I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism

[Fanaelialae]

Agreed, but I'll point out that the monster manual descriptions in question do not just say, "They attack on sight." Instead they describe orcs the way Europeans, for centuries, described people they wanted to subjugate.

I can see what you mean. However, like I said, I read those as descriptive, not prescriptive. Maybe that's a typical orc, or even just the human stereotype regarding orcs. But IMO it certainly is not all orcs, and probably not even a majority of orcs.

Let's assume that 10% of orcs are vicious raiders as described in the MM. The rest live in isolated parts of the world, minding their own business. Unfortunately, that 10% is the most likely to come into contact with humans, since they would actively seek out settlements to raid.

I can see it maybe being a problem with a newbie DM, who might read the books as gospel. But I would hope that any experienced DM would either throw that out or use it as a starting point, because (even aside from being problematic) it's very one-dimensional and boring if every orc is an evil clone of the one next to it. Unless they actually ARE literal evil clones of Gruumsh. There might be an interesting story to tell about evil clones...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Another factor that has arisen is the difference between NPCs and PCs. I've frequently seen the argument that if Elves don't get +2 bonus to Dex then it's empirically not true that elves, on average, have higher dexterity than, say, humans. I really scratched my head over that, until I realized those people mean that all elves, not just PCs, and not even PCs plus the handful of NPCs that get statted out, but all the thousands or millions of elves which exist by implication in the game world, but which are never statted out or really even encountered also have their dexterity determined by those rules.

I'm still scratching my head, but at least now I understand what those people are saying.

I assume all species get all their species traits, PC and NPC alike. If needed I adjust statblocks with this in mind.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can see what you mean. However, like I said, I read those as descriptive, not prescriptive. Maybe that's a typical orc, or even just the human stereotype regarding orcs. But IMO it certainly is not all orcs, and probably not even a majority of orcs.

Let's assume that 10% of orcs are vicious raiders as described in the MM. The rest live in isolated parts of the world, minding their own business. Unfortunately, that 10% is the most likely to come into contact with humans, since they would actively seek out settlements to raid.

I can see it maybe being a problem with a newbie DM, who might read the books as gospel. But I would hope that any experienced DM would either throw that out or use it as a starting point, because (even aside from being problematic) it's very one-dimensional and boring if every orc is an evil clone of the one next to it. Unless they actually ARE literal evil clones of Gruumsh. There might be an interesting story to tell about evil clones...

The books could probably afford to be more clear about that 10% thing though.

 

[Autumnal]

Where I think it gets a little complicated in fantasy is that some creatures are said to be created by deities or supernatural beings that program them with certain behaviors.

These days I respond to that the same way I respond to characters set up to keep a party from cohering other guaranteed to make immediate chaos the other players don’t want: design something else. Lots of concepts of species and culture origins don’t require such things. Go with one of them instead.

 

[billd91]

Oh, GREAT example, and I hope some other people in this thread are still reading.

The reason that works is that they are 'encoded', as you put it, as Nazis. Right? It's not something unrecognizable, we read the description and we think, "Nazi. Nazis are bad. I can kill them." That happens even though they aren't actually called Nazis, don't speak German, and don't have a weird cultural taboo against giving knives as gifts.

And it would make sense if actual Nazis took offense at that, and didn't want to read his books, or play an RPG based on it. But we don't care, because they are stinkin' Nazis! Win-win! Nazism isn't something you are born with, it's a conscious (if poorly made) choice, so it's fair.

It's way more complicated than that, particularly since ERB introduced the white and supremacist Therns in 1913, years before the Nazis were an itch in their founders' metaphorical political pants. Moreover, while ERB detested fascism and Nazism, he was a fan of eugenics. That kind of makes the point of the Therns a bit... less blatant than Barsoomian Nazis.

I've seen an argument that the Therns are more representative of the US southern planter class - still reprehensible and worth overthrowing by a more honorable Virginian gentleman-soldier (ERB having a certain fascination with the American Revolution and its mystique).
In any event, it's likely that, given the timing, the Therns are more representative of US domestic issues than Germany's slide into mystical Aryan supremacy.

 

[Celebrim]

Let's assume that 10% of orcs are vicious raiders as described in the MM. The rest live in isolated parts of the world, minding their own business. Unfortunately, that 10% is the most likely to come into contact with humans, since they would actively seek out settlements to raid.

I kind of come at the problem in the opposite direction. It's probably reasonable to assume that 75% of goblins are vicious cannibals who only want to kill, enslave, and eat everything that isn't a goblin. But the PC's are very unlikely to encounter that "representative goblin" as their first encounter with goblins, because if they did then they'd probably die from that encounter. Instead, the first encounter they had with goblins in my last big D&D campaign was as some of the buccaneers getting off a warship in the harbor alongside the PC barbarian that was ultimately destined to join the party, led by some rich looking pale skinned red headed human officers who were specifically called out as being an ally of the nation that the PCs were currently in. And the first five or so encounters with goblins are like that, members of society that weren't attacking them or being attacked on sight by "in groups", because if you meet a goblin living in cosmopolitan lands amongst other races, chances are they are already "weird" from the standpoint of goblins as a whole. Even like the goblin knight they met in the woods was going about his business and they let him go about it by that point, because they really had no way of knowing what that knight was up to. What they did know by that point is that goblins aren't all easily characterized and don't attack on sight. Looks and greetings were exchanged and they both warily went around each other. Now, there is an argument to be made that if you meet a goblin knight in civilized lands there is a good chance he's scouting for a raiding party and will return and murder people and eat babies in the campaign season, but that wasn't really something I'd introduced to the players at that point.

In fact, one of the few characters that they captured and let go on parole was a hobgoblin mercenary, because by this point they had no preconceptions about goblins even though in the campaign setting it really is true that the majority of goblins are brutal murderous violent individuals. They were judging them as individuals despite that because that's the direction the presentation had gone.

Now, in a different setting on the fantasy planet where they start out directly near a goblin kingdom, a very different set of first impressions could have been created, and it would be I think an interesting sort of experiment to see how players in my game exposed to both first impressions reacted.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I can see what you mean. However, like I said, I read those as descriptive, not prescriptive. Maybe that's a typical orc, or even just the human stereotype regarding orcs. But IMO it certainly is not all orcs, and probably not even a majority of orcs.

Let's assume that 10% of orcs are vicious raiders as described in the MM. The rest live in isolated parts of the world, minding their own business. Unfortunately, that 10% is the most likely to come into contact with humans, since they would actively seek out settlements to raid.

I can see it maybe being a problem with a newbie DM, who might read the books as gospel. But I would hope that any experienced DM would either throw that out or use it as a starting point, because (even aside from being problematic) it's very one-dimensional and boring if every orc is an evil clone of the one next to it. Unless they actually ARE literal evil clones of Gruumsh. There might be an interesting story to tell about evil clones...

I'm sorry but I still don't think you are getting it.

Yes, it is descriptive, not prescriptive. There's nothing preventing a DM from making some orcs different.

But that is how they are described. Those are the things that the author thought were most important for readers to know. Want to know what orcs are like? They are [insert European description of a people they want to conquer].

And what role do those orcs play in traditional adventures? As beasts to be killed.

Just because some people aren't bound by these descriptions, and do totally different things in their own campaigns, doesn't change what the official narrative is. All I'm arguing for is to change the official narrative to be something less evocative of colonialism and slavery, and let people who want those tropes be the ones to modify official content.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I'm sorry but I still don't think you are getting it.

Yes, it is descriptive, not prescriptive. There's nothing preventing a DM from making some orcs different.

But that is how they are described. Those are the things that the author thought were most important for readers to know. Want to know what orcs are like? They are [insert European description of a people they want to conquer].

And what role do those orcs play in traditional adventures? As beasts to be killed.

Just because some people aren't bound by these descriptions, and do totally different things in their own campaigns, doesn't change what the official narrative is. All I'm arguing for is to change the official narrative to be something less evocative of colonialism and slavery, and let people who want those tropes be the ones to modify official content.

I assure you that I do understand what you are saying, and I agree with you that a better write-up would be better.

I wasn't trying to dismiss your viewpoint with my response. Rather, I was simply explaining how I approach the material.

 

[Morrus]

I think one important difference is that a species can be portrayed however you like in your own game, but insisting that your preferred portrayal of that species be hardcoded into the core rulebooks is you insisting that your version of the species has to be like that in my home games.

Leaving it open lets us both have our versions.

 

[MGibster]

What game or games are we talking about here? GURPS, Savage Worlds, D&D, and other games treat species in their own way.