So it's racist if ogres are brutal? And medusa are cruel? And dragons are greedy?
Basically, monsters cannot be monstrous by default?
I mean, they can be all that without it being intrinsic to their race?
You're demanding that we fundamentally dismantle how drama works. Not just in D&D, or in Western culture, but in all storytelling in every culture. Drama works by contrasting traits. It's done at the individual level, and at the group level. If a group is going to have a dramatic function, it must have traits that are contrasted with the traits of other groups.
This is not what this is. The idea that these attributes must be intrinsic to a monster's being is totally not what "drama" is.
If elves and dwarves are the same except in appearance, there is no longer any dramatic tension or contrast between elves and dwarves.
Why do elves have to be completely the same if they don't have these intrinsic racial traits? Like, does their entire conflict come from their race, or does it come from an actual event, actual disagreements, actual conflict?
If ogres can have any qualities, then they've become generic vessels instead of monsters.*
Ogres will still physically
be ogres, and can still be shaped by the events around them.
A D&D that met the moral ideals many here are calling for would be unrecognizable. It would be like turning every Hollywood movie into a Paul Thomas Anderson film.
It would literally not be. For naughty word's sake, I know I don't run naughty word like it is portrayed in the Monster Manual. This is amazingly hyperbolic for no real reason.
And the elephant in the room here is that we've apparently evolved past treating ogres as monsters and into an enlightened era where they have rich and nuanced possibilities of values and behaviour. But the default solution to every problem is still to hack it apart with swords or incinerate it with fireballs.
I mean, why is that the default solution to every problem? For naughty word's sake, do you not try to parlay, interrogate, negotiate, investigate?
If we're interrogating the hobby to remove behaviours we find problematic in the real world, why ignore the brutal and unrelenting violence, much of it against intelligent and sentient beings? Or is that more of a 2025 thing?
I dunno, maybe because we can justify brutal violence due to the circumstances in which it occurred, rather than just defaulting to it? I mean, is this some sort of big shakeup now? Am I missing something?
