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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JEB" data-source="post: 8347356" data-attributes="member: 10148">So if some people could follow the instructions just fine - or at least were satisfied with the results, warts and all - they don't deserve to have it anymore because other people did it wrong? How is that fair?Here's another analogy for you: a hammer can be used to build. It can also be misused to hurt other people. Do you take hammers away from builders - all hammers, from all builders - because other people misuse them? Or do you accept that while it can be misused, it also has value to others, and you simply try to mitigate its potential for harm?Sure it is. I can reasonably describe Nazism as an evil culture, but no one assumes I mean all Germans, or all humans, are evil. (Or at least, I hope no one assumes that.) The same nuance could be used for monster cultures, and reinforced further by explicitly including alternatives or exceptions. And that could have happened without removing alignment from the entire game.Was the meenlock in Candlekeep Mysteries automatically improved in the ways I described because it didn't have "neutral evil" in the statblock? Did removing "lawful good" from the wereraven statblock in Van Richten's suddenly change their portrayal? They seem the same to me...Nor does it seem the gem dragons in Fizban's will have multiple cultures or clear indicators that those behaviors aren't essentialist defaults. They're even still described as tending towards neutrality!Removing alignment doesn't actually change anything. And any changes that would actually address the problem of biological essentialism could have been achieved without removing alignment.I'm sure DMs who like a simple game of "kill the bad guy" quite happily use constructs, undead, fiends, etc. as foes.But here's where it gets interesting. "Bandit" is OK to use without deep motivations, but "goblin" is not? Why? What if the "bandit" was called "halfling bandit"? What if the "goblin" was called "goblin raider"? Would that fix it?Fair enough. I also see topaz dragons are described as "aggressive". That can be taken neutrally as well, yes?So the problem, you're saying, isn't "biological essentialism". That's actually perfectly fine. It's just the specific five words "lawful", "neutral", "chaotic", "good", or "evil"?What if I called a species "organized" or "impartial" or "rebellious" or "friendly" or "vicious"? Is that any different than using the alignment words?What if Wizards described orcs as "warlike" or "aggressive"? Is that OK?</blockquote>

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