D&D 5E I thought WotC was removing biological morals?

[Gradine]

Yes, but the thread is about fey creatures.

If this is going to just be another orc/drow thread, I'm just gonna close it.

There was a side-conversation about the concept of "biological essentialism" and why it was bad, a question that was asked up-thread; Orcs were brought up as the example of it in action. I could trace it back to a comment Danny asked early in the thread about how "biological morals" wasn't the issue, only the racist language used to describe Orcs was, and how there were some of us who do take issues with biological morals.

Of course, you are right in that none of it applies to Redcaps, true fae aren't biological. But it does speak to the idea of "biological morals" and the problems that it entails.

 

[el-remmen]

Sure. Zack Snyder’s zombies, for example, rather miss the mark on the consumerism metaphor. But zombies as an immigration metaphor? That’s so far afield of any interpretation I’ve ever heard… it’s not a drift, it’s a complete non-sequitur. I would need to hear a more detailed analysis under this interpretive lens before accepting it out of hand.

But early films like 1932’s White Zombie makes the fear of abject blackness and the slave that rises against its master as a central fear. As Simone Brioni reminds us in his Cinergie article, “Zombies and the Post-colonial Italian Unconscious,” Frantz Fanon compared the result of the psychopathology of colonization to the condition of the zombie. The Afro-Caribbean roots of the figure of the zombie make such connections obvious. The zombie apocalypse genre itself then represents the fear of the colonized chickens coming home to roost, making a new home in the Euro-American places that used their self-styled narratives of civilized exceptionalism as a tool to justify their centuries of exploitation. So, if colonized peoples were to accept as truth the virtues of the colonizer, why would they not seek out the source of their abjection and the final destination of their siphoned wealth in hopes of getting a piece of it? In other words, cinematic zombism is the dark reflection of imperial hunger turned back on itself.

Quoting something I wrote about 6 years ago but relevant to Charlaquin's comment above. The essay is not specifically about zombism = immigration, but does explore "The slippage between zombies and marginalized national subjects [that] points towards the danger of colonial forces pointed inward that make black and brown bodies into commodities that must be either controlled or destroyed."

 

[Undrave]

because it kind of wants me to make orcish were-dolphins. And wouldn't they be horrible?

Wouldn't they be Were-Orcas?

 

[Gradine]

a name applied to various sea-beasts of the dolphin order"

Speaking of entire species full of psychopaths...

 

[mrpopstar]

Emotional elevation is evidenced by cycling expression (in contrast to emotional depression which is evidenced by flattened expression). The Feywild and Shadowfell are the material world's cosmological elevation and depression.

If the fey are elevations given life, it would makes sense that their form would be mutable. -- Actually, that's quite cool!

However, monster type speaks to the fundamental nature of a creature. Celestials and fiends are wholly different entities.

And now I'm seeing the Feywild and Shadowfell as being the representations of the manic and depressive states of bipolar disorder.

My game just leveled up!

It's not the Feywild and Shadowfell that are emotions incarnate, it's Aborea (elevated, cycling, externalized, passionate, giving) and Gehenna (depressed, flattened, internalized, paranoid, greedy).

The Feywild is the material world in technicolor (dazing, delightful) and the Shadowfell is the material world drained of color (dampening, dreadful).

All this time I've been ascribing the nature of the fey creatures that inhabit the Feywild to the Feywild itself. It was always a blurry line and it all just clicked!

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Start with this: It isn't about just you.

This is about effects of repeated imagery and depictions in large populations over time. This is a statistical effect, not a Warpiglet effect.

That’s the thing. If it was a statistical issue it would be more coherent.

this is far from the result of a factor analysis.

like I said, the efforts are well intentioned if misdirected or strangely applied.

it is true this is not about ‘me’ but that does not mean I should not be interested or apply some kind of reason to it. Since they are changing a game I have played a long time I have a horse in the race.

people are quick to project their own feelings and archetypes which is natural. But it’s haphazard and I think where some see the drow as being hateful toward powerful women, I see “black widow spiders”…the female drow metaphorically eat their mates. Aren’t the black widow females larger and more powerful than the males?

just one of many examples of people seeing what they want to see. And consequently designers say “yeah! Yeah! I see the face!” When looking at the clouds here but not there…

 

[Lanefan]

I... why do you disagree with me and then immediately say a bunch of stuff that is exactly what I'm saying? My problem is with the "always", not the "evil".

Ah, then I misread - sorry. I thought your (and others') issue was with the idea of a culture or species having a general alignment tendency at all.

So, to get this correct:

"Orcs - tendency: evil" is OK.
"Orcs - always evil" is not OK.

If that's your stand then yes, we're more or less in agreement; left only to argue over just how strong that tendency might be within any given culture or species.

I suppose that we do disagree on the role biology does (or should) play in it. D&D, as presented, certainly does attribute biological causes to morality. It's just that, in my view, this is both wrong and bad.

A baby orc, taken from its culture, may tend towards anger and violence even as they grow, but these traits cannot be morally judged on their own, or else every Barbarian also needs to be defined as "always evil".

I get around this by having Barbarian be a sub-species of Human (yes, with a built-in CN alignment tendency! ) rather than a class; thus you can be a Barbarisn Fighter, a Barbarian Thief, etc. - but not a Barbarian Wizard; they don't do that sort of thing. I've never been all that keen on the class in general, as WotC has done it.

 

[Argyle King]

The issue lies in Cultural Weight.

Orcs -started- as "People". Just a twisted form of people playing into a specific cultural image.

Powrie were not "People" to begin with. They were written in legend as monsters that had a humanlike shape.

Redcaps would have to have "Peopleness" applied to them, a culture, an identity, etc. Their Cultural Weight, like Angels and Demons, is that they don't really have any semblance of personal responsibility. No more moral decisionmaking to their murderous ways than a rabbit eating her young when she's stressed out.

There are stories of angels having some ability to think for self. Arguably, that's what lead to Lucifer being cast out.

Through the context of D&D, I think it becomes more blurred -as the existence of tieflings and aasimar would indicate that there is some capacity for consensual interaction with other beings. It would also seem to imply that the core essence of a D&D outsider is not such that it overpowers the ability to make decisions when the two meet and/or are joined. If the argument is that they are not capable of enough thought to make such decisions, that would imply some form of nonconsensual interaction (which is possibly more problematic).

Side Note: I vastly do prefer the version of angels (which 4th Edition embraced) which are typically fanatical servants of a higher power. The idea of an enemy who cannot be reasoned with because they are so dedicated to an ideal has an element of terror to it, especially when a "good" party finds themselves being viewed as non-good by some otherworldly judge. A similar mindset is what made MCU Thanos a compelling villain.

Orcs were (as per Tolkien) specifically twisted and created to be an evil reflection of what elves were. I certainly see why their visual representation is something which is an issue. I think there is some debate as to whether the author intended to make orcs in the image of other ethnicities or orcs are a palette swap of how elves were portrayed in his work. In either case, some portion of the audience finds their portrayal a problem. Often I find myself asking, "how should they look so as to not look like anything, while still looking like what they're supposed to be?"

D&D Orcs are something which I never really have had an idea for what they were supposed to be. Even when I was new to the game, I had a difficult time figuring out what their identity was supposed to be. They're kinda goblinoids but not. I vaguely remember that a DM I had a while back went with more pig-like features for them; that's somewhat supported by the tusks and such, but I really have little idea concerning who or what they are supposed to be.

 

[Alzrius]

Ah, then I misread - sorry. I thought your (and others') issue was with the idea of a culture or species having a general alignment tendency at all.

So, to get this correct:

"Orcs - tendency: evil" is OK.
"Orcs - always evil" is not OK.

If that's your stand then yes, we're more or less in agreement; left only to argue over just how strong that tendency might be within any given culture or species.

So basically, the way 3E did it?

 

[Azzy]

I wonder if the "fey are bound but strong emotions" excuse applies to centaurs, satyrs and hexbloods? You know, the three PC "fey" races so far...

This has already been discussed.