Re: Evil, LoTR, and Glorantha

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_...>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:37:52 -0600

Andrew Barton says:
>One thing I dislike about LoTR is the way that the whole race of orcs is
>presented as evil because they were made that way. Tolkein was a Christian
>and I'd have hoped he would allow for the possibility of an orc overcoming
>its background. No sentient being should be beyond the possibility of
>redemption.

        This has bugged me for years. It's occurred to me that Science Fiction and Fantasy, while generally "progressive" in tone, has always had this flirtation with racism (and class, of course) -- in a lot of novels, and moreso in games, birth is destiny. If you are playing a Dwarf, you will have high strength and constitution (or might and endurance or whatever), lower dexterity, be bad at magic, etc. Glorantha and its various systems, it seems to me, have been against that -- sure, there are racial and cultural trends: Uz are big and hungry, enlo are stupid, dwarves are "mechanical," Heortlings crude and ignorant, Black Oaks shifty, etc, but there are a lot of individual exceptions. Individual choices seem to matter in a way that is absent from a lot of fantasy worlds.

        Anyway, that's my feeling.

Peter Larsen