Every time people lament changes to the lore that amount to “not every member of species X is irredeemably evil” and claim the game is removing villains from it, I think how villains of so-caleld evil species fall into two cathegories: a) bland and boring and b)have something else, unrelated to their species going on for them, that makes them interesting.
I feel like the bigger reason to have evil races is to have a more or less ever present challenge and point of conflict. For instance, the underdark is horrible place to be, in large part due to the drow. Their presence and general alignment of evil makes the setting dangerous and interesting. Is this town safe? Have the drow been messing about assassinating local leaders? Should we help this group by liberating them from slavery from the drow?
It’s almost like their species is in of itself a character, with this species sized character being evil. Having an entire species be generally evil gives the world more scale than a single evil character would. But yes, an individual villain needs more than just their evil race to be interesting.
But the reason the drow are evil is primarily because of the Spider god Lolth, not because they’re Drow. Drow free from Lolth aren’t necessarily evil.
Absolutely. But I wasn’t talking about the lore reason why they’re generally evil.
No quarrel there. The only interesting thing about evil races is when you subvert the trope, but as we’ve all been doing that since the 80s that’s just become another tired trope.
Personally I just run campaigns where 90% of the people are humans.
Mindflayers are definitly evil (from humanoid perstective) because of their species. They eat and bread brains. And they are interesting.
Deekin is a great example of how an evil species (Lawful Evil Kobold) can make a great narrative.
I don’t think you necessarily need to have a whole species be one alignment for it.
Just having the culture of a specific community aligned a certain way (ideally with a reason) is more interesting than “all x do bad stuff because they’re bad and they like badness.”
I think a huge problem with this is trying to frame everything through D&D as well as our perspective. Fuck modern D&D and its desire to control the entire dialogue. Wizards of the Coast aside, there’s also a fantasy component here. I personally dislike requiring all races to act exactly like humans with human motives. From a specific perspective, we view the wanton murder and sacrifice of wood elves by the drow as a terribly evil thing. From the drow perspective, why can’t the opposite be true? I’m not talking about Salvatore’s one-sided writing that makes it clear the whole thing is a massive con. D&D is very biased toward human motive and perspective. Why can’t both be true? Drow are evil to us and we are evil to them? That’s a much more interesting story and completely changes the narrative around someone like Drizzt.
This is a really nuanced take on speculative fiction in general. I also strongly feel that, the way WotC writes things, removing racial alignment is very important. There is no nuance in their universe. Even when we see other races, we always evaluate their action through a human lens rather than being presented a cogent paradigm contrary to ours.
DnD good and evil are distinct from common usage of the terms; they are cosmic forces, objective truths. Each action reverberates through the higher and lower planes and tilts the scales towards victory for one side or another in their eternal struggle. This lore doesn’t leave a ton of room to change the alignment of entire races (and that is by design, structure makes it easier for people to get in to the setting).
But this is just in the established settings, any DM is free to homebrew any setting and justification they like.
Note that I am not trying to defend this as the height of storytelling, it isn’t. It is a consequence of how the setting is justified - with deities being active participants, having specific rules for granting and revoking powers, and the physical presence of higher and lower planes embodying perfect conceptions of ‘good’, ‘evil’, order, chaos, etc. All of this can be changed, and again any DM is free to change it, but the ‘deep lore’ of the established settings over the past 40 years is drenched in this stuff.
One way to consider it is simply - the Drow aren’t evil because they are Drow. The Drow are evil because their culture promotes actions that align with the literal true definition of evil that is present in the setting. Evil doesn’t mean bad, it is just a label aligning with some physical rule of the universe. Just like the positive charge of a proton and negative charge of an electron are labels for physical rules of our own universe. Positive isn’t any better than negative, but they are inherently distinct.
Evil races give someone the PCs don’t have to feel bad about killing. Obviously depends on your party, but if they befriend the hungry wolf pack and negotiate with the bandits, then a band of definitely evil goblins gives the barbarian something to smash without worrying if they’re killing little Timmy’s dad.
Edited to add: And if “he’s an evil race” is your only reason for them being a major villain, that’s bad storytelling. About as bad as “yes they’re going to help you because they’re good,” and not for some kind of benefit to them, monetary or spiritual or whatever.
Your players care about race when murdering people. If you want to murder people then just do it.
Also that’s what we have Nazi metaphor’s for
Szass Tam, Sauron, SecCom, The Empire, etc.
If you can kill something without feeling bad because of its race, that’s fucked up. A group of goblin bandits can be fun, but they’re villains because of the bandit thing, not the goblin thing. Why should a group defined by plundering travelers be more acceptable than a group defined by being short with green skin?
That said, the undead are, more often than not, fair game. Undead are a mockery of the life that came before and a defilement of their corpse, so killing them is a way of honouring the dead.
Why should a group defined by plundering travelers be more acceptable than a group defined by being short with green skin?
Because in a fantasy world, where we can know for 100% certainty that gods created life, it’s not impossible for those gods to have made a certain creature type objectively evil.
In some settings, Orcs are the way they are because their god is the last one to pick a place for them to live, gets pissy, and decides that “Fuck you guys! If that’s how you want to play it, my orcs are going to plunder the shit out of your guys’ lands!”
In other settings, there has to be some kind of cosmic balance to things, and some gods are just evil because there has to be a natural counterpart to good, and so the creatures they create are just inherently evil.
I think the issue is with this kind of debate is that that it’s referred to as “race”. We don’t really have a one-for-one on this IRL (because Goblins don’t exist) and we don’t refer to animals as “different races”.
No, sorry, that still doesn’t answer my question.
Cosmically controlled goblins are doing the same thing as bandits, but the bandits made the choice to do evil things and the goblins didn’t get a chance to refuse. Surely, the people choosing to do evil are worse than those forced to do evil, right? So why are bandits better than goblins?
The suggestions you gave fall kinda flat to me, really. No matter what the in-universe reason is, the DM made the universe. “It’s what my character would do” doesn’t excuse bad behaviour, and neither does “it’s what my gods decided.” You’re the one who made them do that. You’re the one that decided an entire culture of thinking, feeling people are born objectively evil and can be killed en masse. And that’s fucked up.
You’re the one that decided an entire culture of thinking, feeling people are born objectively evil and can be killed en masse. And that’s fucked up.
I think that’s where the issue falls apart. You want them to be thinking feeling people who can change. They don’t have to be. If an evil deity creates Goblins, and makes them evil for whatever reason, they can inherently lack the ability to freely think and evolve.
And there’s nothing “fucked up” about it.
Look at some villains who are just objectively evil. People point-out the Adventure Time Lich all the time, and that thing is just evil. There’s no point trying to argue with it. No point trying to convince it to right its wrongs. It doesn’t care, because it’s just evil.
Goblins have language and culture and religion, and that all requires the ability to think, feel and grow. Making them evil means that either your worldbuilding is nonsense or you’ve made a thinking, feeling group of people inherently evil from birth. If you want a group that doesn’t think, feel or grow, then do what I said in the first place and use undead.
Stop saying it’s an evil deity doing these things. It’s just you. You’re doing these things. Don’t be a coward.
Are you seriously trying to justify Boblin the Goblin being evil because of the Lich from Adventure time? One is the cosmic manifestation of the death of all things, and the other is short and green. That’s not remotely the same.
And most objectively evil villains in fiction are, I shall point out, human. Nothing to do with their species. A group of human bandits and a group of goblin bandits are equally evil. And at no point have you given any explanation as to why that wouldn’t be the case.
Either answer the fucking question or shut the fuck up.
Edit: It would appear they chose to shut the fuck up. I would have preferred they answer the question, but this is acceptable.
Sorry, I didn’t realize you were exclusively arguing in bad faith/trolling. I’ll stop responding.
I’d argue Devils, by their nature of being lawful as well as evil, are often interesting villains because of their “species”, but it’s kinda different when it’s a creature literally made from the primordial essence of Evil rather than just a bad dude.
I’d love to be literal devil’s advocate here and argue devils just think different, in ways usually not immediately beneficial to in-universe society but ultimately a plus by instead providing a stress test for development of what is in universe considered ‘good’. Insert the quote from Legend what is light without dark.
Understandable - I prefer lovecraftian and fey creatures for alien thought processes, and use devils more as a foil/mirror to the lawful god of cities, merchants, and wealth, whomst I hate and will take any opportunity to drag.
I see Fey not as alien, but as capricious. They do what they please, when they please, damn the consequences.
They might commit arson against a local noble and then give that noble’s kid a super fancy cake; and not have a reason for either beyond “lol, lmao”
the primordial essence of Evil
See, I hate that this exists at all. I would much prefer alignments be tied to outlooks on life or even political philosophies than just baking deterministic morality into the setting.
No, equating alignment and morality makes them both meaningless. Morality should be tied to outlooks/philosophies etc, a personal matter of how the individual acts in a situation, while alignment with the forces of good/evil/law/chaos should be a matter of absolute determinism. It’s easy to look at D&D and say it’s wrong, but just because something’s bad in D&D doesn’t mean the idea itself is bad.
I have it to where the good/evil extraplanar creatures are created as expressions of the good and evil within everything sentient.
Yes, exactly - as I put it to my players, a “person” isn’t able to be inherently good or evil. They’ll have their own morals - particular things they always will or won’t do - but alignment is for things literally made of the concept of that alignment.
Can confirm, I run a LOT of dragons and the interesting dragon villains are generally about finding unique takes on their common traits or villains because of their response to their circumstances rather than pure random villainy. We’ve got the red dragon who self-perpetuates her own cycle of violence, we’ve got the black dragon who’s mentally broken because their worldview of being entitled to everything due to their strength collapsed after they lost a territorial struggle, we’ve got the emerald dragon who’s desire not to be bothered by their humanoid allies led them to neglect their promises, we’ve got the silver dragon who loved her friends so much she was willing to fall into necromancy to try and undo their deaths.
Also we have That Bastard With Eight Player Kills.
That said, always remember: To become cliche, something needs to work super well first- so well that everyone does it. It only crosses from great into cliche if everyone does it and forgets why and how it worked in the first place.
Oh, please do tell the story of That Bastards With Eight Player Kills
Young Black Dragon called Gendridd, wasn’t meant to be a major obstacle, his personally is that he’s evil mostly just because he’s having a fantastic time being an asshole and constantly taunting people (to the extent that the first and so far only lair effect he’s got is the ability to heckle people at any location in the lair). Anyways he was fully aware that he’d get one-rounded trying to fight a party of four level 7 PCs, so instead of fighting them stole the party’s unattended bags and sat in a tree to taunt them about it before flying off (he did not consider this might lead to fighting them anyway).
The party’s plan was to ambush him in his own territory, so their plan was to cut through some of the most overgrown parts of the swamp to get behind his lair and set up an ambush, instead of confronting any of his minions. However, between several spellcaster party members who had both completely dumped their strength/dexterity and couldn’t cast spells while drowning, party members wearing full heavy armour that weighed them down significantly, and bad rolls, then two of them fell into a bog, and in trying to rescue them the others also fell in and they all drowned, resulting in the first TPK.
Obviously that wasn’t a super satisfying ending, so for closure I offered to run a oneshot with a level 5 party in Gendridd’s lair, sent to avenge the original party, on condition that I wouldn’t hold back with enemy strategy and tactics (no bullshit with magic, just good enemy postioning, balanced teams that had lots of options in fights, and had actual battle plans). They made it through most of the dungeon pretty well, while constantly trading off verbal barbs with Gendridd who basically ran a snarky sports commentary the entire way through, letting them know how eager he was to crush them when they made it to HIS big boss chamber. Anyways they reached the outside of the chamber and they were just preparing to fight the skeletons who were guarding his door when he jumped out of an acid river behind them and got a Surprise Round, hitting two of them with a breath weapon and then rolling good enough initiative to knock out their fragile backline casters.
After that then he’s become popular/respected enough to get Promoted To NPC.
TLDR: First wipe due to RNGiamat cursing the d20 and a party badly suited to dealing with falling in a bog. Second wipe because Gendridd employed the secret chromatic dragon art of ‘lying to people’.
Any story pitching “good” vs “evil” is bedtime drivel dressed a different way.
Talk about disrespecting the roots of fantasy
respect is a funny way to frame this. The roots of fantasy, written when ontological evil was commonly seen as a thing present in the real world? those roots? or the roots when ethnic nationalism was the way of geopolitics? or when scientific racism informed much of the modern conception of races in dnd? respect is about the last thing anybody owes fiction, the world can change as beliefs do.
I was mostly thinking about Tolkien’s legendarium and the tales inspiring his work. Some of its roots (like norse mythology) is far older and/or unrelated to what you mentioned.
mm no, ontological evil. Also tolkien is not older than any of what i mentioned.
How is Morgoth not Ontologically Evil?
? you tell me i guess?
I feel like:
- No race should have alignment locking in any direction, because people are people and can do whatever they want. Our goodness or badness isn’t determined by our genes.
- But, people are who they are because of the society they grow up in and how people treat them. If humans treat goblins like shit because they’re goblins, and a goblin turns into a big bad because they want to kill the humans that slaughtered their village, then that villain is interesting for reasons tied to their species.
“No villain in D&D is interesting for reasons tied to their species” sounds very dangerously close to “I’m race-blind” in terms of not acknowledging that different people have different struggles, and racism is often a huge part of those struggles.
Your number 2 is based around cultural, not species differences. Two humans raised in two different cultures could end up very different.
There could be two tribes of goblins. One that began eating people out of desperation and now just do it because it’s tradition. The other could have grown up in close relationships with their nongoblin neighbors and are seen as a valuable part of their region.
So untying evilness to their race isn’t being race blind or pretending people down have struggles - it’s removing the shoehorning that occurred.
If humans treat goblins like shit because they’re goblins, and a goblin turns into a big bad because they want to kill the humans that slaughtered their village, then critical support to that goblin
