D&D General In 2025 FR D&D should PCs any longer be wary of the 'evil' humanoids?

[Remathilis]

I don't own the 2024 MM or anything written by WotC after it, but my understanding is that while 2024 MM humanoid NPC stat blocks are written to be explicitly of any alignment and non humanoid type monster stat blocks have default alignments specified in the MM entry the difference between humanoids and nonhumanoids on alignment is not explicit for the difference in type, just in practice from what's been put out in the MM.

Is there an explicit discussion about the nonhumanoids turning into humanoids or explicitly laying out the alignment issue for nonhumanoids being different than for humanoids?

Jermey said in the video about aberrations that gith who spent time away from the planes and lived on the material plane long enough (generations, not in ones lifetime) became humanoids and got the abilities of the pc species rather than the abilities in the Monster Manual (and were aberrations). He insinuated that was true of all PC species whose type differed from MotM to MM. Now none of that is stated in the MM (aside from a reference in the lizardfolk section) but we also haven't had any new species that were formally monsters be reprinted yet. It's possible that the PC goblin species will be fey if it gets reprinted or the giths be aberrations, but for now the take is that if you're a PC goblin, your from a different branch of goblin than the MM goblin.

 

[Lord Irongron]

No need really, you do not have to abandon things from prior editions at all, just do not follow the crowd and do what you want at your own table.

A setting where Teifling for example are 'beloved and accepted across the multiverse' has lost the plot.

Unfortunately in this case my 'table' is an online server with hundreds playing at any one time, and a large team of volunteer DMs running events and ensuring rules and broader RP expectations are adhered to, and therein lies the problem; new folk come through every day, and their expectations of the Forgotten Realms are sometimes wildly different to the older players, for whom a 'monster' walking into a tavern is akin to one of the Nazgul popping by the Shire for second breakfast.

And it's not just players - DMs, depending on their generation may feel differently about this too.

As the years roll on it increasingly feels like it's a lot of greybeards shouting 'NO! IT ISN'T HOW WE DID IT IN OUR DAY!'

I personally have the feeling that beyond the post spellplague timeline, or the D&D edition something quite fundamental has changed in regard how most fans like to play the game, and sooner or later I have to adapt to that.

And rather than setting a bomb off in my own forums/discord by raising the topic I thought this would be an ideal place to get a feeling for just how the larger fandom felt about it.

And thanks so much for all the replies!

 

[Desdichado]

I haven't the foggiest idea what "2025 FR D&D" players should do, but my players should be wary of pretty much everyone they meet. And yes, there are plenty of evil—not with scare quotes—humanoids for them to run in to.

 

[Scribe]

Unfortunately in this case my 'table' is an online server with hundreds playing at any one time, and a large team of volunteer DMs running events and ensuring rules and broader RP expectations are adhered to, and therein lies the problem; new folk come through every day, and their expectations of the Forgotten Realms are sometimes wildly different to the older players, for whom a 'monster' walking into a tavern is akin to one of the Nazgul popping by the Shire for second breakfast.

And it's not just players - DMs, depending on their generation may feel differently about this too.

As the years roll on it increasingly feels like it's a lot of greybeards shouting 'NO! IT ISN'T HOW WE DID IT IN OUR DAY!'

I personally have the feeling that beyond the post spellplague timeline, or the D&D edition something quite fundamental has changed in regard how most fans like to play the game, and sooner or later I have to adapt to that.

And rather than setting a bomb off in my own forums/discord by raising the topic I thought this would be an ideal place to get a feeling for just how the larger fandom felt about it.

And thanks so much for all the replies!

Ah, in that case yes, its trying to hold back the tide. Especially if you are living in the D&D space. If you are going to keep with the current edition, you are playing heroic hero's out to do mighty deeds, regardless of your ancestry choice, and thats about it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Unfortunately in this case my 'table' is an online server with hundreds playing at any one time, and a large team of volunteer DMs running events and ensuring rules and broader RP expectations are adhered to, and therein lies the problem; new folk come through every day, and their expectations of the Forgotten Realms are sometimes wildly different to the older players, for whom a 'monster' walking into a tavern is akin to one of the Nazgul popping by the Shire for second breakfast.

And it's not just players - DMs, depending on their generation may feel differently about this too.

As the years roll on it increasingly feels like it's a lot of greybeards shouting 'NO! IT ISN'T HOW WE DID IT IN OUR DAY!'

I personally have the feeling that beyond the post spellplague timeline, or the D&D edition something quite fundamental has changed in regard how most fans like to play the game, and sooner or later I have to adapt to that.

And rather than setting a bomb off in my own forums/discord by raising the topic I thought this would be an ideal place to get a feeling for just how the larger fandom felt about it.

And thanks so much for all the replies!

If this community is any indication of how the broader D&D community feels, then it’s a pretty stark divide. The subject of evil orcs may as well substitute for Goodwin’s Law here. The discussion In this thread has so far been very cordial, but people have very strong opinions on this matter in both directions. For what it’s worth, I think you’ve accurately assessed the direction the wind is blowing. Over time, the trend among D&D gamers is moving towards more cosmopolitan, more open to more fantastical species, and less open to the idea of any species being inherently evil, or even predominantly evil. The idea that one can assess a sentient being’s moral character by what group they were born into with any degree of reliability is only growing less popular over time.

Also, side note- the idea of Tieflings being among the “evil species” is particularly strange to me. They’ve been a core PC option in the player’s handbook for almost twenty years now, across two full editions and whatever the 5e 2014 to 5e 2024 transition was, and as far as I know they’ve never actually been evil. I mean, their whole schtick is being outcast and marginalized because of their fiendish appearance despite not actually having any inborn tendency towards evil…

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Also, side note- the idea of Tieflings being among the “evil species” is particularly strange to me. They’ve been a core PC option in the player’s handbook for almost twenty years now, across two full editions and whatever the 5e 2014 to 5e 2024 transition was, and as far as I know they’ve never actually been evil. I mean, their whole schtick is being outcast and marginalized because of their fiendish appearance despite not actually having any inborn tendency towards evil…

Tieflings were a PC race before they ever got an entry in any Monstrous Compendium, they've been around since 2e back in 1994. They had an alignment restriction of "any alignment but Lawful Good" something that's been ignored in every edition since 2e.

 

[Clint_L]

Unfortunately in this case my 'table' is an online server with hundreds playing at any one time, and a large team of volunteer DMs running events and ensuring rules and broader RP expectations are adhered to, and therein lies the problem; new folk come through every day, and their expectations of the Forgotten Realms are sometimes wildly different to the older players, for whom a 'monster' walking into a tavern is akin to one of the Nazgul popping by the Shire for second breakfast.

And it's not just players - DMs, depending on their generation may feel differently about this too.

As the years roll on it increasingly feels like it's a lot of greybeards shouting 'NO! IT ISN'T HOW WE DID IT IN OUR DAY!'

I personally have the feeling that beyond the post spellplague timeline, or the D&D edition something quite fundamental has changed in regard how most fans like to play the game, and sooner or later I have to adapt to that.

And rather than setting a bomb off in my own forums/discord by raising the topic I thought this would be an ideal place to get a feeling for just how the larger fandom felt about it.

And thanks so much for all the replies!

Could you clarify a bit more? Is this a situation where players might wind up with different DMs, and you need to ensure that there is a more or less uniform experience? Or are they typically always with the same DM?

I'm wondering why each individual DM can't chat with their players to determine a consensus for that table. For example, at session 0 with new groups I always emphasize that I don't use alignments and players shouldn't assume that any creature is automatically evil and needs to be killed; they need to assess the situation.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I always thought more people played PC Kobolds than Gnomes.
They are like little dragon dudes.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm confident players are not looking for the "dark ages reenactment of historical accuracy" any longer

Any longer?

Not trying to be a big downer, but they never were. There's no period in RPG history where that was a major, popular thing in RPGs.

The earliest RPGs are wargame-adjacent "kill your way through a deathtrap of a dungeon" deals. There was no "medieval sim" let alone "dark ages sim" component there.

Developing from that we get a kind of fantasy that is already rapidly trending towards high fantasy, Blackmoor and so on have a mix of S&S and high fantasy inspirations but that's still not "medieval sim" and Blackmoor, Greyhawk etc. were absolutely not "medieval" worlds, but rather very mixed in their level of tech, style of behaviour and so on. If you wanted to be a knight from a faux-European country that was an option, but just one of a buffet of options.

Dragonlance appears in 1984, and high/heroic fantasy in pretty much exactly the modern sense is here! And it's pretty much immediately a big hit. Not everyone is into it. People are still dungeon-crawling, hexcrawling, sandboxing, and so on, but this is something and people are increasingly realizing it as the '80s rave on. It is also at this period we get I think closest to the "dark ages reenactment of historical accuracy", except it's not dark ages, it's never dark ages (more's the pity!), it's solidly medieval. It's not 700 AD, it's 1100 AD or 1300 AD but for some reason all RPGs feel the need to be anachronistic and jumble together stuff even in ways the real would didn't and that don't make sense, so that limits the "sim". Still, we do get stuff kinda in that direction, like Rolemaster. And we get a subsection of D&D players going for that, but it's very much a subsection, because most D&D players are primarily pursuing something else.

So if this is all irrelevant lol I was very interested to think about the "any longer", because that's just never been major.

(EDIT - There is Runequest and that does present itself as 'dark ages' and claims them as a major inspiration, though in practice tends to seem - to me at least - a lot more the classical or ancient world just with solidly iron age equipment. And as much as it is an excellent game, it wasn't huge.)

A setting where Teifling for example are 'beloved and accepted across the multiverse' has lost the plot.

Is it any more far fetched than "English people rule the world and demand - and get - respect from pretty much everyone! And not just by force either!" when 1500+ years before they were* considered some of the dumbest hairiest smelliest stupidiest people on the planet?

I do not think that it is.

It might not be a plot you're you're interested it, but it's definitely not losing the plot. Like Cicero was saying the English, Britons, were so so stupid, so very very unhelp-ably stupid, they could never learn to read, ever. Just absolute failure of a race of people, not even good slave material, he advised his friends. Ugly, super-stupid, unreliable, nothing to recommend them. Caesar felt somewhat similarly, except his focus was on the belief Britons were profoundly unmusical, and could not sing nor play musical instruments.

< I am really working hard to resist the urge to put in an Austin Powers video here - I know he's fictional and played by a Canadian lol >

(PS you do not want to hear Cicero's detailed opinions about Jewish people, which he had, in abundance, suffice to say his views were more or less identical to what the most strident Islamophobes say about Muslims today. And I do mean almost identical. If you read it in a novel you'd think it was a very heavy-handed and on-the-nose analogy.)

On a more serious note you could probably do a pretty hilarious setting, good for at least a one-off campaign, where you did the 1800s but the British Empire was just orcs. Absolutely everything is the same, but we're orcs. Just behaving 100% exactly like 1800s British Empire people. Because honestly the way Cicero described Britons, we might as well have been D&D orcs or even goblins.

* = Hmmmmmmmm just saying maybe we still are?

 

[pukunui]

Large cultural diverse areas like Waterdeep and Neverwinter would be full of various species living in relative peace with no larger societal prejudice against humanoids (or near humanoids) but not necessarily against evil monsters. A dwarf barkeep may harbor personal grudges against the drow, but that's not going to reflect a wider societal prejudice in the whole of Neverwinter.

To build on this, Neverwinter will have societal prejudice against people from Luskan, regardless of species, due to the long history of bad blood between the two cities.

Hate the Luskanite because he’s a pirate who’d rob his own mother blind not because he’s an orc or a tiefling or a wererat.