The Creation of Evil Races

[assault]

One of the ideas that has become a big deal in D&D circles is that there shouldn't be inherently Evil races.

 

I'll refrain from ranting about this and cut to the chase.

Surely, creating an Evil Race is a very Evil act. The kind of thing that the Evilest of Evils would do, just to be Evil. (And because minions are useful.)

So, in other words, if inherently Evil races didn't exist, they would be created!

While I came up with this through an independent line of thought, Tolkien had already done it, as you would expect. He described the "creation" of Orcs as one of Morgoth's Most Evil Deeds.

Evil races can therefore plausibly exist, and the fact of their existence should, in fact, be horrifying.

If you need metaphors for racism, you can always look somewhere else. Just stay away from residential schools for Orc children unless you really want to go there.

Also, "race" isn't a good term. Something else would be better.

Thoughts?

 

[Doc Democracy]

The problem doesn't arise in one-offs and dungeon where everything you meet is slavering hordes ready to tear you apart.  Killing in those situations is effectively self-defence.

 

The problem is in campaign play where you have tribes of orcs, goblins etc.  Mothers and children.  When your "good" party raid the village to accomplish their quest, killing 99% of the warriors, what do they do with the "evil" non-combatants.  After all, they remain evil.

 

As my group never grapples with such high-falutin ideas we rarely have any issues.  I do think a large part of that is that we are, to a man, white middle class folk that have never suffered discrimination.

 

I do think that the presence of folk that are inherently evil opens up the option for bad behaviour (random slaughter of essential innocents) simply for existing under the flag of "Well, they are evil and I am good".  It is the whole poor take on alignment that permeated D&D.  The same players would scream injustice if I persecuted their LE assassin character in cities of "good" folk.

 

As a workaround, I have proposed in my Greyhawk HERO, that goblins and orcs were created by evil gods.  They live in the wildernesses and lands ruled by evil Lords because it is the only place they are welcome.  The reason?  Not because they are inherently evil but evil shaman/priests can sacrifice any single orc/goblins etc to create a horde (size limited by the power of the priest and length of the ritual).  It is the reason such hordes exist and towns often refuse entry to these creatures because of the risk inherent in their very existence.  Their actions determine their alignment, just like anyone else but their heritage determines their risk.

 

As such, even the non-ravening hordes, non-evil acting tribes of humanoid creatures have a dislike of "good" nations who force them to live in horrid places with horrid people.  In the example above, the mothers and children cannot be presumed evil, there will be the usual ratios of good folk and bad folk in the village.  They will hate the players who just slaughtered their men-folk though.

 

This may change how players interact with humanoid villages, but it has to change how I play them too.  For instance, why would a whole village accept the kidnap of a local human maiden?  Why would all the menfolk fight to defend that bad action? 

 

There will be good and bad humanoid communities.  There will be times when a village of orcs has come under malign influences, just as that might happen with human villages.  There will be times the players consider atrocities but it could no longer have the convenient cover of "it doesn't matter, they are all evil, even the babies".

 

Doc

[Doc Democracy]

5 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

Not because they are inherently evil

 

Ach, tripped myself up.  I meant not because they are evil and act evil.  I think inherently evil might have a different terminology in my Greyhawk. 

 

Inherently evil would mean you have a link to the Plane of Elemental Evil.   Some races are born with such a link but it does not dictate their alignment and the various detect spells are sensitive enough to differentiate between evil and "inherent" evil.

 

I think any D&D campaign has that planar theology built in.  I think the mortal races should be equivalent in that they can choose how they want to behave and have a behavioural alignment.  Similarly, elves are inherently good, that link works when they watch to leave the mortal realm and "travel" to whatever end place their theology determines for them.

 

I am inclined to treat drow and duergar like orcs and goblins, twisted races that have had that link to the plane of Elemental Evil added to their essence by some god or another.  I am also inclined to give those races the ability to draw on the link for benefits.  So a goblin might lean on the link to add to its sneak ability (+2 to begin, possibly upto +5 as it gains ability).  Such use will change their alignment to evil.  Orcs might be able to use it to boost STR, Drow to cast magic etc.  drawing on it will change their behaviour, like the Dark Side of the Force.

 

In that way, their God has given them a temptation to become evil and do evil.  It does not mean they give in and a non-evil orc might be seen almost better than a non-evil man, elf or dwarf because they constantly fight, and win, against the very real temptations they face every day.

 

All this works better in HERO because it can model all that better than D&D.

 

Doc

[Lord Liaden]

Human fantasy is full of classes of being which, through one agency or another, have been rendered irredeemably "evil." Demons. Undead. Unseelie. If one wishes to slaughter creatures without a twinge of guilty conscience, such things are well precedented and available to the fantasy genre. But they're things whose existence is fundamentally different from ours in some way. They may not think or feel the way we do, or interact with us or each other in the same ways as us. They may not be subject to normal aging and death, or may lack souls, or the like. They may come from a radically different environment which shaped them that way, or even have consciously chosen to follow that path.

 

If your intent is to apply the distinction between good and evil to any race with a society, family relationships, and free will at all resembling real humanity, just keep in mind that you're imposing modern concepts of ethics and morality on archaic civilizations for whom, for most of our history, such concepts did not exist. It wasn't that long ago that "The only good ____ is a dead ____" was a widely held view. It was long considered acceptable, sometimes even laudable, to kill followers of the "wrong" religion or customs, or who were held to be inferior by birth to the group doing the killing, or who were just part of a hostile tribe. (And in no few parts of the world, it still is.) Killing children was a practical measure to forestall an enemy restocking their supply of fighters, or to prevent them growing up and seeking revenge for the killing of their own loved ones.

 

If your gaming group wants to view an historically-inspired world through the modern lens, you've already moved beyond justifying killing out of hand anything in which you can see some reflection of ourselves.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Grailknight]

You have to make a distinction between enemies with human motivation and values but different morals and those with irreconcilably alien thoughts and needs.

 

You can coexist with creatures such as orcs and various types of beast-men. That doesn't mean it'll be all sweetness and light. There'll be wars and atrocities caused by cultural and religious differences and resource scarcity just with like other human nations.

 

You can't live with things like Illithids or Xenomorphs who can only see you as cattle or reproductive hosts or both. You can either kill them or become fodder.

 

The GM has to determine this when creating those races. There can be exceptions but be very clear that they are atypical individuals. Being a serial killer or a philosophical researcher can happen in any group and both ways.

[GDShore]

I try not to use the concepts of Good/Evil. My present campaign has supporters of the life gods vs supporters of the death gods. The problem I think lies in the use of the word "RACE" it has become so loaded in the past two generations. I've stopped using race for the most part and gone to using Species, as Grailknight suggests orcs and goblins can be dealt with bumps but dealt with. Things like the Illithids or Xenomorphs cannot. (unless you like being cattle)

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its just a difference of opinions, and usually based on varying worldviews.  I personally like "evil" (or, at least so uncivilized and ruthless as to be effectively so) races as easy targets for the heroes to beat up on.  I don't mind having ethical dilemmas on occasion either, I just don't like to make a habit of it beause I want players to go home going "that was fun!" not "that really challenged my presuppositions and I will be dwelling on this all night!"

[Scott Ruggels]

This is fantasy, not comics code comics. This is where characters are using earlier frames of reference.  Just be sure to read the room correctly 

[Duke Bushido]

I may have missed this completely, but it would help if we had a definition of evil, and what all-pervasive traits would define a race as evil.

 

[Lord Liaden]

I dunno. I've always considered it a matter of, " I know it when I see it."

[GDShore]

Like LL I know it when I see it and I have seen it. I am 71+ years old and have met 2 evil persons, one male one female. The female is dead killed in a automobile accident that I have always believed was divinely orchestrated to the betterment of the world. The male is in prison and will never get out. Canada long time past forbade executions, and a life sentence 20-25 years, we also have the Dangerous Offender Act, and if you "get put on that" they can keep you there for forever. He is one of those that's there forever.

     Not sure I can define what is evil but I think I can start,, - One who commits murder (the taking of life without cause) for personal gratification.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I liked the old designation of pirates as being the enemies of humanity, so wicked and destructive that you didn't even need a trial to end them.  Murderous rapists and thieves who lived only for their own gratification and filled with hate for the world.  Mind you not all of them were like that, but enough that hostis humani generis became a standard term for them.

 

Outlaws were the same sort.  Sometimes they were sad stories of people abused by those in power, but generally they were horrendous people who committed ghastly acts against their fellow person, and were declared outside of the law; out-law.  They no longer had any legal protections or assumption of due process and assumption of innocence.

 

Both cases can be abused, naturally, but they did exist for a reason, there really are people so horrific that they lose their general societal protections.  Child rapists, serial killers, etc.  Even today its sort of understood, where a child molester is found out in prison and their life expectance drops considerably.

[GDShore]

You are correct Mr. Taylor, originally out-law's were horrendous people, most today still are, I once studied pre-law, and remember an article which generally studied the premise that if "the state charges you with a crime you must be guilty". The article put great effort into looking at those declared outlaw in England in the middle ages defined as mid 11 th. century to late English renaissance late 17 th. century. Allowing for destruction through conflict (civil wars, world wars ect.) a review of the azzises show that a greater % of those declared outlaw were almost certainly innocent of the original crime or thru despoiling daughters or killing of sons, taking of lands ect. usually at the behest of or actions of the English aristocracy. You do not get a legend like Robin Hood out of thin air.

[Steve]

I suppose one way to look at “Evil Races’ would be to consider them all genetically predisposed to a form of sociopathy. They kill and harm others, and they have absolutely no conscience holding them back.

 

if you want to get more metaphysical, they either have no souls or twisted, stunted ones due to the influences of an evil god. I think this is what Morgoth did to get Orcs. That was his real crime. Not that he created a race, but that he so horribly perverted existing beings and their spirits to create Orcs.

 

That would actually bring in a horror aspect to things, to have one or more created races have to deal with a dark reflection brought about by evil powers. So Humans and Orcs could have this relationship in one world. That Orcs are horrible, twisted perversions of Humans.

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I liked the old designation of pirates as being the enemies of humanity, so wicked and destructive that you didn't even need a trial to end them.  Murderous rapists and thieves who lived only for their own gratification and filled with hate for the world.  Mind you not all of them were like that, but enough that hostis humani generis became a standard term for them.

 

 

Have you ever heard the story (maybe apocryphal) of Alexander the Great and the pirate Diomedes?

 

Diomedes, so the story tells us, was a notorious pirate who had finally been captured and brought before the emperor for sentencing. Because of the pirate's many criminal deeds, everyone expected that Alexander would sentence the pirate to death.  Before he passed judgment, however, Alexander decided to interview the pirate.

"What could possibly give you the right to sail the seas, taking by force things that do not belong to you?" Alexander asked the pirate.

Diomedes boldly replied with some questions of his own. "O Emperor," he said, "what could possibly give you the right to travel the whole world, taking by force things that do not belong to you? What gave you the right to occupy the land of Egypt? Who made you king of Persia? By what authority did you invade the land of India?"

Alexander stared at the man in amazement, and Diomedes went on speaking. "Because I use only my own boat," he said, "I am called a pirate. You, however, use your army and your navy, and so you are proclaimed an emperor. If you ask me who is the greater criminal, I cannot say. I do know, however, that if I had such weapons at my disposal, I would be an emperor too."

Alexander was so impressed by this reply that instead of punishing the pirate, he let him go, praising him for his boldness and insight.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

I suppose one way to look at “Evil Races’ would be to consider them all genetically predisposed to a form of sociopathy. They kill and harm others, and they have absolutely no conscience holding them back.

 

if you want to get more metaphysical, they either have no souls or twisted, stunted ones due to the influences of an evil god. I think this is what Morgoth did to get Orcs. That was his real crime. Not that he created a race, but that he so horribly perverted existing beings and their spirits to create Orcs.

 

That would actually bring in a horror aspect to things, to have one or more created races have to deal with a dark reflection brought about by evil powers. So Humans and Orcs could have this relationship in one world. That Orcs are horrible, twisted perversions of Humans.

 

According to The Silmarillion, Morgoth created the race of Orcs from corrupted Elves. When you think of how Tolkien portrayed Elves, it's even more horrific that Orcs are their distant kin.

 

If you're looking for a more philosophical definition of "evil," I believe you also have to consider the issue of free will. If a race has been bred/modified/conditioned to perform acts of cruelty and ruthlessness, and have no option to behave any other way, can they truly be called evil? That's like calling a swarm of fire ants evil if they kill you by a thousand venomous stings. It's an agonizing death, but the ants are just behaving the way they were born to.

 

If someone knows the difference between right and wrong, and has free will to choose between them, but deliberately chooses wrong, would that not be a greater evil? OTOH if a person has the ability to choose, they can also choose to repudiate their previous actions and seek to do good in atonement... in which case killing them takes away that choice.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Sundog]

You can also have the problem of the classic hill tribe.

 

This is the group of people who live in the not very productive or fertile hills/mountains/badlands above and near the fertile and productive valleys/plains occupied by a different tribe or people. Perhaps they were driven out of the fertile lands by the current occupants, or maybe they came here from other places, or perhaps tech has changed things and allowed the people in the infertile realm to access the fertile one. The classic way they get past the infertility of their land is to take what they want/need by raiding the people in the fertile area. Over time, they come to view their capacity to raid the fertile regions as a divine gift or right, and they get very good at it.

 

Of course, the people of the fertile valleys have a rather different view. To them, the hill people are the purest evil.

 

It's a pattern that has repeated dozens of times across the world. It usually ends either when the fertile valley people get together and burn out the hill tribes (though most attempts to do so fail) or there is the rise of gunpowder. The fertile valley folk have the tech edge, and that changes everything.

 

We actually see the remains of that situation in the northern middle east today. The Kurdish people are the classic hill tribe, and the people around them - the Turks, the Arabs, whole peoples of that region, have long memories of Kurdish raiders. It's one of the unspoken reasons hy none of them want the Kurds to have their own nation.

[Lord Liaden]

Holding onto ideation formed centuries ago has caused the modern world a great deal of grief. 😠

 

Historically there has often been another option, though: the hill and valley peoples start peacefully trading with each other, exchanging goods one group has that the other lacks and wants. Sure, violence frequently breaks out anyway, for one reason or another; but long periods of peaceful interaction are hardly unprecedented.

[Gauntlet]

On 9/12/2023 at 12:45 AM, Doc Democracy said:

I have proposed in my Greyhawk HERO, that goblins and orcs were created by evil gods. 

 

One way you could do it is state that there are no female orcs. Orcs reproduce through rape, then keeping the mothers until birth and then killing them then utilizing a demonic ritual to change the baby to complete orc. Using this you could even say that half-orcs are ones whose mothers got away and gave birth to their half-orc child without the direct influence of the orcs making them have a choice in their alignment.

 

I definitely enjoyed using Grayhawk and did so when I ran D&D 2.0 and when I started running using Fantasy Hero. Still use it today. Am even running a game (well whenever it gets started again) where the characters are going through the Against the Giants G series.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Gauntlet

[DShomshak]

16 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I may have missed this completely, but it would help if we had a definition of evil, and what all-pervasive traits would define a race as evil.

 

And by extension, a definition of good. I favor the anthropological/psychological approach of moral foundations theory, which seeks to study the moral reasoning of actual people to find the basis for their judgements. Here's the Wikipedia article:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

 

In brief, though, the researchers have identified six moral foundations that seem widespread across cultures. (More may be possible. Research continues.)

 

* Care/Harm may be the most straightforward, as it is individually observable and relatively non-contextual. The deliberate infliction of suffering on another is evil; the alleviation of suffering and active promotion of quality of life is usually considered good, all other things being equal.

 

* Liberty/Oppression is also pretty straightforward. Most people want to do what they want to do, and object to someone else forcing them to act or not act as they choose.

 

* Fairness/Unfairness: Humans are clearly born with an innate sense that it's wrong for some people to get more than others, or more than they've earned. (Though the definition of "earned" is of course subject to self-interest.) Any parent who has had one child complain that another child's slice of cake was a millimeter larger than their own knows what I'm talking about. Active cheating is, well, it's often dependent on who's cheating whom. But cheating your own group is almost always condemned.

 

* Loyalty/Treachery is more group-dependent than the previous. Very few people actually admire betrayal of the group. But what group owns your loyalty?

 

*Authority/Insubordination: Most people, in most societies, admire obedience to authority. But this gets even more conditional, as the authority must be accepted as legitimate, which gets into circular definitions. Also, this foundation is reciptocal: Whoever is in authority must do its duty in order to maintain legitimacy. Failure to do so makes rebellion righteous. It's not always good to be king!

 

* Purity/Defilement: This one is the most abstract and culturally dependent, but people tend to have strong feelings in favor of what they conceive as pure, and against what they regard as soiled, corrupted, or adulterated -- anything from a white bigot feeling horror at "race mixing," to an environmentalist's exaltation at experiencing "unspoiled wilderness."

 

People being complicated, moral judgements are rarely based on just one foundation. For instance, soldiers can fall into a competition of showing who's most loyal to the group and the leader by trying to outdo each other in harming the enemy. See: the Rape of Nanking and other mass atrocities.

 

One game application of Moral Foundations Theory is that it offers a way to make different groups "evil" in diofferent ways. But I've gone on long enough; examples are left to the reader.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Doc Democracy]

I think the planes of elemental good and elemental evil remove any relativity in the idea of good and evil.  It also makes it difficult to define.

 

Good enhances the universe, helps it to develop while evil works to rip things up and makes life worse.

[Doc Democracy]

26 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

One way you could do it is state that there are no female orcs. Orcs reproduce through rape, then keeping the mothers until birth and then killing them then utilizing a demonic ritual to change the baby to complete orc.

 

Oof, that is dark and doesn't help with all of other evil races.  Would also mean an orc horde was a sign of a LOT of extreme horridness.

 

Demographics would be skewed too.

 

[Gauntlet]

5 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

Oof, that is dark and doesn't help with all of other evil races.  Would also mean an orc horde was a sign of a LOT of extreme horridness.

 

Demographics would be skewed too.

 

True, I saw this example in a game where Orcs pretty much were the main bad guys. I believe they even had them keeping human women slaves for mating, I believe that is how they stated that the Demographics worked. Was definitely an extremely dark game though.

[Christopher R Taylor]

While I don't think you need to have anything fresh and new for bad guys in Fantasy Hero, it is fun to try to come up with a new approach to an evil species.  Say, these are Salt Elves that live in the desert who desire to control and take away all water, even water in bodies.  So they take captives and drain them of all blood to render into water.  And they divert water away from farmer, ranchers, settlers, etc, to keep for themselves.  They aren't terraforming or anything, they just want all the water for themselves, and will do anything to get it.  You have a well?  Then you must die so the Salt Elves can have the water.

 

But basically if you're going to have an all evil group, you have to have an objective standard to what is good and evil in your world.  If its all relative and whatever your truth is, then there isn't any evil, just people who disagree with your character, which others in the party might vary on.

[Lord Liaden]

41 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

I think the planes of elemental good and elemental evil remove any relativity in the idea of good and evil.  It also makes it difficult to define.

 

Good enhances the universe, helps it to develop while evil works to rip things up and makes life worse.

 

But those concepts are attempts to translate human conceptions of good and evil into cosmological constants. H.P. Lovecraft and his imitators introduced classes of creature and entity who are so alien, they don't think or feel the way that we do. They may do things that have consequences we would characterize as "evil," but their motivations have nothing to do with that. We may not even be capable of understanding them. As our Dean Shomshak has expressed it, such beings are neither good nor evil, they're just higher up on the food chain.