Theory about the Dark One

[Worldsong]

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

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

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

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

Two points to be made here.

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

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

So with that in mind:

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

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

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

[Peelee]

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

But I strongly disagree with it

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

Goblins are evil

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

[Goblin_Priest]

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

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

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

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

I could have missed or misunderstood a few quotes though.

[The Pilgrim]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[hamishspence]

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

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

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

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

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

Leave it up to the DM what alignment to assign a particular monster (based on its personality and actions as determined by the same DM).

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

[Peelee]

In addition...

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

Spoiler: The author disagreeing with you

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

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

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

Spoiler: The author disagreeing with you

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

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

Spoiler: The author disagreeing with you

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

I just think this double-objective weakens both efforts.

Spoiler: The author disagreeing with you

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I am not playing a game.

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

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

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

Spoiler: The author disagreeing with you

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

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

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

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

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

This, exactly.

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

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

Oh wait—I am!

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

[Jason]

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

I said those things in another thread and received a rather incredulous response.

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

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

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

[hamishspence]

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

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

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

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

[mjasghar]

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

[Worldsong]

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

[Jason]

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

.
Sure, I've considered that, and obviously my personal experience is limited to the places I've lived and played.

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

[KorvinStarmast]

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

Fair question. That's the challenge confronting Jirix, mostly off screen.

1) The nations that have accepted the hobgoblin conquest of Azure City, did it mostly out of fear of the Lich

And until they can sing "ding dong the Lich is dead" I doubt they'll reverse course.

2) Without Redcloak, who is also likely to no longer exist by the end of the book, the Hobgoblins might very soon forget about Redcloak's ideals and go back to their old ways of living (which, btw, involved peaceful co-existence with the Azurites. Jirix probably isn't the former Supreme Leader, but he was raised under his rule).

Jirix will either grow into the job, and be a competent leader, or he won't. That's a bit of char dev that may or may not stay off screen.

3) The Hobgoblins are occuping stolen lands. Their lands are the hills they came down from, where many of their women and children still live.

Right, their homeland got larger. (Often happens with a successful invasion). I don't see that as a problem unless the Azurites can put together a coalition. Hinjo has to first re establish the Azurites where they are, then he can hope to mount a reconquista.

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

One of RC's constant refrains was "we goblins have poor lands, that's why we are in the situation we are in." OK, now they have good lands. We'll see.

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

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

I think it's an off screen plot years after the Order saves the world, kind of like the Vaarsuvius redemption plot: V has so much atoning to do that it would take it's own few books to handle it ... and as noted above, Hinjo has to rebuild Azurite power to mount an amphibious invasion. Something like D-Day, but harder.

[Goblin_Priest]

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

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

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

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

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

[Kornaki]

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

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

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

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

[Jason]

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

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

https://www.lung.org/research/trends...tobacco-trends

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

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

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

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

[KorvinStarmast]

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

Lien is seen smoking in GDGU. As a teenager.
Personal anecdote:
I started trying out smokes in junior high; smoked on and off for quite a few years. Quit (for the last time) some years ago and this time, unlike the other extended quitting spans (many of them lasting for years), it's for good. I don't even have the once a year cigar on New Years eve. Done is done.

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

or never srarted in the '90s

My kids very cleverly never started.

I don't think killing non-existent monsters while pretending to be a hero will do any psychological harm to you.

It won't. See also the alleged harm that first person shooter video games do or don't do.

I'm not as sure about pretending to kill monster children or other obvious non-combatants, or pretending to engage in torture or cruelty towards these same non-existent monsters.

This is where a GM or a DM needs to draw a line, use a tool like applying "lines and veils" or the use the clumsily named (but useful!) X Card. If you are really interested, there are some interesting sites on the web for "RPG safety tools" that can be handy to apply in uncomfortable situations during play.

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

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

[Goblin_Priest]

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

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

https://www.lung.org/research/trends...tobacco-trends

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed.

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