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So an interesting thing in the "D&D Orcs are racist" 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ" title="DVD" aria-label="Emoji: DVD">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đŽ" title="Horse face" aria-label="Emoji: Horse face"> --which is correct -- is it& #39;s relation to the Satanic Panic of the 80& #39;s and through that White US Evangelical Christianity.
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So in 70& #39;s OD&D humanoids exist, and are badly racially coded, as in Tolkien. Yet, 70& #39;s D&D doesn& #39;t presume player morality - it has the wargamers fallacy of equal sides (which leads to far too many panzercorps fans, but...) played without moral lens.
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Orcs in OD&D are monster, but ones that neutral and chaotic PCs can hire as mercenaries. They aren& #39;t coded as essentially evil. I know it& #39;s a small comfort if any. Plus evil humans (e.g. bandits and berserkers) play a much larger role on enemies tables.
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Humanoids, and essentialism about them, aren& #39;t as common a foe until BADD and other largely Christian fundamentalist critics of D&D begin critiquing D&D as a game of amoral murder.
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Even killing bad people: necromancers and bandits makes for moral outrage. Better to argue one& #39;s violence is morally good - in the blunt way of US Evangelical morals. Monsters are embodiments of cosmic evil and sin.
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This is one of the ways 80& #39;s D&D pushed back against the Panic. It codified its conflicts as lacking moral nuance, and built settings with clear "heroic" narratives.
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One might think this is a time to talk smack about the Hickmans, but it& #39;s not - Dragonlance is morally clear, and has esulting ethical issues, but Dragonmen at least aren& #39;t part of an imperialist tradition (I think?)
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Better to compare the Orcs in the last of the B series of adventures with those in the early ones. B11 King& #39;s Festival comes to mind. Orcs in a hole, raiders and kidnappers without reason who attack on sight. This is the essentialist model.
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B11 also has very heavy handed advice about forcing good morality (killing orcs and saving priests) on the players - making D&D morally safe, even instructional - maybe even for conservative Christians. The fear of backlash is almost palpable in BECMI.
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None of this fixes orcs. They can& #39;t be fixed today. Even WOWs "good orcs" are a mess of noble savage stereotypes, and OD&Ds were steeped in Tolkien& #39;s British Imperialism.
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Still, the moral variety and play implied in B2& #39;s orcs with thier children, rivalries, goblin enemies and seeming resentment of the Chaos Church feels far more redeemable and less essentialist.
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So certainly calling out the vile racial essentialism in 5E and the entire "evil humanoid" concept is important, but take a moment to consider that fantasy worlds without nuance lend themselves to it more readily then those with.
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