Quote from: Sigmund;481997How about this. Do you ban your kids from reading or playing D&D, because it presents "racist" ideas? If so, how do you justify to them that it's ok for you to play D&D, but not them? If not, but you still find Adam Dray's argument compelling, how do you justify to yourself playing a "racist" game? Do you really think how strong and fast you are has anything to do with your musc... oops, wrong rant Seriously, do ya'all really think fantasy orcs are racist, and yet are still ok playing fantasy RPGs?

I don't speak for anyone else, but I feel like I have answered this one many times over in this thread.  

I don't believe that I should ban my son from reading anything different than the views that I want him to have.  So, for example, I am fine with him reading Robert E. Howard or watching old movies from the 30s and 40s, even if they have racist and/or sexist material.  What I do do is teach him to criticize the stuff he's reading / watching / playing.  For example, he was interested in James Bond, say, so we watched Goldfinger a few weeks ago - and we commented on and made fun of stuff in the movie.  I just played Hellcats & Hockeysticks with him and two others over the weekend - and his character was using a high-power bomb to blow up her teacher.  

To repeat, a few key points:

1) Historical stories and genres tend to not represent our modern-day values, especially over issues that have changed a lot over time: i.e. attitudes towards slavery, democracy, race relations, and sex differences among many others.  

2) This doesn't mean we should burn all of our books except for a select few new ones.  It means we have to recognize that values have changed and read critically.  There will be some "bad" messages in generally "good" stuff.  

3) Having an evil race is in my opinion a holdover, a bit like rescuing the princess as a trope.  You can come up with all sorts of valid reasons why this particular princess needs rescuing, but ultimately the trope of rescuing princesses is closely tied to sexist roots and deserves poking fun at every once in a while.  Likewise with the evil races, in my opinion.  I'd note the Shrek movies as one example of such poking fun, where the handsome prince is the bad guy and the ugly ogre is the hero.

Quote from: jhkim;4820421) Historical stories and genres tend to not represent our modern-day values, especially over issues that have changed a lot over time: i.e. attitudes towards slavery, democracy, race relations, and sex differences among many others.  

Eh, there is enough buried in historical stories and genres (if you're inclined to look for it) that completely or nearly meshes with our present day attitudes towards the subjects you mention.

Quote3) Having an evil race is in my opinion a holdover, a bit like rescuing the princess as a trope.

Seriously, JohnKim ?

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Cranewings;482029Pseudoephedrin's orcs are an analogy for capitalist western societies which invade and destroy beautiful and peaceful indigenous people, such as elves and halflings.

Naw, those are, quite literally my PCs in Emern.

My orcs are like the barbarians during the early Christian / late Roman era. Vital, rude, prolific and half-friendly in the worst way. If you think of men like Alaric, Stilicho, Attila and Genseric, as well as the peoples they led you'd get a pretty good idea of how I see orcs acting.

Quote from: Phillip;482039Turning from D&D to RuneQuest's world of Glorantha, I think there are both kinds of creatures.

Trolls are "just people too", with cultural and personal issues. There is essentially a largely homogenous Trollish culture, and it features customs such as regarding other sentient beings (from trollkin to elves) as foodstuffs.

Broos seem to me to be of the "irredeemably evil" sort. Unlike that of, say, wasps, their inhumanity is in a sense not whole. Like many gods and monsters, they reflect only a part of the human (and other similiar beings') condition. As with much in Glorantha, this has to do with the mythic world being part of the ordinary world (or vice-versa).

Broos are the best "irredeemably evil" fantasy race I've come across, but they also strike me as quite magical (chaos features) and alien. In general Glorantha is more fundamentally shot-through with magic and myth than the implied D&D setting. It also doesn't have Paladins.

Quote from: David R;482051Eh, there is enough buried in historical stories and genres (if you're inclined to look for it) that completely or nearly meshes with our present day attitudes towards the subjects you mention.

I'm not sure what you mean by "enough".  

I would agree there is significant overlap between modern views and historical views about these topics (slavery, democracy, race relations, sex differences).  Still, there are also significant differences.  In popular modern works, the tendency is very strongly to edit out parts.  We don't pretend that slaves didn't exist, but we also don't use the devious slave archetype in nearly the same way Plautus did (for example).

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;4818962. I find the idea of a naturalistically-portrayed, irredeemably evil species of humanoids difficult to accept. An irredeemable species means that they're born evil, or with the seeds of evil in their genes. (I.e., even if they're cute & harmless when young, they're genetically programmed to become noxious as they age.)

Human beings are genetically programmed to behave certain ways and have certain mental capabilities, too.  It becomes noticeable in people who lack normal mental capabilities, such as with autism.  Why is a species that naturally has a different set of capabilities, urges, and priorities difficult to accept?  

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;4818963. Noxious is partly contextual. A species that's harmful when it comes in contact with humanity isn't inherently noxious. To be inherently noxious the species has to, essentially, require harm for its own survival. (In this sense, smallpox, measles or filariasis are worse than the plague bacterium, since plague doesn't require human hosts to propagate the species.) By definition, this means that stopping the harm caused by the species is equivalent to starving it to death or otherwise wiping it out.

Not the only option.  They can also be noxious to their own kind such that if you leave them alone only with their own kind, they will prey on and abuse each other.  Think about what violent criminals do to each other in prison if you need a model of how that works.  So, sure, you could put them on a reservation where they can't hurt other people but they will just make life a living Hell for each other.

Quote from: jhkim;482060I'm not sure what you mean by "enough".  

I would agree there is significant overlap between modern views and historical views about these topics (slavery, democracy, race relations, sex differences).  Still, there are also significant differences.  In popular modern works, the tendency is very strongly to edit out parts.  We don't pretend that slaves didn't exist, but we also don't use the devious slave archetype in nearly the same way Plautus did (for example).

Are you talking about historical fiction and movies? If so i am not seeing it. Most of tge stuff i read they emphasize things like slavery and treatment of women. And straight history books havent avoided this stuff for some time.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;482031Right, "evil as a species characteristic" is far from the only way you can have conflict, and there are many scenarios where alignment doesn't stand at the forefront. E.g., it's about as easy to picture a war between human kingdoms as between a human kingdom and an orc kingdom.

Then why have orcs and other monsters at all?  Why not simply have two human kingdoms?

To quote George R. R. Martin's essay "First, Sew On A Tentacle" (from Writing and Selling Science Fiction, 1976 (*)), where I think his observations about aliens and story have some relevance to fantasy role-playing creatures and setting:

"Those writers who see in the shadowy figure of the alien nothing but a pulp convention are literarily blind; the alien is more than that, far more.  The alien is a modern elf, a troll, a ghost.  The alien is god and devil.  The alien is mystery and color and romance.  The alien is the ultimate outsider and the outsider has been a concern of serious literature since before there was an animal called 'serious literature.'"

[...]

"The fist thing you should think about is -- why is this alien in my story?"

[...]

"Stories of social and cultural conflict are very common in SF, of course.  And that is good.  [...] But they are human conflicts.  There is no need to cast them in the clothes of human versus alien.  To expand on the original rule, then: if the only important differences between the aliens and the humans in your story are cultural and social, then your story ought not have aliens at all."

(*) Contrary to what Kyle imagines, there are no true crime books on my bookshelf.  The majority of my books are role-playing books and then books about Late Bronze Age History (which, sadly, never generates long threads on this site) and writing fiction (with a focus on genre fiction).

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;482008Sigmund, I'm not requiring realism. I'm pointing out the elaborate, but selective fashion, in which realism is being applied, in the name of justifying a scenario where "good" PCs are doing the right thing, with metaphysical certitude, in killing noncombatants.

This plays right into the quote in the OP, which I also object to. It's just that in one case you've got somebody saying that D&D and similar games glorify genocide, while in the other, you've got an argument that killing noncombatants can be "necessary" and good. The "facts" being asserted on the two sides aren't too different.

I think that if the creatures portrayed in D&D are slain by player characters with reckless abandon and they are basically funny looking people rather than actual monsters, then the parallels discussed by the OP have some legitimacy, just as if chickens were really people, PETA's talk about the "Chicken Holocaust" might have some legitimacy.  Where I believe the OP is wrong is in assuming that the monsters portrayed in games like D&D are basically funny looking people, just as PETA's mistake is assuming that chickens are people and fish are "sea kittens".  

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;482008However, it doesn't follow that characters are compelled or justified in seeking out Orcs to kill and rob (as the OP would have it). Nor does it follow that the scenario of deciding what to do with humanoid young should arise in play, or that, if it does, the right thing to do is to exterminate them.

The Orcs are listed in the monster manual with hit points, treasure, and details about what can be found in the monster's lair.  B2 Keep on the Borderlands, a module included with basic D&D for quite a few years, contains lair after lair containing women and children.  I am seriously curious how those who played trough B2 "back in the day" (or even recently) handled those encounters.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;482008Even if the action ends up with PCs in control of an Orc settlement, the D&D texts don't state that killing the females and children is necessary, justified, or "good".

OK.  Let's assume it's not good (which I think is a perfectly legitimate option).  What does it mean for the PCs to spare the females and children after slaughtering all of the warriors and hunters?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;482008But the scenario of exterminating young, as a good thing, demands this concept of "irredeemable" with absolute foreknowledge that goes well beyond pragmatism.

D&D has long had the ability to detect alignment and the Paladin has long had the ability to Detect Evil at will.  If that ability is not to create absolute knowledge of who the Paladin should or shouldn't slay, then what is it for?

Pretending orcs are psychopaths doesn't get around the problem Martin points out though. You're merely applying a slightly unusual human psychological type to them, not anything radically different from humanity.

Quote from: jhkim;481990This is true, but I think we are all against such bannings.  In fact, with rare exceptions I believe in complete free speech.  However, just because I oppose banning doesn't mean that I can't think there can ever be bad messages in pulps, comic books, video games, heavy metal, rap music, and RPGs.  For example, I think that a lot of the original pulp stories had pointedly racist messages.  Black Canaan is an extreme example, but plenty of the stories have side themes or slants to them that convey racism.

Sure, but is there anything in D&D that's so racist that you don't need to make assumptions about the motives of the authors to find it?

Quote from: jhkim;481990A common attitude seems to be that if I edit out the negatively stereotyped black characters from a story, then the story isn't racist anymore - and doesn't have any of the stigma.  I think that is very much misguided.  It reduces the obviousness of the racist attitudes, but they are still there in the rest of the story.

And if there aren't really any racist attitudes in the rest of the story after the editing is done?  Why do you assume that they can never be fully excised?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;482053Naw, those are, quite literally my PCs in Emern.

My orcs are like the barbarians during the early Christian / late Roman era. Vital, rude, prolific and half-friendly in the worst way. If you think of men like Alaric, Stilicho, Attila and Genseric, as well as the peoples they led you'd get a pretty good idea of how I see orcs acting.

That's awesome.

Back in the 3.0 days, I used to run a group of orcs (all with two hit dice of course), called "The Bane Lords." There deal was that they were the barbarians - demon worshiping lawful evil barbarians, which destroyed "Rome" and settled the city. The demon worshipers who ruled the orcs used magic to reconstruct the Roman culture (easy to do with Roman slaves).

One time I crushed 3 9th level characters with 3 Bane Lord orcs. They used a 20' spiked pit trap to keep a couple characters busy while they used nets and tridents to stab the other characters to death. Only one PC survived. Ever sense then the Bane Lords were famous.

Just imagine a big group of orcs marching in a disciplined phalanx, being led by a demon worshiper high priest in red robes, dear antlers, the huge ornate banner staff, all chanting some orc war song. It was great.

Quote from: Cranewings;482069Back in the 3.0 days, I used to run a group of orcs (all with two hit dice of course), called "The Bane Lords." There deal was that they were the barbarians - demon worshiping lawful evil barbarians, which destroyed "Rome" and settled the city. The demon worshipers who ruled the orcs used magic to reconstruct the Roman culture (easy to do with Roman slaves).

The last big fantasy campaign I ran was the monotheistic setting I briefly described some thread else. Orcs were basically agrarian in nature so they worshipped the nature/farming aspect of the setting's only God. When the big push by the current Empire centuries past resulted in planet wide conflict, the Orcs started worshipping the aspect of vengence known as The Dark Uncle (the cult of which was actually created by humans during the early days of the conflict). After a while customs and ideas of their old nature aspect worship mingled with the vengence aspect and it turned into the Cult of War, which was one of the main cults in the setting and which had adherents of every race.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;482067Pretending orcs are psychopaths doesn't get around the problem Martin points out though. You're merely applying a slightly unusual human psychological type to them, not anything radically different from humanity.

It's radically different enough that it's not that hard to find their thinking described as if it were alien, if not actually calling it "alien" and the difference is not simply a social or cultural one.

Quote from: David R;482070The last big fantasy campaign I ran was the monotheistic setting I briefly described some thread else. Orcs were basically agrarian in nature so they worshipped the nature/farming aspect of the setting's only God. When the big push by the current Empire centuries past resulted in planet wide conflict, the Orcs started worshipping the aspect of vengence known as The Dark Uncle (the cult of which was actually created by humans during the early days of the conflict). After a while customs and ideas of their old nature aspect worship mingled with the vengence aspect and it turned into the Cult of War, which was one of the main cults in the setting and which had adherents of every race.

Regards,
David R

Nice.

What made the orcs different than humans if they have a human style culture? Why were they there if there was only one god? Who made them?
In my new sandbox game, which is pretty fun to write, world in motion and all that, I just had the party fight a group of fungus orcs.

Full on completely evil orcs a tribe of evil red goblins made by killing some mushroom headed goblins and using their bodies to grow the fungus. The orcs were basically guards for their layer.