D&D General Drow & Orcs Removed from the Monster Manual

[Micah Sweet]

Mostly agree. I’d just add if the solution for goblins is making them fey, they could have made orcs into something just as easily killable. Except orcs were turned into a PC option.

Maybe it’s just my group but I find more people interested in playing a goblin than an orc these days.

Ran a whole goblinoid campaign last year.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Re: violence there are movies where violence happens and it's cool and whoa, but there are also much more rarely movies which actually, genuinely, endorse violence, ideologically, which is a step beyond mere glorification.

This is why I mentioned Dirty Harry and Rambo. Obviously the first Dirty Harry film has a much more nuanced moral landscape (and I don't think that movie endorses violence because in the end, in order to use violence to achieve justice, Harry is a broken man). But I like the other movies in the series as well and many of those blatantly endorse violence. I don't agree with the message, but I enjoy the films and I also think it is useful to understand where the movies are coming from because they do raise problems you have to grapple with if you are against using violence

When I have more time I will address your 24 post as this is the reason I brought it up (it definitely starts endorsing both violence and political views I disagree with, and that my father definitely had issues with). For right now I can say, we had long conversations about it and ultimately agreed we found that violence still to be cathartic because it was make believe.

 

[Alzrius]

I think there's actually quite a lot of "soft endorsement" out there, like, maybe as many as 20% of people who play don't really believe that in the sense of applying it to the real world normally, but definitely are kind of soft on that idea, and basically selectively support colonialist violence, even whilst perhaps paying lip-service to the idea that its bad. Further, there's like, 5%, in my experience, who absolutely do think the colonialist violence is the point and a good thing.

I'm skeptical, since I have it on good authority that 73.6% of all statistics are made up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You are 100% correct that I don't want to have this conversation in the context of my entertainment media.

Other people can have it, of course. But I'm not making major changes to my morality at 46 years old.

I'm fine with having it, but it's not going to change how I feel about fiction and how it differs from reality.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe it’s just my group but I find more people interested in playing a goblin than an orc these days.

It's not just your group.

And if you are even slightly, remotely adjacent to modern... um... "thirsty" fantasy art (I just follow some people on Bsky and Twitter, okay!), you know goblins are real popular...

It's the worst of all worlds: here is a foe you're intended to kill, but we're not going to tell you what to do with CR if you want that foe to actually have the "Adrenaline Rush" or "Relentless Endurance" trait the 2024 PC Orc has, or the "Aggressive" trait the 2014 MM Orc has. You figure it out.

Yeah the "you figure it out" is indeed the problem here! Like, is that template worth +CR? Does it raise 1/4 CR to 1/2? 4 to 5? Come on!

I'm leaning towards infestation myself (like the Last of Us, or the Zerg in Starcraft). Infestation naturally triggers a disease/disgust response, which tends to prime us towards violence. Hiveminds with insectile characteristics are good too (who doesn't want to squash a bug?).

Yes that's another classic. Just be careful about whether you make it possible to de-infest people/beings. If you can, and you don't, suddenly a gigantic blazing moral question appears in the heavens and won't go away, like some baleful comet. Even if you make it so say, killing the source de-infests the remaining people, then as soon as you learn that it becomes a moral imperative to kill as few infested as possible, which can put a real damper on things. I think the best way of doing it is to say "If you're fully infected, it's over, you're done, no going back, but we can stop future infections by doing X or Y".

 

[Alzrius]

I think the best way of doing it is to say "If you're fully infected, it's over, you're done, no going back, but we can stop future infections by doing X or Y".

Just nuke the planet from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Obviously the first Dirty Harry film has a much more nuanced moral landscape (and I don't think that movie endorses violence because in the end, in order to use violence to achieve justice, Harry is a broken man). But I like the other movies in the series as well and many of those blatantly endorse violence.

Yeah but I do have to say, I think they too became less enjoyable as they became more keen on this cheap and simplistic/propagandistic idea of Harry as an "Avenging Angel" rather that as you correctly point out, a really screwed-up guy from the first movie.

I'd also say the second one, Magnum Force, is kinda okay in this regard, because Harry still seems messed up, and the answer to murderous cops who execute criminals willy-nilly and the politicians who aid them is to blow away said murderous cops and detonate (!!!) the politicians who aid them. Which is like, almost radical? Even if he's mostly doing it because he's mad with them for thinking they're him! (It's a very modern comic book kind of movie!).

Those movies were very much formative in how I thought about the morality and ideology movies and media put, and how I wrestled with it.

For right now I can say, we had long conversations about it and ultimately agreed we found that violence still to be cathartic because it was make believe.

Yeah I think when it's just bang bang whoa holy hell boom bang bang I think it's a lot easier to take than when it's bang bang "Here is a speech explaining why I am morally correct to murder people" boom bang bang.

Jack Bauer has a similar if slower evolution to a flanderized version of himself, like Dirty Harry. And like Harry, even when he's flanderized, the writers occasionally remember the original character and let it show through.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It may not trigger you to go commit violence (and I am NOT saying it does) but if you say believe in pacifism and your favorite movie IS Predator, I do question how you square a believe that violence isn't the answer with enjoying a movie that says violence isn't the answer, it's the question and the answer is Yes.

My favorite movie isn't predator. But it is one of them.

I square it because movies are art, and the beliefs expressed in a movie don't have to capture my own. I mean I don't agree with the core premise of Last Temptation of Christ, but I find it a compelling watch and I want to see the perspective it is presenting. With predator, I enjoy the onscreen violence. Because I know none of those people are actually being harmed. The problem with violence in the real world is that it hurts and kills real people. It causes real world physical pain and death. Predator is all movie makeup, special effects and it using violence to achieve an an entertaining, even artistic, result. This is why we like things like Shakespearean tragedies. There is an emotional catharsis that kind of drama achieves. Yet I don't think anyone of us would endorse mass poisonings or suicide.

Also if you are going to be an apologist for resolving things non-violently, I think the worst, absolutely worst, way you can go about that is going after peoples' entertainment. You aren't going to win people over by telling them to stop watching Rambo. You aren't going to win people over by insisting we make these things more boring and dull

 

[TwoSix]

Yes that's another classic. Just be careful about whether you make it possible to de-infest people/beings. If you can, and you don't, suddenly a gigantic blazing moral question appears in the heavens and won't go away, like some baleful comet. Even if you make it so say, killing the source de-infests the remaining people, then as soon as you learn that it becomes a moral imperative to kill as few infested as possible, which can put a real damper on things. I think the best way of doing it is to say "If you're fully infected, it's over, you're done, no going back, but we can stop future infections by doing X or Y".

100%. You want contagious but not too contagious (or the PCs have to decontaminate after every fight, which is tiresome), relatively easy to treat early on (again, to allow PCs to not get it), but irreversible after the onset of symptoms.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

100%. You want contagious but not *too*contagious (or the PCs have to decontaminate after every fight, which is tiresome), relatively easy to treat early on (again, to allow PCs to not get it), but irreversible after the onset of symptoms.

What can I say but yes EXACTLY that.