Quote from: Omega on April 06, 2021, 01:05:25 PM

Quote from: jhkim on April 05, 2021, 04:01:56 PM

I generally agree with Kyle here, which is what I've expressed in my own circles. Though a slight correction - there are people that worry about the feelings and culture of orcs. Mainstream games like World of Warcraft have them as player characters with interested communities, and mainstream films like Bright (2017) portray orcs as sometimes-positive characters. But even if someone accepts the specific case of orcs - the video is arguing that there should be no inherently evil monsters at all - even vampires and so forth.

As noted before. Non-Evil examples of probably every known monster out there has probably popped up in some TSR product.
Ones I can think of...
Non-evil Gnolls, Harpies, Orcs, Kobolds, At least two freaking good Mindflayer,

How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:10:27 PM
How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

Like those are hard to find if you can cast the right spells.

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 01:12:02 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:10:27 PM
How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

Like those are hard to find if you can cast the right spells.

Or bribe the right judge.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:33:56 PM

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 01:12:02 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:10:27 PM
How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

Like those are hard to find if you can cast the right spells.

Or bribe the right judge.

There is adventure potential in this if players are interested in setting up an ethical brain consumption alternative for reformed mindfloggers. Opportunities and profit abound.

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 01:36:04 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:33:56 PM

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 01:12:02 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:10:27 PM
How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

Like those are hard to find if you can cast the right spells.

Or bribe the right judge.

There is adventure potential in this if players are interested in setting up an ethical brain consumption alternative for reformed mindfloggers. Opportunities and profit abound.

Or a really, really creepy criminal justice system. Mindflayer cops who scan suspects to determine their guilt, Cleric judges who Detect Alignment keep the mindflayer cops from becoming evil, and criminals are executed by having their brains eaten. Bonus points if the system is as execution-happy as, say, 18th century England.

Quote from: ScytheSong on April 06, 2021, 01:50:22 PM

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 01:36:04 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:33:56 PM

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 01:12:02 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:10:27 PM
How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

Like those are hard to find if you can cast the right spells.

Or bribe the right judge.

There is adventure potential in this if players are interested in setting up an ethical brain consumption alternative for reformed mindfloggers. Opportunities and profit abound.

Or a really, really creepy criminal justice system. Mindflayer cops who scan suspects to determine their guilt, Cleric judges who Detect Alignment keep the mindflayer cops from becoming evil, and criminals are executed by having their brains eaten. Bonus points if the system is as execution-happy as, say, 18th century England.

Misdemeanors are only partially eaten. They lose their ability to spell words and sometimes stare vacantly into space.

Does it matter if the mindflayer eats a comatose brain?

If you want an example of why good races are bad game design, then look no further than the shitty RTS game plots written by Activision Blizzard. They keep repeating the same tired stupid plot where the orcs and humans or space elves and space bugs become best friends and team up to fight the "real" villain (who is still depicted as inherently evil btw).

It's so fucking stupid and turns perfectly serviceable civilizations and settings into utter crap. This is why I hate Activision Blizzard. They ran their RTS IPs into the ground by forcing every playable side into a generic good guy role.

To add insult to injury, these are the most profitable and popular games in the RTS genre. The genre is so niche that they don't have any competition with better writing. It fucking sucks.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 06, 2021, 02:11:03 PM
If you want an example of why good races are bad game design, then look no further than the shitty RTS game plots written by Activision Blizzard. They keep repeating the same tired stupid plot where the orcs and humans or space elves and space bugs become best friends and team up to fight the "real" villain (who is still depicted as inherently evil btw).

It's so fucking stupid and turns perfectly serviceable civilizations and settings into utter crap. This is why I hate Activision Blizzard. They ran their RTS IPs into the ground by forcing every playable side into a generic good guy role.

To add insult to injury, these are the most profitable and popular games in the RTS genre. The genre is so niche that they don't have any competition with better writing. It fucking sucks.

That would also be a tired option if both sides were total pieces of shit who had to band together for self preservation against an even bigger piece of shit. That's just Marvel Team-Up bullshit. Morality has naught to do with it.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:10:27 PM
How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

I know that there's fluff that mindflayers prefer smart people, but do they have to eat sentient brains? Couldn't they just eat livestock brains to survive?

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on April 06, 2021, 02:32:08 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 01:10:27 PM
How does that even work? Do they only eat the brains of Bad People?

I know that there's fluff that mindflayers prefer smart people, but do they have to eat sentient brains? Couldn't they just eat livestock brains to survive?

Yeah when we get into this level of detail mindflayers are just vampires but with brains instead of blood and tentacle faces. Perhaps this ruins mindflayers for some, but now I like them more.

Spelljammer, the ship itself and not just the setting, has Illithid on board who fed in large part by being the designated executioners and euthanasia.  Someone's dying, they call the Illithid, who roll in and psionic the patient's pain away, then get to nibble the brain once the person's kicked the bucket.  Of course, Illithid being Illithid there were also some evil shenanigans going on on the side, but it does demonstrate the possibility of working out arrangements by which brain-eating creatures are able to feed without being evil predators.

Now this is the kind of content we can work with - Evil Races are good game design because how else do we get to work out the particulars of reforming them?

The thing is, like most subjects these people are bumbling into, we've already dealt with it.  Like, no shit there can be good orcs.  Drizzt's been a thing since, what, the 80s?  RPGs and D&D in particular have always been open to examining both evil creatures with deeper motivations than "Hulk smash" and in outliers from predominately evil societies who turn towards neutrality or good.  Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun in particular tended to turn the alignment system on its head, being chock full of weird antiheroes from the evil side and holier-than-thou assholes from the good side.  Whatever weird straw man "gamers" these people have in mind when they do videos like this bear no relationship to reality.

The new players who don't know you and don't care to learn the rich cultural history of gamers quibbling about the ethics of fictional people.

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:13:25 PM
That would also be a tired option if both sides were total pieces of shit who had to band together for self preservation against an even bigger piece of shit. That's just Marvel Team-Up bullshit. Morality has naught to do with it.

Sure. That was also the case in Starcraft at one point: the space cowboy teamed up with the genocidal space elf who incinerated his home planet. Also, the space cowboy tricked the genocidal space elf into incinerating another planet. Total pieces of shit is putting it mildly.

Quote from: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:50:10 PM
Now this is the kind of content we can work with - Evil Races are good game design because how else do we get to work out the particulars of reforming them?

Evil (or morally ambiguous, eldritch, whatever) races are good game design because they provide a ready reason for violent conflict, which is the standard gameplay for the overwhelming majority of roleplaying and video games.