It is only evil through the eyes of their opposition. Drow don't think they're evil, that's just how their society is.
That doesn't really make things better, because if it's subjective, they aren't actually evil at all and PCs slaughtering them are in the wrong.
In any case, the basic issue is that judging people as 'evil' or 'good' based on involuntary traits is problematic, and the existence of exceptions actually makes doing so worse, not better. PCs attacking sentient creatures without solid evidence that those creatures are doing something bad is, well, evil murder-hobo behavior. If all orcs or drow behave badly, that may be problematic from a world design standpoint, but it does mean PCs attacking them on sight is justified. If only some of them behave badly, they should really be doing more investigation (of course, if they're heavily armed and in a place they don't belong, that's probable cause, but much of the time that's more accurate as a description of the PCs than of the monsters).
In all 11 pages so far, I have yet to see anyone make the statement that Orcs are evil because they are Orcs, or that Drow are evil because they are Drow. So honestly I'm not sure why you're attacking that point, since nobody is making it.
It is only evil through the eyes of their opposition. Drow don't think they're evil, that's just how their society is.
That doesn't really make things better, because if it's subjective, they aren't actually evil at all and PCs slaughtering them are in the wrong.
In any case, the basic issue is that judging people as 'evil' or 'good' based on involuntary traits is problematic, and the existence of exceptions actually makes doing so worse, not better. PCs attacking sentient creatures without solid evidence that those creatures are doing something bad is, well, evil murder-hobo behavior. If all orcs or drow behave badly, that may be problematic from a world design standpoint, but it does mean PCs attacking them on sight is justified. If only some of them behave badly, they should really be doing more investigation (of course, if they're heavily armed and in a place they don't belong, that's probable cause, but much of the time that's more accurate as a description of the PCs than of the monsters).
In all 11 pages so far, I have yet to see anyone make the statement that Orcs are evil because they are Orcs, or that Drow are evil because they are Drow. So honestly I'm not sure why you're attacking that point, since nobody is making it.
My point is: an adventure that presents a group of orcs as monsters to kill, without bothering to explain why they're a problem and in need of killing, really should have some rewriting. That doesn't mean rewriting to make the orcs not monsters, it means rewriting to actually establish them as a threat that needs to be dealt with.
Consider a classic: Keep on the Borderlands. Why exactly are you going and attacking the caves? If you actually look inside the dungeon there's a fair amount of bad stuff going on there (apparently eating humans is standard for the locals, there's a fair number of captives, and the evil cult seems likely to be up to no good), but none of that is stuff the PCs are likely to find out about until after killing everything in sight, it's really just "there's monsters over there, someone should go kill them".
It is only evil through the eyes of their opposition. Drow don't think they're evil, that's just how their society is.
That doesn't really make things better, because if it's subjective, they aren't actually evil at all and PCs slaughtering them are in the wrong.
In any case, the basic issue is that judging people as 'evil' or 'good' based on involuntary traits is problematic, and the existence of exceptions actually makes doing so worse, not better. PCs attacking sentient creatures without solid evidence that those creatures are doing something bad is, well, evil murder-hobo behavior. If all orcs or drow behave badly, that may be problematic from a world design standpoint, but it does mean PCs attacking them on sight is justified. If only some of them behave badly, they should really be doing more investigation (of course, if they're heavily armed and in a place they don't belong, that's probable cause, but much of the time that's more accurate as a description of the PCs than of the monsters).
In all 11 pages so far, I have yet to see anyone make the statement that Orcs are evil because they are Orcs, or that Drow are evil because they are Drow. So honestly I'm not sure why you're attacking that point, since nobody is making it.
My point is: an adventure that presents a group of orcs as monsters to kill, without bothering to explain why they're a problem and in need of killing, really should have some rewriting. That doesn't mean rewriting to make the orcs not monsters, it means rewriting to actually establish them as a threat that needs to be dealt with.
In the case of a race generally, it should be an established part of the background of the setting. What values are present or absent in their society, how they interact or not with their neighbors, etc. But that's taking the argument back around for another lap, which doesn't seem to have produced any meaningful discussion so far.
In the case of a race generally, it should be an established part of the background of the setting. What values are present or absent in their society, how they interact or not with their neighbors, etc. But that's taking the argument back around for another lap, which doesn't seem to have produced any meaningful discussion so far.
That reminds me of another annoyance: presenting races (or whatever you want to call them) as monocultures. While rare and/or extremely long lived races might have less cultural variation than humans, races that are both short lived and plentiful (at least halflings, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs) should have just as much cultural variation as humans -- shouldn't be "orcs are like X", it should be "the orcish tribes in area Y are like X".
However please, please go deeper than .... 'Because Gods' or
This is actually a pretty big deal in the game.
When gods in the game tell you things it's possibly a good idea to listen to them. How many casters would give up their power and their spells because some other culture said it's a bad thing?
So, regardless of which god tries to influence you, you try to obey them? If dealing with a Greek style pantheon, good luck with that. If dealing with a Christian style, you would be far more likely to be tempted by Satan than contacted by God. Would you play in a campaign where, even if playing a cleric, you had no choice over which god(s) to obey, having to try to obey the teachings of every god without any ability to choose which you prefer, even if only for sanity purposes?
That 'other culture' almost certainly has at least one god too. What happens if their culture's god makes more sense to your character? Does your character have no ability to change their faith? Literally none, not even the option of accepting the consequences?
Besides, my point was not that gods should have no power or influence, but rather that, for example, Orcs should not be 'defined' as evil simply because a god made them. If they were made with free will, they were made with free will, which includes the ability to think differently than designed. One of the most basic definitions of intelligence is the ability to change one's own programming and the definition of sentience is to be aware of one's own programming and thus make at least some of those changes consciously.
Sure and with free will comes consequences. You bring up Christianity as an example but those that stray from God and go to Satan in that religion are punished in the afterlife (some would also say in the living world too). From reading lore of the Orcs it's very clear that their are a few Orc Gods not all about killing and slaughter, but they are not the majority of the pantheon. So disobeying this all powerful being that has been the main religion of the culture of centuries that has plenty of stories to keep people in line is difficult. Again let's look at the real world - Free will exists and yet terrible, terrible dictators are able to rise to power with the support of their people and commit acts of genocide. They all had free will and yet a large portion of them did not disagree and supported on their leader. But would we not say these people had free will?
Why can't Orcs worship someone like Pelor? Nothing says they can't other than culture. Is Pelor in that culture, do the leaders speak of him? How is an Orc (or anyone for that matter) that has been raised in a certain culture to know or understand stuff from outside their own "world" without some outside influence. It's frankly a bad comparison, but look at "spoiled" rich kids. How many stories do people tell of meeting someone who had no idea about what problems a working class family faces or what things they did. If you grow up eating only lobster and caviar, you are going to be confused when you find someone plucking and eating a chicken they hand raised.
Everyone wants to always bring "real world" into D&D but yet never like to point out examples of cultures and groups that have "free will" yet don't change from their ways. Many people raised in a religion don't just hop ship and go to another one. Look at cultures like Amish, while some subsets let the children experience the world, how many truly don't return to the Amish way of life? Take away Orc, take away Drow, and place Human in the lore and see how much people would not be complaining about a whole empire that is "evil" to the areas around it. If a God was willing to grant a society huge power for doing his bidding, we wouldn't bat and eye at a human culture being formed from that. After all they "choose it." But now we look at the same lore with something like Orc there and now it's "Why was a whole race made 'Evil,' can't they have free will?"
That is still not to say that their can't BE those outliers, how many players make humans who went rogue and turned against their family or country? People play humans, elfs, gnome, etc that go against type and no one cares. Plenty of players also play these races to type and also no one seems to care. Yet When we look at more morally evil or morally grey races, now there this big hubbub about what they can and cannot do that never gets brought up with the "good" races.
Let me be frank since this issue boils down to Faerun and Eberron being the largest "known" D&D worlds - You want to have a world that is not 70% Drow worship lolth fine, go ahead. They just published Matt Mercer's campaign world where these things hold more to that alignment. But why should every Material Plane, hold the same values for each race? Why should all races on all Material Planes be neutral? This is fantasy, change what you dislike like hundreds have done. But while I enjoy WoTC making some changes to races, lets not removed 30 years of world building from people because some want a more "All races have the same morality so there is no interrace conflict."
I like how I answer your questions in my reply and yet you ask them as if you didn't read - why does an Orc not know anything but the Orc pantheon because CULTURE. The exact thing you constantly argue about and want expanded on.
To answer about your gods question - its polytheistic, that's a battle for the soul, it depends on the world and what truly happens with a soul. I believe only the Elves have lore about souls so it be hard to say what would happen with that Orc who cast off Gruumsh and believed in Silvanus. I also believe it would be different form world to world.
Free will doesn't mean that - but a lot of your argument had boiled down to "Why are races different from one another" so it would seem you are interested in have one single over arching culture that everyone follows. And guess what culture can also belong to a singe D&D race, so your last line makes little argument. Orcs can have a single culture and still be spread out around the world; plenty of cultures in real world have similar trends. Just like how no mater where you go, if you enter a Roman Catholic church for a Sunday morning service, the format and service will be the same (except for the language)
However please, please go deeper than .... 'Because Gods' or
This is actually a pretty big deal in the game.
When gods in the game tell you things it's possibly a good idea to listen to them. How many casters would give up their power and their spells because some other culture said it's a bad thing?
So, regardless of which god tries to influence you, you try to obey them?
Completely missing the point. In game, if you are a cleric of Lolth, and just for kicks decide to not obey her wishes, you lose your powers and mayhap get turned into a slime creature. If you're a Paladin of Tyr and decide to slaughter a village for giggles, you will probably lose your powers.
That being the case, if your god tells you, "Hey, go do this thing," you should go do it.
1 - Because your character will lose abilities if you don't.
2 - Because it's the GMs plot hook. It's a game, people.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
1 - Yes, you lose your power. In the real world, you can be executed as a heretic (even to this day in some fundamentalist faiths). And yet people convert or simply defy. There is no shortage of examples in history of individuals who have been executed for not conforming, both in secular and non-secular ways.
Which is the reason why the majority of people continue with the status quo.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Free will doesn't mean that - but a lot of your argument had boiled down to "Why are races different from one another" so it would seem you are interested in have one single over arching culture that everyone follows. And guess what culture can also belong to a singe D&D race, so your last line makes little argument. Orcs can have a single culture and still be spread out around the world; plenty of cultures in real world have similar trends. Just like how no mater where you go, if you enter a Roman Catholic church for a Sunday morning service, the format and service will be the same (except for the language)
You realize Roman Catholic isn't a race? The way voluntary groups keep consistency across the group is by declaring people who fail to obey the tenets of the group no longer a part of the group. Unless orcs who decide to behave in an 'un-orclike' way cease to be orcs (which is not impossible but means 'race' is an utter misnomer), that doesn't work for races.
Also, large uniform cultures are incompatible with a chaotic alignment, so even if you assumed there were a common orc culture, it wouldn't be CE. It could be LE, maybe NE, but not CE.
I like how I answer your questions in my reply and yet you ask them as if you didn't read - why does an Orc not know anything but the Orc pantheon because CULTURE. The exact thing you constantly argue about and want expanded on.
To answer about your gods question - its polytheistic, that's a battle for the soul, it depends on the world and what truly happens with a soul. I believe only the Elves have lore about souls so it be hard to say what would happen with that Orc who cast off Gruumsh and believed in Silvanus. I also believe it would be different form world to world.
Free will doesn't mean that - but a lot of your argument had boiled down to "Why are races different from one another" so it would seem you are interested in have one single over arching culture that everyone follows. And guess what culture can also belong to a singe D&D race, so your last line makes little argument. Orcs can have a single culture and still be spread out around the world; plenty of cultures in real world have similar trends. Just like how no mater where you go, if you enter a Roman Catholic church for a Sunday morning service, the format and service will be the same (except for the language)
How does anyone question anything in any given society? How are there atheists and agnostics? How are there rebels? Even in isolated societies, people question. They question authority, they seek better ways of doing things. They observe and form conclusions. And societies do not normally exist in isolation. They discover each other, make contact, trade and/or war with each other. Even in wars, prisoners are taken if only to gain intelligence information.
And as someone who has attended a lot of different Christian church services in quite a few different denominations, including a lot of Catholic services, no, each church is different. The differences in priests can be very striking and when you find a church with a good priest it makes a huge difference to the service. You can also study up on the differences between Popes.. and that is the Roman Catholic church, which is very "ordered" and there will be a lot of similarity. If you look at evangelical churches, the differences between churches are often even more striking.
So when talking about cultures, do you always focus on the cultures outliers? Are you always trying to figure out what the outliers of China look like? That's is the most backwards way to look at anything. I hope when you are building campaign Civs you aren't always going on about the outliers and actually explain the major parts of that culture.
See you really fail at reading comprehension. Yeah if you choose to go to different Christian faiths, yes the services are different. but notices how I said if you go to any Roman Catholic church. AS someone who was raised Roman Catholic I can in form you, the Mass given by the Pope, is identical in structure to the one given by my local Priest. Will there be minor variations, most likely as all people have a different rhythm and cantor, but I still know that 2 reading will be given followed by a reading from one of the Gospels, and then the preist will summarize the lessons, etc. Sure they might not hand out Eucharist the exact same way, but I still know where in the mass it will occur and the general way to receive it. But that was the thing I was explaining, not if you chose to go to a Greek orthodox our a protestant church.
Oh yeah, completely forgot that "chaotic" means no plan so obvi you win, any thing that is chaotic will never be able to organize under anything. Yeah that's why demons are totally loosing the blood war, because their chaotic tenancies are preventing any planning.
Free will doesn't mean that - but a lot of your argument had boiled down to "Why are races different from one another" so it would seem you are interested in have one single over arching culture that everyone follows. And guess what culture can also belong to a singe D&D race, so your last line makes little argument. Orcs can have a single culture and still be spread out around the world; plenty of cultures in real world have similar trends. Just like how no mater where you go, if you enter a Roman Catholic church for a Sunday morning service, the format and service will be the same (except for the language)
You realize Roman Catholic isn't a race? The way voluntary groups keep consistency across the group is by declaring people who fail to obey the tenets of the group no longer a part of the group. Unless orcs who decide to behave in an 'un-orclike' way cease to be orcs (which is not impossible but means 'race' is an utter misnomer), that doesn't work for races.
Also, large uniform cultures are incompatible with a chaotic alignment, so even if you assumed there were a common orc culture, it wouldn't be CE. It could be LE, maybe NE, but not CE.
And last time I checked it quite easy for a being to be kicked out of their culture. Does an orc who disobeys his tribe stop being an orc? No, but he will be shunned and possibly executed for what he did, so I mean being killed sure does seem to make him "Not an orc"
Just because RC isn't race doesn't make the ability for wide spread reach of uniform culture now impossible. You want even more closer matched things fine, different D&D races are basically species, so lets look there. Oh yeah plenty of species so similar hierarchical structures even when they are thousands of miles apart. Look at other primates, No matter where a bonobo tribe is, they are still matriarchal if no outside factors pressure a societal change. Bird Hierarchy also stays the same when you look at intelligent flocks of the same species in different parts of the world. It's hard to use RL examples of uniformity in race, because race is not a really thing in humans so there are no good examples. So Sorry I use religious orgs (although you didn't tell Kotath his religious org examples are wrong), and now I've tried intelligent species but I know that won't satisfy you either.
See my above comment on this ridiculous chaotic can't be organized talk.
In the case of a race generally, it should be an established part of the background of the setting. What values are present or absent in their society, how they interact or not with their neighbors, etc. But that's taking the argument back around for another lap, which doesn't seem to have produced any meaningful discussion so far.
That reminds me of another annoyance: presenting races (or whatever you want to call them) as monocultures. While rare and/or extremely long lived races might have less cultural variation than humans, races that are both short lived and plentiful (at least halflings, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs) should have just as much cultural variation as humans -- shouldn't be "orcs are like X", it should be "the orcish tribes in area Y are like X".
1 - Yes, you lose your power. In the real world, you can be executed as a heretic (even to this day in some fundamentalist faiths). And yet people convert or simply defy. There is no shortage of examples in history of individuals who have been executed for not conforming, both in secular and non-secular ways. There is risk in defying the status quo. However there are also plenty of examples of individuals who have been successful in doing so, including examples where they were both successful and lived full lives.
I'm at a loss for why you keep attacking this point, because nobody in the thread has made it. Neither do the 5e racial descriptions.
Not once was it ever said that ALL members of a race were good or evil. They are typically something in the morality compass based on their culture, largely based on racial characteristics, their environment, threats to themselves or families, their religious worship and cultural views on anything not from their culture.
And yet what you say has never been said seems to be exactly what many of the people opposed to this policy changed are afraid of losing. And those opposed but not saying that seem to think that this change will mean all races suddenly become good aligned or something...
What people are opposed to is that some idiot on Twitter said that orcs and drow are representations of black people today and wanted them changed, then later came out and said that he doesn't even play D&D yet Wizards of the Coast bent over backwards to appease a person who isn't even a customer.
The fact that someone can look at a matriarchal society filled with political intrigue and backstabbing being a way of life while worshiping an evil deity as the predominant religion and think "that looks like black people" is racist. We are simply calling it out and that is being misrepresented by twitter. Whenever I run a game, I will ignore whatever changes the sensitivity readers Wizards of the Coast hired will make, and I will keep the racial traits as they stand if it fits the world my campaigns will be in and if the players want to play these races.
Well let's see... darker skinned (or for that matter, non-white) races in the game are much more likely to be evil than good.
The one clearly matriarchal society (not merely ruled by a queen, but where women are the the dominant gender throughout the society) is evil.
You cannot see how either of those could be seen as problematic?
Nope. Because they aren't black people. They are dark elves, who live underground, and orcs. They are not human and their fictional cultures have nothing to do with any african tribe like Shaka Zulu, current country in Africa or anyone in Jamaica, North America, Central America or anywhere else in the world. There is no society that has the same culture as has been developed. I find it more likely that if you look at them and see black people then you are the problematic one, not the game.
I mean, you yourself, just equated likely to be evil with being black by using it as an example of something problematic. There are plenty of races in D&D that are evil that are also not darker skinned. Yuan-Ti. Goblins. Kobolds. Minotaurs come in all colors.
The issue with institutionalized racism and more generally, institutionalized xenophobia is that people do not actually question their feelings or actions towards others. And if you think that questioning the status quo is all the fault of one lone voice on twitter, whom you seem to insist does not even play the game, you are going way out of your way to dismiss such questions.
The issue with institutionalized racism is that no one can say specifically which institution when pressed on it, nor say how it is racist if they do name one, and who the specific racist people in that specific institution are and what they are doing that is specifically racist.
Without evidence, institutional racism is nothing more than an abstract theory that deliberately removes individuality from people and forces them into groups and then judge them by the group. It's a philosophy that builds up racism because it's incapable of looking at individuals and seeing individuals rather than groups.
@Kotath I can’t find the post rn but I totally agree with you about how the drow, one of the few gynocratic and matriarchal societies in D&D, are being literally demonized as chaotic evil demon worshippers.
You need to read more about the history of racism, particularly in the US. Even after the Civil War there was still massive resistance to equality and it is still there to some degree. Take a look at police statistics as to who is more likely stopped, who is more likely to be assumed to be a criminal or a threat. When you say 'no one can say which institution,' you fail to understand the term. It is referring to attitudes being taken generally for granted by society, not by racism on the part of any specific institution.
You also need to learn more about literary allegory. A representation does not have to be a perfect to represent something else. Both Science Fiction and Fantasy and before that, parables and morality plays have been used to present situations in third party manners, using fictional stand ins for whatever or whoever is being commented on.
Then where is the evidence that even suggests that drow are a stand in for an entire ethnic group aside from having a similar skin color? Or the orcs? If you're telling me that a matriarchal political system that relies on backstabbing each other is a stand-in for black people then you are the problem because you see black people as evil and you're projecting that attitude on others.
In all 11 pages so far, I have yet to see anyone make the statement that Orcs are evil because they are Orcs, or that Drow are evil because they are Drow. So honestly I'm not sure why you're attacking that point, since nobody is making it.
My point is: an adventure that presents a group of orcs as monsters to kill, without bothering to explain why they're a problem and in need of killing, really should have some rewriting. That doesn't mean rewriting to make the orcs not monsters, it means rewriting to actually establish them as a threat that needs to be dealt with.
Consider a classic: Keep on the Borderlands. Why exactly are you going and attacking the caves? If you actually look inside the dungeon there's a fair amount of bad stuff going on there (apparently eating humans is standard for the locals, there's a fair number of captives, and the evil cult seems likely to be up to no good), but none of that is stuff the PCs are likely to find out about until after killing everything in sight, it's really just "there's monsters over there, someone should go kill them".
In the case of a race generally, it should be an established part of the background of the setting. What values are present or absent in their society, how they interact or not with their neighbors, etc. But that's taking the argument back around for another lap, which doesn't seem to have produced any meaningful discussion so far.
That reminds me of another annoyance: presenting races (or whatever you want to call them) as monocultures. While rare and/or extremely long lived races might have less cultural variation than humans, races that are both short lived and plentiful (at least halflings, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs) should have just as much cultural variation as humans -- shouldn't be "orcs are like X", it should be "the orcish tribes in area Y are like X".
Sure and with free will comes consequences. You bring up Christianity as an example but those that stray from God and go to Satan in that religion are punished in the afterlife (some would also say in the living world too). From reading lore of the Orcs it's very clear that their are a few Orc Gods not all about killing and slaughter, but they are not the majority of the pantheon. So disobeying this all powerful being that has been the main religion of the culture of centuries that has plenty of stories to keep people in line is difficult. Again let's look at the real world - Free will exists and yet terrible, terrible dictators are able to rise to power with the support of their people and commit acts of genocide. They all had free will and yet a large portion of them did not disagree and supported on their leader. But would we not say these people had free will?
Why can't Orcs worship someone like Pelor? Nothing says they can't other than culture. Is Pelor in that culture, do the leaders speak of him? How is an Orc (or anyone for that matter) that has been raised in a certain culture to know or understand stuff from outside their own "world" without some outside influence. It's frankly a bad comparison, but look at "spoiled" rich kids. How many stories do people tell of meeting someone who had no idea about what problems a working class family faces or what things they did. If you grow up eating only lobster and caviar, you are going to be confused when you find someone plucking and eating a chicken they hand raised.
Everyone wants to always bring "real world" into D&D but yet never like to point out examples of cultures and groups that have "free will" yet don't change from their ways. Many people raised in a religion don't just hop ship and go to another one. Look at cultures like Amish, while some subsets let the children experience the world, how many truly don't return to the Amish way of life? Take away Orc, take away Drow, and place Human in the lore and see how much people would not be complaining about a whole empire that is "evil" to the areas around it. If a God was willing to grant a society huge power for doing his bidding, we wouldn't bat and eye at a human culture being formed from that. After all they "choose it." But now we look at the same lore with something like Orc there and now it's "Why was a whole race made 'Evil,' can't they have free will?"
That is still not to say that their can't BE those outliers, how many players make humans who went rogue and turned against their family or country? People play humans, elfs, gnome, etc that go against type and no one cares. Plenty of players also play these races to type and also no one seems to care. Yet When we look at more morally evil or morally grey races, now there this big hubbub about what they can and cannot do that never gets brought up with the "good" races.
Let me be frank since this issue boils down to Faerun and Eberron being the largest "known" D&D worlds - You want to have a world that is not 70% Drow worship lolth fine, go ahead. They just published Matt Mercer's campaign world where these things hold more to that alignment. But why should every Material Plane, hold the same values for each race? Why should all races on all Material Planes be neutral? This is fantasy, change what you dislike like hundreds have done. But while I enjoy WoTC making some changes to races, lets not removed 30 years of world building from people because some want a more "All races have the same morality so there is no interrace conflict."
I like how I answer your questions in my reply and yet you ask them as if you didn't read - why does an Orc not know anything but the Orc pantheon because CULTURE. The exact thing you constantly argue about and want expanded on.
To answer about your gods question - its polytheistic, that's a battle for the soul, it depends on the world and what truly happens with a soul. I believe only the Elves have lore about souls so it be hard to say what would happen with that Orc who cast off Gruumsh and believed in Silvanus. I also believe it would be different form world to world.
Free will doesn't mean that - but a lot of your argument had boiled down to "Why are races different from one another" so it would seem you are interested in have one single over arching culture that everyone follows. And guess what culture can also belong to a singe D&D race, so your last line makes little argument. Orcs can have a single culture and still be spread out around the world; plenty of cultures in real world have similar trends. Just like how no mater where you go, if you enter a Roman Catholic church for a Sunday morning service, the format and service will be the same (except for the language)
Completely missing the point. In game, if you are a cleric of Lolth, and just for kicks decide to not obey her wishes, you lose your powers and mayhap get turned into a slime creature. If you're a Paladin of Tyr and decide to slaughter a village for giggles, you will probably lose your powers.
That being the case, if your god tells you, "Hey, go do this thing," you should go do it.
1 - Because your character will lose abilities if you don't.
2 - Because it's the GMs plot hook. It's a game, people.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Which is the reason why the majority of people continue with the status quo.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
You realize Roman Catholic isn't a race? The way voluntary groups keep consistency across the group is by declaring people who fail to obey the tenets of the group no longer a part of the group. Unless orcs who decide to behave in an 'un-orclike' way cease to be orcs (which is not impossible but means 'race' is an utter misnomer), that doesn't work for races.
Also, large uniform cultures are incompatible with a chaotic alignment, so even if you assumed there were a common orc culture, it wouldn't be CE. It could be LE, maybe NE, but not CE.
Wakanda is a chaotic uniform culture.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
(a) fictional, (b) not even close to chaotic. The concept of a uniform chaotic culture doesn't even make sense; they're contradictory concepts.
So when talking about cultures, do you always focus on the cultures outliers? Are you always trying to figure out what the outliers of China look like? That's is the most backwards way to look at anything. I hope when you are building campaign Civs you aren't always going on about the outliers and actually explain the major parts of that culture.
See you really fail at reading comprehension. Yeah if you choose to go to different Christian faiths, yes the services are different. but notices how I said if you go to any Roman Catholic church. AS someone who was raised Roman Catholic I can in form you, the Mass given by the Pope, is identical in structure to the one given by my local Priest. Will there be minor variations, most likely as all people have a different rhythm and cantor, but I still know that 2 reading will be given followed by a reading from one of the Gospels, and then the preist will summarize the lessons, etc. Sure they might not hand out Eucharist the exact same way, but I still know where in the mass it will occur and the general way to receive it. But that was the thing I was explaining, not if you chose to go to a Greek orthodox our a protestant church.
Oh yeah, completely forgot that "chaotic" means no plan so obvi you win, any thing that is chaotic will never be able to organize under anything. Yeah that's why demons are totally loosing the blood war, because their chaotic tenancies are preventing any planning.
And last time I checked it quite easy for a being to be kicked out of their culture. Does an orc who disobeys his tribe stop being an orc? No, but he will be shunned and possibly executed for what he did, so I mean being killed sure does seem to make him "Not an orc"
Just because RC isn't race doesn't make the ability for wide spread reach of uniform culture now impossible. You want even more closer matched things fine, different D&D races are basically species, so lets look there. Oh yeah plenty of species so similar hierarchical structures even when they are thousands of miles apart. Look at other primates, No matter where a bonobo tribe is, they are still matriarchal if no outside factors pressure a societal change. Bird Hierarchy also stays the same when you look at intelligent flocks of the same species in different parts of the world. It's hard to use RL examples of uniformity in race, because race is not a really thing in humans so there are no good examples. So Sorry I use religious orgs (although you didn't tell Kotath his religious org examples are wrong), and now I've tried intelligent species but I know that won't satisfy you either.
See my above comment on this ridiculous chaotic can't be organized talk.
Good point.
Wow! You guys really get into this.
I'm at a loss for why you keep attacking this point, because nobody in the thread has made it. Neither do the 5e racial descriptions.
Nope. Because they aren't black people. They are dark elves, who live underground, and orcs. They are not human and their fictional cultures have nothing to do with any african tribe like Shaka Zulu, current country in Africa or anyone in Jamaica, North America, Central America or anywhere else in the world. There is no society that has the same culture as has been developed. I find it more likely that if you look at them and see black people then you are the problematic one, not the game.
I mean, you yourself, just equated likely to be evil with being black by using it as an example of something problematic. There are plenty of races in D&D that are evil that are also not darker skinned. Yuan-Ti. Goblins. Kobolds. Minotaurs come in all colors.
The issue with institutionalized racism is that no one can say specifically which institution when pressed on it, nor say how it is racist if they do name one, and who the specific racist people in that specific institution are and what they are doing that is specifically racist.
Without evidence, institutional racism is nothing more than an abstract theory that deliberately removes individuality from people and forces them into groups and then judge them by the group. It's a philosophy that builds up racism because it's incapable of looking at individuals and seeing individuals rather than groups.
@Kotath I can’t find the post rn but I totally agree with you about how the drow, one of the few gynocratic and matriarchal societies in D&D, are being literally demonized as chaotic evil demon worshippers.
Then where is the evidence that even suggests that drow are a stand in for an entire ethnic group aside from having a similar skin color? Or the orcs? If you're telling me that a matriarchal political system that relies on backstabbing each other is a stand-in for black people then you are the problem because you see black people as evil and you're projecting that attitude on others.
To name a few: Most giants (especially Fomorian) & ogres, Redcap, Duergar and Derro are typically considered evil races.