Goblins!

I would furthermore observe that no one is under any obligation to suppress their personal interests or areas of expertise when it comes to roleplaying in a fantasy world. So if you have people who are interested in things like moral philosophy and anthropology then making "Otyughs are people, of a sort, too" a recurring theme because "my players like talking to the Otyughs" is a sensible thing to do.

A game world is not a real place, and if it's a choice between making it more engaging and interesting or more realistic and plausible, I will always err for the former.

Honestly, my interpretation is that "magic exists, and is a force we can harness" allows for people in Pathfinder to very easily solve a great number of problems that we struggle with even in the 21st century. Like a single 13th level Kinetic Chirugeon can, at zero personal cost, cure the blindness of anybody who comes to them in a single action and has been able to do the same with diseases for 6 levels now (the recipient of the kinetic healing accepts the burn and is told to go sleep it off, they will be 100% after a good rest.) Places that get organized can wipe out a hunger, disease, and poverty given sufficient will to do so.

Of course, since this is supposed to be a heroic setting we can't have all the problems already solved before the PCs get there, but the potential to solve them is a lot more accessible in fantasy land than in the real world.

Flip side, "Hey I have the power to make fire appear basically anywhere I want. And that old slob Banner keeps letting his sheep graze on my fields. Hmmm..., DEAR! I'm just going to ...go for a short walk. I'll be back for dinner"

Humanity has proven time and again to use things for good and evil. Or "Our good" or "My own reasons". I see no reason to think a fantasy setting will have everyone working for the betterment of everyone with magic when you can also just as easily bend others to your will due to the same spell list.

Outside of adventurer dangers of course but there's not much of a game or story if there's not some sort of threat over the players.

I would say though that a person in the game world who is aware of magic, and what it can do, who then considers both the positive and negative potential when put to use would quickly come to the realization that the most effective problems to solve in terms of "accomplishing desired outcomes" are philosophical or sociological problems.

Since you can't stop the neighborhood 5th level wizard from hurling fireballs at all of the various annoying neighbors, but you can make him not want to do so, perhaps by trying to forge more harmonious relationships with neighbors.

Because magic exists means that most of the solutions to problems are not technological ones- they are problems whose solutions begin with thoughts and words.

Is this the actual case or are you purposely being fecicous?

1. *Facetious

But that doesn't impact the basic direction the people who write them have been steering them in- nor where they may continue to take them in the next year or two.

I would say though that a person in the game world who is aware of magic, and what it can do, who then considers both the positive and negative potential when put to use would quickly come to the realization that the most effective problems to solve in terms of "accomplishing desired outcomes" are philosophical or sociological problems.

Since you can't stop the neighborhood 5th level wizard from hurling fireballs at all of the various annoying neighbors, but you can make him not want to do so, perhaps by trying to forge more harmonious relationships with neighbors.

Because magic exists means that most of the solutions to problems are not technological ones- they are problems whose solutions begin with thoughts and words.

Spellcraft is trained and Knowledge arcana is trained so DC 10 or lower. Seems people dramatically overestimate what the average person knows about magic in pathfinder.

I am very glad that goblins have been made a core race. It's not the in-character racism that bothers me, however. (Though, the idea that everybody, everywhere, no matter what would be irrationally compelled to kill a goblin character on sight and chase adventuring parties out of town seems way too over the top.)

No, it's the out-of-character stuff that bothers me. Because those who say that all goblins (or drow, or orcs, or whatever else) have to be evil (or one-of-a-kind rarities) are saying that the stereotypes are an all-encompassing reality. Though this is about fictional characters, this thought process never leads to a good place.

At the very least, you're limiting yourself as a storyteller. Because, if you resist stereotyping real people, but let yourself stereotype these characters, you're basically saying they are one-dimensional characters who are little more than robots. Doing this is cutting yourself off from so many potential story threads. They don't even have to be big ones, just a bit of variety and individual personality in enemies can go a long way.

Worse, though rarer, I've seen players who believe real people fall into stereotypes, as well. I've actually had people argue with me saying 'All drow are evil just like all...' <racist stereotype cut because I refuse to dictate it>.

I'm cool with goblins having an evil culture, I'm just happy there's more room for interesting characters that break the mould. Because there should, by the nature of them being sapient beings, be many of them.

I have always believed this, and it's the reason it took me until late last year to get into Pathfinder heavily. I didn't like the stereotypes in Dungeons & Dragons, and an initial peek into Pathfinder seemed to have the same problem. I still played it, but more for the tactical side of things than the story. As a result, I hadn't bought a lot of books or really invested in it. However, when I found the Redeemer archetype on the SRD late last year I realized that this world is far more interesting than I gave it credit for. (Once I gave it a chance, as well, this was evident in so much more than that as well.)

I may never play a goblin, but the idea that the game doesn't treat them as a homogenous whole makes me happy.

I feel like the poison M+M analogy fits in instances where the majority of the species fits the goblin stereotype but there happens to be some "civilized" ones.

Wow, there are a lot of responses to this thread, which is...not that surprising, honestly. Admittedly it's a trivial issue on the surface, especially in comparison to all the other substantive reasons why people might be leery of PF2. There are a lot of issues that bulk larger in the whole conception of the game, certainly. But this does have the potential to become a a synecdoche for what a lot of people don't like about PF2, so on that level it's an instructive debate.

One of the things people seem to be objecting to is that the devs are removing the "Pathfinderyness" of the game and moving it dramatically and obviously toward 5e (to name a single competitor), but in a larger sense that's a debate about changing toward other things already on the market instead of standing its ground.

Paizo's goblins were always just about the last humanoid race you could imagine being core because they were completely insane, bloodthirsty, sociopathic pyromaniacs. Now they're just Kender (like Kender weren't annoying enough the first time around). It's taking a point of distinction away and deliberately regressing toward the mean.

It's not like it's surprising though, as this process has been going on since the first publication of Golarion. They already took out the two aspects of Golarion that were the most interesting to me personally. 1) Erastil being a LG chauvinist pig -- that's an awesome idea, a LG god whose views are so retrograde that he actually makes you angry, but he's still a lawful good deity, and 2) the Cult of the Dawnflower and Taldor, which is another great idea -- an aggressive cult of a good deity who does horrific things in the name of spreading the faith. There's a vast amount of story potential around that; in fact, I'd say that was the most interesting point about Golarion. There are many more examples I could cite, but to be honest I stopped paying much attention to Golarion a few years ago. It's useful to remember that Golarion really is a generic fantasy world of the kind we've been seeing since Forgotten Realms at least. At the beginning there were a lot of interesting bits attached to it that differentiated it from the ordinary (paladins of Asmodeus, anyone?), but since publication Paizo has been busily retconning those points out of existence.

Many years ago I read an observation that is really salient to this conversation. My own personal knowledge of this specific topic is limited, far more so than the writer I'm citing (sadly I can't recall his name -- pretty sure it was a man...does that narrow it down?) but it scanned right as confirming things I'd already observed. In essence, a study of the history of RPG publishing shows that the first edition of any game system or game world has a lot of weird, funny angles that mark it out as something unique, something that's very much an idiosyncratic vision. The second edition removes most of those aspects in favor of more generic and common mechanics or flavor. Each succeeding edition goes further down that road. New editions are a relentless march toward the mediocre mean until everything's just an indistinguishable mass with every other game out there. This isn't universal, of course; some games and settings stubbornly maintain their uniqueness. But it's the case with a lot of things, and I think we're receiving a lot of indications that PF2 will be walking that same road. "People like goblins, therefore goblins are core and have an iconic and everything" is highly emblematic of that march to the mean, and I think people are sensing it and rebelling against it.

It is, of course, possible to say that GMs can make any modifications they desire in their individual games, but that ignores the dominant role Golarion plays in the game (development and play alike). Many, many aspects of Pathfinder are explicitly tied to that world, Society on down to APs, and it sounds like Golarion is getting baked in even further going forward. That does limit the game's flexibility and ease of use, especially when the GM has to be eternally vigilant about whether a new feat, trait, spell, class, or whatever is going to blatantly clash with their established world by virtue of being inextricably tied to the default setting. IOW, the more work you need to do to turn the default game into a game you want to play, the less reason there is to pick that game in the first place.

My $0.02. I'll fade back into the woodwork now.

** spoiler omitted **

I just avoid things in my games that I don't consider fun or interesting, things that either I or my players would find upsetting to an unfun degree, and things that nobody is particularly interested in exploring.

I don't see how "there's no racism" is more implausible than "dragons exist" and selective realism is a real pitfall in this game.

** spoiler omitted **

While you're entitled to your own opinion and to running your own games any way you like, drilling in on other people for not agreeing with your playstyle is not appropriate for these boards.

Especially in a completely unrelated blog discussion!

In keeping with the discussion and trying to pull it back closer to topic:

Racism exists in my games—in the bad guys. People who aren't bad people are not inherently racist in my campaigns. They are open to people being good or bad and not judging them. Why? Because that's how my players and I like it.

So are goblins evil in my campaigns? Most, yes. They are culturally evil and always have been. But there has been over the past ten years more and more non-evil goblins showing up here and there. Very few to be sure, but they do make the occasional appearance. And goblin PCs have been around for quite some time. So I see the people of Golarion treating goblins the way they treat orcs and half-orcs: with suspicion and on guard, but not "slay immediately." And that I find works well with Pathfinder lore and my personal gaming tastes.

This is a fantasy world; it can be whatever we want it to be.

No, I mean this seriously- what reasons are there to justify "kill all the human bandits, it's fine" could not be reused with minimal alteration for "kill all these orcs, it's fine"?

Like sure you could make an argument whether lethal force is justifiable in a self-defense situation if you *could* have dealt with the problem otherwise, but we don't do that when the party is beset by bandits, to say nothing of all those "evil cult" meetings that PCs are fond of breaking up with swords and arrows and fire and that sort of thing. At no point does the skin color or parentage of the bandits or cultists actually matter.

Seems like a lotta people here are really dedicated to making sure racism is a part of both the official game

Not really, we just understand that the official setting already HAS it. It's not about inclusion but its current existence [and since no major changes are happening between the new game] and the new one.

Though, the idea that everybody, everywhere, no matter what would be irrationally compelled to kill a goblin character on sight and chase adventuring parties out of town seems way too over the top.

Not irrational when every bit of lore paints them in a light that makes it a rational expectation.

Because those who say that all goblins (or drow, or orcs, or whatever else) have to be evil (or one-of-a-kind rarities) are saying that the stereotypes are an all-encompassing reality. Though this is about fictional characters, this thought process never leads to a good place.

No one's saying all goblins are evil: we're saying most people have no idea that a non-evil goblin is possible and nothing they have ever known would lead them to think otherwise.

I'm cool with goblins having an evil culture, I'm just happy there's more room for interesting characters that break the mould. Because there should, by the nature of them being sapient beings, be many of them.

It's the setting that has painted the race in a single way, not the players or the storytellers. I for one have no issue with a goblin 'bucking the trend'. My issue is with people assuming people in the world would have some idea it's possible without something that changes the narrative.