D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Vaalingrade]

Yes, the book is a flat out explosion of poorly thought out (or maybe even deliberately horrific) ideas about what goodness and evil are in the 3e D&D universe and the acceptable methods for a 'good' character to fight/vanquish/convert evil. If the question at hand is ever 'has D&D ever...'-based, well it certainly has.

It wasn't in isolation either. Later in the run, we got the Grey Guard, a Paladin that played like everyone was already playing Paladins -- AKA Jack Bauer with a magic pony.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So, you just keep them locked up for the rest of their lives until they figure out how not to be evil on their own? (Assuming the years of the sentences add up to that much?)

A-are --and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just asking because it sure sounds like it -- are you advocating brainwashing criminals?

That is literally the basis of a number of psychological thrillers.

 

[Cadence]

It wasn't in isolation either. Later in the run, we got the Grey Guard, a Paladin that played like everyone was already playing Paladins -- AKA Jack Bauer with a magic pony.

The internet couldn't fully deliver. It changed "with" to "as" in what it found.

 

[Maxperson]

Literally everything in the game can be 'easily ignored'.

So let us stop all discussion forever.

Up to you, but when you have a book with a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff, cherry picking is the way to go. You don't toss the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[Cadence]

A-are --and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just asking because it sure sounds like it -- are you advocating brainwashing criminals?

That is literally the basis of a number of psychological thrillers.

"The soul reflects on past evils and slowly finds within itself a spark of goodness." - Is that brainwashing? Or is it counseling while in jail and getting time off for good behavior? Or are you arguing they're the same thing?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Up to you, but when you have a book with a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff, cherry picking is the way to go. You don't toss the baby out with the bathwater.

That was neither of the BoXDs. It was bad stuff all the way down. Except giant horse lady, because all areas of the fandom need inclusion.

 

[Vaalingrade]

"The soul reflects on past evils and slowly finds within itself a spark of goodness." - Is that brainwashing? Or is it counseling while in jail and getting time off for good behavior? Or are you arguing they're the same thing?

It ALWAYS works and changes them so they agree with your view of good. It's brainwashing.

The internet couldn't fully delivered. It changed "with" to "as" in what it found.
View attachment 149561

I knew this was coming the second I typed it.

 

[Cadence]

It ALWAYS works and changes them so they agree with your view of good. It's brainwashing.

Hence, again, I suggested just having it go to N and not E instead of the over the top alignment matching it suggests.

I knew this was coming the second I typed it.

I would be disappointed if you hadn't know.

 

[Remathilis]

To return to the tiger analogy brought up earlier in the thread, I'm not sure there's that much difference between tigers and mind flayers in terms of their ability to make moral judgements. We tend to assume that creatures with higher intelligence should be able to make moral judgements, because we're the most intelligent species on the planet in real life and that's what we do. But there's really no reason to assume that this is the case. After all, humans with high intelligence (for whatever definition of the term you'd like to use) don't necessarily act more morally.

It's easy to imagine a species with greater then human intelligence that utterly lacks the capacity to make moral judgements of any kind, or even recognize the concept. Such a creature would be terrifying....especially if it had tentacles and wanted to eat your brain. So for me, that's kind of the point, and it's why I treat mind flayers as neutral in my campaigns. No, you won't find any eating vegan brain substitute and running the local grocery store, any more then you'd find a shark doing those things. If you suddenly made a shark hyper-intelligent, they wouldn't stop being a shark. And sharks aren't evil. They're just sharks, doing what sharks do.

I kind of like the idea that this makes Mind Flayers mutually incomprehensible not just with humanoids (all of whom are capable of making moral judgements, even if they often don't behave morally), but also with demons, devils, and other outsiders. For demons and devils, cruelty is the point. They're essentially made out of cruelty and hatred. Mind Flayers are so alien they can't even process the concept of hate.

I've always liked and accepted that some beings (aberrations, fiends, elementals, celestials, even some undead and fey) have extremely different psychological systems that they don't adhere to morality as mortal beings do. A mind flayer cannot understand emotions beyond that which can be rationalized. An angel has difficulty understanding why someone would choose evil. A fiend cannot contemplate friendship. Even those closer to mortal may have hang ups that make them inhuman (a vampire understands the world though the lens of predator and prey, a fey cannot grasp the idea of individual property).

I like it because it makes them inhuman. They do not see the world like you or I. An orc or a drow is evil by choice or by nurture, but a mind-flayer is evil by nature.

The push to make all sentient creatures equally capable of moral choice the way humans are makes them all feel like humans.

 

[Maxperson]

That was neither of the BoXDs. It was bad stuff all the way down.

Except not. I picked out a bunch of useful stuff to use. Arbitrarily declaring the entire books bad is indicative of blinders being worn. I get that not all of it was good, but it's a pet peeve of mine when people read a few things that are bad and then just declare the rest of it to be the same.

Except giant horse lady, because all areas of the fandom need inclusion.

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.