What you're asking, Falwith, is for the 'new' lore to be shunted off to the side as random splinters that don't matter and have no impact. "Drow are ALWAYS EVIL, ALL THE TIME, because the evil Lolthian city of Menzoberranzen makes them that way! ...except for this one little village of maybe fifty or so less-evil drow, off in some corner of Faerun nobody pays any attention to, I guess..."
How does that solve anything? You're still demanding that entire species of sapient humanoid creatures be treated as A.C.E.F. and murdered on sight while making absolutely meaningless 'concessions' to splinter lore you not only never intend to use yourself but are kinda actively angling for nobody else to use, either. How does that make anybody happier? The people who hate "evil" species not being genetically evil have to tolerate the splinter lore Besmirching Their Forgotten Realms, and the people who want a more nuanced approach don't get it because the splinters are so small it's pointless to try and use them in a story. You still have to discard FR lore and build your own if you want anything other than Humans Good, Everything Else Bad.
You're still demanding that entire species of sapient humanoid creatures be treated as A.C.E.F. and murdered on sight
I don't know what A.C.E.F. means, but I haven't seen anyone argue that an inherently evil race must be slaughtered on sight. This feels like a strawman argument.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I just get tired of everyone wanting to delete anything from the past that is/was hurtful, as opposed to simply showing how much better things are (and should be) going forward.
1) D&D isn't "the past;" it's a fantasy world. It's a game, not a museum.
2) People want to play in the fantasy world, and WotC wants to sell it, so they have many reasons to continually improve it and broaden its appeal. The changes are literally things getting better by going forward.
When the Satanic Panic hit D&D it was used initially to increase sales, go figure putting out an edgy game that had pastors clutching their pearls got people to play. When 2nd Edition came out it was bought by a pearl clutcher who censored content quite a bit. The game lost its edge by catering to the morally stunted who didn't buy D&D. Eventually TSR went broke and that was that.
I do say its a bold strategy cotton to repeat past censorship and literally redact information from the game to appease modern day pearl clutchers. Maybe it will increase sales. For me, I've long since quit buying WotC lore/adventure content, its just bad. The core rules are evergreen though. I'm saving a lot of money and reskinning prior content and getting great reactions from my players. I remember when Pathfinder came out in reaction to 4E, and how well it did. I frankly can't wait for 5.5E to come out, because it will most likely get Pathfindered by a different publisher again with the censorship of content.
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Always: every last single member of the species is A.C.E.F. There are no exceptions that do not involve literal divine intervention, and even those are kept to an absolute minimum. ALL drow are evil sun-hating slavers. ALL orcs are evil near-mindless marauders. ALL kobolds are evil craven dragon worshippers. So on and so forth - exceptions are not to be treated as exceptions and will be suppressed until there are no exceptions.
Chaotic: the species is invincibly opposed to any form of peaceful coexistence. They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be negotiated with, they cannot be parleyed with. The species is chaotic to the point of madness, at least insofar as 'The Good Guys' are concerned. All attempts at nonviolent confrontation fail, period. No rolling required, you simply cannot talk to these species.
Evil: the species is inimically, genetically, fundamentally hostile to all non-them forms of life. They kill, grape, maim, and torture just for shits, because it's the evil thing to do, and if there's a way they can harm 'The Good Guys' society they will do it, even at great expense to their own societies. They are evil to levels even Saturday morning cartoon villains would balk at, so horrifically over-the-top monstrous that not murdering them on sight would be considered an 'Evil' act by most human gods.
Forever: none of the above can ever be fixed or changed. The species is a uniform hive-mind monocolture that is catastrophically chaotic and outlandishly evil, and it will remain that way until Toril's sun goes red giant and consumes the world in dying sunfire. No amount of effort by any heroic party can change even the slightest aspect of such a species. Should the heroes find a drow infant squalling in the Underdark, abandoned moments after its birth by its progenitors, and attempt to raise it as their own? That child will grow up into a moustache-twirlingly Hyper Evil sun-hating spider-worshipping slaver, because "drow are spider-worshipping slavers" is baked into their blood and bones and absolutely nothing will ever change. They aren't even people. Not really. They're one-note cardboard cutouts some eight-legged ******* goddess moves around like Monopoly pieces whenever she gets bored, with no goals, aspirations, or ambitions of their own save Being More Chaotic or being More Evil - both strictly as their human surface-worlder enemies define it.
It's what all the Old Lore Diehards want - for 'Villainous' species to be flat, boring, pointless monocultures that exist solely to spawn stat blocks they can murder for profit. Even discarding the ethical arguments against portraying a technically-sapient species that way...it's just boring. Lazy, boring storytelling that just squats on the most basic, superficial and played-out fantasy tropes to build a minimally-viable game of murderhoboing all the darkies for another roll at those random loot tables. A lot of modern players simply aren't interested, and frankly more and more of the older, established players aren't interested anymore either.
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
"As a drow, you are infused with the magic of the Underdark, an underground realm of wonders and horrors rarely seen on the surface above. You are at home in shadows and, thanks to your innate magic, learn to conjure forth both light and darkness. Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues. The cult of the god Lolth, Queen of Spiders, has corrupted some of the oldest drow cities, especially in the worlds of Oerth and Toril. Eberron, Krynn, and other realms have escaped the cult’s influence—for now. Wherever the cult lurks, drow heroes stand on the front lines in the war against it, seeking to sunder Lolth’s web."
Would you kindly point out the rewrite to "Menzo" for me?
"This new text replaces a description that confused the culture of Menzoberranzan—a city in the grip of Lolth’s cult in the Forgotten Realms—with drow themselves. The new text more accurately describes the place of drow in the D&D multiverse and correctly situates them among the other branches of the elf family, each of which was shaped by an environment in the earliest days of the multiverse: forests (wood elves), places of ancient magic on the Material Plane (high elves), oceans (sea elves), the Feywild (eladrin), the Shadowfell (shadar-kai), and the Underdark (drow). Drow are united by an ancestral connection to the Underdark, not by worship of Lolth—a god some of them have never heard of."
I just get tired of everyone wanting to delete anything from the past that is/was hurtful, as opposed to simply showing how much better things are (and should be) going forward.
1) D&D isn't "the past;" it's a fantasy world. It's a game, not a museum.
2) People want to play in the fantasy world, and WotC wants to sell it, so they have many reasons to continually improve it and broaden its appeal. The changes are literally things getting better by going forward.
When the Satanic Panic hit D&D it was used initially to increase sales, go figure putting out an edgy game that had pastors clutching their pearls got people to play. When 2nd Edition came out it was bought by a pearl clutcher who censored content quite a bit. The game lost its edge by catering to the morally stunted who didn't buy D&D. Eventually TSR went broke and that was that.
You seem to be correlating a change in lore (or censorship) to the company going broke; however as a reminder correlation is not the same as causation. I dont know the full history of 2nd edition, but I imagine that it is a substantial leap to put its shortcomings squarely and fully on the shoulders of lore changes which occurred.
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
The bolded word is what I would see as the difference in thought here. You are equating societies with races. There can be evil societies without every member of the race(s) in the world being evil.
Just as there are criminals and evil people in human societies, there can be rebel do gooders in evil societies. Or perhaps enough good individuals have escaped to form some separate community, but the main society is still evil.
I ask you again, what are human societies like in your worlds? Are humans uniformly good or something? Uniformly neutral, with neither crime nor altruists in human cities?
Something in which you are missing is you are attributing human behavior to monsters. It would be the same thing as you attributing human behavior to your dog. You are upset that your dog is committing incest by trying to breed a family member, meanwhile the dogs are doing what is natural due to their behavior. Humans and dogs share some behavior, but you will never understand a dog nor will a dog understand you.
Looking at Mind Flayers for instance, they use sentient species as food. There are not vegetarian mind flayers that subsist of the minds of carrots. Would it be a competitive advantage for a Mind Flayer to view Humans as anything but food? Especially as they die from starvation. If you want to "humanize" a mind flayer, then going from human physiology, as a human suffers from starvation they devolve into a machine looking for food, up to and including murder and cannibalizations. Sure if WotC wants to make good Mind Flayers, then they have to change their need to live off sentient life.
I mean WotC can do whatever they want, if WotC want to redact content to satiate the massive pearl clutchers who are upset by having good and evil in the game, especially for monsters that are specifically set up to be alien, evil and incredibly powerful to give players a campaign villain to overcome, then I say go for it. Censor the lore, what's the worse that can happen when a publisher makes changes for a minority of players.
We'll find out in sales if the new approach works. I haven't touched any new content since they went in this direction with Winninger. I wish WotC worst of luck, because I'd like to see the D&D Franchise moved to another publisher in the future, and we might just get it if 5.5E ends up like 4E, and its a distinct possibility.
I just get tired of everyone wanting to delete anything from the past that is/was hurtful, as opposed to simply showing how much better things are (and should be) going forward.
1) D&D isn't "the past;" it's a fantasy world. It's a game, not a museum.
2) People want to play in the fantasy world, and WotC wants to sell it, so they have many reasons to continually improve it and broaden its appeal. The changes are literally things getting better by going forward.
When the Satanic Panic hit D&D it was used initially to increase sales, go figure putting out an edgy game that had pastors clutching their pearls got people to play. When 2nd Edition came out it was bought by a pearl clutcher who censored content quite a bit. The game lost its edge by catering to the morally stunted who didn't buy D&D. Eventually TSR went broke and that was that.
You seem to be correlating a change in lore (or censorship) to the company going broke; however as a reminder correlation is not the same as causation. I dont know the full history of 2nd edition, but I imagine that it is a substantial leap to put its shortcomings squarely and fully on the shoulders of lore changes which occurred.
They literally censored content for 2E, it cut the edge (nudity, violence, demons, devils) and they made content that fit the moral views of their very Christian owner, because that was D&D bigger audience right? The censorship is fitting the moral views of Seattle not the larger audience. Group think kills companies and WotC is full group think. If you look at sales in American Comic books compared to Manga, you can see what happened when American Comic books took Seattle's culture to heart. I've already quit buying WotC lore content because its boring and this round of censorship isn't going to make me buy their new stuff. I'm already buying content from third party the same way I moved from Marvel and DC to Manga. I haven't bought a comic book since 2016 but I have subscriptions to anime and manga services and use them daily.
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
The bolded word is what I would see as the difference in thought here. You are equating societies with races. There can be evil societies without every member of the race(s) in the world being evil.
Just as there are criminals and evil people in human societies, there can be rebel do gooders in evil societies. Or perhaps enough good individuals have escaped to form some separate community, but the main society is still evil.
I ask you again, what are human societies like in your worlds? Are humans uniformly good or something? Uniformly neutral, with neither crime nor altruists in human cities?
Looking at Mind Flayers for instance, they use sentient species as food. There are not vegetarian mind flayers that subsist of the minds of carrots. Would it be a competitive advantage for a Mind Flayer to view Humans as anything but food? Especially as they die from starvation. If you want to "humanize" a mind flayer, then going from human physiology, as a human suffers from starvation they devolve into a machine looking for food, up to and including murder and cannibalizations. Sure if WotC wants to make good Mind Flayers, then they have to change their need to live off sentient life.
Looking over the errata, the only change in Volos for Mind Flayers is from this:
Mind Flayers are inhuman monsters that typically exist as part of a collective colony mind. Yet illithids are not drones to an elder brain. Each has a brilliant mind, personality, and motivations of its own
to this:
When you’re roleplaying a mind flayer, the following tables contain possible inspiration. They suggest characteristics that a mind flayer might possess
Nothing within the table was changed, so all of their possible behaviors are still the same. Where is the problem exactly? It doesnt mention any change to their diet.
If being okay with this change makes one a "pearl clutcher" then I guess I better pickup the Identify spell.
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
The bolded word is what I would see as the difference in thought here. You are equating societies with races. There can be evil societies without every member of the race(s) in the world being evil.
Just as there are criminals and evil people in human societies, there can be rebel do gooders in evil societies. Or perhaps enough good individuals have escaped to form some separate community, but the main society is still evil.
I ask you again, what are human societies like in your worlds? Are humans uniformly good or something? Uniformly neutral, with neither crime nor altruists in human cities?
Looking at Mind Flayers for instance, they use sentient species as food. There are not vegetarian mind flayers that subsist of the minds of carrots. Would it be a competitive advantage for a Mind Flayer to view Humans as anything but food? Especially as they die from starvation. If you want to "humanize" a mind flayer, then going from human physiology, as a human suffers from starvation they devolve into a machine looking for food, up to and including murder and cannibalizations. Sure if WotC wants to make good Mind Flayers, then they have to change their need to live off sentient life.
Looking over the errata, the only change in Volos for Mind Flayers is from this:
Mind Flayers are inhuman monsters that typically exist as part of a collective colony mind. Yet illithids are not drones to an elder brain. Each has a brilliant mind, personality, and motivations of its own
to this:
When you’re roleplaying a mind flayer, the following tables contain possible inspiration. They suggest characteristics that a mind flayer might possess
Nothing within the table was changed, so all of their possible behaviors are still the same. Where is the problem exactly? It doesnt mention any change to their diet.
If being okay with this change makes one a "pearl clutcher" then I guess I better pickup the Identify spell.
I just get tired of everyone wanting to delete anything from the past that is/was hurtful, as opposed to simply showing how much better things are (and should be) going forward.
1) D&D isn't "the past;" it's a fantasy world. It's a game, not a museum.
2) People want to play in the fantasy world, and WotC wants to sell it, so they have many reasons to continually improve it and broaden its appeal. The changes are literally things getting better by going forward.
When the Satanic Panic hit D&D it was used initially to increase sales, go figure putting out an edgy game that had pastors clutching their pearls got people to play. When 2nd Edition came out it was bought by a pearl clutcher who censored content quite a bit. The game lost its edge by catering to the morally stunted who didn't buy D&D. Eventually TSR went broke and that was that.
You seem to be correlating a change in lore (or censorship) to the company going broke; however as a reminder correlation is not the same as causation. I dont know the full history of 2nd edition, but I imagine that it is a substantial leap to put its shortcomings squarely and fully on the shoulders of lore changes which occurred.
They literally censored content for 2E, it cut the edge (nudity, violence, demons, devils) and they made content that fit the moral views of their very Christian owner, because that was D&D bigger audience right? The censorship is fitting the moral views of Seattle not the larger audience. Group think kills companies and WotC is full group think. If you look at sales in American Comic books compared to Manga, you can see what happened when American Comic books took Seattle's culture to heart. I've already quit buying WotC lore content because its boring and this round of censorship isn't going to make me buy their new stuff. I'm already buying content from third party the same way I moved from Marvel and DC to Manga. I haven't bought a comic book since 2016 but I have subscriptions to anime and manga services and use them daily.
So your just gonna double down then. Ok
Edit: Also I feel like there's a fun irony in discussing something like "group think" in the same thread as Mind Flayers
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
The bolded word is what I would see as the difference in thought here. You are equating societies with races. There can be evil societies without every member of the race(s) in the world being evil.
Just as there are criminals and evil people in human societies, there can be rebel do gooders in evil societies. Or perhaps enough good individuals have escaped to form some separate community, but the main society is still evil.
I ask you again, what are human societies like in your worlds? Are humans uniformly good or something? Uniformly neutral, with neither crime nor altruists in human cities?
Looking at Mind Flayers for instance, they use sentient species as food. There are not vegetarian mind flayers that subsist of the minds of carrots. Would it be a competitive advantage for a Mind Flayer to view Humans as anything but food? Especially as they die from starvation. If you want to "humanize" a mind flayer, then going from human physiology, as a human suffers from starvation they devolve into a machine looking for food, up to and including murder and cannibalizations. Sure if WotC wants to make good Mind Flayers, then they have to change their need to live off sentient life.
Looking over the errata, the only change in Volos for Mind Flayers is from this:
Mind Flayers are inhuman monsters that typically exist as part of a collective colony mind. Yet illithids are not drones to an elder brain. Each has a brilliant mind, personality, and motivations of its own
to this:
When you’re roleplaying a mind flayer, the following tables contain possible inspiration. They suggest characteristics that a mind flayer might possess
Nothing within the table was changed, so all of their possible behaviors are still the same. Where is the problem exactly? It doesnt mention any change to their diet.
If being okay with this change makes one a "pearl clutcher" then I guess I better pickup the Identify spell.
As usual, people don't read the actual content. They just make up crap and spew it out into forums.
I just get tired of everyone wanting to delete anything from the past that is/was hurtful, as opposed to simply showing how much better things are (and should be) going forward.
1) D&D isn't "the past;" it's a fantasy world. It's a game, not a museum.
2) People want to play in the fantasy world, and WotC wants to sell it, so they have many reasons to continually improve it and broaden its appeal. The changes are literally things getting better by going forward.
When the Satanic Panic hit D&D it was used initially to increase sales, go figure putting out an edgy game that had pastors clutching their pearls got people to play. When 2nd Edition came out it was bought by a pearl clutcher who censored content quite a bit. The game lost its edge by catering to the morally stunted who didn't buy D&D. Eventually TSR went broke and that was that.
You seem to be correlating a change in lore (or censorship) to the company going broke; however as a reminder correlation is not the same as causation. I dont know the full history of 2nd edition, but I imagine that it is a substantial leap to put its shortcomings squarely and fully on the shoulders of lore changes which occurred.
They literally censored content for 2E, it cut the edge (nudity, violence, demons, devils) and they made content that fit the moral views of their very Christian owner, because that was D&D bigger audience right? The censorship is fitting the moral views of Seattle not the larger audience. Group think kills companies and WotC is full group think. If you look at sales in American Comic books compared to Manga, you can see what happened when American Comic books took Seattle's culture to heart. I've already quit buying WotC lore content because its boring and this round of censorship isn't going to make me buy their new stuff. I'm already buying content from third party the same way I moved from Marvel and DC to Manga. I haven't bought a comic book since 2016 but I have subscriptions to anime and manga services and use them daily.
So your just gonna double down then. Ok
Edit: Also I feel like there's a fun irony in discussing something like "group think" in the same thread as Mind Flayers
Dude, I gave you content, its my opinion and you can have yours. You can read up the moral views of the new owner for D&D and what she did to the company. And yes her moral and censorial views did help in great part to kill the company. Maybe you believe the censorship will help, I'm noping on that, and we'll have to agree to disagree. [REDACTED]
Man. Isn't it astonishing how evil is nothing more than a hereditary switch that's flipped ON or OFF at birth? All the people arguing against any changes to improve flexibility in this thread are so right - you can't possibly have a campaign villain who'se held to be evil because of its actions and the evils it commits on the region! It has to be evil because it was born that way, even if it's never done anything but lurk in the Underdark its whole life eating the brains of people down there your Heroic Adventuring party's never heard of!
Why, let's ignore the human robber baron preying on a defenseless populace and crippling trade throughout our region - that guy's human, he can't possibly be evil! Who cares about the corrupt duke feeding that robber baron information and supplies in exchange for a cut and the use of his smuggler's lines to undercut the king and sidestep trade levies and tarriffs - he's human, how could be possibly be a Campaign Villain?! Why bother with the shadowy cabal of ancient necromancers who're using the duke as a patsy to destablize the region and try to tip it into civil war so they can reap bodies by the thousands and act unimpeded by armies too busy slaughtering each other to chase them down and stasmp their dark magics out? Those necromancers are human - we done told you already, humans can't possibly be evil! They weren't born that way, and that means no action they could ever undertake as part of setting up a thrilling campaign storyline would ever make them evil!
Let's instead launch an invasive war of conquest into the Underdark to get at those mind flayer guys who've shown no sign whatsoever of any intent to cause our nation trouble and stir up that whole hornet's nest, because all those guys down there are evil and must be expunged! That's the D&D way!
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
The bolded word is what I would see as the difference in thought here. You are equating societies with races. There can be evil societies without every member of the race(s) in the world being evil.
Just as there are criminals and evil people in human societies, there can be rebel do gooders in evil societies. Or perhaps enough good individuals have escaped to form some separate community, but the main society is still evil.
I ask you again, what are human societies like in your worlds? Are humans uniformly good or something? Uniformly neutral, with neither crime nor altruists in human cities?
Looking at Mind Flayers for instance, they use sentient species as food. There are not vegetarian mind flayers that subsist of the minds of carrots. Would it be a competitive advantage for a Mind Flayer to view Humans as anything but food? Especially as they die from starvation. If you want to "humanize" a mind flayer, then going from human physiology, as a human suffers from starvation they devolve into a machine looking for food, up to and including murder and cannibalizations. Sure if WotC wants to make good Mind Flayers, then they have to change their need to live off sentient life.
Looking over the errata, the only change in Volos for Mind Flayers is from this:
Mind Flayers are inhuman monsters that typically exist as part of a collective colony mind. Yet illithids are not drones to an elder brain. Each has a brilliant mind, personality, and motivations of its own
to this:
When you’re roleplaying a mind flayer, the following tables contain possible inspiration. They suggest characteristics that a mind flayer might possess
Nothing within the table was changed, so all of their possible behaviors are still the same. Where is the problem exactly? It doesnt mention any change to their diet.
If being okay with this change makes one a "pearl clutcher" then I guess I better pickup the Identify spell.
Mind Flayers are inhuman monsters
That's it? That's what all this anger is about?
I finished casting Identify with my clutched pearls and have determined youve slicked your slope with the Grease spell
Man. Isn't it astonishing how evil is nothing more than a hereditary switch that's flipped ON or OFF at birth? All the people arguing against any changes to improve flexibility in this thread are so right - you can't possibly have a campaign villain who'se held to be evil because of its actions and the evils it commits on the region! It has to be evil because it was born that way, even if it's never done anything but lurk in the Underdark its whole life eating the brains of people down there your Heroic Adventuring party's never heard of!
Why, let's ignore the human robber baron preying on a defenseless populace and crippling trade throughout our region - that guy's human, he can't possibly be evil! Who cares about the corrupt duke feeding that robber baron information and supplies in exchange for a cut and the use of his smuggler's lines to undercut the king and sidestep trade levies and tarriffs - he's human, how could be possibly be a Campaign Villain?! Why bother with the shadowy cabal of ancient necromancers who're using the duke as a patsy to destablize the region and try to tip it into civil war so they can reap bodies by the thousands and act unimpeded by armies too busy slaughtering each other to chase them down and stasmp their dark magics out? Those necromancers are human - we done told you already, humans can't possibly be evil! They weren't born that way, and that means no action they could ever undertake as part of setting up a thrilling campaign storyline would ever make them evil!
Let's instead launch an invasive war of conquest into the Underdark to get at those mind flayer guys who've shown no sign whatsoever of any intent to cause our nation trouble and stir up that whole hornet's nest, because all those guys down there are evil and must be expunged! That's the D&D way!
You seem to be quite binary in your thinking and its disturbing. Do you attribute human behavior to a lion you find in the safari and come up and wave to it or do you seek shelter? Lions have a different mode of thought, which includes eating meat and you happen to be made up of quite tasty parts. Now if that lion was a cub you raised from birth it would be quite different wouldn't it? However wouldn't it make sense to treat all lions as apex predators and give them wide birth as default? Are the lions evil, no they are acting in their naturel but yes we would consider them evil. Now a Westerner given all the benefits of Western society we have the luxury of debating, meanwhile someone living in an area with lions would have to treat them as apex predators to live.
If you look at some of our nearest ancestors, they are quite happy to troop up, find stranglers from other tribes and eat them alive, including their brains as they scream out in pain. From a human perspective that is evil. Now, if Goblins are set up as raiders, where they are quite happy going out and raiding other civilizations for food, slaves and equipment, then by all means let them go at it. If a goblin decided to buck the system and become a paladin of bahamut then by all means let him go. Big boys and girls can handle the concept of good and evil, default behaviors and outliers and understand that goblins are not humans, they are made up monsters based on myths of old.
I have no desire to buy content made up by people who are going to humanize and racialize each and every monster in the world. I'm not playing Seattle & Slimes, I have no desire to deal with anything dealing with modern belief systems shoe horned into a fantasy RPG with heroes and villains. Players will leave your game if you go into these types of politics, I've seen campaigns lose players over this level of esoteric debate. A lot of people just want to go out, be the hero and vanquish the evil red dragon, not go into morality plays.
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What you're asking, Falwith, is for the 'new' lore to be shunted off to the side as random splinters that don't matter and have no impact. "Drow are ALWAYS EVIL, ALL THE TIME, because the evil Lolthian city of Menzoberranzen makes them that way! ...except for this one little village of maybe fifty or so less-evil drow, off in some corner of Faerun nobody pays any attention to, I guess..."
How does that solve anything? You're still demanding that entire species of sapient humanoid creatures be treated as A.C.E.F. and murdered on sight while making absolutely meaningless 'concessions' to splinter lore you not only never intend to use yourself but are kinda actively angling for nobody else to use, either. How does that make anybody happier? The people who hate "evil" species not being genetically evil have to tolerate the splinter lore Besmirching Their Forgotten Realms, and the people who want a more nuanced approach don't get it because the splinters are so small it's pointless to try and use them in a story. You still have to discard FR lore and build your own if you want anything other than Humans Good, Everything Else Bad.
Why bother?
Please do not contact or message me.
I don't know what A.C.E.F. means, but I haven't seen anyone argue that an inherently evil race must be slaughtered on sight. This feels like a strawman argument.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
When the Satanic Panic hit D&D it was used initially to increase sales, go figure putting out an edgy game that had pastors clutching their pearls got people to play. When 2nd Edition came out it was bought by a pearl clutcher who censored content quite a bit. The game lost its edge by catering to the morally stunted who didn't buy D&D. Eventually TSR went broke and that was that.
I do say its a bold strategy cotton to repeat past censorship and literally redact information from the game to appease modern day pearl clutchers. Maybe it will increase sales. For me, I've long since quit buying WotC lore/adventure content, its just bad. The core rules are evergreen though. I'm saving a lot of money and reskinning prior content and getting great reactions from my players. I remember when Pathfinder came out in reaction to 4E, and how well it did. I frankly can't wait for 5.5E to come out, because it will most likely get Pathfindered by a different publisher again with the censorship of content.
I want more not less lore.
I chuckled a bit at how you want to just chuck a newly discovered variant of a race off to the side and not use them. So far as my OWN handling of things, nowhere did I indicate a small splinter sect of 50 or so humanoids. See, here is where we differ. You have a need to have everything be a happy melting pot where everyone loves everyone else and there are no evil societies. I prefer to have a wide variety of social systems and beliefs and in some cases, the greater bulk of a race that has been encountered ARE of that evil, dark mentality. There are areas where this race has settled and live a more tolerant and inclusive lifestyle, but honestly, rewriting the history of Menzo so everyone can and does worship what God they want and plays nice with all the other races simply washes out the range of variety.
I guess I need to know why it's such a horrible thing to allow societies of evil to exist in a fantasy realm? That's what I am seeing from those who feel the lore MUST be entirely redone. ANY society of evil MUST be eradicated. NO society is permitted to be wallowing in evil, dark thoughts, motives and ideals. An entire ban on anything that isn't rainbows and lollipops seems rather....odd?
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
A.C.E.F.: Always Chaotic Evil Forever.
Always: every last single member of the species is A.C.E.F. There are no exceptions that do not involve literal divine intervention, and even those are kept to an absolute minimum. ALL drow are evil sun-hating slavers. ALL orcs are evil near-mindless marauders. ALL kobolds are evil craven dragon worshippers. So on and so forth - exceptions are not to be treated as exceptions and will be suppressed until there are no exceptions.
Chaotic: the species is invincibly opposed to any form of peaceful coexistence. They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be negotiated with, they cannot be parleyed with. The species is chaotic to the point of madness, at least insofar as 'The Good Guys' are concerned. All attempts at nonviolent confrontation fail, period. No rolling required, you simply cannot talk to these species.
Evil: the species is inimically, genetically, fundamentally hostile to all non-them forms of life. They kill, grape, maim, and torture just for shits, because it's the evil thing to do, and if there's a way they can harm 'The Good Guys' society they will do it, even at great expense to their own societies. They are evil to levels even Saturday morning cartoon villains would balk at, so horrifically over-the-top monstrous that not murdering them on sight would be considered an 'Evil' act by most human gods.
Forever: none of the above can ever be fixed or changed. The species is a uniform hive-mind monocolture that is catastrophically chaotic and outlandishly evil, and it will remain that way until Toril's sun goes red giant and consumes the world in dying sunfire. No amount of effort by any heroic party can change even the slightest aspect of such a species. Should the heroes find a drow infant squalling in the Underdark, abandoned moments after its birth by its progenitors, and attempt to raise it as their own? That child will grow up into a moustache-twirlingly Hyper Evil sun-hating spider-worshipping slaver, because "drow are spider-worshipping slavers" is baked into their blood and bones and absolutely nothing will ever change. They aren't even people. Not really. They're one-note cardboard cutouts some eight-legged ******* goddess moves around like Monopoly pieces whenever she gets bored, with no goals, aspirations, or ambitions of their own save Being More Chaotic or being More Evil - both strictly as their human surface-worlder enemies define it.
It's what all the Old Lore Diehards want - for 'Villainous' species to be flat, boring, pointless monocultures that exist solely to spawn stat blocks they can murder for profit. Even discarding the ethical arguments against portraying a technically-sapient species that way...it's just boring. Lazy, boring storytelling that just squats on the most basic, superficial and played-out fantasy tropes to build a minimally-viable game of murderhoboing all the darkies for another roll at those random loot tables. A lot of modern players simply aren't interested, and frankly more and more of the older, established players aren't interested anymore either.
Please do not contact or message me.
"As a drow, you are infused with the magic of the Underdark, an underground realm of wonders and horrors rarely seen on the surface above. You are at home in shadows and, thanks to your innate magic, learn to conjure forth both light and darkness. Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues. The cult of the god Lolth, Queen of Spiders, has corrupted some of the oldest drow cities, especially in the worlds of Oerth and Toril. Eberron, Krynn, and other realms have escaped the cult’s influence—for now. Wherever the cult lurks, drow heroes stand on the front lines in the war against it, seeking to sunder Lolth’s web."
Would you kindly point out the rewrite to "Menzo" for me?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
"This new text replaces a description that confused the culture of Menzoberranzan—a city in the grip of Lolth’s cult in the Forgotten Realms—with drow themselves. The new text more accurately describes the place of drow in the D&D multiverse and correctly situates them among the other branches of the elf family, each of which was shaped by an environment in the earliest days of the multiverse: forests (wood elves), places of ancient magic on the Material Plane (high elves), oceans (sea elves), the Feywild (eladrin), the Shadowfell (shadar-kai), and the Underdark (drow). Drow are united by an ancestral connection to the Underdark, not by worship of Lolth—a god some of them have never heard of."
Maybe in here?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
You seem to be correlating a change in lore (or censorship) to the company going broke; however as a reminder correlation is not the same as causation. I dont know the full history of 2nd edition, but I imagine that it is a substantial leap to put its shortcomings squarely and fully on the shoulders of lore changes which occurred.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Something in which you are missing is you are attributing human behavior to monsters. It would be the same thing as you attributing human behavior to your dog. You are upset that your dog is committing incest by trying to breed a family member, meanwhile the dogs are doing what is natural due to their behavior. Humans and dogs share some behavior, but you will never understand a dog nor will a dog understand you.
Looking at Mind Flayers for instance, they use sentient species as food. There are not vegetarian mind flayers that subsist of the minds of carrots. Would it be a competitive advantage for a Mind Flayer to view Humans as anything but food? Especially as they die from starvation. If you want to "humanize" a mind flayer, then going from human physiology, as a human suffers from starvation they devolve into a machine looking for food, up to and including murder and cannibalizations. Sure if WotC wants to make good Mind Flayers, then they have to change their need to live off sentient life.
I mean WotC can do whatever they want, if WotC want to redact content to satiate the massive pearl clutchers who are upset by having good and evil in the game, especially for monsters that are specifically set up to be alien, evil and incredibly powerful to give players a campaign villain to overcome, then I say go for it. Censor the lore, what's the worse that can happen when a publisher makes changes for a minority of players.
We'll find out in sales if the new approach works. I haven't touched any new content since they went in this direction with Winninger. I wish WotC worst of luck, because I'd like to see the D&D Franchise moved to another publisher in the future, and we might just get it if 5.5E ends up like 4E, and its a distinct possibility.
They literally censored content for 2E, it cut the edge (nudity, violence, demons, devils) and they made content that fit the moral views of their very Christian owner, because that was D&D bigger audience right? The censorship is fitting the moral views of Seattle not the larger audience. Group think kills companies and WotC is full group think. If you look at sales in American Comic books compared to Manga, you can see what happened when American Comic books took Seattle's culture to heart. I've already quit buying WotC lore content because its boring and this round of censorship isn't going to make me buy their new stuff. I'm already buying content from third party the same way I moved from Marvel and DC to Manga. I haven't bought a comic book since 2016 but I have subscriptions to anime and manga services and use them daily.
Looking over the errata, the only change in Volos for Mind Flayers is from this:
to this:
Nothing within the table was changed, so all of their possible behaviors are still the same. Where is the problem exactly? It doesnt mention any change to their diet.
If being okay with this change makes one a "pearl clutcher" then I guess I better pickup the Identify spell.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
So your just gonna double down then. Ok
Edit: Also I feel like there's a fun irony in discussing something like "group think" in the same thread as Mind Flayers
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
As usual, people don't read the actual content. They just make up crap and spew it out into forums.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
[removed. Responded to the wrong user. My bad]
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Edit: simple misunderstanding
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Dude, I gave you content, its my opinion and you can have yours. You can read up the moral views of the new owner for D&D and what she did to the company. And yes her moral and censorial views did help in great part to kill the company. Maybe you believe the censorship will help, I'm noping on that, and we'll have to agree to disagree. [REDACTED]
Man. Isn't it astonishing how evil is nothing more than a hereditary switch that's flipped ON or OFF at birth? All the people arguing against any changes to improve flexibility in this thread are so right - you can't possibly have a campaign villain who'se held to be evil because of its actions and the evils it commits on the region! It has to be evil because it was born that way, even if it's never done anything but lurk in the Underdark its whole life eating the brains of people down there your Heroic Adventuring party's never heard of!
Why, let's ignore the human robber baron preying on a defenseless populace and crippling trade throughout our region - that guy's human, he can't possibly be evil! Who cares about the corrupt duke feeding that robber baron information and supplies in exchange for a cut and the use of his smuggler's lines to undercut the king and sidestep trade levies and tarriffs - he's human, how could be possibly be a Campaign Villain?! Why bother with the shadowy cabal of ancient necromancers who're using the duke as a patsy to destablize the region and try to tip it into civil war so they can reap bodies by the thousands and act unimpeded by armies too busy slaughtering each other to chase them down and stasmp their dark magics out? Those necromancers are human - we done told you already, humans can't possibly be evil! They weren't born that way, and that means no action they could ever undertake as part of setting up a thrilling campaign storyline would ever make them evil!
Let's instead launch an invasive war of conquest into the Underdark to get at those mind flayer guys who've shown no sign whatsoever of any intent to cause our nation trouble and stir up that whole hornet's nest, because all those guys down there are evil and must be expunged! That's the D&D way!
Please do not contact or message me.
That's it? That's what all this anger is about?
I finished casting Identify with my clutched pearls and have determined youve slicked your slope with the Grease spell
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
You seem to be quite binary in your thinking and its disturbing. Do you attribute human behavior to a lion you find in the safari and come up and wave to it or do you seek shelter? Lions have a different mode of thought, which includes eating meat and you happen to be made up of quite tasty parts. Now if that lion was a cub you raised from birth it would be quite different wouldn't it? However wouldn't it make sense to treat all lions as apex predators and give them wide birth as default? Are the lions evil, no they are acting in their naturel but yes we would consider them evil. Now a Westerner given all the benefits of Western society we have the luxury of debating, meanwhile someone living in an area with lions would have to treat them as apex predators to live.
If you look at some of our nearest ancestors, they are quite happy to troop up, find stranglers from other tribes and eat them alive, including their brains as they scream out in pain. From a human perspective that is evil. Now, if Goblins are set up as raiders, where they are quite happy going out and raiding other civilizations for food, slaves and equipment, then by all means let them go at it. If a goblin decided to buck the system and become a paladin of bahamut then by all means let him go. Big boys and girls can handle the concept of good and evil, default behaviors and outliers and understand that goblins are not humans, they are made up monsters based on myths of old.
I have no desire to buy content made up by people who are going to humanize and racialize each and every monster in the world. I'm not playing Seattle & Slimes, I have no desire to deal with anything dealing with modern belief systems shoe horned into a fantasy RPG with heroes and villains. Players will leave your game if you go into these types of politics, I've seen campaigns lose players over this level of esoteric debate. A lot of people just want to go out, be the hero and vanquish the evil red dragon, not go into morality plays.