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.
Personally, as a DM I get tired of how many different intelligent species there are. It makes worldbuilding very hard. I tried carving out space for each of them, but it wasn’t worth it. These days I prefer to just get rid of most races, but it’s a bit hard to tell which ones to keep.
Try flipping your process. Instead of working from the full list and taking things out, start from an empty list and add stuff in. If there isn’t a good enough reason for it to be there, don’t put it in. And if this leaves you with just humans, that’s fine.
I’m not removing githyanki from my game. Githyanki were never in my game.
That’s one thing I love about shadowruns setting. You have all the races, but they don’t really have to have a space carved out for them, since humans just became these races literally overnight. They just fit in with society as human, but…
Totally agree, shadowrun is so much fun, and the setting (especially in Germany) has so many fun details
Instead of trying to specifically carve out spaces for each one, try just figuring out the balance of the starting play area and immediate neighboring regions. Then have rough ideas of where some other continents in the world are, and as other spieces come up that are rare for the region you can say they are originally from continent X.
Until the players actually go visit these other places, you don’t need to have societies fully formed and figured out. Once players decide to visit, you should have at least one session of sea/air/whatever travel buffer to give you time to populate new lands (and can then adjust for any storyline/player interest.)
For example, in my campaign I told my players that the elven homeland was in the continent to the south. Three years later they are finally going to visit there, and it turns out I now know that the elders and majority of elves in the capital city live in a giant treetop metropolis while halflings and some other races are engaged in a 1920s style drug-fueled gang warfare on the ground level amidst a technological revolution (Drive-by violence is much more interesting with repeating crossbows and fireballs instead of tommy guns and bombs). The elves care very little about what the “dirty ground races” are up to because as a consequence of their longevity, they are very slow to change and adapt to a changing world.
Had I tried to figure out their society at the start of the campaign, it would have been nothing like that.
No quarrel there. The only interesting thing about evil races is when you subvert the trope, but as we’ve all been doing that since the 80s that’s just become another tired trope.
Personally I just run campaigns where 90% of the people are humans.
I prefer humans to be weak so nobody chooses them. Want a lizardborn x orc cleric? Sure. Want a human fighter? Well, theeeese enemies have + x on these stats against humans.
Wow, what a hot take!
Why punish players that want to be a human?
Monster fucker from tumblr
Well hold on, maybe I wanna bottom…
Furry DM, pushing a fetish on their players.
" Dare you enter my magical realm?? "
Cuz they always are either elf or human and that is boring. Also, I’m one of those bastards who force the players to role play, yet I’m no maniac who forces them to poop and pee.
Surely the RP is what makes a character interesting, not their species? If your character is only interesting because they’re an orc, in my opinion that’s a pretty boring character
Boring to whom?
To me! I love having post apocalyptic settings where humans are nearly extinct because they were too weak to defend themselves.
One campaign I forced them to be human and they made it their own goal to eradicate all non-human humanoids from the Face of the world. Needless to say their creativity in overcoming their weaknesses was amazing.
Too weak? Nah, that’s just bad story telling. Humans aren’t weak, even if we’d lose a bare knuckle fight against most other animals. Tools will ALWAYS magnify strength far more than bestial fortitude even can.
At least make their downfall something more believable, like they were too prideful and arrogant to take a serious threat seriously until it was too late. Even if the mechanics of the loss involve humans being physically weaker, it cannot be the overarching “just because”.
It’s like Batman. Batman can take out most all of the others in the Justice League despite being “just a human”, in the right scenarios. Nobody likes a story where Batman is simply crushed by a superior force.
Humans aren’t weak, even if we’d lose a bare knuckle fight against most other animals. Tools will ALWAYS magnify strength far more than bestial fortitude even can.
But that’s against a creature without sapience. You can’t lazily outsmart an enemy as smart as you, can use tools, AND is innately stronger than you. Like, its trivial to come up with a scenario that fits @BudgetBandit’s summary:
The human realm is invaded by an alliance of beastkin that are as smart as they are, but stronger and more agile. They attempted to stand against them, but their armies were too numerous and had a superior fighting style. Soon enough, the last standing human Kingdom fell under siege of the combined might of the beastkin and the remaining humans went to ground in order to survive.
That’s a combination of their premise and your downfall/underestimation with like 5 min of brainstorming. Don’t assume people aren’t telling a complex story just because they summarize it in a single sentence.
90% of the people are humans
I go with a setting where humans don’t exist at all. The closest is Elves, and picking them comes with a whole host of implications, like needing twice as much food to survive and everyone assuming you’re mega rich.
Mindflayers are definitly evil (from humanoid perstective) because of their species. They eat and bread brains. And they are interesting.
I tried to run a goblin sympathy campaign and they just did genocide so
I’d argue Devils, by their nature of being lawful as well as evil, are often interesting villains because of their “species”, but it’s kinda different when it’s a creature literally made from the primordial essence of Evil rather than just a bad dude.
I’d love to be literal devil’s advocate here and argue devils just think different, in ways usually not immediately beneficial to in-universe society but ultimately a plus by instead providing a stress test for development of what is in universe considered ‘good’. Insert the quote from Legend what is light without dark.
Understandable - I prefer lovecraftian and fey creatures for alien thought processes, and use devils more as a foil/mirror to the lawful god of cities, merchants, and wealth, whomst I hate and will take any opportunity to drag.
I see Fey not as alien, but as capricious. They do what they please, when they please, damn the consequences.
They might commit arson against a local noble and then give that noble’s kid a super fancy cake; and not have a reason for either beyond “lol, lmao”
Always interpreted planar creatures as having an alien thought process in general. That is a good use of devils ngl, for related playing pallies/clerics with ‘my higher power is the people’ is quite fun.
the primordial essence of Evil
See, I hate that this exists at all. I would much prefer alignments be tied to outlooks on life or even political philosophies than just baking deterministic morality into the setting.
No, equating alignment and morality makes them both meaningless. Morality should be tied to outlooks/philosophies etc, a personal matter of how the individual acts in a situation, while alignment with the forces of good/evil/law/chaos should be a matter of absolute determinism. It’s easy to look at D&D and say it’s wrong, but just because something’s bad in D&D doesn’t mean the idea itself is bad.
I have it to where the good/evil extraplanar creatures are created as expressions of the good and evil within everything sentient.
Yes, exactly - as I put it to my players, a “person” isn’t able to be inherently good or evil. They’ll have their own morals - particular things they always will or won’t do - but alignment is for things literally made of the concept of that alignment.
Not all are made from one guy though. Some are just pulped evil in a can. Even with different outlooks on life there are still things that everyone would hate. Like “very specific crimes” to an infant. I say that’s enough for pure evil
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.
Oh, please do tell the story of That Bastards With Eight Player Kills
Young Black Dragon called Gendridd, wasn’t meant to be a major obstacle, his personally is that he’s evil mostly just because he’s having a fantastic time being an asshole and constantly taunting people (to the extent that the first and so far only lair effect he’s got is the ability to heckle people at any location in the lair). Anyways he was fully aware that he’d get one-rounded trying to fight a party of four level 7 PCs, so instead of fighting them stole the party’s unattended bags and sat in a tree to taunt them about it before flying off (he did not consider this might lead to fighting them anyway).
The party’s plan was to ambush him in his own territory, so their plan was to cut through some of the most overgrown parts of the swamp to get behind his lair and set up an ambush, instead of confronting any of his minions. However, between several spellcaster party members who had both completely dumped their strength/dexterity and couldn’t cast spells while drowning, party members wearing full heavy armour that weighed them down significantly, and bad rolls, then two of them fell into a bog, and in trying to rescue them the others also fell in and they all drowned, resulting in the first TPK.
Obviously that wasn’t a super satisfying ending, so for closure I offered to run a oneshot with a level 5 party in Gendridd’s lair, sent to avenge the original party, on condition that I wouldn’t hold back with enemy strategy and tactics (no bullshit with magic, just good enemy postioning, balanced teams that had lots of options in fights, and had actual battle plans). They made it through most of the dungeon pretty well, while constantly trading off verbal barbs with Gendridd who basically ran a snarky sports commentary the entire way through, letting them know how eager he was to crush them when they made it to HIS big boss chamber. Anyways they reached the outside of the chamber and they were just preparing to fight the skeletons who were guarding his door when he jumped out of an acid river behind them and got a Surprise Round, hitting two of them with a breath weapon and then rolling good enough initiative to knock out their fragile backline casters.
After that then he’s become popular/respected enough to get Promoted To NPC.
TLDR: First wipe due to RNGiamat cursing the d20 and a party badly suited to dealing with falling in a bog. Second wipe because Gendridd employed the secret chromatic dragon art of ‘lying to people’.
That’s hilarious. First TPK to the hardest boss of the campaign, the bog. And that dungeon crawl with snarky commentary sounds like an absolute blast. Thanks for sharing!
I’m known for running mostly human campaigns, but one of my favorite tricks is to run a seemingly human villain with personality traits usually associated with an evil monster, then as the adventure goes on the learn that the heraldry features the monster etc etc.
Of course they know me, so they all think it’s metaphor and inspiration.
But at the very last minute, when they think they have him cornered and taken care of all the lackeys…. SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS! He drops his magical disguise and it’s an old fashioned D&D lair boss battle!!!
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.
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.
No one’s saying in the setting you’re playing in goblins can’t be evil as a default. Having it be a blanket truth for all settings is a bit constraining though. Goblins specifically in the DND world probably shouldn’t all be evil alignment because their history is… Complicated
Dragons are interesting as a species… They’re also in the name of the game. You remove them and the game is just “Dungeons And.”
Dragons are pretty cool, but it’s also sus as hell that the Lawful Good dragon is a cool daddy and the Chaotic Evil dragon is a crazy bitch. It’s got major “divorced guy energy” is all I’m saying.
In Pathfinder the “good” dragons can be just as fucked up. One set up a “perfect society” for humanoid races on an island, where the government performs eugenics and brainwashing and banishes anyone that shakes off the brainwashing
Eugenics is interesting from a dragon’s perspective. They might live long enough to actually see the results.
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.
But the reason the drow are evil is primarily because of the Spider god Lolth, not because they’re Drow. Drow free from Lolth aren’t necessarily evil.
Absolutely. But I wasn’t talking about the lore reason why they’re generally evil.
Drow freed from Lolth, in isolation of another way being convincingly presented to - likely forced on - them, have had how many thousands of years of abusive culture hammered & manipulated into them. More likely than not they’ll still develop an evil culture, though the structure of their society would likely shift due to power gaps. Given how they work either a single powerful demagogue or some sort of council system of the great houses.
Drow even under Lolth aren’t necessarily evil but she set them up for biological rewards for evil whenever she can (there’s little detail on this but I think that’s concept’s the source of the terrible “mother’s ecstasy at womb murders” thing - good idea, bad example/implementation), on top of enforcing an ongoing culture of brutality and wickedness. Its how most of the evil deities still allow for Free-will to empower their Faith. They combine physiological reward hijacking, adding aspects that encourage easier exclusion from others (isolation is good for limiting options), and rigorous and brutal cultural and societal reinforcement. It doesn’t prevent good, but it gives far higher hurdles for an evil race to overcome.
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.
Polar Bears have a “evil race” reputation… I’m sure they are just misunderstood and will explain it to you while they disembowel you
Polar bears aren’t intelligent enough to be evil. Depending on edition, they’re either unaligned or true neutral.
Any story pitching “good” vs “evil” is bedtime drivel dressed a different way.
Talk about disrespecting the roots of fantasy
respect is a funny way to frame this. The roots of fantasy, written when ontological evil was commonly seen as a thing present in the real world? those roots? or the roots when ethnic nationalism was the way of geopolitics? or when scientific racism informed much of the modern conception of races in dnd? respect is about the last thing anybody owes fiction, the world can change as beliefs do.
I was mostly thinking about Tolkien’s legendarium and the tales inspiring his work. Some of its roots (like norse mythology) is far older and/or unrelated to what you mentioned.
mm no, ontological evil. Also tolkien is not older than any of what i mentioned.
Some of its roots (like norse mythology) is far older and/or unrelated to what you mentioned.
mmm no, ontological evil
How is Morgoth not Ontologically Evil?
? you tell me i guess?
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.
DnD good and evil are distinct from common usage of the terms; they are cosmic forces, objective truths. Each action reverberates through the higher and lower plans and tilts the scales towards victory for one side or another in their eternal struggle. This lore doesn’t leave a ton of room to change the alignment of entire races (and that is by design, structure makes it easier for people to get in to the setting).
But this is just in the established settings, any DM is free to homebrew any setting and justification they like.
Note that I am not trying to defend this as the height of storytelling, it isn’t. It is a consequence of how the setting is justified - with deities being active participants, having specific rules for granting and revoking powers, and the physical presence of higher and lower planes embodying perfect conceptions of ‘good’, ‘evil’, order, chaos, etc. All of this can be changed, and again any DM is free to change it, but the ‘deep lore’ of the established settings over the past 40 years is drenched in this stuff.
One way to consider it is simply - the Drow aren’t evil because they are Drow. The Drow are evil because their culture promotes actions that align with the literal true definition of evil that is present in the setting. Evil doesn’t mean bad, it is just a label aligning with some physical rule of the universe. Just like the positive charge of a proton and negative charge of an electron are labels for physical rules of our own universe. Positive isn’t any better than negative, but they are inherently distinct.
What you’re describing is closer to the nuance I’m interested in than WotC’s settings. If you read some of the later Lolth stuff, it’s the exact opposite of that. Evil is bad and the justification for anything always involves this trite movement from evil to good. They’re not presented as counterbalances or equal combatants. Even evil characters seem to always be working under the assumption that good characters are ultimately better.
The 40k universe has a lot of similarities. However, I’d argue its authors are somewhat better at presenting why Chaos is an equally valid choice or why the Orks can do whatever they want. There isn’t a clear choice (some authors are fucking terrible at this and drive WotC-style to the goodness of the Imperium).
The only reason WotC has to remove alignment from races is because WotC has made it very clear there is the thing people should want and there is the thing people should not want. That’s not an even layout of nine alignments. That’s a huge bias and all of their content reflects that.
Someone needs to play Call from the Deep
