RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)

[BoxCrayonTales]

The orc babies argument is ancient. If you want to avoid the umpteenth time it's brought up and comparisons to real life genocide, then maybe redesign orcs so they don't have babies? 40k orks and 13th Age orcs are a good example of how you can do this.

Or I could discuss interesting, adult philosophical quandaries with other adults, without worrying about triggering the perpetually offended.

Sanitizing art so as not to offend isn't something I'd personally shoot for.

[a group is playing a game of D&D]
GM: You find a room full of orc babies lying defenseless in their cribs.
Paladin's Player: I move from crib to crib, slaughtering each baby orc in turn.
Rest of the group: Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?!
Paladin's Player: They're evil! I'm just roleplaying what my character would do!

Deliberately setting out to avoid situations like that is "sanitizing art"? The above situation is deliberately offensive caricature, not art. I would never want to play with people who would want to play that seriously. Anyone who wants to play something like that is fucking insane, full stop. I expect that kind of idiotic genocide apologism shit from CalArt tumblr sjw cartoons, not fantasy books by sane people!

[DocJones]

"It is therefore possible for a Paladin to, in fact, actually perform a 'mercy killing' such as the inquiring player asked about, provided the tenets of his or her theology permitted it. While unlikely, it is possible."

It's clear to me that Gygax is engaging in a thought experiment based on someone's query.
One used to be able to do that on the internet without having some woke moron attributed some sort of horrible character flaw to you.

[Grognard GM]

...idiotic genocide apologism shit...

I tried critiquing your rant (for rant it was) but I don't want a flamewar, so let's just say we'll have to agree to disagree. Which no doubt makes me evil.

[Grognard GM]

So, getting back on topic, this thread is a doozie
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/wir-coyote-and-crow.905053/

Not only is there a (gushing) break down of the book (ironically revealing how nonsensical and racist it is), but the comments are golden.

I especially like when, having been informed that the perfect native cultures have seamlessly combined spirituality and science, a poster says "I kinda wish there was a conflict between spirituality and science since that sounds like an interesting theme to centre a game around. But i understand it doesn't fit what they were going for here."

In post #17, Moritz replies to him with "No, the book makes it implicit that as a non-European setting, there is no such conflict."



PS- Bonus points for where the lore states they have 99% effective birth control, but also trumpets they have abortions for all.

[wmarshal]

The orc babies argument is ancient. If you want to avoid the umpteenth time it's brought up and comparisons to real life genocide, then maybe redesign orcs so they don't have babies? 40k orks and 13th Age orcs are a good example of how you can do this.

Or I could discuss interesting, adult philosophical quandaries with other adults, without worrying about triggering the perpetually offended.

Sanitizing art so as not to offend isn't something I'd personally shoot for.

[a group is playing a game of D&D]
GM: You find a room full of orc babies lying defenseless in their cribs.
Paladin's Player: I move from crib to crib, slaughtering each baby orc in turn.
Rest of the group: Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?!
Paladin's Player: They're evil! I'm just roleplaying what my character would do!

Deliberately setting out to avoid situations like that is "sanitizing art"? The above situation is deliberately offensive caricature, not art. I would never want to play with people who would want to play that seriously. Anyone who wants to play something like that is fucking insane, full stop. I expect that kind of idiotic genocide apologism shit from CalArt tumblr sjw cartoons, not fantasy books by sane people!

That situation with the orc babies in cribs is a deliberate set up.

However, tone down the caricature nature with of the presentation. Your party has just killed all the males of the orc tribe that was raiding the hamlets in the borderlands. The females and children move aside as you loot the cave complex, but take no other action. Your party leaves, and the remaining members of the tribe die due to deprivation, attacks by nearby goblin tribes, etc. In 3 weeks all of the orc women and children are just as dead. What would you expect your players do? Basically adopt the 20-30 orc non-combatants as their charges? Be responsible for providing them with food, clothing and shelter, along with some education as to how to be a farmer or tradesman? Is that what your players want to do the next 3 sessions until they quit the game out of boredom. Alternatively, do they attempt to get the nearby hamlets to take them in after losing their own family members to the orc tribe? Can the hamlet that's barely surviving even afford to take in hungry mouths? Take them to the capitol city several weeks away? Whose to say who will take them in there? Why are they the city's responsibility, and not that of the party?

On the other hand, if orcs are viewed as being no different in morality than the xenomorphs from Alien, there's no problem in killing the orc babies, just as there is nobody who gets upset at idea of setting on fire a bunch of xenomorph face huggers. That is nobody sane is going to object to setting the xenomorphs on fire. Some nutcase will object to doing so on grounds of discrimination on the basis of species.

I've run games where the orcs have no more sense of morality than a xenomorph. Other tables play them thousands of different ways. Each table should be able to play what's right for their table without getting judged as morally reprobate just because the morality of the setting at their table doesn't align with current morality.

I won't say it's impossible for a table to be immoral. The NuTSR Star Frontiers is just a white supremacist sci-fi "game" made by awful people, for awful people. But for me to get morally outraged there has to be more "there" there than "what about the orc babies?" In a Shadowrun setting, killing the orc babies would be an evil act. In a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting where the orcs are monsters - maybe not an evil act to kill any orc you find.

[Ratman_tf]

So, getting back on topic, this thread is a doozie
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/wir-coyote-and-crow.905053/

Not only is there a (gushing) break down of the book (ironically revealing how nonsensical and racist it is), but the comments are golden.

I especially like when, having been informed that the perfect native cultures have seamlessly combined spirituality and science, a poster says "I kinda wish there was a conflict between spirituality and science since that sounds like an interesting theme to centre a game around. But i understand it doesn't fit what they were going for here."

In post #17, Moritz replies to him with "No, the book makes it implicit that as a non-European setting, there is no such conflict."



PS- Bonus points for where the lore states they have 99% effective birth control, but also trumpets they have abortions for all.

Coyote and Crow sounds more and more like a 2023 woke activist's version of an alternate "history" for native americans, and less of an RPG setting.
I mean, more power to 'em if they can find people to buy it. But this is sounds all "Without the white devils to corrupt them, the indigenous people made a socialist, progressive heaven on earth. Now roll some dice."

[David Johansen]

The easy solution, is of course to make the orc lair a forward military outpost with no women and children present.  If you put a room full of orc babies in cribs an encounter you're already commenting on the argument.  Well, unless of course, orc babies are vicious and mobile and deadlier than a giant rat and the orcs keep them in individual cages to keep the death rate down.  What were we talking about again?

[jhkim]

Gary was the one who made the comparison by quoting a real genocidal lunatic.

Except the saying predates your source. If Hitler said "might makes right," I could also say it, and I wouldn't be 'quoting Hitler.'

In this case, though, it's the *content* of the saying that is horrific. It is not a random quotation. The earlier origin of the phrase was supposedly what English soldiers said when killing Irish children in the 1680s, which isn't any better. cf.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/02/11/nits/

In the U.S., it became famous in the 1860s by John Chivington's use of it in a public speech shortly before the Sand Creek Massacre. "Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice."

The origin of the phrase for killing Irish children doesn't redeem the phrase from its use in killing Native American children. It just exposes it as more awful.

So Tolkien felt that orcs could be redeemed, and it's clear that this is a reflection of his own real-world values.

You're digging deep in to the meta, while it's not needed from a lore POV.

Tolkiens Orcs are Elves that were twisted by a powerful entity. It makes sense that they have the capability to reform, at least to some degree.

D&D Orcs were hand crafter by an Evil god, to reflect his evil in their every deed, and said evil god works constantly to make sure that they maximise the evil they do.

It's the difference between killing starving people raiding your farm, that would leave you alone if they weren't starving; vs killing locusts that strip your farm every year, and always will.

As I understand it, the topic is about the real-world lessons of alignment and race -- which is by definition meta. It is possible to set up a game world where it is canonically good and righteous to go around killing orc children. Such a game-world could be logically consistent and playable. However, many players would not be comfortable with that - because that isn't what is good in the real world.

Tolkien considered the real-world implications of his writing to be important, and plenty of people have found inspiration and meaning in his writing.

[SHARK]

The orc babies argument is ancient. If you want to avoid the umpteenth time it's brought up and comparisons to real life genocide, then maybe redesign orcs so they don't have babies? 40k orks and 13th Age orcs are a good example of how you can do this.

Or I could discuss interesting, adult philosophical quandaries with other adults, without worrying about triggering the perpetually offended.

Sanitizing art so as not to offend isn't something I'd personally shoot for.

[a group is playing a game of D&D]
GM: You find a room full of orc babies lying defenseless in their cribs.
Paladin's Player: I move from crib to crib, slaughtering each baby orc in turn.
Rest of the group: Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?!
Paladin's Player: They're evil! I'm just roleplaying what my character would do!

Deliberately setting out to avoid situations like that is "sanitizing art"? The above situation is deliberately offensive caricature, not art. I would never want to play with people who would want to play that seriously. Anyone who wants to play something like that is fucking insane, full stop. I expect that kind of idiotic genocide apologism shit from CalArt tumblr sjw cartoons, not fantasy books by sane people!

That situation with the orc babies in cribs is a deliberate set up.

However, tone down the caricature nature with of the presentation. Your party has just killed all the males of the orc tribe that was raiding the hamlets in the borderlands. The females and children move aside as you loot the cave complex, but take no other action. Your party leaves, and the remaining members of the tribe die due to deprivation, attacks by nearby goblin tribes, etc. In 3 weeks all of the orc women and children are just as dead. What would you expect your players do? Basically adopt the 20-30 orc non-combatants as their charges? Be responsible for providing them with food, clothing and shelter, along with some education as to how to be a farmer or tradesman? Is that what your players want to do the next 3 sessions until they quit the game out of boredom. Alternatively, do they attempt to get the nearby hamlets to take them in after losing their own family members to the orc tribe? Can the hamlet that's barely surviving even afford to take in hungry mouths? Take them to the capitol city several weeks away? Whose to say who will take them in there? Why are they the city's responsibility, and not that of the party?

On the other hand, if orcs are viewed as being no different in morality than the xenomorphs from Alien, there's no problem in killing the orc babies, just as there is nobody who gets upset at idea of setting on fire a bunch of xenomorph face huggers. That is nobody sane is going to object to setting the xenomorphs on fire. Some nutcase will object to doing so on grounds of discrimination on the basis of species.

I've run games where the orcs have no more sense of morality than a xenomorph. Other tables play them thousands of different ways. Each table should be able to play what's right for their table without getting judged as morally reprobate just because the morality of the setting at their table doesn't align with current morality.

I won't say it's impossible for a table to be immoral. The NuTSR Star Frontiers is just a white supremacist sci-fi "game" made by awful people, for awful people. But for me to get morally outraged there has to be more "there" there than "what about the orc babies?" In a Shadowrun setting, killing the orc babies would be an evil act. In a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting where the orcs are monsters - maybe not an evil act to kill any orc you find.

Greetings!

Excellent analysis, WMarshal! I agree entirely. Your commentary captures my own thoughts well on this kind of "Game Quandary". I think people that frame such a scenario as the conquerors being evil and insane--or otherwise also painting the character's *players* as being such--are being intellectually dishonest, or at least very simplistic. This whole scenario may or may not hold zero moral implications whatsoever. It all depends precisely on the DM, and the context of the DM's fantasy world. I.e, how are Orcs and Orc culture, such as it may be, presented in general, certainly by the civilized human cultures?

In some worlds, Orcs are a primitive tribal culture that nonetheless aspires to some kind of recognizable moral agency and philosophy, more or less similar to that of humans. In other campaign worlds, Orcs are more like tribal groups of evil, bestial locusts.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

[Brad]

So now people are digging up Gary Gygax messageboard posts from almost 20 years ago and GETTING OFFENDED? Jesus Christ, get a fucking life, losers.

[Bruwulf]

So, getting back on topic, this thread is a doozie
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/wir-coyote-and-crow.905053/

Not only is there a (gushing) break down of the book (ironically revealing how nonsensical and racist it is), but the comments are golden.

I especially like when, having been informed that the perfect native cultures have seamlessly combined spirituality and science, a poster says "I kinda wish there was a conflict between spirituality and science since that sounds like an interesting theme to centre a game around. But i understand it doesn't fit what they were going for here."

In post #17, Moritz replies to him with "No, the book makes it implicit that as a non-European setting, there is no such conflict."



PS- Bonus points for where the lore states they have 99% effective birth control, but also trumpets they have abortions for all.

Don't even have to click the link to know what that thread would be like. I made the mistake of trying to read Coyote and Crow. It's just someone's masturbatory alt-history bullshit. The thing that's saddest is "A future where, for whatever reason, Europe never came to the Americas and they developed in their own direction"? That could be an interesting premise. But instead they had to go all Wakanda-y on it.

Worse, they went all Rodenberry on it. I say worse, but specifically I mean worse from an RPG perspective. Roddenberry, despite the lasting power of Star Trek, was rather infamous for trying to make Star Trek into a setting that didn't work for human drama, and the writers had to fight him constantly over it. Similarly, certain settings don't lend themselves well for an RPG setting, for whatever reason. I love Tolkien, but I've always felt Middle Earth is too "closed" to really work well for an RPG. I adore Eclipse Phase conceptually, but it's so gonzo and changes so many assumptions about the way things have to be approached that it's very hard to find players and GMs compatible with it. And so on. Coyote and Crow is sort of the same... There's not a good sense of "Okay, now, what do I do with this?" to make a good game out of it. Once you get past every other thought being "We're not European, therefor we're FUCKING AWESOME AND PERFECT!", there's... just a rather lackluster, boring setting with little in the way of hooks or interest.

It's sorta like the Sword Lesbians RPG. Once you get past the "QUIRKY CAL-ART LESBIANS!!!1!1!" thing, there's not much there that hasn't been done before, and better.

Or, like Ratman said...

I mean, more power to 'em if they can find people to buy it. But this is sounds all "Without the white devils to corrupt them, the indigenous people made a socialist, progressive heaven on earth. Now roll some dice."

I'm somehow reminded of a college course I took (and somehow, got actual credit for) back in the early 00's... It was supposed to be on the history of the Grail myth. It... Well, that would be a very kind description of it. It was basically some burned-out hippy who had no business even teaching children, much less adults, standing up and telling us his revisionist fanfic version of history, in between having us get up and play-act and walking us through sanitised wiccan rituals. I would have dropped the class, but it was too late to get any money back, credits were credits...

Anyways, his contention that before the people of the "Wind and the Sword" came, the native Celtic people were egalitarians who had absolutely no gender roles, lots of female warriors and warrior queens... but were also pacifists who never fought, until the people of the "Wind and the Sword" came and brought war to them. 

We didn't even have a textbook... He had a book, and he would xerox pages for us every class. That was a wild class.

So now people are digging up Gary Gygax messageboard posts from almost 20 years ago and GETTING OFFENDED? Jesus Christ, get a fucking life, losers.

I can't speak to what the purple chucklefucks think. I'm certainly not offended. I'm a fucking roleplayer, arguing over stupid shit is about 17% of why I love this hobby.

[rytrasmi]

^^^^ Well, that tracks, don't it. Identity is about "being" something. Drama is about "doing" something.

Remove some major factions (filthy Euros!) and solve all the local problems, and what is left to do?

I suppose you could play a party of enlightened commissars that travel the countryside clearing up misunderstandings about the state doctrine and occasionally reeducating some lazy peasants.

[BoxCrayonTales]

The orc babies argument is ancient. If you want to avoid the umpteenth time it's brought up and comparisons to real life genocide, then maybe redesign orcs so they don't have babies? 40k orks and 13th Age orcs are a good example of how you can do this.

Or I could discuss interesting, adult philosophical quandaries with other adults, without worrying about triggering the perpetually offended.

Sanitizing art so as not to offend isn't something I'd personally shoot for.

[a group is playing a game of D&D]
GM: You find a room full of orc babies lying defenseless in their cribs.
Paladin's Player: I move from crib to crib, slaughtering each baby orc in turn.
Rest of the group: Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?!
Paladin's Player: They're evil! I'm just roleplaying what my character would do!

Deliberately setting out to avoid situations like that is "sanitizing art"? The above situation is deliberately offensive caricature, not art. I would never want to play with people who would want to play that seriously. Anyone who wants to play something like that is fucking insane, full stop. I expect that kind of idiotic genocide apologism shit from CalArt tumblr sjw cartoons, not fantasy books by sane people!

That situation with the orc babies in cribs is a deliberate set up.

However, tone down the caricature nature with of the presentation. Your party has just killed all the males of the orc tribe that was raiding the hamlets in the borderlands. The females and children move aside as you loot the cave complex, but take no other action. Your party leaves, and the remaining members of the tribe die due to deprivation, attacks by nearby goblin tribes, etc. In 3 weeks all of the orc women and children are just as dead. What would you expect your players do? Basically adopt the 20-30 orc non-combatants as their charges? Be responsible for providing them with food, clothing and shelter, along with some education as to how to be a farmer or tradesman? Is that what your players want to do the next 3 sessions until they quit the game out of boredom. Alternatively, do they attempt to get the nearby hamlets to take them in after losing their own family members to the orc tribe? Can the hamlet that's barely surviving even afford to take in hungry mouths? Take them to the capitol city several weeks away? Whose to say who will take them in there? Why are they the city's responsibility, and not that of the party?

On the other hand, if orcs are viewed as being no different in morality than the xenomorphs from Alien, there's no problem in killing the orc babies, just as there is nobody who gets upset at idea of setting on fire a bunch of xenomorph face huggers. That is nobody sane is going to object to setting the xenomorphs on fire. Some nutcase will object to doing so on grounds of discrimination on the basis of species.

I've run games where the orcs have no more sense of morality than a xenomorph. Other tables play them thousands of different ways. Each table should be able to play what's right for their table without getting judged as morally reprobate just because the morality of the setting at their table doesn't align with current morality.

I won't say it's impossible for a table to be immoral. The NuTSR Star Frontiers is just a white supremacist sci-fi "game" made by awful people, for awful people. But for me to get morally outraged there has to be more "there" there than "what about the orc babies?" In a Shadowrun setting, killing the orc babies would be an evil act. In a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting where the orcs are monsters - maybe not an evil act to kill any orc you find.

Indeed.

My point is that people don't seem to understand what they're arguing for when they say "orcs should have babies". Or if they have some idea of baby orcs as being no different from alien chestbursters, then they don't seem to understand others can't read their minds. There's an unspoken assumption by most players and GMs that humanoids operate like humans unless stated otherwise. That includes things like giving birth to tiny defenseless offspring that must be cared for like human babies are. That's why the "what do we do with the baby orcs/goblins/whatever?" is even a recurring argument in D&D fandom.

Obviously, most groups don't want to involve orc non-combatants in the first place, so the argument that they should is just pointless status quo-defending contrarianism. Orcs (and other humanoids) don't need non-combatants because they're irrelevant and raise unnecessary moral questions. Ergo, the most efficient thing to do is state that non-combatants don't exist. This shouldn't be a controversial statement, but somehow it is.

I'm going to share an example from my own worldbuilding brainstorming. I use both the generic evil orcs and the non-evil orcs in my setting. They're cousin species, but they look, behave, and reproduce very differently. The evil orcs look hideous and misshapen, they're programmed to be evil and obedient, come in several distinct forms, and they're "born" in alchemical spawning pits created by the evil overlord (use the statistics for all goblinoids, including orcs, to represent them). The non-evil orcs look like attractive athletic green-skinned human beings with tusks and pointed ears, and are basically human in all ways that matter (use the half-orc stats rather than inventing a new race). The non-evil orcs are the result of a failed experiment to create more efficient orcs, but they failed only in one respect: they were too independent and empathetic, so they rebelled against the evil overlord.

This lets me have my cake and eat it too. I have evil orcs that are perfectly okay to slaughter by the truckload with no moral quandary, and I have non-evil orcs that are people with only a mildly creepy backstory. This sort of solution shouldn't be controversial.

[rytrasmi]

I'm going to share an example from my own worldbuilding brainstorming. I use both the generic evil orcs and the non-evil orcs in my setting. They're cousin species, but they look, behave, and reproduce very differently. The evil orcs look hideous and misshapen, they're programmed to be evil and obedient, come in several distinct forms, and they're "born" in alchemical spawning pits created by the evil overlord (use the statistics for all goblinoids, including orcs, to represent them). The non-evil orcs look like attractive athletic green-skinned human beings with tusks and pointed ears, and are basically human in all ways that matter (use the half-orc stats rather than inventing a new race). The non-evil orcs are the result of a failed experiment to create more efficient orcs, but they failed only in one respect: they were too independent and empathetic, so they rebelled against the evil overlord.

This lets me have my cake and eat it too. I have evil orcs that are perfectly okay to slaughter by the truckload with no moral quandary, and I have non-evil orcs that are people with only a mildly creepy backstory. This sort of solution shouldn't be controversial.

What's the point of this? You have 2 totally different races both called orcs. What makes them both orcs? They fact that they are green?

They're programmed. So what? Maybe they can be reprogrammed and therefore saved.

It seems like it's a lot of dressing up to camouflage the morality issue.

[Wrath of God]

That's Lawful. It isn't Good. Lawful Good requires both elements. There's a reason they are two separate axis. Hell, paladins are a class that is basically objective, metaphysical Good incarnate, and can sense objective, metaphysical evil... despite their alignment restrictions, they don't really have any law/chaos powers. If anything, the "good" element should be more important than the "lawful" element. Otherwise, you get... Well. Bluntly, you get the stereotype of the "lawful asshole" Paladin, which seems to be what Gary is supporting.

Hey, look, he's the grandfather of our hobby, I'm not trying to vilify him, just saying... on this point, I disagree with his interpretation.

Considering that originally there was only Law/Chaos axis in D&D, I'd say for Gygax law/chaos was more important of two.
And of course Paladins are not Good incarnate - they are Good mixed with Law - class that would be Good incarnate would have to be NG.

Because D&D. Because Paladins are literally able to sense evil. "Because church and state say so" is less of an authority than "Holy shit, that hurts to look at" or "Hey, why did my magic sword of Goodliness stop working for me?".

And why you assume Cosmic Force of Good in D&D Multiverse will agree with your moral stances about what's Good and what's Evil. What if GOOD, cosmic GOOD that's above even Good deities is perfectly fine with violent eradication of Evil?

[quote="BoxCrayon]It doesn't matter. While the killer might go to hell, his victims still go to heaven. That's a worthy sacrifice for the greater good. "I will damn myself to hell by killing all 8 billion human beings, if it means enough of them go to heaven in my place and the countless souls of the future unborn never have to worry about sinning."[/quote]

Only if one is utilitarian.
But the thing is in abrahamic religion God is kinda vehemently anti-utilitarian so trying to circumvent objective morality will end badly. You trick Omniscient beings on your own risk.
In other words - if you believe in Abrahamic God - you will know that trick would fail.

This is a fundamental problem with any kind of morality that allows for the existence of any Greater Good. It inevitably results in the ends consuming the means.

I'm just speaking purely from a logical perspective. The logic checks out, even if humans and gods alike refuse to acknowledge it.

No it does not. Because you added unconsciously axiom of utilitarian morality - which is not objective empiric truth but like... your assumption dude.
Meanwhile Salvation of Many is not more important or greater good than Salvation of One. Keep those Vulcan superstitions out of it.

Realistically speaking, every setting which has eternal damnation would eventually inspire an interplanetary crusade to exterminate all life to save their souls from this fate

No it wouldn't. Amount of radicals that would sacrifice own souls to eternal torment for that is like negligible. There would be no crusades, because most fanatic enough people would be on God side in damning sinners and be OK with it.

I suppose you could play a party of enlightened commissars that travel the countryside clearing up misunderstandings about the state doctrine and occasionally reeducating some lazy peasants.

From TBP thread it seems there are more options for conflict - weird mutated things, there are mentioned wars and armies arranged by Sheriffs and so on.
But all this gender-marriage stuff - BLAH.