Every time a Black Dragon dies, an Angel gets it's Wings [Archive]

Chobarth

2012-03-15, 08:15 PM

Swore I wouldn't hijack the current strip thread about Girard's ass any further, so I created this thread. First the comments already made, then a response.

Whatever your opinion of Girard's family...
Don't forget all the innocent dragons.

Eeee Gods. Not this again. Evil dragons. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Well done V. Too bad about all the collateral damage, you should have thought it through it better with your vaunted 18 Int score.

The 'innocent' black dragons are like all of the 'innocent' practitioners of <insert your favorite example of dread evil>... and we all know you aren't a fan of the Belkster Kish. You, Celia, and a few other forum pacifists seem to worry about the issue in the abstract, but in OOT's-world "reality" the dead dragons should have caused a tilt towards the good... LESS suffering, LESS harm, LESS depravity. Too bad s/he didn't knock off 25% of the Red ones as well.

It's Burlew's world, but D&D based means the black dragons were evil. (yes, yes, with micro-percentage non-evil black dragons who really were innocent - the alignment rules are crazy)

LOL for me calling the OOT's comic universe a reality.

The goodness or evilness of an act does not depend on the goodness or evilness of the people upon whom the actor is acting. Showing mercy to good people is just as good as showing mercy to evil people. Murdering evil people is just as evil as murdering good people. Judge the act. Not the victims.

I didn't comment on the ACT's morality, I commented on the outcome. Does V need to worry about his afterlife? Perhaps - it's been argued to death. I'm merely pointing out that the dead Black Dragons destroyed by the spell likely tilted OOTSverse towards the good. Now, perhaps in the aggregate it ended up neutral with all the dead humanoids, and depending on the numbers it might have even shifted towards evil.

But the dragons, by and large, were evil and good riddance to them. Their "innocence" is abstract -- if I were a common villager in OOTSverse I'd shed no tears for the sudden removal of 1/4th of the Black Dragons from the world. "A good start", the villager might say... unconcerned about the morality of the person responsible. When the 'victims' are black dragons -- shrug.

Hijack of thread OFF - no further commentary about this subject in this thread from me.

Not again, Chobarth. Still. Because you're wrong. The comic's author disagrees with you, the D&D books disagree with you, and you're wrong. Killing creatures because "their race is evil" is itself a thoroughly evil action. You can keep asserting otherwise as many times as you like, of course.

Kish, your latest post reminds me of Haley's quip about LG types... Anyway, taken in order:

1)Burlew disagree's with you.
So? I don't effect the creation of his comic, and my enjoyment of his comic is unaffected by any disagreement. As the comic's author he retains complete creative control but doesn't make him some kind of infallible herald of truth. Many of the concepts and conversations generated by OOTS on this forum stretch beyond the limits of the story itself. The D&D game rules themselves stand outside of his story (and he ignores or bends them to suit the narrative at his whim - as he should) so this is a moot point.

2)The D&D books disagree with you.
I believe you are combining two related conversations in your head from different threads. Yes, the D&D rules proved me wrong when I said ALL black dragons are evil. "Always" is a word that the designers apparently didn't understand... But this isn't under discussion. If you'll reread my OP, I mention the small percentage of non-evil black dragons. I just don't care about them, and I don't think the OOTSverse common folk would either. Pick one of the more horrific types of violent criminals in our world - some of them have probably reformed - but if V could rid the world of 25% of them...

3)I'm simply wrong.
Well, that is your viewpoint. I doubt I'll be able to shake you of it. But the reality is that we simply disagree. I could call you wrong (and I probably have in the past) but in the end, its just contrasting worldviews.

4)I keep asserting "that killing evil creatures isn't an evil action".
I've never said that Kish. You're twisting my words ('again'... wait, I think it is 'still' this time). I've said that the act was evil - I've repeated that many times in many different threads. But the outcome from the black dragons dying (not the entire spell) to everyone except Vaarsuvius was basically good.

Using the rules of the game about alignment (which I dislike intensely just for this reason) V killed 'mostly' evil sentient creatures, clouding his personal soul with an Evil action. I think in one thread I basically said "evil action, good outcome, neutral balance" -- but I haven't repeated that since the full scope of the spell has been revealed.

I eat farmed produce knowing that the herbicides kill more than just weeds. They kill 'mostly' weeds. I shop at places that have contracts with pest control companies knowing that they kill more than just the local vermin. They kill 'mostly' the local vermin (all vermin would be innocent in your view correct? roaches and rats are no less innocent and deserving of life than black dragons?)

Familicide: Evil spell. Casting it is an evil action. There is no argument here.

25% of Black Dragons dying: A good effect. Doesn't forgive V's evil action, but OOTSverse common folk likely lack your moral high horse and would applaud hir anyway... Even those who are appalled still live in a goodlier world. Those dragons were 'mostly' evil, and to a very high percentage.

Overall effect: Only a divine being with perfect knowledge can 'really' ascertain this. Totally Burlew's call and he can shape it into anything he wants. Possibly somewhere south of neutral, but we don't know enough to see how the OOTSverse good/evil balance shifted. Punt.

Gift Jeraff

2012-03-15, 08:23 PM

Particle_Man

2012-03-15, 08:50 PM

Maybe the act would have been a good act in 1st edition if not for the collateral damage. :)

FujinAkari

2012-03-15, 09:25 PM

Black Dragons are not inherently evil. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept, but it has been blatently stated as such. The idea that some races exist purely to be slaughtered is a horrible, heinous concept and one of the primary themes of OOTS is subverting the concept of a Black and White morality and demonstrating why the game isn't 1st edition anymore.

lio45

2012-03-15, 09:27 PM

Some relevant quotes from the author:

"If it is wrong to kill a thousand dragons simply because they are dragons, then it is wrong to kill a single dragon for the same reasons.

Also, I'm not sure what it says about fantasy roleplaying that I felt the need to make the argument against genocide. Probably best that I not think about it too much."

The thing is, there's no direct real world analogy for intelligent critters like dragons.

If someone killed a thousand mosquitoes, would that be genocide as well? (And would it be wrong to kill a single mosquito for the same reason?)

Also... if you could find a way to cast Familicide on bed bugs, you'd definitely own a thriving business ;) ...and I don't think anyone would cry over the innocent ones being offed (because yes, that spell would kill plenty of bed bugs that haven't yet done anything wrong).

The point being, I don't think our real-world notion of genocide would still be valid as is for acts done on monster races in a D&D world. This is one of the few times, maybe the only one in fact, where I think Rich has been stretching it a little too much. Mass killing, yes, slaughter, yes, genocide? Not really.

Sneaky Weasel

2012-03-15, 09:33 PM

ti'esar

2012-03-15, 09:35 PM

How is this not a morally justified thread?

Gift Jeraff

2012-03-15, 09:35 PM

In D&D, bed bugs and mosquitos do not have an intelligence score. The game deems them Always True Neutral, without exception. (Yeah yeah, zombies and skeletons...) Chromatic dragons have an Intelligence score over 2 (just like humans), and can in fact be any alignment (it's just rare). Clearly, there's a difference between the two.

Also, why does the OP keep mentioning common folk? Since when do common folk determine the OOTSiverse's objective alignment system?

ThePhantasm

2012-03-15, 09:37 PM

Isn't this a "morally justified" thread? Yeah, I think it is.

lio45

2012-03-15, 09:46 PM

Just because they are monsters does not make them animals. Dragons are intelligent creatures, more so than most humans. By the definition of genocide, as I understand it, casting Familicide would definitely qualify as such. Bed bugs are not an intelligent, sapient species, and thus killing them on a large scale would not be genocide.

Actually, dragons would most definitely be considered animals by the common definition of that word.

So, are you saying that no intelligent creature species can ever have a behavior that would have them be considered pests by the humans in whatever example setting that we're talking about?

Since I take it you'll answer a sensible "no" to that question, it then raises the following question: how would you consider a creature species with enough INT to be sapient yet which still lives off biting people and sucking their blood, leaving itchy, red marks behind them?

It's pretty easy in the modern real world: there are humans, and there are pests. It's not that easy when you have to consider a hybrid of the two. Where do you draw the line? Do you pick an INT number? (Maybe D&D already sets a sapiency INT threshold; IDK. That could be one way to settle it.)

Edited to avoid double post:

Chromatic dragons have an Intelligence score over 2 (just like humans), and can in fact be any alignment (it's just rare). Clearly, there's a difference between the two.

Which was actually my point. At which intelligence score do you stop considering a pest a pest? I'm aware >2 is the threshold for a certain number of intelligence-related things, so maybe that's it, although I think I'd personally still want to kill a mosquito even if it had an INT of 3.

Besides, I'm not sure intelligence alone will turn a creature type into something equal to a human. Monsters have habits, behaviors, etc. that are defined by the rulebooks in, I believe, a narrower fashion than it's done for humans and playable races. So an intelligent monster type can almost always act as a pest.

MrShadetree

2012-03-15, 09:59 PM

This really is ridiculous. This is genocide no matter what sentient beings were killed. It is just as totally evil killing black dragons as it would have been killing bronze dragons. The outcome is irrelevant. THe number of non dragons killed should really cement this. I would throw out the argument that V had more of a desire to abuse and torture ABD than "do a good Deed" by killing a quarter of the black dragons. It was evil whichever way it is spun.

lio45

2012-03-15, 10:08 PM

V had more of a desire to abuse and torture ABD than "do a good Deed" by killing a quarter of the black dragons.

Of course. That should be incredibly obvious to everyone.

Still not sure I agree with your assertion that it's genocide. The only criterion you seem to be using is intelligence. Not a bad one, but still leaves something to be desired. Killing ten 6-year-old kids isn't exactly equivalent to killing ten dolphins. Yes, I know, the kids would've grown up... ok, here's a more apt analogy then: retarded human adult with a 6-year-old mental age vs normal adult dolphin. Still not equal from the widespread POV.

PS - Maybe this qualifies as a "morally justified" thread, I don't know. Anyway, I'm not the one who started it. So far though, I don't have the feeling the conversation is bad enough to be worthy of a thread lock.<

MrShadetree

2012-03-15, 10:24 PM

Sentient is more than intelligence. Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Dragons are thinking beings not animals or vermin that don't in D&D terms. That is the difference.

Janmorel

2012-03-15, 10:28 PM

Still not sure I agree with your assertion that it's genocide. The only criterion you seem to be using is intelligence. Not a bad one, but still leaves something to be desired. Killing ten 6-year-old kids isn't exactly equivalent to killing ten dolphins. <

Leaving aside the creepiness of that analogy, have you seen a lot of half-dolphins wandering around the coastal cities?

If it can successfully breed with the player races, it ought to count as a race, as well as a species.

jere7my

2012-03-15, 10:50 PM

Actually, dragons would most definitely be considered animals by the common definition of that word.

As would humans, yes.

So, are you saying that no intelligent creature species can ever have a behavior that would have them be considered pests by the humans in whatever example setting that we're talking about?

Since I take it you'll answer a sensible "no" to that question, it then raises the following question: how would you consider a creature species with enough INT to be sapient yet which still lives off biting people and sucking their blood, leaving itchy, red marks behind them?

Once you're dealing with a free-willed sapient species, you can no longer talk about the species as a whole "having a behavior." You can speak of tendencies or habits, but when it comes to meting out punishment you have to deal with the crimes committed by individuals. Killing Ralph the Black Dragon for simply being a black dragon, even if he is a black dragon paladin who flies orphans to safety on his back and lives only on donated sheep, is a terrible idea.

Your sapient pests who suck blood sound a lot like vampires, and the bookshelves of America groan under the weight of morally gray vampires. Wiping out vampires willy-nilly will wipe out Angel alongside Dracula.

ManuelSacha

2012-03-15, 10:56 PM

Seriously, which innocent black dragons? :smallsigh:

Seems to me you just want to play the devil's advocate. :smallannoyed:

ZeroNumerous

2012-03-15, 10:56 PM

If it can successfully breed with the player races, it ought to count as a race, as well as a species.

So zombies, vampires, oozes, and golems all count as separate races/species?

Warren Dew

2012-03-15, 10:56 PM

I was kind of hoping Kish's first comment quoted was a joke. We may dislike Girard and his clan - I do - but it's hard to argue that they are completely evil when they are, you know, dedicated to preventing the destruction of the world.

Kish, your latest post reminds me of Haley's quip about LG types... Anyway, taken in order:

1)Burlew disagree's with you.
Not true anyway, at least insofar as D&D alignments go.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=274463#post274463

ManuelSacha

2012-03-15, 10:59 PM

So zombies, vampires, oozes, and golems all count as separate races/species?

What. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlatWhat)

Dude, if you've seen somebody BREEDING with golems, zombies or oozes... keep it to yourself, and most importantly DON'T DESCRIBE IT, for the love of Thor!

JSSheridan

2012-03-15, 11:05 PM

The purpose of Good is not to destroy Evil, but to redeem it.

jere7my

2012-03-15, 11:06 PM

Seriously, which innocent black dragons?

Well, let me just check my black dragon phone directory...oh wait, I can't, because they're fictional. It's been well established that the D&D rules allow for good black dragons, just as they allow for Drizz't do'Urden; given that, even if we haven't been personally introduced to a good black dragon, you either have to make decisions about killing them on a case-by-case basis, based on their actions, or accept the death of some good dragons as collateral damage. (In this case, the collateral damage extends rather further, as we're seeing.)

Even if you do accept the collateral damage, which this is not the place to debate the morality of, you don't rejoice in it. It's a tragedy, which is not in line with the thread title here.

AgentofOdd

2012-03-15, 11:15 PM

Surfing HalfOrc

2012-03-16, 12:18 AM

Sigh.

Look, D&D is NOT like other games.
In Poker, a Royal Flush beats a Straight Flush.
Every Time.
In Monopoly, you have to either pay a fine, or roll doubles to Get Out of Jail.
Every Time.
In Candyland, you move your piece to the color you drew.
Every time.

In D&D just because the Monster Manual says "Alignment is:_______" does not give you a free pass to kill it, or become best friends with it. Unless you play it like that.

And that's the difference. Poker is Poker around the world.

Monopoly has been translated into 37 languages, but the rules are mostly the same.

Candyland is color based, and the rules DON'T radically change in Great Britain just because it is colour based.

In D&D not all dragons are evil, even the Evil ones. Same with the Drow, Beholders, Mind Flayers or just about any other sentient race or species. At YOUR table they might be, at my table they might be, at anyone who plays they might be. But they might NOT be as well. It depends on the GM, players, readers, or programmers.

And at Rich's table, which is where we are all sitting right now, ALL goblins, dragons, drow, or even paladins are NOT GUILTY just because of the actions of a few, or even the majority. Each must be judged individually, based on their actions.

B. Dandelion

2012-03-16, 12:18 AM

OP, I have a serious moral problem with your reckless abuse of the poor misunderstood apostrophe. IT'S wings indeed! :smallyuk:

(As to the rest, this is plainly a "morally justified" aka "soon-to-be-locked" thread so there's little point to saying anything else.)

Chobarth

2012-03-16, 02:11 AM

Maybe I'm missing something. Why are most folks debating the ethics of Familcide (which I'm reasonably certain everyone agrees is evil), when the thread creator is arguing that the deaths of the Black Dragons had a net positive impact on the world which may be offset by the deaths of the human/dragon hybrids? It can't be too controversial to say the severe reduction of an (almost always) evil race is a good thing for the planet if not for the individual's soul no?

This. Thanks AgentofOdd.

re: other comments --

OP, I have a serious moral problem with your reckless abuse of the poor misunderstood apostrophe. IT'S wings indeed! :smallyuk:

(As to the rest, this is plainly a "morally justified" aka "soon-to-be-locked" thread so there's little point to saying anything else.)

ROFL. Thanks for the grammar fix. Apologies. As far as morally justified, well perhaps they will lock it but I don’t think so. If I’m wrong, so be it. I’m not justifying V’s actions, nor having a discussion about morals per se. So it isn’t ‘plain’ to me. I’m merely reacting to Kish’s commentary (I get that one right?) about the black dragons being innocent. Innocent of doing anything to V? Sure, of course they were. But innocent given the ridiculous alignment rules? No. Overwhelmingly evil.

The funny thing is that, really, I agree with Kish. Judging a race/species that way should indeed be considered heinous. But my position that V inadvertently shifted the balance towards ‘good’ is because of the warped alignment rules. I don’t agree with Burlew that players are misusing them or whatever, I think they are warped from the beginning and were designed that way on purpose. Don’t shoot the messenger for pointing out that the Black Dragons are overwhelmingly Evil per the rules of the game. They apparently didn’t want to market moral relativism… i.e. the gods really did create goblins to supply XP. It makes for a good story to fight against it, but doesn’t change how the game was written. The real world doesn’t have an analog for the ‘evil’ races in D&D campaigns.

Black Dragons are not inherently evil. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept, but it has been blatently stated as such.

True, but so what? I admit that I thought they were, but it turns out that the 3.5 Monster Manual listing that says “always evil” doesn’t really mean it. Some small percentage of them go a different direction. Drizzt and the Drow being the most popular example. If 98% are evil, and 2% are not I don’t see why that is such a hard concept. If I gave you a sandwich that was 98% excrement and 2% ham it wouldn’t inherently be a poo-wich, but I still wouldn’t eat it. I’d throw it away, and without consideration of the innocent 2%. Hurrah for V!

This really is ridiculous. This is genocide no matter what sentient beings were killed. It is just as totally evil killing black dragons as it would have been killing bronze dragons. The outcome is irrelevant. THe number of non dragons killed should really cement this. I would throw out the argument that V had more of a desire to abuse and torture ABD than "do a good Deed" by killing a quarter of the black dragons. It was evil whichever way it is spun.

Now this post DOES start to get into the morality instead of the alignments / outcomes argument. It also has nothing to do with the thread. Please cease posts like this, or it will be locked as B. Dandelion projected.

Sentient is more than intelligence. Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Dragons are thinking beings not animals or vermin that don't in D&D terms. That is the difference.

That is a good point, but it falls short when you look at the current literature of animal experience. I’ll leave the insects out of it, but plenty of animals qualify for what you just described as sentience. None of them are overwhelmingly Evil however…

Once you're dealing with a free-willed sapient species, you can no longer talk about the species as a whole "having a behavior."

Your sapient pests who suck blood sound a lot like vampires, and the bookshelves of America groan under the weight of morally gray vampires. Wiping out vampires willy-nilly will wipe out Angel alongside Dracula.

Wait, so you wouldn’t cast a spell that wiped out 25% of vampires? (assuming it was limited to that, not like the version V cast…) I consistently underestimate these boards. Also, yes you can talk about free-willed sapient species as a whole. I direct you to the 3.5 Monster Manual. An entire volume that does just exactly that – including alignments.

Even if you do accept the collateral damage, which this is not the place to debate the morality of, you don't rejoice in it. It's a tragedy, which is not in line with the thread title here.

I generally rejoice in good being raised and evil being lowered. If the general PC species were aware of what happened, they might commemorate Saint Vaarsuvius with his own holiday. Note that I am NOT justifying what V did. Wrong reasons, wrong method, horrific unforeseen collateral damage – just a terrible thing. But in regards to the Black Dragons specifically: “Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, the destruction of one-quarter of the most vile tempered and cruel of all chromatic dragons!”

It’s still be seen (if indeed we’ll ever know) if V inadvertently did more harm or good with that spell. An argument for disrupting the ecology could be made, but D&D is NOT a balanced ecology (Owl-bears. LOL) in the first place.

And at Rich's table, which is where we are all sitting right now, ALL goblins, dragons, drow, or even paladins are NOT GUILTY just because of the actions of a few, or even the majority. Each must be judged individually, based on their actions.

Yeah, I get that, and never once have you seen me address Burlew requesting or demanding that he change anything about the story. But again, don’t shoot the messenger. The alignment rules are warped and the concept remains a constant in the game. Goblins, Dragons <chromatic>, Drow aren’t judged to be evil because of the actions of a few. They are judged to be evil because the overwhelming majority of them are evil. When 25% of them are erased off the planet, pop a cork and raise a toast to Saint Vaarsuvius.

I’m leaving you with the following quote in case anyone didn’t click through before – pretty sure it pre-dates the familicide threads however. Not saying I’m in agreement about killing in general, nor theft, but thought it was important to be seen again.

Killing evil creatures isn't evil, and for all their screw ups, no one (but Belkar) has committed any evil actions. (Theft isn't evil, just selfish.)
__________________
Rich Burlew

Nimrod's Son

2012-03-16, 02:43 AM

Black Dragons are not inherently evil. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept, but it has been blatently stated as such.

True, but so what?
And right back atcha. That one sentence of yours pretty much answers your entire complaint here. Rich isn't relating to us the storyline from a game of D&D. He's telling a story that he's made up, that happens to take place in a universe that mostly follows the rules of D&D. When it suits him.

Chobarth

2012-03-16, 02:55 AM

And right back atcha. That one sentence of yours pretty much answers your entire complaint here. Rich isn't relating to us the storyline from a game of D&D. He's telling a story that he's made up, that happens to take place in a universe that mostly follows the rules of D&D. When it suits him.

Very true. But overall he follows the rules. The 'amazing Wight creation' spell, and a few other things aside, he does an extremely convincing job of following the general rules. He bends them to his whim for story reasons, and I've never had a problem with that.

But I'm not complaining about Burlew - I'm commenting on the forum posters who seem to think that eliminating the Black Dragons wasn't a net good. Not good for V, not good for the collateral non-dragons, not good for 2% of the BD's themselves. But all this "boo hoo hoo, the poor innocent BD's" bilge.

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice...

guguma

2012-03-16, 02:55 AM

This, I just HAD TO quote this again

And at Rich's table, which is where we are all sitting right now, ALL goblins, dragons, drow, or even paladins are NOT GUILTY just because of the actions of a few, or even the majority. Each must be judged individually, based on their actions.

In fact please read it one more time, not only in Rich's table this is in fact what it is in the real world. An INTELLIGENT and SANE person will do whatever they CAN do, and they have a reason to DO it, it is GOOD in their perspective and no one can be judged or classified especially with nothing as narrow as a 9 unit discrete spectrum of alignments.

I will not get much into this, but GOOD and EVIL are seriously subjective concepts not only all people and actions can be classified as GOOD and EVIL even a single event might prove hard to judge as GOOD and EVIL.

e.g Someone hungry stealing bread, is this person evil because he is stealing the good baker's hard work, or is the baker evil for not giving a bread to the poor hungry man?

I want to congratulate Surfing Halforc for his truly wise comment once again though.

Jabberwok

2012-03-16, 02:59 AM

ti'esar

2012-03-16, 03:16 AM

{scrubbed}

Nimrod's Son

2012-03-16, 03:18 AM

I can only assume none of the mods have been online. :smallwink:

Winter

2012-03-16, 03:36 AM

I will not get much into this, but GOOD and EVIL are seriously subjective concepts not only all people and actions can be classified as GOOD and EVIL even a single event might prove hard to judge as GOOD and EVIL.

No, not in D&D. In D&D those are basic concepts of the universe.

The point in Rich's comment was you cannot kill something or someone just because he, she or it is evil (or because you think that is evil).
You can only act based on deeds. So if someone evil does no evil deed, it would be evil to kill him based on the alignment (e.g. on a Detect Evil).

If that person is right at doing an evil deed, it is good to stop him.

Evil in D&D is neither subjective nor negotiable. But it's still not enough to know someone is evil to convict him.

BaronOfHell

2012-03-16, 03:57 AM

I'm no D&D player, so I don't really know how evil differentiates in this game from its common use. I do however get the feeling that D&D is backwards. Am I wrong in thinking that in D&D "you do evil, because you're evil"? Because typically you'd expect the "you're evil, because you do evil". This is of course very simplified.

If I understood this thread correct, then I believe this is not about the act itself (familicide), but about the outcome of said act upon the world of D&D.

Anyway, in regard to some arguments.
When it's pointed out the world is in general better because a lot of evil creatures have been removed, I'd like to ask, better to whom? I think this comic have clearly illustrated that even in D&D evil is not just "evil". There are so many flavors. Let's imagine tarquin had been slain while taking care of baby Nale. This would maybe be better for all those Tarquin were evil towards, but Nale would, as a baby, be in worse situation by far.

I'm certain that whoever the black dragons have acted evil towards and would have acted evil towards will be better off compared to the potential world where these black dragons would have existed. But there'll also be a lot in a much worse situation.

So can't we just take the average, or a weigthed average because a man is worth more than a king and a hero is worth more than a villain? I don't think we can, because "better off" as in "more good", doesn't work that way, as I see it. At least I would not be surprised if some is much worse off, because the remaining affected black dragons will get really really mad. Which is an understatement by itself. Just check out Tiamat, she's basicly ensuring that 5 times as many good aligned dragons will be destroyed. Which means the world is not better off due to the act, because the act leads to more unnecessary destruction (which is btw. a big part of evil, not something you want in a mainly good world) and not less.

Regarding the point about the oots common folks wouldn't care. Well first of all, common folk usually mean the average guy in the population. Now for any allienated population, it's obvious that the usual common folk would not care what happened about them despite this populations general alignment. Why? Because they're not really part of their world. As such I find such an argument to be rather populistic.
I don't know if this is true, but let's imagine centaurs are good aligned and very shy, so they keep to themselves. Now if this were true, I'd guess the common guy would care just as little as about the dragons. Especially becase dragons, if I understood correct, aren't considered a menace in general. Only a few villages probably have dragon problems considering how low a percentage of dragons there is in the world when comparing to the total amount of beings. These few villages will be of such a low percentage that they cannot inflict the perception of the common guy.

All in all, I think on short term basis then for the average individual this spell changes basicly nothing. On long term basis, it'll only bring more chaos and destruction in the negative sense to this world.

IT'S wings indeed! :smallyuk:

What is this "it" which "is wings"???:smalleek:

B. Dandelion

2012-03-16, 03:57 AM

As far as morally justified, well perhaps they will lock it but I don’t think so. If I’m wrong, so be it. I’m not justifying V’s actions, nor having a discussion about morals per se. So it isn’t ‘plain’ to me.

I'm not sure that flies as a level of distinction above plain ol' morally justified. Your position, if I have you correct, is that something that kills more "guilty" beings than "innocent" ones is a net Good, and that's an arguable moral stance you're taking. Do you believe that if you start with one Good person and one Evil one, and kill them both, the world will most assuredly retain the exact same moral equilibrium it had before? Guess what. Not everyone else does. Maybe killing evil things is only neutral, not good, or only good to the extent it prevents even more people from being killed by the evil one had it continued to live. In such a framework the collateral damage of innocents is often or always a net evil.

Winter

2012-03-16, 04:11 AM

I'm no D&D player, so I don't really know how evil differentiates in this game from its common use. I do however get the feeling that D&D is backwards. Am I wrong in thinking that in D&D "you do evil, because you're evil"? Because typically you'd expect the "you're evil, because you do evil". This is of course very simplified.

Yes, it works the same in D&D. Alignment follows character, the alignment does not determine the character.

What confuses a lot of people is that many monesters are listed as "Always Evil" in the Monster Manual. They think it means just that, but this is simply following the setup of the game. A game where good people whack evil things without feeling bad.
Why do not feel bad? Because they are the good guys who kill evil things.

There is no bigger moral concept beyond that. D&D is a game, and as such creates a setting in which the game works. Trying to find a philosophical background for that is moot because the fact there are "mostly evil creatures who do a lot of nasty things" is a basic axiom of the world to make the game work.
A world like that could never work (compare the amount of evil in the world vs. the amount of good), but it does not have to as it's just a game.

The exception are Demons or other creatures who really are embodiments of their alignment (the universal concept behind that alignment, to be precise). But even HERE we have exceptions in D&D.

D&D is the setup for an awesome game, which needs evil beings to do evil things so heroes can show up and fix it.
It also needs some evil beings who turn out to be not what they appear and this means neutral or good as that makes a great story and let's you catch players by surprise.

Rich (and hopefully most DMs) take that simple setting of D&D and use it to tell a better, more complex, more engaging, more tricky story than "Me good, me hit evil thing and am hero".

Murder is evil. Killing something without real reason is evil. Therefore, killing a being just for "being there" that you think (or even know!) is evil, is murder and as such evil.
This has nothing to do with morality at all, it's all on the level of "basic concepts of the D&D-worlds".

Rich Burlew confirmed in comments his world works like this (quoted above). You cannot just kill beings because they are evil, as that is an evil deed in itself.

What the "morality" of all this is and if in some cases "an evil deed towards good ends" is "worth" it is something that we cannot agree on as it is based in our RL morility, culture and personal views on the world.
But I think that is not even necessary as Vaarsuvius' act was not that. He did not say "I make an evil sacrifice to prevent a bigger evil from happening", he just went for it out of a powertrip and selfishness. Morality never entered in Vaarsuivus' action at all, it was just smacking things with a hammer in the hopes that would make "them" stop (note: "they" already had stopped at that point).

hamishspence

2012-03-16, 07:27 AM

Murder is evil. Killing something without real reason is evil. Therefore, killing a being just for "being there" that you think (or even know!) is evil, is murder and as such evil.
This has nothing to do with morality at all, it's all on the level of "basic concepts of the D&D-worlds".

The problem is very few D&D books set this out in black and white. Offhand I can think of two- BoED and Eberron Campaign Setting.

"Good implies respect for life" in PHB might help- but I've seen a lot of cases where people argue:

"An evil alignment guarantees that the creature will commit many acts of comparable heinousness to murder during its lifetime- therefore "respect for life" demands that you kill the creature in order to prevent all those future evil acts."

BoVD raises this argument- but follows with "this is only valid for creatures of consummate, irredeemable evil".

Since there appears to be no such thing- even fiends have redeemed themselves- a case can be made that this argument is never valid in D&D.

Winter

2012-03-16, 07:34 AM

It's how most groups of 15 year olds start, and some find it's all they ever need and thus stay at that. Other groups go on, play more complex stories, more complex characters, and good and evil also become more complex.

One style of play says "We do not have to ponder what evil is, our aligment says we are good, the one of the goblin says he's evil, therefore, we can whack it and be heroes".
The other style is much more complex and goes beyond that (and I think that is where playing roleplaying games becomes interesting).

D&D caters for both needs perfectly - but OotS has made it very clear in which camp it is.

Therefore, I find it highly unfitting if someone argues based on the "basic" point of view on D&D in regard to OotS. Of the two ways to see and play D&D, the "basic" view simply does not apply.
And therefore, it is highly evil in the context of this story to kill a bunch of black dragons simply "because".

To get away from alignment and mortals, the way to view D&D "basic" and "complex" also stretches to rules. The rules are an abstract formulation to simulate life (and make it playable).
A basic view would be to take the rules as written, the more advanced option is to apply common sense. You could argue both ways that a first level mage with Con is 100% dead when attacked four times by a housecat or you could claim that four attacks of a housecat do not kill a grown man, no matter what the rules say.
Both options to see it are "correct", but if OotS states "it takes the rules loose", you cannot come and base your argument on the rules as they are written. It's the same with what is evil.

Mixt

2012-03-16, 07:52 AM

Well, elves are all arrogant bastards so obviously it would be a good thing to murder them all.

Kill every single elf on the planet, then rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, the bastard elves are all dead! Yay!

Also, Humans Are Bastards, so let's kill every single human as well, because they are bastards, so wiping them out is a good thing.

KILL THEM ALL AHAHAHAHA!!!

I know, let's kill every living thing on the planet, because everyone has commited at least one evil act in their life.
The world will be better off without all those evildoers, humans, elves, dwarves, everything, kill them all!

LadyEowyn

2012-03-16, 07:57 AM

Here's how I look at it:

1) It's wrong to kill an Evil being simply because it's Evil, if it doesn't attack you. However, an Evil creature - being Evil - is likely to attack you, and if one does so, you are justified in killing them. You are also justified in doing so if the Evil being is harming others. This covers the majority of situations that adventurers will face, including V killing the young black dragon, which attacked the party immediately after they entered its cave.

However, if you just walk up to an Evil being (e.g, Belkar) and kill them when they're not doing anything, that's not a Good action; that's in Miko territory.

2) Killing a large group of beings without knowing whether they are Evil is even worse than just killing one Evil being that isn't currently harming anyone. Killing them as pre-emption without evidence that such pre-emption is warranted, OR killing them simply to cause pain and suffering to another Evil being (I think Vaarsuvius was affected by both motivations), is an Evil act. We can make a decent guess that at least some of the dragons killed by the spell were not Evil from the presence of the red-robed dragon doing magic (assuming robe colours in the OotS-verse signify alignment, as Vaarsuvius' do and as that's how things worked in Dragonlance).

2xMachina

2012-03-16, 08:32 AM

I think the OP isn't arguing whether it is a good or evil act.

But rather:
~25% of evil black dragons are dead. We/The OOTS civilian population should/would rejoice, rather than go "Boo Hoo, black dragons"

EDIT: And IMO, as a possibly Neutral person, I'd spend my allocated evil act on applauding this evil act that has made life better for people I care more about.

Saph

2012-03-16, 08:51 AM

I think the reason this argument is so hard to resolve is that you've got two incompatible perspectives.

Egalitarian view: All sentient creatures should be treated respectfully rather than with prejudice or violence. Judging them based on their species is wrong, regardless of any tendencies they might display.

Self-preservation view: Black dragons are bloody great acid-breathing monsters that are hideously powerful and usually maliciously destructive. The less of them around the better, and we don't much care how that gets done.

We've got a privileged position as readers, so we're free to identify with either one. However, it seems likely to me that most humanoids in the OotS-verse are going to tend towards the self-preservation view. It's a lot harder to value species conservation and tolerance for all other living things when said creatures live right over the next hill and think humans make a great snack food.

TheSummoner

2012-03-16, 09:18 AM

Self-preservation view: Black dragons are bloody great acid-breathing monsters that are hideously powerful and usually maliciously destructive. The less of them around the better, and we don't much care how that gets done.

Humans are the single most destructive creature in the world. Just think of all the damage that has been done by the various wars throughout history. Think of all the pain and suffering they've caused. Think of all the environmental damage. Think of all the cute little animals that they've slaughtered. The less of them around the better, and we don't much care how that gets done.

Ok, now that I have that out of my system...

Since when does "evil" mean "guilt"? Dragons are big. Dragons are powerful. Dragons are predators. These are all facts. If a dragon tries to eat you/your friend/people from a village you come across, would it be ok to slay the dragon? Yes. Does the fact that the dragon tried to eat someone make the dragon evil? Not anymore than the fact that humans eat cows makes us evil.

"Evil" isn't something you default to. With the exception perhaps of things like demons or the undead, you are not born/creaed evil. Evil is something you do. Evil is the result of your actions. The result of the choices you make. Of the effects of those choices. Of your reasons behind those choices.

So... anyone who says it was a good thing that all of those dragons died... What did those dragons do? What specifically did those black dragons do. No generalities here, I want specific examples of why those particular dragons were evil and deserved to die. If you can't give them, then perhaps you shouldn't be passing down the death sentence.

Saph

2012-03-16, 09:21 AM

Humans are the single most destructive creature in the world. Just think of all the damage that has been done by the various wars throughout history. Think of all the pain and suffering they've caused. Think of all the environmental damage. Think of all the cute little animals that they've slaughtered. The less of them around the better, and we don't much care how that gets done.

Case in point. :smallsmile:

You're generally only going to have this point of view if you don't have to worry on a frequent basis about non-humans eating you. When people are seriously concerned about survival (as they have good reason to be in a D&D world) attitudes change a bit.

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 09:25 AM

Humans are the single most destructive creature in the world. Just think of all the damage that has been done by the various wars throughout history. Think of all the pain and suffering they've caused. Think of all the environmental damage. Think of all the cute little animals that they've slaughtered. The less of them around the better, and we don't much care how that gets done.

Wait... what? Humans are more destructive than Dragons? Than DEMONS? Uh... no. Demons are literally made to sew destruction.

TheSummoner

2012-03-16, 09:26 AM

Actually, I'm expressing this point of view on morality in a conscious attempt to be as objective as I can about it. Morality has to be objective or it is entirely meaningless.

Do people like being eaten? Of course not. But is it evil to eat a living thing? If it is, then it is for everyone. Anything that eats meat is either evil for eating meat or eating meat does not make you evil. It can't be both ways.

It is no more evil for a dragon to eat a human than it is for a human to eat a cow. The human (and the cow) may not like being eaten, but it doesn't make the dragon (or the human) evil for doing it. Circle of life and all that.

Chobarth

2012-03-16, 10:23 AM

Here's how I look at it:
1) It's wrong to kill an Evil being simply because it's Evil, if it doesn't attack you
2) Killing a large group of beings without knowing whether they are Evil is even worse than just killing one Evil being that isn't currently harming anyone

We all agree it was an evil act. That’s not what this thread is about. The net outcome of V’s spell is the part I find more interesting. Evil in D&D, as someone posted above, is an active type of evil because it’s a game. Bad stuff that necessitates a hero or heroic group. No tears need be shed except for a FEW of the large number of black dragons slayed on the Saint Vaarsuvius Day Massacre.

I love how Saph has phrased it best – very well done. (apologies for stealing and conjoining your sentences)

In the abstract, for those who can afford the attitude in an RPG world, All sentient creatures should be treated respectfully rather than with prejudice or violence. BUT SINCE Black dragons are bloody great acid-breathing monsters that are hideously powerful and usually maliciously destructive, the less of them around the better. I.E. “Whomever this dragon-slayer Vaarsuvius is, he/she shouldn’t have cast such a heinous spell, however if I ever meet the elf firsthand, I’ll be sure to buy hir a drink.”

One style of play says "We do not have to ponder what evil is, our aligment says we are good, the one of the goblin says he's evil, therefore, we can whack it and be heroes".
The other style is much more complex and goes beyond that (and I think that is where playing roleplaying games becomes interesting).

D&D caters for both needs perfectly - but OotS has made it very clear in which camp it is.

Therefore, I find it highly unfitting if someone argues based on the "basic" point of view on D&D in regard to OotS. Of the two ways to see and play D&D, the "basic" view simply does not apply.
And therefore, it is highly evil in the context of this story to kill a bunch of black dragons simply "because".

For the record, since I loathe the alignment system anyway, I guess you’d say I’m accustomed to ‘complex’ games. We stretched the rules long ago.

And again, no one is arguing that it isn’t highly evil to kill the black dragons with the familicide spell. But I find your basic v complex point specious at best. It’s entirely fitting to posit that removing all those black dragons in a single stroke was a positive for team good if you are enmeshed in a fairly standard D&D story and not some homebrew based off of D&D… Whether you are playing ‘basic’ or ‘complex’ as you say, the rules indicate that those Black Dragons were overwhelmingly a nasty crew with few exceptions. In the more nuanced role-playing games, you might encounter more gray decisions and mixed situations – but even then, most RPG worlds are going to be infested by evil creatures committed to evil actions, Black Dragons being primarily among them.

OOTS still utilizes the alignment system and basic framework of the game, and the alignment system in D&D has been warped from the beginning. Given the system, overall evil should be decreased (at least for the time being) in relation to the black dragons. We can’t tell with the full effects of the spell.

The hero is committed to decreasing the evil (in most games and the classic stories). V (and NOT to hir credit) short-circuited the system with all those black dragon deaths. If not for all the truly innocent deaths (and we don’t know how many, nor how to weigh them against the dragons) they could be preparing V’s statue right now – a dragon slayer without known equal. The action can’t be justified, but all of the evil dragon apologists exasperate me.

Particle_Man

2012-03-16, 11:12 AM

I don't think the OOTSverse as a whole would benefit from having less Black Dragons. Some who suffered from the dragons would be glad, but if you want to be a dragon-slayer you need dragons! Think of all the adventurers being disappointed by an empty lair.. lost challenges.

Actually, those lairs still have the loot in them, just sitting there. I suppose that armour and clothing made out of black dragon hide will not be able to be sold for as much as before though - supply and demand and all that.

For me, dragons eating humans is more evil than humans eating cows, assuming the cows were not tortured first.

But if we are talking about net results and not the act itself (in the sense that if it had been some accidental plague not caused by anyone that wiped out 1/4 of the black dragons, we could ask whether the world would be better or worse off had the plague not happened), remember that the IFCC has agreed to kill many more good dragons than the number of evil dragons that have died, so if the IFCC follow through on that, the net result of the familicide spell will be an massive decrease of good in the world. So the hypothetical peasants might have reason to curse V's name, after all.

Although, if alignment is determined by actions, and paladins can detect evil, does that mean that their detect evil becomes proof that the being in question must have done evil actions (otherwise they would not detect evil)?

jere7my

2012-03-16, 11:23 AM

But I'm not complaining about Burlew - I'm commenting on the forum posters who seem to think that eliminating the Black Dragons wasn't a net good. Not good for V, not good for the collateral non-dragons, not good for 2% of the BD's themselves. But all this "boo hoo hoo, the poor innocent BD's" bilge.

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice...

Okay, you accept the collateral damage of familicide. But if you were at war, and could drop a bomb that would kill one thousand guaranteed bad guys and one innocent child, killing that child would still be a tragedy. If you rejoiced, if you said "But all this 'boo hoo hoo, the poor innocent child' bilge," it would not be to your credit. Get it?

Paseo H

2012-03-16, 11:25 AM

What is more powerful than a dragon?

A human.

jere7my

2012-03-16, 11:34 AM

Wait, so you wouldn’t cast a spell that wiped out 25% of vampires? (assuming it was limited to that, not like the version V cast…) I consistently underestimate these boards.

There's this thing called "due process," see. You don't go around killing sapient beings without proving that they are guilty. (I am carefully not referencing current real-world debates here.) If vampires are free-willed (not always the case), and can choose to be good, then blindly killing a swath of them without checking to see if each one has committed any crimes worthy of death, or at least doing some serious soul-searching about collateral damage, is an insupportable act.

Also, yes you can talk about free-willed sapient species as a whole. I direct you to the 3.5 Monster Manual. An entire volume that does just exactly that – including alignments.

No, you can talk about tendencies and trends, but free will means that every single individual of that species can choose to do good or evil. That means that you have to consider every single individual before you can kill them, or else accept, hopefully reluctantly, the tragedy of collateral damage. I don't want to put words in Rich's mouth, but I believe this is one of the major themes of his comic.

Chobarth

2012-03-16, 11:39 AM

...remember that the IFCC has agreed to kill many more good dragons than the number of evil dragons that have died, so if the IFCC follow through on that, the net result of the familicide spell will be an massive decrease of good in the world. So the hypothetical peasants might have reason to curse V's name, after all.

Actually they said that the death of 5x good dragons 'eventually' would be trivial if their plan worked, so they agreed to Tiamat's demands basically to shut her up. I'm not convinced that any portented decrease of good in the future relating to the IFCC will because of the Familicide spell.

Still a good point though. Without perfect knowledge of the Gods, it will impossible to know just what the balance ended up being unless V dies and we get to watch when they tell hir.

2xMachina

2012-03-16, 11:44 AM

You can't really put what IFCC does on casting Familicide's account. Else, evil people can blame good guys all they want.

Evil guy: See, you helped that child. Now I must go kill a few. That makes your action increase evil in the world!

Particle_Man

2012-03-16, 11:55 AM

The IFCC gave V access to the soul-splice that included 3 evil major casters with spells like Familicide, so I think the IFCC can share some blame here - they are the ones with the long term plan, after all, so they might be most responsible for the long-term consequences.

Chobarth

2012-03-16, 11:57 AM

Self-Edit. Wandered into Morally Justified talk on this one.

I can't respond to your posts properly without breaking the forum rules Jere7my. Bottom line: the alignment rules cause this kind of debacle, and I'm not a proponent for indiscriminate killing in the RPG world - but since it already happened...

OrzhvoPatriarch

2012-03-16, 12:01 PM

Just to be clear, the argument here is that Familcide, while an Evil act, was an Evil act that created more good than harm? Or at the very least the general populous will see it that way?

If only there was a two world phrase that summed that kind of argument up, one that is against the rules and gets threads locked…

2xMachina

2012-03-16, 12:18 PM

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 12:20 PM

If a mugger killed a fella on his way to a school massacre, does it have net good, or net harm?

Wouldn't you go: Whew, that's a lucky coincidence. Sure saved a lot of people. Sad about that dead guy, but oh well.

Mugger is still a bad guy, with bad intentions, and should be caught and punished. But... net harm? As seen by the population? Unlikely.

So this assumes that the Black Dragons were all on their ways to massacres, which is exactly the assumption being attacked. Black Dragons are sentient creatures, the idea that they are inherently evil and deserve to be slaughtered merely because of how they were born is abominable.

The Extinguisher

2012-03-16, 12:22 PM

Good and Evil aren't some kind of zero-sum game. Doing an Evil act doesn't reduce the good in the world. Yes, an act that is Evil could have some good consequences, but that does not excuse the act at all.

Not to drift into real world politics, but the same idea is applied to a murder investigation. Even if the guy who got killed was the worst possible person in the world, the detectives still need to treat the case with the same respect they would any other, because (repeat after me) murder is wrong no matter who was murdered.

You can't excuse an act just because it might have possibly done a little good in all it's Bad.

2xMachina

2012-03-16, 12:28 PM

So this assumes that the Black Dragons were all on their ways to massacres, which is exactly the assumption being attacked. Black Dragons are sentient creatures, the idea that they are inherently evil and deserve to be slaughtered merely because of how they were born is abominable.

It's not an excuse. No one is saying: "Act is Justified. V's act is not evil."
No one is talking about that. (Except you guys who like to keep saying V's act is evil, even when the focus is on something else.)

It's asking: Is there net utility gained from this act? Does the general populace see a net utility from the act?

For me, the answer to the 2nd is probably yes. The 1st... maybe.

theNater

2012-03-16, 12:32 PM

If a mugger killed a fella on his way to a school massacre, does it have net good, or net harm?

Wouldn't you go: Whew, that's a lucky coincidence. Sure saved a lot of people. Sad about that dead guy, but oh well.

Mugger is still a bad guy, with bad intentions, and should be caught and punished. But... net harm? As seen by the population? Unlikely.
But it's not a fella that got killed here, it's many fellas. Let's tweak this a bit.

Say a mafia hitman performs a drive-by shooting with a machine gun. As it happens, the only people hit during this are a van full of terrorists about to split up and bomb one building each, and one innocent bystander. How many terrorists have to be in the van before it has net good?

The Extinguisher

2012-03-16, 12:36 PM

But it's not a fella that got killed here, it's many fellas. Let's tweak this a bit.

Say a mafia hitman performs a drive-by shooting with a machine gun. As it happens, the only people hit during this are a van full of terrorists about to split up and bomb one building each, and one innocent bystander. How many terrorists have to be in the van before it has net good?

It doesn't matter. It's still an evil act, it will always be an evil act, even if there was no innocents killed.

TheSummoner

2012-03-16, 12:57 PM

Say a mafia hitman performs a drive-by shooting with a machine gun. As it happens, the only people hit during this are a van full of terrorists about to split up and bomb one building each, and one innocent bystander. How many terrorists have to be in the van before it has net good?

Except that's not what happened at all...

Say a mafia hitman performs a drive-by shooting with a maching gun. He does this because someone from a rival crime family was a threat to his group and they decided they needed to get rid of him. So the mafia hitman does his drivebuy and guns down that guy. The guy who was a threat to the family. In the process he also guns down a street full of bystanders. Maybe these bystanders were connected to his target and the rival crime family. Maybe they weren't. He doesn't know. He doesn't care.

But a street full of people are now dead.

A book says that black dragons are always evil. I call bull...ogna... bologna. It would be like saying (for example) all French people are always evil and are born that way by default. Even if we were to accept something as ridiculous as that to be true, "evil" does not mean "guilty". There was no proof that any of the dragons (aside from mama herself) was evil or a threat to anyone. There is no proof of any "net gain for good" in slaughtering the lot of them. Innocent until proven guilty.

Winter

2012-03-16, 01:16 PM

... no one is arguing that it isn’t highly evil to kill the black dragons with the familicide spell.

I fear that is a statement too hard to hold around here. I even think it might be impossible.

But I find your basic v complex point specious at best. It’s entirely fitting to posit that removing all those black dragons in a single stroke was a positive for team good if you are enmeshed in a fairly standard D&D story and not some homebrew based off of D&D…

Hold on a second:
If something in itself is evil or not is not determined by the outcome and then the sum of all that which came from it.
The act is the act, in itself. It might be the lesser evil, it might be "worth" it, but yet set a bound man a sword on the chest and push stays murder. What you intend with that and what is the actual outcome is a different matter.
In this case here we do not really have to argue as Vaarsuvius did not try to do "good" by his action. He had no "good" intent beyond "I do not want it to happen again and pick the first option available, even if it's not the best". He did an horrible act and that this might save many merchants in the future (now and in 100+ years, even) who do not get eaten by black dragons is, for the act, completely unrelated.
In this case even less than in the general case as Vaarsuvius never intended that.

The hero is committed to decreasing the evil (in most games and the classic stories). V (and NOT to hir credit) short-circuited the system with all those black dragon deaths.

Ever heard of "Beware you do not become what you fight?" Vaarsuvius became willingly evil and handwaved that remark by the dragon-head away with "my entry is in the monster manual".

but all of the evil dragon apologists exasperate me.

Rather see them as "murder condemners" or even better "genocide condemners" and you are much more spot on than with "dragon apologists".

rgrekejin

2012-03-16, 02:22 PM

I don't know what's more amazing - the sheer number of replies to this thread that have clearly missed the OP's point, or the fact that it hasn't been locked yet. But, as long as it remains open, let me try to summarize this for the people who keep trying to argue that casting familicide was an evil act:

Yes. It was. We agree with you. Nobody here is trying to argue that it wasn't. Not the OP. Not me. Not anybody.

No matter how many lives V saved by killing a bunch of black dragons, casting the spell was evil to the core. A decision as heavy as the life or death of an individual should always be considered on a case-by-case basis, not on some ill-defined classification. Period. End of discussion.

Now, let's think about the effect that V's evil action had on the world. A bunch of black dragons are dead. Some of them might have been good. Most of them would have been bad. Empirically, we know this to be true. The evil ones can no longer go on to do evil acts. The good ones can no longer go on to do good acts. Overall, the number of evil acts that will not be done in the future is probably greater than the number of good acts that will not be done in the future as a result of the spell. V did not care about this fact, and did not take it in to account. And even if she would have, it would STILL have been evil to cast that spell, because life and death deserve consideration on the basis of an individual's actions.

But, objectively speaking, has the balance of the world shifted more towards good, or more towards evil as a result of the spell? Due to the collateral damage, we have no way of knowing for sure. But it is possible that the overall shift was towards good. This still does not make it alright for V to have cast the spell. But, strictly speaking, is it possible that her evil act may have had good consequences? Yes, it is possible. We do not have enough data to say for sure one way or another, but it is possible.

Winter

2012-03-16, 02:53 PM

One could refute the theory that the space the dragons left is now getting filled with other evil creatures. The hoardes are parted, the items and riches scattered, ending in the wrong hands, enabling people like Tarquin to rise to power.

One cannot know if the overall effects are good and it is even harder if you consider the time factor as well.
Is it net-good within the next year? The next ten? The next 100? Those might differ a lot.
I guess for the next year we have less people that are pestered by black dragons, but what if the red dragon who lived next door now extends his territory? What if the orcish tribes that were held under control by a dragon roam free now? What if the Sword of Human-Decapitation help by a dragon over his fireplace now ends up in the hands of Grooak, the Human-Hating orc?

We cannot know but I'd very much think the effects of the dragons being gone are not as simple and clear good as it might seem on the first thought. And this does not even take stuff as killed half-dragon paladins (or only knights or midwives) etc into account.

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 03:21 PM

1dominator

2012-03-16, 03:32 PM

IF the vast majority of black dragons and their relatives would by living have caused more evil than good then Vs actions are sound from a utilitarian perspective!

P.S. Also this whole argument is stupid, good and evil have no definition objective definition and where each individual draws the line (if they even do so) ultimately comes down to something that cannot be adequately explained to other people so as to convince them to change their definition. Unless of course they already agree with you on the definitions of good and evil, but in that case you are just arguing classifications. This argument is like arguing about whether apples or pears are tastier, completely subjective. Only the topic is so much closer to our hearts than food...

rgrekejin

2012-03-16, 03:46 PM

The argument is that the world of OOTS does not function under the premise of rigid alignments, and that sentient creatures must be examined one at a time rather than assumed to be a certain way. That is the very definition of sentience.

The argument being presented assumed and continues to assume that the black dragons killed, as well as all their kin and offspring, were a force of destruction, without a single shred of evidence that this is the case. We know literally nothing about any of them, so to discuss the 'net good' gained from an act of genocide is, frankly, appauling.

Yes, we do know that the world of OOTS does not function under a rigid alignment system, and that things marked "always evil" are not really always evil. But that we know nothing at all about them is not true. We know that the population of the OOTS world views black dragons as evil until proven otherwise. Assuming that this is not simply blind racism on their part, we DO know something about black dragons in aggregate. And that is that they are, in general, very nasty creatures given to doing evil things. Should they have been considered one at a time? Absolutely they should have. Familicide was evil, and there's no way of getting around it. But the consequences of such an action (or, really, any action) can be one of three things - good, bad, or neutral. So while I disagree completely with V's actions, I have to concede that it is objectively possible that there may be less evil in the world as a result of them. And not talking about that fact isn't going to make it go away.

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 04:02 PM

But that we know nothing at all about them is not true. We know that the population of the OOTS world views black dragons as evil until proven otherwise. Assuming that this is not simply blind racism on their part, we DO know something about black dragons in aggregate. And that is that they are, in general, very nasty creatures given to doing evil things.

How do we know either of those things?

The only thing that has been said about Black Dragon is that Miko thinks they are evil, and she is hardly the unbiased viewpoint such a claim requires.

The only thing Black Dragons have done is defend their home and avenge their loved ones (admittedly, to a rediculous degree.) Claiming that they are creatures of wrath and routinely bring death and destruction to the lands is wholly unsupported by the text.

rgrekejin

2012-03-16, 04:18 PM

How do we know either of those things?

The only thing that has been said about Black Dragon is that Miko thinks they are evil, and she is hardly the unbiased viewpoint such a claim requires.

The only thing Black Dragons have done is defend their home and avenge their loved ones (admittedly, to a rediculous degree.) Claiming that they are creatures of wrath and routinely bring death and destruction to the lands is wholly unsupported by the text.

I dunno, I think the actions of the OOTSers themselves speak volumes about the regard the general public holds black dragons in. No one got overly teared-up about killing one. After all, if this were just a home invasion/misunderstanding, you'd think someone would have at least commented on it, or tried to correct the mistake. After all, we know from Origins of PCs that Roy is all for talking to people, even when killing them would be more expedient. Why would he have not at least attempted to talk to the dragon, unless he expected its reaction to be to kill on sight?

Beyond that, we also know they primarily worship Tiamat, who we know to be evil, know to work reasonably closely with the demonstrably evil IFCC, and who would be satisfied with the deaths of five good dragons for every one of hers. Which, you know, now that I think about it, kind of implies that hers were mostly non-good to begin with...

lio45

2012-03-16, 04:24 PM

Once you're dealing with a free-willed sapient species, you can no longer talk about the species as a whole "having a behavior." You can speak of tendencies or habits, but when it comes to meting out punishment you have to deal with the crimes committed by individuals. Killing Ralph the Black Dragon for simply being a black dragon, even if he is a black dragon paladin who flies orphans to safety on his back and lives only on donated sheep, is a terrible idea.

Your sapient pests who suck blood sound a lot like vampires, and the bookshelves of America groan under the weight of morally gray vampires. Wiping out vampires willy-nilly will wipe out Angel alongside Dracula.

Interesting that you came up with the vampire example, because yesterday after posting I gave that matter a bit of thought ("what would be the best possible real-world analogy for the black dragon species?") and found two (sure, they're just as fictional as D&D monsters, but they're still somewhat part of the real world culture as both have been featured plenty of times in stories set in the real world). 1) Vampires, 2) Aliens.

Sure, you wouldn't want to eliminate a good vampire if you could help it, but in general, looking at their behavior (OK, "habits/tendencies" :P), most good honest folk out there would probably cheer if you killed a bunch of them (i.e. average vampires).

Consider the typical malevolent aliens we see in stories (let's make them free-willed and intelligent for the sake of this example) and it's even easier to agree to a "genocide" of them. (Term still in quotation marks because I'm still disagreeing with the use of it on aliens or monsters).

Okay, you accept the collateral damage of familicide. But if you were at war, and could drop a bomb that would kill one thousand guaranteed bad guys and one innocent child, killing that child would still be a tragedy. If you rejoiced, if you said "But all this 'boo hoo hoo, the poor innocent child' bilge," it would not be to your credit. Get it?

Sure, there's a very real and very unfortunate tragedy in there, but overall it's good news. If you don't agree with that, then we've put the finger on the exact reason why this discussion is taking place: core disagreement on whether or not some collateral damage can be acceptable. (Even though we in this thread so far ALL consider V's act pure Evil, from what I have gathered.)

Warren Dew

2012-03-16, 05:27 PM

I'm not sure that flies as a level of distinction above plain ol' morally justified. Your position, if I have you correct, is that something that kills more "guilty" beings than "innocent" ones is a net Good, and that's an arguable moral stance you're taking.
To me, it seems like "guilty" and "innocent" are terms that make sense only in "morally justified" arguments. "Good" and "evil" make sense as D&D alignments, even if one doesn't think they have any relationship to morality. I think that's what's meant by "alignment discussions are okay; 'morally justified' discussions are not".

Do you believe that if you start with one Good person and one Evil one, and kill them both, the world will most assuredly retain the exact same moral equilibrium it had before? Guess what. Not everyone else does. Maybe killing evil things is only neutral, not good, or only good to the extent it prevents even more people from being killed by the evil one had it continued to live.
I think that's a valid argument. In the case of "killing evil things is only neutral", a familicide that only killed evil black dragons would then be neutral; Vaarsuvius' actual familicide would be evil only because it killed some nonevil creatures, such as perhaps Girard's clan.

Particle_Man

2012-03-16, 05:43 PM

People aren't arguing about that, that I read anyway.

The argument being presented assumed and continues to assume that the black dragons killed, as well as all their kin and offspring, were a force of destruction, without a single shred of evidence that this is the case. We know literally nothing about any of them, so to discuss the 'net good' gained from an act of genocide is, frankly, appauling.

Well, if black dragons are listed as "always evil" and "always evil" means 99%+ of them are evil, and if actions cause one's alignment to be the way it is (as opposed to one being "just created that way"), then presumably 99% of black dragons have done enough evil actions to become evil. If the 1% that have not are all in the 25% of black dragons killed by the familicide spell, that still means that 24 dragons that have done evil actions have died for every dragon that has not. And we know from V's conversation with the ABD that it is a not unknown fact in the world that monsters are listed in the monster manual (that 4th wall keeps coming down) - that would be the same monster manual that lists black dragons as "always chaotic evil".

SoC175

2012-03-16, 06:07 PM

25% of Black Dragons dying: A good effect."If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Even despite the spell removing a large number of powerful agents of evil from the prime, the spell could still benefit evil over good in the cosmic scale.

If [Evil] can get [Good] to eliminate it completely by just resorting to one evil mean to the good end, [Evil] has won the eternal struggle by corrupting [Good] and being reborn from it just as [Good] annihilates it.

A book says that black dragons are always evil. I call bull...ogna... bologna. It would be like saying (for example) all French people are always evil and are born that way by default. Even if we were to accept something as ridiculous as that to be true, "evil" does not mean "guilty". Note that dragons in D&D are inherently magical beings. Magic infuses their very being.

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 06:22 PM

I dunno, I think the actions of the OOTSers themselves speak volumes about the regard the general public holds black dragons in. No one got overly teared-up about killing one.

Uh... their first response was to try and avoid combat. Even then, there was nothing beyond self-defense in their actions. None of them said a word about the Black Dragon being a public menace or even an utterance about how the deed was in any way heroic, which is certainly something we would expect from Elan.

Beyond that, we also know they primarily worship Tiamat, who we know to be evil,

This is not known. Tiamat is one of the deities that created dragons, but it has never been said that all, most, or many of them actively worship her. There's that sentience thing which you keep trying to ignore :)

[Tiamat is] know to work reasonably closely with the demonstrably evil IFCC

Uhhh... other than them both being residents of the same afterlife, there is absolutely no working relationship ever shown or implied. Tiamat just got mad when the IFCC basically allowed 1/4th of her creations to get slaughtered.

Which, you know, now that I think about it, kind of implies that hers were mostly non-good to begin with...

non-Good != Evil, and again being Evil is expressedly NOT a reason to kill them, according to every authority that has spoken on the subject.

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 06:24 PM

Well, if black dragons are listed as "always evil" and "always evil" means 99%+

1) It doesn't
2) Rich ignores that anyway and is actively subverting it.

Particle_Man

2012-03-16, 07:05 PM

1) It doesn't
2) Rich ignores that anyway and is actively subverting it.

1) It basically does. From the MM: "Always: The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions."

So there may be a single non-evil black dragon in the bunch, and that would be about it, if we are talking unique. If we are talking rare, there may be more, but they would be, well, rare, like 1%. So the other 99% would be chaotic evil. Although interestingly this alignment description goes directly against the "actions determine alignment" idea by allowing one to be "born with the indicated alignment". Whether the black dragon eggs are also chaotic evil is left undetermined.

As for 2) That is fine, OOTS is Rich's homebrew, effectively, after all. That said, Roy didn't seem to have many qualms about "dragon-slaying for loot and bragging about it to Miko" so it seems to be a "thing" done in this world.

Warren Dew

2012-03-16, 08:14 PM

Although interestingly this alignment description goes directly against the "actions determine alignment" idea by allowing one to be "born with the indicated alignment". Whether the black dragon eggs are also chaotic evil is left undetermined.
I see the monster manual description as more a guideline for the dungeonmaster on how to play the relevant creatures, or perhaps as a description of how most of the creatures of that type behave. From an in game perspective, the black dragons are still evil aligned because their acts are predominantly evil, and if the dungeonmaster chooses to play one of those rare exceptions differently, then it's aligned differently.

SaintRidley

2012-03-16, 09:10 PM

As for 2) That is fine, OOTS is Rich's homebrew, effectively, after all. That said, Roy didn't seem to have many qualms about "dragon-slaying for loot and bragging about it to Miko" so it seems to be a "thing" done in this world.

Which still does not mean Rich is upholding it. Putting something in a work of literature does not indicate anything about the author's point of view. This is one of the reasons why the Death of the Author is.

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 09:23 PM

1) It basically does. From the MM: "Always: The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions."

Yeah, but the MM also defines what the percentage is. I don't remember if "Always X" refers to 85% or 95%, but I -know- it isn't 99% :P

Porthos

2012-03-16, 09:58 PM

Yeah, but the MM also defines what the percentage is. I don't remember if "Always X" refers to 85% or 95%, but I -know- it isn't 99% :P

Always: Either unique or one-in-a-million exceptions.
Usually: 50%+
Often: 40%-50%
Monster Manual pg 12.

Not that it matters in regards to OotSWorld, of course...

ETA:::: This is 3e, BTW, not 3.5. Let me see if I can find my 3.5e rulebook to see if there is a difference or not....

ETA x 2: The only difference is that the description is changed from "one in a million" to the less restrictive "or rare" cited earlier. But there is no percentage given.

The other two percentages given are unchanged.

Pg 305 Monster Manual 3.5e for reference.

Particle_Man

2012-03-16, 10:33 PM

Which still does not mean Rich is upholding it. Putting something in a work of literature does not indicate anything about the author's point of view. This is one of the reasons why the Death of the Author is.

I think you have DotA backwards, unless you are trying to argue that the mere fact that Rich is arguing that dragon-racism is wrong does not mean that it in fact is wrong in the universe he created?

Particle_Man

2012-03-16, 10:34 PM

Yeah, but the MM also defines what the percentage is. I don't remember if "Always X" refers to 85% or 95%, but I -know- it isn't 99% :P

Well if you find the % let me know, but "unique" seems to indicate that if there are more than 100 black dragons in the world (pre-familicide), then less than 1% are not the given alignment of CE. Unique means only one, after all.

[Edit - Damn, Porthos, you are *good* at this! Ninjad. Swordsaged. Heck, I should just save time and say Porthosed]. :smallsmile:

FujinAkari

2012-03-16, 10:53 PM

Always: Either unique or one-in-a-million exceptions.
Usually: 50%+
Often: 40%-50%
Monster Manual pg 12.

Odd... maybe it was different in 2E, because I definitely remember an explicit 95%, or maybe I'm just crazy.

Regardless, "Rare" which was added for 3.5 certainly allows more frequency than 1/100. After all, the rarest result a d20 can handle occurs 5% of the time :P

jere7my

2012-03-16, 11:11 PM

Consider the typical malevolent aliens we see in stories (let's make them free-willed and intelligent for the sake of this example) and it's even easier to agree to a "genocide" of them. (Term still in quotation marks because I'm still disagreeing with the use of it on aliens or monsters).

There's a book by Orson Scott Card you might want to read.

Sure, there's a very real and very unfortunate tragedy in there, but overall it's good news.

I am not arguing that collateral damage is never acceptable. I am saying that incurring collateral damage should color our response and weigh heavily upon us, regardless of the "net good" that is accomplished.

I think slotting anything having to do with the death of a sapient being into a "good news" or "bad news" dichotomy is unnecessarily reductive. It is one of the gravest choices any person can make, and the moral ramifications are more complex than that.

The OP has said several times that he wants to raise a toast to "Saint Vaarsuvius" for her actions, and the title of the thread itself is celebratory. I find that crass — just as I would find it crass if celebration were the response to a child being killed in a real-world bombing raid that took out a cell of evildoers. And, frankly, I would feel the same way if no children died — our response to any death, especially a death we had a hand in, should be sober and pensive, irrespective of the net effect it has on the world.

(This is fiction, of course; I don't think fictional deaths always need to be dealt with in the same sober way. The point of Star Wars is not to make us ponder the Death Star janitors. Sir Lancelot's killing spree in Holy Grail should not make us queasy. We don't need to weep for every Space Invader we blip out of existence. But when we try to examine the actions of a fictional character through the lens of real-world morality, the real-world consequences of death become germane.)

SaintRidley

2012-03-16, 11:11 PM

I think you have DotA backwards, unless you are trying to argue that the mere fact that Rich is arguing that dragon-racism is wrong does not mean that it in fact is wrong in the universe he created?

I'm saying that characters in Rich's universe expressing opinions (such as Roy not caring about going in and killing a dragon in its home*, or Miko doing anything Miko-ish, etc.) are not to be taken as Rich's opinion. Just because he includes an action or opinion in his work does not mean that he agrees with it.

Taking it further into DotA - you have to judge the work on its own to determine what the work means. What Rich tells us about the work is nice, but ultimately the work needs to show us what Rich is telling us for us to take what Rich has to say as worth something. I would hope that we could pick up from the comic that genocide is bad without Rich having to tell us, outside the comic, explicitly that genocide is bad. Many have done so.

Crazy alternate universe time. The comic is identical to its current state, but Rich tells us V did a wonderfully good thing by casting Familicide. The fact that Rich tells us this should not influence our understanding of the comic when the comic very clearly shows that that is not the case. If a character commits genocide and the author says the character did a good thing, you disregard the author and judge the character based on the text and what the character did (if it's not clear, the character is a bad person because genocide, duh).

Again, I'm not saying that if Rich says dragon-racism is bad that it is actually good in the comic universe. I'm saying that what Rich's characters say does not reflect on what Rich himself thinks. That's the intentional fallacy.

*Someone brought that up and seemed to be taking it as proof that Rich thought the dragon deaths from Familicide were okay.

2xMachina

2012-03-16, 11:44 PM

There's a book by Orson Scott Card you might want to read.

It was X, and the population is happy with it initially. Before they found out the aliens didnt mean to kill humans

Or Starship troopers. Humans didn't mind at all, killing planets full of aliens.

jere7my

2012-03-16, 11:50 PM

It was X, and the population is happy with it initially.

The response of the fictional populace of the book doesn't have much bearing on the fact that Card presented it as a morally complicated situation.

Or Starship troopers. Humans didn't mind at all, killing planets full of aliens.

I don't recall claiming that there are no works of fiction in which people, or authors, support genocide.

Augmental

2012-03-16, 11:57 PM

So what if the act of genocide is inherently evil? In almost all cases, genocide refers to killing or attempting to kill all, or 100% of, a race! The Familicide spell only killed 25% of all black dragons! Since 25% is less than 100%, this means Familicide isn't genocide and casting it made V a saint!

Stormlock

2012-03-17, 12:12 AM

As a thought experiment, imagine the familicide working in reverse: If it instead increased the black dragon population by 25%. Would anyone bother trying to claim that isn't, in and of itself, an evil act? It would be tantamount to creating a deadly virus and releasing upon the world and justifying it as non evil by saying the virus hasn't killed anyone yet. Foreseeable consequences matter, and the foreseeable general consequences of 25% of the black dragon population being alive or dead are fairly obvious: lots of their future victims being dead/alive in the long run. And whinging over the 1 in a million possibility that maybe 25% more black dragons would somehow be a good thing is as absurd as claiming V killing the draketooth clan might have been a good thing too. It's the most likely outcomes that matter.

Also, from everything I've seen in Rich's work, the trope he keeps breaking is that evil is necesarily cartoonish puppy kicking evil; looking out for your own family doesn't make you non-evil, evil people protect things and want peace too. All the races that are evil in DnD are still frigging evil in OotS land. Sabine is evil, the black dragons who've done anything in the comics were evil, I don't think I've seen a single goblin or hobgoblin that can even be classified as neutral, let alone good. Or kobold. Or ogre. The closest thing would be Enor being neutral. And frankly I find the idea that taking up a bounty from the Empress of Blood (also blatantly evil) as being 'neutral' a bit of a hard sell.

2xMachina

2012-03-17, 12:28 AM

I suppose the Oracle could be somewhat good/neutral. Tho he's still an ass for sticking to his misleading answers when the world is at stake.

Generally... genocide... Morally complicated if they aren't out to kill us. Once they do (like Starship troopers), killing them back is "All is fair in love & War".

IMO, that says a lot about us humans. So long they don't try to harm us, we'll chastise their killer. Once they do try to harm us, we're more worried about killing them, till they stop trying to harm us. I'd say dragons is the 2nd, given that they eat humans.

Maybe if the dragons pull the Ender's card: We didn't know humans die when we eat them. Or feel pain when tortured. We're just misinformed from our wildly different mentality.

Stormlock

2012-03-17, 12:46 AM

I considered the oracle, but he works directly for Tiamat. You could possibly make a case for him being neutral, but definitely not good. I suspect he's actually full blown evil though; any assistance he renders to the forces of good is purely coincidental to line his own pockets/save his own ass/amuse himself. I doubt, for example, that he'd have any qualms at all about telling someone a means of committing an unspeakably evil act successfully, which would disqualify him as neutral. But we've never had Xykon show up and ask him the best way to murder a million people, so we can't say for sure there.

rgrekejin

2012-03-17, 01:25 AM

Uh... their first response was to try and avoid combat. Even then, there was nothing beyond self-defense in their actions. None of them said a word about the Black Dragon being a public menace or even an utterance about how the deed was in any way heroic, which is certainly something we would expect from Elan.

You'll notice that Elan never comments when they kill any of the other generally evil monsters they kill all the time, either. I would think that if they expected the dragon to be reasonable in any way, they would have tried to talk to it. They didn't. Something along the lines of "Whoa! Excuse us, we didn't know anyone was living here, we'll be on our way now" would have sufficed. They fought it and killed it because they, based on what they knew as adventurers and citizens of a world were dragons actually exist, fully expected it to be evil, and its reaction to their intrusion to be violent. They were probably right to expect both things.

This is not known. Tiamat is one of the deities that created dragons, but it has never been said that all, most, or many of them actively worship her. There's that sentience thing which you keep trying to ignore :)

If black dragons don't worship Tiamat, why would she care that they were killed? In general D&D canon, which you seem pretty eager to ignore at this point, Tiamat is expressly evil and she is worshiped by evil dragons. I understand that OOTS is not exactly D&D, that always evil does not mean always evil, and that just because it's in a rule book somewhere means that Rich is bound by it. But by now, your assumption about the OOTS universe appears to be not that it occasionally diverges from D&D rules, but that it deliberately subverts all of them while giving the reader the impression that it does not, just to screw with us. Plus, ya'know, there's that whole "placated by the promise of killing five good dragons for every one of hers slain", which I think we can all agree is enough to peg her as EVIL.

Seriously, the sheer number of assumptions you have to make which run counter to the way things work in D&D to make this theory stand up are ridiculous. Now you've got

1. Taimat is not an evil deity
2. Black Dragons do not worship Tiamat
3. The majority of Black Dragons are not evil
4. Good adventuring parties routinely kill good monsters

All of which run counter to everything we'd expect from a D&D-based reality, but any one of those I would be able to accept, for the sake of argument, even though there is not a scintilla of evidence for them. But it seems unlikely that a comic that is at least nominally based in D&D rules would alter all of them at once.

And as for the sentience thing, I don't know why you keep harping on it as an issue. Yes, they are sentient. They can make their own choices. They can choose to worship Tiamat. Most do, according to D&D rules, but if you want to ignore those, okay. They can choose to be good or evil. Guess what? Statistics say, the overwhelming majority of them chose to be evil. I'm not sure how that helps your case. At least if they were locked in to their alignment biologically, there could be a case made that they're a victim here somehow. But there isn't. The ones that are evil are that way because they chose to be. And the majority of them are evil.

Uhhh... other than them both being residents of the same afterlife, there is absolutely no working relationship ever shown or implied. Tiamat just got mad when the IFCC basically allowed 1/4th of her creations to get slaughtered.

Yes, I suppose you're right. Taimat does not have an implied working relationship with the IFCC, other than to the extent that she can call them up and chat with them. This statement was made primarily to underline the fact that she is EVIL. Perhaps it is just me, but I cannot imagine that Thor could get the IFCC on the line. They're not playing on the same team. The fact that Tiamat could is simply data to reinforce the establishment of her as evil in this universe absent any input from D&D rules, as they're not licit in this discussion.

non-Good != Evil, and again being Evil is expressedly NOT a reason to kill them, according to every authority that has spoken on the subject.

Yes, I am aware that non-good is not the same as evil. However, since the fiends only promise the murder of five GOOD dragons in exchange, this is the strongest statement I can make with certainty about their alignments. That is, we can rule good out. Perhaps in this universe Tiamat is a paragon of extreme neutrality, whose creations sit in caves collecting stamps, meditating on the meaning of life, and never effecting the outside world. But if this is the case, then I suspect that the comic has deliberately misled us.

In summary: Most black dragons are probably evil. Using familicide was also evil and unacceptable, since it does not allow for case-by-case judgement of individuals, and furthermore, simply being evil in and of itself is woefully insufficient reason to kill someone. But given what we know about the nature of black dragons, it is fair to suggest that the sum total of the effects of the spell may, in fact, have been a net movement in the direction of good. It is not certain, but the possibility exists. This does not mean I condone it. This does not mean I think V a hero in some way. Just that I'm pragmatic enough to accept that sometimes evil acts can have good consequences. And that this may (or may not) have been one of those times.

ti'esar

2012-03-17, 01:37 AM

I still don't know how this doesn't count as a "morally justified" thread.

jere7my

2012-03-17, 01:53 AM

As a thought experiment, imagine the familicide working in reverse: If it instead increased the black dragon population by 25%. Would anyone bother trying to claim that isn't, in and of itself, an evil act?

That's ridiculous. Creating a million drunk drivers would be a terrible idea. That doesn't make executing a million drunk drivers a good idea.

Stormlock

2012-03-17, 02:44 AM

It does if you're trying to improve road safety (and a better analogy would be something more like gang members, who are much more likely to cause injury or death.)

Remember, right and wrong have nothing to do with the discussion at hand. This is just whether or not the world is a better place after the act. Justifications aren't part of the equation. An OotSverse with no evil beings in it at all would be a better one for everyone remaining. The same couldn't be said for an OotSverse with no good beings in it at all. Both evil and good beings want good beings around, whether as prey or to cooperate with. Following this line of thought, fewer black dragons makes for a better world than more black dragons and fewer people black dragons like to eat and loot treasure from.

Porthos

2012-03-17, 03:57 AM

[Heck, I should just save time and say Porthosed]. :smallsmile:

:smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:

So what if the act of genocide is inherently evil? In almost all cases, genocide refers to killing or attempting to kill all, or 100% of, a race! The Familicide spell only killed 25% of all black dragons! Since 25% is less than 100%, this means Familicide isn't genocide and casting it made V a saint!

The defintion of the word might surprise you. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide)

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars.

And I think to be safe I will avoid saying anything else beyond linking to/mentioning the defintion of the word. :smallsmile:

Winter

2012-03-17, 04:24 AM

ll the races that are evil in DnD are still frigging evil in OotS land. Sabine is evil, the black dragons who've done anything in the comics were evil, I don't think I've seen a single goblin or hobgoblin that can even be classified as neutral, let alone good. Or kobold. Or ogre. The closest thing would be Enor being neutral. And frankly I find the idea that taking up a bounty from the Empress of Blood (also blatantly evil) as being 'neutral' a bit of a hard sell.

Sabine seems to feel genuine love, something that should be impossible when considering what she is (literal embodyment of evil).

If you want to meet a neutral or arguably even good Goblin, read Start of Darkness.

Enor and Ganji are "neutral" by Word of God", but I do not follow that estimate, they are borderline neutral at best. We, in my estimate, do not see their neutrality in the comic but are only told about it so I'm not sure they are a good example for anything aligment-related.

The point of OotS-alignment is that it's much more complex than "If it is evil in D&D it is horribly evil here as well". No, that is not how OotS comes over. It comes over as "it quickly becomes very blurry and even where it is not blurry at all, evil still has motives that are understandable* and evil creatures can indeed be capable of positive emtions**".

* Redcloak.
** How Tarquin cares for Elan or Sabine's love for Nale or the dragons who love their family etc.

Stormlock

2012-03-17, 05:22 AM

Read SoD. I don't recall any goblins that were distinctively neutral, let alone good.

Just because an evil creature is minding it's own business at the time doesn't make it neutral. To be neutral it would require some sort of moral compass not motivated by personal desires. Like say, not being willing to kill other sapient beings for fun or profit.

AFAICT, Rich's whole point about the alignment thing is that evil people fall in love and have real motivations too. Even good ones that could motivate a good person just as well. The difference is that an evil person follows those motivations ruthlessly, while a good or even neutral person is bound by some idea of reasonable behaviour they must obey. V, for example, wouldn't simply murder someone random to take their stuff, not because he likes all other people, but because he thinks that would be reprehensible, and only wants to kill people that either deserve to die or that he can't coexist with. Belkar has no such qualms. Likewise, I've seen nothing contrary to the idea that any of the 'innocent' goblins (or other evil races) wouldn't be willing to murder a total stranger to take their stuff, if they thought they could safely get away with it.

Winter

2012-03-17, 05:33 AM

Stormlock

2012-03-17, 05:57 AM

It never struck me that way.

He just wanted to be left alone and protect his family and friends. I feel like if you stuck him (or anyone else I've considered evil so far) in Belkar's shoes on that road with the gnomish candy merchant, he'd do the same thing. Maybe not quite that bad (unless he was especially hungry for candy) but certainly he'd be right alongside for lots of other blatantly evil things, like selling prisoners into slavery, robbing/swindling total strangers, or performing evil acts for the sake of money. He didn't do any of those things because he never had a chance to do any of them on screen for his own interests. But neither did he turn down a chance to do any of those things, which is what it would take for me to consider him neutral. He also never objected to any of the evil things Redcloak did because they were evil or wrong- he only objected because they weren't what was best for him, his family, or the goblin people. He didn't think, for example, that risking the fate of the entire universe just to give the dark one some leverage against other gods was a bad thing.

Zale

2012-03-17, 06:10 AM

So it's perfectly Ok that V murdered thousands of sentient beings for no more reason than (s)he was angry and wanted bloody, bloody vengeance?

Yep. Glasses up to V!

Winter

2012-03-17, 06:17 AM

This is an entirely new discussion, but for the fun of it:

He started evil, I agree. He had no problem with The Plan in itself.

But as time progresses, he stays the voice of reason and constantly questions their means to achieve the goal. You can argue it's not out of morals but because "it's not good for the people", but in the later parts of SoD, Right-Eye shifts his priorities.
He does not want to fight for the right of the goblin people, but to work for it. To leave them alone and be left alone and create something.
Instead of "conquering" that is a moral progress. Right-Eye also focuses on family, of having his kids grow up, he's a carpenter instead of a highway-goblin (he could do that as well to make his living).

If he were a human, you probably would not call that "only cares for himself", but name that town-building and capentry a typical neutral to good commoner.

Near the end of the story, he outright states the Dark One is evil and "wrong" as he lets throw Redcloak goblin-life after goblin-life, so he is very much against "sacrificing goblins for the greater good". Again, you could argue with selfishness here, but as SoD goes on we find less cases were Right-Eye is evil and more and more where he behaves in a "good" way, and therefore, I'd conclude it's not just selfishness.

At the end of SoD, he even goes as far as risking himself to fix the problems of his race. Self-sacrifice for the sake of others is a pretty good trait, evil people do not do that.
Of course you can argue that was all petty vengeance for all the losses Xykon caused, but again: Right-Eye has a harder stance to convince because his skin is green.

I'm not saying he "has to be good" but I am fairly certain he left the evil-area and is at least neutral. What else is the absence of evil traits but the presence of many things and views that you could consider good if not non-evil?

Killer Angel

2012-03-17, 06:32 AM

125% of Black Dragons dying: A good effect.

If were not for the fact that the repercussion could well be the destruction of 5 good dragons for every black one (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0668.html)killed by familicide...

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 06:55 AM

I am not arguing that collateral damage is never acceptable. I am saying that incurring collateral damage should color our response and weigh heavily upon us, regardless of the "net good" that is accomplished.

The OP has said several times that he wants to raise a toast to "Saint Vaarsuvius" for her actions, and the title of the thread itself is celebratory. I find that crass — just as I would find it crass if celebration were the response to a child being killed in a real-world bombing raid that took out a cell of evildoers.

(This is fiction, of course; I don't think fictional deaths always need to be dealt with in the same sober way. Star Wars Holy Grail Space Invaders But when we try to examine the actions of a fictional character through the lens of real-world morality, the real-world consequences of death become germane.)

If this wasn't fiction, as you point out, (and an RPG based stick-figure type of fiction at that) it might even pass beyond crass into vulgar. But I'm not sure how you have the idea that I'm examining the aftermath of V's spell through real-world morality. Because I'm not. I can't... the real world doesn't have a ridiculous 9-grid alignment system. If I created a sig file that glorified <insert some real world example - no reason to break the rules> that would be tasteless and might even signify that I'm ethically bereft.

But celebrating the sudden removal of a large number of black dragons, in a fictional comic series based in the 'world' of D&D? Yeah. Not a problem.

How convenient that your fictional examples needn't be treated soberly, but that OOTS apparently does... I'm keeping my sig file, and please remember that:

Black dragons are bloody great acid-breathing monsters that are hideously powerful and usually maliciously destructive. The less of them around the better...

Stormlock

2012-03-17, 07:11 AM

The thing is, I don't consider looking out for one's family to be a 'good' trait. It's just normal. Even the most evil people will likely do that (Xykon being an exception- he's plain crazy.) Looking out for one's race is a bit of a harder call, but still doesn't seem like a good or even neutral thing to me. Case in point: The paladins exterminating the goblins to protect the human race wasn't an act of good or neutrality (or evil). It was just plain selfishness. It's entirely possible to have two sides that are both lawful good trying to murder eachother to protect their own race/family/whatever. Likewise, it's possible to have two sides that are evil doing the same. Willingness to do something for the benefit of people you care about doesn't fall anywhere on the alignment scale on my book. To pertain to alignment, I think what matters is the idea of being a 'better' person. I think this was alluded to when Roy died. Roy got brownie points for doing and trying to do things that made him a good person. If Redcloak and Xykon had been risking and ruining the lives of say, hobgoblins (let alone kobolds), I doubt Righteye would have cared 2cp about the matter. His primary motivation for his actions was that his family and future generations were going to be living under Xykon's boot for the rest of eternity (and of course, revenge later on). He also didn't so much as bat an eye when Redcloak pointed out that if he failed Xykon might very well genocide the goblin race in revenge. His abandonment of the dark one doesn't mean much to me either for similar reasons. He grew to despise his god because he felt abandoned by him both personally and as a goblin, not because he couldn't stomach what he was doing. It'd be like dropping out of a viscous crime syndicate because you're not getting paid enough or your family is at too much risk, rather than because the organization kills innocent people for money.

Something like this is clearly a matter of opinion though, I'm not really trying to convince you I'm right about this or anything. Just my 2cp on things.

Augmental

2012-03-17, 08:21 AM

Crobarth, you can keep your signature. Nobody was telling you to remove it. You'll just come across as crass to a lot of people for having it. I count myself among those people. :smallannoyed:

martianmister

2012-03-17, 08:24 AM

I agree with "Right-eye could be evil" sentiment. Nothing in the book is showed him good or non-evil to me.

Winter

2012-03-17, 08:43 AM

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 08:51 AM

{scrubbed}

Winter

2012-03-17, 09:15 AM

In killing people there is never a net effect. You cannot say "Because we killed three bad guys the one collateral damage was ok, therefore it's a good thing".

Some (of course we speak of fantasy) politicians tell you it works like that, but it does not. Killing of innocents is never good and you cannot simply sum up the "evil" victims vs. the "innocents" and come up "net good".

Creating collateral damage (in a fantasy world, how that applies to more is your own judgment!) is always an evil thing and that it averages out is something the people who caused it tell themselves so they do not have to hang themselves.

But if the thread was not "morally justified" before it now very quickly runs into moral territory on when killing is ok and when not. So let's stick to D&D: In D&D-terms I can only say that "killing innocents" is always evil and that one horrible deed is not automatically equaled out by more killing (this time of evil beings).

You simply cannot rob a caravan, kill all the two dozen merchants and then use 50% of that money to build an orphanage which will safe 50 orphans from freezing to death in the winter to "make up for it".
It simply does not work that way, you have done a very evil deed that probably makes you evil yourself. There simply is no "net good" effect from robbing the caravan.

Lintecarka

2012-03-17, 09:30 AM

I'm not convinced the outcome could be anything but evil.

The strongest weapon of the good guys is their faith there might be a better world, where all sentient beings can live in peace. There are exalted characters, that actively and often successful try and convince even the most foul creatures to try a different path. Now they will have to explain the next black dragon why a quarter of his species had to die.

In the short term a lot of lives have been saved, thats a given. But the one major goal of uniting all sentient beings has taken a major hit. As such it can't be a good thing those dragons are dead.

So at the end of the day there's simply nothing good enough to balance the evil aspects of Familicide.

Winter

2012-03-17, 09:44 AM

I'm not convinced the outcome could be anything but evil.

I agree to you, but it's even worse:

Even if the outcome would in some way be "net good" (it does not work like that, but let's assume for a moment it does), the act that caused the extra-deaths (or even the intended deaths of the dragons!) would have been very evil in itself.
It'd still be the equivalent of stabbing someone in the back from the shadows without any announcement or even personal quarrel (aka murder) done a hundred times.

Killer Angel

2012-03-17, 09:55 AM

Let me add that I'm not forgetting about the horrific collateral damage Vaarsuvius has caused. We do not know if the net effect was even to the good with all the innocents he killed - perhaps it wasn't. But except for a very small percentage of them, the Dragons aren't numbered among those 'innocents'... and celebration of their removal specifically isn't something I'd think would be insensitive.

The fact is that this collateral damage, is far from little or "unimportant".
1 - 25% of evil black dragons killed = GOOD THING!
2 - A staggering amount of innocent people killed: NOT GOOD (but let's say that i'm not caring for the moral thing)
3 - Girard's family killed (guardians of a Gate to shelter humanity and universe from Evil): VERY BAD!!!: it's extremely dangerous for the world, that now is more at risk than having around some more black dragon.

You cannot celebrate the removal of the dragons by itself.
It's not like you put at torch a jail ("what a horrible act! but at least all those criminals are now dead!")
It's like throwing a bomb during a robbery, killing 2 criminals, a bunch of innocent bystanders, a couple of guards and the police chief. Celebrating the definitive removal of the 2 criminals, not only is insensitive, but is also missing the whole picture.

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 11:17 AM

In killing people there is never a net effect… you cannot simply sum up the "evil" victims vs. the "innocents" and come up "net good".

I can’t comment because of forum rules beyond saying I vehemently disagree. You might consider reading more world history… just remember that you might not actually encounter the word “evil”, but the concepts remain the same. We don’t have an analog for D&D evil alignments per se.

You simply cannot rob a caravan, kill all the two dozen merchants and then use 50% of that money to build an orphanage which will safe 50 orphans from freezing to death in the winter to "make up for it".
It simply does not work that way, you have done a very evil deed that probably makes you evil yourself. There simply is no "net good" effect from robbing the caravan.

As is becoming typical for this thread, you miss the general point. There are excellent posts in the previous pages that already dismiss this line of thinking, but the short version is that your analogy is completely unrelated. Quotes like that will probably see the thread eventually locked.

The fact is that this collateral damage, is far from little or "unimportant".

You cannot celebrate the removal of the dragons by itself … not only is insensitive, but is also missing the whole picture.

I’ve never alluded to the idea that the collateral <non-black dragon> damage is anything less than terrible. I’ve certainly never said it’s “unimportant”. I’m not going to address the ‘celebration’ directly, but there are actually very few situations in all of life (or literature) that are completely untainted with unforeseen or unknowable effects. But people celebrate anyway.

In a D&D world, those dead BD’s are a boon to the general good aligned populace of planet OOTS, and good riddance to them. V should NOT have done it. But (s)he did, and the outcome is interesting to speculate about. Now the people supporting my side of this point have done a very good job, better than myself in many cases, of building a cogent and logical stance about this. Most (but not all) of the people on your side have relied primarily on emotional responses about how V cast an EVIL spell (uncontested) and tangential arguments (ignored when possible) that go off topic.

I don’t think there is much more for me to say that hasn’t been already addressed, or completely breaks the forum rules. I’ll keep reading the thread of course. I do wonder if it will end up locked in the end.

Everyone please remember that March 20th (it was in 2009) was the date of the Saint Vaarsuvius Day Massacre… light a candle (or possibly a bonfire) for the innocent departed that V indiscriminately slaughtered, and then pop a cork in salute to the most accomplished dragon-slayer known. Less Chaotic Evil is less chaotic evil.

FujinAkari

2012-03-17, 11:36 AM

Seriously, the sheer number of assumptions you have to make which run counter to the way things work in D&D to make this theory stand up are ridiculous. Now you've got

1. Taimat is not an evil deityThis is not an assumption I hold.

2. Black Dragons do not worship TiamatThis is... sort of. I think some likely worship her, but not the 99.999999999% you're trying to claim. As sentient creatures, Black Dragons make their own choices.

3. The majority of Black Dragons are not evilThis is not an assumption I hold.

4. Good adventuring parties routinely kill good monstersThis is not an assumption I hold. ((Though I really don't think the adventurers care about the alignment of the monsters -at all- Adventurers kill monsters))

So let me clarify, since apparently some of my nitpicking has been transmogrified into tenants of my argument :)

1) Black Dragons as Sentient Creatures. They make their own decisions in life and deserve to be treated as individuals. It is always wrong to kill anything without first finding out if it deserves to die. ((Yes, I know "No one's saying V wasn't evil to cast it!" but you are trying to declare them all rampaging monsters and ignore their sentience, you are passing judgement on them as a species which is still wrong))

Frankly, 1) is all I need, but I have more.

2) Black Dragons are never shown terrorizing ANYTHING. The only thing they seem to do is sit their butts inside caves. This makes the claim that they are menaces to society laughable, and completely without supporting evidence.

3) Black Dragons are evil. Although I do think you are GROSSLY overstating how many of them are evil (as I said, I would guess 85 - 95%) they are more often than not, evil. However, this is irrelevant. According to Rich Burlew, Gary Gygax, Skip Williams, Margaret Weis, R.A. Salvatore, and pretty much any other D&D authority who has ever commented on the issue, being evil doesn't mean the person deserves to be killed, and if they don't deserve to be killed then no 'net good' was gained by unjustly killing them.

B. Dandelion

2012-03-17, 11:42 AM

{Scrubbed}

:smallconfused: So basically what you're saying is you don't want an honest dialogue, you specifically want to goad people into making comments you know already are against the rules? And you're proud of that? Good grief.

Warren Dew

2012-03-17, 11:44 AM

I would think that if they expected the dragon to be reasonable in any way, they would have tried to talk to it. They didn't. Something along the lines of "Whoa! Excuse us, we didn't know anyone was living here, we'll be on our way now" would have sufficed. They fought it and killed it because they, based on what they knew as adventurers and citizens of a world were dragons actually exist, fully expected it to be evil, and its reaction to their intrusion to be violent. They were probably right to expect both things.
Well, that plus the fact that Roy wanted the starmetal.

TheSummoner

2012-03-17, 11:52 AM

{Scrubbed}

jere7my

2012-03-17, 11:59 AM

Scrub the post, scrub the quote.

Aaaaand thank you. You have now admitted that you are trolling, which was my secret point all along.

Internet tip: You do not get to admit to trolling and act all butthurt that people are bothered by it in the same post.

Particle_Man

2012-03-17, 12:01 PM

You simply cannot rob a caravan, kill all the two dozen merchants and then use 50% of that money to build an orphanage which will safe 50 orphans from freezing to death in the winter to "make up for it".
It simply does not work that way, you have done a very evil deed that probably makes you evil yourself. There simply is no "net good" effect from robbing the caravan.

Actually, if you are talking strictly D&D (as you said you were) you can do exactly that. That is what the "atonement" spell is about, after all.

"This spell removes the burden of evil acts or misdeeds from the subject. The creature seeking atonement must be truly repentant and desirous of setting right its misdeeds."

Winter

2012-03-17, 12:01 PM

I can’t comment because of forum rules beyond saying I vehemently disagree. You might consider reading more world history… just remember that you might not actually encounter the word “evil”, but the concepts remain the same. We don’t have an analog for D&D evil alignments per se.

A) I think this is some sort of personal attack. I'm not delving further into that.
B) What does have world history to do with D&D evil? Why should world history be clearly interpretable and speaking for itself in any way? If it was that way, we could shut down the largest part of our history deparments.
C) I think it is very obvious the real world does not have the D&D alignment system. What do you want to express here?
D) I do have a university degree on master's level in history. I'm always happy if someone can educate me further...

EDIT: On second thought, please don't. I don't see how you could take it any further without journeying into 'morally justified' talking points. This post is already far enough down that path, but I'll leave it intact. I'll have no further posts relating to the 'celebration'. The sig file was mainly to cheese the dragon apologists off in the first place, so I'm glad to see its apparently working.

I am unsure, what does this mean? Do you say you only put it there to heat up people who have a different opinion on this as you? You are saying it was "mainly" there to heat up stuff and you are now happy it worked?
Can you please elaborate so I can decide if it was just bad judgment or deliberate engaging in something that is highly rude when people try to discuss stuff.

jere7my

2012-03-17, 12:07 PM

That's ridiculous. Creating a million drunk drivers would be a terrible idea. That doesn't make executing a million drunk drivers a good idea.

It does if you're trying to improve road safety (and a better analogy would be something more like gang members, who are much more likely to cause injury or death.)

You just said that executing a million drunk drivers would be a good idea, if you're trying to improve road safety. Think about that for a second.

If someone is a sociopath who is obsessed only with road safety, then yes, killing a million drunk drivers might sound like a good idea, to him. (I know you're not a sociopath, so that is presumably not what you meant to say.) But in the real world, the consequences spill out well beyond road safety. Those million drunk drivers have lives, have families and friends, have important roles in the economy. They have rights, including the right to a trial. Those things are true of gang members, too. You can't snip out the effect on road safety and examine it on its own — you have to account for the whole spiralling, cascading avalanche of consequences.

jere7my

2012-03-17, 12:16 PM

Here is why actions matter more than alignment:

Imagine a world in which the only sapient beings are black dragons. They fly around the swamps all day, eating crocodiles (which breed like rabbits in this world, and are completely unintelligent). They get married, have babies, play black dragon soccer. Perhaps they have vicious schemes, because they are "always chaotic evil," but the only sapient beings whom they can possibly hurt are other black dragons.

Then someone comes along in a spaceship and kills a quarter of them. Is that person heroic, or a monster? They've "reduced the net evil in the universe", certainly. But shouldn't they wait until the evil creatures have committed some sort of crime before executing them for what they might do?

Augmental

2012-03-17, 12:21 PM

Actually, if you are talking strictly D&D (as you said you were) you can do exactly that. That is what the "atonement" spell is about, after all.

"This spell removes the burden of evil acts or misdeeds from the subject. The creature seeking atonement must be truly repentant and desirous of setting right its misdeeds."

That's true, but that's not what Winter's referring to. He's referring to the idea that saving lives can make up for the murders that were caused by saving said lives. And frankly, that's one of the less evil examples - at least the hypothetical caravan murderer is actively trying to make up for his murders. In the case of familicide, V didn't even consider the good the genocide of black dragons could do (and that's assuming it would come out to a so-called "net good", which has a good amount of evidence to the contrary as of strip number 843) - he just genocided the black dragons on a power trip-fueled whim.

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 12:29 PM

:smallconfused: So basically what you're saying is you don't want an honest dialogue, you specifically want to goad people into making comments you know already are against the rules? And you're proud of that? Good grief.

No, that isn't true. I'm of the opinion that this thread isn't breaking the forum rules. So far, 4 pages in, it hasn't been locked. But having a discussion about why celebrating the BD's destruction is crass is going to swiftly get into 'morally justified' conversation imo. I'm still curious, just not enough to see the thread locked (it's already close enough, and may end up locked - hard to tell).

I have no problem with honest dialogue - if the poster can do it without crossing the line, then I'll have been wrong about their ability and learn something. Not sure where you are coming up with 'goading people into breaking the forum rules' as I've been careful to avoid just that. I don't consider my rather inflammatory sig file to be a goad, I didn't even expect to retain it for more than a few posts. But at this point I believe I will.

The sig file was designed to be objectionable to those I labeled dragon apologists. Fine line with 'crass', but once again, that guy compared it to celebrating the death of a child.

Perhaps I should change the sig file to a countdown for the Saint Vaarsuvius Day Massacre on the 20th. Only 3 more days, make sure you cabinet is well-stocked.

Jokes and Incendiary comments aside, actuarial science probably has the best tools to make the assessment on the net effect of what V committed. Note the language, I did not say 'accomplished'. Actuaries make some stone-cold and blood-curdling prognostications about the worth of people. Magical D&D actuaries could probably do a credible approximation of what happened if they had access to enough information.

Average lifespan of a Black Dragon; Evil Act Index; Opportunity Costs of the dead Innocents; etc etc

Particle_Man

2012-03-17, 12:34 PM

According to Rich Burlew, Gary Gygax, Skip Williams, Margaret Weis, R.A. Salvatore, and pretty much any other D&D authority who has ever commented on the issue, being evil doesn't mean the person deserves to be killed, and if they don't deserve to be killed then no 'net good' was gained by unjustly killing them.

Lets assume something different. What if 1/4 of the Black Dragons had died, not due to someone killing them, but simply of a disease, I dunno, Dragon Plague or something. Would one be able to talk about 'net good' then, since in this scenario they were not unjustly killed by anyone?

Dragons eat people. Ok? People eat cows.

I disagree with this analogy. But then I am not a vegetarian. I find the arguments on not torturing cows to make sense, as cows can feel pain. I don't find the arguments against killing cows to make sense, as I think the sapience, not the sentience, is the relevant factor in "deserving to live".

In any case, there seems to be a dilemma for your position:

Either:

a) "Always Chaotic Evil" means that all, or almost all, creatures with that designation are "born chaotic evil", as it says in the monster manual, and so do not require to have done evil actions to be evil (and the exceptions could be just as easily non-chaotic but still evil as they could be non-evil but still chaotic). Thus, it would not be surprising that all, or almost all, of the Black Dragons killed were evil. Here one could even make a claim, however, that if evil is to have any further meaning, one would have to go further and say that being born evil makes one prone to evil actions as well. Otherwise being evil is about as meaningful as having a particular eye colour.

or

b) "Always Chaotic Evil" means that (contrary to the MM entry) all, or almost all, creatures with that designation have done (and very likely will continue to do) the actions that made them chaotic evil, and that is the only reason that they are CE, in which case killing them protects the rest of society and/or acts as justice for the evil actions they have done.

So I can see an argument going along the lines of saying that "evil doesn't mean anything, so doesn't justify killing evil creatures" so alignment just becomes an irrelevant feature, like eye colour, or I can see an argument going along the lines of saying "evil means they have done the evil actions to make them evil, but we don't know that black dragons are evil until we see them doing evil things" but arguing along both lines simultaneously seems to muddy the issue.

jere7my

2012-03-17, 12:36 PM

I don't consider my rather inflammatory sig file to be a goad,

The sig file was designed to be objectionable to those I labeled dragon apologists.

Could you please read what you write before writing what you write?

Particle_Man

2012-03-17, 12:39 PM

In the case of familicide, V didn't even consider the good the genocide of black dragons could do (and that's assuming it would come out to a so-called "net good", which has a good amount of evidence to the contrary as of strip number 843) - he just genocided the black dragons on a power trip-fueled whim.

Strictly speaking, V did have a motive beyond whim - he wished to make it impossible for any other black dragon relatives to go looking up V's loved ones and harming them, based on the fact that killing the first black dragon is what led to the other related black dragon seeking revenge by attacking V's family.

[Edit: Come to think of it, this indicates that the DM's "style" in this "campaign" is to say "Yes, but . . . " as in "Yes you can kill this dragon but it has an angry mother that will look you up. Yes you can destroy the angry mother and any other angry black dragon relatives likely to look you up but that will kill a lot of innocents as well as make your major quest to save the world that much harder. I wonder if Rich is familiar with the game Polaris. Which in turn may have extremely negative connotations for the fate of the OOTS].

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 12:49 PM

{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Okay. I guess I do have more to say.

See, we agree here. It is idiotic. That's what D&D does however, and that's the world setting of the fantasy story we're reading. I'm already on record for loathing the alignment rules, but because of the way the game designers and the writers of the Monster Manual set it up, THEY supply the proof you are looking for - sorry if you don't like it. Don't shoot the messenger.

This is talked about, including percentages, back a couple pages by some other posters. The game is the proof. Committed, cruel, vile, no hold's barred, Chaotic Evil with a capital E exists in OOTSverse and most BD's are billed that way. It's not just Xykon, its a world filled with Evil, rampant killing, torture, slavery, monsters, soul-less undead, etc etc. (Though apparently 1-2% of the dragons sit quietly in their swampy caves and contemplate the universe - I'm discounting them for you. They are probably sustainable vegetarians.)

The Extinguisher

2012-03-17, 01:05 PM

Okay. I guess I do have more to say.

See, we agree here. It is idiotic. That's what D&D does however, and that's the world setting of the fantasy story we're reading. I'm already on record for loathing the alignment rules, but because of the way the game designers and the writers of the Monster Manual set it up, THEY supply the proof you are looking for - sorry if you don't like it. Don't shoot the messenger.

This is talked about, including percentages, back a couple pages by some other posters. The game is the proof. Committed, cruel, vile, no hold's barred, Chaotic Evil with a capital E exists in OOTSverse and most BD's are billed that way. It's not just Xykon, its a world filled with Evil, rampant killing, torture, slavery, monsters, soul-less undead, etc etc. (Though apparently 1-2% of the dragons sit quietly in their swampy caves and contemplate the universe - I'm discounting them for you. They are probably sustainable vegetarians.)

Yes, evil exists. But do you know who else is evil? The bartender who secretly wishes to burn the city down and run away with all the gold. Or the embezzler who is stealing from the local temple. Do those people deserve to be indiscriminately slaughtered for the sake of good?

Always Chaotic Evil is a tool for DM's, not the absolute law of the universe. Maybe there was a unique good Black Dragon, who had a family and taught their family to be good as well. Now in wiping out a quarter of the black dragons, you've wiped out a powerful force of good as well. You can't judge a group of sentient beings on the actions of the group. That's racism (or speciesism or whatever word you want to use for your prejudices). No matter how much you think you may know about the group, you must judge each one individually on their actions.

The thing is, no matter how you try and use words like "net good" and looking at the long term, all you are trying to do is ask whether the act of killing the black dragons was good or evil. You cannot in one breath say "of course the act was evil" and in the next say "but look at all the good it did". It doesn't work like that. Either the act was good or evil. Period.

We can look at the long term consequences, but that's far reaching and almost impossible, because we don't know how it will escalade, and where do we cut it off? Realistically, everything that happens afterwards could be a result of Familicide, so we never know when to stop.

So what is it then? Was Familicide good or evil?

FujinAkari

2012-03-17, 01:05 PM

Lets assume something different. What if 1/4 of the Black Dragons had died, not due to someone killing them, but simply of a disease, I dunno, Dragon Plague or something. Would one be able to talk about 'net good' then, since in this scenario they were not unjustly killed by anyone?

I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't consider it a good thing if 1/4th of all the rich miser's in the world dropped dead. I mean, sure, maybe they could do more with their money and help humanitarian efforts rather than hoarding it all, but death on such a massive scale is never a beneficial thing.

And that is the crux of where your argument fails. You keep assuming that Dragons are actively causing suffering and causing harm to the lives of the populous, with no evidence to support this. As said, all we see is Dragons sitting in their lairs.

Sure, once provoked they embody the 'hell hath no fury' phrase, but you can't talk about net good gained by slaughter when the individuals slaughtered really weren't hurting anyone.

Winter

2012-03-17, 01:06 PM

The game is the proof. Committed, cruel, vile, no hold's barred, Chaotic Evil with a capital E exists in OOTSverse and most BD's are billed that way. It's not just Xykon, its a world filled with Evil, rampant killing, torture, slavery, monsters, soul-less undead, etc etc.

Yes, that is not really argued. The argument comes from what to do based on that and when killing those beings with what motive is evil in itself and when it is not.
That is the argument here.

multilis

2012-03-17, 01:17 PM

What evidence do we have that Black Dragons are evil?

A "rule book"? How lame. Then I write rulebook that humans are evil and meant for XP and food for dragon adventurers and eat them!

There are lots of rules and rulebooks, such as "rule of funny", "plot", etc. There is Elan rule that if an event is million to 1 then it is likely to occur, and then we see Elan prediction come true! So therefore if someone claims million to 1 odds that most black dragons are non-evil based on some silly rule book that only makes that likely.

We see poor in love black dragon, minding his own business in his lair till he is killed by savage adventurers seeking treasure and XP. What is wrong about trying to defend self and home from killers?

Then poor momma dragon goes to oracle, finds out that evil mage who is destined to put world at risk. She is brutal to that mages kids. That is sad. But that is only act of one dragon. And what else was she going to do? Being a smart dragon she obviously asked about future of that mage. She found out of future evil. She knew she could not kill the mage, as that future hadn't come true. So she did best she could in distracting mage to search for her rather than destroy world in hopes that might help. Yes, in last moments of life, she desperately hoped she could defy fate and actually kill mage but when situation is hopeless, what did she have to lose? She did not tell mage of her motives because that might contribute to the evil turn of mage.

Yes it was stupid, but many do stupid including roy. Stupid does not mean evil by itself.

Compared to actions of 1 dragon, lets look at actions of 1 elf. Slaughter innocent young black dragon. Heartbreak to dragon's girlfriend and momma. Familicide. Deal with Devil. Put entire world further at risk with silence. If all black dragons are evil because of 1 black dragon, then what about elves?

But sadly it gets worse in case of elves. They hang out with trees. Trees confirmed evil both by dwarf protagonist and by evil destruction of cliffport with their druid ally Leeky Windstaff.

Elves also genocidal - "only good goblin is dead goblin".

So compared to black dragons we have much more evidence that elves deserve familicide! But do you see black dragon wizards going around wiping out the elves?

No. They are too busy defending a gate. Trying to save world. Till an elf killed them and put world at risk.

Please don't judge by skin color. Being black does not mean evil. To paraphrase song by Sting, "Black dragons love their children too."

jere7my

2012-03-17, 01:22 PM

See, we agree here. It is idiotic. That's what D&D does however, and that's the world setting of the fantasy story we're reading. I'm already on record for loathing the alignment rules, but because of the way the game designers and the writers of the Monster Manual set it up, THEY supply the proof you are looking for - sorry if you don't like it.

Rich also hates the alignment rules, or at least the way they are commonly interpreted. See here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12718471&postcount=108) and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12718550&postcount=120). One of the themes of the comic in general, and familicide in particular, is undermining those alignment rules. It is not "the world setting of the fantasy story we're reading" — it is, deliberately, a deconstruction, examination, and criticism of the D&D alignment rules. Rich is also saying that "shoehorning an entire group into a label such as 'good' or 'evil' is idiotic," and you're missing the point by a country mile if you think we can start with black-and-white good-and-evil morality when we're talking about the strip. You can't go quoting D&D alignment rules and expect them to mean anything here. That's not how Rich's world works.

Fine line with 'crass', but once again, that guy compared it to celebrating the death of a child.

Kindly don't forget that familicide did in fact result in the deaths of children.

Winter

2012-03-17, 01:22 PM

Please don't judge by skin color. Being black does not mean evil. To paraphrase song by Sting, "Black dragons love their children too."

You're not entirely hitting the point. Which is: Even if the dragons all were evil (we know most are evil because the rules say so) this is still no reason to just nuke them from the orbit.

The Extinguisher

2012-03-17, 01:37 PM

You're not entirely hitting the point. Which is: Even if the dragons all were evil (we know most are evil because the rules say so) this is still no reason to just nuke them from the orbit.

Also, evil does not strictly mean terrorizing the countryside, burning villages, capturing princesses and killing knights. (Man, now I want to go play Hoarde.)

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 01:42 PM

A) I think this is some sort of personal attack. I'm not delving further into that.
B) What does have world history to do with D&D evil? Why should world history be clearly interpretable and speaking for itself in any way? If it was that way, we could shut down the largest part of our history deparments.
C) I think it is very obvious the real world does not have the D&D alignment system. What do you want to express here?
D) I do have a university degree on master's level in history. I'm always happy if someone can educate me further...

I am unsure, what does this mean? Do you say you only put it there to heat up people who have a different opinion on this as you? You are saying it was "mainly" there to heat up stuff and you are now happy it worked?
Can you please elaborate so I can decide if it was just bad judgment or deliberate engaging in something that is highly rude when people try to discuss stuff.

Hmmmm... well, I'll make a decision after this thread has run its course. But I'm not interested in trolling - and while I don't view 'objectionable' as equal to 'goad' I'll plead bad judgement and remove the sig file for the time being. No desire to undermine the conversation. Apologies. Thank you for pointing out the effect.

1) personal attack? well, like the sig file I'll just apologize and move on - I don't see it, but no attack was intended.

2) because there are multiple examples of 'net good' being tallied after comparing the collateral damage of various actions. unlike D&D, "evil" isn't mentioned much because our world isn't set up in a fantasy model, but the concept remains the same. net good might never be able to be measured exactly, but it can be approximated.

3) people keep making comparisons from the real world, to the fictional fantasy world in regards to how "alignments" must be viewed - but the analogs don't properly exist. forget about the term 'black dragon' -- D&D has plenty of Chaotic Evil <fill in the blank> all over the place. Evil is much more palpable in OOTSverse - to posit that it isn't, and assert that a large number of CE creatures being wiped out isn't objectively an improvement to good aligned creatures makes no sense. D&D isn't a balanced ecology, so the food chain argument doesn't apply very well either

4) perhaps you do, perhaps you don't - trust is difficult online, but that 'fact' if we assume its true doesn't grant you any extra authority. you'll have to spell out your arguments just like everyone else.

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 01:47 PM

Could you please read what you write before writing what you write?

A) those words don't share a meaning, so I fail to see the problem, and B) was that sentence constructed as nonsense on purpose? I'm merely guessing at what I think you meant.

jere7my

2012-03-17, 01:54 PM

A) those words don't share a meaning, so I fail to see the problem, and B) was that sentence constructed as nonsense on purpose? I'm merely guessing at what I think you meant.

By your own words, your .sig was "inflammatory" and "objectionable", but not a "goad". If you don't see a contradiction there, I suggest you invest in a good dictionary.

rgrekejin

2012-03-17, 02:06 PM

1) Black Dragons as Sentient Creatures. They make their own decisions in life and deserve to be treated as individuals. It is always wrong to kill anything without first finding out if it deserves to die. ((Yes, I know "No one's saying V wasn't evil to cast it!" but you are trying to declare them all rampaging monsters and ignore their sentience, you are passing judgement on them as a species which is still wrong))

I have repeatedly said that it is in fact wrong to ignore their sentience and ability to make their own choices. I am not trying to claim that they are all rampaging monsters. That is, in fact, not a position I hold. I do hold that a lot of them are. Frankly, I don't think that position is really controversial. I'm not passing judgement on the species, but making a generalization about them. Yes, individual cases deserve individual consideration. I've been saying that all along. But, if you scroll down, you'll notice that that doesn't have any bearing on my point.

2) Black Dragons are never shown terrorizing ANYTHING. The only thing they seem to do is sit their butts inside caves. This makes the claim that they are menaces to society laughable, and completely without supporting evidence.

Black dragons have been shown, in panel, to be terrorizing a certain cottage in an elven village, as well as a group of adventurers. :) As I explained earlier, I've got to think that if the OOTS had any reason to suspect that the black dragon was in any way good, they would have attempted to explain their position to it (like they did when they first encountered Miko). They did not. They assumed it evil, and I do not believe they did so for no reason. True, we never see any black dragons terrorize random villages in the comic, but that is because this comic is not about black dragons. It is about the OOTS, and showing a random black dragon attack would be a pointless sidetrack. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and all the ancillary evidence we have points overwhelmingly to them being evil. Evil alignment is the result of evil actions. You can not maintain that black dragons are generally evil (which I see that you do) and at the same time say there is no evidence that they ever do anything evil. The two positions are mutually exclusive.

3) Black Dragons are evil. Although I do think you are GROSSLY overstating how many of them are evil (as I said, I would guess 85 - 95%) they are more often than not, evil. However, this is irrelevant. According to Rich Burlew, Gary Gygax, Skip Williams, Margaret Weis, R.A. Salvatore, and pretty much any other D&D authority who has ever commented on the issue, being evil doesn't mean the person deserves to be killed, and if they don't deserve to be killed then no 'net good' was gained by unjustly killing them.

I do not think I am grossly overstating how many of them are evil. According to the monster manual, things that are always evil are not always evil, but such exceptions are unique or rare. Your guess of 85-95% is just that: a complete and utter guess. There is, I suppose, no way to prove either of our respective opinions on the matter, although I think the published materials favor my interpretation over yours.

I suppose I don't have a figure for my assumption, but let's agree on 95% (I think this is probably an overestimate, but I'll accept it for the sake of argument). That means that if V's spell kills 200 dragons, 190 of them are evil and 10 are not. The overwhelming majority of them have committed enough evil acts to be labeled evil. I am not arguing that they deserved to be killed solely on the basis of their evilness. They did not. This is not in dispute.

But they are nonetheless dead. Alignment is determined by actions, not the other way around. This, I think, we at least agree upon. They are evil because they did evil things. In all likelihood, they would continue to do evil things. Now they will not. Less evil actions will be perpetrated because they are no longer around. Again, this does not justify killing them solely for that reason. Each evil action must be taken in context, and each creature weighed as an individual. But, in total, there will now be a lesser sum of evil actions in comparison to good actions. I am not arguing that they deserved to die, but rather asking "Now that they are dead and there is no changing it, what effect does it have on the world?" It could be a net positive. It could be a net negative. It could be neutral. We don't know. But that the outcome is positive is a possibility. Good can come from evil.

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 02:17 PM

By your own words, your .sig was "inflammatory" and "objectionable", but not a "goad". If you don't see a contradiction there, I suggest you invest in a good dictionary.

ob·jec·tion·a·ble
adjective
causing or tending to cause disapproval

goad
noun
something that urges, or drives

Winter convinced me to remove the sig for the time being anyway, but the terms aren't necessarily synonymous as demonstrated above.

Digging at the apologists for my own amusement was (per Winter) poor judgement on my part if I want to continue the discussion, but there was never a goal to urge or drive anyone to break the forum rules (I was accused of that also).

Not interested in trolling the thread - so the sig file is gone for the time being.

SaintRidley

2012-03-17, 02:24 PM

You're missing the operative word: inflammatory.

tending to excite anger, disorder, or tumult

You know. Like goading.

Chobarth

2012-03-17, 02:53 PM

You're missing the operative word: inflammatory.

You know. Like goading.

That's pretty much the opposite to goading. If you are trying to drive or direct creatures into specific actions, then causing tumult and disorder is usually is a bad idea. (Unless that was indeed your goal.)

Regardless, the sig file has been removed for now.

rgrekejin has the best post at the moment. That's a good summation of why the villagers might be a bit jubilant.

Also, Jere7my if you read that Burlew quote you linked, he says he may like the alignment rules but feels they aren't played properly. I don't agree with him, I think they are played properly more often than not but never made sense in the first place.

He goes on to say that its a short hop to real-world racism which from a fantasy escapist game is really quite an immense 'hop'. Acknowledging that the black dragons are overwhelmingly evil doesn't effect how I view real groups of people in reality - it's the reverse actually. My lack of racism causes me to dislike the alignment rules. But that is how they set up the game, and it's difficult for me to ascertain why he likes the alignment rules while simultaneously disliking the conclusions derived from source material that says things like "always chaotic evil".

It's because of the alignment rules that I can say good riddance to the black dragons, it's not because I'm a speciest / racist / classist / etc. etc. As I've said several times, don't shoot the messenger. I think Burlew is wrong about this - because if I agree with him, I'm led to the conclusion that D&D teaches racism. I don't buy it. Have played the game for decades and seen no proof first-hand or heard it about it third-hand.

Burlew:
It doesn't matter that the sentient being in question is a fictional species, it's saying that it's OK for people who look funny to be labeled as Evil by default, because hey, like 60% of them do Evil things sometimes! That is racism. It is a short hop to real-world racism once we decide it is acceptable to make blanket negative statements about entire races of people.

Our fiction reflects who we are as a civilization, and it disgusts me that so many people think it's acceptable to label creatures with only cosmetic differences from us as inherently Evil. I may like the alignment system overall, but that is its ugliest implication,