Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

[Nerd_Paladin]

...

Alright, listen. Fictional people are still people within the fictional universe.
If they are not, then there is no point to them.

Indeed. And if the fictional universe chooses to depict them as BAD people, exclusively, then that's valid within the confines of that universe. We may find it "unrealistic" and recognize that doing that is a storytelling device that we may or may not like, but it is not "racism."

Goblins have an INT score. They have a language. They are people. Sapient people with a culture.

Not reall; goblins aren't anything but an abstract concept of whatever the writer wants them to be. Mr. Burlew wants them to be like real people, and hundreds of game designers want them not to be, and each depiction is equally valid (though not necessarily as good, that's an opinion matter) within the confines of its own little world. But go on.

Why read fiction if you cannot become invested? And why suddenly lose the ability to be objective? I disagree with your views on how fiction is supposed to work. You should become invested, you should be able to imagine the characters as actual people and not cardboard cut-outs (that would be terrible character making), and the things that happen should make sense.

I didn't say don't become invested. I said don't become SO invested that you lose your sense of objectivity and start having the same emotional reaction to fictional characters as you would to real people. Why not do this? Because losing your objectivity ruins your power to assess the work, and almost always leads you to interpret it wrongly. This is, for example, why people tend to think of "Romeo & Juliet" as a great love story (which it isn't) rather than a cautionary tale (which it is; among other things).

This particular piece of fiction assumes an imposed DnD morality (which is not as Black and White as you claim. Black and White is two options, there were nine last time I played DnD, and even within those there are choices to be made.) on a world with characters that act like people rather than the NPC cutouts and the stock characters used by certain DnD players and DMs.

Which is fine in itself, except that work is, by the author's admission, supposed to be moralizing satirical tirade against the ethical ramifications of the source material. The problem with that is that those ethical ramifications only exist if you misinterpret the game material and/or run the game poorly. So he's satirizing a convention for it's misuse, which seems a little unfair to me. So I stand by my conclusion of yesterday; "The Order of the Stick" is a great story, but a poor satire.

In our world, no matter what any creature is, killing it for no reason is wrong. Some disagree, this comic and it's writer don't.

But fantasy gaming doesn't work the way our world does. In our world, killing people is wrong because people are complex beings, and all of them have some kind of value, even those who commit despicable acts. Not so in the fantasy world; in the fantasy world we may have creatures who are wholly evil with no redeeming qualities, if the writer so chooses for that to be the case.

Again, we may find this depiction "unrealistic" and recognize it for the cheap dramatic convenience that it is, but that's as far as it goes. At no point does it become analogous to "racism". To effect, we cannot take the position that "Fake evil monsters deserve equal rights too," (boy, good luck with THAT charity fundraiser...). If the comic intends to point out that that dramatic device is unrealistic...well, go nuts, but we all arrived at that station about a minute after the train left, so seems like much ado about noting to me.

Further, I would once again point out that anyone who plays fantasy games that consist of killing creatures for literally no reason is doing it poorly.

The world of the comic may have started as a humorous satire of a DnD world.

And now it's become an angry, moralizing satire of D&D and the various elements of the gaming habit that "disgust" the writer. He's got an axe to grind; that's his prerogative, as it is his story after all, and he's worked hard on it, but it's a misplaced agenda, if you ask me.