D&D 5E What’s So Great About Medieval Europe?

[Morrus]

Oh. It's a thread about orcs and racism now? I closed another thread about that topic; please don't simply move the discussion here.

 

[Fenris-77]

Except orks aren't savage people with dark skin, are they? You can't freely substitute one for the other and up to a point it's disingenuous to do so (a pretty blatant category mistake to be precise). I'm sure there are some treatments of orcs that are horrifyingly racist. However, that is a very different proposition that saying unless you treat orcs like X you're playing a racist game. That is the case because orcs are not one thing, they are a thousand things, each different from the next.

Nor is the diagetic frame of a TTRPG the same as the real world. RPGs have actual evil, it's part of their charm. So, yeah, category mistake upon category mistake. I don't disagree that actually racist games need fixing, of course they do, but I do think it's laughable that people can say unless you do X you're racist in reference to orcs and say it with a straight face.

Edit - sorry Morrus, you posted while I was writing. I'll bin this if you think it's offside.

 

[Minigiant]

Maybe slightly off here. I'm an older Millennial, but I didn't start playing until the middle of high school, and that was in 2000 when 3rd Edition was released. Though some gamed earlier with AD&D, the larger chunk of Millennials would likely start in the 3era or 4era.

I am an old Millennial too. I was thinking some Millennials may have still be in 2e games run by older layers or come into video games that still were AD&D2E until the mid 00s.But you are right. Most Millenials would have started in 3e and 4e.

Games like WoW and a lot of games that reexamine "monster races" or "humanize" them through playability are definitely contributing to generational senses of fantasy. I think for the better.

Definitely. Normalization of monster races has really spiced up race choice. Without it, it gets really powergamey.

Now which generation started the "drow society and cities don't make sense"?
I wanna thank them.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Sure. But as technology advances in England it also advanced in France, Spain, Denmark, and the like. You didn’t have a nation that was just 300 years behind living next to a refined nation.

Charlemagne exterminated entire tribes of people to consolidate the Holy Roman Empire, and, of course, let's not forget the conquests of the Romans stretched as far north as the British Isles to begin with, spreading everything from infantry tactics to written language on the way, which is a large part of why the Germanic tribes were able to conquer so much territory. I would definitely not go to the Middle Ages to find an example of a civilization that grew harmoniously without conquest and political consolidation.

The question of why orcs are savage remains. And if it’s cultural, than it’s likely the, being oppressed and denied trade and shared opportunity. Forced to live in undesirable locations. Reserves if you will....

Nomadic tribes in North America, which you're obviously alluding to, had contact and trade with various civilizations (including Europeans) for well over a thousand years before they were finally conquered in the 19th century. "Oppression" is a really poor explanation for why they never abandoned tribal organization, stopped hunting and raiding, settled down to farm, built cities, developed some kind of permanent record-keeping, produced manufactures for trade, and organized centralized governments.

A better answer is "nobody forced them to," because the fact is that massive change in social organization rarely just happens on its own. It usually happens when somebody with a different way of organizing that produces superior technology and warmaking ability forces a change.

 

[Krachek]

I would say they have a different view. Whether or not it's "better" is a matter of preference and what role they fill in the game. IMHO if they're just humans with rubber masks they don't really serve any purpose any more and there's basically no reason to have them in my campaign.

Then again I also don't want my vampires sparkling in the sun (unless they're about to explode) and being a werewolf isn't a power-up.

I hope you don’t feel too much ashamed, because the vampire concept have been use in so much different setup these days, I get myself filled up. A vampire today is kind of usual and don’t scare anybody.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Right. But “multiple cultures” means nothing if one is still “eeeevil”. And the idea of an elf culture that is pure “eeeevil” is what sent us down this rabbit hole.

And it brings up the catch-22 situation I invoked earlier.
If you have multiple orc cultures, and none of them are killable them that skirts the evil humanoid problem but removes the potential for easy villains in a game. You can’t easily kill orcs or goblins anymore than you could just kill humans. Which derails games with unnecessary moral quandaries and makes the PCs into horrible murderers committing ethnic cleansing in Keep on the Borderlands.

It solves one problem but brings in a whole other problem.
And then you still end up with the question of why there are no orc cities or kingdoms. And why orcs live in the wilds. Which just leads to the inevitable answer of “because humans are keeping them there.”

It’s not inevitable at all. They can’t just prefer to live in unspoiled nature and not care about building things or exploring?

If you want easily killed enemies, make them an evil faction, not an evil culture. Germans have never been evil as a culture, but the Nazis sure as hell were, and I’ve no sympathy for their war dead as a result. Humans aren’t evil in Star Wars, but there is no reason to mourn the dead stormtroopers.
and of course there are fiends, Illithid, undead, etc.

I would say they have a different view. Whether or not it's "better" is a matter of preference and what role they fill in the game. IMHO if they're just humans with rubber masks they don't really serve any purpose any more and there's basically no reason to have them in my campaign.

But they aren’t just humans with rubber masks. They don’t have to be evil to be different from humanity.

Which doesn’t solve the problem, because it just becomes “nurture” then, and killing orcs from the “evil subculture” you’re killing people who could be redeemed and are just misguided.

Why would you be killing them, though? Unless they are attacking, and you’re fighting them in self defense, why the hell are you killing sentients?

Then it goes back to why is it okay that X is inherently evil while Y is not. If I were going to go with the "sentient creatures have a choice" then I'd embrace it and it would apply to all sentient races.

Feel free to reply with the typical "but [fill in the blank] are different because [fill in the blank]". It's just changing where you draw the line on fictional creatures that do not exist.

Well, no, because devils aren’t a race, and have no culture. The line isn’t arbitrary at all, it’s quite simply built into what the different creatures are.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

It’s not inevitable at all. They can’t just prefer to live in unspoiled nature and not care about building things or exploring?

If you want easily killed enemies, make them an evil faction, not an evil culture. Germans have never been evil as a culture, but the Nazis sure as hell were, and I’ve no sympathy for their war dead as a result. Humans aren’t evil in Star Wars, but there is no reason to mourn the dead stormtroopers.
and of course there are fiends, Illithid, undead, etc.

But they aren’t just humans with rubber masks. They don’t have to be evil to be different from humanity.

Why would you be killing them, though? Unless they are attacking, and you’re fighting them in self defense, why the hell are you killing sentients?

Well, no, because devils aren’t a race, and have no culture. The line isn’t arbitrary at all, it’s quite simply built into what the different creatures are.

Devils have no culture? What?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

 

[Oofta]

It’s not inevitable at all. They can’t just prefer to live in unspoiled nature and not care about building things or exploring?

If you want easily killed enemies, make them an evil faction, not an evil culture. Germans have never been evil as a culture, but the Nazis sure as hell were, and I’ve no sympathy for their war dead as a result. Humans aren’t evil in Star Wars, but there is no reason to mourn the dead stormtroopers.
and of course there are fiends, Illithid, undead, etc.

But they aren’t just humans with rubber masks. They don’t have to be evil to be different from humanity.

Why would you be killing them, though? Unless they are attacking, and you’re fighting them in self defense, why the hell are you killing sentients?

Well, no, because devils aren’t a race, and have no culture. The line isn’t arbitrary at all, it’s quite simply built into what the different creatures are.

So ... what you're saying is that you want this thread shut down because your implementation of orcs is different than mine? Although I do agree. They don't have to be evil, I just choose to do it. There are already too many humanoid non-evil races running around for my taste (dwarves, elves, gnomes*, halflings, half-elves, half-orcs not to mention aarokarca, tieflings, warforged ... the list goes on).

I mean, I guess everybody has to have a goal.

*never mind gnomes. Gnomes are evil.

 

[Aldarc]

So Medieval Europe... What's so great about it?

 

[Son of the Serpent]

So ... what you're saying is that you want this thread shut down because your implementation of orcs is different than mine? Although I do agree. They don't have to be evil, I just choose to do it. There are already too many humanoid non-evil races running around for my taste (dwarves, elves, gnomes*, halflings, half-elves, half-orcs not to mention aarokarca, tieflings, warforged ... the list goes on).

I mean, I guess everybody has to have a goal.

*never mind gnomes. Gnomes are evil.

Also just because we dont accept that there is such a thing as an evil culture or race doesnt mean its outright impossible for such a thing to exist. To say one knows there cant be assumes a lot about what can be objectively known. Its not well thought out.