D&D and English Reports do not go together

[mikeejimbo]

For some reason I recalled just now a time I wrote a report comparing and contrasting Iago from Othello and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. I tried to argue that Iago was Lawful Evil and Heathcliff was Chaotic Evil. I got a C, though. So, I'm wondering if perhaps I had the alignments of the characters wrong, or if the whole idea of actually trying to argue it in an English class was a bad idea from the get go.

(The story has a happy ending - I got an A in the class overall.)

[SurlySeraph]

Yeah, it's generally best to argue in the terminology the teacher uses rather than terminology from an outside source, especially if said source is a game. You could describe their traits as different kinds of evil and argue that they fit into general categories, but using the terms "Lawful Evil" and "Chaotic Evil" is probably a bad idea.

EDIT: Also, Iago is more of an intelligent Neutral Evil. He's not trying to support the standing order; he just wants to hurt Othello.

[Yrcrazypa]

This thread was made absolutely hilarious by the fact that I read Iago, ignored the next few words and immediately extrapolated the parrot from Alladin, Gilbert Godfried voice and all. Afterwards I was disappointed that it WASN'T him.

[Mando Knight]

This thread was made absolutely hilarious by the fact that I read Iago, ignored the next few words and immediately extrapolated the parrot from Alladin, Gilbert Godfried voice and all. Afterwards I was disappointed that it WASN'T him.

...90's kid? Yeah, me, too...
My first exposure to Robin Williams was as the Genie of the Lamp, and I believe I heard James Earl Jones as Mufasa a couple of years before I heard him as the chilling voice of Darth Vader. And then I didn't know that they were the same voice actor until several years later because I wasn't interested in identifying actors by voice and/or appearance until my teens...

The real question is, how well did you do the comparing and contrasting? That's what the teacher wanted, so rambling on about alignments and such would not have done you much good if you didn't use them for the sole purpose of showing what was asked.

[Cristo Meyers]

Well, you could use the alignments, but only in a pretty specific way. If you used them solely as a way to help illustrate the differences between the two characters then it'd probably get a pass, but that depends a lot on the teacher.

In practice, though, since you'd have to explain the alignments it'd be pretty unwieldy.

[Trog]

Well if you define those two DnD terms and keep the comparison self-contained it probably would mix fine. If you instead assume that some non-gamer is going to know the differences between the two terms you might stumble a bit. Also would depend on how relative those two terms are to the character's actions in the story.

DnD alignments, by and large, are not the best pigeon holes because many nuances of real world motivations are lumped together in uncomfortable ways. Such as a person being truly concerned with the balance of good and evil and one who is merely selfish and disinterested both being shoved into the True Neural alignment. Also, 4e alignments (esp. "Unaligned") ftw. :smallwink:

I have mixed DnD (interests) with English reports before in that I have done a rather lengthy report on dragons in myth and mythology. Got an A- on it. Not bad for cramming a semester's worth of work into a single 10-hour work day too. :smallcool::smalltongue:

[Cristo Meyers]

I have mixed DnD (interests) with English reports before in that I have done a rather lengthy report on dragons in myth and mythology. Got an A- on it. Not bad for cramming a semester's worth of work into a single 10-hour work day too. :smallcool::smalltongue:

The best papers are not borne of persperation but rather of desperation :smallwink:

[mikeejimbo]

See, that's the thing. I thought I did fairly well succinctly defining lawful evil and chaotic evil, and then I thought I presented textual evidence supporting both. However, I do think Iago is more neutral evil now, which is what I view as my one flaw.

[Trog]

This thread was made absolutely hilarious by the fact that I read Iago, ignored the next few words and immediately extrapolated the parrot from Alladin, Gilbert Godfried voice and all. Afterwards I was disappointed that it WASN'T him.
Oh THERE'S A SURPRISE!! I'll think I'll fail a system shock roll and DIE from that surprise! [/Iago] :smallwink:

[Silverraptor]

I actually did an english story project based off of one of my group's DnD games. I was one of the few in the class to get an "A" for creativity. All I did was rip off the entire game session.:smallbiggrin:

[Jalor]

This thread was made absolutely hilarious by the fact that I read Iago, ignored the next few words and immediately extrapolated the parrot from Alladin, Gilbert Godfried voice and all. Afterwards I was disappointed that it WASN'T him.
...90's kid? Yeah, me, too...
I knew I couldn't be the only one. My first thought was "No way, a Lawful Evil parrot wouldn't be so snarky towards his master."

[LurkerInPlayground]

Alignments are a sacred cow of D&D that does need slaying.

Somebody said that about the Vancian magic system. But no. Alignments are pretty suck. Alignment makes people think of complex problems by reducing it to a few concrete and ill-defined words. It adds no actual insight. It just makes a person slap a label on something and feel satisfied they've found what amounts to a non-answer.

It's far more useful to talk about a person's motivations or their personality traits (i.e. greed, sadism, jealousy, revenge, etcetera).

[Stormthorn]

Well if you want to use DnD alignments you needs to list them and then go into depth about what each one represents before you can start matching characters to them.