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

[Zardnaar]

No I'm not. I'm not making any value judgment on kids. What I'm arguing is that if your choices are murder lots of kids, or don't murder lots of kids, you don't murder lots of kids. The U.S. would not have been responsible for what would have happened in the other two scenarios.

You're indirectly responsible for the other dead kids and directly responsible for the more dead Americans though.

You had the option if saving lives and didn't do it.

Would you slow the war down in Europe to spare the German civilians and let the regime murder more people?

You can easily turn that into a D&D thing as well. Do nothing BBEG kills more people? Or deal with them sooner killing more people short term.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, I'm saying they aren't human. They have no more conscience as we understand it than a tiger if that's your definition of how an orc works.

They are fictional creatures. All we really know is that they are not human. Beyond that? Up to the campaign and the DM.

Yeah so what I'm saying is avoid saying stuff like "like sociopaths" or "like people as ASPD", because those are human terms for human things.

WotC made the same error but much more severely - they described Orcs in the exact way that human ultra-racists describe [insert race they don't like, usually dark-skinned].

 

[Scribe]

I dont know, at this point I feel this threads run its course. Till the next time fellow adventurers.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You can easily turn that into a D&D thing as well. Do nothing BBEG kills more people? Or deal with them sooner killing more people short term.

You could do that. Maybe you shouldn't though? I think this is one thing many people in this thread, me and @Oofta included, would agree on.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I dont know, at this point I feel this threads run its course. Till the next time fellow adventurers.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm not saying I support the idea that orcs are past the point of being described as a different species. I was just relaying the idea. My fix is rather on the other side: drop races altogether. If every playable race is made of people, then call them people and accept that they are human with very few differences that couldn't just be replicated by a peculiar human culture (and make every characteristics floating, not only ASIs, during character creation). Then, later, introduce the dreaded, inhuman, born-in-vat, always evil Cros to play the part the CR1-2 group of enemies you can actually kill without objectively being a murderer so far held by Orcs.

I kind of like darkspawn in the World of Magnamund.

Spawn "born" in a vat from dark magic infused with the soul stuff of the god of darkness himself.

They're self aware somewhat but literally can't be anything else at least not without deific intervention or an archmage tweaking them.

Literally spawn of evil.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Spawn "born" in a car from dark magic infused with the soul stuff of the god of darkness himself.

I'm thinking "car" is not the word you meant to type here though that is an amazing mental image I just got lol.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah so what I'm saying is avoid saying stuff like "like sociopaths" or "like people as ASPD", because those are human terms for human things.

WotC made the same error but much more severely - they described Orcs in the exact way that human ultra-racists describe [insert race they don't like, usually dark-skinned].

I'm saying they are orcs not people no matter how you try to twist it around. Calling a tiger dangerous is not racist, it's realistic. Calling an orc as defined in the MM dangerous is not racist, it's realistic.

I'm done, there's no point in discussing this with you.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm thinking "car" is not the word you meant to type here though that is an amazing mental image I just got lol.

Autocorrect sigh.

I come down in nuture vs nature with orcs. On some settings though maybe not the Warhammer Orks being a prime example. Tolkeins orcs as well I suppose but I'm not familiar with all of their lire so not 100% sure there.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm saying they are orcs not people no matter how you try to twist it around. Calling a tiger dangerous is not racist, it's realistic. Calling an orc as defined in the MM dangerous is not racist, it's realistic.

I'm done, there's no point in discussing this with you.

/shrug unfortunately The Powers That Be and Society At Large agree with me, and not you. I'm not trying to be mean, you've made some interesting posts on this, I've been trying to illuminate why TPTB and SAL don't agree with you though.