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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 6208038" data-attributes="member: 2303">Another point here is that evil looks very different seen from the outside.If you look at England from a Chinese perspective during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_wars" target="_blank">Opium Wars</a>, the only real conclusion you can draw about those English is that they were chaotic and evil. This is not how the English saw themselves, and not how we see them today. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuthering_heights" target="_blank"> Wuthering Heights</a> was written just 4 years after the end of the opium war. What I am trying to say is that a culture can look distinctly different from the inside and outside. If you are a physically able hobgoblin living in a highly regimented hobgoblin society and winning a war, you probably think your life is the best there is and something very close to heaven. If you are describing domestic scenes inside an orc tribe, things probably are crude but the evil might not be apparent by any means. Sure, the weak are beaten down, but they also know there place so there is little apparent conflict. Orc babies know better than to cry when daddy is around. And a whole lot of comradely roughhousing is going on. Like kindergarten, with axes.But in my games I generally try to avoid such scenes. Player characters have selective perception, so they will not notice signs of affection among orcs. Orcs just never have babies anywhere where the PCs are going to find them. If the theme of the campaign is life under oppression, the oppressed will be human (or elves etc - someone generally considered "good"). if we look at Paizo's current adventure path Wrath of the Righteous, they deftly bypass most of these issues by having the opponents be demons - extra-planar aliens without families and in 99% of all cases irredeemably evil. And you can still bet the players will meet that 1% redeemable demon. Thus you can BOTH have a named, redeemable heartthrob AND hordes of minions a paladin can slay in good faith. 20 years ago such a war story might be told with orcs as the antagonists, but today Paizo choose the even easier-to-slay demons. This is entertainment, not social realism, but the standards of what is acceptable entertainment change over time.</blockquote>

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