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

[OakenHart]

Are tieflings fiends and aasimar celestials?

There can be mortals with outsider ancestry without being outsiders themselves. That's always been the case?

I think 3e muddied things up a bit when they labeled them "native outsiders" (I don't think they were called as such in other editions, but maybe someone can correct me/verify?), but yeah, even with that label they were explained as "not truly outsiders themselves".

 

[Argyle King]

So... a thing I intend to do, going forward, and a thing that WotC should do, is make creatures, even humanlike ones, that cannot alter their moral position "Unaligned", and then let their actions determine morality as things happen.

Angels and Demons? Unaligned Outsides. Angels might foster goodness in the universe, might -serve- goodness or a good creature... But they do so not out of choice or moral compunction, but because they're designed to do so. Further, they can and will commit terrible acts of horrible evil in order to fulfill the intentions of their creators.

An Angel will burn an entire city to the ground if they are commanded to do so, with no pause to rescue children or ensure that animals are loosed and saved, because they have been told that it will be good to do so.

Similarly, even a demon acting in a manner that appears good, such as saving a family, is ultimately serving a greater evil. And has no more moral consideration for the act than for poking a hole in a chicken.

Redcaps? Murderous Unaligned Fae. They kill because it is what they do. They're not "Evil" or "Good" or even "Neutral" because those alignments imply there's some morality to their thoughts and deeds. There isn't. No more than there's thought to their failed attempts at Stealth while wearing iron boots that they never remove. If a Redcap wanted to be stealthy, he could take them off. But even when he wishes to be stealthy, the boots make it basically impossible.

Because like homicide, the boots are a part of what a Redcap is.

As to the racial allegories of Redcaps: are not "People" or Representations thereof in any example. They're explicitly, historically, mythological monsters. So trying to compare them to things like Orcs and Elves is doomed to failure. And there's actually a couple of layered reasons for that.

Firstly: Orcs were never mythological. They were created, whole cloth, by Tolkien and other writers. There's no cultural tradition of Orcs in myth and legend unlike the Powrie/Redcap. Orcs were created to represent Corrupted Elves. Which is -already- heavy into racism because the Orcs are Black (With Black Speech) while the Elves are all white and blonde and it plays hard into Ham, of Biblical fame. Oh, I'm sure Tolkien didn't sit down and think "Darn black people and/or Jewish People, I'mma make them my villains!" when he wrote the book (though I could be wrong)...

I find a lot here that I agree with.

Though, I do have a question.

You mention that there's no mythological history of orcs; that Tolkien wrote them into existence.

How is that not also true of mythological creatures? Before something was written (or spoken) into story, how would it have a history?

 

[aco175]

Elves have the fey ancestry trait, but they are not fey. They gain a power from having been fey long ago, but are humanoids now for game purposes. Are there elves that never lost the fey type and can be classified as something else, or are they too close to normal elves or humans to be seen as different. I know there is the good and evil courts, but what about a race of elves that are of the fey realm and not the material.

 

[Faolyn]

Sure. Zack Snyder’s zombies, for example, rather miss the mark on the consumerism metaphor. But zombies as an immigration metaphor? That’s so far afield of any interpretation I’ve ever heard… it’s not a drift, it’s a complete non-sequitur. I would need to hear a more detailed analysis under this interpretive lens before accepting it out of hand.

Honestly, I could see that. My very racist next door neighbor, who fortunately moved out last year, seemed legitimately frightened of the non-white people who live in our building. He had multiple extra locks installed on his door to prevent them from breaking in.

And I've heard racist rhetoric about "hordes of immigrants and minorities" will overwhelm white people and wipe them out, either through violence or out-breeding (and I'd be surprised if you hadn't heard this bit of idiocy as well). So I can definitely see how some people view zombies as a either a metaphor for immigration or as a metaphor for the fear of immigrants.

 

[Remathilis]

We should separate the idea of "fundamental flaws" from "sometimes vague terminology".

This isn't about calling orcs evil, the post I'm quoting states the fundermental underpinnings of fantasy is problematic. D&D is built at it's core about these original sins. I can see making changes to how orcs or drow are perceived, but when you are at the "dungeon delves are colonialism" level, what is even left to save?

 

[Umbran]

Metaphors have a tendency to drift or have other people interpret them in ways not intended by the author.

There are three "texts": What the author intended, what was actually produced, and what the audience got out of it. All these are valid texts. Many authors embrace this, knowing the audience will have their own take on the work, and in fact are intentionally non-specific to allow the piece to resonate with more people.

 

[Faolyn]

There is an odd cynical streak that wants to point out the hypocrisy of that. That some fey are utterly bound by their nature and other fey are not, but I think it's just easier to admit that PC "fey" are a mechanical mistake and treat those races/lineages as humanoids with fey ancestry (cf elves).

There seem to be three possible types of fey in 5e now. There's fey like centaurs, satyrs, etc., which we can all imagine as being born and raised in the same way that humans are. The old-fashioned way. (Especially since satyrs are not male-only now.) These fey may have stronger "alignment tendencies" than humans do, but will still have free will.

Then there are the fey like dryads, who seem to be born out of nature. It's easy to imagine a dryad as the embodied soul of a tree, or a korred as the embodied soul of a stone, that one day the fey just walked out of the tree or stone or whatever, fully formed. These fey probably have free will that is strongly limited by their origins as basically pseudo-elementals.

Then there are the fey like redcaps and boggles, who are specifically said to be born from emotions or actions that take place in the Feywild or where the Feywild and Material plane meet. "A boggle is born out of feelings of loneliness." "Meenlocks are spawned by fear." "If a sentient creature acts on an intense desire for bloodshed, one or more redcaps might appear where the blood of a slain person soaks the ground." The fey are, as others have said, emotional elementals.

So I don't think it's hypocritical so much as there's an unwritten difference between the types of fey.

 

[Umbran]

I suppose that we do disagree on the role biology does (or should) play in it.

For Fae, who are not well-established to be biological creatures as we commonly use the term?

 

[Argyle King]

Elves have the fey ancestry trait, but they are not fey. They gain a power from having been fey long ago, but are humanoids now for game purposes. Are there elves that never lost the fey type and can be classified as something else, or are they too close to normal elves or humans to be seen as different. I know there is the good and evil courts, but what about a race of elves that are of the fey realm and not the material.

That's what 4E Eladrin were.

 

[Faolyn]

I think 3e muddied things up a bit when they labeled them "native outsiders" (I don't think they were called as such in other editions, but maybe someone can correct me/verify?), but yeah, even with that label they were explained as "not truly outsiders themselves".

"Native outsider" seemed to mostly (or even entirely?) be given to monsters that were first detailed in Planescape. Even if those monsters were completely mundane.