting each other (despite not wanting to) because they have bad information
-good, intelligent people hurting each other (despite not wanting to) because they have bad resources

How does this account for evil, intelligent people who hold power over large groups, but who don't care about hurting others to advance themselves? Do those people not exist in your games?

They can be reasoned with as well as the ones who don't want to hurt others. If the villain wants immortality and is killing people to get it, then you can ask what happens if you give the villain immortality without killing anyone in the process. What do they do then?

If they stop because they have what they want, they're a Type-1 conflict.
If they continue to hurt people, then they're a Type-3 conflict of the person-scale type: they cannot actually be reasoned with, and they're 'innately' evil regardless of any particular kind of rationale.
If 'you can't do that because the world requires you to kill people to be immortal!' then they're a Type-2 conflict.

Segev
2015-01-28, 04:04 PM
Is it just me, or does it seem the "you can't depict that, because it's anti-non-white racism" positions are taking a very anglo-centric perspective that is, itself, kind-of racist for assuming that theirs is the only culture that could possibly be represented by the "heroes" of the game who are fighting these "racist" stereotypes?

Spiryt
2015-01-28, 04:06 PM
Because the stereotypes of the orcs - of brutish, vicious tribes of semi-civilized barbarians who storm through civilized lands, pillaging and destroying, and who can't be reasoned with, only fought, is already the stereotype traditionally applied to African and Native American people. It's not even a comparison, it's identical.

Well, is it seriously?

I cannot really remember recent Native American description not involving some 'honorable, spiritual, connected with ancestors, and with nature' etc.

So pretty much another dumbing down cliche only from some some different angle.

'Simple, pillaging people' gets attributed to about everyone, as far as I can tell...

'Some European tribesmen' would be probably most common.


Is it just me, or does it seem the "you can't depict that, because it's anti-non-white racism" positions are taking a very anglo-centric perspective that is, itself, kind-of racist for assuming that theirs is the only culture that could possibly be represented by the "heroes" of the game who are fighting these "racist" stereotypes?

It is kinda weird.

Most of those "orcs and goblins' Hordes are some kind of not well thought of primal, marauding tribesmen, but with huge metal weapons and other perks out of somewhere etc.

Nothing really stands out as any particular allusion.

Squark
2015-01-28, 04:09 PM
This divides up into the categories I posted.

If the sustaining factor is ideology, then instead of having an 'always evil' race you have an 'always evil' religion/philosophy/etc. But that does get you Type-3 conflicts, so that can work. Alternately, if the ideology is literally just 'they're misinformed' then you have a Type-1 conflict (e.g. 'exists only because someone has the idiot ball'). This also covers the 'hundreds of years of bloodshed' type factors. Either the desire for vengeance is a cultural imperative (Type-3, but again its similar to 'always evil' type situations because now you have an evil 'culture'), or its just people stone-walling and being stubborn in which case it's Type-1 again.

If the sustaining factor is resource scarcity, then its Type-2 (conflicts driven by the harshness of the world). Great to use sparingly, but if you run only this kind of thing then the PCs generally start to feel helpless and the natural result is that they stop caring about the in-game world (e.g. 'this world is too crappy to bother saving').

Just because a problem is solvable doesn't mean the players can easily solve it. Maybe by introducing irrigation to the raiders, they can farm as well and eventually won't need to raid, but that doesn't instantly solve the problem. You've still got generations of tradition, harsh feelings on both sides, and, well, Irrigation networks aren't built in a day. The players can make progress without a threat disintegrating. And, for that matter, we have problems driven by the harshness of the world, but on the whole, humans keep on living and doing things.
Alien-ness is useful in making it clear 'this is not a person, don't treat them as such'.Sure. I'm not objecting to wholesale zombie or tyranid extermination. But those are alien in a different sort of the word. They're not humans with funny teeth and skin color. They're a force of nature without any parallels to humanity. For that matter, speaking of 40k, Warhammer 40000 does Orks that fall into the monster category, because they're not just pointy eared humanoids form a culture that looks down on every other civilization, or blue-skinned humanoids with a fervent belief in their manifest destiny. 40k's Orks are unnatural, because a long, long time ago, some alien who did have a choice didn't think about or didn't care about what their genetically engineered scorched earth warriors might do to the galaxy if they lost. (Also, the humans of 40k are not upheld as good, generally speaking).


Is it just me, or does it seem the "you can't depict that, because it's anti-non-white racism" positions are taking a very anglo-centric perspective that is, itself, kind-of racist for assuming that theirs is the only culture that could possibly be represented by the "heroes" of the game who are fighting these "racist" stereotypes?

Assuming I understand what you're saying, I think the point people are trying to get across is that we shouldn't be perpetuating negative stereotypes (positive stereotypes are dangerous in their own right, but let's focus on the negative ones for the oment) regardless of where they came from. As to which culture can be the heroes, uh... I'm confused, whoever said the "heroes" had to be from an anglo-like culture?

BRC
2015-01-28, 04:14 PM
The natural timeframe for a campaign is in terms of 'game sessions'. When you have PCs walking around with personal power approaching that of small nations, things get done very quickly compared to real-world timescales (or more to the point, they look a lot more like modern timescales than historical ones, so things that would have been stable in historical context quickly fall apart).

"Assassinate a powerful individual" is, for example, roughly a one-game action. That one game could just be a 24 hour period. Or it could be something with months of downtime/travel montage/etc in the middle. "Personally negotiate between two or three recalcitrant, politically empowered NPCs" is also roughly a one-game action. "Acquire a particular object", "Fight off a raid", "Investigate a particular event or situation", etc are roughly one-game actions. "Raid X facility/complex/etc", "Defend X place against an invasion", etc are roughly two-to-three game actions.

Generally I want a bunch of ~5-6 session conflicts and a bunch of ~10-30 session conflicts, and then interleave/overlap/connect them in the context of an overarching theme to make 'the game'. The 5-6 session conflicts provide momentum, and the 10-30 session ones provide consistency. A campaign is usually something like 70 sessions.

Right, but how much game-world time does that cover.

Because you don't need a stable problem that last throughout all of the setting's history. You just need the problem to be there for the story you are telling.

"Orcs are inherently Evil" makes them a perpetual problem.

However, for all practical purposes, Orcs only need to be evil for the duration of the campaign. Which means that if you want to keep Orcs around as an evil force for the whole campaign, you just need to make the reason for that evil something that the PCs cannot solve in the timescale of the campaign.
"Orcish culture makes them prone to evil" is a problem that might get solved at some point, but it could take generations. As far as the PC's are concerned, they don't have time to sit around and convince the Orcs to give up their warring ways.

How many "game sessions" is "Change Orcish Culture"? Because it shouldn't be a matter of getting a few Nat 20's on diplomacy.
And more importantly, if the Players are willing to put that much time and effort into doing so, what's the problem with stopping them? If they're like "Yes, what we really want to do is spend the next eight-ten sessions getting the respect of the Orcs, then putting them on a path towards peace", that's a worthy goal. You can get just as much game out of that as you can from "Lets kill the Orcs until they are no longer a threat".

Also, concerning your "People are Stupid" or "The World Sucks" theory, Orcs being always evil is just "The World Sucks. It sucks so much that there are sentient species who are by their very nature intractably dedicated to making the world suck more".

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-28, 04:16 PM
Is it just me, or does it seem the "you can't depict that, because it's anti-non-white racism" positions are taking a very anglo-centric perspective that is, itself, kind-of racist for assuming that theirs is the only culture that could possibly be represented by the "heroes" of the game who are fighting these "racist" stereotypes?

I would say no. I don't think Orcs were intended as a racist stereotype. The comparison isn't really to those groups of people, but to the way those groups were depicted in media: The other, which needed to be fought to save the day and get the girl. That these groups are obviously capable of thought and choice, but aren't treated as being worthy of a second thought when slaughtering them to get into fame and glory, so some parallels can be made between these heroes killing willy-nilly, and DnD heroes doing such despite redemption being a part of the game.

McBars
2015-01-28, 04:19 PM
Because the stereotypes of the orcs - of brutish, vicious tribes of semi-civilized barbarians who storm through civilized lands, pillaging and destroying, and who can't be reasoned with, only fought, is already the stereotype traditionally applied to African and Native American people. It's not even a comparison, it's identical.

Perhaps, but that is an ABSURD parallel to draw. Christ, way too many people taking things way too seriously in this thread.

I think people feel that they need to humanize monsters because of:

1. Intense narcissism manifested by assuming just because creatures share some traits with us (intelligence/sentience/sapience) they necessarily share all of our traits/values/behaviors. Just because you can't imagine them being different just because they share a few traits with us doesn't mean they cant be radically different, that's simply a failure of your imagination.

2. Taking things at the table WAY too seriously; really, leave this stodgy philosophical crap for real life.

Strongly agree with the OP. This is an obnoxious trend; one that thankfully has remained on the forums and out of most games I play in.

Segev
2015-01-28, 04:19 PM
Assuming I understand what you're saying, I think the point people are trying to get across is that we shouldn't be perpetuating negative stereotypes (positive stereotypes are dangerous in their own right, but let's focus on the negative ones for the oment) regardless of where they came from. As to which culture can be the heroes, uh... I'm confused, whoever said the "heroes" had to be from an anglo-like culture?

My point is more that, by insisting that the stereotype MUST be about American Indians or African Tribesmen, it's also insisting that the heroes MUST be White Cowboys or British Colonials, since those are the ones who had those particular groups as their "orcs."

By denying that any other "orc" inspirations exist, that "orcs" can represent anything else (and thus be far less of a specific racial stereotype), they're being awfully narrow in who the "heroes" of the tale can represent, as well.

McBars
2015-01-28, 04:22 PM
My point is more that, by insisting that the stereotype MUST be about American Indians or African Tribesmen, it's also insisting that the heroes MUST be White Cowboys or British Colonials, since those are the ones who had those particular groups as their "orcs."

By denying that any other "orc" inspirations exist, that "orcs" can represent anything else (and thus be far less of a specific racial stereotype), they're being awfully narrow in who the "heroes" of the tale can represent, as well.

Perhaps, but both stereotypes are constructs of this thread rather than being present in the game.

Tvtyrant
2015-01-28, 04:25 PM
Basically creatures which as depicted as being humans with masks have to act like humans or have an explanation for why they don't (sorta). So for instance Orcs have tribes and technology like humans do, and so are basically human. For them to not really be like humans involves an explanation of what they really are like.

Hags are smarter than Humans and Orcs, and are all but always depicted as evil. But they aren't really like us; they live in isolation or tiny groups of 3, they eat humanoid flesh, and they don't have any known culture beyond houses and magic. A good hag wouldn't stand out, per se, but I have never heard a complaint that they are too evil as a species. The same is true of Trolls and Ettins, which are dumb but human-like.

NichG
2015-01-28, 04:27 PM
Just because a problem is solvable doesn't mean the players can easily solve it. Maybe by introducing irrigation to the raiders, they can farm as well and eventually won't need to raid, but that doesn't instantly solve the problem. You've still got generations of tradition, harsh feelings on both sides, and, well, Irrigation networks aren't built in a day. The players can make progress without a threat disintegrating. And, for that matter, we have problems driven by the harshness of the world, but on the whole, humans keep on living and doing things.

The difference between 'living in the real world' and 'characters in the game' is that the game case comes with an expectation of being much more compressed. The consequence is that slow, gradual improvement is simply not that satisfying to players. It isn't actually counted as 'success' psychologically.

I've tried to run games spanning a timescale that comparable to a real person's lifespan, and yet to to have that feel satisfying as a game at the same time. You run into all sorts of interesting player psychology when you do that. For instance, most players will balk at something like 'this ocean voyage takes 1 year'. They think 'that dungeon crawl where we gained 2 levels only took half a week, this is a year of dungeon crawls we're missing out on'. Worse, they feel like that ocean voyage would correspond to sitting there for a proportionate amount of table time with nothing happening. It takes a lot to get over that instinct to hoard time and to get players to really appreciate that 'okay, so a year passes, and now...' takes only seconds to resolve in table-time.

It's also a bit of a knife-edge. If a player does make a character that would be comfortable with spending a year on something so readily, then that character is likely to be less proactive than a character who has things they want to be doing with every day of that time. You instead have to hit the sweet spot of 'I am okay with waiting for events to begin to unfold, but once that starts I become very driven'. That's very challenging RP to ask for.



Sure. I'm not objecting to wholesale zombie or tyranid extermination. But those are alien in a different sort of the word. They're not humans with funny teeth and skin color. They're a force of nature without any parallels to humanity. For that matter, speaking of 40k, Warhammer 40000 does Orks that fall into the monster category, because they're not just pointy eared humanoids form a culture that looks down on every other civilization, or blue-skinned humanoids with a fervent belief in their manifest destiny. 40k's Orks are unnatural, because a long, long time ago, some alien who did have a choice didn't think about or didn't care about what their genetically engineered scorched earth warriors might do to the galaxy if they lost. (Also, the humans of 40k are not upheld as good, generally speaking).

I don't particularly care either way about the details of implementation here (others clearly do, but I'll leave that to them). Mostly I'm trying to point out the potential consequences to the game if you just cut out the role that orcs traditionally fill without replacing it with 'something'. That 'something' could be pack-mentality zombies or intelligent UV radiation that experiences the entirety of time as 'now' or whatever. But it is important not to completely disregard the value of having the occasional 'implacable force' or '2d villain' to act as contrastive or filler elements.

Deophaun
2015-01-28, 04:28 PM
It's not about all monsters being human. It's about creatures that are portrayed as sentient, should probably act sentient...
That's all well and good. The problem is, I know of only a single sentient species, and a sample size of one is not large enough for me to draw a conclusion that all sentient species must have free will. In fact, there's a whole scientific endeavor put towards creating sentience without free will going on right now (called Artificial Intelligence).

And this outlook becomes even more unlikely as you look at the role of how genetics influences both behavior and intelligence. A squirrel does not behave the same as a honey badger does not behave the same as a bumble bee does not behave the same as an alligator does not behave the same as a rottweiler. And these animals display very different cognitive capabilities that do not track with their temperament. Now, we can all chalk that up to social constructs and how alligators just grew up in rough neighborhoods and were kept down by the 1% of bumble bees who hoard 99% of the honey from the badgers, but that would be silly.

Basically, the notion that intelligence somehow frees people from nature is a comforting fiction that will likely be shattered if we ever find that we aren't alone in the universe and come across sentient minds that are utterly alien to our own.

Segev
2015-01-28, 04:34 PM
*puts on his Ph.D. hat*

Not really; those mortar-boards are annoying.

But more seriously, my dissertation was on spiking neural networks, and my own area of focus in academia was computational intelligence (CI). This field, as a whole, is more likely to produce results humans recognize as "intelligent" (by which we often mean "intuitive") than a field of A.I. wherein the goal is "human-like sentience/sapience."

Certainly, the goal of constructing such an A.I. is not going to come with a desire to make it lack free will; it's hard to conceive of such a thing, and it raises all sorts of ethical questions that only make lawyers richer.

No, I think we're more likely to see expert systems developed, as that's what's already underway. Systems capable of natural language processing and capable of automating the intellectual work of subject-matter experts, but not on the whole being any more "people" than the robots that automate an automobile factory.

They perform intuitive "thinking" as reflexivly as your brain stem performs the functions to make your hands type out your forum posts.

Personally - going into speculative future-science, here - I expect we'll see humans neural interfacing with computers on a level that we consider the computer an extension of us, rather than seeing A.I.s develop to run our computers for us. We'll replace the OS directly, controlling computational processes as easily as we do our own bodies. THis isn't an "upload" fantasy I'm positing, either, so much as making our machines extensions of us.

Sorry for the off-topic tangent, but I felt the need to speak out in response to the idea that we'd be developing A.I.s without free will.

hamishspence
2015-01-28, 04:41 PM
That's all well and good. The problem is, I know of only a single sentient species, and a sample size of one is not large enough for me to draw a conclusion that all sentient species must have free will. In fact, there's a whole scientific endeavor put towards creating sentience without free will going on right now (called Artificial Intelligence).

And this outlook becomes even more unlikely as you look at the role of how genetics influences both behavior and intelligence. A squirrel does not behave the same as a honey badger does not behave the same as a bumble bee does not behave the same as an alligator does not behave the same as a rottweiler.

Yes - but those aren't all bipedal, clothes-wearing tool-users.

There's a great many similarities between many of the D&D "monstrous races" and the "player races".

Tragak
2015-01-28, 04:47 PM
The difference between 'living in the real world' and 'characters in the game' is that the game case comes with an expectation of being much more compressed. The consequence is that slow, gradual improvement is simply not that satisfying to players. It isn't actually counted as 'success' psychologically.

I've tried to run games spanning a timescale that comparable to a real person's lifespan, and yet to to have that feel satisfying as a game at the same time. You run into all sorts of interesting player psychology when you do that. For instance, most players will balk at something like 'this ocean voyage takes 1 year'. They think 'that dungeon crawl where we gained 2 levels only took half a week, this is a year of dungeon crawls we're missing out on'. Worse, they feel like that ocean voyage would correspond to sitting there for a proportionate amount of table time with nothing happening. It takes a lot to get over that instinct to hoard time and to get players to really appreciate that 'okay, so a year passes, and now...' takes only seconds to resolve in table-time.

It's also a bit of a knife-edge. If a player does make a character that would be comfortable with spending a year on something so readily, then that character is likely to be less proactive than a character who has things they want to be doing with every day of that time. You instead have to hit the sweet spot of 'I am okay with waiting for events to begin to unfold, but once that starts I become very driven'. That's very challenging RP to ask for. If "time in a game is more compressed" were the primary factor, then novels and films wouldn't have 3-dimensional villains any more than your games seem to.


I don't particularly care either way about the details of implementation here (others clearly do, but I'll leave that to them). Mostly I'm trying to point out the potential consequences to the game if you just cut out the role that orcs traditionally fill without replacing it with 'something'. The consequences are that villains are fighting for something evil and the heroes need to stop them, rather than just being "person that exists so that the PCs don't have to feel remorse yet can still kill him for the sake of killing somebody." Character conflict, not a murder-go-round.


That 'something' could be pack-mentality zombies or intelligent UV radiation that experiences the entirety of time as 'now' or whatever. But it is important not to completely disregard the value of having the occasional 'implacable force' or '2d villain' to act as contrastive or filler elements. The value being "I want to kill something for the sake of killing something, but I don't want to feel bad about being a killer, so I categorically declare that my victims are worse killers than myself?"

For the record, I feature murder-happy characters like that in my games too. I simply cast them as the villains rather than as the heroes.

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-28, 04:55 PM
Europeans can correct me, but there are few cultural depictions of European pagans within the last century, probably because of a lack of pagans. The ones that get depicted are probably depicted as devil-worshipers, which tend to be deviant, weak, and insidious, which is a completely different stereotype. However, a culture which is violent, treats women very badly, stupid, and very strong does not encompass all barbaric stereotypes and might not even be intended that way. But when you have that culture, and make it clear that they cannot ever be redeemed or reasoned with because they are a certain race, well...It tends to remind people of very bad fiction.

Wait, are we using the term "pagan" in a different sense? There are plenty of non-Christian cultures that we used to lump in with the erroneous notion of the Dark Ages, particularly in opposition to the "civilized" Roman empire.

Keep this in mind - any time you see a "dung ages" style pseudo-middle ages depiction in fiction, are there not barbaric tribes that occasionally menace the peasants, like orcs?

Does the savage berserker not come to mind? Do the Norse, the Germanic tribes, the Celts, and other non-Christian European cultures not qualify as a very popular depiction of European pagans? Are these old cultures not treated as primitives who raid, rape and pillage in certain stereotypical fiction?

Granted, you can argue that these cultures don't exist in the same format anymore, but the stereotype remains. Hence why I consider "Orcs = non-whites" to be a misleading comparison.

SiuiS
2015-01-28, 04:56 PM
It's more like every human came from the same source. Any normal human follows what they see as a logical path, and while it's lead to a number of paths, all those paths seem to follow the same rough route. The same applies to non-humans such as dogs. All of a dogs actions seem based on what hey think the best course of action is.

So now you have all life as we know it following a number of rules. The chief one is that they try to keep life going. So the have young and gather the fuel needed to not stop.

Mundane monsters (things like orc, and not things like undead) would appear to follow all the rules of Earth-based life. Therefore they need to follow actions that are in their best interest. If they didn't they would die out long ago.

Also never forget all the parts orc are played by humans in green-face because DMs are too racist to hire real orcs!

While this is accurate, I don't see how this follows from what I said and you quoted. Elaborate?


Is it just me, or does it seem the "you can't depict that, because it's anti-non-white racism" positions are taking a very anglo-centric perspective that is, itself, kind-of racist for assuming that theirs is the only culture that could possibly be represented by the "heroes" of the game who are fighting these "racist" stereotypes?

Yes. Exactly. It's a weird sort of tunnel vision.

NichG
2015-01-28, 05:13 PM
If "time in a game is more compressed" were the primary factor, then novels and films wouldn't have 3-dimensional villains any more than your games seem to.

Um, compression of events has nothing to do with 3-dimensionality of villains. You're mixing up two separate lines of discussion. Compression of events is why players won't be satisfied with 'in 100 years, the raids will stop' as a success end-state of a plotline.



The consequences are that villains are fighting for something evil and the heroes need to stop them, rather than just being "person that exists so that the PCs don't have to feel remorse yet can still kill him for the sake of killing somebody." Character conflict, not a murder-go-round.

A villain who is fighting 'for something evil' is a person-scale Type-3 conflict, as I said. I also consider that to be a fundamentally 2d character, because they're doing things 'for the evulz' not for the specific goal which is necessitating evil methods as part of its completion (Type-2), or because evil is the easiest or most direct path towards the goal (Type-1).


The value being "I want to kill something for the sake of killing something, but I don't want to feel bad about being a killer, so I categorically declare that my victims are worse killers than myself?"

Yes, actually, otherwise known as 'catharsis'. If you're playing a game which is 90% 'rules on how you can kill things', then run a game where its not okay to kill things, then you create a conflict of expectations and leave the player in an unfulfilled state. To run a game with depth in such a case, you need to use artifice to say 'its okay to kill things' but also say 'it isn't always okay to kill things' at the same time, and have that not feel like an unreasonable expectation. Contrastive elements are a way to do this very effectively.

Take the game Bastion for example. Through most of the game, you're killing wildlife or 'gas-bags', which are perhaps intentionally ambiguous as to their degree of sentience, but are clearly on the 'alien' side of things. When you defeat those enemies, they simply disappear from the field. This is used to great effect later on when you're fighting other human enemies of another race and culture which has been at war with your own. When you kill them, the bodies remain on the field.

Without the contrast, it wouldn't be making a point. It'd just be 'oh, when you kill things, they leave a body'.

Icewraith
2015-01-28, 05:21 PM
"Alright guys, here's the deal. While yes, orcs can be molded to fit a variety of unpleasant and outdated cultural motifs, THESE orcs fervently believe in their destiny as eventual conquerors of the world. There is no debate that the deity they worship actually did create their race using his own blood in the early days of history, and that god is actually still around today and is still an incredibly evil sadistic bastard. The clerics of that deity have been whipping these guys into a frenzy about this raid for weeks.

Yes, if things were different they'd probably be a refined culture of peaceful tea drinkers. In an alternate universe your party is composed of sex-crazed roving brig.... err... enlightened sexless beings that practice juggling and the cello, or juggling cellos or something. However, at the moment your party and a bunch of crapsack pushovers with leather armor and spears are the only things stopping these guys from ripping through that considerably more peaceful farming village - not to mention the inn with the cute twins and that one drunk guy who still owes the rogue five gold pieces - like an industrial belt sander through one of those fast food chain ketchup packets.

So, you guys can keep on complaining about how I'm falling victim to unfortunate racist historical stereotypes- the ones that don't account for settings with magic and dragons and where you can plane shift over to a deity's home plane and try to kick it in the shin before you get vaporized. If my use of unrealistic, shallow stereotypes is boring you and ruining your immersion, we can play Scrabble or something.

However, just like in the real world, if a bunch of armed guys show up and start killing people and taking stuff -which is a thing that happens from time to time- and suffer no negative consequences, they'll keep on doing it unless enough people show up with enough firepower to stop them. Or they drown in the blood of their victims or keel over from consuming all the alcohol they've plundered or manage to kill everyone who stands in their way or die of sexual exhaustion or something.

So, what are you guys going to do?"

Tragak
2015-01-28, 05:28 PM
Um, compression of events has nothing to do with 3-dimensionality of villains. You're mixing up two separate lines of discussion. Compression of events is why players won't be satisfied with 'in 100 years, the raids will stop' as a success end-state of a plot line. If you use heroes vs. villains instead of humans vs. non-humans, then you don't need "in 100 years, the raids will stop" to be the only possible success.


A villain who is fighting 'for something evil' is a person-scale Type-3 conflict, as I said. I also consider that to be a fundamentally 2d character, because they're doing things 'for the evulz' not for the specific goal which is necessitating evil methods as part of its completion (Type-2), or because evil is the easiest or most direct path towards the goal (Type-1). Where did that come from? My entire point across all of my comments in this thread is that villains with motivations are more interesting than villains "for the evulz," and I've been trying to figure out why other people would prefer "for the evulz" over 3-dimensional motivations. How did you get "Tragak wants villains to be 'for the evulz' 2-dimensional" out of that?


Yes, actually, otherwise known as 'catharsis'. If you're playing a game which is 90% 'rules on how you can kill things', then run a game where its not okay to kill things, then you create a conflict of expectations and leave the player in an unfulfilled state. To run a game with depth in such a case, you need to use artifice to say 'its okay to kill things' but also say 'it isn't always okay to kill things' at the same time, and have that not feel like an unreasonable expectation. Contrastive elements are a way to do this very effectively.

Take the game Bastion for example. Through most of the game, you're killing wildlife or 'gas-bags', which are perhaps intentionally ambiguous as to their degree of sentience, but are clearly on the 'alien' side of things. When you defeat those enemies, they simply disappear from the field. This is used to great effect later on when you're fighting other human enemies of another race and culture which has been at war with your own. When you kill them, the bodies remain on the field.

Without the contrast, it wouldn't be making a point. It'd just be 'oh, when you kill things, they leave a body'. In my games, the contrasting element is "are the other people villains or not" not "are the other people humans or not"

NichG
2015-01-28, 05:51 PM
If you use heroes vs. villains instead of humans vs. non-humans, then you don't need "in 100 years, the raids will stop" to be the only possible success.

Not relevant.



Where did that come from? My entire point across all of my comments in this thread is that villains with motivations are more interesting than villains "for the evulz," and I've been trying to figure out why other people would prefer "for the evulz" over 3-dimensional motivations. How did you get "Tragak wants villains to be 'for the evulz' 2-dimensional" out of that?

Because you're saying 'what about 3d villains who simply want evil things?'. I'm saying "That's not 3d, thats still 2d, because you're defining them by the evilness of their motivations".

But I'm also saying, you don't need to be absolutist about this, and you shouldn't be. The question isn't "Do I do 3d or 2d villains?". You should do both. They're both tools in your toolkit, and they both have places where their use is extremely effective, especially in synergy with eachother.


In my games, the contrasting element is "are the other people villains or not" not "are the other people humans or not"

That is a very different contrast that is used to communicate a very different message. Its like saying "In my house, we don't eat bread. Instead, we drink tea."

Tragak
2015-01-28, 05:52 PM
"Alright guys, here's the deal. While yes, orcs can be molded to fit a variety of unpleasant and outdated cultural motifs, THESE orcs fervently believe in their destiny as eventual conquerors of the world. There is no debate that the deity they worship actually did create their race using his own blood in the early days of history, and that god is actually still around today and is still an incredibly evil sadistic bastard. The clerics of that deity have been whipping these guys into a frenzy about this raid for weeks.

Yes, if things were different they'd probably be a refined culture of peaceful tea drinkers. In an alternate universe your party is composed of sex-crazed roving brig.... err... enlightened sexless beings that practice juggling and the cello, or juggling cellos or something. However, at the moment your party and a bunch of crapsack pushovers with leather armor and spears are the only things stopping these guys from ripping through that considerably more peaceful farming village - not to mention the inn with the cute twins and that one drunk guy who still owes the rogue five gold pieces - like an industrial belt sander through one of those fast food chain ketchup packets.

So, you guys can keep on complaining about how I'm falling victim to unfortunate racist historical stereotypes- the ones that don't account for settings with magic and dragons and where you can plane shift over to a deity's home plane and try to kick it in the shin before you get vaporized. If my use of unrealistic, shallow stereotypes is boring you and ruining your immersion, we can play Scrabble or something. If by "something" you mean D&D that uses magic, dragons, plane shifting, and deities and yet the villains are 3-dimensional? Challenge accepted retroactively completed. Easily. I've played games where magic, dragons, plane shifting, and deities did not automatically require unrealistic, shallow stereotypes.

If you think that unrealistic, shallow stereotypes are more entertaining than 3-dimensional characters, then don't pretend that "We're playing with magic, dragons, plane shifting, and deities, I have no choice."


However, just like in the real world, if a bunch of armed guys show up and start killing people and taking stuff -which is a thing that happens from time to time- and suffer no negative consequences, they'll keep on doing it unless enough people show up with enough firepower to stop them. Or they drown in the blood of their victims or keel over from consuming all the alcohol they've plundered or manage to kill everyone who stands in their way or die of sexual exhaustion or something. That's how my games work too. Sometimes Orc heroes have the gall to defend their families against rampaging Human villains.


So, what are you guys going to do?" If this "characterization" of sentient people is so important to you, then I will play D&D with somebody else.

JusticeZero
2015-01-28, 05:56 PM
"Alright guys, here's the deal. While yes, orcs can be molded to fit a variety of unpleasant and outdated cultural motifs, THESE orcs fervently believe in their destiny as eventual conquerors of the world. There is no debate that the deity they worship actually did create their race using his own blood in the early days of history, and that god is actually still around today and is still an incredibly evil sadistic bastard. The clerics of that deity have been whipping these guys into a frenzy about this raid for weeks."
And this is FINE, because now we can see some reason for the conflict instead of "Duh, because their entry says 'Chaotic Evil'!"

Eh. It's also how Italians viewed Caucasians. It's also how Caucasians viewed other Caucasians. It's how the English viewed the Scottish. It's how the Irish (and English) viewed the Scandinavians... assuming it means color is a weird form of whitewash. ....It's not accurate to presume this only ever applies to colored people being degenerated by non colored people.
The problem is that for some groups of people, that stereotype of "bloodthirsty degenerate savages" ISN'T IN THE HISTORY BOOKS - they have to deal with it RIGHT NOW. For those of us one of these groups, we still have to deal with people thinking it's OK to use us as mascots representing violence, we still have to deal with police randomly pulling us over and searching us on a regular basis, we still have people assume the worst of us on sight. This isn't something we read about academically and say "What terrible times they must have had in days of old, what say?"

Is it just me, or does it seem the "you can't depict that, because it's anti-non-white racism" positions are taking a very anglo-centric perspective that is, itself, kind-of racist for assuming that theirs is the only culture that could possibly be represented by the "heroes" of the game who are fighting these "racist" stereotypes?
I am not going to deny that there are a few people who are white who are from cultures that are marginalized and oppressed who were recently being slaughtered by the trainload, or murdered by the hundreds by zealous theocrats, or what have you.

...How, exactly, is that a defense, though? All it means is that "Some of the people who this game is going to severely upset because of the themes therein have white skin". It makes it even worse, not better.

McBars
2015-01-28, 06:10 PM
And this is FINE, because now we can see some reason for the conflict instead of "Duh, because their entry says 'Chaotic Evil'!"

The problem is that for some groups of people, that stereotype of "bloodthirsty degenerate savages" ISN'T IN THE HISTORY BOOKS - they have to deal with it RIGHT NOW. For those of us one of these groups, we still have to deal with people thinking it's OK to use us as mascots representing violence, we still have to deal with police randomly pulling us over and searching us on a regular basis, we still have people assume the worst of us on sight. This isn't something we read about academically and say "What terrible times they must have had in days of old, what say?"

I am not going to deny that there are a few people who are white who are from cultures that are marginalized and oppressed who were recently being slaughtered by the trainload, or murdered by the hundreds by zealous theocrats, or what have you.

...How, exactly, is that a defense, though? All it means is that "Some of the people who this game is going to severely upset because of the themes therein have white skin". It makes it even worse, not better.

Come down off the high horse and stop irresponsibly injecting controversy where there is none.

The behavior you describe is an inextricable facet of human biology, a trait passed on due to its usefulness in helping previous generations survive and reproduce. We are a species that relied on visual input and rapid processing/decision-making to carve out our evolutionary niche...and it still serves important purposes today.

Not that such a thing really has anything to do with the OP's point, but people in this thread have stretched it out into an absurd exaggeration that needs deflating.

Milo v3
2015-01-28, 06:19 PM
Most of this is a few pages back, but this is what I get for living on the wrong side of the world.


This just seems like a complete red herring. I have never ever seen "evil because LOL" except in the most comedic of games or fiction. Even the stereotypical orcs in DnD usually have the motivation of wanting goodies from the Good races.
"Evil because LOL" translating to evil for no reason. Though, based on a large amount of posts on this forum, a large amount of people (thankfully doesn't seem to be anywhere near a majority) act as game ruining insane people because "my alignment is evil" rather than for any actual reason in the circumstances.


Also, what does being humanoid have to do with anything? :smallconfused:. I'm assuming you mean "monster" in the moral sense.
I was attempting to isolate how they are monsters, and humanoid was to remove Physically Monstrous as the origin.


So are vampires.
I'd argue against that, I mean, in most forms of media I've witnessed with vampires, as soon as you become a vampire you immediately turn evil for no sapient reason. Generally the reason is "negative energy corrupts the mind" or "vampires don't have souls, so they immediately become evil".

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-28, 06:42 PM
Just wondering, could you link that thread. It sounds interesting. I just enjoy reading discussions like this. (I fall down on the side that Orcs and the like should be in a way human.)

I'm sorry, I'd like to but my search of it failed. It appears to be absent.

123456789blaaa
2015-01-28, 06:48 PM
<snip>
This is a very good point. Nevertheless, I still think that in a group of sapient beings capable of even rudimentary reason would not have out of them a certain percentage that consistently chooses good - because being good is often simply more reasonable than being evil. Granted, I'm looking at this from through an ethics lens, not an epistemological one.

I don't intend to give offence but can you really not think of many plausible and interesting scenarios in which it makes sense for these beings to be evil? With so much variety and imagination in fiction, your reasoning only applies to a subset no?

Also, if racism is a concern, I don't think it's really that much better to say that the group is completely evil and horrible but simply chooses not to be out of self-interest.


Races can be presented in ways that make them a clear and present danger to everyone. An earlier game had an invasion of monsters. "Can we reason with them?" "They're invading because they're a hive creature that reproduces by devouring corpses from the inside out." "O-kay then, roll for initiative!"

However, orcs lost that a long time ago. The WH fungal orcs still have it, but the typical fantasy orc is just a race of "savage" people with tusks. And we've moved beyond demonizing "savages", by and large, because there are a lot of them we talk to on a daily basis. The games where the heroes are going and slaughtering orcs en masse just because they are orcs, with orcs being constructed as a civilization in the way that most fantasy does, has a problem at the modern and diverse table. They make a lot of people stop and say something like:
"Wait a minute. That orc resembles some of my grandparents, before they could afford fancy stuff.. i'm an orc! This game is about a bunch of well-equipped privileged people going into *my hometown* and slaughtering everybody in it. And i'm supposed to be rooting for the murderers?"
Then suddenly, it's all flipped around in ways that are extremely uncomfortable in ways that nobody should have to deal with.

The issue here then seems to not be an inherent problem with the idea of irredeemably "evil" races/species/etc. Instead, lack of thought and bad world-building leading to unfortunate implications.

One of the reasons racist sterotypes were so effective is because they tapped into pre-existing fears and ideas that grabbed the imagination. The idea of savagery and bestial urges lurking beneath a veneer of civilisation were still there before racism came into the picture. People just tapped into that and turned it into a weapon of hate by applying it to actual people instead of supernatural monsters (like werewolves for example).

I think that the idea of personfying these fears to use in a story is still a valid literary tool and can be done without reinforcing racism. Like...take Pathfinders Africa-pastiche in their campaign world Golarion. There is a ape-man demon lord that sends out chattering ape-men minions to do horrible things to the surrounding people...who are black tribespeople. They fight against the ape-people and are just as good and intelligent as the people in the europe/amerca/etc countries. Are the ape-men racist? They certainly make use of imagery that could be quite racist. But I think there's a very clear dividing line that stops the unfortunate implications.


It's a spectrum. This forum trends toward the complex motivation end of the spectrum. Other areas of the net trend to other ends. Orcs as viable intelligent nonevil monsters has been around as long as I have – thirty years or more.

Unlike honest Tiefling, I did grow up with antagonists as savages. But rather than elevating the savages to high moral actors, a lot of my fiction looked at what makes high moral actors into savages. This made something clear to me; whether an antagonistis portrayed as a very week thought out choice maker, or simply an implacable force the protagonist struggles against, is a choice that must serve the fiction. Yes, which choice is considered the default says something about the person designing the fiction, and yes, needing to portrayed non-protagonists as mindless objectively wicked savages is unfortunate and has moral implications. But once that becomes a choice, made rationally and for specific reasons rather than 'because that's how it is/should be', then there is no problem.


<snip>
If that evil organization is instead made up of, e.g., robots designed and programmed to exterminate all life (but to do so over a term of a century lets say, and so able to use strategy and other aspects of civilization-level intelligence beyond 'kill what is in front of me'), then there isn't that instinct. You aren't primed to expect that you could negotiate with the kill-bot. Its made very clear that there is no way that your goals and their goals will ever be anything but mutually defeating, and that their goals are intrinsic to them and not to the world. That last bit is what distinguishes it from Type-2 conflicts.

Allow me to thank you guys/gals. You're saying a lot of what I want to say but better than I'm thinking it.


Most of this is a few pages back, but this is what I get for living on the wrong side of the world.


"Evil because LOL" translating to evil for no reason. Though, based on a large amount of posts on this forum, a large amount of people (thankfully doesn't seem to be anywhere near a majority) act as game ruining insane people because "my alignment is evil" rather than for any actual reason in the circumstances.


I was attempting to isolate how they are monsters, and humanoid was to remove Physically Monstrous as the origin.


I'd argue against that, I mean, in most forms of media I've witnessed with vampires, as soon as you become a vampire you immediately turn evil for no sapient reason. Generally the reason is "negative energy corrupts the mind" or "vampires don't have souls, so they immediately become evil".

I understood that. My point is that utter ireedeemable monsters can be both sapient and also have motivations and reasons for their actions that make sense. Do you disagree with this?

Citrakayah
2015-01-28, 06:50 PM
Yes - but those aren't all bipedal, clothes-wearing tool-users.

There's a great many similarities between many of the D&D "monstrous races" and the "player races".

And, for that matter, even if they are bipedal, clothes-wearing tool-users, that doesn't mean you have to have them operate off of human psychology. Nor does it mean they have to be evil or antagonists. And it definitely doesn't mean they have to have inscrutable motivations that for some reason always end up causing trouble for us.

The easiest way to do this is to look at how the species evolved, and then look at how that would influence its behavior and culture, taking into account change over time due to environmental conditions and internal factors. For instance, if you want to have gnolls in your game, instead of looking to standard fantasy tropes, my preferred method is to do the necessary research and learn:

1. How people in similar areas survived.
2. How spotted hyenas behave.

Amphetryon
2015-01-28, 06:54 PM
I read with a little irritation the recent thread about the trend toward humanising orcs in TRPGs, by a refusal to accept orcs as naturally or irredeemably evil. Instead, according to this trendy view, they must be human in monster drag with comprehensible human motivations, with perhaps some psychological window dressing. I wonder at this trend. Enlighten me: is it part of a general trend in fantasy games to humanise all monsters, so that no monster can simply be evil, but must essentially be a human and find its evilness in terms of its humanity? Is this a robust trend or a probably short-lived one? How much of this trend existed in original/old school TRPG participants and was perhaps overlooked?

The core of the issue is that most writers (certainly more than half) are human. This is true whether they write TRPG adventures or other fictional works we broadly and collectively call 'Fantasy.' As such, the writers have this natural tendency to want to produce characters, both Good and Evil, with motivations that are somehow comprehensible to their readers, who are - again - mostly human. Because of this, the motivations presented are generally ones shared by humans, because those are the ones understood by humans on some level.

Milo v3
2015-01-28, 07:23 PM
I understood that. My point is that utter ireedeemable monsters can be both sapient and also have motivations and reasons for their actions that make sense. Do you disagree with this?

Don't disagree at all, having motivations and reasons for their actions is all that is needed for the evil to make sense. Evil because evil doesn't make sense, but, as long as it makes sense from their point of view I can see them doing evil actions.

I wasn't aiming to disagree, merely explain what I meant by saying "Evil 'cause LOL"

SiuiS
2015-01-28, 07:30 PM
And this is FINE, because now we can see some reason for the conflict instead of "Duh, because their entry says 'Chaotic Evil'!"[/wuote]

I don't believe anyone ever really just wants them to be evil because the book says. I think it just gets old having to justify why the bad guys are bad every single time. Maybe it should: maybe it will make people think about who they pick to be bad and why they pick those specific monsters all the time. But mostly it just burns people out.

The problem is "burning out racists" and "burning out friends" can be the same thing, and as a community we want one but not the other. Cognitive dissonance ensues.

[quote]The problem is that for some groups of people, that stereotype of "bloodthirsty degenerate savages" ISN'T IN THE HISTORY BOOKS - they have to deal with it RIGHT NOW.

This is true. It's also political, so not with going into. Us Irish still face this, believe it or not, though. And us queers. I am not outside the issue, I just understand the outside perspective.

Bob of Mage
2015-01-28, 07:33 PM
I would just like to add that I just remembered a comedy skit that I once saw on TV that touchs on this issue.

There was a party of adventurers standing around the body of a dragon that they had just killed. Along comes some sort of guard. Said guard informs them that it's illegal to hunt dragons here. Now the party is looking uneasy as this is happening as since they clearly broke the law and aren't overpowered enough to wipe out whole nations yet. Along comes an orc who informs the guard that they were with him and shows his orc status card and that they were partaking in a traditional orc hunt which is legal. The guard and the orc go on to talk about the hardships the orc people have suffered and how sorry the guard feels about that.

Now clearly it's so easy to put Aboriginal in the role of orcs that such a skit would have worked for anyone who had any idea about thier history. Orcs, kobolds, lizardfolk and so on, have no right to defend the land the lived on for countless years. Most of the time the monsters have lived on the land they are fought on for a long time. Since they don't know how to use it right and don't know how to live right, it's the job of "good" races to take it from them.

If a gnome faction acted the same way would a party of heros set out to kill every last one of them like they were kobolds? I'm pretty sure you would not kill every last one of them, even the kids. In fact you wouldn't even need the kobolds to do anything other then exist for it to be alright to march in is murder them all and take their loot. Same thing when orcs and humans fight over land. Fat chance in nine hell that the orcs well ever be sided with unless there's a very, very strong reason (outright LG orcs vs CE bady eating humans).

It's very easy to see why someone would dislike the world as is in default D&D.

Icewraith
2015-01-28, 08:10 PM
If by "something" you mean D&D that uses magic, dragons, plane shifting, and deities and yet the villains are 3-dimensional? Challenge accepted retroactively completed. Easily. I've played games where magic, dragons, plane shifting, and deities did not automatically require unrealistic, shallow stereotypes.

If you think that unrealistic, shallow stereotypes are more entertaining than 3-dimensional characters, then don't pretend that "We're playing with magic, dragons, plane shifting, and deities, I have no choice."

That's how my games work too. Sometimes Orc heroes have the gall to defend their families against rampaging Human villains.

If this "characterization" of sentient people is so important to you, then I will play D&D with somebody else.

No my point is that the orc raiding party being portrayed in my post is not composed of unrealistic, shallow stereotypes if I understand how other people are using those words. They're also still a fairly "standard" high fantasy orc raiding party about to destroy a comparatively defenseless village unless the PCs intervene.

Seriously, what else do you want? The guy in charge of their culture has set things up to ensure that he stays in power perpetually and that the culture will fulfill his goals in the manner he desires. He rewards those who act according to his wishes and punishes those who do not. Anyone who disagrees with him ends up dead or in exile. None of this is exactly unrealistic. While there are, or at least there can be, other groups of orcs that don't fit in with this characterization, they're not here unless one of the PCs is an exiled orc.

You want depth? There's an entire organization with goals, short term tactical plans, long term strategic plans and a society to mold into an unstoppable fighting force. There's a ridiculously powerful villain running things and a massive clergy full of potentially important characters with their own possibly subtle motivations and goals. There's probably a series of hidden refuges of orcs who don't follow Gruumsh. Maybe they're enlightened, peaceable folk who abhor conflict and merely wish to stay hidden. Maybe they just switched over to a militaristic but less evil deity and wish to supplant the current clergy. Maybe they're actually secret Vecna worshipping cultists and even more evil and dangerous than the Gruumsh orcs.

But, just because the end result of all this is still an orc raiding party attacking a defenseless village in front of the PCs doesn't mean that I'm in the "orcs are chaotic evil in the MM so they are open season" camp. Maybe they're the "standard" orcs, at least at first glance, and that might make them a stereotype, but it's neither "unrealistic", nor is it racist, nor does it need to be shallow.

Edit: Also, does your response mean that you would rather leave the gaming table than defend a village (that you have been to at least once and if all the people there are evil cultists or something they're extremely talented actors) against an orc raiding party?

oudeis
2015-01-28, 08:16 PM
Every time I see threads like this my stomach clenches up. The debate swiftly becomes a litmus test for real-world racial beliefs and a competition to prove who is the most enlightened. Some few attempt to bring reason to an emotion fight and suffer a predictable backlash, and after a fairly short time the outrage- Outrage, I tell you!- wanes until the next time someone raises the topic, when it flares up just as brightly as it did before.

So let me ask you all this: How many times, and I want examples, have you personally encountered these kind of situations in games you've played in? What was the average age of the players involved? Can you cite proof or even circumstantial evidence that the GM or the other players were deliberately inserting or attributing characteristics to the 'Orcs' of your game that were stereotyped insults directed at you, your background, or your beliefs? Most importantly, has this been the predominant theme in your gaming experience so far?

If not, then please stop arguing that fantastic simplification automatically equates to real racism.


This has to stop. Posts that insist this have to stop. Threads that raise this have to stop. I can't tell you how utterly wearying it is to read smug, sanctimonious, and simplistic attempts to assert that using [insert fantasy creature here] as Teh Evul RaceTM is really an attempt to justify or perpetuate some hateful personal belief using RPG mechanics. "Bob the DM is using Orcs as the bad guys in his campaign? Clearly he's a closet racist! " Please, just desist.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-28, 08:31 PM
Every time I see threads like this my stomach clenches up. The debate swiftly becomes a litmus test for real-world racial beliefs and a competition to prove who is the most enlightened. Some few attempt to bring reason to an emotion fight and suffer a predictable backlash, and after a fairly short time the outrage- Outrage, I tell you!- wanes until the next time someone raises the topic, when it flares up just as brightly as it did before.

So let me ask you all this: How many times, and I want examples, have you personally encountered these kind of situations in games you've played in? What was the average age of the players involved? Can you cite proof or even circumstantial evidence that the GM or the other players were deliberately inserting or attributing characteristics to the 'Orcs' of your game that were stereotyped insults directed at you, your background, or your beliefs? Most importantly, has this been the predominant theme in your gaming experience so far?

If not, then please stop arguing that fantastic simplification automatically equates to real racism.


This has to stop. Posts that insist this have to stop. Threads that raise this have to stop. I can't tell you how utterly wearying it is to read smug, sanctimonious, and simplistic attempts to assert that using [insert fantasy creature here] as Teh Evul RaceTM is really an attempt to justify or perpetuate some hateful personal belief using RPG mechanics. "Bob the DM is using Orcs as the bad guys in his campaign? Clearly he's a closet racist! " Please, just desist.

Better said than I could.

McBars
2015-01-28, 08:33 PM
Every time I see threads like this my stomach clenches up. The debate swiftly becomes a litmus test for real-world racial beliefs and a competition to prove who is the most enlightened. Some few attempt to bring reason to an emotion fight and suffer a predictable backlash, and after a fairly short time the outrage- Outrage, I tell you!- wanes until the next time someone raises the topic, when it flares up just as brightly as it did before.

So let me ask you all this: How many times, and I want examples, have you personally encountered these kind of situations in games you've played in? What was the average age of the players involved? Can you cite proof or even circumstantial evidence that the GM or the other players were deliberately inserting or attributing characteristics to the 'Orcs' of your game that were stereotyped insults directed at you, your background, or your beliefs? Most importantly, has this been the predominant theme in your gaming experience so far?

If not, then please stop arguing that fantastic simplification automatically equates to real racism.


This has to stop. Posts that insist this have to stop. Threads that raise this have to stop. I can't tell you how utterly wearying it is to read smug, sanctimonious, and simplistic attempts to assert that using [insert fantasy creature here] as Teh Evul RaceTM is really an attempt to justify or perpetuate some hateful personal belief using RPG mechanics. "Bob the DM is using Orcs as the bad guys in his campaign? Clearly he's a closet racist! " Please, just desist.

Encore! Encore!

Icewraith
2015-01-28, 08:55 PM
I had a DM introduce a pair of probably gay NPCs who were likely pulled from a TV show with characters he was shipping and possibly writing fanfiction about. The party later tried to assassinate them. Repeatedly.

However,
1- it was high school,
2- This was the group's first attempt at an "evil campaign", we were trying to kill everything in sight.
3- you must understand, the problem wasn't that they were "probably gay". The problem was that it turned out the DM had a thing similar to the SUE files DM where it turned out certain NPCs were self inserts and suddenly grew 9th level spell slots or miraculously escaped events unharmed when inconvenienced. Also, whatever he was going for, nobody else knew the reference and the characters came off as annoying and unpleasant. So, the DM introduced a pair of annoying and absurdly yet inconsistently powerful self insert characters into a campaign where the PCs were already trying to destroy everything that was normally held good and holy.

So of course, the party response was something like "challenge accepted".

It all mostly worked out- the campaign self destructed of course, and he thought we were being bigots until we all sat down and had a chat regarding points two and three, also he hadn't actually come out to any of us (and didn't for awhile afterwards IIRC, although we all suspected but didn't have actual confirmation) so we were missing some context.

We went on to run a number of non-evil campaigns and he learned a valuable lesson on the importance of maintaining a consistent world and knowing your players (you can steal plots from things we don't follow, but don't expect us to get jokes or think things are funny or understand what's actually going on if they require knowledge of the content), so it worked out for the best.

That's the closest I've got to real world racism or bigotry at the tabletop, but it was interesting enough I thought I'd share.

awa
2015-01-28, 09:29 PM
Its funny i rarely have all evil humanoids, alien perhaps but not all evil. But whenever i hear these debates and lots of people saying that an all evil race means I'm raciest or my world/ story is immature or underdeveloped.

It makes me want to come up with reasons for species that need to be put down. Species that spawn by the dozens constantly swarming out to wipe out settled species. Elegant sadists who get endorphin rushes from seeing other species in pain. Hierarchically species who have an ingrained need to force any weaker then themselves into subservience and are driven to a murderous rage at any who would act against their order and many more.

Tragak
2015-01-28, 09:49 PM
This has to stop. Posts that insist this have to stop. Threads that raise this have to stop. I can't tell you how utterly wearying it is to read smug, sanctimonious, and simplistic attempts to assert that using [insert fantasy creature here] as Teh Evul RaceTM is really an attempt to justify or perpetuate some hateful personal belief using RPG mechanics. "Bob the DM is using Orcs as the bad guys in his campaign? Clearly he's a closet racist!" Please, just desist. But the thing is that you could be saying this anywhere: WotC, MinMaxBoards, RPGnet... Why come to GiantITP and bother the fans of this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=12718550&postcount=120)?

JusticeZero
2015-01-28, 10:14 PM
And this is FINE, because now we can see some reason for the conflict instead of "Duh, because their entry says 'Chaotic Evil'!"
I don't believe anyone ever really just wants them to be evil because the book says..
I read with a little irritation the recent thread about the trend toward humanising orcs in TRPGs, by a refusal to accept orcs as naturally or irredeemably evil.
Instead, according to this trendy view, they must be human in monster drag with comprehensible human motivations, with perhaps some psychological window dressing..
You were saying?

McBars
2015-01-29, 01:18 AM
But the thing is that you could be saying this anywhere: WotC, MinMaxBoards, RPGnet... Why come to GiantITP and bother the fans of this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=12718550&postcount=120)?

Why? Because not everyone on this forum is necessarily in agreement with that sentiment, which hinges on an absurd slippery slope argument to make the connection between generalizations about fantasy creatures begetting real-life racism. I think it's incredibly irresponsible to inflame people by suggesting a serious link between the two.

It also completely disregards any differences between the biology of different in-game species (for example orcs and humans)...biology which may result in profoundly different spectra of behavior for each species. Silly as it is to talk about this type of thing with respect to elf games, that's where this thread has wound up.

Psyren
2015-01-29, 02:01 AM
I don't think it would be that hard for WotC or Paizo or whoever else to append "bandit" next to "orc" in the MM/Bestiary so that you know they're evil due to their profession rather than their race. Paizo at least went in the right direction by allowing Goblins, Hobgoblins, Orcs and Drow as PC races and pointing out that most of them end up evil due to socialization/culture rather than biology.(Culture of course being much easier and faster to shift than genetics.)

I also don't think the Giant's argument is in any way a slippery slope. Objectifying a fictional sentient being truly isn't that far off from objectifying a real one. It's why things like caricatures and stereotypes are so troubling.

Yukitsu
2015-01-29, 03:20 AM
I don't think it would be that hard for WotC or Paizo or whoever else to append "bandit" next to "orc" in the MM/Bestiary so that you know they're evil due to their profession rather than their race. Paizo at least went in the right direction by allowing Goblins, Hobgoblins, Orcs and Drow as PC races and pointing out that most of them end up evil due to socialization/culture rather than biology.(Culture of course being much easier and faster to shift than genetics.)

I also don't think the Giant's argument is in any way a slippery slope. Objectifying a fictional sentient being truly isn't that far off from objectifying a real one. It's why things like caricatures and stereotypes are so troubling.

I should point out that that's nearly verbatim what Jack Thompson says about video games.

Can't say I really get why genetics should have anything to do with anything. Virtually every setting with them, Gods created the orcs, not genetics.

Rion
2015-01-29, 03:55 AM
Since people have already talked about how to bring other types of conflict in than "They are evil because they are green and have tusks and we don't", I would like to emphasise that you could take inspiration from real life history as well as folk tales from the middle ages on how conflicts form.

Based on history here are two examples on how someone can create instability and be aggressive without being in it "for the evulz":
A philosopher king is attempting to rule as a wise king, and is constructing schools and universities as well as being a patron of both the arts and sciences (magics in fantasy), and he funds chartering of new towns and improvements of infrastructure and irrigation, but as a ruler he is also preoccupied with having the best possible army according to what he knows. All of this requires immense amounts of money. In fact all of this requires so large amounts of money that even being the owner of the only gold mines in the region plus taxation isn't enough to fund all this progress he is doing. So he wages war for the purpose of acquiring not neccessarily land, territory and raw resources, but to extract wealth from the neighbouring realms through looting, pillaging, ransoming and ransacking.

Secondly you have an "evil advisor", except he is not actually evil. He genuilly have the best interests of both the country and the royal dynasty at heart, he wants stability, peace and strength for his country, and since person who rules because of his birth is not likely to be as good as he is, he often overrules and subverts the actual king's orders because he finds them ignorant, hasty or too emotional, and he won't let the king loose his head or the kingdom descend into anarchy because the king doesn't think long enough or hard enough about decisions, but prefers to make them with the heart.
Add in a good dose of being willing to achieve strength and peace for his own country through destabilising the neighbouring ones via espionage and covert operations, and you have someone who can easily serve as an antagonist.

Or from folk tales, maybe you have someone who is an outlaw and therefore needs to survive through robbery by neccessity, but his outlaw status is derived from an act committed because of either love or honour?

How about a realm of merchants driven to piracy because one of the regiond they were old trading partners with have found an easier route to the other one?

What about just plain greed, rather than "for evulz"? Merchant republics fighting each other over trading posts, brothers fighting over their father's kingdom, border skirmishes and reaving because the peasants who do it live like barons?

I've already tried to stay away from mentioning exactly what I'm referring to in real life history with the examples, but I'm definitely going to do so even more with the following example: What about conflicts caused by religion? And both not talking about the crusades myself, nor do I think others talking about the crusades would be a good idea, but I am talking about situtations where one nation of a specific religion launched an attempt at forced conversion on a nation of a different religion (complete with trying to eradicate everything tied to their old worship), and the rest of the peoples of the other religion responded through raids and violence targetting all of the nations adhering to the first religion?

All of these are more "low" or "dark" fantasy than "high", but if you want sources of grey and grey morality where the conflict is still unavoidable but not through ignorance, then they are quite good.

Psyren
2015-01-29, 04:18 AM
I should point out that that's nearly verbatim what Jack Thompson says about video games.

No, it's not even close to verbatim. Jack Thompson's argument was performing X act in video game makes you more likely to perform X act in real life, which is ridiculous. What the Giant was talking about was the more abstract idea that being conditioned to see a fictional race as the enemy for no other reason than because of their race, desensitized you to the questions you should be asking about whether going after individual members of that race is truly justified.

In short, Jack Thompson believed games condition you to perform certain acts - but unless those acts are pushing buttons on a lump of plastic he was pretty far off base. The Giant meanwhile was pointing out that games (and other media) can instead condition you to think a certain way, or at the very least to form certain conclusions very quickly via their unique brand of design shorthand. That is actually a true danger, because your mind can be conditioned in that way regardless of the physical actions you take while playing a game, and that conditioning can color and contextualize your outlook after the game has ended.

Propaganda games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP4_bMhZ4gA) take this sort of conditioning to its logical conclusion but any experience immersive enough is capable of it on at least some level.

Belial_the_Leveler
2015-01-29, 04:46 AM
Interesting comparison:


1) Many substances that affect the body's chemistry can result in irrational or violently destructive behavior. Someone who takes such substances thinks differently than the average person. They might or might not remain fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action (depending on the substance) but they have no choice about their irrational or violently destructive disposition.

2) Orcs and goblins have slightly different body chemistry than humans. They often are portrayed as irrational and violently destructive. They are fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action and are portrayed as "Evil".




Yes people. It is possible to make an entire race that is irrational and violently destructive as a whole. We, in real life, pretty much have such a capacity to breed humans altered genetically to have many kinds of problems - including personality issues. Give us another century and we will be able to perfect this ability. Now, a guy like Morgoth is an immortal Greater Power with supernatural resources and access to near-infinite test subjects. Of course he could make a sentient "evil" race - and he did.

Segev
2015-01-29, 09:24 AM
But the thing is that you could be saying this anywhere: WotC, MinMaxBoards, RPGnet... Why come to GiantITP and bother the fans of this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=12718550&postcount=120)?I think the reason he posted that on this board rather than the others is that he happens to be on this board and got tired of reading it in his usual hangout.


Interesting comparison:


1) Many substances that affect the body's chemistry can result in irrational or violently destructive behavior. Someone who takes such substances thinks differently than the average person. They might or might not remain fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action (depending on the substance) but they have no choice about their irrational or violently destructive disposition.

2) Orcs and goblins have slightly different body chemistry than humans. They often are portrayed as irrational and violently destructive. They are fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action and are portrayed as "Evil".




Yes people. It is possible to make an entire race that is irrational and violently destructive as a whole. We, in real life, pretty much have such a capacity to breed humans altered genetically to have many kinds of problems - including personality issues. Give us another century and we will be able to perfect this ability. Now, a guy like Morgoth is an immortal Greater Power with supernatural resources and access to near-infinite test subjects. Of course he could make a sentient "evil" race - and he did.

Sure, though if that's all there is...I question the viability of such a race, absent Morgoth or Gruumsh or the like magicaly/divinely making sure they survive. I mean, just imagine an entire civilization of humans who consistently fed their children and kept takign as adults those substances. I don't think they'd do well.

NichG
2015-01-29, 09:36 AM
Of course, generally speaking, the orcs fare pretty poorly against everyone else in just about every comparison you want to make in most settings. They have all sorts of problems: more internal strife, less efficient means of feeding themselves and their clan (thus necessitating raids), less technology (e.g. magical crafting), less available spare time per individual for non-survival tasks, shorter lifespans, fewer high-level characters, and a tendency to get used as cannon fodder by more individually powerful evil entities such as e.g. Saruman. 'Drugged into the stone-age by a deity who has empty-nest syndrome and doesn't want its creations to become independent' would, actually, explain a lot of that. They're not made to be stable, because then they wouldn't need their creator anymore.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-29, 09:47 AM
Interesting comparison:


1) Many substances that affect the body's chemistry can result in irrational or violently destructive behavior. Someone who takes such substances thinks differently than the average person. They might or might not remain fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action (depending on the substance) but they have no choice about their irrational or violently destructive disposition.

2) Orcs and goblins have slightly different body chemistry than humans. They often are portrayed as irrational and violently destructive. They are fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action and are portrayed as "Evil".




Yes people. It is possible to make an entire race that is irrational and violently destructive as a whole. We, in real life, pretty much have such a capacity to breed humans altered genetically to have many kinds of problems - including personality issues. Give us another century and we will be able to perfect this ability. Now, a guy like Morgoth is an immortal Greater Power with supernatural resources and access to near-infinite test subjects. Of course he could make a sentient "evil" race - and he did.

Couldn't we also imagine it the other way around, wherein an animal is developed or evolved, such that it has a high level of intelligence, along with natural cruelty and sadism? A more developed version of the possibilities suggested by a chimpanzee?--developed to the point just short of being capable of higher creative thought. In many cases, uneducated humans might find themselves on apparent par with the more highly developed such beings, but the highest developed humans would outclass the highest developed among them. Just locate the difference between man and beast as such, and remove that quality from man, to produce the mind of the evil race in question.

YossarianLives
2015-01-29, 09:53 AM
I sure do love a nice gitp argument. This is great! Wait for me I need to get some popcorn.

*gets popcorn*

Psyren
2015-01-29, 10:21 AM
Interesting comparison:


1) Many substances that affect the body's chemistry can result in irrational or violently destructive behavior. Someone who takes such substances thinks differently than the average person. They might or might not remain fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action (depending on the substance) but they have no choice about their irrational or violently destructive disposition.

2) Orcs and goblins have slightly different body chemistry than humans. They often are portrayed as irrational and violently destructive. They are fully capable of coherent thought and deliberate action and are portrayed as "Evil".




Yes people. It is possible to make an entire race that is irrational and violently destructive as a whole. We, in real life, pretty much have such a capacity to breed humans altered genetically to have many kinds of problems - including personality issues. Give us another century and we will be able to perfect this ability. Now, a guy like Morgoth is an immortal Greater Power with supernatural resources and access to near-infinite test subjects. Of course he could make a sentient "evil" race - and he did.

Nah - at best you can make such a race predisposed to be irrational and violent. So long as they are intelligent though, they can combat those urges, and so long as they have the capacity to do so then genocide/slaughtering them en masse is not the answer for any character with any pretensions to goodness.

Basically, for any race that isn't made from or powered by evil itself, you can choose "intelligent" or "must be slaughtered at every opportunity" - never both.

goto124
2015-01-29, 10:25 AM
'Must be slaughtered 99% of the time' :P

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-29, 11:31 AM
Nah - at best you can make such a race predisposed to be irrational and violent. So long as they are intelligent though, they can combat those urges, and so long as they have the capacity to do so then genocide/slaughtering them en masse is not the answer for any character with any pretensions to goodness.

Basically, for any race that isn't made from or powered by evil itself, you can choose "intelligent" or "must be slaughtered at every opportunity" - never both.

Unless such creatures are essentially very very highly developed animals, lacking a moral free will. In which case, they can be slaughtered with impunity whatever their intelligence level.

Or, even better, the creature in question represents someone dedicated to evil, who has made his choice in the past tense to be as wicked as possible. Imagine orc souls being readied for incarnation. The orc's spiritual difference from the human's is, the orc makes his choice as to dedicate himself to good or evil before being incarnated. The ones that pick good, are shunted away somewhere else or destroyed, but the ones that pick evil are incarnated as orcs. That would make the entire race intelligent and to be slaughtered at every opportunity.

BTW what does "made from or powered by evil" mean? If I'm a devil made from or powered by evil, how is that my fault any more than an aggressive animal's aggression is its fault?

hamishspence
2015-01-29, 11:42 AM
Unless such creatures are essentially very very highly developed animals, lacking a moral free will.

How do we know animals like chimps and dolphins don't have a "moral free will"?

In some editions of D&D, dolphins have a Good alignment. Being a "very highly developed animal" does not preclude free will.

Segev
2015-01-29, 11:51 AM
Honestly, my concern over the concept of "orcs et al are creatures of evil who can't be other than that because they're made of evil" is that it overlaps with the concept of [evil] outsiders. Who are, literally, made of evil and cannot be anything else. The few whose alignments fail to match their alignment subtypes are literally insane.

How do you differentiate that from "this humanoid race is always evil because they're made evil and can't be anything else?"

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-29, 11:53 AM
How do we know animals like chimps and dolphins don't have a "moral free will"?

In some editions of D&D, dolphins have a Good alignment. Being a "very highly developed animal" does not preclude free will.

They lack creativity, in the specific sense suggested by the concept of the doubling of the square, for example. Bring me a dolphin or a chimp--or a scarab beetle or a bass fish, for that matter--that can be led through to discover the principle of doubling of the square, and I for one'll welcome it into the ranks of Humanity.

The Good-aligned dolphins you reference, is that not a case of irrefragable goodness, one from which they cannot depart?

hamishspence
2015-01-29, 12:06 PM
Don't think so. Even in 1e, "Good" races like elves and dwarves had plenty of Evil characters as well.

Icewraith
2015-01-29, 12:12 PM
They lack creativity, in the specific sense suggested by the concept of the doubling of the square, for example. Bring me a dolphin or a chimp--or a scarab beetle or a bass fish, for that matter--that can be led through to discover the principle of doubling of the square, and I for one'll welcome it into the ranks of Humanity.

The Good-aligned dolphins you reference, is that not a case of irrefragable goodness, one from which they cannot depart?

I wouldn't base any definition of sentience, creativity, or mental capability on the ability to understand or implement a particular mathematical concept. Not while bees are better than us at the traveling salesman problem.

Thialfi
2015-01-29, 01:03 PM
In reading through this and other threads like it, I'm wondering if it's much ado about nothing. My gaming experiences are limited to the same group of people I've been playing with for 30+ years now. Are there games out there where the distinctions drawn here actually come in to play?

My group has always taken the alignment of creatures as a baseline for how encounters with those creatures are likely to proceed. When the DM actually designs encounters the players are usually aware of the stakes and either know or work to discover who the villians of the scenario are. I even ran a Forgotten Realms scenario where the mists of Ravenloft were threatening to claim a local independent town. An army in the service of Lathander was dispatched to end this threat. The leaders of the army were either neutral good or lawful good. They ordered the government to submit to martial law and recognize the authority of the church of Lathander to deal with the crisis. The heroes are hired by the local Lord and Lady (who was a half-drow) to both end the undead threat and disabuse the Lathanderites of the notion that they had the right to usurp the government by any means necessary. By all accounts the leaders of the town were well loved by the citizenry and ruled their town with a wise and even hand. I had paladins fighting paladins with neither side risking a fall from grace.

Are there really groups that run into an orc village and say "well, book says they are chaotic evil. We should wipe them all out"?

I just have a hard time picturing a group being that black and white about anything. I have an even harder time picturing changing the wording of the alignment to "usually chaotic evil" having any effect on the gameplay of such a black and white group.

hamishspence
2015-01-29, 01:14 PM
Are there really groups that run into an orc village and say "well, book says they are chaotic evil. We should wipe them all out"?

I just have a hard time picturing a group being that black and white about anything.

If you believe some of The Giant's comments, something like 90% of groups used to be like that:


The comic is criticizing not how the game is intended to be played, but how the game is actually played and has been for 35+ years. And how it is actually played 9 times out of 10 is that goblins are slaughtered because they are goblins, and the book says that goblins are Evil so it's OK. If you've never played in a game with people like that, then congratulations! You've had an exceptionally lucky D&D career, and that whole portion of the comic's subtext is Not For You. But there are plenty of people who maybe have never given it a second thought.

Psyren
2015-01-29, 01:28 PM
How do you differentiate that from "this humanoid race is always evil because they're made evil and can't be anything else?"

Which humanoid race is always evil? When I look at Orcs, Kobolds and even Drow I see "usually."

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-29, 01:42 PM
How do we know animals like chimps and dolphins don't have a "moral free will"?

In some editions of D&D, dolphins have a Good alignment. Being a "very highly developed animal" does not preclude free will.

I know this is a tangent, but I am laughing my ass off at the thought of Good-aligned dolphins being in a monster manual somewhere.

Whoever wrote that entry does NOT understand dolphins. Or ascribes to the hippy-dippy painted-van idea of dolphins, or perhaps Flipper.

Dolphins are capable of what we'd consider to be pretty evil behaviors, including gang rape and infanticide. That said, they are also capable of extremely good and helpful acts, so chalk it up to being intelligent and social creatures.

The sapient/free-willed line is an extremely blurry one, anyway. Without an idea of a identifiable culture or what constitutes a moral code similar to our own, debating "moral free will" is a bit difficult. Our conception of good/evil as a binary choice or alignment standard might not even enter into the consideration of another intelligent species. Such creatures might posess little-to-no concept of it, so our standards are moot.

Then again, I'm no zoologist.

Segev
2015-01-29, 01:47 PM
I wouldn't base any definition of sentience, creativity, or mental capability on the ability to understand or implement a particular mathematical concept. Not while bees are better than us at the traveling salesman problem.They...really aren't. They utilize a swarming algorithm (which we've co-opted for many kinds of problem solving). They aren't better so much as they have more tries they can do in parallel.

Take enough humans, let them each attempt to solve the problem while communicating with each other, and they will manage it just as effectively (assuming they don't overthink it).

Also... http://xkcd.com/399/


Which humanoid race is always evil? When I look at Orcs, Kobolds and even Drow I see "usually."

I can't think of one. I am responding to those who comment that they like their orcs to on some elemental level be made up of evil. I am too lazy to find quotes, but I've seen something to that effect several times in this thread. Perhaps it is a straw man; if so, I apologize.

123456789blaaa
2015-01-29, 01:51 PM
You were saying?

...he didn't say anything about wanting it because the book said it. He said he didn't like the refusal to accept that orcs can't be naturally and irredeemably evil. Nothing about having CE beside an entry (that wouldn't even make sense in games without alignment). He could very well dislike that kind of paper-thin justification.

Amphetryon
2015-01-29, 01:59 PM
If you believe some of The Giant's comments, something like 90% of groups used to be like that:

I'm personally curious as to the size and nature of the Giant's survey sample supporting the '9 out of 10' assertion.

1337 b4k4
2015-01-29, 02:21 PM
Honestly, my concern over the concept of "orcs et al are creatures of evil who can't be other than that because they're made of evil" is that it overlaps with the concept of [evil] outsiders. Who are, literally, made of evil and cannot be anything else. The few whose alignments fail to match their alignment subtypes are literally insane.

How do you differentiate that from "this humanoid race is always evil because they're made evil and can't be anything else?"

You don't along morality lines. Not really anyway. Trace most of these evil fantasy creatures back far enough and a lot of them are a) intentional allegories or mirrors of specific dark parts of human nature and b) just one part of the "armies of evil". What makes an orc different from a vampire different from a devil or demon is the specific dark part of human nature they're supposed to be. Orcs are (in general, your specific version may vary) the savagery of the human race. Our animal interior laid bare without the thin veneer of civilization keeping it at bay. It's what we fear we become were it not for the social rules that bind us together. Vampires are (in general, your specific version may vary) our lust and greed. Human avarice turned loose. Demons and devils are (in general, your specific version may vary) our capacity for lies, deceit and trickery. The ultimate of the Faustian nightmare that our world would be should your word not be your bond or worse still, should your word be the only concern beyond any humanitarian concerns. They're all parts of one whole though, which is "evil"


If you believe some of The Giant's comments, something like 90% of groups used to be like that:

I have to suspect that there may be a bit of confirmation bias in The Giant's comments. While his experience is that 9 out of 10 groups play that way, my experience is that 0 out of 10 groups have never examined the "orc babies" dilemma. This is further compounded by the fact that just because the particular game, for this particular instance is using evil orcs and they're evil with no real further expounding on that fact doesn't imply that the players or GM think that "All orcs are evil cause the book says so LOLZ!" nor that they wouldn't apply any more three dimensional motives if the issue came up in the game. That is to say that just because one enjoys playing Dynasty Warriors does not imply that one thinks that all Chinese people (who aren't "my tribe") are evil and can be killed with impunity even though that's what happens in the game.

Squark
2015-01-29, 02:31 PM
I'm personally curious as to the size and nature of the Giant's survey sample supporting the '9 out of 10' assertion.

The 9 out of 10 is an estimate, but not unfounded- Look at the redbox's intro adventure, "Keep on the Borderlands." The plot is litterally, "These monsters are there. kill them." That module was the conceptual template for tons of DM's first adventures (and it wasn't exactly the only one). For that matter, Forge of Fury, the first 3.5 adventure I ran, didn't have much more of a plot either. Sunless Citadel did have a justification, but it was also rather flimsy.

Yukitsu
2015-01-29, 02:31 PM
No, it's not even close to verbatim. Jack Thompson's argument was performing X act in video game makes you more likely to perform X act in real life, which is ridiculous. What the Giant was talking about was the more abstract idea that being conditioned to see a fictional race as the enemy for no other reason than because of their race, desensitized you to the questions you should be asking about whether going after individual members of that race is truly justified.

In short, Jack Thompson believed games condition you to perform certain acts - but unless those acts are pushing buttons on a lump of plastic he was pretty far off base. The Giant meanwhile was pointing out that games (and other media) can instead condition you to think a certain way, or at the very least to form certain conclusions very quickly via their unique brand of design shorthand. That is actually a true danger, because your mind can be conditioned in that way regardless of the physical actions you take while playing a game, and that conditioning can color and contextualize your outlook after the game has ended.

Propaganda games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP4_bMhZ4gA) take this sort of conditioning to its logical conclusion but any experience immersive enough is capable of it on at least some level.

I should point out that as sapient creatures, our thoughts dictate our actions and our attitudes towards actions will dictate what actions we take. You can't claim that we can be convinced by games to persecute an ethnic minority (which is an action) but not to kill (which is an action) because games influence our attitudes but not our actions. For one, the evidence simply doesn't support what you're saying, and rationally, if games did influence our beliefs as you posit, they absolutely would lead directly to action such as violence. You can talk as much as you want about subtle differences, but the content of each argument, that games influence real world belief and thinking cannot be disentangled from accusing it of causing action.

Squark
2015-01-29, 02:41 PM
I should point out that as sapient creatures, our thoughts dictate our actions and our attitudes towards actions will dictate what actions we take.You can't claim that we can be convinced by games to persecute an ethnic minority (which is an action) but not to kill (which is an action) because games influence our attitudes but not our actions. For one, the evidence simply doesn't support what you're saying, and rationally, if games did influence our beliefs as you posit, they absolutely would lead directly to action such as violence. You can talk as much as you want about subtle differences, but the content of each argument, that games influence real world belief and thinking cannot be disentangled from accusing it of causing action.

Actually, that propaganda example is a good one. Early Communication research found that propaganda was fairly effective except when it was fighting a deeply held belief. Humans don't like to kill other humans. It takes a lot of effort for the military to overcome that instinct. Our tendency to stereotype or objectify other humans, however, is very close to the surface. It's not hard at all for games* to dredge the nasty parts of that like racism to the surface if we're not thinking critically about things.

*Stories is a better word, since games are only one of many types of stories we use to ake sense of the world.

Reverent-One
2015-01-29, 02:44 PM
The 9 out of 10 is an estimate, but not unfounded- Look at the redbox's intro adventure, "Keep on the Borderlands." The plot is litterally, "These monsters are there. kill them."

Correction, the plot is "The monsters that are attacking, raiding, pilliaging, and murdering are there. Kill them.". There's a war between the two sides (Mankind and Chaos) going on, they're not just saying "those people look different but otherwise don't bother us, let's kill them".

Squark
2015-01-29, 02:46 PM
Correction, the plot is "The monsters that are attacking, raiding, pilliage, and murdering are there. Kill them.". There's a war between the two sides (Mankind and Chaos) going on, they're not just saying "those people look different but otherwise don't bother us, let's kill them".

I'd have to check, but neither Keep on the Borderlands nor Forge of Fury make any real reference to raiding. The monsters just seem to be living there- Both modules had the entire population present, including Children. With hp values.

Reverent-One
2015-01-29, 02:50 PM
I'd have to check, but neither of the modules I mentioned make any real reference to raiding. The monsters just seem to be living there- Both modules had the entire population present, not just the warriors.

From the background section of the module:


The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, rape its riches, and steal its treasures. If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them. Yet, there are always certain exceptional and brave members of humanity, as well as similar individuals among its allies - dwarves, elves, and halflings - who rise above the common level and join battle to stave off the darkness which would otherwise overwhelm the land.

There's also mentions of captives (merchants and maidens) within the caves that you can find, in some cases tortured and intended for food.

Yukitsu
2015-01-29, 02:53 PM
Actually, that propaganda example is a good one. Early Communication research found that propaganda was fairly effective except when it was fighting a deeply held belief. Humans don't like to kill other humans. It takes a lot of effort for the military to overcome that instinct. Our tendency to stereotype or objectify other humans, however, is very close to the surface. It's not hard at all for games* to dredge the nasty parts of that like racism to the surface if we're not thinking critically about things.

*Stories is a better word, since games are only one of many types of stories we use to ake sense of the world.

Directed propaganda though is distinct from a game. How effective are propaganda games compared to other forms of propaganda? I haven't personally found any psychological studies. It could be that they as a whole are capable of a similar result but what we haven't seen from such games or propaganda at all is the generalization of bigotry. Such media is designed to desensitize you against a targeted cultural group and the soldiers that come back home didn't then go about massacring minorities that they weren't fighting against.

From the majority of game studies that I can find however, we simply don't see people mistaking the fantastic elements of those games for real life ones. Propaganda differs in that it is specifically teaching us to hate or dehumanize a real group while reinforcing that it's a real world issue, and often those efforts focus in on them in a way that causes us to hate them as a group, not to be a general bigot. If a game were to make us dehumanize a fictional or otherwise not real group, you'd be hard pressed to show it generalizing into real life, and harder still, it has to be driven home that the prejudice that you are developing is not a fictional one.

Amphetryon
2015-01-29, 03:01 PM
The 9 out of 10 is an estimate, but not unfounded- Look at the redbox's intro adventure, "Keep on the Borderlands." The plot is litterally, "These monsters are there. kill them." That module was the conceptual template for tons of DM's first adventures (and it wasn't exactly the only one). For that matter, Forge of Fury, the first 3.5 adventure I ran, didn't have much more of a plot either. Sunless Citadel did have a justification, but it was also rather flimsy.

I missed where The Giant used the word 'estimate' - or a synonym for it - in the quoted passage. Perhaps it's in an extended version of the quote?

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-29, 04:15 PM
I wouldn't base any definition of sentience, creativity, or mental capability on the ability to understand or implement a particular mathematical concept. Not while bees are better than us at the traveling salesman problem.

What would you base a definition of sentience, creativity, or mental capability on?

Psyren
2015-01-29, 04:15 PM
I should point out that as sapient creatures, our thoughts dictate our actions and our attitudes towards actions will dictate what actions we take. You can't claim that we can be convinced by games to persecute an ethnic minority (which is an action) but not to kill (which is an action) because games influence our attitudes but not our actions. For one, the evidence simply doesn't support what you're saying, and rationally, if games did influence our beliefs as you posit, they absolutely would lead directly to action such as violence. You can talk as much as you want about subtle differences, but the content of each argument, that games influence real world belief and thinking cannot be disentangled from accusing it of causing action.

It doesn't have to lead to overt violence. The example given in the video was that simply putting a certain ethnicity as the default target in modern warfare games has led to an increase in slurs related to that ethnicity on Xbox Live. So unless you're arguing "well, at least nobody was killed" as a reason this isn't a problem, I'm not sure what you're getting at.


From the background section of the module:



There's also mentions of captives (merchants and maidens) within the caves that you can find, in some cases tortured and intended for food.

Even if the orcs are the aggressors, I think the Giant is right in saying there's absolutely no need to stat orc children in such a module.

McBars
2015-01-29, 04:33 PM
Even if the orcs are the aggressors, I think the Giant is right in saying there's absolutely no need to stat orc children in such a module.

Then whoever feels that way should just omit the children when they run the module, and the rest of us will make up our minds about their (the children's) place/appropriateness in an imaginary game world without someone else's preachy moral authority.

Eldan
2015-01-29, 05:00 PM
Well, that's the question, isn't it. Science can't answer it. Philosophy is getting problems, too. Seems the difference to other animals is more a sliding scale than a different level.

Segev
2015-01-29, 05:03 PM
Just wait until I figure out how to wire rats together into radio-connected super-brains able to process real-world computational problems!

Psyren
2015-01-29, 05:21 PM
Then whoever feels that way should just omit the children when they run the module, and the rest of us will make up our minds about their (the children's) place/appropriateness in an imaginary game world without someone else's preachy moral authority.

Why shouldn't it be the other way around? Why shouldn't "statting children is squicky and unnecessary" be the default state, and those who want the campaign where they can slaughter kids can make up stats on their own without tacit approval from the game designers to do so?

Your stance is extremely odd to me. If WotC were considering adding detailed rules for rape to the game, would you be arguing in favor and saying things like "Whoever feels rape is wrong should omit the rape rules when they play the game, and the rest of us can make up our minds whether rape mechanics are appropriate for our imaginary game world without someone else's preachy moral authority!"

Belial_the_Leveler
2015-01-29, 05:22 PM
Basically, for any race that isn't made from or powered by evil itself, you can choose "intelligent" or "must be slaughtered at every opportunity" - never both.
You can choose "both" for the following reasons;


[survival morality] The land has limited resources. It can support 2 million of race A, 2 million of race B or 1 million of each. I am a member of race A. If one race is not better than another but both are distinct, I choose my race to be twice as powerful as it is now and the other race to be extinct. Because the possible options of "peaceful cooperation with a different race", "eternal resource war with equal opponent", and "extinction" are not to my liking. On account of prosperity for my race being only a 33% chance with those options, as opposed to 100% once the other guys are killed. [/survival morality]


These orcs have attacked us many times in the past, destroyed our cities, killed our people. They're violent and aggressive. The paladins and good clerics want peace. How can we possibly have peace with someone who is naturally aggressive? We can make a treaty now, perhaps, but how long will it last? Not forever I bet. But the paladins and good clerics also say they're sentient, as smart and logical as we are - and for that we should embrace them. Are they insane!? Have they seen how fast those orcs and goblins breed? If they're really as smart as we are, our only chance is to end them now, before they have both numbers and resources more than we do!


Hey guys, look; greenskins! They're the socially acceptable targets of the day so let's kill them and take their stuff. Good opportunity to try out those new moves, spells and tactics, too. If the guys in the city ever get to a decision on their "morality" delusion, we could always move back to undead and color-coded dragons.


Crap, it's orcs again. Let's kill them all now before their stench permanently fouls my sense of smell. And look at those so-called homes of theirs. Gods, they're fugly. Let's lay waste to this eyesore.


The orcs are attacking! The orcs are attacking! Let's go attack them back before they attack us. Also, new leather boots - green is the new black, right?


...and by applying this engineered S-virus on the greenskin problem, we induce sterility and guarantee an easy, war-free solution within three to five decades. And all that without violating the purely theoretical moral principles against violent death some institutions adhere to. In addition, by applying this engineered T-virus at the same time, we guarantee a docile workforce without need for sustenance and with boundless endurance once one to three decades of maturation in moist soil has been achieved.

SiuiS
2015-01-29, 05:29 PM
But the thing is that you could be saying this anywhere: WotC, MinMaxBoards, RPGnet... Why come to GiantITP and bother the fans of this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=12718550&postcount=120)?

Here's the problem with that.


Our fiction reflects who we are as a civilization, and it disgusts me that so many people think it's acceptable to label creatures with only cosmetic differences from us as inherently Evil.

That's true! We should never mark something as evil just because of cosmetic differences.

There is a flaw in this reasonig though, which says "we're all pink inside. So every difference is cosmetic and you're the monster for thinking there's anything beyond cosmetic differences". Kobolds aren't just small reptiles that are just like people. They literally spawn from rock in deep dungeons that grow like some weird fungus through the earth, breaching into the netherworld. Orcs aren't just colored people, they are molded clay given fires of malice and hate where real people have souls.

Yes, you can say "my orcs are humans with funny foreheads" but getting upset because that's not the default and orcs really are just organic hate robots in standard fiction is projecting, and not in a good way.


You were saying?

I was saying no one is saying "just cuz book". Now support your argument, because there was no justification of "just cuz book" anywhere in the post you quoted.

Smarm and snark are not arguments. :)



I also don't think the Giant's argument is in any way a slippery slope. Objectifying a fictional sentient being truly isn't that far off from objectifying a real one. It's why things like caricatures and stereotypes are so troubling.

It's a slippery slope because it says "jaywalkers are deserving of respect so mass murderer cannibals are too". That's a slippery slope. The idea that all differences must be cosmetic is an assumption, and not a valid one all the time. Glossing over that makes for bad discussion. It's taking a moral high ground that isn't there.

Belial_the_Leveler
2015-01-29, 05:38 PM
Minor nitpick:

Orcs were originally corrupted elves, not animated clay.

Citrakayah
2015-01-29, 05:38 PM
Here's the problem with that.



That's true! We should never mark something as evil just because of cosmetic differences.

There is a flaw in this reasonig though, which says "we're all pink inside. So every difference is cosmetic and you're the monster for thinking there's anything beyond cosmetic differences". Kobolds aren't just small reptiles that are just like people. They literally spawn from rock in deep dungeons that grow like some weird fungus through the earth, breaching into the netherworld. Orcs aren't just colored people, they are molded clay given fires of malice and hate where real people have souls.

Neither of those things are true in Dungeons and Dragons, last time I checked.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the differences between orcs and kobolds and humans are cosmetic--they probably won't be, and I'd personally argue that it's not particularly good writing to make every different species have pretty much the same behavioral patterns.

But that doesn't translate to "evil."

Psyren
2015-01-29, 05:41 PM
You can choose "both" for the following reasons;

Correction: never both and stay morally upright. Obviously a race/civilization who chooses to be morally bankrupt can freely go with both.


Neither of those things are true in Dungeons and Dragons, last time I checked.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the differences between orcs and kobolds and humans are cosmetic--they probably won't be, and I'd personally argue that it's not particularly good writing to make every different species have pretty much the same behavioral patterns.

But that doesn't translate to "evil."

Indeed.

McBars
2015-01-29, 05:55 PM
Why shouldn't it be the other way around? Why shouldn't "statting children is squicky and unnecessary" be the default state, and those who want the campaign where they can slaughter kids can make up stats on their own without tacit approval from the game designers to do so?

Your stance is extremely odd to me. If WotC were considering adding detailed rules for rape to the game, would you be arguing in favor and saying things like "Whoever feels rape is wrong should omit the rape rules when they play the game, and the rest of us can make up our minds whether rape mechanics are appropriate for our imaginary game world without someone else's preachy moral authority!"

You making that connection is every bit as absurd as the upstream quote from the Giant about in-game events begetting out of game behavior. I would not play at raping anymore than I would the slaughter of children, but I don't need you to protect me from having to make that choice at my table by arbitrating what should or shouldn't be in the fiction/game/lore.

Look, for me it has nothing to do with the individual atrocities being discussed (racism/genocide/rape/whatever), which are obviously horrible and everything to do with ignorant folk trying to law the game to be what they feel it should be. If you don't like what someone has written into a game, don't buy and don't play it, if you disagree with the content of Mein Kampf, Naked Lunch, Lolita.... don't buy or read those, but above all don't acrimoniously argue for the censorship of that content either. People don't need you to tell them how to play. I sure as hell do not.

Like anyone here knows what an orc should behave like anyway. :smallwink: They're just such insane narcissists that they can't imagine another being, no matter how distinctly different it is from themselves, thinking, feeling, or acting in a way that makes no sense to them.

Belial_the_Leveler
2015-01-29, 05:59 PM
stay morally upright
Humans aren't "good" by definition. As a civilization, they have to first achieve moral uprightness before they have a chance to retain it. That said, not caring for the morality of your actions for survival/self-improvement purposes is not evil - it is neutral.



When humans are objectively threatened by someone and peace accommodations with them have repeatedly failed, and the lives of many humans will be lost if a solution is not found, said someone is going to vanish soon, probably in a fungus-shaped cloud of irradiated plasma. Then, any survivors will be asked for unconditional surrender. If they don't agree, they'll be ashes.

hamishspence
2015-01-29, 06:01 PM
That said, not caring for the morality of your actions for survival/self-improvement purposes is not evil - it is neutral.

If you go by BoVD "Sacrificing others to save yourself is an evil act. It's a hard standard, but that's the way it is."

Belial_the_Leveler
2015-01-29, 06:06 PM
It's not sacrifice, it's plain old killing. And you don't save only yourself but every other person they would have killed in the future. Sort of how every single battle of good vs evil plays out, when the good guys kill the bad guys.

hamishspence
2015-01-29, 06:15 PM
The BoVD example was for "fleeing from bad guys in a way that endangers innocents" though.

Summary:

"Your only way out is across a dangerous scree slope. You know that if you head that way, there is a good chance that the resulting rockslide will hit a nearby village. You do so anyway. You have sacrificed innocents to save yourself - this is Evil".

Psyren
2015-01-29, 06:18 PM
I would not play at raping anymore than I would the slaughter of children, but I don't need you to protect me from having to make that choice at my table by arbitrating what should or shouldn't be in the fiction/game/lore.

How is "I won't write the rules to do this for you, you can make them yourself" in any way "arbitrating what should or shouldn't be in the game?"

No one is stopping you from statting up all the children you like and then rolling initiative. The tools in the system are right there for you to do so. But the designers are under no obligation to encourage it, which putting such stats in the published modules would tacitly endorse.


It's not sacrifice, it's plain old killing. And you don't save only yourself but every other person they would have killed in the future. Sort of how every single battle of good vs evil plays out, when the good guys kill the bad guys.

This fails the imminent harm statute. When truly Good guys kill Bad guys, it is to prevent them from some heinous act they're going to do, not merely "this might happen, maybe, one day, if we let them live; better to genocide them now and not take chances." It's not just immoral, it's cowardly to boot.

Yukitsu
2015-01-29, 06:23 PM
It doesn't have to lead to overt violence. The example given in the video was that simply putting a certain ethnicity as the default target in modern warfare games has led to an increase in slurs related to that ethnicity on Xbox Live. So unless you're arguing "well, at least nobody was killed" as a reason this isn't a problem, I'm not sure what you're getting at.


Frankly, yes. If you could somehow prove that medium like games, books whatever that use completely fantastical elements somehow then translates into real world bigotry, you'll then have to explain why those racists are less prone to violence than other racists. Racism doesn't translate into violence in every single racist, but where they aren't actively persecuting another minority group, then absolutely my stance is "well, at least nobody was killed" with the addendum that they'd better not be persecuted in some other way. I don't care if some jerk has some serious hatred against some other ethnic group so long as he's keeping it to himself, but that's not what happens.

And that's the crux of my problem with your position. Racists don't just keep their opinion to themselves. If every person who read J.R.R. Tolkien's work, which has some of the most extreme prejudicial and dehumanizing treatment of their always evil orcs in any form of medium that I can think of were influenced in the way you are trying to equate, there absolutely would be more racial violence in the aftermath of say, the movies, or in groups that have read the books when compared to ones that don't. And despite that, that isn't at all the case. This isn't because the books and movies and games have made them racists who don't do anything, it's because there isn't any connection between them being racist and the things they have read or watched about a clearly fantastical species in a completely fantasy setting.

Morty
2015-01-29, 06:53 PM
This thread, like so many others, presents a false dichotomy. It's not a question of orcs (orcs being a stand-in for all ostensibly sapient but conveniently evil species) being human, or non-human. They're always human-like, and always have been, even in their most "kill on sight" incarnations. No more and no less than elves or dwarves. They just happen to be humans who are all conveniently, irredeemably evil, same as elves are aloof magical humans and dwarves are greedy stubborn humans. Which is what disturbs me, and many other people. All the talk about their being "alien" and value thereof is just rhetoric to conceal this fact.

hamishspence
2015-01-29, 06:56 PM
They're always human-like, and always have been, even in their most "kill on sight" incarnations.

The conversation between The Great Goblin and the party in The Hobbit springs to mind. Or Shagrat and Gorbag's conversations, or that between Ugluk and Grishnakh.

awa
2015-01-29, 07:06 PM
This thread, like so many others, presents a false dichotomy. It's not a question of orcs (orcs being a stand-in for all ostensibly sapient but conveniently evil species) being human, or non-human. They're always human-like, and always have been, even in their most "kill on sight" incarnations. No more and no less than elves or dwarves. They just happen to be humans who are all conveniently, irredeemably evil, same as elves are aloof magical humans and dwarves are greedy stubborn humans. Which is what disturbs me, and many other people. All the talk about their being "alien" and value thereof is just rhetoric to conceal this fact.

Not certain how to say this but your wrong there are plenty of depictions of orcs that are not human 40ks fungus orcs that infest planets you need to literally burn them out of the land or you may never get rid of them fighting a perpetual war as new orc grow from the spores generation after generation.

hamishspence
2015-01-29, 07:08 PM
40K orcs (Orks) still talk and act very much like humans, in stories where they're the viewpoint characters.

Necroticplague
2015-01-29, 07:39 PM
The thing is, in order to have intelligent/sapeint/sentient monsters which do not have human-like motivations, you have to introduce some truly alien aspect to them. A drive, a need, a hunger, a lack of such which humans have, or even a different physical or mental quality that still leaves them...recognizably free-willed and able to be reasoned with at least on a surface level.

This is not easy.

I'll just take this, run with it, and add my 2 cents:

Anything in a gaming world will be, ultimately, run by a human. Usually, its either through description as an opposing force, or use as an assisting one. Either way, its ultimately a human that going to make it come to life. As a result, in order to make something actually seem to be an element of the world, instead of just some shoddy video-game style crappy plot device, they have to at least be understandable enough to humans to flesh them out. In the lack of such extra details, we tend to flesh them in by making them more like ourselves, since we understand our own thought process rather well.

On the other hand, understandable enough to be portrayed with depth by humans does not necessarily mean human-like. A great example would be Exalted's portrayal of the yozi. On a surface level, they're incomprehensible, as their very being is vastly different from anything humans have a frame of reference for (Is Ligier the dude with the awesome crafting ability, or that glowing green thing in the sky? Yes, both. At once.) However, once you look at them in a different light, they become understandable to humans, even if they aren't even remotely human: the yozi are more like an institution (I think of them like my college). Once you realize that, they manage to suceed at being both understandable to humans (because we all have experience observing or being a part in various institutions) and completely inhuman (because their actions aren't similar to anything that people do, being more akin to corporations).

awa
2015-01-29, 07:42 PM
Talk ill give you that, act not so much. There violence, love of destruction and lack of fear are so extreme that while they maybe comprehensible any human who actually acted like that would be considered completely insane a danger to himself and others. They have a range of emotions and opinions but there norm is so far removed from any normal human behavior that i cant say its human like.

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-29, 07:46 PM
40K orcs (Orks) still talk and act very much like humans, in stories where they're the viewpoint characters.

Humans who grow larger and stronger by fighting and live only to endlessly fight, grow up from spores, and have technology that operates solely because they think it should, and use teeth as currency? Those orks?

They talk like cartoonish parodies of soccer hooligans, sure. But they aren't remotely human. You cannot reason with an ork, only pay him and point him at a better fight than you yourself could provide. That's really the extent of human-ork negotiations in 40k.

40k orks are a perfect example of orcs you would be extremely hard pressed to coexist with, since they ARE hardwired to slaughter you and enjoy it. They aren't ever going to make the decision to be "good" by human standards, because they act this way on a biological level. No amount of culture or environment can change that.

They have a simplistic mentality that is comprehensible to us, but it is still a very alien one. As silly as they are, they're a good example of orclike monsters that don't need to be sympathized with, and don't really carrry unfortunate implications when your character kills them. They are too divorced from humanity, hell, they're practically living cartoons.

Nobody is going to say that 40k orks are a misunderstood species. They're pretty well understood to be irredeemable by human standards, and they won't disagree, considering how little they care for what humans think.

WH40K is odd in the sense that these same beings also share the galaxy with other, actually redeemable and relateable races, like the Tau or Eldar. And those races are the reason why humanity's general hatred of xenos is depicted as an evil quality. But orks? They aren't much better than tyranids, so killing them is not an issue.

Orcs as depicted in DnD, or Warcraft? That's where the moral quandary actually lies.

NichG
2015-01-29, 07:58 PM
Frankly, yes. If you could somehow prove that medium like games, books whatever that use completely fantastical elements somehow then translates into real world bigotry, you'll then have to explain why those racists are less prone to violence than other racists. Racism doesn't translate into violence in every single racist, but where they aren't actively persecuting another minority group, then absolutely my stance is "well, at least nobody was killed" with the addendum that they'd better not be persecuted in some other way. I don't care if some jerk has some serious hatred against some other ethnic group so long as he's keeping it to himself, but that's not what happens.

And that's the crux of my problem with your position. Racists don't just keep their opinion to themselves. If every person who read J.R.R. Tolkien's work, which has some of the most extreme prejudicial and dehumanizing treatment of their always evil orcs in any form of medium that I can think of were influenced in the way you are trying to equate, there absolutely would be more racial violence in the aftermath of say, the movies, or in groups that have read the books when compared to ones that don't. And despite that, that isn't at all the case. This isn't because the books and movies and games have made them racists who don't do anything, it's because there isn't any connection between them being racist and the things they have read or watched about a clearly fantastical species in a completely fantasy setting.

In general, its because people's standards on these things are generally not nuanced. People ask 'can X influence Y?' not 'will X influence Y at a level that is worth bothering about?'. People feel free to set 'worth bothering about' where its convenient for them to do so to make whatever point they want to make, because these things aren't actually compared with other sources of influence. Maybe one day when we have medical models as good as physics, we'll discover that eating green M&Ms increases your chance of cancer by 10^-8%. So in the entire human population, if everyone ate green M&Ms, 0.1 people would die of cancer who would not otherwise have done so! It's an influence, but its a tiny one.

So maybe, if we quantify racist behavior in some variable 'R' we find that games with 'orcs are always evil', say, a 0.01 contribution to that quantity, such that R = (lots of stuff) + 0.01*(fraction of people who have played a game where orcs are always evil). That on its own doesn't tell us much, without that being tied to other concrete things like the fraction of the population who are playing games at all, and more to the point the relationship between this 'R' and things like 'occurrence of hate crime', etc. Also, if the (lots of stuff) factor includes things that have coefficients of 1.0, then worrying about the 0.01 coefficient would be silly, because even if you manage to push it to zero (which you won't), the noise from the 1.0 term is going to swamp it.

Thats what makes these discussions a bit arbitrary, IMO. We're talking about a relatively small hobby, and on top of that a relatively small factor within that hobby (compared to e.g. the games glorifying violence, or taking particular views on religion, or taking unrealistic views on how societies work, or encouraging egotism through PC-centricness, or any number of other possible influences that could also modulate a person's behavior). If there's a particular person in your group who is getting offended, that's one thing. But arguing from the point of view of the overall effect on society seems is rigid in the extreme. Yes, there probably is an effect, but there's also an effect from a bazillion other things too.

Necroticplague
2015-01-29, 08:03 PM
Humans who grow larger and stronger by fighting and live only to endlessly fight, grow up from spores, and have technology that operates solely because they think it should, and use teeth as currency? Those orks?

They talk like cartoonish parodies of soccer hooligans, sure. But they aren't remotely human. You cannot reason with an ork, only pay him and point him at a better fight than you yourself could provide. That's really the extent of human-ork negotiations in 40k.

You know, you could say pretty similar things about the humans in 40k as well, at least large portions of it.

"Humans who grow larger and stronger by fighting and live only to endlessly fight, grow up from sporestoxic hellholes before being brutally modified in vats, and have technology that operates solely because they think it should for reasons they don't remotely understand, so they worship it as magic instead of studying it, and use teeth as currency? Those orksHumans?

They talk like cartoonish parodies of soccer hooligansmedeival crusaders, sure. But they aren't remotely like humans we recognize. You cannot reason with an orkmarine, only pay him and point him at a better fightbigger threat than you yourself could provide. That's really the extent of human-orkeverybody negotiations in 40k.

awa
2015-01-29, 08:11 PM
You know, you could say pretty similar things about the humans in 40k as well, at least large portions of it.

"Humans who grow larger and stronger by fighting and live only to endlessly fight, grow up from sporestoxic hellholes before being brutally modified in vats, and have technology that operates solely because they think it should for reasons they don't remotely understand, so they worship it as magic instead of studying it, and use teeth as currency? Those orksHumans?

They talk like cartoonish parodies of soccer hooligansmedeival crusaders, sure. But they aren't remotely like humans we recognize. You cannot reason with an orkmarine, only pay him and point him at a better fightbigger threat than you yourself could provide. That's really the extent of human-orkeverybody negotiations in 40k.

I would argue that is a bad example for two reasons (well ignore that calling a space marine a human is in my opinion pushing it becuase inquisitors do many of the same things at least as far as personality goes) first those represent a insignificant portion of the population the absolute extremes of human reckless violence only barely meeting the minimum requirements of orc crazy. The vast majority of humans just want to live their lives marines and inquisitors represent less then 1% of 1% of the 40K human population.

Second the similarity is superficial at best i don't understand how this computer works and worship it is a human thing, i believe red cars drive faster and becuase i believe it hard enough it's true is very different. humans don't grow by fighting not even marines living in a crummy place is almost unrelatable to growing from a spores that are continuously dispersed by traveling and dieing orcs. Even marines don't live only to fight they live to pray and protect mankind killing is just their job and their primary means of doing the latter.

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-29, 08:19 PM
You know, you could say pretty similar things about the humans in 40k as well, at least large portions of it.

"Humans who grow larger and stronger by fighting and live only to endlessly fight, grow up from sporestoxic hellholes before being brutally modified in vats, and have technology that operates solely because they think it should for reasons they don't remotely understand, so they worship it as magic instead of studying it, and use teeth as currency? Those orksHumans?

They talk like cartoonish parodies of soccer hooligansmedeival crusaders, sure. But they aren't remotely like humans we recognize. You cannot reason with an orkmarine, only pay him and point him at a better fightbigger threat than you yourself could provide. That's really the extent of human-orkeverybody negotiations in 40k.

Yes, everyone absolutely gets painted with broad strokes like that. Especially the post-human space marines, who aren't even technically human anymore.

40k has roots in parody and black comedy.

That's an arena where I don't think there's any point in trying to sympathize with those orks, or hell, with most of their humans either. It is a setting where it's perfectly appropriate to slaughter most of the other races simply because they're a largely incompatible caricature when compared with your own, on a very basic level. There is no possible coexistence, since most everyone in that setting is some breed of lawful/chaotic-evil or neutral-hungry.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war, after all.

The Orks of 40k aren't worth redeeming, and so are most other races. And that's FINE, because 40k is only problematic when you take it 100% serious, instead of realizing that it is, at it's heart, a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of ultraviolence. Even Dan Abnett (who does a very good job of plausibly grounding 40k), still doesn't paint orks any differently than the rest of the canon. They're fundamentally alien.

JusticeZero
2015-01-29, 08:45 PM
Talk ill give you that, act not so much. There violence, love of destruction and lack of fear are so extreme that while they maybe comprehensible any human who actually acted like that would be considered completely insane a danger to himself and others. They have a range of emotions and opinions but there norm is so far removed from any normal human behavior that i cant say its human like.
Those of us who are from IRL "Monster races" know that before people started clamping down on racism, we were depicted in exactly the same way that was just described on a regular basis. We don't trust that the description is unbiased,unless there is some actual world building crunch to justify the conflict.

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-29, 08:56 PM
Those of us who are from IRL "Monster races" know that before people started clamping down on racism, we were depicted in exactly the same way that was just described on a regular basis. We don't trust that the description is unbiased,unless there is some actual world building crunch to justify the conflict.

The problem is, 40k orks (which awa is describing) do NOT have an IRL "monster race" counterpart. They're alien spore beings who live to fight and fight to live, and are treated as violent comic relief. The worldbuilding crunch dispenses with most all real world comparisons.

Heck, the closest IRL counterpart we can give them are, again, English soccer hooligans. They even speak with exaggerated cockney accents. They're barbaric in the same sense that drunken frat boys are. And Games Workshop (being a UK company) made them this way intentionally.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-29, 09:03 PM
You know, you could say pretty similar things about the humans in 40k as well, at least large portions of it.

"Humans who grow larger and stronger by fighting and live only to endlessly fight, grow up from sporestoxic hellholes before being brutally modified in vats, and have technology that operates solely because they think it should for reasons they don't remotely understand, so they worship it as magic instead of studying it, and use teeth as currency? Those orksHumans?

They talk like cartoonish parodies of soccer hooligansmedeival crusaders, sure. But they aren't remotely like humans we recognize. You cannot reason with an orkmarine, only pay him and point him at a better fightbigger threat than you yourself could provide. That's really the extent of human-orkeverybody negotiations in 40k.

You're focussing on the human soldiery. Presumably there are uncounted quadrillions of civilians in the 40K galaxy, many of whom act and think in ways we would recognise as human. But also presumably, based on what is said of orks, they have no such human-like analogous population. Humanity is not completely inhuman. Orks are.

Lord Raziere
2015-01-29, 09:04 PM
Here's the problem with that.



That's true! We should never mark something as evil just because of cosmetic differences.

There is a flaw in this reasonig though, which says "we're all pink inside. So every difference is cosmetic and you're the monster for thinking there's anything beyond cosmetic differences". Kobolds aren't just small reptiles that are just like people. They literally spawn from rock in deep dungeons that grow like some weird fungus through the earth, breaching into the netherworld. Orcs aren't just colored people, they are molded clay given fires of malice and hate where real people have souls.

Yes, you can say "my orcs are humans with funny foreheads" but getting upset because that's not the default and orcs really are just organic hate robots in standard fiction is projecting, and not in a good way.


Kobolds? ok they reproduce differently, how does that make them different as people?

and as for the orc-soul-hate thing....well here is the thing about hate robots, and robots in general, any AI capable of thinking for itself is capable of evolving beyond its programming. so lets assume that orcs are more like robots than colored people.

still not right. why? because as any sci-fi story about robots would tell you, if you make a bunch of robots give them weapons enough to kill any human being easier than actual humans, then program them to go out and kill things, then give them enough intelligence to be at least as adaptable as humans....

don't be surprised when they turn on you and start doing things Not As Programmed. AI is not a static thing, in fact the entire point of AI is to be an ever-evolving machine that learns and improves itself. so after a while, you either end up with orcs so good at killing that no one can stand against them, or orcs that start recognizing that constant fighting and killing only hurts them in the long run. However due to the existence of Wizards and their various shenanigans in any work of fiction, the first scenario of unstoppable orcs is impossible or highly unlikely. the orcs that therefore continue to fight and kill eventually die out and the orcs that recognize that not fighting might be more beneficial, live.

just like how real killer robots would turn out: either they improve so much they are unstoppable win completely or they recognize their programming will only lead to their doom at the hands of EMP and thus decide to stop killing. so, robots are still people, even if they are living weapons crafted to try and destroy other people, because in truth no one is a weapon, no person is that inflexible, the mind is not a set-in-stone system, the entire point of is that it can be changed to be better, you can argue that it exists to do nothing else, and that a mind that isn't doing that is not functional and is in fact insane.

and if you say that the orcs are programmed to be insane, well then they'd be dead. a nonfunctional brain leads to a dead species., as well as destroyed living weaponry. no adaptive AI means your orcs are as useful as trade federation battle droids and just as easily killed. you might as well send zombies after the heroes while your at it.

and thats not getting into the fact that magic in the olden times was seen as trying to steal the power of the gods for yourself in some cultures. so a witch could say hack into an orc's soul with the stolen gods powers and change it to not be pure evil or something, if you think of magic as sort of like hacking the power of the gods. real nice cyberpunk (magipunk? divinipunk?) twist on it.

which means, that this is not a question of redemption, but of how to best utilize soul-hacking to make the orcs souls good turn them to your side so that you may build an army of such monsters to defeat the god that created them as if your like some weird soul-hack master taking down the evil god ruling some part of reality. and it would probably be a more reliable method than talking. helm of opposite alignment exists after all, you just have to figure out how to reverse engineer that then apply it on a wider scale, and whats the problem? they are robots as you say, and therefore I am reprogramming them to be good people. why kill them when I can make them my own warriors and comrades for good?

so yeah, no matter how you slice it, the orcs will eventually end up either learning to change their behavior to not be violent, be reprogrammed to not be violent, or die off entirely from being too insane to adapt. I'm still treating them like people even if I have to kill a lot of them.

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-29, 09:10 PM
You're focussing on the human soldiery. Presumably there are uncounted quadrillions of civilians in the 40K galaxy, many of whom act and think in ways we would recognise as human. But also presumably, based on what is said of orks, they have no such human-like analogous population. Humanity is not completely inhuman. Orks are.

Not even the soldiery. Necroticplague is focusing solely on the space marines, which are a decidedly inhuman element of the Imperium's armed forces, and whose numbers are infinitesimally small compared to the rest of the soldiery.

Those regular bastards in the trenches are human like you and me, and most of them have been handed the crap end of the stick, and are forced to die in droves. Heck, they're human enough to need "encouragement" (ie. the threat of being shot by a commissar) in order to keep fighting in these very messy conflicts.

SiuiS
2015-01-29, 09:15 PM
Minor nitpick:

Orcs were originally corrupted elves, not animated clay.

Correction. Orcs in D&D have never been corrupted elves.


Neither of those things are true in Dungeons and Dragons, last time I checked.

Kobolds being antignomes and gnomes beig being which can literally spring from the earth goes back as far as medusas being elemental earth creatures which are spherical shells with a multitude of tentacles on their home plane.

Orcs being soulless and animated only by the wicked will of their god also goes back a long way. Elves, to, actually; they were creatures without souls, which is why they couldn't be ressurected.


Of course, that doesn't mean that the differences between orcs and kobolds and humans are cosmetic--they probably won't be, and I'd personally argue that it's not particularly good writing to make every different species have pretty much the same behavioral patterns.

But that doesn't translate to "evil."

No, but being evil translates to evil. The issue here is that current popular opinion is that orcs can never be evil, ever, they're just some other, equally valid and subjective flavor of not-evil, just like you.

Which is bull. If you're including a system of objective morality or alignment, judgement is part of that. Just because we, at thirty, have already explored the nature of good and evil through make believe doesn't mean we have to advance the basics so the newcomer twelve and fourteen year olds are forbidden from doing the same and should feel bad about wanting to.


You making that connection is every bit as absurd as the upstream quote from the Giant about in-game events begetting out of game behavior. I would not play at raping anymore than I would the slaughter of children, but I don't need you to protect me from having to make that choice at my table by arbitrating what should or shouldn't be in the fiction/game/lore.

Mm. Actually, that's probably where some of the intensity here is coming from; no one is saying rules should be written universally to prevent this from ever being an option in games (that I've seen). They're saying "these are the rules specifically for my table". From that position, outrage at beig told not to do stuff shouldn't.


If you go by BoVD "Sacrificing others to save yourself is an evil act. It's a hard standard, but that's the way it is."

The alignment system is not moral. The boXd series tries to combine the two but it's a bad yard stick.


This thread, like so many others, presents a false dichotomy. It's not a question of orcs (orcs being a stand-in for all ostensibly sapient but conveniently evil species) being human, or non-human. They're always human-like, and always have been, even in their most "kill on sight" incarnations. No more and no less than elves or dwarves. They just happen to be humans who are all conveniently, irredeemably evil, same as elves are aloof magical humans and dwarves are greedy stubborn humans. Which is what disturbs me, and many other people. All the talk about their being "alien" and value thereof is just rhetoric to conceal this fact.

I disagree. Then again, I don't just do "these are humans with universal traits based on race". I've been arguing for elves as mystical spirit beings for a long time.


40K orcs (Orks) still talk and act very much like humans, in stories where they're the viewpoint characters.

Aye.

JusticeZero
2015-01-29, 09:16 PM
The problem is, 40k orks (which awa is describing) do NOT have an IRL "monster race" counterpart. They're alien spore beings who live to fight and fight to live, and are treated as violent comic relief. The worldbuilding crunch dispenses with most all real world comparisons..
Did you somehow miss the "unless there is world building crunch to justify it" part you quoted me saying? Warhammer orcs have that crunch. Standard keep on the borderlands tribes with tusks do not.

awa
2015-01-29, 09:26 PM
if my example is one you accept as justified why quote me as if you were arguing against me it will only lead to confusion.

Ceiling_Squid
2015-01-29, 09:27 PM
Did you somehow miss the "unless there is world building crunch to justify it" part you quoted me saying? Warhammer orcs have that crunch. Standard keep on the borderlands tribes with tusks do not.

Ah, my mistake.

Sorry, I saw that you were replying to a comment that was actually referring to 40k orks (it was a response to someone who was discussing them). I had made the assumption you were unaware. My apologies.

1337 b4k4
2015-01-29, 11:09 PM
The monsters just seem to be living there- Both modules had the entire population present, including Children. With hp values.



Even if the orcs are the aggressors, I think the Giant is right in saying there's absolutely no need to stat orc children in such a module.

Just so that we're all on the same page here. I happen to have B2 sitting right in front of me. It provides stats for "young" in exactly two places. It does so once in the description of the lizard man caves (p.13), noting that the young have 1 HP but do not attack the players. It also provides stats for young Bugbears (p.19) where in very stark contrast to every other place where young are mentioned throughout the module, it provides a full stat block for them and does not note that they are non-combatants.

In all other places in the module, including every single place where Orc young are mentioned, the module both provides no stats at all, and also makes it explicitly clear that these are non combatants. Likewise, every place where it lists monsters that are adult noncombatants, it does not provide HP or stat blocks. So let's be very clear, even if you're playing B2 with OD&D rules, if you're killing orc children, you're killing non-combatants who haven't attacked you. Whether that's good, neutral or evil is left for the players and GM to work out amongst themselves, and it's worth noting that in this edition of D&D, there was no such thing as good or evil alignment.

SiuiS
2015-01-30, 12:17 AM
Kobolds? ok they reproduce differently, how does that make them different as people?

and as for the orc-soul-hate thing....well here is the thing about hate robots, and robots in general, any AI capable of thinking for itself is capable of evolving beyond its programming. so lets assume that orcs are more like robots than colored people.


This is verging off topic (I know, right? This is where I draw the line?), but; you're presupposing some things. AI is a word that implicitly contains high intelligence, objectivity, and self evaluation in it's concept. An army of hate robots would theoretically eventually evolve beyond that programming, because they are immortal and super intelligent.

Living creatures suffer from laziness, tunnel vision, circular logic and stupidity.


Those of us who are from IRL "Monster races" know that before people started clamping down on racism, we were depicted in exactly the same way that was just described on a regular basis. We don't trust that the description is unbiased,unless there is some actual world building crunch to justify the conflict.

This is true. There are certain biases and assumptions in the very concepts of tribalism that are, frankly, racist.

And for what it's worth, I too missed your "crunch which justifies the conflict" sentence until the end here. Problem with discussion when it becomes about persuasion, it's very easy to start forming answers to only half the statement.

C'est la vie, non?

Belial_the_Leveler
2015-01-30, 03:50 AM
Those of us who are from IRL "Monster races" know that before people started clamping down on racism, we were depicted in exactly the same way that was just described on a regular basis. We don't trust that the description is unbiased,unless there is some actual world building crunch to justify the conflict.
Of course it's biased. It's the "some people do want to roleplay evil racists that exterminate other races for fun, profit or other reasons, so let's give them acceptable targets so they have fun without much moral ambiguity" kind of bias.

And those of us that do want the option to roleplay evil or just morally ambiguous characters find all those attempts at political correctness detrimental to our gaming experience. Frankly, in a game where human sacrifice to demons is an option for players, asking to remove potential racism for moral reasons is hypocrisy at best.

SiuiS
2015-01-30, 03:53 AM
When the game presents demonic sacrifice as an always evil act, but beating up the dark skinned monsters as, you know, just something you do in your day, somewhere between breakfast and tea, that's still a problem.

Raimun
2015-01-30, 05:28 AM
I think most of you are overthinking this whole thing.

All the orc slayings I've taken part of in D&D/Pathfinder/etc. were the fault of the orcs. It's usually one of the three basic scenarios:

1) The orcs attacked our party when we were peacefully walking along a road/in a forest/etc.
2) We attacked the orcs because they were raiding and killing the villagers/farmers/etc.
3) They were the foot soldieres of some guy who wanted to destroy the world or possibly rule it. Or a little bit of both.

Killing the orcs in all these scenarios was the right to do, because they were the aggressors. If you replaced the orcs with humans in those scenarios, my characters would have then slayed humans. Or heck, if the orcs were replaced with clones of my characters the result would still be pretty much the same: a lot of dead clones*.

But why do the orcs do stuff like this? Because +4 to Strength makes them stronger than most folk, and they don't excel as diplomats, artists, craftsmen, sages or farmers, what with -2 to all mental stats. Because of this, they have a long and (for them, at least) illustrious history of horrible and unprovoked violence, stemming from that very strength. This has also led them to disdain the more peaceful professions and those who practice them. But they are stronger than most folk. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is how such a violent culture perpetuates itself.

Meta-game reason would be that a game of heroic fantasy needs antagonists and guys who have only hammers fit the bill rather well. That's not to say this is the only option. It's just the most simple one.

So, show my character a peaceful orc, who does not pillage villages and he won't even entertain the thought of fighting that orc. For the record, this has happened many times in the games I have played.

*Ok, facing an army of clones of yourself would be pretty jarring, in and out of character... at first, at least.

veti
2015-01-30, 06:26 AM
What would you base a definition of sentience, creativity, or mental capability on?

I, for one, wouldn't. Such terms only get in the way. So often, we define something and say "this far, this is our limit", only to abandon it as soon as it becomes uncomfortable.

Example? When I was young, "sentience" was the defining feature of people, and I often heard "if only (insert animalhere) were sentient of course they'd have rights". Then a bunch of people did a bunch of research, and more importantly, some hard thinking, and found they couldn't come up with a definition of "sentient" that doesn't include pigs. And yet, most people I know are still eating bacon.

Don't get hung up on definitions and boundaries. Deal with the situation you see. If there's a tribe of orcs in front of you, you might want to fight them - or negotiate, or run away, or sneak past, or join them. Depends on what your personal goals and beliefs are. What really isn't profitable to speculate on, however, is whether they're innately or culturally Evil. Because you can always reach any conclusion you need, just by redefining your terms.

And let's get this out of the way while I'm here: There is no such thing as "free will", in the easy sense people like to bandy the term about. It's simply not a thing that can exist. To say that someone can "choose to be good" makes as much sense as that they could choose to speak Arapaho or jump six metres in the air. "Choice" is not the limiting factor; it's a question of capacity, not intent.

Nobody"chooses to do good". To the extent that there's any choice going on, what they choose is to act on an impulse of compassion or generosity. If a creature doesn't have those impulses, then it can't be "good" any more than I can photosynthesise.

But that's not to say that it has to be evil, or that it can't do things that are indistinguishable from good. Just that it can't be motivated by good. It doesn't have the equipment.

Amphetryon
2015-01-30, 07:41 AM
Those of us who are from IRL "Monster races" know that before people started clamping down on racism, we were depicted in exactly the same way that was just described on a regular basis. We don't trust that the description is unbiased,unless there is some actual world building crunch to justify the conflict.

At issue here is a sort of 'the chicken or the egg' paradigm; a designer could just as easily add perfectly viable crunch to justify 'in game-world' racism that (potentially) has analogs to a real-world group's experience after the fact as through the creation of the crunch. A person whose tendency is to see the real-world analogs - and I point no fingers here - is essentially free to decide whether they believe the analogs she perceives are due to intentional real-world parallels or design constraints of the crunch, and therefore free to decide whether any perceived slight is intended or not. An author's claim one way or the other can be happily ignored, according to more than one theory of literary analysis.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-30, 09:33 AM
Exalted's portrayal of the yozi.Yozis, actually. Yozi is strictly the singular form.

Psyren
2015-01-30, 09:41 AM
Of course it's biased. It's the "some people do want to roleplay evil racists that exterminate other races for fun, profit or other reasons, so let's give them acceptable targets so they have fun without much moral ambiguity" kind of bias.

And those of us that do want the option to roleplay evil or just morally ambiguous characters find all those attempts at political correctness detrimental to our gaming experience. Frankly, in a game where human sacrifice to demons is an option for players, asking to remove potential racism for moral reasons is hypocrisy at best.

...the hell? If you want to roleplay an "evil racist," why do you care about the alignment of your victims? You can go after elves, or gnomes, or humans or anyone else and get that title, so why do you need orcs to be "acceptable targets?"

And for the record, I think it's fine that Orcs are "usually evil" - so long as it is still required of the paladin or other good-aligned character that they analyze what exactly a given orc is currently doing before they're allowed to out sword and run them through. That's all I'm personally saying.

Segev
2015-01-30, 09:43 AM
Guys, let's stop personalizing this and trying to play the victim card.

Frankly, I could make the case that, in modern media and political correctness, the white male is the "monster race" that is "always evil" and is thus "obviously" what is intended by always-evil-orcs.

I don't want to; I hate having these discussions on what is supposed to be a board for fun game related talk.

Besides, all this "you're real-world racists against the race I choose to claim you are because you think a fictional race can be designated as antagonists in a fictional game about swinging flaming swords and hurling balls of magical ice at bad guys" business is a little silly. Not to mention ad hominem, since it really is starting to get to the point of "you're a racist if you don't agree with me, and that means I can ignore you."

Jayabalard
2015-01-30, 09:46 AM
Correction. Orcs in D&D have never been corrupted elves.You can argue that the official creation myths published by TSR (and later WoTC) don't include that story ... but early D&D games (especially ones there were hobbits in the game rather than halflings) just used the Tolkein orc creation myth where orcs were elves that were corrupted by a dark entity. It was common in the 80s to run into people discussing that as the default assumption on usenet or Fidonet messaging and newsgroups (early internet).

"D&D = the published settings and nothing else" attitude is a fairly modern preconception, and it ignores the fact that much of the early gaming this wasn't the case.


But everyone mixes ''sentient'' with ''human''. Flatworms are sentient. They're not sapient. Likewise, sapient isn't the same thing as free will.

When you're talking about races being inherantly good/evil, you're not really talking about sentience or sapience... it's generally about whether they have the capacity to choose


What's not fine, from my perspective, is the idea that Orcs can't choose. That they are fundamentally, automatically Evil. Look, creatures like Demons and Devils and other Evil Outsiders are made of Evil, I get that part. But things like Orcs, or Goblins, or similar, are made out of meat. Not out of cosmic Evil, just meat, like Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and possibly Kender. Meat is neither Good nor Evil; it's just meat. Why make that assumption?

If you're talking orcs the trope is generally that they are made of meat and magic. Why is it such a stretch for them to be made of meat, magic and evil? That fits in pretty well with orc creation myths in many fantasy settings. Even if they're just made of meat, why do you assume that they have no purely biological programming? To assume that they have exactly the same level of free will that humans do* just makes orcs humans in rubber suits.

*assuming that humans have free will, which isn't something universally agreed upon.

Segev
2015-01-30, 09:55 AM
Now we're getting back to the more entertaining discussion, I think.

Personally, I don't like to have magic be an "innate" component of my humanoid and demi-human races. Or, if it is, I prefer it to be at the level of "everything is magical to some degree" backround for a fantasy world, rather than "orcs are magically evil."

I just feel like that steps on Fiends' toes too much. They're the ones who are magically evil to the point of being literally made of the stuff.

On the other hand, I like the idea of having orcs be different in some way that makes their "evil" behaviors make sense for their race. Even better if it's something that, if it were true of any one of us, would tend to skew our choices such that we would find ourselves strongly tempted to be orc-like in behavior.

Not a direct over-write of free will or personality. But something along the lines of the better-written reasons why vampires turn evil: there is a hunter as strong as lust or a lust as strong as hunger; it can be resisted, but the benefits of NOT resisting are so great. Excuses can be made. And slopes slipped down.

Orcs are not vampires, and I'm not suggesting that specific drive or temptation. But something would be cool.

There's a limited amount in their stat line. +4 Str and -4 Int and -2 Wis and Cha is going to make one think all problems look like heads to smash in. Still, that's not enough on its own, for me. I would prefer something more, something that would make even the philosopher orc of philosopher orcs with Int 14 and Wis 16 find good reason to, from an orckish perspective, engage in evil behavior.

He might find reasons to "rise above" it, too, mind, but I'd like there to be something other than "orcs are too dumb to be good" involved. Especially since you can have good-aligned big dumb fighters.

Jayabalard
2015-01-30, 10:17 AM
Now we're getting back to the more entertaining discussion, I think.

Personally, I don't like to have magic be an "innate" component of my humanoid and demi-human races. Or, if it is, I prefer it to be at the level of "everything is magical to some degree" backround for a fantasy world, rather than "orcs are magically evil."You can trace that back to D&D's origins though... They generally had something magical about them (elves the most, dwarfs the least iirc). That's sort of what made them "demi-human" rather than human. I suspect that assumption was part of the reason that OD&D represented them as classes rather than races.


I just feel like that steps on Fiends' toes too much. They're the ones who are magically evil to the point of being literally made of the stuff.Fiends are totally made of evil. Perhaps Orcs (or any "always irredeemably evil" races) are partially made of evil, enough to essentially fry their free will when it comes to good/evil choices.



There's a limited amount in their stat line. +4 Str and -4 Int and -2 Wis and Cha is going to make one think all problems look like heads to smash in. Still, that's not enough on its own, for me. I would prefer something more, something that would make even the philosopher orc of philosopher orcs with Int 14 and Wis 16 find good reason to, from an orckish perspective, engage in evil behavior. Orcs didn't always have that stat line and they weren't always playable.

If you look at earlier incarnations of D&D, orcs are more irredeemably evil, and not playable. As the default assumption of D&D tended toward allowing the players to play more and more races, those races became more humanlike... more free will primarily, since players tend to demand that.

So I'm of the opinion the shift in orcs (and even other things like fiends and half fiends) gaining the ability to be good rather than always evil (and in general being less alien) is the direct consequence of allowing those to be PC races.

hamishspence
2015-01-30, 10:27 AM
So I'm of the opinion the shift in orcs (and even other things like fiends and half fiends) gaining the ability to be good rather than always evil (and in general being less alien) is the direct consequence of allowing those to be PC races.

Increasing inclusion of them in civilization probably plays a part.

Sigil, back in 2nd ed Planescape, was a City Where Monsters Walk The Streets Freely And Are Accepted - you could see celestials and fiends shopping in the bazaars, arguing in coffee shops, and so forth. And there were plenty of redeemed fiends and fallen celestials in the fluff of this period. Yet, celestials and fiends weren't really PC races at this point.

Citrakayah
2015-01-30, 10:32 AM
Kobolds being antignomes and gnomes beig being which can literally spring from the earth goes back as far as medusas being elemental earth creatures which are spherical shells with a multitude of tentacles on their home plane.

Citation, please. I can't find stuff backing you up, for either kobolds or medusas.


No, but being evil translates to evil. The issue here is that current popular opinion is that orcs can never be evil, ever, they're just some other, equally valid and subjective flavor of not-evil, just like you.

I haven't seen anyone argue that. I've seen people argue that orcs, as a species, should not be evil.


Which is bull. If you're including a system of objective morality or alignment, judgement is part of that. Just because we, at thirty, have already explored the nature of good and evil through make believe doesn't mean we have to advance the basics so the newcomer twelve and fourteen year olds are forbidden from doing the same and should feel bad about wanting to.

Young children are perfectly capable of grasping basic ethics and recognizing poor writing.

Psyren
2015-01-30, 10:48 AM
Frankly, I could make the case that, in modern media and political correctness, the white male is the "monster race" that is "always evil" and is thus "obviously" what is intended by always-evil-orcs.

That would be a pretty odd argument to make; orcs as they are portrayed in D&D settings and Tolkien have next to nothing in common with this demographic, particularly in terms of economics or upward mobility.



"D&D = the published settings and nothing else" attitude is a fairly modern preconception, and it ignores the fact that much of the early gaming this wasn't the case.

The published settings are still the baseline by which the designers expect newcomers to fantasy TTRPGs to contextualize the experience. You could, for example, make a custom setting where angels and metallic dragons are actually evil, and chromatics and fiends are actually good, but the fact still remains that by and large they have chosen not to do so.



If you're talking orcs the trope is generally that they are made of meat and magic. Why is it such a stretch for them to be made of meat, magic and evil?

It's a stretch because the mechanics do not back this fluff up. They don't have the [Evil] subtype, they are "usually" evil rather than "always," they are easily playable even as good-aligned PCs, magic interacts with them the same way it does with elves or humans etc. Nothing in the crunch portrays them as being made of anything substantially different than we are.

And the books themselves - BoED and Savage Species for instance, or Monster Codex/ARG - flat-out tell you not to treat them this way. While statistically a given orc you encounter may be evil, you still can't attack them if they're not doing anything wrong and expect to stay Good yourself.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-30, 10:57 AM
I, for one, wouldn't. Such terms only get in the way. So often, we define something and say "this far, this is our limit", only to abandon it as soon as it becomes uncomfortable.

Example? When I was young, "sentience" was the defining feature of people, and I often heard "if only (insert animalhere) were sentient of course they'd have rights". Then a bunch of people did a bunch of research, and more importantly, some hard thinking, and found they couldn't come up with a definition of "sentient" that doesn't include pigs. And yet, most people I know are still eating bacon.

Don't get hung up on definitions and boundaries. Deal with the situation you see. If there's a tribe of orcs in front of you, you might want to fight them - or negotiate, or run away, or sneak past, or join them. Depends on what your personal goals and beliefs are. What really isn't profitable to speculate on, however, is whether they're innately or culturally Evil. Because you can always reach any conclusion you need, just by redefining your terms.

And let's get this out of the way while I'm here: There is no such thing as "free will", in the easy sense people like to bandy the term about. It's simply not a thing that can exist. To say that someone can "choose to be good" makes as much sense as that they could choose to speak Arapaho or jump six metres in the air. "Choice" is not the limiting factor; it's a question of capacity, not intent.

Nobody"chooses to do good". To the extent that there's any choice going on, what they choose is to act on an impulse of compassion or generosity. If a creature doesn't have those impulses, then it can't be "good" any more than I can photosynthesise.

But that's not to say that it has to be evil, or that it can't do things that are indistinguishable from good. Just that it can't be motivated by good. It doesn't have the equipment.

That's a long post to tell us you have no idea how to decide who to eat.

Of course we have free will. I can have an idea to do good, and choose to act in accordance with that idea or not. That's free will, and it's attached to creativity, as exampled by the doubling of the square principle along with other such principles. Only humans have the free will, the capacity, to grasp such ideas, to transmit them and assimilate them into their social practice Anything without that is an animal, or something that formerly had free will but has become so debased as to be effectively no longer human, such as sufficiently wicked men--or the Tolkien / Grimm's Fairy Tales / standard D&D conception of orcs.

Beleriphon
2015-01-30, 11:41 AM
This is a horrible, racist stereotype, obviously. The problem is that the orc as a concept was basically just that stereotype, but with green skin and tusks. So when you've been exposed to the "native americans are vicious murderers" or "black people are thugs" stereotype, and you go into gaming and see it staring back at you, it's incredibly uncomfortable.

In fairness, white settlers in the American west had a reason to fear the aboriginal peoples. Largely because the settlers were an invading force that was being violently repelled in some places. I think the difference is that orcs don't generally fall into the aboriginal people type "other" culture in so far as they aren't the ones being pushed out of ancestral lands, they're more like Vikings in 10th century England. If you saw those ships on the horizon you went and got armed, because it probably wasn't going to be a happy good times swapping tales and getting drunk on mead with a bunch of Danes; it was probably going to end up with a burnt down farm, a raided church, and dead friends. Orcs are usually portrayed as the later type: violent raiders. They survive by raiding non-orc (or I suppose other orc) settlements. This usually means rampaging murder on those being raided, which I think given the circumstances most people would want to fight back against.

As for free will. Humans have free will in so far as we can choose between two basic impulses, help others or help ourselves. On the whole society functions because we usually pick help others because we innately understand the value of helping others. If a creature innately lacks that ability for compassion then its never, ever going to pick helping other creatures unless that inherently helps itself first. This is really hard for people to understand because we are hardwired to be compassionate to others (at least a little bit). That doesn't mean something like an orc is incapable of not being a rampaging murder machine, but their very nature would seem to indicate that they don't really even have compassion towards each other so they use a me first attitude in all things.

Thus orc societies weren't formed by groups realizing that they can protect each other, it would have been formed by the stronger orc forcing other orcs into service, and the others not being able to resist. A small group might join by virtue of seeing the benefit to themselves (say not starving to death), but each orc in the group is going to look for what advantage they can get as well. If you look at they way orcs are written in fiction this actually fits pretty well as an explanation as to why they behave the way they do. It doesn't suggest they can't be bargained with, or even reasoned with, but it does suggest they a prone to be driven by short term goals that satisfy their immediate wants and needs, and when those aren't met they are prone to anger and violence.

Belial_the_Leveler
2015-01-30, 11:42 AM
I can have an idea to do good, and choose to act in accordance with that idea or not.

1) Only if you know what good is. For example, children often don't - and can be quite cruel as a result. Also, for example, medieval peasants who were taught by their religion that burning people at the stake was good.
(analogues to too-dumb-to-be-literate Orcs and demon-worshipping Drow here)

2) Only if you're free to make a choice worth mentioning, whether due to physical slavery or mental conditioning. Soldiers for example are conditioned to inhumanize their opponents and typical fanatic followers/slaves to charismatic dictators have their choices made for them.
(analogues to the Dark Lord conditioning his more-malleable-than-human troops for generations and/or perverting their thought process with various techniques)

3) Only if acting in accordance with that idea is within your physical capabilities. See, a drug addict is often incapable of breaking his addiction on his own, someone prone to violent rages may be unable to control himself without external assistance and so on.
(analogues to Orcs' naturally different or purposefully altered physiology limiting their choices)





And thus we got beings that are otherwise sentient and possess free will that will almost always be casually cruel, cook people for food or as sacrifice, being fanatical adherents to an evil authority and are naturally prone to violence and destruction. Hence the "usually evil" label.

hamishspence
2015-01-30, 11:58 AM
I think the difference is that orcs don't generally fall into the aboriginal people type "other" culture in so far as they aren't the ones being pushed out of ancestral lands

In Power of Faerun (3.5 splatbook) the "frontier game" is all about you, as a frontier leader, directing the moving into of those ancestral lands, and the pushing out of the residents:


Some frontier regions are uninhabited only in the eye of the beholder. Alien cultures built by aberrations, extraplanar invaders (such as elementals and outsiders) and "uncivilised" tribes (made up of fey, giants, primitive humanoids, or monstrous humanoids) often do not count in the eyes of would-be settlers. In such areas, a frontier leader is effectively trying to conquer a territory by breaking the back of the existing but unacknowledged culture and replacing it with one of his own choosing

Tragak
2015-01-30, 11:59 AM
In fairness, white settlers in the American west had a reason to fear the aboriginal peoples. Largely because the settlers were an invading force that was being violently repelled in some places. I think the difference is that orcs don't generally fall into the aboriginal people type "other" culture in so far as they aren't the ones being pushed out of ancestral lands, they're more like Vikings in 10th century England. If you saw those ships on the horizon you went and got armed, because it probably wasn't going to be a happy good times swapping tales and getting drunk on mead with a bunch of Danes; it was probably going to end up with a burnt down farm, a raided church, and dead friends. Orcs are usually portrayed as the later type: violent raiders. They survive by raiding non-orc (or I suppose other orc) settlements. This usually means rampaging murder on those being raided, which I think given the circumstances most people would want to fight back against.

As for free will. Humans have free will in so far as we can choose between two basic impulses, help others or help ourselves. On the whole society functions because we usually pick help others because we innately understand the value of helping others. If a creature innately lacks that ability for compassion then its never, ever going to pick helping other creatures unless that inherently helps itself first. This is really hard for people to understand because we are hardwired to be compassionate to others (at least a little bit). That doesn't mean something like an orc is incapable of not being a rampaging murder machine, but their very nature would seem to indicate that they don't really even have compassion towards each other so they use a me first attitude in all things.

Thus orc societies weren't formed by groups realizing that they can protect each other, it would have been formed by the stronger orc forcing other orcs into service, and the others not being able to resist. A small group might join by virtue of seeing the benefit to themselves (say not starving to death), but each orc in the group is going to look for what advantage they can get as well. If you look at they way orcs are written in fiction this actually fits pretty well as an explanation as to why they behave the way they do. It doesn't suggest they can't be bargained with, or even reasoned with, but it does suggest they a prone to be driven by short term goals that satisfy their immediate wants and needs, and when those aren't met they are prone to anger and violence. Does this mean that, because of Viking raiders, non-humans would be correct in judging humans the way many of the humans here are saying to judge orcs?

Beleriphon
2015-01-30, 01:12 PM
[/quote]
In Power of Faerun (3.5 splatbook) the "frontier game" is all about you, as a frontier leader, directing the moving into of those ancestral lands, and the pushing out of the residents:
Some frontier regions are uninhabited only in the eye of the beholder. Alien cultures built by aberrations, extraplanar invaders (such as elementals and outsiders) and "uncivilised" tribes (made up of fey, giants, primitive humanoids, or monstrous humanoids) often do not count in the eyes of would-be settlers. In such areas, a frontier leader is effectively trying to conquer a territory by breaking the back of the existing but unacknowledged culture and replacing it with one of his own choosing.

In fairness, that doesn't exactly sound like a series of adventures that are Good aligned. They wording is very much ambiguous, and leans towards what the adventures are about while making it clear that the adventurers might not be in the right. But, it also doesn't mean orcs by and large aren't rapacious predators that tend towards what the game calls Evil.


Does this mean that, because of Viking raiders, non-humans would be correct in judging humans the way many of the humans here are saying to judge orcs?

Not as such. Norse culutures were primarily agrarian and not really a good comparison to orcs, although the view of seeing raiders on the horizon isn't bad. That said, yes a real non-human species might very well look at our history and decide to view us the same as we view fictional orcs. Of course we're forced to look at a non-human creature through the lens of human psyche and we don't even have a real creatue to examine to see what actually makes them tick (psychologicially, they presumably have hearts). So, I think the best thing to do is figure out why the evil creatures behave the way they do in the fiction and just run with it unless you have a reason not to. Note that reason can be personal preference as much as anything else.

That being said, the reason I suggest orcs behave the way they do in fiction is because they are incapable of compassion at a very basic level. They aren't pschologically equipped to feel compassion towards others. Its part of the reason that fiction usually portrays them as unsophisticated at a civilization level (ie. they don't build cities) as well as violent towards everybody.

Raimun
2015-01-30, 01:19 PM
1) Only if you know what good is. For example, children often don't - and can be quite cruel as a result. Also, for example, medieval peasants who were taught by their religion that burning people at the stake was good.
(analogues to too-dumb-to-be-literate Orcs and demon-worshipping Drow here)

2) Only if you're free to make a choice worth mentioning, whether due to physical slavery or mental conditioning. Soldiers for example are conditioned to inhumanize their opponents and typical fanatic followers/slaves to charismatic dictators have their choices made for them.
(analogues to the Dark Lord conditioning his more-malleable-than-human troops for generations and/or perverting their thought process with various techniques)

3) Only if acting in accordance with that idea is within your physical capabilities. See, a drug addict is often incapable of breaking his addiction on his own, someone prone to violent rages may be unable to control himself without external assistance and so on.
(analogues to Orcs' naturally different or purposefully altered physiology limiting their choices)





And thus we got beings that are otherwise sentient and possess free will that will almost always be casually cruel, cook people for food or as sacrifice, being fanatical adherents to an evil authority and are naturally prone to violence and destruction. Hence the "usually evil" label.

Indeed. In such a culture, there's a tremendous peer pressure. And I'm not only talking about mere psychological factors. That kind of peer pressure extends to the world of physics.

Ie. many fantasy settings make a point that orcs beat and/or kill all orcs who are sufficiently "non-orcy. And the biggest, strongest, most violent orc? That guy is the leader of the tribe and the one who other orcs look up to.

That means your standard orc culture weeds out those orcs who don't subscribe to the notion that all you have is a hammer and everything else are nails. I mean, if someone in an orc community is causing dissent and all you have is a hammer, the course of action is pretty obvious.

Whenever the "Int 14, Wis & Cha 16"-orc is born, s/he is most definitely "non-orcy" and will be most likely eventually beaten to death. That is, unless that orc uses that mental prowess to violent ends and can hold its own in fights. Or runs away from orcish tribes and can't anymore attempt to change the tribe from within.

So we can see that a culture with a deep rooted history of violence does self-regulate itself. Hence, they are usually Evil.

Lord Raziere
2015-01-30, 02:19 PM
This is verging off topic (I know, right? This is where I draw the line?), but; you're presupposing some things. AI is a word that implicitly contains high intelligence, objectivity, and self evaluation in it's concept. An army of hate robots would theoretically eventually evolve beyond that programming, because they are immortal and super intelligent.

Living creatures suffer from laziness, tunnel vision, circular logic and stupidity.



So you admit they're people then? because if they are lazy, have tunnel vision and can be stupid like that, how can they be hate robots out only to kill crush and destroy? therefore because of their flaws, I need to treat them like people. sure, if a bunch of invaders armed and try to attack innocents I'd kill them to protect those innocents, doesn't change the fact that they're people but, sometimes the only negotiation you can achieve is with a blade.

hamishspence
2015-01-30, 02:31 PM
That being said, the reason I suggest orcs behave the way they do in fiction is because they are incapable of compassion at a very basic level. They aren't pschologically equipped to feel compassion towards others. Its part of the reason that fiction usually portrays them as unsophisticated at a civilization level (ie. they don't build cities) as well as violent towards everybody.

According to Cityscape, they do build cities - but those cities tend to get battered by adventurers, and rival cities, before they really take off- hence orcs think of them as temporary:

Cityscape page 24-25:

Orc & Goblinoid Cities
While a few exceptions exist (notably hobgoblins), orcs and the various goblinoids have primitive cultures, which are reflected in their cities. A typical city consists primarily of rough wooden buildings, with few taller than two or three stories. Construction is crude: Doors might not fit well in their frames, or might be simple hide curtains, while roofs are often thatch or simple wood. Roads are rarely paved and follow no real plan. Most such communities have some sort of defensive perimeter, such as a wooden wall, a spiked moat, or a series of guard towers on stilts or built in trees.

Many orc and goblinoid cities are subterranean and use stone rather than wood, but they otherwise resemble surface cities. They exploit defensible locales, rich natural resources, or nearby communities on which to prey. Underground cities are more orientated toward defence, often being in caverns with limited entrances.

Such cities are crudely functional, with little thought for aesthetics. Decoration is minimal: trophies from prior kills, or walls daubed in bright colors, with little sculpture or artwork. Other races assume that these primitive humanoids have no interest in beauty. Although this is true to an extent, the main factor is that orcs and goblinoids expect their communities - even the larger cities - to be temporary. They constantly struggle with other races, other tribes of their own kind, and marauding adventurers. Thus, they view any effort beyond providing the necessities of life as a waste of time and energy.

Synar
2015-01-30, 02:52 PM
I don't think all monsters should be treated the same way and in all campaigns, else why have different monsters, culture, campaign and settings? So I believe there is nothing wrong with having monsters be reskinned humans, different culture human, slighty tweaked humans or alien thinking humans, but there is nothing wrong else with having them be always evil.

Yes, I'm a fan of grey and white morality, and I think having all of your monsters be caricaturally evil is not very interesting - but there are a lot of shades of evil. This is the same problem there is with evil campaign - people automatically assume backstabbing incapable of love sadistic ravager tyrant, but there are ways to make evil guys actually have motivations, complex morality, personality, and potential or lack of pulsions.

Just like there are a lot of potential "all evil" sapient races : born with inescapable cravings or pulsions*; having different inborn instincts and/or morality, with implications seen as evils by humans; growing in the cult of an evil idol/deity/spirit/ideal, or even having an inborn connection, potentially a backlash for not following the cult/idea/need of revenge(such as cleansing humanity or the Lochart descendants of the city of That) or a demoniac double personality; have them be evil by need, with maybe an inborn bias against trust/entraid/organization; or any other idea you get.
And I believe that trying to think about ideas for a sapient or even playable evil race can lead to pretty intersting ideas and character.

So, guys, stop the meaningless debates, and start throwing ideas on the paper!

:smallwink:


*from vampire to orc to kleptoman to jealousy to alchol to outbursts of violence to pretty much anything

By the way, would someone with a "tragic destiny" kind of mindset, with the goal to avenge X by bringing down/utterly annihilating Y even if some/most members of Y are quite innocent or even ignorant of what happened, be evil? What about someone whose blood start heating at the mere sight of X?

Oh, and being evil =/= needs to die [unless pretty specific take on evil, such as cosmic fight between good and evil].
Seriously.
I do hope those of you that question this never get in a legislative assembly.

(Finally, on the subject of racism, you should now that "human races" have no biological meaning, as ethnicity are more complex and divided and sub-divided that skin color, and that differences in ethnicities are fairly minor and widely unimportant to the subject at end, so any symbolic links between D&D races (species) and human races are only to be made if you're playing with racists, and you really need to make a point, or if you just want to make people think, and, well, make a point [having an audience counts, so it does have meaning in OOTS]. But, you know, that's my opinion.)



Since people have already talked about how to bring other types of conflict in than "They are evil because they are green and have tusks and we don't", I would like to emphasise that you could take inspiration from real life history as well as folk tales from the middle ages on how conflicts form.

Based on history here are two examples on how someone can create instability and be aggressive without being in it "for the evulz":
A philosopher king is attempting to rule as a wise king, and is constructing schools and universities as well as being a patron of both the arts and sciences (magics in fantasy), and he funds chartering of new towns and improvements of infrastructure and irrigation, but as a ruler he is also preoccupied with having the best possible army according to what he knows. All of this requires immense amounts of money. In fact all of this requires so large amounts of money that even being the owner of the only gold mines in the region plus taxation isn't enough to fund all this progress he is doing. So he wages war for the purpose of acquiring not neccessarily land, territory and raw resources, but to extract wealth from the neighbouring realms through looting, pillaging, ransoming and ransacking.

Secondly you have an "evil advisor", except he is not actually evil. He genuilly have the best interests of both the country and the royal dynasty at heart, he wants stability, peace and strength for his country, and since person who rules because of his birth is not likely to be as good as he is, he often overrules and subverts the actual king's orders because he finds them ignorant, hasty or too emotional, and he won't let the king loose his head or the kingdom descend into anarchy because the king doesn't think long enough or hard enough about decisions, but prefers to make them with the heart.
Add in a good dose of being willing to achieve strength and peace for his own country through destabilising the neighbouring ones via espionage and covert operations, and you have someone who can easily serve as an antagonist.

Or from folk tales, maybe you have someone who is an outlaw and therefore needs to survive through robbery by neccessity, but his outlaw status is derived from an act committed because of either love or honour?

How about a realm of merchants driven to piracy because one of the regiond they were old trading partners with have found an easier route to the other one?

What about just plain greed, rather than "for evulz"? Merchant republics fighting each other over trading posts, brothers fighting over their father's kingdom, border skirmishes and reaving because the peasants who do it live like barons?

I've already tried to stay away from mentioning exactly what I'm referring to in real life history with the examples, but I'm definitely going to do so even more with the following example: What about conflicts caused by religion? And both not talking about the crusades myself, nor do I think others talking about the crusades would be a good idea, but I am talking about situtations where one nation of a specific religion launched an attempt at forced conversion on a nation of a different religion (complete with trying to eradicate everything tied to their old worship), and the rest of the peoples of the other religion responded through raids and violence targetting all of the nations adhering to the first religion?

All of these are more "low" or "dark" fantasy than "high", but if you want sources of grey and grey morality where the conflict is still unavoidable but not through ignorance, then they are quite good.

So much this.

Raimun
2015-01-30, 03:44 PM
I don't think all monsters should be treated the same way and in all campaigns, else why have different monsters, culture, campaign and settings? So I believe there is nothing wrong with having monsters be reskinned humans, different culture human, slighty tweaked humans or alien thinking humans, but there is nothing wrong else with having them be always evil.

Yes, I'm a fan of grey and white morality, and I think having all of your monsters be caricaturally evil is not very interesting - but there are a lot of shades of evil.

Thank you, I agree with this. I guess this is what I've been trying to say the whole time.

While I think orcs, goblins and co. shouldn't be "always Evil", I think there's nothing wrong if some settings portray them as "usually Evil". You know, with the whole thing that their culture is based on raiding those weaker than themselves etc..

Also, I think it's perfectly okay if some settings portray orcs and co. as normal, decent folk or as an admirable society.

The important thing is that the setting is consistent and serve the dynamics of the story well.

Yukitsu
2015-01-30, 03:56 PM
Indeed. In such a culture, there's a tremendous peer pressure. And I'm not only talking about mere psychological factors. That kind of peer pressure extends to the world of physics.


In this case it's a bit more extreme. In the real world, we debate morality because we don't have a final arbiter of what is or is not good or bad. Most orcs, this is not the case. They are divinely influenced by something which in that setting, physically exists as a judge and jury of what is or is not acceptable for an orc to do or be. There is no internal conflict, there is no faith, it's simple and hard fact that an orc which does not destroy everything is a bad orc according to their God. What kind of pressure would your own deity coming to you and saying you're wrong to be anything other than what you are have? I don't think it could be resisted. And that is orcs in very nearly every setting that comes to immediate mind.

Beleriphon
2015-01-30, 04:50 PM
According to Cityscape, they do build cities - but those cities tend to get battered by adventurers, and rival cities, before they really take off- hence orcs think of them as temporary:

Cityscape page 24-25:

Erm, I'm not sure an armed camp is the same a city. Having a city implies a high level of permanence as well providing and economic base and living space and work for people not directly involved agriculture. The description seems more like it was included to get some ideas going for a city build and run by orcs if one wanted such a thing. Either way I still think there's an important distinction between humans, or creatures meant as human stand ins, in RPGs and creatures like orcs. The difference I think is due to a psychological difference, orcs and their ilk don't feel compassion, and thus have no qualms about making violence their first and most obvious option, even when inclined to cooperate an orc is still looking for ways to exert dominance and gain control over a situation.

At any rate, my question is why don't we have qualms about killing beholder or aboleths? They're always evil, and they're a good sight smarter than orcs as a whole. Is it because they're described as hating anything that doesn't look exactly like them in the case of beholders? Is it because aboleths a described as wanting to conquer the universe and turn people into slaves? I mean Cthulu fish probably just need a hug right? :smallwink:

hamishspence
2015-01-30, 04:59 PM
Even beholders are only "Usually Lawful Evil" in D&D - though nonevil beholders are exceedingly rare.

Given that Chaotic Neutral is the second most common orc alignment and that orcs are only "often chaotic evil) and that Good orcs do exist - the notion that orcs are biologically incapable of compassion, seems to me ill-founded.

Psyren
2015-01-30, 05:16 PM
To be fair, I think in the Beholder entry, the "usually" deals more with the "Lawful" aspect than the "Evil" aspect. Despite being "Eye Tyrants," LoM states they actually end up hating each other even more than the members of other races (most of whom are beneath their notice except for the unlucky few who end up as foes or food); that along with, or perhaps because of, their racial insanity makes any alliances or society they form crude at best. So while they're almost invariably evil, I think the Lawful tendency is tenuous at best - they tend to control their craziness through strict routine, but they are still loners which can lead to a chaotic bent.

awa
2015-01-30, 06:13 PM
people aren't saying d&d 3.5 orcs are all evil in the default mechanics so why is that been brought up over and over again it's completely irrelevant. This is not in the 3.5 forum but general role-playing game.

Ravian
2015-01-30, 06:29 PM
Personally I've always disliked trying to make any natural race biologically evil. It stinks of laziness, and it doesn't make for interesting motivations. Sure people complain about making non-human races humans with funny hats but you can only have so many races of natural sociopaths before it gets real old, real fast.

Really while a wholly non-human mindset is interesting to explore, it tends not to do well in fantasy settings. Mainly because fantasy throws out most biological concepts out the window and you're often defaulting to more mythic explanations. Typically this means they're created by some form of deity, but once again deities tend to have very human mindsets as well. (This is largely because wholly in-human thinking Gods tend to have more to do with Lovecraft than Tolkein.)

Also there's the fact that fantasy tends to draw heavily from folklore and particularly historical sources. That's why most non-human races behave more like human cultures than separate species. Could this be considered lazy as well? Certainly. But to tell you the truth, I much prefer this kind of laziness to biological complexity.

Maybe this is just because I have a far greater interest in sociology and history than I do with psychology, but I really enjoy coming up with fantasy societies, typically drawn off of historical sources. But creating creatures with non-human psychology adds a new layer of complexity to that whole experience. Could a naturally evil species even form a society? Only extremely social animals that we know about form groups larger than extended family units. Could a civilization actually develop when the majority of individuals are more inclined to kill and steal than work together? It's a thought experiment certainly, but I'm more content to use a human mindset that suits the purposes I need.

If I need a race primarily made up of barbarian hordes, I don't need to investigate what sort of neurological differences would make said race pillage a plunder, I just look and see why any number of real-world hordes did what they did and give the race a similar motivation. Obviously I don't say that the race itself is biologically inclined towards this precise behavior, instead only that this group's environment and circumstances have developed to encourage a culture similar to say Norse raiders, Huns etc.

Of course when I'm doing something more sci-fi I generally experiment a bit more with alien mindsets. Largely because players are expecting truly alien creatures in a sci-fi game, rather than pseudo-historical cultures with magic like I tend to like my fantasy settings.

Jay R
2015-01-30, 06:50 PM
I don't assume that all goblins and orcs are evil, but I do assume that the goblin and orc societies near my players are evil.

In fact, in my world, goblins are somewhat animalistic, and are easily dominated, like a pack of wolves or herd of horses. That makes them perfect fodder for would-be conquerors. With one exception, each time the heroes have seen goblins, there have been ogres, gnolls, or men behind them forcing them on.

[They once encountered goblin warg-riders. They rode in and tried to cut one PC out of the camp and drag him away. None of the PCs noticed that this is how wolves hunt. The leader of that raiding party wasn't the goblin leading the charge, but the warg under him.]

The goblins also have almost no culture or crafts. The first time the PCs met them, I said that the goblins attacked with crudely-made spears and clubs. After the battle, the PCs asked if any of the goblin gear was valuable. I replied, "Consider the implications of the phrase 'crudely-made clubs'."

Citrakayah
2015-01-30, 07:33 PM
If that's the case, can you get them to behave by intimidation?

Beta Centauri
2015-01-30, 07:45 PM
I understand the racial undertone thing, and I do tend to prefer that races not be wholly, irredeemably evil partly for that reason. If I feel I need that for a game, I'll use undead or demons or the like. The monsters are then just a destructive force that can be destroyed without any particular malice. We fight the fire, and maybe even hate it, but it doesn't have any real way to care that we hate.

The other reason I prefer races not to be wholly, irredeemably evil is that I like to have options. I might think it's interesting to have an NPC orc that can and should be worked with, instead of killed on sight. It's like having a Klingon on the Enterprise: it's interesting because it subverts a trope, but it also broadens what Klingons are capable of, as a race. They're clearly not innately awful.

I don't play D&D to have moral debates or pitfalls. I'm happy to enable my players by providing them whatever moral certitude they need. If they felt justified in killing a particular being, they're going to find out that they were right to do so. If they want to slaughter orcs, I will happily set it up so that there's no question that the orcs they're slaughtering are best slaughtered, and that, for whatever reason, there are no cute little orc orphans wondering when daddy is coming back. The heroes are, somehow, in the right.

Jay R
2015-01-30, 09:35 PM
If that's the case, can you get them to behave by intimidation?

I suspect so, but it still needs to be constant, just like the other. In one battle, the PCs killed the three ogre leaders, and the fifty goblins ran. I suspect the same would happen with fifty goblins being forced to work in a soup kitchen.

SiuiS
2015-01-30, 10:29 PM
At issue here is a sort of 'the chicken or the egg' paradigm; a designer could just as easily add perfectly viable crunch to justify 'in game-world' racism that (potentially) has analogs to a real-world group's experience after the fact as through the creation of the crunch. A person whose tendency is to see the real-world analogs - and I point no fingers here - is essentially free to decide whether they believe the analogs she perceives are due to intentional real-world parallels or design constraints of the crunch, and therefore free to decide whether any perceived slight is intended or not. An author's claim one way or the other can be happily ignored, according to more than one theory of literary analysis.

Does that matter? I would think not at all times. Else you could never trust a well designed setting – maybe the writer is just good at good winking chicanery and rationalization.

But then, it becomes impossible to tell if all authors are terrible or if the reader is incapable of extending benefit of doubt. Not a fruitful avenue.


Citation, please. I can't find stuff backing you up, for either kobolds or medusas.

You can't find anything about gnomes being spirits of rock? Seriously?

Medusas, check either the champion, expert or master sets. I don't remember which ones deal with the elemental planes. Perhaps even the set 3 companion book, I dunno. I'm getting names from google image searches.



I haven't seen anyone argue that. I've seen people argue that orcs, as a species, should not be evil.


Yes you have, though not in those words. "It's always bad to portray monsters without depth because that's how actual racism was played" has been used many times throughout this thread.

"That's never good" means "that is always bad" and also "the opposite is always good", with good and bad in this sense being what you're 'supposed' to do.



Young children are perfectly capable of grasping basic ethics and recognizing poor writing.

They are indeed. Neither of which matters, as I am discussing experiencing things over simply thinking about them. Else you'd never have to play D&D, just think about playing, for your fix.


That would be a pretty odd argument to make; orcs as they are portrayed in D&D settings and Tolkien have next to nothing in common with this demographic, particularly in terms of economics or upward mobility.

That's the least of what's wrong with that statement, really.



The published settings are still the baseline by which the designers expect newcomers to fantasy TTRPGs to contextualize the experience. You could, for example, make a custom setting where angels and metallic dragons are actually evil, and chromatics and fiends are actually good, but the fact still remains that by and large they have chosen not to do so.


I read this as angels being metallic draconic demons at first.



It's a stretch because the mechanics do not back this fluff up. They don't have the [Evil] subtype, they are "usually" evil rather than "always," they are easily playable even as good-aligned PCs, magic interacts with them the same way it does with elves or humans etc. Nothing in the crunch portrays them as being made of anything substantially different than we are.

Aha, so demons didn't become creatures if mystically congealed evil until D&D 3.5, then? And demons in Bard's Tale are just as normal as humans?

Resorting to 3e mechanics is flawed premise and presentation; it could be easily argued that older editions were sufficiently different games that what 3e did doesn't matter. Especially with all that stupid non-necromantic conjuration healing nonsense because negative = evil, but not really.

Orcs are evil, mystically evil. Demons are evil, mystically evil. Chromatic dragons are evil, mystically evil. The third justifies the first not being identical to the second; they don't need a standardized evil template to all be evil. Orcs are specifically mortal instruments. Demons are not. Dragons are weird and even harder to categorize.


Only humans have the free will, the capacity, to grasp such ideas, to transmit them and assimilate them into their social practice Anything without that is an animal, or something that formerly had free will but has become so debased as to be effectively no longer human, such as sufficiently wicked men--or the Tolkien / Grimm's Fairy Tales / standard D&D conception of orcs.

Ah, so in this view, the tendency of evil to create tunnel vision, and wickedness corrupts one into further, more constraining, more corrupting wickedness?

Then yes, I would say that in this, orcs are not sapient. They are animals. This opens the original question in a different light; if an animal has the potential to achieve sapience – to evolve – should it be considered sapient-in-potentia, or should it be considered an animal until it specifically demonstrates otherwise?

Are the Geth, once they achieve true sapience, deserving of rights and respect despite any whack job with tech skills being able to turn them into his private army? Are talking crows and ravens and other blackbirds of myth still animals despite their intelligence? Interesting view.

Psyren, what do you think of this angle?


In Power of Faerun (3.5 splatbook) the "frontier game" is all about you, as a frontier leader, directing the moving into of those ancestral lands, and the pushing out of the residents:

Interesting. So Power of Faerun tries to replicate old achool map hex clearing, but doesn't justify it as rousting animals and gypsy raiders.

Yes, I'm aware that is not itself justified, but it's basically what they did and no one blinked twice at the time. Lends some weight to the whole racism angle, really.


Does this mean that, because of Viking raiders, non-humans would be correct in judging humans the way many of the humans here are saying to judge orcs?

If there were nothing but Scandinavians on active raid all the time, then yes.


So you admit they're people then? because if they are lazy, have tunnel vision and can be stupid like that, how can they be hate robots out only to kill crush and destroy? therefore because of their flaws, I need to treat them like people. sure, if a bunch of invaders armed and try to attack innocents I'd kill them to protect those innocents, doesn't change the fact that they're people but, sometimes the only negotiation you can achieve is with a blade.

No, a robot designed around the principles of wickedness and evil would evince laziness and stupidity because those are supposedly evil. Sparrows can be lazy. Squirrels can be stupid. Fish can have tunnel vision. So can deer. None of these are people.

That's a trait of being an organism, not of being sapient.


Personally I've always disliked trying to make any natural race biologically evil.

Cool. Now, establish orcs as a natural race and as a race that is evil biologically instead of iteratively pressed into wickedness by a corruption and taint of the soul.

I'm also against natural races being evil just because weird biology. But I'm also against assuming magical fairyland tea party needs evolution and newtonian physics because reasons, I ain't gotta explain nothin, as well.


Maybe this is just because I have a far greater interest in sociology and history than I do with psychology, but I really enjoy coming up with fantasy societies, typically drawn off of historical sources.

These aren't mutually exclusive, in a culture or in a person; as a gamer you can do both. You aren't married to any given choice; that's why I advocate mindful choice over picking and sticking.

Citrakayah
2015-01-30, 10:37 PM
You can't find anything about gnomes being spirits of rock? Seriously?

No, about kobolds springing from stone rather than being creatures that reproduce conventionally. I thought you might be talking about folklore at first, but that doesn't exactly fit either.


Medusas, check either the champion, expert or master sets. I don't remember which ones deal with the elemental planes. Perhaps even the set 3 companion book, I dunno. I'm getting names from google image searches.

Don't have them. The only source I could find that discussed their portrayal in original Dungeons and Dragons was Wikipedia, which didn't back you up. And I know that they aren't portrayed in Greek folklore like that.

Amphetryon
2015-01-30, 10:49 PM
Does that matter? I would think not at all times. Else you could never trust a well designed setting – maybe the writer is just good at good winking chicanery and rationalization.

But then, it becomes impossible to tell if all authors are terrible or if the reader is incapable of extending benefit of doubt. Not a fruitful avenue.Given the real-world baggage some folks see attached to fantasy Races, and the intense debate within this thread, it appears to matter. If it doesn't matter 'at all times,' how do we demarcate the times it does against the times it doesn't?

Either that, or I'm radically misunderstanding what you reference with "that."

Lord Raziere
2015-01-30, 10:55 PM
No, a robot designed around the principles of wickedness and evil would evince laziness and stupidity because those are supposedly evil. Sparrows can be lazy. Squirrels can be stupid. Fish can have tunnel vision. So can deer. None of these are people.


well if they're completely evil and wicked, then they'd have no virtues, which includes diligence and ambition, things that drive you to act at all.

so if your arguing for them to be programmed to be truly evil and thus possessing all the sins of evil including sloth, then the orcs would be no threat, for they'd be too lazy to actually go around raiding and killing, and too stupid to figure out how to lift a sword.they'd be no threat and would be wiped out easily.

for them to be threats, they'd have the virtues of diligence, ambition, courage, and such and so on that allow them to actually act and be a threat, features that while not redeeming them, shows that you have to have good qualities to you to be able to do anything worth doing, and thus not purely evil. thus if they're not purely evil, not purely hate robots, they're people, therefore redeem whoever orc you can.

pure evil by the way of lack of all virtues only results in pure cowardly lazy people who would be too afraid and lazy to get out of bed in the morning for fear tripping down the stairs and breaking their neck. orcs are not this, and therefore they have virtues that allow them to function, therefore they are people.

veti
2015-01-31, 01:16 AM
Of course we have free will. I can have an idea to do good, and choose to act in accordance with that idea or not. That's free will, and it's attached to creativity, as exampled by the doubling of the square principle along with other such principles. Only humans have the free will, the capacity, to grasp such ideas, to transmit them and assimilate them into their social practice Anything without that is an animal, or something that formerly had free will but has become so debased as to be effectively no longer human, such as sufficiently wicked men--or the Tolkien / Grimm's Fairy Tales / standard D&D conception of orcs.

So "only humans have free will", and "anything without that is an animal". Nice circle there. I also note that your "of course" rebuttal contains an enormous number of assumptions not in evidence. As well as those mentioned by Belial, above - what is an "idea to do good" and where does it come from?

Can you define this thing called "free will" that you set such store by? Without using the word "human"?

The doubled-square that you seem to think is the ultimate proof of - something else that's also undefined at this point - is an exercise that only becomes possible when the subject can not only grasp such abstract ideas as "area" and "double", but also clearly communicate them. When someone can teach a chimp to do that, will you really set such importance on leading it through a geometrical exercise? What if it paints a picture instead, or plays an original composition on the bassoon?

And - and this is the real reason why this entire line of reasoning is pointless - what follows, if it does satisfy you that it has this undefined quality? What will you do then?

Milo v3
2015-01-31, 01:31 AM
Can you define this thing called "free will" that you set such store by? Without using the word "human"?

The ability to choose from options with thought rather than it being merely a result of natural impulse and reaction, granted most of the time people respond directly through immediate reaction severely biased from instinct, but decisions can be thought about and we can with effort go against our impulses and automatic reactions despite them effectively being programmed responses generated from our past experiences.

Though for various reasons I don't think humanity is a magic special species who are the only ones on the planet that can think for half a second rather than just going off impulse.

SiuiS
2015-01-31, 02:41 AM
No, about kobolds springing from stone rather than being creatures that reproduce conventionally. I thought you might be talking about folklore at first, but that doesn't exactly fit either.


I'm talking about the currents and cultures I've seen running through D&D, especially the old school revival stuff. Monsters are monstrous, not as an excuse for racism but to explore the possibilities. A world where flies really do spontaneously generate from old meat; how neat is that! What else could be different? We should explore and find out! Maybe some of is will even make it back...

If you want a book citation, you won't get one. Just like there's no book citation for orcs being direct Tolkien-esque corrupted elves. But that's still a thing that people believe to be true from the old days.



Don't have them. The only source I could find that discussed their portrayal in original Dungeons and Dragons was Wikipedia, which didn't back you up. And I know that they aren't portrayed in Greek folklore like that.

Of course Wikipedia isn't going to provide proprietary content. That level of specificity is actively against what they're about when referencing the details of works like this.

They're easy enough to get ahold of. Check out the source; implying I'm lying to win Internet arguments because the world's least reliable encyclopedia doesn't provide clear page references and quotations is insulting. I would prefer we go look it up directly if it's worth checking at all.


Given the real-world baggage some folks see attached to fantasy Races, and the intense debate within this thread, it appears to matter. If it doesn't matter 'at all times,' how do we demarcate the times it does against the times it doesn't?


It is less important when the surrounding context makes it clear that the person doing the writing and idea crafting can be trusted with such a topic without blindly injecting their unconscious biases into the work. The demarcation is very simple and very elusive; when we can trust the person involved. What counts as trustworthy, how do we know, is it an earned state or a maintained one, are all questions that can't be answered by rules so much as developed by experience, though.


well if they're completely evil and wicked, then they'd have no virtues, which includes diligence and ambition, things that drive you to act at all.

You're equating virtue in the moral sense and virtue in the ethical sense. Ambition is often a non-good thing. Your premise is flawed.

Evil is also not defined by 'sin'. Saying something is evil does not equate to saying it has a laundry list of arbitrary traits, not in this sense – although technically what defines being evil could be rendered as a laundry list of traits. That's really quibbles, though.



pure evil by the way of lack of all virtues only results in pure cowardly lazy people who would be too afraid and lazy to get out of bed in the morning for fear tripping down the stairs and breaking their neck. orcs are not this, and therefore they have virtues that allow them to function, therefore they are people.

Too many leaps, too many unsubstantiated conflations.


So "only humans have free will", and "anything without that is an animal". Nice circle there. I also note that your "of course" rebuttal contains an enormous number of assumptions not in evidence. As well as those mentioned by Belial, above - what is an "idea to do good" and where does it come from?

This is pretty basic sophomore stuff, isn't it? :smallconfused:
Your argument is the difference between human and animal is arbitrary. Well, yeah. Of course it is. There are many arbitrary divides that have value in certain contexts, however. Being arbitrary does not mean it is wrong or without value. It simply means that this specific line is where the tipping point is theoretically set; anything on one side is in a different set from anything on the other side.

The idea to do good comes from the ability to possess metathought. You have an idea about what good is. You break down how your immediate or near future actions can potentially achieve it. You accelerate muscle tissue into contraction to propel you to physically engage in the task you just devised.


Can you define this thing called "free will" that you set such store by? Without using the word "human"?

The ability to evaluate and mindfully choose.
I frequently see people make points about how you don't really choose, because there's only one real choice and the others are traps. This is hogwash, for two reasons. One, people choose trap options all the time. There being only one clear, good, safe route doesn't make that the sole choice, it just makes it potentially the best – depending on your goals.

The other is that if I would naturally choose to do a thing based on my internal processes, and outside forces or even other, less controlled internal forces would make me take that path, this does not invalidate the choosing. A conspiracy theorist acquaintance of mine falls into this a lot. He's convinced that music is mind controlling people into feeling things, for example, but he can't grasp the idea that people know this and choose their music based on how they want to feel. He assumes that if something affects his mood, it must always be unwilling. But free will allows one to choose to accept that external force rather than fighting it.



And - and this is the real reason why this entire line of reasoning is pointless - what follows, if it does satisfy you that it has this undefined quality? What will you do then?

Change, albeit slowly.


The ability to choose from options with thought rather than it being merely a result of natural impulse and reaction, granted most of the time people respond directly through immediate reaction severely biased from instinct, but decisions can be thought about and we can with effort go against our impulses and automatic reactions despite them effectively being programmed responses generated from our past experiences.

This is why we value introspection and forethought. We can change our programming, so when narrow timeframes arrive, we act in line with our morals and not with our grosse motor functions.

Raimun
2015-01-31, 02:56 AM
I'd like to ask of one thing.

Please, stop making arguments along the lines of: "I detest orcs being always Evil because blablabla."

Seriously. Last time orcs were always Evil was in the 80s.

And as we all know, only weird people play old editions* of D&D nowdays.

Nowdays, orcs are usually Evil because default settings have cultural reasons for that kind of behavior.

*Anything before 3.0.

Milo v3
2015-01-31, 03:43 AM
I'd like to ask of one thing.

Please, stop making arguments along the lines of: "I detest orcs being always Evil because blablabla."

Seriously. Last time orcs were always Evil was in the 80s.

And as we all know, only weird people play old editions* of D&D nowdays.

Nowdays, orcs are usually Evil because default settings have cultural reasons for that kind of behavior.

*Anything before 3.0.

Based on various posts in this thread, several people do have orcs as always evil in their games. The very first sentence in this whole thread implies that Donnadogsoth has orcs as "irredeemably evil".

1337 b4k4
2015-01-31, 08:43 AM
pure evil by the way of lack of all virtues only results in pure cowardly lazy people who would be too afraid and lazy to get out of bed in the morning for fear tripping down the stairs and breaking their neck. orcs are not this, and therefore they have virtues that allow them to function, therefore they are people.

My dog gets out of bed every morning, with no fear of falling down the stairs and breaking his neck. He, nor any other dog, is not people.

Jay R
2015-01-31, 09:00 AM
It usually doesn't matter whether they are all evil. If a tribe is in the grip of an evil leader, and they are forced to march into your lands as an attacking army, you have to fight the entire army, not just the ones who are evil.

Tolkien's orcs were often wanting to rebel against the Red Eye, but until they do, they are all foes of the heroes.

Citrakayah
2015-01-31, 09:13 AM
I'm talking about the currents and cultures I've seen running through D&D, especially the old school revival stuff. Monsters are monstrous, not as an excuse for racism but to explore the possibilities. A world where flies really do spontaneously generate from old meat; how neat is that! What else could be different? We should explore and find out! Maybe some of is will even make it back...

If you want a book citation, you won't get one. Just like there's no book citation for orcs being direct Tolkien-esque corrupted elves. But that's still a thing that people believe to be true from the old days.

Then you really don't have an right to act like it's a default interpretation. Yes, obviously if kobolds spontaneously emerged from rocks just like gnomes but were just evil, then kobolds are all evil. But that generally isn't true in most games, so it makes less sense for kobolds to be all evil.


Of course Wikipedia isn't going to provide proprietary content. That level of specificity is actively against what they're about when referencing the details of works like this.

They mention what medusas are like in each edition. With citations. Which they are allowed to do, and doesn't involve proprietary content.


They're easy enough to get ahold of. Check out the source; implying I'm lying to win Internet arguments because the world's least reliable encyclopedia doesn't provide clear page references and quotations is insulting. I would prefer we go look it up directly if it's worth checking at all.

I'm not buying an old book that I wouldn't use for anything except a single Internet argument. Especially when it costs $85.00. Especiallyier (and yes, I know that isn't a word) when it might be any one of several books.

And no, I'm not implying that you're lying. At absolute worst, I think that your memory might be incorrect... which happens to the best of us, so please stop getting offended over the fact that I think that you might be mistaken.

1337 b4k4
2015-01-31, 10:16 AM
Then you really don't have an right to act like it's a default interpretation. Yes, obviously if kobolds spontaneously emerged from rocks just like gnomes but were just evil, then kobolds are all evil. But that generally isn't true in most games, so it makes less sense for kobolds to be all evil.

To be completely fair, none of the older D&D books that I have discuss the origins of Kobolds to any degree. For early D&D, origins were simply not a topic discussed for most monsters.



They mention what medusas are like in each edition. With citations. Which they are allowed to do, and doesn't involve proprietary content.


Actually, the article on wikipedia only describes "typical physical characteristics" and does not get specific to each edition. To this end, I've reviewed my own materials and this is what the D&D books say (emphasis mine):

OD&D (chainmail supplements)
--------------------------------------



Monsters & Treasure: No origins, described as per the greek monster, but with serpent body


Basic D&D
--------------


Moldvay: No origins, as per the greek monster

Mentzer Basic: No origins, as per the greek monster

Mentzer Companion: "On the Plane of Earth, a medusa is an ugly writhing mass of 10' long tentacles connected to a small lumpy spherical body. Several eyes on foot-long eyestalks also protrude from the body..."

Rules Cyclopedia: Similar Plane of Earth description as above


AD&D
--------


Monster Manual: No origins, as per the greek monster


So at least for basic D&D, yes, on alternate planes, Medusa were balls of tentacles.



And no, I'm not implying that you're lying. At absolute worst, I think that your memory might be incorrect... which happens to the best of us, so please stop getting offended over the fact that I think that you might be mistaken.

On the other hand, without any evidence of your own to the contrary, it's basically a your word vs Siuis' word. Either one of you has an equally likely chance to be mistaken.

Citrakayah
2015-01-31, 12:06 PM
Actually, the article on wikipedia only describes "typical physical characteristics" and does not get specific to each edition. To this end, I've reviewed my own materials and this is what the D&D books say (emphasis mine):

OD&D (chainmail supplements)
--------------------------------------



Monsters & Treasure: No origins, described as per the greek monster, but with serpent body


Basic D&D
--------------


Moldvay: No origins, as per the greek monster

Mentzer Basic: No origins, as per the greek monster

Mentzer Companion: "On the Plane of Earth, a medusa is an ugly writhing mass of 10' long tentacles connected to a small lumpy spherical body. Several eyes on foot-long eyestalks also protrude from the body..."

Rules Cyclopedia: Similar Plane of Earth description as above


AD&D
--------


Monster Manual: No origins, as per the greek monster


So at least for basic D&D, yes, on alternate planes, Medusa were balls of tentacles.

Okay, that works.


On the other hand, without any evidence of your own to the contrary, it's basically a your word vs Siuis' word. Either one of you has an equally likely chance to be mistaken.

I know.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-31, 12:44 PM
I'd like to ask of one thing.

Please, stop making arguments along the lines of: "I detest orcs being always Evil because blablabla."

Seriously. Last time orcs were always Evil was in the 80s.

And as we all know, only weird people play old editions* of D&D nowdays.

Nowdays, orcs are usually Evil because default settings have cultural reasons for that kind of behavior.

*Anything before 3.0.

Thanks for calling me weird.

Donnadogsoth
2015-01-31, 12:52 PM
So "only humans have free will", and "anything without that is an animal". Nice circle there. I also note that your "of course" rebuttal contains an enormous number of assumptions not in evidence. As well as those mentioned by Belial, above - what is an "idea to do good" and where does it come from?

Can you define this thing called "free will" that you set such store by? Without using the word "human"?

The doubled-square that you seem to think is the ultimate proof of - something else that's also undefined at this point - is an exercise that only becomes possible when the subject can not only grasp such abstract ideas as "area" and "double", but also clearly communicate them. When someone can teach a chimp to do that, will you really set such importance on leading it through a geometrical exercise? What if it paints a picture instead, or plays an original composition on the bassoon?

And - and this is the real reason why this entire line of reasoning is pointless - what follows, if it does satisfy you that it has this undefined quality? What will you do then?

Free will is the ability to choose creativity, and creativity is that quality which willfully discovers, transmits, and assimilates the ideas of natural law that allow mankind to increase his potential population density. Not population density as such, but potential, as a measure of power. Any animal that can do this, is a human. Not count but discover a principle of doubling the square. Not painting a picture but painting a classical composition. Not playing an original bassoon composition but doing one that could be classified as classical music. All of these in germ, of course, but the germs indicating potential to develop into mastery, as the normal human child is capable of displaying such germs of mastery. In my games, at least, orcs lack this germ. They are either animals lacking it originally or they are wicked souls who chose their wickedness prior to incarnation and such have no practical ability or inclination to be creative, to have free will, to be "Good".

SiuiS
2015-01-31, 01:18 PM
I'd like to ask of one thing.

Please, stop making arguments along the lines of: "I detest orcs being always Evil because blablabla."

Seriously. Last time orcs were always Evil was in the 80s.

And as we all know, only weird people play old editions* of D&D nowdays.

Nowdays, orcs are usually Evil because default settings have cultural reasons for that kind of behavior.

*Anything before 3.0.

I dunno. There are a lot of folks who are very insistent that orcs are always one way or another.

Personally, I think it's weird that people pick one set of assumptions for all their games forever and never change it.


My dog gets out of bed every morning, with no fear of falling down the stairs and breaking his neck. He, nor any other dog, is not people.

Eh... I avoided using pets because pets become people in any way that matters on a personal scale. My cats are people. Buttermilk actually not only reminds me to get him water, but figured out that I had to turn on the pipes after some plumbing work first and led me to the lever.
That's why we like dogs and cats. Their natural bonding instincts match our own well enough. They integrate into the small clan unit.


Then you really don't have an right to act like it's a default interpretation.

Sure I have the right to act like the default interpretation in an era where here are no origins made canon is the default interpretation. That's sort of the point.



I'm not buying an old book that I wouldn't use for anything except a single Internet argument. Especially when it costs $85.00. Especiallyier (and yes, I know that isn't a word) when it might be any one of several books.

That's unfortunate, because the set can be had officially from WotC for cheap, and the information is pretty good. It's nice to have a breadth of knowledge about how things were and how they will be. Gotta know where you come from to know where you're going.



Basic D&D
--------------


Moldvay: No origins, as per the greek monster

Mentzer Basic: No origins, as per the greek monster

Mentzer Companion: "On the Plane of Earth, a medusa is an ugly writhing mass of 10' long tentacles connected to a small lumpy spherical body. Several eyes on foot-long eyestalks also protrude from the body..."

Rules Cyclopedia: Similar Plane of Earth description as above


AD&D
--------


Monster Manual: No origins, as per the greek monster


So at least for basic D&D, yes, on alternate planes, Medusa were balls of tentacles.

It was the companion! Man that threw me off. I remember having that and being so confused when the C in BECMI was champion, not companion.

Which one has the Warmachine mass combat rules? I'll have to pick then up again when I can. Expensive though, I can't do PDFs. My eyes...

Frozen_Feet
2015-01-31, 02:42 PM
Young children are perfectly capable of grasping basic ethics and recognizing poor writing.

Funny thing, then, that pretty much all the arguing and complaining about alignment I've ever seen is done by adults. Children, meanwhile, tend to intuitively grasp it. :smalltongue:


Does this mean that, because of Viking raiders, non-humans would be correct in judging humans the way many of the humans here are saying to judge orcs?

They wouldn't be correct, but looking at all the crap we do to non-human things in this world (in addition to stuff we do to other humans), it would be perfectly understandable (ajd, dare I say, justified) argument to make. :smalltongue:

---

Now, to other things: all this talk about whether orcs are usually or always evil or what not is missing one thing: variance is not proof of freedom.

Let's consider the tale of a pack of baboons and a bearded scientist. Like with most packs, the rather agressive and violent alpha males ruled it. One effect of this was that whenever food was available, the alphas would eat first.

One day it happened that humans left some contaminated food in the vicinity. As usual, the alphas took it to themselves, with the rest having to do with non-man-made meals. In a few days, all the alphas got ill. With them no longer around, the females of the pack had to mate with the beta males who, as the bearded scientist put it, "were the good guys". With much surprise, the bearded scientist observed that the amount of violence within the pack reduced greatly. He decided to wait and see if this was a permanent change. After three generations, the altered pack behaviour was still in effect.

The bearded scientist was much delighted. Stroking his beard, he mused: "Animals can change their culture overnight." Smiling broadly, he then asked, "why not humans?"

Indeed, why not? Well, for starters, it's trivial to note that this change did not come to being as a result of any conscious attempt on the part of the baboons. Alphas, betas, females and all were acting just like all other baboons in the past. It was pure, externally caused co-incidence that ultimately caused the change. No real choice or effort was exterted by those influenced by it.

In the same vein, nothing dictates the good orcs, or for that matter good humans, chose to be good. It could be they were just given the right push at the right moment by some force completely outside their own ability to influence. In fact, this is a stable of myths and fantasy both. The ineffable hand of God or Destiny guides people through their lives, and all attempts to fight fate only serve to force you down the path faster as you unwittingly march into traps made of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Alternatively, consider dice and random chance. Sure, you could roll under 394, or above 656 on a 50d20 roll, but you'll be rolling for a long while before any such thing happens. And even when it does, it has nothing to do with choice - the dice just landed where physics determined they should.

SiuiS
2015-01-31, 04:12 PM
Funny thing, then, that pretty much all the arguing and complaining about alignment I've ever seen is done by adults. Children, meanwhile, tend to intuitively grasp it. :smalltongue:


Heh~



They wouldn't be correct, but looking at all the crap we do to non-human things in this world (in addition to stuff we do to other humans), it would be perfectly understandable (ajd, dare I say, justified) argument to make. :smalltongue:


Aye, that's pretty fair.



Indeed, why not? Well, for starters, it's trivial to note that this change did not come to being as a result of any conscious attempt on the part of the baboons. Alphas, betas, females and all were acting just like all other baboons in the past. It was pure, externally caused co-incidence that ultimately caused the change. No real choice or effort was exterted by those influenced by it.

In the same vein, nothing dictates the good orcs, or for that matter good humans, chose to be good. It could be they were just given the right push at the right moment by some force completely outside their own ability to influence. In fact, this is a stable of myths and fantasy both. The ineffable hand of God or Destiny guides people through their lives, and all attempts to fight fate only serve to force you down the path faster as you unwittingly march into traps made of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Alternatively, consider dice and random chance. Sure, you could roll under 394, or above 656 on a 50d20 roll, but you'll be rolling for a long while before any such thing happens. And even when it does, it has nothing to do with choice - the dice just landed where physics determined they should.

That's the thing; sapience is the ability to set in motion external forces to act upon ourselves. There's nothing saying the orcs or humans chose to be good. But there is always the possibility that they did, which is something baboons cannot do.

Lord Raziere
2015-01-31, 11:48 PM
My dog gets out of bed every morning, with no fear of falling down the stairs and breaking his neck. He, nor any other dog, is not people.

Then would you say its perfectly ok for me to buy a basket of cute puppies then take a gun and shoot them all in rapid succession for no reason?

Because if they're not people, then its perfectly ok since the only thing the puppies would be is property, and I can do anything I want with my property.

SiuiS
2015-02-01, 12:18 AM
There are a lot of things you're allowed to do and have the right to do that people will get upset about. Unloading on a basket of puppies in front of someone is less about what you feel you have a right to do, and more about provoking an emotional response I hopes that it clashes with the logical foundation presented.

But "logically, you can hurt your animals" and "emotionally, I'm going to do something about it anyway" are not at odds. Please, don't hurt the puppies :smalleek: