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

[HJFudge]

This is all a stupid smokescreen for the fact that the character you're describing, is still, in D&D terms, an Evil character. Because once again, alignment measures personal morality on an objective scale. This isn't the Good Place. You can spit out nonsense like "erroneous" and pretend I said stuff I didn't like "all deviations are disallowed", but you're never going to get around the fact that the character you're describing is Evil.

Now he may feel he does a lot of "good", but it's small-g good, he is capital-E Evil, because he is totally amoral and ruthless, and has absolute faith in his personal ability to change the future and always make it "better".

This is a classic villain.

So what are the alignment criteria? Lets use 5e's. From the 5E SRD

Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society. Gold dragons, paladins, and most dwarves are lawful good.
Neutral good (NG) folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs. Many celestials, some cloud giants, and most gnomes are neutral good.
Chaotic good (CG) creatures act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect. Copper dragons, many elves, and unicorns are chaotic good.
Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes. Many monks and some wizards are lawful neutral.
Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don’t take sides, doing what seems best at the time. Lizardfolk, most druids, and many humans are neutral.
Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else. Many barbarians and rogues, and some bards, are chaotic neutral.
Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order. Devils, blue dragons, and hobgoblins are lawful evil.
Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms. Many drow, some cloud giants, and goblins are neutral evil.
Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust. Demons, red dragons, and orcs are chaotic evil.

RAW the PC described would be, most likely, Chaotic Good. A PC who acts as his conscience directs, with little regard for what people who dont know what they are talking about and just making stuff up on the internet expect.

In this case, the PCs conscience directs them to kill the prince in order to stop 10,000 deaths. They don't care that you haven't actually read the rules but are pretending to have done so. Their action they are taking is straight up murder so perhaps you may argue they are not lawful, and I will give you that. But there is NO support for your argument here in the actual text. In their hearts and their minds, this PC has decided to take an action that they believe is right. This is chaotic good. Through RAW.

Stop making stuff up.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Maybe “immutable” was hyperbolic. Still, this reads to me as an explanation of why you prefer ethnocultures rather than why you think cultural diversity makes humanoid races fundamentally human.

I mean... I don't, myself. In as much as races are a thing, no amount of cultural similarity will erase that.

But not having separate cultures would make the game less, IMO. You'd throw away a ton of cool ideas and potential, and utterly trash a lot of narrative advantages, for the sake of - what?

The rest is just "doing the descriptions better" (something I don't think I've seen any disagreement on*) and figuring out where to spend printing/publishing resources.

 

[Scribe]

I mean, I would consider that a positive, but again, I’m trying to set aside what you or I would prefer so I can understand why diverse humanoid cultures translates to humans with masks to you. I get that you wouldn’t like for a character’s race not to communicate anything about their culture or expected behavior, but if that were the case, how would that make them human?

If I may, it would not make them human, but it would remove part of what makes them 'other than human'.

Elves? They live a really long time, that is not nearly expanded on enough imo. That would be alien, to humans.
Dwarves? They are all smaller than your average human, and they live longer by over 3x. Hard to mistake that for a human.

Blah Blah Blah. (Other Lineages...)

Orcs. - Short lived. Stronger and larger than your average Human. At a glance then, in again a cosmopolitan setting, what separates this lineage from a human? It looks different, sure, but what else? It may be more predisposed to labour intensive work (unless you are into those whole Floating ASI ideas....) but lets assume that we have no default alignment, no default language, no negative stereotypes, no tropes, and heck lets throw in Floating ASI for kicks.

What is an Orc in such a world? Anything it wants to be. Whats a Human in that world? Anything it wants to be.

Are we going to just go all in on the fact they have short lives? I mean we could, but thats about all we have that differentiates Human, and Orc.

In short, the argument is, if you remove X Lineage = Y Behavior (and Attributes, and Alignment) there is nothing but appearance left. Which is actually all I got out one of the older very long threads regarding 'What is the appeal of weird races?' or whatever it was.

 

[Charlaquin]

As I said mini cultures making explaining things to newer players easier.

There's pros and cons much like anything else.

Again, this explains why you prefer ethnocultures. It does not explain how having diverse cultures makes other races human.

 

[Charlaquin]

I mean... I don't, myself. In as much as races are a thing, no amount of cultural similarity will erase that.

But not having separate cultures would make the game less, IMO.

Ok. That’s not a thing I’m interested in arguing about right now, because doing so hasn’t seemed to get us anywhere. Right now I’m just trying to understand a perspective I frequently see expressed in these discussions that has never made sense to me - that making races more culturally diverse would make them “humans with masks.”

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

So, are you assuming that expanding the range of cultures and roles for various humanoids will inevitably result in total overlap with humans? That seems like a dubious assumption to me.

Since any culture can be adopted by any bipedal sentient, yes. There can't be an orcish-specific culture that is caused by them being orcish or that couldn't be created by a human society, if you remove the tie between race and culture. If orcs are sentient like humans, they can produce the exact same range of culture than humans. In a given setting, they might produce a few culture different from humans and elves one that won't create overlap, but the difference won't come from being orcs -- since all sentient can produce the same culture once there is no longer such a thing as a racial culture -- it will come from other factor that won't make them different from default.

I mean, I would consider that a positive, but again, I’m trying to set aside what you or I would prefer so I can understand why diverse humanoid cultures translates to humans with masks to you. I get that you wouldn’t like for a character’s race not to communicate anything about their culture or expected behavior, but if that were the case, how would that make them human?

Because there would be nothing left to make them not-humans?

Once you have removed cultural specificities and mechanical differences (the way recent UA and Tasha goes), what makes orcs not human?

The difference in lifespans is certainly a thing.

Yes, but that's something that's rather downplayed... to explain why a 200 years-old elf can be level 1.

Elves can see really far and dwarves can see in the dark, which is bound to shape their experience differently from human experience.

Infravision. That's what I wrote "with mask and infravision".

Physical characteristics.

Greatly downplayed by the floating ASIs. Every bipedal sentient species can produce the same range of physical characteristics. If they favour, on average, one over the other, it's just a cultural thing that can be replicated by humans with the same cultural focus.

It’s a fantasy setting, so maybe innate magical aptitude of some sort.

It would need to be replicated in the rules.

Different native environments.

Which environment can't human inhabit that orcs could? I am all from a tribe of resilent orcs that could live in the northern tundra far above what could human do thanks to their improved CON. That would be distinctive. But it's not really the direction taken with a downplay in mecanical differenciation between the races. At this point, no playable bipedal sentient species is more suited to an environment than another. Except from the underground habitat, because of low-light vision, which makes human less suited there.

There are all sorts of ways characters of different races are different besides culture. Heck, their cultures may even be different, if there isn’t 100% overlap between all races’ range of cultures.

I fail to imagine a culture that couldn't be adopted by another race and would be distinctively orcish (or elvish, or...)

 

[Charlaquin]

If I may, it would not make them human, but it would remove part of what makes them 'other than human'.

Ok. That I can understand. So would it be accurate then to say that the “humans with masks” line is a rhetorical exaggeration?

In short, the argument is, if you remove X Lineage = Y Behavior (and Attributes, and Alignment) there is nothing but appearance left. Which is actually all I got out one of the older very long threads regarding 'What is the appeal of weird races?' or whatever it was.

See, you lose me when you boil all that stuff you just mentioned down to “nothing but appearance.” Is lifespan appearance? Is physical strength and size appearance? Are innate magical capabilities appearance? Is native environment appearance? Is ability to see in the dark appearance?

I get that these differences aren’t significant enough for your liking. That’s a valid preference. But saying that those differences amount to a rubber mask, or “nothing but appearance” comes across as extremely dismissive and flippant towards people with different preferences.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But not having separate cultures would make the game less, IMO. You'd throw away a ton of cool ideas and potential, and utterly trash a lot of narrative advantages, for the sake of - what?

What "cool ideas and potential"? I honestly do not see what "cool ideas and potential" are being missed out on, here. You can absolutely still have mindless antagonists (see: zombies as noted earlier), or species that are pure evil because of actual behavior (see: mindflayers, especially if there's any kind of "tell" that shows they eat sapient brains), or you can make society-level antagonists that are actually complex and meaningful instead of cardboard cutouts.

I cannot see what "ton of cool ideas and potential" we're missing out on here.

There can't be an orcish-specific culture that is caused by them being orcish or that couldn't be created by a human society, if you remove the tie between race and culture. If orcs are sentient like humans, they can produce the exact same range of culture than humans.

1: Yes, there can. That's literally why I talked about Harry Potter goblins earlier.
2: Not necessarily.

That's literally what I've been arguing this whole time. That people keep assuming the above when....it's just flat not true. Being sapient does not mean having 1:1 correspondence with the possible spectrum of human cultures, potentially for physiological reasons, behavioral reasons, or contextual reasons. It might mean that, for some species, but it is not an automatic thing. As noted, a purely carnivorous species would almost certainly end up with a different perspective and some amount of different behavior because meeting their fundamental dietary needs is very different from humans meeting theirs.

 

[Charlaquin]

Snipped for brevity

So, this comes across to me as fundamentally saying, “apart from all the non-cultural differences between races, culture is the only thing that differentiates races.”

 

[Zardnaar]

Again, this explains why you prefer ethnocultures. It does not explain how having diverse cultures makes other races human.

Mono cultures help differentiate them from humans.

Doesn't make them humans as such. But if they are sentient, fee willed etc etc they're more or less humans culturally.

The various humanoids were essentially tier list to work through to get up to demons, devil's, dragons etc.

Using the same logic D&D has some bigger issues. It's a game I've had Communists gleefully loot stuff, people opposed to the death penalty quite happily execute someone.

No one thinks to hard about it. If you do there's tomb raiding, looting, stealing often murder and executions without due process.

If they're depicting humanoids or whatever as RL cultures that's a problem but if you're drawing lines between what happens in D&D to RL things it's odd when the murder, looting, tomb raiding etc is already there.

May as well pack it up you have to "not think about it" at some point. It's escapism.

Everyone's entitled to their own views it's the double think required. That's ok this isn't even if the connection is very tenuous.