D&D General D&D doesn't need Evil

[Charlaquin]

Really? What is there to possibly take issue with? A new player isn't going to have the baggage from prior editions and 5e only has one vague sentence for alignment.

Again I point you to orcs.

Editing to add this before my train goes into the mountains and I lose connection: orcs are not the whole problem, they are indicative of the many problems with having an objective moral standard in the game. The new crowd is more likely to take issue with it because younger folks tend to have more postmodern (or at this point, post-postmodern) worldviews,

 

[Maxperson]

Again I point you to orcs.

And again, that's not really an alignment issue. It's a 5E race issue caused by 5e labelling the entire race as evil, rather than using the 3e model where entire countries of orcs could be LG. The primary issue with the orcs you keep pointing to is the written descriptions, not alignment.

Editing to add this before my train goes into the mountains and I lose connection: orcs are not the whole problem, they are indicative of the many problems with having an objective moral standard in the game.

Then show them. You have yet to show any problem other than orcs, which are not a problem with alignment itself.

The new crowd is more likely to take issue with it because younger folks tend to have more postmodern (or at this point, post-postmodern) worldviews,

Okay. Thanks for at least admitting that you are just assuming it's a problem for them. I haven't seen it be an actual problem for them, though.

 

[Redwizard007]

Are we at the point in the argument where it is ok to have evil actions as long as we don't call them out as such, but having evil races or individuals is hurtful?

 

[Maxperson]

Are we at the point in the argument where it is ok to have evil actions as long as we don't call them out as such, but having evil races or individuals is hurtful?

Not exactly. It's more like...

It's okay to have evil actions like murder, and it's okay for us at the table to call murder evil, but if the game labels murder as evil it's big bad wrong fun, because that would be using alignment.

 

[Faolyn]

Can someone fill me in on how LE doesn't have context? I mean there's has been a river of ink over the editions... Am I missing something?

Sure.

Say the PCs are in a dungeons and meet a Izouna, a LE mage. That's the info you get on her. How do you RP Izouna?

 

[Faolyn]

Are we at the point in the argument where it is ok to have evil actions as long as we don't call them out as such, but having evil races or individuals is hurtful?

No.

You can have evil actions and call them evil. You can have evil individuals. You can have evil groups.

But there needs to be more than just a label. Come up with motivations for them to be evil. An Always Evil race makes no sense. It wouldn't function, especially the creatures are mortal beings who need to raise young and live in a group to survive.

You can definitely have individuals or a group of creatures with an evil goal: summon destructive entities; steal and kill for personal profit; genocide another race because they don't like them for whatever reason; hurt or control a group for power. But just saying "they're evil because I need a bad guy for this adventure" is a weak reason.

 

[Thunder Brother]

Sure.

Say the PCs are in a dungeons and meet a Izouna, a LE mage. That's the info you get on her. How do you RP Izouna?

Man, I hated this question on the ACT.

 

[Faolyn]

The alignment problem being argued in the orc threads is that all of them are evil. That wasn't the case in 3e. You could have entire countries of LG orcs by RAW. It's a simple fix.

No, the problem is that never actually happened. There weren't any countries of LG orcs. Whenever there were non-evil orcs, it was because they lived with other humanoids who "civilized" them. There weren't any groups of orcs who decided on their own to to be good.

Which is basically saying that these groups of people are incapable of being not-evil unless a "better" people teaches them.

 

[Maxperson]

No, the problem is that never actually happened.

Can you prove that? It seems to me that I played a game with one DM who in 3e had a country of non-evil orcs.

There weren't any countries of LG orcs. Whenever there were non-evil orcs, it was because they lived with other humanoids who "civilized" them. There weren't any groups of orcs who decided on their own to to be good.

If you're talking about official sources, well I've already shown you multiple examples of settings with orcs that weren't evil and lived with humans, including the Forgotten Realms. So yes, it did happen.

Your complain seems to be that it didn't happen enough for your personal preferences, which isn't a reason for taking alignment out of a game for everyone. YOU remove it for your game and we can all be happy.

 

[Oofta]

Do we really need yet another thread shut down for a discussion of the race that shall not be named?