Quote from: S'mon;478104Eh, Jesus explictly said DON'T STONE THE ADULTERERS.  :rolleyes:

It's just a metaphor. We can beat the shit out of them if we want to!

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478138Depends. If they are using historically accurate army uniforms and formations, no. If they are using weird racist exaggerations of the African armies, then yes.

How about if I use weird racist exaggerations of the Italian imperialists, then slaughter them with my heroic Ethiopian Paladins?

(I actually have Ethiopian Paladins in one of my D&D settings).

Quote from: Benoist;478141It's just a metaphor. We can beat the shit out of them if we want to!

"Let he who is without sin throw the first punch"?

Quote from: S'mon;478142How about if I use weird racist exaggerations of the Italian imperialists, then slaughter them with my heroic Ethiopian Paladins?

(I actually have Ethiopian Paladins in one of my D&D settings).

That would by definition also be racist. Although since Italians are not really a disadvantaged group anywhere that I know of in this day and age, it's less problematic. If you make fun of the president of the United States, you aren't exactly keeping the man down, you know?

Discriminating against people who are in a strong position is also wrong, but much less so than discriminating against the weak and powerless. Taking a loaf of bread from a rich man and a poor man is stealing in both instances, but the second is obviously more morally wrong because more real harm is done.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478145That would by definition also be racist. Although since Italians are not really a disadvantaged group anywhere that I know of in this day and age, it's less problematic. If you make fun of the president of the United States, you aren't exactly keeping the man down, you know?

Unproblematically racist. Thanks, got it.

I really just don't see the angst as being needed.

Sure, as we grow up and become more sophisticated, some players and GMs might want to play more grown up games that take advantage of the morality plays and try to deal with prejudice and racial/gender issues, or try to create a 'negotiator' class.

Other people might enjoy their games, prefering to focus on what their group of players finds fun.  Yes, I think there are a lot of great opportunities in RPGs for some wieghtier issues...but only if that is what is fun for the players.

Quote from: S'mon;478082I've tried really hard to create something usable out of the Oerth religious system & its deities, which mashes up 15th century European Christianity (Bishops!  Inquisitions in the See of Medegia!) with Roman-Greek-Norse style paganism, and it just can't be done.

Completely independent of the topic (and it probably deserves one of its own) something I'd love to see is an intelligently written alt-historical medieval Church that combines pantheism with the trapping of the medieval Catholic Church.

I've been listening to some audio lectures on the early Dark Ages and the development of the Christian Church, and very little of what we think of as traditional Catholic practices had anything to do with what was actually written in the Bible[1]. Swapping out the deit(ies) being worshiped would not, I think, affect much of the structure of the medieval Church.

I seem to recall Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion series has a wonderful example of a pantheistic religion that has the trappings of rural medieval Christianity, complete with Inquisitions and religious wars (there's some disagreement about whether the pantheon has four members or five).

[1] Inasmuch as there even were written Bibles to check at the time, which mostly there were not.

Quote from: The Butcher;478089Aren't we all? I don't see a lot of adulterers getting stoned to death in Christian countries. I mean, it's in the Bible, right? :rolleyes:

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;478092And the reason is simple. Most christians aren't literalists anymore. The religion has evolved and our interaction with the text has developed alongside other advancements. That doesn't mean Christianity lacks a coherent moral framework. It just doesn't rely soley on a literal interpretation of the bible to construct that framework.

I think that the main difference is that in RL you can break as many commandments as you want without any direct discernible cause, but in an RPG world with real gods, they may come down really hard on you, without intermediaries.

Quote from: David Johansen;478130Those Ralpartha orcs are from The All American range that they came out with in response to GW's European Range which places them BEFORE THEY GOT THE D&D LISCENCE.  The orcs from Crucible AFTER THEY LOST IT AND FASA BOUGHT THEM OUT also look like Zulus.  I know because the ones pictured have cast on bases not plastic slotta bases.

*snip*

The earlier Ral Partha orcs by Tom Meir look more like Romans with big crazy falcheons.

*snip*.

Thanks for the info!
Love the Tom Meir minis...

EDIT: Could not find any pics. of the Zulu Orcs at "The Lost Minis Wiki" Ral Partha/All American Line so...?!

Quote from: Cranewings;477870I think orcs still have shame and guilt. They just have an inborn love for bloodshed and only respect leadership on the grounds that the leader can kill him. The shame and guilt they have might be for showing weakness or failing at a task.

If you ask me, this quote is an example of the source of the problem.  "I think orcs (insert opinion)."  Look, he's not wrong.  In any campaign he's running, he's absolutely right.  Just in my campaign he's wrong.  Guilt?  Shame?  Nope.  Wrong orcs.  In my campaign...orcs are evil.  They just are.  The colonial argument stuff is laughable once you get to know my orcs.  Men...women...children...they all gotta go.  They just do.  Leaving a baby orc or a mama orc alive to go on to kill and rape and torture innocent people would be the same thing as not plugging a hole in a dam full of innocent water.

I get the feeling that the moral-relativism guy that started this thread has redeemable orcs.  Chaotic 3.5 pseudo-barbarians with big teeth?  Misunderstood orcs with big sympathetic eyes like Shrek?  A sensitive side like that huggably non-Klingon Worf?  Whatever.  If that's what you're calling orcs then you're probably right...killing them would be evil.

Define your orcs.  If they're irredeemably evil, then killing them isn't evil (by definition).  Killing Peter Jackson orc kids isnt evil - it's common fucking sense.

If you don't believe that any creature could conceivably be evil, then state that at the beginning and spare everyone the aggravation.  If you just said that, then everyone could just ignore the thread, because plenty of GMs and world designers out there are working in realities that acknowledge and/or focus on the struggle between good and evil.  

What is evil?  Does it really exist?  Hell, I'm not equipped to answer those questions.  But in my campaign they ARE real and orcs are evil, and letting a cave full of females and young grow up and breed and spread devastation...that might not be evil in and of itself, but it sure as hell is depraved indifference.

Now if it were those cute Shrek monsters that OP's gf makes him watch...

No...I guess I'd still kill them.  I'd just suck up the alignment hit.

OP is dead on right about the orcs in his campaign.  What a moral mind-wracking players must have to go through to get to 2nd level in that world.  There must be alot of hand-wringing and speeches.  But in my campaign orcs are evil, so in my campaign he is wrong.  Guys that kill orc families arent really ever compared to or treated like the tyrannical troops of Edward Longshanks, theyre treated like doughboys returning from Europe.

That argument aside...no group of adventurers in my campaign will ever have the luxury of standing around contemplating these things in the doorway of a room full of female orcs either.  That's because my female orcs would be gutting the theologians with spears and splashing them with bowls full of scalding stew.  My female orcs would kill all y'all - and if they didn't, the orc kids would.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;478136I guess I don't see where the expectation that you will kill the children is coming from. Just because they have kids, and orcs are evil, that doesn't mean you are expected to kill their children.

I can easily see a character that seriously follows a code of chivalry not killing the orc babies. Not a whole lot of valor to gain and there's a good possibility to lose some.

Quote from: Imperator;478061It does not have to relate to baby orcs, anyway. One of the most dramatic and intense scenes in my recent run of Masks of Nyarlathotep came during the interrogation of a captured cultist in Limehouse, London. The cultist was shadowing the PCs, they turned the tables on him, and they interrogated him. They got some useful intel from him, but they knew they could not let the guy free. The guy was insane, was a psycho worshipper of Elder Gods who would probably run off to his masters and tell them everything.

So they decide, after many doubts, that the cultist has to die. And it's hard, because at that point of the game they have seen some nasty action in Harlem, they have killed in self-defense, but this is different and they're not psychopaths or hardened soldiers (only one of them has been in WWI and he didin't kill ever a prisoner), so finally one of the players says "Ok, I'll do it" so he gets the cultist's belt and strangles him.

At that point, I decided that it had to be significant, so instead of just saying, "Ok, he dies", I just made the PC roll the damage from choking until the cultist died. The player got very shitty rolls at first, so it took some attempts. With each roll, the players were feeling more and more uneasy, even though we didn't describe the situation in graphic detail, I just said "The cultist is still twitching and moving, roll again." It was a dramatic scene, because one of the PCs said at the end, when they were going to dump the body in the Thames: "The line between they and us has grown thinner."

A similar thing ended up happening to me, once. We were playing Shadowrun, and we were doing a straight up robbery of some tech company. I was the driver, and playing a bit of a nutter with a nasty streak. We broke in and found these two employees who we didn't expect to be there, and one of them ended up trying to scream for help. So, I said my guy was going to club him to death, and the GM decided I should roll it out. It ended up taking forever, with roll after roll after roll, and after a little while the whole thing just became exquisitely uncomfortable. We showed up at the table for some high spirited Pulp Fiction, and the dice turned it into Sympathy For Mr Vengeance.

Quote from: MDBrantingham;478176In my campaign...orcs are evil.  They just are.  The colonial argument stuff is laughable once you get to know my orcs.  Men...women...children...they all gotta go.  They just do.  Leaving a baby orc or a mama orc alive to go on to kill and rape and torture innocent people would be the same thing as not plugging a hole in a dam full of innocent water.

I get the feeling that the moral-relativism guy that started this thread has redeemable orcs.  Chaotic 3.5 pseudo-barbarians with big teeth?  Misunderstood orcs with big sympathetic eyes like Shrek?  A sensitive side like that huggably non-Klingon Worf?  Whatever.

You're perfectly capable of saying that Good in your campaign is defined to include killing baby orcs.  However, if I were playing in your campaign, I would still feel a little uncomfortable slitting those orc babies' throats in the name of Good.  In fact, I would feel no more comfortable about it than if I were killing baby orcs in a game where there wasn't any codified alignment about it.  

That's because what makes me uncomfortable is my own personal real-world morality, not the game-world alignment.  Killing babies in the name of Good is just kind of creepy.

Quote from: jhkim;478194You're perfectly capable of saying that Good in your campaign is defined to include killing baby orcs.  However, if I were playing in your campaign, I would still feel a little uncomfortable slitting those orc babies' throats in the name of Good.  In fact, I would feel no more comfortable about it than if I were killing baby orcs in a game where there wasn't any codified alignment about it.  

That's because what makes me uncomfortable is my own personal real-world morality, not the game-world alignment.  Killing babies in the name of Good is just kind of creepy.

Maybe killing all orcs is not the real solution expected of Good characters. Maybe truly Good characters should try to change the nature of the Evil orcs in some way.

Quote from: jhkim;478194You're perfectly capable of saying that Good in your campaign is defined to include killing baby orcs.  However, if I were playing in your campaign, I would still feel a little uncomfortable slitting those orc babies' throats in the name of Good.  In fact, I would feel no more comfortable about it than if I were killing baby orcs in a game where there wasn't any codified alignment about it.  

That's because what makes me uncomfortable is my own personal real-world morality, not the game-world alignment.  Killing babies in the name of Good is just kind of creepy.

I hear where you're coming from, but "babies"...aren't you anthropomorphizing?  Most of the time "baby", when referred to non-humans, is an adjective, not a noun.  Baby elephants, baby snakes, baby orcs, but just the word "Baby"= baby human.  

It seems like you're incapable of seeing the orc young as fundamentally different from a human baby.  I mean an orc "baby" might be like a wolverine.  Not really a deadly threat to a man in armor with a sword, but it isn't defenseless.  Would it be ok to kill it if it looked like a facehugger?

As far as the creepiness of it goes, there certainly can be an aspect of "god's madmen" to it.