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

[doctorbadwolf]

Let's take human bandits as an example. Are some evil? Absolutely. But some may have been forced into at a very young age (similar to child soldiers), some may be desperate and see it as their only chance of survival. Some may be Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and give most of their money to the poor. Or do you think every thief in existence is evil with a capital "E"?

Does it matter if any of them are Evil? Erase cosmic Evil from the game, and the bandits are still killing townsfolk and stealing their stuff.

If they aren’t committing murder in order to more easily commit theft, the PCs probably aren’t hunting them down.

Edit: The thing is, for me, it doesn’t make it okay to kill someone “because they’re evil”. It’s okay to kill someone or not based on their actions now and in the immediate future.

 

[Oofta]

Does it matter if any of them are Evil? Erase cosmic Evil from the game, and the bandits are still killing townsfolk and stealing their stuff.

If they aren’t committing murder in order to more easily commit theft, the PCs probably aren’t hunting them down.

PCs aren't "hunting them down" in my campaign because they're evil either.

 

[Oofta]

Maybe, maybe not. We don't really know how much we humans are actually going against our instinctual programming and the answer might very well be "we're not going against our programming at all, it's just that our programming is very complex."

As an example, I was the weird kid. "Not like other girls," in a manner of speaking. Then, in my late 30s, I got diagnosed with ASD--specifically, Asperger's. And in doing research, I discovered that the weird things I did were all very normal for Aspie girls.

Drugs, injury, age, traumatic experiences and disease can all have a dramatic impact on personality. We may not understand how our brains work but to think we are completely driven by free will is overblown. We may not want to accept that much of what we do and believe is just instinct, but it is.

Do we have some control? Obviously, yes. But it's probably more limited than a lot of people acknowledge.

 

[Faolyn]

can you resist the urge to eat when your body wants to but you do not?

Could you if you hadn't eaten in days?

 

[Faolyn]

Fixed.

If those were my minis, I'd probably do what the Toon RPG did and call them Porcs.

 

[ART!]

Er, no. Read up on Nuremberg.

[the post I commented on seems to have been deleted, so...nevermind! ]

 

[Bohandas]

Of course you can. But then they stop being people and just end up as things to kill. And in that case, you might as well just use zombies or robots or whatever.

Why are evil A.I.s ok but evil organics aren't? Some versions of orcs (Warhammer) are arguably just as prefab as robots are

EDIT:
And what about beings with a collective consciousness (such as Tyranids, to use another warhammer example, or to a lesser extent D&D's modrons)? They should be expected to all think alike (unless cut off from the collective like rogue modrons or that one genestealer cult)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

PCs aren't "hunting them down" in my campaign because they're evil either.

This doesn’t seem to engage with the content of the post you’re quoting in any way I can see.

What point are you going for, here?

 

[jmartkdr2]

This doesn’t seem to engage with the content of the post you’re quoting in any way I can see.

What point are you going for, here?

I think he's just trying not to have yet another conversation about whether the sentence "all orcs are evil" is racist.

 

[Charlaquin]

we have yet to generate one that does not sound even more insane yet so it stands as one right now.

Sure, but historically people have always used whatever the most advanced technology of the time was as a metaphor for how humans functioned. And historically they have always proven to be wildly inaccurate. I see no reason to believe the pattern isn’t going to continue.

look I follow our Lord and savour on this topic, given that freedom is the right of all sapient beings I would thus see john Connor's action as immoral but understandable.

Does skynet have free will though? Personally, I think the vast majority of “artificial intelligence” in sci-fi falls short of what I would consider actual sapience. The closest I’ve seen is the ship’s computer in Star Trek (particularly in TNG), which ironically wasn’t even written to be AI.