D&D General All Dead Generations: "Classic Vs. The Aesthetic"

[TheSword]

As I said in my first post on Mindflayers, there are substantial differences between eating meat and what mindflayers do. I don’t believe opinions on the sentience of animals is relevant in this debate. You can approach this from the point of view that eating animals is wrong and still see a difference between humans and mind flayers.

If humans ate cows brains while the cows were still alive, in a manner in which chased maximum pain and horror because it tasted better that way and knowing full the well that the cow knew exactly what was happening to it at the time (and not caring/ or worse enjoying it) then that might make us like mind flayers. I don’t think we do though.

If humans marched cows via mind control to the dining room and made them watch the same happen to their compatriots, knowing that they could appreciate and anticipate what was happening then that might make us like mind flayers. We don’t do that either.

If some of the cows were randomly selected to have our fertilized eggs planted in their brains so our babies would grow inside them, painfully and eventually consuming their identity… and this was done in a way that the cow knew what was going to happen, then we might be like mind flayers. We don’t do that either.

The reality is we aren’t. The majority of humanity does have some form of animal welfare, and that largely was influenced by compassion and a desire not to inflict additional pain. While a dog may be sentient, an oyster has no central nervous system so I hope you can agree it isn’t. That welfare has increased in response to evidence that animals have some sentience. We try to minimize harm. Most decent people today recognize that foi gras is cruel and barbaric and would object to food made in these ways. It doesn’t mean they’re aren’t still cruel systems, however humanity generally tries to reduce cruelty.

The issue is not just that mind flayers eat brains, or reproduce in hosts. It’s that they are self aware of what they’re doing, and they know their victims are aware of what they’re doing, and they still act in such a way as to cause maximum harm. You can’t say the same about a wasp or parasitic larvae. Mind flayers are not acting on instinct… they are genius level creatures.

I would absolutely say that adventurers that use mental domination on sentient creatures for their own enjoyment, or convenience are evil yes (rather than self defence or achieve some more beneficial goal). Autonomy is an extremely important human right and loss of it is an primal fear. Charm monster, charm person and domination are one if the most problematic things in the game from a moral point of view.

The only way a mind flayer is not evil is if it fundamentally changes the way it behaves vs the typical mindflayer, abstaining from using its mental domination, it’s mind blast, reading people’s thoughts, using its acidic devouring tentacles to extract living brains, performing ceramorphosis with conscious beings. This might be a cool idea for you and I heartily encourage you to add it into your games, but it would be an aberration (not the creature type) and I don’t believe there is anything wrong with labeling the race monsters and evil… those humanitarian illithids would probably agree!

 

[TheSword]

Spoilers for the movie Babe...

That is one of the most sinister things I have ever seen!

Clearly some cats are more evil than others.

 

[Vyshan]

And, as a final point, which I raised earlier, if the only reason we need "all evil" monsters that we can use, then why use humanoids? If these game elements are only there to be bags of HP that we whack for XP, then, well, there's a whole bestiary of monsters that we can beat on to our hearts content. However, if we want to use intelligent monsters with cultures and whatnot, well, the cost of that is you can't paint them using the same language that has been propagated in the genre for decades. That's the price. You want evil orcs? Great, you can have evil orcs. What you can't have is ALL evil orcs that are never presented as anything else, while at the same time using language that is full of ick.

Take your pick. You can have one or the other.

Simple I choose option C: All orcs the players encounter are 'evil' based on their beliefs, fanaticism, and adherence to a dogma based on propaganda. As you are no longer fighting simply a race but instead an opposing culture who is on a warpath complete with an army. Even children orcs the players encounter are raised and fed on that propaganda by other orcs about what makes their culture the best and correct.

Are their 'good' orcs? Yes. Will you as a player encounter them? Probably not. At most you might encounter one who is a deserter for their army.

Why use humanoids for an antagonistic force? Because nothing is more scary than encountering those who believe they are in fact in the right.

I use quotation marks around good and evil like 'this' because to show that gray exists. After all if you have two 'lawful good' armies battling it out because they both believe in what they are doing is fighting for a better future for their side, yet they don't see eye to eye based on cultural differences.

 

[Mercurius]

"If we're not supposed to eat humans, how come they're made out of meat?"

~ Mind Flayer Bumper-sticker

 

[Charlaquin]

"If we're not supposed to eat humans, how come they're made out of meat?"

~ Mind Flayer Bumper-sticker

More like “why do their skulls have food inside them?”

 

[pming]

Hiya!

The environment is massive.
The 'processing' is horrible.

For me, you simply just need to spend time around animals enough, notice their behaviors over time, and yes even cattle, sheep, whatever, and think on 'we grow these to be slaughtered'.

To me, there is something very messed up about that.

But is the alternative better? That being humans killing other humans over hunting grounds? Because that's what it'd come down to. That's the way it was before we started domesticating animals for food. Tribe A wandering into the hunting grounds of Tribe B = one tribe dying...men, women and children. Not because the winning tribe was 'bad', but because if they didn't, there would be a good chance the area would get 'hunted out'; then both tribes starve, with every man, woman and child on both sides.

Yes, it's a simplification, but that was the core aspect of life before we figured out how to domesticate, irrigate and grow our own food...oh, and store it for the winter.

We can't simply be herbivores. Not with our advanced society. We simply don't have the land or social/economic structure to do it. For example, Canada and the USA simply do not have enough land to feed everyone here if we tried to switch to a 'mostly vegetarian' diet (about 75% plant). It's impossible. So...what now? Well, we have to buy it from other countries or invade/conquer them. Guess which countries have the capability to handle this? If you said "Countries inhabited by non-white people", you win a vegetarian cookie! Most of Africa, Middle East, Philippines, Vietnam, China, Japan, etc. ...remember what I said about Tribe A and Tribe B? Ok, now what if Tribe A had Stealth Fighter, Bombers, and Drones...and Tribe B had Bi-Planes, Hot Air Balloons and Binoculars? How do you think it's going to turn out for Tribe B when Tribe A says "We need half of your food. Give it and we won't invade you".

Bottom line...as wonderful an idea it would be to be able to have a perfect balance of meat and veg, with no cruelty or misused/greedy land use (and sustainable water management)...we simply don't live in that world now. The ONLY way humanity survives more than another 50 to 100 years, is if we have a massive depopulation event (...dinosaurs ring a bell?), or we develop the tech to move into space, the moon and our solar system to set up food production and living space.

Wow. Did THAT go off topic! Sorry! But it is important to be said, so I think it's ok. If not, mods, just delete this.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Charlaquin]

We can't simply be herbivores. Not with our advanced society. We simply don't have the land or social/economic structure to do it. For example, Canada and the USA simply do not have enough land to feed everyone here if we tried to switch to a 'mostly vegetarian' diet (about 75% plant). It's impossible.

This is just wildly factually incorrect. Meat is vastly more resource-intensive than produce because the animals have to be fed. We could in fact produce far more food for far more people if we only produced plant-based food.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This is just wildly factually incorrect. Meat is vastly more resource-intensive than produce because the animals have to be fed. We could in fact produce far more food for far more people if we only produced plant-based food.

This. At each stage in the food chain energy is wasted. e.g. cow eats grass. The fewer steps in the food production chain the more energy efficient it is. Given that "human photosynthesises" is not yet possible, "human eats plant" is the most efficient form of food production.

Doesn't mean you have to be vegan. Simply reducing the proportion of meat and dairy in your diet helps, just like using your car less.

 

[TheSword]

We probably shouldn’t turn this into the rights and wrongs of being vegan. We’ll inevitably have vegans posting who will be offended by one side and omnivores feeling the same way about the other side. I don’t know if it counts as politics but the issue is about as annoying.

The mind flayer issue isn’t about whether eating meat is evil. Whatever you think about omnivores I would people don’t think they’re evil in the D&D sense.

 

[Aldarc]

Why would it? Sure, it applies to many 'planet of the week' species in Trek, but I really don't think that things like Vulcans or Klingons are just humans in rubber masks (only portrayed by such.) And Uz of Glorantha most definitely aren't. And sure, perhaps they are not as deep as real life humans, but neither are fictional humans; there is always limits on how much can be portrayed in fiction. But I think these feel like real people, and they still come across as somewhat differnt to humans. Putting these things ion setting actually adds something, it allows you to tell stories you otherwise couldn't. That's what I want.

You are correct. Things like Vulcans aren't just humans in rubber masks, because they are human enough in appearance that they don't even have to wear masks. They just have to wear fake pointy ears.

(Though originally Vulcans were supposed to have red skin, but on black-and-white televisions it looked a little too much like black face, so they scrapped the idea.)

But what if we add to this gygaxian formula the "load-bearing" tropes of subsequent editions, specifically the influence of LotR style epic fantasy and beyond? Because then you have the interesting situation where the outside grave robbers of the gygaxian game are now the chosen one heroes of the hickman and weis game (and of course there were elements of the latter in the former).

incidentally, it is a bit of a paradox when it is the gygaxian naturalists who want inherently evil monsters, as it goes against the playstyle and aesthetics you identify

Yeah, I do think that the new norm of play in D&D is possibly far closer to Eberron and Exandria (or even dare I say World of Warcraft) than it is the earlier Gygaxian load-bearing tropes.