Thread by @rdonoghue

Practical upshot of stopping doing terrible things:

Evil is incredibly useful in D&D. Having the setting slap the label of evil on things simplifies things for players and GMs in concrete, practical gameplay ways.

For players, it removes the complexity around the fact that their jobs are largely of the violence and murder delivery sort.

For GMs, it allows the shortest possible path to a plot, because "Stop Evil" is a fantastic all-purpose motivation.

"Stop Evil" is rarely a position that players will argue with or surprise you about, and it drives action in a simple, predictable way.

Intrinsically evil orcs allows the GM to literally say "There are orcs here" and now it's a plot to resolve with violence!

The key thing here is that this is not *essential* to trad D&D, but it's definitely an enabler. It's empty calories that make the whole thing go down sweet and smooth, at least until someone actually reads the label and sees ingredients like "racism" and "Creepy absolutism"

Obviously, this is on my mind as WOTC moves away from intrinsically evil races. Most people are fine with this because if you've played D&D with ANY level of nuance for more than a few minutes, this question has come up. Arguing about what to do with kobold babies is a staple.

But I want to acknowledge that it's a hard change because the alternative is work that people are not used to doing. Change is hard, and it's ok to be a little bit thrown off. Especially if you hear that as a condemnation of how you've played D&D in the past.

It's not. Or rather, it's not a personal condemnation. It's about the *game* as published. The relationship between that an you is more complicated and nuance than we can generalize, so I promise the only way this change is about you is if you make it so.

But I also promise you, there's better D&D waiting on the other side.

Evil is an easy motivation for conflict, but it is far from the *only* reason for conflict. For evidence of this, please look to all of human history.

What will change is that conflict should suggest *context*.

Context is awesome. It makes the world feel more alive. It makes the choices and actions of the characters feel like they have meaning.

And the thing is, we know this.

Look at our published adventures. Something that was so lazy as to just be "go smite evil" would get eyerolls. There are PEOPLE involved, and they have NEEDS and WANTS and they can RESPOND as players do things.

All this change does is say there are more people

That's awesome

Anyway, I get it if it's a weird seeming change. It genuinely does upend decades of tradition. And, as with all things, you are the filter through which this is processed at your table. If you want to keep doing it the old way, it's absolutely an option.

Obviously, I feel like it's the right direction.

But the other reason I go through all of this is that if you think this has somehow removed the essential conflict from D&D, then I think you may find that your idea of the central conflict is not universal.

I mean, I'm gonna be honest - I believe that there are some people who are grossly offended by this, but I also think that most of the tweets to that effect are robo-garbage. I think better of our community.

But robo-garbage or not, it's worth saying they're wrong. :)

That said, lets get tactical.

If you need essential conflict, D&D still has a TON of options. Undead are the classic, of course, but Eberron did a wonderful job of illustrating that Aberrrations could be used in a consistent way to make Cthulhu you could fight.

And if you're comfortable with cosmic evil, there are still devils and demons.

Plus, the is D&D - reskinning is one of the easiest mechanical things to do.

If you need something to fill the *role* of Orcs in an adventure, you can reskin them.

One of the great D&D traditions is the "ecology of..." model, and it's a fun exercise to come up with monsters that might share most of the Orc Statblock, but are actually humanoid ashpiles, pressed into shape and bound with dragon blood to serve a dark necromancer.

It's a world of magic and wonder. You can find better excuses for evil than "just 'cuz"

Because your players are not bad or wrong for wanting their games to be clear cut. Complex morality and deep meaning are great, but sometimes you just want cheetos and swords.

And you can still have that. You can still have "Behold, Evil!" As a plot, with all the benefits in terms fo speed of play and motivations that support.

All this asks is that you think about it a *little*.

I will also suggest stealing a page from PBTA and consider being a fan of the monsters.

it is very easy to tell when someone has decided that an evil race is cool, because abruptly they start getting backstory and nuance. Look to the Gith and the Drow for really clear examples

I would never feel bad about bringing the Githyanki into a game, and even considering them largely evil, because it's not generic evil, they have a society and values and an ethos, and the problem comes from it being at odds with outs.

I admit, I don't think about Orcs that deeply. But if I did, I suspect they'd play a lot better too.

So, lean into the stuff you like. Use that enjoyment as an excuse to make it richer.

Now, that said, let's speak to the elephant in the room: Violence.

D&D is a game where many problems are resolved with violence. You can apply nuance to this, tune it and clean it up, but at it's heart, D&D is about fighting stuff.

That creates a tricky line to walk.

When we address another issue (like evil races), we kind of catch a glimpse of this underlying issue, and it can really muddle or magnify things. Racism is bad, so they're removing racism. Logically it follows: violence is bad, so is it next?

(Hint: it is not)

Dealing with play violence is a VASTLY more complicated topic than I'm ready to deal with at the moment, but I want to name it explicitly because it *is* a question, and it's something we all come to terms with in one way or another.

Those approaches may range from tonal changes to mechanical tweaks to just not worrying about it. Honestly, do whatever work for you.

I call it out to make it clear this is a DIFFERENT issue. The problem is not that we're killing evil orcs, but that we were ok saying "all orcs are intrinsically evil".

(Unless you're intentionally killing the orcs as a race proxy, in which case you can kind of fuck right off)

Anyway, class starts in a few minutes, so I need to jet. For folks who find this change hard, I am genuinely sympathetic. But if you're willing to lean into it and see what it means, then I've got your back.

Stay safe, all.