D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[AgentPaper]

See, I don't think the reason many players just skip straight to murdering everything with green skin and fangs they see lies entirely in the way they view the game. The fact is that the books call these races Evil, with a capital E in addition to painting them in the worst possible light. It doesn't matter that they're only "usually/ofen evil". The implication is that they're Evil, so it's okay to kill them. Don't tell me you've never seen this approach expressed. And I think that it's bad design and bad writing.

Yes, and I don't see that as bad design or bad writing. Orcs are there to be evil antagonists that the players need to fight. They fulfill this role very well. If you want a less clear-cut issue, then you don't use orcs, you use dwarves or elves or gnomes or humans.

The books aren't painting them in the worst possible light, they're describing them exactly how they are, which happens to be really bad. If you don't like that, that's fine, you can use different enemies in your campaign. But you not liking it doesn't make it bad. I personally don't like elves, or how they're portrayed, or really anything about them, but other people love them.

If you think there should be a race of noble savagaes/proud warrior race guys similar to orcs but not always evil, then that's fine. In fact, Half-Orcs fill that role fairly well already. But that doesn't mean you need to warp the already existing aspects of the game which other people like, just to fit your desires.