D&D 5E Discussion

[Caim]

This succubus registers to me as "absolutely unsexy", but I can't explain why.

Her terrible hairline.

 

[Gandalf]

This succubus image is made by a girl, Jodie Muir from UK. She likes to paint Kylo Ren and other things.

 

[Larianshill]

So, I'd like to talk about orcs. Please engage, this is an effortpost.

We all know that orcs were removed from Monster Manual. We all know why (orcs = niggers, we need to decolonize DnD, and evil races are... Le bad!). Now orcs are mexicans, and literally nothing about them is orcish. However, orcs were always only one "evil" race of many. How are the others doing in the new edition?

I've just posted a picture of the hill giants. They are portrayed as evil, ugly, gluttonous. Hill giants have always been giant orcs (or even bigger ogres). How are they described in the Monster Manual?

Huge Giant, Chaotic Evil
Disaster, invasion, or want might drive hill giants from their homes into other people's lands. Some displaced hill giants might steal what they need or seek revenge for their losses by causing ruin among smaller beings. Others might take up lives of raiding or serve other giants in return for protection.

...huh. Seems kind of similar to how orcs have been like, historically speaking.

What about ogres, their lesser kin?

Large Giant, Chaotic Evil
Ogres are selfish raiders and hulking gluttons spawned of hateful supernatural forces. From dismal ruins and bleak hinterlands, they raid vulnerable communities and ambush travelers. Ogres covet food and treasure, and they spitefully destroy art, books, clockwork devices, and other delicate or lovingly made things. Occasionally they kidnap victims to eat later or, more rarely, performers who catch their interest.

Ogres trace their origins to wrathful deities such as Erythnul, Takhisis, and Vaprak. They magically emerge from the earth of lands corrupted by evil gods, sinister magic, or ancient curses. Some bear evidence of the places that spawned them, sporting rocky calluses, mossy growths, or frozen scars.

Also seems kind of like the orcs of old! Actually, a lot like orcs!

What about the lawful evil cousins of orcs, the hobgoblins? Hobgoblins have been the uruk-hai of DnD. Are they also now misunderstood mexicans?

Medium Fey (Goblinoid), Lawful Evil
Hobgoblins embody the primal urge to grow and spread, expressing such drives by bending the world to their whims. Lone hobgoblins claim woodland territories and plunder the wilds. In groups, they form hierarchical, martial societies bent on conquering lands and stripping them of resources to serve their expansionist zeal.

Hobgoblins often subjugate animals, monsters, and destructive Fey—particularly goblins and bugbears—to serve their plans. Hobgoblins might ally with dragons, warlords, the servants of warlike gods, or other powerful creatures that promise them control of new territories. Should hobgoblins bring an entire land to heel, they seek new conquests, venturing across seas, into the Underdark, or to stars and planes of existence beyond.

Many hobgoblins serve the violent god Maglubiyet, whose hunger for conquest matches their own. Hobgoblin followers of Maglubiyet flourish in the Infinite Battlefield of Acheron, where they endlessly indulge their drive for domination. These war-obsessed hobgoblins employ elaborate tactics and strange weapons, which they sometimes unleash on worlds of the Material Plane.
The drive to subjugate and pillage is part of hobgoblins' supernatural nature, though a few might repress their warlike tendencies or turn them to more useful ends. Roll on or choose a result from the Hobgoblin Strategies table to inspire how a hobgoblin carries out its conquest.

Wow! Not only evil conquerors, but inherently evil conquerors. Hobgoblins are no longer products of their society or environment - they are born evil, and might only overcome it with great effort. That... That sounds A LOT like the racist trope they were trying to avoid with orcs!

Okay, what's going on with gnolls? They were humanoids, once. Like orcs, but furries. What's going on with them?

Medium fiend, Chaotic Evil
Gnoll warriors crave endless slaughter but quickly grow bored with the prey they kill and the treasures they plunder. Nevertheless, they're enraged by the thought of anyone else having what's theirs, compelling them to ruin what they can't take with them.
The first gnolls arose from hyenas that fed on flesh tainted by the Abyss. Their corruption and violence delighted the demon lord Yeenoghu, who encouraged their numbers and spread them across the multiverse. Ever since, gnolls have been the cackling servants of Yeenoghu, existing to cause ruin and to feast on what remains.

Actual demons! Can't even overcome their evil nature through effort, they are literally MADE of evil.

So this is the result. The stated goal was "We're moving away from evil races, it's a bigoted and outdated racist trope", but instead of deconstructing and removing it, they've actually made it far more integral to DnD than it ever was before. DnD has never been more racist than it is now. Now certain races exist to be slaughtered without mercy, because you know they are born evil. Ogres, hill giants, hobgoblins, gnolls - it's perfectly alright to kill them on sight. It's just that orcs are not one of those races.

 

[Larianshill]

Oh, and if you're wondering about goblins. For some reason they're listed as Chaotic Neutral, but their description is... Well... A bit less kind to them. See for yourselves.

Goblins are Feywild embodiments of recklessness and ruin. They delight in wreckage—the louder, the more energetic, and the more convoluted, the better. Goblin raids are often as much opportunities to enjoy setting fires and tormenting livestock as they are parts of more disruptive plots.

Goblins obey those who accomplish the wildest plans. Such leaders might be goblin raid masterminds, bombastic magic-users, or those capable of making the loudest noises. Hobgoblins and forceful humanoids might also command ornery groups of goblins, directing their destructiveness toward banditry, sabotage, or war.

The deity Maglubiyet claims to be the god of goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears, and on the Infinite Battlefield of Acheron, the deity commands innumerable goblinoid legions. In ages long past, Maglubiyet witnessed the destructive propensity of goblinoids and relocated a population of them from the Feywild to his realm on the Outer Planes. Since then, hordes of these more martial-minded goblins have flourished, with some finding their ways to Material Plane worlds. These vicious invaders seek to sow ruin in preparation for their god's conquest.

This image has been brought to you by the Wizards of the Coast.

 

[Caim]

If there's something the new Monster Manual got right, it's the Hill Giants.

BGG giants:

Healthy at any size, bigot. Ya slay, kween. Buck broke an adventurer, and is now doing some witchy shit!

New Monster Manual giants:

Violent, destructive, gluttonous, obese, intentionally drawn as ugly.

Those are just upscaled English women.

 

[thesecret1]

So this is the result. The stated goal was "We're moving away from evil races, it's a bigoted and outdated racist trope", but instead of deconstructing and removing it, they've actually made it far more integral to DnD than it ever was before. DnD has never been more racist than it is now. Now certain races exist to be slaughtered without mercy, because you know they are born evil. Ogres, hill giants, hobgoblins, gnolls - it's perfectly alright to kill them on sight. It's just that orcs are not one of those races.

It's because for races to be anything but reskinned humans (at which point, why the fuck even have them at all?), they need to be significantly DIFFERENT from humans, and not just physically. They have to think different, behave different, believe different thing, they need to be decidedly their own thing, not just humans with cultural differences. At which point you have two options. Option A is to call them inherently evil and call it a day (cartoon villainry, basically), or you can go further and try to develop a different system of thought that they operate on (so that they can act consistently, and for their goals to make sense) that is sufficiently inhuman. If you don't do this, then you're bound to do that whole song and dance with humanizing monsters again, losing yet more monsters to being "muh misunderstood victims" or some shit, at which point you don't have a game, you have a pile of unplayable shit where the only plot is listening to tearful backstories.

What WotC did is, in essence, an attempt at a compromise and a copout. "Okay, orcs are now just niggers, go ahead and play as them, there's no functional or story difference aside from some racial boni. But that's where we draw the line, ok? Leave our other races alone, we need to have something for the players to kill." And thus, they give up on perhaps the most iconic evil fantasy race in existence.

What they should've done instead was go back to the roots, to ODnD. Humans, Dwarves, Halflings, Elves. Only playable races. Nothing else is playable because the mentality is too inhuman for the players to ever RP, orcs are evil murderous beasts that you can and should genocide before you get genocided in turn.