The FR I run is close to what Ed himself envisions. There is tangible, objective Good and Evil but only on a cosmic scale - entities such as Demons, Devils, Celestials are good examples.
Then there is subjective evil which is based on the society and environment and nothing more. Which means not all members of a particular species are evil or good.
There have been good red dragons in the history of Faerun (if there weren't then the elves wouldn't have lost Myth Drannor, by the way)
The orc Kingdom of Many Arrows under the rule of Lorgru has treaties with cities and countries of Silver Marches since the monarch favors peace.
The good drow of Eilistraee are now more accepted than ever before when her avatar appeared on the walls of Waterdeep and beaconed them to go. Humans of Waterdeep are fascinated by the culture to the point where they dress up as drows (paint) and dance naked in the moonlight.
Any strong willed, intelligent member of any species can choose their own destiny. The likelihood of that is a whole different matter depending on many circumstances.
Original D&D listed neither either Good nor Evil on its alignment charts, only Law and Chaos.
Well no f'ing duh. Thank you for correcting me. How stupid could I be to put Law/Chaos and/or Good/Evil. Cause, you know, the Holmes Blue Box isn't considered Original D&D alongside 3LBB D&D.....
People should be able to play how they want and have fun doing it. It's totally fine that people have different politics in their own game worlds, but the moment you start making statements about aspects of other people's games in THEIR games is 'idiotic', I personally think that's uncalled for.
Cause being called "idiotic" is SO MUCH WORSE than being called/compared to a "Bigot" or "Racist" or "Colonizer" for playing D&D the way it was originally conceived vis-a-vis Law/Chaos and/or Good/Evil.
Brooklyn, are you deliberately trolling? You come in here, yell at everyone that they are playing wrong and are idiots for not playing your style, than say that you are victimized and this thread is flame bait when it attempts to show that anyone can play D&D their way.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
People should be able to play how they want and have fun doing it. It's totally fine that people have different politics in their own game worlds, but the moment you start making statements about aspects of other people's games in THEIR games is 'idiotic', I personally think that's uncalled for.
Cause being called "idiotic" is SO MUCH WORSE than being called/compared to a "Bigot" or "Racist" or "Colonizer" for playing D&D the way it was originally conceived vis-a-vis Law/Chaos and/or Good/Evil.
Nobody called you a bigot or any of the other things. They said that they did not like that style of game because the themes closely mirrored the attitudes of bigots/racists in the real world. That is not calling you one, just pointing out the reason they dislike that way of playing.
You are the one who told everyone else that they were playing the game wrong. Nobody told you that you were wrong to play your way, in fact many throughout both that and the previous thread told you they were happy for you to play that way if you want. They just didn't want to play that way themselves.
You are the one who insulted everyone with a different type of game to yourself, even going so far as to start an entire new thread to insult people when the mods stopped the debate in the previous thread.
You then have the nerve to come into this thread and say that it is "nothing but flame-bait"?!?!
At what point do you dismantle the game to the point of absurdity? I personally think the game is fine as is. Good races, evil races, good monsters, evil monsters, middle of the road both, makes sense and has for decades. How far do you push the narrative of everyone can be good and shouldn't be attacked because of race or background? Does the blood war stop and devils and demons start having cookouts? Do Drow stop worshipping Llolth and send a "My Bad" letter to all other races about slavery and all the other races just forgive them? Do the elves let other races into Evermeet? Granted these are very far fetched and at the total end of that spectrum, but where is that line of demarcation?
At what point do you dismantle the game to the point of absurdity? I personally think the game is fine as is. Good races, evil races, good monsters, evil monsters, middle of the road both, makes sense and has for decades. How far do you push the narrative of everyone can be good and shouldn't be attacked because of race or background? Does the blood war stop and devils and demons start having cookouts? Do Drow stop worshipping Llolth and send a "My Bad" letter to all other races about slavery and all the other races just forgive them? Do the elves let other races into Evermeet? Granted these are very far fetched and at the total end of that spectrum, but where is that line of demarcation?
That isn't what anyone is saying at all. What I am saying is that villains are more interesting if they have a motive instead of "just because they evil." You can still have goblins attacking a settlement. But in one of my games, the gobbos would have a reason to attack the settlement- maybe the humans unearthed a goblin relic they want back, or they need more land for whatever reason, or anything else.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
At what point do you dismantle the game to the point of absurdity? I personally think the game is fine as is. Good races, evil races, good monsters, evil monsters, middle of the road both, makes sense and has for decades. How far do you push the narrative of everyone can be good and shouldn't be attacked because of race or background? Does the blood war stop and devils and demons start having cookouts? Do Drow stop worshipping Llolth and send a "My Bad" letter to all other races about slavery and all the other races just forgive them? Do the elves let other races into Evermeet? Granted these are very far fetched and at the total end of that spectrum, but where is that line of demarcation?
I think the answer is to think of the races as representing factions or nations, which have varying degrees of relations with each other. The drow view suface-dwellers as inferior and potential slave-fodder. While an individual drow may disagree with its faction (i.e. Drizzt, from what I understand), the group as a whole still has an ideology.
So when you encounter an individual from one of these factions, the DM presents that individual as adhering to the group ideology, rejecting it, or some variation in between. This may not work for all races. I'm not sure a demon and a devil can put aside their animosity for any significant length of time. But for the more conventional races whose beliefs are subject to their own individual free-thinking, it can be.
Races that are functionally different species will often feel justified in viewing other species as less important, since they can't breed or merge with them, and in the end one will probably go extinct. Better thee than me, right?
I think its more a matter of perspective. Sure, Drow are evil in most eyes but to them they are just doing what they are suppose to be doing. Does that excuse their actions? Probably not, but it is what they believe they need to be doing. If goblins are raiding a village that is bad for the people of the village, yeah. But those goblins might just be doing what they need to because some other force is making them gather food or it cost them their lives.
This is where the wonder of playing the game comes in. If i present this situation to my players, perhaps my players kill all the goblins and solve the problem. Perhaps they talk to the goblins and find out that their village got flooded and because of poor leadership they had to raid the town. The party can then help them rebuild and potentially establish peaceful coexistence between the two groups.
I think its more a matter of perspective. Sure, Drow are evil in most eyes but to them they are just doing what they are suppose to be doing. Does that excuse their actions? Probably not, but it is what they believe they need to be doing. If goblins are raiding a village that is bad for the people of the village, yeah. But those goblins might just be doing what they need to because some other force is making them gather food or it cost them their lives.
This is where the wonder of playing the game comes in. If i present this situation to my players, perhaps my players kill all the goblins and solve the problem. Perhaps they talk to the goblins and find out that their village got flooded and because of poor leadership they had to raid the town. The party can then help them rebuild and potentially establish peaceful coexistence between the two groups.
Why shouldn't that be possible?
Not saying it shouldn't be possible, just not probable. Brokering a peace between demons and devils is impossible. Brokering between humans and elves, more than likely fairly easily. Between Goblins and a human town? Probably not, but you can sure try! With some good rolls you could probably keep them from killing you on site but broker a long standing peace is probably not going to happen, at least based on current D&D structure.
I'm trying to see at what point those who feel this game has racist tendencies and that races should be able to coexist, how far do you take it? Where is that line and how do you draw it there? There are those like Drizzt and basically any player character Drow that break away from the norm, but should their whole society as written be changed?
Others have expressed my position on this better than I could.
In the end, this should be no different to any other discussion of play style to me. Some want lots of combat, or exploration, or role play, while some want a mixture. Some want certain races to be inherently good or evil, some want more subtlety and variability. Some prefer an absolute definition of good and evil, some want to see it as subjective and subtle. None of these approaches are wrong, they are just different, and everyone is free to choose their own way.
The only thing which is wrong in this thread, or the other one, is people telling others that their play style is wrong.
Others have expressed my position on this better than I could.
In the end, this should be no different to any other discussion of play style to me. Some want lots of combat, or exploration, or role play, while some want a mixture. Some want certain races to be inherently good or evil, some want more subtlety and variability. Some prefer an absolute definition of good and evil, some want to see it as subjective and subtle. None of these approaches are wrong, they are just different, and everyone is free to choose their own way.
The only thing which is wrong in this thread, or the other one, is people telling others that their play style is wrong.
This
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@MidnightPlat: Fair shake on the Der&Der thing. That's mostly just what my group calls the game at this point, a funny riff on the Texan redneck in our group (who is, thus far, the most successful DM) that we use to poke him. My intent was more "ehrmagehrd!" than developmental impediment, but I see the issue. I'll do my best to refrain from that usage here.
@Brooklyn: Calm down, please. I never accused you of being a racist or bigot. There is, however, a very noticeable divide in the community these days between what might be considered a 'Purist' stance, e.g. yours, and a 'Modernist' stance, e.g. mine.
Purists see Always Chaotic Evil goblins and similar older, established tropes as simply the history of the game, and playing with those tropes in place is respecting that history and conserving the hobby for those to come. New players should be taught the ways of the Old Masters, the history of the game and its storied creators, because knowing exactly who Mordenkainen is, why the Blood War is important, and how all of the long fifty-year history of D&D across ten-plus rulesets, six or seven 'editions', and the work of seminaries in their field lends a game a sense of weight, gravitas, and momentum that many modern games lack. There's no racism in these old ideas because it's a fictitious space, and many Purists find the idea of equating Faerun to the realm world in any way baffling and nonsensical. Gleefully putting a goblin village to the torch to earn their payday in Faerun is no indication at all that one has any desire to subjugate or extinct minorities in real life, the same way everybody's five-digit kill counts in first-person shooters is no indication that they're a wildly unstable psycho megamurderer in real life.
It's simply the way the game is played, part of the history and ethos of D&D. Removing those elements is like removing the Six Sacred Scores, the concept of armor class, or the existence of goblins in the first place - it's removing an essential part of the game whose absence makes it no longer Dungeons and Dragons. It's messing with Gary Gygax's plan, and Gary is the beloved founder and the Architect of D&D. His vision is the purest form of D&D there is, and we should all be so lucky as to emulate his ways and his work.
But from more modernist viewpoints, Brooklyn? Fifty years of progress, change, and societal evolution cannot be ignored. I live in a world where it's mostly okay to tell people I'm transgender, but it's not okay to call certain people certain things that would get me both redacted and banned in short order. While there's debates over how helpful that latter is (which are for another place and another time, don't get into it here please people), a lot of folks consider that a net positive. I've read Tolkien's books. Not only are they not really all that impressive by modern standards, they also haven't aged well at all. I am heartily sick of Mr. Tolkien trying to demand from beyond the grave that I conform to his worldbuilding when enjoying my fantasy gaming hobby. A lot of people who are just as talented as Gary Gygax were have done a lot of cool things with D&D in these fifty years, and I'm more interested in their work than in Gary's.
I can't help but want more from my fantasy than a salty old man long dead could've envisioned when writing his books about how uncool it was that the modern society of his day wasn't deeply Christian anymore. I want youkai. I want skyships powered by living lightning. I want colorful clothes and spicy food. I want psychic powers. I want all that cool shit we've come up with in the fifty years since D&D's been a thing, and I want it in a world more nuanced and interesting than the same tired old Legally Distinct Middle Earth we've been trucking around in for half a century. I want a D&D game wherein putting an entire goblin village to the torch with absolutely zero hesitation over a basic food raid earns the PCs a reputation as ruthless monsters - whether they wanted to be or not, and with all the criminal attention such a reputation would entail. I want a D&D game where decisions like that matter. Not one where that's just how the world works so enjoy, broskie.
I want youkai. I want skyships powered by living lightning. I want colorful clothes and spicy food. I want psychic powers. I want all that cool shit we've come up with in the fifty years since D&D's been a thing, and I want it in a world more nuanced and interesting than the same tired old Legally Distinct Middle Earth we've been trucking around in for half a century. I want a D&D game wherein putting an entire goblin village to the torch with absolutely zero hesitation over a basic food raid earns the PCs a reputation as ruthless monsters - whether they wanted to be or not, and with all the criminal attention such a reputation would entail. I want a D&D game where decisions like that matter. Not one where that's just how the world works so enjoy, broskie.
From my perspective and in my experience, what most people want most from a game like D&D is escapism.
The world is full of compromises. You need to work with your fellow humans to get anything done, and that often means taking their needs into consideration. The direct response to feeling wronged is often not the best route (e.g. you don't punch someone in the face for cutting you in line). We're creatures of urges first and foremost, with a thin icing of analysis and introspection dabbed on top. We're constantly reminded that we're not the star of the show, and that the world doesn't revolve around us, and that we can't always (or even usually) have it our own way. It creates stress, and those of us who have become "well adjusted" feel that stress no less than anyone else. We've just developed coping mechanisms, and for many people those coping mechanisms keep them alive and going. They're essential!
Escapism is when you get to lay that all aside for a little while. You watch an action movie, and you don't really worry too much about the fallout from the hero beating up the villain. In fact, you probably deliberately don't concern yourself about it because in many ways that's the reason you chose to watch that movie in the first place (or why you gravitate toward its genre). The movie is your time to relax the analysis and introspection, and feed the urges for a while. It's healthy. It's art, even if the specific expression I choose to consume isn't to your taste.
D&D is one of these things. For many, it's there so they can live in a world of straightforward good and evil for a while. If you tell players they can't have inherently evil creatures in their game, it's like sitting next to your friend in the theater going on about how the villain is going to sue the hero for battery and how the fights are unrealistic and how the hero is some kind of power-tripping fascist and so on. Not that any of that is necessarily untrue, but it's beside the point, and you wouldn't be doing your friend a service. The reaction your friend would give you is in essence the same reaction you're getting from a lot of your "purist" players. They know what you're saying. They understand fully that the real world isn't set up morally or ethically the same as the game world. They know that they shouldn't replicate their PCs' behavior in real life. All of these things are true, but they're beside the point.
Notice that a lot of people don't like action movies. A lot of folks make exactly those claims, for exactly those reasons. I happen to enjoy action movies for what they are, but they also don't tend to be more than twoish hours long. If I were to watch one, single action movie five hundred-odd hours in length, i.e. the length of a D&D campaign? I'd probably end up asking a lot of those questions myself.
A beer-and-pretzels dungeon crawl that offers nothing but pure, nihilistic escapism is perfectly fine. Writing up a big post telling everyone that playing any other form of D&D is 'idiotic' is significantly less so, ne?
I want youkai. I want skyships powered by living lightning. I want colorful clothes and spicy food. I want psychic powers. I want all that cool shit we've come up with in the fifty years since D&D's been a thing, and I want it in a world more nuanced and interesting than the same tired old Legally Distinct Middle Earth we've been trucking around in for half a century. I want a D&D game wherein putting an entire goblin village to the torch with absolutely zero hesitation over a basic food raid earns the PCs a reputation as ruthless monsters - whether they wanted to be or not, and with all the criminal attention such a reputation would entail. I want a D&D game where decisions like that matter. Not one where that's just how the world works so enjoy, broskie.
From my perspective and in my experience, what most people want most from a game like D&D is escapism.
Just so. What people you know want. Other groups have different expectations. It’s a diversifying hobby. I should know. I’m a noob myself.
A beer-and-pretzels dungeon crawl that offers nothing but pure, nihilistic escapism is perfectly fine. Writing up a big post telling everyone that playing any other form of D&D is 'idiotic' is significantly less so, ne?
Couldn't have said it better.
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A beer-and-pretzels dungeon crawl that offers nothing but pure, nihilistic escapism is perfectly fine. Writing up a big post telling everyone that playing any other form of D&D is 'idiotic' is significantly less so, ne?
Except for the fact that people like me (and others) who have said there is nothing morally wrong, within the alignment Lawful and Good, of putting an entire Goblin village to the sword and being told its "problematic" and that its similar to the "justification of wiping out Native Americans". IOW, its backhandedly calling us racists, bigots and everything under the Sun because "its like what happened in history". Except for the fact that D&D is NOT our world. Its part of a universe where Good & Evil are real, manifest forces.
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Original D&D listed neither either Good nor Evil on its alignment charts, only Law and Chaos.
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The FR I run is close to what Ed himself envisions. There is tangible, objective Good and Evil but only on a cosmic scale - entities such as Demons, Devils, Celestials are good examples.
Then there is subjective evil which is based on the society and environment and nothing more. Which means not all members of a particular species are evil or good.
There have been good red dragons in the history of Faerun (if there weren't then the elves wouldn't have lost Myth Drannor, by the way)
The orc Kingdom of Many Arrows under the rule of Lorgru has treaties with cities and countries of Silver Marches since the monarch favors peace.
The good drow of Eilistraee are now more accepted than ever before when her avatar appeared on the walls of Waterdeep and beaconed them to go. Humans of Waterdeep are fascinated by the culture to the point where they dress up as drows (paint) and dance naked in the moonlight.
Any strong willed, intelligent member of any species can choose their own destiny. The likelihood of that is a whole different matter depending on many circumstances.
Well no f'ing duh. Thank you for correcting me. How stupid could I be to put Law/Chaos and/or Good/Evil. Cause, you know, the Holmes Blue Box isn't considered Original D&D alongside 3LBB D&D.....
Meanwhile in my homebrew setting, almost all PC races (and many humanoid NPC races) are mutant offspring of humans...
Brooklyn, are you deliberately trolling? You come in here, yell at everyone that they are playing wrong and are idiots for not playing your style, than say that you are victimized and this thread is flame bait when it attempts to show that anyone can play D&D their way.
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Nobody called you a bigot or any of the other things. They said that they did not like that style of game because the themes closely mirrored the attitudes of bigots/racists in the real world. That is not calling you one, just pointing out the reason they dislike that way of playing.
You are the one who told everyone else that they were playing the game wrong. Nobody told you that you were wrong to play your way, in fact many throughout both that and the previous thread told you they were happy for you to play that way if you want. They just didn't want to play that way themselves.
You are the one who insulted everyone with a different type of game to yourself, even going so far as to start an entire new thread to insult people when the mods stopped the debate in the previous thread.
You then have the nerve to come into this thread and say that it is "nothing but flame-bait"?!?!
The mind boggles!
Let's not devolve this thread into personal attacks and instead focus on the original topic; aka the validity of individual play styles of D&D
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At what point do you dismantle the game to the point of absurdity? I personally think the game is fine as is. Good races, evil races, good monsters, evil monsters, middle of the road both, makes sense and has for decades. How far do you push the narrative of everyone can be good and shouldn't be attacked because of race or background? Does the blood war stop and devils and demons start having cookouts? Do Drow stop worshipping Llolth and send a "My Bad" letter to all other races about slavery and all the other races just forgive them? Do the elves let other races into Evermeet? Granted these are very far fetched and at the total end of that spectrum, but where is that line of demarcation?
That isn't what anyone is saying at all. What I am saying is that villains are more interesting if they have a motive instead of "just because they evil." You can still have goblins attacking a settlement. But in one of my games, the gobbos would have a reason to attack the settlement- maybe the humans unearthed a goblin relic they want back, or they need more land for whatever reason, or anything else.
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I think the answer is to think of the races as representing factions or nations, which have varying degrees of relations with each other. The drow view suface-dwellers as inferior and potential slave-fodder. While an individual drow may disagree with its faction (i.e. Drizzt, from what I understand), the group as a whole still has an ideology.
So when you encounter an individual from one of these factions, the DM presents that individual as adhering to the group ideology, rejecting it, or some variation in between. This may not work for all races. I'm not sure a demon and a devil can put aside their animosity for any significant length of time. But for the more conventional races whose beliefs are subject to their own individual free-thinking, it can be.
Races that are functionally different species will often feel justified in viewing other species as less important, since they can't breed or merge with them, and in the end one will probably go extinct. Better thee than me, right?
I think its more a matter of perspective. Sure, Drow are evil in most eyes but to them they are just doing what they are suppose to be doing. Does that excuse their actions? Probably not, but it is what they believe they need to be doing. If goblins are raiding a village that is bad for the people of the village, yeah. But those goblins might just be doing what they need to because some other force is making them gather food or it cost them their lives.
This is where the wonder of playing the game comes in. If i present this situation to my players, perhaps my players kill all the goblins and solve the problem. Perhaps they talk to the goblins and find out that their village got flooded and because of poor leadership they had to raid the town. The party can then help them rebuild and potentially establish peaceful coexistence between the two groups.
Why shouldn't that be possible?
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"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
Not saying it shouldn't be possible, just not probable. Brokering a peace between demons and devils is impossible. Brokering between humans and elves, more than likely fairly easily. Between Goblins and a human town? Probably not, but you can sure try! With some good rolls you could probably keep them from killing you on site but broker a long standing peace is probably not going to happen, at least based on current D&D structure.
I'm trying to see at what point those who feel this game has racist tendencies and that races should be able to coexist, how far do you take it? Where is that line and how do you draw it there? There are those like Drizzt and basically any player character Drow that break away from the norm, but should their whole society as written be changed?
Others have expressed my position on this better than I could.
In the end, this should be no different to any other discussion of play style to me. Some want lots of combat, or exploration, or role play, while some want a mixture. Some want certain races to be inherently good or evil, some want more subtlety and variability. Some prefer an absolute definition of good and evil, some want to see it as subjective and subtle. None of these approaches are wrong, they are just different, and everyone is free to choose their own way.
The only thing which is wrong in this thread, or the other one, is people telling others that their play style is wrong.
This
#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
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@MidnightPlat: Fair shake on the Der&Der thing. That's mostly just what my group calls the game at this point, a funny riff on the Texan redneck in our group (who is, thus far, the most successful DM) that we use to poke him. My intent was more "ehrmagehrd!" than developmental impediment, but I see the issue. I'll do my best to refrain from that usage here.
@Brooklyn: Calm down, please. I never accused you of being a racist or bigot. There is, however, a very noticeable divide in the community these days between what might be considered a 'Purist' stance, e.g. yours, and a 'Modernist' stance, e.g. mine.
Purists see Always Chaotic Evil goblins and similar older, established tropes as simply the history of the game, and playing with those tropes in place is respecting that history and conserving the hobby for those to come. New players should be taught the ways of the Old Masters, the history of the game and its storied creators, because knowing exactly who Mordenkainen is, why the Blood War is important, and how all of the long fifty-year history of D&D across ten-plus rulesets, six or seven 'editions', and the work of seminaries in their field lends a game a sense of weight, gravitas, and momentum that many modern games lack. There's no racism in these old ideas because it's a fictitious space, and many Purists find the idea of equating Faerun to the realm world in any way baffling and nonsensical. Gleefully putting a goblin village to the torch to earn their payday in Faerun is no indication at all that one has any desire to subjugate or extinct minorities in real life, the same way everybody's five-digit kill counts in first-person shooters is no indication that they're a wildly unstable psycho megamurderer in real life.
It's simply the way the game is played, part of the history and ethos of D&D. Removing those elements is like removing the Six Sacred Scores, the concept of armor class, or the existence of goblins in the first place - it's removing an essential part of the game whose absence makes it no longer Dungeons and Dragons. It's messing with Gary Gygax's plan, and Gary is the beloved founder and the Architect of D&D. His vision is the purest form of D&D there is, and we should all be so lucky as to emulate his ways and his work.
But from more modernist viewpoints, Brooklyn? Fifty years of progress, change, and societal evolution cannot be ignored. I live in a world where it's mostly okay to tell people I'm transgender, but it's not okay to call certain people certain things that would get me both redacted and banned in short order. While there's debates over how helpful that latter is (which are for another place and another time, don't get into it here please people), a lot of folks consider that a net positive. I've read Tolkien's books. Not only are they not really all that impressive by modern standards, they also haven't aged well at all. I am heartily sick of Mr. Tolkien trying to demand from beyond the grave that I conform to his worldbuilding when enjoying my fantasy gaming hobby. A lot of people who are just as talented as Gary Gygax were have done a lot of cool things with D&D in these fifty years, and I'm more interested in their work than in Gary's.
I can't help but want more from my fantasy than a salty old man long dead could've envisioned when writing his books about how uncool it was that the modern society of his day wasn't deeply Christian anymore. I want youkai. I want skyships powered by living lightning. I want colorful clothes and spicy food. I want psychic powers. I want all that cool shit we've come up with in the fifty years since D&D's been a thing, and I want it in a world more nuanced and interesting than the same tired old Legally Distinct Middle Earth we've been trucking around in for half a century. I want a D&D game wherein putting an entire goblin village to the torch with absolutely zero hesitation over a basic food raid earns the PCs a reputation as ruthless monsters - whether they wanted to be or not, and with all the criminal attention such a reputation would entail. I want a D&D game where decisions like that matter. Not one where that's just how the world works so enjoy, broskie.
Please do not contact or message me.
From my perspective and in my experience, what most people want most from a game like D&D is escapism.
The world is full of compromises. You need to work with your fellow humans to get anything done, and that often means taking their needs into consideration. The direct response to feeling wronged is often not the best route (e.g. you don't punch someone in the face for cutting you in line). We're creatures of urges first and foremost, with a thin icing of analysis and introspection dabbed on top. We're constantly reminded that we're not the star of the show, and that the world doesn't revolve around us, and that we can't always (or even usually) have it our own way. It creates stress, and those of us who have become "well adjusted" feel that stress no less than anyone else. We've just developed coping mechanisms, and for many people those coping mechanisms keep them alive and going. They're essential!
Escapism is when you get to lay that all aside for a little while. You watch an action movie, and you don't really worry too much about the fallout from the hero beating up the villain. In fact, you probably deliberately don't concern yourself about it because in many ways that's the reason you chose to watch that movie in the first place (or why you gravitate toward its genre). The movie is your time to relax the analysis and introspection, and feed the urges for a while. It's healthy. It's art, even if the specific expression I choose to consume isn't to your taste.
D&D is one of these things. For many, it's there so they can live in a world of straightforward good and evil for a while. If you tell players they can't have inherently evil creatures in their game, it's like sitting next to your friend in the theater going on about how the villain is going to sue the hero for battery and how the fights are unrealistic and how the hero is some kind of power-tripping fascist and so on. Not that any of that is necessarily untrue, but it's beside the point, and you wouldn't be doing your friend a service. The reaction your friend would give you is in essence the same reaction you're getting from a lot of your "purist" players. They know what you're saying. They understand fully that the real world isn't set up morally or ethically the same as the game world. They know that they shouldn't replicate their PCs' behavior in real life. All of these things are true, but they're beside the point.
Notice that a lot of people don't like action movies. A lot of folks make exactly those claims, for exactly those reasons. I happen to enjoy action movies for what they are, but they also don't tend to be more than twoish hours long. If I were to watch one, single action movie five hundred-odd hours in length, i.e. the length of a D&D campaign? I'd probably end up asking a lot of those questions myself.
A beer-and-pretzels dungeon crawl that offers nothing but pure, nihilistic escapism is perfectly fine. Writing up a big post telling everyone that playing any other form of D&D is 'idiotic' is significantly less so, ne?
Please do not contact or message me.
Just so. What people you know want. Other groups have different expectations. It’s a diversifying hobby. I should know. I’m a noob myself.
Couldn't have said it better.
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Except for the fact that people like me (and others) who have said there is nothing morally wrong, within the alignment Lawful and Good, of putting an entire Goblin village to the sword and being told its "problematic" and that its similar to the "justification of wiping out Native Americans". IOW, its backhandedly calling us racists, bigots and everything under the Sun because "its like what happened in history". Except for the fact that D&D is NOT our world. Its part of a universe where Good & Evil are real, manifest forces.