Well that’s the thing, isn’t it? The idea of monsters spawned from an evil god that aren’t capable of being anything other than what they were made to be... Doesn’t really jive well with our concepts of morality. If they can’t choose to be good, can we even really say they’re evil?
I do love me some tragic vampires.
It is definitely a philosophical deep dive.
Oh, sure. It makes perfect sense to me to have the Common Folk think of most “Monstrous” Folk as evil. No reason in-world prejudice shouldn’t exist. I just don’t think the game should implicitly justify that in-world prejudice by giving lineages built-in alignments.
For game purposes, I don't see why it really matters. Alignment for monsters gives us "a clue to its disposition and how it behaves in a roleplaying or combat situation."
I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t know what an orc’s disposition or behavior in roleplaying and combat would be if it weren’t for two letters in the stat block.
Indeed, complicated and sensitive. So maybe let’s not oversimplify it in game. If you want to avoid complex moral dilemmas in your RPGs (which is totally understandable), then actually avoid those moral dilemmas, instead of just including them but pretending they aren’t deeply complex topics.
I think an issue is that the orc in the MM is presented as a "default orc" when really it's representing an orc warrior that typically gets in the way of characters' goals.
Alignment is just an aid that goes along with the descriptive text. Orcs have been around for so long I don't need it, but I find it useful for other monsters. For someone running orcs for the first time that has a decent grasp of the concepts but has never picked up a MM in their life I think it's useful. Also easy to ignore if you don't like it.
