OOTS #1113 - The Discussion Thread

[derfenrirwolv]

They ask me why I'm bringin'
A baby into battle

"Thats really irresponsible"
And getting them rattled

I say "Give me a break
Get off my back dammit"

I didn't learn parenting
My daddy was a planet

Zardu Hasselfrau
Zardu Hasselfrau

HEY!

(apologies if its been said before)

[8BitNinja]

Well in OOTS, they have a reason.

I'm not denying that. I just think that it's odd how creatures who have the good alignment on the individual level (majority wise, there obviously are dwarves that deviate) don't have it on the societal level.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Not really surprising. Studies have repeatedly shown that people just don't act against the herd, whatever the culture, and herds tend to be passive. Stand around, eat, make children, repeat.

As someone once said, committees bring out the coward in everyone, because you don't need to act. You just go along.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm not denying that. I just think that it's odd how creatures who have the good alignment on the individual level (majority wise, there obviously are dwarves that deviate) don't have it on the societal level.

1. Things to not scale up evenly from individual to culture

2. Suggest you do a little reading on the psychology of crowds and mobs. (It is interesting reading, to be sure). There are whole books written about that and no, dear paladin, I am not going to TLDR a rather complex bit of psychology.

3. Within any given group or culture there are deviations form the mean. That's being a sentient being. Ant colonies and human cultures don't overlap all that much.

[Shining Wrath]

Strange how Dwarves are typically Lawful Good but have a Lawful Neutral culture.

I think most governments would tend toward LN. Laws are how governments function, so you write and enforce laws to accomplish whatever goals you may have - even if your goal is to maximize freedom in a CN sense, writing and enforcing laws is how a government would accomplish that.

The alternative is lawless rule by whoever is in charge with absolute caprice, unless overruled by a stronger person in charge. That's going to be tend toward CE in most cases; something about absolute power corrupting and so on.

[hamishspence]

I think most governments would tend toward LN. Laws are how governments function, so you write and enforce laws to accomplish whatever goals you may have - even if your goal is to maximize freedom in a CN sense, writing and enforcing laws is how a government would accomplish that.

Large-scale government tends to be Lawful. According to DMG2, all thriving empires are Lawful - if the become Chaotic, they fall apart. And Cityscape, for communities of Large Town size or larger, has a much higher percentage be Lawful than Chaotic (whereas the DMG percentages are not nearly as biased in favour of Law - though there is a slight bias).

[Shining Wrath]

Large-scale government tends to be Lawful. According to DMG2, all thriving empires are Lawful - if the become Chaotic, they fall apart. And Cityscape, for communities of Large Town size or larger, has a much higher percentage be Lawful than Chaotic (whereas the DMG percentages are not nearly as biased in favour of Law - though there is a slight bias).

Agree.

A tribe can be rule of the chief, what he says goes, until a new chief comes along by defeating the old one. It's hard to do that with a population size larger than a few dozen.

Even if you want your elves to be CG, the king is likely to issue laws, abide by precedents, appoint people to subordinate positions to exercise power on his behalf, and other Lawful stuff.

Taking this further, even if the rulers are not lawful neutral, the government will tend that way. An evil set of rulers doesn't want to be too overt in their oppression, as even crushed rebellions consume valuable resources (such as the peasants you kill not paying their taxes next year). A good set of rulers will likely have trouble legislating things like generosity and forgiveness.

[Lord Joeltion]

On a closer inspection, if Hilgya's modus operandi is the same as Durkon (WWLD*), the assassination attempt on her husband now makes a lot more sense. Even if there actually was another way to sabotage the marriage.

A lot of her craziness has just became standard OOTS wackiness, maybe

*What Would Loki Do

[8BitNinja]

1. Things to not scale up evenly from individual to culture

2. Suggest you do a little reading on the psychology of crowds and mobs. (It is interesting reading, to be sure). There are whole books written about that and no, dear paladin, I am not going to TLDR a rather complex bit of psychology.

3. Within any given group or culture there are deviations form the mean. That's being a sentient being. Ant colonies and human cultures don't overlap all that much.

Thank you for your wisdom. It's been a while since I read about group psychology.

[Devils_Advocate]

In standard D&D cosmology, if Thor is CG, who is the dwarven LG god? Is there even one?

Moradin. Thor isn't even a dwarven god. He's a Norse god.

This reminds me of someone on some thread I had seen somewhere, who claimed that in elder scrolls interracial relations with beast races is bestiality. That's pretty much missing the point of words. Bestiality isn't bestiality because animals have fur, it's bestiality because of the differences between the cognitive capabilities between humans and animals. Similarly here, when people discuss the mores of humans, they're not mores of humans because they're only about humans, they're mores of everything with the same cognitive and emotional capabilities (which includes most intelligent beings in OotS). It's unnecessary to clarify this in the real world of course as only humans possess such.

Humans don't all have the same of set cognitive and emotional capabilities, and there are plenty of cognitive and emotional capabilities shared between humans and other species.

Again, I am not claiming that Hilgya took the best approach to solve her problem (she tried to kill someone for crying out loud!) just that she is right that there was a problem and liking her escape (not exactly what I mean ut best translation I can find) to the act ofa neurotic teenager isn't fair.

("likening") :)

Most of the gods haven't done anything though.

Shall I take it that you haven't read Start of Darkness?

A society consisting entirely of sheep that have to act one specific way or be damned for eternity is a society that will end up unchanging, decaying and dead and that does not deserve to keep existing anyways.

You clearly wrote that they had no right to exist because you didnt like their culture

That's not clear to me from the above at all. The existence of a society is not the same thing as the existence of the members of that society; the society and the individuals within it are not the same thing. The whole is not merely its parts, but also the relationships between them, and it is the latter that is objectionable here.

See, now, people, would you rather argue with me or with him?

We don't have to choose just one or the other.

It is not oppression to create a culture which serves the biological needs of the majority of its members.

That's not necessarily oppressive, but it's not inherently non-oppressive either.

There are individualists in dwarven society, but they are rare enough that dwarven society can ignore them without lasting harm to society. This is not evil or oppressive because it serves to benefit the conformist majority.

What do you think "oppressive" means? I Googled it and the first definition listed was "unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate group" (emphasis mine).

Society is not a means to achieve personal benefit. It is a construct devised to insure the survival of the society.

"Individuals should serve society, not vice versa" seems fairly Lawful Evil, as it actively devalues sentient beings as anything but a means to an end.

Seeking to maximize the net welfare of sentient beings, and valuing institutions like "society" as tools for doing so, would be a contrasting Lawful Good approach.

do you really think the Federation would shed many tears should Bajorans or even Maquis blow up Cardassia Prime?

I get the impression that the Federation is a sort of society that finds genocide fairly appalling.

I used the Federation as a shorthand for the kind of moderate societal norms most of us in this forum presumably believe in - no forced marriages, everyone gets pursuit of happiness and so on.

Basically, the standards for societal freedoms to which, presumably, most of us are accustomed.

I get the impression that most members of this forum are pretty strongly opposed to genocide.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that modern liberal democracies are more okay with genocide than they are with forced marriage. I'm not aware of any evidence that that's an actual thing. On the contrary, the responses that you've received in these threads seems like significant evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it's time to admit that you're a bit out of touch?

See, what you're implying here is that the right not to marry someone is more valuable than the right not to be killed. But, um... wasn't Hilgya was made to marry someone by threatening her with death? Like, if she would have rather been killed than marry Ivan, she could have just opted for that, right? To make that choice for her and for everyone else, thereby robbing them of even more agency, doesn't seem like a defense of freedom. The problem with "Live free or die" is that it's given in the imperative. Bit of an implicit contradiction, there. Even if Hilgya was under threat of torture instead, the pain caused by a violent uprising might similarly be greater than the pain prevented, particularly if the violent uprising itself involved the use of torture.

Nothing justifies any reaction whatsoever.

Perhaps it's possible that, in some case where a group is harming beings that wouldn't get blown up by blowing up the group, the harm prevented by blowing up that group along with a bunch of innocents is greater than the harm done. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. Dwarven leaders aren't e.g., to our knowledge, invading, raiding, conquering, etc. foreign lands. The idea that the dwarves could be "liberated" by blowing them all up seems like the Chaotic Evil to brian's Lawful Evil. And given that doing so would send them all to Hel, it also seems factually wrong. So there's that.

[hamishspence]

Shall I take it that you haven't read Start of Darkness?

I have. And nothing in Start of Darkness says that the main pantheons have "wronged the dwarves" the way Thor Loki & Hel did.

They may have wronged the "monster races" - but the crayon strips are not objective, but narration by Redcloak - they may have errors.

[Fyraltari]

("likening") :)

Godsdammit.

[Devils_Advocate]

I have. And nothing in Start of Darkness says that the main pantheons have "wronged the dwarves" the way Thor Loki & Hel did.

Well, I simply don't agree that wronging non-dwarves "isn't anything" in this context. I see the specific incident that you refer to as just one manifestation of a more general trend of unjust and/or incompetent* divine mismanagement. I don't think that the mistreatment of mortals is hunky dory so long as the dwarves, the goblinoids, etc. all get screwed over separately in different ways. Setting their "lessers" against each other is part of how those in power profit at the expense of those out of power. So long as the mortal races are each only concerned with their own kind, there's little hope of meaningful change. Only by uniting together in a GLOBAL revolution can they hope to throw off their deific oppressors!

... Y'know, assuming that such a response to unjust and/or incompetent divine mismanagement is warranted, wise, etc. But saying that it's none of those things is a different argument from suggesting that the gods don't mistreat mortals. Which of course they do, it would be a surprise if they didn't!

*Remember how the gods accidentally created the Snarl? "Whoopsy daisy" seems a bit insufficient to cover that.

Godsdammit.

I told you the word that you were looking for! You should be grateful!

[Fyraltari]

Only by uniting together in a global revolution can they hope to throw off their deific oppressors.

Yeah, the Gods have an off-switch on the world so I don't think that's a viable plan.

I told you the word that you were looking for! You should be grateful!

I am.

[zimmerwald1915]

Yeah, the Gods have an off-switch on the world so I don't think that's a viable plan.

Point of order: the gods have an off-switch on the Material Plane. Which just means that any revolution would have to wait until the afterlives. Which is probably appropriate, because mortal souls are as much as or more exploited as plane batteries as they are as living worshipers.

[Peelee]

Point of order: the gods have an off-switch on the Material Plane. Which just means that any revolution would have to wait until the afterlives. Which is probably appropriate, because mortal souls are as much as or more exploited as plane batteries as they are as living worshipers.

Devil's advocate: if mortal souls weren't, they wouldn't have existed at all in the first place.

[Kish]

Without getting into real-world religion or politics, I'll just say that I don't think that would stop Rich from presenting a soul rebellion against the gods as being in the right.

If he wanted to. Which I expect will be well beyond the scope of this story, where the D&D afterlife setup is likely to remain at the level of "it exists, occasionally people comment on it, but no one the spotlight is focused on is actively interested in either changing or maintaining it."

[Fyraltari]

Point of order: the gods have an off-switch on the Material Plane. Which just means that any revolution would have to wait until the afterlives. Which is probably appropriate, because mortal souls are as much as or more exploited as plane batteries as they are as living worshipers.

I suspect they have one on the afterlives too.

[zimmerwald1915]

I suspect they have one on the afterlives too.

I think not. It is the Material Plane that is described as being woven of the "threads of reality" that the gods control.

That said, the gods are still phenomenally powerful in themselves and both live and lead armies in the outer planes, so the distinction is a bit meaningless.

[Keltest]

I think not. It is the Material Plane that is described as being woven of the "threads of reality" that the gods control.

That said, the gods are still phenomenally powerful in themselves and both live and lead armies in the outer planes, so the distinction is a bit meaningless.

well presumably the afterlives didn't exist before the mortals did, so while they may not be able to turn off all the Outer Planes, the afterlife portions could well be made to disassemble on demand.

[Devils_Advocate]

Devil's advocate: if mortal souls weren't, they wouldn't have existed at all in the first place.

What's a reasonable price to charge for existence? A period of weirdly codified, limited indentured servitude not to exceed 18 years, perhaps? A little arbitrary, but not necessarily too unreasonable? Might be alright, so long as we default to questioning whether the specific practices involved are ethical, rather than accepting them because they're the norm. Could we do that, on a societal level?

Ha ha, I'm joking of course, we don't do that with anything.

[Fyraltari]

What's a reasonable price to charge for existence? A period of weirdly codified, limited indentured servitude not to exceed 18 years, perhaps? A little arbitrary, but not necessarily too unreasonable? Might be alright, so long as we default to questioning whether the specific practices involved are ethical, rather than accepting them because they're the norm. Could we do that, on a societal level?

Ha ha, I'm joking of course, we don't do that with anything.

The souls are not submitted to indentured servitude in the OOTS-afterlife. Moving up and down the mountain is entirely their choice. They turn into embodiment of their alignment as they, by themselves, lose interest in anything else than that by way of fullfilment. There is no indication that turning into god food is in any way harmful or painful to the soul.

In fact it can be seen as a nice escape from this horrible fate.

[hamishspence]

I'd think of their final state as less "god food" and more "the building blocks of new outsiders".

A lemure is built from a soul shell - and a soul shell has every bit of individuality wrung from it, before being turned into a lemure. Which can then climb the chain of command - transforming into different kinds of devil along the way.

Similarly, I would guess that when someone reaches the top of the mountain, and "achieves perfect enlightenment" - they are transformed into a lantern archon (which is not allowed to the top of the mountain again after the first time - and cannot remember what it was like) - which can become other, more powerful archons (with hands) along the way.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0493.html

[Devils_Advocate]

My experience has been that D&D material on what happens to the souls of the dead is generally pretty vague. But that which does describe them as turning into alignment exemplars generally seems to have them lose their memories either before or shortly after arriving on their new home planes, which isn't the case here.

The general picture seems to be of mortals being reborn as chump petitioners who then have to work their way up to balor or pit fiend but probably die before then. (The ecology of the Upper Planes is not explored in nearly so much detail, because the Upper Planes are far less of a source of adversaries and adventures than the Lower Planes. The Upper Planes cause and contain far fewer problems that adventurers need to sort out, while the Lower Planes kind of specialize in creating problems.) But that's the default fate of souls without patron gods. And having a patron god is described as the norm for mortals, so the default isn't even standard. It's pretty clear that we only even get "fiends come from dead mortals" because that's relevant information about the fiends.

Roy even nominally worships the Northern Gods, as I recall, and it's entirely possible that all of the souls plainly identifiable as a former mortal also have or had patron deities of some sort, so really nothing here actually contradicts the core Planescape model, because that's actually the exception.

It seems highly doubtful that a soul would be reset to the lowest level of enlightenment only to have to go through them all again, so what you suggest implies that each level of the mountain represents two different levels of enlightenment. Which would be weird. But maybe it makes sense in a way for the greatest student to graduate to the position of lowest teacher.

The souls are not submitted to indentured servitude in the OOTS-afterlife. Moving up and down the mountain is entirely their choice. They turn into embodiment of their alignment as they, by themselves, lose interest in anything else than that by way of fullfilment. There is no indication that turning into god food is in any way harmful or painful to the soul.

That's how things work in the afterlife that Roy went to, any probably at least pretty close to how things work in the Upper Planes in general. Souls that go to the Lower Planes are very likely rather less free than that to do as they please, and subjected to rather less pleasant conditions. To put it mildly. But that's what they get for bein' Evil.

And, hey, if you want to be Evil and not get enslaved by fiends you can cut some sort of deal with a demon or a devil, or, most commonly, an Evil deity. If you like conquest, then just worship an Evil god of war and fight in his name and you can keep on fightin' for him after you die. This doesn't even require you to do anything that you weren't going to do anyway! Virtually every lifestyle is endorsed by some deity or another, so shop around and find the right one for you. Basically all that's required to get an appropriate god on your side is that you express appreciation for his support (i.e. worship), which your god needs to have the power to assist you and others in doing your thing, so that's seriously not an unreasonable demand. You don't have to do this, of course, but then you have to deal with the consequences of not having a deity on your side. Like, you made your bed, so now lie in it, y'know?

Regardless, I wasn't describing how souls are treated in the OotS afterlife. I was alluding to the way in which actual human beings are treated in the actual real world that we actually live in. If that didn't even occur to you, then I feel that that rather underscores my overall point.

I'm not arguing that children should be free. I'm just saying that situations where someone's freedom is restricted deserve moral scrutiny. But cultural norms tend to be accepted because they're cultural norms. So restrictions on freedom that are cultural norms receive less moral scrutiny than they should. But that's not particular to the treatment of children or even to restrictions on freedom in general. Other morally dubious practices that are cultural norms also receive less moral scrutiny than they should. Because cultural norms tend to be accepted because they're cultural norms.

Hopefully you understand my intended point now that I've dragged it out of the subtext.

[Fyraltari]

Regardless, I wasn't describing how souls are treated in the OotS afterlife. I was alluding to the way in which actual human beings are treated in the actual real world that we actually live in. If that didn't even occur to you, then I feel that that rather underscores my overall point.

As much as I can remember what I was thinking three weeks ago, I think that I understood that you were talking about but didn't see how that was relevant to the topic at hand.

I'm not arguing that children should be free. I'm just saying that situations where someone's freedom is restricted deserve moral scrutiny. But cultural norms tend to be accepted because they're cultural norms. So restrictions on freedom that are cultural norms receive less moral scrutiny than they should. But that's not particular to the treatment of children or even to restrictions on freedom in general. Other morally dubious practices that are cultural norms also receive less moral scrutiny than they should. Because cultural norms tend to be accepted because they're cultural norms.

Hopefully you understand my intended point now that I've dragged it out of the subtext.

While I agree, I still don't see what this has to do with thediscussion, as I explained the freedoms of the souls on the LG afterlife (and I suspect the NG and CG too) are not being restricted in any way.

[Devils_Advocate]

As much as I can remember what I was thinking three weeks ago, I think that I understood that you were talking about but didn't see how that was relevant to the topic at hand.

Ah. Good thing I said "If", then.

While I agree, I still don't see what this has to do with thediscussion

I guess that my more general point is that the sort of criticism I see being directed at the behavior of fictional deities in a comic strip might be a bit more usefully directed at the behavior of actual persons in the real world. Like, for example, someone might comment that the gods treat mortals like cattle. And we can then argue about how fair an assessment that is. But underlying that commentary is the idea that how cattle are treated is, you know, bad. That's an actual thing that happens in the actual world we live in and we can do something in response to that.

Not only are moral standards not really for assessing purely hypothetical situations, they're not specifically for assessing unusual situations either. They can and should be used to examine things that people already do regularly*, including things considered acceptable. Otherwise things wind up staying acceptable out of cultural inertia rather than because they should be.

*I suppose that this summarizes as "Ethics is for everyday living".