D&D General The Problem with Evil or what if we don't use alignments?

[Maxperson]

Having tusks does not equal pig people.

Um. It literally says piggish faces. That equates to pig people.

 

[Hex08]

I think lots of people would disagree with you, which is why we have the Great Orc Disjunction. I understand your views and sympathize, but they might be in the minority.

I would be careful before saying that point of view is in the minority. It may be the case for those who spend a lot of time on internet forums and the like where these topics are discussed but I am willing to bet that's a small part of the actual player base. This is purely anecdotal but of the five of us in my primary RPG group only two of us ever use the internet in relation to the hobby (the other only uses it for rules clarification) so of the five of us, four have no clue this discussion is even a thing. I also know a fair number of gamers I don't play with or play with less frequently and of them I would be willing to bet only a small percentage are aware of this debate.

For most of the player base I would be not be surprised if this is a non-issue.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Just unpacking this idea that people who feel that's some racism in the portrayal of orcs would be okay with painting the whole species as evil (with or without a tiny ignored note that maybe not all of them are evil, but kill 'em on sight anyway) if they were dumber looking or possibly uglier or inhuman (not sure what's being driven at here).

So people who don't like racist depictions would be predisposed to... judge a people harshly based on their appearance?

 

[Neonchameleon]

They're described as a race of savages and look enough like humans to make people equate them to racist stereotypes. That's why orcs are always the go to in these conversations. Every now and then someone might say goblins or yuan-ti or gnolls or whatever are problematic, but 99% of the time it's orcs.

If orcs still looked like this:
View attachment 139850
Instead of this:
View attachment 139852
I highly doubt people would care how they were depicted.

Either make them pig people again or get rid of Gruumsh and move them from the Monster Manual to the Player's Handbook.

If orcs were pig-people I highly doubt whether they would be depicted much. And like it or not there are probably three better known settings than any D&D setting, all of which feature orcs fairly centrally; Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, and Warhammer.

Pig faced orcs are so far outside mainstream depictions of orcs that they'd be one of the D&D odditites like the flumph.

 

[Helldritch]

That seems to be an eminently devilish way of advancing through the Nine Hells: i.e. I won’t stab you in the back for no reason, but will absolutely do so to get ahead.

So this isn’t a LE v. CE thing.

Devils will do it only if they are sure that they will not get caught and only if does not put hell's goal at stakes. Demons will do it as soon as the opportunity presents itself, regardless of the consequences for the battle or even itself. The Yuggoloth might or might not do it depending on many factors all of them personal to the yuggoloth itself. These are a bit more arduous to play because of their mercenary nature.

 

[Minigiant]

They're described as a race of savages and look enough like humans to make people equate them to racist stereotypes. That's why orcs are always the go to in these conversations. Every now and then someone might say goblins or yuan-ti or gnolls or whatever are problematic, but 99% of the time it's orcs.

If orcs still looked like this:
View attachment 139850
Instead of this:
View attachment 139852
I highly doubt people would care how they were depicted.

Either make them pig people again or get rid of Gruumsh and move them from the Monster Manual to the Player's Handbook.

The problem isn't how they look.
The problem is that they are fully functioning brains but don't act like it and instead are fleshy Grummush-bots.

This is why Warhammer Orcs/Orks were given xeno-brains and mentally cannot understand peace. They aren't Evil nor Chaotic, just Destructive.

 

[Aging Bard]

I would be careful before saying that point of view is in the minority. It may be the case for those who spend a lot of time on internet forums and the like where these topics are discussed but I am willing to bet that's a small part of the actual player base. This is purely anecdotal but of the five of us in my primary RPG group only two of us ever use the internet in relation to the hobby (the other only uses it for rules clarification) so of the five of us four have no clue this discussion is even a thing. I also know a fair number of gamers I don't play with or play with less frequently and of them I would be willing to bet only a small percentage are aware of this debate.

For most of the player base I would be not be surprised if this is a non-issue.

For lots of cis-white males like me, all sorts of issues are "non-issues". We need to be more attentive to all those who say they ARE issues, and then listen.

 

[Faolyn]

No. It makes them lawful. Alignment isn't a straightjacket. Why are you trying to make it one? Vader and the Emperor are like 90-95% LE and 5-10% CE. That doesn't equate to NE or CE. They are LE, but like any reasonably realistic personality, will have aspects that fall into other alignments.

Basically, you look at a personality and each alignment is a box. The biggest box is your alignment. The rest are the aspects that fall outside of your alignment. If they're mostly the same size, you're neutral.

I lawful + chaotic = lawful (and presumably chaotic + lawful equals chaotic), then that just shows that the alignments can be stretched to the point of uselessness.

 

[Faolyn]

That the DM is free by RAW to have any alignment of orc he wants, means that all alignments are out there. It's jut the CE ones that are encountered by default.

And that's the same as saying "all orcs are evil." Because of course a DM can do anything they want. The DM can have a setting with no gravity and give all the PCs trucks. But by RAW all orcs are evil.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'm just going to throw this out there, every campaign I run, or have ever run, has some sort of 'evil' race. Every. Single. One. Fantasy is a subset of romance, and it needs a certain amount of black and white to function, even in the grimmest of grimdark settings. There's no light without shadow and all that. Now, pretty obviously this needs to be done without racial shading of any kind, but there's nothing wrong with the basic idea.