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

[ti'esar]

Alright.

So one one hand, we can have Goblinoids being created solely to serve as fodder. Created for the explicit purpose of being slaughtered by the Clerics of Gods, thus increasing the levels of their Clerics and thus increasing their influence. Essentially, they were betrayed before they even set foot on the planet. To prevent them from posing real threats to their chosen races, they are situated in backwater areas with no resources and no strategic values. Thus, forcing them to turn largely to banditry to keep themselves alive.

On the other hand, we can have Goblinoids be evil because...They're evil. EVIL. EVIL EVIL EVIL. MAIM DEATH KILL BURN DIE.

But its okay. I can understand why you wouldn't want moral ambiguity in D&D. You've got enough to think about, so why waste time thinking about if these Goblins are raiding the roads because they have little to no other options to make a living or because...They're evil.

EVIL. EVIL EVIL EVIL. MAIM DEATH KILL BURN DIE.

There's no need for straw-manning. Nerd_Paladin has every right to dislike the direction the comic's taken with Redcloak. What I'm objecting to is declaring that an objective "failure", especially in light of the arguments he makes to justify it.

[Nerd_Paladin]

I suppose "failed" may have been too strong of a term, particularly given that "The Order of the Stick" is still in progress. Still, it was a title. And I don't suggest failure in objective terms; this is just my critical opinion.

[LIST=1]

It is the status quo. Why should it not be contested?

Because I think it's silly for a writer to expect us to get worked up over a supposed moral crisis that was manufactured by the intentional misapplication of artificial concepts originally created as a technical convenience. "Isn't it tragic that goblins get killed?" Well, not really, no, not as written. The comic, then, must write them differently in order for us to be invested in that idea, but as soon as you do that you're conceding that the original point lacked merit.

But its okay. I can understand why you wouldn't want moral ambiguity in D&D. You've got enough to think about, so why waste time thinking about if these Goblins are raiding the roads because they have little to no other options to make a living or because...They're evil.

EVIL. EVIL EVIL EVIL. MAIM DEATH KILL BURN DIE.

Case in point. There is no moral crisis to fighting monsters in D&D, we must create one for ourselves if we wish it to be so. But as soon as we do that we're not longer satirizing, critiquing, or even attacking the game, rather just our own spin on it. So even if "The Order of the Stick" is making a pointed satirical barb at mainstream gaming, it is a barb directed not on the game itself. Really, the only thing we can say about the game is that it doesn't make sense; but again, so what? That's so evident that it doesn't seem worth saying, much less getting up in arms about.

[Taelas]

Mm no. What the people you're addressing are saying, rather, is that the alignment system is not as simplistic as you're claiming it is--not in D&D, not in OotS--and the "artificial binary" isn't there. Redcloak is a complex, multilayered, and Lawful Evil character. If you think there's a contradiction there, you've fundamentally misunderstood D&D.

This pretty much answers everything, so I'll just quote it.

[Taelas]

Methinks this thread is bah-roken.

Ah, there we go. Fixed it!

[WhamBamSam]

The Gods - seemingly acting in a way that represented D&D's game designers by proxy - deliberately forced the "monster" races into circumstances that required them to become raiders and bandits in order to survive. The goblins were as you put it, "acting villainous," but their evil was forced upon them by the world in which they live. When a world/society/whatever is set up in a way that explicitly encourages conflict, conflict is what you get. The goblins aren't evil in OotS or in D&D in general because they're genetically hardwired to be evil. They're evil because they're in a story, and stories need villains.

But what happens when the story ends? The answer of course is that "there is no end, there's just the point where storytellers stop talking." After enough time in the perpetual state of minor conflict it becomes inevitable that the goblins eventually get sick of it and some leader, like the Dark One, brings them together in the hope that they won't have to take it anymore. TDO proposes peace, but the terms are unfavorable to the leaders of the favored races, and surprise, surprise, it doesn't work. They decide to off what the uppity warlord and hope that the problem will just go away. In a twist no one saw coming, it backfires and we get a horrific bloody war. Naturally, once the bloodshed finally stops, both sides leave with false conclusions about the other. The goblins become convinced that humans are morally bankrupt and untrustworthy, while humans, elves, et al come away with the lesson that allowing the monstrous humanoids to become too organized is dangerous. The never ending escalation of petty revenge continues..

Since I'm using so many Tarquin and Nale quotes, I might as well also point out that Tarquin preventing Nale from learning about Elan for the sake of dramatic tension and raising Nale as a villain was also deliberately setting up conflict for the sake of narrative. In many ways, the smaller scale story of Elan's family runs parallel to the primary narrative. I would almost wonder if this were being done intentionally to use Elan/Tarquin's genre savvy to make various points about the story as a whole even though the family are all somewhat secondary to the main plot.

[Kish]

Case in point. There is no moral crisis to fighting monsters in D&D,

Yes, there is. Unless the DM chooses to artificially enforce a much more black-and-white morality system than the D&D default.

You're insisting that failure to implement your house rules, constitutes house rules.

[Idhan]

I haven't read Start of Darkness yet, but anyway...

Say you're a Mongol child in the 13th century. Say that your family, mother, father, siblings, etc, are all Mongols, and your family has been rampaging across Asia, killing, raping, and looting. You're currently settled somewhere in the Middle East.

Your Khan has every intention of crushing every other independent state remaining, but at the moment -- as in, right at this moment, at three in the afternoon on Tuesday -- you're not fighting anyone.

Now say a bunch of Egyptian mamluks attack your camp. The Egyptian sultan has managed to catch your settlement unprepared and surprised. They massacre pretty much everyone -- your mother, your friends, etc. You survive, but not because the mamluks spared any other children.

I think we could say that 1) the Mongols are a very real threat to independent civilizations, and war against them is justified 2) the Egyptians were doing something wrong in killing indiscriminately, and 3) as a survivor of the massacre, you might have a bone to pick with the Egyptians.

Are you evil because of that? Not necessarily. It depends on how you deal with it. How has Redcloak dealt with it? Well, as an example, by torturing people who he knows don't know anything as a way of tricking his partner.

You might object that you're talking alignment, not Medieval Asian history: that the Mongols are still, after all, humans, and thus predominantly of neutral alignment with a mix of law, chaos, good, and evil typical of humans among their ranks, like the Egyptians, Franks, Han, Saxons, etc.. However, how do you think an "usually neutral evil"-aligned goblin race would act that sets them apart from Hulagu Khan -- that makes the whole analogy invalid?

[Denamort]

The world is intentionally contradictory, as other's have pointed out, becuase the D&D sistem is intentionally contradictory.
D&D stablishes a system that judges people according to their actions, and then it says monsters tend to be Evil. This goes in contradiction with the system itself. If the system judges acording to acts, why classify according to race?
Mostly, it anoys me that you asume that because you don't find a problem with D&D morality or that because you consider it's not worth debating, then the subject is unimportant. Go to the Roleplaying games and see the number of people debating morality. Why do they do it, if the subject is stupid and simple? I guess we are all stupid simpletons.
You said that nobody expects the D&D system to work in the real world. Why not? I expect that. I expect all of D&D to allow me to represent a verosimil world. The rules are the conduit by witch you can easily reproduce the universe surrounding the players without compromising the narrative. If the system fails at that, I better play with out it at all. If I have to represent every detail during a battle or, on the opposite, is resolved with a single roll of a die, I may as well just narrate to my players. So, I do want a system that can represent the conflict between good and evil without hampering my ability to create an interesting tale.

OotS seeks to show how the alingment system in D&D fails to portray real-world morality. It creates a "Real World" that runs under D&D rules, and then shows the contradictions in the sistem. And it uses them both for comedic or Dramatic effect.

Most importantly, I think what you said it's the "typical" D&D doesn't need alingment at all.

You said

One, the idea in the average D&D game is NOT that goblins can be freely slaughtered as a matter of kind but instead is that violence with monsters is inevitable because those creatures act as a direct threat to others. The image of peaceful, minding-their-own-business goblins getting run down en masse by racist Paladins is not the nature of D&D; those goblins are almost always looting or raiding some place nearby, or monkeying around with magic they don't understand that threatens to unleash Something Bad, or just generally being *****. I've yet to find a D&D adventure where the villains weren't up to something villainous.

If that the only reason why the alingment system exist, why use it at all? Do players really need a label that says "This dude is Evil" when he is trying to summon Tyamat into the Material Plane. Will the Paladin say "Well, they are about to sacrifice that young girl to their God to bring Eternal Darkness, but are we sure they are Evil?" Of course not, that would be stupid. The Paladin won't use a "Detect Evil" in that, it's retarded. The system is there to simplify conflict and prevent players from thinking who's loot they are taking.
And I have an example from one of my last games. We where taveling with my friend trough a mountain when we heard the cries of help from a Withe Dragon, who had been captured by some Giants. I suggested we should interfere and ask what those Dragons (Young dragons, by the way) had done. But one of the other players insisted he didn't care because chromatic dragons are "Evil". Those are the kind of situations that arise during gameplay because a DM wants to make a story in a realistic world and the rules work against him.

[dps]

All you're doing here is projecting your own highly specific interpretations of what D&D is "supposed" to be, with paper thin villains who are evil for no reason and have literally no existence beyond disposable packets of experience points (except for human villains, who can of course be as morally ambiguous as they like by virtue of not having a listed alignment or green skin). That's all well and good in your own game, but every DM, every sourcebook writer, every player has their own interpretation on that with what they like to write, read, or play. And frankly, the whole school of "intelligent mortal beings should have whole societies of nothing but mindless destruction of all other societies for no reason other than the story says so" in literature kind of went out the window along with pre-Modernism.

Looking at it that way, it's easy to see why he has a problem with the comic, though. Order of the Stick is basically a parody of the sort of mindset about DnD that he seems to have.

[veti]

Yes, the real world is, but the artificial game world is not. So is "The Order of the Stick" about a realistic moral world or an artificial binary one? It can't be both. In short, either Redcloak makes sense, or the comic world does.

To me, a big part of OOTS is exploring the gaps in D&D that official sources and sourcebooks have papered over.

Part of the picture that I think tends to get overlooked is the extent to which our ideas of "morality" have changed in the 30-odd years that D&D has been on the mass market.

Back in the late 70s, when I was first introduced to it, no-one saw anything unsavory in the idea of "evil" races as XP fodder. Why should we? To those of us brought up on Tolkien and his contemporaries, the notion that "orcs = evil" was hardly controversial.

Sometime in the 80s the Culture Wars - in real life - got into full swing, and anything that sniffed of "racism" rapidly became untouchably taboo. Quite suddenly, D&D's attitude to orcs and goblins, which had seemed perfectly natural and reasonable in the 1970s, became very hard to defend.

Another front in those same wars was interminable bickering between those who believe morality is absolute, and those who believe it's purely societally defined. D&D in its day has swung both ways. 2nd Edition said that

Although many things are commonly accepted as good (helping those in need, protecting the weak), different cultures impose their own interpretations on what is good and what is evil [...] Remember that evil, like good, is interpreted differently in different societies.

In its eagerness to distance itself from this "relative morality" idea, 3e went to the opposite extreme without ever discussing its implications. As a result, we now have the absurd position of a supposedly-absolute morality being policed by ruthlessly partisan, and eminently fallible, gods.

OOTS is openly addressing these issues in the context of D&D. It has a thesis (traditional view - goblins are "natural enemies" to humans) and antithesis (goblins are unfairly persecuted by humans), and I'm hoping that the resolution of the story will resolve these two points into some kind of synthesis.

[Chronos]

So, let me get this straight: Given a world where an entire race is categorized as worthless, and given one member of this race who takes offense at that and tries to change his lot (and that of his people) for the better, this is regarded as bad characterization? That just because the PCs slaughter goblins indiscriminately, the goblins should lie back and take it? Man, I'm glad that Rich is writing this strip, not the OP.

[Nerd_Paladin]

The goblins were as you put it, "acting villainous," but their evil was forced upon them by the world in which they live. When a world/society/whatever is set up in a way that explicitly encourages conflict, conflict is what you get. The goblins aren't evil in OotS or in D&D in general because they're genetically hardwired to be evil. They're evil because they're in a story, and stories need villains.

Then that's not really being evil at all; well, it might be evil in the dictionary sense of the word, but not in the capital-E, D&D alignment sense. At that point the story has moved beyond those simple concepts...except that those concepts are still present in the comic, and indeed are an important part of it. The goblins have an Evil (not just "evil") alignment, a self-acknowledged one, and the Paladins all have Good alignments (even Miko! Well, for the most part). And yet their behavior does not really reflect this at all. If the characters have been typecast by the gods, then the gods did a lousy job.

Say you're a Mongol child in the 13th century. Say that your family, mother, father, siblings, etc, are all Mongols, and your family has been rampaging across Asia, killing, raping, and looting. You're currently settled somewhere in the Middle East.

Now say bunch of Egyptian mamluks attack your camp. The Egyptian sultan has managed to catch your settlement unprepared and surprised. They massacre pretty much everyone -- your mother, your friends, etc. You survive, but not because the mamluks spared any other children.

Indeed, a fascinating analogy...but invalid. Mongols were not Chaotic Evil. They were real people and their actions, nature, culture, and society are more complicated than that.

Goblins are Neutral Evil. They are not real people. They are not so complicated (not in terms of their morality anyway). Except in "The Order of the Stick" they are...but in a way that contradicts their Neutral Evilness for the sake of making them theoretically sympathetic (something they would never be under the RAW). But that Neutral Evilness is still there, and still hardwired into the concept of the game world. The conflict is founded on internal inconsistencies.

However, how do you think an "usually neutral evil"-aligned goblin race would act that sets them apart from Hulagu Khan -- that makes the whole analogy invalid?

Well, if you'll pardon me, it ain't what they do, it's why they do it. The Mongols had their motivations. Monsters in D&D often have no motivation at all. When they do, it's usually an evil one; because they want treasure, or food, or territory, or to please an evil god. That works because it's a game and it's their role to be the villain, and also because the game demands no more of them than that. No real situation is ever that simple. But that's why this is fantasy, not reality.

The world is intentionally contradictory, as other's have pointed out, becuase the D&D sistem is intentionally contradictory.

Perhaps; but the D&D system is a simple rubric that allows game rules to function properly, not a treatise on ethics, as so many people seem to feel.

D&D stablishes a system that judges people according to their actions, and then it says monsters tend to be Evil. This goes in contradiction with the system itself. If the system judges acording to acts, why classify according to race?

Convenience partly, but also the source material; Tolkien's orcs and trolls were always wicked creatures, vampire and werewolves in classic folklore are always destructive, dragons in western cultures are just ***** in general, etc. That's their role in a story, because of course, they are characters, not people. If orcs in classic D&D were just as complex as humans or elves, we wouldn't need them around; we already have humans and elves. They have a role in the game, and that role is as antagonists, and as such they fill it. This, too, is the plot of "The Order of the Stick", only difference being that there it's posed as a grand, moral, meta-literary dilemma...which as I argue here is both a little silly and does not actually make sense.

Mostly, it anoys me that you asume that because you don't find a problem with D&D morality or that because you consider it's not worth debating, then the subject is unimportant. Go to the Roleplaying games and see the number of people debating morality. Why do they do it, if the subject is stupid and simple? I guess we are all stupid simpletons.

Because a few common misinterpretations have been magnified over the years, and the publishers haven't done that great of a job of clearing it up, and this is the internet, after all, where people will even argue that Belkar is Chaotic Neutral. You'll notice that the alignment system was almost completely done away with in the most recent iteration of the game, I suspect in part because of this very problem.

I repeat, my opinion is that people have the wrong take on D&D alignment to the following effect: They believe that because goblins are marked Evil that they then loot and pillage, an idea which makes them "uncomfortable." I contend, however, that the idea is that goblins loot and pillage, therefore they are marked Evil. Alignment can change, after all, even in the most draconian of interpretations of the system. Notice that this, too, is the stance of "The Order of the Stick", save for the addition that goblins are "forced" into this by a kind of grand divine conspiracy theory...which to me undermines the whole idea.

You said that nobody expects the D&D system to work in the real world. Why not? I expect that. I expect all of D&D to allow me to represent a verosimil world. The rules are the conduit by witch you can easily reproduce the universe surrounding the players without compromising the narrative.

I disagree, and, respectfully, I'd say you're setting yourself for a lifetime of disappointment that way. We have alignment so that the Paladin can Smite Evil, not to teach us important lessons about what evil is. If that were the case, "The Order of the Stick" would be making an important statement with this. But it isn't.

[Nerd_Paladin]

Part of the picture that I think tends to get overlooked is the extent to which our ideas of "morality" have changed in the 30-odd years that D&D has been on the mass market.

Back in the late 70s, when I was first introduced to it, no-one saw anything unsavory in the idea of "evil" races as XP fodder. Why should we? To those of us brought up on Tolkien and his contemporaries, the notion that "orcs = evil" was hardly controversial.

Sometime in the 80s the Culture Wars - in real life - got into full swing, and anything that sniffed of "racism" rapidly became untouchably taboo. Quite suddenly, D&D's attitude to orcs and goblins, which had seemed perfectly natural and reasonable in the 1970s, became very hard to defend.

This is veering into territory that will likely get the thread locked. However, I don't think our ideas about genocide have changed much since the late 70s. Frankly, if people have a problem with orcs and goblins being depicted as evil lately, it's because they've chosen to. Which is fine; if people want more complex stories good for them. But they go looking for them in places that they aren't, and then they get mad and start grandstanding about it when they don't find it.

So, let me get this straight: Given a world where an entire race is categorized as worthless, and given one member of this race who takes offense at that and tries to change his lot (and that of his people) for the better, this is regarded as bad characterization?

But that's not the world of the game; just the comic. And yet the comic has tied this conflict to the game concepts without bothering to apply them in any way that's intellectually honest about what they mean.

That just because the PCs slaughter goblins indiscriminately, the goblins should lie back and take it? Man, I'm glad that Rich is writing this strip, not the OP.

The "slaughter" of goblins in D&D is not indiscriminate (unless your DM is a jerk, I guess). As I said, I've never played a D&D game where the villains were just minding their own business before getting run down by crusading heroes. No published adventure has ever depicted that, to my knowledge.

The violence against goblins in "The Order of the Stick" is indeed sometimes indiscriminate (thought not on the part of our main characters), but only because those goblin's nature does not really reflect the game. For reasons why that is in itself problematic, see previous posts.

Some people are accusing me of applying too narrow of an interpretation of the game material. I contend, however, that I am applying the interpretation that is consistent with the goals of the game. D&D is not great literature, it was never meant to be a broad commentary on any real moral, ethical, political, or social situation, any more than, oh, Pac-Man was meant to be a comment on consumer culture ("Pac-Man's gluttony, of course, is represented by his rotundness and constant gobbling motion; the ghosts are the have-nots, lacking even physicality, their crude symbolism representing the mortality that menaces the poor in our society, and their pursuit of Pac-Man emblematic of their simmering proletarian rage," etc).

D&D is the simplest of simple fantasy (hence the accusation of "escapism" by many critics). People have chosen to project bigger ideas onto it either because they are hungry for more complex entertainment but found it lacking elsewhere, or else because, well, some folks just gotta get angry about something. I highly doubt that any form of media that meant to address real issues would employ the use of Detect Evil or Smite Chaos features.

[B. Dandelion]

...from the wording of your complaint I would gather that you take the approach to morality as some kind of personal attack designed to talk down to people who don't mind playing around in settings where "evil races" are the norm and can be slaughtered without qualm.

I think there's a rather large difference in between "deconstructing" something and soapboxing about it. I mean really. You're accusing people who like approaches such as OOTS' of looking for something to get mad about?

All I can see is that he's made an interesting story out of the notion of an arbitrary good & evil.

[Nerd_Paladin]

...from the wording of your complaint I would gather that you take the approach to morality as some kind of personal attack designed to talk down to people who don't mind playing around in settings where "evil races" are the norm and can be slaughtered without qualm.

Sometimes. Depends on the person. As I've already mentioned, I don't interpret "The Order of the Stick" that way, but rather instead as a case of a story that lost its way a bit by trying to do too many things and being hobbled by having roots that are more simple than its eventual aspirations.

I think there's a rather large difference in between "deconstructing" something and soapboxing about it. I mean really. You're accusing people who like approaches such as OOTS' of looking for something to get mad about?

Some of them, yes. But as mentioned, not specifically in this case. Also as mentioned, the idea of "deconstructing" D&D morality seems, to me, a rather fruitless exercise, since it takes only a few seconds and is done by most people on a subconscious level the first time they read the rules. As I've said before, there is no moral dilemma inherent in D&D, there is only one there if we choose to put it there.

[FlawedParadigm]

I highly doubt that any form of media that meant to address real issues would employ the use of Detect Evil or Smite Chaos features.

Which is why 4E did away with using alignments for mechanical purposes. This was progress. I believe that yes, goblins in most campaigns are evil, antagonistic forces. Why? Because it's convenient for DMs to have races who are, in general, Hell-bent on evil, else the players aren't really heroes, are they? They're just murderers for the sake of increasing their own personal power - which makes them villains. D&D as a game requires races who are wholly or generally dedicated to evil to make the moral framework make sense - after all, how could anyone possibly be a Paladin (prior to 4E) unless unambiguously evil threats are a constant threat?

D&D as a storytelling platform - as some DMs and obviously Rich intend to use it as - does *not* require such a thing, however, and that is in part something this comic intends to address at almost every possible turn. Short of denizens of alignment planes who really don't have a choice, it simply makes sense that not all members of any race subscribe to any particular moral platform. In D&D as it is often played, a character like Redcloak wouldn't make much if any sense, nor is there any need for such a character - some races need to be XP fodder if any non-sociopathic characters are ever to advance past first level with anything but role-playing XP. But for purposes of telling a story, there's no reason why dozens of characters like Redcloak for a number of races shouldn't exist. I daresay elsewhere in the world, there's some other crusader for kobolds, orcs, trolls, or other usually/always evil non-alignment-plane races who typically receive no characterisation whatsoever and are used simply to give PCs "acceptable" targets to kill for purposes of personal advancement.

Tl;dr - your arguments are perfectly acceptable and probably correct when looking at D&D from the perspective of a game. From a story perspective, however, I feel your opinions to be out of place, because the very purpose of a well-told story is to make the reader question things. In this case, the status quo.

[Nerd-o-rama]

If the characters have been typecast by the gods, then the gods did a lousy job.

No ****, Sherlock.

I don't think I can stay emotion-neutral in this thread anymore, so peace out.

[Nerd_Paladin]

But for purposes of telling a story, there's no reason why dozens of characters like Redcloak for a number of races shouldn't exist. I daresay elsewhere in the world, there's some other crusader for kobolds, orcs, trolls, or other usually/always evil non-alignment-plane races who typically receive no characterisation whatsoever and are used simply to give PCs "acceptable" targets to kill for purposes of personal advancement.

Tl;dr - your arguments are perfectly acceptable and probably correct when looking at D&D from the perspective of a game. From a story perspective, however, I feel your opinions to be out of place, because the very purpose of a well-told story is to make the reader question things. In this case, the status quo.

But there's the problem; if Redcloak and company are, indeed, completely evil, as the D&D rules generally require them to be for the game to function in the way you point out, then his "just" cause is not really just, and in fact wouldn't exist at all; his family's murder would not be senseless violence, it would in fact be quite sensible, and the Paladins would not be zealous bigots, they would be protecting innocent lives against a very real threat. Redcloak could still be motivated by it in the same way, still feel the same pain and anger over it, but the larger idea that he's "evil for a good cause" wouldn't hold water, because his cause wouldn't be (and couldn't be) good. So I suppose what we have here is a matter of rules conflicting with story; but in this case only because the storyteller has chosen to make the story conflict with the rules.

[Nerd_Paladin]

No ****, Sherlock.

I don't think I can stay emotion-neutral in this thread anymore, so peace out.

Lousy in the sense of being inconsistent and not really doing what they meant to do, not in the sense of it being a terrible thing. Seems that the gods, if they were really gods, could employ their own rules in a more binding fashion.

[rewinn]

To go at this from an entirely different direction:

1. Lots of great stories have what OP seems to consider a character contradiction when you dig deep enough. Who committed the first murder in the movie version of The Big Sleep? What happened to the 1st girlfriend in Romeo and Juliet?

2. The first job of an author is to tell an interesting story. IIRC it was Fredric Pohl, when challenged, "Why did you write that awful story?", replied "For 5 cents a word."

It's certainly nice that Redcloak's tale is all about morality and alignment and stuff, just as Belkar's is about faking character growth and Hailey's is Learning A Valuable Lesson About Trusting People and so forth. All these Valuable Lessons are good stuff, but they are there to serve the story. RC's story is *interesting* because he has these kinks - generally speaking, he's much more interesting than Xykon or the Oracle or even Roy, because their motivations are pretty straightforward.

[Zevox]

It seems to me that the problem is that you're assuming that D&D's attempt to make morality objective through its alignment system works at all to begin with.

It doesn't. That's the point - it's why Redcloak's story works, it's why a lot of things in this comic work (see Miko as another example, for instance). It's just another part of D&D's idiosyncrasies that the comic makes fun of, and in this case also makes a story out of.

As I've said before, there is no moral dilemma inherent in D&D, there is only one there if we choose to put it there.

Just the reverse: there only isn't one if you choose to ignore the fundamental problems with it. For example, how does it make any sense for an intelligent race, capable of thinking for itself and making its own decisions, to always be one alignment, as D&D posits Dragons (to use just one of many examples) are? How does it make any sense for any race to be genetically predisposed to being an alignment at all, as many races in D&D are said to be? It doesn't. It's simply a convenient way to handwave the moral questions that monster-killing would otherwise raise, if you choose not to think about it.

Zevox

[Idhan]

Indeed, a fascinating analogy...but invalid. Mongols were not Chaotic Evil. They were real people and their actions, nature, culture, and society are more complicated than that.

... it ain't what they do, it's why they do it. The Mongols had their motivations. Monsters in D&D often have no motivation at all. When they do, it's usually an evil one; because they want treasure, or food, or territory, or to please an evil god.

Okay. I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that a neutral evil goblin's motives are categorically different from a neutral evil human's motives? (If so, where does it say so in which D&D sourcebook?)

Or are you saying that all neutral evil beings, humans, goblins, whatever, are driven by some form of pure malice, and anyone with any motivation besides that is, by definition, not neutral evil in the alignment sense, even if their actions might be very brutal (e.g., Hulagu Khan)? (If so, what alignments does this not apply to? Is everyone with a motive other than pure benevolence and distaste for order not Chaotic Good? Is everyone with a motive other than cool indifference not True Neutral? Is any alignment compatible with with complex motivations?)

(P.S.: I find it odd to list "they want... food" as a specifically evil motive. I usually see that motive raised as a potentially exculpatory motive for acts such as theft.)

[Fiery Diamond]

You seem to be laboring under a mistaken impression.

A person who does evil things for a just cause when he could take a different approach is still Evil, capital E, alignment system wise. You are arguing that if you have a reasonable and compelling motivation for doing evil things, that somehow that means doing those things doesn't make you get smacked with the Evil alignment. In this you are completely wrong.

Put simply: it isn't everyone else that's got the wrong idea of how the alignment system works as a classification within the game or a narrative based on the game, it's you.

[B. Dandelion]

Some of them, yes. But as mentioned, not specifically in this case. Also as mentioned, the idea of "deconstructing" D&D morality seems, to me, a rather fruitless exercise, since it takes only a few seconds and is done by most people on a subconscious level the first time they read the rules. As I've said before, there is no moral dilemma inherent in D&D, there is only one there if we choose to put it there.

I don't think the purpose of OOTS' deconstruction is to simply point out how something doesn't make sense or wouldn't really work, or trying to make a story out of a revelation that it doesn't work. It would be one thing to go about it that the evil races were really good all along and are just being unfairly persecuted. As it is, it OOTS makes a story out of how it could work, by conceptualizing "creators" as gods who needed those evil races to make their game work the way it wanted it to. By expanding the scope to look at the creation of the setting as a greater part of it, it allows the possibility of characters becoming aware of the reasons behind their creation, and to (rather understandably) have a complaint.

[ti'esar]

I don't think the purpose of OOTS' deconstruction is to simply point out how something doesn't make sense or wouldn't really work, or trying to make a story out of a revelation that it doesn't work. It would be one thing to go about it that the evil races were really good all along and are just being unfairly persecuted. As it is, it OOTS makes a story out of how it could work, by conceptualizing "creators" as gods who needed those evil races to make their game work the way it wanted it to. By expanding the scope to look at the creation of the setting as a greater part of it, it allows the possibility of characters becoming aware of the reasons behind their creation, and to (rather understandably) have a complaint.

Which, incidentally, relates to the point I was making earlier - people who have a beef with D&D and "Always Evil" races aren't arguing that all goblins are misunderstood pacifists; they've got a problem with the setup as a whole.

[FlawedParadigm]

But there's the problem; if Redcloak and company are, indeed, completely evil, as the D&D rules generally require them to be for the game to function in the way you point out, then his "just" cause is not really just, and in fact wouldn't exist at all; his family's murder would not be senseless violence, it would in fact be quite sensible, and the Paladins would not be zealous bigots, they would be protecting innocent lives against a very real threat. Redcloak could still be motivated by it in the same way, still feel the same pain and anger over it, but the larger idea that he's "evil for a good cause" wouldn't hold water, because his cause wouldn't be (and couldn't be) good. So I suppose what we have here is a matter of rules conflicting with story; but in this case only because the storyteller has chosen to make the story conflict with the rules.

But they're not completely evil. Because this is a story, not the game. That was the entire point of the post.

[WhamBamSam]

Then that's not really being evil at all; well, it might be evil in the dictionary sense of the word, but not in the capital-E, D&D alignment sense. At that point the story has moved beyond those simple concepts...except that those concepts are still present in the comic, and indeed are an important part of it. The goblins have an Evil (not just "evil") alignment, a self-acknowledged one, and the Paladins all have Good alignments (even Miko! Well, for the most part). And yet their behavior does not really reflect this at all. If the characters have been typecast by the gods, then the gods did a lousy job.

But there's the problem; if Redcloak and company are, indeed, completely evil, as the D&D rules generally require them to be for the game to function in the way you point out, then his "just" cause is not really just, and in fact wouldn't exist at all; his family's murder would not be senseless violence, it would in fact be quite sensible, and the Paladins would not be zealous bigots, they would be protecting innocent lives against a very real threat. Redcloak could still be motivated by it in the same way, still feel the same pain and anger over it, but the larger idea that he's "evil for a good cause" wouldn't hold water, because his cause wouldn't be (and couldn't be) good. So I suppose what we have here is a matter of rules conflicting with story; but in this case only because the storyteller has chosen to make the story conflict with the rules.

So wait. You're arguing that D&D morality is completely at odds with evil ever being done for a good cause? No. That's absurd. Miko performed an evil act based on what she thought was right, and that was entirely in keeping with her character.

Anyway, goblins aren't even necessarily evil by D&D rules. They're usually evil. They have free will in principal, but the circumstances of their lives severely limit their options in practice.

Still, if it makes you feel better about it, think about it this way. In-universe, the Gods are the absolute moral authority, so they get to say what's good and what's evil. They defined goblins to be evil because it was convenient for them, and later, TDO became an evil god because he got along better with the other evil gods. So Redcloak's evil is unambiguous in the eyes of the gods, but as D&D gods aren't infallible (hell, some of them have actually been killed in the OotS-verse) a cause can still be good by objective morality (or rational morality if you don't believe in objective morality), while still evil according to divine law.

[Giddon]

I find some interesting points missing from this argument. Although it has already been said, I still believe you are trying too hard to fit the OotS into the rigid framework of the D&D 3.5e rules, which is not how its meant to be. And not just from the morality point of view, but from the game mechanics point of view. I don't have the quotes from The Giant at hand, but he has admitted that he will generally only use the D&D rules as a guideline for battles and actions, but that he will never have that limit him from allowing the characters to do whatever he imagines, even if it would mean breaking some of those D&D rules. He allows rule of funny or rule of it-makes-for-better-story-telling take precedence over fitting a rigid set of rules.

Now with that in mind I think its similar for the alignments. For characters such as the Deva's and the Fiends and even the paladins, he adopts the binary alignment system in a stricter fashion, because it allows conflict to erupt with the characters that fall in this binary system but are more subject to the gray morality you say holds no place in the D&D system. Evidently everyone in the OotS-verse is subject to the alignment rules, but there is deviation and in fact contradiction to this binary alignments because this is not a 3.5e campaign running strictly by the available source material, its a story, and one that constantly breaks the 4th wall, and this breaking away from the D&D rules is just another way to do that while adding to the narrative and plot, at least from my point of view.

Addressing the issue of RC, I think one of the problems is that you are assuming that RC was inherently evil. As said before, even in the world of D&D the alignments don't have to be set in stone by race (like in Eberron), so since this is Rich's story he may have chosen to start RC neutral per say, and then have SoD show how he really turned evil. There is absolutely moral justification in his actions there. Same with the Dark One, he may not have been inherently evil, he wanted to achieve his original plan through diplomacy and peace, but when he was betrayed he chose to turn to what could be considered evil methods instead. In doing so, and RC in following this plan, has led both of them to corrupt a just cause. So its not so much evil for a just cause, its more like a just cause turned evil.

Finally to talk a little bit about seemingly this contradiction that you say exists in RC's grey more realistic morality and the OotS strict D&D alignment system that makes for inconsistency that strain the story, what say you for example of Tarquin and Elan? Their whole confrontation was about clashing those two ideas, with Elan representing the D&D side of the argument that since he is good he must defeat his dad because he is evil, while Tarquin insisted that he disliked those labels because they were not more then that, just labels not true representations of morality. Again the inconsistency appears, but woven into the conflicts and narratives of the whole OotS-verse.

Essentially I believe the contradiction you point out does exist, but that it does so knowingly and with the intention of the author, and that it is there for a purpose, which is to create conflict that allows for an interesting plot, and why not, themes and sub themes for people to think and debate about. After all The Giant has recently said it himself in a post precisely about straying too much away from D&D, that he does not seek to write about a game any more, what he seeks is to write a story. And good stories tend to have themes that create debate and arguments.

[FujinAkari]

The image of peaceful, minding-their-own-business goblins getting run down en masse by racist Paladins is not the nature of D&D

We can note that this image is also not present in The Order of the Stick.

Still, as Kish has been somewhat driving at through the whole thread, your entire argument seems to flow from a premise that D&D does not have. No where is it stated that D&D monsters can and should be killed anywhere they are found, it just so happens that the average game brings the action to the heroes in the form of invading monsters. Very few games will have the heroes going out and slaughtering peaceful goblins because, well, that isn't very heroic now is it?

Taking that premise of "Goblins invade a lot!" and giving story reasons for it and the goblinoid reaction to it does not somehow undermine the entire work, as you seem to be claiming, it adds nuance to the work and moves goblinoids from the role of stock villain into characters in and of their own right.

And if examining a race of monsters, establishing their society and fleshing them out as a sentient and interesting facet of the world is somehow a violation and impossible to allow within a D&D context... well... R.A. Salvatore would like a word with you :P

[thepsyker]

Indeed, a fascinating analogy...but invalid. Mongols were not Chaotic Evil. They were real people and their actions, nature, culture, and society are more complicated than that.

Goblins are Neutral Evil. They are not real people. They are not so complicated (not in terms of their morality anyway). Except in "The Order of the Stick" they are...but in a way that contradicts their Neutral Evilness for the sake of making them theoretically sympathetic (something they would never be under the RAW). But that Neutral Evilness is still there, and still hardwired into the concept of the game world. The conflict is founded on internal inconsistencies.

First off, according to the 3.5 srd at least, Goblins are only usually Neutral Evil, in other words by RAW there is room for goblins who are not neutral evil and therefore room for complexity in their morality.

Second yeah Goblins are not real people so what? How does that serve your argument? That just means that they can be as complicated as a particular setting, author or DM decides to make them. D&D is a flexible game particularly in regards to things like setting flavors such as the motivations of the villains. If you as a DM/storyteller want to have the conflict between your PC/protagonists and goblins be a black and white struggle between good and evil that is your decision. However, it is not against the RAW for another DM/storyteller to try to add further layers to that conflict in their game/story.

I also have to say that I'm not seeing how goblins/hobgoblins aren't evil in OoTS. Sure the backstory adds some complexity to things and they are portrayed as having a culture more complicated than the "grr we kill things for the evuls and fun" that you might see in say the Orcs of Warhammer, but that doesn't change the fact that they still engage in plenty of evil acts such as raiding, slavery, providing material support to a Litch bent on world domination, engaging in plots that may result in the destruction of the entire world, slaughtering hundred of thousands in a bloody crusade of vengeance, stealing circus property, etc.