NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 5919248" data-attributes="member: 18182">While broad, I agree with your distinctions between viewing fantasy races in a "mythic" view versus a more "modern" view, it's how I've always looked at the issue too.  I think D&D started with the mythic view, and has slowly morphed towards the modern view over the years, although not completely or evenly.  And, it's really only a problem if the DM is thinking about race one way and some of their players are thinking of race the other way.I think this shift from the mythic view towards the modern view is also reflected in fantasy and scifi literature, and not just the novels with the D&D logo stamped on them.  Characters, protagonists or antagonists, are simply more interesting if they are fully fleshed out "people" rather than simply manifestations of supernatural stereotypes of "good" or "evil".I think that D&D Next, in the section of the new DM's Guide covering how to run the game, this should be discussed.  As a DM, choosing to make your "bad guy" fantasy races intrinsically evil or more nuanced creatures with free will should be fine either way, but the choice should be understood and communicated to the players so that folks don't get irritated or upset when their expectations aren't met.The worst mistake I ever made on this issue is when I had my players busting a werewolves den.  After the heroes defeated all the wolf-men that attacked them, they found a young girl cowering under some furniture.  The paladin got the same "evil" reading off the girl as he did off of all the other werewolves, as the girl was also a recently turned werewolf, she was clearly a creature of supernatural evil . . . . yet she was a terrified little girl who just wanted to go home.  It was a lose-lose choice, either kill a little girl or allow a supernatural monster to roam the countryside.  After that scene was over (and the paladin killed the young girl), we all felt kinda crappy and didn't want to play anymore.  I was running a "evil is evil" campaign, but for some reason felt that I needed to throw in a "moral choice" for the paladin.  I'm a little more careful now.</blockquote>

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