Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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I think on of the biggest influence of the race thing is "Theoretical Players" who are totally into tabletop game lore, story, and concept but don't actually play. People who treat it like a normal video game or book. Evil races work well from a gameplay perspective since your DM doesn't have to spend half the game establishing why your random encounters are bad guys, you can just go and attack the goblin and orcs because they're clearly evil and you need to fight something that can think and wield weapons. Nuance takes time. Its good if you're playing a game where you have that kind of time, like the people who don't actually play and just fantasize about it. Its annoying if your GM has to show the undead murdering innocent villagers before you can do anything about it because they might be the good ones and you don't want to screw it up.

Its like your cursor turning red in a video game. Kill these guys because they're bad and maybe get context later. The GM has an hour for this encounter and already spent ten minutes describing their location and equipment.
 
WinchesterPremium said:
I think on of the biggest influence of the race thing is "Theoretical Players" who are totally into tabletop game lore, story, and concept but don't actually play. People who treat it like a normal video game or book. Evil races work well from a gameplay perspective since your DM doesn't have to spend half the game establishing why your random encounters are bad guys, you can just go and attack the goblin and orcs because they're clearly evil and you need to fight something that can think and wield weapons. Nuance takes time. Its good if you're playing a game where you have that kind of time, like the people who don't actually play and just fantasize about it. Its annoying if your GM has to show the undead murdering innocent villagers before you can do anything about it because they might be the good ones and you don't want to screw it up.

Its like your cursor turning red in a video game. Kill these guys because they're bad and maybe get context later. The GM has an hour for this encounter and already spent ten minutes describing their location and equipment.
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I think you hit the nail on the head. Evil races are a great shorthand for "this is an enemy", and they're considered Evil for a reason. If orcs and goblins in that world are widely known for invading peaceful lands, burning villages, raping half the survivors to death and enslaving the rest, why would you give them a nuanced evaluation? They're not human, they don't think like humans, they're not "misunderstood", they're not just doing that because of some great leader, they're simply fucking evil. If you see a band of orcs crouched in the bushes flanking a road, you know from bitter experience that they're up to no good. If someone chooses to believe that's some oblique reference to a real-life ethnic group, then I'd call them racist unless the orcs speak in Ebonics and are called Tyrone and Shaqueefa.

It's very early in the morning and coffee isn't ready yet, but let me try to get some thoughts out here: I think this all comes from this tabula rasa idea many people have, that we're all exactly the same and only your choices affect who we are. Weirdly, a lot of the idiots spousing that idea also seem to believe that the only thing that's set about someone is their gender. Anyway, the point is that fantasy races aren't humans and they don't think like humans. Well-written orcs, goblins or kobolds would sound like sociopaths to us. They'd be like talking to a Neanderthal. They may be intelligent, but their mindsets are limited, explaining how they're often stuck living in primitive ways and rarely develop sophisticated societies, and in many settings they're supernaturally bound to the gods that created them. Someone might argue these races are evil by Author Fiat and that's bad writing, and I would disagree with that. Sometimes you just need uncontroversial bad guys, and whatever nuance may exist in their mindset is irrelevant to the story.

It's just instead of dehumanizing humans to have our obviously evil guys (hi, Nazis. You're fucking overused), we go killing ugly monsters who don't have loving families waiting for them at home.
 
Corn Flakes said:
I think you hit the nail on the head. Evil races are a great shorthand for "this is an enemy", and they're considered Evil for a reason. If orcs and goblins in that world are widely known for invading peaceful lands, burning villages, raping half the survivors to death and enslaving the rest, why would you give them a nuanced evaluation? They're not human, they don't think like humans, they're not "misunderstood", they're not just doing that because of some great leader, they're simply fucking evil. If you see a band of orcs crouched in the bushes flanking a road, you know from bitter experience that they're up to no good. If someone chooses to believe that's some oblique reference to a real-life ethnic group, then I'd call them racist unless the orcs speak in Ebonics and are called Tyrone and Shaqueefa.

It's very early in the morning and coffee isn't ready yet, but let me try to get some thoughts out here: I think this all comes from this tabula rasa idea many people have, that we're all exactly the same and only your choices affect who we are. Weirdly, a lot of the idiots spousing that idea also seem to believe that the only thing that's set about someone is their gender. Anyway, the point is that fantasy races aren't humans and they don't think like humans. Well-written orcs, goblins or kobolds would sound like sociopaths to us. They'd be like talking to a Neanderthal. They may be intelligent, but their mindsets are limited, explaining how they're often stuck living in primitive ways and rarely develop sophisticated societies, and in many settings they're supernaturally bound to the gods that created them. Someone might argue these races are evil by Author Fiat and that's bad writing, and I would disagree with that. Sometimes you just need uncontroversial bad guys, and whatever nuance may exist in their mindset is irrelevant to the story.

It's just instead of dehumanizing humans to have our obviously evil guys (hi, Nazis. You're fucking overused), we go killing ugly monsters who don't have loving families waiting for them at home.
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A lot of people have trouble balancing empathy with pragmatism and end up empathizing with the villain at the expense of logic. You'll see this a lot in popular media. Tony Soprano, Walter White, even the fucking Joker of all things. People fucking love them, but at the same time completely overlook that at their core they are irredeemable pieces of shit that do not deserve a bit of sympathy or understanding. When they can barely grasp the minds of actual humans, how can you expect them to truly consider a literally inhuman mindset? They can't even confront their own cognitive dissonances without needing to retreat to a safe space, let alone explore the deeper parts of the evil alignment portion of the morality axis.

Case in point. My group did an evil campaign a few years ago all the way to level 20. The lower levels were what you'd normally expect in the standard murder-hoboing and id indulging. Characters without any depth or character besides "I'm evil, therefore I loot and pillage". No real motivations, no goals, no characterization aside from their psychoses and manias.

So how did we get such a shitshow all the way to level 20 with a chaotic evil dwarf that collected eyeballs, a special ed warlock, a borderline rapist ranger, and a revolving cast of other ne'er do wells? Simple. I made my character even worse than them. Hobgoblin Fighter. I made a monster with a purpose and goals and I achieved them by whatever means necessary. I directed the violence at appropriate targets to build up good reputation. I acted heroically in battle, saved peasants, slayed monsters, all for the purpose of building momentum to achieve a position of authority to rule with an iron fist. I played on those very flawed sympathies people have so "he's not like the others, he's actually decent" while usurping a barony with false evidence and claims that the local lord was housing a demonic cultist (true) and taking part in the rites and sacrificing servants (false). From mid to high levels it was basically "sure, he's a brutal warlord, but at least it's safe to travel the roads, praise be to Maglubiyet" and "his companions are complete assholes but at least he keeps them in line and all the orc bands and that beholder are gone" and even "sure I'm a slave, but if I work hard enough, one day I'll be free and have slaves of my own!" You get a lot more mileage out of affably evil over murderhoboing or Drizzt_Clone_19572/Orc Lives Matter, in my book.
 
Ive ben playing Kult Divinity Lost. Already sent one player to hell, fuck nuance.
 
I’d never give d&d money again. It’s easy enough to come up with your own encounters within the rule set.
 
Ive honestly stopped playing DnD if I dont have to. Too many great games out there. I just got my PDFs from the Abberant Kickstarter, so it looks like superheroess is my next campaign
 
40 Year Old Boomer said:
A lot of people have trouble balancing empathy with pragmatism and end up empathizing with the villain at the expense of logic. You'll see this a lot in popular media. Tony Soprano, Walter White, even the fucking Joker of all things. People fucking love them, but at the same time completely overlook that at their core they are irredeemable pieces of shit that do not deserve a bit of sympathy or understanding. When they can barely grasp the minds of actual humans, how can you expect them to truly consider a literally inhuman mindset? They can't even confront their own cognitive dissonances without needing to retreat to a safe space, let alone explore the deeper parts of the evil alignment portion of the morality axis.

Case in point. My group did an evil campaign a few years ago all the way to level 20. The lower levels were what you'd normally expect in the standard murder-hoboing and id indulging. Characters without any depth or character besides "I'm evil, therefore I loot and pillage". No real motivations, no goals, no characterization aside from their psychoses and manias.

So how did we get such a shitshow all the way to level 20 with a chaotic evil dwarf that collected eyeballs, a special ed warlock, a borderline rapist ranger, and a revolving cast of other ne'er do wells? Simple. I made my character even worse than them. Hobgoblin Fighter. I made a monster with a purpose and goals and I achieved them by whatever means necessary. I directed the violence at appropriate targets to build up good reputation. I acted heroically in battle, saved peasants, slayed monsters, all for the purpose of building momentum to achieve a position of authority to rule with an iron fist. I played on those very flawed sympathies people have so "he's not like the others, he's actually decent" while usurping a barony with false evidence and claims that the local lord was housing a demonic cultist (true) and taking part in the rites and sacrificing servants (false). From mid to high levels it was basically "sure, he's a brutal warlord, but at least it's safe to travel the roads, praise be to Maglubiyet" and "his companions are complete assholes but at least he keeps them in line and all the orc bands and that beholder are gone" and even "sure I'm a slave, but if I work hard enough, one day I'll be free and have slaves of my own!" You get a lot more mileage out of affably evil over murderhoboing or Drizzt_Clone_19572/Orc Lives Matter, in my book.
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Another thing a lot of people don't grasp is that you can play an evil character that's not a complete psycho. You just need someone who's driven and doesn't really care about the law or hurting people.

One of my favorite characters ever was a Lawful Evil Fighter who, seeing an opportunity early in the campaign, took over a small criminal gang the party fought against on the early levels. As the campaign went on, the Fighter gradually expanded the gang's operations until by level 12 or so he was recognized as one of the big three crime bosses operating in and around the kingdom's capital city. He was ruthless, feared by his subordinates, and used a lot of subterfuge and illusions (a hat of disguise does wonders) to make himself seem even more powerful than he was. But except for executing the occasional blatantly incompetent minion, he ran his operation fairly and his underlings were loyal (it also helped that he put the right people in charge when he had to go out adventuring). Sadly, the campaign didn't reach its final conclusion, but we were gearing up to have my characters' crime syndicate help smuggle and plant evidence against the king's evil vizier, who was actually a dragon in disguise.

(And yes, the GM admitted he cribbed Warcraft's Onyxia plotline for that.)
 
Not really a D&D story about an evil character, but you'd never think my character had a interstellar warrant out on her for multiple homicide and gross malpractice. Not at first glance. Too attractive, too bubbly and happy, far too caring about her average patient. Then you find out she went mental after dealing with gang violence on Planet California (yeah, the game's heavily inspired by Freelancer, sue the GM) and went on a euthanasia spree at her hospital and offed every single gangbanger there. Now she practices preventative medicine even Mordin Solus would balk at. Oh, and be careful if she offers you free food. She's as fond of unapproved human drug trials as a certain non-doctor from Brazistol, Rhode Island. Still, she's (probably) safer to be around than the party's gadget master who has as sincere of a belief in workplace safety as Q Branch. And that place has Hours instead of Days for its workplace accident sign.
 
Snekposter said:
Not really a D&D story about an evil character, but you'd never think my character had a interstellar warrant out on her for multiple homicide and gross malpractice. Not at first glance. Too attractive, too bubbly and happy, far too caring about her average patient. Then you find out she went mental after dealing with gang violence on Planet California (yeah, the game's heavily inspired by Freelancer, sue the GM) and went on a euthanasia spree at her hospital and offed every single gangbanger there. Now she practices preventative medicine even Mordin Solus would balk at. Oh, and be careful if she offers you free food. She's as fond of unapproved human drug trials as a certain non-doctor from Brazistol, Rhode Island. Still, she's (probably) safer to be around than the party's gadget master who has as sincere of a belief in workplace safety as Q Branch. And that place has Hours instead of Days for its workplace accident sign.
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What game is this?
 
Its a buddy's homebrewed system and setting combo. The system is Palladium that's been streamlined to only be somewhat harder to understand than most systems instead of brain-grindingly painful. Its what happens when a couple of autists see something that's too autistic even for them and slash it down to something approximating sanity. As to the setting... well... its basically Freelancer meets Firefly meets Shadowrun. The campaign so far has taken place on Planet Austin, in the Texas system, and half of it is pretty much like the music video for Knights of Cydonia since one job had us take down a gang of jetbiking assholes who stopped to plunder the town with our kung fu powers for the sweet, sweet bounty money. And the other half that's in the planet's big city of Dallas...
Nothing quite like rescuing some quite guilty elven weapons traffickers just because my other character (cyborg murder-elf with an actual residence, so he's not a hobo for once!) once knew them a hundred years ago from an impending C-SWAT raid and then stopping a terrorist before he can set off his nuke. Thankfully the gangs are only a minor issue (at least in the city limits, but outside of it you're on your own) since the Texas cops do what Texas cops do when people start shit, and there's also no annoying Keanu Reeves MacGuffin (yet).
 
anti SJW said:
So Lawful Good paladins can't go around killing orc babies.

But what if you are a paladin of the god of killing babies?
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I know it's just a joke but I'm gonna play it straight anyway: depends on the setting and the god.

In Forgotten Realms, in Current Year? That's just not going to happen. That god wouldn't be Lawful Good, and its followers wouldn't be Lawful Good.

In a setting where Orcs are defined by being utterly corrupt and evil and irredeemable to a point that a Lawful Good god has slaughtering orcs down to the last child as part of its portfolio, though? Sure. You can be a Lawful Good Paladin of St. Angmar the Protector, God of Orc-Slaying.
 
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Corn Flakes said:
In Forgotten Realms, in Current Year? That's just not going to happen. That got wouldn't be Lawful Good, and its followers wouldn't be Lawful Good.
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Depends on what edition of DnD you are using and how close you use RAW.

IIRC, an early version of the rules, Lawful Good wad described as "you obey the laws of the land."

So under those rules, a paladin living in Nazi Germany that finds Jewish people and turns them in would still be considered lawful good.
 
I want to make a character that calls himself a paladin. But isn't. He'd base his believes in some book they found. He'd say things like " well, the book doesn't say that killing bound, helpless prisoners is wrong. So we can do that and still be good. "
 
Yeah that's a big no from me on all of that rules lawyering to make murderhobo pallys who mulch infants. Especially since it involves a RAW take on one of several interpretations on what lawful good is and you're dealing with a humanoid infant. I don't care what excuse is made, I know if I had a player do that I'd make them fall so hard they are having an ice bath with Satan.

Also I'm sorry, but I'm of the mind that the only absolutes in setting are when you get to Outsiders and divine magic, and even they (the outsiders) can defy that fate, rare as it may be. Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos exist and are actual forces, but they don't purely guide you crude beings of flesh and matter.
 
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Adamska said:
Yeah that's a big no from me on all of that rules lawyering to make murderhobo pallys who mulch infants. Especially since it involves a RAW take on one of several interpretations on what lawful good is and you're dealing with a humanoid infant. I don't care what excuse is made, I know if I had a player do that I'd make them fall so hard they are having an ice bath with Satan.
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Orcs are evil creatures made by an evil god and designed to do evil things until they die and spend an eternity fighting dead goblinoids in the endless battles of Acheron between Gruumsh and Maglubiyet (with an occasional special guest appearance by Kurtulmak). No orphanage is going to take in a band of marauding orc toddlers and infants because they'll kill (and possibly eat) the other children. It's no more an evil act than filling a weighted sack with pitbull puppies and yeeting it into a river.
 
40 Year Old Boomer said:
Orcs are evil creatures made by an evil god and designed to do evil things until they die and spend an eternity fighting dead goblinoids in the endless battles of Acheron between Gruumsh and Maglubiyet (with an occasional special guest appearance by Kurtulmak). No orphanage is going to take in a band of marauding orc toddlers and infants because they'll kill (and possibly eat) the other children. It's no more an evil act than filling a weighted sack with pitbull puppies and yeeting it into a river.
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And with that you're now CE.

I legit don't give a shit what you try to argue with, since unlike outsiders, humanoid beings can and do change alignment based on Nurture too. By the logic you try pushing, humans from the different Faerun kingdoms are all like their aligned state even at birth.

Fuck it, just play Paladin of Slaughter. That's clearly what you want to do with this build.
 
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