D&D 5E (+)What Ubiquitous DnD Tropes Get It Totally Wrong?

[doctorbadwolf]

Also, @Oofta its probably important to remember that the thread is about D&D as a whole, not your or my campaign/world.

The trope of orcs as mindlessly evil monsters is a problem for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. In your game they are more like demons than like humans, that’s between you and your group. The reason people are arguing with you is that you’ve brought that up in the context of stating that the game loses soemthing when orcs are made sentient beings that can choose how they act.

We aren’t telling you that you make worlds wrong. Just to be clear.

 

[Oofta]

Eberron is a good example, IMO, of religion done right.

The aliens were hunting them. Killing what’s hunting you is pretty much always morally acceptable. It was also fine for Arnie to kill the Predator, for the same reason.

Except when Ripley decided to torch all the pods.

Nuking either species out of existence, though...there we get into trouble.

As for having creatures that it’s okay to kill without remorse, while that mode of play is alien to me, we do actually have that dynamic in our games in the form of organizations. If we are fighting the necromantic demon-worshipping cultists that kidnap people to perform necromantic experiments on them and seek to break the seals that keep demons from coming into the world in order to bring about an apocolypse that they beleive will lead to a new utopia...we kill them without remorse.

When we see a Sahuagin, we are careful because Sahuagin are very dangerous, but we don’t just kill them on site because they’re people and don’t always just want to eat other people.

It's not like I have PCs hunting down orcs, it's that there is never really any peaceful relationship with orcs. I also simply avoid the baby [insert monster here] issues.

I want moral dilemmas to be like my relationship with chocolate chip cookies. I love them, but I don't want them every day. If I eat them every day they aren't special. Hmm ... now I'm hungry.

So if monsters are monsters (including orcs) then when the NPC you've gotten to know and trust turns out to be a (human) monster it stands out.

 

[Oofta]

Because demons are elementals of evil. They are physical manifestations of Elemental evil.

Orcs and Gnolls were create as a race of natural, mortal, beings.

So in your world demons are evil, orcs and gnolls have free will even though both were created from an evil power source.

If that works for you, great. I've just decided to not make arbitrary distinctions.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Except when Ripley decided to torch all the pods.




It's not like I have PCs hunting down orcs, it's that there is never really any peaceful relationship with orcs. I also simply avoid the baby [insert monster here] issues.

I want moral dilemmas to be like my relationship with chocolate chip cookies. I love them, but I don't want them every day. If I eat them every day they aren't special. Hmm ... now I'm hungry.

So if monsters are monsters (including orcs) then when the NPC you've gotten to know and trust turns out to be a (human) monster it stands out.

I find that the NPC being a human monster stands out quite dramatically either way.

And if humans are raiding a village and killing people unnecessarily, (most irl raids weren’t that bloody. Mostly just enough fighting to get to the stuff you wanna steal and get out again), taking hostages back to eat later, etc, then kill them. Where is the moral dilemma?

 

[Aldarc]

So in your world demons are evil, orcs and gnolls have free will even though both were created from an evil power source.

If that works for you, great. I've just decided to not make arbitrary distinctions.

How have you not made them?

 

[Oofta]

Are xenomorphs given the veneer of historical real world cultures like orcs often are? Is racism documented as part of the historical depiction of xenomorphs like with orcs? I would say that the line has a lot to do with what real world cultures and peoples are being aligned with the "monstrous" through the lens of D&D and its "monster races."

It's not as if the typical D&D player requires biological essentialism to justify killing human cultists and bandits without much guilt. Nor is D&D somehow bereft of other monstrous species that the players could kill relatively guilt-free (e.g., undead, demons, devils, aberrations, magical beasts, constructs, etc.).

Most definitely.

Xenomorphs are scary based on our fear of different and "other". As is the roots of racism.

But yes, it can be a moral dilemma on whether or not to kill bandits. Not something I normally throw in, but sometimes bandits are just really, really desperate people who do their best to not kill anyone and only steal from people that can afford it.

 

[Oofta]

How have you not made them?

It's not arbitrary to accept the MM on face value. To say that some humanoid creatures are monsters.

Well ... any more than everything about the game is arbitrary of course.

 

[Oofta]

Also, @Oofta its probably important to remember that the thread is about D&D as a whole, not your or my campaign/world.

The trope of orcs as mindlessly evil monsters is a problem for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. In your game they are more like demons than like humans, that’s between you and your group. The reason people are arguing with you is that you’ve brought that up in the context of stating that the game loses soemthing when orcs are made sentient beings that can choose how they act.

We aren’t telling you that you make worlds wrong. Just to be clear.

I am discussing a trope of D&D, and a lot of fantasy. Orcs are listed in the MM as chaotic evil. They have been treated as irredeemably evil in most published campaigns and official stories (with a brief detour in 4E, and a few other exceptions here and there). In your campaign feel free to ignore the MM.

But it's also a trope of fantasy fiction in general that there are many creatures that may look human (or vaguely so) that are definitely not human. Whether that's orcs or trolls or sidhe or angels.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So in your world demons are evil, orcs and gnolls have free will even though both were created from an evil power source.

If that works for you, great. I've just decided to not make arbitrary distinctions.

It isn’t at all arbitrary. It’s a logical distinction. “Created by an evil power source” isn’t particularly compelling unless you make the creation story of “good” races into untrue myths, or restrict their alignments as well.

Orcs are aggressive, clannish, and have a harder time than most humans controlling their anger. That largely comes from Gruumsh, in my worlds. In Eberron, it’s just a result of them being very passionate, and scholarly orcs aren’t physically aggressive but instead are a pain to get in an argument with, etc. Peer review from an Orc Sage is...not gentle.

Gnolls, I do prefer older lore where the demon prince is an interloper, but I don’t change their origins in published worlds. So, in FR, I stick with the canon of every previous edition, where their origins/demonic influence makes them have impulses toward violence and predation, but they can choose to gather in groups that fight that impulse (I borrow from the philosophical ideal of jihad as the struggle against the sinful self, or in this case against the demon within, a lot for Gnolls and Minotaurs in FR) and keep each other level and away from “the demon within”.

Devils and demons, however, weren’t created by an evil power, they are a fundamental, and fundamentally evil, part of the universe. They aren’t natural creatures. They don’t procreate. They are elementals in all but name/game mechanical “creAture type”, of the Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil types. When Grazzt went to the abyss and joined team demon, he became a demon. His nature changed. When Zariel fell she became a devil. None of these creatures are races. They aren’t even “living” by the natural definition of the term.

Orcs arent Elemental, they are a race.

calling that distinction “arbitrary” seems totally bonkers, to me. It’s like saying that distinguishing between stones and dogs is arbitrary.

 

[Bohandas]

Races is definitely an inaccurate term for the various types of humanoid, but I’m not sure “species” is accurate either.

I mean, "genus" might be a little bit more accurate than sepcies sinch there are a bunch of diffetent types of elves with radically different characteristics (with the same note also going for dwarves and gnomes)