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2013-07-22, 05:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Yep.
"I LIKE the universe. Some of my best evil took place here. I'm not going to destroy it unless I get REALLY bored."
He's talking about preserving the universe or not preserving based on his own enjoyment, and majorly upsetting the status quo in his favor.
Girard was working tirelessly and obligating his family to do the same, ultimately lowering their quality of life to preserve the universe at all costs, although I can see how that's exactly the same as "wouldn't necessarily destroy the universe if given the opportunity." I see your point.My Homebrew (Free to use, don't even bother asking. PM me if you do, though; I'd love to hear stories).
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2013-07-22, 05:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
I have to shake my head at the idea that only...maybe three alignments out of nine, based on your claim that "preserving the universe" is either Good or Lawful?...would see any value in there being anything for them to stand on.
I'm not going to join the match of sarcasm volleys--fond as I normally am of sarcasm. I think the argument that "preserving the universe" proves someone anything other than not-completely-nihilistic (And, though I do not believe I should have to spell this out, not-completely-nihilistic describes the majority of people of all alignments) is silly to the point of being self-refuting, and so I have no counter-argument to it, beyond that "You don't think it falls apart when glanced at? Huh."
I will, however, note that any claims about how much (or how little) Girard or his family gave up are based on assumptions. Perhaps he cried himself to sleep every night, wailing about how much it hurt him to have to sponsor the kidnappings of innocent people's children (and the incidental cleaning out of their savings). Perhaps sitting in the middle of his web of deceptions, surrounded by people who had been raised and brainwashed to revere him, was all he ever wanted from his life. The former is no more easily supported by the evidence in the comic than the latter. (In fact, if you pay close attention to the wording you might get the idea that I think the former is kind of a silly claim itself.)Last edited by Kish; 2013-07-22 at 05:36 PM.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2013-07-22, 05:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
I said Girard was probably True Neutral, despite the great service he was doing for everyone (without asking for much, even considering the thefts).
And people we'd normally call "good" often ARE doing what they're doing on the assumption that it is saving the world, not simply improving it.
Destroying creation will always be evil. Preserving it may be only self-interest, but dang if I wouldn't appreciate whoever did it.
Besides, everyone who could alter the fate of Ootsworld could probably escape instead.
So Xykon=bad because he's risking destroying the world to ensure his own benefit.
Girard=good(ish) because he's risking his family for the world's benefit.
In both cases, alignment is secondary to other qualities: Girard's paranoia, Xykon's hedonism.My Homebrew (Free to use, don't even bother asking. PM me if you do, though; I'd love to hear stories).
Avatar done by me (It's Durkon redrawn as Salvador from Borderlands 2).
Nod, get treat.
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2013-07-22, 05:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Quite a claim.
So Xykon=bad because he's risking destroying the world to ensure his own benefit.
And then there's Nale. Rich described him as no less evil than Xykon. Yet, there is no indication that his plans feature the possible or definite destruction of the world anywhere. I guess that's not Rich's definition either then.
I said Girard was probably True Neutral, despite the great service he was doing for everyone (without asking for much, even considering the thefts).
And your claim that Girard was doing everyone, or anyone other than himself, a service is as completely unsupported as it ever was. Your claim that he was "risking his family for the world's benefit" is even worse; I understand the chain that leads to the first (it goes, "Wanting to have something to stand on is a selfless motivation,"); I don't get what you're talking about with the latter at all. If his family (if he would even have a family without kidnapping, which is another extremely questionable claim) simply left the gate to its own devices they would be destroyed with the world or ground under Xykon's heel with everyone else in the world.Last edited by Kish; 2013-07-22 at 06:11 PM.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2013-07-22, 06:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
No, just saner.
And then there's Nale. Rich described him as no less evil than Xykon. Yet, there is no indication that his plans feature the possible or definite destruction of the world anywhere. I guess that's not Rich's definition either then.
...Wow. I wonder how many people would agree that "your child will disappear shortly after being born, you will never see her again, and incidentally all your money will go as well, and I'm not actually offering you a choice or a warning here, this is all going to come as a horrible surprise to you after you get fooled into thinking one of my homegrown sociopaths is in love with you" is not asking much. Very few, I hope.
And your claim that Girard was doing everyone, or anyone other than himself, a service is as completely unsupported as it ever was. Your claim that he was "risking his family for the world's benefit" is even worse; I understand the chain that leads to the first (it goes, "Wanting to have something to stand on is a selfless motivation,"); I don't get what you're talking about with the latter at all. If his family (if he would even have a family without kidnapping, which is another extremely questionable claim) simply left the gate to its own devices they would be destroyed with the world or ground under Xykon's heel with everyone else in the world.
Roy said he was doing everyone a favor, not me.My Homebrew (Free to use, don't even bother asking. PM me if you do, though; I'd love to hear stories).
Avatar done by me (It's Durkon redrawn as Salvador from Borderlands 2).
Nod, get treat.
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2013-07-22, 06:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
To be fair, any spellcaster who can cast 9th level spells can take anyone he wants to the Outer Planes, whenever he wants. If Girard had decided to ditch his responsibilities as a Gatekeeper and take his family with them, they could undoubtedly have carved out pretty good lives for themselves in the Outer Planes of their choice.
Although overall, I agree with your take on Girard & co. I just expect that he was more interested in defending the Gate because he saw it as his purpose in life and found it fulfilling, rather than because he was a self-preservationist at heart.Number of Character Appearances VII - To Absent Friends
Currently playing a level 20 aasimar necromancer named Zebulun Salathiel and a level 9 goliath diviner named Lo-Kag.
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2013-07-22, 06:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Damn Neutrals!
PS how was Girard neutral on the law/chaos scale? I could certainly see neutral on the good/evil scale (as well as some arguments in either direction), but when what suggests lawful for him? If anything, he seems like an "off the deep end" chaotic character (extreme paranoia, presumably instituting the child abduction gate protection program, etc.)
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2013-07-22, 06:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Last edited by sengmeng; 2013-07-22 at 06:31 PM.
My Homebrew (Free to use, don't even bother asking. PM me if you do, though; I'd love to hear stories).
Avatar done by me (It's Durkon redrawn as Salvador from Borderlands 2).
Nod, get treat.
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2013-07-22, 06:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
I simply do not understand why people continue to automatically assume that the child theft practices of the Draketooth Clan should be laid at Girard's door, alignment wise.
We have zero evidence, zero, that Girard himself had anything at all to do with it.
What we do know about Girard himself, is that he went on an epic adventure to protect the universe with companions, four of which were good, a paladin associated with him for years without falling, he dedicated his entire life to the protection of a Gate, he was suspicious of authority to the point of setting lethal traps intended to be triggered by paladins, a chaotic good companion was at the least infatuated with him, and continued to associate with him for many years, he was deeply, deeply upset when it appeared that one of his companions abandoned another one to die, and a neutral good character willingly took his side in an dispute with a lawful good character up to the point of potential combat.
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2013-07-22, 06:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Wait, we now know the alignment of Serini? And didn't the conflict strip suggest that Soon started to throw down with Dorukan first, and Girard piped in after because he hated Soon?
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2013-07-22, 06:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
We do not know the alignment of Serini. Or Kraagor.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2013-07-22, 06:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
In my book, Law and Chaos aren't about complexity, they're about formality.
A Chaotic could invent absolutely brilliant plans as long as they revolve around what actually works, rather than simply about who's making them, and would always be willing to consider new information at any time from the people he trusts to know what they're talking about. On the other hand, a Lawful could be completely unwilling to come up with his own plan because he feels that it's his boss's job to make the plans for him.
842: You'll notice that the schedule of who does what spells on what day only covers one week, so I imagine that there were frequent evaluations about whether anybody had come up with new ideas instead of just blindly repeating last month's schedules.A game is a fictional construct created for the sake of the players, not the other way around. If you have a question "How do I keep X from happening at my table," and you feel that the out-of-game answer "Talk the the other people at your table" won't help, then the in-game answers "Remove mechanics A, B, and/or C, impose mechanics L, M, and/or N" will not help either.
Tragak's Planar Reconstruction Archive (current active project: Acheron)
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2013-07-22, 07:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Minor quibble, I'm not seeing much of a difference between your Indifferent and Mercenary types. Or, more specifically, Mercenary just seems to be a specific kind of Indifferent, as in "I'm indifferent your morals and your ideology. How much are you paying me to do this on your behalf?"
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2013-07-22, 07:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
It sounds like a matter of passively doing not much of anything vs. actively doing a lot of everything
A game is a fictional construct created for the sake of the players, not the other way around. If you have a question "How do I keep X from happening at my table," and you feel that the out-of-game answer "Talk the the other people at your table" won't help, then the in-game answers "Remove mechanics A, B, and/or C, impose mechanics L, M, and/or N" will not help either.
Tragak's Planar Reconstruction Archive (current active project: Acheron)
Avatar Credit goes to: Chd. Thank you!
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2013-07-22, 08:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
True enough, although from a storyteller's point of view, the caveats "innocent" and "coerced" in your statement leave a lot of room to play around. If Therkla was non-evil throughout her seven years of working under Kubota, then it was doubtless because of the interpretation of one of these two words.
(To explain the "coerced" one more carefully: this could apply if she was brainwashed into being obedient to Kubota, or if she was brainwashed into believing in an honor system that made her uphold an oath of loyalty to Kubota. These are hypothetical examples -- I don't think either of them was actually the case. But it explains why I think, for example, that Szeth in The Way of Kings should be considered Neutral.)
Mind you, I'm perfectly willing to believe that Therkla was Evil throughout most of the seven years -- although not a particularly malevolent Evil -- and that she only shifted to Neutral near the end, once she started letting Elan's example influence her behavior. In fact, I think this is quite likely -- but her being Neutral all along isn't impossible. And the reason why is based on the other caveat word, "innocent":
... I don't have a hard time believing that at all. Shojo paints the Azure nobility as a hive of reprehensible, slimy, backstabbing (literally) politicians. And the people in that community that Kubota was most likely to want killed off are the ones who were at the top of the power structure, or those who were most ruthless (and therefore likely to get him killed off). And Shojo's senility act shut down the first category. So I imagine most of the targets Therkla killed over the years weren't "innocent" by any stretch of the imagination.You can call me Draz.
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2013-07-22, 08:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
This. We can take out the part of Girard's allies alignments and it's still a very good point for Girard to be CG.
The problem here is that the dogmatic paladin fan-boys think that going against paladins is being not-good. Just as Miko thought: "with me, or against me". Very paladin-ish.
Rich has put some effort on narrating how you can be good and still fight against the fundamentalist paladins... żremember Roy beating Miko BEFORE she fell?Last edited by Blas_de_Lezo; 2013-07-22 at 08:15 PM.
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2013-07-22, 08:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
My Homebrew (Free to use, don't even bother asking. PM me if you do, though; I'd love to hear stories).
Avatar done by me (It's Durkon redrawn as Salvador from Borderlands 2).
Nod, get treat.
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2013-07-22, 08:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Therkla's past actions and initial appearance are definitely Evil. Even she knows it, dodging the Detect Evil Lien used. Her rather strong crush on Elan has a good influence on her. She shows compunction against killing innocents, acts to rescue Kazumi and Daigo, and articulates a definite Neutral moral position in the final confrontation with Kubota. Love story of the century it ain't, but it is a classic redemptive arc.
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2013-07-22, 09:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Mercenary differs in that it is fundamentally selfish, where as my indifferent types could better be called "Good-lite." I don't believe this "selfish" works for OOTS in light of having sometime to think about it.
I'm pretty sure that we can class Rich's use of the Neutral alignment in OOTS as "Indifferent" and that the word "selfish" doesn't need to come up.
Its a stronger form of indifferent then I had. The neutral aligned in OOTS do not show a preference for associating with Good over Evil, or if they do, it is a mild preference, one that is easily overcome by circumstance.
This is my current attempt at fleshing out Neutrality from our discussion:
Neutral aligned respond to incentives and form relationships that are more important to them than morality. They lack the drive to commit evil and will do so only when given a strong enough incentive, whether in the form of a good job (Kilkil), or a looser organizational arrangement (Hank, Jenny), money (Enor and Gannji), a sense of belonging (Therkla), or family (Right-eye, and perhaps Therkla). Similarly, Neutral people are unlikely to go out of their way to commit good acts, if such acts require a great deal of sacrifice for strangers.The laws of physics are not crying in a corner, they are bawling in the forums.
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2013-07-22, 10:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Roy never actually defeated Miko before she fell. The first fight ended in a stalemate, which evolved into a truce. The second fight ended with Miko and Windstriker soundly kicking the Order of the Stick to the curb and hauling five/sixths of them in chains to Azure City.
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2013-07-22, 10:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Plus Paladins are not allowed to associate themselves (i.e. be in the same adventuring party) with anyone of Evil Alignment without violating the Paladin code. Soon might not have attacked Girard on sight, but Soon would have refused to accompany Girard on adventures, possibly leaving the Order of the Scribble before the day was out.
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2013-07-22, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
ITs a great narrative, except for the part but the point is weakened in that you just say "her past actions" and "initial appearance" is definitely evil (without the in-comic support). She does dodge the detect evil, which suggests maybe Therkla doesn't know what her own alignment is.
The insistence that Therkla is evil or that Girard is neutral or evil is based on taking certain acts very gravely. This is against the grain of everything the Giant said about how he interprets alignment.
There is no evidence that the Giant ever viewed Evil alignment as that clear-cut (you do X, therefore, YOU ARE NOW EVIL!). I it is possible Rich sees an Evil alignment (for the OOTS story) as more about having an internal disposition towards evil, something that can develop as a character commits evil acts, but doesn't necessarily develop even if the character commits some evil actions.Last edited by Reddish Mage; 2013-07-22 at 11:28 PM. Reason: Made it a bit humbler if I'm going to divine the word of the author
The laws of physics are not crying in a corner, they are bawling in the forums.
Thanks to half-halfling for the avatar
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2013-07-23, 01:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Ok fair enough, but I think it is equally valid to interpret the respect shown to the two characters you mention as appropriate deference to the source of one's power, and appropriate deference to a very powerful creature, who is also a fellow 'reptillian'. It need not have anything to do with alignment. With the OotS, he is most antagonistic towards their one Evil member, so again I'm not sure we can draw conclusions about the Oracle's alignment from who he respects/is snarky to.
The rest of the discussion on neutrality and Evil and the Draketooths is pretty interesting, but veering to close to morally justified for my tastes.The prison was full of British officers who had sworn to die, rather than be captured.
Avatar by Rich Burlew: The Giant Stuck It To Me!
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2013-07-23, 03:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Might The Holey Brotherhood be "balance" type True Neutral?
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2013-07-23, 03:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
I wrote a very long post defending Therkla's Neutrality, but I decided to delete it. It doesn't matter if anyone else agrees, and I doubt anyone will ever be convinced anyway. The characters in the comic are not meant to be examples or guides on what is or is not such-and-such alignment. As I've said before:
So when I say, "This character has this alignment," just read it as, "This character was written with this point of view in mind, and if you could see their entire life rather than this small sliver, that would be more obvious."
Also, let's keep the Moral Justification blades sheathed, and for that matter, make sure we don't insult groups of people with opposing viewpoints.Rich Burlew
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2013-07-23, 05:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
One character with a neutral outlook that I haven't noticed being mentioned: Nero.
Though you could argue that Nero narratively is not a character, but that the character in question is more or less the IFCC, just as Donald Duck's nephews aren't really separate characters...But that's just me quibbling.
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2013-07-23, 05:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
I like how people dispute the author's views on a character's alignment, despite the fact that we only ever saw a small sliver of her life.
For all we know Therkla might have spent her off days rescuing orphans and puppies from burning buildings.
What we do know is that Therkla chose Neutrality in the end.
And really, that's all we need to know.Wolfen Houndog - The World in Revolt (4e)
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2013-07-23, 05:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
That's very interesting, thanks for posting that! I had suspected many of those, but some surprised me quite a bit. Mostly Ian Starshine, he struck me as he might be Chaotic Good. Perhaps he's trying to be Chaotic Good but his methods makes him slide into Chaotic Neutral?
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2013-07-23, 05:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
While it is certainly true that it doesn't really matter that much if people agree about her alignment, I think that it's also true that many people would have enjoyed reading such a post. I can easily buy Therkla being Neutral, at least at the end, but it would have been interesting to see what you were to say about it.
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2013-07-23, 05:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No love for Neutral alignments in OOTS
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II