Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Will the updated evil races be in BG3?

Wizards recently announced that they are changing some of the evil races to be more sensitive to global racial oppression.

They specifically mention that orcs and dark elves are portrayed particularly negatively.

I'm curious if those changes will make it into BG3. I don't know many details regarding what Wizards has announced (just that it involves dark elves and orcs), but I'm simultaneously excited to see what they come up with, and also slightly worried that it might impact Larian's release.

I've heard that Wizards has very particular quality standards, so I could understand if some adjustments need to be made.

Remember that if you look at an always chaotic Evil Orc Pillager and think "That reminds me of a racial minority" then this is on you.

Drow are confirmed as a playable race and drow culture has a clear and specific identity. Trying to change it would upend years of world setting, lore and history. They are people, true, but they are evil people.

This accellorated things, but a lot of this stuff was in motion before 2020 happened, after they got critized for stuff like CoS and ToA.

And Jeremy Crawford mentioned that the Gnolls in like the NM should have been fiends, with a seperate Gnoll humaniod race. So I think somewhere Gnolls PC race is coming.

4e solved the problem with gnolls.

and crawford is a hack, hes worse than mearls when it comes to the direction fo dnd

It's pretty obvious that they already have, with Goblins being the first example. The cult of the absolute will be a big part of that along withBG itself. We got a hint of BGs openness to "monster" races in the Gazetteer in BG: DiA (with deep gnomes and lizardfolk being examples).

are deep gnomes a monster race?
Derros are but Deep gnomes are just another Gnome subrace IIRC.
Duergar i guess are a "Monster" race but they had player stats for a while now

The problem with DnD isn't so much that certain races are "evil", it's more that the whole thing evolved as a very simple heroic fantasy setting. Almost every race or monster started out as a simple stereotype, either derived from historical mythology or culled from literary works.

I'm sure some of the DnD authors over time have been influenced to some degree by both conscious and unconscious bias in their writings and inventions, but I'm sure most of the perceived issues are simply due to relying overmuch on the eternal fantasy dichotomies good/evil, law/chaos, civilized/primitive.

Most attempts to relate DnD races to the Human population of the earth don't really stand up. The Drow, for example, have dark skin, but in a different palette to any tropically-attuned humans, pale hair, but in a different palette to any temperate-attuned humans, and facial features that are generally similar to Europeans. It's not clear who it might be insulting to depict such a race as evil.

It would be a shame if all DnD fantasy societies, of all races, end up feeling the same, rather than each society, of any race, being based solely on it's history, geography and current political circumstances.

This is a ridiculous subject. These are not real races, thus cannot be subject to the label "minority group". There is no ethics, no rights, nor any reason to even consider equality or representation of fictive/imaginative "races". It's like people invent issues for the sake and of complaining.

Fact is, this is a digital interpretation of a ruleset. At best you are trying to argue equality of bits and bytes represented by pixels.

If people actually identify on a deep personal level with the character, to such an extent it's a problem with out certain demographic representation, then the people in said group probably shouldn't be playing the game in the first place.

"We" are not trying to argue for anything. WoTC have been moving their content in this direction for quite a while, and have stated some of their reasons for doing so. Every new or refreshed piece of 5e content is examined to see if it draws on, or was influenced by, present or past bigotry. Some of it is.

BG3 as a 5e product is also included in this scrutiny.

How the f*@! do you look at ANYTHING in D&D and be like "hmm, yes, this part is based on bigotry, myes". last I checked there is a human race in D&D so if anyone finds an issue with a fictional race and how they are portrayed in a fictional world then they need to go rethink their entire life. If you see ANY similarities between fictional races, like drow or orcs, and any RL group...YOU are creating those similarities and seeing connection where there are none. In all the D&D groups I've played in, no one has EVER even hinted at a connection between any RL minority group and any race in D&D.

Exactly. SJW's are going rampant with their PC to the point where even imaginary worlds with imaginary rules are problematic.
I truly hope that Larian will refrain from force-feeding the player with PC and/or identity political quests / biographies / plots etc.
If not, i will probably not be playing the game for long. I mean, playing games is a means to have fun and escape IRL for brief moments.
Introducing mass hysteria into the game kinda breaks that notion.

Even ignoring implication of attaching traits to 'evil', traits that have been used to stereotype minorities in real life, making whole races evil 'because gods said so' (whether that's setting or writing gods) is just lazy writing to have faceless mooks to slaughter. Your group is itching for some combat? Just throw some orcs their way. At least now you don't have to write whole essays justifying yourself to your DM if you want to play one of those races as non-evil alignment.

And you can still play those races that way at your table if you want to. Sure, the opposite could've been done as well in the opposite case, but it's nice to see the people being paid for it actually doing the more labour intensive version.

I do not know if it´s really that surreal and unrealistic.

I mean, the entire Inca´s religious beliefs were based on human sacrifices of the lower caste. They even have the Capacocha, where even noble families sacrifice his children because they were the best and pure.

The Karankawa and the Aztecs were known to practice cannibalism: warriors would eat a strip of flesh from enemies they had slain in combat. That was a symbol of status.

Nazi´s dream was the glorification of the pure Arian race and purge the other races and minorities. With gas chambers. In bulk.

The millenary Indian "Thug" cult trained his family members to practice the Tuggee: Strangling people for money. They even adopted the children of his victims so they became thugs.

It´s not so strange the existence of entire civilizations that has "evil" practices that are tolerated and even encouraged by their society or social group in the real world.
It would be weird if there is not in a fantasy world.

You do not even have to search much about their motivations: The ethical and moral values of their society are what could be considered "Evil" by the standards of most other communities.

Is it?
I dont think so.

I think its easier to write a heroic narrative that way. Its easier to bring analgoies to the table iwthout having to revolve the entire cmapaign around it. Is that neccesarily a bad thing? I dont think so. Much like Sci fi, fatnasy is in the universe of "what ifs".
That includes objective morality. Which in turn gives you some rather unique storytelling potentials that modern fantasy writers sadly seem to forget about.

The idea that Orcs are just walking XP is somehow sitll thrown around despite beeing wrong for 3 editions now. I mean it all started out with spelljammer and the Scro, but even "Evil" orcs have plenty of nuance now.
Mindflayers are the next thing. They are Evil,c apital E. Theres no of that moral "nuance" there, but you dont need to.

Imagine Mind flayers were not evil. Would that improve the stories you can tell with mindflayers?
or would it actually detract from their terror?



But here comes the most important point:

One has to realize that the non Human races of DnD arent supposed to represent Humans.
If you want a complex war with another nation, you discribe Humans fighting Humans.

If you want to use a Humanoid enemy you can fight with weapons to symbolize a terrifying external threat. You use orcs.


For some reason Game of Thrones is ofthen cited as an example of fantasy dealing with "grey moraliy", when thats complete nonsense. But game of tThrones is a great example of how to use "always chaotic evil".
The white walker sin game of thrones ar ethat. Enemy of all life.

Does that make them lazy?
Or racist?
No. They are an analogy. The white walkers are an analogy for Climate Change.
The Threat of the white walkers is there to make a point about the Human rulers not working together and not beeing able to face the threat.

Only fighting Climate change with Swords and arrows makes for a supremeley better book than fighting it with lessening carbon emissions.


Do you understand where im getting here?
The Orcs are Evil because the Orcs do not represent Humans. The Orcs represent a savage existential threat and the fear of Savagery overcoming civility in Human minds.
They are the shadow on the wall of the primeval cave. Not neccesarily orcs but all kinds of Eivl creatures.

Correct, but it's more general than that. It's the fear of "the other". If someone/something is not attuned to the way you do things, then it's wrong, or inferior, or evil.

It is always easy to demonise "the other" in any society, you just need to find the right lever, be that political, religious, nationalist, racial...the list of ways you can divide a society into "us" and "them" is quite extensive.

So long as "us" is the group in control of a society, such division can work both when "us" is a minority, which leads to elitist fear of "the other", and when "us" is a majority, which leads to oppressive fear.

Most of us ( and I include myself ) have acquired subconscious bias as a consequence of growing up in our societies; our families, friends, the news media, politicians, religious leaders and so on, all influence us to a particular worldview.

I have no problem myself with fantasy races being identified as the primeval fear of civilised society, or the embodiment of evil / chaos etc, but would not want it to be achieved by portraying them using characteristic traits of existing human groupings.

i wouldnt say they neccesarily only represent the other.
They can represent pretty much whatever.
They represent an outside threat, whatever that may be. THey could represent the financial crisis if you write the story that way...

I'm just going to ignore these particular examples, since I just don't know enough about these cultures, but...


Here is the issue, bad/evil system doesn't make all the people living under it evil. Yes, the leaders are unquestionably dreadful, and the system they've built is equally so, but people who have grown up under it, or were swept up because they already lived in the areas are not necessarily. Through many tactics they can be driven into complacency, apathy, or support (whether that's through dehumanisation of the opponents, weaponising nostalgia or other ways, I'm not going to be summing up Ur-Fascism here), but that doesn't make them evil. It's why the goal against them wasn't to kill them all, but to dismantle the state and show the people living under it that it's not the only way.

This is opposed to always-evil races, where you have the, annoyingly common situation of 'will you kill the orc baby because you know it will grow up to be violent and dangerous regardless of where they grow up'.


The Drow are much closer to what you describe as an evil society, however, I have an issue even with that, because I have a hard time seeing a society built on making everyone as miserable as possible survive long term without frequent revolutions, without everyone being inherently evil and predisposed to violence.


I mean, I haven't done extensive opinion research, but I don't think you are going to find many people claiming that the undead invasion part of the Song of Ice and Fire is the most interesting part of the series.

Problem with this analogy however is, that unlike the always evil races of Dungeons and Dragons, the rank and file of the undead army in ASoIaF aren't sentient, no idea about their leader person, I haven't seen the series. So they are less evil people, and more force of nature that has shape of people.

Meanwhile, orcs are sentient, but evil for reasons (and in case of DnD, less intelligent for reasons that smell of eugenics)

...not to mention imagining you can defeat climate change with swords is so unhelpful I can't even begin putting it in words.



You can say that, but in most cases they are not written that way, they might not be literally human, but they are human-like, highlight parts of human behaviour that is arbitrarily assigned to other exaggerated human traits, and my favourite (/s), fantasy racism often manifests much like real world racism, except the receiver being evil gives a 'justification' for it. I'm not saying that these problems have been written in out of malice, or are intentional, rather, they exist because of cultures and systems we live in
Media is influenced by real world sentiments, and real world sentiments influence media. It's not going to turn a friendly kid into a horrific racist, and it's very much not intended to in most cases, but there are subtle effects on reinforcing stereotypes and uncomfortable behaviours, despite it not being 1 to 1 comparison in most cases.

And even the OG, Tolkien, eventually grew to regret how he wrote the orcs.

In any case, I doubt I am going to convince you, and I'm not one you should ask about these things, I'm just some weirdo on the internet who has acquired an interest in effects of culture on media and vice versa in recent years. You would get a much better account of how one affects another, from someone who actively studies this, preferably who has been directly affected too.

...I'm just going to hit post in hopes that this ramble is at least somewhat coherent.

Edit:
I'm going to borrow words from the one who wrote the one who came up with Drizzt...
"In fantasy, you embody evil in a race, and then you disembody it with your sword, and that’s also what mankind has done through the centuries, right? By dehumanizing the enemy so you don’t feel bad about killing them. But that’s just blatantly immoral when you get right down to it, and yet I love fantasy. So that’s the paradox I had to deal with."

Just because I love drow...There is a government-like body made up of the matron mothers of the top 9 houses of the city. They meet to ensure the needs of the overall city are met; economic, safety, etc. There are revolutions, constantly, where houses quietly destroy other houses to improve their ranking in the city. It is a controlled kind of chaos but all attacks and actions are directed by Lolth, who clearly loves chaos but also wants/needs her drow to survive to continue worshiping her. So there is enough order to keep individuals and houses in-line enough to ensure survival...while chaos is the underlying belly of the beast. Since R.A. Salvatore's books are considered lore, drow are not born inherently evil or predisposed to violence but children are raised by females and that is the issue if you know anything about drow society in Faerun.

You realize that the "Undead invsaion" isnt meant to be the super existing bit about game of thrones right?
The entire point is that the "Undead invasion" sets the plot in motion.

Its about the Humans not cooperating. The undead invasion is the background threat.

Simmilar to how the Orcs are the big threat in LOTR.
They are not the players nt he field of poltiics and diplomacy, they are the natural desaster about to strike.

By your logic you cannot use any humanoid creature as a stand in for evil to create a better story.
well to that i say NO

>the creator of drizzt
Well yeah, he clearly knows what hes talking about. Drizzt is the modern hamlet.

If someones prime achievement is ruining the "good dark elf" trope forever, then im not gonna take his advice on how to write evil races seriously.