Goblin Oppression; fact or fiction?

[Jason]

Huh, I'm used to blue being the color used for sarcasm or facetious comments; your first statement lacks them but also seems like the kind of thing that would be said sarcastically. My apologies if you're being serious.

I was serious. A much-quoted line from the Giant is to the effect that "9 times out of 10," D&D players are playing killing any goblin on sight just because the book says they're evil, and I don't think that's anywhere near an accurate ratio.

As for the second statement, I was referring to (and quoting) Ionathus, not your own personal views on the comic, but thanks for the enlightenment.

I understood that. My point was that the print-only comics make a much stronger case for the prevasiveness of anti-monster prejudice in Stickworld than the online comics do.

And yes, the AD&D ability was what I was referring to. However, I don't believe it made the transition to 2E, and that's the one I started with (and that only because my friend was using his dad's old sourcebooks because we could not afford the 3E books in our early-teen years).

Yes, it's gone from the 2nd edition PHB.

[hamishspence]

I was serious. A much-quoted line from the Giant is to the effect that "9 times out of 10," D&D players are playing killing any goblin on sight just because the book says they're evil, and I don't think that's anywhere near an accurate ratio.

It might be slightly less accurate now, but I think it was a lot more accurate when The Giant was playing.

And given how often I see people arguing that this is the way it's supposed to be - it's clear that this playstyle still has a pretty big fanbase - it isn't just "problem players".

[Jason]

It might be slightly less accurate now, but I think it was a lot more accurate when The Giant was playing.

I disagree, and I've been playing pretty much continuously since 1983. Not always D&D, but very often. I was in a university club meeting new players all the time through the mid-'90s to mid-'00s, and I did a lot of local convention and Living Greyhawk play with players I had never met before through most of the '00s. I occasionally met a player like this, but it was never near "9 times out of 10".

I suppose my experience might be a regional thing, but gamer culture as represented in periodicals have nearly always decried that style of gameplay too, so I have thought my experience is rather typical.

And given how often I see people arguing that this is the way it's supposed to be - it's clear that this playstyle still has a pretty big fanbase - it isn't just "problem players".

Unless it's a small group of problem players that represent a tiny percentage of the games out there doing the loudest arguing, and making it look like there are a lot of them. That's assuming they do actually play that way as well, and aren't just arguing the point online.
"It's on the internet all the time" isn't really much of an argument for how often something happens in real life.

[Wildstag]

As an early example, you don't get a story like Tucker's Kobolds getting widespread fame and recognition if people were uninterested in using Goblins and Kobolds more intelligently than as just fodder for strong characters. That is one of the most famous D&D-gamer stories and it's about making weak creatures more intelligent and thoughtful.

If the "9 out of 10" myth were true, Tucker's Kobolds would have been dismissed by the audience as a "That GM" story, and not something to aspire to. I'd be willing to bet the "9 out of 10" myth is actually flipped around the opposite way.

I've been playing a relatively short time compared to some of you guys; 15 years, having started back in 2006. I've played in four geographically distinct locations: Albuquerque, a suburb of OK City, Western MD, and online games. I have literally never played in a game where low-CR monsters were "just" chump-change. I've never played a game where demi-human civilians weren't expected to be treated the same as human civilians.

That's just my experience, but I've never actually met another player that's dealt with those kinds of situations.

So the assumption that is at the root of the story design really only works if you've played with "that guy" GMs, and by the nature of the meme, "that guy" isn't a dime a dozen GM.

[Ionathus]

I'm going to change my mind. A bit, at least.

I'm going to accept the idea that PC vs. non-PC racial discrimination in Stickworld has been sufficiently demonstrated in the comic to show that it is fairly pervasive in the PC race cultures, at least the ones we've been shown so far.
So, argument won as far as that point goes.

However, I still think the current situation in Stickworld may have nothing to do with how or why the gods created the non-PC races in the beginning, that the gods could if coerced be helpful in eliminating such bigotry but are literally incapable of resolving it without willing mortals, that the Dark One is not the wise and benevolent god that Redcloak thinks he is, and that despite the existence of anti-goblin prejudice and oppression that Redcloak is not justified in his actions in any way.

Also, Redcloak is still himself a racist. I don't think that oppression of your species by others means that you can't yourself be racist.

I also have issues with the idea that it is morally wrong to label a fantastic fictional species "usually evil." Basically, I don't accept the idea that it would be some slippery slope to encouraging real-world racism.
But at the same time I don't think it's healthy to spend all your hobby time pretending to torture, rape, or otherwise behave badly against non-existent fictional people or monsters, regardless of whether they were established as evil or not before hand. I think the mainstream D&D culture (such as it is) has generally agreed with me on this point from the earliest days of the hobby.

Well said. I wholeheartedly agree -- TDO is certainly no saint, Redcloak is an extremist hypocrite, and I believe mortals will be the key to progress being made. Hopefully with more negotiations like Durkon & RC just had (but, ideally, ending in less of "the hitting and the yelling and the more hitting").

I also agree with you that most players, even from the start of the hobby, didn't view sadism as acceptable even against Evil opponents. I have some followup thoughts about that later on in this post.

We disagree about labelling fictional species "usually evil" -- I share Rich's opinion that "default alignments" shouldn't feature in either statblocks or society descriptions. At most, I think the Law/Chaos dynamic is more useful for roleplay and tactics, without getting into all the ethically-shaky stuff. I do agree that it's hard to prove any connection between that labelling and real world racism -- but it's just too easy to draw parallels for the practice to sit right with me.

Part of your argument is based on print-only comics which one has to pay for to see legally, and as someone living on a shoestring budget, I'm kinda just left to read other people's interpretations of the events in print. Alternatively, I have the online-comics and the result I'm left with is this. The premise that the goblins are made solely to be experience-nuggets for adventurers only works if the default assumption of the reader is that goblins are made to be fodder for low-level adventurers. If you've spent your whole life playing in relatively egalitarian settings or campaigns, then this assumption comes harder with such scant evidence actually presented to us.

Lord Raziere has done some examination of monstrous humanoid treatment in the web comic, which was very exhaustive for every book so far and worth a read. I think this also falls into the "9 times out of 10" stuff I wanted to discuss, which is coming next, I promise.

As a side note, I know you've probably already had them recommended, but the Gumroad PDFs are significantly cheaper, if you ever find yourself in the financial spot to get them. I really loved both -- some of my favorite OotS scenes are in these two books!

I was serious. A much-quoted line from the Giant is to the effect that "9 times out of 10," D&D players are playing killing any goblin on sight just because the book says they're evil, and I don't think that's anywhere near an accurate ratio.

Okay, so the 9 times out of 10 thing.

I might be misremembering it, so please check my logic here. But I never took Rich's comments to mean "9 times out of 10, PCs are sociopaths against monstrous humanoids." The way I saw it, his argument was less about whether the PCs are murderhobos, and more about how the narrative itself often treats the monstrous humanoids.

When you burst into the cave, do the goblins snarl and start stabbing, even if they're wildly outnumbered? Do they act like mortals, with desires and fears, or do they act like Evil Robots with fangs? Are they given concrete and relatable desires (food, money, territory), or are they always portrayed as religious fanatics who just want to kill to please their Blood God? Or little sociopaths who just want to hurt innocents?

Can they be negotiated with? Do they ever try to surrender? Is their surrender rejected as trickery? When they die, is it described the same way the GM describes human deaths? Or is it somehow more visceral?

Basically, I don't feel like Rich was saying that most tables condone egregious violence and torture against goblins. I think he was saying that, at most tables, the green skin and the fangs are just enough of a difference to allow both GM and players to treat the goblins or orcs or kobolds or what have you as "other"...and, therefore, treat them just differently enough from more "civilized races" to cause concern.

I don't agree that it's actually 9 out of 10 -- I think the ratio is much lower. But I've played at tables like that, myself. I also think that maybe the people who get into 16-page threads about Goblin Oppression are more likely to play in tables that ask these harder-hitting philosophical questions. Rich may be preaching to the choir a bit here.

I believe Rich is writing against what he perceives as a baseline assumption of the game, an assumption that random 14-year-olds picking up the Monster Manual for the first time are in danger of taking at face value: that goblins are a "usually evil" race and are therefore, on some hard-to-define level, acceptable targets.

[Jason]

Basically, I don't feel like Rich was saying that most tables condone egregious violence and torture against goblins. I think he was saying that, at most tables, the green skin and the fangs are just enough of a difference to allow both GM and players to treat the goblins or orcs or kobolds or what have you as "other"...and, therefore, treat them just differently enough from more "civilized races" to cause concern.

And why is it concerning? Is it really the "this is a slippery slope that will encourage more real world racism" argument?

Isn't that akin to arguing that someone who plays fighters is going to resort to violence more often in the real world, or that someone who plays rogues will decide he should start stealing from Walmart? Or that someone who plays wizards will start to think he really can cast spells?

I believe Rich is writing against what he perceives as a baseline assumption of the game, an assumption that random 14-year-olds picking up the Monster Manual for the first time are in danger of taking at face value: that goblins are a "usually evil" race and are therefore, on some hard-to-define level, acceptable targets.

Why shouldn't it be accepted at face value? We're talking about fictional creatures here. What the game designer says about their culture and attitudes in the monster entry is intended to be generally accurate information, just like their hit points and special abilities.

On a strictly meta-level the evil humanoid races are acceptable targets, because the reason they are in the game in the first place to be the minor bad guys. If a DM goes out of his way to develop them into not being acceptable targets in his game that's great too - I do that kind of thing all the time - but there really isn't an authentic vibrant culture of sentient beings who have their own lives and loves hiding somewhere behind the stat block that it would be wrong for us to label as "evil" because they're not really evil.

[pendell]

There are some real nasty people in this hobby. I remember a case back in the 90s where the PCs interrogated someone by first breaking all his fingers, then casting cure light wounds to heal them back up, then break them all over again. Repeat et cetera ad nauseum. I have forgotten the details, but I believe the NPC being interrogated was human, no alignment in question.

But then, there are also people who play GTA 5 by running over hookers, getting out of the car, and then jumping up and down on them while they are dead. But I don't think that's normal either for players in that space.

And of course, in The Sims, people would put sims in a swimming pool, then take away the ladder and watch them drown.

Obviously these things are wrong and I think the players who do these things know that. I think there is a small subset of players who need help, and I think there is a larger subset who is either occasionally or regularly willing to do stuff in a fantasy world they could never do in the real one, but are perfectly well behaved in the real world and wouldn't dream of doing anything like that to a real person of ANY race.

I'm of the anecdotal opinion that most players behave within confines we would describe as good , even by our modern frame of reference. I'd be willing to be persuaded otherwise, however, by data as opposed to anecdote.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[dancrilis]

But then, there are also people who play GTA 5 by running over hookers, getting out of the car, and then jumping up and down on them while they are dead. But I don't think that's normal either for players in that space.

I don't know about the newer GTAs but in the original it was possible to clean out the city you were in of life - good times, no pedestrians no cars no nothing except yourself (and that annoying F-019 that would race past you ever now and again before you had a chance to shoot it).

Back on topic:
The fact that goblin oppression (such as it is) needs people to look at extra material means that is it not a main theme of the comic - and frankly I am not sure we saw much goblin oppression (rather then general oppression) in the extra material.

[Wildstag]

Lord Raziere has done some examination of monstrous humanoid treatment in the web comic, which was very exhaustive for every book so far and worth a read. I think this also falls into the "9 times out of 10" stuff I wanted to discuss, which is coming next, I promise.

To paraphrase Captain America, that examination is "written by people with agendas, and agendas change". If I want the objective information people are basing their arguments on, I either spend money or put up with interpretations that, again, are written with some level of bias whether they intend to or not.

There are some real nasty people in this hobby. I remember a case back in the 90s where the PCs interrogated someone by first breaking all his fingers, then casting cure light wounds to heal them back up, then break them all over again. Repeat et cetera ad nauseum. I have forgotten the details, but I believe the NPC being interrogated was human, no alignment in question.

But then, there are also people who play GTA 5 by running over hookers, getting out of the car, and then jumping up and down on them while they are dead. But I don't think that's normal either for players in that space.

And of course, in The Sims, people would put sims in a swimming pool, then take away the ladder and watch them drown.

Obviously these things are wrong and I think the players who do these things know that. I think there is a small subset of players who need help, and I think there is a larger subset who is either occasionally or regularly willing to do stuff in a fantasy world they could never do in the real one, but are perfectly well behaved in the real world and wouldn't dream of doing anything like that to a real person of ANY race.

Obviously there is a ubiquitous subset of people doing things they wouldn't do in real life. Let he who has never killed another creature in D&D throw the first counter-argument, but it's commonplace to kill in a game.

But for a "9 out of 10" situation to be real, it's not "some nasty people" or "small subset that need help", it'd have to be "vast majority of people are nasty and need help", which obviously is not the case. For the assumptions to work, the vast majority of D&D players would have to be bloodthirsty maniacs that can't wait to kill creatures in game just because their alignment says "always evil" and they look like inhuman critters.

And since that is fairly obviously not the case, the goblin oppression subplot either looks like a shallow view of humanity (irl) or a ridiculous choir-preaching gimmick. Since the oppression is not obvious out of any reliable narration in the online-only comics, and you have to pay to see any valid evidence of it, I'd lean towards the former being the case rather than the latter, since making the stories exclusive seems like it serves to justify the decision the story hinges on rather than explain.

To quote Kyle Broflovski, "if it's that important that everyone needs to see it, put it on the internet and make it free".

[dancrilis]

But for a "9 out of 10" situation to be real, it's not "some nasty people" or "small subset that need help", it'd have to be "vast majority of people are nasty and need help"

Not quite - if The Giant used to play like that and grew out of it then the statement would be true without it needing to reflect the wider culture (frankly I imagine many tables play like that to start with), but I suspect that 9 out of 10 was hyperbole meaning 'it happens enough to be relevant' which is likely true.

[Ionathus]

And why is it concerning? Is it really the "this is a slippery slope that will encourage more real world racism" argument?

Basically, yes. Or, like I said earlier, just that the parallel feels too close for comfort. I don't necessarily think that the portrayal of goblins in D&D will make somebody out there become racist...but I do think that it isn't helping either. The term "Othering" plays into my stance on this a lot.

This aspect of D&D concerns me more than the Fighter, Rogue, or Wizard examples you named because those aspects are mechanical. The goblin discussion is narrative, which doesn't get a lot of focus when we discuss the game. Although the rulebooks prepare GMs and players to roll the dice and add the numbers together, I don't feel like they prepare GMs and players to tell a story. As a result, fledgling storytellers are left to populate the world themselves with characters, and if they grab a hobgoblin statbook and see "Lawful Evil" at the top, that'll inform their depiction of the character.

An experienced storyteller could do a lot of different things with that, but lots of GMs aren't experienced. My concern, which is very influenced by Rich's discussion about baby dragons, is that having default alignments starts the conversation off on the wrong foot, by automatically assuming that every hobgoblin the players meet will be Lawful but, more importantly, Evil. Like I said, more experienced storytellers can handle the nuance of that, but some GMs might run them as mindless murder-monsters with neither a conscience nor even free will. Making something both A) sentient and also B)automatically evil doesn't sit well with me, so I object to it as a default assumption.

On a strictly meta-level the evil humanoid races are acceptable targets, because the reason they are in the game in the first place to be the minor bad guys. If a DM goes out of his way to develop them into not being acceptable targets in his game that's great too - I do that kind of thing all the time - but there really isn't an authentic vibrant culture of sentient beings who have their own lives and loves hiding somewhere behind the stat block that it would be wrong for us to label as "evil" because they're not really evil.

The issue I take with this point is that there was never a need to create "humans, except X" to fill the minor bad guy role. You could easily change the attacking orc tribe to a tribe of nomadic humans. The kobold minions of the dragon? Could just as easily be dragon-worshipping elven cultists. This would accomplish the same mechanical effect, but it would reinforce the idea that anyone can choose Good or Evil. Creating a new race and saying "they're sentient like us humans, but they're usually evil" is so bizarre to me. What separates us from them, then? Why do they trend towards evil? Is it their culture? If so, why can't they just be an evil nation, rather than an evil race?

I won't speculate why the original designers chose to create monstrous humanoid races for low-level adventurers to fight, but I do agree with people (including WotC) who say that there are some icky-feeling comparisons to those original Monster Manual descriptions and the characteristics that our culture used to ascribe to certain ethnic groups. Like I've said elsewhere, I don't think this was done out of outright racist intentions...I think it was just people using the tropes they knew without examining them too closely.

In the games I run, villains come in all shapes and sizes, but I never portray any of them as innately evil at their core. I do my best to portray anything sentient and mortal as if it was just a human with different skin tone / size / configuration of limbs. The only things that don't get this treatment are things like Elementals, Fiends, Celestials, Aberrations, Undead, nonsentient Monstrosities, and certain Fey. These, I treat more like forces of nature or utterly alien cosmic hazards. But anything that lives and breathes and uses its brain and free will on this mortal plane gets a blank slate from me.

I fully recognize this is only one way to run the game! It's just the one that feels right to me, so it's the one I run.

ETA for ninjas:

To paraphrase Captain America, that examination is "written by people with agendas, and agendas change". If I want the objective information people are basing their arguments on, I either spend money or put up with interpretations that, again, are written with some level of bias whether they intend to or not.

Sorry, I didn't offer that analysis as objective fact or argument against your points: I offered it as one person's review of the things that could conceivably be worth examining in the online comic. I certainly don't agree with all of Raziere's assessments, and many of the examples are either completely neutral or actually points against the Goblin Oppression narrative, so please believe me when I say that I offered it in good faith rather than as a snarky dismissal.

And since that is fairly obviously not the case, the goblin oppression subplot either looks like a shallow view of humanity (irl) or a ridiculous choir-preaching gimmick. Since the oppression is not obvious out of any reliable narration in the online-only comics, and you have to pay to see any valid evidence of it, I'd lean towards the former being the case rather than the latter, since making the stories exclusive seems like it serves to justify the decision the story hinges on rather than explain.

To quote Kyle Broflovski, "if it's that important that everyone needs to see it, put it on the internet and make it free".

Emphasis mine.

Without spoiling too much about either book, the "goblin oppression" subplot is exactly that -- a subplot. It informs the characters' decisions and backstories in each story, but it still is only a subplot. It's very possible that this discussion has oversold the importance of those books, and that if/when you read them, it won't even change your opinion! After all, several people in this thread have read them but remain in the "no widespread goblin oppression exists" camp.

I feel like Rich's stance was clear on the treatment & portrayal of monstrous humanoids ever since he had Belkar quip about it in comic 13. I only read the print-only books years later, and I felt like they re-affirmed and expanded my already-held opinions about the goblin subplot, rather than creating them from scratch.

[RifleAvenger]

The issue I take with this point is that there was never a need to create "humans, except X" to fill the minor bad guy role. You could easily change the attacking orc tribe to a tribe of nomadic humans. The kobold minions of the dragon? Could just as easily be dragon-worshipping elven cultists. This would accomplish the same mechanical effect, but it would reinforce the idea that anyone can choose Good or Evil. Creating a new race and saying "they're sentient like us humans, but they're usually evil" is so bizarre to me. What separates us from them, then? Why do they trend towards evil? Is it their culture? If so, why can't they just be an evil nation, rather than an evil race?

This is the key piece for me. The way in which non-human races in the core books are depicted as cultural monoliths perpetuates the toxic worldview that there are evil (and 'good') races rather than dangerous cultural practices and unjust societal systems. Media does help shape the worldview of those who engage with it (even if it is to reject the stance said media takes), and those who don't engage critically are liable to uncritically allow what is presented to influence them.

It isn't something stuck in the past either; I can open my 5e monster manual and read about the "black hearted" goblins "motivated by greed and malice." If anything, 5e has less nuance presented in the core materials for monstrous humanoids than 3e did. This presentation carries over into many modules marketed at beginning GM's. Thus, "some races are evil by nature" is the default assumption presented to new D&D players unless their GM explicitly chooses to subvert it.

It doesn't matter if 9/10 players being racist murderhobos is extreme hyperbole when nearly 100% of the core reference materials affirm the views of those that are. The nature of most published content is to justify the PC's actions, or simply leave them unquestioned, and thus the game is rigged against the races designated as villains (or the organizations, but that's getting off-topic). Of course there will be sufficient justification for the PC's to break into the homes of 'monsters' and kill/loot them; someone made the choice to write it that way to begin with. Huh, almost like the Stickworld gods creating monstrous humanoids as xp fodder...

EDIT: I'll also add that Rich is stuck in a Morton's Fork where he can either A) make it very obvious in the comic that goblinoids are oppressed, at once hurting the writing quality and causing those who dislike the message to label the comic as "preachy" or B) write things more subtly and open up the possibility that people will (mis)interpret the story such that there is no systemic oppression of goblinoids.

[Jason]

This aspect of D&D concerns me more than the Fighter, Rogue, or Wizard examples you named because those aspects are mechanical. The goblin discussion is narrative, which doesn't get a lot of focus when we discuss the game.

Surely player roles in a party are narrative as well as mechanical?

Although the rulebooks prepare GMs and players to roll the dice and add the numbers together, I don't feel like they prepare GMs and players to tell a story. As a result, fledgling storytellers are left to populate the world themselves with characters, and if they grab a hobgoblin statbook and see "Lawful Evil" at the top, that'll inform their depiction of the character.

And what is wrong with that? Isn't the point of an alignment entry in a stat block to give DMs information on short notice on how to depict a character with some consistency?

The issue I take with this point is that there was never a need to create "humans, except X" to fill the minor bad guy role.

Why is the assumption that they are "humans, except x"? Why isn't it "they look kind of like humans but are really very different, including their alignment?"

You could easily change the attacking orc tribe to a tribe of nomadic humans. The kobold minions of the dragon? Could just as easily be dragon-worshipping elven cultists. This would accomplish the same mechanical effect, but it would reinforce the idea that anyone can choose Good or Evil.

I have yet to see a D&D game that doesn't include evil humans at some point, and the vast majority of games I have played have included non-evil humanoids at some point as well, so the point that anyone can choose is nearly always made, almost to the point of being cliche.

Without spoiling too much about either book, the "goblin oppression" subplot is exactly that -- a subplot. It informs the characters' decisions and backstories in each story, but it still is only a subplot.

Agreed.

[RifleAvenger]

Why is the assumption that they are "humans, except x"? Why isn't it "they look kind of like humans but are really very different, including their alignment?"

Making aliens evil at their core, or simply too dangerous for coexistence because of their alien nature, is still an ugly concept. Especially when it's invoked only to deflect criticism of problematic themes and presentation (e.g. human, except x, races as designated villains).

I really respect the authors of Lancer for presenting Deimosian and Egregorian Non-Human-Persons as simultaneously legitimately alien (no humanoids with funny foreheads) and still deserving of sapient dignity and the same rights as humans.

Besides, goblins are very clearly human, except x, in D&D. Hobgoblins especially. Intelligent mammalian bipedal social omnivores with a heavy dependence on tool-use, a relatively K selected mode of reproduction, a body plan combining aspects of an arboreal ancestor adapted to terrestrial pursuit predation, complex vocal communication and language, and the ability to pass on learning between generations through education. Hobgoblins even engage in a sedentary agricultural lifestyle, and have values clearly mapped to the archetype of a honor-based and militaristic warrior culture.

[pendell]

Well, I'm going to say there's a place for evil fantasy races. Because I'd rather demonize them then demonize human beings, especially because the things Rich are concerned about are many times multiplied when we're dealing with real human beings.

Consider Tolkien; The enemy did not have just orcs and trolls in his ranks. He had easterlings and southrons as well. And Southrons bore an ,um, unfortunate resemblance to real world cultures.

I'm not going to explain why I thought portraying that particular culture as villainous was a problem in the 2000s. Suffice it to say, whenever something goes wrong , cultures that are panicked and angry tend to spread it around with a very broad brush, even if you're a different culture and run a pizza shop and are as nonviolent as a mouse.

There's a reason "The Horse and His Boy" and "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis didn't find movie adaptations in that time period, and no wonder.

But if you invent a fantasy villain like orcs or Klingons or aliens, you cannunite the entire human race together against them. In Star Trek you humans of many different nations (which were at each other's throats currently or recently in the real world while Star Trek was made) all united against the Klingons and Romulans. Even in Tolkien, the unlikely friendship of Legolas and Gimli, bridging a gulf of misunderstanding and hatred millenia old , was first started not by mutual love but by their mutual fear of the Dark Lord and all his works.

If by some miracle I could convince the entire real-world human race to unite against a fictional fantasy race, as opposed to killing each other, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Cruelty to drawings I find infinitely preferable to flesh-and-blood cruelty to real people.



Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Keltest]

Well, I'm going to say there's a place for evil fantasy races. Because I'd rather demonize them then demonize human beings, especially because the things Rich are concerned about are many times multiplied when we're dealing with real human beings.

Consider Tolkien; The enemy did not have just orcs and trolls in his ranks. He had easterlings and southrons as well. And Southrons bore an ,um, unfortunate resemblance to real world cultures.

The Southrons werent evil, per se, they were a society under the shadow of the greatest manipulator mankind had ever seen and that had spend generations with nothing but Mordor to interact with on a meaningful level. Only the minions directly created by Morgoth or Sauron (ie the orcs and trolls and the like) were portrayed as being evil. The Southrons are very much victims of Sauron's lies and manipulations.

[danielxcutter]

Speaking of Narnia, what Tash is supposed to represent really isn’t exactly something I like to think about.

[Ionathus]

Surely player roles in a party are narrative as well as mechanical?

Yes, I absolutely agree. I just meant to draw the line between two different aspects of the game -- while I don't worry about players going out into the world delusional about their own sorcery powers, I do care about the stories that we all choose to tell each other.

And what is wrong with that? Isn't the point of an alignment entry in a stat block to give DMs information on short notice on how to depict a character with some consistency?

Why is the assumption that they are "humans, except x"? Why isn't it "they look kind of like humans but are really very different, including their alignment?"

I do this for, say, fiends, or undead. So my players can face off against a horde of wights or bearded devils with no moral compunctions, even as I get to use lots of cool abilities against them as the DM. The battle is otherworldly, supernatural, and there's no moral conundrum -- "these things are literal manifestations of evil or negative energy, there's no mortal soul piloting the thing, and it wants you unequivocally dead. What do you do?"

But as RifleAvenger has pointed out, hobgoblins are very much "humans, except x". Hell, in 5e they and all other "monstrous races" are listed as "Small/Medium Humanoid" in the statblock. My personal rule (and there are, of course, plenty of other ways to run it) is that nothing with the Humanoid type is inherently one alignment.

I treat them like all the NPC statblocks in the back of the 5e Monster Manual, where 17/21 entries read "any alignment" (the remainder, belonging to Assassin, Cultist, Cult Fanatic, and Thug, all just say "any non-good alignment" rather than "any evil alignment"). I like that approach. I don't think dictating alignment in statblocks truly does any GMs all that much good.

But then, that's a bigger discussion!

I have yet to see a D&D game that doesn't include evil humans at some point, and the vast majority of games I have played have included non-evil humanoids at some point as well, so the point that anyone can choose is nearly always made, almost to the point of being cliche.

I absolutely don't mean to twist your words, so please let me know if I'm off base here.

You just said that you've never seen a game without evil humans, and almost never seen a game without non-evil "monstrous humanoids." Does it strike you as strange that humans are always afforded the full range of the alignment spectrum, but monstrous humanoids don't always get that same assumption? It's not a big problem, but I think that tiny difference is a sign of a larger issue.

Well, I'm going to say there's a place for evil fantasy races. Because I'd rather demonize them then demonize human beings, especially because the things Rich are concerned about are many times multiplied when we're dealing with real human beings.
...
But if you invent a fantasy villain like orcs or Klingons or aliens, you cannunite the entire human race together against them. In Star Trek you humans of many different nations (which were at each other's throats currently or recently in the real world while Star Trek was made) all united against the Klingons and Romulans. Even in Tolkien, the unlikely friendship of Legolas and Gimli, bridging a gulf of misunderstanding and hatred millenia old , was first started not by mutual love but by their mutual fear of the Dark Lord and all his works.

What you're talking about with Star Trek feels more like an Evil Nation, which I think is an entirely worthwhile D&D convention. Creating a misguided or malicious faction, country, continent, or planet is far preferable for me...as long as the uniting issue is political rather than racial. An entire nation that's fallen to an Evil ideology is a different beast entirely, because it's not based on what the inhabitants are, but rather what they choose to be.

That's certainly still a slippery difference, and other people could argue it's not much of a difference at all if the inhabitants have been indoctrinated for generations. But narratively, it moves the blame off the creature's genetic makeup and onto its social & political situation.

Cruelty to drawings I find infinitely preferable to flesh-and-blood cruelty to real people.

I do have to object to this part. I don't place a lot of faith in "catharsis" as a social concept, and believe that allowing hatred, cruelty, or fantasy racism to fester in our imaginations does us more harm than good. Do I find it preferable to people going out and doing real racism? Yes. But it doesn't really sit right with me either.

[RifleAvenger]

Well, I'm going to say there's a place for evil fantasy races. Because I'd rather demonize them then demonize human beings, especially because the things Rich are concerned about are many times multiplied when we're dealing with real human beings.

Consider Tolkien; The enemy did not have just orcs and trolls in his ranks. He had easterlings and southrons as well. And Southrons bore an ,um, unfortunate resemblance to real world cultures.

I'm not going to explain why I thought portraying that particular culture as villainous was a problem in the 2000s. Suffice it to say, whenever something goes wrong , cultures that are panicked and angry tend to spread it around with a very broad brush, even if you're a different culture and run a pizza shop and are as nonviolent as a mouse.

There's a reason "The Horse and His Boy" and "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis didn't find movie adaptations in that time period, and no wonder.

But if you invent a fantasy villain like orcs or Klingons or aliens, you can unite the entire human race together against them. In Star Trek you humans of many different nations (which were at each other's throats currently or recently in the real world while Star Trek was made) all united against the Klingons and Romulans. Even in Tolkien, the unlikely friendship of Legolas and Gimli, bridging a gulf of misunderstanding and hatred millenia old , was first started not by mutual love but by their mutual fear of the Dark Lord and all his works.

If by some miracle I could convince the entire real-world human race to unite against a fictional fantasy race, as opposed to killing each other, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Cruelty to drawings I find infinitely preferable to flesh-and-blood cruelty to real people.



Respectfully,

Brian P.

That place only exists if the necessity of some evil race is a given. It is not, and in my opinion there should be no universally evil races/species/etc., human or otherwise. The issues presented by xenophobic depictions like the very one you mention are not solved by inventing a new target of convenience for the same old hatreds. They merely allow harmful memes to hide and fester behind symbolism and fiction. That, I think, is part of Rich's entire point with the goblin subplot.

I also think inventing a demi-human evil-by-nature acceptable target does not serve to promote unity among real world humans, because in our current frame of reference said demi-humans can only represent another group of human beings in the abstract. The lesson taught is still "us versus them." Klingons escape this because there is a greater degree of nuance eventually shown that makes them not culturally monolithic; they become an example, along with the Romulans, of "imperialism is bad and corrosive to even those benefitting from it" rather than "some people are by nature evil."

About the only "absolutely evil" grouping I can accept is fiends, and even then I tend to portray them as symbols for a particular aspect of social harm. They're less people and more tangible manifestations of a hyperobject, which is more broadly represented by the plane they reside on.

[Jason]

But as RifleAvenger has pointed out, hobgoblins are very much "humans, except x".

Well, maybe, maybe not. Just because they look human-ish doesnt have to mean they are humanish, especially in a world where magic and the gods are real.

You just said that you've never seen a game without evil humans, and almost never seen a game without non-evil "monstrous humanoids." Does it strike you as strange that humans are always afforded the full range of the alignment spectrum, but monstrous humanoids don't always get that same assumption?

No, not really. They're not humans. They shouldn't be like humans, or be like humans "but green." They should be like orcs or goblins or kobolds. In D&D the wide varieties in human alignment are a defining human trait. It's actually in the rules.

It's been extremely rare that I've seen an evil halfling or a chaotic dwarf either, so you could say they are also generally being denied the "the full alignment spectrum", only the other way around, as it were.

In truth, I said "almost" because humanoids don't get used in every game. There are too many other minor bad guy options to use them every time.
Come to think of it, I've actually had some games where humans, good or evil, didn't appear either, so it's not absolutely correct to say I've never seen a game without an evil human.

[danielxcutter]

Well, maybe, maybe not. Just because they look human-ish doesnt have to mean they are humanish, especially in a world where magic and the gods are real.

No, not really. They're not humans. They shouldn't be like humans, or be like humans "but green." They should be like orcs or goblins or kobolds. In D&D the wide varieties in human alignment are a defining human trait. It's actually in the rules.

If they were as well established to be so, then it'd have worked. The problem is that a lot of DMs don't even bother with that beyond "they're monsters, kill them".

It's been extremely rare that I've seen an evil halfling or a chaotic dwarf either, so you could say they are also generally being denied the "the full alignment spectrum", only the other way around, as it were.

Portraying certain races as "better" than others is also speciesism, I think.

In truth, I said "almost" because humanoids don't get used in every game. There are too many other minor bad guy options to use them every time.
Come to think of it, I've actually had some games where humans, good or evil, didn't appear either, so it's not absolutely correct to say I've never seen a game without an evil human.

I think the problem isn't that some PC race members aren't portrayed as Evil, it's that too many of the non-PC races almost always are.

[Lord Raziere]

I haven't read this particular book, but if Therkla did say "and i'm still half-human!" that would imply that she was rejected because she isn't being treated the way a full human would.

Anyways, thanks for all the analysis. It's really helpful to have all this laid out.

Ah, but I've done only done the first step.

Now to compile:

Spoiler: Index of Analyses

Show

Start of Darkness Analysis
No Cure For the Paladin Blues Analysis
War And Xp's Analysis
Don't Split The Party Analysis
Blood Runs In The Family Analysis
Utterly Dwarfed Analysis
Good Deeds Gone Unpunished Analysis

Spoiler: Themes I Have Observed

Show

From these various points of evidence, let us observe the themes that have been most consistently portrayed from these interactions:
Impulsive Adventurers:
Between Celia's pacifism traveling adventurers and her reaction to killing, Right-Eye's efforts to hide himself entering a human city, Belkar's use of adventurers to kill Yikyik and it working because they're a kobold, and other such examples like the cutaway panel in Utterly Dwarfed, there is a undercurrent of adventurers being as impulsive and quick to kill as Belkar, caring about the gold and experience before peoples lives. These examples show up enough that we cannot blame the Sapphire Guard for this. Its clearly, consistently shown that while there isn't organized oppression to specifically kill goblins outside of the Sapphire Guard, adventurers outside of the Order of the Stick are portrayed as paid raiders and murderers concerned only with their own gain, and its considered socially and culturally acceptable to kill monsters like goblins out of reasons like: money, paranoia, a war effort, experience points, hatred, because they are near someone who actually deserves it and revenge. Most adventurers aren't like the protagonist and in fact I'd say even the Order of the Scribble is uncommonly good, thoughtful and altruistic compared to most adventurers as they agreed to protect the Gates to preserve the universe despite their seemingly insurmountable differences, each one sacrificing much of their lives to do so- if they were typical adventurers, they wouldn't have these extreme philosophies and thoughts about the world they live in, nor would they investigate enough to know of the plot and just assume that macguffin is safe when the enemies dead while they collect the loot. It happens so regularly that its clear adventurers killing out of impulse or greed is far from a recent thing and is expected of them as normal from anyone that isn't specifically calling it out as wrong. Not all oppression or systemic injustice has a government behind it, and adventurers in this world form of a system that while ad-hoc, still kills people out of economic, social and cultural reasons and its often portrayed that they don't deserve it

Lack of Arcane Education and Divine Representation:
Throughout the comic most of the spellcasters we see are human. Clerics are a bit more varied in representation, but wizards and sorcerers are almost always human or elven and with often a very snooty attitude towards other peoples intellect, thinking people idiots for not being spellcasters like them or inheriting their power and using it as an opportunity to throw their power around so they can live like a king. While Redcloak is the one goblin cleric exception, most of the monsters don't get any representation in the Godsmoot with orcs maybe being another exception. Furthermore, clerics seem to require an established church hierarchy and organization in this world while wizards require college education, making it unlikely that any random monster would be able to become a cleric or wizard on their own. This is important because given how Wizards and Clerics are known as like, the two of the most powerful classes in 3.5 core? Yeah you want those classes if you want an advantage in these matters, clerics and wizards could go a long way towards bringing equality to the monstrous races as they can do all sorts of things as any 3.5 optimizer can tell you, just look at Dorukan's dungeon and the defenses he made now imagine apply such power to helping improve the lives of monstrous races who are less fortunate. Just look at Cliffport and its application of magic to improve peoples lives! No monsters get that. And I doubt wizard academies accept most monster applications into their institutions given their elitist attitudes, with early V dismissing hobgoblins as unintelligent creatures when the general they were talking to with more experience in dealing with them was perplexed as to why they were sacrificing so many. While Roy faces constant nagging from his father and sister about being a big dumb meatshield rather than becoming a wizard, and since most monsters probably don't have his education I doubt they'd be any better in their eyes. Clerics and Wizards are just plain valued over most other classes in terms of societal contribution. (notice that druids don't get the same level of value, since they're all about nature, not civilization)

Followers =/= Leaders
Another thing that is consistently portrayed throughout the comic and not just among monsters, is that what leaders want and what the people they rule want aren't necessarily the same, and many civilians, citizens or followers are not doing what they do out of actual belief in the cause, but because they have their own reasons or because they are forced into doing it out of circumstance. Its a consistent theme that most people have their own agenda and goals in life even as they doing something else and that they often have to compromise with others to get what they want, or go against their groups values behind their back. We see this with the goblins as well: Redcloak may be all in on the Plan, but its implied most hobgoblins fight for him don't think beyond what their job requires and leave all the thinking to him, and that the goblin leaders before him and HSL-2 were hateful of humans only in some vague lazy way that is more a reinforcement of tradition than anything that automatically provokes war. In turn Redcloak himself has a different agenda than Xykon. Right Eye came to have a different agenda than either of them. Oona herself doesn't join up with Redcloak out of devotion to his cause but rather because she is promised the bugbears will get a better shake with the rest of the goblins if she helps. And How the Paladin Got his Scar is all about how the followers of each respective faction don't agree with their leaders commands and both leaders in the end needed to get ousted from their positions whether by demotion or by death for true peace to be achieved.

But that guarantees nothing as leaders even if they have the best of intentions may not be shared by their people: Heck Thor can't even stop dwarves from attacking TREES for crying out loud! Even if all the good leaders of the world wanted to treat monsters in general better, that doesn't mean everyone will agree with them or that adventurers will comply with their rules, as its shown repeatedly that adventurers break what is considered lawful or good behavior all the time. and its clear some leaders don't care or don't want to. and if Kubota is anywhere near an average noble in this setting, I doubt the lives of sapient beings are high on their list of concerns. The Giant is making a point that while the races aren't automatically going to be chaotic good rebels, they can still be people who don't agree with their evil leaders and don't necessarily want what is given to them in life, and that just because they follow bad leaders doesn't mean they themselves deserve to die.

The Failures of Paranoia:
Why though, did people try to wipe out the Dark One or the Crimson Mantle in the first place? Paranoia. The kings were paranoid that the Dark One's power and instead of dealing with him, got him killed, just as the paladins were paranoid of any threat to existence that they were willing to kill whole goblin towns than just helping them so that the Plan doesn't look like their only hope. Both times instead of getting RID of the threat....they made it stronger than they could possibly imagine, making a dark god and a powerful high priest bent on revenge, with Azure City paying the price for a few paladin's decisions. Gin-Jun and Miko both in their paranoia went off the deep end in spectacular fashions, seeing threats wherever they looked without stopping to think whether any of it was right. and throughout the comic, from Girard to Haley's father, to V's paranoid preemptive strike on anyone who could possibly claim to be a black dragons relative, we are shown how paranoia fails to get anything done and only makes things worse when its applied outside of adventuring, and has only worsened relationships between people whenever someone uses paranoia as justification or reasoning for their actions. Gin-Jun nearly caused a war with his paranoia, and Miko ensured the war that happened would be lost in her paranoia. While Haley nearly lost her chance with Elan because of her paranoia and distrust. So how many adventurers who ARE good kill monstrous races out of paranoia that they might be evil anyways? How can equality exist if the starting assumption is this distrust of one another and an assumption that the other side is out to get them? Not helped by the fact DnD is written to make sure everything is out to get you.

Revenge and Escalation:
In some works, revenge is portrayed as something quasi-noble, with the protagonist seeking a truly evil being who has done an injustice to someone for no good reason until they find it, kill it and put that life behind them

In other works its portrayed more negatively, as an all consuming need to find the person responsible and make things equal in an eye for an eye fashion but that this will cause some other person to see revenge in turn to also go for an eye for an eye. Or the person goes to any lengths to secure their revenge against one person, doing a bunch of things to finally get it after a long time, killing many lives to get to that point, then the person feeling hollow as they realize how little it was worth it.

OOTS while negative in its portrayal of revenge, I would argue, goes even further. In OOTS, that quasi-noble revenge quest Roy is on is portrayed as more of a family duty he got saddled with that is pushed aside for the more important goal of keeping the world safe in general and is now more of a side benefit to destroying an evil lich, with Roy having no personal connection to the person being avenged. Other people with actual revenge stories however are more significant, as often revenge is only portrayed as a flawed way of "getting even", when really in this story its much worse:
-Belkar, Xykon and Nale show this on a small scale, all evil people whose response to slights against them are to start killing the person responsible immediately, which is a disproportionate response to many of things done to them: Belkar kills the Oracle for a smartass prediction, Nale practically makes getting revenged for quasi-imagined slights the Linear Guild's slogan and is technically pursuing Elan, a guy he previously never he even met or knew in his life to make his life worse simply because he is "the evil twin." Not just revenge, but an escalation.

-Vaarsuvius and the black dragon family of course has a conflict where the number of people dying escalates from one to a quarter of all black dragons and everyone that could possibly be related to those dragons and V having to live with the fact that their actions will never be truly made up for and perhaps may spend their entire life atoning for it, that nothing about this was even, nothing about this was proportionate, moderate or rational. Their revenge extended far beyond the original target and was generalized into killing many innocents who had nothing to do with this, the deaths not being apart of the process, but apart of the result of getting revenge.

-It would be one thing if Redcloak in response to his village being slaughtered by the Sapphire Guard, only targeted the Sapphire guard. But instead he generalized his feelings towards humans in general. He decided to many years down the road, raise an army, conquer an entire city destroy its army, enslave its people, and pretty much wipe Azure city off the map as a nation to make his own and crush any resistance attempting to change that. And he succeeds. Cause see, when it comes to revenge, Redcloak makes everyone else look like amateurs. While idiots like Xykon or Nale are trying to get their revenge served piping hot immediately, Redcloak is sits back and waits for his chance to finally serve himself some high quality vengeance ice cream when he can best do so. but he doesn't stop there, he is intent on potentially destroying the entire world for his goal, revenge against everything for a world he wouldn't even have any part of.

to take this further, its possible that given the Dark One's okayness with Redcloak sacrificing goblin lives and the Dark One is okay with sacrificing goblin lives as well- but why? isn't he doing this to help the goblin people? Perhaps not: do we know what the Gate's ritual actually does? We know its teleports the Gate but not whether it teleports the rift as well. Cause this is just a bit of fridge logic, but how you would teleport a HOLE in SPACE? its not a thing per se, its a tear. you can't transport a tear somewhere else, its a tear in the fabric of stuff. its an antithetical to an object as you can get, and conjuration is all about transporting objects around. So what if teleporting the gate....doesn't transport the RIFT to the afterlife at all? What if the Dark One just tricked Redcloak the same way Redcloak tricked Xykon by only telling him the partial truth, and what really is supposed to happen when Redcloak teleports the gate is that the gate just disappears....and the Rift stays allowing the Snarl to get out and start destroying everything so that the Dark One can force a reset? and that this plan is all about the Dark One's revenge against the world for humans killing him for what he tried to do? Its in theme: Redcloak is being an unthinking servant of the Dark One just like the hobgoblins under him, and the Dark One is lying to his follower just so he can get his revenge and think about improving the goblin race afterwards. Just like Redcloak did with Azure City. This theory kind of falls apart when you consider Dorukan considered the gates being used as a weapon a viable enough possibility to install a self destruct mechanism for it, but its certainly a plausible possibility.

Conclusion:
So, does goblin oppression exist in OOTS world? I would say so, yes along with many other kinds of oppression. There is Azure City who organized paladin death squads to go around killing goblins to protect a secret. But more than that, there is a consistent cultural and social expectation for adventurers to kill things for people, and those adventurers care only about the loot and exp over investigating things or caring about peoples lives- adventurers are not paid to be investigators, heroes or diplomats. They are paid to murder and kill, whether those reason are good ones or not. Going deeper, there is a noticeable lack of monstrous clerics or wizards for most races represented in the comic and I doubt that creatures living out in the world have access to proper education to be able to get into those classes which are so important in this world for various reasons. Finally there is the depiction of revenge and how it can escalate a situation into being a blood feud that spans generations where people wish for death of the other side on both ends, and how it has escalated so badly that one side of the conflict feels like they have to threaten the entire world to get heard.

Now, sure Redcloak and the Dark One's decisions are their own. they are bad people, and nothing about goblinoid oppression being true justifies what they do. However at the same time? They are still products of their circumstances. Even if they chose to take the highest road they could, you'd still have two powerful goblins feeling very negatively about humans and the world and rightly so. They only exist in the first place because the people involved were more concerned about stamping out the threat they represent, than engaging with them as people to make sure that they don't think they HAVE to be even bigger threats to get things done. Each time the humans tried to kill them, they only became stronger and less fond of humans as a result. It made the situation worse, not better. The heartless logic of stamping out all resistance so they won't fight back....doesn't work in the world of DnD because each time its tried there is a method to bite back harder. I doubt V's deal is the only one the Lower planes have done to ensure that a loser got the power to retaliate back. Even if Redcloak is his own person, his own decisions, a villain of his own choices...those choices could not have been made if adventurers- which includes paladins- didn't create the circumstances for a person like Redcloak to exist and be seen as an alternative to letting the status quo continue. Redcloak may be at fault for all the things he did, but the adventurers are at fault for making someone like Redcloak possible. For if they didn't, he would just be a lowly whitecloak, serving the community in whatever small way he could and perhaps in that capacity he would've been happy, rather than the person he is today.

[Metastachydium]

The issue I take with this point is that there was never a need to create "humans, except X" to fill the minor bad guy role. You could easily change the attacking orc tribe to a tribe of nomadic humans.

(Because ”civilised settled people fending off the stupid, barbaric attacks of the Evil nomadic hordes” is not a problematic trope in and on itself.
And (to remark on a later post of yours as well) no, there's nothing „high choice” about having a mother tongue, a culture or an ethnic identity based on these.)

[Ionathus]

(Because ”civilised settled people fending off the stupid, barbaric attacks of the Evil nomadic hordes” is not a problematic trope in and on itself.
And (to remark on a later post of yours as well) no, there's nothing „high choice” about having a mother tongue, a culture or an ethnic identity based on these.)

Agreed, but with this setup there's no reason it has to be race-based. If the aggressors and the defenders are cut from the same ethnic cloth, or if both sides have a widely diverse makeup, their differences can be purely political/ideological. And who says the nomads have to be stupid, barbaric, or even evil? Who says the settlers have to be civilized?

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand your second statement. What do you mean by "high choice"?

[Metastachydium]

Agreed, but with this setup there's no reason it has to be race-based. If the aggressors and the defenders are cut from the same ethnic cloth, or if both sides have a widely diverse makeup, their differences can be purely political/ideological. And who says the nomads have to be stupid, barbaric, or even evil? Who says the settlers have to be civilized?

As long as it is kept all grey-and-grey, this is not an issue. Conflict between nomadic and settled population is a commonplace, after all.
However, the subject matter of the discussion was „who or what is suitable for the role of minor bad guys” when this came up, and the problem with „usually Evil but pathetically weak species” cannot be solved by substituting „usually evil but pathetically weak nomads” for these species, especially since a bias of sorts already exists against such ethnic groups.

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand your second statement. What do you mean by "high choice"?

I might be misusing the term, since I'm not a native speaker of English. I used in the sense that `a matter in which one has a say, a matter of choice` rather than something one is born into and cannot necessarily just change (a low-choice condition).

[The Pilgrim]

But if you invent a fantasy villain like orcs or Klingons or aliens, you cannunite the entire human race together against them. In Star Trek you humans of many different nations (which were at each other's throats currently or recently in the real world while Star Trek was made) all united against the Klingons and Romulans. Even in Tolkien, the unlikely friendship of Legolas and Gimli, bridging a gulf of misunderstanding and hatred millenia old , was first started not by mutual love but by their mutual fear of the Dark Lord and all his works.

If by some miracle I could convince the entire real-world human race to unite against a fictional fantasy race, as opposed to killing each other, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Cruelty to drawings I find infinitely preferable to flesh-and-blood cruelty to real people.

Fantasy villain species was an improvment over using fantasy human ethnic groups as villains, which in turn was an improvement over using real human ethnic groups as villains (which was the custom before the times of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Conan the Barbarian).

From fantasy villain species we moved into alien bugs, and from alien bugs into zombies, which seem kosher as legitimate targets, at least for now. I wonder what will be the next step, because I'm sure the day will come when people will shout "zombies have rights too" and we'll have to move into something else.

[Cazero]

It's as if giving sapience to a creature makes it a person that should have basic human rights.

[Worldsong]

It's as if giving sapience to a creature makes it a person that should have basic human rights.

Clearly giving goblinoids sapience was a mistake.

EDIT: I'm guessing that part of the problem is that enemies who can use equipment and strategize can create more interesting scenarios than beasts which just charge you and try to gore you. So we keep making enemies who can use equipment and strategize and then someone comes along and points out that those are signs of intelligence, if not outright sapience.

And then we can't just say "We good, they bad" and attack on sight.

[pendell]

Fantasy villain species was an improvment over using fantasy human ethnic groups as villains, which in turn was an improvement over using real human ethnic groups as villains (which was the custom before the times of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Conan the Barbarian).

From fantasy villain species we moved into alien bugs, and from alien bugs into zombies, which seem kosher as legitimate targets, at least for now. I wonder what will be the next step, because I'm sure the day will come when people will shout "zombies have rights too" and we'll have to move into something else.

Precisely. And Terry Pratchett is ahead of you on that last

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Cazero]

And then we can't just say "We good, they bad" and attack on sight.

You can do that just fine if they're bandits/soldiers/whatever who attack you on sight first.