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

> 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. Philosophically debatable, but a reasonable perspective. More germane to TTRPGs, I think it’s a legitimately interesting way to frame orcs, both more in line with the original source material (which as you say is nebulous to their origin) and interesting for players and GMs to deal with. To me it’s so important that different ancestries/creatures be legitimately alien. If I can find a facsimile of an ancestry in real life Earth, it’s not foreign enough that I want an ancestry. I don’t need orcs that are tribal warriors or Mexican, we have Mexico and tribes on Earth. This is one area where Pathfinder and D&D both miss the mark for me… but not Warhammer, where they’re a psychic fungus, or LotR, where they’re test tube mooks. > 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. Definitely a good way to make a villain. But I’m not convinced any one trait makes a good villain! There are a lot of villains who have empathy, across media. Adrian Veidt in Watchmen, Roy Batty in Bladerunner, Lucifer in Paradise Lost, Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. All heroes are alike; each great villain is evil in their own way. I ran Ravenloft in 3.5 and adored playing Strahd, it’s so fun to twirl the figurative moustache. To me a huge strength of tabletop is that we get to savor things more emotionally vs intellectually compared to other entertainment, since we’re acting it out, and with simple characters you can flat out bathe in it. I don’t play 5e but I would run Ravenloft if it meant getting to run rampant with Strahd again. Anyone who has never GMed before, believe me, I’ve never found anything like Snidley Whiplashing it up, 22 ounces of fresh cut ham on rye. All the joy of being despicable, none of the culpability.

Man, this was always sad when I finally realized it. I always thought "racial alignment" was about the culture of those races conditioning those who grew up in those civilizations being raised with certain beliefs to serve as a guideline in how individuals of those races would be depicted in setting. (Or supernatural compulsions for things like Devils, Demons, Modrons, etc... but that's different) Then I realized most people that I played with just used it as an excuse to be openly racist. It's for the best that the system is being removed, people just don't know how to use it without causing problems. This is why we can't have nice things.

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

New lore: orcs are evolved from ducks. That explains *everything*

So, you're playing human CEOs

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

In that case, however, Drow are the descendants of elves that followed a god that betrayed Corellon. They aren't innately evil, they are innately good/chaotic and programmed to be evil/lawful (by DND logic). Orcs are theoretically opposite. Evil/chaotic by essentialist, divinely mandated nature and capable of learning otherwise. More importantly, they're people the PCs can murder for golf with no discussion about morality... And while that's convenient for some DMs it does have some very, very obvious problems.

I long for the day when people stop kissing Tolkein's ass and try to make everything about him, whatever direction it goes.

Does his rizz come from his drip?

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 mean, if merely existing is enough motivation for IRL executives to be evil piles of shit, I don't see a need for fictional characters to need much motivation... Some people clearly just _enjoy_ lording over others...

It's interesting, so many cultures have demons or evil spirits. And sometimes those evil spirits can be turned to good, but not usually. I think DND mirroring culture in this way is still mostly OK, whereas culture has thankfully mostly moved on from *races* being good or evil.

> 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. This paradox, I.e., if orcs have free will, they can be truely evil, and not just a tool. But if they're predestined to be basically evil as a race, can they really have free will? I think is basically unresolvable. That's why Tolkien could never find a clear answer.

No that's Fred Durst. Drizzt is the outer colored part of the peel of a citrus fruit.

Nothing of value. Just some YouTube Kiddies beating a dead horse once again.

For demons and devils, that usually goes straight into supernatural, as they're not really a race, but physical manifestations of evil energies.

A setting with evil races is a setting in which genocide is implicitly justified. Anyone who finds appeal in such a setting should think long and hard about why.