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!
So eating brains of people isn't wrong? Good to know that Hannibal lecter isnt evil to you
Why do you seem against expanding the lore to also include non-clutist Drow as it would fix things without changing the clutist Drow. You said they would be splinters but that wasn't in the post you replied to just that lore can be expanded. You made the comment about splinters. You seem to take the worst possible way to expand things instead of trying to find ways to make it work.
It seems you don't want the old lore to stay and want it gone instead of expanding the lore further even to the point of hyperbole and strawmans
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
Well it is obvious that without those words you would have no way of knowing that Mindflayers eat brains and are likely to assume that they eat carrots. /s
The issue I have is they didn't move the content to setting books, they just removed it. That is my major complaint of setting books is they give the backdrop and some details but leave a lot of work for the DM. Like I wouldn't be upset if things were at least laid out like these are the default things about the races, places, cultures but feel free to change as you see fit.
Can I put this in perspective a bit? First, the actual content changed or removed is minimal. In this day and age you can pull up the collected info on any setting in a browser window in a matter of seconds. I too would like more content in an actual book in my own two hands, but this (re-)moved content amounts to a drop in the proverbial bucket - it's wouldn't solve anything decribed as "a lot". If that's your main concern, just take it to the interwebs and grab whatever you want from wikis or fan pages or even from someone else's cool homebrew. Second, if WotC were to move this removed content to the relevant setting books, this would affect just one of them: the Realms book. Which we have exactly one of so far and, to loop back to my first comment, that one doesn't even cover one percent of the info on the FR that's been released over a handful of editions. I can't see how this move instead of remove alternative would in any way help you out with your complaint.
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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.
The problem with comparing "monsters" such as orcs, goblins, drow etc... to RL animals who can't change their natural impulses is that in the DnD world, Orcs, goblins, Drow etc... have HUMAN levels of intelligence. In the dnd world they are a PEOPLE. You can't make a comparison like that to real life because we don't HAVE another fully sentient species on our planet. There's no frame of reference. What we DO have in our world is other peoples. We attribute human qualities to them such as behavioral diversity because of their human levels of thought.
If you want to homebrew these species as animalistic and possessing uncontrollable instincts that's fine! thats the whole point of a homebrew world, to make your own lore. But as long as their statblock indicates human levels of intelligence, I'm going to design them with every bit of complexity as I would any other person.
Everyone clutching their pearls and wringing their hands saying "How will I make evil villains for my campaigns if the books don't explicitly tell me something is evil?!"
The answer is very simple - actions make evil, not heritage. The lion-in-the-wild thing is an idiotic example - no the lion's not bloody 'evil', but if it's eating farmers on the frontiers you put it down anyways to protect your own. If mind flayers are eating brains in your backyard and preparing to invade your realm, you go deal with that because even though the mind flayers don't consider themselves evil at all, you ain't gonna be having that brain buffet nonsense in your hometown because you like your brains where they are, thanks.
You don't need a book telling you "Mind flayers are evil" to make a campaign about mind flayers threatening your society. You don't need a book telling you "all drow are always terrible" to run a campaign where Menzoberranzen has uncovered ancient magical superweapons and is about to make that your problem. Hell, it'd make that game more interesting to have a sporadic influx of refugees from Menzoberranzen be what alerts the players to the problem in the first place - cast-offs and living detritus that escaped their fate as fuel for the weapon, begging sanctuary. Good way to lead into the campaign - have the players help resolve this sudden, bizarre influx of ragged, malnourished 'slaver elves' and figure out what the hell that's all about as a way for them to discover "wait, the priestesses of Lolth have uncovered what?! HOLY SHIT, we need to do something about that!" Hell, maybe one of the party's PCs is even one of those escapees. They used their talents to bring themselves and a heartbreakingly small handful of their friends and family out, and they're the only one both brave and powerful enough to risk going back and setting this to rights.
I'd totally be down to play that game, probably as the delf escapee. The whole "Oops, Menzoberranzen is doing the slavery thing again, y'all better go genocide you some dark people and bring back their loot"? Significantly less so, thanks.
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!
So eating brains of people isn't wrong? Good to know that Hannibal lecter isnt evil to you
Eating brains is wrong, but if you only know they're eating brains in a theoretical "this book by this hopefully trustworthy author says so" it's a pretty big step to fire up the old crusade machine. It's unfortunate for the poor souls who end up like this, but if these mindflayers are only snacking on the cerebrum of the rare dumb humanoid trespassing on their lawn that's not that much different from any other race that defends their turf with prejudice and typically the other civilizations don't declare war on those for doing that either. If squidheads start sending raiding parties for to bring back takeout, that's something else - because it's not some theoretical evil happening in another back yard than ours anyway.
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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.
There's about 2000 monsters described in 5E books, even if you take out all the unique ones and the non-monstrous ones. In contrast there are only about 50 playable races, with more than half having been a playable race from the start, rather than a non-playable monster race that got moved to the PC pool. These people you speak of have a long way to go.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
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!
So eating brains of people isn't wrong? Good to know that Hannibal lecter isnt evil to you
Why do you seem against expanding the lore to also include non-clutist Drow as it would fix things without changing the clutist Drow. You said they would be splinters but that wasn't in the post you replied to just that lore can be expanded. You made the comment about splinters. You seem to take the worst possible way to expand things instead of trying to find ways to make it work.
It seems you don't want the old lore to stay and want it gone instead of expanding the lore further even to the point of hyperbole and strawmans
I still haven't found anything removing the old lore. What has been removed?
All that's been changed is some race's lore has been changed from "ARE evil" to "CAN be evil" and removal of "suggested" alignments to make room for more diverse characters.
The issue I have is they didn't move the content to setting books, they just removed it. That is my major complaint of setting books is they give the backdrop and some details but leave a lot of work for the DM. Like I wouldn't be upset if things were at least laid out like these are the default things about the races, places, cultures but feel free to change as you see fit.
Can I put this in perspective a bit? First, the actual content changed or removed is minimal. In this day and age you can pull up the collected info on any setting in a browser window in a matter of seconds. I too would like more content in an actual book in my own two hands, but this (re-)moved content amounts to a drop in the proverbial bucket - it's wouldn't solve anything decribed as "a lot". If that's your main concern, just take it to the interwebs and grab whatever you want from wikis or fan pages or even from someone else's cool homebrew. Second, if WotC were to move this removed content to the relevant setting books, this would affect just one of them: the Realms book. Which we have exactly one of so far and, to loop back to my first comment, that one doesn't even cover one percent of the info on the FR that's been released over a handful of editions. I can't see how this move instead of remove alternative would in any way help you out with your complaint.
My issue with the interwebs answer is it is either promoting copy right infringement(breaking the law) or using homebrew
So eating brains of people isn't wrong? Good to know that Hannibal lecter isnt evil to you
Why do you seem against expanding the lore to also include non-clutist Drow as it would fix things without changing the clutist Drow. You said they would be splinters but that wasn't in the post you replied to just that lore can be expanded. You made the comment about splinters. You seem to take the worst possible way to expand things instead of trying to find ways to make it work.
It seems you don't want the old lore to stay and want it gone instead of expanding the lore further even to the point of hyperbole and strawmans
Since we're editing posts after the fact...
Let me ask you this - are you really trying to expand "The Lore"? Because to me, and to many, many other people, the constant backlash, sniping, snarling, and resistance to literally ANYTHING that smacks of "maybe the world isn't quite as boringly, unrealistically black-and-white as it used to be" is not at all an 'expansion' of the lore so much as it is you trying to foist people off into some other, non-D&D game so you can keep your world where heroic pale-skinned humans go out and genocide the darkies People want the lore "expanded" so they can then ignore all the "expanded" lore and go right back to closing the door in the faces of the new people and complaining about all that expanded lore.
I am heartily sick of old lore being used as a club to drive new people away from the entire tabletop gaming hobby, yes. Somebody comes in and says "hey, I read this really cool book when I was younger about a dark elf guy fighting against his people...can I do something like that?", only for all the old-timers to beat him with sticks until he signs a waiver from his hospital bed swearing to never play D&D again because they're sick of drow not being evil...and all the old-timers are perfectly fine with that.
I would be delighted to see a proper Forgotten Realms sourcebook. A big, meaty, burly book with all the information a new DM needs to run a game for new players in a streamlined version of the classic setting. I wouldn't run that game, but I think it's a very important product that Wizards is lagging way behind in making. The SCAG is a tire fire and everybody knows it, it's not remotely sufficient. But frankly, Wizards could produce fifty sourcebooks of the size and quality of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and still not get through five percent of explaining fifty years of up-its-own-butt, hyper-convoluted, constantly self-contradicting and eternally rebotted Forgotten Realms lore. Any Forgotten Realms sourcebook would only piss off all the decades-old diehards, because it'd be to the Realms what Rising from the Last War was to Eberron - a brief overview of the most important points of the lore for modern players who just want to play a game of D&D. And y'all will never accept that.
So eating brains of people isn't wrong? Good to know that Hannibal lecter isnt evil to you
Why do you seem against expanding the lore to also include non-clutist Drow as it would fix things without changing the clutist Drow. You said they would be splinters but that wasn't in the post you replied to just that lore can be expanded. You made the comment about splinters. You seem to take the worst possible way to expand things instead of trying to find ways to make it work.
It seems you don't want the old lore to stay and want it gone instead of expanding the lore further even to the point of hyperbole and strawmans
Since we're editing posts after the fact...
Let me ask you this - are you really trying to expand "The Lore"? Because to me, and to many, many other people, the constant backlash, sniping, snarling, and resistance to literally ANYTHING that smacks of "maybe the world isn't quite as boringly, unrealistically black-and-white as it used to be" is not at all an 'expansion' of the lore so much as it is you trying to foist people off into some other, non-D&D game so you can keep your world where heroic pale-skinned humans go out and genocide the darkies People want the lore "expanded" so they can then ignore all the "expanded" lore and go right back to closing the door in the faces of the new people and complaining about all that expanded lore.
I am heartily sick of old lore being used as a club to drive new people away from the entire tabletop gaming hobby, yes. Somebody comes in and says "hey, I read this really cool book when I was younger about a dark elf guy fighting against his people...can I do something like that?", only for all the old-timers to beat him with sticks until he signs a waiver from his hospital bed swearing to never play D&D again because they're sick of drow not being evil...and all the old-timers are perfectly fine with that.
I would be delighted to see a proper Forgotten Realms sourcebook. A big, meaty, burly book with all the information a new DM needs to run a game for new players in a streamlined version of the classic setting. I wouldn't run that game, but I think it's a very important product that Wizards is lagging way behind in making. The SCAG is a tire fire and everybody knows it, it's not remotely sufficient. But frankly, Wizards could produce fifty sourcebooks of the size and quality of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and still not get through five percent of explaining fifty years of up-its-own-butt, hyper-convoluted, constantly self-contradicting and eternally rebotted Forgotten Realms lore. Any Forgotten Realms sourcebook would only piss off all the decades-old diehards, because it'd be to the Realms what Rising from the Last War was to Eberron - a brief overview of the most important points of the lore for modern players who just want to play a game of D&D. And y'all will never accept that.
So why bother?
I'm not an old time player, hell I just bought my first book in 2018, but seeing the lack of official resources to work with on where to start on my own world and lack of anything to actually run a game in the settings. Cause I always start planning out a campaign and get bogged down my logical questions I have about who, what, where, when, how
I don't like it that there are people who bludgeon others for wanting to try out a character, or story, or what have you. But I also don't think removing typically evil or typically good, etc will change that.
Edit: I'm gonna admit I'm not very creative at times and I will admit that those things being listed helps me with a starting point. Like mind flyers are evil, that gives me an idea of how I'm gonna integrate them into the story. It is never we are going to go here and kill them cause they are evil, but more did a thing and there is retaliation for the thing. But always give me an idea of how they are. They are intelligent but also share a hivemind. I've already created "good" Drow more based on the dunmer from elder scrolls but I didn't get rid of the classic Drow as an optional location to adventure in
Everyone clutching their pearls and wringing their hands saying "How will I make evil villains for my campaigns if the books don't explicitly tell me something is evil?!"
The answer is very simple - actions make evil, not heritage. The lion-in-the-wild thing is an idiotic example - no the lion's not bloody 'evil', but if it's eating farmers on the frontiers you put it down anyways to protect your own. If mind flayers are eating brains in your backyard and preparing to invade your realm, you go deal with that because even though the mind flayers don't consider themselves evil at all, you ain't gonna be having that brain buffet nonsense in your hometown because you like your brains where they are, thanks.
You don't need a book telling you "Mind flayers are evil" to make a campaign about mind flayers threatening your society. You don't need a book telling you "all drow are always terrible" to run a campaign where Menzoberranzen has uncovered ancient magical superweapons and is about to make that your problem. Hell, it'd make that game more interesting to have a sporadic influx of refugees from Menzoberranzen be what alerts the players to the problem in the first place - cast-offs and living detritus that escaped their fate as fuel for the weapon, begging sanctuary. Good way to lead into the campaign - have the players help resolve this sudden, bizarre influx of ragged, malnourished 'slaver elves' and figure out what the hell that's all about as a way for them to discover "wait, the priestesses of Lolth have uncovered what?! HOLY SHIT, we need to do something about that!" Hell, maybe one of the party's PCs is even one of those escapees. They used their talents to bring themselves and a heartbreakingly small handful of their friends and family out, and they're the only one both brave and powerful enough to risk going back and setting this to rights.
I'd totally be down to play that game, probably as the delf escapee. The whole "Oops, Menzoberranzen is doing the slavery thing again, y'all better go genocide you some dark people and bring back their loot"? Significantly less so, thanks.
It seems more like you, and people like you, don't want anyone to commit the thoughtcrime or imagine anyone as being inherently evil ever, and that this type of idea must be EXPUNGED from the game. It's black and white with you, there is no nuance.
D&D is not an analog for the real world. Never has been, and never should be. Orcs are not humans. It doesn't matter how intelligent they are, you are trying to anthropomorphize them.
We only have the intelligent species of earth to compare and understand, but in complete honest truth, we actually live in a real universe where life may (and probably does) exist on other planets. It is thus entirely possible that there could exist on another planet a species that is almost always larger than humans, or stronger than humans, or more intelligent than humans, much dumber that humans. There could even be a species so alien to how we are made that their brains are literally wired to commit acts we humans would judge as evil. That is a real potential thing.
The point we are trying to make to you is that while you might not like the moral ickyness of an entire species (except for outliers) being a particular way, it seems to be only because you equate the fantasy setting of D&D as analogous to the real world, and since you are afraid of such generalizations being made about humans in the real world, you are afraid of what people might think if they pretend those things in a pretend world. It's almost like you seem to be saying "There should be no X in D&D because we don't want X in real life, and if we allow it in D&D, then people will try to make it the same way in real life."
It has been the case for a long time in D&D that members of an evil race can be not evil. A very... long... time. NO ONE is saying that all drow should be slaughtered on site. No one.
Evil is not a real tangible thing in the real world, only subjective morality. Evil is a real thing in D&D. A real, actual, tangible thing.
"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?
So eating brains of people isn't wrong? Good to know that Hannibal lecter isnt evil to you
Why do you seem against expanding the lore to also include non-clutist Drow as it would fix things without changing the clutist Drow. You said they would be splinters but that wasn't in the post you replied to just that lore can be expanded. You made the comment about splinters. You seem to take the worst possible way to expand things instead of trying to find ways to make it work.
It seems you don't want the old lore to stay and want it gone instead of expanding the lore further even to the point of hyperbole and strawmans
Since we're editing posts after the fact...
Let me ask you this - are you really trying to expand "The Lore"? Because to me, and to many, many other people, the constant backlash, sniping, snarling, and resistance to literally ANYTHING that smacks of "maybe the world isn't quite as boringly, unrealistically black-and-white as it used to be" is not at all an 'expansion' of the lore so much as it is you trying to foist people off into some other, non-D&D game so you can keep your world where heroic pale-skinned humans go out and genocide the darkies People want the lore "expanded" so they can then ignore all the "expanded" lore and go right back to closing the door in the faces of the new people and complaining about all that expanded lore.
I am heartily sick of old lore being used as a club to drive new people away from the entire tabletop gaming hobby, yes. Somebody comes in and says "hey, I read this really cool book when I was younger about a dark elf guy fighting against his people...can I do something like that?", only for all the old-timers to beat him with sticks until he signs a waiver from his hospital bed swearing to never play D&D again because they're sick of drow not being evil...and all the old-timers are perfectly fine with that.
I would be delighted to see a proper Forgotten Realms sourcebook. A big, meaty, burly book with all the information a new DM needs to run a game for new players in a streamlined version of the classic setting. I wouldn't run that game, but I think it's a very important product that Wizards is lagging way behind in making. The SCAG is a tire fire and everybody knows it, it's not remotely sufficient. But frankly, Wizards could produce fifty sourcebooks of the size and quality of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and still not get through five percent of explaining fifty years of up-its-own-butt, hyper-convoluted, constantly self-contradicting and eternally rebotted Forgotten Realms lore. Any Forgotten Realms sourcebook would only piss off all the decades-old diehards, because it'd be to the Realms what Rising from the Last War was to Eberron - a brief overview of the most important points of the lore for modern players who just want to play a game of D&D. And y'all will never accept that.
So why bother?
I'm not an old time player, hell I just bought my first book in 2018, but seeing the lack of official resources to work with on where to start on my own world and lack of anything to actually run a game in the settings. Cause I always start planning out a campaign and get bogged down my logical questions I have about who, what, where, when, how
I don't like it that there are people who bludgeon others for wanting to try out a character, or story, or what have you. But I also don't think removing typically evil or typically good, etc will change that.
Are you looking for a more fleshed out Forgotten Realms setting or are you going more for monster lore? I can point you to a book or two for forgotten realms like a good source for Waterdeep is the 2E Volo's Guide to Waterdeep. It will teach you how you can build a fantasy city, flavor text, how to set up blocks for encounters from Ed Greenwood himself. You get ratings right out Michelin for areas, its a fantastical good reference book for DM's and its something that WotC simply lacks the ability to put out now (just look at their Swordcoast guide). If you want to get monster lore, good resources are AJ Picket, Jorphan or MrRhexx. You can use them to get older edition lore and books for monsters that actually make sense, compared to what WotC are trying to retcon as lore. A good one for Aberrations is 3E Lords of Madness. You'll start to notice that a lot of what 5E has put out lore wise, is most of the older content but reduced a bit, you'll get more stuff older editions and it will tend to be more coherent.
Evil is a "tangible, real thing" in the Forgotten Realms.
It's no such thing in Eberron.
It's not really any such thing in Wildemount.
It's not any such thinbg in Theros or Ravnica or Strixhaven, where Color Warz dominates over Battles of Good and Evil.
Why should the core books describe things as they work in the Forgotten Realms, when that's the only realm of the ever-increasing number of D&D settings where things work that way?
That's the real question. Not all this "you're a terrible person for not liking A.C.E.F. species in D&D" buggery.
Why should the core books describe things as they work in the Forgotten Realms, when that's the only realm of the ever-increasing number of D&D settings where things work that way?
Cause alignment is a mechanic of the system? I know it is rude to answer a question with another question and I hope it didn't come off as rude.
Evil is a "tangible, real thing" in the Forgotten Realms.
It's no such thing in Eberron.
It's not really any such thing in Wildemount.
It's not any such thinbg in Theros or Ravnica or Strixhaven, where Color Warz dominates over Battles of Good and Evil.
Why should the core books describe things as they work in the Forgotten Realms, when that's the only realm of the ever-increasing number of D&D settings where things work that way?
That's the real question. Not all this "you're a terrible person for not liking A.C.E.F. species in D&D" buggery.
Eberron has the Dark Six, and while the chart there does not specify alignment, include a god of Death & Greed, and a god of Betrayal & Bloodshed.
These campaign worlds also use the same alignment system from the PHB, which means that Evil is a real, tangible thing in those campaign worlds.
You are just factually wrong.
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"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?
My issue with the interwebs answer is it is either promoting copy right infringement(breaking the law) or using homebrew
It isn't. Pretty much if it's not creating illegal digital copies or another outright copy/paste type deal, it doesn't infringe on copyright protection. Plenty of perfectly legitimate wikis out there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Why should the core books describe things as they work in the Forgotten Realms, when that's the only realm of the ever-increasing number of D&D settings where things work that way?
Cause alignment is a mechanic of the system? I know it is rude to answer a question with another question and I hope it didn't come off as rude.
Outside of one or two magic items, alignment has practically no mechanical influence on gameplay. There are no class features or spells which are dependent on the player or target having a particular alignment.
To call the Alignment chart a mechanic of the system is generous, imo. Removing it from a stat block will have a negligible effect on gameplay. The DM will just decide what they want that instance of the creature to be based on how it fits into their narrative. What the exact alignment is probably wont ever be revealed to the player.
Magic is a mechanic of the system, but Chronurgy is strictly speaking non-existent outside Exandria. System fundamentals don't have to be identical in how they show up in various settings. Those are distinct instances.
Eberron has the Dark Six, and while the chart there does not specify alignment, include a god of Death & Greed, and a god of Betrayal & Bloodshed.
These campaign worlds also use the same alignment system from the PHB, which means that Evil is a real, tangible thing in those campaign worlds.
You are just factually wrong.
The alignment system existing doesn't make Evil a tangible thing. Just because characters get placed on a Good - Evil axis doesn't mean there's some absolute cosmic force Evil present in the setting as well. Stepping up from mortals' alignments to gods' alignments doesn't change that either. An evil god isn't the same as a cosmic Evil.
So eating brains of people isn't wrong? Good to know that Hannibal lecter isnt evil to you
Why do you seem against expanding the lore to also include non-clutist Drow as it would fix things without changing the clutist Drow. You said they would be splinters but that wasn't in the post you replied to just that lore can be expanded. You made the comment about splinters. You seem to take the worst possible way to expand things instead of trying to find ways to make it work.
It seems you don't want the old lore to stay and want it gone instead of expanding the lore further even to the point of hyperbole and strawmans
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
Well it is obvious that without those words you would have no way of knowing that Mindflayers eat brains and are likely to assume that they eat carrots. /s
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Can I put this in perspective a bit? First, the actual content changed or removed is minimal. In this day and age you can pull up the collected info on any setting in a browser window in a matter of seconds. I too would like more content in an actual book in my own two hands, but this (re-)moved content amounts to a drop in the proverbial bucket - it's wouldn't solve anything decribed as "a lot". If that's your main concern, just take it to the interwebs and grab whatever you want from wikis or fan pages or even from someone else's cool homebrew. Second, if WotC were to move this removed content to the relevant setting books, this would affect just one of them: the Realms book. Which we have exactly one of so far and, to loop back to my first comment, that one doesn't even cover one percent of the info on the FR that's been released over a handful of editions. I can't see how this move instead of remove alternative would in any way help you out with your complaint.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The problem with comparing "monsters" such as orcs, goblins, drow etc... to RL animals who can't change their natural impulses is that in the DnD world, Orcs, goblins, Drow etc... have HUMAN levels of intelligence. In the dnd world they are a PEOPLE. You can't make a comparison like that to real life because we don't HAVE another fully sentient species on our planet. There's no frame of reference. What we DO have in our world is other peoples. We attribute human qualities to them such as behavioral diversity because of their human levels of thought.
If you want to homebrew these species as animalistic and possessing uncontrollable instincts that's fine! thats the whole point of a homebrew world, to make your own lore.
But as long as their statblock indicates human levels of intelligence, I'm going to design them with every bit of complexity as I would any other person.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand point missed, twice over.
Everyone clutching their pearls and wringing their hands saying "How will I make evil villains for my campaigns if the books don't explicitly tell me something is evil?!"
The answer is very simple - actions make evil, not heritage. The lion-in-the-wild thing is an idiotic example - no the lion's not bloody 'evil', but if it's eating farmers on the frontiers you put it down anyways to protect your own. If mind flayers are eating brains in your backyard and preparing to invade your realm, you go deal with that because even though the mind flayers don't consider themselves evil at all, you ain't gonna be having that brain buffet nonsense in your hometown because you like your brains where they are, thanks.
You don't need a book telling you "Mind flayers are evil" to make a campaign about mind flayers threatening your society. You don't need a book telling you "all drow are always terrible" to run a campaign where Menzoberranzen has uncovered ancient magical superweapons and is about to make that your problem. Hell, it'd make that game more interesting to have a sporadic influx of refugees from Menzoberranzen be what alerts the players to the problem in the first place - cast-offs and living detritus that escaped their fate as fuel for the weapon, begging sanctuary. Good way to lead into the campaign - have the players help resolve this sudden, bizarre influx of ragged, malnourished 'slaver elves' and figure out what the hell that's all about as a way for them to discover "wait, the priestesses of Lolth have uncovered what?! HOLY SHIT, we need to do something about that!" Hell, maybe one of the party's PCs is even one of those escapees. They used their talents to bring themselves and a heartbreakingly small handful of their friends and family out, and they're the only one both brave and powerful enough to risk going back and setting this to rights.
I'd totally be down to play that game, probably as the delf escapee. The whole "Oops, Menzoberranzen is doing the slavery thing again, y'all better go genocide you some dark people and bring back their loot"? Significantly less so, thanks.
Please do not contact or message me.
Eating brains is wrong, but if you only know they're eating brains in a theoretical "this book by this hopefully trustworthy author says so" it's a pretty big step to fire up the old crusade machine. It's unfortunate for the poor souls who end up like this, but if these mindflayers are only snacking on the cerebrum of the rare dumb humanoid trespassing on their lawn that's not that much different from any other race that defends their turf with prejudice and typically the other civilizations don't declare war on those for doing that either. If squidheads start sending raiding parties for to bring back takeout, that's something else - because it's not some theoretical evil happening in another back yard than ours anyway.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
There's about 2000 monsters described in 5E books, even if you take out all the unique ones and the non-monstrous ones. In contrast there are only about 50 playable races, with more than half having been a playable race from the start, rather than a non-playable monster race that got moved to the PC pool. These people you speak of have a long way to go.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I still haven't found anything removing the old lore. What has been removed?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
All that's been changed is some race's lore has been changed from "ARE evil" to "CAN be evil" and removal of "suggested" alignments to make room for more diverse characters.
My issue with the interwebs answer is it is either promoting copy right infringement(breaking the law) or using homebrew
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
Since we're editing posts after the fact...
Let me ask you this - are you really trying to expand "The Lore"? Because to me, and to many, many other people, the constant backlash, sniping, snarling, and resistance to literally ANYTHING that smacks of "maybe the world isn't quite as boringly, unrealistically black-and-white as it used to be" is not at all an 'expansion' of the lore so much as it is you trying to foist people off into some other, non-D&D game so you can keep your world where heroic pale-skinned humans go out and genocide the darkies People want the lore "expanded" so they can then ignore all the "expanded" lore and go right back to closing the door in the faces of the new people and complaining about all that expanded lore.
I am heartily sick of old lore being used as a club to drive new people away from the entire tabletop gaming hobby, yes. Somebody comes in and says "hey, I read this really cool book when I was younger about a dark elf guy fighting against his people...can I do something like that?", only for all the old-timers to beat him with sticks until he signs a waiver from his hospital bed swearing to never play D&D again because they're sick of drow not being evil...and all the old-timers are perfectly fine with that.
I would be delighted to see a proper Forgotten Realms sourcebook. A big, meaty, burly book with all the information a new DM needs to run a game for new players in a streamlined version of the classic setting. I wouldn't run that game, but I think it's a very important product that Wizards is lagging way behind in making. The SCAG is a tire fire and everybody knows it, it's not remotely sufficient. But frankly, Wizards could produce fifty sourcebooks of the size and quality of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and still not get through five percent of explaining fifty years of up-its-own-butt, hyper-convoluted, constantly self-contradicting and eternally rebotted Forgotten Realms lore. Any Forgotten Realms sourcebook would only piss off all the decades-old diehards, because it'd be to the Realms what Rising from the Last War was to Eberron - a brief overview of the most important points of the lore for modern players who just want to play a game of D&D. And y'all will never accept that.
So why bother?
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm not an old time player, hell I just bought my first book in 2018, but seeing the lack of official resources to work with on where to start on my own world and lack of anything to actually run a game in the settings. Cause I always start planning out a campaign and get bogged down my logical questions I have about who, what, where, when, how
I don't like it that there are people who bludgeon others for wanting to try out a character, or story, or what have you. But I also don't think removing typically evil or typically good, etc will change that.
Edit: I'm gonna admit I'm not very creative at times and I will admit that those things being listed helps me with a starting point. Like mind flyers are evil, that gives me an idea of how I'm gonna integrate them into the story. It is never we are going to go here and kill them cause they are evil, but more did a thing and there is retaliation for the thing. But always give me an idea of how they are. They are intelligent but also share a hivemind. I've already created "good" Drow more based on the dunmer from elder scrolls but I didn't get rid of the classic Drow as an optional location to adventure in
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
It seems more like you, and people like you, don't want anyone to commit the thoughtcrime or imagine anyone as being inherently evil ever, and that this type of idea must be EXPUNGED from the game. It's black and white with you, there is no nuance.
D&D is not an analog for the real world. Never has been, and never should be. Orcs are not humans. It doesn't matter how intelligent they are, you are trying to anthropomorphize them.
We only have the intelligent species of earth to compare and understand, but in complete honest truth, we actually live in a real universe where life may (and probably does) exist on other planets. It is thus entirely possible that there could exist on another planet a species that is almost always larger than humans, or stronger than humans, or more intelligent than humans, much dumber that humans. There could even be a species so alien to how we are made that their brains are literally wired to commit acts we humans would judge as evil. That is a real potential thing.
The point we are trying to make to you is that while you might not like the moral ickyness of an entire species (except for outliers) being a particular way, it seems to be only because you equate the fantasy setting of D&D as analogous to the real world, and since you are afraid of such generalizations being made about humans in the real world, you are afraid of what people might think if they pretend those things in a pretend world. It's almost like you seem to be saying "There should be no X in D&D because we don't want X in real life, and if we allow it in D&D, then people will try to make it the same way in real life."
It has been the case for a long time in D&D that members of an evil race can be not evil. A very... long... time. NO ONE is saying that all drow should be slaughtered on site. No one.
Evil is not a real tangible thing in the real world, only subjective morality. Evil is a real thing in D&D. A real, actual, tangible thing.
"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?
Are you looking for a more fleshed out Forgotten Realms setting or are you going more for monster lore? I can point you to a book or two for forgotten realms like a good source for Waterdeep is the 2E Volo's Guide to Waterdeep. It will teach you how you can build a fantasy city, flavor text, how to set up blocks for encounters from Ed Greenwood himself. You get ratings right out Michelin for areas, its a fantastical good reference book for DM's and its something that WotC simply lacks the ability to put out now (just look at their Swordcoast guide). If you want to get monster lore, good resources are AJ Picket, Jorphan or MrRhexx. You can use them to get older edition lore and books for monsters that actually make sense, compared to what WotC are trying to retcon as lore. A good one for Aberrations is 3E Lords of Madness. You'll start to notice that a lot of what 5E has put out lore wise, is most of the older content but reduced a bit, you'll get more stuff older editions and it will tend to be more coherent.
Evil is a "tangible, real thing" in the Forgotten Realms.
It's no such thing in Eberron.
It's not really any such thing in Wildemount.
It's not any such thinbg in Theros or Ravnica or Strixhaven, where Color Warz dominates over Battles of Good and Evil.
Why should the core books describe things as they work in the Forgotten Realms, when that's the only realm of the ever-increasing number of D&D settings where things work that way?
That's the real question. Not all this "you're a terrible person for not liking A.C.E.F. species in D&D" buggery.
Please do not contact or message me.
Cause alignment is a mechanic of the system? I know it is rude to answer a question with another question and I hope it didn't come off as rude.
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
From EGtW page 27, list of EVIL gods. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/egtw/story-of-wildemount#BetrayerGods Every single one of them is Capital-E Evil. Their alignments are specified in the chart.
Eberron has the Dark Six, and while the chart there does not specify alignment, include a god of Death & Greed, and a god of Betrayal & Bloodshed.
These campaign worlds also use the same alignment system from the PHB, which means that Evil is a real, tangible thing in those campaign worlds.
You are just factually wrong.
"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?
It isn't. Pretty much if it's not creating illegal digital copies or another outright copy/paste type deal, it doesn't infringe on copyright protection. Plenty of perfectly legitimate wikis out there.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Outside of one or two magic items, alignment has practically no mechanical influence on gameplay. There are no class features or spells which are dependent on the player or target having a particular alignment.
To call the Alignment chart a mechanic of the system is generous, imo. Removing it from a stat block will have a negligible effect on gameplay. The DM will just decide what they want that instance of the creature to be based on how it fits into their narrative. What the exact alignment is probably wont ever be revealed to the player.
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Magic is a mechanic of the system, but Chronurgy is strictly speaking non-existent outside Exandria. System fundamentals don't have to be identical in how they show up in various settings. Those are distinct instances.
The alignment system existing doesn't make Evil a tangible thing. Just because characters get placed on a Good - Evil axis doesn't mean there's some absolute cosmic force Evil present in the setting as well. Stepping up from mortals' alignments to gods' alignments doesn't change that either. An evil god isn't the same as a cosmic Evil.
https://the-dragons-neck.fandom.com/wiki/Good_&_Evil_in_Faerun_(Alignments) describes how Good and Evil are intrinsic forces in the Realms. That's simply not the case in Exandria or Eberron.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].