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

[JonBeowulf]

It doesn't actually change anything. It's folly to believe DMs are going to rewrite their campaign worlds because WOTC changed the metadata of some races. Heroes need villains in order to do heroic stuff and those villains will be whatever race the DM decides they will be for whatever reasons the DM decides.

Whether the entire race is evil or just that tribe over there or just this one warlord here is irrelevant to the game as it is being played. It certainly matters as a topic of discussion/debate.

[Lord Raziere]

Did the bandits choose to do something wrong? Yes certainly. However is that wrong thing worthy of an on the spot death penalty? Well, if they attacked an innocent with lethal force, yes probably. But still we don't know what their motives are. Maybe these were peasants who had a bad harvest and need money to buy food and medicine for their kids. You have the power to take them out without killing them, is it right to just execute them on the spot? I can certainly see why having a random monster that you know without a doubt is evil can be less stressful than having a person.

Although if you're playing a hack n slash where you don't want to think at all you could always have them be unambiguously evil. The bandits pop out shooting at you and declaring that while murdering you is fun it was more fun when they killed that grandma and then ate a baby the other day. Just ridiculously over the top villainy.

Don't care. They are bandits. Killing them.

Neither do I care if the evil empire troops all have families in some far off home or whatever. killing them.

But what I won't kill things for is being born.

[Kane0]

Trolls? Colored dragons? Intelligent undead?
My guess would probably continue the humanoid trend (goblinoids, reptilian, monstrous, giant-kin, etc)

[Luccan]

I think people are going to keep running their games like they want and the only thing that will change is language choices and characterization WotC decides on in the future. Consider that an adventure where orcs are coming down from the mountains and slaughtering villagers has orcs that are evil because they're slaughtering villagers, not because they're orcs.

Honestly the only thing this complicates is the classic dungeon crawl, but even then old school players never seem to stop talking about how they made allies with this monster or that group in the dungeon, etc. Which means even in a dungeon there's a capacity to treat intelligent creatures with free will like... Well like intelligent creatures with free will. And not a walking bundle of hit points you have moral license to kill because they don't look like your PC. Oh and Rangers. Rangers probably need to drop the classic Favored Enemy thing. To be fair, it's kinda sucked since it was called Favored Enemy, so replacing it with a better feature would really work out for everybody.

[JoeJ]

Is there any need for a race of hats?

Yes, and not just a race of hats. All races that aren't human need to be, in some sense, races of hats (although they don't necessarily have to be evil hats; that's a different question entirely). Any non-human group needs to have some identifiable trait that sets them apart from humans, because non-human races exist specifically to allow stories that you can't tell with humans only. The differences between, for example, any human and any elf need to be greater than the differences between any two humans. If they aren't, then that race (or species, or whatever you call it) has no narrative reason to exist; they should be replaced with a human culture.

[MaxWilson]

Hmm, yes I can certainly see that. I feel like that's partly our fault as DMs. We run so many complex monsters with backstories and motives and what have you that the players become suspicious if the adventure is just go here and kill this thing. Once early on I was having trouble with one of my players being a bit murder hoboish and (A) I had him loot a homemade child's doll with a note saying happy birthday Anna, off of someone he killed. After that he was waay less inclined to just stab things. (B) To the point that it was a little bit of overcorrection and basically anything that wasn't a construct or some sort of illusion gets a non lethal strike.

However even with that I stand by saying though that races of evil aren't really necessary. (C) We can have groups of mind flayers or giants or goblins or whatever who are clearly antagonistic and need to be put down. And if the players want to go out of their way to negotiate and make a peaceful solution, well maybe it's not the game I planned for but it still sounds like a good game to me.

(A) Oof. Excuse me while I go have a quick cry in the corner. That sounds rough.

(B) Yeah, that sounds familiar. Also, a tendency not to benefit much from surprise (although recon is still valuable), because instead of <surprise round: stabbity stab> <round 2: more stabs> it's more like a cautious "Hello Mr. Monster, do you have a good reason for being here? Oh I see you're attacking me now."

(C) Mind flayers are Always Evil races IMO even though they're not Always Hostile. No one ever needs to feel sad if a Mind Flayer dies. Giants, well, that gets into the morally ambiguous territory again, especially when you put it together with how PCs are (by design!) going to flatten most monsters they encounter with very little danger to themselves. Using lethal force against them starts to look less like self-defense or even capital punishment and more like simple murder***.

This is doubly true when you're dealing with groups. How bad do a giant's friends need to be before the death penalty becomes justice for hanging out with them?

*** But, that's because I don't run Giants as Always Evil to the same extent as mind flayers or beholders or neogi. I treat them more like hobgoblins, drow, and githyanki.

How is killing bandits murder for convenience? they're bandits. they're objectively evil and chose to do so unlike orcs who have no choice. I'd be much more comfortable with killing bandits than what your talking about.

They're not real threat to you, you have the capability to subdue them with nonlethal force and bring them to justice, you're just not bothering to do so because it would cost you a few extra HP and would be be inconvenient have POWs (you'd rather look for treasure)--that feels uncomfortably like murder for convenience to me, to the point where many PCs I've played would not be willing to do it. (Others would shrug and leave them for dead, not caring how many of them bled out with failed death saves but also not bothering to finish them off. A few of my characters might cut their throats without cruelty but also without guilt, if they were judged a threat to the mission.)

Besides, "objectively evil" isn't as simple as you imagine. Do you know why Bandit #12 (call him Benjamin) is a bandit? Do you know what his alternatives were and what his life was like and how he spends it now? What has Benjamin, specifically, done that makes him worthy to die? Is armed robbery worth the death penalty even if Benjamin has never killed anyone because they have always surrendered? People can be bad, even evil, without being worthless beyond redemption.

If you want to avoid these issues, don't put a Benjamin in your adventure, put a monster of some kind, a neogi or a zombie or a nightwalker, etc.

I suspect it's mostly an issue of humans in hats.

Orcs are just humans in hats. Elves are just humans in hats. Drow are just humans in hats. Halflings are just humans in hats.

Gnolls, for some reason in 5e, are the incidental creations of a passing demon lord, an unhappy little accident that will try to eat your face not because it's hungry but because its nature is the byproduct of where the Abyss meets the Prime. Which is to say, Gnolls are metal.... And also much more interesting, precisely because they aren't humans in hats. They are a force of nature, a gale in a world where sometimes the wind blows South by SouthEvil. And that's freaking radical.

Drow at one point had a bit of lore associated with them that they were all conceived as twins, but only one of them emerged alive because the one would strangle the other in the womb. The first rite of passage of a people wholly and jealously controlled by a demonic pseudo-deity that took a direct interest in the shaping of every individual soul. ... That's also metal... and totally inhuman. But if you want to make them human, you've got to walk that kinda thing back. It has to be a hat - something to be donned or doffed at whim - if you want to make them human.
People were talking about how Drizzt was problematic from a "they're all evil perspective." Surely he is; the lore associated with drow is so shocking, so vile, so divinely totalitarian that the prospect of there being a Drizzt at all... doesn't make any sense. It wasn't just a cultural thing; it was a cultural thing set in place by a malign, godlike power beyond mortal ken. Drizzt sort of fouls that whole dynamic right up; he's the first drow that's just a human in a hat. He manages to somehow foil the cultural and supernatural elements that would otherwise forge his character; for him, they're just a hat. And because of him, you can't take any of it seriously. Lolth isn't actually that big a deal. Spiritual totalitarianism that exists from the womb to the tomb... doesn't.
He made drow less metal. Less transcendentally tragic and terrifying. And more human.
So yeah, drow used to be depicted as universally evil. But they pretty plainly *didn't* have meaningful free will. The option had been stripped from them utterly, and that made them something distinct from humans. A tragedy. A metaphor. A stark warning about what could happen to your own societies if you let the demons win, when you let Evil take control. The "killing them on sight because they're evil" thing was incidental; what they were was an elf robbed of the capacity for moral choice. They were distinct even from their human in hats kin, because of that robbery.

But Drizzt comes along and undermines that by showing that all the fouled up stuff about drow? They just choose to be that way. And that's ultimately more damning than what they were before him. And less metal, for sure.

If you're going to go with a purely fictional species, just making them human seems like a waste. Drow used to be alien. And the story they used to tell was pretty brutal, but it was also interesting. They showed the tragic consequences of letting supernatural big-e Evil win. And if they can just take off that hat... it's a different, less compelling story.

So, if I had to guess:
They are coming for the gnolls next. They are far, far too metal as they are depicted now.

EDIT
Oh, I appear to have walked into an actual argument. I will start reading all those posts now.

Huh. That's some interesting drow lore. I agree that it's more interesting, from a worldbuilding/gameplay perspective, than what we have post-Drizz't.

[JoeJ]

Besides, "objectively evil" isn't as simple as you imagine. Do you know why Bandit #12 (call him Benjamin) is a bandit? Do you know what his alternatives were and what his life was like and how he spends it now? What has Benjamin, specifically, done that makes him worthy to die? Is armed robbery worth the death penalty even if Benjamin has never killed anyone because they have always surrendered? People can be bad, even evil, without being worthless beyond redemption.

But on the gripping hand, if I take Benjamin prisoner and turn him over to the authorities, he'll be hanged because, in a medieval society, that's what happens to bandits who are caught. Probably in public, in front of a cheering crowd. So I'm not really sparing his life, I'm just giving him a few more days before he dies.

[Lord Raziere]

But on the gripping hand, if I take Benjamin prisoner and turn him over to the authorities, he'll be hanged because, in a medieval society, that's what happens to bandits who are caught. Probably in public, in front of a cheering crowd. So I'm not really sparing his life, I'm just giving him a few more days before he dies.

Pretty much. Why torture him by dragging it out and humiliating him in public? At least I'll make it quick. What am I an enforcer of the law? last I checked we don't play Constables And Criminals.

[MaxWilson]

But on the gripping hand, if I take Benjamin prisoner and turn him over to the authorities, he'll be hanged because, in a medieval society, that's what happens to bandits who are caught. Probably in public, in front of a cheering crowd. So I'm not really sparing his life, I'm just giving him a few more days before he dies.

Because obviously powerful PCs have zero influence with local leaders, no ability to plead for clemency no matter how few Benjamin's actual crimes, and death is the only possible outcome for getting mixed up with the bandits so you might as well execute him now. Why even bother with fact-finding and a trial? Obviously there's nothing else you could possibly do.

Surely you can see that setting yourself up as judge, jury, and execution for a human being is at the very least morally complicated compared to killing a monster like a black pudding, a bone naga, or a mind flayer. The utility of monster-monsters is that they are morally simpler for when the DM wants to keep things simple.

[Lord Raziere]

Because obviously powerful PCs have zero influence with local leaders, no ability to plead for clemency no matter how few Benjamin's actual crimes, and death is the only possible outcome for getting mixed up with the bandits so you might as well execute him now. Why even bother with fact-finding and a trial? Obviously there's nothing else you could possibly do.

Surely you can see that setting yourself up as judge, jury, and execution for a human being is at the very least morally complicated compared to killing a monster like a black pudding, a bone naga, or a mind flayer. The utility of monster-monsters is that they are morally simpler for when the DM wants to keep things simple.

What else do you expect me to do, dress up in a suit and cravat name myself Miles Edgeworth and start shouting "OBJECTION!!"? I'm not here for courtroom drama or medieval police procedural. I'm here to be a badass, who kills things with my awesome fantasy hero abilities. You seem to have more problems with the Hack and slash style of play than I do, if your that willing to arbitrarily suddenly be beholden to the law just because they're a bunch of fictional humans rather a bunch of fictional orcs. I don't care for "alien races" and if I need morally justified punching bags I'm quite capable of finding them without needing genetic confirmation.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Because obviously powerful PCs have zero influence with local leaders, no ability to plead for clemency no matter how few Benjamin's actual crimes, and death is the only possible outcome for getting mixed up with the bandits so you might as well execute him now. Why even bother with fact-finding and a trial? Obviously there's nothing else you could possibly do.

If Ben is such a standup guy who won't kill his targets he's not going to fight armed groups who are liable to fight back. And what about the people who possibly starved because he robbed them of their lively hood. Is Tim the farmer any less dead either way? If the PC's want to show Ben mercy their better off not turning him in And what if Ben doesn't exist? What if all the bandits act like Raiders from Fallout 3 who torture and mutilate their victims. You're adding a moral layer that isn't necessary. Oh and as for the fact finding trial... he either be convicted and likely hanged OR in the event he's not convicted the PC's will be arrested for beating up him and his friends. As if they aren't bandits what reason did you have to beat them up.

Surely you can see that setting yourself up as judge, jury, and execution for a human being is at the very least morally complicated compared to killing a monster like a black pudding, a bone naga, or a mind flayer. The utility of monster-monsters is that they are morally simpler for when the DM wants to keep things simple.

Oh look the Local Lord hired us to eliminate the bandit problem, we've just been hired to be executioners. If the DM wants to keep things simple then he has the bandits be murderous bastards who rape and pillage everything they can.

[diplomancer]

On the Benjamin issue, a cameo from a recent session:

We are playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen, end of chapter 1, Greenest in Flames, after the Cult of the Dragon goes away after pillaging and burning the city. We have captured a cultist, and are about to interrogate him.

Present in the room, apart from the cultist, are myself (a Tiefling Celestial Warlock with a criminal background, a bad dude whose Patron is also his "outer conscience") the city's Governor, and the party Paladin.
I smile pleasantly to the Cultist, and say that the people of Greenest are very pissed off at what's happened, and, being the only prisoner, they are all very willing to give him a horrible death as a just punishment, BUT, if he spills the beans, I'd give him the mercy of a quick death.

After a quick intimidation check (there was some bluffing threat of torture, my PC will not torture anyone, but he has no issue with people believing he will) he spills the beans. I ask the Governor: "permission to execute the prisoner", Governor goes "do what you need to do", and leaves the room. I say "I get my dagger and slit his throat", Paladin's player says "I try to stop him", DM says "you two roll for initiative". I win initiative, DM describes it as being too quick for the Paladin to react (by the way, Paladin was out of Lay on Hands by then, he couldn't save the guy if he wanted to). Short argument ensues, I say "dozens of people are dead because of scum like this" (my character suffers from a guilty conscience, having unintentionally, but culpably, killed 3 innocent people in his past, so there is definitely a "lady doth protest too much" quality to his dealings with villains). Paladin says "and now one more person's dead".

So, I still don't think that what my character did was in any way wrong or even offensive to a Paladin. I did kill him out of mercy, and if I didn't, he very likely would have died a much worse death. Angry villagers who have lost their loved ones and have had most of their food stores wantonly burnt down are not known to be very merciful or patient. I had tacit permission from the local authority, who HAD the undoubted right, and some might say the duty, to execute him.

Interestingly enough, now that we've reached level 3, Paladin has decided to go Vengeance (I thought he was going for devotion, the way he was acting). I'm curious to know if this will make any difference to his outlook :)

[Unoriginal]

Since the publishing of the PHB, the 5e stance on the question has ALWAYS been "mortal creatures have the choice in their morality, but culturally (as well as due to divine influence) they are often incentivized toward certain behaviors".

If the WoTC spokepersons are going "look, we're changing things now", it's either that they haven't read the books or that they want to pretend they're right now doing the job that was already done.


Also I find the idea that the Guide to Wildemount's orcs & goblinoids are more morally diverse or something to be ludicrous, because Matt Mercer went full "orcs are elves corrupted by an evil god", and goblinoids are cursed to act like violent and malevolent jerks unless they're beaten within an inch of their life and survives (or are born within X distance of one of the artifacts that can remove their creator god's hold on their soul).

[AvatarVecna]

I think they will release UA for playable Ogre race, size Medium. We already have medium Centaurs and Minotaurs, so this is logical.

Shrek is love, Shrek is life.

[RifleAvenger]

As others have said, hopefully all of them. Fantasy races are a fantasy about race, and it says something dark when said fantasy includes "these are the types of people it's ok to kill on sight."

The "Other" as an acceptable target for violence needs to go, along with biology-based moral essentialism.

Institutions and factions make for great "these are definitely the bad guys" villains once their means and motivations are established (and if the PCs don't know means or motivation, maybe they should hold their fire?). There is no need for a large group of villains to be delineated by 'race.'

It doesn't actually change anything. It's folly to believe DMs are going to rewrite their campaign worlds because WOTC changed the metadata of some races. Heroes need villains in order to do heroic stuff and those villains will be whatever race the DM decides they will be for whatever reasons the DM decides.

Whether the entire race is evil or just that tribe over there or just this one warlord here is irrelevant to the game as it is being played. It certainly matters as a topic of discussion/debate.

What the writer of a work portrays as the default matters a lot, especially to new players. Or those making use of official modules or adventures and don't want to spend a lot of time doing rewrites. It sets default expectations and tone. Most importantly in this case, it tells potential players whether they're dealing with a game where the foul ideology of biologic moral essentialism, and the cruel ideals and behaviors that spring from it, are objectively correct in the fiction of the default setting.

There is no rule in the book saying that a GM can't make whatever races "Always Evil" or do away with such a thing entirely, true. But what matters is whether the concept of "Evil races" is normalized or not.

[Unoriginal]

The "other" as an acceptable target for violence needs to go, along with biology-based moral essentialism.

I'll point out that 5e does not present the Other as an acceptable target for violence due to being Other. The only "acceptable targets for violence" are those who act in a way that can be summarized as "are going to rob/harm/kill/eat/enslave the PCs and/or those the PCs care about if everyone let them", regardless of if they're Other or not.

[RifleAvenger]

I'll point out that 5e does not present the Other as an acceptable target for violence due to being Other. The only "acceptable targets for violence" are those who act in a way that can be summarized as "are going to rob/harm/kill/eat/enslave the PCs and/or those the PCs care about if everyone let them", regardless of if they're Other or not.

The issue is, books like the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide then present various "Others" as monocultures of evil and destructive behaviors. Exceptions are allowed, but in the vein of "one of the (G/)good ones" that characters like Drizz't fall into.

The logic winds up something like:

"These X are ok to kill because they are going to rob/harm/kill/eat/enslave the PCs and/or those the PCs care about."
+
"X culture universally promotes robbing/harming/killing/eating/enslaving the PCs and/or those the PCs care about."
=
"Therefore all X are ok to kill (unless they demonstrably prove otherwise; guilty until proven innocent)."

The middle step is what needs to be taken out.

Doing so has been done before too, even partially in D&D. Look at Eberron, where all humanoids and even many monstrous humanoids each have a number of distinct cultures, plus prominent multiracial cultures. In the best cases, those cultures are then themselves nuanced and multifaceted instead of being stereotypical monoliths. That just needs to become the normal approach instead of what's been done up to now in the flagship settings (Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms).

[Ettina]

Yes, and not just a race of hats. All races that aren't human need to be, in some sense, races of hats (although they don't necessarily have to be evil hats; that's a different question entirely). Any non-human group needs to have some identifiable trait that sets them apart from humans, because non-human races exist specifically to allow stories that you can't tell with humans only. The differences between, for example, any human and any elf need to be greater than the differences between any two humans. If they aren't, then that race (or species, or whatever you call it) has no narrative reason to exist; they should be replaced with a human culture.

Elves live for 750 years and don't need to sleep, instead going into a trance where they relive bits of their past lives. That's something you can't do with a culture of humans, unless they've used magic or something to make themselves basically not human anymore.

[JackPhoenix]

Neither do I care if the evil empire troops all have families in some far off home or whatever. killing them.

But what I won't kill things for is being born.

So you're fine with killing someone for being born in the wrong place, instead of being born as a certain species?

[Sigreid]

The issue is, books like the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide then present various "Others" as monocultures of evil and destructive behaviors. Exceptions are allowed, but in the vein of "one of the (G/)good ones" that characters like Drizz't fall into.

The logic winds up something like:

"These X are ok to kill because they are going to rob/harm/kill/eat/enslave the PCs and/or those the PCs care about."
+
"X culture universally promotes robbing/harming/killing/eating/enslaving the PCs and/or those the PCs care about."
=
"Therefore all X are ok to kill (unless they demonstrably prove otherwise; guilty until proven innocent)."

The middle step is what needs to be taken out.

Doing so has been done before too, even partially in D&D. Look at Eberron, where all humanoids and even many monstrous humanoids each have a number of distinct cultures, plus prominent multiracial cultures. In the best cases, those cultures are then themselves nuanced and multifaceted instead of being stereotypical monoliths. That just needs to become the normal approach instead of what's been done up to now in the flagship settings (Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms).

I think that's perfectly acceptable for a book like a monster manual that sets a default and even says in it that the DM can change if they prefer. I'd argue that it would be a setting or race specific book that should offer other suggestions more in depth. I mean, in the end the purpose of the monster manual is to give the DM ready made opponents ripe to be fought, killed and robbed so DMs can get on with their dangerous adventures. So, I don't see anything wrong with saying "The default is this race was created to bed legitimate opposition to a heroic party. Or this race was created to challenge and evil party." and get on with it. The reason it was never a problem in the past is we didn't have people with access to lots of other eyes deciding ON THEIR OWN, that x race was a stand in for y real world human group and that's just horrible. In 40 years or so of playing I've never thought the monster races were anything other than monsters that took humanish form so the party could use their stuff and thus benefit from fighting them.

[Unoriginal]

I think that's perfectly acceptable for a book like a monster manual that sets a default and even says in it that the DM can change if they prefer. I'd argue that it would be a setting or race specific book that should offer other suggestions more in depth. I mean, in the end the purpose of the monster manual is to give the DM ready made opponents ripe to be fought, killed and robbed so DMs can get on with their dangerous adventures. So, I don't see anything wrong with saying "The default is this race was created to bed legitimate opposition to a heroic party. Or this race was created to challenge and evil party." and get on with it. The reason it was never a problem in the past is we didn't have people with access to lots of other eyes deciding ON THEIR OWN, that x race was a stand in for y real world human group and that's just horrible. In 40 years or so of playing I've never thought the monster races were anything other than monsters that took humanish form so the party could use their stuff and thus benefit from fighting them.

I have no issue with "X culture encourages Y, PCs want to stop/prevent Y, therefore most of the PCs' interactions with X culture is going to be antagonistic", but "those creatures are monsters therefore they exist to be slaughtered by the PCs" is an abhorrent concept for me.

You don't need to equate Fictional Species A with a real-life group to think that Fictional Species A are people who deserve to be treated as such.

It's just that part of being treated like people include "if you do things to others they don't like, expect they'll defend themselves".

[Sigreid]

I have no issue with "X culture encourages Y, PCs want to stop/prevent Y, therefore most of the PCs' interactions with X culture is going to be antagonistic", but "those creatures are monsters therefore they exist to be slaughtered by the PCs" is an abhorrent concept for me.

You don't need to equate Fictional Species A with a real-life group to think that Fictional Species A are people who deserve to be treated as such.

It's just that part of being treated like people include "if you do things to others they don't like, expect they'll defend themselves".

And that's a fine way for people to treat it. It's also perfectly fine IMO for the monsters in the monster manual to be enemies in a can. But I'll freely admit that I enjoy playing RPGs but I in no way internalize settings, characters or creatures. I don't form emotional connections with it beyond the game moment.

Also, if you really do want to get more realistic, there's no reason and no reference to say that a sapient species can't have a brain chemistry that causes them to be extremely aggressive and violent.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Everyone, we've been down this road a number of times now. These conversations are topical and important, but they only work if everyone involved makes a real effort to do so calmly and courteously, to reign in the rhetoric and dial the intensity way down. The scope and nature of structural oppression is a very difficult topic to discuss without getting heated. But if you can't discuss it without getting heated (whichever 'side' you're on), do everyone a favour and stay out of it.

[Tanarii]

On the Benjamin issue, a cameo from a recent session:

Two scenario from a one-shot I ran a few years back:

PCs are level 1 and fighting bandits in their camp. The PCs attacked them on the word of a local sherif, and are are trying to find the main camp. The Life Cleric decides to capture the last one, and grapples him and demands surrender. Bandit surrenders, blabs the main camps location, and starts blubbering "please don't kill me" over and over again in a great begging, scared, and frankly apparently annoyingly whiny voice. The vengeance Paladin says something like "I stab him" and I respond with "okay, he's dead". Everyone else at the table is shocked and doesn't know what to say. The Life cleric was especially upset.

I feel that player action have consequences. If they happen, they happen. The two mistakes I made was not giving anyone else a chance to interrupt, and more importantly not reading my table.

This was the same one shot where the PCs later had been encountering humanoid whelps, and letting them run away after killing the adults. Mot that they had much chance of survival, but I was describing them as older so maybe they were thinking "teens". And then a PC Wizard fireballed a cave mostly blindly after being shot up with arrows, only to find out there had been whelps hiding near the back. That really disturbed them. Again, I should have read the table from both the bandit incident, and the way they'd previously been reacting to finding whelps in the caves.

---------

Attacking and killing 'bad-guys' in combat isn't an issue for the standard player. But they hate having to deal with questions of 'bad-guy' prisoners, and they really hate to deal with young bad guys. If the table wants a game about these issues go for it. But IMX very few do.

I understand from some Player's perspective, they want to play the cool rebel of a bad guy race without getting attacked and killed on sight. But from a DM perspective, obviously bad 'bad-guys' are an extremely useful tool, to give players the kind of game they want.

[Sigreid]

Two scenario from a one-shot I ran a few years back:

PCs are level 1 and fighting bandits in their camp. The PCs attacked them on the word of a local sherif, and are are trying to find the main camp. The Life Cleric decides to capture the last one, and grapples him and demands surrender. Bandit surrenders, blabs the main camps location, and starts blubbering "please don't kill me" over and over again in a great begging, scared, and frankly apparently annoyingly whiny voice. The vengeance Paladin says something like "I stab him" and I respond with "okay, he's dead". Everyone else at the table is shocked and doesn't know what to say. The Life cleric was especially upset.

I feel that player action have consequences. If they happen, they happen. The two mistakes I made was not giving anyone else a chance to interrupt, and more importantly not reading my table.

This was the same one shot where the PCs later had been encountering humanoid whelps, and letting them run away after killing the adults. Mot that they had much chance of survival, but I was describing them as older so maybe they were thinking "teens". And then a PC Wizard fireballed a cave mostly blindly after being shot up with arrows, only to find out there had been whelps hiding near the back. That really disturbed them. Again, I should have read the table from both the bandit incident, and the way they'd previously been reacting to finding whelps in the caves.

---------

Attacking and killing 'bad-guys' in combat isn't an issue for the standard player. But they hate having to deal with questions of 'bad-guy' prisoners, and they really hate to deal with young bad guys. If the table wants a game about these issues go for it. But IMX very few do.

I understand from some Player's perspective, they want to play the cool rebel of a bad guy race without getting attacked and killed on sight. But from a DM perspective, obviously bad 'bad-guys' are an extremely useful tool, to give players the kind of game they want.

When I'm a player, my characters don't take prisoners. Everyone in my group knows this.

[Morty]

Hopefully, all of them.

The goalpost has never moved. It has always remained: "If it is a sentient race, it has the capacity for good and evil and everything inbetween." WotC has just taken their sweet time inching towards it.

That's about the size of it. This isn't a complicated question and other games, books and stories of all kinds have managed to exist without universally evil sapient species. But it's treated as some kind of inviolate institution in D&D. I ran a Dungeon World campaign (which would have worked just as well in D&D if I was willing to run it) where there were no "evil species" and it somehow worked without a hitch.

[JonBeowulf]

What the writer of a work portrays as the default matters a lot, especially to new players. Or those making use of official modules or adventures and don't want to spend a lot of time doing rewrites. It sets default expectations and tone. Most importantly in this case, it tells potential players whether they're dealing with a game where the foul ideology of biologic moral essentialism, and the cruel ideals and behaviors that spring from it, are objectively correct in the fiction of the default setting.

There is no rule in the book saying that a GM can't make whatever races "Always Evil" or do away with such a thing entirely, true. But what matters is whether the concept of "Evil races" is normalized or not.

My point is that it's all world background stuff and mostly invisible to the players. As players, they don't concern themselves if an entire race is evil -- they're concerned about the ones they encounter. They don't encounter a race, they encounter a collection of individuals acting in whatever manner the DM has prescribed based on the world s/he has created.

We agree that having a race be evil because they're that race as canon is, at best, undesired. It's a relic of the long history of the game. They can, and should, change the canon but it doesn't change the game. Unless they make these no-longer-always-evil races playable because we're going to run into balance issues to rival some of the silliness EA is known for.

[Tanarii]

We agree that having a race be evil because they're that race as canon is, at best, undesired. It's a relic of the long history of the game.

It's not an undesirable relic at all. It's a desirable trait for running the game in the modern era. It gives the majority of players what they want. Us vs Them becoming Good vs Bad.

But as it has always been, Good vs Bad replacing Us vs Them can suddenly hit a brick wall when you start to run into details that break that paradigm.

[KorvinStarmast]

That's like saying evil Drow aren't problematic because Drizz't. What's new is saying that exceptions to the evilness aren't enough.

Given that, in AD&D terms, they were explicitly designed as an evil group living in the bowels of the earth and worshipping an explicitly evil goddess, I am not sure why they are problematic. As for Sci Fi/Fantasy racial groups with ebony skin (not brown or deep brown as on the planet Earth) you can go back to John Carter from Mars. I suspect that EGG stole/borrowed the Geryhawk Drow's (who are the original drow) underground habitat from Burroughs. Why do I think that? In Gods of Mars, Carter encounters the First Born, who are the Black Martians (First Born)

... they live in an underground stronghold near the south pole of the planet, around the submartian Sea of Omean, below the Lost Sea of Korus, where they keep a large aerial navy...

Gygax was engaging in trope subversion of elves (traditionally forest dwellers) in doing this with his created (or perhaps borrowed?) evil underground sub-race. (For my money, he'd have been better off making them albino with pupil-less eyes, like some underground blind fish, but that's a matter of personal opinion).

Drizz't was a narratively, and somewhat romantically, created exception to the usual Drow case by an author - not a game designer - to sell fantasy fiction books rather than a creation made for game purposes.

You could say that Drizz't stood how D&D became a game on its head, or maybe is an example of the D&D fantasy recursion.

Originally, D&D took horror fiction, swords and sorcery, high fantasy, dying earth genre, legends and myths, and some other speculative fiction (Clone spell, for example, is a more SF concept as is the psychic power of the mind flayer) and made a game out of it.

The fiction of Salvatore took the game and from that influence made a fantasy story built from the game.

Backwards, as it were, in process.

[Naanomi]

We agree that having a race be evil because they're that race as canon is, at best, undesired.

For physical, biological species lacking supernatural influence? Sure.

Metaphysical brings that are literally capital-Evil poured into the vague shape of a man? Incomprehensible horrors from beyond space and time incapable of recognizing material life as sentient or valuable? A reanimated corpse whose only thoughts are unnatural hunger and agony? Not so much.