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<blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9589054" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Well, in many games like D&amp;D, especially in previous editions, the idea is that alignment is this fairly absolute thing. If something is Good, then everything they do is Good (or neutral at worst). For example, back in 3x's Book of Exalted Deeds where they had good totally-not-poisons-honest, or in 5e when they had the Good god Moradin turn his back on the duergar because they failed their saving throws against mind control. Meanwhile (as I wrote on another thread) you have Evil orc gods who don't actually have that evil a portfolio. If you go by the original origin story, Gruumsh just wanted to give his people a place to live after all the human and demihuman gods claimed the good parts for themselves. But for that, the orcs were branded evil and everything they did was evil.Logically speaking, orcs, elves, dwarfs, whatever, should be as alignmentally-diverse as humans, but because they have &quot;Lawful Evil&quot; or &quot;Chaotic Good&quot; in their statblock, people, including the game's writers come up with rationales like &quot;orcs and goblinoids have less free will than humans do.&quot;(I don't want to derail this anymore than necessary into an alignment thread, so feel free to ignore this rant and roll your eyes at me. But I kinda want to see a setting where, like, halflings and dwarfs got all the good land thanks to their gods and the humans and elves and whatever else got the shaft, and see what the PCs think and do about it.)That much probably won't, if it's a one-off. I think the problem comes if every depiction of whatever someone is exposed to is evilevilevil. Which, you have to admit, was the case for a very long time, and is almost certainly why there's so much pushback at the idea of removing alignments or having &quot;pretty&quot; orcs or things like that. If the original AD&amp;D books had decided that only about half of all orcs were evil but the other half were good or neutral (as opposed to them being mostly evil, with a few good orcs, if the DM wants), there wouldn't be nearly so many alignment arguments. (Again, don't want to derail, feel free to ignore me if you prefer.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Faolyn, post: 9589054, member: 6915329"] Well, in many games like D&D, especially in previous editions, the idea is that alignment is this fairly absolute thing. If something is Good, then everything they do is Good (or neutral at worst). For example, back in 3x's Book of Exalted Deeds where they had good totally-not-poisons-honest, or in 5e when they had the Good god Moradin turn his back on the duergar because they failed their saving throws against mind control. Meanwhile (as I wrote on another thread) you have Evil orc gods who don't actually have that evil a portfolio. If you go by the original origin story, Gruumsh just wanted to give his people a place to live after all the human and demihuman gods claimed the good parts for themselves. But for that, the orcs were branded evil and everything they did was evil. [I]Logically [/I]speaking, orcs, elves, dwarfs, whatever, should be as alignmentally-diverse as humans, but because they have "Lawful Evil" or "Chaotic Good" in their statblock, people, including the game's writers come up with rationales like "orcs and goblinoids have less free will than humans do." (I don't want to derail this anymore than necessary into an alignment thread, so feel free to ignore this rant and roll your eyes at me. But I kinda want to see a setting where, like, halflings and dwarfs got all the good land thanks to their gods and the humans and elves and whatever else got the shaft, and see what the PCs think and do about it.) That much probably won't, if it's a one-off. I think the problem comes if [I]every [/I]depiction of whatever someone is exposed to is evilevilevil. Which, you have to admit, was the case for a very long time, and is almost certainly why there's so much pushback at the idea of removing alignments or having "pretty" orcs or things like that. If the original AD&D books had decided that only about half of all orcs were evil but the other half were good or neutral (as opposed to them being [I]mostly [/I]evil, with a [I]few [/I]good orcs, if the DM wants), there wouldn't be [I]nearly [/I]so many alignment arguments. (Again, don't want to derail, feel free to ignore me if you prefer.) [/QUOTE]

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