I don’t use evil races because it makes the whole enterprise of heroism less heroic. And it’s not like my imagination is limited when it comes to conceiving of such races or societies. American slave narratives, the former system of governance in South Africa, the Saddam Regime, ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe and Africa, the current regimes in the Middle east could all be used as inspiration to create functional “evil” societies

As for the evil children commit, we have the child soldiers in Africa, the kid assassins of the South American drug cartels, child pimps of South East Asia, really, if you need to justify killing evil children (and let’s forget the complex reasons behind the phenomena I cited), there’s ample inspiration, if you want to go down this route and base it on a little reality.

Most gamers use evil races as a quick and convenient route to escapism and there’s nothing wrong with that. They don’t go around slaughtering “evil” women and children “noncombatants”. Evil Race normally = “evil males warriors or (females)” of the species. At least that’s how it was when I was running evil races.

I stopped using evil races because my own personal worldview started seeping into my games. I realized that no real world race was irredeemable and within the examples I mentioned there were people fighting against the oppression their societies perpetuated against them or others. And heroism is about bravery, compassion empathy sacrifice all that good stuff that comes with a heavy price. In some cases it’s about helping people redeem themselves and their societies. And this kind of heroism was possible within the confines of our imaginary games. All this seems pretty irrelevant when it comes to irredeemable evil races. Mind you, my players have created some pretty unsavory types throughout a wide range of genres/games. But this definition of heroism held true for all the players I have gamed with over the years regardless of genre/game.

There are plenty of “evil” acts, ideologies etc that my pcs can kick butt against without lumping into the convenient label of “race”. Killing women and children even if they are supposed to be irredeemably evil, was never heroic to my players or their characters when I was using evil races.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478822I'm glad you managed to have fun, but you don't understand morality very well, and your self-described system for it has all sorts of ridiculous characteristics. We've discussed it several times over the years now, as you should recall.

While I will happily acknowledge that my formal knowledge of moral philosophy is lacking and that yours seems to be quite extensive, I think it is not correct to confuse an understanding of moral philosophy and an understanding of morality and how human minds work when making moral decisions.  Moral philosophy is an attempt to explain what is, at it's heart, an innate emotional response and attempting to intellectualize and rationalize and moral response is like trying to intellectually and rationally explain why I love my wife.  While I could probably take a stab at rationalizing it by explaining, for example, the various things I like about her, it would be unlikely to convince you to love her the way I do.  

Similarly, while you could try to explain to me, throwing out the names of philosophers and and philosophies, why it's badwrongfun to allow Good PCs to slaughter helpless orc babies and give me endless utilitarian arguments about how including them in a game is lazy or implausible or problematic, what it all really boils down to is that those who empathize with orc babies and see them as helpless victims are disgusted by the idea that slaughtering them could ever be seen as Good while those who don't empathize with them for a variety of reasons or those for whom the utilitarian arguments for slaughter are stronger than their disgust over killing helpless creatures aren't disgusted by it.  We can both try to rationalize those feelings after the fact and wrap them in philosophy to explain why we are right and other people are wrong but it all boils down to trying to change the way someone feels about something.

In the end, in my game, even though I was asked by players to provide them with what we call "killable bad guys", I played up the empathy of the Evil creatures and the players not only let some of them walk free but felt awful about slaughtering the goblin den.  And the explanation for that is explained quite clearly by the article Whose Life Would You Save?.  Emotional distance matters.  How persuasive a utilitarian argument is matters.  The strongest feeling wins.

When looking at the slaughter of goblin babies as a utilitarian problem of weighing the benefits and costs of different solutions, the players were on board with slaughter as the approved solution.  When the players playing from an in-character perspective, if not thinking in character, encountered actual even opponents such as goblins role-played to play on their sympathies, begging for their lives, and offering to cut deals with the PCs, the often opted to take the deals and even let them go.  And when confronted with goblin babies being driven into them by their mothers, described and role-played for verisimilitude, the empathy became hard to ignore and the result was the emotion of horror.  And given how many times over the years I've seen threads by GMs asking how to create horror in their games intentionally, I find it difficult to believe situations that create strong emotions like that should be avoided.

So I understand quite well why the players made the moral choices they made and had the emotional reactions they had to various elements of the campaign and I didn't find it reading Kant, Hume, Sarte, Foucault, and so on.  Similarly, I think I understand quite well why Adam Dray had the reaction he had.  The problem is that in trying to rationalize his emotions as moral universals, his reaction is not persuading those who do not share a similar emotional reaction or see the similarities he sees.  I understand why he reacted the way but don't believe everyone should be expected to react that way.

And despite your repeated claims that things can't happen a certain way or have "ridiculous characteristics", I assure you that the players who walked through the goblin den in my game could have gone through it like a cultural anthropologist and asked me how everything worked (and we did discuss that a bit out of the game) and I could have told them how they reproduced, raised their children, got their food, prepared their food, ventilated their den, got their weapons and armor, built their lair, treated captives, and so on.  

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478822I am not impressed with the creation of fake moral dilemmas by exploiting metaphysics. "Should orc noncombatants be killed?" is as stupid as "Should you travel back in time to kill Hitler?" It's a purposefully constructed puzzle (in the Wittgensteinian sense) of morality trying to disguise itself as an actual moral deliberation.

Then I think you are something of an oddity because the fantasy and science fiction genres which so dominate the role-playing hobby are fascinated if not obsessed by such problems.  In fact, the "Should you travel back in time to kill Hitler?" problem was a major plot point on a recent episode of the long running Doctor Who (episode 218b, "Let's Kill Hitler").    So while it may not impress or interest you, your preferences are hardly universal or even normal.

As for killing helpless combatants and non-combatants, that problem has frequently been faced by players in games I've played in and run over the years, many of whom play strongly in character, if not thinking in character, and I, too, have seen PCs draw weapons on each other and players, in character, have heated arguments ,over such issues.  Such problems are hardly superficial or meaningless in those games.

And in most of the cases I've been in where players faced what you consider a purposefully constructed puzzle rather than an actual moral deliberation, the situation arose organically out of the details of the setting and created what sure looked like "actual moral deliberation" by players arguing in character to me, as much as anything else in a role-playing game is serious or real.  The goblin den was in my setting because it was loosely based on Keep on the Borderlands, which has lairs of various creatures in it.  It wasn't put there to test the players, who were free in my game to go anywhere they wanted to.

I also find it interesting that nobody has tried to explain why people should be horrified over the idea of justifiably killing orc babies but killing baby dragons is not only given a pass but was pretty much the only sort of dragon you could kill in the Holmes basic set.

Quote from: StormBringer;478980It takes close to 650 posts (currently) to decide he's over-reacting?  It takes 650 posts to blow the guy off and move on with your gaming?

Not at all. In my first post to this thread I concluded with,

Quote from: Kyle AaronIf you're going to get offended at an imaginary mythology about an imaginary race, at least get it right, you cocksmock. Killing orcs is like killing Nazis: fun and amusing.

I believe that is essentially what you're suggesting, that we should conclude the guy's over-reacting and dismiss him contemptuously.

The rest of my posts have simply be reiterating that point and mocking people. And mockery of pretentious semi-literate cocksmocks never gets old. So fuck you, Stormy, fuck you with a large pointy d4.

Quote from: StormBringer;478905But isn't 'betrayal' part of 'evil'?

No.  It's potentially an aspect of Chaos.

Quote from: John Morrow;479011I also find it interesting that nobody has tried to explain why people should be horrified over the idea of justifiably killing orc babies but killing baby dragons is not only given a pass but was pretty much the only sort of dragon you could kill in the Holmes basic set.

Here you have hit the core.  As far as I can understand from the philosophy thrown in waves, the objection stems from the fact that orcs appear close enough to human to set certain minds spinning.

This is a component of the argument made up and clung to by certain of the posters, just like the idea that absolute good/evil in a campaign of that nature can serve no other purpose than to make large scale butchery and xp gain convenient.  There is no wordcount capable of detaching the claws from these false attributions.  Why they are brought in and clung to - I have no power to say.

Cosmological structures with absolute good/evil creatures exist in many forms and for many reasons.  For many it is just a logical extension of the creation of their own universe by a god of absolute good combating a god of absolute evil.  That there are angels or other beings at one end without free will, and demons at another end without free will, and pawns to serve them both who lack free will, is not inferior, or less rich, or puerile, or any of the other fierce adjectives that have been splashed about.  Perhaps in a monotheistic cosmology, orcs and such creatures serve the same purpose as a Ha-Satan figure, to test the souls of men of good.  The possibilities are myriad and I will not test your patience further with my paltry examples. The point is that such a cosmology is merely different and imputes no less complexity of design or social depth.

The fact is that there is potential, if anything, for more depth, since such a cosmology can also include a myriad of beings with free will who are redeemable, and therefore the designer gets both, where those who shun such a cosmology get only free willed beings and therefore have cosmologies with less variety, or texture, or whatever is the phrase of the day.

Now pity me, for I fear the assassins approach my door, but with my final breath let me say that I prefer neither type of cosmology nor do I value one as more enlightened than the other.  They both have value and great potential.  So let the arrows fly.

I suppose I should also add that in B2: Keep on the Borderlands there are encounters in a Lizard Man mound (that includes males, females, young, and eggs), a Kobold lair (that includes males, females, and young), an Orc lair (that includes males, females, and young), a Goblin lair (that includes males, females, and young), a Hobgoblin lair (that includes males, female, and young), a Bugbear lair (that includes males, females, and young), and a Gnoll lair (that includes males, females, and young).  Thats just about every basic humanoid monster, depicted as reproducing naturally and presented with the expectation that the PCs will attack them in their lair (it helpfully notes, again and again, that the young don't fight and have nothing of value).  And I'm supposed to believe that the scenario of a party facing Orc young never happens to people and that only a sadistic GM would face players with such a problem, when that very situation is presented in nearly every part of the sample dungeon included with basic D&D for years?

Quote from: John Morrow;479011a

  In fact, the "Should you travel back in time to kill Hitler?" problem was a major plot point on a recent episode of the long running Doctor Who (episode 218b, "Let's Kill Hitler").  

Well, they wanted you to think that, certainly. In actuality it was a red herring for River Song's origin, and Hitler got locked in a closet and forgotten about 10 minutes into the episode.

Quote from: Vmerc@;479021Here you have hit the core.  As far as I can understand from the philosophy thrown in waves, the objection stems from the fact that orcs appear close enough to human to set certain minds spinning.

Only if those certain minds are those of racist fucks.

It's fair to assume Adam Dray is imagining Africans and Asians as the colonial/genocide victims, since he says, "it all stinks to me of a kind of privileged, colonial, expansionist, genocidal viewpoint", and it seems, given that the "privileged" bit is almost only ever applied to white Christian Westerners, very unlikely that he's talking about (say) Arab colonialism in Indonesia like the Pontianak Sultanate, or Serb/Croat/Bosniak genocide in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, etc.

So Adam Dray sees orcs as Africans or Asians. Which is racist. Seriously. If you look at these guys -



- and think, say, "Africans!" or "Asians!" - well then you're the racist fuck, not the nerds sitting around a table rolling dice and eating cheetos. However much you feel guilty about it and write long screeds telling us that in killing orcs we're having badwrongfun, you're still racist.

Orcs are orcs, and monsters. Humans are humans. If you fancy a little grey in your black and white game world, that's okay, some humans are monstrous, and some monsters human. But in the end, if you believe orcs represent some human ethnic or social group, then you really need to face up to some hard truths about the nasty way you see the world, because you're a racist fuck.

This dude is totally black, what you talkin' bout?

Quote from: boulet;478841CRKrueger: that was brilliant and fun to read!

Quote from: Benoist;478845I concur. CRK wins the thread.

Totaly :cool:

:hatsoff:

Quote from: Vmerc@;479021*snip*
Now pity me, for I fear the assassins approach my door, but with my final breath let me say that I prefer neither type of cosmology nor do I value one as more enlightened than the other.  They both have value and great potential.  So let the arrows fly.

I like this sort of thinking....Vmerc@ you seem like a neat and rational person to have a chat with...

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;479030So Adam Dray sees orcs as Africans or Asians. Which is racist. Seriously. If you look at these guys and think, say, "Africans!" or "Asians!" - well then you're the racist fuck, not the nerds sitting around a table rolling dice and eating cheetos.

Well now, that deep type thinking strikes me as being similar to saying that the idea that orcs can't be irredeemable and dragons can is racism by definition - defining the potential of a race strictly upon its looks, and  I, never having studied the anthropological fields for any impressive amount of time, and lacking social terminology and sophistication of any kind, would feel I was overreaching my status in life to suggest it.

Quote from: skofflox;479038Vmerc@ you seem like a neat and rational person to have a chat with...

Sadly, I am not the fine man you take me for.

Quote from: Vmerc@;479042Sadly, I am not the fine man you take me for.

Ahhh...there we have it then.
No need to be saddened by your lot.
I raise my glass in brotherhood...I suspect you would be a hoot to game with!:p

Quote from: TristramEvans;479029Well, they wanted you to think that, certainly. In actuality it was a red herring for River Song's origin, and Hitler got locked in a closet and forgotten about 10 minutes into the episode.

[Spoiler Warning for the past few episodes of Doctor Who if you haven't seen them.]

Actually, there was quite a bit more to it than that.  A second set of time travelers also showed up to punish Hitler but showed up too early, implying that they were only authorized to punish him at the end of his life so it wouldn't affect time and undo his crimes.  But the more important bit is during the growing up scene, River Song expresses ongoing rage over the fact that bad things happen in history and time traveling The Doctor doesn't do anything to fix it, which is where killing Hitler fits in and directly pushes the issue of whether or not people should travel back in time and kill Hitler.  And this is hardly the first time that Doctor Who has dealt with "fake moral dilemmas by exploiting metaphysics" including, let's see, last weeks episode that put the characters in the position of having to essentially erase one version of a person to save another version.  Science fiction and fantasy is full of this stuff.