If you DMed like OotS?

[danielxcutter]

Bit late, my friend. That ship has sailed, circled the globe, and come back into port laden with spices from far-off lands.

Can I sig this?

[woweedd]

Can I sig this?

I mean, i'm basically quoting Zero Punctuation, but sure.

[Peelee]

Why? Because back-handed contempt is so endearing?

Well, yes, but I wouldn't call that backhanded. "If I got a paper cut, that’s a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy. "

[factotum]

(As an aside, my preferred head-canon version of the story is that the blood oath was satisfied and Eugene released by Roy's death in the line of duty. Then, when he came back, we'd know he's working purely out of the good of his heart. But alas... such a view is not supported by the data.)

If it worked that way then the Blood Oath would already have been fulfilled by Eugene's many deaths while adventuring in search of Xykon...I mean, he was still trying to fulfil the Oath at that point, the fact he never found the guy shouldn't make a difference.

[Kish]

Eugene's many deaths while adventuring in search of Xykon

[citation needed]

[Grey_Wolf_c]

[citation needed]

Specifically, the bit about "while adventuring in search of Xykon", please.

GW

[factotum]

We know he went adventuring for a time, and I don't actually see why else he would have been doing so? We also know he died multiple times during that time period from his gravestone in On the Origin of PCs. Now, I suppose it's possible he gave up his search for Xykon without ever having got a scratch and then blew himself up doing magical experiments half a dozen times, but that really doesn't seem a more likely explanation to me than "he died a lot while searching for Xykon".

[Rodin]

We know he went adventuring for a time, and I don't actually see why else he would have been doing so? We also know he died multiple times during that time period from his gravestone in On the Origin of PCs. Now, I suppose it's possible he gave up his search for Xykon without ever having got a scratch and then blew himself up doing magical experiments half a dozen times, but that really doesn't seem a more likely explanation to me than "he died a lot while searching for Xykon".

Except we explicitly see him adventuring while not looking for Xykon, in this comic. He starts to bring it up while they're in a dungeon, then decides he doesn't care anymore.

As for why he's adventuring, do we need one in the Stickverse? Adventuring just seems to be a profession like any other given the sheer number of them we see. Maybe he was dungeon diving to provide for his family. Or because there were magical artifacts he wanted. Or any number of non-Xykon related reasons.

[hamishspence]

Except we explicitly see him adventuring while not looking for Xykon, in this comic. He starts to bring it up while they're in a dungeon, then decides he doesn't care anymore.

That scene was shown in the prequels, to have taken place while he was looking for Xykon. He finds Xyklon instead. And gives up.

[Lacuna Caster]

If it worked that way then the Blood Oath would already have been fulfilled by Eugene's many deaths while adventuring in search of Xykon...I mean, he was still trying to fulfil the Oath at that point, the fact he never found the guy shouldn't make a difference.

I don't have much to add to what Rodin & hamishpence said, but it's certainly an interesting point.

[Kish]

We know he went adventuring for a time, and I don't actually see why else he would have been doing so?

Your assumption that his adventuring career consisted solely of looking for Xykon, beginning when he started looking for Xykon and ending when he stopped*, is your business, but please don't speak as if it was an established fact which can be used to disprove ideas.

*With the associated assumptions that he finished his adventuring career before his party got above the level range posted on the wall of Xyklon's dungeon and thus all his deaths were when Uncle Mytok was just barely high enough level to cast Raise Dead at the latest, and that Roy's dismissiveness toward Eugene's deaths was entirely based on having heard about them rather than experiencing them, as they all happened well before he was born.

[factotum]

and that Roy's dismissiveness toward Eugene's deaths was entirely based on having heard about them rather than experiencing them, as they all happened well before he was born.

Why would I make that assumption when we know exactly when Roy was born and the occasions on which Eugene died? According to his tombstone Eugene died in 1124, 1143, 1149, 1158, 1159, and 1168 before his final death in 1180, while Roy was born in 1155. So, three of Eugene's deaths *did* happen before Roy was born, and another two of them when Roy was so young that he probably wouldn't have realised what was going on--only the one in 1168 would have been meaningful to him.

[Kish]

Start of Darkness pages 25-26 lay out the sequence of events. Eugene hadn't even met Sara before the dungeon scene where he turned his back on the Blood Oath (where, incidentally, he looked exactly like he did in the scene where Xykon killed Fyron, dark beard, none of the markers of age he shows in later scenes). So you've just halved the viability of your assumption even as a theory: he died at least three times after "never mind, guys, it was a stupid oath anyway."

Edited to add: If Eugene died while looking for Xykon, even once, he should, according to what the deva said, have gotten into the afterlife. And yet he was shocked and enraged that Roy got in because Roy had died trying to fulfill the Blood Oath.

[Lacuna Caster]

My main point was to suggest that there is a slightly adjusted version of the story that allows Roy to be less ambiguously heroic. (Particularly if he took on the blood oath voluntarily to get his Dad out of limbo.) But also that, in a way, escalating the physical stakes doesn't particularly develop the characters.

It's worth noting, I think, that it requires at least 15 Intelligence to cast Teleport, and the vast majority of people won't go beyond, like, 12 or 13. I would argue that the main thing that makes adventurers special isn't class levels, but ability scores.

1) I don't know how many ninth-level-and-above wizards you're assuming exist in the OotS setting, 2) I don't know how the presented OotS world, as opposed to an imagined medieval world, shows signs of lacking teleporting wizards, and 3) if by "Tippyverse" you mean "it doesn't resemble an imagined medieval world" rather than the "everyone important is in huge cities" stuff, sure.

Sure, OOTSverse has teleporting wizards, but as I touched on, it's not like the Guard was using scry-and-die to TP directly on top of the order, which would seem to be the most logical thing when you have access to those spells (and we know that Shojo does.) That the order's primary wizard also doesn't know the spell also leads to... substantial complications.

The point about ability scores is interesting, because aside from caster stat requirements D&D very much favours nurture over nature- generally the BAB and skill bonuses you get from gaining levels over time completely dwarf the effects of latent talent. And despite the DMG description of a world where nearly everybody is level 1, there's no intrinsic difficulty with earning XP via standard rules (if nothing else, rulers could set up non-lethal gladiatorial tournaments to level up their subjects pretty well ad-infinitum.)

Even with Int requirements, you can boost stats as you level or via magic items, so... if even one person in 10(?) can qualify to cast teleport, you've essentially rendered all merchant caravans and shipping obsolete. Similarly, if even 5% of the population can graduate as Wis 15 10th-level clerics, then agriculture is obsolete. And with permanency, trap effects and item crafting, you can just say "beam me up, scotty" and "tea, earl gray- hot." Which is cool and all, but it doesn't look much like a regular fantasy setting, or even large swathes of OOTSverse.

[goto124]

My main point was to suggest that there is a slightly adjusted version of the story that allows Roy to be less ambiguously heroic. (Particularly if he took on the blood oath voluntarily to get his Dad out of limbo.) But also that, in a way, escalating the physical stakes doesn't particularly develop the characters.

If anything, the Blood Oath is more of a motivation to get Eugene to take great pains to help Roy fulfil the Oath. Even without the Oath, the benefits of stopping Xykon and saving the world are clear and something Roy would pursue. Isn't 'saving the world' the main reason Roy is doing this whole thing, anyway?

[Kish]

I believe Lacuna is suggesting that Rich could have written Roy as having, and having always had, purely selfless motives. Which is, as far as it goes, undeniable: if Rich had chosen to write a different story he could have written a different story.

[Lacuna Caster]

If anything, the Blood Oath is more of a motivation to get Eugene to take great pains to help Roy fulfil the Oath. Even without the Oath, the benefits of stopping Xykon and saving the world are clear and something Roy would pursue. Isn't 'saving the world' the main reason Roy is doing this whole thing, anyway?

Ostensibly, yes, but my point is that most of the story expresses this in the form of lengthy filibusters. Roy has a perfectly selfish reason for wanting Xykon dead- heck, one can argue there are perfectly selfish reasons to want your planet to continue existing- so whatever altruistic motives he might have... can't be clearly expressed under those circumstances. (Eugene has been effectively useless since Roy got raised anyway, so I don't think much would be lost by resolving the blood oath at that point.)

To be clear, there's an Evil version of Roy who'd do things like drive cannon-fodder minions before him with the lash sooner than confront Xykon in single combat, and strictly speaking the Godsmoot has nothing to do with hunting down X, but going out of his way to save Durkon would actually reveal more virtue than going of his way to save millions of souls... if there were any difference.

To summarise, this page paradoxically says more about Miko than this page says about Roy. (Yes, I know V/Haley are talking about making 3 trips. Frankly, they're not being very bright.)


EDIT: To be fair, Roy could theoretically have let Xykon be Julia's business instead, so he's not 100% obliged to hunt down the lich personally. Then again... roping in Julia might not have been an unintelligent thing to do. Put a few levels under her belt, and she could probably cast teleport by now.

[georgie_leech]

It seems to me that logic implies that if someone is doing a quest for virtue, and things balloon and now the hero or things the hero cares about are threatened (that is, the situation has become more perilous), they're suddenly less virtuous for having a personal stake in the matter.

[Lacuna Caster]

I wouldn't say the hero becomes less virtuous, it's just that those circumstances don't provide additional evidence of virtue. If you're willing to pay a thousand dollars to save 1 life, then being willing to pay a thousand dollars to save 100 lives is objectively a better return on investment, but also doesn't raise the bar for your altruism... particularly if you're one of the hundred lives. Being willing to risk death to save another life would. (Of course, if you have a choice between the three tradeoffs, there's nothing virtuous about opting to die versus spending dollars to save more lives. A genuine altruist would want to maximise results, not bragging rights.)

Lord of the Rings, for comparison, explicitly starts with the problem of saving the world, and presents Sam/Frodo with escalating resistance and diminishing odds of survival. Les Miserables is largely concerned with the fate of individuals, but Valjean, similarly, has to sacrifice more and more to protect the people that matter to him. OOTS starts with the problem of ensuring that Roy/Eugene/Julia get a decent afterlife, and... in various ways... actually provides more incentives to do it over time. Roy is willing to fight Xykon, sure, but we already knew that from back in the days of DCF- being willing to repeatedly fight Xykon with a stronger, better-equipped team, when the fabric of the universe he happens to occupy is increasingly at stake, doesn't tell you anything new about him.

To be fair, the afterlife-incentive problem actually applies to almost anyone good-aligned in D&D (I mean, how virtuous do you need to be when the reward for compassion is an eternity of bliss?) but it's made much more explicit in Roy's case than anyone else. (Also to be fair, this begs the question of why anyone in their right mind would opt to be Evil.)

So yeah, IMHO this page says more about Celia than this page says about O-Chul.

[woweedd]

I wouldn't say the hero becomes less virtuous, it's just that those circumstances don't provide additional evidence of virtue. If you're willing to pay a thousand dollars to save 1 life, then being willing to pay a thousand dollars to save 100 lives is objectively a better return on investment, but also doesn't raise the bar for your altruism... particularly if you're one of the hundred lives. Being willing to risk death to save another life would. (Of course, if you have a choice between the three tradeoffs, there's nothing virtuous about opting to die versus spending dollars to save more lives. A genuine altruist would want to maximise results, not bragging rights.)

Lord of the Rings, for comparison, explicitly starts with the problem of saving the world, and presents Sam/Frodo with escalating resistance and diminishing odds of survival. Les Miserables is largely concerned with the fate of individuals, but Valjean, similarly, has to sacrifice more and more to protect the people that matter to him. OOTS starts with the problem of ensuring that Roy/Eugene/Julia get a decent afterlife, and... in various ways... actually provides more incentives to do it over time. Roy is willing to fight Xykon, sure, but we already knew that from back in the days of DCF- being willing to repeatedly fight Xykon with a stronger, better-equipped team, when the fabric of the universe he happens to occupy is increasingly at stake, doesn't tell you anything new about him.

To be fair, the afterlife-incentive problem actually applies to almost anyone good-aligned in D&D (I mean, how virtuous do you need to be when the reward for compassion is an eternity of bliss?) but it's made much more explicit in Roy's case than anyone else. (Also to be fair, this begs the question of why anyone in their right mind would opt to be Evil.)

So yeah, IMHO this page says more about Celia than this page says about O-Chul.

Ok, there actually is an answer as to why people in OOTS verse choose to be Evil. Firstly, Evil afterlives aren't meant as punishments. They're pretty bad but they're bad because they are, by definition, inhabited entirely by Evil people, and a world inhabited entirely by Evil is gonna be pretty bad by default. Basically, there's nothing forcing the Evil afterlives to suck. It's just that, when you take all the most selfish, conniving, remorseless beings in existence and stuff them all in one place, with nothing left to hold them back, things are gonna go to Hell quickly, in a rather literal sense, in this case. Also, almost no Evil person thinks they're gonna be at the bottom. Evil people tend to be, as a rule, selfish, survival-of-the-fittest types, and assume that they themselves ARE the fittest. Ergo, they assume that they'll be ruling the roost in the Afterlife. Of course, statistically speaking, they're far more likely to be the big fish in the small pond that is the Mortal Plane, and will end up as a Lemure or Imp serving the medium fish in the big pond that is the Afterlife, but they don't know that.

[martianmister]

So yeah, IMHO this page says more about Celia than this page says about O-Chul.

In which way?

[woweedd]

In which way?

LC is saying that, since Cellia not only doesn't know there's an afterlife waiting for her but, in fact, KNOWS there isn't, it makes her actions more heroic because, if she dies, there's no reward for her actions. Essentially, it's the whole "If you know Heaven exists, do all Good acts become selfish?" question.

[Lacuna Caster]

In which way?

What woweedd said. I like O-Chul well enough, but I also feel that fans can squee a bit much about actions he takes under circumstances where he has very little reason or opportunity to do otherwise. (Such as refusing to divulge information he genuinely does not have.)


The evil-afterlife-as-ponzi-scheme idea is a reasonable one, and I suppose there are alternate setups, such as Dark One presumably rewarding faithful followers and Hel scooping up any dwarf without a viking funeral. I'm not saying that Hell's unpleasantness doesn't owe a lot to the inhabitants, but you'd think the prospect of heading for the dingiest inmate-run-asylum in the universe would be enough to discourage a lot of the small fry. (Then again, I suppose that's not without real-world parallels.)

This does raise another question though- how would ostensibly good-aligned people feel about sending their enemies to a place of eternal ass-raping? I can't imagine a white knight shoving their worst enemy into a pit of burning coals and leaving them there for a thousand years, given torture is supposed to be a major ethical no-no. Worse, if you're talking about genuinely infinite reward, the afterlife setup arguably implies that the best thing you can do for a good person is kill them. They go straight to a better place, never need to worry about the bare necessities, and maybe get promoted as a deva or archon or angel or houri. It completely inverts the normal moral weightings of who you're supposed to eradicate and who you need to handle gently.

[factotum]

Worse, if you're talking about genuinely infinite reward, the afterlife setup arguably implies that the best thing you can do for a good person is kill them. They go straight to a better place, never need to worry about the bare necessities, and maybe get promoted as a deva or archon or angel or houri.

There's two problems there:

1) It's not up to you to determine where a person's soul will end up, so even if you *think* they're a truly Good person, you can't be sure of that--so what if you kill them and they end up somewhere they don't want to be?

2) Following on from that point, there is always room for people to change and grow while they're alive, whereas I'm pretty sure the afterlife is supposed to be a more static existence. You might kill someone Good and they go to one of the Good afterlives, but they might have become an even better person and got an even better afterlife if you'd just let them be a few years.

[Lacuna Caster]

Oh, it's reasonable to talk about issues of consent and verifying outcomes, sure, but even if you found some way to solve those problems it still leads to very strange behaviours. "Hi, there, I've been chatting to the deva upstairs and they assure me you've got a 1st class ticket to Elysium! Kill yourself."

And yeah, there are other complications- staying in touch with family, setting a positive example for the folks on earth, et cetera. I guess what I'm driving at is the cosmic system of punishment and rewards behaves like something very similar to law enforcement, by creating conditions that align self-interested behaviour with prosocial behaviour. Which can obviously be of net benefit to society, but arguably makes it harder distinguish people with an intrinsic concern for others' welfare from those that are just... going with the flow.

I'm reminded of an earlier discussion on vigilantism and lawfulness, where I think the author commented that being Lawful is harder to demonstrate for the vigilante than it is for the regular law-abiding citizen embedded in their native culture. I think this is actually backward. It's harder for the vigilante to get away with practicing their code in defiance of local norms, but that's exactly what gives you hard information about the extent of their commitment to that code. Conversely, someone who conforms to the expectations of their native culture is really telling you very little about their intrinsic priorities, because the risk/reward ratio generally favours doing so. (To give an example, we know that Durkon is Lawful not because he followed rules and orders back in the dwarven lands, where he'd be hanged or ostracised for failing to do so- we know he's Lawful because he keeps following rules and orders after he's already been exiled.) You can make an argument about internalised habit, but I'm not sure many dwarves would do that.

[Lacuna Caster]

The real argument against the lawfulness of the vigilante is that while the vigilante might have a rigorous internal code, the effort to impose that code upon the larger society can arguably interpreted as chaotic... insofar as it involves independent initiative, disrupting existing power structures, and effecting substantial change in others' traditional values- things that are normally filed under the non-lawful banner. (Hence the quote about Batman as "a dionysian figure, a force for anarchy that imposes an individual order.")

I don't think the rules of D&D give much help there. There are no specific guidelines on the relative weighting of internal motivation vs. external results, or how much change on what scale counts as Law/Chaos +1, et cetera, so it all tends to boil down to GM fiat. Which is a pity, because in theory that's where the thematic meat of the system lies.

[woweedd]

Oh, it's reasonable to talk about issues of consent and verifying outcomes, sure, but even if you found some way to solve those problems it still leads to very strange behaviours. "Hi, there, I've been chatting to the deva upstairs and they assure me you've got a 1st class ticket to Elysium! Kill yourself."

And yeah, there are other complications- staying in touch with family, setting a positive example for the folks on earth, et cetera. I guess what I'm driving at is the cosmic system of punishment and rewards behaves like something very similar to law enforcement, by creating conditions that align self-interested behaviour with prosocial behaviour. Which can obviously be of net benefit to society, but arguably makes it harder distinguish people with an intrinsic concern for others' welfare from those that are just... going with the flow.

I'm reminded of an earlier discussion on vigilantism and lawfulness, where I think the author commented that being Lawful is harder to demonstrate for the vigilante than it is for the regular law-abiding citizen embedded in their native culture. I think this is actually backward. It's harder for the vigilante to get away with practicing their code in defiance of local norms, but that's exactly what gives you hard information about the extent of their commitment to that code. Conversely, someone who conforms to the expectations of their native culture is really telling you very little about their intrinsic priorities, because the risk/reward ratio generally favours doing so. (To give an example, we know that Durkon is Lawful not because he followed rules and orders back in the dwarven lands, where he'd be hanged or ostracised for failing to do so- we know he's Lawful because he keeps following rules and orders after he's already been exiled.) You can make an argument about internalised habit, but I'm not sure many dwarves would do that.

I feel liek you're getting into philosophical matters that may be beyond the scope of this forum.

[hamishspence]

I'm reminded of an earlier discussion on vigilantism and lawfulness, where I think the author commented that being Lawful is harder to demonstrate for the vigilante than it is for the regular law-abiding citizen embedded in their native culture. I think this is actually backward. It's harder for the vigilante to get away with practicing their code in defiance of local norms, but that's exactly what gives you hard information about the extent of their commitment to that code.

The Vigilantism & Lawful Alignment thread, yes. This was the post in question:

In my personal interpretation of Lawfulness in D&D, I believe that yes, it is possible to be Lawful using a personal code rather than the societal definitions of law and order. However, I believe that the burden of upholding that code has to be much stricter than that of the average person in order to actually qualify as Lawful. You must be willing to suffer personal detriment through adhesion to your code, without wavering, if you want to wear the Lawful hat.

Because almost everyone has a personal code of some sort; Robin Hood had a personal code, and he's the poster child for Chaotic Good. The reason his code doesn't rise to the level of Lawful is that he would be willing to bend it in a pinch. And since he's already bucking all the societal traditions of his civilization, there are no additional penalties or punishments for him breaking his own code. He's unlikely to beat himself up if he needs to violate his own principles for the Greater Good; he'll justify it to himself as doing what needed to be done, maybe sigh wistfully once, and then get on with his next adventure.

Conversely, a Lawful character who obeys society's traditions has a ready-made source of punishment should he break those standards. If such a character does stray, she can maintain her Lawfulness by submitting to the proper authorities for judgment. Turning yourself in effectively atones for the breaking of the code, undoing (or at least mitigating) the non-Lawful act.

A Lawful character who operates strictly by a personal code, on the other hand, is responsible for punishing herself in the event of a breach of that code. If she waves it off as doing what needed to be done, then she is not Lawful, she's Neutral at the least. If she does it enough, she may even become Chaotic. A truly Lawful character operating on a personal code will suffer through deeply unpleasant situations in order to uphold it, and will take steps to punish themselves if they don't (possibly going as far as to commit honorable suicide).

People think that using the "personal code" option makes life as a Lawful character easier. It shouldn't. It should be harder to maintain an entirely self-directed personal code than it is to subscribe to the code of an existing country or organization. This is one of the reasons that most Lawful characters follow an external code. It is not required, no, but it is much, much easier. Exceptions should be unusual and noteworthy. It should be an exceptional roleplaying challenge to take on the burden of holding yourself to a strict code even when there are no external penalties for failing.

So as far as vigilantism goes, if a character has a specific pre-established personal code that involves personally punishing those who commit offenses, then yes, they could still be Lawful. Most characters do not have such a code; most characters simply follow general ideas of their alignment on a case-by-case basis. Certainly none of the characters in OOTS have such a code except perhaps for Miko. And we all saw what a slippery slope that turned out to be.

[Lacuna Caster]

The Vigilantism & Lawful Alignment thread, yes. This was the post in question:

Yeah, that's the one. The thing is, I don't see why that should particularly apply to the vigilante. Making sacrifices for your code is how you demonstrate commitment, sure, but there's no reason why that shouldn't apply to the regular-citizen scenario. Problem is, the regular citizen who never breaks their code is actually showing no intrinsic commitment to the law- they'd be hunted down and punished if they didn't! That's just rational self-interest at work.

Conversely, the guy who enters a different society or an area of wilderness, and still sticks by their code, even when they derive no particular benefit from it, and possibly a substantial cost? That person really values their code. I don't think there's any particular need for self-flagellation on top of that- the code is effectively it's own punishment.

[Jasdoif]

I like O-Chul well enough, but I also feel that fans can squee a bit much about actions he takes under circumstances where he has very little reason or opportunity to do otherwise. (Such as refusing to divulge information he genuinely does not have.)

Is that why you picked a strip that says more about Redcloak than it does about O-Chul?