Something else to be considered: 5E has brought a *lot* of new players into the hobby. Sometimes, it's a whole group of folks giving it a try for the first time together, so, whoever is DMing is 100% new to the hobby, as well. Generally speaking, new DMs are going to go with the default settings of what's printed in the books. So, making "any alignment" or "typically [alignment]" is a wonderful help for those neophyte DMs.
@@SupergeekMike I agree with what you send in this video. That being sead I find myself falling into this alot. I have a harder time writing . I tened to do heavy combat in my games making cities makes me nervous it is alot to think about. So I tend to stick to the wilds but I want to do more with this.
Also worth noting that THIS EXACT QUESTION of whether orcs were all inherently evil is one that vexed JRR Tolkien throughout his life. He originally designed them to be unthinking killing machines which one should have no remorse about destroying, which is why Aragorn spends years genociding them after the Battle of the Black Gates. But then he changed his mind, bc he didn't want Morgoth to have the power of creation... only perverting and corrupting souls. Which, unfortunately means that orcs are souls with agency. Which means you could have good orcs. Which means it is evil to genocide them. Tolkien died before he figured out a solution that gave him the story need for guilt-free orc-slaying, and the cosmological need that only the One God could create life. Point is-we're not the first ones to get hung up on this moral dilemma.
@@Frabnoil then why do anything? why try to come up with any idea for yourself if nobody has done it yet. why try to do anything noone has ever done before, why try to go to mars? why are you going to wake up tomorrow if youve never done it before😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
@@Frabnoil Tolkien lived in a time when such questions weren't as popular and such. He was very progressive by his time, even if that progressivism is dated enough to be problematic by today's standard. It's important to acknowledge that we are standing on the shoulders of titans.
I got into D&D with 3rd edition, and that edition used "any alignment", "usually lawful good", "always chaotic evil" and the like. It was a bit unclear, because "always" meant that exceptions are rare rather than nonexistent. Still, I think it's weird that they abandoned that for 5e's style; it's good that they're returning to it.
Oddly enough, Pathfinder, a more direct 3rd Edition derivative, also removed the usually/always label from statblock alignments. I guess to streamline things? It was helpful in differentiating things that are supernaturally evil from culturally/ideologically that way.
@@michaelramon2411 That is odd. I imagine it would be simple enough to have a spectrum of alignment terms that's easy to understand even to players who don't read the whole intro section of the Monster Manual. Maybe, "any alignment", "tends toward chaotic evil", "usually chaotic evil", and "innately chaotic evil"; the last being reserved for demons and the like.
That's very weird, because the word "always" means no exceptions, and the word "usually" means the exceptions are rare rather than nonexistent. It's just what those words mean.
@Dont Misunderstand in 3e specifically the use of the word "always" in the alignment was reserved for creatures without souls or free will. Devils are always lawful evil. Demons are always chaotic evil. Celestials that look like angels are always lawful good. Celestials with animal heads are always chaotic good. Sladdi are always chaotic. Inevitables are always lawful. Undead are always evil. Those creature types had set immutable alignments because they were born from the energies of planes that had set and immutable alignments. Which is a design choice that sabotaged all attempts to bring Planescape to 3e.
Sauron very famously had a very inclusive armies, but even though he had many countries and species 'united' their cultures weren't very diverse, mostly values around violence and power.
Here's my two cents (before I watched the whole video). Certain extraplanar type creatures such as demons, devils, celestials, modron, and slaadi are intrinsically tied to their alignment. If a celestial stops being good, it stops being a celestial (looking at you, Zariel). Non-intelligent creatures would be unaligned, as would most folks, like commoners for the most parts. Other creatures, particularly humanoids can be whatever they want.
In my opinion good and bad aren't inherent, and changes on viewpoints. If you think about angelic servants of a fire god who's prerogative is to spread fire they are still celestials but they are lawful at best. Btw there is a very good Pointy Hat video on celestials and angels especially where he rethinks them.
In 3.5, many "evil races" have the word "usually" rather than "always" as their alignment. For example, for hobgoblins, the entry is "Alignment: Usually lawful evil". That is the default setting for hobgoblin society in the base game - but the "usually" gives the GM plenty of leeway to creature both individuals and cultures that vary from that default setting. I make a note of telling my players that the MM alignments are not at all set in stone, and in my current campaign, for example, there is a tribe of lizardfolk that have a treaty with the local barony and actively engage in trade etc. And the party has met and worked with a forest troll and his bugbear buddies to liberate a bunch of enslaved bugbears from a band of dracotaur followers of Tiamat. I have no problem with removing the alignment descriptor, and having fluff descriptions of possible societies would be even more helpful.
As an old guy in the hobby but one who is trying to grow and learn, I have SOME feelings on this. I won't dive too deep into a lot of it but just leave it be said that as far back as the early 80s I was running "typically" evil races with nuance and a bit more reasoning. That said, it doesn't stop in-world perceptions of "evil" and "othering". The orcs of the next valley over may be doing what they are doing because you invaded their lands and built farms, but their tactics in expressing that disdain may likely fall into the cultural default of evil, despite them having good reason. The orcs in my games may not be evil, but many of them are definitely going to act evil, just as any complex, multi-faceted culture or even species/race/ancestry will. Our human world has every flavor of human and nearly every single one of them has perpetrated universally evil acts on other humans. They are not by default evil. Evil is in the act not in the blood (though fantasy and scifi can create edge cases for this). I think there is something to be said for narrative of your game world vs. the narrative of the default game. D&D as it was written was written with a specific world (Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms) in mind and from the point of view of the constants of those worlds. Early D&D was very much couched in the cosmology of the setting as well. Evil, good, law, chaos, were all very elemental things with gods very much a part of the world. Drow, for example, were never really intended to be analogous to any real world culture or ethnicity. They were, based on articles and interviews from the time, based on the Norse concept of dark elves and the name was a variation of the Cornish Trow, a sort of dark fey/trollish sort of thing. Furthermore, Drow were the original exception to the elves which had always been portrayed as bright, shiny, and elevated, though a lot of them had chips on their shoulders. Drow, are, in many ways, an early attempt to break with monoculture. They were a relatively small group of elves that were led astray by an evil spider queen. Even the Lolth angle isn't initially part of their creation. And of course, nothing was helped when, in the late 80s, some TSR artists started portraying Drow with African American skin tones instead of the very much, non-realistic, straight black as darkness, black they had been (fuck you very much Queen of the Spiders mega-module). Does all of this mean that things shouldn't change? Short answer yes. D&D, being as big as it is, cannot simply remain as it was. It's no longer played by awkward nerds in basements, it is in the mainstream and has a responsibility to behave like it is. My kids are queer, many of my friends are people of color and i want them to be able to approach the game feeling welcome. I may be the most open grognard out there, but I am not representative of the game as a whole. All this said, I do feel that the game needs to really work harder on instructing DMs. It needs to stop treating the DMG as an afterthought and burying intro level DM advice as "optional" or "advanced".
I get the too-literal-translation of "dark elves" to dark skin color, but that has always bothered me for biological reasons. I'm sure those early authors were not consciously racist, and that never bothered me. But creatures that stay that far from the sun should develop an albino appearance. If they'd done the biologically sensible route, we wouldn't have this parallelism problem with drow!
About the game on early versions and the cultures being more flexible, it's also worth noticing that Gigax himself wrote the game with this vision. His "random Orc Enemy" template was Evil, sure, but most of the Named Orc NPCs from that time were actually Neutral. His vision of "Aligments arent about morality but about beliefs" made it in a way that a lot of NPCs could be seem as Evil just because they didnt stand against it (in the Orc / Goblinoid case, quite literally). When you're forced to worship a Devil you become "Evil", but you can change it once you're free. The problem is less a "80's works are more binary in the choices" and more "the Kids and teenagers who played in the 80's werent capable of understanding the shades of grey"... Gygax made a point showing lots of "non generic aligment" NPCs (specially so for the more problematic ones) wishing people understood that they had the freedom to do the same, but nost of the readers stills taking it as "this means there's only those two / three guys that diverge, everything else is (generic aligment for the race/species)"
@@hawkname1234 never put your biology chocolate in the fantasy peanut butter. If you do that then you have dragons that can't fly or have breath weapons or giants that can stand up under their own weight.
@@elfbait3774 but chocolate peanut butter cups are great, just got to get the ratio of each right. Too much fantasy and it’s nonsensical. Too much real life and then it’s just Sci-fi
One gripe I have with your first argument about where to draw the line, is that technically there's nothing stopping WotC from introducing Mindflayers or Demons as playable ancestries. So when that happens, should they receive the same treatment and have a "default alignment" dropped? Ofc, personally I like the suggestion style of "generally this" or "usually that" or even going further and having "sub-alignments". Like, goblins worshipping X god are generally evil, whereas drow worshipping Eilistraee are generally good. EDIT: And I also think alignment was never meant to be black and white, just shorthand for building encounters. Everything is nuanced, but not every nuance fits in a rulebook. The alignment needs an update, preferably with the "often/usually" thingy so the shorthand isn't entirely lost if they were outright removed.
Re: your first point, it does actually seem like they’re trending that way, even beholders and vampires are getting the “typically” in Spelljammer. And in fairness, folks have pointed out that I’ve listed angels and devils as “representing a specific alignment” but even those creatures can switch alignment, as we saw with Zariel (or, you know, Lucifer lol), so there’s no reason for them to be as hard-coded either! The main reason I listed them that way is purely because they represent very different fears than just “They’re different from us so we can kill them” - for example, mind flayers and slaadi represent fears of your agency being robbed and being converted into a monster. So my argument essentially is that their existence as pure-evil can still be dramatic and not lazy storytelling, as it is with tribal creatures being coded as evil. But of course, I’m not gonna say no to getting even more nuance in our monster books 😁
I basically came here to say this too. I'm not sure there *is* a hard line between humanoids and the Far Realm stuff, especially given how that stuff has origins in Lovecraft's racist stereotyping and paranoia. It's not exactly the same kind of problematic as colonialist tropes, but shows like Stargate SG-1 show how even parasitic mind-control worms don't *need* the bioessentialism treatment.
I've played from way back and, well, old alignments were rather straightjackets, and purposefully so. Much of the game was that way, stats were rolled in order on just 3d6, classes and even races could require alignments, dwarves couldn't be wizzards, etc... It was all meant to force players to work with what they had and to make a DM's world easier in a black and white way. Still, not long after release writers and creators got to work subverting some aspects of the game. These days we're benefiting from decades of improvements and refinements, I say we keep going. Now, back to working on my magepunk world where the orks have organized into labor unions and the kobolds are trying to make more inroads into the legal practices.
Specific traits of the race can make them inherently evil. For example, the natural reproductive process for the Mindflayers make them necessarily evil, in order for their race to survive at all. The real questions arise with claims of certain races being inherently good, because there's really no possible way for a race with any agency to be born good.
Personally speaking I never really saw the alignment on monstrous races as end all be all. I always see monster manual alignments as a “default” character. Meaning that this is how the majority of them will be but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is how it has to be. So if you randomly picked a drow there is an “over 50% chance” this is how that character would likely act. Be it a 51% or a 99% chance of it. Also it specifies that the rules in the books are D&D are yours to interpret and the books are really more just guidelines to help streamline things for you.
I treated the goblins in my last campaign like the kids in the movie Attack The Block. They started off as a gang of thieves, but the players soon realised they were just misunderstood. And after they cleared out a goblin hideout, the goblin leader made them think when he told them he robbed people, but he never killed anyone like they did. The party was suitably ashamed of themselves and it really changed their behaviour throughout the rest of the game.
After watching the matt coleville video on alignment, stopped really thinking about the "good, neutral, evil" aspect of it and only really started to consider the "lawful, neutral, chaotic" of the table. That seems more descriptive of the culture of an ancestry or the character of an NPC. I first realized the trouble with default ancestry alignments when I asked, what is the equivalent of "Humanity" in D&D or multi-ancestry worlds.
I completely agree. I didnt have this hangup by the time I started playing/dming because I had been reading the Legend of Drizzt series for years before I ever joined a game. In that series, over the course of many books, the main characters slowly come to the same conclusions about race in the forgetten realms. You will probably cover this Monday but the conclusion I got is that when it comes to 'evil' races like orcs and drow it has little to do with genetics and is mainly due to the society they grow up in. These cultures are shaped by the worship of gods like Grumesh and Lolth because those gods provide power to the ruling class and thus regular members of the race have the 'proper' way beaten and indoctrinated into them. There are examples (and have been for a while) that when these races live outside those corrupting power structures (whether in there own tribes or integrated in society) that they have the same internal proportions of good and evil as all reasoning races. Looking forward to Monday's video.
If memory serves, 3e's Races of the Underdark is explicit that drow aren't born evil, they're raised to be evil. Their society is a theocracy in the grip of an evil goddess, and it's so dysfunctional that it only survives because of literal divine intervention; you either get vicious or get killed. It's easy to end up "evil" by our standards if you live in a Hobbesian trap. Historically, that includes many if not most tribal societies and herding cultures, which makes tribal-coded D&D races a bit of a minefield.
I don't think I've ever looked at a stat block when deciding what creature to put in an encounter. I just go by "what would make sense for them to encounter in this part of the world?" and make them either friendly or antagonistic and change the stat block to make them stronger or weaker as needed.
I tried in the early 90s to run a campaign, taking some idea from the Mystara Gazetteers, where the Humans and their clients Dwarves, Elves etc typified the "evil races" as per the Monster Manual, but the plot twist mid-campaign was when the party discovered why the Orcs and Drow behaved like that - the Humans and other dominant cultures had forced them into marginal lands (the less fertile surface lands, the underground) and continually kept them penned there, suffering dreadful hardships. It didn't go down well with some of my players... Maybe I should pick the idea up again, thanks for reminding me of it.
Alignment is a tendency to behave in a certain manner. No one is ever fully any alignment all of the time nor is any group fully comprised of a single alignment. In addition there should be as much information as possible provided to DMs to realize that the “rules” of dnd are more like suggestions than they are commandments. Now let’s examine the idea of having a “barbarian”
Totally right. Alignment is meant to be two-dimensional and it just is. If you want to push the boundaries of the make-believe game just do it, WotC aren't going to bust down your door for that
I always feel stuck with this argument, because I love being able to use nuance and allow players chances for diplomacy and give opportunities for roleplay rather than just fighting constantly. Because while some societies, some people, may be evil, that doesn't write every person in that society as evil. But sometimes burnout and depression hits hard, and it can feel taxing playing the game of morals and moral gray areas. Sometime you just want something simple for a moment, where good and bad are more rigid and black and white, like superheroes and villains from childhood cartoons or knights and monsters from fantasy stories. I would say I don't like the latter as the norm, and there's ways to potentially make those encounters still interesting in their own right, but I think the main point of allowing nuance and flexibility in alignment is just a universal good. Because sure, some people might want something simple; they want to feel like a hero for the night, slaying the evil villains and monsters and whatnot. But for people who want more depth out of the game, they don't have to feel like they're limited by what the book tells them.
To me the point isn’t what Dnd 5e is saying, it’s the way their saying it. I heard very few people say “hey, if we remove base alignment it can make more realistic and nuanced worlds.” I heard “base alignment is inherently evil and if you think Orcs are evil your racist” The second one is stupid. It’s a fake race, and trying to call me racist for making a fake race be evil is dumb. It’s also dumb for me to say you are stupid for trying to make the the dnd universe more nuanced. At the end of the day though, I side with the people who want certain races to have certain alignments. Why? Because that’s the baseline. It’s been like that since dnd 3.5 at least, as well as almost all mythology and modern media. Unless there’s a legitimately good reason to change something, don’t change it. No one has provided me with good reasons why it’s bad to make orc evil, until they do, why change it?
I remember playing Storm Kings Thunder, and we needed stuff some Barbarian tribes had. The group anticipated hostilities, especially after just recently offing several Berserkers and their leader (a woman). My Druid, normally brief with words, suddenly piped up with a plan: We cut off the leader's head, and take it back to her Tribe. No one of course saw how this would avoid a fight. So my Druid explains that these tribes may be violent and racist, but they had a respect for nature that informed their beliefs. If we were to be meek and bow for forgiveness, they would see that as weakness. If we marched in, and showed the Head of their most secure person among them it would show that we were strong. A wolf may revile a bear, but it will bend to its will because it is wise enough to see the difference in strength. They still didn't think it would work, but it did, much to the Lawful party members chagrin. The tribe was even grateful to an extent because of how awful their leader had been.
I have never bothered with “always evil”. Never made sense to me. Creatures of the material plane can be good or evil, lawful or chaotic. Societies can be largely this way or that but individuals are still individuals.
@@rainick actually I’d argue that creatures without free will are the ones that shouldn’t have an alignment, since they’re not capable of making ethical decisions one way or another.
@@KaliFortuna Just because they don't make the decision they are still aligned with one of those alignments, assuming you are using an alignment system.
I would like to add a story from one of my games. Feel free to ignore if it gets long... I played a game with two players which begins with a MANTICORE attacking a halfling and her child in their windmill (some of you might recognise the adventure). The players immediately came to the conclusion that this manticore had some nefarious plot in mind (the truth? Driven away from traditional hunting grounds by a bigger beast). A game or two later, they come across orcs that have occupied a small shrine. A blizzard is setting in, and this is the only shelter. The players decide to negotiate with the orcs and share the shrine for a night. Now because I'd set up a combat, I had the orcs plan to kill the party in their sleep, but the adventure puts an ogre here. Having not introduced it yet, I planted hints to it's presence in the shrine by adlibbinh that the "beast" had been captured attempting to fight the orcs and lost its mate. As soon as I said that, the players immediately exclaimed "that's why the manticore was attacking below! It was driven away by these orcs and had lost its mate!" Immediately, I changed my plans... because how much cooler is that? Suddenly, the party felt bad for almost killing the other manticore, and they helped this one escape and teamed up with it to defeat the orcs. This video coupled with that encounter has made me rethink all the decisions that I had originally laid out when preparing the adventure. I'm not sure I've come to any conclusions yet, but the fact that I'm rethinking things is a step in the right direction, I think...
Hey SupergeekMike , would you consider not bashing republicans in your videos? I’m not sure why your dragging politics into these videos but it always throws me out of the video because I feel hurt for being harshly judged by the extremists of a political party. I feel like a lot of people, like your video was talking about, do not all fall hard into one of two very polarizing political camps. People sit in the middle, but at the end of the day, you got to lean one way or another. Republicans are not all evil, as your digs often seem to imply. I agree with you on many of your very interesting points about dnd, I understand where you’re coming from, yet I’m a little confused about why I leave watching your videos feeling like the bad guy for something that has nothing to do with Dnd…
Happy to address this, because I appreciate that not everybody understands where I’m coming from; I know some people feel that discussions of politics don’t belong in unrelated videos. But one thing I’ve noticed is that, if I’m not explicit about what my beliefs are, it’s all too easy for someone to assume I’m in their camp when I don’t condone their beliefs. As an example, someone on Twitter reached out to me a few months ago and said they were SURE, based on my videos, that we’d enjoy playing D&D together. But his profile was full of truly toxic QAnon conspiracy content and absolutely monstrous beliefs. And I realized it was my responsibility to be more explicit about where I stand on a lot of the most important issues, so the folks like him understand that I do not represent a haven or an ally for their toxic beliefs. But to your other point, that I’m painting a broad generalization of Republicans… well, first, I don’t make comments about the voters, simply the leadership. It’s why I often use words like “Republican Party,” and even when I say “Republicans” I’m usually referring to the leaders of the party. And given the direction that the Republican leadership (and by extension, the Republican Party) has gone in the past few years alone, I can only say that I consider them to be the single greatest threat to America today. Every recent Republican policy is either obstructionist (making sure Democratic politicians can’t pass reasonable gun safety laws or health care for all or getting rid of student loans), or actively dangerous. For example… Getting rid of Row v. Wade will lead to many, many pregnant people dying because they can’t get abortions safely. Statistics consistently show that criminalizing abortions doesn’t reduce the number of abortions, because people don’t get abortions recreationally - they’re a medical need. And removing safe access only leads to more harm, potentially irreversible harm, to pregnant people. Republicans campaign on a platform that demonizes transgender people. This actively escalates the rate of hate crimes against trans people (who are already not having an awesome time). Additionally, Republican policies on immigration are often cruel and xenophobic. The most recent, most glaring example was when Ron DeSantis flew migrants legally seeking asylum to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt, sending them to an island with no infrastructure for new residents and setting many of them up with appointments in the following days at offices across the country that they had no chance of making, especially since they were told to register with the wrong agency, apparently on purpose. And this cruel and illegal act still did nothing to deter the fact that DeSantis is the front runner for the Republican nominee for President. Because the Republican Party does not run on ideas, they run on culture war B.S. that often specifically targets marginalized communities. Republicans fight against any sort of gun control, and deny the fact that mass shooting statistics overwhelmingly reflect the fact that spree shooters are almost always radicalized by conservative rhetoric. Republicans fight against climate change and try to insist that it’s not the greatest existential threat to the world, when the science simply doesn’t support them. They keep moving the goalposts because they receive support from oil companies and coal lobbies and the like. Republicans push gerrymandering practices and restrict voting laws because they are intimately familiar with the fact that, when Black people vote in America, they overwhelmingly vote for Democrats (not because Democrats get things done, but because they’re the only option that isn’t actively trying to make the nation worse). This has been true for decades, but in the past few years they’ve become much more brazen in how openly they discuss their goals to keep people from voting in order to try to cheat at elections. Speaking of which, Republicans are too cowardly to speak out against Trump’s election lies, which led to a new wave of election deniers running for office. And many, MANY Republicans on the ballot this November explicitly said, if elected, they would “ensure Republicans never lost another election” by making it easier to cheat in 2024 and subsequent elections. Republicans still, to this day, try to fight gay marriage and other LGBT+ causes, because they simply think of gay people as less than straight people, it’s clear not only from their policies but also from their rhetoric. Republicans continue to block health care for all, which means private insurance companies continue to drain the funds of those who seek medical care, especially when it comes to those with pre-existing conditions. And as we saw from the pandemic, Republican leaders don’t care if people die as long as they keep making money. They said this, out loud, on Fox News. Republicans deny vaccines, then have to switch and shift gears because their voters kept dying of a preventable illness, but they’ve still been unable to put that genie back in the bottle. Because the rhetoric of their movement is deliberately anti-intellectual. It has been for years, as they target the “elites” as the enemies and deny science on every issue, they’ve created a culture where their voters refuse to believe in a life-saving vaccine because somebody’s aunt shared a Facebook meme about Bill Gates putting microchips in vaccines or something - and Republican politicians are so scared of alienating those voters (maybe because they stormed the capital, more likely because they don’t want to lose their votes) that they can’t help themselves but to continue to further misinformation. Here’s a helpful comparison: Democratic policies aren’t always perfect, I won’t deny that, but their ultimate goal is to help people. Republican policies, if they pass, will absolutely and unambiguously lead to more death and suffering. Most of my friends are members of groups who are legitimately threatened by the rhetoric Republican leaders use, and their lives would become immeasurably worse if more of their policies were signed into law. We’re all accountable for our votes. I am not fond of Biden (I would’ve much preferred Bernie or Elizabeth Warren, they’re not perfect but their policy goals would improve the lives of all Americans and they generally practice what they preach), but I voted for him because he was the only option to try to get the political policies I hoped for - and while he dragged ass on a lot of them, he eventually got some good stuff done. The Inflation Reduction Act has a clickbait name that has nothing to do with inflation, but it tackles climate change from dozens of different directions, which is absolutely what the country needs at this point. I don’t know what platform a Republican voter is voting for at this point, but I know that if my political party was driven by leaders who pledged the make the nation “better” by making marginalized people suffer, I would think twice about voting for them. The Democratic Party is a mess and it sucks that it’s the only viable way to try to get some of these policies put through. But I honestly think the Republican Party is the greatest threat to our country, and to the people I love. So, ultimately, I have plans to stop bashing them anytime soon. I best for all of us that you know where I stand on these issues.
@@SupergeekMike Thank you for taking the time to respond. I see where you are coming from. I just don't see the need of driving a wedge further between those two political parties. While I may identify, more as a republican, I don't agree with how they go about a lot of things. I think there is a better, kinder, middle ground between the two extremes where a truly better America exists. In a perfect world, I think many of the Democratic parties goals are great! But we don't live in a perfect world and bad people, on both sides will take advantage of whatever system is in place and use it for their own gain. That's why I just... don't like politics being added into these videos, but I do see why you do so. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Please know, we are not all evil aligned monsters. I appreciate your content, regardless. Just think of me please, when you word your jokes? I promise I don't mean ill.
I remember when I read books about Drizzt, I was surprised by a line about gnolls (like they were, I can`t sure). After Drizzt killed them, he experienced moral anguish. And one of the characters said that Drizzt is naive, because he does not know that gnolls are evil, and killing them is normal. It was strange for me, because with such logic, you can safely justify the genocide of the entire race, and it will be "good".
We should also get rid of the "Monstrosity" shrug-bucket. If a mosquito-bat (Stirge) is a Beast, why isn't an Owl-Bear one too, or an Eagle-Lion (Griffin), or a Falcon-Horse (Hippogriff)? There are things in Humanoid which don't look all that human-shaped, so why can't a Harpy be one? Mimics should be in Ooze, many monstrosities could be Aberrations, and if a Wyvern is 'close enough' to a Dragon, why isn't a Hydra also? Almost every creature is fictional and the categories were made up, so nothing says they can't have more or fewer categories.
Half-orcs kinda make me think in the Mandalorians, of Star Wars. Imagine this very proud warrior tribe born from an alliance between humans and orcs. They're not very well seen because war propaganda, but as you play you can expand their culture and society.
Heres an idea, you are a half orc mercenary who is hired by your local lord to wipe out a goblin camp. You do, mercilessly slaughtering the goblins but then there's a goblin baby and all the sudden you have second thoughts. Kinda like an inverse of keep on the borderlands.
Drow as racial charicatures specifically is something I truly have trouble seeing beyond the most superficial level - unlike with, say, the Hadozee. Yes, their skin is dark. Yes, they frequently appear as antagonists. But... aren't they more like slave-taking imperialists themselves than any perception of native cultures _by_ formerly imperialistic nations? Never played _Out of the Abyss_ or anything like that, so maybe I'm missing some key details... but I honestly can't see many parallels. I'd be interested to know more of what people see with Drow. Also, "Underdark subrace gray" is a strange enough color that it reads to me more like an alien skintone than a human one. Could just be a color perception thing, though.
The only thing that makes me defensive, and I appreciate that Mike did not do this for the most part, is that people tend to blame this attitude on older players, or long-time players. It's a little bit akin to how he was saying that some people were already playing with loose alignments for monsters, but didn't see the need to make it explicit in the books. But really that's the truth, many of the older/longer-time players I've played with (and I've been playing D&D for 30 years now) already were under the assumption that a drow could be raised to be good, or you could have a whole society of good goblins, or what-have-you. I mean R.A. Salvatore initiated this idea decades ago. Maybe he should have gone further than the "one good drow" thing like you pointed out, but hey, for the early 80's that was a really good first step. I mean if you crack open almost any D&D 3.5 handbook that has monsters, you will see they include the exact same language that makes Mike so happy. They introduced the Usually/Often/Always descriptors to monsters in the stat block quite a long time ago, and then for some reason dropped that idea when they went to 5e (presumably to make things more simple?). All five of the 3rd ed./3.5 Monster Manuals use this nomenclature. And they don't use Always as often as you would think. Even Aboleths and Mind Flayers are "usually" rather than "always" evil creatures. Maybe they should have codified drow as "often" evil, or "usually" neutral, but the point is things were already trending this direction years ago, but then we managed to take a step back somehow. Most of the people I see ranting and raving about default alignments aren't older grognards, they are younger players who don't really know where the hobby came from or why things are they way they are. Anyway, good video, keep up the good work.
You know, the thinking of "x is always evil" is one of my best motivators to just play the weirdest shit. I want to play as Gnolls, I want to play as a Mind Flayer, hell maybe one day I'll try to convince a dm to let me play a freaking Beholder (somehow), I want to do extremely weird shit as long as it's fun for me and it doesn't fuck up with the other player's fun.
Haha, a while back I commented on your Gruumsh video. Today, RU-vid recommended this one, and I found out that you pre-empted a good chunk of my comment in this video. Good stuff. I will argue against the idea that there's a clear distinction between creatures which are permissible to be evil, and those that aren't. You said Hobgoblins have a society, as if Devils or Mind Flayers or other intelligent evil creatures do not. You point out that some of these races are playable-- which I say, "so?" Was it not wrong to consider Orcs inherently evil before putting out a PC stat block for them? I would guess you would say it was always wrong. The issue isn't a mechanical one, so you can't dismiss by talking about mechanics. But let's just accept your premise that we all know that orcs and goblins have more in common with elves and humans than they do with Ilithids and demons-- that doesn't explain why it's okay for fiends and aberrations to be generally evil. Are they not creatures of free will? Why should their type silo them from moral depth? And what of minotaurs and centaurs, which, if found in the wild, are Monstrosities instead of Humanoids? One of the best things about 3.5 is that there were rules written that allowed you to turn any creature that had any semblance of intelligence into a PC with information in their stat block. The fact that you can play as these creatures in 5e is in no way a signal that these shouldn't also be monsters. Or more, that players shouldn't be able to play monsters. I mean, the bulk of these monster races came out of Volo's, which definitely treated these races like monsters. PCs are exceptional. There wasn't an inconsistency between saying "Bugbears are evil, but your bugbear PC doesn't have to be." I'm really disappointed that you're just dismissing this as a bad faith argument. Still, I appreciate your video overall. I like that you're trying to do good and this is an important topic, if only for awareness.
My half orc Paladin is redeeming the race and gruumsh. Gruumsh felt his children were slighted. He and corallon did fight. My orcs tribe was cut off in a underdark area where the were well taken care off for millennia. The surface orcs have had to struggle so much it’s made the aggressive cutthroats. Rogahl travels around creating fruit orchards and wheat fields with plant growth and teaching farming and animal handling
I haven’t used monster alignments except for truly axiomatic creatures like angels and devils since the year 2002. It seemed outdated even then, twenty years ago. Hell I’ll only share this since my players will never see it but in my current campaign the villains of the next tier of play are going to be twisted evil angels, so I’m even coming around to dispensing with fixed alignment to axiomatic creatures. Alignment should always service the story, not shackle it.
That’s a good point, in the video I describe angels as a creature with a firm alignment…. But there’s a pretty famous story in the Christian tradition of an Angel who definitely didn’t keep his alignment so even they don’t need to be set in stone lol
@@SupergeekMike that’s an excellent point! There also a spoiler plot detail involving a certain Kingmaker character that services this non axiomatic variety of angels. it’s always been out there if people looked for examples.
It not really about Race , it's about Culture. I have always allowed "monster race" PC as long as they were compatible with the party as a whole. And they are prepared for what might be a hostile world.
I agree. I always read the alignment in the manual to mean that the evil humanoid was evil because of the society/culture it resided in and then just reduced that to evil meaning just 'hostile' to outsiders. They didn't nessacerily have to be genetically evil but maybe informed by their society to be that way or in the case or were just more naturally predisposed to more negative behaviour due to evolutionary pressure which kept those Races/Species alive or influenced by outside forces.
The alignment in old stat blocks just represented that the majority of the species is evil. Everything in the DnD books is just a recommendation, and that is the perfect example. Of course, not all of the orcs in Forgotten Realms are evil, just majority of them, who belongs to their culture, which is considered by other humanoid cultures as inherently evil. If we see alignment in the stat block we just understand, that that creature's culture is evil and destructive from perspective of the basic humanoid society. That is not about species being evil from birth. And goes not only about playable races, but about other monsters too. For example: Beholders are evil in their nature, but it doesn't mean we can't run into a lawful-good Beholder, who was raised differently, or who's alignment was changed, naturally or through magic. It's a pretty fun character idea, though should we remove alignment from Beholder's stat block? Of course not, because it gives us a vector of possible behaviour of this NPC, but to follow it or not is your choice.
That's one of the things i like about the upcoming Tales of the Valiant books: alignments are not mentioned in character creation and monster stat blocks, and I've often wondered about doing away with it before this. Also, I've noticed that Matt Mercer has often broken strereotypes in Exandria or at least explained why some creatures are evil (such as the goblinoids races of the Iron Authority who worship and strive to conquer in the name of the Strife Lord).
I disagree with your assertion that all games without alignments are more interesting than the "paper thin" plots in games with alignments. The "one of the good ones" trope has been so overused that it makes me double down and build worlds where all members of a species can be evil. Answering why all (yes, all) members of a species treat humanity without any compassion requires interesting world building. Ignoring harmful parallels to real world cultures is a challenge. There is a needle to thread, but I don't think the only answer is to turn every orcy boy into a modern human with green skin. Example: Yuan-ti came from an ancient human culture, and sold their souls to reptile gods. They're not evil because they're racist Jewish South American pastiches, they're evil because they're chained together by this ritual to conquer all. Now when you uncover Snakey McSnakeface, you don't have to find out his personal morality, i.e. if he's one of the good ones and just killed the blacksmith because Mrs McSnakeface was having an affair. Instead, you get to learn of a global conspiracy with well placed operatives in all but the coldest kingdoms. Add some to Rime of the Frostmaiden and the players can debate whether letting Auril win and go all Frozen 3: the Frozening to root out the international cabal of snake spies is worth it. Maybe the PCs research a way to break the old ritual and free the (essentially) enslaved descendants of the crazy snake cult. We can then fast forward 200 years and have a ritual where every king and advisor in the Frozen Federation has to take a pilgrimage to the great snake detector and ensure their countries aren't being led by Yuan-Ti. Do the adventurers get ambushed while escorting the Queen Consort home from the detector? Or do we have an intrigue campaign when the hidden Yuan-Ti start astroturfing democratic revolutions. Interesting stories can be told in worlds with evil ancestries. Saying otherwise is lazy and unimaginative.
Apart from magical energies, I typically think of alignments with different words, selfish, supportive, and predictable. Chaotic really does fit well, but sometimes I think hidebound vs unpredictable just to give all four a new name. Not to say that angels don't make me weep sometimes with their unwillingness to help, but to me the concepts underlying the Outer Planes are what many mortal races choose to aspire to, or are just taught that was their choice. Things from the Outer Planes, just don't think the way we humans do. Which is half the reason some people want to roleplay unique specimens... Anyway, thanks for some insightful comments.
I feel like, as far as replacements for 'race' goes, species is better than ancestry when you want to avoid loaded terms. Nobody that will actually be at your table can credibly be called a different species, while many probably *have* suffered because of perceptions about their race or ancestry. And it's generally more accurate to what is actually being described in the book by today's language, anyway. (And it's not like the rest of the books use real early-modern-English) The only place we stumble there is stuff like warforged - but they're clearly not a 'race' either, so w're not getting any *more* wrong by using 'species'. Maybe 'people' would be better? "Who are your people?" "The dwarves!" As for the default alignments, yeah, I think get rid of them for intelligent non-planar beings, and replace them with suggested *factions* (and their alignments) for new DMs to get multiple ideas of how to use each monster type in their world.
I think for MOST races, there should be a SUGGESTED or AVERAGE alignment. But, it shouldn't be so set in stone as in the Monster Manual of, "Oh yeah. This race is just chaotic evil." Thanks to characters like Drizzt Do'Urden we KNOW that outliers exist. At the same time, I think an alignment still SHOULD be given. Alongside the average personality/society. In my setting at a certain time period, Gnomes are evil. Just outright. They're run by a Demigod Barbarian and they are just an outright evil Empire. This ISN'T the case in other time periods. This ISN'T the case for all Gnomes, just the vast vast majority. During this time period Orc and Goliaths are primarily set on an island, and they're the inventors, hell they created the warforged! They're relatively neutral and peaceful. Now this changes later and earlier in the timeline to the Orcs we more know and love, but still; they can show change and have over time, it's an ebb and flow. Alongside that, I think for a fair amount of 'evil races' it's more cultural, although there are certainly those that are just.. biologically evil. Devils, Daemons, Demons, and there are others. But these aren't really 'mortal' races. Most of the monstrous races I view as 'evil' because of their culture, not biologically... Things do get wonky when gods are ACTIVELY involved in a race, however.
3.5 put stuff like usually [alignment here]. Like if you want a beholder to be good that's fine. Even drow are usually law evil. Doesn't mean a lawful good drow society can't exist , it's just uncommon.
The best way to do this change is just to remove the alignment system entirely. Orcs can still be a horde of evil for you if thats what you want in your world, but its less a mechanical decree from WotC and more just a DMs own personal worldbuilding (and there is nothing, zero, nada, 0 wrong with having Orcs be evil in your world. Or Drow be evil. Or Tieflings be discriminated against etc etc) Alignment sucks, and is a narrative and roleplay ball and chain.
This has been something I have struggled with as I build my own world. I particularly enjoy morally gray humanoids, with one exception: the high elves of Mardynor straight up committed a genocide of goblinoids a couple hundred years ago. Since then, political relations with Mardynor have been very terse. Still, two of my players are playing half-elf descendants of high elves that left Mardynor due to disagreements with the wider society. Showing obvious and sensible exceptions to ANY norm makes your world feel more nuisanced and lived in.
I really hope they go with the “typically” route. It was really helpful for me to know that hobgoblins were usually lawful evil, because the culture in the book is about both honor and pain. Sort of like extreme Klingons. If most statblocks don’t have any alignment to go off of, it’s more work for a new dm who is unfamiliar with these creatures because they’ve either got to look something up or make something up. Having a “typically” might not solve every issue with the alignment system as a concept but I think it really helps, and I prefer it over just saying “I don’t know, you decide.” for almost every monster.
This why i freaking LOVE Eberron so much. In that setting chromatic dragons could be good and metallic ones could be evil. The goblinoids formed a waring ethno-state and, while you wouldn't call them good, they have a rich culture dating back to their legendary civilization that ruled millennia ago. And many orc are: Yes savage barbarians, but they rage and fight to the death with actually evil demonic invaders. If Keith Baker could do it 20 or so years ago, i think we all can give a lot more nuance to ALL races/ancestries and make alignment an individual thing (or not a thing if you prefer) rather than a feature set in stone (or rather ink)
Bio-Essentialism has unfortunately been part of the ethical philosophy of D&D since its first edition’s variations. I’ve been reading the AD&D trio of rulebooks this past week and Gary’s rules around females being unable to match males in strength as well as the intelligence ceilings imposed on the Half-Orcs (sadly not their only restriction) has really soured what is otherwise a fascinating game. The more I read Gygax’s quotes and forum posts, the more I finding disturbing musings regarding female players not being neurologically capable of enjoying the strategic nuance of D&D, humanity’s essential superiority in the assumed setting, and Lawful-Good alignment equated to John Chivington’s slaughter of Cheyenne women and children. I love this game, but there are some traditions from which we can afford to alter course.
i am all for Bio-Essentialism when it comes to the different Races/Species but when it comes to Male/Female it falls flat since chosing to play as a Male or Female is part of asthetic customization and the players choice of being able to get pregnant or impregnating others. these 2 things should be the only things that are Bio Essentialism abot male or female choice (i play as females a lot (just prefer that) and some of them were or became mothers)
I feel like Matt is describing a utopistic attitude, when talking about worlds with magic that can separate soul from body, gods taking mortal form and roads so treacherous you'd be safer in a bear cave. If you try think as a villager living in a world like that you would have a lot of stereotypes living in your head. Also to the lizard people running the world trope uhm why are only the good and super charismatic metal dragons are allowed to take humanois shapes? What I mean is you can take out fantasy from racism but you cannot really do the same vicaversa when all of it is based on ten thousand years of human fears of the different and unknown
"every rule in D&D is a suggestion, and that doesn’t stop some people from acting like you’re breaking the rules and playing wrong if you don’t use every rule as written." Exactly! It doesn't stop at alignments, too. I had to (friendly) fight tooth and nail with my DM when making my halfling character because I wanted her to be chubby and to weigh more than the usual 40 pounds. (Didn't help that it was my very first game, I'm still very new to RPG, and your videos are a huge help, so thank you very much!)
I have many things to say about this video. First off, you have easily become my favorite D&D content creator and are the only one I support on Patreon. I look forward to you putting out more stuff. Secondly, you are absolutely correct that the D&D community likes its tradition. I have seen the many in the community absolutely LOSE THEIR MINDS about WotC's Unearthed Arcanas. Mainly because it changes things they love. But remember, this is a play test and if they don't try things the game will never change. Lastly, I taking a group through Lost Mine of Phandelver (or as we now call it LOMP). In LOMP you mainly run into Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and many similar creatures. In my head I have never seen them as evil. The Orcs I have called a Roving Band of Orcs. Yes that group of Orcs is all about battle, killing, stealing things, but I have never once suggested it is all evil, and I have Christopher Paolini and Urgals to thank for that. In his world, Urgals are "evil", at least to most people. But then you get to meet them, you understand they have homes, kids, wants, aspirations, but their culture is mainly focused on being the biggest and baddest, that you prove yourself through combat. So they are not evil, but how they earn honor is through combat. Love the video, looking forward to Monday's.
Thank you so much! I never read Paolini, I just hadn’t really heard much about it until I was much older and reading much less often, but his books are on my list out of curiosity - but this is a full-on recommendation! I’m looking forward to checking that one out and seeing how it reinforces these concepts 😁
@@SupergeekMike The inheritance series is pretty good. Definitely the work of a teenage writer, but he does a great job of telling a compelling story. The things I talked about with the Urgals takes until about book 2-3 to really get into it, but it does get there. And if you like his work in the Inheritance series, I am reading his new book "To Sleep In a Sea of Stars" which is also pretty good. All of these are on Audio books, don't know if you consume books that way, but I have found it very helpful to get back into "reading"
So you suggest that a gang of bullies engaged in killing and stealing for a living are not evil because they don't see said behaviour as problematic. Are you under an impression that you have reached some sort of advanced understanding of morals, I wonder?
@@direweaver not necessarily. All I am saying is that there are ways to make roaming bands if orcs that are doing things like raiding etc, and there is a way to still make them have hearth and home. I make no claims that I have superior morals, I just said that I treated the orcs in my world the way Paolini (probably misspelled his name) framed Urgals in his Inheritance book series. Take what you want out of that. If you want orcs to be true evil in the realm, go ahead. That was always allowed.
@@chapwolff I hear you. The entire situation is very ironic to me. The OP's idea that if you treat orcs as monsters in your fantasy games you basically mirror the tradition of RL racism against primitive cultures is already preposterous on its own. But then you suggest that providing professional murderers and robbers in your campaign wit families somehow makes them less evil. And that sounds absolutely psychotic.
I DM a campaign where the players include a good-hearted bugbear barbarian, a somewhat sketchy aasimar bard who is also a stripper, and a half-orc cleric who renounced violence after finding religion. I've got lots of thoughts about alignments 😅
I have an older NPC generator that scales alignments up and down for each NPC, and it could be affected by race, but it had degrees for the alignments. Strongly Good/Evil, normal, Tends toward, etc. But in my current campaign I haven't used alignment for anyone, PC or NPC. I'm contemplating building a new world, more Points of Light and less civilized. I think each center of civilization should probably have its alignment guide. But I'll make up my mind later.
I can say that I've had people look at me sideways when I say I play DnD because I'm not a white dude. They would respond with "Well, black people don't play DnD because all the black people are evil and your goal is to kill them" or something similar. I literally had to explain how I created my own world and how I can pick and choose what I want to include in the game. Just like how some videogames have it where you can disable QTEs. I remember when my players crossed the harsh flaming desert to be picked up by a red dragon that helped them get to the kingdom of snake people. I used a bit of flavor from the yuan-ti types and mixed in a few of the gorgon traits. I had them be very spartan-esque with a few hints of an art renaissance. They were going through a bit of a cultural and social shift. They were trying really hard to get to know the different kinds of 'mammals'. They even overheard a younger snake person trying to explain to an older snake person that they have to ask what their species is because calling them 'mammals' is a derogatory. Since they had trade with knolls, they knew what a knoll was and they overheard some younger snakes sigh when their parent would say "I like that one. That's one of the good ones." Speaking with the residence, they explained that since the desert is so hot, there aren't many mammal species in general and their forefathers came to the conclusion that they were clearly the best suited for life in the desert and therefore superior to other creatures. Things were changing because of things like expeditions going past the desert and realizing that it can get cold out there. Trading with knolls has become vital to getting outside items especially during the colder seasons so being nice to them has become good business sense. I even had a group of mindflayers that ended up a bit trapped in an underground oasis. They ended up basically crash landing there through the astral sea since there are a few portals to others realms deep in the underground caverns and sometimes rifts open up randomly because of all the wild raw magic. The two groups had a deal for trade and helping with building and maintaining water ways throughout the kingdom. The snake kingdom would provide their worst criminals for the mindflayers' 'breeding'. The players had mixed opinions about that last one, but the kingdom didn't see a use of wasting anything. They are in a unforgiving desert where they have fire flashes from the fire plane that turns the sand to glass so they like to make sure everything is used. They also gained these three groups as allies through some very interesting and unique quests. They were all about helping to defeat the big bad since she was planning on using them for experiments and had previously tried to invade, destroying a mindflayer pool and plenty of the snake people's nesting sites and the knolls' breeding dens. So to them, she was a baby killer that had to be stopped. My players were so hyped.
I love these details about the yuan-ti! But it also sucks that the judgement is on the face for so many people you’ve encountered - that’s such a huge bummer.
12:34 I think I can explain this one a bit better. Basically, a lot of the arguments online (Far less nuanced and thoughtfully put together than this video) were going: "This race is stupid and evil! Clearly it represents black people." And the, quite appropriate response to THAT statement is: "Why is your first reaction to a stupid/evil race "It must mean black people"? If anything that sounds like you yourself are playing into a stereotype." Which is a case of people responding to poorly concieved arguments, or, more often, these poorly concieved arguments were from people REPEATING an argument they heard somewhere in the most confrontational manner possible without bringing up the actual, legitimate talking points the original had made, like: "It's not just that they're "Stupid and evil" the way they're drawn has a lot of references to how native african people are depicted." Sidebar: In fact, this can be a common response. If the counterargument seems like it's a weird response. They may not be responding to your well thought out and reasearched essay, but making a kneejerk response to some random guy on Reddit screaming at them that they're racist for playing a module with a goblin villain in it. You of course, would not and have not said anything of the sort... but we all know the internet is where reasonable discourse goes to die.
I think that DND is a bit different with this problem then Warhammer 40k. I think the way orcs are designed are clear why their design and style is inherently different from humans
I generally only pay attention to the first word on that top line. "Medium", "Large", and so on. On a rare occasion I read the next word or two for a player's spell. I've never payed attention to the alignments. I just decide how the monster acts in my world base on what I've decided, not a book. I could be wrong, but this book was written with The Forgotten Realms in mind, where these alignments make sense. That's why WotC is changing it, so they aren't limited to their idea of how these races exist in that universe. Just look at some of the ancestry changes in Monsters of the Multiverse.
I use default alignments for when creatures aren't fully sentient (able to hold conversion in some extent) ,being controlled on mass, or if the majority of the race/species/ancestry is in active conflict with the party and they're to be KOS
I am very much torn between wholehearted agreement with everything said about the main topic of alignments - the nuanced portrayal of orcs and goblinoids was one of the reasons why I immediately fell in love with Eberron when it launched - and wholehearted disagreement with the points repeatedly made on the side about species - and that is what they are, regardless of whether they can interbreed - as any goblin being able to gain as much muscle mass as the strongest of orcs remains risible.
I'm gonna get at minimum an eye roll on this, but I do think it needs to be said. I like a lot of your content, but the political comments are a little over-the-top. This is your platform to share your beliefs, and you should feel safe and comfortable enough to do so. I know this video is about correlations with historic and modern racism in D&D and how we can do better, and I agree, but the same can be said about so many other identifying labels. An "evil" society will have good people, as you mention in this video. You may feel personally attacked by a certain group's actions. The Republican party is composed of individuals with personal beliefs and is not a homogenous evil ancestry like we see in the drow or orcs in D&D. Not all people in the party are waging a war on human rights, just some of the dirtbags with undeservingly large names in the party, just like there are a good number of opportunistic dirtbags in the Democrat party. I know there is probably some line you could draw here to dismiss what I'm saying, but the generalization stands out really sharply in a video where you say that an entire ancestry should be treated with far more nuance. I like your content generally, but I do have a hard time when someone seeking to encourage discourse on how we can be more ethical in our thinking and gaming throws out nearly half the country based on some other identifier which, in the end, describes only a small part of the people tied to it. I definitely came away with a lot to think about in how I can improve as a Dungron Master and how I present the world to my players.
To a mindflayer, eating a brain probably is like eating steak, or maybe even eating salad. Their entire biology is based off of consuming sentient being, either by eating their brains or cerebromorphosis. In order to not be "evil", they would need to a) stop breeding, b) leave the hive mind (which is their equivalent of just going to live in a hut in the mountains or something) and c) consuming non sentient brains (so, going "vegan"). Some do, but it's incredibly inconvenient, like the human equivalent of all of those would to a human.
Me who uses Ancient Roman stereotypes of Germans and Gauls for Orcs and other savages 💪. But seriously tho yeah I definitely get the whole thing about races being inherently evil and all, personally I just don’t like it because it makes them boring. How I’ve interpreted it in my world is that people such as Drow or Goblins are stereotyped as evil or savages by those who don’t get around much and only hear about them through stories. And those stereotypes are based in some group of that race which is evil, like the Drow of Lolth, or the Goblin tribes, but of course they only represent a few of them. Hell people are racist towards the normal races too, like for example people hate Elves because they think they’re all hauty and xenophobic, which leads them into being just like that towards the Elves. That’s one of the things I love about The Elder Scrolls and its world building, the Imperials are Imperialists of course, Nords are xenophobic, Dark Elves enslaved Lizard people, High Elves fancy themselves the master race, they even invented slurs I mean that’s some world building. Anyway what were we talking about again
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The issue with alignment in the sourcebooks like the Monster Manual IMO is that those books pretend to be setting-agnostic while they are quite obviously not. Alignment in adventure modules or even setting-specific books (like Eberron or Dragonlance) is fine with the understanding that it refers to the dominant culture of that species _in_ _that_ _setting_ , and even then for free-willed races it should be "typically XY" (or better yet, "Any alignment (typically XY)" to make it very obvious to everyone).
This is a VERY SIGNIFICANT point that, quite frankly, was missed entirely. The MM leans quite hard towars Forgotten Realms. So does Volo's Guide to Monsters. (Volo is a NPC who originated in the Forgotten Realms.) But those books are presented as if their material should apply to every D&D setting ever. Now, to be fair, that's how EVERY D&D book is presented, even the ones where it's clear said book is setting specific. (For example, the Eberron books have sidebars telling you how to include the material presented in Forgotten Realms or in the Magic The Gathering settings, despite Eberron material fitting neither.) But that's really the whole problem. These books do not differentiate well between settings, even if they're presented as setting specific. Every new setting book is simply an excuse to add more content everywhere. That's really why we got into this jam in the first place. What would have been much better is if WotC presented each D&D setting in a more complete and comprehensive manner. Then the conversation wouldn't be, "Why did Drow used to have the default alignment of Neutral Evil?"; instead, it would be, "Are Drow in the Forgotten Realms presented well as individuals and as a society?". (As a sidenote, my answer to that second question would be a hard no.) Of course, that takes more work.
Yeah, it's more a problem of WotC trying to give less setting details. Plus there's also the inscrutable evil like Mind Flayers where they ARE not good no matter what you are even if you are on their side they see you as food unless you can be useful in other ways. I'll eat you later. But that is also no different from humans eating chickens. (You may argue that chickens aren't sentient, but the Mind Flayer could argue humans aren't sentient either.) Good/evil alignment tends to be subjective to the POV you are looking from. And that's what I take the monster manual alignments as from the POV of the standard person living in that world.
@verdantmistral442 , I think that's absolutely true of some settings. Forgotten Realms is a good example. Now, what about the Planes? Clearly, Planar creatures are cosmically a certain alignment. But also, if you have a human who ends up in the Abyss, then that human becomes corrupted by the chaotic evil nature of the Abyss. Planar settings are arguably some of the most clear in terms of how alignment works. The big issue is, we haven't got much interaction in the currently published settings with the Planes. (The Magic The Gathering settings stuff doesn't count, because MtG Planes aren't alignment based so much as based on colors of Magic.) Again, WotC doesn't want to flesh out settings to include Planar stuff.
I think this is treading into the DM's territory-- if they have Tolkien-esque orcs (a bastardization of elves twisted to serve their dark lord) who are evil by nature, then that's their prerogative. On the flip side, if they have Warcraft-like orcs, then that's fine too! But in the end, I don't think the fantasy world is supposed to reflect the real world; the whole reason people don't like the idea of "evil race" is because that concept doesn't exist in reality-- but fantasy isn't reality. You could totally have a world where separate gods are vying for control of the universe; a world where the war is mostly fought between a group of races who are aligned with God-A and a separate group of races are aligned with God-B. In fact, that's kind of the original vibe of old D&D. Even in old school D&D, "evil" wasn't so clear cut-- when you came across monsters in the dungeon, the DM would have to make reaction rolls to see how they would behave. You could totally have an instance where an "evil" goblin would act friendly (or even helpful) towards a party of humans. There were some exceptions, for instance goblins would attack (on sight) a party that had dwarf. But (in my opinion) that was mainly because the goblin and dwarven cultures had a long history of wars and feuding over territory rather than "We're evil, they're good! Must kill!" type attitude.
In our campaign I play a bugbear and the player I sit next to plays a drow. We’re probably the least evil out of our party of 7. It’s fun! Also we’re the two heaviest note-takers of the campaign out of game, so I’d like to think that that makes us the opposite of evil IRL too lol
I think you're missing in big part a few things here. The rules were written with very specific settings in mind... and they have always (in the old books anyway, 5e tends to do awa with nuance, so the criticism is valid for this edition at least) made an explicit point of pointing out that the given alignments were meant as "this is most likely going to be the most commonly found attitude among X". Greyhawk setting all the way back in 80s had as many evil named Drow NPCs as non-evil ones, and there's been literal blocks of text explaining that majority of the Drow society has grown into a given mindset due to being isolated, but there are exceptions and individuals who seek change or try to escape from it. Putting "typically" in front is no different than the old attitude of having that "typically" be the preface of the section on alignment and/or race altogether. People who just skim over will not register it anyway and hard-headed simpletons will still insist that a player wanting to play a good orc makes no sense because "the book says orcs are typically evil so you need to be evil!". The problem with nuance is not that the system hinders it. It's the fact that, unfortunately... people just don't read. And in its race to simplify things as much as possible, 5e has leaned into the simplification too much, and the nuance is even more lost than it was before. "Any alignment" philosophy works just fine for being setting-agnostic, but provided valuable hints on what the society the character was likely going to grow up from would be when playing in a given setting. But at this point we might just as well do away with alignment altogether, since it is increasingly losing any meaning. Though I'd at this point welcome the change of the word "race", if just because it has become a pointless buzzword despite not even *being* a real thing in biological classification, and not being meant to mean a "different ethnicity of humans". "Human race" is a thing in our real world language just fine, even if it's at this point mostly abandoned in that sense. It would make it so much easier to have a conversation if the word could finally be dropped. Will it solve the issue? No, not in the slightest. Because the issue is not in the game. The issue is with the people.
I don’t feel like blaming people is the useful solution here, when the actual start of the solution is just to change the two words on each stat block to say something else.
@@SupergeekMike blaming people is what you did with pre-emptively describing what people who disagree with you think. Stating a fact is hardly blaming anyone. People really do not read and you said as much yourself in the video.
Burning Wheel Orcs are one of my favorite ways of having an "Evil" race that aren't evil. They are a playable race that has Hate as an attribute that can be used to make them more powerful but also can drive them mad if they use it too much. It's an interesting portrayal of how often we have features that we did not choose that we can use, leverage, struggle against, or outright reject. If you don't take the time to look at these orcs complexly, you may have just minimized them to just being evil. Which they aren't.
instead of saying this is good and that is bad, you can say both are usually neutral but in this setting they hate each other really badly and here are sample reasons why. Very good video, had my trouble with the recent changes for the orc race/specie
I don’t fully agree with your view on fantasy races being problematic or with how much they affect our world. However, I appreciate that you presented your argument concisely and provided examples. It's great that you explained your position without attacking those with different opinions, and you've definitely given me something to think about. I like how Tales of the Valiant emphasizes heritage, focusing on the culture a character grew up in rather than just race. That approach allows everyone to play the way they want. In my opinion, regardless of people’s views on whether certain races are inherently evil, player choice should always come first. Personally, I don’t care much about the debate over races being evil or not. I like orcs and kind of dislike elves, so even if drow were all evil, I'd find that more interesting than elves. Also, why provide an alignment for creatures when, first, you don't dictate how my world works, and second, the official settings already vary between different worlds and lore? Just look at Eberron’s orcs, for example. I think having chaotic and lawful alignments makes more sense, where chaotic and lawful reflect how a creature manages its emotions rather than its morality. Chaotic creatures are more likely to be consumed by their emotions and act unpredictably, which can be good or bad. Lawful creatures might have better self-control but can be stubborn and resistant to change. So, by not labeling a group as inherently good or evil, it leaves room for me to fill in those gaps in my games. which is what id do anyway. Again good video.
The way I as a DM treat those given alignments is as "what most people see them as" not every Orc is evil, but orcs often raid villages and humans will therefor have a very negative opinion on them. So they are seen as evil. But are they? No, not all of them. So in locations, where Orc-raids are rare or non existing, you might find many orcs, that are accepted by the society. So no species is evil, but the way society sees them matters.
One thing people should note is that plenty of settings do different things with monsters than the Forgotten Realms do. For instance, in Eberron, almost any creature can have any alignment.
Let’s help each other out - what are some great motivations for an enemy who is an orc? How about a drow? Or a hobgoblin? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
@SupergeekMike - depending on the backstory for your drow, a non-evil motivation for drow to be antagonistic could be something like the drow were driven underground in the distant past because they lost a war with the other elves (motivations/ideology/etc of the war don’t matter so it’s not a clear cut good vs evil war) and are now trying to reclaim a place on the surface for their race and/or seeking revenge or recompense for how their ancestors were treated. Non-evil orc antagonist motivation, if going with them being a tribal society - maybe they’re pushing back against the neighbouring ‘civilised’ nation’s acts of colonialism? Maybe even something like said ‘civilised’ nation plundered the temples the orcs worship in (these could either be ruins of an older civilisation that the orcs have moved into after the fact and started worshiping, or things they’ve built themselves) for artefacts and the orcs are just trying to get them back. Could even be used as part of an ethical dilemma for PCs; have the players playing Indiana Jones analogues and confront them with the dilemma of do they go through with continuing to ‘save’ the archeological finds for a museum, or do they return them to the orcs who are the rightful owners. Hob-goblins are fairly easy; just slot them in as one of your civilised nations. If you have a map with half a dozen human kingdoms, three dwarf kingdoms and a couple of elf kingdoms with all of them being no more or less evil or good than the others, then just make one of the human ones a hobgoblin kingdom instead. And the reason they’re antagonists in your game just becomes because that’s how the political climate is; the kingdom your PCs are aligned with is antagonistic with them because of political reasons and would be even in the original draft where they were a human kingdom.
Drow are probably the easiest. They're an intelligent, long-lived group of people, who live (canonically) in an extremely dangerous, nearly inhospitable area. As a society, they ought to be looking for safety and secure resources more than anything else. As a society, they're probably needing to pretty regularly get to the surface to gather things that are scarce underground (e.g. wood) and are pretty terrified of their neighbors. There are many obvious societal goals; for an individual, you have the whole of the Underdark at your disposal as well. Maybe a loved one has been made the thrall of an aboleth. Maybe they are trying to get revenge on the mind flayers that destroyed their village. Maybe they just want to escape the horrors of the Underdark and leave peacefully above-ground. Orcs? I like the reverse perspective Lord of the Rings. You have a society that lives in a ****hole area like Mordor that's lacking in basically anything of value except maybe metals. Even a small turn for the worse, like a drought, would be enough to cause some serious harm to these people, and it's only natural that they would look to expand into the much richer neighboring areas in the face of starvation. So a leader of these people might be looking simply to expand their territory. Or they might be looking for some magical artifact that would gain them advantage in a coming war. Or even an artifact that might allow them to affect the weather in the area so it will be more fertile where they live. Most wars, historically, have boiled down to resources anyway, so grounding conflicts in an understandable real-world problem is a very natural way to create conflict that makes sense rather than having one people being evil-for-the-sake-of-evil.
Drow aren't a race but cultish elves that have succumbed to a misanthropic view of the world do to their long lives nature, their despair has corrupted them and they seek to end the world and all the evil in it. Drow are childless and not a race because they're actually just an elvish cult.
The way I see it is the whole of a stat block is based on the ‘typical’ example, it has to be. Do all hobgoblins have a strength of 13? Do they all have a speed of 30 feet? Do they all wear chain mail and wields shields? No of course not. The idea that all hobgoblins are Storm Trooper like clones of one another is so ridiculous it beggars belief. Heck there are even different examples of hobgoblins in the monster manual. When my player characters go about killing enemies it helps to know that the enemies they are killing are the bad guys. Once you start suggesting that maybe it’s not the hobgoblins that are the bad guys, but it’s actually the player characters , it kind of kills a lot of the fun. Combat (and therefore by default ‘killing other living creatures’) is where I derive a lot of the fun from the game. It’s important that the creatures I kill in the game are the monsters otherwise it’s my characters that are the monsters. In my campaign world the ‘EVIL’ Draconian Empire are the bad guys. They go around conquering neighbouring lands and enslaving other cultures. Does that mean all Dragonborn are evil? Heck no, one of my players is playing a Dragonborn. The changes made to monster’s alignment don’t bother me, I’m just bemused that they were necessary in the first place for something that to me was so obvious it didn’t need spelling out. What does bother me is being accused of being racist, or colonialist, because of the way I choose to represent imaginary creatures in a fictional world
I feel context to why the monsters are evil/enemies helps a lot. In my current game I've been using hobgoblins as a common source of mooks. This is because there's a wandering mercenary army composed primarily of hobgoblins that's getting fed up of fighting for other peoples' lands and are trying to claim their own turf. They're going about this by working with various gangs in the city-state the PCs live in to create unrest in the hopes of taking over when the local government falls apart. They're not the bad guys because they're hobgoblins, but they're bad guys because they are would-be conquerers who are willing to work with the shadiest of the local gangs. Also a couple of the gangs, which contain humans, elves and the like, were much more evil than these hobgoblins. In general I don't bother with alignment unless the being in question is supposed to be "made" of the alignment in question (such as fiends).
Great video and I'm really excited to watch the videos you suggested. I've been looking for more content in this area. I did want to add some additional perspective for the illiteracy argument. Not everyone can read the entire book, even if they want to. Me for example as a dyslexic didn't get access to be able to read the entire books until the beginning of last year when I found a screen reader that would help me. With my dyslexia reading the standard way is actually physically exhausting. So I have to select what things I'm going to read and focus in as hard as I can on those. Or at least that's how I had to do it before. And even when the other players and DM's in my group knew that I had this disability they weren't always conscientious of the problems that could cause. I wasn't able to read all the parts of the combat section because I didn't know where they were or that I should be looking for them. And I had other things to read rather than attempting over multiple years to read the D&D books cover to cover. Luckily now with a screen reader I have a much easier time as long as the books they're releasing work with screen readers.
That’s a good point, it hadn’t occurred to me! But of course, that’s the point, we often don’t think about how our ableism colors our biases. Thank you so much for sharing ♥️
This argument reminds me of that time I had three completely different Orc nations in one of my worlds. And the most evil (as a culture, but there were a lot of good people in it) was the one I based off the Romans. Yes, I made Roman orcs, and my players seemed to like them. Just like there are loads of different human or elven cultures, why not different monstrous cultures too?
Great video on a very contentious topic. While I have a lot of opinions on the matter (races _are_ cultural archetypes in D&D, D&D's commercialization of its races has created this monster as they were originally more nuanced by design, the genericization of races erodes their otherworldliness) I think there are two pieces I'd like to elaborate on to add to the overall discussion. 1. *Why is it always about good versus evil?* I've listened to a lot of people talk about this subject now and the one repeating thing I hear is that we're unfairly portraying races as evil through colonialist tropes. I never hear any opinions on law versus chaos, which I find an interesting hole to the debate. Is there not a problem with what is the original axis for alignment? If so, can we just eliminate the good versus evil axis and be done with these petty arguments? Alignment is supposed to represent a creature's beliefs and so law versus chaos seems like a much better axis to measure that on. 2. *I think being too loose with alignment also has the potential to be harmful to the game.* The way D&D is played has changed drastically from the days where groups were local and between people with a baseline of familiarity. Having codified versions of rules and even typical versions of races/species/ancestries is going to important to the longevity of the game moving forward into the digital age of pick-up one shots and new players. I like the use of "typically" for more humanoid races that can play faster and looser with their beliefs, but I do also believe we need to start limiting some of that scope for identity's sake. What I would love to see this trend towards are multiple alignment suggests under a race/species/ancestry entry, ex. hobgoblins are Lawful Non-Good/Lawful Neutral or Evil and orcs are Chaotic Any/Chaotic Good, Neutral, or Evil. While I understand people are upset about races getting pigeon-holed into certain belief structures, I do think it's important to remember that those structures are sometimes necessary for a good time. While I don't want to blanket an entire race under one belief system, I also don't want players getting trapped into moral complexities and leave the table questioning themselves because "Any Alignment" becomes the default for goblins. It's certainly a tricky topic, but I think videos like these provide a good platform to analyze the problem and discuss potential fixes for some truly damaging views we've created as a community.
I don’t need the good/evil alignment. But I don’t have a ton of time during the week to plan and i use the chaotic/lawful section to help me understand how to play npcs and monsters.
I like thinking of orcs as Spartanic. They would leave a baby in the forest if it looked weak. They value being a soldier above all else except motherhood. One of my favorite character concepts is an orc or half-orc who was abandoned for having albinism but is found by some dwarves and raised not quite realizing they aren't a dwarf.
As I wrote in another comment, I made an entire orc nation based on the Romans. As violent as they are, they are very methodical and their civility and cold strategy makes them way more menacing in war. Then there's another nation who only respects those who can fight man to man, and one of the prerequisites to have a meeting with them is to "prove your worth" (usually by killing one of the animals they farm, bred to be bigger and more aggressive than they would be in nature). They're not evil, they're not even that warmongering (unlike the Roman-orcs) they just really like fighting, and can be friendly to those who prove their valor in battle.
I would like to say that from my understanding the "races" themselves individually are not evil, it is the right is might and self serving cultures they are raised in. I usually have a off shoot culture who disagreed with how things were and managed to leave before they are dealt with. It is the popular culture of the group that we see as "evil". Just as we see totalitarian governments as evil.
Maybe what I say will be something to be ignored. But I feel that I have to say this... I believe that the BIGGEST issue that bothers people is not that newer players (for the most part) have issues with default Evil Alignments... But that, at least in my experience... the developers, and those of us who played for decades are having motivations and attitudes unfairly assigned to us. Yep. People are looking at aspects of the game from their perspective, and it seems to me, that they then assume that Gygax et al, and old school players saw all of the things that the new folks see, and just thought that these 'bad things" were OK... and thus we are reenforcing all of the issues that are bring assigned to D&D NOW. Now, PLEASE, I ask that anyone reading this take a step back and consider that today's world. is NOT the world of the 1970s and 1980s.THIS is incredibly important. In those decades, the computer was at best an incredibly expensive playtoy as far as the average family was concerned. The Internet as we know it did not even exist until the very late 1990s. That means that a LOT of people didn't have access to the reams of daily knowledge immersion that people today have at their fingertips. If we wanted to learn something... then we had to go to the Public Library and look it up. Now take a moment and consider the unbelievably VAST difference in outlooks and knowledge bases that this could create. Even up to the turn of THIS Century... most of mankind was limited to reading newspapers, listening to radio, physically going to school, and going to a bookstore or library if we wanted to learn something. Now you can take 1/2 hour and gather reams of information on any subject from all over the world, translated for you. That just was NOT a thing for the first 30 years or so of D&D. When I hear things that you touched on... like Goblins were antisemitic... or Orcs were based on Asians... that Drow were supposed to somehow represent people of color... or that Tribal cultures were based on colonialism... I have to blink. And blink HARD. Because I don't believe that any of these things were true. Take a moment and take away the Internet. Just take it away. And think about what game developers and players had available to us during the 20th Century... and if you are going to make statements about any of the motivations of people who created or played D&D then you HAVE to do do within the limited lens of what THEY could access. To create the game of D&D, Gygax and co had a limited knowledge of medieval arms and armor. They had made a medieval battle game, so we know that. But then they started to create a game that used creatures and cultures from (mostly) medieval cultures and legends. In addition, we know that took inspiration from various Fantasy novels... VERY notably Robert E. Howard. Have you ever read Howard's novels? Now consider the Elves, Dwarves, gnomes. In the 70s all you would have found when looking them up would be Tolkien and Celtic and Norse folklore. Gygax has stated that when he created the Drow they were based on the 'Dark Elves' of Norse mythology. My point is that people NOW say a lot of things that are accusing people (designers and players) THEN of doing or believing things that those folks never even conceived of. How were Gygax and co supposed to be aware of Tolkien's beliefs on anything? Most people had no idea that Howard had psychological issues. the devs and players only knew what they could find in whatever limited books we could find at the library or book store. Back then, if you used the word Colonialism, a lot of folks in the US would have immediately started thinking about the American Revolution. The other, more modern attitude in the issue, simply was not discussed beyond academic circles... it was certainly not mainstream. And I am not being "Willfully obtuse". You can read old interviews with game creators at the time... They stated their influences... and often what they were thinking. I read many of them at the time. Not one whit of anything I read indicated that the game was written with knowledge of what people are accusing the creators of. Am I suggesting that the things that you say are 'problematic' with the game are not? No... Not NOW. What I AM saying is that the game was not designed with an awareness of ANY of the issues now being talked about in mind. Not... One... In many cases it would have been near impossible.There has been a metric ton of information uncovered about all kinds of people and subjects since the 20th Century, that none of us could have known. To hold us accountable for this... well it goes beyond reason. Much of original D&D was designed based on the concept that this was game where good heroes fight evil monsters.... it was as simple as that. You can watch any fantasy movie from those days to see that was the prevailing attitude of Fantasy. It was Good vs bad, Light vs Darkness... Black and white morality. And you can easily see where much of these problematic 'evil only' monsters came from. Let's take the Lizard folk. Yuan Ti came later. You ever see old Saturday morning cartoons? One of the most popular shows around the time D&D was created was Land of the Lost. The only real Humanoid enemies? A prehistoric Lizardman species called the Sleestak. They lived in a Lost City and were always enemies of the Heroes. Add that to the Cult of Set in Conan, and the idea that Lizardfolk are just sentient reptiles who have no reason not to see Humans as dinner... and you have a species that is easy to call Evil. One of the big problems with this subject is the modern concept that 'nothing is really evil.' based on this no one and nothing can BE Evil, because Evil becomes completely subjective based on the individual concerned. Heck, is a tribe of cannibalistic headhunters Evil from their perspective? Probably not. But how is anyone that encounters them going to see them? And,,, if this was an in game culture... what would even the kindest of them eat? How would someone from a nearby town view them if his sister was on last week's menu? Maybe the Aztecs might not be considered an Evil culture... but their temples would suggest that they might be... at least as far as those they captured and sacrificed would be concerned. I believe... not because I was an old school gamer... but because I am a student of human history...that despite the fact that you can have good people that live within a culture... those same good people might believe in things that are considered down right evil by every other culture. And thus those same good people might well be considered evil as a result. Consider Rome. You could have a soldier who does all the right family things... married with kids, donates to the poor, is educated... treats people with kindness and compassion. Then on his day off he takes that same family to the coliseum to see slave gladiators fight each other to the death for their amusement. And a week later, this same 'good family man' marches off to conquer Gaul to take plunder, land and slaves. Now take the same man and he becomes an adventurer... he has the same beliefs in Rome over all... when he joins a party who has the moral ground when discussing freeing slaves from a roman village? Would this Roman, who is Good, not be in the right for trying to convince the party of the righteousness of the Roman slavery system, and to try to make the party understand that they would be criminals and in the wrong for stealing the property of honest Roman citizens? I believe that every game world needs to have a set Good and Evil axis for that world. If only so that everyone can have the same perspective on how that world works. I also believe that Cultures can be considered generally Evil by that Axis. Thus... while a member of a classic monster species might act generally Good, if that monster culture behaves and acts evil by this axis, and the creature does not have any issue with these beliefs and behavior.... Would they actually be Good or Evil? If the Lizard folk stole the Halfling baby because he was hungry... is the party really wrong to try to stop him? Yes they could offer food NOW...but what happens the next time? Is the party really in the right to suggest that the Lizard folk should go hungry or not eat halflings? If Lizardfolk believe they can eat anything... maybe even other Lizardfolk... maybe they aren't Evil in their own eyes... but does the party really have an obligation to stop them? And what about the Halflings? Do their feelings on the matter count? Would they not consider the giant Lizards that eat them as being Evil? This can create an ethical and philosophical roller coaster that doesn't end. I think we need to be more understanding of each other in this area. And we need to stop accusing each other of wrongdoing or wrong thinking, just because they don't agree with us. The ONLY true resolution that WoTC can actually give us is to abolish the concept of Good and Bad from the game entirely, as well as any and all indicators of how ANY creature in the game should act or behave. "Here are creature stat blocks. Do what you want with them." Backing completely out of the arena of behaviors or attitudes of creatures at all. and leaving it entirely to the individual group is the only truly reasonable resolution. I disagree that WoTC should be a leader of the community. They should simply be a completely neutral game designer. The Community... as such... should make their own decisions. Thanks for the Video. It creates discussion, and that's never a bad thing.
I definitely agree with all of your points, and I especially like your argument that not only does having ancestries be always evil have very bad real world parallels, it's just... uninspired and flat storytelling. In my homebrew world I actually turn that concept on it's head by having the primary antagonistic culture opposing the party be the elven noble elite. They have a lot of the typical negative stereotype opinions of the other ancestries, but this is treated by the story like the bigotry it is. Meanwhile the party's staunchest allies are a band of wererats, tieflings, goblins, and orcs led by a drow wizard, and they're also allied with a chaotic neutral smuggling ring of kobolds, lizardfolk and dragonborn. It's a lot more fun and nuanced, and the jokes are at the expense of asshats who deserve to be made fun of/punched in the face.
Part of the problem is that having alignment on a creature statblock is that it implies that all such creatures share the same alignment, racially. (I don't know why people can't assume it varies just like STR and CON scores, but whatever.) But I think it CAN BE a helpful shorthand to describe CULTURES as lawful vs chaotic or good vs. evil (which I interpret as altruistic vs. selfish). There are LOTS of evil/selfish cultures: investment bankers, vikings, religious militants and, as you said, the Republican Party. There are also some (more, albeit imperfect) good cultures where altruism dominates: nursing, teaching, environmental work, social work, etc. Maybe the Nordic countries would qualify as good/altruistic cultures. And of course there are lots of individuals of every alignment within, but thats how the structures and folkways of that culture average out. I think it's a very worthwhile conversation to have and Mike-I applaud you for having it when your channel is still growing and not waiting until you have more power within the industry to take a stand. Good for you. It won't be a costless move-but that's why I think it was altruistic on your part.
21:18 I dont think like this, but i know some people who do, and to be honest im not sure i see anything wrong with most of these. Id love a video explaining whats wrong with it. Right now, those emotions about the game seem perfectly reasonable. Alot of people reslly dont want or care to make the world more complex, I dont see why we should push our more narrative gameplay style onto them. Ofcourse, we should still change stuff. But i dont see why theyre not allowed to dislike those changes.
16:37 there’s also a problem with litigious players who either thru lack of imagination or a sense of entitlement feel like anything “RAW” cannot be challenged, amended, altered, etc. by the DM
I believe alignments should go in general, to be honest (it's just a heck of a contagious topic, and it doesn't even do anything in 5e). I don't really agree that the idea of some merely unsolvable conflict between groups of sentient creatures is inherently inappropriate, but it's probably a separate problem.
Recognize the perspective-based determination of good and evil. That said, should alignment be replaced with cultural descriptions akin to Sid Meier’s Civilization? Species X is expansionist, species Y is xenophobic, etc. Recognize that that is a generalization, could we agree that those are descriptions that are not attributable to a moral position? Accordingly, the determination of how to deal with that culture’s behavior is perspective based, circumstantial and generally not evil or food.
I'm glad that WotC is angling towards 'typically' alignment as opposed to 'always' alignment, including Fizban's adding options to give thinking, reasoning, emotional beings (i.e. dragons) possible motivations that might be antithetical to what their alignment brands them as, such as neutral or good intentions in chromatic dragons, and more villainous goals to metallic dragons. Not to mention skewing away from the stereotype of more tribal groups as savage, or that drow are sadistic and evil. Speaking of drow, I'm grateful that I know my DM won't lean into using dehumanizing commentary about drow culture during an Out of the Abyss campaign. Plus, there's also a drow in the party who is already breaking the mold for expectations, which is nice.
What's weird about my own experience with the "alignment" argument in the DnD subculture is that I was actually into The Witcher before a friend introduce me to DnD, and the big thing about the Witcher is that it is a very "Grimdark DnD"-inspired world, but it deconstructs the whole idea of inherent creature alignment as it throws the reader/player into these complex moral and ethical conflicts. So I kind of got into the game thinking that was a part of it, only learning later on about the "being a GoodGuy means that when you encounter BadGuy you just get to kill them and take their stuff" notion of alignment from Grognards on the internet. Another interesting thing is that Michael Moorcock, the fantasy-author that wrote his his "Eternal Champion" fantasy stories (which provided a ton of inspiration to Gygax & Arnerson, the creators of DnD) to feature a cosmic conflict between Law & Chaos did so because he wanted to deconstruct the stereotypical fantasy-genre conflict of "the forces of Light/Good vs. the forces of Dark/Evil." A champion of Law could be a just and compassionate protector, or a tyrannical authoritarian dictator. A champion of Chaos could be a free-spirited liberator of the oppressed, or a unstable, violent lunatic. (DnD youtuber LegalKimchi has an excellent video on this).
in the inheritence cycle, you have urgals, sort of orcs, they aren't evil. through their culture they just like war. that's why they are deemed evil, but when you learn more about their culture you see a much different perspective. i really like this, cause they aren't evil just love to battle.
I agree alignment shouldn't be set for playable races, but I do not think having orcs (assuming orcs are not playable) as creations of some greater evil power makes your world racist or built on racist tropes. Non-European cultures should be represented as well as European ones are, and (importantly) as humans.
Just from real life experience and historical records, the real monsters eerily look just like us. I seldom used alignment and replaced that with principles, agendas and loyalties, which are nuanced and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Veering away from a principle can create inner conflict and peers may notice this. Switching agendas can cause disorder with daily routines and long term plans. Breaking loyalties can result in ostracism or retribution. I encourage players to give their new characters one of each and develop others through roleplay. Maintaining those often reward the characters in various ways-there are no random tables. I assign these to monsters, too. Early on, with just a few encounters, players realize that murder hobos have no place in the world.
This topic has always been very interesting to me and I'm glad that you discussed it in your channel. What I do in my games as a DM is playing with perspective and point of view. That's probably something I took from being a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. What I mean by playing with perspective is changing the discourse depending on the players point of view. For instance, in my world, elves and orcs have been enemies since a very long time. If the players are working with the elves, orcs will be described as brute barbarians and reckless murderers, but that's not strictly true, just elvish propaganda. On the other hand, if the players work with the orcs, the elves would be described as something quite similar to colonialists that take everything from the natives and proclaim to be the rulers of the place. I think that makes my world more realistic and interesting in a moral sense. There are no good peoples by default as well as there are not evil peoples by default, all depends on the point of view and none is completely right nor completely wrong. The same happens with dark elves. They're just elves who were kicked out of the surface centuries ago and, due to the countless dangers from the Underdark, have developed a very strict society with moral standards that might seem cruel for the surface people but are actually necessary to survive in a place like the Underdark.
I ignore alignment for everything, including devils and celestials. In my setting Inhabitants of the hells are selfish opportunists manipulating the mortal plane and inhabitants of the upper planes are condescending bureaucrats somewhat disinterested in the fates of mortal beings. Both are capable of being helpful or a hinderance to the players in their own way.
My contention with the alignment system has been that it's too reductive. The way I've seen the 'default' alignments is it's from the perspective of whichever side the PCs think is 'good'. Your example of the US and the USSR is very apt, because both sides hated each other in similar ways. I have no trouble with changing the alignments of these humanoid races, since no member of a race always sticks with their culture, or retains the beliefs they are 'born to'.
Great video! Personally, I don't need alignment. I don't use it unless I'm doing something with Planescape. I prefer how games like Dragon Age handle morality; no one needs to be told that Darkspawn and monsters are evil, but people on the other hand are capable of all sorts of things, good and bad.
if all humans are not good, so how could all orcs be evil? “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the battleline dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
