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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 8021263" data-attributes="member: 6777454">The idea is that they embody whatever aspects of humankind that the current writer decides are "the worst" and thus, over the years, have generally resembled whichever group of humans that the current writer or artist believes least deserve to be treated with humanity.Orcs are not something entirely divorced from reality, but rather the collection of the negative stereotypes the person who holds a negative view about another group of humans has about those they most dislike without any of the mitigating factors that might cause one to feel sympathy for them.One could easily create an "entirely fictional" race of evil humanoids that are based on the way the Nazis depicted Jewish people. They could be rat people with beady eyes, giant noses, curly, gnarled beards, sneaky and constantly looking to collect and horde gold, etc. Give them another name ans they would be "entirely fictional nonhuman race". The issue is that anyone who took one look at them would know exactly who they were referring to.If D&D was transparent enough to have a dark-skinned race that was dark skinned with big lips, loved watermelon and fried chicken, were naturally quite lazy and stupid and if one doesn't keep them in bondage and put them to work that they will naturally get addicted to drugs, commit every crime in the book and can't be trusted with weapons-- one put all the disclaimers they want saying that this race is "not human" and "in no way meant to be a negative reflection on anyone" and they could bring up how statistics prove that African-Americans don't actually like fried chicken or watermelon nor do drugs anymore often than white people do... all the disclaimers in the world wouldn't make one bit of difference, it would be so very obvious who the race was designed to refer to and what ideas it was designed to convey.Orcs can't really be locked in as so specifically referring to a single group of people. After all, they have been used by different writers and artists to reflect different groups they had negative views of over the years. Hobgoblins are a bit easier, in most depictions they have kind of unapologetically been Asians. Or at least they have either been Spartans or Samurai. Which is slightly less worse as those are particularly social groups that set themselves apart from the rest of humanity and considered themselves to be something above everyone else. Though it is still rather odd that just being born a Hobgoblin automatically makes one evil and not enough of them can ever escape that for no one to need hesitate on killing them.But Orcs? Are they Gauls/Celts? Are they Mongols? Are they Indians? Are they Africans? It super depends on the writer at the time and which cultural influences they felt confident they could have the "evil race" reflect.And its kind of unavoidable. So long as there is a race who is "just born evil" and they have some sort of culture, that culture is going to reflect some real world culture because humans are simply not creative enough to create a totally new and original culture-- or, perhaps, at least not both create one and keep it consistent across dozens of writers and artists. As long as your fictional race has some sort of identifiable culture-- they are going to be like some real life group, or at least the common stereotypes about some real life group.And I do find it strange how D&D has found it unnecessary to remove the horror elements from some things.Vampire and Lycanthropes are about unstoppable disease and how infection can warp one from whatever they once were to being merely a transmitter of that disease. Yet somehow people have no issue with vampirism and lycanthrope being transformed into simply feats and powers that a character could potentially acquire.Devils/demons are meant to be beings of pure malfeasance who literally feed and reproduce off of evil being done in the world-- yet somehow demonically infected humans, Tieflings, can be a base PC race and any ill effect of literally being, at least in part, a being that is made up of purely evil energy-- that's perfectly fine.But weirdly-- the common human-like "monster" races that are born into the world through normal means, are not inherently mystical in any way, have to somehow grow to adulthood within an at least semi-functional society, are fully conscious and self-aware and have free will.... somehow those are the things that absolutely cannot be allowed to be proper PC races, must be kept as people that one can identify by physical characteristics and automatically know their lack of morality and slaughter on sight? And if they are allowed to be PCs, they must be designed to be woefully underpowered compared to other PCs and have NPCs mistreat them at every opportunity in order to punish the player for having chosen an "wrong" race?Since I was 12 years old and picked up my first basic D&D box, that if I thought the Goblins with their big ears and dog-like faces looked cute and I want to play one of those-- why is that either not allowed or I should feel like its impossible for me to contribute to the party for having wanted to play the more unusual looking thing? And if the world is inhabited by 100x as many goblinoids and orcs, like... why is Drow the evil race that can suddenly be good? Why are they inventing this new Dragon-people race wholesale and awkwardly inserting it into the worlds? Why are what are basically robots being prioritized as a proper, balanced PC race?Even if only 1-2% of the goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, etc. were good aligned and friendly to humans-- wouldn't they vastly outnumber these other options? Yet... if we want to play the game, we are officially not allowed to choose them? Or we have to play the game with what amounts to half a level or an entire level penalty if we insist on playing them?Even if we were to put aside that they are the only peoples who are regularly depicted as non-white and dressed in non-European clothing, just... why? What is so damn necessary to the very essence of D&D that one be able to look at someone with whatever colored skin, know they are evil and be confident that gutting them before even uttering a greeting is the most holy and righteous course of action that they would rather players use magic rabies as super powers than allow a person to play as one of the yellow-skinned or red-skinned people?</blockquote>

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