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<blockquote data-quote="Scott_Rouse" data-source="post: 4656039" data-attributes="member: 51773">I understand that most of the monsters in D&amp;D are monsters in the true sense, inherently evil for the sake of being evil (an orc gets off on killing the village). But if you take the idea of &quot;evil is as evil does&quot; away, blur the lines a bit, I think it can be an interesting way to turn the tables in your campaign. What if orcs do what they do because they are the &quot;indians&quot;? The indigenous race that has been getting the screw job by the &quot;others&quot; (to use a Lost-ism) for the past few millennium? Killing a village is not done out of evil a but as a matter of survival. Suddenly your band of human &quot;hereos&quot; stops looking so heroic and starts looking like group genocidal maniacs.As for the shark, yes in 2009 we can watch Discovery and know that a great white eats a surfer beacuse the surfer on a board looks like a seal from below. But as little as 100 years ago I assure you the average human probably consider the shark evil, a killer that served no good purpose on earth. When I was a kid, I had a neighbor who killed any snake he saw, even harmless garter snakes. This guy was smart, went to the same school I did, but unlike me believed snakes were &quot;of the devil&quot; and needed to be eraticated. Ignorance is one explaination for a perspective on &quot;evil&quot;. Your highly evolved predator is another man's monster.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Scott_Rouse, post: 4656039, member: 51773"] I understand that most of the monsters in D&D are monsters in the true sense, inherently evil for the sake of being evil (an orc gets off on killing the village). But if you take the idea of "evil is as evil does" away, blur the lines a bit, I think it can be an interesting way to turn the tables in your campaign. What if orcs do what they do because they are the "indians"? The indigenous race that has been getting the screw job by the "others" (to use a Lost-ism) for the past few millennium? Killing a village is not done out of evil a but as a matter of survival. Suddenly your band of human "hereos" stops looking so heroic and starts looking like group genocidal maniacs. As for the shark, yes in 2009 we can watch Discovery and know that a great white eats a surfer beacuse the surfer on a board looks like a seal from below. But as little as 100 years ago I assure you the average human probably consider the shark evil, a killer that served no good purpose on earth. When I was a kid, I had a neighbor who killed any snake he saw, even harmless garter snakes. This guy was smart, went to the same school I did, but unlike me believed snakes were "of the devil" and needed to be eraticated. Ignorance is one explaination for a perspective on "evil". Your highly evolved predator is another man's monster. [/QUOTE]

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