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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5559877" data-attributes="member: 52073">Would they be, though?  Sure, in the medieval period on Earth, most peasants would probably be racist and afraid out outsiders...but in D&D, the other races are common and can be found pretty much everywhere unless you have a setting that specifically sets out to make them rare--heck, a human commoner is more likely to run into a half-orc than a medieval Englishman would have been to run into someone from the Orient.Now this is the kind of world I like to see.  My main problem with the D&D default assumptions isn't that I want everyone to be happy and living together singing kumbaya, but rather that the set of default races is entirely arbitrary.  Half-orcs are fine, orcs are not.  Gnomes are fine, goblins are not.  Elves are fine, hobgoblins are not.Hobgoblins believe that all other races are inferior; they are "insulting and dismissive" of non-hobgoblins.  If a hobgoblin raiding party attacks a settlement unprovoked, the default races band together to defend it...yet if a band of snooty, arrogant, insulting elves attacks an orc or goblin settlement without provocation, this is perfectly justified.  Why?  Because hobgoblins have a little "usually LE" in their statblock while elves have a little "usually CG."  So if a hobgoblin walks into a town, he's immediately viewed with suspicion and possibly kicked out, while a human is given a free pass, despite the fact that humans are perfectly capable of being evil and the Generic Evil Wizard is as often a human or elf or whatever as a hobgoblin or orc.In fantasy worlds where monsters are around every corner and evil is a tangible force, I don't think the forces of Good (or at least Neutral) should be turning people away because of their race, they should be doing it for other reasons.  A hobgoblin walks into town and passes the detect evil test?  Sure, let him in; we have a bunch more because "usually LE" doesn't mean "always LE."  A ghoul walks into town and (somehow) passes the detect evil test?  Even if he's really sincere, we're not going to kill our own people to feed him, sorry.  When creatures survive on human flesh, when their society runs on enslaving humanoids, when their very presence messes with reality, that's the kind of creature that should be automatically shunned.This is true, and again I probably should have made it more clear that I don't like a blanket acceptance of any and all vaguely humanoid creatures, but rather I dislike the knee-jerk "kill it!" reaction present in most worlds.  However, most humanoid creatures are humans with makeup, essentially.  Goblins, gnomes, orcs, halflings, etc. are all essentially "humans, but..."  The most out-there race of all is the elves, since their long life would give them a vastly different perception on things, and to a lesser extent the dwarves, yet they're almost always portrayed as more "human" than the savage humanoids.</blockquote>

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