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

[Hexmage-EN]

Absolutely true. And those settlers were evil.

I'm just saying that it's disingenuous to say that all of the settlers were -evil-. They were absolutely in the wrong, and taking advantage of a terrible cruelty for their own benefit. But benefiting from the awful deeds of others doesn't make you evil.

It just makes you complicit with that evil.

The settlers at the time were more than just complicit. They were holding onto the land that had been recently acquired and that people were still fighting to take back, oftentimes fighting against those who were looking to reclaim their territory. Even in the late 1800's the Lakota people were practicing a religious ritual that they hoped would destroy everything the settlers had built and send the Europeans back to whence they had came:

They told the people they could dance a new world into being. There would be landslides, earthquakes, and big winds. Hills would pile up on each other. The earth would roll up like a carpet with all the white man's ugly things – the stinking new animals, sheep and pigs, the fences, the telegraph poles, the mines and factories. Underneath would be the wonderful old-new world as it had been before the white fat-takers came. ...The white men will be rolled up, disappear, go back to their own continent.

Source: Ghost Dance

BTW, there's an interesting zombie movie that came out in 2019 called Blood Quantum about a plague afflicting everyone except for the indigenous people of a reservation, with the central conflict being between a faction that wants to help the non-indigenous people and a faction that thinks bringing in non-indigenous people capable of becoming zombies is a bad idea:

Spoiler: Spoilers

It turns out to have been a bad idea; a zombie outbreak occurs within the reservation.

 

[billd91]

It feels like lots of Europe would have past evil activities it's residents benefit from too...

Not just Europe - it's global. History is full of examples pretty much everywhere.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Like the Europeans were any better. There is literally no group of people on this planet who didn't do horrendous things to someone else, or who helped or stood idly by while other people did horrendous things. It's just that some of those things were farther back in history than smallpox blankets.

Really, for most of history (debatably even now) most humans were at least borderline evil. People can act nice, but take away whatever keeps them content (or give them a reason to feel discontent) and you'll see someone's true nature.

 

[billd91]

Really, for most of history (debatably even now) most humans were at least borderline evil.

By today's standards.
Welcome to the privileges of time and philosophical development.

 

[Maxperson]

Red dragons are mortal beings who lay eggs and seemingly raises its young (instead of abandoning their eggs, like some reptiles do). There's no reason why they can't have individual alignments. They may have racial tendencies because yes, biology does influence behavior (look at any book on breeds of cat or dog, for instance), but they're intelligent enough that to channel those tendencies in a variety of ways.

5e is pretty sparse on the lore, so I went back to 3e for this.

"Courtship among red dragons can be a perilous affair, because most would-be suitors are treated as dangerous rivals. Successful red dragon courtship usually involves a younger dragon with fairly high status among its peers carefully approaching an older one. Females do most of the courting, but males are also known to do so. After mating, the younger dragon is usually left to guard the eggs. Most red wyrmlings are left to fend for themselves."

You might get the occasional red dragon of a different alignment, but most are evil and leave their young to survive or not.

 

[Steampunkette]

It feels like lots of Europe would have past evil activities it's residents benefit from too...

Like the Europeans were any better. There is literally no group of people on this planet who didn't do horrendous things to someone else, or who helped or stood idly by while other people did horrendous things. It's just that some of those things were farther back in history than smallpox blankets.

You're not wrong.

But at least I wouldn't be occupying stolen land.

Or, well. At least after a fashion. Like it was stolen (There's parts of Germany and France that have changed hands so many times it's borderline hilarious), sure, but it was stolen from my people every time on both sides of the family. So it'd be like reclaiming my heritage while also stabbing my heritage in the back by occupying land stolen from my heritage...

 

[Faolyn]

People really need to get past the races and monsters etc arent talking about "Every Orc. Drow, Dwarf, Elf, etc etc etc" its talking about generalities. MOST Orcs you encounter will be this way. MOST Mountain Dwarves have this background. NOT ALL.

Go read the 5e description on orcs. Show me the word "most" where it comes to their evil.

And then explain why saying "sure, most orcs are evil murdering rapist warmongers, but not Bob here; he's a good guy" is somehow better.

 

[Cadence]

You're not wrong.

But at least I wouldn't be occupying stolen land.

Or, well. At least after a fashion. Like it was stolen (There's parts of Germany and France that have changed hands so many times it's borderline hilarious), sure, but it was stolen from my people every time on both sides of the family. So it'd be like reclaiming my heritage while also stabbing my heritage in the back by occupying land stolen from my heritage...

Is your percentage of Neanderthal DNA relevant to deciding this?

 

[Faolyn]

You're not wrong.

But at least I wouldn't be occupying stolen land.

Or, well. At least after a fashion. Like it was stolen (There's parts of Germany and France that have changed hands so many times it's borderline hilarious), sure, but it was stolen from my people every time on both sides of the family. So it'd be like reclaiming my heritage while also stabbing my heritage in the back by occupying land stolen from my heritage...

That doesn't make it better, you know...

 

[Scribe]

Really, for most of history (debatably even now) most humans were at least borderline evil

Well that's just not possible. An innate morality applied to 'most' of a species?