So, what is your Favorite "Villain" race these days?

[Scott Christian]

PC and party morality comes pretty easy when people actually try to roleplay their characters. DM's can throw quandaries at them, and make them think. But, when a player roleplays their PC, it is usually very clear what they would do. Players are not some character actor playing Lincoln; hanging on every word he's written, trying to go through their day as if they are him, and constantly researching. You have your alignment. You have allies. You have your trait, ideal, bond, and flaw. And most importantly, you have the information the DM gave you about the world.

I always find it really strange when players don't know how to act. It either means the DM did a great job subtly planting seeds about what they thought was morality (but most of the time these are just plot twists), or the DM pitted the PC's alignment against the ideal or ally against the PC's flaw.

 

[Neonchameleon]

... Simply isn't fun for me.

Morality is a great thing to be in tune with. There are a lot of great questions about what makes something human. When is it morally justified to kill? Even in the case of self defense, when is the threshold of safety crossed? When do you have a moral obligation to retreat? Is it different if you present as a threat to your opponent? What constitutes threatening your opponent? These are all really important questions that I am glad people think about in real life. And if you like that in your game, by all means, have fun with it.

But I really don't want to do any of that at the game table. I don't play RPGs to have moral quandaries or discussions. That's just a level of reality I don't need in my escapism. We raid dungeons. We stop the evil that's destroying the world. We kill people and take their stuff. We don't wonder if the gods are real (because we can literally talk with them), and we don't wonder about what happens when you die (because some of us have been there), and we don't spend a lot of time discussing when it's okay to kill and when it isn't.

Every group draws a line in the sand for when they accept violence and death as an option. For some, it's practically never. For you, it's self defense. For a lot of us, we just need a quick and easy way for the GM to communicate that line to the players, and then we get on with the rest of the game.

The thing is that there are a lot better ways of doing that than by race. If you decide to make race your bad guy signifier then this leads to the "kobold babies" problem and you inherently have the moral quandry baked in.

Meanwhile you can easily have bad guy organisations. People who have chosen evil. If someone is wearing an SS uniform in 1942 and carrying a gun then they've made their life choices. Likewise if they have volunteered to join The Dark Lord's army they are at best a spy. And if they are a skeleton they have no free will so no moral quandry.

The reason to ditch always evil races is so we don't have to have the moral quandries that you don't want and can get on with the rest of the game. If we have evil races then for many of us the moral issues come baked in and we can't get on with the rest of the game.

 

[Meech17]

The thing is that there are a lot better ways of doing that than by race. If you decide to make race your bad guy signifier then this leads to the "kobold babies" problem and you inherently have the moral quandry baked in.

Meanwhile you can easily have bad guy organisations. People who have chosen evil. If someone is wearing an SS uniform in 1942 and carrying a gun then they've made their life choices. Likewise if they have volunteered to join The Dark Lord's army they are at best a spy. And if they are a skeleton they have no free will so no moral quandry.

The reason to ditch always evil races is so we don't have to have the moral quandries that you don't want and can get on with the rest of the game. If we have evil races then for many of us the moral issues come baked in and we can't get on with the rest of the game.

I think what this comes down to is just a difference in play styles. Ideally a DM who subscribes to the evil race method hopefully wouldn't use the kobold baby scenario. It's akin to pulling a 'gotcha' on the players. If they do, that just kind of seems like a jerk move.

On the other side of this coin if you have a world and a playstyle that embraces the shades of grey moral system, you're likely to already have the moral quandaries more complicated and nuanced than baby kobolds.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think what this comes down to is just a difference in play styles. Ideally a DM who subscribes to the evil race method hopefully wouldn't use the kobold baby scenario. It's akin to pulling a 'gotcha' on the players. If they do, that just kind of seems like a jerk move.

On the other side of this coin if you have a world and a playstyle that embraces the shades of grey moral system, you're likely to already have the moral quandaries more complicated and nuanced than baby kobolds.

The thing is that there are several classic adventures with kobold babies style scenarios (including one of the 3.0 introductory adventures) - and I don't recall any guidance saying not to do this so your "ideally" is an ideal. There are also players who are going to have a niggling itch at the back of their mind about kobold babies that aren't about stormtroopers, making the "just kill them" playstyle unpleasant if you use race rather than organisation for the designated killable bad guys when the playstyle barely differs otherwise.

 

[billd91]

I still favor races/cultures that come from more extreme environments such as the underdark. A difficult and harsh life is a pretty workable way to explain groups side-eyeing anyone else living much cushier lives like on the surface where there's light and food fairly drops off trees. So drow, duergar, troglodytes, orcs - all fun representatives of harsh lives -> harsh behavior.

 

[CreamCloud0]

kender, for the catharsis.

 

[Dire Bare]

I think what this comes down to is just a difference in play styles. Ideally a DM who subscribes to the evil race method hopefully wouldn't use the kobold baby scenario. It's akin to pulling a 'gotcha' on the players. If they do, that just kind of seems like a jerk move.

On the other side of this coin if you have a world and a playstyle that embraces the shades of grey moral system, you're likely to already have the moral quandaries more complicated and nuanced than baby kobolds.

When I was younger . . . I threw a young girl, a child, at the party who had been infected by lycanthropy and detected as "evil" by the party's paladin. I regret doing that to my players to this day, it was not cool.

If I ever use an "evil" race again, it will not be a "natural" race (moms, dads, kids, grandparents) but a created or spirit race. In my campaign . . . . Demons and devils are spirits and expansions of the plane of evil, so I'm good there. Undead are corruptions of living things that no longer are truly souled, sentient beings, so also okay. I would be okay with an "orc" type race that are created in vats by some Saruman like character rather than raised in the local orc village. But in all of these types of cases, I would try to tread carefully and mindfully.

But I'm never doing "kobold babies" again. Eesh, that was a bad time.

 

[rmcoen]

Orcs, undead, and aberrations (The Far Realm type, not flumphs) have always been my mainstays. Undead are easy - and no "undead babies" issues - and things that want to eat your brain are pretty clearly "bad guys". Orcs due to LotR and literal decades of lore and novels and games. And in the back pocket are always demons and devils.

Having said all that, my current campaign I decided to try something different - as people on the first page of this thread suggested - and went a different direction. First - while there will occasionally be "animated corpses" for one reason or another, there are no "undead". (the current druid Witch the party is fighting has Circle of Spores-style plant-zombie-things, for example.) Second - the "crystal sphere" is closed: no far realms, no Lower (or Higher) Planes interference.

Third - and on point for the conversation - there are no orcs in this world. Replacing them are "The Tribes", a loose confederation of all "goblinoids" that unitedly hate the Invaders (the PHB races, aka Kingsfolk, confined to a corner of the main continent), but also frequently don't like each other. Primal / Nature / Spirit magic is the tool and trademark of the Tribes, while the Kingsfolk have access to Arcane and Divine. [Yes, PCs can be special and still be rangers and druids, but with story consequences; likewise, the NPC hobgoblin wizard is a unique and odd thing.]

And here's the thing - the Tribes aren't evil. They absolutely are "antagonistic"! But it's able to nuanced and worked with. The Tribes staged a war against dwarven mining concerns in the "neutral zone", with the intent to wipe out all the dwarves and steal their (superior) mines and forges. They actually won, briefly, despite the party's best efforts, but were pushed back after a few months. During the victory, a PC was captured (well, slain, revivified, and then interrogated), but made "friends" with the aforementioned hobgoblin wizard who was in the Tribal vanguard. Later, when the rest of the PC broke the occupation force (with hundreds of dwarven reinforcements), the captured PC saved the wizard's life. And then the entire party went on a long side-quest into Tribal lands, escorted by the hobgoblin! Along the way they cleansed a goblin village of invading Wisps, saved another village from a displacer beast that had moved into their woods (Legendary Boss), one character got training on how to be a shaman (multiclass'd into druid), and they rested and relaxed ("mandatory training downtime") for a week with the goblins.

And later, elsewhere, mercilessly slaughtered several bands of goblins that had massacred a successful farmstead colony in the neutral zone.

Heck, there is even an honest-to-badness rule-breaking true undead in the game (for Story reasons, despite the campaign limit) - and the party is working with and for him!

The campaign seems to be working just fine without "evil in the DNA" creatures.

 

[Voadam]

Undead are easy - and no "undead babies" issues

Undead babies lead to different issues.

 

[rmcoen]

Undead babies lead to different issues.

Atropals, right? Or just nasty side notes in zombie apocalypse shows... ;-)