Zardnaar
Legend
I have thought of time trave in reverse. The baddies are trying to kill them based in the actions of their descendants.
Kinda like T2 but their descendants cause the equivalent of Judgement Day.
D&D General Old School DND talks if DND is racist.
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I have thought of time trave in reverse. The baddies are trying to kill them based in the actions of their descendants.
Kinda like T2 but their descendants cause the equivalent of Judgement Day.
It's not the existence of overlap -- though I won't speak for Oofta -- it's the total overlap. What is the point in saying "you meet an orc" or "you meet an elf" when orcs, elves and humans all are culturally diverse, mechanically indistinct? What information does it convey? You can't deduce anything about his culture, his expected behaviour, just that he's a biped with some degree of intelligence. How does "orc", "elves" distinguish themselves once you've removed monoculture and mechanical differences? What makes "orcs" and "elves" anything other than "humans-with-masks"? With elves, at least, I could see the extremely long lifespan affecting their viewpoint more than just cultural differences could, but it's not something I've really seen really played up. At some point there is a point when "orc" isn't a meaningful descriptor, except for some mild physical variations. And this is the point where every race is the same race.
Justice and Rule
Hero
I mean, Elves ain't human, either, but obviously "the only good elf is a dead elf" would probably feel a bit weird. Same with dwarves and other player races. I suppose my point is that Orcs come off as people, rather than monsters. Illithids and Demons feel unique and disconnected to people in different ways, but Orcs at their most base level feel just like another sapient being.
Yeah, it's sad because the Hobgoblin stuff is just really good, and they don't even give any roleplaying instructions for them! I love stuff like "Brutal Civility" and the meritocratic advancement they have. They've kind of got a fantasy Klingon vibe, but aren't simply about war.
DS9 was really good at fleshing out Klingons, Cardassians, Bajorans and Ferengi. Well, not always Ferengi, but at least they did better with them than TNG did.
I mean, by this logic, literally ANY house rule, any deviation of lore, any single word changed from RAW in any available book for the edition you play makes it Not D&D and not relevant to the discussion. If the book doesnt specifically say you can, you can't.
This is a very peculiar argument. It is a very unhelpful argument. It, in my view, is a very erroneous argument.
Time travel in some form or another has played a part in a great many games I have played...for better and worse. Time travel can be hokey, it can be hard to do well.
My example was that in the campaign, using the D&D ruleset, the plot was that the antagonists were the PCs from the future and they had perfect knowledge of what was to happen. Nothing in the D&D core ruleset prohibits this in any way.
And certainly, if you slaughter the prince or whatever you are gonna get flack for it. Thats part of the story! It is what makes what you do an actual sacrifice! It's very easy to do good when there is no cost. It is when you pay a price for doing what you feel is right that it matters. When only you will know that you did right and whilst everyone else believes you are bad it really doesnt matter what anyone else believes because what matters is the consequence of what you did.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Which is a solution that works, as long as half-orcs aren't a playable thing. If they are, it pretty much guarantees you can't do this.
Why do they need to fit a niche? This is completely separate from my "why do they need to be monoculture" line of questioning, just to be super ultra explicit about that, because I'm sure someone will try to tie the two together as though they were one position. They aren't.
Why does a race need more than "it's popular" or "as a creator, I like them" to be included as an option?
You don't need anything as an author. "Need" is a completely inappropriate standard of inclusion. If we're going by what we "need," then LITERALLY NOTHING in the books--not even human beings--is "needed." (Consider the Redwall books, which never see a human character ever and yet have a massive fan following. Or, if you want a specifically TTRPG example, Mouse Guard.)
So, why is this minimalism required? A lack of "need" is not enough. What mandates that we shouldn't have whatever races seem fun or interesting or popular or profitable or (etc.), other than "we can't include absolutely everything because books don't work that way and resources are finite"?
Why is that best? You seem to be ignoring the very significant possibility that people like these things...without needing them to be mindless violent hordes. That people may just...like buff green-skinned people, whether to look upon, or to play as, or both. Consider roegadyn from FFXIV: they're basically orcs, but emphatically not mindless. They have a cultural history, a reason why they're common in certain areas and rare in others, and they're found all over even though they're not actually native to every part of the planet originally. Most of them are either green-to-grey ("Sea Wolf" clan) or red-to-brown ("Hellsguard" clan); both clans have representation all over the world, in a variety of different cultures, though they can still trace their origins back to certain areas of the planet.
Justice and Rule
Hero
But being diverse doesn't mean they still can't be mechanically distinct: an Orc can still be tougher than a human, an Elf can still be faster and more perceptive than a human. The Orc's strength and toughness means that they can live in more inhospitable areas, travel across wastelands that a human might not, just as an elf's longevity would influence how they see the advancement of society and time. As it stands, Orcs aren't particularly distinguishable from bloodthirsty humans beyond a bonus action to get closer into combat.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
This is highly tangential to the topic at hand, but you actually can make a consequentialist argument in favor of not committing the heinous act that ends the war. It just requires taking a step back from the immediate scenario and considering the longer-term ramifications of the heinous act. Maybe you save more lives in the short term by ending the war early, but how many more might be lost because you set a precedent that such heinous acts are acceptable in wartime? How many allies did committing that act lose you, and how many new enemies did it gain you? Consequentialism isn’t “the ends justify the means,” it’s “outcomes matter more than motivation.” Wartime atrocities get labeled war crimes because most reasonable people recognize that their long-term outcomes are far worse than the immediate advantage they may offer.
Zardnaar
Legend
Several war crimes solved some problems or were committed because of other ones.
Years in the aftermath of WW2 come to mind.
Yup! That is certainly one argument that can be made! There is no right answer to this. There is no One True Way. Each PC, each party, will arrive at a different conclusion and they are all okay. Each choice will have a consequence. The important thing in gaming terms is to make the consequence feel natural and as a result of the players choices. If one weights the scales too heavily one way or another...well...it ruins it imho and makes it feel forced.
If the stakes are 'all of existence' that is too high of a stake in almost all cases for a choice like this. Because then all sorts of things become okay to do. But it is different if it is say the fate of the Kingdom that has your characters values. Or the fate of a family member.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
As with most ethical models, the value of consequentialism directly leads to the flaws thereof. It's supposed to make problems simple by diverting complex questions about motivation to simple questions about consequences. But then you get situations where the "simple" questions of consequences get complicated, because "consequences" means literally everything that could possibly result from your actions, which means that the supposed simplicity has actually turned into the complexity of "okay so what's the appropriate scale for looking at consequences of this action?" And it doesn't just work forward in time--you have to do the same thing when you start from "this was a bad consequence, we need to look for who's responsible" and the back-tracing of what causes led to those consequences can become incredibly thorny (as facetiously covered in an SMBC comic).
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