This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't understand why Orcs have always been the go-to example for this. First of all the "Always Chaotic Evil" terminology only goes back to 2000 and was gone again by 2009 - it originates with the 3rd Edition Monster Manual introducing a bit more nuance into alignments, with the usual alignment now preceded by "Always" (for things like demons where that alignment was part of their nature), "Usually" (where it was more a case of strong cultural associations with that alignment), or the rarely-used "Often" (like usually but the association is much weaker). I think humans got "Often True Neutral" but I can't remember another case where "Often" was used.
And Orcs were firmly in the "Usually" bucket. You even gave some of the reasons for this. All over the Internet people talk like they got tagged "Always Chaotic Evil" and it's just not true! In both editions where that terminology exists they are "Usually Chaotic Evil". The problem they are referring to (EDIT: insofar as it ever existed, which wasn't very) was already fixed in the same book that originated much of the terminology used to discuss it.
I'll need to check the books when I get home, but off the top of my head, orcs themselves have never been Always Chaotic Evil. The language used for monster alignment has changed across the editions, but I believe you're correct that 3e introduced the 'Always [Alignment]' phrasing, and in 3e, orcs were not Always Chaotic Evil. Always Chaotic Evil was reserved for demons and a few other similar characters - monsters that are by definition evil.
Even prior to 3e, though, there was some nuance with orcs - they were presented as usually evil, but not always, and sometimes they were presented with a valid perspective of their own. I remember the origin story for orcs in 2e Forgotten Realms was reasonably sympathetic to them, suggesting that maybe the 'goodly' races really did screw them over, and orc aggression and hostility is a response to an initial divine division of the world that relegated them only to the wastelands, and miserable lives of violence and poverty therein.
More when I have the old sourcebooks to hand, I think, but as far as I'm aware now, ACE orcs is a strawman.
But as I grouched a little while back, I think today, even among D&D players, there's widespread illiteracy as to D&D's past, and a tendency for people to substitute an imagined caricature of mindless hack-and-slash for the game as it actually existed. ACE orcs fit the narrative if you believe that everything prior to 5e was troglodytic monster-murdering with no hint of story.
EDIT:
Okay, here we are.
AD&D1e and AD&D2e both just list orcs' alignment as "Lawful Evil". AD&D doesn't give frequency, but it does say in the introduction to the Monster Manual 1e "ALIGNMENT shows the characteristic bent of a monster to law or chaos, good or evil or towards neutral behavior possibly modified by good or evil intent", and for the Monstrous Manual 2e "ALIGNMENT shows the general behaviour of the average monster of that type". As such I don't regard either manual as indicating that all orcs are necessarily Lawful Evil.
I don't have the 3.0 Monster Manual to hand, but I do have 3.5. 3.5 lists orcs' alignment as "Often chaotic evil", so not only have they swapped from law to chaos, they've also qualified it. The glossary at the back of the book clarifies that "Often" means "The creature tends towards the given alignment, either by nature or nurture, but not strongly. A plurality (40-50%) of individuals have the given alignment, but exceptions are common."
The 4e Monster Manual just gives orc alignment as "Chaotic Evil" without further qualification, but the introduction does note explicitly "A monster's alignment is not rigid, and exceptions can exist to the general rule".
The 5e Monster Manual also just gives orc alignment as "chaotic evil", though its introduction also states, "The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster's alignment to suit the needs of your campaign. if you want a good-aligned green dragon or an evil storm giant, there's nothing stopping you."
As far as I can tell orcs have never been rigidly boxed into a single alignment. They have always been presented with an evil alignment as the most common default for them, but anybody who says that orcs were ever presented as ontologically evil in all cases no matter what is telling a falsehood.
Even in 1st edition AD&D, no one thought "Alignment: Lawful Evil" meant there could be literally zero exceptions in all the multiverse, and the earlier editions of D&D were much more freewheeling in suggesting DMs just make up whatever they wanted ("rulings over rules"). People came up with reasons to have non-evil Beholders and Mindflayers, after all. The point of the trope is not that modern players think back in Ye Olden Days, it was Gygax Law that all Orcs must be Evil, but that a lot of players (remember, D&D was mostly played by young men, often tweens and teens) did take the rules pretty literally. Remember that Alignment Languages were a thing? (Don't know if they still are in more recent versions.) And Alignment itself was based on Moorcockian and Vancian ideas that implied they were mystical properties of the universe and thus a fundamental part of a character, not just a rough label to describe behaviors. There were complicated rules for changing alignments.
So in that context, labeling races in the Monster Manual as "Evil" was taken as a sort of metaphysical categorization. 5E, which as I understand it has moved towards a more "blank slate" model where races do not have attribute modifiers or alignments or class limitations, is largely a reaction against that.
"Hack and slash" gaming also existed, and described quite a few campaigns and convention games. It was so common as to be another trope. Of course this wasn't how the creators of D&D meant it to be, nor how it was presented in the books, and players and GMs frequently bemoaned "hack and slash" gaming. But they bemoaned it because it was common enough to generate semi-parodies like this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I was done with D&D by 3rd edition, so I didn't even know how they mucked with the alignment system in later editions. But Orcs are the go-to example because even in earlier editions, they were a canonically "evil" race, like many others, but the ones even normies were likely to have heard of.
The only other race with as much resonance over this issue were the Drow.
The main bit of pre-2E orc lore I remember was an article in Dragon on their gods, most of which later showed up in books like Monster Mythology and thus became fairly canonical, if it wasn't already. Though skewing toward the violent and warlike compared to, say, elves, theirs were varied enough that even back then it didn't really support an "Always Chaotic Evil" interpretation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link