I think this is getting a bit too weird. It's a game. Until an actual Orc or Drow shows up at my house and says they are offended about their inaccurate portrayal, then I'm pretty sure it's not racism or offensive. Orcs and Drow have always been predominantly evil, but you can have outliers that are good. You can still play a Drow or an Orc and be lawful good if you want, so where is the issue? Is Llolth now a good deity? Are we changing the complete history of these races now? Just seems to be a lot of effort to fix a problem that isn't actually there.
I actually already said something about exactly this. First of all its not the fact that "drow or orcs look like black people and thats racist" its the fact that all of the things that are written in the lore about how terrible they are, are written the exact same way that racist propaganda about minority races in America (specifically Black and Indigenous people) and its forced into the pre-generated worlds in most dnd settings. And saying that you can still play "good" drow and orcs is actually contributing more to the problem. To say when a member of one of those races defects from the "traditional way they are depicted" they are automatically superior to every other member of their races directly contributes the the problem.
It shouldnt be up to me and only me to make my DnD world not racist. It should come racism free and i should be allowed to add however much i want, if any at all.
I don't recall ever seeing any propaganda about any real life race worshiping an evil spider god and living underground enslaving other races to do their work. Musta missed that day in social studies. And being evil or good doesn't make one superior to another. There are good gods (Bahamut) as well as evil ones (Tiamat) that are of equal power.
First of all im talking about parallelism, i trust its a simple enough concept for you to grasp without me having to go down the rabbit hole of how people of color have been demonized for their religion in America.
And to your point of good and evil, your correct being good or evil doesnt make one thing superior to another, but it sure as heck affects your perception about what is better. You even said in your first post "just be a lawful good character and it solves the problem" no. it doesnt. That idea feeds into the problem
edit: also notice how didnt say anything about good and evil in my first response yet you came to that conclusion yourself. A Freudian slip methinks
That's where Ao steps in now. I think that as early as 7 years before 5e came out, all the gods were re-judged by Ao and were given their divine powers back or stripped. I mean it's a lot more complex than that, but that's kinda the way it happened. They all had to make their purpose known and had to stick with it so they really aren't able to have free will like mortals are any more. They were able to say what they wanted to be, but not cannot change.
I don't recall ever seeing any propaganda about any real life race worshiping an evil spider god and living underground enslaving other races to do their work. Musta missed that day in social studies. And being evil or good doesn't make one superior to another. There are good gods (Bahamut) as well as evil ones (Tiamat) that are of equal power.
The drow are primarily a sexist analogy (they're the black widow archetype -- evil man-eating spider-women), giving them dark skin is just the racist cherry on the top.
All I can say is everyone here is welcome at my game table anytime unless your a racist pig, but I'm not running a game online as that is really not my bag.
You know, that dehumanising someone because of their ideology is only slightly less awful than dehumanising them because of their race. Like yeah, you can choose an ideology so that's a factor someone has more agency over, but really the awful thing is the dehumanisation. The removing of a person's personhood. That they chose their ideology is the icing on the awful cake. The dehumanisation is the awful cake.
Yes, calling a person a pig is dehumanisation. Just like in the Rwandan genocide, calling people people cockroaches was dehumanisation. Or, in Nazi Germany, calling the Jews pigs was dehumanisation. It's a way to legitimise doing horrible things to another human being.
If they're openly racist on purpose, they're not allowed at my table either. If it was accidental, I'll talk to them about it and decide from that.
Racists dehumanize other races/cultures of people. I have no qualms against disallowing racist players from my table. It doesn't matter if it dehumanizes them, because apparently that's something they like doing.
You should be dehumanized if you're racist on purpose. Maybe it'll teach them that people deserve to be people. You can't choose your race, but you can choose to be racist. If you're going to make a bad choice in your ideology that discriminates against other people, you're not playing D&D with me.
Your post is promoting racists and don't you dare compare telling racists that they're wrong to literal genocide.
Men being evil is boring, it was for more empowering for women to be the ones in charge. Drow priestesses being more powerful than male drow is against the weak female stereotype.
Drow society reads like a misogynist's strawman of feminism.
In any event, this thread has doubled in size since I first posted in it and nothing actually new has been added. I'm done here.
I still say that if they are going to make Orcs and Drow not automatically evil then they also have to include at the very least Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Half-Ogres, and Duergar. And then all of the other PC races need to be made not automatically good either.
That's kind of the point of this. I want the freedom to play a good drow with no questions asked, as well as a lawful evil gnome. It's about not being forced into a stereotype, whether it was good or bad, though it's significantly worse to be forced into a bad stereotype.
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I think the whole issue of racial alignments could be sidestepped by referring to the dominant society of each group rather than the individuals. That's always been an issue with the bastard form of assumed collectivism that racism usually takes. If the dominant society of Orcs has a chaotic evil leadership structure, that doesn't really impose any assumptions on the average orc beyond what you'd expect from in-world racism. I think we can all agree at this point that the leadership of a society can have a very different set of ethics from the average member of that society... 'nuff said.
I think the whole issue of racial alignments could be sidestepped by referring to the dominant society of each group rather than the individuals. That's always been an issue with the bastard form of assumed collectivism that racism usually takes. If the dominant society of Orcs has a chaotic evil leadership structure, that doesn't really impose any assumptions on the average orc beyond what you'd expect from in-world racism. I think we can all agree at this point that the leadership of a society can have a very different set of ethics from the average member of that society... 'nuff said.
That makes sense to a certain degree, but.... Going by that theory all IRL humans would be classified as C/E these days.
I still say that if they are going to make Orcs and Drow not automatically evil then they also have to include at the very least Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Half-Ogres, and Duergar. And then all of the other PC races need to be made not automatically good either.
That's kind of the point of this. I want the freedom to play a good drow with no questions asked, as well as a lawful evil gnome. It's about not being forced into a stereotype, whether it was good or bad, though it's significantly worse to be forced into a bad stereotype.
Still waiting for someone to provide evidence that PC races are automatically good, from any edition since perhaps 0e. If you check old issues of Dragon magazine, you will find references to Elven run thieves' guilds and in particular, Halfling theives' guilds. PC races have never been automatically good.
I thought maybe 1e AD&D had a race or two where this was the case, but I cracked open the book (orange spine, 1980 version) and it looks like that's a "nope." Only classes had alignment restrictions. (Forgot the ranger used to be good-only!) Races had a ton of stat restrictions though. (Half-orcs max charisma: 12 on a 3d6, though admittedly charisma was mostly useless back then for anything but hiring henchmen.)
But flipping through it was a good reminder that the arrow of change in D&D has been consistently in the direction of more options and more flexibility for 40 years.
I still say that if they are going to make Orcs and Drow not automatically evil then they also have to include at the very least Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Half-Ogres, and Duergar. And then all of the other PC races need to be made not automatically good either.
That's kind of the point of this. I want the freedom to play a good drow with no questions asked, as well as a lawful evil gnome. It's about not being forced into a stereotype, whether it was good or bad, though it's significantly worse to be forced into a bad stereotype.
Still waiting for someone to provide evidence that PC races are automatically good, from any edition since perhaps 0e. If you check old issues of Dragon magazine, you will find references to Elven run thieves' guilds and in particular, Halfling theives' guilds. PC races have never been automatically good.
I thought maybe 1e AD&D had a race or two where this was the case, but I cracked open the book (orange spine, 1980 version) and it looks like that's a "nope." Only classes had alignment restrictions. (Forgot the ranger used to be good-only!) Races had a ton of stat restrictions though. (Half-orcs max charisma: 12 on a 3d6, though admittedly charisma was mostly useless back then for anything but hiring henchmen.)
But flipping through it was a good reminder that the arrow of change in D&D has been consistently in the direction of more options and more flexibility for 40 years.
I misspoke (misswrote?) earlier. I should not have written “automatically,” I should have written “stereotypically presumed to be.”
In the PC Race entries for Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Orcs (VGtM) you will find:
DUERGAR
In cities deep in the Underdark live the duergar, or gray dwarves. These vicious, stealthy slave traders raid the surface world for captives, then sell their prey to the other races of the Underdark. They have innate magical abilities to become invisible and to temporarily grow to giant size.
Alignment
Most dwarves are lawful, believing firmly in the benefits of a well-ordered society. They tend toward good as well, with a strong sense of fair play and a belief that everyone deserves to share in the benefits of a just order.
Alignment
Elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, so they lean strongly toward the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others’ freedom as well as their own, and they are more oftengood than not. The drow are an exception; their exile into the Underdark has made them vicious and dangerous. Drow are more oftenevil than not.
Alignment
Gnomes are most often good. Those who tend toward law are sages, engineers, researchers, scholars, investigators, or inventors. Those who tend toward chaos are minstrels, tricksters, wanderers, or fanciful jewelers. Gnomes are good-hearted, and even the tricksters among them are more playful than vicious.
Alignment
Orcs are vicious raiders, who believe that the world should be theirs. They also respect strength above all else and believe the strong must bully the weak to ensure that weakness does not spread like a disease. They are usually chaotic evil.
So we can see that Dwarves “tend toward good” (except for the Duergar who are all bastages), Elves are “more often good” except Drow who are “more often evil,” Gnomes are “most often good,” and Orcs are “usually evil.” None of them are absolutes (except those bastage Duergar).
When it comes to the Monster Entries, the Drow are all Evil with the exception of the Drow Gunslinger (and maybe some of the ones from adventures I don’t own), L/N/C varies. Orcs are all Chaotic Evil. There are no monster entries for Elf/Elves, Dwarf/Dwarves (other than the universally L/E bastages), Gnome/Gnomes other than the universally unpronounceable ones.
So the major issue seems to be the monster entries as compared to the PC race entries. (Unless your a Duergar, frickin bastages.) But what is true for Drow and Orcs also applies to those other races that I had mentioned too, and if we only exclude the Duergar then how does that look? So they need to join the rest of the humanoid unaligned races too. Seems only fair.
I agree that those descriptions should get re-writes. Even if they simply said 'In the Forgotten Realms, although individuals vary, their societies have traditionally have tended towards the following traits:' and then edited the subsequent paragraphs accordingly. One should keep in mind though that this policy decision came out literally years after this edition was first published and they cannot edit books already in people's hands.
Doesn't seem to stop errata or the upcoming changes to ToA or CoS.
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All I can say is everyone here is welcome at my game table anytime unless your a racist pig, but I'm not running a game online as that is really not my bag.
You know, that dehumanising someone because of their ideology is only slightly less awful than dehumanising them because of their race. Like yeah, you can choose an ideology so that's a factor someone has more agency over, but really the awful thing is the dehumanisation. The removing of a person's personhood. That they chose their ideology is the icing on the awful cake. The dehumanisation is the awful cake.
Yes, calling a person a pig is dehumanisation. Just like in the Rwandan genocide, calling people people cockroaches was dehumanisation. Or, in Nazi Germany, calling the Jews pigs was dehumanisation. It's a way to legitimise doing horrible things to another human being.
If they're openly racist on purpose, they're not allowed at my table either. If it was accidental, I'll talk to them about it and decide from that.
Racists dehumanize other races/cultures of people. I have no qualms against disallowing racist players from my table. It doesn't matter if it dehumanizes them, because apparently that's something they like doing.
You should be dehumanized if you're racist on purpose. Maybe it'll teach them that people deserve to be people. You can't choose your race, but you can choose to be racist. If you're going to make a bad choice in your ideology that discriminates against other people, you're not playing D&D with me.
Your post is promoting racists and don't you dare compare telling racists that they're wrong to literal genocide.
Thank you Levi, and if a player would make any racist comments towards any other player or myself as well any derogatory remarks against any other human in real life regardless what the comment concerns that racist pig or homophobic asshat is not welcome at my table. I believe in including everyone in my games and if that hurts said persons feelings to bad.
I think the whole issue of racial alignments could be sidestepped by referring to the dominant society of each group rather than the individuals. That's always been an issue with the bastard form of assumed collectivism that racism usually takes. If the dominant society of Orcs has a chaotic evil leadership structure, that doesn't really impose any assumptions on the average orc beyond what you'd expect from in-world racism. I think we can all agree at this point that the leadership of a society can have a very different set of ethics from the average member of that society... 'nuff said.
That makes sense to a certain degree, but.... Going by that theory all IRL humans would be classified as C/E these days.
My point is that in a revised PHB, the human entry could refer to human societal leadership in a given setting by alignment without characterizing any individual as tending toward an alignment. Under this system, individual alignments need not have anything to do with their leadership. For example, here's how I would reword the alignment listing for the dwarf:
Alignment
Most dwarven clan elders extol the benefits of a well-ordered society, with a strong sense of fair play and a belief that everyone deserves to share in the benefits of a just order.
The key distinction being that alignment is a defined property of a society and its leadership, not something set in stone by nature of ancestry.
The key distinction being that alignment is a defined property of a society and its leadership, not something set in stone by nature of ancestry.
The Race entries are a mashup of Culture and Genetics already. I always presumed that stuff like alignment was already “cultural” not “ethnic” in much the same way Dwarven/Elvish Weapon Proficiencies are cultural and not genetic. I don’t think your plan makes much difference. I get where you’re coming from, but I doubt the efficacy of your plan.
What part of "I agree that those descriptions should get re-writes" needs additional clarification?
Nothing. I was simply pointing out that not being able to change already printed books is an irrelevant factor. Nothing can be done about those, so there is little gained by considering them. It is what it is is all.
I agree that those descriptions should get re-writes. Even if they simply said 'In the Forgotten Realms, although individuals vary, their societies have traditionally have tended towards the following traits:' and then edited the subsequent paragraphs accordingly. One should keep in mind though that this policy decision came out literally years after this edition was first published and they cannot edit books already in people's hands.
Doesn't seem to stop errata or the upcoming changes to ToA or CoS.
Rules errata is almost certainly less text than lore errata would be.
The upcoming changes to Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd aren't rules errata. Also, if they get rid of the words describing orcs and drow in bad ways, and replace it with more open language, that's not changing a ton.
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I think this is getting a bit too weird. It's a game. Until an actual Orc or Drow shows up at my house and says they are offended about their inaccurate portrayal, then I'm pretty sure it's not racism or offensive. Orcs and Drow have always been predominantly evil, but you can have outliers that are good. You can still play a Drow or an Orc and be lawful good if you want, so where is the issue? Is Llolth now a good deity? Are we changing the complete history of these races now? Just seems to be a lot of effort to fix a problem that isn't actually there.
Just because you don't see a problem, doesn't mean no problem exists.
The upcoming changes to Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd aren't rules errata. Also, if they get rid of the words describing orcs and drow in bad ways, and replace it with more open language, that's not changing a ton.
The legitimate point was made that they should likely change the overly flowery wording regarding 'good' races too. This is actually just as much racism as the way drow or orcs are described. Back here in reality, the 'Canadians are nice' or 'Canadians are polite' lines do actually get used as insults. Again, the descriptions treat sentient races as uniform stereotypes. They do not even throw the word 'typically' in as a disclaimer.
Dragonborn: "Most dragonborn are good, but those who side with Tiamat can be terrible villains."
Dwarf: "They tend toward good as well, with a strong sense of fair play and a belief that everyone deserves to share in the benefits of a just order."
Gnome: "Gnomes are most often good."
Halflings: "Most halflings are lawful good. As a rule, they are good-hearted and kind, hate to see others in pain, and have no tolerance for oppression."
Aarakocra: "Most aarakocra are good and rarely choose sides when it comes to law and chaos."
Aasimar: "Imbued with celestial power, most aasimar are good. Outcast aasimar are most often neutral or even evil."
Firbolg: "As people who follow the rhythm of nature and see themselves as its caretakers, firbolg are typically neutral good. Evil firbolg are rare and are usually the sworn enemies of the rest of their kind."
Tabaxi: "They are rarely evil, with most of them driven by curiosity rather than greed or other dark impulses."
Changling: "Changelings tend toward pragmatic neutrality, and few changelings embrace evil."
Kalashtar: "The noble spirit tied to a kalashtar drives it toward lawful and good behavior. Most kalashtar combine strong self-discipline with compassion for all beings, but some kalashtar resist the virtuous influence of their spirit."
Centaur: "Those who join the Selesnya are more often neutral good, while those who join the Gruul are typically chaotic neutral."
Loxodon: "Most loxodons are lawful, believing in the value of a peaceful, ordered life. They also tend toward good."
Vedalkan: "Vedalken are usually lawful and non-evil."
In fact, literally all of them do indeed have the qualifier that says they are not uniform. And several give examples of those that defy the norm. What it doesn't say, except for the Aasimar and kinda the Kalashtar, is that it's anything to do with their heritage.
The upcoming changes to Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd aren't rules errata. Also, if they get rid of the words describing orcs and drow in bad ways, and replace it with more open language, that's not changing a ton.
The legitimate point was made that they should likely change the overly flowery wording regarding 'good' races too. This is actually just as much racism as the way drow or orcs are described. Back here in reality, the 'Canadians are nice' or 'Canadians are polite' lines do actually get used as insults. Again, the descriptions treat sentient races as uniform stereotypes. They do not even throw the word 'typically' in as a disclaimer.
Dragonborn: "Most dragonborn are good, but those who side with Tiamat can be terrible villains."
Dwarf: "They tend toward good as well, with a strong sense of fair play and a belief that everyone deserves to share in the benefits of a just order."
Gnome: "Gnomes are most often good."
Halflings: "Most halflings are lawful good. As a rule, they are good-hearted and kind, hate to see others in pain, and have no tolerance for oppression."
Aarakocra: "Most aarakocra are good and rarely choose sides when it comes to law and chaos."
Aasimar: "Imbued with celestial power, most aasimar are good. Outcast aasimar are most often neutral or even evil."
Firbolg: "As people who follow the rhythm of nature and see themselves as its caretakers, firbolg are typically neutral good. Evil firbolg are rare and are usually the sworn enemies of the rest of their kind."
Tabaxi: "They are rarely evil, with most of them driven by curiosity rather than greed or other dark impulses."
Changling: "Changelings tend toward pragmatic neutrality, and few changelings embrace evil."
Kalashtar: "The noble spirit tied to a kalashtar drives it toward lawful and good behavior. Most kalashtar combine strong self-discipline with compassion for all beings, but some kalashtar resist the virtuous influence of their spirit."
Centaur: "Those who join the Selesnya are more often neutral good, while those who join the Gruul are typically chaotic neutral."
Loxodon: "Most loxodons are lawful, believing in the value of a peaceful, ordered life. They also tend toward good."
Vedalkan: "Vedalken are usually lawful and non-evil."
In fact, literally all of them do indeed have the qualifier that says they are not uniform. And several give examples of those that defy the norm. What it doesn't say, except for the Aasimar and kinda the Kalashtar, is that it's anything to do with their heritage.
All of them have plenty of reason to turn to evil and it just shows either a complete lack of imagination or the designers just bending over backwards to try to force them to be PC races. I can tell you why every single one of them, a perfectly normal and average member of their society, would be incredibly evil.
Dragonborn have every reason to consider themselves physically and mentally vastly superior to all these bossy mammalian races. They are, after all, the children of massive, neigh-immortal beings with vastly superior power and intelligence. Beings who have been pushed further and further into the wilderness by those little hairy beasts who lay claim to greater and greater sections of the land. I have trouble even imagining why any Dragonborn would stoop to being the lackies and lapdogs of the humans that they are so consistently portrayed as. Them giving humans any quarter whatsoever and not treating them like a rat infestation, no matter how good and noble and righteous and altruistic they may be to each other, stretches all credulity and is only that way because the sole reason they were introduced is because someone around the creation of 4E got it into their head that because the game is called "Dungeons and Dragons" that one should be able to play dragons and decided to introduce them immediately into all campaign settings all at once as the new "good guy" race and demand that everyone immediately like and accept them. Their lack of wings and tails is also based on nothing more but weird ideas they had about how to "balance" them with other races. Afterall-- they decided to give Tieflings a big, thick lizard-like tail and say they get a balance skill bonus based on that-- so how would they excuse the Dragonborn not having the same bonus from the same trait?
Dwarfs have always been established to be greedy, violent, prejudiced, vengeful little drunken bastards who hold grudges forever. As brave, just (i.e. unaccepting of crime or deviation), stalwart, loyal, jovial (once they get a few drinks in them) and so on-- that no one has considered just how evil of things they would stoop to in order to acquire more wealth or not have them wipe out a nearby town over either a resources dispute or for some crime that some person in that town committed two generations ago and no one even remembered-- that's just utter lack of imagination. In the very least it is whitewashing things so that there won't be any complications accepting them as a party member.
Gnomes are most often cantankerous hobos who are generally content to stick to their own little hovels and are likely to just kill people for being on their "property". Their "curiosity" and "intelligence" are often simply just putting a positive spin on the fact that they seek knowledge in order to increase their own power via magical and technological means as they simply have no chance to compete on a physical level. Gnomes are the most likely ever to create some sort of monster for their own defense that goes out-of-control and ravages the countryside or build a giant magical bomb that wipes out a city just to see if it can be done-- or maybe with the full intention of getting people to respect them enough to stop trouncing across and despoiling their lands.
Halflings are thieves. The very first Hobbit character ever invented, the hero of "The Hobbit" was a "Burglar". Do you even know what a burglar is? And that certainly has not changed with Halflings across the editions. They have always been a people who specialize in swiping other people's stuff. Yes, the Kender took that to a whole new level of annoying but explicitly stating that it was such a mental disorder that they could not help but swipe the stuff of even their closest companions. But even the average Halfling is still likely to rob you blind and fence all your goods for some petty cash were they to ever have the opportunity. "Good-natured" just means they like to party (using the illicitly gnabbed funds) and, sure, if you have nothing and seem down on your luck-- they'll show you a bit of compassion, maybe even toss you a couple coins they plucked out of someone else's pockets-- easy come, easy go. The Mafia/Yakuza have been known to be quite charitable when the community around them suffers from natural disaster or other loss. But all their claims of being "against oppression" simply boil down to not wanting there to be any law enforcement around to interfere with them and their kin living like parasites off everyone else.
Aarakocra being "mostly good" is also a bunch of nothing. Here we have a race that explicitly avoids contact with all other races, choosing to stay up in their mountains where they cannot be disturbed. You tresspass, they will shoot you dead-- same as every other "monster" race. And if they do need something from the neighboring community-- they fact that they have chosen to live in pretty desolate regions in order to avoid having to deal with other people regularly means they don't have anything to trade-- they'll just fly down from their mountains, swipe whatever it is they want, cut down anyone who tries to stop them, then fly right back up. All this talk about them being "good" begins and ends with the fact that the first story to feature them just happened to have their personal self interests align with that of the PCs at that particular time.
Aasimars have no more compelling reason to be good than Tieflings have to be evil. If you have dozens, hundreds, thousands of good-aligned Tieflings to the point that no one is even suspicious of Tieflings-- then you are going to have just as many Aasimar who go bad. And that can range from anything from deciding to be as evil as possible fundamentally to rebel against the world's expectations for them to the constant praise, devotion and utter lack of consequences they have ever faced their whole lives, with their every negative action being reinterpreted as good because they have been touched by the angels, they would just be so entitled and spoiled and probably very competitive and judgmental of others in order to gatekeep their privileged societal position.
Firbolgs having to be the "enemy of their kind" to be evil just shows how little the people writing actually thought things through. Sure-- there could be a Firbolg who is evil because they rebelled against their kind and now want to embrace everything that is against their society's natural virtues. You know how else a nature-aligned fae creature could go evil? Because they are utterly weary of all these sentient, materialistic peoples who despoil nature, cut down whole forests to replace them with the giant hives they call "cities", diverting the course of rivers, wiping out whole marshland ecosystems to replace them with these "farms" that grow only a single kind of crop that happens to be useful to them and using poisons to wipe out any creatures that try to make use in the newly created ecosystem. If one cannot understand why a nature-aligned species would want to wipe out all humans and human-like creatures, you don't know anything about ecology.
Tabaxi's entire identity revolves around being cat-people. "Rarely evil"? That's such a load of crap. Have you ever even met a cat? Sure-- your own personal housecat who thinks you are its mom and you feed it might be a cuddly little baby to you-- literally, they retain kitten behavior and mentality. But proper cats? Proper cats are serial killers. They love nothing more than to track down everything and anything weaker than themselves, sadistically play with it for a while and then brutally end its life. Not for food-- but just for entertainment. Cats will learn how to make the sounds of the baby cries of various animals to coax any with paternal/maternal instincts out of hiding or down from trees so that they can sneak up on them and end their lives before they even know what is happening. Cats will even kill and eat any other cats they find who are just slightly smaller than them, simply because they can-- that is why even though one gets all sorts of weird cross-breeds with dogs, with cats-- even closely related species do not crossbreed. A proper cat race would tend towards being chaotic neutral sociopaths with plenty of them become evil serial killers if any opportunity presents itself to do so-- even if they damn well know they will get caught, they'll just play it off as if they meant to get caught. A Tabaxi who was anything but evil to anyone but their immediate friend circle should be an incredible aberration. Its just that they might be charming and sneaky enough about their evil actions that they frustratingly get away with them enough not to get chased out of every town based on their people's reputation.
Changelings are based on legends of fae replacing babies with their own children to get humans to raise them. The tales were used to explain everything from postpartum depression to children with mental illnesses that caused them to behave erratically to children who commit patricide. The last one is important because the Changelings would virtually always kill their surrogate parents before they reached adulthood. How is one going to take a race whose primary defining trait is their biological drive to murder infants and replace them with their own children like Cuckoo birds and then murder their caretakers before reaching adults as "few embrace evil"? And then one has to consider all the murders they would need to commit later on in order to continually escape justice from the murders they have already committed. And if one isn't having them do the only thing they were defined as doing in folklore, then why have Changelings at all?
Centaurs don't have much at all written about them, but they are another race that absolutely avoids mingling with other races at all. Moreover, they are defined as a "warrior race". So someone just handwaved it that they don't target you and just target your enemies with their "warrior ways"? Yeah-- that just seems far too convenient. Centaurs raiding and pillaging farms for food is just something that is going to be happening constantly, especially given they are physically incapable of growing their own food. They wouldn't have anything to gain from fighting orcs or other "evil" humanoids who generally have nothing to take after killing them. In fact, they would have every reason to just get out of their way and let them attack the humans since they are more than swift enough to do so and then once the humans and orcs kill one another, they can gallop in and do a bit of scavenging before trotting right back out before anyone even knows they are there.
As for Kalashitar, Loxodon and Vedalkan-- I have no idea what they are and I am willing to bet that if one were to compile every single word written about them, it wouldn't fit 5 pages. Just what is presented here is enough to indicate to me that they are probably some crappy, Mary Sue race with absolutely no culture or psychology to speak of-- just some random "animal-people" or "people who have magic ability X" that were imagined up solely as protagonists and no attempt to actually fit them into the world in a natural or meaningful way was ever attempted. So there is no need to address why some Mary Sue creation of someone who didn't even care about them enough to actually develop out any real ideas beyond what PC racial stats to give them and whose concept is so shallow that you shouldn't even bother slowing down your car before driving through them can be evil. If they had even the slightest bit of thought put into them, it would be readily apparent why an average member of the race would murder your entire PC party and everyone they care about as a natural extension of the traits of the race.
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First of all im talking about parallelism, i trust its a simple enough concept for you to grasp without me having to go down the rabbit hole of how people of color have been demonized for their religion in America.
And to your point of good and evil, your correct being good or evil doesnt make one thing superior to another, but it sure as heck affects your perception about what is better. You even said in your first post "just be a lawful good character and it solves the problem" no. it doesnt. That idea feeds into the problem
edit: also notice how didnt say anything about good and evil in my first response yet you came to that conclusion yourself. A Freudian slip methinks
That's where Ao steps in now. I think that as early as 7 years before 5e came out, all the gods were re-judged by Ao and were given their divine powers back or stripped. I mean it's a lot more complex than that, but that's kinda the way it happened. They all had to make their purpose known and had to stick with it so they really aren't able to have free will like mortals are any more. They were able to say what they wanted to be, but not cannot change.
The drow are primarily a sexist analogy (they're the black widow archetype -- evil man-eating spider-women), giving them dark skin is just the racist cherry on the top.
If they're openly racist on purpose, they're not allowed at my table either. If it was accidental, I'll talk to them about it and decide from that.
Racists dehumanize other races/cultures of people. I have no qualms against disallowing racist players from my table. It doesn't matter if it dehumanizes them, because apparently that's something they like doing.
You should be dehumanized if you're racist on purpose. Maybe it'll teach them that people deserve to be people. You can't choose your race, but you can choose to be racist. If you're going to make a bad choice in your ideology that discriminates against other people, you're not playing D&D with me.
Your post is promoting racists and don't you dare compare telling racists that they're wrong to literal genocide.
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Drow society reads like a misogynist's strawman of feminism.
In any event, this thread has doubled in size since I first posted in it and nothing actually new has been added. I'm done here.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
That's kind of the point of this. I want the freedom to play a good drow with no questions asked, as well as a lawful evil gnome. It's about not being forced into a stereotype, whether it was good or bad, though it's significantly worse to be forced into a bad stereotype.
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I think the whole issue of racial alignments could be sidestepped by referring to the dominant society of each group rather than the individuals. That's always been an issue with the bastard form of assumed collectivism that racism usually takes. If the dominant society of Orcs has a chaotic evil leadership structure, that doesn't really impose any assumptions on the average orc beyond what you'd expect from in-world racism. I think we can all agree at this point that the leadership of a society can have a very different set of ethics from the average member of that society... 'nuff said.
That makes sense to a certain degree, but.... Going by that theory all IRL humans would be classified as C/E these days.
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I thought maybe 1e AD&D had a race or two where this was the case, but I cracked open the book (orange spine, 1980 version) and it looks like that's a "nope." Only classes had alignment restrictions. (Forgot the ranger used to be good-only!) Races had a ton of stat restrictions though. (Half-orcs max charisma: 12 on a 3d6, though admittedly charisma was mostly useless back then for anything but hiring henchmen.)
But flipping through it was a good reminder that the arrow of change in D&D has been consistently in the direction of more options and more flexibility for 40 years.
I misspoke (misswrote?) earlier. I should not have written “automatically,” I should have written “stereotypically presumed to be.”
In the PC Race entries for Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Orcs (VGtM) you will find:
So we can see that Dwarves “tend toward good” (except for the Duergar who are all bastages), Elves are “more often good” except Drow who are “more often evil,” Gnomes are “most often good,” and Orcs are “usually evil.” None of them are absolutes (except those bastage Duergar).
When it comes to the Monster Entries, the Drow are all Evil with the exception of the Drow Gunslinger (and maybe some of the ones from adventures I don’t own), L/N/C varies. Orcs are all Chaotic Evil. There are no monster entries for Elf/Elves, Dwarf/Dwarves (other than the universally L/E bastages), Gnome/Gnomes other than the universally unpronounceable ones.
So the major issue seems to be the monster entries as compared to the PC race entries. (Unless your a Duergar, frickin bastages.) But what is true for Drow and Orcs also applies to those other races that I had mentioned too, and if we only exclude the Duergar then how does that look? So they need to join the rest of the humanoid unaligned races too. Seems only fair.
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Doesn't seem to stop errata or the upcoming changes to ToA or CoS.
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Thank you Levi, and if a player would make any racist comments towards any other player or myself as well any derogatory remarks against any other human in real life regardless what the comment concerns that racist pig or homophobic asshat is not welcome at my table. I believe in including everyone in my games and if that hurts said persons feelings to bad.
My point is that in a revised PHB, the human entry could refer to human societal leadership in a given setting by alignment without characterizing any individual as tending toward an alignment. Under this system, individual alignments need not have anything to do with their leadership. For example, here's how I would reword the alignment listing for the dwarf:
The key distinction being that alignment is a defined property of a society and its leadership, not something set in stone by nature of ancestry.
You cannot fix the past. When has that ever mattered when it comes to changing the future?
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The Race entries are a mashup of Culture and Genetics already. I always presumed that stuff like alignment was already “cultural” not “ethnic” in much the same way Dwarven/Elvish Weapon Proficiencies are cultural and not genetic. I don’t think your plan makes much difference. I get where you’re coming from, but I doubt the efficacy of your plan.
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Nothing. I was simply pointing out that not being able to change already printed books is an irrelevant factor. Nothing can be done about those, so there is little gained by considering them. It is what it is is all.
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The upcoming changes to Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd aren't rules errata. Also, if they get rid of the words describing orcs and drow in bad ways, and replace it with more open language, that's not changing a ton.
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Just because you don't see a problem, doesn't mean no problem exists.
Dragonborn: "Most dragonborn are good, but those who side with Tiamat can be terrible villains."
Dwarf: "They tend toward good as well, with a strong sense of fair play and a belief that everyone deserves to share in the benefits of a just order."
Gnome: "Gnomes are most often good."
Halflings: "Most halflings are lawful good. As a rule, they are good-hearted and kind, hate to see others in pain, and have no tolerance for oppression."
Aarakocra: "Most aarakocra are good and rarely choose sides when it comes to law and chaos."
Aasimar: "Imbued with celestial power, most aasimar are good. Outcast aasimar are most often neutral or even evil."
Firbolg: "As people who follow the rhythm of nature and see themselves as its caretakers, firbolg are typically neutral good. Evil firbolg are rare and are usually the sworn enemies of the rest of their kind."
Tabaxi: "They are rarely evil, with most of them driven by curiosity rather than greed or other dark impulses."
Changling: "Changelings tend toward pragmatic neutrality, and few changelings embrace evil."
Kalashtar: "The noble spirit tied to a kalashtar drives it toward lawful and good behavior. Most kalashtar combine strong self-discipline with compassion for all beings, but some kalashtar resist the virtuous influence of their spirit."
Centaur: "Those who join the Selesnya are more often neutral good, while those who join the Gruul are typically chaotic neutral."
Loxodon: "Most loxodons are lawful, believing in the value of a peaceful, ordered life. They also tend toward good."
Vedalkan: "Vedalken are usually lawful and non-evil."
In fact, literally all of them do indeed have the qualifier that says they are not uniform. And several give examples of those that defy the norm. What it doesn't say, except for the Aasimar and kinda the Kalashtar, is that it's anything to do with their heritage.
All of them have plenty of reason to turn to evil and it just shows either a complete lack of imagination or the designers just bending over backwards to try to force them to be PC races. I can tell you why every single one of them, a perfectly normal and average member of their society, would be incredibly evil.
Dragonborn have every reason to consider themselves physically and mentally vastly superior to all these bossy mammalian races. They are, after all, the children of massive, neigh-immortal beings with vastly superior power and intelligence. Beings who have been pushed further and further into the wilderness by those little hairy beasts who lay claim to greater and greater sections of the land. I have trouble even imagining why any Dragonborn would stoop to being the lackies and lapdogs of the humans that they are so consistently portrayed as. Them giving humans any quarter whatsoever and not treating them like a rat infestation, no matter how good and noble and righteous and altruistic they may be to each other, stretches all credulity and is only that way because the sole reason they were introduced is because someone around the creation of 4E got it into their head that because the game is called "Dungeons and Dragons" that one should be able to play dragons and decided to introduce them immediately into all campaign settings all at once as the new "good guy" race and demand that everyone immediately like and accept them. Their lack of wings and tails is also based on nothing more but weird ideas they had about how to "balance" them with other races. Afterall-- they decided to give Tieflings a big, thick lizard-like tail and say they get a balance skill bonus based on that-- so how would they excuse the Dragonborn not having the same bonus from the same trait?
Dwarfs have always been established to be greedy, violent, prejudiced, vengeful little drunken bastards who hold grudges forever. As brave, just (i.e. unaccepting of crime or deviation), stalwart, loyal, jovial (once they get a few drinks in them) and so on-- that no one has considered just how evil of things they would stoop to in order to acquire more wealth or not have them wipe out a nearby town over either a resources dispute or for some crime that some person in that town committed two generations ago and no one even remembered-- that's just utter lack of imagination. In the very least it is whitewashing things so that there won't be any complications accepting them as a party member.
Gnomes are most often cantankerous hobos who are generally content to stick to their own little hovels and are likely to just kill people for being on their "property". Their "curiosity" and "intelligence" are often simply just putting a positive spin on the fact that they seek knowledge in order to increase their own power via magical and technological means as they simply have no chance to compete on a physical level. Gnomes are the most likely ever to create some sort of monster for their own defense that goes out-of-control and ravages the countryside or build a giant magical bomb that wipes out a city just to see if it can be done-- or maybe with the full intention of getting people to respect them enough to stop trouncing across and despoiling their lands.
Halflings are thieves. The very first Hobbit character ever invented, the hero of "The Hobbit" was a "Burglar". Do you even know what a burglar is? And that certainly has not changed with Halflings across the editions. They have always been a people who specialize in swiping other people's stuff. Yes, the Kender took that to a whole new level of annoying but explicitly stating that it was such a mental disorder that they could not help but swipe the stuff of even their closest companions. But even the average Halfling is still likely to rob you blind and fence all your goods for some petty cash were they to ever have the opportunity. "Good-natured" just means they like to party (using the illicitly gnabbed funds) and, sure, if you have nothing and seem down on your luck-- they'll show you a bit of compassion, maybe even toss you a couple coins they plucked out of someone else's pockets-- easy come, easy go. The Mafia/Yakuza have been known to be quite charitable when the community around them suffers from natural disaster or other loss. But all their claims of being "against oppression" simply boil down to not wanting there to be any law enforcement around to interfere with them and their kin living like parasites off everyone else.
Aarakocra being "mostly good" is also a bunch of nothing. Here we have a race that explicitly avoids contact with all other races, choosing to stay up in their mountains where they cannot be disturbed. You tresspass, they will shoot you dead-- same as every other "monster" race. And if they do need something from the neighboring community-- they fact that they have chosen to live in pretty desolate regions in order to avoid having to deal with other people regularly means they don't have anything to trade-- they'll just fly down from their mountains, swipe whatever it is they want, cut down anyone who tries to stop them, then fly right back up. All this talk about them being "good" begins and ends with the fact that the first story to feature them just happened to have their personal self interests align with that of the PCs at that particular time.
Aasimars have no more compelling reason to be good than Tieflings have to be evil. If you have dozens, hundreds, thousands of good-aligned Tieflings to the point that no one is even suspicious of Tieflings-- then you are going to have just as many Aasimar who go bad. And that can range from anything from deciding to be as evil as possible fundamentally to rebel against the world's expectations for them to the constant praise, devotion and utter lack of consequences they have ever faced their whole lives, with their every negative action being reinterpreted as good because they have been touched by the angels, they would just be so entitled and spoiled and probably very competitive and judgmental of others in order to gatekeep their privileged societal position.
Firbolgs having to be the "enemy of their kind" to be evil just shows how little the people writing actually thought things through. Sure-- there could be a Firbolg who is evil because they rebelled against their kind and now want to embrace everything that is against their society's natural virtues. You know how else a nature-aligned fae creature could go evil? Because they are utterly weary of all these sentient, materialistic peoples who despoil nature, cut down whole forests to replace them with the giant hives they call "cities", diverting the course of rivers, wiping out whole marshland ecosystems to replace them with these "farms" that grow only a single kind of crop that happens to be useful to them and using poisons to wipe out any creatures that try to make use in the newly created ecosystem. If one cannot understand why a nature-aligned species would want to wipe out all humans and human-like creatures, you don't know anything about ecology.
Tabaxi's entire identity revolves around being cat-people. "Rarely evil"? That's such a load of crap. Have you ever even met a cat? Sure-- your own personal housecat who thinks you are its mom and you feed it might be a cuddly little baby to you-- literally, they retain kitten behavior and mentality. But proper cats? Proper cats are serial killers. They love nothing more than to track down everything and anything weaker than themselves, sadistically play with it for a while and then brutally end its life. Not for food-- but just for entertainment. Cats will learn how to make the sounds of the baby cries of various animals to coax any with paternal/maternal instincts out of hiding or down from trees so that they can sneak up on them and end their lives before they even know what is happening. Cats will even kill and eat any other cats they find who are just slightly smaller than them, simply because they can-- that is why even though one gets all sorts of weird cross-breeds with dogs, with cats-- even closely related species do not crossbreed. A proper cat race would tend towards being chaotic neutral sociopaths with plenty of them become evil serial killers if any opportunity presents itself to do so-- even if they damn well know they will get caught, they'll just play it off as if they meant to get caught. A Tabaxi who was anything but evil to anyone but their immediate friend circle should be an incredible aberration. Its just that they might be charming and sneaky enough about their evil actions that they frustratingly get away with them enough not to get chased out of every town based on their people's reputation.
Changelings are based on legends of fae replacing babies with their own children to get humans to raise them. The tales were used to explain everything from postpartum depression to children with mental illnesses that caused them to behave erratically to children who commit patricide. The last one is important because the Changelings would virtually always kill their surrogate parents before they reached adulthood. How is one going to take a race whose primary defining trait is their biological drive to murder infants and replace them with their own children like Cuckoo birds and then murder their caretakers before reaching adults as "few embrace evil"? And then one has to consider all the murders they would need to commit later on in order to continually escape justice from the murders they have already committed. And if one isn't having them do the only thing they were defined as doing in folklore, then why have Changelings at all?
Centaurs don't have much at all written about them, but they are another race that absolutely avoids mingling with other races at all. Moreover, they are defined as a "warrior race". So someone just handwaved it that they don't target you and just target your enemies with their "warrior ways"? Yeah-- that just seems far too convenient. Centaurs raiding and pillaging farms for food is just something that is going to be happening constantly, especially given they are physically incapable of growing their own food. They wouldn't have anything to gain from fighting orcs or other "evil" humanoids who generally have nothing to take after killing them. In fact, they would have every reason to just get out of their way and let them attack the humans since they are more than swift enough to do so and then once the humans and orcs kill one another, they can gallop in and do a bit of scavenging before trotting right back out before anyone even knows they are there.
As for Kalashitar, Loxodon and Vedalkan-- I have no idea what they are and I am willing to bet that if one were to compile every single word written about them, it wouldn't fit 5 pages. Just what is presented here is enough to indicate to me that they are probably some crappy, Mary Sue race with absolutely no culture or psychology to speak of-- just some random "animal-people" or "people who have magic ability X" that were imagined up solely as protagonists and no attempt to actually fit them into the world in a natural or meaningful way was ever attempted. So there is no need to address why some Mary Sue creation of someone who didn't even care about them enough to actually develop out any real ideas beyond what PC racial stats to give them and whose concept is so shallow that you shouldn't even bother slowing down your car before driving through them can be evil. If they had even the slightest bit of thought put into them, it would be readily apparent why an average member of the race would murder your entire PC party and everyone they care about as a natural extension of the traits of the race.