Evil has always confused me as far an alignments go: a society of amoral sociopaths could not function. Dungeon crawling is crime fantasy, the fantasy genre is founded on racism and alignment exists more or less to justify genocide. So why equivocate? Here I present alternatives for those who want to portray "evil" societies in nontraditional fashion, tying into my reinvention of the Evil alignment as the Chaos allegiance. I have reduced the portrayal of savage humanoids to three basic archetypes based on the goblin baby dilemma: no goblin babies, goblin babies must die, and klingon babies.
There are no goblin babies: These savage humanoids either do not reproduce or reproduce in a manner than does not produce families. They might be personifications of strife birthed by Mother Gaia, reproduce by means of spores or plants (typically carnivorous), or any number of other options. It is perfectly moral to kill them en mass without a guilty conscience; in fact, they may be offended if you offer them mercy.
Commentary: I love this option. I don't have to worry about non-combatants or parallels to real world racism.
Goblin babies must die: These savage humanoids reproduce in a fashion similar to humans. However, they are not conscious and cannot be redeemed by being raised in a different culture. They are capable of learning, of speech, of making tools, but they are unable to comprehend art or compromise. Killing them is no different from pest control.
Commentary: I don't like this option because it is contrived to justify murdering women and children. Even if they're just philosophical zombies, they still scream and bleed.
Goblin babies are klingon babies: These savage humanoids are basically klingons: they may have distinct biological differences or vastly different cultures, but they are similar enough to humans that they may coexist were it not for cultural differences. Killing their babies is a horrible atrocity. It is entirely possible for their babies to be adopted by humans or for them to adopt humans into their culture. In many cases they have counterpart cultures that already allied with humans due to non-conflicting values.
Commentary: Whenever I see critics bring this up, I ask myself: "Why aren't you just using humans?" These orcs are just caricatures of Africans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Aboriginals, etc wearing rubber foreheads.
All of the above: savage humanoids are divided into related sub-races by the above qualities, much as humans are related to lemurs and mice. They might be nominally allied, antagonistic or enslaving one another. This lets you have your cake and eat it too.
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