D&D 5E Yes to factionalism. No to racism.

[Jfdlsjfd]

Do they roll dice too?

I had forgotten this important part.

GM: "You see a dark person with a goatee, a cape and a general sinister look. Something about him tells you he's dangerous. You feel he could easily slaughter thousands of peasants for the perceived slight uttered by one of them, like having the gut to ask for 1.5 silver pieces for board and room. His eyes are blazing with the flame of insanity. He has obviously ended whole civilizations of alignment-challenged sentients. What do you do?"
Player 1: we're in trouble... I cast a Disintegrate spell...
Ominous stranger: "can I roll Arcana to recognize the spell? Can I have advantage since my background as a Cobbler obviously made me familiar with destructive magics?"
Player 2: "Wait! We were about to make an horrible mistake..." "Hello stranger, we happen to have a position open in our party, would you be willing to join us in our noble quest?"

 

[Yaarel]

Yes, now we are getting somewhere.

And the beauty of "cultural backgrounds" is, a dwarf can grow up in the Grugach culture, and select one of the Grugach backgrounds to represent this.

 

[Scribe]

And the beauty of "cultural backgrounds" is, a dwarf can grow up in the Grugach culture, and select one of the Grugach backgrounds to represent this.

Yep, I'm fine with that.

Add on racial feats, feats with minimum attribute requirements, entire books worth of magical items, and attribute max/min values, and we are cooking with gas.

 

[Mercurius]

an entire race of freewill beings being monolithically Evil and homogeneous sounds impossible. Meanwhile, even the drow tradition across all editions has included non-Evil and non-Lolth possibilities. So the mechanics of factions is factually correct when describing the D&D tradition.

Your "meanwhile" sort of invalidates the impossibility of a monolithically evil race - which, as you say, D&D has long accounted for. Meaning, at least as early as the first Drizzt book (1988) and possibly earlier, not every single drow has been evil. But I agree with you that factions could be used as a way to clarify this, and it may be that the "evil faction" still accounts for 99.9% of drow in a given campaign world, if that's how the designer or DM envisions it.

But I wanted to respond to the bolded part. "Impossible" according to what? Our own world? A fantasy world is already "impossible," so anything within it only needs to seem possible within the context of the world itself. To judge whether or not something is impossible according to real world standards would invalidate much of D&D.

In a world of dragons and magic, good and evil gods, etc, an evil race doesn't sound impossible, especially if we account for the possibility of exceptions - as D&D always has. I mean, what about mind flayers? Even if we account for the stray gentle one who only eats vat-grown brain matter grown by elvish alchemists and is more interested in studying the stars than conquering them, they're as close as D&D comes to an inherently evil race of intelligent beings. But it works within the context of D&D, no?

As far as the drow are concerned, one angle to consider is propaganda. Maybe they aren't intrinsically evil, it is just that their culture is oppressive and teaches them to be evil, and the Lolth faction squashes any other factions so that, for all intents and purposes, almost the "entire race" is evil. Just as real-world bigotry isn't inherent to anyone, but it is taught, enculturated, and maintained through propaganda. So it doesn't seem at all impossible to envision a fantasy (or real) race that is largely evil, especially if it insular. In fact, this is basically the basis of the Drizzt story and makes for an interesting campaign premise: the PCs are young drow with questions. Perhaps they all had experiences in which they witness kindness and it sparks something in them. Maybe one of them broke their leg and was nursed back to health by a svirfneblin; maybe another was spared by a group of high elves and given a treatise on elvish philosphy. Then they look around at their society and see it with fresh eyes, and off to the races (no pun intended) we go....

 

[Bolares]

Yep, I'm fine with that.

Add on racial feats, feats with minimum attribute requirements, entire books worth of magical items, and attribute max/min values, and we are cooking with gas.

You wrote “cooking with 3e” wrong

 

[Drake2000]

I am puzzled by this fancy debate over culture and background. Are you evil and can I kill you and take your stuff?

Do they have a goatee?

Do they roll dice too?

I have a goatee and I roll dice. I feel threatened.

 

[Oofta]

Your "meanwhile" sort of invalidates the impossibility of a monolithically evil race - which, as you say, D&D has long accounted for. Meaning, at least as early as the first Drizzt book (1988) and possibly earlier, not every single drow has been evil. But I agree with you that factions could be used as a way to clarify this, and it may be that the "evil faction" still accounts for 99.9% of drow in a given campaign world, if that's how the designer or DM envisions it.

But I wanted to respond to the bolded part. "Impossible" according to what? Our own world? A fantasy world is already "impossible," so anything within it only needs to seem possible within the context of the world itself. To judge whether or not something is impossible according to real world standards would invalidate much of D&D.

In a world of dragons and magic, good and evil gods, etc, an evil race doesn't sound impossible, especially if we account for the possibility of exceptions - as D&D always has. I mean, what about mind flayers? Even if we account for the stray gentle one who only eats vat-grown brain matter grown by elvish alchemists and is more interested in studying the stars than conquering them, they're as close as D&D comes to an inherently evil race of intelligent beings. But it works within the context of D&D, no?

As far as the drow are concerned, one angle to consider is propaganda. Maybe they aren't intrinsically evil, it is just that their culture is oppressive and teaches them to be evil, and the Lolth faction squashes any other factions so that, for all intents and purposes, almost the "entire race" is evil. Just as real-world bigotry isn't inherent to anyone, but it is taught, enculturated, and maintained through propaganda. So it doesn't seem at all impossible to envision a fantasy (or real) race that is largely evil, especially if it insular. In fact, this is basically the basis of the Drizzt story and makes for an interesting campaign premise: the PCs are young drow with questions. Perhaps they all had experiences in which they witness kindness and it sparks something in them. Maybe one of them broke their leg and was nursed back to health by a svirfneblin; maybe another was spared by a group of high elves and given a treatise on elvish philosphy. Then they look around at their society and see it with fresh eyes, and off to the races (no pun intended) we go....

I used to have something in my "intro to my campaign" that I sent to prospective players that said something along the lines of "There may have been the occasional good troll, but the other trolls killed and ate them for being weak."

But really one of the main reasons I don't allow a ton of races is that while the races I do allow follow the broad outlines of the book, I want there to be unique variations as well. I'm just not creative or ambitious enough to come up with dozens of different cultures that actually work together.

But, to me, there is an elephant (orc?) in the room. D&D vastly oversimplifies everything in order to make things easy to grasp. Why would race and culture be any different? I'm all for different campaign worlds having more nuance, I would expect them to. But the core concepts are going to be relatively simple and straightforward. While I agree that they went overboard with alignment by getting rid of the frequency modifier, there are only so many ways to keep a base starting point for some things for people to subvert or build upon.

I understand the point of factions, I just don't see how it could be implemented without implicit world building that would be more complex than what we have which comes primarily down to factions being defined by creator deity. Which, when gods are real, does kind of work in a good enough for the most part sort of way. Just not sure how factions based on something other than pantheon would make much of a difference.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I appreciate this post, and I would never advocate for racism, but I just can't get behind including more factions in D&D.

Let's face it- D&D already has a lot of math! And while I can math it out with the next guy, I don't think that adding more factions is a good idea. After all, a lot of people have trouble with factions. Not to mention some of us are older, and can't even remember the difference between a numerator and our religious denomination!

So I would definitely say- No to racism, and no to factions. Because I will always remember the words of my fifth grade teacher when she saw my math test- "You better marry upwards Snarf, because you're dumber than 4/3 of a box of rocks times 1/2 ... and you don't understand that."

...different times. Anyway, I don't use factions in my D&D games, because factions are hard, and Harpers suck.

I don't necessarily think they need to be named and developed factions. Sure, the Scarlet Brotherhood, the Red Wizards of Thay, and the Cult of the Dragon have lore and political intrigue and all that. But there are small factions, too.

All you really need to do to eliminate a huge amount of the racist tones is describe non-humans the same way you describe humans.

If a DM says, "Orcs attack, roll initiative!" it sounds kinda normal. Kinda like, "Zombies attack, roll initiative!" But nobody says, "Humans attack, roll initiative!" Like that sounds weird, right? They say, "Bandits attack!" or marauders, or brigands, or pirates, or mercenaries, or slavers, or cultists, or thieves, or whatever. Instead of just describing what species they are, you describe what group they're in, even in rough and uncertain terms.

The only other element is... don't make every orc a bandit, marauder, brigand, etc. Sure, maybe the human perception is that all orcs are raiders. But the elves and forest gnomes have peaceful relations with the orcs. They seldom see orcish attacks because its only the humans who keep chopping down the forests where the orcs hunt and building even more farmland. Indeed, the forest gnomes will sing all sorts of praised for game from orcish hunters. Orc-made jerky can get you through a very long winter.

That said, I think it's probably a smart idea to come up with a few symbols or names, just like it's smart to have names for NPCs prepared. It's pretty boring to be attacked by "orc savages" on a journey across a desert. It's much more interesting for the Red Tooth Pirates to be waylaying travelers in the middle of the desert. Were they led by Captain Red Tooth herself, infamous for her oversize red jade tooth? If not, what were they doing there? What ARE they known for? Searching for treasure? Avoiding capture by some island kingdom's navy? Marooned? Working side gigs as mercenaries? It takes a really tiny amount of development to completely blossom into a hook. When your players know that these orcs aren't just "being orcs" when they attack, the question of "why?" is instantly more interesting.

 

[TerraDave]

You can't divide every race into factions that could be divided into full on factions. There are too many and its confusing.

You can't solve this with "culture", at least not broad ones...as that opens the door to stereotypes.

You have to decide how to handle slaying at your table. Maybe you just attack the trolls or manticores, or maybe you wait to see intent.

You can have very specific groups of baddies. You can have broad groups--law vs chaos, for example, and deviants on both sides. Maybe individuals, maybe "factions", but that only adds to the campaign as it adds to the campaign, it solves no moral dilemmas. Which may or may not actually exist.

 

[CleverNickName]

I think @Bacon Bits touched on the heart of the issue and it's solution.

Poor form:
"You're surrounded by orcs, roll for initiative."

Better form:
"You're surrounded by orc bandits, roll for initiative."

Best form:
"You're surrounded by bandits, roll for initiative."