Portraying fantasy societies realistically instead of on the evil/good axis

Something that really annoys me is that societies in D&D are either "good demi-humans" or "evil ugly people." I won't go into my hatred of D&D's "ugly = evil" aesthetic.

Why can't we portray societies of orcs, goblins, brain-eating squids, dark elves, snake-human hybrids, etc as just funny-looking humans like we do for the "pretty" dwarves, elves, hobbits, and gnomes? It would go a long way towards explaining how they can raise their own children without eating them and don't destroy themselves with paranoia and blood rage.

It all depends on what stories you want to tell. For social realism, emancipation-seeking orcs with a bad reputation, kobolds running the department of sanitation, and flower power elves work. Or for even more realism, shy away from these stereotypes and just depict everyone as people, regardless of looks.

For heroic fantasy, you generally want easily identifiable enemies that it is generally agreed to be a good idea to beat up.

Pick your tropes to fit the story you want to tell.

How realistic do you want to get? D&D actually isn't realistic as a society at all for a medieval type society, you are right, BUT in the wrong way.

First off, for realism in the Medieval times, Renaissance, or even all the way up until the 20th century you'd have...

Anyone who doesn't look almost like my own people from the same region are evil, we must kill them. (so not just orcs, goblins, etc...ANYONE AND ANYTHING that isn't really looking like your species specific to the region you are from...are basically evil and you kill, enslave, or do much more horrible things to)

Anyone who is not part of my religion must be killed (so it goes even further than homogenous looks, if they aren't Catholic, you persecute and/or kill them.). Heck, there are peoples today that STILL have that attitude and go killing others who are not of the same religion.

Do away with woman's and children's rights.

99% of your characters are NOT going to be nobles, so treat them accordingly. They bear weapons, the knights of the realm will hunt them down and kill them...unless they are mercenaries, in which case anyone who isn't currently paying them are the bad guys...and vice versa for everyone who aren't your guys.

Realism kind of stinks in comparison to most of the worlds presented by D&D to tell the truth, which is probably why we run it as a fantasy.

As it's your fantasy game, you can organize it and run it as you want. Wish for Orcs and Goblins to be the good guys and Humans to be the bad guys...run it as such, but you might not want confuse your fantasy...OR modern day values, as the same as realism for a culture from two centuries ago (heck, the US had slavery less then two centuries ago, and minorities are STILL fighting for equal rights today!).

GreyLord said:

How realistic do you want to get? D&D actually isn't realistic as a society at all for a medieval type society, you are right, BUT in the wrong way.

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It might not all be that gloom, the Asian countries for example were a lot more accepting of religion than Europe/Christianity was. So it doesn't have to always be an Inquisition to stay realistic. Especially as the D&D pantheon is polytheistic and such religions traditionally have not all that much troubles with different (polytheistic) religions.

But I do agree that D&D does a very bad job at being "realistic" and doesn't even try to be.
If you want to have more realistic societies then I suggest you read up on the medieval and/or Renaissance period (D&D is rather fuzzy which one they emulate) and then assign each of your countries a real life country as basis and start from there. The goal should not be to simply copy medieval Europe but it provides a good starting point.
You do need to take account much of Europe was shaped by Christianity by a large amount, a influence you won't have in D&D.

And GreyLord is insofar right that such societies would be a lot darker than portrayed in D&D/fantasy with racism and sexism being the norm, although imo to a lesser extend than what he proposes.
The Witcher books are imo a good example.

Raneth said:

Why can't we portray societies of orcs, goblins, brain-eating squids, dark elves, snake-human hybrids, etc as just funny-looking humans like we do for the "pretty" dwarves, elves, hobbits, and gnomes? It would go a long way towards explaining how they can raise their own children without eating them and don't destroy themselves with paranoia and blood rage.

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Because that's taking away something without adding anything.

There are more humans-in-funny-suits races in D&D than we'll ever need. You can have all sorts of realistic human-ish species fighting against other realistic human-ish species. Even tiled over an entire setting, you'd never run out.

But, certain stories call for unrealistic species. If we take those out, we haven't really added anything to the pile of endless playable races we already have. Instead, we've just messed with those stories for no gain.

So, they're not for every world or every campaign, but sometimes you just have to let the bad guys be bad guys. For those of us, like you and I, that prefer some shades of grey, we already have more to play with than we ever need. There's no need for us to grab for the rest.

Cheers!
Kinak

I simply don't believe societies where everyone is EEEVIIL all the time is feasible. It completely loses any sense of verisimilitude. Even evil societies in real life, like the confederacy, worked by applying a different moral standard to a person based on their race/gender, rather than all being baby-eating psychos.

All people, of any race, gender, etc are "evil" to some degree. They may not consciously recognize it, but everyone does something evil, like not giving to charity, not helping the jobless get jobs, abusing their bodies for pleasure, or wasting their lives on sex/religion/video games/reality TV when they could be focusing on improving humanity as whole and ending all suffering. We can't all be Jesus, but we can't all be Satan either.

A society that consists entirely of baby-eating psychos cannot exist for more than a few days before everyone kills each other. You need most of the population to be decent people that are oppressed by an oligarchy that treats each other mostly decently.

Societies that exist in moral shades of grey (or orange and blue) are often much more exciting to explore than societies where everyone is literally a baby-eating psycho.

For once I would like to see a society of orcs or snakemen with motivations beyond "kill/rape/maim/burn." Even Tolkien himself stated that orcs and half-orcs (uruk-hai) were evil only because Sauron had shaped their culture to promote that and used mass dominate to maintain it (e.g. the "great eye" is a metaphor for him being able to see through the eyes of his orc and human slaves/allies, not an an actual giant eyeball).

I never go along with the "all good/all evil" stuff. I do wish publishers wouldn't either but it seems like a touch habit to break even for Paizo.

I don't really see the good/evil axis of things that you state. Dwarves are greedy. Elves are xenophobic. Humans are ambitious. All of them are capable of evil. Orcs are evil because their creator is evil. They were put there to do evil things. I see it more as neutral/evil axis. With a few shining examples of goodness here and there. The benevolent king, heroic paladin, righteous orders and gentle hospitalers, just governments and so on.

Furthermore being evil alignment does not mean "exclusively employs evil methods to evil ends".

Whatever realism is, this isn't it. But certainly you can have it anyway you want. No one is stopping you.

What you could do is toss alignment, so the sometimes very cartoony good/evil axis doesn't play a factor in your world. Then I would advise you to get to work creating cultures, societies and religions with different/incompatible values, so that you have a basis for ongoing conflicts and mutual misunderstandings. You need these tensions in place, so there is opportunity for adventure and adventurers, and have a setting that can support this kind of game.

Raneth said:

I simply don't believe societies where everyone is EEEVIIL all the time is feasible. It completely loses any sense of verisimilitude. Even evil societies in real life, like the confederacy, worked by applying a different moral standard to a person based on their race/gender, rather than all being baby-eating psychos.

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There are some creatures in the DnD multiverse that I have ZERO problems with being "EEEVIIL" They are typically not "races." In 3e those species are alignment "Always Evil" whereas races are typically "Usually/Sometimes Evil." It is rare to see a race that is full ("always") evil. There are inherent shades of grey already worked in.

Also, I would be hesitant from calling any real life governmental or political organization evil. Their views sometimes we* may associate as evil. But I think it is probably a step too far to say "confederates" are evil.

Now to counterpoint myself, do you enjoy games where you were to fight against confederates, or nazis? The reason for this is even though you can see them as people, they are the enemy and its good to know who you can just mow down. This can applied to essentially ALL video games to one extent or another. Applying the inverse to RPGs works, but it needs to work across a gaming group. Having one party member (or the DM) saying one thing when everyone else wants another won't work out for the odd-member.

All people, of any race, gender, etc are "evil" to some degree. They may not consciously recognize it, but everyone does something evil, like not giving to charity, not helping the jobless get jobs, abusing their bodies for pleasure, or wasting their lives on sex/religion/video games/reality TV when they could be focusing on improving humanity as whole and ending all suffering. We can't all be Jesus, but we can't all be Satan either.

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Not giving to charity = not good, not evil = neutral (individual reasons or circumstances aside)
Not helping jobless get jobs = again neutral (barring circumstances or reasons)
Abusing bodies for pleasure = usually chaotic, not evil
Wasting lives on X = swing and a miss, any alignment can "waste their lives", it is still not "evil"
They could focus on improving humanity as a whole and ending suffering = lawful good (usually), sometimes neutral good.

A society that consists entirely of baby-eating psychos cannot exist for more than a few days before everyone kills each other. You need most of the population to be decent people that are oppressed by an oligarchy that treats each other mostly decently.

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Who are these baby eating psychos? I mean except for demons or some such? Orcs or similar races (to my experience) don't generally eat their own babies.

And I don't get the "You need most of the population to be decent people that are oppressed by an oligarchy that treats each other mostly decently," in relation to the previous sentence. Why do we need this? How?

Societies that exist in moral shades of grey (or orange and blue) are often much more exciting to explore than societies where everyone is literally a baby-eating psycho.

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Oh, they certainly CAN be. They are also much easier to screw up. Just like if you are able to successfully naviagate and use the nine point alignment system effectively then it is much more exciting to explore than a good-evil one, though obviously people have confusions and issues dealing with such a system. Especially difficult is to understand the basic underpinnings of a orange-blue scale.

For once I would like to see a society of orcs or snakemen with motivations beyond "kill/rape/maim/burn." Even Tolkien himself stated that orcs and half-orcs (uruk-hai) were evil only because Sauron had shaped their culture to promote that and used mass dominate to maintain it (e.g. the "great eye" is a metaphor for him being able to see through the eyes of his orc and human slaves/allies, not an an actual giant eyeball).

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And what about mind flayers? Demons? Devils? Beholders? Even Drow?

Many times the races you are talking about (orcs, snakemen) are actively taught to be evil and as often punished for weakness (being good). It says so in the descriptions of these races. There are outliers, individual characters or even groups who can and do defy the norm. But as already pointed out you can do this as is and if you make EVERYTHING grey then you lose motivations.

The best thing about having an orange-blue scale is that you get to recategorize morality. The worst thing is that all creatures must fall into the new paradigm. That is all that exists already. The nine points exists to create conflict and to give deeper motivations than "he's evil, get him." That is the point. Even if you are using 4e's scale of LG-G-U-E-CE then you still have conflict and SHADES of evil. Devils (in both systems) are evil, very evil, but they are a very different kind of evil than demons who just want to eat your face/babies.


*We in North America/Europe, as standards of morality are FAR from universal.. even in North America/Europe.