So I have this thing where I really hate how D&D boxes all their races into pre-determined alignments. My two favourite fantasy races are also goblins and dark elves.
There's definitely a connection there, but I'm honestly not sure which way it goes.
@witchfynder_finder it's really annoying (at the very least) that only humans seem to have genuine free will among the races, everyone else has all these cultural presets. I guess it wouldnt happen like this if they didnt assign gods & religons to the various nonhuman races. Maybe it makes sense to treat racial categories like religious categories in D&D? Then if an individual moves away from the presets it's more like being a religious apostate than anything else ...
(I've thought about this too much obviously)
right now playing a dark elf with goblin sidekick fwiw
@Eve My personal solution is to have races be totally free WRT alignment, but certain societies/groups/collectives/etc have, like, preferred alignments. So, for example, Drow in D&D can be any alignment, but Drow society tends toward LE. Or this adventurer's guild will accept any race, but disallows Chaotic alignments.
@witchfynder_finder this seems totally reasonable. also it's even maybe what the designers had in mind, just that it's implemented in a way that makes the entire races look like a single society. so your solution is like a generalization of what they've done? (a generous reading of their intent)
@witchfynder_finder they really do, I agree. the stuff in the books is all sketched a little too broadly probably so people who dont care about stuff like this can just run the presets and kill a bunch of creatures w/o any guilt feelings lol
@Eve Yeah, I think you're right. Like how the books also really lean heavily on stereotypes and tropes. It probably is just to make it a little more accessible, but it ends up coming across as...not necessarily lazy, but perhaps uninspired? Like they're leaving all the "work" up to the players.
@witchfynder_finder totally, it's all pretty skeletal in a way despite their having spilled a lot of ink .. but actually I might like that? mostly bc I have kind of strong feelings about how some of this stuff *should* be implemented and what it *should* look like, and the more the sources diverge from that the more work you have to do to weed out the bad from the good ...
@Eve Yeah, as much as it annoys me that they only embrace the tropes, it does also free the players to REALLY experiment and try their own things WRT characters and also pushes DMs who don't like things to go out and write their own worlds and rules. Silver lining, I guess~
@witchfynder_finder @Eve It's a CRPG, but Pillars of Eternity did a good job, IMO, of separating species from culture. An elf and a human from the same culture have way more in common than two elves from different cultures. They don't have alignments as such, but it's an adjacent point of interest, perhaps.
@benhamill @Eve I've been meaning to try Pillars for ages tbh. I've heard so many good things about the writing.
@benhamill @witchfynder_finder oh that's interesting. do they do the same for "evil" races? bc one of the issues with D&D is this setting races as evil so they can be cannon fodder. have you seen this series called Orcs (cant remember the author) which sets the main characters as orcs and the humans, elves, etc as a bunch of imperialist racists? it's quite illuminating actually (though I cant remember how good they actually were as novels). there's also work on this in academic philosophy I believe
@Eve @benhamill I tried reading the first Orcs book once but it had a couple really tasteless scenes really early on involving the villain and it totally turned me off the whole endeavour, which is a shame because I did like the idea behind what they were doing.
@witchfynder_finder @benhamill I remember reading them ages ago and I also found that I immediately got rid of the books after, so I guess I also wasnt too happy with them for whatever reason. I pretty much only remember the main concept which I did like.
@Eve @benhamill We need more fantasy literature exploring these sorts of concepts. There's a book I really liked called The Goblin Corps that was kinda the same idea but was more of a humourous take on the concept rather than a deep, philosophical one. It still had some good messages about, like, accepting others and whatnot, but it was framed in a fantasy world after the villain took over the world.
@witchfynder_finder @benhamill it's depressing to realize that I cant think of really any fantasy lit that tries to engage with these kind of issues other than Orcs, which as you say is fatally flawed. it seems like everyone who tries to do more serious things in fantasy just rejects this whole kind of Tolkein/D&D style setting from the very beginning. the only other obvious case I can think of which has individuals overcoming presets are those Drizzt books in pure D&D setting but I certainly wouldnt hold those up as an example of anything intersting here ... trading one boring preset for another
@Eve @benhamill IMO Drizzt STARTED as a very interesting concept, but he very quickly became a very boring character instead. Like, the first trilogy in Icewind Dale actually tackled the topic of racism and the Dark Elf trilogy, chronicling Drizzt's youth also explored it really well. After that he just became a Mary Sue, though...
@witchfynder_finder @benhamill have you guys seen this series? this comic is actually quite relevant to this discussion
@Eve @benhamill Yessss I love these
@witchfynder_finder @benhamill I've read them a million times and they still make me laugh
@Eve @witchfynder_finder That's gold.
@benhamill @witchfynder_finder there's a few more of them if you keep trawling down the series
@benhamill @witchfynder_finder omg this one is even more relevant 😮 😮 😮 http://existentialcomics.com/comic/175
@Eve @witchfynder_finder As a GIANT Tolkien nerd (especially about Elves), this comic is perfect. Wow.
"I wouldn't be surprised if Elrond were some kind of linguistic persriptivist, so maybe he would have criticism on that front too" Same, my dude.
@kara_dreamer @witchfynder_finder @benhamill @Eve This is probably my favorite Existential Comic ever, TBH <3
@Eve @witchfynder_finder Yeah. TBH, I feel like no one's really done much interesting with different sentient species except a very few sci-fi books (Binti comes to mind) and so I generally tend towards books with just humans... Not everyone's ideal, obviously.
@Eve More or less, yeah. I've had friends tell me that it's how you're "supposed" to read the alignment stuff in D&D books but I still feel like the books imply way too strongly that certain races can only be certain alignments.