Quote from: Omega on February 23, 2021, 08:15:56 PM
Pants Romina? 

ahem.

As for there being allways evil races in forlkore. Anyone saying there isn't any such thing is either woefully ignorant, willfully ignorant, or a liar.

No really. Go read up on some folklore of various cultures on some of the hostile beings that plagued people.

Part of the problem is that over time various people have either deliberately or mistakenly merged into one what were before different races of creatures.

And again. Orcs in D&D were originally not allways evil and anyone claiming they were IS a liar.

In ad&d orcs were pretty much irredeemably evil. In the Q and As gary gygax has done hes said that the lawful good course of action for a paladin dealing with a surrendering orc would be for the paladin to make him renounce his evil or his god, and then put him to the sword. The 1st edition monster manual is full of hit points and combat abilities of monster children too.

Quote from: deathknight4044 on February 25, 2021, 02:12:35 AM
In ad&d orcs were pretty much irredeemably evil. In the Q and As gary gygax has done hes said that the lawful good course of action for a paladin dealing with a surrendering orc would be for the paladin to make him renounce his evil or his god, and then put him to the sword. The 1st edition monster manual is full of hit points and combat abilities of monster children too.

Except...
A: Orcs could be Neutral in OD&D and were opened up to any alignment in 2e. Meanwhile in BX they were just Chaotic and could be good, bad or neutral depending on reactions. Just like practically everything else. In AD&D monsters were eventually all over the place in their depictions.

B: If I recall right, the Q&As were not written by Gary and in fact eventually was helmed by a woman who did not like RPGs and deliberately gave out bad information to discourage play. So Gary saying something like that, especially when his players were recruiting orcs, seems rather out of character.

Quote from: Omega on February 25, 2021, 07:28:01 AM

Quote from: deathknight4044 on February 25, 2021, 02:12:35 AM
In ad&d orcs were pretty much irredeemably evil. In the Q and As gary gygax has done hes said that the lawful good course of action for a paladin dealing with a surrendering orc would be for the paladin to make him renounce his evil or his god, and then put him to the sword. The 1st edition monster manual is full of hit points and combat abilities of monster children too.

Except...
A: Orcs could be Neutral in OD&D and were opened up to any alignment in 2e. Meanwhile in BX they were just Chaotic and could be good, bad or neutral depending on reactions. Just like practically everything else. In AD&D monsters were eventually all over the place in their depictions.

B: If I recall right, the Q&As were not written by Gary and in fact eventually was helmed by a woman who did not like RPGs and deliberately gave out bad information to discourage play. So Gary saying something like that, especially when his players were recruiting orcs, seems rather out of character.

That's why I specified AD&D. This answer was from Gary Gygax on a Q and A thread:

QuoteNot directly.

If the infant orc was not able to reason, the paladin would not slay it, possibly see to its care somewhere until it reached a state where reason was possible; but if and when the immature humanoid was able to reason, the paladin would make it swear its rejection of evil, confess its adherance to LG, and then execute it before it could recant. Thus the orc would be guaranteed acceptence in a more benign afterlife.

Cheers,
Gary

And

QuotePaladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old addage about nits making lice applies. Also, as I have often noted, a paladin can freely dispatch prisoners of Evil alignment that have surrrendered and renounced that alignment in favor of Lawful Good. They are then sent on to their reward before thay can backslide :lol:

Cheers,
Gary

QuoteAn eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is by no means anything but Lawful and Good. Prisoners guilty of murder or similar capital crimes can be executed without violating any precept of the alignment. Hanging is likely the usual method of such execution, although it might be beheading, strangulation, etc. A paladin is likely a figure that would be considered a fair judge of criminal conduct.

The Anglo-Saxon punishment for rape and/or murder of a woman was as follows: tearing off of the scalp, cutting off of the ears and nose, blinding, chopping off of the feet and hands, and leaving the criminal beside the road for all bypassers to see. I don't know if they cauterized the limb stumps or not before doing that. It was said that a woman and child could walk the length and breadth of England without fear of molestation then...

Chivington might have been quoted as saying "nits make lice," but he is certainly not the first one to make such an observation as it is an observable fact. If you have read the account of wooden Leg, a warrior of the Cheyenne tribe that fought against Custer et al., he dispassionately noted killing an enemy squaw for the reason in question.

Cheers,
Gary

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=56868&start=270
https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=11762&start=60

QuoteNot directly.

If the infant orc was not able to reason, the paladin would not slay it, possibly see to its care somewhere until it reached a state where reason was possible; but if and when the immature humanoid was able to reason, the paladin would make it swear its rejection of evil, confess its adherance to LG, and then execute it before it could recant. Thus the orc would be guaranteed acceptence in a more benign afterlife.

Cheers,
Gary

Good Lord.

Even if that WAS from Gary I can see how the story that the advice column was taken over by someone who hated RPGs got started. That is HORRIBLE advice.

I mean, let's take "kill someone because they MIGHT commit evil in the future" to its logical extreme and Paladins should be putting every newly baptized infant to the sword because once they reach the age of reason they will inevitably sin and risk their immortal soul.

We don't call people who do that lawful good. We call them serial killers and monsters.

If that was legitimately Gary's view then I also understand why the move to force him out before 2nd Edition launched... even without the moral panic angle of the time that's just toxic.

Gary Gygax was very very very bad philosopher, and let's leave his analysis of D&D morality buried deep deep under rocks of Wisconsin.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 25, 2021, 09:26:16 AM
Gary Gygax was very very very bad philosopher, and let's leave his analysis of D&D morality buried deep deep under rocks of Wisconsin.

Your first mistake was looking for a philosophy lesson in a game about killing monsters and taking their shit. As for the accusations of all those Q and A threads not actually being Gary, is there any evidence for this?

Everything is philosophy.
Especially writers and creators debating about morality of their fictional worlds are philosophers - whether they want it or not.

And honestly if it was not philosophical - then Gygax would just say "whatever man, who cares, just kill them and take their stuff". He didn't. Therefore I can and I shall judge him as a philosopher. A bad philosopher.

Quote from: deathknight4044 on February 25, 2021, 09:34:00 AM
Your first mistake was looking for a philosophy lesson in a game about killing monsters and taking their shit. As for the accusations of all those Q and A threads not actually being Gary, is there any evidence for this?

   I think people are conflating "Gygax's Q&A" with "Sage Advice," which was run by Jean Wells for a time and could poke fun at some of the questions received.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 25, 2021, 09:58:57 AM
Everything is philosophy.
Especially writers and creators debating about morality of their fictional worlds are philosophers - whether they want it or not.

And honestly if it was not philosophical - then Gygax would just say "whatever man, who cares, just kill them and take their stuff". He didn't. Therefore I can and I shall judge him as a philosopher. A bad philosopher.

To quote Gary

QuoteI am not going to waste my time and yours debating ethics and philosophy. I will state unequivocally that in the alignment system as presented in OAD&D, an eye for an eye is lawful and just, Lawful Good, as misconduct is to be punished under just laws.

Lawful Neutrality countenances malign laws. Lawful Good does not.

Mercy is to be displayed for the lawbreaker that does so by accident. Benevolence is for the harmless. Pacifism in the fantasy milieu is for those who would be slaves. They have no place in determining general alignment, albeit justice tempered by mercy is a NG manifestation, whilst well-considered benevolence is generally a mark of Good.

Gary

QuoteI am not going to waste my time and yours debating ethics and philosophy. I will state unequivocally that in the alignment system as presented in OAD&D, an eye for an eye is lawful and just, Lawful Good, as misconduct is to be punished under just laws.

Lawful Neutrality countenances malign laws. Lawful Good does not.

Mercy is to be displayed for the lawbreaker that does so by accident. Benevolence is for the harmless. Pacifism in the fantasy milieu is for those who would be slaves. They have no place in determining general alignment, albeit justice tempered by mercy is a NG manifestation, whilst well-considered benevolence is generally a mark of Good.

Gary

Sounds awfully like ethics/philosophy description from a guy not wasting his times on such subjects
Really alignments get some decent re-enditions with time - but Gygaxian ones were just awful.

Still, "have them raised rightly and educated in goodness until they're the age of reason and have committed themselves to Law and Good... then run them through with a sword so they can never sin" is HORRIFIC by any standard.

Benevolence is for the innocent (as said Orc raised from infancy by lawful good guardians would be)... unless they're an orc, then it's better you run them through with a sword lest they commit a sin. Does this paladin also run through orphaned human guttersnipes because they might be tempted to steal bread to avoid starvation too?

"It's a harsh world with harsh justice" is one thing... THAT is the sort of crap that almost makes the moral panic of the day look justified. Seriously, fuck that with a loaded shotgun. If that's your standard of lawful good we shouldn't ever play at the same table and possibly shouldn't even use the same game system.

Now of course alignment system was sort of fucked up from the beginning.
I mean it started up with just Law and Chaos understood in sort of Moorcockian way.

But with Good and Evil added it turned into unholy clusterfuck, and constant imbalance between cosmological, social and characterological elements were never well resolved.
Among any cosmological alignments based on some cosmic balance - Triad of WoD, Five Colours of MtG, Three opposites of Warcraft, truly this one is worst.

Also it's kinda pointless - if orcs are impossible to redeem then whole "make him confess LG" is stupid, no gods would be tricked by it, if they are redeemable - this is straight up murder.
Overall play stupid games, won stupid prizes.

QuoteMercy is to be displayed for the lawbreaker that does so by accident.

That's not how mercy works dammit. Accidental hurt should be payed for, but still it's not being guilty of crime, killing someone for accidental material evil is not just lack of mercy, it's straight up murder. Mercy by default is towards guilty,

The alignment stuff seems like a different topic to me. Regarding other D&D races:

Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 24, 2021, 06:38:41 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 24, 2021, 05:26:43 PM
It seems like splitting hairs to me to call Unearthed Arcana non-standard. It was official Gygax-written material that was sold as core rules - not optional or setting-specific.

To me, Standard is whatever you can play using the minimum amount of material released originally as "the game".

For D&D, that means the PHB, DMG and MM. For Warhammer FRP, it's just the one core book. Same for Star Wars in its D6 and D20 iterations (FFG has three core books, so you could have different Standards depending on which book you were using), so on and so forth.

Any books released after the core original release are supplements. It doesn't matter if they were written by the original author, if he decides to slap "Core Rules" on the cover or whatever else. Many groups will play with nothing but the original core, specially in places where the investment to get the books in the first place is substantial.

According to this, the standard for BD&D is to only ever play using the Basic Set -- and a group that uses the Expert Set is non-standard. Likewise, this means an AD&D DM who runs the Village of Hommlet and Temple of Elemental Evil in the World of Greyhawk is running a non-standard game -- but a DM who runs using only PH+DMG  in his own weird steampunk setting is running a standard game.

I think that's backwards. Standard should mean what is typically done and expected. Most groups did *not* play using only the Basic Set or PH+MM+DMG.

Among other games - I'm not sure about Warhammer or Star Wars, but (for example) I know most people playing Traveller did not use just Books 1-3. It was far more common to run using further books including the Imperium setting. Similar is true for many other games. A GURPS game that uses (say) GURPS Fantasy would be standard.

This is why I like Warhammer 40,000's take on orcs the best.

Quote from: Jaeger on February 24, 2021, 06:57:26 PM
Even as much as he tried to obfuscate things by constantly bringing up supplemental material, Shasarak knew I was referring to the core books as standard when he was puzzled why a shift that lead to something becoming standard didn't happen instantly:

Quote from: Shasarak on February 15, 2021, 02:47:23 PM
...
Indeed the 3e Core rules had no more or less monster races then there were in the original ADnD rules written thirty years previously.

Even the revised 3.5 Core rule books had no extra monster races.
...

You are the only one I have seen try to say that it is not a thing.

+ bronze dragon's post.

We both agree that 3e Core rules had no more or less monstrous races then previous Core rules and yet somehow we disagree that the cultural shift happened with 3e.