Quote from: Haffrung;1125926Okay, so you don't like to play games where the protagonists kill monsters. Whatever. But do you honestly believe the RPG hobby needs to be excised of monsters?

The dude seriously recommends Monsterhearts over 1e Vampire the Masquerade. I don't think rational thought is anywhere within a league of his comments.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882I advocate that adventuring parties should kill human beings as often and as brutally as possible, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, age, creed, etc.

Humans are quite capable of committing the most brutal acts of violent sadism on their own. We don't need orcs.

Orcs are the fantasy gamer equivalent of teddy bears. Adults substitute human beings as their targets of brutal violence.

OK, are you talking about in game or in Real Life? Because the former already happens a lot without any problems and the latter is just creepy.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882This is a thermian argument.

You mean those aliens from Galaxy Quest?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882I have to give you credit for depicting orcs as non-evil. That's mindblowingly creative and the overwhelming majority of gamers are incapable of imagining that as a possibility.

OK. you didn't seem to get it. It isn't that the orcs in that adventure were non-evil, it was that the orcs in that adventure were the lesser evil.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882That is precisely the reason why we don't need orcs. Every time I watch the news I hear about humanity's evil. I am looking forward to the real life apocalypse because I hate the human race.

I want to kill human beings, not lame teddy bear proxies like orcs.

Again, you are creepily mixing in game and in Real Life. Please just pick one.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882Or we could just kill human beings. We don't need to go out of our way to justify wholesale slaughter as morality.

Creepy......

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882You want fictional women to be raped and forced to give birth to rape babies. You want to have entire fictional races who you can fictionally kill guilt-free.

You don't have to justify your twisted fantasies of rape and murder to me. You need to be honest with yourself and stop trying to justify them as morality.

I recommend playing Hatred and/or RapeLay.

This is all coming from the voices in your head, dude.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882I'm being honest about the fact that D&D is a violent crime simulator and that everyone who needs guilt-free targets is a pansy.

In your opinion.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125921I have no such problems. If you want to play a Rapeborn, then that's entirely on you.

I thought that, hey, maybe the Rapeborn shouldn't be the default option in a game ostensibly made for ages 12+?

I am adopted. More than likely, given the circumstances I have been able to find out about my conception, I satisfy your definition of Rapeborn.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882My position is this: I don't think half-orcs should default to rape babies. I don't think savage humanoids should default to born evil.

I think that, as Greyhawk Grognard put it, "You play an RPG so your character can kill his enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." I think that, rather than imaginary non-people (e.g. orcs, goblins, whatever), we should fight and kill imaginary humans for fun.

That makes me an SJW, I guess.

That's OK, to you I am Rapeborn, to everyone else I guess that I am a half-orc.

Actually, let me spell out the point I am making here. The Real Life guy who was likely conceived by rape and whose biological mother gave him up for adoption because he was a rape baby, does not find the reality of the situation nearly as dreadful as you find the similar imaginary situation for a half-orc in a fantasy role-playing game. Get the fuck over yourself.

Can we start a thread on the the evil of Monopoly and its insinuated goal of becoming a slumlord and all the crimes and shit associated with such places? OMG... this is like genocide!

Seems I'm late to the thread...

Quote from: Chris24601;1125930The dude seriously recommends Monsterhearts over 1e Vampire the Masquerade. I don't think rational thought is anywhere within a league of his comments.

WTF? Monsterhearts over 1e 1e Vampire the Masquerade!?

Well, its good to know I can dismiss anything he has to say about RPG's out of hand.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125921I have no such problems.

Yet every post you've made implies otherwise.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125921If you want to play a Rapeborn, then that's entirely on you.

I have no desire to play half-orcs. If I wanna play orcs I go for the gold and play full blown orc (a "noble savage orc", perhaps, but still...). I don't settle for crappy watered down "half" races. But if we're talking traditional Tolkienesque orcs (as opposed to WOW-style noble savage orcs) having babies with humans (or any other race for that matter) then the most likely scenario is that that child is the product of rape. That has been my argument from post 1 at page 2, and pretty much everyone else's argument as far as I can tell.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125921I thought that, hey, maybe the Rapeborn shouldn't be the default option in a game ostensibly made for ages 12+?

Then maybe you should've said that instead of arguing against points people never made and injecting your own straw man fantasies onto them. You'd still be wrong on the topic of whether it makes sense for half-orc spawn of traditional non-noble savage orcs to be the product of something other than rape, but at least you'd be making some sort of valid point.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125921It's fiction. Birth control is as easy or difficult as we want it to be.

Not if you want to keep things internally consistent and you're not one of those subhuman morons that think that "fiction" is a "get out of jail free card" for things having to make sense. Verisimilitude is a thing, and that one that always trumps the word "fiction".

Verisimilitude is greater than fiction. Without verisimilitude "fiction" is just a lie (and utter garbage). Verisimilitude is what makes fiction art.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125921That makes me an SJW, I guess.

No, going around throwing accusations and arguing against things people never said makes you an SJW. Or at least like one.

I guarantee that most people in this thread are giving way more thought to the gestation of a half-orc than anyone with an author's credit on any D&D book ever did.

Quote from: Haffrung;1125871I don't know when or why orcs started being regarded in RPGs as analogous to human barbarians, rather than monsters. Or why some people feel they should be treated with more empathy and nuance than gnolls, sahuagin, or mind flayers. To me they've always been monsters.

For orcs, it happened at least as long ago as Earthdawn (1992-ish) where almost all humanoid "monsters" were just different phenotypes of people. Warcraft (1994) spread the idea of green-skinned "noble savages" with World of Warcraft (2004) pushing it further and Eberron (2004) bringing the same to D&D (although with gray skin)

For gnolls and sahuagin, which are largely D&D specific (OK, other games have gnolls, but not as D&D depicts them) both are somewhat more nuanced as recently as Eberron (2004). Both are still largely horrible and monstrous by most humans' standards.

For mind flayers...I remember that they tried it in d20 modern but it was a totally tongue-in-cheek thing. I don't know if mind flayers have ever been seriously portrayed as non-monsters.

Greetings!

Oh, geesus. What a fucking shit fest this thread has turned into!:D

What is up with all the handwringing over how Orcs are evil? They are ORCS! And if many, or most Half Orcs are the product of *RAPE*--so what? Back in the day, even as kids, we understood quite well that Orcs were evil, cruel, and savage creatures. It didn't surprise any of us that Orcs routinely engaged in raping their human victims en masse across the land. We never got deep into the details--we all understood that what Orcs do isn't what Mom and Dad do. Orcs beat, torture, and rape their victims. The human women are often enslaved in the orc lands, where most eventually die in their harsh environment. A few may escape, or be rescued, but it always seemed a sure thing that such were a distinct minority. Meanwhile, some percentage of human females are left behind in the burning, traumatized lands that the savage Orc armies just returned from attacking and plundering. Such human women that survived, proceeded to struggle on to rebuild their lives. During that process, soon in the aftermath, many were pregnant and gave birth from their time of being raped by the Orc marauders. We always assumed that probably many Half Orcs born within such human communities were often killed at birth; others being set upon as youngsters and killed by groups of human adolescents or adults alike. Thus, from such a hostile and rough childhood, some Half Orcs born in human communities would eventually survive and reach adulthood. By the Alignment tendencies in the books and discussions in Dragon Magazine, we figured that most such Half Orcs naturally embraced an Evil alignment, for their nature predisposes them to love Evil and Wickedness. That also explained why so many Half Orcs were opportunistic, self-serving and untrustworthy Thieves; cruel, bastard Assassins; or brutal and ruthless Fighters. Beyond all of that, somehow, some few were not of an Evil Alignment, and were some flavour of Neutral or perhaps even of Good Alignment. Ok, fine. We could see how that could work out now and then. Human genes at work, human culture, religion and civilization, some strong human family members, and some kind other humans along their way to adulthood. So, a few Half Orcs could be of Good Alignment. That same reasoning is workable even to the present day, in whatever campaign.

As far as why are Orcs Evil? Because they are evil, brutal, unreasonable and thoroughly uncivilized fucking monsters, that's why. As a whole fucking race, they love torture, slavery, cannibalism, rape, mass slaughter and human sacrifice. They LOVE DARKNESS AND WICKEDNESS! Just like in The Lord of the Rings.

That's why in my game group, most of the gang lights up a cigar, and unleashes the wizard's flame thrower on all the fuckers. The rest of the group throws flasks of oil and burning torches, and moves in like whirling bladed lawnmowers, and wipe the Orcs out. Every last one of them. No mercy. No crying. Get them all wiped the fuck out, and get busy plundering any treasure. Make sure any fleeing survivors see or hear their fellow Orc tribe members being hacked down and roasted. Let them spread the news to other Orc tribes that judgement is coming! Wrath and fire is being poured out upon them!

The group gathers any treasure and equipment plundered, and moves on, exploring nearby areas, and pursuing adventures. More Orcs can be found and dealt with, in a swift and ruthless manner. No one ponders the alleged or theorized "innocence" or the imagined depth of Orc's moral faculties, whatever they are, scant or non-existent as they may be. They are ORCS. Light up another cigar, pour some more drink, and get rolling the dice. FUN and adventure awaits!

If I imposed some lengthy, moralistic philosophy discussion about Orc morality on my players, they would look at me like I was fucking nuts, and roar at me to keep that whiny bitch nonsense, and to fucking pack it! I can easily imagine their laughter, derision, and scorn. They are there to have fun, and have adventures. Any such moral considerations are reserved for other humans, elves, dwarves and such civilized peoples. Orcs, Goblins, Troglodytes, Beastmen, Lizardmen, Snakemen, half fucking demons, and so on are the Enemies of Civilization, and righteousness. That's the way that stuff works with most of my players.

The game should be fun. We don't need to bring real-world fucking Nazis into the ancient and medieval fantasy game world.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882Every time I watch the news I hear about humanity's evil. I am looking forward to the real life apocalypse because I hate the human race.

Amen.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1125882I'm being honest about the fact that D&D is a violent crime simulator and that everyone who needs guilt-free targets is a pansy.

I almost agree.

I notice that D&D players generally want to kill monsters. Perhaps its the fantasy aspect of heroes battling monsters. However, in most non-fantasy games, the players have no issue killing humans. Nobody minds blasting stormtroopers or cultists or space pirates.

I'm hesitant saying the D&D player who prefers orcs over humans as foes is a pansy because that same player might be fine shooting up rooms of terrorists in a modern spy game, but simply prefers his fantasy realms to be filled with fantastical enemies.

Its pretty easy for humans to be guilt free kills in most RPGs. Any dramatic fiction is good at setting up Red vs. Blue and giving supreme justification for maximum violence against your foes.

Quote from: tenbones;1125933Can we start a thread on the the evil of Monopoly and its insinuated goal of becoming a slumlord and all the crimes and shit associated with such places? OMG... this is like genocide!

I would absolutely play Slumlord Monopoly!!! That's fucked up funny!

Well, that escalated quickly!

Still, the thread has been fairly educational - I have always viewed orcs as potbellied, pig-faced, lowly brigand types, the kind you would find in smaller numbers in the seedier corners of human civilisation. (As they would pose no fundamental threat unless they formed an army.) Much of this, I assume, comes from 1st edition AD&D, not Tolkien, who did not have much to say on orc procreation. But the main big lesson about AD&D is how much Tolkien is only the barest sort of window dressing. And AD&D did have half-orc player characters as one of its default options.

Certainly, people interpret their orcs quite differently - I probably could not imagine some of the Warcraft-style orcs living near humans. But I always considered the Warcraft take a fairly modern interpretation. Interesting.

I'm going insane from cabin fever under quarantine.

Quote from: Jaeger;1125937Seems I'm late to the thread...



WTF? Monsterhearts over 1e 1e Vampire the Masquerade!?

Well, its good to know I can dismiss anything he has to say about RPG's out of hand.

WW games suck on general principle. The setting is an idiosyncratic straightjacket, the rules for superpowers are awful, etc. Especially now when the books promote anti-republican rhetoric and have a mandate that alphabet people aren't allowed to be villains.

I only listed Monsterhearts as one example in a whole list of urban fantasy rpgs. I've never actually played it. I don't know why you would dislike it, but whatever.

Quote from: Haffrung;1125926Okay, so you don't like to play games where the protagonists kill monsters. Whatever. But do you honestly believe the RPG hobby needs to be excised of monsters?

Nope. Hydras and nemean lions are tight.

I don't believe that humanoids being born evil should set the standard. I find it a rather repulsive concept philosophically. Maybe it's my Christian upbringing in which I was taught that nobody is beyond redemption through Jesus. The idea of anybody being born evil and beyond redemption seems wrong to me.

Even if humanoids aren't real people, it's the same tribalistic propaganda humans have been using to justify slaughtering one another since time immemorial. "We need stuff. That tribe over there has stuff. That tribe over there is evil and inferior. That means we are morally justified in killing them and stealing their stuff."

Since at least the early 90s fantasy writers have been comfortable writing humanoids as being just as morally complex as humans. It's hardly a new concept by any stretch.

By all means, kill hordes of humanoids in your elf-games. But I don't think we need to justify this wanton slaughter by making them born evil. You can do that if you want, but you don't need to.

I'll be over here, playing a Christian paladin converting the humanoids to Christianity and saving their souls through Jesus Christ.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1125944I almost agree.

I notice that D&D players generally want to kill monsters. Perhaps its the fantasy aspect of heroes battling monsters. However, in most non-fantasy games, the players have no issue killing humans. Nobody minds blasting stormtroopers or cultists or space pirates.

I'm hesitant saying the D&D player who prefers orcs over humans as foes is a pansy because that same player might be fine shooting up rooms of terrorists in a modern spy game, but simply prefers his fantasy realms to be filled with fantastical enemies.

Its pretty easy for humans to be guilt free kills in most RPGs. Any dramatic fiction is good at setting up Red vs. Blue and giving supreme justification for maximum violence against your foes.

That certainly clears things up for me. Thank you very much.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1125862Whole books have been written about the undead as tragical villians.

Yes, and I've sworn to slap that silly Twilight bint into next week if I ever find her

Ironically, though, I did make an alternate writeup for ghouls who turned to the worship of Mordiggian, the Charnel God (see the Clark Ashton Smith story of the same name), as opposed to Orcus, Yeenoghu, or Doresain. While Mordiggian is not exactly a 'good' deity, he is hilariously disinterested in the living to the point where if you're not actively impeding him or trying to steal corpses, he won't bother you. Ghouls devoted to Mordiggian, as a result, serve as a corpse disposal service instead of stalking the living.

Quote from: SHARK;1125943If I imposed some lengthy, moralistic philosophy discussion about Orc morality on my players, they would look at me like I was fucking nuts, and roar at me to keep that whiny bitch nonsense, and to fucking pack it! I can easily imagine their laughter, derision, and scorn. They are there to have fun, and have adventures. Any such moral considerations are reserved for other humans, elves, dwarves and such civilized peoples. Orcs, Goblins, Troglodytes, Beastmen, Lizardmen, Snakemen, half fucking demons, and so on are the Enemies of Civilization, and righteousness. That's the way that stuff works with most of my players.

The game should be fun.

I don't have a problem with evil orcs, but you're making it sound like anything *other* than evil orcs means that the game isn't fun. As if the players of Earthdawn are engaging in moral philosophy.

I've had lots of fun in games with non-evil orcs. My last D&D campaign had good-aligned orcs, goblins, and others as the PCs. They were straight up killing evil -- it's just that the evil was humans, elves, and dwarves. I've had other games with non-evil orcs as well, like Shadowrun where we had an orc shaman PC, and a GURPS Fantasy game where my PC was a rich orcish arms dealer. I enjoy Tolkien, but it's not like every game has to be just like Tolkien or it isn't fun. Mix it up a little.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1125944I would absolutely play Slumlord Monopoly!!! That's fucked up funny!

That sounds like Ghettopoly to me.

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/222573/ghettopoly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDxf14_HSRc

Quote from: HappyDaze;1125942For mind flayers...I remember that they tried it in d20 modern but it was a totally tongue-in-cheek thing. I don't know if mind flayers have ever been seriously portrayed as non-monsters.

Having to eat thinking people's brains probably doesn't make them very popular.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1125944I notice that D&D players generally want to kill monsters. Perhaps its the fantasy aspect of heroes battling monsters. However, in most non-fantasy games, the players have no issue killing humans. Nobody minds blasting stormtroopers or cultists or space pirates.

Hi! I'm the outlier to prove the rule; I love stun settings and non-lethal options.

The group I played Rifts with got really annoyed because a properly played Ley Line Walker is more ridiculous than a Glitterboy at everything except blowing things up and I played my character as a normal human being who generally likes to avoid violence or killing people. My kill count at the end of the campaign was three; all in immediate self-defense and creatures that my spells couldn't typically stop. Most of the party had kill counts in the many dozens.

The issue was I also racked up several times more captures than entire party killed put together, because spells like Magic Net are fight enders without having to punch through armor (and such non-lethal spells make perfect sense for a caster who's primary class trick is being able to teleport a hundred miles down a ley line before the net wears off).

And while I was Unprincipled (out for himself, but not a sociopath) I often ended up being the voice of morality for the Principled and Scrupulous PCs (who would have had zero issues cutting every one of them down in the heat of battle) by the simple expedient of "you can't just execute helpless prisoners."

Thus, the party's biggest hassle was that my basic "lets try not to kill anyone unless we have to" morality meant we invariably ended up with a train of prisoners we had to feed and transport to someplace justice could be administered (being unprincipled, I was fine with just taking their weapons and armor, eliminating the threat and profiting us, and letting them go... but those Principled and Scrupulous types want their justice served).

Anyway, I often play spellcasters in fantasy settings in a similar vein. The main reason in real life that many object to firearms is a fear of becoming a killer. Soldiers have to be trained to dehumanize their enemies in order to do it. Most people having to do so without such training (and sometimes even with it) suffer trauma from having to do so.

Give an ordinary human a device (magic) that can, at your option, either kill or reliably disable an attacker without killing them and I'd wager most will use the non-lethal option almost every time.

You want the orc raider stopped because they are threatening you or others; killing it is just the only viable option for most people to make that happen. Unless you're a wizard. Then you can put them into an enchanted slumber or web them up or charm them or force them to do community service polymorphed into a mule.

A wizard who resorts to just fireballing his enemies (barring some exceptions like mindless undead hordes) hasn't the imagination to be worthy of the title.

* * * *

Anyway, all this is getting to the point that one thing I think BoxCrayon completely misses in his "you just want an excuse to murder people" diatribe is actual character motivation.

I don't know of many campaigns or even adventures where the primary motivation for PCs is "Let's go murder orcs!"

No. Even the most threadbare adventures in that ballpark are typically "The orcs in the ruin are attacking nearby farmsteads. We need you to stop them."

Others are generally, "There's a ruin a days march from here said to full of lost treasure. We should try to find it."

Rather than BoxCrayon's assertion that players are looking for a "crime simulator." If anything, my experience is that players are interested in a "defenders of civilization/explorers of the unknown" simulator.

The monsters, like orcs, are either threats to civilized places or obstacles that happen to be between you and the treasure/knowledge.

It should also be noted that in the earliest versions of the game, fighting monsters to gain treasure was almost seen as a fail state... if you could gain the treasure without the risk of a fight you were coming out significantly ahead.

BoxCrayon is wrong about nearly everything so him being wrong about basic human motivations shouldn't really be a surprise. Or maybe I've just mostly gamed with a bunch of weirdos who like being Spider-Man better than Deadpool.