Gee, it's almost like when you depict a whole race as evil, people get the idea in their head that it's okay to kill them all. Almost like racial alignment in D&D was one of the worst things they ever did. And to be clear, no, I am not defending his behavior, I am saying that this is where it stems from in the hobby. It stems from a time where killing non-combatants was the correct answer, because Gary Gygax said so. There is that infamous article in Dragon Magazine.
And then of course this kind of player will gravitate to the game and make posts like this. It fucking sucks for the hobby as a whole.
54
Frivolous_Beatnik [comrade/them, any] - 1w
The thing that annoys me most is that it's very easy to narratively justify having a group of enemies you can't bargain with, or that you should feel fine about killing in combat.
Nobody is gonna bat an eye at the GM creating a bunch of fascists to dumpster, or even a group of merciless bandits who raid the trade routes for their gain and amusement - giving villains agency in their evil acts is infinitely more interesting and it makes violence a more palatable narrative avenue.
Tying villainy to racialized "all orcs are born this way" tropes seems lazy and near impossible to pull off well unless you're really good at worldbuilding and have thought out the consequences of such a world element, and even then it still feels gross 99% of the time
43
BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them] - 1w
Nobody is gonna bat an eye at the GM creating a bunch of fascists to dumpster
I have a feeling the guy who made the linked comment might
But seriously, this is why the main enemies in my current homebrew project are
Automated weapons platforms
Territorial/aggressive animals
The soldiers of a fantasy counterpart British Empire
30
Evilsandwichman [none/use name] - 1w
The soldiers of a fantasy counterpart British Empire
People always claim that we all think of ourselves as 'the good guys', no one likes to think of themselves as evil, but the reality is much of the worst evils that have happened in this world came from people thinking they're superior and the people they're colonizing are inferior; good and evil didn't come into it, because no rational person commits the horrific acts that colonizers have without thinking of it as evil. I recall reading a quote from a British journal from someone involved in colonial India who said he felt the slaughter of all the men in this one village (it was retribution against Indian freedom fighters) was a waste; he said he didn't feel sorry for them and he didn't like them, just that the killing was a waste, which read to me of someone who could clearly tell what they were doing was evil but that he still believed they were superior and the people of India were inferior.
A better alignment system would instead look at cultures that think of themselves as superior and others as inferior, similar to libs and chuds who defend atrocities against non-Western countries as 'our way of life is better', but then inevitably if the game starts to look more like real life history the players would find themselves on the evil side. If you played a game that started you off in 1800's Britain (for a similar Western-centric setting similar to Middle Earth's Western Europe styled setting), your side would definitively be the bad guys and you'd have to commit the 'great evil' of turning on your Western culture (if you actually wanted to be the good guys). There were many people who 'went native' to join the communities they were supposed to be eradicating or helping in eradicating.
21
NuraShiny [any] - 1w
Yes. It is very easy to do this. My favorite way in this example would be to make the whole towns citizenry be mainly Orcs as well, who are enslaved by the boss of the mine who only cares about getting more ore out of the ground and who has the means to hire muscle to keep the town under control, until the heroes show up.
I really hate how little thought D&D puts into their evil races too. Orcs? They got an evil god they all worship, so they are evil. Don't worry about why the good races get a whole gaggle of gods while the Orcs get a racialized god that is only for them and also obviously terrible. Gnolls? They got their souls tied to a demon, so their are influenced by that and damned to evil. Goblins? They are just evil don't even worry about it. Trolls? They are hungy because regeneration and will eat anything. And so on and so on.
You could make good redemption arcs out of these and an author worth anything at all would do that. Imagine a group of PC Gnolls who somehow get their souls saved and set out to defeat their demon lord to save their whole race from it's terrible fate. Or a bunch of Orcs who dare ask "Hey is our god maybe not cool? Maybe we should look to other gods?". Or what would happen if Trolls had easy access to plentiful food...any one of these would make good stories to tell.
But adventure modules and D&D books so very rarely go there. They mostly just put these races into rooms in dungeons or into random overland encounter tables and then wonder why players learn the lesson that you should just kill them all.
18
BobDole [none/use name] - 1w
“Hey, so your character is now an Oathbreaker Paladin. I don’t allow Evil aligned characters so you’re gonna roll one up before next session while we figure out if you’re still part of the group”
47
BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them] - 1w
It's the guy's self-righteousness that really gets me. They're absolutely convinced they're a brave iconoclast speaking truth to power.
41
BobDole [none/use name] - 1w
Very “adults in the room making hard decisions” prestige tv slop coded.
41
BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them] - 1w
When the world needed him most, UlyssesT vanished
30
LeninWeave [none/use name, any] - 1w
All my posters gone.
29
buckykat [none/use name] - 1w
I agree with all of UlyssesT's media takes but I do not have the energy to be mad about them all day every day
11
Acute_Engles [he/him, any] - 1w
Perfect because this would cause the person to rage about alignments and say you're a cheater DM so hopefully they just quit and you don't have to navigate the social contexts of kicking them out
13
chgxvjh [he/him, comrade/them] - 1w
If you want to play a genocidal paladin in your fictional setting is one thing but making up excuses how it's the right thing a whole other.
43
GalaxyBrain [they/them] - 1w
Having your character be the one making the excuses would be good role playing. If he had prefaced it that its what his CHARACTER would think, well, fine, role playing a piece of shit is acceptable behavior. But this means he's also doing a trash job at DnD by role playing as himself. Ive never played anything even close to this grimdark, a general rule the group i played with followed was 'we are playing a Saturday morning cartoon'. Tabletop RPGs with your friends are generally poor environments to explore any themes let alone race theory regsrding orcs and stuff. Just ignore the stuff im the handbook that sucks and write your own shit.
8
GenderIsOpSec [she/her, kit/kit's] - 1w
Our party sorcerer, with a touch of orc blood in her, wanted to spare the children,
a touch of orc blood is the reason she didn't want to execute children according to this adult in the room Lawful Good Paladin person.
43
decaptcha [none/use name] - 1w
hitler particle detector going off like a tuning fork
39
Evilsandwichman [none/use name] - 1w
Ugh, I remember reading this post years ago; here's something he also posted in that thread (it's part of a slightly longer post):
Orcs are not a 'race' insofar as they are slight variations of the same species, like what we know as race in our world. They don't think like us. Our understandings of morality and alignment are rooted in human virtues and human categories, and orcs just don't subscribe to those virtues.
People literally say about non-Western countries that they don't share our understandings of morality which are rooted in Western virtues, and non-Western people don't subscribe to those virtues; they say non-Western people don't appreciate freedom and they don't love life like we do.
43
Dessa [she/her] - 1w
But then they get mad when RPG publishers change the word "race" into something else. "Oh, we don't want to kill people of other species or heritages. We want to kill other races."
21
Johnny_Arson [they/them] - 1w
And the same people are the ones calling Russians "orcs"
11
Dort_Owl [they/them, any] - 1w
Even their "nice" solution of raising the orc children in human orphanages to "overcome their nature" is so fucking gross if you know how this mirrors how Anglo colonists treated races they saw as inferior. Australia's stolen generation comes to mind.
And it always pisses me off when they try to pass themselves of as "Mr. Rational totally not being emotional because emotions are totally not logical."
The consequences of teaching emotion and logic as opposites I guess.
The non-combatants in a humanoid group might be judged as worthy of death by a LG opponent force and executed or taken as prisoners to be converted to the correct way of thinking and behaving. A NG opponent would likely admonish them to change their ways before freeing them. A CG force might enslave them so as to correct their ways
40
SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them] - 1w
A CG force might enslave them so as to correct their ways
Pretty sure slavery is not 'good' under any circumstances, Gary.
21
Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] - 1w
Yeah, that was by far the biggest yikes in there. Slavery "for their own good" is pretty incredible as good aligned example.
7
GenderIsOpSec [she/her, kit/kit's] - 1w
The old addage about nits making lice applies.
least genocidal amerikkkan
31
BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them] - 1w
If it is perfectly acceptable in the game milieu for Lawful and Good characters to execute prisoners, then why on Oerth would any foe surrender to them?
Why is it that in actuality troops would surrender even knowing that the victors were prone to slaughtering captives. The Japanese did that as did the Nazis.
"When you think about it, the good guys in my setting are a lot like the Nazis"
10
Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them] - 1w
Having someone play a Paladin in DND is often very revealing. I have a friend who is playing a Paladin with a similar black/white outlook on morality in my game, but he is playing a character not just expressing his own personal desire to attack anyone deemed untermensch evil.
This person acting like they deserve a fucking medal for popping a half-chub at the table over all the murder they get to do is just sickening. This would be a "I'm not coming back to another session" from me if this guy was there, especially since it seems like the DM was allowing this to happen or even encouraging it, especially with the evil removed orcs, this is like, the most cliche "DnD Horror stories" set up I can think of.
39
BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them] - 1w
"No but you see the setting has been crafted in such a way that genocide is justified, please do not question why I want to play a setting that allows me to do Generalplan Ost while still being the good guy"
29
GalaxyBrain [they/them] - 1w
The proper way to annoy the party as a paladin is to be TOO morally upright and chivalrous. Go full Dudley DoRight on em. Fuck up sneak attacks by calling out the vile knave to a fair duel! Stuff like that
12
Belly_Beanis [he/him] - 1w
Totally normal to create worlds where sexual assault and slavery are inflicted upon an entire population by another.
Motherfucker, it's made up. It's pretend. You can literally make conflicts with evil that don't involve shit like this. Then these fucking weirdos wonder why they get bullied because of their war crimes simulator.
37
purpleworm [none/use name] - 1w
I think it can be a fine thing for the writing to have a society that enslaves people that the purpose is to fight against.
The issue is when the slavery are a racialized "other" whose blood makes them evil. At that point you are saying that the problem isn't racism but which race is dominating the other.
And obviously most settings with SV being described as "routine" are sicko gooner fantasies.
25
Carl [he/him] - 1w
This is a classic dilemma for D&D groups for a good reason, you really gotta have a group who're all on the same page if you're going to do it because it can turn into a real fight and destroy the group if not handled well. If there's any doubt in your mind how every member of the group will react to the dilemma it's best to just handwave it: maybe not all of the orcs are pro slavery and you just take out the current leadership, maybe this is a colonial outpost sending resources somewhere else and there are no non-fighting orcs present, maybe the orcs are zombies or under mind control and you just need to take out the evil wizard, etc.
Anyway if I got a whiff of "wannabe goblinslayer" from one of my players I would try to discretely kick them from the group. Fuck that shit.
30
buckykat [none/use name] - 1w
The DM is the greater fascist in this scenario
24
Horse {they/them} - 1w
CW for SA if you please
5
BeanisBrain [he/him, they/them] - 1w
Done
5
Horse {they/them} - 1w
5
CliffordBigRedDog [he/him] - 7day
APAB
2
HexReplyBot [none/use name] - 1w
A Reddit link was detected in your post. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
BeanisBrain in slop
[CW: SA] "In D&D you can be anything" "I wanna be a member of the Einsatzgruppen"
Link
Gee, it's almost like when you depict a whole race as evil, people get the idea in their head that it's okay to kill them all. Almost like racial alignment in D&D was one of the worst things they ever did. And to be clear, no, I am not defending his behavior, I am saying that this is where it stems from in the hobby. It stems from a time where killing non-combatants was the correct answer, because Gary Gygax said so. There is that infamous article in Dragon Magazine.
And then of course this kind of player will gravitate to the game and make posts like this. It fucking sucks for the hobby as a whole.
The thing that annoys me most is that it's very easy to narratively justify having a group of enemies you can't bargain with, or that you should feel fine about killing in combat.
Nobody is gonna bat an eye at the GM creating a bunch of fascists to dumpster, or even a group of merciless bandits who raid the trade routes for their gain and amusement - giving villains agency in their evil acts is infinitely more interesting and it makes violence a more palatable narrative avenue.
Tying villainy to racialized "all orcs are born this way" tropes seems lazy and near impossible to pull off well unless you're really good at worldbuilding and have thought out the consequences of such a world element, and even then it still feels gross 99% of the time
I have a feeling the guy who made the linked comment might
But seriously, this is why the main enemies in my current homebrew project are
People always claim that we all think of ourselves as 'the good guys', no one likes to think of themselves as evil, but the reality is much of the worst evils that have happened in this world came from people thinking they're superior and the people they're colonizing are inferior; good and evil didn't come into it, because no rational person commits the horrific acts that colonizers have without thinking of it as evil. I recall reading a quote from a British journal from someone involved in colonial India who said he felt the slaughter of all the men in this one village (it was retribution against Indian freedom fighters) was a waste; he said he didn't feel sorry for them and he didn't like them, just that the killing was a waste, which read to me of someone who could clearly tell what they were doing was evil but that he still believed they were superior and the people of India were inferior.
A better alignment system would instead look at cultures that think of themselves as superior and others as inferior, similar to libs and chuds who defend atrocities against non-Western countries as 'our way of life is better', but then inevitably if the game starts to look more like real life history the players would find themselves on the evil side. If you played a game that started you off in 1800's Britain (for a similar Western-centric setting similar to Middle Earth's Western Europe styled setting), your side would definitively be the bad guys and you'd have to commit the 'great evil' of turning on your Western culture (if you actually wanted to be the good guys). There were many people who 'went native' to join the communities they were supposed to be eradicating or helping in eradicating.
Yes. It is very easy to do this. My favorite way in this example would be to make the whole towns citizenry be mainly Orcs as well, who are enslaved by the boss of the mine who only cares about getting more ore out of the ground and who has the means to hire muscle to keep the town under control, until the heroes show up.
I really hate how little thought D&D puts into their evil races too. Orcs? They got an evil god they all worship, so they are evil. Don't worry about why the good races get a whole gaggle of gods while the Orcs get a racialized god that is only for them and also obviously terrible. Gnolls? They got their souls tied to a demon, so their are influenced by that and damned to evil. Goblins? They are just evil don't even worry about it. Trolls? They are hungy because regeneration and will eat anything. And so on and so on.
You could make good redemption arcs out of these and an author worth anything at all would do that. Imagine a group of PC Gnolls who somehow get their souls saved and set out to defeat their demon lord to save their whole race from it's terrible fate. Or a bunch of Orcs who dare ask "Hey is our god maybe not cool? Maybe we should look to other gods?". Or what would happen if Trolls had easy access to plentiful food...any one of these would make good stories to tell.
But adventure modules and D&D books so very rarely go there. They mostly just put these races into rooms in dungeons or into random overland encounter tables and then wonder why players learn the lesson that you should just kill them all.
“Hey, so your character is now an Oathbreaker Paladin. I don’t allow Evil aligned characters so you’re gonna roll one up before next session while we figure out if you’re still part of the group”
It's the guy's self-righteousness that really gets me. They're absolutely convinced they're a brave iconoclast speaking truth to power.
Very “adults in the room making hard decisions” prestige tv slop coded.
When the world needed him most, UlyssesT vanished
I agree with all of UlyssesT's media takes but I do not have the energy to be mad about them all day every day
Perfect because this would cause the person to rage about alignments and say you're a cheater DM so hopefully they just quit and you don't have to navigate the social contexts of kicking them out
If you want to play a genocidal paladin in your fictional setting is one thing but making up excuses how it's the right thing a whole other.
Having your character be the one making the excuses would be good role playing. If he had prefaced it that its what his CHARACTER would think, well, fine, role playing a piece of shit is acceptable behavior. But this means he's also doing a trash job at DnD by role playing as himself. Ive never played anything even close to this grimdark, a general rule the group i played with followed was 'we are playing a Saturday morning cartoon'. Tabletop RPGs with your friends are generally poor environments to explore any themes let alone race theory regsrding orcs and stuff. Just ignore the stuff im the handbook that sucks and write your own shit.
a touch of orc blood is the reason she didn't want to execute children according to this adult in the room Lawful Good Paladin person.
hitler particle detector going off like a tuning fork
Ugh, I remember reading this post years ago; here's something he also posted in that thread (it's part of a slightly longer post):
People literally say about non-Western countries that they don't share our understandings of morality which are rooted in Western virtues, and non-Western people don't subscribe to those virtues; they say non-Western people don't appreciate freedom and they don't love life like we do.
But then they get mad when RPG publishers change the word "race" into something else. "Oh, we don't want to kill people of other species or heritages. We want to kill other races."
And the same people are the ones calling Russians "orcs"
Even their "nice" solution of raising the orc children in human orphanages to "overcome their nature" is so fucking gross if you know how this mirrors how Anglo colonists treated races they saw as inferior. Australia's stolen generation comes to mind.
And it always pisses me off when they try to pass themselves of as "Mr. Rational totally not being emotional because emotions are totally not logical."
The consequences of teaching emotion and logic as opposites I guess.
Europa Universalis convert culture button
Paradox Games And Their Consequences
EU “deport minorities” button
This sounds influenced (directly or indirectly) by Gygax's horrible, racist take.
Pretty sure slavery is not 'good' under any circumstances, Gary.
Yeah, that was by far the biggest yikes in there. Slavery "for their own good" is pretty incredible as good aligned example.
least genocidal amerikkkan
"When you think about it, the good guys in my setting are a lot like the Nazis"
Having someone play a Paladin in DND is often very revealing. I have a friend who is playing a Paladin with a similar black/white outlook on morality in my game, but he is playing a character not just expressing his own personal desire to attack anyone deemed
untermenschevil.This person acting like they deserve a fucking medal for popping a half-chub at the table over all the murder they get to do is just sickening. This would be a "I'm not coming back to another session" from me if this guy was there, especially since it seems like the DM was allowing this to happen or even encouraging it, especially with the evil removed orcs, this is like, the most cliche "DnD Horror stories" set up I can think of.
"No but you see the setting has been crafted in such a way that genocide is justified, please do not question why I want to play a setting that allows me to do Generalplan Ost while still being the good guy"
The proper way to annoy the party as a paladin is to be TOO morally upright and chivalrous. Go full Dudley DoRight on em. Fuck up sneak attacks by calling out the vile knave to a fair duel! Stuff like that
Totally normal to create worlds where sexual assault and slavery are inflicted upon an entire population by another.
Motherfucker, it's made up. It's pretend. You can literally make conflicts with evil that don't involve shit like this. Then these fucking weirdos wonder why they get bullied because of their war crimes simulator.
I think it can be a fine thing for the writing to have a society that enslaves people that the purpose is to fight against.
The issue is when the slavery are a racialized "other" whose blood makes them evil. At that point you are saying that the problem isn't racism but which race is dominating the other.
And obviously most settings with SV being described as "routine" are sicko gooner fantasies.
This is a classic dilemma for D&D groups for a good reason, you really gotta have a group who're all on the same page if you're going to do it because it can turn into a real fight and destroy the group if not handled well. If there's any doubt in your mind how every member of the group will react to the dilemma it's best to just handwave it: maybe not all of the orcs are pro slavery and you just take out the current leadership, maybe this is a colonial outpost sending resources somewhere else and there are no non-fighting orcs present, maybe the orcs are zombies or under mind control and you just need to take out the evil wizard, etc.
Anyway if I got a whiff of "wannabe goblinslayer" from one of my players I would try to discretely kick them from the group. Fuck that shit.
The DM is the greater fascist in this scenario
CW for SA if you please
Done
APAB
A Reddit link was detected in your post. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.