Killable Peoples
In some of the first adventures for D&D, there were certain people who were fair game to kill. Lots of people, actually. If you come across a goblin or an orc (or a bugbear, or a gnoll, or a troll, or a thoul), you simply murder them first and ask questions never. Nowadays, we moderns find this a bit grotesque. You’re killing orcs, a sentient group of people, for what reason exactly? Because they’re orcs, of course! Yeah, that doesn’t quite hold up to most people anymore. But if you slide into any given table playing dungeons and/or dragons, there are still usually some group of sentient humanoids that can be wantonly slayed, guilt-free. After all, it's a game about wantonly slaying creatures! I am not here to moralize about this–there is plenty of that elsewhere on the internet. It is your regular Thursday night game, and you are here to kill someone! But what I’d like to wax on about is what is says about a given setting when this or that humanoid is an open target for violence.
Zombies. The enemies are mindless and want to kill you! You’re really doing them a favor by killing them, and certainly doing yourself one. When I think of zombies as the default enemy type, I typically think of more modern post-apocalyptic settings, but it is a surprisingly versatile trope and can fit into more futuristic sci-fi and even more mythic fantasy (although, in my humble opinion, skeletons are better undead for fantasy settings than zombies. But that probably deserves its own post).
Wizards. I am using “wizard” here as a synecdoche for arcane magic users of all stripes. If characters are expected to kill witches, wizards and warlocks on sight, no questions asked, the setting is likely one where the organized, dominant powers are highly restrictive against obtaining forbidden knowledge. To me, this brings to mind a medieval Europe where if you wanted someone dead, you could simply accuse them of witchcraft. You could then set them ablaze with impunity in the name of God.
Robots. By which I refer to any artifical creations of mankind, be they golems or battledroids. Like zombies except now they aren’t even alive. And maybe we created them but not for this purpose. They must be deactivated because they are either malfunctioning or they are the pawns of some other evil force with the agency to program them as enemies. However, if even non-violent robots must be killed, perhaps it’s a setting like Dune or Blade Runner where there was some type of robot uprising so even a semi-sentient toaster needs to get blown up.
Orcs. I don’t mean just orcs, although they are the prime referent. Here, I just mean any quote unquote monstrous humanoid (which has its own history beyond mere fantasy). This also doesn’t indicate the setting is fantasy, as “orcs” easily describes super mutants in the Fallout universe. I am not talking about orcs that are murdered by virtue of some actions done by those specific orcs, but rather killing orcs because they are orcs. Even the monstrous children were presumed evil in early D&D adventures and, as Gary Gygax has quoted when asked about this “nits make lice”. If this is the case, you have a highly racialized setting, like in Lord of the Rings, where nations and (ethno)states are synonymous with their racialized populace. This isn’t just a village, it’s an elf village where the elves live and the elves are, of course, naturally, at war with the orcs, whom they hate, mutually.
Neanderthals. Neanderthals are a similar case as orcs, but orcs play up how different they are than the assumed human characters while neanderthals play up how similar they are. Neanderthals might be the default killable human in a prehistoric game where the players are tribes of early homo sapiens moving into territory of neanderthals or other now-extinct hominids and competing with them for resources (if you are reading this, you are a homo sapien. There were once a number of other species of humans, including neanderthals but your and my ancestors killed them). Frankly, I would be much more interested in a game where neanderthals are the enemy-other than orcs because it is like there is really no big difference between these groups, but we are caught in a cycle of competition for resources that will lead to one group dying out entirely. Isn’t that more interesting than “they’re green. Must kill them!”?
Mutants. This is also a play on the racialized enemy trope presented by orcs but in the opposite direction as the neanderthal idea. Here, there is some other group of humans that is evolving in ways that are new, strange and therefore threatening. Maybe this is a setting where people are mutating into some type of monsters and you are surviving non-mutated humans. This might be post-apocalyptic or some other variety of science fiction but doesn’t have to be. For instance, in the neanderthal vs homo sapiens setting I described above, the default killable human would be mutants (i.e., homo sapiens) who have begun invading your homeland if you play not as the homo sapiens but as the neanderthals.
Infidels. This isn’t just enemy combatants of rival faiths but all members of a rival faith. If these are a default killable human in your setting, it means some very high level of hostility between the two faiths. It brings to mind a setting based around crusades or some other holy war. This need not be medieval fantasy, as this is sort of the premise of Halo (as far as I understand it; I was a little child who just enjoyed the gameplay when I played those games and never consumed any of the ancillary media).
Guards. I am using this to refer to all manner of professional combatants: bodyguards, soldiers, police, detectives, and the like. It does matter what type you are facing off against to determine the details of the setting, but it really says less about the setting than about what role the protagonists likely play. If the default killable humans are soldiers, you may be playing as enemy troops, rebels (e.g., killing stormtroopers), guerilla forces, or even just oppressed peoples ready to become revolutionaries of some type. If they are police or detectives, perhaps you are some type of criminal organization. If they are hired goons of some industrialist, perhaps you are saboteurs or environmentalists. What it does tell me about the setting is that there is some old school law vs chaos dichotomy going on.
Druids. One of my early flop blog posts was all about using druids as villains. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but Goblin Punch had already beat me to the, uh, punch with 7 Myths Everyone Believes About Druids 7 years earlier. I like the aforementioned law vs chaos dichotomy, and druids present a slight tweak on that formula by opposing civilization (law) against nature (chaos). If druids are a valid target for your characters, it is because you in some way represent civilization. Perhaps you are explorers, industrials, settlers, or any other agent of colonization and conquest. Maybe you are Romans settling the British Isles. This is probably one of the less obvious enemy types on this list, but you should try it.
Cultists. This is a slightly different flavor of infidels, but that assumes rival faiths of relative symmetry. Such is not the case for cultists. Cultists as enemies isn’t necessarily a focus on their beliefs so much as their secretive nature. The iconic example is Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Where cultists are a default enemy, it means there is some conspiracy afoot. The players are not just fighting cultists, they are seeking truth, they are trying to uncover something larger than any individual with kooky beliefs.
Bandits. Again, I am not simply talking about highwaymen but of all sorts of criminals, from loveable smugglers to credulous assassins. This is the opposite of the “guards” example above. Here, you are the order and your enemies are the agents of chaos. You are the cop and you can kill the robbers with impunity. This is a dichotomy that works with almost any setting: you might be knights routing Robin Hood type bandits, or Stormtroopers executing rebels, or private investigators uncovering criminal and perhaps eldritch horrors. But even if you aren’t an agent of law, in most D&D campaigns, “bandit” is one of the assumed valid enemy combatants. But why? (It may be, as Luke Gearing argues, just how versatile an encounter 2d20 bandits can be.) If you haven’t already read my now-classic The Keep on the Borderlands is Full of Lies post, I recommend reading it (or even revisiting it) for my argument that the raiders/band of chaotic fighters in the wilderness need not automatically be your antagonists. That has always been the default for D&D, but perhaps we are ready to move beyond it as a matter of course just as we were ready to move beyond the automatically villainous orc.
Anyone. The setting is muderhoborealm where players are just fucking around and seeing what they can get away with. Sure, they might kill an orc or a bandit, but they’ll kill the butcher, baker and candlestick maker too. In my experience, this appeals to new players who are still getting used to the tactical infinity offered by TTRPGs. It doesn’t last for long, mercifully, because although it feels incredibly high agency at first, in comparison to video games and other media where your agency is limited at all, indiscriminate killing eventually feels low agency because being discriminating (in the sense of using judgement to make decisions, not like discriminating against orcs because they are green or cultists because they are weird) is what agency is all about. If it’s a game about killing, deciding who to kill, when, and why is part of the “fun”. Why is violence fun in the first place? C’mon, dude, I’m just a blogger, not your therapist.
