So, what is your Favorite "Villain" race these days?

Orcs.

I like to subvert the dominant discourse.

payn said:

Yeap, I moved away from entire groups as villains and towards factions. They could be a cult, or a political outfit, maybe even a guild. They are usually numerous and have all kinds of members. Some of my favorites though are affluent folks that either swing their wealth and power around, or esoteric types that meet in secret and work out of the shadows.

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I've been operating similarly for most of the time I've been playing D&D, I think because of when I joined (1989) and what early adventures I was exposed to, the whole idea of "evil races" seemed fairly weird and outdated, especially as I almost immediately saw it get used in obviously racist ways (c.f. The Orcs of Thar, for example). But I think more than anything, most of the more interesting adventures I read or was influenced by featured cults (often of a more practical than religious kind) or dodgy organisations or the like, so I was more inclined to follow those models than the old "genocide all the humanoids in this cave system" model. And yeah such factions tend to consist of potentially fairly diverse individuals or sub-groups.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

This has been my approach. Even the kobolds who summoned an aspect of Tiamat to conquer the player characters' home barony (well before that was the plot of the first 5E adventures) were a mix of individuals, with some just wanting to live in harmony, others who wanted to leave to go back to their ancestral home and some, yes, who were militant worshipers of Tiamat. There are villains and heroes among all people.

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Personally I use a mixture of antagonists who are at odds with the PCs but perhaps not permanently so, and what I'd consider "actual villains" who have goals so nefarious or abhorrent that there's really no way for the PCs to not seek to destroy them. I think there are groups with no heroes among them, but not groups you're born into, ones you join.

Cannibals. Always the cannibals.

Ruin Explorer said:

I've been operating similarly for most of the time I've been playing D&D, I think because of when I joined (1989) and what early adventures I was exposed to, the whole idea of "evil races" seemed fairly weird and outdated, especially as I almost immediately saw it get used in obviously racist ways (c.f. The Orcs of Thar, for example). But I think more than anything, most of the more interesting adventures I read or was influenced by featured cults (often of a more practical than religious kind) or dodgy organisations or the like, so I was more inclined to follow those models than the old "genocide all the humanoids in this cave system" model. And yeah such factions tend to consist of potentially fairly diverse individuals or sub-groups.

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My earliest fantasy gaming was actually Heroquest. I think about how the Barbarian, elf, dwarf, and wizard faced the same foes the goblins, skeletons, and chaos knights. It's a simple dynamic for a board game that is highly themed. I get that some folks want to keep it simple when they TTRPG. Gobos are evil and the decision to wipe em out and keep the game going is easy. Nothing to think about here. Though what drew me to RPGs is the nuance, the sense of morality, the possibility of a grander experience. So, I have just come to expect more with all the complications that brings. If folks want a beer and pretzel black and white game, I have no qualms with that, but no longer prefer it for myself.

Wolfpack48 said:

Cannibals. Always the cannibals.

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Dont feel bad no matter what my PC does to them.

payn said:

Dont feel bad no matter what my PC does to them.

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What if your PC eats them?

Spanish Inquisition? After all, no one expects it.

In a more serious note: orcs. No, I do not equate them to any real culture/ethnicity/background. My orcs are just the bad guy races/species/ancestry/whatever. No real world equivalent. Just bad fantasy people in a fantasy world making what bad guys in the evil tropes do.

Snarf Zagyg said:

What if your PC eats them?

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Dammit.

payn said:

Though what drew me to RPGs is the nuance, the sense of morality, the possibility of a grander experience.

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Yeah, I played tabletop wargames and the like before TT RPGs, and yeah, actually playing an actual character in an actual world with morality and decisions and so on was a big part of what made RPGs special and appealing, and why I'd rather go to all the effort of running an RPG than just playing HeroQuest or the like.

payn said:

So, I have just come to expect more with all the complications that brings. If folks want a beer and pretzel black and white game, I have no qualms with that, but no longer prefer it for myself.

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I the people I played with kind of rebelled against the idea pretty early on - when I was 12 or 13, playing one of my first games as a player not a DM, we had a DM who was very much raised on the old-skool Gygaxian "genocide is good, actually" tropes, and we fought some orcs who had been raiding caravans and towns in the area, and killed them, and they had some small orc children. We were like "Oh no, we killed their parents because we had to but I guess they're out responsibility now", so immediately started planning how to get them somewhere safe to be raised, and the DM had his incredibly annoying DMPC Paladin butt in and try to tell us that no, we're supposed to just kill the baby orcs, because they might grow up to be evil, and we're like, nah that's because they're raised wrong, and the DM also being 12/13 he didn't really have a good response to that, and just sort of sputtered about how we had to or else the DMPC would be mad and we couldn't be Lawful Good if we didn't murder orc babies. I pointed out none of us was LG - we were all NG or CG - and we told the DMPC to go kick rocks (we'd have much rather he left entirely anyway!) and took the baby orcs to a monastery of Illmater we'd passed earlier.

Ruin Explorer said:

Yeah, I played tabletop wargames and the like before TT RPGs, and yeah, actually playing an actual character in an actual world with morality and decisions and so on was a big part of what made RPGs special and appealing, and why I'd rather go to all the effort of running an RPG than just playing HeroQuest or the like.

I the people I played with kind of rebelled against the idea pretty early on - when I was 12 or 13, playing one of my first games as a player not a DM, we had a DM who was very much raised on the old-skool Gygaxian "genocide is good, actually" tropes, and we fought some orcs who had been raiding caravans and towns in the area, and killed them, and they had some small orc children. We were like "Oh no, we killed their parents because we had to but I guess they're out responsibility now", so immediately started planning how to get them somewhere safe to be raised, and the DM had his incredibly annoying DMPC Paladin butt in and try to tell us that no, we're supposed to just kill the baby orcs, because they might grow up to be evil, and we're like, nah that's because they're raised wrong, and the DM also being 12/13 he didn't really have a good response to that, and just sort of sputtered about how we had to or else the DMPC would be mad and we couldn't be Lawful Good if we didn't murder orc babies. I pointed out none of us was LG - we were all NG or CG - and we told the DMPC to go kick rocks (we'd have much rather he left entirely anyway!) and took the baby orcs to a monastery of Illmater we'd passed earlier.

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Yeah, I think everybody probably has coming of age stories about gaming. There is a point where you decide what you want your games to be. Even the folks that want that black and white gobos always evil, seem to stop saddling every band with a bundle of babies. Its just a complication the game doesn't need. Also, they are past the point of GM gotcha games where they make the players do awful things like kill babies.

In a game about 10-15 years ago the players where charged with taming a wild land and bringing law and order to it. They came upon a couple of highwaymen that were easily thwarted. The players decided to let these underlings go because of the situation. One of the robbers of course returned to the band of brigands and was later faced again and killed. The other, however, returned to town and eventually ran a leather workshop and became a pillar of the community. I am glad the GM did this as they could have easily taunted us at the next encounter, "you idiots should have killed us!" enforcing the idea that you just run through or hang every foe you come across.