Quote Originally Posted by Craft (Cheese) View Post
But that makes everything so much easier! When the party spots a group of Orcs drinking, sparring, and singing songs around a campfire, that's an opportunity for an ambush and some easy XP.

Evil as shorthand for "kill this" means you don't have to go through all the trouble of doing boring stuff like establishing context, creating opportunities for meaningful choice, or encouraging well-developed character motivations. You get to the loot and the XP so much faster!
Or, the DM could be intelligent and not have monsters be humans in funny suits. Why are orcs sitting around a campfire with beers, talking about their bros? This is a terrible example, even as a sarcastic set up. If everyone is going to look the same sitting around a fire talking about their bros and conquests, then there's no reason not to kill them – they're barely caricatures anyway, and exist for whatever the DM contrived at the moment, rather than as a people or culture.

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

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

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


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