Fight me on it
Fight me on it
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I prefer the culture model significantly. Yes most orcs you meet will be part of a warband, but you may also get the orcish equivalent to Kublai Kahn. Drow have a cruel backstabbing matriarchy, but some surface city drow families only reflect that in that women are default head of household. You aren’t killing that camp of goblins because they’re short and green you’re killing them because they’re bandits, hell you may have been given that quest by a goblin.
And it lets you play with stereotypes vs cultural identities being lost to assimilation.
And it’s not like you can’t just automatically signal evil. Drow assassins probably aren’t up to any good unless you’ve been given a heads up. A goblin or orc raiding party is a raiding party and those are safe to assume are evil even if it’s an aasimar one. Even benevolent illithid eat brains.
And we have an example of this in the gith. The difference between the two types is cultural not biological.
It's a lot more interesting to have a goblin that somehow managed overcome its evil nature if basically all other goblins are genuinely crooked and evil, than if they're all "just another race" that's misunderstood. Yes, most villains should probably be more interesting and nuanced than just being evil due to their race, but evil races/monsters aren't a bad thing in a fantasy.
There's a game called Wildermyth where every faction is inherently incompatible with humans, but none of them are inherently evil.
For example, the Gorgons are an empire seeking to reclaim lost territory. This is fair, but they're aquatic, so they need to flood the world to take it back. Humans naturally need to fight them in order to survive, and there's no real way to compromise on that. It doesn't help that they ooze corruption everywhere they go.
I dunno, when you literally have spells that detect or harm specific alignments, it makes good/evil more fundamental than in the real world, and that's fine for a fantasy world IMO.
I have been doing this but because I want to keep the party on guard. Also I think villains who think they are the good guys or doesn't think what they are doing is wrong is better than I'm evil because the plot needs it.
Your game, your rules. That's the beauty of it. I make everything up as I go along.
I tried to run a goblin sympathy campaign and they just did genocide so
Mindflayers are definitly evil (from humanoid perstective) because of their species. They eat and bread brains. And they are interesting.
Someone needs to play Call from the Deep
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