When Fantasy Racism gets stupid

[I'm A Banana]

There's two major camps.

The first is that monsters are monsters, not people, and thus are supernatural entities inherently, capable of being born of wickedness and corruption itself, and thus they can be monolithic and need little variety. An orc is not a natural thing -- it is a manifestation of rage and a scourge on the land. Lets call this the "mythic" motif.

The second is that monsters are creatures, just potentially dangerous creatures. An orc is a person, and so has free will, and can choose to be other than what it is. Lets call this the "modern" motif.

Both are valid and cool, but D&D has long leaned more toward the latter than the former -- ecology writeups for your mind flayers will do that.

 

[Wiseblood]

I get it - there are folk who love their orcs to be evil and barberous, their drow to be evil, a bit psychotic, and prone to extreme darwinism, etc.

I just find it shallow and pedantic.

Orcs are more interesting if they're hostile jerks because all the "civilized" races treat their beliefs are worthless, keep kicking them out of their traditional hunting grounds, insist on the superiority of civilization, etc.

Drow are more interesting if portrayed with a desperate sense of paranoia, as the only thing holding together their society is the convolution of all the plots going on. They sit only one proper revolution away from having a society that doesn't constantly feel like it's falling apart.

The "good" (aka playable) races have a wide array of ethical possibilities - but the default for many monster races is that they are often portrayed as only exceedingly evil, for no real reason other than players need something to kill. Campaign settings vary on this (some better, some worse), but the Tolkienesq dichonomy-as-standard with no redeemable traits for the bad guys is dull. I'd like to see that trope retired.

I hate to say it, but sometimes they are evil because I need someone to kill. I want to buy new weapons. That and killing evil humans of significant enough quantities and power is getting hard.

 

[KidSnide]

The purpose of D&D is to enjoy playing D&D, and the "monsters are evil" trope is of vital importance for many people who want to feel good about clearing dungeons and killing dragons. It definitely shouldn't be retired.

I don't think it should retired, but it shouldn't be put on a pedestal either. This is one of the benefits of including an alignment system, but not mandating things specifically hold to it.

"Monsters are evil!" or "Monsters are just misunderstood!" should be a table-decision.

Oh definitely. I have no interest in playing games where you randomly seek out monsters to kill because they are evil and you are good. I enjoy Diablo 3 as much as the next guy (ok, maybe not quite as much), but I want my tabletop roleplaying time to be a lot more sophisticated.

At the same time, I recognize that morally unambiguous evil-stomping is a big part of the hobby, and trying to get rid of that model would be a big mistake.

Not that I think there is any danger of WotC abandoning that style of play...

-KS

 

[seregil]

While I understand the OP's point, I play Dnd to relax. My entire life is filled with shades of grey. The world, the geopolitics, my faith, ALL that is filled with ethical quandaries where neither side is white or black and there is no 'magic bullet' solution.

Yes, I realize that orcs, being intelligent creatures, can have different viewpoints and maybe, just maybe, we are the rampaging hordes.

I get it.

You know what? I'm tired and worn out. I listen to the news and I worry. I watch the weather being wacky and strange and I worry. I wonder if having children was a good idea, not that I don't love them, but the world in which I am trowing them is bad place and it worries me too.

I don't want that in my game. I want escapism. I want to move from 10x10 room to 10x10 room, kill the orc and open the chest.

On good days, the room are non-square and it isn't always an orc. Whatever.

Sometimes, I have more energy and I add layers to the issues in the game and then my players have to make 'the lesser evil' calls. That's fine too.

In the real world, I don't have a firm answers on any subject of importance. At least, in a game, I can, if I want, smite the %?$/"%? and get on with it.


YMMV.

 

[Dire Bare]

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it always catches me a little off guard when I say one thing on this forum and then several people extrapolate something completely different - no matter how careful I am about word choice.

I don't think that the problem is "you", Transbot9, that you are being unclear or anything. I also don't think the problem is any of "us", the other posters, not understanding something clearly stated. It's hard to fully and clearly portray opinions in one post, and it's equally hard to interpret the full meaning of the writer . . . text on a screen is a limited form of communication, and we all bring our biases to the conversation.

The fix? Post some more and try to clarify your thoughts so we can better understand what you mean.

 

[Vikingkingq]

I think there's a happy medium between "all members of this humanoid race are metaphysically evil" and "orcs are noble savages," and I think that medium is called resource scarcity in a quasi-medieval environment.

One of the things that is often obscured in fantasy is how little surplus there was in pre-modern agriculture (no steel plows, no horse collars, little use of winter crops, and relatively limited ability to reclaim waste ground). Famines were fairly common, and humans often went to war with the next fief over control of good farmland or water rights.

In those circumstances, it doesn't matter whether the goblins or orcs are objectively evil, they're still a threat to your existence. (Obviously, this fits better with Points of Light settings rather than crazy high-magic empires) Your weaker monsters - goblins and kobolds and the like - probably aren't up to farming; your stronger monsters try to destroy human settlements to take their land because there's not enough good farmland to go around.

To use a fantasy example without getting into the question of speciesism, take the Iron Islands in A Song of Ice and Fire. The Ironborn don't think of themselves as evil, they don't worship gods of destruction or chaos, but that doesn't make them any less of a threat to the North, the Riverlands, the Westerlands, or the Reach. At the end of the day, they want to steal your crops and your livestock, rape your women, and drag your people into slavery for their benefit.

 

[Dire Bare]

There's two major camps.

The first is that monsters are monsters, not people, and thus are supernatural entities inherently, capable of being born of wickedness and corruption itself, and thus they can be monolithic and need little variety. An orc is not a natural thing -- it is a manifestation of rage and a scourge on the land. Lets call this the "mythic" motif.

The second is that monsters are creatures, just potentially dangerous creatures. An orc is a person, and so has free will, and can choose to be other than what it is. Lets call this the "modern" motif.

Both are valid and cool, but D&D has long leaned more toward the latter than the former -- ecology writeups for your mind flayers will do that.

While broad, I agree with your distinctions between viewing fantasy races in a "mythic" view versus a more "modern" view, it's how I've always looked at the issue too. I think D&D started with the mythic view, and has slowly morphed towards the modern view over the years, although not completely or evenly. And, it's really only a problem if the DM is thinking about race one way and some of their players are thinking of race the other way.

I think this shift from the mythic view towards the modern view is also reflected in fantasy and scifi literature, and not just the novels with the D&D logo stamped on them. Characters, protagonists or antagonists, are simply more interesting if they are fully fleshed out "people" rather than simply manifestations of supernatural stereotypes of "good" or "evil".

I think that D&D Next, in the section of the new DM's Guide covering how to run the game, this should be discussed. As a DM, choosing to make your "bad guy" fantasy races intrinsically evil or more nuanced creatures with free will should be fine either way, but the choice should be understood and communicated to the players so that folks don't get irritated or upset when their expectations aren't met.

The worst mistake I ever made on this issue is when I had my players busting a werewolves den. After the heroes defeated all the wolf-men that attacked them, they found a young girl cowering under some furniture. The paladin got the same "evil" reading off the girl as he did off of all the other werewolves, as the girl was also a recently turned werewolf, she was clearly a creature of supernatural evil . . . . yet she was a terrified little girl who just wanted to go home. It was a lose-lose choice, either kill a little girl or allow a supernatural monster to roam the countryside. After that scene was over (and the paladin killed the young girl), we all felt kinda crappy and didn't want to play anymore. I was running a "evil is evil" campaign, but for some reason felt that I needed to throw in a "moral choice" for the paladin. I'm a little more careful now.

 

[howandwhy99]

Sometimes the glossy and chitinous Black Widow Spider-Elves are a race of poisoning and routinely heartless killers. Sometimes the alien intelligences are both sentient and psychotic.

What makes a played character like Drizzt different is he chooses not to be like this. And while such creature and culture types may not be your preference, they aren't necessarily uninteresting to others. I let the players choose to make them the "bad guys" or not, but I don't hold back in their characterization or immediately think all such would be flat.

 

[delericho]

Orcs are more interesting if they're hostile jerks because all the "civilized" races treat their beliefs are worthless, keep kicking them out of their traditional hunting grounds, insist on the superiority of civilization, etc.

Nah, it's been done.

Drow are more interesting if portrayed with a desperate sense of paranoia, as the only thing holding together their society is the convolution of all the plots going on. They sit only one proper revolution away from having a society that doesn't constantly feel like it's falling apart.

That's quite interesting, but it's too late. Didn't you hear - they allowed the possibility of "the only good drow", and now they're nothing but a race of tortured loners on quests for redemption. Which would be fine, but the standard-issue dual scimitars are a bit of a hindrance when spellcasting.

The "good" (aka playable) races have a wide array of ethical possibilities - but the default for many monster races is that they are often portrayed as only exceedingly evil, for no real reason other than players need something to kill. Campaign settings vary on this (some better, some worse), but the Tolkienesq dichonomy-as-standard with no redeemable traits for the bad guys is dull. I'd like to see that trope retired.

No thanks.

The thing is, for experienced groups, it really doesn't matter what flavour text is in the Monster Manual - in reality, they'll use orcs as they always have, whether that's as XP-bags, noble savages, or anything else. In many ways, only the "rules stuff" actually matters. Or, to put it another way "if you don't like it, you can change it."

The fluff only really matters for new groups. And here, there is a lot of value in presenting things as they would expect - they'll expect their Orcs to be Tolkienesque (or WoW-esque, or, heck, D&D-esque) because that's what they've been exposed to. They'll expect their dragons to be big, flying lizards that breathe fire. And so on. Presenting these things in a 'classic' mould makes the game accessible to new players, which should be considered a GOOD THING.

 

[Yora]

Orcs are more interesting if they're hostile jerks because all the "civilized" races treat their beliefs are worthless, keep kicking them out of their traditional hunting grounds, insist on the superiority of civilization, etc.

Drow are more interesting if portrayed with a desperate sense of paranoia, as the only thing holding together their society is the convolution of all the plots going on. They sit only one proper revolution away from having a society that doesn't constantly feel like it's falling apart.

Awww... So they really just want to get a hug?