This video is sponsored by WorldAnvil. Let’s talk about alignment for enemies. And before we begin, some of you are
going to feel defensive during this video, or even just from hearing the subject matter of
this video; and I understand. It’s easy for me, sitting here sharing my perspective, to sound
like I’m saying that one style of play is wrong or another is right. And obviously I have my
own preferences, and things that *I* think are important in D&D. I have arguments in this video that
focus on the fun of the players first, arguments that favor complex worldbuilding, and arguments that
acknowledge the tropes and needs of an action RPG like D&D. I understand why orcs and hobgoblins
and drow were treated as monsters by default for so much of the hobby’s history. It’s not just
the influence of popular fiction - beyond just Lord of the Rings, all sorts of fantasy stories have
armies of faceless henchmen - but it’s also the practical aspect of playing a combat-heavy game.
We need monsters to fight of all different types, and in a lot of ways, these monsters *can* work
fine as cannon fodder. And if you and your players haven’t had an issue, and this all seems silly to
you, I hope you watch and enjoy and hopefully some of this makes you think about this side of the
game from a different perspective. If that just doesn’t interest you, no hard feelings, thanks for
watching, don’t forget to like and subscribe on your way out, leave a comment about how I don’t
know anything about D&D, and have a lovely day. I’m also not going to spend much time today
addressing the fact that WotC says they’re going to use “species” instead of “race” going
forward, because honestly, it’s playtest material that just came out - literally just a few days
ago when I’m filming this - and the term might not stick around, so it’s not worth a ton of
time in today’s video because it might not remain relevant - but I am quickly going to say, I don’t
actually think “species” solves any of the actual issues with the term "race." It sort of sides with
the DMs who feel like these should be different species rather than the fantasy equivalent of
ethnicities. But the actual issue with the term “race” isn’t just that it’s a loaded term from
our real world, although it super is - but when paired with the idea that each race has special
powers, because, you know, D&D is a fantasy game and your heritage can determine whether you shoot
lightning out of your mouth or fire out of your blood - that continues to reinforce some loaded
ideas, and the term “species” doesn’t fix that. The podcast and YouTube channel Asians Represent
did a reaction video about this proposed change, they bring up some really great points better than
I would, I recommend you check that out. So, this change tells me that WotC
understands that there *is* a problem with the term “race,” but that they don’t
really understand what that problem is. So I’m not going to use the term “species” in
this video, I’ll probably use “ancestry.” And I might use the term “race” every once
in a while, because old habits die hard. Anyway… let’s talk about alignment for enemies. A few years ago, there was quite a stir over the
fact that WotC effectively removed the alignment from a bunch of their monster and NPC stat blocks.
I believe they first did this in Candlekeep Mysteries, and they did do it in Van Richten’s
Guide to Ravenloft, despite the fact that it was a horror-themed book and we all probably
would’ve just accepted it if there were some hard and fast alignments in a book like that.
It doesn’t seem like that’s going to be their ongoing solution to the alignment issue - more on
that later - but for at least a few publications, they experimented with omitting a default
alignment for their stat blocks whatsoever. And of course, the people you would expect pitched
a fit because WotC took two words out of each stat block. But I, for one, was glad to at least
see them remove the evil default from humanoid races. I’m not talking about more alien creatures,
like mind flayers and slaadi and beholders. Those creatures don’t represent the same inherent fear
as humanoid cultures do. Some of you will argue that there *is* no difference, that hobgoblins
and yuan-ti are just meant to be evil monsters, no different than devils or demons. To that
I say - that is just laughably not true. It’s a false equivalency. These creatures are
different. They’re creatures with some society of their own - and a lot of them are playable. We
have stat blocks for player character hobgoblins and yuan-ti and goblins and kobolds and
orcs - hell, orcs are going to be one of the default ancestries (hopefully they use the
term ancestries) of OneD&D. I’m obviously not saying some orcs and hobgoblins can’t be
evil, just like some elves and humans and dwarves can be evil. And I’m going to make the
case that a group of orcs and hobgoblins can still make a lot of sense as enemies of other
humanoid cultures. But so many people respond to the idea that maybe these creatures shouldn’t
*all* be evil by default with the argument, “So, if we can’t have default evil orcs, does that mean
we also shouldn’t have default evil mind flayers or devils?” But that is a false equivalency.
It’s a hypothetical that assumes the line being drawn is arbitrary. But it’s not. You know how
I know it’s not? Because they did not put out a book of playable mind flayer stats and hag stats
for players. Because we all know that bugbears and orcs and drow have more in common with dragonborn
and gnomes than they do with devils and demons. We all know it. If you don’t know why that
distinction is being drawn where it is, you’re being willfully obtuse. So, if you
want to come in and argue that the orcs are evil just like devils, sorry, it’s a bad
faith argument and I’ve got no time for you. Oh, and if you want to argue that orcs
and drow are evil because the gods made them evil? Don’t worry, we’re
gonna get into that on Monday, we’re gonna talk about why that’s
an extremely foolish argument. Can’t imagine why I thought people
might feel defensive during this video. So, as I said, I was personally fine with
removing the default evil alignment from these creatures, but before they did,
it didn’t affect my games too much. I personally feel like the Monster Manual
referring to “evil” ancestries like hobgoblins is like a US textbook calling people in the
USSR evil. Sure, some of them are evil, fine, but all of them? Every single person who
lives in that community? They’re all evil? Why? How? In what way is that more interesting,
or more realistic, or more dramatic? In my headcanon, everything we read in the Monster
Manual was written by, or at least reflects the viewpoint of, the humans who share this world
with the goblins and orcs and drow. Or rather, the humans who refuse to share the world. So
mostly I think it means “We don’t like them and they don’t like us, we can’t promise
they’ll let you live if they catch you, and we should know, we are the ones who
wrote the book about monsters, not them.” Of course, that approach does hit
a snag when you have magic items that work differently for evil characters. “This cursed mirror hates evil characters like villains and evil PCs!
And I guess all hobgoblins.” Which is why I *do* think it was a good
thing to remove the default alignment of evil from these creatures, because
making them all evil by default just flattens any chance of nuance,
and makes the world more boring. Now this still doesn’t even mean you
can’t have an evil culture in your world. I try to make sure there’s always one
evil culture of humanoids in my campaigns. And not just orcs and kobolds, but maybe a wicked
- or at least antagonistic - nation of dwarves or humans or elves. Now, this definitely doesn’t mean
everybody who lives there is evil, it doesn’t even mean every member of the government is evil.
But their ideals and policies are dangerous, and they are probably preparing at this moment to
attempt to conquer other nations. Now, that also doesn’t mean that every nation planning to gain
power or preparing for war is evil. Honestly, that’s kind of what all nations do. But having
one Heavy, one nation that is definitely looking for power and doesn’t care that much about
playing nice, will keep things interesting. And it also gets you out of the mindset that the
only enemy cultures belong to “monstrous races.” Of course, you don’t have to wait for the
folks at Wizards of the Coast to do your worldbuilding for you - you can create your own
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to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video. Now, let’s acknowledge another reason why it’s
a good thing that “evil” is being removed from all of the “savage” ancestries and cultures -
it’s because it was kind of extremely racist. Now, some of you are going to take that the wrong way,
and think that I’m saying you yourself are racist, that you have hate in your heart, just because
you use orcs and goblins and drow and you’re not critical of the idea in your fiction.
It’s fine, you are not the problem. I mean, once you start filling comments sections with ad
hoc [sic] arguments trying to justify the status quo, you become part of the problem, because
you’re defending lazy, uncritical worldbuilding instead of hearing out the rational arguments.
But I understand why you would be defensive, why you would have a knee-jerk reaction
to that statement. I totally get it. But, let me put it this way:
If you have orcs and goblins in loin cloths and tribal paint, wielding spears and wearing jewelry
made of teeth or ears or whatever… you are keying off of the way these monsters are described in
the official materials. But these descriptions use colonialist language and descriptions that
directly - sometimes deliberately, more often as a systemic storytelling habit, but still directly
- link these cultures to real-world, almost universally non-white, native cultures. And listen
- as far as I’m concerned, that alone isn’t the problem. It’s not inherently bad to have a culture
in your game that wears animal skins and wields simple weapons. After all, you saw my reaction in
the Minis Monthly Unboxing video when I pulled out the orcs riding dinosaurs - those orcs are cool.
And I think if you put that mini in front of your players, they’re going to think it’s awesome
and want to know all about that culture. I mean, if someone who is smarter than me comes along and
says that it’s still problematic, listen to them, treat that statement with the necessary gravity,
but that’s not what we’re talking about today. It’s also worth noting, along these lines,
that a lot of the designs of these creatures, like goblins and orcs, is derived from, we will say,
uncomfortable parallels to racist caricatures of Jewish people or Japanese people or whoever
else along history. Or the fact that yuan-ti are a mishmash of othering tropes about South
American cultures, filtered through the lens of antisemitic conspiracy theories about
lizard-people running the world. And that is not even touching the subject of drow
being dark-skinned and also villainous, that’s well-trodden territory at this point. And
again, that’s all good food for thought, we should probably have that conversation another day, but
that’s actually not what we’re discussing today. I’m just saying, when you take a tribal-coded
community and you describe them all as “evil,” whether realizing it or not, you’re repeating
the tropes that have been attached to native people of many, many cultures, who were
usually treated as subhuman by colonizers, using the exact same language and
mentality as what appears in the D&D books. For a much deeper dive into this
subject, please check out LegalKimchi’s video on Bioessentialism in D&D, it is very
comprehensive when addressing this subject. Now, I’ve talked about this before in other
settings and other platforms and social media, and so I’ve seen a lot of counter arguments. I’d
like to pre-emptively respond to some of the most common replies before they
show up in the comments: “It’s fiction, it’s fantasy, it’s not
meant to represent real-world races.” Yeah, it’s not really meant to be. Usually,
writers and artists need a shorthand for “bad guys,” and they settled on a mishmash of
homages to native cultures and traditions. That’s colonialism. It wasn’t conscious, it was
narrative shorthand. For more on this subject, watch Lindsay Ellis’ video about the movie Bright. This comment has a fraternal
twin, framed like this: “Looking at some fantasy race and
saying ‘this represents a real-world race of humans’ is pretty racist.”
I can’t speak for every white person, but speaking for myself: I didn’t notice.
People of color did. I just listened, heard them out, and internalized what I could about
the lessons they were trying to impart. Also, declaring “noticing racist tropes is the *real* racism, actually!” isn’t just ignorant, it’s anti-intellectual. Noticing similarities isn’t "reading too much into
stuff," it’s literally just media literacy. It’s noticing that some things mean
something specific, it’s pretty basic. “You’re just noticing problematic
stuff when there’s nothing wrong just so you can be outraged.”
Man, the world is on fire and the Republicans are actively trying to
undermine democracy and destroy human rights, I got more important stuff to be mad about.
All I’m saying is “words mean things,” and we shouldn’t have to waste our breath
explaining that just to get past this point and get to a related argument about how
to play better and more fulfilling games of D&D. “Orcs/drow/goblins aren’t choosing to be
evil; they were created to be evil by a god.” Hey… see you on Monday. You may have other rebuttals to this
concept, if so, the comments section there for you. Please be civil. But for
the purposes of continuing this video, I have to assume you understand my point, even
if you don’t fully agree, you can accept the premise and we can move on in good faith.
Because we just, we have to move forward. Here’s the thing about coding these enemy
creatures as all evil. There are essentially just two stories you can tell with a savage, evil
culture. Either they show up to invade, or we meet a character who is one of the few “good” ones.
Both of those tropes are inherently kind of racist. Either these people are
thoughtlessly evil and cruel and barbaric, or else that’s what some of them are like, but
you happened to meet “one of the good ones.” But even if your table isn’t bothered by that,
and you truly don’t think you’re internalizing any ideals of racially prejudiced language -
you can still do better just from a storytelling perspective. There’s a great video from Extra
Credits about that subject, I’m going to do my best not to repeat those points, you should
just check out the video because the argument basically points out that making all members of a
culture "evil" strips away the meaning of alignment in that game and renders the world’s reality as
paper-thin and contrived. And if you are trying to tell a story where (morality) matters, making
a whole populace evil by default directly works against that goal. It’s like trying to create a
moral dilemma out of whether to kill the shark from Jaws - you’d be pretty limited in your
ability to do that because it’s canonically evil and has no choice but to do evil things.
So… at that point, why even have alignment if you aren’t doing anything with it? And if you
aren’t… then why do you care whether the orcs say “chaotic evil” in their stat block or not?
If you’re not using alignment, what do you care? Here’s my two cents: by removing default
alignment from an entire ancestry of people, we open up more options. There really are
so few stories you can tell with a savage, evil race. But they don’t have to be evil - what
if they’re just a pre-technological society with different values? You can still tell stories
about that. I think you should still be careful, be thoughtful, check in with your players and
see what they’re comfortable with. But making them all, or even mostly, “evil” just flattens
your options from a storytelling perspective. You can still totally have enemy cultures,
and you can even still have evil groups of drow or orcs or whatever. Red Hand of
Doom has you fighting lots of hobgoblins, but why? Because they’re actively trying
to conquer other regions. Because their leader worships Tiamat, the evil dragon queen.
That’s, you know, something. That’s a story. But this is what it comes down to for
me: Are the hobgoblins of your campaign villains because you put - and I’m not
exaggerating - *a minimum of two seconds of thought* into what they want and what their
goals are? Or are they villains because you saw these two words in the Monster Manual,
and you had an answer that satisfied you? There’s another frequent comment I’ve seen when
this topic comes up - “This is D&D, DMs can change this, why change the book when you can just
change it at your table if you don’t like it?” I’m not being facetious when I say, this
is almost exactly right. In fact, I kind of wish it was right. But unfortunately,
it’s just backwards. Let me explain. I wish every DM knew that they could change this.
I wish every DM felt empowered to do whatever they wanted. But a lot of people see those two words
and they feel like they have all the information they need. Once something appears in text,
some people don’t see a jumping-off point for their own story - they see things as they are
meant to be according to the game, according to the rules. And they don’t deviate from what’s
written, either because it doesn’t occur to them, or they just like having a “right” answer provided
for them. Hell, look in the comments for this video - everyone there who is insisting that I’m
wrong, that these two words should stay just as they are, are an object lesson in exactly this
problem. By putting something in print, creators often hope it will inspire creativity. But for a
lot of people, they wind up seeing those things as “the way it works.” Yeah, it’s a suggestion,
but every rule in D&D is a suggestion, and that doesn’t stop some people from acting like you’re
breaking the rules and playing wrong if you don’t use every rule as written. So the best way to get
these folks to understand the vast possibilities in front of them… is to change those two words and
get them to start thinking a bit more about it. That leads to another comment I get a lot: “But it
*does* say that earlier in the Monster Manual. Why should Wizards of the Coast change anything, if
the problem is people aren’t reading the book?” Because their goal should be - and they know this
- their goal should be to meet the audience where it is, not where they’d like it to be. And their
responsibility is to do whatever they can to make the D&D community more enjoyable to be a part
of. That’s their role, they have to act in a leadership role. And all they need to do…
is change these two words. They don’t even have to remove them. They tried that,
and then they decided not to do that, that’s fine. They don’t have to remove
them, they can say “any alignment,” just two different words. That alone, I think, would
send a signal to DMs to start considering what, exactly, a creature’s alignment is,
and what that means for their games. Some of y’all will still insist in the comments
that, by changing this, Wizards of the Coast is catering to “unintelligent” readers who don’t
read the intro to the Monster Manual. But there are a couple of problems with that.
One: It’s not actually realistic to how people interact with the game. Not only do some people
probably not read the intro to the Monster Manual, because they’re excited to get to the monsters
- they’ll only go back and read the sections from the intro they need to understand terms in the stat block
- but also, not every DM uses the Monster Manual. People share screenshots of monsters online,
or make their own on Reddit, and you can drop that into your game without ever interfacing
with the Monster Manual at all. You can run an entire campaign without ever buying or opening
that book, let alone reading the opening section. And now that D&D Beyond is a thing, even if
I’ve got the digital copy of the Monster Manual, when I’m trying to find a monster, I can just
search and their stat block will just come up, and I’ll just see that alignment. I won’t
necessarily then get the context of that opening chapter. You don’t have to like it,
but just pretending that this change caters to illiteracy misses the forest for the
trees. It doesn’t matter why the advice isn’t used by lots of people. The point
is that it isn’t used by lots of people. Two: This argument falls apart because, again,
this isn’t hypothetical. Look at all of these other arguments I’ve listed. There are probably dozens
of people, minimum, in my comments insisting that drow are evil because they’re cursed by Lolth
or whatever - and they’re basing that off of the material they were given by the books. This is how
the game presented itself for a long, long time, and kind of still how it presents itself. A
few sentences of lip service in the intro to the Monster Manual doesn’t change the culture
they’re presenting for their players and DMs. The proof is right down there. But I do believe
changing those two words on each stat block *would*. It would make the nuance more visible,
and invite a new approach to worldbuilding. Three: You are spending a lot of your energy
trying to insist that WotC shouldn’t change the two words they’ve already started changing.
You’re trying to maintain a status quo that, like I’ve already said, flattens nuance and implies
some stuff that sounds a lot like colonialism, that some cultures are just “evil” by default. And
that… is such a waste of your time and your anger. This is ultimately what bothers me about all of
those counterarguments. When we say things like, “goblins are based on antisemitic language,”
or “depicting primitive cultures as evil is the language of white colonizers,” or “making
the dark-skinned elves evil probably played a role in gatekeeping people of color
out of the hobby,” that’s often not even the final point we’re trying to make.
I don’t want to speak for every YouTuber, and I know there are tweets or TikToks where
there’s no room for anything but that argument, but when someone serious sits down to discuss
this in a longer form like an article or a video like this, our point is usually more than just, “Thing
bad.” We either want you to think about this in a way you likely haven’t, so you can be more
conscious of these issues at your table… or we are arguing that changing these things will
improve your game in ways you might not expect. And when you comment “No,” what are you saying
no to? Change? More interesting games of D&D? Are you denying this is a problem? Do you not want to
think more critically about the hobby? Do you not care if your games could be more interesting
because you’re content with what you’ve got? Do you, again, just not like
change? What are you saying no to? I can’t honestly think of any version
of any of those answers that means you have anything meaningful
to add to this conversation. The final comment I see all
the time is, “I don’t care, I’m still going to have evil orcs in my game.” JERRY-SITTER: Okay then, that was always allowed. Literally nothing anybody changes about
D&D means your monsters can’t be evil by default. If you’ve heard this argument
from people like me or anyone else, and you still think your game will be better
if the orcs are just mindless murderers, whatever man, you do you. But I at least hope
you understand this change isn’t arbitrary, it’s not people being too sensitive - we’re trying
to make this game better for the generations that follow us, for the new players who want a more
complex and nuanced story. If you want to keep playing Fallout 3, you do you. The rest of us
are trying to push D&D to be more like New Vegas. Spelljammer is the most recent product that
I’ve had a chance to read when I’m writing this, I haven’t gotten my hands on Dragonlance when this
is being filmed, but here’s what Spelljammer did: For lots of creatures in the
book, they wrote “Any alignment.” For some monsters that are
clearly intended to be villains, like the vampirates, which are vampires
mixed with pirates, two groups that are pretty typically the bad guys… they just
added one word. “Typically lawful evil.” They even went further then I felt they needed
to, which I appreciate. For creatures that are reminiscent of beholders, like the Eye Monger,
those also get the word “typically.” That’s more than I would’ve expected or even asked for,
but again, I dig it. That’s fine with me. If you still want to have evil beholders, then nothing
has changed. But if seeing the word “typically” makes you think about this creature’s goals
for more than a picosecond before putting them in your game, then that’s awesome. And that’s the
goal. Literally, that’s all we’ve been asking for. But of course, I want to see what they’re
doing with the “traditionally evil” ancestries, so I finally opened up Monsters of the Multiverse
and scanned through it. A lot of monsters get the “typically” treatment, which is great,
I’m fine with that. Maybe down the road, somebody smarter than me will point out that this
is also flawed and we’ll have to reconsider that, but I understand the function it serves. You
make them evil because this is an action game and players need monsters to fight, but adding
“typically” gives DMs a very obvious, visual reminder as soon as they open the stat block
that these things are flexible, which is great. There don’t seem to be any stat blocks
for orcs or goblins or drow in Monster of the Multiverse, but we do get hobgoblins.
Hobgoblins are fey now, as are goblins I think, although they aren’t in this book. That’s a
cool nod to their mythological connection, that fits. Hell, the most famous use of the
word “hobgoblin” was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream until Marvel Comics came along. So,
they’re fey, that makes a lot of sense. And what’s their alignment?
“Typically lawful neutral.” That is a terrific change. Yeah, for
sure you can still have evil hobgoblins, nothing wrong with that. You can even
have an entire culture of hobgoblins at odds with your populace because they want
something different. But now the default gives you a lot more *interesting*
stuff you can do in your games. So, will orcs and drow in the Monster
Manual wind up being “typically evil” like the reprinted versions of the
derro and the yuan-ti? Or maybe, just maybe, because they’re both going
to be playable races (or ancestries, or hopefully not species) when OneD&D is
published… they’ll get a more interesting alignment, like the hobgoblins? That’s what
I hope, but we’ll have to wait and see. That does it for this episode, but as I’ve
said, on Monday we’ll talk about the idea that these creatures are evil because of
something that happened with the gods, and we’ll ask some, I hope,
interesting questions about that. If you want to support the channel, there are a
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