Concerns About the Progressions of the Goblin Plot (@Rich)

[Ionathus]

As for the second, let's step back a bit and look at things from a wider scale. What makes a "humanoid" a "humanoid"? What makes something "evil"? Not just from a D&D sense, but let's look at fiction as a whole. "Humanoid" is an arbitrary classification for human-like. Goblins are "humanoid" because they're more intelligent than animals and have a roughly human shape. That doesn't mean they are the same as humans in every way but physical. What defines a "humanoid" says nothing of what the eat or if they're predisposed to aggression or anything of the sort. What about "evil"? This is a big problem I have with D&D specifically in that good and evil are objective things. A dragon burns down a farmer's cottage and when the family flees, snatches up their son and flies off with him to devour. Is the dragon evil? From a human perspective, yes. From the dragon's perspective, maybe it was just hungry. In either case, if you're an adventurer passing through and willing to help or even just a foolhardy member of that village who doesn't want to it to happen again, the dragon is a threat and an antagonist to be dealt with. My point is that goblins, dragons and the like are fictional monsters. They are only as "human" as the person telling the story makes them. Maybe they're intelligent and able to converse with humans and understand morality or maybe they're more primal and see humans as little more than dinner. Or they could be something entirely more alien. At the end of the day, they're fictional monsters and the rules are what the author makes them.

Well, in the campaign I'm currently in, goblins are a caste of a species of semi-intelligent asexual bipedal fungus who enjoy violence above all else to the point that they'll gladly pick fights with each other if no one else is available and reproduce by dying. Warhammer is funny like that.

(Emphasis mine)

Right, and my argument is that we then run the risk of making them too human in behavior and appearance (displayed attributes that are proven by the narrative), while only making them completely unhuman in morality (informed attributes that might only amount to a paragraph of flavor text from the DM, or throwaway statements from NPCs). That's the danger: that we'll arrive at "this thing is always deadly and you need to kill it to survive, don't try to reason with it" without doing any work to identify what makes it irredeemable. Without any other reasons to go off of, the mind might start to associate "irredeemable evil" with skin color or certain cultural behaviors, and that's the danger I see.

Before I address the other points you've presented, I'd just like the clarify if you were referring to a group including me here? I could understand if you were I just wanted to be clear. No hard feelings either way.

At the start of this thread, it did seem like you were trying to defend Roy and felt like Durkon's "accusation" (really, I'd call it more of an "observation") was unfair. I'm not sure if your thoughts have changed in the ensuing pages.

I agree that most of the factors of Durkon’s response include what you said, I just feel it ends up coming across manipulative. For example if I told you “Elan saved a murderer”, without understanding the context of Nale and the situation at the time, this could be interpreted a lot of way and it certainly wouldn’t be evidence for why Elan should save every murderer, or that he’s somewhat biased if he doesn’t save a Goblin murderer.

Similar things could be done with “Belkar apologized for hitting somebody”, “Varsuvius abandoned his lover for years”, “Haley attempted to break a known thief and rebel out of prison”. These all have varying degrees of applicability and their inaccuracy would be determined by the conclusion we’re trying to draw from them, like if you wanted to say “Belkar should be nice to Goblins because he was nice to Durkon that time” it would obviously be inaccurate.

So when Roy says it’s hard to negotiate mid fight, and Durkon points out a fight against what he thought was his best friend, in a specific circumstance that could be resolved non-violently, where Roy was in fact losing and nearly died because he was trying to talk, it ceases to be a defense that defeats Roy’s argument, yet Roy admits defeat regardless.

I’d also like to point out that your short joke was both character accurate to Durkon and funny and that’s why it worked. Durkon punches up, and he’s short. Love it.

Again, I want to highlight The Bechdel Test because I think it's really valuable for its parallels to this discussion. Durkon is essentially saying that Roy's behavior didn't "pass the test". But the Bechdel Test isn't about whether or not a movie is sexist: it's about whether or not ALL movies tend to underrepresent women. Using it on an individual basis to judge the quality of a movie is - to use your word - manipulative. Many acclaimed works that highlight women fail to pass the test, too. That Roy's behavior "failed the test" isn't an accusation against Roy; it's an observation that even his behavior reflects the society in which he grew up. Sure, he had plenty of good reasons to not try talking (the only goblins they encountered have been in relation to Xykon & Redcloak), AND talking probably wouldn't have changed anything!

The point is simply that he never tried. And if enough people don't try - for good reasons, bad reasons, or neutral ones - then it forms a pattern of behavior, and soon the goblins never get asked questions or spoken to like fellow sentient mortals.

This is a good point. Just because a story tasks you with thinking about something, doesn't necessarily mean it's meant to give you an answer. Especially with things like this which, in the real world don't have obvious answers or quick fixes.

And based on what Durkon said during his first attempts at negotiations, I imagine it's understand the larger societal problems in this story won't be having any of those either. That's a good thing, writing wise.

I also like this point. "Sitting in your discomfort" is something I've run into a lot: sometimes it's not about figuring out the entire problem and identifying who's to blame or what we should do. Sometimes, the first step is to just acknowledge the problem and sit in it, and work through your feelings on it personally, before collaborating to fix things on a grander scale.