D&D General Old School DND talks if DND is racist.

[Minigiant]

So? Not everyone is interested in writing dramatic campaigns with the depth of The Catcher in the Rye. Some people (including myself frequently) want a lazy option.

It's a game and frequently is played as pure escapism from the complexity of the real world.

People can be lazy.
However a lazy person cannot complain if their laziness creates something offensive or nonsensical.

That's the issue. D&D isn't full of lazy people who don't nitpick anymore.

 

[Minigiant]

So the villains are evil in your campaign because they follow the wrong religion?

You don't see how that is just as (or more) problematic?

They fuse and make pacts with entities who openly seek Armageddon. It's isn't just a different religion.

 

[Oofta]

People can be lazy.
However a lazy person cannot complain if their laziness creates something offensive or nonsensical.

That's the issue. D&D isn't full of lazy people who don't nitpick anymore.

I would say that D&D can be played in a wide variety of ways. Saying that someone who doesn't have your exact preference is not lazy, it's insulting and comes off as being holier-than-thou.

 

[Remathilis]

Suppose the idea of fundamentally evil humanoids is indeed removed from D&D entirely, because of its problematic aspects. There are also many monsters in the other creature types that resemble humanoids. Undead and fiends have already been brought up, but I think we can all agree that there's room for those to remain inherently evil. (Ditto celestials being inherently good.) You could also argue that constructs, as artificial creatures, could also have inherent alignment (though they're usually unaligned anyway).

But what about giants, which are basically just big humanoids? Monstrosities, like ettercaps? Fey, like hags? Aberrations, like mind flayers? Elementals, like efreet? Plants, like blights?

And that's just limiting examples to creatures with humanoid shapes, there are plenty of other intelligent creatures in those types. Plus dragons are certainly intelligent creatures... and currently color-coded for alignment convenience. There have historically been intelligent oozes, even.

(I guess beasts are sufficiently inhuman and unintelligent by default to never be a problem, but they tend to be unaligned.)

The question here being, if inherently evil humanoids are a problem - and I acknowledge folks have authentic concerns here - what happens if folks just replace "orc" with "ogre" as their go-to "kill without remorse" monster? Or ettercaps or hags? Is that still a problem? Is there a line beyond which they're inhuman enough it's acceptable? If not, how far would we have to go to actually address the problem at the default level?

Note, BTW, that we already do have playable monstrosities (centaurs and minotaurs) and fey (satyrs), thanks to Theros. (The Theros minotaur is implicitly humanoid, admittedly, but the Theros centaur is still not a humanoid - they're fey.) And per the recent UA, we may have playable constructs and undead on the way as well. So arguing that just "humanoids" should never have fixed alignments won't work, that ship has sailed.

The long and short of it is that alignment at this point is on life support and I wager it will be slowly removed before 6e. There will be certain tendencies (fiends being malevolent, celestials benign, fey amoral, etc) but very shortly, every monster will be equally likely to be "good" or "evil".

Then every alignment debate will cease and be replaced by ethical and moral debates about justifying violence against opposing groups. D&D realpolitik.

 

[Zardnaar]

They fuse and make pacts with entities who openly seek Armageddon. It's isn't just a different religion.

Often laugh if the Aztecs survived to present day. Evil colonial Spain smashed their religion.

But that religion......

 

[Oofta]

They fuse and make pacts with entities who openly seek Armageddon. It's isn't just a different religion.

So you get to define what is acceptable to justify calling followers of a religion evil? Cultists in general aren't really seeking destruction, they're seeking a remaking of the world. They want to change the world so that in their view it's better. Isn't that the goal of many religions?

Then again, I think the bad guys being "evil cultists" is extremely lazy.

Which don't get me wrong, sometimes I do have dangerous religious cults. They're one of the main tools D&D gives us. I just want other tools as well.

 

[Oofta]

Because change is scary.

Change too much and the game no longer honors it's ancestry, you split the fanbase and you get the civil wars that are consuming other media properties (Star Wars for a good example). Change too little and you aren't helping those who need it.

5e is a good system, true to it's roots while being accessable to many. WotC sought to make it an evergreen edition. But I fear the drumbeat demanding change will hasten WotC to make a new edition to satisfy it's critics, and that new edition may make the same mistakes 4e made about sweeping radical change to mechanics and lore.

So yeah, I'm concerned about what the ripple effect is going to look like. In an era where most of my interests and fandoms dating back to childhood have recently become battlefields for culture wars, you'll have to excuse me being a little anxious.

I wouldn't say that I'm "scared" of change. After all no one is going to break into my house and steal my books. I also do think that some things should be more front and center. Reinforce that alignment and culture is just default. Fix some problematic wording.

However, I would say that I'm "concerned" that they're going to throw the baby out with the bath water. Leave the clear options of simple morality, good and evil as an option. Make it clear that it's optional. Reinforce that evil orcs are just one possibility and what is presented in the book is just one option.

Could we get rid of alignment? Sure. While you're at it let's make the game more realistic in other ways as well. People walking around in high quality plate mail should be practically invulnerable to attacks so you need to knock them prone so you can immobilize them and stab them in the face. Let's talk about infections, amputations and crippling wounds. Discuss how it can take months if not years to recover from wounds. We should also get a section in the DMG on socio-economics and the morality of the ruling class. Maybe we need an entire book on philosophy and morality.

Some people want complex, some people want simple. I want something in-between most of the time. It's a game. Let people have fun sitting around eating pretzels and drinking mountain dew pretending to be the knight in shining armor rescuing the helpless prince from the evil dragon.

Take that away and I'm concerned the game will lose a core audience. D&D is flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of styles. Clean it up a bit, polish some rough edges but don't tell a significant portion of the gaming community that they're doing it wrong.

 

[Minigiant]

I would say that D&D can be played in a wide variety of ways. Saying that someone who doesn't have your exact preference is not lazy, it's insulting and comes off as being holier-than-thou.

You said they were lazy first, not me.

If someone just wants their villains to be easy, they can. However they leave themselves up to easy criticism.

So you get to define what is acceptable to justify calling followers of a religion evil? Cultists in general aren't really seeking destruction, they're seeking a remaking of the world. They want to change the world so that in their view it's better. Isn't that the goal of many religions?

Again these evil cultists are just any old religion. I have written a lot of text about the religions of my setting that a player can have a whole theological combat.

The Infernal Horde and Acolytes of Ends are evil. The Cult of Forever Fires, The Cult of Orc Love, and the Beast Cults aren't.

 

[Oofta]

You said they were lazy first, not me.

If someone just wants their villains to be easy, they can. However they leave themselves up to easy criticism.




Again these evil cultists are just any old religion. I have written a lot of text about the religions of my setting that a player can have a whole theological combat.

The Infernal Horde and Acolytes of Ends are evil. The Cult of Forever Fires, The Cult of Orc Love, and the Beast Cults aren't.

I don't think lazy is a bad thing, you do. Context matters.

If you want to come up with War and Peace for your campaign, that's great. I have quite a bit of history myself.

I don't think it's a good thing for the game if everyone has to come up with that level of detail if they don't want to. Having default bad guys without a lot of justification works for many DMs and stories.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Right so what your saying is players should instead be crushed by overwhelming guilt when they go round killing orcs? Sounds like fun game... not sure it will catch on as well but you do you.

I certainly expect players to feel guilty if their characters kill outside of self defense/defense of others. I have an (imaginary) "Star Fleet" badge that I give out when players resolve a conflict without violence.

Not sure it is, I don't think orcs are evil because of their culture, I think their culture is evil because they are evil.

Well you seem very unclear, since that is the third different interpretation you have put on the same group of orcs.

The trouble is it's very easy to replace "orcs" in that phrase with the name of a real world culture. Even if you don't do it, it's easy to see why someone looking in from the outside would imagine you do.