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

[Baelzar]

The one which has the game effect of, "Everything that isn't one of the player races can be killed on sight without further consideration." Rhetoric aside.

I'm talking about goblins, here. What are you talking about?

[Kish]

I'm talking about goblins, here. What are you talking about?

Oh, I didn't realize that goblins were so much worse than, say, kobolds and orcs in your house rules.

[B. Dandelion]

rbetieh-

It is a very frequent story progression to move from "black and white morality" (we the good guys kill the evil guys) and to expand into increasing shades of gray (the bad guys have a reason for being bad, some of our guys have done bad things too), but not making an entire race of beings be evil doesn't impede that progression. For one, an organization can stand in the place of a race very easily. For another, it is perfectly possible to set things up so that people will simply assume the antagonists are evil at first. That PLANNED progression is different from simply starting with an evil group and then retroactively changing it because it got boring.

I came down on you for Avatar because I thought it was really freaking obvious the planned progression was what they were going for -- the main characters had a lot of understandable hostility towards the antagonists, but they were never an "always chaotic evil" bunch. It took some of the protagonists a while to wrap their heads around it, but it was really obvious that any assumptions along those lines were only there for the specific purpose of knocking them down later on. (And Zuko's face turn was so transparently inevitable that to actually surprise the audience they wound up having to delay it.)

You really think striking lines like "always chaotic evil" is going to "cheat" people out of the full experience? Even if they're associated with typically villainous activities? You can have a bunch of goblin raiders running around antagonizing folk, and have the characters kill them because they're evil. Exactly like the "goblins are just evil, it doesn't matter why" scenario, you don't have to flesh it out right away. They're evil because they're raiders! Then later if you want you can start hinting there's more to the story, maybe have some noble raiders, whatever. The only thing you've taken out of the picture is the RACIAL angle -- they do bad things because of some kind of biological proclivity to evil.

[Baelzar]

Oh, I didn't realize that goblins were so much worse than, say, kobolds and orcs in your house rules.

No, no, no. Kobolds are short, reptilian humanoids with cowardly and sadistic tendencies. Kobolds usually consume plants or animals but are not averse to eating intelligent beings. Kobolds hate almost every other sort of humanoid or fey, especially gnomes and sprites.

I assume that every other humanoid must've done something to one of their villages, or something.

[Thrax]

No, no, no. Kobolds are short, reptilian humanoids with cowardly and sadistic tendencies. Kobolds usually consume plants or animals but are not averse to eating intelligent beings. Kobolds hate almost every other sort of humanoid or fey, especially gnomes and sprites.

I assume that every other humanoid must've done something to one of their villages, or something.

And that's why they shouldn't be like that. Precisely because they have no reason to be hostile, and last time I checked, people were not attacking on sight everything that doesn't look like them. And if they do, they're horrible people I don't want to know.

Everything has to have a reason. Things your characters are fighting are not attacking them "because", but because they have something they want, somebody looking like them killed their family, or because of a thousand other motivations.

I don't know what you were trying to prove with the point about "lazy human morality". It IS more lazy to have enemies attack you because they're enemies, no questions asked. It actually takes thinking to make up a motivation for your enemies. It doesn't take thinking to have them attack because they're not them. So yeah, human morality is less lazy.

That's all discounting the fact that, as I noticed earlier, inborn evil and sapience can't exist in the same being. Sapience implies free will and choice of morality, inborn evil forbids the same thing, thus a race of creatures can't be sapient and evil at the same time.

[Lord_Gareth]

We've already brought up the existence of redeemed fiends and fallen celestials (newsflash: with the way the [Good] subtype works, a celestial falling is just as rare as a fiend rising), but let's address the idea of 'usually' or 'always' evil cultures here. In fact, let's talk about goblins:

So, what is goblin culture like? Fearful. Goblins have no racial deity. They have no pantheon or special claim to any particular talent other than trap-making. They live in scattered, isolated tribes surrounded on all sides by beings that want to kill them - orcs, gnolls, lizardfolk, elves, humans, dwarves. They can't make permanent settlements, because they get driven out of them. They don't farm - no one ever taught them, and no one will let them be long enough to learn.

What do goblins respect? Strength. Why shouldn't they? Their enemies have repeatedly 'proven' that if you've got the might to push someone around, you've got the right to. Goblins prey on beings weaker than their numbers in order to take what they need by force, becoming their abusers on a smaller scale. Does this mean raiding isolated human villages? Yes, it does, and the goblins do so pro-actively in order to secure supplies and get rid of threats to their own well-being. Their lack of political education and understanding of the cultures that despise them means they never really realize that their activities draw down attention from larger bodies than the immediate threat - from orcish clans, human kingdoms, and dwarven halls, and inevitably these entities destroy them.

Yes, they cooperate with other cultures like theirs, because it means they have less enemies to fight. And since that appears to be the only game in town, it only serves to reinforce the paradigm that the only possessions you're entitled to are the ones you can take and anyone big and bad enough to do so can do whatever they want to you.

Put this way, their behavior becomes understandable. Is it still 'usually NE'? Yes, it is - but it's not an active malevolence, a hatred of all that's good and pure. It's a survival instinct so ingrained that it's become callous selfishness, a lack of care about who you hurt to protect yourself and those you care about. Separated from such savagery, a goblin might be talked around to a different way of seeing the world - especially if it leads to a full belly and a safe family. Doesn't that also make sense?

[Imperii]

No, it just makes them lazy. Lazy as hell, to assume a random goblin child is Evil enough to kill on sight, when the sourcebooks don't even support that (you have at worst coinflip odds that he/she is Evil, and then you have to consider the possibility of Evil that is NOT worth killing on sight).

You have BETTER than coinflip odds that a D&D Goblin will be evil.

[Baelzar]

And that's why they shouldn't be like that. Precisely because they have no reason to be hostile, and last time I checked, people were not attacking on sight everything that doesn't look like them. And if they do, they're horrible people I don't want to know.

Shouldn't? They shouldn't be like that? Says who? Not D&D. Not their deity. Just you.

I don't know what you were trying to prove with the point about "lazy human morality". It IS more lazy to have enemies attack you because they're enemies, no questions asked. It actually takes thinking to make up a motivation for your enemies. It doesn't take thinking to have them attack because they're not them. So yeah, human morality is less lazy.

The description I used for kobolds is straight from the 3.5 Monster Manual. It's intellectually lazy to treat D&D monsters like humans in different bodies, when the mythology disagrees.[/QUOTE]

That's all discounting the fact that, as I noticed earlier, inborn evil and sapience can't exist in the same being. Sapience implies free will and choice of morality, inborn evil forbids the same thing, thus a race of creatures can't be sapient and evil at the same time.

That is easily disprovable, even in our own human history. Your fact is made up.

[hamishspence]

It's intellectually lazy to treat D&D monsters like humans in different bodies, when the mythology disagrees.

Exactly what about kobolds, goblins, etc is impossible in a D&D human culture?

A group of humans with "cowardly, sadistic tendencies" which eat other humanoids, is not impossible, nor even implausible.

What makes goblins, kobolds, etc any different from "humans with certain cultural mores"?

[B. Dandelion]

Inborn evil is a verifiable real world thing? As in an observable biological phenomenon? Is there an "evil" gene?

[Jaros]

Has this argument gone onto what the D&D books says is right again? Because two pages back Rich said

And again, "They were designed that way," is not a very good refutation of the argument, "They should not have been designed that way." I see no reason to adhere to a tradition that I find repellant.

Shouldn't? They shouldn't be like that? Says who? Not D&D. Not their deity. Just you.

Yes. Exactly. This is primarily an argument about whether or not D&D should be designed that way. Thrax's argument is that it shouldn't be.

[fergo]

It's intellectually lazy to treat D&D monsters like humans in different bodies, when the mythology disagrees.

It's... what? It'd be less lazy to have goblins as cardboard-cutout villains with no motivations other than 'for the evulz'?

Yeah, spending whole arcs of the comic and an entire prequel book setting up goblins (and Redcloak in particular) as layered, flawed characters with contrasting emotions, ideals and plans was definately the easy route to take.

[Baelzar]

-snip- Goblins have no racial deity.

Yes they do. Maglubiyet. Monster Manual & Complete Divine. They didn't evolve out of goblin-apes.

[Ast]

Yes they do. Maglubiyet. Monster Manual & Complete Divine. They didn't evolve out of goblin-apes.

Everything that is in Monster Manuals and Complete series is basically setting-less. Therefore, a typical goblin on neutral ground without any setting has this deity and is usually evil. Forgotten Realms setting also uses him as a patron deity for goblins. Don't know about Eberron, though. But it's only a base.

But OOTS is written in a D&D-based setting created by Giant. In his setting we specifically know that goblins did not have any deity before The Dark One. They were created, according to the crayon history, by other gods.

If Eberron setting (based on D&D) can have good red dragons, then I fail to see the issue with a story which takes place in OOTS setting (also based on D&D), where goblins differ a bit from their basic description in MM. Especially when those goblins do not differ and I have yet to see the proof that they do. Apart from the deity fact, of course.

[Math_Mage]

You tell me what is more lazy; imagining that a goblin nestling could actually hate you from birth, fighting it's siblings tooth and nail for scraps of whatever the bigger goblins couldn't gorge themselves on, to rule first the creche, then the cave, then the tribe, because the humans and elves and gnomes and dwarves must be sacrificed to appease their god's bloodlust...

or just using safe, easy, familiar human motivations to drive their actions?

YOU are taking the easy way. Evil doesn't have to be simple. Sentience in the D&D world is not evolved - it is created, for a purpose. The gods are not just flavor text.

We'll agree to disagree.

If you've gone through the trouble of considering whether goblins will be uniformly Evil in your world, and developed a logical, consistent framework explaining why they are uniformly Evil in your world and how that backstory is reflected in their present-day behavior, then good for you.

For most people? The uniform Evil is an assumption they make so they can just go ahead and kill it without thinking too hard about the moral implications.

And I have to point out that while you CAN create that logical, consistent framework, it's NOT coming straight from the sourcebook. Not that "comes straight from the sourcebook" should be considered any particular merit when the Giant has stated over and over again that he doesn't CARE whether the sourcebook justifies your position or not.

You have BETTER than coinflip odds that a D&D Goblin will be evil.

That's what I said: "You have at worst coinflip odds..." While 50/50 itself is technically ruled out, I have no compunction about using the open endpoint of a set as the endpoint in discussion.

If Eberron setting (based on D&D) can have good red dragons, then I fail to see the issue with a story which takes place in OOTS setting (also based on D&D), where goblins differ a bit from their basic description in MM. Especially when those goblins do not differ and I have yet to see the proof that they do. Apart from the deity fact, of course.

FWIW OotS goblins are Medium, where D&D goblins are Small. /nitpick

[Baphomet]

I don't understand how this argument has gone so far. There are countless examples out there of "usually ___ alignment" creatures being something else. There are evil elves and dwarves and halflings, far too many chaotic good drow, etc. The existence of exceptions proves that "usually neutral evil" doesn't mean "because they were born that way" but "based on census in the average campaign setting".

D&D is an open-ended game. If you want the reason their numbers are largely neutral evil in your game to be because of some natural, inborn evil, it's your prerogative, and it's not contradicted by the rules to do so. But you have to understand that giving them a different reason to count that way in your setting is likewise not contradicted by the rules. These are both correct interpretations, but it seems like only the people on the side of "natural, inborn evil" are arguing that their interpretation is the sole, rules-correct one.

[Baelzar]

For most people? The uniform Evil is an assumption they make so they can just go ahead and kill it without suffering from moral qualms.

Har de har. Not most people here, judging from the disdainful tone displayed by some.

My argument stems from the OP - D&D goblins and OOTS goblins do not jell. I think I've showed that, using D&D sources. I'm not going to argue that point any more, because it's all laid out upthread.

Does that make OOTS less entertaining? Of course not. Does it make me a racist? Only to unreasonable, unthinking people. Does it my my D&D game shallow or boring? I'll ask my friends at the game tonight.

[hamishspence]

My argument stems from the OP - D&D goblins and OOTS goblins do not jell. I think I've showed that, using D&D sources.

I don't think you have. You've shown that D&D goblins are "Usually Neutral Evil"- but not that this is due to their deity.

The fact that they have a "racial deity" does not mean that deity created them, or determined their alignment.

Similarly, I've cited a D&D source (the Player's Handbook) that shows that even for a "Usually X alignment" category, there can be considerable variation in how much is portrayed as inborn and how much cultural. For Kobolds, it's much more "cultural" than for beholders.

So, D&D goblins and OOTS goblins are quite capable of "jelling".

[Gift Jeraff]

Eh, OOTS goblins don't usually wear shoes, so I don't really think they're capable of gellin'.

[Math_Mage]

Har de har. Not most people here, judging from the disdainful tone displayed by some.

My argument stems from the OP - D&D goblins and OOTS goblins do not jell. I think I've showed that, using D&D sources. I'm not going to argue that point any more, because it's all laid out upthread.

You haven't shown that. You keep talking about this creature that was animated by its Evil creator God with an unwavering desire to do Evil in the world, but you haven't shown any substantial evidence that goblins are actually this way in D&D, or that they aren't the Giant's way in D&D (consider the many similarities between The Dark One and Maglubiyet, for example, even if they aren't an EXACT correspondence--which is fine, since sourcebooks state D&D pantheons may serve as a starting point for DMs to develop their own).

Meanwhile, you've neglected to address the numerous examples of Usually X creatures behaving in a Not-X manner.

Does that make OOTS less entertaining? Of course not. Does it make me a racist? Only to unreasonable, unthinking people. Does it my my D&D game shallow or boring? I'll ask my friends at the game tonight.

According to you, you've already gone through the trouble of developing a backstory for goblins that gives the players a logical consistent justification for considering goblins uniformly Evil...which is fine.

On the other hand, considering goblins uniformly Evil so that you don't HAVE to come up with their backstory would be lazy at best.

If you've been doing the former rather than the latter, there's no reason to be defensive.

[Kish]

My argument stems from the OP - D&D goblins and OOTS goblins do not jell. I think I've showed that, using D&D sources. I'm not going to argue that point any more, because it's all laid out upthread.

Well, you've certainly asserted it many times.

[Darkfyre99]

I'm willing to bet some of this has been written before, but I hope you'll forgive me for not reading all 20+ pages of quotes before replying.

Something about Redcloak has been bothering me for some time. In short, I think that while the effort put into giving Redcloak more dimension than the other villains is admirable and has provided a surprising breadth of material for the comic, ultimately, he fails as both a character and as a villain, and that these stumblings are indicative of a problem with the comic as a whole.

I'm sorry, but I happen to feel that one-dimensional villians are boring. It's the ones whose motives you can understand, and perhaps even emphathise with, that make far more interesting villians... if only for that "there but for the Grace of God," feeling.

Originally, RC was just Xykon's put-upon right hand man, plucky but often belittled, almost childlike at times. "Start of Darkness" more or less reinvented Redcloak from the ground up. As presented these days, Redcloak is something of a misguided anti-villain, someone who is unquestionably evil but who has been driven to evil by his poor lot in life and who is motivated by what might be an admirable goal if he wasn't going about it in such a horrifying, reckless way. In SoD, Xykon characterizes RC's agenda as "Whiny 'evil but for a good cause' crap," which more or less sums it up.

The Giant does admit that it took him a few strips before realizing that it would be better with an actual plot.

This has been the firm conception of Redcloak, his character, his past, and his motivations since SoD, and the position of the comic's narrative has been both that Redcloak is evil (no arguments about "moral justification" please) but that his cause is, at least in theory, just. So what's the problem, in my estimation? Well, in order for Redcloak's good cause to be good, the comic has to cheat and employing a double standard that undermines its integrity. Goblins in "The Order of the Stick" have, at least post-SoD, been depicted as a put-upon, persecuted race. They are widely victimized, particularly by the Paladins of the Sapphire Guard (Mr. Burlew's creative notes characterizes the guard's downfall as moral blowback from their too-zealous crusades against goblinkind), and even by the gods themselves.

There is no doubt that the goblinoid races got the short end of the stick when the gods created them. They were given resource poor lands for the sole purpose of creating conflict between them and those races that got the bountiful lands, and as such have my sympathy.

Now, when life (or the gods) give you lemons, you have three choices:

1) You can make lemonade
2) You can ask your neighbor for help in getting something other than lemons.
3) You can kill your neighbor and take their non-lemony goodness for yourself.

For whatever reason, the goblins, clearly depicted as both sapient and sentient, chose option number three, which is what the gods were hoping for. Would the other races have chosen number three? We'll never know, because most of them haven't been placed in this position. However, it is telling that after Azure City was placed in this position, they chose something other than #3.

Perhaps you can already see the problem with this; in D&D, goblins are never harmless creatures that you can leave to their own devices without having to worry about them. Goblins, in D&D, are always a threat, and therefore violent conflict with them is almost always inevitable. That conflict is more or less the engine that drives the entire game. So this notion that Paladins are sometimes unjust crusaders and that goblins are sometimes innocent victims, and that this cycle of violence gives rise to more significant, costly forms of evil, feels to me like something of a cheat. It only works and makes sense if "The Order of the Stick" is not a comic about D&D.

That isn't quite true. While it is quite true that the generic description implies that "violent conflict with them is almost always inevitable," the fact their alignment is "usually neutral evil" also implies that their "evil disposition" is situational, not innate like... say... wights. I have both played and ran campaigns where the "monstrous" races were just other nations like human, dwarf, or elf nations, and conflict could be avoided if a plucky band of heroes could find a solution to whatever problem was causing them to intrude on the lands of others.

I've also played and ran campaigns where the innately evil disposition and rapid breeding of goblins made them ideal cannon fodder for more powerful villians.

Of course, many would argue that it is indeed not, and that that's actually a good thing, but if you ask me, that's where the cheat comes into it. The comic wants to be about gaming and D&D whenever it's convenient for the sake of humor, but then when the comic wants to employ drama (or melodrama) it works around the conventions of the source material. The schism between these two approaches is evident in the wildly varying characterizations of Redcloak pre and post-SoD; it's an inconsistency, one that is now woven into the fabric of the comic. Sometimes the comic is one thing, sometimes it's another, and these two natures are not only conflicting, they're just plain contradictory. For Redcloak to make sense now, the entire comic has to make less sense.

Role-Playing Games, by their very nature, attracts a wide variety of playstyles and gamemasters, from those who want an old fashioned "hack and slash" dungeon crawl, to those who want a complex characters that drive equally complex plots; from those who are just in it for fun, to those whose play is Serious Business (TM); from those who expect a detailed, well thought out world, to those who consider such detail pointless; from players who never talk in character, to players who never stray out of character. Usually, any particular group is able to find an equilibrium that keeps everyone content... even if said equilibrium is a bit schizophrenic.

The Order of the Stick has always done a good job of representing all those playstyles and expectations that arise from the diversity of those who play role-playing games.

"The Order of the Stick" has always been about how game rules and conventions wouldn't and don't make sense if applied to anything resembling a "real" situation. The difference, of course, is that pre-SoD, those inconsistencies were played for laughs. It is, indeed, funny to think about turn-based tabletop RPGs in literal terms. But when you take that same dynamic and try to fabricate high drama out of it, indeed, try to fabricate a sometimes long-winded moralizing argument out of it, that's less successful. Game rules ARE inherently funny, but they are not inherently tragic, that's only something that we can project onto them. Even when "The Order of the Stick" mocks the rules and artificial conventions of the game, the conventions are still a part of the world and a part of the comic (otherwise the joke wouldn't exist). But Redcloak's narrative and background are at odds with those conventions; in order for it to work, those conventions have to simply not be so.

So either "The Order of the Stick" is about the black and white, binary world of tabletop gaming (and how strange and silly that is), in which case Redcloak does not make sense as a character, or else it's about a more nuanced, complex world that doesn't at all resemble tabletop gaming, in which case the comic as a whole has been undermined. In short, you can't have it both ways, but Redcloak's story tries to anyway.

Dungeons and Dragons has never been a "black and white, binary" RPG. It's alignment system (4th edition notwithstanding) has always been a two-axis spectrum, with nine (not two) general alignments.

This system opened up for more nuanced conflicts than "good vs evil." Conflict can arise, for example, between an Lawful Neutral kingdom and a chaotic good band of plucky heroes, who spend as much time fighting the forces of the local magistrate as they do the mooks of the villian of the campaign, who is very careful about keeping her actions nice and legal.

"The Order of the Stick" is a remarkable piece of work, in that the degree of complexity and maturity in it evolved organically over many years, from its somewhat crude origins into the thrilling, imaginative, multi-faceted narrative we enjoy now. It is inevitable that, when a story (and a writer) change this much over this long of a period of time, that a few things just won't add up in the end. That's just the nature of the beast, and I'm not attacking the comic as a whole or the writer for this.

I am, however, puzzled and even quietly dismayed at what I think was a damaging blunder in how this one, increasingly prominent character was handled, particularly because these character decisions are actually not the result of the comics' early growing pains, and in fact are the very thing that marks a major turning point away from the tone of that early material. That the comic has to cheat and work outside of its own concepts to fabricate the present characterization should be an indicator that it wasn't a great idea to begin with. Sadly, Redcloak is now so tightly woven with the primary conflict that it seems both impossible to reverse the tide and unlikely that he will fade into the background as the finale (whenever it comes) nears.

Ultimately, I would say that this is a lesson against trying to do too many clever things at once; Redcloak and the other villains' comparative simplicity might have seemed like an Achilles heel once the comic started to become smarter and more nuanced, but in trying to make them a match for the rest of the series,the comic has been burdened. Moral conundrums do not necessarily always make a story better, and the effort to fabricate them in a work not well-suited to them often makes it worse.

Ultimately, I think the issue is with your preconceptions on what RPGs in general, Dungeons and Dragons in particular, are like, as opposed to this comic. It seems clear that you have never had the pleasure of playing in a campaign where moral conundrums weren't an accidental byproduct, but deliberately a part of it, and the group's moral decisions had as much to do with shaping the future of their campaign as their prowess in battle.

[Baphomet]

Here, I think I can think of a new way to frame this argument that will let us all come to an agreement: it's all a matter of setting. If I make a setting where goblins are plains-dwelling "noble savage" craftsmen and merchants, where court and economic intrigue has set them at odds with the local mercantile guild, leading a few influential misfit goblins to train a league of elite, shadowy goblin assassins, a group playing that game is still playing D&D. If I make a setting where vile gods of unspeakable horror spawn goblins whole-cloth from putrid blisters in desecrated soil, from whence they emerge mewling their revulsion that they're not drinking the blood of the righteous fast enough, that's D&D also. You can find things that contradict both viewpoints in the flavor text of any number of official sourcebooks. In both cases the average goblin the PC will encounter is going to be evil.

[Soylent Dave]

Here, I think I can think of a new way to frame this argument that will let us all come to an agreement: it's all a matter of setting.

Well, yeah (although there is a 'default setting' associated with D&D, so I'm sure some people will decide that that is the official one regardless...)

But if in a setting (or a fiction) the heroes are killing goblins because of what they are rather than because of what they do, that's... well, it's unsettling at best.

[rbetieh]

Well, yeah (although there is a 'default setting' associated with D&D, so I'm sure some people will decide that that is the official one regardless...)

But if in a setting (or a fiction) the heroes are killing goblins because of what they are rather than because of what they do, that's... well, it's unsettling at best.

Unless the are the enemy, right? If I make a setting that says the great Goblinoid empire of Gurmuktush has been at declared war with the human kingdom of Antalles for 20 years and all the PCs are Antilliean, I think the PCs are well within their right to wipe out the "raiders" who are attacking Antillean supply lines without seeking greater motivation, no? The wonderful thing about open-endedness is any kind of settings can be made right? Isn't that a good thing for games? Or should we all play the same game?

Note, I am not arguing against anything the Giant has done in-comic. There is nothing wrong with his setting. I am arguing against the Giants proposed solution to a problem that I feel hurts more than it could possibly help. If you decide to take alignment out and replace it with nothing, people will use pictures and fight the 'ugly' ones. If you replace the alignment description with default behavior, you are declaring certain behaviors bad, and if a certain other IRL culture does that and thinks its ok, THEY will look at the picture next to the description and think "hey, thats what these writers think WE look like". And if you replace the Alignment desc, with motivations you get the exact same thing. You either dont solve the problem or solve it for some by alienating others. It's a bad solution.

How about this as a start to a solution, why not change the Detect Good/Evil abilities from "Tells you the alignment of critter X" to "lets you know the most evil thing Critter X has ever done along with some other factors like remorse, or whether the critter would do it again, letting the player be the judge of how evil that was"? It doesn't solve the problem entirely, but it helps. And if the DM doesnt want to tell a story, the DM can now say "Meh, we both agree he is evil" and be done with it. If a Pally shoots first without checking, punish him.

[SaintRidley]

Unless the are the enemy, right? If I make a setting that says the great Goblinoid empire of Gurmuktush has been at declared war with the human kingdom of Antalles for 20 years and all the PCs are Antilliean, I think the PCs are well within their right to wipe out the "raiders" who are attacking Antillean supply lines without seeking greater motivation, no? The wonderful thing about open-endedness is any kind of settings can be made right? Isn't that a good thing for games? Or should we all play the same game?

Seems like a case of fighting against them for what they do to me.

[Baphomet]

Well, yeah (although there is a 'default setting' associated with D&D, so I'm sure some people will decide that that is the official one regardless...)

But if in a setting (or a fiction) the heroes are killing goblins because of what they are rather than because of what they do, that's... well, it's unsettling at best.

I hope I did a good job expressing my opinion, because I agree with all of this but am not totally sure if you are disagreeing with me or not.

My point was supposed to be that it seems like all of the people arguing that goblins should be killed on sight are also arguing that a goblin is unequivocally a being of supernaturally-enforced irredeemable evil. If, in their setting, that is the case, I would say that killing a goblin on sight would be justified. If they haven't done anything to deserve it yet, they will; it's part of the laws of the universe over which they have no control. Whether or not such a goblin should count as a free-willed creature, however, would be up for debate.

I would hope that no one is arguing that goblins should always be killed on sight in a setting where they only trend towards evil as a population, rather than as an unbreakable rule. In that case, yes, "unsettling at best".

This gist of the disagreement here seems to be which interpretation is correct, and both sides can cite source material that, at least in their mind, refutes the other. My proposition was that it depends on the setting. While, yes, there can be said to be a "default setting", every DM is still making it their own, and interpretation of contradictory issues like this one is part of that process. The important part is to choose "acknowledging that the contradiction exists" over "proving your opinion right to the exclusion of all others", at least for the few people who find themselves with the latter motivation.

[hamishspence]

I would hope that no one is arguing that goblins should always be killed on sight in a setting where they only trend towards evil as a population, rather than as an unbreakable rule. In that case, yes, "unsettling at best".

I think the root of much of this is how people react when they read the phrase "Usually X Evil"

or "lawful evil" in a pre-3rd ed statblock.

Though I think in one of the early Basic editions, with five alignments (LE, CE, LG, CG, N) even then terms like "usually" or "sometimes" were being used.

If a person's first reaction when reading an alignment stated is "It must be inborn, and due to the creature's racial deity"

- that's what seems to me "unsettling at best".

[pendell]

Now, when life (or the gods) give you lemons, you have three choices:

1) You can make lemonade
2) You can ask your neighbor for help in getting something other than lemons.
3) You can kill your neighbor and take their non-lemony goodness for yourself.

There are other options. One is to open a bank. Or to open an inn. Or go into show business.

There are a ton of ways to make a living that don't require farming, and the Romani in our world employed many of them. That's also where the stereotype of the "Jewish moneylender" comes from -- Jews in Middle Ages Europe weren't allowed to own land, IIRC, so they made ends meet by trade and by loaning money.

For that matter, they could also hire out as bodyguards or as mercenaries. That's what the Gurkhas did. Or they can be explorers and traders, like the settlers of Iceland.

Actually, that brings up a point as well: Iceland has to be one of the most inhospitable countries in the world, but it's a far more pleasant place to live than many parts of Africa which have gold and diamond mines and abundant natural wealth.

There are a ton of ways to prosperity when you're dirt poor besides "kill other people and take their stuff". If the goblins haven't yet followed those paths, maybe it's because they're being led by an immortal genocidal maniac.

Respectfully,


Brian P.

[rbetieh]

There are other options. One is to open a bank. Or to open an inn. Or go into show business.

Nice, now all goblins in OOTS are evil, except Goblin Dan, everyone cheer for the one Good Goblin.....wait whats that elf doing....

<Do not take this post seriously>