Alignment in 5E still causes arguments

[animea90]

One thing I noticed with barbarian tribes and stuff is that, if they aren't literally evil, then players will usually try to negotiate with them, since there's no fear of divine retribution and such. Which calls to question, why didn't the NPCs already try negotiating with each other? Further compounded by that 90% of a given RPG's mechanical support is going ot be for combat - the reasons NPCs aren't diplomancing each other is that NPCs can't perform GM fellatio, rather than a fluff reason that's backed by mechanics. 3x3 alignment and "orcs are literally evil" start to look like loose threads in a shoddily made sweater when you tug at them.

NPCs aren't negotiating with each other because they don't have +20 bonuses to diplomacy rolls. Characters can becomes geniuses of diplomacy and intimidation if they are built to do so. DnD is very loose about letting you stack bonuses to skills to epic proportions.

Where this breaks down is that while GMs do not expect players to be able to swing a sword, they expect the player to roleplay the diplomacy and your players are not as skilled as their characters.

[animea90]

So, this seems to boil down to two possibilities:

1. Let's make a game with clearly designated white hats and black hats so we can conveniently vanquish the forces of darkness in four hours with Doritos. We'll call it something catchy, like "Dungeons & Dragons."

2. Tolkien = BAD! Twilight = GOOD! Ahem... Let's make a Middle Ages + Magic simulator where conflicts arise over complex socio-political issues that would be quickly resolved in a universe where you can make magical infinite food-makers, provide custom demi-planes for radical splinter groups trying to find a "promised land," and all sapient races are intrinsically intelligent and reasonable. We'll call it, "Oprah Winfrey Presents: Fantasyland."

While group 2 could generally use group 1's product as a rough framework to inspire their own games, or even look for products that better match their desires, it's apparently far more important to save the world from D&D's corrupting influence.

Perhaps a more artistic Denner could make an anti-D&D comic called "Conspicuously White Dungeons" that ends in the main character yelling, "I don't want to be Galadriel anymore! I want to be Debbie!"

Here is a very simple question, and before I bother taking you seriously you're going to have to answer it: is race the only way you can think of to simply and clearly designate the setting's white hats and black hats?

If you answer yes, you're probably a racist. I don't mean that in the way "hey, we're having an argument about racism on the internet and you disagree with me so you're a racist," I mean that in the "hey, you just admitted that the only way you can think of to tell bad guys from good guys is the color of their skin."

If you answer no, then you're admitting that the dichotomy constructed in your post is false, and there are in fact trivial ways to satisfy point 1 that do not involve inherently evil orcs or your hyperbolicly described required complexity. You should apologize for your fuck up, which I will assume it is, because the alternative is that you are a liar and your pants are on fire.

Now, both of those answers are obviously bad for you. But unlike your's, the dichotomy I've dropped in your lap is a true one and you either have to man up and pick one or lamely try and weasel out of it. Hint: you should not let my antagonistic attitude cause you to double down and answer yes. You should answer no and agree that the cult of babykickers are obviously blackhats regardless of their racial makeup because they kick babies.

Aside: did you seriously drop a "it's Tolkein or Twilight, and you can have your stupid sparkly vampires" barb into this conversation? That's what my eyes are telling me, but I can't actually bring myself to believe them.

Its not the only way, but I can't think of many good ways to "simply and clearly" designate good vs evil .The problem is doing it in a way that maintains immersion and eliminates the possibility of deceptions.

Alternatives would be: Giant signs over everyone's head marking them as good or evil(many video games go for this).

[Whipstitch]

I just have my bad guys swing axes at people.

You don't require your players to deeply analyze the motives of axe swinger? Perhaps he had a deprived childhood, where his mother failed to read to him ever night. And perhaps axe-swinger is really just trying to make an honest living according to his social norms, while the players are stinky murder-hobos.

Sometimes if I'm feeling really creative the bad guys reek of gin.

[kzt]

Its not the only way, but I can't think of many good ways to "simply and clearly" designate good vs evil .The problem is doing it in a way that maintains immersion and eliminates the possibility of deceptions.

Alternatives would be: Giant signs over everyone's head marking them as good or evil(many video games go for this).

Red and blue colored clothes? I'll let you decide whether crips or the bloods are "good".

[hyzmarca]

So, this seems to boil down to two possibilities:

1. Let's make a game with clearly designated white hats and black hats so we can conveniently vanquish the forces of darkness in four hours with Doritos. We'll call it something catchy, like "Dungeons & Dragons."

2. Tolkien = BAD! Twilight = GOOD! Ahem... Let's make a Middle Ages + Magic simulator where conflicts arise over complex socio-political issues that would be quickly resolved in a universe where you can make magical infinite food-makers, provide custom demi-planes for radical splinter groups trying to find a "promised land," and all sapient races are intrinsically intelligent and reasonable. We'll call it, "Oprah Winfrey Presents: Fantasyland."

While group 2 could generally use group 1's product as a rough framework to inspire their own games, or even look for products that better match their desires, it's apparently far more important to save the world from D&D's corrupting influence.

Perhaps a more artistic Denner could make an anti-D&D comic called "Conspicuously White Dungeons" that ends in the main character yelling, "I don't want to be Galadriel anymore! I want to be Debbie!"

Here is a very simple question, and before I bother taking you seriously you're going to have to answer it: is race the only way you can think of to simply and clearly designate the setting's white hats and black hats?

If you answer yes, you're probably a racist. I don't mean that in the way "hey, we're having an argument about racism on the internet and you disagree with me so you're a racist," I mean that in the "hey, you just admitted that the only way you can think of to tell bad guys from good guys is the color of their skin."

If you answer no, then you're admitting that the dichotomy constructed in your post is false, and there are in fact trivial ways to satisfy point 1 that do not involve inherently evil orcs or your hyperbolicly described required complexity. You should apologize for your fuck up, which I will assume it is, because the alternative is that you are a liar and your pants are on fire.

Now, both of those answers are obviously bad for you. But unlike your's, the dichotomy I've dropped in your lap is a true one and you either have to man up and pick one or lamely try and weasel out of it. Hint: you should not let my antagonistic attitude cause you to double down and answer yes. You should answer no and agree that the cult of babykickers are obviously blackhats regardless of their racial makeup because they kick babies.

Aside: did you seriously drop a "it's Tolkein or Twilight, and you can have your stupid sparkly vampires" barb into this conversation? That's what my eyes are telling me, but I can't actually bring myself to believe them.

Its not the only way, but I can't think of many good ways to "simply and clearly" designate good vs evil .The problem is doing it in a way that maintains immersion and eliminates the possibility of deceptions.

Alternatives would be: Giant signs over everyone's head marking them as good or evil(many video games go for this).

I prefer the route of making good and evil basically be political movements.

Defining someone as Evil would then mean that they supports many (but not necessarily all) of Evil's policy platform.

Law and chaos can get the same treatment. Hell, the platforms don't even have to make sense so long as they're consistant.

[Stinktopus]

But to the (new) point: WHY THE FUCKING FUCK do you think explaining why racism against green people in the setting is totally justified rebuts an argument that it would be better not to justify racism against green people in the setting? Are you incapable of making an argument that coherently interacts with the words being thrown at you?

Because orcs aren't "people." They're disposable minions you put in dungeons when you want to have the heroes kill everything and rack up experience points, but don't have the budget to properly train giant spiders or animate corpses.

[darkmaster]

*blinks* Are you high? You seem to be confusing yourself with the imaginary people in your games.

[sarcasmoverdose]

Because orcs aren't "people." They're disposable minions you put in dungeons when you want to have the heroes kill everything and rack up experience points, but don't have the budget to properly train giant spiders or animate corpses.

And tell us all about how well that philosophy worked for 4E.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

But to the (new) point: WHY THE FUCKING FUCK do you think explaining why racism against green people in the setting is totally justified rebuts an argument that it would be better not to justify racism against green people in the setting? Are you incapable of making an argument that coherently interacts with the words being thrown at you?

Because orcs aren't "people." They're disposable minions you put in dungeons when you want to have the heroes kill everything and rack up experience points, but don't have the budget to properly train giant spiders or animate corpses.

I don't know about your table, but as GM, I've never been able to get players to go grind on orcs as if they were JRPG protagonists. If it has a mouth and a brain, chances are someone will try to talk to it. I don't think I've ever had a game where the motivations of my NPCs was useless information.

[infected slut princess]

I don't particularly care for this attitude that orcs should be treated like animals and killed just because they are orcs and they are a convenient dungeon mook. The rights of orcs should be respected. Even if they are more likely to be chaotic evil on average, that doesn't mean they are all murderers and deserve brutal retribution. Players who have their characters gleefully slaughter rational creatures like orcs on grounds of appearance alone are twisted fuckers.

[Cyberzombie]

That is all very uncomfortable. But it's also something the genre is in the middle of abandoning - orcs are increasingly a protagonist race, and you don't really get anything out of declaring them to be kill-on-sight. It's not like people have problems stabbing the cult of baby-kicking if they aren't green. You don't need evil races for evil villains.

Yeah, unfortunately they're not abandoning the whole deal about orcs being inherently dumber and uglier than humans with their reduced charisma/intelligence scores. The end result is that orcs look way closer to black people and their portrayal is very racist. It's actually more insulting in my mind because clearly, they're acknowledging the parallel between orcs and black people as opposed to just denying it and distancing themselves from it. Yeah, they admit that black people aren't inherently evil, but they are inherently dumber.

I would think their best bet would be to make orcs an evil race, and get rid of the concept of half-orcs entirely. Anything that commonly breeds with humans without the use of magic is dangerously close to being seen as an alternate sub-human race. After all, nobody really complains about bugbears, beholders or gnolls. It's orcs that commonly get fingered as being some kind of racist stereotype. The closer a race is to feeling like a variant human, the more racist parallels you're going to get.

[deaddmwalking]

You know, saying that the orc race was created by an evil god to be evil isn't much different from existing justifications surrounding 'Mark of Cain'.

There's two things:

1) Even if orcs are largely evil, individual orcs may not be evil. The setting is very specific on that score. If you can't tell if an individual orc is good or evil and you can't 'slaughter on sight' then they don't serve the purpose that people would have them serve - being red dots that you can indiscriminately kill.

2) If orcs are largely evil, but not as fundamentally evil as demons or devils, you have a metaphysical question about the nature of evil. Since 'active gods' are not an expectation for every setting (not even every official D&D published setting), the justification fails as often as it succeeds. In those cases, either a new justification needs to be found, or the supposition is unsupported.

[infected slut princess]

orcs look way closer to black people

they're acknowledging the parallel between orcs and black people

There is no parallel unless you are from Stormfront. You are racist if you think orcs look like black people. You are fucking scum.

[ACOS]

My objection is that I have no problem with a fantasy species in a fantasy universe being intrinsically bad guys because an evil god created them specifically to shit in the cereal of everyone else. I figure EVIL gods do that sort of shit in universes where the pantheons largely break down into God of Cereal and God of Shitting in Cereal.

This right here is the extent of Alignment. If the game says it's evil, then it's just assumed to be evil. And the game also assumes that your game at home should be about the White Hats killing the Black Hats because reasons. Seriously, the entirety of the "Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Morals and Ethics" section of the book consists of simply a 3x3 grid table and less than 1 whole page of commentary. That's it - that is the entirely of the morals&ethics section for the entire game. You cannot possibly hope to ever extract anything meaningful from this. It is nothing more than a handwavey bullshit of how the hats are assigned.
Racism isn't even part of the discussion for those who keep printing this shit edition after edition. Evil God Of Evilness shat out some being to worship him, and this is what they look like - they don't even draw the RL racial distinction that so many other people do. "No, that's not black people; black people are just black people. Orcs are just something humaniod looking that got shat out be the Evil God of Evilness, because fantasy trope." And that is literally the furthest extent to which these authors have thought about this. Full stop.
You either:
(a) accept this mind-numbingly simple game conceit and the asininity attached to it, -or-
(b) toss alignments completely out the window (except for maybe extraplanars, and possibly undead to some degree)

I don't even know why this has been a serious discussion past 1982.

[ACOS]

orcs look way closer to black people

they're acknowledging the parallel between orcs and black people

There is no parallel unless you are from Stormfront. You are racist if you think orcs look like black people.

I'm inclined to agree with this.
For people who want to find racism, they can find it in a ham sandwich. It's not even worth indulging the discussion.

[Cyberzombie]

There is no parallel unless you are from Stormfront. You are racist if you think orcs look like black people. You are fucking scum.

Modern orcs have turned into basically humans of a different skin. Every iteration seems to humanize them more than the one before it. Their appearance has gone from being beastial to more and more human-like in appearance. They breed more prolifically than normal humans, are stronger, and yet are also less intelligent and lack charisma. Yet unlike most monster races, they're capable of having babies with humans (which kind of indicates they're very close to human). Their role in the campaign world is that they're dumb and savage, because they rarely have any cities/kingdoms of their own, yet they can be taught civilization by regular humans, and allowed to live with them. Even when allowed in human society, they tend to always hold inferior positions.

I'm not a racist, but it's hard for me to not see some connection, given that they're effectively black stereotypes with a slight bit of fantasy flavor (though not even much anymore). I mean come on, we're talking about a race that's basically identical to humans morally but too dumb and savage to establish their own civilizations until the human (aka the white man) shows them how its done. It almost seems like some kind of slavery apologist argument.

I don't normally see racist parallels but the modern RPG orcs are practically slapping you in the face with it.

[Laertes]

The existence of half-elves and half-orcs as separate things from their parent races is very characteristic of the nineteenth century paranoia about race mixing. Back then people would seriously use terms like mulatto and Eurasian because they honestly believed that the children of an interracial couple were something entirely different from either parent. The fact that this concept exists in modern fantasy is probably down to the fact that both HP Lovecraft and JRR Tolkien were fond of archaic nineteenth century ideals, and were also massive racists.

Paranoia about race mixing is one of the big racist bugbears: it's what's supposed to be so terrifying about Lovecraft's Deep Ones. The amalgamation of the "they are taking our women" panic and the "oh my god I'm not as pure bred as I thought" panic was very scary to people at the time. Nowadays it just comes off as kind of cool, almost like discovering that you're secretly of wizard parentage and now you get to go off to Hogwarts.

A more modern reading of it might just be to say that if your offspring are fertile, then by definition you are both of the same species. Thus a child of an elf and a human will probably just have the stats of whichever of the two they most closely resemble, and nobody makes a big deal out of it.

[deaddmwalking]

I mean come on, we're talking about a race that's basically identical to humans morally but too dumb and savage to establish their own civilizations until the human (aka the white man) shows them how its done.

African states (including several powerful ones) have existed in sub-Saharan Africa - they qualify as 'civilizations' as well as any others. The ultimate failure of African States can largely be attributed to the slave trade - while Africans were not blameless (instead, many were active participants in acquiring slaves from enemy groups), the scale certainly became overwhelming.

Considering that the number of slaves taken from African may have exceeded 10 million and much of the 'justification' for slavery required painting Africans as 'savage', it is hardly surprising that states collapsed and evidence of their existence was not well-accepted by European 'explorers'.

The fact is, Africans have developed sophisticated and powerful cultures and participated in global trade before colonialism. Reducing African organization to only 'tribal' is historically inaccurate.

[DSMatticus]

Cyberzombie is not trying to describe Africans. He is trying to describe stereotypes of Africans. He's just flubbing a lot.

... it's hard for me to not see some connection, given that they're effectively black stereotypes...

See?

[Mistborn]

Honestly I want to see Cyberzombie give a positive argument for why Orks being genetically evil is a good idea. It's easy to see why it's a bad idea it introduces an uncomfortable subtext to the game and it genrally detracts from the game. You don't even need genetically evil races for there to be hordes of baddies for the heroes to mow down, you just need the baddie organizations to be sufficiently evil.

The only counter argument Cyberzombie seems to have is "butt, butt, Social Justice Warriors!!!1!!1!!11!!". Which is basically Godwin's fallacy only less convincing because the targets aren't even evil.

[Cyberzombie]

The fact is, Africans have developed sophisticated and powerful cultures and participated in global trade before colonialism. Reducing African organization to only 'tribal' is historically inaccurate.

Yeah I'm aware, as many racial stereotypes tend to be inaccurate. I also don't believe that blacks are inherently dumber or lack charisma compared to other races either. But that is what racists would have us believe and that is true of the D&D orc.

[QUOTE="]The only counter argument Cyberzombie seems to have is "butt, butt, Social Justice Warriors!!!1!!1!!11!!". Which is basically Godwin's fallacy only less convincing because the targets aren't even evil.[/QUOTE]

The targets don't have to be evil for it to be insulting. It'd be pretty much the same if they set the maximum intelligence for female characters lower than that of male characters or something similar.

Orcs aren't portrayed as being evil, they're portrayed as simply being inferior. And in many ways I think that's worse.

[Scrivener]

Go away for a few days and it's no longer a side discussion, thanks to whoever did that.

A few big points not seeing how inherently evil orcs is wrong is denying racism exists

I disagree. If there is a culture who has stereotypes of pig noses, tusks, wolf ears and garish dress, the orcs are a clear stand in for that race. This means orcs are inherently problematic. If orcs were a caricature of the Inuit them orcs themselves would be racist, regardless as to the cause of their evil.

I do not deny racism, I just don't see how a collection of random attributes add up to real group, that has no stereotypes associated with those attributes. I have never heard of a stereotype that any ethnicity has tusks, or wolf ears. The only way to make the association is to ignore all physical characteristics and go "The welsh are savage, stupid, violent, cannot create any meaningful culture, and even the best of them are Chavs. That sounds like orcs!" Considering that leap as obvious is racist, seeing a Pict as racist isn't since they are a collection of stereotypes given form.

there are neonazi D&D players

First, holy shit, really?

Racist people are racist. It doesn't surprise me skinheads see orcs as minorities. Racists also see hidden racist messages in other media, this doesn't make them right.

Orcs are PCs now

So that means that orcs can't have violent urges? There are literally hundreds of fantasy protagonists that struggle with inner and societal evil. Elric, Drizzit, Grom Hellscream and others all made good protagonists even though they fought their own "inner darkness". This trope has not hindered any of those stories, and I would venture to guess than many people wanting to play orcs are actively embracing that idea.

Orcs in X are clearly Y ethnicity

I don't care.

The Tolkien argument holds water, since it is the foundation if D&D (granted Tolkien orcs are closer to D&D hobgoblins [hatred of elves, appearance and association with goblins]), and even then I don't see people upset because Orcs are a horrible parody of the Ottomans.

Inherently evil orcs automatically gives a racist subtext

It might. I think in an odd way it pushes towards a white mans burden feeling for the other races. This could be because I have been thinking about orcs as a stand in for real races lately, but I find myself being swayed more and more by this argument.

[animea90]

I don't particularly care for this attitude that orcs should be treated like animals and killed just because they are orcs and they are a convenient dungeon mook. The rights of orcs should be respected. Even if they are more likely to be chaotic evil on average, that doesn't mean they are all murderers and deserve brutal retribution. Players who have their characters gleefully slaughter rational creatures like orcs on grounds of appearance alone are twisted fuckers.

You have to remember that this is a game. Different games will have different attitudes.

Often, people want to play a relaxing more light hearted game without getting into the socio-economic conditions that created the bad guys.

[DSMatticus]

This thread is fucking excruciating. Apparently talking about racism instantly makes everyone stupid and illiterate, I don't fucking know. So instead of me trying to knock down an endless parade of non-sequiturs, strawmen, false dichotomies, and other bullshit, we're going to start over from square one.

Hi, my name is DSMatticus. I do not think orcs should be automagically blackhats who are justifiably kill on sight. There are a number of reasons I hold that to be the case, and literally all of them have come up in this thread, but here they are again:

1) WoW happened. Elder Scrolls happened. A bunch of other stories in which orcs are just green people and potential protagonists happened. And even without that, people have been wanting to play orcs since forever. People want to interact with orcs in a way that does not involve indiscriminate murder or attempting to delay indiscriminate murder. Orcs are just another funny human like elves and dwarves now. That's the direction the genre's gone. And that's fucking fine. This is not a clock that needs rolled back.

2) Related to above, orcs have been thoroughly and completely humanized. They live like humans. They breed like humans. They communicate like humans. They think like humans. And that means that when you declare that they are automagically blackhats, the correct "solution" to an orc tribe is to genocide a bunch of orc women and children. And if your response to that idea is "what kind of horrible DM drops a bunch of orc women and children in front of the PC's and forces them to tackle the moral quandary of whether or not to kill them, instead of just dropping armed and villainous orcs in front of them who clearly deserve a visit from some murderhobos," then no shit sherlock that's the point. If you're only going to drop orcs in front of the players that the players are already justified in killing, why are you inventing in setting justifications for killing all those orcs you aren't going to make them kill because it would be the biggest buzz kill ever?

3) The Stormfront worldview is that certain racists are different-colored beastmen of inferior intellect and incapable of moral decency. Declaring that orcs are different-colored beastmen of inferior intellect and incapable of moral decency is telling them that this is a fictional setting in which their worldview is 100% correct. As a general rule, if a neo-nazi is pleased with your setting's approach to race, that should give you pause.

Note how absolutely zero of the above arguments involve convincing you that orcs are any specific race. Even point 3 only involves the rather obvious claim that the setting's description of orcs ("beastmen of inferior intellect and incapable of moral decency") is equivalent to the Stormfront narrative about non-white races in the real world (all non-white races, usually), and not a comparison to any specific race. So if you find yourself saying, "but orcs obviously aren't black people," punch yourself in the fucking mouth.

At its core, the argument is that you add a racist subtext to your game and it gives you absolutely nothing in exchange and also cockblocks a bunch of potential stories. And if you wanted to respond to that argument, you would need to demonstrate that the in-setting description of orcs looks nothing like the real world narratives of racists (hint: you can't, because it does) or describe the benefits of having all orcs (including orc children) be justifiably stab on sight (very little success so far on this front, because color coding the baddies is pretty easy).

So, are we all on the same page yet about what the argument actually is? Because there is no reason for this to be this goddamn difficult.

[sarcasmoverdose]

I disagree. If there is a culture who has stereotypes of pig noses, tusks, wolf ears and garish dress, the orcs are a clear stand in for that race. This means orcs are inherently problematic. If orcs were a caricature of the Inuit them orcs themselves would be racist, regardless as to the cause of their evil.

I do not deny racism, I just don't see how a collection of random attributes add up to real group, that has no stereotypes associated with those attributes. I have never heard of a stereotype that any ethnicity has tusks, or wolf ears. The only way to make the association is to ignore all physical characteristics and go "The welsh are savage, stupid, violent, cannot create any meaningful culture, and even the best of them are Chavs. That sounds like orcs!" Considering that leap as obvious is racist, seeing a Pict as racist isn't since they are a collection of stereotypes given form.

Often racist caricatures contain features the individuals do not have (Jews with horns, blacks with overly simian features, etc).

Racist people are racist. It doesn't surprise me skinheads see orcs as minorities. Racists also see hidden racist messages in other media, this doesn't make them right.

This is, 5E was describing the psychology of the orcs in the same way that the WS describe blacks. It's not a leap of faith to link one with the other.

So that means that orcs can't have violent urges? There are literally hundreds of fantasy protagonists that struggle with inner and societal evil. Elric, Drizzit, Grom Hellscream and others all made good protagonists even though they fought their own "inner darkness". This trope has not hindered any of those stories, and I would venture to guess than many people wanting to play orcs are actively embracing that idea.

Person has violent urges =/= race is "inclined to evil".

The Tolkien argument holds water, since it is the foundation if D&D (granted Tolkien orcs are closer to D&D hobgoblins [hatred of elves, appearance and association with goblins]), and even then I don't see people upset because Orcs are a horrible parody of the Ottomans.

Tolkein actually based the orcs on racist caricatures of Asians.

"The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."

It might. I think in an odd way it pushes towards a white mans burden feeling for the other races. This could be because I have been thinking about orcs as a stand in for real races lately, but I find myself being swayed more and more by this argument.

Replace all references to "Orc" with "Black Person" in 5E. How does it look now?