RPG dislikes

[Ra-Tiel]

I think Tolkien orcs are a slightly different story, since they were actually created as corrupted elves, by whatever lord of darkness created them (melkor or sauron, I forget).  I mean, they were essentially made to be evil, so I think it's fully justifiable to have an evil race in that particular situation.

And what's the particular difference between Uruk-Hai with Sauron and Drow with Lolth? Why is it easy to accept inherent racial malignity in one case, but not in another which has basically the same foundations?

[...] So along come Keanu and Carrie, packing serious heat, and in a few minutes they slaughter dozens of hardworking, well-meaning family men.  Now that's heroism. [...]

I think it's rather the serious issue with morality that "the Matrix" displays here. It's ok to slaughter innocent bystanders, because they could transform into agents at any moment.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I think it's rather the serious issue with morality that "the Matrix" displays here. It's ok to slaughter innocent bystanders, because they could transform into agents at any moment.

Did you just say it was okay or not okay?

[Ra-Tiel]

Did you just say it was okay or not okay?

Would I have labeled that as "serious issue with morality" if I supported it? ;)

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Would I have labeled that as "serious issue with morality" if I supported it? ;)

*shrug* Can't detect voice tone online.

And I agree that if you accept one "entirely evil race" you have to accept them all.

[Polycarp]

Has anybody posted this yet?

Orc Holocaust
The reprehensible moral universe of Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons.
By Erik Sofge
Posted Monday, March 10, 2008, at 6:35 PM ET

When Gary Gygax died, the gaming community lost an icon, its founding genius. At least that's the story being told in countless obituaries this past week by writers as eager to praise Gygax as they are to out themselves'"with faux embarrassment'"as former nerds whose lives he changed with 20-sided dice. And lo, what a fascinating and tortured bunch we are, with our tales of marathon role-playing game (RPG) sessions in windowless basements, our fingers hardened to nacho-cheese-encrusted talons, and our monklike vows of celibacy. Part testament to Gygax, part cathartic confessional, these obituaries are rapidly cementing his position at the head of the geek pantheon.

But it has to be said: Gary Gygax wasn't a visionary to all of us. The real geeks out there'"my homies'"know the awkward truth: When you cut through the nostalgia, Dungeons & Dragons isn't a good role-playing game; in fact, it's one of the worst on the market. Sadly, Gygax's creation defines our strange corner of the entertainment world and drowns out all the more innovative and sophisticated games that have made D&D obsolete for decades. (As a game designer, Gygax is far outclassed by contemporaries such as Steve Jackson and Greg Stafford.) It's the reason that tabletop gaming is not only stuck in the pop culture gutter but considered pathetic even by the standards of mouth-breathing Star Trek conventioneers. And with the entire industry continuing to collapse in the face of online gaming, this might be the last chance to see Gygax for what he was'"an unrepentant hack, more Michael Bay than Ingmar Bergman.

What's wrong with Dungeons & Dragons? It plays like a video game. A good role-playing game provides the framework for a unique kind of narrative, a collaborative thought experiment crossed with improvisational theater. But D&D, particularly the first edition that Gygax co-wrote in 1975, makes this sort of creative play an afterthought. The problem is most apparent in one of Gygax's central (and celebrated) innovations: "experience points." To become a more powerful wizard, a sneakier thief, or an elfier elf (being an elf was its own profession in early editions, which is kind of like saying being Chinese is a full-time job), you need to gain "levels," which requires experience points. And the best way to get experience points is to kill stuff. Every monster, from an ankle-biting goblin to a massive fire-spewing dragon, has a specific number of points associated with it'"your reward for hacking it to pieces. So while it's one player's job'"the so-called Dungeon Master'"to come up with the plot for each gaming session and play the parts of the various enemies and supporting characters, in practice that putative storyteller merely referees one imagined slaughter after another. This is not Tolkien's Middle-Earth, with its anti-fascist political commentary and yearning for an end to glory and the triumph of peace. This is violence without pretense, an endless hobgoblin holocaust.

Here's the narrative arithmetic that Gygax came up with: You come across a family of sleeping orcs, huddled around their overflowing chest of gold coins and magical weapons. Why do orcs and other monsters horde gold when they can't buy anything from the local "shoppes," or share a jug of mead in the tavern, or do anything but gnash their teeth in the darkness and wait for someone to show up and fight them? Who knows, but there they are, and you now have a choice. You can let sleeping orcs lie and get on with the task at hand'"saving a damsel, recovering some ancient scepter, whatever. Or you can start slitting throats'"after all, mercy doesn't have an experience point value in D&D. It's the kind of atrocity that commits itself.

For decades, gamers have argued that since D&D came first, its lame, morally repulsive experience system can be forgiven. But the damage is still being done: New generations of players are introduced to RPGs as little more than a collective fantasy of massacre and greed. If the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft is the direct descendant of D&D, then what, exactly, has Gygax bequeathed to us unwashed, nerdy masses? The notion that emotionally complex story lines are window dressing for an endless series of hack-and-slash encounters? There's a reason so many players are turned off after a brush with D&D. It promises something great'"a lively (if dorky) bit of performance art'"but delivers a small-minded and ignorant fantasy of rage, distilled to a bunch of arcane charts and die rolls. Dungeons & Dragons strips the "role-playing" out of RPGs; it's a videogame without the graphics, and a pretty boring one, at that.

There is a way to wring real creativity, and possibly even artistic merit, from this bizarre medium'"and it has nothing to do with Gygax and his tradition of sociopathic storytelling. In the mid-1980s, right around the time that Gygax was selling off his company, Steve Jackson began publishing the Generic Universal Roleplaying System, or GURPS. Jackson's goal was to provide the rules to play games in any genre. More importantly, characters in this new system could be fleshed out down to the smallest detail, from a crippling phobia of snakes to a severe food allergy. And when it came to experience points, characters got whatever the "gamemaster" decided. They might earn points for succeeding at a given task or simply for playing their character in a compelling way. Of course, players could still take out their real-life bitterness in a fictional killing spree, and the game master might end up with a bumbling and incoherent story line. But GURPS created the potential for so much more.

There are other complex, challenging games out there, and GURPS is still in print. But the bloodthirsty Dungeons & Dragons franchise remains a bestseller. If it seems overly harsh to fault Gygax for his seminal work, keep in mind that in 1987 he helped create the gaming equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space. In the now-infamous Cyborg Commando, you play a man-bot battling an invasion of alien insects. Unfortunately, you seem to have been built for comedic effect, with lasers that shoot out of your knuckles and your brain inexplicably transferred to your torso. That frees up cranial space so you can suck liquids through your nose for further analysis. Not that there are any rules for said chemical analysis, or for much of anything, really. Gygax wasn't much for the details. In the end, his games are a lot like his legacy: goofy, malformed, and fodder for a self-deprecating joke or two'"before being shoved in the closet for good.

Too soon?

[Nomadic]

Possibly yes too soon. Unfortunately I have to admit there is much truth to it.

[sparkletwist]

Well, to be fair, wasn't D&D conceived as a roleplaying addon to Chainmail, which was, after all, a wargame? And you can't very well fault a wargame for being about mass slaughter. :)

[Ra-Tiel]

Has anybody posted this yet?

Orc Holocaust[...]

Are other RPGs really that much better?

Let's take a look at the old WoD. Werewolves would slaughter any vampire they meet, because vampires have the scent of the Wyrm on them. Similarily, werewolves would kill pretty much any mage setting foot into a caern to draw Quintessence, as this kills the caern. Vampires would not refrain from dominating or killing any mortal or mage getting into their way and disturbing their schemes.

Or Shadowrun. Ghouls and vampires, merrows, nagas, wendigos - all are feeling and intelligent beings. Yet they are hunted and basically killed on sight, because they are dangerous, ruthlessly brutal, or are carrying infectious diseases. Spirits and ghosts are usually treated as slaves and tools to be used, and not as intelligent beings that should be treated with respect.

Other games have their own private holocausts just as well. Ironically, I don't hear anyone complain about them.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

And what's the particular difference between Uruk-Hai with Sauron and Drow with Lolth? Why is it easy to accept inherent racial malignity in one case, but not in another which has basically the same foundations?

every reason in the world[/b] for them to be an evil race.

[brainface]

Other games have their own private holocausts just as well. Ironically, I don't hear anyone complain about them.

I dislike[/i] about rpgs: I'm not trying to say what you should dislike. :)

[Ra-Tiel]

I first of all never personally said there was a difference between drow and orcs (in fact, I hadn't realized drow had come into the conversation until you just mentioned them), and second of all, only used orcs as an example, not the Prime Ethos.  

Well, I wasn't trying to imply anything but just quoted the most argued about inherently evil race I could think of right then.

I'm saying that some races were created without hope of redemption - take trollocs and Myrddraal from the Wheel of Time.  They are literally hard-wired to be evil minions of the dark lord of evility.  There are no renegade Myrddraal, deftly wielding two scimitars to combat all the evil of their species.  It's in their mythology.  Just like in the mythology of orcs in the Lord of the Rings.  

Aahhhh... WoT. Remember those times. ;)

But yes, those creatures are definitively inherently evil. But what about DnD orcs and Gruumsh? Doesn't it say that the orcs were created by Gruumsh?

However one runs orcs in their own campaign, though, needs to based on their own mythology, and if orcs are just another evolved, sentient race, then there's no sense for them to be an "evil race."  However, if they are a corrupted, created race, for the sole purpose of being evil (such as the Midnight campaign setting), then there's every reason in the world for them to be an evil race.

See above. If you go with the standard mythology and cosmology, orcs are a race created to serve their evil god as servants in the mortal world. Tough luck for them, I guess. :P

[Polycarp]

Are other RPGs really that much better?

Other games have their own private holocausts just as well. Ironically, I don't hear anyone complain about them.[/quote]
I'm sure it's because D&D is popular in a way that no other roleplaying system is or has ever been; there's no irony there.  You can argue (as the author does) that WoW is a direct descendant of D&D, but nobody could argue it is a descendant of GURPS or any other non-D&D system.  D&D has had a lot of influence on everything that has succeeded it, and continues to do so.  It's entirely fair to study the morality of D&D and note what effects that has had on the roleplaying and gaming community and the fantasy genre itself.

But the reason I posted this was because of people talking about the morality of roleplaying - other games have their "private holocausts," but should they?  Is a world where there are inherently evil, subhuman races "morally reprehensible?"  I don't go to the rhetorical lengths the author does, but the treatment of "evil races" from Tolkein's Orcs and "Swarthy Men" to Gygax's menagerie has always bothered me on a basic level.

[khyron1144]

The discussion about inherently evil humanoid fantasy races here reminds me of one of my houserules for the Tera cmapaign that I might not have mentioned yet.

Paladins's Detect Evil ability is usable at will, not always on.  Detect Evil (and Detect Good)is also somewhat restricted in what is Evil (or Good).  Sentient living humanoids native to the Prime Material never detect as Evil or Good, unless currently engaged in clearly Good or Evil activities.  Violence is Evil.  Kindness is Good.  An Orc giving alms at a temple of Gruumsh detects as Good.  A Paladin fighting a Demon detects as Evil.


This brings me to my second peave:
D&D is not set up to put a Necromancer, an Assassin, a Paladin, and a Druid into the same adventuring group, even if there are four players and they want to play a Necromancer, an Assassin, a Paladin, and a Druid.  The Assassin is Evil.  I'm the DM, I got no problem with Evil PCs, they're like Good PCs but without phony self-justification for the murder and loot gmae that is adventuring.  The Paladin is Good and can Detect Evil and refuses to adventure with Evil PCs.

[Superfluous Crow]

Okay, the paladin would probably discover it at some point, but aren't there items that shield you from alignment detection? Or lets you appear as something else? And paladins, druids and necromancers could easily party together. The only real problem is combining assassins and paladins as i see it. But then again, this still seems more like an objection against alignments in general.
The major problem with alignment restrictions on classes, as i see it, is that by using classes you have already limited the choices of character somewhat, and by further limiting multi-classing the character ends up with even less options.

[Nomadic]

I personally have never seen any real reason to even have alignments. The only reason they exist is for the good vs evil style game with defining lines for each side.