1. Nobody argued that.
2. Rather than morally wrong I'd argue that the 5e take on gnolls is boring, and an unnecessary change from when gnolls used to be officially playable. They could have gone with a new type of undead or fiend if they wanted to use the "big demon spawns little demons by eating" concept (which IMO would have made more sense for the concept rather than using humanoids).
1. Ya'll keep saying that 'nobody is arguing that' but we have a lot of posters saying 'these types of imagery are causing harm' and I think we can all agree that harming others is morally wrong, no? So that is literally what you are arguing. This comes off as dishonest when you deny it. And, even if it is not your intent, there are more than a few of us who are telling you 'Yes, you ARE' and then the question becomes: If enough people feel that this is what you are doing, does what you are intending to do matter?
2. It 100% is boring to have monocultures...but a 'generic enemy you can just kill' does serve a good purpose. That can be put into the game via bandits or, how I do it, is I have a group called the Warped which is basically any living race, sentient or not, that has been overexposed to magic that warps them into mindless killing machines. So Warped can be any race, any species, anyONE really. Bandits are...well, they are also boring to me for reasons that aren't relevant to the discussion.
Also its a bit odd how mind-flayers seem to be okay, you hand-wave any arguments against this without
addressing the issue. They do not resemble humans enough? I don't think orcs resemble humans enough and it strikes me as...well, it strikes me as a bit odd how one can read about big tusked, green skinned creatures who kill and eat people and think 'minority race' but okay. I recognize that I am not the sole judge of how a thing looks...the problem is you are acting as if you
are the sole judge.
Mind-flayers are interesting. I mean, gotta eat to live right? Is doing what one needs to exist
evil? Maybe they only eat the 'bad sentient brains' or what have you. LOTS of different ways to do it that wouldn't paste them as entirely evil as they are portrayed in the books.
I think one of the reasons questions like this are so hard to answer (and you really can't handwave it away, it is a serious consideration that must be made) is because evil and good as concepts are very weak ones. I don't like alignment for that reason and I ignore it in my games entirely. But I am not asking the default to be catered to my tastes and implying that anyone who continues with the default is immoral (or propping up systemic immorality?).
Making the default lore to never cause harm to others (harm as loosely defined by those arguing that having orcs all be bad in the default lore does) is a sisyphean task. It is not going to ever be accomplished. We can't even pin them down on an endstate. When will it be finished? When will the books be morally clean and free from sin? Ask 10 of them you'll get 10 different answers. Or one semi-vague, inconsistent answer that changes a bit moment to moment.
The best way, the ONLY real way to make sure everyone at the table is comfortable is for the individual DMs and GMs to take the needs wants and desires of their players and run their game world accordingly.
I get the desire to make changes in the world for the better. But all these changes? There will be no effect. The time it takes ya'll to argue with us about this, ya'll could be writing your congressperson to end the war on drugs, something that will actually help the people you profess to care about. But thats not as sexy nor does it feel as good to take a noble stand against the injustice of how orcs are portrayed.
BUT seriously, do write them. It takes 5 minutes. Way less time than it takes to post here. I did.
