D&D 5E Orcs and Drow in YOUR game (poll */comments +)

[Jack Daniel]

(You forgot "not applicable, don't use alignment".)

I'm not running 5e, but I still checked "not applicable, orcs and drow absent." I hardly ever run "official" settings, so I have no use for "official" Greyhawkian/Realmsian lore. I have a variety of fay-folk and sluagh and orcneas and draugr in my world that fill the "dark elf" or twisted/goblinized elf niche, and I have porcine anthropoids called gruuchs that fill the "always evil" humanoid battle-fodder niche, but I also have playable goblins and ogres which are good as often as humans and elves are — which is to say, they'd be of "any" alignment if I ever deigned to use alignment for anything other than planar beings.

 

[Flamestrike]

Any sentient race can choose to be Evil, Good or Neutral.

Some groups (Cults, Religions, Cultures, Societies, Organizations) condone or promote evil acts (murder, slavery, torture, harming others) and members of that [cult/ religion/ culture/ society] that agree with and conform to those acts, are thus Evil.

Just like some groups promote and condone good acts (charity, compassion, mercy, tolerance, helping others) and the people within those groups who agree with and conform to those acts, are thus Good.

Evil creatures exist in Good societies. Good people exist in Evil societies.

Evil people can be redeemed. Good people can be corrupted.

The Culture and Religion of the Drow of Menzoberrazan promotes slavery, torture, betrayal, murder and harming others. It thus Evil. But that doesnt mean that the Drow that live there are inherently Evil. All it means is that the Drow that live there and choose to embrace or condone those acts are Evil, those that do not embrace them are Neutral or Good, and even the Evil drow that do live there are not beyond redemption, repudiation of that Evil and changing alignment to Good.

It's not rocket science.

 

[DarkMantle]

@Flamestrike please see the OP, this is a + thread only for information-seeking, and not for debating. Let's keep it fair for everyone - everyone else is only commenting on the poll and/or their own game setting.

 

[Older Beholder]

In my home brew setting you are just as likely to find orcs and drow among the city guard as you are to find them in a group of bandits

 

[Argyle King]

I'm not sure how to answer.

What's true for orcs isn't true for drow (and vice versa) in my home games.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To me the difference is that "any alignment" means that the race is not predisposed either through race(demons/devils) or society(drow/orcs) towards any particular alignment or alignments. Humans are like that. "Typically evil" would be orcs, drow, and other races that either through genetics or society, are mostly evil.

Sure, I just think that people use the terms in significantly overlapping ways. Even looking at say me and my brother, who have very similar DM styles and experiences, I think we might describe essentially the same thing with different terms.

Also agree re "genetics or society" and the failure to distinguish which it is, is a big part of the problem. There should probably have been a different term for one. Or better yet it should never have been "genetic" for any conventional humanoid (monsters maybe).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There haven't been any drow in my game yet, just haven't really felt inclined to include any. But basically all sapient races are Any Alignment and generally presumed to be ordinary folks unless evidence suggests otherwise. The players have met entirely civilized orcs (one of their favorite helpful NPCs is a no-nonsense orc librarian and wizard, who endeared herself by being a lot less flowery than most wizards, while still being erudite), and several other races that are "usually always evil," like ogres and minotaurs. I haven't featured any trolls, and I've been thinking about patterning them after Skyrim's trolls, that is, genuinely non-sapient animals.

The only "always evil" beings that have appeared in my game are mindflayers, or I should say the only such being was a mindflayer, as there's only been one of them (and he's super dead now). Though as I've said many times in threads here, I do also have devils and demons, which are essentially always evil, and which are pretty difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to truly kill permanently due to their nature as spirit-beings rather than proper flesh-and-blood ones, so even if you really did manage to screw up that badly and target the one-in-a-zillion that is theoretically maybe not Always Evil, you'd have to work really hard to accidentally kill them completely dead. (In simple terms, corporeal spirits--like celestials and fiends--don't cease to exist in the world when their body is slain, they just take an unpleasant journey back "home." To kill one truly dead, you must kill it in a place cut off from all access to the planes, which can only be done artificially with intentional magic.)

Basically, if it eats like a person, and talks like a person, and can decide to wear (or not wear) clothes like a person, and has anything even remotely resembling a culture like people do, then it is a person and thus "Any Alignment." Mindflayers, devils, demons, and couatl (the only type of celestial they've met thus far) do not eat the way people do, indeed other than the first they don't even need to eat at all. Note that this is a one-way implication; there are beings that don't hit all of these things but would still count as people (such as warforged and other sapient golem-type beings). Or a Zefrank would say, "This concludes the human test. If you scored at least 3, then you are a human. If your score is less than 3, the results are inconclusive, and testing will continue." Or, for an example where the list is theoretically opt-in, there's a dragon NPC in my game who usually stays undercover in the form of a dragonborn priest. While in that form, he eats like a person, talks like a person, and definitely chooses to dress very formally like a person, while clearly having a culture (actually, semi-shared with one of the PCs, who isn't from his homeland, but lived there for many years).

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Both absent.

There are so many elements to choose from, and neither orcs nor drow are interesting enough to me to make the cut.

 

[Tonguez]

IMC half-Orc stats are used for Humans touched by the beast god Punga (father of lizards, sharks and pigs), they are usually feared but do make great and valued fighters.

Drow society is still leather studded sexy spider dommes, and they are purple skinned but do have black chitin on their arms and legs

 

[AtomicPope]

In my past two campaigns (previous and current) it was important to have Drow as any alignment. In my last campaign there was one particular place where the Drow were horribly evil, but didn't necessarily follow Lolth, and Orcs were very evil. In my current campaign, which is Eberron, Orcs and Drow are any alignment. I really needed an evil assassin cult so I used Orcs for that. I wanted to have nimble, fast, cunning, sneaky Orcs just to switch around the stereotypes a bit. From the PCs' point of view, Orcs and Elves are both pretty evil (Elves are connected to Vol, the Lich Queen). All of it depends on the campaign, story, and how they fit in.