Every time people lament changes to the lore that amount to “not every member of species X is irredeemably evil” and claim the game is removing villains from it, I think how villains of so-caleld evil species fall into two cathegories: a) bland and boring and b)have something else, unrelated to their species going on for them, that makes them interesting.
Personally, as a DM I get tired of how many different intelligent species there are. It makes worldbuilding very hard. I tried carving out space for each of them, but it wasn’t worth it. These days I prefer to just get rid of most races, but it’s a bit hard to tell which ones to keep.
That’s one thing I love about shadowruns setting. You have all the races, but they don’t really have to have a space carved out for them, since humans just became these races literally overnight. They just fit in with society as human, but…
Totally agree, shadowrun is so much fun, and the setting (especially in Germany) has so many fun details
Polar Bears have a “evil race” reputation… I’m sure they are just misunderstood and will explain it to you while they disembowel you
I think a huge problem with this is trying to frame everything through D&D as well as our perspective. Fuck modern D&D and its desire to control the entire dialogue. Wizards of the Coast aside, there’s also a fantasy component here. I personally dislike requiring all races to act exactly like humans with human motives. From a specific perspective, we view the wanton murder and sacrifice of wood elves by the drow as a terribly evil thing. From the drow perspective, why can’t the opposite be true? I’m not talking about Salvatore’s one-sided writing that makes it clear the whole thing is a massive con. D&D is very biased toward human motive and perspective. Why can’t both be true? Drow are evil to us and we are evil to them? That’s a much more interesting story and completely changes the narrative around someone like Drizzt.
This is a really nuanced take on speculative fiction in general. I also strongly feel that, the way WotC writes things, removing racial alignment is very important. There is no nuance in their universe. Even when we see other races, we always evaluate their action through a human lens rather than being presented a cogent paradigm contrary to ours.
DnD good and evil are distinct from common usage of the terms; they are cosmic forces, objective truths. Each action reverberates through the higher and lower planes and tilts the scales towards victory for one side or another in their eternal struggle. This lore doesn’t leave a ton of room to change the alignment of entire races (and that is by design, structure makes it easier for people to get in to the setting).
But this is just in the established settings, any DM is free to homebrew any setting and justification they like.
Note that I am not trying to defend this as the height of storytelling, it isn’t. It is a consequence of how the setting is justified - with deities being active participants, having specific rules for granting and revoking powers, and the physical presence of higher and lower planes embodying perfect conceptions of ‘good’, ‘evil’, order, chaos, etc. All of this can be changed, and again any DM is free to change it, but the ‘deep lore’ of the established settings over the past 40 years is drenched in this stuff.
One way to consider it is simply - the Drow aren’t evil because they are Drow. The Drow are evil because their culture promotes actions that align with the literal true definition of evil that is present in the setting. Evil doesn’t mean bad, it is just a label aligning with some physical rule of the universe. Just like the positive charge of a proton and negative charge of an electron are labels for physical rules of our own universe. Positive isn’t any better than negative, but they are inherently distinct.
What you’re describing is closer to the nuance I’m interested in than WotC’s settings. If you read some of the later Lolth stuff, it’s the exact opposite of that. Evil is bad and the justification for anything always involves this trite movement from evil to good. They’re not presented as counterbalances or equal combatants. Even evil characters seem to always be working under the assumption that good characters are ultimately better.
The 40k universe has a lot of similarities. However, I’d argue its authors are somewhat better at presenting why Chaos is an equally valid choice or why the Orks can do whatever they want. There isn’t a clear choice (some authors are fucking terrible at this and drive WotC-style to the goodness of the Imperium).
The only reason WotC has to remove alignment from races is because WotC has made it very clear there is the thing people should want and there is the thing people should not want. That’s not an even layout of nine alignments. That’s a huge bias and all of their content reflects that.
I feel like the bigger reason to have evil races is to have a more or less ever present challenge and point of conflict. For instance, the underdark is horrible place to be, in large part due to the drow. Their presence and general alignment of evil makes the setting dangerous and interesting. Is this town safe? Have the drow been messing about assassinating local leaders? Should we help this group by liberating them from slavery from the drow?
It’s almost like their species is in of itself a character, with this species sized character being evil. Having an entire species be generally evil gives the world more scale than a single evil character would. But yes, an individual villain needs more than just their evil race to be interesting.
But the reason the drow are evil is primarily because of the Spider god Lolth, not because they’re Drow. Drow free from Lolth aren’t necessarily evil.
Absolutely. But I wasn’t talking about the lore reason why they’re generally evil.
Evil races give someone the PCs don’t have to feel bad about killing. Obviously depends on your party, but if they befriend the hungry wolf pack and negotiate with the bandits, then a band of definitely evil goblins gives the barbarian something to smash without worrying if they’re killing little Timmy’s dad.
Edited to add: And if “he’s an evil race” is your only reason for them being a major villain, that’s bad storytelling. About as bad as “yes they’re going to help you because they’re good,” and not for some kind of benefit to them, monetary or spiritual or whatever.
Eh, but maybe the barbarian should have to think about whether smash is the right path forward?
Also, you can have an individual group of enemies who are very clearly definitely evil without needing to relegate an entire species to it.
That said I run campaigns which are pretty far removed from my players wanting to smash dudes without a second thought.
Except the bard, right?
If you can kill something without feeling bad because of its race, that’s fucked up. A group of goblin bandits can be fun, but they’re villains because of the bandit thing, not the goblin thing. Why should a group defined by plundering travelers be more acceptable than a group defined by being short with green skin?
That said, the undead are, more often than not, fair game. Undead are a mockery of the life that came before and a defilement of their corpse, so killing them is a way of honouring the dead.
Why should a group defined by plundering travelers be more acceptable than a group defined by being short with green skin?
Because in a fantasy world, where we can know for 100% certainty that gods created life, it’s not impossible for those gods to have made a certain creature type objectively evil.
In some settings, Orcs are the way they are because their god is the last one to pick a place for them to live, gets pissy, and decides that “Fuck you guys! If that’s how you want to play it, my orcs are going to plunder the shit out of your guys’ lands!”
In other settings, there has to be some kind of cosmic balance to things, and some gods are just evil because there has to be a natural counterpart to good, and so the creatures they create are just inherently evil.
I think the issue is with this kind of debate is that that it’s referred to as “race”. We don’t really have a one-for-one on this IRL (because Goblins don’t exist) and we don’t refer to animals as “different races”.
No, sorry, that still doesn’t answer my question.
Cosmically controlled goblins are doing the same thing as bandits, but the bandits made the choice to do evil things and the goblins didn’t get a chance to refuse. Surely, the people choosing to do evil are worse than those forced to do evil, right? So why are bandits better than goblins?
The suggestions you gave fall kinda flat to me, really. No matter what the in-universe reason is, the DM made the universe. “It’s what my character would do” doesn’t excuse bad behaviour, and neither does “it’s what my gods decided.” You’re the one who made them do that. You’re the one that decided an entire culture of thinking, feeling people are born objectively evil and can be killed en masse. And that’s fucked up.
You’re the one that decided an entire culture of thinking, feeling people are born objectively evil and can be killed en masse. And that’s fucked up.
I think that’s where the issue falls apart. You want them to be thinking feeling people who can change. They don’t have to be. If an evil deity creates Goblins, and makes them evil for whatever reason, they can inherently lack the ability to freely think and evolve.
And there’s nothing “fucked up” about it.
Look at some villains who are just objectively evil. People point-out the Adventure Time Lich all the time, and that thing is just evil. There’s no point trying to argue with it. No point trying to convince it to right its wrongs. It doesn’t care, because it’s just evil.
Goblins have language and culture and religion, and that all requires the ability to think, feel and grow. Making them evil means that either your worldbuilding is nonsense or you’ve made a thinking, feeling group of people inherently evil from birth. If you want a group that doesn’t think, feel or grow, then do what I said in the first place and use undead.
Stop saying it’s an evil deity doing these things. It’s just you. You’re doing these things. Don’t be a coward.
Are you seriously trying to justify Boblin the Goblin being evil because of the Lich from Adventure time? One is the cosmic manifestation of the death of all things, and the other is short and green. That’s not remotely the same.
And most objectively evil villains in fiction are, I shall point out, human. Nothing to do with their species. A group of human bandits and a group of goblin bandits are equally evil. And at no point have you given any explanation as to why that wouldn’t be the case.
Either answer the fucking question or shut the fuck up.
Edit: It would appear they chose to shut the fuck up. I would have preferred they answer the question, but this is acceptable.
Sorry, I didn’t realize you were exclusively arguing in bad faith/trolling. I’ll stop responding.
Y-you…you do realize the lich, as liches generally work this way, was probably once human, right? And is choosing to believe all life must be quelled? Like…that’s an example of an irredeemably evil person who is actively choosing to be irredeemably evil. Moron.
I would say that many Mind Flayer villains are quite interesting because they are Mind Flayers.
Personally don’t really find the snack sized Cthulhu aspect that interesting. What really interests me about them is the lore about them once being a great empire of douchebags who were overthrown by those they oppressed (gith) who then took their place politically and now hunt them down. Says a lot BG3 focused on this lore over the Cthulhu monster aspect. Just some good lore building which could have (and I’m sure has) gone to any other races.
How would an oppressed people even have a chance of overthrowing rulers who could read and control their minds?
Gith became resistant to the mind control over the millenia. This is why in 5e the race has psychic resistance. The duergar were also slaves of the mind flayers and this is why they have psionic fortitude. There’s some other races that have been altered due to being enslaved (derro, kuo-toa, quaggoth), usually resulting in some form of psionics and madness.
Part of what makes mind flayers interesting because their society touched and left scars on a lot of other races. Gith are just the loudest about it in part because they live in the Astral Sea where time doesn’t age them so, outside of dying during raids, many of the gith who rebelled can easily still be around leading to the rebellion being fresh in the gith’s minds (as opposed to the duergar for example who live on the material plane in normal time and have had empires rise and fall and numerous generations since the enslavement).
Dragons are interesting as a species… They’re also in the name of the game. You remove them and the game is just “Dungeons And.”
Dragons are pretty cool, but it’s also sus as hell that the Lawful Good dragon is a cool daddy and the Chaotic Evil dragon is a crazy bitch. It’s got major “divorced guy energy” is all I’m saying.
In Pathfinder the “good” dragons can be just as fucked up. One set up a “perfect society” for humanoid races on an island, where the government performs eugenics and brainwashing and banishes anyone that shakes off the brainwashing
Eugenics is interesting from a dragon’s perspective. They might live long enough to actually see the results.
Interestingly though it does make for compelling heroes like Drizzt and Wulfgar.
Did*
Kinda of an overplayed trope now.
Because it was a strong character trait, first! So much so, that many people started using it!
From Order of the Stick:
“Wait, aren’t dark elves evil?”
“Oh, my, no. Not since they became a player race. Now the entire species consists of Chaotic Good rebels, yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin.”
“Evil kin? Didn’t you just say they were all Chaotic Good?”
“Details.”
I feel like:
- No race should have alignment locking in any direction, because people are people and can do whatever they want. Our goodness or badness isn’t determined by our genes.
- But, people are who they are because of the society they grow up in and how people treat them. If humans treat goblins like shit because they’re goblins, and a goblin turns into a big bad because they want to kill the humans that slaughtered their village, then that villain is interesting for reasons tied to their species.
“No villain in D&D is interesting for reasons tied to their species” sounds very dangerously close to “I’m race-blind” in terms of not acknowledging that different people have different struggles, and racism is often a huge part of those struggles.
Big cats have hunting instincts that are hard to turn off even if they like you (see: any news story of a big cat eating their owner), humans have instincts relating to forming communities. every single species has some instincts they follow and they aren’t the same as ours, they’ll deeply shape how a species’ cultures/morals/etc develop. Just saying goblins are little green humans is deeply boring and hurts world building.
Any story pitching “good” vs “evil” is bedtime drivel dressed a different way.
Talk about disrespecting the roots of fantasy
respect is a funny way to frame this. The roots of fantasy, written when ontological evil was commonly seen as a thing present in the real world? those roots? or the roots when ethnic nationalism was the way of geopolitics? or when scientific racism informed much of the modern conception of races in dnd? respect is about the last thing anybody owes fiction, the world can change as beliefs do.
I was mostly thinking about Tolkien’s legendarium and the tales inspiring his work. Some of its roots (like norse mythology) is far older and/or unrelated to what you mentioned.
mm no, ontological evil. Also tolkien is not older than any of what i mentioned.
Some of its roots (like norse mythology) is far older and/or unrelated to what you mentioned.
mmm no, ontological evil
How is Morgoth not Ontologically Evil?
? you tell me i guess?
