Theory about the Dark One

[JuanCu]

What if the Dark One wasn't a deity created by goblin belief? Instead, it's a deity created by the PC races suddenly realizing that Goblins are not just mobs to be killed for XP and loot. Mirroring our evolution in the real world, and how our goblin-oppressing characters are mirroring disgusting behaviors of our past and present history.

It's a good explanation for why this Deity suddenly manifested now, after millions of worlds have come and gone. Presumably, goblins have always made up gods, but since the goblins were not given self-awareness by the gods (as they were just Mobs to kill) these proto-gods would have no belief to manifest. Now that we players see them differently, the PC races see them differently: Goblins MAY BE a humanoid species with the chance to determine their own path, regardless of their evil culture. And from this Dark realization spawned the Dark One, the dirty little secret that now threatens to mess with our mindless dungeon-crawling fun. Sleepless nights thinking, "Am I the baddie?" taken form.

Just a little theory that came to me after the last strips reveal that Durkon is capable of seeing Goblins as an actual culture deserving of respect. It would explain why Redcloak has a lesser connection to the Dark One. And how messed up would Redcloak be, if his divinity actually came from Human/Elf/Dwarven empathy?

[Dr.Zero]

What if the Dark One wasn't a deity created by goblin belief? Instead, it's a deity created by the PC races suddenly realizing that Goblins are not just mobs to be killed for XP and loot. Mirroring our evolution in the real world, and how our goblin-oppressing characters are mirroring disgusting behaviors of our past and present history.

It's a good explanation for why this Deity suddenly manifested now, after millions of worlds have come and gone. Presumably, goblins have always made up gods, but since the goblins were not given self-awareness by the gods (as they were just Mobs to kill) these proto-gods would have no belief to manifest. Now that we players see them differently, the PC races see them differently: Goblins MAY BE a humanoid species with the chance to determine their own path, regardless of their evil culture. And from this Dark realization spawned the Dark One, the dirty little secret that now threatens to mess with our mindless dungeon-crawling fun. Sleepless nights thinking, "Am I the baddie?" taken form.

Just a little theory that came to me after the last strips reveal that Durkon is capable of seeing Goblins as an actual culture deserving of respect. It would explain why Redcloak has a lesser connection to the Dark One. And how messed up would Redcloak be, if his divinity actually came from Human/Elf/Dwarven empathy?

Actually this works as a meta explanation for the author motives, but I don't see it working in-universe. I think you mix a little the two things, so I don't know exactly how to analyze the whole idea.

Anyway, in real world goblinoids had Gods already, well before the order fo the stick creation.

This one (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Maglubiyet), for example, looks to be very similar to the Dark One description. And it goes back to 1980, according to the cited sources.

[Worldsong]

The main issue I see is that like with other theories it takes away agency from the goblinoids and has everything be in the hands of the PC races again.

[hroþila]

What if the Dark One wasn't a deity created by goblin belief? Instead, it's a deity created by the PC races suddenly realizing that Goblins are not just mobs to be killed for XP and loot. Mirroring our evolution in the real world, and how our goblin-oppressing characters are mirroring disgusting behaviors of our past and present history.

It's a good explanation for why this Deity suddenly manifested now, after millions of worlds have come and gone. Presumably, goblins have always made up gods, but since the goblins were not given self-awareness by the gods (as they were just Mobs to kill) these proto-gods would have no belief to manifest.
Inasmuch as there is a problem here (which I don't think there is, for the record), this doesn't solve it, it only moves the question one further step back: why did the PC races only do that now, after millions of worlds have come and gone? Any answer you can give to this question will also adequately address why the goblins/XP farm races only make their own god arise in this world and not in a previous world.

Anyway, the Giant said that the goblins didn't worship any gods before the Dark One. There's no particular reason why this would apply to previous worlds, but then again, there's no particular reason why there should have been goblins in previous worlds either.

[mjasghar]

There’s a general issue with Oots that there didn’t seem to be any racial deities
Which makes sense as we’ve seen that in some iterations the ‘oriental’ pantheon are allowed to have oriental type oni instead of western style ogres
And then we have the elven gods rising in this world by sponsoring- which raises the idea of wether there were elves in previous worlds.
And if the world ends and the elven gods survive then the next world will surely have to have elves who will be part of the western pantheon again.

[Riftwolf]

There’s a general issue with Oots that there didn’t seem to be any racial deities.

Except for Thrym, Surtr, Dvalin, and Sigrun, and that's just the Northern Pantheon.

[KorvinStarmast]

Theory about the Dark One

What if the Dark One wasn't a deity created by goblin belief?
He used to play linebacker for either the Minnesota Vikings or the Baltimore Ravens.

Why? Purple! :smallcool:

And I'll go with "Played for the Ravens" because I think Thor would have known more about him if he played for the Vikings.

[Anymage]

#1: I don't know how many worlds were self-aware fantasy settings. Strip out the fantasy, you might well not have goblins. (And even in some fantastic settings; Shadowrun has the initial appearance of orcs and trolls come through "goblinization", but while small metahuman cults are possible the vast majority of them are content with the same religions everybody else uses.) Strip out the self-awareness, nobody will be aware how xp works or that some creatures might be made just to serve as a source of it for others.

#2: Giggles is currently receiving a tribe's worth of worship. He hasn't ascended as an extrapantheonic deity of his own yet. It takes a huge amount of belief to make the jump to ascension, and maybe a little more. It may very well be that individual tribes found their own things to worship, and that a pan-goblinoid leader is indeed astronomically rare. Especially when you consider that having the believers free for TDO to ascend means everybody else just leaving that belief on the table. If other gods tried courting goblin worship in older worlds, this wouldn't have happened. Now that gods realize how much belief goblins can produce, it'll be a long time if ever before entire races are left ignored by all the gods again.

[Goblin_Priest]

The main issue I see is that like with other theories it takes away agency from the goblinoids and has everything be in the hands of the PC races again.

I don't see any issue with this.

After 1213 strips, what goblinoids have gotten the on-screen time to justify them helping themselves out of their situation?

None.

Right-Eye is long dead, Jirix is still an evil servant of the Dark One.

It seems highly unlikely that a new goblin savior character would emerge at this point. Especially considering Redcloak is the central Goblinoid character of this comic, and that merely sidelining him in favor of a new good goblin that saves his kind's day would be a hugely unsatisfactory resolution.

There isn't even much reason to believe that the goblinoids' fate will benefit from much improvement before the comic's resolution. A half-assed savior insert with "and they all lived happily ever after" doesn't do any justice to real-world parallels, if that's what you are pining for.

[hroþila]

Why does Jirix being (possibly) Evil disqualify him from being that saviour? Or Redcloak, for that matter (although in his case there's more narrative reasons to think he will fail).

[Worldsong]

Following up Hroþila by saying I'm rather baffled by the assumption that the goblinoids would have to be Good-aligned before they can have agency or the ability to influence/change their own fate (in this case, for the better).

I also don't think I'm going to consider that an argument worth exploring. That's just... what?

[KorvinStarmast]

Why does Jirix being (possibly) Evil disqualify him from being that saviour? Or Redcloak, for that matter (although in his case there's more narrative reasons to think he will fail). Thank you. If Redcloak dies during the final struggle, the goblins and hobgoblins in Azure City/Gobbotopia have a leader and they have a future. The future might be a rough one, but I seem to recall that Redcloak told his citizens that 17 nations around the world had already recognized Gobbotopia as sovereign (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0702.html). (Strip 702)

[Riftwolf]

I believe the debate is going like this;
A: The Dark One might not be a goblin Deity, but one the PC races thought up instead.
B: Doesn't that rob the goblins of what little racial agency they had in the story?
A: Well the goblins aren't going to have agency because they're not going to be the ones saving the world. Unless you're suggesting that Redcloak (evil) and Jirix (he stomped a bug!) are replaced by a good goblin saviour.
B:... What?

[KorvinStarmast]

I believe the debate is going like this;
A: The Dark One might not be a goblin Deity, but one the PC races thought up instead.
B: Doesn't that rob the goblins of what little racial agency they had in the story?
A: Well the goblins aren't going to have agency because they're not going to be the ones saving the world. Unless you're suggesting that Redcloak (evil) and Jirix (he stomped a bug!) are replaced by a good goblin saviour.
B:... What?
My theory about the Baltimore Ravens makes more sense. :smallcool:

[Worldsong]

I believe the debate is going like this;
A: The Dark One might not be a goblin Deity, but one the PC races thought up instead.
B: Doesn't that rob the goblins of what little racial agency they had in the story?
A: Well the goblins aren't going to have agency because they're not going to be the ones saving the world. Unless you're suggesting that Redcloak (evil) and Jirix (he stomped a bug!) are replaced by a good goblin saviour.
B:... What?

It definitely feels like someone sprung White Man's Burden as if it was the most natural thing.

[mjasghar]

Except for Thrym, Surtr, Dvalin, and Sigrun, and that's just the Northern Pantheon.

Thyrm and surtr are gods of frost and fire with the respective giants as an addition. Part of the issue there is that the source material {scrubbed}. I don’t see how such races could have existed as they are now in the snack world. So maybe they had slush puppies and chilli sauce races?
Divalin arose in this iteration - who knows if he’ll survive the inter period if another world is made.
Sigrun is an integral part of the Northen pantheon as Valkyries are part of their culture

[Razade]

Thyrm and surtr are gods of frost and fire with the respective giants as an addition. Part of the issue there is that the source material {scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I'm not sure what source material you're talking about. If it's like...the source source...{scrubbed}.

If by source you mean OoTs, Thyrm is stated as the God of the Frost Giants (not Frost) and Loki is the God of Fire in the Northern Pantheon. Not Sutr. If it's just D&D then Sutr is the only of the two that are stated as Gods as far as I know and he's expressly stated to be the God of the Fire Giants. So just no, on all facets here.


Divalin arose in this iteration - who knows if he’ll survive the inter period if another world is made.

He's expressly part of the Northern Quiddity. There's no reason to think that he wouldn't.


Sigrun is an integral part of the Northen pantheon as Valkyries are part of their culture

Where do we see Valkyries in OotS?


Also everyone is forgetting that we do have a racial Pantheon. The Elven Gods. They are part of the Northern Pantheon's quiddity, we don't know when they arose but we do know they exist and the Elves worship them rather than the normal Northern Pantheon.

[C-Dude]

Also everyone is forgetting that we do have a racial Pantheon. The Elven Gods. They are part of the Northern Pantheon's quiddity, we don't know when they arose but we do know they exist and the Elves worship them rather than the normal Northern Pantheon.
Western, but I get what you're saying here.
What sets the Elven Gods apart from TDO (and also what sets apart the one Dwarf who deified in the north, the one who always votes by his council) is that they were sponsored by an established pantheon. Their shared quiddity supports this, which might mean that the sponsoring pantheon played a part in the ascension.

Following that logic, that could mean that the gods can detect mass reverence/worship of a mortal and then intervene.

Contradicting that assumption, conversely, may mean that worship of a pantheon's creations holds the same quiddity as they do.
That might mean the opposite of what the OP is suggesting... that the goblinoids sprang up independently of divine influence and so have worship quiddity independent of them. Would poke some holes in Redcloak's cosmological map.

[Razade]

Western, but I get what you're saying here.
What sets the Elven Gods apart from TDO (and also what sets apart the one Dwarf who deified in the north, the one who always votes by his council) is that they were sponsored by an established pantheon. Their shared quiddity supports this, which might mean that the sponsoring pantheon played a part in the ascension.

Following that logic, that could mean that the gods can detect mass reverence/worship of a mortal and then intervene.

Contradicting that assumption, conversely, may mean that worship of a pantheon's creations holds the same quiddity as they do.
That might mean the opposite of what the OP is suggesting... that the goblinoids sprang up independently of divine influence and so have worship quiddity independent of them. Would poke some holes in Redcloak's cosmological map.

Oh whoops, yes. Western. Point remains however that I was only responding to mjasghar's content that we don't see racial Gods. We do.

[Goblin_Priest]

Why does Jirix being (possibly) Evil disqualify him from being that saviour? Or Redcloak, for that matter (although in his case there's more narrative reasons to think he will fail).


Following up Hroþila by saying I'm rather baffled by the assumption that the goblinoids would have to be Good-aligned before they can have agency or the ability to influence/change their own fate (in this case, for the better).

I also don't think I'm going to consider that an argument worth exploring. That's just... what?


Thank you. If Redcloak dies during the final struggle, the goblins and hobgoblins in Azure City/Gobbotopia have a leader and they have a future. The future might be a rough one, but I seem to recall that Redcloak told his citizens that 17 nations around the world had already recognized Gobbotopia as sovereign (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0702.html). (Strip 702)

Jirix is basically the "establishment" leader for the status quo. Narratively, he is a very minor character, as we've seen very little of him and who he is, but that little we saw does not show anything to make us believe that he would bring his people down a different path than the one Redcloak set them on.

All I'm saying is that I don't expect us to see the goblins fix their own problems in this strip, unless it includes an epilogue of sorts.

That doesn't mean I expect us to see the fixing come from the outside, such as the PC races, either. While I take issue with the automatic association of outside help with racist tropes like "white man's burden" (was it racist when France helped the thirteen colonies free themselves from the british monarchy? "races" are not monoliths and inter-national assistance can very much be wholly intra-"racial", and even when it is inter-"racial" it need not be automatically racist.)

In any case, "not seeing the goblins fix their own problems in this strip" leaves a whole lot of other options, and not just "others will fix their problems for them". For example, and which I would find more likely, is that their problems /not get fixed/ in the comic. To fix all of the problems suggests that they are small problems with easy resolution. If the author is going for parallels with real-world racism, that would be incredibly reductive. Sure, in a fantasy you could think of things like "the gods tell their worshippers to treat goblins better", and that could kinda work (though not really in the belief system established in this universe), but then you throw all real life parallels down the drain. A more likely cut-off point would be "they agree to work on a resolution to this problem, though they know the road ahead will be long and windy". Could be something else, too.

I mean, in a way, it's trying to accomplish two things which, in my opinion, are fundamentally incompatible. There's the critic of how fantasy "evil races" are handled in typical D&D play, and there's a critic on real-world racism and how marginalized groups can be treated, and though there's some overlap between both, they are fundamentally different things, regardless of how many parallels some people want to draw between them. D&D's a sandbox game and you take what you want of it. Some people like immersive stories and a bunch of moral grey areas in their stories, others just want to play a game and grind some numbers, escaping the complexities of real life for some simple pleasures. Sticking a "humanoid" subtype on their challenges doesn't make them racist in any way whatsoever.

[Precure]

Wasn't Jirix the leader from O-Chul prequel?

[KorvinStarmast]

Wasn't Jirix the leader from O-Chul prequel? Nope, there's a pretty good consensus on that.

All I'm saying is that I don't expect us to see the goblins fix their own problems in this strip, unless it includes an epilogue of sorts. Jirix and his people have an uphill struggle, but at least they have a start and some of the nations have accepted their conquest of Azure City and will trade with them. The question is, will Gobbotopia be dominated by Hobgoblins to the detriment of Goblins? Rich made an allusion to this challenge in the opening strips with Oona and Greyview, through the mouth of MiTD (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1038.html).
Panel 6, strip 1038.

[Ionathus]

I mean, in a way, it's trying to accomplish two things which, in my opinion, are fundamentally incompatible. There's the critic of how fantasy "evil races" are handled in typical D&D play, and there's a critic on real-world racism and how marginalized groups can be treated, and though there's some overlap between both, they are fundamentally different things, regardless of how many parallels some people want to draw between them. D&D's a sandbox game and you take what you want of it. Some people like immersive stories and a bunch of moral grey areas in their stories, others just want to play a game and grind some numbers, escaping the complexities of real life for some simple pleasures. Sticking a "humanoid" subtype on their challenges doesn't make them racist in any way whatsoever.

Where do you see incompatibility there?

Rich has gone on the record multiple times saying "it's okay to kill X because they have green skin and fangs" is a terrible mentality that's only a short jump away from real-world people being devalued by others, and he wants to address both things in his comic strip. Whether or not you agree with him is irrelevant, because it's his story and that's the one he's telling, and he has very convincingly connected the two ideas (for many of us, at least).

Just because D&D framework allows morally black-and-white stories, doesn't mean OotS is required to be one of them. That's like you're claiming omelets can't exist, because over-easy is the only way you like your eggs prepared.

[Worldsong]

Jirix is basically the "establishment" leader for the status quo. Narratively, he is a very minor character, as we've seen very little of him and who he is, but that little we saw does not show anything to make us believe that he would bring his people down a different path than the one Redcloak set them on.

All I'm saying is that I don't expect us to see the goblins fix their own problems in this strip, unless it includes an epilogue of sorts.

That doesn't mean I expect us to see the fixing come from the outside, such as the PC races, either. While I take issue with the automatic association of outside help with racist tropes like "white man's burden" (was it racist when France helped the thirteen colonies free themselves from the british monarchy? "races" are not monoliths and inter-national assistance can very much be wholly intra-"racial", and even when it is inter-"racial" it need not be automatically racist.)

In any case, "not seeing the goblins fix their own problems in this strip" leaves a whole lot of other options, and not just "others will fix their problems for them". For example, and which I would find more likely, is that their problems /not get fixed/ in the comic. To fix all of the problems suggests that they are small problems with easy resolution. If the author is going for parallels with real-world racism, that would be incredibly reductive. Sure, in a fantasy you could think of things like "the gods tell their worshippers to treat goblins better", and that could kinda work (though not really in the belief system established in this universe), but then you throw all real life parallels down the drain. A more likely cut-off point would be "they agree to work on a resolution to this problem, though they know the road ahead will be long and windy". Could be something else, too.

I mean, in a way, it's trying to accomplish two things which, in my opinion, are fundamentally incompatible. There's the critic of how fantasy "evil races" are handled in typical D&D play, and there's a critic on real-world racism and how marginalized groups can be treated, and though there's some overlap between both, they are fundamentally different things, regardless of how many parallels some people want to draw between them. D&D's a sandbox game and you take what you want of it. Some people like immersive stories and a bunch of moral grey areas in their stories, others just want to play a game and grind some numbers, escaping the complexities of real life for some simple pleasures. Sticking a "humanoid" subtype on their challenges doesn't make them racist in any way whatsoever.

To be clear, I don't expect the story to end with "And now everything is rainbows and sunshine." What I do expect is that the first steps towards a better world will have been taken, with a strong implication that it's going to keep getting better down the line even if it might not be easy.

I've got three links in my signature: the first is Rich stating that so far as he's concerned the way evil races like goblins are treated in typical DnD play is flat out racism. The second link has him stating that he cares about the issue of typical DnD play having blatant racism in it. The third has him stating that he believes fantasy stories can have worth by how they reflect on the real world.

All three together make me feel confident that Rich is in fact using the story about Redcloak and the goblinoids to deal both with how evil races are treated and real-life racism, if only because he's bluntly stated that the former is just one form of the latter. In fact I feel confident enough that I've kind of grown tired of arguing the point because it seems to me like anyone who still isn't convinced isn't going to be convinced by me no matter what I say.

Also I think you're overestimating the fundamental differences between the treatment of evil races and real-life racism. The history of racism is long, complicated, and very, very ugly.

[KorvinStarmast]

Just because D&D framework allows morally black-and-white stories D&D was never built as a black and white morality story.


... a game wherein participants create personae and operate them in the milieu created and designed, in whole or in part, by the Dungeon Master and shared by all, including the DM, in imagination and enthusiasm.

The central theme of this game is the interaction of these personae, whether those of the players or those of the DM, with the milieu, including that part represented by the characters and creatures personified by the DM. This interaction results in adventures and deeds of daring.

The heroic fantasy which results is a blend of the dramatic and the comic, the foolish and the brave, stirring excitement and grinding boredom. It is a game in which the continuing epic is the most meaningful portion. It becomes an entity in which at least some of the characters seem to be able to survive for an indefinite time, and characters who have shorter spans of existence are linked one to the other by blood or purpose.

These personae put up with the frustrations, the setbacks, and the tragedies because they aim for and can reasonably expect to achieve adventure, challenge, wealth, glory and more. If player characters are not of the same stamp as Conan, they also appreciate that they are in effect writing their own adventures and creating their own legends, not merely reliving those of someone else's creation.

Yet because the player character is all-important, he or she must always-or nearly always - have a chance, no matter how small, a chance of somehow escaping what otherwise would be inevitable destruction. Many will not be able to do so, but the escapes of those who do are what the fabric of the game is created upon. These adventures become the twicetold tales and legends of the campaign. The fame (or infamy) of certain characters gives lustre to the campaign and enjoyment to player and DM alike as the parts grow and are entwined to become a fantastic history of a never-was world where all of us would wish to live if we could. I think that in writing OoTS Rich has captured this reasonably well.

The oft quoted bit wherein Rich asserts that killing goblins is racism demonstrates a number of things. He doesn't understand the game as well as he thinks he does, he brings his own baggage to the game (we all do, I'll suggest) - though I get the feeling that when he was making that point he was also expressing a deep frustration with murder-hobo players. I suspect most of us have run into that same frustration at least a few times, and it may be that some people have stopped playing tghe game because the murder-hobo element was too prominent in the games they were playing.

I had a long talk with a clergyman back in the 80's (who played D&D with us) about when is an appropriate age for children to start playing D&D? I suggested "age 16 or so" and he said "more like after high school unless closely supervised by adults at the game table." It was an interesting discussion.

Note: my copy of the Holmes Basic D&D boxed set, which preceded Moldvay/Mentzer, describes it as a game for adults. :smallwink: Contra that thought, Gary played it with his kids and none of them seem to have grown up to be ax murderers.

Related Anecdote: our Tunnels and Trolls game last year went suddenly dead. Three of the five players quit due to one player (who wasn't me) behaving like a murder-hobo early on. I was left with a GM who decided not to try and salvage the game, and a character who I'll never get to play again. (Which is a shame, as we were just getting into it a rhythm ...)

In Rich's defense, he claims that it was his experience that "90%" of the play/game is that. That says a lot about the people he played with. I suspect that this informs his more recent choice to either reduce or stop playing. He's shared that in a few posts, but the most recent one I recall was one of his patreon posts.

I laid off the game for over a decade. (For my own reasons).

[Goblin_Priest]

Where do you see incompatibility there?

Rich has gone on the record multiple times saying "it's okay to kill X because they have green skin and fangs" is a terrible mentality that's only a short jump away from real-world people being devalued by others, and he wants to address both things in his comic strip. Whether or not you agree with him is irrelevant, because it's his story and that's the one he's telling, and he has very convincingly connected the two ideas (for many of us, at least).

Just because D&D framework allows morally black-and-white stories, doesn't mean OotS is required to be one of them. That's like you're claiming omelets can't exist, because over-easy is the only way you like your eggs prepared.

It's been claimed that fantasy "racism" is a short jump from real-world racism, "gateway racism" in a way. And yes, I'm aware of the author's stance on the subject.

But I strongly disagree with it, and there are major issues with making these parallels. Because once you start painting a fantasy race as a proxy for a real-life "race", then you start creating a whole lot more parallels than you were looking for.

Goblins get **** treatment = Minorities get **** treatment
Goblins are sentient beings and deserve better treatment = Minorities are sentient beings and deserve better treatment
Goblins are evil = Minorities are ???
Hobgoblins are happy to join in senseless looting = Minorities are ???
Goblins lack any notable Good figurehead = Minorities ???
Goblins never achieved anything noteworthy on their own = Minorities ???

Fantasy is not the real world. You *can* use fantasy to send a message, and that's fine, but it gets murked up when you combine this with also criticizing fantasy tropes of an established game. Because saying that it's bad because it's the same as RL racism basically equates fantasy victims with RL victims, and that's really inappropriate in my opinion. Goblins were not designed as fodders for some RL ethnic group, they stem from mythology. Just because some parallels can sometimes be drawn, doesn't mean that 1) one should, and 2) even if you do establish these parallels, doesn't mean you should equate both as being fodders for each other.

[mjasghar]

Firstly this is about how the game is played in reality and to an extent how that would work if it was real- so hack and slash on a goblin settlement but then also having the issue of goblin children
Secondly one of the people who worked on the game and was still publishing stuff for it endorsed that black and white view and method of playing the game - Gygax
Thirdly - one of the issues with fantasy races is that artists have to create pictures of beings that don’t exist. Most artists cheat by using existing artwork and copying it with a twist. It’s a fact that most fantasy games start with a premise of the ‘good’ races being from western medieval societies. So we have renaissance fair style Western European armour etc. Then when they want to portray the enemies they use artwork to crib from that shows the real world rivals. Goblins and orcs have variously been portrayed as Eastern in armour and armaments
The classic orc and goblin weapon in artwork is the curved sword. Goblins are often a very thin stereotype of eastern raiders - that’s why they are often associated with wolves and portrayed as bandy legged and sallow skinned
Maybe it’s setting authors being too sacred to attempt to portray other cultures so they don’t use non western human cultures that often. The unfortunate side effect is they end up transponding the trappings of those cultures onto antagonistic humanoids

[KorvinStarmast]

{Nice post}
On top of that, for whatever amount Tolkien's ideation of goblins contributed to D&D goblin stuff, his archetype was informed by about 1300 years of stories, legends, and imperfect histories of Christendom's existential conflict with the Ummah beginning before the crossing into Spain in 711, reaching a peak in the loss of Constantinople to the Turks (who I estimate had a powerful influence on Tolkien's eventual created baseline for both orcs and goblins) 700 years later, only to be reversed about 450 years after that with the demise of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. As broad as that stretch of history is, Tolkien's Third Age alone is 3000 years. And he muddled about with two previous ages that were millenia long. (more or less).
Aside: I had the chance to work for a Turkish boss for about three years - a whole new perspective for understanding the Mediterranean region's history (and for that matter, current events) came with that. When I fold that into the broad history of pre- harlemagne, HRE, late HRE history, and feudal history - all of which Tolkien was deeply familiar with due to when he was in college and when he taught college (even though the history kinda spotty, see Oman's work on the Dark Ages)- seeing how he tried to dig into story and legend and language across that whole spectrum ... a whole lot of lights come on. Yet in some ways, the man set himself an impossible task.

Tolkien's erratic synthesis bundled a whole lot of stuff into some of his created things with ripple effects that are still with us in the fantasy, or "fairy story" genre. (Gondor = variation on the Eastern Roman Empire among them). The list is long and distinguished. A lot of people who borrowed from him did not dig as deeply as he did in terms of their own creative muse. (E.G.G. being one such).

And let's face it: as a writer, for all of the things that he did well, Tolkien wrote himself into dead ends and holes time and again. Other writers are a lot better than he at putting together a tale with fewer false starts and clumsy contradictions. (don't get me started ...)

What does this have to do with TDO?
TDO is outlined as an evil leader of goblins, but unlike the original D&D model of a Sorcerer, Evil High Priest, Demon or other Sauron surrogate, or even an Evil Wizard in a Chainmail game or original D&D campaign, TDO is a sort of Horatio Alger story. He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.

He went from being nobody to being a leader of his people to ascending to godhood. Unlike Hercules, he had no divine daddy. Also, he wasn't half divine, like Aragorn's line.

TDO had to get there the old fashioned way: he had to earn it.

In that creative process, I think that Rich has staked out some new ground for the place of goblins in the fantasy genre.

[Ionathus]

Fantasy is not the real world. You *can* use fantasy to send a message, and that's fine, but it gets murked up when you combine this with also criticizing fantasy tropes of an established game.

...

Just because some parallels can sometimes be drawn, doesn't mean that 1) one should, and 2) even if you do establish these parallels, doesn't mean you should equate both as being fodders for each other.

Why can't you talk about more than one thing in a work? Why can't a piece of media be self-aware of its genre and draw attention to real world issues? According to those rules, we'd have to throw out most works of parody or satire.

I flat-out don't understand the argument that "you can't draw a parallel without comparing every single facet of the two things being compared."

That's what a parallel IS. Two things that are not identical, but have a single important aspect in common.


D&D was never built as a black and white morality story.

I think that in writing OoTS Rich has captured this reasonably well.

The oft quoted bit wherein Rich asserts that killing goblins is racism demonstrates a number of things. He doesn't understand the game as well as he thinks he does, he brings his own baggage to the game (we all do, I'll suggest) - though I get the feeling that when he was making that point he was also expressing a deep frustration with murder-hobo players. I suspect most of us have run into that same frustration at least a few times, and it may be that some people have stopped playing tghe game because the murder-hobo element was too prominent in the games they were playing.

I had a long talk with a clergyman back in the 80's (who played D&D with us) about when is an appropriate age for children to start playing D&D? I suggested "age 16 or so" and he said "more like after high school unless closely supervised by adults at the game table." It was an interesting discussion.

Note: my copy of the Holmes Basic D&D boxed set, which preceded Moldvay/Mentzer, describes it as a game for adults. :smallwink: Contra that thought, Gary played it with his kids and none of them seem to have grown up to be ax murderers.

Related Anecdote: our Tunnels and Trolls game last year went suddenly dead. Three of the five players quit due to one player (who wasn't me) behaving like a murder-hobo early on. I was left with a GM who decided not to try and salvage the game, and a character who I'll never get to play again. (Which is a shame, as we were just getting into it a rhythm ...)

In Rich's defense, he claims that it was his experience that "90%" of the play/game is that. That says a lot about the people he played with. I suspect that this informs his more recent choice to either reduce or stop playing. He's shared that in a few posts, but the most recent one I recall was one of his patreon posts.

I laid off the game for over a decade. (For my own reasons).

I'm sorry, I really honestly don't understand your point. Are you saying murderhobos aren't as common as we're asserting? Or that early D&D didn't allow & encourage the indiscriminate slaying of sentient creatures who were JUST different enough from the more "noble" races?

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm sorry, I really honestly don't understand your point. Are you saying murderhobos aren't as common as we're asserting? Or that early D&D didn't allow & encourage the indiscriminate slaying of sentient creatures who were JUST different enough from the more "noble" races? Early D&D was certainly full of blood and guts, but the major difference is that you got way more XP for avoiding combat to get the gold (at low levels) and nowhere was it assumed that you had to kill goblins first just to get XP. (Heck, if you were in a wilderness encounter and 78 goblins were rolled up and you were first or second level, your first reaction was avoid or parley). Yeah, it was. Parley: a lost art in D&D.

Most of the early games I played had loads of undead, loads of bandits, and slimes/traps/what have you galore. (We certainly had our share of orcs and goblins as well among the wide variety of things we'd have to deal with). The prize was that pile of XP/GP/Gems in the loot, not in the dead bodies. Undead were a terror: Wights, wraiths, specters: they drained levels. Arrgghh! Turn them, cleric, Turn Them! Run Away!!!!!!!!!


Go back to the original books. If you tried to kill off 2000 XP worth of orcs or goblins at 10 XP each to get to second level, you were usually dead before you got there.

Sun Tzu: the acme of skill is to win the war without fighting.

Yes, we did plenty of fighting. No question. We also were rewarded for successful exploring: there were parts of the dungeon to avoid! Our PC's did a lot of dying - hmm, looks like Rich missed the boat on that part, and so has WoTC - but we spent a hell of a lot of time not fighting anyone since we wanted that loot. (Plus, from a player-skill point of view, it's really fun to outsmart the DM's traps and obstacles by doing non linear stuff to get around the hazards and get that phat loot, or die trying to).
1 GP = 1 XP is a different game. (what to do with the GP becomes another "uh, this ain't a real economy" exercise and always has).

While the game has the same name, in a lot of ways it's not the same game now that WoTC has it. (I am not a vitriolic grognard who hates WoTC era D&D - I'm enjoying 5e a lot for all of its imperfections). It does not help the game, the gamer's expectations, nor the genre as a whole that for the last quarter of a century the digitization of the "fantasy RPG" has created the "kill them all and pick up the gold that pops out of the corpse" style of game.

Dave Arneson made a rather sarcastic remark about that two decades ago, I'll see if I can find the link. In short, his take on where CRPGs had taken RPGs was "nah." (I enjoyed Diablo, and other rogue-likes, but it's a fine example of the problem in the change over time in terms of expectation - it's not fair to blame the 21st century player for how the landscape has changed, it really isn't).

ETA: sorry that old link is broken. If I can dig it out of the way back machine, I'll drop it here.

[Worldsong]

It's been claimed that fantasy "racism" is a short jump from real-world racism, "gateway racism" in a way. And yes, I'm aware of the author's stance on the subject.

But I strongly disagree with it, and there are major issues with making these parallels. Because once you start painting a fantasy race as a proxy for a real-life "race", then you start creating a whole lot more parallels than you were looking for.

Goblins get **** treatment = Minorities get **** treatment
Goblins are sentient beings and deserve better treatment = Minorities are sentient beings and deserve better treatment
Goblins are evil = Minorities are ???
Hobgoblins are happy to join in senseless looting = Minorities are ???
Goblins lack any notable Good figurehead = Minorities ???
Goblins never achieved anything noteworthy on their own = Minorities ???

Fantasy is not the real world. You *can* use fantasy to send a message, and that's fine, but it gets murked up when you combine this with also criticizing fantasy tropes of an established game. Because saying that it's bad because it's the same as RL racism basically equates fantasy victims with RL victims, and that's really inappropriate in my opinion. Goblins were not designed as fodders for some RL ethnic group, they stem from mythology. Just because some parallels can sometimes be drawn, doesn't mean that 1) one should, and 2) even if you do establish these parallels, doesn't mean you should equate both as being fodders for each other.

Two points to be made here.

The first point is that racism isn't necessarily even about the discriminated minorities. It's about the treatment said minorities receive, the people who treat them that way, and how that treatment affects the lives of the minorities. The first two comparisons address that point, with the other four you steer into the direction of looking at the minorities themselves.

The second point is that goblinoids don't solely represent realistic minorities, they also represent the stereotypes minorities are given which cause people to discriminate against them: stereotypes which racists use to justify treating minorities that way. If I understand Rich correctly one of his messages is that even if those stereotypes were true it still wouldn't justify treating goblinoids/minorities that way.

So with that in mind:

Goblins get **** treatment = Minorities get **** treatment
Goblins are sentient beings and deserve better treatment = Minorities are sentient beings and deserve better treatment
Goblins are evil = Minorities are declared by racists to be inherently flawed, inferior, Evil
Hobgoblins are happy to join in senseless looting = Minorities are depicted by racists as criminals, thugs, terrorists
Goblins lack any notable Good figurehead = Minority leaders are denounced, put down as rebels, accused of inciting violence in their followers
Goblins never achieved anything noteworthy on their own = Racists would be all too happy to tell you that whatever minority they discriminate against needs the guidance of a superior race to achieve anything worthwhile

So no, goblinoids and real life minorities aren't perfectly identical, but they don't have to be for the comparison to work.

EDIT: Also for someone who actually believes those stereotypes and accusations real-life minorities and goblinoids would be very similar indeed, and if there's anyone who needs convincing that racism is bad it's people who are racist.

[Peelee]

It's been claimed that fantasy "racism" is a short jump from real-world racism, "gateway racism" in a way. And yes, I'm aware of the author's stance on the subject.

But I strongly disagree with it
Regardless of whether you agree with the author's stance or not, you admit to being aware of it, so I am confused as to why you would expect the story to be written against the author's stance.

Goblins are evil
Gonna stop you right there, because that is something that the author has explicitly, both in-universe and out-of-universe, railed against. If you think "Goblins are Evil", then you are missing the point the author is making, whether you agree with it or not.

[Goblin_Priest]

Regardless of whether you agree with the author's stance or not, you admit to being aware of it, so I am confused as to why you would expect the story to be written against the author's stance.

Gonna stop you right there, because that is something that the author has explicitly, both in-universe and out-of-universe, railed against. If you think "Goblins are Evil", then you are missing the point the author is making, whether you agree with it or not.

I don't expect the story to be written against the author's stance. I just think this double-objective weakens both efforts. He's free to pursue this challenge, though, obviously.

And while I might be missing or forgetting parts of word of god, I'm not under the impression that "goblins are evil" is exactly what the author is railing about, because "goblins are [usually] evil" is RAW. The critics I've seen on his part don't so much target the monster manual entry, as the player culture that does the leap from "goblins are evil" to "murdering goblins left and right without cause is A-OK". The apparent contradiction of creating a monster that is humanoid in the proper sense of the word, a human in all but a few relatively minor traits, while treating it as a monster that still, regardless, has no (human) value, like a blob, a plant, or a parasite.

I could have missed or misunderstood a few quotes though.

[The Pilgrim]

Jirix and his people have an uphill struggle, but at least they have a start and some of the nations have accepted their conquest of Azure City and will trade with them. The question is, will Gobbotopia be dominated by Hobgoblins to the detriment of Goblins? Rich made an allusion to this challenge in the opening strips with Oona and Greyview, through the mouth of MiTD (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1038.html).
Panel 6, strip 1038.

The question is... will Gobbotopia keep existing after this story is done?

Because:
1) The nations that have accepted the hobgoblin conquest of Azure City, did it mostly out of fear of the Lich (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0501.html), who is likely to no longer exist by the end of the book.
2) Without Redcloak, who is also likely to no longer exist by the end of the book, the Hobgoblins might very soon forget about Redcloak's ideals and go back to their old ways of living (which, btw, involved peaceful co-existence with the Azurites. Jirix probably isn't the former Supreme Leader, but he was raised under his rule).
3) The Hobgoblins are occuping stolen lands. Their lands are the hills they came down from, where many of their women and children still live (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0702.html).
4) Mass Slavery.

I don't see Gobbotopia being allowed to keep the human slaves. And, as Durkon said, they have so much land they can barely farm it even with the human slaves. 20.000 hobgoblins survived the battle, and according to War and XP's travel guide, the lands of the Azurite Nation were sustaining a population of 530.000.

With no slaves to farm the land, no Lich to scare their enemies, no demagogue full of hatred filling their minds with utopian ideas of questionable morality, and the looting of the land already accomplished... will the Hobgoblins really be interested in staying in the razed Azure City?

Durkon's offer to let the hobgoblins withdraw in exchange for some land (the fertile Blueriver Valley lies conveniently next to the Hobgoblin homeland), seems like a fine outcome for everyone right now. Except for Redcloak, but he will probably be out of the picture by this book's conclussion.

I'm not saying that this is were the story is going, but it's a perfectly valid possibility. People shouldn't take for granted that Azure City wouldn't be restored in some sort by the end of the story.

[hamishspence]

And while I might be missing or forgetting parts of word of god, I'm not under the impression that "goblins are evil" is exactly what the author is railing about, because "goblins are [usually] evil" is RAW. The critics I've seen on his part don't so much target the monster manual entry, as the player culture that does the leap from "goblins are evil" to "murdering goblins left and right without cause is A-OK".

No - The Giant was pretty clear that having MM entries for humanoids with "Usually X alignment" being in the statblock, was something that he thought was a bad idea - and that jettisoning it would fix a lot of problems with the alignment system:



Our fiction reflects who we are as a civilization, and it disgusts me that so many people think it's acceptable to label creatures with only cosmetic differences from us as inherently Evil. I may like the alignment system overall, but that is its ugliest implication, and one that I think needs to be eliminated from the game. I will ALWAYS write against that idea until it has been eradicated from the lexicon of fantasy literature. If they called me up and asked me to help them work on 5th Edition, I would stamp it out from the very game itself. It is abhorrent to me in every way.



Hmm- how do we retain the alignment system (as per the much earlier post about liking some of it) while jettisoning all "unfortunate implications"?

Maybe, for all Monster Manuals, leave out the alignment line in a statblock entirely?

Leave it up to the DM what alignment to assign a particular monster (based on its personality and actions as determined by the same DM).Yeah, I think that would take care of 90% of the problem. I mean, you can still describe the goblins' place in the world and how they usually live by raiding civilized nations without passing a personal moral judgment on all of them. Let alignment be something assigned by the DM when he places that creature in his campaign. If he wants them to be amoral slavers, he gives them and Evil alignment; if he wants them to be scrappy survivors making the best out of their lot in life, he might give them True Neutral or even Chaotic Good (especially if the civilized nations are Evil Empires). DMs already do that for every human that appears, is it so difficult to imagine doing it for the other races, too? Leave inborn alignment to the overtly supernatural—if it exists at all—and away from biological creatures.

[Peelee]

In addition...

once you start painting a fantasy race as a proxy for a real-life "race", then you start creating a whole lot more parallels than you were looking for.

The idea of racism does not need to directly correlate to an existing real-world race in order to still be racist. All that is required is that you evaluate a person based on your preconceptions about others of the same biological group rather than on their own merits.

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



Fantasy is not the real world. You *can* use fantasy to send a message, and that's fine, but it gets murked up when you combine this with also criticizing fantasy tropes of an established game. Because saying that it's bad because it's the same as RL racism basically equates fantasy victims with RL victims, and that's really inappropriate in my opinion.

no fiction is meaningful if its lessons cannot be applied to the world that we, real actual humans, live in. If you are going to dismiss any themes or subtext present in any fantasy story as simply not applying to our world because that world has dragons and ours doesn't, then you have largely missed the point of literature as a whole, and are likely rather poorer for it. Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world; everything else is petty escapism. So if I can make even one person think about how we treat people of other races (or religions, or creeds, or what have you) by using the analogy of Redcloak, then it will have been time well spent on my part.



Goblins were not designed as fodders for some RL ethnic group, they stem from mythology. Just because some parallels can sometimes be drawn, doesn't mean that 1) one should, and 2) even if you do establish these parallels, doesn't mean you should equate both as being fodders for each other.


Because all authors are human, it is exceedingly difficult for anyone to imagine a fully realized non-human intelligence. It has been done maybe a dozen times in the history of speculative fiction, and I would venture not at all in the annals of fantasy roleplaying games. (Certainly, goblins, dwarves, and elves don't qualify, being basically green short humans, bearded greedy humans, and pointy-eared magical humans.) Therefore, it's a moot distinction and one not worth making. Statistically speaking, ALL depictions of non-human intelligence—ever—are functionally human with cosmetic differences. Which is as it should be, because only by creating reflections of ourselves will we learn anything. There's precious little insight into the human condition to gain from a completely alien thought process.


I just think this double-objective weakens both efforts.

I am not playing a game.

I am writing a story that happens to use some of the same terminology and/or base assumptions as a specific game in order to frame the issues that I want to talk about in a way that is easily accessible. Some of those issues are about that game and how it is played and some of those issues are about the real world and how we relate to it. I mix the two freely.

Therefore, whether or not the game lends itself to this sort of introspection has no bearing on whether or not this sort of introspection belongs in my work of fiction, even if I also discuss that game. In the same way as the rules of the game of basketball do not lend themselves to a discussion of heroin abuse, but the book The Basketball Diaries still talks about both.


And while I might be missing or forgetting parts of word of god, I'm not under the impression that "goblins are evil" is exactly what the author is railing about, because "goblins are [usually] evil" is RAW.

"They were designed that way," is not a very good refutation of the argument, "They should not have been designed that way." I see no reason to adhere to a tradition that I find repellant.

The SRD is a bunch of words written by a bunch of people living in Renton, WA. It has no more authority to determine what is true in my work of fiction than the phone book does.

And my contention, with much of OOTS, is that it is specifically wrong on this issue. Not that it is inaccurate; that it is not as it should be. That the game is teaching the wrong lessons, especially since we place it in the hands of those who are "12 & Up." There is no actual truth about what alignment goblins are, because goblins are made-up. Monsters are made-up. What there is, is a bunch of game designers writing a document that says that some types of people are inherently morally inferior to other types of people. And I find that regrettable.

Arguing, "This is the way it is, so therefore it's this way," isn't much of refutation to my argument that it shouldn't be that way. I'm not interested in supporting the way D&D is, I'm interested in changing it, by changing the minds of the people who play it. If you don't want it changed, that's fine. Just don't criticize me for using my work to promote my feelings on the issue.


An important point for me is that there should not be any default assumption about someone's alignment based on their race or species.

This, exactly.

The only real argument being put forth is that goblins were originally designed to be evil, so they should be evil. Except, vampires were also originally designed to be evil, and (one's thoughts on Stephanie Meyers aside) I think we can all agree that there are hundreds of works with morally conflicted or even outright heroic vampires, maybe even more than with purely evil ones now.

Things change. Tradition does not matter. We can revise our views on these monsters as many times as we want until they reflect the story we want to be told, because they do not exist. You cannot say that these ideas do not apply to the world of D&D because the world of D&D is not REAL. We made it up, and we made it up less than 40 years ago. Just change what it is! Write a new story where it's not like that!

Oh wait—I am!

I am not saying that you are wrong and the author is right. I am saying that expecting anything other than what the author has clearly, unequivocally, and repeatedly hammered in as the themes of his story is not an expectation that is likely to be satisfied.

[Jason]

I'm sorry, I really honestly don't understand your point. Are you saying murderhobos aren't as common as we're asserting? Or that early D&D didn't allow & encourage the indiscriminate slaying of sentient creatures who were JUST different enough from the more "noble" races?
I said those things in another thread and received a rather incredulous response.

No. D&D in neither the rules nor the community of gamers has ever encouraged indiscriminantly slaughtering creatures for what amount to mere cosmetic differences.

Murderhobos have always been looked at as problem players, and encouraged to either move on to another hobby or to grow out of it.

Saying "the game is played this way 9 out of 10 times," is flat out wrong. I'm sorry if you really have run into this type of player that often, Rich, but your experience in that case is not typical. I've played since the early '80s and never met a whole party of murderhobos, just the occasional problem player who either left the hobby when the rest of us wouldn't let him act like that or grew out of it.

[hamishspence]

I'm sorry if you really have run into this type of player that often, Rich, but your experience in that case is not typical. I've played since the early '80s and never met a whole party of murderhobos, just the occasional problem player who either left the hobby when the rest of us wouldn't let him act like that or grew out of it.

And have you ever considered that maybe your experience is the one that is somewhat atypical?

I've seen plenty of players insisting that slaughtering certain monsters on sight is not murderhoboing, but normal D&D.

"They are not people, so killing them isn't murder and the adventurer isn't a murderhobo" in short.

[mjasghar]

Should this thread be merged with the other on? Because as far as I can see we have a case of the same argument - goblins are naturally evil / goblins are not naturally evil but are oppressed - in 2 threads with the same people trying to convince 2 different people with the same end point (that they won’t accept the word of the author until it’s flat out in the comic in some 4th wall breaking mass of words from a character they will accept).

[Worldsong]

Technically three people since Keltest also got involved in the other thread.

[Jason]

And have you ever considered that maybe your experience is the one that is somewhat atypical?.
Sure, I've considered that, and obviously my personal experience is limited to the places I've lived and played.

But this playstyle has been a long-time topic of discussion in the wider gamer community. The community consensus, well established in the pre-internet days, has always been that killing non-combatant goblins and other humanoid monsters just because the book says "theyll grow up to be evil" is itself an evil act. Go look at gaming periodicals from the earlier days of D&D and you will come across the debates (often in letter columns, sometimes in editorials and articles) and this consensus.

[KorvinStarmast]

The question is... will Gobbotopia keep existing after this story is done? Fair question. That's the challenge confronting Jirix, mostly off screen.

1) The nations that have accepted the hobgoblin conquest of Azure City, did it mostly out of fear of the Lich (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0501.html)
And until they can sing "ding dong the Lich is dead" I doubt they'll reverse course.

2) Without Redcloak, who is also likely to no longer exist by the end of the book, the Hobgoblins might very soon forget about Redcloak's ideals and go back to their old ways of living (which, btw, involved peaceful co-existence with the Azurites. Jirix probably isn't the former Supreme Leader, but he was raised under his rule). Jirix will either grow into the job, and be a competent leader, or he won't. That's a bit of char dev that may or may not stay off screen.

3) The Hobgoblins are occuping stolen lands. Their lands are the hills they came down from, where many of their women and children still live (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0702.html). Right, their homeland got larger. (Often happens with a successful invasion). I don't see that as a problem unless the Azurites can put together a coalition. Hinjo has to first re establish the Azurites where they are, then he can hope to mount a reconquista.


4) Mass Slavery.
I don't see Gobbotopia being allowed to keep the human slaves. And, as Durkon said, they have so much land they can barely farm it even with the human slaves. 20.000 hobgoblins survived the battle, and according to War and XP's travel guide, the lands of the Azurite Nation were sustaining a population of 530.000. With no slaves to farm the land, no Lich to scare their enemies, no demagogue full of hatred filling their minds with utopian ideas of questionable morality, and the looting of the land already accomplished... will the Hobgoblins really be interested in staying in the razed Azure City? One of RC's constant refrains was "we goblins have poor lands, that's why we are in the situation we are in." OK, now they have good lands. We'll see.

As to slavery, we do not know how many nations the world over have them. Tarquin's country does, at the least, maybe others also do. Not sure if Rich is going to delve into that level of world building, but if 17 nations already have recognized them, then not all nations may be as anti slavery as you or I would be.

I'm not saying that this is were the story is going, but it's a perfectly valid possibility. People shouldn't take for granted that Azure City wouldn't be restored in some sort by the end of the story. I think it's an off screen plot years after the Order saves the world, kind of like the Vaarsuvius redemption plot: V has so much atoning to do that it would take it's own few books to handle it ... and as noted above, Hinjo has to rebuild Azurite power to mount an amphibious invasion. Something like D-Day, but harder.

[Goblin_Priest]

Fair, some Rich quotes I was not aware of. It does indeed appear correct that he believes that writing down some humanoids as "usually evil" is wrong. Some of his arguments are clearly in a different context, though, where he seems to be disputing claims by others about how *his* goblins should be.

To each GM/author, his world. I pretty much dump the whole monster manual (plus PC races) into the garbage in my own games, to run things as I see them. Which incidentally also lacks "usually evil" races (because I simply completely remove alignment from the game). I 100% agree with a statement that would go something along the lines of "Rich can write his world as he pleases". I find his world all that much more interesting for it, I'd find the story much less appealing if set up in Greyhawk.

Really, I agree with almost all of his critics. I stop short of a few, like when he says "What there is, is a bunch of game designers writing a document that says that some types of people are inherently morally inferior to other types of people", that's a leap I don't find justified, but I'm not in any way berating him to change his view. I'm on his forum enjoying his comics, most of which I have not paid for, the most I'd expect is simply to be entitled to respectfully express my own opinion, even when it might contradict his, and no more.

The problems I have with the quoted argument is that that's not what the game designers have said. They wrote that goblins (and various other humanoids) are "usually evil". I don't remember a quote where WotC said (3.5) "goblins are morally inferior humanoids and it's find to just kill them all". If /players/ decide to opt down that path, then I don't think it fair to put the blame on the 3.5 monster manual. In my opinion, most of these players aren't motivated by some form of racism, where they feel legitimate disgust for their subhuman opponents. Simply, they are just seeking the challenge of combat, typically specifically devoid of moral complications (they like goblin enemies because, precisely, they *aren't* human, and so aren't entitled to the same dilemmas taking human life might entail). Furthermore, his critic stems from his (not the WotC authors') equivalency between "(usually) evil" and "morally inferior". By saying that it's wrong to make humanoids evil because it decreases their moral value, he (because the MM doesn't say so) is the one saying that there is a relation between morality and moral value. {scrubbed}. Goblins, on the other hand, aren't human. As Rich himself said, they don't even exist. Where's the moral problem with "doing" (imagining, really) harm to something that doesn't exist? I don't see any. Players are authors. Is Rich a bad guy for showing us a bunch of paladins killing baby goblins? I don't think so. What's the difference between that and players doing the same? I don't see any. Both are telling stories in their own ways, with the limitations of the roles. Acting a villain does not require the actor be villainous. Writing about a bad guy doesn't not require the author to be a bad guy. Roleplaying a character that kills non-humans without remorse does not require the player to be some kind of racist psychopath. Nor is it some kind of nefarious gateway pathway into becoming one. Even at the hands of a pre-teen.

Contrary to what seems to be the dominant discourse, I don't consider our youth to be any less moral than the generations before them, despite the rise of some types of graphic violent medias, such as games like Grand Theft Auto or movies like Saw, whose age recommendations are largely ignored. {scrubbed}. To my ears, saying D&D promotes racism is just another "{scrubbed}": people looking at something they can't relate to, and freaking out about how it could be corrupting others. Kids are not as influenceable as some make them out to be. And the more impressionable kids with violent and psychopathic tendencies... well... they probably aren't the ones playing D&D.

[Kornaki]

I like how we have in the same thread Jason declaring that dnd players have known slaughtering goblins without cause is evil since the 90s, and goblin priest declaring that obviously killing the goblins isn't evil. I feel like Jason has to concede their point at least a little bit, unless this is a clever manchurian debate tactic by goblin.

I also think you can find many other examples of things that people have "known" for many years, but not really internalized. For example when cigarette manufacturers started getting sued in the 90s there were people pointing out that cigarettes causing cancer was "known" for 40 years at that point. Which was true in a theoretical sense, but the graph here suggests people only really internalized it (or quit smoking for some other reason) sometime in the 90s

https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/overall-tobacco-trends

I would cite other examples but I think they are not allowed by forum rules. Hopefully this one is inoffensive enough.

[Jason]

I like how we have in the same thread Jason declaring that dnd players have known slaughtering goblins without cause is evil since the 90s, and goblin priest declaring that obviously killing the goblins isn't evil. I feel like Jason has to concede their point at least a little bit, unless this is a clever manchurian debate tactic by goblin.

I also think you can find many other examples of things that people have "known" for many years, but not really internalized. For example when cigarette manufacturers started getting sued in the 90s there were people pointing out that cigarettes causing cancer was "known" for 40 years at that point. Which was true in a theoretical sense, but the graph here suggests people only really internalized it (or quit smoking for some other reason) sometime in the 90s

https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/overall-tobacco-trends

I would cite other examples but I think they are not allowed by forum rules. Hopefully this one is inoffensive enough.Large numbers of people quit smoking or never srarted in the '90s because it was no longer socially acceptable to smoke. Smoking was an act of rebellion and cool. Then society decided it wasn't cool anymore.

The gaming community reflected in the periodicals of the RPG hobby have likewise always labelled the type of person who will try to kill non-combatants "because the book says they're evil" as not cool. There are people who still do it - mostly players new to this whole pretend to be a magic elf thing - but they've never been the mainstream.

I don't think killing non-existent monsters while pretending to be a hero will do any psychological harm to you. I'm not as sure about pretending to kill monster children or other obvious non-combatants, or pretending to engage in torture or cruelty towards these same non-existent monsters. Goblin Priest and I seem to disagree on that point (among others). I think RPGs genereally work best when players are playing heroes, or at least anti-heroes on their way to becoming heroes, learning to do authentic hero stuff and learning from their mistakes. Like the Order of the Stick.

[KorvinStarmast]

I would cite other examples but I think they are not allowed by forum rules. Hopefully this one is inoffensive enough. Lien is seen smoking in GDGU. :smallwink: As a teenager.
Personal anecdote:
I started trying out smokes in junior high; smoked on and off for quite a few years. Quit (for the last time) some years ago and this time, unlike the other extended quitting spans (many of them lasting for years), it's for good. I don't even have the once a year cigar on New Years eve. Done is done.

Yes, for all of those years, I knew what the risks were and I did not care. Plus, my aunt had smoked about a pack a day for over 40 years and died at the ripe old age of 87, never had lung cancer. Alzheimers got her, in the end. I was in a profession where a moment's inattention could get me killed: a smoke here and there was hardly a risk I worried about. Mom didn't smoke at all, dad would have an occasional pipe or cigar, but he stopped that in his early 60's.
I also ran a lot.
I am glad that this time I am not going back, and so is my wife.

or never srarted in the '90s My kids very cleverly never started.


I don't think killing non-existent monsters while pretending to be a hero will do any psychological harm to you. It won't. See also the alleged harm that first person shooter video games do or don't do.

I'm not as sure about pretending to kill monster children or other obvious non-combatants, or pretending to engage in torture or cruelty towards these same non-existent monsters. This is where a GM or a DM needs to draw a line, use a tool like applying "lines and veils" or the use the clumsily named (but useful!) X Card. If you are really interested, there are some interesting sites on the web for "RPG safety tools" that can be handy to apply in uncomfortable situations during play.

If one person at the table doesn't like it - particularly the PCs killing kids and torturing - the best practice is "remove it from play until an OOC discussion can explore that issue, and its impact, for the group as a whole."

And as a further 'lines and veils' deal, our all adult group has their own norms on the 'sexy times' RP stuff that now and again crops up ... it's a 'fade to black' kind of deal where the PC and NPC are considered to "get a room, go over behind the giant's corpse/tree/boulder/wall" and they are engaged off screen while the rest of us do whatever else.

[Goblin_Priest]

I like how we have in the same thread Jason declaring that dnd players have known slaughtering goblins without cause is evil since the 90s, and goblin priest declaring that obviously killing the goblins isn't evil. I feel like Jason has to concede their point at least a little bit, unless this is a clever manchurian debate tactic by goblin.

I also think you can find many other examples of things that people have "known" for many years, but not really internalized. For example when cigarette manufacturers started getting sued in the 90s there were people pointing out that cigarettes causing cancer was "known" for 40 years at that point. Which was true in a theoretical sense, but the graph here suggests people only really internalized it (or quit smoking for some other reason) sometime in the 90s

https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/overall-tobacco-trends

I would cite other examples but I think they are not allowed by forum rules. Hopefully this one is inoffensive enough.

I don't think I've made the argument that killing goblins isn't evil. Nor the opposite. I've rather contested the associations some people have made with RL issues and the in-game handling of the issue. Personally, I don't really care about dogmatic morality in my games, but I don't really mind going along with it. I prefer worlds where actions and reactions make sense, without consideration to the moral labels the game mechanics might assign, except in the few cases they need be taken into account. If a PC asks IG "is killing goblins evil?", I'd expect them to find folks for just about every possible answers, and as long as the proportions are reasonable given the setting, I'm fine with that. We don't all think alike IRL, I see no reason for NPCs to think alike. The only time it being "evil" or not needs to come up is if the paladin wants to do it, at which point he can just as the GM for his setting's answer to that question, and it just ends there. GMs decide for their world, and that's the end of it.


Large numbers of people quit smoking or never srarted in the '90s because it was no longer socially acceptable to smoke. Smoking was an act of rebellion and cool. Then society decided it wasn't cool anymore.

The gaming community reflected in the periodicals of the RPG hobby have likewise always labelled the type of person who will try to kill non-combatants "because the book says they're evil" as not cool. There are people who still do it - mostly players new to this whole pretend to be a magic elf thing - but they've never been the mainstream.

I don't think killing non-existent monsters while pretending to be a hero will do any psychological harm to you. I'm not as sure about pretending to kill monster children or other obvious non-combatants, or pretending to engage in torture or cruelty towards these same non-existent monsters. Goblin Priest and I seem to disagree on that point (among others). I think RPGs genereally work best when players are playing heroes, or at least anti-heroes on their way to becoming heroes, learning to do authentic hero stuff and learning from their mistakes. Like the Order of the Stick.

Indeed.

Ironically, our main GM tends to feel like you do. At one point, he finally ceded and said "fine, we'll do an evil campaign". And then barely anyone made an evil character, including those who've been wanting to. And afterwards, it could be argued that the party wasn't really all that much more "evil" than any of the others before (neutrality tends to always reign dominant). After all, doing evil left and right is a great way to get a bunch of people on your backs. Doesn't lead to very long careers.