D&D (2024) bring back the pig faced orcs for 6th edition, change up hobgoblins & is there a history of the design change

[ART!]

Note, there is a significant difference between rank and file German soldiers during WWII and Nazis. No one will ever claim that all the rank and file were Nazis. But, those that WERE Nazis, were pretty much as close to evil as the real world gets.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, and for stating the obvious, but if you work for Nazis, they're doing evil Nazi stuff, and you just play along, you're guilty. We worked all that out at Nuremberg 75 years ago.

 

[Stormonu]

Orcs, Scro, Ondonti - I don't care. I just want some foes I can pit my PCs against that they don't have to have a moral quandary over to fight.

 

[Mind of tempest]

There are a bunch of Chinese in a city called Nanjing who would disagree with you.

While yes, when someone says a certain person is a self described nazi in post WWII time frames, we can assume they were a bad person with some high probability, saying everyone who belonged to the nazi party was evil is not an accurate statement. This is especially true for those members who were there before the war actually started.

Note: I want to be very clear I'm not defending nazis here. I tend to take the 1930s captain America approach with them. I just want to stay away from "all of X are evil", because that's how historically justification of genocide has been used. I could better explain with an analogy, but that would cross into political discussion and that's not allowed. I'll just say, "Is it possible, when talking about a group of millions of people, that some of them were not evil?"

On a related note, when I was deployed (and is true of every army all throughout history), when you are going to war, or preparing for war, it is drilled into you how the enemy aren't human. they aren't people. They are all evil. They are all monsters. Xenophobic terms are thrown about with abandon. This is done because when the fighting starts, you can't hesitate to shoot the enemy soldier because if you do, you or your buddies die first. Viewing the enemy soldier as a human being just like you causes hesitation. It was a particular point of inner turmoil within me in my 20s while I was serving, reconciling that training (which I understood why they did it) with my personal outlook on humanity.

Naturally the big drawback to that is that it creates a ton of racism after the war is over, as those feelings carry on. My grandpa hated the "japs" for his entire life, but otherwise you would never think he was racist at all, based on how he was repeated trained and his experience on the island hopping campaign in WWII. My dad hated Vietnamese (which made him racist towards a lot of non-whites (not just Vietnamese) after Vietnam, when by all accounts, he wasn't prior.)

I have the theory that a reverse boot champ is needed so people can unlearn as much of it as possible.

Orcs, Scro, Ondonti - I don't care. I just want some foes I can pit my PCs against that they don't have to have a moral quandary over to fight.

you tried the clockwork horrors?
you could rip of destiny hive and vex those are have ended up more or less evil to the newborn.

 

[S'mon]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, and for stating the obvious, but if you work for Nazis, they're doing evil Nazi stuff, and you just play along, you're guilty. We worked all that out at Nuremberg 75 years ago.

Er, no. Read up on Nuremberg.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Orcs, Scro, Ondonti - I don't care. I just want some foes I can pit my PCs against that they don't have to have a moral quandary over to fight.

I mean, in the Samurai Jack cartoon, they got away from morality questions by making literally everything Jack fought a robot.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Orcs, Scro, Ondonti - I don't care. I just want some foes I can pit my PCs against that they don't have to have a moral quandary over to fight.

Does it have to be a whole race that's inherently okay to murder though?

Like why not have a bunch of orcs that are Fallout style raiders and it's all the skinning people and owning things the main characters need that explain why they need to be murdered rather than green skin and tusks?

 

[Sacrosanct]

I have the theory that a rever boot champ is needed so people can unlearn as much of it is possible.

I got out in 1998, so I have no idea what's changed since then. But back then, there was not transition out of the military to civilian life. You spent your last week (2 weeks if you played the system) just going around with a checklist having every area sign off on it as you turned things in (TA gear, outprocessing dept, pay, etc).

Based on my own experiences, and those of many of my friends, the military absolutely needs to have a deprogramming period when you get out. And not just for the big stuff. When I got out, I had a hard time dealing with civilians at work who were lazy and refused to do anything. In the military, you were direct and forceful to those people. Can you imagine yelling and insulting someone at work who wasn't doing their job at a call center? Thankfully I was smart enough to never do that because I knew the difference, but it was hard to transition from the one area to the next. I mean, one of the guys in my squad was notoriously filthy. His idea of ironing his BDUs (uniform) was to lay them in between his mattresses. His barracks room was a complete filth pile every time it was inspected, and it stunk to high heaven. After counseling statements never had a result and he refused to change, we took him out on the flight line and forcibly washed him down. He wasn't ever dirty after that.

But think about that for a minute, in hindsight. How horrific was that? Talk about consent issues. But back then, it wasn't unusual to do that to someone who was always getting out of line. And it's trained that way (or it was) from day 1 in Basic training. Just look up blanket parties. While officially frowned upon, the cadre absolutely encouraged them. If someone in the squad screws up, the whole squad gets punished. So let the squad dish out the punishment, and that way the person will learn. Full Metal Jacket was the most accurate portrayal of boot camp that I've ever seen.

so yeah, back to the point. The military breaks you down into nothing, then rebuilds you back up as they need you. then they send you on your way with no retraining once you ETS (leave). That is fundamentally flawed. And a big reason why so many vets are having so many issues after they get out.

 

[Oofta]

Does it have to be a whole race that's inherently okay to murder though?

Like why not have a bunch of orcs that are Fallout style raiders and it's all the skinning people and owning things the main characters need that explain why they need to be murdered rather than green skin and tusks?

Let's take human bandits as an example. Are some evil? Absolutely. But some may have been forced into at a very young age (similar to child soldiers), some may be desperate and see it as their only chance of survival. Some may be Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and give most of their money to the poor. Or do you think every thief in existence is evil with a capital "E"?

So you say that "okay, in my campaign all bandits are evil". Cool. I have no problem with that. I also have no problem with effectively all creatures of a certain species being evil. I don't even have an issue with certain monsters being effectively biological robots*. Which doesn't mean I will ever have a hunting season on any intelligent creature. If the PCs go to take out a group of orcs it's because the orcs are raiders or soldiers in an invading army and so on.

*In my campaign orcs are not a natural creature in the traditional sense.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Does it have to be a whole race that's inherently okay to murder though?

Like why not have a bunch of orcs that are Fallout style raiders and it's all the skinning people and owning things the main characters need that explain why they need to be murdered rather than green skin and tusks?

yeah, that is super evil or at least so disagreeable that it makes them and evil more or less identical.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Let's take human bandits as an example. Are some evil? Absolutely. But some may have been forced into at a very young age (similar to child soldiers), some may be desperate and see it as their only chance of survival. Some may be Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and give most of their money to the poor. Or do you think every thief in existence is evil with a capital "E"?

So you say that "okay, in my campaign all bandits are evil". Cool. I have no problem with that. I also have no problem with effectively all creatures of a certain species being evil. I don't even have an issue with certain monsters being effectively biological robots*. Which doesn't mean I will ever have a hunting season on any intelligent creature. If the PCs go to take out a group of orcs it's because the orcs are raiders or soldiers in an invading army and so on.

*In my campaign orcs are not a natural creature in the traditional sense.

That's why I said raiders instead of bandits.

Fallout raiders are in no way ambiguous. They torture people, they decorate with human corpses, they are literal monsters because of what they do, not because they all dress like punk rock sadness or look different. They weren't 'born that way', they made choices that led to them being irredeemable.

The point being killability should be context, not literal hatred of the race.