Cheetahs are more graceful than grizzly bears which are stronger and hardier. I don't see why its problematic that orcs or goblins have more aggressive, selfish natures than PC species to the point where they are generally destructive to the welfare of others in the world. Can we not call that evil?
No, we can't, because it makes evil arbitrary. Evil requires a knowledge of the distinction between good and evil, and a choice to do otherwise. As they say in ethics, capability limits culpability... ...Even then, you need to dump the idea of evil races / cultures, and describe them in terms of their values. Some values may be abhorrent to other value-sets, but not objectively evil.
How much of the disagreement has to do with the word evil? I don't think of evil as some sort of objective essence. If a culture or a group of people have a value set that causes them to regularly murder, **** and generally cause destruction rather than being willing to engage peacefully and reciprocally, or at least keep a neutral distance, with the rest of the world I don't have any issue with nominally labeling that group as evil. I guess that standard is arbitrary, but we have to draw a line somewhere don't we?
If orcs took the path that they did in World of Warcraft and people still wanted to kill on sight or in other ways denigrate them then I would call that racist.
My party just finished dealing with a group of goblins who had captured a merchant and where holding him captive, they where shocked when the Goblin Chief stated he just wanted to get back to his family, his wife and children, and was out here doing a job to earn money. out of game one of them asked me, wait, goblins have families.
Cheetahs are more graceful than grizzly bears which are stronger and hardier. I don't see why its problematic that orcs or goblins have more aggressive, selfish natures than PC species to the point where they are generally destructive to the welfare of others in the world. Can we not call that evil?
No, we can't, because it makes evil arbitrary. Evil requires a knowledge of the distinction between good and evil, and a choice to do otherwise. As they say in ethics, capability limits culpability... ...Even then, you need to dump the idea of evil races / cultures, and describe them in terms of their values. Some values may be abhorrent to other value-sets, but not objectively evil.
How much of the disagreement has to do with the word evil? I don't think of evil as some sort of objective essence. If a culture or a group of people have a value set that causes them to regularly murder, **** and generally cause destruction rather than being willing to engage peacefully and reciprocally, or at least keep a neutral distance, with the rest of the world I don't have any issue with nominally labeling that group as evil. I guess that standard is arbitrary, but we have to draw a line somewhere don't we?
I think you lost track of the point being made. Likening orc's aggression to bear's strength is talking about the aggression as an inherent trait. Culture isn't an inherent trait. Inherent traits aren't choices. Culture is a choice, even if people forget that. Evil that isn't a choice isn't evil.
Capability limits culpability. Choice falls under capability. A zombie, for example, isn't really evil, since it doesn't understand moral choices. The same is true for an animal that hunts you for food. No culpability. Not people.
An orc who is violent because their culture encourages it is making a choice. As they can understand moral issues, they have culpability, so they are capable of evil. If you say it's inherent, then it calls into question culpability by calling into question choice. Then you have a contradiction, as it's a person that's a non-person. Normalizing that contradiction is a subtle harm, as it discourages questioning that contradiction by making it normal.
Do any of y'all realize that Good/Evil are Fundamental Forces of the Multiverse? They are literal quantifiable forces like Gravity and Electromagnetism.They're not subjective. They're objective.
Do any of y'all realize that Good/Evil are Fundamental Forces of the Multiverse? They are literal quantifiable forces like Gravity and Electromagnetism.They're not subjective. They're objective.
Except, you know, in every official setting in 5e.
In the Forgotten Realms, Gruumsh is classified as "evil", but only because the other gods cheated him out of a place for his child-race, so he sent them to war against the children of the so called "good" gods. Sure, he's evil, but he has a good justification for his cause and his grievances are legitimate. Are his actions too extreme? Sure they are, but that doesn't mean that he's completely wrong and completely evil. The "Good Races" can choose to be any alignment, so why shouldn't the "Bad Races"?
In Eberron, evil and good are very much looser concepts that you paint them to be. In Dal Quor they are fundamental parts of the plane of existence, having a sort of Yin-Yang balance between the good quori and bad quori, but even then the forces are shown to be mutable (with the evil quori being capable of stopping the shift to good). Even the angels don't know if the gods exist, making angels be fundamental forces of nature, but not necessarily their purpose or followers. Chromatic and Metallic Dragons are not constrained to any alignment, neither are angels, almost all monsters, or any of the races.
In Ravnica, there are very much good and evil beings, but none of the factions are shown to be completely bad or completely good. The Golgari are "evil", but they provide a necessary part of life in Ravnica, cleaning up waste and making food. Even the supposedly "good" guilds are shown to be extreme and immoral from time to time, such as the Boros Legion's policy of "arresting criminals after we kill them".
In Theros, the "Good Gods" are very much not good in the terms of morality. Heliod is a jackass tyrant ruler of the gods (much like Zeus from Greek mythology), and Erebos is shown to be more an entity of law than one of evil (much like Hades). Good and Evil are mutable, as humanity is, as the gods only exist due to the worship that the humanoid races give them. The gods are as mutable as their worshippers are, which makes good and evil less "fundamental forces of nature" and more "the mood of humanity at present".
In Exandria, the Drow broke free of Lolth and formed the Kryn Dynasty and reinstated worship of the Luxon. All of the other "monstrous races" can break free of the curse that the evil Betrayer gods put upon them. The humans are painted in a much less flattering light than the Kryn Dynasty or the Clovis Concord, with the monstrous races generally being more inclusive and diversity-accepting than the PHB's main races.
Even in the Great Wheel Cosmology, the concepts of Good and Evil are less dominant than those of Light and Darkness. The Positive Energy Plane is filled with light and radiant energy, but that doesn't make it "good" or any less harmful than the Negative Energy Plane, which is full of darkness and shadows. The Feywild is very bright and radiant, but is very much not good, and the Shadowfell is dark, but not necessarily evil (with the Shadar-Kai, Vistani, Shadow Metallic Dragons, the Raven Queen, and so on). The Upper Planes aren't all good, such as the Beastlands, Ysgard, and Arcadia, and not all of the Lower Planes are all evil; such as Carceri (which is more of a planar prison than home of evil), Hades (a gloomy place of misery, but misery isn't exactly evil, it's more just "not a nice place to live", much like the Beastlands, Ysgard, or Limbo wouldn't be very nice places to live), and Acheron (basically Ysgard but for Orcs and Goblinoids).
If Good and Evil were fundamental forces of nature in D&D, the planes of existence associated with those would definitively be evil, not just "not great places to live". Plenty of otherworldly places are fairly inhospitable, which doesn't make them evil, it just makes them not very livable for mortals. Are Antarctica, Death Valley, the Mariana Trench, and Mars evil for not being great places for humans to live? I don't think so.
Even if Good and Evil were definitive, absolute forces of nature in the worlds of D&D, that wouldn't make "monstrous" humanoid races necessarily evil. Orcs and Goblinoids have been shown to have agency in making choices, Drow can choose to worship good deities like Eilistraee, and drow, orc, and goblinoid societies are all shown to have societal pressures to keep people members of their race in their cast. If Orcs/Drow/Goblinoid races were inherently evil and had no agency over their alignment, why the hell would they have these societal pressures to keep members of their race in a society that they have no choice of being a member of? That's a bit like tying an anchor to the ankle of an emu to keep it from flying. An emu already cannot fly, so why the redundancy, unless the Emu (monstrous races) actually can fly (choose their own alignment?). (I am absolutely not saying that emus can fly.)
tl;dr: Good and Evil are very much not objective forces of nature in any official 5e world, especially not when applied to the alignment of humanoid races. If humanoid races were innately their alignment, they wouldn't be humanoids, they'd be fiends, celestials, or aberrations (many of which have been shown to have mutable alignments, like Fallen Angels or Risen Demons). If an angel can choose to fall in the Forgotten Realms (i.e. Zariel and possibly Asmodeus), so can humanoid races, even "monstrous" ones.
My party just finished dealing with a group of goblins who had captured a merchant and where holding him captive, they where shocked when the Goblin Chief stated he just wanted to get back to his family, his wife and children, and was out here doing a job to earn money. out of game one of them asked me, wait, goblins have families.
That does point out something: It's totally fine to play characters who don't get the distinction, but players should. Likewise, it's best if the system can address it, at least implicitly, init's construction. Weather or not it matters for your game is your own business.
Cheetahs are more graceful than grizzly bears which are stronger and hardier. I don't see why its problematic that orcs or goblins have more aggressive, selfish natures than PC species to the point where they are generally destructive to the welfare of others in the world. Can we not call that evil?
No, we can't, because it makes evil arbitrary. Evil requires a knowledge of the distinction between good and evil, and a choice to do otherwise. As they say in ethics, capability limits culpability... ...Even then, you need to dump the idea of evil races / cultures, and describe them in terms of their values. Some values may be abhorrent to other value-sets, but not objectively evil.
How much of the disagreement has to do with the word evil? I don't think of evil as some sort of objective essence. If a culture or a group of people have a value set that causes them to regularly murder, **** and generally cause destruction rather than being willing to engage peacefully and reciprocally, or at least keep a neutral distance, with the rest of the world I don't have any issue with nominally labeling that group as evil. I guess that standard is arbitrary, but we have to draw a line somewhere don't we?
If orcs took the path that they did in World of Warcraft and people still wanted to kill on sight or in other ways denigrate them then I would call that racist.
My party just finished dealing with a group of goblins who had captured a merchant and where holding him captive, they where shocked when the Goblin Chief stated he just wanted to get back to his family, his wife and children, and was out here doing a job to earn money. out of game one of them asked me, wait, goblins have families.
If goblin and orc psychology was the same as humans and players treated them the way they do then that would call into question PC morality. Other than WoW I've personally never come across orcs or goblins behaving the way your party did. If that's the way people want to build their campaign worlds that's fine with me, I'd be happy playing in it. I do still think I like the way some humanoids are portrayed as being more wicked.
Cheetahs are more graceful than grizzly bears which are stronger and hardier. I don't see why its problematic that orcs or goblins have more aggressive, selfish natures than PC species to the point where they are generally destructive to the welfare of others in the world. Can we not call that evil?
No, we can't, because it makes evil arbitrary. Evil requires a knowledge of the distinction between good and evil, and a choice to do otherwise. As they say in ethics, capability limits culpability... ...Even then, you need to dump the idea of evil races / cultures, and describe them in terms of their values. Some values may be abhorrent to other value-sets, but not objectively evil.
How much of the disagreement has to do with the word evil? I don't think of evil as some sort of objective essence. If a culture or a group of people have a value set that causes them to regularly murder, **** and generally cause destruction rather than being willing to engage peacefully and reciprocally, or at least keep a neutral distance, with the rest of the world I don't have any issue with nominally labeling that group as evil. I guess that standard is arbitrary, but we have to draw a line somewhere don't we?
I think you lost track of the point being made. Likening orc's aggression to bear's strength is talking about the aggression as an inherent trait. Culture isn't an inherent trait. Inherent traits aren't choices. Culture is a choice, even if people forget that. Evil that isn't a choice isn't evil.
Capability limits culpability. Choice falls under capability. A zombie, for example, isn't really evil, since it doesn't understand moral choices. The same is true for an animal that hunts you for food. No culpability. Not people.
An orc who is violent because their culture encourages it is making a choice. As they can understand moral issues, they have culpability, so they are capable of evil. If you say it's inherent, then it calls into question culpability by calling into question choice. Then you have a contradiction, as it's a person that's a non-person. Normalizing that contradiction is a subtle harm, as it discourages questioning that contradiction by making it normal.
I think I have a different understanding of the role biology plays in our behavior. Studies on babies show them preferring puppets that help rather than hinder, that they prefer puppets that are more like them than not, etc. Prior to much enculturation, culture can encourage and lock in certain traits rather than others but we aren't blank slates, we are a combination of nature and nurture. I think maybe the issue is, the only real example we have of intelligent creatures like us, is us. I do think that other sentient humanoids with different biologies will have different natures. In my mind inherent doesn't mean inevitable, it means something more like influential.
Regarding evil, I don't think of it as something inherent, I think of it more in terms of impact. If a group of orcs, or zombies, raid and kill an entire village I'm perfectly fine calling that an evil act and having a group of PCs eliminate them, even if it can be said that they can't help themselves (maybe that's even more reason to eliminate them). I guess maybe I wouldn't consider a group of large snakes eating a village of people just because they were hungry as evil but I would eliminate the threat all the same.
In the Forgotten Realms, Gruumsh is classified as "evil", but only because the other gods cheated him out of a place for his child-race, so he sent them to war against the children of the so called "good" gods. Sure, he's evil, but he has a good justification for his cause and his grievances are legitimate. Are his actions too extreme? Sure they are, but that doesn't mean that he's completely wrong and completely evil. The "Good Races" can choose to be any alignment, so why shouldn't the "Bad Races"?
Then what the hell is the point of having Alignment in the game if everything is subjective?
In the Forgotten Realms, Gruumsh is classified as "evil", but only because the other gods cheated him out of a place for his child-race, so he sent them to war against the children of the so called "good" gods. Sure, he's evil, but he has a good justification for his cause and his grievances are legitimate. Are his actions too extreme? Sure they are, but that doesn't mean that he's completely wrong and completely evil. The "Good Races" can choose to be any alignment, so why shouldn't the "Bad Races"?
Then what the hell is the point of having Alignment in the game if everything is subjective?
. . . Read that question again, but from my point of view. That is exactly the point. There is no point in having alignment if it is subjective, and it has been subjective for a long time. There are only very rare circumstances where alignment is actually important to the game, typically in Planescape, and even then there are outliers (fallen angels, risen fiends, rogue modrons, etc). Alignment isn't objective, and there is no point in having it be a part of the base game or inherent to player races than there would be to include rules for Piety to Theros deities in the PHB.
That's why people newer to the hobby tend to dislike alignment (again, there are plenty of exceptions), because it takes a complicated topic and turns it into a 3 by 3 chart of "who can we kill on sight and who should we not kill on sight". D&D's "canon" has admitted that morality is more complicated than alignment makes it out to be, but so far has refused to dump the Sacred Cow that is the alignment system.
There is no point in having alignment in the base game if a) the game repeatedly admits that morality is more complicated than the alignment system and b) the alignment system is nothing more than just a bit of flavor-text with practically no mechanics tied to it. It is especially useless when referring to whole D&D races, as any one species will likely contain tons of different cultures, and marking any culture as "good" or "evil" is very problematic and silly. Cultures are more complicated than that.
Alignment definitely has a space in D&D (I personally would keep it out of the main game if I were to make 6e, only mentioning it in a Planescape setting book), but it definitely doesn't deserve to determine which races/cultures are good and which are bad.
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Then what the hell is the point of having Alignment in the game if everything is subjective?
1) Not everything is subjective, but alignment is. 2) Because the point of alignment is to encourage the player to put at least a minimal amount of thought into the character's point of view, and give a minimal pointer on the perspective of NPCs. As that is a subjective, what it references should likewise be subjective.
It doesn't matter if a goblin "has a family they want to return to", if they are raiding your village because they want to take your food. If goblins can't feed themselves without robbing other settlements including your culture's settlements, they are evil.
If a party is traveling and a bunch of goblins are approaching with the weapons out ready to initiate a fight, you are free to assume they are going to attack you. The only likely conflict would occur if you happened on a goblin encampment. If a culture is camping, it is fair to ask, are they just traveling from one place to another or are they maneuvering for a raid/attack.
How do you wish to handle it? You could attempt to sneak by them, which doesn't solve the riddle, but might get you past the risk. Do you simply figure if you attack then you have the initiative, and that is better for the party? Or do you attempt to initiate communications with the goblins? Very risky. Or can you ask for guidance through an Augury? You could attempt to capture a sentry and question him. That isn't usually a reliable negotiation tactic, and it will automatically put you in a bad light with the goblins. Heck, can you even speak goblin?
It doesn't matter if a goblin "has a family they want to return to", if they are raiding your village because they want to take your food. If goblins can't feed themselves without robbing other settlements including your culture's settlements, they are evil.
That's absolutely false. Remember the Irish Potato Famine? The reason they couldn't feed themselves was because the British were taking away every non-potato food that they could produce, so when the potatoes started to die from a blight, they started starving to death. Their starvation was at the hands of an oppressor, so it would have been justified for them to steal food from people who have more, especially if they can survive without the stolen food and/or if those you're stealing the food from are your oppressors. (I'm not saying that these are the circumstances that happened in the campaign, I'm just saying that there are definitely circumstances where the stealing of food would be justified.)
If a party is traveling and a bunch of goblins are approaching with the weapons out ready to initiate a fight, you are free to assume they are going to attack you. The only likely conflict would occur if you happened on a goblin encampment. If a culture is camping, it is fair to ask, are they just traveling from one place to another or are they maneuvering for a raid/attack.
So, by your logic, if a soldier is carrying a firearm ready to shoot anyone that attacks him, anyone who comes across them is morally allowed to attack them out of nowhere. Or a hunter, for that matter. What if the goblins were carrying weapons to hunt wild animals? What if they were going to attack an enemy settlement that provoked them, and they wanted to be ready for an ambush?
Again, not saying that this happened, I'm just disproving your blanket statements.
How do you wish to handle it? You could attempt to sneak by them, which doesn't solve the riddle, but might get you past the risk. Do you simply figure if you attack then you have the initiative, and that is better for the party? Or do you attempt to initiate communications with the goblins? Very risky. Or can you ask for guidance through an Augury? You could attempt to capture a sentry and question him. That isn't usually a reliable negotiation tactic, and it will automatically put you in a bad light with the goblins. Heck, can you even speak goblin?
All goblins can speak Common, based on the monster stat blocks and racial stats (again, that is dependent on if the DM changed it, but that seems fairly uncommon from my experience and from that of others I know). It is always morally superior to talk before attacking when approaching a group of other people who have done nothing to aggress you.
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"I think I have a different understanding of the role biology plays in our behavior...//... it means something more like influential."
I'm not really trying to say biology isn't a factor, there just needs to be some degree of choice for there to be moral culpability. And I appreciate that in a being as radically different from humans as PCs can be there would logically be psychology that functions differently. The problem is that we are still describing kinds of people, and if we permit what would, in human groups, be a bigoted descriptions, we normalize that and make it harder to spot when dealing with real people. In an ideal world we would all remember to make the distinction between fact and fiction, but that's not the world we've got. It's tempting to permit that approach under the name of realism, with an eye towards non-human biology, but consider how strange it is that we should decide this needs realism, as opposed to so many other parts of D&D. We remove a problem by being less realistic in this case.
"Regarding evil, I don't think of it as something inherent, I think of it more in terms of impact. If a group of orcs, or zombies, raid and kill an entire village I'm perfectly fine calling that an evil act and having a group of PCs eliminate them, even if it can be said that they can't help themselves (maybe that's even more reason to eliminate them). I guess maybe I wouldn't consider a group of large snakes eating a village of people just because they were hungry as evil but I would eliminate the threat all the same." In the field of Ethics, and in many theologies the distinction is made between what is called ambient evil and operative evil. Ambient evil is evil in the sense of a bad situation or state, and so can include poverty, disease, mental illness, etc. Ambient evil isn't anyone's fault. No culpability. If I understand you right, you're talking about ambient evil. Operative evil is evil with an operator, an agent, a culpable being acting to cause the evil. That's evil in the sense that I was using the term above, and I would argue that's the evil relevant to this discussion in terms of characterizing a group of people.
Goblins are NOT people. How many times does this have to be stated for it to sink in? Goblins do not conform to any real world group. They're mythological beings and fantasy monsters.
The current definition of a species is "a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding (Producing fertile young)". Using this definition....it depends. I am pretty sure some species cannot interbreed with others, like tortles, but we know that orcs, elves, halflings, tieflings, dragonborn and even goblins can breed with Humans. I have come to think of it like a circle, with humans in the middle- most can crossbreed with them and produce fertile offspring, but rarely reproduce with each other. In the end, all these creatures are magical so the definitions can be stretched.
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“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
Goblins are NOT people. How many times does this have to be stated for it to sink in? Goblins do not conform to any real world group. They're mythological beings and fantasy monsters.
It doesn't need to be stated at all, except perhaps to be corrected for vacuity. What makes you think they have to conform to a real world group to be people? What's your definition of people? Think it through.
Goblins are NOT people. How many times does this have to be stated for it to sink in? Goblins do not conform to any real world group. They're mythological beings and fantasy monsters.
It doesn't need to be stated at all, except perhaps to be corrected for vacuity. What makes you think they have to conform to a real world group to be people? What's your definition of people? Think it through.
I use the actual definition which means "Human beings". From Meriam-Webster:
1 plural : human beings making up a group or assembly or linked by a common interest 2 plural : human beings, persons —often used in compounds instead of persons
The definition of "person" that applies to a fantasy species is "a character in a play or story", and goblins can be PCs (player characters) or NPCs (non-player characters), and D&D is very much a collaborative story. So, within the confines of D&D, goblins are absolutely "people", they're just not "people" in real life.
How many times does this have to be stated for it to sink in?
As many times as you say it, because it will never sink in, because you are incorrect. Just a debating tip, if you want your argument to seem valid and be persuasive, it's typically better to treat your opponents as worthy of debate instead of idiots with the comprehension and understanding of the situation of a child.
Goblins do not conform to any real world group. They're mythological beings and fantasy monsters.
Now, that's a very large blanket statement. Firstly, I do not disagree on anything about them being mythological beings and fantasy monsters, I'm in total agreement there. However, I do think your statement of "do not conform to any real world group (and you just said 'group', not cultural group, racial group, or LARPing group, so that leaves quite a large hole in your statement's credibility)."
The definition of "conform" that applies to this situation is "being similar in form or type". So, we're looking for any group that is "similar in form or type" in some way to goblins in 5e (I'll expand this to goblinoids, as they tend to go hand-in-hand in discussions like these, and I feel like they are worth discussing here).
The first thing I'll point you to is this image of a Hobgoblin in the 5e Monster Manual. That's samurai armor. They even have the stereotypical top-knot. That's not a one-off, either. There's also the Iron Shadow Monk in Volo's Guide to Monsters, which is pretty stereotypically depicted as a monstrous Ninja. (Also, I'm not against including Asian-themed content in 5e, so don't try to say that I am, but it is obviously wrong to assign any real-life racial/cultural group to a monstrous fantasy race.)
Next, the description of Bugbears in 5e. It basically boils down to them being big, stupid, brutish ape-like monsters with primitive tools/weapons and a primitive, tribal caste-system. Their physical appearance is not connected to any real-life people (except possibly furries, and the few people with hypertrichosis), but the language that they're described in has potential to offend. It closely mirrors the language used by white supremacists for centuries to describe and put-down people of color around the world (I am not saying it is intentional or that the game-designers are/were racist for doing this, but am merely pointing out a point that could cause discomfort in D&D, which the core-rules definitely should at least try to avoid causing). They're even described as being inclined towards crime (specifically calling out murder), and calls them "thugs", which is basically a more disguised version of the n-word in today's society (Source). The description of this race is, at the very least, problematic and un-inclusive towards people who may have heard these racial dog-whistles directed towards them in real life.
Finally, I'll cover goblins, as I would feel a bit dishonest countering your statement about goblins not having a connection towards any real-world groups by going over the other types of goblinoids and not the core race of this humanoid group. The descriptions in the Monster Manual and in Volo's Guide to Monsters makes it clear that they are supposed to be stupid, cowardly, primitive, bullying, egotistical little monsters with basically no soul. They're also called "greedy", use disgusting animals (bats, rats, feral wolves, etc) as pets, torture their prisoners with glee, and their former gods were so weak that an outsider deity was able to come in, kill practically all of their former gods, and enslave the whole of the goblinoid races and their souls. Now this doesn't match up specifically with any real-world peoples, but it takes a ton of stereotypes from a variety of marginalized groups and combines them into one abhorrent race that's lives are worth about as much as a that of a flea with the bubonic plague. Not only are they evil because of their deity (which has been used to excuse racist acts for centuries in the real world), but they're also the victims in the scenario, with an outsider deity conquering their own pantheon in order to enslave them for eternity. I could also point out where greediness, primitivity, cowardice, stupidity, and all of the other words used to describe goblins are very similar to how racists have described marginalized people for centuries, and how they could make the game not feel safe to them (and D&D is a game, where the point is to have fun, so at the very least it should not be riddled with words used against marginalized peoples for centuries).
If there's anything I'm not okay with in the description of races in 5e, it's the victim blaming that a ton of races have with them, including these goblinoid races, duergar, drow, quaggoths, and so on. What D&D does not need more of is excusing always-evil races with excuses that have been used to justify racism in the real world (including genocide), and blaming the victims of atrocities caused by others for their current state. There are uncountable amounts of victimized people in the real world who are blamed for the actions that others force upon them, and if D&D is meant to be a safe space, it needs to get rid of that. Though there's no one "organized group" of these people, I am absolutely certain that this puts off a ton of people. Women who are sexually assaulted are constantly asked "if they did anything to be the cause of their victimhood?", people who are recovering from abusive relationships are asked "why didn't you just remove yourself from that situation?", and when a person of color tries to defend themselves from intruders that they did not know were police officers with no-knock warrants, they're (at the best) criminally charged when they injure a police officer (or quite possibly they are shot and killed on sight, as a worst case scenario), who by all their knowledge could have been a dangerous criminal that wanted to harm them. Blaming the victim happens all of the time in the real world, and it has no business being a part of the lore for D&D races to justify why they are evil and deserve to be killed on sight.
Ok so people seem to be wanting to proscribe the DnD rules and writings strictly here so I will add that the assumption is multiple gods creating each species.
But DnD allows for monotheistic religions, I have run a campaign with just one god as my pantheon in the past. So applying RAW and background in this situation makes the situation even more tricky.
Of course this is for every DM to apply independently O know in my games there is no black and white, lawful good characters can commit “chaotic evil” acts but not have an enforced alignment change, chaotic evil characters can commit Lawful Good acts and not suddenly become good. The alignment system is not binary and really should not be considered such, but that’s a whole other discussion.
I can't tell if you're joking, trolling or serious...
My guess would be serious, and also accurate in everything that he says. Feel free to DM how you want, to tell the story you want, but, accept that in fantasy writing the things being discussed here are being taken seriously by authors, the style of fantasy writing us changing. Even GamesWorkshop have changed race depictions to make them all more shades of grey as opposed to Orks bad, hummies good.
It is also something DnD have acknowledged, Chris Perkins has said in his worlds goblinoids are not simply monsters they are a complicated species that are not necessarily evil, and he has acknowledged that DnD has a long way to go to represent inclusivity and correct some of the mistakes of the past.
This does not stop you simply allowing your characters to wade through goblins like a near grinder, slaughtering at will, but accept that many of us like to tell more nuanced subtle tales in worlds that are more complicated and actually present characters with a moral dilemma, should we be slaughtering these goblins, or, might they be doing this thing for a reason that can be resolved. Yes sometimes my goblinoids are just evil, but then so are some of my humans, my elves, my dwarfs tieflings, Dragonborn, the list can go on and on. You can have lawful good beholders, a chaotic good devil, you can have an illithid who is trying to intergrate into society by not eating brains. So why do you find it so hard to accept that maybe, just maybe goblinoids can be good, responsible members of society. It is a powerful story, members of an oppressed people escaped the control of an evil deity.
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My party just finished dealing with a group of goblins who had captured a merchant and where holding him captive, they where shocked when the Goblin Chief stated he just wanted to get back to his family, his wife and children, and was out here doing a job to earn money. out of game one of them asked me, wait, goblins have families.
I think you lost track of the point being made. Likening orc's aggression to bear's strength is talking about the aggression as an inherent trait. Culture isn't an inherent trait. Inherent traits aren't choices. Culture is a choice, even if people forget that. Evil that isn't a choice isn't evil.
Capability limits culpability. Choice falls under capability. A zombie, for example, isn't really evil, since it doesn't understand moral choices. The same is true for an animal that hunts you for food. No culpability. Not people.
An orc who is violent because their culture encourages it is making a choice. As they can understand moral issues, they have culpability, so they are capable of evil. If you say it's inherent, then it calls into question culpability by calling into question choice. Then you have a contradiction, as it's a person that's a non-person. Normalizing that contradiction is a subtle harm, as it discourages questioning that contradiction by making it normal.
Do any of y'all realize that Good/Evil are Fundamental Forces of the Multiverse? They are literal quantifiable forces like Gravity and Electromagnetism.They're not subjective. They're objective.
Except, you know, in every official setting in 5e.
In the Forgotten Realms, Gruumsh is classified as "evil", but only because the other gods cheated him out of a place for his child-race, so he sent them to war against the children of the so called "good" gods. Sure, he's evil, but he has a good justification for his cause and his grievances are legitimate. Are his actions too extreme? Sure they are, but that doesn't mean that he's completely wrong and completely evil. The "Good Races" can choose to be any alignment, so why shouldn't the "Bad Races"?
In Eberron, evil and good are very much looser concepts that you paint them to be. In Dal Quor they are fundamental parts of the plane of existence, having a sort of Yin-Yang balance between the good quori and bad quori, but even then the forces are shown to be mutable (with the evil quori being capable of stopping the shift to good). Even the angels don't know if the gods exist, making angels be fundamental forces of nature, but not necessarily their purpose or followers. Chromatic and Metallic Dragons are not constrained to any alignment, neither are angels, almost all monsters, or any of the races.
In Ravnica, there are very much good and evil beings, but none of the factions are shown to be completely bad or completely good. The Golgari are "evil", but they provide a necessary part of life in Ravnica, cleaning up waste and making food. Even the supposedly "good" guilds are shown to be extreme and immoral from time to time, such as the Boros Legion's policy of "arresting criminals after we kill them".
In Theros, the "Good Gods" are very much not good in the terms of morality. Heliod is a jackass tyrant ruler of the gods (much like Zeus from Greek mythology), and Erebos is shown to be more an entity of law than one of evil (much like Hades). Good and Evil are mutable, as humanity is, as the gods only exist due to the worship that the humanoid races give them. The gods are as mutable as their worshippers are, which makes good and evil less "fundamental forces of nature" and more "the mood of humanity at present".
In Exandria, the Drow broke free of Lolth and formed the Kryn Dynasty and reinstated worship of the Luxon. All of the other "monstrous races" can break free of the curse that the evil Betrayer gods put upon them. The humans are painted in a much less flattering light than the Kryn Dynasty or the Clovis Concord, with the monstrous races generally being more inclusive and diversity-accepting than the PHB's main races.
Even in the Great Wheel Cosmology, the concepts of Good and Evil are less dominant than those of Light and Darkness. The Positive Energy Plane is filled with light and radiant energy, but that doesn't make it "good" or any less harmful than the Negative Energy Plane, which is full of darkness and shadows. The Feywild is very bright and radiant, but is very much not good, and the Shadowfell is dark, but not necessarily evil (with the Shadar-Kai, Vistani, Shadow Metallic Dragons, the Raven Queen, and so on). The Upper Planes aren't all good, such as the Beastlands, Ysgard, and Arcadia, and not all of the Lower Planes are all evil; such as Carceri (which is more of a planar prison than home of evil), Hades (a gloomy place of misery, but misery isn't exactly evil, it's more just "not a nice place to live", much like the Beastlands, Ysgard, or Limbo wouldn't be very nice places to live), and Acheron (basically Ysgard but for Orcs and Goblinoids).
If Good and Evil were fundamental forces of nature in D&D, the planes of existence associated with those would definitively be evil, not just "not great places to live". Plenty of otherworldly places are fairly inhospitable, which doesn't make them evil, it just makes them not very livable for mortals. Are Antarctica, Death Valley, the Mariana Trench, and Mars evil for not being great places for humans to live? I don't think so.
Even if Good and Evil were definitive, absolute forces of nature in the worlds of D&D, that wouldn't make "monstrous" humanoid races necessarily evil. Orcs and Goblinoids have been shown to have agency in making choices, Drow can choose to worship good deities like Eilistraee, and drow, orc, and goblinoid societies are all shown to have societal pressures to keep people members of their race in their cast. If Orcs/Drow/Goblinoid races were inherently evil and had no agency over their alignment, why the hell would they have these societal pressures to keep members of their race in a society that they have no choice of being a member of? That's a bit like tying an anchor to the ankle of an emu to keep it from flying. An emu already cannot fly, so why the redundancy, unless the Emu (monstrous races) actually can fly (choose their own alignment?). (I am absolutely not saying that emus can fly.)
tl;dr: Good and Evil are very much not objective forces of nature in any official 5e world, especially not when applied to the alignment of humanoid races. If humanoid races were innately their alignment, they wouldn't be humanoids, they'd be fiends, celestials, or aberrations (many of which have been shown to have mutable alignments, like Fallen Angels or Risen Demons). If an angel can choose to fall in the Forgotten Realms (i.e. Zariel and possibly Asmodeus), so can humanoid races, even "monstrous" ones.
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Plus, if you make them objective, you make them arbitrary as per the Euthyphro Dialog.
That does point out something: It's totally fine to play characters who don't get the distinction, but players should. Likewise, it's best if the system can address it, at least implicitly, init's construction. Weather or not it matters for your game is your own business.
If goblin and orc psychology was the same as humans and players treated them the way they do then that would call into question PC morality. Other than WoW I've personally never come across orcs or goblins behaving the way your party did. If that's the way people want to build their campaign worlds that's fine with me, I'd be happy playing in it. I do still think I like the way some humanoids are portrayed as being more wicked.
I think I have a different understanding of the role biology plays in our behavior. Studies on babies show them preferring puppets that help rather than hinder, that they prefer puppets that are more like them than not, etc. Prior to much enculturation, culture can encourage and lock in certain traits rather than others but we aren't blank slates, we are a combination of nature and nurture. I think maybe the issue is, the only real example we have of intelligent creatures like us, is us. I do think that other sentient humanoids with different biologies will have different natures. In my mind inherent doesn't mean inevitable, it means something more like influential.
Regarding evil, I don't think of it as something inherent, I think of it more in terms of impact. If a group of orcs, or zombies, raid and kill an entire village I'm perfectly fine calling that an evil act and having a group of PCs eliminate them, even if it can be said that they can't help themselves (maybe that's even more reason to eliminate them). I guess maybe I wouldn't consider a group of large snakes eating a village of people just because they were hungry as evil but I would eliminate the threat all the same.
Then what the hell is the point of having Alignment in the game if everything is subjective?
. . . Read that question again, but from my point of view. That is exactly the point. There is no point in having alignment if it is subjective, and it has been subjective for a long time. There are only very rare circumstances where alignment is actually important to the game, typically in Planescape, and even then there are outliers (fallen angels, risen fiends, rogue modrons, etc). Alignment isn't objective, and there is no point in having it be a part of the base game or inherent to player races than there would be to include rules for Piety to Theros deities in the PHB.
That's why people newer to the hobby tend to dislike alignment (again, there are plenty of exceptions), because it takes a complicated topic and turns it into a 3 by 3 chart of "who can we kill on sight and who should we not kill on sight". D&D's "canon" has admitted that morality is more complicated than alignment makes it out to be, but so far has refused to dump the Sacred Cow that is the alignment system.
There is no point in having alignment in the base game if a) the game repeatedly admits that morality is more complicated than the alignment system and b) the alignment system is nothing more than just a bit of flavor-text with practically no mechanics tied to it. It is especially useless when referring to whole D&D races, as any one species will likely contain tons of different cultures, and marking any culture as "good" or "evil" is very problematic and silly. Cultures are more complicated than that.
Alignment definitely has a space in D&D (I personally would keep it out of the main game if I were to make 6e, only mentioning it in a Planescape setting book), but it definitely doesn't deserve to determine which races/cultures are good and which are bad.
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1) Not everything is subjective, but alignment is.
2) Because the point of alignment is to encourage the player to put at least a minimal amount of thought into the character's point of view, and give a minimal pointer on the perspective of NPCs. As that is a subjective, what it references should likewise be subjective.
It doesn't matter if a goblin "has a family they want to return to", if they are raiding your village because they want to take your food. If goblins can't feed themselves without robbing other settlements including your culture's settlements, they are evil.
If a party is traveling and a bunch of goblins are approaching with the weapons out ready to initiate a fight, you are free to assume they are going to attack you. The only likely conflict would occur if you happened on a goblin encampment. If a culture is camping, it is fair to ask, are they just traveling from one place to another or are they maneuvering for a raid/attack.
How do you wish to handle it? You could attempt to sneak by them, which doesn't solve the riddle, but might get you past the risk. Do you simply figure if you attack then you have the initiative, and that is better for the party? Or do you attempt to initiate communications with the goblins? Very risky. Or can you ask for guidance through an Augury? You could attempt to capture a sentry and question him. That isn't usually a reliable negotiation tactic, and it will automatically put you in a bad light with the goblins. Heck, can you even speak goblin?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
That's absolutely false. Remember the Irish Potato Famine? The reason they couldn't feed themselves was because the British were taking away every non-potato food that they could produce, so when the potatoes started to die from a blight, they started starving to death. Their starvation was at the hands of an oppressor, so it would have been justified for them to steal food from people who have more, especially if they can survive without the stolen food and/or if those you're stealing the food from are your oppressors. (I'm not saying that these are the circumstances that happened in the campaign, I'm just saying that there are definitely circumstances where the stealing of food would be justified.)
So, by your logic, if a soldier is carrying a firearm ready to shoot anyone that attacks him, anyone who comes across them is morally allowed to attack them out of nowhere. Or a hunter, for that matter. What if the goblins were carrying weapons to hunt wild animals? What if they were going to attack an enemy settlement that provoked them, and they wanted to be ready for an ambush?
Again, not saying that this happened, I'm just disproving your blanket statements.
All goblins can speak Common, based on the monster stat blocks and racial stats (again, that is dependent on if the DM changed it, but that seems fairly uncommon from my experience and from that of others I know). It is always morally superior to talk before attacking when approaching a group of other people who have done nothing to aggress you.
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"Regarding evil, I don't think of it as something inherent, I think of it more in terms of impact. If a group of orcs, or zombies, raid and kill an entire village I'm perfectly fine calling that an evil act and having a group of PCs eliminate them, even if it can be said that they can't help themselves (maybe that's even more reason to eliminate them). I guess maybe I wouldn't consider a group of large snakes eating a village of people just because they were hungry as evil but I would eliminate the threat all the same."
In the field of Ethics, and in many theologies the distinction is made between what is called ambient evil and operative evil. Ambient evil is evil in the sense of a bad situation or state, and so can include poverty, disease, mental illness, etc. Ambient evil isn't anyone's fault. No culpability. If I understand you right, you're talking about ambient evil. Operative evil is evil with an operator, an agent, a culpable being acting to cause the evil. That's evil in the sense that I was using the term above, and I would argue that's the evil relevant to this discussion in terms of characterizing a group of people.
Goblins are NOT people. How many times does this have to be stated for it to sink in? Goblins do not conform to any real world group. They're mythological beings and fantasy monsters.
The current definition of a species is "a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding (Producing fertile young)". Using this definition....it depends. I am pretty sure some species cannot interbreed with others, like tortles, but we know that orcs, elves, halflings, tieflings, dragonborn and even goblins can breed with Humans. I have come to think of it like a circle, with humans in the middle- most can crossbreed with them and produce fertile offspring, but rarely reproduce with each other. In the end, all these creatures are magical so the definitions can be stretched.
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
It doesn't need to be stated at all, except perhaps to be corrected for vacuity. What makes you think they have to conform to a real world group to be people? What's your definition of people? Think it through.
I use the actual definition which means "Human beings". From Meriam-Webster:
1 plural : human beings making up a group or assembly or linked by a common interest
2 plural : human beings, persons —often used in compounds instead of persons
Goblins are not People. They're Monsters.
The definition of "person" that applies to a fantasy species is "a character in a play or story", and goblins can be PCs (player characters) or NPCs (non-player characters), and D&D is very much a collaborative story. So, within the confines of D&D, goblins are absolutely "people", they're just not "people" in real life.
As many times as you say it, because it will never sink in, because you are incorrect. Just a debating tip, if you want your argument to seem valid and be persuasive, it's typically better to treat your opponents as worthy of debate instead of idiots with the comprehension and understanding of the situation of a child.
Now, that's a very large blanket statement. Firstly, I do not disagree on anything about them being mythological beings and fantasy monsters, I'm in total agreement there. However, I do think your statement of "do not conform to any real world group (and you just said 'group', not cultural group, racial group, or LARPing group, so that leaves quite a large hole in your statement's credibility)."
The definition of "conform" that applies to this situation is "being similar in form or type". So, we're looking for any group that is "similar in form or type" in some way to goblins in 5e (I'll expand this to goblinoids, as they tend to go hand-in-hand in discussions like these, and I feel like they are worth discussing here).
The first thing I'll point you to is this image of a Hobgoblin in the 5e Monster Manual. That's samurai armor. They even have the stereotypical top-knot. That's not a one-off, either. There's also the Iron Shadow Monk in Volo's Guide to Monsters, which is pretty stereotypically depicted as a monstrous Ninja. (Also, I'm not against including Asian-themed content in 5e, so don't try to say that I am, but it is obviously wrong to assign any real-life racial/cultural group to a monstrous fantasy race.)
Next, the description of Bugbears in 5e. It basically boils down to them being big, stupid, brutish ape-like monsters with primitive tools/weapons and a primitive, tribal caste-system. Their physical appearance is not connected to any real-life people (except possibly furries, and the few people with hypertrichosis), but the language that they're described in has potential to offend. It closely mirrors the language used by white supremacists for centuries to describe and put-down people of color around the world (I am not saying it is intentional or that the game-designers are/were racist for doing this, but am merely pointing out a point that could cause discomfort in D&D, which the core-rules definitely should at least try to avoid causing). They're even described as being inclined towards crime (specifically calling out murder), and calls them "thugs", which is basically a more disguised version of the n-word in today's society (Source). The description of this race is, at the very least, problematic and un-inclusive towards people who may have heard these racial dog-whistles directed towards them in real life.
Finally, I'll cover goblins, as I would feel a bit dishonest countering your statement about goblins not having a connection towards any real-world groups by going over the other types of goblinoids and not the core race of this humanoid group. The descriptions in the Monster Manual and in Volo's Guide to Monsters makes it clear that they are supposed to be stupid, cowardly, primitive, bullying, egotistical little monsters with basically no soul. They're also called "greedy", use disgusting animals (bats, rats, feral wolves, etc) as pets, torture their prisoners with glee, and their former gods were so weak that an outsider deity was able to come in, kill practically all of their former gods, and enslave the whole of the goblinoid races and their souls. Now this doesn't match up specifically with any real-world peoples, but it takes a ton of stereotypes from a variety of marginalized groups and combines them into one abhorrent race that's lives are worth about as much as a that of a flea with the bubonic plague. Not only are they evil because of their deity (which has been used to excuse racist acts for centuries in the real world), but they're also the victims in the scenario, with an outsider deity conquering their own pantheon in order to enslave them for eternity. I could also point out where greediness, primitivity, cowardice, stupidity, and all of the other words used to describe goblins are very similar to how racists have described marginalized people for centuries, and how they could make the game not feel safe to them (and D&D is a game, where the point is to have fun, so at the very least it should not be riddled with words used against marginalized peoples for centuries).
If there's anything I'm not okay with in the description of races in 5e, it's the victim blaming that a ton of races have with them, including these goblinoid races, duergar, drow, quaggoths, and so on. What D&D does not need more of is excusing always-evil races with excuses that have been used to justify racism in the real world (including genocide), and blaming the victims of atrocities caused by others for their current state. There are uncountable amounts of victimized people in the real world who are blamed for the actions that others force upon them, and if D&D is meant to be a safe space, it needs to get rid of that. Though there's no one "organized group" of these people, I am absolutely certain that this puts off a ton of people. Women who are sexually assaulted are constantly asked "if they did anything to be the cause of their victimhood?", people who are recovering from abusive relationships are asked "why didn't you just remove yourself from that situation?", and when a person of color tries to defend themselves from intruders that they did not know were police officers with no-knock warrants, they're (at the best) criminally charged when they injure a police officer (or quite possibly they are shot and killed on sight, as a worst case scenario), who by all their knowledge could have been a dangerous criminal that wanted to harm them. Blaming the victim happens all of the time in the real world, and it has no business being a part of the lore for D&D races to justify why they are evil and deserve to be killed on sight.
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Ok so people seem to be wanting to proscribe the DnD rules and writings strictly here so I will add that the assumption is multiple gods creating each species.
But DnD allows for monotheistic religions, I have run a campaign with just one god as my pantheon in the past. So applying RAW and background in this situation makes the situation even more tricky.
Of course this is for every DM to apply independently O know in my games there is no black and white, lawful good characters can commit “chaotic evil” acts but not have an enforced alignment change, chaotic evil characters can commit Lawful Good acts and not suddenly become good. The alignment system is not binary and really should not be considered such, but that’s a whole other discussion.
My guess would be serious, and also accurate in everything that he says. Feel free to DM how you want, to tell the story you want, but, accept that in fantasy writing the things being discussed here are being taken seriously by authors, the style of fantasy writing us changing. Even GamesWorkshop have changed race depictions to make them all more shades of grey as opposed to Orks bad, hummies good.
It is also something DnD have acknowledged, Chris Perkins has said in his worlds goblinoids are not simply monsters they are a complicated species that are not necessarily evil, and he has acknowledged that DnD has a long way to go to represent inclusivity and correct some of the mistakes of the past.
This does not stop you simply allowing your characters to wade through goblins like a near grinder, slaughtering at will, but accept that many of us like to tell more nuanced subtle tales in worlds that are more complicated and actually present characters with a moral dilemma, should we be slaughtering these goblins, or, might they be doing this thing for a reason that can be resolved. Yes sometimes my goblinoids are just evil, but then so are some of my humans, my elves, my dwarfs tieflings, Dragonborn, the list can go on and on. You can have lawful good beholders, a chaotic good devil, you can have an illithid who is trying to intergrate into society by not eating brains. So why do you find it so hard to accept that maybe, just maybe goblinoids can be good, responsible members of society. It is a powerful story, members of an oppressed people escaped the control of an evil deity.