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

[BookTenTiger]

As @Malmuria pointed out upthread, there seems to be universal agreement in this thread that it's okay for the redcap to be evil. The large majority of the thread hasn't been about the redcap. Even the OP, afaics, doesn't have an issue with the redcap. The issue OP was raising is whether it makes sense to remove evil alignments while keeping descriptors such as "homicidal" that mean the same thing (which I think is a reasonable point).

I'm not sure homicidal = evil in D&D. I mean, this happens all the time:

Lawful Good Paladin: Why is this bridge blocked? I need to get through to fight the devil armies.

NPC: There's a 1 gp toll.

Lawful Good Paladin (drawing sword): Pelor grant me the strength to smite my enemies!!!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

IMO. That's a rather fuzzy boundary.

1. When we have a paragraph describing a creature in an RPG, who decides how much of that paragraph must align to RW bigoted stereotyping before it's 'problematic'? Is it one sentence, one word, half the paragraph?

That depends on the sentence, worrd or paragraph, now doesn’t it?

Simply calling a group “savages” wouldn’t be sufficient. But start adding “brutish”, “dark-skinned”, “lazy”, “fecund” and the like, and the problem quickly comes into focus.

OTOH, use of a RW single-word slur would be questionable on its face.

(Context matters, of course: using such language when illustrating this is a holdover of prior bigotry- say, in a Shadorun or RIFTS type setting might be permissible, if ill-advised.)

2. Most negative language has been used at some point to describe specific groups of people, especially if we go back in history far enough. How far back in history do we go in our attempts to purge RW bigoted stereotyping?

I’m not sure we need to address the slurs Romans used against Celts & vice versa, but if we’re talking cultures & peoples still in existence? Yeah, we need to talk.

3. One pro to sci-fi and fantasy literature is that the worlds and peoples inhabiting those worlds don't actually exist. This allows questions to be explored like, 'how would things be if there really was biological essentialism'. 'how would things be if certain biological species were actually 100% evil'. 'what if the evil of certain races wasn't just an offensive negative stereotype but actually real and true'

Perhaps, you would find more agreement if you worked on showing that the principles driving the changes weren't as broad and sweeping as some imagine?

Funny you should mention sci-fi.

In another thread on this board on this topic, several posters (myself included) pointed out how most sci-fi writers of the past 50+ years have successfully avoided using the language of RW bigotry, even when writing about topics like bigotry.


Edit: my last paragraph disappeared while posting; I edited it back in.

 

[Aldarc]

Believe me, if the threshold was "humanoids shouldn't be evil" it l the debate would have simmered down some by not. The fact we're debating the redcap shows that this doesn't end at orcs and drow shows a willingness to move the goalposts to include all manner of sentient beings, so much so the term "monster" will no longer be applicable.

My impression of discussion in that thread, admittedly having followed it quite loosely, is that a lot the "debate" doesn't so much involve a moving of goal posts, but, rather, a bad faith slippery slope argument, which is often how many of these arguments go. People seem to think that D&D will all go to hell in a handbasket by disproving that a clear cut line doesn't exist on a slippery slope of their own creation, albeit with the presumption that, therefore, the status quo surrounding this issue should be maintained.

 

[Remathilis]

I'm not sure homicidal = evil in D&D. I mean, this happens all the time:

Lawful Good Paladin: Why is this bridge blocked? I need to get through to fight the devil armies.

NPC: There's a 1 gp toll.

Lawful Good Paladin (drawing sword): Pelor grant me the strength to smite my enemies!!!

I'm increasingly convinced that the PCs are the real monsters in D&D and the great trick is the game convinces players they are the heroes when they are really the villains.

 

[Faolyn]

Why not?
If you are comparing to humans, why can't you say the wood elf is wiser than a human on average, and the high elf is smarter than the human, on average.

That's not what I said.

Why are high elves more intelligent than wood elves, and why are wood elves wiser than high elves?

Also, if humans get a +1 to all stats, then the average high elf is as intelligent as the average human, but not as wise as the average human, and the average wood elf is as wise as the average human, but not as smart--and neither type of elf is as charismatic as the average human is.

 

[Maxperson]

This. Also, the rules of the game assume that gods oversee the world and none can deny their existence. Creationism isn't a religious belief, it is known that the gods created the various races with their own hands (or from their tears, their blood, etc.).

It is a religious belief. There are multiple different gods that all claim to have created everything, and others who claim to have created specific races. They can't all be true.

 

[Maxperson]

Could they not be changed (maybe with or without ability changes) to well... not always be evil?

3e did a great job with that. Alignment for the "evil" races was listed as, "Usually evil" or "Often evil." There were numbers for that as well. "Usually chaotic evil," which orcs were, just meant that more than half were chaotic evil. So 50.01% qualified if the DM wanted it to. That left a great deal of room for every other alignment including Lawful Good.

 

[mrpopstar]

It is a religious belief. There are multiple different gods that all claim to have created everything, and others who claim to have created specific races. They can't all be true.

True.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

So... Farmers. Farmers on the Oregon Trail were evil?

They were certainly complicit in evil. But they largely weren't evil people, themselves. They certainly benefitted from the evils performed by others (As the vast majority of American Citizens still do) but to say they were evil is just laughable.

They were foreign invaders occupying land that the native inhabitants had been driven from but continued to fight to reclaim. Settlers were often the ones doing the fighting, enabling the continued conquest of North America. Further, the settlers were a disease-ridden people who spread plagues among the rightful inhabitants of the continent by their presence, having grown resilient to disease themselves from the filthy conditions of European civilization. The settlers' own religious beliefs also necessitated that they view the beliefs of the native nations as being both false and dangerous to the soul, and therefore worthy of destruction.

So yes, the European settlers were essentially an evil horde of invaders cutting a swathe across the continent and spreading sickness as they went.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

True.

But perhaps all the conflicting creation stories are true! How? It is a transcendent metaphysical mystery no mortal mind can understand!