The literary merits of Alien Intelligence

[Reddish Mage]

Order of the Stick has seemingly chosen to portray all of its sentient creatures in highly personified, anthropomorphic (and anachronistic) ways. From Mama black dragon, who explicitly leaves her teenage son (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0188.html) alone expecting him to do typical contemporary American teenage home-alone things (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0628.html) to Sabine a succubus who appears to actually love and show true loyalty to Nale (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0804.html). Even Xykon misses his bad cup of joe and prefers to remain stylishly crowned rather than wear the tatters of his former clothing without regard to the decay (as a Lich is supposed to do according to the Monster Manual).

This treatment has naturally led to a number of situations that have lead to deeper ethical thinking than a typical dungeon crawl usually induces. This has also led numerous people to think, however, that personification of fantasy monsters is the only proper way to portray them. Encouraging that behavior is a number of statements by the Giant, who has suggested the standard D&D treatment of goblins is racist (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12718550#post12718550), and that killing a single dragon because it is a dragon is wrong.
Originally Posted by The Giant (Don't Split the Party commentary);
Vaarsuvius finds him/herself at the dragon's mercy because he/she never thinks to take precautions against her, despite knowing that the dragon he/she killed shared a home with another. Vaarsuvius then repeats and amplifies this misconception when he/she casts the custom-made familicide spell, essentially speaking for all players who say, "All monsters are evil and exist only for us to kill." But hopefully when the reader sees the scale on which Vaarsuvius carries out the devastation, the error of this thinking is more obvious. 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.

I tend to think that this sort of thinking, taken to an extreme, is a campaign against much of fantasy and science fiction in general, and leads to highly moralistic, straightjacketed D&D play. After all Tolkien, quite a bit of classical mythology, not to mention an endless supply of robot, alien, and monster media tend towards an "other" characterizations of at least certain nonhuman intelligences. This "otherness" ranges from the thin treatment I interpret the Giant as railing against (the notion that certain intelligences are "monsters" can be killed for no other reason, even if the label hasn't even backed up by anything except the fact that the monsters look ugly) to points where the creatures alienness is backed up merely by deeds and lack of personification (arguably raptors in Jurassic Park; most aliens); to (relatively few) treatments where alien lifeforms are given a rich but inhuman treatment that allows for complex human interaction (Orson Scott Card's Speaker of the Dead sequels to Ender's Game; Arguably at least some of Asimov's robots).

While many works of fiction are not very ethically deep (in more ways than just how they depict their non-humans), the ultimate in not allowing for the otherness at all in non-humans (and rejecting any categorical expectations of treatment of them) is the opposite of being ethically and ethnically inclusive, it is in fact, IMO narrow-minded bigotry in reverse.

Sometimes, monsters are meant to be just that, monsters. They are made to be that way because they are personifications of our fear, have radically different physiology, drives, and brains (if they even have brains) or because they come from their own cultural-framework which simply doesn't value human life (if it even values life). Monsters are this way and they can be appropriately killed (though perhaps not made to suffer needlessly) because that is their role in the story.

One can raise the issue that such non-personalized treatments of monsters is pure escapism and Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12718655&postcount=132). However, let us look at the other intelligences (if different and perhaps simpler than us) we find in the animal world. Duck imprint on their mother or occasionally, a random object, and follow whatever around till adulthood, dogs will kill another dog's pups. Even so, there is the claim that any inhuman treatment of creatures that are as intelligent of us encourage bigotry. In contrast, the fiction that inhuman creatures exist that do think in inhuman ways can make quite the opposite point. Should we imagine inhuman creatures existing possessing very alien and evil intelligence that must be dealt with categorically, the differences between human beings become so superficial that it is immediately obvious how petty those difference are when there is a point of view for comparison.

[Poppatomus]

Monsters are this way and they can be appropriately killed (though perhaps not made to suffer needlessly) because that is their roll in the story.


An interesting perspective, particularly your point about forcing all other intelligences to be "human" as a way of narrowing perspective, rather than broadening them.

However, in this story---as you note in your quote above---they aren't alien intelligences. At least not all of them (For a joking example of some alien intelligences, see Elan's early attempt to get other moral perspectives aside from good and evil). Part of the thing that makes OoTS the story that it is is that it challenges the idea that you can, in a shallow way, create whole societies of "aliens", make those societies similar in many ways to humanity, but then remove any concern for killing them by adding a line in a stat block. Maybe the Giant will deal with truly alien intelligences more seriously in the future, but up to this point he has chosen not to.

Also, I think that you over-interpret the Giant's comment on genocide. His point was, as I took it, was that if you want to go off and kill the dragon, you do it because its a murderer, or an invader, or a danger, (or because it's food, or because it's in your way, ad infinitum) not simply because it IS a black dragon.

The difference for a character between killing something because of what it is, rather than for what it has done or for some other instrumental purpose, whether it's an alien intelligence or not, is one of the things the story is trying to bring out. (note how easily the otherness of the dragon can be used to coat a revenge killing with a gloss of self-protection.) The inclusion of alien intelligences may somewhat alter specifics of that analysis, but it doesn't alter the fundamental question.

Ender's game spoiler (for instance, if V were a Bugger queen, it might not occur to him that the killing of many black dragons would matter any more than killing one, or it might leave V unable to understand why the "mother" might seek revenge for the killing of one individual. However, though interesting to consider in how it changes the units by which one measures killing, it still wouldn't really impact the Giant's genocide point, in that the question would still come down to whether killing a being you recognize as possessing ill-defined sentience is justified based on reasons other than what it is. )

[ti'esar]

So... do you want "alien lifeforms [that] are given a rich but inhuman treatment that allows for complex human interaction" or "monsters [that] are meant to be just that, monsters"?

[Reddish Mage]

So... do you want "alien lifeforms [that] are given a rich but inhuman treatment that allows for complex human interaction" or "monsters [that] are meant to be just that, monsters"?

Both actually (and the one does not necessarily preclude the other simultaneously or separately), I see these depictions as legitimate literature that should not raise moral hackles because of its mere existence.

[Forikroder]

Sometimes, monsters are meant to be just that, monsters. They are made to be that way because they are personifications of our fear, have radically different physiology, drives, and brains (if they even have brains) or because they come from their own cultural-framework which simply doesn't value human life (if it even values life). Monsters are this way and they can be appropriately killed (though perhaps not made to suffer needlessly) because that is their roll in the story.

im going to focus entirely on this since it seems to pretty much be the point of your whole rant

the Giant is not saying taht "monsters" should never exist in story, hes not saying that having "monsters" in a story is a terrible thing that should be shunned

hes rebelling against the idea that anything that is a "monster" is okay to just kill, the idea that every single "monster" is the same, that there all evil terrible creatures who will kill you first chance they get and deserve no mercy or attempt to reason with it taht every "Monster" you meet should be immediately killed regardless of what its doing, has done or will do

so yes, sometimes monsters are meant to be jsut that, monsters but to think every monster is a monster is a monsterous way to think ;)

[SowZ]

I'm reminded of the novel "I Am Legend" where many people got mad learning that the main character was a villain all along. He went around killing vampires for being vampires and the reader never questions the morality or it even when Robert drags a screaming pleading woman from her bed into the daylight to experience a painful death when she did nothing wrong. Only after the ending does the reader go 'huh, that was wrong.'

That book pisses people off because it proves to the readers how easy it is for anyone, especially them, to dehumanize and view people as worthy of death. Militaries have known for a long time how easy it is to dehumanize races to totally normal folks. It is brilliant. We don't know it for the most part, but we have to be on constant guard against dehumanization or we will end up rooting for the Robert Neville's of the world.

If combatting the idea that certain sentient groups can be justifiably killed just because of what they are is a campaign against fantasy and sci-fi literature, it is a campaign that needs to be waged. Humans are too vulnerable to racism to open ourselves up to racist modes of thinking, even in fiction. Read up on Pascal's numbers. Prejudice is wired into other primates, it's likely wired into us too. We can't be complacent.

[ti'esar]

Both actually (and the one does not necessarily preclude the other simultaneously or separately), I see these depictions as legitimate literature that should not raise moral hackles because of its mere existence.

Well, then we're not going to get anywhere here, because I quite simply don't see the latter that way.

[SavageWombat]

I interpret this proposal as "if you want a game where the PCs slaughter monsters in dungeons, don't give them human-like characterization."

Which has a point. If you don't want the players to consider the moral ramifications of their actions - because it's supposed to be a fun wargame - don't compare the orcs to Chicagoans. Don't create conflict in your players unless that's what they want from a game.

[Geordnet]

im going to focus entirely on this since it seems to pretty much be the point of your whole rant
Doesn't seem as much of a rant to me as it does a thesis. (Note the formal structure and lack of direct address to Rich.)

And I, for one, agree that it's better to have anything labeled a "monster" be different from humanity in ways which are more than skin deep. It seems to me to be the entire point of having "monsters" in the first place: it's the fact that they're alien and exotic that's interesting.


This actually reflects a synthesis of two different objectives: on the one hand, you have people whom are interested in using fantasy as a stand-in for real life; on the other you have those whom enjoy fantasy for the sake of fantasy. What people in this latter group are after is what Rich collectively labels "Escapism".

And that's where the difference is. Where the more practical-minded see "Escapism" as a pointless distraction, others see it as a goal in and of itself. And that's where having truly (or as close as possible) alien intelligences really helps a lot.

[Sir_Leorik]

I interpret this proposal as "if you want a game where the PCs slaughter monsters in dungeons, don't give them human-like characterization."

Which has a point. If you don't want the players to consider the moral ramifications of their actions - because it's supposed to be a fun wargame - don't compare the orcs to Chicagoans. Don't create conflict in your players unless that's what they want from a game.

But doing that cheapens the experience you and your players will get out of the game. It is possible to have a D&D monster who is still monstrous, while still being able to empathize with that monster. Vampires like Count Strahd von Zarovich (who is cursed to eternally yearn for Tatyana Federovna, the fiance of his brother Sergei, the brother Strahd murdered in order to become a Vampire); dragons like Skie, Dragon Highlord Kitiara Uth Matar's Blue Dragon mount (who formed a friendship with Kitiara and mourned her death); fiends like Shemeska the Marauder, the Arcanoloth "King of the Cross-Trade" (who is the undisputed ruler of Sigil's criminal underworld, while still acting like a mother to Kylie the Tout); and many more examples. Strahd is still a monster, because he terrorizes the Barovian people, drinking the blood of virgins, and oppressing the Gundarakites. Skie is a monster because she steals livestock, kills innocent travelers, and served at the vanguard of Takhisis' Dragonarmy during the War of the Lance, and in Kitiara and Lord Soth's assault on Palanthas. Shemeska is a hardened criminal, who refrains from ordering too many murders in order to avoid the attention of the Lady of Pain. But Strahd, Skie and Shemeska are also characters, with backstories, motivations, and depth.

There are very good reasons for PCs to oppose Strahd, to fight Kitiara and Skie in an aerial battle over Palanthas, or to match wits with Shemeska, other than "He's a Vampire!", "She's a Blue Dragon" or "She's a Yugoloth!" In fact I can think of several scenarios where PCs would need to ally themselves with Strahd or Shemeska, and might be inclined to let Skie flee a battle. You can't reach that complexity if you view Strahd as "just another vampire".

[Forikroder]

But doing that cheapens the experience you and your players will get out of the game. It is possible to have a D&D monster who is still monstrous, while still being able to empathize with that monster. Vampires like Count Strahd von Zarovich (who is cursed to eternally yearn for Tatyana Federovna, the fiance of his brother Sergei, the brother Strahd murdered in order to become a Vampire); dragons like Skie, Dragon Highlord Kitiara Uth Matar's Blue Dragon mount (who formed a friendship with Kitiara and mourned her death); fiends like Shemeska the Marauder, the Arcanoloth "King of the Cross-Trade" (who is the undisputed ruler of Sigil's criminal underworld, while still acting like a mother to Kylie the Tout); and many more examples. Strahd is still a monster, because he terrorizes the Barovian people, drinking the blood of virgins, and oppressing the Gundarakites. Skie is a monster because she steals livestock, kills innocent travelers, and served at the vanguard of Takhisis' Dragonarmy during the War of the Lance, and in Kitiara and Lord Soth's assault on Palanthas. Shemeska is a hardened criminal, who refrains from ordering too many murders in order to avoid the attention of the Lady of Pain. But Strahd, Skie and Shemeska are also characters, with backstories, motivations, and depth.

There are very good reasons for PCs to oppose Strahd, to fight Kitiara and Skie in an aerial battle over Palanthas, or to match wits with Shemeska, other than "He's a Vampire!", "She's a Blue Dragon" or "She's a Yugoloth!" In fact I can think of several scenarios where PCs would need to ally themselves with Strahd or Shemeska, and might be inclined to let Skie flee a battle. You can't reach that complexity if you view Strahd as "just another vampire".

theres nothing wrong with enjoying a game of DnD and getting to turn your brain off and just enjoy the experience

[Reddish Mage]

This actually reflects a synthesis of two different objectives: on the one hand, you have people whom are interested in using fantasy as a stand-in for real life; on the other you have those whom enjoy fantasy for the sake of fantasy. What people in this latter group are after is what Rich collectively labels "Escapism".

And that's where the difference is. Where the more practical-minded see "Escapism" as a pointless distraction, others see it as a goal in and of itself. And that's where having truly (or as close as possible) alien intelligences really helps a lot.

Fantasy by its nature always includes certain elements that are not "real world." One can find real world meaning and relevance to 21st century living in fantasy within the remaining parts of the story. Real world metaphors do not need to be imposed everywhere and certainly not specific metaphors such as "monsters as simply people with a different skin"

[rbetieh]

You know, I have a hard time conceptualizing a true "alien" intelligence. Reason being is that any animal that procreates - as far as we know all but the Mule do - have certain characteristics in common. They protect their young (each in their own way, some like turtles in a very ineffective way for certain) and tend to choose providing resources for themself and their young over sharing them with others (see dogs killing other dogs pups, lions and cats do the same). Fact is, we have too much in common with these creatures possesing brains. We, in fact, do the same thing. Thats why it is easy to go fight a resource war with people who are not "like-us".

In order for a creatre to be possesed of an alien intelligence it must have its primal drives re-worked. Perhaps a plant intelligence or something that need not procreate. The undead would have made the best sense for delving into this territory, up until Malack. A vampire that has a drive to create more like himself.

[LadyEowyn]

I greatly enjoy science fiction and fantasy stories that try to examine interactions with other sapient beings whose moral values are extremely different from our own (such as Speaker for the Dead). But these are very far from not having relevance for out own world - they teach us to move outside of our own perspectives and understand worldviews that are far different. That's an intellectually healthy thing for anyone to be able to do.

If a person does want "shallow escapism" with the heroes killing monsters that are straightforwardly monstrous, then there's a fairly easy solution - make the monsters tough but non-sapient. It's having sapient monsters that the heroes define as universally evil, and that the heroes thus kill thoughtlessly, that creates damaging parallels with real life, and damaging thought patterns.

[Forikroder]

I greatly enjoy science fiction and fantasy stories that try to examine interactions with other sapient beings whose moral values are extremely different from our own (such as Speaker for the Dead). But these are very far from not having relevance for out own world - they teach us to move outside of our own perspectives and understand worldviews that are far different. That's an intellectually healthy thing for anyone to be able to do.

If a person does want "shallow escapism" with the heroes killing monsters that are straightforwardly monstrous, then there's a fairly easy solution - make the monsters tough but non-sapient. It's having sapient monsters that the heroes define as universally evil, and that the heroes thus kill thoughtlessly, that creates damaging parallels with real life, and damaging thought patterns.

i imagine your one of those people who try to use violent video games as the catch all blame of anything bad happening

the problem isnt having sapient monsters that get blanketted as evil the problem is when people fail to draw the line between real life and fiction

nothing that happens in fiction can be a reflection of real life, just because something can/does happen in fiction doesnt mean it can/does happen in real life, thats the whole point of fiction to see/do things that are impossible

[SowZ]

i imagine your one of those people who try to use violent video games as the catch all blame of anything bad happening

the problem isnt having sapient monsters that get blanketted as evil the problem is when people fail to draw the line between real life and fiction

nothing that happens in fiction can be a reflection of real life, just because something can/does happen in fiction doesnt mean it can/does happen in real life, thats the whole point of fiction to see/do things that are impossible

You lost a credibility in this debate to me with the "I'm guessing you're..." aside.

In a GTA game I know that I am playing a bad guy. If I thought it was sometimes okay to shoot someone and steal their car then video games could desensitize me. I can write or play fantasy where sapient creatures are killed as long as I acknowledge it is wrong.

[Forikroder]

You lost a credibility in this debate to me with the "I'm guessing you're..." aside.

im trying to parse your statement and having trouble, did i lose credibility for using "im guessing you" or did i lose credibility even putting that aside?

and why is using such a phraze such a nale in a coffin?

[SowZ]

i imagine your one of those people who try to use violent video games as the catch all blame of anything bad happening

the problem isnt having sapient monsters that get blanketted as evil the problem is when people fail to draw the line between real life and fiction

nothing that happens in fiction can be a reflection of real life, just because something can/does happen in fiction doesnt mean it can/does happen in real life, thats the whole point of fiction to see/do things that are impossible


im trying to parse your statement and having trouble, did i lose credibility for using "im guessing you" or did i lose credibility even putting that aside?

and why is using such a phraze such a nale in a coffin?

It's just kind of patronizing. You should have said, "You are using a similar argument too..." Generalizing ones opponent or making it personal is something that I think sacrifices credibility.

[Forikroder]

It's just kind of patronizing. You should have said, "You are using a similar argument too..." Generalizing ones opponent or making it personal is something that I think sacrifices credibility.

if i have any flaw in these internet debates its making it all too personal :P

[SowZ]

if i have any flaw in these internet debates its making it all too personal :P

Hehe, sure. I'm not trying to attack you by the way. Just recommending against assuming what people think one issue B because of their opinion on issue A.

[Liliet]

The point of fiction can't be to create things separate from reality, because that's not how human brain works. Readers treat book settings as separate independent realities, use words like "world" and "universe", because human brain is wired to percieve everything it emotionally responds to as "real". What we see in fiction has real impact on our real lifes, that's why books are such a powerful ideological tool. You write a book implying some statement, and if enough people from the same group like the book, they will be much more inclined to agree with the statement as applied to real life. That's how it works.

Our moral compass is defined by stories we hear in the childhood and later; we can't always tell whether these stories are true or not (look in your history books - are you sure you can fully trust them? I know I can't trust mine), but they have an impact regardless of this. We learn that a hero who goes off to save the princess from a villain is a good guy, and that a greedy merchant who tries to rob him on the way is a bad guy; that we should follow in the steps of a hero and try to not be like that merchant. What we learn our morality from can be a true story about WW2 or our neighbours, or it can be a fairy tale. It works the same way for our brain.


Of course, there is value in creating just "monsters" to be killed for a story. They are an obstacle to be overcome, something that teaches heroes to protect themselves and their loved ones.

But the key word here is "protect". You kill those monsters, and define them as monsters, because they threaten. And not in a sense "they are here and can eventually decide to do some harm", but in a sense "they are attacking, either they die or someone dear to me does". There's a reason why heroes are reactive (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainsActHeroesReact).

If someone goes around just attacking people unprovoked (or provoked by something not viewed as provocation by said people, although this is already a borderline case), it's normal to view them as a monster (even if they are a PC or a protagonist of the story). It is not normal, however, to view their family as monsters too despite them never having done such things merely because they look the same way.

Big problem with DnD alignment labels taken too literally is that they allow (and are often used in such a way) to portray monsters in their natural environment, without any relation to people, and label them as monsters just because some of their kind, probably even in the other setting, really were monsters. This is just so wrong. They live there, they don't threaten anyone, why are they monsters? Because they have green skin and fangs? You need to provide a base for statements like "they are monsters" or you come off as a monster yourself.

Many works of fiction create "irredeemably evil monsters" without complicating things with moral dilemmas and deep characterisation. However, to establish them as monsters they still use individual characterisation tools: villains kick puppies, murder loved ones, bring Apocalypse, engage in mind control; try to conquer Earth, use humans as slaves, engage in dehumanization themselves; just plain attack and kill people, use them for food... There are many ways to establish a monster as a monster, thing is, to have a good story you have to use these tools. It is necessary.


And portraying "designated bad guys" as not-really-that-bad and presenting moral dilemmas creates better, not worse experience even in the game. I speak from experience, as I've already tried myself as a DM, and I know that had I portrayed definitely evil cannibal kobolds, goblins and hobgoblins as not-truly-sentient existing-purely-to-be-killed creatures (rather than a "local political force" to negotiate with and try to use for completing the quest), our sessions would be much, much less fun. I'm telling ya. Perhaps such portrayal needs too much enthusiasm and imagination from a DM/storyteller, more than they are willing to provide; there are lots of shortcuts "they do this horrible thing -> they are monsters and should be killed", but they still should be taken. "They look like this -> they are monsters and should be killed" is not valid and does not work for people who like giving fiction at least some thought.

Of course for some people pure suspension of disbelief is enough to conclude "if we are told that they are Evil and should be attacked on sight, they must have been doing something really Evil and are already established as monsters, no need to go in details", they will just trust the DM. But this sort of logic leads to danger, danger of forgetting that the villain characterisation was supposed to be there first, and it is the job of other fiction to remind us of that. When you start getting irritated by complex characterisations and prefer simply "they are enemies - kill them", it might be a sign that something's wrong with your moral compass.

[theNater]

Should we imagine inhuman creatures existing possessing very alien and evil intelligence that must be dealt with categorically, the differences between human beings become so superficial that it is immediately obvious how petty those difference are when there is a point of view for comparison.
While intelligence is hard to define, almost all definitions include the ability to learn. Any intelligent creature can learn, and therefore can learn to respect human life.

Of course, physiology or pre-existing culture can make teaching a non-human intelligence to respect human life impractically difficult. So if you want a story where humans are in the midst of an effectively unresolvable conflict with an species of non-human intelligences, such a story is certainly reasonable. But suggesting that an intelligence is unalterably evil, rather than that we lack the ability to alter it, fails to recognize a key element of intelligence.

[Forikroder]

The point of fiction can't be to create things separate from reality, because that's not how human brain works. Readers treat book settings as separate independent realities, use words like "world" and "universe", because human brain is wired to percieve everything it emotionally responds to as "real". What we see in fiction has real impact on our real lifes, that's why books are such a powerful ideological tool. You write a book implying some statement, and if enough people from the same group like the book, they will be much more inclined agree with the statement as applied to real life. That's how it works.

and quite unforunate too far too many people cant (or perhaps wont) see the big thick line seperating reality from fiction


Our moral compass is defined by stories we hear in the childhood and later; we can't always tell whether these stories are true or not (look in your history books - are you sure you can fully trust them? I know I can't trust mine), but they have an impact regardless of this. We learn that a hero who goes off to save the princess from a villain is a good guy, and that a greedy merchant who tries to rob him on the way is a bad guy; that we should follow in the steps of a hero and try to not be like that merchant. What we learn our morality from can be a true story about WW2 or our neighbours, or it can be a fairy tale. It works the same way for our brain.
if someone bases there moral compass on made up storys they hear in childhood instead of basing it actual real world happenings its a problem

also heres to biggest problem, noone should aspire to be the Hero

the man who goes off alone following only his moral compass, who magically has the strength of 10 men where everything always works out for him

people see the Hero and think "i want to be like that" and cant realise that its simply impossible for anyone to be a hero in the real world

too many problems arise from people with swelled heads thinking they know best and run off half-informed thinking themselves a hero


When you start getting irritated by complex characterisations and prefer simply "they are enemies - kill them", it might be a sign that something's wrong with your moral compass.

i disagree entirely, every time i play DnD its exactly like that, and in every other game i played

i play games for entertainment i turn my brain off and enjoy it without worying about it why on earth should i care if i slaughter a hundred goblins when those goblins exist simply as a figment of my imagination? they dont exist i could jsut as easily bring all of them back to life or make them 100 feet tall

they are not real so it doesnt matter

as long as your able to see the line between reality and fiction

[SowZ]

and quite unforunate too far too many people cant (or perhaps wont) see the big thick line seperating reality from fiction


if someone bases there moral compass on made up storys they hear in childhood instead of basing it actual real world happenings its a problem

also heres to biggest problem, noone should aspire to be the Hero

the man who goes off alone following only his moral compass, who magically has the strength of 10 men where everything always works out for him

people see the Hero and think "i want to be like that" and cant realise that its simply impossible for anyone to be a hero in the real world

too many problems arise from people with swelled heads thinking they know best and run off half-informed thinking themselves a hero



i disagree entirely, every time i play DnD its exactly like that, and in every other game i played

i play games for entertainment i turn my brain off and enjoy it without worying about it why on earth should i care if i slaughter a hundred goblins when those goblins exist simply as a figment of my imagination? they dont exist i could jsut as easily bring all of them back to life or make them 100 feet tall

they are not real so it doesnt matter

as long as your able to see the line between reality and fiction

But you should be able to acknowledge that what your character is doing is wrong. Just like when you play Hitman or GTA. If someone asked, "Are those right to do?" You should say something like, "Yeah, I guess not but I don't really care right now."

[Forikroder]

But you should be able to acknowledge that what your character is doing is wrong. Just like when you play Hitman or GTA. If someone asked, "Are those right to do?" You should say something like, "Yeah, I guess not but I don't really care right now."

if they asked "are those the right things to do if you were in that scenario in real life" id say "obviously not"

[SowZ]

if they asked "are those the right things to do if you were in that scenario in real life" id say "obviously not"

Same in DnD, then. It is wrong to wantonly slaughter goblins by real moral standards.

[Forikroder]

Same in DnD, then. It is wrong to wantonly slaughter goblins by real moral standards.

but DnD isnt real world so who cares? its jsut a game its like saying that its wrong to play monopoly because it teachs you to take money from people until there forced to declare bankrupcy

as long as you can understand the line between reality and fiction it doesnt matter what happens in the fiction because it cant cross the line into reality

im not saying its wrong for the Giant to be delivering his message, it certainly is a good message that people need to learn, but im saying that in an ideal world there would be no need to deliver the message because people wouldnt be using something someone made up to decide whats right and whats wrong

fiction is only for entertainment, nothing more (at least it should be)

[SowZ]

but DnD isnt real world so who cares? its jsut a game its like saying that its wrong to play monopoly because it teachs you to take money from people until there forced to declare bankrupcy

as long as you can understand the line between reality and fiction it doesnt matter what happens in the fiction because it cant cross the line into reality

im not saying its wrong for the Giant to be delivering his message, it certainly is a good message that people need to learn, but im saying that in an ideal world there would be no need to deliver the message because people wouldnt be using something someone made up to decide whats right and whats wrong

fiction is only for entertainment, nothing more (at least it should be)

You are massively underestimating the importance of fiction, I think. Any psychologist would tell you stories can impact our psyche. Any anthropologist would tell you how central shared stories are to a culture. Any philosopher or preacher would say how good stories or parables are at communicating messages.

[Bogardan_Mage]

I suspect that in Rich's case, he does not believe that alien intelligence absolves the mindless slaughter of fantasy monsters. So he presents his monsters with human intelligence because people would otherwise not notice this point. A monster that acts like a monster does not raise any eyebrows, a monster that acts like a human reminds people that these are living, thinking creatures and may cause them to re-examine their views on the more monstrous monsters. The Black Dragon family in OotS is a pretty good example of this, with the child being monstrous (at first blush, at least) and the mother hammering home the point later on in the story.

tl;dr, alien intelligence does not excuse killing monsters because of what they are, but it does conceal the ethical question from most people.

[Forikroder]

You are massively underestimating the importance of fiction, I think. Any psychologist would tell you stories can impact our psyche. Any anthropologist would tell you how central shared stories are to a culture. Any philosopher or preacher would say how good stories or parables are at communicating messages.

im sure in the past when those storys were basically there version of a history book

in the modern world though we have actual history books and actual events we can show our children and explain why some things should or shouldnt be done

[archon_huskie]

theres nothing wrong with enjoying a game of DnD and getting to turn your brain off and just enjoy the experience

turning your brain off, play DnD, and wallowing in racism and genocide just to enjoy the experience?

[SowZ]

How does the existence of history books make stories less relevant to modern culture, philosophy, religion, and psychology?

Saying the only purpose of stories should be entertainment is like saying the only purpose of ingesting food should be survival or the only purpose of architecture should be the to find the most cost effective structurally sound building plans.

[Math_Mage]

I tend to think that this sort of thinking, taken to an extreme, is a campaign against much of fantasy and science fiction in general, and leads to highly moralistic, straightjacketed D&D play.
Fine, except what you've actually done is not highlight an argument that can be taken to extremes, but conflate two completely separate discussions out of a desire to reach the conclusion that the author is Doing It Wrong.

Rich argues against the reduction of nonhumans to monsters that grant XP. He also makes most nonhumans intelligent in a very human way. That does not mean Burlew is against the idea of alien intelligences. I'm sure he would be happy with the Moties from The Mote in God's Eye, for example. He's just not writing the nonhumans in OotS that way.

A good rule of thumb is that if your forced interpretation of the Giant's statements leads to an obviously stupid conclusion, that your interpretation is probably incorrect, because the Giant tends not to be obviously stupid.

[Kish]

Rich argues against the reduction of nonhumans to monsters that grant XP. He also makes most nonhumans intelligent in a very human way. That does not mean Burlew is against the idea of alien intelligences.
This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12719590&postcount=178) might, though.

I don't know that "making inhuman sapients actually inhuman" is inherently invalid. I do know that every time I've seen someone on this board use that phrase--prominently and centrally including this thread--it's a blatant euphemism for, "Stop telling me there's something wrong with having goblins as walking targets," part of an argument for less moral complexity, not more. Immediately after "They think fundamentally differently from us" this argument always seems to get to, "And all we need to or should want to understand about how they think is that it means we should treat them like humanoid virii."

[Morty]

My problem with the 'sometimes monsters should just be monsters' argument is that more often than not, it's laziness dressed up in fancy words. It's one thing to desire a convincing depiction of a truly inhuman sapience. But in context of fantasy and sci-fi, most such arguments boil down to a desire for enemies that are ostensibly sapient, but that the heroes do not need to act moral towards.

[Math_Mage]

This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12719590&postcount=178) might, though.

I don't know that "making inhuman sapients actually inhuman" is inherently invalid. I do know that every time I've seen someone on this board use that phrase--prominently and centrally including this thread--it's a blatant euphemism for, "Stop telling me there's something wrong with having goblins as walking targets," part of an argument for less moral complexity, not more. Immediately after "They think fundamentally differently from us" this argument always seems to get to, "And all we need to or should want to understand about how they think is that it means we should treat them like humanoid virii."
Fair citation and fair point. I disagree with the Giant there--while a truly alien race by itself may not teach us anything, human interaction with such a race supplies the reflections he discusses. It would be difficult to write an interesting or useful story with NO human viewpoint, but that's not the same as writing a story with alien viewpoints.

[Michaeler]

You can have inhuman intelligences that live in peace with humans. A creature can view violent clashes as a part of day to day life to be kept within limits but still indulged in to establish your role in society, and see the theft of food as the greatest crime possible punishable by the most severe of penalties, and still be a dog.

[Cerlis]

turning your brain off, play DnD, and wallowing in racism and genocide just to enjoy the experience?

except its not (or could be argued as such) racism or genocide. As they are fictional creatures. and -NO MATTER- what they may -REPRESENT- the FACT that they are NOT real creatures NEVER changes.

I would equate looking down on someone for allowing people to kill goblins "because they are goblins" with looking down on someone because they decided to have their character kill another one without a fair trial or any proof the person WOULD threaten them in the future (and just testimony).

Yes it would be reprehensible for the character, but the character did it not the player. and the player is not guilty for the crimes of his character because those crimes are not his crimes. and also the crimes are make believe.
and as such that there is no racism and genocide because the only person committing or feeling that doesnt exist.

the only crime committed is possibly lazy roleplaying or a -game- that doesnt take into account real life morals. I mean i'd love to play in a dark gritty game where we where faced with real life decisions and where deeply attached to our characters. But you cant fault someone for glossing over something irrelevant to the game just because you want damage dealing bags of experience to have some semblance (<--emphasis)of life .

-------------------------------------------

separate from that i'd think that the main line is drawn at creatures that are known to exist only to create evil. That doesnt mean breed for it, or raised to it. As in this thing's was possibly created to commit evil, and that everything that exists about it exists in order to help it commit evil (for instance its ability to love only exists because it allows it to form lasting bonds with kin and protect each other for continued evil, and breed to create more evil monsters).

Such creatures would have to be very special as even upon hatching they would be inclined to make you suffer (or otherwise try to commit what evil acts they are capable.) For instance a larva or baby monster who can only hear when it is born but it knows that whatever it hears wants to make suffer.

And most creatures in any books i've read aren't like that.

I do think that in one dragonlance book we saw that Black dragons really where evil. We only got perspective from a black dragon weeks after it hatched so the big final question would be when it became sentient and how it felt then. But at the end of the story we saw that it was only using the children as a form of protection and that it was satisfied when it found its new home that when he was big enough he would be able to subjugate the surrounding area. And that the only reason it allowed the humans to live is so their families wouldnt go hunting for him. Basically this baby dragon was extremely evil with no other nurture than a girl who risked her life to save it.


Also, i need to interject that Sentient does not mean telling right from wrong. its self awareness or "able to perceive or feel things." or basically not just seeing something but understanding it.

So you can have a person who is completely evil and would only do something "good" for evil reasons (probably it being something that benefited him) but still be actually sentient.

not to mention that inability to determine good from evil being sentience, means that alot of humans aren't sentient.....

[Liliet]

Forikroder, I think you are wrong about a thick line between reality and fiction. It does not exist.

History books for children contain massively simplified versions of events, sometimes to the point of being pure fiction (especially when there are illustrations and colorful dialogs); other history books are just politically corrected by the current government and can massively deviate from truth; and anyway all history is our attempt at reconstructing facts, we don't really know what happened, it's all our interpretation.

Furthermore, what about history novels, "reconstructing" documentaries? Are these reality or fiction? Where is the line?

Forum dwellers. All you know about us is what we choose to tell about ourselves, and you do not know whether it is true or false. You don't know anything about me - you don't know whether I am really a girl, or maybe I'm a guy who likes to pretend to be a girl in the internet. Maybe my avatar was really drawn by my little brother and I just write that I made it to look better in everyone's eyes. Maybe I'm not really Ukrainian, maybe I'm Australian who has fun pretending to be from another country. You know what I choose to tell about myself, and you have to construct my opinion about me without any knowledge of reality/fiction divide. The same applies to everyone else here, and to everything you see on the internet - any reality/fiction line is very thin and can be put by every person in different place.

Every story brings two messages: factual and emotional. Emotional message helps us remember facts, so it's present everywhere, in all stories, from newspapers and magazines to school textbooks. Fictional stories indeed do not convey any factual message, and it's important to distinguish between real facts and made-up facts. Their value is their emotional message - this situtation makes us feel this way, that situation makes us feel that way. And it's emotional messages that create over moral compass, facts have nothing to do with it; it's just that when we know that facts are real, we can percieve emotional messages that much stronger.

Human brain is wired to sympathise and empathise with images of other people, because basically an image in our brain is always all that we have. A photo of a model on a magazine cover, an avatar and a signature on the forum... we can empathise with them more than we do with a stranger on the street who we see with our own eyes and who is definitely real. We can choose who to empathise with, who to percieve as a person and who not. Our empathy can extend to animals (always, everywhere, we consider a person mentally ill if they do not empathise with animals at all), plants, inanimate objects, purely metaphysical concepts - anything that we choose.

And criteria for such empathy are mostly not related to being real or not. Who do you empathise with more - Roy Greenhilt or Adolph Hitler? Who would you want to succeed, in whose feelings and personal development are you more interested?


When you choose not to empathise, it's what is called "dehumanizing". There's nothing wrong with dehumanizing stones, your computer, sky and sun; however, the more you dehumanize and the closer to real people these objects are, the more distant you become from real people too. Do you empathise with the characters of the newspaper article? People who you have never met and are not sure even really exist?


P.S. Just in case: I really am Ukrainian, I really am a girl, I really draw my avatars myself and they are even more or less close to my actual appearance, except I'm bad at conveying facial likeness and am generous enough in drawing body shape. And I really do have a little brother.

P.P.S. At least that's what I tell you. Enjoy the Mind Screw (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MindScrew)!

[Reddish Mage]

This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12719590&postcount=178) might, though.

I don't know that "making inhuman sapients actually inhuman" is inherently invalid. I do know that every time I've seen someone on this board use that phrase--prominently and centrally including this thread--it's a blatant euphemism for, "Stop telling me there's something wrong with having goblins as walking targets," part of an argument for less moral complexity, not more. Immediately after "They think fundamentally differently from us" this argument always seems to get to, "And all we need to or should want to understand about how they think is that it means we should treat them like humanoid virii."

While what I've wrote heavily focuses on the "monstrous" aspect of the monster depiction, I think it is a deeper defense than "a defense of first person shooters."

There are many ways to treat alien intelligences other than as hostile towards humans. The latter is pretty common, not only in pop fantasy, but in mythology and legend. Sometimes these intelligences are personified and given reasons and rational motives for their actions (for example, the Monster in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein acts against human kind only because he's treated so awfully by his creator and everyone else), sometimes they have very alien reasons (the "Buggers" in Ender's game; notably these reasons become understandable once we learn how they think), sometimes no reason at all is given, its just "how they are."

Its only the latter you seem to have a problem with, the point where humans are confronted by a creatures they find themselves in conflict with but cannot (or feel no need to) understand why these creatures are in conflict with humans.


Fair citation and fair point. I disagree with the Giant there--while a truly alien race by itself may not teach us anything, human interaction with such a race supplies the reflections he discusses. It would be difficult to write an interesting or useful story with NO human viewpoint, but that's not the same as writing a story with alien viewpoints.

So if we table stories surrounding deadly conflict can we all agree stories can be told with aliens with an alien viewpoint?

I think the problem Kish has is when the aliens are depicted specifically in the sort of way that allows us to kill them without consideration of the creatures individuality or motives.

[The Giant]

Order of the Stick has seemingly chosen to portray all of its sentient creatures in highly personified, anthropomorphic (and anachronistic) ways. From Mama black dragon, who explicitly leaves her teenage son (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0188.html) alone expecting him to do typical contemporary American teenage home-alone things (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0628.html) to Sabine a succubus who appears to actually love and show true loyalty to Nale (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0804.html). Even Xykon misses his bad cup of joe and prefers to remain stylishly crowned rather than wear the tatters of his former clothing without regard to the decay (as a Lich is supposed to do according to the Monster Manual).

This treatment has naturally led to a number of situations that have lead to deeper ethical thinking than a typical dungeon crawl usually induces. This has also led numerous people to think, however, that personification of fantasy monsters is the only proper way to portray them. Encouraging that behavior is a number of statements by the Giant, who has suggested the standard D&D treatment of goblins is racist (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12718550#post12718550), and that killing a single dragon because it is a dragon is wrong.
Originally Posted by The Giant (Don't Split the Party commentary);
Vaarsuvius finds him/herself at the dragon's mercy because he/she never thinks to take precautions against her, despite knowing that the dragon he/she killed shared a home with another. Vaarsuvius then repeats and amplifies this misconception when he/she casts the custom-made familicide spell, essentially speaking for all players who say, "All monsters are evil and exist only for us to kill." But hopefully when the reader sees the scale on which Vaarsuvius carries out the devastation, the error of this thinking is more obvious. 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.

I tend to think that this sort of thinking, taken to an extreme, is a campaign against much of fantasy and science fiction in general, and leads to highly moralistic, straightjacketed D&D play. After all Tolkien, quite a bit of classical mythology, not to mention an endless supply of robot, alien, and monster media tend towards an "other" characterizations of at least certain nonhuman intelligences. This "otherness" ranges from the thin treatment I interpret the Giant as railing against (the notion that certain intelligences are "monsters" can be killed for no other reason, even if the label hasn't even backed up by anything except the fact that the monsters look ugly) to points where the creatures alienness is backed up merely by deeds and lack of personification (arguably raptors in Jurassic Park; most aliens); to (relatively few) treatments where alien lifeforms are given a rich but inhuman treatment that allows for complex human interaction (Orson Scott Card's Speaker of the Dead sequels to Ender's Game; Arguably at least some of Asimov's robots).

While many works of fiction are not very ethically deep (in more ways than just how they depict their non-humans), the ultimate in not allowing for the otherness at all in non-humans (and rejecting any categorical expectations of treatment of them) is the opposite of being ethically and ethnically inclusive, it is in fact, IMO narrow-minded bigotry in reverse.

Sometimes, monsters are meant to be just that, monsters. They are made to be that way because they are personifications of our fear, have radically different physiology, drives, and brains (if they even have brains) or because they come from their own cultural-framework which simply doesn't value human life (if it even values life). Monsters are this way and they can be appropriately killed (though perhaps not made to suffer needlessly) because that is their role in the story.

One can raise the issue that such non-personalized treatments of monsters is pure escapism and Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12718655&postcount=132). However, let us look at the other intelligences (if different and perhaps simpler than us) we find in the animal world. Duck imprint on their mother or occasionally, a random object, and follow whatever around till adulthood, dogs will kill another dog's pups. Even so, there is the claim that any inhuman treatment of creatures that are as intelligent of us encourage bigotry. In contrast, the fiction that inhuman creatures exist that do think in inhuman ways can make quite the opposite point. Should we imagine inhuman creatures existing possessing very alien and evil intelligence that must be dealt with categorically, the differences between human beings become so superficial that it is immediately obvious how petty those difference are when there is a point of view for comparison.

Great, it's the old, "You're a bigot for not condoning my bigotry," argument.

You can write (or play) non-humans any way you want to; I am not required to do the same. I would much rather deal with the more pressing issue of how we treat the other humans walking around this planet who look or act a little differently from us. When alien intelligences show up and start getting discriminated against, I will be happy to write about those, too. Until then, priorities. There are literally billions of words written in other works about killing orcs or goblins or whatever with nary a peep about the morality of such; I'm not going to feel guilty about raising one lone objection.

Further, it's a comedy. Monsters acting like typical humans is potentially funny; monsters acting in incomprehensibly alien ways is not.

And more to the point, as I am a vegetarian and strong supporter of animal rights, making the argument that includes the idea that animals are different from us and that's why we're allowed to kill them is not going to hold very much water. It seems that the fact that a duck baby might imprint on an object is part of the reason why you feel they don't deserve rights, but I fundamentally disagree with that position. Yes, including wholly alien evil monsters in a work can prove the "opposite point" from the idea that animals have inherent worth as life forms, and that's a good reason why I don't include them—because I don't ever want to prove that point.

Further, this post is right on target as well (bolding mine):


I suspect that in Rich's case, he does not believe that alien intelligence absolves the mindless slaughter of fantasy monsters. So he presents his monsters with human intelligence because people would otherwise not notice this point. A monster that acts like a monster does not raise any eyebrows, a monster that acts like a human reminds people that these are living, thinking creatures and may cause them to re-examine their views on the more monstrous monsters. The Black Dragon family in OotS is a pretty good example of this, with the child being monstrous (at first blush, at least) and the mother hammering home the point later on in the story.

tl;dr, alien intelligence does not excuse killing monsters because of what they are, but it does conceal the ethical question from most people.

Has anyone ever noticed that nobody ever complains that I don't include peaceful altruistic goblins who are wholly alien in their ability to get along better than we do? No, they always want rampaging monsters who can be killed with impunity. It's always, "Why are you making me feel bad about murder?"

[Morty]

I would also add that it's always goblins and orcs who should be 'alien' instead of 'green skinned humans'. Elves, dwarves and halflings show up in those argments sometimes, but they're just as often, if not more, notably absent - including this thread. In a purely D&D context, "usually Neutral Evil" in the goblin statblock seems to mean, to some people, something wholly different than "usually Chaotic Good" in the elven statblock.

[The Giant]

I would also add that it's always goblins and orcs who should be 'alien' instead of 'green skinned humans'. Elves, dwarves and halflings show up in those argments sometimes, but they're just as often, if not more, notably absent - including this thread. In a purely D&D context, "usually Neutral Evil" in the goblin statblock seems to mean, to some people, something wholly different than "usually Chaotic Good" in the elven statblock.

Also a good point. No one ever complains that Vaarsuvius, Durkon, and Belkar are too humanlike and would be better off portrayed as inhuman alien minds that we can only barely comprehend much less empathize with. It's only the green people that are a problem.

[Reddish Mage]

Great, it's the old, "You're a bigot for not condoning my bigotry," argument.

You can write (or play) non-humans any way you want to; I am not required to do the same. I would much rather deal with the more pressing issue of how we treat the other humans walking around this planet who look or act a little differently from us. When alien intelligences show up and start getting discriminated against, I will be happy to write about those, too. Until then, priorities. There are literally billions of words written in other works about killing orcs or goblins or whatever with nary a peep about the morality of such; I'm not going to feel guilty about raising one lone objection.

Further, it's a comedy. Monsters acting like typical humans is potentially funny; monsters acting in incomprehensibly alien ways is not.


I did not accuse you of the extreme position (disallowing any inhuman characterization of nonhumans in any form of literature or game) but I did claim your comments encourage that characterization that others have pushed.

Anthropomorphic depiction of all the creatures is funny. I love the depiction of outsiders as members of some sort of bureaucracy or corporate hierarchy, Celia as a middle-class 20-something law student, and so on. I think there's something very insightful on the portrayal of goblins and dragons.

I suggest animals have very alien viewpoints and values. I do not opine on animals lacking ethical status (indeed the notion as I think about it sickens me).

My starting point was certain comments in the 918 thread that discrimination of any kind against any sort of sentience for any reason is wrong. That any sort of interaction with nonhumans as anything except individual persons on the basis of equality is lawful evil.

Looking back, I made my points too much in favor of the literature that allows for violent conflict without necessarily offering any analysis or discussion of motives of creatures.

I do not see where I have suggested that the OOTS comics are at fault in how it has depicted its creatures. I certainly do not mean to. I find it insightful, I find it funny, and I love every strip of it.

Edit: In the end there are many varieties of literature that gives various levels of depth in the motives to the creatures it depicts. If you wish to attack escapists struggles between humans and monsters as racists I will not protest. However, I do feel an odd twinge about treating mythological depictions of nonhuman creatures as encouraging racism, and I certainly do not see anything in horror stories that way.

The one thing I really, REALLY want to put an end to, is this claim that any interaction with a sentient creatures, at all, must be done on a purely non-discriminatory basis as if among humans or else be "lawful evil." One does not look a strange vampire in the eye, or date a succubus unless one is really sure this one isn't going to be like some of their peers.

[Solara]

Since elves have been brought up now, does anyone know any good recent fiction that treats them as...well, alien? It seems like now they're at most portrayed as arrogant, stuck up humans, but in the original myths they could be downright unsettling, and the Elder Scrolls (and Dwarf Fortress too I suppose) did a nice job with making some of them fanatical cannibals... :smallbiggrin:

[The Giant]

I suggest animals have very alien viewpoints and values. I do not opine on animals lacking ethical status (indeed the notion as I think about it sickens me).

That's good to know. I think the last paragraph of your post got away from you, then.


My starting point was certain comments in the 918 thread that discrimination of any kind against any sort of sentience for any reason is wrong. That any sort of interaction with nonhumans as anything except individual persons on the basis of equality is lawful evil.

Oh, I totally disagree with that. It could easily be Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Evil even. It depends on the situation.


I do not see where I have suggested that the OOTS comics are at fault in how it has depicted its creatures. I certainly do not mean to. I find it insightful, I find it funny, and I love every strip of it.

You put this thread in the OOTS board, then presented your opinion of how OOTS presents this point, and finally argued why you think that point is wrong. It is very difficult to read that as anything but an implicit criticism. If that wasn't your intent, then it's a communication issue. But not everyone reads every other thread here (especially the Discussion Thread after a while), so if your post needs context from another discussion you should consider presenting it before you begin your thesis.

[The Pilgrim]

im sure in the past when those storys were basically there version of a history book

in the modern world though we have actual history books and actual events we can show our children and explain why some things should or shouldnt be done

Except that History doesn't work that way.

Learning real, actual history is a long and (for most people) boring process (I have a Ph.D in History so I know what I'm talking about). Most people aren't going to go through a 500-page-book just to understand the fluctuation of the price of grain in La Champagne region during the XIII century, for example.

Then comes interpreting History, which is just a subjective process. Two people can learn everything about a particular event and yet come to very different moral conclussions. Most people don't even bother to learn the basics about a particular event before using it to give a moral lesson.

Fiction is a more effective way to drive the point home because:

1) You can present your case straight, without having to bother with the complexity, ramifications, and almost infinite points of view of actual historical facts.

2) No one will invalidate your conclussions because "you got fact X wrong" or "you hand-picked the facts that suited to your perspective and totally ignored this huge lot of facts that did not", or just "you are badmouthing my tribe/country/ideology/religion so la-la-la I'm not hearing you".

3) It's more honest to write an story of Black and White morality than to turn History into a story of Black and White morality.

4) It's shorter and more entertaining.

[Sunken Valley]

Does this mean we can't kill orcs and goblins at all and all the media against it is racist? Even if Sauron is leading an army or they're in the way of Xykon at the dungeon? Does this mean Roy did wrong when he slit all the throats of sleeping goblins (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html)

[The Pilgrim]

Does this mean Roy did wrong when he slit all the throats of sleeping goblins (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html)

Maybe I'm being too bold for suggesting it, but I guess that in Rich Burlew's personal list of "things I regret having done in OOTS", Strip #11 panel #1 ranks rather high.

[Zerter]

I have a Ph.D in History so I know what I'm talking about

What combination of the following is it: Unemployed/Teaching History/Researching History? :smallwink:

[The Giant]

Does this mean we can't kill orcs and goblins at all and all the media against it is racist? Even if Sauron is leading an army or they're in the way of Xykon at the dungeon?

There is a huge difference between a legion of orcs charging at you with swords drawn and a legion of orcs living in a dungeon that you choose to go into. The point is that any decision about killing people should be based on what they are doing/have done, not their species.


Does this mean Roy did wrong when he slit all the throats of sleeping goblins (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html)

Probably. Strictly speaking, those specific goblins hadn't attacked him, and I guess it is theoretically possible that they wouldn't have. He didn't choose to make that distinction before killing them, since he had been attacked by every goblin thus far, so that's probably a black mark on his record. Or maybe they stood there at the door and heard the goblins talking about having killed a bunch of villagers or something.

However, the more accurate assessment is that was strips #11, before there was even the semblance of a plot, and I was far more interested in describing how D&D is played than prescribing how D&D should be played. So it shouldn't be taken as some sort of statement on my part for what is proper behavior.

EDIT:


Maybe I'm being too bold for suggesting it, but I guess that in Rich Burlew's personal list of "things I regret having done in OOTS", Strip #11 panel #1 ranks rather high.

I wouldn't rank it that high, but yeah. All I would really change would be to have the goblins see the OOTS and draw weapons. While you could still make the argument that subsequently killing them in their sleep wasn't lily-white pure, it would be far more in keeping with Roy's character.

[Solara]

What if Sauron's army and Xykon's mooks had been human? They'd be an enemy that needed to be killed just the same, so I'm going with no, not racism.

Roy killing the sleeping goblins has always been an issue, but that was back in the 'joke of the day' days of the strip so I give it a pass.

As far as fantasy racism in general, my take on it has always been that I, as the player/reader/viewer/whatever, sitting there in my air-conditioned home might be able to take the time to ponder the morality of slaughtering goblins, but the character just sees a big scary tower with spikes all over it populated by the same pointy-teethed creatures that slaughter villages every winter and does what comes naturally. Are they bigots? Probably! Just like the goblins themselves, and pretty much every RL historical person of every culture was in one way or another, and still is today. Even when you're self aware about it, I don't think it's possible for the humans to completely logic their way out of irrational fears, especially when the 'Other' has all the same flaws that you do, and is lashing out and perpetuating the cycle in the same way.

[Sir_Leorik]

Does this mean we can't kill orcs and goblins at all and all the media against it is racist? Even if Sauron is leading an army or they're in the way of Xykon at the dungeon? Does this mean Roy did wrong when he slit all the throats of sleeping goblins (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html)

It means that you should not murder Orcs or Goblins because they are Orcs or Goblins. It does not mean that Orcs and Goblins can not be held accountable if they commit an Evil act, such as pillaging, brigandry, slavery or war crimes. However an author (or Dungeon Master) should make clear exactly what the Orcs or Goblins have done to their audience (or Players) and allow the audience to judge if the protagonists are correct to fight the Orcs or Goblins (and a DM should allow the Players to decide what their PCs will do, since PCs have agency, unlike protagonists in a novel or comic book).

Discussing whether Roy was morally justified or not is a violation of the Forum Rules.

[Scow2]

The point of fiction can't be to create things separate from reality, because that's not how human brain works. Readers treat book settings as separate independent realities, use words like "world" and "universe", because human brain is wired to percieve everything it emotionally responds to as "real". What we see in fiction has real impact on our real lifes, that's why books are such a powerful ideological tool. You write a book implying some statement, and if enough people from the same group like the book, they will be much more inclined to agree with the statement as applied to real life. That's how it works.And this is the biggest hole in the "Supported Fantastic Racism is Bad" argument - Just because something is true in a world does not mean it's true in our world. Furthermoer, there is continued confusion between "Games" and "Stories". They are NOT synonymous. And Fiction and Non-Fiction are likewise opposed to each other.

Seriously... a lot of the "People who find it okay to murder goblins for being goblins are evil!" are sounding a lot like Jack Thompson and Patricia Pulling right now.

[Sir_Leorik]

What if Sauron's army and Xykon's mooks had been human?

Sauron's army did have humans. They brought the Mumakils from the south.

[hamishspence]

And when one of them is shot, and dies in front of Sam, we see Sam wondering if this guy really wanted to be there, or if he was made to fight and would have much rather preferred to continue living a normal life.

[The Giant]

As far as fantasy racism in general, my take on it has always been that I, as the player/reader/viewer/whatever, sitting there in my air-conditioned home might be able to take the time to ponder the morality of slaughtering goblins, but the character just sees a big scary tower with spikes all over it populated by the same pointy-teethed creatures that slaughter villages every winter and does what comes naturally. Are they bigots? Probably! Just like the goblins themselves, and pretty much every RL historical person of every culture was in one way or another, and still is today. Even when you're self aware about it, I don't think it's possible for the humans to completely logic their way out of irrational fears, especially when the 'Other' has all the same flaws that you do, and is lashing out and perpetuating the cycle in the same way.

This is very true, but I would point out that the target of my critique is not the people living in a medieval fantasy world—it's the D&D player who lives in the air-conditioned home. I don't care what your D&D character thinks is right or wrong, I care what you think is right or wrong. Whether you then choose to reflect that lesson back into your D&D games is not really my concern.

In other words, it is perfectly acceptable to say, "My D&D character is sort of racist against goblins," and then play the character accordingly. It's not acceptable to say, "My D&D character is not racist against goblins, he just kills them on sight because they're all Evil."

[The Pilgrim]

What combination of the following is it: Unemployed/Teaching History/Researching History? :smallwink:

You forgot "Working at McDonald's" and "getting a second Ph.D in something that actually has career options and now working on it". :smalltongue:

[Scurvy Cur]

Does this mean we can't kill orcs and goblins at all and all the media against it is racist? Even if Sauron is leading an army or they're in the way of Xykon at the dungeon? Does this mean Roy did wrong when he slit all the throats of sleeping goblins (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html)

Nope, it doesn't mean that at all. It just means that if we are killing them because they're orcs or goblins and everyone knows they only exist to be chunks of XP, or because the whole species deserves to die, we are engaging in a very racist rationalization of our actions.

Good fantasy/sci-fi stories don't involve killing the orcs because they're orcs. They involve killing the orcs because the orcs are at the gates of Minas Tirith and want to brutally murder everyone inside. Thus the conflict takes on the moral significance of violence in defense of loved ones/friends/country, rather than casual racism.

What Rich is trying to point out, I think, is that stories should, when confronted with "alien intellects vast, cool, and unsympathetic, regarding this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drawing their plans against us", draw the confrontation not around the fact that the intellects in question are alien, but around the fact that they are unsympathetic and intending to do some horrible things.

Edit: Rich brings up another good point, from the standpoint of a D&D campaign. It is one thing to play a greedy, violent scab of a character, or even an outright villainous one who feels that slaughter and looting are perfectly acceptable ways to line their pockets. It is entirely a seperate matter to be playing a supposedly good character who does this sort of thing while insisting, as a player, that your character is doing nothing evil, because he is only beating up evil creatures.

[zimmerwald1915]

Sauron's army did have humans. They brought the Mumakils from the south.
Offtopic, but "mumakil" is plural. It doesn't need to be further pluralized.

[Amphiox]

Sometimes, monsters are meant to be just that, monsters. They are made to be that way because they are personifications of our fear, have radically different physiology, drives, and brains (if they even have brains) or because they come from their own cultural-framework which simply doesn't value human life (if it even values life). Monsters are this way and they can be appropriately killed (though perhaps not made to suffer needlessly) because that is their role in the story.

Let us drop the question of "sentience" for a moment, and replace "monster" above with "shark".

Is it thus ok to indiscriminately kill every great white shark we see?

Now consider the historically documented craze of shark killing that was inspired by the book and movie Jaws in the 1970's.

Now tell me again that this sort of portrayal in fiction is without real world consequence?

[The Pilgrim]

What if Sauron's army and Xykon's mooks had been human?

Isn't it interesting that Tolkien depicted Sauron's forces as deformed dark-skinned monstrosities who are the result of corrupting the tall white blonde superior race, and his human allies as dark skinned arabic-themed people?

[Amphiox]

And let's go back further into the history of literature, back before the establishment of the modern fantasy genre. Then we see that the "always evil other we can kill without guilt" not infrequently WAS other people. The moors, the muslims, the christians, the germans, and on and on. Or very thinly veiled stand-ins thereof.

When in modern times it gradually became less and less acceptable to do this to actual real groups of human beings, we substituted fantasy creatures in their place.

The unsavory impulses that these portrayals address and satisfy, however, are unchanged.

[Amphiox]

Has anyone ever noticed that nobody ever complains that I don't include peaceful altruistic goblins who are wholly alien in their ability to get along better than we do? No, they always want rampaging monsters who can be killed with impunity. It's always, "Why are you making me feel bad about murder?"

It should be noted that such peaceful altruistic golbins wholly alien in their ability to get along better than humans do exist in fantasy literature.

But when they do, they are usually called "elves".

And sometimes they even have green skin....

[The Giant]

And this is the biggest hole in the "Supported Fantastic Racism is Bad" argument - Just because something is true in a world does not mean it's true in our world.

Every story is about our world, because it is the only world that actually exists. Even if we were to discover another world tomorrow, it would still only be an extension of this world, and all the same moral truths would apply there as well. There is no value to considering the events of a universe that has never existed and will never exist unless it is to reflect upon our own.

This argument is like saying that you would be the greatest football player who ever lived if football involved doing differential calculus while riding a pogo stick. OK, maybe you would be, but so what? That has no bearing on the actual game of football. Maybe you can sit and daydream about it if you want, but the only actually worthwhile point that such a fantasy could have would be what it might illuminate about the actual game in the actual world.

EDIT: Amphiox is on-target here.

[hamishspence]

Isn't it interesting that Tolkien depicted Sauron's forces as deformed black monstrosities who are the result of corrupting the tall white blonde superior race, and his human allies as black skinned arabic-themed people?

Actually, only one group of elves are blond- the Vanyar, and elven families that have intermarried with them.

The vast majority of elves in the LoTR-verse are dark-haired.

[rbetieh]

You can write (or play) non-humans any way you want to; I am not required to do the same. I would much rather deal with the more pressing issue of how we treat the other humans walking around this planet who look or act a little differently from us. When alien intelligences show up and start getting discriminated against, I will be happy to write about those, too. Until then, priorities. There are literally billions of words written in other works about killing orcs or goblins or whatever with nary a peep about the morality of such; I'm not going to feel guilty about raising one lone objection.



I feel like playing Director Lees advocate with this, so bear with me in case I leap a building trying to get to the conclusion...

It seems that we are forgetting a simple fact about humanity, and that is that we have in-bred animal traits just like any other animal. Furthermore, one of the most common of traits in animals is the instinct to protect "us and ours" vs. "them and theirs". It is a need born of necessity, as resources in the wild are often scarce. Darwinians call this survival of the fittest. In any situation where resources are scarce, it is both logical and natural to compete; whether such competition engenders conflict is irrelevant. You have a right to protect yours by whatever means you deem necessary. It's only natural.

Where the moral issue comes in play is when people persist in letting their natural instincts dictate their actions while they live in abundance. Simply put, if there is enough to go around, continually competing over the right to hoard resources is wrong. It is this act that we call abject racism. The problem is, people suffer from the Hedonic cycle, and so see scarcity where there is none.

That being said, in a fantasy setting like this one, scarcity abounds. All of that is abstracted from the player, of course, but is present in the setting. People live in huts, spend their lives in the fields, have to make their own clothes, etc, etc. On top of that, they have to contend with marauding barbarian attacks (be they orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, etc). And this is by design, for in our own world these things happened (with vikings, goths, clan rus, mongols, moors, etc etc etc - all from the point of view of the descendants of the roman empire of course). The fact is fantasy setting creatures are just another set of hat races.

And here comes the kicker. In these settings, there are creatures, living in abundance (kings, liches... black dragons), who don't share. Now who (in story) is being racist?

[Sir_Leorik]

And this is the biggest hole in the "Supported Fantastic Racism is Bad" argument - Just because something is true in a world does not mean it's true in our world. Furthermoer, there is continued confusion between "Games" and "Stories". They are NOT synonymous. And Fiction and Non-Fiction are likewise opposed to each other.

Seriously... a lot of the "People who find it okay to murder goblins for being goblins are evil!" are sounding a lot like Jack Thompson and Patricia Pulling right now.

What about racism in D&D that isn't directed towards non-humans? For example, the Vistani are subject to persecution, and even the Lawful Good monster hunter Dr. Rudolph van Richten hated all Vistani equally, because a single family, from a single tribe was responsible for kidnapping his son Erasmus, and selling him to the Vampire Baron Metus. Dr. van Richten hated the Vistani so much that he unleashed a horde of skeletons and zombies (lent to him by Azalin the Lich) on the camp of the Radanovich family. Decades later, Arturi Radanovich, the last surviving member of the Radanovich family, sought Dr. van Richten out, seeking forgiveness, because the undead were still chasing him! Dr. van Richten was unable to forgive Arturi (who had been a baby when Erasmus was kidnapped), until Arturi took the Doctor to spend time visiting the Vistani, learning about their culture, and even meeting the legendary Madame Eva. Only then could Dr. van Richten recognize his racism, and forgive Arturi, and banish the undead that hunted him.

(See "The Crucible of Rudolph van Richten" from Tales of Ravenloft, and Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani for more details about this story.)

The Giant is using Goblins, Kobolds, Half-Orcs and Lizardfolk, who look much more inhuman than the Vistani, who are humans. But van Richten treated the Vistani with distrust and contempt for decades, and many of the inhabitants of Barovia refrain from harming a Vistana only because they fear the wrath of Count Strahd von Zarovich, a Vampire!

That's not even getting into the works of R.A. Salvatore, and the influence they have had on how Drow are viewed in fantasy games. Without Driz'zt Do'Urden there would probably be no Night Elf PCs in "WoW".

Even fiends and Aberrations can change their Alignments:

In the planar city of Sigil, there is a shop called "The Friendly Fiend", owned by an Arcanoloth (aka Arcanodaemon, aka Ravastra) called A'kin. A'kin claims that he is no longer Neutral Evil, and he acts as an information broker. Before the Faction War, A'kin wrote The Factol's Manifesto, as a way of warning the inhabitants of the Cage about what the higher-ups in their Factions were really up to.

In deep space, in a nearby Crystal Sphere, floats the Rock of Bral. On the Rock is a bar owned and operated by "Large Luigi" a Beholder who has rejected Evil.

Arturi Radanovich, A'Kin the Friendly Fiend and Large Luigi are all from AD&D 2E sources. Driz'zt DoUrden appeared in 1988, towards the end of AD&D 1E. These aren't new concepts in D&D, they're just not popular ones.

[Amphiox]

And here comes the kicker. In these settings, there are creatures, living in abundance (kings, liches... black dragons), who don't share. Now who (in story) is being racist?

That is only an argument for killing SPECIFIC Liches, or regarding specific Liches (or kings, or dragons), as evil, which has never been in contention.

It does not have any relevance on the issue of saying ALL liches (or kings or black dragons) are evil and can be killed without consequence.

[The Giant]

That being said, in a fantasy setting like this one, scarcity abounds. All of that is abstracted from the player, of course, but is present in the setting. People live in huts, spend their lives in the fields, have to make their own clothes, etc, etc. On top of that, they have to contend with marauding barbarian attacks (be they orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, etc). And this is by design, for in our own world these things happened (with vikings, goths, clan rus, mongols, moors, etc etc etc - all from the point of view of the descendants of the roman empire of course). The fact is fantasy setting creatures are just another set of hat races.

And here comes the kicker. In these settings, there are creatures, living in abundance (kings, liches... black dragons), who don't share. Now who (in story) is being racist?

As I said, I am not truly concerned with whether the people living in the fantasy world are or are not racist, because they do not exist. I am concerned with whether we, in the world of relative comfort, can identify whether or not they are being racist.

[Forikroder]

turning your brain off, play DnD, and wallowing in racism and genocide just to enjoy the experience?

it onyl becomes racism and genocide after you make it racism and genocide, until you yourself label it as such its just killing evil monsters who have done actions worthy of getting killed


How does the existence of history books make stories less relevant to modern culture, philosophy, religion, and psychology?

Saying the only purpose of stories should be entertainment is like saying the only purpose of ingesting food should be survival or the only purpose of architecture should be the to find the most cost effective structurally sound building plans.

your comparing apples to oranges

the existance of history books invalidating the neccesity of storys to deliver a message is because its more effecient

if i want to teach my kid not to be racist should i have him read OoTS or should i open a history book and show real world examples of where terrible things ahve happened because of racism?


When you choose not to empathise, it's what is called "dehumanizing". There's nothing wrong with dehumanizing stones, your computer, sky and sun; however, the more you dehumanize and the closer to real people these objects are, the more distant you become from real people too. Do you empathise with the characters of the newspaper article? People who you have never met and are not sure even really exist?

there is a gap between dehumanizing pixels or some thing that literally only exists in my mind and dehumanizing actual humans that is so large you could fit 5 universes in there and have room for a tiki bar

[Sir_Leorik]

As I said, I am not truly concerned with whether the people living in the fantasy world are or are not racist, because they do not exist. I am concerned with whether we, in the world of relative comfort, can identify whether or not they are being racist.

You mean like the Team Peregrine Commander (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0707.html)?

[luc258]

It all comes down that Reddish Mage seems to would like to read a story about alien sentient beings. While there is certainly good literature/comics/movies (District 9 comes to mind) for that, this story is more about how goblins are misstreated by the way they are usually portrayed in D&D, as mere XP-fodder for the players who can be slaughtered on sight without further consideration and it will still count as a good deed.
I would not expect that the OOTS story suddenly changes its fundamental background issue, it might be better to look for a good story that depicts what the OP is looking for in a story.

[SowZ]

except its not (or could be argued as such) racism or genocide. As they are fictional creatures. and -NO MATTER- what they may -REPRESENT- the FACT that they are NOT real creatures NEVER changes.

I would equate looking down on someone for allowing people to kill goblins "because they are goblins" with looking down on someone because they decided to have their character kill another one without a fair trial or any proof the person WOULD threaten them in the future (and just testimony).

Yes it would be reprehensible for the character, but the character did it not the player. and the player is not guilty for the crimes of his character because those crimes are not his crimes. and also the crimes are make believe.
and as such that there is no racism and genocide because the only person committing or feeling that doesnt exist.

the only crime committed is possibly lazy roleplaying or a -game- that doesnt take into account real life morals. I mean i'd love to play in a dark gritty game where we where faced with real life decisions and where deeply attached to our characters. But you cant fault someone for glossing over something irrelevant to the game just because you want damage dealing bags of experience to have some semblance (<--emphasis)of life .

-------------------------------------------

separate from that i'd think that the main line is drawn at creatures that are known to exist only to create evil. That doesnt mean breed for it, or raised to it. As in this thing's was possibly created to commit evil, and that everything that exists about it exists in order to help it commit evil (for instance its ability to love only exists because it allows it to form lasting bonds with kin and protect each other for continued evil, and breed to create more evil monsters).

Such creatures would have to be very special as even upon hatching they would be inclined to make you suffer (or otherwise try to commit what evil acts they are capable.) For instance a larva or baby monster who can only hear when it is born but it knows that whatever it hears wants to make suffer.

And most creatures in any books i've read aren't like that.

I do think that in one dragonlance book we saw that Black dragons really where evil. We only got perspective from a black dragon weeks after it hatched so the big final question would be when it became sentient and how it felt then. But at the end of the story we saw that it was only using the children as a form of protection and that it was satisfied when it found its new home that when he was big enough he would be able to subjugate the surrounding area. And that the only reason it allowed the humans to live is so their families wouldnt go hunting for him. Basically this baby dragon was extremely evil with no other nurture than a girl who risked her life to save it.


Also, i need to interject that Sentient does not mean telling right from wrong. its self awareness or "able to perceive or feel things." or basically not just seeing something but understanding it.

So you can have a person who is completely evil and would only do something "good" for evil reasons (probably it being something that benefited him) but still be actually sentient.

not to mention that inability to determine good from evil being sentience, means that alot of humans aren't sentient.....

And a book about killing all brunettes wouldn't be genocide, but just because something isn't real doesn't mean it's right.


it onyl becomes racism and genocide after you make it racism and genocide, until you yourself label it as such its just killing evil monsters who have done actions worthy of getting killed



your comparing apples to oranges

the existance of history books invalidating the neccesity of storys to deliver a message is because its more effecient

if i want to teach my kid not to be racist should i have him read OoTS or should i open a history book and show real world examples of where terrible things ahve happened because of racism?


there is a gap between dehumanizing pixels or some thing that literally only exists in my mind and dehumanizing actual humans that is so large you could fit 5 universes in there and have room for a tiki bar

You may as well say we should all speak lobjan because it is more efficient. Maybe you don't use stories or literature to examine real issues or let fiction change your thinking. But if you think humanity as a whole lives that way you are dead wrong. The vast majority of people can see stories and literature as more than just entertainment. Whether or not you can or can't is hardly relevant to most others. Saying "I don't get anything out of stories except entertainment" doesn't change that there are seven billion other people who do.

[Forikroder]

And a book about killing all brunettes wouldn't be genocide, but just because something isn't real doesn't mean it's right.

that depends entirely on the scenario in the book, is it a book about people who just hate all brunettes and go on a crusade to wipe them out? then yes thats wrong

is it a book about the only humans who are Brunette come from a certain region known for being bloodthirsty brutal murderers? thats a grey area

is it a book about microspic aliens who invade human bodys, turn there hair brunette (and only infected humans are Brunettes) and these aliens spend there time working on summoning there demon god who will wipe out all humans and the only possible way to remove the aliens is to kill the host? then looks like thats not wrong


You may as well say we should all speak lobjan because it is more efficient. Maybe you don't use stories or literature to examine real issues or let fiction change your thinking. But if you think humanity as a whole lives that way you are dead wrong. The vast majority of people can see stories and literature as more than just entertainment. Whether or not you can or can't is hardly relevant to most others. Saying "I don't get anything out of stories except entertainment" doesn't change that there are seven billion other people who do.

but the problem is that noone SHOULD i feel the world would be a better place if ones moral compass is calibrated based on whats real not whats imagined

also a global language standard would help everyone feel the world as one large community instead of many fractured ones

[zimmerwald1915]

is it a book about microspic aliens who invade human bodys, turn there hair brunette (and only infected humans are Brunettes) and these aliens spend there time working on summoning there demon god who will wipe out all humans? then looks like thats not wrong
...never go work for the CDC. :smalleek:

[Grey Watcher]

As I said, I am not truly concerned with whether the people living in the fantasy world are or are not racist, because they do not exist. I am concerned with whether we, in the world of relative comfort, can identify whether or not they are being racist.

I think part of the issue is the mental habits we cultivate. Sure, saying that all dragons or goblins or whatever are evil in their very nature has no immediate and direct bearing on the real world, because there are no dragons or goblins to suffer because of these assumptions. But it seems to me a very short distance from making assumptions about a fictional people because of their outward physical characteristics to making assumptions about real people because of their outward physical characteristics. So why not take the few extra panels, sentences, or whatever to specify why the protagonists should kill these particular goblins or dragons, instead of just making "guilty until proven innocent" implicit in their nature? (Those reasons might be moral, tactical, personal, political, pragmatic, or whatever, but unless the character's a sociopath, he really should have a reason for killing.)

[The Giant]

I missed this earlier until it was just quoted:


except its not (or could be argued as such) racism or genocide. As they are fictional creatures. and -NO MATTER- what they may -REPRESENT- the FACT that they are NOT real creatures NEVER changes.

I would equate looking down on someone for allowing people to kill goblins "because they are goblins" with looking down on someone because they decided to have their character kill another one without a fair trial or any proof the person WOULD threaten them in the future (and just testimony).

Yes it would be reprehensible for the character, but the character did it not the player. and the player is not guilty for the crimes of his character because those crimes are not his crimes. and also the crimes are make believe.
and as such that there is no racism and genocide because the only person committing or feeling that doesnt exist.

the only crime committed is possibly lazy roleplaying or a -game- that doesnt take into account real life morals. I mean i'd love to play in a dark gritty game where we where faced with real life decisions and where deeply attached to our characters. But you cant fault someone for glossing over something irrelevant to the game just because you want damage dealing bags of experience to have some semblance (<--emphasis)of life .

The crime, such as it is, occurs when the people who roleplayed those actions then say, "And that character is Good." When they take those events and rather than saying, "Yeah, my character is a real piece of dog****, but I have fun playing him," they say, "My character is a hero." When they transfer the lessons of the game into their metagame analysis of it. Because that's when the fourth wall is broken and the stuff that happens in your game affects the real world.

If you want to play a psychopath who kills orcs because they're orcs, awesome. Good for you, have fun. But don't write, "Good," on your character sheet. Or "Neutral." And don't expect me to write a 900+ page story condoning it.

[Toper]

And here comes the kicker. In these settings, there are creatures, living in abundance (kings, liches... black dragons), who don't share. Now who (in story) is being racist?
If you're painting worlds for us where every black dragon is greedy, you are, a little bit, even if you didn't intend it that way. At least, that's a good part of what the Giant wants to convey (and I agree completely with him, Amphiox, etc.).

Other than that, I think you've wandered away from the question of racism quite completely. Inequality is a rather different discussion.

[zimmerwald1915]

Other than that, I think you've wandered away from the question of racism quite completely.
I agree. Particularly when discussing kingship (i.e., political power and class domination) in a society, the topic has drifted from being necessarily about race.

[Lombard]

Personally, the only literary merits that I care about are whether or not the story entertains and interests me. In the context of OoTS the author has used anthropomorphization to both make me laugh and make me think. Other stories I've enjoyed have achieved entertainment and interest in different ways. I'm not really clear on why exactly it matters how the author achieves that within the context of the universe he's created.

Anyways I generally find that people who worry much about what other people enjoy as a diversion have an excess of idle time on their hands.


Who do you empathise with more - Roy Greenhilt or Adolph Hitler?

Really lol? By the 2nd page?

[Forikroder]

I missed this earlier until it was just quoted:



The crime, such as it is, occurs when the people who roleplayed those actions then say, "And that character is Good." When they take those events and rather than saying, "Yeah, my character is a real piece of dog****, but I have fun playing him," they say, "My character is a hero." When they transfer the lessons of the game into their metagame analysis of it. Because that's when the fourth wall is broken and the stuff that happens in your game affects the real world.

If you want to play a psychopath who kills orcs because they're orcs, awesome. Good for you, have fun. But don't write, "Good," on your character sheet. Or "Neutral." And don't expect me to write a 900+ page story condoning it.

but what if they only say that "my character is good" based on the assumption that every goblin/orc they kill was evil and entirely deserving of being killed despite them the player not spending the time to ensure that for every single goblin/orc they kill?

why cant they just take DnD as just a form of entertainment without spending so much time mulling over the moral implications in a made up fantasy game? as long as they dont let the ideas in the game invade in there thinkings of real life wheres the problem with turning your brain off and just enjoying playing a game?

[SowZ]

but what if they only say that "my character is good" based on the assumption that every goblin/orc they kill was evil and entirely deserving of being killed despite them the player not spending the time to ensure that for every single goblin/orc they kill?

why cant they just take DnD as just a form of entertainment without spending so much time mulling over the moral implications in a made up fantasy game? as long as they dont let the ideas in the game invade in there thinkings of real life wheres the problem with turning your brain off and just enjoying playing a game?

Because its physically impossible to not let it affect you at all. The same areas of the brain trigger when you imagine playing golf or actually play golf. If one person never plays golf, one plays it in their head, and one plays it for real, there will usually be a wider skill gap between the guy who doesn't play and the guy who plays in his head than between the guy who plays in his head and the guy who plays for real.

[The Giant]

there is a gap between dehumanizing pixels or some thing that literally only exists in my mind and dehumanizing actual humans that is so large you could fit 5 universes in there and have room for a tiki bar

There is not even so much as a hair's breadth between them. One leads to the other in a continuous spectrum.


If you're painting worlds for us where every black dragon is greedy, you are, a little bit, even if you didn't intend it that way. At least, that's a good part of what the Giant wants to convey (and I agree completely with him, Amphiox, etc.).

Yes, exactly. It's important to remember that every fantasy world was invented by a human, and they made every decision that went into that world. Saying, "Those black dragons are greedy," is really just a way of saying, "That author made those black dragons greedy."


Other than that, I think you've wandered away from the question of racism quite completely. Inequality is a rather different discussion.

Agreed. And one we shouldn't have here, as it is inherently political.

[Grey Watcher]

but what if they only say that "my character is good" based on the assumption that every goblin/orc they kill was evil and entirely deserving of being killed despite them the player not spending the time to ensure that for every single goblin/orc they kill?

why cant they just take DnD as just a form of entertainment without spending so much time mulling over the moral implications in a made up fantasy game? as long as they dont let the ideas in the game invade in there thinkings of real life wheres the problem with turning your brain off and just enjoying playing a game?

If they're aware of this dissonance, and really are up to the task of compartmentalizing, then yes, in theory there isn't a problem. But if you're not mulling over the moral implications of the game, what are the odds that you're introspective enough to catch the bad habits you might be picking up from in-game thinking? Maybe I'm just more impressionable than most, but I think it's definitely worth underscoring the ugly assumptions behind a lot of D&D for no other reason than to make sure people know to keep them at arm's length.

[The Giant]

why cant they just take DnD as just a form of entertainment without spending so much time mulling over the moral implications in a made up fantasy game?

Why am I obligated to indulge them in their ignorance? If that's what they want to do, I can't stop them. But I'm free to express my feelings that what they are doing is harmful, and I choose to express those feelings with a lengthy stick figure webcomic. As this is a free society, you have an equal right to express the opposing view in your own works of fiction.

If you don't want to be subjected to my viewpoint, stop reading things I write.


as long as they dont let the ideas in the game invade in there thinkings of real life wheres the problem with turning your brain off and just enjoying playing a game?

Because it is literally impossible. Anyone who thinks that they can perfectly segregate their experiences in this manner is just fooling themselves.

[Forikroder]

Because its physically impossible to not let it affect you at all. The same areas of the brain trigger when you imagine playing golf or actually play golf. If one person never plays golf, one plays it in their head, and one plays it for real, there will usually be a wider skill gap between the guy who doesn't play and the guy who plays in his head than between the guy who plays in his head and the guy who plays for real.

so your saying people who paly violent video games will inevitably become murderers?


Why am I obligated to indulge them in their ignorance? If that's what they want to do, I can't stop them. But I'm free to express my feelings that what they are doing is harmful, and I choose to express those feelings with a lengthy stick figure webcomic. As this is a free society, you have an equal right to express the opposing view in your own works of fiction.

If you don't want to be subjected to my viewpoint, stop reading things I write.

im not saying its wrong for you to express your viewpoint (or even that your viewpoint is wrong), even if i only looked at this thread its obvious that its neccesary for people to bring up this topic, but why should how i enjoy playing the game be demonized jsut because other people have a hard time seperating fact from fiction?

[Kish]

but what if they only say that "my character is good" based on the assumption that every goblin/orc they kill was evil and entirely deserving of being killed despite them the player not spending the time to ensure that for every single goblin/orc they kill?
Then the player, not the character, somehow does not realize that that grotesque assumption is invalid.

[Forikroder]

Then the player, not the character, somehow does not realize that that grotesque assumption is invalid.

what if the DM ensures that every goblin that the chracter the person is playing was an evil monster and deserves to be killed and the palyer jsut relys on his character knowing that without him knowing it personally?

why am i not allowed to play a game and jsut enjoy it without spending so much time comtemplating the moral question?

[King of Nowhere]

While intelligence is hard to define, almost all definitions include the ability to learn. Any intelligent creature can learn, and therefore can learn to respect human life.

Of course, physiology or pre-existing culture can make teaching a non-human intelligence to respect human life impractically difficult. So if you want a story where humans are in the midst of an effectively unresolvable conflict with an species of non-human intelligences, such a story is certainly reasonable. But suggesting that an intelligence is unalterably evil, rather than that we lack the ability to alter it, fails to recognize a key element of intelligence.

It is quite old in this discussion, but I want to say I appreciated that a lot. So yes, an intelligent creature cannot be "always evil". they may be at war with us for any kind of reason, they may have an evil culture that makes them our enemies (but be wary of what you define as "evil culture"), but labeling an intelligent race "always evil" is in my opinion a clear contradiction in terms.

Then, there's also what someone call escapism. Sometimes you just want to have some fun and you know it's not real so you don't care. I played civilization a lot, I made war for fun, I launched atomic bombs against my enemies or I pillaged their fields to make them starve, and I had no reason for it except that they were controlled by the other player. I put cities to the torch, leveled them and slaughtered the population just because I didn't like their position and wanted to resettle them in a slightly different place.
Of course I would never do that in real life. I do it because I know it's just fiction, those lives are just numbers into my laptop's CPU. and not numbers like a fully fledged matrix-like artificial intelligence, simply a few bytes telling how much inhabitants has the city and what kind of production it gets for that.

So, there are stories made for escapism, and stories made with some deeper ideas. I see nothing wrong in either of them. I certainly would never criticize a player of D&D for saying "this is the kind of campaign where we just kill stuff, because I like to roll the dice and not have to think about it. Yes, of course in real life it would be wrong, but this is just a game". Also, nothing wrong in trying to apply real-life morals to the game. I actually prefer that kind of campaigning. Trying to apply real-world morale to the fiction and failing horribly instead is another thing.
It's not that a semi-sentient race cannot be wholly evil. The orcs in LotR are the most known example, but my favourites are the koloss in mistborn, or the trollocs in the wheel of time. in all those cases, however, they weren't fully intelligent creatures. they didn't really have free will. that makes a difference. So it all depends in the way they are characterized. In D&D monsters are characterized just as humans, but evil. Like that, for no reason. they are evil because they like it, now stop asking question and kill them. I see that not much as racism, but as sloppy characterization :smallwink:
Anyway, the more I try to delve into the problem, the more complicated it appears. there are many shades between the "story with a meaning" and the "I know it's not real and I just want to have some fun and see some action". I'm just going to end now.

One last point about roy killing the goblins in strip 11: those goblins were incapacitated, but they were enemy combatants. they would have attacked the oots once they had woken up. tieing them was out of the table, some other goblin would have passed and free them. taking them prisoner was out of the question, they had no way of doing so. basically, it was not nice, but those goblins had to be killed in col blood. in war such things happen. if they were humans it would have been the same. If I were forced into that situation in real life, I may consider breaking their knees so that they'll never be able to fight against me again, but they will have almost normal lives - and before judging me, consider the alternatives. But with magical healing, that's also out of the question. there was no way to avoid those same goblins trying to kill the order the day after except killing them there.

[The Giant]

why should how i enjoy playing the game be demonized jsut because other people have a hard time seperating fact from fiction?

Because living in a society with free expression means that other people have a right to voice their opinion, even if that opinion is that you are wrong. If you want to argue that they are incorrect, do so, but don't argue that they don't have a right to demonize whatever they want to demonize according to their own feelings on the subject. As a society, we permit people who have far more odious opinions than this one the right to express them.

Your problem is that you not only want to play the way you want to play, you want to be insulated from anyone else saying anything that may make you feel bad about it. Well, too bad. You can have the first, but not the second.

[Scurvy Cur]

but what if they only say that "my character is good" based on the assumption that every goblin/orc they kill was evil and entirely deserving of being killed despite them the player not spending the time to ensure that for every single goblin/orc they kill?

why cant they just take DnD as just a form of entertainment without spending so much time mulling over the moral implications in a made up fantasy game? as long as they dont let the ideas in the game invade in there thinkings of real life wheres the problem with turning your brain off and just enjoying playing a game?

Because killing people on an assumption that they have probably done something to deserve it is not a good act. At best, you can say it is one of those unsavory evil things that neutral characters sometimes do.

A good character doesn't need to verify the history of every opponent he or she faces, mind, because there are other reasons (tactical and strategic considerations, self defense, etc) for them to decide that violence is the only solution to the problem. But assuming that stuff deserves to die and then killing it with no evidence supporting your assumption is definitely not a good act, and we are wrong to try and justify it as such.

[Kish]

what if the DM ensures that every goblin that the chracter the person is playing was an evil monster and deserves to be killed and the palyer jsut relys on his character knowing that without him knowing it personally?

why am i not allowed to play a game and jsut enjoy it without spending so much time comtemplating the moral question?
It's not a matter of "not allowed to." You are free to play whatever characters you please, and as Rich just said, you won't even get any argument here if you say, "But I like playing horrible racists." You clearly choose to debate the moral questions, and argue insupportably that horrible racists are not in fact Evil in D&D. Right here and right now.

If your only case for your past genocidally racist characters being Good is, "But I liked the way Good looked on their character sheets better than the way Evil would have looked," and yet you're choosing to debate the matter anyway, if you want to detect my sympathy, I hope you brought your scanning electron microscope.

[The Giant]

why am i not allowed to play a game and jsut enjoy it without spending so much time comtemplating the moral question?

I don't think the word allowed means what you think it means.

[Reddish Mage]

That's good to know. I think the last paragraph of your post got away from you, then.

Yes, the problem is what is this "non-person treatment" and when is it kosher. I could have meant that objectification of sentient creatures to have the same ethical status as dolls, but what I mean is that there is a variety of kosher treatments of nonhuman creatures in literature, sometimes meaning it is proper to treat them in alien ways. That could mean simply as strange and different beings (as in the Speaker of the Dead trilogy), it could mean as wonderful or even superior beings (as in good faeries or gods), and it could also be as deadly menaces that must be dealt with (as in various horrific creatures). Star Trek episodes contains examples of all three types. There are episodes were god-like beings bestow favors, there are aliens that learn to live with their differences, there are times when the crew is suddenly confronted by hostile threats.

You (the Giant) actually have a problem with at least certain sorts of depictions of the latter. Treating living, thinking beings as deadly menaces, as greedy, as nasty, as sadistic, leads inevitably to the conclusion that we can kill these creatures.

Putting aside these threatening aliens, in cases of dealing with the wonderful or the strange beings, the nonhumans are often still being treated as nonhuman. I propose that in dealing with nonhuman beings of specially nonhumanlike intelligence, there are always differences, and these can be depicted and dealt with on that basis that they are beings of different sentients in the absence of encouraging Racism or Orientalism or Colonialism.

The question then remains about what to do when raising the possibility of the threatening kind of intelligent creature. What remains kosher, what is racist? Do we only dislike creatures that are thinly portrayed as killable just because they are ugly and happen to be located in someone's long abandoned dungeon? OR Do we feel that it is inappropriate to introduce a type of dragon that tends to be unbelievably greedy, selfish, and suspicious? Perhaps there something wrong with categorizing anything with any intelligence as having such tendencies. Or are we simply against the automatic label of every dragon as greedy because that is how they are always portrayed?

Goblins in D&D and Tolkien (not in mythology), are basically humans with some ability score modifiers and maybe darkvision or something, and I can understand why you would say that these creatures shouldn't have an alignment tendency. I personally see no problem with goblins having one, but I agree that a usually alignment is a pretty thin justification for an automatic death sentence. I also think that goblins, by virtue of being so close to humans, are particularly well suited for a downtrodden ugly duckling treatment and its one in this particular instance I applaud.

However, I think there are also interesting issues in dealing with the ethical ramifications of dealing with a species that tends towards evil but only as a usual tendency (not to mention figuring out what that even means; "evil" is such a vague and pejorative word). This could be fodder for a different type of game. If I recall there was a 2nd Edition sourcebook called Creative Campaigning which suggested a dilemma in which the PCs encounter the orc children after killing the adults and are thus forced to find a way to take care of the kids. The supplement, again if I recall, suggested the kids were likely to become evil when they grow up, but also mentioned they were likely to go after the PCs for what they did!

When it comes to creatures that are magical, that come from other planes of existence, that are living embodiments of concepts, or are descendants of gods, I do not see the point in forbidding others in taking the creative license to give such creatures highly negative or positive traits as a category (with various levels of how common those traits are).

The question I have is not, can the Giant take creatures that are historically depicted a certain way and give them a different treatment including personifying them. The question is, to what extent does the OOTS, its author, and the forumites who say they are with him on this one, are appropriately condemning the tendencies in other works of literature, not just the "turn off the brain for a few hour" type but classical works as well.

[Sir_Leorik]

Because living in a society with free expression means that other people have a right to voice their opinion, even if that opinion is that you are wrong. If you want to argue that they are incorrect, do so, but don't argue that they don't have a right to demonize whatever they want to demonize according to their own feelings on the subject. As a society, we permit people who have far more odious opinions than this one the right to express them.

Your problem is that you not only want to play the way you want to play, you want to be insulated from anyone else saying anything that may make you feel bad about it. Well, too bad. You can have the first, but not the second.

I don't think the correct term is "demonize". Patricia Pulling demonized D&D players; you are criticizing a specific way that players are approaching the game. I think that's a crucial distinction (and one that I think forikroder may not recognize). Otherwise I agree with your point: Players have the right to run through dungeon crawls killing anything that moves for XP, and you are entitled to criticize them for that style of playing.

Forikroder, no one is demonizing anyone, but if the criticism of your play style is making you feel bad, maybe the criticism is more valid than you want to acknowledge?

[Forikroder]

Because living in a society with free expression means that other people have a right to voice their opinion, even if that opinion is that you are wrong. If you want to argue that they are incorrect, do so, but don't argue that they don't have a right to demonize whatever they want to demonize according to their own feelings on the subject. As a society, we permit people who have far more odious opinions than this one the right to express them.

Your problem is that you not only want to play the way you want to play, you want to be insulated from anyone else saying anything that may make you feel bad about it. Well, too bad. You can have the first, but not the second.

i understand that it is there opinion, that they think i am wrong jsut because i play DnD this way, but isnt demonizing me for playing DnD this way being just as racist as someone who kills a goblin because its a goblin saying i must be racist because i choose not to fret over morals in a fictional universe?

just because someone plays violent games doesnt mean there going to become violent

[The Giant]

When it comes to creatures that are magical, that come from other planes of existence, that are living embodiments of concepts, or are descendants of gods, I do not see the point in forbidding others in taking the creative license to give such creatures highly negative or positive traits as a category (with various levels of how common those traits are).

I generally have a much more lenient position on explicitly magical beings like demons. Even though I still choose to treat them with human feelings and drives, I am less critical of works that don't. Simply because, as you say, there could be some utility in that, at least theoretically.


The question I have is not, can the Giant take creatures that are historically depicted a certain way and give them a different treatment including personifying them. The question is, to what extent does the OOTS, its author, and the forumites who say they are with him on this one, are appropriately condemning the tendencies in other works of literature, not just the "turn off the brain for a few hour" type but classical works as well.

I would say that this sort of fantasy is still a relatively recent development in terms of literature, and roleplaying games even more so...and as a result, we're at the stage where some viewpoints still need to be expressed just for the sake of getting them out there to be considered. It's too early to say, "But what effect does this expression have?" when the overwhelming tendency is still to go the other way.

It's important to remember that OOTS exists largely as a criticism of D&D, and D&D swings 95% the other way—and is getting worse, not better. I've been looking at the 4e Monster Manual while working on the monster minis for Kickstarter, and almost every single entry starts with, "These monsters are horrible killers who rape and pillage for fun!" or some such. This is the foremost mainstream work in the field of Fantasy Roleplaying Games. No matter how many readers OOTS gets, more people will read the Monster Manual. My position, therefore, is intended as the counterpoint to the overwhelmingly prevailing view in the hobby. So I'm not trying to portray a balanced view because the view is already imbalanced. I'm trying to shift it back to the middle.

[The Giant]

i understand that it is there opinion, that they think i am wrong jsut because i play DnD this way, but isnt demonizing me for playing DnD this way being just as racist

No. It isn't. ......

[hamishspence]

I've been looking at the 4e Monster Manual while working on the monster minis for Kickstarter, and almost every single entry starts with, "These monsters are horrible killers who rape and pillage for fun!" or some such.

Indeed. While some of the splatbooks do paint certain monsters in a better light (usually ones that make those monsters available as PCs) - that's splatbooks, not the main book.

[Scurvy Cur]

so your saying people who paly violent video games will inevitably become murderers?

Wow, way to put words in people's mouths and totally miss their point in the process. What they are saying is not that people who play violent games become violent themselves. They are saying that there is a fundamental difference between engaging in violent games and saying "yeah, my character is a jerk and that's part of the fun" and engaging in them and saying "my character is a great human being because all the people he just hurt probably had it coming". In the case of the former, we acknowledge violent escapism for what it is, and acknowledge that it's fun. In the latter, we obscure the violent escapism and thereby sidestep making the very firm mental disconnect between the pixel violence and our own real morality. The former is pretty harmless. The latter suggests that we have missed a step or two in the formation of our understanding of right and wrong.

[Porthos]

just because someone plays violent games doesnt mean there going to become violent

The only person bringing up this argument on this thread is you. No one else has said the same even by implication.

By the same token if you are going to deny that art can shape and influence popular and individual opinion, you have about 12,000 years of human history to argue against.

[Kish]

i understand that it is there opinion, that they think i am wrong jsut because i play DnD this way, but isnt demonizing me for playing DnD this way being just as racist
...You're under the impression that "people who play genocidal 'good' racists in D&D" are a race now, Forikroder?

[Grey Watcher]

Yes, the problem is what is this "non-person treatment" and when is it kosher. I could have meant that objectification of sentient creatures to have the same ethical status as dolls, but what I mean is that there is a variety of kosher treatments of nonhuman creatures in literature, sometimes meaning it is proper to treat them in alien ways. That could mean simply as strange and different beings (as in the Speaker of the Dead trilogy), it could mean as wonderful or even superior beings (as in good faeries or gods), and it could also be as deadly menaces that must be dealt with (as in various horrific creatures). Star Trek episodes contains examples of all three types. There are episodes were god-like beings bestow favors, there are aliens that learn to live with their differences, there are times when the crew is suddenly confronted by hostile threats.

You (the Giant) actually have a problem with at least certain sorts of depictions of the latter. Treating living, thinking beings as deadly menaces, as greedy, as nasty, as sadistic, leads inevitably to the conclusion that we can kill these creatures.

Putting aside these threatening aliens, in cases of dealing with the wonderful or the strange beings, the nonhumans are often still being treated as nonhuman. I propose that in dealing with nonhuman beings of specially nonhumanlike intelligence, there are always differences, and these can be depicted and dealt with on that basis that they are beings of different sentients in the absence of encouraging Racism or Orientalism or Colonialism.

The question then remains about what to do when raising the possibility of the threatening kind of intelligent creature. What remains kosher, what is racist? Do we only dislike creatures that are thinly portrayed as killable just because they are ugly and happen to be located in someone's long abandoned dungeon? OR Do we feel that it is inappropriate to introduce a type of dragon that tends to be unbelievably greedy, selfish, and suspicious? Perhaps there something wrong with categorizing anything with any intelligence as having such tendencies. Or are we simply against the automatic label of every dragon as greedy because that is how they are always portrayed?

Goblins in D&D and Tolkien (not in mythology), are basically humans with some ability score modifiers and maybe darkvision or something, and I can understand why you would say that these creatures shouldn't have an alignment tendency. I personally see no problem with goblins having one, but I agree that a usually alignment is a pretty thin justification for an automatic death sentence. I also think that goblins, by virtue of being so close to humans, are particularly well suited for a downtrodden ugly duckling treatment and its one in this particular instance I applaud.

However, I think there are also interesting issues in dealing with the ethical ramifications of dealing with a species that tends towards evil but only as a usual tendency (not to mention figuring out what that even means; "evil" is such a vague and pejorative word). This could be fodder for a different type of game. If I recall there was a 2nd Edition sourcebook called Creative Campaigning which suggested a dilemma in which the PCs encounter the orc children after killing the adults and are thus forced to find a way to take care of the kids. The supplement, again if I recall, suggested the kids were likely to become evil when they grow up, but also mentioned they were likely to go after the PCs for what they did!

When it comes to creatures that are magical, that come from other planes of existence, that are living embodiments of concepts, or are descendants of gods, I do not see the point in forbidding others in taking the creative license to give such creatures highly negative or positive traits as a category (with various levels of how common those traits are).

The question I have is not, can the Giant take creatures that are historically depicted a certain way and give them a different treatment including personifying them. The question is, to what extent does the OOTS, its author, and the forumites who say they are with him on this one, are appropriately condemning the tendencies in other works of literature, not just the "turn off the brain for a few hour" type but classical works as well.

I think it also stems from what "Usually Evil" means. Putting it in the statblock does imply that it is an inborn tendency, which I think is really just wrong (and kinda lazy writing). If you want a stronghold or even a nation of corrupt and decadent Goblins, that's fine, but then it's a matter of nurture, not nature (although the bigger the group, the less probable it is that every single member is going to be like the majority and/or leadership). And even then wickedness of the Goblins of the Iron Mountain shouldn't mean that all goblins everywhere else in the world should be regarded as naturally reflecting that same depravity. People within the setting might think so, sure, but those of us outside, creating the setting should strive to know better.

As for the explicitly supernatural (angels, demons, the undead, the divine, etc.), I'm not sure what to think on that score, really, but it does hinge on if their supernatural nature affects their free will, and if so, to what degree. (If an angel is literally incapable of an act of Evil to the same degree that humans are incapable of stopping their own hearts as an act of will... well, what the heck does that even mean?)

[Porthos]

...You're under the impression that "people who play genocidal 'good' racists in D&D" are a race now, Forikroder?

I usually let that pass in these debates since I know what the poster meant to type (bigoted, or prejudiced [though I reserve the right to remind the correct term on occasion :smallwink:]).

And the answer still is: No, it is not.

[hamishspence]

As for the explicitly supernatural (angels, demons, the undead, the divine, etc.), I'm not sure what to think on that score, really, but it does hinge on if their supernatural nature affects their free will, and if so, to what degree. (If an angel is literally incapable of an act of Evil to the same degree that humans are incapable of stopping their own hearts as an act of will... well, what the heck does that even mean?)

D&D has a long-standing tradition of "fallen angels"- so that level of "incapability of acts of Evil" doesn't seem to be standard.

[Jasdoif]

...but isnt demonizing me for playing DnD this way being just as racist as someone who kills a goblin because its a goblin saying i must be racist because i choose not to fret over morals in a fictional universe?Criticism of your choices as an individual is not racist.

That's the key difference; believing a goblin should be killed simply for being a goblin requires denying they have the capability of individual choice. It's not like a goblin chooses to be a goblin, after all.

[Ewig Custos]

One simple question. Why are goblins/orcs being hated and hunted, in your opinion?

[The Giant]

Indeed. While some of the splatbooks do paint certain monsters in a better light (usually ones that make those monsters available as PCs) - that's splatbooks, not the main book.

That's usually the result of looser editorial control on less important parts of the game line, and/or freelancers who don't always toe the company line.

I would say that the portrayal of nonhumans peaked in late 2e with Planescape, a setting almost entirely devoted to the idea that beliefs and actions were more important than where you came from. 3e mostly wiped that out, but didn't specifically tack against earlier moral complexity, and Eberron was sort of ingenious in the way it threw out all assumptions (though again, those ideas came from outside the company). 4e seemed determined to put monsters back in the place of video game bad guys to be killed for XP, with no thought given to how they may live or what role they might have in the universe beyond serving as specific tactical obstacles. It's sort of appalling, actually. And I don't have high hopes for 5e on that front, but I will wait and see before saying anything.

[Scurvy Cur]

The only person bringing up this argument on this thread is you. No one else has said the same even by implication.

By the same token if you are going to deny that art can't shape and influence popular and individual opinion, you have about 12,000 years of human history to argue against.

Spot on.

We are right to criticize Merchant of Venice for its portrayal of Shylock, for example, because it helped to reinforce a deeply harmful and dehumanizing social prejudice that was common in western ciilization for the longest time (and is still viewed as acceptable by some people in current times). It does not matter that Shylock was a fictional character who never actually existed. A message reinforcing a stereotype was still communicated to audiences of the play which served to confirm their harmful prejudices as justified.

[Grey Watcher]

D&D has a long-standing tradition of "fallen angels"- so that level of "incapability of acts of Evil" doesn't seem to be standard.

True, but that also brings angels back down towards humans on the scale of "how alien is this being's thought process". If an angel can fall, then that means that they have free will and can choose, which in turn implies their Evil counterparts (demons and devils) can do so similarly, which starts to bring us back to "can they really be said to have an inborn alignment"?

Like I said, I'm not sure what to think, and it does depend heavily on how much influence the supernatural part of their nature has on what they say and do and think. :smallconfused:

[hamishspence]

The origin stories for various Outsiders vary a lot. Some are said to be "spawned from the plane" - effectively the plane buds a bit of its material off, which takes the form of that outsider.

Others are made from the souls of mortals who died with the same alignment as the plane.

What determines their starting alignment, may not preclude them having freewill and the ability to choose to change.

[Morty]

Outside of D&D, I would say that the idea of presenting the traditional 'monster races' as actual people has gained ground recently. But it's not like I've done research on that, so I could be off-base here. It could be I've been paying more attention lately than I used to.

[Reddish Mage]

I'm not trying to portray a balanced view because the view is already imbalanced. I'm trying to shift it back to the middle.

Indeed, there is no need to "balance" the view in the comic, which I think is already pretty middle of the road and not heavy-handed in depiction of its creatures. The alignment tendencies of D&D exist in-comic, they're just a bit muted by a more common "human," or person, element.

The theme of the thread was not that Alien Intelligences belongs in OOTS, I don't presume to suggest story improvements*, its that it belongs somewhere, just not everywhere.

*More Aarindarius!

[The Giant]

The origin stories for various Outsiders vary a lot. Some are said to be "spawned from the plane" - effectively the plane buds a bit of its material off, which takes the form of that outsider.

Others are made from the souls of mortals who died with the same alignment as the plane.

What determines their starting alignment, may not preclude them having freewill and the ability to choose to change.

There's also the point that published D&D is expressly not consistent on points like this, either because of multiple authors with multiple interpretations or because the game is trying to be all things to all people. A lot of things that show up in game manuals are there because they want players to have every possible option to choose from.

Or, more cynically, if your first book tells them that all monsters are evil, later you can sell them a second book telling them how they aren't and you can play one now.

[Poppatomus]

Man, this thread picked up some steam.


The mention of "video game bad guys" reminds me of something that I think has been lost a bit in this discussion. The focus has been on the extent to which the creatures are alien, but I think that a big part of the issue isn't just the alien-ness of the creatures, but the alien-ness of killing in the D&D, and by extension OoTS universe.

Describing whole races as having some universal moral character raises a host of moral issues, which many choose to ignore, but part of the reason they choose to ignore it is because they're in a world where the way to "advance" is, in effect, exclusively through killing (unlike in the real world) and where the repercussions of killing are, in fact, quite alien (at least for powerful beings like black dragons.

In a sense, the more you nuance the "usually evil" races, the more you sharpen the contrast between a world where the gods are ever present and active, and where ones afterlife is as well understood as one's time on the mortal coil, and our own world.

I've always been one of those morally conflicted D&D players, trying not to kill and finding myself in campaigns where everything was shaded, as in OoTS. But, I wonder if I underestimate the effect on morality of the metaphysics of an OoTS like universe, where death is no undiscovered country.

Or, to put it another way. Say that you gained XP in D&D/OoTS not by killing, but by consuming the soul of the NPCs you kill. Do you think that would effect the number of people who were comfortable with treating races as "always chaotic evil?"

[King of Nowhere]

It's important to remember that OOTS exists largely as a criticism of D&D, and D&D swings 95% the other way—and is getting worse, not better. I've been looking at the 4e Monster Manual while working on the monster minis for Kickstarter, and almost every single entry starts with, "These monsters are horrible killers who rape and pillage for fun!" or some such. This is the foremost mainstream work in the field of Fantasy Roleplaying Games. No matter how many readers OOTS gets, more people will read the Monster Manual. My position, therefore, is intended as the counterpoint to the overwhelmingly prevailing view in the hobby. So I'm not trying to portray a balanced view because the view is already imbalanced. I'm trying to shift it back to the middle. (emphasis mine)

While I agree with you on mostly everything, I have to disagree with that specific point. overstating your argument to meet in the middle is a good strategy when bargaining. when arguing, sometimes it works, but sometimes it makes you seem like an extremist and will undermine your position.
On the other hand, I don't think the oots is overstating anything. if the goblins were portraied as perfect givers of peace injustly persecuted, then it would be an unbalanced view. they aren't. their conflict with humans is portraied, I believe in a much realistic way, like many generation-long feuds, where both sides perceive they are the wronged ones, and every attack they received was totally vicious and unprovoked, while every one they launched was in response to some previous action of war. I find this view to be a very balanced one.
And like you I'm also quite bugged with the
"These monsters are horrible killers who rape and pillage for fun!" lines; as I said, it's not as much racism as sloppy characterization and worldbuilding to me. If they really want to say "it's ok to kill these creatures just for their looks" they could at least be creative about it. there are many ways that could be done that would make it acceptable enough. For exammple saying that those creatures have a long standing hatred with humans, and since your character is human, he's expected to side with his kin and kill those monsters simply because they are the enemy in a war...

[Scurvy Cur]

Indeed, there is no need to "balance" the view in the comic, which I think is already pretty middle of the road and not heavy-handed in depiction of its creatures. The alignment tendencies of D&D exist in-comic, they're just a bit muted by a more common "human," or person, element.

The theme of the thread was not that Alien Intelligences belongs in OOTS, I don't presume to suggest story improvements*, its that it belongs somewhere, just not everywhere.

*More Aarindarius!

And on this last point I would agree. In circumstances where the purpose of the story is to demonstrate people overcoming some sort of explicit threat to their existence, it can often serve to have that threat be alien and implacable. But the focus of the story then lies on the danger posed by this threat, and the hero or heroes working to end the threat are doing so for virtuous reasons such as to forestall the death and suffering of thousands of people.

The problem comes up when the story moves from being an examination of the virtuous reasons the heroes are facing danger to being an fun and frolicsome romp through a host of things-which-look-different-from-us for murder and profit and then tells us that the protagonists are behaving heroically.

And that last becomes an issue in D&D a lot.

[Reddish Mage]

(emphasis mine)

While I agree with you on mostly everything, I have to disagree with that specific point. overstating your argument to meet in the middle is a good strategy when bargaining. when arguing, sometimes it works, but sometimes it makes you seem like an extremist and will undermine your position.
On the other hand, I don't think the oots is overstating anything. if the goblins were portraied as perfect givers of peace injustly persecuted, then it would be an unbalanced view. they aren't. their conflict with humans is portraied, I believe in a much realistic way, like many generation-long feuds...

Recall the "middle-ground" we are speaking about here is between "having human motivations and reasons for actions" and "their evil just because, roll initiative." The middle-ground is actually about portraying the goblins as having inhuman motivations and characteristics.

Edit: I claim OOTS qualifies due to the fact that alignment tendencies seem to appear in comic, if muted. OOTS has gone the anthropomorphic path to the hilt, even in regards to its Outsiders.

[The Giant]

And like you I'm also quite bugged with the lines; as I said, it's not as much racism as sloppy characterization and worldbuilding to me. If they really want to say "it's ok to kill these creatures just for their looks" they could at least be creative about it.

Well, yes, that too. One monster that just wants to murder everyone so you might as well kill them first is a creative decision; a book full of them is an attempt at dodging the issue.

That said, I think there is more of a problem with players taking that book and then using it as the justification for an unfortunate moral stance than there is with the fact that the book skews that way in the first place. Wizards clearly doesn't want to have that conversation and puts out products that reflect that, which is their right. We, as players, are responsible for our own use of those products, and perhaps whether we want to support Wizards.

I would love to see some thought and balance go into the 5e position on nonhuman creatures, but I've been party to the company thought process in the past and I do not expect to see it. So I choose to focus on the public.

[Sir_Leorik]

That's usually the result of looser editorial control on less important parts of the game line, and/or freelancers who don't always toe the company line.

I would say that the portrayal of nonhumans peaked in late 2e with Planescape, a setting almost entirely devoted to the idea that beliefs and actions were more important than where you came from. 3e mostly wiped that out, but didn't specifically tack against earlier moral complexity, and Eberron was sort of ingenious in the way it threw out all assumptions (though again, those ideas came from outside the company). 4e seemed determined to put monsters back in the place of video game bad guys to be killed for XP, with no thought given to how they may live or what role they might have in the universe beyond serving as specific tactical obstacles. It's sort of appalling, actually. And I don't have high hopes for 5e on that front, but I will wait and see before saying anything.

Technically, Planescape came out in mid-2E (1994), and followed Spelljammer and The Complete Book of Humanoids, which allowed a wide range of non-humans as playable races. The Complete Book of Humanoids is a bit of a step back from Spelljammer, since they presented "humanoids" as barely civilized creatures, even in cases where they were explicitly as civilized (or more so) than Humans, Elves or Dwarves (eg. Swanmay, Saurials, Ogre Magi).

3.X tried to eat it's cake and have it too, with Savage Species, Monster classes, ECLs, etc., which allowed some monster PCs, but at the cost of having a sub-sub-optimal PC.

As for 4E, methinks you bear it a lot of unearned malice. Beginning with Monster Manual 2 (a Core Rulebook, not a splatbook) the monster descriptions changed direction from "how to fight this", to "what this creature is like". In Monster Manual 3 (also a Core Rulebook) each monster gets a paragraph or more, introducing what it's like, sometimes giving an example of what an encounter with such a creature is like for its victims. In 4E Humans got tossed back into the Monster Manuals, and the Monster Manual Humans are some of the most vicious monsters in 4E. :smallbiggrin:

Furthermore, in 4E Players always have the option of not killing an opponent. Fighting an Orc with a sword move? You hit him with your hilt knocking him out. Firing an arrow at a Goblin? The arrow hits in a non-vital location, but the Goblin passes out from shock. Cast Thunderwave at a bunch of Minions? You just knock them out, like a Jedi using Force Slam against Stormtroopers. Wildshaped into a panther and cast a daily power that describes ripping out throats? Their throats are fine. Cast Fireball at a room full of 8th Level Minions? Um, they're fine, they're just resting their eyes... :smalltongue:

By contrast, how many 3.X players have their PCs use non-lethal damage, or bind the wounds of their enemies?

[Grey Watcher]

...

By contrast, how many 3.X players have their PCs use non-lethal damage, or bind the wounds of their enemies?

I do, actually. I think our DM thought I was nuts.

[Sir_Leorik]

I do, actually. I think our DM thought I was nuts.

Because you took a -4 penalty to hit, or because of the cost of bandages? :smallconfused:

[Grey Watcher]

Because you took a -4 penalty to hit, or because of the cost of bandages? :smallconfused:

Oh, the bandages. This is a fun little all-specialist-Wizard game we're running so it's not like any of us can AFFORD a to-hit penalty. Plus, our DM is pretty lax about non-magical gear.

Still, 3.5 does make it actively difficult to avoid killing. Which might not be so bad, if the system weren't so heavily focused on combat to begin with.

[hamishspence]

I do, actually. I think our DM thought I was nuts.

While our party wasn't exactly merciful toward enemies- we did tend to assume "Not an enemy unless clearly hostile". Sometimes this involved chatting with monsters found in prison cells in dungeons and freeing them- flameskulls, sorrowsworn, ogres, etc.

[pendell]

Reading this thread reminds me of the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mongoose/rtt.html). Rikki fights a war against cobras who infest an Indian bungalow. During the battle, he comes across the female cobra's clutch of eggs. He smashes them all.

Why not? Should he wait until they grow up and are capable of fighting back or of taking humans with them when they're put down? The best time to deal with that kind of threat is when it's in the egg.

Does it make a difference that they can speak? Well, no. This is an animal tale. And the fundamental nature of a cobra doesn't change because it has higher intelligence than in real life -- it's still a threat, and it's still going to be a danger to humans at any stage of life.

Does that mean that it's okay to hunt humans and kill them in the egg the same way it is cobras? The answer is no. Humans are not cobras. Humans can be good or evil and they can change. Cobra's don't.

Nor does it make sense to say "I will judge a cobra not by the lack of its legs but by the content of its character" . When you're dealing with animals like rats or cobras or mice or cockroaches, the individual differences are so minor , as far as humans are concerned, that such a comparison is pointless. Creatures of this sort can be judged by type.

So ... how will I treat goblins and orcs? It depends on the kind of world I'm in. If I'm in Rich Burlew's world, where goblins are essentially another brand of human with a different shade of skin, then I would treat them as I would any other human -- not to be engaged unless in immediate self-defense or if they are in an enemy army.

If I'm in Tolkien's world , or a similar world, where orcs are essentially a living zombie created because the author needs a stand in for human enemies, I will slaughter them.

And if there is any doubt AT ALL of which kind of world it is, I will err on the side of treat them as human until categorically proven otherwise. In fact, it might be worth doublechecking that it really is a type 2 world and not just taking the fluff as gospel. It may turn out that goblins really ARE "human" -- or perhaps the DM can be persuaded it is so.

I will, say, however, I prefer a world where goblins are beings with whom one can dialog and reason rather than worlds where they are simply organic zombies. But there I suspect Rich and I are both swimming against the tide -- it seems to me D&D is catering to the preteen and teen war game market, and the point is to give them enemies to kill without guilt. I'll betcha the current zombie craze would never have happened if it were still permissible in polite society to treat living beings as zombies. And who knows what we'll target when zombies are humanized? Maybe some kind of sentient bacteria?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[The Giant]

As for 4E, methinks you bear it a lot of unearned malice. Beginning with Monster Manual 2 (a Core Rulebook, not a splatbook) the monster descriptions changed direction from "how to fight this", to "what this creature is like". In Monster Manual 3 (also a Core Rulebook) each monster gets a paragraph or more, introducing what it's like, sometimes giving an example of what an encounter with such a creature is like for its victims. In 4E Humans got tossed back into the Monster Manuals, and the Monster Manual Humans are some of the most vicious monsters in 4E. :smallbiggrin:

Wizards labeling something a Core Rulebook does not make it so. It's just a marketing technique to try to get you to think their latest product is essential.

And really, that just confirms what I'm saying: The further you get from the initial experience, the more leniency they give to nonhumans—either because they're looking to cater to the players who were turned off by the earlier approach, or because they open it up to freelance writers. But I don't think any of us would be surprised if the sales of the 4e Monster Manual 1 outweighed the sales of MM2 and MM3 combined, and then some. Suffice to say there's not a single person who purchased MM3 who hadn't been exposed to MM1 first.


Furthermore, in 4E Players always have the option of not killing an opponent.

Let's not turn this into an edition war. I'm not speaking about the way the game plays, I'm talking about the text of the books. Of course you can do those things, but that doesn't mean the actual words on the page don't go out of their way to make you feel like the monsters probably don't deserve it.

[pendell]

Actually, my last post brings up a question: What kind of people, on average, sit down to play D&D?

Are they people who want to roleplay encounters with nonhuman sentients? People who thrive on adventure and on exploration? People who enjoy setting up diplomatic solutions and resolving problems with nonviolence?

Or is the game primarily a wargame? A game for young teens who don't care about any of that and are bored and antsy unless they're actually killing something?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[hamishspence]

Reading this thread reminds me of the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mongoose/rtt.html). Rikki fights a war against cobras who infest an Indian bungalow. During the battle, he comes across the female cobra's clutch of eggs. He smashes them all.

Why not? Should he wait until they grow up and are capable of fighting back or of taking humans with them when they're put down? The best time to deal with that kind of threat is when it's in the egg.

Does it make a difference that they can speak? Well, no. This is an animal tale. And the fundamental nature of a cobra doesn't change because it has higher intelligence than in real life -- it's still a threat, and it's still going to be a danger to humans at any stage of life.

Does that mean that it's okay to hunt humans and kill them in the egg the same way it is cobras? The answer is no. Humans are not cobras. Humans can be good or evil and they can change. Cobra's don't.

Nor does it make sense to say "I will judge a cobra not by the lack of its legs but by the content of its character" . When you're dealing with animals like rats or cobras or mice or cockroaches, the individual differences are so minor , as far as humans are concerned, that such a comparison is pointless. Creatures of this sort can be judged by type.

Even within the Jungle Book-verse, individual animals can vary. Some wolves are villains, some heroes.

Rikki is there to keep cobras away from humans- but he doesn't go out and try and hunt down every cobra that exists- since he's a defender, not an aggressor.

[Reverent-One]

Or is the game primarily a wargame? A game for young teens who don't care about any of that and are bored and antsy unless they're actually killing something?

For the record, there are plenty of people not young teens that just game to sit back and play the game, which in the case of D&D, primarily involves killing things.

[Lord Raziere]

I've never seen DnD as a world of alien intelligences. OOTS seems exactly the kind of world DnD would turn out to be to me, aside from the narrative causality, genre savviness and no fourth wall.

now, lovecraftian stuff or Eclipse Phase, thats alien intelligence. alien intelligences generally have to be completely different in both body and mind for them to be truly alien, just the mind and all you have is an insane human, just the body and you have a human in an alien body.

me? I don't see how a human mind in a body deviating from baseline human like an orc, is a bad thing. an orc is just a human with green skin, more muscles some tusks and probably a warrior culture. not much different from humans in real life, so I don't see why people are so insistent upon keeping them as evil savages.

as for "turning your brain off" oh gag me. there is already something called turning your brain off, its sleep. you may not realize it, but your brain is working and learning even if you play beer and pretzels style. its not learning the way you used to, your not using your brain the usual way, but your still using it. you use it every single second of every single waking moment in your life. social interaction, emotions and so on take energy and brainpower to expend as well. your not turning off anything.

[The Giant]

Actually, my last post brings up a question: What kind of people, on average, sit down to play D&D?

Are they people who want to roleplay encounters with nonhuman sentients? People who thrive on adventure and on exploration? People who enjoy setting up diplomatic solutions and resolving problems with nonviolence?

Or is the game primarily a wargame? A game for young teens who don't care about any of that and are bored and antsy unless they're actually killing something?

For Wizards, I'm pretty sure the answer is, "Whichever one is willing to give us more money today." Hence the incoherence between different products and editions.

Right now, I think the company skews to the latter, perhaps because they think the former doesn't need every splatbook to play the game. And as Mencken said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

[King of Nowhere]

Actually, my last post brings up a question: What kind of people, on average, sit down to play D&D?

Are they people who want to roleplay encounters with nonhuman sentients? People who thrive on adventure and on exploration? People who enjoy setting up diplomatic solutions and resolving problems with nonviolence?

Or is the game primarily a wargame? A game for young teens who don't care about any of that and are bored and antsy unless they're actually killing something?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

It depends. every group is different. I doubt statistics are avaialble on how many plays he kick the door style

[Sir_Leorik]

Let's not turn this into an edition war.

It's a bit late for that. :smallannoyed:


I'm not speaking about the way the game plays, I'm talking about the text of the books. Of course you can do those things, but that doesn't mean the actual words on the page don't go out of their way to make you feel like the monsters probably don't deserve it.

I really don't get that impression from Monster Manual 1. Monster Manual 1 provides a bare-bones framework for DMs to use. That's it. Unlike the AD&D Monster Manual, the 2E Monstrous Compendium/Manual, or the 3.X Monster Manual, there is very little text devoted to the habits, habitat, diet, culture, or whatever, of the monsters. You were correct when you wrote that they are treated like tools, because that's all they are: tools for the DM to use. If the DM wants to flesh the Goblins out, give them a culture, a society and motivations, he can do that. If the DM just wants some Goblins to use in a stray combat encounter, she can do that too. DMG 1 gives the DM a few hints about the former and goes into detail about the latter. (Personally I think that both approaches are fine, but I prefer the former.)

[pendell]

It depends. every group is different. I doubt statistics are avaialble on how many plays he kick the door style


SOMEBODY must keep those records, for marketing purposes if for no other. Why else would wizards be pushing so hard for the combat mechanics, as Rich chronicles, at the expense of moral complexity and ambiguity? If I were a stakeholder charged with paying for a new edition, I'd want to see charts and graphs and studies showing there would be a measurable increase in sales from making this change before plunking down the money for a new edition.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Poppatomus]

Why not? Should he wait until they grow up and are capable of fighting back or of taking humans with them when they're put down? The best time to deal with that kind of threat is when it's in the egg.

Does it make a difference that they can speak? Well, no. This is an animal tale.

[snip]

I'll betcha the current zombie craze would never have happened if it were still permissible in polite society to treat living beings as zombies. And who knows what we'll target when zombies are humanized? Maybe some kind of sentient bacteria?


I think this is somewhat contradictory. I don't think you can say that the Cobras being able to speak changes nothing, and then later speculate about what would happen if zombies (by definition mindless killing machines without humanity) were humanized that might make them different.

I am not that your overall position is contradictory, but I think the contradiction there raises a point at the core of this discussion. The issue is that the Cobra in RTT (a great story) aren't really alien intelligences, because in order to understand them, to make them interesting as enemies, the story has to anthropomorphize them, and in doing so it invariably raises the question of whether, rather than stealing those eggs, RTT might have been better off raising the Cobras.

I think that the most useful analogy here is the one that the Giant hinted at earlier in the thread: vegetarianism. We think it's alright to devour animals not because of anything a particular animal did, but because of what animals are and our decision that, because of what they are, they lack moral agency.

By contrast, in a story, a villain that lacks moral agency isn't a villain, it's a mudslide. (or a zombie, or a golem). To play it any other way, as a civilization that can speak, make art, live on its own, etc . . . but is also invariably nothing but killers is trying to have your bacon and befriend it, too.

[Reverent-One]

SOMEBODY must keep those records, for marketing purposes if for no other. Why else would wizards be pushing so hard for the combat mechanics, as Rich chronicles, at the expense of moral complexity and ambiguity? If I were a stakeholder charged with paying for a new edition, I'd want to see charts and graphs and studies showing there would be a measurable increase in sales from making this change before plunking down the money for a new edition.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

That's probably done via checking sales numbers. If crunch-heavy books sell better than fluff-heavy books, that means more mechanics and numbers for everyone!

[AKA_Bait]

I generally agree with the Giant on this one but I did want to chime in on one point regarding alien intelligences with incomprehensible, or at least very difficult to broach, thought processes and motivations. Intellectual otherness, as opposed to physical otherness, can also be a good storytelling tool to combat or condemn racism and bellicosity. I'm reminded of Joe Halderman's Forever War

wherein a war lasting generations starts because of an inability to communicate and continues for generations because of the time lag of space travel and the assumptions made by later generations.

In other words, aliens with an alien intelligence can be a good tool to demonstrate that simply because you cannot understand another entity does not mean that they aren't a sentient creature entitled to rights and fair treatment. We shouldn't forget that many of the historical justifications for racism found fertile ground in the allegedly different intellectual capabilities of repressed peoples.

For the record, I do not consider not taking this angle a weakness of the comic. OotS has its own, very effective approach to this real world issue. Because the Giant is right that the issue rears its head often in gaming and literature (also fantasy computer based RPGs), this approach and choice of medium is extremely effective.


Still, 3.5 does make it actively difficult to avoid killing. Which might not be so bad, if the system weren't so heavily focused on combat to begin with.

I think the mechanics there actually influence play also. Taking prisoners once the mook bad guys are at zero or negative health almost never happens in the games I've played and, consequently, means that the DM can't or doesn't (because it's pointless and we all have limited time) plan on having those bad guys be more than bags of xp rather than people after a while. That creates a "no real value of life" circle for all of the npc/monsters that aren't obviously plot-critical.


I've never seen DnD as a world of alien intelligences. OOTS seems exactly the kind of world DnD would turn out to be to me, aside from the narrative causality, genre savviness and no fourth wall.


Not a fan of Aboleths and Mindflayers then eh?


That's probably done via checking sales numbers. If crunch-heavy books sell better than fluff-heavy books, that means more mechanics and numbers for everyone!

That strikes me as a very inaccurate measure though. I've bought splatbooks for crunch, for fluff, and just because I was bored, DMing at the time, and thought I might see something that I could use.

[CoffeeIncluded]

Personally I feel that if you want a game or section of a game where you want to knock some heads without feeling bad about what you're killing, you should use monsters. And when I say monsters, I mean actual nonsentinent ravenous rabid beasts that have no social or moral structure, nothing but instincts, but still a massive danger to society. And I feel that if you're going to make the cannon fodder a group of sentiment creatures, you should make it clear that this group does not represent the norm for that race.

My brother plays a lot of Call of Duty and other Fpses (I prefer rpgs). One of the online modes he plays with his friends is a game where you do nothing but shoot nazi zombies. Nazi zombies are the perfect "Mindless killing" cannon fodder because nobody feels bad about killing nazis, and nobody feels bad about killing zombies because they're specifically mindless. At the same time, they're not representative of humanity. If they were and you were encouraged to now them down without thinking about it, then you'd have a huge controversy on your hands.

Yet many dms and players view the evil orcs and goblins and whatever as representative of their entire race instead of clearly outside the norm.

I have to thank you, Rich. I don't think I would have sat right with the always chaotic evil notion present and encouraged in many dnd games (which you and this forum have introduced me to, so thanks!). But you encouraged me to protest more loudly, to press the Dm as to whether or not he considers the orcs we fight to be representative of all orcs. And you and your comic helped to encourage and solidify my decision to completely toss racial alignment in my game. And one of the major themes in my game is the prejudice between races, compounded by the cultural pressures of immigrating to a new land.

So thank you.

[The Giant]

It's a bit late for that. :smallannoyed:

No, it's not. This isn't about a ruleset, and I honestly could not care less about the rules attached to these concepts. I only mentioned editions to highlight the fact that these ideas have not always been what was put forward. I'm not going to engage you over the rules because I do not care about them.


I really don't get that impression from Monster Manual 1. Monster Manual 1 provides a bare-bones framework for DMs to use. That's it. Unlike the AD&D Monster Manual, the 2E Monstrous Compendium/Manual, or the 3.X Monster Manual, there is very little text devoted to the habits, habitat, diet, culture, or whatever, of the monsters. You were correct when you wrote that they are treated like tools, because that's all they are: tools for the DM to use. If the DM wants to flesh the Goblins out, give them a culture, a society and motivations, he can do that. If the DM just wants some Goblins to use in a stray combat encounter, she can do that too. DMG 1 gives the DM a few hints about the former and goes into detail about the latter. (Personally I think that both approaches are fine, but I prefer the former.)

OK, let's pull out the first sentence of some monster descriptions. No demons or anything, just regular natural humanoids:

"Gnolls are feral, demon-worshipping marauders that kill, pillage and destroy. They attack communities along their borders without warning and slaughter without mercy, all in the name of their demon lord Yeenoghu."

"Goblins are wicked, treacherous creatures that love plunder and cruelty."

"Hobgoblins live for war and bloodshed, killing or enslaving creatures weaker than themselves. More aggressive and organized than their goblin and bugbear cousins, they see all other creatures as lesser beings to be subjugated..."

"Creatures of stone and rock, earth giants are mean, uncouth, territorial monsters that often enslave smaller, weaker creatures."

"Minotaurs are fierce, bull-headed monsters that worship demons and enslave and plunder weaker creatures."

Yes, the whole book is bare bones. But the only bits of flesh hanging on those bones are the ones that paint them as Acceptable Targets.

[AKA_Bait]

Yet many dms and players view the evil orcs and goblins and whatever as representative of their entire race instead of clearly outside the norm.

It's slightly more than that too, though. The core rulebooks identify these races as "usually" or "always" evil. i.e., the bad ones are the norm in the fluff of the "default setting."

[pendell]

And when I say monsters, I mean actual nonsentinent ravenous rabid beasts that have no social or moral structure, nothing but instincts, but still a massive danger to society. And I feel that if you're going to make the cannon fodder a group of sentiment creatures, you should make it clear that this group does not represent the norm for that race.


And the problem I have with this is that nonsentient ravenous rabid beasts aren't interesting enemies. They do not pose the kind of threat an intelligent, organized enemy poses. The Most Dangerous Game (http://archive.org/stream/TheMostDangerousGame_129/danger.txt).

The enemy who attacked Azure City is MUCH more interesting when it is led by an intelligent, skilled commander with plausible motivations such as Redcloak, as well as by soldiers who do more than simply shuffle mindlessly forming drooling "braiiinnnnsss".

Of course, when you start making an enemy of that class of intelligence, I think you also have to start bringing in moral ambiguity. Why SHOULD an intelligent, rational creature such as Redcloak be attacked on sight rather than reasoned with? Is it really necessary that greenskins and palefaces kill each other for no better reason than they've always done it?

I think the Giant is right about this -- I don't think you can introduce an enemy with human complexity and intelligence without also introducing the possibility of dialog, of some level of interaction beyond mere brute force. After all, a big difference between Redcloak and the mice I mentioned earlier is that Redcloak can reason. And doesn't the fact that you're fighting a reasonable enemy imply that you should at least TRY reason before killing them all? If it's at all feasible?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Kish]

Reading this thread reminds me of the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mongoose/rtt.html).
I don't think I can really talk about Kipling here without falling foul of the no-politics ban, so I'll just say that while I could perceive Kipling grabbing for all my heartstrings by making Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's side also the side of not only the humans but all non-snake animals in the story...

...it didn't really make me feel anything, even as a child. That is, I accepted the premises of the story while reading the story, just as I would have had the story been told from one of the snakes' point of view and been about their heroic struggle against the invading humans and their vicious mongoose. And I reached the end, and I was glad that the hero had triumphed, don't get me wrong. And then I put it away. I took no moral lessons from it; it's not the kind of work I would try to generalize to anything else.

[Reverent-One]

That strikes me as a very inaccurate measure though. I've bought splatbooks for crunch, for fluff, and just because I was bored, DMing at the time, and thought I might see something that I could use.

If the differences are close, you'd be right. On the other hand, if there are large differences in book sales, it would be much more obvious.

[CoffeeIncluded]

It's slightly more than that too, though. The core rulebooks identify these races as "usually" or "always" evil. i.e., the bad ones are the norm in the fluff of the "default setting."

Exactly. And if the people who play didn't encourage it, then the rulebooks would stop posting it.


And the problem I have with this is that nonsentient ravenous rabid beasts aren't interesting enemies. They do not pose the kind of threat an intelligent, organized enemy poses. The Most Dangerous Game (http://archive.org/stream/TheMostDangerousGame_129/danger.txt).

The enemy who attacked Azure City is MUCH more interesting when it is led by an intelligent, skilled commander with plausible motivations such as Redcloak, as well as by soldiers who do more than simply shuffle mindlessly forming drooling "braiiinnnnsss".

Of course, when you start making an enemy of that class of intelligence, I think you also have to start bringing in moral ambiguity. Why SHOULD an intelligent, rational creature such as Redcloak be attacked on sight rather than reasoned with? Is it really necessary that greenskins and palefaces kill each other for no better reason than they've always done it?

I think the Giant is right about this -- I don't think you can introduce an enemy with human complexity and intelligence without also introducing the possibility of dialog, of some level of interaction beyond mere brute force. After all, a big difference between Redcloak and the mice I mentioned earlier is that Redcloak can reason. And doesn't the fact that you're fighting a reasonable enemy imply that you should at least TRY reason before killing them all? If it's at all feasible?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

And if you can't, don't make it an entire race. For instance, have the players face down a group of slavers of mixed race.

I suppose I was being a bit extreme when I said no social structure. Wolves have social structure, and being chased by a pack of monsters that hunt like wolves would be an interesting encounter. I should have said culture and civilization.

[Scurvy Cur]

Actually, my last post brings up a question: What kind of people, on average, sit down to play D&D?

Are they people who want to roleplay encounters with nonhuman sentients? People who thrive on adventure and on exploration? People who enjoy setting up diplomatic solutions and resolving problems with nonviolence?

Or is the game primarily a wargame? A game for young teens who don't care about any of that and are bored and antsy unless they're actually killing something?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I would add another group in there to which I belong which is not represented in the list:

People that enjoy the sort of collaborative storytelling that RP in a setting with a campaign plot but few restrictions on where that plot can go involves. That's what good RP is, essentially a collaborative story in which every character, PC and NPC alike brings something to the table. The D&D system provides an arbitration framework for that collaborative effort, to put the various characters' strengths and weaknesses down in numerical form so that conflicts can be resolved in a system that everyone at the table has accepted.

[AKA_Bait]

If the differences are close, you'd be right. On the other hand, if there are large differences in book sales, it would be much more obvious.

I guess I just don't agree with that. I would actually think that the marketing and packaging would account for the overwhelming majority of the difference in book sales. More, I expect that some types of splatbook will always sell better than others because they are usable mid-campaign. Additional Monster Manuals are immediately useful for a DM. A book creating a new campaign setting or adding a bunch of additional classes may not be able to be used right away. I know that I had a pension, back when I bought WotC books, to pick up things like monster manuals and items/spell compendiums first for that reason.


Exactly. And if the people who play didn't encourage it, then the rulebooks would stop posting it.

I'm not so sure about that. I think that new players especially fall into the "must follow the fluff" mindset and it never even occurs to them that something is off. You know, unless they read OotS.:smallcool:

[pendell]

"Gnolls are feral, demon-worshipping marauders that kill, pillage and destroy. They attack communities along their borders without warning and slaughter without mercy, all in the name of their demon lord Yeenoghu."
"Goblins are wicked, treacherous creatures that love plunder and cruelty."
"Hobgoblins live for war and bloodshed, killing or enslaving creatures weaker than themselves. More aggressive and organized than their goblin and bugbear cousins, they see all other creatures as lesser beings to be subjugated..."
"Creatures of stone and rock, earth giants are mean, uncouth, territorial monsters that often enslave smaller, weaker creatures."
"Minotaurs are fierce, bull-headed monsters that worship demons and enslave and plunder weaker creatures."


With all due respect to the authors, this reads like something out of a propaganda sheet, the kind they give to soldiers when they're trying to pump them up and kill people. As opposed to the kind of writeup that you might give, to , say, diplomats who were being assigned to serve in another country.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[The Giant]

"Also known as sea devils, sahuagin are vicious sea dwellers that share many traits with sharks. They slaughter and devour anything they catch, raiding costal settlements in the dead of night."
"Salamanders reside in the fiery regions of the Elemental Chaos. They are greedy and cruel creatures, quick to rob or enslave weaker folks."
"Quicklings are swift, wicked fey that kill other creatures for food, treasure, or sport."
"Orcs worship Gruumsh, the one-eyed god of slaughter, and are savage bloodthirsty marauders. They plague the civilized races of the world..."
Not the first sentence, but: "Ogres are cruel, bloodthirsty, greedy, and gluttonous..."

In fact, it seems like the worst, most reprehensible descriptions are reserved for the humanoids that aren't pretty. Demons start out with, "In their many and varied forms, demons are living engines of annihilation. They embody the destructive forces of chaos. All things tend to decay into entropy, but demons exist to hurry that process along."

So demons get a more objective even-handed portrayal in their first sentence of their place in the world than orcs.

[Reverent-One]

I guess I just don't agree with that. I would actually think that the marketing and packaging would account for the overwhelming majority of the difference in book sales.


More, I expect that some types of splatbook will always sell better than others because they are usable mid-campaign. Additional Monster Manuals are immediately useful for a DM. A book creating a new campaign setting or adding a bunch of additional classes may not be able to be used right away. I know that I had a pension, back when I bought WotC books, to pick up things like monster manuals and items/spell compendiums first for that reason.

Aren't these two thoughts contradictory? If it's nearly all marketing and packaging, then the type shouldn't matter. I agree with the second thought myself, which is what I was getting at. If certain types sell better, the company is going to make more of those types and less of the others.

[King of Nowhere]

SOMEBODY must keep those records, for marketing purposes if for no other. Why else would wizards be pushing so hard for the combat mechanics, as Rich chronicles, at the expense of moral complexity and ambiguity? If I were a stakeholder charged with paying for a new edition, I'd want to see charts and graphs and studies showing there would be a measurable increase in sales from making this change before plunking down the money for a new edition.

Respectfully,

Brian P.
On the other hand, culture, organization and stuff like that is something you can always make up as dm, while gameplay mechanics are not. so it's ok that they would just set stats and let you create the world.
in fact, that's exactly how i used the monster manual. I always completely ignored everything they said in the monster description if it didn't suit me.

[The Giant]

With all due respect to the authors, this reads like something out of a propaganda sheet, the kind they give to soldiers when they're trying to pump them up and kill people. As opposed to the kind of writeup that you might give, to , say, diplomats who were being assigned to serve in another country.

Because that's exactly what it is. It's a blatant statement of, "You don't have to worry about the moral repercussions of killing these things. They're evil, now roll initiative." It's a clear indication that the writers of that book felt that the appropriate way to play their game was to dispense with such concerns in one sentence, and then get on with the fun.

The fact that it gets more over-the-top the closer you get to something that could look or act human is very telling.

[Kish]

With all due respect to the authors, this reads like something out of a propaganda sheet, the kind they give to soldiers when they're trying to pump them up and kill people. As opposed to the kind of writeup that you might give, to , say, diplomats who were being assigned to serve in another country.

Respectfully,

Brian P.
I remember reading an analysis online that quoted the--I think Second Edition--monster writeup of goblins and the one of elves, and then pointed out that, in essence, the quoted descriptions said exactly the same thing, that the species in question was given to stealth and guerilla tactics. Only, for the elves, this was presented as about how "quick" and "clever" and "at home in the wilderness" they were, whereas for the goblins, it was presented as how "vile, treacherous and cowardly" they were.

[CoffeeIncluded]

With all due respect to the authors, this reads like something out of a propaganda sheet, the kind they give to soldiers when they're trying to pump them up and kill people. As opposed to the kind of writeup that you might give, to , say, diplomats who were being assigned to serve in another country.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

That's what I was thinking too. And reading that honestly made me feel queezy, because those propaganda sheets never lead anywhere good.


I remember reading an analysis online that quoted the--I think Second Edition--monster writeup of goblins and the one of elves, and then pointed out that, in essence, the quoted descriptions said exactly the same thing, that the species in question was given to stealth and guerilla tactics. Only, for the elves, this was presented as about how "quick" and "clever" and "at home in the wilderness" they were, whereas for the goblins, it was presented as how "vile, treacherous and cowardly" they were.

Exactly. And the only difference is that in most campaigns you're expected to stab the goblins and not the elves.

[Giggling Ghast]

On the other hand, I think it's OK to judge a book from its cover from time to time.

For instance, if I'm skulking around some ancient castle that once belonged to an evil necromancer and I encounter a hulking undead abomination stitched together from the body parts of dozens of corpses, carrying two meat cleavers and adorned with a black eyeless mask and a series of metal spikes protruding from its back, I think it's safe to assume said monstrosity is probably not a hapless security guard with a family of five who's only here because it was the only work he could find in this economy.

[The Giant]

I remember reading an analysis online that quoted the--I think Second Edition--monster writeup of goblins and the one of elves, and then pointed out that, in essence, the quoted descriptions said exactly the same thing, that the species in question was given to stealth and guerilla tactics. Only, for the elves, this was presented as about how "quick" and "clever" and "at home in the wilderness" they were, whereas for the goblins, it was presented as how "vile, treacherous and cowardly" they were.

Yes, exactly! I remember that.

In no way am I implying that this is a problem that popped up with 4th Edition. It is merely the current edition, and thus merits special attention because it is the state of the game now, and presumably should reflect the lessons learned in older editions. That it doesn't speaks poorly of the current climate.

[Reverent-One]

Because that's exactly what it is. It's a blatant statement of, "You don't have to worry about the moral repercussions of killing these things. They're evil, now roll initiative." It's a clear indication that the writers of that book felt that the appropriate way to play their game was to dispense with such concerns in one sentence, and then get on with the fun.


Or since the book's purpose is to "Give the DM things for the PCs to fight", that it's giving the understandably relevant details of why the PCs would be fighting them to the DM as well.

[AKA_Bait]

Aren't these two thoughts contradictory? If it's nearly all marketing and packaging, then the type shouldn't matter. I agree with the second thought myself, which is what I was getting at. If certain types sell better, the company is going to make more of those types and less of the others.

I don't view them as contradictory because I'm not dividing my types by fluff v. crunch as had been earlier in the discussion. I'm splitting them by the role within the game (monster fluff & crunch, class fluff & crunch, stuff fluff & crunch).

I also think that the marketing has little to do with the content of the books. By most accounts, the ToB classes are wonderful. I remember seeing almost no publicity around those books on the WotC site when they came out, but lots of ads for other stuff. I think they sold less well than higher print-run (read: it's on the shelf in Barnes and Noble when you go in) books that were pretty much crap on all fronts.


On the other hand, culture, organization and stuff like that is something you can always make up as dm, while gameplay mechanics are not.

Says who? We have a whole forum in the playground devoted to making up the mechanics of feats, classes, monsters, etc. Also, the alignment of the monster isn't really just fluff in D&D as it has mechanical impacts.


Or since the book's purpose is to "Give the DM things for the PCs to fight", that it's giving the understandably relevant details of why the PCs would be fighting them to the DM as well.

I think that what the Giant is getting at here is that the "reasons" players have for killing a creature ought to be better than "most of them do bad things and they look scary." The reasons should be particular to those monsters, not just because they are that type of monster.

[The Giant]

Or since the book's purpose is to "Give the DM things for the PCs to fight", that it's giving the understandably relevant details of why the PCs would be fighting them to the DM as well.

Sure, if you want to pretend that you couldn't start a description with, "Minotaurs are bull-headed warriors with a deep sense of territoriality that often leads them into conflict with those that would explore the ancient ruins they have claimed for their own." Or literally any other description that outlines a potential conflict without passing judgment on them.

If you think those opening sentences weren't chosen for the exact effect they are giving, you don't understand how these books get written.

[Sir_Leorik]

Yes, exactly! I remember that.

In no way am I implying that this is a problem that popped up with 4th Edition. It is merely the current edition, and thus merits special attention because it is the state of the game now, and presumably should reflect the lessons learned in older editions. That it doesn't speaks poorly of the current climate.

Or it could reflect the internal politics of first TSR and then Wizards. The 1E Monster Manual was entirely Gary Gygax's baby. But by the time 2E launched, Gary was long gone, and the "suits" Lorraine Williams brought in to run the company insisted on changing things (hence the retitling of Devils and Demons into Ba'atezu and Tan'nari, for example). The corporate culture at TSR in it's dying days was so mismanaged, that WotC decided that they would go in a completely different direction. And then WotC got bought up by Hasbro, which has it's own corporate culture. Whatever the climate was when WotC acquired TSR, it changed enough that Monte Cook was dropped from the planning for D&D Next because his ideas clashed with what upper management wants, whereas Mike Mearls is more in tune with management.

[Sunken Valley]

Probably. Strictly speaking, those specific goblins hadn't attacked him, and I guess it is theoretically possible that they wouldn't have. He didn't choose to make that distinction before killing them, since he had been attacked by every goblin thus far, so that's probably a black mark on his record. Or maybe they stood there at the door and heard the goblins talking about having killed a bunch of villagers or something.

However, the more accurate assessment is that was strips #11, before there was even the semblance of a plot, and I was far more interested in describing how D&D is played than prescribing how D&D should be played. So it shouldn't be taken as some sort of statement on my part for what is proper behavior.


Wasn't there a quote from you back in 2004 (so you would have had a real plot) where you said "killing evil creatures isn't evil"? May have to look but I'm sure you said it.

[Scurvy Cur]

Or since the book's purpose is to "Give the DM things for the PCs to fight", that it's giving the understandably relevant details of why the PCs would be fighting them to the DM as well.

Except that's sort of the job of the DM's world-building and plot, as well as the PCs themselves to determine. A well-designed campaign doesn't at all hinge on the monster manual painting a target on pretty much every entry it has. It sets up reasons beyond "Splatbook says" for conflict and plot to take place.

Unless, you know, your campaign is essentially a series of rooms with a fight in each. In which case, yeah, I suppose the DM could use a canned excuse to toss whatever encounter looks interesting at his or her players.

[Reverent-One]

Sure, if you want to pretend that you couldn't start a description with, "Minotaurs are bull-headed warriors with a deep sense of territoriality that often leads them into conflict with those that would explore the ancient ruins they have claimed for their own." Or literally any other description that outlines a potential conflict without passing judgment on them.

They couldn't have rewritten it like that without changing the creature. In your version, the only reason we're given that one might fight with them is if one intrudes on their territory. That's not what what the Minotaurs described in in the MM do though, those Minotaurs actually go and enslave other creatures. Either version could be used in a given world (or in fact both if you have different types/groups/societies of Minotaurs), but they are two different things. And saying they enslave and plunder isn't passing judgement if that's actually what they do. In that case, it's merely reporting the facts.


Except that's sort of the job of the DM's world-building and plot, as well as the PCs themselves to determine. A well-designed campaign doesn't at all hinge on the monster manual painting a target on pretty much every entry it has. It sets up reasons beyond "Splatbook says" for conflict and plot to take place.

So then why have any details on those creatures other than the stats/physical description? Is the DM required to do all of it?

[Morty]

I remember reading an analysis online that quoted the--I think Second Edition--monster writeup of goblins and the one of elves, and then pointed out that, in essence, the quoted descriptions said exactly the same thing, that the species in question was given to stealth and guerilla tactics. Only, for the elves, this was presented as about how "quick" and "clever" and "at home in the wilderness" they were, whereas for the goblins, it was presented as how "vile, treacherous and cowardly" they were.

I think it was third edition, actually. Is this (http://www.goblindefensefund.org/history4.html) what you're referring to?

The whole site is silly and over the top, but it does highlight the issues with the presentation of goblins in D&D, which extend to all 'monster races'.

[TriForce]

well, to adress to origional issue:

everyone playing DnD has the option of giving their monsters "human" motivations. nobody is forced to do so.

However, the fact that a LOT of DM's CHOOSE to make their monsters more "human" means that they themselves either enjoy the game more that way, or simply see them that way.

besides all the great points already made by the giant and others, id like to point out that DnD is a ROLEPLAYING game, and roleplay is (supposed to be) a great part of it. that means that your characters SHOULD think about what they do and why, and YOU should think about that too. the moment you decide that your character wants to kill everything with a green skin on the assumption that its a threat and nothing else, you as a player should think about what that implies. there are plenty of real life equivelant things that i could talk about, but lets not do that here

[AKA_Bait]

They couldn't have rewritten it like that without changing the creature. In your version, the only reason we're given that one might fight with them is if one intrudes on their territory. That's not what what the Minotaurs described in in the MM do though, those Minotaurs actually go and enslave other creatures. Either version could be used in a given world (or in fact both if you have different types/groups/societies of Minotaurs), but they are two different things. And saying they enslave and plunder isn't passing judgement if that's actually what they do. In that case, it's merely reporting the facts.

Really? How about: Minotaurs are bull-headed warriors with a deep sense of territoriality that often leads them into conflict with those that would explore the ancient ruins they have claimed for their own. Some Minotaur cultures teach that the enslavement of weaker creatures is justified and encourage their members to plunder races without the same physical prowess.

Have I missed any potentially conflict creating elements? Did I make all Minotaurs legitimate targets?

[pendell]

Because that's exactly what it is. It's a blatant statement of, "You don't have to worry about the moral repercussions of killing these things. They're evil, now roll initiative." It's a clear indication that the writers of that book felt that the appropriate way to play their game was to dispense with such concerns in one sentence, and then get on with the fun.

The fact that it gets more over-the-top the closer you get to something that could look or act human is very telling.


And I think this gives me a greater feel for the context in which OOTS is written.

See, most of my fantasy reading isn't generic D&D -- it's Terry Pratchett. And in Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, humans, dwarves, trolls, and vampires all co-exist with a certain degree of harmony brought about by their mutual all-consuming love of profit and money. Every other book revolves around some new species -- Trolls and dwarves (Men-at-Arms), Golems (Feet of Clay), Orcs (Unseen Academicals) , Vampires(the Truth) arriving in the City. They have difficulties, but the villains are NEVER the nonhumans, but always the stupid, blinkered Lord Rusts or whomever on the human side who wants things The Way They've Always Been. There's always some deep plot which the heroes foil and by the end of the book the anvil is dropped that Just Because They Look Different Doesn't Mean They Aren't Good People Too.

Pratchett's been telling these stories for more than ten years.

So when I pick up OOTS, I don't find the story remarkable or revolutionary because it treats goblins as people rather than targets. In fact, it seems par for the course.

But I guess that the audience I am a member of is not the generic D&D audience that Wizards is marketing towards -- the demographic that's never read Pratchett and just wants enemies to kill.

To that D&D audience Rich is a voice in the wilderness. Compared to the core books, Rich's work is NOT par for the course. The idea that nonhumans are more than violent ravening monsters who can only be killed appears to be a novel idea, and given the tone of the books it is an idea that is getting increasingly short shrift.

It is this trend that Rich sees and what OOTS, in essence, warns against: To draw a contrast, to show that mindless violence is NOT the right answer , to rebuke the increasing tendency to divide the world of D&D into only two kinds of creature: Humans, and targets.

...

It makes me wonder: Just how influential ARE the splatbooks and so forth on how people view fantasy and the real world around them? For myself, my views on such things were not shaped by D&D -- instead, I brought my own fully formed views on such things to the D&D table. I was making up stories set in the Tolkienverse about renegade orcs escaping from the War of the Ring and trying to "pass" in human communities long before I'd ever had contact with D&D. D&D had minimal influence on my thinking about such things -- they simply gave me a framework within which to act out my fantasies with other like-minded people.

And in any campaign *I* run, orcs will not have just one single religion and be mindless violent monsters, fluff be damned.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

PS. Ankh-Morpork national anthem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqCbOJc6RU), as performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony. Yes, really. -- BDP.

[Toper]

They couldn't have rewritten it like that without changing the creature... And saying they enslave and plunder isn't passing judgement if that's actually what they do. In that case, it's merely reporting the facts.
You can't be serious. They're not reporting facts, they're writing fiction! Yes, a different description would create a different, more humanized minotaur. That's the whole point.

[The Giant]

Or it could reflect the internal politics of first TSR and then Wizards. The 1E Monster Manual was entirely Gary Gygax's baby. But by the time 2E launched, Gary was long gone, and the "suits" Lorraine Williams brought in to run the company insisted on changing things (hence the retitling of Devils and Demons into Ba'atezu and Tan'nari, for example). The corporate culture at TSR in it's dying days was so mismanaged, that WotC decided that they would go in a completely different direction. And then WotC got bought up by Hasbro, which has it's own corporate culture. Whatever the climate was when WotC acquired TSR, it changed enough that Monte Cook was dropped from the planning for D&D Next because his ideas clashed with what upper management wants, whereas Mike Mearls is more in tune with management.

Whether or not something is profitable does not weigh even a little on my determination of whether or not it is a good idea. I am sure that every day at Wizards HQ, the fact that TSR failed is used as justification for the idea that fluff-heavy nuanced views of moral questions don't sell. The alternative is still a set of terrible, potentially damaging ideas being spread to teenagers with the imprimatur of Official Content on the cover.


They couldn't have rewritten it like that without changing the creature.

Then change the creature! It's a made-up human with a cow head, it can be however we want it to be, so why don't we all put our grown-up pants on and try reeeeeeeeally hard to imagine a person who is not immediately deserving of death?


Really? How about: Minotaurs are bull-headed warriors with a deep sense of territoriality that often leads them into conflict with those that would explore the ancient ruins they have claimed for their own. Some Minotaur cultures teach that the enslavement of weaker creatures is justified and encourage their members to plunder races without the same physical prowess.

See?

[Kish]

I think it was third edition, actually. Is this (http://www.goblindefensefund.org/history4.html) what you're referring to?
...Possibly? Not sure.

[AKA_Bait]

But I guess that the audience I am a member of is not the generic D&D audience that Wizards is marketing towards -- the demographic that's never read Pratchett and just wants enemies to kill.

I think that would be an interesting study of the sales data, but I'd bet that you are right. There's also the issue of, whatever that overlap might be, isn't it better to have one more piece of it? Even reading the Discworld books may not trigger an otherwise intelligent person to start thinking critically about D&D.

[Scurvy Cur]

They couldn't have rewritten it like that without changing the creature. In your version, the only reason we're given that one might fight with them is if one intrudes on their territory. That's not what what the Minotaurs described in in the MM do though, those Minotaurs actually go and enslave other creatures. Either version could be used in a given world (or in fact both if you have different types/groups/societies of Minotaurs), but they are two different things. And saying they enslave and plunder isn't passing judgement if that's actually what they do. In that case, it's merely reporting the facts.



So then why have any details on those creatures other than the stats/physical description? Is the DM required to do all of it?

You're missing the point though. The reason that all the creatures as described in the monster manual all universally do horrible, awful things is that it establishes them as perfectly legit targets for any PC. The point of the entire argument at hand is that this is, in essence, implicitly racist. It tags a judgmental and negative description on more or less every non-PC race in there and moreover implies some degree of universality to it.

Remember, the descriptions of the monsters are that way becasuse someone chose to write them that way. There is no reason that the writers had to pick what they did. No real minotaurs exist that the sourcebooks are trying to faithfully recreate or anything.

Likewise, with regards to "is it the DM's job, etc."

Uhhh... Yeah? That's sort of the DM's job. The DM is the final arbiter on the details of the world. There is no rule in the game that says he needs to depict every creature entry exactly as printed in the MM. When a DM chooses to write a species of creature exactly as described in the MM, it is still the DM's choice. The sourcebooks can give ideas, present stat blocks, and save the DM a little work, but at the end of the day, the DM builds the world and the plot and fills it with details.

[Reverent-One]

You can't be serious. They're not reporting facts, they're writing fiction! Yes, a different description would create a different, more humanized minotaur. That's the whole point.

*Sigh* Facts within the fictional world.


Really? How about: Minotaurs are bull-headed warriors with a deep sense of territoriality that often leads them into conflict with those that would explore the ancient ruins they have claimed for their own. Some Minotaur cultures teach that the enslavement of weaker creatures is justified and encourage their members to plunder races without the same physical prowess.

Have I missed any potentially conflict creating elements? Did I make all Minotaurs legitimate targets?

They're not all legtimate targets based on the MM description either, if the PCs run into a Minatour with a lemonade stand, they don't have any more reason to attack it whichever description is printed in the book (unless said lemonade is made from slaves' tears of agony or something :smallamused:). The only difference is that your rewrite implies to the DM a smaller number have that mindset than the MM version.


Then change the creature! It's a made-up human with a cow head, it can be however we want it to be, so why don't we all put our grown-up pants on and try reeeeeeeeally hard to imagine a person who is not immediately deserving of death?

Well, the point of the book is "Things for the PCs to fight", so not giving reasons to fight them is being somewhat incomplete. True, the DM could do that work themselves and the book could just include the stats and physical description, but if the DM feels like doing that, the notes for DMs that do like having some basics to use or build upon as they see fit aren't going to stop them.


You're missing the point though. The reason that all the creatures as described in the monster manual all universally do horrible, awful things is that it establishes them as perfectly legit targets for any PC. The point of the entire argument at hand is that this is, in essence, implicitly racist. It tags a judgmental and negative description on more or less every non-PC race in there and moreover implies some degree of universality to it.

Generally, not neccessarily universally.


Likewise, with regards to "is it the DM's job, etc."

Uhhh... Yeah? That's sort of the DM's job. The DM is the final arbiter on the details of the world. There is no rule in the game that says he needs to depict every creature entry exactly as printed in the MM. When a DM chooses to write a species of creature exactly as described in the MM, it is still the DM's choice. The sourcebooks can give ideas, present stat blocks, and save the DM a little work, but at the end of the day, the DM builds the world and the plot and fills it with details.

Right, which is what those little bits you're complaining about are there for.

[AKA_Bait]

The only difference is that your rewrite implies to the DM a smaller number have that mindset than the MM version.

Not at all. My description implies that the unquestionably evil parts of the description are attributed to a culture as opposed to an entire race. The latter implies that you might be able to reason with a Minotaur and change its mind whereas the former implies that it is in their nature to behave a particular evil way.


Well, the point of the book is "Things for the PCs to fight", so not giving reasons to fight them is being somewhat incomplete.

I didn't want to get into it before, but the MM is not just for things to fight. There are also good creatures and neutral creatures in the MM. More, as I demonstrated above, you can include the "reasons to fight them" fluff without parsing it in a way that pegs an entire supposedly sentient race rather than a culture defined by beliefs.

[Sir_Leorik]

Whether or not something is profitable does not weigh even a little on my determination of whether or not it is a good idea. I am sure that every day at Wizards HQ, the fact that TSR failed is used as justification for the idea that fluff-heavy nuanced views of moral questions don't sell. The alternative is still a set of terrible, potentially damaging ideas being spread to teenagers with the imprimatur of Official Content on the cover.

I agree with you that WotC's staff not only need to impress their grand Potato-Headed overlords, they also live with the knowledge of just how mismanaged TSR was. But publishing fluff-heavy, nuanced books wasn't what caused TSR to fail. Publishing fluff-heavy, nuanced books that were expensive to produce, and selling them for a fraction of the cost, caused TSR to fail. I remember Chris Pramas writing about this a little over ten years ago, about how WotC sent auditors to Lake Geneva and were astonished by the mess that Williams left the company in.

The big difference between WotC under Hasbro, and TSR, is that if Hasbro were to decide to shut down the D&D tabletop RPG because of poor sales, they would still keep the rights, and produce card games, video games, apps for generating characters or magic items, and probably a line of action figures. If TSR had gone under and not been rescued by WotC, D&D would have died out, kept alive by a few thousand fans, but that would be it. Tabletop RPGs would continue to exist, with SJG and White Wolf picking up the slack.

In terms of monster descriptions, you're right, these ones are intended to paint Humanoids in a disturbing light. I view it as part and parcel of the horrible world building that was part of the first wave of 4E products. I can not stand the fluff in the products that came out before PHB 2.

[WalkingTarget]

Wasn't there a quote from you back in 2004 (so you would have had a real plot) where you said "killing evil creatures isn't evil"? May have to look but I'm sure you said it.

That's a separate argument.

[Grishnákh the Orc] is [Evil], killing [him] is [Not Evil].

This is different from:

[Any Orc anywhere] is [Evil], killing [Orcs] is [Not Evil].

The point of the discussion that's happening here is centered on the implications of stating a character's alignment based solely on his/her race.

[The Giant]

*Sigh* Facts within the fictional world.

There is no fictional world. It doesn't exist. There is only this world, where we are talking, and where we have made up a bunch of fictional cow-people.


They're not all legtimate targets based on the MM description either, if the PCs run into a Minatour with a lemonade stand, they don't have any more reason to attack it whichever description is printed in the book (unless said lemonade is made from slaves' tears of agony or something :smallamused:).

That minotaur with a lemonade stand has to be invented solely by the DM. The minotaur who enslaves others doesn't. Anything that requires the DM to go beyond the text of the book is something that the text is implicitly discouraging.


The only difference is that your rewrite implies to the DM a smaller number have that mindset than the MM version.

Yes, and that is a worthwhile thing. That is worth changing two sentences for. Especially when by "smaller number" you mean "any number smaller than the entire population of the species."


Well, the point of the book is "Things for the PCs to fight", so not giving reasons to fight them is being somewhat incomplete.

I did give them a reason to fight it: PCs are exploring ruins, stumble upon a minotaur lair, minotaur attacks because it is very territorial, PCs fight. Maybe the PCs try to talk it out with the minotaur, maybe they don't. Maybe one specific minotaur is a real jerk who likes oppressing people. But at least we know the whole species isn't necessarily like that.

[pendell]

Silly question.

What about a game which involves hunting down sentient creatures, enslaving them, and forcing them to fight others of their kind for the amusement of humans? I think the game is called ... pokemon?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Solara]

"Hobgoblins live for war and bloodshed, killing or enslaving creatures weaker than themselves. More aggressive and organized than their goblin and bugbear cousins, they see all other creatures as lesser beings to be subjugated..."

Yeah, but a creative DM can still get around this. After all, does the above really mean they're evil, or does a lot of what makes their society a successful one just happen to depend on warfare? Can't get a wife and kids unless you prove yourself in battle, can't feed them unless you have slaves to work the fields, etc. A 'peaceful' hobgoblin is a shiftless loser, an embarrassment to his family and a drain on society. A good one has a fat wife and ten kids and provides for them all with a farm taken from the vile humans. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about D&D hobgoblins beyond what I've seen in this strip.)

I'm going to tiptoe around naming names here because I'm not really sure of the line between discussing history and discussing politics, but about 200 years ago there were some folks living in my area who were an extremely organized and aggressive force who did a whole lot of genociding, murdering, brutal gang rape, kidnapping and enslaving, with some really horrific torture thrown in for kicks. I've read detailed survivors' accounts that literally made me queasy, but obviously it wouldn't be accurate to call them evil. By the standards of their own culture what they were doing was perfectly normal, even right and good. (Well okay, slowly roasting a six year old girl alive is Evil with a capital E no matter how you look at it, I'm gonna have to draw the line there, sorry, but the rest of my point still stands.)

If I was setting up a game or story involving hobgoblins or any of the other 'usually evil' races, I'd probably have the conflict occur much as it does in RL -- two clashing cultures meet, naturally both sides' initial contact is with the military or quick-to-get-violent 'adventurers' of the other because they're the ones out their exploring and paving the way for others, and things only go downhill from there. Neither side gets to see how much the others love their families or what they might have in common or be able to learn from each other or whatever...and they don't exactly have a lot of time to think it over.

This whole simplistic idea of 'the goblins live on the mountain and launch raids on the elves in the forest' or whatever that you often see in fantasy settings would rarely fly in real life. If they were enemies from the start, the goblins would either successfully attack and slaughter or drive the elves away to occupy the forest, or they would fail and the elves would focus all their energy on counterattacking and removing the threat. And if they failed, the goblins would lash back with renewed effort until one side or the other got the upper hand. Neither side is ever going to sit there and wring their hands and go 'oh wow, those guys were jerks, I sure hope they don't attack again' in a stalemate for centuries while their families are in constant danger.


Honestly, I think if I ever get around to writing a fantasy novel I'm going to either make humans the only species, or have their societies so intermingled with orcs and elves and whatnot that it's impossible to take sides in the major conflict that have anything to do with race. And yet I know people IRL who have literally stated that humans (the entire race) are 'boring' and in order for a fictional character to hold their interest they have to have teeth or claws or wings or fur or weird colored eyes and magic powers. As opposed to like, a relatable personality or goal. I keep telling them they need to learn something about the world they actually live in because humans are endlessly amazing and weird just how they are.

...I'm kind of wandering, I'm going to stop now I think. Humans are absolutely the best, most complex species in existence though, even when they have green skin and fangs. :smalltongue:

[Spoomeister]

I have to say, I personally like a little black-and-white, absolute-evil, you-see-this-critter-you-kill-it, in some of my games from time to time.

As G'Kar put it once on Babylon 5:

"By G'Quan, I can't recall the last time I was in a fight like that. No moral ambiguity, no ... hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say, we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor."

The larger points in this thread about having some texture and nuance and characterization in storytelling are all fine and good... same for fretting over the effect of monster manual entries on impressionable youth, where one doesn't want to be a party to promoting the notion that All Things That Look Like This Are Bad, sure, ok, you're being consistent in your values and morals and that's commendable...

...but for me personally, when so much of real life is shades of grey and empathy and sympathy and seeing all sides of a conflict, it's good for me in my escapist hobbies to occasionally be just fighting capital-E Evil. That's why I'm ok with a monster description that is simply "they're all evil and do evil things".

[Reverent-One]

So after starting to reply to specific posts, I realized we've moved off a bit from the point I was trying to reply to, and will try to be more clear.

I'm not denying that said bits from the MM aren't used to describe "Always Evil"* creatures. Nor am I saying that "Always Evil" creatures are the best types of creatures. What I am disagreed with was saying that the purpose of those descriptions were to make players go "Look a <insert creature here>, let's kill it despite it not doing anything deserving of it", but to describe what some basic concepts of the race that DMs can use within their world (or not). Whether one sort of concept is or another is better is going to be a matter of opinion that will go nowhere and not my point.

*"Always" Evil historically being more of a general rule than absolute statement in D&D

[The Giant]

Yeah, but a creative DM can still get around this.

Not to knock you specifically, but this is an idea that gets brought up a lot and it really has very little merit to the argument of whether or not the official rulebooks should read the way they do.

Yes, a creative DM can get around it. A creative DM can get around anything. A sufficiently creative DM can invent their own game system and never give Wizards another dollar. Which is why they almost certainly don't figure very heavily in the company's decisions.

I'm not worried about the effect on people with high levels of creativity and strong personal morality that they have developed through introspection. I'm worried about the effect on people who don't think about it at all, who never question what they're reading, and just go along with what's in the book because they only have so much time before Saturday night's session.


...but for me personally, when so much of real life is shades of grey and empathy and sympathy and seeing all sides of a conflict, it's good for me in my escapist hobbies to occasionally be just fighting capital-E Evil. That's why I'm ok with a monster description that is simply "they're all evil and do evil things".

I don't have the luxury of only considering my own personal hobbies; I'm in the business of content creation. My words influence other people, as do those of the Wizards authors. What I put out there and what they put out there affect the world, and it's negligent for us not to acknowledge that.

And from where I'm standing, the real world is already way too full of people who say, "They're all evil and do evil things," about other people for me to ever be OK with that. We always need more empathy and sympathy and seeing all sides of the conflict. Always.

[pendell]

This whole simplistic idea of 'the goblins live on the mountain and launch raids on the elves in the forest' or whatever that you often see in fantasy settings would rarely fly in real life.


Actually, historically this kind of low-intensity conflict is the norm rather than the exception. The Arabs called it Razzia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazw#Ghazw_as_raid.E2.80.94razzia). I also recommend Blood and Thunder (http://www.amazon.com/Blood-and-Thunder-ebook/dp/B000W969O0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1379366315&sr=1-1&keywords=blood+and+thunder), which describes the same kind of war fought between Mexicans and the Dine, back before that part of the world became part of the United States. Also a study of the pirates of the Caribbean, or the Barbary pirates.

Essentially, you had two nomadic peoples (in the case of the Arabs raiding each other), or you had two small sedentary peoples who lived next to each other, neither of whom was strong enough to wipe the other out. In fact, wiping each other out would defeat the purpose of this kind of war -- however else are young men to gain wealth and prestige quickly, if you drive away all the enemies and force them to do work?

This kind of low-intensity conflict can continue indecisively for generations. Indeed, a permanent victory in such a war is no more to be thought of than if the NFL champion were to wipe out all the other football teams. Instead, every now and then a small band of high-spirited young men will go out and steal the enemy's cattle or kill some lone farmer out by himself. In the name of "avenging the wrong", a band of vigilantes from the other side will get together and do the same back. And so it continues, century after century, generation after generation.

Ending such low-intensity conflicts and bringing about peace is something only highly organized societies can accomplish, by fielding enough military force not simply to harass enemies but to annihilate them. That's what the Romans did to Carthage.

So Goblins harassing elves in low-level conflict, and the elves responding by either killing the intruders or launching counter-raids in return, is not implausible. It is exactly what neighboring tribes and families in the real world do by default. The Robber's Cave experiment (http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/09/war-peace-and-role-of-power-in-sherifs.php) was conducted to determine what it would take to start intergroup conflict. And the answer was: It doesn't take anything. The mere fact that different groups exist is enough to provoke rivalry. War is very easy, Peace is hard.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[The Giant]

Also, G'kar is a perfect example of my point. The Monster Manual entry for Narn would have started, "Narns are a vicious bloodthirsty race that plot to conquer new worlds and bring them under their reptilian dominion."

Thankfully, JMS has a better grasp on my point than do the writers of 4e.

[Spoomeister]

I don't have the luxury of only considering my own personal hobbies; I'm in the business of content creation. My words influence other people, as do those of the Wizards authors. What I put out there and what they put out there affect the world, and it's negligent for us not to acknowledge that.

And from where I'm standing, the real world is already way too full of people who say, "They're all evil and do evil things," about other people for me to ever be OK with that. We always need more empathy and sympathy and seeing all sides of the conflict. Always.

Well, it's very different when it's about the games you're running, and the story you're telling with OOTS, because you are telling a specific story and the story you want to tell has these values in it. It's absolutely your prerogative and I'd expect you'd want to reflect that in there. The very nuance and shadings and variety of perspectives you put into your story is what makes it interesting in the first place.

[Grey Watcher]

I have to say, I personally like a little black-and-white, absolute-evil, you-see-this-critter-you-kill-it, in some of my games from time to time.

As G'Kar put it once on Babylon 5:

"By G'Quan, I can't recall the last time I was in a fight like that. No moral ambiguity, no ... hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say, we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor."

...

The quote is a little counter to the point you're trying to make insofar as the bad guys in question there had demonstrated that they, personally, were bad (stealing from old ladies and such). So beating up a gang of orcs that steal from old ladies is fine. Where thigns start to go off the rails is in going from there to assuming that any given orc steals from old ladies unless the DM goes out of his way to inform you otherwise.

Also, there's something either very hilarious or very depressing in reading this argument at the same time as I learn of some of the reactions to the most recent Miss America's crowing. :smallfrown:

[luc258]

It seems to me like the D&D product line is created for people that are looking for a hack & slash style game. People grow out of it and want more depth in story and characters, including the antagonists.

[Spoomeister]

Also, G'kar is a perfect example of my point. The Monster Manual entry for Narn would have started, "Narns are a vicious bloodthirsty race that plot to conquer new worlds and bring them under their reptilian dominion."

Thankfully, JMS has a better grasp on my point than do the writers of 4e.

Therein lies the difference in content, audience and purpose.

The Monster Manual entry for Narn could have gone as you described.
JMS' campaign based on that Monster Manual entry would be entertaining because he's using it as a starting point to then play with the player's conventions.
And a different GM might run with the MM entry as written, if that's what they and their gaming group wanted to play.

[Grey Watcher]

Therein lies the difference in content, audience and purpose.

The Monster Manual entry for Narn could have gone as you described.
JMS' campaign based on that Monster Manual entry would be entertaining because he's using it as a starting point to then play with the player's conventions.
And a different GM might run with the MM entry as written, if that's what they and their gaming group wanted to play.

But... JMS is the author of the monster manual. They were written, from the ground up, to have the nuance they have. Granted, for dramatic reasons, he chose to show us the bloodthirsty side first, but it wasn't like, in his notes, he just stopped there. He knew what he was doing with that particular bait-and-switch.

[Spoomeister]

It seems to me like the D&D product line is created for people that are looking for a hack & slash style game. People grow out of it and want more depth in story and characters, including the antagonists.

It's patronizing as hell to characterize that preference as "they grow out of it". That would be akin to saying people should, oh I don't know, "grow out of" comic strips.

Hack & slash style gaming is perfectly acceptable entertainment, and not some stage of moral development or maturation.

[Spoomeister]

But... JMS is the author of the monster manual. They were written, from the ground up, to have the nuance they have. Granted, for dramatic reasons, he chose to show us the bloodthirsty side first, but it wasn't like, in his notes, he just stopped there. He knew what he was doing with that particular bait-and-switch.

You can't really cut that both ways though, then and say that a theoretical MM entry for the Narn would get it wrong. Either the theoretical MM entry example works in all the ways that a MM can be used (for telling a variety of stories) or it doesn't (in which case the Narn are only JMS' creation for that specific story and not created as all-purpose monsters the way critters in a sourcebook are).

[veti]

It is quite old in this discussion, but I want to say I appreciated that a lot. So yes, an intelligent creature cannot be "always evil". they may be at war with us for any kind of reason, they may have an evil culture that makes them our enemies (but be wary of what you define as "evil culture"), but labeling an intelligent race "always evil" is in my opinion a clear contradiction in terms.

And this is why I think I've given up on games that make a big deal, or any kind of deal at all for that matter, about "alignment".

Imagine: I'm a mid-level fighter, retired and living in a peaceful village. News starts coming in of a dragon terrorising the area. It's burned three other villages so far. Then a dragon flies over and lands, slap bang in the middle of my village.

Now, my most prized possession is one (1) Arrow of Dragon Slaying. 100% guaranteed to kill, stone dead, any dragon it hits.

Is this the same dragon that's been terrorising others? Or is it a completely different dragon, here on an embassy of peace? There's no way to tell. What I do know is that right at this moment, my family, everyone I love and care about, is one sneeze away from death.

So, is this specific dragon "evil"? I don't know, and right at this moment I don't care. I'm going to take the shot.

Is that good, is it morally defensible? Again, I don't care. Whatever the consequences are, I'll deal with them as best I can. Right here and now, there is an immediate and obvious threat, and I have to make a choice: do I finish it, or do I wait to see what it does next? Sorry, dragon, I can't take that chance.

You want to call me a monster for that? Fine, say it with me now: I don't care. I'll even come to your families' funerals, when it's their turn.

[Scow2]

To me... the argument that Fantastic Racism leads to real racist thoughts/actions needs a lot more evidence than mere internet discussions. Personally - I think that argument holds just as much water as the Jack Thompson-style argument that People who play Hack+Slash "But we're heroes!" murderhobo campaigns are more likely to commit the headline-grabbing, "But I was wronged!" or "My Cause is Just!" mass murders.

To me... Goblins and monsters aren't Evil because they're Monsters: They're Monsters because they're Evil. However, D&D has moved away from portraying Goblinoids as "Things that go bump in the night" or "Twisted versions of humanoids" (Primarily, "bad children" that have given into monstrous urges) to a race in their own right that propogates through non-evil means... unlike, say, a Hieracosphinx (Which has significant "unfortunate implications" if we ignore the fantastic context).

I think the crusade against Racism/Speciesism in fantasy is misguided. And, if the argument that "People are hard-coded to be racist" is true, then no amount of preaching or prosthetilizing can change that - but we can redirect it by creating fictional non-humans that are fantastically different from humans, so to mitigate the differences between real, living people.

It's also useful to try exploring genuine, incompatible-with-human intelligence in case we end up meeting it in the future - either through (unlikely) extraterrestrial contact, or attempts to 'uplift' animals that go horribly wrong (Which just requires time, better knowledge of neurology, and ethically-dubious experiments here on Earth - and there are plenty of people motivated to try and do so.)

[hamishspence]

Imagine: I'm a mid-level fighter, retired and living in a peaceful village. News starts coming in of a dragon terrorising the area. It's burned three other villages so far. Then a dragon flies over and lands, slap bang in the middle of my village.

Now, my most prized possession is one (1) Arrow of Dragon Slaying. 100% guaranteed to kill, stone dead, any dragon it hits.

Is this the same dragon that's been terrorising others? Or is it a completely different dragon, here on an embassy of peace? There's no way to tell. What I do know is that right at this moment, my family, everyone I love and care about, is one sneeze away from death.

So, is this specific dragon "evil"? I don't know, and right at this moment I don't care. I'm going to take the shot.

Is that good, is it morally defensible? Again, I don't care. Whatever the consequences are, I'll deal with them as best I can. Right here and now, there is an immediate and obvious threat, and I have to make a choice: do I finish it, or do I wait to see what it does next? Sorry, dragon, I can't take that chance.
If one knows that there's the possibility of there being multiple dragons in the area, some hostile, some not,

then "shoot on sight" with an irreplaceable weapon, seems rather short-sighted at the minimum- leaving aside any moral issues.

[Grey Watcher]

You can't really cut that both ways though, then and say that a theoretical MM entry for the Narn would get it wrong. Either the theoretical MM entry example works in all the ways that a MM can be used (for telling a variety of stories) or it doesn't (in which case the Narn are only JMS' creation for that specific story and not created as all-purpose monsters the way critters in a sourcebook are).

OK, let me clarify my point. JMS isn't someone who found an entry for the Narn as a race of aggressive saber-rattlers and opportunistic raiders and decided it would make for a great story arc to unexpectedly turn them into victims and, in the process, reveal their spiritual side. He created Narns from his own imagination, with both sides of their culture, with the intent of telling exactly the story that he did with them. So, in the analogy of a Narn entry in the monster manual, if it just talked about the militarism and aggression (as say, the Hobgoblin entry does), it would fall short of representing what they are. And a lot of people wouldn't think to look past that initial impression and attempt to flesh out the culture more.

Did that make any more sense?

[Sunken Valley]

Does anyone reading think that in the comic, the fate of Azure City will be that the goblins will get to keep their city and the azurites build a new one in the island they found and both sides shake hands and call truce, ending the cycle of violence? Because based on what The Giant said, I fully expect this ending (also because large portions of the happy ending phantasm won't be happening and this is one of them).

In other news, 4E is touted here as the big roleplaying game currently. It's not. Not only has 4E not made a book in just over 2 years but Pathfinder has been outselling D&D in 2012 and 2013. I checked their srd (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/) and will be copy pasting some descriptions below. I think they are better than the ones in the 4E books by far (except for the Orc and Ogre). I picked them based on "savage" humanoids that have shown up in the comic (and minotaurs). Anyone wants another monsters copied from the sight (and is to lazy to look) I'll do so.

Goblin
Goblins prefer to dwell in caves, amid large and dense thickets of thistles and brambles, or in structures built and then abandoned by others. Very few goblins have the drive to build structures of their own. Coastlines are favored, as goblins are quite fond of sifting through junk and flotsam in an unending quest to find treasures among the refuse of more civilized races.

Goblin hatred runs deep, and few things inspire their wrath more than gnomes (who have long fought against goblins), horses (who frighten goblins tremendously), and regular dogs (whom goblins regard as pale imitations of goblin dogs).

Goblins are also quite superstitious, and treat magic with a fawning mixture of awe and fear. They have the habit of ascribing magic to the mundane as well, with fire and writing both taking on mystical power in goblin society. Fire is much loved by goblins for its capacity to wreak great destruction and because it doesn't require size or strength to wield, but written words are hated. Goblins believe that writing steals words out of your head, and as a result of this belief, goblins are universally illiterate.

Goblins are voracious and can eat their body weight in food daily without growing fat. Goblin lairs always have numerous storerooms and larders. While they prefer human and gnome flesh, a goblin won't turn down any food—except, perhaps, vegetables.


Hobgoblin
Hobgoblins are militaristic and fecund, a combination that makes them quite dangerous in some regions. They breed quickly, replacing fallen members with new soldiers and keeping up their numbers despite the fortunes of war. They generally need little reason to declare war, but more often than not that reason is to capture new slaves—life as a slave in a hobgoblin lair is brutal and short, and new slaves are always needed to replace those who fall or are eaten.

Of all the goblinoid races, the hobgoblin is by far the most civilized. They see the larger and more solitary bugbears as tools to be hired and used where appropriate, usually for specific missions involving assassination and stealth, and look upon their smaller goblin kin with a mix of shame and frustration. Hobgoblins admire goblin tenacity, yet their miniscule kindred's unpredictable nature and fondness for fire make them unwelcome additions to hobgoblin tribes or settlements. Nonetheless, most hobgoblin tribes include a small group of goblins, typically squatting in the most undesirable corners of the settlement.

Many hobgoblin tribes combine their love of warfare with keen intellects. The science of siege engines, alchemy, and complex feats of engineering fascinate most hobgoblins, and those who are particularly skilled are treated as heroes and invariably secure high-ranking positions in the tribe. Slaves with analytical minds are quite valued, and as such raids on dwarven cities are commonplace.

It is well known that hobgoblins mistrust and even despise magic, particularly arcane magic. Their shamans are treated with a mix of fear and respect, and are usually forced to live alone on the fringes of the tribe's lair. It is all but unheard of to find a hobgoblin practicing arcane magic, or as hobgoblins call it, “elf magic.” This is the root of their hatred of magic—the hobgoblins' hatred of elves.

A hobgoblin stands 5 feet tall and weighs 160 pounds.


Drow
Although related to the elves, the drow are a vile and evil cousin at best. Sometimes called dark elves, these cunning creatures prowl the caves and tunnels of the world below, ruling vast subterranean cities through fear and might. Worshiping demons and enslaving most races they encounter, the drow are among the underworld's most feared and hated denizens.

Drow are shorter and a bit more slender than their surface-dwelling kin, but they are otherwise physically similar. Drow have dark skin, ranging from black to a hazy purple hue. Most drow have white or silver hair and white or red eyes, but other colors are not unheard of.

Drow society is ruled over by powerful nobility, themselves governed by sadistic and dangerous matriarchs who constantly plot and scheme against rival houses and lesser kin within their own families. The majority of drow are the common soldiers and decadent citizenry, with base stats as presented here—drow nobles are more powerful and dangerous, and are detailed below.

In combat, drow are thoroughly ruthless, with little regard for fairness or mercy. They prefer to attack from ambush or to lure enemies into situations where they clearly have the upper hand. If things turn against them, drow are quick to flee, leaving slaves and minions to cover their escape.


Ogre (open at your peril)
Stories are told of ogres—horrendous stories of brutality and savagery, cannibalism and torture. Of rape and dismemberment, necrophilia, incest, mutilation, and all manners of hideous murder. Those who have not encountered ogres know the stories as warnings. Those who have survived such encounters know these tales to be tame compared to the truth.

An ogre revels in the misery of others. When smaller races aren't available to crush between meaty fists or defile in blood-red lusts of violence, they turn to each other for entertainment. Nothing is taboo in ogre society. One would think that, left to themselves, an ogre tribe would quickly tear itself apart, with only the strongest surviving in the end—yet if there is one thing ogres respect, it is family.

Ogre tribes are known as families, and many of their deformities and hideous features arise from the common practice of incest. The leader of a tribe is most often the father of the tribe, although in some cases a particularly violent or domineering ogress claims the title of mother. Ogre tribes bicker among themselves, a trait that thankfully keeps them busy and turned against each other rather than neighboring races. Yet time and again, a particularly violent and feared patriarch rises among the ogres, one capable of gathering multiple families under his command.

Regions inhabited by ogres are dreary, ugly places, for these giants dwell in squalor and see little need to live in harmony with their environment. The borderland between civilization and ogre territory is a desperate realm of outcasts and despair, for here dwell the ogrekin, the deformed offspring and results of frequent ogre raids against the lands of the smaller folk.

Ogre games are violent and cruel, and victims they use for entertainment are lucky if they die the first day. Ogres' cruel senses of humor are the only way their crude minds show any spark of creativity, and the tools and methods of torture ogres devise are always nightmarish.

An ogre's great strength and lack of imagination makes it particularly suited for heavy labor, such as mining, forging, and clearing land, and more powerful giants (particularly hill giants and stone giants) often subjugate ogre families to serve them in such regards.

A typical adult ogre stands 10 feet tall and weighs roughly 650 pounds.


Kobold
Kobolds are creatures of the dark, found most commonly in enormous underground warrens or the dark corners of the forest where the sun is unable to reach. Due to their physical similarities, kobolds loudly proclaim themselves the scions of dragonkind, destined to rule the earth beneath the wings of their great god-cousins, but most dragons have little use for the obnoxious pests.

While they may speak loudly of divine right and manifest destiny, kobolds are keenly aware of their own weakness. Cowards and schemers, they never fight fair if they can help it, instead setting up ambushes and double-crosses, holing up in their warrens behind countless crude but ingenious traps, or rolling over the enemy in vast, yipping hordes.

Kobold coloration varies even among siblings from the same egg clutch, ranging through the colors of the chromatic dragons, with red being the most common but white, green, blue, and black kobolds not unheard of.


Orc (this description is awful)
Along with their brute strength and comparatively low intellect, the primary difference between orcs and the civilized humanoids is their attitude. As a culture, orcs are violent and aggressive, with the strongest ruling the rest through fear and brutality. They take what they want by force, and think nothing of slaughtering or enslaving entire villages when they can get away with it. They have little time for niceties or details, and their camps and villages tend to be filthy, ramshackle affairs filled with drunken brawls, pit fights, and other sadistic entertainment. Lacking the patience for farming and only able to shepherd the most robust and self-sufficient animals, orcs almost always find it easier to take what someone else has built than to create things themselves. They are arrogant and quick to anger when challenged, but only worry about honor so far as it directly benefits them to do so.

An adult male orc is roughly 6 feet tall and 210 pounds. Orcs and humans interbreed frequently, though this is almost always the result of raids and slave-taking rather than consensual unions. Many orc tribes purposefully breed for half-orcs and raise them as their own, as the smarter progeny make excellent strategists and leaders for their tribes.


Troll
Trolls possess incredibly sharp claws and amazing regenerative powers, allowing them to recover from nearly any wound. They are stooped, fantastically ugly, and astonishingly strong—combined with their claws, their strength allows them to literally tear apart flesh to feed their voracious appetites. Trolls stand about 14 feet tall, but their hunched postures often make them appear shorter. An adult troll weighs around 1,000 pounds.

A troll's appetite and its regenerative powers make it a fearless combatant, ever prepared to charge headlong at the nearest living creature and attack with all of its fury. Only fire seems to cause a troll to hesitate, but even this mortal threat is not enough to stop a troll's advance. Those who commonly battle with trolls know to locate and burn any pieces after a fight, for even the smallest scrap of flesh can regrow a full-size troll given enough time. Fortunately, only the largest part of a troll regrows in this way.

Despite their cruelty in combat, trolls are surprisingly tender and kind to their own young. Female trolls work as a group, spending a great deal of time teaching young trolls to hunt and fend for themselves before sending them off to find their own territories. A male troll tends to live a solitary existence, partnering with a female for only a brief time to mate. All trolls spend most of their time hunting for food, as they must consume vast amounts each day or face starvation. Due to this need, most trolls stake out large territories as their own, and fights between rivals are quite common. While these are usually nonlethal, trolls are aware of each others' weaknesses and will use such knowledge to kill their own kind if food is scarce.


Minotaur
Nothing holds a grudge like a minotaur. Scorned by the civilized races centuries ago and born from a deific curse, minotaurs have hunted, slain, and devoured lesser humanoids in retribution for real or imagined slights for as long as anyone can remember. Many cultures have legends of how the first minotaurs were created by vengeful or slighted gods who punished humans by twisting their forms, robbing them of their intellects and beauty, and giving them the heads of bulls. Yet most modern minotaurs hold these legends in contempt and believe that they are not divine mockeries but divine paragons created by a potent and cruel demon lord named Baphomet.

The traditional minotaur's lair is a maze, be it a legitimate labyrinth constructed to baffle and confuse, an accidental one such as a city sewer system, or a naturally occurring one such as a tangle of caverns and other underground passageways. Employing their innate cunning, minotaurs use their maze lairs to vex unwary foes who seek them out or who simply stumble into the lairs and become lost, slowly hunting the intruders as they try in vain to find a way out. Only when despair has truly set in does the minotaur move in to strike at its lost victims. When dealing with a group, minotaurs often let one creature escape, to spread the tale of horror and lure others to their mazes in hope of slaying the beasts. Of course, to minotaurs, these would-be heroes make for delicious meals.

Minotaurs might also be found in the employ of a more powerful monster or evil creature, serving it so long as they can still hunt and dine as they please. Usually this means guarding some powerful object or valuable location, but it can also be a sort of mercenary work, hunting down the foes of its master.

Minotaurs are relatively straightforward combatants, using their horns to horribly gore the nearest living creature when combat begins.

[Spoomeister]

OK, let me clarify my point. JMS isn't someone who found an entry for the Narn as a race of aggressive saber-rattlers and opportunistic raiders and decided it would make for a great story arc to unexpectedly turn them into victims and, in the process, reveal their spiritual side. He created Narns from his own imagination, with both sides of their culture, with the intent of telling exactly the story that he did with them. So, in the analogy of a Narn entry in the monster manual, if it just talked about the militarism and aggression (as say, the Hobgoblin entry does), it would fall short of representing what they are. And a lot of people wouldn't think to look past that initial impression and attempt to flesh out the culture more.

Did that make any more sense?

But any GM can use a monster manual entry as their starting point for any story they want to tell. Taking it straight from the entry to create a stark good-v-evil is one story. Building on their entry to create one's own vision or variant of that entry is another. They're both fine.

It's not that it falls short of representing what they are, just that it doesn't represent everything it could possibly be, because representing that is the author's / GM's job.

I think the key bit here is


And a lot of people wouldn't think to look past that initial impression and attempt to flesh out the culture more.

Some may not, out of ignorance. Some may not, out of wanting to tell a specific story. Some may, out of wanting to tell a specific story.

I think Scow2 has a point, though 'misguided' might be overstating it IMHO:


I think the crusade against Racism/Speciesism in fantasy is misguided. And, if the argument that "People are hard-coded to be racist" is true, then no amount of preaching or prosthetilizing can change that - but we can redirect it by creating fictional non-humans that are fantastically different from humans, so to mitigate the differences between real, living people.)

[Reddish Mage]

So Goblins harassing elves in low-level conflict, and the elves responding by either killing the intruders or launching counter-raids in return, is not implausible. It is exactly what neighboring tribes and families in the real world do by default. The Robber's Cave experiment (http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/09/war-peace-and-role-of-power-in-sherifs.php) was conducted to determine what it would take to start intergroup conflict. And the answer was: It doesn't take anything. The mere fact that different groups exist is enough to provoke rivalry. War is very easy, Peace is hard.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Robber's Cave, as well as Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment have in common that an authority figure was actively overseeing the environment and was actively encouraging the conflict. The only thing we can learn from them is that when in an environment that was designed to encourage conflict, and with an authority figure that encourages conflict, we get conflict! That's not very shocking.

[King of Nowhere]

On the other hand, culture, organization and stuff like that is something you can always make up as dm, while gameplay mechanics are not.

Says who? We have a whole forum in the playground devoted to making up the mechanics of feats, classes, monsters, etc. Also, the alignment of the monster isn't really just fluff in D&D as it has mechanical impacts.


Yes, and I houseruled/homebrewed plenty of stuff in my dming days. however, homebrewing/houseruling is likely to give unbalanced stuff with all sorts of balancing issues. inventing societies and politics do not present such problems. so I prefer to have the gaming mechanics in the manual, and invent the campaign world. Also, I like to imagine societies and cultures and how they would interact and how would magic and deities play in all of that, while I don't like much to figure out how to make modifiers that would make the game mechanically sound. So, again, I prefer to have rules in the manual, and make up my own world.
I suppose for some people it will be different. maybe they like to invent new mechanics but don't like to have to figure out how a world works. But I think most people will tend towards my side on this issue.

[Mutant Sheep]

I think the crusade against Racism/Speciesism in fantasy is misguided...
(Sorry, actually quoting is hard right now)I knew of no "Anti Racism/Speciesism in Fantasy" crusade ever existed. The first exposure I even had to this was when someone pointed out that every orc being evil had some poor implications, and that eventually led to two 8 year olds debate on whether Brian Jacques' 3 good rats in the entire history of Redwall meant if rats were actually inclined towards giant pillaging hordes or not. All I've ever seen of this "crusade" before Mr. Burlew's work was "These magically corrupted always evil orcs are a bit racist", and thats phrasing the argument I heard eloquently.:smalltongue:

But aside from personal history of contact with this crusade, I think "redirecting our natural racism towards fictional beings" is a weird idea, because *Mr. Burlew quote goes here* And Rich isn't saying playing a hack and slash makes you a horrible murdering psychopath. He would like it if you admit your murder hobo might not qualify for paladinhood, though.:smallamused:

I look forward to the day when Rich actually posts something I disagree with, because I keep finding myself agreeing with every post of his I find.:smallbiggrin: If that day ever comes, I hope I'll be a decent enough writer to actually contribute to the conversation, rather than whatever I just did with this post.

[Solara]

I'm worried about the effect on people who don't think about it at all, who never question what they're reading, and just go along with what's in the book because they only have so much time before Saturday night's session.


Admirable effort, but in the end, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.

...or, er, something like that. Young people get spoonfed terrible, destructive ideas everywhere they turn. Substituting a few of those with actual good and meaningful things is wonderful, but in the long run, learning to think for yourself enough to figure out the difference between bulls*** and chocolate pudding before you happily gulp it down is something everyone has to do on their own.

I hadn't realized that all the race descriptions were that bad, though. I guess in a way I was lucky I had no money in highschool, I never played real D&D, just flipped longingly through fluff books in stores and then made up my own setting that was basically just a pastiche of Tolkien, Star Wars, and M:tG on a giant jungle world. We indiscriminately slaughtered nagas, not goblins, so it was all okay. (Also the nagas were basically Aztecs and all those guys were super evil you know?) :smalltongue:

[137beth]

Silly question.

What about a game which involves hunting down sentient creatures, enslaving them, and forcing them to fight others of their kind for the amusement of humans? I think the game is called ... pokemon?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Very silly indeed: Pokemon isn't about enslaving sentient creatures and forcing them to fight for the amusement of humans; it is about enslaving sentient creatures, and forcing them to fight others of their kind who have been enslaved by other ("Evil") humans, with the Good motivation of preventing the Evil humans from enslaving even more sentient creatures:smalltongue:

[veti]

We are right to criticize Merchant of Venice for its portrayal of Shylock, for example, because it helped to reinforce a deeply harmful and dehumanizing social prejudice that was common in western ciilization for the longest time (and is still viewed as acceptable by some people in current times). It does not matter that Shylock was a fictional character who never actually existed. A message reinforcing a stereotype was still communicated to audiences of the play which served to confirm their harmful prejudices as justified.

On the other hand, Shylock was a much more humanised and sympathetic portrayal than other contemporary characters. He's much more sympathetic, for instance, than Barabas in The Jew of Malta, who in turn was controversial because pretty much everyone in that play is a villain, and he wasn't all that much worse than the rest.

Context is important. Shakespeare wasn't so much "reinforcing" the stereotype as "undermining it from within". Within 50 years of The Merchant of Venice being written, Jews were welcomed back into England - openly, and allowed to practise their own religion - for the first time in more than 300 years.


Since elves have been brought up now, does anyone know any good recent fiction that treats them as...well, alien?

Terry Pratchett, Lords & Ladies. The elves are literally from another dimension, and "here" chiefly for the fun and sport of hunting and torturing humans.

[pendell]

But aside from personal history of contact with this crusade, I think "redirecting our natural racism towards fictional beings" is a weird idea. And Rich isn't saying playing a hack and slash makes you a horrible murdering psychopath. He would like it if you admit your murder hobo might not qualify for paladinhood, though.


It's pretty much what Tolkien tried to do in LOTR. From his own discussion in his nonfiction *HIS* real-world war experience was that his own army had halflings, orcs, and all sorts of people good and bad. And he wanted a "clean" fight, one where all the good guys are on THIS side, all the bad guys are on THAT side, and there is no ambiguity whatsoever which side is which.

There IS a place in fantasy for that.

Although from what is chronicled here, perhaps D&D rulebook are tilted too much that way.

In this scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dctofGc07lo) from a game I play -- Return of the king stage 9: Courtyard -- The enemy has broken into the city and is busy killing as many helpless civilians as they can right in front of me. It's my job to save as many as I can before falling back to the next defended position.

It's not that I have anything against orcs or trolls in particular -- if I passed 'em in a field having tea I wouldn't particularly care. But orcs and trolls murdering innocents right in front of me -- that I take *strong* exception to. Not because I have anything against orcs and trolls as such. Because I don't like armed bullies murdering people. And if there were human enemies -- or elvish enemies, for that matter -- on the field doing the same, I'd slot them the same way.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Reddish Mage]

And from where I'm standing, the real world is already way too full of people who say, "They're all evil and do evil things," about other people for me to ever be OK with that. We always need more empathy and sympathy and seeing all sides of the conflict. Always.

The term "evil" is a judgment, not an objective description. You are telling me that something is "immoral" which means, what exactly? Tell me someone is greedy, violent, oppressive, mean, selfish, or lacks regard for others. However, just telling me someone is evil doesn't tell me anything.

That's a problem with "always" evil alignment, it doesn't really tell you at all what traits are innate to that creature-type, its merely an invitation to join in and judge them. And when it comes to ethnic groups of humans who do not have extra-planar origins, of course, we know "always" in regards to alignment or character traits is never an appropriate appellation.

[AKA_Bait]

You can't really cut that both ways though, then and say that a theoretical MM entry for the Narn would get it wrong. Either the theoretical MM entry example works in all the ways that a MM can be used (for telling a variety of stories) or it doesn't (in which case the Narn are only JMS' creation for that specific story and not created as all-purpose monsters the way critters in a sourcebook are).

I think that one of the ways an MM is used in conjunction with play style, to influence the user toward compassion and understanding, is overlooked by your equivalency. A JMS Narn implies one thing about the nature of people, a 4e MM Narn implies another.


I think the crusade against Racism/Speciesism in fantasy is misguided. And, if the argument that "People are hard-coded to be racist" is true, then no amount of preaching or prosthetilizing can change that - but we can redirect it by creating fictional non-humans that are fantastically different from humans, so to mitigate the differences between real, living people.

If so, shouldn't we have the monsters designed to sensitize us to other humans be the ones closest in physical appearance to us and the ones we are redirecting to be the most physically different? The WotC materials do just the opposite, as the Giant demonstrated with the quotes above.


So, again, I prefer to have rules in the manual, and make up my own world.
I suppose for some people it will be different. maybe they like to invent new mechanics but don't like to have to figure out how a world works. But I think most people will tend towards my side on this issue.

Probably, but I also think that most players also don't significantly tweak the fluff in the MM either or at least use it as a starting point. I think this is especially true of the new, younger, impressionable players that the Giant is most concerned about. Building a consistent world can be just as daunting as home-brewing the stat block for a new monster. I have read a lot of new DM seeks help type threads over the years and the number of requests for help regarding tweaking fluff or world-building easily equal the number of those asking a mechanical question.


That's a problem with "always" evil alignment, it doesn't really tell you at all what traits are innate to that creature-type, its merely an invitation to join in and judge them. And when it comes to ethnic groups of humans who do not have extra-planar origins, of course, we know "always" in regards to alignment or character traits is never an appropriate appellation.

We may know it, but not everyone does and historically there most certainly have been groups that considered other groups "always" lots of things (e.g., always thieves, always drunks, always stupid).

[Scow2]

The term "evil" is a judgment, not an objective description. You are telling me that something is "immoral" which means, what exactly? Tell me someone is greedy, violent, oppressive, mean, selfish, or lacks regard for others. However, just telling me someone is evil doesn't tell me anything.

That's a problem with "always" evil alignment, it doesn't really tell you at all what traits are innate to that creature-type, its merely an invitation to join in and judge them. And when it comes to ethnic groups of humans who do not have extra-planar origins, of course, we know "always" in regards to alignment or character traits is never an appropriate appellation.Yet, "Usually Evil" humanoids (And I'd go so far as to say "Usually Good" humanoids as well) aren't Humans. I also don't believe that any humanoid, except with a single exception, are not made from an inherent imbalance of Primal Good/Evil and/or Law/Chaos. Nonhuman (As in, any race except by-the-book Humans) Sentient creatures in D&D aren't merely seperate cultures that developed over time to adapt to their environment/surroundings. They are tools and creations made by their Deities, each who has a personality that can fit into an alignment category, that is reflected within each of their creations. The experience of life of being created by one deity is something D&D's humans all lack, which leads to them going all over the alignment spectrum and finding the idea that a sapiant race doesn't have entirely free will in its moral outlook and judgement to be alien to the point of incomprehensibility. For the most part, "Usually Evil" creature's minds are inherently corrupted by Evil, and is something they have to deal with their entire life, though enough willpower can overcome it.

The only problem I have with the descriptions of Pathfinder's "Evil" humanoids is the judgement on how they fight (as compared to elves)... however, the big difference I think that accomodates that discrepency is that the Evil Humanoids usually make such attacks unprovoked, while Elves resort to underhanded, 'cowardly' tactics in response to incursion. (PC incursions into Evil Humanoid areas are generally the exception, not rule, of Evil Humanoid vs. Nonevil humanoid aggression).

I particularly like Pathfinder's explanation of Goblins - these things may be bipedal, but they are not human in their thought process. They are the "Things that go bump in the night." Tragic? Yes/Maybe/Definitely... but then again, Dwarves didn't choose their lot in life to be slaves to Law and Good even/especially when it makes them miserable, either.

[hamishspence]

Yet, "Usually Evil" humanoids (And I'd go so far as to say "Usually Good" humanoids as well) aren't Humans. I also don't believe that any humanoid, except with a single exception, are not made from an inherent imbalance of Primal Good/Evil and/or Law/Chaos. Nonhuman (As in, any race except by-the-book Humans) Sentient creatures in D&D aren't merely seperate cultures that developed over time to adapt to their environment/surroundings. They are tools and creations made by their Deities, each who has a personality that can fit into an alignment category, that is reflected within each of their creations.

There's more than a few humanoid races that tend toward True Neutral rather than any of the four points. Lizardfolk and Halflings are the first that spring to mind.

[Scow2]

There's more than a few humanoid races that tend toward True Neutral rather than any of the four points. Lizardfolk and Halflings are the first that spring to mind.They tend toward Neutral, having a strong equallibrial balance of "Primal" alignment forces - they tend toward Neutrality. Humans, on the other hand, lack that equillibrium, and can end up scattered all over the place. Humans aren't "Alignment: Usually (or even merely Often) Neutral". They're "Humans aren't inclined to any particular alignment, not even neutral."

[hamishspence]

And despite being "Usually neutral" the halfling patron deity- Yondalla- is Lawful Good.

So, it isn't always the case that a race's patron deity in D&D determines the most common alignment of that race.

[The Giant]

Admirable effort, but in the end, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.

It is literally my entire job to write or draw things for the purpose of making people think this way or that. That's all I do. Forgive me for not dismissing it as an inherently futile endeavor.

[Lord Raziere]

Look, I'm won't ask people to give up fighting capital E-evil for fighting capital-E-evils sake.

I'm just asking why does it have to be an entire race of people doing it for no reason? why does it have to be orcs? anything can be capital E-evil! just have the enemy kick a puppy, torture some peasants for no reason and add in maniacal laughter! its literally easy as that. you don't need to invent a race that does it. it requires no effort or thought, as you yourselves admitted, so why are you people trying so hard to defend it?

I mean, its not as if you need any special tools, just say the PC's are good, everyone you fight is evil, then go to town, you can do that with any RPG, however we are pushing for a more thoughtful approach here, to a higher examination, you can go ahead and leave it unexamined at your table- there are tons of games aside from DnD that while trying to reach for deeper themes, still has their beer and pretzel players that just do crazy things and fight stuff but playing as things other than medieval murderhobos. DnD needs more examination and such, there is difference between the power fantasy of being able to kill whatever you want, and the moral fantasy that your right in doing so.

I have no problem with your power fantasy, your moral fantasy on the other hand is quite troubling.

[King of Nowhere]

Yet, "Usually Evil" humanoids (And I'd go so far as to say "Usually Good" humanoids as well) aren't Humans. I also don't believe that any humanoid, except with a single exception, are not made from an inherent imbalance of Primal Good/Evil and/or Law/Chaos. Nonhuman (As in, any race except by-the-book Humans) Sentient creatures in D&D aren't merely seperate cultures that developed over time to adapt to their environment/surroundings. They are tools and creations made by their Deities, each who has a personality that can fit into an alignment category, that is reflected within each of their creations. The experience of life of being created by one deity is something D&D's humans all lack, which leads to them going all over the alignment spectrum and finding the idea that a sapiant race doesn't have entirely free will in its moral outlook and judgement to be alien to the point of incomprehensibility. For the most part, "Usually Evil" creature's minds are inherently corrupted by Evil, and is something they have to deal with their entire life, though enough willpower can overcome it.

II understand that point, and in fact "hardwired by the powers that be" is the only explanation I accept for a sentient creature being always evil. but then it is not a sentient creature the way we think. It is a partially supernatural being. so the description should not go like "goblins are vicous and murderous sadistic bastards", but instead "goblins were created by the evil deity to fight humans, and while being intelligent, they lack free will on that matter". That is a perfectly acceptable way if you like to have a black and white world.

But my favourite way to create an "evil race" is to make a culture that is self consistent, and do not consider itself evil, but is equivvalent to evil from the outside perspective. I particularly like how I made the orcs: "orcs are not inherently evil, but their society is founded over an honor code that requires every challenge to be met with violence. Since such "challenge" can consist in just looking at them the wrong way, they are often at odds with all the other races. For their parts, the orcs don't understand why the other races hate them, because to them that behaviour is absolutely normal. In general, they have a complex honor code that is often mistaked for cruelty by those who don't knwo them well. for example, they are known to sometimes torture to death prisoners; however, to them that is a mark of honor, to allow a worthy opponent to show his strenght by enduring torture with honor. the more cruel the torture, the greatest the respect they are showing you. If an orc is captured by an enemy, he will often ask to be tortured to death, and will be offfended on a refusal; the greatest offence would be to spare his life: that implies that he's no treath to you, and will cause him to lose his honor forever, a fate most orcs consider far worse than death..."
Of course there were a few peaceful tribes who rejected that way of living, but they always marked themselves apart. since no peaceful orc was allowed to live among the warlike tribes, any orc in a warlike tribe was automatically a valid target to kill on sight just for his affiliation. He would be offended if you considered him otherwise.

[Scow2]

And despite being "Usually neutral" the halfling patron deity- Yondalla- is Lawful Good.

So, it isn't always the case that a race's patron deity in D&D determines the most common alignment of that race.Actually, Yondalla is only one of the Halfling's deities - they have several. Also, Yondalla is actually a two-faced deity: The Lawful Good "Yondalla" presented to everyone saying "We halfling are civilized and virtuous people!" and, and the Chaotic Leadsheet-Neutral "Dallah Thaun", who will go to any lengths required to protect the Halfling race.

[Goosefeather]

Terry Pratchett, Lords & Ladies. The elves are literally from another dimension, and "here" chiefly for the fun and sport of hunting and torturing humans.

Yep. From the blurb,


Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.

Pratchett's elves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elves_(Discworld)) are basically extra-dimensional amoral parasites - they literally cannot comprehend empathy or emotions. They're the only sapient species that doesn't get a sympathetic portrayal. His dwarves, trolls, vampires, werewolves, orcs, goblins, gnomes, gnolls, gods, gargoyles, fairies and humans are all capable of both good and bad, and held accountable for their choices as individuals, but his elves are just alien.

[Reddish Mage]

Look, I won't ask people to give up fighting capital E-evil for fighting capital-E-evils sake.

I'm just asking why does it have to be an entire race of people doing it for no reason? why does it have to be orcs?

It isn't easy being green? I honestly don't know why its orcs and goblins, I'm far more interested in talking up dragons myself as they are highly magical in-game and iconic. The fact that orcs and goblins come from mythology means they were there long before Tolkien or Gygax came along and made them low level cannon fodder.

[The Giant]

It isn't easy being green? I honestly don't know why its orcs and goblins, I'm far more interested in talking up dragons myself as they are highly magical in-game and iconic.

That's why it's orcs. With dragons, your run the risk of conflating their obvious power and potential danger to life and limb with the moral issue of how to interact with them. With orcs, they're no more powerful than a human, so the fact that they're treated like they have no ethical value becomes a lot more obvious.

Try reading veti's rant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16035731&postcount=192) about killing a dragon on sight from a page or so back with the word "orc" in place of "dragon." It reads a lot more disturbing and unjustifiable, because we know that a single orc is not the threat that a single dragon is.

[Scow2]

II understand that point, and in fact "hardwired by the powers that be" is the only explanation I accept for a sentient creature being always evil. but then it is not a sentient creature the way we think. It is a partially supernatural being. so the description should not go like "goblins are vicous and murderous sadistic bastards", but instead "goblins were created by the evil deity to fight humans, and while being intelligent, they lack free will on that matter". That is a perfectly acceptable way if you like to have a black and white world.

But my favourite way to create an "evil race" is to make a culture that is self consistent, and do not consider itself evil, but is equivvalent to evil from the outside perspective. I particularly like how I made the orcs: "orcs are not inherently evil, but their society is founded over an honor code that requires every challenge to be met with violence. Since such "challenge" can consist in just looking at them the wrong way, they are often at odds with all the other races. For their parts, the orcs don't understand why the other races hate them, because to them that behaviour is absolutely normal. In general, they have a complex honor code that is often mistaked for cruelty by those who don't knwo them well. for example, they are known to sometimes torture to death prisoners; however, to them that is a mark of honor, to allow a worthy opponent to show his strenght by enduring torture with honor. the more cruel the torture, the greatest the respect they are showing you. If an orc is captured by an enemy, he will often ask to be tortured to death, and will be offfended on a refusal; the greatest offence would be to spare his life: that implies that he's no treath to you, and will cause him to lose his honor forever, a fate most orcs consider far worse than death..."
Of course there were a few peaceful tribes who rejected that way of living, but they always marked themselves apart. since no peaceful orc was allowed to live among the warlike tribes, any orc in a warlike tribe was automatically a valid target to kill on sight just for his affiliation. He would be offended if you considered him otherwise.I find your method even more likely to cause controversy (As it implies the author doesn't find the behavior offensive), and, in outlining how wrong a race is, can go too far in detail, especially if the atrocities hard-wired into the species come anywhere near the culture's population recovery/growth system.

There is only one creature that is "sapient" in the way we think (And, given how drastically the human mind can change and percieve the world and act under chemical effects ranging from drugs to even natural hormones and neurotransmitters makes me question even that nature of "sapience"). I don't find it absurd that other species can have alignment-affected mental imbalances that cause them to inherently/immediately see 'evil' acts as the best course of action to take, or have overwhelming urges/instincts to commit unspeakable acts. Goblins may not have been made by a specific deity... The 'real-world' origin of Goblins is disobedient children of other species, who turn to evil and wickedness without a parent to serve as a moral compass (And is preserved as the race procreates... whether it's by normal reproduction or childnapping depends on setting). And Bugbears are childish bullies taken up to 11.

My favorite "Go to" Evil race is Gnolls, because they are based on a real-world similarity: Spotted hyenas. And, unlike every other mammal in the world, the first instinct a newborn hyena has isn't to find and nurse from its mother. Instead, it's commit fratricide. In 4e, Gnolls also literally have a demonic voice in their mind from the moment they are born (And pick up Abyssal automatically, as a result).

With all of my support for the existence of inherently evil races, though, I don't agree that they are worthy of mass genocide: Even with the inherent disposition toward evil that needs constant vigilance, there are a few that can overcome it and opt to be Neutral... or even Good - and as long as there is One Good Goblin/Hobgoblin/Gnoll/etc, for his/her sake, the race should be spared. The number of deliberately killed innocents it takes to be considered an atrocity is one.

[veti]

Try reading veti's rant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16035731&postcount=192) about killing a dragon on sight from a page or so back with the word "orc" in place of "dragon." It reads a lot more disturbing and unjustifiable, because we know that a single orc is not the threat that a single dragon is.

And, obviously, that's why I made it a dragon. With an orc, it would be ridiculous.

But I do think it's a point that's at risk of getting lost in this discussion. Using a dragon makes the point that religiously treating "all sentient beings" as "equals" is just as silly as the other way around. You need to recognise the differences, not as a matter of morality, but of necessity.

[The Giant]

And, obviously, that's why I made it a dragon. With an orc, it would be ridiculous.

But I do think it's a point that's at risk of getting lost in this discussion. Using a dragon makes the point that religiously treating "all sentient beings" as "equals" is just as silly as the other way around. You need to recognise the differences, not as a matter of morality, but of necessity.

Not when there are no dragons in the real world, no, we don't. There is no actual necessity to depict that scenario because that scenario will never happen. The scenario with the humanoid of a different skin color happens every single day.

Or to put it another way, I will happily accept a loss in versimilitude with regards to how characters in a fictional narrative treat giant fire-breathing lizards if it means that even one real person in the real world might think more carefully about how they treat their real neighbors. That is a price I will gladly pay ten times over.

[Kish]

And, obviously, that's why I made it a dragon. With an orc, it would be ridiculous.
Rather, with an orc, the ridiculousness would be more obvious.

Your example--stacked as it was--still doesn't work unless you want to say that it's perfectly Good for anyone to try their level best to kill the Order on sight. High-level adventurers are at least as dangerous as dragons; Roy shares a race and (probable) class with the man primarily responsible for far more misery in the part of the world he currently occupies than any dragon we've seen could dream of. Whenever Vaarsuvius is there, everyone around her/him is a sneeze away from seeing their city melt...

...and would be even if Vaarsuvius was Good-aligned and had never committed mass murder.

Congratulations on being able to accomplish the extremely easy feat of imagining a situation to justify killing a dragon on sight, but it's still not an argument.

[Rakoa]

I actually took the Giant literally as I read the rant and imagined it in my head, so in this scenario a winged Orc that had been burning villages came flying and landed and it was awesome.

[Aldrakan]

And, obviously, that's why I made it a dragon. With an orc, it would be ridiculous.

But I do think it's a point that's at risk of getting lost in this discussion. Using a dragon makes the point that religiously treating "all sentient beings" as "equals" is just as silly as the other way around. You need to recognise the differences, not as a matter of morality, but of necessity.

Making it a dragon completely defeats the point. You shoot the dragon because dragons are really rare, you know that there's a specific evil one in the area, and you are making a best guess that you're shooting the right one.
As Gray Watcher pointed out, if you shoot the wrong one you no longer have the arrow. For example, if the village was for some reason a dragon pilgrimage sight and dragons landed there on a regular basis and did no harm, shooting the first one you saw would be both stupid and evil.

Putting it in real world terms, if you were a sniper charged with shooting a suicide bomber on sight, and this suicide bomber were 6 foot 7 man with long red hair and a tattoo of a duck on his face, you would probably shoot the first guy matching that description you saw because they aren't exactly growing on trees.

Edit: Sorry, I mean hamishpence.

[Reddish Mage]

Ah, and here I nearly posted about veti that if you replaced "dragon" with "highly exotic looking human" it would seem clear. The problem with the example is there are too many vague points, how many dragons actually exist in this world, what are their relations with human? How reliable is this news you heard. Is it consistent with dragon behavior to go around level towns one after another and was that exactly what was related to you? See, I can table the entire issue of whether you can profile solely on its lizard-looking-winged-thing (you didn't say that your fighter understood what a dragon was any better) in that I'm uncertain from your details that the level of confidence is even high enough to warrant shoot on sight even if you could positively identify the being as the very being that was referred to by the news.

Now if this was a game session, given that this set up is oh so convenient there's obviously some sort of story going on, and its not going to end as simply with shooting that dragon, I'd expect it to be worthwhile to be sure what's going on.

Also, I note that talking is a free action and does not lower your initiative count.

All that said, I'm sure you can engineer this so that your level of confidence is high enough and the danger great enough that you can shoot, but I'm pretty sure after we did all that the example would not be all that relevant anymore to the discussion.

Even if you can get everyone to shoot on the basis of just about any trait if you could raise the danger level high enough, immediate enough, make the trait rare enough and put the confidence level into the stratosphere. That proves only that hard cases make bad law.

[GameJudge]

Silly question.

What about a game which involves hunting down sentient creatures, enslaving them, and forcing them to fight others of their kind for the amusement of humans? I think the game is called ... pokemon?



Per the cartoon, Pokémon want to get out there and mix it up. Ash's Turtwig, after deciding it wanted to accompany Ash, would still not do it unless Ash could defeat it. Pikachu gets whupped ALL the time, and it still wants to go at a moment's notice. Oshawott escapes its Pokéball going "Pick me! Pick me!" more than once.

[Bogardan_Mage]

Not when there are no dragons in the real world, no, we don't. There is no actual necessity to depict that scenario because that scenario will never happen. The scenario with the humanoid of a different skin color happens every single day.

Or to put it another way, I will happily accept a loss in versimilitude with regards to how characters in a fictional narrative treat giant fire-breathing lizards if it means that even one real person in the real world might think more carefully about how they treat their real neighbors. That is a price I will gladly pay ten times over.
Well hang on, are we talking about your story in particular or fiction in general? In the former it goes without saying that you can write it for the purpose of inspiring people to think more about their ethics and pay that "price" as you put it in pursuit of that goal. But going beyond your own creations, I think the fact that dragons don't exist is just as irrelevant as the fact that orcs don't exist. It doesn't need to be clearly and obviously applicable to real life on a 1-to-1 basis to be a valid exploration of the ethical questions at hand.

[Solara]

Essentially, you had two nomadic peoples (in the case of the Arabs raiding each other), or you had two small sedentary peoples who lived next to each other, neither of whom was strong enough to wipe the other out. In fact, wiping each other out would defeat the purpose of this kind of war -- however else are young men to gain wealth and prestige quickly, if you drive away all the enemies and force them to do work?

Simple, just expand into your new territory until you bump into somebody else's, then try and take theirs too. :smallwink: Though to be fair the examples I was thinking of all had a distinct advantage in one way or another. Then again, with elves vs. goblins we'd have to include the possibility of magic which I'm sure would count...

At any rate, even if it's healthier from a Darwinian perspective in the long run, I doubt many communities are going to think it through enough to purposely keep their enemies around as a 'game preserve' of sorts. When the Comanche got their horses, that was pretty much it for their neighbors. (Though they kind of shot themselves in the foot with that one since some of those tribes were acting as a buffer zone between them and the US invaders...)


Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.


Looks fantastic, thanks for the recommendation guys. :)

I just hope they're not albino moon worshippers too or Terry Prachett has officially stole my ideas...directly from my brain...with a time traveling device of some sort... and my lawyer will be contacting him shortly. :smallmad:

[King of Nowhere]

I find your method even more likely to cause controversy (As it implies the author doesn't find the behavior offensive), and, in outlining how wrong a race is, can go too far in detail, especially if the atrocities hard-wired into the species come anywhere near the culture's population recovery/growth system.



You may find it controversial, but I like it because of that. Especially since it's realistic. because 99% of what people do that we label as evil? they think they are justified. In ancient sparta, there was a day in the year when it was ok for a young warrior to kill any number of enslaved peasants, to prove his worth. I'm sure those who did it never considered it as evil, but glorious. all ancients societies practiced slavery. none of them ever assumed there was anything wrong with slavery. in fact, when the slaves revolted, often they took slaves themselves. those people who owned slaves were no more evil than me or you. the native americans tought they were right in raiding the settler, and the settlers tought they were right in taking all the land for themselves and shooting all the buffalos. When two people clashes, both sides are absolutely sure they are in the right. And that's maybe the most tragic part of it all. then history decides who had been right all along. Now I think I am a good person, but maybe in the future I will be considered a monster cause I eat animals. One hundred years ago I would have been considered a slacker, because I would not work 12 hours per day as was common at the time. What is right and what is wrong is highly relative, and while this DO NOT mean we should stop trying to decide what is right and what is wrong, it also means that we must be careful about the judgments we make on those assumptions.

So, back from a D&D perspective, if I make an enemy people, I give them some internal motivation that make them persuaded that they are right. In the case of the orcs, that made every adult male of a warlike tribe a legitimate target, as every adult male of such a tribe is by definition a soldier in war with you, because he made such a choice, and if he wanted to be peaceful he could have left his tribe and find shelter in one of the peaceful tribes (by the way, about population recovery: only male fight. 90% of male orcs die before adulthood, but those suriving will easily get a dozen wives and make dozens of children, so the population remain stable. I thought it out). I didn't even do it on purpose; I let their culture evolve starting from the warrior stereotype, I added lots of gratuitous violence cause I still wanted them to be opponents, I put into it a pinch of aiel's honor code, and I ended up with that.
Even then, I never treated them as xp bundles. I had one mission where the pcs had to protect some peaceful orcs from an evil elf who wanted to stir interracial troubles as an excuse to take their land, then I had one mission where an orc warlord wanted to force the peaceful orcs to adopt his way of life and declare war on the humans, while another warlike chieftain opposed him arguing that in order to eventually beat the humans the orcs had to settle down and cultivate fields and grow their numbers and start some magic academies of their own. he also claimed that the first orc had no honor because he killed an unarmed elder of another tribe (the proper form would have been to give him a weapon and make him fight against an elder from your tribe, so that it would be a "fair fight"). He eventually told the pcs that he had a debt of honor to them and thus he accepted to live by their moral code, even if he found it all screwed up.
So, I gave those orcs plenty of depth.
If you think that I gave them an evil culture just to make them acceptable targets, you are missing the point. I wanted to explore the concept of a chaotic evil culture. How it could come into being, how it could perpetuate itself, how it could avoid self-destruction and anarchy, how an honorable person ascribing to the values of that culture would look like, how they would see our culture. I even gave a sort of peaceful solution, with everyone staying in his own land and not bothering the other peoples.
There is just so much you can do with a "usually evil" race that do not entail just killing them cause they are evil. Even if you choose to accept the label, you can still make them intersting and treat them as people.

[veti]

Making it a dragon completely defeats the point. You shoot the dragon because dragons are really rare, you know that there's a specific evil one in the area, and you are making a best guess that you're shooting the right one.

Not just really rare, but also really powerful. That's why I need to make the judgment call immediately, I don't have the luxury of interviewing it first. The potential consequences of not doing it are just - unthinkable.

Seriously, if this dragon wanted to approach on a friendly basis, the way to do that would be to identify someone who was on their way to the village - a homecoming farmer, peddlar or someone - land, and talk to them first, to send us a message. Landing unannounced in the middle of the village is just asking for trouble.


Not when there are no dragons in the real world, no, we don't. There is no actual necessity to depict that scenario because that scenario will never happen.

Then - with great respect - why did you include dragons in your story? Surely the whole point of dragons is to highlight the power disparity with everyone else. If you're trying to draw real-world parallels, and dragons don't have such a parallel, why write them in?

[Math_Mage]

Not just really rare, but also really powerful. That's why I need to make the judgment call immediately, I don't have the luxury of interviewing it first. The potential consequences of not doing it are just - unthinkable.
And the potential consequences of doing it, and being wrong, are equally unthinkable. You've conveniently only included the error type where you hesitate and the dragon turns out to be the one you were looking for, ignoring the error type where you don't hesitate and the dragon turns out to be Good--or, perhaps worse, Evil with a bunch of Evil friends who weren't interested in you until you killed the dragon.

Power works both ways. It does not create the moral imperative for you to kill the dragon, it just makes the consequences of being wrong--in either direction--far greater.


Seriously, if this dragon wanted to approach on a friendly basis, the way to do that would be to identify someone who was on their way to the village - a homecoming farmer, peddlar or someone - land, and talk to them first, to send us a message. Landing unannounced in the middle of the village is just asking for trouble.
And yet this changes nothing about the moral argument.


Then - with great respect - why did you include dragons in your story? Surely the whole point of dragons is to highlight the power disparity with everyone else. If you're trying to draw real-world parallels, and dragons don't have such a parallel, why write them in?
Because it's a story about Dungeons and Dragons. No, surely the whole point of dragons is NOT to highlight the power disparity with everyone else, which is evident because Rich has used them to do other things in this work. The author is not obligated to only use a race to represent the theme you think they should represent.

[AKA_Bait]

Then - with great respect - why did you include dragons in your story? Surely the whole point of dragons is to highlight the power disparity with everyone else. If you're trying to draw real-world parallels, and dragons don't have such a parallel, why write them in?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it is, at least partly, because in a D&D rules based comic you pretty much have to include some dragons.

[Solara]

You may find it controversial, but I like it because of that. Especially since it's realistic. because 99% of what people do that we label as evil? they think they are justified. In ancient sparta, there was a day in the year when it was ok for a young warrior to kill any number of enslaved peasants, to prove his worth. I'm sure those who did it never considered it as evil, but glorious. all ancients societies practiced slavery. none of them ever assumed there was anything wrong with slavery. in fact, when the slaves revolted, often they took slaves themselves. those people who owned slaves were no more evil than me or you. the native americans tought they were right in raiding the settler, and the settlers tought they were right in taking all the land for themselves and shooting all the buffalos. When two people clashes, both sides are absolutely sure they are in the right. And that's maybe the most tragic part of it all. then history decides who had been right all along. Now I think I am a good person, but maybe in the future I will be considered a monster cause I eat animals. One hundred years ago I would have been considered a slacker, because I would not work 12 hours per day as was common at the time. What is right and what is wrong is highly relative, and while this DO NOT mean we should stop trying to decide what is right and what is wrong, it also means that we must be careful about the judgments we make on those assumptions.

Thank you for this. Soooo many people don't get this. I think we might possibly be the most arrogant and judgemental generation that ever lived.


Not just really rare, but also really powerful. That's why I need to make the judgment call immediately, I don't have the luxury of interviewing it first. The potential consequences of not doing it are just - unthinkable.


But the same thing applies to Aldrakan's 'suicide bomber with a duck tattoo' analogy. I don't think the scenario as you've set it up would be much of a moral quandary at all though...the story would be in the practical consequences of what would happen if by some bizarre coincidence and freakishly bad timing your warrior guy (or sniper) happened to be wrong.

[pendell]

I just hope they're not albino moon worshippers too or Terry Prachett has officially stole my ideas...directly from my brain...with a time traveling device of some sort... and my lawyer will be contacting him shortly
.

No, no they don't. Terry Pratchett's "elves" bear close resemblance to the Fey of myth, and they are NOT like Tinkerbell. The ones that are more benevolent are handicapped by the fact that they don't really "get" humans, and so don't understand (for example) why being taken away from fairyland and returning hundreds of years later in human time might be a problem.

The nasty ones ... well, think nasty little boys with small animals, except the small animals are humans.



There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the color. The was no evil glint. But there was…

… a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[The Giant]

Then - with great respect - why did you include dragons in your story? Surely the whole point of dragons is to highlight the power disparity with everyone else. If you're trying to draw real-world parallels, and dragons don't have such a parallel, why write them in?

Because the D&D game already includes dragons, and the treatment of such within the text of the game and around the gaming table was already an issue before I drew my first comic. I didn't invent this setting out of whole cloth, it's a pastiche. It's a commentary on the way people are already playing the game. The "point" of including the black dragons in OOTS is to expressly make these very points that I am being criticized for making. To take the criticisms of Start of Darkness to the next level: Yes, even dragons.

The real-world parallel that I am drawing is to the real players sitting around the real table, rolling dice and making up stories about dragons, not to any actual dragons. I'm not making commentary on how I think humans should treat dragons, I'm making commentary on how I think people should write fiction or play games about how humans treat dragons. Namely, they should acknowledge that if the fictional human kills the fictional dragon on sight for no reason than that they are a dragon, then that fictional human has done something bad. Maybe something understandable given the circumstances, but not something to be lauded and congratulated upon for doing what needed to be done.

That's it. That's all I'm trying to accomplish. It's a really simple point, but this whole discussion proves that it's a point that needs to be made.

[Scow2]

- Snip- And my problem with this whole thing is that it conflates Species and Culture... which might be more relevant to the real world, but it defeats the purpose of having multiple sapient species of varying natural ability and psychosis in a fantasy or transhuman setting, IMO. And, it causes problems with either giving too much or too little information on the race's behaviors as well.

There's no need to kick out the Objective Alignment system, either, if racial behaviors are already determined: Why not label the orcs of your culture "Usually Chaotic Evil", because they pretty clearly are (even if they don't think so).

When it comes to panel 1 of Strip 11: "Killing evil creatures" is not an Evil act unless it's done for Evil ends - If someone is vile enough (By depriving others of essential rights, such as that to life) to have earned an "Evil" tag, their own right to life is forfeit. However, someone must still exercise caution in killing members of a race that's "Usually Evil", because there's a chance that a given member has overcome/ignored the racial inclination (Though it's usually possible to discern within a few moments, because they are outliers in their culture).

[ti'esar]

I have no problem with your power fantasy, your moral fantasy on the other hand is quite troubling.

This is my favorite thing anyone has said so far in this thread.

Edit: Although this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16033941&postcount=99) runs a close second.

[Reddish Mage]

Incidentally, the fact is, I'm rather sympathetic of the notion that dwarves, elves and gnomes could be very discriminatory towards humans as a race that doesn't trend towards a good alignment as such it is clearly a danger to associate too closely with them.

[veti]

And the potential consequences of doing it, and being wrong, are equally unthinkable. You've conveniently only included the error type where you hesitate and the dragon turns out to be the one you were looking for, ignoring the error type where you don't hesitate and the dragon turns out to be Good--or, perhaps worse, Evil with a bunch of Evil friends who weren't interested in you until you killed the dragon.

Power works both ways. It does not create the moral imperative for you to kill the dragon, it just makes the consequences of being wrong--in either direction--far greater.

False equivalence. There's a straightforward moral calculus here. The consequences of being wrong in each direction are not symmetrical.

Dragons are, as previously mentioned, really rare. Thus the chances of this being "the" specific evil dragon are quite high. However, for the sake of being fair, let's say those chances are only 50/50.

If I kill it, and it turns out to be innocent, an innocent person has died. That's on me, it's my crime, and I'm the one who has to deal with my guilt. If that means giving myself up to the dragon's relatives for justice, letting them take a life for a life - then I guess that's what I'll end up doing. Final casualty count: 1, or worst case, 2. (I would certainly plead for my life in those circumstances, and I would hope that a genuinely "good" dragon community would see my point of view. But worst case, I die.)

(I'm going to ignore the "what if it's evil but just here to grab a barrel of beer before continuing on to terrorise someone else" option, because that's just too silly to live.)

If I don't kill it, and it turns out to be guilty, then by the time I next get to roll initiative, 30 innocent people have died, and I then have to kill the dragon anyway. Final casualty count, assuming I win initiative on the second round: 31.

If the odds are 50/50, then (Expected deaths) if I kill it: 1.5. (Expected deaths) if I don't kill it: 15.5. Even if you make a much more generous assessment of the odds - let's say there's a 75% chance it's innocent, and it could only kill 10 people with one breath - the calculus still comes down firmly against it.

(Aside: I know there are people who think that "taking one innocent life is just as bad as taking 30". I've heard that argument several times in my life, and it's never made a lick of sense to me. Then there's the argument that I'm directly responsible for the lives I take, but only indirectly responsible for those I allow the dragon to take. I believe that line of moral reasoning is fresh out of the back end of a horse. If I could have prevented those deaths, and, fully forseeing the consequence, I didn't, then - yes, I am responsible.)


And yet this changes nothing about the moral argument.

On the contrary. The dragon should have known that her arrival, unannounced, in a village unaccustomed to receiving such visitors would be greeted with consternation, not to say panic. Failing to take some precaution against that is criminal recklessness on her part. A bit like driving a hummer at maximum speed through a built-up area: you might not mean any harm, but really, you're in no position to act the injured-innocent if harm does ensue.

[Ramien]

When it comes to panel 1 of Strip 11: "Killing evil creatures" is not an Evil act unless it's done for Evil ends - If someone is vile enough (By depriving others of essential rights, such as that to life) to have earned an "Evil" tag, their own right to life is forfeit. However, someone must still exercise caution in killing members of a race that's "Usually Evil", because there's a chance that a given member has overcome/ignored the racial inclination (Though it's usually possible to discern within a few moments, because they are outliers in their culture).

I have to say you're wrong here. Killing anything sentient should require the same proofs and reasons behind the killing no matter the race or reputation. 'Evil' can be anything from a barkeep who routinely shortchanges customers when they can get away with it and who might rob any unwary travellers to the most vile devil worshipper. Just because some spell/effect tells you they're on that end of the alignment spectrum does not equal making it okay to kill them. There's no proof of actual misdeeds, just general malign intent. Roy said it best here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0251.html) - 'Concern for the dignity of sentient beings' does not make distinctions about the alignment of the sentient beings.

Yes, heroes fight evil, and often kill the villains. But they don't set out to kill all evil characters they see. They fight to stop commissions of evil, not to slake their bloodlust on socially acceptable targets. That way lies Belkar.

[Solara]

Then there's the argument that I'm directly responsible for the lives I take, but only indirectly responsible for those I allow the dragon to take. I believe that line of moral reasoning is fresh out of the back end of a horse. If I could have prevented those deaths, and, fully forseeing the consequence, I didn't, then - yes, I am responsible.)

This is why I get so frustrated with Batman whenever he fights the Joker.

[Ramien]

This is why I get so frustrated with Batman whenever he fights the Joker.

If Batman were to kill the Joker in self-defense, then that's morally acceptable. If he had the Joker and his current plan neutralized, and then killed him, he would be a murderer. It can be seen as justified in some senses, but in the end it's still murder.

The Joker has free will, and any actions taken after Batman turns him into the authorities are on the Joker's head, not Batman's. Otherwise you end with a setting where the 'heroes' have killed all the villains because of what they 'might' do - and we don't like it when our lawful governments jail people just because of 'might do,' why would we want vigilantes or other self-appointed 'heroes' doing the same thing?

[Forikroder]

If Batman were to kill the Joker in self-defense, then that's morally acceptable. If he had the Joker and his current plan neutralized, and then killed him, he would be a murderer. It can be seen as justified in some senses, but in the end it's still murder.

The Joker has free will, and any actions taken after Batman turns him into the authorities are on the Joker's head, not Batman's. Otherwise you end with a setting where the 'heroes' have killed all the villains because of what they 'might' do - and we don't like it when our lawful governments jail people just because of 'might do,' why would we want vigilantes or other self-appointed 'heroes' doing the same thing?

how many times does the Joker have to escape prison and go on another murder spree before batman realises that its not what he might do but what hes going to do?

he needs to stop being such a coward who refuses to actually get his hands dirty and do what needs to be done to keep Gotham safe isnt that the whole point of him being the dark knight?

[Scow2]

I have to say you're wrong here. Killing anything sentient should require the same proofs and reasons behind the killing no matter the race or reputation. 'Evil' can be anything from a barkeep who routinely shortchanges customers when they can get away with it and who might rob any unwary travellers to the most vile devil worshipper. Just because some spell/effect tells you they're on that end of the alignment spectrum does not equal making it okay to kill them. There's no proof of actual misdeeds, just general malign intent. Roy said it best here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0251.html) - 'Concern for the dignity of sentient beings' does not make distinctions about the alignment of the sentient beings.

Yes, heroes fight evil, and often kill the villains. But they don't set out to kill all evil characters they see. They fight to stop commissions of evil, not to slake their bloodlust on socially acceptable targets. That way lies Belkar.Even if a race leans toward an alignment, it doesn't mean all members of the race are of that alignment (Though it's a good guess if you're attacking, say, Xykon's forces.) Killing, say, a band of goblins that has been peacefully occupying in an otherwise abandoned keep for the past 20 years, and minding its own business except to sell a powerful magic fruit for a fraction of its value to the villagers every year (And, instead of killing murderous intruders, subduing and detaining them until reparations of a fraction of the damages in life and property they cause are repaid) is definitely an evil act. So is slaying the town bard that's decided to make a living playing a flute just because it happens to have the head of a hyena and successfully-repressed urges to murder everyone and desecrate the corpses clawing in the back of its mind.

People who are evil have and continue to commit evil unless stopped... then again, I don't consider someone as able to ping as "evil" unless they have deliberately and remorselessly killed at least one innocent person, with nothing to redeem them. (I consider "Collateral damage", as demonstrated by Mr. Plump's assessment of Moist Von Lipwig in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal to count). Tolerance of genuine Evil shows a blatant disregard of concern for the dignity of the victims of that person. Alignment takes action and intent to achieve.

[Forikroder]

People who are evil have and continue to commit evil unless stopped... then again, I don't consider someone as able to ping as "evil" unless they have deliberately and remorselessly killed at least one innocent person, with nothing to redeem them. (I consider "Collateral damage", as demonstrated by Mr. Plump's assessment of Moist Von Lipwig in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal to count). Tolerance of genuine Evil shows a blatant disregard of concern for the dignity of the victims of that person. Alignment takes action and intent to achieve.

its possible for someone to be evil without having a body count

[Solara]

If Batman were to kill the Joker in self-defense, then that's morally acceptable. If he had the Joker and his current plan neutralized, and then killed him, he would be a murderer. It can be seen as justified in some senses, but in the end it's still murder.

So how many hundreds of people does a guy have to murder before putting him down like a rabid dog becomes a justifiable option? To put it back in D&D terms, I think a paladin should be willing to fall if by doing so they know for a fact they're saving countless innocent lives. Wouldn't it be a kind of selfishness to knowingly allow all those people to die because you refuse to get your hands dirty?

...of course in the real world if Batman didn't take him down, I'm sure somebody else would have by now, or he'd have simply been executed. Or at least they might have switched out the revolving door in Arkham for one that actually locks.

[Bulldog Psion]

This is why I get so frustrated with Batman whenever he fights the Joker.

But you don't think they'd do away with a villain as popular and distinctive as the Joker, do you? :smallbiggrin:

[Scow2]

False equivalence. There's a straightforward moral calculus here. The consequences of being wrong in each direction are not symmetrical.

Dragons are, as previously mentioned, really rare. Thus the chances of this being "the" specific evil dragon are quite high. However, for the sake of being fair, let's say those chances are only 50/50.

If I kill it, and it turns out to be innocent, an innocent person has died. That's on me, it's my crime, and I'm the one who has to deal with my guilt. If that means giving myself up to the dragon's relatives for justice, letting them take a life for a life - then I guess that's what I'll end up doing. Final casualty count: 1, or worst case, 2. (I would certainly plead for my life in those circumstances, and I would hope that a genuinely "good" dragon community would see my point of view. But worst case, I die.)

(I'm going to ignore the "what if it's evil but just here to grab a barrel of beer before continuing on to terrorise someone else" option, because that's just too silly to live.)

If I don't kill it, and it turns out to be guilty, then by the time I next get to roll initiative, 30 innocent people have died, and I then have to kill the dragon anyway. Final casualty count, assuming I win initiative on the second round: 31.

If the odds are 50/50, then (Expected deaths) if I kill it: 1.5. (Expected deaths) if I don't kill it: 15.5. Even if you make a much more generous assessment of the odds - let's say there's a 75% chance it's innocent, and it could only kill 10 people with one breath - the calculus still comes down firmly against it.

(Aside: I know there are people who think that "taking one innocent life is just as bad as taking 30". I've heard that argument several times in my life, and it's never made a lick of sense to me. Then there's the argument that I'm directly responsible for the lives I take, but only indirectly responsible for those I allow the dragon to take. I believe that line of moral reasoning is fresh out of the back end of a horse. If I could have prevented those deaths, and, fully forseeing the consequence, I didn't, then - yes, I am responsible.)



On the contrary. The dragon should have known that her arrival, unannounced, in a village unaccustomed to receiving such visitors would be greeted with consternation, not to say panic. Failing to take some precaution against that is criminal recklessness on her part. A bit like driving a hummer at maximum speed through a built-up area: you might not mean any harm, but really, you're in no position to act the injured-innocent if harm does ensue.Actually, the moral thing to do in this situation is to hold action until intent is discerned. If you guess wrong, not only have you killed an innocent person, but you've also left your village to be completely destroyed when the REAL evil dragon comes - and it would come as a surprise, because they believe that the threat had been handled. The death of your entire village is also on your head, not just the death of the dragon you wrongfully killed.


If Batman were to kill the Joker in self-defense, then that's morally acceptable. If he had the Joker and his current plan neutralized, and then killed him, he would be a murderer. It can be seen as justified in some senses, but in the end it's still murder.

The Joker has free will, and any actions taken after Batman turns him into the authorities are on the Joker's head, not Batman's. Otherwise you end with a setting where the 'heroes' have killed all the villains because of what they 'might' do - and we don't like it when our lawful governments jail people just because of 'might do,' why would we want vigilantes or other self-appointed 'heroes' doing the same thing?Actually, the reason Batman doesn't kill the Joker is:
1.) He's afraid he'll start slipping, and killing villains who have done less and less damage than the Joker. He's afraid of sliding down a slippery slope because he's at least somewhat aware of his own neurosis.
2.) He's seen what happens to Superheroes who do kill - their writers misinterpret it, decide that "Anyone who kills someone for any reason is an unhinged murderer", and then derail the character completely, leading to Batman reluctantly killing (or refusing to save) the Joker one issue in a dramatic moment... and fifty or so later, his authors have him driving the Batmobile down Gotham's street with quad-gatling guns mounted on all corners gleefully gunning down bank robbers, teenaged wannabe-gangsters, petty thieves, muggers, jaywalkers, and stopsign/light blowers.


its possible for someone to be evil without having a body countI disagree. In order for them to be evil, they must have a net "Lives enhanced vs lives completely destroyed" ratio of -1 - even if that is achieved through greatly diminishing the quality of life of a number of people (Or indirectly getting someone innocent killed through deliberate action) - High-personal-value theft (Taking from those who don't have enough to be taken from), scams, slavery, and the like can all hasten the deaths of people, decrease quality of life, and generally make the world a significantly worse-off place.

[Ramien]

Even if a race leans toward an alignment, it doesn't mean all members of the race are of that alignment (Though it's a good guess if you're attacking, say, Xykon's forces.) Killing, say, a band of goblins that has been peacefully occupying in an otherwise abandoned keep for the past 20 years, and minding its own business except to sell a powerful magic fruit for a fraction of its value to the villagers every year (And, instead of killing murderous intruders, subduing and detaining them until reparations of a fraction of the damages in life and property they cause are repaid) is definitely an evil act. So is slaying the town bard that's decided to make a living playing a flute just because it happens to have the head of a hyena and successfully-repressed urges to murder everyone and desecrate the corpses clawing in the back of its mind.

People who are evil have and continue to commit evil unless stopped... then again, I don't consider someone as able to ping as "evil" unless they have deliberately and remorselessly killed at least one innocent person, with nothing to redeem them. (I consider "Collateral damage", as demonstrated by Mr. Plump's assessment of Moist Von Lipwig in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal to count). Tolerance of genuine Evil shows a blatant disregard of concern for the dignity of the victims of that person. Alignment takes action and intent to achieve.

And yet, Moist was never Evil. He never even realized he was hurting real people (who weren't trying to con him themselves, anyway) until he had Pump 19 rub his face in it, and he got hit hard with the guilt of it.

If you're considering murder to be the defining capability of evil, I have some bad news for you about what else can be done to sentient beings without killing them or hastening their deaths in any way.

In any case, and again, just because they're 'Evil' is not justification for a good person to kill them out of hand. Justice requires proof, Mercy requires compassion, Hope requires (at least a chance of) redemption. Good does not have the luxury of saying 'but not this guy, 'cause he's evil' when it comes to morality. Immediate defense of self, or of others, is necessary, but how you act when your foe is in your complete power is a big part of your own alignment.

[Forikroder]

I disagree. In order for them to be evil, they must have a net "Lives enhanced vs lives completely destroyed" ratio of -1 - even if that is achieved through greatly diminishing the quality of life of a number of people (Or indirectly getting someone innocent killed through deliberate action) - High-personal-value theft (Taking from those who don't have enough to be taken from), scams, slavery, and the like can all hasten the deaths of people, decrease quality of life, and generally make the world a significantly worse-off place.

what your talking about is much different then saying "to be evil you must have killed an innocent person"

[137beth]

what your talking about is much different then saying "to be evil you must have killed an innocent person"

Really? Who said that?
Oh, wait, you just made it up as a straw man.