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

[Oofta]

Except when people started talking about having evil regimes you started to argue against it. You're continuing to do so right now.

I am not, and have never argued against having evil regimes. I'm arguing against the idea that every single soldier of an evil regime is automatically evil.

I'm done. Have a good one.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

But for it to be built into their fantasy DNA and have them not drive themselves extinct... that makes no sense.

The same amount of sense that, say, the wing/bodyweight ratio of a dragon makes when it is flying?

The same amount of sense that a fireball (or any magic, really) makes with physics?

The same amount of sense that an endless war between the three "evil" factions in the outer planes makes?

The same amount of sense that the idea of teleportation or plane shifting of any kind while maintaining continuity of consciousness works (see, it's like the prestige- you're actually killing yourself and a new you is continuing on ....).

The same amount of sense as a fantasy world with active deities that meddle in events, and even create whole races, and then ... just kinda of let things slide?

The same kind of sense that the wonky science that allows elves to breed with humans, and orcs to breed with humans, but not elves to breed with orcs, but yet also allows half-elves to continue on as a separate "race" because something something reasons?

You get the idea. The extent to which people apply the real world (and those concerns and that logic) to the fantasy world is great- but it doesn't mean that things in the fantasy world operate the same.

 

[Faolyn]

I am not, and have never argued against having evil regimes. I'm arguing against the idea that every single soldier of an evil regime is automatically evil.

I'm done. Have a good one.

And nobody has ever said that every single soldier of an evil regime is evil. In fact, I gave several examples how they could be logically not-evil!

You are the one who keeps making this claim, just like you are the one who keeps claiming that people are calling you racist or nazi sympathizers when nobody has, and just like you are the one who keeps claiming that orcs with culture are just humans with funny teeth. And when we keep trying to talk about that, you just run away. Criminy.

 

[Faolyn]

The same amount of sense that, say, the wing/bodyweight ratio of a dragon makes when it is flying? [Etc.]

It makes less sense then that. Because if orcs are evil to their DNA core, then they would be too destructive to form cohesive groups; they'd be killing each other off any reason or no reason and be so busy fighting each other that they wouldn't risk trusting any of their cohorts during a battle against others. They wouldn't bother to heal each other after battles, and they wouldn't bother raising their non-precocial, singly-born young, so their numbers would constantly dwindle in that way, too. After a few generations, they'd be extinct.

For every one of your other examples, you can handwave it away with magic. But you can't handwave orcs as-is that way.

 

[Bohandas]

It could work if they bred fast enough. They already have r-strategist traits in relative abundance

 

[Sacrosanct]

These threads are always turning out to be the same. Let me summarize the next 10 pages, if the last three threads are of any indicator:

Person A: The alignment should say orcs are evil, because that's a quick and easy indicator to me to let me know they are evil without having to read any additional text."
Person B: "But if you have a default alignment, that's problematic for reason A, B, C, etc. If you want them evil at your table, just make them evil, but there's a lot of reasons not to make a humanoid intelligent species inherently evil as the game's baseline."
Person A: If you aren't lazy and read the the other additional text (yes, someone made this exact claim), they aren't all evil, just defaulted that way, and you can change them to non-evil if you want."
Person B: "Didn't you just get done saying you don't have time to read additional text, but now you want everyone else to read additional text or they're lazy?"

On a side note, I find it fairly dubious to read someone say they aren't "arguing that the game should be this way" when they've done exactly that a week or two ago in the other threads. This thread and this conversation aren't happening in a vacuum. Did you change your mind? Possibly, but don't be surprised when people react to you based on what you were arguing previously as well.

 

[Sacrosanct]

And if anyone cares about my position or reasoning behind it:

Position on mundane intelligent human species: No default alignment. Campaign specific instead.
Reasons:

• it's much easier to go from "generic and make adjustments to how I want" then to go to "specific and rewrite how it's presented", including but not limited to things like "how something is presented is how players will react when they encounter such thing, and if something is inherently evil in the book and presented that way, that's how players will react in game"
• There are a lot of reasons why portraying intelligent humanoid species in the books as inherently evil is problematic from a historically colonial standpoint
• A significant number of current gamers don't want it that way, so it's easier for everyone to tailor how they want at their table (null alignment as base, assign as you feel necessary with no changes to the RAW) than for a large chunk of gamers to rewrite how the game is presented and defaulted to play.
• It's more limiting to say "orcs are X" than it is to say "orcs can be x, y, or z or anything in between"

 

[Charlaquin]

You're imposing human psychology on them. Not entirely, but at least partially. You're saying that they can't think and feel in a fundamentally different way that would cause them all to behave evilly.

They absolutely can, but that different way of thinking and feeling must either come from their environment or their biology, so the question is still applicable. If it’s environmental, it can’t be universal. If it’s genetic, yikes.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, I have a problem with declaring genetic evil. That just... can't be evil to me. Evil is about choicesm if you remove the choice you can have other things, but it can't be evil.

After all, Sharks are savage, blood-thirsty predators, but they aren't evil.

I personally have philosophical issues with the very notion of evil, but setting that aside, I agree. There’s usually an implied willfulness in what people consider evil that precludes it from being a product of biology.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It could work if they bred fast enough. They already have r-strategist traits in relative abundance

But then they’d behave totally different than they ever have in official D&D anyway, because they wouldn’t be working together in groups.