Quote from: Dog Quixote;477771Not to mention that you can see the whole Orc myth, (or at least the one in Monstrous Mythology which I think is the same) as demonstrating how the other races' gods screwed the Orcs and forced them into the fringes of the world.

In any case, sympathetic reading or not, it doesn't strike me as particularly Nazi like.

In Unearthed Arcana it's presented as clearly an Orc-POV, self-serving myth.  There are plenty of real-world analogues of the 'we were cheated' and 'manifest destiny' type; both sides of the Unionist-Nationalist conflict in my homeland have similar myths, even though we have no racial differences and minimal ethnic differences.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;477772Battling and even wiping out the last members of an ancient and evil race bent on enslaving and/or eating humans has a long tradition in swords and sorcery fiction. It's only right and proper for us to carry this fine and honourable tradition on.

I'm not sure that speaks to everyone nowadays, especially if you're speaking to people not prone to blind nationalism or those who don't thrive on the creation of the "other" -- whether it's communists, fascists, or whatever other demons you want to zoom in on.

Even Stargate, despite initially presenting an alien race as evil, pulled the whole "It's not the race, it's the individuals" thing.  Also, Halo did nearly the same thing by presenting parts of the Covenant as sympathetic in the later games.  And in those games/movies where you still have some sort of irredeemably evil race, there's still a lot of redirecting the blame for things back on humans.

Quote from: S'mon;477777In Unearthed Arcana it's presented as clearly an Orc-POV, self-serving myth.  There are plenty of real-world analogues of the 'we were cheated' and 'manifest destiny' type; both sides of the Unionist-Nationalist conflict in my homeland have similar myths, even though we have no racial differences and minimal ethnic differences.

Well yes that's true.  But if you look at where the Orcs live in the game world, and where the other races live, it's easy to come to the conclusion that maybe they were cheated.  That was definitely the perspective my non-evil Orc PC took.

I think its possible to enjoy games where there is more moral ambuguity, more reason behind things like orc raids, and also still enjoy games where orcs are pure evil and PCs hunt them down. For me it depends on how much realism I am in the mood for.

In the end it is still just a game. To me the argument that killing orcs has some broader impact on a person's life and is a form of crypto-racism (or endorsement of genocide) is the same kind of reasoning IMO behind the early 80s scare of RPGs and heavy metal music when people were worried about satanic setting material and subliminal messages.

1.) In our world people disagree on whether there is magic or not. -  In a D&D world, it does.
2.) In our world people disagree on whether gods exist or not. -  In a D&D world, they do.
3.) In our world people disagree on whether there is such a thing as absolute Good or Evil. -  In a D&D world, there is.

Someone who is talking about killing orcs in a dungeon and calling it genocide, and then also calling it an allegory for white racism and colonialism has failed to grasp the three very basic concepts I listed above.  You have to have a level of imagination capable of seeing things outside the world perspective you got spoon-fed at college.

Once you're capable of setting that aside, then you can get into the more interesting and rewarding conundrums of good and evil like JHKim and Pseudo are talking about.

The original author never got past that.  He's just parroting.

Quote from: CRKrueger;4777813.) In our world people disagree on whether there is such a thing as absolute Good or Evil. -  In a D&D world, there is.

This is frankly bullshit. While yes, D&D does claim that there is absolute good and absolute evil, the game has never been able to coherently define what either of them actually are. It's all very well to say that you have a setting that doesn't have any shades of gray, but if you honestly can't define what the line between black and white are, you haven't actually delivered on that premise.

Maybe the D&D world runs on Divine Command ethics and whatever laws Pelor has set down are the actual real world definition of Good there. But since neither WotC nor TSR ever actually wrote Pelor's rules down anywhere, it functions exactly the same as our world where there are shades of gray and most people use personal ethical stances that contain contradictions and unresolved dilemmas.

So saying that absolute Good and Evil exist in D&D resolves fuck all, because it still doesn't answer the question about whether killing baby kobolds is OK or not.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;477783So saying that absolute Good and Evil exist in D&D resolves fuck all, because it still doesn't answer the question about whether killing baby kobolds is OK or not.

By Crom, it's almost as if we were supposed to roleplay things!

Please say it ain't so.

We've started to describe the differences between the player types as "gold farmers" and "role-players".  If you give a grand description of the reason behind the mission, and all your players hear is "go there and kill everyone", then you have gold farmers.  They're as bad in table top games as they are on-line.  They don't care about the setting, they don't care about the reasons, and they sure don't care about role-playing.  For them FRPGs are just like first person shooters.
But you as the game master control the game.  You can make it a role-playng game or a mindless hunt and kill game.  Look, most basic (class based) games do not allow for role-playing.  Get a game that actually has skills for the Negotiator.  (Carousing, Intimidation, Politics, Seduction, etc.)  The more you allow them to do, the more they will do and the better your chances of avoiding what I always feel is a boring waste of time - rolling all night just to kill a swarm of orcs.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;477784By Crom, it's almost as if we were supposed to roleplay things!

Please say it ain't so.

That's a fantastic idea. We'll all roleplay having self-evident knowledge that cannot be argued with because it is absolute, unchangeable, and beyond question. And since each one of us will be making it up as we go along, we can have long shouting matches in real life when they inevitably conflict. It will be like having a role playing session with a Mormon Saint, and Islamic Mullah, a Catholic Bishop, and a Jewish Rabbi at the table. We can have the first session be about what the righteous way to prepare food is.

Alternately: this is a stupid fucking plan because there are no two people in the universe with the same exact ethical calculus and asking a table of five players to settle on a consistent absolute moral compass is worse than asking them to share a single large pizza with exactly three toppings.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;477783So saying that absolute Good and Evil exist in D&D resolves fuck all, because it still doesn't answer the question about whether killing baby kobolds is OK or not.

-Frank

It doesn't resolve anything, except to clarify that Evil does exist.  Once you get there, then you can address the nature of whether a baby kobold is Evil.  Take that kobold, raise it in the home of a paladin and are you going to get a good little kobold or is the day going to come when the kobold kid wants a toy another kid has and the preschool turns into a slaughterhouse?  Even if it is Evil, does that justify killing it? You know, the kind of stuff gamers with imagination first thought about in 6th grade.

Quote from: Mr. Self-Loathing White MaleSo it all stinks to me of a kind of privileged, colonial, expansionist, genocidal viewpoint that makes my stomach turn.

This jackass - he never got that far.  He didn't think about it at all until probably around the time he went to college, where the scales fell from his eyes and he saw what a horrible crime he had committed simply by being born with a penis that was kinda pink.

How to deal with intelligent "monsters" in D&D-genre settings makes for some of the more interesting role-playing opportunities, provided you're actually able to roleplay - something the OP clearly has issues with.

Quote from: CRKrueger;477793He didn't think about it at all until probably around the time he went to college, where the scales fell from his eyes and he saw what a horrible crime he had committed simply by being born with a penis that was kinda pink.

That's a funny line.  

Re 'absolute Good & Evil' though, I think that's a fairly weak counter to the OP argument.  Presumably a game like RAHOWA has absolute good & evil - Hitler & Nazis are Good, Jews & blacks are Evil, killing them is Good.  But the reader isn't necessarily going to buy into the premise of the game.  In FATAL, rape is Good (I'm guessing).  TSR & now WoTC can declare 'Orcs are Evil, Killing them is Good, the Universe says so' but not everyone is going to buy into the premise that Genocide of thinking creatures can ever be Good.

Quote from: CRKrueger;477793How to deal with intelligent "monsters" in D&D-genre settings makes for some of the more interesting role-playing opportunities, provided you're actually able to roleplay - something the OP clearly has issues with.

Is the moral dilemma of whether kobold children should be killed really interesting?

There being no real world equivalent situation it's a dilemma that is completely artificial to the game world.  

For some reason I'm strangely reminded of the arguments about anti-immersive disociated mechanics in 4E.  For me there's something similiar going on when D&D throws up these kinds of situations.

Quote from: J Arcane;477768Why do you hate Warhammer?

Orcs are my least favourite part of the setting, actually.

Why is this an issue in fantasy games and not sci-fi, for example? What I mean is, there might be many alien races out there with inscrutable, or incompatible, moral frameworks but I don't seem to recall anyone making a fuss over it.

IMO, any sentient race should have their own moral framework and operate out of it accordingly. Orcs, kobolds, etc. are not just faceless and formless masses of slavering bad-guys, at least not in my settings. Now that does NOT mean they are not working at cross-purposes with the PCs, or other races in the setting, but there is usually a method behind their "madness" if you will.

I think the main problem is assuming that all races (fantasy or sci-fi) will have goals that are comprehensible to 21st Century humans raised in Western societies. Hell, most westerners don't understand parts of their OWN societies, much less those of China, or India, or anywhere else for that matter. I see no reason fantasy PCs will fare any better - but giving Orcs and Kobolds "depth" as a species is up to the DM in the final analysis.

Quote from: Werekoala;477799Why is this an issue in fantasy games and not sci-fi, for example? What I mean is, there might be many alien races out there with inscrutable, or incompatible, moral frameworks but I don't seem to recall anyone making a fuss over it.

It's because in games like D&D with Alignment there is supposedly only ONE 'Good' - and those Kobolds ain't it.  Pre-4e they register as Evil on the Evil-o-meter (Paladin Det Evil in 3e, Know Alignment previously).