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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 1632701" data-attributes="member: 18549">I like Driddle's take on it much better.  Having a happy ending where you kill the scapegoat who's been leading all the humans down the wrong path kind of undoes the point of having all the humans be so nasty in the first place.  I mean, what Driddle's describing is pretty much human history in fantasy terms...the Aryans migrating into India, the Indo-European tribes colonizing Europe, the Europeans colonizing practically everywhere else...  Humans are the aliens from Independance Day, moving from place to place, stripping it of its resources, and moving on.The point of the game seems to be that human nature is inherantly exploitative.  Even if they didn't come to the world with the notion of strip-mining the place and killing off all of its inhabitants, they breed quickly and need somewhere to put those people.  "Hi elves.  Do you mind if we stick a little settlement in your woods?"  "Not at all humans.  The trees are there for all to enjoy."  "That's great.  We're going to have to cut a few down though, to build some houses.  But don't worry, there's plenty left."  "Well, all right.  However, we build our homes in the branches and roots of the living trees.  We could show you how.  We believe that in the long run it will bene..."  "That's great elves.  You guys sure are at one with nature or something.  Hmm... it looks like our settlement is going to have to be a bit bigger than we were expecting.  And we need to make some room to farm things.  Just a few more trees will have to come down.  I notice that you're not making use of the forest's bounty very well.  The humans down in the valley will pay good money for high-quality lumber."  "Well, you see, we only take the trees that have fallen and died on their own, so we do not disturb the..."  "Hey Lenny!  Mark these ones for logging.  The trees are much bigger here than over there.  Oh, and elves, we're thinking that we might need just a bit more room since we're getting a few more settlers coming in from the valley.  I hear they fished out the lake down there and they're trying to find some work here.  Good thing too.  We're going to need some lumberjacks."  "Say, didn't there used to be orcs living in the valley?"  "Those crazy bastards?  They were stealing herd animals that we had rounded up and domesticated, and when we tried to scare them away they attacked us.  So we organized an army and drove them back into the hills.  Bunch of monsters, if you ask me.  Good riddance."  "I see.  I'm just going to have to go over here and talk to the other elves.  Please don't mind us glaring in this direction and fingering our bows menacingly.  It's just elvish custom."  "See ya later, elves."Your setup sounds too much like the "it's just a few bad apples" scapegoating thing that's been kicking around the news media lately.  Frankly, I think it would ruin the setting if it were just some evil leaders that could be removed to solve the problem.  Life's more messy than that.  And humans never needed evil leaders to get them to do reprehensible things without noticing how reprehensible they are.</blockquote>

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