Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 03:45:25 PMI respect people's free speech rights to write what they want.

I mean I respect that stance, but I think what ended up rubbing people (and me) the wrong way is the moralizing judgement of other peoples ethics.
'I don't like overtly sexual orc rape games/ I like to have humanistic villains' is very different from 'Having pure evil in games is a dangerous reflection on reality and desensitizes people from violence towards villains and genocide'.

I actually noticed a trend that I always tend to humanize my antagonists unless they are utterly alien beings, but I don't make value judgements of people that just have 'evil orcs'. Nor do I think that humanistic orcs are somesort of superior game design.

Which is what this discussion is a reaction too. The video that said 'Evil orcs are INFERIOR game design'.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 19, 2021, 04:30:57 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 03:45:25 PMI respect people's free speech rights to write what they want.

I mean I respect that stance, but I think what ended up rubbing people (and me) the wrong way is the moralizing judgement of other peoples ethics.
'I don't like overtly sexual orc rape games/ I like to have humanistic villains' is very different from 'Having pure evil in games is a dangerous reflection on reality and desensitizes people from violence towards villains and genocide'.

I actually noticed a trend that I always tend to humanize my antagonists unless they are utterly alien beings, but I don't make value judgements of people that just have 'evil orcs'. Nor do I think that humanistic orcs are somesort of superior game design.

Which is what this discussion is a reaction too. The video that said 'Evil orcs are INFERIOR game design'.

One of the reasons I despise WarCraft is because the orcs were changed between the second and third game from conquistadors to peaceful Native American stereotypes who don't take responsibility for their past war crimes.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 04:51:38 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 19, 2021, 04:30:57 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 03:45:25 PMI respect people's free speech rights to write what they want.

I mean I respect that stance, but I think what ended up rubbing people (and me) the wrong way is the moralizing judgement of other peoples ethics.
'I don't like overtly sexual orc rape games/ I like to have humanistic villains' is very different from 'Having pure evil in games is a dangerous reflection on reality and desensitizes people from violence towards villains and genocide'.

I actually noticed a trend that I always tend to humanize my antagonists unless they are utterly alien beings, but I don't make value judgements of people that just have 'evil orcs'. Nor do I think that humanistic orcs are somesort of superior game design.

Which is what this discussion is a reaction too. The video that said 'Evil orcs are INFERIOR game design'.

One of the reasons I despise WarCraft is because the orcs were changed between the second and third game from conquistadors to peaceful Native American stereotypes who don't take responsibility for their past war crimes.

They're not real, what past war crimes.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 03:45:25 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 11:22:15 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AMYour idea of escapism might be a hellscape of sexual violence,..., but... my idea of escapism is to sanitize that sort of thing because I get too much of it in reality.

Dude, where tha fuck do you live? The Congo?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AMI stopped taking anti-psychotics years ago. They were wrongly proscribed anyway. Also, I'm like super stressed all the time because I'm frustrated when know-nothings on the internet praise shit writing in fandoms that I used to like but can no longer associate with, but have no alternatives.

...

I'm so fucking bitter and unhappy.

You stress over the silliest shit. You're constantly fretting over the fact that people in the INTERNET like things you don't, and the world doesn't revolve around your personal preferences. True self-inflicted first world problems.

You're constantly complaining that people don't share your high-minded view of fiction, or your fragile mental state, where everything has to be fed to you in a sanitized form. And how writers have consistently failed to write the fiction YOU want, as is apparently their job. You worry about irrelevant shit too much, and look at everything through a exaggerated lens where everything has to be hyper-scrutinized and overthought, and any instance of something you find morally objectionable (based on a histrionic worldview) signifies the end of the world.

NO one in the western world lives in a "hellscape of sexual violence". We might be headed into a cyberpunk dystopia, but that's a different problem. I'm not gonna get rid of cyberpunk as a genre just because the Present is Dark and Cyberpunk.

Smoke some weed and try some emptiness meditation to purge yourself of these hyper-active thoughts before you hurt your brain.

We live in a capitalist society. I should be able to find something that suits my tastes. I'm frustrated that I can't.

I know I sound entitled. I'm working on my own writing because I know nobody else will write what I'm looking for.

Happy?

You guys complain about SJWs all the time. I should be allowed to complain that one idiot writer fucked up an entire genre to the point that no one else tried to touch it since.

This isn't even about orcs anymore. Orcs are not on my list of things I find interesting unless it's an RTS where I can play orc conquistadors. Go and write some trashy orc rape porn, I dare you. I'm probably not going to read it, but I respect people's free speech rights to write what they want.

1) A capitalist society does not guarantee that you will (or should be able to) find products that specifically cater to your unique and overly specialized and complicated tastes.

2) There's a difference between complaining about an entire movement of people actively causing demonstrable and measurable harm to society and all its institutions, while forcing their views on everyone and the system itself, and profusely moping and complaining that different works of fiction don't reflect your personal and highly questionable and subjective opinions. And how everyone is a moron and you live in a constant state of misery as a result of such completely frivolous shit.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 04:51:38 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 19, 2021, 04:30:57 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 03:45:25 PMI respect people's free speech rights to write what they want.

I mean I respect that stance, but I think what ended up rubbing people (and me) the wrong way is the moralizing judgement of other peoples ethics.
'I don't like overtly sexual orc rape games/ I like to have humanistic villains' is very different from 'Having pure evil in games is a dangerous reflection on reality and desensitizes people from violence towards villains and genocide'.

I actually noticed a trend that I always tend to humanize my antagonists unless they are utterly alien beings, but I don't make value judgements of people that just have 'evil orcs'. Nor do I think that humanistic orcs are somesort of superior game design.

Which is what this discussion is a reaction too. The video that said 'Evil orcs are INFERIOR game design'.

One of the reasons I despise WarCraft is because the orcs were changed between the second and third game from conquistadors to peaceful Native American stereotypes who don't take responsibility for their past war crimes.

Responsibility for what? What their ancestors did? Wasn't WC 3 an entirely new generation of orcs born YEARS after the events in WC1 &2 (were orcs were actual conquerors) lead by an orc leader who was a former slave to humans, and tried to reform orcs, only to end up joining humans to fight the Burning Legion, which kinda implies that they DID take responsibility (or at least make amends) for what their ANCESTORS did?

This is where your opinions fall apart. You assert questionable stuff that doesn't even entirely map with reality, then you work yourself up into a moping mess over fundamentally flawed perceptions of various topics that don't even matter that much even if your assertions were correct. Which they're not.

Quote

2) There's a difference between complaining about an entire movement of people actively causing demonstrable and measurable harm to society and all its institutions, while forcing their views on everyone and the system itself, and profusely moping and complaining that different works of fiction don't reflect your personal and highly questionable and subjective opinions. And how everyone is a moron and you live in a constant state of misery as a result of such completely frivolous shit.

Yeah the latter group might actually realize the complaining don't do shit.

Edit: Latter! Latter, not former! Why do you always fuck this up, what is wrong with you!

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 18, 2021, 04:44:18 PM
Before anyone brings up this bad game design opinion, they should learn to play the game first so that they understand the context of the Evil Race.

Alot of these nuts are no different from ones infesting about anything now. Cultists. They hate something because someone told them to.

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 05:53:03 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 03:45:25 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 11:22:15 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AMYour idea of escapism might be a hellscape of sexual violence,..., but... my idea of escapism is to sanitize that sort of thing because I get too much of it in reality.

Dude, where tha fuck do you live? The Congo?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AMI stopped taking anti-psychotics years ago. They were wrongly proscribed anyway. Also, I'm like super stressed all the time because I'm frustrated when know-nothings on the internet praise shit writing in fandoms that I used to like but can no longer associate with, but have no alternatives.

...

I'm so fucking bitter and unhappy.

You stress over the silliest shit. You're constantly fretting over the fact that people in the INTERNET like things you don't, and the world doesn't revolve around your personal preferences. True self-inflicted first world problems.

You're constantly complaining that people don't share your high-minded view of fiction, or your fragile mental state, where everything has to be fed to you in a sanitized form. And how writers have consistently failed to write the fiction YOU want, as is apparently their job. You worry about irrelevant shit too much, and look at everything through a exaggerated lens where everything has to be hyper-scrutinized and overthought, and any instance of something you find morally objectionable (based on a histrionic worldview) signifies the end of the world.

NO one in the western world lives in a "hellscape of sexual violence". We might be headed into a cyberpunk dystopia, but that's a different problem. I'm not gonna get rid of cyberpunk as a genre just because the Present is Dark and Cyberpunk.

Smoke some weed and try some emptiness meditation to purge yourself of these hyper-active thoughts before you hurt your brain.

We live in a capitalist society. I should be able to find something that suits my tastes. I'm frustrated that I can't.

I know I sound entitled. I'm working on my own writing because I know nobody else will write what I'm looking for.

Happy?

You guys complain about SJWs all the time. I should be allowed to complain that one idiot writer fucked up an entire genre to the point that no one else tried to touch it since.

This isn't even about orcs anymore. Orcs are not on my list of things I find interesting unless it's an RTS where I can play orc conquistadors. Go and write some trashy orc rape porn, I dare you. I'm probably not going to read it, but I respect people's free speech rights to write what they want.

1) A capitalist society does not guarantee that you will (or should be able to) find products that specifically cater to your unique and overly specialized and complicated tastes.

2) There's a difference between complaining about an entire movement of people actively causing demonstrable and measurable harm to society and all its institutions, while forcing their views on everyone and the system itself, and profusely moping and complaining that different works of fiction don't reflect your personal and highly questionable and subjective opinions. And how everyone is a moron and you live in a constant state of misery as a result of such completely frivolous shit.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 04:51:38 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 19, 2021, 04:30:57 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 03:45:25 PMI respect people's free speech rights to write what they want.

I mean I respect that stance, but I think what ended up rubbing people (and me) the wrong way is the moralizing judgement of other peoples ethics.
'I don't like overtly sexual orc rape games/ I like to have humanistic villains' is very different from 'Having pure evil in games is a dangerous reflection on reality and desensitizes people from violence towards villains and genocide'.

I actually noticed a trend that I always tend to humanize my antagonists unless they are utterly alien beings, but I don't make value judgements of people that just have 'evil orcs'. Nor do I think that humanistic orcs are somesort of superior game design.

Which is what this discussion is a reaction too. The video that said 'Evil orcs are INFERIOR game design'.

One of the reasons I despise WarCraft is because the orcs were changed between the second and third game from conquistadors to peaceful Native American stereotypes who don't take responsibility for their past war crimes.

Responsibility for what? What their ancestors did? Wasn't WC 3 an entirely new generation of orcs born YEARS after the events in WC1 &2 (were orcs were actual conquerors) lead by an orc leader who was a former slave to humans, and tried to reform orcs, only to end up joining humans to fight the Burning Legion, which kinda implies that they DID take responsibility (or at least make amends) for what their ANCESTORS did?

This is where your opinions fall apart. You assert questionable stuff that doesn't even entirely map with reality, then you work yourself up into a moping mess over fundamentally flawed perceptions of various topics that don't even matter that much even if your assertions were correct. Which they're not.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline

Barely a decade passes between the second and third wars.

I don't understand you at all. I'm complaining that some orcs aren't evil and you're insulting me for it. I would've thought you'd be like-minded.

I get the feeling you don't actually care about the content of my opinions and just personally dislike me.

Quote from: SHARK on April 18, 2021, 03:33:57 PM
Some of these intellectual, *moralizing* arguments seem so disconnected to me. It's like total ivory-tower garden delusion.

Imagine you living in a region, some village. For you entire life, for your father's entire life, for your grandfather's entire life--your area, the surrounding villages--have been raided by Orcs on a regular basis. The Orc warbands use your entire region as a supply of food, booty, and women to fuck and breed with. Yes, the Orcs typically capture people here and there, and roast them alive by bonfire and devour them in savage parties. Your sister, or your cousin, has given birth to half-Orc bastard offspring after being brutally raped. Your neighbors have suffered likewise. Your childhood friends, growing up with you--they all have shared similar experiences, just like yours.

Why should Orcs be treated with anything but extermination, fire, and wrath?

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 11:22:15 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AMYour idea of escapism might be a hellscape of sexual violence,..., but... my idea of escapism is to sanitize that sort of thing because I get too much of it in reality.

Dude, where tha fuck do you live? The Congo?
....
NO one in the western world lives in a "hellscape of sexual violence". We might be headed into a cyberpunk dystopia, but that's a different problem. I'm not gonna get rid of cyberpunk as a genre just because the Present is Dark and Cyberpunk.

VisionStorm, I think you're talking past BoxCrayonTales here. When he refers to "hellscape", he is not talking about where he lives in the real world. (He says he gets too much dark shit in his real life, but he isn't describing his real-life world as a "hellscape".) He's talking about a violent fantasy world -- specifically the sort of world that SHARK just described in a prior post. He prefers his fantasy world to be less dark than that - by having orcs that are just flat-out evil vermin without requiring justifying it by their sexual violence.

I can understand that. At my current turning point in gaming, I'm coming to think that a lot of the delving in the dark, grim-and-gritty shit in many of my previous games hasn't actually been as much fun as it sounded. I'm wrapping up a year-long Call of Cthulhu campaign now, and I'm looking forwards to something a little lighter.

Quote from: jhkim on April 19, 2021, 08:30:33 PM

Quote from: SHARK on April 18, 2021, 03:33:57 PM
Some of these intellectual, *moralizing* arguments seem so disconnected to me. It's like total ivory-tower garden delusion.

Imagine you living in a region, some village. For you entire life, for your father's entire life, for your grandfather's entire life--your area, the surrounding villages--have been raided by Orcs on a regular basis. The Orc warbands use your entire region as a supply of food, booty, and women to fuck and breed with. Yes, the Orcs typically capture people here and there, and roast them alive by bonfire and devour them in savage parties. Your sister, or your cousin, has given birth to half-Orc bastard offspring after being brutally raped. Your neighbors have suffered likewise. Your childhood friends, growing up with you--they all have shared similar experiences, just like yours.

Why should Orcs be treated with anything but extermination, fire, and wrath?

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 11:22:15 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AMYour idea of escapism might be a hellscape of sexual violence,..., but... my idea of escapism is to sanitize that sort of thing because I get too much of it in reality.

Dude, where tha fuck do you live? The Congo?
....
NO one in the western world lives in a "hellscape of sexual violence". We might be headed into a cyberpunk dystopia, but that's a different problem. I'm not gonna get rid of cyberpunk as a genre just because the Present is Dark and Cyberpunk.

VisionStorm, I think you're talking past BoxCrayonTales here. When he refers to "hellscape", he is not talking about where he lives in the real world. (He says he gets too much dark shit in his real life, but he isn't describing his real-life world as a "hellscape".) He's talking about a violent fantasy world -- specifically the sort of world that SHARK just described in a prior post. He prefers his fantasy world to be less dark than that - by having orcs that are just flat-out evil vermin without requiring justifying it by their sexual violence.

I can understand that. At my current turning point in gaming, I'm coming to think that a lot of the delving in the dark, grim-and-gritty shit in many of my previous games hasn't actually been as much fun as it sounded. I'm wrapping up a year-long Call of Cthulhu campaign now, and I'm looking forwards to something a little lighter.

Greetings!

Well, I described such a fantastic reality within a milieu--as to why Humans or others might have good reason to hate Orcs and want them exterminated. It isn't just because the Orcs wear a "Black Hat". Evil alignment isn't just a coloured badge. In my campaigns, Evil creatures and races are EVIL. Evil races regularly do EVIL things, like brutally conquering peaceful races, roasting them over fires and eating them, sacrificing them on altars to dark gods, breaking them to the yoke of slavery, and plundering their women and breeding hordes of disgusting, violent, hate-filled mongrels.

THAT'S why Orcs are evil, and monstrous, and need to be exterminated.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 05:53:03 PM
Responsibility for what? What their ancestors did? Wasn't WC 3 an entirely new generation of orcs born YEARS after the events in WC1 &2 (were orcs were actual conquerors) lead by an orc leader who was a former slave to humans, and tried to reform orcs, only to end up joining humans to fight the Burning Legion, which kinda implies that they DID take responsibility (or at least make amends) for what their ANCESTORS did?

This is where your opinions fall apart. You assert questionable stuff that doesn't even entirely map with reality, then you work yourself up into a moping mess over fundamentally flawed perceptions of various topics that don't even matter that much even if your assertions were correct. Which they're not.

Man, Blizzard lore is it's own brand of IP hell. "Evil race was actually corrupted by evil-er race, so let's team up to fight the bigger badder!" Has been their go-to since forever.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 19, 2021, 08:48:52 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 05:53:03 PM
Responsibility for what? What their ancestors did? Wasn't WC 3 an entirely new generation of orcs born YEARS after the events in WC1 &2 (were orcs were actual conquerors) lead by an orc leader who was a former slave to humans, and tried to reform orcs, only to end up joining humans to fight the Burning Legion, which kinda implies that they DID take responsibility (or at least make amends) for what their ANCESTORS did?

This is where your opinions fall apart. You assert questionable stuff that doesn't even entirely map with reality, then you work yourself up into a moping mess over fundamentally flawed perceptions of various topics that don't even matter that much even if your assertions were correct. Which they're not.

Man, Blizzard lore is it's own brand of IP hell. "Evil race was actually corrupted by evil-er race, so let's team up to fight the bigger badder!" Has been their go-to since forever.

It's superhero comics but fantasy and somebody could make it work but it sure wasn't Blizz.

I personally LOVE evil races...for so many reasons.

It's one of the reasons I enjoy Alignment. Some creatures are inherently and cosmically aligned to Chaos, to Evil, to demonic gods and devil lords.

As for justification, all that matters is the setting. Every setting deserves its own "rules" and when you design your own setting, those rules are yours alone to decide.

However, an "evil" race in Traveller or Gamma World makes less sense, but aliens and mutants whose modus operandi is diametrically opposed to anything remotely civilized (or perhaps, beneficial to the PCs) are easy enough to drop into the setting and they are, for all intents and purposes, a race of evil.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AM
I'm so fucking bitter and unhappy.

Life's too short for that. I highly suggest a media detox and spending more time in nature.

Man's artificial world is not conducive to mental health. Drive to a beach and put your feet in the sand, or hike in the nearest forest, mountains or even an urban park. Pack a lunch and extra water and turn off your cellphone.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 07:13:21 PM
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline

Barely a decade passes between the second and third wars.

I don't understand you at all. I'm complaining that some orcs aren't evil and you're insulting me for it. I would've thought you'd be like-minded.

I get the feeling you don't actually care about the content of my opinions and just personally dislike me.

Even if only a decade had passed, that still doesn't change the fact that many in the Horde were a younger generation by this point, that they were trying to reform themselves and that they did join up with humans to fight the same Big Bad evil that originally corrupted them, which means that they did take responsibility and steps towards cleaning up their act. Humans still didn't accept them afterward. It's not like they did a clean slate and forgot all the orcs did.

Also, my argument has never been that all orcs must be evil--they aren't even irredeemably evil in my games, just savages naturally predisposed to aggression. I just think that inherently evil races are not necessarily a bad thing and could work, depending on the nature of the setting and how those races came about. Some version of orcs could be invariably evil and irredeemable, such as orcs created by magic to be creatures of darkness. Others could just be violence-prone brutes, who could nonetheless have the capacity for good. In Warcraft they're closer to the second type (at least as portrayed as of WC3+).

Quote from: jhkim on April 19, 2021, 08:30:33 PM

Quote from: SHARK on April 18, 2021, 03:33:57 PM
Some of these intellectual, *moralizing* arguments seem so disconnected to me. It's like total ivory-tower garden delusion.

Imagine you living in a region, some village. For you entire life, for your father's entire life, for your grandfather's entire life--your area, the surrounding villages--have been raided by Orcs on a regular basis. The Orc warbands use your entire region as a supply of food, booty, and women to fuck and breed with. Yes, the Orcs typically capture people here and there, and roast them alive by bonfire and devour them in savage parties. Your sister, or your cousin, has given birth to half-Orc bastard offspring after being brutally raped. Your neighbors have suffered likewise. Your childhood friends, growing up with you--they all have shared similar experiences, just like yours.

Why should Orcs be treated with anything but extermination, fire, and wrath?

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 11:22:15 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2021, 08:30:47 AMYour idea of escapism might be a hellscape of sexual violence,..., but... my idea of escapism is to sanitize that sort of thing because I get too much of it in reality.

Dude, where tha fuck do you live? The Congo?
....
NO one in the western world lives in a "hellscape of sexual violence". We might be headed into a cyberpunk dystopia, but that's a different problem. I'm not gonna get rid of cyberpunk as a genre just because the Present is Dark and Cyberpunk.

VisionStorm, I think you're talking past BoxCrayonTales here. When he refers to "hellscape", he is not talking about where he lives in the real world. (He says he gets too much dark shit in his real life, but he isn't describing his real-life world as a "hellscape".) He's talking about a violent fantasy world -- specifically the sort of world that SHARK just described in a prior post. He prefers his fantasy world to be less dark than that - by having orcs that are just flat-out evil vermin without requiring justifying it by their sexual violence.

I can understand that. At my current turning point in gaming, I'm coming to think that a lot of the delving in the dark, grim-and-gritty shit in many of my previous games hasn't actually been as much fun as it sounded. I'm wrapping up a year-long Call of Cthulhu campaign now, and I'm looking forwards to something a little lighter.

Meh...maybe. Crayon mopes so much, I don't know sometimes.

Quote from: This Guy on April 19, 2021, 08:54:54 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 19, 2021, 08:48:52 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 19, 2021, 05:53:03 PM
Responsibility for what? What their ancestors did? Wasn't WC 3 an entirely new generation of orcs born YEARS after the events in WC1 &2 (were orcs were actual conquerors) lead by an orc leader who was a former slave to humans, and tried to reform orcs, only to end up joining humans to fight the Burning Legion, which kinda implies that they DID take responsibility (or at least make amends) for what their ANCESTORS did?

This is where your opinions fall apart. You assert questionable stuff that doesn't even entirely map with reality, then you work yourself up into a moping mess over fundamentally flawed perceptions of various topics that don't even matter that much even if your assertions were correct. Which they're not.

Man, Blizzard lore is it's own brand of IP hell. "Evil race was actually corrupted by evil-er race, so let's team up to fight the bigger badder!" Has been their go-to since forever.

It's superhero comics but fantasy and somebody could make it work but it sure wasn't Blizz.

It's been decades since I played those games and my memory is crap, so I don't entirely get what people hate about it. 

But I guess making the evil race an "ackshually, they were really corrupted by an eviler race" is a weak copout.

Quote from: Spinachcat on April 19, 2021, 08:58:05 PM
Life's too short for that. I highly suggest a media detox and spending more time in nature.

Man's artificial world is not conducive to mental health. Drive to a beach and put your feet in the sand, or hike in the nearest forest, mountains or even an urban park. Pack a lunch and extra water and turn off your cellphone.

Dont do it that's how the anprims get you

Quote from: SHARK link=topic=43387.msgIn my campaigns, Evil creatures and races are EVIL. Evil races regularly do EVIL things, like brutally conquering peaceful races, roasting them over fires and eating them, sacrificing them on altars to dark gods, breaking them to the yoke of slavery, and plundering their women...

I'm just re-reading Wheel of Time (listening while walking my dog) and up to this point it reminds me of trollocs/myrddraal. (I think Jordan did a good job of showing how bad/evil they were without being gratuitous. That was one of the changes in tone that Sanderson brought to the last few books which I really disliked.)

I think the only character who had an issue killing a trolloc was Loial for about 2 minutes - but that's because he's from a species of tree-hugging semi-pacifists. And that's just the first time - he kicks butt and takes names later. The traveling people are the gypsy/hippies of the world and refused to fight anybody - but they don't eat meat either (which I'm a bit dubious of them getting proper nutrition while traveling around in a medieval setting - but whatever).

I really do think that the issue with evil orcs specifically is that they've been used so many different ways in different settings. If I were publishing a fantasy setting and wanted 100% evil incarnate style orcs as a central piece of the setting, I'd probably just call them something different. Just to avoid the baggage that comes with orcs being used in settings where they aren't evil incarnate and are potentially just the same as everybody else (latter Warcraft is the only setting I know of which goes that far - but I'm sure there are others).

I would still likely use orcs as a more brutish species who aren't as civilized and do a lot of raiding etc. - likely leaning more towards the evil end of the spectrum - perhaps involved in demon worshipping or whatever. It's a good shorthand than players are used to.

Do I have ANY problem with 100% evil orcs? No. Are people who say having evil orcs/races being foolish? Yes.

But I feel like it'd be easier to create a new species which is 100% evil incarnate rather than going to the trouble of explaining that THESE orcs are evil incarnate, unlike the orcs that the players may be familiar with in other settings.

Addendum: At least for an RPG. Goblin Slayer showed that it's possible to use the preconceptions of the reader - in the case of goblins that they're weak, no danger, and possibly cute - as a tool. In it's case, as a gut-punch when the goblins brutally kill the group of intrepid young adventurers etc. I didn't get that far in, but it seemed sort of implied that they're very weak demons, or at least related to them. They can't even survive without being parasites - as there are no female goblins... (obvious implication - and not the goofy Warhammer fungus explanation)