In Lord of The Rings Tolkien actually put in the lore that Morgoth and Sauron organized the Orcs in such a way that it was impossible for them to develop a distinct culture because it would give them something else other than them to be loyal to.
There is also a dialogue between orcs where they basically say that when it's all over, they just want to love somewhere quiet and isolated, not living a life of destruction. Even the original text that portrays orcs shows them in a nuanced way.
@IggyBitz actually the urukai in Lord of the Rings were said in the books to be crossbreeds between orcs and humans. More like a twisted version of half elves like Aragon's people started out being. Sorry if it seems I'm trying to out nerd you dude. That's just a surprisingly fascinating and f***** up part of Lord of the Rings Lord, that's actually just not talked about.
“...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” -The Dark Knight
A great example of a game that uses an evil race is Dragon Age: Origins. That setting has different intelligent races with different cultures and a lot of moral ambiguity, but the one constant is that the Darkspawn are a pure evil race that only seeks to destroy the world. That's not even mentioning the way they make more Darkspawn.
@@futurewario9591 I just finished Veilguard and I enjoyed it a lot tbh. It is different from the rest, but that does not make it bad. I thought it was a good game overall
@@futurewario9591 lol, sure thing dude... If your opinion of the game is based on whatever cherry picked clips float around the internet or is reduced to a very small and optional part of the overall plot, there's no point discussing about the game. I for one actually played the full game, 90 hours worth of it to be precise, and I'd happily discuss its strengths and real weaknesses, but there's hardly a point arguing about some h8r meme BS just doing the rounds. As for the "suddenly woke" criticisms I hear, I think most ppl either haven't played the other games or have forgotten their content.
Being an existential threat is not evil. Something primal and destructive without reason cannot really be evil, the same way wildfire or earthquake is not evil. To be able to be evil (much like being good) you must be able to choose evil of your own free will.
Lots of thoughts on this: it depends on what story you want to tell. If you're going with symbolic fantasy (akin to the Classic, Pulp & Grunge eras), this works - for the reasons you explained. The Undead are the unstoppable march of death, Vampires are the parasitic elite, Werewolves and Witches are the paranoia inducing murders howling in the night, Goblins steal your left socks and Orcs are an amorphous extension of Sauron. But in the contemporary era, there's been a shift towards sympathetic villains, Worldbuilding and a distrust in authority. People enjoy imagining the complexities of an otherwise impossible world and that extends to the evil side. We have bad memories of the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. We been told a fantasy about apocalyptic evils before that turned out to be just normal people. If you can talk your way out of a fight in an RPG by speaking Orkish, you might question why either side would be hostile to begin with. But, you can still do evil races within the contemporary style. Personally, I think recent years have shown us there are large groups of people conditioned to enjoy evil for it's own sake because it makes them feel strong. All that said, there is no wrong way to tell a story. Classical, Pulp, Grunge or Contemporary, good writing is still good writing.
In my view, characters who want to reform an evil race have a Good character. But the constraints of the setting/story affect how viable that is. Lots of good story potential
@ffffffffffffffff5840 Yeah, it's part of the best characters to find a glimmer of good in the cruelest of evil. Superman, Batman, Luke Skywalker, Aang, Spider-Man.
i'm not oppose to make evik characters synpathetic. But i feel media is making them to sympathetic. There are to many modern stories where people SIDE with the villain views. Making people root for evil is kinda wierd.
The people that are using Drizzt as an example of why inherently evil races are bad for character writing or TTRPGs are fundamentaly misunderstanding the character. The story of Drizzt is that of an anomaly; his character works BECAUSE of the Drow's inherent evil. He's a male Drow that only lived because his older brother died. His father already had doubts about his place among his race, which molded Drizzt's vision of his people. He struggled against his own identity and that of the Drow, to the point of abandoning Menzoberranzan and living in the Underdark for decades as an anti-social Hunter, who's killer instincts came from his race and his training. It took him DECADES to abandon that persona, travel to the surface, trust others again and find people who would trust him in return. And even then, he continues to struggle with slipping back into the persona of the Hunter, who is too much like the evil Drow he escaped from. Exceptions to evil races can exist, but only if: (A) That race is, in fact, evil. (B) If the conditions for the exception are met and make sense within the fiction. (C) If the exceptions struggle with their identity, sacrifice something to assume their new identity, and it hurts like hell.
Drizzt is exactly the reason why evil races aren't done much anymore. I think that evil races are excellent as part of a setting, but the issue is that it is innately interesting for players to then get to play as that races Drizzt for the reasons you mentioned. The race becomes popular because the idea of subverting a races evil nature gives characters some inherent drama and backstory. But then it stops being an subversion to be a good member of an evil race and as more people engage with the material, a certain number of them will inevitably push back on the idea of the race being labelled as evil at all, until it gets watered down to the point that you have drow, orcs and goblins being just humans with different colored skin and sizes.
This was about what I was going to say. I'm currently in a Starfinder game were I am playing a Hobgoblin mercenary, from a hobgoblin mercenary fleet, now stranded on an alien world..... and he is still evil! If anything escaping from the oppressive has only made him swing more neutral evil than he already was (all the way into being Chaotic for a bit). His new crew have done quite a bit to try and convert him to be more like then, yet he brings up a lot of good points as far as their survival and thriving in this new place fraught with enemies and danger.... That the whole point of playing these races though! To play the evil side and see from it's perspective, or possibly see him start being 'corrupted' by their positive influence the same way a human might be when stuck living with orcs and hobgoblins. So exactly as you said, in proper TTRPG practice
@ThatOtherGuyOverThere Drizzt is a prime example of a good aligned character belonging to an evil race done right, the guy is the literal reason why people acknowledge that the Drow can go against the very nature of their matriarchal society and made the Drow go from 1 dimensional demon worshipping sadists to a nuanced evil race that is capable of producing outliers.
@@MrNephthys17 Sure, but it's still valuable to let people play as a member of an evil race, if they have a good excuse for their outlook(if it's not the same as the rest of the race) but also come with the expectation of prejudice. What I hate about it is too many players want the first part, but get upset at the second to the point where DM's don't seem to want to roleplay it anymore. If I choose to play a good/neutral drow, I want life for them to be HARD, cause otherwise yeah, I could just be human.
Before I even knew what D&D was, my brother and I used to role play with the drawings we made of various characters and creatures. We drew a lot of vampires, so that race received significant focus and development. We figured out a way to give the race depth while it was still ultimately evil. Every vampire had "free will", they weren't programmed to be evil or anything like that, but the vampire culture was built on the belief that vampires were superior to other beings, and feeding on "lesser" creatures was their right. They also chose who could become a vampire, and the people they chose were those who fit the image of what a vampire "should be", similar to the way the Nazis thought the ideal man was blonde haired and blue eyed. Thus, while individual vampires could choose to be good, the vampire culture inevitably produced an endless supply of psychopaths. Excellent video, by the way.
You remind me the vampire philosophy from castlevania. Every vampire want to drink all the blood, eat all the people and they believe they own everything if they are strong enough to take it from others
Might Makes Right. If a culture based on this survives long enough, they often make it so that anyone who resembles the powerful or shares a caste/clan/family name with them inherently deserve power. These cultures always have slaves or deeply exploited caste of people, who typically inherit their status by accident of birth(just as those who are on top do). These cultures are repeated for most of the past 7000 years of humanity. While other forms of human organization exist, these cultures wrote most of the histories, due to winning the violence and manipulating others into stability.
@beardyben7848 and technically that's a philosophy that isn't wrong. If you jave the strength to make whatever you want you will do it. Characters like the Hulk show it, he chooses not to do so
The Skaven have depth and an interesting culture with its clan structure, the Great Horned Rat, and the council of thirteen (Warhammer was created by history nerds and it's awesome). But the key point is that it's a culture built entirely around aggrandizement of the self and destruction of everything that isn't Skaven. You don't need to worry about the ethics of killing the ratmen because even their civilization is, at its core, about slaughtering everything you hold dear. They don't even treat *each other* well (with one or two exceptions that are notable specifically because of how rare it is).
I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I agree whole-heartedly. Forcing a "who's the real monster here?" aspect into a story and thinking it adds depth to every single creature, regardless of sentience, is bonkers. I understand it probably comes from a good place, but it ignores that primal evil not only exists but plays an important, if visceral, role in storytelling, be it TTRPGS or broader fiction. There's a season 2 episode of _The X-Files_ where Mulder investigates some murders at a sewage treatment facility, only to discover a mutated, humanoid flukeworm eating people and using them to reproduce. The creature ends up in FBI custody, and since (at this point) the X-Files have been decommissioned, they have to treat it like a normal case. Mulder's boss says they need the creature psych evaluated and sent to court. Mulder, baffled by this, states _"it's not a person, it's a monster"._ It's evident that it's barely cognisant and only lives to survive. Acknowledgement of its inhumanity makes it scary, but the idea of people trying to reason with it makes it utterly horrifying. I've done this, too, as a younger writer and it can go way too far. Not every creature has to be some misunderstood Frankenstein Monster with layers and complexity. Just having beast that's an imminent threat is enough most of the time.
Handled pretty gracefully I’d say. “No evil races” is definitely a more modern take on fantasy, but sometimes too much nuance grinds the game to a halt and can lead to unsatisfactory endings when people tend to play roleplaying games to kill monsters and be heroic. Current discourse does tend to overthink evil races, and puts too much pressure on DMs to adjust. Not everyone should be asked to make a deep analysis on morality in their own worlds, instead just focus on making something they and their players might enjoy.
Every good designed evil race will end like this. Someone will make a fan art of said race that looks nice, people will like them, a game will make them playable
So ? i don't see the problem, just don't play that game. I play orcs often bcz I hate the way some nerds who can't fight/lift weights decided that any person with muscle has to be evil and brutishly stupid. The world is complex so let people create complex worlds, and if you don't wanna play in one it's fine no one is forcing you. Plus come on there's some real inspiration for some of those races.like don't tell me goblins weren't developpes into an anti semmitic stereotype, bcz tolkien's goblins were just orcs from the misty mountains. No long noses, no stealing money, no weird rxpe thing going on around them. Or just look at old dark elves art from DnD, they're just a weird racist's view of black people. You have to understand that some people don't want to play with those type of characters, that are also really poorly written. Your evil guy is evil bcz he was born like that ? Bcz of genetics ? That's lazyness. No one is born to be a certain way, human potential is limitless, and since all fantasy species are modelled after real world humans, then so is their potential.
@@golomoed5347 aight but a lot of people who defend this stupid argument this should not happen are in this comment section so I thought u were too. Also the guy who made the video and who has this stupid argument liked ur post
@golomoed5347 sure, it has a real life impact. 50 60 years ago the numberless trope got people thrown in the seine river in my city, my dad still hears screams man
an easy evil race would be demons. Demons and angels are literally the same race, but demons are evil and its why they have been put in the time out dimension.
@@KrillAndGrill I mean even in settings without an almighty singular deity, if good and evil are literal cosmic forces, then it can be a natural process of them.
@@DemigodoftheSea I think demons from doom are a very interesting way to make a developed group that's absolute pure irredeemable evil They were a race of fearless, extremely ambitious and determined beings that were created to be conquerors, and started to physically corrupt themselves by abusing the powers they used too much without a care for anything but their desire to conquer
I think that people forget that evil cultures 100% existed, and not just as a culture we would call evil now due to changing beliefs on what is good, thus being just another form of moral relativism, but genuinely, wholly evil cultures. Drawing on the elements that further highlight the evil of enemies opens up the possibility for interesting and terrifying cultures with nuance that can in fact make that evil more subtle. The inner workings of ogres doesn't need to turn their brutal culture of gluttony and greed into something we are meant to sympathize with, but could highlight the evil inherent in a culture that sees everything you have as theirs, from your treasures to your flesh. If you are going to add depth to the evil races, then, in my opinion, the depth needs to highlight the most terrible aspects of them, or make the juxtaposition in how they treat each other and how they treat the people there even more stark.
I have mixed feelings on this. I definitely agree that players dipping their toes in what is supposed to be existentially evil (and therefore humanizing it) can definitely undermine the narrative power of that evil. I think the holdout is specifically on evil RACES, instead of evil creatures that are not at all humanoid. It’s very difficult for most people to hear the word “race” in a fantasy context and not immediately overlay real-world associations of racism, particularly the idea that an entire group is “all evil.” A lot of players instinctively feel that if it gets called a race, it CANNOT be an evil monolith, or else we have a problem. Evil monsters on the other hand that aren’t looped in with the term “race” are great for that existential threat. Zombies, demons, aliens, slimes, or unintelligent wild beasts-creatures that are entirely removed from the concept of race-are still capable of providing that antagonistic force in a campaign. Interesting video as always, great stuff!
I agree as well for the most part but I do think a setting could have inherently evil races that are humanoid and not have issues. Prior to the lore change, Orcs in WoW were corrupted by Demonic influence. You can be sympathetic for their origins and yet recognize that they are ultimately changed because of the demonic association. However I do agree that there are people that don't approach this in good faith and will attempt underhanded insinuations regarding race and the real world analogues they use. Ultimately you should be mindful of these things when crafting creatures and races that fit the mold of inherently evil.
"In a private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as: squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types." The history of orcs is ingrained in race coding. In the movie Bright (2017) orcs are coded as urban ethnicities and African American, while elves are coded as upperclass and white. "medieval Scandinavian texts whiteness is associated with beauty, Alaric Hall has suggested that elves may have been called 'the white people' because whiteness was associated with (specifically feminine) beauty." Are Russians evil for invading Ukraine? No but the government and ruling parties are definitely are. You can have the governing body do horrible and evil decisions while still showing the dichotomy of citizens of that government (in this case race such as orcs drow etc) disagreeing with the decisions and direction of rulership. You can make great and complex stories of how your PC drow/orc is fighting for change in their society and losing that battle and the internal turmoil they are going through.
@@DeadpoolAli Yep. No society in the real world has ever been a monolith. There have always been people within society who didn't like the way that society was doing things, or who thought they were fine with it even as they themselves stood out like a massive sore thumb.
4:51 And in their attempts to make fantasy "deeper" and more "engaging" the result is boring and flat. You hit the nail in the head with this one, as usual.
My favorite example of a pure evil race that is also give nuance is the Wraiths from Stargate Atlantis. They have a whole hierarchy, political intrigue, religious beliefs, and yet no matter how much depth they have, the fact that they view all other people and even one another as potential food ensures that even those allied with the heroes will always be feared and distrusted. The existential threat of the Wraiths can't be diluted through nuance, because nuance doesn't erase the fact that they are the enemies of all that is good in the world, regularly culling humanity for their own benefit.
Heck they actively resent attempts to make them literally human and view the tools to do so as merely a weapon to use against other Wraith to turn them into potential food sources.
This exactly. Its always bugs the crap out of me when people try to have good guy vampires. Like what the hell, you literally eat people. The first thing a still decent person would do after being turned into a vampire against their will is take quick walk on a brilliant sunny day. Anything else is putting everyone else around you in extreme danger just for you hanging around. Even if you hand wave it and say the victims don't always die and if they feed regularly they can control themselves its still so off the charts evil that no one should tolerate it. Anything vampy enough to be called a vampire is evil by definition. There is no ambiguity.
A good video, with great points. If as a DM, you want to create a pure evil faction without real world parallels, the following work well: Undead, Demons, Lovecraftian Monsters, Robots I think DAO darkspawn are also a great example of evil done right. Funny film trivia: the bugs from Starship Troopers are actually a bad example of pure evil. It’s heavily implied humans are the invaders and that the bugs are simply retaliating against humans for invading their territory and pillaging their resources.
I'm not trying to be argumentative but..... The starship troopers thing depends entirely on what you are looking at, if you are looking at the movie in the context of the book then the bugs are undeniably "pure evil", but when it comes to taking the movie as a maybe separate piece of work, the bugs are a *bit* more ambiguous. I think the movie does a bad job at making them ambiguous, but the argument can certainly be made.
@@billdecompsa4705The movie shows that the bugs are intelligent, have feelings, and are likely only responding to human incursions into their space, but you have to watch with a critical eye since the movie is shown from the fascistic perspective of the Federation.
@@David_Axelord I mean considering that the bugs are a hivemind and aren't human, trying to interpret their actions based on human emotions or intentions is sort of flawed. The movie is a mess not because its "fascistic perspective of the Federation." but because Verhoven didn't seem to understand what he wanted, if you really want to make a satire on something, you don't bury (supposedly) under layers and layers of subversive "hints", that don't play out very well because very little of the movie is actually "fascist".
@billdecompsa4705 I actually thought I was explaining the bugs' behavior in an animal way, not a human way, territorial behavior is hardly limited to humans in nature. As far as finding the film a mess or not seeing all that much fascist stuff in it, I don't know what to tell you, sounds like we're just bringing different perspectives to it.
Just my opinion, but I think this discussion is conflating two separate ideas: "races" and "monsters." When I think of a "race," playable or otherwise, I'm generally thinking about an intelligent, humanoid creature that gathers into social hierarchies bound together by shared culture. People. When I think of a "monster," I'm thinking of something alien and inhuman, perhaps primal and bestial, maybe meant to be used as an allegory for what we consider to be "evil," or maybe just beyond human understanding. This is the category where I'd tend to put undead, demons, and "classic" monsters like manticores and hydras. I think the issue we're running into in the current fantasy environment is that we're taking older "monsters" and turning them into "races," and for some people that leads to some icky thoughts in regards to real-world cultures, conflicts, and our ability, as humans, to dehumanize and villainize cultures we don't understand or agree with. But I think every table is going to draw the line between those two categories a little bit differently, based on personal experience and taste. For me, personally, I don't believe in "evil" as an underlying cosmic force. I believe people, individuals, have the capacity for evil; I believe such people are capable of selling their ideologies and passing them on, spreading them to others, but I don't like the idea of labeling "all" people within a group as "evil" because some of them happen to be terrible. As a GM, my stance is generally, "I want my players to have fun." If a player wants to take on the role of a goblin or an orc and our game of choice supports that, I'm going to let them. We'll work out what that means for our table and the fantasy world we share with each other. If I want to represent "true evil," literally or symbolically, that's a niche that doesn't have to be filled by a playable race. Demons/devils are literal incarnations of evil. A horde of ravenous zombies can represent a monstrous, insatiable hunger just as well as a pack of gnolls. I don't know of many games that would make either of those options playable by default (though perhaps at GM discretion). Ultimately, it's going to come down to your table, your players, and the story you want to tell together. I'm not going to try to tell anybody how to run their own games. For me, I'd rather not villainize an entire race of people. That feels gross. I might accentuate and highlight some rather disastrous flaws in a culture, but try to meter it out with individuals who buck the norm. If I want to represent "evil" and provide a horde of creatures the PCs can demolish without feeling bad about it, I'll turn to using monsters.
Why are Drow evil? Loilth, their selfish nature and a dark reflection of human nature. They are selfish, twisted and sadistic because in a lot of ways, they enjoy it. They enjoy harming and dominating others, they do not care. My players fight them, they fight an evil dragon because he's a necromancer that kills and raises his victims to throw at his next victims and mocks life itself. He seeks power and personal gratification, stop him. :) Something I always go back to when ever I hear about people wanting to humanize the monster, "if the world was peaceful you wouldn't need adventures to defend it." Mindflayers can't be reasoned with, an ancient red dragon can't be bought, a necromancer has no value for others, beyond what he can do with their remains despite it's perverse nature. The drow want to see you suffer because they genuinely believe you deserve it in their twisted minds. I'm not here to make some grand statement. I'm the dungeon master, I create the monsters so you as players can be the heroes.
Yeah it's a worrying trend to see fantasy creatures become too human. These days it can be boiled down to just another flavour of human, the last decade there's also been a lot of anti-human sentiment flowing around pop culture too. I miss seeing media monsters be monsters
I 100% agree with you. You don't need to make everythin' Morally Complex. You can simply say "The Orcs and Goblins rampaging through the countryside are under the command of an evil wizard who rides on the back of a dragon who wishes to conquer the kingdom" and that should be enough. As temptin' as it is to expand the lore of a Fantasy world, over explanation will bore the players to tears.
I think where people get hung up on this is misunderstanding that some elements of a story get used to make the audience experience new levels of intensity in emotions while others use those same elements to give different nuances in new combinations of emotions (and others still fail to do either). There are a couple of options and both could potentially work but they have different uses. In the end they are just different ways of writing stories. And they both have some right and wrong ways to write each. This type of high stakes fantasy races ( with evil races, holy races, etc ) are used for intensity. The video lays it out pretty solidly. The other main use of fantasy races could convey certain things about different groups in people in society (although mapping them onto certain ethnic groups in real life is usually agreed to be cringe , even in the nuances mode they're more used to create new archetypes ). An example of the nuances version of races in fantasy would be the different types of animals in Animal Farm. The pigs represented one group, the dogs represented another, sheep another, and so on. Those species didn't represent the extreme larger-than-life intensity that LOTR does for Orcs, etc. That wasn't their function. Furthermore, fantasy stories can have heroes and villains without using evil or holy races - Arcane has about a dozen main characters who can clearly be heroes or villains - depending on which factions you side with.
I agree with you. I dont like taking the "Morally grey" high ground like Wotc is doing with every single race because its offensive to have races be evil now apparently.
@@Iulian111IKR. I especially hate what they did to the orcs making them analogous to hispanics. Drow at least have an excuse in that they not only have options for a good god they can follow but in their origin story are explained to have been corrupted rather than created evil like orcs and goblinoids.
I think the key is that you can, and often should, use both. You can have, for example, your culturally ostracized dark elves who are somewhat dark but not outright evil, rather, complex, alongside the threat of an unambiguously monstrous undead horde for example, so when you want to tell a story of conflict between morally grey persons, you can, but if you want an existential struggle against unrelenting forces of evil, that option is available too
I used to play a spaniard skeleton named Rodrigo, the party knew that while any other cursed skeleton was evil, Rodrigo had some humanity left. He didn't change the world idiosyncrasy, and still had to fight other skeletons, didn't even knew how he became undead in the first place, but he was "part of the group" 🧛🏻♀️🧝🏽♂️🧜🏻♂️💀✨ I think that's a way to have a skeleton cake and eat it too 😅
In some old Polish rpg/fantasy blog once was an article "Why every fantasy setting needs their own orcs", and above all those things that you say in that's blog there was a simple anwser - sometimes you need some simple adventure scenario, and monsters who are inteligent enough to make some plans, but evil, so no one will start moral dilemma fits perfectly for that.
5:10 I mean, maybe. As a counterpoint though, World of Darkness is all about playing the dark and evil races of the world and all the philosophic things they represent and it's narratives are still fine. You can even play the "good guys" in the Hunters so it's not just solely playing the "evil races".
The usefulness of pure evil really depends what kind of game you're playing. But if you're playing a traditional heroic explore-fight-loot gameplay loop kind of game, you need monsters that players won't feel bad about killing. If they start asking if their actions are justified, you instantly spiral into something else entirely. You can't necessarily just declare "goblins are evil and it is always good to kill them!" though. Cultural ideas around goblins, orcs, etc have broadly shifted and that might not get the same traction it once did. In a recent low-level D&D game I used gibberlings and mutant animals as the generically killable enemy, and that worked pretty good. No one wondered about their culture.
Why can't you though? If it's my setting and my creation and I say "all goblins in this world are evil" who is there to disagree with that statement? It's my creation and take. Just because you approach something with the baggage of your own experience doesn't mean it's my job to help you sort through that.
@@paulsmart4672 It's so obvious you can't explain why? LMAO So if YOU wrote a book and in that book you made a setting, and in that setting you decided that the goblins you created were inherently evil.....that what? You can't do that? LMAO you're not allowed? This is the dumbest take so far if I'm understanding you correctly.
In this day and age, the most subversive and cutting edge take you can offer to fantasy is going back to the primordial roots and utterly reject everything about modern fantasy. Embrace the chud fantasy, make it the chad fantasy.
@PaulStore800 yes I have read them all, I do enjoy them. Every single wizard or sorcorrer in those stories is twisted. Half the leaders are wolves in sheeps cloathing. As brutal as Conan himself can be, given the settongs context he is the hero.
The problem i have with this line of thinking is that when im up against an orc, i dont want to be up against a tiger with thumbs: i want to fight a *person*
In a DnD game, I played a twist on Red October where a Warhammer Dark Elf captain was willing to surrender his ship in exchange for asylum. But he was an exception that confirmed established rules, not some symbol of "noble deserters in Dark Elf lines".
I think I see your point here for unapologetic evil, if your party is fighting orcs it's not your job as the DM to make them feel bad because "agghh they're people too." The point here is intentionality. For example, orcs in my game are not innatley evil but instead follow the God of the Hunt. They aren't hordes that take over towns but are always chasing bigger and bigger prey to prove their strength. On the flipside I have Yuan-Ti, who are entirely evil and wish to turn every humanoid in the world into Yuan-Ti. Having a reason for Yuan-Ti destroying every other civilization doesn't make them less evil. I would not have Yuan-Ti as a playable race in my settin, but orcs are 100% designed to be playable. If orcs are evil in a setting, commit to making them anathema to life as an inhuman type of monster.
In a tabletop game I'm running, I've got an ancient species of Saurians who once ruled the entire world in an evil empire, mistreating all the other species in various non-TH-cam-friendly ways. Though the empire has fallen, they remain the scheming and villainous boogeymen alongside their last remaining God, devoted to freeing the rest of their vile pantheon and punishing the other species of the world. Since all the playable species have that shared history of being abused by the Nasty Dinosaur People, there's a bond there that helps them stick together. VERY helpful from a DMing perspective, especially since it's made pretty clear that they are the Irredeemable Bad Guys.
I'll admit I'm guilty of this over complexity in my own writing, even when I try to make a monstrous cannon fodder race. The justification I gave is when the gods of the setting uplifted species into sentience not all were uplifted with care. That's why some races like orcs have both a rare sentient variant, and a more common physically powerful but dumb and bestial variant. And the sentient orcs use their bestial counterparts as expendable soldiers and cheap labor. The funny part is gnomes are much the opposite, they've been uplifted so much they've come out the other side and become monsters again. Hyper intelligent magically and technologically advanced monsters who see other races as crude brutish animals they can experiment on with no second thought.
With these last two, I think you'd enjoy reading "Menzoberranzan-A Perfect Unjust State" from Irwin & Robichaud's D&D and Philosophy. A single line eludes to the richness concerning the evil nature of the Drow and their society: "You may do whatever you can get away with...that is all that matters." I agree that where devils, demons, and other incomprehensible entities are concerned, evil "as nature" or a representative of such a cosmic force is for the good concerning TTRPGS. We're definitely on the same page that such races turned into playable characters should be avoided, if not outright disallowed. After all, there are quite a few, and one that often passes by, maybe because of their history, is the Gith. I am, however, reluctant to give up the nuance of "evil" for just wanting to corrupt, destroy, or whatever, as in many cases, it reduces everything to a "monster," and what subtlety is there in that? From the "GAME" aspect, though, and just playing devil's advocate here, the transformation into a playable choice seems to have more to do with the ever-increasing list of options produced starting about D&D 3.5. Hot on the tail of the most notable Drizzt Do'Urden, further spurred by the inclusion of several sub-races even within the classic choices. The stale feeling that some got from the longstanding core choices did drive many of us in the middle days of the game to ask to play those races. It's good stuff, TRILL, far better than much of what gets produced laced with highbrow language and raised intellectualized noses. It makes me look forward to the subjects of "Heroism and Goodness."
I think you can have a good mix of both nuanced evil and inherent evil. My only issue really is when you make the inherent ones playable by the characters. I also do agree that not everything should be a "Monster" as you said. Just that when they are, don't let the players get ahold of em lol. I also think it started a bit earlier than 3.5 with 2e but I do think 3.5 is when it went into overdrive. I appreciate the thoughts as always!
I waited till the end before I gave my piece, and I think you're 75% right. However, Where I disagree is he idea that players can NEVER play as one fo these races. To me, it is eternally important to remember that one or two exceptions does NOT make the whole race suddenly good. In fact, I think people should be open to playing then as evil in the first place..... maybe a lesser sort to their peers, but still clearly on the side of evil (at least in the beginning). I mean, it's that part of the appeal in the first place? I.E: I'm playing a Hobgoblin merc stranded on an alien world and still focusing on surviving and becoming a freelancer rather than live under 'the elder's rules'. He is STILL evil though, despite the parties efforts and his fierce loyalty to them by now, but the moral conflicts are super gratifying! So yeah, lean into!
I think you're falling too far into the other camp by saying "evil races don't need culture", because without SOME explanation of their motivations, you've basically got "ORC LOL BAD" going on. That's just as much of a fallacy as saying "everything should be player friendly". You need the "Orcs are warped and twisted by Morgoth, but they were once elves that fell to the Shadow" type culture or lore to make them work. Cardboard cutout baddies like zombies just don't work in a setting unless you start suspending all sorts of disbelief. Dark elves before Drizzt had a complex and and compelling society, multiple motivations and factions, and even Gygax had a "good" dark elf at the end of Queen of the Demonweb Pits. The explanation for that culture made it even MORE horrific because of what was the societal norm. How they viewed other races. That reason for WHY they were doing what they were doing was part of what made it far, far more interesting to deal with them as players or as a DM.
I enjoy complex Orcs, Drow Goblins etc. But yes unambiguous evil is great for storytelling and just plain fun. I think moving away from the classical evil fantasy races is good if you manage to explore evil in an different interesting way.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. You can have both in the same setting. I'm moreso arguing from the point that if you're going to make a race inherently evil, just keep it unplayable for the players except in specific circumstances.
@@TrillTheDM I concur. I'm playing a Hobgoblin merc stranded on an alien world and still focusing on surviving and becoming a freelancer rather than live under 'the elder's rules'. He is STILL evil though, despite the parties efforts and his fierce loyalty to them by now, but the moral conflicts are super gratifying! But it only works because Hobgoblins are an evil race inherently!
@@TrillTheDMah and here I was about to make a comment saying both can exist like a goober, glad I saw this lol. Great video by the way! I personally like having a bit of both in my settings. One of my favorite world building lines about demons in dnd said that despite their Evil nature some try being good for a while due to their inherit mailability with Chaos. Many revert back, seeing it as a passing amusement and “delve into their debauchery with renewed vigor,” every once in a while one wants to keep going. Of the infinite horrors of the abyss where new unimaginable horrors crawl out the primordial depths and nothing is impossible, it stands to reason that one can mutate in just the right way to stumble onto salvation. 99.9% of demons are unimaginable evil and even those who dare to be good can always revert so must always be treated with caution, but it’ll be a damn compelling story to see them struggle towards that goal lol.
Okay, counterpoint: The "Token Good Orc" trope has been a staple of fantasy and sci-fi storytelling for decades now. Not letting players play members of normally Evil races is denying the good storytelling potential of being an orc raised by humans, a drow defecting from the evil underkingdom, or a goblin who's learning to channel his chaotic nature to be a decent being. If we can have stories of good people turning to the side of Evil, than we need the alternative as well, of beings born to a society of evil, who learn to embrace good values. Sometimes it can be a doomed endeavour, sometimes it can be an aspirational "no one is beyond saving" statement. But there needs to be an opening. And there's always the "rage zombies/overriding hive mind" option if you still want irredeemable monsters.
My problem with this is that most people don't ever approach it seriously. People might include some "token discrimination moments" but often times these types of characters and their situations just get overlooked for the flow of the game. Let's say for example in a world where Orcs are INHERENTLY Evil. Everybody in the world sees and knows them as such, it isn't a question of "their culture is different than ours" these Orcs are Demonic Pig Orcs. In the case that there IS one Orc that is somehow able to break away from the demonic side for whatever reason, how is the world EVER going to let that Orc be around them? It would be kill on sight at ALL times. The world would naturally not understand or ever be okay with this situation. In a book this is fine, the author can do whatever the hell they want, but if you are playing this honestly in your setting then how is it not a total nightmare for the person playing that race? Constantly trying to be killed, hunted down, removed from society completely.
It is somewhat annoying to me when I play as an orc, half orc, lizardfolk, or tiefling... and the DM refuses to let the NPC's react accordingly. My orcish character is from the same clan that raided their villages. My tiefling looks like a fiend that tempts people into selling their souls for wealth and power. My lizardfolk literally eats people. For gameplay, yes, it might also be annoying to be chased out of town or refused service. But I chose to play as a monstrous race that is often seen as "evil". Let me have the story that I specifically asked for.
I enjoy the occasional monster playing against type, either for dramatic or comedic effect. I also like to think that redemption is available to any and all who seek it, even in races steeped in pure evil, especially when that effort is genuine, its very cathartic. You don't need to explain the orc's society, because the orc player is rejecting all of it to live a better life. Of course, those should be the rare exception to hammer home the fact that the majority of the race is still an active threat to the world.
Interesting take on "playable monsters" that keeps them monstrous and not just "misunderstood" is I think vampires in Vampire: The Masquarade. Plasyers are vampires, and they don't technically need to be evil, but each one of them has "best" inside. The beasts don't simply wants to feed, it wants to kill and main. Being a vmapires is a struggle to keep on humanity in a state when your own very nature constantly pushes you to be a monster. Vampires have culture and society, but every single one they create is fundamentally based on using mortals as a sustenence. It's brutal society of the parasites in which the might makes right. Even when they are more "understandable" and "sympathethic", they are still monsters from the mortal perspective and by very nature cannot function without exploitation and abuse. Even "heroic" vmapires playthrough require your player character to feed on people, often non-consensually. Sure, GM can handwave this, but it's a fact. Interesting thing in one of newest edition is that a vampire cannot really calm the Beast without killing a person while feeding. The one who are not monsters are forced to constantly be subjected to the influence of the Beast, every single moment of their un-life.
Let the wicked witch of the west stay wicked, I say! No more musicals! Ha. Seriously, though, great video. You put into words something I've wanted to explain for a great while.
I generally agree, a fight against pure evil threating the world can lead to an exeptional story. There are many examples of that. However, I would say that doing this too often can rob the story of any weight and meaning. If the world is on the brink of destruction for the 10th time and it is saved for the 10th time what makes the other ones matter? This is in my experience a challenge for a dm thats not easy to overcome. I myself tend to enjoy lower and more personal stakes in my games more.
There's definitely a balance you should take. I don't think an evil race being present makes the world on the brink of destruction though. That might be their goal but it doesn't mean they're successful about it or that they're right at the gates. They just are present.
THANK YOU for this video. It beautifully articulates most of my thoughts on the subject. Also bonus points for the Army of Darkness and Black Cauldron clips. Like, comment, sub and share well earned my friend!!
I agree with the points exposed, but also, you CAN let a player use an evil race character if they really want to, just making it be an anomaly, an extraordinary being that for reasons known or unknown, obtained, recovered or developed higher conciousness. An unique individual from that race that's an exception to this unquestionable evil. This could also make for an instant plot device.
I liked how old D&D handled orcs. Orcs being pure evil but half-orcs having that spark of humanity that allows them to be better. It's one of those "keeping you cake and eating it too" examples.
Well done, my friend. Races and beings with evil or alien motives are so much fun and help fantasy and sci-fi shine (of course, in parallel, the story or game can be about human or human like races dealing with complex moral issues and evil/corrupt folks among their own people). I personally love when heroes face off against malevolent races whose ultimate designs are not well understood, but the heroes know with certainty that only nightmares await if such creatures are allowed to thrive.
I think the most important thing here is overthinking, at the end of the day almost every character and species starts as a concept, and represents that concept. it could be incredibly fleshed out, or it could be like you said about the undead: simply the physical manifestation of inevitable demise. When people over, analyze, and overthink these things they come up with ideas about them that have no bearing in reality. They are pure fantasy. They write their own lore, and get offended about ideas that aren’t real. I think it’s very important to create unique cultures, and unique, cultural, identities, too, so that people do not confuse these things with real life… When people look at every single barbarian and call it racist it’s very difficult.
I think both concepts can coexist having some typically evil races with cultures with a different or none sense of morality, not inmorality but amorality. Yet you still need the ultimate evil, the undeniable threat, you need a clear villain a clear antagonist. As you said in the beggining both are narrative tools with pros and cons and ways to use them
Your best video to date, IMHO. We agree that allowing inherently evil races as playable options in RPGs challenges the philosophical foundation of the game’s world by blurring established moral dualities and destabilizing the consistency of its lore. Evil races often embody mythological archetypes and primal fears, serving as foils for protagonists and anchoring the setting’s moral stakes; transforming them into sympathetic or heroic figures risks diluting their symbolic power and unraveling the world’s internal logic. While such inclusion offers the potential for complex storytelling, it can erode the metaphysical framework, trivialize the narrative stakes, and overwhelm the campaign with ethical relativism at the expense of high-stakes adventure.
Glad you enjoyed! Definitely agree, it's a trade-off that you have to decide whether or not it's worth. To me it's just not worth it. That's not to say that the only races playable in my games are inherently good. They're just allowed nuance that the inherently evil races aren't.
@@TrillTheDM It’s all about finding what fits your game's tone and style. Maintaining that balance can make for compelling storytelling. Thanks for doing what you do.
@@007ohboy You bring up some valid points, and I think it really comes down to what kind of story you want your game to tell. For me, the idea of inherently evil races isn’t about lazy storytelling but rather about creating a mythological framework where certain forces are primal embodiments of good or evil, much like how dragons, demons, or angels are often used in fantasy. That said, I totally understand the appeal of exploring exceptions, like Drizzt, or focusing on individual agency within those archetypes-it’s a compelling angle for a different style of game. At my table, I prefer to keep those archetypes intact because they establish a clear framework for the world, with exceptions like Drizzt being powerful precisely because they defy the norm. If every member of an inherently evil race had the same capacity for good as anyone else, the impact of those rare exceptions would diminish. It’s all about what works for the story you want to tell, and while I lean toward preserving those archetypes, I respect that others may prioritize a different kind of nuance in their games.
Interesting video, but I think you're ultimately incorrect, for a few reasons; 1) Players shouldn't ever be flat-out prohibited from choices. Those choices may have consequences, like an Orc Barbarian being automatically distrusted by the townsfolk, but that's an obstacle the player will have to overcome. 2) While there's a place for "forces of nature" villains, "slavering demons bent on destruction" are less interesting to me than "orderly devils bent on subjecting the world." Silas & Delilah Briarwood weren't heroes because they had a sympathetic backstory. But that backstory made them more interesting than a mustache-twirler just being evil for the lols. 3) I WISH WotC were making traditionally evil races playable while keeping them interesting & unique. I fear it's just out of a desire to homogenize everything, not by giving everyone different, & often conflicting motivations, but rather by giving everyone the same, bland, peaceable, kumbaya motivation. Kudos for the thought-provoking video, though.
I hated that they started sanitizing the monsterus races in dnd, if I play an Orc it’s because I want the full Orc experience not a big green teddy bear. Same with goblins or any other like it I’m not looking to play a different shaped human.
This would work if their intricate background was still profoundly alien. Like seeing the xenomorphs reproduce. The more you learn, the more hostile to human life by their differences they become.
Well said! Additionally, if we look at TTRPG and how every race is getting playable, this brings a whole new set of questions. I find PF2 goblins to be one of the most egregious examples here: in that universe, goblins used to be agents of chaos and mayhem, available for parties with mercurial worldviews at best, but with the new edition not only can they be played like any other race with no restrictions. Additionally, it is heavily implied that goblins can now be proper members of any society... while at the same time staying that very same low-level critter with a taste for fire, indesreiminate violence, wielding their cultural weapons literally named "horsechoppers" and "dogslicers". To me, this makes the world seem terribly wonky, because it means that even though there are good examples of those creatures, and they're numerous and not at all rare, no other race (as written by authors) has attempted to alleviate them beyond their state, like establishing trade on a large scale, making them neglectful in a world that is apparently painted as colourful and accepting of all. Sure, fantasy worlds do not have to follow the same vices we have as a species throughout our history, but giving every race meaning, morality, while at the same time making them extremely diverse AND respective of each-others borders is incredibly immersion-breaking. Besides, when this happens, goblins, elves, dwarves or even gnolls essentially become "humans but X".
I got to be honest the inhuman threat Trope is never something I like if I had my own campaign I wouldn't call the monsters I call them creatures you can negotiate with them I love the social side of role-playing it's fun to me the Drow for example of an evil faction but you can still interact with them I'm not saying every enemy has to be human but I still like to be able to negotiate with them
There's no reason you can't have both. If you are assuming that with this video I mean that there can't be other just normal evil people across the spectrum of playable races then that's a false assumption.
I'm cooking up this goblin shadow monk npc who is a devout worshipper of the goblin god and he does this by living to fight. He takes pleasure in conflict and lives to one day die in battle. His only hatred is the breaking of the status quo of the greater cosmos (evil races should be evil, good are good). He takes pride in his life as an evil creature and awaits his eventual downfall. I think adding playable evil races opens potential storytelling. The monster on a redemption path, struggling with internal and external pressures to take that easy and evil path. A secretly evil party member who looks to cooperate with the party in sofar as to be in position to take the place of the initial bbeg (though this is for the neutral or good races).
It's all about what kind of story you want to tell, and what kind of experience your players want. I allow my players to be almost anything they want IF we work through how it can make sense in my setting. For example, you want to play an orc in a good campaign? Sure. But we're going to have to SERIOUSLY consider how, and why this is happening. Give them the purple lightsaber, with enough imagination and perhaps some compromise, you can make it work. But in theory I completely agree with you. Some races as a whole need to be left as what they were originally intended as: monsters.
I'll agree that current year DND has gone overboard with their "inclusion" efforts for playable races to be all Kum Bay Yah, but I also think your point in this video is overly simplistic. For the most part "evil" antagonist races don't make sense as avatars of destruction and chaos, unless they are literally demonic, like, well, demons, or many concepts of the undead, as those things largely do exist just to be eeevil and destructive. Most of the time, they ultimately have to be considered either predators, competitors, and/or aliens. They have their own internal workings for their species or race, but they don't necessarily have reason to give consideration to the main player character races. Like, orcs have to have some level of society to be able to fight with weapons. Even in LotR, they mostly fought to serve the ambition of some powerful master, and might have just bumbled around in their own area otherwise. But just because they have their own society doesn't mean they should just be able to integrate into a multi-racial frolic fest. Humans fight each other over just cultural and territorial differences, and things which are arguably differing sentient species would be even more likely to do so. The only reason the usual fantasy races really work together is because elves, dwarves, gnomes, and such were originally conceived as something that were human like and interact with humans, hundreds and thousands of years ago.
Yeah but do you have to explain all that? I even say that less is more when it comes to these evil races that act as avatars of destruction and chaos. The implication is that there is SOME sort of culture going on behind the scenes that makes them function the way they do, but keep that behind the scenes. Let the players imagination make up all that shit. YOU don't have to explain it, sometimes things can just BE. Why is it overly simplistic? This video doesn't disregard that normal races can be evil, just that if you create something INHERENTLY evil then it should be kept safe out of player's hands. That way you don't have to get lost down the quagmire of justifying them in the first place.
I've actually started to like the original three alignment system because it just avoids so many issues like this. Law, Neutrality, and Chaos work fine on there own and leave the concept of good and evil open to interpretation. A creature of Chaos wasn't chaotic because it had a wacky personality, but because it craved destruction and the fall of civilization. I don't mind having a party of mixed alignments btw. I ran a one shot that way once and told the players to roleplay their alignments without telling anyone else what they were. We had two evil characters who didn't know that the other was evil, and they were kind of in opposition of each other while trusting the good characters. It was fun.
I don't entirely agree with the idea of not making evil races playable I DO think that there needs to be a damn good reason for it to be done though half-orcs were added to make a playable orc the drow have an entire culture, and there are those within that do not agree with that culture and refuse to walk that path. just look at Drizzt alternatively, it could be a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario where two folk would normally be at odds, there could be a greater threat that would both BOTH out of business unless they work together. there are ways to make it work but I do agree that races that are inherently evil should not be made not-evil just to appease people especially people like the guy in the pinned comment XD plus, a world without evil should also be without good, imo it's unbalanced otherwise. either good and evil both exist or neither exist
showing moral complexity to evil races shows that they do in fact have a choice in their actions. evil isn't a thing you are rather it's a thing that you do.
The delicate tightrope becomes more delicate when balancing story and gameplay in TTRPGs when introducing evil races as playable. This goes for the GM and the said player(s). They all will succumb to plot holes, and even inconsistencies. I bet even the player(s) will have no more dialogue to run with for character development. But this is a creative exercise/endeavor, nonetheless. It is just a matter of how well parties can stretch this exercise-hopefully to the conclusion of the campaign.
I agree that that is a perfectly reasonable way to use evil races, but I disagree that that is what they have to be. Generally in my worlds I make small evils understandable, but the more you understand them the more clear it becomes that they are incompatible. I find it boring if my players think "good: because elves" or "evil: because orcs" and would rather them look at the actions of their enemies and determine good and evil based on that. That said, I usually make my own settings and heavily curate what my players can play to focus the narrative, so my answer to "Should evil races be available to PCs?" is very much: Depends on the game I'm running and where my focus is.
The unique part of “fantasy” and “sci-fi” is that you can look at things from a magical or biological perspective and say “these are just the way they are because they are” You don’t have to humanise them because they *inherently are not human* on their thoughts and actions They are not like us - they don’t have to be Aberrations exist, like a “good” Orc, but they are just that: entirely unique, one of characters that are special *because* of that quirk
I'd argue there are plenty of compelling narratives to be made of both an uncomplicated evil hoard, as well as nuanced, complex adversaries. It's tricky (but not impossible) to mix and match, but the real trouble starts when people insist that their preferred version is the only viable option. Sometimes the orcs and goblins are metaphors for oppressed and marginalized people who have been thoroughly othered to the point of no longer being seen as human, and sometimes they are monsters meant to be cut down without thought or hesitation because it's been a rough week and I'm going to pretend this next one looks exactly like my boss. Neither is inherently better, there are plenty of good and bad examples of each, maybe ask some questions at session zero to dial in expectations before you find out that half the table want to befriend everything and the other half are murder hobos.
The way to write evil races is that you make a character who is an exception to that from a cultural or even a moral standpoint, you could have the narrative potential of them coming to terms with their own culture, and eventually having to fight against it like The Arbiter from Halo. You can still keep the whole race themselves evil, but everyone of them is them, they become less of a "race" and more like flies to swat.
This video reminds me of Anbennar, a full conversion mod for EU IV, and the way it deals with this dilemma. In this setting, you can turn typical evil/monstruous races (like goblins, orcs, kobolds and gnolls for example) into "civilized" nations. It is a huge pain in the ass to do so (armies get weaker, things get more expensive etc). This is the way I believe some fantasy societies could reform. Great video.
I like this video (the comments are kind of a mixed bag for me) To me, since I am a massive fan of TTRPG material and lore to the war games like 40k. This can be an interesting dialogue. To me, since I've dmed a lot. I find that having "evil races" is great, simple, and straight to the point. The classic Warband of Orcs raiding the town is a classic way to entice the players. I do think, as for any story or game it should be a sliding scale, Dark elves in the forgotten realms gave me the perfect balance of "Evil Race" and nuance to boot while making it fun to approch the idea. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that while an evil race or culture is the template, the nuance and specifics should be the seasoning that pushes it. Besides having my players feel bad could be a great time, however I dont think the lich who wants total domination got to where he was by being a nice person.
I personally like more nuanced races and cultures in fantasy, but I get what you mean. What can be done for the best of both worlds is having inherently evil races but have those few who break off from them, the anomalies of their kind.
Anomalies of their own kind defeats the point of an inherently evil race. You might be mistaking Race vs Culture here. Culture allows for the breaking off, inherent to the core of the creature/race is much different. The best balance is having both. Evil races and Evil cultures in a setting. One to act as the mythical evil archetype and the other to provide a more nuanced look, in the end though the inherently evil races should never be playable except in specific circumstances.
9:00 I‘d argue Annihilation is more eldritch horror. Though I love eldritch horror xD 10:00 I think that‘s the crux. I always say if you have to change them to play them, why play them at all? You‘re just in love with the aestetics in that case. I really love evil creatures as embodiments of human flaws. In my current campaign, the evil races are unable to self-regulate. They are slave to their emotions and desires; they simply have no motivation to be good. The strongest along them embody singular emotions like Hunger, Lust, Fear, Rage, Commitment, or Curiosity. I think another good example of evil species are the Mindflayers. They made themselves what they are at heart. They eugenixed themselves into becoming a parasite that can only survive by inflicting pain, but in return they grow ever stronger and can steal the abilities and knowledge if those they consume. With them, you can actually dive as deeply as you want into their society and history, and they actually become more evil by doing so because their entire existence relies on it. Or take the azteks. They‘re an excellent example for a purely evil culture - hated by all their neighbours. A society that essentially gave up morals for conveniency. That kind of thinking can actually be added nicely to eldritch gods that give rewards because they enjoy the amusing ants hurting each other in their name. Lastly there‘s the matter of perspective. People often criticise that innately evil creatures like undead or demons lack agency. In one campaign I had a group of anorganic creatures who innately understood that reality was wrong. They worked collectively at waking the Godhead - stopping it from dreaming and thus erasing reality - because none of the mortal creatures were real to start with and if they could rescue the Dreamer from his nightmare, all the better.
There's a simpler way to say much of what the video is angling at here. There is a difference between *people*, and *monsters*. *People* can be complex. They can have whole societies, deep inner worlds, dreams, hopes. Motivations that make fighting them, as a group, complex. This doesn't mean they can't be an entire group that needs fighting, even to the death. We forget there are MANY examples of this kind of thing. The army bearing down on everything you know and love will not be stopped by a heartfelt Charisma check. Monsters, though. Monsters do not, *cannot*, think or behave like people. Monsters are primeval horrors, and any similarity to humans is only to drive home that horror. The troll under the bridge is not thinking like a human, and it never can. The devil at the crossroads cannot feel sympathy, or empathy. If it did, it would not BE a devil anymore. And yes, there is crossover here. There are people who are basically just monsters, and MUST be treated as such. Examples are not hard to think of, or find. The trick is, it's almost always *individual* people. The only times it applies to groups are the groups that define themselves by wanting to treat other groups of people *like* monsters. But if you remove the possibility of monsters entirely, you lose a whole angle of writing and roleplay too. I always think of how Tieflings and Aasimar have in recent times been reduced to 'rainbow horns and tails nonsense' (affectionate) or 'the shiny pretty kids'. These are creatures partly formed of the IDEA of evil and good. What is life like for a character who is, to their very *genes*, driven to rescue orphans from a burning building? What about the one whose genes whisper to them constantly to block the doors and set the fire in the first place? Is it better to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort? Because brother, some people in the real world have instincts and urges in their heads and hearts, through no fault of their own, that are monstrous. Or noble. And we should be able to have stories about all of these. Huh, maybe not that much simpler a way to put it after all.
I like how one of the first things you point out is there is good reason for the push back. Real world baggage unfortunately does seep in and that for many people makes a purely evil race unbelievable and potentially problematic for a lot of people. Me personally, I don’t mind certain races being predisposed towards evil, but if they can think enough to strategize at all, they can think enough to choose who they wanna be. Suffice to say, orcs may be predisposed towards evil in my games, but a player character does get to be the exception to the norm. If anything that gives them a chance to tell their own story. Why isn’t their character like all the others? What made them defect or were they simply born away from all of that? I think it ultimately comes down to what kind of story you’re trying to tell. And your players for that matter. Some groups gel well with a symbolic threat that doesn’t need to be reasoned with. Others may want a villain with more sympathetic ambitions. Tbh everyone should just play the game they wanna play and if that’s not the game your table is playing maybe you just need another table.
I would note that pure evil races weren't ever a part of dnd kinda - reaction tables in first editions meant anything other than a mindless skeleton, zombie or similar would at least treasure it's life and not fight just to be evil. Lots of evil races in first editions of dnd were also given explanations as to why they are evil and some weren't even set to being evil. Straship Troopers clip also feels out of place - in the movies, bugs are actually just defending themselves against humanity's conquest. We just view things from the viewpoint of the brainwashed and expandable cannon fodder. I would say the "complex orcs, simple zombies" thing mirrors some of my own thoughts on the topic. Pure evil tends to be boring by itself in literature - it acts more as a force of nature affecting other elements. A horde of zombies or a mindless beast of destruction. Complex evil is popular not just because of modern increase in awareness, but because it is much easier to make interesting by itself. Complex evil is easier to make interesting by itself and it's still evil, even if it has some more reasoning behind the acts of evil. You will still have to fight it and it can approach pure evil's levels of unredeemable. I like complex evil to be about individuals and cultures rather than races. Modern people also tend to be a bit more aware of complexities of humanity so pure evil races are harder to pull off - sapience implies free wil and free will implies some sort of justification behind evil, even if it's as simple as cultural influence or brainwashing
I might be in a minority here, but I like D&D's alignment system, as that gave birth to the Planescape campaign setting, that gave more philosophical meanings to things like "lawful evil" or "chaotic good", and with that something totally evil (in the axis of lawful-neutral-chaos) can be interesting. Sure, it doesn't have the same shades of gray like - say - The Witcher (and probably everyone has seen how Batman can be given as an example of every nine alignments), but for example Blood War where devils (lawful evil) and demons (chaotic evil) fought each other is very interesting lore. Also, demons being *chaotic* also means that they can escape their default alignment now and then, like with the lawful, chaste succubus Fall-from-Grace seen in cult classic video game Planescape: Torment.
While there are certain races that were traditionally seen as evil that I do like to have as a playable option, I also prefer these options to not be particularly "good" lets say, tamed at best. They will behave if they deem it will allow them to further their cause, but won't be good for the sake of good. Other races however, I do prefer are just evil as this video describes. And for the sake of world building but also story, sometimes just having that bad guy you can't reason with, and therefore must eliminate, works just fine.
In my current campaign the players could only choose humans to play. In the first session a player asked if he could do anything, i daid yep. He done proceeded to murder a random towns person. Which promptly got him thrown in an oibliette. He, "created" a new character. After the session i txted him that his character in yhe oibliete had an adventure waiting. Long story short there was a hole in the oibliette and he traveled in completes darkness until he almost died of dehydration. He found an alter to orcus and became his champion. I then told him that the character was transformed into an evil race that he got to control. The races motivation were the subjegation and murder of centaurs and humans in the name of orcus. The player created a great race and loved whenver his good character had to fight them lol.
There is something that isn't mentionned in the video but i think has it's place in it, or around it like in in a comment section for exemple, is that it only works if your world have evil in it. Personnaly i don't believe in evil and good. I think that they aren't natural things but human concepts put on things that juste are. Like killing isn't evil or good, it exist. Then you can personnaly judge it as good or evil. So if in your world evil exists, it's ok. But in a lot of worlds it just don't, personnaly i don't have "evil" in my current cyberpunk campaign, nor i had it in my fantasy campaign before, but there were evil person, and evil acts. So i think that evil races can exists in a world where evil is a natural concept, but still we have to be carefull, or not if you don't want to, to why they are evil : is it because they are a threat to civilisation ? Or because they crave for the power ? Because that doesn't mean the same thing
There’s a time and place for both; evil cultures can be just as interesting- sure the race itself isn’t necessarily evil, but the group you are fighting? They are. Maybe they are mislead, maybe they knowingly and willingly chose evil. Maybe they aren’t so different from humans, but you happen to be on the receiving end of the xenophobia, warmongering and zealotry today and if you don’t step up it’s innocents that are going to suffer. Either way it’s good to have groups of clear villains. Be they an evil race that will screw you over because of their nature, an amoral one that can’t see you as anything other than prey, or an evil culture whose culture is just as unapologetically evil as any demon. Of course since in a lot of fantasy race and culture are basically the same thing, there might not be a lot of material difference. To give examples of both from my main campaign world in D&D doppelgängers are pararites that feed off suffering and their very presence makes a place feel depressing as negative emotions are amplified and positive ones suppressed. They infiltrate areas to sow discord and abuse and feed off the misery it creates. Meanwhile the Cyr are a mixed bag in terms of races, humans, orcs, goblinoids, doppelgängers and even demons can be found among their ranks, but the Cyr as a culture believe both might makes right and they revel in causing suffering. There’s also the Altherians who are probably a more present threat than the Cyr for where the party is currently at; as a culture they are basically holier than thou zealots with little tolerance for anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs. Out of the three factions mentioned here they probably have the most “average joes” living in their territory, but the Altherians (or their allies) that the party has faced so far have mostly been in the business of invading border towns or riding down local patrols.
Ha, the only structure that needs to be known about the 'culture' of evil races is to have the hierarchy set up. Like a giant or troll will be what is commanding the orcs. An evil wizard is commanding the Troll. Maybe some demon is possessing the wizard. That is pretty much it.
Yeah I sorta rediscovered this when I read The Sun Eater and encountered The Ceilcin. If the Ceilcin were morally gray it would take away from the work. Nothing wrong with having unambiguously evil species; just be careful to not make their cultures resemble anything irl (Nothing wrong with morally gray orcs or drow either)
For Tolkien style storytelling j agree with everything you said. But when it comes to interactive media, people will always want to dive deeper into something interesting, even surface level like the evil factions, and generally speaking people generally like nuanced and complex characters over simple caricatures. Obviously, as Tolkien demonstrates, even adding complexity and depth to a part of a story does not necessarily need to compel sympathy, and I think that's a good thing in his case. However, when it comes to interactive media like video games and tabletop RPGs, I think you can generally get away with supplanting "evil races" with "evil factions", especially when supplemented by clearly evil races such as Demons and monsters. I'm fine with evil races, but limiting the creative options for players in a game world where the point is to be able to do almost anything you want to seems counter-intuitive. And let me just say on a philosophical level... "It's better not to understand the enemy so that we may hate them without remorse" is the most nihilistic ideology imaginable, and it's the main reason why we humans go to war and inflict tragedy and pain on each other so regularly. As much as I understand we are talking about media here and not reality, it's a pretty sketchy notion to blindly embrace this philosophy as being something desirable, as we know how easily media influences the perspective of those who consume it, even in the most "fantastical" if concepts. What we create as a species reflects the way we see the world after all... And it affects the way we see the world too. Good video though, I like the discussion on this topic.
I agree with this totally. Robbing evil races of their purpose turns what is compelling into a just another human reskin. I do think there is some room for evil races to have good characters, but they must be the exception and justified through the culture. For instance, there should be no atheist drow. You are either bargaining with Shar or saved by the light of Selune. I play a goblin, the reason he is "good" is because he was left for dead by other goblins and has instead taken to the market forces approach to morality. He's a greedy, inventive outcast of his own people who has taken in with mercenaries with the intention to lead and make bank
![Always Evil Races in Fantasy [Are Kind of Boring]](/img/n.gif)
In Lord of The Rings Tolkien actually put in the lore that Morgoth and Sauron organized the Orcs in such a way that it was impossible for them to develop a distinct culture because it would give them something else other than them to be loyal to.
In that way orcs are not a race. They're corrupted elves. So idk if you can call them a "race" really it seems stupid
It's also stated that orcs and the eventual Uruk Hai were corrupted and mutated elves
There is also a dialogue between orcs where they basically say that when it's all over, they just want to love somewhere quiet and isolated, not living a life of destruction. Even the original text that portrays orcs shows them in a nuanced way.
@IggyBitz actually the urukai in Lord of the Rings were said in the books to be crossbreeds between orcs and humans. More like a twisted version of half elves like Aragon's people started out being. Sorry if it seems I'm trying to out nerd you dude. That's just a surprisingly fascinating and f***** up part of Lord of the Rings Lord, that's actually just not talked about.
@@ViscountAlexOfTheHorsePeople Yeah which they would not have been able to do if sauron survived.
“...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
-The Dark Knight
IRL we have a example of pure evil race
Dolphins and Politicians
Don't forget Turkeys. The Americans already know.
@@TrillTheDM Or Shoebill Storks.
Wildlife in Australia.
The Emu are also evil
@@shadowdragon7347 we're talking about evil races
Not about evil itself
A great example of a game that uses an evil race is Dragon Age: Origins. That setting has different intelligent races with different cultures and a lot of moral ambiguity, but the one constant is that the Darkspawn are a pure evil race that only seeks to destroy the world. That's not even mentioning the way they make more Darkspawn.
Was also thinking of DA as a great example of all sorts of evil stuff!
To bad the leftists in Bio(hazard)Ware had to 💩 all over The Dragon Age series with The Veilguard.
@@futurewario9591 I just finished Veilguard and I enjoyed it a lot tbh. It is different from the rest, but that does not make it bad. I thought it was a good game overall
@@sanddanglotka I'm not going to enjoy a game that preaches & whines to me about pronouns.
@@futurewario9591 lol, sure thing dude... If your opinion of the game is based on whatever cherry picked clips float around the internet or is reduced to a very small and optional part of the overall plot, there's no point discussing about the game.
I for one actually played the full game, 90 hours worth of it to be precise, and I'd happily discuss its strengths and real weaknesses, but there's hardly a point arguing about some h8r meme BS just doing the rounds.
As for the "suddenly woke" criticisms I hear, I think most ppl either haven't played the other games or have forgotten their content.
Being an existential threat is not evil. Something primal and destructive without reason cannot really be evil, the same way wildfire or earthquake is not evil. To be able to be evil (much like being good) you must be able to choose evil of your own free will.
Lots of thoughts on this: it depends on what story you want to tell.
If you're going with symbolic fantasy (akin to the Classic, Pulp & Grunge eras), this works - for the reasons you explained.
The Undead are the unstoppable march of death, Vampires are the parasitic elite, Werewolves and Witches are the paranoia inducing murders howling in the night, Goblins steal your left socks and Orcs are an amorphous extension of Sauron.
But in the contemporary era, there's been a shift towards sympathetic villains, Worldbuilding and a distrust in authority.
People enjoy imagining the complexities of an otherwise impossible world and that extends to the evil side.
We have bad memories of the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. We been told a fantasy about apocalyptic evils before that turned out to be just normal people. If you can talk your way out of a fight in an RPG by speaking Orkish, you might question why either side would be hostile to begin with.
But, you can still do evil races within the contemporary style. Personally, I think recent years have shown us there are large groups of people conditioned to enjoy evil for it's own sake because it makes them feel strong.
All that said, there is no wrong way to tell a story. Classical, Pulp, Grunge or Contemporary, good writing is still good writing.
@@AMillennialNerdThank you! I still think Trill makes some good points.
Make the monsters be in charge. That way the evil races are the authority.
In my view, characters who want to reform an evil race have a Good character. But the constraints of the setting/story affect how viable that is. Lots of good story potential
@ffffffffffffffff5840 Yeah, it's part of the best characters to find a glimmer of good in the cruelest of evil. Superman, Batman, Luke Skywalker, Aang, Spider-Man.
i'm not oppose to make evik characters synpathetic. But i feel media is making them to sympathetic.
There are to many modern stories where people SIDE with the villain views. Making people root for evil is kinda wierd.
The people that are using Drizzt as an example of why inherently evil races are bad for character writing or TTRPGs are fundamentaly misunderstanding the character.
The story of Drizzt is that of an anomaly; his character works BECAUSE of the Drow's inherent evil.
He's a male Drow that only lived because his older brother died. His father already had doubts about his place among his race, which molded Drizzt's vision of his people.
He struggled against his own identity and that of the Drow, to the point of abandoning Menzoberranzan and living in the Underdark for decades as an anti-social Hunter, who's killer instincts came from his race and his training.
It took him DECADES to abandon that persona, travel to the surface, trust others again and find people who would trust him in return.
And even then, he continues to struggle with slipping back into the persona of the Hunter, who is too much like the evil Drow he escaped from.
Exceptions to evil races can exist, but only if:
(A) That race is, in fact, evil.
(B) If the conditions for the exception are met and make sense within the fiction.
(C) If the exceptions struggle with their identity, sacrifice something to assume their new identity, and it hurts like hell.
Drizzt is exactly the reason why evil races aren't done much anymore. I think that evil races are excellent as part of a setting, but the issue is that it is innately interesting for players to then get to play as that races Drizzt for the reasons you mentioned. The race becomes popular because the idea of subverting a races evil nature gives characters some inherent drama and backstory.
But then it stops being an subversion to be a good member of an evil race and as more people engage with the material, a certain number of them will inevitably push back on the idea of the race being labelled as evil at all, until it gets watered down to the point that you have drow, orcs and goblins being just humans with different colored skin and sizes.
This was about what I was going to say. I'm currently in a Starfinder game were I am playing a Hobgoblin mercenary, from a hobgoblin mercenary fleet, now stranded on an alien world..... and he is still evil! If anything escaping from the oppressive has only made him swing more neutral evil than he already was (all the way into being Chaotic for a bit).
His new crew have done quite a bit to try and convert him to be more like then, yet he brings up a lot of good points as far as their survival and thriving in this new place fraught with enemies and danger.... That the whole point of playing these races though! To play the evil side and see from it's perspective, or possibly see him start being 'corrupted' by their positive influence the same way a human might be when stuck living with orcs and hobgoblins.
So exactly as you said, in proper TTRPG practice
@ThatOtherGuyOverThere Drizzt is a prime example of a good aligned character belonging to an evil race done right, the guy is the literal reason why people acknowledge that the Drow can go against the very nature of their matriarchal society and made the Drow go from 1 dimensional demon worshipping sadists to a nuanced evil race that is capable of producing outliers.
@@MrNephthys17 Sure, but it's still valuable to let people play as a member of an evil race, if they have a good excuse for their outlook(if it's not the same as the rest of the race) but also come with the expectation of prejudice. What I hate about it is too many players want the first part, but get upset at the second to the point where DM's don't seem to want to roleplay it anymore. If I choose to play a good/neutral drow, I want life for them to be HARD, cause otherwise yeah, I could just be human.
@@lauraw2526 100% agree.
Before I even knew what D&D was, my brother and I used to role play with the drawings we made of various characters and creatures. We drew a lot of vampires, so that race received significant focus and development. We figured out a way to give the race depth while it was still ultimately evil. Every vampire had "free will", they weren't programmed to be evil or anything like that, but the vampire culture was built on the belief that vampires were superior to other beings, and feeding on "lesser" creatures was their right. They also chose who could become a vampire, and the people they chose were those who fit the image of what a vampire "should be", similar to the way the Nazis thought the ideal man was blonde haired and blue eyed. Thus, while individual vampires could choose to be good, the vampire culture inevitably produced an endless supply of psychopaths. Excellent video, by the way.
You remind me the vampire philosophy from castlevania. Every vampire want to drink all the blood, eat all the people and they believe they own everything if they are strong enough to take it from others
Might Makes Right. If a culture based on this survives long enough, they often make it so that anyone who resembles the powerful or shares a caste/clan/family name with them inherently deserve power.
These cultures always have slaves or deeply exploited caste of people, who typically inherit their status by accident of birth(just as those who are on top do). These cultures are repeated for most of the past 7000 years of humanity. While other forms of human organization exist, these cultures wrote most of the histories, due to winning the violence and manipulating others into stability.
@beardyben7848 and technically that's a philosophy that isn't wrong. If you jave the strength to make whatever you want you will do it. Characters like the Hulk show it, he chooses not to do so
Imagine trying to add depth to Skaven. It would simply ruin them as a concept.
I love the skaven
The Skaven have depth and an interesting culture with its clan structure, the Great Horned Rat, and the council of thirteen (Warhammer was created by history nerds and it's awesome). But the key point is that it's a culture built entirely around aggrandizement of the self and destruction of everything that isn't Skaven. You don't need to worry about the ethics of killing the ratmen because even their civilization is, at its core, about slaughtering everything you hold dear. They don't even treat *each other* well (with one or two exceptions that are notable specifically because of how rare it is).
@@HalfTangible every skaven is God's gift to the world, and they stab and steal and lie to prove it.
Skaven are the best evil race ever
They already have depth.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I agree whole-heartedly. Forcing a "who's the real monster here?" aspect into a story and thinking it adds depth to every single creature, regardless of sentience, is bonkers. I understand it probably comes from a good place, but it ignores that primal evil not only exists but plays an important, if visceral, role in storytelling, be it TTRPGS or broader fiction.
There's a season 2 episode of _The X-Files_ where Mulder investigates some murders at a sewage treatment facility, only to discover a mutated, humanoid flukeworm eating people and using them to reproduce. The creature ends up in FBI custody, and since (at this point) the X-Files have been decommissioned, they have to treat it like a normal case. Mulder's boss says they need the creature psych evaluated and sent to court. Mulder, baffled by this, states _"it's not a person, it's a monster"._ It's evident that it's barely cognisant and only lives to survive. Acknowledgement of its inhumanity makes it scary, but the idea of people trying to reason with it makes it utterly horrifying.
I've done this, too, as a younger writer and it can go way too far. Not every creature has to be some misunderstood Frankenstein Monster with layers and complexity. Just having beast that's an imminent threat is enough most of the time.
Handled pretty gracefully I’d say. “No evil races” is definitely a more modern take on fantasy, but sometimes too much nuance grinds the game to a halt and can lead to unsatisfactory endings when people tend to play roleplaying games to kill monsters and be heroic.
Current discourse does tend to overthink evil races, and puts too much pressure on DMs to adjust. Not everyone should be asked to make a deep analysis on morality in their own worlds, instead just focus on making something they and their players might enjoy.
Yeah no inherently evil races is a pretty modern take for sure.
Sometimes it's just fun to know who the enemy is at all times and save the town.
I've seen people unironically say that people are racist for depicting Demons as inherently evil. That's how deep this shit goes 💀
Every good designed evil race will end like this. Someone will make a fan art of said race that looks nice, people will like them, a game will make them playable
So ? i don't see the problem, just don't play that game. I play orcs often bcz I hate the way some nerds who can't fight/lift weights decided that any person with muscle has to be evil and brutishly stupid. The world is complex so let people create complex worlds, and if you don't wanna play in one it's fine no one is forcing you. Plus come on there's some real inspiration for some of those races.like don't tell me goblins weren't developpes into an anti semmitic stereotype, bcz tolkien's goblins were just orcs from the misty mountains. No long noses, no stealing money, no weird rxpe thing going on around them. Or just look at old dark elves art from DnD, they're just a weird racist's view of black people. You have to understand that some people don't want to play with those type of characters, that are also really poorly written. Your evil guy is evil bcz he was born like that ? Bcz of genetics ? That's lazyness. No one is born to be a certain way, human potential is limitless, and since all fantasy species are modelled after real world humans, then so is their potential.
@ardugaleen2231 I proposed an explanation thats all. I also played orcs in WoW
@@golomoed5347 aight but a lot of people who defend this stupid argument this should not happen are in this comment section so I thought u were too. Also the guy who made the video and who has this stupid argument liked ur post
@ardugaleen2231 U seem to have a lot of emotions about this
@golomoed5347 sure, it has a real life impact. 50 60 years ago the numberless trope got people thrown in the seine river in my city, my dad still hears screams man
an easy evil race would be demons. Demons and angels are literally the same race, but demons are evil and its why they have been put in the time out dimension.
And if you stop being evil? You're not a demon/devil anymore. It's pretty easy honestly.
@DemigodoftheSea It even works because since God is all-knowing, then if a demon turns into an angel YOU KNOW the dude is for real, and vice-versa.
@@KrillAndGrill I mean even in settings without an almighty singular deity, if good and evil are literal cosmic forces, then it can be a natural process of them.
@@DemigodoftheSea Exactly
@@DemigodoftheSea I think demons from doom are a very interesting way to make a developed group that's absolute pure irredeemable evil
They were a race of fearless, extremely ambitious and determined beings that were created to be conquerors, and started to physically corrupt themselves by abusing the powers they used too much without a care for anything but their desire to conquer
I think that people forget that evil cultures 100% existed, and not just as a culture we would call evil now due to changing beliefs on what is good, thus being just another form of moral relativism, but genuinely, wholly evil cultures. Drawing on the elements that further highlight the evil of enemies opens up the possibility for interesting and terrifying cultures with nuance that can in fact make that evil more subtle. The inner workings of ogres doesn't need to turn their brutal culture of gluttony and greed into something we are meant to sympathize with, but could highlight the evil inherent in a culture that sees everything you have as theirs, from your treasures to your flesh. If you are going to add depth to the evil races, then, in my opinion, the depth needs to highlight the most terrible aspects of them, or make the juxtaposition in how they treat each other and how they treat the people there even more stark.
@Namewriter "Evil" cultures did not "100% exist" at scale save for MAYBE brief generation level times of transition.
@@Thumbdumpandthebumpchump agreed. Wholy evil cultures doesn't exist, but there are aspects of cultures that can be cruel and generally unethical
I don't think you understand what culture means.
@slayeroffurries1115 Absolutely. I think it requires careful discussion, but it would be dishonest to pretend that cultures are "equal."
Give me an example of an actual evil irl culture then.
I have mixed feelings on this. I definitely agree that players dipping their toes in what is supposed to be existentially evil (and therefore humanizing it) can definitely undermine the narrative power of that evil. I think the holdout is specifically on evil RACES, instead of evil creatures that are not at all humanoid. It’s very difficult for most people to hear the word “race” in a fantasy context and not immediately overlay real-world associations of racism, particularly the idea that an entire group is “all evil.” A lot of players instinctively feel that if it gets called a race, it CANNOT be an evil monolith, or else we have a problem.
Evil monsters on the other hand that aren’t looped in with the term “race” are great for that existential threat. Zombies, demons, aliens, slimes, or unintelligent wild beasts-creatures that are entirely removed from the concept of race-are still capable of providing that antagonistic force in a campaign.
Interesting video as always, great stuff!
I agree as well for the most part but I do think a setting could have inherently evil races that are humanoid and not have issues. Prior to the lore change, Orcs in WoW were corrupted by Demonic influence. You can be sympathetic for their origins and yet recognize that they are ultimately changed because of the demonic association.
However I do agree that there are people that don't approach this in good faith and will attempt underhanded insinuations regarding race and the real world analogues they use. Ultimately you should be mindful of these things when crafting creatures and races that fit the mold of inherently evil.
"In a private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as: squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."
The history of orcs is ingrained in race coding.
In the movie Bright (2017) orcs are coded as urban ethnicities and African American, while elves are coded as upperclass and white.
"medieval Scandinavian texts whiteness is associated with beauty, Alaric Hall has suggested that elves may have been called 'the white people' because whiteness was associated with (specifically feminine) beauty."
Are Russians evil for invading Ukraine? No but the government and ruling parties are definitely are.
You can have the governing body do horrible and evil decisions while still showing the dichotomy of citizens of that government (in this case race such as orcs drow etc) disagreeing with the decisions and direction of rulership.
You can make great and complex stories of how your PC drow/orc is fighting for change in their society and losing that battle and the internal turmoil they are going through.
@@DeadpoolAli Yep. No society in the real world has ever been a monolith. There have always been people within society who didn't like the way that society was doing things, or who thought they were fine with it even as they themselves stood out like a massive sore thumb.
4:51 And in their attempts to make fantasy "deeper" and more "engaging" the result is boring and flat.
You hit the nail in the head with this one, as usual.
My favorite example of a pure evil race that is also give nuance is the Wraiths from Stargate Atlantis. They have a whole hierarchy, political intrigue, religious beliefs, and yet no matter how much depth they have, the fact that they view all other people and even one another as potential food ensures that even those allied with the heroes will always be feared and distrusted. The existential threat of the Wraiths can't be diluted through nuance, because nuance doesn't erase the fact that they are the enemies of all that is good in the world, regularly culling humanity for their own benefit.
Heck they actively resent attempts to make them literally human and view the tools to do so as merely a weapon to use against other Wraith to turn them into potential food sources.
This exactly. Its always bugs the crap out of me when people try to have good guy vampires. Like what the hell, you literally eat people. The first thing a still decent person would do after being turned into a vampire against their will is take quick walk on a brilliant sunny day. Anything else is putting everyone else around you in extreme danger just for you hanging around. Even if you hand wave it and say the victims don't always die and if they feed regularly they can control themselves its still so off the charts evil that no one should tolerate it. Anything vampy enough to be called a vampire is evil by definition. There is no ambiguity.
A good video, with great points. If as a DM, you want to create a pure evil faction without real world parallels, the following work well: Undead, Demons, Lovecraftian Monsters, Robots
I think DAO darkspawn are also a great example of evil done right.
Funny film trivia: the bugs from Starship Troopers are actually a bad example of pure evil. It’s heavily implied humans are the invaders and that the bugs are simply retaliating against humans for invading their territory and pillaging their resources.
I'm not trying to be argumentative but..... The starship troopers thing depends entirely on what you are looking at, if you are looking at the movie in the context of the book then the bugs are undeniably "pure evil", but when it comes to taking the movie as a maybe separate piece of work, the bugs are a *bit* more ambiguous. I think the movie does a bad job at making them ambiguous, but the argument can certainly be made.
@@billdecompsa4705The movie shows that the bugs are intelligent, have feelings, and are likely only responding to human incursions into their space, but you have to watch with a critical eye since the movie is shown from the fascistic perspective of the Federation.
@@David_Axelord I mean considering that the bugs are a hivemind and aren't human, trying to interpret their actions based on human emotions or intentions is sort of flawed. The movie is a mess not because its "fascistic perspective of the Federation." but because Verhoven didn't seem to understand what he wanted, if you really want to make a satire on something, you don't bury (supposedly) under layers and layers of subversive "hints", that don't play out very well because very little of the movie is actually "fascist".
@billdecompsa4705 I actually thought I was explaining the bugs' behavior in an animal way, not a human way, territorial behavior is hardly limited to humans in nature. As far as finding the film a mess or not seeing all that much fascist stuff in it, I don't know what to tell you, sounds like we're just bringing different perspectives to it.
@@David_Axelord I typed out a good response to this, expanding on the topic, but my webpage reloaded. RIP. sorry.
Just my opinion, but I think this discussion is conflating two separate ideas: "races" and "monsters."
When I think of a "race," playable or otherwise, I'm generally thinking about an intelligent, humanoid creature that gathers into social hierarchies bound together by shared culture. People.
When I think of a "monster," I'm thinking of something alien and inhuman, perhaps primal and bestial, maybe meant to be used as an allegory for what we consider to be "evil," or maybe just beyond human understanding. This is the category where I'd tend to put undead, demons, and "classic" monsters like manticores and hydras.
I think the issue we're running into in the current fantasy environment is that we're taking older "monsters" and turning them into "races," and for some people that leads to some icky thoughts in regards to real-world cultures, conflicts, and our ability, as humans, to dehumanize and villainize cultures we don't understand or agree with.
But I think every table is going to draw the line between those two categories a little bit differently, based on personal experience and taste.
For me, personally, I don't believe in "evil" as an underlying cosmic force. I believe people, individuals, have the capacity for evil; I believe such people are capable of selling their ideologies and passing them on, spreading them to others, but I don't like the idea of labeling "all" people within a group as "evil" because some of them happen to be terrible.
As a GM, my stance is generally, "I want my players to have fun." If a player wants to take on the role of a goblin or an orc and our game of choice supports that, I'm going to let them. We'll work out what that means for our table and the fantasy world we share with each other.
If I want to represent "true evil," literally or symbolically, that's a niche that doesn't have to be filled by a playable race. Demons/devils are literal incarnations of evil. A horde of ravenous zombies can represent a monstrous, insatiable hunger just as well as a pack of gnolls. I don't know of many games that would make either of those options playable by default (though perhaps at GM discretion).
Ultimately, it's going to come down to your table, your players, and the story you want to tell together. I'm not going to try to tell anybody how to run their own games.
For me, I'd rather not villainize an entire race of people. That feels gross. I might accentuate and highlight some rather disastrous flaws in a culture, but try to meter it out with individuals who buck the norm.
If I want to represent "evil" and provide a horde of creatures the PCs can demolish without feeling bad about it, I'll turn to using monsters.
Why are Drow evil? Loilth, their selfish nature and a dark reflection of human nature. They are selfish, twisted and sadistic because in a lot of ways, they enjoy it. They enjoy harming and dominating others, they do not care. My players fight them, they fight an evil dragon because he's a necromancer that kills and raises his victims to throw at his next victims and mocks life itself. He seeks power and personal gratification, stop him. :)
Something I always go back to when ever I hear about people wanting to humanize the monster, "if the world was peaceful you wouldn't need adventures to defend it." Mindflayers can't be reasoned with, an ancient red dragon can't be bought, a necromancer has no value for others, beyond what he can do with their remains despite it's perverse nature. The drow want to see you suffer because they genuinely believe you deserve it in their twisted minds. I'm not here to make some grand statement. I'm the dungeon master, I create the monsters so you as players can be the heroes.
Yeah it's a worrying trend to see fantasy creatures become too human. These days it can be boiled down to just another flavour of human, the last decade there's also been a lot of anti-human sentiment flowing around pop culture too. I miss seeing media monsters be monsters
I 100% agree with you. You don't need to make everythin' Morally Complex. You can simply say "The Orcs and Goblins rampaging through the countryside are under the command of an evil wizard who rides on the back of a dragon who wishes to conquer the kingdom" and that should be enough. As temptin' as it is to expand the lore of a Fantasy world, over explanation will bore the players to tears.
I think where people get hung up on this is misunderstanding that some elements of a story get used to make the audience experience new levels of intensity in emotions while others use those same elements to give different nuances in new combinations of emotions (and others still fail to do either). There are a couple of options and both could potentially work but they have different uses.
In the end they are just different ways of writing stories. And they both have some right and wrong ways to write each.
This type of high stakes fantasy races ( with evil races, holy races, etc ) are used for intensity. The video lays it out pretty solidly.
The other main use of fantasy races could convey certain things about different groups in people in society (although mapping them onto certain ethnic groups in real life is usually agreed to be cringe , even in the nuances mode they're more used to create new archetypes ). An example of the nuances version of races in fantasy would be the different types of animals in Animal Farm. The pigs represented one group, the dogs represented another, sheep another, and so on. Those species didn't represent the extreme larger-than-life intensity that LOTR does for Orcs, etc. That wasn't their function.
Furthermore, fantasy stories can have heroes and villains without using evil or holy races - Arcane has about a dozen main characters who can clearly be heroes or villains - depending on which factions you side with.
Trill; this is a great expression and notion that I myself have always held, exquisitly put.
Thank you, great video.
I agree with you. I dont like taking the "Morally grey" high ground like Wotc is doing with every single race because its offensive to have races be evil now apparently.
It's not even morally grey at this point with the current direction. It's sanitized analogues to real world cultures.
@@Iulian111IKR. I especially hate what they did to the orcs making them analogous to hispanics. Drow at least have an excuse in that they not only have options for a good god they can follow but in their origin story are explained to have been corrupted rather than created evil like orcs and goblinoids.
@@genghiskhan6809I though orcs were black people not Hispanics?
I think the key is that you can, and often should, use both. You can have, for example, your culturally ostracized dark elves who are somewhat dark but not outright evil, rather, complex, alongside the threat of an unambiguously monstrous undead horde for example, so when you want to tell a story of conflict between morally grey persons, you can, but if you want an existential struggle against unrelenting forces of evil, that option is available too
Absolutely. Thank you for understanding this.
I used to play a spaniard skeleton named Rodrigo, the party knew that while any other cursed skeleton was evil, Rodrigo had some humanity left.
He didn't change the world idiosyncrasy, and still had to fight other skeletons, didn't even knew how he became undead in the first place, but he was "part of the group" 🧛🏻♀️🧝🏽♂️🧜🏻♂️💀✨
I think that's a way to have a skeleton cake and eat it too 😅
@green_warlock skeletons cannot eat cake. They have no stomachs or intestines.
In some old Polish rpg/fantasy blog once was an article "Why every fantasy setting needs their own orcs", and above all those things that you say in that's blog there was a simple anwser - sometimes you need some simple adventure scenario, and monsters who are inteligent enough to make some plans, but evil, so no one will start moral dilemma fits perfectly for that.
5:10 I mean, maybe. As a counterpoint though, World of Darkness is all about playing the dark and evil races of the world and all the philosophic things they represent and it's narratives are still fine.
You can even play the "good guys" in the Hunters so it's not just solely playing the "evil races".
The usefulness of pure evil really depends what kind of game you're playing.
But if you're playing a traditional heroic explore-fight-loot gameplay loop kind of game, you need monsters that players won't feel bad about killing. If they start asking if their actions are justified, you instantly spiral into something else entirely.
You can't necessarily just declare "goblins are evil and it is always good to kill them!" though. Cultural ideas around goblins, orcs, etc have broadly shifted and that might not get the same traction it once did.
In a recent low-level D&D game I used gibberlings and mutant animals as the generically killable enemy, and that worked pretty good. No one wondered about their culture.
Why can't you though? If it's my setting and my creation and I say "all goblins in this world are evil" who is there to disagree with that statement? It's my creation and take.
Just because you approach something with the baggage of your own experience doesn't mean it's my job to help you sort through that.
@@TrillTheDM It's so obvious (and already partially explained) that it is difficult to believe the question could be asked in good faith.
@@paulsmart4672 It's so obvious you can't explain why? LMAO
So if YOU wrote a book and in that book you made a setting, and in that setting you decided that the goblins you created were inherently evil.....that what? You can't do that? LMAO you're not allowed? This is the dumbest take so far if I'm understanding you correctly.
@@TrillTheDM You don't need to worry about what follows if you understand someone correctly.
@@paulsmart4672
In this day and age, the most subversive and cutting edge take you can offer to fantasy is going back to the primordial roots and utterly reject everything about modern fantasy. Embrace the chud fantasy, make it the chad fantasy.
go full sword and sorcery, Conan the barbarian. Keep it simple and clear without moral complexity.
@@onemisterfrankoConan? Not morally complex? Have you never read any of those books? Who am I kidding...
@PaulStore800 yes I have read them all, I do enjoy them. Every single wizard or sorcorrer in those stories is twisted. Half the leaders are wolves in sheeps cloathing. As brutal as Conan himself can be, given the settongs context he is the hero.
The problem i have with this line of thinking is that when im up against an orc, i dont want to be up against a tiger with thumbs: i want to fight a *person*
My golden rule is, and will always be; it's a game, don't overthink it.
In a DnD game, I played a twist on Red October where a Warhammer Dark Elf captain was willing to surrender his ship in exchange for asylum. But he was an exception that confirmed established rules, not some symbol of "noble deserters in Dark Elf lines".
I think I see your point here for unapologetic evil, if your party is fighting orcs it's not your job as the DM to make them feel bad because "agghh they're people too."
The point here is intentionality. For example, orcs in my game are not innatley evil but instead follow the God of the Hunt. They aren't hordes that take over towns but are always chasing bigger and bigger prey to prove their strength. On the flipside I have Yuan-Ti, who are entirely evil and wish to turn every humanoid in the world into Yuan-Ti. Having a reason for Yuan-Ti destroying every other civilization doesn't make them less evil. I would not have Yuan-Ti as a playable race in my settin, but orcs are 100% designed to be playable.
If orcs are evil in a setting, commit to making them anathema to life as an inhuman type of monster.
In a tabletop game I'm running, I've got an ancient species of Saurians who once ruled the entire world in an evil empire, mistreating all the other species in various non-TH-cam-friendly ways. Though the empire has fallen, they remain the scheming and villainous boogeymen alongside their last remaining God, devoted to freeing the rest of their vile pantheon and punishing the other species of the world. Since all the playable species have that shared history of being abused by the Nasty Dinosaur People, there's a bond there that helps them stick together. VERY helpful from a DMing perspective, especially since it's made pretty clear that they are the Irredeemable Bad Guys.
I'll admit I'm guilty of this over complexity in my own writing, even when I try to make a monstrous cannon fodder race.
The justification I gave is when the gods of the setting uplifted species into sentience not all were uplifted with care. That's why some races like orcs have both a rare sentient variant, and a more common physically powerful but dumb and bestial variant. And the sentient orcs use their bestial counterparts as expendable soldiers and cheap labor.
The funny part is gnomes are much the opposite, they've been uplifted so much they've come out the other side and become monsters again. Hyper intelligent magically and technologically advanced monsters who see other races as crude brutish animals they can experiment on with no second thought.
With these last two, I think you'd enjoy reading "Menzoberranzan-A Perfect Unjust State" from Irwin & Robichaud's D&D and Philosophy. A single line eludes to the richness concerning the evil nature of the Drow and their society: "You may do whatever you can get away with...that is all that matters." I agree that where devils, demons, and other incomprehensible entities are concerned, evil "as nature" or a representative of such a cosmic force is for the good concerning TTRPGS. We're definitely on the same page that such races turned into playable characters should be avoided, if not outright disallowed. After all, there are quite a few, and one that often passes by, maybe because of their history, is the Gith. I am, however, reluctant to give up the nuance of "evil" for just wanting to corrupt, destroy, or whatever, as in many cases, it reduces everything to a "monster," and what subtlety is there in that?
From the "GAME" aspect, though, and just playing devil's advocate here, the transformation into a playable choice seems to have more to do with the ever-increasing list of options produced starting about D&D 3.5. Hot on the tail of the most notable Drizzt Do'Urden, further spurred by the inclusion of several sub-races even within the classic choices. The stale feeling that some got from the longstanding core choices did drive many of us in the middle days of the game to ask to play those races. It's good stuff, TRILL, far better than much of what gets produced laced with highbrow language and raised intellectualized noses. It makes me look forward to the subjects of "Heroism and Goodness."
I think you can have a good mix of both nuanced evil and inherent evil. My only issue really is when you make the inherent ones playable by the characters. I also do agree that not everything should be a "Monster" as you said. Just that when they are, don't let the players get ahold of em lol.
I also think it started a bit earlier than 3.5 with 2e but I do think 3.5 is when it went into overdrive. I appreciate the thoughts as always!
I waited till the end before I gave my piece, and I think you're 75% right. However, Where I disagree is he idea that players can NEVER play as one fo these races. To me, it is eternally important to remember that one or two exceptions does NOT make the whole race suddenly good. In fact, I think people should be open to playing then as evil in the first place..... maybe a lesser sort to their peers, but still clearly on the side of evil (at least in the beginning). I mean, it's that part of the appeal in the first place?
I.E: I'm playing a Hobgoblin merc stranded on an alien world and still focusing on surviving and becoming a freelancer rather than live under 'the elder's rules'. He is STILL evil though, despite the parties efforts and his fierce loyalty to them by now, but the moral conflicts are super gratifying! So yeah, lean into!
I think you're falling too far into the other camp by saying "evil races don't need culture", because without SOME explanation of their motivations, you've basically got "ORC LOL BAD" going on. That's just as much of a fallacy as saying "everything should be player friendly". You need the "Orcs are warped and twisted by Morgoth, but they were once elves that fell to the Shadow" type culture or lore to make them work. Cardboard cutout baddies like zombies just don't work in a setting unless you start suspending all sorts of disbelief.
Dark elves before Drizzt had a complex and and compelling society, multiple motivations and factions, and even Gygax had a "good" dark elf at the end of Queen of the Demonweb Pits. The explanation for that culture made it even MORE horrific because of what was the societal norm. How they viewed other races. That reason for WHY they were doing what they were doing was part of what made it far, far more interesting to deal with them as players or as a DM.
I enjoy complex Orcs, Drow Goblins etc. But yes unambiguous evil is great for storytelling and just plain fun.
I think moving away from the classical evil fantasy races is good if you manage to explore evil in an different interesting way.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. You can have both in the same setting. I'm moreso arguing from the point that if you're going to make a race inherently evil, just keep it unplayable for the players except in specific circumstances.
@@TrillTheDM I concur. I'm playing a Hobgoblin merc stranded on an alien world and still focusing on surviving and becoming a freelancer rather than live under 'the elder's rules'. He is STILL evil though, despite the parties efforts and his fierce loyalty to them by now, but the moral conflicts are super gratifying!
But it only works because Hobgoblins are an evil race inherently!
@@TrillTheDMah and here I was about to make a comment saying both can exist like a goober, glad I saw this lol.
Great video by the way! I personally like having a bit of both in my settings.
One of my favorite world building lines about demons in dnd said that despite their Evil nature some try being good for a while due to their inherit mailability with Chaos. Many revert back, seeing it as a passing amusement and “delve into their debauchery with renewed vigor,” every once in a while one wants to keep going. Of the infinite horrors of the abyss where new unimaginable horrors crawl out the primordial depths and nothing is impossible, it stands to reason that one can mutate in just the right way to stumble onto salvation. 99.9% of demons are unimaginable evil and even those who dare to be good can always revert so must always be treated with caution, but it’ll be a damn compelling story to see them struggle towards that goal lol.
Okay, counterpoint: The "Token Good Orc" trope has been a staple of fantasy and sci-fi storytelling for decades now. Not letting players play members of normally Evil races is denying the good storytelling potential of being an orc raised by humans, a drow defecting from the evil underkingdom, or a goblin who's learning to channel his chaotic nature to be a decent being.
If we can have stories of good people turning to the side of Evil, than we need the alternative as well, of beings born to a society of evil, who learn to embrace good values. Sometimes it can be a doomed endeavour, sometimes it can be an aspirational "no one is beyond saving" statement. But there needs to be an opening.
And there's always the "rage zombies/overriding hive mind" option if you still want irredeemable monsters.
My problem with this is that most people don't ever approach it seriously. People might include some "token discrimination moments" but often times these types of characters and their situations just get overlooked for the flow of the game.
Let's say for example in a world where Orcs are INHERENTLY Evil. Everybody in the world sees and knows them as such, it isn't a question of "their culture is different than ours" these Orcs are Demonic Pig Orcs. In the case that there IS one Orc that is somehow able to break away from the demonic side for whatever reason, how is the world EVER going to let that Orc be around them? It would be kill on sight at ALL times. The world would naturally not understand or ever be okay with this situation.
In a book this is fine, the author can do whatever the hell they want, but if you are playing this honestly in your setting then how is it not a total nightmare for the person playing that race? Constantly trying to be killed, hunted down, removed from society completely.
It is somewhat annoying to me when I play as an orc, half orc, lizardfolk, or tiefling... and the DM refuses to let the NPC's react accordingly. My orcish character is from the same clan that raided their villages. My tiefling looks like a fiend that tempts people into selling their souls for wealth and power. My lizardfolk literally eats people.
For gameplay, yes, it might also be annoying to be chased out of town or refused service. But I chose to play as a monstrous race that is often seen as "evil". Let me have the story that I specifically asked for.
I enjoy the occasional monster playing against type, either for dramatic or comedic effect. I also like to think that redemption is available to any and all who seek it, even in races steeped in pure evil, especially when that effort is genuine, its very cathartic. You don't need to explain the orc's society, because the orc player is rejecting all of it to live a better life. Of course, those should be the rare exception to hammer home the fact that the majority of the race is still an active threat to the world.
Interesting take on "playable monsters" that keeps them monstrous and not just "misunderstood" is I think vampires in Vampire: The Masquarade.
Plasyers are vampires, and they don't technically need to be evil, but each one of them has "best" inside. The beasts don't simply wants to feed, it wants to kill and main. Being a vmapires is a struggle to keep on humanity in a state when your own very nature constantly pushes you to be a monster. Vampires have culture and society, but every single one they create is fundamentally based on using mortals as a sustenence. It's brutal society of the parasites in which the might makes right. Even when they are more "understandable" and "sympathethic", they are still monsters from the mortal perspective and by very nature cannot function without exploitation and abuse.
Even "heroic" vmapires playthrough require your player character to feed on people, often non-consensually. Sure, GM can handwave this, but it's a fact. Interesting thing in one of newest edition is that a vampire cannot really calm the Beast without killing a person while feeding. The one who are not monsters are forced to constantly be subjected to the influence of the Beast, every single moment of their un-life.
Let the wicked witch of the west stay wicked, I say! No more musicals!
Ha. Seriously, though, great video. You put into words something I've wanted to explain for a great while.
I generally agree, a fight against pure evil threating the world can lead to an exeptional story. There are many examples of that. However, I would say that doing this too often can rob the story of any weight and meaning. If the world is on the brink of destruction for the 10th time and it is saved for the 10th time what makes the other ones matter? This is in my experience a challenge for a dm thats not easy to overcome. I myself tend to enjoy lower and more personal stakes in my games more.
There's definitely a balance you should take. I don't think an evil race being present makes the world on the brink of destruction though. That might be their goal but it doesn't mean they're successful about it or that they're right at the gates. They just are present.
Especially if someone's making a Homebrew campaign I don't think every race needs to be playable just too many but I think it should be GM discretion
Beautifully articulated my friend! You have the voice of a skald
THANK YOU for this video. It beautifully articulates most of my thoughts on the subject.
Also bonus points for the Army of Darkness and Black Cauldron clips. Like, comment, sub and share well earned my friend!!
I agree with the points exposed, but also, you CAN let a player use an evil race character if they really want to, just making it be an anomaly, an extraordinary being that for reasons known or unknown, obtained, recovered or developed higher conciousness. An unique individual from that race that's an exception to this unquestionable evil.
This could also make for an instant plot device.
I liked how old D&D handled orcs. Orcs being pure evil but half-orcs having that spark of humanity that allows them to be better. It's one of those "keeping you cake and eating it too" examples.
Why is Orcs "Pure Evil" though? I kinda wonder?
Well done, my friend. Races and beings with evil or alien motives are so much fun and help fantasy and sci-fi shine (of course, in parallel, the story or game can be about human or human like races dealing with complex moral issues and evil/corrupt folks among their own people). I personally love when heroes face off against malevolent races whose ultimate designs are not well understood, but the heroes know with certainty that only nightmares await if such creatures are allowed to thrive.
Been running D&D since mid 70's. You nailed it, IMO.
I think the most important thing here is overthinking, at the end of the day almost every character and species starts as a concept, and represents that concept.
it could be incredibly fleshed out, or it could be like you said about the undead: simply the physical manifestation of inevitable demise.
When people over, analyze, and overthink these things they come up with ideas about them that have no bearing in reality. They are pure fantasy. They write their own lore, and get offended about ideas that aren’t real. I think it’s very important to create unique cultures, and unique, cultural, identities, too, so that people do not confuse these things with real life… When people look at every single barbarian and call it racist it’s very difficult.
I think both concepts can coexist having some typically evil races with cultures with a different or none sense of morality, not inmorality but amorality. Yet you still need the ultimate evil, the undeniable threat, you need a clear villain a clear antagonist. As you said in the beggining both are narrative tools with pros and cons and ways to use them
Nice, another banger video
Appreciate it!
Your best video to date, IMHO. We agree that allowing inherently evil races as playable options in RPGs challenges the philosophical foundation of the game’s world by blurring established moral dualities and destabilizing the consistency of its lore. Evil races often embody mythological archetypes and primal fears, serving as foils for protagonists and anchoring the setting’s moral stakes; transforming them into sympathetic or heroic figures risks diluting their symbolic power and unraveling the world’s internal logic. While such inclusion offers the potential for complex storytelling, it can erode the metaphysical framework, trivialize the narrative stakes, and overwhelm the campaign with ethical relativism at the expense of high-stakes adventure.
Glad you enjoyed!
Definitely agree, it's a trade-off that you have to decide whether or not it's worth. To me it's just not worth it. That's not to say that the only races playable in my games are inherently good. They're just allowed nuance that the inherently evil races aren't.
@@TrillTheDM It’s all about finding what fits your game's tone and style. Maintaining that balance can make for compelling storytelling. Thanks for doing what you do.
@@007ohboy You bring up some valid points, and I think it really comes down to what kind of story you want your game to tell. For me, the idea of inherently evil races isn’t about lazy storytelling but rather about creating a mythological framework where certain forces are primal embodiments of good or evil, much like how dragons, demons, or angels are often used in fantasy. That said, I totally understand the appeal of exploring exceptions, like Drizzt, or focusing on individual agency within those archetypes-it’s a compelling angle for a different style of game. At my table, I prefer to keep those archetypes intact because they establish a clear framework for the world, with exceptions like Drizzt being powerful precisely because they defy the norm. If every member of an inherently evil race had the same capacity for good as anyone else, the impact of those rare exceptions would diminish. It’s all about what works for the story you want to tell, and while I lean toward preserving those archetypes, I respect that others may prioritize a different kind of nuance in their games.
Interesting video, but I think you're ultimately incorrect, for a few reasons;
1) Players shouldn't ever be flat-out prohibited from choices. Those choices may have consequences, like an Orc Barbarian being automatically distrusted by the townsfolk, but that's an obstacle the player will have to overcome.
2) While there's a place for "forces of nature" villains, "slavering demons bent on destruction" are less interesting to me than "orderly devils bent on subjecting the world."
Silas & Delilah Briarwood weren't heroes because they had a sympathetic backstory. But that backstory made them more interesting than a mustache-twirler just being evil for the lols.
3) I WISH WotC were making traditionally evil races playable while keeping them interesting & unique. I fear it's just out of a desire to homogenize everything, not by giving everyone different, & often conflicting motivations, but rather by giving everyone the same, bland, peaceable, kumbaya motivation.
Kudos for the thought-provoking video, though.
I hated that they started sanitizing the monsterus races in dnd, if I play an Orc it’s because I want the full Orc experience not a big green teddy bear. Same with goblins or any other like it I’m not looking to play a different shaped human.
This would work if their intricate background was still profoundly alien. Like seeing the xenomorphs reproduce. The more you learn, the more hostile to human life by their differences they become.
Well said!
Additionally, if we look at TTRPG and how every race is getting playable, this brings a whole new set of questions.
I find PF2 goblins to be one of the most egregious examples here: in that universe, goblins used to be agents of chaos and mayhem, available for parties with mercurial worldviews at best, but with the new edition not only can they be played like any other race with no restrictions. Additionally, it is heavily implied that goblins can now be proper members of any society... while at the same time staying that very same low-level critter with a taste for fire, indesreiminate violence, wielding their cultural weapons literally named "horsechoppers" and "dogslicers".
To me, this makes the world seem terribly wonky, because it means that even though there are good examples of those creatures, and they're numerous and not at all rare, no other race (as written by authors) has attempted to alleviate them beyond their state, like establishing trade on a large scale, making them neglectful in a world that is apparently painted as colourful and accepting of all.
Sure, fantasy worlds do not have to follow the same vices we have as a species throughout our history, but giving every race meaning, morality, while at the same time making them extremely diverse AND respective of each-others borders is incredibly immersion-breaking. Besides, when this happens, goblins, elves, dwarves or even gnolls essentially become "humans but X".
Thanks for the great vid! Happy Thanksgiving!!!
I got to be honest the inhuman threat Trope is never something I like if I had my own campaign I wouldn't call the monsters I call them creatures you can negotiate with them I love the social side of role-playing it's fun to me the Drow for example of an evil faction but you can still interact with them I'm not saying every enemy has to be human but I still like to be able to negotiate with them
There's no reason you can't have both. If you are assuming that with this video I mean that there can't be other just normal evil people across the spectrum of playable races then that's a false assumption.
I like this mentality
Also, if the pcs are going to be a hero but from an evil race, they can feel unique like Drittz.
I'm cooking up this goblin shadow monk npc who is a devout worshipper of the goblin god and he does this by living to fight. He takes pleasure in conflict and lives to one day die in battle. His only hatred is the breaking of the status quo of the greater cosmos (evil races should be evil, good are good). He takes pride in his life as an evil creature and awaits his eventual downfall.
I think adding playable evil races opens potential storytelling. The monster on a redemption path, struggling with internal and external pressures to take that easy and evil path. A secretly evil party member who looks to cooperate with the party in sofar as to be in position to take the place of the initial bbeg (though this is for the neutral or good races).
It's all about what kind of story you want to tell, and what kind of experience your players want. I allow my players to be almost anything they want IF we work through how it can make sense in my setting. For example, you want to play an orc in a good campaign? Sure. But we're going to have to SERIOUSLY consider how, and why this is happening. Give them the purple lightsaber, with enough imagination and perhaps some compromise, you can make it work. But in theory I completely agree with you. Some races as a whole need to be left as what they were originally intended as: monsters.
I'll agree that current year DND has gone overboard with their "inclusion" efforts for playable races to be all Kum Bay Yah, but I also think your point in this video is overly simplistic. For the most part "evil" antagonist races don't make sense as avatars of destruction and chaos, unless they are literally demonic, like, well, demons, or many concepts of the undead, as those things largely do exist just to be eeevil and destructive.
Most of the time, they ultimately have to be considered either predators, competitors, and/or aliens. They have their own internal workings for their species or race, but they don't necessarily have reason to give consideration to the main player character races. Like, orcs have to have some level of society to be able to fight with weapons. Even in LotR, they mostly fought to serve the ambition of some powerful master, and might have just bumbled around in their own area otherwise. But just because they have their own society doesn't mean they should just be able to integrate into a multi-racial frolic fest. Humans fight each other over just cultural and territorial differences, and things which are arguably differing sentient species would be even more likely to do so. The only reason the usual fantasy races really work together is because elves, dwarves, gnomes, and such were originally conceived as something that were human like and interact with humans, hundreds and thousands of years ago.
Yeah but do you have to explain all that? I even say that less is more when it comes to these evil races that act as avatars of destruction and chaos. The implication is that there is SOME sort of culture going on behind the scenes that makes them function the way they do, but keep that behind the scenes. Let the players imagination make up all that shit. YOU don't have to explain it, sometimes things can just BE.
Why is it overly simplistic? This video doesn't disregard that normal races can be evil, just that if you create something INHERENTLY evil then it should be kept safe out of player's hands. That way you don't have to get lost down the quagmire of justifying them in the first place.
I've actually started to like the original three alignment system because it just avoids so many issues like this. Law, Neutrality, and Chaos work fine on there own and leave the concept of good and evil open to interpretation. A creature of Chaos wasn't chaotic because it had a wacky personality, but because it craved destruction and the fall of civilization.
I don't mind having a party of mixed alignments btw. I ran a one shot that way once and told the players to roleplay their alignments without telling anyone else what they were. We had two evil characters who didn't know that the other was evil, and they were kind of in opposition of each other while trusting the good characters. It was fun.
I don't entirely agree with the idea of not making evil races playable
I DO think that there needs to be a damn good reason for it to be done though
half-orcs were added to make a playable orc
the drow have an entire culture, and there are those within that do not agree with that culture and refuse to walk that path. just look at Drizzt
alternatively, it could be a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario
where two folk would normally be at odds, there could be a greater threat that would both BOTH out of business unless they work together.
there are ways to make it work
but I do agree that races that are inherently evil should not be made not-evil just to appease people
especially people like the guy in the pinned comment XD
plus, a world without evil should also be without good, imo
it's unbalanced otherwise.
either good and evil both exist or neither exist
Skallagrim's video on humans comes to mind...he lays out all the reasons humans would be seen as evil by Elves or Dwarves.
I agree completely. You don’t negotiate with the xenomorph. You nuke the bastards.
Orcs are actually just fluffy misunderstood quirkchungus who like cervecas and guacamole
showing moral complexity to evil races shows that they do in fact have a choice in their actions. evil isn't a thing you are rather it's a thing that you do.
This is the best thing I ever saw.
The delicate tightrope becomes more delicate when balancing story and gameplay in TTRPGs when introducing evil races as playable.
This goes for the GM and the said player(s). They all will succumb to plot holes, and even inconsistencies. I bet even the player(s) will have no more dialogue to run with for character development.
But this is a creative exercise/endeavor, nonetheless. It is just a matter of how well parties can stretch this exercise-hopefully to the conclusion of the campaign.
I agree that that is a perfectly reasonable way to use evil races, but I disagree that that is what they have to be. Generally in my worlds I make small evils understandable, but the more you understand them the more clear it becomes that they are incompatible. I find it boring if my players think "good: because elves" or "evil: because orcs" and would rather them look at the actions of their enemies and determine good and evil based on that. That said, I usually make my own settings and heavily curate what my players can play to focus the narrative, so my answer to "Should evil races be available to PCs?" is very much: Depends on the game I'm running and where my focus is.
Your content is brilliant. Thank you!
I appreciate that!
The unique part of “fantasy” and “sci-fi” is that you can look at things from a magical or biological perspective and say “these are just the way they are because they are”
You don’t have to humanise them because they *inherently are not human* on their thoughts and actions
They are not like us - they don’t have to be
Aberrations exist, like a “good” Orc, but they are just that: entirely unique, one of characters that are special *because* of that quirk
I'd argue there are plenty of compelling narratives to be made of both an uncomplicated evil hoard, as well as nuanced, complex adversaries. It's tricky (but not impossible) to mix and match, but the real trouble starts when people insist that their preferred version is the only viable option. Sometimes the orcs and goblins are metaphors for oppressed and marginalized people who have been thoroughly othered to the point of no longer being seen as human, and sometimes they are monsters meant to be cut down without thought or hesitation because it's been a rough week and I'm going to pretend this next one looks exactly like my boss. Neither is inherently better, there are plenty of good and bad examples of each, maybe ask some questions at session zero to dial in expectations before you find out that half the table want to befriend everything and the other half are murder hobos.
The way to write evil races is that you make a character who is an exception to that from a cultural or even a moral standpoint, you could have the narrative potential of them coming to terms with their own culture, and eventually having to fight against it like The Arbiter from Halo. You can still keep the whole race themselves evil, but everyone of them is them, they become less of a "race" and more like flies to swat.
This video reminds me of Anbennar, a full conversion mod for EU IV, and the way it deals with this dilemma. In this setting, you can turn typical evil/monstruous races (like goblins, orcs, kobolds and gnolls for example) into "civilized" nations. It is a huge pain in the ass to do so (armies get weaker, things get more expensive etc). This is the way I believe some fantasy societies could reform.
Great video.
I like this video (the comments are kind of a mixed bag for me)
To me, since I am a massive fan of TTRPG material and lore to the war games like 40k. This can be an interesting dialogue. To me, since I've dmed a lot. I find that having "evil races" is great, simple, and straight to the point. The classic Warband of Orcs raiding the town is a classic way to entice the players.
I do think, as for any story or game it should be a sliding scale, Dark elves in the forgotten realms gave me the perfect balance of "Evil Race" and nuance to boot while making it fun to approch the idea.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that while an evil race or culture is the template, the nuance and specifics should be the seasoning that pushes it. Besides having my players feel bad could be a great time, however I dont think the lich who wants total domination got to where he was by being a nice person.
I personally like more nuanced races and cultures in fantasy, but I get what you mean. What can be done for the best of both worlds is having inherently evil races but have those few who break off from them, the anomalies of their kind.
Anomalies of their own kind defeats the point of an inherently evil race. You might be mistaking Race vs Culture here. Culture allows for the breaking off, inherent to the core of the creature/race is much different. The best balance is having both. Evil races and Evil cultures in a setting. One to act as the mythical evil archetype and the other to provide a more nuanced look, in the end though the inherently evil races should never be playable except in specific circumstances.
9:00 I‘d argue Annihilation is more eldritch horror. Though I love eldritch horror xD
10:00 I think that‘s the crux. I always say if you have to change them to play them, why play them at all? You‘re just in love with the aestetics in that case.
I really love evil creatures as embodiments of human flaws. In my current campaign, the evil races are unable to self-regulate. They are slave to their emotions and desires; they simply have no motivation to be good. The strongest along them embody singular emotions like Hunger, Lust, Fear, Rage, Commitment, or Curiosity.
I think another good example of evil species are the Mindflayers. They made themselves what they are at heart. They eugenixed themselves into becoming a parasite that can only survive by inflicting pain, but in return they grow ever stronger and can steal the abilities and knowledge if those they consume. With them, you can actually dive as deeply as you want into their society and history, and they actually become more evil by doing so because their entire existence relies on it.
Or take the azteks. They‘re an excellent example for a purely evil culture - hated by all their neighbours. A society that essentially gave up morals for conveniency. That kind of thinking can actually be added nicely to eldritch gods that give rewards because they enjoy the amusing ants hurting each other in their name.
Lastly there‘s the matter of perspective. People often criticise that innately evil creatures like undead or demons lack agency. In one campaign I had a group of anorganic creatures who innately understood that reality was wrong. They worked collectively at waking the Godhead - stopping it from dreaming and thus erasing reality - because none of the mortal creatures were real to start with and if they could rescue the Dreamer from his nightmare, all the better.
There's a simpler way to say much of what the video is angling at here.
There is a difference between *people*, and *monsters*.
*People* can be complex. They can have whole societies, deep inner worlds, dreams, hopes. Motivations that make fighting them, as a group, complex. This doesn't mean they can't be an entire group that needs fighting, even to the death. We forget there are MANY examples of this kind of thing. The army bearing down on everything you know and love will not be stopped by a heartfelt Charisma check.
Monsters, though. Monsters do not, *cannot*, think or behave like people. Monsters are primeval horrors, and any similarity to humans is only to drive home that horror. The troll under the bridge is not thinking like a human, and it never can. The devil at the crossroads cannot feel sympathy, or empathy. If it did, it would not BE a devil anymore.
And yes, there is crossover here. There are people who are basically just monsters, and MUST be treated as such. Examples are not hard to think of, or find. The trick is, it's almost always *individual* people. The only times it applies to groups are the groups that define themselves by wanting to treat other groups of people *like* monsters.
But if you remove the possibility of monsters entirely, you lose a whole angle of writing and roleplay too. I always think of how Tieflings and Aasimar have in recent times been reduced to 'rainbow horns and tails nonsense' (affectionate) or 'the shiny pretty kids'. These are creatures partly formed of the IDEA of evil and good.
What is life like for a character who is, to their very *genes*, driven to rescue orphans from a burning building? What about the one whose genes whisper to them constantly to block the doors and set the fire in the first place?
Is it better to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort? Because brother, some people in the real world have instincts and urges in their heads and hearts, through no fault of their own, that are monstrous. Or noble.
And we should be able to have stories about all of these.
Huh, maybe not that much simpler a way to put it after all.
I appreciate you had the discipline to make this point without citing Frieren. (This is not a knock on frieren.)
I like how one of the first things you point out is there is good reason for the push back. Real world baggage unfortunately does seep in and that for many people makes a purely evil race unbelievable and potentially problematic for a lot of people.
Me personally, I don’t mind certain races being predisposed towards evil, but if they can think enough to strategize at all, they can think enough to choose who they wanna be. Suffice to say, orcs may be predisposed towards evil in my games, but a player character does get to be the exception to the norm. If anything that gives them a chance to tell their own story. Why isn’t their character like all the others? What made them defect or were they simply born away from all of that?
I think it ultimately comes down to what kind of story you’re trying to tell. And your players for that matter. Some groups gel well with a symbolic threat that doesn’t need to be reasoned with. Others may want a villain with more sympathetic ambitions. Tbh everyone should just play the game they wanna play and if that’s not the game your table is playing maybe you just need another table.
I would note that pure evil races weren't ever a part of dnd kinda - reaction tables in first editions meant anything other than a mindless skeleton, zombie or similar would at least treasure it's life and not fight just to be evil.
Lots of evil races in first editions of dnd were also given explanations as to why they are evil and some weren't even set to being evil.
Straship Troopers clip also feels out of place - in the movies, bugs are actually just defending themselves against humanity's conquest. We just view things from the viewpoint of the brainwashed and expandable cannon fodder.
I would say the "complex orcs, simple zombies" thing mirrors some of my own thoughts on the topic.
Pure evil tends to be boring by itself in literature - it acts more as a force of nature affecting other elements. A horde of zombies or a mindless beast of destruction.
Complex evil is popular not just because of modern increase in awareness, but because it is much easier to make interesting by itself.
Complex evil is easier to make interesting by itself and it's still evil, even if it has some more reasoning behind the acts of evil. You will still have to fight it and it can approach pure evil's levels of unredeemable.
I like complex evil to be about individuals and cultures rather than races.
Modern people also tend to be a bit more aware of complexities of humanity so pure evil races are harder to pull off - sapience implies free wil and free will implies some sort of justification behind evil, even if it's as simple as cultural influence or brainwashing
I might be in a minority here, but I like D&D's alignment system, as that gave birth to the Planescape campaign setting, that gave more philosophical meanings to things like "lawful evil" or "chaotic good", and with that something totally evil (in the axis of lawful-neutral-chaos) can be interesting. Sure, it doesn't have the same shades of gray like - say - The Witcher (and probably everyone has seen how Batman can be given as an example of every nine alignments), but for example Blood War where devils (lawful evil) and demons (chaotic evil) fought each other is very interesting lore. Also, demons being *chaotic* also means that they can escape their default alignment now and then, like with the lawful, chaste succubus Fall-from-Grace seen in cult classic video game Planescape: Torment.
While there are certain races that were traditionally seen as evil that I do like to have as a playable option, I also prefer these options to not be particularly "good" lets say, tamed at best. They will behave if they deem it will allow them to further their cause, but won't be good for the sake of good. Other races however, I do prefer are just evil as this video describes. And for the sake of world building but also story, sometimes just having that bad guy you can't reason with, and therefore must eliminate, works just fine.
Literal meme of when the Villian in a video game becomes a Playable character.
In my current campaign the players could only choose humans to play. In the first session a player asked if he could do anything, i daid yep. He done proceeded to murder a random towns person. Which promptly got him thrown in an oibliette. He, "created" a new character. After the session i txted him that his character in yhe oibliete had an adventure waiting. Long story short there was a hole in the oibliette and he traveled in completes darkness until he almost died of dehydration. He found an alter to orcus and became his champion. I then told him that the character was transformed into an evil race that he got to control. The races motivation were the subjegation and murder of centaurs and humans in the name of orcus. The player created a great race and loved whenver his good character had to fight them lol.
There is something that isn't mentionned in the video but i think has it's place in it, or around it like in in a comment section for exemple, is that it only works if your world have evil in it. Personnaly i don't believe in evil and good. I think that they aren't natural things but human concepts put on things that juste are. Like killing isn't evil or good, it exist. Then you can personnaly judge it as good or evil. So if in your world evil exists, it's ok. But in a lot of worlds it just don't, personnaly i don't have "evil" in my current cyberpunk campaign, nor i had it in my fantasy campaign before, but there were evil person, and evil acts. So i think that evil races can exists in a world where evil is a natural concept, but still we have to be carefull, or not if you don't want to, to why they are evil : is it because they are a threat to civilisation ? Or because they crave for the power ? Because that doesn't mean the same thing
This is why I still love 40k despite it's flaws
There’s a time and place for both; evil cultures can be just as interesting- sure the race itself isn’t necessarily evil, but the group you are fighting? They are. Maybe they are mislead, maybe they knowingly and willingly chose evil. Maybe they aren’t so different from humans, but you happen to be on the receiving end of the xenophobia, warmongering and zealotry today and if you don’t step up it’s innocents that are going to suffer.
Either way it’s good to have groups of clear villains. Be they an evil race that will screw you over because of their nature, an amoral one that can’t see you as anything other than prey, or an evil culture whose culture is just as unapologetically evil as any demon.
Of course since in a lot of fantasy race and culture are basically the same thing, there might not be a lot of material difference.
To give examples of both from my main campaign world in D&D doppelgängers are pararites that feed off suffering and their very presence makes a place feel depressing as negative emotions are amplified and positive ones suppressed. They infiltrate areas to sow discord and abuse and feed off the misery it creates.
Meanwhile the Cyr are a mixed bag in terms of races, humans, orcs, goblinoids, doppelgängers and even demons can be found among their ranks, but the Cyr as a culture believe both might makes right and they revel in causing suffering.
There’s also the Altherians who are probably a more present threat than the Cyr for where the party is currently at; as a culture they are basically holier than thou zealots with little tolerance for anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs. Out of the three factions mentioned here they probably have the most “average joes” living in their territory, but the Altherians (or their allies) that the party has faced so far have mostly been in the business of invading border towns or riding down local patrols.
Ha, the only structure that needs to be known about the 'culture' of evil races is to have the hierarchy set up. Like a giant or troll will be what is commanding the orcs. An evil wizard is commanding the Troll. Maybe some demon is possessing the wizard. That is pretty much it.
Yeah I sorta rediscovered this when I read The Sun Eater and encountered The Ceilcin. If the Ceilcin were morally gray it would take away from the work.
Nothing wrong with having unambiguously evil species; just be careful to not make their cultures resemble anything irl (Nothing wrong with morally gray orcs or drow either)
The Cielcin are a great example. Thank you.
For Tolkien style storytelling j agree with everything you said. But when it comes to interactive media, people will always want to dive deeper into something interesting, even surface level like the evil factions, and generally speaking people generally like nuanced and complex characters over simple caricatures. Obviously, as Tolkien demonstrates, even adding complexity and depth to a part of a story does not necessarily need to compel sympathy, and I think that's a good thing in his case.
However, when it comes to interactive media like video games and tabletop RPGs, I think you can generally get away with supplanting "evil races" with "evil factions", especially when supplemented by clearly evil races such as Demons and monsters. I'm fine with evil races, but limiting the creative options for players in a game world where the point is to be able to do almost anything you want to seems counter-intuitive.
And let me just say on a philosophical level... "It's better not to understand the enemy so that we may hate them without remorse" is the most nihilistic ideology imaginable, and it's the main reason why we humans go to war and inflict tragedy and pain on each other so regularly. As much as I understand we are talking about media here and not reality, it's a pretty sketchy notion to blindly embrace this philosophy as being something desirable, as we know how easily media influences the perspective of those who consume it, even in the most "fantastical" if concepts. What we create as a species reflects the way we see the world after all... And it affects the way we see the world too. Good video though, I like the discussion on this topic.
I agree with this totally. Robbing evil races of their purpose turns what is compelling into a just another human reskin.
I do think there is some room for evil races to have good characters, but they must be the exception and justified through the culture.
For instance, there should be no atheist drow. You are either bargaining with Shar or saved by the light of Selune.
I play a goblin, the reason he is "good" is because he was left for dead by other goblins and has instead taken to the market forces approach to morality. He's a greedy, inventive outcast of his own people who has taken in with mercenaries with the intention to lead and make bank