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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8027792" data-attributes="member: 7635">But seriously though, when was the last time D&D asked you to slaughter orcs because they are orcs, and not "orcs are going to attack the town" or such nonsense. Even Keep on the Borderlands, weak as the story is, implies the Caves of Chaos are an existential threat the to the titular keep's survival. The difference between "slay the orcs because they're evil" and "slay the orcs because they serve Sauron" is almost a distinction without meaning as far as perpetuating the stereotypes. I mean, the fact that Tolkien's orcs were literal creations of Sauron hasn't shielded them for criticism. Quite frankly, I feel some of these arguments are beginning to reach absurdism. I seriously doubt that the vast majority of D&D players see orcs as an unredeemable foe only to be genocided for the circumstance of thier birth. They are used as villains primarily, often as pawns of evil wizards, dark gods, or menacing warlords, but I can't think of a single instance where TSR/WotC has just advocated that they deserve to be slaughtered for just being orcs. (anyone want to prove me wrong, I'm all ears). What I see is the notion that orcs, in this role, perpetuate racial stereotypes and that's not something you can fix be removing the alignment from the stat-block and slapping a "not all orcs" paragraph in the MM. The notion of the orc needs to radically change if we are serious about this. To be fair, the notion of the dwarf, elf, and every other humanoid with a monoculture and alignment tendency (good or evil) needs to as well. I fail to see how anything less does more than slap a band-aid on the problem. Because right now, D&D exists in the "this is the default, but the DM can change it" zone and it's not good enough. The next step is to remove the default and make it solely the DM's choice on how it's used. The notion of orc raiders, goblin thieves, elven foresters and dwarven miners will no longer be discussed as the default, but as one of many options (if options are presented at all). Anyway, all this is will lead to the MM no longer needing monster alignments. Humanoids will start, but if they don't have alignments, we don't need the unaligned alignment for beasts and nonsentients anymore either. I can further see near-humanoid races (giants and monstrosities) falling into the same vein, and really, you just have some obvious examples left (aberrations, fey, fiends, celestials, and undead). You could cull alignment entirely from the MM and it wouldn't hurt the game much mechanically. And with PCs, you can use bonds/flaws/traits to simulate alignment better. Why keep it? I just imagine that as alignment is removed from monsters, it will be removed from PCs eventually as well.</blockquote>

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