D&D 5E D&D Races: Evolution, Fantasy Stereotypes & Escapism

[Scott Christian]

That's a bit reductionist.

I agree. It is a bit reductionist. That's why I asked. I am responding to @Faolyn's statement:

For an entire race of humanoids or other mortal creatures? No, I can't get behind the idea of inherent evil. I have no problem with supernatural beings being inherently evil, though.

But, AGAIN, it's not just "inherently evil" that's the problem. Why do people keep repeating this? That's not the issue and it should be really, really clear by now that that's not the issue. The issue HAS NEVER BEEN INHERENTLY EVIL BEINGS.

The issue is that we've described beings using language that clearly mirrors racist thinking. No one cares if a manticore is evil because manticores have never been a stand in for real world people. THERE IS ALWAYS TWO POINTS TOGETHER.

Again, you do not have to yell. I never said that was the problem. In fact, if you read my posts, you would see I tried to bring the two sides together to fix the problem. I chose to try and rewrite the orc so it doesn't contain the hurtful language it did in the PHB. Did you try to fix the problem? Did you also try to rewrite it? (Perhaps I missed something.)
If you didn't, and the only thing you've done is tell the other side why they are wrong in having inherently evil orcs, then perhaps you can take a different approach and try to help them instead of lecturing them.

The two points that need to be kept together are:

1. Is this thing described as inherently evil/bad/nasty?

AND

2. Has that thing been described using language that mirrors language that has been applied to real world people?

As per my, now, three other posts - If you remove the language, is it then okay to have inherently evil orcs? If not, then you need to state exactly that. It is never okay for orcs to be inherently evil. At least then, when people debate you, they are not caught in a quagmire of semantic rebuttals.

 

[Scott Christian]

It feels like...

There are some that are fine with any particular creature/monster type being innately of a given alignment (and other creature types having each individual able to pick its alignment) depending on the campaign world.

Yeah, that is what I am reading too. I am just trying to clarify.

There are some that would have all "humanoids", aka "people", treated the same as far as being able to choose their individual alignments.

There are others that say anything with free will should have freedom to choose it's own alignment.

And there are some that would get rid of intrinsic alignment altogether.

(And there are folks who would draw the lines in between those.)

Agreed. It feels like this would be a good questionnaire. Not sure how to word it, but it would be nice to see most of the lines are drawn here at EnWorld.

 

[Scott Christian]

You misunderstand. There's no motive for the creature to be evil or do perform evil acts beyond "because I (the DM) say so." It's trite and boring, as well as being cartoonishly unrealistic, considering they are are otherwise just like any other people.

Give orcs a reason to perform evil acts.

Could you give examples of inherently evil reasons? Or are all those reasons external, such as resource scarcity, xenophobia, etc.?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well I mean xenophobia is the leading reason for calling your neighbors inherently evil.

 

[Scott Christian]

It makes zero sense for a biological entity to be inherently evil. D&D humanoids are K-strategies, which means they have only one or a few young, which have a relatively longish maturation period and thus need to be cared for; they aren't r-strategists (unless you're using Space Fungus orcs instead of the typical D&D orcs). They need to eat and create tools and comfort objects like clothing, but they can't create it all themselves so they have to live in groups. They live in groups which means they need to be able to work in a group. They have societies, which means that they need to be able to work to keep the society stable or to improve it. If they were Always Evil, they would lack the ability to do any of the above for any period of time, and they would have died out ages ago, their evil having cause them to implode.

Supernatural creatures--fey, fiends, elementals, undead--are, in fact, supernatural. They are made of or animated by magic. They don't obey natural laws. Most of them don't have to reproduce; they are literally born out of their surroundings (lots of fey are created due to strong emotions and others seem to spring from nature itself, fiends are formed out of evil souls or directly created by more powerful fiends or gods, and most elementals seem to spring up from primal matter) and even those who do reproduce (like vampires, some fey, and some fiends) generally do so for either emotional reasons or to create minions, not because they are trying to keep their species in existence. Most of them either don't need to eat or have the type of diet where it doesn't pay to work with others to satisfy, because they need something like blood. Many of them are also immortal, or close to it, and as such they don't think like humanoids do. Heck, in many ways, there aren't even true "races" of supernatural beings. Statblocks aside, it's pretty fair to say that each demon is its own entity and is unrelated to any other demon, even if they have the same statblock--after all, they don't share a common ancestor since one could have come from a larva formed by an evil human on Toril and the other could have been created by a bored demon prince using a soul that he stole from a hapless good-aligned gnome from Oerth.

Thanks for clarifying your stance. It is appreciated.

So yeah. I'm sure there are plenty of examples non-evil supernatural beings. But that's completely different than what I'm talking about.

I guess I need to clarify mine as well. When I said examples exist, I was talking about fallen angels. They are created to be guardians of good. Yet, there are stories where they chose differently. Or the story of the succubus, that actually fell in love, and then decided to turn against his creator and protect the human village. That was my reference. Sorry if it was unclear.

 

[Scott Christian]

Sure, that makes sense. You're saying that we wouldn't use the terms in isolation and in writing up a monster, or presenting it to the players, we'd use more specific details to provide a more accurate picture of the creatures and cultures in question. I maintain that the much more important pieces are those details, not the label of primitive or savage, and that it's important to know what you want to convey with those words. I completely agree that the format of a monster manual entry gives room for all that information.

Yes. I agree. I like your examples much better, and I think they give the DM much more to work with. But RPG books are written in a weird expository/narrative format, much like nonfiction books by the likes of Malcolm Gladwell, David Epstein, Bill Bryson, etc. It is difficult to not summarize using singular adjectives.

 

[Scott Christian]

Thread has moved on, so I'm not going to do my usual play-by-play. All I will say is, I have known plenty of people--some of them on this very forum, most of them elsewhere--who legit just want to be able to stab an orc because it's an orc and not think about it. No preamble, no establishing backstory (that would be boring faffing about, not adventuring), just "ah yes, orcs, the things you stab because they're bad." It's a thing. It's even a thing for people who otherwise put a lot of work into a world overall, building complex political and cultural things, populating a sandbox carefully with a variety of things that cohere together, or writing a big and meaningful plotline.

And yes, the overall trend is toward "well...just saying that outright has some kinda clear Bad Vibes, so let's make up a reason nothing needs to change and then continue as we were." Like, the specific reason for all that work above was so that they wouldn't actually need to think about it, and the person who built that world was explicit that that's why they did it. I can't remember the specific poster otherwise I'd just name them, and I don't really feel like doing the google search to find them. But they were very clear that the reason for it was so that they could preserve the "there's no need to think about it, they're just orcs" mentality, hence why I used it as an example. You can only get "we need to make an excuse for why this is okay" when (a) the not-okay thing is already there, and (b) you're aware that it's not-okay and thus feel the need to make it okay again.

That's fair enough, and in my opinion, they are wrong.

But one person is not a thing. It is not a movement. That is why I specifically asked for any person to step forward and say they do not a lore motive, or an environmental motive, or a character motive. I am curious, but I think that might just be one rogue person who does not represent any of the RPG communities out there. Maybe that is naive of me, but it is how I feel.

 

[Irlo]

I dont think about ANY of this.

I think low tech, low development, probably hunter/gatherer. You can certainly extrapolate stuff from there if you wanted to...but family? Government? Religion? No way.

And to imply that Religion will be lesser just because tech is? That family would be lesser? Why? Especially in a fantasy world, why? I mean heck, lets look at our oh so great and advanced present day society.

EDIT: Take literally ANY mythology you want, from our history, and contrast that with today. How did all those primitive people fare now?

Hows Religion and Family doing today in the west?

It's not my view that the religions and social structures of low-tech cultures are less advanced or inferior to those of high-tech cultures, and that's not what I was trying to express. But that is a view that is prevalent -- so prevalent it's pervades the way that history is taught and the way pop culture represents "primitive people." It's a view that has certainly had enormous repurcussions in the real world in the way that "advanced" nations interact with "primitive" ones.

As things are presented, societies follow an arc of development, from primitive to advanced, with implied value judgements attached to those stages. It's a justification for colonization, religious missions, carving up parts of the world into nations with arbitrary borders to force societies into better, more advanced forms. There are also widely-held attitudes that "primitive people" are stuck in time, having failed to advance because of their failings, limitations, or inherent qualities -- and that's wrapped up with a lot of racist assumptions and implications as well.

When you label a culture or society "primitive," all those implications come with it, whether you mean it or not. (You've said you don't think about any of that. I'm not doubting you. But a lot of people do think about it -- it's part of what "primitive people" means -- and RPG writers should be aware of that to avoid unintended implications.)

The implicaitions are even broader when labelling an entire race (rather than a particular society) as "primitive." That really seems to lean into the unstated assumptions of inherent qualities that prevent advancement which mirror the ideas supporting real-world abuses.

 

[Scott Christian]

It's not my view that the religions and social structures of low-tech cultures are less advanced or inferior to those of high-tech cultures, and that's not what I was trying to express. But that is a view that is prevalent -- so prevalent it's pervades the way that history is taught and the way pop culture represents "primitive people." It's a view that has certainly had enormous repurcussions in the real world in the way that "advanced" nations interact with "primitive" ones.

As things are presented, societies follow an arc of development, from primitive to advanced, with implied value judgements attached to those stages. It's a justification for colonization, religious missions, carving up parts of the world into nations with arbitrary borders to force societies into better, more advanced forms. There are also widely-held attitudes that "primitive people" are stuck in time, having failed to advance because of their failings, limitations, or inherent qualities -- and that's wrapped up with a lot of racist assumptions and implications as well.

When you label a culture or society "primitive," all those implications come with it, whether you mean it or not. (You've said you don't think about any of that. I'm not doubting you. But a lot of people do think about it -- it's part of what "primitive people" means -- and RPG writers should be aware of that to avoid unintended implications.)

The implicaitions are even broader when labelling an entire race (rather than a particular society) as "primitive." That really seems to lean into the unstated assumptions of inherent qualities that prevent advancement which mirror the ideas supporting real-world abuses.

This discussion makes me think of how we'll view the term "modern" or "developed country" versus "developing country" in the future. What connotations will they have?

 

[Scribe]

It's not my view that the religions and social structures of low-tech cultures are less advanced or inferior to those of high-tech cultures, and that's not what I was trying to express. But that is a view that is prevalent -- so prevalent it's pervades the way that history is taught and the way pop culture represents "primitive people." It's a view that has certainly had enormous repurcussions in the real world in the way that "advanced" nations interact with "primitive" ones.

As things are presented, societies follow an arc of development, from primitive to advanced, with implied value judgements attached to those stages. It's a justification for colonization, religious missions, carving up parts of the world into nations with arbitrary borders to force societies into better, more advanced forms. There are also widely-held attitudes that "primitive people" are stuck in time, having failed to advance because of their failings, limitations, or inherent qualities -- and that's wrapped up with a lot of racist assumptions and implications as well.

When you label a culture or society "primitive," all those implications come with it, whether you mean it or not. (You've said you don't think about any of that. I'm not doubting you. But a lot of people do think about it -- it's part of what "primitive people" means -- and RPG writers should be aware of that to avoid unintended implications.)

The implicaitions are even broader when labelling an entire race (rather than a particular society) as "primitive." That really seems to lean into the unstated assumptions of inherent qualities that prevent advancement which mirror the ideas supporting real-world abuses.

I'm on my primitive smart phone and the battery is weak..., but I really believe what you are getting at is so far beyond the realm of a word, even a definition of a word, and is so far down the rabbit hole of assumptions, politics and personal interpretation, I don't really think it can be discussed with earning myself another warning/infraction.

You may not believe their is a link between tech levels and religion. I certainly don't.

Yet you fear others do.

You don't feel the racist assumptions, beliefs or views are valid, neither do I.

But you fear others do.

So again it's George Carlin's 7 Words bit.

What are the words?
Who says these are the words?
Why are they OK in one scenario but not another, and by whose decree?