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

[Scribe]

Which, again goes back to clarifying that alignment and fluff is the optional default.

I can see for some iconic monsters/races you could add a bit more text or sidebar similar to what they did with the drow. But there are limitations to how much that can be done. I mean, what happens when the next supplement comes out and you can play a succubus or cambion or ... well whatever.

What we do then, is construct a setting where that all makes sense and the game very quickly becomes quite a bit more complex than 'Can I just fireball them before they talk to us.'

There is no reason we shouldnt be able to play as a non-Evil Succubus or Cambion. Heck, there are thinking Undead, why is it OK to just nuke a Lich?

This is not absurd, this is the logical reality when saying no sapient lineage can be defaulted to being 'bad'.

 

[Morrus]

What we do then, is construct a setting where that all makes sense and the game very quickly becomes quite a bit more complex than 'Can I just fireball them before they talk to us.'

There is no reason we shouldnt be able to play as a non-Evil Succubus or Cambion. Heck, there are thinking Undead, why is it OK to just nuke a Lich?

This is not absurd, this is the logical reality when saying no sapient lineage can be defaulted to being 'bad'.

Can you not imagine a fiction where a good lich exists?

 

[Justice and Rule]

Here's where my point of confusion is. Is it morally permissible to insert anything into a fictional game space such that your standard adventuring party can feel justified dropping a fireball on it without interrogating it first? If so, where does that line occur where such a description becomes problematic?

From what I've gathered, I can drop a fireball on demons, no problem. Same thing with undead and most constructs. But fireballing orcs would be problematic. Is the line anything humanoid? Anything sapient and not directly burning down a village?

I mean, I suppose it's all in the context of the situation? I mean, are we talking just an Orc standing alone, minding his own business? Is he in a raider camp, have we been tracking some bandits that match his description?

I mean, to me, no. But I'm cautious because I don't want to end up as this guy.

 

[Scribe]

Can you not imagine a fiction where a good lich exists?

I certainly can, thats the thrust of my entire argument for pages.

If people insist that Orcs cannot be labelled Evil, then neither can anything else.

 

[Oofta]

What we do then, is construct a setting where that all makes sense and the game very quickly becomes quite a bit more complex than 'Can I just fireball them before they talk to us.'

There is no reason we shouldnt be able to play as a non-Evil Succubus or Cambion. Heck, there are thinking Undead, why is it OK to just nuke a Lich?

This is not absurd, this is the logical reality when saying no sapient lineage can be defaulted to being 'bad'.

Which, cool. I don't do murder hobo nuke 'em from orbit campaigns anyway.

I just think D&D can and should continue to support the spectrum. For example in the OP's stream the professor dude had a problem with the people hassling the tiefling. First thing I'd do during a session 0 was that if someone wanted to play a tiefling would be to check what they were comfortable with.

If the tiefling player wants to be the outcast that proves their worth against all the odds, all the bigotry then we can tell an awesome story that will include to aspects of bigotry. Potentially even coming from the group. If they don't I'd make it clear to the other players it wasn't acceptable.

For me if I play a PC with the outcast background it's perfectly okay for the DM to treat my PC as an outcast because that's what I signed up for. But it does take some open conversations and a level of trust that goes both ways.

 

[Morrus]

If people insist that Orcs cannot be labelled Evil, then neither can anything else.

I think that's an excellent idea! Let the DM decide the alignment of any given individual creature. Good thinking.

 

[TwoSix]

I certainly can, thats the thrust of my entire argument for pages.

If people insist that Orcs cannot be labelled Evil, then neither can anything else.

Yea, that's pretty much where I've always been. I've had good intelligent undead, good orcs, good ogres, good kobolds, etc., all pop up in my games. But there's no moral consequence to assuming they're hostile and acting accordingly, as long as they're acting somewhat hostile. A peaceful shire full of orc farmers with a shrine to Pelor in the center of town is going to be investigated, not fireballed because "orcs are evil".

 

[Voadam]

Can you not imagine a fiction where a good lich exists?

Given the 5e MM writing of them having to feed souls to their phylacteries I would generally give them an evil over an any alignment entry.

Changing that fiction part, sure. You can then have Forgotten Realms Baelnorns and Eberron Deathless.

 

[Justice and Rule]

What we do then, is construct a setting where that all makes sense and the game very quickly becomes quite a bit more complex than 'Can I just fireball them before they talk to us.'

There is no reason we shouldnt be able to play as a non-Evil Succubus or Cambion. Heck, there are thinking Undead, why is it OK to just nuke a Lich?

This is not absurd, this is the logical reality when saying no sapient lineage can be defaulted to being 'bad'.

Edit: Actually I misread this. I just don't see too much of a problem with this.

Can you not imagine a fiction where a good lich exists?

Ha! I have something like this. Initially it started off in my head as just a gnomish lich who became a lich largely to document history, coming across a much lower-level party in the guise of a regular gnome trying to get to the tomb of an ancient warrior-king. He'd help out when needed (while concealing his identity), then he'd raise the warrior-king and teleport out to basically interview him so he could write his historical texts.

Eventually that evolved into the owner of the magical shop being a 20,000 year old gnomish lich who had been defeated by heroes of a completely different age, but he had been buried underneath thousands of tons of earth when his lair caved in. Eventually his mind just sort of shuts off, and 19,500 years later a landslide basically manages to unearth him. It's been so long that he's basically an amnesiac, immediate magical power at his fingertips but not remembering who he was. Eventually he's able to put together the basics, and, without knowing where his phylactery is, he basically set up shop a city at the edge of what is now a human Empire. He can't use too much magic without starting to move back into that lich mindset (In my setting negative energy is kind of toxic, almost drug-like, which is part of the reason why liches become so detached from life; this dude basically had a 19,000 year detox), but he has setup a bunch of wards in his shop so he's not immediately detectable, wears gloves so people can't feel his cold hands, and makes his day as a purveyor of magical wares. He has a family and they have several adopted children. I thought it a cool idea.

 

[Scribe]

I mean, this feels like the slippery slope fallacy. We shouldn't worry about what we need to do this with later because we don't know that we'll actually need to.

I dont think it is.

I think you clean up Volo's, and either we leave the rest alone as it pertains to setting specific definitions (FR Orcs != Eberron Orcs) or we have another layer of errata that sapient beings are not of a predefined monolithic alignment.

That's not a slippery slope, it's 'apply a patch to alignment'. IMO of course.