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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6459903" data-attributes="member: 4937">Good societies for evil races, per my campaign:Humans: As the better examples of human social institutions in history and literature, warts and all.Goblins: The typical goblin counter-cultural society is loosely objectivist in nature and based on personal contract, rejecting the notion that if you are strong you have a right to the labor of others and that this ultimately benefits the race as a whole that undergirds normal goblin society.  Typically these societies are created by breakaway members of goblin plebian and bourgeois castes - typically the merchant and tinkerer castes that have a relatively high degree of economic security and freedom and herdsman castes who have potential wealth but lack social standing in the society to capitalize on it.  They reject tribe and family as a basis of social structure in preference to individual rights, reject the caste structure, reject slavery, and reject theft as a valid means of acquiring wealth.  In general, these counter-cultural societies tend toward CN, although it wouldn't be impossible for a small group to veer toward CG particularly if it opens relations with an existing CG culture (perhaps a human nation) and adopts its norms.  They are highly unstable for a variety of reasons:1) The goblin family of deities zealously guards the race as a personal possession.   Breakaway groups of goblins represent an existential threat to their perceived interests, particularly if the breakaway group shows interest in shifting their worship to other deities.   Thus, the most stable external communities tend to be impious or continue to propitiate normal goblin deities in at least a nominal manner - the former involves a significant loss of utility to the community and the later involves a bit of dangerous hypocrisy.  A crusade is likely to be declared against any break away community that threatens the integrity of the species as a whole, and in general such breakaway communities can't survive a coordinated attack.2) The community is at danger if it attempts to assimilate outsiders, and the wealthier and more successful it becomes the greater danger it is in.   New members of the community will be increasingly unlikely to actually hold the communities interests at heart.  Afterall, the community is to a large extent based on self-interest, and its far too easy to cross a threshold where the number of truly self-centered persons reaches a dangerous percentage of the number of persons acting out of mutual self-interest.   The community then tends to descend into strife and anarchy, ultimately collapsing.3) The community is at danger if it does not attempt to assimilate outsiders.  Although nurture can skew the propensities of the race somewhat, it remains true that goblins in their very nature were made to have certain tendencies.  Even if there is a critical mass of like-minded goblins in the founding generation, future generations of goblins will tend to have less adherence to the foundational beliefs of the community than the prior generation.  This deterioration can be subtle, because the succeeding generations will generally adhere to the community and its ideals out of natural tendencies to loyalty to the community and subservience to its existing leaders.   But as these generations move into positions of leadership themselves, they tend gradually erode the freedoms that the community was founded on until they exist only in the form of highly regulated legal fictions.   Eventually, as the community becomes more and more tradition, community, and legal minded, it becomes dissatisfied with the founding ideals of the community and rapidly shifts to a set of beliefs that closely resemble that of the larger goblin culture.   Often this occurs contemporaneously with 'invasion' by goblin clerical evangelists whose messages then resonate with the society in its present form.4) The community is in danger if it doesn't try to embed itself in a larger protectorate such as a human nation.  If the community begins to prosper, it becomes an increasingly desirable target for neighboring communities and thus subject to banditry and ultimately invasion and genocide.  Wealth breeds jealousy and greed.  These threats often come from neighboring goblin tribes, but equally they can come from neighbors of any racial group.  Humans, elves, and dwarves will typically perceive a growing, wealthy, goblin neighbor as a threat and will move against it out of a misplaced sense of self-preservation, misplaced ideas of justice, racism, or self-justified greed (depending on tendencies of that society).   It is very difficult for a goblin community to gain the sort of trust with non-goblin communities (particularly with the big three alliance of humans, dwarves, and elves) that allow for normal relationships between nations.   Goblin diplomats don't normally enjoy immunity or freedom of travel.  Goblins can't normally expect to be entitled to legal protection in foreign courts, or to be able to extradite foreign criminals for prosecution in their own courts.   To the extent that they can, neighbors are generally loathe to give recognition to goblin breakaway groups for fear of upsetting relations with the larger, more established, more dangerous goblin clans.   Without protection from a larger established community however, it's difficult for breakaway communities to resist invasion.5) The community is in danger if it does try to embed itself in a larger community seeking protection.  Many more tolerant human cultures accept goblin citizens to some degree or the other, at least as individuals.   A few less savory dwarves are also willing to deal with goblins.  Idreth tend to be highly tolerant of everyone, though loathe to violate their perceived neutrality.  However, goblin communities embedded in larger communities have to accept the laws and customs of the community they find themselves in much of the time (there are very very few exceptions where goblins are treated as a semi-autonomous nation within a larger framework, and sadly for good reasons, see #3).  This makes it very hard to maintain the traditions the community was founded on.  Worse, it's a simple fact that goblins are not the most tactful, beautiful, and pleasant of races to have as neighbors, and that even in tolerant communities there will be widespread discrimination against them of various sorts.  This tends to accelerate the degeneration of the ideas that the community was founded on and increase rebellion against the founding generation by succeeding generations, which in turn leads to greater rejection by the larger community in an accelerating cycle.  The ultimate result tends to be genocide or ejection of the community by the larger community.The longest lived goblin counter-cultures tend to involve highly isolated communities with powerful spell-casters in the founding generation.It's also possible, though highly rare, to see shifts up toward LN or LG when a strong ruler among the Great Goblins or bugbears adopts a more benevolent policy toward the plebian and bourgeois castes, and begins to suppress the injustices that the aristocratic classes assume to be their normal rights.  These societies are even more unstable than the counter cultural ones, first because all of the leaders subordinates will tend to see acts of mercy or benevolence as proof of weakness and senility, leading to coups and other crisis.  Secondly, because its very difficult for the Great Goblin to ensure continuity of succession, as it generally requires having an heir of a similar disposition.  Thirdly, because the Great Goblin will if he moves too far in this direction will lose the support of the clergy, without which he's likely doomed.  And any Great Goblin that attempted to move religious norms away from the traditional gods would almost instantly find himself facing a crusade from the entire rest of the goblin race.  Even a whole clan would have a difficulty surviving such an onslaught, particularly given that the clan itself would probably not be as cohesive and undivided as the attacking clans. I've never deeply explored either structure, though I do have a goblin campaign that I've started a few times but never had time to play through where one possible end state I'd like to see would be establishment of a community of the first type by the PCs.   A campaign where the PC's are as low level characters manipulated into attacking a goblin break away community of the first or second type would also be interesting.   If I ever did a political focused campaign, a scenario where the PC's have the opportunity to back a goblin 'King Arthur' type figure that has arisen and fight off a goblin crusade might also be interesting.Other than the goblins, I don't have any unusually evil race that regularly shows up in my games.  I feel the need for only one trope 'ugly' race, and so long ago dropped orcs from my games.   Drow are so stereotyped that I'm loathe to use them, to the extent that common lore in the game world is that the Drow are extinct and have been for 5000 years, and I've never had a good idea for an Underdark campaign.  All other races, mongrelmen, kobolds, gnolls, dark creepers, merfolk, lizardfolk, and so forth are rare, tend to be highly isolated, and unvaryingly have monocultures because they are each the special creation of some deity that they have as sole patron.  Whether good or evil, they are more akin to a deities fingernails than true independent beings, similar to the relationship between Morgoth/Sauron and orcs and trolls in late (post LotR) Tolkien canon.   I've never devoted any mental space to trying to make those lesser races diverse culturally.  The more races you have in your world, the harder of a problem of imagination that presents.</blockquote>

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