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Evil Monster Ancestries - Yay or Nay?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9287110" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I agree with the 3e designers that classified creatures as "Usually X", "Often X", and "Always X" where "Always" means something like between 99.999999% and 100% chance and departure from the normal will usually be to a quite small degree. </p><p></p><p>In my game humans are "Usually Neutral" and say centaurs are "Often Chaotic Good" and gnolls are "Always Chaotic Evil". </p><p></p><p>I don't believe in having playable races that are of the "Always" sort. Elves are "Usually Chaotic Good". I do allow say Hobgoblins despite the fact they are "Often Lawful Evil". I find that enforcing heroism on players is just about impossible because real life players are somewhere between "Usually Neutral" and "Usually Chaotic Evil" and the majority of them are just incapable of playing a consistently heroic figure anyway. Since I don't really desire to tell them how to play, I leave them to their devices. I give them plenty of opportunities to be the hero and do good and show virtue, but usually they evade those opportunities adroitly - except for the 1 in 8 players that is incapable of being anything but heroic and would utterly fail at the skullduggery of something like Blades in the Dark. </p><p></p><p>I do believe however in diversity of thought and form. Nothing is as appalling to me as someone who paints everything with a monocolor brush and says, "Well they are all just humans with bumps on their forehead, and there are no real meaningful differences between anything, and everything is relative anyway, but despite that if we all just held hands and talked about our feelings we'd have universal peace and brotherhood." The sheer terrified denial of The Other not only makes me think they live in an echo chamber, but that when they encounter an opinion or culture quite different than their own they are going to be terribly ill prepared to be tolerant of it. I like having a whole paint palette, and I hate treating aliens or monsters as just different ethnicities of humans as I feel that is just disrespectful to both human ethnic groups and aliens. Nothing is worse to me than seeing an alien coopt some human culture or serve as a simplistic stand in for some real portion of humanity. Let humanity stand for itself, and let aliens be themselves for whatever they are. For the love of the Creator, please don't make Klingons (or Vulcans, or Orcs) Asians. I cringe any time a race has a tea ceremony as one of its defining aesthetics. </p><p></p><p>Thus, I also despise when demons are basically just another morally complex and conflicted being, or when monsters just have a heart of gold if you only got to know them. Let demons be what they are and let monsters be what they are, and don't think you are being clever when 100% of the time you subvert expectations as if that is creativity. </p><p></p><p>But not everything ugly is a monster. As I said, goblins don't stand in for anything as far as I'm concerned, but I'm perfectly fine with a morally complex goblin hero dealing with the misunderstanding of people about the nature of his kind - "Well, no, it is true that most of my brothers do relish the taste of human flesh, especially infants, but they don't eat them raw. And not all of us are like that. Some of us, not a lot of us I grant you, feel that's very shameful behavior unbecoming of a free people." </p><p></p><p>So no, I don't allow monster ancestries in my game, but whether or not you are pretty by conventional human standards isn't what makes you a monster. And of course, the thing about free people is that they can be both heroes and monsters - they get to choose. You can't tell by looking.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9287110, member: 4937"] I agree with the 3e designers that classified creatures as "Usually X", "Often X", and "Always X" where "Always" means something like between 99.999999% and 100% chance and departure from the normal will usually be to a quite small degree. In my game humans are "Usually Neutral" and say centaurs are "Often Chaotic Good" and gnolls are "Always Chaotic Evil". I don't believe in having playable races that are of the "Always" sort. Elves are "Usually Chaotic Good". I do allow say Hobgoblins despite the fact they are "Often Lawful Evil". I find that enforcing heroism on players is just about impossible because real life players are somewhere between "Usually Neutral" and "Usually Chaotic Evil" and the majority of them are just incapable of playing a consistently heroic figure anyway. Since I don't really desire to tell them how to play, I leave them to their devices. I give them plenty of opportunities to be the hero and do good and show virtue, but usually they evade those opportunities adroitly - except for the 1 in 8 players that is incapable of being anything but heroic and would utterly fail at the skullduggery of something like Blades in the Dark. I do believe however in diversity of thought and form. Nothing is as appalling to me as someone who paints everything with a monocolor brush and says, "Well they are all just humans with bumps on their forehead, and there are no real meaningful differences between anything, and everything is relative anyway, but despite that if we all just held hands and talked about our feelings we'd have universal peace and brotherhood." The sheer terrified denial of The Other not only makes me think they live in an echo chamber, but that when they encounter an opinion or culture quite different than their own they are going to be terribly ill prepared to be tolerant of it. I like having a whole paint palette, and I hate treating aliens or monsters as just different ethnicities of humans as I feel that is just disrespectful to both human ethnic groups and aliens. Nothing is worse to me than seeing an alien coopt some human culture or serve as a simplistic stand in for some real portion of humanity. Let humanity stand for itself, and let aliens be themselves for whatever they are. For the love of the Creator, please don't make Klingons (or Vulcans, or Orcs) Asians. I cringe any time a race has a tea ceremony as one of its defining aesthetics. Thus, I also despise when demons are basically just another morally complex and conflicted being, or when monsters just have a heart of gold if you only got to know them. Let demons be what they are and let monsters be what they are, and don't think you are being clever when 100% of the time you subvert expectations as if that is creativity. But not everything ugly is a monster. As I said, goblins don't stand in for anything as far as I'm concerned, but I'm perfectly fine with a morally complex goblin hero dealing with the misunderstanding of people about the nature of his kind - "Well, no, it is true that most of my brothers do relish the taste of human flesh, especially infants, but they don't eat them raw. And not all of us are like that. Some of us, not a lot of us I grant you, feel that's very shameful behavior unbecoming of a free people." So no, I don't allow monster ancestries in my game, but whether or not you are pretty by conventional human standards isn't what makes you a monster. And of course, the thing about free people is that they can be both heroes and monsters - they get to choose. You can't tell by looking. [/QUOTE]
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