I think that’s why most longrunning fantasy settings are moving away from it except for beings that cannot live without doing evil, like Liches, or are outright formed from the cosmic essence of [ALIGNMENT].
But even then you’ve had members of good aligned cosmic races falling and more rarely, members of evil races turning against evil (on an unrelated note, if anyone forced Arueshalae to relapse to evil in WOTR, we can’t be friends)
Nerubians and kobolds were always sympathetic though.
The ones were met in Northrend were the ones that were murdered and resurrected by Arthus to serve him. They were in the same boat as humans and high elves.
Kobolds were always an oppressed native species that the humans of Stormwind treated like vermin.
That origin is also more in-line with the Silmarilion, imo, than the origin Jackson landed on for the movies.
I always had a soft spot for the kobolds. I would often ask myself why we are constantly sent to kill these guys and take their candles. They just want to be left alone
Yes, which I suspect is why he never quite settled on what the orcs were in terms of their origin. He wasn’t content to leave the matter at dismissing them as inherently evil without further examination, though. As for the “good” Valar, it’s worth noting that the Valar are not presented as perfect beings, and they are capable of making bad or unwise choices.
That’s what it comes down to, really. If a character has the ability to choose their own action, then they therefore can choose to do good or evil. I find that much more interesting than “everyone in X race is just inherently bad”, or conversely, “everyone in X race is inherently good.” The Nerubians have always been interesting because they chose to reject the Old Gods, despite their link to them. We helped the living Nerubians in Wrath fight against both their undead kin and the Faceless Ones that were taking advantage of the situation.
They should probably not take over active mines if they don’t want smoke, but at the same time its weird nobody put 2 and 2 together and tried offering cheap tallow candles in return for whatever ore the Kobolds mine up.
Since kobolds are intelligent and as we seen in. TWW, capable of trade that could have worked.
But and just a little thought experiment, how do we know those mines weren’t originally kobold mines the humans decided to take over? It’s something worth considering
My first thought was “no way the kobolds were logging and refining timber for the mining supports we’ve seen in EK mines”, but if the little buggers have a nose for gold there’s no way your average Human kingdom wouldn’t try to clear them out and expand.
I think it also gets forgotten that because bliz seems mostly allergic to present conflict between the 7 kingdoms (outside like Alterac, the collapse of the alliance in WC3 or the fall of the Arathi empire, all things that are old lore which I’m not sure would ever be added these days) a lot of the regular political conflict of being a medieval patchwork gets moved to interspecies conflict.
Well and the Dwarves do get to have internal conflict.
I think the Eredar redemption was a bit of a short sighted error. Kobolds and Nerubians have always been easily manipulated “neutral” factions though.
Unfortunately the ratio of people who care about the lore to people who just want to play as like Centaurs and Ogres and ‘red draenei’ is like 1:9.
It’s kind of a shame. At some point it reaches critical mass and the game implodes into nonspecific slop, but the two cited examples here are pretty minor comparatively.
Okay and yeah that Kobolds voice acting is incredibly irritating. All the dungeon voice acting is this xpac is very “first year at theater school” for some reason
I have a secret to tell you.
Come closer.
Closer.
Closer.
WHEN YOU ARE THE DM EVERY SINGLE RULE IS OPTIONAL.
Pathfinder specifically states this, but no DM worth their salt should have needed that line. Back in the day, we houseruled so much you could have built a Hyatt Hotel with the changes we would make.
If you’re running Eberron with Pathfinder you can ignore that rule. In fact the cleric rules for Noticula also ignored that rule because despite her chaotic neutral alignment she as the Redeemer Queen DID NOT allow chaotic evil clerics.
And with 2nd Edition Remaster, alignment has been thankfully kicked to the curb. Now it’s all about what each diety considers it’s edicts and anathema and in settings like Eberron, how much they bother (or fail) to police compliance.
They’re super into ‘everyone is good and everyone is bad’ stuff these last few years. So there’s no ubiquity among groups.
Oh, I know, I have played several systems and settings and none have been free of my tampering as a GM. But a lot of groups especially online have sticklers in charge.
th
Than those are the groups you say…“BYE” to.
Interesting responses. I admit I don’t know/remember all the details. I don’t necessarily insist on these races being “evil,” that concept has completely gone out the window with the Naaru and the Legion just being races of beings that bestow powers on their servants but that’s besides the point (maybe).
When I think back to Warcraft 1/2, for example, when you play as the horde, each mission is to go into an area, establish a base and wipe out the humans of that area. Right or wrong, good or evil, it’s a clear friend-enemy distinction.
I think some nuance is good, especially when it comes to rival/splinter groups from playable races (ie, Defias brotherhood, Dark Iron dwarves, blackrock orcs, etc), but when literally every group is kinda tame, with the occasional cartoonishly evil villain leader, it makes it all seem kinda same-y.
I mean what are you gunna do, ask for a race that you can pat yourself on the back for genociding
Here is something i want to mention, People always say they want things to be simple, black and white as they were when they were kids, but the reality is things were never simple you were just a child
Idk, for one thing it’s a lot more interesting than “every individual of this race is ontologically evil.” But for another, neither of these races were -ever- purely evil. There were Nerubians we worked with in Wrath of the Lich King; the quests for the Nerbubian dungeons were literally given to us by them. Kobolds are frequently not so much ‘evil’ as just ‘a local nuisance’ that we respond to with extreme violence.
Kobolds have also always talked in low common. Have you played the game before?
Kobolds were never “evil” – just stupid. Murlocs, gnolls, kobolds, troggs, all just stupid, stupid little things. Invasive species that are highly territorial and easily manipulated by stronger powers.
Kobolds and gnolls specifically are natives to the areas they live in. NPCs just have us mass murder them because it’s just easier
Just wanted to add that