Quote from: FrankTrollman;478269As for Orcs being irredeemably evil, that's just factually wrong. Over and above whatever diplomancy rules exist in whatever edition you're playing with, the spell atonement has existed since forever. It converts a humanoid from any alignment to any alignment. Period. Orcs can be redeemed for full value: it's in the rules.

I researched this thoroughly before running my D&D 3.5 game.  You will note that part of the atonement spell reads:

"The creature seeking atonement must be truly repentant and desirous of setting right its misdeeds."

The problem with inherently and irredeemably Evil orcs would be finding one that is repentant and desirous of setting right their misdeeds.

Quote from: MDBrantingham;478258Look - I respect your view...that everyone and every thing is redeemable.  And in your campaign it makes sense.  And if I were in your campaign, I would accept the parameters.

I don't agree with your view.  Not, at least, as far as roleplaying settings go.  In my campaign, where there is supernaturally defined morality, there is absolute evil and absolute good.  

Respecting your view is not the same as agreeing with it.  

I dont expect your campaigns to be like mine.  I dont want your campaigns to be like mine.  I dont think it would make sense if they were.  That's roleplaying.  The roles in your campaign are defined differently than in mine.

Well, this makes a lot of sense to me. That is why I specified that, although I usually am more of a shades of grey guy, I can have fun in a setting with absolutes.

Quote from: jibbajibba;478264I can not expect that the GM gets to define good and evil in his world. He can define the Laws of the world, he can define the customs of the world, but the players are bound to bring their own good/evil with them and trying to pretend that isn't the case ends up becoming a semantic arguement of the type you have when you are trying to be edgy when you are 15. Saying 'but in my Aztec world Human sacrific is Good,' is just being dickish. You can say 'Human sacrifice is the way we do things, it is the Law,' doesn't make it good.

So by all means define goblins or giants in a racist way but be aware that you are doing it. Or just play a hack and slash. What I find unsupportable is the game that claims to be using imagination and deeply immersive and far superior to MMOs and CRPGs when the PCs just wade into groups of creatures kill them with no remorse and still claim themselves to be Goodly heroes.

I like this.

Quote from: jibbajibba;478264Saying 'but in my Aztec world Human sacrific is Good,' is just being dickish. You can say 'Human sacrifice is the way we do things, it is the Law,' doesn't make it good.

Surely this depends on cultural psychology. For many historical societies human sacrifices were indeed considered good acts, to the point where some members of society would prefer to be a sacrifice rather than die an otherwise ignoble death. Yes, it might have been faced with fear and superstition (it involves death after all) but it doesn't mean it wasn't seen as being 'good'.

Similarly in the very early classical age Slavery was considered an act of goodness, since it allowed you to deal with captured prisoners of war without having to kill them in cold blood. It was only later it was institutionalised as a method of earning wealth and became increasingly brutal. The interesting point here being that cultures practising regular warfare did their best to avoid unnecessary killing.

Our modern preconceptions are extremely limited when it comes to the range of morality expressed by past civilisations.

Quote from: J Arcane;478241I think there is far less imagination in insisting everything be an imitation of the world, than daring imagine one beyond it.

That sounds like something off a desk calendar.

Quote from: S'mon;478274I thought it was a pretty good thread until Pseudo posted, actually.  He kinda took it into rpgnet sneeredy-cat territory.

No, it really wasn't a good thread, for all the reasons I pointed out and more. You might imagine something new or interesting was being said here, but you would be mistaken.

Step 1: Mass charm person.
Step 2: Mass atonement.

People are really going to a lot of effort - including using pseudo-scientific reasoning, pseudo-intellectual moralising, and of course tons and tons of angry whinging - to make absolutely sure that not one orc, ever, anywhere, under any conditions, could ever even possibly consider becoming good, so it's all right to kill their children.

That's fucking weird. Morrow, Krueger, you guys seem real desperate to make it OK to kill baby orcs to avoid feeling a dirty conscience, throwing out idea after idea as each one is demolished in turn.



Personally, I've always been fine with "You're at war with the local orcs," and to let PCs do as they please from there. Some will slaughter noncombatants like orc babies and women, some won't. Such is war. If you want to play a flatly heroic game where PCs won't crush the skulls of children, tell them so and then don't put the children of their enemies in the game.

There, this full retard thread has been solved.

Quote from: Pete Nash;478284Surely this depends on cultural psychology. For many historical societies human sacrifices were indeed considered good acts, to the point where some members of society would prefer to be a sacrifice rather than die an otherwise ignoble death. Yes, it might have been faced with fear and superstition (it involves death after all) but it doesn't mean it wasn't seen as being 'good'.

Similarly in the very early classical age Slavery was considered an act of goodness, since it allowed you to deal with captured prisoners of war without having to kill them in cold blood. It was only later it was institutionalised as a method of earning wealth and became increasingly brutal. The interesting point here being that cultures practising regular warfare did their best to avoid unnecessary killing.

Our modern preconceptions are extremely limited when it comes to the range of morality expressed by past civilisations.

You see this is the position I would directly refute becuae I can't hope to know the mind set or cultural position where human sacrifice was okay. Now you have already coloured your examples by stating that the vicitims of sacrifice were willing. Well that changes it. I can accpet that killing yourself for your god is a good act I can't accept that killing someone else is. At best the priest cutting the throats of hte devout is performing a morally neutral act.
Likewise your slavery example has slavery as a way of preserving the lives of captured prisoners (a fact I don't think I have seen any evidence for in any culture by the way) and implies that getting them to work for free in your fields or your arenas or your bed was a later addition.
I can totally accept that slavery can be lawful and culturally accepted but I can't accept it as good. I can accept that it can be morally neutral by the way as if you treat your slaves well and feed them and house them their life relative to the life they might have had would be better but they are still not free and so I can't cast it as good.

Again this is where alignment breaks down to a degree because you are not goign to be able to "take a medieval french stance on alignment" the best you can do is to gvie your interpretationa nd understanding of what that stance woudl be and that is coloured by so many of your own perceptions that it is a moot exercise. If a Nazi though they were good in eliminating the evil Jewish race from Germany they might think they were Good but in fact they were misguided and wrong and their actions were evil actions.

I have created plenty of Societies where these types of attitudes are the norm and the inhabitants believe themselves to be good. I liek to do that and then bring the PCs in to make their own minds up.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;478269As for Orcs being irredeemably evil, that's just factually wrong. Over and above whatever diplomancy rules exist in whatever edition you're playing with, the spell atonement has existed since forever. It converts a humanoid from any alignment to any alignment. Period. Orcs can be redeemed for full value: it's in the rules.

I think what matters for the purposes of this argument though is how people use orcs in their own game. If a GM decides orcs are pure evil then killing an orc has different meaning than in a game where orcs are simply more aggressive and warlike.

But I think the main thing is it is just a game. My issue with the post in the OP was that he seemed to be saying there was some real life moral issue with players slaying orcs in a game of D&D.

QuoteSo the question of whether Orcs can be redeemed or not has a genuine answer in the rules: yes they can.

-Frank

And these are fine things to debate in game. I have no problem with an argument between two characters over how to deal with an orc prisoner. Arguments over whether orcs are so evil they have to be destroyed are fine. All these things are food for great character interaction (and I think they come up in a lot of campaigns).

Where people start losing me is when they draw a line between the treatment of orcs in a game and the oppression of people in real life.

The best thing to come out of this thread is the idea of Nixon-faced orcs.

One question, can anyone cite where Tolkien says orcs were redeemable and/or that they became farmers after the events of Lord of the Rings?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;478293I think what matters for the purposes of this argument though is how people use orcs in their own game. If a GM decides orcs are pure evil then killing an orc has different meaning than in a game where orcs are simply more aggressive and warlike.

I guess that is the main obstacle for getting to a universal conclusion. After all, it all boils down to a very subjective and personal decision as it is how the GM wants to portray his world.

QuoteBut I think the main thing is it is just a game. My issue with the post in the OP was that he seemed to be saying there was some real life moral issue with players slaying orcs in a game of D&D.

Yep. I got the same impression, and I think that is stupid.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;478294The best thing to come out of this thread is the idea of Nixon-faced orcs.

One question, can anyone cite where Tolkien says orcs were redeemable and/or that they became farmers after the events of Lord of the Rings?

I seem to recall a dialogue between 2 orcs while Sam is trying to rescue Frodo in Mordor. If I'm not mistaken, they were discussing what would they do after the war, the same way a couple of human soldiers could do. It's the nearest thing I get to that.

I don't remember JRRT saying explicitly one thing or the other. The Orcs were Elves, tortured and brutalized until they became monsters, hating themselves, and hating and fearing the hand that guides them. Probably being victims of such abuses made them into the violent creatures they are, and created a society based on brute force and fear as the means to rule.

I don't see the Orcs being more evil than Humans may be. Orcs are cannibals, but so are some human cultures. They are brutal warriors, but there is no lack of precedents between us. Thing is, there's nothing they may do that hasn't been done over and over through history.

And at the end of the day, it's a cultural matter. If you grow in a culture of cannibals, cannibalism is somethign not-evil for you, and you wouldn't understand someone who got upset at that.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;478294The best thing to come out of this thread is the idea of Nixon-faced orcs.

I thought that was a nice visual as well.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478287Step 1: Mass charm person.
Step 2: Mass atonement.

People are really going to a lot of effort - including using pseudo-scientific reasoning, pseudo-intellectual moralising, and of course tons and tons of angry whinging - to make absolutely sure that not one orc, ever, anywhere, under any conditions, could ever even possibly consider becoming good, so it's all right to kill their children.

That's fucking weird. Morrow, Krueger, you guys seem real desperate to make it OK to kill baby orcs to avoid feeling a dirty conscience, throwing out idea after idea as each one is demolished in turn.



Personally, I've always been fine with "You're at war with the local orcs," and to let PCs do as they please from there. Some will slaughter noncombatants like orc babies and women, some won't. Such is war. If you want to play a flatly heroic game where PCs won't crush the skulls of children, tell them so and then don't put the children of their enemies in the game.

There, this full retard thread has been solved.

But surely you can conceed, as I would, that the orcs may be toally evil. Say they were grown from the ground by evil wizards (like Saruman in the LotR movies). In this case they won't have young at all.  That is a choice for the GM to make when he does his world building but they need to be aware of the implications those choices have

Quote from: ImperatorI seem to recall a dialogue between 2 orcs while Sam is trying to rescue Frodo in Mordor. If I'm not mistaken, they were discussing what would they do after the war, the same way a couple of human soldiers could do. It's the nearest thing I get to that.

I don't remember JRRT saying explicitly one thing or the other. The Orcs were Elves, tortured and brutalized until they became monsters, hating themselves, and hating and fearing the hand that guides them. Probably being victims of such abuses made them into the violent creatures they are, and created a society based on brute force and fear as the means to rule.

I don't see the Orcs being more evil than Humans may be. Orcs are cannibals, but so are some human cultures. They are brutal warriors, but there is no lack of precedents between us. Thing is, there's nothing they may do that hasn't been done over and over through history.

And at the end of the day, it's a cultural matter. If you grow in a culture of cannibals, cannibalism is somethign not-evil for you, and you wouldn't understand someone who got upset at that.

I actually remembered this scene and was about to mention it. IIRC, they were waxing nostalgic over the days when they just waylaid travelers and took their stuff (can't remember if they killed their victims or not). Anyway, I think the implication was that they didn't so much like war for its own sake, and preferred the relative freedom and comfort of the old days. So maybe they're selfish dicks, but society has its ways of integrating such people.

Also, weren't the uruk-hai implied to be part hobbit? I vaguely recall that there was this one asshole hobbit in Bree that the Uruk-Hai were said to resemble later.

EDIT: That last bit would imply sex and children, as opposed to from-the-ground birth portrayed in the movie.

Quote from: Melan;478249I just wanted to post that I suspect this will be the next thread on these boards to hit 1000 replies.

I just wanted to post and to do my part to get it there. It certainly has a high internet forum wharrgarbl quotient. If it achieves critical mass it could go all the way.

Quote from: beejazz;478300I actually remembered this scene and was about to mention it. IIRC, they were waxing nostalgic over the days when they just waylaid travelers and took their stuff (can't remember if they killed their victims or not). Anyway, I think the implication was that they didn't so much like war for its own sake, and preferred the relative freedom and comfort of the old days. So maybe they're selfish dicks, but society has its ways of integrating such people.

The more I think about the subject, the more I have troubles thinking of the Orcs (as tipically portraited in LotR or D&D and the like) as "evil," or at least more evil than humans. After all, what they do, we have done.

Maybe that is the problem with absolute evil, that we cannot imagine it (because it doesn't exist). After all, evil monsters do things that humans have done, also, as part of their cultures.

QuoteAlso, weren't the uruk-hai implied to be part hobbit? I vaguely recall that there was this one asshole hobbit in Bree that the Uruk-Hai were said to resemble later.

EDIT: That last bit would imply sex and children, as opposed to from-the-ground birth portrayed in the movie.

I can't remember that part, but doesn't ring a bell.