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

[ezo]

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.

But goblins were playable in 2014 eventually, along with orcs. They backtracked on that--for now. Making goblins fey isn't the solution--it solves nothing. People will still want to play them as PCs as you say.

Humans have always been a PC option, but they can be villians and killed off wholesale if they oppose the PCs via their acts (preferably evil acts...).

So, what really are the problems?

 

[Bedrockgames]

For me that propaganda is so awful and lame that it ruins the movie in the same way it having some terrible musical numbers would. It's like "ewww". The most hilarious example of lame propaganda remains Hero, which has an ending so propagandistic that it completely destroys the momentum of the movie like it hit a wall and turns tragedy into entirely unintentionally very funny farce.

Ip Man gets more and like that as the series go. The last one is pretty blatant. I get it if that turns one off completely. For me the action, the character, Donnie yen and the overall story is enough to keep me wanting to see them (but they are what they are)

 

[Alzrius]

Ip Man gets more and like that as the series go.

This is kind of unrelated, but there's a fun fact about the first film that flies under a lot of people's radar: in the scene where the titular character confronts his friend who's working as a translator for the occupying Japanese army, calling him a traitor for working with them while his friend protests about needing to feed and protect his family, the scene ends with his friend yelling at Ip Man (who is walking away in disgust), "I'm a Chinese man!"

What the subtitles don't catch is that he yells that sentence (and only that sentence) in Japanese, the language of their occupiers. It subtly changes the context of the scene, but since the subtitles don't indicate it, there's no way to know that unless you happen to speak either Cantonese or Japanese.

 

[Retreater]

I find that there is a gamist need for certain games to have low level "fodder" bad guy statblocks. These can be bandits, guards, or whatever. I have used generic elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc, as antagonists in certain adventures.
As long as there's something mechanical, I can add details to say "this bandit happens to be an orc" or whatever. But I would prefer to be able to add traits that made them feel more interesting from a mechanical perspective.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

People didn't want to have those conversations about savage orcs and chainmail bikinis, but those conversations still happen.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But goblins were playable in 2014 eventually, along with orcs. They backtracked on that--for now.

If the rules have not been replaced, they still apply, as per WotC. Goblins are still playable. As are fairies (who are fey).

Making goblins fey isn't the solution--it solves nothing.

It solves two things:

1) D&D goblins were out of line with 2020 pop culture goblins.

2) D&D goblins were boring.

 

[Scribe]

So, what really are the problems?

Well, I can tell you what isnt the problem.

Killing the other goblinoids in droves, because you see they are Fey, not People.

 

[TiQuinn]

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.


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.

I don’t know if Dirty Harry ever really tried to say anything negative about Harry Callahan unless it was the viewer bringing their own views into matters. Don Siegel and the screenwriters mostly cut their teeth on the 1950s western genre, specifically John Wayne movies, which were very much not known for being introspective in any such way. Eastwood movies were very much anchored in casual racism and rugged individuality, and it was always “the system” that was preventing a good man from carrying out justice. His final act in Dirty Harry is throwing away his badge - he’s not broken, it’s saying the system that’s broken and it’s his final statement about that system.

 

[TwoSix]

People didn't want to have those conversations about savage orcs and chainmail bikinis, but those conversations still happen.

And I happily ignored those too!

 

[Scribe]

People didn't want to have those conversations about savage orcs and chainmail bikinis, but those conversations still happen.

Wait, are we sure about this...