War and XPs (lots of SPOILERS)

[Oxymoron]

Ok, I've got my new book War and XPs and while reading the extras, I see that Rich answers some questions we all have been dying to know.

1.Is Sabine a demon or a devil? Rich writes in the extra between pages 338-339:

She (Sabine) also relishes physical combat a lot more than we expect from succubi-types, partly because I always thought demons with damage reduction would revel in their inability to be hurt.

Ok, he dosen't actually call her a demon, but I think it's close enough. She looks like a succubi and has a succubis powers afterall.

2. Will the monster in the darkness ever reveal itself? Rich writes in the extra between pages 367-368:

I know now exactly when and why the monster will reveal itself, too.. don't expect it any time soon, though.

3. Is Miko coming back? Rich writes in the extra between pages 422-423:

I thought Miko should be unique as someone who falls from grace, but never gets the opportunity to redeem herself. It stands as a reminder that unlike the heroes in those redemtion stories, you or I don't always get the chance to fix our mistakes before we die. Would she have been capable of of changing? Would she have become a villain? We don't know.

Again, he dosen't actually say she never will be back, but if he brought her back, she would probably have to take one of these paths, or become a dirt farmer or something.

[Linkavitch]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this. It has answered alot of questions. Although, the one that everyone is asking, is, WHAT GENDER IS V?!?!?!?!?:biggrin:

[blackspeeker]

Well as far as MitD goes, I'm just glad to here that we will get an answer.

[Felixaar]

y'kno, none of these are actually conclusive...

and you'll never know what gender V is. just accept it and move on :smallamused:

[Penquin47]

It's pretty conclusive that we will, at some point, learn what the MitD is.

And we do get an answer for V's gender from Elan. Three of them! (Okay, once he says male, once female, and once none of your business.)

[paladin_carvin]

Actually, I think it's fairly solid that the third statement there means that we will never be seeing Miko again. If she somehow came back, it would ruin one of the main points of her character.

[aapje]

Maybe add some spoiler tags in your post just to be on the safe side :smallwink:

[Max_Sinister]

I don't know about the MitD... maybe Rich really means "I will NEVER reveal the MitD and that's because I don't know which monster could be like that! Muahaha and ha!" :smallwink:

[Sir_Norbert]

To be honest, I always knew we would eventually find out what the Creature is ;) Rich doesn't come across to me as the Lemony Snicket type of writer.

V's gender, on the other hand, is set up so that it's hard to imagine a possible resolution that would be more satisfying than leaving it unresolved -- partly because gender is, as V says in Origins, so unimportant. On the other hand, there is one possible way to resolve it I can think of, and that's eventually meeting V's spouse, so there may yet be a reveal some hundreds of comics down the line.

[Lissou]

To be honest, I always knew we would eventually find out what the Creature is ;) Rich doesn't come across to me as the Lemony Snicket type of writer.

V's gender, on the other hand, is set up so that it's hard to imagine a possible resolution that would be more satisfying than leaving it unresolved -- partly because gender is, as V says in Origins, so unimportant. On the other hand, there is one possible way to resolve it I can think of, and that's eventually meeting V's spouse, so there may yet be a reveal some hundreds of comics down the line.

Er... Why? Even if V's spouse isn't androgeinous, considering we don't know if V and V's spouse are the same gender or not, it won't bring any new information at all.

As for the MitD, Rich also said that it was a monster he didn't create himself, that the readers could potentially gues what it was and that he has left hints since the time he decided on what it was, which was way back during book one.

[paladin_carvin]

Er... Why? Even if V's spouse isn't androgeinous, considering we don't know if V and V's spouse are the same gender or not, it won't bring any new information at all.

As for the MitD, Rich also said that it was a monster he didn't create himself, that the readers could potentially gues what it was and that he has left hints since the time he decided on what it was, which was way back during book one.

Agreed. Rich has shown that the world (of OoTS) is pretty accepting of same-sex couples. So, even if V has a 'wife', it wouldn't mean V is male, and if V has a husband it wouldn't mean that V was female. Further, elves always seemed like they would be accepting of same sex couples, being so naturally chaotic and free. But, the interchange about it is very fun.

[factotum]

I don't know about the MitD... maybe Rich really means "I will NEVER reveal the MitD and that's because I don't know which monster could be like that! Muahaha and ha!" :smallwink:

Except he also says he knows exactly what type of creature the MitD is, and that it's one that already "exists" in D&D canon--e.g. it's not just something he made up for the strip.

[Remirach]

I was curious as to what others thought about the Giant's commentary that Azure City got a dose of "what goes around, comes around" and that even the gods "can't stop Karma from kicking them in their divine asses once in a while." (Nice line, BTW.) There's been a lot of discussion since Start of Darkness as to how much of the Dark One's story was true: did that lend greater credence to it in your eyes? The Giant makes no remarks on the specific point that the humanoid races were only created to be XP fodder, but he does make it pretty damn clear that even the gods can do things that are immoral (and thus fall afoul of "Karma") and that the extermination of entire villages of goblins and other races was "damning" even though it was at the behest of the 12 gods.

Yet it's also specifically noted that yes, it was the gods and not some all-powerful force of Goodness and Lawfulness that stripped Miko of her Paladin powers (which I had thought was self-evident, but there was some dispute on this point). So the gods dictate what is considered good, yet they themselves don't always live up to that ideal? It's that kind of theological viewpoint that makes me wish there wasn't a ban on discussing real-life religion... but oh well.

Any thoughts, or am I just rambling to myself again?

[Chronos]

As for the MitD, Rich also said that it was a monster he didn't create himself, that the readers could potentially gues what it was and that he has left hints since the time he decided on what it was, which was way back during book one.So now we just have to figure out, first, whether the Monster is from an official D&D source, and second, how many liberties, if any, he's taking with its canonical stats and qualities. So far as I know, there's no creature from any D&D book which is consistent with everything we know about Monster-san, which means that he's either changing some things about it (in which case it's unrealistic to think we could guess it), or that it's from some source other than D&D (which opens up a heck of a lot of possibilities).

[Sir_Norbert]

Er... Why? Even if V's spouse isn't androgeinous, considering we don't know if V and V's spouse are the same gender or not, it won't bring any new information at all.
I assume V's spouse is a sentient being and therefore capable of revealing V's gender to the other characters. :smallconfused:

[Fawkes]

Agreed. Rich has shown that the world (of OoTS) is pretty accepting of same-sex couples.

Can you provide evidence, Mr. Wright?

[paladin_carvin]

HOLD IT!

Well, first off, three main characters have have incidences that imply bisexual curiosity, if not perhaps complete bisexuality. (Elan http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0050.html, though this is merely a hint, he is very jumpy. You could argue that there is a bit there because of the belt as well. There are other things, but those are shot in the dark clues that generally mean little. Stronger is Nale, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0365.html . And of course, Haley http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0309.html (in her aphasia) as well as plain and clear in http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0382.html ) as well as a bit more minor character (Julie in the infamous http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0343.html )

One individual has said he was gay, comfortably (the goaler, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0387.html) and in War and XP

Two female paladins make out, at least one of which seeming very to be herself comfortably bi or homosexual.
The more interesting point of this incident is that Miko herself approves of the relationship in the same strip where she berates the same paladins for eating in a restaurant where gamblers sometime play in the back ally. If there were any standard against such a relationship, she would have said something.

[LuisDantas]

Arguably, the fall of Azure City (and the greater risk of freeing the Snarl that it entails) is a direct result of the Twelve Gods' failure to treat goblins with fitting respect.

The way I see it, the Twelve Gods are much like the classical greek gods in that they have power, but not necessarily maturity - and most certainly not wisdom. For the most part they are trying to do the best they can, and that's why they removed Miko's powers - but they do not have any transcendental wisdom or divine insight into the future to guide them.

Interestingly, Tiamat (who is of course not one of the Twelve Gods) apparently HAS such insight and lends it to the Oracle on demand.


(...) he does make it pretty damn clear that even the gods can do things that are immoral (and thus fall afoul of "Karma") and that the extermination of entire villages of goblins and other races was "damning" even though it was at the behest of the 12 gods.

Objectively, that is quite true. It damned Redcloak and motivated him into going to great lengths to get revenge for goblinkind. That's something that just wouldn't happen if goblins weren't mistreated so badly.


Yet it's also specifically noted that yes, it was the gods and not some all-powerful force of Goodness and Lawfulness that stripped Miko of her Paladin powers (which I had thought was self-evident, but there was some dispute on this point). So the gods dictate what is considered good, yet they themselves don't always live up to that ideal?

A link to the real-life version of this question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma).

My take on it is that the (OOtS-world) gods dictate what they want to happen, but have no inate moral superiority.


It's that kind of theological viewpoint that makes me wish there wasn't a ban on discussing real-life religion... but oh well.

Any thoughts, or am I just rambling to myself again?

Let me invite all of you people to discuss the matter on this Brazilian forum (http://clubecetico.org/forum/index.php/board,14.0.html) (you'll need to sign up (http://clubecetico.org/forum/index.php?action=register) first). I post there daily and I am sure to notice any posting from you people.


Best,
Luis

[TigerHunter]

HOLD IT!

Well, first off, three main characters have have incidences that imply bisexual curiosity, if not perhaps complete bisexuality. (Elan http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0050.html, though this is merely a hint, he is very jumpy. You could argue that there is a bit there because of the belt as well. There are other things, but those are shot in the dark clues that generally mean little. Stronger is Nale, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0365.html . And of course, Haley http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0309.html (in her aphasia) as well as plain and clear in http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0382.html ) as well as a bit more minor character (Julie in the infamous http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0343.html )

One individual has said he was gay, comfortably (the goaler, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0387.html) and in War and XP

Two female paladins make out, at least one of which seeming very to be herself comfortably bi or homosexual.
The more interesting point of this incident is that Miko herself approves of the relationship in the same strip where she berates the same paladins for eating in a restaurant where gamblers sometime play in the back ally. If there were any standard against such a relationship, she would have said something.

However, Nale takes offense at Varsuuvius implying that he's gay (or bi), and Belkar does comment on the fact that the two paladins making out is fairly... raunchy. Though that may just be because they're a. paladins and b. in the middle of a public bar.


I don't know about the MitD... maybe Rich really means "I will NEVER reveal the MitD and that's because I don't know which monster could be like that! Muahaha and ha!" :smallwink:
Except that that's kind of the complete opposite of what he said...


Personally, I'm more interested about the 'hints' Rich claims to have left us regarding the MitD's species and, uh... something else that I don't remember at the moment.

[paladin_carvin]

I was curious as to what others thought about the Giant's commentary that Azure City got a dose of "what goes around, comes around" and that even the gods "can't stop Karma from kicking them in their divine asses once in a while." (Nice line, BTW.) There's been a lot of discussion since Start of Darkness as to how much of the Dark One's story was true: did that lend greater credence to it in your eyes? The Giant makes no remarks on the specific point that the humanoid races were only created to be XP fodder, but he does make it pretty damn clear that even the gods can do things that are immoral (and thus fall afoul of "Karma") and that the extermination of entire villages of goblins and other races was "damning" even though it was at the behest of the 12 gods.

Yet it's also specifically noted that yes, it was the gods and not some all-powerful force of Goodness and Lawfulness that stripped Miko of her Paladin powers (which I had thought was self-evident, but there was some dispute on this point). So the gods dictate what is considered good, yet they themselves don't always live up to that ideal? It's that kind of theological viewpoint that makes me wish there wasn't a ban on discussing real-life religion... but oh well.

Any thoughts, or am I just rambling to myself again?

Well, a few things to consider. In some weird fashion, the Azurites worship the entire pantheon of the 12 gods at onces. We see in SoD that maybe a few are actually evil, thus the entirety of the pantheon may be TN and not LG LN or NG as you might guess. Some settings allow non LG/LN/NG deities to have paladins, the one that springs to mind first is of course Sune, CG goddess of beauty from the Forgotten Realms setting.
(Start of Darkness spoilers)

Further, it is not uncommon for campaigns to justify the killing of an 'evil race' as a good act, being that it would help all they would plunder from. While we see the families of Red Cloak living normal, it is not without reason to think they may be evil. After all, paladins do have detect evil. The Dark One, as it would seem, is a deity that is, indeed, evil (no matter how much I love the idea). He is driven by anger and revenge as much as he is the betterment of his people. The way he plans to gain power is poetic revenge. While doing so, he is willing to put the whole world in jeopardy in the process. Part of his plan is maliciously killing other gods. The dark one is indeed evil. BUT! The karma bites because good and evil are diametric while karma is not. Fighting evil is part of a good agenda, but it doesn't matter if it was 'good' if you wronged someone. The Azurites wronged the goblins, even if they are evil, and they payed for it. In some ways, the battle between good and evil is what keeps the karmic cycle moving...

Further so, you can lose your paladin abilities for going against your their code, not mattering if the action was either lawful or good (since any serious act that is not lawful or good would already make a paladin fall). It would be against any paladin code to commit regicide against a non-evil leader, even more so a good one (even if that is chao good).

[paladin_carvin]

However, Nale takes offense at Varsuuvius implying that he's gay (or bi), and Belkar does comment on the fact that the two paladins making out is fairly... raunchy. Though that may just be because they're a. paladins and b. in the middle of a public bar.

Or c, Belkar assumes that everything he likes is raunchy :smallbiggrin:
Nale may take offense just because there may be a stereotype there of emasculation, even if it is accepted.

Also, don't forget spoilers... I think.

[TigerHunter]

Also, don't forget spoilers... I think.
Official policy is that any thread marked spoilers doesn't need spoiler tags, and anything in a bonus strip isn't exactly plot-spoiling material. But I'll go edit it just to be safe.

[David Argall]

three main characters have have incidences that imply bisexual curiosity, if not perhaps complete bisexuality.
Just about all of these imply that gay behavior is a misdemeanor, perhaps a minor one even by that standard, but still "criminal" behavior. Given that many societies deem it a felony, and a major one at that, we might deem the OOTS world much more tolerant than the average society, but that does not mean it is fully tolerant.



(Elan http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0050.html, though this is merely a hint, he is very jumpy.
Which suggests the impropriety right there.


Stronger is Nale, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0365.html .
And again we have the attitude that, while it may not be any big thing, it is still something one should not be doing.


And of course, Haley http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0309.html (in her aphasia) as well as plain and clear in http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0382.html )
Haley says "..a girl...OK...more than one girl.." And she is trying to confess something secret. So again, shameful and "criminal" behavior.


as well as a bit more minor character (Julie in the infamous http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0343.html )
Whether Julie had any sexual meaning here is unclear. Since Pomphey is male, we accept as a matter of course his thoughts are shameful.


One individual has said he was gay, comfortably (the goaler, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0387.html)
He came out [of hiding, and apparently not that far out]. Again we get that touch of unacceptable behavior. It may only be a touch, but it is there.

and in War and XP


Two female paladins make out, at least one of which seeming very to be herself comfortably bi or homosexual.
The more interesting point of this incident is that Miko herself approves of the relationship in the same strip where she berates the same paladins for eating in a restaurant where gamblers sometime play in the back ally. If there were any standard against such a relationship, she would have said something.
Not having seen WXP yet, I can't be sure, but this sounds like the scene where the cop is giving the bankrobbers a parking ticket. If so, it would show the reverse, that Azure City was very against such relationships and Miko was too angry about them being in the restaurant at all to realize what they were doing in it.

[TigerHunter]

Not having seen WXP yet, I can't be sure, but this sounds like the scene where the cop is giving the bankrobbers a parking ticket. If so, it would show the reverse, that Azure City was very against such relationships and Miko was too angry about them being in the restaurant at all to realize what they were doing in it.

They outright admit to her that they're dating (even though they're not, they only say that as an excuse to not bring her along to the restaurant) and she replies "May the Twelve Gods bless your union." Given that it's Miko, I think that if there was any sort of taboo, she would have at least objected.

[LuisDantas]

Fair enough, TigerHunter.

David Argall is not necessarily wrong either. It is quite possible for a society to accept gay couples yet have an stigma attached to them.

Miko strikes me as someone who would try her best to respect the law and understand its purpose, including in situations where it would actually make her more tolerant than the average citizen.

[TigerHunter]

Fair enough, TigerHunter.

David Argall is not necessarily wrong either. It is quite possible for a society to accept gay couples yet have an stigma attached to them.

Miko strikes me as someone who would try her best to respect the law and understand its purpose, including in situations where it would actually make her more tolerant than the average citizen.
Also true. But removing the tag from a mattress (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0227.html) isn't against the law either.

[LuisDantas]

Also true. But removing the tag from a mattress (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0227.html) isn't against the law either.

We do not know that (as far as the OOtS world is concerned). Besides, I am assuming that there is a law reinforcing the legitimacy of same-sex couple in that world.

Or, who knows, maybe Miko just doesn't fit all that neatly into stereotypes :)

Such things have been known to happen, after all.

[paladin_carvin]

Removing a mattress tag is illegal... if you don't own it. It's a weird law, but there may be some truth to it being illegal there; such as if a patron or an employee removed it. Heck, you may argue that the tag must remain if it is for 'public' use. But I digress.

I think Dantas has it on the head. There is a stigma. Many people are happy at the thought of homosexual couples, yet would take offense to being called a homosexual themselves. Think in reverse, other than when attempting to 'pass', most homosexuals would not like being called heterosexual. I find it unlikely that many homosexuals feel heterosexuals should be tried for crimes, be made into criminals or necessarily find them unappealing in any fashion.

Even in more 'accepting' or 'tolerant' areas of our world they still have taboos and stigmas about homosexuals.

[Oxymoron]

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE! All the responses! :smallbiggrin:

(Note to self, reduce intake on caffeindrinks. :smallconfused:)

Anyway, to answer some of your questions:The answer to V's gender dosen't get answered in this book, and I doubt it ever will. If we ever were to meet Vs spouse, he/she would probably be just as androgynious (is that a word?) as V him/herself.

Is the OOTSverse accepting of homo/bi-sexuality? Yes, it is. The guard in the Cliffport prison was openly gay, and in War and XPs, two paladin women talked about being together in front of Miko, and even she didn't care.

And about the whole karma thing hitting the southern gods in the face. Well it explains why the paladins that slew the goblin elders and children in Redcloaks village didn't fall. In the OOTSverse, the gods grant paladins their powers, and the gods probably chooses to look away when a paladin comits crimes against something green with fangs, thus creating fanatics like Miko. In a way, the gods are responsible for all the bad paladins out there. So, in your faces subjective bad gods, you just got served (or something).

[Fawkes]

One individual has said he was gay, comfortably (the jailer, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0387.html) and in War and XP

Two female paladins make out, at least one of which seeming very to be herself comfortably bi or homosexual.
The more interesting point of this incident is that Miko herself approves of the relationship in the same strip where she berates the same paladins for eating in a restaurant where gamblers sometime play in the back ally. If there were any standard against such a relationship, she would have said something.


This evidence is...acceptable.

[SteveMB]

They outright admit to her that they're dating (even though they're not, they only say that as an excuse to not bring her along to the restaurant) and she replies "May the Twelve Gods bless your union." Given that it's Miko, I think that if there was any sort of taboo, she would have at least objected.

When one of them makes up the "we're dating" story, the other whispers an objection "I'm not--", but quickly goes along with the ploy -- if there's any stigma at all to having Miko think that she's in a lesbian relationship, it doesn't rise to the level of being worse than putting up with Miko's company for an evening. In any case, when we see them again it's evident that she's at least bi-curious.


Haley says "..a girl...OK...more than one girl.." And she is trying to confess something secret. So again, shameful and "criminal" behavior.

It could be simply that she finds guys getting off on such imagery (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0123.html) to be a bit tiresome.

[LuisDantas]

It could be simply that she finds guys getting off on such imagery (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0123.html) to be a bit tiresome.

Possible, but unlikely. She took that possibility in stride rather gracefully in the strip you link to.

[Remirach]

Arguably, the fall of Azure City (and the greater risk of freeing the Snarl that it entails) is a direct result of the Twelve Gods' failure to treat goblins with fitting respect.

The way I see it, the Twelve Gods are much like the classical greek gods in that they have power, but not necessarily maturity - and most certainly not wisdom. For the most part they are trying to do the best they can, and that's why they removed Miko's powers - but they do not have any transcendental wisdom or divine insight into the future to guide them.

Interestingly, Tiamat (who is of course not one of the Twelve Gods) apparently HAS such insight and lends it to the Oracle on demand.
I agree with the comparison to the Greek gods (I always find it regrettable that the one pantheon I really have any familiarity with is the one that got smote), but don't forget that ALL the gods, not just Azure City's, were responsible for the making of the lesser races and the poor lot they were given. Also Tiamat is clearly labeled as an "evil" god.


Objectively, that is quite true. It damned Redcloak and motivated him into going to great lengths to get revenge for goblinkind. That's something that just wouldn't happen if goblins weren't mistreated so badly.
Yep, Burlew goes so far as to call Redcloak "a villain they themselves created."


A link to the real-life version of this question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma).

My take on it is that the (OOtS-world) gods dictate what they want to happen, but have no inate moral superiority.
(from the link)

The second horn of the dilemma (i.e. that which is moral is moral because it is commanded by God, known as divine command theory) runs into three main problems. First, it implies that what is good is arbitrary, based merely upon God's whim; if God had created the world to include the values that rape, murder, and torture were virtues, while mercy and charity were vices, then they would have been.

That about sums it up. It also calls into question the supposed "evilness" of the goblins that were slaughtered -- did they set off the paladin's "evil radar" because they were objectively evil, or because they were arbitrarily evil as defined by the f--ed up world they were put into? ISTM that War and XPs argues for the latter.


Let me invite all of you people to discuss the matter on this Brazilian forum (http://clubecetico.org/forum/index.php/board,14.0.html) (you'll need to sign up (http://clubecetico.org/forum/index.php?action=register) first). I post there daily and I am sure to notice any posting from you people.

Best,
Luis
Thanks for the invite. :smallsmile: I'll think about it.


Well, a few things to consider. In some weird fashion, the Azurites worship the entire pantheon of the 12 gods at onces. We see in SoD that maybe a few are actually evil, thus the entirety of the pantheon may be TN and not LG LN or NG as you might guess. Some settings allow non LG/LN/NG deities to have paladins, the one that springs to mind first is of course Sune, CG goddess of beauty from the Forgotten Realms setting.
But we're talking about genocide. Even if the group "averages out" somewhere in the neutral range, that's pretty objectively evil. Also, the paladins of Azure City are of the standard Lawful Good variety.



(Start of Darkness spoilers)

Further, it is not uncommon for campaigns to justify the killing of an 'evil race' as a good act, being that it would help all they would plunder from. While we see the families of Red Cloak living normal, it is not without reason to think they may be evil. After all, paladins do have detect evil.
But when the inherent "goodness" of the gods is called into question, you've also called into question the inherent "evilness" of the goblins. The Paladins do have "detect evil" -- but it's the "evil" that is defined by the 12 gods. Furthermore, when you're talking about genocide, can you really justify it, or are you just rationalizing it?

The Dark One, as it would seem, is a deity that is, indeed, evil (no matter how much I love the idea). He is driven by anger and revenge as much as he is the betterment of his people. The way he plans to gain power is poetic revenge. While doing so, he is willing to put the whole world in jeopardy in the process. Part of his plan is maliciously killing other gods. The dark one is indeed evil. BUT! The karma bites because good and evil are diametric while karma is not. Fighting evil is part of a good agenda, but it doesn't matter if it was 'good' if you wronged someone. The Azurites wronged the goblins, even if they are evil, and they payed for it. In some ways, the battle between good and evil is what keeps the karmic cycle moving...
The Dark One is indeed evil, although to be precise, his plan involves blackmailing the gods and threatening to have them killed, not actually killed -- or at least, that is what he says his plan is.

Your other point is where you lose me. It's good to hurt someone who is evil, which means that karma will come around and do you wrong? I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. I think the point here is that it might have been just to stop the goblins, but the Azurites took a cruel and disproportionate revenge against them, and that is what has come back to bite them in the ass. Karma is operating above "good" and "evil" only so much as "good" and "evil" are defined by the people who wrote the rules, who are fallible and biased.
Anyway as with regard to all this about gayness being immoral or unacceptable, consider that most people would be offended and/or embarrassed to be mistaken as the opposite gender -- but that doesn't imply that society considers anything morally wrong with the male or female genders. So being uncomfortable at the thought of being "mistaken for gay" does not, to me, imply much about how society regards things.

There's also another example of homosexual tolerance in "Origin of the PCs," when the priest asks Durkon how he feels about Thor and Durkon says something to the effect of he loves him to the greatest extent that his heterosexuality will allow, not that there is anything wrong with the alternative. And Durkon's a relatively conservative guy...

[LuisDantas]

I agree with the comparison to the Greek gods (I always find it regrettable that the one pantheon I really have any familiarity with is the one that got smote), but don't forget that ALL the gods, not just Azure City's, were responsible for the making of the lesser races and the poor lot they were given. Also Tiamat is clearly labeled as an "evil" god.

I would comment on it, but I fear there is no way to do that without going too far into real-world religious belief to fit in this forum.


Yep, Burlew goes so far as to call Redcloak "a villain they themselves created."

I take it that you agree? I certainly do. Redcloak seems to be quite the alright guy, other than his thirst for revenge and its consequences.


(...) the supposed "evilness" of the goblins that were slaughtered -- did they set off the paladin's "evil radar" because they were objectively evil, or because they were arbitrarily evil as defined by the f--ed up world they were put into? ISTM that War and XPs argues for the latter.

Even in fantasy worlds it is just not possible for whole races to be truly evil. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzt_Do'Urden)


Your other point is where you lose me. It's good to hurt someone who is evil, which means that karma will come around and do you wrong? I don't think that's how it's supposed to work.

Gosh, I SO wish I could use a real-world religion point here. :smalltongue:

[Lissou]

About the homosexuality thing...

1) Haley is Haley. She hides everything. She is ashamed of everything. She hid the fact she had a tattoo, she hid her love for Elan... She's just not self confident. So yeah, she's keeping it a secret that she's kissed girls.

2) People can not want to be thought to be gay without it meaning that being gay is a bad thing. I'm a female. I don't think being male is a bad thing. Yet, it people think I'm a male, I'll take offence or at least hastily make sure they're corrected. And it has happened. It made me very uncomfortable and yet I hve nothing against males, and hve no stigma against them.

3) OOTS is full of references to the real word. Using expressions like "coming out" is just normal in a strip that refers to Oprah or the Olympics. It's just using an expression that's in the language Rich is using. Similarly, lesbians are "hot" according to males, and that's kept in the OOTS world, but that doesn't say anything bout a stigma.

Finally, about V. V can't always tell genders apart. V don't see what's weird about kissing someone the same gender as yours. V thinks genders are an irrelevant detail.
It seems to me, in these conditions, yes, you can think V could be with someone of either gender, and that wouldn't make any difference.
Also, if V's spouse is like V, they won't reveal V's gender even if they know it. V surely hasn't, even know he/she isn't actively hiding it.

[Teatime]

I lol'd hard at the bonus strip where Elan was guessing V's four words, and included "My gender is male," "My gender is female," and "none of your business!" since I've seen threads here stating those exact hypothesis'. Shot down by the Giant!

[Manoftyr]

I love this comic for exactly this reason, Rich is turning the ENTIRE good/evil notion on its head, in the world of OotS it seems 'to me at least' that the Paladins and supposed 'good' races are no better whatsoever than the evil ones, the entire difference between good and evil becomes theoretical and esoteric, in actual practice there is little if any difference.

For example, the Paladins 'supposedly good' massacre an entire Goblin village but that's okay because goblins are 'evil'...but isn't massacring wrong/evil 'period' apparently not since those Paladins didn't lose their powers which essentially makes the entire notion of 'good' more subjective...and raises the question, what's Good? What's Evil?, If there really is no difference outside of esoteric notions are they the same?, Who's the monster?, Who's the victim, Is there even a victim?...it is 'exactly' these kinds of questions and notions that draw me to this comic so much.

Look at Redcloak, he has the interests of his people at heart, he is acting to destroy a threat to his culture, to his race and to stop their suffering and in doing so he annihilated the Azure city capital...is that any different than the Azurites slaughtering Goblin villages?...No, it isn't, not whatsoever but Azurites are 'good' and the Goblins 'evil'...well, if the two factions behave EXACTLY the same towards one another...than what's the difference?...there is none!, period, zilch, nadda.

The only difference between a good and evil person it seems is that if you're evil you glow red when a Paladin uses detect evil on you and if you aren't you don't...outside of that there is absolutely no difference, both the good and evil 'characters' seem to be equally capable of good or evil 'actions'...Rich has essentially in his comic turned this entire notion of good vs. evil and what good and evil is COMPLETELY on its head, brilliantly I might add and for that I have nothing to say but kudos, kudos indeed...continue doing an awesome job Mr. Burlew.

[LuisDantas]

An alternate reading is that Rich is criticizing the alignment classes of D&D, which is indeed embarrasingly stereotypical to the point of being esoteric.

I really like little bits and pieces here and there such as Redcloak's brightest moment (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0451.html).

Come to think of it, isn't Redcloak generally becoming more conscious and empathic? He almost regrets having to keep torturing O-Chul (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0548.html), despite knowing full well that he is an Azure City paladin (a human paladin, mind you) that would slay him if given half a chance. Quite some advance for a guy who thought nothing of sacrificing hobgoblins for nearly no reason not so long ago (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0190.html).

[Remirach]

I take it that you agree? I certainly do. Redcloak seems to be quite the alright guy, other than his thirst for revenge and its consequences.
My sig doesn't give it away? Redcloak's easily my favorite character. I certainly sympathize with him, and I continue to hope against hope that somehow he'll turn around. Dunno how likely it is though.


Even in fantasy worlds it is just not possible for whole races to be truly evil. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzt_Do'Urden)
Truth to be told, I haven't read the books in question. I don't play tabletop games in general either. (Yeah, it's kind of bizarre that I've become so attached to this comic, but I'm not the only one.) I have read other fantasy, though. And there are indeed authors who will create races that are entirely evil down to the last man, woman and child. For example I don't recall hearing of any "reformed Trollocs" in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Some of your poorer fantasy writers have the lamentable habit of making whole countries where everyone is inexplicably evil, or bloodlines that can't produce a single decent person, and so on...

So I would have to disagree. I mean, it makes for boring writing in my opinion, but people do write whole races that are truly evil.

[LuisDantas]

It's certainly true that many writers (even Tolkien, come to think of it) create "100% evil" races and the like. But it just doesn't make internal sense.

[paladin_carvin]

But we're talking about genocide. Even if the group "averages out" somewhere in the neutral range, that's pretty objectively evil. Also, the paladins of Azure City are of the standard Lawful Good variety.


But when the inherent "goodness" of the gods is called into question, you've also called into question the inherent "evilness" of the goblins. The Paladins do have "detect evil" -- but it's the "evil" that is defined by the 12 gods. Furthermore, when you're talking about genocide, can you really justify it, or are you just rationalizing it?
[/spoiler]
The Dark One is indeed evil, although to be precise, his plan involves blackmailing the gods and threatening to have them killed, not actually killed -- or at least, that is what he says his plan is.

Your other point is where you lose me. It's good to hurt someone who is evil, which means that karma will come around and do you wrong? I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. I think the point here is that it might have been just to stop the goblins, but the Azurites took a cruel and disproportionate revenge against them, and that is what has come back to bite them in the ass. Karma is operating above "good" and "evil" only so much as "good" and "evil" are defined by the people who wrote the rules, who are fallible and biased.
Anyway as with regard to all this about gayness being immoral or unacceptable, consider that most people would be offended and/or embarrassed to be mistaken as the opposite gender -- but that doesn't imply that society considers anything morally wrong with the male or female genders. So being uncomfortable at the thought of being "mistaken for gay" does not, to me, imply much about how society regards things.

There's also another example of homosexual tolerance in "Origin of the PCs," when the priest asks Durkon how he feels about Thor and Durkon says something to the effect of he loves him to the greatest extent that his heterosexuality will allow, not that there is anything wrong with the alternative. And Durkon's a relatively conservative guy...

Just for safety, all is going to be spoiler capped.

Magic itself is objective. It doesn't matter who grants it, unless you step further and say that the gods sabotaged magic. There doesn't seem to be that implication. I don't think Rich messed with that or is implying it. No, I would say that the goblins were evil, or at least most of them.

On the other side, the paladins may not have commited an evil act to kill them. It was certainly not a good act: Good finds a better way. Good never kills without offering parley. But, as there was a need to be expedient in order to protect the fabric of the universe, I think it could be argued it was not necessarily evil. The attempt, after all, was to end the red cloak, an item being used to establish a new universal order which not only may kill a few deities but may destroy the entire world, nay, existence itself. In such a mission, I can hardly think the paladins evil for 'rushing' at the cost of some innocents.

But, as to my mention of Karma. Karma is merely the eb and flow of aggression and happenstance. Karma is a personal thing, working from person to person, incident to incident. A police man is always a bit to quick to fire, but never wrong on who he fires at. He kills criminals and then innocents don't die. But he does his job wrong, and those criminals could have been rehabilitated, or at least given a fair chance. In the end, it's a 'good' thing, taking those that are, indeed, evil away from those they hurt. The police man is not evil (especially if he doesn't do this out of malice or true intent) but he has wronged many people, even if they were evil. Karma, of course, will some day see to his end. One day, a criminal will fire too soon. Maybe he'll miss when firing too soon in a situation that could have been resolved and he'll die in the hail of gunfire... but that is my point.

[Manoftyr]

It's certainly true that many writers (even Tolkien, come to think of it) create "100% evil" races and the like. But it just doesn't make internal sense.

It never makes sense, and it's a trend I'd like to see broken from...and I feel Mr. Burlew is certainly doing his part to go against the grain in that respect.

[paladin_carvin]

It's certainly true that many writers (even Tolkien, come to think of it) create "100% evil" races and the like. But it just doesn't make internal sense.

You know, the error here is misunderstanding the nature of evil. Evil chokes out good. If evil takes hold of a nation, race, whatever... it crushes good (along with plenty of other stuff). Evil rarely suffers good to live long, and certainly doesn't let it strive or prosper.

Further, when you have something like Tolkein's Orcs, you have races designed to be evil. Orcs are cursed elves, if I recall correctly. Twisted into evil completely. In such stories those creatures know being good like we know breathing water.

[Rogue 7]

An alternate reading is that Rich is criticizing the alignment classes of D&D, which is indeed embarrasingly stereotypical to the point of being esoteric.

I really like little bits and pieces here and there such as Redcloak's brightest moment (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0451.html).

Come to think of it, isn't Redcloak generally becoming more conscious and empathic? He almost regrets having to keep torturing O-Chul (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0548.html), despite knowing full well that he is an Azure City paladin (a human paladin, mind you) that would slay him if given half a chance. Quite some advance for a guy who thought nothing of sacrificing hobgoblins for nearly no reason not so long ago (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0190.html).

The dude was fully ready to toss 14 captured slaves into a cosmic horror for no other reason than to try and force an answer out of the Paladin. He's lording over a group of humans who, for the most part, had absolutely nothing to do with the Sapphire Guard's attack on his village. No, I don't think he's acting particularly good right now.

[Manoftyr]

You know, the error here is misunderstanding the nature of evil. Evil chokes out good. If evil takes hold of a nation, race, whatever... it crushes good (along with plenty of other stuff). Evil rarely suffers good to live long, and certainly doesn't let it strive or prosper.

That...sounds like a 'really' oversimplified way of looking at the whole 'evil' or 'good' conundrum...aside from fairly obvious things like murder, rape and whathaveyou, I'd say Evil is largely in the eye of the beholder, and even things like rape and murder are often subject to context and circumstance and not clear cut and dry, so to speak.

Although, on the other hand, I would by in large agree that when a society as a whole forgets simple things like 'killing and raping with impunity isn't a very good way to go about things, and fanatic xenophobia isn't exactly conducive to a growing society', that line of negative thinking can overwhelm and snuff out alternative ideologies if the conditions are right.

[Manoftyr]

The dude was fully ready to toss 14 captured slaves into a cosmic horror for no other reason than to try and force an answer out of the Paladin. He's lording over a group of humans who, for the most part, had absolutely nothing to do with the Sapphire Guard's attack on his village. No, I don't think he's acting particularly good right now.

No, he didn't actually throw them into the Snarl so it can be argued he never actually intended to.

Also, I doubt Redcloak sees it that way, much like the Azurites and other humans view all Goblins as scum, so too the Goblinoids view humanity...the capacity for species to stereotype and kill one another is quite large, and the manner of the stereotyping hardly matters if the end result is killing them.

Not saying the Goblins are right, just that the Azurites are really no better.

[paladin_carvin]

That...sounds like a 'really' oversimplified way of looking at the whole 'evil' or 'good' conundrum...aside from fairly obvious things like murder, rape and whathaveyou, I'd say Evil is largely in the eye of the beholder, and even things like rape and murder are often subject to context and circumstance and not clear cut and dry, so to speak.

Although, on the other hand, I would by in large agree that when a society as a whole forgets simple things like 'killing and raping with impunity isn't a very good way to go about things, and fanatic xenophobia isn't exactly conducive to a growing society', that line of negative thinking can overwhelm and snuff out alternative ideologies if the conditions are right.

Oh, quite so. And the core of evil and good are quite simple. It's as simple as knowing what the drives all evil in the world: yourself. Good and evil are simply a balance of who benefits from your actions and at whose cost. In the end, all evil actions occur because a person is thinking of themselves, and is willing to sacrifice someone else in some way. All good comes from the willingness of a person to do something good for someone else without considering themselves in the situation. The rest is just sorting out the details.

[Fawkes]

I'd say Evil is largely in the eye of the beholder, and even things like rape and murder are often subject to context and circumstance and not clear cut and dry, so to speak.

I can't think of a single situation where rape would be an appropriate course of action.

[ff7hero]

That...sounds like a 'really' oversimplified way of looking at the whole 'evil' or 'good' conundrum...aside from fairly obvious things like murder, rape and whathaveyou, I'd say Evil is largely in the eye of the beholder, and even things like rape and murder are often subject to context and circumstance and not clear cut and dry, so to speak.

Good and evil are simple concepts. Paladin_carvin covered that prefectly, but I just wanted to point out that under no circumstances or context are rape or murder not cut and dry evil. I'm frankly shocked you would say something like that about rape, and I'm assuming you're using a 'killing people=murder' justification for the second. If you sincerely think that there are contexts where rape or murder would be anything other than evil acts, I would be fascinated to hear them...

[Fawkes]

Good and evil are simple concepts. Paladin_carvin covered that prefectly, but I just wanted to point out that under no circumstances or context are rape or murder not cut and dry evil. I'm frankly shocked you would say something like that about rape, and I'm assuming you're using a 'killing people=murder' justification for the second. If you sincerely think that there are contexts where rape or murder would be anything other than evil acts, I would be fascinated to hear them...

I can think of a few justifications for murder, but, as I posted above, I'm drawing a blank on rape.

[DBear]

I doubt Redcloak sees it that way, much like the Azurites and other humans view all Goblins as scum, so too the Goblinoids view humanity...the capacity for species to stereotype and kill one another is quite large, and the manner of the stereotyping hardly matters if the end result is killing them.

Not saying the Goblins are right, just that the Azurites are really no better.

Yeah, as far as Redcloak is concerned, humans are the monsters. The Goblins! (http://www.goblinscomic.com/) webcomic takes this premise to its logical conclusion.

[FujinAkari]

ARG!

Rich... seriously... stop taunting me!

I had finally come to peace with the idea that Miko's story was actually over (your previous commentary's line about her recurring for the rest of the story not withstanding) and then you show a picture of her bowing reverantly as the LAST IMAGE OF THE BOOK!

How am I supposed to take that, but a subtle jab at 'don't forget about her JUST yet...'

I think you've got a bit of a sadist in ya :P



Love War and XPs ^_^

[Remirach]

Come to think of it, isn't Redcloak generally becoming more conscious and empathic? He almost regrets having to keep torturing O-Chul (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0548.html), despite knowing full well that he is an Azure City paladin (a human paladin, mind you) that would slay him if given half a chance. Quite some advance for a guy who thought nothing of sacrificing hobgoblins for nearly no reason not so long ago (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0190.html).
Bad example. Redcloak is saying "sucks to be him" with regard to O-Chul's ongoing torture, but he's going to continue inflicting torment on him not out of hope of getting information or even a desire for revenge, but rather a cold-blooded need to deceive Xykon into staying put for the time being. His words are not intended sympathetically: he doesn't care about O-Chul and he doesn't regret torturing him.


Just for safety, all is going to be spoiler capped.
Probably not necessary, but I'll roll with it.


Magic itself is objective. It doesn't matter who grants it, unless you step further and say that the gods sabotaged magic. There doesn't seem to be that implication. I don't think Rich messed with that or is implying it. No, I would say that the goblins were evil, or at least most of them.
The only thing we've been told so far that is objective is karma. What the D&D template says about magic is really neither here nor there: I'm talking about the story of creation as is told by the strip. Where it is said that the gods created the world... and thus by extension, they created magic. So there is no need for "sabotage" to be involved -- the flaws that we (the viewer) perceive were built into the system from the ground up. It's messed up to begin with. It's messed up to begin with to create whole races whose entire purpose is to get killed so the gods' followers can gain XP.

There's no demonstrable proof that the goblins of Redcloak's village were any more or less evil than the average human being. There's no proof that they didn't, say, dine on the blood of human virgins every night either, but the author commentary in War and XPs paints a sad picture of a continual back-and-forth series of grievances between the goblins and the humans that has continued for so long that no one can even say any more who started it or who is to blame. That's the narrative.


On the other side, the paladins may not have commited an evil act to kill them.
Clearly it wasn't "evil" by the standards set by the gods, but just how "objective" that barometer is has been called into severe question.


It was certainly not a good act: Good finds a better way. Good never kills without offering parley. But, as there was a need to be expedient in order to protect the fabric of the universe, I think it could be argued it was not necessarily evil. The attempt, after all, was to end the red cloak, an item being used to establish a new universal order which not only may kill a few deities but may destroy the entire world, nay, existence itself. In such a mission, I can hardly think the paladins evil for 'rushing' at the cost of some innocents.
The "collateral damage" claim is disingenuous when it's clear during the attack that the Paladins know the threat is the Crimson Mantle and the slaughter continues unabated even after he is slain. This includes children who are simply trying to hide from the bloodshed. Also do you not see any irony in the fact that you claim "the core of good and evil is quite simple" and are here defending murdering helpless children in the name of "expediency?"


But, as to my mention of Karma. Karma is merely the eb and flow of aggression and happenstance. Karma is a personal thing, working from person to person, incident to incident. A police man is always a bit to quick to fire, but never wrong on who he fires at. He kills criminals and then innocents don't die. But he does his job wrong, and those criminals could have been rehabilitated, or at least given a fair chance. In the end, it's a 'good' thing, taking those that are, indeed, evil away from those they hurt. The police man is not evil (especially if he doesn't do this out of malice or true intent) but he has wronged many people, even if they were evil. Karma, of course, will some day see to his end. One day, a criminal will fire too soon. Maybe he'll miss when firing too soon in a situation that could have been resolved and he'll die in the hail of gunfire... but that is my point.
I get the sense here that you believe karma is not related to good and evil -- merely the return of aggression for aggression. That's not really what the concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma) is about, and that's not what the Giant is talking about when he says "what goes around, comes around." The policeman that saves peoples lives by firing on an aggressive bad guy is sowing more good than evil. The policeman that fires on a suspect who poses no danger does no one any good, so he is not doing his job right.


No, he didn't actually throw them into the Snarl so it can be argued he never actually intended to.

Also, I doubt Redcloak sees it that way, much like the Azurites and other humans view all Goblins as scum, so too the Goblinoids view humanity...the capacity for species to stereotype and kill one another is quite large, and the manner of the stereotyping hardly matters if the end result is killing them.

Not saying the Goblins are right, just that the Azurites are really no better.
That's pretty much exactly what I got out of the Giant's commentary, too.

[David Argall]

It also calls into question the supposed "evilness" of the goblins that were slaughtered -- did they set off the paladin's "evil radar" because they were objectively evil, or because they were arbitrarily evil as defined by the f--ed up world they were put into? ISTM that War and XPs argues for the latter.
I shall have to wait and read, but D&D operates on the theory that they are evil, not that they are defined as evil.


There's also another example of homosexual tolerance in "Origin of the PCs," when the priest asks Durkon how he feels about Thor and Durkon says something to the effect of he loves him to the greatest extent that his heterosexuality will allow, not that there is anything wrong with the alternative.
This is one of those statements that is a lie by the very fact you say it. If there was nothing wrong with the alternative, you would not bother to say there was nothing wrong. Saying there is nothing wrong is what you do after somebody has noticed there is something wrong. Maybe there is nothing seriously wrong, or maybe it should not be wrong, but there is a wrong.
So Durkon is another case of our OOTS showing a slightly negative opinion of gay behavior. We have not seen any rabidly anti-gay actions, but the number of things that are slightly anti-gay is rather large.



No, he didn't actually throw them into the Snarl so it can be argued he never actually intended to.
Well, if you just want to argue, or maybe want to insist Redcloak is a figure of virtue... But the scene heavily assumes that dumping the slaves to the Snarl was a real possibility.
One reason is that if O'Chul didn't believe Redcloak would do it, he wouldn't have the incentive to buckle. [Note here that clerics don't have bluff as a class skill while paladins do have sense motive. So if Redcloak is not willing to killing the slaves, he is at least risking just wasting his time.]



Come to think of it, isn't Redcloak generally becoming more conscious and empathic? He almost regrets having to keep torturing O-Chul, despite knowing full well that he is an Azure City paladin
Almost regrets? That is pretty much damming with faint praise. And I fail to see where any regrets are based on moral grounds as opposed to being a waste of his valuable time.



1) Haley is Haley. She hides everything. She is ashamed of everything. She hid the fact she had a tattoo, she hid her love for Elan... She's just not self confident. So yeah, she's keeping it a secret that she's kissed girls.
A lack of self confidence means she keeps trivial sins secret, not that they are not sins. And those things she keeps secret do reflect poorly on her, or she fears they will. So we deduct that she deems kissing girls something she should not have done.


2) People can not want to be thought to be gay without it meaning that being gay is a bad thing.
Even if we assume this to be true, which seems dubious, the point is that each example brought up has shown some mild degree of anti-gay feeling.


3) OOTS is full of references to the real word. Using expressions like "coming out" is just normal in a strip that refers to Oprah or the Olympics. It's just using an expression that's in the language Rich is using.
"Just an expression" is a form of apology where the speaker tries to say he didn't mean what he said. While often enough the offended party is making a fuss over nothing worth making a fuss over, there is a meaning to an expression. We are not talking about mere noise. When a phrase like "came out" is used, it's meaning is also used.



Similarly, lesbians are "hot" according to males, and that's kept in the OOTS world, but that doesn't say anything bout a stigma.
Now the point was brought up as an attempt to prove a lack of stigma, not as a proof of stigma, which means the proof is inadequate. However, if you consider the implications of "hot", you will find "perverted", "immoral", and other such terms implied there. One can argue that they don't have to be part of the definition and sometimes are not, but you are still talking about activities you are likely reluctant to tell your mother about.


Finally, about V. V can't always tell genders apart. V don't see what's weird about kissing someone the same gender as yours. V thinks genders are an irrelevant detail.
Which further implies the general stigma. We get laughs from V's inability to recognize the sexual norm. So when V fails to notice something sexual, we conclude the norm does exist.



Even in fantasy worlds it is just not possible for whole races to be truly evil.
All sorts of fantasy worlds have whole races of truly evil. It's quite common. D&D 3.5 is more realistic in assuming there are exceptions to the rule.

[Sir_Norbert]

Similarly, lesbians are "hot" according to males
Thank you for pandering to stereotypes.

[LuisDantas]

You know, the error here is misunderstanding the nature of evil. Evil chokes out good. If evil takes hold of a nation, race, whatever... it crushes good (along with plenty of other stuff). Evil rarely suffers good to live long, and certainly doesn't let it strive or prosper.

Further, when you have something like Tolkein's Orcs, you have races designed to be evil. Orcs are cursed elves, if I recall correctly. Twisted into evil completely. In such stories those creatures know being good like we know breathing water.

I fear I have a serious problem with your definitions of good and evil.

For one thing, while I agree that both good and evil are, for lack of a better expression, transmitable by example, what defines evil is its self-destructive nature. Evil forbids itself from striving and prospering - and that is why, both in reality and in any reasonable fantasy setting, it produces its own cure.

Godwin's law is tempting me :)

I also fail to see how magic can be objetive about detecting evil, when evil itself is such a complicated thing to define. It is not possible for such a magic effect to know good from evil any better than the supernatural forces that empower it. And if it were, the social implications would be very silly and very drastic indeed (we would have whole communities testing themselves for alignment in a mechanical way and confusing themselves out of their minds) :smalltongue:

[LuisDantas]

This is one of those statements that is a lie by the very fact you say it. If there was nothing wrong with the alternative, you would not bother to say there was nothing wrong. Saying there is nothing wrong is what you do after somebody has noticed there is something wrong. Maybe there is nothing seriously wrong, or maybe it should not be wrong, but there is a wrong.
So Durkon is another case of our OOTS showing a slightly negative opinion of gay behavior. We have not seen any rabidly anti-gay actions, but the number of things that are slightly anti-gay is rather large.

That may or may not be true in the OOtS world. It isn't true in ours, and probably isn't in that one either.

Durkon's reactions are quite similar to real-world ones, when coming from someone who does not consider homosexuality wrong, but does recognize that there is a social stigma attached to it. Further still, it is the typical response that tries to encourage shattering that stigma.

[JoseB]

I can think of a few justifications for murder, but, as I posted above, I'm drawing a blank on rape.

<momentary thread hijack>
Sorry for injecting some real-life misery in the thread, but rape has been used very often as a weapon of war; recently and most infamously during the Balkan wars subsequent to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. It has a terrifying, demoralizing and utterly destroying effect upon the psyche of the civilian women caught in it and, secondarily, upon their husbands, brothers and sons in the front when they hear of what has happened. The more traditional the society, the stronger this effect becomes, and the more it helps undermine the resistance to the attacking armies.

In quite a few wars, military leaders have coldly used rape as a weapon for the reasons outlined above (most infamously, again, in the wars of ex-Yugoslavia). In other occasions, they have acted "by inaction", allowing the soldiers under their command to run amok with the civilian women, for the same reason.

Not saying that this is a defensible use of rape, but that, for certain minds, it has appeared to be, historically, a useful weapon in times of war.
</momentary thread hijack>

Re: War and XPs: Can't wait to get my hands of the book and its accompanying magnet, if only for the hinted at extra stuff being commented on in this thread.

Just my 2 eurocent!

[SteveMB]

1) Haley is Haley. She hides everything. She is ashamed of everything. She hid the fact she had a tattoo, she hid her love for Elan... She's just not self confident. So yeah, she's keeping it a secret that she's kissed girls.

Good point; Rich's commentary in this volume specifically notes that developing some self-confidence and overcoming her habit of hiding behind deception and concealment was part of Haley's character development in this part of the overall story.

[DreadSpoon]

Not having seen WXP yet, I can't be sure, but this sounds like the scene where the cop is giving the bankrobbers a parking ticket. If so, it would show the reverse, that Azure City was very against such relationships and Miko was too angry about them being in the restaurant at all to realize what they were doing in it.


Miko had absolutely no issue with the two paladins when they said they were dating. None. She avoided the restaurant due to other , unrelatedillicit activities performed by its employees.

[Fawkes]

<momentary thread hijack>
Sorry for injecting some real-life misery in the thread, but rape has been used very often as a weapon of war; recently and most infamously during the Balkan wars subsequent to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. It has a terrifying, demoralizing and utterly destroying effect upon the psyche of the civilian women caught in it and, secondarily, upon their husbands, brothers and sons in the front when they hear of what has happened. The more traditional the society, the stronger this effect becomes, and the more it helps undermine the resistance to the attacking armies.

In quite a few wars, military leaders have coldly used rape as a weapon for the reasons outlined above (most infamously, again, in the wars of ex-Yugoslavia). In other occasions, they have acted "by inaction", allowing the soldiers under their command to run amok with the civilian women, for the same reason.

Not saying that this is a defensible use of rape, but that, for certain minds, it has appeared to be, historically, a useful weapon in times of war.
</momentary thread hijack>

How is that justified AT ALL? That's just wrong. Just plain wrong.

[JoseB]

How is that justified AT ALL? That's just wrong. Just plain wrong.

Agreed in that it is wrong. But from a cold, calculating military point of view, in the mind of the planners of the offensive taking place in region X of Croatia in 1993, or region Y of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994, it was a very simple, cheap and effective way of sowing terror and demoralization among the enemy via their home front.

And it saved a lot of ammunition, to boot, when it came to neutralizing the will to fight of soldiers in the front (lots of soldiers, when they heard of what happened to their mothers, wives and sisters back home, were left in the front thinking: "what worth am I if, shooting here and being shot at, was unable to protect those I care most about?" Many deserted to go back to their homes).

Just because things are wrong it doesn't mean that they cannot be justified if you think hard enough and twistily enough about them. Welcome to the world.

Tens of thousands of women (minimum) were raped during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, where rape was specifically used as a weapon of war.

Of course, that pales in comparison with the (estimated) two million that were raped during the final assault on Germany at the end of WWII, but that latter one can be considered to stem from the Soviet commanders in the rearguard acting by omission and from a thirst for revenge on the part of the common soldiers upon everything German. It was not something specifically planned and done on purpose.

...Aaaaand, I think that that has been our dose of TMI and thread derailment for today...

Just my 2 eurocent!

[Fawkes]

Just because things are wrong it doesn't mean that they cannot be justified if you think hard enough and twistily enough about them. Welcome to the world.

I don't think you understand my point. Rape, no matter the reason for it, is ALWAYS an action that would be classified as evil in a D&D setting. There are plenty of reasons a Paladin might have to kill, but there's no way a D&D character with a Good alignment would commit rape.

[JoseB]

I don't think you understand my point. Rape, no matter the reason for it, is ALWAYS an action that would be classified as evil in a D&D setting. There are plenty of reasons a Paladin might have to kill, but there's no way a D&D character with a Good alignment would commit rape.

OK. Misread you there. I thought you meant that there had not been any moment (i.e. real world history) when rape had not been considered to be justified as something that was expedient and useful to use for "something better" (in this case, getting a war to go better for your own side).

From your point of view, I agree with you: There is no way that a D&D character with Good alignment would commit rape (the type of thought outlined above is, in my opinion, pretty much on the evil side of the spectrum).

Just my 2 eurocent!

[David Argall]

That may or may not be true in the OOtS world. It isn't true in ours, and probably isn't in that one either.
When denying something, the rules of logic require some evidence or explanation. It is not enough to simply deny because one can mindlessly continue to do that no matter what facts or evidence are presented.


Durkon's reactions are quite similar to real-world ones, when coming from someone who does not consider homosexuality wrong, but does recognize that there is a social stigma attached to it. Further still, it is the typical response that tries to encourage shattering that stigma.
Now here you are simply agreeing with me.
We are not concerned with whether Durkon is biased against homosexuals or not. We are asking if his society and/or world is. And you are saying that Durkon recognizes there is such a bias. We might claim that all virtuous types [such as Miko?] deem this bias wrong, but they are recognizing there is such a bias.



Rape, no matter the reason for it, is ALWAYS an action that would be classified as evil in a D&D setting. There are plenty of reasons a Paladin might have to kill, but there's no way a D&D character with a Good alignment would commit rape.
"ALWAYS" is an invitation to the nitpickers. A couple of examples that demonstrate you mean "almost always"...

You rescue the virgin sacrifice, who turns out to not want to be rescued. She has the idea that being knocked up by the demonlord and giving birth to the antichrist is a good thing, for her anyway [the rest of the world has a different opinion]. Since you are not going to escape carrying an unwilling woman and the antichrist must be prevented, your options are to kill her or rape her, and she shares the general opinion that no, rape is not a fate worse than death, however much she dislikes the rape.

By the rules of the kingdom, the ruling queen must be virgin. Since she is also quite evil, you can end her evil rule without having to kill her.

A standard method of settling feuds between families is marriages between them. The opinion of neither member of the new couple was consulted. Nor was it deemed an option not to have children.

W&XP

Miko had absolutely no issue with the two paladins when they said they were dating. None. She avoided the restaurant due to other , unrelatedillicit activities performed by its employees.
I do hope my copy arrives soon. As described so far, the scene seems a waste of space, and I have considerably more confidence in our writer than that.



Thank you for pandering to stereotypes.
Stereotypes exist largely because they are accurate. They are rarely always correct, but virtually nothing is. Brief visits to a few porn sites will demonstrate this one is quite accurate.

[paladin_carvin]

I fear I have a serious problem with your definitions of good and evil.

For one thing, while I agree that both good and evil are, for lack of a better expression, transmitable by example, what defines evil is its self-destructive nature. Evil forbids itself from striving and prospering - and that is why, both in reality and in any reasonable fantasy setting, it produces its own cure.

Godwin's law is tempting me :)

I also fail to see how magic can be objetive about detecting evil, when evil itself is such a complicated thing to define. It is not possible for such a magic effect to know good from evil any better than the supernatural forces that empower it. And if it were, the social implications would be very silly and very drastic indeed (we would have whole communities testing themselves for alignment in a mechanical way and confusing themselves out of their minds) :smalltongue:

In almost all settings I've seen, magic is something that is part of the nature of existence. It is in some ways above the gods, but that itself is simplified. It is something the gods themselves did not create: it just is. Forgotten Realms has the Weave;even Mystra doesn't make or truly 'control it', she only guards it from abuse. In literature, Lewis talks about 'Deep Magic', which is again all about the way the world works. In many ways, it is far more objective than the gods.

Further so, it makes sense to have magic itself objectively decide if something is good or evil. After all, if the gods decided what was good and evil, there would only be good deities. Everyone would decide that their justifications and reasons were good and that anyone opposing them was evil. Most certainly The Dark One is included in this: he feels completely justified in his goals, his actions and his means, but the reality is that as a deity he is, in fact, evil.

And I don't see why the way I described evil is contrary to the concept of how it is self-destructive. After all, what is more destructive that selfishness? When we stop caring about the next man, and are completely willing to hurt the other man for our own gain; what could be more destructive than this?

Even if good and evil is more complicated than I say, why would magic not be able to make heads and tails of it? Why do you think the saying 'A wizard did it' exists? Magic, by its nature, can do anything. Only in existences where magic is entirely controlled by some force can it really be limited. Otherwise it is just a matter of amplification and creative use. Magic can do the work of computers, the work of super-machines, atomic weapons and space craft, bring dust back to life- why not search a soul?

[Fawkes]

"ALWAYS" is an invitation to the nitpickers. A couple of examples that demonstrate you mean "almost always"...

You rescue the virgin sacrifice, who turns out to not want to be rescued. She has the idea that being knocked up by the demonlord and giving birth to the antichrist is a good thing, for her anyway [the rest of the world has a different opinion]. Since you are not going to escape carrying an unwilling woman and the antichrist must be prevented, your options are to kill her or rape her, and she shares the general opinion that no, rape is not a fate worse than death, however much she dislikes the rape.

By the rules of the kingdom, the ruling queen must be virgin. Since she is also quite evil, you can end her evil rule without having to kill her.

Being the lesser of two evils, so to speak, does not negate the fact that is an evil action. A gunman forces you to rape a woman, or he will kill the both of you and a bag of puppies. It's still an evil thing to do, only the gunman is the one who is evil.


A standard method of settling feuds between families is marriages between them. The opinion of neither member of the new couple was consulted. Nor was it deemed an option not to have children.

Evil acts imposed by a society are still evil acts. Example: centuries ago, slavery was seen as a part of life. It was still bad, even if it was a "standard method."

[paladin_carvin]

The indefinite thing about rape is the same about murder: what differentiates it from appropriate similar actions. Where is murder separated from justifiable homicide? When in war is a kill justified? When should you capture? This is where ethics get involved. Where is rape separated from 'needed' sex (ie, a forced marriage, marriage of convenience, political marriage...)? Certainly some in those situations mutually wish to have the marriage they are in, and some have mixed feelings, and some wish out but have no choice. Where is the line? That is an ethics question.

Again, to go with what I said before about evil, think it this way. We know murder is evil: this is because a murder is taking something for your own benefit. Sometimes it's for money. Sometimes it's for revenge. Sometimes it's for the love of killing. All these things give the murderer something by taking away a life. But, when you kill a maniac on a killing rampage, you may take a life, but you giving life to others... well, then you are getting into ethics of what each life is worth etc. etc., which is neither here nor there.

[Remirach]

"ALWAYS" is an invitation to the nitpickers. A couple of examples that demonstrate you mean "almost always"...

By the rules of the kingdom, the ruling queen must be virgin. Since she is also quite evil, you can end her evil rule without having to kill her.
If I were an evil empress, and some goody-two-shoes with a sword and a hard-on for self-righteousness wanted to literally screw me out of my kingdom -- I think I'd sooner opt for the headsman. Yecch!

[Oxymoron]

Errrrrrr, rape and murder is bad MKAYYYYYYYYYYYYY! :smalleek:

[SteveMB]

Backing away from the real-world morals questions that have come up (which quickly lead beyond the scope of this forum), the bottom-line impression I got from Rich's remarks is that, while the Twelve Gods could bend their interpretation of "Lawful Good" behavior standards to suit their convenience, they couldn't change the fact that actions have consequences.

Redcloak, while still personally responsible for his own choices, was in large part the consequence of the Sapphire Guard's actions. And so their actions came back to haunt them.

[kenb215]

I thought this topic was supposed to be for talking about the book. What happened? :confused:


What other stuff did Rich talk about in the commentary?

[Lissou]

Thank you for pandering to stereotypes.

I didn't mean that it's always the case or anything, just that yes, Rich is going to use things that are commonly known, tropes and the like, and "lesbians are hot" is kinda one of them. I don't know if it's the "1 woman+ 1 woman = two women to watch rather than one" or the "I'll 'convert' her" or a bit of both, but yeah, it's a well-known "thing", whether it's true or not.


Which further implies the general stigma. We get laughs from V's inability to recognize the sexual norm. So when V fails to notice something sexual, we conclude the norm does exist.

Ah, but I wasn't talking about a stigma at all here. I was back to what started it: saying that we don't know what gender V's spouse is, and that knowing it wouldn't help knowing V's gender at all. Whether there is a stigma or not, V doesn't care about gender. Obviously, V wouldn't have any problems with homosexuality, or being with someone of the same gender. Or the opposite one. So, no information there.
Personally, I think of V as a male, and V's spouse could be either a male or a female that I wouldn't think differently.

[Manoftyr]

Good and evil are simple concepts. Paladin_carvin covered that prefectly, but I just wanted to point out that under no circumstances or context are rape or murder not cut and dry evil. I'm frankly shocked you would say something like that about rape, and I'm assuming you're using a 'killing people=murder' justification for the second. If you sincerely think that there are contexts where rape or murder would be anything other than evil acts, I would be fascinated to hear them...

There are situations where things like rape and murder have been interpreted by societies or individuals to be acceptable both today and in the ancient world, just because we today view them as 'evil' doesn't necessarily mean absolutely EVERYONE would view every incident of rape or murder as an evil action in every context 'everything' is subject to context, that's what I meant.

I'm actually somewhat offended by the context of your reply, it seems to read like you are portraying me or painting me rather as some kind of monster for simply playing devil's advocate to the subject of the subjectivity of contemporary morality.

If you'd like to twist my words around to imply that I'm somehow advocating murder or rape, then save your breath and express your ethical condemnations of me to someone who gives a damn...as I frankly don't give a flying crap over what someone on an internet forum may think of me based on their own mis-interpretations of my words.


Being the lesser of two evils, so to speak, does not negate the fact that is an evil action. A gunman forces you to rape a woman, or he will kill the both of you and a bag of puppies. It's still an evil thing to do, only the gunman is the one who is evil.



Evil acts imposed by a society are still evil acts. Example: centuries ago, slavery was seen as a part of life. It was still bad, even if it was a "standard method."

But the fact that it was once a practice that was wide spread and not seen to be morally too terrible or especially 'evil' brings up the whole subjectivity thing which is what I mean, 'nothing' is always clear cut and dry 'good' or 'evil' not even things like murder or rape, as terrible as they are they are 'still' on some level still subjective and a victim to context.

Sometimes, in fact usually, those two actions are clearly evil...but there are still situations where things become a bit more complicated and enter a more 'gray' area.

[paladin_carvin]

Do realize that the horror of rape is relative to the values of sexual practice. Rape is about power, and thus can only be as powerful as it is allowed. After all, in a world where no one cared about your sexual activity and virginity wasn't special or even seen as a definite negative, it limits what being raped does. After all, part of the violence of rape is to cause shame... but if no one is ashamed about sexual practice, it hardly has that effect. Of course, rape is rape: there is no way around that if it truly is rape, it is wrong. But what rape is, how bad it is, what it all means and even who 'can' be raped has been argued for ages. And I don't think we'll figure it out here.

[dps]

Even if we assume this to be true, which seems dubious, the point is that each example brought up has shown some mild degree of anti-gay feeling.


Now the point was brought up as an attempt to prove a lack of stigma, not as a proof of stigma, which means the proof is inadequate. However, if you consider the implications of "hot", you will find "perverted", "immoral", and other such terms implied there. One can argue that they don't have to be part of the definition and sometimes are not, but you are still talking about activities you are likely reluctant to tell your mother about.


Which further implies the general stigma. We get laughs from V's inability to recognize the sexual norm. So when V fails to notice something sexual, we conclude the norm does exist.


I'm not quite sure what your point is. The original statement that prompted this discussion was that, "the world (of OoTS) is pretty accepting of same-sex couples." I can't see how the existance of some stigma or mild anti-gay feeling would make that statement false. I see evidence in the comic that the original statement is true, and none that it is false. Had the poster instead stated that "the world is completely accepting of same-sex couple" I would agree that the statement is inaccurate, but, then, that's not what he posted.

[Manoftyr]

I fear I have a serious problem with your definitions of good and evil.

For one thing, while I agree that both good and evil are, for lack of a better expression, transmitable by example, what defines evil is its self-destructive nature. Evil forbids itself from striving and prospering - and that is why, both in reality and in any reasonable fantasy setting, it produces its own cure.


I would agree up into a point, while the notion of entirely 100% evil races are silly for that very reason I.E. that pure evil enmasse so to speak can't really function due to its destructive nature...but 'evil' as a whole is far more subjective in my view then good is, I mean, does anyone who is evil truly view themselves as evil?, rarely, and everyone has different views on what truly encompasses 'evil'...I mean, from my perspective the Azurites are just as 'evil' as the Goblinoids.

In that way I would argue that evil isn't necessarily, in its nature, self-destructive oftentimes it is unfortunately self-perpetuating.

[Fawkes]

But the fact that it was once a practice that was wide spread and not seen to be morally too terrible or especially 'evil' brings up the whole subjectivity thing which is what I mean, 'nothing' is always clear cut and dry 'good' or 'evil' not even things like murder or rape, as terrible as they are they are 'still' on some level still subjective and a victim to context.

Sometimes, in fact usually, those two actions are clearly evil...but there are still situations where things become a bit more complicated and enter a more 'gray' area.

You have a point. But it is my personal belief that it is never okay to bring undue harm to another person. And I cannot think of any situation where raping a woman would not be a bad thing to do, barring the "lesser of two evils" situations.

[Manoftyr]

Probably not necessary, but I'll roll with it.

The only thing we've been told so far that is objective is karma. What the D&D template says about magic is really neither here nor there: I'm talking about the story of creation as is told by the strip. Where it is said that the gods created the world... and thus by extension, they created magic. So there is no need for "sabotage" to be involved -- the flaws that we (the viewer) perceive were built into the system from the ground up. It's messed up to begin with. It's messed up to begin with to create whole races whose entire purpose is to get killed so the gods' followers can gain XP.

There's no demonstrable proof that the goblins of Redcloak's village were any more or less evil than the average human being. There's no proof that they didn't, say, dine on the blood of human virgins every night either, but the author commentary in War and XPs paints a sad picture of a continual back-and-forth series of grievances between the goblins and the humans that has continued for so long that no one can even say any more who started it or who is to blame. That's the narrative.


Clearly it wasn't "evil" by the standards set by the gods, but just how "objective" that barometer is has been called into severe question.


The "collateral damage" claim is disingenuous when it's clear during the attack that the Paladins know the threat is the Crimson Mantle and the slaughter continues unabated even after he is slain. This includes children who are simply trying to hide from the bloodshed. Also do you not see any irony in the fact that you claim "the core of good and evil is quite simple" and are here defending murdering helpless children in the name of "expediency?"


I get the sense here that you believe karma is not related to good and evil -- merely the return of aggression for aggression. That's not really what the concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma) is about, and that's not what the Giant is talking about when he says "what goes around, comes around." The policeman that saves peoples lives by firing on an aggressive bad guy is sowing more good than evil. The policeman that fires on a suspect who poses no danger does no one any good, so he is not doing his job right.

I agree entirely with this, and in fact in my previous statements take it even further to say that this blatant lack of objectivity on the part of the twelve gods effectively makes 'good' no better than 'evil' in the world of the OotS, the Paladins/Azurites are no different than the Goblinoids and the only thing differentiating the 'good' side from the 'evil' side is the fact that people on the evil side glow red when you use detect evil on them.

I stand firmly behind my earlier assessments of the 'good vs. evil' dynamic in the OotS world, there is virtually 'no' difference that isn't esoteric and superficial...and it's a dynamic that I find extremely refreshing.

[LuisDantas]

When denying something, the rules of logic require some evidence or explanation. It is not enough to simply deny because one can mindlessly continue to do that no matter what facts or evidence are presented.

I fear that you have lost me here. I have no idea of what you are talking about.


Now here you are simply agreeing with me.

Not really. See below.


We are not concerned with whether Durkon is biased against homosexuals or not. We are asking if his society and/or world is. And you are saying that Durkon recognizes there is such a bias. We might claim that all virtuous types [such as Miko?] deem this bias wrong, but they are recognizing there is such a bias.

There is a difference between recognizing the existence of a social stigma in a society and agreeing with it. Durkon did the former, and it is unlikely albeit technically possible that he does the later. Your previous post claimed that Durkon thought of same-sex relationships as wrong, not as socially persecuted.

[Lupy]

We figured out the V thing. Any of you ever heard the of the Law of Inverse Gendered Ninja Teleportation? It states that there are 2 ninjas, one make and one female, who look exactly the same aside from their... gender parts... and switch between panels. :smallbiggrin:

I like the way Rich answers questions without giving an answer too.

[LuisDantas]

In almost all settings I've seen, magic is something that is part of the nature of existence. It is in some ways above the gods, but that itself is simplified. It is something the gods themselves did not create: it just is. Forgotten Realms has the Weave;even Mystra doesn't make or truly 'control it', she only guards it from abuse. In literature, Lewis talks about 'Deep Magic', which is again all about the way the world works. In many ways, it is far more objective than the gods.

Would it however be even aware of such things as good and evil? I would think not.


Further so, it makes sense to have magic itself objectively decide if something is good or evil. After all, if the gods decided what was good and evil, there would only be good deities.

This is where our lines of thought part ways. The way I see it, good and evil are concepts that can not exist at all without a conscious mind to support or "commit" them. That in no way would imply all deities to be good.


Everyone would decide that their justifications and reasons were good and that anyone opposing them was evil.

As we humans do. And quite often they would simply be deluding themselves, as do we.


(...)

Even if good and evil is more complicated than I say, why would magic not be able to make heads and tails of it?

Because magic is not itself sentient, I guess. And it would need to be to recognize, much less react to, either good or evil.


Why do you think the saying 'A wizard did it' exists? Magic, by its nature, can do anything. Only in existences where magic is entirely controlled by some force can it really be limited. Otherwise it is just a matter of amplification and creative use. Magic can do the work of computers, the work of super-machines, atomic weapons and space craft, bring dust back to life- why not search a soul?

Magic is as ill-defined as anything can be. In most settings it does have some sort of limitation, if for no other reason because it can short-circuit plots otherwise.

But when you give it sentience (as some settings actually do) then it essentially becomes a character as opposed to a resource. That is not the case in OOtS as far as we know.

[David Argall]

Being the lesser of two evils, so to speak, does not negate the fact that is an evil action.
Killing someone is also an evil act. But we know of many cases where it is necessary, or even desirable. It is in those cases the lesser evil. Now we find many more cases where killing is justifiable, but its base evil nature is clear. Somebody is dead! You don't recover from that. That is not a rhetorical statement, it is simple fact.
Now with rape, we have far more difficulty in finding justifying circumstances, but when we do, we again have a case of the lesser evil being the proper action.



it is never okay to bring undue harm to another person.

This is a tautology. Undue means it is not ok.



We know murder is evil:
Of course. The definition of murder is an evil killing.



The original statement that prompted this discussion was that, "the world (of OoTS) is pretty accepting of same-sex couples." I can't see how the existance of some stigma or mild anti-gay feeling would make that statement false.
This is an objection that is largely limited to being made by the author of the original statement [He has some standing in claiming he is misunderstood, whereas a thrid party, by being a third party, has a lesser claim to knowing the true meaning of the statement], at least when he is an active poster on the point, as is the case here.
The word "pretty" is subject to a host of definitions, making it subject to correction whether or not used correctly.
One definition of "pretty" would be as a comparison. That would mean that it is more accepting than some alternative. However, what alternate is meant? The default case is our own, and that at least makes the supporting evidence weak.
"Accepting" is also a word of varying meaning, from "resigned" to "approving". In general "approving" is the default definition, which makes any case of disapproval, even weak, evidence the statement is wrong.



If I were an evil empress, and some goody-two-shoes with a sword and a hard-on for self-righteousness wanted to literally screw me out of my kingdom -- I think I'd sooner opt for the headsman.
Well, since the options are killing or raping you, it is likely we are not paying much attention to your opinion in any case.
However we have the actual behavior of women in rape situations that shows an overwhelming preference for surviving the situation. [And an even larger preference for not getting in the situation in the first place, but that is not part of our discussion.]

[LuisDantas]

Rape is evil by definition.

Murder, as I understand it, isn't. It can be commited in self-defense, or as a last resort to contain someone who is an immediate and real threat to someone else, or even as a pious act to someone who is in pain and dying.

[Remirach]

Well, since the options are killing or raping you, it is likely we are not paying much attention to your opinion in any case.
However we have the actual behavior of women in rape situations that shows an overwhelming preference for surviving the situation. [And an even larger preference for not getting in the situation in the first place, but that is not part of our discussion.]
I largely meant for that to be a joke, although I am finding all this talk of "when could rape be considered the lesser of two evils" discussion to be rather inappropriate, and I'd rather not see this thread closed. So I thought to laugh it off. But is your argument here that it's would be (in the hypothetical) less evil to rape the evil empress than it would be to kill her even if she'd sooner die than be raped? Because of women in other rape situations? I mean it's not really analogous, largely because your hypothetical has, to my knowledge, not ever happened. But consider being given the choice of being violated and stripped of your power, and then god knows what, versus a straight execution. Some people would prefer the option that allowed them to maintain some sense of honor -- and although I don't want to once again derail into real-life religion here, it is true that there are canonized female saints who were sanctified because they chose death rather than submission to an "impure" sexual encounter. So it's not a clear-cut "less evil" situation at all.

[paladin_carvin]

But why must something have sentience to be a judge? In most simple means, we always use things without sentience to judge things. Bob and Jim need to know who has the bigger pumpkin; should they have Doug judge them, or put them on a heartless machine? Of course the later. We, in our world, stop at such things because we know that nothing without sentience is capable of something as complicated as a judgment of actions of good and evil. But if something was grand enough, why shouldn't it make such judgment. Our brains are able to understand things nothing without sentience can, but it is our sentience that makes us unable to judge without bias.

Magic itself may not have any conscious awareness of what it means to be good or evil, but it that doesn't disqualify it as a means of judgment. A digital camera may not understand what makes a sky dark or light, but it can still tell you if it is or not. You yourself may have no idea what makes one type of berry poisonous and another good for you, but you can know it anyway. In fact, you can learn without even experiencing the poison or good berry.

[LuisDantas]

But why must something have sentience to be a judge?

Quite simply, because there is no other way.


In most simple means, we always use things without sentience to judge things. Bob and Jim need to know who has the bigger pumpkin; should they have Doug judge them, or put them on a heartless machine? Of course the later.

That's taking measurements, not making judgements.


We, in our world, stop at such things because we know that nothing without sentience is capable of something as complicated as a judgment of actions of good and evil. But if something was grand enough, why shouldn't it make such judgment.

Something grand enough to make judgments (however you define "being grand") is by definition sentient.


Our brains are able to understand things nothing without sentience can, but it is our sentience that makes us unable to judge without bias.

True enough, I guess. Some points are worded in a way that I find a bit speculative, but I suppose that's about right.


Magic itself may not have any conscious awareness of what it means to be good or evil, but it that doesn't disqualify it as a means of judgment.

Other than being a complete impedment? :smallwink:


A digital camera may not understand what makes a sky dark or light, but it can still tell you if it is or not.

Not really. It does not even have concepts of dark and light. It just takes measurements and records then. Note also that dark and light are actually fairly physical concepts, far more concrete and easy to define than good and evil.


You yourself may have no idea what makes one type of berry poisonous and another good for you, but you can know it anyway. In fact, you can learn without even experiencing the poison or good berry.

Because I am sentient.

[paladin_carvin]

1) That is not a counter argument. That is the same as saying 'Because I said so'.

2) A measurement IS a judgment. Judgments are merely weighing the values or various answers to a question and deciding what is right.

Something grand enough to make judgments (however you define "being grand") is by definition sentient.

3) Again, this is not a counter. What is your reasoning? I hardly think sentience is about being able to make judgments. One may reason that only something sentient can question anything, but non-sentient things judge things for us all the time. We have computers do just that for us all day long.

4) I'll admit, I didn't like how I worded it either. It could, and should, have been better.

5) But why would this be an impediment?

6) Ah, dark and light... I don't know- I've heard there is a gray area there too. I'd actually trust a camera better than my own judgment on how dark a sky is. It is extremely less bias than I.

7) Don't be too hasty, a book can do the same thing.

[Manoftyr]

I largely meant for that to be a joke, although I am finding all this talk of "when could rape be considered the lesser of two evils" discussion to be rather inappropriate, and I'd rather not see this thread closed.

I'm in agreement here too actually, in the sense that the rape talk is less than appropriate for the thread...which is kind of strange because I mentioned it in the first place...although, when I did I didn't expect it to spiral into a full blown discussion on the subject matter, I was merely mentioning the two most largely thought of as 'evil' things off the top of my head as examples for how even truly heinous things are still subject to objectivity and context in regard to their 'evilness' so to speak.

Didn't mean to provoke a whole damned spiel on it, and this thread seems hardly the place for it.


1) That is not a counter argument. That is the same as saying 'Because I said so'.

2) A measurement IS a judgment. Judgments are merely weighing the values or various answers to a question and deciding what is right.

Something grand enough to make judgments (however you define "being grand") is by definition sentient.

3) Again, this is not a counter. What is your reasoning? I hardly think sentience is about being able to make judgments. One may reason that only something sentient can question anything, but non-sentient things judge things for us all the time. We have computers do just that for us all day long.

4) I'll admit, I didn't like how I worded it either. It could, and should, have been better.

5) But why would this be an impediment?

6) Ah, dark and light... I don't know- I've heard there is a gray area there too. I'd actually trust a camera better than my own judgment on how dark a sky is. It is extremely less bias than I.

7) Don't be too hasty, a book can do the same thing.

Paladin Carvin, I think you've lost me too here...none of that makes any sense whatsoever. Sentience is an absolute necessity in making a judgment, otherwise societies governed entirely by probability generators and computations would work in more than just theory, in order to make a judgment one must be able to think, and in order to think one must be sentient.

If the world were completely black and white and founded on absolutes and 'only' absolutes, and everyone was a robot who behaved in exactly the same manner as everyone else and there was absolutely no gray area to 'anything...than yeah maybe sentience wouldn't necessarily be a requirement to make judgments, but that's simply not the world we live in nor is it even the world we're talking about...and we're talking about good and evil here, which are concepts born out of sentience, a non-sentient entity like a computer has absolutely no concept of things like 'good' or 'evil' they don't exist to it because it is not self-aware.

To judge something as 'right' or 'wrong' takes a working, living, thinking, questioning mind...because we live in a world that isn't static...if we lived in a static world than it wouldn't be necessary...but we don't.

[The Giant]

The Voice of Mod: Let's drop the discussion of rape, please. It's not actually relevant to anything that occurs in OOTS and treads on being offensive and/or political.

[SPoD]

Regarding the acceptability of homosexuality in OOTS, I would say that what people are forgetting is that the world of OOTS is not one, unified society. That it is possible that the dwarves, the Northerners, the Azurites, and the elves all have different levels of acceptance. Some of the examples you are comparing are apples and oranges. If we organize our characters into groups, we can see some patterns emerge:

Group A: Dwarves (Durkon, high priest of Thor): Durkon's expression of manly love without sexual overtones implies that the dwarves have had, in the past, some stigma attached to homosexuality, but one that they acknowledge and are trying to overcome. That the high priest didn't condemn him for his statement that there "isn't anything wrong with the alternative" tells us that it isn't just Durkon's P.O.V. However, like Belkar below, Durkon is capable of appreciating two female paladins getting it on.

Group B: Northerners (Haley, Elan, Nale, Belkar, Cliffport prison guards): There seems to be some drive to keep homosexual/bisexual behavior secret or deny it altogether, implying some level of still-existing social stigma. Elan and Nale both deny it, Haley hides it and treats it as shameful (though again, that may just be her), and the Cliffport guard refers to "coming out". Notably, Belkar finds it arousing, implying that it is still taboo in some way.

Group C: Southerners (Miko, the two female paladins): Full acceptance, even from a person dedicated to purging even the slightest impropriety from her fellow paladins.

Group D: Elves (Vaarsuvius): V seems completely incapable of understanding why Belkar would find two female paladins making out "hot", implying that homosexuality is so accepted that he/she doesn't even notice the difference.

So in the end, the reactions of members of human society tell us absolutely nothing about whether or not Vaarsuvius' marriage could be to a member of the same gender. It is possible that we may actually be treated to a scene some day where the other OOTS members are agape at the fact that V is gay, while V him/herself doesn't understand what they are talking about.

All we CAN say is whether the author believes that there should be a social stigma attached, and I personally believe that he is only portraying one insofar as is necessary to make jokes. As in, he is willing to portray characters as being bisexual/homosexual without any actual stigma attached, unless doing so would be funny.

[SPoD]

ARG!

Rich... seriously... stop taunting me!

I had finally come to peace with the idea that Miko's story was actually over (your previous commentary's line about her recurring for the rest of the story not withstanding) and then you show a picture of her bowing reverantly as the LAST IMAGE OF THE BOOK!

How am I supposed to take that, but a subtle jab at 'don't forget about her JUST yet...'

I think you've got a bit of a sadist in ya :P

I took that image to be a curtain call. She is bowing, because her part in the story has concluded.

It seemed pretty final to me, especially in the context of Rich's commentaries about her death.

[Sir_Norbert]

So in the end, the reactions of members of human society tell us absolutely nothing about whether or not Vaarsuvius' marriage could be to a member of the same gender.
Yes, but I never said it did. Can we just please get that clear?

[pendell]

That...sounds like a 'really' oversimplified way of looking at the whole 'evil' or 'good' conundrum...aside from fairly obvious things like murder, rape and whathaveyou, I'd say Evil is largely in the eye of the beholder, and even things like rape and murder are often subject to context and circumstance and not clear cut and dry, so to speak.

Although, on the other hand, I would by in large agree that when a society as a whole forgets simple things like 'killing and raping with impunity isn't a very good way to go about things, and fanatic xenophobia isn't exactly conducive to a growing society', that line of negative thinking can overwhelm and snuff out alternative ideologies if the conditions are right.

Butting in to agree with Manofytr.

Any society has to have a healthy seasoning of 'good' people in it. Because if you have a society composed solely of chaotic evil individuals solely out for their own gain, they can't organize because they'll be too busy backstabbing each other. Society fragments into hundreds of little clans, which fragment further until it's each individual for himself.

You can't run a business without some minimal faith that your customers will pay their bills.

You can't run an army if you don't have at least some faith that your soldiers will obey orders and kill the enemy and not the person next to them in line. Absent that faith, the army will break apart in the first battle.

Even if you're a criminal, you need a healthy dose of good faith if you're to fence stolen goods or hire a henchman or contract out a killing. Any time the organization grows above one person there is the possibility that someone not you will turn stoolie. Yeah, you can threaten them with death, but it simplifies matters enormously if people can take a pledge of silence and keep it without needing constant supervision.

And that's why there's never really been a chaotic evil society in real-life human history. Because the best you can do in such circumstances is organize a pirate band or an outlaw group, whose sole function is to act as a parasite on a larger, functioning society. Any society that doesn't have that leaven of good people in it *has* to crumble, because there's literally nothing to hold it together.

And that's why 'evil' and 'good' need each other. Because if evil steals what other people have earned, you still need good behavior in order to build up a stash worth stealing in the first place. And that's why the evil person's ideal is to be the one evil person in a society of good, simple trusting sheep. Other evil people in the mix just mean more quarrels, less money to go around and more wary sheep. So it makes sense for evil people to assist good people in getting rid of competitors. The evil person gets a 'flock' of his own, the good people get robbed by one instead of by many. I wonder if that's part of the reason kings came into existence?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[SPoD]

Yes, but I never said it did. Can we just please get that clear?

You did not. Others did, in response to your statement. I was responding to the others.

[pendell]

Rape is evil by definition.

Murder, as I understand it, isn't. It can be committed in self-defense, or as a last resort to contain someone who is an immediate and real threat to someone else, or even as a pious act to someone who is in pain and dying.

Are you a native English speaker by chance?

My understanding is that *murder* is evil by definition, but *homicide* is not.

*Homicide* is the taking of a human life. To make a living human being dead.

There are a number of ways this can happen that are not murder.

*Accidental* homicide is what happens when you kill someone and didn't mean to. It happens in cars all the time. You don't see the pedestrian while driving an automobile and turn him/her into road pizza. It's a tragedy and a horror, yes, but it's not *murder*.

*Justifiable* homicide is what happens when you kill someone for a societally acceptable reason. A policeman killing a man who is threatening innocents is an example of this, or the actions of a soldier in war.

*Excusable* homicide is what happens when you kill someone but there's some mitigating circumstance, such as being drunk or being excessively provoked as in killing the man you find in bed with your wife. This is considered to be the crime of manslaughter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manslaughter), which is a crime for which one goes to prison but it's still not *murder*.

*Murder* is homicide when none of the above apply. When a person deliberately, willfully kills another human being for no good reason and does so while in full possession of his/her facilities.

By such definition, murder is always an evil act. It can be nothing else.

At least, that's my understanding.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[factotum]

Any society has to have a healthy seasoning of 'good' people in it. Because if you have a society composed solely of chaotic evil individuals solely out for their own gain, they can't organize because they'll be too busy backstabbing each other.

Actually, the concept of the demons in D&D is exactly that--a society of Chaotic Evil types. What makes it work is simple Might Makes Right philosophy--whoever is the most powerful takes power and orders those of lesser might around. (I can't imagine it would go well for any lesser demon who tried to "backstab" Demogorgon, for example :smallsmile:).

In any case, I would say you're talking more about the Law/Chaos axis anyway; a society of Lawful Evil people would be entirely feasible, even without what I just said above.

[LuisDantas]

1) That is not a counter argument. That is the same as saying 'Because I said so'.

Not really.


2) A measurement IS a judgment. Judgments are merely weighing the values or various answers to a question and deciding what is right.

Nope. Measurements are comparisons between objective quantities. Judgements often involve measurements, and just as often leave the domain of objectivity entirely. That is why there is virtually no attempt to use computer programs to substitute arbiters of any kind.


3) Again, this is not a counter. What is your reasoning? I hardly think sentience is about being able to make judgments. One may reason that only something sentient can question anything, but non-sentient things judge things for us all the time. We have computers do just that for us all day long.

As a computer technician, I can tell you that it just doesn't happen that way. Computers are the most mechanical beasts there are, and to make a judgment is utterly beyond them.


(...)5) But why would this be an impediment?

Because good and evil are not at all objective. They only exist as a direct result and in contrast to the capability of making choices and understanding its consequences. Such capability depends entirely on the mental and psychological faculties of the acting being - that is why it is possible to declare oneself "not guilty by reason of insanity".

While I will grant that some non-divine spells and magical effects on D&D worlds apparently can perceive a lot of things about the environment, it makes a lot more sense to chalk it up as an oddity created for the well-being of the game than to treat magic as an all-knowing yet non-sentient force.


6) Ah, dark and light... I don't know- I've heard there is a gray area there too. I'd actually trust a camera better than my own judgment on how dark a sky is. It is extremely less bias than I.

But in the end the camera does not care about the visual attributes of the image, while you do. That more than entitles you to, for the lack of a better expression, "pull rank" on it.


7) Don't be too hasty, a book can do the same thing.

How so?

[SPoD]

But in the end the camera does not care about the visual attributes of the image, while you do. That more than entitles you to, for the lack of a better expression, "pull rank" on it.

To phrase this a different way (in support of your point), a camera can record that the sky is 83.4% black. One person looks at this and thinks, "Wow, that's REALLY dark!" and another looks at it and thinks, "Meh, I've seen darker." Both are seeing the same image, they just make different judgments on it.

[LuisDantas]

Are you a native English speaker by chance?

Not really. But I try hard. :smallwink:


My understanding is that *murder* is evil by definition, but *homicide* is not.

*Homicide* is the taking of a human life. To make a living human being dead.

There are a number of ways this can happen that are not murder.

According to one popular anglophone source (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/murder) at least, murder is characterized by intent, not by evil. There are situations when a killing can be both intentional and justified.

[pendell]

What makes it work is simple Might Makes Right philosophy--whoever is the most powerful takes power and orders those of lesser might around. (I can't imagine it would go well for any lesser demon who tried to "backstab" Demogorgon, for example :smallsmile:).


That may work with D&D demons, but with humans ... okay, let's say you rule by this philosophy in a city of , say, 10,000 people. You can make a small group of say, ten people directly in front of you do what you want "or else". What are the other 9,990 doing?

What's to stop this group from just stopping whatever they're doing while you're busy oppressing something else? Or worse, banding together to take you on? No matter how powerful you are, enough people can take down any one single person. Even if they won't, you can't be everywhere at once.

Even if you're going to be a dictator, there comes a point when you can't simply rule by fear. You need people -- your party, your clan -- who will continue doing what you want even when you're not immediately present. Out of their own self-interest (i.e. you've bribed them) or for some other reason (family bonds? fanatical ideology?).

But fear by itself? There's only so much fear any one person can project and still be credible. For anything more than that you need a group of people. And that group can't be held together by fear itself. Why? Because if you make yourself feared and hated by a group of dangerous people (they'd have to be, if you're going to use them to oppress the rest of society), there's no reason some ambitious person can't promise them something beyond fear of punishment. Then it's a knife in the dark and no one, not even your own bodyguards, will lift a finger to help you.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[factotum]

The problem is, chaotic people are by nature not terribly organised, and you're talking about some sort of organised revolt. What would happen in a chaotic society is that everyone is looking out for Number One, and therefore they're not going to go up against the the Big Boss simply because they might end up dead before he does. The only way a CE character would try to grab the reins of power is if he either (a) knew a foolproof method for dispatching the Head Cheese by stealth or (b) was simply more powerful than him.

[Warren Dew]

Okay, I'm not going to spoiler War and XPs material due to the thread title, except where quoting spoilered text. I will spoiler Start of Darkness material.


They outright admit to her that they're dating (even though they're not, they only say that as an excuse to not bring her along to the restaurant) and she replies "May the Twelve Gods bless your union." Given that it's Miko, I think that if there was any sort of taboo, she would have at least objected.

A bit of a tangent, but I found that a very touching bonus strip, if a bit out of place. At the end of the strip, we see that Miko has already prepared what looks to be a very nice dinner for three before trying to get the other two to have dinner with her. Of course, she's too much of a social nerd to actually get the invitation across properly - kind of like a lot of gamers. Then when they make up excuses to avoid her, she gives the best part of the dinner to her horse, rather than taking the good bits for herself. No wonder she wants to see him in the afterlife; it looks like he's her only friend.

Start of Darkness

For example, the Paladins 'supposedly good' massacre an entire Goblin village but that's okay because goblins are 'evil'...but isn't massacring wrong/evil 'period' apparently not since those Paladins didn't lose their powers

... likely because all the adult goblins were knowing worshippers of the Dark One, and thus sworn enemies of the humans - and even the children were likely trespassers on human lands. That doesn't make killing them "good", but it may well make killing them "not evil", especially as the Paladins are not acting in their own personal interests. If it's not evil, it's reasonable for the Paladins not to lose their powers. There isn't really any necessary moral ambiguity here.


The dude was fully ready to toss 14 captured slaves into a cosmic horror for no other reason than to try and force an answer out of the Paladin. He's lording over a group of humans who, for the most part, had absolutely nothing to do with the Sapphire Guard's attack on his village. No, I don't think he's acting particularly good right now.

Agreed - not now, and not ever.

Xykon is evil, and he's honest about it, and everyone agrees he's evil. Redcloak's acts are just as evil, but he's a hypocrite and pretends[1] he's doing it in a good cause. So his being a hypocrite about being evil makes him less evil? Some people seem to think so, but I don't agree.

[1]Start of DarknessWe know it's not an honest evaluation because Right Eye demonstrates what good goblins are actually doing - live in peace on their own lands, rather than taking lands from the humans, despite the goblin lands being in poorer locations. Redcloak even admits this, briefly, before being pulled again into his corruption.


I get the sense here that you believe karma is not related to good and evil -- merely the return of aggression for aggression. That's not really what the concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma) is about, and that's not what the Giant is talking about when he says "what goes around, comes around."

It may not be simple "aggression for aggression", but it's not the same as good and evil, either.

Here's another example. Shojo deceives Miko for her entire lifetime, sends her on missions under false pretenses, and generally abuses her loyalty. His karmic payback is to be killed by her. That doesn't make her killing him good - quite the opposite, according to the twelve gods. It's still karmic payback, though.


There are situations where things like ... murder have been interpreted by societies or individuals to be acceptable both today and in the ancient world

I question whether those situations were ever interpreted by entire societies as acceptable; that they were accepted by individuals doesn't make them any less evil. In the situations JoseB mentions, mass murder was still clearly evil. After all, terrorizing the population with good acts just doesn't work all that well. Evil acts do not become nonevil just because someone like Xykon accepts them.


Are you a native English speaker by chance?

I am, if you're looking for one. Your understanding of "murder" is basically correct; it's definitely distinct from "killing". I'd only note that some cases of accidental homicide can be considered manslaughter (didn't mean to kill someone, but should have known that one was doing something dangerous enough to have a high risk of killing someone), and your specific examples of "excusable" homicide would generally be considered murder rather than manslaughter. Justifiable homicide, the classic case of which is immediate self defense, is not considered murder. It appears that wiktionary is not a great source in this case.

Murder is always considered an evil act by "society" in the sense that it consists of those killings that are defined by society as unlawful (or a subset thereof). That doesn't mean that it will always be viewed uniformly as evil; assassinating an evil dictator may be viewed as good by many, even though it's still murder.


But fear by itself? There's only so much fear any one person can project and still be credible. For anything more than that you need a group of people. And that group can't be held together by fear itself. Why? Because if you make yourself feared and hated by a group of dangerous people (they'd have to be, if you're going to use them to oppress the rest of society), there's no reason some ambitious person can't promise them something beyond fear of punishment. Then it's a knife in the dark and no one, not even your own bodyguards, will lift a finger to help you.

If the fear is strong enough, it's hard to promise something that will overcome the fear. Xykon's a good example of ruling through fear. Stalin is a good real life example. Now granted, there are rumors that Stalin died when he was refused medical attention for a heart attack - kind of like bodyguards that wouldn't help - but that didn't happen til he was 70, and no one dared an assassination.

[Azuroth]

In any case, I would say you're talking more about the Law/Chaos axis anyway; a society of Lawful Evil people would be entirely feasible, even without what I just said above.

Yes, Chaos is obviously anathema to an ordered (Lawful) society. For a "working" lawful evil entity that didn't self destruct, see The Knights of Takhisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Takhisis)

[Lissou]

A bit of a tangent, but I found that a very touching bonus strip, if a bit out of place. At the end of the strip, we see that Miko has already prepared what looks to be a very nice dinner for three before trying to get the other two to have dinner with her. Of course, she's too much of a social nerd to actually get the invitation across properly - kind of like a lot of gamers. Then when they make up excuses to avoid her, she gives the best part of the dinner to her horse, rather than taking the good bits for herself. No wonder she wants to see him in the afterlife; it looks like he's her only friend.

That's... pretty interesting, actually. I didn't see it that way at all. To me the strip was more of a "see, Miko's so unbearable, than even pladins end up LYING to get rid of her!" thing.
And then, when she came back to her room and ate, I didn't notice there was food for 3. I thought "man, I can't believe she's suggesting to go eat out but is planning on just ditching them: she lready made food!" mixed with "so she knew they'd say no, then?"
I guess I didn't think she could be inviting people to eat home, where they always eat, when every restaurant is free that night >.>

I'll re-read it and see if you interpretation fits, but if you're right, then yeah, I guess she was very lonely. It's not like she didn't bring it on herlsef, though.

[Silveus]

Chaotic evil doesn't mean psycotic, CE people aren't just mindless killing machines running around. Chaotic just means a lack of structure. chaotic evil epople could still work together for common goals providing each indavidual benifits in some way from it.

A chaotic evil society is possible just not likely due to the fact that being Chaotic makes it harder for the society to organize. a CE society would quickly make itself an enemy of any good society and would also be easy pickings for an lawful evil society that would want to steal its wealth.

thats why all CE society in the real world are small. pirate ships ran really well but they made them selves enemies of good aligned societys and were eliminated.


And as for a lawful evil society those can clearly exist, since they have in the past. alot of ancient cizilizations were lawfull evil and russia under stalin was, not to mention nazi germany and imperial japan.

[Silveus]

Also in regards to the paladins destroying that goblin village in SOD, that can easily be explained as purely good.

Goblins are inherntly Neutral evil which means that they lack a organized millitary. all goblins can pick up arms and fight and usaly do. that village was potentialy a nest of goblin warriors, and since goblins don't from millitary ranks in battle its effectivly impossible to tell if any given goblin is gonna pull a knife and charge you. On top of that the former redcloak was there. if the high preist of the goblin church is in a village not only does it make it a high profile target but it also makes it likely that the vilage would be very well guarded.

Furthermore in times of war its common practice to target and destroy enemy resources. that vilage produced food that feeds the enemy golbins therfore destroying the village significantly damaged the goblins ability to wage war on the humans.

The case of killing the young goblins is also justified. goblins age much faster than humans. in a few months time those young goblins would be adults and since goblins go through almsot no millitary training they would be ready warriors in just a few months. this wasn't a case of killing children but a case of killing recruits. when an army attacks a millitary base, which this village basicaly was, it would be foolish to spare the trainees so that they can finish their training and join the war against you.

as for killing the goblins that were running away that can also be explained. goblins are Neutral evil, they don't stand and fight, they ambush. when faced with an overwhelming force, say a bunch of palladins charging into their camp, they will obviously run. better to take them out before they sneak up behind and pepper the paladins with arrows.

And finaly this isn't modern times, the paladins don't have satalites to spy on the vilage before the attack. their intelagence was probably non existant. when they entered the village goblins took up arms against them, thats all the confirmation they needed to determin that this was a hostile camp.

[paladin_carvin]

Godwin's law has finally been evoked. I will take that que to exit.

I will part with this-

Consider one of our most ancient mythologies- one that much of D&D ideas are based on: Egyptian.

When a man died and he was judged as to if he was good or evil, how did the gods decide?

His heart was weighed against a feather.

[Lissou]

Also in regards to the paladins destroying that goblin village in SOD, that can easily be explained as purely good.

Goblins are inherntly chaotic evil which means that they lack a organized millitary. all goblins can pick up arms and fight and usaly do. that village was potentialy a nest of goblin warriors, and since goblins don't from millitary ranks in battle its effectivly impossible to tell if any given goblin is gonna pull a knife and charge you. On top of that the former redcloak was there. if the high preist of the goblin church is in a village not only does it make it a high profile target but it also makes it likely that the vilage would be very well guarded.

Furthermore in times of war its common practice to target and destroy enemy resources. that vilage produced food that feeds the enemy golbins therfore destroying the village significantly damaged the goblins ability to wage war on the humans.

The case of killing the young gobliuns is also justified. goblins age much faster than humans. in a few months time those young goblins would be adults and since goblins go through almsot no millitary training they would be ready warriors in just a few months. this wasn't a case of killing children but a case of killing recruits. when an army attacks a millitary base, which this village basicaly was, it would be foolish to spare the trainees so that they can finish their training and join the war against you.

as for killing the goblins that were running away that can also be explained. goblins are chaotic evil, they don't stand and fight, they ambush. when faced with an overwhelming force, say a bunch of palladins charging into their camp, they will obviously run. better to take them out before they sneak up behind and pepper the paladins with arrows.

And finaly this isn't modern times, the paladins don't have satalites to spy on the vilage before the attack. their intelagence was probably non existant. when they entered the village goblins took up arms against them, thats all the confirmation they needed to determin that this was a hostile camp.

Do you read Goblins?
There is a charcter, Kore, who kills "potential evil". He kills every creature that has been in contact with an evil creture, because it's a disease you might catch, or something.
You're making me think about that. Yeah, let's kill them all, after all, they have hands, they might, in theory, grab a knife some time in the future and attack me or someone else!
By if you follow this logic to its conclusion, you can't let any creture alive, even lawful good ones: what if their alignments changed?

[Silveus]

Goblins are defined as Evil. of course there ar exceptions but generaly they are all evil. and since many times in the comics we see that the characters are aware of game mechanics they would know this fact.

lets take this to the real world. lets say i give you a gun and take you to a maximum security prision where there was recently a riot. crazy prisoners are running around with weapons, and you know this. so i throw you in there and 3 of them charge at you, one with a gun, one with a knife and one unarmed. what are you going to do?

you shoot them ofcourse, or you panic and then get killed, thats always an option.

I am not saying just kill all goblins but in this case in that village the paladins were justified.

[Silveus]

Also i want to add my 2 cents on the detect evil thing. the exact mechanic of how magic works is unknown so you could just as easily assume that detect evil isn't judging the target and rendering a verdict, but is infact measuring some kind energy that the target gives off.

Since evil and good are actualy energy forms since weapons can be enchanted with them it could be possible that every thought and action a person does creates a tiny bit of that energy that lingers withing the person. detect evil or any detect spell measures the amounts of each energy and determins which is greater and then informs the caster. in a mortal being the energy never accumulates enough to do anything but in the case of outsiders the aura can increase greatly. this is also why items can be detected as evil and such, or why an evil artifact gives off a much greater aura.

This is also supported by the crown roy took. the evil energy that was produced inside of Xykon leeched out to the crown and lingered.

[Kish]

Goblins are defined as Evil. of course there ar exceptions but generaly they are all evil.

Read the Monster Manual definition of "usually evil," please.

You also neglected to consider any number of differences between a village and a prison--the presence of noncombatants being only the first one that comes to mind.

Edit: Looking at more of your posts, and considering that goblins are "usually Neutral Evil," not Chaotic, I'm wondering now what the basis of your claims is.

[Silveus]

Yeah i noticed the Neutral over chaotic thing too, my bad, i will fix that. however that doesn't really change much of what i said. goblins don't make rank and file soldiers, they make skirmishers. they are still likely to run when faced with a greater force and then sneak attack (not actualy sneak attack but the tactic).

And i beleive my analogy to a prision is still valid. and number of the inmates running around could and probably are not trying to kill you. many just want to get away from the chaos that is going on. howerver you can't be sure of which ones are actualy running away and which ones are running to get weapons or call for help. Sure you could wait and see but that could also really easily get you killed. and your clearly in a dangerous situation where shooting first and asking questions is justified.

Not saying its the exact thing but its close enough to get the point across. do you expect the palladins to ask the goblins first?

Plus i want to stress again that the red cloak was there. the high preist of the goblins who has an artifact that greatly increases his power. Not only is it really important that he is killed quickly before he starts throwing super spells around but its also important to stop him from fleeing the sceen also. any one of the fleeing goblins could be the red cloak in disguies. And as i stated the leader of the goblin religion would probably have some pretty good body guards with him.

And you point out the fact there are noncombatants there, thats true. but from the visual clues what makes a normal goblin soldier different from a noncombatants? the possesion of weapons and armor. its given then a vilage that wasn't expecting an attack wouldn't have armored trrops just sitting around so you couldn't tell by whether or not a goblin is wearing armor or not. your forced to go by weapons, and weapons can be hidden.

[Warren Dew]

Furthermore in times of war its common practice to target and destroy enemy resources.

It's common practice, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.


Plus i want to stress again that the red cloak was there. the high preist of the goblins who has an artifact that greatly increases his power. Not only is it really important that he is killed quickly before he starts throwing super spells around but its also important to stop him from fleeing the sceen also. any one of the fleeing goblins could be the red cloak in disguies.

This might be a valid argument; if they had actually captured the red cloak itself, it might have saved a lot of goblins, as well as humans, in the long run. Presumably the paladins had no way of telling who the high priest might pass the red cloak on to. It could possibly be argued that the paladins did an insufficiently thorough job, given that the red cloak escaped, albeit on a different goblin than it started on.

[Remirach]

It may not be simple "aggression for aggression", but it's not the same as good and evil, either.

Here's another example. Shojo deceives Miko for her entire lifetime, sends her on missions under false pretenses, and generally abuses her loyalty. His karmic payback is to be killed by her. That doesn't make her killing him good - quite the opposite, according to the twelve gods. It's still karmic payback, though.
Yeah, I know. I kind of cringed typing that when I know it's not really that simple, but the original analogy was basically twisted beyond comprehension. If you have to kill someone to save a life, I don't think that's the kind of situation where karma would come into play because you didn't instead spare them (and let someone innocent die) and allow them to repent. Shojo's payback was karma, I agree -- he lied, and his lies came back to haunt him. (The irony is that he was killed over something he wasn't lying about, but he'd proved himself untrustworthy.)

Silveus, you argue that it's okay to kill noncombatant children because they grow up faster? What does it matter how fast they grow? They aren't guaranteed to be evil when they do achieve maturity, and if they were, it would be equally irrelevant.



And i beleive my analogy to a prision is still valid. and number of the inmates running around could and probably are not trying to kill you. many just want to get away from the chaos that is going on. howerver you can't be sure of which ones are actualy running away and which ones are running to get weapons or call for help. Sure you could wait and see but that could also really easily get you killed. and your clearly in a dangerous situation where shooting first and asking questions is justified.
Wait, so you just start firing randomly? At first you talked about shooting inmates who were running toward you with weapons in their hands, and now that's progressed to it being "justifiable" to kill people who could be doing potentially anything? You're presuming they are guilty of attempted murder solely because they are prisoners (or goblins), which is slightly more understandable in a highly charged situation but you cannot say that it's okay just to mow everybody down because "who knows" what they could do. If it is, why not just nuke the goblin population whole. Mass genocide. No mercy. After all, they might turn evil. There's really no telling. Safer just to kill 'em. Heck, why do we have prisons in the real world? People might escape! Shouldn't we just have an automatic death penalty for capital crimes?

[David Argall]

SoD Now the SoD village massacre scene does give us serious problems. On the face of it the paladins involved should fall, but they don't. Why not?

One theory is that they are holy warriors, who obey the gods, not the principles of Good. But this is highly suspect. The rules of D&D say the paladin falls for an evil deed, not for a deed that the gods do not approve of, and they consistently rule that Good is not determined by the gods, but exists no matter what they may say or do.
A variant is the idea that our writer is redefining the rules this way. But routinely we find our good types behave in a good way, while the evil types are proud to call themselves evil, and to prove it. We don't find anybody, other than Miko who is concerned about the opinions of the gods on these points.
Perhaps a more reasonable idea is that our writer simply didn't care here. He wanted a sympathetic scene for Redcloak, and this one worked. That it didn't follow the rules? He has ignored them often enough. However it does cause some problems with the plot and this seems inferior.
So probably best is that we simply don't have all the details. And this way we can find the paladins didn't do evil and don't have to fall.
As noted below, the presence of the Redcloak makes the village a legitimate military target, but it does not justify the death of all in the village, particularly after the Redcloak is dead. However, is this a random village?
The presence of the Redcloak argues against this. While this could just be another village he is visiting, it could alternately be his base of operations, and all those within the village troops under his direct command, and thus much more acceptable military targets.
We also have the availability of many Detect Evils. This allow for the possibility that the paladins had checked the alignment of all or nearly all of the villagers, and found them evil.
And this sort of explanation allows us to assume the rules of the game are actually being followed here. If they are not, there is little point in arguing the point at all.


Also in regards to the paladins destroying that goblin village in SOD, that can easily be explained as purely good.
Well, no. Any time you kill something, there is a default presumption of evil. There are of course a number of exceptions, and D&D games play heavily on those exceptions, but we still have the reluctance to kill. Saying this is easily explained, and that the result will be, not just non-evil, but outright good, is clearly an exaggeration.


Goblins are inherntly Neutral evil
That is "usually Neutral Evil", which works out to about 90% some type of evil. But that still means there are a substantial number of innocents in a random collection of goblins.


that village was potentialy a nest of goblin warriors,
That is a very dubious defense. Everybody is a potential murderer. You can act on that potential only when it has reached very high levels, where the potential is almost absolute. And being merely a warrior is even less justification.


On top of that the former redcloak was there. if the high preist of the goblin church is in a village not only does it make it a high profile target but it also makes it likely that the vilage would be very well guarded.
Now this can be used as justification for the attack, but not for the attempt to eliminate all the survivors. The Redcloak can be presumed to be a proper target for destruction, but we do not get from that that there is any need to kill the others.


Furthermore in times of war its common practice to target and destroy enemy resources.
That it is common practice does not mean it is acceptable practice. It is also common practice to lie, cheat, and steal, when you can get away with it.


The case of killing the young goblins is also justified...
this wasn't a case of killing children but a case of killing recruits.
This amounts to saying killing is always justified.



And finaly this isn't modern times, the paladins don't have satalites to spy on the vilage before the attack. their intelagence was probably non existant.
They, however, did have Detect Evil and other magic.


lets take this to the real world. lets say i give you a gun and take you to a maximum security prision where there was recently a riot. crazy prisoners are running around with weapons, and you know this. so i throw you in there and 3 of them charge at you, one with a gun, one with a knife and one unarmed. what are you going to do?
You are confusing apples with oranges here. In your prison example there is only kill or be killed. In our village case, there are all sorts of other choices, many of which do not involve killing.
But let us change the example here. The prisoners are not attacking, just standing around. Now you do not have base grounds for blazing away. You might regain in under certain conditions [they are attacking somebody else, you are authorized to order them back to their cells and they refuse to go...], but your base case is that you can't shoot them.

[AceOfFools]

I'll admit I haven't read everything in this thread and probably won't be coming back. Long alignment talks bore me.

I'd like to point out a couple of quotes and a fresh perspective that can be discussed, evaluated or ignored by people that do.

OotPCs:
"Rumors indicate that the area has been heavily raided by goblins for the past six months" :Roy:
indicating that, yes, some goblins, particularly those working for Xykon, do kill humans to steal supplies.

Villagers also assume a large group of orcs that move into an area is a raiding party with enough conviction to flee at the sight of them and find the considerable sum of money necessary to hire adventurers to protect them.

SoD:

Right-eye on his Xykon-free living environment: "It's nice. No paladin, no elves, no raids on humans. We just try to live the best we can with what we have."
Redcloak is mildly offended/confused that he would do so given how little he had. Right-eye definitely raided humans for supplies after the village was destroyed, but the attitude presented is that it's normal for goblins to behave that way and his group is something of an aberration.

Right-eye also built (most of) those homes himself, making him one of the first members of that community that tried the "getting along" approach.

And then there were the ogres that raided the dirt farmers.

It's subtle, but I believe that part of OotS setting is that monster and monstrous human raids on humanoid settlements happen occasionally. That's why you need adventurers and village wizards who specialize in evocation and so forth.

So maybe there was more to the goblin village that has multiple trained warriors then we saw when they were under attack. Maybe there was more to them then the fact that they loved their families.

Not to imply I think the genocidal response was appropriate, but maybe there was more to it than we get from the goblin children's perspective.

[Lissou]

Goblins are defined as Evil. of course there ar exceptions but generaly they are all evil. and since many times in the comics we see that the characters are aware of game mechanics they would know this fact.

lets take this to the real world. lets say i give you a gun and take you to a maximum security prision where there was recently a riot. crazy prisoners are running around with weapons, and you know this. so i throw you in there and 3 of them charge at you, one with a gun, one with a knife and one unarmed. what are you going to do?

you shoot them ofcourse, or you panic and then get killed, thats always an option.

I am not saying just kill all goblins but in this case in that village the paladins were justified.

I'd shoot in the air to unload the gun and then throw it away. Or if I don't have time for that, I'd directly throw it away. But, better, I wouldn't accept to carry a gun in the first place. It's way too dangerous.

And I don't assume people will kill a stranger just for fun. They might take me hostage to bargain for their own freedom, but then I'd have time to talk to them and decide on what to do next.

Not to mention your example is about me ending up there after riots starting, possibly in order to calm things down or something? rather than, you know, deciding to go into a prison in the middle of the day, when they might be celebrating someone's birthday or something, and randomly shoot them all. Because, you know, they're criminal, what if they escaped and hurt more people? I should probably just kill them to be safe.

[dps]

Of course. The definition of murder is an evil killing.

Actually, the definition is that it's an unlawful killing. I could give some specific examples, but I think I'd be getting too close to real-world politics and religion for this forum.

[Lissou]

Actually, the definition is that it's an unlawful killing. I could give some specific examples, but I think I'd be getting too close to real-world politics and religion for this forum.

I think the definition of murder is a voluntary killing without consent. Although depending on the contry, killing someone who asks you to (because they can't do it themselves) is sometimes illegal... but I'm not sure if it's ever still called murder.
Also, murder counts only if it's another human, with human rights. That's why killing animals or plants isn't considered murder.

So, a murder is a veru specific form of killing, for sure.

EDIT: In DnD, I guess maybe it's "sentient" instead of "human"... Although it DOES seem killing goblins is A-OK because they're goblins, so...

[Silveus]

Goblins aren't humans. that doesn't mean that destroying them is ok. it means they don't work in the same way.

These are all from the 3.5 Monster manual on goblins.

"goblins are small humanoids that many consider little more than a nuisance. However if they are unchecked, their great numbers, rapid reproduction, and evil disposition eneable them to overrun and despoil civilized areas."

"the concept of a fair fight is meaningless in their society. they favor ambuses, overwhelming odds, dirty tricks, and any other edge they can divise."

"Goblins have a poor grasp of stratagy and are cowardly by nature, tending to flee the field if battle turns against the."

"goblins live b raiding and stealing(preferably from those who cannot defend themselves easily)"

Nothing the palladins did in that raid could be called evil. the intention of the attack was to kill the redcloak, good intentions. some of the things they did could be considered Neutral but palladins don't loose their powers when they commit Neutral acts in and effort to acomplish a good goal.



It's common practice, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.



This might be a valid argument; if they had actually captured the red cloak itself, it might have saved a lot of goblins, as well as humans, in the long run. Presumably the paladins had no way of telling who the high priest might pass the red cloak on to. It could possibly be argued that the paladins did an insufficiently thorough job, given that the red cloak escaped, albeit on a different goblin than it started on.

Just because it isn't right doesn't make it wrong, its Neutral. And failing at your goal doesn't make it any less good of a goal. as the deva said to roy "your trying".


Silveus, you argue that it's okay to kill noncombatant children because they grow up faster? What does it matter how fast they grow? They aren't guaranteed to be evil when they do achieve maturity, and if they were, it would be equally irrelevant.


Wait, so you just start firing randomly? At first you talked about shooting inmates who were running toward you with weapons in their hands, and now that's progressed to it being "justifiable" to kill people who could be doing potentially anything? You're presuming they are guilty of attempted murder solely because they are prisoners (or goblins), which is slightly more understandable in a highly charged situation but you cannot say that it's okay just to mow everybody down because "who knows" what they could do. If it is, why not just nuke the goblin population whole. Mass genocide. No mercy. After all, they might turn evil. There's really no telling. Safer just to kill 'em. Heck, why do we have prisons in the real world? People might escape! Shouldn't we just have an automatic death penalty for capital crimes?

The young goblins will almost certianly grow up into into soldiers of some sort since they are right next to the red cloak, the goblin whos goal it is to release a god destroying monster.

and i am not saying its ok to kill them because they grow up faster, i am saying they are already grown up enough to kill them. your veiwin them as like 8 year olds, in human terms. but in human terms they are closer to like 16-17. give them a few months and they would be adults.

However this IS an act that isn't good, but it isn't evil.

I never said fire randomly, altho i must admit that since i lack any kind of military traing that is probably what i would do. its also would almost any untrainged person would do, besides those that panic and run away. the point of me saying that 3 of them ran after you is to show that you KNOW some of them are trying to harm you. For some one who could stay calm i would assume they would try to maintain order in the room. order all the inmates to lay down and if they didn't comply shoot them.


@David Argall

Your post is big so i am not going to quote it just respond to specific points.

Originally Posted by Silveus
that village was potentialy a nest of goblin warriors,

That is a very dubious defense. Everybody is a potential murderer. You can act on that potential only when it has reached very high levels, where the potential is almost absolute. And being merely a warrior is even less justification.


The monster manual lists a goblin village with 50% non combatants. the DMG lists a village with 401 to 900 people. thats 200 to 450 sildiers. if we down grade that to a thorp, the smallest from of town, thats 20-80 people and 10-40 soldiers that gives the thing an EL of 3 to about 7 for the thorp the village is way higher. and again the red cloak is there which not only increases the threat level but also increases the odds of more higher level soldiers.


Originally Posted by Silveus
On top of that the former redcloak was there. if the high preist of the goblin church is in a village not only does it make it a high profile target but it also makes it likely that the vilage would be very well guarded.

Now this can be used as justification for the attack, but not for the attempt to eliminate all the survivors. The Redcloak can be presumed to be a proper target for destruction, but we do not get from that that there is any need to kill the others.

the redcloak escaped. any one of those goblins could have been running away with it.

lets switch this to a real life example. the use army targets a terrorist base in the mountins that intelegence says has a large amount of uranium and plutonium. the base also has lots of villagers around. the attack starts and the terrorists fight back, and by the time the soldeirs get to where the materials were supposed to be they are gone. at this point the villagers and any terrorists that gave up are running, and any one of them could be carrying the materials. while the vialgers are noncombatants they also clearly agree with the terrorists or they wouldn't be living with them. the uranium and plutonium are so important that the fleeing people would be attacked in an effort to find it.


Originally Posted by Silveus
Furthermore in times of war its common practice to target and destroy enemy resources.

That it is common practice does not mean it is acceptable practice. It is also common practice to lie, cheat, and steal, when you can get away with it.

actualy it is an accepted practice, since every country in war always does it. doesn't mean its fair but it is accepted.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Silveus
lets take this to the real world. lets say i give you a gun and take you to a maximum security prision where there was recently a riot. crazy prisoners are running around with weapons, and you know this. so i throw you in there and 3 of them charge at you, one with a gun, one with a knife and one unarmed. what are you going to do?

You are confusing apples with oranges here. In your prison example there is only kill or be killed. In our village case, there are all sorts of other choices, many of which do not involve killing.
But let us change the example here. The prisoners are not attacking, just standing around. Now you do not have base grounds for blazing away. You might regain in under certain conditions [they are attacking somebody else, you are authorized to order them back to their cells and they refuse to go...], but your base case is that you can't shoot them.

the original point of my prision analogy was to show that being and a very dangerous spot and fear for your life would prevent you from talking to every body to discern their intentions before shooting them. any prisioner that didn't want to be caught up in the riot would have stayed in their cells.

but the prision thing is not as accurate as i would like it to be so lets use my terrorist one.



I'd shoot in the air to unload the gun and then throw it away. Or if I don't have time for that, I'd directly throw it away. But, better, I wouldn't accept to carry a gun in the first place. It's way too dangerous.

And I don't assume people will kill a stranger just for fun. They might take me hostage to bargain for their own freedom, but then I'd have time to talk to them and decide on what to do next.

Not to mention your example is about me ending up there after riots starting, possibly in order to calm things down or something? rather than, you know, deciding to go into a prison in the middle of the day, when they might be celebrating someone's birthday or something, and randomly shoot them all. Because, you know, they're criminal, what if they escaped and hurt more people? I should probably just kill them to be safe.

even with out the gun i gave you in the prsion situation you are still clearly in alot of danger being there. even if you aren't just randomly killed you could still be hurt or taken hostage. and firing the gun into the roof would just make you more of a target and draw more attention your way. i specificaly said maximum security fuuu of psycopaths. your odds of reasoning your way out are probably about the same of one of them desciding to eat you.

and my example was you are being thrown into a prision that is in the middle of a riot. some one gave you the gun and some one is forcing you in there, so some one has a gerater objective that your not privalged to know.

i bet that each indavidual palladin didn't know all of the detials before going in there. they would have been unnecasary. all they needed to know was hostile goblin village, red cloak is there, and make sure you get the red cloak.

and to add to the palladins not knowing everything, that attack happened 34 years ago. shojo was in charge of the sapphire guard then, and he doesn't have a slight history of not telling the palladins the entire truth.

[Raging Gene Ray]

About the questions on Goblins being objectively vs. subjectively evil:

The whole point of "Always Evil" races I think has always been due to the fact that most people playing RPGs don't want to tackle moral questions. Real life is full of enough of that. They just want to stick their swords in things without worrying about any repercussions.

Also:



Similarly, lesbians are "hot" according to males, Thank you for pandering to stereotypes.

Yeah, Lissou! You stereotype horribly. You should go to Sterotype Jail for making promoting those stereotypes...and those monotypes.

[Lissou]

Goblins aren't humans. that doesn't mean that destroying them is ok. it means they don't work in the same way.

These are all from the 3.5 Monster manual on goblins.

"goblins are small humanoids that many consider little more than a nuisance. However if they are unchecked, their great numbers, rapid reproduction, and evil disposition eneable them to overrun and despoil civilized areas."

"the concept of a fair fight is meaningless in their society. they favor ambuses, overwhelming odds, dirty tricks, and any other edge they can divise."

"Goblins have a poor grasp of stratagy and are cowardly by nature, tending to flee the field if battle turns against the."

"goblins live b raiding and stealing(preferably from those who cannot defend themselves easily)"

True, true. Goblins act so badly, compared to other races. And it's not written in a biased way at all. Let's compare:

Elves: “Elves are cautious warriors . . . maximizing their advantage by using ambushes, snipers, and camouflage. They prefer to fire from cover and retreat before they are found, repeating this maneuver until all of their enemies are dead.”

Yeah, Elves are so neat. Cautious, and clever enough to flee. Not like Goblins, who use dirty tricks to uneven fights, and are cowards.

Gnomes: “Gnomes prefer misdirection and deception over direct confrontation. They would rather befuddle or embarrass foes (other than goblinoids or kobolds) than kill them. Gnomes make heavy use of illusion magic and carefully prepared ambushes and traps whenever they can.”

Halflings: “Halflings are cunning, resourceful survivors and opportunists . . . [they] prefer to fight defensively, usually hiding and launching ranged attacks . . . their tactics are very much like those of elves.”

Man, these dirty goblins, with their unfair ambushes. Fortunately, none of the "good" races do these stuff >.>.

I direct you to this page (http://www.goblindefensefund.org/history4.html), where I got the information (I'm not going to pretend the research work was mine) as it offers more insight.

[Yorgelayheehoo]

I think that the entire order is this close to being LN. Miko was just the beginning, or perhaps the most visible in a long line of Sapphire Guard that Fell during the execution of their callous, un-good duties.

The rules in many adventures explicitly state that killing noncombatants, especially children, is an evil act. How many Sapphire Guardsmen (and women) Fell because of that attack? I'd say every single one who participated. Their Falling could have been covered up by the Azure City government (Lawful Good doesn't mean free speech!) so as to keep their reputation of stalwart do-goodniks who never do any evil things.

Sound plausible?

[Manoftyr]

Alright, well...now we're getting into long drawn out rule based D&D arguments quoting the monster manual, alliance definitions and the like...so, I'm going to step out of this discussion myself as I personally feel 'even as a gamer myself' that looking at the OotS comic through such a lense detracts something from it.

But in closing I more or less echo Lissou's statements and stand by my original premise that in the world of the OotS, good and evil have become completely esoteric notions and there is really no difference between the forces who say they're 'good' and the forces who say they're 'evil', they do exactly the same things but just justify it in different ways and find different reasons...which hardly matters if the end result is massacring the enemy side, even if those enemies are 'crafty little insidious dastardly Goblin scum' or 'self-righteous oppressive murdering bastard human scum', it's all the same.

[David Argall]

Nothing the palladins did in that raid could be called evil.
Much of what they did was default evil. Our problem is determining why it was not.
When you are killing children, those fleeing from you, and the unarmed in general, etc, etc, you have a moral problem.



failing at your goal doesn't make it any less good of a goal. as the deva said to roy "your trying".
"You're trying" is a defense of the marginal, and in many cases not much of a defense there either. Any time you fail, the question comes up "Should you have tried in the first place?" and the answer is often no.



The young goblins will almost certianly grow up into into soldiers of some sort since they are right next to the red cloak, the goblin whos goal it is to release a god destroying monster.
The Redcloak was dead at that point and as far as the paladins knew, was not going to influence these children.


your veiwin them as like 8 year olds, in human terms. but in human terms they are closer to like 16-17. give them a few months and they would be adults.
It's the reverse. They look like 8 years old, but are in fact 4 years old.
However the age is not important. You are still looking at a "threat" that is quite abstract and far in the future.



The monster manual lists a goblin village with 50% non combatants. the DMG lists a village with 401 to 900 people. thats 200 to 450 sildiers. if we down grade that to a thorp, the smallest from of town, thats 20-80 people and 10-40 soldiers that gives the thing an EL of 3 to about 7 for the thorp the village is way higher. and again the red cloak is there which not only increases the threat level but also increases the odds of more higher level soldiers.
None of which [except the Redcloak] makes the least difference.



the redcloak escaped. any one of those goblins could have been running away with it.
The paladins killed the Redcloak, and then wandered away from the body to do rather trivial tasks. Clearly they did not deem the Redcloak as anything much beyond a uniform, of no importance worth mentioning. Since they deemed it worthless, the fact a goblin might escape carrying it can not be used as justification of their actions.


lets switch this to a real life example. the use army targets a terrorist base in the mountins that intelegence says has a large amount of uranium and plutonium.
Now right away, we have very good reason to think intelligence wasn't very. Somebody got drunk and listened to a bunch of scare talk. Or it's a flat out lie. Uranium scares people and so the report writer added in a nonsense claim of uranium to scare people into paying attention to his report.
And if we decide to believe the report, our proper response is to just stay away from this base. Uranium is expensive, hard to handle, and outright dangerous. Our terrorists are more likely to kill themselves than anybody else.
They are much more likely to use effective means if we take the uranium away from them.


the base also has lots of villagers around. the attack starts and the terrorists fight back, and by the time the soldeirs get to where the materials were supposed to be they are gone.
Which is not the case in the SoD village.


at this point the villagers and any terrorists that gave up are running, and any one of them could be carrying the materials.
And if they are carrying any significant amount of the uranium, they are dying. It would also be obvious to the observer. So this does not justify casual shooting.


while the vialgers are noncombatants they also clearly agree with the terrorists or they wouldn't be living with them. the uranium and plutonium are so important that the fleeing people would be attacked in an effort to find it.
They could be attacked in certain cases, but as a blanket effort, no. Random fleeing figure X is by and large morally immune to just being shot. One must make efforts to try less permanent means, or to determine if any means at all are acceptable.



actualy it is an accepted practice, since every country in war always does it. doesn't mean its fair but it is accepted.
The word was "acceptable", which means that even if all do the unacceptable, it is still unacceptable. It may be accepted that one will fail to eliminate it, at least entirely, but one is expected to try when one can have hope of success.
And we are talking of Good here, not standard practice, which may also be neutral or evil. The mere fact that every army has done it is merely a failing of every army from the Good view.


the original point of my prision analogy was to show that being and a very dangerous spot and fear for your life would prevent you from talking to every body to discern their intentions before shooting them.
Which would be largely irrelevant to our discussion since the paladins were the attackers, and made no visible efforts to discern intentions. [Now I deem it quite possible they had used detect evil and had determined the number of non-evils in the village to be trivial, if even non-zero, but the order after the Redcloak is killed is to exterminate, not to take prisoners and kill those who resist or fail some test of virtue. The paladins can not plea any sort of self defense on this point.]


any prisioner that didn't want to be caught up in the riot would have stayed in their cells.
Not if they are wise.
The idea quickly occurs to nearly all the prisoners. "Hey, by the time the guards get control back there will be such a mess they won't be able to figure out who did what. So if I round up a dozen of my buds, we can really do a number on whoever we don't like..." So if you have some enemies [and people in prison are apt to make enemies and carry grudges], staying alone in your cell is asking for a very bad time. Instead you go find your buds just so you can defend yourself [well, doing some of your enemies likely sounds like a good idea too, but the basic idea is your own safety].
So our riot site contains a great number of people who are effectively innocents.


i bet that each indavidual palladin didn't know all of the detials before going in there. they would have been unnecasary. all they needed to know was hostile goblin village, red cloak is there, and make sure you get the red cloak.
But let us compare with Miko here since that was about all she knew. But she makes a Detect Evil before approaching, and demands surrender instead of immediately attacking. Then she breaks off attacking when presented with evidence there is something she does not understand. And Miko is presented as a rather minimal paladin in these respects. So if the village attackers can not be said to meet Miko standards, something is wrong.

[David Argall]

The rules in many adventures explicitly state that killing noncombatants, especially children, is an evil act. How many Sapphire Guardsmen (and women) Fell because of that attack?
Apparently zero.


I'd say every single one who participated. Their Falling could have been covered up by the Azure City government (Lawful Good doesn't mean free speech!) so as to keep their reputation of stalwart do-goodniks who never do any evil things.

Sound plausible?
No. Note that with Miko, the fall happened right away. We have the paladins in the village retaining their status for as long as we see them, with no sign that any fell.
Repeat: There is zero sign that any of the paladins involved fell. That is fact for our pruposes and we have to deal with that fact.




in the world of the OotS, good and evil have become completely esoteric notions and there is really no difference between the forces who say they're 'good' and the forces who say they're 'evil', they do exactly the same things but just justify it in different ways and find different reasons...which hardly matters if the end result is massacring the enemy side, even if those enemies are 'crafty little insidious dastardly Goblin scum' or 'self-righteous oppressive murdering bastard human scum', it's all the same.
You are simply ignoring the evidence. Our evil types in the strip have no hesitation in saying they are evil, and in then doing some evil deed.
On the other side, consider 69, 93, 101, 171, 238, 399, & 475, each of which involves rejecting tactics on the grounds of being evil, not due to inefficiency. [Not that I always agree with the evaluation, but the point is that they are rejecting tactics they, largely correctly, assume an evil party would use.]

[Warren Dew]

Regarding the Start of Darkness stuff, I'd just note a few things.

1. One of the paladins attacking the Redcloak's original village says, "The twelve gods have judged your hearts and found them to be Evil." I suspect this is roleplaying for, "you detect as evil."
2. There's nothing that says children can't be evil. For all we know, these goblin children tear the wings off of fairies for fun in their spare time.

3. Redcloak wanders up to the body of the former high priest in the middle of the battlefield, but is never attacked until he attacks a paladin. One possibility is that he's the only one that didn't detect as evil at the beginning of the battle, leading the paladins to spare him, and he only turns evil upon donning the red cloak or attacking the paladin or something.

[David Argall]

SoD3. Redcloak wanders up to the body of the former high priest in the middle of the battlefield, but is never attacked until he attacks a paladin. One possibility is that he's the only one that didn't detect as evil at the beginning of the battle, leading the paladins to spare him, and he only turns evil upon donning the red cloak or attacking the paladin or something.

SoD Quite unlikely. That the one non-evil goblin in the village is selected to be cleric of an evil god? Indeed, everything points to his being a typical member of his village.
Note that the old Redcloak told him to run away, after talking about the goblins registering as evil on paladin detects. So the picture that makes sense is that our Redcloak runs and hides as the paladins ignore him for the more important target. When the old Redcloak is dead, they don't see our boy and move off after targets of opportunity. Since those are mostly fleeing, the paladins get further away from the old Redcloak and our lad returns. He then leaves the field of battle before the paladins notice him.

[arkwei]

But let us compare with Miko here since that was about all she knew. But she makes a Detect Evil before approaching, and demands surrender instead of immediately attacking. Then she breaks off attacking when presented with evidence there is something she does not understand. And Miko is presented as a rather minimal paladin in these respects. So if the village attackers can not be said to meet Miko standards, something is wrong.

You bring up wonderful points, my friend.

Also, I noted that Miko knows beyond doubt that OotS is responsible for the destruction of the Gate, yet still she first demanded surrender.

At the tavern, when they openly defied her, she still didn't kill them, not even Belker.


Compared to our SoD paladins, who attacked without warning, and killed children who weren't fighting, and went to extremes such as "exterminate", we do see a problem with their methods.

The best part: the Old Redcloak haven't done anything to the Gates yet. Or at least, the paladins know nothing about the powers of the redcloak, or the Dark One's plan yet. (Else they would have seized/destroyed it.) The paladins weren't dealing with nuke-armed terrorists, so to speak; they are just killing criminals.

[LuisDantas]

I fear there are two serious flaws in using Miko as a contrast to the SoD paladins.

First, to the best of my knowledge we do not know whether the Azure Guard got some sort of scolding after their poor behavior in SoD.

Second, and most serious, Miko had specific orders (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0290.html) that restricted her options.

[David Argall]

SoD
I fear there are two serious flaws in using Miko as a contrast to the SoD paladins.

First, to the best of my knowledge we do not know whether the Azure Guard got some sort of scolding after their poor behavior in SoD.
For our purposes we pretty much know they were not. When paladins fall, they fall immediately. There is no arrest, trial, or appeal. Since they did not fall then and there, they didn't fall, and thus received no scolding worthy of our interest.


Second, and most serious, Miko had specific orders (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0290.html) that restricted her options.
Orders issued a thousand miles away are not particularly binding. The underling simply must be trusted. Nor are Miko's orders particularly detailed.

Orders are also a matter of Law, not Good. No matter what the orders given to the village raiders, they would still fall for an evil deed. Equally, Miko's orders do not allow her to do evil deeds. Since the claim is often made that Miko was only marginally good, finding these are doing something that Miko would not is a pretty clear case of some flaw in the picture.



the Old Redcloak haven't done anything to the Gates yet. Or at least, the paladins know nothing about the powers of the redcloak, or the Dark One's plan yet. (Else they would have seized/destroyed it.) The paladins weren't dealing with nuke-armed terrorists, so to speak; they are just killing criminals.
The paladins clearly know the outlines of the Dark One's plot. They accuse the Redcloak of threatening the foundations of creation. They may or may not know this is related to the gates. [They probably do. The gate is their obsession, and they are unlikely to be involved in any other type of threat.] They seem to know the Redcloak is the center of this threat, but deem this is the person instead of the object. So they were after nuke-armed terrorists at first, but not after they killed the old Redcloak.

[LuisDantas]

SoD
For our purposes we pretty much know they were not. When paladins fall, they fall immediately. There is no arrest, trial, or appeal. Since they did not fall then and there, they didn't fall, and thus received no scolding worthy of our interest.

Is that a rule, or just your reading of what usually happens? Paladins usually act alone and fall on a moments notice, ok. But a larger group acting on fairly direct orders from the twelve gods could reasonably be expected to be scolded back into line as opposed to falling out of paladin status, because in this situation the flaw is with the gods' orders as opposed to the paladins' intent. That's my reading of it anyway.


Orders issued a thousand miles away are not particularly binding. The underling simply must be trusted. Nor are Miko's orders particularly detailed.

"Bring them back alive if possible" is fairly clear all the same, and a good reason to ask for surrender as opposed to attacking them on sight, which was the point. Also, you'll notice that Miko did slay the bandit leader she met for nearly no reason at all in #189 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0189.html), which is counterevidence to her usually giving people a chance to surrender.


Orders are also a matter of Law, not Good. No matter what the orders given to the village raiders, they would still fall for an evil deed. Equally, Miko's orders do not allow her to do evil deeds. Since the claim is often made that Miko was only marginally good, finding these are doing something that Miko would not is a pretty clear case of some flaw in the picture.

I thought it was quite clear by now there there is indeed a flaw in the picture and that it is located on the twelve gods' judgement. In effect, orders coming from them are treated as being ineherently good even when they are clearly not.

[Kish]

Miko did slay the bandit leader she met for nearly no reason at all in #189 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0189.html),
Really, now. "You'll serve me or you'll die! Hold Person!" is not nearly no reason.

I agree with your overall claim about the Sapphire Guard, mind. I consider that scene to show the Sapphire Guard committing a very obvious, clear-cut evil act, and getting a pass from the Twelve Gods so that they don't Fall for it. Rich's commentary about even the Twelve Gods not being able to completely avoid karma in War and XPs only makes it that much clearer.

[LuisDantas]

Really, now. "You'll serve me or you'll die! Hold Person!" is not nearly no reason.

I meant the father. It would be easy enough to scare him away at that point.

[Warren Dew]

I meant the father. It would be easy enough to scare him away at that point.

He pulled his swords and was swinging at her. Like his daughter, it qualifies as self defense on Miko's part, which is generally considered a pretty good reason.

You know you don't have to spoiler things that are in the online comics, right?

[David Argall]

Is that a rule, or just your reading of what usually happens?
PH, p. 44. ",,loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act." That is period, as in when your hp = -10 you die. Immediate is automatically there except where it is explicitedly said otherwise.

SoD
Paladins usually act alone and fall on a moments notice, ok. But a larger group acting on fairly direct orders from the twelve gods
So where do we have those direct orders? We have a set of gods who have vowed not to interfere in the world, and don't seem to be able to give any useful warning to Azure City.
Presumably you wish to refer to the paladin's statement to the goblins, but this is not an order from the gods, and the reference to the twelve gods is likely just rhetoric.


could reasonably be expected to be scolded back into line as opposed to falling out of paladin status, because in this situation the flaw is with the gods' orders as opposed to the paladins' intent.
Paladins do not get any "I was only following orders" loophole. Whether the order comes from god or man, an evil order is not to be obeyed by a paladin.


Miko did slay the bandit leader she met for nearly no reason at all in #189 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0189.html), which is counterevidence to her usually giving people a chance to surrender.
As has been pointed out, many times, both Samantha and her dad attacked Miko and were proper victims of self defense.


I thought it was quite clear by now there there is indeed a flaw in the picture and that it is located on the twelve gods' judgement.
Again, just where do we see evidence that the twelve gods are even consulted? Instead, we have limits on what the gods can do.


In effect, orders coming from them are treated as being ineherently good even when they are clearly not.
What is the evidence of this? It is certainly not the D&D rule, which treats the Good as far above the gods.

[Oxymoron]

OMG, look the SOD palladins didn't fall because they get their powers from the southern gods. The southern gods wanted the goblins killed, so they didn't take the SOD palladins powers away. What the palladins did wrong was that they slaughtered every goblin they saw, not just the bearer of the crimson mantle and his warriors. In a normal D&D setting, the SOD palladins would fall.

[Warren Dew]

SoD We have a set of gods who have vowed not to interfere in the world

I know they vowed not to interfere outside their own domains. Did they vow not to interfere at all?

[Lowkey]

Is it not possible that Miko's fall was not due to the fact that she committed an evil act, so mush as she was working against the will of the 12 gods and was punished for it? Consider that Shojo was stated to be one of the few people in the world trying to fix the problem and keep the Snarl contained. Releasing the Snarl is a direct threat to the 12 gods, and they punished Miko not for the murder of a defenseless old man, but for going against their plans.

Whereas the earlier paladins were either acting in accordance with the will of the 12 gods, or at least were not doing anything the 12 gods disproved of, and thus were not held accountable for their actions (for at least a generation).

The gods of OOtS have been shown to be less the nebulous idea of good or evil with a directing intelligence that modern interpretations of god are and more like the spoiled and power corrupted individuals that historical gods are.

Working from the earlier opinion that "good" and "evil" have become largely arbitrary in the OOtS world, and this assumption makes it all flow in a more logically consistent manner, at least in my view.