I also do not think anyone is unaware of their alignments from an internal perspective or a subjective one. i.e. Orcs aren't thinking to themselves, they are the good guys and that paladin of Pelor is evil. They know what side of the war they are on, they know upon which plane their god resides and to where their souls go upon death, and for the most part, they accept their purpose and function in the grand scheme of things; as does everyone else.
Evil creatures are aware of which side they're on, but they think it's the right side to be on. This is the main issue with alignment and why so many people argue about it. "Good" means two different things. Moral good has an objective definition (within D&D). But there's also the subjective evaluation, like "you did a good job." This is where we get weird concepts like it's good to be evil (for an evil creature).
So in a sense, everyone thinks they're the good guys. If they didn't, they'd switch sides. The idea that an evil creature somehow thinks its on the morally bankrupt side is cartoonish. Like it's some role it plays. An evil creature thinks it's on the correct/proper/right side, even if it knows that side is nasty and cruel. It's a moral virtue to be nasty and cruel. Compassion and kindness are moral failings. Although the evil creature wouldn't term it like that, with words like "moral virtue," but it would still think that's the way to be. I mean assuming it's not enslaved and working against its own desires, but then that's not the true alignment of the creature.
It's "Whom do you serve? "The light, the darkness, the balance, or no-one/myself". In the case of the last one, you can write probably write undecided or unaligned.
By those standards, your average ancient red dragon or beholder or mind flayer is unaligned. With the exception of celestials and fiends, very few creatures show much evidence of caring about the 'war'.
Just because race alignment is removed, does not mean class alignment or monster alignment is. It is essential in the lore and outer planes and roleplaying.
A really cool thing in Tomb of Annihilation is the nine gods conflicting alignments. There is even a puzzle where the characters have to make an alignment chart to open a door.
Just because race alignment is removed, does not mean class alignment or monster alignment is. It is essential in the lore and outer planes and roleplaying.
A really cool thing in Tomb of Annihilation is the nine gods conflicting alignments. There is even a puzzle where the characters have to make an alignment chart to open a door.
Alignment is part of D&D.
Class alignment is not a thing in 5ed. I would also argue that the outer planes would be better off divorced from the Alignment Grid, but I suppose that subjective.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Just because race alignment is removed, does not mean class alignment or monster alignment is.
As Ophidimancer mentioned, Class alignment is not a thing anymore. And monster alignment isn't even essential, you can just as easily use any monster without its alignment. I've run angels as villains and devils as allies in different campaigns. Alignment didn't matter then, and it shouldn't with how you use monsters.
It is essential in the lore
Nope. Not at all. Not essential in Eberron, Exandria, Ravnica, Theros, Strixhaven, and many other settings. Literally only in the Forgotten Realms (in 5e, at least).
and outer planes
Literally only in one cosmology in the whole D&D multiverse. Eberron, Dark Sun, Nentir Vale, and the Magic: the Gathering settings do not use The Great Wheel.
and roleplaying.
Nope. You can roleplay just fine without alignment (in my opinion, in many circumstances roleplay is actually better without alignment). Other TTRPGs don't have alignment, and they still roleplay all the time. Alignment is not essential at all to roleplay. It is not essential to it, and is often detrimental to it (when a fellow player or DM says "your alignment is X, should you be saying things like Y?").
A really cool thing in Tomb of Annihilation is the nine gods conflicting alignments. There is even a puzzle where the characters have to make an alignment chart to open a door.
As someone that really dislikes alignment . . . I actually really like this part of the Tomb of Annihilation. But it really only works in extreme cases like that, where the entities that the characters are bonded to are alien and don't follow human logic.
Alignment is part of D&D.
It doesn't have to be, and it is not essential to playing D&D, any D&D video games, reading any D&D books (when has it ever came up in a Drizzt book?), or watching any D&D-based movies or TV Shows (like the upcoming D&D movie or Critical Role TV Show).
And it being a part of D&D doesn't necessarily make it good. This is the "status quo" argument, which is a logical fallacy. I've run whole campaigns without mentioning alignment a signle time, and it hasn't negatively impacted them in literally any way.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Incidental re alignment, not incidental in and of itself, personality.
Where else should one's alignment reside, if not in the personality? Or asked another way, what else should an alignment be, other than a part of a character's personality?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Isn't it a consequence of your personality whether you decide the Angels are right or the Fiends are?
Then how can personality be "largely incidental" when speaking of alignment, ie morality?
Also, why would most beings even care about Celestials or Fiends? I'm pretty sure most beings have never even really heard of, let alone met or had their lives impacted by any of those entities. I am highly skeptical of your position that most beings consciously decide their alignment and base it upon, of all things, their disposition toward the politics of extra planar entities. I also object to the idea that orcs don't think they're the good guys. That's not how sane thinking beings work. They do the things they do because they think it is the right thing to do based on what they know and have learned.
I feel your description of alignment is ... cartoonish? Like, ridiculous and reminiscent of of wartime propaganda penny dreadfuls. So like ... I guess that is a take on things and one way to play it, but not to my taste at all. No, thank you.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Isn't it a consequence of your personality whether you decide the Angels are right or the Fiends are?
Then how can personality be "largely incidental" when speaking of alignment, ie morality?
Also, why would most beings even care about Celestials or Fiends? I'm pretty sure most beings have never even really heard of, let alone met or had their lives impacted by any of those entities. I am highly skeptical of your position that most beings consciously decide their alignment and base it upon, of all things, their disposition toward the politics of extra planar entities. I also object to the idea that orcs don't think they're the good guys. That's not how sane thinking beings work. They do the things they do because they think it is the right thing to do based on what they know and have learned.
I feel your description of alignment is ... cartoonish? Like, ridiculous and reminiscent of of wartime propaganda penny dreadfuls. So like ... I guess that is a take on things and one way to play it, but not to my taste at all. No, thank you.
I am saying we are not speaking of morality, per se; that stuff already is covered first under the personality description. We are literally speaking of being the ally of one pair or another of cosmological forces. Alignment only has relevance in this context, otherwise it is an incidental concept.
Why wouldn't they? - The adventurers in particular as they are the ones who get roped into it and end up fighting Tiamat and other such beings. I don't know what your world is like, but the clergy is a significant presence in the daily lives of many; Dwarves and Halflings in particular. The D&D deities aren't distant but active in the world. Every spell granted to a cleric or paladin is a miracle, hospices that perform healings are a thing, the purification of formerly despoiled food and drink are a thing; and on the other side, Succubi and such are constantly corrupting aristocrats and, imps are making deals with people, cults of the elder elemental evil pop up here or there, etc. Tiamats cult just poped up again; that's the campaign we are doing now. everyone knows what there particular clergy has to teach about the state of the universe at large and knows that the source of their texts are all real. In this context when they are pointed at and asked "and whose side are you on, my child?" folks do have an answer.
That's not how sane thinking beings work
Which doesn't at all dissuade me from the idea. ;-P
I don't care to argue whether or not it is 'sane behavior', but some people do what they are told to without thinking about it. Other people think they are right, and also know that what they are doing in the name of being right is still actually evil. Take the operative from Serenity. He knows he does evil but thinks it's right for him to do that evil in service to the Alliance's goal of making all their worlds 'better'. Being right and being good are not the same.
The Orcs IMHO 'know' that pillaging the countryside and taking slaves and burning down townships is 'evil', but as far as they are concerned it's their land to take and their right to take it, and their prey are all interlopers anyway. The justification does not change the action from evil to good. The action is not a matter of perception but a universal absolute. It is an action that pleases their Dark Lord and his greatest minions; and they are glad to have pleased him.
----
Dude, but of course it is. This is that kind of game. Pennydreadfuls were before my time, but what wasn't was: The Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon, from the 80's, where the kids from Earth had to deal with Venger every episode. That was my first exposure to D&D you know. That's entirely the kind of game this is.
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Isn't it a consequence of your personality whether you decide the Angels are right or the Fiends are?
Then how can personality be "largely incidental" when speaking of alignment, ie morality?
Also, why would most beings even care about Celestials or Fiends? I'm pretty sure most beings have never even really heard of, let alone met or had their lives impacted by any of those entities. I am highly skeptical of your position that most beings consciously decide their alignment and base it upon, of all things, their disposition toward the politics of extra planar entities. I also object to the idea that orcs don't think they're the good guys. That's not how sane thinking beings work. They do the things they do because they think it is the right thing to do based on what they know and have learned.
I feel your description of alignment is ... cartoonish? Like, ridiculous and reminiscent of of wartime propaganda penny dreadfuls. So like ... I guess that is a take on things and one way to play it, but not to my taste at all. No, thank you.
I am saying we are not speaking of morality, per se; that stuff already is covered first under the personality description. We are literally speaking of being the ally of one pair or another of cosmological forces. Alignment only has relevance in this context, otherwise it is an incidental concept.
Why wouldn't they? - The adventurers in particular as they are the ones who get roped into it and end up fighting Tiamat and other such beings. I don't know what your world is like, but the clergy is a significant presence in the daily lives of many; Dwarves and Halflings in particular. The D&D deities aren't distant but active in the world. Every spell granted to a cleric or paladin is a miracle, hospices that perform healings are a thing, the purification of formerly despoiled food and drink are a thing; and on the other side, Succubi and such are constantly corrupting aristocrats and, imps are making deals with people, cults of the elder elemental evil pop up here or there, etc. Tiamats cult just poped up again; that's the campaign we are doing now. everyone knows what there particular clergy has to teach about the state of the universe at large and knows that the source of their texts are all real. In this context when they are pointed at and asked "and whose side are you on, my child?" folks do have an answer.
That's not how sane thinking beings work
Which doesn't at all dissuade me from the idea. ;-P
I don't care to argue whether or not it is 'sane behavior', but some people do what they are told to without thinking about it. Other people think they are right, and also know that what they are doing in the name of being right is still actually evil. Take the operative from Serenity. He knows he does evil but thinks it's right for him to do that evil in service to the Alliance's goal of making all their worlds 'better'. Being right and being good are not the same.
The Orcs IMHO 'know' that pillaging the countryside and taking slaves and burning down townships is 'evil', but as far as they are concerned it's their land to take and their right to take it, and their prey are all interlopers anyway. The justification does not change the action from evil to good. The action is not a matter of perception but a universal absolute. It is an action that pleases their Dark Lord and his greatest minions; and they are glad to have pleased him.
----
Dude, but of course it is. This is that kind of game. Pennydreadfuls were before my time, but what wasn't was: The Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon, from the 80's, where the kids from Earth had to deal with Venger every episode. That was my first exposure to D&D you know. That's entirely the kind of game this is.
I find all of that distasteful in the same way that wartime propaganda is. It makes me feel like there's someone, some group of people, that you're vilifying through the medium of gaming. I honestly don't think you're consciously doing that, but history itself makes me associate this particular kind of moralizing with Yellow Peril propaganda. It is highly uncomfortable. Hackle raising.
Edit: Also I prefer not to be addressed as "dude." It's not a huge deal, I just don't like it.
The Orcs IMHO 'know' that pillaging the countryside and taking slaves and burning down townships is 'evil', but as far as they are concerned it's their land to take and their right to take it, and their prey are all interlopers anyway. The justification does not change the action from evil to good. The action is not a matter of perception but a universal absolute. It is an action that pleases their Dark Lord and his greatest minions; and they are glad to have pleased him.
One might even say they feel good about it. When people say "everyone thinks they're the good guy," this is what that means. They're not confused about the larger morality, but they think their morality -- whatever label you want to attach to it -- is the right one.
The Orcs IMHO 'know' that pillaging the countryside and taking slaves and burning down townships is 'evil', but as far as they are concerned it's their land to take and their right to take it, and their prey are all interlopers anyway. The justification does not change the action from evil to good. The action is not a matter of perception but a universal absolute. It is an action that pleases their Dark Lord and his greatest minions; and they are glad to have pleased him.
One might even say they feel good about it. When people say "everyone thinks they're the good guy," this is what that means. They're not confused about the larger morality, but they think their morality -- whatever label you want to attach to it -- is the right one.
This whole argument falls down because we are ascribing our sensibilities to a far darker, more dangerous place.
The Orcs behaviour may not actually be "evil" if the people that they are attacking have taken away the land they lived in and hunted on and killed there people then there actions are simply the acts of an oppressed, invaded people. This is not a world where people "sit down and talk through" there issues, Original DnD it is a world where those who are "different" are hunted down and killed because they are "evil".
Where the Native Peoples who fought back against imperialist invaders "evil?
By all means run a simple binary campaign, but, it kind of falls down when you consider that most "intelligent" (as in can communicate through language and writing) races in DnD can run from lawful good to chaotic evil. Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, Tieflings, Dragonborn, every player race pretty much can be any alignment. So why do we instantly then say that Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins etc must all be Evil?
In my experiance a campaign becomes far far richer when as a DM you don't simply say, these goblins are here and will fight just because they are evil. Instead, these goblins are here, resources are tight in this part of the land and so, in order to protect themselves from Starvation, if any party comes through and hunts, or takes from the land, or disturbs the balance the Goblins will try and drive them away.
Or
These Orcs have lived with 300 years of Humans and Elves trying to encroach on their land, they have a complicated social structure but see the land as there own, given to them by a god. After 300 years they have come to realise there is no point in trying to talk, they must fight to keep what is theres, fight to protect the young and old that have been slaughtered by those who see them simply as savage animals to be culled from the earth to allow the expansion of more "cultured" civilisations. Or to mine the important resources found in the land. So the Orcs react, they kill and attack anyone who encroaches on their land, they take prisoners to make them rebuild what has been destroyed. To the Humans and Elves Orcs are evil, but, they would behave no differently if the roles where reversed.
This is where a simple "alignment" really doesn't work, you end up saying everyone is just neutral, with alignment based on perception and circumstance and this is why I don't use alignment in my games as defined in the PHB.
I don't care to argue whether or not it is 'sane behavior', but some people do what they are told to without thinking about it. Other people think they are right, and also know that what they are doing in the name of being right is still actually evil. Take the operative from Serenity. He knows he does evil but thinks it's right for him to do that evil in service to the Alliance's goal of making all their worlds 'better'. Being right and being good are not the same.
The Operative is a great character, nuanced and complex. But you realize that that taking the complexities of a nuanced character and using it as a broad brush across an entire people completely destroys the nuance, right? You can't use the same standards for a single person and apply them to an entire people, that is stereotyping at best! If you play with anyone who has suffered with that kind of stereotyping then I can almost guarantee you this will make them uncomfortable, even if they don't say anything about it, it makes me uncomfortable just to read about it. And if you don't play with anyone who has suffered from systematic racism in their lives ... maybe now you know why.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
1) Putting human cultural norms on non-human races is problematic.
2) Human cultural norms can vary by culture, region, etc. as well as by race, both human and non-human.
IMHO you need to have an independent set of criteria to base the race/culture on what ever scale you use.
Also just because you/your race/your culture believe something or have convinced yourselves of something does not mean it is true and that is why IMHO you need an independent set of criteria to base things on.
MDC
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I'm sorry, but I don't want to play in a game where "All the personality stuff is largely incidental."
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Evil creatures are aware of which side they're on, but they think it's the right side to be on. This is the main issue with alignment and why so many people argue about it. "Good" means two different things. Moral good has an objective definition (within D&D). But there's also the subjective evaluation, like "you did a good job." This is where we get weird concepts like it's good to be evil (for an evil creature).
So in a sense, everyone thinks they're the good guys. If they didn't, they'd switch sides. The idea that an evil creature somehow thinks its on the morally bankrupt side is cartoonish. Like it's some role it plays. An evil creature thinks it's on the correct/proper/right side, even if it knows that side is nasty and cruel. It's a moral virtue to be nasty and cruel. Compassion and kindness are moral failings. Although the evil creature wouldn't term it like that, with words like "moral virtue," but it would still think that's the way to be. I mean assuming it's not enslaved and working against its own desires, but then that's not the true alignment of the creature.
yay! another alignment forum
Updog
By those standards, your average ancient red dragon or beholder or mind flayer is unaligned. With the exception of celestials and fiends, very few creatures show much evidence of caring about the 'war'.
Just because race alignment is removed, does not mean class alignment or monster alignment is. It is essential in the lore and outer planes and roleplaying.
A really cool thing in Tomb of Annihilation is the nine gods conflicting alignments. There is even a puzzle where the characters have to make an alignment chart to open a door.
Alignment is part of D&D.
Class alignment is not a thing in 5ed. I would also argue that the outer planes would be better off divorced from the Alignment Grid, but I suppose that subjective.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
As Ophidimancer mentioned, Class alignment is not a thing anymore. And monster alignment isn't even essential, you can just as easily use any monster without its alignment. I've run angels as villains and devils as allies in different campaigns. Alignment didn't matter then, and it shouldn't with how you use monsters.
Nope. Not at all. Not essential in Eberron, Exandria, Ravnica, Theros, Strixhaven, and many other settings. Literally only in the Forgotten Realms (in 5e, at least).
Literally only in one cosmology in the whole D&D multiverse. Eberron, Dark Sun, Nentir Vale, and the Magic: the Gathering settings do not use The Great Wheel.
Nope. You can roleplay just fine without alignment (in my opinion, in many circumstances roleplay is actually better without alignment). Other TTRPGs don't have alignment, and they still roleplay all the time. Alignment is not essential at all to roleplay. It is not essential to it, and is often detrimental to it (when a fellow player or DM says "your alignment is X, should you be saying things like Y?").
As someone that really dislikes alignment . . . I actually really like this part of the Tomb of Annihilation. But it really only works in extreme cases like that, where the entities that the characters are bonded to are alien and don't follow human logic.
It doesn't have to be, and it is not essential to playing D&D, any D&D video games, reading any D&D books (when has it ever came up in a Drizzt book?), or watching any D&D-based movies or TV Shows (like the upcoming D&D movie or Critical Role TV Show).
And it being a part of D&D doesn't necessarily make it good. This is the "status quo" argument, which is a logical fallacy. I've run whole campaigns without mentioning alignment a signle time, and it hasn't negatively impacted them in literally any way.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
My current campaign has gone from 1st to 16th level without any mention of alignment. (We'll be going to 20th or higher before we're done.)
For role-playing purposes we're using the 12 Jungian archetypes.
Nobody at our table has missed the alignment system and its absence hasn't caused any issues when running the game.
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
Incidental re alignment, not incidental in and of itself, personality.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Where else should one's alignment reside, if not in the personality? Or asked another way, what else should an alignment be, other than a part of a character's personality?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Isn't it a consequence of your personality whether you decide the Angels are right or the Fiends are?
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Then how can personality be "largely incidental" when speaking of alignment, ie morality?
Also, why would most beings even care about Celestials or Fiends? I'm pretty sure most beings have never even really heard of, let alone met or had their lives impacted by any of those entities. I am highly skeptical of your position that most beings consciously decide their alignment and base it upon, of all things, their disposition toward the politics of extra planar entities. I also object to the idea that orcs don't think they're the good guys. That's not how sane thinking beings work. They do the things they do because they think it is the right thing to do based on what they know and have learned.
I feel your description of alignment is ... cartoonish? Like, ridiculous and reminiscent of of wartime propaganda penny dreadfuls. So like ... I guess that is a take on things and one way to play it, but not to my taste at all. No, thank you.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Only if you bother to think about it, and have enough self-awareness to accurately judge your own actions.
Note: Did not read all of the posts.
In general alignment is as important or non-important as the GM makes it in their game.
MDC
I am saying we are not speaking of morality, per se; that stuff already is covered first under the personality description. We are literally speaking of being the ally of one pair or another of cosmological forces. Alignment only has relevance in this context, otherwise it is an incidental concept.
Why wouldn't they? - The adventurers in particular as they are the ones who get roped into it and end up fighting Tiamat and other such beings. I don't know what your world is like, but the clergy is a significant presence in the daily lives of many; Dwarves and Halflings in particular. The D&D deities aren't distant but active in the world. Every spell granted to a cleric or paladin is a miracle, hospices that perform healings are a thing, the purification of formerly despoiled food and drink are a thing; and on the other side, Succubi and such are constantly corrupting aristocrats and, imps are making deals with people, cults of the elder elemental evil pop up here or there, etc. Tiamats cult just poped up again; that's the campaign we are doing now. everyone knows what there particular clergy has to teach about the state of the universe at large and knows that the source of their texts are all real. In this context when they are pointed at and asked "and whose side are you on, my child?" folks do have an answer.
Which doesn't at all dissuade me from the idea. ;-P
I don't care to argue whether or not it is 'sane behavior', but some people do what they are told to without thinking about it. Other people think they are right, and also know that what they are doing in the name of being right is still actually evil. Take the operative from Serenity. He knows he does evil but thinks it's right for him to do that evil in service to the Alliance's goal of making all their worlds 'better'. Being right and being good are not the same.
The Orcs IMHO 'know' that pillaging the countryside and taking slaves and burning down townships is 'evil', but as far as they are concerned it's their land to take and their right to take it, and their prey are all interlopers anyway. The justification does not change the action from evil to good. The action is not a matter of perception but a universal absolute. It is an action that pleases their Dark Lord and his greatest minions; and they are glad to have pleased him.
----
Dude, but of course it is. This is that kind of game. Pennydreadfuls were before my time, but what wasn't was: The Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon, from the 80's, where the kids from Earth had to deal with Venger every episode. That was my first exposure to D&D you know. That's entirely the kind of game this is.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I find all of that distasteful in the same way that wartime propaganda is. It makes me feel like there's someone, some group of people, that you're vilifying through the medium of gaming. I honestly don't think you're consciously doing that, but history itself makes me associate this particular kind of moralizing with Yellow Peril propaganda. It is highly uncomfortable. Hackle raising.
Edit: Also I prefer not to be addressed as "dude." It's not a huge deal, I just don't like it.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
One might even say they feel good about it. When people say "everyone thinks they're the good guy," this is what that means. They're not confused about the larger morality, but they think their morality -- whatever label you want to attach to it -- is the right one.
This whole argument falls down because we are ascribing our sensibilities to a far darker, more dangerous place.
The Orcs behaviour may not actually be "evil" if the people that they are attacking have taken away the land they lived in and hunted on and killed there people then there actions are simply the acts of an oppressed, invaded people. This is not a world where people "sit down and talk through" there issues, Original DnD it is a world where those who are "different" are hunted down and killed because they are "evil".
Where the Native Peoples who fought back against imperialist invaders "evil?
By all means run a simple binary campaign, but, it kind of falls down when you consider that most "intelligent" (as in can communicate through language and writing) races in DnD can run from lawful good to chaotic evil. Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, Tieflings, Dragonborn, every player race pretty much can be any alignment. So why do we instantly then say that Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins etc must all be Evil?
In my experiance a campaign becomes far far richer when as a DM you don't simply say, these goblins are here and will fight just because they are evil. Instead, these goblins are here, resources are tight in this part of the land and so, in order to protect themselves from Starvation, if any party comes through and hunts, or takes from the land, or disturbs the balance the Goblins will try and drive them away.
Or
These Orcs have lived with 300 years of Humans and Elves trying to encroach on their land, they have a complicated social structure but see the land as there own, given to them by a god. After 300 years they have come to realise there is no point in trying to talk, they must fight to keep what is theres, fight to protect the young and old that have been slaughtered by those who see them simply as savage animals to be culled from the earth to allow the expansion of more "cultured" civilisations. Or to mine the important resources found in the land. So the Orcs react, they kill and attack anyone who encroaches on their land, they take prisoners to make them rebuild what has been destroyed.
To the Humans and Elves Orcs are evil, but, they would behave no differently if the roles where reversed.
This is where a simple "alignment" really doesn't work, you end up saying everyone is just neutral, with alignment based on perception and circumstance and this is why I don't use alignment in my games as defined in the PHB.
The Operative is a great character, nuanced and complex. But you realize that that taking the complexities of a nuanced character and using it as a broad brush across an entire people completely destroys the nuance, right? You can't use the same standards for a single person and apply them to an entire people, that is stereotyping at best! If you play with anyone who has suffered with that kind of stereotyping then I can almost guarantee you this will make them uncomfortable, even if they don't say anything about it, it makes me uncomfortable just to read about it. And if you don't play with anyone who has suffered from systematic racism in their lives ... maybe now you know why.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
In general:
1) Putting human cultural norms on non-human races is problematic.
2) Human cultural norms can vary by culture, region, etc. as well as by race, both human and non-human.
IMHO you need to have an independent set of criteria to base the race/culture on what ever scale you use.
Also just because you/your race/your culture believe something or have convinced yourselves of something does not mean it is true and that is why IMHO you need an independent set of criteria to base things on.
MDC