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Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 07:02 AM
Over on the "kill teh orcs" thread, people have been making the distinction between an "always evil" race and a "usually evil" race.

The more I think about this, the more ludicrous this gets. The more I think about it, the more "usually evil" sounds like an awful annoying cop-out.

As far as I'm concerned you can play a fantasy race in one of two ways. Either you can treat them as a metaphor: Elves are fading glory, Orcs are rapacious destruction, or you can treat them as real sentient beings.

If you treat them as a metaphor, the "usually" label is meaningless. An Orc is like a disease: it kills because it is in its nature to kill, and you can't feel bad about killing an Orc any more than you feel bad about taking antibiotics.

If you treat them as real people, though, the "usually" lable becomes even worse. Somehow we are expected to believe that this sentiet, free-willed race universally and knowingly chooses an "evil" lifestyle. This is completely mad.

A lot of people cling to the "usually" label because they fear that the idea of an "evil race" is equivalent to real world racism. In a sense I suppose it is, but only *if* you treat that race as a real group of people, rather than a metaphor. If, however, you treat them as real people, then saying "Orcs, as a race, are evil, but rarely one will rise above his roots" is really no better. In fact it's a good deal worse, because suddenly your Orcs go from being rapacious embodiments of slaughter to being a literally evil race, a race of beings which is somehow morally bankrupt by virtue of its genetics.

Am I missing something? Is there some serious value in the "usually evil" label beyond a pure cop out?

Fiery Diamond
2008-02-12, 07:12 AM
No, in fact, there is not some serious value beyond that of a cop-out. However, there is quite a big (if wrong-I'm not disagreeing with you) reason for this cop-out's existence. That is the desire of the game creators to create a situation that will allow you to have races other than humans that you can fight because they are other races, without feeling like you're being a racist, yet still give DMs the freedom to have members of said races be good people if they want to. In other words, it's an attempt to "have your cake and eat it too." Which, of course, never works out.

Basically, I agree with you - it's a cop-out. I know WHY they did it, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a cop-out.

-Fiery Diamond

Zincorium
2008-02-12, 07:13 AM
This is, in a large part, due to the fact that evil is a very broad and vague term in D&D (look at all the alignment threads and you'll see some good examples).

The core concept of orcish society in D&D is that they are a brutal species with very, very many enemies. They kill the weak in their own society because it makes the tribe strong, something they desperately need, and they also raid and enslave other races because it's the only way for them to get ahead.

Orcish religion takes this even another step. Remember, this is D&D, the gods have their fingers in everything.

Gruumsh is perennially angry because, hey, he freaking got his eye put out and his people are being slaughtered everyday for the change in their pockets. So he uses the orcs to lash out at all the races around them even if there's not much reason to. They've changed the character of orcs a lot in recent editions, but without a pantheon change it's not going to mean much.

The end result of all this is that orcs are taught from day one that cruelty to those around them is good, that the elves, dwarves, and humans have stolen the land and goods that rightfully belong to the orcs, and that they shouldn't feel bad for doing anything we'd consider evil.

Am I making sense with this, Dan?

Sir Iguejo
2008-02-12, 07:15 AM
Being "Usually Evil" doesnt mean that the race is compound of merciless murderers and need to be exterminated like some kind of disease. It means that more than 50% of the race members is evil.

Being Evil does not implies senseless killing. I look at it more as selfishness. Take a look at it: probably most orc commoners have never killed anyone. Being Evil mean that they would not hesitate to kill if they need someone dead.

Rigon
2008-02-12, 07:22 AM
that "usually evil" is a statistical data which points out probability.
it means that the most common value of alignment among the units of a group is evil. but there are other alignments around which in total might return a greater number than the number of evil.

statistics and nothing more. it's function is a help as a default value for alignment and also pointing out how often this might differ from the default value.

racism is not something which can be even related to this data. it's a typical example of text misinterpretation. we need monsters to slay as that is one of the most common ways to gain experience and loot. and this is justified by a convenient alignment system (which is also very often overridden by plots and player decisions).

Serpentine
2008-02-12, 07:29 AM
I'd have to go look through all the monster manuals to be sure, but I believe "Always Evil" is reserved for those creatures that are completely, irrecovibly (wow, I butchered that word. Go me) Evil, the ones by whose very existance they increase the amount of pure Evil in the world, the ones who embody that very alignment - fiends, for example. "Usually Evil" creatures, on the other hand, may be innately inclined to be Evil, resulting in Evil societies, which then reinforce Evil in their offspring, raising Evil adults, which enforce their Evil societies, and so on. There may be some Good groups, but such groups would be likely to be rare and unstable due to their innate tendencies to violence, sadism, greed or whatever. Individuals may be Good through positive influence teaching them to restrain their natural tendency. Eh, it works okay for me.

Would this be an okay place for me to bring up my own issues with "Always Evil"? Goff, don't read this.
I'm going to throw a vampire NPC in my game. The party has been entrusted with delivering something to him to keep it safe, and he's going to be rather powerful, so I'm not exactly wanting them to attack him. Anyway, he's going to be noble, in several senses of the word, considering the people in his village to be his charges and his responsibility. He will suck their blood, but it will be more of a job that the young are expected to do for him (like serfs tilling the field, sort of thing). He treats his people well, protects them from danger, is kind to them - I'm thinking that if anyone is really freaked out by the idea of having him suck their throats, he'll make other arrangements or simply give them other duties. On the other hand, he's a vampire. His very existence is Evil. It could easily be argued that if he were to be anything but Evil, he should end his existence (of course, it could then be counter-argued that if he did that then his people would be left to the other vampires and werewolves that infest that country, but that's beside the point). So. Vampires are undead and undead are Always Evil. Aside from (or in addition to, or something) him being a unique creature - a possibility allowed for in the rules - can an undead creature be non-Evil (this particular fellow is likely to be Lawful Neutral) through acts alone?
Continuing from this line of thought, I've been pondering its significance to the Alignment spells. I've heard people say that they hate them and get rid of them or whatever. I don't want to ban them, but we're relatively free with our alignments - or at least the definitions of them. I was thinking, could they, perhaps, just detect those creatures that totally embody that alignment or have it though their mere existence, and/or those creatures who are completely and utterly immersed in it? That is, an unusually selfish person who likes tying tin cans to cats' tails and imagines their neighbours dying in gruesome ways wouldn't be effected by them, but a fiend or a devoted cleric of an evil god would. Does that sound reasonable?Sorry if that stuff doesn't fit so well here...

Saph
2008-02-12, 07:31 AM
As far as I'm concerned you can play a fantasy race in one of two ways. Either you can treat them as a metaphor: Elves are fading glory, Orcs are rapacious destruction, or you can treat them as real sentient beings.

What? No. Where are you getting this?

First, you haven't even got the label right. Orcs aren't "Usually Evil", they're "Often Chaotic Evil". There's a difference.

Second, haven't you ever heard of probability? There's a middle ground in between "Every member of this race is evil" and "No member of this race has any inclination towards evil at all". You seem to be saying that every race must either be 100% one alignment, or their alignment must be a complete blank, with nothing said about it at all. This is just silly.

D&D already has races that are paragons of their alignment and always the same - they're called outsiders. Humanoids and monstrous humanoids are something quite different.

- Saph

Bavarian itP
2008-02-12, 07:35 AM
The more I think about this, the more ludicrous this gets.

Well, I have shocking news for you: Everything about the D&D alignment system is about as ludicrous, stupid and superfluous as a game rule can possibly be.


you can treat them as real sentient beings

I have more shocking news for you: In D&D, the so-called "monster races" aren't designed to be portrayed as sentient beings. They are designed to be sword food.

MorkaisChosen
2008-02-12, 07:57 AM
The way I see it, it's not about genetics but culture. An orc's genetics make him big, tough and maybe a bit stupid. The orc's culture (Kultur?) makes him evil except in the instances where either one rebels against it (Drizzorct Do'Orcden) or they're brought up by another race.

That's unless you go Tolkien and say they're made from the tortured and warped descendants of elves and are tainted by the vil of their creation by the Dark Lord.

kamikasei
2008-02-12, 08:14 AM
If you treat them as real people, though, the "usually" lable becomes even worse. Somehow we are expected to believe that this sentiet, free-willed race universally and knowingly chooses an "evil" lifestyle. This is completely mad.

No we're not, and where are you getting this from?

They're "Often Chaotic Evil" because the alignment most common among a group of orcs is Chaotic Evil. It's similar to how (though I can't swear the same magnitude qualifier is used) Elves tend more towards Chaotic Good than other alignments. Humans are specifically stated not to have any single most common alignment; this is not true for every other "non-monstrous" race.

So yeah, orcs are more often Chaotic Evil than any other alignment, but not necessarily more often CE than not, if you see the distinction. They are racially biased towards brute strength over intelligence or wisdom and culturally biased towards brutality, rapaciousness and, in general, evil. The same (regarding culture, not race) could probably be said of quite a few human cultures.

MorkaisChosen
2008-02-12, 08:18 AM
Just look at some of Britain's past for an example- Witch Trials and bruning (Insert denomination of Christianity here) at the stake for not being (insert other denomination) like (insert ruler) could easily be argued to be evil.

So as not to offend anyone I've picked my own country here, but the same can probably be done for most.

Swordguy
2008-02-12, 08:19 AM
Of course, the "often evil" descriptor ignores the fact that in such a race, combined with the orcish cultural acceptance of violence, would mean that those who aren't CE would be killed as weak or "unwilling to do what needs done". Everyone needs to be CE to keep up.

MorkaisChosen
2008-02-12, 08:23 AM
Killed as weak or escape into the wilds, learn ranger skills and start dual-wielding scimitars.

Demented
2008-02-12, 08:24 AM
If you treat them as real people, though, the "usually" lable becomes even worse. Somehow we are expected to believe that this sentiet, free-willed race universally and knowingly chooses an "evil" lifestyle. This is completely mad.

Why?
It seems pretty convenient to me. Guy steals from you, chop his head off. Guy spits on your sidewalk, chop his head off. Guy hits on your daughter, chop his head off. Someone chops your daughter's head off, you chop his head off, then you instate rules whereby chopping someone's head off must be done in a Ritual of Honor to tone down the chopping a little. Someone inevitably gets mad at you, so to demonstrate, you chop his legs and arms off, declare a Ritual of Honor, then chop his head off. Of course, everyone gets with the program, because you're the guy who's really good at chopping people's heads off, and no "sentient free-willed" being is going to argue with that.
Thus begins Evil society.

Afterwards, you find that your tribe is a bit short of labor. So, you go plundering the nearby hippy elf village because... Well, actually the elves have that annoying proficiency with elven longbows and they seem to be the mopey foresty types rather than hippies, so you decide to raid some human villages instead. This doesn't require a whole lot of thought to decide that you're going to be evil today. The situation is just what it is: You need loot, humans have loot, they're close by, easy prey, and you're naturally good at chopping people's heads off. What's to argue? So you go off and terrorize some human villages.

Then you get home, with all your loot and fresh female slaves, and some guy's been causing a mess in your kitchen with your apparently unfaithful wife. Which is no big loss, since she has the face of a pig. Literally. So, you chop off a couple more heads in a ritual of honor. At this point you're tired and don't want to bother with chopping people's heads off (there are better things to be done tonight), so you decide to split the tribe up a little and send the more hotheaded youngsters off in a warband with some ambiguous goal to cause mayhem and destruction. They're strapping young orc lads with lots of super-goblinoid-testosterone, and also happen to inspired by your supply of loot and female slaves, so they're totally cool with that. Odds are that they'll be slain by a group of PCs by your understanding, but they aren't thinking far enough ahead to realize it. You, however, don't mind, because they're a nuisance anyway, and you'll be free to exploit their families when they're gone. That's before you even get to the slaves. Life is good. No, I'm sorry, life is evil. But it's good. In an evil sort of way.

Unfortunately for you, the youngsters somehow survive their adventures and return with their own phat lewts. One of the particularly strong ones has even taken a few PC levels from the experience gained, and decides he doesn't like you. In a stroke of uncharacteristic brilliance, he approaches you with his latest idea: The Ritual of Succession, and chops your head off. While you aren't alive to savor the moment, he adds a few more rituals to the list, whips up the rest of the males into a glorifying battle frenzy, and goes off to conquer that hippy elf village that you had long since forgotten.

What's so bad about that?

Swordguy
2008-02-12, 08:25 AM
Killed as weak or escape into the wilds, learn ranger skills and start dual-wielding scimitars.

Yeah.

...

Better they be Tolkein-style orcs to be killed on sight than that.

Learnedguy
2008-02-12, 08:25 AM
This is why I avoid killing stuff that's able to say "ouch".

Curmudgeon
2008-02-12, 08:40 AM
Well, I have shocking news for you: Everything about the D&D alignment system is about as ludicrous, stupid and superfluous as a game rule can possibly be. The standard operating procedure for most D&D adventuring parties is:
See it.
Kill it.
Feel good about doing so.
In any system where there's a rational relationship between actions and consequences, pretty much all PCs must be treated as "evil". The D&D alignment system is merely a tool to provide an excuse for killing, because killing is what generates positive feedback in D&D.

Yes, this is ludicrous and stupid. Alas, it's not superfluous; it's a purposeful part of the game design to get the action going, saving immature players the burden of any moral decisions that would get in the way of combat.

Mr. Friendly
2008-02-12, 08:47 AM
As everyone has pointed out, its just a guideline.

Honestly, its a guideline of a guideline.

All it means is that most of the Orcs you meet will be evil.

However, the vaguery is there for important reasons.

Has this situation ever come up (I know it often comes up in our games and I love busting my fellow players):

Your party heroically battles its way into the Orcish Stronghold (or Bugbear or Ogre or Goblin or whatever) and kills the warriors, the chiefs, the lieutenants, the sergeants, the second and third string warriors, the chef, the tailor, butcher, the baker and the candlestickmaker. Now, all that is left is a huddling mass of screaming and crying Orcish women and children.

What do you do?

Most players I play with, the answer: KILL THEM THEY ARE EVIL!!!!!!

I never let that go and have in fact rolled initiative against my own parties to stop them. (Only when I play good characters obviously or neutral who has a motive)

The typical reasoning is that Orcs are evil and if we let the women and children live they will just grow up to do the same evil stuff. However, that is of course judging children and non-combatants guilty of the crimes of their society and sentancing them to death for the sins of their fathers.

A good character who kills an unarmed (or even a feebly armed honestly) Orcish woman or child has commited murder without question.

I think part of the point is moral ambiguity. It teaches players a fundamentally important lesson that every human being needs to have ingrained in their souls: Not all sentient beings are alike and you cannot punish someone for a crime that another committed. Collective punishment is a warcrime.

Yes, of course, this is D&D and it is a game. People commit genocide all the time and its no big deal. Of course most people are neutral. Generally though player characters are Often Good :smallwink: being good is a special responsibility. You can't just run around willy-nilly exterminating races you don't like.

This is a really rambling post isn't it?

Mr. Friendly
2008-02-12, 08:49 AM
Demented:

I see what you did there.

+1 would read again.

kpenguin
2008-02-12, 08:56 AM
You know, quite a few people might classify humans as "usually evil"...

Swordguy
2008-02-12, 09:00 AM
You can't just run around willy-nilly exterminating races you don't like.

Why not?

I mean, you're Good, right? That means you have respect for life, right? At what point does the suffering of innocents you'll stop by butchering the orc families outweigh the suffering you allow to happen by letting them live?

Some of them might grow up to not be evil. But the statistical majority of them will almost certainly be, unless you butcher the women and steal the children to be raised differently (which is still Evil), and Orcs definitely have a fiercely shamanistic culture that's centered around a divine mandate (by a God who really exists, no less!) of enslaving or wiping everyone else out.

If you say future actions never justify something like that, then you're committing an evil act via dooming others to be killed directly through your own inaction. You could have stopped them and didn't - which makes you just as bad as them.

The end point should be "what society would you rather see inherit the planet?" Hint: it's not the one centered around enslavement of everybody else.

People are looking at this through a 21st century lens of being taught that all viewpoints are valid and everyone deserves to get a chance. Instead, look at it through the lens of an 8th-century Saxon, or even better, an Iron Age warrior. The Race Wars in D&D are a zero-sum clash. In the long run, who will do more good if they come out on top?

Spiryt
2008-02-12, 09:05 AM
Honestly, I don't know why people bother so much about alingment in D&D.

Yes, many of Orc are evil. What;s the matter?

If I need whole tribe of neutral Orcs - there. If I need a tribe/band/whatever of wandering bastards - no problem.

"Usually evil" is a guideline - orcs have tendency to be nasty guys - and thats all.

Telonius
2008-02-12, 09:17 AM
As everyone has pointed out, its just a guideline.

Honestly, its a guideline of a guideline.

All it means is that most of the Orcs you meet will be evil.

However, the vaguery is there for important reasons.

Has this situation ever come up (I know it often comes up in our games and I love busting my fellow players):

Your party heroically battles its way into the Orcish Stronghold (or Bugbear or Ogre or Goblin or whatever) and kills the warriors, the chiefs, the lieutenants, the sergeants, the second and third string warriors, the chef, the tailor, butcher, the baker and the candlestickmaker. Now, all that is left is a huddling mass of screaming and crying Orcish women and children.

What do you do?

Most players I play with, the answer: KILL THEM THEY ARE EVIL!!!!!!

I never let that go and have in fact rolled initiative against my own parties to stop them. (Only when I play good characters obviously or neutral who has a motive)

The typical reasoning is that Orcs are evil and if we let the women and children live they will just grow up to do the same evil stuff. However, that is of course judging children and non-combatants guilty of the crimes of their society and sentancing them to death for the sins of their fathers.

A good character who kills an unarmed (or even a feebly armed honestly) Orcish woman or child has commited murder without question.

I think part of the point is moral ambiguity. It teaches players a fundamentally important lesson that every human being needs to have ingrained in their souls: Not all sentient beings are alike and you cannot punish someone for a crime that another committed. Collective punishment is a warcrime.

Yes, of course, this is D&D and it is a game. People commit genocide all the time and its no big deal. Of course most people are neutral. Generally though player characters are Often Good :smallwink: being good is a special responsibility. You can't just run around willy-nilly exterminating races you don't like.

This is a really rambling post isn't it?

Killing the women would be neutral, if they're armed. (Yes, I'm an equal-opportunity impaler). Killing the children would be evil.

Person_Man
2008-02-12, 09:39 AM
In my games:

Often Evil: Most members of the species are Evil, but there is known faction or community that is not. For example, most orcs are Evil barbarians who roam the countryside in clans. But some orcs have made their way to the city and/or have been converted by non-Evil missionaries, so you can't just kill them on site.

Usually Evil: 99% of the species is Evil, but its not inhearent in their nature. For example, the huge majority of Drow are Evil. But its because their society is very Evil and isolated. So its possible for a Drow "lone wolf" PC or NPC to be Good or Neutral. In fact, this particular alignment trope has been used so many times that its a cliche.

Always Evil: Every member of this species is Evil. You can kill them on sight and be cheered on by the local authorities for doing so. This category is reserved almost exclusively for demons, devils, and undead. Monsters without the possibility of redemption.

kamikasei
2008-02-12, 09:47 AM
Killing the women would be neutral, if they're armed. (Yes, I'm an equal-opportunity impaler). Killing the children would be evil.

Hmmm... while I agree that killing a woman is exactly as evil or not as killing a man, I think there's a distinction to be made here. "Killing the women and children" isn't just a matter of killing the defenceless but also the defenders, and crossing the line from killing the aggressors. It's defeating an army on the field and then putting their cooks and stableboys and camp followers to the sword.

hewhosaysfish
2008-02-12, 09:48 AM
Their innate tendencies give orcs a higher probability of growing up evil than humans: therefore humans should exterminate the orcs to minimise the destruction and suffering they will inevitably cause.

Their innate tendencies give humans a higher probability of growing up evil than elves: therefore elves should exterminate the humans to minimise the destruction and suffering they will inevitably cause.

Discuss.

MorkaisChosen
2008-02-12, 10:11 AM
Why not?

I mean, you're Good, right? That means you have respect for life, right? At what point does the suffering of innocents you'll stop by butchering the orc families outweigh the suffering you allow to happen by letting them live?

Some of them might grow up to not be evil. But the statistical majority of them will almost certainly be, unless you butcher the women and steal the children to be raised differently (which is still Evil), and Orcs definitely have a fiercely shamanistic culture that's centered around a divine mandate (by a God who really exists, no less!) of enslaving or wiping everyone else out.

But you're not giving them the chance to prove you wrong. Good isn't always about doing what does the least harm; it should be the most good. You could always use the five years you've gained in which there are no adult Orc warriors to prepare the locals for an orc attack, so that if the orcs attack they will be ready. However, there's always a chance that you've done enough damage to the evil Orcish culture that they decide to become peaceful hippy farmers.

Moral Wiz
2008-02-12, 10:21 AM
Their innate tendencies give orcs a higher probability of growing up evil than humans: therefore humans should exterminate the orcs to minimise the destruction and suffering they will inevitably cause.

Their innate tendencies give humans a higher probability of growing up evil than elves: therefore elves should exterminate the humans to minimise the destruction and suffering they will inevitably cause.

Discuss.

Their innate tendencies give elves a higher probability of growing up evil than humans: (The pride, the desire for power, the belief in their own cultural supremacy) therefore humans should exterminate the elves to minimize the destruction and suffering they will inevitably cause.
:smallamused:

Prophaniti
2008-02-12, 10:26 AM
*awsomeness*

That's great! Life through the eyes of an orc cheif! Well done, sir!

Anyway, I don't see a conflict with running any of the "Usually Evil" races as sentient. It's really quite simple to understand. Just look at human history, full of wars, killing, betrayal and other actions that are undeniably evil. Actions perpetrated by (ostensibly) sentient and free-willed people, done knowingly and conciously. Chosen, in fact. Now simply imagine a society where such things are considered acceptable, perhaps even glorified. Read your history, it has happened before IRL. Thus you have a group of fully sentient, completely free-willed beings operating in a society which offends the sensibilities of the other beings around them. Really, all D&D does with the monstrous races is take the same emnities and reasons for fighting that humans have already and remove the similarities in appearance. That way one can enjoy the events and conflicts of the game (was that too subtle?) without being bogged down in philisophical debates.

kamikasei
2008-02-12, 10:38 AM
Their innate tendencies give elves a higher probability of growing up evil than humans: (The pride, the desire for power, the belief in their own cultural supremacy) therefore humans should exterminate the elves to minimize the destruction and suffering they will inevitably cause.
:smallamused:

Elves are "usually Chaotic Good". Orcs are "often Chaotic Evil". Humans "tend towards no one alignment, not even neutrality". The result is that Elves are stated, by the rules, to be more strongly biased towards Good relative to humans than Orcs are biased towards Evil (again, relative to humans). Which pretty much means that anything humans can say about orcs, elves can say more of about humans.

...If we're being relative. Of course, objectively, more orcs are more evil than humans. :smallsigh:

MorkaisChosen
2008-02-12, 10:45 AM
Orcs are more evil than humans, but humans are more evil than elves- exterminate anyone who isn't "Usually Good".

Jack Zander
2008-02-12, 11:08 AM
But you're not giving them the chance to prove you wrong. Good isn't always about doing what does the least harm; it should be the most good. You could always use the five years you've gained in which there are no adult Orc warriors to prepare the locals for an orc attack, so that if the orcs attack they will be ready. However, there's always a chance that you've done enough damage to the evil Orcish culture that they decide to become peaceful hippy farmers.

When creatures are pushed, they push back. That violence will only lead to more violence. They won't be "forced" into being peaceful. They'll realize that racist and greedy humans and elves are going to destroy them unless they become stronger.

Dervag
2008-02-12, 11:55 AM
When creatures are pushed, they push back. That violence will only lead to more violence. They won't be "forced" into being peaceful. They'll realize that racist and greedy humans and elves are going to destroy them unless they become stronger.I find this (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=9483443&postcount=2) to be very helpful and instructive.

The practical upshot of the post is that D&D is not based on a modern culture in which the different fantasy species are like modern warring ethnic groups that keep trying to exterminate each other entirely.

Looking at the assumptions basic to D&D. The PCs are wandering warriors who beat things up and take their stuff. Social organization is quasimedieval. Even if you don't have medieval theocracies you still have kings and princes and barons ruling over stretches of land. National governments are legitimate because the local autocrat says they are, not because they are constructed from the bottom up by the governed.

This social setting is a lot like the Iron Age of ancient and classical times, or like the early Middle Ages. And in that era, genocide was almost unheard of.

There'd be two warring cultures next door to each other. They wouldn't try to kill each other off, by and large. Most of the actual "warfare" would take the form of small groups of warriors from one side sneaking into the other side's territory and burning or stealing some of their stuff. Conquering territory from the strong rulers of that territory was too much trouble. After all, if they were weak enough for you to conquer them easily you'd probably already have done so.

This is exactly the way D&D warfare as we see it in campaigns usually goes. Goblin tribes send "war bands" over to the nearest human settlements, kill the defenders, do some basic looting and pillaging, then go home carrying big sacks of portable wealth from the settlements in question. Then human nations retaliate by sending "adventuring parties" over to the nearest goblin settlements. The "adventurers" kill the defenders, do some basic looting and pillaging, and then go home carrying big sacks of portable wealth from the settlements in question.

Issues of alignment and such aside, both sides are doing essentially the same thing here. Neither side is engaged in the kind of total war that modern people in industrial societies are familiar with.

Variations on this basic theme include slave raiding and banditry (orc bandits are really just long-range orc raiders that strike deeper into your territory and stick around longer).

Now, in a society like this, once in a while one side or the other will get tired of the constant low-level raiding, amass an army, and try to conquer the neighbor. When that kind of high-intensity war breaks out, we expect the stakes to go up.

So the goblins assemble a mighty horde led by charismatic shamans and warlords, or the humans assemble a mighty army led by charismatic priests and champions. But even then, consider what goal of the army is likely to be.

Usually the goal is tribute, with one side trying to hit the other so hard that they can take back lots of treasure. Enough treasure to seriously damage the loser's economy and greatly strengthen the winner's economy, so that the loser will be unable to attack the winner effectively for a while.

Or the goal is simply to induce the enemy fighter-types to surrender or flee. Peasants don't fight very well, so if you overrun a bunch of peasants and chase off the warriors native to the region, your core territory is no longer in danger because the peasants won't be able to threaten you without their warriors. If you can force the fighter-types to give you all their weapons and start trying to farm, that's almost as good; you'll have to watch them carefully but without their powerful weapons (like magic items and special mounts) they aren't nearly as much of a threat. And, again, your side is strengthened by captured weapons.

Very seldom would you see a medieval or ancient army invading a territory with the goal of complete destruction. There were exceptions. For example, the Assyrians would invade a country and take all the mobile property, leaving the inhabitants to go through a famine. Or they'd scatter the inhabitants of a rebellious province throughout their empire in a large-scale Diaspora, and resettle the province with more reliable and loyal subjects.

But this kind of thing made them very unpopular. Eventually, when a competing power bloc (the Persians) was in a position to attack Assyria, the subjects were so sick of their cruelty that they rallied to the Persians and Assyria was destroyed as completely as many of their victims. They became a forgotten culture- for millenia, the only well known evidence that they even existed was to be found in the holy books of a single ethnicity that had suffered at their hands.

There were a few other cases of ethnic cleansing or the complete destruction of property in the ancient era, such as when the Romans got tired of fighting Carthage every few decades and decided to dismantle the whole city brick by brick and sow the surrounding fields with salt so that nothing would grow there. This was an atrocity so great by ancient standards that it remained a well-known legend for at least 2200 years (and counting).

Now, let's apply this kind of stuff in D&D. If we assume that the wars of D&D are like ancient or Dark Age military culture (with "adventurers" standing in as the raiders for the Designated Good Guys), then we do not expect to see the mass murder of orcish women and children by humans. Nor do we expect to see the mass murder of human women and children by orcs. In fact, if a bunch of orcs were to start attacking human villages and killing everyone, it is entirely possible that even the other orcs would ally with human groups trying to bring them down.

Because it's well understood that one of the basic rules of the 'game' of war is that you do not try to destroy the basis of your opponent's civilization. You may try to conquer it. You may try to steal every last drop of wealth you can squeeze out of it. But you at least make sure there will be something left to pillage a few years down the line. I mean, who knows? Your kid might need a new barony some day, and it's better to have him subduing conquered territory than sitting around the castle sulking because your army reduced everything within 200 miles to a smoldering wasteland.

hewhosaysfish
2008-02-12, 12:29 PM
Looking at the assumptions basic to D&D. The PCs are wandering warriors who beat things up and take their stuff...

In a kick-in-the-door style game, maybe. But does it necessarily apply to all PCs? Or even the majority of PCs?
I see people making this statement all the time: "D&D is all about breaking into sentient creatures homes, killing them and taking their stuff" and it really bugs me!

Did Frodo destroy the One Ring just because he wanted to loot Barad Dur?
Did Belgarion stab a handful of Andraks and rummage through their pockets?
Did Luke Skywalker go on the Death Star trench run in the hope of finding some good salvage in the wreckage afterwards?

Gah!

Roderick_BR
2008-02-12, 01:11 PM
Personally, I treat these things in a case-by-case. Races that are often or usually, I treat as a tendency of their society.

You can have an orc tribe hell-bent into destroying and torturing, using the "survival of the fittest" to it's more literall sense.
Their whole society is evil, with rare exceptions.

Then you can have orcs tribes as that sort of place where a human wouldn't dare enter, but they won't venture into others cities to cause wars. Some stories based in World of Warcraft seems to use this d idea, with mixed groups of orcs, trolls, humans, and orcs in warbands. The actual WoW game still uses the Aliance/Horde mechanic, where one group is automatically enemy of the other.
In this case, orcs are dangerous but won't attack travelers just for sheer evilness.

Then you have the whole race of evil races, but in this case, those creatures are usually horrible monsters, with picth black hearts. Whatever the reason, they are evil to the core, and adventurers often kill them on sight. In the Lord of the Rings series, orcs are a corrupted race, technicallly created for the purpose of being evil armies for their lords. Creatures like these are either not-natural creations, or plagues. The exceptions are rare to none.

I usually like a mix of the 2 first kinds. Sometimes the players will find an orc tribe that just want to be left alone, and some even willing to start trade routes, while others just want to loot caravans.

The webcomic Goblins is a great example of that. The tribe of the main characters is a pacific tribe, but because of an old evil tribe that used to live there, they get a bad fame, and often need to avoid attacks from adventurers that think that they are evil.

Leicontis
2008-02-12, 01:18 PM
I've always seen the "often X" alignment descriptors as indicating a cultural inclination. For real-life examples, Americans are (at least by stereotypes) culturally predisposed towards individualism and independence, which would give them a descriptor of "often chaotic". People in many east Asian countries are culturally predisposed towards communalism and deference to authority, giving an "often lawful" descriptor.

Thus, orcs are culturally predisposed towards violence, greed, and selfishness, resulting in an alignment listing of "often CE".

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 01:26 PM
What? No. Where are you getting this?

First, you haven't even got the label right. Orcs aren't "Usually Evil", they're "Often Chaotic Evil". There's a difference.

A semantic difference, the point is that you either have the concept of an Evil Race or you don't. Either Orcs are Evil just because they're Orcs, or they aren't


Second, haven't you ever heard of probability? There's a middle ground in between "Every member of this race is evil" and "No member of this race has any inclination towards evil at all".

That middle ground is "some members of this race have had some inclination towards evil". This is the description which fits, amongst other races, Humans. Humans are not listed as being "Often Chaotic Evil" or even "Sometimes Chaotic Evil".


You seem to be saying that every race must either be 100% one alignment, or their alignment must be a complete blank, with nothing said about it at all. This is just silly.

Actually yes, that is pretty much exactly what I'm saying. No matter how many tyrants, dictators, maniacs, dark cultists, psychopaths and lunatics the human race produces, Humans never get so much as a *sniff* of evil in their Alignment description.

But somehow we are expected to believe that Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears and the like are at once "evil" and yet also somehow supposed to be sentient beings capable of moral choice.


D&D already has races that are paragons of their alignment and always the same - they're called outsiders. Humanoids and monstrous humanoids are something quite different.

D&D has beings that are paragons of their alignment and are always the same. They're called Outsiders. D&D also has beings that can be of pretty much any alignment you like, they're called Humans. Somehow the monster races wind up as neither one nor the other. They're apparently "predisposed" towards evil, or have an evil "society" or something, but are still supposed to be intelligent beings capable of moral choice. It's inconsistent.

Solo
2008-02-12, 01:56 PM
They're apparently "predisposed" towards evil, or have an evil "society" or something, but are still supposed to be intelligent beings capable of moral choice. It's inconsistent.

Well, the two are not incompatible with each other. You could have a society in which people choose to be evil.

Shall I leave the obvious examples unsaid?

kamikasei
2008-02-12, 02:01 PM
A semantic difference, the point is that you either have the concept of an Evil Race or you don't. Either Orcs are Evil just because they're Orcs, or they aren't

That middle ground is "some members of this race have had some inclination towards evil". This is the description which fits, amongst other races, Humans. Humans are not listed as being "Often Chaotic Evil" or even "Sometimes Chaotic Evil".

Actually yes, that is pretty much exactly what I'm saying. No matter how many tyrants, dictators, maniacs, dark cultists, psychopaths and lunatics the human race produces, Humans never get so much as a *sniff* of evil in their Alignment description.

But somehow we are expected to believe that Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears and the like are at once "evil" and yet also somehow supposed to be sentient beings capable of moral choice.

D&D has beings that are paragons of their alignment and are always the same. They're called Outsiders. D&D also has beings that can be of pretty much any alignment you like, they're called Humans. Somehow the monster races wind up as neither one nor the other. They're apparently "predisposed" towards evil, or have an evil "society" or something, but are still supposed to be intelligent beings capable of moral choice. It's inconsistent.

Pretty much every paragraph there is incorrect. The "monster races", for the most part, are described as tending towards Evil. Elves, for a different example, are described as tending towards Good. Humans are described as not having a tendency at all. What's the problem here? I mean, where is the contradiction you see between "having an evil society" and "being intelligent beings capable of moral choice"?

Are there no human cultures in your fantasy which have evil societies? Wouldn't (honest question, I'm not sure) Thayans be described as "often/usually Evil"? Well, Orcs are like Thayans. Okay, this makes them more of a culture than a race, an unrealistic monoculture like Star Trek aliens. Big whoop. Orcs are described as tending towards Evil, not being a) all, universally, irredeemably evil by nature like Outsiders or b) without any particular tendency or theme in alignment, like Humans. You're stating that this is so as if it were an argument, but it's not an argument, it's simply how things are, and the rest of us who've responded don't see the problem. So if you want to make a case that this is a problem, please do so; but otherwise you're not really getting anywhere.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 02:08 PM
Why?
It seems pretty convenient to me. Guy steals from you, chop his head off. Guy spits on your sidewalk, chop his head off. Guy hits on your daughter, chop his head off. Someone chops your daughter's head off, you chop his head off, then you instate rules whereby chopping someone's head off must be done in a Ritual of Honor to tone down the chopping a little. Someone inevitably gets mad at you, so to demonstrate, you chop his legs and arms off, declare a Ritual of Honor, then chop his head off. Of course, everyone gets with the program, because you're the guy who's really good at chopping people's heads off, and no "sentient free-willed" being is going to argue with that.
Thus begins Evil society.

It's a good example, but I've got some misgivings about it, the biggest of which is that your society, for all its faults, doesn't actually sound all that evil. If it was a Human society then, well you might make the Chieften and Head Head-Chopper-Offer Evil, and maybe the Dark Priests of the God of Chopping People's Heads Off, but you'd probably make the rest of the people in the culture Neutral at worst.

The culture you've got is moderately violent, slave-owning, and has ritualised combat. The slavery is basically the only thing which *remotely* distinguishes your "evil" culture from a "good" culture with a tradition of dueling or jousting.

A society ruled over by a *human* Dark Lord will be full of oppressed peasants, eking out an honest living under the thumb of the Legions of Terror. The subjects of non-human Dark Lords somehow becomes utterly and irrevocably morally tainted by their state of oppression. Human cultures are capable of fighting wars, often wars over prosaic issues like natural resources, without earning the "evil" tagline, but not Orcs. The "evil" culture you describe, which churns out bloodthirsty savage monsters by the droves amongst the orcish race is *exactly* the sort of culture which produces the vast majority of Barbarian adventurers, very few of whom are Evil.

As the second poster on this thread puts it, it strikes me very much as the designers trying to have their cake and eat it. They want Orcs to be easy, all purpose enemies who the PCs can cut down in random encounters, but they also seem to want to portray the orcs as a real race with a genuine cultural identity. It winds up being the worst of both worlds.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 02:24 PM
Well, the two are not incompatible with each other. You could have a society in which people choose to be evil.

Shall I leave the obvious examples unsaid?

You probably should, since I think to do otherwise would violate Forum guidelines.

The thing is that there is a big difference between "a society in which some people choose evil" (which is basically all societies) "a society which is ruled by an evil organisation" (which includes a great many real historical societies) "a society in which some evil practices are institutionalized" (which includes a great many societies and - depending on your views on various controversial issues - could well include your own) and "an evil society" (I'm not convinced that any society is truly evil through and through) and it's an even bigger step from there to an evil *race*.

If you (in the general sense, not you personally) have a Human kingdom in your world which is ruled over by an Evil cult, which demands human sacrifice to appease it's dark god, chances are you *wouldn't* make every single person (or even a sizable minority of people) in that Kingdom Evil. You certainly wouldn't make everybody *descended* from a member of that culture Evil, or even *inclined* to be evil. You would probably have a fair number of people in that society who opposed the sacrifice, and a small number trying to stop it. Orcs and Drow get no such respect. They're assumed to immediately and universally knuckle under for the worst depredations of their Evil society.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 02:45 PM
Pretty much every paragraph there is incorrect. The "monster races", for the most part, are described as tending towards Evil. Elves, for a different example, are described as tending towards Good. Humans are described as not having a tendency at all. What's the problem here? I mean, where is the contradiction you see between "having an evil society" and "being intelligent beings capable of moral choice"?

The problem is that "evil" in D&D is full on evil. It isn't just owning slaves, or participating in gladiatorial combat. It is specifically "hurting oppressing and killing others". Evil characters "have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient" or "actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master".

Even citizens of an "evil society" will not, in general, react by becoming evil themselves. D&D evil is no-holds-barred, killing for pleasure evil.


Are there no human cultures in your fantasy which have evil societies? Wouldn't (honest question, I'm not sure) Thayans be described as "often/usually Evil"?

I'm not hugely familiar with FR, but I really don't think they would. The Red Wizards are an Evil Organization, Thay is a land *ruled* by an evil organization, but Thayans most *certainly* wouldn't qualify as an "Often Evil" race. That would imply that a significant percentage of them - merely by dint of being born Thayan - would actually have no compassion for others or else kill for pleasure.


Well, Orcs are like Thayans. Okay, this makes them more of a culture than a race, an unrealistic monoculture like Star Trek aliens. Big whoop. Orcs are described as tending towards Evil, not being a) all, universally, irredeemably evil by nature like Outsiders or b) without any particular tendency or theme in alignment, like Humans. You're stating that this is so as if it were an argument, but it's not an argument, it's simply how things are, and the rest of us who've responded don't see the problem. So if you want to make a case that this is a problem, please do so; but otherwise you're not really getting anywhere.

The problem is that it's a wishy-washy cop out. Thayans are an excellent example. Nowhere in the rules are Thayans described as having any tendency in their Alignment, and Thayans - other than the Red Wizards and those who work for them - are never portrayed as any more evil than other humans. Nowhere is it ever *remotely* suggested that the ordinary people of Thay are evil, or that it would be appropriate for adventurers to kill them and take their stuff.

The problem is evidenced every time these or any other D&D boards have an "is it okay to kill Orcs on sight" argument. The designers have tried to make Orcs into disposable sword-fodder and a real race of intelligent beings simultaneously, and this means that you wind up with a game where players kill the first 99 Orcs they see, and then the GM gets confused when they kill the 100th.

Tokiko Mima
2008-02-12, 02:50 PM
Even when it denotes a race as 'always X' it doesn't mean that ever member of that monster race has to be that alignment. Look at Angels for example. They're listed as 'always good,' but more than a few Demon Lords or Archdevils were once angels.

I would treat that section as more fluff. It's great that it's there, because it indicates that in general an 'Often Chaotic Evil' creature that you encounter will often be Chaotic Evil, but not in all cases. If a troop of Goblins wants to turn good promote altruism and self sacrifice it's unusual, that's all it means.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 03:01 PM
I would treat that section as more fluff. It's great that it's there, because it indicates that in general an 'Often Chaotic Evil' creature that you encounter will often be Chaotic Evil, but not in all cases. If a troop of Goblins wants to turn good promote altruism and self sacrifice it's unusual, that's all it means.

But that's exactly what I find annoying. I know a lot of people think this is a false dichotomy, but the idea that it would be "unusual" for a member of a particular race to pursue goodness strikes me as significantly *less* acceptable than the idea of it being impossible.

Thay may be an evil nation, but nobody is surprised if they meet a good Thayan, or hear that there are - shock horror - Thayans who oppose the Red Wizards (even if they don't survive).

Solo
2008-02-12, 03:18 PM
Orcs and Drow get no such respect. They're assumed to immediately and universally knuckle under for the worst depredations of their Evil society.

One could argue for divine influence, certainly in the case of the Drow...

puppyavenger
2008-02-12, 03:28 PM
As another example, anyone have an explantion for the supercomputer-level inteligence, more charismatic and perceptive than any human ever, wide multi laignment panetheon haveing dragons, who for some reason are completly evil unless they have a gene that makes them more powerful on average and makes there scales shiny. In which case they are completly and utterly, angelicly good?

Frosty
2008-02-12, 03:31 PM
And this is why, in my games, most creatures from the material plane register as Neutral on the good/evil scale. It takes something extreme to register as either Good or Evil. So, when you go to Detect Evil on an Orc, 95% of the time the orc will ding Neutral. I then give Paladins actual class abilities to buff them.

Rutee
2008-02-12, 03:38 PM
One could argue for divine influence, certainly in the case of the Drow...

I'd agree with that; Wouldn't it also be kinda true with Orcs? I thought Gruumsh made them or something..

Saph
2008-02-12, 03:40 PM
A semantic difference, the point is that you either have the concept of an Evil Race or you don't. Either Orcs are Evil just because they're Orcs, or they aren't

Why?


Actually yes, that is pretty much exactly what I'm saying. No matter how many tyrants, dictators, maniacs, dark cultists, psychopaths and lunatics the human race produces, Humans never get so much as a *sniff* of evil in their Alignment description.

That's because humans, in D&D, average to Neutral. They don't favour Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos. Other races do.


D&D has beings that are paragons of their alignment and are always the same. They're called Outsiders. D&D also has beings that can be of pretty much any alignment you like, they're called Humans. Somehow the monster races wind up as neither one nor the other.

No, they're in the second category. They can be any alignment you like. Members of the monster races of all alignments exist - they're just not evenly distributed.

You've yet to give any reason as to why it's unacceptable for different species to have different moral tendencies. Since you obviously have a problem with Orcs being more likely to be evil than humans, do you have the same issue with all racial differences? Are dwarves allowed to have +2 Con, -2 Cha, and darkvision, or is that forbidden too?

- Saph

Subotei
2008-02-12, 03:41 PM
Just look at some of Britain's past for an example- Witch Trials and bruning (Insert denomination of Christianity here) at the stake for not being (insert other denomination) like (insert ruler) could easily be argued to be evil.

So as not to offend anyone I've picked my own country here, but the same can probably be done for most.

Ahh yes - but when a witch burning is done with love to save their eternal soul, surely it is a good act?

It depends on cultural context - so discussing abstract 'good' or 'evil' is missing the mark. It will all depend upon the campaign setting and very probably, which side of the fire you're on.

Cuddly
2008-02-12, 03:42 PM
How's it a cop out? If all orcs fall within 3 std deviations of evil, then yeah, you can safely say that they're "usually evil".

Just like dogs "usually have teeth" or "cats usually lick their buttholes".

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 03:53 PM
I'd agree with that; Wouldn't it also be kinda true with Orcs? I thought Gruumsh made them or something..

And I have no problem with that, but that makes them an evil race created by an evil god in order to do evil (like Lord of the Rings Orcs). In which case it kind of makes no sense for them to be redeemable.

kamikasei
2008-02-12, 03:59 PM
@Dan: I think we've talked ourselves into a bit of a dead end, because it seems to me your beef is a bit larger than just the alignment entry in the Orc monster stats. Your idea of evil is more severe than mine and, I think, others who are disagreeing with you. Further, while I agree it's bad design of WotC to describe orcs as only mostly evil but use them as generic guiltless dungeon-fodder, that doesn't make the race inconsistent or invalid, just ill-used.

I also can't agree with your characterization of an entry of "often evil" as somehow saying "this race is horrible and wrong and nasty just by virtue of being its race". D&D monsters are heavily stereotyped and Wizards deliberately defy those stereotypes all over the place, so it's clearly not an indelible tarnish. All it takes for a race to be "often chaotic evil" is for more individuals to be chaotic evil than any other single alignment. There's no suggestion that, say, a newborn orc raised by humans would grow up evil (well, any more than a big, strong, dumb human kid with an "outsider" stigma).

In summary: yeah, you're right, making a race only fairly or mostly evil and then saying it's okay to throw them in as antagonists the players won't feel the need to negotiate with is bad. It's bad design. It doesn't render the concept of "often chaotic evil" invalid.

Cuddly
2008-02-12, 04:00 PM
And I have no problem with that, but that makes them an evil race created by an evil god in order to do evil (like Lord of the Rings Orcs). In which case it kind of makes no sense for them to be redeemable.

Why? You're assuming that Gruumsh's creation is perfect. That they're perfect little embodiments of chaos and evil, and that they breed true.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 04:05 PM
Why?

Umm ... because it's logically necessary? A or Not A. Either Orcs are intrinsically evil, or they are not intrinsically evil.


That's because humans, in D&D, average to Neutral. They don't favour Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos. Other races do.

How? Why? What force is this which somehow makes Orcs "tend" towards evil, but stops short of actually making them *all* evil? Are they the spawn of a particularly apathetic dark god?


No, they're in the second category. They can be any alignment you like. Members of the monster races of all alignments exist - they're just not evenly distributed.

You've yet to give any reason as to why it's unacceptable for different species to have different moral tendencies. Since you obviously have a problem with Orcs being more likely to be evil than humans, do you have the same issue with all racial differences? Are dwarves allowed to have +2 Con, -2 Cha, and darkvision, or is that forbidden too?

Notice, however, that Dwarves *all* have +2 Con, -2 Cha and darkvision. They don't "usually" or "often" have +2 Con -2 Cha and Darkvision. I'm perfectly okay with the idea of racial traits, but if you're going to make Alignment one of them then you should damned well do it and not shilly-shally about in the middle.

My issue with the current situation is that it *absolutely* fosters the kinds of arguments you always get about whether or not it's acceptable to just kill Orcs on sight. If Orcs are people, the game should treat them like people, instead of like encounters. If Orcs are just monsters to fight, the game should stop trying to pretend they're people.

Saph
2008-02-12, 04:09 PM
Umm ... because it's logically necessary? A or Not A. Either Orcs are intrinsically evil, or they are not intrinsically evil.

Again, probability. Orcs are often Chaotic Evil. Not always. Often.


Notice, however, that Dwarves *all* have +2 Con, -2 Cha and darkvision. They don't "usually" or "often" have +2 Con -2 Cha and Darkvision. I'm perfectly okay with the idea of racial traits, but if you're going to make Alignment one of them then you should damned well do it and not shilly-shally about in the middle.

No thanks. I prefer some variety in my games.

You are, of course, completely free to houserule otherwise.


My issue with the current situation is that it *absolutely* fosters the kinds of arguments you always get about whether or not it's acceptable to just kill Orcs on sight. If Orcs are people, the game should treat them like people, instead of like encounters. If Orcs are just monsters to fight, the game should stop trying to pretend they're people.

*sigh* Perhaps they're something in between? Perhaps there's a third category other than 'horrible monsters' and 'normal humans exactly like us'?

- Saph

Severus
2008-02-12, 04:09 PM
We've always gone with the "inherently corrupt" in our campaigns.

There is plenty of opportunity to play with moral ambiguity with main races without having to do it with orcs too.

Of course, I don't generally like campaigns with dozens of sentient races. It feels to me like a GM couldn't make up their mind what they wanted their world to be like and threw in everything.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-12, 04:10 PM
Humm... let me see if I have a grip on the discussion thus far. It seems to be a nature vs. nurture question where the issue is what degrees of nature/nurture make sense.

Hence:


And I have no problem with that, but that makes them an evil race created by an evil god in order to do evil (like Lord of the Rings Orcs). In which case it kind of makes no sense for them to be redeemable.

In other words: Races created by an evil god, or who are supposed to be metaphors for an evil idea, are by nature evil and nothing (nurture) is going to change that. Therefore, it makes no sense to have a 'usually' stuck on there.


No, they're in the second category. They can be any alignment you like. Members of the monster races of all alignments exist - they're just not evenly distributed.


In other words: Despite their creation and genetics, all races have the potential to be any alignment. The purpose of the additional descriptors, like usually, are to give a rough idea of the distribution of alignments within a given race. This can be accounted for by biology/nature (Orcs get an endorphin rush when they eat babies, so lots of them do it), culture (Thayans are raised to be power hungry and mistrustful), or both (Drow are raised to regular elves plus they have a positive physical gratification when the gut a surface elf).

Seems to me that both can make perfect sense depending entirely upon the kind of universe the DM wants to create. If he wants one where free will/nurture is a major factor (and consequentially NPC races tend to be more described more in terms of cultural tendencies) or one where the inborn traits of a creature are dominant/determing (and as a correlary NPC races, writ large, are frequently metaphors for an idea, like brutality, greed, or kindness).

Either works depending on what you want. I'm with Saph though.

Indon
2008-02-12, 04:13 PM
Always Evil: Every member of this species is Evil. You can kill them on sight and be cheered on by the local authorities for doing so. This category is reserved almost exclusively for demons, devils, and undead. Monsters without the possibility of redemption.

I run things largely like you, with this exception: For me, 'always', isn't really always. It's always unless you're important. So significant NPC's, PC's, and such could indeed play their good-aligned demons or whathaveyou.

Statistically, I would treat the frequency of "always" races with a radically different alignment as being about as often as Exalted members of a no-tendency race (like humans).

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-02-12, 04:13 PM
Umm ... because it's logically necessary? A or Not A. Either Orcs are intrinsically evil, or they are not intrinsically evil.I always viewed it as a product of culture, they aren't intrinsically evil, but they're raised without morals and therefor likely to become evil.
How? Why? What force is this which somehow makes Orcs "tend" towards evil, but stops short of actually making them *all* evil? Are they the spawn of a particularly apathetic dark god?No, but their god tells them it's okay to kill elves and take their stuff, so those that don't are rare, because "If God approves, it must be so!" Those that disagree are going against God, and we know how well that works. :smallfrown:
Notice, however, that Dwarves *all* have +2 Con, -2 Cha and darkvision. They don't "usually" or "often" have +2 Con -2 Cha and Darkvision. I'm perfectly okay with the idea of racial traits, but if you're going to make Alignment one of them then you should damned well do it and not shilly-shally about in the middle.Except the DMG specifically mentions that some racial traits are not inborn and should be traded out if you have the PC raised by another culture. I view alignment as similar to that.
My issue with the current situation is that it *absolutely* fosters the kinds of arguments you always get about whether or not it's acceptable to just kill Orcs on sight. If Orcs are people, the game should treat them like people, instead of like encounters. If Orcs are just monsters to fight, the game should stop trying to pretend they're people. Any reason why you can't kill certain people on sight? In WWII, an allied soldier would be perfectly justified in shooting a Male German, no question. The rare chance that the German is a rebel against the Nazi's doesn't change that.

Indon
2008-02-12, 04:17 PM
Except the DMG specifically mentions that some racial traits are not inborn and should be traded out if you have the PC raised by another culture. I view alignment as similar to that.

You know, it'd be nice if 4'th edition had a mechanic for stuff like that.

Like, an Elf raised among humans doesn't get proficiency with Elven weapons, but instead gets skill points. A definitive establishment of what racials would be best to treat as being cultural (Yes, while they can usually be eyeballed, I really like doing less work for things!).

Saph
2008-02-12, 04:17 PM
Notice, however, that Dwarves *all* have +2 Con, -2 Cha and darkvision. They don't "usually" or "often" have +2 Con -2 Cha and Darkvision. I'm perfectly okay with the idea of racial traits, but if you're going to make Alignment one of them then you should damned well do it and not shilly-shally about in the middle.

Let's try explaining this another way.

Assuming you generate stats by the 3d6 method, humans will have an average Con of 10-11. A dwarf will have an average Con of 12-13. An elf will have an average Con of 8-9.

So dwarves are usually, but not always, hardier than elves. Elves are usually, but not always, frailer than Dwarves.

So you see, you already do accept "usually" and "often" as racial qualifiers. You just don't realise you're doing it.

- Saph

#Raptor
2008-02-12, 04:48 PM
What's so bad about that?

You've had me at "chop his head off". Where can I apply? :smallamused:

Nah, in all seriousness, I think this was a good explaination of orc culture.
Anyone who liked Demented's post might also want to take a look at The rise and fall of an Orc Chieftain (Orc warrior NPC throughout his life) (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=29357&page=1&pp=30), the story of Hargash.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 05:12 PM
I always viewed it as a product of culture, they aren't intrinsically evil, but they're raised without morals and therefor likely to become evil.

But why are they raised without morals? Because they come from an evil culture? Why is their culture evil? Because it consists of evil creatures.

And if we take "Often Chaotic Evil" as written, there could be hundreds of Lawful Good Orcs out there, preaching tolerance and forgiveness amongst the tribes, what's stopping the other Orcs from listening?


No, but their god tells them it's okay to kill elves and take their stuff, so those that don't are rare, because "If God approves, it must be so!" Those that disagree are going against God, and we know how well that works. :smallfrown:

The elves' god tells them that it's okay to kill Orcs and take *their* stuff, why is one evil and not the other? And how does "kill the elves and take their stuff" translate into "a sizable percentage of our race is Chaotic Evil". Again this is a wider problem with D&D alignment. A culture which includes "evil" institutions becomes an "evil" culture, and so produces an "evil" populace, and suddenly a nation that started out with a little light gladiatorial combat or the occasional public execution becomes a mob of slavering maniacs bent on destroying the world.


Except the DMG specifically mentions that some racial traits are not inborn and should be traded out if you have the PC raised by another culture. I view alignment as similar to that.

Unfortunately it doesn't actually *say* that Alignment works that way. And again, I'm actually not convinced that your "culture" can turn you evil. It might make you accept as normal certain acts which other cultures would consider evil, but that's not the same as becoming full-on capital-E Evil in the "has no respect for life, kills wantonly" sense.


Any reason why you can't kill certain people on sight? In WWII, an allied soldier would be perfectly justified in shooting a Male German, no question. The rare chance that the German is a rebel against the Nazi's doesn't change that.

In WWII an allied soldier would be perfectly justified in shooting a man dressed in the uniform of a German Soldier on sight. He would absolutely not be justified in shooting any and all German males. The word for that would be "Genocide".

Furthermore, once the war was over, shooting Germans became even less justifiable even though many of them would have been products of an evil society. Hell, the current Pope grew up under the Nazis, nobody is saying he should be shot.

Solo
2008-02-12, 05:35 PM
Any reason why you can't kill certain people on sight? In WWII, an allied soldier would be perfectly justified in shooting a Male German, no question. The rare chance that the German is a rebel against the Nazi's doesn't change that.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 05:45 PM
Again, probability. Orcs are often Chaotic Evil. Not always. Often.

I get that they're "often" Chaotic Evil, but the question is *why*?

Do they have some intrinsic property that *makes* them tend towards evil? How does it manifest? Why, if it's something in their blood, do so few of them succumb?

Do they just come from a culture that makes them "often" evil? What does that even mean? And why haven't the eighty percent of Orcs who *aren't* Chaotic Evil done something to *change* their culture? Why do the the Chaotic Evil factions dominate?

In short, isn't it a bit convenient that there exactly enough Evil Orcs for the players to be able to fight them without worrying about the morality of it, and exactly enough Good Orcs for the GM to beat the Paladin over the head with his Code of Honour.


No thanks. I prefer some variety in my games.

You are, of course, completely free to houserule otherwise.

I always houserule one way or the other, because as you may have noticed, I don't think anything else makes sense.


*sigh* Perhaps they're something in between? Perhaps there's a third category other than 'horrible monsters' and 'normal humans exactly like us'?

Since "normal humans exactly like us" have performed human sacrifices, all manner of horrific blood sports, considered hangings - both legal and illegal - to be a form of family entertainment, razed cities to the ground, tortured our enemies to death and waged campaigns of systematic extermination against our fellow man, I am not entirely certain what you would put into this third category.

This is my problem with the "cultural" Orcs. Apparently they're "evil" because they come from a culture which thinks it's appropriate to wage war on its neighbours to get what it wants. Unlike the human nations, apparently.

Falkus
2008-02-12, 05:48 PM
But why are they raised without morals? Because they come from an evil culture? Why is their culture evil? Because it consists of evil creatures.


Or perhaps most Orcs live in an environment where ruthlessness is a survival trait, and that in order for the tribe to survive, it cannot be slowed down by the weak. This is the sort of environment that would encourage people who live there to display traits associate with the evil alignment.


but that's not the same as becoming full-on capital-E Evil in the "has no respect for life, kills wantonly" sense.

You know, you can be of an evil alignment in DnD without being a supervillain type. I think the issue here is that your definition of evil is wildly different from the DnD definition.

Saph
2008-02-12, 05:56 PM
I get that they're "often" Chaotic Evil, but the question is *why*?

Didn't you just say that you're fine with Orcs being Always Evil?

Pick whatever reason makes it okay for a race to be Always Evil in your book, weaken it slightly, and you have a reason for Orcs to be Often Evil.


Since "normal humans exactly like us" have performed human sacrifices, all manner of horrific blood sports, considered hangings - both legal and illegal - to be a form of family entertainment, razed cities to the ground, tortured our enemies to death and waged campaigns of systematic extermination against our fellow man, I am not entirely certain what you would put into this third category.

For a start, Orcs.

Also, Goblins, Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes. In D&D, there are other answers to alignment other than "Always Evil" and "No Description".

- Saph

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 05:58 PM
Or perhaps most Orcs live in an environment where ruthlessness is a survival trait, and that in order for the tribe to survive, it cannot be slowed down by the weak. This is the sort of environment that would encourage people who live there to display traits associate with the evil alignment.

This is exactly the kind of logic that I start to find a little disturbing, because it's the kind of logic that applies to real people as well as to fantasy races.

There are a lot of real people who live in harsh, unforgiving environments, and they don't wind up "evil." Hell, living in a harsh environment could just as easily teach you that you have to cooperate and work together, because you can't get by on your own. A society where everybody is constantly infighting wouldn't survive.


You know, you can be of an evil alignment in DnD without being a supervillain type. I think the issue here is that your definition of evil is wildly different from the DnD definition.

So you're saying that you can be evil without necessarily "hurting, oppressing, and killing others", that it is completely incorrect to say that "evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient" or else "actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master."

I can't imagine where I got the impression that Evil implied any of those things.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 06:03 PM
Didn't you just say that you're fine with Orcs being Always Evil?

Pick whatever reason makes it okay for a race to be Always Evil in your book, weaken it slightly, and you have a reason for Orcs to be Often Evil.

Unfortunately it simply doesn't work like that, because the reason I would be happy for Orcs to be Always evil is "because in this campaign I intend to use Orcs to represent the tangible presence of evil."

It's not a spectrum, it's a statement. It's a decision about the role you want Orcs to have in the world.


For a start, Orcs.

Also, Goblins, Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes. In D&D, there are other answers to alignment other than "Always Evil" and "No Description".


But *how* - in a practical sense - do they actually *work*.

How is an Orc tribe which raids human lands for food and a human tribe that raids Orc lands for food different? What is the *functional* difference between an "evil" society of Orcs and the society from which Barbarians apparently come?

Frosty
2008-02-12, 06:09 PM
But *how* - in a practical sense - do they actually *work*.

How is an Orc tribe which raids human lands for food and a human tribe that raids Orc lands for food different? What is the *functional* difference between an "evil" society of Orcs and the society from which Barbarians apparently come?

Difference? *what* difference? In my game, there wouldn't be a difference. Both tribes would be neutral and maybe slightly leaning evil depending on what else they do.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 06:10 PM
Difference? *what* difference? In my game, there wouldn't be a difference. Both tribes would be neutral and maybe slightly leaning evil depending on what else they do.

Your game, however, houserules out the "Often Evil" description. Which I see as sensible.

Saph
2008-02-12, 06:11 PM
Unfortunately it simply doesn't work like that, because the reason I would be happy for Orcs to be Always evil is "because in this campaign I intend to use Orcs to represent the tangible presence of evil."

Too bad for you, I guess. :P Most people tend to use Orcs for more varied reasons. In most games, Orcs are neither "incarnations of tangible evil", nor "humans with green skin".


But *how* - in a practical sense - do they actually *work*.

How is an Orc tribe which raids human lands for food and a human tribe that raids Orc lands for food different? What is the *functional* difference between an "evil" society of Orcs and the society from which Barbarians apparently come?

Use whatever metric you measure Good and Evil by. Humans average midway on the scale. Dwarves and Elves average on the upper half. Orcs and Goblins average on the lower half. Simple as that.

- Saph

Rutee
2008-02-12, 06:15 PM
And I have no problem with that, but that makes them an evil race created by an evil god in order to do evil (like Lord of the Rings Orcs). In which case it kind of makes no sense for them to be redeemable.
Well, you were asking how something can be pre-disposed to evil, and that's it. Isn't it conceivable that circumstances can change one from predisposition by birth?

Frosty
2008-02-12, 06:16 PM
Too bad for you, I guess. :P Most people tend to use Orcs for more varied reasons. In most games, Orcs are neither "incarnations of tangible evil", nor "humans with green skin".
- Saph

I like to go the route of: Orcs = smelly human with green skin, a slightly different brain chemistry, and depending on where they're raised, a different culture.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 06:26 PM
Well, you were asking how something can be pre-disposed to evil, and that's it. Isn't it conceivable that circumstances can change one from predisposition by birth?

I'm not talking about predisposition here, I'm talking about thematic function. The way I see it Orcs can interestingly be one of several things:

- A race of unutterably evil beings, serving to symbolise a particular variety of unthinking destruction. In this case Orcs should always be evil, and it should always be okay to kill them.
- A race of beings with a properly realized culture and place in the world. In this case they should be treated exactly like humans.
- Disposable encounter fodder. This is the same as the first option but with less thematic purpose.
- A race of beings which are drawn towards evil, but which can overcome it. In this case it is absolutely essential that this dichotomy be engaged with. Otherwise they're just inconsistent.

What I do *not* think is acceptable is treating Orcs as Irredeemably Evil when you want the players to fight them and Totally Ordinary Guys when you don't, and that's exactly what the "Often Evil" tag encourages.

VanBuren
2008-02-12, 06:27 PM
In my games:
Always Evil: Every member of this species is Evil. You can kill them on sight and be cheered on by the local authorities for doing so. This category is reserved almost exclusively for demons, devils, and undead. Monsters without the possibility of redemption.

This is mostly true even by RAW. RAW does concede that there may be an exception or two in the Always Evil category, but then states that these are by far the exception and is incredibly rare and unique.

Which is how they're allowing that Succubus Paladin, I suppose.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 06:36 PM
This is mostly true even by RAW. RAW does concede that there may be an exception or two in the Always Evil category, but then states that these are by far the exception and is incredibly rare and unique.

Which is how they're allowing that Succubus Paladin, I suppose.

Although ironically since the Always Evil races are pretty much infinite in number, even if only one in a billion deviates from the pattern, there wind up being rather a lot of them.

Frosty
2008-02-12, 07:15 PM
- A race of unutterably evil beings, serving to symbolise a particular variety of unthinking destruction. In this case Orcs should always be evil, and it should always be okay to kill them.
- A race of beings with a properly realized culture and place in the world. In this case they should be treated exactly like humans.
- Disposable encounter fodder. This is the same as the first option but with less thematic purpose.
- A race of beings which are drawn towards evil, but which can overcome it. In this case it is absolutely essential that this dichotomy be engaged with. Otherwise they're just inconsistent.

And which view do you prefer for your campaigns? I mostly do option 2. Some are evil. Some are good. some are neutral.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 07:19 PM
And which view do you prefer for your campaigns? I mostly do option 2. Some are evil. Some are good. some are neutral.

Actually I kinda prefer 1 if I use them at all, I just feel that "these orcs are good" is kind of overplayed.

Weirdly I'm beginning to find option four kind of appealing. Actually dealing with the consequences of a race that was genuinely drawn towards Evil and Chaos regardless of its best interests could be quite interesting.

puppyavenger
2008-02-12, 07:35 PM
This is mostly true even by RAW. RAW does concede that there may be an exception or two in the Always Evil category, but then states that these are by far the exception and is incredibly rare and unique.

Which is how they're allowing that Succubus Paladin, I suppose.

Still, how do Dragons work?

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-12, 07:38 PM
Still, how do Dragond work?

They're colour coded for your convenience, clearly.

Again, Dragons aren't something I have a problem with. The whole "Metallic/Chromatic" thing has a nice inexplicable mythic weight to it. Again I'm totally fine with things that just *are* evil. It's things that just *are* margianally-more-predisposed-towards-evil-than-humans-in-a-manner-never-fully -described that get me.

puppyavenger
2008-02-12, 07:46 PM
They're colour coded for your convenience, clearly.

Again, Dragons aren't something I have a problem with. The whole "Metallic/Chromatic" thing has a nice inexplicable mythic weight to it. Again I'm totally fine with things that just *are* evil. It's things that just *are* margianally-more-predisposed-towards-evil-than-humans-in-a-manner-never-fully -described that get me.

yes, but most other always evil things at least have an explanation, Fiends, pure evil incarnete, wights, ghouls exetra, derangedsouls forced to feed on life force for survival, but dragons are smarter, more intelligent, more charismatic, have innate power, a TN chiefdiety and half of them are still inexplicaby evil.

puppyavenger
2008-02-12, 07:48 PM
They're colour coded for your convenience, clearly.

Again, Dragons aren't something I have a problem with. The whole "Metallic/Chromatic" thing has a nice inexplicable mythic weight to it. Again I'm totally fine with things that just *are* evil. It's things that just *are* margianally-more-predisposed-towards-evil-than-humans-in-a-manner-never-fully -described that get me.

yes, but most other always evil things at least have an explanation, Fiends, pure evil incarnete, wights, ghouls exetra, derangedsouls forced to feed on life force for survival, but dragons are smarter, more intelligent, more charismatic, have innate power, a TN chiefdiety and half of them are still inexplicaby evil.

puppyavenger
2008-02-12, 07:52 PM
They're colour coded for your convenience, clearly.

Again, Dragons aren't something I have a problem with. The whole "Metallic/Chromatic" thing has a nice inexplicable mythic weight to it. Again I'm totally fine with things that just *are* evil. It's things that just *are* margianally-more-predisposed-towards-evil-than-humans-in-a-manner-never-fully -described that get me.

yes, but most other always evil things at least have an explanation, Fiends, pure evil incarnete, wights, ghouls exetra, derangedsouls forced to feed on life force for survival, but dragons are smarter, more intelligent, more charismatic, have innate power, a TN chiefdiety and half of them are still inexplicaby evil.

SadisticFishing
2008-02-12, 09:06 PM
They're usually evil because they're raised that way and worship Evil deities, not because they're inherently evil.

Draco Ignifer
2008-02-12, 10:00 PM
Instinct.

Humans have built-in instinctual methods of reaction to different circumstances. The smell of rot, for example, makes us nauseated; this is a survival mechanism to keep us from poisoning ourselves. Being alone in the dark makes us scared. We can overcome these, and we can ignore them, but they still exist.

Orcs are an entirely different species from humans. They have different brains, different brain functions. Why is the concept of a race having instincts that predispose it towards evil so ridiculous? Greatly increase the fight part of the fight-or-flight response, add in a stronger level of xenophobia, and a strong territorial instinct, and you have a species that is genetically predispositioned to raid humans living in close proximity to it. Every orc's first instinctual reaction upon seeing a human is "What's this strange THING doing in my territory? It's a threat... kill it!" Some can overcome it. Others don't even bother to.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-12, 10:16 PM
What I do *not* think is acceptable is treating Orcs as Irredeemably Evil when you want the players to fight them and Totally Ordinary Guys when you don't, and that's exactly what the "Often Evil" tag encourages.

Why must something be Irredemably evil if you want the players to fight with them or even to have the 'often evil' tag? I usually portray Orcs as something akin to a society of street thugs or gangs. They may not be irredably evil, but the PC's have good reason to fight them, and feel ok about it afterwards because of the things they do. In that mode must the PC's kill them on sight? No, of course not. Will they all be evil? Nope. Will most and will the PC's be justified in watching their backs when they are around, even if the Orcs aren't doing anything particularly suspicious? Sure.


I'm totally fine with things that just *are* evil. It's things that just *are* margianally-more-predisposed-towards-evil-than-humans-in-a-manner-never-fully -described that get me.

It needn't be inexplicable. For example, in humans, males with XYY chromosomes are statisticlaly more prone to violence. Quite a few mental disorders are heritable. Saying Orcs just happen to be that way because of their Orcish biology (or in more magical terms 'soul') seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.

If your concern is that WotC didn't give a full explanation why, I suppose you have a gripe. Personally, I prefer it that way so that I can decide within whatever campaign world I'm creating why Orcs are 'usually evil' without having to overwrite some of the existing fluff.

Woot Spitum
2008-02-12, 10:28 PM
I don't see what is so confusing about the often evil trait. My guess is that it means orcs are roughly: 60% Chaotic Evil, 15% Neutral Evil, 15% Chaotic Neutral, 10% Other.

As for humans, who do not tend towards any particular alignment it goes something like this: 11% Chaotic Evil, 11% Neutral Evil, 11% Lawful Evil, 11% Chaotic Neutral, 11% True Neutral, 11% Lawful Neutral, 11% Chaotic Good, 11% Neutral Good, 11% Lawful Good, 1% Didn't Know/Refused.

Nothing to it really.

EvilElitest
2008-02-12, 10:32 PM
Over on the "kill teh orcs" thread, people have been making the distinction between an "always evil" race and a "usually evil" race.

The more I think about this, the more ludicrous this gets. The more I think about it, the more "usually evil" sounds like an awful annoying cop-out.

As far as I'm concerned you can play a fantasy race in one of two ways. Either you can treat them as a metaphor: Elves are fading glory, Orcs are rapacious destruction, or you can treat them as real sentient beings.

If you treat them as a metaphor, the "usually" label is meaningless. An Orc is like a disease: it kills because it is in its nature to kill, and you can't feel bad about killing an Orc any more than you feel bad about taking antibiotics.

If you treat them as real people, though, the "usually" lable becomes even worse. Somehow we are expected to believe that this sentiet, free-willed race universally and knowingly chooses an "evil" lifestyle. This is completely mad.

A lot of people cling to the "usually" label because they fear that the idea of an "evil race" is equivalent to real world racism. In a sense I suppose it is, but only *if* you treat that race as a real group of people, rather than a metaphor. If, however, you treat them as real people, then saying "Orcs, as a race, are evil, but rarely one will rise above his roots" is really no better. In fact it's a good deal worse, because suddenly your Orcs go from being rapacious embodiments of slaughter to being a literally evil race, a race of beings which is somehow morally bankrupt by virtue of its genetics.

Am I missing something? Is there some serious value in the "usually evil" label beyond a pure cop out?

Well personally i like to see my world as something a bit more then "Its DA evil, kill it"

think about it, in the D&D Aligment system, being evil is quite easy. So logically, it makes sense for races that have cultures that would be considered evil to be normally evil. It is only a cop out a game is suppose to run with a total black and white mentality

I mean the orcish culture is evil. However they are just another race like dwarvess and elves, so they still have free will, thus allowing them to choose on their own to be good or evil


from
EE

Gitman00
2008-02-12, 10:40 PM
I get that they're "often" Chaotic Evil, but the question is *why*?

Do they have some intrinsic property that *makes* them tend towards evil? How does it manifest? Why, if it's something in their blood, do so few of them succumb?

Do they just come from a culture that makes them "often" evil? What does that even mean? And why haven't the eighty percent of Orcs who *aren't* Chaotic Evil done something to *change* their culture? Why do the the Chaotic Evil factions dominate?

All these questions you're bringing up are quite valid and insightful... and they're exactly why the alignment has the "often" descriptor. It's to allow the DM to answer each of these questions as he sees fit within the context of his game.

For the DM who wants a race of irredeemably corrupt minions of evil, Often Chaotic Evil fits nearly as well as Always Chaotic Evil. And let's face it, anybody who has read Tolkien (or seen the movies) tends to think of Orcs in those archetypal terms. However, for the DM who desires a more nuanced race with a well-developed society, or who wants a non-evil Orc NPC, he's not bound by the Always descriptor.

Within the context of the game, PCs aren't going to see the entire history and prehistory of the Orc race and therefore won't delve into questions of whether the race is genetically predisposed toward evil, or evil because of their society. If your current game world's Orcs have a society that encourages evil behavior, and most of your Orcs are therefore evil, it doesn't really matter if 2000 years ago they had a Lawful Good society (unless you choose to put a lot of history in your world).


In short, isn't it a bit convenient that there exactly enough Evil Orcs for the players to be able to fight them without worrying about the morality of it, and exactly enough Good Orcs for the GM to beat the Paladin over the head with his Code of Honour.

Only if the GM chooses to play it that way, which isn't always the case. That's the point. There's supposed to be room for interpretation, so each GM can build a unique world.


Since "normal humans exactly like us" have performed human sacrifices, all manner of horrific blood sports, considered hangings - both legal and illegal - to be a form of family entertainment, razed cities to the ground, tortured our enemies to death and waged campaigns of systematic extermination against our fellow man, I am not entirely certain what you would put into this third category.

This is my problem with the "cultural" Orcs. Apparently they're "evil" because they come from a culture which thinks it's appropriate to wage war on its neighbours to get what it wants. Unlike the human nations, apparently.

Ah, so is your real problem that humans aren't called evil? :smallamused: If so, I'm right there with you. I think evidence is overwhelming that humans are, in fact, predisposed towards evil. However, no one wants to believe that he's evil by nature, including the game designers. Since they can't deny, given human history, that the potential for evil exists within the human race, they call us neutral.

Swordguy
2008-02-12, 10:42 PM
Well personally i like to see my world as something a bit more then "Its DA evil, kill it"

think about it, in the D&D Aligment system, being evil is quite easy. So logically, it makes sense for races that have cultures that would be considered evil to be normally evil. It is only a cop out a game is suppose to run with a total black and white mentality

I mean the orcish culture is evil. However they are just another race like dwarvess and elves, so they still have free will, thus allowing them to choose on their own to be good or evil


D&D is supposed to have a black and white mentality. If you don't agree with it, play something without alignment.

EvilElitest
2008-02-12, 10:43 PM
Just a fun little irony i feel compelled to point out, contrary to the claims of most people, D&D or at least 3rd Edition isn't really made for the "See it, Kill it, loot it" approach as much as everyone says it is, i mean their are a lot of examples of them adding a human element to their cultures
from
EE

EvilElitest
2008-02-12, 10:50 PM
Why not?

I mean, you're Good, right? That means you have respect for life, right? At what point does the suffering of innocents you'll stop by butchering the orc families outweigh the suffering you allow to happen by letting them live?

If your wiping out other races via genocide, then no your not good Redcloak, nor are you respecting life. Techicially, the from their perspective the same is true, how much more happier would the orcs be if there were less humans to bug them? Same justification, except for the orcs it involves murder and is evil

oh wait, same thing is said for the murder of innocent orc families.


Some of them might grow up to not be evil. But the statistical majority of them will almost certainly be, unless you butcher the women and steal the children to be raised differently (which is still Evil), and Orcs definitely have a fiercely shamanistic culture that's centered around a divine mandate (by a God who really exists, no less!) of enslaving or wiping everyone else out.

Book of Exalted deeds has a passage on this, the solution does not involve killing them, it involves you know, good actions


If you say future actions never justify something like that, then you're committing an evil act via dooming others to be killed directly through your own inaction. You could have stopped them and didn't - which makes you just as bad as them.
No your not, you not murdering innocents, because in D&D ends don't justify the means, evil acts don't make good act and allow you to keep those fancy paladin powers.


The end point should be "what society would you rather see inherit the planet?" Hint: it's not the one centered around enslavement of everybody else.
Well yours involves tyrannical destruction of everyone else, so that wouldn't work for me ether


People are looking at this through a 21st century lens of being taught that all viewpoints are valid and everyone deserves to get a chance. Instead, look at it through the lens of an 8th-century Saxon, or even better, an Iron Age warrior. The Race Wars in D&D are a zero-sum clash. In the long run, who will do more good if they come out on top?
Yeah, because we all know that the 8-century saxons were the greatest upholders of morality there,

Now you might think that hubris,tyranny, genocide, murder, racism, zealotry, slaughter, and hypocrisy are all fine and dandy you do that. But it isn't good via D&D absolute morality
from
EE

Solo
2008-02-12, 11:05 PM
People are looking at this through a 21st century lens of being taught that all viewpoints are valid and everyone deserves to get a chance.

To be fair, I've never heard anyone say that.

The closest I've heard is people saying most viewpoints are valid and most people deserve a chance.

We all laugh at Scientology, for example.

Ascension
2008-02-12, 11:08 PM
- A race of beings which are drawn towards evil, but which can overcome it. In this case it is absolutely essential that this dichotomy be engaged with. Otherwise they're just inconsistent.

What I do *not* think is acceptable is treating Orcs as Irredeemably Evil when you want the players to fight them and Totally Ordinary Guys when you don't, and that's exactly what the "Often Evil" tag encourages.

This is the option I would choose, I would engage the dichotomy, but the ways you let the PCs know when it's okay to kill orcs when it isn't should be obvious...

-If the orcs are shooting/charging/whatever at you, kill them. In this case they're the aggressors, you're acting in self-defense, honestly their alignment doesn't matter, you're trying to save your own skin. Once the weapons are drawn negotiation is over.

-If the orcs are in the middle of an obviously evil act, stop them. This may very well involve killing them. In this case you're putting a stop to active evil, so your actions are obviously active good. No problem.

-If the orcs are minding their own business but you know for a fact that they've done evil acts in the recent past, you have two options: Give them a warning, then attack, or simply attack without warning. Either one of these could be a good act, but giving warning is a lawful act and attacking without it is a chaotic act. In this case you're essentially in the role of cops breaking into a drug dealer's house: You know that you're justified in stopping them, whether or not they're in the act.

-If the orcs are doing nothing in particular and you don't have any prior experience with them, you can do one of three things: 1.) Simply ignore them. 2.) Suspiciously ask what they're up to. 3.) Attempt to initiate friendly contact. The first is the easy option, obviously a neutral act, the second is basically a fantasy form of racial profiling, the third is neutral-to-good. Adventurers would be fairly justified in doing any of the above. If the adventurers ask questions, then the justification of their subsequent actions will hinge on the orcs' answer.

-If the orcs are engaged in an obviously peaceful act, like... I don't know... having a picnic by the lake with their children, then obviously, obviously approaching them with hostile intent would be evil. I don't care what their alignment is, if you try to attack them you're killing without the slightest bit of justification, and that is evil, no ifs ands or buts about it.

Just weight the encounters with orcs so that percentage wise your party comes across hostile raiding parties slightly more often than they come across neutral traders or peaceful picnickers. That's "often evil."

EvilElitest
2008-02-12, 11:20 PM
The problem is that "evil" in D&D is full on evil. It isn't just owning slaves, or participating in gladiatorial combat. It is specifically "hurting oppressing and killing others". Evil characters "have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient" or "actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master".

Not really, owing slaves, stealing for your own benefit, murdering people to further your own goals are evil, but not all out phyco evil. You can be a generally good person and still be evil, i mean Napoleon would be evil in D&D (LE) and he was a generally nice guy in person. So would Julius Caesar, Redcloak, the eleventh Louis, and plenty of other generally nice people who happen to be selfish



Even citizens of an "evil society" will not, in general, react by becoming evil themselves. D&D evil is no-holds-barred, killing for pleasure evil.
No taht means that their alignment doesn't stop them from killing for pleasure, but the don't have to. An evil person can still be a decent guy

[QUOTE]I'm not hugely familiar with FR, but I really don't think they would. The Red Wizards are an Evil Organization, Thay is a land *ruled* by an evil organization, but Thayans most *certainly* wouldn't qualify as an "Often Evil" race. That would imply that a significant percentage of them - merely by dint of being born Thayan - would actually have no compassion for others or else kill for pleasure.
Thayans are humans. Not all evil people kill for pleasure or have no compassion for other, even in the ranks of the Red Wizards themselves. I mean, somebody who just wants personal power and is willing to commit evil deeds to get that is evil, but isn't a monster.



The problem is that it's a wishy-washy cop out. Thayans are an excellent example. Nowhere in the rules are Thayans described as having any tendency in their Alignment, and Thayans - other than the Red Wizards and those who work for them - are never portrayed as any more evil than other humans. Nowhere is it ever *remotely* suggested that the ordinary people of Thay are evil, or that it would be appropriate for adventurers to kill them and take their stuff.

Yeah, because that would involve the murder of generally innocent people (being evil isn't a crime Ergo). Killing the Red Wizards who are doing evil things is ok (the lich guy for example) but innocent Thayens is a no no


The problem is evidenced every time these or any other D&D boards have an "is it okay to kill Orcs on sight" argument. The designers have tried to make Orcs into disposable sword-fodder and a real race of intelligent beings simultaneously, and this means that you wind up with a game where players kill the first 99 Orcs they see, and then the GM gets confused when they kill the 100th.

In what situation are they killing the orcs? If the orcs are sitting around not directly hurting anyone, then evil or no your are commiting evil in killing them
from
EE

comicshorse
2008-02-12, 11:24 PM
Posted by Swordguy
D&D is supposed to have a black and white mentality. If you don't agree with it, play something without alignment.

So you're fine with the Paladins black and white mentallity then ?

EvilElitest
2008-02-12, 11:30 PM
And I have no problem with that, but that makes them an evil race created by an evil god in order to do evil (like Lord of the Rings Orcs). In which case it kind of makes no sense for them to be redeemable.

Fun Fact, Tolkien was a devout Catholic and the main reason why he didn't publish most of his notes during his life time was because he didn't approve of the always CE orc theory
Even in his world orcs aren't always CE, "Nothing is born evil, even Sauron was not so". Remember the main moral of the story is mercy (see gollum) so you can't say LOTRS didn't realize the orc problem
from
EE

EvilElitest
2008-02-12, 11:38 PM
Umm ... because it's logically necessary? A or Not A. Either Orcs are intrinsically evil, or they are not intrinsically evil.

Well the they are "Often Chaotic evil" so that indicates that they have a choice in being evil. That means 'Gasp' the world isn't black and white, oh dear what crazy ideas



How? Why? What force is this which somehow makes Orcs "tend" towards evil, but stops short of actually making them *all* evil? Are they the spawn of a particularly apathetic dark god?


The little niffty thing we call free will, might have heard of it



Notice, however, that Dwarves *all* have +2 Con, -2 Cha and darkvision. They don't "usually" or "often" have +2 Con -2 Cha and Darkvision. I'm perfectly okay with the idea of racial traits, but if you're going to make Alignment one of them then you should damned well do it and not shilly-shally about in the middle.
alignment is just a demonstration of what their culture leans to, it is a CE culture. Remember, being evil is not a crime, it is just selfish. Activally hurting others is what causes problems




My issue with the current situation is that it *absolutely* fosters the kinds of arguments you always get about whether or not it's acceptable to just kill Orcs on sight. If Orcs are people, the game should treat them like people, instead of like encounters. If Orcs are just monsters to fight, the game should stop trying to pretend they're people.

They are treated like every other race, they have a general alignment taht their culture leans towards evil. Now their is a way to logically approach this, but that requires ditching absolutist extremes
from
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horseboy
2008-02-13, 01:20 AM
Killed as weak or escape into the wilds, learn ranger skills and start dual-wielding scimitars.
My orc sings cowboy songs and rides a unicorn named Freedom.


What do you do?

Most players I play with, the answer: KILL THEM THEY ARE EVIL!!!!!!

Eh, we killed them all because we didn't want them to suffer a slow death from starvation.


How? Why? What force is this which somehow makes Orcs "tend" towards evil, but stops short of actually making them *all* evil? Are they the spawn of a particularly apathetic dark god?
Lol! He'd have made better ones, but he's too busy cutting himself.


But, yeah, this is just reason # bajillion and 8 that alignments are stupid and should be ignored.

Fhaolan
2008-02-13, 01:27 AM
Hrmmmm... Okay, I'm not really agreeing or disagreeing with any side here. I just want to throw something out there for examination.

This is a numeric-equivalent analysis for the alignment descriptors. Represent the Alignment on the good/evil axis as a number on a scale of 1-9. A good individual is a 1-3, a neutral individual would be a 4-6, an evil individual would be 7-9. An 'Always Good' population will have an average of 1, a 'Usually Good' population will have an average of 2, an 'Often Good' population will have an average of 3-3.5, a true 'Neutral' population would have an average of 4-6, an 'Often Evil' population would have an average value of 6.5-7, a 'Usually Evil' population would need an average value of 8, and of course the 'Always Evil' population will have an average of 9.

Say you have a population of 5 individuals, with alignment values of {6,7,5,8,7} The average of this set is 6.6, which falls into the range for a population of 'Often Evil'. However, this is a subset of the entire population of 15 individuals {{6,7,5,8,7}{5,8,2,1,6}{3,8,1,3,1}} [As a note, I used random number generators for this set, I didn't engineer the numbers for this.] The average of the entire population is 4.733. Which means the entire population is Neutral.

Okay, so what's my point? The point is that despite the indication that the entire population of a race can be considered Neutral, on average, an isolated population within that race can in fact be Often Evil or more. While the Kingdom is Neutral, a village in that Kingdom could be considered Often Evil. This is the case that I believe that D&D Humans fall into.

Now, say that same population has a driving force added to it that pushes each individual towards Evil. That force could be biologic, cultural, or divine in origin, but it is there. With a +2 modifier, this pushes the numbers of the set to be {{8,9,7,9,9}{7,9,4,3,8}{5,9,3,5,3}}. [I'm putting 9 as max, so any value above 9 is still 9.] The average of this entire set is 6.533, or 'Often Evil'. The first subset has an average of 8.4, or 'Usually Evil'. And there are still individuals that have a value of 3, which is still 'Good'. They may not be *as* Good as an individual with a value of 1, but are within the range as I defined it.

So, my secondary point is that an entire population can be 'Often Evil', despite individuals being 'Good'. Which is the case for D&D Orcs, in my opinion.

What exactly is the driving force is campaign specific, and no blanket statement is capable of covering all situations. In my campaign the force is biologic-like as Orc's metabolism and brain chemistry produces a larger tendency towards sociopathism than human averages. But that's for my campaign, and does not apply to others.

Of course, this is statistics, and you can't actually prove anything with statistics. If I wanted to prove that all Orcs like pink fuzzy blankets to sleep on, I can produce numbers to 'proof' this, despite it's sillyness. All I'm doing is showing a pseudo-mathimatical avenue to think along.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 05:20 AM
Fun Fact, Tolkien was a devout Catholic and the main reason why he didn't publish most of his notes during his life time was because he didn't approve of the always CE orc theory

The reason Tolkein didn't publish most of his notes during his lifetime is because nobody would publish them.

And as a devout *Catholic* Tolkein would have *absolutely* believed in the concept of original sin. He would have believed in Satan and Hell, and that Satan was not "born" evil, but that he rebelled against God out of pride.


Even in his world orcs aren't always CE, "Nothing is born evil, even Sauron was not so".

No, in his world Orcs *weren't* always CE. Because they used to be Elves. But to be an Orc is to be an evil thing, pitiable perhaps but ultimately evil.

Similarly you'll note that the line is "Nothing is born evil" not "nothing is ever wholly evil" or "evil is subjective". Sauron did not start out evil, he was corrupted, just like the Orcs were corrupted, but once something *is* corrupt, it's corrupt and that's it.


Remember the main moral of the story is mercy (see gollum) so you can't say LOTRS didn't realize the orc problem

Actually the main moral of the story is *pity*. And notice that gollum actually *isn't* redeemed. He remains evil throughout the book. Furthermore it is actually Gollum's very *evil* which allows him to destroy the ring, when Frodo cannot.

At no point in LotR are we asked to condemn Aragorn for slaughtering Orcs on sight, at no point are we asked to see the orcs as anything but monsters. At no point are we expected to see orcs as actually having a *functional* society (heck, they seem to regularly kill each other for no clear reason).

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 05:31 AM
Not really, owing slaves, stealing for your own benefit, murdering people to further your own goals are evil, but not all out phyco evil. You can be a generally good person and still be evil, i mean Napoleon would be evil in D&D (LE) and he was a generally nice guy in person. So would Julius Caesar, Redcloak, the eleventh Louis, and plenty of other generally nice people who happen to be selfish

Being selfish doesn't make you evil, it makes you neutral. Quite specifically so. Being evil means that you either (and I hate to quote the SRD yet *again* but I'm going to have to) "have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient" or else "actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master". Selfishness is *textbook* neutrality.

If that wasn't the case then pretty much *every* D&D character *ever* would qualify as evil, and so would most D&D societies.



No taht means that their alignment doesn't stop them from killing for pleasure, but the don't have to. An evil person can still be a decent guy

No they *can't*. A decent guy isn't evil, an evil guy isn't decent. Evil does not mean "just a bit selfish" it means "has no respect for life or the rights of others".

This is very, very clear in the rules.


Thayans are humans. Not all evil people kill for pleasure or have no compassion for other, even in the ranks of the Red Wizards themselves. I mean, somebody who just wants personal power and is willing to commit evil deeds to get that is evil, but isn't a monster.

Yes, yes they are. If you are willing to slaughter innocents by the hundreds just to make yourself more powerful, then you are a monster. If you are not willing to do so then you are not evil.

The average Thayan peasant is no more evil than the average Cormyrean peasant.


Yeah, because that would involve the murder of generally innocent people (being evil isn't a crime Ergo). Killing the Red Wizards who are doing evil things is ok (the lich guy for example) but innocent Thayens is a no no

An innocent person is not evil, an evil person is not innocent. By definition.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 05:47 AM
Hrmmmm... Okay, I'm not really agreeing or disagreeing with any side here. I just want to throw something out there for examination.


(Numbers excised)

The thing is that, as you admit yourself, the numbers by themselves are meaningless.

I can get my head around the *idea* of an "Often Evil" race. I can get the concept that some members of a race might be good and others not (qv humanity). What I can't get is that idea that you have a race which is "more likely to be evil" *just because*.

Suppose Orcs have a quasi-biological compulsion towards aggression. Great, so they're aggressive and warlike. That doesn't make them *evil*. Hell *men* have a biological impulse towards aggression. Turn it up a notch, so that they're overwhelmed by an insatiable bloodlust and they're still just berzerkers, they're not *evil*. Barbarians aren't required to be evil, Frenzied Berzerkers aren't required to be evil, so why should a race which has a predisposition towards behaving like Frenzied Berzerkers be considered evil.

The cultural argument works much the same way. Orcs are apparently "often evil" because they come from an "evil society". So why isn't the same true of Thayans? Why does nobody suggest that 60% of the entire population of Thay are literally evil. And what's so evil about Orcish society anyway? That it rewards ruthlessness and cruelty and punishes self-sacrifice? Isn't *every* society like that? Hell isn't self-sacrifice sought of punished by definition, that being sort of why the call it "self sacrifice" not "self advancement".

Somehow I am expected to believe that Orcs possess some ineffable quality which predisposes them towards "evil" despite the fact that no actual aspect of their behaviour, society, or culture is actually evil in and of itself. There is nothing Orcs do which humans do not do, there is nothing orcs do which specific PC classes don't have as their *main schtick*.

Starbuck_II
2008-02-13, 07:20 AM
(Numbers excised)
Frenzied Berzerkers aren't required to be evil, so why should a race which has a predisposition towards behaving like Frenzied Berzerkers be considered evil.

I think, they are evil.


Somehow I am expected to believe that Orcs possess some ineffable quality which predisposes them towards "evil" despite the fact that no actual aspect of their behaviour, society, or culture is actually evil in and of itself. There is nothing Orcs do which humans do not do, there is nothing orcs do which specific PC classes don't have as their *main schtick*.


They worship a evil god. I think that is what makes them evil.

Serenity
2008-02-13, 07:59 AM
I honestly do not remotely understand what you're talking about. Orcs are sentient beings with free will, perfectly capable of choosing good or evil for themselves. However, they live in a culture which, for a variety of reasons, including the worship of a hateful dark god, encourages them to indulge in murderous, violent, greedy tendencies--in short evil. Good orcs are almost always working at a cross-purpose with their culture at large. It's also perfectly possible that there are scattered tribes that have forsaken the worship of Gruumsh and live in relative harmony with nearby humans and even elves.

Demented
2008-02-13, 08:44 AM
Peasants:
Peasants are the functional equivalent of slaves. They are not responsible for the society, do not act in its governance, and do not promulgate its 'law'. The alignment of peasants has no effect on the alignment of the society to which they belong, except for that sub-society to which peasants (or slaves) are the exclusive partners of. Ergo, evil rulers over a populace of largely neutral peasants is still an evil society, up until the moment that the evil rulers are overthrown.

Aggressive Nature:
Aggression and berzerker activity are not related. The berzerker technique itself is harnessable for good, requires some ambiguous chaotic tendencies and doesn't require any evil to pull off.

Whereas if you get a bunch of aggressive males together, they're going to want to go fishing, big-game-hunting, and video-game-playing, all of which involve actively killing things for sport, one of the hallmarks of evil. None of them are going to slip into a sleep-like state of rage where they dramatically increase the entropy level in their surroundings due to an evolved combat response. ...One would hope. :smallconfused:

Semanticery:
"Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient." This goes to show that, in order to be evil, you don't have to go about killing everything that's not nailed down... Only when it's convenient. Committing murder in a situation that's likely to get you caught, for example, is inconvenient. There's also an emphasis on "hurting" and "oppressing" others that's available for use, if you need to do something besides kill.

Of course, nothing's stopping you from being the rampant murderer either... The point is merely that, depending on how lazy you are, and your standard of convenience, it's possible to be evil without ever actually killing anyone. If you're desperate, you can always torment the mice in your basement.

Humans and Evil:
Remember that humans can be evil. In fact, 1/3 of them are, if the equal-proportions statement is to be believed. Orcs would need to invent a whole new definition of evil if they wanted to be more evil than humans. What you describe as something which is attributed to orcs as evil, but not attributed to humans as evil, is in fact something which is attributed to humans as evil.

kamikasei
2008-02-13, 09:07 AM
Whereas if you get a bunch of aggressive males together, they're going to want to go fishing, big-game-hunting, and video-game-playing, all of which involve actively killing things for sport, one of the hallmarks of evil. None of them are going to slip into a sleep-like state of rage where they dramatically increase the entropy level in their surroundings due to an evolved combat response. ...One would hope. :smallconfused:

You've obviously never seen me play Mairo Kart.

Shademan
2008-02-13, 09:17 AM
i have to second that, kamikasei.
me and my brother can get very..... primal... when we game.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 09:54 AM
Peasants:
Peasants are the functional equivalent of slaves. They are not responsible for the society, do not act in its governance, and do not promulgate its 'law'. The alignment of peasants has no effect on the alignment of the society to which they belong, except for that sub-society to which peasants (or slaves) are the exclusive partners of. Ergo, evil rulers over a populace of largely neutral peasants is still an evil society, up until the moment that the evil rulers are overthrown.

By the same logic, though, no-leaders amongst the Orcs would not be considered part of Orcish society, and so once again they would not have the "cultural" influences which are apparently responsible for Orcs being "Often Evil". They'd just be the opressed underclass of an evil regime.

Which is why there's a big, important difference between an "evil society" and an "evil race".


Aggressive Nature:
Aggression and berzerker activity are not related. The berzerker technique itself is harnessable for good, requires some ambiguous chaotic tendencies and doesn't require any evil to pull off.

Whereas if you get a bunch of aggressive males together, they're going to want to go fishing, big-game-hunting, and video-game-playing, all of which involve actively killing things for sport, one of the hallmarks of evil. None of them are going to slip into a sleep-like state of rage where they dramatically increase the entropy level in their surroundings due to an evolved combat response. ...One would hope. :smallconfused:

The point is that you can just about argue that Orcs, because they are naturally more aggressive than Humans, are more inclined to be evil, but you then *have* to apply that logic to anybody else whose culture or nature promotes aggression. Like, say, Barbarians. Or indeed adventurers of any sort.


Semanticery:
"Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient." This goes to show that, in order to be evil, you don't have to go about killing everything that's not nailed down... Only when it's convenient. Committing murder in a situation that's likely to get you caught, for example, is inconvenient. There's also an emphasis on "hurting" and "oppressing" others that's available for use, if you need to do something besides kill.

Of course, nothing's stopping you from being the rampant murderer either... The point is merely that, depending on how lazy you are, and your standard of convenience, it's possible to be evil without ever actually killing anyone. If you're desperate, you can always torment the mice in your basement.

The point is, though, that an Evil person is the kind of guy who would not hesitate to use torture, murder and violence just to get his own way. That's not the kind of behaviour Orcs display. They attack humans, but humans attack Orcs. They raid for stuff they need, but so does everybody else. Either Orcs behave in SRD-Definition Evil ways, in which case they are psychopaths and incapable of sustaining a functional society, or they don't, in which case what's the deal with the "evil" descriptor?


Humans and Evil:
Remember that humans can be evil. In fact, 1/3 of them are, if the equal-proportions statement is to be believed. Orcs would need to invent a whole new definition of evil if they wanted to be more evil than humans. What you describe as something which is attributed to orcs as evil, but not attributed to humans as evil, is in fact something which is attributed to humans as evil.

Two things here: Firstly, exactly what percentage of a race has to be "Evil" for it to earn the "Often Evil" label? If Humans are thirty percent pure evil that's, well, really quite a lot of evil in my book.

Secondly, throughout this thread people have declared Orcs to be "evil" for doing things which I *honestly* do not believe a human society would be considered evil for doing.

On page 1 a poster describes an "evil" society where the leaders got where they were by being bigger and stronger than those around them. Where they use a trumped up "code of honour" to allow them to ritualistically kill anybody they don't like, and which conducts raids against its neighbours for resources they need.

The thing is, that's *exactly* how 90% of "Good" societies work as well. The nobles are Knights, and their whole *purpose* is to be good at killing people. They have jousts or duels or other formalised methods of killing people you don't like (or failing that they just have executions), and they fight wars for things they need.

Orcs do exactly the same things other races do, but it's mysteriously "evil" for them.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 10:07 AM
I honestly do not remotely understand what you're talking about. Orcs are sentient beings with free will, perfectly capable of choosing good or evil for themselves.

Okay, great. Totally on your side so far.

[qote]However, they live in a culture which, for a variety of reasons, including the worship of a hateful dark god, encourages them to indulge in murderous, violent, greedy tendencies--in short evil.[/quote]

Okay, this is where I get off. How the hell did their society end up like that? Why is their god so evil? Did he just wake up cranky one morning? Why is *all* Orc culture evil, to the extent that the moment it *stops* being evil it stops being Orc culture?

Furthermore, if we take the "often" Chaotic evil label at face value, the *majority* of Orcs actually wind up being non-evil. They wind up as Neutral or Good. Why do these neutral or good Orcs tolerate an Evil society? Why don't they say "sorry, Evil minority, we're going to stop worshipping Grummsh because he's clearly a psycho?"


Good orcs are almost always working at a cross-purpose with their culture at large.

Their culture at large being inexplicably dominated by the *minority* of Orcs who are Chaotic Evil? Who hold tremendous power over Orc culture for some reason.


It's also perfectly possible that there are scattered tribes that have forsaken the worship of Gruumsh and live in relative harmony with nearby humans and even elves.

Then why do we never see them? And why are they "scattered"? If Orc society contains a large percentage of non-evil Orcs, those orcs will presumably go and form their *own* society somewhere else. Free from the "cultural" influence of the Evil Orcs, these new Orcish tribes will completely lose any suggestion of Evil. They will live happily alongside Elves, Dwarves and Humans, and when you talk about "orcs" humans will immediately think of the nice guys who trade with them, not the maniacs who live in the mountains and are too busy murdering each other to cause any problems.

Yet for some reason this never happens. The Good Orcs never seem to breed, or break away from "mainstream" Orc culture. They just seem to sit around in Orc villages, waiting to jump under a Paladin's sword.

You simply can't say that cultural pressure is the reason that a race has adopted an Evil culture. It's nonsensical

VanBuren
2008-02-13, 10:16 AM
I think, they are evil.

Frenzied Berserkers?

Anyway, I think the minimum for often evil is about 40%.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 10:19 AM
Frenzied Berserkers?

Anyway, I think the minimum for often evil is about 40%.

I'd thought that was "Usually". I thought "Often" was just "more of this alignment than any other" which would put the minimum at about 12%.

Of course part of the problem here is that I'm not sure if there's any actual canon information about what percentage of normal people have any given Alignment. The idea of 1/3 of Humans being Good and another 1/3 being Evil strikes me as completely mad, given the SRD definitions of the terms.

Fhaolan
2008-02-13, 10:22 AM
(Numbers excised)

The thing is that, as you admit yourself, the numbers by themselves are meaningless.

I can get my head around the *idea* of an "Often Evil" race. I can get the concept that some members of a race might be good and others not (qv humanity). What I can't get is that idea that you have a race which is "more likely to be evil" *just because*.

Suppose Orcs have a quasi-biological compulsion towards aggression. Great, so they're aggressive and warlike. That doesn't make them *evil*. Hell *men* have a biological impulse towards aggression. Turn it up a notch, so that they're overwhelmed by an insatiable bloodlust and they're still just berzerkers, they're not *evil*. Barbarians aren't required to be evil, Frenzied Berzerkers aren't required to be evil, so why should a race which has a predisposition towards behaving like Frenzied Berzerkers be considered evil.


Not that I don't agree with you, but I'm doing the devil's advocate bit here. :smallsmile: I don't like the 'just because' either. Everything has a solid 'because', but that varies from campaign to campaign. My 'because' isn't going to be the same as someone else's because.

So I'm going to continue to use my campaign for this, as I can't very well comment on other people's campaigns.

As mentioned in my post above, Orcs in my campaign have a greater tendency to sociopathism due to brain chemistry than humans. Sociopathism, as I understand it, is based on a lack of empathy, not upon it's tendency towards violence. It is not that Orcs are more violent than humans. Nor is it that there are Orcs that are more evil than the most evil human. It is simply that the average Orc is much less able to view other creatures as anything other than a tool towards it's own ends than the average Human. While there are Orcs that can be phillanthropic, because that individual is not as sociopathic as the average Orc, they are rarer than they are in Humans.

In fact, other than a few physical differences, there isn't much difference in personality between a sociopathic Human and a sociopathic Orc. There are simply more sociopathic Orcs available, on average.

How does such a culture survive? Not very well. Which is why Orcs don't overrrun the entire world. Their individual ability to survive is very high, and they breed fairly quickly, but their ability to form stable societies is very low. Which is why in my campaign Orcs don't build large cities and countries. They basically exist in small clans who raid other socities for the goods they cannot make themselves, as they don't have sufficient stability to form enough of an industrial base to support more complex production. An individual clan can get wiped out by vengeful members of other races (or other Orcs), but there are sufficient numbers of Orcs in the world to provide enough breeding stock to compensate.

---

Who said that the average Thayan isn't evil? Thayans are an isolated population of Humans. As long as the average Human is Neutral, any specific isolate population of Humans can be very evil indeed. All that is required is that the rest of the Human race be more good to compensate. Since there are less Thayans than there are other Humans, each individual other Human only needs to be slightly more good to compensate. Or, there needs to be another isolate population of Humans that are just as good as the Thayans are evil. All that matters is that the average across the entire race be neutral.

kamikasei
2008-02-13, 10:30 AM
Of course part of the problem here is that I'm not sure if there's any actual canon information about what percentage of normal people have any given Alignment. The idea of 1/3 of Humans being Good and another 1/3 being Evil strikes me as completely mad, given the SRD definitions of the terms.

Humans "tend towards no one alignment, not even neutrality". That pretty much requires that every alignment is equally represented. Well... I suppose, in principle, they could tend to be LG, TN, or CE in equal numbers, but that's not much help...

Dervag
2008-02-13, 10:50 AM
Suppose Orcs have a quasi-biological compulsion towards aggression. Great, so they're aggressive and warlike. That doesn't make them *evil*. Hell *men* have a biological impulse towards aggression. Turn it up a notch, so that they're overwhelmed by an insatiable bloodlust and they're still just berzerkers, they're not *evil*. Barbarians aren't required to be evil, Frenzied Berzerkers aren't required to be evil, so why should a race which has a predisposition towards behaving like Frenzied Berzerkers be considered evil.Because it isn't merely a strong predisposition to aggressiveness. Aggressiveness might be a component, but it would come coupled with other characteristics. For example, orcs might be extremely xenophobic.

Or they might be strongly inclined to dominance structures similar to the ones found in certain kinds of herd animals. In this case, 'alpha orcs' establish their dominance over 'beta orcs' by dumping on them and beating them up, and where this behavior proceeds down the chain (in other words, most orc relationships are abusive to some degree by human standards).

This produces what I (influenced by Doc Smith's Lensman series) call a 'Boskone' culture. Power comes from being good at overcoming or betraying one's superiors and taking their place; transfers of power generally look a lot like a coup. This pattern persists all down the line. Everyone in the society accepts it, and takes it for granted that the way to be an important person is to kiss up to those very senior to you, backstab those immediately senior to you and your peers, and make sure everyone below you is too beaten down to try to knock you loose. Your role models in this society are the people who are good at doing this, and who are generally evil-aligned. So even if you're good or neutral, you tend to take evil acts for granted. And if you are evil (and competent), your freedom of action in this society is extremely large and you will likely become a policy maker.

This is by no means alien to human nature. It's basically office politics with the knobs cranked up to eleven and a bit of gang violence thrown in. But it's also the kind of social organization we see in 'evil' societies in D&D (possibly including human ones). This is more or less how demons and devils organize themselves (with demons relying more on force to maintain dominance structures, and devils more on maneuver and law).

If orcs respond naturally to this kind of society and tend to form it when left to themselves to set up a government, it should be no surprise that their most powerful figures behave evilly and tend to lead the others into evil with them.


The cultural argument works much the same way. Orcs are apparently "often evil" because they come from an "evil society". So why isn't the same true of Thayans? Why does nobody suggest that 60% of the entire population of Thay are literally evil.Good point. To me, this proves that evilness of orcs is not purely cultural. Rather, I believe that orcs have some biological traits that have led them to have a rather nasty culture. And that they respond to the nastiness of that culture in ways indicated by their biology, which leads them to do evil. Further, I suspect that this (literally) vicious cycle is being egged on by supernatural D&D powers who want the orcs to act like a bunch of brutal thugs.


And what's so evil about Orcish society anyway? That it rewards ruthlessness and cruelty and punishes self-sacrifice? Isn't *every* society like that? Hell isn't self-sacrifice sought of punished by definition, that being sort of why the call it "self sacrifice" not "self advancement".I think that what's going on here is that because orcs respond to pecking orders even more readily than humans, they naturally form societies that are even more dominated by pecking orders- with all the non-orcs at the bottom. So if you meet an orc, he's probably going to try to push you around to show you who's boss. And since his main advantage over most other species is having big muscles, he's going to push you around by beating you up.

So a lot of orcs wander around beating people up to show them who's boss, and see no problem with taking other people's stuff or forcing them to comply with threats. Hence, evil.


Somehow I am expected to believe that Orcs possess some ineffable quality which predisposes them towards "evil" despite the fact that no actual aspect of their behaviour, society, or culture is actually evil in and of itself. There is nothing Orcs do which humans do not do, there is nothing orcs do which specific PC classes don't have as their *main schtick*.I think it's a combination of culture and biology reinforcing each other's worst features. Non-evil barbarians may be warlike and fierce, but they come from cultures that are less inclined to casual brutality as a way of enforcing dominance structures than the average orc culture is. Evil human barbarians come from cultures that are, well, a lot like orc culture. Or they want their cultures to be a lot like orc culture, because they're really good at acting like an orc.


By the same logic, though, no-leaders amongst the Orcs would not be considered part of Orcish society, and so once again they would not have the "cultural" influences which are apparently responsible for Orcs being "Often Evil". They'd just be the opressed underclass of an evil regime.What I'm saying is:

Sure, Hrun the orc warlord is evil. He most likely got his job by establishing themselves as a ruthless badass who will beat you to death if you look at him cross-eyed and who can bring his followers wealth by robbing the rest of the world as much as possible. And if we're honest about alignment pretty hard to be anything but evil-aligned and want a reputation like that, let alone acquire it naturally.

The thing is, when an orc warlord hauls off and smacks Grok the Good-aligned with a club for suggesting that they not take a dirt farmer's last cow, most of the rest of the orcs think that's pretty cool. They think "Dang, Grok is a loser. Good thing Chief Hrun smacked him down. Maybe he'll learn something from it. I'm sure glad Grok isn't our chief."

And if they were chief instead of Hrun, they'd act pretty much the same way. They wish they were as smart and tough as Hrun, and if they were they would act just like Hrun.

Now, not all orcs are like this, but most of them are. They are OK with the idea that every level of their society is characterized by these violent dominance relationships in which you get whacked upside the head the moment you step out of line. They participate in these relationships. Except for a few scrawny downtrodden loser orcs at the very bottom of the totem pole, most orcs will be on both ends of at least one such relationship. The orcs at the top get pushed around by gods and demons; the orcs in the middle get pushed around by chiefs; the drudges and weaklings get pushed around by the orcs in the middle. Even in private, most orcs won't think "we shouldn't be so hard on Grok." They don't look up to Grok; they look up to Hrun. If I'm right, this is because Hrun has established himself as the alpha figure in the orc tribe, and orcs have an even stronger response to alpha male status than humans do.


The point is, though, that an Evil person is the kind of guy who would not hesitate to use torture, murder and violence just to get his own way. That's not the kind of behaviour Orcs display. They attack humans, but humans attack Orcs. They raid for stuff they need, but so does everybody else. Either Orcs behave in SRD-Definition Evil ways, in which case they are psychopaths and incapable of sustaining a functional society, or they don't, in which case what's the deal with the "evil" descriptor?As I see it, this is why. Raiding is more central to orc culture than to human culture, because most human cultures can hang together without going a-viking every once in a while. Because orc government consists of a series of dominance hierarchies, and because ambitious orcs are always trying to move up the ladder, they tend to do badly if they don't have external enemies to beat up.


Two things here: Firstly, exactly what percentage of a race has to be "Evil" for it to earn the "Often Evil" label? If Humans are thirty percent pure evil that's, well, really quite a lot of evil in my book.I don't think most evil-aligned people aren't pure evil in the diabolical sense. They're evil in the "thug who is unthinkingly brutal but not actively sick" or "schemer who will cheerfully betray you but who doesn't actively enjoy causing pain" sense.


On page 1 a poster describes an "evil" society where the leaders got where they were by being bigger and stronger than those around them. Where they use a trumped up "code of honour" to allow them to ritualistically kill anybody they don't like, and which conducts raids against its neighbours for resources they need.

The thing is, that's *exactly* how 90% of "Good" societies work as well. The nobles are Knights, and their whole *purpose* is to be good at killing people. They have jousts or duels or other formalised methods of killing people you don't like (or failing that they just have executions), and they fight wars for things they need.Again, I think the difference is a matter of degree. Most medieval-style human societies (and quite possibly most modern ones) are neutral. They they tend to be hard on people who get too firmly in their way, but they can get by without doing that. Their culture won't fall apart if suddenly the ruler says "Hey, you know what? Let's give peace a chance." Consensus relationships play a large role in the society, but so do dominance relationships. Leaders are often great warriors, but they usually end up leading with the advice and consent of underlings, even if they don't believe that they need that advice and consent.

In an evil society, dominance relationships prevail. The society does fall apart if the leaders suddenly decide to be nice to everyone, or at least the leaders fall apart. Not only are leaders supposed to be great warriors, but they lead using their warrior skills. If the chief tells you to do something, he establishes that you should do it by hitting you until you stop disagreeing with him. And possibly hitting you a time or two even if you do agree with him, just so you don't get any ideas above your station. And most third party observers of that society are OK with this; it's their idea of how people work.

In a good society, consensus relationships prevail. The society will actually fall apart if the leaders suddenly get all brutal on them, because people will be scared and confused and think the leaders have gone crazy.


Okay, this is where I get off. How the hell did their society end up like that? Why is their god so evil? Did he just wake up cranky one morning? Why is *all* Orc culture evil, to the extent that the moment it *stops* being evil it stops being Orc culture?At a guess, because their god is mean and nasty and hurts people for fun and wants to run everything whether everyone else likes it or not. And because he said one day "You know, I need to make me some orcs as an enforcement arm on the Prime Material."


Furthermore, if we take the "often" Chaotic evil label at face value, the *majority* of Orcs actually wind up being non-evil. They wind up as Neutral or Good. Why do these neutral or good Orcs tolerate an Evil society? Why don't they say "sorry, Evil minority, we're going to stop worshipping Grummsh because he's clearly a psycho?"Because most of the non-CE orcs are either neutral evil or chaotic neutral. Chaotic neutrals aren't going to stage a revolution very effectively, and neutral evils will likely fit into an evil society quite well.

The chaotic neutrals would probably be just as happy worshipping, say, Kord, except that Kord isn't an orc. Which is a bummer for most of them. But while they aren't personally vicious the way the chaotic evil orcs are, they're still accustomed to a level of interpersonal brutality and violence that we would find rather disturbing. So the fact that their chieftain is a brute and that they make a living by raiding villages doesn't bother them, even if they personally probably wouldn't do quite so much raiding and brutishness if they were in charge. Which, incidentally, is why they aren't in charge.

The good orcs are at the tail end of the bell curve. They aren't respected role models in their society, because to the evil and borderline evil orcs they look stupid and squeamish. So they're not going to overthrow anything.


Then why do we never see them? And why are they "scattered"? If Orc society contains a large percentage of non-evil Orcs, those orcs will presumably go and form their *own* society somewhere else.Most of the non-evil orcs will be neutral, and neutrals can live fairly comfortably in an evil-aligned society. Although they usually don't end up running it, because naturally evil people will be better at gaining power in such a society.

AtomicKitKat
2008-02-13, 11:06 AM
tl;r0.5

My 2 cents. Gruumsh made them in his image, but being not nearly as powerful as he imagines himself to be, he cannot make them perfect little clones of himself. So he speaks to his Clerics, Adepts, whatever, and they help reinforce things that drive the tribe to Chaotic Evil. Now, assuming a tribe happened to have a particularly violent "Rite of Succession", all the Clerics and the previous violent chief and all his would-be successors were killed during said Rite, and a more intelligent, perhaps, more compassionate Orc ascended. Maybe he was "that Momma's boy", or the guy who was always more suited for Peasant work than physical combat(he built up muscles for hauling crops, but not enough to swing an axe well enough), but whatever the case, he was a "Rennaisance Man", so to speak, and leads his people to new glory. Of course, Gruumsh will not stand for this, and might send a stronger Orc tribe to assimilate this rebel tribe by force.

Serenity
2008-02-13, 11:25 AM
See, here's the thing: D&D in no way requires that an evil person be a complete psychopath incapable of normal social interaction. There is no reason an evil culture has to be unsustainable. They're not necessarily the most stable, especially in the case of Chaotic Evil societies which codify (as much as they codify anything) extreme 'might makes right' ideals, but there's nothing impossible or contradictory about them.

Also, where are you getting 'Evil orcs are a minority?' 40-50% are Chaotic Evil. That doesn't make the remaining 50-60% all non-evil. Many of them are possibly Neutral Evil, perhaps Lawful Evil types. Many Neutral orcs might not entirely agree with some things their people do, but wouldn't be willing to stick their necks out in protest.

As for 'why you never see good orc tribes', well, that's a question for your DM. Also, it seems worth noting that Eberron has orc tribes with a strong druidic tradition helping protect the world from Daelkyr invasion.

Frosty
2008-02-13, 11:54 AM
D&D is supposed to have a black and white mentality. If you don't agree with it, play something without alignment.

Or, play DnD and remove the portions of the game that requires a definite value of alignment. I typically remove Detect <alignment> and Smite <Alignment> in my games. You wanna kill something and feel justified afterwards, you gotta do your legwork to make sure those things needed killing.

comicshorse
2008-02-13, 12:03 PM
Societies, even evil ones, can be self-perpetuating. You may get a chief who wants to tery farming and diplomacy but the young aggressive warriors will soon rally to a upstart who promises them the easy loot of raids.
Just finished a book upon Attilla the Hun in which the author suggests that towards the end of his reign Attilla wished to try to establish a more stable rule but he knew if he didn't provide the various clans with war and loot the empire he'd built would collapse from under him.
Particularly true if the upstart has magic granted him by the god who wants the raiding and war to go on

its_all_ogre
2008-02-13, 12:04 PM
Dervag's post pretty much sums up my thinking:smallbiggrin:
why is there no clapping hands smily?
all bow down to that post.
bow i say!

Guancyto
2008-02-13, 12:13 PM
Another thing about the "often" tag is that even in a society that rewards beating people up and taking their stuff, someone has to take care of the limited infrastructure involved. A strong, Chaotic Evil orc is not going to stand for herding goats, but a neutral (or even good) one might be fine with it, be not willing to go the extra mile or maybe not have a choice. Regardless, someone needs to make the tents and clothes and generally give the bigga, stronga boyz more time for fightin'.

If your orcish society is heavily patriarchal, the women and children probably do this. But if your status is determined by how well you can beat the ever-loving snot out of people, this has a hard time holding up since orcish women are statistically just as good at it as the men.

So you get the less aggressive orcs (who might even find the whole burning and pillaging thing distasteful) staying behind and holding the fort. You might even get some stronger neutrals or goods making sure nobody burns the camp and steals the goats while the war parties are out a'partyin'. A neutral character, regardless of race, rarely has a problem with protecting his home, family, tribe, etc. And that's fine. He doesn't want to go burn down that hapless human village, he can just not come. More loot for the rest of us.

So if they're orcish raiders, bandits, pillagers, armies or leaders, they're much more likely to be your standard Chaotic Evil "smash 'em good" badasses because, as Dervag puts quite well, that's the sort of thing that gets you higher on the totem pole. The closer you get to their home, the less horrible they are because the ones staying at home are the ones that couldn't hack it or didn't want to.

Saph
2008-02-13, 12:24 PM
Because it isn't merely a strong predisposition to aggressiveness. Aggressiveness might be a component, but it would come coupled with other characteristics. *snip*

Very good post. I've generally played orc cultures like that, too, although I never summarised it that well. :)

- Saph

Morty
2008-02-13, 12:31 PM
There's a strange dichtomy to orcs, actually. They're only "often" evil, and yet they're portrayed as brutal, raiding thugs preety much everywhere they appear. If that was "usually evil", it'd be appropriate. But it's "often", which means that in a group of orcs evil ones may very well be a minority.

Zincorium
2008-02-13, 12:40 PM
There's a strange dichtomy to orcs, actually. They're only "often" evil, and yet they're portrayed as brutal, raiding thugs preety much everywhere they appear. If that was "usually evil", it'd be appropriate. But it's "often", which means that in a group of orcs evil ones may very well be a minority.

It's 'often chaotic evil' not just 'often evil'. There are multiple types of evil.

The chaotic evil ones will make up around 40%. Chaotic neutral and neutral evil probably make up almost all the rest. Orcs of any other alignment are probably not going to be around in any quantities, and they'd be the least enthusiastic about going on violent raids.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 12:46 PM
There's a strange dichtomy to orcs, actually. They're only "often" evil, and yet they're portrayed as brutal, raiding thugs preety much everywhere they appear. If that was "usually evil", it'd be appropriate. But it's "often", which means that in a group of orcs evil ones may very well be a minority.

I think part of the problem here is the fact that "Often Chaotic Evil" doesn't actually tell you anything about the prominence of other Alignments. An "Often Chaotic Evil" race could be 60% Chaotic Evil, 40% Neutral Evil, or it could be 30% Chaotic Evil, 20% Neutral Evil, 10% Lawful Evil, 20% Chaotic Good, 20% Neutral Good.

The problem here being that the way it tends to work in practice is often that you get mobbed by hundreds of Chaotic Evil orcs who want to kill you for no good reason, then the moment you start taking the fight to the enemy you get swamped by Neutral and Good Orcs who have mysteriously stayed quiet all this time.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-13, 12:54 PM
The problem here being that the way it tends to work in practice is often that you get mobbed by hundreds of Chaotic Evil orcs who want to kill you for no good reason, then the moment you start taking the fight to the enemy you get swamped by Neutral and Good Orcs who have mysteriously stayed quiet all this time.

That seems to me to be more a problem of bad (read: inconsistent) DMing rather than one with the frequency divisions.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 01:01 PM
Dervag: All good points, and I don't actually disagree with anything you say, it's just that to my mind the picture of Orcish society you paint is "Orcs are intrinsically evil, and therefore their society reflects this".

As I say, I have *absolutely* no problem with that. It's a perfectly legitimate way for a non-human race to be portrayed. It's just that as far as I'm concerned the race you describe is not "Often Chaotic Evil" so much as "Intrinsically Evil".

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 01:03 PM
That seems to me to be more a problem of bad (read: inconsistent) DMing rather than one with the frequency divisions.

Specifically, I think that the bad DMing is the result of bad game design, and the frequency division is symptomatic of that bad game design.

Orcs are explicitly set up so that they can *simultaneously* be used as guilt-free-blade-fodder *and* as a playable race with a believable culture.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-13, 01:20 PM
Specifically, I think that the bad DMing is the result of bad game design, and the frequency division is symptomatic of that bad game design.

Orcs are explicitly set up so that they can *simultaneously* be used as guilt-free-blade-fodder *and* as a playable race with a believable culture.

I guess it is that I never really go the impression that anything particular foes were set up to be 'guilt free blade fodder' and I'm not sure where in the rules you are getting that from. Or for that matter that the rules expect them to be a playable race witha believable culture. Their role in any given setting is up to the DM and I believe explicitally so.

They are monsters, and have stats and therefore can be guilt-free blade fodder, as can any other monster. They have a short, pretty vague description, and therefore can have a believable culture (as can any other monster with an int score over 3 or so.

It seems to me that the game designers left it open ended so that DMs can decide how they want to deal with them. Of course, when a system is intentionally left open for other people to use there are people who will use it badly and do inconsistant things with it.

Personally, I'd prefer a system where they left me options than one where they forced me to houserule if I didn't like it.

Indon
2008-02-13, 01:25 PM
But why are they raised without morals? Because they come from an evil culture? Why is their culture evil? Because it consists of evil creatures.
Culture has inertia like that.


And if we take "Often Chaotic Evil" as written, there could be hundreds of Lawful Good Orcs out there, preaching tolerance and forgiveness amongst the tribes, what's stopping the other Orcs from listening?

An interesting interpretation. Allow me to propose another:

You have the Frozen Wastelands of Wherever, a region dominated by savage humanoids such as Orcs and Goblins, with a few tribes of less numerous groups as well.

Every single tribe living in the wastes is predominantly evil, for every species... with one exception. The Black City, so called because of the stone used in the construction of its' buildings, is an old and predominantly Lawful/Neutral Good community.

The City is a trading and mining community, but first and foremost, it is one of the most famous martial communities in the world. Years of fending off Orc and Goblin invasions has left the City with, bar-none, the most disciplined and effective fighting forces that can be found. Mercenaries and young warriors of all races come to the City to cut their teeth adventuring, but despite all the foreigners, the predominant races of The Black City are Orcs and Goblins.

And there's an example of an area of 'often' evil races, by my reckoning. The Black City sends out no proselytizers - they largely keep to themselves, except for meeting invaders on the field. Their culture is different than that of most orc tribes, so it's entirely reasonable for most orcs you find there to be Good, with the rare Evil exception.

Guancyto
2008-02-13, 01:30 PM
The problem here being that the way it tends to work in practice is often that you get mobbed by hundreds of Chaotic Evil orcs who want to kill you for no good reason, then the moment you start taking the fight to the enemy you get swamped by Neutral and Good Orcs who have mysteriously stayed quiet all this time.

That just sounds lazy to me. They don't have to have stayed quiet, they just have to be beaten down, weaker or have different priorities than vast sweeping change of the whole looting and pilliaging thing.

Regardless of alignments involved, the one is killing Orcs for trying to kill you. The other is killing them for defending their home. You, as an adventurer, will probably end up doing both. The latter isn't good, but it doesn't make you a cross of Hitler and Stalin whose very piss is pure liquid malevolence, either.

And really, the second you start penalizing people for making neutral actions is the second a Paladin can't do his laundry without using holy water.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 01:36 PM
Culture has inertia like that.

It really doesn't, you know. Social change does in fact happen in all societies.


An interesting interpretation. Allow me to propose another:

You have the Frozen Wastelands of Wherever, a region dominated by savage humanoids such as Orcs and Goblins, with a few tribes of less numerous groups as well.

Every single tribe living in the wastes is predominantly evil, for every species... with one exception. The Black City, so called because of the stone used in the construction of its' buildings, is an old and predominantly Lawful/Neutral Good community.

The City is a trading and mining community, but first and foremost, it is one of the most famous martial communities in the world. Years of fending off Orc and Goblin invasions has left the City with, bar-none, the most disciplined and effective fighting forces that can be found. Mercenaries and young warriors of all races come to the City to cut their teeth adventuring, but despite all the foreigners, the predominant races of The Black City are Orcs and Goblins.

And there's an example of an area of 'often' evil races, by my reckoning. The Black City sends out no proselytizers - they largely keep to themselves, except for meeting invaders on the field. Their culture is different than that of most orc tribes, so it's entirely reasonable for most orcs you find there to be Good, with the rare Evil exception.

So why do the Evil Orcs live outside the city? Don't the non-CE-majority turn around and say "hold on a second, they've got a blinking city with hot and cold running beer. We live in caves, what's up with that?" You'd think that Evil would wind up being rather unpopular in such a situation.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 01:43 PM
I guess it is that I never really go the impression that anything particular foes were set up to be 'guilt free blade fodder' and I'm not sure where in the rules you are getting that from.

How about from the "Organization" chart in the monster description, which specifies that Orcs are met in Gangs, Squads or Bands, with only the Band description mentioning any "noncombatants". Coupled with the "Evil" alignment or the bit saying "Orcs enjoy attacking from concealment and setting ambushes, they obey the rules of war only so long as it is convenient for them." The fact that they are proficient in all simple weapons, preferring those that do the most amount of damage in the least amount of time and, of course, the fact that Orcs appear as random monsters in vast numbers of D&D campaigns and modules.


Or for that matter that the rules expect them to be a playable race witha believable culture. Their role in any given setting is up to the DM and I believe explicitally so.

In that case, why is their Alignment predefined? Why force the GM to houserule his Orcs to make them any more or less evil than the party line?


They are monsters, and have stats and therefore can be guilt-free blade fodder, as can any other monster. They have a short, pretty vague description, and therefore can have a believable culture (as can any other monster with an int score over 3 or so.

It seems to me that the game designers left it open ended so that DMs can decide how they want to deal with them. Of course, when a system is intentionally left open for other people to use there are people who will use it badly and do inconsistant things with it.

Personally, I'd prefer a system where they left me options than one where they forced me to houserule if I didn't like it.

The point is that the system *isn't* left open. It tells you exactly what Orcs are, they're violent animalistic creatures that roam about in Gangs of 2-4 or Squads of 11-20, attacking people.

Morty
2008-02-13, 01:53 PM
I think part of the problem here is the fact that "Often Chaotic Evil" doesn't actually tell you anything about the prominence of other Alignments. An "Often Chaotic Evil" race could be 60% Chaotic Evil, 40% Neutral Evil, or it could be 30% Chaotic Evil, 20% Neutral Evil, 10% Lawful Evil, 20% Chaotic Good, 20% Neutral Good.

Who said that alignment diversity has to be governed in 100% by numbers? It's up to DM to set those numbers depending on situation. One tribe of orcs might be more war-like than the others, and so on.


The problem here being that the way it tends to work in practice is often that you get mobbed by hundreds of Chaotic Evil orcs who want to kill you for no good reason, then the moment you start taking the fight to the enemy you get swamped by Neutral and Good Orcs who have mysteriously stayed quiet all this time.

That's bad DMing, not bad rules.
Of course, presentation of "monster" races in D&D sucks, but alignments aren't the worst of it.

Frosty
2008-02-13, 02:07 PM
Why should creatures have pre-defined alignments anyways? I certainly don't prescribe to those except for certain outsiders. Every creature has an alignment based on their own unique cultural experiences and upbringing (which are determined by the unique game world the DM creates). You can't pigeonhole entire races into one alignment or another. You can't do it to humans, so you shouldn't really do it for any playable race really.

kamikasei
2008-02-13, 02:13 PM
How about from the "Organization" chart in the monster description, which specifies that Orcs are met in Gangs, Squads or Bands, with only the Band description mentioning any "noncombatants". Coupled with the "Evil" alignment or the bit saying "Orcs enjoy attacking from concealment and setting ambushes, they obey the rules of war only so long as it is convenient for them." The fact that they are proficient in all simple weapons, preferring those that do the most amount of damage in the least amount of time and, of course, the fact that Orcs appear as random monsters in vast numbers of D&D campaigns and modules.
...
The point is that the system *isn't* left open. It tells you exactly what Orcs are, they're violent animalistic creatures that roam about in Gangs of 2-4 or Squads of 11-20, attacking people.

I'm going to quote that section from another monster entry. See if you can guess which one.


Organization: Squad (2-4), company (11-20 plus 2 3rd-level sergeants and 1 leader of 3rd-6th level), or band (30-100 plus 20% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 10 adults, 5 5th-level lieutenants, and 3 7th-level captains)

Note that, again, only the "band" entry mentions noncombatants.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 02:25 PM
I'm going to quote that section from another monster entry. See if you can guess which one.

Note that, again, only the "band" entry mentions noncombatants.

That'll be Elves. Which just means that it's stupid the same way twice.

It's designed specifically so you can randomly encounter a random number of monsters in the wilderness. Notice, however, that the Elves are described as "living on fruits and grains, occasionally hunting for fresh meat" while the Orcs are described as "favouring weapons which do as much damage as possible as fast as possible". The elves are "cautious warriors who take time to analyze their opponents" while the Orcs "enjoy attacking from concealment" and "obey the rules of war only when convenient".

If I decide I want honourable Orcs or psychotic elves, the rules don't give me the option.

Jayabalard
2008-02-13, 02:38 PM
If I decide I want honourable Orcs or psychotic elves, then I have to disregard some guidelines the rules don't give me the option.Fixed that for you

It's pretty standard in D&D: if you want to move away from the default fluff that you'd use for random encounters then you have to disregard some of the existing guidelines that are designed to make those encounters easy to create.

Dr Bwaa
2008-02-13, 02:40 PM
If I decide I want honourable Orcs or psychotic elves, the rules don't give me the option.

The rules do give you the option. They gave you that option when they said "Hey, you're the DM, everything in these rulebooks is intended to be used as a guidline to make play fun and balanced."

That doesn't sound restricting to me. As a DM, if there's something I don't like, I change it. If I want a charismatic, LG tribe of orcs, I'll make one, and write in some backstory as to why they aren't like the other marauding bands out there, or why the don't worship Gruumsh, or what have you. As the DM, you have permission (and encouragement) to do that. Make your world the way you want it; in no way do the rules actually tell you "well, no, Orcs are CE, so really there's no way to encounter them without a big massacre." Just change it; that's your right.


(Not to mention the fact that in the MM, the groups you'll find of "monsters" are designed specifically with the assumption that most encounters will be combat encounters. That's why there's a big stats block on combat, and why there's a tiny blurb on society, if any at all.)

EDIT: ninja'd!

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 02:43 PM
The rules do give you the option. They gave you that option when they said "Hey, you're the DM, everything in these rulebooks is intended to be used as a guidline to make play fun and balanced."

But they wouldn't need to do that if they just filed the "Alignment" section off the monster description.


That doesn't sound restricting to me. As a DM, if there's something I don't like, I change it. If I want a charismatic, LG tribe of orcs, I'll make one, and write in some backstory as to why they aren't like the other marauding bands out there, or why the don't worship Gruumsh, or what have you. As the DM, you have permission (and encouragement) to do that. Make your world the way you want it; in no way do the rules actually tell you "well, no, Orcs are CE, so really there's no way to encounter them without a big massacre." Just change it; that's your right.

That's pretty much my attitude too, it's just that I take it to its logical conclusion by running mostly homebrewed systems nowadays.


(Not to mention the fact that in the MM, the groups you'll find of "monsters" are designed specifically with the assumption that most encounters will be combat encounters. That's why there's a big stats block on combat, and why there's a tiny blurb on society, if any at all.)


Umm ... exactly? This was all in response to somebody asking what in the Orc rules description made me think they were designed for use as guilt-free sword fodder.

Jayabalard
2008-02-13, 02:49 PM
But they wouldn't need to do that if they just filed the "Alignment" section off the monster description.It's far better for them to create a default set of fluff and have people disregard what they don't want to use than to not offer anything as the default; that way people can choose whether they want to start from the default fluff and make some minor changes here and there or whether they want to make major changes, or if they want to scrap it and design the fluff from the ground up.


Since they have created that, with races, how their societies function, pantheons of gods, and so on, for they might as well include as much of that information as they can in the MM entry. Part of that information would be a general indication of alignment, based on the societies that exist.

kamikasei
2008-02-13, 02:52 PM
That'll be Elves. Which just means that it's stupid the same way twice.

Not quite; rather, it illustrates that the "organization" entry is meant to be "what you might run into if you are going to end up fighting this monster", not "how this race organizes its members within its society".


It's designed specifically so you can randomly encounter a random number of monsters in the wilderness.

Yeah, just so. So citing it as evidence of the poor treatment of Orcs is pointless, and the rest of the paragraph which began with this sentence is either irrelevant or a completely separate gripe to the "organization" entry.


Notice, however, that the Elves are described as "living on fruits and grains, occasionally hunting for fresh meat" while the Orcs are described as "favouring weapons which do as much damage as possible as fast as possible". The elves are "cautious warriors who take time to analyze their opponents" while the Orcs "enjoy attacking from concealment" and "obey the rules of war only when convenient".

See also: elf vs. goblin tactics as described by their monster entries. The rules are shamelessly, horribly biased. That doesn't have much of anything to do with the validity of "often chaotic evil".


If I decide I want honourable Orcs or psychotic elves, the rules don't give me the option.

No more than the rules don't give you the option of encountering a pair of wandering elf minstrels on the road, heading off to perform in the tavern to which you're bound. They're not warriors and they're not in a squad or company, but their existence is not precluded or even particularly discouraged by the rules.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 03:01 PM
Yeah, just so. So citing it as evidence of the poor treatment of Orcs is pointless, and the rest of the paragraph which began with this sentence is either irrelevant or a completely separate gripe to the "organization" entry.


I never said it was evidence of the poor treatment of Orcs, I said it was evidence that Orcs were set up to be used as guilt-free-sword-fodder. Now the same is true of pretty much every other non-good creature in the MM, but that's not the point. The point is that after the third random combat encounter with Monster Group X it's a little unfair to expect your players to suddenly start treating them as real people.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 03:04 PM
It's far better for them to create a default set of fluff and have people disregard what they don't want to use than to not offer anything as the default; that way people can choose whether they want to start from the default fluff and make some minor changes here and there or whether they want to make major changes, or if they want to scrap it and design the fluff from the ground up.

That's fair enough. I prefer either one of the two alternatives to that. I prefer *either* a single specific setting *or* fluff-free game mechanics. I find that D&D gives you *just enough* fluff to make all D&D settings feel kind of samey, but not enough to actually make a playable gameworld right out of the box.

Jayabalard
2008-02-13, 03:07 PM
The point is that after the third random combat encounter with Monster Group X it's a little unfair to expect your players to suddenly start treating them as real people.What you're describing is a launch problem, not a design problem.

The problem that you're citing is an example of extremely poor DMing, where the DM is treating the creature inconsistently. Even random encounters should be "real people" as much as possible, rather than just XP pinatas.

kamikasei
2008-02-13, 03:20 PM
I never said it was evidence of the poor treatment of Orcs, I said it was evidence that Orcs were set up to be used as guilt-free-sword-fodder. Now the same is true of pretty much every other non-good creature in the MM, but that's not the point.

If Orc and Elf organization don't differ significantly (and they don't), and yet you don't regard Elves as "set up to be used as guilt-free sword-fodder", then the organization entry cannot be what makes them so.


The point is that after the third random combat encounter with Monster Group X it's a little unfair to expect your players to suddenly start treating them as real people.

Absolutely. So what?

It seems like you're lumping a bunch of different objections together and presenting them as one. They're not.

Indon
2008-02-13, 03:48 PM
It really doesn't, you know. Social change does in fact happen in all societies.

Like how sexism is vanishing all over the planet, eh? The last, post-industrializing century saw the fastest social movements that history has ever seen, and they still took decades or generations.



So why do the Evil Orcs live outside the city? Don't the non-CE-majority turn around and say "hold on a second, they've got a blinking city with hot and cold running beer. We live in caves, what's up with that?" You'd think that Evil would wind up being rather unpopular in such a situation.

The evil orcs live outside the city because it's right and good for an Orc to do! They think the orcs inside the city are soft and weak from living in their stone (they don't live in caves - dwarves live in caves. They live in huts) cities. Everyone knows that fermented goat's milk is better than beer anyway.

And every once in a while, a particularly charismatic orc unites some of the tribes with the objective of sacking and destroying the soft-orc town. The logic is simple - they live differently, and therefore are weak and easy pickings for our evidently strong warriors. What kind of tribe that doesn't hunt can ever have strong warriors? So they charge at the city and they get beaten up by the Black City's superior military.

Why are there still tribes of orcs? Because they don't all die, and the Black City has never gone out to kill them. Why do they keep attacking? Because their great leaders only show up every couple generations, more than long enough for the Black City's victory to be attributed to deceit and trickery and not superior force-of-arms at all. Why don't they just move into the city? Someone's already there. Why haven't they all figured out this cycle and decided to change it? Well, they do have -2 to all of their mental stats.

But no doubt some of them have figured out all this. Most of them probably haven't bothered to stay with the tribes, instead coming to the Black City on a quest to discover what makes them different, and for one reason or another never coming back. The rare one that were to go to civilization, and come back knowing them, then return to lead his people into a new age, well, he's PC/Major NPC material. You don't just let your plot hooks happen when the PC's aren't there to take a hand in things.

EvilElitest
2008-02-13, 04:06 PM
But why are they raised without morals? Because they come from an evil culture? Why is their culture evil? Because it consists of evil creatures.

No because their culture is evil. A culture that advocates Might makes right would be evil, along with an evil religion. Humans can just as easily be the same


And if we take "Often Chaotic Evil" as written, there could be hundreds of Lawful Good Orcs out there, preaching tolerance and forgiveness amongst the tribes, what's stopping the other Orcs from listening?

Maybe 60% would be CE
Some more would be NE
Others would be LE
A smaller percent would be CN
A smaller group N
A smaller Group LN
An even Smaller group of CG
A smaller group of NG
And a tiny group of LG
Now the culture is evil, and LG morals would go against their culture. What do real life cultures do when people go against them?


The elves' god tells them that it's okay to kill Orcs and take *their* stuff, why is one evil and not the other? And
The elf God tells them to defend themselves from orcs and other evil creatures, says nothing advocating murder/raiding/genocide i might add



Unfortunately it doesn't actually *say* that Alignment works that way. And again, I'm actually not convinced that your "culture" can turn you evil. It might make you accept as normal certain acts which other cultures would consider evil, but that's not the same as becoming full-on capital-E Evil in the "has no respect for life, kills wantonly" sense.

you haven't read much history have you? If you look at real life societies, the morals of the society do very much effects its people. Most Romans had no problem with slavery and oppression, because their culture said it was ok


In WWII an allied soldier would be perfectly justified in shooting a man dressed in the uniform of a German Soldier on sight. He would absolutely not be justified in shooting any and all German males. The word for that would be "Genocide".
no but shooting a german who surrendered or german children would be evil




This is exactly the kind of logic that I start to find a little disturbing, because it's the kind of logic that applies to real people as well as to fantasy races.

There are a lot of real people who live in harsh, unforgiving environments, and they don't wind up "evil." Hell, living in a harsh environment could just as easily teach you that you have to cooperate and work together, because you can't get by on your own. A society where everybody is constantly infighting wouldn't survive.

And their are a lot of people who come from harsh, unforgiving enviromets who do wind up as evil, or at least the D&D version of it. Rapists, thieves, murderers, killers, ect do come from nasty societies a lot of the time. Look at the slaughters during the dark ages



So you're saying that you can be evil without necessarily "hurting, oppressing, and killing others", that it is completely incorrect to say that "evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient" or else "actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master."

Evil creatures don't have to have any compassion. That doesn't mean they can't. Perfectly normal if selfish people can be evil, you really are not reading between the lines


I can't imagine where I got the impression that Evil implied any of those things.

If you focused on more than just one paragraph you'd be surprised what you could find

From
EE

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 04:12 PM
you haven't read much history have you? If you look at real life societies, the morals of the society do very much effects its people. Most Romans had no problem with slavery and oppression, because their culture said it was ok

That's sort of exactly my point. Most Romans had no problem with slavery. Most Romans were not sociopaths. According to your logic, because Roman society condoned Slavery, that made Roman society Evil, which made the Romans Evil. This is clearly nonsense.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-02-13, 04:14 PM
That's sort of exactly my point. Most Romans had no problem with slavery. Most Romans were not sociopaths. According to your logic, because Roman society condoned Slavery, that made Roman society Evil, which made the Romans Evil. This is clearly nonsense.Slavery is actually neutral by the RAW. Just FYI.

EvilElitest
2008-02-13, 04:15 PM
That's sort of exactly my point. Most Romans had no problem with slavery. Most Romans were not sociopaths. According to your logic, because Roman society condoned Slavery, that made Roman society Evil, which made the Romans Evil. This is clearly nonsense.

No, because the romans would be evil. You don't need to be a sociopath to be evil. The romans culture advocated Slavery, oppression, conquest and the occasional slaughter, as well as the Arena. They would be evil. You need to get over the idea that all evil people aren't sociopaths, most are just callus or selfish

And i think Slavery is evil by teh by, with the exception of indentured servents/willing slavery
from
EE

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 04:19 PM
No, because the romans would be evil. You don't need to be a sociopath to be evil. The romans culture advocated Slavery, oppression, conquest and the occasional slaughter, as well as the Arena. They would be evil. You need to get over the idea that all evil people aren't sociopaths, most are just callus or selfish

You keep saying this, it is wholly untrue.


Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

Nowhere does it say "evil characters are selfish" or "evil characters live in societies which condone behaviours which a not considered acceptable to a 21st century liberal". It says "evil creatures have no compassion for others and kill without qualms" period.

Rutee
2008-02-13, 04:26 PM
...Well that explains why your position felt so irreconcilable. Usually Evil with the SRD's definition of Evil really /is/ something I have to question. Kamikasei was saying words to this effect earlier, actually, that your definition of evil would alter the believability of it..

What if, hypothetically, EE's definition of Evil were correct, or there were an alignment called "Evil-Lite" that it fell under?

Morty
2008-02-13, 04:27 PM
You keep saying this, it is wholly untrue.


Nowhere does it say "evil characters are selfish" or "evil characters live in societies which condone behaviours which a not considered acceptable to a 21st century liberal". It says "evil creatures have no compassion for others and kill without qualms" period.

No offense, but if you treat alignment like extremes, then no wonder it makes even less sense than usual. If you don't equal evil with sheer, bloody-minded cruelty, then it's not so bad.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 04:33 PM
No offense, but if you treat alignment like extremes, then no wonder it makes even less sense than usual. If you don't equal evil with sheer, bloody-minded cruelty, then it's not so bad.

Then, however, you get the opposite problem, which is that "evil" becomes a meaningless concept. If "evil" just means selfish then frankly, pretty much everybody is kind of evil.

Person_Man
2008-02-13, 04:35 PM
You know, I think we're really just arguing about where to draw the lines when it comes to alignment.

For example, even in a secular, sophist, liberal society composed entirely criminal defense attorneys - if a Demon appeared in a billow of smoke and started killing people, they'd presume that he was Evil, and would do their best to kill it.

By the same token, even in highly religious, dogmatic, conservative society composed entirely of Marines - if an female orc with child in hand appeared at the city gate groveling on its hands and knees begging for help against its despotic clan mates who want to slaughter all newborns in the world, they'd probably listen to her and investigate.

Sometimes you need violent encounters with unambiguously Evil enemies, so that Paladins and similarly Lawful Good players can have fun killing something without having to discern its motivation, agenda, or personality.

And sometimes you need to take well accepted conventions (X group is usually or always Evil) and turn it on its head, because its an interesting roleplaying opportunity to do so.

Which races and monsters are Always Evil or Usually Evil isn't important, as long as the PCs understand that they're out there somewhere, and they can access that information through the Knowledge Skills and investigation. WotC draws the lines for us in many places in the alignment rules. But DMs can always re-draw them somewhere else if they want. But as long as you use any alignment rules you'll have to draw the line somewhere. Or you can just abolish the alignment rules, and let the PCs know this before they decide to play a Paladin-like PC.

Dervag
2008-02-13, 04:39 PM
Dervag's post pretty much sums up my thinking:smallbiggrin:
why is there no clapping hands smily?
all bow down to that post.
bow i say![bows down] Thank you, thank you.


I think part of the problem here is the fact that "Often Chaotic Evil" doesn't actually tell you anything about the prominence of other Alignments. An "Often Chaotic Evil" race could be 60% Chaotic Evil, 40% Neutral Evil, or it could be 30% Chaotic Evil, 20% Neutral Evil, 10% Lawful Evil, 20% Chaotic Good, 20% Neutral Good.

The problem here being that the way it tends to work in practice is often that you get mobbed by hundreds of Chaotic Evil orcs who want to kill you for no good reason, then the moment you start taking the fight to the enemy you get swamped by Neutral and Good Orcs who have mysteriously stayed quiet all this time.My explanation of the way I deal with this may not make sense to most readers:

I assume that alignment with respect to law/chaos and good/evil maps to a plane, with each component of alignment being a continuous variable. Then I assume that orc alignments are distributed on a Gaussian curve centered somewhere in the chaotic evil region. Most of the orcs who aren't in the region are close to it, with some exceptional outlier cases who are good or lawful.

As for the mystery of getting swamped by neutral and good orcs, the theory above explains it rather well- if the 'not so bad' orcs stay home, while the bad orcs go out raiding, it stands to reason that you see bad orcs in your village and not so bad orcs in the orcs' village.

This is exactly the way things worked with the Vikings. Most other European cultures of the Dark Ages came to hate the Norse because the face of the Norse they saw were Viking raiders who behaved a lot like orcs. But if you went to Denmark or Norway or Sweden, where these people lived, you'd find that they weren't nearly as malevolent or cruel as people who only met them while they were raiding villages in Ireland would think.


Dervag: All good points, and I don't actually disagree with anything you say, it's just that to my mind the picture of Orcish society you paint is "Orcs are intrinsically evil, and therefore their society reflects this".

As I say, I have *absolutely* no problem with that. It's a perfectly legitimate way for a non-human race to be portrayed. It's just that as far as I'm concerned the race you describe is not "Often Chaotic Evil" so much as "Intrinsically Evil".But they're not intrinsically evil. Some of them aren't evil at all. It's just that their society predisposes them to be evil, much as, say, a fantasy version of medieval Chinese society might predispose people to be lawful. That doesn't mean there are no, or even only a few, chaotic people in the society. But such people are marginalized. Their alignment does not bring them wealth or power. They are not the role models that most people follow.

This can produce a self-reinforcing cycle over time.


It really doesn't, you know. Social change does in fact happen in all societies.Yes, but not quickly. And when there are gods and demons who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, they change even less quickly.


So why do the Evil Orcs live outside the city? Don't the non-CE-majority turn around and say "hold on a second, they've got a blinking city with hot and cold running beer. We live in caves, what's up with that?" You'd think that Evil would wind up being rather unpopular in such a situation.Maybe the orcs inside the city discriminate against outsiders because they've been fighting them so long. Maybe the orcs outside the city despise city-dwellers, so that only a trickle of them enter the city (think Bedouin). There are lots of reasons why nomads and city dwellers can coexist without the nomads automatically moving to the cities.


Then, however, you get the opposite problem, which is that "evil" becomes a meaningless concept. If "evil" just means selfish then frankly, pretty much everybody is kind of evil.Even our house pets are rather evil.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 04:45 PM
Sometimes you need violent encounters with unambiguously Evil enemies, so that Paladins and similarly Lawful Good players can have fun killing something without having to discern its motivation, agenda, or personality.

And sometimes you need to take well accepted conventions (X group is usually or always Evil) and turn it on its head, because its an interesting roleplaying opportunity to do so.

That's fair enough, but what you absolutely *can't* do is have a violent encounter with an unambiguously evil enemy one week and then have an encounter the next week in which said enemy is *not* unambiguously evil. That's not an interesting roleplaying opportunity, it's cheap.

My issue with "Often Evil" races is that they're designed to be unambiguously evil enemies when you need them to be unambiguously evil, and not when you don't, which promotes inconsistency.

Indon
2008-02-13, 04:54 PM
Then, however, you get the opposite problem, which is that "evil" becomes a meaningless concept. If "evil" just means selfish then frankly, pretty much everybody is kind of evil.

What? Are you saying evil is either murder-the-party-in-their-sleep vile, or... nothing?

Evil characters can have friends (and not even murder them), can adventure (though more for mercenary than heroic reasons), and can even show virtues such as bravery (though perhaps it's not neccessarily courage, as confidence).

Philosophically, Evil is the belief that every being is responsible for themselves and themselves alone. If you don't have money, it's because you didn't earn (or take) it, and you sure don't deserve it. Nobody deserves to lead unless they can prove they're the best, which means they better get into some Rituals of Honor. And so on.

You don't have to be a puppy-kicking goblin warlord to qualify as evil. Heck, if you played a street urchin with an every-man-for-themselves attitude, you'd probably register as slightly evil.

Edit:

That's fair enough, but what you absolutely *can't* do is have a violent encounter with an unambiguously evil enemy one week and then have an encounter the next week in which said enemy is *not* unambiguously evil. That's not an interesting roleplaying opportunity, it's cheap.

My issue with "Often Evil" races is that they're designed to be unambiguously evil enemies when you need them to be unambiguously evil, and not when you don't, which promotes inconsistency.

How does it promote inconsistency? If the tribe of orcs is invading your home for loot because they think you're squishy and weak and don't deserve all those shiny things, you fight them off. Then the next week when you turn the tables on those orcs and march into their village, only to find nothing but invalids, women, and children prepared to defend their homes to the death, you have just that, perfectly consistently.

EvilElitest
2008-02-13, 05:35 PM
You keep saying this, it is wholly untrue.


No your just closing your eyes and basing everything off the most extreme example of one phrase, a phrase that isn't even a total definition. There are plenty of other sources on the matter, in fact read the entire alignment part, particularly the part that says aligments are extreme 100% definitions. You are simple taking the most extremist close minded approach to the interpretation and not even even attempting to take a larger view


Nowhere does it say "evil characters are selfish" or "evil characters live in societies which condone behaviours which a not considered acceptable to a 21st century liberal". It says "evil creatures have no compassion for others and kill without qualms" period.

1. nor does it say that all evil creatures don't care about other people or show no compassion, just that they don't need to. Other aligments require some sort of outlook in order to maintain them, a good person has to care about others and not commit evil deeds for example, a neutral person cannot cause others undue suffering ect. An evil person does not have those requirements, they simple need to act in whatever way they want. Dispite your extremist interpretation, nothing says that that evil people have to be like that, just that they don't need to show compassion to keep their aligment. A CE person could be a generally good bloke who is simple wiling to commit evil to further his ends, or a serial killer
2. Selfishness is the nature of evil, along with Hubris, greed ect. A person who only works for their own benefit is evil, or a person who oppreses others for their own personal gain.
3. No it doesn't say period, because we have plenty of other sources (the aligment seciton, BoVD, BoED, almost every evil NPC ect) that shows that this simple isn't true.



That's fair enough, but what you absolutely *can't* do is have a violent encounter with an unambiguously evil enemy one week and then have an encounter the next week in which said enemy is *not* unambiguously evil. That's not an interesting roleplaying opportunity, it's cheap.

My issue with "Often Evil" races is that they're designed to be unambiguously evil enemies when you need them to be unambiguously evil, and not when you don't, which promotes inconsistency.

Well orcs via D&D aren't unambiguosly evil. And if orcs attack you, be they netural or evil, you can kill them in self defense. You could destroy a whole army of orcish attackers and raiders without a problem before running across their women and children.

And Rutee, what are you saying now?

from
EE

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-13, 05:52 PM
Well orcs via D&D aren't unambiguosly evil. And if orcs attack you, be they netural or evil, you can kill them in self defense. You could destroy a whole army of orcish attackers and raiders without a problem before running across their women and children.


And I'm fine with that, but in that case you have to *present* them as something other than unambiguously evil. This means *not* using them as the default wandering monster. If a DM presents me with a "save the village from the Orcs" quest, and after having me fight waves of the buggers he pulls the "aah, do you see, they have women and children" card I will walk out of his game and never come back, because it's annoying as all hell.

EvilElitest
2008-02-13, 05:56 PM
And I'm fine with that, but in that case you have to *present* them as something other than unambiguously evil. This means *not* using them as the default wandering monster. If a DM presents me with a "save the village from the Orcs" quest, and after having me fight waves of the buggers he pulls the "aah, do you see, they have women and children" card I will walk out of his game and never come back, because it's annoying as all hell.

Sounds like you have ether a piss poor DM or a really bad game. Because you can have them attack the village in a Save the village sort of way and still have them being something other than unambiguously evil


They attack the village because they want food, money, women and goods as well as honoring their god in killing humans. You kill them. If you DM says "Wait they were good because they hoped to feed their families" then you can walk away but if you PCs following the surviving orcs to find that they do in fact have their own society, well that makes sense
from
EE

AKA_Bait
2008-02-13, 06:00 PM
If a DM presents me with a "save the village from the Orcs" quest, and after having me fight waves of the buggers he pulls the "aah, do you see, they have women and children" card I will walk out of his game and never come back, because it's annoying as all hell.

So, whatever the wandering monsters are, they can't have families? Pretty much all Mammals and humaniods are out then. I guess snakes and insects can work...

Why is their having women and children annoying btw? Just because they have families doesn't make them any less evil or in need of killing when they attack the village.

EvilElitest
2008-02-13, 06:12 PM
So, whatever the wandering monsters are, they can't have families? Pretty much all Mammals and humaniods are out then. I guess snakes and insects can work...

Why is their having women and children annoying btw? Just because they have families doesn't make them any less evil or in need of killing when they attack the village.

it does force you to pay attention to those icky moral details
from
EE

Wardog
2008-02-13, 06:54 PM
How/why can an orc be "often" or "usually" evil/CE, but not always?

One way of explaining it would be simply by biology, as expressed by their racial attribute bonuses.

+4str, -2int, -2wis, -2cha.

+4 str means they the easiest way to solve a problem is to hit it until it breaks/goes away.
-2 int means they will be less able to think of a non-violent solution.
-2 wis means they will be less able to empathize with other people.
-2 cha means they won't get on well with other people (even their own kind), and will not be very good at calming people down or talking their way out of conflict.

None of this makes an orc innately evil.
None of it means they will always do evil.
None of it means all orcs will behave in the same way.

But it does mean that, for an orc, doing evil (or more specifically, doing violence) is easier than the alternatives.

And as such, a greater proportion of orcs (compared to humans) will choose to do evil.

And if orc psychology is anything like human psychology, if a lot of people behave in a certain way, others will tend to follow, either because they see them as role-models worthy of emulation, or simply because they don't want to draw the attention of the evil ones. Hence the development of an "evil culture" that increases the proportion of evil orcs in existance (up to whatever point your setting demands), but still leaves the option of individuals, groups, or even whole societies who buck the trend.


Incidently, Richard Dawkin's [i]The Selfish Gene[i/] gives a good explanation of how genetics and evolution can influence an animal's instinctive behaviour. It also explains that humans are unusual in the degree to which our behaviour is influenced by culture and upbringing rather than genes. Its doesn't seem unreasonable that another sentient species (e.g. orcs) would be similar, but could also be influenced a bit more by their genes than humans are.

Demented
2008-02-13, 07:21 PM
...Well that explains why your position felt so irreconcilable. Usually Evil with the SRD's definition of Evil really /is/ something I have to question. Kamikasei was saying words to this effect earlier, actually, that your definition of evil would alter the believability of it..

What if, hypothetically, EE's definition of Evil were correct, or there were an alignment called "Evil-Lite" that it fell under?

Evil is mostly flexible enough for that, actually.
It provides two primary possibilities:
1. You're innately evil, having no compassion and killing for convenience. That'd be the sociopath. You won't kill when it's inconvenient, except possibly when it's more inconvenient not to kill, thus you're able to operate normally in a society, at least until someone gives you trouble. You may enjoy oppressing and hurting others, but that's just proof that you're fit for middle management, or writing the sequel to Tomb of Horrors. You could even be that quiet serial killer who lives above board most of the time, maintaining a veneer of Lawful Neutral, all while kidnapping and murdering people in the dead of night for your own satisfaction.
2. You follow evil, by duty to an evil diety or evil master. You could be anyone, but you take loyalty to a fault and your deeds to an extreme. If gruumsh says jump, you jump, on top of the innocent's backs. You can be a henchman in an oppressive army, "simply following orders" when you level a town with explosives. You can be the loyal member of some organized crime group, involved in an escalating war of vengeance on the streets of some urban city. You could even be the medium of a powerful evil entity, for the sake of providing a service (at oft-times terrible cost) to the people around you.

It's also possible to fluctuate in alignment... You may not always Evil, in fact you may be normally Neutral in your normal life, the ordinary guy who mans the grocery stand and always gives people their change. But in desparate times, when food is scarce, soldiers are knocking on your door, and everyone is suspected of some form of treachery, you resort to evilness in order to survive; you steal food, water and money; you murder witnesses; you frame others for crimes (that you're not even sure were committed) just to get the officials off your back... Wherever life takes you.


(Alignment) is not a straitjacket for restricting your character. Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can still be quite different from each other. In addition, few people are completely consistent.

puppyavenger
2008-02-13, 08:08 PM
Maybe 60% would be CE
Some more would be NE
Others would be LE
A smaller percent would be CN
A smaller group N
A smaller Group LN
An even Smaller group of CG
A smaller group of NG
And a tiny group of LG



Actualy acording to the aligment chart, LE orks would number about the same as CG, the third least numeros grouping/nitpick/

EvilElitest
2008-02-13, 08:12 PM
Actualy acording to the aligment chart, LE orks would number about the same as CG, the third least numeros grouping/nitpick/

Wouldn't it be closer as evil is closer to their culture than good?
from
EE

Serenity
2008-02-13, 08:21 PM
Hmm, I'd say hurting and oppressing others were things that the Roman society condoned. The slavery, the vast conquest, the blood sports in the Colosseum. Evill without everyone being sociopaths. Just like the greedy slum lord who lines his pockets at the expense of his tenants is hurting and oppressing them, even if he's a perfectly charming fellow who some blokes down at the pub like to drink with. The D&D alignment system in no way suggests that evil alignments are reserved for sociopaths.

What exactly is inconsistent about one representative of a race being unambiguously evil, while another is good? Benito Mussolini was unambiguously evil. There's plenty of Italians who are not. If you're talking about the same enemy, sure, I'll buy the argument. But a different enemy who just happens to be of the same race as the unambiguously evil guy? Nothing inconsistent there.

Atanuero
2008-02-13, 09:59 PM
In fact it's a good deal worse, because suddenly your Orcs go from being rapacious embodiments of slaughter to being a literally evil race, a race of beings which is somehow morally bankrupt by virtue of its genetics.
And what makes this impossible, exactly? Is it so hard to believe that although every being's psychology is influenced by its biology, Orcs happen to be influenced more than others? If they didn't choose this lifestyle that is most suited for them, would it not be unlike an Orwell or Huxley book (specifically Brave New World)? And do you have some sort of trouble believing that as a race, Orcs are less intelligent than, say, humans because of their biology? This racial lack of intelligence or ingenuity is the primary REASON they live in a relatively speaking basic manner. Let's not forget that a typical orc lives in order to survive and then find some measure of happiness, and if their brains are only large enough to allow all (but the smartest) of them to live in a primal, eat-or-be-eaten type of society, why do you consider this to be wrong?

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 05:48 AM
it does force you to pay attention to those icky moral details

Exactly. It forces you to pay attention to those icky moral details which you have to ignore for the game to function. And not just moral details, but logistical details and issues of psychological realism.

It's like Season 6 Buffy. Suddenly we're asked to wonder how Buffy pays her bills. Now maybe I'm just cynical, but my response to this wasn't "gosh, my preconceptions have been challenged, wow" it was "for Pete's sake, the house was *already* too nice for Joyce to be able to afford as a single parent, and if Giles can afford to give her a job in the Magic Box, can't he just pay her a stipend for - y'know - saving the world? And what about the bloody Watcher's Council? Surely they must have had to deal with issues like this *before* in the past 5000 years?"

Same with Orcish civilians. Confront me with a bunch of Orcish women and children and I immediatley start thinking "so hang on, these Orcs all have wives and families like everybody else, yet somehow they were willing to run screaming to their deaths against a group of heavily armed warriors, for no clear reason? And where are they getting all this food from if they've only just started raiding villages? And what is my character even doing here, I'm a *priest* for crying out loud. Why am I tromping around in plate mail when I should be working in a church somewhere? In fact, why doesn't the army deal with these guys? Surely there's a local lord out there who should be dealing with this himself instead of paying me 500 Silvers to do it? And why does this medieval society have a cash economy anyway?"

If you ask me to play a game in which a large part of the core gameplay is fighting random monsters, purely to see if you can beat them, then don't "confront" me with the "moral" implications of my actions. They haven't got any.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 05:56 AM
Hmm, I'd say hurting and oppressing others were things that the Roman society condoned. The slavery, the vast conquest, the blood sports in the Colosseum. Evill without everyone being sociopaths. Just like the greedy slum lord who lines his pockets at the expense of his tenants is hurting and oppressing them, even if he's a perfectly charming fellow who some blokes down at the pub like to drink with. The D&D alignment system in no way suggests that evil alignments are reserved for sociopaths.

So what about Victorian England? Vast conquest again, plus public executions, and tremendous opression.

What about (and I tread very lightly with this) present day liberal democracies? We still ruthlessly exploit poorer nations, we still use open warfare, physical threats and, on occasion, political assassination to get our way in the rest of the world. We justify all of this in terms of "national interest" or of course "protecting democracy" (just as Rome justified its conquests in terms of the Pax Romana).

At what point *exactly* would you suggest that human civilization *stopped* being "Evil"?


What exactly is inconsistent about one representative of a race being unambiguously evil, while another is good? Benito Mussolini was unambiguously evil. There's plenty of Italians who are not. If you're talking about the same enemy, sure, I'll buy the argument. But a different enemy who just happens to be of the same race as the unambiguously evil guy? Nothing inconsistent there.

Nothing at all. What's inconsistent is every member of a race that you ever meet being not only unambiguously evil, but specifically portrayed as unambiguously evil so that you can fight them without worrying about it, right up until the DM wants you to stop fighting.

That's the equivalent of having mobs of Benito Mussolinis attack you every time you walk into an area with a large Italian population, and then wondering why you assume it's a trick when the 214th Benito Mussolini you meet doesn't attack you.

puppyavenger
2008-02-14, 07:31 AM
Wouldn't it be closer as evil is closer to their culture than good?
from
EE

CG orcs are two steps away on the alignment chart, as is LE, so tecnicly there should be about the same number, with LN and NG having even less and LG having barely any.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-14, 07:52 AM
Exactly. It forces you to pay attention to those icky moral details which you have to ignore for the game to function. And not just moral details, but logistical details and issues of psychological realism.

Utter nonsense. My game has orcish (and even ogre and kobold) women and children. It also has good guys of both races, rare though they may be. Somehow, it manages to function.


*rant about buffy*
Same with Orcish civilians. Confront me with a bunch of Orcish women and children and I immediatley start thinking "so hang on, these Orcs all have wives and families like everybody else, yet somehow they were willing to run screaming to their deaths against a group of heavily armed warriors, for no clear reason?

Because it's part of their culture? Why did Picts run headlong screaming at the roman legions? They had women and children too. Are you suggesting that all the members of the mongol hordes were bachelors other wise it doesn't make sense at all?

Also, if orcs in games that you have played just rush headlong to their deaths your DM lacks some skills in setting up random encounters.


And where are they getting all this food from if they've only just started raiding villages?

They didn't just start raiding villages. They just started rading villages where the PC's happen to be. They are nomadic.


And what is my character even doing here, I'm a *priest* for crying out loud. Why am I tromping around in plate mail when I should be working in a church somewhere?

Because you are based off of midevil warrior priests?


In fact, why doesn't the army deal with these guys? Surely there's a local lord out there who should be dealing with this himself instead of paying me 500 Silvers to do it?

You mean the local lord with 10 levels in aristorccrat who hires guys like you to handle this sort of thing?


And why does this medieval society have a cash economy anyway?

Read This. (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=9483435) Particulary the section on economics.


If you ask me to play a game in which a large part of the core gameplay is fighting random monsters, purely to see if you can beat them, then don't "confront" me with the "moral" implications of my actions. They haven't got any.

If you ask me to do a job that involves manufacturing of plutonium don't confront me with the moral implications either. It hasn't got any. It's just physics. I shouldn't have to worry about how it might effect the rest of the world. Right?

Serenity
2008-02-14, 08:05 AM
Nothing at all. What's inconsistent is every member of a race that you ever meet being not only unambiguously evil, but specifically portrayed as unambiguously evil so that you can fight them without worrying about it, right up until the DM wants you to stop fighting.

That's the equivalent of having mobs of Benito Mussolinis attack you every time you walk into an area with a large Italian population, and then wondering why you assume it's a trick when the 214th Benito Mussolini you meet doesn't attack you.

No, that's the Allies encountering only the Axis Italian armies during the African campaign, then when they finally push up into Italy itself, encountering Italian civilians.


Same with Orcish civilians. Confront me with a bunch of Orcish women and children and I immediatley start thinking "so hang on, these Orcs all have wives and families like everybody else, yet somehow they were willing to run screaming to their deaths against a group of heavily armed warriors, for no clear reason?

So...no soldier, bandit, murderer, or anyone else who does something dangerous, illegal, and/or immoral has a family? Maybe they attacked you because they wanted your stuff for their village, and since they were Evil, thought it would be perfectly all right to acquire your stuff by killing you.


If you ask me to play a game in which a large part of the core gameplay is fighting random monsters, purely to see if you can beat them, then don't "confront" me with the "moral" implications of my actions. They haven't got any.

Only true if that's how you play. I have never met a random encounter in my life, and I've done exceedingly few dungeon crawls. Heck, I've probably fought more humanoid enemies than any monstrous race. D&D is perfectly capable of providing a deep-immersion roleplaying experience with very little combat every bit as much as it's capable of providing kick-in-the-door hack and slash. If you prefer the latter, that's fine. But you are not the final arbiter of what makes sense or doesn't, or what is the 'right' way to play D&D.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 11:01 AM
Utter nonsense. My game has orcish (and even ogre and kobold) women and children. It also has good guys of both races, rare though they may be. Somehow, it manages to function.

It might function for you, it probably wouldn't function for me.


Because it's part of their culture? Why did Picts run headlong screaming at the roman legions? They had women and children too. Are you suggesting that all the members of the mongol hordes were bachelors other wise it doesn't make sense at all?

The picts ran screaming at the Roman legions because the Romans were invading their land.


Also, if orcs in games that you have played just rush headlong to their deaths your DM lacks some skills in setting up random encounters.

That's true. That's probably because most of the GMs in games I've played aren't running D&D, and therefore don't feel the need to have random encounters in the first place.


They didn't just start raiding villages. They just started rading villages where the PC's happen to be. They are nomadic.

Oh I see.


Because you are based off of midevil warrior priests?

Ah yes, those medieval warrior priests who spent their lives wandering the countryside with a thief and a mercenary doing odd jobs for people.


You mean the local lord with 10 levels in aristorccrat who hires guys like you to handle this sort of thing?

Because clearly the best way to solve a problem is to hire some random members of the public.


Read This. (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=9483435) Particulary the section on economics.

Thanks, but I've read enough D&D apologia to last me a lifetime.


If you ask me to do a job that involves manufacturing of plutonium don't confront me with the moral implications either. It hasn't got any. It's just physics. I shouldn't have to worry about how it might effect the rest of the world. Right?

Umm ... how do you go from "playing a game" to "doing a job"?

The point is that if I'm playing Civilization, I don't worry about the moral implications of building nukes. If I'm playing Hitman I don't worry about the ethical issues of assassination, and I find games which deliberately try and make you question the very assumptions they're asking you to make in the first place to be (a) trite and (b) annoying.

If you want to run a campaign in which players are playing real people in a believable world then that's great, and I certainly wouldn't suggest you *can't* do that under D&D (although I personally wouldn't choose to). But you *do* have to drop some of the core elements of D&D gameplay. I, as a player, am happy to accept arbitrary missions and run around having fights, but I will cope with such a game by having no investment in my character or the world. I will not, therefore, be remotely interested in thinking about the "moral implications" of actions I only took because I was required to by the conventions of the game. That's the equivalent of asking somebody if they want to go down the pub, then when you get there subjecting them to an hour long lecture about the evils of alcohol.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 11:12 AM
No, that's the Allies encountering only the Axis Italian armies during the African campaign, then when they finally push up into Italy itself, encountering Italian civilians.

The Axis Italian armies aren't evil, any more than the Allies are. They're just soldiers. They may debatably work for an evil government, but since we've pretty much established that imperialism and a willingness to use violence to support its national interests makes a government evil, so are the Allies.


So...no soldier, bandit, murderer, or anyone else who does something dangerous, illegal, and/or immoral has a family? Maybe they attacked you because they wanted your stuff for their village, and since they were Evil, thought it would be perfectly all right to acquire your stuff by killing you.

Soldiers, bandits, and murderers tend to win. If I encounter a group of bandits on the road, I will expect them to either be strong enough to kill me trivially, or smart enough to realise that they cannot kill me trivially, in which case I do not expect them to fight me. In neither case do I expect them to act like a D&D "encounter".

If a group of people need supplies for their village, and are so desperate that they resort to attacking heavily armed groups of seasoned mercenaries, then those people are clearly not evil. Evil people would just attack another village and leave the heavily armed men alone.


Only true if that's how you play. I have never met a random encounter in my life, and I've done exceedingly few dungeon crawls. Heck, I've probably fought more humanoid enemies than any monstrous race. D&D is perfectly capable of providing a deep-immersion roleplaying experience with very little combat every bit as much as it's capable of providing kick-in-the-door hack and slash. If you prefer the latter, that's fine. But you are not the final arbiter of what makes sense or doesn't, or what is the 'right' way to play D&D.

Just out of interest, what do you define as a "deep immersion roleplaying experience with very little combat"?

Frosty
2008-02-14, 11:33 AM
Would it make you happier if your DnD DM didn't give random encounters? Sure you'd still have plenty of opportunities to fight, because the world is dangerous one, but the DM would make the world one consistent with a world populated by intelligent, (semi) rational creatures with distinct cultures and a will to survive.

In other words, if you fight orcs, it wouldn't be because they're mindless, blood thirsty animals. They'd be doing something internally consistent with what an Orc would do to survive in this world and to provide for their families back home and makes sense. You can fight them, knowing (or finding out) why they're doing what they do, and then you can go to their homes see the reasoning hold up. You can then possibly choose to resolve whatever issue is causing the conflict between the orcs and the other party via more violence or dilomacy, just like you have a choice in real life.

Woot Spitum
2008-02-14, 11:34 AM
Soldiers, bandits, and murderers tend to win. If I encounter a group of bandits on the road, I will expect them to either be strong enough to kill me trivially, or smart enough to realise that they cannot kill me trivially, in which case I do not expect them to fight me. In neither case do I expect them to act like a D&D "encounter".Of course, bandits aren't going to look at your average adventuring party and think, "Oh dear, they are three levels higher than most of us, we can't beat them." They are more likely to think, "Hey, there are twenty of us and only four of them. Yeah, they look tough, but they just don't have the numbers to beat us." PC's do not have little numbers over their heads indicating their power level to anyone who happens to see them.

Frosty
2008-02-14, 11:39 AM
Their power...IT'S OVER NINE THOOOOOUSAND??!?!?!?!!!!1111ONEoneEleven

Indon
2008-02-14, 11:52 AM
I will not, therefore, be remotely interested in thinking about the "moral implications" of actions I only took because I was required to by the conventions of the game.

You know, I'm starting to think you're viewing the actions of characters in D&D in terms of alignment, rather than using alignment to describe the actions of characters in D&D.

Yes, there's a difference. The first way only gives a maximum of 9 given solutions to any problem, and most of them are impractical or outright stupid. The other way is a real-life situation, but how you solve it is loosely categorized.

The first interpretation does not produce a servicable alignment system, and the second one does.

Person_Man
2008-02-14, 11:53 AM
That's fair enough, but what you absolutely *can't* do is have a violent encounter with an unambiguously evil enemy one week and then have an encounter the next week in which said enemy is *not* unambiguously evil. That's not an interesting roleplaying opportunity, it's cheap.

My issue with "Often Evil" races is that they're designed to be unambiguously evil enemies when you need them to be unambiguously evil, and not when you don't, which promotes inconsistency.

Agreed.

Really, the DM should never use the alignment rules as a trap. If a race is "Often Evil" then the PCs should be able to treat them as unambiguously evil 99% of the time. And that 1% of the time when Drizzit comes out of the cave and warns them about an impending plot hook, the DM should go out of his way to make it authentic, and give the PCs reasons to trust him, and reasons why this particular Drow isn't Evil.

Guancyto
2008-02-14, 11:55 AM
Thanks, but I've read enough D&D apologia to last me a lifetime.

Could have fooled me. What with, you know, coming here and asking for it.

So wait, what have you shifted to objecting to, here? This started out as an insightful query into the idea of an inherently corrupted race, but now it just seems like you're striking out against bad and lazy DMing, which nobody but the bad and lazy DMs actually like.

Dervag
2008-02-14, 12:14 PM
No your just closing your eyes and basing everything off the most extreme example of one phrase, a phrase that isn't even a total definition. There are plenty of other sources on the matter, in fact read the entire alignment part, particularly the part that says aligments are extreme 100% definitions. You are simple taking the most extremist close minded approach to the interpretation and not even even attempting to take a larger viewPot, kettle. If I understand your argument correctly, I think I agree with you, but I don't think you're in a good position to criticize Mr. Hemmens for being closed-minded.


And I'm fine with that, but in that case you have to *present* them as something other than unambiguously evil. This means *not* using them as the default wandering monster. If a DM presents me with a "save the village from the Orcs" quest, and after having me fight waves of the buggers he pulls the "aah, do you see, they have women and children" card I will walk out of his game and never come back, because it's annoying as all hell.But that actually makes sense. In fact, even if we assume that orcs are just humans in funny suits, it still makes sense, because there are real cultures like that. The men form raiding parties and go attack a village, while the women, children, invalids, and men not interested in raiding stay home.

Imagine if your DM had a bunch of humans who sail across the ocean and attack a village. These humans are ferocious. They steal things, they carry off people to sell into slavery. Some of them are complete slavering maniacs. There are quite a few of them, and they're damnably hard to track down and stop.

So you finally fend off these crazy raiders and cross the ocean yourself, in hopes of stopping the attacks at the source. And you find (relatively) peaceable villages with the full compliment of women and children, as well as lots of 'raiderman' men who aren't interested in raiding and in fact think of the raiders as being dangerous people.

Would you quit the campaign in disgust? Because I've just described the Vikings and Norse of real Earth. And yet this campaign works exactly like the one you would quit in disgust, only with Norwegian people instead of orcs.


Same with Orcish civilians. Confront me with a bunch of Orcish women and children and I immediatley start thinking "so hang on, these Orcs all have wives and families like everybody else, yet somehow they were willing to run screaming to their deaths against a group of heavily armed warriors, for no clear reason?Well, when the Norse suddenly ran into a group of warriors, they would quite often attack if they thought they had a chance. Orcs might well do the same. And if they themselves are heavily armed warriors, they're not going to shrink from a fight against a group of human warriors who are not obviously dramatically more powerful than they are (i.e. not ten feet tall or carrying a huge flaming sword).

There are plenty of humans who do exactly the kind of thing you're unwilling to believe orcs might do.


And where are they getting all this food from if they've only just started raiding villages?They farm, but they're not very good at it because the land is marginal? They hunt, and likewise? They're not raiding for food but instead for things like agricultural implements and treasure that they want and can use but don't need for day-to-day survival?


And what is my character even doing here, I'm a *priest* for crying out loud. Why am I tromping around in plate mail when I should be working in a church somewhere?Because you're a martial cleric and not a cloistered one, as is the premise of the entire D&D cleric class?

Even in the real Middle Ages there were fighting priests and fighting bishops.


In fact, why doesn't the army deal with these guys? Surely there's a local lord out there who should be dealing with this himself instead of paying me 500 Silvers to do it?Maybe the local lord has more silver than soldiers. Which, come to think of it, is probably why he's being raided by orcs in the first place. His neighbor with the strong army is not being raided by orcs, but on the other hand he also wouldn't have any money to pay you to make the orcs go away if he was being raided by orcs.


And why does this medieval society have a cash economy anyway?"Does it? Or does it just have an economy in which silver is deemed valuable, and in which pieces of silver that have been stamped with the guarantee of some powerful authority are extra-valuable because you know they haven't been debased with other metals?

Foeofthelance
2008-02-14, 12:34 PM
Goin' all the way back to the first post for this one!


If you treat them as a metaphor, the "usually" label is meaningless. An Orc is like a disease: it kills because it is in its nature to kill, and you can't feel bad about killing an Orc any more than you feel bad about taking antibiotics.

If you treat them as real people, though, the "usually" lable becomes even worse. Somehow we are expected to believe that this sentiet, free-willed race universally and knowingly chooses an "evil" lifestyle. This is completely mad.

I always figured "Usually" referred to their society, whereas "Always" meant the creature was born and powered by Evil. Orcs aren't evil on an individual level. However, as a society they worship a god that advocates genocide and the general destruction of everything non-orc, and they take these views to heart and practice them, well, religiously. The ones who don't probably get kicked out, and are lucky to survive on their own. As individuals they'd probably get along ok with most people, if it wasn't for their tendency to listen when Gruumsh says, "Go rape, loot, and kill the elves! Then burn a few human homesteads on your way back!"

This is compared to something such as Pit Spawn, which is born of the darkness of the Abyss from collective evil, gets its personal kicks tormenting and killing for no good reason, and wouldn't bother with redemption if the gods of good smacked it up side the head with an Epic Change Alignment.

horseboy
2008-02-14, 12:43 PM
you are not the final arbiter of what makes sense or doesn't, or what is the 'right' way to play D&D.
Technically, he is the final arbiter of what makes sense...to him. Everyone has a different level to which they're willing to suspend disbelief as well as about what things.

EvilElitest
2008-02-14, 12:50 PM
Exactly. It forces you to pay attention to those icky moral details which you have to ignore for the game to function. And not just moral details, but logistical details and issues of psychological realism.

Um, no, you really don't need to ignore those details for the game to function, unless you happen to have a piss poor DM, and then it sucks anyways




Same with Orcish civilians. Confront me with a bunch of Orcish women and children and I immediatley start thinking "so hang on, these Orcs all have wives and families like everybody else, yet somehow they were willing to run screaming to their deaths against a group of heavily armed warriors, for no clear reason?
No real reason. Here some reasons

1. Might make right.
2. The mighty Grumish God who created this race wants vengeance upon the elves
3. The elves have killed orcs in the past (who was in the right is irrelevant) and the time for vengence is due
4. Our tribe needs food and supplies, and it is quicker to get it via raiding
5. those heavely armed warriors are trustpassing on our land/committing blasphemy They must die

And where are they getting all this food from if they've only just started raiding villages? And what is my character even doing here, I'm a *priest* for crying out loud. Why am I tromping around in plate mail when I should be working in a church somewhere? In fact, why doesn't the army deal with these guys? Surely there's a local lord out there who should be dealing with this himself instead of paying me 500 Silvers to do it? And why does this medieval society have a cash economy anyway?"


If you ask me to play a game in which a large part of the core gameplay is fighting random monsters, purely to see if you can beat them, then don't "confront" me with the "moral" implications of my actions. They haven't got any.
1. While D&D is suppose to have random encounters, the point of the game normally isn't to kill them just to see if you can
2. Why not? Nothing under ether the evil or orc description says that they need to be mindless evil monsters.


Pot, kettle. If I understand your argument correctly, I think I agree with you, but I don't think you're in a good position to criticize Mr. Hemmens for being closed-minded.

no because i'm not basing my argument upon on single sentence and finding the most extremist view point possible for its interpretations



So what about Victorian England? Vast conquest again, plus public executions, and tremendous opression.
Generally evil what is your point?



The picts ran screaming at the Roman legions because the Romans were invading their land.

And the elves are going against their religious beliefs your point?





The point is that if I'm playing Civilization, I don't worry about the moral implications of building nukes. If I'm playing Hitman I don't worry about the ethical issues of assassination, and I find games which deliberately try and make you question the very assumptions they're asking you to make in the first place to be (a) trite and (b) annoying.

When i watch 300 i do get pissed about the advocated morals of that movie, and when i play Assassin's creed i am interested in the moral implications of murdering the crusaders


If you want to run a campaign in which players are playing real people in a believable world then that's great, and I certainly wouldn't suggest you *can't* do that under D&D (although I personally wouldn't choose to). But you *do* have to drop some of the core elements of D&D gameplay.
No you don't, you can D&D just hte way it is an still have a believable moral system


I, as a player, am happy to accept arbitrary missions and run around having fights, but I will cope with such a game by having no investment in my character or the world. I will not, therefore, be remotely interested in thinking about the "moral implications" of actions I only took because I was required to by the conventions of the game. That's the equivalent of asking somebody if they want to go down the pub, then when you get there subjecting them to an hour long lecture about the evils of alcohol.
that isn't the game, that is the player or DM. The game itself doesn't promote that, that is the way your playing it

from
EE

horseboy
2008-02-14, 12:57 PM
Of course, bandits aren't going to look at your average adventuring party and think, "Oh dear, they are three levels higher than most of us, we can't beat them." They are more likely to think, "Hey, there are twenty of us and only four of them. Yeah, they look tough, but they just don't have the numbers to beat us." PC's do not have little numbers over their heads indicating their power level to anyone who happens to see them.
No, but players do have enough magic gear to read by at night. 20 men or not, when every single one of the 4 have magical weapons and armour and half a dozen trinkets that equals odds pretty quick. Nope, better to go raid the people that aren't Christmas trees.

Frosty
2008-02-14, 12:58 PM
No, but players do have enough magic gear to read by at night. 20 men or not, when every single one of the 4 have magical weapons and armour and half a dozen trinkets that equals odds pretty quick. Nope, better to go raid the people that aren't Christmas trees.

Most magical gear don't glow unless you're using Detect Magic or something similar you know.

horseboy
2008-02-14, 01:05 PM
Most magical gear don't glow unless you're using Detect Magic or something similar you know.
Which is a 0 level spell, and available through feats. If you're in a magic world and you're going to have a low level druid/cleric/wizard to back up your bandit horde anyway, a useful bit of knowledge. Bandits don't grow on trees, despite what the MM may tell you.

Serenity
2008-02-14, 01:09 PM
And if you're tangling with orcs at that level, it's because they've got class levels and magic items of their own. Joe Classless Orc and his CR 1/2 aren't going to show up much if at all in a 20th level adventure. Hruk Redbear, Champion of Gruumsh, the 20th level barbarian and his warband, on the other hand, just might.

Charles Phipps
2008-02-14, 02:50 PM
That's sort of exactly my point. Most Romans had no problem with slavery. Most Romans were not sociopaths. According to your logic, because Roman society condoned Slavery, that made Roman society Evil, which made the Romans Evil. This is clearly nonsense.

Uhh, why?

Just throwing an idea here. But if we have a Roman Army and they're a bunch of Normal People from Rome that wade into a village of foreigners, slaughter them, rape, and take their stuff.

Why can't the Romans be LE?

I think part of the problem is that "Evil" In modern society = deviance while Evil in D&D = A perfectly valid and arguably most common lifestyle choice for most of the world's populous.

In D&D, you'd have To Kill a Mockingbird.

Gregory Peck: LG
Scout: CG
Boo Radley: NG
Majority of Townsfolk: LE

Starbuck_II
2008-02-14, 03:08 PM
So you finally fend off these crazy raiders and cross the ocean yourself, in hopes of stopping the attacks at the source. And you find (relatively) peaceable villages with the full compliment of women and children, as well as lots of 'raiderman' men who aren't interested in raiding and in fact think of the raiders as being dangerous people.


Well, you should first find out if they are the ones who sent out the raiders. If they are; ask them why? If they just like to, than they are evil. At least the ones in charge.

So you can kill them.

Depending on alignment:
If evil or nuetral (you do have motivation if they will continue to threaten your family/life): you can kill the rest

If Good: get authorities (ask king of your place what he wants done).

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 04:21 PM
Could have fooled me. What with, you know, coming here and asking for it.

So wait, what have you shifted to objecting to, here? This started out as an insightful query into the idea of an inherently corrupted race, but now it just seems like you're striking out against bad and lazy DMing, which nobody but the bad and lazy DMs actually like.

The problem with threads like this is inevitable drift, so I'm now actually discussing a whole bunch of different things at once including the idea of an inherently corrupted race, the idea of an inherently corrupted society, and the idea that coming from a corrupted society makes you evil.

There's a certain amount of having a go at bad and lazy DMing as well, because inevitably what one person sees as bad and lazy DMing another person will see as totally consistent. It doesn't help that because so many people are talking at once people wind up taking my replies to points made by other people as replies made to their, subtly different points, and the whole thing gets into an enormous muddle.

For example, a couple of pages back I agreed with Person_Man's statement that you sometimes just needed a good old unambiguous smackdown against something that was Just Plain Bad, but added the corollary that you had to be careful not to make something Just Plain Bad one week and Morally Ambiguous the next. People then insisted that no, this was actually totally okay. Which I think was *probably* miscommunication. I think there's still some useful stuff to come out of the discussion mind, which is why I'm still here (also I like to reply to people).

Thanks.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 04:30 PM
And if you're tangling with orcs at that level, it's because they've got class levels and magic items of their own. Joe Classless Orc and his CR 1/2 aren't going to show up much if at all in a 20th level adventure. Hruk Redbear, Champion of Gruumsh, the 20th level barbarian and his warband, on the other hand, just might.

For what it's worth, this is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about when I draw the distinction between "a believable race" and "guilt-free sword-fodder".

If you're running the kind of game where I face encounters scaled to my level then I can't take it seriously as a living world or an interactive narrative. When I'm being presented with encounters that are specifically designed to challenge my character in a fight, I'm going to view those encounters as just that and I will find it *very* difficult to treat members of that race as anything else.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 04:44 PM
But that actually makes sense. In fact, even if we assume that orcs are just humans in funny suits, it still makes sense, because there are real cultures like that. The men form raiding parties and go attack a village, while the women, children, invalids, and men not interested in raiding stay home.

Imagine if your DM had a bunch of humans who sail across the ocean and attack a village. These humans are ferocious. They steal things, they carry off people to sell into slavery. Some of them are complete slavering maniacs. There are quite a few of them, and they're damnably hard to track down and stop.

So you finally fend off these crazy raiders and cross the ocean yourself, in hopes of stopping the attacks at the source. And you find (relatively) peaceable villages with the full compliment of women and children, as well as lots of 'raiderman' men who aren't interested in raiding and in fact think of the raiders as being dangerous people.

Would you quit the campaign in disgust? Because I've just described the Vikings and Norse of real Earth. And yet this campaign works exactly like the one you would quit in disgust, only with Norwegian people instead of orcs.


You've just described the Vikings of real earth: a broad, rich and varied culture, with no tendency towards any alignment whatsoever. That's sort of my point.

The more I think about it, the more I don't buy this "evil culture" idea, and I think I've finally worked out why.

Basically, there's a double standard. Evil societies have to deal with real-world social problems, and Good societies don't. Evil cultures raid others for the resources they need. Good cultures never need resources. Evil cultures mercilessly crush dissent. Good cultures never have dissenters. Evil cultures tax their peasants and send slaves to work in the mines. Good cultures don't tax their peasants, or if they do the peasants are always happy to pay, and their mines apparently operate themselves. Good rulers never have to stoop to evil methods to deal with potential usurpers, but Evil is the only way to get ahead in an Evil society. The list goes on.

Frosty
2008-02-14, 04:59 PM
There's a difference between a Good society and Utopia. Good societies in my games still have problems they need to work out. But at least they're trying to work it out in a just manner.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-02-14, 05:07 PM
Um, no, you really don't need to ignore those details for the game to function, unless you happen to have a piss poor DM, and then it sucks anyways

Okay, let me go over this one more time.

Yes, it is possible to run a serious, deep, meaningful game of D&D about moral issues and the like if you really want to.

I do *not* believe it is possible to run such a game if you only have moral issues one session in four, and spend the other three having level-appropriate encounters against unambiguously evil (or even unambiguously hostile) opponents.


No real reason. Here some reasons

1. Might make right.
2. The mighty Grumish God who created this race wants vengeance upon the elves
3. The elves have killed orcs in the past (who was in the right is irrelevant) and the time for vengence is due
4. Our tribe needs food and supplies, and it is quicker to get it via raiding
5. those heavely armed warriors are trustpassing on our land/committing blasphemy They must die

Okay, but in that case why aren't they attacking a defenceless Elvish village in overwhelming force, instead of attacking an adventuring party that will probably wipe them all out while expending 10-20% of its renewable resources?

This is the point I am making. If you want me to believe that your Orcs are a realistic race with motivations, homes and civilians, you have to make them *act* like a realistic race with motivations, homes, and civilians, and you can't do that and still provide "combat encounters".


Generally evil what is your point?

I think you'll find my point is contained in the two sentences after the one you quoted, most importantly "precisely at what point in history do you consider society to have *stopped* being evil?"


And the elves are going against their religious beliefs your point?

My point is that the Picts attacked the Romans, even though the Romans were a vastly superior and better armed force, because the Romans would probably have killed them all anyway.


When i watch 300 i do get pissed about the advocated morals of that movie, and when i play Assassin's creed i am interested in the moral implications of murdering the crusaders

When you play Mario Brothers, do you get interested in the moral implications of jumping on the Goombas?


No you don't, you can D&D just hte way it is an still have a believable moral system

You can have a moral system which you, personally, consider believable. That's not the same thing.

Charles Phipps
2008-02-14, 05:38 PM
When you play Mario Brothers, do you get interested in the moral implications of jumping on the Goombas?

As a child, I briefly wondered if the Goombas were the Good Mushroom Kingdom citizens turned evil by magic.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-14, 05:56 PM
I do *not* believe it is possible to run such a game if you only have moral issues one session in four, and spend the other three having level-appropriate encounters against unambiguously evil (or even unambiguously hostile) opponents.

See, to me that reads the same way as "It's not possibe to have a game with deep meaningful moral issues if your DM kinda sucks." Which, I'll concede, but I'd also agree with: "It's not possible to have a game with __(insert anything good here) if your DM kinda sucks."




Okay, but in that case why aren't they attacking a defenceless Elvish village in overwhelming force, instead of attacking an adventuring party that will probably wipe them all out while expending 10-20% of its renewable resources?

Since when is an Elvish village defenseless? There aren't enough of them to have overwhelming force maybe so they pick on small groups they think they can overpower. Some of those groups are straggler elves, and really are easy prey, some turn out to be adventureres and slaughter them.


This is the point I am making. If you want me to believe that your Orcs are a realistic race with motivations, homes and civilians, you have to make them *act* like a realistic race with motivations, homes, and civilians, and you can't do that and still provide "combat encounters".

I guess I just don't understand why that is. Real people have combat. There really are, and were, brigands and societies that lived by raiding other societies. Depending upon time period, it really wasn't that uncommon. Why should it be unrealistic if fictional people do?


I think you'll find my point is contained in the two sentences after the one you quoted, most importantly "precisely at what point in history do you consider society to have *stopped* being evil?"

Hard to say really. Which society are you talking about? I think American Society has been pretty much Neutral since around 1890.


My point is that the Picts attacked the Romans, even though the Romans were a vastly superior and better armed force, because the Romans would probably have killed them all anyway.

Really? If the Picts had just surrendered and accepted Roman rule you really think that Rome would have slaughtered them all? Do you have any historical evidence for this?


You can have a moral system which you, personally, consider believable. That's not the same thing.

Because of some absolute standard of believabilty I assume? Enlighten me.

Fhaolan
2008-02-14, 06:01 PM
Hi Dan, don't mind me, I just wanted to comment:


I do *not* believe it is possible to run such a game if you only have moral issues one session in four, and spend the other three having level-appropriate encounters against unambiguously evil (or even unambiguously hostile) opponents.

Okay, but in that case why aren't they attacking a defenceless Elvish village in overwhelming force, instead of attacking an adventuring party that will probably wipe them all out while expending 10-20% of its renewable resources?


I agree with this. I don't do level-appropriate encounters. Heck, don't do random encounters at all unless the PCs wander off in a direction I wasn't prepared for and I'm hoping for inspiration as to what to do next. And in most cases those random encounters are 'in the distance you catch a glimpse of something trying to hide.' I don't believe intelligent creatures would rush to engage an obviously armed band without serious reasons to do so. Unintelligent creatures, such as giant scorpions or something similar, might but that's a different discussion.

As for level-appropriate, that kind of stuff breaks believability for me too. Of course, I've been doing this from before the whole 'level-appropriate' vibe came into fashion. I've been known to drop massively overpowered and underpowered encounters on a party. The world doesn't revolve around the PCs, and if they happen to wander into areas that are decidely unhealthy for them, they need to learn how to wander right back out, or talk *really fast*. :smallbiggrin:


This is the point I am making. If you want me to believe that your Orcs are a realistic race with motivations, homes and civilians, you have to make them *act* like a realistic race with motivations, homes, and civilians, and you can't do that and still provide "combat encounters".

Agreed. The closest thing I've done to a "combat encounter" in the last few years is when a group of PCs stumbled across a scouting party that was running ahead of the Free Imperial Legions during one of the Gnoll Empire's expansionary pushes. The PCs didn't engage, and ran away. And I mean *away*, through several countries to get as far away from what was about to become a warzone.

EDIT: I provide "encounters", it's how the PCs react to them that makes the "combat encounters" or not. The PCs can run away, surrender, not attack in the first place, etc. A full range of options are always available. I don't do hack'n'slash games anymore. They bore me, and you really don't want me DMing when bored. I get silly.


I think you'll find my point is contained in the two sentences after the one you quoted, most importantly "precisely at what point in history do you consider society to have *stopped* being evil?"


Personally... I don't. I personally believe that RL Humans fall into the category of 'Often Lawful Evil'. D&D Humans are, on average, more Good than RL Humans in my opinion.

Frosty
2008-02-14, 06:02 PM
Sure you can have combat encounters with Orcs. you just gotta set the scenario up correctly. The orcs *are* attacking an elf village that has only low level defenders. They were winning handily and were happily raping and pillaging when the gallant PCs show up. The PCs defend the village and drive off/kill the orcs. There. That's slightly more believable than random orc bandits attacking adventurers on the road right?

Also, not orc tribes are the same. you *can* have one group of orcs you meet be unquestionably evil and another one that is ambiguous (and the two clans clearly distinguish themselves) that is how you may have combat encounters with orcs and still give some orcs the "realistic race with motivations" treatment.

Serenity
2008-02-14, 06:03 PM
Okay, let me go over this one more time.

Yes, it is possible to run a serious, deep, meaningful game of D&D about moral issues and the like if you really want to.

I do *not* believe it is possible to run such a game if you only have moral issues one session in four, and spend the other three having level-appropriate encounters against unambiguously evil (or even unambiguously hostile) opponents.

Which is not the same thing as "ignoring details". Or even the same thing as "the orc raiders are evil, but there are orc civilians who aren't". If the first three sessions are pure hack and slash, then yes, there is a precedent that mosnters are there to kill. It's perfectly possible, though, to have a roleplaying campaign where the PCs wrangle with moral issues from the start, while at the same time not meeting their first good orc until session 4. An individual is perfectly capable of being unambiguously evil without making his race unambiguously evil. I doubt you'd cry foul if the existence of human serial killers/demonic cultists/violent bandits, each of whom are clearly heinous and unambiguously evil/hostile did not mean that all humans were unambiguously evil/hostile.

It's perfectly possible to play 'random combat encounters' realistically. Often they do outnumber the PCs. Past low levels, give them class levels, and they suddenly have very good reason to think they have a good chance of taking down the wandering armed folks. They can attack from cover, ambush a sleeping party, flank, fight dirty, etc. They may not be the brightest creatures on the Material Plane, but they're perfectly capable of at least that level of tactics--and if the armed wanderers are, say, intruding on orcish lands, why wouldn't they want to do that?

EvilElitest
2008-02-14, 06:35 PM
Okay, let me go over this one more time.

Yes, it is possible to run a serious, deep, meaningful game of D&D about moral issues and the like if you really want to.

I do *not* believe it is possible to run such a game if you only have moral issues one session in four, and spend the other three having level-appropriate encounters against unambiguously evil (or even unambiguously hostile) opponents.

Example? Lets take four games


Game 1 Orc raiders attack the PCs, the PCs have shiny stuff and the orcs want it
Orcs are being normal evil blokes (stealing killing ect) and the PCs kill them. Much like real life bandits
Reason for attacking- Orcs want money, PCs are trust passing on orcish lands, Orc's religion demands the death of the infidels
Orc's aligment- CE,NE, CN
Justified in killing them-yes
Situation 2, orc raiders attack near by village
reason for attacking- They need food and it is easier to take it, the village has been bothering them for some reason, Grumish Demands sacerfices
Orcs aligment, CE, NE, LE, CN, N (the latter two only want the stuff)
Justified in killing them- yes
Situation three, orc raider band is intercepted by PCs and killed
Reason for Orcs being their- they hope to obtain more loot and supplies via raiding, honoring their gods, avenging old losses (real or imagined)
Orcs aligments- CE, NE, N, LN, CN, LE
Justified in killing them- Yes, provided they give them a chance to turn back (paladins at least)
Situation4, The PCs hunt the survivors back to the orc village, and massacres all the folks there, including women, children, and noncombatants
Orc reason- there just living here at current, raiders come from here to obtain food and supplies, but as of now they are just trying to recover from the raid
Aligments- Any but mostly evil
Justified?- No



Okay, but in that case why aren't they attacking a defenceless Elvish village in overwhelming force, instead of attacking an adventuring party that will probably wipe them all out while expending 10-20% of its renewable resources?
1. Because they are on their land, have stuff to sell, are going against their religion ect
2. Um, they don't know how powerful they are, they could just be traveling mercenaries who will prove to be easy prey. They don't know that they will be wiped out by this group who expands only limited resources


This is the point I am making. If you want me to believe that your Orcs are a realistic race with motivations, homes and civilians, you have to make them *act* like a realistic race with motivations, homes, and civilians, and you can't do that and still provide "combat encounters".

Yeah you can, just give a reason for why they are doing this. If you have a piss poor DM, then no you can't do that


I think you'll find my point is contained in the two sentences after the one you quoted, most importantly "precisely at what point in history do you consider society to have *stopped* being evil?"

We've stopped being evil? When did this happen? Generally most societies nowadays are neutral with a mix of good an evil blokes if you go by D&D standards. However most of these societies aren't totally psychopathic they just do evil things


My point is that the Picts attacked the Romans, even though the Romans were a vastly superior and better armed force, because the Romans would probably have killed them all anyway.

And the orcs attacking other races for cultural and social reasons


When you play Mario Brothers, do you get interested in the moral implications of jumping on the Goombas?

no, but when i play better games like Baldur's gate i feel guilty attacking random people just to get their loot




You can have a moral system which you, personally, consider believable. That's not the same thing.

And D&D offers that, as long as your DM isn't bad


Personally... I don't. I personally believe that RL Humans fall into the category of 'Often Lawful Evil'. D&D Humans are, on average, more Good than RL Humans in my opinion.
Certainly, it isn't like we have every done evil horrible stuff to other people

Really you are being sarcastic right?


from
EE

Fhaolan
2008-02-14, 07:03 PM
Certainly, it isn't like we have every done evil horrible stuff to other people

Really you are being sarcastic right?


Unfortunately, no, I'm not. I have a really bad opinion of the human race. I understand that others do not share that opinion, and I have met many humans that are not evil, and even some who are Good. But I have met enough who are definitively Evil by D&D standards to sway the average off of Neutral in that direction. And I mean capital E, deliberate choice when they get out of bed in the morning, "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die" level Evil.

I get the impression that I've had a weird life.

I won't go further with this bit of the discussion as it will go past what the Forum Rules will allow.

FoE
2008-02-14, 07:12 PM
You know, in Eberron, the only inherently evil races are fiends, undead and abberations like mind flayers. Orcs are actually good guys in many cases. Certainly there are races which are more warlike than others (elves, for example), but no 'mortal' race is inherently evil. And 'evil' characters can belong to 'good' organizations. Take the Church of the Silver Flame, for example: while the majority of its members work to take down evil, their definition of 'evil' can be a bit too broad and sometimes they persecute innocent people.

EvilElitest
2008-02-14, 07:13 PM
Unfortunately, no, I'm not. I have a really bad opinion of the human race. I understand that others do not share that opinion, and I have met many humans that are not evil, and even some who are Good. But I have met enough who are definitively Evil by D&D standards to sway the average off of Neutral in that direction. And I mean capital E, deliberate choice when they get out of bed in the morning, "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die" level Evil.

I get the impression that I've had a weird life.

I won't go further with this bit of the discussion as it will go past what the Forum Rules will allow.

Actually this was me mis reading your statement i thought you said that RL humans are generally good and that D&d humans are evil. Never mind. Yeah, you haven't had a real life, it is pretty much true that by D&D standards RL humans are generally evil or neutral with a minority of good. I"d consider my self LN
from
EE

Demented
2008-02-14, 07:26 PM
Humans will resort to evil more easily than good, since the former implies survival and the latter implies sacrifice. (Honestly now, would you rather live needlessly or die needlessly?) Well, that and beating innocent people down is surprisingly fun once you've done it.

EvilElitest
2008-02-14, 07:49 PM
Humans will resort to evil more easily than good, since the former implies survival and the latter implies sacrifice. (Honestly now, would you rather live needlessly or die needlessly?) Well, that and beating innocent people down is surprisingly fun once you've done it.

You should write for children's TV shows
from
EE

horseboy
2008-02-14, 08:01 PM
You should write for children's TV shows
from
EEChildren's shows are the most evil thing known to man. You better do that ice show for Parade of Hope, if you know what's good for you.