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<blockquote data-quote="uzirath" data-source="post: 7924478" data-attributes="member: 8495">Yeah, I've played in annoying campaigns where it feels like every word has been redefined: &quot;trolls&quot; are small winged fairies and &quot;pixies&quot; are hulking green brutes. Definitely obnoxious. As you allude to here, though, it's important to separate the meaning of words from whatever meaning D&amp;D has ascribed to them. Dragons, for example, aren't necessarily &quot;evil&quot; in world mythology, so they have a broad range of plausible ethical outlooks. Maybe that's not a great example because there are also &quot;good&quot; dragons in D&amp;D. How about goblins? Traditionally, they are evil in D&amp;D, but that's not always true in common parlance and certainly not in folklore. In those cases, I enjoy mixing things up. Perhaps this is connected to our conversation about the Yuan-Ti in the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/consequences-of-playing-evil-races.670207/page-4#post-7921577" target="_blank">Consequences of playing &quot;EVIL&quot; races</a> thread. Since the term &quot;Yuan-Ti&quot; doesn't have any existence outside of D&amp;D (AFAIK), I don't think of the term having a firm definition beyond &quot;snake people.&quot; I hadn't ever internalized the fluff. They featured in multiple AD&amp;D campaigns that I played in after the publication of Dwellers of the Forbidden City, and they were usually evil, but not universally so. We definitely had subplots with &quot;good&quot; Yuan-Ti. Since so many GMs rewrite the fluff for races, and alignment has no crunchy bearing anymore, it seemed easy enough to envision them in alternate ways. After rereading the latest treatment in the Monster Manual, I can see why they seemed like an odd choice for moral rehabilitation.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="uzirath, post: 7924478, member: 8495"] Yeah, I've played in annoying campaigns where it feels like every word has been redefined: "trolls" are small winged fairies and "pixies" are hulking green brutes. Definitely obnoxious. As you allude to here, though, it's important to separate the meaning of words from whatever meaning D&D has ascribed to them. Dragons, for example, aren't necessarily "evil" in world mythology, so they have a broad range of plausible ethical outlooks. Maybe that's not a great example because there are also "good" dragons in D&D. How about goblins? Traditionally, they are evil in D&D, but that's not always true in common parlance and certainly not in folklore. In those cases, I enjoy mixing things up. Perhaps this is connected to our conversation about the Yuan-Ti in the [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/consequences-of-playing-evil-races.670207/page-4#post-7921577']Consequences of playing "EVIL" races[/URL] thread. Since the term "Yuan-Ti" doesn't have any existence outside of D&D (AFAIK), I don't think of the term having a firm definition beyond "snake people." I hadn't ever internalized the fluff. They featured in multiple AD&D campaigns that I played in after the publication of [I]Dwellers of the Forbidden City,[/I] and they were usually evil, but not universally so. We definitely had subplots with "good" Yuan-Ti. Since so many GMs rewrite the fluff for races, and alignment has no crunchy bearing anymore, it seemed easy enough to envision them in alternate ways. After rereading the latest treatment in the [I]Monster Manual[/I], I can see why they seemed like an odd choice for moral rehabilitation. [/QUOTE]

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