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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 7269760" data-attributes="member: 6777454">It's a "you" directed towards those who bemoan something being lost by not having a universally "evil" race that are all much weaker than a mid-level character against which the PCs are encouraged to kill on sight and ultimately commit total genocide if possible while literally being labeled as "good" in block text on the piece of paper describing the aspects of the character by the omniscient judge of the game.I don't see there is much denying indulging in a fantasy involving invading the homes of creatures to kill everything that moves, possibly dissecting it for valuable body parts and seizing everything not nailed down with the singular goal of gaining great wealth and becoming even better at killing things is an expression of a less than healthy part of one's psyche. And being so defensive about it and level threats at people for pointing it out is pretty immature. But I suppose I could have better conveyed that the psychopathic tendencies lie in just about everyone's psyche.I am guilty of it, I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. But I recognize it is less than ideal and it would be better if the world had more layers and complexity. That villains should be villains because of the actions they elect to do and not because of the people they are born to. And very likely warfare happens with particular people and it cannot be resolved peacefully, but I needn't declare everyone with those physical features is necessarily evil in all aspects of their existence and that I am perfectly good and the solution is to purge every last one of them from the world.... rather, instead, the ideal situation would be to win the war then negotiate a peace and let future generations have better relations.And, really, Orcs and Goblins are an improvement on what was there before-- before they were the stand-ins, fantasy (everything from westerns to Conan and Tarzan) generally depicted non-white peoples exactly in the manner that D&D tended to depict Orcs and Goblins and such-- it was just now instead of demonizing and advocating violence against a particular ethnic group, instead you had a more generalized "evil, sub-human foreigner people" of which there were none in real life and therefore far more harmless. But there is a reason why they are described living in "tribes" with "shaman" with "chieftains". They are kind of just those old ugly racist depictions with a coat of paint. Once one understands that, both embrace and subvert it in equal measures.Now the concept of the zombie has arisen to fulfill that role. As an allegory, zombies convey far less xenophobic implications as literally anyone can become a zombie, and it is often most dramatic to have people the protagonist knows become zombies. Although I have heard some ways in which the allegory of zombies can carry with it some pretty negative connotations.</blockquote>

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