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Am I the only person who likes removal of evil races?
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I’m all for a broader scope in the lore of any ancestry in a game. As a Forever DGM a limited scope just means less chance I’m going to use them in a campaign. Evil isn’t an ancestry it’s a mental illness.I came to say something similar. Evil is just generational trauma. Sometimes someone who suffers from generational trauma will choose not to continue the chain of trauma but usually the abused become the abusers. If a whole society is built like Menzoberranzan it'd be really hard to be a good person. 99% of people who tried to be good would just die or get taken advantage of.
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.One of the most popular DnD characters is a member of an “evil” race who proves that it’s not a racial feature but a cultural one. (Yes I’m talking about Drizzt, AKA why every DnD group from ~1990 to ~2005 had *that guy* who wanted to play a drow ranger.)
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.
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One of the most popular DnD characters is a member of an “evil” race who proves that it’s not a racial feature but a cultural one. (Yes I’m talking about Drizzt, AKA why every DnD group from ~1990 to ~2005 had *that guy* who wanted to play a drow ranger.)I'd suggest even before then in the early character guides with the idea that one could play a half-orc. Plus a good DM would give the party options in talking to "monsters" instead of just fighting their way through. A group of goblins probably wasn't evil, they were just trying to survive like anyone else, and sometimes they had to work with the actual evil in the game because they were tools being used for other purposes. D&D took a lot from Tolkien, but I don't think the mythology was included. In wiki footnotes someone had an article in a 1982 Dragon magazine on the background of orcs from a half-orc viewpoint, but I can't find reference anywhere on that. Point being, Tolkien orcs were created by evil for evil purposes and aren't simply just a race of creatures. D&D orcs aren't like that from my understanding.
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.Can you give some context? But saying that Orc and Drow are biologically evil feel like *good old racism*. The whole Drow *let's take a nice race and make an evil dark-skinned version of them* way more problematic than the *Drow is blackface* debate
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I explicitly looked for "evil races ttrpg" in YouTube and most of the results are from 2-5 years ago. Who's blowing up the algorithm by raising a dead topic?
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.One of the frustrating things about humans and mass communication is the "for me it's Tuesday" effect. For someone, this is the first time they've encountered "maybe orcs being innately evil isn't a good idea". They want to explore it and go through their feelings and blah blah blah. It's a day that might change their life. For someone else, it's Tuesday. We've had this conversation a thousand times before. It's old hat. It's hard to be patient to faceless newcomer #3742 when you've already done this conversation so many times. They feel stupid and slow because they blend in with all the other people who brought this up. They're bringing up points they feel are fresh and clever but have been discussed and settled already. But they're a person seeing it for the first time. Somehow. It feels like "are you stupid? We just went over this", but that's an illusion. It's new to them . (This doesn't account for bad faith actors, who are trash and should go away)
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.meh, I really don't give two shits about it. In my campaigns, I'll just ignore this and have orcs and goblins default to evil unless my party decides to do something that requires them to be more nuanced. But most of the time I just need fantasy bugs that can be squashed without any moral dilemma attached. That doesn't mean that other groups can't have their nuanced orcs that have tragic generational trauma attached. It's just not something I need for my average dungeon crawl.
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.I'm fine with orcs and what not being normal for the most part but I think creatures like demons should be as close to naturally evil as possible maybe just no evolved empathy
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One of the frustrating things about humans and mass communication is the "for me it's Tuesday" effect. For someone, this is the first time they've encountered "maybe orcs being innately evil isn't a good idea". They want to explore it and go through their feelings and blah blah blah. It's a day that might change their life. For someone else, it's Tuesday. We've had this conversation a thousand times before. It's old hat. It's hard to be patient to faceless newcomer #3742 when you've already done this conversation so many times. They feel stupid and slow because they blend in with all the other people who brought this up. They're bringing up points they feel are fresh and clever but have been discussed and settled already. But they're a person seeing it for the first time. Somehow. It feels like "are you stupid? We just went over this", but that's an illusion. It's new to them . (This doesn't account for bad faith actors, who are trash and should go away)Yup, it helps to remember that they're 1 of today's [lucky 10,000](https://xkcd.com/1053/). That said, I do think it's reasonable to say that certain fantasy races might tend to think in certain ways, or have certain opinions, even if only because that's what they're brought up with. It means you can have interesting "ugly duckling" scenarios where one is brought up by a different race and ends up with their outlook instead.
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.The root of orcs as we think of them is Lord of the Rings, where they’re corrupted elves (or something like that). Literarily, they represent the evils of war. Tolkien orcs are evil. Orcs have seen the furthest drift from those roots of anything from LotR. Dwarves, elves, orcs, and halflings saw some drift to generalize them for other tabletop settings. But the traits settled on for orcs in the 90s and 00s (strong, nomadic, clan society, warlike, brutal, noble savage stuff) can now feel insulting, because those traits are so often used in racist contexts, so orcs have seen a second drift away from those, too. I don’t see much of a point to orcs anymore and don’t use them. Regarding 5e, I haven’t read its finished modern take on orcs but if I want Fantasy Mexico I’m just going to use human Fantasy Mexico. I do disagree that fantasy villains need motivations beyond existing. Conscience and free will are required for protagonists, optional for antagonists. Illithids, vampires, and early Pathfinder goblins come to mind from fantasy. Strahd’s reason for being a villain is that he’s mopey. Everything in Cthulhu, likewise, lacks comprehensible motivation. It’s hard to make an inherently evil villain that is a foil to the PC, but not every villain needs to be a foil.
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I'm fine with orcs and what not being normal for the most part but I think creatures like demons should be as close to naturally evil as possible maybe just no evolved empathyI choose to play demons as though they can have empathy, but it's always calculated empathy. They are intentionally and willfully choosing to act with empathy because it meets some other goal, so even though all demons are fundamentally evil, they are not all fundamentally despicable. I say it like it's some high holy road concept thing, but it's just more of a general guideline. Demons will do anything they want to do as long as it meets their current objective. Assuming we're talking about humanoid demon creatures and not some sort of like ethereal "presence of evil" demon.
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Yup, it helps to remember that they're 1 of today's [lucky 10,000](https://xkcd.com/1053/). That said, I do think it's reasonable to say that certain fantasy races might tend to think in certain ways, or have certain opinions, even if only because that's what they're brought up with. It means you can have interesting "ugly duckling" scenarios where one is brought up by a different race and ends up with their outlook instead.I think "cultural values" are a better mechanism for that. Like america teaches that capitalism and individualism are good values. Anyone raised here gets a lot of that, but it's not an innate property of being from Ohio
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The article you're looking for is in Dragon #62 - The half-orc point of view. There's a whole series of them and they're all good reads.
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One of the most popular DnD characters is a member of an “evil” race who proves that it’s not a racial feature but a cultural one. (Yes I’m talking about Drizzt, AKA why every DnD group from ~1990 to ~2005 had *that guy* who wanted to play a drow ranger.)
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.It's a matter of world building. Orcs can be noble savages, or violent monsters. The main problem is humanizing these creatures. If you instead imagine a separate evolutionary path, then the race can be inherently "evil". If orcs have evolved for conflict and violence far beyond human levels, then by our standards they would be evil. At least by the philosophy of a middle ages like world. Catholics and Protestants considered each other evil for a few hundred years. A violent species that destroys humans on sight due to their violent instincts would easily be evil. Exceptions could exist, but the mass of individuals would be "evil".
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I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.Gonna write my short story about the orc barbarians who destroy human colonies that get too close to orc territory, not because they're inherently evil, but because they've seen what human greed for power and domination does to subjugated races, the flow of magic, and the health of the earth. So they view humans as evil. "Your kind knows nothing but exploitation! You drain the lands of their nutrients to feed cities of sycophants until they are fat! Tell me, adventurer, when was the last time you heard of a dragon attacking an orc caravan? We have no fear of such beings as they only attack the depraved greed of man." "Attacked the village? Do your handlers even lie to hired blades? Yes we burned the village you call Argath, but no one was harmed. Humans, as dangerous as you are, are still cowards. Surrounding a mining village and telling them to leave when they're outnumbered ten to one is hardly, what you would call, a negotiation. We sent hunters to escort them out of the mountains of Gri'ut Kar and burned the village to ensure the trek was one way."
