Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478517I don't argue with stationery.
Yes, if one gets rid of the need for child-rearing and social cohesion it becomes plausible,

Do Gnolls rear young?  Are they evil?

You're saying that an evil race is iimpossible because an evil race would never be able to rear young.  Stunning.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478536It doesn't preclude them from being evil. Don't move the goalposts. They were set at "irredeemably evil" and "absolute evil" (whatever those are supposed to be).
 

Quote from: RPGPundit;477964That's right. If they were Always Chaotic Evil, THEY'D BE ORCS.
 
Which is the whole point. I don't think the OP-quote really gives a fuck about "racism" (except maybe in the typical white-guilt sense); what he cares about, what offends his relativist post-modern collapse-of-civilization west-hating sensibilities is the very idea that something can be evil, and should be fought.
 
That it can be GOOD to fight against evil, to fight for goodness, to oppose something else that is an evil and would be harmful to our civilization. That's what he hates, because he can't believe himself capable of doing that, because he has no values left in him he's willing to fight for.
 
RPGPundit

The second post I've quoted initially was a ?, but reading through more of the recent posts I can see more evidence that the affirmative team insist that everything has to be shades of grey, because they don't believe in black.
 
Why stop at nuanced orcs? Lets have some LG reformed mind flayers.

Quote from: Darwinism;478547They're not people if they're damned savages that I dislike! There's nothing wrong with this viewpoint!

Of course, you completely ignore everything I've said about context, verisimilitude, coherence of the campaign milieu etc.

Crawl back to your hole, fuckwit.

Quote from: CRKrueger;478327Most of the time I've ran D&D, orcs weren't irredeemably evil, but in some settings they were.  It just depends on the cosmology of that particular setting.  Sometimes orcs reproduce and have young, sometimes they are magic fungus, sometimes they are created by wizards.

For the record, in my D&D 3.5 campaign, the Orcs were not irredeemably Evil but simply had a strong tendency to be but the goblinoids and some other monsters were irredeemably evil.  I wanted the game to explore both options.  The Paladin code from my game reads, in part:

15) Do not attack those who have not attacked you unless you know them to be Evil.  Do whatever you can to spare those who are not Evil. Those who have turned to Evil yet still might be redeemed should also be spared.  Kill that which is Evil by nature, for only through the Lethe [reincarnation] might they be redeemed.

17) You should accept the surrender of your enemies and they will become your charge.  Evil that cannot be redeemed that is in your charge should be dispatched quickly and without malice.  All others in your charge should be treated honorably and humanely.

18) Destroy the undead.  Their place is in the grave or as dust upon the wind.

19) Destroy demons and devils.  Their place is not in this world and they are the enemy of all you stand for.

Note also that the cosmology included reincarnation as a (difficult but possible) option for the Evil dead rather than eternal damnation.

Quote from: CRKrueger;478327I never said the PCs should avoid having a dirty conscience, what the conscience of a character feels is where the roleplaying comes in.  There's a difference between killing being easy and killing being necessary, or justified.  That's what makes it a hard choice, even a horrible one.

I have also said the same thing.  I've repeatedly pointed out that the slaughter of the goblin den in my D&D 3.5 game, even after the goblin women and children had attacked the party and pushed the fight on them, was one of the grimmest and most horrific scenes in the game.  It was not, as you put it, "paladins crushing the cute little green skulls of baby orcs under their bootheels while in the background plays 'Onward Christian Soldiers'".  It was an entire party horrified by the carnage, including the Neutral Druid played by an ex-Marine who was generally in a rush to "get to the killing".  And there was a lot of emotional depth in that.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;478561Why stop at nuanced orcs? Lets have some LG reformed mind flayers.

And sexy romantic Good vampires to fall in love with.  Oh wait...

Quote from: MDBrantingham;478560You're saying that an evil race is iimpossible because an evil race would never be able to rear young.  Stunning.

The Nazis didn't have children, either, because evil people can't have and raise children.  They hatched as fully formed and uniformed adults from beer steins.

Quote from: Benoist;478562Of course, you completely ignore everything I've said about context, verisimilitude, coherence of the campaign milieu etc.

Crawl back to your hole, fuckwit.

Except I'm not, I'm summarizing what you've said. Context, verisimilitude, and coherence of campaign milieu are just fancy justifications of lazy worldbuilding.

Crawl back to your thesaurus, fuckwit.

Quote from: Darwinism;478566Except I'm not, I'm summarizing what you've said. Context, verisimilitude, and coherence of campaign milieu are just fancy justifications of lazy worldbuilding.

Nope. Steal a brain somewhere, that one's rotten. Then get yourself an education, acquire a mind of your own, pull out a copy of a dictionary to help you decipher the complicated fancy words, and then maybe you'll have a shot at this.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;478561The second post I've quoted initially was a ?, but reading through more of the recent posts I can see more evidence that the affirmative team insist that everything has to be shades of grey, because they don't believe in black.
 
Why stop at nuanced orcs? Lets have some LG reformed mind flayers.

I am extremely curious as to how you became a telepath, especially since your telepathy does not seem particularly accurate?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;478557Why?

I've already explained why near the start of this very thread. Go back and read it.

Quote from: MDBrantingham;478560Do Gnolls rear young?  Are they evil?

The second question is already loaded with idiotic presumptions & conceptions.

QuoteYou're saying that an evil race is iimpossible because an evil race would never be able to rear young.  Stunning.

I am doubtful about the whole concept of "evil races" except as artificial constructions by external forces in the first place, and then yes, I am willing to assert that a group of unrestrained psychopathic murderer-rapists would not form a self-sustaining society that could perpetuate itself.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;478559I never suggested Zeus was a good god (But to be fair to the Greeks, they didn't always endorse the behavior of the gods).

The Greek pantheon is Chaotic Good last I checked. Certainly they were as of AD&D 2e.

QuoteBut the D&D pantheon has gods that span the range of alignments and the domains gods cover is very much a hodgpodge of old Europrean pantheons with a PG-rating IMO. If the only gods in D&D were a lawful good deity and a Chaotic evil one, I could see the christian comparison. But you have gods of war, trickster gods, etc.

It's more complex than that. As I said, it's outside the scope of this thread.

Quote from: Benoist;478538I disagree. Consistency is part of verisimilitude, or 'the believability of the game milieu'. Like I just said, this does not mean that the imaginary world has to be a carbon copy of the real world. It means that the former must be internally consistent, given its own context, not the real world's. I think you could play alien beings in some imaginary settings who would be radically different from what you and I would define as "people" in our real world, have these beings be internally consistent with the imaginary world's context, and have tons of fun doing so, wouldn't you?

Sure, but nothing I've said makes that impossible. In fact, if I'm going to be asked to depict an alien mindset, I want things worked out as consistently, clearly and logically as possible so that it's possible to use my reason and imagination to understand how those creatures think rather than just parroting the appropriate cliche or whatever. I also want to understand the meaning or function of the points of differentiation from ours, which contributes to a better understanding of the whole. "Why does this species think so differently?" had better have a good question if the whole thing is predicated on it.

Similarly, "Why are we killing orcs, and why are the orcs trying to kill us?" are pretty important questions, especially in dungeoncrawls and hack-and-slash games. In fact, the more the game focuses on killing orcs, the better and more interesting answer(s) it ought to have to that question, rather than just handwaving it away as a tiresome problem.

As I said near the start of the thread, answering these sorts of questions injects variety, meaning, context to encounters, adventures and campaigns when done well. Doing them well means handling them in a way that opens up new possibilities and developments, rather than closing them down. Rigid metaphysical constructions are necessarily more limiting than contingent reasons, and therefore should be used sparingly when at all, and then only for the most common recurring elements of the world.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478571The Greek pantheon is Chaotic Good last I checked. Certainly they were as of AD&D 2e.

Sure but that was during the 2E days when they were making a conscious effort not to offend conservative christian parents. I think most gamers are familiar enough with Zeus to know our modern moral sensibilities don't really apply to him.

QuoteIt's more complex than that. As I said, it's outside the scope of this thread.

I am sure it is more complex than my two sentences there. But I do think there is a strong strain of European mythology influencing the D&D gods. Not denying there isn't Christian influence as well.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478233Let's go down the full retard list:

Am I allowed to find irony in a person complaining about privilege and exploitation casually throwing around the R-word?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;4782331) Morrow pretending to be a psychologist / moral philosopher rationalising a society of psychopaths, something that has never actually existed

You mean like dragons, zombies, and magic missile spells?  Yet in point (6), you complain that people are "too unimaginative to even make up sensible or interesting imitations of the world".  So which is it?  Should I be trying to use real world models to imitate the real world to make a fantasy setting more plausible or not?  

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;4782334) Consistent confusion of authoritative citation of source material and facts with whims, desires, dreams & half-memories, also what you can find on the first page of Google that seems like it kind of supports what you said

You mean like not reading to the end of the Atonement spell where it specifically precludes being used the way you suggested using it to make your point?  And before you try again, the AD&D 1e spell won't work the way you want it to either.  And the reason for that is pretty obvious.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478570I've already explained why near the start of this very thread. Go back and read it.

I am having trouble finding the post attributed incorrectly to me. So rather than sift through for yours as well, I'll just concede this point:)