Yes that’s a good point!

@@SupergeekMike I agree with what you send in this video. That being sead I find myself falling into this alot. I have a harder time writing . I tened to do heavy combat in my games making cities makes me nervous it is alot to think about. So I tend to stick to the wilds but I want to do more with this.

You described my D&D group lol we were all brand new, first time players who relied a lot on the book. And it’s super helpful!

This seems like the most important argument for the change.

And if Tolkien couldn't do it with something HE created, what hope do you think WoTC or anyone else is going to have? 😆

​@@Frabnoil then why do anything? why try to come up with any idea for yourself if nobody has done it yet. why try to do anything noone has ever done before, why try to go to mars? why are you going to wake up tomorrow if youve never done it before😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆

Source your bullshit.

To be fair, no god in middle earth, other than that one megagod, can actually truly create from scratch.

​@@Frabnoil Tolkien lived in a time when such questions weren't as popular and such. He was very progressive by his time, even if that progressivism is dated enough to be problematic by today's standard. It's important to acknowledge that we are standing on the shoulders of titans.

Sauron very famously had a very inclusive armies, but even though he had many countries and species 'united' their cultures weren't very diverse, mostly values around violence and power.

Oddly enough, Pathfinder, a more direct 3rd Edition derivative, also removed the usually/always label from statblock alignments. I guess to streamline things? It was helpful in differentiating things that are supernaturally evil from culturally/ideologically that way.

@@michaelramon2411 That is odd. I imagine it would be simple enough to have a spectrum of alignment terms that's easy to understand even to players who don't read the whole intro section of the Monster Manual. Maybe, "any alignment", "tends toward chaotic evil", "usually chaotic evil", and "innately chaotic evil"; the last being reserved for demons and the like.

That's very weird, because the word "always" means no exceptions, and the word "usually" means the exceptions are rare rather than nonexistent. It's just what those words mean.

​@Dont Misunderstand in 3e specifically the use of the word "always" in the alignment was reserved for creatures without souls or free will. Devils are always lawful evil. Demons are always chaotic evil. Celestials that look like angels are always lawful good. Celestials with animal heads are always chaotic good. Sladdi are always chaotic. Inevitables are always lawful. Undead are always evil. Those creature types had set immutable alignments because they were born from the energies of planes that had set and immutable alignments. Which is a design choice that sabotaged all attempts to bring Planescape to 3e.

In my opinion good and bad aren't inherent, and changes on viewpoints. If you think about angelic servants of a fire god who's prerogative is to spread fire they are still celestials but they are lawful at best. Btw there is a very good Pointy Hat video on celestials and angels especially where he rethinks them.

@@themonolougist , that's not how alignment works in D&D.

@@SamBrockmann So you are saying that there could not be evil celestials?

@@themonolougist , I am saying exactly that. Because that would cause them to cease to be celestial. Several prominent devils prove this.

@@SamBrockmann I call that infinitively unimaginative

Re: your first point, it does actually seem like they’re trending that way, even beholders and vampires are getting the “typically” in Spelljammer. And in fairness, folks have pointed out that I’ve listed angels and devils as “representing a specific alignment” but even those creatures can switch alignment, as we saw with Zariel (or, you know, Lucifer lol), so there’s no reason for them to be as hard-coded either! The main reason I listed them that way is purely because they represent very different fears than just “They’re different from us so we can kill them” - for example, mind flayers and slaadi represent fears of your agency being robbed and being converted into a monster. So my argument essentially is that their existence as pure-evil can still be dramatic and not lazy storytelling, as it is with tribal creatures being coded as evil. But of course, I’m not gonna say no to getting even more nuance in our monster books 😁

I basically came here to say this too. I'm not sure there *is* a hard line between humanoids and the Far Realm stuff, especially given how that stuff has origins in Lovecraft's racist stereotyping and paranoia. It's not exactly the same kind of problematic as colonialist tropes, but shows like Stargate SG-1 show how even parasitic mind-control worms don't *need* the bioessentialism treatment.

*cough* They already have in the past. Mind flayers used to be playable before, along with many other "monstrous" races.

I've played from way back and, well, old alignments were rather straightjackets, and purposefully so. Much of the game was that way, stats were rolled in order on just 3d6, classes and even races could require alignments, dwarves couldn't be wizzards, etc... It was all meant to force players to work with what they had and to make a DM's world easier in a black and white way. Still, not long after release writers and creators got to work subverting some aspects of the game. These days we're benefiting from decades of improvements and refinements, I say we keep going. Now, back to working on my magepunk world where the orks have organized into labor unions and the kobolds are trying to make more inroads into the legal practices.

Specific traits of the race can make them inherently evil. For example, the natural reproductive process for the Mindflayers make them necessarily evil, in order for their race to survive at all. The real questions arise with claims of certain races being inherently good, because there's really no possible way for a race with any agency to be born good.

I get the too-literal-translation of "dark elves" to dark skin color, but that has always bothered me for biological reasons. I'm sure those early authors were not consciously racist, and that never bothered me. But creatures that stay that far from the sun should develop an albino appearance. If they'd done the biologically sensible route, we wouldn't have this parallelism problem with drow!

About the game on early versions and the cultures being more flexible, it's also worth noticing that Gigax himself wrote the game with this vision. His "random Orc Enemy" template was Evil, sure, but most of the Named Orc NPCs from that time were actually Neutral. His vision of "Aligments arent about morality but about beliefs" made it in a way that a lot of NPCs could be seem as Evil just because they didnt stand against it (in the Orc / Goblinoid case, quite literally). When you're forced to worship a Devil you become "Evil", but you can change it once you're free. The problem is less a "80's works are more binary in the choices" and more "the Kids and teenagers who played in the 80's werent capable of understanding the shades of grey"... Gygax made a point showing lots of "non generic aligment" NPCs (specially so for the more problematic ones) wishing people understood that they had the freedom to do the same, but nost of the readers stills taking it as "this means there's only those two / three guys that diverge, everything else is (generic aligment for the race/species)"

@@hawkname1234 never put your biology chocolate in the fantasy peanut butter. If you do that then you have dragons that can't fly or have breath weapons or giants that can stand up under their own weight.

@@albertonishiyama1980 this is very true. We certainly had plenty of evil druids and by RAW they were supposed to be neutral.

@@elfbait3774 but chocolate peanut butter cups are great, just got to get the ratio of each right. Too much fantasy and it’s nonsensical. Too much real life and then it’s just Sci-fi

This is a VERY SIGNIFICANT point that, quite frankly, was missed entirely. The MM leans quite hard towars Forgotten Realms. So does Volo's Guide to Monsters. (Volo is a NPC who originated in the Forgotten Realms.) But those books are presented as if their material should apply to every D&D setting ever. Now, to be fair, that's how EVERY D&D book is presented, even the ones where it's clear said book is setting specific. (For example, the Eberron books have sidebars telling you how to include the material presented in Forgotten Realms or in the Magic The Gathering settings, despite Eberron material fitting neither.) But that's really the whole problem. These books do not differentiate well between settings, even if they're presented as setting specific. Every new setting book is simply an excuse to add more content everywhere. That's really why we got into this jam in the first place. What would have been much better is if WotC presented each D&D setting in a more complete and comprehensive manner. Then the conversation wouldn't be, "Why did Drow used to have the default alignment of Neutral Evil?"; instead, it would be, "Are Drow in the Forgotten Realms presented well as individuals and as a society?". (As a sidenote, my answer to that second question would be a hard no.) Of course, that takes more work.

Yeah, it's more a problem of WotC trying to give less setting details. Plus there's also the inscrutable evil like Mind Flayers where they ARE not good no matter what you are even if you are on their side they see you as food unless you can be useful in other ways. I'll eat you later. But that is also no different from humans eating chickens. (You may argue that chickens aren't sentient, but the Mind Flayer could argue humans aren't sentient either.) Good/evil alignment tends to be subjective to the POV you are looking from. And that's what I take the monster manual alignments as from the POV of the standard person living in that world.

@verdantmistral442 , I think that's absolutely true of some settings. Forgotten Realms is a good example. Now, what about the Planes? Clearly, Planar creatures are cosmically a certain alignment. But also, if you have a human who ends up in the Abyss, then that human becomes corrupted by the chaotic evil nature of the Abyss. Planar settings are arguably some of the most clear in terms of how alignment works. The big issue is, we haven't got much interaction in the currently published settings with the Planes. (The Magic The Gathering settings stuff doesn't count, because MtG Planes aren't alignment based so much as based on colors of Magic.) Again, WotC doesn't want to flesh out settings to include Planar stuff.

Exactly that! I think thats the best of both worlds tbh. Keep things simple, keep things fair.

Exactly! And ooh wait, you can’t leave us hanging, I wanna know more about the aasimar!

@@SupergeekMike Basically, she had some sort of premonition of calamity and knew she needed an army to fight it, but to get the clout for such resources she needed to be seen as a hero. So she started charming monsters to attack local cities for her and her friends to fight, ala Syndrome from the Incredibles. It was pretty tragic how she genuinely believed it was a necessary evil, and was particularly personal to the party because (most of us) grew to really like her and look up to her before the reveal, and we're really close with her party who are naturally not handling it well.

@@sagesaria Hell yes, that rules.

yeah but sometimes we want a bunch of evil monsters to kill this is vegan 'it has a face' kind of thinking ... you are still killing life if its a swarm of insects or a swarm of goblins

@@Xenibalt Removing the default of "all of these creatures are evil by default" doesn't mean you can't give the villains a motivation that makes them evil. We don't feel bad when Bruce Willis kills the terrorists from "Die Hard," yet nobody seriously argues that the film is about how Germans are all evil. The film even makes it clear that the East German government has disavowed Hans Gruber, so canonically the film tells us that this has nothing to do with Hans being German. It's a very small amount of nuance, but it helps promote slightly more interesting villains (even if they still aren't complex, they're still more interesting than a swarm of insects) and helps prevent players from becoming murderhobos who slaughter everyone they see who is from a certain heritage. Obviously if that doesn't bother you, then don't worry about it, it's your game. But something "having a face" doesn't mean it's bad to kill. There are, like, hundreds of Punisher comics about some of the most vile human beings in fiction getting exactly what they deserve in extremely graphic ways.

Ugh that sucks, it’s never fun when a game falls apart, but when something THAT avoidable happens, it’s so much more of a bummer. Sorry to hear that ♥️

Sounds like a particular nasty case of a player using metagame knowledge (i.e. knowing that in the DMG Drow are typically evil) to choose their character's actions in a bad way. I'd LOVE to have Drizzt Do'Urden and his panther Guenhwyvar come charging into the room to protect and defend his old friend the Archivist from the racist murder hobo that just attacked them and of course Drizzt would crush the player character and then drag them off to prison/dungeon/etc. for the player character's trial on attempted murder of a high ranking city official. Get's the point across not all Drow are evil, that there's consequences for their character's actions, makes clear that sort of metagaming will not be tolerated at the table, and could keep the story going and lead to an opportunity for some major character growth from the player character.

That would have been a good opportunity to stop the game and talk things out rather than letting them play out at the table. If you really want this game to get back together you could give it a try by bringing the players together again and talking things out, explaining your position and world building and how attacking that archivist was wrong. If they can all agree to that, you can still totally retcon back to that original interaction and continue the game. If the player that decided to attack refuses to see sense you can always kick that player in particular if they insist on being a murder hobo and continue the game with the others. You have options!

To me the point isn’t what Dnd 5e is saying, it’s the way their saying it. I heard very few people say “hey, if we remove base alignment it can make more realistic and nuanced worlds.” I heard “base alignment is inherently evil and if you think Orcs are evil your racist” The second one is stupid. It’s a fake race, and trying to call me racist for making a fake race be evil is dumb. It’s also dumb for me to say you are stupid for trying to make the the dnd universe more nuanced. At the end of the day though, I side with the people who want certain races to have certain alignments. Why? Because that’s the baseline. It’s been like that since dnd 3.5 at least, as well as almost all mythology and modern media. Unless there’s a legitimately good reason to change something, don’t change it. No one has provided me with good reasons why it’s bad to make orc evil, until they do, why change it?

Colville's video about why everyone loves the undead basically boils down to this. No moral quandaries when it's a skeleton fueled by evil magic.

I remember playing Storm Kings Thunder, and we needed stuff some Barbarian tribes had. The group anticipated hostilities, especially after just recently offing several Berserkers and their leader (a woman). My Druid, normally brief with words, suddenly piped up with a plan: We cut off the leader's head, and take it back to her Tribe. No one of course saw how this would avoid a fight. So my Druid explains that these tribes may be violent and racist, but they had a respect for nature that informed their beliefs. If we were to be meek and bow for forgiveness, they would see that as weakness. If we marched in, and showed the Head of their most secure person among them it would show that we were strong. A wolf may revile a bear, but it will bend to its will because it is wise enough to see the difference in strength. They still didn't think it would work, but it did, much to the Lawful party members chagrin. The tribe was even grateful to an extent because of how awful their leader had been.

If memory serves, 3e's Races of the Underdark is explicit that drow aren't born evil, they're raised to be evil. Their society is a theocracy in the grip of an evil goddess, and it's so dysfunctional that it only survives because of literal divine intervention; you either get vicious or get killed. It's easy to end up "evil" by our standards if you live in a Hobbesian trap. Historically, that includes many if not most tribal societies and herding cultures, which makes tribal-coded D&D races a bit of a minefield.

Sure, but then why even have an entry for monster alignments? It’s like noting “not applicable”, it gives no useful information.

@@KaliFortuna Some of them may not have meaningful free will. In fact many may not.

@@rainick actually I’d argue that creatures without free will are the ones that shouldn’t have an alignment, since they’re not capable of making ethical decisions one way or another.

@@KaliFortuna Just because they don't make the decision they are still aligned with one of those alignments, assuming you are using an alignment system.

Totally right. Alignment is meant to be two-dimensional and it just is. If you want to push the boundaries of the make-believe game just do it, WotC aren't going to bust down your door for that

That’s a good point, in the video I describe angels as a creature with a firm alignment…. But there’s a pretty famous story in the Christian tradition of an Angel who definitely didn’t keep his alignment so even they don’t need to be set in stone lol

@@SupergeekMike that’s an excellent point! There also a spoiler plot detail involving a certain Kingmaker character that services this non axiomatic variety of angels. it’s always been out there if people looked for examples.

The gnolls of the Forgotten Realms setting I think stand apart from other humanoids, they fall more into devil or mind-flayer territory as they are essentially demon-spawn that are driven by an insatiable hunger to kill and consume, and they reproduce by turning regular hyenas into more gnolls. In other settings though, they may be more like other people. I think they're more like other humanoids in Eberron, and in my home setting they are playable hyena-people with a typically evil culture that they regularly break away from.

Also, Drizzt could have easily replied "so why am I still alive? Aren't drows evil too?"

Thank you so much! I never read Paolini, I just hadn’t really heard much about it until I was much older and reading much less often, but his books are on my list out of curiosity - but this is a full-on recommendation! I’m looking forward to checking that one out and seeing how it reinforces these concepts 😁

@@SupergeekMike The inheritance series is pretty good. Definitely the work of a teenage writer, but he does a great job of telling a compelling story. The things I talked about with the Urgals takes until about book 2-3 to really get into it, but it does get there. And if you like his work in the Inheritance series, I am reading his new book "To Sleep In a Sea of Stars" which is also pretty good. All of these are on Audio books, don't know if you consume books that way, but I have found it very helpful to get back into "reading"

Heres an idea, you are a half orc mercenary who is hired by your local lord to wipe out a goblin camp. You do, mercilessly slaughtering the goblins but then there's a goblin baby and all the sudden you have second thoughts. Kinda like an inverse of keep on the borderlands.

Thank you so much!

I agree. I always read the alignment in the manual to mean that the evil humanoid was evil because of the society/culture it resided in and then just reduced that to evil meaning just 'hostile' to outsiders. They didn't nessacerily have to be genetically evil but maybe informed by their society to be that way or in the case or were just more naturally predisposed to more negative behaviour due to evolutionary pressure which kept those Races/Species alive or influenced by outside forces.

Thank you so much!! ♥️

That’s a good point, it hadn’t occurred to me! But of course, that’s the point, we often don’t think about how our ableism colors our biases. Thank you so much for sharing ♥️

Oooh I like it!

😂

I think it would! Honestly, anything that helps clarify that these cultures aren’t monolithic is a great step.

imgur.com/RSWZrUg

@@SupergeekMike thank you kindly (off to plot my players demise)

I love these details about the yuan-ti! But it also sucks that the judgement is on the face for so many people you’ve encountered - that’s such a huge bummer.

Ten years before that, we were also debating them! The debates have progressed and broadened over the intervening years, but yeah, they're not new.

@@aaronghunter Yep, I remember "the grognards" back in my day going at it with uncharacteristic gusto xD

Thank you!!

Thank you so much ☺️

(The idea being that nobody thought to tell this poor guy that he's not a dwarf. His parents have this "Wait, I thought you told him!" thing)

As I wrote in another comment, I made an entire orc nation based on the Romans. As violent as they are, they are very methodical and their civility and cold strategy makes them way more menacing in war. Then there's another nation who only respects those who can fight man to man, and one of the prerequisites to have a meeting with them is to "prove your worth" (usually by killing one of the animals they farm, bred to be bigger and more aggressive than they would be in nature). They're not evil, they're not even that warmongering (unlike the Roman-orcs) they just really like fighting, and can be friendly to those who prove their valor in battle.

Also I agree, I don't think coding an entire playable race as evil was a good much less as necessary.

Happy to address this, because I appreciate that not everybody understands where I’m coming from; I know some people feel that discussions of politics don’t belong in unrelated videos. But one thing I’ve noticed is that, if I’m not explicit about what my beliefs are, it’s all too easy for someone to assume I’m in their camp when I don’t condone their beliefs. As an example, someone on Twitter reached out to me a few months ago and said they were SURE, based on my videos, that we’d enjoy playing D&D together. But his profile was full of truly toxic QAnon conspiracy content and absolutely monstrous beliefs. And I realized it was my responsibility to be more explicit about where I stand on a lot of the most important issues, so the folks like him understand that I do not represent a haven or an ally for their toxic beliefs. But to your other point, that I’m painting a broad generalization of Republicans… well, first, I don’t make comments about the voters, simply the leadership. It’s why I often use words like “Republican Party,” and even when I say “Republicans” I’m usually referring to the leaders of the party. And given the direction that the Republican leadership (and by extension, the Republican Party) has gone in the past few years alone, I can only say that I consider them to be the single greatest threat to America today. Every recent Republican policy is either obstructionist (making sure Democratic politicians can’t pass reasonable gun safety laws or health care for all or getting rid of student loans), or actively dangerous. For example… Getting rid of Row v. Wade will lead to many, many pregnant people dying because they can’t get abortions safely. Statistics consistently show that criminalizing abortions doesn’t reduce the number of abortions, because people don’t get abortions recreationally - they’re a medical need. And removing safe access only leads to more harm, potentially irreversible harm, to pregnant people. Republicans campaign on a platform that demonizes transgender people. This actively escalates the rate of hate crimes against trans people (who are already not having an awesome time). Additionally, Republican policies on immigration are often cruel and xenophobic. The most recent, most glaring example was when Ron DeSantis flew migrants legally seeking asylum to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt, sending them to an island with no infrastructure for new residents and setting many of them up with appointments in the following days at offices across the country that they had no chance of making, especially since they were told to register with the wrong agency, apparently on purpose. And this cruel and illegal act still did nothing to deter the fact that DeSantis is the front runner for the Republican nominee for President. Because the Republican Party does not run on ideas, they run on culture war B.S. that often specifically targets marginalized communities. Republicans fight against any sort of gun control, and deny the fact that mass shooting statistics overwhelmingly reflect the fact that spree shooters are almost always radicalized by conservative rhetoric. Republicans fight against climate change and try to insist that it’s not the greatest existential threat to the world, when the science simply doesn’t support them. They keep moving the goalposts because they receive support from oil companies and coal lobbies and the like. Republicans push gerrymandering practices and restrict voting laws because they are intimately familiar with the fact that, when Black people vote in America, they overwhelmingly vote for Democrats (not because Democrats get things done, but because they’re the only option that isn’t actively trying to make the nation worse). This has been true for decades, but in the past few years they’ve become much more brazen in how openly they discuss their goals to keep people from voting in order to try to cheat at elections. Speaking of which, Republicans are too cowardly to speak out against Trump’s election lies, which led to a new wave of election deniers running for office. And many, MANY Republicans on the ballot this November explicitly said, if elected, they would “ensure Republicans never lost another election” by making it easier to cheat in 2024 and subsequent elections. Republicans still, to this day, try to fight gay marriage and other LGBT+ causes, because they simply think of gay people as less than straight people, it’s clear not only from their policies but also from their rhetoric. Republicans continue to block health care for all, which means private insurance companies continue to drain the funds of those who seek medical care, especially when it comes to those with pre-existing conditions. And as we saw from the pandemic, Republican leaders don’t care if people die as long as they keep making money. They said this, out loud, on Fox News. Republicans deny vaccines, then have to switch and shift gears because their voters kept dying of a preventable illness, but they’ve still been unable to put that genie back in the bottle. Because the rhetoric of their movement is deliberately anti-intellectual. It has been for years, as they target the “elites” as the enemies and deny science on every issue, they’ve created a culture where their voters refuse to believe in a life-saving vaccine because somebody’s aunt shared a Facebook meme about Bill Gates putting microchips in vaccines or something - and Republican politicians are so scared of alienating those voters (maybe because they stormed the capital, more likely because they don’t want to lose their votes) that they can’t help themselves but to continue to further misinformation. Here’s a helpful comparison: Democratic policies aren’t always perfect, I won’t deny that, but their ultimate goal is to help people. Republican policies, if they pass, will absolutely and unambiguously lead to more death and suffering. Most of my friends are members of groups who are legitimately threatened by the rhetoric Republican leaders use, and their lives would become immeasurably worse if more of their policies were signed into law. We’re all accountable for our votes. I am not fond of Biden (I would’ve much preferred Bernie or Elizabeth Warren, they’re not perfect but their policy goals would improve the lives of all Americans and they generally practice what they preach), but I voted for him because he was the only option to try to get the political policies I hoped for - and while he dragged ass on a lot of them, he eventually got some good stuff done. The Inflation Reduction Act has a clickbait name that has nothing to do with inflation, but it tackles climate change from dozens of different directions, which is absolutely what the country needs at this point. I don’t know what platform a Republican voter is voting for at this point, but I know that if my political party was driven by leaders who pledged the make the nation “better” by making marginalized people suffer, I would think twice about voting for them. The Democratic Party is a mess and it sucks that it’s the only viable way to try to get some of these policies put through. But I honestly think the Republican Party is the greatest threat to our country, and to the people I love. So, ultimately, I have plans to stop bashing them anytime soon. I best for all of us that you know where I stand on these issues.

@@SupergeekMike Thank you for taking the time to respond. I see where you are coming from. I just don't see the need of driving a wedge further between those two political parties. While I may identify, more as a republican, I don't agree with how they go about a lot of things. I think there is a better, kinder, middle ground between the two extremes where a truly better America exists. In a perfect world, I think many of the Democratic parties goals are great! But we don't live in a perfect world and bad people, on both sides will take advantage of whatever system is in place and use it for their own gain. That's why I just... don't like politics being added into these videos, but I do see why you do so. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Please know, we are not all evil aligned monsters. I appreciate your content, regardless. Just think of me please, when you word your jokes? I promise I don't mean ill.

@SupergeekMike - depending on the backstory for your drow, a non-evil motivation for drow to be antagonistic could be something like the drow were driven underground in the distant past because they lost a war with the other elves (motivations/ideology/etc of the war don’t matter so it’s not a clear cut good vs evil war) and are now trying to reclaim a place on the surface for their race and/or seeking revenge or recompense for how their ancestors were treated. Non-evil orc antagonist motivation, if going with them being a tribal society - maybe they’re pushing back against the neighbouring ‘civilised’ nation’s acts of colonialism? Maybe even something like said ‘civilised’ nation plundered the temples the orcs worship in (these could either be ruins of an older civilisation that the orcs have moved into after the fact and started worshiping, or things they’ve built themselves) for artefacts and the orcs are just trying to get them back. Could even be used as part of an ethical dilemma for PCs; have the players playing Indiana Jones analogues and confront them with the dilemma of do they go through with continuing to ‘save’ the archeological finds for a museum, or do they return them to the orcs who are the rightful owners. Hob-goblins are fairly easy; just slot them in as one of your civilised nations. If you have a map with half a dozen human kingdoms, three dwarf kingdoms and a couple of elf kingdoms with all of them being no more or less evil or good than the others, then just make one of the human ones a hobgoblin kingdom instead. And the reason they’re antagonists in your game just becomes because that’s how the political climate is; the kingdom your PCs are aligned with is antagonistic with them because of political reasons and would be even in the original draft where they were a human kingdom.

Humans burnt down our trees and now it is waaaaaah

Check out Burning Wheel Orcs

Drow are probably the easiest. They're an intelligent, long-lived group of people, who live (canonically) in an extremely dangerous, nearly inhospitable area. As a society, they ought to be looking for safety and secure resources more than anything else. As a society, they're probably needing to pretty regularly get to the surface to gather things that are scarce underground (e.g. wood) and are pretty terrified of their neighbors. There are many obvious societal goals; for an individual, you have the whole of the Underdark at your disposal as well. Maybe a loved one has been made the thrall of an aboleth. Maybe they are trying to get revenge on the mind flayers that destroyed their village. Maybe they just want to escape the horrors of the Underdark and leave peacefully above-ground. Orcs? I like the reverse perspective Lord of the Rings. You have a society that lives in a ****hole area like Mordor that's lacking in basically anything of value except maybe metals. Even a small turn for the worse, like a drought, would be enough to cause some serious harm to these people, and it's only natural that they would look to expand into the much richer neighboring areas in the face of starvation. So a leader of these people might be looking simply to expand their territory. Or they might be looking for some magical artifact that would gain them advantage in a coming war. Or even an artifact that might allow them to affect the weather in the area so it will be more fertile where they live. Most wars, historically, have boiled down to resources anyway, so grounding conflicts in an understandable real-world problem is a very natural way to create conflict that makes sense rather than having one people being evil-for-the-sake-of-evil.

Drow aren't a race but cultish elves that have succumbed to a misanthropic view of the world do to their long lives nature, their despair has corrupted them and they seek to end the world and all the evil in it. Drow are childless and not a race because they're actually just an elvish cult.