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  1. - Top - End - #211
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    hamishspence's Avatar

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

    PHB2 does have one of the paladin credos be:

    "Outside of moral absolutes, an ethical code is based on the greatest good of the greatest number".

    IMO for "just cause" it generally requires that the act be in response to something the other being is doing or trying to do.

    If a person is trying to do something evil to others, you have "just cause" to use a reasonable amount of violence to prevent them.

    Similarly if they've actually done so, a community has "just cause" to use appropriate measures to prevent them from continuing to do so, which can include the death sentence in serious cases.
    Last edited by hamishspence; 2012-02-14 at 03:43 PM.
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  2. - Top - End - #212
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    RedSorcererGirl

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

    I have not read the rest of this thread, and probably won't unless I'm extremely bored.

    TC, your post was basically a lot of words to say "I prefer that goblins were wholly irredeemably evil so that paladins could butcher them without any recrimination."

    Please consider that in the context of the other alignment nuances of the story, for instance the black dragon.

    Just because the Black Dragon is chaotic evil and willing to sink to horrifying depths to avenge her son does not mean that V was any less evil to cast Familicide on her.

    Just so, paladins, who are supposed to be Lawful Good, shouldn't get to just shoot from the hip when it comes to their enemy. They should be required to use their weapon carefully, and they should be required to not shamefully indulge in any feelings of anti-goblin prejudice while doing so. It should be seen only as a grim necessity to fight and kill the enemy, and they should do only enough to get the job done, to go any further is a betrayal of their alignment and their honor.

    Good should be nice, because if we allow for meanness in any way, then why should anyone be nice? It's like the whole 'fairness' thing, well if someone doesn't feel obligated to be fair to me then why should I be obligated to be fair?

    Take for instance, when Haley killed Crystal. While Crystal certainly had it coming, many of us were scandalized by how callous Haley was about it. If she had treated it as the grim necessity of taking out an enemy, nobody would have batted an eye. But here is a good person, one of the heroes, indulging in vidictiveness.

    Therefore yes, niceness, which precludes anger, displeasure, and even the least amount of racist feeling, is an absolute moral obligation, but especially so for paladins.
    I do, however, wonder what the poor strawman ever did to you. - Kish

  3. - Top - End - #213
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    Kobold

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

    I get to log in cause I have stuff ta talk-a-bout!

    The OP's comparison to old literature that did not explore the gray areas of black-and-white morality was as best misguided. Here is why:

    Even if we go back to Tolkien and say that he created Orcs and Uruk-Hai as unambiguously evil and deserving of slaughter, it was not the label itself of evil (which the OP rightly assumes) that made them deserving of slaughter: it was in fact that they were a tireless evil, one that at all hours of the day and night demonstrated just how deserving it was of having its life shortened.

    The OP says then that this is what the evil element of stories should be, and that when creating a monstrous villain, no sympathy should ever, ever be placed on them, because it weakens the underlying premise that Evil is Evil.

    However, he then goes on to say that the real world is not anything like this; while fantasy stories (or at the very least any story that even mentions an unambiguous evil) are best served black and white, the real world is not, and never the twain shall meet.

    The root of the issue: is "unambiguous evil" always a mere storytelling device, and is talking about it in real terms stupid and unnecessary?

    I vehemently disagree that anything included in a story is always and unequivocally to be relegated to mere devices. Because when you start thinking of stories as merely a collection of devices, you separate them out from their application to us as real humans who live in a real world. There is a need to mirror both complexity and non-complexity of issues, and saying that something is poorer for examining complexity in an issue that is stated as a non-complex dichotomy fails to encompass the moral purpose of the story.

    I mean, I can take the exact same argument that the OP made about sympathetic evil and turn it around by shifting the perspective up one notch. He states that Redcloak is a poorer villain for generating sympathy and having a noble cause, because he is nonetheless obviously evil, and when you dilute evil, to him you're saying that somehow it excuses* his genocidal acts and baby-eating.

    But I say, what is the entire point of demonstrating an unambiguous evil? So if we have a story where a bunch of good guys go out and defeat the unambiguous evil genocidal baby-eating dictator because Good is Good and Evil is Evil, what have we been told that we don't already know? Was this message made any more important than the last time we were told it?

    But the reason it is in Lord of the Rings is because Tolkien was exploring the nature of evil, with good on one side and evil on the other and man caught in the middle. Wheras in Order of the Stick, these races do not themselves represent good or evil: they all represent mankind, because from Rich's perspective, they are all intelligent, thinking feeling creatures who have the same motivations, needs and desires that humans do.

    And it's not even to say that there is no unambiguous, ruthless, tireless evil in OotS. You have evil gods and evil devils and demons and The Snarl. But even Lord of the Rings explored the gray areas of morality--it merely did so with the human characters (and the hobbits a bit) alone. The exploration of the gray areas of morality is expanded in Rich's work because he includes all intelligent mortal races within this spectrum and not merely humans.

    Rich, unlike Tolkien, does not represent the Cosmic as something graspable and knowable (though perhaps slightly more graspable and knowable than the real world, but with the perspective that there is something more to the universe than even the gods), and this is probably because Tolkien was Catholic and Rich is not. It is not necessary to him to have all villains be motivated by evilly evil Evil, because to do so is to undermine the purpose driving his story, which is different than the purpose that Tolkien had.

    Clashing with Tolkien is not a problem with Tolkien himself, rather the audience shift through D&D which resulted in "we kill the Uruk-Hai because they are evil" becoming "we kill the Uruk-Hai because they pinged evil on my Evildar". If you think this is a non-issue and not worth discussing, it's probably because you can't see beyond its implementation in game ethics and how it mirrors a real problem in real-world ethics.

    So I guess what we can take away from this is that the OP did not like The Godfather.

    * Well, not exactly excuses, but slightly weakens the resolve and faith in the good guys, who are Good, and should not have to face such moral quandaries when facing a genocidal baby-eater.
    Last edited by RickGriffin; 2012-02-14 at 04:37 PM.

  4. - Top - End - #214
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    BlackDragon

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

    Quote Originally Posted by FujinAkari View Post
    If both of these quotes are accurate, then it would mean that Azure City has been sending its Paladins to go and seen a significant number Fall on a routine basis
    Not necessarily. What maybe happened is that they started out with good intentions--sparing the women and children, and so on--but gradually kept pushing at what was acceptable until, in the raid on Redcloak's village, they crossed the line. This might also explain why, as far as we can tell, they stopped doing these raids; once they'd had a few of their number Fall they probably decided the old "wipe out the village pour encourager les autres" wasn't really appropriate!

  5. - Top - End - #215
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    I can just imagine that they started sparing the women and children, which inevitably lead to goblin assassins as they trained kids to be angry at paladins, and thus it started biting them in the ass, so they cynically decided that killing the kids when they're young is better than having them lead lives of bitterness where they just end up trying to assassinate paladins anyway.

  6. - Top - End - #216
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    At first I'll admit that I haven't read the whole topic yet (I'm currently on the fourth page), so I apologize if I repeat some previoulsly adressed statement.


    Anyway here's my opinion:
    The OP's problem isn't so much about the "Evil or Not", issue, but rather about the direction of the story. We can safely assume that Giant at the beginning of the strip didn't have the whole OOTSverse as we know it currently in mind, and some characters didn't have their past planned, like Redcloak. He was just a hypercompetent sidekick at the beginning, someone who creates one half of the "straight guy, wacky guy" archetype.
    But when the OOTS started to be more complex than "D&D gag-a-day", the Giant added more complexity to Redcloak. We saw why is he working with Xykon, what does he hope to achieve, et cetera. Yes, it wasn't there at the beginning. But there is nothing I'd remember, that contradicts the big picture. The first strips doesn't contradict the latest.

    In short: the added depth to the Redcloak doesn't oppose who he become. Therefore his characterization is a good thing. Most of the readers prefer complex Redcloak, to a second-in-command-yup-that's-it redcloak. And it isn't a failure at Rich's part. Many creators does that thing. And everyone here prefers new strips to some polishing of the old, especially if there isn't any real benefit. After all we find everything later.

    Thank you and good night. At least here, in my country.
    In which threads did people consider my responses to be readworthy? Why, a good question, here's an answer.
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  7. - Top - End - #217
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    DruidGuy

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

    I got to ask Gary Gygax a question about alignment, back in the old days of 1st edition, when GenCon was in Kenosha, WI. "What happened if an assassin changed to a non-evil alignment?"

    He said he had never considered that, thought a bit, and suggested that they might become a thief, since they could have non-evil alignments, and it was similar to a fallen paladin becoming a fighter. Thieves had relatively flexible alignments (and were popular 1st edition class since they could level with less XP than other classes, and allowed for more races to advance without limitations).

    1st edition had a lot of quirks like that - but I think it was to capture the way the "classes" had been portrayed in literature and history (the more "story-telling history" rather than strictly facts). I asked the question because I wanted to write a module (which I had hoped to submit to a following Gencon) based loosely on "Dune", and wanted to have a Master Assassin like Thufir Hawat who was probably Lawful Neutral rather than evil. I wanted to make the rules fit the story, rather than the other way around. I think Gary tended to think along the same lines. The paladin code is a big part of the stories like Galahad. "Good" thieves like Robin Hood also needed to fit in the rules, and they did.

    With later editions, I think there was a lot less focus on "borrowing" from the stories of yore (maybe the copyright problems with Deities & Demigods had an influence on that ) and more creating new/original stories (the success of DragonLance probably had an even bigger influence on that ).

    It's hard to deny that 3.5 & 4th edition made huge improvements to the overall mechanics of D&D (with 1st edition, I never came across anyone who played with the rules exactly as written - every gaming group had a long list of house rules and "agreed understandings", and it would be a bit messy at Gencon because folks would often have different views, etc - but I still tend to play/DM with view of the 1st edition in my heart: The rules serve the story, and not the other way around - and if the DM feels the need to change them to better tell the story, go ahead (although if Gary G is handy, you could ask his opinion).

    For hundreds of years, folks would look at the something like the story of Galahad and argue about what moral purity really meant. Now we get to create our own Galahads (or Redcloaks), and the stories we create give rise to the same classic arguments as the old ones did. I'd say that's working as intended.

  8. - Top - End - #218
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    hamishspence's Avatar

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

    Quote Originally Posted by FafnerMorell View Post
    The rules serve the story, and not the other way around - and if the DM feels the need to change them to better tell the story, go ahead (although if Gary G is handy, you could ask his opinion).
    Unfortunately we can't:
    http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html

    though one could dig around on the forums he used to frequent for answers, in case the question's already been asked.
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  9. - Top - End - #219
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    DruidGuy

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

    ^ You just need to keep an ouija board (or a caster with "Speak With Dead") handy at your gaming table (j/k)

  10. - Top - End - #220
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheyCallMeTomu View Post
    I try not to get my system of rules and ethics from Dungeons and Dragons source books. Not that those are bad points.

    "Just cause" is pretty much up in the air. If you think that killing a goblin child will save three human children down the line, you could argue that's just cause-but it would require that it be reasonably foreseeable that that's the case.
    It's still an unnecessarily brutal method of accomplishing that goal, taken for the sake of convenience at best and prejudice at worst. Even granting the hypothetical that we can KNOW this goblin child will be responsible for the deaths of human children down the line as things are, killing the goblin child is STILL not the best or only way to divert him/her from that path.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheyCallMeTomu View Post
    I can just imagine that they started sparing the women and children, which inevitably lead to goblin assassins as they trained kids to be angry at paladins, and thus it started biting them in the ass, so they cynically decided that killing the kids when they're young is better than having them lead lives of bitterness where they just end up trying to assassinate paladins anyway.
    Cynical or not, it's still wrong.
    Last edited by Math_Mage; 2012-02-14 at 05:02 PM.

  11. - Top - End - #221
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    MindFlayer

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

    I don't know if this thread should be considered "over" at this point, but I'll throw two coppers in.

    Remember that alignment in OotS is simultaneously a reflection of your actions and a declared statement of allegiance. The two can easily be in conflict.

    Best example: the Paladin in Roy and Durkon's original adventuring party (OoPCs). He is LG. He states that he is LG. He has to be LG, because he's a paladin. He specifically mentions having to be LG to maintain his paladin powers. And he considers the fact that this keeps him from murdering Durkon a bloody nuisance.

    Now, if he'd actually arranged the death of a fellow adventurer just because he didn't like him, he'd certainly have been kicked to the curb by the recorder angel, and I'd speculate that he's correct that he's lose his powers. But he is allowed to grotesquely violate the spirit of LG as long as he maintains the letter of LG. So arranging for someone else to do the betrayal is fine from his point of view.

    Now, this is of course intended as humor. But let's put it in terms of Redcloak, as a goblin. Redcloak was a member of team Evil even as a child. He knew that was what he signed up for. But he hadn't done anything evil, and wasn't required to by the game system. It's like he checked "Evil" on his voter registration - it doesn't really mean much.

    The interesting plot development, to me, is that Redcloak, who wasn't any more "Evil" at first than anyone who prefers Team Jacob, has been led in his pursuit of "the good for goblins" to commit the evil acts that aren't particularly in his nature anyway.

    So Redcloak was born Evil, but also chose Evil. And those are two different things, in the OotS-verse.

    ---

    And Rich, you are a god. My favorite part of reading your collections is the essays, like the above, where you explain your thinking on the story so far.

  12. - Top - End - #222
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    And it's ridiculous to think that any given six-year-old may have committed a horrible act worthy of being executed unless the text says otherwise, just because that six-year-old has green skin and her parents bring her to their church services. That right there is enough reason for the story to be the way it is. No author should have to take the time to say, "This little girl ISN'T evil, folks!" in order for the reader to understand that. It should be assumed that no first graders are irredeemably Evil unless the text tells you they are.
    Stereotypes exist for a reason. There's nothing wrong with assuming a stereotype is correct in the absence of other evidence, assuming that it is reasonably grounded in fact. I'd even say it is prudent to assume a member of a race with a "usually Evil" moniker is Evil, given a lack of evidence otherwise. Children are not fully grown members of their race, obviously, and so do not fall under the same stereotype, but it is still far more likely that a child of a "usually Evil" race is Evil than it is for humans.

    That does not mean that people shouldn't be open-minded enough to examine whether or not their preconception is true.

    So I disagree. If we're talking first graders who are goblins, I see no problem in assuming they are Evil, as long as you do not stick to that assumption given evidence to the contrary, and as long as you do not act solely on that assumption. Every being deserves the benefit of the doubt, but it would be stupid to assume that, simply because they are a child, they are not also Evil, when the vast majority of the rest of their culture is.

  13. - Top - End - #223
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    BlueKnightGuy

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

    I'm sorry if these points were brought up before - I skimmed the post and did not find them, but...

    Let's assume for the sake of argument that the OP is correct about the irredeemability of the golblinoid races, that alignment works the way he describes it, and that the central point of D&D is to kill the irredeemably evil creatures because they pose a threat to others. The argument is couched in these assumptions, and trying to argue against the basic principles won't really solve anything.

    Even with all these things accepted as true, the goblins will not see the world this way.

    They will not be able to accept that due to their evil-ness, they are forever doomed to lose to humanoids of a diametrically opposed alignment because that is the way the world demands it.

    Evil people (such as Hitler or Stalin) never see themselves as evil. They never accept the idea that they are the bad guys. Everyone is the hero in their own narrative, even if all empirical evidence points the other way.

    So rather than simply accepting that they are evil, the goblinoids (like people in real life) construct a series of rationalizations - reasons why they evil things they do are justified in a greater sense. They may believe these things (Hitler really believed that a race war against Jews and Slavs was needed to preserve the German "race"), or they may simply construct them to avoid the disapprobation of others (as Stalin did with his show trials and public executions of "traitors"). But they will construct them, and they will be repeated ad nauseum in an attempt to rewrite the narrative in a way that best supports their actions.

    If the actions are evil, you can bet these rationalizations will be even MORE rampant and convoluted, because the offenders KNOW what they are doing is wrong, but wish to do it anyway. The rationalization allows them a pretext to continue behaving badly and still think of themselves as good people.

    The need to feel that you are a good person is very important to all people, and so we must extrapolate this need for any sentient D&D race.

    So, even if goblins are irredeemably evil, they will not admit it, not even to themselves. They NEED to feel like the good guys, and so have constructed a series of rationalizations that cast them as helpless and put upon, even if - no, ESPECIALLY if - it is not true. This allows them to behave as they want without suffering the psychological trauma that comes with believing that you are a monster and the things that you do are so evil that even hope for redemption is impossible.

    Understand that "irredeemably evil" is thrown around here with no real understanding of the magnitude of the term. To be that evil, so evil that any form of forgiveness is impossible, that no matter what you do you will forever be hated and spat upon by all decent people... that's a difficult idea to truly understand. And to be made irredeemable because you were BORN is harder still. I would understand the need to fight against that, even if all of reality were against me. I would have to. So would any sentient and sane being. Accepting that amount of hate directed at you because you had the unbelievable effrontery to be born would be impossible.

    This is what we see in Redcloak. He will not - CANNOT - accept that the function of his race is to die on the bloody swords of others because the Gods have declared them "good" and he and his people "evil." Desperate for a way out of this Deity-imposed exile, he has concocted a plot that will finally place his race where he feels they belong. It is irrelevant whether his interpretation of events is true or not. He will use them regardless BECAUSE HE NEEDS TO.
    Last edited by Rennard; 2012-02-14 at 05:21 PM. Reason: Spelling

  14. - Top - End - #224
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by Szar_Lakol View Post
    Every being deserves the benefit of the doubt, but it would be stupid to assume that, simply because they are a child, they are not also Evil, when the vast majority of the rest of their culture is.
    The point being made is that:

    It should be assumed that no first graders are irredeemably Evil unless the text tells you they are.
    so- even if a goblin child is "more likely to be Evil" than a human child, it is still:

    ridiculous to think that any given six-year-old may have committed a horrible act worthy of being executed unless the text says otherwise, just because that six-year-old has green skin and her parents bring her to their church services.
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  15. - Top - End - #225
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by RickGriffin View Post
    SNIPPED
    Ok, interesting look at Tolkien. Not my own one, as I think the badness in Tolkien is far deeper and more nuanced than you give it credit for. For instance Boromir, Feanor and co are wonderful examples. In fact the idea of Evil being generated from good motives gone bad (often by going to an extreme, or being untempered by compassion or other virtues) is how most villains arise in his work.

    To use Boromir as an example, he comes close to becoming a villain at times in his treatment of Frodo. Not full out I admit (and he is redeemed with ease) but he does bad things. All from the twin motives of familial responsibility, and the need to save his people. His downfall was a lack of humility and a need to be the one to do the saving. Good motives, but without the restraint of another virtue it turned to bad.

    And Gandalf denies himself the ring because "he would use it from a desire to do good, and through me a great evil would arise". or some such.

    Pride in oneself is an excellent source of Evil. As is simple selfishness. Or an "ends justify the means" attitude. In short he shows many causes for individual evils arising, with varying motives of differing cause. Allthough he does show how evil can obscure such motives and that, whatever the drive, Evil is Evil. And even the most noble can be corrupted.

    A very deep view, which the Silmarillion goes even further into.

    Not a simple as you seem to hint at, intentionally or not.

    (note, I am a bit of a Tolkien Fanboy)
    If I cared about this, I would probably do something about it.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by RickGriffin View Post
    Even if we go back to Tolkien and say that he created Orcs and Uruk-Hai as unambiguously evil and deserving of slaughter, it was not the label itself of evil (which the OP rightly assumes) that made them deserving of slaughter: it was in fact that they were a tireless evil, one that at all hours of the day and night demonstrated just how deserving it was of having its life shortened.
    Tolkien's orcs and uruks come from corrupted / fallen elves and men. They aren't so much a separate race as a corruption of a pre-existing good race. They aren't evil because they are orcs, rather, they are orcs because they are evil / corrupted by dark magic. This was because Tolkien was convinced that evil can only mock, mar, and twist reality, not create.
    "And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand." - St. Augustine

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  17. - Top - End - #227
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by Conuly View Post
    Either he didn't fall (in which case Redcloak has a case that the gods are capricious and unjust) or he DID and it just wasn't on-screen.
    We KNOW that the gods are capricious and unjust, we see it in just about every frame they appear in. From Banjo upwards, they're about as trustworthy as a box of oven-roasted hand grenades.

    Which goes to the issue of gods as arbiters of what's "good" and "evil". It's a mechanic that only makes sense if one of two things is true:

    Option one: your definitions of "good" and "evil" are acknowledged to be subjective. In this case there's no problem with having them enforced by a capricious authority. 2nd Edition D&D worked this way, but it turned out to be massively unpopular. (No-one likes to be told that their morality is "subjective", everyone likes to believe that their idea of good is "really" Good and anyone who disagrees is either misinformed, misguided or just plain Wicked.)

    Option two: there's some kind of "overgod" power that provides a framework that implicitly compels all the lesser gods to follow a common set of rules. 3rd Edition D&D mostly goes this way, but without admitting what it's doing or why. In OOTS, it's possible that this function is provided by the Snarl - if the gods failed to act consistently with the so-called "objective" definitions of alignment, the world would weaken and the Snarl would eat them all - but as far as I can recall, no-one has said that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nerd_Paladin View Post
    The third branch this argument may take is the idea that the goblins MAY be wholly evil (although, again, this in itself punctures the balloon of RC's origin story), but are ALSO victims of the gods by that very tokien. Leading us to the weird question of whether a creature can be the victim of its own creation and whether, if the gods are the root cause of evil, then can evil beings really be considered responsible for their own actions (anyone else a "Jesus Christ Superstar" fan? Anyone, anyone at all? Hello?)? At which point it becomes one of those unanswerable cosmic questions about free will. Which I would posit is also a bad basis for in-story conflict, at least in this case. Possibly the worst of all, actually.
    I think another driver we're not taking into account is necessity.

    D&D's roots go back to "wargaming". In a wargame, you don't question the enemy's motivations: they've got to die, or be defeated, because they're the enemy. It really is that simple. And if you don't do it to them, they'll certainly do it to you.

    That's how "alignment" was originally inserted into the game - as, basically, a substitute for different-coloured uniforms.

    There are a lot of details that were written into the game back then, which were (I believe) basically trying to justify the eternal enmity between "PC races" and "monster races". Some monster races (e.g. illithids) literally subsist on a diet of people; so long as there is any organisation among humans, it must be implacably opposed to them for its own defence.

    But with others, the reason is more subtle. Goblins and orcs, in particular, are described as breeding fast. That makes them "dangerous" if not contained: if they have room to breed, the next generation will be exponentially stronger than the previous one.

    Once you've processed that bit of information, the question becomes: how can we stop these things from being a threat to our own children? If the orcs are happy to live in a peaceful pluralistic society alongside humans, that would be one answer (although you might also legitimately worry about the long-term stability of such an arrangement).

    But so long as the orcs define themselves as a separate tribe with its own exclusive land, its own government and its own needs, you absolutely need to make sure they're contained, and be ready to use force to keep them that way. Anything less would be a betrayal of your own children. And in that case it doesn't matter what alignment the orcs are: they are the enemy, and that's all you need to know about them.
    "None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain

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    Kobold

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Omergideon View Post
    Ok, interesting look at Tolkien. Not my own one, as I think the badness in Tolkien is far deeper and more nuanced than you give it credit for. For instance Boromir, Feanor and co are wonderful examples. In fact the idea of Evil being generated from good motives gone bad (often by going to an extreme, or being untempered by compassion or other virtues) is how most villains arise in his work.
    You missed my part near the conclusion where I say that Tolkien does in fact explore the grays of morality, but such aspects are explored in the human and near-human characters only, not in the corrupted races, because the corrupted races do not represent a nuanced human, only evil and corruption itself.

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

    I would still say Tolkien explores it with Evil races/characters a bit once we reach the silmarillion and beyond. not so much in LoTR I agree, which focuses mostly on out heroes. But Gollum is an evil race in a sense. Or at least sufficiently twisted so as to count. Then again he does have every evil thing start out as a good race, so you may have something to go on there. Objection partly withdrawn.

    But still, even orcs are a corruption and degredation of Elves, and so started as a good race. And thus represent how evil arises in all beings.
    If I cared about this, I would probably do something about it.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Omergideon View Post
    To use Boromir as an example, he comes close to becoming a villain at times in his treatment of Frodo. Not full out I admit (and he is redeemed with ease) but he does bad things. All from the twin motives of familial responsibility, and the need to save his people. His downfall was a lack of humility and a need to be the one to do the saving. Good motives, but without the restraint of another virtue it turned to bad.
    I think Boromir is an excellent example - possibly the best I've seen in literature - of a paladin falling. Like any good paladin, his defining character trait is "loyalty", and it's his loyalty to his people that makes him betray his other ideals.
    "None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain

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

    The thing about orcs, trolls et cetera in Tolkien's works is that he himself wasn't very satisfied with the idea of an inherently evil race, or so I've heard.
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
    The thing about orcs, trolls et cetera in Tolkien's works is that he himself wasn't very satisfied with the idea of an inherently evil race, or so I've heard.
    He was vehemently opposed to the idea, and speaks at length about it in his letters. Implying it ever was his greatest regret in LoTR. From what I read anyways.

    He concluded such an idea was the greatest moral injustice Gods could create and so decided it was merely culture etc that affected orcs, and that they could be redeemed if raised away from that. Evil "in the blood" was antithetical to everything he thought of.
    If I cared about this, I would probably do something about it.

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

    Boromir is an example of two of Tolkien's favorite storytelling tools: narrative threading, and evil containing the seeds of its own destruction.

    The temptation of Boromir comes from the Ring, which Sauron himself created. Without that Temptation, the Fellowship would have gone on to Minas Tirith and failed. Instead, it fractured at Amon Sul, and Frodo ran off alone, which led him to Gollum. Thus Sauron's evil impulse turned against himself. Sam himself mentions narrative threading when he observes that he and Frodo are still in the tale of Beren One-Hand, because it was because A that B, because B then C, which led to Bilbo, which led to Gollum ... and so on. Everything is a consequence of what came before.

    There is a great deal of that in OOTS as well. There isn't a lot of random coincidence going on.
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by Omergideon View Post
    But still, even orcs are a corruption and degredation of Elves, and so started as a good race. And thus represent how evil arises in all beings.
    Well sure, the origins of evil are also explored in the stories and evil is not necessarily monolithic; in fact I am pretty sure the portrayal of evil as multi-faceted in Tolkien is why it continues to be more thematically diverse than most copycat fiction that relegate evil to only The Thing The Badguy Does And The Hero Ought Not To Do.

    It's the difference between "they do evil because they're the villain" and "they're the villain because they do evil". The former is an arbitrary designation used for pushing the reader's easy-to-reach buttons, the latter actually ties it into the foundation of the story's theme.
    Last edited by RickGriffin; 2012-02-14 at 05:58 PM.

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

    That being said, if the goblins are actually inherently evil-which we really don't have any reason to believe, but even if they were-that would be a pretty damned good reason for why Redcloak's motivations are 100% correct.

    Personally, I'm rooting for him, though I think having Xykon as his buddy is a mistake.

    Too bad V isn't agreeable.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by pjackson View Post
    The important thing is that Redcloak regards it as an injustice.
    The paladins surely did not.
    The paladins are more likely to be right, but that is not important to the story.
    No, the important thing is that the author, Rich Burlew--he's been posting in this thread--called it an injustice. Therefore, it was an injustice, even if you don't consider "Redcloak's five-year-old sister deserved killing" laughably absurd. If the paladins believe otherwise than their chance of being anything but wrong are 0%.

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

    Wow, that's a long OP and a lot of pages with lengthy posts that all rest on the assumption that gaming system and setting are the same thing.

    In the setting of OotS, Goblins are not inherently evil. I don't see a reasonable argument on how this makes it incompatible with D&D as a whole. So you really can't say that RC's characterization is "failed", which, if I may add, is quite an arrogant way to put it.

    Of course you're free not to like it. But personally I don't think the comic is trying to have two incompatible things at once. It just manages to have them in a way you didn't expect or don't like.

    Personally, I don't think the morality of Redcloak's actions depends on whether goblins can be good or not. I don't think he's a well-intentioned extremist, but a deluded villain who doesn't grasp the sunk cost fallacy. But that is my take on him, there are others who root for RC and his goblinoid cause, which is also fine. This complexity could indeed only be achieved by making goblinoids not "always chaotic evil", but normal people who largely just want to live their lives. It's designed so that people can have different opinions on the story's characters, which imo is what's really great about OotS. I really don't see how this aspect of the comic is inherently incompatible with others.
    "I'm particularly fond of our priesthood of the Benefactor, since our main duties seem to be sitting around and pretending that the Benefactor doesn't exist. When we're not stealing things, that is."
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  28. - Top - End - #238
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kish View Post
    No, the important thing is that the author, Rich Burlew--he's been posting in this thread--called it an injustice. Therefore, it was an injustice, even if you don't consider "Redcloak's five-year-old sister deserved killing" laughably absurd. If the paladins believe otherwise than their chance of being anything but wrong are 0%.
    Waitaminute... you're saying the idea of the author being mistaken is not just a very hard thing to argue or prove, but a logical impossibility?

    I think the form of argument "Rich says X, X implies Y, therefore Y, period" is not necessarily valid. And even in cases where it is, it doesn't seem to get us very far. Seriously: what difference does it make, from our point of view, whether that death was "really an injustice" or not?

    What matters is what Redcloak thinks of it, what the paladins thought of it, what the Twelve Gods thought of it. Whether it "really was" so or not, even if we can attach some meaning to the question, is completely beside the point.
    "None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain

  29. - Top - End - #239
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Wow, that's a long OP and a lot of pages with lengthy posts that all rest on the assumption that gaming system and setting are the same thing.

    In the setting of OotS, Goblins are not inherently evil. I don't see a reasonable argument on how this makes it incompatible with D&D as a whole. So you really can't say that RC's characterization is "failed", which, if I may add, is quite an arrogant way to put it.

    Of course you're free not to like it. But personally I don't think the comic is trying to have two incompatible things at once. It just manages to have them in a way you didn't expect or don't like.

    Personally, I don't think the morality of Redcloak's actions depends on whether goblins can be good or not. I don't think he's a well-intentioned extremist, but a deluded villain who doesn't grasp the sunk cost fallacy. But that is my take on him, there are others who root for RC and his goblinoid cause, which is also fine. This complexity could indeed only be achieved by making goblinoids not "always chaotic evil", but normal people who largely just want to live their lives. It's designed so that people can have different opinions on the story's characters, which imo is what's really great about OotS. I really don't see how this aspect of the comic is inherently incompatible with others.
    "I'm particularly fond of our priesthood of the Benefactor, since our main duties seem to be sitting around and pretending that the Benefactor doesn't exist. When we're not stealing things, that is."
    Locke Lamora, The Gentleman Bastard Sequence

    The pun is mightier than the sword!

  30. - Top - End - #240
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    Default Re: Redcloak's failed characterization, and what it means for the comic as a whole.

    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    Whether it "really was" so or not, even if we can attach some meaning to the question, is completely beside the point.
    I have absolutely no clue what you consider the point to be. But I'm pretty sure your entire attitude toward writing in general is utterly incompatible with mine, so I don't expect ever to understand.

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