Extra Credits and the Orc Oopsie

[Music] [Applause] [Music] if you paid attention to the games discourse on the internet during 2019 and 2020. ah yeah that was those were fun times also her legs make a swastika extra credits no you might have noticed a recurring argument about some species from fantasy media specifically orcs oh yeah i remember that a bunch of totally not racist progressive types on the internet all of a sudden started deciding that you know what orcs are kind of like black people orcs shouldn't be like black people all violent and barbaric and evil now all of us normal people heard that and we just about lost our minds because this was one of the most low-key racist and ridiculous and horrible things that we'd ever heard and we said no no i i'd never thought about that i never even never even begun to consider that that might even be a thing that could be a thing wow y'all are kind of terrible can we just play our game can you go away now not to worry this episode isn't going to be just another member of the chorus talking about how if all orcs in a game are blindly evil that it's racist oh no of course not you're just going to extremely strongly imply it and you're going to build this entire video off of that foundational assessment and the person who you let guest write this episode has an entire youtube channel dedicated to the racial injustice present in fantasy works of fiction instead we want to discuss how that particular choice is simply bad game design dear god what what an incredibly stupid and simple minded assessment i you didn't have to make this video you know you didn't have to you didn't have to do this you did this to yourself extra credits you did this to yourself no one forced you you decided that this is the hill that you're gonna die on again after the nazi thing this is a sequel to the nazi thing isn't it you made that nazi video and the whole internet made fun of you for weeks about it and then you were like you know what okay all right we've learned our lesson we're masochists punch us in the face again [Music] thanks so much to nordvpn for sponsoring today's episode oh how embarrassing to take control of your internet security get a huge discount on a two-year plan and get one month free use code extra credits at nordvpn.com extra credits you know i i don't have any jokes about this i just i just want nordvpn to get all the money they possibly can out of the sponsorship for this video about orcs and racism i mean people are loving it this is great real quick up top please welcome james mendez hodz who guest wrote this episode thanks so much mendez ah so you're the one responsible for this dumpster fire now i'd never heard of james mendes hodes before and neither have you neither has anybody he's got a blog at jamesmendezhodz.com mendez sitting at the bar in a barong tagalong smiles at the camera hello stranger he has a youtube channel as well though he hasn't uploaded in like a year now i mean who would who would neglect their youtube channels like that why would why would anybody not upload in like a year i would highly recommend you never ever watch these videos they are horrifically bad and not even in an entertaining kind of way i sat down and watched some of his content before i started making this video to sort of get into the mind of the author it's misery would not recommend it to anybody it's not even entertainingly bad it's just depressing in the description however of his most recent video there's an extremely enlightening quote from him where he lines out what he says is the most important thing that he can say about orcs and i think it's very very telling and it's very very informative this then is the most important thing i can say about orcs if we play a game and how you or the game talk about orcs reminds me how racists talk about me memories of racism distract me and i cannot enjoy the game if you like call it a me problem not a u problem if you want that kind of game cool i just won't join you you'll be better off without me i'll be better off without you not calling you racist or evil just stating a preference but it's better we discuss this now rather than midway through the game yeah keep all that in mind as we progress through this extra credits video for whom he is the author it is incredibly enlightening and it tells you everything that you need to know about how he sees this topic mr mendes seems like the kind of person who has developed a sort of tunnel vision after years and years and years of focus on race and the discussion of race where no such discussion is necessary or even present he lacks the ability to compartmentalize between the fantastical and what he believes to be real i think years and years and years of a victimization complex and seeking out such victimhood even in fantasy settings has colored his entire perception of these unreal worlds even in fantastical fictional worlds that are completely divorced from the real one he irrationally links those conjurations of imagination to himself mr mendes is a bitter man like many progressive leftist and social justice warrior types mr mendes might at first seem to be a nice person with really wonderful intentions who just wants to teach you a better way but as often happens he's not self-aware enough to know when the mask slips or of course he does know and he simply doesn't care not understanding how counterproductive this is to his own discussion immediately after that seemingly benign statement on his part we get this never mind tolkien history or theory that's the most important point of course i have other thoughts explained in the articles about depicting orcs in a way which tells people who fight racism daily you care more about our experience than consistency or balance but if your interlocutor can't or won't respect a creative preference based on an inalienable experience of oppression block them they haven't reached a level of empathy we would expect from most children and that you're not getting paid enough to teach i found this worthy of mention because it tells us about the way this person sees the world the extra credits video title just so we're clear is evil races are bad game design however it's much much deeper for mr mendes it's not just bad game design it's not just a lack of an ability to be creative or to execute proper world building it's a character assessment on you mr mendez's self-proclaimed most important comment on the topics of orcs and fantasy comes across as very charitable um diplomatic polite it has a let's agree to disagree sort of vibe to it now in the next paragraph we see that it's not quite the case peace was never an option if you create a setting in a fantasy world a fictional universe where there is a an evil race regardless of how that's consistent regardless of the balance in the game as it plays out you're a bad person because you can't be empathetic to me someone who fights racism every day you aren't just bad at world building you are a bad person because you aren't placing my feeling of oppression in the real world be it real or imagined with the fiction that you've created for the purpose of balance and consistency if you do not tailor your fictional universe your fictional worlds your fictional race with its fictional culture to my personal sense abilities then that makes you worthy of character judgment and that makes you a bad person and of course topped off with the definitely not pretentious you're not getting paid enough to teach james mendes hodes everybody the living embodiment of why you need to gate keep the [ __ ] out of the things that you like much of the recent conversation on orcs points out that characterizing a whole species in your game as ugly warlike and benevolent might be harmful to real world groups regularly mischaracterized as ugly warlike and benevolent oh wow that's that's an image that i had to look at today uh just so we're clear youtube susan i do not in any way endorse or agree with extra credits or james mendez hodes my video is a strict and strong rebuttal to them please know to monetize all right i guess we'll start off with uh something a bit obligatory if you see orcs in a fantasy setting and your mind can't help but compare them to black people i don't know maybe keep that to yourself you know maybe maybe not all opinions are ones that you should share maybe just keep that a little secret that you never tell anyone ever not a good look the idea that people who play tabletop rpgs and video games are going to enact real world hatred against black people because they saw evil orcs in a video game is some of the most insulting and asinine crap that i've ever heard these people focus all the time on race they see race as a key component of your very identity and who you are they've internalized it so much that they project that onto other people nobody thinks this at no one no one thinks this you made this [ __ ] up so that you could [ __ ] about something you made this up so that you could reach your spindly nasty gooey fingers into something that you could control that you could exercise some authority on it's just like everything else these [ __ ] people touch they want to take it away from you and turn it into something that they can control i mean if you look through james's twitter i wouldn't recommend it he he he retweets a guy who's like you know what maybe we shouldn't call the class and dungeons and dragons barbarians it's very problematic like actually [ __ ] off go away however this video isn't that though if you want more on that discussion mendez breaks it down wonderfully over on his website and we'll have a link to that in the description no don't don't do that i i did i did that i went and listened don't do it don't i'm saving you precious minutes of your life don't do it but here we're going to talk about something related why characterizing a group like this in your game can be lazy at best and at worst actively harmful to the world you're creating wow james how incredibly charitable of you at best it's lazy if you're the game master for a dungeons and dragons or pathfinder game or if you're developing a video game there's a lot of work that you have on your plate the idea that at best you're lazy if you just have an evil faction for the players to fight against is like that's insa how insulting if i want to have an army of goblins or a horde of orcs or a swarm of bugs or a that's a group of zombies called a a pod a gaggle of zombies then that's not lazy i can put my effort into other things the world building in different aspects the the factions that are involved the weapons and the items and the equipment that are scattered around the world the the physical work that goes into creating maps and tokens and getting numbers all set together i don't have time to do everything sometimes a conflict can be very simple a horde of zombies is coming they are evil they want to eat your brains you and your adventurers have to stop them before they eat the town not everything has to be complex not everything has to be super specific and nuanced there's nothing inherently wrong about a lack of complexity and i kind of i can't help but feel like he sort of answers his own question here listen to that again why characterizing a group like this in your game can be lazy at best and at worst actively harmful to the world you're creating um uh duh what do you mean at worst they're actively destructive to the world it's like yeah duh that yeah they're the bad guys they're the evil enemies that's why we're trying to stop them it's like how do you not know this that's the point the orcs want to pillage and burn the zombies want to eat brains and hang around the bugs want to make hives everywhere the demonic army from the portal of the netherworld wants to destroy all life yeah that's why we want to stop that that's why they're the antagonists that's why they're the villains that's why we have to kill them that's why we're creating a scenario in which people can channel their aggression and their violence to a virtuous end though you know something in this video kind of caught my eye look at that box full of super cool figurines this dude has or or are those plushies you know there's a big burly orc there there's a the spoopy skellington there's a mighty dragon and a happy horny devil but you know i just can't help thinking that this box of cool plushies is missing something like there's just oh you know i i think i know just the thing it needs and it just might be the thing that you need as well oh my god what's this it's rags the doggo you have asked for it and it's finally here your very own soft handsome and forever snarky impressive sheep that is now available for good homes like yours rags the shiba inu is here to stand guard wherever you need him always ready to be at your side as you journey through and across the internet so take courage against bad movies bad arguments and bad memes as rags takes watch like the good boy he is just don't forget the head pats and the tummy rubs but um why just have one silent guardian media critic when you could have two the first generation of every frame of paws plushies isn't complete without rags's best buddy and co-host mahler and not only will it look fantastic on your desk you'll get a 10 discount for purchasing both of them so oh my goodness no bad argument could ever escape such a pair of critical eyes however this is a limited time offer for a limited time run once this plushy set sail expires it is gone for good so get yours before they make like good movies and disappear forever so grab a pair of plushies and help support our channels and our podcast every frame a pause when designing a game's world and populating it with fictional species a designer might be tempted to differentiate them from one another by certain inalienable qualities wait what do you mean they might do that they have to do that that's how that's how species work that's how we differentiate all things from things that aren't those things like their moral alignment violent versus peaceful love versus chaos good versus evil and the like um yeah sure if you wanted to do that then you could do that absolutely that's a trait that you could use to differentiate things instead of morality being the conceptual thing that it is in the real world you could make it a more concrete sort of essence that's built into the the very being of creatures or the fabric of the universe a kind of aura or magic and does anybody find it a little unusual that the uh symbolic imagery let's say of him depicting evil is a stereotypically depicted it's a common trope in speculative fiction but especially in the context of a game oh no not games i always knew they were up to something painting an entire species with the same moral brush actually weakens the entire thing you are going to have to put in some hard work to convince me that's the case and even your language is really skewed it's not painting them with a moral brush they are the paint there was no brushing required you didn't take a thing and then make them evil evil would be intrinsic to their very nature it's like saying oh you're just painting all squares with a four equal sides brush this idea that a certain subgroup like race nationality or sex has inalienable traits is called biological essentialism or simply bioessentialism i'm not sure why you're bringing up nationality here it's kind of muddying the waters from what the point is we're talking about orcs as a species we want to get into nationality and culture that's totally different and i feel like you're going to use that to sort of obfuscate the point that everyone has a contention with i think a lot of people would have an issue world building wise with the idea that a whole nationality is just inherently evil that seems to make a whole lot less sense than biologically it is inherent to them as a thing that they are evil in this world if somebody presented me with a fictional world and said yeah so there are orcs in my world and they're they're evil they're a force of chaos they were created by a god of darkness or violence and they're really evil that's just what they are it's the nature of the orc to be evil i'd be like okay but i would have a much harder time believing that everybody inside of a nation was just inherently evil i'd ask all kinds of questions like can they not leave their nation are they brainwashed isn't that a cultural thing and it's not intrinsic i don't know and it's a valid way to talk about qualities like how many legs an animal has or whether it can fly well yeah that's how we're using it james do you agree but all too often this concept gets misused in untrue statements like pit bulls are a violent breed men are more logical than women or asians are better at math i feel like you're trying to take us on a weird detour to try and poison the well instead of focusing on the actual issue all right let's take the pitbull one as an example because it is youtube in 2021 i ain't touching those other two according to a 13-year long survey in the united states of fatal dog bites by dogbites.org despite the pitbull making up only 6.5 percent of the united states dog population it's responsible for 66 of fatal dog bites that doesn't mean that the breed is inherently violent there are other factors that contribute to these statistics that don't have anything to do with inherent genetic qualities to the dog now you clearly know that which is why you used it as an example which makes me kind of wonder why you brought it up when it's not related at all to an orc in a fantasy setting who has an inherent quality of itself is evil or chaotic oh and uh don't think that i'm not noticing how you're trying to lead us into thinking a certain way with the image that you use statistically speaking pitbulls are by far the most violent dog breed that there is but you're showing us a cute puppy pitbull playing with a tennis ball to try and lead us to think that that can't be true i mean look how cute it is i mean i'm not gonna deny that puppies are super cute but you know what else is cute lion cubs hippopotamus calves they're calves right calves calves hippopotamus calves you're using imagery to try and mislead people stop that i can see through your amateur [ __ ] intentionally or not you're making bad comparisons here just based on sheer statistics which are descriptive observations of reality sure a pit bull might be violent more than any other dog might be violent the york however if we're talking about moral essentialism it has to be evil it must be evil it can't be any other way if it wasn't evil it wouldn't be an orc it would be something else if that is an inherent prescriptive trait of this fictional creature as it has been created it must be evil if it is an immutable characteristic of the orc then removing its violence would turn it into something else completely but if you tame a pit bull or raise a pit bull to be a sweetheart and it's never violent it's still a pit bull it hasn't intrinsically changed because that isn't a trait that defines what a pit bull is it's just descriptive of general behavior statistically you're already kind of steering us off course let's get back on track here now chances are if a game is said in the real world that the designers are avoiding these tropes because they aren't real as multiple fields of societal and hard science can readily prove to you well it depends on what the trope is and how it's applied we'll use the pitbull one we'll keep rolling with that puppy is it a trope that pit bulls are more violent than any other dog well i guess you could say so but that's also accurate to reality they are by far the most violent dog breed i mean again this depends on how you're using the word trope in context of a real world scenario but let's say that in your world pit bulls were extremely docile they never bit people they were extremely skittish and nervous and scared all the time yeah that would go against the trope you wouldn't quote unquote fall prey to the trope of violent pit bulls however if you're trying to build a realistic world going against that trope that would be unrealistic that's fine by the way there's nothing wrong about creating a quasi-fictional world where pitbulls are super docile but if you purposefully chose to do that and then also told me you're trying to have a realistic world i would question your decision making and if your only answer was i want to avoid the trope i'd have some further questions to ask you i guess that's what makes the pit bull example so really odd i went ahead and i looked up an objective study to find out that the pit bull was the most violent breed not that it's inherently violent big distinction but it is the most violent i'm using science to support what could loosely be called a trope of reality that's another potential topic you could have talked about is it a trope that the sky is blue and the grass is green what makes a trope good or bad or are tropes totally neutral and it's about their execution but speculative fiction offers us an opportunity to reify or make real various things which don't exist or to exaggerate things which do yeah in fiction you can make [ __ ] up i agree also you'd better not be sculpting muhammad there now bioessentialism is a tempting idea in fantasy for some of the same reasons as it is in the real world no god because to our human minds broad generalizations are comforting they reduce the world to simple cut and dry categories god i feel like this is so dismissive and oversimplified yes a lot of overly broad categorizations are bad a lot of them are bad it's not good to broadly categorize the stereotypes of genders or races but to just say that it's for comfort is all right so if i'm out on the street for milwaukee's and i and i see a lion on the road in front of me i'm gonna absolutely broadly categorize that lion as wanting to eat me yeah sure i can recognize that hashtag not all lions want to eat me but you know what i i'm not i'm not gonna take my chances i feel like some broad stereotypes can be really really practical and useful if uh if we're playing a tabletop role-playing game and we've established that orcs are morally essentially evil as part of their intrinsic nature if i see one i'm gonna run away or i'm gonna attack it i'm not gonna try and make friends with it sure that's a broad categorization but it seems in that context it's just the right move and i think it's kind of interesting in a video that's all about how biological essentialism is super bad he goes into an example about how human minds work better be careful there james you don't want to get too close to biological essentialism now do you or is it okay when we do it with humans hmm you're a confusing man i would say it's okay as long as you leave us dogs out of it but i suppose it's a little late for that all orcs bad all elves good root for these folks not for these folks well in a fictional scenario in which an orc is inherently bad and elves are not necessarily bad i'm i'm going with elves and i'm just as upset as everyone else is having to side with the filthy knife ears but you know what sometimes you gotta make the uncomfortable choices look at his [ __ ] face he's standing there i'll smug like he knows he's better than you but just like in the real world bioessentialism can present problems in fiction as well oh yeah i wouldn't want to hurt that fictional orcs feelings that would be a hate crime stop right there criminal scop but you know what maybe i'm jumping the proverbial gun tell me how does this cause issues in fictional worlds you said it's bad writing and it's bad game design and i'm all ears as long as they're not knife ears specifically a moral one the idea that a sapient species can inherently tend towards good or evil acts or lawful or chaotic ones that's fine though that's okay it's fiction it's not real we can distinguish between fantasy and reality at least most of us can you should come over here you know actually don't stay over there freak and that moral essentialism actually undercuts the greatest strength games can bring to storytelling yeah well that's a pretty big can there can this sense of moral essentialism undercut video game narratives it can it also might not at all your your extra credits you should know this [ __ ] better than everybody you'd think all the years y'all been droning on about it you think the only moral components in any narrative come specifically from the morality derived from the antagonistic force not the interpersonal relationships of the protagonists or the quote-unquote good guys in a story not from the people they meet and the struggles they have and any of that why would you think that are you so incredibly lacking in creativity you think that morally essentially evil antagonistic forces just like disqualify the entire work from having incredible complex moral dilemmas and discussions and choices that have to be made the darkspawn in dragon age they're evil it's what they are they're they're forces of evil who want to destroy the world you telling me that dragon age lacks moral choices are there no moral choices in mass effect because the reapers are evil man remember when bioware wasn't [ __ ] in a big part of this discussion has to do with tabletop role-playing games dungeons dragons pathfinder etc if if you're if you're a game master and you have an evil enemy that's just inherently evil and you still can't find a way to introduce moral choices to your party i mean i don't know i guess you're just [ __ ] at storytelling i guess i don't know what else to say not that you even need moral choices if you just want to get people together and kill orcs and dungeons but [ __ ] go for it it's your game have fun that's the number one rule right make sure everyone has fun and if fighting morally essentially evil orcs is your idea of fun go for it you have done nothing wrong the players own power to make meaningful interesting choices and judgments for their characters including moral ones so if a game's creative choices apply a moral valuation to every member of an entire species before the players even meet them well now that's just taking that power away from the players wow this is bizarre um so a limitation is essential to having a challenge you have to have limitations for there to be challenges to overcome and not all challenges have to be moral ones in fact the vast majority of the challenges that you encounter in your life and probably in any fantasy setting or a tabletop rpg is completely amoral it has nothing to do with morality in a video game or in a tabletop rpg the challenge is how do i kill all of these enemies how do i use my abilities as efficiently as possible how do i avoid taking damage how do i use the terrain to my advantage how can i be tactical and strategic or maybe it's just simple logistics we're going on an adventure how long will we be gone what's the weather of where we're going well maybe our party needs to get wool cloaks or extra food or maybe we need a cart and maybe we need snow shoes oh but we only have so much money so yeah what do we do these are all challenges that you overcome just because a game doesn't have any moral choices that directly relate to an antagonistic force that you're fighting doesn't mean that they don't exist within the game and they don't have to and it's certainly not bad game design in the visuals here they're kind of misleading the way that they're being used in the way that information is being presented it's like it's subliminally trying to trick you let's take this first image here we have the developer here or the dungeon master they're interchangeable for the purposes of this illustration i assume she's a developer because of the big d on her shirt unless she's just a massive [ __ ] but the developer is telling the player that all of these creatures are evil but the creatures seem pretty ambivalent and they're smiling and they're even waving and they're being generally or at least apparently friendly the purpose of this video or at least in a huge part has to do with the moral essentialism and how it relates to good or bad writing when it comes to fictional races like these gooey boys if the developer is telling the player that all of the gooey boys are evil intrinsically and if the gooey boys are not intrinsically evil then that's a failure on the developer's part in either a couple ways either they're just flat out lying to the player which i would wonder why they would do that or it's their intention to have these gooey boys be intrinsically evil but they just aren't talented enough to execute that well in their setting the picture seems to portray them as friendly enough they're smiling and waving they don't seem evil maybe it's just a ploy because they're that [ __ ] evil maybe they're slow they need to pretend to be friendly so you get closer and they can eat your knees but i think what's really going on here is that we have extra credits draw this picture and imply to us that it's not actually good that the developer told us something that isn't true which isn't the fault of moral essentialism in writing it's the fault of the developer not being talented and that's a totally different discussion the next image has the player declaring i'll decide that if they're evil or not and the developer is obviously annoyed and the gooey boys are very happy to know that they're not being called evil now generally in video games if the developer wants to tell a player something it's either done in an in universe or an out of universe context like in a medicines the star wars title crawl is a good example of an out of universe the the director the creator is speaking directly to the audience to establish without any sense of ambiguity that these are the facts of this fictional world it establishes things as they are so that we can proceed it's not subtle but it's very easy to distinguish from the in-universe events in this cartoon i know it seems minor but it is something that they created for the purpose of attempting to bolster their points so i'm kind of going to harp on it a little bit the personification here of this delivery system of information being that all of the gooey boys are intrinsically evil is the developer herself which implies to me that this is the developer directly through a title crawl similar way speaking to the players saying that they are evil this isn't an in-universe uh account that was given to the player by some other character who simply believes this to be true and again that's another thing entirely we see that all the time in media where a character believes something to be true reports that thing as factual and it turns out maybe they were misinformed or flat out wrong this cartoon doesn't seem to be portraying that this cartoon implies that the developer either has the intention or is directly telling the player that these gooey boys are evil and if they're wrong how can you be wrong you're you're the developer you made the game every attribute about these creatures is completely up to your discretion you decide what they are you are in essence the god of this internal fictitious cosmos if there is a discrepancy between something that you show to the players and something that you have declared to be true in the world that's bad writing and you need to work on that this cartoon would be much more accurate and helpful to your point if instead of having the developer herself in a meta representation giving information to the in-universe characters or the players you instead had a similar in-universe person simply reporting what they believed to be true or trying to trick the player then the player would be able to make the choice as to whether or not to believe that person or investigate and there you have your moral choice bam nice and easy making this delivery of information out of universe really really muddles the water it breaks the trust between the player and the developer which is not something that you want this doesn't mean the developer has to give the player all the information that there is it means that you just don't want to lie to the players because then when you tell the player something that's supposed to be taken true well maybe the player will be hesitant to believe you because you're a liar and in turn if a group of orcs for instance doesn't even have a choice about their actions are they actually evil well um that depends on what you mean when you say evil i'm gonna assume when you say evil you just mean really bad if the orcs aren't choosing to be evil it's just something that they are it's intrinsic to their nature to be evil then sure i won't morally condemn them for it because they're not making any kind of decision they couldn't be any other way but i'm still going to go out and kill them perhaps in your story you can even have the players feel some kind of sympathy and pity for these creatures that they have to exterminate because these creatures are beyond saving it's impossible to turn these intrinsically evil creatures good because look if a person say destroys a house we call that evil because they chose to do so what destroying a house what a what a bizarre example that you have chosen out of all of the examples in the universe and throughout history that you could have fabricated to give an example of someone being evil because of their choices you chose you chose something that has no moral component to it you know i'm gonna i'm gonna bet that most houses are destroyed by people who choose to destroy houses because it's just demolition work and there's nothing immoral about it you could have pulled up like murder rape torture slavery all kinds of stuff but you chose destroying a house as your example but if a tornado destroys a house well i mean is wind evil no but this is like the orc thing you brought up earlier i'm not gonna say that the tornado is evil it's not even an agent it doesn't even make decisions at all and just like the orc thing i'm still gonna do what i can to stop tornadoes if that if that's a thing if there was a a weather machine that i could use to stop tornadoes from happening then yeah i would i would kill quote-unquote tornadoes and i'm still gonna run away from tornadoes or take shelter from tornadoes and i'm from arkansas i know all about that tornado life no therefore if a game's world building chooses to program every member of a species to destroy aren't they more like the tornado uh in one way sure however from a gameplay perspective the challenges that they would present to the player would be radically different from one another and so would the solutions that the players would have to come up with as well that doesn't mean that it's bad game design and it doesn't mean that it's bad writing you still have to tell us why that's the case disaster movies aren't inherently badly written because the main antagonist is a force of nature same goes with games about zombies now if the player's characters are able to make moral choices but an entire class of npcs is inherently evil regardless of their choice then the game is either telling the player that moral choices don't matter or it's simply driving a wedge between the player's morality and the morality that applies to the rest of the world blocking the player from further becoming a part of it oh my god i hope you never make a video game so in case there's any confusion this is what james is saying in a nutshell if a game that has some moral mechanics doesn't allow a moral mechanic in this scenario then the first message it sends to players is that moral choices don't matter the second message that sends to players is that the player is blocked from being a part of the world let's tackle these one at a time just because a game allows moral choices to be made and either has some kind of a moral mechanic or allows players to make choices based on morality that doesn't mean that every single decision in every single encounter and every single enemy that is faced has to be done with a moral framework involved in it sometimes and i would say the vast majority of times players just want to have fun and the dm wants to have fun with the players as well not every transaction has to be some discussion about market freedom and personal blah blah blah and not every single battle encounter has to be some kind of a back and forth about the nature of violence in the da da da there is a reason that a huge amount of games and tabletop role-playing games feature enemies where there is no worry about the moral implications of the combat because the combat is well it's the fun part the goal is to have fun in combat is a way that people do this it's fun to go into combat with your friends in these games and enjoy yourselves it would be completely unreasonable for players to expect that every single encounter decision transaction and what have you would have a deep moral or philosophical component to it that would be exhausting now if players really do want to have a campaign or a game or a story where that was a part of it and that was kind of the design then go for it i can see how that might be appealing in limited doses but for most people it's not a concern moral decisions are made within limited frameworks that the dm constructs for certain scenarios so that the players can talk about it and role play their characters and have some nifty discussions it is simply not going to be fair for the dm who's putting a lot of work and a lot of effort constructing these worlds and scenarios for the players to have to do this for every encounter all the time most players will not even consider the idea that there is a moral component to fighting zombies or monsters or chaos things they're just evil they're trying to destroy the world they're trying to attack people they're trying to do whatever nefarious thing that they do is and they need to be destroyed subdued and that's that and it doesn't have to be more complicated than that the dm has plenty of freedom at his disposal in order to construct scenarios where the enemies that are encountered can be you know pacified peacefully or if they could be you know convinced to not fight or their allegiances can change those are fun but they don't have to constitute 100 of encounters the idea that if there isn't always a moral choice that moral choices do not matter at all is a ridiculous one moving on to the second message which is that the player is blocked from being a part of the world if this kind of scenario doesn't allow a moral mechanic if you and your party are faced with a bunch of green slimy boys and the dm has told you specifically in a seemingly out of you know universe way a meta way that they are intrinsically evil and they are intrinsically bad what this translates to me as is that these creatures have been placed here just so we can have fun combating the creatures that's the only way that i could see myself if i was a dm speaking to players directly in an out of universe way what the purpose would be so that they could just know rest assured these enemies are just for them to have combat with and have a good time with go for it enjoy yourselves the idea that a player is blocked from being a part of the world because they're unable to have a moral decision in regards to fighting intrinsically evil creatures is ridiculous now the obvious response to this supposed message would be that moral decisions and moral actions are not the only way that players will impact this world in fact just by killing these creatures you have impacted the world you've made the world a safer place you've removed evil from it you've removed an element of destruction from it narratively this can have all kinds of consequences when lightning strikes a tree in the forest and creates a big forest fire that absolutely has a a change on the world particularly that forest and the things living in it but there's no moral component that's involved that's just forces of nature doing what they do if the only way that players can impact the world is through their moral decisions that they're making that's either a failure on the players to use even the most basic amount of imagination in fact i don't even know if that's possible it's certainly a failure on the dm if the world is set up and i don't even know how you could construct this scenario actually i was trying to think of hypotheticals but yeah i got nothing i don't think it's possible for the players to only affect the world in moral decision making i mean maybe if you want to go to incredibly contrived extremes or the most anal and technical definitions of morality that no one ever uses ever but that's already an extreme that isn't worth entertaining what's so strange is that james mendez hodes has apparently devoted a great deal of his life to thinking about these things and yet it feels like he hasn't thought about them at all i it comes across as someone who doesn't have the most basic comprehension of game design or how players function in a game for instance in warhammer 40k this inconsistency is central to the imperium of man's villainous creed individuals human choices make them good or evil whereas aliens are created evil well talk about the most inappropriate possible setting to discuss morality geez so all of the factions in warhammer 40k are dicks and they're trying to destroy each other the tagline for warhammer 40k is in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war it's not about peace it's about destroying your enemies whatever race they may be and if they're not your race then they're the enemy it's not a game about progressive liberal values and deep philosophical and moral discussions on why we do what we do and is it right and oh if only there was another way no it's about horrible horrific terrible awful violence everywhere war war death killing carnage that's what gives warhammer 40k its incredible appeal its aesthetics and its its lore and its focus on violence and destruction it is a fun fantasy probably because it's devoid of these moral questions if the point you're trying to raise here is that maybe the imperium of man isn't like the good guys um yeah duh there are no good guys in this setting it's just your side and the other side now i'm not saying that warhammer 40k is a setting where these kinds of ideas can't be explored however it is very clear that these kinds of things are the definite exception to the rule and that's what makes warhammer warhammer and of course games workshop made that choice to facilitate a war game where lethal violence is the only option yeah that's what the vast majority of people who are fans of warhammer 40k enjoy about it and love about it but then folks also saw that in the 40k novels and rpgs which required more interesting narrative complexities imperial heroes have to grapple with and recognize the logic of that creed based on their own experience now i'm not familiar with this book in this short story so i couldn't really speak as to their quality or how well they execute their ideas this is just a claim that you're asserting without any real specifics you're just sort of presenting the idea and just adding these moral components to warhammer stories or warhammer games it doesn't make them better intrinsically it doesn't necessarily make the game better now it can make them more complex but more complexity doesn't again doesn't necessarily mean better you can add things to a story and you can make the story worse so because i don't know the intricacies of these stories in particular i'll just have to leave that one there okay but now you might be asking what if you're playing the kind of game where you're engaging in violence because it's exciting and fun not because of its moral dimensions oh no can you imagine such a hellscape where the meaningful choice is about tactics rather than ethics and you know when you stop for just a second and think about all of the games that like a moral component and are just about tactics and strategy it kind of boggles the mind games that actually include moral components to them are the teeny teeny tiny minority maybe the goal is to take moral calculus out of the problem sure yeah maybe some people want to have fun one solution might be saying all orcs are evil go ahead and shoot them but in that situation as soon as someone inadvertently feels some empathy as people often do for anything seeming even vaguely alive the easy answer becomes less easy generally it's good when players feel empathy towards fictional characters in a world that you've created it means that some part of it is realistic and believable that there's a connection to be made there it creates investment but that doesn't mean that all empathy is valuable if players are too empathetic and they get too connected to everything that's an issue with a player something that needs to be resolved maybe talk through because that sounds like it could be a problem for the game if you as a dm tell your players that orcs in this universe are intrinsically evil they are beyond saving and that it is part of their very nature to be bad and they couldn't be any other way if at that point players still insist on trying to be their friends or be kindly towards them then it might be a good idea to simply punish the player in game for doing that when you've been very very explicit with him where that will lead either that or maybe this particular player has a problem distinguishing fantasy from reality of course it's probably going to be advisable that if you do have an inherently evil race somewhat of a reason for it might make it more believable it makes it seem like less of a gamey element and more of an actual element of the universe you're creating and if the goal of your game is to stop players from engaging in moral debates and just fight some bad guys you kind of gotta say something more reliable than oh it's fine they were all born this way oh hey look at you just bringing that up um you don't have to again you don't kind of have to in fact if you have that reason you might want to just keep it in your back pocket for if the players even ask because maybe the players just go along with it maybe that could be part of a potential subversion later the point is you do not need this it might not even be information that's available to the denizens of the world that your fiction is taking place in however it could help fortunately the real world's made progress on this problem because sometimes in this day and age people actually bear visual signifiers which say i'm evil not because of where i was born but because of the choices i've made oh oh i don't like where this video is going at all such as nazi uniforms and clan hoods i'm not really surprised at all that james mendes hodes was able to bring up nazis in the kkk in a video that talks about orcs and tabletop rpgs honestly it's probably all he thinks about i think it was abraham lincoln who said do i not destroy my enemies when i make them my friends when i take people and change them into something that i like perhaps a redemptive form of combat if you will there is a time to wage war there is a time to take up arms there is a time to take to the streets there are times and places for these sorts of things but especially in the modern context that this video exists with with the minuscule number of actual nazis and actual klansmen that exist who have no institutional power and virtually zero influence in the world the greatest manifestation of these two characters is in the conjuration of the boogeyman that they represent or far in the past in history as few of them as there are they do exist in society right they're out there and you might never meet one in your life but they do exist they are a part of society and there always will be these strange hateful outliers and while there is a time to fight them in a physical sense especially nowadays there is more of a i i pity them i feel bad for them they have been convinced unfortunately of a terrible awful position one of hatred one that lacks rationality and if they were convinced into that position i think many of them can be convinced out of them and they could join the rest of us i think that dismissing their humanity is not only a bit ironic but it doesn't help the problem i think it pushes them further into a sense of victimhood a sense of righteousness in their positions it drives them away into the dark corners of the world where they coagulate in where they become even more extreme i i don't know i guess i'm being a little serious here um in a world where i get called to nazi because i don't like a star wars movie or because i don't think trump was evil or because i have some completely moderate or reasonable position and you get called a nazi those these words they just don't have meaning anymore so for the purely pragmatic sense of because so many people are labeled as these things and called these things maybe we should temper our approach to the people who are called these things there is also an aspect of i think that a society one that views itself as progressive and modern and liberal right there does need to be a pathway to redemption and there does need to be a way for us to say that you can be saved you are a person and you are one of us as uncomfortable as it might make us feel to say that you are of value and i would rather save you than have to destroy you in a more traditional sense i think that is to the benefit of everyone um those are just my thoughts i figure i'd put them out there i don't know um as the years have gone by there's just so much hate in society and there's so much unwillingness to understand other people and so much readiness to dismiss offhand that i wonder how much of these problems are of in a way our own creation the many of you the many many of you who are familiar with me know that i am not at all opposed to the the extreme prejudice destruction of an enemy if it comes down to that if that is the way to go um but maybe it's not always the way and maybe fostering this attitude that oh you're uh whatever so therefore you have to be destroyed and ostracized from society and turned into a pariah and there isn't a way for you to redeem yourself there isn't a way to save you um essentially i guess related to this video that you are morally essentially evil at the core i don't think that's a good attitude we need to be creating amongst people sorry for the long tangent just figured that was important to get out there however going back to the video i'm pretty sure that a couple minutes ago in your time and not mine you said something along the lines of this because to our human minds broad generalizations are comforting they reduce the world to simple cut and dry categories huh then in fiction we have things like the hydra logo a clear visual signifier but one that denotes choice not birth except that the primary antagonist of hydra in captain america the winter soldier the titular winter soldier was brainwashed into following hydra he didn't have a choice one of the main plotlines of that movie was cap believing in the inner goodness of bucky and trying to save him from his brainwashing not gonna lie james you are really really bad at picking examples and if the statement that a game is making with its backstory and symbols is that an enemy had a choice and they chose wrong then that gets way less complicated for a game that's interested in uncomplicated violence you know james i don't know how you've done it but somehow you've managed to get this completely backwards now i shouldn't expect anybody to say this because it's so at least as a few moments ago i thought this was self-evidently just the the reverse of how it is of how real life is about how game design is and you're here at least acting as some kind of authority on game design and all right i'm gonna i'll lay it out really simple just so that we're clear because apparently this needs to be clarified according to james mendez hodes the writer and extra credits they seem to support the things he says and recommend it if a creature chooses to do evil things they even say if the creature chooses wrong then that's uncomplicated violence that's simple violence but if a creature is evil by its nature well now that's complicated and this is totally the reverse of how it is now in the real world and how writing and morality actually function is that if a creature chooses evil things or chooses the wrong thing well violence against them that's potentially very complicated and if a creature is evil by its very nature well that simplifies acts of violence against them considerably because they're evil intrinsically i i guess i'll explain this for the four people on the planet who don't get it and it's sad because extra credits and mr hoods i guess they're among them if a creature has chosen to do something evil which oddly james mendes hodes simply calls choosing wrong as if it's just always that cut and dry and maybe he thinks it is then that means for whatever reason that creature has become convinced to perform an evil action or to support an evil organization at one point in their life they were convinced to choose as they did and there's a very strong case to be made that most if not all positions that somebody was convinced into or reasoned into they can be convinced or reasoned out of they are not intrinsically evil there is a chance perhaps even a good one that they can be reasoned with and convinced that they are wrong especially when you consider how immensely complex scenarios can become when you throw in concepts such as coercion and duress perhaps your adversaries wouldn't attack you if there was another way maybe they're desperate for resources maybe they've been tricked and lied to that you are the enemy or perhaps most terrifying of all to some that maybe your antagonists are correct and maybe you are the one who's doing evil there are times when it's cut and dry self-defense for instance if you're being robbed at gunpoint if your city is being besieged if your country is being invaded you have the right to self-defense that's not likely going to be a complex issue for most people sure maybe the person threatening to kill you for the money in your wallet has their reasons well in fact they must have reasons for doing this but that doesn't mean they get to do as they do without repercussion that reason might be greed it might be the desire for violence in its associated thrills and glory but that's no excuse similarly the members of an invading army besieging your castle well all of them they have their reasons as well but you have a right to defend yourself and this is moral simplicity this is uncomplicated violence at least for the most part but how you deal with surrendering enemies and captured combatants pacified cultists imprisoned thieves or murderers now this is where complexity can be at its extremes contrast this with those green gooey blob boys from earlier they are evil by nature they cannot not be evil they must be evil it is not possible for them to be good thinking that they can be anything other than evil is a mistake there is no chance at coming to terms with him they cannot be reasoned out of their evilness they must be dealt with accordingly and this is an extremely simple moral issue now you can feel sorry for them you can pity them your heart can wish that there was a way to cure them of their evil nature but all of these things are well it's different than how you actually deal with them they are in a way not even agents they're simple machines of flesh that cannot deviate from that evil nature and this all depends of course on the world building specifics of the game that you're playing if you're playing an rpg and your game master tells you from one player to another that the gooey slimes are horrible monsters who know only evil and you choose to attempt to parlay and to reason with them then you are a fool and you will be laughed at when you get what's coming to you creatures who have chosen evil or seem to have chosen evil there is a chance at redemption potentially sometimes that chance is minuscule sometimes that chance is extremely likely sometimes good men can be tricked or pressed into performing evil deeds imagine you're walking down the road and nearby town guards see you and your adventuring party and they mistake you for a wanted criminal and they try to arrest you based on what's potentially a very honest mistake made with real justice in mind attacking them and killing them all in retaliation to avoid potential jail time well that's far far far more morally complicated than say defending yourself from an attack from an otherworldly demon seeking to feast upon your mortal flesh let's take the example that extra credits is using for their illustration uh it looks to be an innocent person is about to be sacrificed at an altar to some cultists as an offering to some dark god or whatever if you're that guy's friend or really if you're just anybody then yeah you're morally in the clear to kill the people to save his life but even this one scenario the morality changes as the situation changes what if you gunned down the first guy with the knife and it drops to the floor and the other scatter what if they run away in fear of their lives is it as morally uncomplicated to chase them down with your tommy gun and riddle them with bullets what if one of them surrenders in fear what if they beg for mercy what if they say that they had to because if they didn't sacrifice this person the dark god whatever would devour the world well what now what started as a very morally simple and easy to justify act well it has only gotten more complicated as time goes on now they might say that this sort of thing is it's without complication it's more you're morally in the clear but i don't know when when you make an illustration of a man with a gun smiling as he chases down attempting to kill someone else who's fleeing for their lives and is unarmed maybe that's not quite as morally uncomplicated as extra credits and james mendes hodes wants it to be and if the defense here is that it's only an illustration then well maybe you should have [ __ ] drawn something else so whether a game does or doesn't want its players to overthink their character's moral choices evil as a choice is just more effective than evil as a bioessential trait like i shouldn't be surprised by it with that long-winded explanation that i just gave but it continues to baffle me with how totally backwards this is especially with the examples we get this cultist is a person i mean yeah you can give him the skull mask in a book called how to evil but what led them to this place why are they doing what they're doing what are the reasons do they think they're doing the right thing are they performing some sort of necessary evil do they not like it but they feel that they have to is what they're doing actually evil or does it just have the appearance of evil that's a discussion that you could have and maybe it could be easy to solve maybe this could be totally black and white in a scenario but there's immense room for this to be a super complex issue and the more complex that issue is and the more actions that this cultist can potentially take like running away in fear surrendering begging for mercy these change the moral framework of the violence and yet james says that with the example of alien i mean it's it's it's a beast it's a monster it it kills and it devours it lays eggs in people's stomach it can't be reasoned with it's an evil creature that you have to destroy or it will destroy you how is that more complex i would unironically use this image here of the cult guy with the book and the alien as an example of how the cultist guy could be potentially super morally complex and the alien is just an excellent example for blow him away without any regards to morality but then of course if everyone wearing the evil team uniform happens to be an orc or if every orc happens to have chosen team evil the game wouldn't exactly be communicating that difference very well so the issue is that you're using the word happens sarcastically here and if not then you need to work on your communication skills a great deal which would be important considering that you write things for big youtube channels anyway you're using happens sarcastically here but if you're playing a game where all of the orcs continuously do evil things and they're indistinguishable from everybody in the race choosing to do evil things well maybe the game is trying to be purposefully ambiguous with it maybe this information is being conveyed to the player from in universe characters who believe this to be true maybe it's something for the players to figure out on their own perhaps with the intention of subverting expectations or giving the players something they didn't expect coming their way or maybe the gm intends for orcs to be intrinsically evil in this universe and they forgot to tell the player who knows there's a lot of options here there's a lot of room for creative decision making that goes into these worlds and you being instantly dismissive of that idea well it doesn't seem very healthy to a discussion involving the good game writing that you claim to know so much about speaking of which your your video is almost done are you ever going to tell us why this is bad writing because because you haven't really done that unless some some of those arguments you made earlier were intended to convince us which they they didn't because they're really really [ __ ] bad a quick fix here would be to show some diversity in the evil team's hiring practices you say this is a fix but you have yet to establish why this is a problem why it's broken and in need of being fixed and there's a really real possibility that diversity within an organization could make no sense at all and it could damage the world building you're probably not going to see a bunch of trans black lesbian jewish nazis with pegged legs also implying that there are hiring practices for this evil organization or supposedly evil organization narrative depending it implies they're not intrinsically evil just that they're an organization that's antagonistic or is purported to be evil or of course they could be evil that's a possibility as well of course i'm not saying it's impossible but it would be interesting to come up with a story where an organization was full of intrinsically evil individuals who couldn't be anything other than evil at their very cores and they have like job interviews that could be interesting if you could find a way to do that i'm not saying it's impossible but it seems odd for instance with evil humans and elves as well as orcs or conversely introduce orcs who have chosen good and neutral as well as evil oh um okay uh this is okay i so it's kind of embarrassing but so what you're talking about is it's dungeons and dragons you're describing dungeons and dragons it was invented in 1974 james surely you've heard of it and a good example of a series getting better and better at this over time is mass effect because in the first game commander shepard never meets a nice batarian or a fun geth but then spoiler alert most of these evil species turn out to be as complex and interesting as the human ones as the trilogy progresses oh man this is a horrible example but at least i can't fault you for inconsistency both the battarians and the geth were never intrinsically morally evil they don't apply to this video they are not examples you can use to point to morally evil races if a player thought that all battarians were evil based on the let's say extremely limited exposure you got of them in the mass effect dlc bring down the sky well then that player is a [ __ ] and bring down the sky the first time we meet batarians in the series a group of batarian extremists led by balak attack a mining facility on an asteroid and attempt to use the asteroid as a weapon against the human world of terra nova and kill the millions of colonists there balak's second in command charn was only intent on a slave rate on the facility and he doesn't have any desire to destroy an entire colony of millions charn can be convinced to leave without bloodshed so long as shepard agrees to kill bollock and the batarian gives shepherd a pass for the facility in order to make that happen and even the conversation that shepard has with balak both before and after the final fight against him for the dlc elaborate on his reasons as to why he did what he did what i've done this is nothing compared to what's been done we've been forced into exile forced to survive on what we can scrounge up it's been like that for decades like i said anybody who thinks that this establishes baterians as a morally evil race intrinsically is an idiot because the batarians never were and they don't continue to be after mass effect 1. as for the geth they were never intrinsically morally evil either there's clearly more to them that we don't know about but just because they function as common enemies to fight in mass effect that doesn't mean they're intrinsically evil and the difference here is a player's potentially initial impressions being wrong instead of what the truth seems to be all in all this mass effect example is completely irrelevant to this video's supposed topic and it doesn't serve any purpose other than the continued topical detour that most of your video seems to be materians and geth were never intrinsically evil the issue of moral essentialism does not apply to them here particularly in terms of whether the writing and design is good also [ __ ] me this menu screen that's a oh that nostalgia hits me right in the the heart i guess that's where nostalgia comes from right the heart broad moral generalizations about species or culture not only does it make internal sense in this video you said flat out that moral essentialism was bad writing and bad game design you have not even approached approaching explaining how that's the case you asserting that you did it doesn't make it so with the practically infinite amounts of internal worlds and fictional universes that can be conjured up through the imagination how you can say so confidently and blatantly that moral essentialism is just bad writing it baffles me i have no idea how you could possibly make that claim in confidence i don't know but it also leads to less evocative less rewarding worlds and games you know maybe there's an alternate universe where you presented some evidence for that claim but it's not this one but we can solve that problem by following our best creative instincts okay you guys want some writing advice from me don't trust your instincts your instincts can be really crappy your intuition can be dumb your gut feeling can be totally wrong if you want internally logical and consistent worlds you're going to have to work for it you're going to have to really think about it it's not something that you could probably just do on the top of your head chances are your base instincts or your intuition is probably not going to be enough to just create one of these worlds that's logically airtight and internally consistent write it draft it re-draft it re-draft it again keep re-drafting try to poke your own holes in it try to get a devil's advocate to see if they can break it don't just trust your instincts and write something down and go with it because you followed your heart or whatever writing good writing internally consistent and logical writing that makes sense that's difficult it's hard to do that's why so many shows and movies and games can fail at it so often to diversify deepen and complicate the worlds we create and its denizens this way players won't be incentivized to make snap judgments about our game's orcs or aliens or undead based on moral absolutes or body types no no no no no no no you did it again you've already done you did it with a mass effect thing just a few moments ago the moral essentialism of an orc or a goblin or a beasty or a monster or a summoned demon or a zombie or a skellington or whatever it is the moral essentialism of that creature that is different than how the players or even the characters in the in-game characters the npcs in that world perceive those creatures to be the claim of this video is that moral essentialism is bad game design and bad writing you have not shown how morally essentially evil creatures cannot be logically consistent with their universe how their worlds can't support that all you've done at best and i'm being very generous here all you've done at best is established that maybe a player could jump to conclusions and think that about a creature who isn't intrinsically evil the attempts at arguments that you've made to establish otherwise have been pathetic and on their face worthless you should have tried harder you should have not listened to your own advice not gone by instinct you should have redrafted this you should have devil's advocated yourself that's a verb right you know what i mean which means it works you should have asked people to come up with holes or issues or problems with your script you should have redrafted and re-scripted maybe you should have done a video because this one was a bad idea from the start but maybe you should have done a video about how we can subvert stereotypes and tropes when it comes to the morality of enemy factions and enemy creatures in clever and interesting ways that might have been something that was worthy of listening to maybe there's a reason the skeletons in the spooky basement are trying to do what they do maybe there's a reason oh um return of the living dead 1985 the zombies in that they wanted to eat brains because it made the pain go away you could have made a whole video with all kinds of references to media about how you could subvert these tropes in interesting ways and there could have been a lot of cool writing advice in there but i'm just convinced that you're not capable of giving any good writing advice i i feel like this was your chance you gotta you got an opportunity to write for extra credits a big channel lots of people watching i don't know probably the biggest audience you've ever spoken to or maybe not i'm i'm guessing here i don't care if i'm wrong this was your chance this was your golden opportunity and and you blew it instead we'll all be driven to investigate explore and learn our players will invest themselves more in our games oh yeah if we just got rid of intrinsically evil orcs and zombies and skeletons and ghosts and goblins if we just got rid of those players would love it they'd rejoice everyone would just have a much better time and the games would be so much more high quality you know maybe you are qualified to talk about fantasy worlds as much as you do seeing as you clearly already live in one and because they're human ask the hard questions to push our design into even more enriching and unexpected places asking the hard questions you just asserted boldly and without anything approaching a reasonable argument that if you have evil races and games you're robbing players of hard questions having a session of d where i fight spooky scary skeletons in a cold cursed crypt doesn't mean that for the rest of my campaign i'm locked out of choosing whether or not to save an enigmatic elf escapee convicted of a callous cruel crime on extremely elusive evidence or decide what furtive fickle faction to further on either end of a morally murky mass melee it's like saying if you have bacon and eggs for breakfast tomorrow you will never be able to have anything else ever again but can't i have biscuits and gravy plus you know maybe if we ditch this whole evil race's line of thinking if one day orcs or extra-dimensional horrors or even isikai protagonists pop out of a portal they'll offer us humans the same courtesy i'd call that a win-win you know the problem with the video where almost everything you say is stupid is that if you want to say something really stupid intentionally in order to make a joke it might not catch like the the joke might not stand out as a joke because it just it sort of it's like it sludges in with everything else so it doesn't it doesn't seem like it's not it's not even a good joke i don't even know if it qualifies as a joke more of just a observational kind of like hey um what what is an izakaya protagonist is that is that from one of those hentai cartoons once again thanks so much to nordvpn for sponsoring all right all right i googled um izakaya protagonist on my computer box and it's like an anime thing um so i don't really i really don't care about it at all i don't i don't think it's possible for me to care any less in this episode if you're looking to protect your so um [ __ ] that uh we're done with that video that's finished no more extra credits hooray we did it we've reached the end of the video this is the outro we're done wow what a journey what a magical adventure we went on together what a terrible video that was goodness gracious i'm glad that i can come back to making videos on my channel on youtube getting back in the swing of things and i know that there will always be idiots on the internet it gives me a great sense of job security there really was in that video the opportunity to talk about a lot of interesting narrative things you could have had the opportunity to talk talk about all kinds of different narrative concepts about morality and different factions and how players can interact with the world around them and how they see other characters and how maybe as a game master you can create a world that might subvert the expectations of players and things of that nature but we didn't get into like any of that at all um the the point was never proven this whole orcs or black people and moral essentialism was just like and then so many of the um like response videos to this that i've seen and a lot of the discussion that i've seen surrounding this a lot of people just sort of forget and i'm not blaming him for it but a lot of people sort of forget that the the attempt at the core concept of this extra credits video was about moral essentialism and they barely talked about that at all it was a bunch of tangents and divergence into their own little la la lands of just a waste of time we barely got to talk about anything regarding moral essentialism i did more than they did but that's me and i talk a lot if you are a gm if you are a dungeon master gmdm i don't know which one is the proper one the same [ __ ] thing if you are the game master and you're making a world for your players to have fun in because that's kind of the ultimate goal of a tabletop role-playing game is that the players have fun because it's a game right um i really feel as if it's okay to have orcs that are evil or goblins that are evil or spooky skeletons that are just just awful and that's fine it's fine to give players enemies that they can just enjoy having combat in because that's a big part of these games players like to engage in combat they like to be tactical they like to try new things they like to synergize their their positions and their their attacks together and they like to try and use the environment to their advantage and it's a lot of fun it's a lot of fun to play tons of fun not everything has to be this crazy moral introspection moment where you you teary eyed strike down orcs that you feel or blah blah we don't need that it's fine it's okay carry on if you've made it this far thank you very very much it was fun to make this video it was fun to get to work again on main channel content i really enjoy it i'm glad i'm back to it things are just so much better for my life right now and i really really appreciate you guys for coming back and taking a look means a lot to me my life would have been way way different if i didn't have people still supporting me and chatting with me and talking with me it things would have been totally different for me so i'm going to try to be putting out videos fairly regularly i've got some stuff on the works that'll hopefully speed up production that still looks good in terms of you know its quality its production value stick around things will be coming thank you for the support and thank you hopefully for the kind words you'll be saying in the comments hope that you enjoyed the video and i will see you later

Channel: Rags

Views: 252,030

Keywords:

Id: TkCxlM-NmA8

Length: 82min 58sec (4978 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/YourPrivateNightmare]

Who is this Rags character and how is he related to EFAP?

I only know of Rag'''''''''''''

​

'''''s

[u/LegoFanDX115]

Aw sweet r'a'g''''ssss remembered his channel password.

[u/Curtman_tell]

Wasn't this guy a guest on EFAP once?

[u/RedstoneSteve12]

Orc = black grandma

[u/[deleted]]

Oh my goodneeees… the doggo came back from buying cigarettes and milk!

[u/mynameJef6969]

https://youtu.be/Iy1lMICwr2U

[u/R333KEK]

Oh this gon’ be gooood

[u/Lucky_Plan7855]

But can't I have biscuits and gravy?

NOOOOOOO!!!! HAAAHAAAHAAAHAAA

[u/weeOriginal]

I’m hearing him talk about this seperation between real races and cultures…. Does this mean that he’s okay with 1000 year old Loli’s?