Quote from: CRKrueger;478024Actions have consequences, it would be interesting if your characters come back around to this area again 10 years later and have to deal with seeing the area decimated by the next generation of humanoids.  The mayor who claimed them heroes now cursing them because his grand-daughter was butchered makes for a nice scene.

Someone who is afraid to make the hard choice is a coward as well.  

Glad your group worked it out to their satisfaction, every table deals with this stuff their own way.

I don't know if they've thought that far ahead, or ever will.  They're a fairly selfish party -- they'd rather get loot and bail.

We're also talking about a group made up of PCs named Nads, Ned, Lars, Thefe (the Thief), and Dat Ho.

Oh, well Nads is dead.  2 HP at first level wasn't such a good thing for the poor fighter.

This thread reminds me of a DS9 episode:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Abandoned_%28episode%29

In short, the station picks up a genetically engineered warrior and half of them are pulling this whole "nobody is irredeemibly evil" schtick only to find out that in fact, he is unfailingly violent and hazardous.

Quote from: John Morrow;478021To be honest with you, I get the feeling that every writer today has learned that same lesson in school and when every hero has a flaw, every villain has a positive trait, and the cannon fodder all turn out to be real people, too, that becomes quite boring to me, too.

Yup, I hear you and bleeding heart political correctness is trying to poison everything in the world to be sure.

But I'm talking about depth and reasons.

There's a far cry between an interesting villain and a milksop whiner like Anakin.

The difference between a hero and a villain is that a hero will sacrifice even himself to prevent atrocities and a villain seldom even needs to rationalize them.  But yeah the villain might love puppies and the hero might hate them.  The difference lies in the willingness to sacrifice everything to do the right thing.

Hanibal Lecter's mannered and well groomed civility only serves to make him more chilling.  Adrian Vedit's beauty and visionary altruism only makes him more repulsive.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe point missed in all of this is that goblinoids are not meant to be analogies for some kind of human group here, they're not jews or gypsies or black people; they are symbolic of certain moral concepts; of chaos, of barbarism, of evil, of greed, of bloodlust, whatever. This is such a big problem for some people because they cannot grasp the concept of there being absolute truths out there. So instead, they want to create a moral gray area where there is none.

That's charmingly naive, but here are the old Ral Partha Orcs:



Yes, there has been a concerted movement to make them the "Greenskins" that are no longer associated with any human ethnic group. But let's be honest here: in the old days Orcs were Black people and you were supposed to kill their females and young when you found their villages.

And just in case you try to weasel out that you were talking about goblins (even though in AD&D Goblins and Orcs were all the same "giant class" of humanoid), let's look at the old Hobgoblins:



They were explicitly Orientals. Hell, that hasn't even changed. Even Games Workshop still talks about Hobgobla-Khans.

But detaching Orcs from analogies to real world peoples is part of the (quite commendable) movement to make Dungeons & Dragons less morally reprehensible. So if you get upset at people who want to make the Orcs more complex so there is a reason why you'd kill some and not all (thereby making it less about genocide), why the fuck aren't you upset at your own fucking revisionism where you deny the real-world human racial origins of the fantasy races?

-Frank

Quote from: John Morrow;478019In my original replies to this thread, I acknowledged understanding why people see real-world parallels and why it could make them uncomfortable.  The goal of racists and other bigots is often to present all members of their hated group as inherently inferior...

I understand the 'Evil/Monstrous' = 'OK to Kill' idea, but I don't really understand how you get from 'inferior' to implying 'should be killed'?  3e D&D advocates that Halflings should be killed because they have a -2 STR penalty? Dwarves must die due to their -2 CHA?  Is 'inferior' here used as a Term of Art rather than in its normal meaning?

IRL 'inferior' might be taken to imply 'ok to enslave', as with common Bantu attitudes to Pygmies - 'they're smaller & weaker, it's ok to enslave them' but generally not 'should be killed'.  It usually seems to be more feelings that the other group is superior in some way - no doubt 'undesevered' superiority - that incites murderous feelings in humans: Nazi resentment of Jews, various SE Asian groups' resentment of diaspora Chinese, Hutu resentment of Tutsis.  Arguably D&D does do this with a few monsters like Mind Flayers - "they're controlling our minds!" - but with Orcs it's not their superiority nor their inferiority that makes killing them advisable, it's their status as a direct threat.

Quote from: John Morrow;478021By the end of the new Battlestar Galactica, I was wishing that the mutineers would have just killed off the main characters and would have enjoyed a Blake's 7 style ending.

I'm with you there!  After a few seasons of new BG I was strongly feeling "These jerks don't deserve to survive!" - in fact I got quite resentful at the writers keeping such no-hopers alive, when IRL they'd have had to shape up fast or die off equally quickly - without script immunity they'd never get through 4 seasons of BG as the complete no-hopers we see on screen.

Quote from: Benoist;478025This thread's participation is awesome.

It seems a lot more mature than what you normally see on such threads.

Imagine this thread on rpgnet!  :eek:

Quote from: John Morrow;478019So what's the benefit of having objectively and irredeemably Evil monsters in the first place?  The reason for that can be found in Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering (quoted from your page on it):

"The Butt-Kicker wants to let off steam with a little old-fashioned vicarious mayhem. He picks a simple, combat-ready character, whether or not that is the best route to power and success in the system. After a long day in the office or classroom, he wants his character to clobber foes and once more prove his superiority over all who would challenge him. He may care enough about the rules to make his PC an optimal engine of destruction, or may be indifferent to them, so long as he gets to hit things. He expects you to provide his character plenty of chances to engage in the aforementioned clobbering and superiority."

Basically, objectively and irredeemable evil monsters simplify the moral landscape for the player and green-light butt-kicking as a way to solve problems.

I can buy that some butt-kicking players prefer orcs to be irredeemably evil.  However, that green light isn't universal.  

Maybe I'm not in Robin Laws' Butt-kicking category, but like I said, I'm actually more comfortable playing a self-serving hero who is willing to slaughter barbarous orcs just to drive them off and take their stuff, as opposed to a righteous hero who slaughters orcs because he feels that is the morally right thing to do.  The latter actually feels more twisted to me.  I don't speak for everyone, but my impression is that many butt-kicker players are like this.  That is, they are quite comfortable with their PCs being morally grey or even black.  

This isn't a contradiction - but a caveat.  Just make sure that if this is the solution suggested, that it is really addressing what your butt-kickers want.  Actually, I'd be curious to see a poll - formal or informal - of people's preferences.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478035That's charmingly naive, but here are the old Ral Partha Orcs:



Yes, there has been a concerted movement to make them the "Greenskins" that are no longer associated with any human ethnic group. But let's be honest here: in the old days Orcs were Black people and you were supposed to kill their females and young when you found their villages.

And just in case you try to weasel out that you were talking about goblins (even though in AD&D Goblins and Orcs were all the same "giant class" of humanoid), let's look at the old Hobgoblins:

SNIP

They were explicitly Orientals. Hell, that hasn't even changed. Even Games Workshop still talks about Hobgobla-Khans.

But detaching Orcs from analogies to real world peoples is part of the (quite commendable) movement to make Dungeons & Dragons less morally reprehensible. So if you get upset at people who want to make the Orcs more complex so there is a reason why you'd kill some and not all (thereby making it less about genocide), why the fuck aren't you upset at your own fucking revisionism where you deny the real-world human racial origins of the fantasy races?

-Frank

Your arguement is specious. Ral Partha did not write D&D and I find it very hard to swallow that a subset of orc miniatures can bring racism into the game. Only in your own imagination are orcs black people.

But lets look at some other examples of humanoids from back then, shall we? So that we do not blindly accept your own cherry-picked crap as truth. Check out this blog known as Back in '81.

Here, I'll make it easy and just link some of the images:










Oh My Fucking God! Lookit All Them Pig-Faced Orcs!!

Wait, where did these pig-faced orc miniatures come from?




Holy Shit! These Are Official TSR Orcs!

And not a one of them looks like a black person.

Hmm, how are orcs depicted in the AD&D Monster Manual?



Hell, the pig-faced orc meme has even invaded my beloved Star Wars by the time that Return of the Jedi came out! Allow me to present, the Gamorreans!



So Frank, please tell me where the real-world pig-faced people are who the orc is based off of you sorry fucking retard. To them pig-faces, I will personally apologize for all the rotten stereotyping we have done in our games.

EDIT: Oh shit! I almost forgot The Orcs of Thar module!

Quote from: wikipediaAccording to Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, The Orcs of Thar is "written in a humorous style that presents orcs as lovable goofballs who just happen to enjoy slaughter and pillage".

It should probably be noted that Frank Trollman wrote for Shadowrun, a game that more than any other ever written explicitly draws parallels between it's handling of non-human races, including Orcs, and real world racism in the most hamfisted way imaginable.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478035

They were explicitly Orientals.

So were Tolkien's Orcs - he said they looked like Mongols, though they spoke like Cockneys.  GW Orcs follow Tolkien in being British Urban Proletariat - 'Chavs' as we now call them.  Of course this has little emotional resonance for Americans, who go with "Orcs = Blacks" or, more plausibly, "Orcs = Red Indians".  AD&D pig-faced Orcs don't look or behave anything like* either Africans or Amerindians, but their place in the 1e   'Old West Frontier' cowboy paradigm is clearly that of the Red Indians, not the Negros.  I've never seen anything like that Ral Partha Orc pic before, whereas the Oriental hobgoblins are straight out of the 1e MM.

*1e Orcs wear the same armours (ring, scale) and use the same weapons (pole arms, crossbows) as the humans, though dirty and poorly maintained.  They live either in cave complexes or fortified villages with catapults and ballistae.  The Savage Orcs of 3e & 4e are a recent innovation.

Edit: I see Jeff beat me to it, only far less politely, and with pictures.  

Frank resorting to selective citation to prove a point? Well I never! :hatsoff:

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478035*snip*

But detaching Orcs from analogies to real world peoples is part of the (quite commendable) movement to make Dungeons & Dragons less morally reprehensible. So if you get upset at people who want to make the Orcs more complex so there is a reason why you'd kill some and not all (thereby making it less about genocide), why the fuck aren't you upset at your own fucking revisionism where you deny the real-world human racial origins of the fantasy races?

-Frank

can't let this one slide
:huhsign:
Talk about revisionism...the orcs in 1ed AD&D MM looked like PIGS not "black people"...and the RP orc minis I have are from the 70's early 80's and do not look anything like those pictured. How "old" are those minis I wonder....:hmm:
I have been collecting RP minis over 30 years and have never seen these so this is perplexing!
Can you provide any more info on these figs.?

And Orcs don't have souls so kill them all and let Gruumsh sort them out (Thanks for that interesting link BloodyStupid) and seeins how they are all Lawful Evil or whatever this should be easy.
The logic of the game is under your controll...


EDIT: I see others have been faster on the keyboard regarding this post by FT...nice job!

Quote from: skofflox;478045I have been collecting RP minis over 30 years and have never seen these so this is perplexing!
Can you provide any more info on these figs.?

Yeah, I suspect those 'RP' Orc minis are highly modified from the release version.