Evil Races are Bad Game Design – Bioessentialism & Worldbuilding – Extra Credits



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If you want to learn on the origins of orcs, check out James’ blog here: https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/1/13/orcs-britons-and-the-martial-race-myth-part-i-a-species-built-for-racial-terror

There’s been a spicy issue that’s come up a few times in the tabletop roleplaying community over the last few years: how do we handle evil races? Are they a vital part of the fantasy genre, imported from Tolkein’s works and therefore untouchable? Or should we reexamine the way that speculative fiction can sometimes just paint species and culture with the same broad brush? Well, we think that outside of any connection or implication of real-world situations, evil races are just… kind of bad and lazy game design.

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34 thoughts on “Evil Races are Bad Game Design – Bioessentialism & Worldbuilding – Extra Credits”

  1. the video just said: "hey, maybe not making a species capable of thought and intelligence all evil unequivocally is bad?" and yall be like this

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  2. This is the most stupid thing ive ever seen. Orcs arent really evil in Warhammer 40k, they are more like anarcists. They just love doing what they are doing. Only (some) humans, and chaos humans are evil in 40k. AndTau are an alien race, that is more or less pure good. And then there are the tyranids, that consume everything, but they are animalistic, not evil. And then there are the eldar, that have both good and evil factions. But then again: evil and good, is a matter of perspective.

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  3. Only that, in 40k warhammer, every faction is evil (yes even the Imperium of Man) and the reason for everyone wanting to kill everyone depends on things like hunger, fun, assimilation, hatred, or even survival.
    On a separate note: who tf compares orcs to groups of people? Humans in every fantasy setting with orcs are not restricted to caucasian features.

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  4. The one problem with this that I have is that orcs aren’t a subgroup (i.e race, nationality, or sex) of humans or elves or whatever- it’s a completely different species- so while yeah maybe don’t make them intrinsically evil or whatever cuz that’s kinda dumb- I’m fine with stuff like the – 2 to intelligence on DnD cuz it’s feasible that a different sentient species has a lower capacity for intelligence- to a reasonable degree since they are still sentient

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  5. Did yall just ignore the existence of WOW and imply that everyone thinks orcs represent minorities?

    Also gj completely misunderstanding how views on good and evil work in cultures. Most people recognize that killing humans = evil.

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  6. This argument is fundamentally flawed. Most likely the NONHUMAN faction will also follow a NONHUMAN moral code. Now, what if their "good" is inherently evil to us? What if their morallity makes us and them unable to peacfully exst besides one another? then they are born evil and thats not "lazy worldbuildng".

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  7. Surely the point of fantasy is explore ideas and concepts that don't exist in the real world, we can all agree that biological essentialism is nonsense in the real world, while still permitting ourselves to explore the concept in our hobbies and in fiction. Restricting the ideas that we can explore in fiction does nothing but harm creativity. Yes there is most definitely a place and value in making rich complicated races and cultures who can be both good and evil, but there is also a value in the stories with simplistic narratives of good vs evil, in which a simplistic evil races or cultures can play a role. We can explore these ideas without transferring the ideas to real life, its the point of the escapism of our hobbies, books and films.

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  8. This only shows yourself for what YOU… really think. If you look at some fantasy thing and see this as a group of people then that tells us what you think about that group of people.

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  9. I can kinda see what you're driving at but in the case of Orcs, many games DO portray them as complicated, but their race drives them to generally more violent tendencies.

    But in games line Warhammer or Warcraft, neither humans or Orcs are inherently evil (hell, play Horde on WoW). They are just at war and are labeled just as the enemy… As necessity to make you want to kill them.

    Other lore like Lord of the Rings, orcs ARE bioessentally evil. They are created to be a killing force with no empathy, by a truely evil (by choice) creator.

    Maybe they cannot be your definition of evil, since they have no choice, like a tornado, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be stopped. If we could cause tornadoes to not occur, we would out of sheer self preservation. Same goes for "evil" species in games, regardless of choice or motivations.

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