Drizzt is dripping with riiiiiiizzzzzzzzz God, even I took psych damage from the cringe

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 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.

If a few minutes of reading TvTropes is anything to go by, the Tolkien never officially decided on an origin for his orcs. All of the possibilities he considered clashed with his legendarium somehow. And he had some of them that actively resisted Sauron, which makes them 'not strictly evil' I suppose. You can't be evil if you don't have free will. A tool has no evil except from what comes from the hand that wields it. So to me, orcs make more sense as a constructed organic machine, little better than automatons, and with no moral sense of their own. A dog would have more capacity for evil. But the interesting question would ask who would have the capacity to create such machines, who believes that violence is an acceptable method of achieving their goals. You say that conscience is optional for antagonists? I'd say that a complete lack of empathy is the defining quality of evil, what drives them to seek power without any care for others. Plus, having orcs lets you roll up a whole pile of mooks for your players to fight whenever you like, and if they happen to be trying to advance your BBEG's goal while completely indifferent to whether they cause pain and suffering along the way, all the better. Can't give the masterplan away if they were completely indifferent to why they were asked to do something and never asked questions about it, but it gives your players some goals to work towards and some puzzles to chew on. And yeah, Strahd's entire backstory and motivation being 'he is a dick' is difficult to make interesting. A well-intentioned extremist that thought they needed power that they then could not control and which led them to darkness has the potential for some characterisation. Strahd wanted the booty but could not get the booty and is angry about it. Plus that module is just two hundred hours of one TPK after another.

I can see the arguments against the concept of evil races. It's intimately linked with real-world racism about "wrong" groups that "deserve" to be colonized or genocided. Writing the fictional world as being populated by distinct groups that have conflicting cultural motivations is more interesting than "this group is bad because they are bad." But... what about demons/devils?

If a few minutes of reading TvTropes is anything to go by, the Tolkien never officially decided on an origin for his orcs. All of the possibilities he considered clashed with his legendarium somehow. And he had some of them that actively resisted Sauron, which makes them 'not strictly evil' I suppose. You can't be evil if you don't have free will. A tool has no evil except from what comes from the hand that wields it. So to me, orcs make more sense as a constructed organic machine, little better than automatons, and with no moral sense of their own. A dog would have more capacity for evil. But the interesting question would ask who would have the capacity to create such machines, who believes that violence is an acceptable method of achieving their goals. You say that conscience is optional for antagonists? I'd say that a complete lack of empathy is the defining quality of evil, what drives them to seek power without any care for others. Plus, having orcs lets you roll up a whole pile of mooks for your players to fight whenever you like, and if they happen to be trying to advance your BBEG's goal while completely indifferent to whether they cause pain and suffering along the way, all the better. Can't give the masterplan away if they were completely indifferent to why they were asked to do something and never asked questions about it, but it gives your players some goals to work towards and some puzzles to chew on. And yeah, Strahd's entire backstory and motivation being 'he is a dick' is difficult to make interesting. A well-intentioned extremist that thought they needed power that they then could not control and which led them to darkness has the potential for some characterisation. Strahd wanted the booty but could not get the booty and is angry about it. Plus that module is just two hundred hours of one TPK after another.

No that's Ms.Frizzle. Drizzt is that dude who sings in Limp Bizkit

What have I missed?

I can see the arguments against the concept of evil races. It's intimately linked with real-world racism about "wrong" groups that "deserve" to be colonized or genocided. Writing the fictional world as being populated by distinct groups that have conflicting cultural motivations is more interesting than "this group is bad because they are bad." But... what about demons/devils?

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 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.

I can see the arguments against the concept of evil races. It's intimately linked with real-world racism about "wrong" groups that "deserve" to be colonized or genocided. Writing the fictional world as being populated by distinct groups that have conflicting cultural motivations is more interesting than "this group is bad because they are bad." But... what about demons/devils?

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)

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.

Just look for better settings. You can even keep the DnD rules if you're feeling kinda lazy and just swap some names.

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 can see the arguments against the concept of evil races. It's intimately linked with real-world racism about "wrong" groups that "deserve" to be colonized or genocided. Writing the fictional world as being populated by distinct groups that have conflicting cultural motivations is more interesting than "this group is bad because they are bad." But... what about demons/devils?

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.