D&D (2024) bring back the pig faced orcs for 6th edition, change up hobgoblins & is there a history of the design change

[Faolyn]

I clarified my statement in a follow-up post. The uniform a person wears does not necessarily indicate their moral character. Many soldiers have no choice and are drafted/conscripted. The Nazi army conscripted men from ages 16-60 by the end of the war. Boys aged 12 and under were manning artillery units. I don't believe that they were all evil.

So no, I don't think it's "okay" to say all soldiers forced to fight on the side of an evil regime are evil. War may sometimes be necessary but I don't think it is ever good in the real world.

Are child soldiers all that common in D&Dland?

 

[Charlaquin]

Speaking of essentializing, I think the discussion of if it’s ok to say all bandits/Raiders/members of the evil regime’s army are evil is looking at it the wrong way. It doesn’t really matter if they’re all evil. In fact, if you get down to it, most of them probably have relatable reasons for doing what they’re doing. But those reasons run into the “cool backstory; still murder” response. Are the raiders evil people? That’s a philosophical question that has been debated for thousands of years. The more practical question is, are the raiders a threat to your village?

 

[jmartkdr2]

What annoys me about these discussions is that so many people tend to assume a lack of nuance in other people's games.

 

[Charlaquin]

What annoys me about these discussions is that so many people tend to assume a lack of nuance in other people's games.

To be fair, some people are literally saying “I don’t want that kind of nuance in my games!”

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So if Joe is guarding the doomsday device, it's never okay to kill them? After all, defending the device is their job but they aren't personally going out of their way to harm anyone.

If Joe is guarding the doomsday device that makes him an antagonist. It's fine to kill him. And it's just as fine to kill him if he is lawful good or chaotic evil.

 

[Stormonu]

As long as you're not giving the orcs a Cockney accent or making them inspired by Indiginous/African tribal cultures... seems fine. If you're including a bunch of stereotypes to orcs that exist to real people, maybe don't make them evil to the core.

When I talk as them, they have to speak somehow. I unconsiously slip into a false Slavic accent when doing Strahd, and the scottish dwarf stereotype seems to have been around forever. If I suddenly have my goblins speaking Japanese* because that's what I want to give it an incomprehensible bend to the players at my table am I suddenly being racist?

* chosen because I am actually attempting to learn Japanese, and my player's don't know the language.

 

[jmartkdr2]

To be fair, some people are literally saying “I don’t want that kind of nuance in my games!”

And that's fine - they are playing a fantasy game, and part of the fantasy is that the antagonists are reliably antagonistic. Plus, they're not saying "in my setting, literally every orc is a free-willed individual who chose to be cartoonishly evil." It's just that the orc the pc's are fighting are things or people the pc's can fight. The possibility of other orcs remains, it's just not used.

 

[Oofta]

Anyone replying to this public discussion on a public board?

Not the DM and their group?

You aren't the boss of me.

 

[Oofta]

If Joe is guarding the doomsday device that makes him an antagonist. It's fine to kill him. And it's just as fine to kill him if he is lawful good or chaotic evil.

Then orc are antagonists in my games.

 

[Oofta]

To be fair, some people are literally saying “I don’t want that kind of nuance in my games!”

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

There are times when I want to avoid deep, unanswerable philosophical debates. In real life there are often no good answers. That doesn't mean I personally enjoy replicating those issues in game.