ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling

Not a chance, it didn't have a hint of Red Vs Blue

That's it! I just poked at the first episode and I sure damn did forget a lot.

Yeah, I thought that was standard? Maybe I'm in a bubble IRL.

I mean, in another comment I whine about people whining about orcs

I love him

Oh no

Very strong agree on this.

Sorry if my answer was off-topic. I thought you were asking about personhood in your personal games, because you made the statement that if a critter acts like a person that indicates you should treat it as a person. I personally agree, but I wanted to point out the fuzziness of personhood.

Looking back over my comment, I think I ended up rambling and only mostly saying anything. These are the points I wanted to express:

1. Personhood isn't objective fact, and every person at your gaming table has a different idea of what a person is.
2. Since only people count when making moral decisions, personhood is a bit of a touchy subject and doesn't get examined much. As a result, pretty much everyone thinks all the good people they know agree with their personal definition of personhood because disagreeing on that means you are Evil and Bad.
3. Because this is such a touchy subject, people are really sensitive to it. It's hard to make a work that interrogate personhood without it coming across as preachy, so if you want to interrogate it it's best to present them with a nuanced situation and let them make up their own mind without non-diagetic criticism nudging them in a direction
4. i also wanted to repeatedly emphasize that our fantasy tropes can be traced back to colonialist, imperialist, and often very racist tropes that were common in the 19th century, and a lot of more modernized fantasy tropes stemming from those old tropes can still be pretty yikes if you think about it for any period of time. Not something most players think about, but I think trying to improve on them is worthwhile.

Also, I should point out that in 2e, 1e, and ODnD, the phrasing was usually "Orcs tend towards chaotic evil due to the Rage of Gruumsh inclining them to solve all problems with violence" or "Elves are generally chaotic and will react to a party with suspicion or hostility". Back then, alignment was more about external relationships than your character, but this wasn't communicated well. The widespread misconception that alignment was about your internal character got enshrined in 3rd edition and then just got carried forward from then into later editions, which is really unfortunate. The point of alignment was supposed to be that good characters and evil characters don't get along, and the same with Lawful and Chaotic characters, even if their individual ethics don't actually overlap much. But that's not how most players see it, so now WotC has reacted to this with a full walkback on creature alignment in a way that kinda erases the little nuance that was left.

Dude, I live in the real world, I can only suspend my disbelief so much! I can't just forget how mules are made! The brain keeps thinking and it doesn't stop when I tell it to lol

Good point. This needs to be said more.

Nah I'm in my 20s, that's just what happens when you are super horny, aren't ashamed of it, but also don't know what sex is.

Oh, that's actually a pretty interesting question! Here's the thing: your players probably already think killing people is bad! The thing is, the word "people" is carrying a lot of weight there. For example, in shmup videogames (where the point is the excessive violence) usually the target of your killing spree is some caricature of a group the devs don't count as people, such as the KKK or WW2-era Nazis. This is also why modern shmups take place in the middle east and have you gunning down Al-Qaeda or ISIS or some other dehumanized boogeyman. It's not generally a distinction made consciously, and everyone sets the line differently. Lots of people I've met on Hexbear or Lemmygrad don't think cops and alt-right nazis are people, which I disagree with. And most people I know IRL definitely believe their pets count as people, which I understand is controversial.

My point here is to point out that we all at some point decided what counts as a person, and it's a touchy opinion that rarely gets examined. A less touchy equivalent is how many people have very different opinions on what counts as cheating, but are convinced that their opinion is objectively and inarguably correct. I think it's worth examining what is a person to you and why you decided that.

However, as a gamemaster you have to allow your players to make two choices:

1. Are the monsters we are fighting people or not?
2. Does my character agree with me?

Taking these choices away from them is not fun. However, if you want to encourage a particular outcome, you can put a finger on the scales through game design.

Old-school dungeon crawls dealt with this by making combat Not The Thing We Are Here For, since the players are playing as professional graverobbers who are here to hoover up anything that isn't nailed down and get the hell out, since you only gain xp for the gp value of the treasure you loot. If you have limited time and resources, Combat is a needless risk to be avoided. This usually results in players actively trying to negotiate with the sentient denizens of the dungeon for mutual profit.

A more narrative approach is to have the players be a part of a society that has opinions of orcs and goblins that mirror colonial-era America. If the players notice that their fellow citizens talk about dealing with goblins in terms of extermination and population control, they're probably going to have a "Are we the baddies?" moment unless they are either very dense or racist (and having played at a table with both, the difference between stupidity and racism is very obvious). It's also pretty cool to play as a freedom fighter, and a lot of groups will gravitate towards fighting against colonial oppression—but only if they feel if that choice is non-obvious and therefore they made the choice themselves; if fighting the power means opposing YOU, then thats what they will do, and we dont want an adversarial table, right?