Does anything in the erratta actually active preclude playing 'always evil orcs' anyway? My understanding was it was just removing that as the default and not inserting a new default setting to replace it. Unless I'm misunderstanding it shouldn't really hurt anyone's interpretation of orcs.
My understanding is no, there's nothing overwriting it. The problem for me is that I'm new to D&D and so I'm not used to the different monsters. I went away, no access to the Internet etc, and played a session with no prep. We got into a room and was attacked by several star spawn manglers. What are they? No freaking idea. There wasn't a picture to go with the stat block, couldn't look it up. That was an awkward session, me trying to identify what these creatures looked like when all I had was a stat block.
WotC is terrible for helping new DMs. This discussion bas been had several times on this board, but this is an area where WotC doesn't help. I've got a lot of stat blocks and not a lot of information on how to make those creatures come alive. I pay a lot of money to WotC to take that load off of me so I can focus more on the story. Removing the alignment isn't much, but it's removing a data point that helps me put together thise world. It's very easy to ignore it. My current character is a Drow Paladin that isn't evil. It's easy for me to say that it's different to what WotC prints, especially if they make that clear in their texts. What's more difficult is to put in what was never there to begin with. Drow are completely new to me, the nearest I've come across was the Dunmer. That means that while prepping my sessions, I've got to create a whole culture and flavour for them - and knowing that they were, as a rule.of thumb, evil was helpful for that. If I didn't have that hook to help me? Well, that's just yet more work for me. Which means less work developing unique and interesting characters. If I didn't like what WotC said about the Drow? No problem, I can ignore it or just draw inspiration or from it. I'm no worse off for them having said it.
I'm fine with them scrapping the alignment system (I think it's seriously flawed anyway), but it really needs to be replaced with something to help DMs, particularly new ones, to understand the various creatures better and make a vibrant and diverse world. Please, no more "and the, um, creature, moves across the room and moves it's head...I'm assuming it has a head...to look at you with it's...I'm going to say it has beady eyes..." It's fine for the experienced guys who have a strong foundation in the lore to have the descriptive stuff removed and claim it'sremoving the restrictions, but for us newer people? We need all the data points that we can get.
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Does anything in the erratta actually active preclude playing 'always evil orcs' anyway? My understanding was it was just removing that as the default and not inserting a new default setting to replace it. Unless I'm misunderstanding it shouldn't really hurt anyone's interpretation of orcs.
My understanding is no, there's nothing overwriting it. The problem for me is that I'm new to D&D and so I'm not used to the different monsters. I went away, no access to the Internet etc, and played a session with no prep. We got into a room and was attacked by several star spawn manglers. What are they? No freaking idea. There wasn't a picture to go with the stat block, couldn't look it up. That was an awkward session, me trying to identify what these creatures looked like when all I had was a stat block.
WotC is terrible for helping new DMs. This discussion bas been had several times on this board, but this is an area where WotC doesn't help. I've got a lot of stat blocks and not a lot of information on how to make those creatures come alive. I pay a lot of money to WotC to take that load off of me so I can focus more on the story. Removing the alignment isn't much, but it's removing a data point that helps me put together thise world. It's very easy to ignore it. My current character is a Drow Paladin that isn't evil. It's easy for me to say that it's different to what WotC prints, especially if they make that clear in their texts. What's more difficult is to put in what was never there to begin with. Drow are completely new to me, the nearest I've come across was the Dunmer. That means that while prepping my sessions, I've got to create a whole culture and flavour for them - and knowing that they were, as a rule.of thumb, evil was helpful for that. If I didn't have that hook to help me? Well, that's just yet more work for me. Which means less work developing unique and interesting characters. If I didn't like what WotC said about the Drow? No problem, I can ignore it or just draw inspiration or from it. I'm no worse off for them having said it.
I'm fine with them scrapping the alignment system (I think it's seriously flawed anyway), but it really needs to be replaced with something to help DMs, particularly new ones, to understand the various creatures better and make a vibrant and diverse world. Please, no more "and the, um, creature, moves across the room and moves it's head...I'm assuming it has a head...to look at you with it's...I'm going to say it has beady eyes..." It's fine for the experienced guys who have a strong foundation in the lore to have the descriptive stuff removed and claim it'sremoving the restrictions, but for us newer people? We need all the data points that we can get.
While I agree that 5e could do more to help DMs, this Errata didn't remove art or really anything that "Helped DMs". The descriptive text and lore for creatures is still readily available, especially for Drow. If you are having a hard time finding information on Drow society (and from multiple worlds), you are not looking very hard.
1.) Absolutely nothing you're arguing is remotely new. This exact same argument - almost word for word, in some cases - was had back in the prerelease cycle to Tasha's Cauldron, when half a dozen significant forum jerkwaffles (who were, admittedly, drastically less civil than you are, so kudos there) spent months turning every thread in DDB into a diatribe about how Evil races were evil and how the game would be ruined forever with all the new changes coming in and around Tasha's. The whole "evil is a cosmic force" thing? Covered, extensively. The whole "evil species are the creations of evil gods" thing? Gone over ad nauseum. The "how will I create menacing villains for my campaign?" question? Asked to the point of madness. I haven't seen a single word in this thread that wasn't said a hundred times or more back in the ol' firestorms of the Tasha's release. We've had Tasha's Cauldron for a year and a half or so now, and the game ain't exploded yet.
2.) Absolutely nothing is stopping you from backhacking all this A.C.E.F. lore back into your games. Hell, Wizards didn't take it out of your games in the first place. They took it out of the books, but "the books" only define your game until you do. Once you've gotten into playing, gotten into building up the story of your table, the world they exist in? The books take a decided backseat. As was said earlier - people were all perfectly fine with saying "if you don't want orcs to be A.C.E.F. in your game, then you make that change! Nothing's stopping you!" prior to Wizards' about-face on racist undertones in the game. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, "nothing's stopping you from making that change" is no longer acceptable as a response? Seems double-standardy and unpleasant.
I do understand that people are going to be feeling some kind of way about having to do work they didn't previously have to do, but I'd point out that in the end it'll be better for you. People who've had to hack and tweak and change and adjust D&D forever because the core rules say "you're not allowed to play the way you want to play" have generally gotten better at playing and running the game due to having to invest harder and work harder to get it to allow us to play. Once you get used to stretching your creator's muscles a bit, you'll be in a better place to both play and run games.
Thank you. Yeah, I found anothe rthread earlier today talking about this stuff. It was page 16. I came in at the end this time instead of starting from the top.
Well, villains can be lawful evil, neutral evil, and perhaps even chaotic neutral too, they don't all need to be CE, though I do find myself using smarter villains for LE making them the bosses vs. CE henchmen. Yeah, this stuff wont really interfere with me as a DM per se - recruitment and retention notwithstanding; but it can as a player. Never mind my needing to find a DM who would like the formerly typical 'Medieval Europe setting with a veneer of fantasy draped over it, but still relatively realistic (to it's time too socially speaking) that is both perhaps low magic but still slightly higher than standard CR (I like 32 point buy instead of 27). The real issue though is if I'm looking to play in an officially sponsored living campaign. I thought 5e did have one of those that was like RPGA: Living Greyhawk from 3e? Those adhere to the RAW. WotC is making their official world IMHO, not as much fun as it usd to be / a less appealing a place for me to want to belong to.
It's not just this latest erratta either, it's been like this since the beginning. Even Faerun has never been by favorite world, but WotC kept emphasizing it over others, Greyhawk included.
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You seem to be ignoring the many, many times people have pointed out that their evil does not necessarily come from an extraplanar source. Or for that matter, the many, many examples you've been given where they are not evil, and that's just in the FR and other published settings. Different worlds with different lore and different creation myths will inevitably lead to different kinds of orcs. And don't even get me started on homebrew worlds and how they just ignore that the FR even exists, let alone who made what race on Toril.
The point of this errata, or at least one of the points, is to make the creatures setting agnostic. Orcs, and all other creatures, will not be assumed to be the same in every world. Instead, they will behave in a way appropriate to the lore of a given world, as shaped by the DM of a given campaign. WotC is removing the idea that any creature will act in any specific way, and is leaving it up to individual creators, be they creators of settings or individual DMs, how those orcs behave in any given world. That's all that's happening. They are giving people license to let creatures act in whatever way best serves any particular campaign world.
You want every orc in your world to be irredeemably evil, and basically there to act as bags of XP for low- to mid-level PCs. Just black hats and white hats, and it's all very simple. Great. Do that. If other people want their orcs to be nuanced and want PCs to have to think about whether or not any particular orc needs killing. They can do that. You might argue, well, the pro-nuance people could always have done that, but that argument cuts both ways -- you can still make evil orcs.
Honestly, I sometimes think the whole issue boils down to how its changing who needs to do the work. Under the old way, orcs or drow were only good for killing. That was the default, with a handful of exceptions. So, if people wanted nuanced orcs, they were the ones who needed to make the change to the "official canon" and explain it to their players and make sure people understand. Now that's flipped and the default is that the orc you see might actually be a bad person or might be a good person and maybe you should ask questions before you start stabbing. So now people who only want orcs that are only good for killing will be the ones who need to explain to their table that in their world, orcs are "Capitol E" Evil, and its fair game to slaughter any one you see, all the way down to the babies.
At its core, that's the big change. Both options have always been available to everyone, just now it's making a different group of players do the tiniest little bit of extra work to implement their vision.
I'm only talking about FR and similar published settings. I don't mind what the entire multiverse may be getting up to, just those areas where I and mine are likely to be a part of, and when I/we are likely to be a part of them. I know. I disagree with that point. I don't believe all these creatuires should be agnostic. I believe they should remain in the roles for which they were origonally designed. Yes, I agree. I'm basically a bit sour cause I'm up to my elbows in homebrew revisons right now.
But even on Toril, the world were the FR campaign plays out you have examples of how Gruumsh power is not absolute or even acknowledged. To point it out again as you are ignoring it, you had a whole campaign setting called Zakhara, https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Zakhara were you had Orcs living together with other humanoids living peaceful lives and not worshipping Old One Eye. They would have found it insulting to be even remotely associated with him. This is a campaign setting dates from 1992 2nd edition AD&D you could take a boat (or other transportation device) and travel from the Dalelands to the Land of Fate setting. Same World, same Orcs. The behaviour and worldview of various species has never been so set into stone as much as people seem to think. And you're not even forced to do so if you want to keep the stereotypical old alignment system.
I'll take a look at it. Greyhawk was my very first campaign I ever played in. I came in in with 3e. I missed the 90's unfortunately as far as gaming was concerned.
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I'll take a look at it. Greyhawk was my very first campaign I ever played in. I came in in with 3e. I missed the 90's unfortunately as far as gaming was concerned.
Mine was Greyhawk as well, followed closely by Ravenloft. First time I was the DM for dnd was in the Greyhawk setting around From the Ashes. Before that I played a German rpg.
nods, me too, Ravenloft and Kalimar were the two next ones. My first time DMing was a run through of the Ashardalon Campaign, the one that opened with the Sunless Citadel and ended with Bastian of Broken Souls. After that I picked up Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I never really got a campaign going around it though; might try again soon.
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1.) Absolutely nothing you're arguing is remotely new. This exact same argument - almost word for word, in some cases - was had back in the prerelease cycle to Tasha's Cauldron, when half a dozen significant forum jerkwaffles (who were, admittedly, drastically less civil than you are, so kudos there) spent months turning every thread in DDB into a diatribe about how Evil races were evil and how the game would be ruined forever with all the new changes coming in and around Tasha's. The whole "evil is a cosmic force" thing? Covered, extensively. The whole "evil species are the creations of evil gods" thing? Gone over ad nauseum. The "how will I create menacing villains for my campaign?" question? Asked to the point of madness. I haven't seen a single word in this thread that wasn't said a hundred times or more back in the ol' firestorms of the Tasha's release. We've had Tasha's Cauldron for a year and a half or so now, and the game ain't exploded yet.
2.) Absolutely nothing is stopping you from backhacking all this A.C.E.F. lore back into your games. Hell, Wizards didn't take it out of your games in the first place. They took it out of the books, but "the books" only define your game until you do. Once you've gotten into playing, gotten into building up the story of your table, the world they exist in? The books take a decided backseat. As was said earlier - people were all perfectly fine with saying "if you don't want orcs to be A.C.E.F. in your game, then you make that change! Nothing's stopping you!" prior to Wizards' about-face on racist undertones in the game. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, "nothing's stopping you from making that change" is no longer acceptable as a response? Seems double-standardy and unpleasant.
I do understand that people are going to be feeling some kind of way about having to do work they didn't previously have to do, but I'd point out that in the end it'll be better for you. People who've had to hack and tweak and change and adjust D&D forever because the core rules say "you're not allowed to play the way you want to play" have generally gotten better at playing and running the game due to having to invest harder and work harder to get it to allow us to play. Once you get used to stretching your creator's muscles a bit, you'll be in a better place to both play and run games.
Thank you. Yeah, I found anothe rthread earlier today talking about this stuff. It was page 16. I came in at the end this time instead of starting from the top.
Well, villains can be lawful evil, neutral evil, and perhaps even chaotic neutral too, they don't all need to be CE, though I do find myself using smarter villains for LE making them the bosses vs. CE henchmen. Yeah, this stuff wont really interfere with me as a DM per se - recruitment and retention notwithstanding; but it can as a player. Never mind my needing to find a DM who would like the formerly typical 'Medieval Europe setting with a veneer of fantasy draped over it, but still relatively realistic (to it's time too socially speaking) that is both perhaps low magic but still slightly higher than standard CR (I like 32 point buy instead of 27). The real issue though is if I'm looking to play in an officially sponsored living campaign. I thought 5e did have one of those that was like RPGA: Living Greyhawk from 3e? Those adhere to the RAW. WotC is making their official world IMHO, not as much fun as it usd to be / a less appealing a place for me to want to belong to.
It's not just this latest erratta either, it's been like this since the beginning. Even Faerun has never been by favorite world, but WotC kept emphasizing it over others, Greyhawk included.
There’s nothing quite like living greyhawk, anymore. That was a global effort with a single unified story line and, well it was a really cool concept, unclear how well it was in execution.
There is Adventurers League. Which is more like DMs running through published adventures (I think, maybe there’s some homebrew AL out there?), and they have pretty strict rules about how you can make a character. The idea being the character is then easily portable from one table to another.
Thank you. Yeah, I found another thread earlier today talking about this stuff. It was page 16. I came in at the end this time instead of starting from the top.
Well, villains can be lawful evil, neutral evil, and perhaps even chaotic neutral too, they don't all need to be CE, though I do find myself using smarter villains for LE making them the bosses vs. CE henchmen. Yeah, this stuff wont really interfere with me as a DM per se - recruitment and retention notwithstanding; but it can as a player. Never mind my needing to find a DM who would like the formerly typical 'Medieval Europe setting with a veneer of fantasy draped over it, but still relatively realistic (to it's time too socially speaking) that is both perhaps low magic but still slightly higher than standard CR (I like 32 point buy instead of 27). The real issue though is if I'm looking to play in an officially sponsored living campaign. I thought 5e did have one of those that was like RPGA: Living Greyhawk from 3e? Those adhere to the RAW. WotC is making their official world IMHO, not as much fun as it usd to be / a less appealing a place for me to want to belong to.
It's not just this latest erratta either, it's been like this since the beginning. Even Faerun has never been by favorite world, but WotC kept emphasizing it over others, Greyhawk included.
Okay, here's something that's going to blow your mind: I don't use alignment in my campaigns. I don't use it in my Eberron Campaign, I don't use it in my Rime of the Frostmaiden Campaign, I didn't use it in my Spelljammer Campaign, and I don't use it in any of the campaigns that I have/had in my homebrew world. Not only that, but I still have villains. Not just Antagonists, Antagonists are just people that actively opposes the PCs (which I do have plenty of, more than I have villains), but Villains (which are just Evil Antagonists).
Now, how can I have Villains (who are defined as Evil Antagonists) if I don't use Alignment (which includes the 3 Evil Alignments) in my campaigns? Like, if I don't just say they're evil, how do my players know whether or not they are evil.
I don't label them as evil and then let the players kill them based off of their alignment. Instead, I let their actions speak for them. If that Angel is in charge of a cult that worships himself, he radicalizes and brainwashes the people that he rules over in a Theocracy, and he imprisons/murders anyone that speaks up against him? He's evil, and probably a Villain. I don't need to label which type of Alignment he is, because it genuinely doesn't matter. In his eyes, he's probably Lawful Good. In the eyes of an outsider, he's probably Lawful Evil or Neutral Evil. It sincerely doesn't matter to narrow it down, because that doesn't effect the game. What effects the game is his role in it. If the players want to free the village that he rules over from his tyranny, he becomes an Antagonist. If he uses evil tactics to try and beat the PCs, he's a Villain. If they choose to allow him to rule and possibly enter into a mutually beneficial relationship with them, he's an Ally.
His specific answer in a personality test that is a 3x3-grid doesn't matter, because only his role affects the campaign. Unlike many people that use alignment, his role isn't predetermined by the DM because of some arbitrary distinction in overly-simplistic morality. Just because he's "Lawful Evil" or "Neutral Evil" doesn't mean that he's automatically a Villain or Kill-On-Sight NPC. How he affects the party and the story in the campaign is what matters. Whether or not he gets in the way of the players (or vice-versa) is what matters. Not Alignment, not the fact that he's probably a Fallen Angel, and definitely not the fact that I put a two-letter description on his stat block to justify the PCs murderizing him the first instant he appears in the campaign.
Hell, you can even have Villains that are probably of a good alignment. High Cardinal Krozen from the Church of the Silver Flame in Eberron is a great example. Sure, he's an extremist that regularly commits war-crimes, but he's a well-intentioned extremist. Sure, he's a power-hungry narcissist that would likely overthrow Jaela Daran if the opportunity presented itself, but he also would do it knowing that it would probably be for the good of the Church, Thrane, and all of Eberron if it wasn't being led by an impulsive 11 year old and was instead being led by an experienced, intelligent, pragmatic individual such as himself. Yes, he's probably being manipulated by the Shadow in the Flame (and he even knows that this is likely), but that won't compromise his agenda that legitimately would be good for the rest of Khorvaire.
If the party somehow pisses him off somehow and he becomes an antagonist of the campaign, he'll still be doing good things. He'll kill anyone that consorted with the Lords of Dust/Cults of the Dragon Below, even if they had no choice in the matter, and it would be a good thing. He'll do evil things (murder innocent people), which will make him explicitly a Villain, but it will be for a very good/righteous purpose (keeping the Demon Overlords and Daelkyr imprisoned in Khyber). "For the Greater Good" is practically his motto, and he's probably even right the vast majority of the time.
What's his alignment, though? Umm . . . maybe lawful evil? He does evil things, is very rigid about following rules, and is extremely self-centered. But he also does the evil things for a good purpose, would probably betray the only person of higher-rank than him if he thought that it would benefit the world, and is self-aware about how narcissistic he is to the point that he often doubts himself (even if he doesn't let it show). So . . . Neutral Good? Chaotic Good? True Neutral? Lawful Neutral? Chaotic Neutral?
I don't think there's really an answer. Alignment is overly-simplistic anyways, and High Cardinal Krozen is a very complicated person. He's very detailed, has been stated that he could be an ally or villain depending on the campaign by Keith Baker himself (the guy who created the setting), and has multiple different motivations for everything he does. He's a complex, well-detailed person, and given that Alignment is the exact opposite both of those things, he doesn't really fit all that well into any single alignment. He's good, until he does evil, he's lawful, until he thinks that it would be good for him to not be, and he's narcissistic and nationalistic, but clearly has inner-complexities that conflict with these parts of his personality.
You can have Villains and Antagonists without using Alignment, you can have satisfying campaigns with just Antagonists, and Alignment isn't the end-all, be-all of D&D or playing it successfully. You can have NPCs like Krozen in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and any other world, you just have to accept that Alignment (if you use it) is a guideline and not an actual rule, and whether or not you use it, you can still have mindless mooks that the players can kill with no moral repercussions if that's your kind of thing (Everybody Loves Zombies, after all).
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From the way I'd do it, His reasons are irrelivant. He would indeed count as lawful evil, regdless of his road to hell having been paved with best of intentions, and even ragrless of the outcomes of his actions really leading to a better world. 3e alignment rules indeed had that clarification, for paladins in particular; that doing evil for goodness's sake is still evil anyway, and still a violation - The genuinely 'good' must do good, even when it is stupid and impractical.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing that it's stupid and impractical. I'm just saying: Even so; and that it is part of the flavor.
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From the way I'd do it, His reasons are irrelivant. He would indeed count as lawful evil, regdless of his road to hell having been paved with best of intentions, and even ragrless of the outcomes of his actions really leading to a better world. 3e alignment rules indeed had that clarification, for paladins in particular; that doing evil for goodness's sake is still evil anyway, and still a violation - The genuinely 'good' must do good, even when it is stupid and impractical.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing that it's stupid and impractical. I'm just saying: Even so; and that it is part of the flavor.
Philosophers have been debating morality and what "good" and "evil" actually mean for thousands of years. D&D and randos on the internet like you and me are not going to solve those questions that minds brighter than either of ours have failed to answer.
Label him any alignment you want, but it's arbitrary and won't influence his role in any campaign that he's properly implemented in. If used as written, he could be anything from a patron/close ally of the party to its fiercest enemy.
My point was that alignment isn't necessary to determine villains or allies in campaigns. You can have Lawful Good Villains that still do bad things, and you can have Chaotic Evil NPCs that are still allies or even actively beneficial to the world. Heck, the whole point of the Blood War from a meta standpoint is to have a "necessary evil to protect the world" in the forms of the Devils (and, arguably, the Demons fill the same roll to protect the world from the Devils).
You don't need alignment. It's not necessary. Even if you have it, that doesn't mean that it will or even should fill any sort of roll in the campaign or story. It's an option to not use it, just as valid of one as having alignment rule the campaign and make all Orcs, Gnolls, Goblinoids, and Drow Kill-On-Sight because they're all 100% evil 100% of the time. That was the point.
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I think there's been purple and various hues of darker gray and blue in the lore too, no?
I don't know about plain -in the middle- grey as there is already a suggroup of elves called Grey Elves. Apparently with this "everybody's lore is different" nonsense, I don't quite know what to make of them anymore. In greyhawk they were a subgroup of High-Elf; but I don't know that High-elf was itself a sub group in Greyhawk vs the generic elf, which was only made a subgroup in Faerun. - and in Faerun, Grey elves were actualy Moon-Elves/Silver-Elves -which themselves are potentially either actuallay High-Elves, or they are Eladrin - and the term 'Grey' was actually used as an insult or slur, either for them as whole or for a subculture within there society. Grey Elves of Oerth may also be akin to Sylvan-Elves in certain other worlds.
Edit ... Also, apparently, Eladrin means High Elf... So I'm not sure if I'm meant to apply the term culturally only to those who still reside within the feywild ... faewylde?, rather than as a unique subtype relative to other High-Elves...or what?
The different settings have some shared elements (usually there's a Feywild, usually there are elves, etc) but obviously they change some things to make it unique. Conservation of resources though, they reuse some rules stuff and recontextualize it -- there are no high elves in Faerun, but the stats that Greyhawk uses for them are still used, this time for sun elves (iirc). These aren't the same elves by any means. Their origins, cultures, physical appearances, all can be quite different. The stats are the same though. It requires labor to make new stats, and it requires money to pay for labor. And why reinvent the wheel, anyway?
I think there's been purple and various hues of darker gray and blue in the lore too, no?
I don't know about plain -in the middle- grey as there is already a suggroup of elves called Grey Elves. Apparently with this "everybody's lore is different" nonsense, I don't quite know what to make of them anymore. In greyhawk they were a subgroup of High-Elf; but I don't know that High-elf was itself a sub group in Greyhawk vs the generic elf, which was only made a subgroup in Faerun. - and in Faerun, Grey elves were actualy Moon-Elves/Silver-Elves -which themselves are potentially either actuallay High-Elves, or they are Eladrin - and the term 'Grey' was actually used as an insult or slur, either for them as whole or for a subculture within there society. Grey Elves of Oerth may also be akin to Sylvan-Elves in certain other worlds.
Edit ... Also, apparently, Eladrin means High Elf... So I'm not sure if I'm meant to apply the term culturally only to those who still reside within the feywild ... faewylde?, rather than as a unique subtype relative to other High-Elves...or what?
No Grey Elves were not a sub group of high elves. Nor were they sylvan, valley, ice, dark or Grugach. They were the longest lived and most isolationist of the good elves, lived the longest too. Don't mix Greyhawk an Forgotten Realms lore please.
From the link: Grey elves were a sub-race of high elves endemic to the planet of Oerth and Greyspace.
Take it up with them if you disagree. Yes, it speaks of their isolationism, I'm uncertain about lifespan, but I'l ltake your word for it - and from the other link: They were considered high elves sometimes also called eladrin.
somewhere in those two links, it speaks of travelers from oerth to Faerun sometimes mistaking moon elves for Grey elves due to their similar appearance, and it talks about grey elf cultural similarities to the Sylvanesti of Kryn and the Sun Elves of Toril.
edit - found it it; at the bottom under trivia:
Visitors to Toril that were familiar with this race of elves sometimes suffered from confusion, due to the fact that the planet's silver elves, whom they a bore a resemblance to, were also sometimes referred to as gray elves. Though this term was considered by them to be a pejorative.
From the link: Grey elves were a sub-race of high elves endemic to the planet of Oerth and Greyspace.
Take it up with them if you disagree. Yes, it speaks of their isolationism, I'm uncertain about lifespan, but I'l ltake your word for it - and from the other link: They were considered high elves sometimes also called eladrin.
somewhere in those two links, it speaks of travelers from oerth to Faerun sometimes mistaking moon elves for Grey elves due to their similar appearance, and it talks about grey elf cultural similarities to the Sylvanesti of Kryn and the Sun Elves of Toril.
edit - found it it; at the bottom under trivia:
Visitors to Toril that were familiar with this race of elves sometimes suffered from confusion, due to the fact that the planet's silver elves, whom they a bore a resemblance to, were also sometimes referred to as gray elves. Though this term was considered by them to be a pejorative.
My understanding is no, there's nothing overwriting it. The problem for me is that I'm new to D&D and so I'm not used to the different monsters. I went away, no access to the Internet etc, and played a session with no prep. We got into a room and was attacked by several star spawn manglers. What are they? No freaking idea. There wasn't a picture to go with the stat block, couldn't look it up. That was an awkward session, me trying to identify what these creatures looked like when all I had was a stat block.
WotC is terrible for helping new DMs. This discussion bas been had several times on this board, but this is an area where WotC doesn't help. I've got a lot of stat blocks and not a lot of information on how to make those creatures come alive. I pay a lot of money to WotC to take that load off of me so I can focus more on the story. Removing the alignment isn't much, but it's removing a data point that helps me put together thise world. It's very easy to ignore it. My current character is a Drow Paladin that isn't evil. It's easy for me to say that it's different to what WotC prints, especially if they make that clear in their texts. What's more difficult is to put in what was never there to begin with. Drow are completely new to me, the nearest I've come across was the Dunmer. That means that while prepping my sessions, I've got to create a whole culture and flavour for them - and knowing that they were, as a rule.of thumb, evil was helpful for that. If I didn't have that hook to help me? Well, that's just yet more work for me. Which means less work developing unique and interesting characters. If I didn't like what WotC said about the Drow? No problem, I can ignore it or just draw inspiration or from it. I'm no worse off for them having said it.
I'm fine with them scrapping the alignment system (I think it's seriously flawed anyway), but it really needs to be replaced with something to help DMs, particularly new ones, to understand the various creatures better and make a vibrant and diverse world. Please, no more "and the, um, creature, moves across the room and moves it's head...I'm assuming it has a head...to look at you with it's...I'm going to say it has beady eyes..." It's fine for the experienced guys who have a strong foundation in the lore to have the descriptive stuff removed and claim it'sremoving the restrictions, but for us newer people? We need all the data points that we can get.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
While I agree that 5e could do more to help DMs, this Errata didn't remove art or really anything that "Helped DMs". The descriptive text and lore for creatures is still readily available, especially for Drow. If you are having a hard time finding information on Drow society (and from multiple worlds), you are not looking very hard.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Thank you. Yeah, I found anothe rthread earlier today talking about this stuff. It was page 16. I came in at the end this time instead of starting from the top.
Well, villains can be lawful evil, neutral evil, and perhaps even chaotic neutral too, they don't all need to be CE, though I do find myself using smarter villains for LE making them the bosses vs. CE henchmen. Yeah, this stuff wont really interfere with me as a DM per se - recruitment and retention notwithstanding; but it can as a player. Never mind my needing to find a DM who would like the formerly typical 'Medieval Europe setting with a veneer of fantasy draped over it, but still relatively realistic (to it's time too socially speaking) that is both perhaps low magic but still slightly higher than standard CR (I like 32 point buy instead of 27). The real issue though is if I'm looking to play in an officially sponsored living campaign. I thought 5e did have one of those that was like RPGA: Living Greyhawk from 3e? Those adhere to the RAW. WotC is making their official world IMHO, not as much fun as it usd to be / a less appealing a place for me to want to belong to.
It's not just this latest erratta either, it's been like this since the beginning. Even Faerun has never been by favorite world, but WotC kept emphasizing it over others, Greyhawk included.
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But even on Toril, the world were the FR campaign plays out you have examples of how Gruumsh power is not absolute or even acknowledged. To point it out again as you are ignoring it, you had a whole campaign setting called Zakhara, https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Zakhara were you had Orcs living together with other humanoids living peaceful lives and not worshipping Old One Eye. They would have found it insulting to be even remotely associated with him. This is a campaign setting dates from 1992 2nd edition AD&D you could take a boat (or other transportation device) and travel from the Dalelands to the Land of Fate setting. Same World, same Orcs. The behaviour and worldview of various species has never been so set into stone as much as people seem to think. And you're not even forced to do so if you want to keep the stereotypical old alignment system.
I'll take a look at it. Greyhawk was my very first campaign I ever played in. I came in in with 3e. I missed the 90's unfortunately as far as gaming was concerned.
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Mine was Greyhawk as well, followed closely by Ravenloft. First time I was the DM for dnd was in the Greyhawk setting around From the Ashes. Before that I played a German rpg.
nods, me too, Ravenloft and Kalimar were the two next ones. My first time DMing was a run through of the Ashardalon Campaign, the one that opened with the Sunless Citadel and ended with Bastian of Broken Souls. After that I picked up Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I never really got a campaign going around it though; might try again soon.
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There’s nothing quite like living greyhawk, anymore. That was a global effort with a single unified story line and, well it was a really cool concept, unclear how well it was in execution.
There is Adventurers League. Which is more like DMs running through published adventures (I think, maybe there’s some homebrew AL out there?), and they have pretty strict rules about how you can make a character. The idea being the character is then easily portable from one table to another.
Okay, here's something that's going to blow your mind: I don't use alignment in my campaigns. I don't use it in my Eberron Campaign, I don't use it in my Rime of the Frostmaiden Campaign, I didn't use it in my Spelljammer Campaign, and I don't use it in any of the campaigns that I have/had in my homebrew world. Not only that, but I still have villains. Not just Antagonists, Antagonists are just people that actively opposes the PCs (which I do have plenty of, more than I have villains), but Villains (which are just Evil Antagonists).
Now, how can I have Villains (who are defined as Evil Antagonists) if I don't use Alignment (which includes the 3 Evil Alignments) in my campaigns? Like, if I don't just say they're evil, how do my players know whether or not they are evil.
I don't label them as evil and then let the players kill them based off of their alignment. Instead, I let their actions speak for them. If that Angel is in charge of a cult that worships himself, he radicalizes and brainwashes the people that he rules over in a Theocracy, and he imprisons/murders anyone that speaks up against him? He's evil, and probably a Villain. I don't need to label which type of Alignment he is, because it genuinely doesn't matter. In his eyes, he's probably Lawful Good. In the eyes of an outsider, he's probably Lawful Evil or Neutral Evil. It sincerely doesn't matter to narrow it down, because that doesn't effect the game. What effects the game is his role in it. If the players want to free the village that he rules over from his tyranny, he becomes an Antagonist. If he uses evil tactics to try and beat the PCs, he's a Villain. If they choose to allow him to rule and possibly enter into a mutually beneficial relationship with them, he's an Ally.
His specific answer in a personality test that is a 3x3-grid doesn't matter, because only his role affects the campaign. Unlike many people that use alignment, his role isn't predetermined by the DM because of some arbitrary distinction in overly-simplistic morality. Just because he's "Lawful Evil" or "Neutral Evil" doesn't mean that he's automatically a Villain or Kill-On-Sight NPC. How he affects the party and the story in the campaign is what matters. Whether or not he gets in the way of the players (or vice-versa) is what matters. Not Alignment, not the fact that he's probably a Fallen Angel, and definitely not the fact that I put a two-letter description on his stat block to justify the PCs murderizing him the first instant he appears in the campaign.
Hell, you can even have Villains that are probably of a good alignment. High Cardinal Krozen from the Church of the Silver Flame in Eberron is a great example. Sure, he's an extremist that regularly commits war-crimes, but he's a well-intentioned extremist. Sure, he's a power-hungry narcissist that would likely overthrow Jaela Daran if the opportunity presented itself, but he also would do it knowing that it would probably be for the good of the Church, Thrane, and all of Eberron if it wasn't being led by an impulsive 11 year old and was instead being led by an experienced, intelligent, pragmatic individual such as himself. Yes, he's probably being manipulated by the Shadow in the Flame (and he even knows that this is likely), but that won't compromise his agenda that legitimately would be good for the rest of Khorvaire.
If the party somehow pisses him off somehow and he becomes an antagonist of the campaign, he'll still be doing good things. He'll kill anyone that consorted with the Lords of Dust/Cults of the Dragon Below, even if they had no choice in the matter, and it would be a good thing. He'll do evil things (murder innocent people), which will make him explicitly a Villain, but it will be for a very good/righteous purpose (keeping the Demon Overlords and Daelkyr imprisoned in Khyber). "For the Greater Good" is practically his motto, and he's probably even right the vast majority of the time.
What's his alignment, though? Umm . . . maybe lawful evil? He does evil things, is very rigid about following rules, and is extremely self-centered. But he also does the evil things for a good purpose, would probably betray the only person of higher-rank than him if he thought that it would benefit the world, and is self-aware about how narcissistic he is to the point that he often doubts himself (even if he doesn't let it show). So . . . Neutral Good? Chaotic Good? True Neutral? Lawful Neutral? Chaotic Neutral?
I don't think there's really an answer. Alignment is overly-simplistic anyways, and High Cardinal Krozen is a very complicated person. He's very detailed, has been stated that he could be an ally or villain depending on the campaign by Keith Baker himself (the guy who created the setting), and has multiple different motivations for everything he does. He's a complex, well-detailed person, and given that Alignment is the exact opposite both of those things, he doesn't really fit all that well into any single alignment. He's good, until he does evil, he's lawful, until he thinks that it would be good for him to not be, and he's narcissistic and nationalistic, but clearly has inner-complexities that conflict with these parts of his personality.
You can have Villains and Antagonists without using Alignment, you can have satisfying campaigns with just Antagonists, and Alignment isn't the end-all, be-all of D&D or playing it successfully. You can have NPCs like Krozen in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and any other world, you just have to accept that Alignment (if you use it) is a guideline and not an actual rule, and whether or not you use it, you can still have mindless mooks that the players can kill with no moral repercussions if that's your kind of thing (Everybody Loves Zombies, after all).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
From the way I'd do it, His reasons are irrelivant. He would indeed count as lawful evil, regdless of his road to hell having been paved with best of intentions, and even ragrless of the outcomes of his actions really leading to a better world. 3e alignment rules indeed had that clarification, for paladins in particular; that doing evil for goodness's sake is still evil anyway, and still a violation - The genuinely 'good' must do good, even when it is stupid and impractical.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing that it's stupid and impractical. I'm just saying: Even so; and that it is part of the flavor.
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Philosophers have been debating morality and what "good" and "evil" actually mean for thousands of years. D&D and randos on the internet like you and me are not going to solve those questions that minds brighter than either of ours have failed to answer.
Label him any alignment you want, but it's arbitrary and won't influence his role in any campaign that he's properly implemented in. If used as written, he could be anything from a patron/close ally of the party to its fiercest enemy.
My point was that alignment isn't necessary to determine villains or allies in campaigns. You can have Lawful Good Villains that still do bad things, and you can have Chaotic Evil NPCs that are still allies or even actively beneficial to the world. Heck, the whole point of the Blood War from a meta standpoint is to have a "necessary evil to protect the world" in the forms of the Devils (and, arguably, the Demons fill the same roll to protect the world from the Devils).
You don't need alignment. It's not necessary. Even if you have it, that doesn't mean that it will or even should fill any sort of roll in the campaign or story. It's an option to not use it, just as valid of one as having alignment rule the campaign and make all Orcs, Gnolls, Goblinoids, and Drow Kill-On-Sight because they're all 100% evil 100% of the time. That was the point.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Guys. This has nothing to do with the Poll. This Thread is about how many people fall on which side of the subject if at all.
If you want to discuss the Errata, there is a thread for that, which you are having the same fight in. Please go there.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
wait drow aren't black anymore (well all black) huh i missed that part oh well fan art has been drawing them grey and purple for years.
I think there's been purple and various hues of darker gray and blue in the lore too, no?
I don't know about plain -in the middle- grey as there is already a suggroup of elves called Grey Elves. Apparently with this "everybody's lore is different" nonsense, I don't quite know what to make of them anymore. In greyhawk they were a subgroup of High-Elf; but I don't know that High-elf was itself a sub group in Greyhawk vs the generic elf, which was only made a subgroup in Faerun. - and in Faerun, Grey elves were actualy Moon-Elves/Silver-Elves -which themselves are potentially either actuallay High-Elves, or they are Eladrin - and the term 'Grey' was actually used as an insult or slur, either for them as whole or for a subculture within there society. Grey Elves of Oerth may also be akin to Sylvan-Elves in certain other worlds.
Edit ... Also, apparently, Eladrin means High Elf... So I'm not sure if I'm meant to apply the term culturally only to those who still reside within the feywild ... faewylde?, rather than as a unique subtype relative to other High-Elves...or what?
Grey elf | Forgotten Realms Wiki | Fandom :: Moon elf | Forgotten Realms Wiki | Fandom
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The different settings have some shared elements (usually there's a Feywild, usually there are elves, etc) but obviously they change some things to make it unique. Conservation of resources though, they reuse some rules stuff and recontextualize it -- there are no high elves in Faerun, but the stats that Greyhawk uses for them are still used, this time for sun elves (iirc). These aren't the same elves by any means. Their origins, cultures, physical appearances, all can be quite different. The stats are the same though. It requires labor to make new stats, and it requires money to pay for labor. And why reinvent the wheel, anyway?
No Grey Elves were not a sub group of high elves. Nor were they sylvan, valley, ice, dark or Grugach. They were the longest lived and most isolationist of the good elves, lived the longest too. Don't mix Greyhawk an Forgotten Realms lore please.
From the link: Grey elves were a sub-race of high elves endemic to the planet of Oerth and Greyspace.
Take it up with them if you disagree. Yes, it speaks of their isolationism, I'm uncertain about lifespan, but I'l ltake your word for it - and from the other link: They were considered high elves sometimes also called eladrin.
somewhere in those two links, it speaks of travelers from oerth to Faerun sometimes mistaking moon elves for Grey elves due to their similar appearance, and it talks about grey elf cultural similarities to the Sylvanesti of Kryn and the Sun Elves of Toril.
edit - found it it; at the bottom under trivia:
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I don't make this stuff up.
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https://greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Elf use the correct lore aggregator then? Toril is Toril, Oerth is Oerth.
Thank you!
I shall add this to my resource list.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
You're welcome, it's the most up to date of the GH wiki's, and doesn't allow non fact checked sources.