Quote from: Sigmund;478890Edit: Hell, maybe Sauron was influenced more by the Kaiser than the Fuehrer... that would make sense too.

See, that's the thing. When one sees evil in literature and gaming and supposes its sources, they are more or less making associations in their heads based upon their experiences. When someone who lived through 1918 sees evil, violence, and oppression, they associate it with a different figure than one who lived through 1939.

But there's the rub, really. I hold that by-and-large, when we put opposition in the game of this nature, we are doing it to put a face on evil.

Now, a big part of the draw of gaming is kicking butt. The opposition is evil so we feel justified in kicking it's butt, because evil is violent, dangerous, and threatening people who didn't threaten it first. That's pretty much what alignment is really about.

What this is not about is whether orcs are different. I don't slay orcs because they have green skin, pig snouts, live under the ground, listen to gangsta rap, or wear their pants halfway down their ass.

As a side note, I don't think of orcs as "irredeemable"*. I do think that a mass majority of orcs are, in fact, never going to change and diplomacy is probably only going to happen in unusual circumstances, and to try to convert orcs to the good side while they are ready to unleash violence on you is going to result in you getting dead.

The sad fact is, orcs really are a lot like humans in that if they are brought up to believe in violence and oppression, precious little is going to change it. In fact, think of Drizzt Do'urden, a character brought up in the ruling caste of a society that makes Stalinist Russia look egalitarian. I frankly have a hard time taking the Drizzt character seriously because I don't see why he would deviate from what he was taught prior to any exposure to other ways of life.

*- as a side note, in 3e, they aren't. They are "often" evil, meaning that nothing about the nature of the universe makes them evil, like demons or dragons.

Quote from: Blackhand;478925Nobody has pointed out during all this that orc "women and children" only exist if you want them to?

In fact, Warhammer got rid of such moral ambiguity a long time ago - orcs don't have women or children, and in fact spring up fully grown and ready to fight directly from the ground.

Kalamar orcs (or one variant of them) come about this way.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;479131See, that's the thing. When one sees evil in literature and gaming and supposes its sources, they are more or less making associations in their heads based upon their experiences. When someone who lived through 1918 sees evil, violence, and oppression, they associate it with a different figure than one who lived through 1939.

But there's the rub, really. I hold that by-and-large, when we put opposition in the game of this nature, we are doing it to put a face on evil.

Now, a big part of the draw of gaming is kicking butt. The opposition is evil so we feel justified in kicking it's butt, because evil is violent, dangerous, and threatening people who didn't threaten it first. That's pretty much what alignment is really about.

What this is not about is whether orcs are different. I don't slay orcs because they have green skin, pig snouts, live under the ground, listen to gangsta rap, or wear their pants halfway down their ass.

As a side note, I don't think of orcs as "irredeemable"*. I do think that a mass majority of orcs are, in fact, never going to change and diplomacy is probably only going to happen in unusual circumstances, and to try to convert orcs to the good side while they are ready to unleash violence on you is going to result in you getting dead.

The sad fact is, orcs really are a lot like humans in that if they are brought up to believe in violence and oppression, precious little is going to change it. In fact, think of Drizzt Do'urden, a character brought up in the ruling caste of a society that makes Stalinist Russia look egalitarian. I frankly have a hard time taking the Drizzt character seriously because I don't see why he would deviate from what he was taught prior to any exposure to other ways of life.

*- as a side note, in 3e, they aren't. They are "often" evil, meaning that nothing about the nature of the universe makes them evil, like demons or dragons.

I agree with you. I'm playing a half-orc in Benny's Ptolus thread in fact, and he's certainly not evil. I simply find the whole idea of orcs having been intended to be metaphors for minorities and inherently racist to be ludicrous.

Quote from: Sigmund;479133I agree with you. I'm playing a half-orc in Benny's Ptolus thread in fact, and he's certainly not evil. I simply find the whole idea of orcs having been intended to be metaphors for minorities and inherently racist to be ludicrous.

Where half orcs are technically a minority: you're probaly the only one around in the game

Quote from: Melan;479111Reality check: I think he is simply trolling.

Trolling is the distraction I indulge to fill the time waiting for someone to address the central fucking theme I posted several pages back, which must have slipped the rigors of the highminded critics of these lands.  Want me to stop ramblin' - say something of fucking import.  And even if your portrait is painted by the great impressionists themselves, feel free, please, to embellish your intellectual pursuits with vulgarity of the lowest type, so's that thugs such as myself can understand your fucking dialect.

Elsewise leave me to my bottle.

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.

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.

But if you prefer to continue dealing with the loose change of things, let me not be the one to condemn a man for trolling.

Quote from: boulet;479141Where half orcs are technically a minority: you're probaly the only one around in the game

Lol, good point, although I'm actually not. skoflox is playing my brother, Runch.

Quote from: Vmerc@;479144Trolling is the distraction I indulge to fill the time waiting for someone to address the central fucking theme I posted several pages back, which must have slipped the rigors of the highminded critics of these lands.  Want me to stop ramblin' - say something of fucking import.  Elsewise leave me to my bottle.

Quote from: Vmerc@;479144Here 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 would be happy to address your point of view directly...

I agree.

Quote from: John Morrow;479125And your feeling about the Holmes Basic D&D expecting players to fight very young or young dragons between the ages of 1 and 15 and offering subdual, where "a dragon can be sold or forced to serve the character or characters who subdued it" (Should we add an endorsement of slavery to the sins of D&D?), as an alternative to killing them?  And your feelings about Keep on the Borderlands being full of situations where the PCs are raiding the lair of intelligent humanoids where they will encounter humanoid females and their young?

As for the Judeo-Christian Devil, there are various interpretations of who or what he is, ranging from a servant of God to a dualist anti-God.  I personally liked the take on Hell in the movie "Dark Angel: The Ascent" where the demons in Hell actually bowed down before God and weren't actually Evil.  Punishing evil souls was simply their job.  But is this really relevant to what Devils and Demons are in D&D (where, in 3.5 they have the word "Always" in front of their alignment) or how they are typically played in role-playing games?

Again I have no issues with PCs killing whatever they like. Shit I don't mind PCs killing litle human kids. What I mind is PCs killing innocent sentient beings and then treating that as a perfectly acceptable good act.

One of the problems with subduing dragons for example is that they have high to genius level intelligence but you are treating them like a labrador or a pony. So if your PCs are happy subduing hobbits, dwarves and humans I have no qualms with them subduing dragons. Just keep it consistent.

Devils and demons wise I want my hyper intelligent powerful Evil stuff to revel in their evil to sip at it like fine wine to dwell over the minutia of torture and suffering to make a hobby of it. Making them crude beings with no choice about their actions seems to detract from that.
My devils don't line up on the battle grid and use thse special powers or these or whatever, they are like my major NPCs they are woven into the plot they are part of the world. They will call a flag of truce, parley with the PCs see what they desire and then offer it to them at a price.
My demons lead armies of lesser cretures in invasions of the homes of the good folk, they steal little babies from their cribs and leave their gnawed bones for the PCs to fine.

Quote from: Sigmund;479145Lol, good point, although I'm actually not. skoflox is playing my brother, Runch.

So how are the half-orcs treated when they find themselves with civilised folks.

Typically in my games where orcs are percieved as evil incarnate (this is not the case in all my settings) there is vast racism at 1/2 breeds.  Typically innkeepers won't serve you, they make you sleep in the barn, even they they are loathe incase you eat the horses. Guards always stop you and ask you questions, the wealthy refuse to acknowledge you etc etc.

When a guy in one of my games decided to play a 1/2 Ogre cos he loved the look of the fantastic combat stats he got a rude awakening when in the first town they visited he was arrested stripped and stuck in a cage at a carnival for kids to poke with sticks and folks to thrown rotten vegetables at, "penny a poke, see the monster roar, tuppence for a turnip, thruppence a cabbage, roll up, roll up."

Quote from: Sigmund;478999Cannibalism is a cultural thing for humans, but orcs aren't humans (or indeed anything at all outside of what I say they are, at least in my game anyway). Plus, since orcs and humans are not the same thing, would it even be cannibalism if orcs ate humans? Dude, this is all the same no matter what, because orcs aren't real. They are whatever we say they are in our games. I don't even have to build a cosmology to have that be true. All I have to do is say to my group, "In my game, orcs are human-eating monsters that are irredeemably evil" and that's what they are. It has nothing to do with cosmology or morality or any other -y because this is all imaginary. I don't need to construct some elaborate divine hypothesis or cultural speculation to make human eating orcs any more believable than dragons, fairies, elves, or wizards. What is it about orcs that makes them so immune to the same kinds of things you could do with completely home-brewed fantasy races or aliens or any number of other kinds of monsters/antagonists? Orc babies aren't actually babies any more real than lizard man babies or rot grub babies or harpy babies or dragon babies or slaad babies or rakshasa babies or ogre babies or any other kind of fantasy race babies. I'm saying my orcs are evil, human-eating, rotten souled killers that hate all other sentient races with a burning passion, love to watch other races suffer, and make fine cheese. I need no more explanation than that. This does not make me a racist or colonialist. There's nothing more I can say on the subject.

I'm not telling you you can't do it, or passing moral judgements on what you pretend to do. You can imagine all kinds of shit. Go ahead.

I'm just asking what imagining infanticide brings to the table that not imagining infanticide would not.

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.

Or the difference between a dragon and an orc has something to do with diet. Namely, a dragon will eat fucking everything when it grows up, whether malicious or not.

As I've said, evil is not the only way to justify killing. Inherent danger works too. Giant scorpions don't care one way or another, probably aren't hurting you for the sheer joy of it, etc. But you still don't want fifty of them running around your village.

Quote from: jibbajibba;479097Totally agreeing with David R's comments.

Also I totally mentioned killing dragons way back in the thread so don't dare say we didn't cover it

I would say Dragons totally have free will and could decide to be good or evil. I think the study of dragons is really more about the corruption of absolute power than about inherent 'evilness'. I woudl put demons and devils int eh same category.
The idea that devils and demons are inherently evil is almost counter intuitive because the whole point of the judeo-christian 'Devil' is that he chose through his own free will to take an "evil path" (although reading the source material he does nothing actually evil just refused to obey without question, then pursuades Eve to disobey in order to gain knowledge, but now we are getting all gnostic and irrelevant) so making him inherently evil is a bit like turning him into a big, barky, dog.

Sigmund's comments which focus on 'it's all make beleive so none of it matters'  is a bit odd in a forum where we talk about RPGs and world building and immersion and all that stuff. One wonders why someone with that world view would get emeshed in this thread at all.

I can see I'm not the only one who sees dragons as not inherently evil.

Personally, I see outsiders as sort of without free will. I don't pull my sources from judeo-christian stuff so much, and I see outsiders as made of the stuff of their planes. So demons are made of hellstuff, which is the origin of evil seeping into the world in the same way that elementals are made of fire and exist only to spread the flame everywhere possible.

They only serve free-willed gods for the same reason that gods can warp sympathetic planes around themselves.

Quote from: John MorrowAs for the Judeo-Christian Devil, there are various interpretations of who or what he is, ranging from a servant of God to a dualist anti-God.  I personally liked the take on Hell in the movie "Dark Angel: The Ascent" where the demons in Hell actually bowed down before God and weren't actually Evil.  Punishing evil souls was simply their job.  But is this really relevant to what Devils and Demons are in D&D (where, in 3.5 they have the word "Always" in front of their alignment) or how they are typically played in role-playing games?

I've always kind of liked the idea of the Judeo-Christian devil as an appointed antagonist. Off topic, I know.

Quote from: jibbajibba;479154So how are the half-orcs treated when they find themselves with civilised folks.

Typically in my games where orcs are percieved as evil incarnate (this is not the case in all my settings) there is vast racism at 1/2 breeds.  Typically innkeepers won't serve you, they make you sleep in the barn, even they they are loathe incase you eat the horses. Guards always stop you and ask you questions, the wealthy refuse to acknowledge you etc etc.

When a guy in one of my games decided to play a 1/2 Ogre cos he loved the look of the fantastic combat stats he got a rude awakening when in the first town they visited he was arrested stripped and stuck in a cage at a carnival for kids to poke with sticks and folks to thrown rotten vegetables at, "penny a poke, see the monster roar, tuppence for a turnip, thruppence a cabbage, roll up, roll up."

I had a player once that wanted to play the one good drow in a classic undefined D&D world. I gave him the same treatment you are talking about, and on the third game when a guard was telling him to fuck off, he decided he wasn't really chaotic good anymore and cut the guy's head off.

Quote from: Cranewings;479169I had a player once that wanted to play the one good drow in a classic undefined D&D world. I gave him the same treatment you are talking about, and on the third game when a guard was telling him to fuck off, he decided he wasn't really chaotic good anymore and cut the guy's head off.

Exactly and that is why Orcs and Drow are actually evil

Quote from: beejazz;479167As I've said, evil is not the only way to justify killing.

Quote...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 their claws from these false attributions.

The cycle continues.

Quote from: Sigmund;479120Also, you do realize this thread has nothing to do with politics. I'm pretty left wing on most issues, but the bullshit espoused by this Dray feller has nothing to do with actual politics because orcs aren't real. They don't need defending.

I think he refers to Benoist's use of the term Team Left. Not sure I get the reference, though.

Quote from: Sigmund;479145Lol, good point, although I'm actually not. skoflox is playing my brother, Runch.

Couple of intellectuals, if there was ever one

Quote from: Vmerc@ said before: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 agree with you onthat both cosmological visions have potential and value, but I tend to prefer avoiding absolutes because of practical reasons. Spels and effects like detect alignment provide for many many situations in which you can get wonky results, though some of John Morrow's ideas may improve that.

Quote from: jibbajibba;479154So how are the half-orcs treated when they find themselves with civilised folks.

Typically in my games where orcs are percieved as evil incarnate (this is not the case in all my settings) there is vast racism at 1/2 breeds.  Typically innkeepers won't serve you, they make you sleep in the barn, even they they are loathe incase you eat the horses. Guards always stop you and ask you questions, the wealthy refuse to acknowledge you etc etc.

When a guy in one of my games decided to play a 1/2 Ogre cos he loved the look of the fantastic combat stats he got a rude awakening when in the first town they visited he was arrested stripped and stuck in a cage at a carnival for kids to poke with sticks and folks to thrown rotten vegetables at, "penny a poke, see the monster roar, tuppence for a turnip, thruppence a cabbage, roll up, roll up."

There is some stigma being RPed, but mostly because we (skofflox and I via our characters) are currently befriending an orc we encountered and the others just want to kill it. It's pretty fun, and I haven't seen so much as a shred of evidence pointing to actual real world racism on the part of anyone involved.