But why should those evil orcs be the base? In 2 of the 5e worlds there are good/neutral orcs (Eberrron and Exandria). This is more than the official 5e worlds where orcs are evil (Forgotten Realms). It's already the default in the majority of the 5e settings where orcs exist, why shouldn't it be the default in all of 5e? In those 2 worlds, there are no shortages of villains, even with people drow and people orcs.
It shouldn't be the default in Volo's or the Monster Manual for Orcs to be evil. It should have the default be as open as possible, with different worlds interpreting them in different ways.
Besides the story I quoted that noted that the main reason the Orcs are opposed to other races is because they got screwed over by the "good" races' gods before they'd done anything and are out for revenge or justice in the fist place....
Orcs have not been necessarily evil in Forgotten Realms since well... practically the settings inception.
Cities like Waterdeep were stated to have "monster districts" that were inhabited by the "less desirable" races, but nonetheless were still considered official denizens of the city. And that has been a thing since the late 1989, only a few years after the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was printed in 1987, as it appeared in the D&D game series around that time. (Granted, in the game to just wander into that district and basically start fighting and killing nearly everyone you meet as a way of getting early game XP...)
The, perhaps not entirely well written, Handbook of Humanoids came out around 1993 which expressly noted that Orcs could be of any alignment and could be heroes. There was a Lawful Good subrace of Orcs called the Ondont that were established around 1995. And then there was the Gray Orcs who were added to the setting in 2003 (specifically designed to have a PC-ready subrace of Orcs that were distinct from the typical bad guy ones.)
Sure, the Orogs are almost always evil (then again-- everything that lives in the Underdark is) and the Mountain Orcs are generally at least unfriendly to the main 5 PC races if not explicitly "evil". But there have been good-aligned Orcs, at least subspecies of Orcs, established for the vast majority of the time the campaign setting has even existed. The idea that Forgotten Realms is the primary source of the "all Orcs are evil" rule seems quite odd when it was actually the first setting to really begin changing that.
If you want to see the very odd ideas for Orcs that existed before that, you might be able to find a pdf of The Orcs of Thar online. It was written in 1988 as part of the Gazette series for GreyHawk and a read would give one a good idea of the odd notions TSR had. Not only are the rules really, really bad to the point of being entirely non-functional at higher levels for anything that wasn't initially created as a high-level monster-- but it literally mocks and insults anyone who would have any interest in playing such a thing seriously and goes on to assume that the rules are intended entirely for a humorous tongue-in-cheek one-off (not that they actually created any rules that would make them fun to play in a humorous manner).
I think the ability to play Orcs and other humanoids in Dungeons and Dragons started off bad and got better as time has gone on-- peaking in 4E where all base (pre-feats) races were quite well balanced given they all kind of just fit into a simple template. Then 5E had to go and just utterly screw that progress up with Volo's Guide.
And on the note of Forgotten Realms and humanoids-- seems to me that, in the early days, one of the unique features of Forgotten Realms was that it had dinosaurs and specifically dinosaur people. Seems like that was entirely dropped after WotC took over the setting. Why were they gotten rid of?
I don’t think whole cultures should be deliberately devoted to the pursuit of evil. I see orcs as much more like the Visigoths in Roman times than creatures whose sole reason for existence is hurting other people. As for dark elves...their society could be a fascinating study in gender politics, but I think playing drow all too often leads to misogynistic depictions of dark-skinned Lloth-worshipping (Lloth and Lilith even sound similar) Femme Fatales whose sole motivation is to destroy all that is “good” and “light” and “pure” (and yes, usually but not always male).
But I’m not that good with abstract arguments, so this will probably be my last comment on this issue.
That's fine and you can do both of those things - but asking that the entire society change aka Gruumsh's, an Evil god, spawn to not be evil as a society means rewriting them entirely. There is nothing wrong with creating a settlement of Orcs that aren't like Gruumsh, but in D&d where Gods have a large hand in their creations and have a large impact on the world, there is going to be actual consequences for those orcs who turned on Gruumsh. Like I mentioned with the Drow, there is a whole off-shoot where a group basically go completely against their natural society. They are hated by the Drow society and most likely not liked by Lolth either, but again Lolth in her nature is Evil. Why would she not ask her followers and children to be Evil too?
If you don't want this heavily aligned nature of beings - you need to remove D&D cosmology from your world. Basically look at Ravinca for that. The gods don't exists on that world and therefore many of those inherently Evil cultures have very different set ups.
But why should those evil orcs be the base? In 2 of the 5e worlds there are good/neutral orcs (Eberrron and Exandria). This is more than the official 5e worlds where orcs are evil (Forgotten Realms). It's already the default in the majority of the 5e settings where orcs exist, why shouldn't it be the default in all of 5e? In those 2 worlds, there are no shortages of villains, even with people drow and people orcs.
It shouldn't be the default in Volo's or the Monster Manual for Orcs to be evil. It should have the default be as open as possible, with different worlds interpreting them in different ways.
But why should those evil orcs be the base? In 2 of the 5e worlds there are good/neutral orcs (Eberrron and Exandria). This is more than the official 5e worlds where orcs are evil (Forgotten Realms). It's already the default in the majority of the 5e settings where orcs exist, why shouldn't it be the default in all of 5e? In those 2 worlds, there are no shortages of villains, even with people drow and people orcs.
It shouldn't be the default in Volo's or the Monster Manual for Orcs to be evil. It should have the default be as open as possible, with different worlds interpreting them in different ways.
Besides the story I quoted that noted that the main reason the Orcs are opposed to other races is because they got screwed over by the "good" races' gods before they'd done anything and are out for revenge or justice in the fist place....
Orcs have not been necessarily evil in Forgotten Realms since well... practically the settings inception.
Cities like Waterdeep were stated to have "monster districts" that were inhabited by the "less desirable" races, but nonetheless were still considered official denizens of the city. And that has been a thing since the late 1989, only a few years after the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was printed in 1987, as it appeared in the D&D game series around that time. (Granted, in the game to just wander into that district and basically start fighting and killing nearly everyone you meet as a way of getting early game XP...)
The, perhaps not entirely well written, Handbook of Humanoids came out around 1993 which expressly noted that Orcs could be of any alignment and could be heroes. There was a Lawful Good subrace of Orcs called the Ondont that were established around 1995. And then there was the Gray Orcs who were added to the setting in 2003 (specifically designed to have a PC-ready subrace of Orcs that were distinct from the typical bad guy ones.)
Sure, the Orogs are almost always evil (then again-- everything that lives in the Underdark is) and the Mountain Orcs are generally at least unfriendly to the main 5 PC races if not explicitly "evil". But there have been good-aligned Orcs, at least subspecies of Orcs, established for the vast majority of the time the campaign setting has even existed. The idea that Forgotten Realms is the primary source of the "all Orcs are evil" rule seems quite odd when it was actually the first setting to really begin changing that.
If you want to see the very odd ideas for Orcs that existed before that, you might be able to find a pdf of The Orcs of Thar online. It was written in 1988 as part of the Gazette series for GreyHawk and a read would give one a good idea of the odd notions TSR had. Not only are the rules really, really bad to the point of being entirely non-functional at higher levels for anything that wasn't initially created as a high-level monster-- but it literally mocks and insults anyone who would have any interest in playing such a thing seriously and goes on to assume that the rules are intended entirely for a humorous tongue-in-cheek one-off (not that they actually created any rules that would make them fun to play in a humorous manner).
I think the ability to play Orcs and other humanoids in Dungeons and Dragons started off bad and got better as time has gone on-- peaking in 4E where all base (pre-feats) races were quite well balanced given they all kind of just fit into a simple template. Then 5E had to go and just utterly screw that progress up with Volo's Guide.
And on the note of Forgotten Realms and humanoids-- seems to me that, in the early days, one of the unique features of Forgotten Realms was that it had dinosaurs and specifically dinosaur people. Seems like that was entirely dropped after WotC took over the setting. Why were they gotten rid of?
They were good-aligned (I think) and they were called saurials.
Also, race in the sense that the op is using it does exist. Let's take Elves, for example. High Elf, Wood Elf, Sea Elf, Dark Elf and then all the Elves that are not playable, are all races that come under the species title of Elf. Humans are less divided, but even humans have different races. Damaran, Illuskan, Mulan and so on are all races that come under the title "Human". Gnomes have races, and so do Dwarves. Even Halflings, Goblins and Orcs have them. That says nothing about the monsters, and planal entities, some of which have even more significant and stricter divisions.
You can't remove race from the game. Even if we say that we are going to use the word "species," without race, every character would be an Elf, or a Human or a Dwarf etc., with little distinction to every other member of its species. Even then, the existence of different "species" still creates division.
What about the traditional racial tensions between Dwarves and Elves? Typically if you were to ask a Dwarf who was responsible for a crime and one of the suspects is an Elf, they are going to pick the Elf due to a deeply ingrained distrust of Elves.
It is all reactionary nonsense that smells suspiciously of 80s paranoia.
Racism is terrible, and I am not trying to defend racists, but I don't see where the books or the games are being racist. They go out of their way to describe racial views and tensions in a way that is not inflammatory at all.
If you don't want race in your game, then you can remove it, but that doesn't mean that everyone should have to play the same game.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
le for a crime and one of the suspects is an Elf, they are going to pick the Elf due to a deeply ingrained distrust of Elves.
Or they would pick the most likely suspect because of dwarves' traditional sense if justice and fairness. Or, since not everyone plays in the same game world, there are no ingrained distrust of elves at all?
What, exactly, about racial tensions between Elves and Dwarves? I've disliked that since the games inception back in the 70's. It has always felt completely artificial and unnecessary. If there has been recent issues between an Elvin nation and a Dwarven nation, sure, but historically it has been presented as blind xenophobia, a refusal to accept each other's cultures.
What, exactly, does that add to the game?
And the OP was not suggesting removing race, merely renaming it. Yes there is paranoid reaction-ism, but there is also the exact same phenomenon over change. That does not mean change is a bad thing. We have both lived through many changes in our lives and yet society is still here and is not 'ruined,' despite the predictions and hand-wringing.
Like most of these things, it historically goes back to Tolkien. In Middle Earth, there was a conflict between the Dwarves and Elves over one of the Silmarils. After Beren stole it from Morgoth, King Thingol decided to have it placed on a setting. Through previous events, he has come into possession of Nauglamir, a beautiful chain and the the greatest working of the dwarves. He decides he wants to make the greatest elfstone and the greatest dwarf chain one piece to create a work of beauty never before seen.
So he hired some dwarves who placed it on Nauglamir. The party of dwarves who are working on the piece decides they want the Silmaril (partly because it was exceedingly beautiful, but also likely because Morgoth had poured some of his will into it after so long and it was now corrupting), so they make an absurd claim to it as payment for their services.
Thingol is a wise and powerful elf king, but he's also prideful and is being corrupted by love of he Silmaril. He insults the dwarves. They kill him, his guards slay most of them. They flee back to their lands and tell their countrymen a complete lie about what actually happened ("Thingol refused to pay us and slaughtered us instead!") Meanwhile, Melian, Thingol's wife, is grieving and her power diminishes. This brings down Melian's girdle, the magical forest barrier that prevents unwanted foes from entering Thingol's land. The dwarves attack, slaughtering the elves who weren't expecting this. I think they capture the Simaril. This was stupid, because all the elves that came from Valinor are literally sworn to retake the accursed things no matter what, so they attack and retake the gem. War starts between the races opposed to Morgoth which is exactly what he wants.
Its a whole bloody mess and its a pretty good example of how Morgoth used his power to corrupt good things created by the other Valar.
This, of course, gets transferred directly into DnD, but without any of the historical background, so it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Like most of these things, it historically goes back to Tolkien.
This, of course, gets transferred directly into DnD, but without any of the historical background, so it doesn't make sense.
Exactly. And even in Tolkien, thousands of years pass with civilization doing nothing but continue to decline. It all sounds heoric until you realize how much most of the victories came across as Pyrrhic.
Yes, I suppose it is. Naturally, since civilization is in free-fall it falls to Sauron, servant of Aule the smith, to bring everything back into order. Sure, he was once allied with Morgoth, but now he's good for real this time and he's going to make everything better! He can introduce magical power to the elves in the form of Rings to let them maintain their fading lands! He can bring industrialization!
And wouldn't everything be SO much better if the wisest, most powerful, and oldest being now in Middle Earth ruled... well... everything?
I think most of the current problem with orcs actually comes from the fact that the idea is cribbed from Tolkien, but without really incorporating it properly or giving it the background to make sense. A look through the historical background really brings this into light.
My understanding is that Tolkien got the idea from mythology and borrowed heavily from Grendel – who is essentially an evil spirit in flesh, the product of demons. Tolkien borrows this and develops orcs, using another term from the mythology to represent a race of monsters. For him, elves, men, and orcs are essentially unfallen man, man-as-he-is, and fallen man. In his letters, he even uses the terms elves and orcs interchangeably for “good humans and bad humans,” saying that: “In real (exterior) life men are on both sides [of the war]: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels.” Orcs are a purified view of the evil of the human race, made visible through the lens of fantasy.
The mythological origins of Orcs in Tolkien are less certain than is commonly thought. He actually offers several theories, none of them conclusive, stating that orcs were 1) lesser fallen Maiar (angels) given flesh, 2) corrupted elves, 3) beasts of humanoid shape, 4) Elves mated with beasts, or 5) possibly even direct creations, if we are to take “bred by Melkor of the subterranean heat and slime” literally. Whatever their origin, orcs are warped and malformed because the dark process used to create them. They are foul of heart and mind, with corrupted morals and optimized for war because Morgoth needed a cheap army and delighted in mocking the good Valar by warping everything he touched.
Tolkien never quite decided how he wanted to deal with the possibility of orcs with free will. He agreed that anything that had free will had to have the opportunity for redemption, so he was uncomfortable making the orcs fully sapient. At the same time, Morgoth couldn’t create beings with true intelligence and Tolkien had already portrayed the orcs as possessing intellect. We don’t know where he would have ended up, since Tolkien died before finishing most of his work. I feel fairly confident orcs would have eventually ended up as either beasts or thralls that were extensions of Morgoth’s will, or as a minor dark spirit given flesh (like vampires, werewolves, and balrogs were). Essentially, orcs would either have no choice or have freely chosen evil, but they would not really be a distinct species of their own, like elves, dwarves, hobbits, and men.
The problem occurs when DnD steals the idea. Orcs are copy pasted directly from Tolkien, but they had to remove the reason for why they were always chaotic evil (because they were created/corrupted by Morgoth and are basically extensions of his will). So orcs are dropped in as creatures who act pretty much like Tolkien orcs, but now suddenly have free will. Of course, that immediately creates opportunities for interesting stories. If orcs could have free wills, even if the books say they are always evil, then we can play with them. We can have stories with twists where the orcs are not really evil. Orcs are pretty strong, so presumably some people who wanted to play cool characters homebrewed in orc PCs, either as party of evil parties or as “the lone one who is good” (because that’s a fun concept to play). But of course, we can’t have ugly PCs, so now they are no longer malformed and twisted by dark magic, but fairly ordinary humanoids. Who suddenly are green and have tusks… because of Warhammer and Warcraft, which also steal the concept, but change it substantially.
That tilts the needle strongly in the direction of “free-willed individual” and away from “demon created killing machine”. I think it also creates a serious problem for DnD, since orcs now are being increasingly portrayed as free willed, having their own society, etc. In part because of this, I suspect, people start using orcs as metaphors for racism. There’s one short story in which the “Senator Bilbo” is racist towards orcs and tries to keep them out of the Shire. This gets Tolkien completely wrong, of course, but I suspect the idea that orcs were racist originated from this divide between the Tolkien “orc who is a servant of the dark lord without free will” and the developing mythology of “orc who is just a member of a warrior race”.
It’s as if someone invented vampires in which they are the souls of evil people who made a deal with the devil. Then someone else comes along, steals the name and makes vampires with the same powers, but writes them as just a generic race of beings who don’t need human blood to live and have their own unique culture. The new vampires are nomadic, have children normally, and sound like just a weird ethnic group, but are for whatever reason still arbitrarily evil because of vampire A.
Then of course, people come along and finding problems with Vampire B, accuse anyone who likes Vampire A of being racist! The problem is not racism. The problem is two mutually inconsistent versions of orcs – 1) classic orcs, which were not designed with free will OR with and identifiable culture and 2) new orcs, which were designed with free will and DO act like a culture. (Though I don’t think DnD orcs really lines up with any real world culture well – you can make an argument that they are a generic stand-in for any “warrior” race really, from Vikings to Visigoths to Mongols.)
Tolkien never quite decided how he wanted to deal with the possibility of orcs with free will. He agreed that anything that had free will had to have the opportunity for redemption, so he was uncomfortable making the orcs fully sapient. At the same time, Morgoth couldn’t create beings with true intelligence and Tolkien had already portrayed the orcs as possessing intellect. We don’t know where he would have ended up, since Tolkien died before finishing most of his work. I feel fairly confident orcs would have eventually ended up as either beasts or thralls that were extensions of Morgoth’s will, or as a minor dark spirit given flesh (like vampires, werewolves, and balrogs were). Essentially, orcs would either have no choice or have freely chosen evil, but they would not really be a distinct species of their own, like elves, dwarves, hobbits, and men.
He described Orcs as ugly Mongoloids and the only explicitly non-European humans in the entire setting, the Easterlings, were equally universally evil and servants of Sauron. You can do mental gymnastics until you break your back-- but it was what it was. Expecting anything enlightened arising from an Englishman born in the 1800s who watched the fall of the British Empire and its colonies slip away during the late 19th and first half of the 20th century is just madness. Naturally he wasn't going to have a more progressive and enlightened view of the world than the rest of his countrymen at the time who had to justify the way their country had ruled the world through the 18th and 19th centuries. And anyone who was simply wasn't going to come into that level of popularity.
I believe race vs species is irrelevent to what is causing the actual complaint/issue.
The argument, whether you agree with it or not, is that having a group sharing the same alignment, personatilty traits etc reinforces the concept of stereotyping and the idea that group is predisposed to say evil because of their identity. Also that this reinforces the idea of its ok to slaughter (etc) group X because all Xs are evil baddies. By extention to really labour the point, stop and search individuals from group Y because Ys are.....
Personnally I don't like the human tendancy to lump all members of a group in together and to treat individuals based on a perception of that group, and I'm all for trying to breakdown that mindset.
Will changing how DnD handles Orcs and Drow help to do this? I have no idea but I see no harm in having the conversation.
Also, race in the sense that the op is using it does exist. Let's take Elves, for example. High Elf, Wood Elf, Sea Elf, Dark Elf and then all the Elves that are not playable, are all races that come under the species title of Elf. Humans are less divided, but even humans have different races. Damaran, Illuskan, Mulan and so on are all races that come under the title "Human". Gnomes have races, and so do Dwarves. Even Halflings, Goblins and Orcs have them. That says nothing about the monsters, and planal entities, some of which have even more significant and stricter divisions.
Okay, I'm going to take this one at a time. Yes, there will be different races still, but the umbrella under which the titles of specific groups of people fall will be a little more broad (and accurate IMHO) if it was changed to species.
You can't remove race from the game. Even if we say that we are going to use the word "species," without race, every character would be an Elf, or a Human or a Dwarf etc., with little distinction to every other member of its species. Even then, the existence of different "species" still creates division.
I don't think anyone is trying to remove race from the game, or even the concept of different people having different abilities. It definitely makes sense for an Aarakocra to have a talon attack while a halfling has none, because they have different physiology. The thing is, the change to alignments or ability scores determined on race/species doesn't really add much to the game, and what it does add is shortsighted and a very small benefit.
What about the traditional racial tensions between Dwarves and Elves? Typically if you were to ask a Dwarf who was responsible for a crime and one of the suspects is an Elf, they are going to pick the Elf due to a deeply ingrained distrust of Elves.
Get rid of those, then. I never found them interesting. It came from Tolkein, but D&D has changed a ton from its LotR roots. I don't need that kind of racism in my games, where elves are mistreated because of who they are by dwarves, which in general are a good people. I don't want the game to say that racism is okay, in fantasy terms or not.
It is all reactionary nonsense that smells suspiciously of 80s paranoia.
And this is where you lost me. Please do explain how this is like the Satanic Panic, because I very much abhor it when someone compares inclusivity to freaked out Christians wanting to wipe D&D off the face of the Earth. (I'm a Christian, and not insulting those that are. I'm insulting the ones that literally were calling for the destruction of the game we all love.)
Racism is terrible, and I am not trying to defend racists, but I don't see where the books or the games are being racist. They go out of their way to describe racial views and tensions in a way that is not inflammatory at all.
Vistani are racist depictions of the Romani people. Tomb of Annihilation had problematic wording describing the Chultans, who very much were based off of real life people. Orcs are described with language that at the very least mirrors what white supremacists have called BIPOC for centuries. There are problems in 5e (and probably every edition) with racial inclusion in the books that have come out.
If you don't want race in your game, then you can remove it, but that doesn't mean that everyone should have to play the same game.
I want "race" to exist in the game (by that I mean different peoples, like Lizardfolk, Humans, Orcs, etc) but I don't want the base game to have different groups have racial prejudices against different races. In 5e, there are twice as many campaign settings with Orcs that aren't mostly evil/villainous than the ones that are. I want the base of the game to be as open racially as possible, with different settings and different tables determining what sets the different races/species apart.
Also, race in the sense that the op is using it does exist. Let's take Elves, for example. High Elf, Wood Elf, Sea Elf, Dark Elf and then all the Elves that are not playable, are all races that come under the species title of Elf. Humans are less divided, but even humans have different races. Damaran, Illuskan, Mulan and so on are all races that come under the title "Human". Gnomes have races, and so do Dwarves. Even Halflings, Goblins and Orcs have them. That says nothing about the monsters, and planal entities, some of which have even more significant and stricter divisions.
You can't remove race from the game. Even if we say that we are going to use the word "species," without race, every character would be an Elf, or a Human or a Dwarf etc., with little distinction to every other member of its species. Even then, the existence of different "species" still creates division.
What about the traditional racial tensions between Dwarves and Elves? Typically if you were to ask a Dwarf who was responsible for a crime and one of the suspects is an Elf, they are going to pick the Elf due to a deeply ingrained distrust of Elves.
It is all reactionary nonsense that smells suspiciously of 80s paranoia.
Racism is terrible, and I am not trying to defend racists, but I don't see where the books or the games are being racist. They go out of their way to describe racial views and tensions in a way that is not inflammatory at all.
If you don't want race in your game, then you can remove it, but that doesn't mean that everyone should have to play the same game.
Wym by “80s paranoia?”
Also, reactionary means right wing, doesn’t it? Or am I thinking of a different word?
Like most of these things, it historically goes back to Tolkien.
This, of course, gets transferred directly into DnD, but without any of the historical background, so it doesn't make sense.
Exactly. And even in Tolkien, thousands of years pass with civilization doing nothing but continue to decline. It all sounds heoric until you realize how much most of the victories came across as Pyrrhic.
Also, race in the sense that the op is using it does exist. Let's take Elves, for example. High Elf, Wood Elf, Sea Elf, Dark Elf and then all the Elves that are not playable, are all races that come under the species title of Elf. Humans are less divided, but even humans have different races. Damaran, Illuskan, Mulan and so on are all races that come under the title "Human". Gnomes have races, and so do Dwarves. Even Halflings, Goblins and Orcs have them. That says nothing about the monsters, and planal entities, some of which have even more significant and stricter divisions.
Okay, I'm going to take this one at a time. Yes, there will be different races still, but the umbrella under which the titles of specific groups of people fall will be a little more broad (and accurate IMHO) if it was changed to species.
You can't remove race from the game. Even if we say that we are going to use the word "species," without race, every character would be an Elf, or a Human or a Dwarf etc., with little distinction to every other member of its species. Even then, the existence of different "species" still creates division.
I don't think anyone is trying to remove race from the game, or even the concept of different people having different abilities. It definitely makes sense for an Aarakocra to have a talon attack while a halfling has none, because they have different physiology. The thing is, the change to alignments or ability scores determined on race/species doesn't really add much to the game, and what it does add is shortsighted and a very small benefit.
What about the traditional racial tensions between Dwarves and Elves? Typically if you were to ask a Dwarf who was responsible for a crime and one of the suspects is an Elf, they are going to pick the Elf due to a deeply ingrained distrust of Elves.
Get rid of those, then. I never found them interesting. It came from Tolkein, but D&D has changed a ton from its LotR roots. I don't need that kind of racism in my games, where elves are mistreated because of who they are by dwarves, which in general are a good people. I don't want the game to say that racism is okay, in fantasy terms or not.
It is all reactionary nonsense that smells suspiciously of 80s paranoia.
And this is where you lost me. Please do explain how this is like the Satanic Panic, because I very much abhor it when someone compares inclusivity to freaked out Christians wanting to wipe D&D off the face of the Earth. (I'm a Christian, and not insulting those that are. I'm insulting the ones that literally were calling for the destruction of the game we all love.)
Racism is terrible, and I am not trying to defend racists, but I don't see where the books or the games are being racist. They go out of their way to describe racial views and tensions in a way that is not inflammatory at all.
Vistani are racist depictions of the Romani people. Tomb of Annihilation had problematic wording describing the Chultans, who very much were based off of real life people. Orcs are described with language that at the very least mirrors what white supremacists have called BIPOC for centuries. There are problems in 5e (and probably every edition) with racial inclusion in the books that have come out.
If you don't want race in your game, then you can remove it, but that doesn't mean that everyone should have to play the same game.
I want "race" to exist in the game (by that I mean different peoples, like Lizardfolk, Humans, Orcs, etc) but I don't want the base game to have different groups have racial prejudices against different races. In 5e, there are twice as many campaign settings with Orcs that aren't mostly evil/villainous than the ones that are. I want the base of the game to be as open racially as possible, with different settings and different tables determining what sets the different races/species apart.
I don't think anyone is trying to remove race from the game, or even the concept of different people having different abilities. It definitely makes sense for an Aarakocra to have a talon attack while a halfling has none, because they have different physiology. The thing is, the change to alignments or ability scores determined on race/species doesn't really add much to the game, and what it does add is shortsighted and a very small benefit.
I don't understand exactly what you mean. As in a Half-Orc having a higher starting Strength than a Halfling. Are you saying that shouldn't be there and/or make sense and add to the game?
The fault here lies with having a "Default" campaign setting at all. All the rules should be setting neutral with the lore presented in setting books.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I agree. It's a bit too late to fix that in 5e, though, so we have to make these fixes.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Exactly. And this is just another reason that the Forgotten Realms should probably be retired.
Besides the story I quoted that noted that the main reason the Orcs are opposed to other races is because they got screwed over by the "good" races' gods before they'd done anything and are out for revenge or justice in the fist place....
Orcs have not been necessarily evil in Forgotten Realms since well... practically the settings inception.
Cities like Waterdeep were stated to have "monster districts" that were inhabited by the "less desirable" races, but nonetheless were still considered official denizens of the city. And that has been a thing since the late 1989, only a few years after the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was printed in 1987, as it appeared in the D&D game series around that time. (Granted, in the game to just wander into that district and basically start fighting and killing nearly everyone you meet as a way of getting early game XP...)
The, perhaps not entirely well written, Handbook of Humanoids came out around 1993 which expressly noted that Orcs could be of any alignment and could be heroes. There was a Lawful Good subrace of Orcs called the Ondont that were established around 1995. And then there was the Gray Orcs who were added to the setting in 2003 (specifically designed to have a PC-ready subrace of Orcs that were distinct from the typical bad guy ones.)
Sure, the Orogs are almost always evil (then again-- everything that lives in the Underdark is) and the Mountain Orcs are generally at least unfriendly to the main 5 PC races if not explicitly "evil". But there have been good-aligned Orcs, at least subspecies of Orcs, established for the vast majority of the time the campaign setting has even existed. The idea that Forgotten Realms is the primary source of the "all Orcs are evil" rule seems quite odd when it was actually the first setting to really begin changing that.
If you want to see the very odd ideas for Orcs that existed before that, you might be able to find a pdf of The Orcs of Thar online. It was written in 1988 as part of the Gazette series for GreyHawk and a read would give one a good idea of the odd notions TSR had. Not only are the rules really, really bad to the point of being entirely non-functional at higher levels for anything that wasn't initially created as a high-level monster-- but it literally mocks and insults anyone who would have any interest in playing such a thing seriously and goes on to assume that the rules are intended entirely for a humorous tongue-in-cheek one-off (not that they actually created any rules that would make them fun to play in a humorous manner).
I think the ability to play Orcs and other humanoids in Dungeons and Dragons started off bad and got better as time has gone on-- peaking in 4E where all base (pre-feats) races were quite well balanced given they all kind of just fit into a simple template. Then 5E had to go and just utterly screw that progress up with Volo's Guide.
And on the note of Forgotten Realms and humanoids-- seems to me that, in the early days, one of the unique features of Forgotten Realms was that it had dinosaurs and specifically dinosaur people. Seems like that was entirely dropped after WotC took over the setting. Why were they gotten rid of?
Agreed.
They were good-aligned (I think) and they were called saurials.
Yes, and there's actually one in 5e dragonbait.
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Also, race in the sense that the op is using it does exist. Let's take Elves, for example. High Elf, Wood Elf, Sea Elf, Dark Elf and then all the Elves that are not playable, are all races that come under the species title of Elf. Humans are less divided, but even humans have different races. Damaran, Illuskan, Mulan and so on are all races that come under the title "Human". Gnomes have races, and so do Dwarves. Even Halflings, Goblins and Orcs have them. That says nothing about the monsters, and planal entities, some of which have even more significant and stricter divisions.
You can't remove race from the game. Even if we say that we are going to use the word "species," without race, every character would be an Elf, or a Human or a Dwarf etc., with little distinction to every other member of its species. Even then, the existence of different "species" still creates division.
What about the traditional racial tensions between Dwarves and Elves? Typically if you were to ask a Dwarf who was responsible for a crime and one of the suspects is an Elf, they are going to pick the Elf due to a deeply ingrained distrust of Elves.
It is all reactionary nonsense that smells suspiciously of 80s paranoia.
Racism is terrible, and I am not trying to defend racists, but I don't see where the books or the games are being racist. They go out of their way to describe racial views and tensions in a way that is not inflammatory at all.
If you don't want race in your game, then you can remove it, but that doesn't mean that everyone should have to play the same game.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Or they would pick the most likely suspect because of dwarves' traditional sense if justice and fairness. Or, since not everyone plays in the same game world, there are no ingrained distrust of elves at all?
Like most of these things, it historically goes back to Tolkien. In Middle Earth, there was a conflict between the Dwarves and Elves over one of the Silmarils. After Beren stole it from Morgoth, King Thingol decided to have it placed on a setting. Through previous events, he has come into possession of Nauglamir, a beautiful chain and the the greatest working of the dwarves. He decides he wants to make the greatest elfstone and the greatest dwarf chain one piece to create a work of beauty never before seen.
So he hired some dwarves who placed it on Nauglamir. The party of dwarves who are working on the piece decides they want the Silmaril (partly because it was exceedingly beautiful, but also likely because Morgoth had poured some of his will into it after so long and it was now corrupting), so they make an absurd claim to it as payment for their services.
Thingol is a wise and powerful elf king, but he's also prideful and is being corrupted by love of he Silmaril. He insults the dwarves. They kill him, his guards slay most of them. They flee back to their lands and tell their countrymen a complete lie about what actually happened ("Thingol refused to pay us and slaughtered us instead!") Meanwhile, Melian, Thingol's wife, is grieving and her power diminishes. This brings down Melian's girdle, the magical forest barrier that prevents unwanted foes from entering Thingol's land. The dwarves attack, slaughtering the elves who weren't expecting this. I think they capture the Simaril. This was stupid, because all the elves that came from Valinor are literally sworn to retake the accursed things no matter what, so they attack and retake the gem. War starts between the races opposed to Morgoth which is exactly what he wants.
Its a whole bloody mess and its a pretty good example of how Morgoth used his power to corrupt good things created by the other Valar.
This, of course, gets transferred directly into DnD, but without any of the historical background, so it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Yes, I suppose it is. Naturally, since civilization is in free-fall it falls to Sauron, servant of Aule the smith, to bring everything back into order. Sure, he was once allied with Morgoth, but now he's good for real this time and he's going to make everything better! He can introduce magical power to the elves in the form of Rings to let them maintain their fading lands! He can bring industrialization!
And wouldn't everything be SO much better if the wisest, most powerful, and oldest being now in Middle Earth ruled... well... everything?
I think most of the current problem with orcs actually comes from the fact that the idea is cribbed from Tolkien, but without really incorporating it properly or giving it the background to make sense. A look through the historical background really brings this into light.
My understanding is that Tolkien got the idea from mythology and borrowed heavily from Grendel – who is essentially an evil spirit in flesh, the product of demons. Tolkien borrows this and develops orcs, using another term from the mythology to represent a race of monsters. For him, elves, men, and orcs are essentially unfallen man, man-as-he-is, and fallen man. In his letters, he even uses the terms elves and orcs interchangeably for “good humans and bad humans,” saying that: “In real (exterior) life men are on both sides [of the war]: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels.” Orcs are a purified view of the evil of the human race, made visible through the lens of fantasy.
The mythological origins of Orcs in Tolkien are less certain than is commonly thought. He actually offers several theories, none of them conclusive, stating that orcs were 1) lesser fallen Maiar (angels) given flesh, 2) corrupted elves, 3) beasts of humanoid shape, 4) Elves mated with beasts, or 5) possibly even direct creations, if we are to take “bred by Melkor of the subterranean heat and slime” literally. Whatever their origin, orcs are warped and malformed because the dark process used to create them. They are foul of heart and mind, with corrupted morals and optimized for war because Morgoth needed a cheap army and delighted in mocking the good Valar by warping everything he touched.
Tolkien never quite decided how he wanted to deal with the possibility of orcs with free will. He agreed that anything that had free will had to have the opportunity for redemption, so he was uncomfortable making the orcs fully sapient. At the same time, Morgoth couldn’t create beings with true intelligence and Tolkien had already portrayed the orcs as possessing intellect. We don’t know where he would have ended up, since Tolkien died before finishing most of his work. I feel fairly confident orcs would have eventually ended up as either beasts or thralls that were extensions of Morgoth’s will, or as a minor dark spirit given flesh (like vampires, werewolves, and balrogs were). Essentially, orcs would either have no choice or have freely chosen evil, but they would not really be a distinct species of their own, like elves, dwarves, hobbits, and men.
The problem occurs when DnD steals the idea. Orcs are copy pasted directly from Tolkien, but they had to remove the reason for why they were always chaotic evil (because they were created/corrupted by Morgoth and are basically extensions of his will). So orcs are dropped in as creatures who act pretty much like Tolkien orcs, but now suddenly have free will. Of course, that immediately creates opportunities for interesting stories. If orcs could have free wills, even if the books say they are always evil, then we can play with them. We can have stories with twists where the orcs are not really evil. Orcs are pretty strong, so presumably some people who wanted to play cool characters homebrewed in orc PCs, either as party of evil parties or as “the lone one who is good” (because that’s a fun concept to play). But of course, we can’t have ugly PCs, so now they are no longer malformed and twisted by dark magic, but fairly ordinary humanoids. Who suddenly are green and have tusks… because of Warhammer and Warcraft, which also steal the concept, but change it substantially.
That tilts the needle strongly in the direction of “free-willed individual” and away from “demon created killing machine”. I think it also creates a serious problem for DnD, since orcs now are being increasingly portrayed as free willed, having their own society, etc. In part because of this, I suspect, people start using orcs as metaphors for racism. There’s one short story in which the “Senator Bilbo” is racist towards orcs and tries to keep them out of the Shire. This gets Tolkien completely wrong, of course, but I suspect the idea that orcs were racist originated from this divide between the Tolkien “orc who is a servant of the dark lord without free will” and the developing mythology of “orc who is just a member of a warrior race”.
It’s as if someone invented vampires in which they are the souls of evil people who made a deal with the devil. Then someone else comes along, steals the name and makes vampires with the same powers, but writes them as just a generic race of beings who don’t need human blood to live and have their own unique culture. The new vampires are nomadic, have children normally, and sound like just a weird ethnic group, but are for whatever reason still arbitrarily evil because of vampire A.
Then of course, people come along and finding problems with Vampire B, accuse anyone who likes Vampire A of being racist! The problem is not racism. The problem is two mutually inconsistent versions of orcs – 1) classic orcs, which were not designed with free will OR with and identifiable culture and 2) new orcs, which were designed with free will and DO act like a culture. (Though I don’t think DnD orcs really lines up with any real world culture well – you can make an argument that they are a generic stand-in for any “warrior” race really, from Vikings to Visigoths to Mongols.)
He described Orcs as ugly Mongoloids and the only explicitly non-European humans in the entire setting, the Easterlings, were equally universally evil and servants of Sauron. You can do mental gymnastics until you break your back-- but it was what it was. Expecting anything enlightened arising from an Englishman born in the 1800s who watched the fall of the British Empire and its colonies slip away during the late 19th and first half of the 20th century is just madness. Naturally he wasn't going to have a more progressive and enlightened view of the world than the rest of his countrymen at the time who had to justify the way their country had ruled the world through the 18th and 19th centuries. And anyone who was simply wasn't going to come into that level of popularity.
I believe race vs species is irrelevent to what is causing the actual complaint/issue.
The argument, whether you agree with it or not, is that having a group sharing the same alignment, personatilty traits etc reinforces the concept of stereotyping and the idea that group is predisposed to say evil because of their identity. Also that this reinforces the idea of its ok to slaughter (etc) group X because all Xs are evil baddies. By extention to really labour the point, stop and search individuals from group Y because Ys are.....
Personnally I don't like the human tendancy to lump all members of a group in together and to treat individuals based on a perception of that group, and I'm all for trying to breakdown that mindset.
Will changing how DnD handles Orcs and Drow help to do this? I have no idea but I see no harm in having the conversation.
Here's a really good suggestion... watch this... i think it may help you understand the topic in a different perspective.
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
Okay, I'm going to take this one at a time. Yes, there will be different races still, but the umbrella under which the titles of specific groups of people fall will be a little more broad (and accurate IMHO) if it was changed to species.
I don't think anyone is trying to remove race from the game, or even the concept of different people having different abilities. It definitely makes sense for an Aarakocra to have a talon attack while a halfling has none, because they have different physiology. The thing is, the change to alignments or ability scores determined on race/species doesn't really add much to the game, and what it does add is shortsighted and a very small benefit.
Get rid of those, then. I never found them interesting. It came from Tolkein, but D&D has changed a ton from its LotR roots. I don't need that kind of racism in my games, where elves are mistreated because of who they are by dwarves, which in general are a good people. I don't want the game to say that racism is okay, in fantasy terms or not.
And this is where you lost me. Please do explain how this is like the Satanic Panic, because I very much abhor it when someone compares inclusivity to freaked out Christians wanting to wipe D&D off the face of the Earth. (I'm a Christian, and not insulting those that are. I'm insulting the ones that literally were calling for the destruction of the game we all love.)
Vistani are racist depictions of the Romani people. Tomb of Annihilation had problematic wording describing the Chultans, who very much were based off of real life people. Orcs are described with language that at the very least mirrors what white supremacists have called BIPOC for centuries. There are problems in 5e (and probably every edition) with racial inclusion in the books that have come out.
I want "race" to exist in the game (by that I mean different peoples, like Lizardfolk, Humans, Orcs, etc) but I don't want the base game to have different groups have racial prejudices against different races. In 5e, there are twice as many campaign settings with Orcs that aren't mostly evil/villainous than the ones that are. I want the base of the game to be as open racially as possible, with different settings and different tables determining what sets the different races/species apart.
Edit: Fixed formatting error.
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Wym by “80s paranoia?”
Also, reactionary means right wing, doesn’t it? Or am I thinking of a different word?
Exactly!!!
I like this idea.
I don't understand exactly what you mean. As in a Half-Orc having a higher starting Strength than a Halfling. Are you saying that shouldn't be there and/or make sense and add to the game?
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