Okay, I guess I'll give my opinion on that Extra Credits video

So Extra Credits released a video claiming that "evil races are bad game design" and got massively ratio'd.

There's a lot to unpack about the video because it conflates a lot of things that aren't actually related. So I'm just going to present a massively simplified argument:

Firstly, our elf-games are violent murder simulators that require players to mow down hordes of mooks. The game is designed that way. Most tabletop roleplaying games are designed that way. If you don't like it, then play a game that isn't a violent murder simulator.

Secondly, while you could easily play a game where you go around scalping human bandits... orcs are just cooler. The use of orcs in fantasy has nothing to do with anti-black racism. Using orcs as your mooks of choice doesn't even imply that they're "inherently evil." The "orc baby dilemma" is a really old argument dating back to UseNet.

There's no way for the players to know that there are good orcs unless the GM goes out of the way to tell them. It's extremely inconvenient to stop and tell the players the backstory of Orc Mook #294 when they're just playing for the sake of violence.

Lastly, it's entirely possible that the "pretty" races like humans, dwarves, elves, etc are just racists the whole time. The game books might be giving hugely biased accounts, I don't know?

Is it wrong to animate dead?

In the past I’ve posted long dissertations on the morality of the undead and the shadowfell. In general, I have felt that the morality would vary by campaign setting and GM discretion.

Another idea I had involved a different take on the afterlife. In my post on the cosmology of my head-canon setting, I said most people who die pass to the shadowfell rather than the outer planes. When revived, their soul likewise returns from there. The shadowfell serves as the mythological underworld and occult spirit world.

To explain why people in-setting have such a visceral reaction to the undead, I decided to adopt a model of the soul based on real world mythology. Rather than being totally disconnected from their bodies, the dead retain a connection to their bodies. They can essentially scry using this connection, even interact with their living relatives without leaving the shadowfell. In extreme cases, they can enter and reanimate their own corpses, such as to defend their tomb from robbers or help protect the necroscope. Temporal parameters vary from manifestation to manifestation.

So, among other things, the spell speak with dead actually communicates with the soul of the deceased and not just an impression. Even if the soul is far away enjoying (or not) their afterlife, this operates like a long-distance phone call. This also explains why societies, as in real life, develop complex practices regarding mourning the dead even long after the funeral: the dead benefit from such treatment, like consuming offerings, being guardian angels, etc. 

The reason why animating the dead, at least without their consent anyway (they can give consent, or have reason to animate themselves a la BoED’s deathless), is so taboo is because the dead know it and may become upset with such treatment. To prevent the dead from rebelling, you have to enslave their soul too even if it isn’t providing the animating force. (This opens a lot of plot hooks too, such as a lost soul begging you to kill the vampire demon animating their corpse.)

So you can only have good necromancers if they have a positive social rapport with the dead. Otherwise it’s no different from enslavement. That said, there are definitely societies with state-sanctioned necromancy where people sell their corpses as slaves. Even though the dead are aware of what going on, they’re still dead. Backbreaking labor loses most of its unpleasantry when your body no longer feels pain or thirst.

That’s the gist of it. I might explore this further in future posts, but I don’t know if I find it interesting enough at present. I had enough of a headache trying to make sense of the many inconsistent ways that soul loss is handled.

Aligned weapons

In the 3.x era, aligned weaponry raised some logical questions since it meant that when angels and demons fought their damage reduction did not work against each other, yet when demons and devils fought their damage reduction did work against each other.

5e has dropped 3.x's convoluted damage reduction mechanic in favor of a unified mechanic for damage vulnerability, resistance and immunity. Aligned damage no longer exists, although some effects deal damage to particular types: an arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage to dragons and otherwise harmless holy water inflicts radiant damage to fiends and undead.

I feel that removing the concept of aligned damage was unnecessary if alignment's place in the rules has essentially been replaced by types, and some monsters like vampires and werewolves still resist non-silvered weapons. Furthermore, the mechanic of extra damage makes it easy to derive different degrees of harm to provide more granularity and avoid logic gaps.

For example: fiends might be resistant or immune to damage from mortal weapons but not fiendish weapons, whereas celestial weapons not only ignore their resistance or immunity but deal extra radiant damage. In practice, this means that a fight between demons and devils would deal damage normally to both, but a fight between angels and demons would result in even greater damage to both.

So you can both use your xibalban blade to cut an otherwise invulnerable demon as well as splash it with holy water or brush it with a blessed dagger to cause burns.

D&D aberrations, celestials, fiends, etc in a Moorcockian context

D&D took the chaos/order alignment trope from Moorcock and then added good/evil onto it, even though this is unnecessary. I decided to go back to the original Moorcockian model for my setting, but this means that the various monsters like aberrations, celestials and fiends need to be re-contextualized.

For those who are not experts on Moorcock's multiverse, the epic conflict is between law and chaos. Neutrality is a law because it demands a balance between law and chaos. Chaos rejects this because it is chaos, and law decides to enforce the balance. At some point law goes overboard and decides the only way to preserve the balance is to destroy chaos, which violates the balance in the other direction.

This conflict is fairly easy to understand but is at odds with the conventional D&D alignment system, which has law/chaos playing second fiddle to good/evil. The Moorcockian alignment system doesn't define good or evil in cosmology terms, except insofar as imbalance is evil because it is anathema to life.

The typical terminology for the Moorcock alignments is lawful, chaotic and neutral, but this terminology is inaccurate since it neglects the subtleties I mentioned previously. In a world where chaos is ascendant, there is little functional difference between law and neutrality; in a world where law is ascendant, the reverse is true. The generic fantasy setting is the former, and the characters are nominally associated with law/neutrality. This isn't to say that harmful manifestations of law cannot appear in a world where chaos is ascendant, but it is vastly less common than harmful manifestations of chaos.

The various spiritual entities would have different alignment associations compared to the standard.

• Aberrations would represent chaos, full stop. While different groups of aberrations might behave in a seemingly lawful manner, that is due to chaos' inherent tendency toward diversity.
• Celestials would represent balance, law and neutrality. They are active in that they actively fight for the balance.
• Elementals represent neutrality in its purest form. They are generally reactive to imbalances, and actively maintain conditions suitable to life (e.g. the weather).
• Fey would represent chaos, but to distinguish them from aberrations they are tempered by the presence of neutrality and law.
• Fiends would represent any kind of imbalance, whether toward law or chaos.

Influence from Stormbringer

I have been doing some research on the Moorcock's Multiverse wiki and learned about the obscure elements of the Eternal Champion series' expanded universe. This gives me some more ideas for exploring my own take on the concept.

Revisiting the morality of undeath

In past editions the undead were heavily involved with positive/negative energy and associated planes. These distinctions no longer exist in 5e, being replaced by necrotic and radiant damage which are entirely separate from healing (good riddance!). There are plenty of arguments for non-evil necromancy and non-evil undead, but in the end it depends entirely on the metaphysics the GM has chosen for their campaign. In this post I present a number of "moral options" I have seen proposed...

Three axis alignment, revisited

I have seen a couple different suggestions for adding a third axis to alignment. One suggestion is to add an active/passive axis for how militantly a character pursues their alignment. Another suggestion is to split the lawful/chaotic axis into two axes for internal and external attitudes: a chaotic/orderly axis for a character's behavior and a lawful/lawless axis for whether a character respects the laws of society.

Chaos versus Discord, or, why Chaos is not chaotic

My cosmology replaces the traditional alignment system with four allegiances to primeval forces of Chaos, Cosmos, Discord, and Order. (Basically, I just fold neutrality and good into Cosmos because I find it stupid to segregate them.) Chaos and Discord are two separate forces and have a history with one another.

Exemplars of Law

Exemplars of Law have been published in numerous d20 books over the decades. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of creatures that could populate your planes of law.


Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes

• P&P Automations, Dreadnaught
• P&P Automations, Spiked Demolisher
• P&P Automation, Vemonhacter
• P&P Champion of Law

Creature Weekly

• CW1 Dreadgem
• CW3 Emu-lok Template

Classic Play: The Book of the Planes

• CotP Inevitable, Jarut
• Exilarches

SRD v3.5

• SRD Inevitable, Kolyarut
• SRD Inevitable, Zelekhut
• SRD Inevitable, Marut

Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary

• PenB Zenzoga

Blood & Treasure

• Polyhedroids

Blood & Treasure Monster Tome

• Geometrons
• Metal monsters

PRD Pathfinder Reference Document

• Axiomites
• Inevitables
• Kytons

Tome of Horrors Complete

• N'gathau

Dark Roads & Golden Hells

• Axioms
• Maxim

Secrets of the Planes: Planar Races

• Neirut

I noticed a number of Recurring Archetypes:

• The Axioms/Axiomites/exilarches/etc are formed from mathematical formulae
• The Automations/Inevitables/etc are constructed
• The polyhedroids/geometrons/metal monsters/etc are living dice
• The kytons/n'gathau are cyborg torturers and stuff
• The maxim and neirut are planetouched

Good liches and bad liches

After reading The Lords of the Night: Liches and Dweomercraft: Lich, I was inspired to incorporate those portrayals into my developing campaign setting. This gives liches of varying shades of morality on opposing sides.

Evil, savage humanoids

My cosmology removes Good and Evil in favor of Chaos, Cosmos, Discord and Order. Of those, cosmos is the only allegiance which is not inimical to life as we know it. The evil, savage humanoids in the MM are re-imagined as agents of Chaos.

My setting uses a single pantheon for the entire world rather than race specific pantheons. Humans and demihumans worship the gods (Cosmos), humanoids worship the demons (Chaos). What makes the monstrous humanoids psychologically distinct from humans and demihumans is that they are predisposed by nature/nurture towards serving Chaos. This means that their driving goals are to tear down civilization, pollute nature, and generally cause mayhem and suffering. Their reason for doing this is fairly rational: in hell your status is determined by how evil you are (by comparison, humans are nice to other humans out of a combination of empathy and desire to go to heaven). Since committing atrocities against their own tribe is counterproductive, humanoids generally commit atrocities against outsiders.

What exactly does it mean to be inclined by nature and nurture to serve Chaos? It does not mean they lack free will or have it limited, despite what the MM may say. One of the conceits of my setting is that corruption, the currency of hell, may only be accumulated if the actor is free-willed and knowingly causes harm. (BTW, I am using the corruption mechanic from Mongoose's Book of Hell.) Humans and demihumans all have a conscience and an id. The conscience is a voice in their head that tells them to do the right thing, while the id tells them to pursue self-gratification regardless of the consequences. Humanoids are born with an inverted conscience which urges them to serve Chaos, cause unnecessary suffering, and ultimately destroy reality. This cheats the prerequisite for free will and does not absolve them of responsibility for their actions. Where a human born in a deeply misogynistic, racist culture will turn out completely different if raised in an egalitarian culture, a humanoid raised in human society will constantly struggle with their inverted conscience.

What makes humanoids biologically distinct from humans and demihumans is that they don't really have any kind of childhood. They are generally "born" as adults (or miniature adults) with sufficient knowledge to survive. This saves energy which would otherwise be spend on raising and educating children. In many cases they do not actively reproduce, but generate spontaneously in response to certain stimuli.

Why are undead evil? Why does necromancy get such a bad rap?

Why are undead always evil? Necromancy is not evil: it includes healing and resurrection! How many stories portray ghosts or vampires as sympathetic? Zombies and skeletons are supposed to lack the free will necessary for moral judgment in the first place. Making undead inherently evil is redundant when you have fiends. I take a morally grey approach, using other sources to derive alignment rather than undeath itself.

The problem of evil

In my campaign setting I replaced "Evil" with "Chaos" a la Warhammer, but it is essentially the same. (Discord and Order are also the nominally evil cosmological factions, but that's largely because of their extreme mindset in trying to benevolently end suffering.) When evil is a cosmological constant, it raises a number of questions. Why is there evil? Who defines it? Why would anyone knowingly serve it if that means eternal damnation? How are so-called evil societies able to function?

Gods be good

Unlike other settings, my cosmology does not segregate gods by alignment. Gods are, by definition, good, not deaf to humanity's suffering, or play some key role in maintaining reality. They are the protectors and allies of the cosmic balances.

Three axis alignment

13th Age and 5e have largely dispensed with alignment mechanics. That said, alignments could serve as a useful guide to behavior for characters to follow. However, the traditional two axis alignment is too confining due to the confusion of methodical with law-abiding. Therefore, I propose dropping neutral entirely and splitting the law/chaos axis into orderly/chaotic and lawful/unlawful. The orderly/chaotic axis represents a character's general thought processes, while the lawful/unlawful axis represents their respect for society's laws. This gives a total of 2×2×2=8 alignments, one less than the three axis model.

For example: a demon barbarian would be chaotic unlawful evil, a demon manipulator would be orderly unlawful evil, and a demon bureaucrat would be orderly lawful evil.

While I feel alignments are too simplistic to represent realistic moral divisions, I do find them useful as a guide for distinguishing general categories behavior. I will be using them in the future as a means of differentiating between, say, demons and devils and deuces and whatever.

Alignment factions primer

I do not think the two-axis alignment system really makes much sense, but unfortunately for me it is baked into the design of the game. Even if PCs do not need to select alignments, the monsters and cosmology (including my homebrew) are still informed by alignment. So I am going to reframe the alignments of chaos, evil, good and law into allegiances loosely based on "Essences" from Mage: The Ascension or "Urges" from Nine Worlds or the factions from Age of Sigmar.

The order/chaos conflict

The worlds of 13th Age are locked in a fairly typical conflict for mythology: orderly civilization versus chaotic nature. [Insert fumanor references]

Order is informed by Ancient Egypt's Ma'at and Michael Moorcock's Cosmic Balance (rather than stultifying Order). It recognizes that chaos may be constructive (e.g. forest fires making way for new growth).

Chaos, then, represents mostly or only the destructive aspects.

Alignment, moral ambiguity and grimdark fantasy

5th edition downplays the influence of alignment on the rules, but it still informs the canon cosmology and my simplified cosmology. Instead of arguing the meaning of alignment, I prefer a practical approach in the form of allegiances. Inspired by Mage: The Ascension and Requiem Chevalier Vampire, my cosmology is the backdrop for a conflict between four opposing forces with dramatically different yet sympathetic world views.

The Crusader and the Priestess: strange bedfellows?

The Crusader and the Priestess, as well as their patron gods, are ultimately on the same side: the side of Ma'at. They serve order, balance, and justice, though in dramatically different ways. The Crusader, viewed in the most positive light, is a morally ambiguous man who makes difficult moral decisions.

But Order and Balance are not necessarily the same thing. If left unchecked by Balance and unopposed by Chaos, Order would ultimately petrify the universe like a fly in amber.

Since the current age is one where Chaos is ascendant, then Order and Balance work together to oppose it. But in another age this could quite easily turn around, and the heroes would be recast as freedom fighters against an oppressive regime.

Alignment revised

Alignment has been treated fairly inconsistently across editions. My planar revision project takes a different approach, inspired by Stormbringer, Hellraiser, Warhammer and Exalted.

• There are only three alignments: Law/Order, Chaos and Balance/Harmony.
• Alignments are cosmological constants, not personality types or measurements of morality.
• Each alignment has its anthropomorphic personifications who seek to dominate the cosmos.
• Law is represented by the archons (not the SRD archons), who hail from the Halls of Order. The word "archon" references the rulers of the material world in Gnosticism. They include (but are not limited to) entities like the Cenobites from Hellraiser.
• Chaos is represented by the demons (and not just the SRD demons), who hail from Tarassein. They include (but are not limited to) entities like Chaos from Warhammer and Fair Folk from Exalted.
• Balance is represented by the aeons (from the PRD), who hail from the Firmament. The word "aeon" references the emanations of God in Gnosticism.
• The archons and the demons are locked in a constant struggle for dominion of the cosmos, with the aeons caught in the middle. Law and chaos at their extremes are inimical to life, hence the need for balance.
• The lower planes are a key battleground between the forces of law and chaos. The archons created the devils to compete with the demons on their own turf, and the angels to hold both in check.
• The devils are nominally servants of law, but they serve more out of fear of reprisal than loyalty to law itself. They do not always get along with the other forces of law.
• The angels are nominally servants of law, but in practice their actions serve the balance.