assault

250. It worked well enough for "1st issue" versions.

Which is why creating such a "race" is so Evil.

250. It worked well enough for "1st issue" versions.

It may be worth remembering that Christian theology holds that humans are an "inherently evil" race. Everyone is born tainted by the Original Sin of Adam and Eve's disobedience to God. We can struggle against that evil taint, as individuals and as societies, but can never succeed completely. Fortunately, forgiveness is an option.
 
Dean Shomshak

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?

 

"The races tend to act evil because evil gods made them to be that way" has been good enough for D&D for decades. It's good enough for an action/adventure game about characters becoming more powerful by killing monsters and taking their stuff. But:
 
1) Just because D&D does something, doesn't mean everyone else, or indeed anyone else, should do Fantasy that way. Or even Fantasy gaming.
 
2) I am no longer one of the young adult males who were D&D's original target audience. I am a late-middle-aged, effete pseudo-intellectual. I overthink. So even when I play D&D, I toss the metaphysics and do it my own way. But that would be very long to explain and likely of limited interest to anyone else.
 
Suffice to say that if Tolkien can build a Fantasy world on the theological and moral frameworks of Catholicism, I can do it on Enlightenment humanism. I have no trouble finding a sufficient supply of villains the PCs feel happy to battle and kill. I am quite happy with the result, and my players seem to be, too.
 
Dean Shomshak

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?

 

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?

 

I honestly read that as the Pinocchio coup, and imagined an army of wooden puppets led by a cricket.

But wood you support it?  Axing for a friend.

That's not unlike the actual coup.

50th anniversary of the Pinochet coup in Chile, which proved that there is no such thing as enemies, only friends we haven't made yet.

Playing in a dimly lit farmhouse in the middle of nowhere helps. Add a touch of LARPing if you are keen.

The game I am remembering was Call of Cthulhu. The scenario was loosely based on Robert E Howard's "Dig Me No Grave".

As long as it's not horniness, it's good.

You might be getting him confused with Crusader.

And Defender was an OG hero.  It is his character sheet that is analyzed during the "how to build a character" section in the first two editions.  Possibly the third as well, but I don't remember for certain.
 
 

I would love to see a genuine fire-and-brimstone preacher hit Evangelicals with a genuine Biblical prophecy objection to Trump like that. That might actually get through to them.

The Trumpists wouldn't listen if God Himself spoke to them. 
And, yes, if someone showed me plausible evidence...I'd believe Trump was, indeed, the Antichrist of Revelations.  

Here's a wacky idea. Some NPC miniature sets mention names of towns (Cullhaven, Dreadmere, Dunkeldorf). Let those towns be part of your campaign, so the miniatures will appear only in their respective towns. For a campaign map, use the 1972 Outdoor Survival game.

These days I focus a lot on "whose fantasy is it anyway?".
 
A lot of historical fantasy writing had a particular target audience, and if you weren't in that, tough luck.
 
It's still possible to write/design for that audience, but there is a noisy fringe of them that objects to anything being written for anyone else. Those people deserve nothing.

Great.
 
Now I gotta go re-read Grunts.
 
 

... Seems not. We never had much German presence here, did we?

I'm now picturing a setting that is mostly the same, like the whole of the setting remains consistent, but for this one particular city that got built or not back in the turn of the century (as is 1800s to 1900s) and is the centre of some weird time alternating stuff that can't be fixed yet, so instead there's just a big hotel/temporal embassy in there within the city/space where the city would be, ready to pick up an occasional accidental visitor who had wandered out from the other version of local reality and now needs a little magitech help to be able to go back to the other side. Lots of tourists, too, come to see the landmarks of the city that is and is not, then also visit all the nice countryside that exists in the version of local reality where it is not present.