For about ... twenty or more years now, I've been a Forever-DM and one of my pet peeves was the inherent racism in "All of X are Y" settings, that anything that wasn't Human got pigeon-holed into a archetype, broad or narrow, and that Humans were the 'greatest good' in a setting.
It has always irritated me. We can't even stop murdering each other over religion, gender, even the colour of our skin. And somehow we're taking the Big Chair away from these ancient, magically gifted or physically superior entities when we can't even stop demonizing each other? I always pitched my settings as nation against nation and faction against faction, not on racial lines but ideological ones, and while certain nations may have larger amounts of X race than the others, only the overtly evil ones were X race dominant, because nothing gets a multi-racial table ready to rumble like saying "Hey, here's some racists, go get 'em."
And something that one of the newer DMs I've brought up over the past year at the support group (over Discord, we're being exceedingly careful about spreading the Corvid-19 since lots of the families we support are on the low-income end and have single parents) brought this up to me, and I discussed it with the other DMs in the group ... and it got me thinking. So I'm bringing it to the forums as, I'm the oldest person still DMing in the group, and I introduced and guided most of our current DMs, if maybe I've done the wrong thing by my friends and their players. I'd appreciate some non-involved feedback.
Does anyone else have such a view of Humanity in fantasy settings? That while they're not an intrinsically evil race, they're not exactly a naturally benevolent one either. That Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes aren't nominally 'The Good Guys' of a setting? That Goblinoids, Orcs and other monstrous races are not by nature evil, only pushed into conflict by the relentless expansionism, racism and religious intolerance of the normal playable races?
My players certainly have seldom complained, but then I generally run the settings past them first and tell them to be utterly ruthless if they see anything they don't like and/or feel is caricturish or culturally insensitive, and I can't stop thinking that maybe I just have very tolerant friends and not that I've bucked the caucasian-centric fantasy power-fantasy.
TL:DR, does anyone else make non-Human-centric campaigns?
I am planning a sand box where there are definitely nations with suspect motives ( human dominated) the people aren't evil per say but their leaders are bent on world conquest and they are going along with it, not sure what my players will do about them. There will be traditionally kill on sight races like goblins that are peacefully getting on with life and some that will be living along side other races in cities, and a equal measure of different groups including humans/elves/dwarfs etc that might well be or end up as hostile as the traditional monsters. Will still be things in the woods that try to eat you. Most of the sentient races will think they are the good guys, but my players characters might have a different point of view, will take an age to play out I can't see starting this one for 6 months but it looks like I have had similier thoughts and your players look like they are interested, so try it, the next level would be to play a party partly or whole traditionally non player races and again do you change way world. In some respects you can end up just swapping labels around, but you could end up with a slightly different feel to your world.
I usually play most of the different species in my games as morally gray - you might find individuals in any culture that have attitudes different from the norm. However, it can be difficult for these people growing up in these societies so that their survival isn't assured.
In the end, it is possible to find good and bad in any society and to find societies and cultures that span the spectrum from "good" to "evil". However, even defining good and evil can be difficult.
In terms of D&D, where magic and gods can be manifest, and some of these can actually be slotted into categories defining whether they are lawful or chaotic, good or evil - there can be societies and cultures that can be quite extreme. Even there though, I will usually have the possibility of individuals existing within those societies that don't conform to the expected norms but they will often have to hide themselves within their societies.
Anyway, both parties and worlds are filled with fantasy creatures which can all be a mix of good and evil - so some campaigns may not be human centric. However, most of the fantasy worlds I have used do have a significant human population, often the majority in many though not all areas. I don't think I've run a campaign without humans in it somewhere.
Well, I'd have to go with "sorta". The mostly human nation of Galoron is the most powerful nation in my world, but they aren't the good guys. No one is, really. They're the "villains" due to their persecution of other races. They declared war on the tribal "nation" of the orcs simply to gain more land and power. The orcs aren't the good guys in this situation. They have an isolationist society that hates almost all outsiders, but they're not evil.
The goblinoids, however, are conquerors and pillagers, so one might think that they're evil. However it's not that they enjoy bloodshed and violence. Their entire society revolves around war, and it wouldn't be able to sustain itself for long without some type of battle. The other reason they're so aggressive is that they believe it's their destiny to rule the continent. The only way they know how to do that is through conquest (though, to be fair, the other two nations around them want their land, too).
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
This reminds me of the webcomic goblins. At the start there was this funny bit where the goblins decided to actually use the treasure items in the poorly locked chest in their village, changed everything for them. And there’s a human who is hailed as a hero by the other humans for all the goblins he kills, but is absolutely evil.
I have been allowing Goblins, Hobgoblins, Orcs, and Kobolds and Half-(Gnomes, Dwarves, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Orcs*) as PC races since 2e, and have since added Bugbears and Half-Ogres (but dropped Gnolls). *(Half-Orcs weren’t a thing back then.)
Most of my villains are (or were) humans, and a good number are Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes too. I basically treat them all the same, with equal propensity for Good and Evil. I treat the Alignments in D&D not as objective absolutes, and more as cultural stereotypes from a purely human perspective. (Remember, IRL, good and evil all depends on which one folks think is right. So the same things can be both good and evil depending on who’s opinions you gather.)
Dirverse Group including Goblins, Humans, Elves / Custom Far Realm Aberrations
I've allowed Goblins, Changelings, and a Bugbear as PCs (in general, I allow all races from the PH, Volos, and Eberron Books). In general I don't treat PC races as "good" or "evil" though certain PCs will deal with prejudices based on historical interactions, etc.
I don't generally make natural creatures innately good or evil; they just want what they want, and sometimes that gets them into conflict with other creatures. In cases like Keep on the Borderlands it's pretty clear that the humans are the aggressors, but most of the races that are numerous enough to stand a chance are going to be the aggressors at one point or another.
I'm the same. In my world biology *never* determines alignment. Not even for dragons. The only beings that have a set alignment are ones that embody it, such as planar entities (demons and the like).
I have it that most of the descriptions in the core set are full of prejudice, and the opinions of the general public who don't really know anything.
There is a reason for the opinions tho. For example, orcs are characterised as evil because humans and dwarves wanted their land that was a great way to turn people against them. Orcs also got the whole "warmongering warrior race" stereotype by fighting back against the humans and dwarves and having the audacity to win.
As for dragons, I play chromatic dragons as cats and metallic dragons as dogs. Easy to see how one would be seen as evil and one as good.
I find it a lot more fun this way. My players are not murder hobos tho so that helps.
QUESTION: I'm not sure what you are asking. How/why is this doing a disservice?
Kinda sorta. Basically, humans give birth and grow up faster than anything except goblins and orcs. So, naturally, they need more resources. After the humans began their genocidal First Crusade, the elves and dwarves have consolidated and closed their borders. The Dwarves still do business with humans, but the Dwarves remember, some of them literally, all of them figuratively, what humans are capable of, even if an individual human isn't blamed for the actions of his great grandfather. And on the human side, they have histories of the exploitation they suffered at the hands of the Dwarves during the Divine Republic era. Some of these are genuine grievances, some are propaganda peddled by institutions that have been infiltrated by fiendish influences. The Elves mostly feel guilty because they literally remember that, since they arrived here as refugees from the Feywild, they have actually messed up humans pretty badly in a couple of ways. That, plus the murderousness and unpredictability of humans, led to a fairly strict policy of isolation.
The Orcs in the Northlands have been knocked back to the Iron Age by plague and disease and environmental toxins. They are open-minded enough to acknowledge that no one likes having their village raided. They understand that they're not seeing the best face of humanity. They're also smart enough to realize that humanity has completely oriented all of its institutions to ensure that the only face that is ever pointed towards orcs is the most violent one, and that implies a choice. On the other hand, the Orcs in the Middlemarches have formed a tight symbiotic bond with the August of the Erus Empire, and while most of their job is still terrorizing and killing humans, they also have a respected place in at least one human society.
The goblins are hanging on by a thread. They've been dwindling both in population and territory for thousands of years now and you see quite a few in the main campaign city, working on the killing floor of the stockyards or similar low-wage brutal occupations.
So I guess I'd describe the approach as "human structural racism predetermines how non-humans are allowed to interact with human society, which ends up pushing them into 'alignment'-stereotype-reinforcing behavior." Humans aren't "the bad guys" but a lot of their institutions are run by genuinely bad guys at the moment (with even worse guys whispering in their ears while they sleep). The average peasant is just trying to get by and doesn't ever think about the big picture (a luxury afforded them by virtue of being human).
I suppose my biggest concern arose from the question from the younger DM.
"Why is it that Humans are almost always the aggressive faction? I mean, I get we've got a multi-cultural group and having the big antagonistic group being caucasian means we're not offending anyone, but ... why not the monster races? They're ugly, they're evil, they're inhuman, that's why they're in the game, to serve as fodder for the players to chew through."
For me, it stemmed from, waaaaaay back in high school, when I was going to DM for the first time, one of my friends was over and we were watching cartoons after school while avoiding our homework and there was a reboot on the TV, and a certain character popped back in and their response was "Oh man, they white-washed her."
It took a bit of time before I realized what he was talking about. The character had gone from a dark person to a light tan person. They'd gone from a background character to a secondary one. All by lightening their skin. And it hit me that my entire campaign (admittedly written at the cringe-inducing age of 15!) was white humans, white dwarves, white elves and the bad people were .... grey orcs, green goblins, brown people and black elves. And it stuck with me, hard, that even though I wasn't intending to, I had made a campaign where my players, my friends, would not be invested in because they had nothing in the game that would resonate with them as individuals. Cue the fastest re-write in history.
Fast fowards a few years and I've had some more discussions with them, and a counsellor that I'd approached on my own for a variety of personal reasons, and I brought up the concept that a lot of fantasy races were used to demonized-but-not-ackshually other people, and I was concerned about it since I'd just been asked to take over DMing duties for one of the older members of the support group and at the time, we'd just gotten a big surge of indian, chinese, korean and iranian kids into our ranks. I was giving myself ulcers over the fact that a lot of what was printed by WotC and a lot of big-name fantasy writers was assigning non-human races to non-caucasian societies and cultures, and I wanted to make the kids feel safe and welcomed not ... ostracised or victimized. Kat was a big help with this as she was able to help me get around several mental blocks and got me in touch with several people who specialized and taught about the histories of these cultures and were able to in turn guide me to sources where I could make cultures involving the new kids in new settings without coming across as 'well-meaning white idiot'.
Off topic, but there is a lot of benefit for DMs in contacting actual professors and communities and asking for assistance in making sure you're referencing the cultures you're using are actually being done so in a good way. Culture Clash is a thing, and even the most well meaning of us won't get social and cultural quirks right on the first go.
Of course, to prevent "Monster version of X culture", I'd blend the nations and regions to have large groups of differing races. And again, being where we were, and still are, in our part of the world, there was a lot of redneck activity that we had to jump on quickly to make sure it never got a foothold in the group, and that the families we were looking out for knew that they could report it and have a large group of people to back them up.
I've tried to talk to the new DM about how, just because something looks different or has a different outlook on life, the automatic response should not be "ENEMY!". Concern, yes, but not an immediate urge to stab the thing. His response was that was stupid and it was just a game, it didn't matter and if you decided to go burn Orc babies, it didn't mean you wanted to burn babies in real life. I agreed, but I also pointed out that the group is all about inclusion, and that's why the Humans/Elves/Dwarves being in charge of everything and given cart blanche to stab anything they don't like and claim divine mandate to the world as reason to forcibly colonize and enslave native populations wasn't really going to fly in our group.
TL:DR
New DM prefers standardized settings with mainly caucasian races killing everything else, that if it isn't Human, or allied to Humans, it is XP fodder or should be subservient to them. I prefer a less murder-blender style of game and have a noticeable aversion to White Power Fantasy. The other three DMs in the groups have all given varying degrees of support to me because we are a multi-racial table and giving equal screentime to non-western societies in a positive light has helped some of the kids who get picked on for always having different characteristics to the rest of their school-mates.
On the one hand, I am always concerned that I'm 'doing it wrong' when it comes to DMing, especially given we've got eight multi-racial/multi-national tables, and I have brought up and helped train most of the DMs in the group, and I'm concerned my own biases have been passed on to them. That I have 'over-sensitised' the group and I'm reading too much into what the young man is saying in a negative way because of my own history.
On the other hand, while I really do like this young man, he's become very ... cold towards the idea of DMing for some people, and as much as I hope it is just teen angst rearing it's pimply head, I'm also worried I'm going to have to ask him to step away from the position because he's very much ... if it ain't us, kill it in his game-style, and he defaults a lot to the older interpretations of the Goblinoids, Orcs and Dark Elves, specifically the bad interpretations, and every time we try to talk to him about it, he clams up and just gives us one-word responses.
Well, obviously, this is getting pretty heavy. I don't know what kind of after school/municipal/whatever framework rules you're working under, so you're on your own about demoting the kid.
Someone as alive to nuance as you seem to be must realize that everything I know about this kid is coming through your lens. But, assuming you're a reliable narrator, you're painting a picture of a kid who's not interested in getting on board with what you're trying to do. Where do you go from there? I dunno. If there are other kids for whom he does not care to DM*and I think we both know what we're saying* then that's a whole different layer of problem and needs to be addressed. Ideally before he puts together a table of kids he feels comfortable with and starts indoctrinating them with his baby-burning fantasies.
As one of many possible alternatives, let me suggest this: If I'm counting right, you've got five DMs total? Put together a writers room, co-ordinate a big interlocking set of campaigns, like a Marvel Universe set of campaigns, pointing towards a five-table free for all at the end. And all of these campaigns will have a common group of villains, chosen from the following list:
Abberations; Constructs; Fiends; Ooze; Plant; or Undead.
I mean, there are JUST SO MANY disposable villains in D&D. I mean, these poor kids at Wizards, they're throwing away ideas, they're not disposable enough!
I am not suggesting that this kid will be soothed by a non-caucasian human bad guy, but am I getting that you fear you are over-correcting? It would put that fear to rest.
The campaign world I am working on doesn’t have humans as a primarily race. In fact they are one of the rarest races in my world, and connected to the dragons. That’s because up until a hundred years ago, humans basically didn’t exist on the plane at all (outside of the occasional planar travelers). They however came to the plane alongside a massive army of Dragonborns, Kobolds, and Dragons led by a colossal Dragon godling who liberated one of the major kingdoms caught in the middle of a Dragon Civil war.
So the others races don’t really know what to make of these Dragon-aligned beings that look awfully similar to the Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes of the world. They can still be any alignment bough, and have a lot of diversity despite their small numbers. They don’t even have to follow the dragons and can venture out. Humans however do at least seem to respect the Dragon godling for some reason.
New DM prefers standardized settings with mainly caucasian races killing everything else, that if it isn't Human, or allied to Humans, it is XP fodder or should be subservient to them. I prefer a less murder-blender style of game and have a noticeable aversion to White Power Fantasy. The other three DMs in the groups have all given varying degrees of support to me because we are a multi-racial table and giving equal screentime to non-western societies in a positive light has helped some of the kids who get picked on for always having different characteristics to the rest of their school-mates.
On the one hand, I am always concerned that I'm 'doing it wrong' when it comes to DMing, especially given we've got eight multi-racial/multi-national tables, and I have brought up and helped train most of the DMs in the group, and I'm concerned my own biases have been passed on to them. That I have 'over-sensitised' the group and I'm reading too much into what the young man is saying in a negative way because of my own history.
Well, it sounds problematic from what you've said, but it's possible you're reading too much into his questions and actions. I will say that having humans always be the bad guys is just reversing your original mistake; you should have members of any race being good, neutral, or evil, and plenty of situations where neither side in a conflict is obviously good or evil, they're just enemies.
I took part in a really good PBP adventure here that ran with the concept that Humans and normally allied races like elves and dwarves, etc. were the bad guys and each of the PCs were playing one of the monstrous races that were available.
It's a pretty good example of what can be done with that concept, though it did not get to finish, as most D&D games tend to struggle with. The best part about it was that each player got a hand in developing the world map a little bit and had a stake in the game when the human-allied forces showed up and ruined their homeland in some way.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
I have written an adventure that I have not yet had the opportunity to run (thanks, covid). It's not exactly a one-shot, more like a two-or-three shot. It's set in a rugged forest near a coast - similar to the west coast of British Columbia or the panhandle of Alaska. The players would choose from a stack of pregenerated characters I have created for this. The players would all be humanoids - orc, goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear, and ogre. Basically, some humans and dwarves established a small outpost on the coast last fall. The humanoid clans all figured they would die during the rough winter, but they didn't. Now it's spring and those humans and dwarves have built a road and a bridge to another outpost a mile inland. There are strange sounds and occasional fires and explosions around that outpost.
No single humanoid clan is strong enough right now to repel these invaders, because the ancient white dragon that lives in Crag Peak further inland has been hunting and feeding a lot recently, to fatten up for her impending hibernation period. So the clans decide that each clan will present one champion, and those champions will deal with the invaders. The players are those champions. (4 to 6 characters, all 6th level).
So here's the real plot: the dwarves used to live in Crag Peak until a century or two ago when the white dragon drove them out (the humanoids don't know that). So the dwarves are planning to attack the dragon during its hibernation period, hoping she will be vulnerable (the humanoids don't know that either). The dwarves have hired a bunch of human mercenaries to help. They don't even know (or care) that there are humanoid clans in the area, but they will kill anyone or anything that gets in their way of reclaiming their ancestral home. The humanoid clans just want to live their lives and not have their forest cut down or burned by these invaders.
So that's the gist of it. The players will have plenty of options for how they want to address the problem. They might focus on direct combat, they might focus on subterfuge and sabotage, they might enlist some other help from around the forest to help them, heck they might even try to alert the dragon and hope that she kills the invaders for them (but that's a very risky proposition).
Basically, neither side here is "good" or "bad". They're all just doing what they think is best for themselves. The dwarves want their home back (and all the treasure they lost inside it). The humanoids want their forest left intact. The humans just want to get paid. That's about it. Hopefully I'll get a chance to run it some day, if we ever manage to emerge from The Plague Year.
I have done an all Drow campaign... well, done being a relative term, because we are at a pause on it. When you are focused on possibly everyone being evil, it changes how the game is played to some degree. That doesn't mean Drow aren't Xenophobic... they certainly are... so it isn't the best for "inclusion".
I'm also in the final stages of writing an all Orc campaign. It focuses on the team of orcs and overcoming obstacles. They will find hints of racism in some of the literature they find in old ruins and they may start off with seeing the humans as just fodder to take things from. Mostly I want them to dive into what an Orc actually experiences and what might sent them apart from other races in terms of tribe loyalty before I bring them into trying to ally themselves with other races (that is mid-late game stuff where they will need the alliances). Again... as it is a single race party campaign, it doesn't fit for "inclusion" either.
I think the main errors come about when people don't understand the monsters and they don't have their own feelings or motivations and are just disposable cutouts to fling against the might of the party. Maybe it's all the reading I did when I was young, but I try to put myself into the shoes of many of the beings in the Monster Manual so that I can understand them and make them more real at the table. And yes, there are lots of prejudices around. Some honestly so... why wouldn't a red dragon think it could just take whatever it wanted and never give a thought to the puny beings that brought it tribute? We don't practice baseless hatred of "humanoid" species, but maybe we do have a shared hatred of oozes and rust monsters... and some of our characters have phobias about spiders or snakes...
In my world there is an empire, thus empire has perpetuated the myth that orcs, goblins and their kin are all evil monsters to be eradicated.
Actually this is a lie, there communities where established peaceful places and as a people they lived in peace trading with other races hence half orcs. The Empire however wanted their land for its resources and so attacked and pushed the myth that all green skins are evil.
The first sight of this the players will have is going to be hunting down slavers, they will eventually find out the slaves are orc, goblin and hobgoblin families trapped and enslaved to be sold. The slavers will be elves (not drow) halflings and humans.
Now there will be lawful and chaotic evil orcs and goblins about, just as there are chaotic evil humans but it will be balanced by plenty of friendly orc villiages.
My advice: Never paint anyone as the bad guy. Treat everything like real world politics: "The Drow live under a religious dictatorship, and are not allowed freedom under their government." "Orcs are traveling nomads. Other races have been moving into their sacred lands and territories" Etc. Someone should be treated as evil when they act that way. I love my snobby elf nobles, but don't assign groups.
For about ... twenty or more years now, I've been a Forever-DM and one of my pet peeves was the inherent racism in "All of X are Y" settings, that anything that wasn't Human got pigeon-holed into a archetype, broad or narrow, and that Humans were the 'greatest good' in a setting.
It has always irritated me. We can't even stop murdering each other over religion, gender, even the colour of our skin. And somehow we're taking the Big Chair away from these ancient, magically gifted or physically superior entities when we can't even stop demonizing each other? I always pitched my settings as nation against nation and faction against faction, not on racial lines but ideological ones, and while certain nations may have larger amounts of X race than the others, only the overtly evil ones were X race dominant, because nothing gets a multi-racial table ready to rumble like saying "Hey, here's some racists, go get 'em."
And something that one of the newer DMs I've brought up over the past year at the support group (over Discord, we're being exceedingly careful about spreading the Corvid-19 since lots of the families we support are on the low-income end and have single parents) brought this up to me, and I discussed it with the other DMs in the group ... and it got me thinking. So I'm bringing it to the forums as, I'm the oldest person still DMing in the group, and I introduced and guided most of our current DMs, if maybe I've done the wrong thing by my friends and their players. I'd appreciate some non-involved feedback.
Does anyone else have such a view of Humanity in fantasy settings? That while they're not an intrinsically evil race, they're not exactly a naturally benevolent one either. That Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes aren't nominally 'The Good Guys' of a setting? That Goblinoids, Orcs and other monstrous races are not by nature evil, only pushed into conflict by the relentless expansionism, racism and religious intolerance of the normal playable races?
My players certainly have seldom complained, but then I generally run the settings past them first and tell them to be utterly ruthless if they see anything they don't like and/or feel is caricturish or culturally insensitive, and I can't stop thinking that maybe I just have very tolerant friends and not that I've bucked the caucasian-centric fantasy power-fantasy.
TL:DR, does anyone else make non-Human-centric campaigns?
I am planning a sand box where there are definitely nations with suspect motives ( human dominated) the people aren't evil per say but their leaders are bent on world conquest and they are going along with it, not sure what my players will do about them. There will be traditionally kill on sight races like goblins that are peacefully getting on with life and some that will be living along side other races in cities, and a equal measure of different groups including humans/elves/dwarfs etc that might well be or end up as hostile as the traditional monsters. Will still be things in the woods that try to eat you. Most of the sentient races will think they are the good guys, but my players characters might have a different point of view, will take an age to play out I can't see starting this one for 6 months but it looks like I have had similier thoughts and your players look like they are interested, so try it, the next level would be to play a party partly or whole traditionally non player races and again do you change way world. In some respects you can end up just swapping labels around, but you could end up with a slightly different feel to your world.
I usually play most of the different species in my games as morally gray - you might find individuals in any culture that have attitudes different from the norm. However, it can be difficult for these people growing up in these societies so that their survival isn't assured.
In the end, it is possible to find good and bad in any society and to find societies and cultures that span the spectrum from "good" to "evil". However, even defining good and evil can be difficult.
In terms of D&D, where magic and gods can be manifest, and some of these can actually be slotted into categories defining whether they are lawful or chaotic, good or evil - there can be societies and cultures that can be quite extreme. Even there though, I will usually have the possibility of individuals existing within those societies that don't conform to the expected norms but they will often have to hide themselves within their societies.
Anyway, both parties and worlds are filled with fantasy creatures which can all be a mix of good and evil - so some campaigns may not be human centric. However, most of the fantasy worlds I have used do have a significant human population, often the majority in many though not all areas. I don't think I've run a campaign without humans in it somewhere.
Well, I'd have to go with "sorta". The mostly human nation of Galoron is the most powerful nation in my world, but they aren't the good guys. No one is, really. They're the "villains" due to their persecution of other races. They declared war on the tribal "nation" of the orcs simply to gain more land and power. The orcs aren't the good guys in this situation. They have an isolationist society that hates almost all outsiders, but they're not evil.
The goblinoids, however, are conquerors and pillagers, so one might think that they're evil. However it's not that they enjoy bloodshed and violence. Their entire society revolves around war, and it wouldn't be able to sustain itself for long without some type of battle. The other reason they're so aggressive is that they believe it's their destiny to rule the continent. The only way they know how to do that is through conquest (though, to be fair, the other two nations around them want their land, too).
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I don't have good guys. Humans in my world are either the smallest or most violent people in my world.
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
This reminds me of the webcomic goblins. At the start there was this funny bit where the goblins decided to actually use the treasure items in the poorly locked chest in their village, changed everything for them. And there’s a human who is hailed as a hero by the other humans for all the goblins he kills, but is absolutely evil.
I have been allowing Goblins, Hobgoblins, Orcs, and Kobolds and Half-(Gnomes, Dwarves, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Orcs*) as PC races since 2e, and have since added Bugbears and Half-Ogres (but dropped Gnolls).
*(Half-Orcs weren’t a thing back then.)
Most of my villains are (or were) humans, and a good number are Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes too. I basically treat them all the same, with equal propensity for Good and Evil. I treat the Alignments in D&D not as objective absolutes, and more as cultural stereotypes from a purely human perspective. (Remember, IRL, good and evil all depends on which one folks think is right. So the same things can be both good and evil depending on who’s opinions you gather.)
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The various villains in my one-shots and campaigns/encounters have been:
I've allowed Goblins, Changelings, and a Bugbear as PCs (in general, I allow all races from the PH, Volos, and Eberron Books). In general I don't treat PC races as "good" or "evil" though certain PCs will deal with prejudices based on historical interactions, etc.
I don't generally make natural creatures innately good or evil; they just want what they want, and sometimes that gets them into conflict with other creatures. In cases like Keep on the Borderlands it's pretty clear that the humans are the aggressors, but most of the races that are numerous enough to stand a chance are going to be the aggressors at one point or another.
I'm the same. In my world biology *never* determines alignment. Not even for dragons. The only beings that have a set alignment are ones that embody it, such as planar entities (demons and the like).
I have it that most of the descriptions in the core set are full of prejudice, and the opinions of the general public who don't really know anything.
There is a reason for the opinions tho. For example, orcs are characterised as evil because humans and dwarves wanted their land that was a great way to turn people against them. Orcs also got the whole "warmongering warrior race" stereotype by fighting back against the humans and dwarves and having the audacity to win.
As for dragons, I play chromatic dragons as cats and metallic dragons as dogs. Easy to see how one would be seen as evil and one as good.
I find it a lot more fun this way. My players are not murder hobos tho so that helps.
QUESTION: I'm not sure what you are asking. How/why is this doing a disservice?
Kinda sorta. Basically, humans give birth and grow up faster than anything except goblins and orcs. So, naturally, they need more resources. After the humans began their genocidal First Crusade, the elves and dwarves have consolidated and closed their borders. The Dwarves still do business with humans, but the Dwarves remember, some of them literally, all of them figuratively, what humans are capable of, even if an individual human isn't blamed for the actions of his great grandfather. And on the human side, they have histories of the exploitation they suffered at the hands of the Dwarves during the Divine Republic era. Some of these are genuine grievances, some are propaganda peddled by institutions that have been infiltrated by fiendish influences. The Elves mostly feel guilty because they literally remember that, since they arrived here as refugees from the Feywild, they have actually messed up humans pretty badly in a couple of ways. That, plus the murderousness and unpredictability of humans, led to a fairly strict policy of isolation.
The Orcs in the Northlands have been knocked back to the Iron Age by plague and disease and environmental toxins. They are open-minded enough to acknowledge that no one likes having their village raided. They understand that they're not seeing the best face of humanity. They're also smart enough to realize that humanity has completely oriented all of its institutions to ensure that the only face that is ever pointed towards orcs is the most violent one, and that implies a choice. On the other hand, the Orcs in the Middlemarches have formed a tight symbiotic bond with the August of the Erus Empire, and while most of their job is still terrorizing and killing humans, they also have a respected place in at least one human society.
The goblins are hanging on by a thread. They've been dwindling both in population and territory for thousands of years now and you see quite a few in the main campaign city, working on the killing floor of the stockyards or similar low-wage brutal occupations.
So I guess I'd describe the approach as "human structural racism predetermines how non-humans are allowed to interact with human society, which ends up pushing them into 'alignment'-stereotype-reinforcing behavior." Humans aren't "the bad guys" but a lot of their institutions are run by genuinely bad guys at the moment (with even worse guys whispering in their ears while they sleep). The average peasant is just trying to get by and doesn't ever think about the big picture (a luxury afforded them by virtue of being human).
I suppose my biggest concern arose from the question from the younger DM.
"Why is it that Humans are almost always the aggressive faction? I mean, I get we've got a multi-cultural group and having the big antagonistic group being caucasian means we're not offending anyone, but ... why not the monster races? They're ugly, they're evil, they're inhuman, that's why they're in the game, to serve as fodder for the players to chew through."
For me, it stemmed from, waaaaaay back in high school, when I was going to DM for the first time, one of my friends was over and we were watching cartoons after school while avoiding our homework and there was a reboot on the TV, and a certain character popped back in and their response was "Oh man, they white-washed her."
It took a bit of time before I realized what he was talking about. The character had gone from a dark person to a light tan person. They'd gone from a background character to a secondary one. All by lightening their skin. And it hit me that my entire campaign (admittedly written at the cringe-inducing age of 15!) was white humans, white dwarves, white elves and the bad people were .... grey orcs, green goblins, brown people and black elves. And it stuck with me, hard, that even though I wasn't intending to, I had made a campaign where my players, my friends, would not be invested in because they had nothing in the game that would resonate with them as individuals. Cue the fastest re-write in history.
Fast fowards a few years and I've had some more discussions with them, and a counsellor that I'd approached on my own for a variety of personal reasons, and I brought up the concept that a lot of fantasy races were used to demonized-but-not-ackshually other people, and I was concerned about it since I'd just been asked to take over DMing duties for one of the older members of the support group and at the time, we'd just gotten a big surge of indian, chinese, korean and iranian kids into our ranks. I was giving myself ulcers over the fact that a lot of what was printed by WotC and a lot of big-name fantasy writers was assigning non-human races to non-caucasian societies and cultures, and I wanted to make the kids feel safe and welcomed not ... ostracised or victimized. Kat was a big help with this as she was able to help me get around several mental blocks and got me in touch with several people who specialized and taught about the histories of these cultures and were able to in turn guide me to sources where I could make cultures involving the new kids in new settings without coming across as 'well-meaning white idiot'.
Off topic, but there is a lot of benefit for DMs in contacting actual professors and communities and asking for assistance in making sure you're referencing the cultures you're using are actually being done so in a good way. Culture Clash is a thing, and even the most well meaning of us won't get social and cultural quirks right on the first go.
Of course, to prevent "Monster version of X culture", I'd blend the nations and regions to have large groups of differing races. And again, being where we were, and still are, in our part of the world, there was a lot of redneck activity that we had to jump on quickly to make sure it never got a foothold in the group, and that the families we were looking out for knew that they could report it and have a large group of people to back them up.
I've tried to talk to the new DM about how, just because something looks different or has a different outlook on life, the automatic response should not be "ENEMY!". Concern, yes, but not an immediate urge to stab the thing. His response was that was stupid and it was just a game, it didn't matter and if you decided to go burn Orc babies, it didn't mean you wanted to burn babies in real life. I agreed, but I also pointed out that the group is all about inclusion, and that's why the Humans/Elves/Dwarves being in charge of everything and given cart blanche to stab anything they don't like and claim divine mandate to the world as reason to forcibly colonize and enslave native populations wasn't really going to fly in our group.
TL:DR
New DM prefers standardized settings with mainly caucasian races killing everything else, that if it isn't Human, or allied to Humans, it is XP fodder or should be subservient to them. I prefer a less murder-blender style of game and have a noticeable aversion to White Power Fantasy. The other three DMs in the groups have all given varying degrees of support to me because we are a multi-racial table and giving equal screentime to non-western societies in a positive light has helped some of the kids who get picked on for always having different characteristics to the rest of their school-mates.
On the one hand, I am always concerned that I'm 'doing it wrong' when it comes to DMing, especially given we've got eight multi-racial/multi-national tables, and I have brought up and helped train most of the DMs in the group, and I'm concerned my own biases have been passed on to them. That I have 'over-sensitised' the group and I'm reading too much into what the young man is saying in a negative way because of my own history.
On the other hand, while I really do like this young man, he's become very ... cold towards the idea of DMing for some people, and as much as I hope it is just teen angst rearing it's pimply head, I'm also worried I'm going to have to ask him to step away from the position because he's very much ... if it ain't us, kill it in his game-style, and he defaults a lot to the older interpretations of the Goblinoids, Orcs and Dark Elves, specifically the bad interpretations, and every time we try to talk to him about it, he clams up and just gives us one-word responses.
Well, obviously, this is getting pretty heavy. I don't know what kind of after school/municipal/whatever framework rules you're working under, so you're on your own about demoting the kid.
Someone as alive to nuance as you seem to be must realize that everything I know about this kid is coming through your lens. But, assuming you're a reliable narrator, you're painting a picture of a kid who's not interested in getting on board with what you're trying to do. Where do you go from there? I dunno. If there are other kids for whom he does not care to DM *and I think we both know what we're saying* then that's a whole different layer of problem and needs to be addressed. Ideally before he puts together a table of kids he feels comfortable with and starts indoctrinating them with his baby-burning fantasies.
As one of many possible alternatives, let me suggest this: If I'm counting right, you've got five DMs total? Put together a writers room, co-ordinate a big interlocking set of campaigns, like a Marvel Universe set of campaigns, pointing towards a five-table free for all at the end. And all of these campaigns will have a common group of villains, chosen from the following list:
Abberations; Constructs; Fiends; Ooze; Plant; or Undead.
I mean, there are JUST SO MANY disposable villains in D&D. I mean, these poor kids at Wizards, they're throwing away ideas, they're not disposable enough!
I am not suggesting that this kid will be soothed by a non-caucasian human bad guy, but am I getting that you fear you are over-correcting? It would put that fear to rest.
The campaign world I am working on doesn’t have humans as a primarily race. In fact they are one of the rarest races in my world, and connected to the dragons. That’s because up until a hundred years ago, humans basically didn’t exist on the plane at all (outside of the occasional planar travelers). They however came to the plane alongside a massive army of Dragonborns, Kobolds, and Dragons led by a colossal Dragon godling who liberated one of the major kingdoms caught in the middle of a Dragon Civil war.
So the others races don’t really know what to make of these Dragon-aligned beings that look awfully similar to the Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes of the world. They can still be any alignment bough, and have a lot of diversity despite their small numbers. They don’t even have to follow the dragons and can venture out. Humans however do at least seem to respect the Dragon godling for some reason.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
Well, it sounds problematic from what you've said, but it's possible you're reading too much into his questions and actions. I will say that having humans always be the bad guys is just reversing your original mistake; you should have members of any race being good, neutral, or evil, and plenty of situations where neither side in a conflict is obviously good or evil, they're just enemies.
I took part in a really good PBP adventure here that ran with the concept that Humans and normally allied races like elves and dwarves, etc. were the bad guys and each of the PCs were playing one of the monstrous races that were available.
Here is a link.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/play-by-post/8318-oetheas-chosen-not-recruiting
It's a pretty good example of what can be done with that concept, though it did not get to finish, as most D&D games tend to struggle with. The best part about it was that each player got a hand in developing the world map a little bit and had a stake in the game when the human-allied forces showed up and ruined their homeland in some way.
I have written an adventure that I have not yet had the opportunity to run (thanks, covid). It's not exactly a one-shot, more like a two-or-three shot. It's set in a rugged forest near a coast - similar to the west coast of British Columbia or the panhandle of Alaska. The players would choose from a stack of pregenerated characters I have created for this. The players would all be humanoids - orc, goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear, and ogre. Basically, some humans and dwarves established a small outpost on the coast last fall. The humanoid clans all figured they would die during the rough winter, but they didn't. Now it's spring and those humans and dwarves have built a road and a bridge to another outpost a mile inland. There are strange sounds and occasional fires and explosions around that outpost.
No single humanoid clan is strong enough right now to repel these invaders, because the ancient white dragon that lives in Crag Peak further inland has been hunting and feeding a lot recently, to fatten up for her impending hibernation period. So the clans decide that each clan will present one champion, and those champions will deal with the invaders. The players are those champions. (4 to 6 characters, all 6th level).
So here's the real plot: the dwarves used to live in Crag Peak until a century or two ago when the white dragon drove them out (the humanoids don't know that). So the dwarves are planning to attack the dragon during its hibernation period, hoping she will be vulnerable (the humanoids don't know that either). The dwarves have hired a bunch of human mercenaries to help. They don't even know (or care) that there are humanoid clans in the area, but they will kill anyone or anything that gets in their way of reclaiming their ancestral home. The humanoid clans just want to live their lives and not have their forest cut down or burned by these invaders.
So that's the gist of it. The players will have plenty of options for how they want to address the problem. They might focus on direct combat, they might focus on subterfuge and sabotage, they might enlist some other help from around the forest to help them, heck they might even try to alert the dragon and hope that she kills the invaders for them (but that's a very risky proposition).
Basically, neither side here is "good" or "bad". They're all just doing what they think is best for themselves. The dwarves want their home back (and all the treasure they lost inside it). The humanoids want their forest left intact. The humans just want to get paid. That's about it. Hopefully I'll get a chance to run it some day, if we ever manage to emerge from The Plague Year.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
I have done an all Drow campaign... well, done being a relative term, because we are at a pause on it. When you are focused on possibly everyone being evil, it changes how the game is played to some degree. That doesn't mean Drow aren't Xenophobic... they certainly are... so it isn't the best for "inclusion".
I'm also in the final stages of writing an all Orc campaign. It focuses on the team of orcs and overcoming obstacles. They will find hints of racism in some of the literature they find in old ruins and they may start off with seeing the humans as just fodder to take things from. Mostly I want them to dive into what an Orc actually experiences and what might sent them apart from other races in terms of tribe loyalty before I bring them into trying to ally themselves with other races (that is mid-late game stuff where they will need the alliances). Again... as it is a single race party campaign, it doesn't fit for "inclusion" either.
I think the main errors come about when people don't understand the monsters and they don't have their own feelings or motivations and are just disposable cutouts to fling against the might of the party. Maybe it's all the reading I did when I was young, but I try to put myself into the shoes of many of the beings in the Monster Manual so that I can understand them and make them more real at the table. And yes, there are lots of prejudices around. Some honestly so... why wouldn't a red dragon think it could just take whatever it wanted and never give a thought to the puny beings that brought it tribute? We don't practice baseless hatred of "humanoid" species, but maybe we do have a shared hatred of oozes and rust monsters... and some of our characters have phobias about spiders or snakes...
In my world there is an empire, thus empire has perpetuated the myth that orcs, goblins and their kin are all evil monsters to be eradicated.
Actually this is a lie, there communities where established peaceful places and as a people they lived in peace trading with other races hence half orcs. The Empire however wanted their land for its resources and so attacked and pushed the myth that all green skins are evil.
The first sight of this the players will have is going to be hunting down slavers, they will eventually find out the slaves are orc, goblin and hobgoblin families trapped and enslaved to be sold. The slavers will be elves (not drow) halflings and humans.
Now there will be lawful and chaotic evil orcs and goblins about, just as there are chaotic evil humans but it will be balanced by plenty of friendly orc villiages.
My advice: Never paint anyone as the bad guy. Treat everything like real world politics: "The Drow live under a religious dictatorship, and are not allowed freedom under their government." "Orcs are traveling nomads. Other races have been moving into their sacred lands and territories" Etc. Someone should be treated as evil when they act that way. I love my snobby elf nobles, but don't assign groups.
My only good homebrews: Races, Subclasses.
An aspiring DM and Homebrewer. Ask me if you need anything.