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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8022767" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Did I know what you meant? You tried to dismiss my point by saying "of course they aren't humans" but this was never about being human. It was about personhood. For centuries across every land on the map, people have pointed to their neighbors and said "these are not people, they are monsters in people's skin, it is kill or be killed". Sometimes they are monsters just because, sometimes because they worship "dark gods" or "evil spirits" So is it any wonder that if I went to my college aged players, who are taking a class on say, colonialism, and I say "okay, Orcs are a vicious and brutal people, who slaughter civilized folk, all because they worship the evil god Gruumsh" one of my players might think back to the real atrocities they just read about and be conflicted? Because I just spun the exact same narrative that okayed the slaughter of [X]. This has happened at my tables, this discussions have come up, multiple times. And I can't just dismiss them by saying "well, orcs aren't humans anyways, so it is fine."And no one can draw any troubling connections right? No one could possibly get drawn out of the fantasy by echoes of the IRL past that I am pulling out? Well, you seem to have snipped too much, because your presentation of Orcs being bad because of metaphysical laws is the exact opposite of what I said in that post. I also find it squicky to say that orcs raised in human society are just "pretending" to be good, and are still inherently evil. That leads to "just slaughter all of them" mentalities. Which are a problem. Okay, firstly, it is not literally impossible to apply real world racism to them. People have posted the links, and while yes, they are a respresentation of many different racist claims, I think that is somewhat more obvious. Orcs are the archetype racists have called other people to dehumanize them. To the second, man, I get the desire for simple, mindless fun. I do, trust me. I've had PCs rack up big body counts. But, the way you are phrasing things is just ugly. Hand-wringing, Really? Redeem in quotation marks while calling them brutes, implying it is all impossible and a naive dream to get something good out of these beings? I'm reminded of a movie review I watched recently. You'll probably discount it out of hand, but it struck me. It was a brief study of Newt Schamander from "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." and the reviewers wanted to point out something, something I had forgotten. At the end of the movie, they confront the monster. There is a monster, it is doing all the terrible things it is accused of doing, and a third party kills it. And that is framed as a tragedy. It was a tragedy that they couldn't save the monster. And thinking about it, how often have you ever read a story with that moral in it? I realized it was incredibly rare. Sure, I've read about misunderstood monsters, but this thing wasn't misunderstood. It was the terrible force of destruction that it was purported to be. And that makes the issue far more interesting. Sure, I like my mindless fun, slaughtering cultists or bandits or demons without any real concern about the morality of it. But, at the end of the day, that is the easiest storytelling we can do. "They are other, go kill them."Because some people see the language that was used to oppress and kill in the past being used as an excuse to kill things in the game. Is this really so hard to see?Or, honestly, just redo a few small details. Make Gruumsh not pure evil. He can be a god of strength and war without being evil, we've got those. Instead of making orcs kill all people because they are evil, have them be at war with everyone. We can figure out a good reason, but it isn't "just because" they have a goal. Maybe, they are at war with the Elves because they are trying to reclaim Gruumsh's lost eye, and they are fighting everyone else for siding with the elves. Then, don't have the PCs run into an Orc Village (avoiding the orc babies problem). Bam, you have orcs that are constant antagonists (you only meet enemy soldiers) but who are not "brutish, low and stupid" or irredeemably evil. Why do you kill an orc warband? The war part. If you don't take them out, they are going to attack, pillage and burn somewhere, because that is the mission they are on. But there is a reason for it, could you negotiate with them? Maybe. But they are definitely your enemy.</blockquote>

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