First off, I'd like to thank you, NP, for the most interesting thread I've seen on this board, possibly ever. Thank you for keeping it thoughtful, on-topic and civil in the face of all responses.

Quote Originally Posted by Nerd_Paladin View Post
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.
I agree. Indeed, until I read Rich's first two responses to this thread, it would never have occurred to me to call it "satire" at all. I had taken it, and will continue to read it, for a thoughtful, if sometimes meandering, essay on the implications of the alignment system in general. Oh, and a great adventure story.

And it still seems to me that a pure "anti-racist" agenda doesn't work in a D&D settings, because there really are differences between the races that can't just be ignored. The leaders of any human or elvish country that allows Gobbotopia to exist in its present form, I would say, are grossly neglecting their duty. They're betraying their own children, and I don't see how you can get much more Evil than that.