Quote from: RPGPundit;1101144HUMANS are the ones who are supposed to have a slight chance of being redeemed.

Humans are always the worst monsters.  Humans get up to stuff that makes demons and devils shake in their boots.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1101144HUMANS are the ones who are supposed to have a slight chance of being redeemed.

Tolkien, for one, disagreed. In his letters, he regretted that the Orcs he had created were irredeemable. He actually seemed to agonize over it. I only have Orcs in my campaigns when there is an Evil Overlord for them to serve and they are not redeemable. But almost anyone else is redeemable and there have been a couple of redeemed Goblins and even a Troll. My next project is someone from Portland or Seattle or an Auburn fan.

For me, "redeemable" anybody depends on the specific setting, not default assumptions.

In general, I don't gravitate to nuance in my settings. I'm cool with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly being what they are. However, if I'm running a morally gray setting, then I'm happy allowing a spectrum of behavior for all sentient beings.

I really only have two irredeemable creatures in my setting; demons and undead (the mindless ones are mindless automatons, the intelligent ones chose the shadow rather than go into the light... no power in the setting can make you an undead against your will, you must choose it). Everything else sapient is basically human in their capacity for free will and their capacity for good or evil (and technically the demons and undead both made their choice between good and evil too and only exist because they chose evil).

My orcs are humans who were mutated by the energies of The Cataclysm into super-predators (stronger, faster, able to see in the dark and track by scent), they tend to be more aggressive, but they retain human minds. If you run across civilian orcs you probably shouldn't butcher them on sight. they're just folks trying to get by. BUT you're very unlikely to meet any of those because they're well behind the borders of the Orcish Empire; an unholy mashup of the worst traits of the Roman Empire and Mongol Hordes who believes it is the legitimate successor to the fallen Praetorian Empire, worships its founder as an ascended god and whose state policy is that all non-orcs must be enslaved or eradicated for the glory of the Empire.

The only orcs that PCs are going to meet in ordinary circumstances are the ones who volunteered to go out and systematically murder, rape, enslave and plunder their neighbors in a campaign whose aim is to weaken them enough for eventual conquest. You can mow them down without the slightest bit of remorse because they're actual terrorists plotting ongoing war crimes against your people. They're evil because they freely choose to commit evil acts.

Potential redemption doesn't mean there can't be clear cut Good and Evil. Just because something is technically redeemable doesn't mean its practically redeemable or that its choices are misunderstood. It just means they chose the path they're on so while the paladin may lament their refusal to surrender, he can cut them down in order to protect innocents with a clear conscience (while the LG fighter doesn't even give them a warning because they're about to kill innocents and their actions speak for themselves.

Quote from: Chris24601;1101220I really only have two irredeemable creatures in my setting; demons and undead (the mindless ones are mindless automatons, the intelligent ones chose the shadow rather than go into the light... no power in the setting can make you an undead against your will, you must choose it). Everything else sapient is basically human in their capacity for free will and their capacity for good or evil (and technically the demons and undead both made their choice between good and evil too and only exist because they chose evil).

If you can't be made undead against your will, where do the mindless automatons come from?

There's also the practical side effects of going with the "redeemed evil thing"--it's easy to overuse it.  Do it too much, and it loses its power.  It's maybe not quite as bad as the "NPC betrays the party" thing, but it definitely has a limit.

I recently had an adventure with some "redeemable" hags.  They were still amoral in a lot of ways, and certainly self-centered.  But they were trying to stop a much more dangerous evil, and in the process had gotten on a long walk towards something better.  (That's a long walk as in "centuries".)  The main reason it worked so well is that I so rarely play that card.  And even when I played it this time, the hags still had some definite issues for "good" characters. The players were genuinely conflicted about what to do, which led to some great roleplaying with the NPCs, and even better between the PCs.

If everything is gray, then the shades of gray don't resonate very much.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1101223If everything is gray, then the shades of gray don't resonate very much.

I think this is a very important point that resonates beyond evil races or etc., but all the way up to individual characters.

I think it's a mistake, for example, to insist on your bad guys / militaristic empires / nefarious wizards / etc. to always have a 'good and logical reason for being bad' AKA appealing to the morality of your PCs; the king is only evil and hunting down hedge mages because they took his daughter years ago and he's still looking for her, the wizard is only turning people into abominations because the townsfolk exclude him from their holiday celebrations and he believes once he's transformed them all that he can finally live in harmony with them, so on and so forth. Not that it's bad to have reasons for your baddies doing what they do, but turning every villain into a moral quandary takes the punch out of all your moral quandaries.

I think it's a mistake not to let some people simply be power hungry, or greedy, or insane, or overcome with jealousy or grief, or straight-up megalomaniacal. By the same token I think it's healthy to sprinkle in unabashedly good people; not limited to friendly NPCs but even kings, nobles, wizards, etc. (assuming it's possible in-setting) who simply are decent folks or actively work towards the betterment of themselves in others.

This is really just a long-winded way of adding to and repeating Steven Mitchell's succinct and accurate point. Shades of gray work best when not all characters fall into the middle 15% of the spectrum, similar to the way that horror is much more effective when punctuated by moments of humor and respite.

Quote from: David Johansen;1101163Humans are always the worst monsters.  Humans get up to stuff that makes demons and devils shake in their boots.

And the ones capable of stunning acts of compassion and mercy.

___

My general approach on redeemable monsters is that any one can be redeemed. Even supernatural ones. That's Raven's character concept.

For day-to-day dungeon crawling/adventuring, trying to redeem every orc is going to result in dead PCs.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1101202For me, "redeemable" anybody depends on the specific setting, not default assumptions.

In general, I don't gravitate to nuance in my settings. I'm cool with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly being what they are. However, if I'm running a morally gray setting, then I'm happy allowing a spectrum of behavior for all sentient beings.

I'm with this. What creatures are redeemable depends on the setting.

In a recent campaign I ran, humans were the evil bad guys, and they were unredeemable.

It's a fantasy world - there's no real truth.

Quote from: jhkim;1101246In a recent campaign I ran, humans were the evil bad guys, and they were unredeemable.

You ran a FernGully campaign?

Quote from: Antiquation!;1101247You ran a FernGully campaign?

Heh.

It was D&D in an alternate setting where orcs, goblins, kobolds, gnolls, and other humanoids were good-aligned -- opposed by evil humans, elves, and dwarves. The PCs were trying to find and restore the ancient Temple of the Elements - using various material from the original Temple of Elemental Evil module.

It was using 5E rules for a fairly old-school-ish game with the reversal that the "dungeon" settings are the sites for social interaction and intrigue, and "town" settings were for monster-fighting.

Quote from: jhkim;1101252Heh.

It was D&D in an alternate setting where orcs, goblins, kobolds, gnolls, and other humanoids were good-aligned -- opposed by evil humans, elves, and dwarves. The PCs were trying to find and restore the ancient Temple of the Elements - using various material from the original Temple of Elemental Evil module.

It was using 5E rules for a fairly old-school-ish game with the reversal that the "dungeon" settings are the sites for social interaction and intrigue, and "town" settings were for monster-fighting.

Hm, that's a pretty fun idea. I like the idea of reversing the socializing/fighting settings, that seems like it would be an interesting change of pace.

Quote from: jhkim;1101252Heh.

It was D&D in an alternate setting where orcs, goblins, kobolds, gnolls, and other humanoids were good-aligned -- opposed by evil humans, elves, and dwarves. The PCs were trying to find and restore the ancient Temple of the Elements - using various material from the original Temple of Elemental Evil module.

It was using 5E rules for a fairly old-school-ish game with the reversal that the "dungeon" settings are the sites for social interaction and intrigue, and "town" settings were for monster-fighting.

Ah, Monsters! Monsters! using D&D... There's been other things along that idea since then of course (Reverse Dungeon for another).

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1101222If you can't be made undead against your will, where do the mindless automatons come from?

Allow me to clarify.

Your soul cannot be made an undead against your will (nor can it be destroyed). Animating a corpse is no different than animating a pile of chemicals. There's no soul or will attached to it. It's a robot that does whatever it's creator commands it to do. There's no unwilling soul trapped in some torturous half-life where it's compelled by inhuman instincts to commit atrocities. That's moved on to whatever comes next. Only those unwilling to go into the light; who choose to linger in darkness (often out of a desire for revenge or some other black emotion); rise as intelligent undead empowered by the Shadow and their own twisted souls.

The inviolability of souls is a big deal for me. There are no soul-eaters or soul-destroying spells in my world (you can't even be possessed unwillingly... though demon worshipers are more than willing to torture you until you break and agree just to make the pain stop... which also means there's often a timeframe where rescuing someone before they succumb is a viable mission to undertake).

Quote from: ffilz;1101259Ah, Monsters! Monsters! using D&D... There's been other things along that idea since then of course (Reverse Dungeon for another).

Yup. My version was a little different because the humanoid races were all good-aligned while humans were evil - but it's still a similar idea.