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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vikingkingq" data-source="post: 5919229" data-attributes="member: 66208">I think there's a happy medium between "all members of this humanoid race are metaphysically evil" and "orcs are noble savages," and I think that medium is called resource scarcity in a quasi-medieval environment. One of the things that is often obscured in fantasy is how little surplus there was in pre-modern agriculture (no steel plows, no horse collars, little use of winter crops, and relatively limited ability to reclaim waste ground). Famines were fairly common, and humans often went to war with the next fief over control of good farmland or water rights.In those circumstances, it doesn't matter whether the goblins or orcs are objectively evil, they're still a threat to your existence. (Obviously, this fits better with Points of Light settings rather than crazy high-magic empires) Your weaker monsters - goblins and kobolds and the like - probably aren't up to farming; your stronger monsters try to destroy human settlements to take their land because there's not enough good farmland to go around. To use a fantasy example without getting into the question of speciesism, take the Iron Islands in A Song of Ice and Fire. The Ironborn don't think of themselves as evil, they don't worship gods of destruction or chaos, but that doesn't make them any less of a threat to the North, the Riverlands, the Westerlands, or the Reach. At the end of the day, they want to steal your crops and your livestock, rape your women, and drag your people into slavery for their benefit.</blockquote>

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