OOTS #1142 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up.

[A.A.King]

"My Fault"? I'm guessing the whole idea of creating the Goblin race as XP Fodder for Clerics was Thor's idea?

[137beth]

Wow, I'm glad that at least some of the "good" gods are taking responsibility for their horrible decisions.

[Agnostik]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one would totally be fine with 100-200 strips of this Thor and the Dark One sitcom. A series of hilarious misunderstandings would cause each episode to end with a new Snarl unmaking creation but it'd be back to normal at the start of the next one.

[Peelee]

"My Fault"? I'm guessing the whole idea of creating the Goblin race as XP Fodder for Clerics was Thor's idea?

Thats what I was suspecting when I saw that.

[schmunzel]

Thats what I was suspecting when I saw that.

I presume its his fault because he attacked the dark one on or after his ascension

sch

[EYanyo]

Hmm, when Thor mentioned that the Dark One ascended on his own with no sponsorship for existing pantheons, it got me thinking...

What are the odds that a certain puppet god will ultimately come in to play in all of this?

[Peelee]

Hmm, when Thor mentioned that the Dark One ascended on his own with no sponsorship for existing pantheons, it got me thinking...

What are the odds that a certain puppet god will ultimately come in to play in all of this?

Zero percent.

[Lord Raziere]

Well that explains it: new two color Snarl ain't something anyone wants, so....thats why no communication. hm. So thats why we need to communicate through priests. hm. and Thor being partly responsible....yeah...yeah...I can see that....

[TuringTest]

I wonder if all this divine essence colors thing is created by the god's followers. If I remember my prequel readings, the Dark One ascended to godhood on his own because of the gathering of all goblinoid races.

[Sienar]

"...his name is totally metal."

Would that be "Dramatic Irony"?

Hee hee.

[Velazquez]

I wonder if all this divine essence colors thing is created by the god's followers. If I remember my prequel readings, the Dark One ascended to godhood on his own because of the gathering of all goblinoid races.

It could be, it follows the same logic as the rest of the OOTS universe.

[AlurenDarkfire]

What did you do, Thor??

[super dark33]

I can think of a name much more metal than "The Dark One" >.>
:smalltongue:

[Fan67]

I wonder if he really tried to kill Dark One.

I also wonder what is his plan of reasoning with him.

[M Placeholder]

His name was totally metal? I reckon before he became The Dark One, he was known as Osbourne Kilmister.

[Eldritch Queen]

Well, color me surprised. (No pun intended.)

I was wondering how The Dark One was different from the Elven Gods. Always try to get by on your own merits, kids. (The More You Know.) Also, I'm curious to see just how Thor is responsible for ill relations with The Dark One. Things were already rocky from the start between TDO and the other pantheons; He learned that the Gods purposefully made goblins like him cannon fodder for PC races, it doesn't get much worse than that. One has to wonder just how badly Thor screwed the pooch if he thinks it's his fault. :smallconfused:

[Coventry]

There is no way that Red Cloak (the goblin) will forgive all that has happened.

Wait ... will Durkon end up wearing The Red Cloak (thereby becoming the new HPoDO) once all is said and done?!?

Nope. I think I should forget that thought...

[HMS Invincible]

I didn't think they could create more snarls. Of course, they didn't mention color theory until now.

[Peelee]

There is no way that Red Cloak (the goblin) will forgive all that has happened.

Wait ... will Durkon end up wearing The Red Cloak (thereby becoming the new HPoDO)

I think you have a slight misunderstanding of how being a Cleric works.

[M Placeholder]

I wonder if he really tried to kill Dark One.

I also wonder what is his plan of reasoning with him.

Perhaps he doesn't. Instead, he gets Loki to come up with a plan to trick The Dark One and fix the rift.

[Tarthalion]

I think his name is totally metal too.

[hroþila]

I read "metal" as "mental" and was thoroughly confused for half a minute.

Anyway, I'm on Team "It's Thor's Fault Because He Wanted to Kill the Dark One upon Ascension".

[Fyraltari]

That name is metal.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one would totally be fine with 100-200 strips of this Thor and the Dark One sitcom. A series of hilarious misunderstandings would cause each episode to end with a new Snarl unmaking creation but it'd be back to normal at the start of the next one.

I'd watch the Hel out of that.

[Thecommander236]

I'm guessing that Thor drunkenly insulted the Dark One or was one of the people who decided Goblins should be experience fodder. Or even worse, maybe Thor TOLD his followers to kill The Dark One when he was still alive (though I doubt that since it's a dishonorable attack).

[Grey Watcher]

"My Fault"? I'm guessing the whole idea of creating the Goblin race as XP Fodder for Clerics was Thor's idea?

In Start of Darkness...

... Thor is the one used to represent the "take the Dark One out while we still can!" reaction to his ascension. (The panel specifically shows Thor and the Dark One about to fight with Loki and Tiamat interceding on The Dark One's behalf.) I'm guessing that, at the time, Thor was in, and possibly even the leader of, the "Kill the upstart!" faction. Something he now very much regrets.

Also, interesting that the other gods have already figured out The Dark One's Plan and are playing chess around him as much as he is around them.

[Fyraltari]

I love how the Dark One's illusion is just looking around being angry.

[masonwheeler]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.

Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:

[TuringTest]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.


Probably, having seen how it works and the end result, they don't want to take the risk.

Remember that they are specially vulnerable, so they might be hurt with no way of undoing even a small one.

[Thecommander236]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.

Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:

I love it! Or they will combine into an even bigger snarl and it will now be made of 5 colors. Oops.

[Grey Watcher]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.

Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:

If Loki thinks "unmake the world" is something they could do within 10 minutes, it seems likely that they could create a world in a relatively short amount of time. (A day? A week? A month? A year?) It might have literally been a matter of minutes between "Hey guys, let's create a new world together!" to "What the heck just happened to Ares!?"

And the gods definitely seem to have a better-safe-than-shredded-to-bits-sorry policy. They might not know how big a snarl has to be to be deadly, but they also REALLY don't want to find out.

[Dausuul]

"My Fault"? I'm guessing the whole idea of creating the Goblin race as XP Fodder for Clerics was Thor's idea?
That's my bet as well... emphasis on "bet."

When you wake up one morning with a killer hangover and a race of followers who have to die in battle or be damned forever, you gotta make sure they have something to fight.

[anonynos]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.


/COULD/ create one. Could being the operative word there. They probably don't know exactly what it took to make the snarl appear, so he doesn't want to risk making the situation even worse by adding in another mini-snarl.

[Fyraltari]

Interesting, now we know why the gods can't just wait out for another Dark One. Arising has to happen without their input, if they intentionnally made things so that new gods would arise they would not get a new quiddity. I believe that may also explain why there is so few ascended mortals: they had to get the pre-existing gods approval.

However that doesn't expalin why the Dark One can't help for the next world (apart from being a contrarian). I hope Thor explains next strip.

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.
That happened only once. The gods don't know the exact causes and are not willing to experiment. How much disagreement is too much? How many gods need to be involved? For how long? Nobody knows and nobody wants to find out. Better safe than sorry.


Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:

I don't think you can destroy chaos by throwing more chaos at it. Same goes for anger, discord disagreement and all of the other things the Snarl was born of.

[masonwheeler]

And the gods definitely seem to have a better-safe-than-shredded-to-bits-sorry policy. They might not know how big a snarl has to be to be deadly, but they also REALLY don't want to find out.

Some of them, at least. The Godsmoot made it abundantly clear that "The Gods" as a single organization with a single policy is not a thing in any way in this world.

[mjasghar]

I wonder if he really tried to kill Dark One.

I also wonder what is his plan of reasoning with him.
CG god of barbarians sees a new LE god of monsters
I wonder...
As for the colour - the goblin who became the dark one was purple (anyone know what specific subrace that is supposed to be?)

[Fyraltari]

If Loki thinks "unmake the world" is something they could do within 10 minutes, it seems likely that they could create a world in a relatively short amount of time. (A day? A week? A month? A year?) It might have literally been a matter of minutes between "Hey guys, let's create a new world together!" to "What the heck just happened to Ares!?"

And the gods definitely seem to have a better-safe-than-shredded-to-bits-sorry policy. They might not know how big a snarl has to be to be deadly, but they also REALLY don't want to find out.

As a anyone who ever built sandcastles can tell you, destruction is generally must faster than construction.

[masonwheeler]

I don't think you can destroy chaos by throwing more chaos at it. Same goes for anger, discord disagreement and all of the other things the Snarl was born of.

Why not? It worked in Dragonlance. Repeatedly.

[Peelee]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.

Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:

Five gold says the snarl thing will be solved by cooperation and not more fighting.

[Jasdoif]

Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:I don't think you can destroy chaos by throwing more chaos at it. Same goes for anger, discord disagreement and all of the other things the Snarl was born of.Also, the energy output of a Snarl-antiSnarl reaction might eradicate the multiverse.

[2D8HP]

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i294/trytoguess/Thor.png "...totally Metal"


Thor said METAL!

I'm totally in the tank(ard) for this! :biggrin:

[Fyraltari]

Why not? It worked in Dragonlance. Repeatedly.

If you say so. I don't know what that is.

[Grey Watcher]

Some of them, at least. The Godsmoot made it abundantly clear that "The Gods" as a single organization with a single policy is not a thing in any way in this world.

I think "Let's not get anywhere near creating another Snarl" and "Let's keep the Snarl locked up" are literally the only two things that they unanimously support.


As a anyone who ever built sandcastles can tell you, destruction is generally must faster than construction.


True, so maybe hours instead of minutes. But the point is, there's a strong possibility that it was a lot less than "ages".

NOTE: I'm gonna go back and look at what Shojo says. I realize his exposition has an asterix on it for potential inaccuracies, but it's the best account we have until and unless Thor (or one of the other gods) provides more exposition.

EDIT: OK, Shojo says the Snarl grew with each passing day, so we are taking on a scale of days, at least.

[PirateMonk]

As for the colour - the goblin who became the dark one was purple (anyone know what specific subrace that is supposed to be?)

I'm pretty sure he's just a regular goblin with various unusual traits. The skin color in particular may be a riff on Drizzt Do'Urden's purple eyes.

[Resileaf]

Considering Thor has full control over his image of the Dark One, it's funny that he has him glare angrily at Minrah, Durkon and himself.

[Ron Miel]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one would totally be fine with 100-200 strips of this Thor and the Dark One sitcom. A series of hilarious misunderstandings would cause each episode to end with a new Snarl unmaking creation but it'd be back to normal at the start of the next one.

You could call it The God Couple.

[Kish]

If you say so. I don't know what that is.
A D&D novel series, and attached campaign setting, of hotly debated qualify. Known for such gems as "too much good makes you evil" and for elves who are essentially Nazis because they're the first race created by the gods of good.

[jwhouk]

As a anyone who ever built sandcastles can tell you, destruction is generally must faster than construction.

It took four years to build the World Trade Centers, but only two hours to bring them down.

[Ron Miel]

CG god of barbarians sees a new LE god of monsters
I wonder...
As for the colour - the goblin who became the dark one was purple (anyone know what specific subrace that is supposed to be?)

I think he was supposed to be unique.

[Fyraltari]

A D&D novel series, and attached campaign setting, of hotly debated qualify. Known for such gems as "too much good makes you evil" and for elves who are essentially Nazis because they're the first race created by the gods of good.

Thanks for the info. I will go on a limb and say that if that is representative of the logic that is valid in these parts, then its ideas on how to defeat a creature of pure chaos are not worth investigating.

[Quinton250]

There is no way that Red Cloak (the goblin) will forgive all that has happened.

Wait ... will Durkon end up wearing The Red Cloak (thereby becoming the new HPoDO) once all is said and done?!?

Nope. I think I should forget that thought...

I’ve been thinking this for a few strips now. Ill type up my theory tomorrow if I have time.

[Kish]

I’ve been thinking this for a few strips now. Ill type up my theory tomorrow if I have time.
I hope your theory accounts for Redcloak specifying that the Crimson Mantle only works for a goblinoid cleric.

[Viridian]

Ah, that's why he needs Durkon.

Only Nixon could go to China.

[Tvtyrant]

There is no way that Red Cloak (the goblin) will forgive all that has happened.

Wait ... will Durkon end up wearing The Red Cloak (thereby becoming the new HPoDO) once all is said and done?!?

Nope. I think I should forget that thought...

That is why we never see Durkon's father, he was clearly Red Cloak's niece.

[blademan9999]

I suppose that's why they Rich stated that they can't simply kill The Dark One anymore, because it might create a second snarl.

[Rrmcklin]

I didn't think they could create more snarls. Of course, they didn't mention color theory until now.

Why woulnd't they be able to make more Snarls? Color theory only explains why they can't get rid of the original, it doesn't change anything about how the Snarl was created.

[Rrmcklin]

I suppose that's why they Rich stated that they can't simply kill The Dark One anymore, because it might create a second snarl.

No, they couldn't kill the Dark One anymore because he after being a good for a bit he's built up a lot of soul power. Rich explained that as well.

[Basement Cat]

If you say so. I don't know what that is.

The original trilogy came out in the late 80's and it was awesome. The later works...not so much, IMO. But the original trilogy spawned the Kender i.e. a halfling-type race of universal kleptomaniacs.

OT: Thor is demonstrating an enormous amount of humility. I cannot help but wonder what Loki is like.

And given that Loki sent Hilgya to join Nale and the Linear Group way back when I wonder if we'll get a face to face between those two. Hopefully one that doesn't involve Hilgya's death.

[Pyrrhic Gades]

Knowing all this can't be good for Durkon's life-post resurection.

Roy:We have freed you from Hel. Are you back to your Thor loving-self?

Durkon: Have I told you of the good news about The Dark One?

[LadyEowyn]

All pretty much as I expected; to me, the most interesting piece of new information here is that the other gods are already aware of The Plan.

I do think there's potential for successful negotiations here. The main goal of the Dark One and of Redcloak is to create a world where goblinoids are treated equally; the point of the Plan is to gain control of the Snarl in order to be able to have a strong negotiating position. If the Dark One can obtain concessions on the status of goblinoids by agreeing to help the other gods, rather than by threatening them, that's just as advantageous for him as well as being less risky. It achives his current objective, just using a carrot rather than a stick.

Also, it's not like any of the the other times Redcloak has had the option of choosing to give up the Plan. Here, he wouldn't be being asked to accept the inequality of goblins that is built into the structure of the world; he'd be being given a similar (and better) option for addressing it. There's at least a possibility that he'd go for it.

It really is an option that allows all sides to get what they want; the main obstacle is lack of trust.

[Dire Ferret]

I hope your theory accounts for Redcloak specifying that the Crimson Mantle only works for a goblinoid cleric.

While I don't think this idea is likely at all, Durkon is still dead and Reincarnate is a spell so we're wide open for more absurd speculation.

[Rrmcklin]

A Here, he wouldn't be being asked to accept the inequality of goblins that is built into the structure of the world; he'd be being given a similar (and better) option for addressing it. There's at least a possibility that he'd go for it.

It really is an option that allows all sides to get what they want; the main obstacle is lack of trust.

Recloak crossed the point of wanting equality awhile ago; he wants supremacy. He views the situation as a zero-sum game. Which you can't even totally blame him for the way the system has been set up, but still.

[Mic_128]

You could call it The God Couple.

Damn, that is a lot better than my Don't Snarl at Me pitch.

[Fyraltari]

Knowing all this can't be good for Durkon's life-post resurection.

Roy:We have freed you from Hel. Are you back to your Thor loving-self?

Durkon: Have I told you of the good news about The Dark One?
Okay that made me laugh

The main goal of the Dark One and of Redcloak is to create a world where goblinoids are treated equally

Or is it? Redcloak's goals, to me, seems to be:

1) Completing the plan for the plan's sake (and peace of mind).

2) Revenge.

3) The welfare of the goblin races.

In that order.

We don't know much about who the Dark One is as a person, but there's a chance he also is the "if I can't have cake without you also having cake then nobody gets cake!"* type.

*"Screw you, Jack! I won't let you have yours!"

[JumboWheat01]

I can see it now, Thor resting in his home, banging his head to some heavy metal.

[Sylian]

I can see it now, Thor resting in his home, banging his head to some heavy metal.Given his aesthetics, I would assume folk metal or viking metal (if you consider that a genre). Xykon would probably prefer death metal, I'm guessing?

[Crisis21]

Ah, I get it. Thor attacked the Dark One after his ascension because Thor was jealous of his name!

[Mandor]

Clearly we need an expert bargainer here, who can appear at first glance to have NO interest in either side, but who will go to the mat for the Order, and be able to negotiate Redcloak into a Lawful bound corner.

Paging Celia!

[LadyEowyn]

What we know about The Dark One so far is:

- The Dark One initially (being he became a god) attempted to negotiate with the other species for a fair distribution of the land, so that goblinoids would have some of the decent territory. He established his army not for the purpose of outright conquest, but in order to negotiate from a position of strength. He was then assassinated by people with no interest in negotiating.

- The Dark One's current goal is to use the threat of the Snarl to extort concessions from the other gods that will provide goblins with equal status (not with control of the whole world).

- The Dark One told Jirix that Jirix's role was to engage in "battles of trade and logistics, diplomacy and intrigue" - in other words, he wants Gobbotopia to operate as a functioning nation-state that can work with its neighbours, not try to conquer them. (And he's phrasing this in a way - "battles" - that will appeal to the hobgoblin's largely martial society.)

In short, the information that we do have indicates that he's a reasonable person who can be worked with. Granted, all this information is from Redcloak's and Jirix's perspective, so there's certainly a possibility of it being untrue. But giving us all that information just to say "Nope, it was all lies, he's just a one-dimensional villain who wants to conquer the world" doesn't really mesh, at all, with the plot direction indicated by the last two strips.

As for Redcloak:

- He certainly does (or did) want revenge on humans and especially on paladins, but the strength of this motivation is starting to fade. Unlike his previous conflicts with paladins (the fight with Miko; his overall enthusiasm for the conquest of Azure City; using Disintegrate on Hinjo during the conflict of Azure City), after he defeats the Resistance his response to Jirix's question about whether he got to kill any paladins was "One, sort of. It was less satisfying than I remember." The emotional satisfaction of revenge is fading.

- He may recognize that he's sticking with the Plan in part because of what it's cost him thus far, but that doesn't mean he has no interest in the actual goals of the Plan. He has succesfully convinced himself that the Plan is the best option for goblinoids, and he's able to cling to that because he hasn't been prevented with any alternatives that address the cosmically built-in inferior status of goblinoids. Being presented with such an alternative could force him to examine his motivations and what he really wants.

- The evidence does support Redcloak's main goal for goblinoids being equality rather than supremacy. He is not trying to use Gobbotopia to conquer the world; he's done his best to establish it as a functioning state that has a good working relationship with his neighbours, and that's been his position ever since the start of DSTP. At some points, he's even been willing to prioritize that above the plan: in DSTP, he was deliberately delaying Xykon from moving on the next Gate so that Gobbotopia would have time to establish trade relations with their neighbours.

[KorvinStarmast]

Why not? It worked in Dragonlance. Repeatedly. that's part of what made Dragonlance less than awesome ... :smallfrown: Even though it had some good stuff.

The original trilogy came out in the late 80's and it was awesome. The later works...not so much, IMO. But the original trilogy spawned the Kender i.e. a halfling-type race of universal kleptomaniacs. Don't get me started ... :smallwink:

Roy:We have freed you from Hel. Are you back to your Thor loving-self?
Durkon: Have I told you of the good news about The Dark One? Oh, that would be so cool.

Clearly we need an expert bargainer here, who can appear at first glance to have NO interest in either side, but who will go to the mat for the Order, and be able to negotiate Redcloak into a Lawful bound corner. Paging Celia! Loki.

[Crisis21]

It occurs to me that what Thor wants is in direct opposition to what the IFCC wants (#668, panel 6) (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0668.html).

[Puschkin]

Redcloak has always been one of my favourite characters and definately my favourite outside the Order. I am very pleased that it seems like he will be the key to resolving the main plot. Also, I am a sucker for complex, reasonable villain characters that make a turn at some point and work together with the bland good guys for a common cause. So I keep my hopes up that by the end, Redcloak will be alive and his people free.

[Grey Watcher]

Considering Thor has full control over his image of the Dark One, it's funny that he has him glare angrily at Minrah, Durkon and himself.

Not too surprising. Even Elan's illusions are capable of back-talking their creator. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0597.html)


All pretty much as I expected; to me, the most interesting piece of new information here is that the other gods are already aware of The Plan.

I do think there's potential for successful negotiations here. The main goal of the Dark One and of Redcloak is to create a world where goblinoids are treated equally; the point of the Plan is to gain control of the Snarl in order to be able to have a strong negotiating position. If the Dark One can obtain concessions on the status of goblinoids by agreeing to help the other gods, rather than by threatening them, that's just as advantageous for him as well as being less risky. It achives his current objective, just using a carrot rather than a stick.

A major question is "Does the Dark One have the same Sunk Cost Fallacy Blindspot as his high priest?" Because that could be as much, if not more, of a stumbling block than the trust issues and resentment from him and Thor having previously locked horns.

[Rrmcklin]

Redcloak has always been one of my favourite characters and definately my favourite outside the Order. I am very pleased that it seems like he will be the key to resolving the main plot. Also, I am a sucker for complex, reasonable villain characters that make a turn at some point and work together with the bland good guys for a common cause. So I keep my hopes up that by the end, Redcloak will be alive and his people free.

That assumes Thor's "just batch the rifts whenever the form" plan will be the end of things. But that's not actually a permeant solution, and thus not very likely to happen, from a narrative standpoint. Plots like this always have permanent solutions, unless it's being used to set up a sequel series or something of that nature.

This will most certainly be important to whatever ultimately resolves things, but "Redcloak will be the key to resolving the main plot" is something it's way too early to actually say.

At this point, Redcloak ruining whatever they have in mind might be just as (or more) likely.

[factotum]

I just don't see it. Redcloak is so deep into the sunk cost fallacy that he *has* to keep going with the Plan. Yes, he delayed briefly in Azure City, but I don't think he ever intended to make that a permanent thing (not that Xykon would have let him). I do agree the Dark One himself might be more reasonable, though--I still think that when he told Redcloak via the resurrected Jirix "Don't screw this up" he was talking about Gobbotopia, not the Plan.

[Curupira]

I do think there's potential for successful negotiations here. The main goal of the Dark One and of Redcloak is to create a world where goblinoids are treated equally; the point of the Plan is to gain control of the Snarl in order to be able to have a strong negotiating position. If the Dark One can obtain concessions on the status of goblinoids by agreeing to help the other gods, rather than by threatening them, that's just as advantageous for him as well as being less risky. It achives his current objective, just using a carrot rather than a stick.
(...)
It really is an option that allows all sides to get what they want; the main obstacle is lack of trust.

Yes, but the lack of trust is warranted: The Dark One was first betrayed by human kings, then was almost instantly attacked by Thor himself when he ascended. Any attempt at negotiations will be received with extreme distrust by The Dark One.

EDIT: I hadn't seen that you explained it yourself better than me in that other post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23403099&postcount=69). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Kish]

--I still think that when he told Redcloak via the resurrected Jirix "Don't screw this up" he was talking about Gobbotopia, not the Plan.
Don't we have Word of the Author to the contrary on this?

[B. Dandelion]

I just don't see it. Redcloak is so deep into the sunk cost fallacy that he *has* to keep going with the Plan. Yes, he delayed briefly in Azure City, but I don't think he ever intended to make that a permanent thing (not that Xykon would have let him). I do agree the Dark One himself might be more reasonable, though--I still think that when he told Redcloak via the resurrected Jirix "Don't screw this up" he was talking about Gobbotopia, not the Plan.

I've argued before that the commentary in book five comes out pretty strongly against that interpretation.


Most importantly, the idea needed to be put forth that just because Redcloak had, in fact, established a goblin state on the grave of Azure City did not mean that he was being let off the hook for carrying out his god's evil plan for the Gates. If Redcloak was the hero of the story, he could probably rest on his laurels at this point, but as the villain, he needs to keep moving.

Redcloak is "on the hook" for his god's plan, he is being ordered to continue even when he might have reason not to.

[Ghosty]

I hope your theory accounts for Redcloak specifying that the Crimson Mantle only works for a goblinoid cleric.

Is Oona close enough for divine work? Despite her attitude towards the Dark One being, "no big whoop (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1038.html)."

I guess RedCloak's niece could make an appearance. Other than that, I'm not seeing any close-by goblinoid clerics.

[SilverCacaobean]

Durkon will like this mission even less than he liked the last one he had in the name of Thor.


A D&D novel series, and attached campaign setting, of hotly debated qualify. Known for such gems as "too much good makes you evil" and for elves who are essentially Nazis because they're the first race created by the gods of good.

I keep learning more about d&d and every time I think it can't surprise me anymore...


Knowing all this can't be good for Durkon's life-post resurection.

Roy:We have freed you from Hel. Are you back to your Thor loving-self?

Durkon: Have I told you of the good news about The Dark One?

OotS: He's still possessed! KILL HIM AGAIN!

[hamishspence]

Probably, having seen how it works and the end result, they don't want to take the risk.

Yup. As the Giant put it:


The gods do not have a neutral meeting ground—or rather they do, and this is it.

Also, gods of different pantheons do not meet in person anymore, lest any debates or squabbles turn into Snarl Jr.

There might be momentary meets like with Tiger:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0453.html

but not for any length of time.

[Aveline]

Is Oona close enough for divine work? Despite her attitude towards the Dark One being, "no big whoop (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1038.html)."

I guess RedCloak's niece could make an appearance. Other than that, I'm not seeing any close-by goblinoid clerics.

I would love to see Oona don the Crimson Mantle. She seems far more genuinely concerned with goblinoid welfare than Redcloak is. And think of the comedy! I bet she'd negotiate with the Dark One every step of the way.

[Juhn]

A D&D novel series, and attached campaign setting, of hotly debated qualify. Known for such gems as "too much good makes you evil" and for elves who are essentially Nazis because they're the first race created by the gods of good.Technically-speaking, the biggest instance of "too much good makes you evil" was the head of the biggest (previously) Good-aligned empire deciding that, essentially, certain races were listed as "always evil" or "usually evil" in the Monster Manual, and could therefore be safely exterminated (and on top of that, that doing so was a Good act since it improved the world).

Suffice to say that he was not, in fact, Good (even in setting) as soon as he set off down that road. There's a reason he never had access to the Good-aligned divine magic someone in his station is supposed to have.

The whole idea behind that honestly wasn't dissimilar to what's going on in OotS, although the execution there is debatable.

[Fyraltari]

I would love to see Oona don the Crimson Mantle. She seems far more genuinely concerned with goblinoid welfare than Redcloak is. And think of the comedy! I bet she'd negotiate with the Dark One every step of the way.

https://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g68/Cats_Are_Aliens/Banners/DarkOne_zps35xlc6yw.png Nod. Get treat.

[Synesthesy]

Am I the only one who felt the urge to listen to this song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edBYB1VCV0k

[hamishspence]

Suffice to say that he was not, in fact, Good (even in setting) as soon as he set off down that road. There's a reason he never had access to the Good-aligned divine magic someone in his station is supposed to have.


Apparently, Fizban (the LG god Paladine in disguise), does say "the Kingpriest of Istar was a good man." in the novel Dragons of Spring Dawning.


"Haven't you learned anything, young lady?" Fizban scolded, shaking a bony finger at her. "There was a time when good held sway. Do you know when that was? Right before the Cataclysm!"

"Yes" - he continued, seeing their astonishment - "the Kingpriest of Istar was a good man. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't, because both you have seen what goodness like that can do. You've seen it in the elves, the ancient of embodiment of good! It breeds intolerance, rigidity, a belief that because I am right, those who don't believe as I do are wrong.

"We gods saw the danger this complacency was bringing upon the world. We saw that much good was being destroyed, simply because it wasn't understood. And we saw the Queen of Darkness, lying in wait, biding her time; for this could not last, of course. The overweighted scales must tip and fall, and then she would return. Darkness would descend on the world very fast."

[M Placeholder]

What we know about The Dark One so far is:
- The Dark One told Jirix that Jirix's role was to engage in "battles of trade and logistics, diplomacy and intrigue" - in other words, he wants Gobbotopia to operate as a functioning nation-state that can work with its neighbours, not try to conquer them. (And he's phrasing this in a way - "battles" - that will appeal to the hobgoblin's largely martial society.)


Trade, logistics, diplomacy and intrigue are all important in building the nation-state of Gobbotopia, but that doesn't mean that TDO doesn't want Gobbotopia to not be an aggressive state. Hell, there are no shortage of real world nations that used all that as weapons just as important as martial capability.

TDO might very well view all those things as necessary for conquering other realms and putting them on top. And he wouldn't be wrong about that.

[Fyraltari]

Am I the only one who felt the urge to listen to this song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edBYB1VCV0k
Nope. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cDa7yZeci8)
In fact (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzed5O-SmmA) let me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf8Y5lk6VOo) indulge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUlK3S_9IOo).

Apparently, Fizban (the LG god Paladine in disguise), does say "the Kingpriest of Istar was a good man." in the novel Dragons of Spring Dawning.

Whoever wrote that does not know what good means.

[Rrmcklin]

Is Oona close enough for divine work? Despite her attitude towards the Dark One being, "no big whoop (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1038.html)."

I guess RedCloak's niece could make an appearance. Other than that, I'm not seeing any close-by goblinoid clerics.

I imagine you have to already be a cleric for it to work, putting on the mantle doesn't automatically make the wearer a cleric. And Oona isn't a cleric.

[hamishspence]

Whoever wrote that does not know what good means.

The writers were Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis - the primary early Dragonlance writers.

I think the differences between Dragonlance Good and 3e Good are a holdover from 1e/2e.

Gygax had some interesting things to say about how Good characters do things, as well, which were not entirely consistent with the 3e/3.5e version of Good. Makes sense that other authors of the time might have similar issues.

[Kish]

Technically-speaking, the biggest instance of "too much good makes you evil" was the head of the biggest (previously) Good-aligned empire deciding that, essentially, certain races were listed as "always evil" or "usually evil" in the Monster Manual, and could therefore be safely exterminated (and on top of that, that doing so was a Good act since it improved the world).

With the strong encouragement of the major elven civilizations.

Also, not just the "listed evil" ones--any that weren't "listed Good," except for humans, and some of his elven advisors grumbled about having to accept that a human was not going to join them in trying to wipe out humans. He also hated and tried to wipe out arcane spellcasters.


Suffice to say that he was not, in fact, Good (even in setting) as soon as he set off down that road. There's a reason he never had access to the Good-aligned divine magic someone in his station is supposed to have.

Y'might want to reread the Legends series again. He was a very magically powerful cleric of Paladine, right up until the gods dropped a mountain of fire on him.

And, as hamishspence pointed out, the moral that the hacks Weis and Hickman beat the readers over the heads with was not "racism is evil" or "good and evil are found in actions, not inborn" or "excessive moral certitude leads to evil, so always question your own moral standing" but "balance between Good and Evil is necessary because Good 'breeds intolerance, rigidity, a belief that because I am right, those who don't believe as I do are wrong'" (the part in double quotes being a direct quote from the chief God of Good within the setting).

So yeah.

[hamishspence]

Apparently, Beldinas the Kingpriest was, at least, under the influence of a powerful evil artefact:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/Dragonlance

still, that might excuse him partially, but not totally.



I wonder, had The Giant read Dragonlance when he created Miko? She seems very much like "Dragonlance Good" at its worst.

[KorvinStarmast]

Whoever wrote that does not know what good means. If you read it like "that the high Priest of Istar *was* good" (with the implication being that the condition changed) it probably scans better. That and the problem of "good" or "evil" being sides in a conflict, rather than modes of behavior. (rather like the Law/Chaos sides basis of the original three alignments ...) but that's water well under the bridge at this point. 3.x gamified it even further.

[hamishspence]

The "Good held sway right before the Cataclysm" bit does seem to imply that Good as a Cosmic Force was dominant, and thus that the world was out of balance, due to his actions.

[B. Dandelion]

So it sounds like Thor's gonna need Durkon to meet with a sufficiently high-level cleric of the Dark One so that the two of them can cast Summon Proxy and have a mini-Godsmoot for Thor and TDO to hammer it out... figuratively speaking. But of course there aren't that many goblin clerics of a high enough level to cast that spell, so the good guys are going to have to figure out how to get Redcloak to go along with the idea, despite the fact that he's determined to kill them all on sight.

(What I sorta suspect might happen is that the paladins will wind up ambushing him after he leaves the dungeon. 1041 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1041.html) establishes that he exits the Tomb low on spells and morale, if they could catch him away from his allies he'd pretty much be a sitting duck against two decently-leveled paladins like O-Chul and Lien. So... beat the crap out of him, take him prisoner, and then try to win him over. It's foolproof!)

I'm not sure about the patch-as-you-go plan though, it wouldn't surprise me if that fell through. I suspect the Snarl will be more permanently taken care of / untangled by the time the comic's done.

[KorvinStarmast]

The "Good held sway right before the Cataclysm" bit does seem to imply that Good as a Cosmic Force was dominant, and thus that the world was out of balance, due to his actions. Yeah. That whole balance thing works better with Law/Chaos than it does with Good/Evil.

[Deepbluediver]

He learned that the Gods purposefully made goblins like him cannon fodder for PC races, it doesn't get much worse than that.
I've seen several people mentioning this- have we ever gotten confirmation from anyone other than the goblins themselves that this is what actually happened? To me, it always seemed just a little too convenient that the goblins where the aggrieved party, who only wanted a fair shot and peaceful commerce while the other races just stabbed them in the back. And that ALL of the other good, good and evil alike, were perfectly OK with this.

Is it possible? Sure, I guess so. And maybe everyone else was just to preoccupied with their own stuff so it's more a crime of ignorance and apathy than malice, which I admit doesn't absolve the good gods entirely but does make it more understandable IMO. But it also seems entirely plausible to me that we don't have the whole story yet, or at least another point of view.

[Fyraltari]

The writers were Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis - the primary early Dragonlance writers.

I think the differences between Dragonlance Good and 3e Good are a holdover from 1e/2e.

Gygax had some interesting things to say about how Good characters do things, as well, which were not entirely consistent with the 3e/3.5e version of Good. Makes sense that other authors of the time might have similar issues.
Really? by definition, good is what is needed and evil is what should be removed. There can never be "too much good" or "not enough evil" these are self contradictory statements.

With the strong encouragement of the major elven civilizations.

Also, not just the "listed evil" ones--any that weren't "listed Good," except for humans, and some of his elven advisors grumbled about having to accept that a human was not going to join them in trying to wipe out humans. He also hated and tried to wipe out arcane spellcasters.

Y'might want to reread the Legends series again. He was a very magically powerful cleric of Paladine, right up until the gods dropped a mountain of fire on him.

And, as hamishspence pointed out, the moral that the hacks Weis and Hickman beat the readers over the heads with was not "racism is evil" or "good and evil are found in actions, not inborn" or "excessive moral certitude leads to evil, so always question your own moral standing" but "balance between Good and Evil is necessary because Good 'breeds intolerance, rigidity, a belief that because I am right, those who don't believe as I do are wrong'" (the part in double quotes being a direct quote from the chief God of Good within the setting).

So yeah.
So basically "Good breeds evil"? seems more like these writers just have a flawed understanding of good.

How does"balance between Good and Evil is necessary" even supposed to work? Doesn't that make the balance itself good? And now you need to balance the balance with some more evil? So instead of 50/50 you have 25/75? And then you have to balance that as well and you get 12.5/87.5 and so on?

You know "if you start thinking you should tolerate evil you will end up dominated by evil" would be a (somewhat) valid moral lesson but somehow I don't think that's what they aimed for here.

[Lord Seth]

Intersting comic. I've been apathetic about Order of the Stick for a while but the most recent strips have really revitalized my interest in the series.

[Sylian]

The original trilogy came out in the late 80's and it was awesome. The later works...not so much, IMO.It's a shared world, with lots of subpar authors contributing, although some made some good work (like Chris Pierson, Richard A. Knaak, or Margaret Weis' solo work (and the draconian stories she wrote together with Don Perrin). Note that I haven't really read Dragonlance in years so I can't tell for sure I'd still appreciate it, though I do suspect I would appreciate at least some of it. With that being said, I agree that the whole "Too much Good is bad" thing seemed a bit strange. Fantasy logic, I suppose? Perhaps they shouldn't have been calling it "Good" as much as "Paternalism", because that is what it was, extreme paternalism. When you're justifying slavery "for their own good" then you're kind of veering into Lawful Evil territory.

I think Dragonlance, or at least the first two trilogies, were kind of written with teenagers in mind. They're not really meant to be super deep or such. I mostly read them as a teenager myself, so I'm not really sure how I'd react to them now that I'm an adult, hmm.

[Ghosty]

I imagine you have to already be a cleric for it to work, putting on the mantle doesn't automatically make the wearer a cleric. And Oona isn't a cleric.

I don't see Oona in the Class and Level Geekery thread, but I thought we'd all guessed she was a shaman? And if so, that would make her somewhat used to channeling divine energy. From SoD, what level was RedCloak supposed to be when he put the Mantle on?

I just don't think there'd need to be that much handwaving required if the Giant had Oona put the Mantle on. Say because RedCloak refused to work with the Order, especially if the two Paladins show up at this last Gate with the Order, and even if the Dark One ordered him to.

(That'll be a fun conversation: "RedCloak, I order you to work with these two, even though they're members of the group who massacred your family and one of whom you'd spent 200 strips or so torturing.)

Or if Xykon figures the Plan out, and preemptively blasts RedCloak with a Meteor Swarm or three. (After the first Maximized Energy Drain fails because RedCloak's wearing Tsukiko's ring.)

Edit: Swarm, Storm; same diff.

[Nightcanon]

Apparently, Fizban (the LG god Paladine in disguise), does say "the Kingpriest of Istar was a good man." in the novel Dragons of Spring Dawning.

The important word in that sentence might be was.

[Rrmcklin]

I don't see Oona in the Class and Level Geekery thread, but I thought we'd all guessed she was a shaman? And if so, that would make her somewhat used to channeling divine energy. From SoD, what level was RedCloak supposed to be when he put the Mantle on?

I just don't think there'd need to be that much handwaving required if the Giant had Oona put the Mantle on. Say because RedCloak refused to work with the Order, especially if the two Paladins show up at this last Gate with the Order, and even if the Dark One ordered him to.

(That'll be a fun conversation: "RedCloak, I order you to work with these two, even though they're members of the group who massacred your family and one of whom you'd spent 200 strips or so torturing.)

Or if Xykon figures the Plan out, and preemptively blasts RedCloak with a Meteor Storm or three. (After the first Maximized Energy Drain fails because RedCloak's wearing Tsukiko's ring.)

I don't see why people would guess she was a shaman, she never referred to herself as such, and we haven't seen her casting any divine spells or the like.

Though I think a bigger issue to that would be that Oona is ultimately a bit character and she's not going to ever replace Redcloak in the story in any meaningful capacity.

I doubt Recloak is going to go along with whatever Thor/the Dark One agree to, but that'll mean the plan won't happen, not that someone else will take his place and make it work.

[Angband]

...it seems likely that they could create a world in a relatively short amount of time. (A day? A week? A month? A year?)

In other fictional settings, creating the whole universe in the span of six days is canonical.

[hamishspence]

You know "if you star thinking you should tolerate evil you will end up dominated by evil" would be a (somewhat) valid moral lesson but somehow I don't think that's what they aimed for here.

It's more:

"If you start thinking that everyone that is evil must be exterminated, you make the world a worse place in practice".

"Tolerating worshippers of evil gods" is portrayed as a Good Thing.



Eberron may be a continuation of this - with its theme that Evil-aligned characters can be worthy contributors to society who don't deserve to be killed.


The original trilogy came out in the late 80's and it was awesome.

Spring Dawning was book 3 in that trilogy. The Kingpriest trilogy was later, showing the leadup to the Cataclysm itself.

[Fyraltari]

I don't see why people would guess she was a shaman, she never referred to herself as such, and we haven't seen her casting any divine spells or the like.
Indeed, she also show signs of not understanding how it works.


Though I think a bigger issue to that would be that Oona is ultimately a bit character and she's not going to ever replace Redcloak in the story in any meaningful capacity.

I doubt Recloak is going to go along with whatever Thor/the Dark One agree to, but that'll mean the plan won't happen, not that someone else will take his place and make it work.

Redcloak's role in the story is not "High Priest of the Dark One" nor is it "Leader of the Goblin people", it's "Second-to-most prominent vilain (redeemable?) with sympathetic motives".

The first two things he may very well lose just as he lost "Ruler of Gobbotopia" to Jirix, himself as much a "bit character" as Oona is.

I can see a conclusion where Red will agree to let go of his grievances to for the common good and get the goblins their fair share in return. But I can also see one where he doesn't, is killed and somebody else does it.

[Juhn]

Y'might want to reread the Legends series again. He was a very magically powerful cleric of Paladine, right up until the gods dropped a mountain of fire on him.I was remembering based on the Kingpriest Trilogy, which expanded things a lot, although admittedly it's been almost 15 years since I read either.


If you read it like "that the high Priest of Istar *was* good" (with the implication being that the condition changed) it probably scans better.

Brother Beldyn was a Good person, although once he became Beldinas the Kingpriest (and received a prophecy from the gods he completely misinterpreted), he didn't stay Good for long. He became absolutely convinced that he was destined to singlehandedly save the world by cleansing it of Evil once and for all. As he did this and it didn't produce the changes he thought it would, he eventually broadened the definition of Evil all the way to "Anything that isn't my specific flavour of 'Good'".

If I remember right he was also being 'advised' by the most powerful evil archmage to ever exist (as part of his decades-long bid for ultimate power) basically from the moment he started to go bad, which probably didn't help.


How does"balance between Good and Evil is necessary" even supposed to work? Doesn't that make the balance itself good? And now you need to balance the balance with some more evil? So instead of 50/50 you have 25/75? And then you have to balance that as well and you get 12.5/87.5 and so on?It gets even weirder than that, actually. Way further on down the line, after the books get really weird, they manage to kill the primary God of Evil once and for all. Without her around, this leaves things out of balance, and the chief God of Good has to reduce himself to mortality in order to maintain the balance. Then it gets really weird as the chief God of the Neutral Pantheon realizes he might have to step down lest Neutrality get too powerful.

Dragonlance metaphysics is weird and not super well-thought-out. I grew up on it and it produced a lot of things I like in modern D&D, but it could get weird at times.

[Erloas]

Whoever wrote that does not know what good means.
I think they know exactly what good means, but they were trying to demonstrate that just because the majority of what you do is good doesn't mean that everything you do is good. That you can get blinded to reality and *believe* you can do no wrong so you stop questioning if your actions are *actually* good or not.

　
My take on this is that at this point The Dark One doesn't, and can't, have the whole picture of the snarl. He may, but seems a bit unlikely, know how many worlds have been destroyed by the snarl. The fact that he thinks it can be controlled implies that he doesn't know what he is dealing with.

Since the other gods have no way of talking to The Dark One they need to get some high level priests together on the mortal plane to talk, like the Godsmoot. Durkon and Red Cloak can do that. I think Thor apologizing and being humble could go a long ways. Red Cloak, while he believes in the Plan, if his god tells him otherwise, will change the plan because he is Lawful, he would go along with it even if he doesn't necessarily believe it is the best option himself.

I've got a bigger question about how Xykon is going to play into this. Being an all-powerful and eternally living Liche is sort of useless if the universe ceases to exist in a few months. He has nothing at all to gain from the Plan, he just doesn't know that at this point.

[Scorer]

I've got a bigger question about how Xykon is going to play into this. Being an all-powerful and eternally living Liche is sort of useless if the universe ceases to exist in a few months. He has nothing at all to gain from the Plan, he just doesn't know that at this point.


Something to learn from The Giant is that you always get surprised by the most unexpected. Xykon looks like a silly one dimensional skull. So yes, surprise is coming for sure. :smallsmile:

[Goblin_Priest]

I presume its his fault because he attacked the dark one on or after his ascension

sch

Maybe spoiler material? But

He's the only god we see actively trying to engage the Dark One in the crayon strips

[Jasdoif]

I don't see why people would guess she was a shaman, she never referred to herself as such, and we haven't seen her casting any divine spells or the like.I don't recall a lot of people doing so, either. I believe the most common expression was "Oona must be a Beast Heart Adept; that class appeared in Dungeonscape, which has 'Rich Burlew' as one of its designers".

[Rrmcklin]

Redcloak's role in the story is not "High Priest of the Dark One" nor is it "Leader of the Goblin people", it's "Second-to-most prominent vilain (redeemable?) with sympathetic motives".

The first two things he may very well lose just as he lost "Ruler of Gobbotopia" to Jirix, himself as much a "bit character" as Oona is.

I can see a conclusion where Red will agree to let go of his grievances to for the common good and get the goblins their fair share in return. But I can also see one where he doesn't, is killed and somebody else does it.

I don't see what point you're making. "High Priest of the Dark One" and "Leader of the Goblin people" are a part of what makes him "Second-to-most prominent villain".

In any case, whatever happens, no, I don't see a conclusion that involves "Redcloak the character we've known from the beginning is replaced, by Oona, a character we've known and spent significantly less time being invested in to resolve the story."

I doubt the story will be resolved Thor's way at all, but that's a different matter.

[Fyraltari]

It's a shared world, with lots of subpar authors contributing, although some made some good work (like Chris Pierson, Richard A. Knaak, or Margaret Weis' solo work (and the draconian stories she wrote together with Don Perrin). Note that I haven't really read Dragonlance in years so I can't tell for sure I'd still appreciate it, though I do suspect I would appreciate at least some of it.
That does make thematic coherence harder.


It gets even weirder than that, actually. Way further on down the line, after the books get really weird, they manage to kill the primary God of Evil once and for all. Without her around, this leaves things out of balance, and the chief God of Good has to reduce himself to mortality in order to maintain the balance. Then it gets really weird as the chief God of the Neutral Pantheon realizes he might have to step down lest Neutrality get too powerful.

Dragonlance metaphysics is weird and not super well-thought-out. I grew up on it and it produced a lot of things I like in modern D&D, but it could get weird at times.
That was a joke, right?
Like when, in Asterix: Mission Cleopatra, Cleopatra's milk bath is so very cool that dipping one's fingertip in it is apprently midly painful as if it was too hot or too cold? Right?

Yeah. That whole balance thing works better with Law/Chaos than it does with Good/Evil.
I mean, yeah!
"The Balance between Law and Chaos is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Emotion and Discipline is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Blue and Orange is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Salt and Pepper is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Good and Evil is Good; too much of either is Evil" does not work.



With that being said, I agree that the whole "Too much Good is bad" thing seemed a bit strange. Fantasy logic, I suppose?
Message applicable only to fantasy universes (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticAesop) should stay there.

Perhaps they shouldn't have been calling it "Good" as much as "Paternalism", because that is what it was, extreme paternalism. When you're justifying slavery "for their own good" then you're kind of veering into Lawful Evil territory.
Probably, yes.
Also "justifying slavery "for their own good" "
*Vomits a little*


I think Dragonlance, or at least the first two trilogies, were kind of written with teenagers in mind. They're not really meant to be super deep or such. I mostly read them as a teenager myself, so I'm not really sure how I'd react to them now that I'm an adult, hmm.
That. Is. Not. An. Excuse.
Seriously.

I am sick of people who think they can get away justifying bad writing by washing their hands and saying "it's just for Kidz" (I am not accusing you of nything there Sylian, just ranting).

Children and teenagers are not any dumber than adults, just less experienced, they deserved good writing just as much as the rest of us. And they need it more. Children and teens need good stories with message that encourage them to be brave, tolerant, forgiving, good. Those are the years where personality shapes itself and somehow it counts less than the others?!
Writing for children should be seen as the hardest, most important form of writing, not dead-end alimentory work, until the writer can get back to the "real" stuff.

Arrrrgh!


*Breathes in*
*Breathes out*

Okay, rant over.

It's more:

"If you start thinking that everyone that is evil must be exterminated, you make the world a worse place in practice".
That I can get behind.


"Tolerating worshippers of evil gods" is portrayed as a Good Thing.
unless their religion call for evil actions, right? right?



Eberron may be a continuation of this - with its theme that Evil-aligned characters can be worthy contributors to society who don't deserve to be killed.
That I can get behind.




I think they know exactly what good means, but they were trying to demonstrate that just because the majority of what you do is good doesn't mean that everything you do is good. That you can get blinded to reality and *believe* you can do no wrong so you stop questioning if your actions are *actually* good or not.
That I can get behind, but if true "Too much Good is Evil" is a terrible way to present it.

[ManuelSacha]

Guys, guys, guys.
This whole debate is moot.

Paladine, leader of the good gods, supported the good high priest for a long time. As long as he was "good", you might say.
Then he started tolerating the high priest, but sending signals that he wanted him to change, at the first signs of megalomania.
Then he and the other gods...


THREW A "MOUNTAIN" (COMET) AT HIM.
The message isn't at all that "good is bad".
It's that "always believing that you're in the right and that everybody else is a hack... is bad." :smallcool:

On a different subject...
How much do we think this chapter has left?
I mean, Thor just touched the last points that were left unclear, the next page will probably be about him expanding on that one SoD scene, and then... dwarves vote and we're done?
I guess what I'm asking is "where is my next OotS book"? :smalltongue:

[t209]

And....I think the damage is already done by Thor now.
Maybe they should have thought about the aura before relegating Dark One as a pariah.
And what about the Elven Pantheon?

[Fyraltari]

I don't see what point you're making. "High Priest of the Dark One" and "Leader of the Goblin people" are a part of what makes him "Second-to-most prominent villain".

In any case, whatever happens, no, I don't see a conclusion that involves "Redcloak the character we've known from the beginning is replaced, by Oona, a character we've known and spent significantly less time being invested in to resolve the story."

I doubt the story will be resolved Thor's way at all, but that's a different matter.
Redcloak's role in-universe is not the same as is role in the story is what I'm saying. He is the second most prominent vilain, not because of his role in story but beause he is the second-to-one charcater the heroes most want to thwart. His having his positions is not essential to that. For example in many James Bond films, the vilain main henchman show up after the climax for a last fight with Bond. At this point there organization doesn't exist anymore, they are not anybody's number 2, basically they are not, in-universe different from any other thug with a vendetta. Yet they are still the movie's second vilain.

A tertiary character inheriting Redcloak's in-universe position as part of Redcloak's defeat at the hand of the order would not inherit his position within the story.

Another example:
During the course of the game the heroes depose the Emperor of the Dominion, Arcturus Mengsk and places his son Valerian Mengsk (with whom we had spen little ttime up to that point) on his throne. This heralds the switch of the Dominion from "bad guys" to "good guys". Valerian took Arcturus place in-universe but not in the story. And it was a satisfying conclusion to the whole "Rayno/Kerrigan/Mesk plot.


How much do we think this chapter has left?
I mean, Thor just touched the last points that were left unclear, the next page will probably be about him expanding on that one SoD scene, and then... dwarves vote and we're done?
I guess what I'm asking is "where is my next OotS book"? :smalltongue:

If I may quote myself:


Not until the Godsmoot is over, Durkon raised, the Hilgya/Kudzu situation is adressed and a proper party has been held at Sigdi's place with Durkon's family and the Order.

EDIT:
And....I think the damage is already done by Thor now.
Maybe they should have thought about the aura before relegating Dark One as a pariah.
And what about the Elven Pantheon?

They're a subpantheon of the Western Pantheon and share in its quiddity.

[Hardcore]

What I do not get is why Minrah thought Thor had made fun of the Dark Ones name.

[Jasdoif]

What I do not get is why Minrah thought Thor had made fun of the Dark Ones name.With the "Oh!" in front of it, I'm guessing that's the first thing she could think of that Thor might do that would offend someone. And with the "...Oh." after it, she likely thought the name was silly, herself.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

What I do not get is why Minrah thought Thor had made fun of the Dark Ones name.

My guess is that that is the worst Minrah is capable of imagining Thor doing. She has him in a bit of a pedestal, what with him being her god and all.

Grey Wolf

[warmachine]

This is why all societies have mid ranking politicians/nobles/bureaucrats that talk to enemy leaders but higher ranks can deny is happening. Thor needs to recruit an intermediary god. The Dark One does have a few allies. Find them.

[Rrmcklin]

This is why all societies have mid ranking politicians/nobles/bureaucrats that talk to enemy leaders but higher ranks can deny is happening. Thor needs to recruit an intermediary god. The Dark One does have a few allies. Find them.

Having allies doesn't change the issue of disagreements still being possible and creating another (albeit weaker) Snarl, that Thor brought up this strip.

Probably especially concerning this issue since the gods are at least somewhat aware of what the Dark One has been trying to do.

[dtilque]

In other fictional settings, creating the whole universe in the span of six days is canonical.

Yes, but in OotS, the gods have had lots and lots of practice. I'm sure they could whip up a passable new world in a couple hours or so.


A thought occured to me: There's the common thought that the gods should just destroy this world anyway and let the Dark One contribute to the next. Which would make that world 4-color and thus not vulnerable to the Snarl. That might be so, but only if the three pantheons first come to an agreement with the DO. Otherwise they'll end up with another 4-color Snarl. And if the new Snarl merges with the old one, they'll have a new and improved Snarl 2.0, now with 5 quiddities!

OK, so if they come to an agreement, should they then destroy the world and build a new 4-color one? Perhaps, but it would probably be best to start with smaller projects, such as repairing the current one first. They need to build trust before getting to big projects.

[Fyraltari]

This is why all societies have mid ranking politicians/nobles/bureaucrats that talk to enemy leaders but higher ranks can deny is happening. Thor needs to recruit an intermediary god. The Dark One does have a few allies. Find them.

Hermod, demigod of messenger (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1012.html) is against destroying the world. If sending a minor god to talk to the Dark One was feasible, Thor would have sent him in exchange for better standing at the Moot. That he hasn't, suggests that it is not a workable solution to the problem.

[Crisis21]

I mean, yeah!
"The Balance between Law and Chaos is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Emotion and Discipline is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Blue and Orange is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Salt and Pepper is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Good and Evil is Good; too much of either is Evil" does not work.

*snip*

That I can get behind, but if true "Too much Good is Evil" is a terrible way to present it.

I've got a way to explain it that you may or may not agree with:

Good is basically Selfless. Evil is basically Selfish.

Obviously too much selfishness is a Bad Thing as people stop considering the welfare of anyone but themselves and anything resembling decent society collapses.

However, too much selflessness can also be a Bad Thing in its own way. When you consider the welfare of others to the exclusion of all else, one of the first things to suffer is your own welfare. When you act to help others at your own expense consistently, then the inevitable conclusion is that soon enough you will be unable to help others at all.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a good example of what happens when a person is exclusively Good or Evil.
To sum up: Hyde, who is completely Evil has no self-control at all, no buffer between thinking he wants something and acting on it, leading to behavior that is increasingly disruptive and destructive. Jekyll, who is completely Good on the other hand, withers away without any drive to sustain himself much less do anything about Hyde. By ridding himself of his Evil desires, he has stripped himself of having desire at all, including the desire to do Good.

[Ruck]

Hmm, when Thor mentioned that the Dark One ascended on his own with no sponsorship for existing pantheons, it got me thinking...

What are the odds that a certain puppet god will ultimately come in to play in all of this?


Zero percent.

I was reading some old discussion threads recently, because I have a lot of time and I'm not very creative, and it really is remarkable how often people predict Banjo saving the day (it was pretty popular at the Godsmoot). I think Roy put the nail in that in #1027, and it would undercut the drama besides.


Clearly we need an expert bargainer here, who can appear at first glance to have NO interest in either side, but who will go to the mat for the Order, and be able to negotiate Redcloak into a Lawful bound corner.

Paging Celia!

I don't think a Lawful Good outsider in a relationship with a member of the Order will appear to have no interest in either side.


I read "metal" as "mental" and was thoroughly confused for half a minute.

Anyway, I'm on Team "It's Thor's Fault Because He Wanted to Kill the Dark One upon Ascension".

That's the one that seems to have the most evidence so far. He could've also been the one to suggest goblins should be cannon fodder for PCs, but we haven't seen anything to support that.


That's my bet as well... emphasis on "bet."

When you wake up one morning with a killer hangover and a race of followers who have to die in battle or be damned forever, you gotta make sure they have something to fight.

That said, this would be a logical justification for why Thor might have suggested the "goblins as cannon fodder" idea.


How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons

Well, I guess not.


CG god of barbarians sees a new LE god of monsters
I wonder...
As for the colour - the goblin who became the dark one was purple (anyone know what specific subrace that is supposed to be?)

I don't think it is one, at least not from anything we've heard. Of course, Redcloak's telling of the tale in Start of Darkness may not be fully accurate, but it sounds like The Dark One is specifically unique. (If there's a how and why, it's yet to be told.)


Perhaps he doesn't. Instead, he gets Loki to come up with a plan to trick The Dark One and fix the rift.

I don't think a plan that involves tricking a god who is already incredibly distrustful of you has much chance to succeed.


It really is an option that allows all sides to get what they want; the main obstacle is lack of trust.


Ah, that's why he needs Durkon.

Only Nixon could go to China.

I did have the thought-- I think I posted it last thread-- that Durkon is the party member most likely to be able to get through to Redcloak, not just because they're both clerics, but because Durkon also had very negative experiences with / view of humans until he met Roy. He can relate to and empathize with the side of Redcloak that's more focused on revenge against the humans, and we at least know he's trustworthy enough to be believed. Maybe Redcloak can be convinced too. ("Thor is a deceitful, untrustworthy wretch, but I know you think he's not, so I agree.")


It occurs to me that what Thor wants is in direct opposition to what the IFCC wants (#668, panel 6) (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0668.html).

Good catch. And we know the IFCC has cards yet to play, so this might be setting up our final conflict of the series, even beyond Roy vs. Xykon and the Order vs. the Plan: "The side that wants a war, and the side that does not."

[LadyEowyn]

My guess is that they'll have to go beyond Thor's current plan of "build four-colour gates to contain the Snarl". If they allow the Dark One to contribute something substantive to the nature of the current world (e.g., making goblins the equal of other species in terms of their stats), that could make the entire world four-colour and contain the Snarl permanently.

But that's likely something that the gods aren't yet willing to offer, so there's a long way to go.

[Fyraltari]

I've got a way to explain it that you may or may not agree with:

Good is basically Selfless. Evil is basically Selfish.
You are right, I don't agree.


Obviously too much selfishness is a Bad Thing as people stop considering the welfare of anyone but themselves and anything resembling decent society collapses.

However, too much selflessness can also be a Bad Thing in its own way. When you consider the welfare of others to the exclusion of all else, one of the first things to suffer is your own welfare. When you act to help others at your own expense consistently, then the inevitable conclusion is that soon enough you will be unable to help others at all.
That's true but if you want to argue that these works treat Good and Evil as equivalent to Selfless and Selfish, then:


Whoever wrote that does not know what good means.




The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a good example of what happens when a person is exclusively Good or Evil.
To sum up: Hyde, who is completely Evil has no self-control at all, no buffer between thinking he wants something and acting on it, leading to behavior that is increasingly disruptive and destructive. Jekyll, who is completely Good on the other hand, withers away without any drive to sustain himself much less do anything about Hyde. By ridding himself of his Evil desires, he has stripped himself of having desire at all, including the desire to do Good.
I don't remember that book very well, but I think that Jekyll attempts to separate his good from his bad failed and all he managed to do was create a potion that would make his bad side prominent. In other words Hyde is "pure evil" while Jekyll is both good and evil (as humans are). In fact doesn't he keep drinking the potion because it gives him an excuse to indulge (which is evil)?

That said, this would be a logical justification for why Thor might have suggested the "goblins as cannon fodder" idea.
Meh. I don't see this Thor throwing entire people under the metaphysical bus to fix his own mistakes. Maybe he was a worse person before? Even then, after spending these few strips establishing Thor s a parangon of Goodness that'd be a weird turn.


I did have the thought-- I think I posted it last thread-- that Durkon is the party member most likely to be able to get through to Redcloak, not just because they're both clerics, but because Durkon also had very negative experiences with / view of humans until he met Roy. He can relate to and empathize with the side of Redcloak that's more focused on revenge against the humans, and we at least know he's trustworthy enough to be believed. Maybe Redcloak can be convinced too. ("Thor is a deceitful, untrustworthy wretch, but I know you think he's not, so I agree.")

Good catch. And we know the IFCC has cards yet to play, so this might be setting up our final conflict of the series, even beyond Roy vs. Xykon and the Order vs. the Plan: "The side that wants a war, and the side that does not."
Ooooh. Very good.

[Crisis21]

You are right, I don't agree.


That's true but if you want to argue that these works treat Good and Evil as equivalent to Selfless and Selfish, then:


Eh, it's a generalization like many things are. Plus, I'm not arguing in regards to any work in particular (mostly because I haven't read the ones being discussed) but for the general existence of a necessary balance between 'Good' and 'Evil', even if the balance in question is optimal at (and I'm just pulling arbitrary numbers out here) 90% and 10% respectively.

[Fitzclowningham]

So it sounds like Thor's gonna need Durkon to meet with a sufficiently high-level cleric of the Dark One so that the two of them can cast Summon Proxy and have a mini-Godsmoot for Thor and TDO to hammer it out... figuratively speaking. But of course there aren't that many goblin clerics of a high enough level to cast that spell, so the good guys are going to have to figure out how to get Redcloak to go along with the idea, despite the fact that he's determined to kill them all on sight.

Its very plausible that Durkon could find himself the high priest of Thor before it's all over.

[Fyraltari]

Eh, it's a generalization like many things are. Plus, I'm not arguing in regards to any work in particular (mostly because I haven't read the ones being discussed) but for the general existence of a necessary balance between 'Good' and 'Evil', even if the balance in question is optimal at (and I'm just pulling arbitrary numbers out here) 90% and 10% respectively.

Again, "Evil" means "something that should not be". If you think balancing two things is a necessary thing, then you don ot think either of those are evil, you think that it is not balancing them that is evil.

[St Fan]

Eh, it's a generalization like many things are. Plus, I'm not arguing in regards to any work in particular (mostly because I haven't read the ones being discussed) but for the general existence of a necessary balance between 'Good' and 'Evil', even if the balance in question is optimal at (and I'm just pulling arbitrary numbers out here) 90% and 10% respectively.

Anybody has read Villains by Necessity (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/VillainsByNecessity)? It's another work featuring the balance between Good and Evil as a necessity to preserve the world. As in, evil being triumphant would cause the world to sink into darkness, but Good being triumphant would cause the world to end up ablaze in pure light.

Hence the villain protagonists are trying to reset the balance (mostly for entirely selfish reasons, of course).

[LadyEowyn]

this might be setting up our final conflict of the series, even beyond Roy vs. Xykon and the Order vs. the Plan: "The side that wants a war, and the side that does not."

I completely agree with this.

[warmachine]

Hermod, demigod of messenger (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1012.html) is against destroying the world. If sending a minor god to talk to the Dark One was feasible, Thor would have sent him in exchange for better standing at the Moot. That he hasn't, suggests that it is not a workable solution to the problem.
If the demigod intermediary is not a workable option and neither are direct talks, then joining forces is almost certainly a non-starter. Perhaps Durkon could be that intermediary. Trouble is, intermediaries must be influential in their own society or others regard talking to them as a waste of time, and Durkon is just a mortal Cleric that follows what his god demands. Diplomacy needs more than just trusted messengers.


One way around this impasse is convincing the other gods to allow a Dark One Cleric into the Godsmoot. Changing the rules to let him into the club shows you're prepared to drop hostilities. If the other gods refuse, then cooperation between and the Dark One was never possible to begin with.

[Aveline]

Anybody has read Villains by Necessity (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/VillainsByNecessity)? It's another work featuring the balance between Good and Evil as a necessity to preserve the world. As in, evil being triumphant would cause the world to sink into darkness, but Good being triumphant would cause the world to end up ablaze in pure light.

Hence the villain protagonists are trying to reset the balance (mostly for entirely selfish reasons, of course).

That sounds a little contrived. And even so, if doing Good hurts people, it's not actually Good. It just means the presumption of Goodness is false.

[Crisis21]

Again, "Evil" means "something that should not be". If you think balancing two things is a necessary thing, then you don ot think either of those are evil, you think that it is not balancing them that is evil.

The dictionary disagrees with your definition.


e·vil

adjective
1.
profoundly immoral and malevolent.

harmful or tending to harm.


noun
1.
profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.

a manifestation of this, especially in people's actions.

something that is harmful or undesirable.

I don't have time to go into detail right now, but this seems way off from 'something that should not be' (aka 'unnatural').

[Jasdoif]

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a good example of what happens when a person is exclusively Good or Evil.
To sum up: Hyde, who is completely Evil has no self-control at all, no buffer between thinking he wants something and acting on it, leading to behavior that is increasingly disruptive and destructive. Jekyll, who is completely Good on the other hand, withers away without any drive to sustain himself much less do anything about Hyde. By ridding himself of his Evil desires, he has stripped himself of having desire at all, including the desire to do Good.
I don't remember that book very well, but I think that Jekyll attempts to separate his good from his bad failed and all he managed to do was create a potion that would make his bad side prominent. In other words Hyde is "pure evil" while Jekyll is both good and evil (as humans are). In fact doesn't he keep drinking the potion because it gives him an excuse to indulge (which is evil)?As I recall...what ended up happening was that the situation reversed itself: Jekyll started transforming into Hyde without the potion, and Hyde took the potion to turn back into Jekyll (since law enforcement was after Hyde and not Jekyll). Eventually Jekyll ran low on the supplies that went into the potion, and went he acquired replacements discovered (to his horror) that his next batch didn't work.

Some parallel for the idea that Jekyll only thought he would stay in control; that after purposefully indulging his impulses with the excuse of Hyde for so long, Hyde became the real persona.

[Anitar]

One way around this impasse is convincing the other gods to allow a Dark One Cleric into the Godsmoot. Changing the rules to let him into the club shows you're prepared to drop hostilities. If the other gods refuse, then cooperation between and the Dark One was never possible to begin with.

But if they do that, that also gives him the chance to vote "yes".

[ArgentiAertheri]

This is why all societies have mid ranking politicians/nobles/bureaucrats that talk to enemy leaders but higher ranks can deny is happening. Thor needs to recruit an intermediary god. The Dark One does have a few allies. Find them.

We know Loki is pro wait it out, and I think Tiamat welcomed TDO -- could Loki and Tiamat act as intermediaries?

Thor and Loki can feud all day without creating another Snarl right? Anyone of the same quiddity can fight safely? So if Thor gets an Evil god from his pantheon on board, they could maybe have a calm discussion with TDO?

Except that's very "gods playing nice", so more likely is Durkon getting his child's mother to reach out to Redcloak… which might work, since dwarfs aren't human.

[Rrmcklin]

If the demigod intermediary is not a workable option and neither are direct talks, then joining forces is almost certainly a non-starter. Perhaps Durkon could be that intermediary. Trouble is, intermediaries must be influential in their own society or others regard talking to them as a waste of time, and Durkon is just a mortal Cleric that follows what his god demands. Diplomacy needs more than just trusted messengers.


One way around this impasse is convincing the other gods to allow a Dark One Cleric into the Godsmoot. Changing the rules to let him into the club shows you're prepared to drop hostilities. If the other gods refuse, then cooperation between and the Dark One was never possible to begin with.


But if they do that, that also gives him the chance to vote "yes".

And also assumes the gods are a united front on anything. These rules exist because their infighting was so common they made a physical manifestation of it that can kill them. They're not all going to be willing to agree to change them, especially to let someone in who has been plotting to threaten them with their worst blunder in with it.

If the Dark One could be convinced to talk to them all as a whole, that might be enough to convince most of the others to consider it. But we're already dealing with that problem.

The situation is more complicated that warmachine insists it is. No one ever wants to be the first to concede something.

[Fyraltari]

The dictionary disagrees with your definition.



e·vil

adjective
1.
profoundly immoral and malevolent.

harmful or tending to harm.


noun
1.
profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.

a manifestation of this, especially in people's actions.

something that is harmful or undesirable.
I don't have time to go into detail right now, but this seems way off from 'something that should not be' (aka 'unnatural').
Actually by "something that should not be" I meant "something you believed it would be benefitial not to exist" ie "undesirable". Wether something is "unnatural", that is "artificial", is another beast entirely.

As I recall...what ended up happening was that the situation reversed itself: Jekyll started transforming into Hyde without the potion, and Hyde took the potion to turn back into Jekyll (since law enforcement was after Hyde and not Jekyll). Eventually Jekyll ran low on the supplies that went into the potion, and went he acquired replacements discovered (to his horror) that his next batch didn't work.

Some parallel for the idea that Jekyll only thought he would stay in control; that after purposefully indulging his impulses with the excuse of Hyde for so long, Hyde became the real persona.
Yeah, that does ring a bell.

[permacapybara]

I think there's some confusion here that stems from what Good and Evil mean in D&D, as opposed to common usage.

In 3.5, at least, Good and Evil are not synonymous with right and wrong. They are cosmic forces. At the level of individual behavior, they correspond, roughly, to people who work make other thinking beings happier and better of, and people who work to harm others. An Evil person in D&D, for instance, might enjoy pursuing their own pleasure by killing or abusing people, and argue that this is the way the world should be, but (unless they're hiding their nature), they won't deny that they're Evil. It would be fairly pointless, since various spells reveal alignment. They'll just argue that being Evil is the right thing to do. Otherwise, though, the full spectrum of moral beliefs and reasoning exist in D&D, at least in theory.

[Fyraltari]

We know Loki is pro wait it out, and I think Tiamat welcomed TDO -- could Loki and Tiamat act as intermediaries?

Thor and Loki can feud all day without creating another Snarl right? Anyone of the same quiddity can fight safely? So if Thor gets an Evil god from his pantheon on board, they could maybe have a calm discussion with TDO?

Except that's very "gods playing nice", so more likely is Durkon getting his child's mother to reach out to Redcloak… which might work, since dwarfs aren't human.
Quiddity has nothing to do with alignment. If any of the other gods and the Dark one disagree on something there is a risk of spawning Snarl, The Second Of Its Name.

Getting a priest of the Dark One and Durkon to Summon Proxy is the way to go.

I think there's some confusion here that stems from what Good and Evil mean in D&D, as opposed to common usage.

In 3.5, at least, Good and Evil are not synonymous with right and wrong. They are cosmic forces. At the level of individual behavior, they correspond, roughly, to people who work make other thinking beings happier and better of, and people who work to harm others. An Evil person in D&D, for instance, might enjoy pursuing their own pleasure by killing or abusing people, and argue that this is the way the world should be, but (unless they're hiding their nature), they won't deny that they're Evil. It would be fairly pointless, since various spells reveal alignment. They'll just argue that being Evil is the right thing to do.

Then those forces should be called something else.

[permacapybara]

Well, they're not perfect names, but they're better than most of the concise names I can think of. The average person's intuition of what good and evil people (from their perspective) do corresponds pretty well to the D&D definition. Some works go with something like "Light and Darkness," "Word and Void," etc., but those arguably can be more confusing.

[St Fan]

That sounds a little contrived. And even so, if doing Good hurts people, it's not actually Good. It just means the presumption of Goodness is false.

Mostly true. The premise is essentially that the notion of Good and Evil are not the modern ones, but more the medieval/heroic ones.

Hence the "Good" side consider it normal to eradicate an always evil race, or to brainwash evil people into becoming good. They're entirely focused on "Good" and "Evil", but not on right and wrong.

Good and Evil are more like factions, and not entirely dependent of the morality of their members.


Then those forces should be called something else.

Yeah, the aforementioned book speaks more of an imbalance between "Light" and "Dark" than good and evil, in fact.

[PontificatusRex]

I mean, yeah!
"The Balance between Law and Chaos is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Emotion and Discipline is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Blue and Orange is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Salt and Pepper is Good; too much of either is Evil" works.
"The Balance between Good and Evil is Good; too much of either is Evil" does not work.

That does make thematic coherence harder.




As someone who was seriously annoyed by the ridiculous morality/cosmology of the Dragonlance books when I read them (and yeah, I was a teen, the whole "It's just YA" excuse is no excuse) I can't help jumping on the bandwagon here. Weis and Hickman clearly were unable to tell the difference between Law and Good - a pretty common thing given that our society tends to be inherently biased towards seeing Order as a good thing and Disorder as a bad thing. The intolerance of the elves and the "good" rulers is pretty clearly a symptom of too much desire for conformity and distrust of difference, not too much benevolence.

Heck, we saw this equation of law with good codified in the 4th Edition alignment system with the grid being replaced by straight line with Lawful Good at one end and Chaotic Evil on the other.

[permacapybara]

Also, D&D also has a Law and Chaos axis, which corresponds to things that, in real life, people might think of as good or evil, too. What all of this amounts to is that, occasionally, we might end up agreeing even with a moral position that's, in D&D terms, neutral or even evil.

[Ruck]

I don't see Oona in the Class and Level Geekery thread, but I thought we'd all guessed she was a shaman? And if so, that would make her somewhat used to channeling divine energy. From SoD, what level was RedCloak supposed to be when he put the Mantle on?

I thought Beast Master was the general consensus.


I don't recall a lot of people doing so, either. I believe the most common expression was "Oona must be a Beast Heart Adept; that class appeared in Dungeonscape, which has 'Rich Burlew' as one of its designers".

Or that. I don't know enough about 3.5 prestige classes to know the difference.


Meh. I don't see this Thor throwing entire people under the metaphysical bus to fix his own mistakes. Maybe he was a worse person before? Even then, after spending these few strips establishing Thor s a parangon of Goodness that'd be a weird turn.

I don't either, but desperate times and all that.

[The MunchKING]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.

Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:

I thought it took grabbing and twisting the Threads of Reality, so if the kept their hands off the Threads, it would just be a Divine punchup.

[GrayDeath]

Well, that strip aint foreshadowing, no sir. ^^


As for the Dragonlance Discussion, look at the teams later Works, the sovereign Stone Trilogy, they again (in parts) confuse strict order and "Rules are there for a reason, so we follow them, and you have to follow them too" with Good (and Benevolence and similar things as lesser parts).

if you replace all mentions of Good with law and all of Evil with Chaos, Dragonlance becomes much much more concise and the arguments easier to follow (instead of doing a "huh, are they mental? at times^^).


Now back to Topic of looking forward to Durkons and Redcloaks Meeting, hm?

[Kish]

The important word in that sentence might be was.
Paladine's line "the Kingpriest of Istar was a good man" is referring to a centuries-dead historical figure.

I was remembering based on the Kingpriest Trilogy, which expanded things a lot, although admittedly it's been almost 15 years since I read either.

I believe the word you're looking for is retconned.

The Kingpriest Trilogy was apparently written by someone named Chris Pierson. I'm glad to hear that they didn't continue the weird-ass ethical ideas of the background information they expanded. The two core trilogies still try to hard-sell "too much good leads to evil" and Weis and Hickman are still hacks.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Interesting, that the other newer gods had to be sponsored by someone else while the Dark One rose all by himself. That might explain why there aren’t that many risen gods if most of them needed to be sponsored. Also, it’s interesting how much the gods know about his plan. Finally, nice to get some confirmation that the Dark One does not get his own sort of vote or anything.

[Rrmcklin]

Finally, nice to get some confirmation that the Dark One does not get his own sort of vote or anything.

We had confirmation of that when he wasn't shown or even implied to be a part of the Goodsmoot. Three pantheons voting, and him being recognized as separate from all of them, confirms he's not a part of the process.

[masonwheeler]

If you say so. I don't know what that is.

Oh, you're so missing out!

I'll simply say that, before OOTS came out, it was the most awesome work of D&D-based fiction ever written. (The first few, at least. The "Dragons of..." series and "Legends" were amazing, but after the Graygem and the war with Chaos everything started going downhill. :( ) Definitely worth checking out.

[Sylian]

Also "justifying slavery "for their own good" "
*Vomits a little*It should be noted that they conveyed fairly clearly that this was not, actually, a good thing (and probably not a Good thing either).


I am sick of people who think they can get away justifying bad writing by washing their hands and saying "it's just for Kidz" (I am not accusing you of nything there Sylian, just ranting).I agree that bad writing should not be the case. I do not think Dragonlance really counts as bad writing though. Is it George Orwell, Alexandre Dumas, Arthur Conan Doyle-level of depth? Not really, no. It's more like a fun, easy-going adventure, not going into depth with philosophy or ethics. I think that's fine. I agree that there are bad parts (such as the whole "Balance between Good and Evil", but iirc that was mostly a thing in the original trilogy and some other books, and it wasn't used much or at all by other prominent authors, such as Chris Pierson or Richard A. Knaak), but I don't think it's really fair to call it bad. The best work of literature ever written? Probably not. Enjoyable? I sure thought so when I read them, and I don't think I necessarily prefer shallow books over deeper books (before I discovered Dragonlance I was actually reading a bunch of classical literature, and I have read and enjoyed some classical literature since then too).


Children and teens need good stories with message that encourage them to be brave, tolerant, forgiving, good. Those are the years where personality shapes itself and somehow it counts less than the others?!Would you say Dragonlance made a poor job at that, though? Ultimately, the books had plenty of Good characters who acted in ways that could be seen as positive (such as Sturm, or Caramon), and the characters weren't necessarily as shallow as some people might think (though probably less deep than the OotS characters). In most of the major Dragonlance books, the main characters are heroes, after all (with some exceptions, depending on series, lots of books in that universe).

Regarding Dragonlance elves: The first trilogy (Dragonlance Chronicles) actually made me dislike fantasy elves in general for being super arrogant and kind of racist... Luckily some of the later book had better elves, and I eventually got over it. But yeah, Dragonlance elves can be somewhat unlikable, especially Silvanesti (there are exceptions, of course).

By D&D terms, I'd call the Kingpriest Lawful Neutral at best and Lawful Evil at worst. As I said, I don't think the issue was too much Good as much as it was too much self-righteousness and paternalism and such. Kind of like Miko, I suppose. While Miko might've been Lawful Good, I don't think her main issue was that she was too Good, but rather not Good enough. Granted, Miko was arguably not as bad as some people during the Kingpriest era, although I suppose not all of them where Good (although, apparently, the Kingpriest was, which I find strange. I haven't read the Kingpriest Trilogy though since it's out of print and is really hard to find).

[Grey Watcher]

I don't remember that book very well, but I think that Jekyll attempts to separate his good from his bad failed and all he managed to do was create a potion that would make his bad side prominent. In other words Hyde is "pure evil" while Jekyll is both good and evil (as humans are). In fact doesn't he keep drinking the potion because it gives him an excuse to indulge (which is evil)?

Because it's a pet peeve of mine when Jekyll and Hyde get referenced as being Good and Evil, I'd like to say that, yes, this is correct (I think at one point Jekyll himself even notes that, while Hyde is All Bad, Jekyll remains the composite whole). Basically, the model the story runs on is less D&D alignments and more Freudian psychology: Hyde is Jekyll's Id with just barely enough Ego to navigate the world at all and no Superego whatsoever. Jekyll uses Hyde as a disguise to indulge his worst impulses because he can do so without sullying his respectable reputation. Plus, y'know, tampering with the fundamental natural order when bored (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0203.html).

It's later adaptations that make Jekyll heroic to further contrast with Hyde. [/Pet Peeve Induced, Self-Important, Pedantic Rant]

[Sylian]

Oh, you're so missing out!

I'll simply say that, before OOTS came out, it was the most awesome work of D&D-based fiction ever written. (The first few, at least. The "Dragons of..." series and "Legends" were amazing, but after the Graygem and the war with Chaos everything started going downhill. :( ) Definitely worth checking out.IIRC (been a long time since I read these), the original trilogy (Dragonlance Chronicles) is not quite as good as people make it out to be, but it's still the original trilogy and introduces the world and the characters, so I recommend it if you want to read Dragonlance. After that, Legends is a given, and a significant step-up in quality, partly because it focuses on fewer characters (thus giving them more room to grow). Those are the core 6 books, so to speak.

Some other recommendations from what I can remember:

The Lost Chronicles Trilogy, which is more recent and kind of fits between the original Dragonlance Chronicles. Arguably, at this point, they had become better authors and one could make the claim that it's better than the original trilogy, I suppose. By Weis and Hickman. IIRC not much focus on weird philosophy.

The Doom Brigade and Draconian Measures, two books about a group of bridge building draconians. Kind of a look in the lives of an "Evil" race (although the main characters are more Neutral). Two of the better books in the series, written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Dark Disciple trilogy, written by Margaret Weis. Takes place pretty late in lore though so you might not want to jump to this one too early. I suppose, from a lore perspective, you should read Dragons of Summer Flame and The War of Souls trilogy by Weis and Hickman) but IIRC they're a bit weaker than Chronicles.

Taladas trilogy by Chris Pierson. This one barely counts as Dragonlance, with a whole different set of cultures and such. It's a different continent but the trilogy was a lot of fun to read IIRC, Chris Pierson might be the best Dragonlance author out there.

The Soulforge (Weis) and Brothers in arms (Weis and Don Perrin), gives quite a bit of insight to Raistlyn and Caramon's early lives.

Anyway... I don't really know how well it holds up. I don't think the books are nearly as bad as people make them out to be, though (unless we're talking about random stray books, which there are a lot of with varying quality).

[masonwheeler]

I think they know exactly what good means, but they were trying to demonstrate that just because the majority of what you do is good doesn't mean that everything you do is good. That you can get blinded to reality and *believe* you can do no wrong so you stop questioning if your actions are *actually* good or not.

Yeah, that was my take on it as well. And that's definitely an important lesson to learn; it's just too bad that a lot of people apparently missed that bit of nuance. :smallfrown:

[factotum]

Regarding all this discussion about Dragonlance--didn't the first ever editions of D&D only have the law/chaos axis? They added the good/evil one later on, and it seems to me that Weis and Hickman are only guilty of getting the two aspects mixed up a bit. (Incidentally, their Death Gate cycle is a pretty good read--totally non-D&D related, though).

[masonwheeler]

I don't remember that book very well, but I think that Jekyll attempts to separate his good from his bad failed and all he managed to do was create a potion that would make his bad side prominent. In other words Hyde is "pure evil" while Jekyll is both good and evil (as humans are). In fact doesn't he keep drinking the potion because it gives him an excuse to indulge (which is evil)?

The part that the book neglected to mention is that once his transformations began to become too disruptive to his daily life, Dr. Jekyll began to work on a counteragent of some sort. He made several attempts to reverse the transformation, but none of them worked for long.

After a while, he gave up on trying to reverse it entirely, and instead attempted to limit its effects. There were several failed attempts, but eventually he found a serum that worked. When the transformation took him, it would strengthen his legs significantly, and improve his breathing capacity and endurance, but that's all. No bestial form, no mental impairment, no sudden reversals of the moral compass.

In other words, he could run, but he couldn't Hyde. :smallbiggrin:

[Kish]

The D&D-no-A modules were set in a campaign setting variously known as Mystara, or the Known World (on the surface) or the Hollow World (on the inside).

The Dragonlance campaign setting was originally published for First Edition AD&D. The primary evil deity was Lawful Evil. The primary good deity was Lawful Good, as was the Kingpriest according to his "one second before death" character sheet.

[Crisis21]

Actually by "something that should not be" I meant "something you believed it would be benefitial not to exist" ie "undesirable". Wether something is "unnatural", that is "artificial", is an entire beast entirely.


'Should Not Be' and 'Do Not Want' are two entirely different things. Take pain for example: I don't like feeling pain, but I should if I get injured. If I happened to get injured and didn't feel pain then something would be Very Wrong.

Just because you don't want something doesn't mean it 'Should Not Be'.

As for the Good/Evil balance being necessary, consider the following:


1) Many people consider Good and Evil to be subjective ideas, with what constituting either being entirely relative to the culture any given person is from. In this framework, neither is capable of existing without the other because for it to exist as a concept, then there needs to also be a concept of its antithesis to provide sufficient conceptual contrast.


2) Evil is considered to be the 'easy' path in many fictional works. Good requires dedication and commitment in such works whereas Evil needs only a moment of weakness. As things in nature prefer to follow the path of least resistance (hence why water flows downhill), then this suggests that Evil is in fact more 'natural' than Good. And like many natural things that are also distasteful - pain, vomiting, bowel movements, etc. - it likely serves a very important purpose even if we don't necessarily know what that is or want to consider the possibility (more on this below).
Chaos and Law follow a similar pattern with Chaos being 'easier' to follow than Law, and thus when the archetypical Good vs Evil conflict is defined it tends to be Lawful Good vs Chaotic Evil. Because both Law and Good are the harder philosophies to follow while Chaos and Evil are the easier ones, as evidenced by the fact that Lawful Good is often considered the single hardest alignment to stick to while Chaotic Evil is the easiest.


3) A core component for Good is consideration and respect for others. Likewise, Evil is heavily characterized by a lack of such. In general, Good deeds will ask that you put others first even at your own detriment and Evil deeds will see you put yourself first to the detriment of others. However, always putting others first can lead to you not taking care of yourself properly. There's a fairy tale (whose name I forget) involving a boy so kind and giving that he can't refuse a request from someone in need. He ends up nothing more than a talking head who lacks the power to even see the first gift anyone ever gave him. I think you would agree that such a state would not be desirable in general, but it is doing only Good deeds that leads the boy to end up there. Had he been even just a little Evil then he might have ended up better off.


4) Evil is defined as harmful. Creatures that are unwilling to inflict harm on others are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to basic survival. As such, our capacity for Evil is intrinsically linked with our basic survival instincts and those are most definitely something we needed evolving on this planet.



In conclusion, Evil is undesirable for a functioning society, and I can agree that our world could certainly use less of it, but that doesn't mean that getting rid of it completely would be a Good Thing.

[Shining Wrath]

"His name is totally metal". Epic.

So - Durkon has to talk to Redcloak. And be believed. And Redcloak has to convince The Dark One.

Tall order.

[Goblin_Priest]

All they need now is to create a new race, that gets an even RAWER deal than the goblins, and then wait for them to create their own quiddity, and then they can do five quiddity seals for the four quiddity rifts!

[Crisis21]

"His name is totally metal". Epic.

So - Durkon has to talk to Redcloak. And be believed. And Redcloak has to convince The Dark One.

Tall order.

Or Summon Proxy could be involved.

[colanderman]

Spelling nitpick: "aperature" should be "aperture".

[zimmerwald1915]

Or Summon Proxy could be involved.
Somehow I doubt that the resolution of this plot thread will involve long-established characters being passive mouthpieces for their patrons.

[deuterio12]

Somehow I doubt that the resolution of this plot thread will involve long-established characters being passive mouthpieces for their patrons.

Not the resolution, just "involved". I could totally see Durkon and Redcloak trying summon proxy at first then when it fails they just discuss it among themselves.

[Crisis21]

Somehow I doubt that the resolution of this plot thread will involve long-established characters being passive mouthpieces for their patrons.

I doubt the resolution of this plot thread is going to resemble how anyone expects it to go at all.

[Worldsong]

On the Good vs Evil thing, I haven't read Dragonlance but the Wheel of Time series had an example of Evil being necessary which I thought was fairly decent.

When the protagonist got into a position where killing the Evil God was actually a realistic possibility he realized that the Evil God was the essence and concept of selfishness. Killing the Evil God would mean erasing the very concept of selfishness from the world. The result would have been a theoretically perfect world where nobody ever hurts others for personal gain, but where people would be unable to feel desire or ambition. A world where nothing would go wrong but where everyone would just go through the motions without ever striving to improve or really enjoying anything.

In short, a static world where you'd be hard pressed to call the inhabitants alive.

The protagonist quickly decided that wouldn't be worth it.

Of course it's not perfect but if you wanted to rename Good and Evil I think there'd be good odds of the result being Selfless vs Selfish in which case I'd agree that both sides are necessary since selfishness gets people working (which is why villains are usually the ones to get a story rolling) while selflessness helps people prioritize properly.

[ArgentiAertheri]

Somehow I doubt that the resolution of this plot thread will involve long-established characters being passive mouthpieces for their patrons.

I doubt it will resolve everything, but it would let Thor and TDO scream at each other safely, and I think TDO is going to have a lot of venting to do before he'd ever even consider agreeing to help. Redcloak may be a jerk, but goblins have valid grievances that need to be addressed before any common ground can be found. Since Thor can't just pop on by TDO's for tea, we're left with Summon Proxy.

[Crisis21]

On the Good vs Evil thing, I haven't read Dragonlance but the Wheel of Time series had an example of Evil being necessary which I thought was fairly decent.

When the protagonist got into a position where killing the Evil God was actually a realistic possibility he realized that the Evil God was the essence and concept of selfishness. Killing the Evil God would mean erasing the very concept of selfishness from the world. The result would have been a theoretically perfect world where nobody ever hurts others for personal gain, but where people would be unable to feel desire or ambition. A world where nothing would go wrong but where everyone would just go through the motions without ever striving to improve or really enjoying anything.

In short, a static world where you'd be hard pressed to call the inhabitants alive.

The protagonist quickly decided that wouldn't be worth it.

Of course it's not perfect but if you wanted to rename Good and Evil I think there'd be good odds of the result being Selfless vs Selfish in which case I'd agree that both sides are necessary since selfishness gets people working (which is why villains are usually the ones to get a story rolling) while selflessness helps people prioritize properly.

More or less what I've been getting at.

[Psychronia]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one would totally be fine with 100-200 strips of this Thor and the Dark One sitcom. A series of hilarious misunderstandings would cause each episode to end with a new Snarl unmaking creation but it'd be back to normal at the start of the next one.

Yes please! The Dark One's (illusion's) grumpy face glaring at Thor in itself is hilarious. And the few comments from Thor we have about him already paint the picture for an amazing interaction.

...Ooh. Or they could be more of a dynamic duo in an action show. Initially butting heads (and creating mini-Snarls) all the time, but gradually bonding over how they both care about their people. Lemme take a shot at it...

Two Gods. Both rough around the edges. A history that should make them the worst of enemies. A common goal that has forced them into the most unlikely of partnerships.
If they can work together against the god-slayer, they just might have a fighting chance.

[Riarra]

I've got this image of Thor showing up at the Dark One's doorstep with a gigantic apology fruit basket stuck in my head.

I got into Dragonlance through the Dragon Codices series for kids, and they don't hold up too well now that I'm older, but they had things like black dragons working with the protagonist and villainous bronze dragons and good draconians. And then I went and read the original trilogy when I was older and more familiar with fantasy tropes and it was nowhere near as interesting to me. Love the Kang's Regiment books, though.

[Arcane_Secrets]

How would "the slightest disagreement" between Thor and the Dark One create a new Snarl? I thought it only emerged after Ages of infighting between four entire pantheons, and required so much disagreement over such a long period of time that its creation was so subtle that none of them noticed and so it took them all off guard.

Also... does Thor's comment there sound like foreshadowing to anyone else? Calling it now: they'll destroy the Snarl by creating a counter-Snarl with the Dark One's help and having the two annihilate each other. :elan:

Is the MitD actually a two color snarl? Is the reason why Thor knows that conflicts between him and The Dark One could create a two color snarl because it already happened before?

[kiapet]

So basically, the gods are in double or nothing on this world. They have the chance to solve their problem on as close to a permanent basis as they can get, but also a chance to be completely wiped out themselves. No wonder they're so divided.

[Raven777]

A D&D novel series, and attached campaign setting, of hotly debated qualify. Known for such gems as "too much good makes you evil" and for elves who are essentially Nazis because they're the first race created by the gods of good."Too much forced Good is indistinguishable from Evil" is not a concept unique to Dragonlance. Case in point: Mengkare the Gold Dragon from Pathfinder (http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Hermea). Bonus Godwin points for this one literally being trying to breed a race of perfect Humans.

[Rrmcklin]

Is the MitD actually a two color snarl? Is the reason why Thor knows that conflicts between him and The Dark One could create a two color snarl because it already happened before?

We know the MitD isn't just something the Giant made up. That includes the Snarl.

[Crisis21]

I've got this image of Thor showing up at the Dark One's doorstep with a gigantic apology fruit basket stuck in my head.

I got into Dragonlance through the Dragon Codices series for kids, and they don't hold up too well now that I'm older, but they had things like black dragons working with the protagonist and villainous bronze dragons and good draconians. And then I went and read the original trilogy when I was older and more familiar with fantasy tropes and it was nowhere near as interesting to me. Love the Kang's Regiment books, though.

This mental image is awesome and you should feel awesome for bringing it to the thread.

[Coventry]

I think you have a slight misunderstanding of how being a Cleric works.

In 3.5: switch allegiance, have the other deity accept the change, and maybe have an atonement spell cast upon you. It is not that hard, really - with the right motivation. Refer to the 3.5 Player's Handbook II sidebar "Divine Conversion" (p193).

In the playground: it depends on what the Giant thinks.

In both cases, the problems begin when the other worshipers of the abandoned deity decide to punish the apostate. This Thor has motivation to smooth over such things.

I do think that a Goblin like Jirix would be a better replacement HP. But getting the Red Cloak to him would be an interesting side quest that seems like something up O'Chul's alley. He is the one that could put aside everything in the past if it means saving all of creation. Doing so fits his personality and tenaciousness to a T.

[JavaScribe]

Seems to me that the only reason for any conflict between goblins and the PC races is that everyone wants to defend their own share of the pie.

But in a world of infinite planes, where magic can create things out of thin air, can't they just bake more pie?

If they absolutely need a cannon fodder race, there are probably more ethical ways to go about it, like making a race that wants to die honorably in battle on a cultural level and gets a nice afterlife to make up for the unfortunate necessity.

[ArgentiAertheri]

If they absolutely need a cannon fodder race, there are probably more ethical ways to go about it, like making a race that wants to die honorably in battle on a cultural level and gets a nice afterlife to make up for the unfortunate necessity.

Or simply a non-sentient one -- imagine if killing cows gave XP, there'd be some very high level farmers!

...the idea of cannon fodder being a dwarf's duty is rather amusing though.

[C Alexander]

The Monster in the Darkness is the Dark One.

[factotum]

The Monster in the Darkness is the Dark One.

No, he isn't, because of a couple of things: as already pointed out, the Giant has said that MitD is not something he made up himself. Secondly, the big game hunters who captured MitD in "Start of Darkness" recognised what it was and even made comments along the lines of, "Wow, it's really unusual for one of these to be able to talk".

[Larre Gannd]

No, he isn't, because of a couple of things: as already pointed out, the Giant has said that MitD is not something he made up himself. Secondly, the big game hunters who captured MitD in "Start of Darkness" recognised what it was and even made comments along the lines of, "Wow, it's really unusual for one of these to be able to talk".

Thirdly, Redcloak knows what the Mitd is, and isn’t praying to the Mitd

[C Alexander]

Thirdly, Redcloak knows what the Mitd is, and isn’t praying to the Mitd

Ah, fair enough!

[Rogar Demonblud]

Really? by definition, good is what is needed and evil is what should be removed. There can never be "too much good" or "not enough evil" these are self contradictory statements.

So basically "Good breeds evil"? seems more like these writers just have a flawed understanding of good.

How does"balance between Good and Evil is necessary" even supposed to work? Doesn't that make the balance itself good? And now you need to balance the balance with some more evil? So instead of 50/50 you have 25/75? And then you have to balance that as well and you get 12.5/87.5 and so on?

You know "if you start thinking you should tolerate evil you will end up dominated by evil" would be a (somewhat) valid moral lesson but somehow I don't think that's what they aimed for here.

To understand this, you need to know the setting cosmology. Then it make a horrifying kind of sense.

So, originally there was just this one god, generally referred to as the Highfather, He was everything, everything was him, you get the drift. From him sprang three deities: the eldest being Gilean (the Observer), the second being Paladine (the Preserver) and the last being Takhisis (the Corrupter).

At some point, everything went to hell (without waiting for a handbasket). Depending on which version of the canon you follow, either Takhisis corrupted her brothers into stealing some of their father's power to create a world and people and lesser gods for her to use as toys, or she ambushed and tried to gank Daddykins to take all of his pwer for herself. End result is that the Three had to lock him away to save their own skins.

What we (or rather, people in Dragonlance) consider reality is the seal on that lock. Think of it as a plate you're balancing on the tip of a dagger. If you put too much weight on any one side (G or E, L or C), the whole thing comes crashing down. And if you put too much weight in the center, the point of the blade will punch through and the whole thing breaks anyway. The solution the gods came up with is to have the whole thing wobbling back and forth, to avoid either stasis or imbalance.

Their persistent problem is that their father is still reaching out and influencing everything, requiring a hefty amount of deific intervention to keep the whole thing from falling apart. The most famous incident of this is the Greygem, which could have its own trilogy at this point.

Through all of this, Takhisis is still trying to steal power and souls and everything, because she's either stupid enough or arrogant enough to think she can win against Pops whenever he gets out.

Eventually, everything does fall apart, an irate father figure makes the scene and, well, his proper name is the Father of All and Nothing. His default answer to anything that annoys him is disintegration. In this case, he forms parts of himself into monsters and sends them down to the planet to kill everything. Except they don't just kill you. They actually disintegrate your soul, which means no one ever remembers you existed. Including the gods. If there are pictures or paperwork or songs or stories that mention you, they also immediately cease to exist.

He eventually gets contained again due to Epic Plotomancy Powers, but only after about a third of the planet is glassed.

That's what the gods are trying to prevent with the whole balance spiel.

And now that I type that all out, it sounds a lot like how the OOTS gods deal with the risk of releasing the Snarl.

[LuisDantas]

I just realized that the reason why Thor is telling all this to Durkon and Minrah now is because he wants either or both to be his envoys towards towards the clerics of the Dark One.

Not Redcloak, but one or several of his many predecessors from Start of Darkness.

Durkon and probably Minrah may well be about to travel to the realm where Jirix met the Dark One back in #704.

And I think that Minrah is likely to remain there for a while in exchange for one of the late priests.

I expect the Order to learn a lot more of the Dark One's views and motivations in strips to come. That ought to give Belkar the opportunity to be tempted into resuming his evil ways. It may be more interesting if the Dark One manages to ressurrect a previous non-Evil priest, though. That might even connect with further explorations of the true alignments of Vaarsuvius, Miko and Nale and what alignment means in OOtS-world.

[rasborry]

I don't know if someone's brought this up, but I wonder what this talk about a possible two-color Snarl says about what happened in comic 453 (can't link the strip). Tiger goes to directly confront Thor. You could interpret Thor's reaction there as him being worried about creating a Snarl. But Tiger is not worried?

[RainbowCloakBun]

As for the colour - the goblin who became the dark one was purple (anyone know what specific subrace that is supposed to be?)
It's not a subrace, TDO was just a shiny goblin.

[martianmister]

I just don't see it. Redcloak is so deep into the sunk cost fallacy that he *has* to keep going with the Plan.

Whole point of the Plan was forcing other gods into negotiation by using the threat of the Snarl.

[greenfunkman]

Whole point of the Plan was forcing other gods into negotiation by using the threat of the Snarl.

Or possibly to USE the Snarl to destroy the other gods if they didn't cooperate!

[a_flemish_guy]

I don't know if someone's brought this up, but I wonder what this talk about a possible two-color Snarl says about what happened in comic 453 (can't link the strip). Tiger goes to directly confront Thor. You could interpret Thor's reaction there as him being worried about creating a Snarl. But Tiger is not worried?

well tiger knows the consequences and knows that thor knows the consequences
they're both aware that conflict between panteons could result in a being that can easily destroy them, and so deals were made and frankly were kept because of that, tiger was merely reminding thor of that deal

think of it as MAD in it's most pure form

but the dark one (am I the only one to read that in artyom's voice every time?) has shown that he doesn't really understand what the snarl is, hell I don't think he has even realised the significanse of his unique colour, basicly he's the kid of wargames (of course it doesn't help that he's probably paranoid and has a (justified) persecution complex)

also now I think inter-pantheon conflicts aren't frowned upon, an eventual mono-colour snarl would only be as powerfull as a single god and every god in that pantheon would inmeditaly pounce on it

also I've been thinking that if gods are mono-colour and humans are multi-colour then why are gods more powerfull then humans

personally I think it has to do with powerlevel, like with a grizzly
I as a human am more advanced then a grizzly and yet put me in unarmored hand to hand with that grizzly and I'd die, quickly

however give me time and equipment and that very same grizzly won't stand a chance

[themunck]

Regarding all this discussion about Dragonlance--didn't the first ever editions of D&D only have the law/chaos axis? They added the good/evil one later on, and it seems to me that Weis and Hickman are only guilty of getting the two aspects mixed up a bit. (Incidentally, their Death Gate cycle is a pretty good read--totally non-D&D related, though).
This. Good and Evil was only split off from Law and Chaos after the first Dragonlance trilogy was released. (Which was actually a novelisation of their actual D&D campaign, IIRC.) My guess is that it was split largely as a result of Dragonlance exploring the nooks and crannies of the alignment system and revealed where it was lacking.

[Linneris]

I don't get the "totally metal" joke. Is that a colloquial expression or something?

[RainbowCloakBun]

also I've been thinking that if gods are mono-colour and humans are multi-colour then why are gods more powerfull then humans

personally I think it has to do with powerlevel, like with a grizzly
I as a human am more advanced then a grizzly and yet put me in unarmored hand to hand with that grizzly and I'd die, quickly

however give me time and equipment and that very same grizzly won't stand a chance
Mortals (of any race) will probably never be as powerful as a god, but they will definitely be more real than one. Realness does not equal power. Power equals power, and the gods have a lot of power, even if it isn't very real without the quiddity of other pantheons added to it.

[Priceguy]

Knowing all this can't be good for Durkon's life-post resurection.

Roy:We have freed you from Hel. Are you back to your Thor loving-self?

Durkon: Have I told you of the good news about The Dark One?

Very few times have a forum post made me actually laugh out loud. This one made me shake with laughter.

[hamishspence]

I don't get the "totally metal" joke. Is that a colloquial expression or something?

Probably a reference to heavy metal music.

Like when Belkar is told off for posing for heavy metal album covers:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0923.html

the "posing" scene in question being at the end of the previous strip:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0922.html

So Thor is saying that "The Dark One" is a very "heavy metal" kind of name.

[masonwheeler]

But in a world of infinite planes, where magic can create things out of thin air, can't they just bake more pie?

Wasn't a world of fruit pies one of the things they already tried? And it didn't work? :elan:

[StreamOfTheSky]

So, the gates were brought up. And I was curious on the gods' thoughts on them, but that aspect was completely glossed over, sadly.

Like.... the gates were made by mortals. Why did the gods never do something like that before, in this world or the others? Did it create some sort of unintended negative effect (thus far, seems like they just delayed the Snarl's inevitable return and even if the last is destroyed, were unquestionably useful), and if so....what? Why didn't any gods intervene (more) directly to prevent the prior gates from being destroyed or accessed by Redcloak? Can the broken gates be patched up, or can new ones be made (I don't recall it ever being explained what made that time and that group so special that only they could make these gates)? What were the gods' thoughts on the creation of the gates when it was happening?

Oh well, ultimately they're just a plot device to drag out the eventual end of the world into a looming sense of dread rather than a sudden onset. And at this point w/ only one left anyway. So I guess none of that matters anymore.

[hamishspence]

So, the gates were brought up. And I was curious on the gods' thoughts on them, but that aspect was completely glossed over, sadly.

Like.... the gates were made by mortals. Why did the gods never do something like that before, in this world or the others?

Maybe the gates required Epic casters, and the gods are never more than 20th level casters?

[SilverCacaobean]

So, the gates were brought up. And I was curious on the gods' thoughts on them, but that aspect was completely glossed over, sadly.

Like.... the gates were made by mortals. Why did the gods never do something like that before, in this world or the others? Did it create some sort of unintended negative effect (thus far, seems like they just delayed the Snarl's inevitable return and even if the last is destroyed, were unquestionably useful), and if so....what? Why didn't any gods intervene (more) directly to prevent the prior gates from being destroyed or accessed by Redcloak? Can the broken gates be patched up, or can new ones be made (I don't recall it ever being explained what made that time and that group so special that only they could make these gates)? What were the gods' thoughts on the creation of the gates when it was happening?

Oh well, ultimately they're just a plot device to drag out the eventual end of the world into a looming sense of dread rather than a sudden onset. And at this point w/ only one left anyway. So I guess none of that matters anymore.

Roy asks the same question and Shojo (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0276.html) claims that they can only fix it if they unmake the world first. Of course we know now that Shojo had incomplete information but it's as good an explanation as any for now. I think that when Thor says that they can close the rifts if the Dark One joins them, he doesn't mean that the gods will literally descend to the mortal plane and fix them. Rather, they'll do it through their clerics.

[The MunchKING]

No, he isn't, because of a couple of things: as already pointed out, the Giant has said that MitD is not something he made up himself. Secondly, the big game hunters who captured MitD in "Start of Darkness" recognised what it was and even made comments along the lines of, "Wow, it's really unusual for one of these to be able to talk".

Rich did not make up the concepts of Goblins, Gods, or even as far as I know the idea of cramming them together into a Goblin God.

I don't think it's LIKELY for the reason you brought up, along with all the others detailed in the MitD guessing threads when "god" is brought up. But I'd say that wouldn't fall afoul of the "rich made it up" statement moreso than every other character he made up.

[martianmister]

I think people are missing the point of Dragonlance handling of alignments. It's obviously flawed because it's based on Gary Gygax's alignment system, a clash between Good/Lawful and Evil/Chaotic forces. Kingpriest was bad because he tried to sacrifice peoples' choice of freedom in order to create a world without evil, a.r.a. "too much good."

[Fyraltari]

Whole point of the Plan was forcing other gods into negotiation by using the threat of the Snarl.
If they do so without the Plan beng implemented then the Plan was useless and Redcloak can't have that.

I don't get the "totally metal" joke. Is that a colloquial expression or something?
Yes. Thor thinks that name is cool enough to be part of a metal song/band. Which is funny because Thor is the subject of a loooooooot of metal songs.

So, the gates were brought up. And I was curious on the gods' thoughts on them, but that aspect was completely glossed over, sadly.

Like.... the gates were made by mortals. Why did the gods never do something like that before, in this world or the others? Did it create some sort of unintended negative effect (thus far, seems like they just delayed the Snarl's inevitable return and even if the last is destroyed, were unquestionably useful), and if so....what? Why didn't any gods intervene (more) directly to prevent the prior gates from being destroyed or accessed by Redcloak? Can the broken gates be patched up, or can new ones be made (I don't recall it ever being explained what made that time and that group so special that only they could make these gates)? What were the gods' thoughts on the creation of the gates when it was happening?

Oh well, ultimately they're just a plot device to drag out the eventual end of the world into a looming sense of dread rather than a sudden onset. And at this point w/ only one left anyway. So I guess none of that matters anymore.
It should be noted that the Gates are just as tri-colored as the rest of creation. The gods may simply not believe they can hold the Snarl for long.

'Should Not Be' and 'Do Not Want' are two entirely different things. Take pain for example: I don't like feeling pain, but I should if I get injured. If I happened to get injured and didn't feel pain then something would be Very Wrong.
That was "should" as in the speaker is applying a moral judgment on it. If I think that something should not be then I don't want it to exist. Anyone who thinks pain should not exist is wrong as examplified by the documented cases of people without a pain responses who killed themselves by accident.


Just because you don't want something doesn't mean it 'Should Not Be'.
Switch that around.


1) Many people consider Good and Evil to be subjective ideas, with what constituting either being entirely relative to the culture any given person is from. In this framework, neither is capable of existing without the other because for it to exist as a concept, then there needs to also be a concept of its antithesis to provide sufficient conceptual contrast.
First, moral relativism is garbage.
Second, I don't need the existenc of evil things to know that other things are good. You don't need slavery to enjoy a sunrise or whatever.


2) Evil is considered to be the 'easy' path in many fictional works. Good requires dedication and commitment in such works whereas Evil needs only a moment of weakness. As things in nature prefer to follow the path of least resistance (hence why water flows downhill), then this suggests that Evil is in fact more 'natural' than Good.
Appeal to nature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature).

And like many natural things that are also distasteful - pain, vomiting, bowel movements, etc. - it likely serves a very important purpose even if we don't necessarily know what that is or want to consider the possibility (more on this below).
That is a false analogy. Evil does not mean unpleasant or painful. Evil litterally means "that without which the world would be better". If you lose something positive by ridding yourself of something evil, then by definition that wasn't evil.

Chaos and Law follow a similar pattern with Chaos being 'easier' to follow than Law, and thus when the archetypical Good vs Evil conflict is defined it tends to be Lawful Good vs Chaotic Evil. Because both Law and Good are the harder philosophies to follow while Chaos and Evil are the easier ones, as evidenced by the fact that Lawful Good is often considered the single hardest alignment to stick to while Chaotic Evil is the easiest.
Rebelling is not easier than simply doing what you are told.


3) A core component for Good is consideration and respect for others. Likewise, Evil is heavily characterized by a lack of such. In general, Good deeds will ask that you put others first even at your own detriment and Evil deeds will see you put yourself first to the detriment of others. However, always putting others first can lead to you not taking care of yourself properly. There's a fairy tale (whose name I forget) involving a boy so kind and giving that he can't refuse a request from someone in need. He ends up nothing more than a talking head who lacks the power to even see the first gift anyone ever gave him. I think you would agree that such a state would not be desirable in general, but it is doing only Good deeds that leads the boy to end up there. Had he been even just a little Evil then he might have ended up better off.
You are again equating selflessness with good. On the contrary a balance of selflessness and selfishness (like, I don't know, 80/20 or something) would be good while too much of either would be evil. Therefore one should get rid of the imbalance.


4) Evil is defined as harmful.
Wrong again.

Creatures that are unwilling to inflict harm on others are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to basic survival.
Most plants are completely unable to harm anything. Yet...

As such, our capacity for Evil is intrinsically linked with our basic survival instincts and those are most definitely something we needed evolving on this planet.
Again, no.
Fighting to defend one-self or hunting for food are not evil.

[Worldsong]

If they absolutely need a cannon fodder race, there are probably more ethical ways to go about it, like making a race that wants to die honorably in battle on a cultural level and gets a nice afterlife to make up for the unfortunate necessity.

So everyone start hunting the dwarves en masse?


First, moral relativism is garbage.

I generally take the stance that moral absolutism is nonsensical, so without intending any hostility (I'm genuinely curious and interested) I'd like to hear your explanation of your perspective on this.


Again, no.
Fighting to defend one-self or hunting for food are not evil.

The idea I believe is that in attempting to define Good and Evil people have tried to categorize certain traits and habits as inclinations of Evil and Good which can still be positive as a whole.

The example here would be that hunting for food has an Evil inclination to it because you're hurting/killing other lifeforms for personal gain but it's an acceptable Evil because you're doing it out of necessity. So it's essentially the idea of necessary Evil.

Of course I have wondered in the past whether Evil is still Evil if it's necessary...

[martianmister]

To understand this, you need to know the setting cosmology. Then it make a horrifying kind of sense.

So, originally there was just this one god, generally referred to as the Highfather, He was everything, everything was him, you get the drift. From him sprang three deities: the eldest being Gilean (the Observer), the second being Paladine (the Preserver) and the last being Takhisis (the Corrupter).

At some point, everything went to hell (without waiting for a handbasket). Depending on which version of the canon you follow, either Takhisis corrupted her brothers into stealing some of their father's power to create a world and people and lesser gods for her to use as toys, or she ambushed and tried to gank Daddykins to take all of his pwer for herself. End result is that the Three had to lock him away to save their own skins.

What we (or rather, people in Dragonlance) consider reality is the seal on that lock. Think of it as a plate you're balancing on the tip of a dagger. If you put too much weight on any one side (G or E, L or C), the whole thing comes crashing down. And if you put too much weight in the center, the point of the blade will punch through and the whole thing breaks anyway. The solution the gods came up with is to have the whole thing wobbling back and forth, to avoid either stasis or imbalance.

Their persistent problem is that their father is still reaching out and influencing everything, requiring a hefty amount of deific intervention to keep the whole thing from falling apart. The most famous incident of this is the Greygem, which could have its own trilogy at this point.

Through all of this, Takhisis is still trying to steal power and souls and everything, because she's either stupid enough or arrogant enough to think she can win against Pops whenever he gets out.

Eventually, everything does fall apart, an irate father figure makes the scene and, well, his proper name is the Father of All and Nothing. His default answer to anything that annoys him is disintegration. In this case, he forms parts of himself into monsters and sends them down to the planet to kill everything. Except they don't just kill you. They actually disintegrate your soul, which means no one ever remembers you existed. Including the gods. If there are pictures or paperwork or songs or stories that mention you, they also immediately cease to exist.

He eventually gets contained again due to Epic Plotomancy Powers, but only after about a third of the planet is glassed.

That's what the gods are trying to prevent with the whole balance spiel.

And now that I type that all out, it sounds a lot like how the OOTS gods deal with the risk of releasing the Snarl.

I think you're mixing up the Chaos and the High God.


If they do so without the Plan beng implemented then the Plan was useless and Redcloak can't have that.

How so? Some gods wants to destroy the world 'cause they're afraid of the Plan. On of the reasons that Thor wants to negotiate with the Dark One 'cause of the Plan.

[Kish]

"Too much forced Good is indistinguishable from Evil" is not a concept unique to Dragonlance.
If my criticism was inaccurate, you wouldn't have needed to add (force in, heh) the bolded word and bold it.

[martianmister]

If my criticism was inaccurate, you wouldn't have needed to add (force in, heh) the bolded word and bold it.

"Too much good" is exactly that, forced good.

[mjasghar]

To understand this, you need to know the setting cosmology. Then it make a horrifying kind of sense.

So, originally there was just this one god, generally referred to as the Highfather, He was everything, everything was him, you get the drift. From him sprang three deities: the eldest being Gilean (the Observer), the second being Paladine (the Preserver) and the last being Takhisis (the Corrupter).

...

He eventually gets contained again due to Epic Plotomancy Powers, but only after about a third of the planet is glassed.

They retconned it so Chaos becomes the embodiment of the chaos the gods created the world out of - the high god has returned to being a ‘commisioning editor’
Btw there was a book where takhisis took on a human avatar and forced someone to obey her by showing them her destroying a inhabited solar system - with no god stopping her and yet somehow she cares more about Krynn and is limited
And then somehow there’s Taladas which matters but downstairs matter
Oh and maybe they’ve retconned everything again

[Worldsong]

"Too much good" is exactly that, forced good.

Depends on whether you define Good as 'everything that is beneficial' or as 'traits shared by most groups which are advocated as the forces of Good'

With the former too much Good is effectively impossible because if something became harmful it'd no longer be beneficial and automatically disqualify itself.

With the latter too much Good would mean that certain ideals are being pursued to the point of suppressing all other ideals, which could end up being a bad thing if only because you'd end up trampling foreign cultures for no other reason than that they're different from what you're familiar/comfortable with.

[Fyraltari]

I generally take the stance that moral absolutism is nonsensical, so without intending any hostility (I'm genuinely curious and interested) I'd like to hear your explanation of your perspective on this.
First and above all else, it can be used to justify absolutely everything. "Oh yes but you see, slavery/intolerance/mass slaughter/gang-rape/murder and mutiliation/... is an integral part of our culture so that means it's okay."
Second, it is an appeal to tradition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition). And like all of them not only does it makes no sense when examined ("Why is this thing good? BECAUSE MY PARENTS SAID SO STOP ASKING QUESTION!"), impedes the evolution of the society ("Do not question the tradition, things should stay as they always were") and encourages people not to think ("But really our founders must have had a reason to decide this was good, are we sure we agree with it? I SAID STOP ASKING QUESTONS").


Of course I have wondered in the past whether Evil is still Evil if it's necessary...
My point is no. It can be necessary unpleasantness, though. Then again I find that the arguments that lead to "I was only doing what was necessary" are often suspicious.

[Worldsong]

First and above all else, it can be used to justify absolutely everything. "Oh yes but you see, slavery/intolerance/mass slaughter/gang-rape/murder and mutiliation/... is an integral part of our culture so that means it's okay."
Second, it is an appeal to tradition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition). And like all of them not only does it makes no sense when examined ("Why is this thing good? BECAUSE MY PARENTS SAID SO STOP ASKING QUESTION!"), impedes the evolution of the society ("Do not question the tradition, things should stay as they always were") and encourages people not to think ("But really our founders must have had a reason to decide this was good, are we sure we agree with it? I SAID STOP ASKING QUESTONS").

My moral relativism doesn't stem from following tradition, it stems from evaluating every situation on its own and trying to find the right solution without throwing certain possible answers out of the window because some absolute morality has stated that those answers must always be evil even when the situation suggests otherwise.

I find that ever since I wholeheartedly accepted moral relativism the amount of thinking I did on morality actually went up, because I essentially adopted the mindset 'forget what the rules say or what tradition says or even what I thought a year ago, what makes sense to me RIGHT NOW?' (well, not actually forget, but consider without letting rules/tradition/old self override current rationality).


My point is no. It can be necessary unpleasantness, though. Then again I find that the arguments that lead to "I was only doing what was necessary" are often suspicious.

I think we're overall in agreement on this point. If the actions you take are for the greater good and you are aiming for the greater good it may be an unpleasant action but not an Evil action.

That said it's true that there's a lot of people who use that kind of reasoning to just do what they secretly want to do, which means it can be abused.

[Fyraltari]

My moral relativism doesn't stem from following tradition, it stems from evaluating every situation on its own and trying to find the right solution without throwing certain possible answers out of the window because some absolute morality has stated that those answers must always be evil even when the situation suggests otherwise.

I find that ever since I wholeheartedly accepted moral relativism the amount of thinking I did on morality actually went up, because I essentially adopted the mindset 'forget what the rules say or what tradition says or even what I thought a year ago, what makes sense to me RIGHT NOW?' (well, not actually forget, but consider without letting rules/tradition/old self override current rationality).
Hey, I'm no philosophy major, the definition of "moral relativism" that I know, is "morality depens solely of the culture one is from" and since this


1) Many people consider Good and Evil to be subjective ideas, with what constituting either being entirely relative to the culture any given person is from.
was what I reacted to, I maintain that my "moral relativism is garbage" reaction, is, in this specific instance, justified.

I leave the classification of your and Crisis21's positions to people more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.


I think we're overall in agreement on this point. If the actions you take are for the greater good and you are aiming for the greater good it may be an unpleasant action but not an Evil action.

That said it's true that there's a lot of people who use that kind of reasoning to just do what they secretly want to do, which means it can be abused.
Hear, hear. though what exactly constitutes greater good and where an action stops being necessary to become exagerated is extremely tricky to pin down... and we're back to the trolley problem. Bummer.

[Worldsong]

Hey, I'm no philosophy major, the definition of "moral relativism" that I know, is "morality depens solely of the culture one is from" and since this


was what I reacted to, I maintain that my "moral relativism is garbage" reaction, is, in this specific instance, justified.

I leave the classification of your and Crisis21's positions to people more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.

Fair enough. There's a huge difference between culture based morality and what I use so it might be that what I use has a different name entirely and I just don't know about it.


Hear, hear. though what exactly constitutes greater good and where an action stops being necessary to become exagerated is extremely tricky to pin down... and we're back to the trolley problem. Bummer.

Yeah, it's tricky business.

[Kish]

Okay, for the benefit of those who might be curious about the Dragonlance setting, let me clarify something.

First was a trilogy of novels (Dragons of Autumn Twilight; Dragons of Winter Night; Dragons of Spring Dawning). It had the lines hamishspence quoted, with the chief god of good and most unambiguously and completely positive character in any of the books declaring that too much good leads to evil (not "forced" good, not "not actually" good, not any of the addenda people are pushing to try to make it less ludicrous than it was). It didn't say anything about where the gods came from.

I'm not sure whether the 1ed AD&D hardcover or the second trilogy came next, but both of those two came out. The second trilogy, the Legends trilogy (Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, Test of the Twins), involved travel back in time, so the Kingpriest of Istar appeared onstage, along with his Nazi-elf advisors. The Kingpriest was unambiguously a powerful cleric of Paladine. It also spelled out that the Kingpriest's forces were on a crusade to wipe out, as far as I could tell, everyone except elves and humans who weren't arcane spellcasters (full elves and full humans, that is; half-elves got killed along with everyone else). The Kingpriest's loathing for arcane spellcasters, and his having pushed them underground, was explicitly stated.

The 1ed AD&D hardcover introduced the background of the gods: it presented a quasi-Christian mythology in which the omnipotent and all-good High God had exiled the gods of evil, and the gods of good had come to Krynn to restrain the abuses of the exiled gods of evil.

A lot of side novels and short stories were published, dealing with events that happened during the main trilogies when the camera was focused on the main characters, or with events that happened in other times (prequels, in other words). They were all licensed by Weis and Hickman, but usually written by other authors, and Weis and Hickman didn't hesitate to establish that something different from what these side books had stated was actually what had happened if it came up in their main plot.

Then, Weis and Hickman produced another book, announced as the ultimate conclusion of the Dragonlance series (Weis and Hickman predictably didn't stick to this). It was called Dragons of Summer Flame. It introduced the background of the gods--a background completely unrelated to what the AD&D hardcover had said. In that book, the father of the gods was an entity called Chaos. (Let me try to ward off the people who are already reaching for their keyboards to "correct" me with the retcon they added later, which I'll get to in the next paragraph: Chaos was unambiguously both "father of the gods" and "The Father of All and Nothing.") He was as powerful as all the gods, good, neutral, and evil, put together, and he objected to them having created something as stable as a world. The novel was about driving him away from Krynn.

Later D&D books retconned Chaos into a kind of Satan-figure, more powerful than any of the gods but far less powerful than the High God, deluded into believing that he was actually the father of the gods. I don't know if the High God, or any indication of his existence, ever actually showed up in any novels, as I never read any of the novels that came out after Dragons of Summer Flame. If he didn't, then it can truly be said that the novels and (A)D&D sourcebooks have completely separate cosmology.

[KorvinStarmast]

How does"balance between Good and Evil is necessary" even supposed to work? It doesn't; the Balance theme was originally, in D&Disms, the balance between Law and Chaos, not between Good and Evil. IIRC, the BECMI alignment system boiled down to 5: Neutral, Lawful Good, Lawful Evil; Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil. That particular set up was a little better at reflecting the Law/Chaos balance theme than the two axis grid. And also, as noted above, corruption can happen to the best of them, when it comes to leaders of nations/religions. Something from Lord Acton about 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely' comes to mind. :smallcool:

@Kish:
Thanks for the summary.

That sounds a little contrived. And even so, if doing Good hurts people, it's not actually Good. It just means the presumption of Goodness is false.Yeah.

We know Loki is pro wait it out, and I think Tiamat welcomed TDO -- could Loki and Tiamat act as intermediaries? Yes, and that choice seems to fit with who stood between Thor and TDO originally.
In 3.5, at least, Good and Evil are not synonymous with right and wrong. They are cosmic forces. At the level of individual behavior, they correspond, roughly, to people who work make other thinking beings happier and better of, and people who work to harm others. . And that's part of the problem. The gamification of good and evil brings some difficult side effects.

The two core trilogies still try to hard-sell "too much good leads to evil" and Weis and Hickman are still hacks. Is there some personal animus between you and them IRL?

On the Good vs Evil thing, I haven't read Dragonlance but the Wheel of Time series had an example of Evil being necessary which I thought was fairly decent. 1) Jordan lost control of his muse 2) he kept publishing books because people kept buying them 3) Waste of Time is not a finished work, given that Jordan died before he got tired of writing about side characters who he'd fallen in love with. There was some good and fun stuff in that series, to be sure, but it went off the rails somewhere between books 5 and 7 ... Martin seems to be falling into the same trap with ASOIAF.
Seems to me that the only reason for any conflict between goblins and the PC races is that everyone wants to defend their own share of the pie. The reason is Rich Burlew poking fun at, and subverting, a common D&D trope/icon. (My favorite poke was the goblin teenagers in the first book).

[a_flemish_guy]

personally my reasoning why too much good is not, well good is that without evil there's no frame of reference

take the roy getting evaluated scene for example, he's at least within the top 10 of good characters and yet he's not entiarly good but there are so many characters who are worse and thus his transgressions fall well within the scale of him being good

if you'd eradicate all evil then eventually you'll end up with figures like roy being the equivalent of the fiends for his small deviations of what's good, and eventually you'll end up in a society where being grumpy to your neighbour is treated like if you'd just murdered him

[Worldsong]

1) Jordan lost control of his muse 2) he kept publishing books because people kept buying them 3) Waste of Time is not a finished work, given that Jordan died before he got tired of writing about side characters who he'd fallen in love with. There was some good and fun stuff in that series, to be sure, but it went off the rails somewhere between books 5 and 7 ... Martin seems to be falling into the same trap with ASOIAF.

None of those things have to do with the example I provided, unless you're arguing that because there were flaws with the series as a whole you shouldn't use portions of it as examples in relevant discussions.

Also three is incorrect, Brandon Sanderson completed it using the extensive notes provided by Robert Jordan before his death. While of course Brandon writes differently from Jordan I believe he stuck to the material he was given.

[martianmister]

Depends on whether you define Good as 'everything that is beneficial' or as 'traits shared by most groups which are advocated as the forces of Good'

With the former too much Good is effectively impossible because if something became harmful it'd no longer be beneficial and automatically disqualify itself.

With the latter too much Good would mean that certain ideals are being pursued to the point of suppressing all other ideals, which could end up being a bad thing if only because you'd end up trampling foreign cultures for no other reason than that they're different from what you're familiar/comfortable with.

The world itself is a naturally neutral place in which good and evil co-exist, and evil is a natural result of free will. Disturbing that balance in favour of good is an unnatural act, that's what Fizban called "too much good." Evil itself exist as long as people have free will, any act that could totally destroy the evil is have to destroy the free will as well. This was Kingpriest's plan, creating an authoritarian world state with no free will.

[Crisis21]

That was "should" as in the speaker is applying a moral judgment on it. If I think that something should not be then I don't want it to exist. Anyone who thinks pain should not exist is wrong as examplified by the documented cases of people without a pain responses who killed themselves by accident.

Saying something 'should not be' is equivalent to saying its very existence is a mistake. Given the context of Good vs Evil of this discussion, that's an order of magnitude greater than 'do not want'.

If your personal dislike of Evil is all you have to go on, then your 'should not be' argument is inherently flawed.




Switch that around.

No. It's correct the way it is.



First, moral relativism is garbage.
Second, I don't need the existenc of evil things to know that other things are good. You don't need slavery to enjoy a sunrise or whatever.

First, the wildly differing cultures of the world would like to have a word with you.
Second, if you are capable of enjoying something, you are also capable of not enjoying something. If you have a concept of light, you also have a concept of dark. Evil would exist as a concept even if only defined as an absence of Good.



Appeal to nature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature).

So you're saying there are natural things that should not exist?



That is a false analogy. Evil does not mean unpleasant or painful. Evil litterally means "that without which the world would be better". If you lose something positive by ridding yourself of something evil, then by definition that wasn't evil.

Again, the dictionary disagrees with you. (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/evil)



Rebelling is not easier than simply doing what you are told.

And yet simply taking what you want is often considered easier than earning it (i.e. working for it, paying for it, etc.).



You are again equating selflessness with good. On the contrary a balance of selflessness and selfishness (like, I don't know, 80/20 or something) would be good while too much of either would be evil. Therefore one should get rid of the imbalance.

Oh, hey, you actually agreed with my core argument while claiming to disagree with it. How about that?

As for equating selflessness with Good, would you mind giving an example of a selfish person who would be considered Good in the eyes of others? While performing unambiguously selfish actions? Unless and until you can show me that being selfless is not an inherent and necessary component of being Good (as an alignment), then I will continue to equate the two.



Wrong again.

What part of 'this is in the dictionary' (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/evil) are you not comprehending? I'm sorry you're offended by me following the dictionary definition instead of your own personal definition, but in this case you are the one who is demonstrably and empirically wrong.



Most plants are completely unable to harm anything. Yet...

Many plants have a surprising amount of options when it comes to self defense actually. Those that don't compensate by being extra prolific (most flowers) or actually requiring the animals that eat them to enable procreation (the grass on your lawn, which is part of why you have to mow it).

Trust me, nature is far more brutal in far more ways than you ever imagined.



Again, no.
Fighting to defend one-self or hunting for food are not evil.
And yet they both require one to undertake actions that in a different context would be considered Evil (inflicting injury and killing). All actions can be undertaken in multiple contexts. Thus if an action is Evil in one context and Good in another, then Evil is necessary for the action to remain an option when it is Good to do so.
Hunting for food requires killing. So does murder. The first is not Evil, but the second is. You cannot eradicate murder (the Evil action) without removing the ability to kill, which would prevent hunting for food (and in fact a great deal of food gathering in general depending on how widely you define 'kill'). Ergo, the ability to kill is necessary despite the fact that it creates the possibility of Evil action. Ergo, the existence of Evil - even if only as a possibility - is in fact necessary.



Hey, I'm no philosophy major, the definition of "moral relativism" that I know, is "morality depens solely of the culture one is from" and since this


was what I reacted to, I maintain that my "moral relativism is garbage" reaction, is, in this specific instance, justified.

I leave the classification of your and Crisis21's positions to people more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.

Moral relativism is what has allowed humanity to grow culturally as a species over time. There are things that cultures in the past would consider Good that we today would view as unambiguously Evil. Without moral relativism, human culture would still be stuck with the distasteful practices of the past and think them Good things. As such, I maintain that moral relativism is the exact opposite of garbage.


The world itself is a naturally neutral place in which good and evil co-exist, and evil is a natural result of free will. Disturbing that balance in favour of good is an unnatural act, that's what Fizban called "too much good." Evil itself exist as long as people have free will, any act that could totally destroy the evil is have to destroy the free will as well. This was Kingpriest's plan, creating an authoritarian world state with no free will.

Very nicely put.

[Grey Watcher]

Seems to me that the only reason for any conflict between goblins and the PC races is that everyone wants to defend their own share of the pie.

But in a world of infinite planes, where magic can create things out of thin air, can't they just bake more pie?

If they absolutely need a cannon fodder race, there are probably more ethical ways to go about it, like making a race that wants to die honorably in battle on a cultural level and gets a nice afterlife to make up for the unfortunate necessity.

Or they could go the '80's Saturday Morning Cartoon route and have all the antagonist's mooks be robots, zombies, and other mindless, non-living things, so no ethical concerns about mowing them down in droves.

[mjasghar]

A large part of this discussion goes back to the issue d and d has with Neutrality somehow being the ultimate best thing from one view of writers
And then another group says no neutrality is just a bunch of boring or sometimes evil but give money to charity
So we have nature type rangers - and they are usually good (at least in the first couple of editions) but they work in circles lead by druids who are TN. Oh and the afterlife for animals and nature types is the beastlands and that’s a Good Plane...
Meanwhile the Plane of TN is just a featureless place that it seems people just use to go to other places. But the exemplar race of TN are the rilmani who are Celestials (rilmani is a possible assimar bloodline)
So inconsistencies built on top of inconsistencies

[zimmerwald1915]

A D&D novel series, and attached campaign setting, of hotly debated qualify. Known for such gems as "too much good makes you evil" and for elves who are essentially Nazis because they're the first race created by the gods of good.
To be fair, this is the most influential depiction of elves since Tolkien. There must be something in it.

[JavaScribe]

So everyone start hunting the dwarves en masse?
Yes.:smalltongue:

Black comedy aside though, it really shouldn't be hard for the gods to create a less unethical and rebellious XP farm. It could even be a literal farm.

I kind of have to wonder why "good" gods would allow a system like this in the first place in a non-meta sense.

[mjasghar]

Well we also have a pantheon empowering paladins in the South - one of which (Rat) is evil - and collectively Falling her
Yet Tiger confronts Thor alone (btw I would’ve thought Dragon a better choice as in Oriental mythology dragons are tied to thunder in the same way giants are in Northern Europe)
And we have a Western pantheon ostensibly lead by an evil being (Marduk has red eyes)
Edit- I may be mistaken there and he could easily be LN. Even then all the pantheons have evil gods and they are still allowed to help create worlds

[hamishspence]

I kind of have to wonder why "good" gods would allow a system like this in the first place in a non-meta sense.

Because they're outnumbered two to one by the Neutral and Evil Gods, making up only 1/3 or so of them?


Why do you seem to think that the Good gods are in control here? Why do you think that actions taken by "the gods" as a group necessarily reflect the will of the Good gods, as opposed to those of the Neutral and Evil gods?

The rules of the Godsmoot—including whether or not mortals can have their arguments be heard—have been decided by all of the gods in advance, roughly two-thirds of which are not Good by any definition.

Similar principles probably apply to 'allowing a system', as to the Godsmoot.

[Messenger]

And we have a Western pantheon ostensibly lead by an evil being (Marduk has red eyes)
Edit- I may be mistaken there and he could easily be LN. Even then all the pantheons have evil gods and they are still allowed to help create worlds
Sorry for the nitpick but I doubt that a being who’d cry out of all four of those red eyes (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1139.html) would be Evil in alignment. I’m willing to bet that was an act of grief born out of empathy rather than any kind of weeping an Evil god could have for the death of a world.
Also, while I am unfamiliar with the real world mythology of Marduk, from what little I know I think Marduk was a heroic figure- perhaps even Thor’s counterpart in his pantheon in terms of being the god who looks out for the little peope.

[super dark33]

Sorry for thenitpick but I doubt that a being who’d cry out of all four of those red eyes (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1139.html) would be Evil in alignment. I’m willing to bet that was an act of grief born out of empathy rather than any kind of weeping an Evil god could have for the death of a world.
Also, while I am unfamiliar with the real world mythology of Marduk, from what little I know I think Marduk was a heroic figure- perhaps even Thor’s counterpart in his pantheon in terms of being the god who looks out for the little peope.

Marduk is kinda a more coolheaded Thor/Zeus it seems.

[Kish]

To be fair, this is the most influential depiction of elves since Tolkien. There must be something in it.
Oh, I think there's something in it, all right. Specifically human pettiness.

I remember reading an article that started with "Tolkien screwed us." It argued that Tolkien took away the mantle of "the good guys" from humans. The person who linked it (hi, Corvis!) said he totally agreed with it, and when I reacted to that line about "the good guys," stated that I was responding to something that was nowhere in the article and that this showed I was a brainwashed elf fan.

I think that attitude is incredibly common: that humans, as dear Gary Gygax said explicitly, have the right to be the heroes, and any nonhuman race that isn't obviously aimed at the role of supporting characters or villains needs to be put in its place.

(It's not restricted to fantasy, either. Remember the first Star Trek series in which the captain and star was nonhuman? Me neither; it hasn't come out.)

[Worldsong]

Are we now ragging on human writers having a human bias?

Because I'm on board for that.

[hamishspence]

Oh, I think there's something in it, all right. Specifically human pettiness.

I remember reading an article that started with "Tolkien screwed us." It argued that Tolkien took away the mantle of "the good guys" from humans. The person who linked it (hi, Corvis!) said he totally agreed with it, and when I reacted to that line about "the good guys," stated that I was responding to something that was nowhere in the article and that this showed I was a brainwashed elf fan.


Tolkien was less "elves are the real heroes" and more "humble people, like hobbits (a kind of human), are the real heroes."

In more traditional fiction, someone like Aragorn would be "the star" and not Frodo and Sam.

[LuisDantas]

So, it turns out that Dragonlance goes back to the time of AD&D 1st Edition and, like a sizeable part of Star Wars fandom, believes that there is such a thing as being 'excessively good"?

That is a good thing to learn.

From what I read in some of the posts above, it seems that "too much good" in Dragonlance terms seems to be what I would describe instead as a lack of wisdom, of proper balances and checks, or as an excessive centralization of power. I guess this helps in explaining how come so many people think of Miko as somehow a LG character when she was totally TN, if not altogether morally crippled.

"Good" in its purest form is not obedience to rules, but rather quite the opposite - it is a daring and giving attitude that includes the need to learn of the consequences of one's actions and their impact.

I don't expect mainstream fiction to be solid on its treatment of ethics any more than I expect books from Derek Parfit and Peter Singer to be thrilling page-turners licensed by HBO and Netflix into multi-season series.

But still, a little clarity on the basic concepts would still be in order.

Also, it may or may not turn out that the ethics in a world where literal divine intervention is a class feature with strict measurements will turn out significantly different from ethics in a world where divinity is a speculative concept.

[Keltest]

Dragonlance buys into the "theres a cosmic balance" thing some settings have to justify why neutral gods and good gods don't gang up on the evil gods, but it does a really bad job of actually explaining the consequences of throwing that balance out of whack. Istar in particular was only ever portrayed as a decadent, dystopian pseudo-rome, where people are enslaved and thrown into gladiatorial arenas, the priests are allowed to indulge in whatever whims they feel like, and an evil wizard is allowed to suck the life out of people because he has the Kingpriest convinced that he's totally not evil, yo. And this is what they think a society that has embraced Goodness to the fullest looks like.

[Messenger]

Specifically human pettiness.

I remember reading an article that started with "Tolkien screwed us." It argued that Tolkien took away the mantle of "the good guys" from humans. The person who linked it (hi, Corvis!) said he totally agreed with it, and when I reacted to that line about "the good guys," stated that I was responding to something that was nowhere in the article and that this showed I was a brainwashed elf fan.

I think that attitude is incredibly common: that humans, as dear Gary Gygax said explicitly, have the right to be the heroes, and any nonhuman race that isn't obviously aimed at the role of supporting characters or villains needs to be put in its place.I’d like to add a bit to that line of thinking, Kish, based on a reflection/realization I recently had on majority of D&D settings and stories. You speak of “nonhumans should only be villains or supporting cast”, but I think it’s really worse than that.

Maybe I’m wrong... Recently pondering lichs as one of D&D’s most iconic villains, given how powerful they are, I realized that lich characters in the various D&D settings are almost always former humans. Who are the most iconic and well known lichs in the D&D game/multiverse? Vecna and Acererak*. Expand the list and you perhaps get Szass Tam and Larloch. The only active big name nonhuman lichs around are the queen of the githyanki and Lady Vol of Eberron. It got me wondering, why aren’t there halfling or gnome lichs out there for example? I vaguely recall a couple of elven lichs in “classic” D&D literature, but they’re never the Big Bads in the stories they’re in.

If you expand the group to include big villain undead, we get Strahd for vampires and Lord Soth for death knights (my contribution to the Dragonlance discussion :smallwink: ). Again, their origin is human.

So even the big villain roles and the antagonist’s spotlight gets to fall only on humans.

This all the more makes me scratch my head: this is all fantasy and fiction, whether literature or games. Elves and halflings and lichs don’t exist in the real world anyway, so why does it matter that the spotlight has to fall on human characters when their created world is inhabited not just by humans? Nonhuman PCs and NPCs easily be as Evil as human villains and can certainly advance in power to reach such stature- so why not?

* Note: Acererak was in life actually a cambion born to a human mother, but his Tomb of Horrors description simply says he was human.

[hamishspence]

Istar in particular was only ever portrayed as a decadent, dystopian pseudo-rome, where people are enslaved and thrown into gladiatorial arenas, the priests are allowed to indulge in whatever whims they feel like, and an evil wizard is allowed to suck the life out of people because he has the Kingpriest convinced that he's totally not evil, yo. And this is what they think a society that has embraced Goodness to the fullest looks like.

Maybe that author, the writer of the Kingpriest Trilogy, felt differently about certain things than Hickman & Weis, and sought to present Istar as being as horrible as possible,

not because they thought Istar was "embracing Goodness to the fullest" but because they thought that whole idea was stupid, and thus, they intended to persuade readers into thinking the same way?

[Sylian]

My moral relativism doesn't stem from following tradition, it stems from evaluating every situation on its own and trying to find the right solution without throwing certain possible answers out of the window because some absolute morality has stated that those answers must always be evil even when the situation suggests otherwise.That's not really moral relativism. I imagine most or all utilitarians or virtue ethicists would agree that different situations demand different solutions. Moral relativism would mean that, for instance, action X in situation Y would be good in society A but bad in society B. What you're describing sounds like like: Action X is good in situation Y, but action X is not good in situation Z, instead action Q should be used in situation Z. Not caring about traditions or rules doesn't make you a relativist. So, taking D&D, perhaps slavery is morally permissible according to hobgoblins but not according to humans. If you accept that it is true when a hobgoblin says "Slavery is right" and simultaneously true when a human says "Slavery is right", then it seems like you've accepted moral relativism.


I think we're overall in agreement on this point. If the actions you take are for the greater good and you are aiming for the greater good it may be an unpleasant action but not an Evil action.By D&D standards, an Evil action is an Evil action, regardless of intent or consequences. Sacrificing an innocent to save a million people is, by D&D standards, Evil.


I don't know if the High God, or any indication of his existence, ever actually showed up in any novels, as I never read any of the novels that came out after Dragons of Summer Flame. If he didn't, then it can truly be said that the novels and (A)D&D sourcebooks have completely separate cosmology.He did, barely.

From what I've gathered on the Kingpriest: Seems he, himself, was Lawful Good to the end, but somewhat deluded. He didn't realize that he was causing harms and that his advisers were Lawful Evil (or Lawful Neutral doing Evil deeds, perhaps?). So, in a sense, I suppose it's a variant of "Sometimes Good people don't notice the Evil that is happening"? Still doesn't save the Balance though, I really don't see why there has to be a balance between Good and Evil deities. Is it really bad if there are more Good deities? Evil and Neutral deities might complain but why should Good deities? Anyway... I don't think Dragonlance has the best cosmology out there, and I wouldn't consider it all that useful for teaching ethics or philosophy or anything like that (in general, I'd prefer reading non-fiction for those issues, although there are some exceptions, like George Orwell, I suppose, although that's more like political philosophy than ethics, I suppose).


The world itself is a naturally neutral place in which good and evil co-exist, and evil is a natural result of free will. Disturbing that balance in favour of good is an unnatural act, that's what Fizban called "too much good." Evil itself exist as long as people have free will, any act that could totally destroy the evil is have to destroy the free will as well. This was Kingpriest's plan, creating an authoritarian world state with no free will.What he failed to note was that such a state would cause great harm, which, one could argue, would be Evil (though it's not according to D&D logic, which is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of taking D&D alignment too seriously). A dictator that sacrifices essential freedom in the name of Good is, I'd argue.


First, the wildly differing cultures of the world would like to have a word with you.
Second, if you are capable of enjoying something, you are also capable of not enjoying something. If you have a concept of light, you also have a concept of dark. Evil would exist as a concept even if only defined as an absence of Good.1. Let's say that some cultures think that slavery is morally permissible. Does this make it true, or does it mean that they are mistaken and slavery is not, in fact, morally permissible? I would be inclined to side with the latter. Many cultures are wrong on several important ethical issues.

2. Evil might exist as a concept but it could, theoretically, not-exist in reality. We could think of a theoretical color perfect in every way, and this may exist as a concept, but not in reality.


As for equating selflessness with Good, would you mind giving an example of a selfish person who would be considered Good in the eyes of others? While performing unambiguously selfish actions? Unless and until you can show me that being selfless is not an inherent and necessary component of being Good (as an alignment), then I will continue to equate the two.Haley can be quite selfish at times but she's still ultimately Good. Even Durkon and Roy are somewhat selfish at times (Durkon with beer, for instance). They're not 100% selfish though, that would be hard to combine with being Good, unless ones selfish wants happen to align with Good actions.


You cannot eradicate murder (the Evil action) without removing the ability to kill, which would prevent hunting for food (and in fact a great deal of food gathering in general depending on how widely you define 'kill').In theory, you could. A system like Minority Report or a mind control system of some sort could solve this.


Ergo, the ability to kill is necessary despite the fact that it creates the possibility of Evil action. Ergo, the existence of Evil - even if only as a possibility - is in fact necessary.Practically speaking, I don't think it'd be possible to remove Evil without killing all moral agents. Theoretically it's possible though.


Moral relativism is what has allowed humanity to grow culturally as a species over time. There are things that cultures in the past would consider Good that we today would view as unambiguously Evil. Without moral relativism, human culture would still be stuck with the distasteful practices of the past and think them Good things. As such, I maintain that moral relativism is the exact opposite of garbage.People might still eventually figure out what is wrong and what is right, though. I don't think moral relativism was necessary for this.


Dragonlance buys into the "theres a cosmic balance" thing some settings have to justify why neutral gods and good gods don't gang up on the evil gods, but it does a really bad job of actually explaining the consequences of throwing that balance out of whack. Istar in particular was only ever portrayed as a decadent, dystopian pseudo-rome, where people are enslaved and thrown into gladiatorial arenas, the priests are allowed to indulge in whatever whims they feel like, and an evil wizard is allowed to suck the life out of people because he has the Kingpriest convinced that he's totally not evil, yo. And this is what they think a society that has embraced Goodness to the fullest looks like.Istar seems about as good as the society in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This article might be relevant to the discussion: http://dlnexus.com/features/articles/14665.aspx

In summary, it states that the Balance actually means respecting free-will and not forcing people to act Good. Good and Neutral deities value free will, while Evil deities do not, so the Good and Neutral deities use the Balance as a tool against Evil deities to prevent Evil deities to suppress free will. "no side can be permitted to overwhelm the mortals to such a degree as to negate their free will". So, basically, it's about not forcing people to be Good, but encouraging them. If we accept this, then the issue isn't really that "Too much Good is bad" but "Forcing people to be Good is bad", which is a whole different story.

Of course, even if we do accept this, it's hard to argue that the books were a bit vague on that front. They kind of made it seem like "Too much Good is bad". You shouldn't have to make an analysis in order to figure out what they meant with that.

[hamishspence]

Recently pondering lichs as one of D&D’s most iconic villains, given how powerful they are, I realized that lich characters in the various D&D settings are almost always former humans. Who are the most iconic and well known lichs in the D&D game/multiverse? Vecna and Acererak*. Expand the list and you perhaps get Szass Tam and Larloch. The only active big name nonhuman lichs around are the queen of the githyanki and Lady Vol of Eberron. It got me wondering, why aren’t there halfling or gnome lichs out there for example? I vaguely recall a couple of elven lichs in “classic” D&D literature, but they’re never the Big Bads in the stories they’re in.


3.5e at least, had an elven lich as one of the major "example villains" in the Champions of Ruin splatbook. Still not very active, but on the way to becoming so.

And of course, dragon liches (dracoliches) were a major thing - they still tended to be more "the muscle" than "the great schemer" most of the time though.

[Messenger]

I gotta point out in regards to the discussion about the natures of Good, Evil, and Neutrality and the use of the term “selfish”: we should distinguish between or specify what is
1. acting on a healthy self-interest and
2. plain ol’ screwing over other people to get what you want.
IIRC, this is the basic distinction/understanding between most ordinary Neutral folk and actual Evil people that is used by most players and DM’s. Buying a meal for one’s self instead of giving the money to charity isn’t quite a Good (or morally meritorious) deed, but it’s not Evil. However, hurting or killing someone to get money for your meal would be.*

* Hm. This may be a bad example to use here since that pretty much is what adventurers of all alignments do, but I hope I get the point across.

[The MunchKING]

I guess this helps in explaining how come so many people think of Miko as somehow a LG character when she was totally TN, if not altogether morally crippled.


Not really, if she was anything Neutral it would be Lawful Neutral. Her whole philosophy was about having a strong set of rules and following them, and making others follow them. Rules and Honor were what was the sole constant of her morality throughout. That she thought she was some kind of Chosen One unable to be wrong was a strong personal failing, but if anything reinforced the Lawful rigidity she held her standards and rejected the others.

[Messenger]

3.5e at least, had an elven lich as one of the major "example villains" in the Champions of Ruin splatbook. Still not very active, but on the way to becoming so.

And of course, dragon liches (dracoliches) were a major thing - they still tended to be more "the muscle" than "the great schemer" most of the time though.But we’re now in 5th Edition, a couple of years into it in fact, and the big name lichs are still Acererak (Tomb of Annihilation, AKA Tomb of Horrors v.2) and Vecna (thanks to his artifacts, godhood, and appearance as the ultimate villain of Critical Role Campaign/Season 1). :smallfrown:

As for dracoliches, know of any named ones with the same name recall as Acererak and Vecna? :smallfrown:

[M Placeholder]

It got me wondering, why aren’t there halfling or gnome lichs out there for example?

In the D&D universe, the lack of gnome liches can be explained in that Illusion (the school of magic most closely associated with gnomes) was opposed by necromancy in the 1st and 2nd edition of the game. In the FR setting, there is a bandit gang who operate just north of the nation of Halruaa who are led by a vampiric gnome and in the DS setting, a gnome kaishaga (Death Lord) was presented by Athas.org (http://www.athas.org/articles/Athasian-Plot-Hooks), but that's about it for powerful undead gnomes as far as I recall.

[hamishspence]

As for dracoliches, know of any named ones with the same name recall as Acererak and Vecna? :smallfrown:

While not nearly as prominent, Dragotha, the secondary villain of the Age of Worms campaign, did get a 4e entry - in 4e's Draconomicon.

Dragon 359, the last print issue for 3.5, had him in the Top 20 D&D Villains.

[M Placeholder]

As for dracoliches, know of any named ones with the same name recall as Acererak and Vecna? :smallfrown:

In the Dark Sun setting, there is Dregoth, the Kaishaga ("death lord", similar to a lich in other worlds) of the destroyed city of Giustenal, but he, like all of the Champions of Rajaat, started off as a human. After the Dragon of Tyr was killed, he was positioned as the most powerful being on that world.

He's probably the closest, but still a long way off the baddies mentioned.

[Messenger]

Sadly, insofar as the game has moved forward in edition, it highlights how the game still favors humans as the star of the show over nonhumans as per Kish’s point. I can’t hold it too much against WotC and most players where they want to use such big established names from the game’s history but it means we haven’t moved much- if at all- from Gygax’s idea of only humans being the big stars. Are we even going to see that gnome vampire and Dragoreth in an official future addition to the game that’s part of the current edition? The odds seem pretty slim.

[Fyraltari]

Saying something 'should not be' is equivalent to saying its very existence is a mistake. Given the context of Good vs Evil of this discussion, that's an order of magnitude greater than 'do not want'.
No that is expressing the thought that it would be better (should) if it was not (not be). If you know a better way to word that without using a convoluted periphrase, then congratulations, you speak better english than I do.


If your personal dislike of Evil is all you have to go on, then your 'should not be' argument is inherently flawed.
Or you could use a logical argument, like utilitarian, ethics, the Veil of Ignorance, the Golden Rule, the Kantian imperative for why the world would be better without that thing.




First, the wildly differing cultures of the world would like to have a word with you.
Why?


Second, if you are capable of enjoying something, you are also capable of not enjoying something. If you have a concept of light, you also have a concept of dark. Evil would exist as a concept even if only defined as an absence of Good.
I have both my arms. I can imagine what it would be like to not have them. I do not require someone to lose their arms to know that is a bad thing.
Who cares if evil as a concept exist? concepts are not part of the material world.


So you're saying there are natural things that should not exist?
Progeria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progeria) come to mind.


Again, the dictionary disagrees with you.[/URL]
And? Dictionary exists to repertoriate practical day-to-day uses of words by relating them to other words you are assumed to already know the meaning of. When it comes to a basic concept such as evil it is impossible to have a complete definition because that is the kind of word that is used to define the others. You'll notice that this definition loops back on itself several times.

Go and find a dictionary definition of "time" that has any use as well.

[QUOTE=Crisis21;23404679]And yet simply taking what you want is often considered easier than earning it (i.e. working for it, paying for it, etc.).
So? You were saying that chaos is inherently easier than law, and I gave you an example of situation where the chaotic behaviour (rebelling) was harder than the lawful one (submitting). I don't really see what that has to do with anything, though.



Oh, hey, you actually agreed with my core argument while claiming to disagree with it. How about that?
Are you even serious... My argument from the begining was that "balance = good, imbalance = evil" works in nearly all contexts, but not when the things being balanced are good and evil. And that every attempt to justify balacing those twos rests on flawed definitions of good and evil, such as, for example, equating them with selflessness and selfishness.


As for equating selflessness with Good, would you mind giving an example of a selfish person who would be considered Good in the eyes of others? While performing unambiguously selfish actions? Unless and until you can show me that being selfless is not an inherent and necessary component of being Good (as an alignment), then I will continue to equate the two.
How about the self-made man who provides employment to an entire town? Never gave a penny to anyone, yet thanks to him the town is prosperous.

Or more realistaically, by remebering that not one person can be entirely selfless or selfish and if one wants to be good they have to balance the two because if they are too selfish then they are not doing good despite being able and if they are too selfless then they take away their own ability to do good and thus won't do anymore good than if they were selfish?

This really isn't complicated. Let me take a simple example. You have a pie, it is good the ingredients are near perfectly dosed, the cooking time was juuuuuuust right, the temperature, the color, the texture, everything is even better than you can imagine. And then instead of eating it, you decide to put it back into the oven and overcook it a little so that it will be worse than it was because it was "too good".
Does that make sense to you or do you realize why "too good" is an oxymoron?


What part of 'this is in the dictionary' (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/evil) are you not comprehending? I'm sorry you're offended by me following the dictionary definition instead of your own personal definition, but in this case you are the one who is demonstrably and empirically wrong.
See above.


Many plants have a surprising amount of options when it comes to self defense actually. Those that don't compensate by being extra prolific (most flowers) or actually requiring the animals that eat them to enable procreation (the grass on your lawn, which is part of why you have to mow it).

Trust me, nature is far more brutal in far more ways than you ever imagined.
Do not make assumption on what I do or do not know or imagine.
And you just listed ways for plants to survive without harming anything.



And yet they both require one to undertake actions that in a different context would be considered Evil (inflicting injury and killing). All actions can be undertaken in multiple contexts. Thus if an action is Evil in one context and Good in another, then Evil is necessary for the action to remain an option when it is Good to do so.
What that means is that the action itself (killing) is not evil, it is the context that makes it evil (murder vs hunting for food). And no-one ever murdered we there would still be hunting for food.

Hunting for food requires killing. So does murder. The first is not Evil, but the second is. You cannot eradicate murder (the Evil action) without removing the ability to kill, which would prevent hunting for food (and in fact a great deal of food gathering in general depending on how widely you define 'kill').
Yes we can. We just need to advance past the point were no one murders anyone, everybody could, but no one does.

Ergo, the ability to kill is necessary despite the fact that it creates the possibility of Evil action. Ergo, the existence of Evil - even if only as a possibility - is in fact necessary.
That's only if you consider killing evil in itself. Which it is not.


Moral relativism is what has allowed humanity to grow culturally as a species over time. There are things that cultures in the past would consider Good that we today would view as unambiguously Evil. Without moral relativism, human culture would still be stuck with the distasteful practices of the past and think them Good things. As such, I maintain that moral relativism is the exact opposite of garbage.
No. Moral relativism is what would have forced us to stick with these practices in the first place. The idea that there is, in fact a difference between good and evil, is necessary to evaluate practices and decide to get rid of those we find evil.


an evil being (Marduk has red eyes)

Profiling!

[M Placeholder]

Sadly, insofar as the game has moved forward in edition, it highlights how the game still favors humans as the star of the show over nonhumans as per Kish’s point. I can’t hold it too much against WotC and most players where they want to use such big established names from the game’s history but it means we haven’t moved much- if at all- from Gygax’s idea of only humans being the big stars. Are we even going to see that gnome vampire and Dragoreth in an official future addition to the game that’s part of the current edition? The odds seem pretty slim.

The gnome vampire was in a part of FR that wasn't given anywhere near as much focus as The Sword Coast or the Heartlands, the two most featured parts of FR. And that area was destroyed (along with most of the area known as The Shining South) in 4e, so I doubt very much that they are going to bring him back.

[mjasghar]

Re: moral relativism
Slavery was/is regarded in societies where it happened as evil but necessary
Specifically it tended to evolve out of 2 practices that became entangled and then added in nationalism or racism (the later being the Confederate definition)
Firstly a poor person could volunteer to become a permanent servant in return for food and lodging. And this was accepted because before the electric motor most housework needed lots of physical labour and time. This persisted in indentured labour for passage to the colonies and the way servants were treated in most countries in Victorian/Edwardian times, and to be blunt still are in many countries though with a wage on top to be sent home
Secondly enemies would be defeated and their homes destroyed so they couldn’t oppose again - then taking them as prisoners is almost a mercy
Take both of this and add corruption and exceptions for the powerful (a family with one slave to help in the house in Rome treated them almost as family but in a paternalistic way, whilst senators and equites could do what they liked) and you get a situation like imperial Rome
And that attitude is an inherent part of humanity as we see today, not helped by nationalistic exceptionalism - people will even lionise Imperial Rome whilst condemning other civilisations for slavery as if Rome didn’t do the same and worse🤔

[Windscion]

The reason that many gods are former humans -- isn't that because they were based on actual 1e players? And in 1e only humans could hit level 20. Which, yes, was certainly a biased viewpoint.

[Marshscriver]

The slightest disagreement could create a new two-color Snarl!

It strikes me that the Dark One and the Twelve Gods might have had a little dust-up re: the Sapphire Guard's crusade against the goblins.

It also strikes me that whatever came boiling out of the rift in #945 was purple and blue.

[hamishspence]

It also strikes me that whatever came boiling out of the rift in #945 was purple and blue.

So was The Snarl in all the crayon strips.