D&D General The Case for Evil Orcs (Minor Rings of Power Spoilers)

[billd91]

Because one of those is fighting someone because they're opposed to you on an idealogical level, and the other is going after them because of how they born. How are these even comparable? You're comparing an entire race, literately available for anyone to play as an option, to an idealogical choice

Going after the soldiers of the Jerk Empire is a vastly different thing than targetting someone because of how they were born

Is it? Did those soldiers of the Jerk Empire choose to be born there, be subject to its ideologies from birth, be conscripted into its armies?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, ideally you'd have turncoats, folks who aren't buying into the regime, various other people and whatnot joining up with the other side for power, fame, fear....

But, you've found the solution. Regimes be evil, races aren't. Plus, folks remember and like the stories of people driven to fight each other through circumstance, through who had things been different they may have been friends. No one cares about Orphanageburner the Bandit who burns orphanages because he's Chaotic Evil and your players will reduce him to a bloodied smear on the ground in 3 rounds, tops

But if the regime and the race are the same thing, as far as the actual play is concerned, does that make a difference?

 

[DEFCON 1]

They don't have to comment from a moralistic point if view. I would consider that rather rude.

Are you suggesting that if someone posts here and says "This is how I play the game and you don't get to make a moral judgement on how I do it" that that's enough to shield them from any responses?

That's an interesting take. "I'm making a comment on a public discussion forum, but no one else is allowed to discuss it."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Are you suggesting that if someone posts here and says "This is how I play the game and you don't get to make a moral judgement on how I do it" that that's enough to shield them from any responses?

That's an interesting take. "I'm making a comment on a public discussion forum, but no one else is allowed to discuss it."

Generally speaking, insulting others on ENworld is discouraged. I would call implying that a poster is a bad person because of their playstyle an insult.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This cuts in both directions. Choosing to cyberbully and harass people who play the game in a manner you don't approve of is not okay even if you call it "criticism."

Disagreeing or calling people out is not cyberbullying.

 

[Alzrius]

Disagreeing or calling people out is not cyberbullying.

Dropping thinly-veiled hints that anyone who plays the game in a manner a given poster doesn't approve of will, and should, have their character publicly impugned by that poster is cyberbullying.

 

[billd91]

Are you suggesting that if someone posts here and says "This is how I play the game and you don't get to make a moral judgement on how I do it" that that's enough to shield them from any responses?

That's an interesting take. "I'm making a comment on a public discussion forum, but no one else is allowed to discuss it."

Discuss it? Or badwrongfun it? Or subtly imply the person who posted is a racist?

 

[Reynard]

Ah but the usual reason for why there are inherently evil races is because the evil god that created them doesn't give them the same amount of free-will that good gods give to their creations. Thus inherently good races tend to be race because the sentient races created by good gods, have free-will thus can choose to act in a evil manner.

But is free will necessary for "good"? That's another philosophical discussion that is probably too involved for this thread because we would have to define both "good" and "free will."

 

[Vaalingrade]

Dropping thinly-veiled hints that anyone who plays the game in a manner a given poster doesn't approve of will, and should, have their character publicly impugned by that poster is cyberbullying.

I... don't think we have the same definition of cyberbullying.

Because that's not cyberbullying.

 

[theCourier]

Let's be real. This is not about individual game tables. Everyone can play in and DM the type of game they want to run, and there's nothing anyone on any social media can do about it. I, personally, think good and evil races are boring af so it's a trope I avoid. And yet I still play a game based on traipsing around dangerous locales for the sake of profit. There's tools in these games to avoid the type of play I don't want (e.g., morale rolls, reaction rolls, combat being very dangerous and swingy), so I'm able to make it work just as people who DO want those tropes are able to make them work.

This is about the actual game's text and play culture changing, and people acting like that's infringing or irreversibly changing the hobby or their ability to run the games they want... And that's not true. I mean, people who don't want evil orcs or biological essentialism in their game have been catering their games towards that style for years, and letting other people know that that's how their game is being run. So... that's going to be true of people on the opposite side of the argument now. You can do it, though, it's not that big a deal. Just let people know what you're doing, and let them decide if that's the game for them.