Where it's never evil to kill orks and goblins

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 12:03 am

There's a difference between "evil" and "unacceptable". You can just say killing orcs isn't evil because fuck 'em. If they have a culture that isn't directly and violently opposed to yours and you start killing them, that's unacceptable.

The pre-modern argument doesn't hold water because we are modern/postmodern people. So like Frank said, unless they are zombies or Nazis, it's not cool to kill all of them guilt free. You can run a game where the fuckers are Nazi zombies, but if you characterize them as anything resembling human, you run into everyone's friend, empathy.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 12:19 am

Mask_De_H wrote:The pre-modern argument doesn't hold water because we are modern/postmodern people. So like Frank said, unless they are zombies or Nazis, it's not cool to kill all of them guilt free. You can run a game where the fuckers are Nazi zombies, but if you characterize them as anything resembling human, you run into everyone's friend, empathy.

Dont know if I agree. See, I dont mind those things if it makes sense in the context of the game. Slavering of foreign peoples on ancient greece, raids and rapes on norse sagas, despotism on bronze age settings, etc. dont really bother me. YMMV of course.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 12:59 am

What people will play at and what is morally right are obviously two very different things though. When historians talk about various acts of violence being common in their day that is to provide big picture historical context, not to excuse those acts. Well, the good historians approach it that way, anyway. There's a lot of apologists I'm not about to defend.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 1:00 am

Mask_De_H wrote:You can run a game where the fuckers are Nazi zombies,

It's called Wolfenstein 3D

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 1:47 am

Half-Orcs are my favorite player race sooo this is kidna a non-starter for me.
Maybe cause I played Warcraft the original when I was a kid. So I'm thinking that because of all the petty shit we've killed "the out groups" here on earth amonst humans, you don't need another reason. Making them the fungi out of yuggoth or whatever is just useless.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 2:31 am

Midnight_v wrote:Half-Orcs are my favorite player race sooo this is kidna a non-starter for me.
Maybe cause I played Warcraft the original when I was a kid. So I'm thinking that because of all the petty shit we've killed "the out groups" here on earth amonst humans, you don't need another reason. Making them the fungi out of yuggoth or whatever is just useless.

That's part of where I'm coming from though, it's interesting for humans to fight humans. When I watched Lord of the Rings the Southrons and Easterlings really stood out, I wanted to find out more about why these humans marched alongside orcs under Sauron's banner. I love Robert E Howard's writings and the strong cultures his humans come from where they come into mutual conflict and mutual cooperation.

But sometimes I just want monster men to purge from a dungeon/space hulk and not find a nursery filled with recently orphaned babies*. I already really really like how warhammer does their orks (and elves too), but wanted to explore other options. I also think it's perfectly possible to have a setting where one group of humanoids are like an elemental force of war so fighting them is like fighting a tsunami, and another group are guys who you can fight and/or take to bed.

*and sometimes I want to find out that my campaign against the beastmen was the government lying to me about what's really going on. FFXI did that really well.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:58 am

silva wrote: Dont know if I agree. See, I dont mind those things if it makes sense in the context of the game. Slavering of foreign peoples on ancient greece, raids and rapes on norse sagas, despotism on bronze age settings, etc. dont really bother me. YMMV of course.

The problem is, we're not observing the norsemen, we're playing the norsemen. In the context of this thread, you're saying that, in your fantasy vikings campign, you're totally cool with the players sitting at the table describing how they rape the women among the dismembered corpses of their husbands and fathers.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 5:08 am

rasmuswagner wrote:The problem is, we're not observing the norsemen, we're playing the norsemen. In the context of this thread, you're saying that, in your fantasy vikings campign, you're totally cool with the players sitting at the table describing how they rape the women among the dismembered corpses of their husbands and fathers.

I dont care about describing the daughter raping process, nor the father and husband dismembering process, nor the childs enslavement process, but I rather have them included as brief facts if those were common practices in the setting in question. (thats not much different from Apocalypse World Sex moves really - you dont need to describe the process, just say "I banged her" and then it blacks out and you wake up in the morning ).

I totally understand if you have a problem with that and prefer to run a sanitisized version of middle ages. I totally respect that. I just dont like this sanitization myself.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 5:44 am

silva wrote:I totally understand if you have a problem with that and prefer to run a sanitisized version of middle ages. I totally respect that. I just dont like this sanitization myself.

I don't want to play games in the middle ages. I want to play games in fantasy worlds that have technology vaguely reminiscent of the middle ages. I'd like those worlds to make some amount of sense despite the magic and whatever other fantasy tropes, but I'll grant a lot of leeway for fun. And as far as I'm concerned, adding in dysentery, rape, and mass slaughter of orcs and justifying them as fine adds neither sense nor fun to the game.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 6:22 am

OgreBattle wrote:
Midnight_v wrote:Half-Orcs are my favorite player race sooo this is kidna a non-starter for me.
Maybe cause I played Warcraft the original when I was a kid. So I'm thinking that because of all the petty shit we've killed "the out groups" here on earth amonst humans, you don't need another reason. Making them the fungi out of yuggoth or whatever is just useless.
That's part of where I'm coming from though, it's interesting for humans to fight humans. When I watched Lord of the Rings the Southrons and Easterlings really stood out, I wanted to find out more about why these humans marched alongside orcs under Sauron's banner. I love Robert E Howard's writings and the strong cultures his humans come from where they come into mutual conflict and mutual cooperation.

But sometimes I just want monster men to purge from a dungeon/space hulk and not find a nursery filled with recently orphaned babies*. I already really really like how warhammer does their orks (and elves too), but wanted to explore other options. I also think it's perfectly possible to have a setting where one group of humanoids are like an elemental force of war so fighting them is like fighting a tsunami, and another group are guys who you can fight and/or take to bed.

*and sometimes I want to find out that my campaign against the beastmen was the government lying to me about what's really going on. FFXI did that really well.

The designers of Dawn of War II explicitly compared the Tyranids to a force of nature when comparing them to the Chaos Marines in the role of villain. So, "hive mind that wants to eat all the things" is an option that isn't "violent fungus", though admittedly there's shared conceptual space with endless hordes of the undead there. (This is part of why I was never all that annoyed with how Matt Ward trashed the old Necrons canon, with the exception of the Pariahs subplot.)

Speaking of Chaos Marines, the option occurs to simply never reach the enemy's heartland. In all 40K depictions it is totally OK to kill all the followers of Chaos, as they by and large tend to be an invading hostile force, and the corrupting effects of the Eye of Terror probably wreck the redemption chances of any children found there. Though, there's also the fact that the armies of Chaos are human and aren't born with their alignment hat.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 6:38 am

OgreBattle wrote:That's part of where I'm coming from though, it's interesting for humans to fight humans. When I watched Lord of the Rings the Southrons and Easterlings really stood out, I wanted to find out more about why these humans marched alongside orcs under Sauron's banner.

You won't find any particular nuance in Tolkien, the Dunlanders follow Sauron "because they are bad." Interestingly, this logic ended up making "Good" be bad and "Evil" be good in the D&D world as described by Gygax. According to him, one of the big stumbling blocks for playing an Ogre or even a Goblin was that you'd be "kill on sight" in the "Good" villages. Meanwhile, "Evil" was multiracial, multicultural, and seemingly meritocratic. Humans and Dwarves not only lived in "Evil" villages, but could aspire to becoming Dark Lord of the Orcs by being personally awesome - something that was apparently not a reciprocal option for Orcs in "Good" kingdoms in Gygax's world.

Tolkien to his credit was actually bothered by this line of reasoning, concerned that his anti-Hitler opus was too similar to actual Nazi propaganda. Although he never really came up with a solution, and never addressed it in-world. There is, however, a reason that there are Storm Front yahoos who embrace Tolkien's writings as an allegory for their fight to exclude Africans and Jews. Tolkien very explicitly didn't want it interpreted that way, but it's pretty easy to do.

-Username17

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 6:49 am

One of the funniest things I read from Tolkien is when he talked about the use of atomic weapons against Japan:
"My sentiments are more or less those that Frodo would have had if he discovered some Hobbits learning to ride Nazgûl-birds 'for the liberation of the Shire'."

Stormfront also has the most surreal threads about Drizzt where you'll see white supremacists arguing that just because dark elves have black skin doesn't mean Drizzt can't be a hero and admired by white Americans.

Omegonthesane wrote: (This is part of why I was never all that annoyed with how Matt Ward trashed the old Necrons canon, with the exception of the Pariahs subplot.)

Yeah, the Newcrons are oozing in personality. I'm glad they replaced the oldcrons (though the pariah subplot was the only interesting part of them). "Mindless undead" Necrons still exist though as a kind of mental illness or when none of the sentient necron nobles survive through the millennia so it's just an AI running its drones on default or corrupted program.

I figure Necrons as they are now are halfway to being a "You can kill them without feeling bad" and "You can hold a conversation with them". Some Necron Lords actually like ruling over other races so when they take over an imperial world they just change the government and make people build effigies to their hubris

Newcrons

Speaking of Chaos Marines, the option occurs to simply never reach the enemy's heartland. In all 40K depictions it is totally OK to kill all the followers of Chaos, as they by and large tend to be an invading hostile force, and the corrupting effects of the Eye of Terror probably wreck the redemption chances of any children found there. Though, there's also the fact that the armies of Chaos are human and aren't born with their alignment hat.

Is there actually stuff written about life for a not-superhuman regular human living in the Eye of Terror?

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 8:34 am

silva wrote:
rasmuswagner wrote:The problem is, we're not observing the norsemen, we're playing the norsemen. In the context of this thread, you're saying that, in your fantasy vikings campign, you're totally cool with the players sitting at the table describing how they rape the women among the dismembered corpses of their husbands and fathers.
I dont care about describing the daughter raping process, nor the father and husband dismembering process, nor the childs enslavement process, but I rather have them included as brief facts if those were common practices in the setting in question. (thats not much different from Apocalypse World Sex moves really - you dont need to describe the process, just say "I banged her" and then it blacks out and you wake up in the morning ).

I totally understand if you have a problem with that and prefer to run a sanitisized version of middle ages. I totally respect that. I just dont like this sanitization myself.

I can understand how and why you're in siege mentality every time you visit this board, so I'm going to break it down into bite-sized chunks for you.

*Adventurers stereotypically enter Orc or Goblin caves and kill every weapon-bearing adult.
*This includes young adults, who have never personally committed a crime against the Lands of Man. Killing someone for the actions of his peers or the actions you expect he'll take in some unspecified future is generally considered bad by a modern audience, mmkay?
*It also creates Orphaned Orc Babies. Who are going to go crying to their death of thirst or ratbites very soon. Leaving babies in a cave in the wilds, with no intention of returning or sending help is generally considered pretty fucking terrible by a modern audience, mmkay?
*Killing all the adult members of the tribe is not something that is glossed over, it's the very meat of the gaming session.
*By equivocating genocide with all the other atrocities, you are in effect stating that a mini-game about "appraising and breaking in a pack of prisoners for their new life as slaves" is just as appropriate for a gaming sessions as killing orcs.

What we are discussing in this thread is something that you would be familiar with, if you had any experience with RPGs: How can we spend an evening of delightful orc-fighting, without ending it by going through the nursery and smothering orc babies in the crib because it's more merciful than the alternatives?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 1:03 pm

Hell, even though they were made to be like that, the WH40K Orks ain't just a bunch of mindless murderers . .
They have culture and religion.
They enjoy sports and music.
They enjoy alcohol.
And if you combine their religion, sports, music and alcohol, something gets killed.
That's just how they roll y0!
The orks are the only genuinely happy/content race in the universe of 40K as a whole.

And the reason WHY Necrons kill everything alive is, as far as i understood, to starve their enemies that live off of the essence of the living beings.
Nothing alive to eat? You starve. We don't need no food, we can sleep untill you all have starved to death.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 1:14 pm

How can we spend an evening of delightful orc-fighting, without ending it by going through the nursery and smothering orc babies in the crib because it's more merciful than the alternatives?

Various options:

1. Don't go into the orcs' heartland. When you fight orcs it's usually in direct defense of your own society. In the cases when you launch an expedition to the Caves of Chaos, what you find isn't an orc village with civilians and children, but an armed camp on an extended raid.

2. Portray the orcs as people, so you can have this concern in character. (No one ever talks about how to have human villains without having to kill a bunch of human children, after all). You can then resolve it in any of a number of different ways:

a. When you attack the orc village, you're not looking to kill them to the last man -you're trying to fill santa sacks with the orcs' stuff and prove your bravery. Even if you could you wouldn't wipe them all out, because that would be a horrible thing to do.

b. When you attack the orc village, at a certain point the orcs will surrender to avoid being wiped out, and will accept your demands to stop raiding the Shire or whatever on pain of you coming back to finish the job.

c. When you attack the orc village, it's war, not pest control. If you defeat the orc warriors, the King will march tiny men in behind you to set up an occupation force, governor and tax collector. I see half-orcs in their future.

This does not necessarily force you to make orcs into nothing but humans in a funny hat -they can still have a thoroughly alien lifecycle, culture and/or psychology. But it does require humans and orcs to be similar enough that they can usefully communicate, and coexist peacefully in the right circumstances.

Alternative 3. is for them to lack that similarity, so they're basically a horde of locusts that must be stopped and can't be reasoned with. Either they spontaneously form at full size somehow, or their children are already self-sufficient and thoroughly evil, like Wyrmlings. I think this option is distastefull and really dull, but I include it for completeness' sake.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 3:35 pm

Ok, what about this:

If you kill Orcs youre releasing them from damnation because they are in truth good souls that got trapped against their will and now are twisted and behaving bestially, agianst their original nature. So you kill them out of mercy, for saving them.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 3:42 pm

What the Collectors from Mass Effect 2? They were once people, but they are mind controlled into being slaver/Murderers. And, they have no art or culture. Just one purpose, which is to eliminate all sentient life, even though they themselves are sentient.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 3:49 pm

silva wrote:Ok, what about this:

If you kill Orcs youre releasing them from damnation because they are in truth good souls that got trapped against their will and now are twisted and behaving bestially, agianst their original nature. So you kill them out of mercy, for saving them.

While many religions have used that exact excuse to condone mass murder, it's still repugnant. In fact, the very fact that it is literally exactly the excuse used to condone real mass murders in the real world is what makes it repugnant.

You wanna talk about "culture bearers," "atonement through death," or "degenerate races" while you're at it?

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 3:52 pm

/Godwin
no, i don't know why this does not work <.<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:06 pm

If the previously-proposed hive mind is strong enough that 'the ork' is a single entity with many bodies, ganking individual bodies doesn't actually kill anyone. Of course, you then have to deal with an enemy who is crazy coordinated. The non-ork side would need some sort of super-advantage of its own to make up for that communications deficit.

If an 'ork' was the result of a parasitic organism that could only live by being implanted in and taking over another sentient being's body, and effectively killed that being in the process so you couldn't get the person back by removing the parasite, then you could make an argument that they were all murderers and under the death penalty by default.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:09 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
silva wrote:Ok, what about this:

If you kill Orcs youre releasing them from damnation because they are in truth good souls that got trapped against their will and now are twisted and behaving bestially, agianst their original nature. So you kill them out of mercy, for saving them.
While many religions have used that exact excuse to condone mass murder, it's still repugnant. In fact, the very fact that it is literally exactly the excuse used to condone real mass murders in the real world is what makes it repugnant.

You wanna talk about "culture bearers," "atonement through death," or "degenerate races" while you're at it?

-Username17

But in the game all that would be objectivelly true, different from real life. So it would be indeed a good thing to release those souls from their damned reality. Got the difference ?

(Btw, Im replaying Dark Souls now and the idea is similar: hollows are damned souls that you free when you perma-kill them)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:13 pm

silva wrote:But in the game all that would be objectivelly true, different from real life. So it would be indeed a good thing to release those souls from their damned reality.

Got the difference ?

You could make a game where Africans were objectively less intelligent than Europeans and Jews were objectively drinking the blood of Christian babies, and that wouldn't be remotely OK. Sure, in the game world, discriminating against Africans and hunting the Jewish vampire menace would be acceptable, but sitting down and playing such a game would be a horrible thing to do.

Using real world genocide apologies in your game world doesn't make things OK. It makes your entire game world a repulsive piece of racism fanfiction.

-Username17

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:19 pm

How about this partial solution: baby orcs can survive to adulthood unattended.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:If an 'ork' was the result of a parasitic organism that could only live by being implanted in and taking over another sentient being's body, and effectively killed that being in the process so you couldn't get the person back by removing the parasite, then you could make an argument that they were all murderers and under the death penalty by default.

I'm pretty sure that the Abberations splatbook in D&D 3.5 has this be the Mind Flayer reproductive process.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:33 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Using real world genocide apologies in your game world doesn't make things OK. It makes your entire game world a repulsive piece of racism fanfiction.

-Username17

But nobody is using the real world. Its Fiction. Do you also get this frilled when you see other works of fiction containing genocide, rape and slavering like comics, movies, videogames, etc ? Being a slaver in Fallout 2 doesnt mean I condone the practice in real life. Being a corp in Netrunner doesnt mean I condone exploitation of fellow humans in real life. Playing Duke Nukem 3D doesnt mean I condone mass murdering because someone said your girlfriend is hot in real life.

If you have difficulty in separating reality from fiction, you shouldnt be engaging in any fictional recreation in the first place. YMMV and all that.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:47 pm

silva wrote:Ok, what about this:

If you kill Orcs youre releasing them from damnation because they are in truth good souls that got trapped against their will and now are twisted and behaving bestially, agianst their original nature. So you kill them out of mercy, for saving them.

That sounds like a more horrible/racist version of what I posted earlier.

Avoraciopoctules wrote:It is the Dharma of orcs to be the bane of civilization. They accumulate merit by lurking in caves and waylaying travelers, as well as by raiding villages and cities. However, there are certain principles they are expected to abide by to keep things from getting too horrific.

Dying in battle with heroes is a great honor, assuring good odds of getting a better reincarnation. Orcs often give heroes a fighting chance even when they could use dishonorable tactics to gain great advantage, since they get metaphysical brownie points whether the heroes win or lose.

If the orcs are going through the motions of raids out of religious obligation and are totally okay with having the Warlord get stopped by adventurers, then both sides get some of what they want when PCs show up and stab them. Now, caste systems like this still have creepy prejudiced undertones, but that means you can have a late-game plot where you storm Kailasa and force the gods to change the Dharma Wheel at swordpoint.