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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 7822576" data-attributes="member: 6801845">I don't really have much of an opinion on how other people run their games.  Orcs are not the creations of Gruumsh, not hard wired to be chaotic evil?  Maybe they have more flexibility than the hard lines indicated in the MM?  Go for it!  I do think FR is kind of "mushy" at times, but it's just a personal preference.  I don't want to anthropomorphize non-human races, I want them to be distinct.  That goes for elves just as much as orcs.  I don't want elves to be humans with pointy ears and a long life span.As far as depth, I only have so much time to document and explain my game.  The more I have to balance in my head space when coming up with campaign concepts the better off I am.  For example, in a previous campaign gnolls were a big problem in the region.  They had a slightly different origin (an evil comotose god that had been defeated by Thor long ago), but everything else was things I could just pull in from various sources without having to retcon.  The more powerful versions are so obsessed with blood lust that even while dying they still strike out.Or take orcs.  The orcish priest (forget what they're called) has a spell list that fits the base assumption, other leader-type orcs have features that just fit the canonical description of orcs.  The goblin captain(?) is a coward that sacrifices other goblins to protect himself and so on.  I can read the fluff on the monster and be done, as can my players.  That frees up conceptual space for a bunch of other fluff.  I accept that "orcs are evil" is just one of many simplifications in D&D.  I just don't see a lot of gain from diluting the nature of the races.  In addition I view the alignment of MM entries and the fluff of where they fit in as a core rule.  I don't see a need to change it because the PCs will always need bad guys to fight.Also, where does it end?  Are demons no longer evil?  Are ghouls suddenly Fallout ghouls, just victims of some magical energy that transformed them?  Not sure any of that helps explain much of anything.  For me having a world where basic assumptions are easy to grasp makes the stories flow more easily for me. The complexities I do add stand out more.</blockquote>

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