Quote Originally Posted by Errorname View Post
Ultimately I don't find these reasons persuasive because having a one-note evil species is not required to actually explore any of these ideas, and their inclusion generally makes these ideas less compelling, not more.

Making non-human races diverse in culture and character makes them feel a lot more real. If your world has an evil army of Orcs menacing the nations of good, having Orcish tribes not aligned with the army or Orcs citizens in the nations of good doesn't undermine the army's villainous threat, and actually give you opportunities to develop that army by providing potential points of contrast.
See, that's all fine and dandy, but it dances around a point: if at the end of day, your orcs (or other non-humans) end up just humans, why didn't you just use humans to explore the same concepts?

An example of a game that acknowledges this, there's Lamentations of the Flame Princess - which more or less says in the referee's book that if your orcs (or what have you) are practically just thinly veiled caricatures of humans, own up to it and just use humans in those roles.

Of course, history of LotFP also teaches us one reason why not to do it: because media illiterate people will get outraged and eat you alive for it. Same reason why a romance novel might used vampires or werewolves as stand-ins for queer people.

But is that the only reason, or are there more?