Which villainous race(s) are next on the chopping block?

[Liquor Box]

Also, were they telling me? Because I rather enjoyed content like volo's in which there was oodles of flavors of villainous. I also said on page 4 that the PC options have loose language on alignment like tend to, often, and most.

I'm all for fleshing out the archetypal villainous races and giving them depth. I'm not for the stance that it's never ok to have stock canon adversary races (species).

I agree with this.

I quite like races like orcs and goblins being 'usually evil'. It means they are generally cast as villains, allows moral conundrums regarding how the party should treat a group that is usually evil, or indeed how they should react when they see others mistreating such a group. It also allows Razier's longstanding point that she wants to play a non-evil orc.

Then you can have other races, like demons or devils always evil, so you do know where you stand with them. Or at least almost always evil (if you object to the absolute on the grounds of free will).

Then you have a whole host of races (like dwarfs) who not usually or always evil - for those who don't really like dealing with races who are cast as evil by nature.

It just allows so much more.

Movies have been doing that "this has been a work of fiction, any resemblance to real people living or dead is entirely coincidental" thing for a long time now. Does not save them from criticism when they use tropes that reflect unfortunate attitudes towards real world groups. In the case of orcs and drow in particular, they've been called out for long enough that a disclaimer and nothing more will feel like a brush off.

Doubly so because "they're dumb, savage brutes" isn't properly alien. If you want this tribe of people with grey-green skin to be basic savages, they're just bad guys you can't do anything more with. Savages as a trope are overdone. Give me a hive mind that considers us individualists alien. Or a group who needs extreme sensation, revels in the sensation of taking wounds and mortification of their own flesh, and who don't understand that the townspeople they visit to exchange violence with don't feel the same way. Hell, even demonic corruption meaning that they're overtaken by rage at the slightest provocation, with outsiders not knowing the many layers of protocol they use to avoid collapsing into pointless infighting. Give me something at least a little different if you absolutely must have a race of designated antagonists thrown in there.

You are right, people do criticise movies that are not based on real people as being based on real people. To be honest though, there's no avoiding criticism, and that's not a realistic aspiration. DnD will be criticised no matter what it does, the question we have been talking about is whether the criticism is warranted.

In my opinion being clear that orcs are not a different race of humans, but a completely different species (or a monster as they've been designated in some editions) goes some way toward being clear that the criticism is not warranted. Doubly so when orcs are clearly far more distinct from humans than any race is from another. If a person sees orcs as representing a real world race (and noone in this thread has said that I don't think, they are just concerned that others might) then that probably says more about their own perspective than that of DnD.

The rest of the post just explains your preference for a different type of monster. That is you preference, but irrelevant to whether people who prefer orcs as antagonists should get 'usually evil' ones.