OOTS #1066 - The Discussion Thread

[Knaight]

Addressed to anyone who happens to be reading this: You know, I can't think of a character who isn't a cleric, a paladin, a goblin, or an orc whose religion is a joke who's shown any real interest in what the gods think? Haley never casually swears using Loki's name and didn't have any hesitation in acting like Thor was a big joke. Elan only cares about one god, and he's a puppet. Even Tsukiko, who was part cleric, doesn't seem to have been interested in any gods, as such; the cleric class was part of her Mystic Theurge chassis, nothing else.

Any other examples I'm missing?

Yes. The bodyguards at the godsmoot seemed very, very interested in what the gods were thinking about right then. It's the sort of interest that tends to come about when you're watching people vote on whether to murder you, intensified by how they were also discussing whether to murder literally everyone that wasn't one of them or the Snarl.

[nocoolnamejim]

Well, if we're going to get into semantic inferences...that is passive. You didn't say it's considered fine by the gods, you said it's considered fine by the way the gods have set things up...meaning someone looked at the way the gods set things up and decided that meant it's fine. That someone could be the gods...or Soon...or Xykon...or specific gods rather than gods universally....

On the low end of the cynicism spectrum, the ambiguity is unhelpful because the separation from context is a barrier to better understanding of the perspective as a whole. On the high end of the cynicism spectrum, the ambiguity is subversive because it actively attempts to separate an activity from its actors, who could be challenged as imperfect.

Admittedly I could have phrased things better. For that I genuinely do apologize.

On the other hand, I gave passive aggressive snark in my last post back to Kish because the post I was responding to was passive aggressive snark.

"I'm sorry, it genuinely never occurred to me that anyone could not know 1) what passive voice is, and 2) that it's generally unwise for communicating."

I'm sorry. It genuinely never occurred to me that someone could be so ignorant. That's not an apology. That's passive aggressive snark. Which is why I responded in kind.

I thought it was pretty obvious given the only "who" I referred to was the gods. When Grey Wolf's entire first post then explicitly talked about the gods

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...&postcount=338

I thought that everyone had gotten my meaning. I assumed that was made extra specially clear by my response to that.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...&postcount=344

My bad. I genuinely thought it was pretty obvious I was talking about the gods.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

In OotS, it sounds like the goblins would just want to have a peaceful life in their nice settlement, but then adventurers burst through walls like demendted, bloodthristy Kool-aid men, point at the goblins, scream "EEEEEEVIL" and then charge to kill all of them.

No, it doesn't. It is established that there is raiding done by both sides. But there is a larger context you cannot ignore: the goblins were created later, at a time when there was no good land left uncolonized. They had to set camps in badlands of various descriptions, lands incapable of feeding their population. The gods, in short, forced them into their roles as raiders. The "proper" races then responded in kind. The gods manufactured an unstable system which would cause their people and the goblins into permanent war.

You accuse Rich of wanting to have his cake and eat it. That's utterly false. The problem is that you are conflating "all goblins" with "those forcefully recruited into Xykon's army". They are not the same at all. Yes, Rich has goblins as antagonists. He also has a couple of dead humans (only one of which is still moving and talking, I'll grant you).But you should not from that draw the conclusion that, therefore, Rich is saying that all goblins and dead humans are evil.

EDIT:

I thought it was pretty obvious given the only "who" I referred to was the gods. When Grey Wolf's entire first post then explicitly talked about the gods

My bad. I genuinely thought it was pretty obvious I was talking about the gods.

It was not obvious. I had to assume and, like I said, I do that a lot, and in a significant portion of such I actually extrapolate too far.

Grey Wolf

[Kish]

In OotS, it sounds like the goblins would just want to have a peaceful life in their nice settlement, but then adventurers burst through walls like demendted, bloodthristy Kool-aid men, point at the goblins, scream "EEEEEEVIL" and then charge to kill all of them.

Yet, the different goblinoids are still portrayed as being mostly "bad guys", except with a "you treated our species like ****, so we're going to treat you like **** once the table have turned" kind of justified revenge.

I think you might be underestimating how much the gods could do without any mortals actively buying into it. (Note that the Dark One, before he ascended, explicitly had never heard what the gods had done; he was shocked and outraged to learn it.)

That is: Take two groups of people. Make them physically distinct. Plunk one down on good farmland with natural resources, they can build whatever they want. Plunk the other one down on land that won't support them in any way. They can take some of what the first group has somehow, or get them to give it to them (begging?), or they can starve.

What happens then, and what would become each culture's accepted norm without either believing in evil for evil's sake--well, I'm going to stop while I'm still reasonably certain I haven't broken the no-politics rule.

[The_Weirdo]

V nominally worships the elven gods of knowledge and adheres to their code. I leave it as an exercise to, well, you, to decide whether their lack of visible guidance for V is due to their nature as elven gods of knowledge (as opposed to, say, gods of hitting evil in the face with a hammer), or because V only pays lip service to them.

I think Roy's mom was implied to be somewhat devote as well, though not heavily.

It's less "lip service" than "non-practicing", really.

[Keltest]

I think you might be underestimating how much the gods could do without any mortals actively buying into it. (Note that the Dark One, before he ascended, explicitly had never heard what the gods had done; he was shocked and outraged to learn it.)

That is: Take two groups of people. Make them physically distinct. Plunk one down on good farmland with natural resources, they can build whatever they want. Plunk the other one down on land that won't support them in any way. They can take some of what the first group has somehow, or get them to give it to them (begging?), or they can starve.

What happens then, and what would become each culture's accepted norm without either believing in evil for evil's sake--well, I'm going to stop while I'm still reasonably certain I haven't broken the no-politics rule.

For my part, the existence of Right-eye's village (which was both peaceful and left undisturbed by the neighboring humans), and the hobgoblin citadel (in the middle of the mountains!) suggests that Redcloak and/or the Dark One deliberately exaggerated the disparity in resources as part of propaganda for The Plan. If nothing else, the citadel in the mountains suggests that (hob)goblins can make due with different resources than humans had.

[nocoolnamejim]

It was not obvious. I had to assume and, like I said, I do that a lot, and in a significant portion of such I actually extrapolate too far.

Grey Wolf

Was it still unclear after my response to your post? You know...the response that the answer to the question

You're using passive voice. "It's considered fine." Who considers?

"So having a bunch of good aligned creatures objecting to something that happens every day and is considered to be fine by the good alignment gods "

was made completely explicit that I was talking about the gods?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/shows...&postcount=344

I'm definitely willing to take a certain amount of blame for not realizing sooner what needed clarifying but I clarified who I was talking about way before Kish acknowledged that I clarified.

"Who considers fine?"
"The good alignment gods consider it fine."

36 posts later.

"Ah! The gods! Finally, you identify who you've been speaking for!"

[Grey_Wolf_c]

For my part, the existence of Right-eye's village (which was both peaceful and left undisturbed by the neighboring humans), and the hobgoblin citadel (in the middle of the mountains!) suggests that Redcloak and/or the Dark One deliberately exaggerated the disparity in resources as part of propaganda for The Plan. If nothing else, the citadel in the mountains suggests that (hob)goblins can make due with different resources than humans had.

Right eye either outright states or at least implies that life at the village is hard, though (sorry, afb), and that only through sheer hard work has conflict been avoided. I got the impression that it wasn't a scalable solution.

As to the hobgoblins, we never did see where they got their food from. They might have been raiders just like other goblins.

(it would be hilarious if it turns out that the Order did solve the issue of where goblins could get sufficient food by their non-slaying of the infinite hydra)

GW

[Rogar Demonblud]

Elan recognized that he should be making a speech about the Twelve Gods when he buried Therkla.

And the IFCC are very aware of the deities, especially that honked off five-headed dragon lady.



Anyhow, I believe the dragons would be taking more aggro from a jumped up hairless monkey person killing a lot of dragons than anything relating to alignment. But then the Council of Wyrms theme song is 'Draco Uber Alles'.

[nocoolnamejim]

I think you might be underestimating how much the gods could do without any mortals actively buying into it. (Note that the Dark One, before he ascended, explicitly had never heard what the gods had done; he was shocked and outraged to learn it.)

That is: Take two groups of people. Make them physically distinct. Plunk one down on good farmland with natural resources, they can build whatever they want. Plunk the other one down on land that won't support them in any way. They can take some of what the first group has somehow, or get them to give it to them (begging?), or they can starve.

What happens then, and what would become each culture's accepted norm without either believing in evil for evil's sake--well, I'm going to stop while I'm still reasonably certain I haven't broken the no-politics rule.

To take this interesting observation...

It's very similar to the dynamic of the Western Continent where the elves have all the good lands and the human kingdoms are fighting it out over the desert in-comic.

I wonder if the humans would be considered evil for trying to take the elven lands.

[Keltest]

Right eye either outright states or at least implies that life at the village is hard, though (sorry, afb), and that only through sheer hard work has conflict been avoided. I got the impression that it wasn't a scalable solution.

As to the hobgoblins, we never did see where they got their food from. They might have been raiders just like other goblins.

(it would be hilarious if it turns out that the Order did solve the issue of where goblins could get sufficient food by their non-slaying of the infinite hydra)

GW

You do misremember. Redcloak brings up that the goblins have less than the humans, and Right-eye's response is "so?" its only Redcloak who insists that should be cause for conflict.

As for the hobgoblins, that begs the question though, raiders of who? That hobgoblin base was implied to be pretty far away from other civilization, and while my Knowledge (Historic Logistics) skill isn't especially high, I don't believe there were ever any significant city-states that survived exclusively through banditry and raiding. The Vikings, Goths, Huns, etc... all actually had decently resource-rich lands they were coming from, even if they didn't have agriculture or infrastructure on the scale of the civilizations they were raiding.

[Unoriginal]

To take this interesting observation...

It's very similar to the dynamic of the Western Continent where the elves have all the good lands and the human kingdoms are fighting it out over the desert in-comic.

I wonder if the humans would be considered evil for trying to take the elven lands.

In any case, we know that the different empires in the mostly non-fertile parts can afford a pretty large population, all things considered.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

As for the hobgoblins, that begs the question though, raiders of who? That hobgoblin base was implied to be pretty far away from other civilization, and while my Knowledge (Historic Logistics) skill isn't especially high, I don't believe there were ever any significant city-states that survived exclusively through banditry and raiding. The Vikings, Goths, Huns, etc... all actually had decently resource-rich lands they were coming from, even if they didn't have agriculture or infrastructure on the scale of the civilizations they were raiding.

But it wasn't a city state. It was closer to a Roman military encampment. For all we know, they had literally set up for a week on their way between raiding territories. Sub-Subsistence cultures that had to raid neighbours have existed, mostly in prehistory, because the moment people figured out walls that became a lot harder. As a rule of thumb, they weren't the kind to write* stuff down, so we tend to know of them only from the PoV of the raided, which wasn't kind to them. They certainly never became what we'd call civilizations, though - they existed in the margins of them.

Grey Wolf

*This being prehistory, I mostly mean art-wise, rather than actual writing, of course.

[littlebum2002]

For my part, the existence of Right-eye's village (which was both peaceful and left undisturbed by the neighboring humans), and the hobgoblin citadel (in the middle of the mountains!) suggests that Redcloak and/or the Dark One deliberately exaggerated the disparity in resources as part of propaganda for The Plan. If nothing else, the citadel in the mountains suggests that (hob)goblins can make due with different resources than humans had.

The citadel and village only existed because they had not yet come to the attention of the LARGE portion of the world who were given express permission by their deities to commit genocide against the goblinoids.

"They haven't managed to find and kill us yet" is not really a sustainable life strategy. The ultimate goal is to change the world so that "kill any goblionoid on sight" is no longer an acceptable way of thinking, not just to hide in nooks and crannies from the close to 1/3rd of the world that thinks that way.

[Rogar Demonblud]

In any case, we know that the different empires in the mostly non-fertile parts can afford a pretty large population, all things considered.

Amazing things can be done with magic.

[Unoriginal]

No, it doesn't. It is established that there is raiding done by both sides. But there is a larger context you cannot ignore: the goblins were created later, at a time when there was no good land left uncolonized. They had to set camps in badlands of various descriptions, lands incapable of feeding their population. The gods, in short, forced them into their roles as raiders. The "proper" races then responded in kind. The gods manufactured an unstable system which would cause their people and the goblins into permanent war.

Fair enough, but it still means that the fundamental reason why goblins are thought as the "evil" ones here is because the gods f***ed them over in order to have antagonists and that no one tried to solve the "goblins live in the badlands, so they invade the better places" root of the problem (or at least, didn't manage to solve it). So the fundamental reason the goblins are considered the "evil ones" in this equation is because people (including the gods) are jerks to goblins.

The problem is that you are conflating "all goblins" with "those forcefully recruited into Xykon's army". They are not the same at all.

I'm not saying that, but I can get why what I said wasn't clear.

Amazing things can be done with magic.

I wonder if the goblins have access to that kind of magic.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Fair enough, but it still means that the fundamental reason why goblins are thought as the "evil" ones here is because the gods f***ed them over in order to have antagonists and that no one tried to solve the "goblins live in the badlands, so they invade the better places" root of the problem (or at least, didn't manage to solve it). So the fundamental reason the goblins are considered the "evil ones" in this equation is because people (including the gods) are jerks to goblins.

Err... yes? I mean that's what my position is. Except you can skip the "people" part. Goblins are "evil" because the gods say so (and have ensured that circumstances force them into it).

GW

[Keltest]

But it wasn't a city state. It was closer to a Roman military encampment. For all we know, they had literally set up for a week on their way between raiding territories. Sub-Subsistence cultures that had to raid neighbours have existed, mostly in prehistory, because the moment people figured out walls that became a lot harder. As a rule of thumb, they weren't the kind to write* stuff down, so we tend to know of them only from the PoV of the raided, which wasn't kind to them. They certainly never became what we'd call civilizations, though - they existed in the margins of them.

Grey Wolf

*This being prehistory, I mostly mean art-wise, rather than actual writing, of course.

If that were simply a temporary base of operations, it seems rather unlikely to me that they would have left their non-combatants there, unable to fend for themselves due to the raiders all being absent, for over a year while they were on another continent campaigning.

Also, its pretty elaborate for a temporary camp, though I will admit to that being at least plausible.

[Kish]

I think it works much better to look at individual morality rather than racial morality.

That is: I know this fellow who

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

Show

murdered his own younger brother to stop him from destroying a complete monster who had amused himself by watching the younger brother's wife and two older children die

. Even as he kept saying what he was doing was for the benefit of the tribe of his people who had come with him, his actions showed a consistent willingness to sacrifice them to keep the monster happy, and ultimately they all died, some killed by people the fellow recognized as enemies, a whole lot killed by the monster.

Does it make anyone more or less evil if I mention that the one I called the "fellow" is a goblin and the one I called the "monster" is (or at least was) human?

If I say "here is a character who cuts a defenseless five-year-old girl in half" or "here is a group of characters who whip elderly slaves who they freely acknowledge can't work any faster than they are, because they find it amusing to watch the slaves fall over," isn't it clear already that both are villains? Does it really make any difference which ones are human, which ones are hobgoblins, or what the gods think about the matter?

"Good goblins are dead goblins."--Some guy who literally existed so Rich could demonstrated Redcloak's Implosion spell on someone who didn't deserve audience sympathy.

[Mightymosy]

Spoiler: Response to Mightymosy, spoiler'd for length

Show

The original quote certainly concluded that people needed to lighten up about supposed-discrimination they read into the comic, when it was supposed to be just a joke, which I agree with to an extent (obviously, there's issues when the joke goes too far in regards to a rights issue, but I doubt Rich is gonna step in that particular turd). The issue is more with the conversation that lead up to that conclusion, which discusses the "engineers are awkward" joke being "overdone in mainstream media". While your conclusion was written to be specific to the OotS comic, and I don't think you're transphobic (or whatever the word would be for "dismissive of the issues trans people have with their depiction in the mainstream media"), the conclusion in undermined by the argument concerning mainstream media, and overshadowed by the lines drawn between engineer discrimination and LGBT discrimination.

To put it a bit more simply, this:



...implies some comparison between perceived anti-engineer and anti-trans jokes/trends in the OotS comic. While it would probably be less offensive if written like this:



It wouldn't be perfect, of course, but it wouldn't be calling out specific groups anymore. The problem is this unintentional juxtaposition:



The conclusion is about the comic in particular, but the argument leading up to it is not, and this can leave people with the impression that your conclusion is meant as a more general statement in regards to how groups are depicted by the media, which comes across very poorly.

Once again, I don't think you're transphobic (or whatever the word for this would be), but I've long since come to a conclusion myself that we, as individuals, have some level of responsibility for how the world perceives us and judges us, to take into account how people will view our actions and words before we speak or act, to make sure the image we're presenting, and the one that others will take away, is one we can be satisfied with...and this goes doubly for online interactions, where misunderstandings and unintended implications/impressions occur much easier. I don't think you're a bad person, my post was more an attempt to let you know that this:



...looks far worse than I'm pretty sure you intended it to look.

Thank you for your long post. I read it but I am still not sure....

You complain that what I wrote could be percieved as me generalising things, but then you suggested I should have worded it like this:
"Bottom line: It's a comic. A parody. Maybe we should all step back a little and try not being insulted, regardless of the group supposedly being maligned. Laughing about oneself is a huge step in character, I have found."

Your suggestion was to not mention specific groups I mentioned.

I mentioned these groups specifically because these were groups the comic either made fun of or which were discussed in relation to the comic making fun of - the intent was to create a clear connection to the comic.
Thus, the "It's a comic" in the beginning of the paragraph...

I could have wrote
"It's a well-intentioned comic. A non-offensive parody[...]"
or something along those lines.
That would have made it a little more clear that I don't approve of other comics or media that make offensive and bad fun of these particular groups (I thought that was clear from the context, but hey, maybe it wasn't )


So, semantics aside I still have no clue why, or how, transgender people feel insulted by the comic. Maybe that would be part of the way to understand the actual problem?



That being said, we can talk about other media as well, if people want.

Just one problem with "mainstream" media is that this means different things to different people.
For example the "mainstream" media I watch (like, TV series), has a lot more jokes that could be seen as discrimination against socially awkward nerd people than it has jokes against transgenderism or lesbian/gay people, for that matter.

I would point out that the second group is being discriminated in the way they are underrepresented in numbers, and I'd agree to that. Transgender people in media I watch are rare, but when they appear they are often either victims (in crime stories - the Mentalist, discussed briefly in the last comic discussion thread, had one really nice episode about it) or comedic relief (in comedy). So, if you say "Transgender people should get more representation as in, for example, taking leading roles in stories (protagonists)", then yes! Unfortunately they'd have to stand in a long, long line of applicants who also are criminally underrespresented in "mainstream media". And yes, I agree that's unfortunate.

We may be slowly getting someplace, though - for example we had this comedy show where a gay couple (is gay insulting? I don't know. If it is, I can replace it with other words) is getting some lady to have a child for them. I wasn't getting warm with the show, mostly because we were watching other shows more regularly at the time, and a lot of the jokes just weren't "clicking" with me, but I was, and still am, happy that the show was created. And who knows? After we finish our current series', we might give the show another try. I needed a couple episodes to like the Mentalist, maybe this will happen with that series as well?

[Mightymosy]

[...]"Good goblins are dead goblins."--Some guy who literally existed so Rich could demonstrated Redcloak's Implosion spell on someone who didn't deserve audience sympathy.

And still I think there were people rooting for him, or at least finding him cool. But gotta give Rich credit: at least this time he made the karmic death swift and timely, and disgusting.

[Burner28]

What's the current debate about?

[Mightymosy]

My theory is that Roy was unaware that the starmetal was already claimed, the young black dragon was understandably uninterested in negotiating with armed invaders, and Roy never attacked once Vaarsuvius had neutralized the threat (before terminating him some time later); there was no basis for faulting Roy morally.

Don't understand the part about the starmetal. Could you explain, please?

The part about Roy is that he proudly gloated over the dragon killing, and the deva didn't note it, despite generally caring for "bad language". So gloating about a murder done by your team is morally better than giving your jerk father sarcastic lines? Hmmm...
And Roy was being held responsible for Belkar because he is his leader. He is also Varsuuvius' leader.

My personal explanation is that the Giant left it out for space reason/forgot to include it, but I am not sure, of course.

Thank you!

[Mightymosy]

What's the current debate about?

Good and evil, in various aspects. As usual

[Mordar]

That is: Take two groups of people. Make them physically distinct. Plunk one down on good farmland with natural resources, they can build whatever they want. Plunk the other one down on land that won't support them in any way. They can take some of what the first group has somehow, or get them to give it to them (begging?), or they can starve.

What happens then, and what would become each culture's accepted norm without either believing in evil for evil's sake--well, I'm going to stop while I'm still reasonably certain I haven't broken the no-politics rule.

This is the Valjean dilemma, right? Is a thief less a thief because he stole the loaf of bread to feed a child instead of stealing the loaf of bread because EVEL? Sure, that's a small scale example that could easily bend your way.

Is a group that pillages because their village will starve and their people will die if they don't less a group of pillagers than the group who does it for the evillulz?

I guess my point here is: if you steal/murder/burn with intent, regardless of the root of the intent, you are a thief/murderer/arsonist. All kinds of questions fly up, though, when you consider the beings benefiting from the theft/murder/pillaging without participation. That, of course, is the question of throwing out the babies with the bathwater.

TANGENT: Is calling Andi an Engineer in the STEM sense a disservice? Do we have proof she is more than an Engineer in the mechanic sense?

- M

[Kish]

I think Rich has too low of an opinion of "being responsible for what someone else does." The deva explicitly says she'd accept him not being responsible for Belkar at all if he wasn't the group leader (so Durkon is in the clear for just watching Belkar and Vaarsuvius torture Yukyuk, apparently), and though she did bring up Belkar, she accepted frankly ridiculous excuses ("I'm his prison warden! Don't ask why I've consistently been glad to be away from him when he's killing goblins who are trying to surrender or apprentice barbarians when not in my sight, made no efforts to restrain him from anything but what he did directly in front of me until Shojo insisted on acting like him killing some NPC guard meant something, and then I was as passive as could be: happy to go along with the Mark of Justice, happy to coach Belkar on how to get Hinjo to remove the Mark of Justice").

The young black dragon's death was Vaarsuvius' sin, not Roy's. It wouldn't fly in a game I was running, it might or might not fly in a game Rich was running, but it flies in the comic Rich is writing, without that meaning it wasn't a sin at all.

[Doug Lampert]

There is no such thing as "innocent Evil".

In D&D, you can't be of an Alignment by merely *thinking* about it or having an outlook on life.

This is incorrect. Any "always evil" race is born that way, this includes black dragons. What crime has a black dragon committed when it breaks out of it's shell?

If you are Evil and a dragon, you've done things equivalent to attacking passerbies to eat them, pillaged what was left after your rampage, enslaved people, killed people for just walking somewhere you considered your territory, or the like.

If a Red Dragon didn't do anything Evil, then they wouldn't be Evil.

As for the very young chromatic dragons, I'd say their parents still get them "toys" like prisoners, slaves or places where they can do things in total impunity and they just indulge in typical chromatic dragon behavior. And even the youngest dragon with stats is still smart and wise as your average human adult (for most of the scale colors, at least), so they know right from wrong, they just don't care.

Except that many of the chromatic dragons EXPLICITLY often leave eggs to hatch untended and do nothing for the children. So, no. That's not what's happening.

[Unoriginal]

I think it works much better to look at individual morality rather than racial morality.

That is: I know this fellow who

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

Show

murdered his own younger brother to stop him from destroying a complete monster who had amused himself by watching the younger brother's wife and two older children die

. Even as he kept saying what he was doing was for the benefit of the tribe of his people who had come with him, his actions showed a consistent willingness to sacrifice them to keep the monster happy, and ultimately they all died, some killed by people the fellow recognized as enemies, a whole lot killed by the monster.

Does it make anyone more or less evil if I mention that the one I called the "fellow" is a goblin and the one I called the "monster" is (or at least was) human?

If I say "here is a character who cuts a defenseless five-year-old girl in half" or "here is a group of characters who whip elderly slaves who they freely acknowledge can't work any faster than they are, because they find it amusing to watch the slaves fall over," isn't it clear already that both are villains? Does it really make any difference which ones are human, which ones are hobgoblins, or what the gods think about the matter?

"Good goblins are dead goblins."--Some guy who literally existed so Rich could demonstrated Redcloak's Implosion spell on someone who didn't deserve audience sympathy.

I agree with what you say, but I don't see which part of the debate you're addressing


That elf was a monster who killed goblins not because they were malevolent, but because they're goblins.

The thing I thought as weird is that the Giant consider that D&D saying "Species X's individuals are generally Evil, because they have a tendency to do Y malevolent behaviors out because instinct, culture and society and usually enjoy it too" is bad, but his own justification is "goblins are considered evil because the gods made them the world's punching bags, and now this Evil Goblin God and his Evil priest are lashing out against it."

In the first case, it's acknowledging what your average D&D goblin's behavior is likely to be, just like someone would say "Star Trek's Klingons have a tendency to be pretty violent", "LotR's Hobbits are generally a peaceful folk", or "doing a deal with a Dragon in Shadowrun is usually not wise."

But in the second it makes that the whole goblin species suffered a great, fundamental injustice, despite not being really more malevolent than any other species and just wanting enough lands to live well, with the Dark One and Redcloack going "enough! You wanted us to be the bad guys? Well, we're going to use this abomination to threaten you!" only once they got pushed too far big jerk gods and bigoted mass-murderers.

And when you think about it, if the Order succeed at countering Hel's plan, they'll save millions of Dwarves from an helish afterlife. But if the Order succeed at countering Redcloack's plan, they'll doom millions of goblins to suffer in a life where the gods themselves have stacked the deck against them, and then an afterlife that's not much better.

I'm honestly not trying to insult anyone or the like, I just find there is.. a dissonance, maybe it's the term, in finding "those beings are likely to kill the adventurers on sight and be cruel to them because their society encourage it" to be bad, but then turning it into "those beings are likely to be killed by adventurers on sight and have other people be cruel to them because those people's gods and the rules of the world encourage it". Because instead of making it about who's malevolent and who's not, it makes the whole thing "those divine jerks decided who was the good guy here, but it's not factually true."

idk, maybe I'm just too tired to think about it rationally.

Sorry for the rant, I hope I didn't offend anyone.

[Unoriginal]

This is incorrect. Any "always evil" race is born that way, this includes black dragons. What crime has a black dragon committed when it breaks out of it's shell?

Not true. There is nothing saying they're born that way. Unless you're talking about beings such as Fiends.

Except that many of the chromatic dragons EXPLICITLY often leave eggs to hatch untended and do nothing for the children. So, no. That's not what's happening.

In which case, the explanation is: most chromatic dragons, when left by their parents to hatch and fend for themselves, with the intellect of adult humans (and I think the knowledge), are likely to commit acts such as knowingly attacking sapient beings or making them suffer in other ways, because they want their riches/to toy with them/to enslave them/to eat them after coming to the conclusion it's what they want to do. Not all will think that way, but most.

[Kish]

I don't think the Order simply smashing Xykon, killing Redcloak, reconquering Gobbotopia and returning Azure City to Hinjo, and restoring the status quo ante is in the cards, or would be treated as a happy ending if it was.

That said, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate Redcloak's hypocrisy or that of his god. If I were Oona, I'd be kicking myself for having guilted Redcloak into strengthening economic and social ties with me.