D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Michael Linke]

The whole idea that a campaign setting needs to have real world cultural analogs is lazy. I excuse Mystara for doing this because it sort of did it first before it was a tired trope, but I would be 10000% open to a hypothetical resurrection of Mystara moving these cultures away from their real world influences toward more original, fantastical presentations.

 

[Vaalingrade]

No. That was Gygax's opinion that he used for his personal game and in advice given, but the books do not say that it is good to torture a creature into becoming good.

Book of Exalted Deeds.

And don't try to say 'well that's a past edition' because this is a General thread.

 

[Faolyn]

The 1e MM is supposed to be used to challenge and fight PCs, so of course they will be written that way. That's their intended function within the game. They are not some sort of dissertation on the societies of said monsters outside of that context.

And yet the trend continued in 2e, which included Habitat/Society and Ecology sections. And in Dragon magazines, which had articles (e.g., Half-Orcs, in #62, and The Humanoids, in #63, both by Roger Moore for 1e; despite the title, Half-Orcs is more about orcs than half-orcs) where they had plenty of room to go into their society--and they used that room to talk about how awful they are.

If they had wanted the humanoids to be not always evil, I'm they would have thought to write that. You don't need to write a dissertation on it. You need one sentence, maybe two. In modern parlance, all you need is a hash tag. After all, the 1e MM included a fair number of good and neutral monsters who weren't supposed to be used to challenge and fight PCs.

In the Half-Orcs article above, Moore talks about how even half-orcs raised by humans are only occasionally going to be neutral or, more rarely, good, but will be "unnaturally" (by human standards) Lawful, because back in 1e, orcs were LE, not CE.

Yep. Doesn't apply to arguments that say, "Why aren't there any exceptions in individuals?" or "Why is it that X monster CANNOT be a different alignment?" The exceptions in those cases neatly counter the arguments being used.

Yes, it does apply to those arguments, very much so. Because no matter what you, as a DM, may decide, the books themselves show that the game expected orcs, goblins, etc., to be entirely evil, with maybe an exception. And "this orc is OK, he's a good orc," is not a neat counter at all.

And anyway, even if and when the MMs blatantly say "not all whatevers need to be this alignment," that only actually means something if the books actually show this to be true, and not just as that one exception. Heck, skipping editions, Obould Many-Arrows: uniter of his peoples, broker of peace treaties, willing to put his own anger aside to form important alliances. Chaotic Evil. Not even Lawful! In 3x, when orcs were only "often" Chaotic Evil, they wouldn't change this one orc's alignment to even Lawful Evil.

That is why saying that the exceptions counter the arguments.

 

[Voranzovin]

To return to the tiger analogy brought up earlier in the thread, I'm not sure there's that much difference between tigers and mind flayers in terms of their ability to make moral judgements. We tend to assume that creatures with higher intelligence should be able to make moral judgements, because we're the most intelligent species on the planet in real life and that's what we do. But there's really no reason to assume that this is the case. After all, humans with high intelligence (for whatever definition of the term you'd like to use) don't necessarily act more morally.

It's easy to imagine a species with greater then human intelligence that utterly lacks the capacity to make moral judgements of any kind, or even recognize the concept. Such a creature would be terrifying....especially if it had tentacles and wanted to eat your brain. So for me, that's kind of the point, and it's why I treat mind flayers as neutral in my campaigns. No, you won't find any eating vegan brain substitute and running the local grocery store, any more then you'd find a shark doing those things. If you suddenly made a shark hyper-intelligent, they wouldn't stop being a shark. And sharks aren't evil. They're just sharks, doing what sharks do.

I kind of like the idea that this makes Mind Flayers mutually incomprehensible not just with humanoids (all of whom are capable of making moral judgements, even if they often don't behave morally), but also with demons, devils, and other outsiders. For demons and devils, cruelty is the point. They're essentially made out of cruelty and hatred. Mind Flayers are so alien they can't even process the concept of hate.

 

[Maxperson]

"Characteristic bent" even...

View attachment 149529

This seems a light more open than the Moldvay basic ones...
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The infamous Gygax quote on mercy seems more inline with Moldvay than the 1e MM.


But I do have issue with the only purpose of the MM to be to challenge and fight PCs. There are a number of good creatures as well.

That's what I say challenge. I think good monsters are there provide challenges to PCs other than killing. Having to talk one down from righteous revenge(on a mostly innocent populous) for the murder of its mate for example.

 

[Cadence]

RE: Alignment tangent

In my current game I've separated evil and EVIL/CHAOS/BAD. The three flavors of really bad are Aberration, Undeath, and Temptation, with the respective goals of converting the universe to incomprehensible chaotic miasma, extinguishing life and bringing about the void, and driving other beings to depravity.

The actual aberrations, undead, and demons are EVIL to me in this world because those are the respective singular end goals of all of their work and deeds. Their raison d'etre. If one among them capable of planning does a "good deed" it was only because the outsider judging it "good" didn't see how much more it would spread their goals. They are incapable of having any other long term final ambition. They are incurable. If confined they would be left unfulfilled and bide their time until they could work towards the final end.

A mere priest or practitioner or monster or even devil on the other hand could be doing evil, and maybe even serving the forces of BAD for any number of reasons. Maybe it spared them a more immediate death, gives them hope of power in what they falsely imagine the eventual hierarchy to be, lets them spit in the eye of those that cast them out, etc... Maybe one is even partially transformed into an aberration, undead, or demon, but isn't there yet and has other hungers beyond the ultimate end. These might be yet saved if caught before the last speck of their being has been converted.

There may well be a creature or followers that feeds off of human brains (to eat), run gladitorial fights (for entertainment), torture (for the endorphin rush of sadism), and keeps slaves (to make less work for themselves). Those are not the Illithid in this latest world I made. The Illithid of that world feed off of human brains (to sustain themselves on their quest for converting all to chaotic miasma), torture (to create psychic energy that slowly converts all to chaotic miasma), run gladitorial fights (to mold them into tools for converting all to chaotic miasma), and keep slaves (to work towards moving the universe to chaotic miasma). And, when they succeed and lose their own selves in the universal roil of all encompassing chaos? Well, they win, and become part of what their existence was aimed at and will be for time unending.

Why have them that way? Because it felt like a thing to have in the story when needed. Because sometimes it's nice to beat something unquestionably EVIL.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, it does apply to those arguments, very much so. Because no matter what you, as a DM, may decide, the books themselves show that the game expected orcs, goblins, etc., to be entirely evil, with maybe an exception. And "this orc is OK, he's a good orc," is not a neat counter at all.

No. No it doesn't apply to those arguments. You cannot say, "My issue is that every last one of this race is evil and the books don't allow for individual exceptions." and then cry, "The exception proves the rule!" when you are shown that your argument is in error.

And I have shown you repeatedly where the bolded portion hasn't been true since 3e came out. You of course try to brush that aside with some sort of, "but the published books don't show that." followed by me showing that in published books and you making some other excuse.

 

[Voadam]

Book of Exalted Deeds.

A 3.5 supplement book with some neat mechanics and flavor stuff (celestial lords yay!), and some fairly terrible mechanics and advice on alignments that can sometimes be very hard to reconcile with 3.5 core book alignment descriptions or many thoughts on morality.

I would advise skimming this one for parts you like and not get too worked up on the likely many parts you do not.

 

[Maxperson]

A 3.5 supplement book with some neat mechanics and flavor stuff (celestial lords yay!), and some fairly terrible mechanics and advice on alignments that can sometimes be very hard to reconcile with 3.5 core book alignment descriptions or many thoughts on morality.

I would advise skimming this one for parts you like and not get too worked up on the likely many parts you do not.

I went to look for it and I found this in the 3.5 Book of Exalted Deeds in the redemption of evil section.

"Holding a sword to a captured villain’s throat and shouting, “Worship Heironeous or die!” is not a means of redemption. Sword-point conversion might be a useful political tool, but it is almost entirely without impact on the souls of the “converts.” Worse, it stinks of evil, robbing the victim of the freedom to choose and echoing the use of torture to extract the desired behavior. True redemption is a much more difficult and involved process, but truly virtuous characters consider the reward worth the effort involved. The process of redemption is described in Chapter 2: Variant Rules"

Then I looked in Chapter 2 under redeeming variant rules and found this.

"Prisoners must be treated with a certain amount of respect. Torturing prisoners is out of the question, of course, and generally knocking prisoners unconscious again every time they wake up amounts to cruelty"

It's explicitly saying that torture is not a way to do it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And yet, Sanctify the Wicked.

But this is the book that justified agonizing poisons with 'they're turning evil back on their source'.