D&D 5E (2014) I thought WotC was removing biological morals?

[TwoSix]

Are we going to take that down to each individual red dragon, individual beholder, Individual lich and individual Balor?

"Yes, I know the dragon just chomped down several villages, but maybe it had a reason! It could be a mother!"

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can see through your lens. I don't see it as a depressing change, but simply just change. It has changed and always will. But the pretending part is irritating. I am fine with change. Just say: "In light of the changing views in our society, we would like to amend some of the aspects of our game we deem archaic. Therefore, we are changing the original intent to ____________________."
I have no problem with people who do that. It can sometimes show growth. But to not be forthcoming, that always makes it feel like they either: don't know why they are changing it or are trying to hide something.

I think they were trying to put forth that they never "had it wrong" from a modern perspective, and people just misinterpreted what was always intended. Ridiculous.

 

[Steampunkette]

If the problem is that evilness is based on stereotypes applied to minorities, then just shift the focus to making their evilness based on European cultures instead. There's plenty of historical examples of Europeans being ignorant, greedy, filthy, and murderous. Swap out samurai-inspired hobgoblin armor for something like a Roman legionnaire or a Spanish conquistador, for example.

That's -half- of the problem. The first part is the idea that an entire -race- of people can be evil. This goes back all the way to Ham in the Bible as a trick of language and identity that gives racism a strong basis. Even if you swap out the stereotypes you're still portraying it as not only possible, but -reasonable-, that an entire race of people are inherently Evil, with the attached justification of killing them all. Including the babies.

Which is the first half of the -sentence- that you've quote-mined for this argument.

That's why I said to base it on European tribal cultures rather than any other culture. To avoid cultural appropriation of non-European cultures.

If the stance is that tribal cultures of any kind can't be depicted at all (evil tribe = othering, good tribe = noble savage), then that's another thing.

Having good tribes and bad tribes is totally fine. Nothing wrong with it. The issue is when it becomes monolithic across a species.

If you've got a tribe of Orcs who worship Gruumsh and are evil conquerors and a tribe of Orcs who worship Luba-Trughu and are peace-loving hippies and another tribe of Orcs who worship no god and are just living on the land minding their own business and seven other tribes of varying levels of good, evil, law, chaos, antagonism, and protagonism...

Well then you've got societies, some of which are evil but it displays that Orcs aren't inherently evil genocide-fodder where gutting innocent women and children is the "Right Thing to Do" 'cause they're evil and will just grow up to be murderous.

As to basing it on European Tribes: You still fall prey to the same issues of "Savages" and "Brutes" or the idea of rapist pillagers who are coming for your women-folk which all still feed into the same stereotypes applied to minorities. Unless you specify "Savage in a European kind of way" every time it comes up the word "Savage" is just gonna evoke the same things it always has. Same with Greedy and Murderous being applied to Jewish People.

Because there have historically been evil societies of mostly evil people. I don't think it's stereotyping to call the people who fought for or were complicit in Manifest Destiny evil.

So... Farmers. Farmers on the Oregon Trail were evil?

They were certainly complicit in evil. But they largely weren't evil people, themselves. They certainly benefitted from the evils performed by others (As the vast majority of American Citizens still do) but to say they were evil is just laughable.

Similarly the vast majority of Germans in the 40s weren't evil. They were just too small and too scared to stop it. But the members of the Nazi Party? The people who gleefully cheered when a Janitor handed two students of a school to the Gestapo? Who pinned a medal to his chest for sending a couple of innocent kids to their deaths? They were certainly evil.

And, again, that's a -society- of evil you're trying to display. A -group- of evil people. Not an entire -race- of evil people.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Are we going to take that down to each individual red dragon, individual beholder, Individual lich and individual Balor?

Whilst I have no issues with dragons generally being terrifying monsters that often eat people, being able to tell the good ones and bad ones apart by the colour of their skin certainly is something I could do without...

 

[BookTenTiger]

Are we going to take that down to each individual red dragon, individual beholder, Individual lich and individual Balor?

I mean, why not?

All you're talking about here is Motivation. The red dragon, beholder, lich, and Balor act through Motivation. What do they want?

The Beholder might want to alleviate its madness by spreading it to as many innocent villagers as possible. Or guard its interdimensional treasure. Or be loyal to a powerful outsider.

I think this points to a flaw in marking all Orcs and Drow and such as Monsters simply by listing them in the MM. If I were in charge of it, I would not have a listing for Orc. I'd have stat blocks for the Orcs that adventures are typically going to be clashing against. Orc raiders, orc warlords, orc clerics of Gruumsh... But why do we need the stats for a lonesome baseline orc?

Another idea would be to take the race right out of it. Have a base stat for, say, Bandit, then options to make in an Orc, a Gnoll, an Elf, a Dragonborn...

 

[Steampunkette]

Funny. I can think of several counter-examples to this. Especially in the Fizban alignment thread debate. I think it's safe to say YOU don't want to get rid of evil monsters, but I don't think "no one" does. On contraire, I think there is a group that does want all monsters that aren't mindless to be equally capable of good or evil, be it giants, dragons, beholders pit fiends, or liches.

Believe me, if the threshold was "humanoids shouldn't be evil" it l the debate would have simmered down some by not. The fact we're debating the redcap shows that this doesn't end at orcs and drow shows a willingness to move the goalposts to include all manner of sentient beings, so much so the term "monster" will no longer be applicable.

Fair. I should learn never to use absolutes in any discussion, honestly.

 

[Umbran]

Are we going to take that down to each individual red dragon, individual beholder, Individual lich and individual Balor?

Who is this "we"? I comment on the changes in the game, but I don't enact them. I don't work for WotC, and I'm confident WotC doesn't listen to me about anything at all. Nor am I privy to any WotC plans.

I would not mind if dragon color became dissociated from their behavior - I've been thinking about doing something different than standard for dragons for a while now anyway. I'm okay with beholders being individuals.

I'm also okay with WotC continuing to link creature type to behavior for certain immortal or primarily spiritual beings. Liches should be rare enough to not think of them as a race or species anyway, but I'm good with the idea that either 1) what's needed to become a lich wouldn't be done by individuals who are not evil and/or 2) the powers they mess with to reach their state have impacts upon them, or the like.

However, I'm also a fan of redemption stories, and "rising from the pit itself" isn't a bad redemption story...

 

[Argyle King]

Whilst I have no issues with dragons generally being terrifying monsters that often eat people, being able to tell the good ones and bad ones apart by the colour of their skin certainly is something I could do without...

Admittedly, that's something I've attempted to step away from but have failed in doing so as much as I'd like.

Even when running other game systems, it's become a shorthand way of trying to give players (who have experience with D&D and color-coded enemies in video games) some hint about what to expect from a dragon encounter.

My intent is usually to hint at what sort of attacks they'll face, but I suppose I've also participated in pushing negative ideas about outward appearance.

I do have some ideas for doing it differently, but I'm not sure that putting energy into completely reworking my usual audience's understanding of a core aspect of their fantasy experience would be fruitful. Some of them had a rough time with the idea that dwarves I had in a setting weren't Scottish Vikings.

Terrible excuse I guess, but
I win the battles I can and try to support my real world beliefs while also realizing that I'm playing a game that involves other people, some of whom just want to roll dice and not think too hard about whether black dragons living in a swamp is some manner of racist social commentary.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Funny. I can think of several counter-examples to this. Especially in the Fizban alignment thread debate. I think it's safe to say YOU don't want to get rid of evil monsters, but I don't think "no one" does. On contraire, I think there is a group that does want all monsters that aren't mindless to be equally capable of good or evil, be it giants, dragons, beholders pit fiends, or liches.

I haven't seen that thread. My view is that there are two reasonable ways to go in order to improve very human-like evil monsters such as orcs:

1) Keep their human traits (society, language, culture, religion, tool-use, biological needs, bear young, etc) and make their morality human too.
2) Keep them evil but make them less human, like demons or homunculi for example.

Believe me, if the threshold was "humanoids shouldn't be evil" it l the debate would have simmered down some by not. The fact we're debating the redcap shows that this doesn't end at orcs and drow shows a willingness to move the goalposts to include all manner of sentient beings, so much so the term "monster" will no longer be applicable.

As @Malmuria pointed out upthread, there seems to be universal agreement in this thread that it's okay for the redcap to be evil. The large majority of the thread hasn't been about the redcap. Even the OP, afaics, doesn't have an issue with the redcap. The issue OP was raising is whether it makes sense to remove evil alignments while keeping descriptors such as "homicidal" that mean the same thing (which I think is a reasonable point).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Admittedly, that's something I've attempted to step away from but have failed in doing so as much as I'd like.

Even when running other game systems, it's become a shorthand way of trying to give players (who have experience with D&D and color-coded enemies in video games) some hint about what to expect from a dragon encounter.

My intent is usually to hint at what sort of attacks they'll face, but I suppose I've also participated in pushing negative ideas about outward appearance.

I do have some ideas for doing it differently, but I'm not sure that putting energy into completely reworking my usual audience's understanding of a core aspect of their fantasy experience would be fruitful. Some of them had a rough time with the idea that dwarves I had in a setting weren't Scottish Vikings.

Terrible excuse I guess, but
I win the battles I can and try to support my real world beliefs while also realizing that I'm playing a game that involves other people, some of whom just want to roll dice and not think too hard about whether black dragons living in a swamp is some manner of racist social commentary.

I like different dragons having differing ecologies and behaviours, I just do not link it to morality. Though generally I just don't use metallic dragons at all, I don't think they look cool.