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

[Oofta]

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.

We just draw the lines differently, but we are both drawing lines. I don't think something having a label of "fiend" makes it any more or less inherently evil.

It's a trope of D&D that there are monsters. If you are an X you are evil.

Have a good one!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

And generally, in fantasy fiction that isn’t fairly problematic in tying evil creatures to specific groups of foreigners, creatures that procreate like humans, and build towns or camps like humans, and use tools like humans, and make distinctions between their relatives and strangers, etc, aren’t treated the same as things like doppelgangers and demons and the like.

Some unnatural creatures only do some of those things, and thus are treated as more alien and monstrous.

However, the thread is literally about common tropes that get it wrong. To many of us, always-evil orcs is one of those tropes.

I mean, you know no one claimed that it isn’t a trope, right? Why would you think that “it’s a common trope” is a valid counter to “this trope is dumb/bad/wrong/a thing I don’t like”?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

We just draw the lines differently, but we are both drawing lines. I don't think something having a label of "fiend" makes it any more or less inherently evil.

It's a trope of D&D that there are monsters. If you are an X you are evil.

Have a good one!

And literally the point is to challenge that trope.

 

[Charlaquin]

In any case I've stated what I do and why. I want there to be monsters that are ... well monsters. Once you start saying that some monsters (whether humanoid or not) are not really monsters then it gets blurry quickly. What gives a monster free will to override their nature? Intelligence? Because then Demons should have free will so that can't be it.

Is it origin? Well then if the origin story of gnolls is correct they're demon spawned.
Orcs were created as a force of destruction and revenge. Why do gnolls and orcs have free will to be any alignment they want but demons do not?

For the same reason demons ping “detect evil and good” and gnolls and orcs do not. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is in your setting, but in mine it’s because demons are otherworldly beings - specifically, primordials corrupted by the Elder One. Free will is a feature of beings native to the world. And you still haven’t answered the question of why elves and dwarves have free will but gnolls and orcs do not.

 

[Oofta]

you still haven’t answered the question of why elves and dwarves have free will but gnolls and orcs do not.

For the same reason we have "fallen angels" and not "risen demons". It's easier to be evil. Which is a whole other trope.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

We just draw the lines differently, but we are both drawing lines. I don't think something having a label of "fiend" makes it any more or less inherently evil.

Not all lines are arbitrary, however.

“Because I want orcs to be like Aliens” is arbitrary, which is fine in your own game. “Because these creatures aren’t part of the natural world, aren’t a race by any rational good-faith definition, and are instead an Elemental part of the cosmos as a manifestation of a specific kind of evil, while these other creatures are a natural procreating race with a lifespan and inherited traits and behavioral deviations from the norm” isn’t arbitrary. It’s a rational categorization distinction.

No one is telling you what to do in your game.

 

[Charlaquin]

Except that's where we fundamentally disagree. Orcs are not people in my campaign. They're monsters.

How do you define “monster?” What quality of orcs separates them from peoples?

I know I'll be accused of "slippery slope" again but should Ripley have felt guilty about killing xenomorphs? Would it have mattered if the aliens had looked more like humans? They were at least somewhat intelligent even if we don't know exactly how intelligent they were.

I mean, she was acting in self-defense, so I’d say she’s in the clear. If she had gone out of her way to kill xenomorphs that posed no threat to her or anyone there might be more moral gray area. More importantly though, xenomorphs are not framed as a people. They are framed as essentially beasts driven by instinct rather than rational thought. Social beasts (eusocial, to be more specific), but beasts nonetheless, as opposed to beings.

 

[Oofta]

Not all lines are arbitrary, however.

“Because I want orcs to be like Aliens” is arbitrary, which is fine in your own game. “Because these creatures aren’t part of the natural world, aren’t a race by any rational good-faith definition, and are instead an Elemental part of the cosmos as a manifestation of a specific kind of evil, while these other creatures are a natural procreating race with a lifespan and inherited traits and behavioral deviations from the norm” isn’t arbitrary. It’s a rational categorization distinction.

No one is telling you what to do in your game.

You're just giving justification to the line you draw.

Which is fine, I just use a different justification.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Nearly everything about gods, in D&D, is a dumb trope that makes no sense.

Like, if you leave your world, the gods no longer matter, unless they are also gods of wherever you go. If you use Planescape, it’s much worse than that.

The gods are a joke. And yet, they created all the stuff. Okay. Sure.

Really it’s more that the D&D multiverse makes little sense. If you treat each world as if the others don’t exist, things work much better.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You're just giving justification to the line you draw.

Which is fine, I just use a different justification.

Nope. One is rational, the other is arbitrary.

Nothing wrong with “because I want it that way”, but it isn’t the same thing as a rational categorization distinction.