I am sorry if this is something basic that has been discussed to death before but I feel like I need to get this out of my system before I ruin friendships by wishing centuries of humiliation on people for the way they play pretend.
I had a casual chat with a friend and fellow GM about our current campaigns and worldbuilding. At some point beast races come up and I mention I like gnolls and give a few short details about their society in my setting. In response I get an explanation that he can't have this kind of characterization because of Goebbles level bullshittery about how beastmen are inherently savage and destructive and basically a swarm of pests that has to be put down. And how this is necessary in order to address the moral issues of what to do with beastmen non-combatants. Essentially giving players moral license to commit genocide and still be considered "good" in-universe.
It felt so fucking unreal seeing how normally chill people can almost reproduce word for word the vile shit that Zionists are using right fucking now as a justification for mass murder and not have a single moment of "oh shit wait wtf am I saying". I had to step away from the keyboard and calm down. I hate how concept of "sapient creatures that are completely and irredeemably evil and are specifically designed to be slaughtered" is seen as something completely normal and even expected. Gygax was a piece of shit genocide enthusiast who deserves to rot in hell and it's high time that we move on from colonial plunder sims with dragons and obligatory others that exist only to be killed and looted.
You are building an imaginary world and there are no limits. The genre is literally called imagination. There is no excuse for consciously designing entire species that are designated for slaughter and reproducing some of the vilest ideologies ever thought up by humans as a pillar of your worldbuilding.
That's it I guess. That's the rant. Thanks for reading. I am doing my best trying to give positive portrayals of non-human societies in my games and also trying to get my friends to play other games that aren't built from around breaking into others' homes to kill them and take their stuff.
Honestly playing games from other franchises is probably the way around this. I am pretty sure Star Wars doesn't do this with aliens in their RPGs.
It technically doesn't, but there are totally designated "evil" races, like Darth Maul's species of devils and witches.
Wait really? But Merrin exists. And Ventress gets redeemed pretty quickly. That's so weird given the killing of the Dathomiri night sisters was treated as horrific and the episode called "Massacre"
Counterpoint: Devils and witches are very cool and sexy and I like them.
I think the nightsisters aren't supposed to be evil, as the other comment said they even get like slaughtered and it's explicitly a bad thing.
Heck when they originally got created, most of them are light siders. In canon they do seemingly all use some form of dark side magics, but they seem more problematic in terms of social hierarchy than being consumed by the dark side. They are more social darwinist in some ways, particularly with their slave species of Zabraks they keep, but who knows, we only just found out they used to have an empire and came from another galaxy. And that the Jedi knew that and treat them more like bedtime stories or neat curiosities as opposed to an enemy. Heck Obi Wan is super polite to them when he goes to Dathomir, though he was always flirting with Ventress so him hitting on Mother Talzin is hardly shocking.