Dwarves aren't cool anymore

[Jophiel]

It's kind of a reasonable assumption that the species in a setting reproduce somehow, unless you want there to be a finite and ever shrinking amount of Orcs in the world.

It's also a reasonable assumption that player characters poop but that doesn't mean you need to describe it in game.

Put it this way: If your game has come to a discussion about whether infantcide is justified, it's not a game I want to be involved in anyway so you do you. If the only thing between your game and infantcide is the orc stat block, I'm REALLY glad I'm not part of that game.

Though I am amused that the conversation has somehow gone from "Wanting a story like Drizzt is so emo and edgy lol" to "My players might want to murder helpless orc babies and how can I stop this if not Alignment: Evil (But Maybe Not)? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

[Dr.Samurai]

Again, I go back to my comments about removing the magic and fantasy from the game, and what the purpose of the game is, and the (IMO) dubious reasoning of "making sense" or "being more real".

We haven't come across orc babies because the DM is not running Sim City: D&D edition. We don't go to the bathroom either in game. It's fine if people want to play their game in this way, but don't chastise the game for not being that by default.

[Grim Portent]

Regardless of whether or not baby orcs are innately evil, good (or even nominally neutral) PCs shouldn't be murdering them.

That said "But what if there's baby orcs in my game and no one knows how they got there and now we're infested with evil orc babies and what do we do?" is probably the weakest possible reason to say that orcs aren't innately evil. The number of orc babies in your world is exactly as many as you put in your world for the players to find.

What else can you do with an innately evil baby? Put it in prison pre-emptively? Leave it to die of exposure after you killed its innately evil parents?

Broadly speaking children should appear in any place that has a long standing community of beings of reproductive age. Every orc tribe should have quite a few kids of various ages wandering around, much like you'd expect in a human village. Really the only times there should be no children is when it's a raiding band that has explicitly left all the civilians behind to go raiding in foreign territory in the manner of vikings or pirates. Maybe an actual army situation as well, but given the sort of tag alongs that medieval human armies had I would honestly not be surprised at orcs bringing their kids along too.

People make kids, animals in general make kids, the idea that there wouldn't be kids in a place creatures live is weird to me, and I am going to be inclined as a PC to ask about children, either to kill them if they are innately predatory like Mind Flayer tadpoles, to try and rear them if they are animals/magical beasts, or to sort out some sort of care if they are roughly analogous to human kids. I'm going to ask about giant spider eggs, the camp followers of bandits, the wards of the Claw of Luthic we just decapitated, so on and so forth.

[OldTrees1]

Yeah, the point of mentioning Drizzt isn't that the Icewind Dale books are the pinnacle of fantasy literature, it's just an easy example that most RPG people are at least passingly familiar with. He's just shorthand for that style of tale. It doesn't hurt that the books were super popular, largely on the strength of his story/conflict (no one was saying "Heck yeah, Regis is awesome").

Wait a moment. Heck yeah, Regis is awesome. They were enjoyable in Icewind Dale, and got even better later on.

Bruenor, Catti-brie, Drizz't, Regis, and Wulfgar are all awesome. Not to mention Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri.

As for drow, Bregan D'aerthe were a neutrally aligned mercenary company in Menzoberranzan. The story of Drizz't does not require figuratively all drow to be evil. It was based on the assumption that merely a majority of the drow that survived were evil.

What else can you do with an innately evil baby? Put it in prison pre-emptively? Leave it to die of exposure after you killed its innately evil parents?

The same thing you do with the other babies.

Notice you tadpole example was not due to neothelids tendency towards evil. It was due to them being predatory. Like an owlbear cub but ~9 Int instead of ~3 Int.

[Mordar]

It's funny how times change. Back in the early 3E days, the feeling of many people - especially older-school players, IIRC - was that Drizzt was overhyped and the resulting knockoff characters were usually overly edge-lord / melodramatic. I think a lore change that basically said: "Ok Drizzt, get off your high-horse, it's not like you're the only good-aligned Drow around" would have been pretty welcome.

I don't really have anything against Drizzt, but I don't really have anything for him either - he's just not a significant part of my D&D experience. So "Drow need to be 99.9% evil to support Drizzt being cool" is a non-starter for me.

I think it was Vanilla Ice Syndrome. A very large number of people (including non-AD&D players) read and enjoyed the books...evidenced by the continued high demand and sales...and then just like Conan or Gandalf or Fafhrd or [on and on], readers wanted to emulate that character in a game. And then there were 84 bijillion Drazzts, Drozzts and Brizzts running around out there. And then everyone put on tweed coats with elbow patches and bit their imported hornwood pipes and said "This Salvatore hack and his Drizzt vomit is childish pablum and so beneath me." Then they went off and played some other "high brow" RPG and looked down their long noses at kids that came after them and "discovered" Icewind Dale and repeated the whole process.

Yeah, the point of mentioning Drizzt isn't that the Icewind Dale books are the pinnacle of fantasy literature, it's just an easy example that most RPG people are at least passingly familiar with. He's just shorthand for that style of tale. It doesn't hurt that the books were super popular, largely on the strength of his story/conflict (no one was saying "Heck yeah, Regis is awesome").

That's a shame but that's a player issue, not a world building issue. Though I'm wondering about the confluence where you have players willing to RP murdering infants, a DM willing to give them infants to murder and now the only thing stopping them is that... some orcs might be nice when they grow up? By the time your game has gotten to the point where infanticide is on the table, the alignment line in the stat block is the least of your problems.

I think it does present an interesting test use for the "always Evil" race. Let's pretend the Dracks are an "always Evil" race of humanoids that subsist on scavenging, raiding, pillaging and all that sort of thing. They do not sow, fish, or live on manna. Let's further assume they breed like standard humanoids, maybe a higher birth rate or shorter gestation, but still on the curve. Finally, let's assume that they do rear young in some sort of typical fashion. Killing the raid-capable Dracks does what to the non-raid-capable Dracks? Without the murderous pillaging, what happens to the rest of them? Does anyone care about that step down the line? Do the heroic dwarves (are there any other kind? ) who killed the fully gender balanced raiding party also carry responsibility for the nigh-inevitable deaths of those that the raiding party sustained?

And does the calculus change if instead of humanoid Dracks we have scaley alien-minded quadrupeds with base for blood?

- M

[Jophiel]

Killing the raid-capable Dracks does what to the non-raid-capable Dracks?

Give them incentive to hone their hunter/gatherer skills? Isn't that the answer to any group of anyone who decide to send all their resource-gathering people off to get slaughtered without a Plan B? You either go find more people to support you, figure out how to support yourself or perish and think "Maybe sending everyone off on that raid was a bad idea" as your final thoughts.

As for posts about "realism", I've managed to go multiple campaigns without running into infants of any humanoid race. I'm skeptical that this is a real issue until the DM makes it one intentionally.

[LibraryOgre]

Regardless of whether or not baby orcs are innately evil, good (or even nominally neutral) PCs shouldn't be murdering them. Slaughtering helpless noncombatants shouldn't be on their list of acceptable stuff.

Then what do you do with creatures that WILL grow up to be evil? Not might, not probably, but WILL?

[Dr.Samurai]

I think it was Vanilla Ice Syndrome. A very large number of people (including non-AD&D players) read and enjoyed the books...evidenced by the continued high demand and sales...and then just like Conan or Gandalf or Fafhrd or [on and on], readers wanted to emulate that character in a game. And then there were 84 bijillion Drazzts, Drozzts and Brizzts running around out there. And then everyone put on tweed coats with elbow patches and bit their imported hornwood pipes and said "This Salvatore hack and his Drizzt vomit is childish pablum and so beneath me." Then they went off and played some other "high brow" RPG and looked down their long noses at kids that came after them and "discovered" Icewind Dale and repeated the whole process.

This made me laugh


With regards to the hypotheticals, again, it's not really for us to decide. That's for the players and their DMs to determine, because it's not a given that it will come up in every game. In my games, if I ask about camp followers, my DM is going to look at me like "dude, don't give me more work to do" and say "there are no camp followers". Hypothetical avoided.

Presumably, the game/DM and the players will mesh, and the types of challenges posed will be ones that either side is interested in exploring, as opposed to popping up in a forum post to prove a point on either side of a discussion.

[Jophiel]

Then what do you do with creatures that WILL grow up to be evil? Not might, not probably, but WILL?

Again, it doesn't come up because I don't play in games where we're asked to either murder babies or provide daycare services.

[Grim Portent]

The same thing you do with the other babies.

Notice you tadpole example was not due to neothelids tendency towards evil. It was due to them being predatory. Like an owlbear cub but ~9 Int instead of ~3 Int.

So I should put a child that will grow up to hurt people because of it's innate evil in a situation where it can hurt people? What sense is there to that? If a gnoll pup is going to start killing and eating people the moment it's physically capable because of divine or demonic influence I'm not going to leave it in the care of some nuns who might not be able to cope when it turns violent, I'm going to either leave it to die or put it down myself so it doesn't suffer unneccesarily. [EDIT: If my character is Evil, I might keep it to raise as an underling.]



As for predatory, that was more to indicate that I would also kill the young of non-sapient species that are inherently inimical to sapient life, as well as the infants of sapient life that is inherently going to be murderous. If a giant jewel wasp was laying eggs in the bodies of paralysed sapients to be eaten from the inside out I'd kill any and all larvae, eggs or juvenile wasps as well as the adults. Any form of intrinsically evil being whose intrinsic evil is sufficient to warrant death,* any being whose life cycle is dependant on preying on sapient life in a non-consensual manner,** any being whose existence is inherently inimical to sapient life and refuses to avoid sapients to avoid harming them, all things that have to be killed for the protection of others, to do otherwise is simply negligent.


*Murder, torture, that sort of level of innate evil.

**If a vampire survives off of donated blood or animal blood then co-existence is laudable and worthwhile, if a vampire has to kill its victims and feed on people then co-existence is murder by proxy.

[Jophiel]

If a gnoll pup is going to start killing and eating people the moment it's physically capable because of divine or demonic influence I'm not going to leave it in the care of some nuns who might not be able to cope when it turns violent, I'm going to either leave it to die or put it down myself

Well, that that's your answer for anything else in the same circumstances. So what does it matter (to you) if it's a gnoll pup or an orc cub or a goblin... uhhh... -ling? assuming they're all going to start biting nuns?

[Grim Portent]

Well, that that's your answer for anything else in the same circumstances. So what does it matter (to you) if it's a gnoll pup or an orc cub or a goblin... uhhh... -ling? assuming they're all going to start biting nuns?

Because the other option available long before the issue of them in the actual game comes up is 'gnolls/orcs/goblins are not innately evil and not significantly more dangerous when raised outside their primary culture than a human or gnome,' in which case it's just a baby, a weird baby that might act outside the human norm, but a baby and needs to be protected even at great inconvenience or peril to myself. In this case the babies of an enemy orc tribe are no different than finding a surviving human baby in a hamlet that was burned by dragonfire, getting the baby/babies to a safe place is the new immediate priority.


If I'm playing in a Warhammer Fantasy game, killing a beastman calf or a fresh-from-the-ground greenskin is just common sense and should be done at any opportunity outside an evil campaign, the creatures are inherently hostile to all other forms of life.

If I'm playing D&D then I'm generally going to assume most sapient children are not inherently evil, are somewhere within a standard deviation of human morality, and want to protect them, but I'm also going to try and negotiate with their adult counterparts because the same mercy I would give their children extends to them as well. If it's made clear to me that they are not, and are instead evil that cannot be changed, then extermination becomes not just acceptable, but morally necessary if it's within my character's power.

[Dr.Samurai]

Your character's morality is completely up to you. You are free to do what you want with whatever creatures you come across in your adventures.

[Jophiel]

Because the other option available long before the issue of them in the actual game comes up is 'gnolls/orcs/goblins are not innately evil

Sure. Alternately, the answer long before it comes up in the actual game is "I'm not going to throw infants at the party and make them decide what to do with them". It's really a non-issue until you decide to make it one.

Honestly, if I'm playing a game and we come across ANY baby and I need to figure out what to do with it, I'm going to get mentally detached because I don't want to role play caring for a human baby as we trek across the wilderness in search of its family just like I don't want to role play throwing gnoll pups into the river. But if your table has babies making a presence then, yeah sure, work that into your world planning I guess.

[Morgaln]

I get this, and I'll note that the argument is not specifically about Drizz't.

I just don't see the value in replacing stories like Drizz't with... "Hey guys, it's your boi Gormax the Slayer, just your regular ol' neighborhood gnoll. Nothing really differentiates me from any of the rest of you except I have fur, and this little tail".

The push is that all of these races should be treated as civilized human-but-not-human analogues, and so the stories that come out of them will be stories we already have in the millions. Again, Drizz't story is also old and played out as well, but at least it can exist.

The difference here really is culture versus race. In a story, it is perfectly alright to say "these drow, who inhabit Menzoberranzan are all evil". Since it is the only group of drow we meet in the Drizz't books, that gives a predominantly evil culture for someone like Drizz't to play off of. The problem arises when you create a setting and say "drow in this setting are evil." Now you're not making a statement about a specific group of drow. You're making a blanket statement about everyone who is a drow, regardless of who they are, where they come from and what they did. And once you do that, once you decide that everyone is inherently evil, killing their babies arguably becomes the moral right choice. That is what people are opposing; they don't want race to be a deciding factor when morally judging a person. That doesn't mean races are interchangeable, it means that every member of every race is allowed to be morally complex.

[Grim Portent]

Sure. Alternately, the answer long before it comes up in the actual game is "I'm not going to throw infants at the party and make them decide what to do with them". It's really a non-issue until you decide to make it one.

Honestly, if I'm playing a game and we come across ANY baby and I need to figure out what to do with it, I'm going to get mentally detached because I don't want to role play caring for a human baby as we trek across the wilderness in search of its family just like I don't want to role play throwing gnoll pups into the river. But if your table has babies making a presence then, yeah sure, work that into your world planning I guess.

It's not just babies, it's children in general. You never have a trip to a farming village and have children so much as mentioned in background narration? No NPCs or PCs with families that include children? Squires or pages? The inclusion of human, dwarven, elven or whatever children isn't really any different from those of 'monster' races unless you somehow never come into conflict with anyone from a classic PC race. I've had more than a few games where we antagonise friendly or neutral groups, often nobles or merchants, with stupid shenanigans or schemes, sometimes to the point of violence, and several games that included children as NPCs of varying importance. Generally the children are placed in such a manner as to not be in our firing line, usually we're protecting them from other people when they aren't just pure background elements, but their presence drastically changes how we approach a given situation, generally for the better.

[Jophiel]

It's not just babies, it's children in general. You never have a trip to a farming village and have children so much as mentioned in background narration?

Sure. They're not present on the battlefield. If a party was to ask about some random kids who were in a town that we were, for some reason, attacking the DM would say "they ran off and scattered during the conflict" and no one would reply with "Let's go hunt some toddlers!" because we don't play that way. If a story had a child as a McGuffin ("Go rescue the young prince") then said child probably has a solid layer of plot armor.

I've had more than a few games where we antagonise friendly or neutral groups, often nobles or merchants, with stupid shenanigans or schemes, sometimes to the point of violence

We don't get violent with friendly groups for fun and have to debate whether or not to murder the merchant's schoolchildren. It's just... not a thing with us?

Again, if this comes up it's only because the DM decided to make it a thing. And my usual impression of DMs adding "What about these babies?" and the like is that it's a lame gotcha (traditionally to jerk around the paladin). So no matter how many ways you try to phrase "But what about orc babies?" my answer is likely to remain "That's not an aspect of the games I play in so it doesn't really matter".

It's like kids in a game like Skyrim: Some people get weirdly mad that you can't murder children but the vast majority of people probably don't even notice because that's not an aspect of game play they're going to engage with unless the developers intentionally add a "Do you murder babies??" mission. Then they'll engage by turning the game off.

[LibraryOgre]

Again, it doesn't come up because I don't play in games where we're asked to either murder babies or provide daycare services.

"I don't ever ask the question" doesn't answer the question, though. It is a world-building issue, because there's the question of "Where do all these orcs come from?"

[Psyren]

I am not insisting that a setting has to kill off hope or idealism.

No, I am not sure what you mean. Part of the fun is bringing that hope and idealism into the world, as opposed to just playing in an idyllic setting straight from the jump.


I'm probably stating the obvious but it seems to me that this is a case of just not accepting the premise of the game in the first place. This strikes me as people complaining that Batman doesn't solve the crime in Gotham, as if the author set out to write a story that'd be wrapped up by issue 3 with a happy ending that reads "Billionaire Philanthropist Solves Poverty and Crime by Investing Millions in Education and Rehabilitation". That's not what the comics are about or looking to provide. I feel like that is what is happening here, where the purpose of the game and its lore is being misconstrued and then held at fault for not providing some other service (like reflecting a player's vision of an idealized world).

I'm not saying Eilistraee needs to save all the Drow, just like you're not saying Batman needs to solve all crime in Gotham. But both Batman and Eilistraee should show at least some signs of success that justify their existence. The setting being written such that Eilistraee failed at stopping Lolth from turning all the Drow into irredeemably evil bastards would be just as dull as a Gotham where Batman was incapable of saving anyone from the Joker. I would take one look at such a comic, shrug, and toss it in the trash where it belongs, because it would be nothing but edgelord nonsense.

No, they wouldn't. It's a bold claim with absolutely nothing to substantiate it.

Whether the evil deities would need to be omnipotent or not is besides the point. They need to fail at that specific thing, otherwise their creations lack free will and shouldn't be PCs to begin with, which appears to be a nonstarter among the majority of the playerbase.

[Dr.Samurai]

The difference here really is culture versus race. In a story, it is perfectly alright to say "these drow, who inhabit Menzoberranzan are all evil". Since it is the only group of drow we meet in the Drizz't books, that gives a predominantly evil culture for someone like Drizz't to play off of. The problem arises when you create a setting and say "drow in this setting are evil." Now you're not making a statement about a specific group of drow. You're making a blanket statement about everyone who is a drow, regardless of who they are, where they come from and what they did. And once you do that, once you decide that everyone is inherently evil, killing their babies arguably becomes the moral right choice. That is what people are opposing; they don't want race to be a deciding factor when morally judging a person. That doesn't mean races are interchangeable, it means that every member of every race is allowed to be morally complex.

But we know it isn't just Menzo. Drow are all throughout the Underdark and they are evil. The drow that are not evil don't really make up for the in-world reality, experiences, and perspective that characters have when they come face to face with drow. Someone said earlier that it's from the in-world perspective and it's completely true. Drow are raiders, slavers, and killers, and you're looking at someone from the Sword Coast and telling them "Hey... don't be so hasty to judge. You know, not all drow are like that. Somewhere, in a little hidden pocket of the world, are drow illusionists, and drow that dance in the moonlight. Do you think it's fair that you lump them in with the ones that murdered your entire family and took the ones they didn't into the Underdark as slaves?"

Inevitably, you guys will argue that it would be wrong for someone in the game to react viscerally at a drow and attack, because not all drow are evil, when the reality is that almost all drow are evil, and impact the surface world with their depravity.

There is a HUGE difference between "not all of them" and "almost all of them".

It's not just babies, it's children in general. You never have a trip to a farming village and have children so much as mentioned in background narration? No NPCs or PCs with families that include children? Squires or pages? The inclusion of human, dwarven, elven or whatever children isn't really any different from those of 'monster' races unless you somehow never come into conflict with anyone from a classic PC race. I've had more than a few games where we antagonise friendly or neutral groups, often nobles or merchants, with stupid shenanigans or schemes, sometimes to the point of violence, and several games that included children as NPCs of varying importance. Generally the children are placed in such a manner as to not be in our firing line, usually we're protecting them from other people when they aren't just pure background elements, but their presence drastically changes how we approach a given situation, generally for the better.

Yeah, this is just a table playstyle. This does not sound like most of the games I play in. Doesn't make it wrong, but it's just not something we have to contend with.

[Mordar]

The difference here really is culture versus race. In a story, it is perfectly alright to say "these drow, who inhabit Menzoberranzan are all evil". Since it is the only group of drow we meet in the Drizz't books, that gives a predominantly evil culture for someone like Drizz't to play off of. The problem arises when you create a setting and say "drow in this setting are evil." Now you're not making a statement about a specific group of drow. You're making a blanket statement about everyone who is a drow, regardless of who they are, where they come from and what they did. And once you do that, once you decide that everyone is inherently evil, killing their babies arguably becomes the moral right choice. That is what people are opposing; they don't want race to be a deciding factor when morally judging a person. That doesn't mean races are interchangeable, it means that every member of every race is allowed to be morally complex.

Not sure I follow the difference. If all of the Drow in my campaign come from Menzoberrazan, it is acceptable to have Drow be "always Evil", but if I have setting with no Menzoberranzan but still Drow, and still in similar numbers, I can't say they are "always Evil"? Even if all the Drow in the known world are all from the Venom Marsh?

Or is there an implication that even if it is never touched on or mentioned that tying the "always Evil" to one place leaves open the possibility that there are Drow in the Verdant Wood that are not "always Evil"?

- M

[Jophiel]

"I don't ever ask the question" doesn't answer the question, though.

It doesn't need to be. I have enough to worry about with things that actually matter in the game.

Yes, it's assumed orcs make baby orcs. The players don't come across any baby orcs just like they don't come across numerous things that "exist" but don't play any role in the game and thus don't get called out. No one is invested enough with messing with baby orcs for this to ever come up or anyone to care about.

[icefractal]

I just don't see the value in replacing stories like Drizz't with... "Hey guys, it's your boi Gormax the Slayer, just your regular ol' neighborhood gnoll. Nothing really differentiates me from any of the rest of you except I have fur, and this little tail".

Maybe I'm not getting your point, but ... "evil" is not a rare trait, nor one that generates much depth by itself.

Like, humans can already be evil. In fact I'd say that while in-world it may only be 1/3rd, 1/4th, 1/10th or whatever fraction, in terms of screen-time it's probably a majority (compare two hours of real-time spent fighting through the Orcus cult's (human) enforcers with maybe 20 minutes spent talking to people in the (mostly not evil) surrounding villages).

So IMO, the evil gnoll version doesn't really seem like an improvement:
"Nothing really differentiates me from any half of the rest of you except I have fur, and this little tail"

Like, red hair is more rare than being evil, so if making gnolls always-evil counts as "more depth", then making gnolls always-redheads would create some kind of literary masterpiece, I guess.

[gbaji]

Yeah, again, this is a problem that the DM is bringing up, presumably so the PCs can tackle it. I have yet to come across orc babies, because, I imagine, my DM is not interested in asking those questions.

But if we are saying that orcs are the way they are because of the heavy influence of their evil deities on their culture, than a baby raised outside of that culture should not feel that same pressure, no?

In which case, the PCs can leave the baby off at the nearest holy place willing to care for the baby.

But to Jophiel's point, these hypotheticals exist only if the DM makes them exist.

And this is the point. If the DM puts orc babies into the game, and presents the players with the conundrum of dealing with said orc babies, then the DM needs to have previously thought through what the actual nature of orc babies are. And for that matter, also thought out what orcs are. In the film Aliens, we (the audience) have no similar moral quandry when we see Ripley using a flame thrower to kill a bunch of alien babies, right? Why not? Because the setting has firmly established that these things are more or less mindless animal level (but clever animal) creatures, with absolutely no other motivations than to kill and breed. They're literally living organic bioweapons, and are treated as such.

Now. If that's what orcs are in your game settting, then that's what you (the DM) make them into. They kill for the sake of killing. Always. The cannot do anything else. You cannot show orcs engaged in trading, or bargaining, or any form of diplomacy, or having any reaction to meeting any other living thing other than "how do we kill/eat/whatever these things?". You make them into the freaking Zerg and walk away.

But the moment you give to orcs the capacity to work with others if needed, or goals other than to kill and breed, and you allow them to ever be player characters, then you have established that any orc, could choose to be good or evil, and can choose to help or to harm, and choose which god(s) to worship, which professions to pursue, choose who they like or dislike, and all of those other "sentient self aware species stuff". And at that moment, killing the orc baby becomes a grossly evil act. Always.

And that decision is always up to the DM to make.

"I don't ever ask the question" doesn't answer the question, though. It is a world-building issue, because there's the question of "Where do all these orcs come from?"

It's really not about where they come from, anymore than the question is "where do those Aliens come from?" Or "Where do the Zerg come from?". The question is to what degree orcs have the capacity to choose their own nature and path. If they possess that abilty at all, then it is evil to kill their babies. If you want it to be ok for the PCs to kill their babies, then you must make orcs completely inhuman monsters who do nothing but act as a weapon for whatever god or powerful demon thing is directing them, and nothing else.


Most orcs in most D&D settings can have different alignments than evil, and can often be played as characters. Ergo, in those settings, orcs have the capacity to be good. Ergo, killing their babies is just as wrong as killing human babies because they just happen to have been born to a family who are subjects of the enemy (evil) king instead of your own. That's an alignment choice on the part of the PCs, and not an actual moral question. And yeah, even if orcs are "mostly evil", and as they grow up they naturally feel a desire to kill people and eat their flesh or something, if the setting ever shows any orcs ever holding back that part of them and working with other species for any purpose other than killing them and eating their flesh, then one has to assume it's still a choice and thus it's wrong to kill someone/thing before it's even had a chance to face that choice in the first place.

And heck, in such a setting, roleplaying out the orc who has these innate tendencies can be quite interesting and fun. So there's that too. And sure, maybe you spare that orc baby's life, and maybe it grows up and becomes this horrible killing machine. So what? That creates yet more drama and interest in the game. The players response to that should not be "we just have to make sure to kill all orc babies" unless the DM has established that this is always the 100% outcome. Anything less than that should result in a "maybe this time it'll work out" approach (and perhaps looking into what went wrong with the first one). There's always going to be the question of the "psychopath child", who is just destined to be evil and cause great harm and suffering when they grow up. But we don't kill human babies just because this can happen. The DM has complete control over whether this is just a possiblity or a guaranteed outcome.

[Jophiel]

If you want it to be ok for the PCs to kill their babies, then you must make orcs completely inhuman monsters who do nothing but act as a weapon for whatever god or powerful demon thing is directing them, and nothing else.

More to the point, you need to (a) have players who'll say "Wooo! We're killing evil orc infants! Yay for great justice!" and (b) provide them with orc babies to murder.

I'll skip that game, thanks.

[gbaji]

More to the point, you need to (a) have players who'll say "Wooo! We're killing evil orc infants! Yay for great justice!" and (b) provide them with orc babies to murder.

I'll skip that game, thanks.

Hey. Your immune system probably killed a few million baby bacteria just today, so...

But yeah, if the DM is specifically choosing to say "There's a nursery room with a dozen orc infants in it. What do you do?", that's a choice the DM is making. It's just as easy to let the PCs fight and kill the adult orcs and just not have any baby ones happen to be in the area at the time. And if the DM does put orc babies into the mix and the expected player response is anything other than "we treat them just like we would human babies in the same situation", then that's a problem with the whole group playing the game.

And I guess as a broader obseration on "the things DMs choose to turn into morality plays", if the DM is doing stuff like this, but the PCs only ever stumble upon dragon eggs, or orc infants, or baby trolls, but not once is there ever a group of small children in that human bandit encampment, or a nursery in the evil overlords tower, or any other similar scenarios involving human infants, then that's also 100% on the DM actually artificially creating this in the first place. One kinda has to question the objective and motive at that point.

And I guess it also goes to "what kind of game do you really want to play?". I tend towards fun, adventurous, high fantasy style game settings and adventures. That's what my players enjoy playing, and that's what I enjoy running. So yeah... we're in it for the whole "we're going to find and kill unambiguously evil things, and take their stuff". And if I'm running something with a bit more grey in it, the grey folks are all going to be adult people, who made adult choices, and are doing whatever they are doing, and interacting with the PCs in whatever way they are, as a result of those choices they made. The minions of the evil overlord are people who choose to work for said evil overlord (the pay is good, and the benefits are great!), and thus can be dispatched for their choices. If there is a scenario where people are being forced to do things they don't want to do, you can bet that said plot point will be made abundantly clear to the players so that they can't possibly miss it. I will never put a situation in the game where the enemy forces the PCs just killed in order to save the village, or stop the bbeg's plan, will turn out after the fact to have all been dominated pacifists or something, or their children were being held hostage unless they particpated, or something else.

Some people may enjoy playing that stuff. My players don't. And I suspect that most players don't either. Putting such things into a game, doesn't really create moral questions to be answered, but just makes the players feel bad. And that's not fun.

[Dr.Samurai]

Agree with Jophiel and with what Gbaji just said.

I also want to point out that people are objecting to things that wind up being true as the conversation continues.

I originally made reference to sympathetic villains and was told it’s not about that. Then one of my points was replied to with a story about a sympathetic villain.

We are being mocked about how easy it is to tell villains apart and fight evil and we require race indicators to play, but now we’re being posed with these grey moral quandaries about camp followers and children and babies and who can you kill and who can’t you kill.

So I dare say we know exactly what people are looking for and object to it as the only proper way that D&D should be played. And insofar as it allows the rest of us to easily play with our style, the lore should not be changed to accommodate the “realistic” moral quandaries that others are looking for. You can do that with humans easy enough without turning all other D&D races into humans.

[Amnestic]

So I dare say we know exactly what people are looking for and object to it as the only proper way that D&D should be played.

What
Either you're saying "We're the only people playing D&D right, and people who disagree are playing it wrong" or you've written something that definitely looks like you're saying that, and that's an absolutely buck wild thing to say.

[LibraryOgre]

It's really not about where they come from, anymore than the question is "where do those Aliens come from?" Or "Where do the Zerg come from?". The question is to what degree orcs have the capacity to choose their own nature and path. If they possess that abilty at all, then it is evil to kill their babies. If you want it to be ok for the PCs to kill their babies, then you must make orcs completely inhuman monsters who do nothing but act as a weapon for whatever god or powerful demon thing is directing them, and nothing else.

Which is what I've been saying. And that is a world-building choice, whether they are people, or necessarily-evil instruments of evil.

I'd also say that the choice goes beyond infants, as popular as they are as examples. What do you do with orc prisoners? With orcs who surrender? Are they capable of surrender? Are they capable of alignment change? If an orc is irrevocably evil, is merciful execution the only option, or do you let them go? If they're not irrevocably evil, they're people, they can change. But whether they are irrevocably evil is a world-building choice that impacts the game, even if you never meet a baby orc.

[Dr.Samurai]

What
Either you're saying "We're the only people playing D&D right, and people who disagree are playing it wrong" or you've written something that definitely looks like you're saying that, and that's an absolutely buck wild thing to say.

The opposite.

Given all the objections to evil race cultures, I feel we’re being told we’re playing wrong. And I’m saying I object to that.