You can easily still use orcs and goblins as bad guys without falling into racially coded stereotypes as long as you consider them as a non-ubiquitous people, rather than a blanket snarling monoculture.
Instead of "help! The village is under attack by orcs! Help us!", think more along the lines of "help! The Skar clan of orc bandits is attacking the town! Someone help us!" Specify who they are as an enemy, rather than just saying "orcs," implying that it's just all orcs. These orcs have an identity, an occupation, maybe even a motive. The more work you do at the back end to flesh out your bad guys and make them three dimensional, the less applicable real world stereotypes become. Like, maybe the Skar clan is an outlaw clan, shunned by the others when they wouldn't follow the new Highleader, and thus, they've taken to raiding countrysides since they no longer have the support of the Grisk clan who tends to much of the food production in orc society, and the Lu clan who controls the mining won't trade with them any longer, etc.
Suddenly with this backstory, the image of orcs as a savage and primitive people falls apart when their society is shown with complexity and nuance, and therfore the racist perception of any real life peoples as being "primitive" is far from people's minds.
Your backstory doesn't have to necessarily be political either. Maybe instead of a politically outcast clan, you have a cult of goblins dedicated to worship of the old gods and the return to the time of blood worship. This cult by no means represents all goblins, but they operate in secrecy, from the shadows. Again, they're not evil because they're goblins, it's not a Goblin Cult per se, it's a cult consisting of goblins because they worship an ancient demon who once acted as a patron diety to a certain goblin nation that they're trying to resurrect. Again, specificity about background and motive dispels assumption.
Another thing you can and should do is also include human bad guys, and elves and dwarves. Whatever species live in your game world, they come in all moralities, and humans are just as likely to turn to banditry as orcs. Maybe even make a point of showing bandits as non-species specific. Maybe sometimes the baddies are just a big hoarde of humanoids who'd rather rob you for your dinner than make their own.
Make clear why these groups are behaving evilly, and you avoid implying that they-- and by extent any free-thinking people-- are just inherently bad.
Yes, but people do frequently view the others as a part of a snarling blanket monoculture. In a fictional game, it's kinda up to the players to decide that they are going to push back at the narratives of NPCs, not a responsibility of DMs (or WotC) to remove those narratives to begin with.
Yes you can let the players decide what narrative to focus on, but they can't do that without knowing the full picture. Without making that background available to them at some point (and sure, maybe they get their first impression of orcs from the village that keeps getting pillaged by the Skar clan, and draw some initial assumptions from those people before learning more about the other clans), but if you just start with what the townsfolk of pillageville are saying and never give players the opportunity to question it, you're essentially withholding important information they might wish to use, from the players.
Well it's your game, but maybe you're giving players too little agency here. If players have made their characters to right the wrongs of racial narratives, they search of for the truth by themselves, and I would certainly let them try. If they don't care at all about that, want to paint all orcs with the same brush. and go to war with the entire species, by all means, reap the whirlwind. It's not up to a DM to make sure players are "doing the right thing", even if thousands of innocent fictitious orcs are murdered in the process. One thing a good DM will do, however, is make clear the consequences of their actions, because that's a story worth telling. But even that isn't mandatory. It's just a ******* game, after all.
Perhaps, but I would like to reiterate once again that the question was how to run evil orcs or goblins without hitting on the "inherently evil" coding with its unfortunate undertones. The answer provided was to highlight that while this individual band could be engaged in anything from banditry to infernal worship, they aren't representative of all members of their species.
Sure, and the completely plausible (and likely) narrative of the villager in distress doesn't need to change to alter the "fact" that the orcs in this hypothetical setting are not "evil by nature", but due to circumstance.There are reasons the narrative might be different (like the villager has dealings with other orcs, etc.) but these are because of story elements.
Can you please start over from the beginning? I feel like you're starting in the middle of your argument here and I can't figure out what you're driving at.
I wanted to know if having gnolls, goblins, and orcs be the physical embodiments of evil, created to serve the will of evil deities and demons was a way to avoid racism.
The short answer is yes, it's still a racist trope. It doesn't matter what reason you give for having an entire race/species/whatever be "born evil"
Could I make them fiends? Acheron, the plane where their deities reside and wage eternal war against each other, already has a partially evil alignment.
I'm a social worker. I spend all day, every day drowning in grayness, where no one's good or evil, where no one's right or wrong, and there's only imperfect people struggling to survive in imperfect systems. At the end of the week, I want to visit a world where that orc is the evil, physical embodiment of the destructive systems in my community; that goblin is the evil, physical embodiment of the dominating systems in my community; and that gnoll is the evil, physical embodiment of the rapacious systems in my community. I want heroes to take up sword and spell and slay that evil, not ponder the nuance of its circumstances. That's what's waiting for me in the real world.
I don't want to promote racism at my table, though. I'm losing a battle of attrition against that, and every other layer of oppression built into these systems, every day, and I don't want to add to that.
I'm just looking for a way for straight up evil fantasy monsters to be straight up evil fantasy monsters without putting more bullshit into the world.
I wanted to know if having gnolls, goblins, and orcs be the physical embodiments of evil, created to serve the will of evil deities and demons was a way to avoid racism.
The short answer is yes, it's still a racist trope. It doesn't matter what reason you give for having an entire race/species/whatever be "born evil"
Could I make them fiends? Acheron, the plane where their deities reside and wage eternal war against each other, already has a partially evil alignment.
I'm a social worker. I spend all day, every day drowning in grayness, where no one's good or evil, where no one's right or wrong, and there's only imperfect people struggling to survive in imperfect systems. At the end of the week, I want to visit a world where that orc is the evil, physical embodiment of the destructive systems in my community; that goblin is the evil, physical embodiment of the dominating systems in my community; and that gnoll is the evil, physical embodiment of the rapacious systems in my community. I want heroes to take up sword and spell and slay that evil, not ponder the nuance of its circumstances. That's what's waiting for me in the real world.
I don't want to promote racism at my table, though. I'm losing a battle of attrition against that, and every other layer of oppression built into these systems, every day, and I don't want to add to that.
I'm just looking for a way for straight up evil fantasy monsters to be straight up evil fantasy monsters without putting more bullshit into the world.
They absolutely can be fiends.
Technically, if there is such a thing these days, when you go back to their origins, they are part of The Good Folk (Well, Goblins, are). and so could easily be wicked denizens of Fairywilde seeking their entertainment on the mortal plane as well.
Gnolls are a bit harder -- they don't have a western basis (though there is a similar West African, but that would also place them in Fairy).
Orcs are essentially drawn from what we think of as Ogres, today, so would require a bit.
That said...
because I absolutely get what you are talking about, if I took some time and wrote up something to support all of that, would it help? Not a "wanna buy" thing -- I mean I would write it right here into the thread, for you, no expectation of return.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
You can easily still use orcs and goblins as bad guys without falling into racially coded stereotypes as long as you consider them as a non-ubiquitous people, rather than a blanket snarling monoculture.
Instead of "help! The village is under attack by orcs! Help us!", think more along the lines of "help! The Skar clan of orc bandits is attacking the town! Someone help us!" Specify who they are as an enemy, rather than just saying "orcs," implying that it's just all orcs. These orcs have an identity, an occupation, maybe even a motive. The more work you do at the back end to flesh out your bad guys and make them three dimensional, the less applicable real world stereotypes become. Like, maybe the Skar clan is an outlaw clan, shunned by the others when they wouldn't follow the new Highleader, and thus, they've taken to raiding countrysides since they no longer have the support of the Grisk clan who tends to much of the food production in orc society, and the Lu clan who controls the mining won't trade with them any longer, etc.
Suddenly with this backstory, the image of orcs as a savage and primitive people falls apart when their society is shown with complexity and nuance, and therfore the racist perception of any real life peoples as being "primitive" is far from people's minds.
Your backstory doesn't have to necessarily be political either. Maybe instead of a politically outcast clan, you have a cult of goblins dedicated to worship of the old gods and the return to the time of blood worship. This cult by no means represents all goblins, but they operate in secrecy, from the shadows. Again, they're not evil because they're goblins, it's not a Goblin Cult per se, it's a cult consisting of goblins because they worship an ancient demon who once acted as a patron diety to a certain goblin nation that they're trying to resurrect. Again, specificity about background and motive dispels assumption.
Another thing you can and should do is also include human bad guys, and elves and dwarves. Whatever species live in your game world, they come in all moralities, and humans are just as likely to turn to banditry as orcs. Maybe even make a point of showing bandits as non-species specific. Maybe sometimes the baddies are just a big hoarde of humanoids who'd rather rob you for your dinner than make their own.
Make clear why these groups are behaving evilly, and you avoid implying that they-- and by extent any free-thinking people-- are just inherently bad.
Yes, but people do frequently view the others as a part of a snarling blanket monoculture. In a fictional game, it's kinda up to the players to decide that they are going to push back at the narratives of NPCs, not a responsibility of DMs (or WotC) to remove those narratives to begin with.
Yes you can let the players decide what narrative to focus on, but they can't do that without knowing the full picture. Without making that background available to them at some point (and sure, maybe they get their first impression of orcs from the village that keeps getting pillaged by the Skar clan, and draw some initial assumptions from those people before learning more about the other clans), but if you just start with what the townsfolk of pillageville are saying and never give players the opportunity to question it, you're essentially withholding important information they might wish to use, from the players.
Well it's your game, but maybe you're giving players too little agency here. If players have made their characters to right the wrongs of racial narratives, they search of for the truth by themselves, and I would certainly let them try. If they don't care at all about that, want to paint all orcs with the same brush. and go to war with the entire species, by all means, reap the whirlwind. It's not up to a DM to make sure players are "doing the right thing", even if thousands of innocent fictitious orcs are murdered in the process. One thing a good DM will do, however, is make clear the consequences of their actions, because that's a story worth telling. But even that isn't mandatory. It's just a ******* game, after all.
Perhaps, but I would like to reiterate once again that the question was how to run evil orcs or goblins without hitting on the "inherently evil" coding with its unfortunate undertones. The answer provided was to highlight that while this individual band could be engaged in anything from banditry to infernal worship, they aren't representative of all members of their species.
Sure, and the completely plausible (and likely) narrative of the villager in distress doesn't need to change to alter the "fact" that the orcs in this hypothetical setting are not "evil by nature", but due to circumstance.There are reasons the narrative might be different (like the villager has dealings with other orcs, etc.) but these are because of story elements.
Can you please start over from the beginning? I feel like you're starting in the middle of your argument here and I can't figure out what you're driving at.
What I'm driving at is that NPCs need reasons to say things. A villager says "Help me! Orcs have attacked my village!" because orcs have attacked his village. Nothing weird about that. Would the same villager for no additional reason instead cry, "These specific orcs that do not represent orc-kind as a whole and are also professional bandits have attacked my village, please help!"? I'm exaggerating for emphasis here, but tell me wouldn't that be odd?
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“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
*resists urge to ask if the villager is an Orc themselves, but very poorly. Rolled a 3 against a target of 16, and had disadvantage due to giggling.*
I blame Timmy.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
You can easily still use orcs and goblins as bad guys without falling into racially coded stereotypes as long as you consider them as a non-ubiquitous people, rather than a blanket snarling monoculture.
Instead of "help! The village is under attack by orcs! Help us!", think more along the lines of "help! The Skar clan of orc bandits is attacking the town! Someone help us!" Specify who they are as an enemy, rather than just saying "orcs," implying that it's just all orcs. These orcs have an identity, an occupation, maybe even a motive. The more work you do at the back end to flesh out your bad guys and make them three dimensional, the less applicable real world stereotypes become. Like, maybe the Skar clan is an outlaw clan, shunned by the others when they wouldn't follow the new Highleader, and thus, they've taken to raiding countrysides since they no longer have the support of the Grisk clan who tends to much of the food production in orc society, and the Lu clan who controls the mining won't trade with them any longer, etc.
Suddenly with this backstory, the image of orcs as a savage and primitive people falls apart when their society is shown with complexity and nuance, and therfore the racist perception of any real life peoples as being "primitive" is far from people's minds.
Your backstory doesn't have to necessarily be political either. Maybe instead of a politically outcast clan, you have a cult of goblins dedicated to worship of the old gods and the return to the time of blood worship. This cult by no means represents all goblins, but they operate in secrecy, from the shadows. Again, they're not evil because they're goblins, it's not a Goblin Cult per se, it's a cult consisting of goblins because they worship an ancient demon who once acted as a patron diety to a certain goblin nation that they're trying to resurrect. Again, specificity about background and motive dispels assumption.
Another thing you can and should do is also include human bad guys, and elves and dwarves. Whatever species live in your game world, they come in all moralities, and humans are just as likely to turn to banditry as orcs. Maybe even make a point of showing bandits as non-species specific. Maybe sometimes the baddies are just a big hoarde of humanoids who'd rather rob you for your dinner than make their own.
Make clear why these groups are behaving evilly, and you avoid implying that they-- and by extent any free-thinking people-- are just inherently bad.
Yes, but people do frequently view the others as a part of a snarling blanket monoculture. In a fictional game, it's kinda up to the players to decide that they are going to push back at the narratives of NPCs, not a responsibility of DMs (or WotC) to remove those narratives to begin with.
Yes you can let the players decide what narrative to focus on, but they can't do that without knowing the full picture. Without making that background available to them at some point (and sure, maybe they get their first impression of orcs from the village that keeps getting pillaged by the Skar clan, and draw some initial assumptions from those people before learning more about the other clans), but if you just start with what the townsfolk of pillageville are saying and never give players the opportunity to question it, you're essentially withholding important information they might wish to use, from the players.
Well it's your game, but maybe you're giving players too little agency here. If players have made their characters to right the wrongs of racial narratives, they search of for the truth by themselves, and I would certainly let them try. If they don't care at all about that, want to paint all orcs with the same brush. and go to war with the entire species, by all means, reap the whirlwind. It's not up to a DM to make sure players are "doing the right thing", even if thousands of innocent fictitious orcs are murdered in the process. One thing a good DM will do, however, is make clear the consequences of their actions, because that's a story worth telling. But even that isn't mandatory. It's just a ******* game, after all.
Perhaps, but I would like to reiterate once again that the question was how to run evil orcs or goblins without hitting on the "inherently evil" coding with its unfortunate undertones. The answer provided was to highlight that while this individual band could be engaged in anything from banditry to infernal worship, they aren't representative of all members of their species.
Sure, and the completely plausible (and likely) narrative of the villager in distress doesn't need to change to alter the "fact" that the orcs in this hypothetical setting are not "evil by nature", but due to circumstance.There are reasons the narrative might be different (like the villager has dealings with other orcs, etc.) but these are because of story elements.
Can you please start over from the beginning? I feel like you're starting in the middle of your argument here and I can't figure out what you're driving at.
What I'm driving at is that NPCs need reasons to say things. A villager says "Help me! Orcs have attacked my village!" because orcs have attacked his village. Nothing weird about that. Would the same villager for no additional reason instead cry, "These specific orcs that do not represent orc-kind as a whole and are also professional bandits have attacked my village, please help!"? I'm exaggerating for emphasis here, but tell me wouldn't that be odd?
It's not that hard for a local to give some details.
"It was a band of Skar clan orcs. We've never been chummy with orcs, and the feeling's mutual, but mostly we just leave each other be. But these Skar clan types are something else. Heard the other clans kicked them out over something, and now they've started raiding all through the region."
Obviously this is not a conversation you'll have in the midst of an attack, but it's entirely within the purview of your typical quest-giver outlining their problem. They certainly wouldn't want to just say "some orcs attacked us" and have you go haring off and aggravating the ones who've been leaving them be.
I mean, if you really need to fight embodiments of pure evil, Descent into Avernus is right there
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You can easily still use orcs and goblins as bad guys without falling into racially coded stereotypes as long as you consider them as a non-ubiquitous people, rather than a blanket snarling monoculture.
Instead of "help! The village is under attack by orcs! Help us!", think more along the lines of "help! The Skar clan of orc bandits is attacking the town! Someone help us!" Specify who they are as an enemy, rather than just saying "orcs," implying that it's just all orcs. These orcs have an identity, an occupation, maybe even a motive. The more work you do at the back end to flesh out your bad guys and make them three dimensional, the less applicable real world stereotypes become. Like, maybe the Skar clan is an outlaw clan, shunned by the others when they wouldn't follow the new Highleader, and thus, they've taken to raiding countrysides since they no longer have the support of the Grisk clan who tends to much of the food production in orc society, and the Lu clan who controls the mining won't trade with them any longer, etc.
Suddenly with this backstory, the image of orcs as a savage and primitive people falls apart when their society is shown with complexity and nuance, and therfore the racist perception of any real life peoples as being "primitive" is far from people's minds.
Your backstory doesn't have to necessarily be political either. Maybe instead of a politically outcast clan, you have a cult of goblins dedicated to worship of the old gods and the return to the time of blood worship. This cult by no means represents all goblins, but they operate in secrecy, from the shadows. Again, they're not evil because they're goblins, it's not a Goblin Cult per se, it's a cult consisting of goblins because they worship an ancient demon who once acted as a patron diety to a certain goblin nation that they're trying to resurrect. Again, specificity about background and motive dispels assumption.
Another thing you can and should do is also include human bad guys, and elves and dwarves. Whatever species live in your game world, they come in all moralities, and humans are just as likely to turn to banditry as orcs. Maybe even make a point of showing bandits as non-species specific. Maybe sometimes the baddies are just a big hoarde of humanoids who'd rather rob you for your dinner than make their own.
Make clear why these groups are behaving evilly, and you avoid implying that they-- and by extent any free-thinking people-- are just inherently bad.
Yes, but people do frequently view the others as a part of a snarling blanket monoculture. In a fictional game, it's kinda up to the players to decide that they are going to push back at the narratives of NPCs, not a responsibility of DMs (or WotC) to remove those narratives to begin with.
Yes you can let the players decide what narrative to focus on, but they can't do that without knowing the full picture. Without making that background available to them at some point (and sure, maybe they get their first impression of orcs from the village that keeps getting pillaged by the Skar clan, and draw some initial assumptions from those people before learning more about the other clans), but if you just start with what the townsfolk of pillageville are saying and never give players the opportunity to question it, you're essentially withholding important information they might wish to use, from the players.
Well it's your game, but maybe you're giving players too little agency here. If players have made their characters to right the wrongs of racial narratives, they search of for the truth by themselves, and I would certainly let them try. If they don't care at all about that, want to paint all orcs with the same brush. and go to war with the entire species, by all means, reap the whirlwind. It's not up to a DM to make sure players are "doing the right thing", even if thousands of innocent fictitious orcs are murdered in the process. One thing a good DM will do, however, is make clear the consequences of their actions, because that's a story worth telling. But even that isn't mandatory. It's just a ******* game, after all.
Perhaps, but I would like to reiterate once again that the question was how to run evil orcs or goblins without hitting on the "inherently evil" coding with its unfortunate undertones. The answer provided was to highlight that while this individual band could be engaged in anything from banditry to infernal worship, they aren't representative of all members of their species.
Sure, and the completely plausible (and likely) narrative of the villager in distress doesn't need to change to alter the "fact" that the orcs in this hypothetical setting are not "evil by nature", but due to circumstance.There are reasons the narrative might be different (like the villager has dealings with other orcs, etc.) but these are because of story elements.
Can you please start over from the beginning? I feel like you're starting in the middle of your argument here and I can't figure out what you're driving at.
What I'm driving at is that NPCs need reasons to say things. A villager says "Help me! Orcs have attacked my village!" because orcs have attacked his village. Nothing weird about that. Would the same villager for no additional reason instead cry, "These specific orcs that do not represent orc-kind as a whole and are also professional bandits have attacked my village, please help!"? I'm exaggerating for emphasis here, but tell me wouldn't that be odd?
I never said you can't have npcs or groups of npcs who carry prejudice. Logically yes it makes sense for nobody in pillageville to have a sunny disposition towards orcs. However, as a DM, when you present that viewpoint without (eventually, you do not need to do this right away, or have the villagers expound on this in the middle of an attack-- rather if the players need to go further into orc territory on a later quest, or run into an orc community in a neighboring city, they can find out more about orc society then) framing it in a larger context, you essentially sign off on it as "correct". If you have the villagers tell the players that orcs are all marauding raiders, and you never show or tell the players differently, then to your players, they are. And you can do that if nobody at your table has a problem with that, but as OP specifically asked how not to do that, I'd advise OP not to do that.
As far as Ace's point about the villagers using specificity making sense in a crisis; yeah. The villagers live in the world, and probably have a passing understanding of orc societal structure if they're so close on the border of orc lands that they're prime raiding targets, so shouting "orcs are coming!" might be less useful if that has your guardsmen confused as to whether to expect a pack of raiders or a bunch of dinosaur herders. It's like how, in actuality, Paul Revere probably didn't shout "the British are coming!", because that would have been a meaningless thing to shout in a British colony to a bunch of British subjects. Instead he (for the portion of the ride he actually did) used more specific language like "the King's troops are coming!" or something along those lines. Therfore yeah, it makes sense even if the townsfolk are prejudiced against orcs to still shout like "Skar raiders incoming!" aside from the much less useful, "ah! Orcs!"
...What you do at your table with your players is and always has been between you and your players alone, so long as no one is being hurt and everyone is having a good time...
This makes sense in the case of physical violence at the table, but why would someone outside a game care about whether the people playing it are having a good time?
Been asking that question ever since the first time they accused us of cavorting with devils and conjuring!
In the end, I did read the ask as " how to do this", and approached it that. may not have been useful to the OP -- for me and my games, all that stuff is important (as a mixed race woman, Sociologist, psychologist, diversity, Inclusion Equity specialist, balah blah), but in the end, really...
it is what the players feel comfortable with. If they don't mind it, then let it be. That is the kind of thing a session zero is really useful for figuring out.
i mean, my whole thing was I needed bad guys, lol, and I needed a reason for them to be the bad guys -- just like the OP. How I got there was a bit more involved, but really, the core need is the same.
I remember those days too. I went to a catholic school. My friends and I were taken out of class and made to read literature on the satantic evils of D&D and the dangers it posed to our immortal souls. We thought it was hilarious and learned just how stupid adults could be.
My own background is in Philosphy and i certainly appreciate the use of ideology in creating villains. Do your Facists have a strong element of Darwinism in their beliefs - i.e. valuing strength and denigrating weakness?
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“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
You can easily still use orcs and goblins as bad guys without falling into racially coded stereotypes as long as you consider them as a non-ubiquitous people, rather than a blanket snarling monoculture.
Instead of "help! The village is under attack by orcs! Help us!", think more along the lines of "help! The Skar clan of orc bandits is attacking the town! Someone help us!" Specify who they are as an enemy, rather than just saying "orcs," implying that it's just all orcs. These orcs have an identity, an occupation, maybe even a motive. The more work you do at the back end to flesh out your bad guys and make them three dimensional, the less applicable real world stereotypes become. Like, maybe the Skar clan is an outlaw clan, shunned by the others when they wouldn't follow the new Highleader, and thus, they've taken to raiding countrysides since they no longer have the support of the Grisk clan who tends to much of the food production in orc society, and the Lu clan who controls the mining won't trade with them any longer, etc.
Suddenly with this backstory, the image of orcs as a savage and primitive people falls apart when their society is shown with complexity and nuance, and therfore the racist perception of any real life peoples as being "primitive" is far from people's minds.
Your backstory doesn't have to necessarily be political either. Maybe instead of a politically outcast clan, you have a cult of goblins dedicated to worship of the old gods and the return to the time of blood worship. This cult by no means represents all goblins, but they operate in secrecy, from the shadows. Again, they're not evil because they're goblins, it's not a Goblin Cult per se, it's a cult consisting of goblins because they worship an ancient demon who once acted as a patron diety to a certain goblin nation that they're trying to resurrect. Again, specificity about background and motive dispels assumption.
Another thing you can and should do is also include human bad guys, and elves and dwarves. Whatever species live in your game world, they come in all moralities, and humans are just as likely to turn to banditry as orcs. Maybe even make a point of showing bandits as non-species specific. Maybe sometimes the baddies are just a big hoarde of humanoids who'd rather rob you for your dinner than make their own.
Make clear why these groups are behaving evilly, and you avoid implying that they-- and by extent any free-thinking people-- are just inherently bad.
Yes, but people do frequently view the others as a part of a snarling blanket monoculture. In a fictional game, it's kinda up to the players to decide that they are going to push back at the narratives of NPCs, not a responsibility of DMs (or WotC) to remove those narratives to begin with.
Yes you can let the players decide what narrative to focus on, but they can't do that without knowing the full picture. Without making that background available to them at some point (and sure, maybe they get their first impression of orcs from the village that keeps getting pillaged by the Skar clan, and draw some initial assumptions from those people before learning more about the other clans), but if you just start with what the townsfolk of pillageville are saying and never give players the opportunity to question it, you're essentially withholding important information they might wish to use, from the players.
Well it's your game, but maybe you're giving players too little agency here. If players have made their characters to right the wrongs of racial narratives, they search of for the truth by themselves, and I would certainly let them try. If they don't care at all about that, want to paint all orcs with the same brush. and go to war with the entire species, by all means, reap the whirlwind. It's not up to a DM to make sure players are "doing the right thing", even if thousands of innocent fictitious orcs are murdered in the process. One thing a good DM will do, however, is make clear the consequences of their actions, because that's a story worth telling. But even that isn't mandatory. It's just a ******* game, after all.
Perhaps, but I would like to reiterate once again that the question was how to run evil orcs or goblins without hitting on the "inherently evil" coding with its unfortunate undertones. The answer provided was to highlight that while this individual band could be engaged in anything from banditry to infernal worship, they aren't representative of all members of their species.
Sure, and the completely plausible (and likely) narrative of the villager in distress doesn't need to change to alter the "fact" that the orcs in this hypothetical setting are not "evil by nature", but due to circumstance.There are reasons the narrative might be different (like the villager has dealings with other orcs, etc.) but these are because of story elements.
Can you please start over from the beginning? I feel like you're starting in the middle of your argument here and I can't figure out what you're driving at.
What I'm driving at is that NPCs need reasons to say things. A villager says "Help me! Orcs have attacked my village!" because orcs have attacked his village. Nothing weird about that. Would the same villager for no additional reason instead cry, "These specific orcs that do not represent orc-kind as a whole and are also professional bandits have attacked my village, please help!"? I'm exaggerating for emphasis here, but tell me wouldn't that be odd?
It's not that hard for a local to give some details.
"It was a band of Skar clan orcs. We've never been chummy with orcs, and the feeling's mutual, but mostly we just leave each other be. But these Skar clan types are something else. Heard the other clans kicked them out over something, and now they've started raiding all through the region."
Obviously this is not a conversation you'll have in the midst of an attack, but it's entirely within the purview of your typical quest-giver outlining their problem. They certainly wouldn't want to just say "some orcs attacked us" and have you go haring off and aggravating the ones who've been leaving them be.
I more or less agree with that. The initial "Help!" is going to be very short on details which are filled in later when there's no immediate danger. The details themselves might demonstrate to players that orcs in this particular world act generally all other humanoids, as would having other orcs being encountered in non-combat contexts, in mixed company, etc.
What do want to point out though is that even a quest-giver might not have all that much info, might have zero experience with other orcs, and may actually just say "some orcs attacked us". That itself isn't a racist trope. Maybe the villager had never seen orcs before, and only heard terrible stories of them, like they were the creations of an evil god that plunder and murder because they that's what they were born to do and that will never change - stories which are now "confirmed" in his mind. Believe is or not, that's still not a racist trope. The only thing that could make this a trope is to actually have those stories be completely true. But if they were only stories and not the "reality" of the orcs (like they weren't really an evil god's creations, or even if they were initially they had free will and could change), the story isn't "racist".
The other thing is the players. Would they just take the villager's words and go off slaughtering all orcs? I doubt it, but hey, they might. That's on them. It would take would be a uniformly bloodthirsty group, but it would be the players themselves that brought the "racism" into the game. My point is, players will always have a choice how they act and react to information and situations. The DM can't assume if they say A and players will automatically do B, nor should the DM take responsibility for B if that is what they choose.
If players do something you find quite cringe, the response is not to change how you run your NPCs, it's with natural consequences. For example, the ignorant PCs find an orc village in the mountains, and set about slaughtering them. Afterward, they find all the scared, crying orc children hiding in a hole. "Where's Mommy? Where's Daddy?" Ouch. Then a couple of the orcs that escaped spread word of the atrocity, and all the orcs (including the initial bandits, even) band together to hunt down the murdering PCs. Super-ouch. If the party escapes or wins, have them forever dogged by rumours and descriptions of "evil adventurers". The original human(?) villagers might even turn against them, and word might reach higher authorities. The orcs and humans could be brought together by the deeds of the villainous "racist" players. Mega-ouch. How do they get out of this predicament brought on by their own assumptions and actions? This might not be your initial planned adventure, but in going just with it, isn't there a great and memorable story regardless? I doubt these players would ever make the same mistake again.
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“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
You can easily still use orcs and goblins as bad guys without falling into racially coded stereotypes as long as you consider them as a non-ubiquitous people, rather than a blanket snarling monoculture.
Instead of "help! The village is under attack by orcs! Help us!", think more along the lines of "help! The Skar clan of orc bandits is attacking the town! Someone help us!" Specify who they are as an enemy, rather than just saying "orcs," implying that it's just all orcs. These orcs have an identity, an occupation, maybe even a motive. The more work you do at the back end to flesh out your bad guys and make them three dimensional, the less applicable real world stereotypes become. Like, maybe the Skar clan is an outlaw clan, shunned by the others when they wouldn't follow the new Highleader, and thus, they've taken to raiding countrysides since they no longer have the support of the Grisk clan who tends to much of the food production in orc society, and the Lu clan who controls the mining won't trade with them any longer, etc.
Suddenly with this backstory, the image of orcs as a savage and primitive people falls apart when their society is shown with complexity and nuance, and therfore the racist perception of any real life peoples as being "primitive" is far from people's minds.
Your backstory doesn't have to necessarily be political either. Maybe instead of a politically outcast clan, you have a cult of goblins dedicated to worship of the old gods and the return to the time of blood worship. This cult by no means represents all goblins, but they operate in secrecy, from the shadows. Again, they're not evil because they're goblins, it's not a Goblin Cult per se, it's a cult consisting of goblins because they worship an ancient demon who once acted as a patron diety to a certain goblin nation that they're trying to resurrect. Again, specificity about background and motive dispels assumption.
Another thing you can and should do is also include human bad guys, and elves and dwarves. Whatever species live in your game world, they come in all moralities, and humans are just as likely to turn to banditry as orcs. Maybe even make a point of showing bandits as non-species specific. Maybe sometimes the baddies are just a big hoarde of humanoids who'd rather rob you for your dinner than make their own.
Make clear why these groups are behaving evilly, and you avoid implying that they-- and by extent any free-thinking people-- are just inherently bad.
Yes, but people do frequently view the others as a part of a snarling blanket monoculture. In a fictional game, it's kinda up to the players to decide that they are going to push back at the narratives of NPCs, not a responsibility of DMs (or WotC) to remove those narratives to begin with.
Yes you can let the players decide what narrative to focus on, but they can't do that without knowing the full picture. Without making that background available to them at some point (and sure, maybe they get their first impression of orcs from the village that keeps getting pillaged by the Skar clan, and draw some initial assumptions from those people before learning more about the other clans), but if you just start with what the townsfolk of pillageville are saying and never give players the opportunity to question it, you're essentially withholding important information they might wish to use, from the players.
Well it's your game, but maybe you're giving players too little agency here. If players have made their characters to right the wrongs of racial narratives, they search of for the truth by themselves, and I would certainly let them try. If they don't care at all about that, want to paint all orcs with the same brush. and go to war with the entire species, by all means, reap the whirlwind. It's not up to a DM to make sure players are "doing the right thing", even if thousands of innocent fictitious orcs are murdered in the process. One thing a good DM will do, however, is make clear the consequences of their actions, because that's a story worth telling. But even that isn't mandatory. It's just a ******* game, after all.
Perhaps, but I would like to reiterate once again that the question was how to run evil orcs or goblins without hitting on the "inherently evil" coding with its unfortunate undertones. The answer provided was to highlight that while this individual band could be engaged in anything from banditry to infernal worship, they aren't representative of all members of their species.
Sure, and the completely plausible (and likely) narrative of the villager in distress doesn't need to change to alter the "fact" that the orcs in this hypothetical setting are not "evil by nature", but due to circumstance.There are reasons the narrative might be different (like the villager has dealings with other orcs, etc.) but these are because of story elements.
Can you please start over from the beginning? I feel like you're starting in the middle of your argument here and I can't figure out what you're driving at.
What I'm driving at is that NPCs need reasons to say things. A villager says "Help me! Orcs have attacked my village!" because orcs have attacked his village. Nothing weird about that. Would the same villager for no additional reason instead cry, "These specific orcs that do not represent orc-kind as a whole and are also professional bandits have attacked my village, please help!"? I'm exaggerating for emphasis here, but tell me wouldn't that be odd?
I never said you can't have npcs or groups of npcs who carry prejudice. Logically yes it makes sense for nobody in pillageville to have a sunny disposition towards orcs. However, as a DM, when you present that viewpoint without (eventually, you do not need to do this right away, or have the villagers expound on this in the middle of an attack-- rather if the players need to go further into orc territory on a later quest, or run into an orc community in a neighboring city, they can find out more about orc society then) framing it in a larger context, you essentially sign off on it as "correct". If you have the villagers tell the players that orcs are all marauding raiders, and you never show or tell the players differently, then to your players, they are. And you can do that if nobody at your table has a problem with that, but as OP specifically asked how not to do that, I'd advise OP not to do that.
As far as Ace's point about the villagers using specificity making sense in a crisis; yeah. The villagers live in the world, and probably have a passing understanding of orc societal structure if they're so close on the border of orc lands that they're prime raiding targets, so shouting "orcs are coming!" might be less useful if that has your guardsmen confused as to whether to expect a pack of raiders or a bunch of dinosaur herders. It's like how, in actuality, Paul Revere probably didn't shout "the British are coming!", because that would have been a meaningless thing to shout in a British colony to a bunch of British subjects. Instead he (for the portion of the ride he actually did) used more specific language like "the King's troops are coming!" or something along those lines. Therfore yeah, it makes sense even if the townsfolk are prejudiced against orcs to still shout like "Skar raiders incoming!" aside from the much less useful, "ah! Orcs!"
True. From your words, it appeared implied to me. My apologies for the error.
I've always heard it was "The Redcoats are coming! The Redcoats are coming!" but that might just be from TV.
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“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
It was “the regulars are coming”, as I’ve heard it, and they didn’t run around shouting it at the top of their lungs since the revolution was still fairly covert at that stage.
I more or less agree with that. The initial "Help!" is going to be very short on details which are filled in later when there's no immediate danger. The details themselves might demonstrate to players that orcs in this particular world act generally all other humanoids, as would having other orcs being encountered in non-combat contexts, in mixed company, etc.
What do want to point out though is that even a quest-giver might not have all that much info, might have zero experience with other orcs, and may actually just say "some orcs attacked us". That itself isn't a racist trope. Maybe the villager had never seen orcs before, and only heard terrible stories of them, like they were the creations of an evil god that plunder and murder because they that's what they were born to do and that will never change - stories which are now "confirmed" in his mind. Believe is or not, that's still not a racist trope. The only thing that could make this a trope is to actually have those stories be completely true. But if they were only stories and not the "reality" of the orcs (like they weren't really an evil god's creations, or even if they were initially they had free will and could change), the story isn't "racist".
The other thing is the players. Would they just take the villager's words and go off slaughtering all orcs? I doubt it, but hey, they might. That's on them. It would take would be a uniformly bloodthirsty group, but it would be the players themselves that brought the "racism" into the game. My point is, players will always have a choice how they act and react to information and situations. The DM can't assume if they say A and players will automatically do B, nor should the DM take responsibility for B if that is what they choose.
If players do something you find quite cringe, the response is not to change how you run your NPCs, it's with natural consequences. For example, the ignorant PCs find an orc village in the mountains, and set about slaughtering them. Afterward, they find all the scared, crying orc children hiding in a hole. "Where's Mommy? Where's Daddy?" Ouch. Then a couple of the orcs that escaped spread word of the atrocity, and all the orcs (including the initial bandits, even) band together to hunt down the murdering PCs. Super-ouch. If the party escapes or wins, have them forever dogged by rumours and descriptions of "evil adventurers". The original human(?) villagers might even turn against them, and word might reach higher authorities. The orcs and humans could be brought together by the deeds of the villainous "racist" players. Mega-ouch. How do they get out of this predicament brought on by their own assumptions and actions? This might not be your initial planned adventure, but in going just with it, isn't there a great and memorable story regardless? I doubt these players would ever make the same mistake again.
I would like to once again point out that the core question being addressed here is “how to present traditionally antagonistic species without the coding that carries implications of racism?”, and so my examples are tailored to addressing that point. No, you do not need to have every NPC go out of their way to be PC when talking about other species. Yes, you can have some give a simplistic and biased recounting of events. But none of that actually addresses the question posed here.
Of course, but sometimes people bring things up in their responses that spark tangents in the direction of conversation. Tangents can be just as interesting, important, and fun to explore as the OP, and such directions may end up circling back and adding to the initial discussion. Or not. We usually can't predict where things go.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie
I would like to once again point out that the core question being addressed here is “how to present traditionally antagonistic species without the coding that carries implications of racism?”
Rule 1: Don't get lost in the weeds.
That is, don't ignore the forest for the trees, using an isolated example.
Rule 2: Recognize that Racism is a system.
And, in particular, a value system that is encoded into multiple aspects of life and normalized so that it becomes as close to invisible or acceptable as possible. It is also socially broad -- so if it hits that tiny village where poor timmy is learning the broadsword and staring at a 10 foot pole wondering wtf is he gonna do while building a small set of patchwork armor it also hits that that big City and that Town that the village supports with taxes and limited surplus.
Notes:
The only way to do that (present traditionally antagonistic species without the coding that carries implications of racism) is to provide a justification for them being the enemy. That justification cannot rely on them being inherently or otherwise "trapped" (as individuals), and within the framework for D&D the only way to do that is with either a set of values or a culture that provides a basis for that.
even the assertion that provides such a rationale within D&D as a whole that says "everything from this plane of existence is evil" the spectre remains, because it still requires that everyone from that place be *whatever it is that represents evil in that setting* when it is linked to sentient beings and sapient peoples.
I would argue that the first step is to recognize that Goblins and Orcs are people. But I would also recognize that both Race and Species are, as concepts, inherently structured to support and provide cover for the systematic nature of racism, however that is a hard sell to a lot of folks who still think some variation of the one drop rule holds (even if they have switched the blood quanta basis to "dna") *because of racism in the real world*.
I still have them, but I call them heritages, and I also do the other thing which is separate "race" from "culture" and pretty much the differences come down to height, weight, and far more limited special abilities than they currently have (since those functionally presume something good or bad in practice, even if not in intent and objective).
Or, if you keep those abilities, they should all be something done in relation to the broader (e.g. natural, supernatural, surreal, et al) world, but not conflict with another People.
Social Conflict is a social phenomenon, not a physiological one. For thinking, rational, emotional beings, survival is a social issue, not a lion eating the lamb sort of thing.
Timmy won't grow up to hate Goblins and Orcs because they are inherently bad, but he will grow up and teach his kids that -- and it will be because he makes the decision that his suffering and need for vengeance is more important than their existence just as the guy who is driving crazy on the road and upset at all the other drivers is actively showing how he thinks he is more important than everyone else.
However, as pointed out, those Orcs that raided his village could be part of a small breakaway group.
Well, why did they break away? What was it that motivated them? IS there an opportunity for people to learn that doesn't actually matter, since the issue is bigger than "what does the party learn" -- it is about the larger system as a whole.
As a thought experiment, let's look at one possible motive: those Goblins and Orcs are all actually known for having a particular trait about them that sets them apart from their larger community, There is a stigma applied to them for it -- maybe they kissed their wives and babies at night or something, it doesn't matter what the stigma is based in, merely that there is one for the purpose of this experiment.
As a result, the main Council for the nation that has enough Goblins and Orcs in power to make laws and they outlawed these orcs and goblins from being a part of the society there. They lost their homes and their belongings and were driven out of the country. Now, they come across this place that makes a pretty decent base for them all, but there are too many to support effectively on the limited resources they have, and when they try to trade, because the other kingdom told everyone not to trust them (and didn't say why beyond they are bad people) they can't buy or sell anything. Forced by this circumstance to fight for their survival, they turn to banditry, and they are pissed and out of control and go way overboard and kill a bunch of people, taking their experiences of injustice out on the villagers.
In this example, they are no longer a pure evil race. They did something that was seen as evil, but that basis for that evil was it was against the "laws of decency" and has created little Timmy Montague who will become a horrible scourge down the road.
But, wait, it gets better.
Let's say that the people of that village decide that if *these orcs and goblins are like that, then all of them are*, well...
Now the villagers are the racist ones. Just like little Timmy.
Even though they have a "righteous" reason for hating *those orcs and goblins*, to extend it to others beyond the is where the racism comes into play.
And the Orcs ad Goblins, deciding that all humans are to blame and are all alike is another possible outcome that would be racist.
So, how to code them as not evil?
Backstory and Lore. The game has done a lot of stuff already from an official perspective -- removal of species alignment, the stripping of racially encoded aspects like "savagery = lesser" and other efforts. In doing so, they begin to treat the goblins as "inherently evil" (itself a coded trope that can be applied broadly) and made it so that these are seen as people -- merely different kinds of people.
If we take what I put up above and start adding additional things to it -- what's the stigma, cultural norms and mores and beliefs that we take from a known example and twist to be menacing or that draws on our own limited experiences in a way that we don't see it as racist (war bonnets! Story tattoos! Phylacteries!) -- then we can start to fall back into the trap again if we say that "all lives matter, err, I mean that all goblins and orcs are this way", because then we are saying that no goblin could ever be born and no Orc raised in that society who might possibly disagree with something about it.
My initial example explicitly relies on all of this stuff above. I intentionally encoded the culture to be something that is, across the board, offensive to most people -- though not all are offended, and some folks won't see a problem with it because I did what we all do and drew from real world current examples. I did a deep dive, and I used known structural operations that do have the effect of limiting how most people can escape that world -- and in so doing I was able to also set up a resistance movement, and a way for Goblins to escape and become free" of that culture.
And I laid some traps as well -- the fact that my goblins are carnivores is an intentional trap. yes, they have a backstory that involves literally being created to fight wars for certain evil gods (in this case, a megalomaniac with strong fascist tendencies and a habit of literal interpretations of phrases such as "nail them to the wall"), and as part of that they were created to be able to survive on the battle field by eating the corpses of their enemies.
Sounds *horrible!* My gods, the disgusting cannibalism! Except that they don't only have to eat the meat of other living beings. They can survive perfectly well on other things (also, technically, they are omnivores, but I am nitpicking my own work).
just because they can does not mean they inherently *must*.
There is another trap here: player side information on them is presented in a way to make them seem horrible. In other words, the cultures the players belong to are racist. And since they will come to depend on a Goblin in the late stages of the Campaign, they will have a chance to overcome their racism.
(note: the majority of my player groups are PoC and LGBTQ minorities).
All of which iis to demonstrate how one isn't going to achieve showing that all goblins aren't evil based on an encounter with a village by a small band of goblins and orcs. It is always going to be based in the larger issues -- because the small band exemplar is going to have racism baked in no matter what unless the larger system has removed it.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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So, here's my thinking. (Which I think is consistent with some of what's been said, but which I hope is helpful.) What evil thing do you need orcs to do, because presumably there's something more than just sitting there and being orcs? (Burn a village.) Would humans do that evil thing sometimes? (Yes.) Assume these orcs are doing it for the same reason the humans would - greed or spite or making an example or whatever other bandit thing you can think of. (Some other orcs might be somewhere else not burning villages, and that might be a key nuance, but your plot is about adventurers out to stop village-burners. In fact, it's about adventurers out to stop these particular orcs from burning this particular village.)
It seems like far more effort to introduce the idea that all orcs, everywhere are into burning villages and exist for that purpose, even though villages can easily get burned in the complete absence of orcs. How many orcs can your characters even fight? Like, if your entire adventure is a nonstop all-out hack-and-slash orc-slaying bonanza, how many orcs can the players kill? A hundred? Two hundred? Okay, so you need a reason for two hundred armed adult orcs to be evil, not, like, two million.
And I mean, okay, maybe your BBEG needs a big scary-looking army even if the players aren't going to personally fight all of them, and skeletons simply won't do. But we're still talking about a defined organization with a specific leader and some ideology. Maybe it's a few thousand. Maybe it's tens of thousands; that's a pretty big medieval army but whatever. Does it help you---is it actually easier---for every single orc to be implicated?
As a separate note, if orcs have no free will to not be evil, whatever that means in practice when logistically they can't all be out actively doing evil... does that not make them more victims of whoever imposed this condition on them than aggressors?
But basically, I think what happens is that orcs were added to the game because they make a simple low-level antagonist. Lore is written---probably unthinkingly---to support that role. And because official lore has to deal in extremely broad generalities (when you're writing the Monster Manual, the prompt is not "Write a plot with evil orcs" but "Explain what an orc is"), you get... weird ideas. But the end user is most likely worried about their specific plot for their specific game, where it's much easier to avoid this in the first place.
I would like to once again point out that the core question being addressed here is “how to present traditionally antagonistic species without the coding that carries implications of racism?”, and so my examples are tailored to addressing that point. No, you do not need to have every NPC go out of their way to be PC when talking about other species. Yes, you can have some give a simplistic and biased recounting of events. But none of that actually addresses the question posed here.
If we're talking broad strokes, in my homebrew world I just lampshaded the whole discussion (since my current players didn't want to play that kind of campaign) by having "Volo's Guide To Monsters" be an actual book in the world, but one of, shall we say, dubious accuracy and unsavory reputation
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
...What you do at your table with your players is and always has been between you and your players alone, so long as no one is being hurt and everyone is having a good time...
This makes sense in the case of physical violence at the table, but why would someone outside a game care about whether the people playing it are having a good time?
Been asking that question ever since the first time they accused us of cavorting with devils and conjuring!
In the end, I did read the ask as " how to do this", and approached it that. may not have been useful to the OP -- for me and my games, all that stuff is important (as a mixed race woman, Sociologist, psychologist, diversity, Inclusion Equity specialist, balah blah), but in the end, really...
it is what the players feel comfortable with. If they don't mind it, then let it be. That is the kind of thing a session zero is really useful for figuring out.
i mean, my whole thing was I needed bad guys, lol, and I needed a reason for them to be the bad guys -- just like the OP. How I got there was a bit more involved, but really, the core need is the same.
I remember those days too. I went to a catholic school. My friends and I were taken out of class and made to read literature on the satantic evils of D&D and the dangers it posed to our immortal souls. We thought it was hilarious and learned just how stupid adults could be.
My own background is in Philosphy and i certainly appreciate the use of ideology in creating villains. Do your Facists have a strong element of Darwinism in their beliefs - i.e. valuing strength and denigrating weakness?
Oh, they absolutely do, though I wouldn’t call it Darwinian, since the underlying concept there is adapt or die, but is often crossed with adaptation being strong in too many people’s minds.
They are almost uniformly structured internally to not see humans, demihumans, and so forth as “people” but rather as symbolic concepts of deceit and deception, and they dismiss human rights as a form of denigration and servitude to the Powers That Be.
longer backstory trivia, semi-germane: @1000 years ago, there was a massive war between the Powers That Be and it was fought beside those who had sworn loyalty to them. The war started because the self proclaimed “top dog” Power had raped one of the other gods (and several others, but this one was married to a guy with a temper). To give his people an advantage, Belial (the top dog) asked several thousand of his followers if he could grant them greater power, more strength, the ability to survive these battles that shook the world.
those that said yes became the goblins. They started taking turns on either side (dwarves for logistics, elves for special combat units and ferocity in battle) to fight alongside the source for all of them: humans.
from Goblin POV, they are the ones who should have free reign over the bright lands, whose god should be restored to his rightful place as god of gods (and I note, these are not Gods of anything, not personifications, just gods (and the people don’t like them anymore)), and as they have never turned their backs on the three powers that they serve, it is right and just they should throw down these idolatrous unbelievers.
(the lord from player side goes all in).
surveillance state, neighbor reporting, heavy policing, blah blah. Their chattel are made to work farms as well as provide training ops. Highly militarized, regimented, etc. Not big on symbolism.
imps serve a similar role to Dwarves, and then I have bad guys based on a nightmare rendering of Stitch and sea faring raider Bugbears. Imps are the masters of the under dark, but are vegetarians who like shiny things and secrets.
my Kobolds were supposed to be a fifth bad guy people, but they said nah, and just became hyper isolationist. They are more a cross between kobolds and lizard men, though.
resistances exist among all of them, and escapees often head to the free city or to the island nation. If this first campaign does well, then I will be doing an aid the resistance series after.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I would like to once again point out that the core question being addressed here is “how to present traditionally antagonistic species without the coding that carries implications of racism?”, and so my examples are tailored to addressing that point. No, you do not need to have every NPC go out of their way to be PC when talking about other species. Yes, you can have some give a simplistic and biased recounting of events. But none of that actually addresses the question posed here.
If we're talking broad strokes, in my homebrew world I just lampshaded the whole discussion (since my current players didn't want to play that kind of campaign) by having "Volo's Guide To Monsters" be an actual book in the world, but one of, shall we say, dubious accuracy and unsavory reputation
I love the whole use of Volo’s that way. I am writing the player lore through different representatives who all are that kind of unreliable narrator, with my monster book including the value of certain parts and such since the author is a former adventurer turned merchant.
I am curious, though, and I really don’t want to start anything more, but, um, what do you mean by that kind of a campaign? If it would spark something, never mind. My campaigns pretty much never touch on isms except for when I do a tour of the Ghost Tower of Ism.
And that is a localized old module, lol.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I am curious, though, and I really don’t want to start anything more, but, um, what do you mean by that kind of a campaign?
The world -- or at least the isolated country the party is in -- was set up with colonial-ish tropes as part of its history, where the "monster" PC races species (orcs, goblins, dragonborn/kobolds, etc.) appear to be indigenous, and the traditional PC species (human/elf/dwarf/halfling, plus gnome) showed up hundreds of years ago in boats fleeing Troubles. It took a while for the two sides to find common ground. At present there's peace but still lingering resentments, factions hoping to stir up trouble and use it to their advantage etc.
Had the players been interested in doing a more political campaign there were avenues to explore, but they weren't, so we're not. The party's got an orc, a kobold, a human, an elf(-ish) and a halfling in it, everybody gets along as much as people ever get along, and the wars are generations in the past and nothing more than lore
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
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Can you please start over from the beginning? I feel like you're starting in the middle of your argument here and I can't figure out what you're driving at.
Could I make them fiends? Acheron, the plane where their deities reside and wage eternal war against each other, already has a partially evil alignment.
I'm a social worker. I spend all day, every day drowning in grayness, where no one's good or evil, where no one's right or wrong, and there's only imperfect people struggling to survive in imperfect systems. At the end of the week, I want to visit a world where that orc is the evil, physical embodiment of the destructive systems in my community; that goblin is the evil, physical embodiment of the dominating systems in my community; and that gnoll is the evil, physical embodiment of the rapacious systems in my community. I want heroes to take up sword and spell and slay that evil, not ponder the nuance of its circumstances. That's what's waiting for me in the real world.
I don't want to promote racism at my table, though. I'm losing a battle of attrition against that, and every other layer of oppression built into these systems, every day, and I don't want to add to that.
I'm just looking for a way for straight up evil fantasy monsters to be straight up evil fantasy monsters without putting more bullshit into the world.
They absolutely can be fiends.
Technically, if there is such a thing these days, when you go back to their origins, they are part of The Good Folk (Well, Goblins, are). and so could easily be wicked denizens of Fairywilde seeking their entertainment on the mortal plane as well.
Gnolls are a bit harder -- they don't have a western basis (though there is a similar West African, but that would also place them in Fairy).
Orcs are essentially drawn from what we think of as Ogres, today, so would require a bit.
That said...
because I absolutely get what you are talking about, if I took some time and wrote up something to support all of that, would it help? Not a "wanna buy" thing -- I mean I would write it right here into the thread, for you, no expectation of return.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
What I'm driving at is that NPCs need reasons to say things. A villager says "Help me! Orcs have attacked my village!" because orcs have attacked his village. Nothing weird about that. Would the same villager for no additional reason instead cry, "These specific orcs that do not represent orc-kind as a whole and are also professional bandits have attacked my village, please help!"? I'm exaggerating for emphasis here, but tell me wouldn't that be odd?
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron Satie*resists urge to ask if the villager is an Orc themselves, but very poorly. Rolled a 3 against a target of 16, and had disadvantage due to giggling.*
I blame Timmy.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
It's not that hard for a local to give some details.
"It was a band of Skar clan orcs. We've never been chummy with orcs, and the feeling's mutual, but mostly we just leave each other be. But these Skar clan types are something else. Heard the other clans kicked them out over something, and now they've started raiding all through the region."
Obviously this is not a conversation you'll have in the midst of an attack, but it's entirely within the purview of your typical quest-giver outlining their problem. They certainly wouldn't want to just say "some orcs attacked us" and have you go haring off and aggravating the ones who've been leaving them be.
I mean, if you really need to fight embodiments of pure evil, Descent into Avernus is right there
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I never said you can't have npcs or groups of npcs who carry prejudice. Logically yes it makes sense for nobody in pillageville to have a sunny disposition towards orcs. However, as a DM, when you present that viewpoint without (eventually, you do not need to do this right away, or have the villagers expound on this in the middle of an attack-- rather if the players need to go further into orc territory on a later quest, or run into an orc community in a neighboring city, they can find out more about orc society then) framing it in a larger context, you essentially sign off on it as "correct". If you have the villagers tell the players that orcs are all marauding raiders, and you never show or tell the players differently, then to your players, they are. And you can do that if nobody at your table has a problem with that, but as OP specifically asked how not to do that, I'd advise OP not to do that.
As far as Ace's point about the villagers using specificity making sense in a crisis; yeah. The villagers live in the world, and probably have a passing understanding of orc societal structure if they're so close on the border of orc lands that they're prime raiding targets, so shouting "orcs are coming!" might be less useful if that has your guardsmen confused as to whether to expect a pack of raiders or a bunch of dinosaur herders. It's like how, in actuality, Paul Revere probably didn't shout "the British are coming!", because that would have been a meaningless thing to shout in a British colony to a bunch of British subjects. Instead he (for the portion of the ride he actually did) used more specific language like "the King's troops are coming!" or something along those lines. Therfore yeah, it makes sense even if the townsfolk are prejudiced against orcs to still shout like "Skar raiders incoming!" aside from the much less useful, "ah! Orcs!"
I remember those days too. I went to a catholic school. My friends and I were taken out of class and made to read literature on the satantic evils of D&D and the dangers it posed to our immortal souls. We thought it was hilarious and learned just how stupid adults could be.
My own background is in Philosphy and i certainly appreciate the use of ideology in creating villains. Do your Facists have a strong element of Darwinism in their beliefs - i.e. valuing strength and denigrating weakness?
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron SatieI more or less agree with that. The initial "Help!" is going to be very short on details which are filled in later when there's no immediate danger. The details themselves might demonstrate to players that orcs in this particular world act generally all other humanoids, as would having other orcs being encountered in non-combat contexts, in mixed company, etc.
What do want to point out though is that even a quest-giver might not have all that much info, might have zero experience with other orcs, and may actually just say "some orcs attacked us". That itself isn't a racist trope. Maybe the villager had never seen orcs before, and only heard terrible stories of them, like they were the creations of an evil god that plunder and murder because they that's what they were born to do and that will never change - stories which are now "confirmed" in his mind. Believe is or not, that's still not a racist trope. The only thing that could make this a trope is to actually have those stories be completely true. But if they were only stories and not the "reality" of the orcs (like they weren't really an evil god's creations, or even if they were initially they had free will and could change), the story isn't "racist".
The other thing is the players. Would they just take the villager's words and go off slaughtering all orcs? I doubt it, but hey, they might. That's on them. It would take would be a uniformly bloodthirsty group, but it would be the players themselves that brought the "racism" into the game. My point is, players will always have a choice how they act and react to information and situations. The DM can't assume if they say A and players will automatically do B, nor should the DM take responsibility for B if that is what they choose.
If players do something you find quite cringe, the response is not to change how you run your NPCs, it's with natural consequences. For example, the ignorant PCs find an orc village in the mountains, and set about slaughtering them. Afterward, they find all the scared, crying orc children hiding in a hole. "Where's Mommy? Where's Daddy?" Ouch. Then a couple of the orcs that escaped spread word of the atrocity, and all the orcs (including the initial bandits, even) band together to hunt down the murdering PCs. Super-ouch. If the party escapes or wins, have them forever dogged by rumours and descriptions of "evil adventurers". The original human(?) villagers might even turn against them, and word might reach higher authorities. The orcs and humans could be brought together by the deeds of the villainous "racist" players. Mega-ouch. How do they get out of this predicament brought on by their own assumptions and actions? This might not be your initial planned adventure, but in going just with it, isn't there a great and memorable story regardless? I doubt these players would ever make the same mistake again.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron SatieTrue. From your words, it appeared implied to me. My apologies for the error.
I've always heard it was "The Redcoats are coming! The Redcoats are coming!" but that might just be from TV.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron SatieIt was “the regulars are coming”, as I’ve heard it, and they didn’t run around shouting it at the top of their lungs since the revolution was still fairly covert at that stage.
I would like to once again point out that the core question being addressed here is “how to present traditionally antagonistic species without the coding that carries implications of racism?”, and so my examples are tailored to addressing that point. No, you do not need to have every NPC go out of their way to be PC when talking about other species. Yes, you can have some give a simplistic and biased recounting of events. But none of that actually addresses the question posed here.
Of course, but sometimes people bring things up in their responses that spark tangents in the direction of conversation. Tangents can be just as interesting, important, and fun to explore as the OP, and such directions may end up circling back and adding to the initial discussion. Or not. We usually can't predict where things go.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Starfleet Admiral Aaron SatieRule 1: Don't get lost in the weeds.
That is, don't ignore the forest for the trees, using an isolated example.
Rule 2: Recognize that Racism is a system.
And, in particular, a value system that is encoded into multiple aspects of life and normalized so that it becomes as close to invisible or acceptable as possible. It is also socially broad -- so if it hits that tiny village where poor timmy is learning the broadsword and staring at a 10 foot pole wondering wtf is he gonna do while building a small set of patchwork armor it also hits that that big City and that Town that the village supports with taxes and limited surplus.
Notes:
The only way to do that (present traditionally antagonistic species without the coding that carries implications of racism) is to provide a justification for them being the enemy. That justification cannot rely on them being inherently or otherwise "trapped" (as individuals), and within the framework for D&D the only way to do that is with either a set of values or a culture that provides a basis for that.
even the assertion that provides such a rationale within D&D as a whole that says "everything from this plane of existence is evil" the spectre remains, because it still requires that everyone from that place be *whatever it is that represents evil in that setting* when it is linked to sentient beings and sapient peoples.
I would argue that the first step is to recognize that Goblins and Orcs are people. But I would also recognize that both Race and Species are, as concepts, inherently structured to support and provide cover for the systematic nature of racism, however that is a hard sell to a lot of folks who still think some variation of the one drop rule holds (even if they have switched the blood quanta basis to "dna") *because of racism in the real world*.
I still have them, but I call them heritages, and I also do the other thing which is separate "race" from "culture" and pretty much the differences come down to height, weight, and far more limited special abilities than they currently have (since those functionally presume something good or bad in practice, even if not in intent and objective).
Or, if you keep those abilities, they should all be something done in relation to the broader (e.g. natural, supernatural, surreal, et al) world, but not conflict with another People.
Social Conflict is a social phenomenon, not a physiological one. For thinking, rational, emotional beings, survival is a social issue, not a lion eating the lamb sort of thing.
Timmy won't grow up to hate Goblins and Orcs because they are inherently bad, but he will grow up and teach his kids that -- and it will be because he makes the decision that his suffering and need for vengeance is more important than their existence just as the guy who is driving crazy on the road and upset at all the other drivers is actively showing how he thinks he is more important than everyone else.
However, as pointed out, those Orcs that raided his village could be part of a small breakaway group.
Well, why did they break away? What was it that motivated them? IS there an opportunity for people to learn that doesn't actually matter, since the issue is bigger than "what does the party learn" -- it is about the larger system as a whole.
As a thought experiment, let's look at one possible motive: those Goblins and Orcs are all actually known for having a particular trait about them that sets them apart from their larger community, There is a stigma applied to them for it -- maybe they kissed their wives and babies at night or something, it doesn't matter what the stigma is based in, merely that there is one for the purpose of this experiment.
As a result, the main Council for the nation that has enough Goblins and Orcs in power to make laws and they outlawed these orcs and goblins from being a part of the society there. They lost their homes and their belongings and were driven out of the country. Now, they come across this place that makes a pretty decent base for them all, but there are too many to support effectively on the limited resources they have, and when they try to trade, because the other kingdom told everyone not to trust them (and didn't say why beyond they are bad people) they can't buy or sell anything. Forced by this circumstance to fight for their survival, they turn to banditry, and they are pissed and out of control and go way overboard and kill a bunch of people, taking their experiences of injustice out on the villagers.
In this example, they are no longer a pure evil race. They did something that was seen as evil, but that basis for that evil was it was against the "laws of decency" and has created little Timmy Montague who will become a horrible scourge down the road.
But, wait, it gets better.
Let's say that the people of that village decide that if *these orcs and goblins are like that, then all of them are*, well...
Now the villagers are the racist ones. Just like little Timmy.
Even though they have a "righteous" reason for hating *those orcs and goblins*, to extend it to others beyond the is where the racism comes into play.
And the Orcs ad Goblins, deciding that all humans are to blame and are all alike is another possible outcome that would be racist.
So, how to code them as not evil?
Backstory and Lore. The game has done a lot of stuff already from an official perspective -- removal of species alignment, the stripping of racially encoded aspects like "savagery = lesser" and other efforts. In doing so, they begin to treat the goblins as "inherently evil" (itself a coded trope that can be applied broadly) and made it so that these are seen as people -- merely different kinds of people.
If we take what I put up above and start adding additional things to it -- what's the stigma, cultural norms and mores and beliefs that we take from a known example and twist to be menacing or that draws on our own limited experiences in a way that we don't see it as racist (war bonnets! Story tattoos! Phylacteries!) -- then we can start to fall back into the trap again if we say that "
all lives matter, err, I mean that all goblins and orcs are this way", because then we are saying that no goblin could ever be born and no Orc raised in that society who might possibly disagree with something about it.My initial example explicitly relies on all of this stuff above. I intentionally encoded the culture to be something that is, across the board, offensive to most people -- though not all are offended, and some folks won't see a problem with it because I did what we all do and drew from real world current examples. I did a deep dive, and I used known structural operations that do have the effect of limiting how most people can escape that world -- and in so doing I was able to also set up a resistance movement, and a way for Goblins to escape and become free" of that culture.
And I laid some traps as well -- the fact that my goblins are carnivores is an intentional trap. yes, they have a backstory that involves literally being created to fight wars for certain evil gods (in this case, a megalomaniac with strong fascist tendencies and a habit of literal interpretations of phrases such as "nail them to the wall"), and as part of that they were created to be able to survive on the battle field by eating the corpses of their enemies.
Sounds *horrible!* My gods, the disgusting cannibalism! Except that they don't only have to eat the meat of other living beings. They can survive perfectly well on other things (also, technically, they are omnivores, but I am nitpicking my own work).
just because they can does not mean they inherently *must*.
There is another trap here: player side information on them is presented in a way to make them seem horrible. In other words, the cultures the players belong to are racist. And since they will come to depend on a Goblin in the late stages of the Campaign, they will have a chance to overcome their racism.
(note: the majority of my player groups are PoC and LGBTQ minorities).
All of which iis to demonstrate how one isn't going to achieve showing that all goblins aren't evil based on an encounter with a village by a small band of goblins and orcs. It is always going to be based in the larger issues -- because the small band exemplar is going to have racism baked in no matter what unless the larger system has removed it.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
So, here's my thinking. (Which I think is consistent with some of what's been said, but which I hope is helpful.) What evil thing do you need orcs to do, because presumably there's something more than just sitting there and being orcs? (Burn a village.) Would humans do that evil thing sometimes? (Yes.) Assume these orcs are doing it for the same reason the humans would - greed or spite or making an example or whatever other bandit thing you can think of. (Some other orcs might be somewhere else not burning villages, and that might be a key nuance, but your plot is about adventurers out to stop village-burners. In fact, it's about adventurers out to stop these particular orcs from burning this particular village.)
It seems like far more effort to introduce the idea that all orcs, everywhere are into burning villages and exist for that purpose, even though villages can easily get burned in the complete absence of orcs. How many orcs can your characters even fight? Like, if your entire adventure is a nonstop all-out hack-and-slash orc-slaying bonanza, how many orcs can the players kill? A hundred? Two hundred? Okay, so you need a reason for two hundred armed adult orcs to be evil, not, like, two million.
And I mean, okay, maybe your BBEG needs a big scary-looking army even if the players aren't going to personally fight all of them, and skeletons simply won't do. But we're still talking about a defined organization with a specific leader and some ideology. Maybe it's a few thousand. Maybe it's tens of thousands; that's a pretty big medieval army but whatever. Does it help you---is it actually easier---for every single orc to be implicated?
As a separate note, if orcs have no free will to not be evil, whatever that means in practice when logistically they can't all be out actively doing evil... does that not make them more victims of whoever imposed this condition on them than aggressors?
But basically, I think what happens is that orcs were added to the game because they make a simple low-level antagonist. Lore is written---probably unthinkingly---to support that role. And because official lore has to deal in extremely broad generalities (when you're writing the Monster Manual, the prompt is not "Write a plot with evil orcs" but "Explain what an orc is"), you get... weird ideas. But the end user is most likely worried about their specific plot for their specific game, where it's much easier to avoid this in the first place.
Medium humanoid (human), lawful neutral
If we're talking broad strokes, in my homebrew world I just lampshaded the whole discussion (since my current players didn't want to play that kind of campaign) by having "Volo's Guide To Monsters" be an actual book in the world, but one of, shall we say, dubious accuracy and unsavory reputation
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Oh, they absolutely do, though I wouldn’t call it Darwinian, since the underlying concept there is adapt or die, but is often crossed with adaptation being strong in too many people’s minds.
They are almost uniformly structured internally to not see humans, demihumans, and so forth as “people” but rather as symbolic concepts of deceit and deception, and they dismiss human rights as a form of denigration and servitude to the Powers That Be.
longer backstory trivia, semi-germane: @1000 years ago, there was a massive war between the Powers That Be and it was fought beside those who had sworn loyalty to them. The war started because the self proclaimed “top dog” Power had raped one of the other gods (and several others, but this one was married to a guy with a temper). To give his people an advantage, Belial (the top dog) asked several thousand of his followers if he could grant them greater power, more strength, the ability to survive these battles that shook the world.
those that said yes became the goblins. They started taking turns on either side (dwarves for logistics, elves for special combat units and ferocity in battle) to fight alongside the source for all of them: humans.
from Goblin POV, they are the ones who should have free reign over the bright lands, whose god should be restored to his rightful place as god of gods (and I note, these are not Gods of anything, not personifications, just gods (and the people don’t like them anymore)), and as they have never turned their backs on the three powers that they serve, it is right and just they should throw down these idolatrous unbelievers.
(the lord from player side goes all in).
surveillance state, neighbor reporting, heavy policing, blah blah. Their chattel are made to work farms as well as provide training ops. Highly militarized, regimented, etc. Not big on symbolism.
imps serve a similar role to Dwarves, and then I have bad guys based on a nightmare rendering of Stitch and sea faring raider Bugbears. Imps are the masters of the under dark, but are vegetarians who like shiny things and secrets.
my Kobolds were supposed to be a fifth bad guy people, but they said nah, and just became hyper isolationist. They are more a cross between kobolds and lizard men, though.
resistances exist among all of them, and escapees often head to the free city or to the island nation. If this first campaign does well, then I will be doing an aid the resistance series after.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I love the whole use of Volo’s that way. I am writing the player lore through different representatives who all are that kind of unreliable narrator, with my monster book including the value of certain parts and such since the author is a former adventurer turned merchant.
I am curious, though, and I really don’t want to start anything more, but, um, what do you mean by that kind of a campaign? If it would spark something, never mind. My campaigns pretty much never touch on isms except for when I do a tour of the Ghost Tower of Ism.
And that is a localized old module, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The world -- or at least the isolated country the party is in -- was set up with colonial-ish tropes as part of its history, where the "monster" PC
racesspecies (orcs, goblins, dragonborn/kobolds, etc.) appear to be indigenous, and the traditional PC species (human/elf/dwarf/halfling, plus gnome) showed up hundreds of years ago in boats fleeing Troubles. It took a while for the two sides to find common ground. At present there's peace but still lingering resentments, factions hoping to stir up trouble and use it to their advantage etc.Had the players been interested in doing a more political campaign there were avenues to explore, but they weren't, so we're not. The party's got an orc, a kobold, a human, an elf(-ish) and a halfling in it, everybody gets along as much as people ever get along, and the wars are generations in the past and nothing more than lore
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)