Goblin Oppression; fact or fiction?

[Worldsong]

You can do that just fine if they're bandits/soldiers/whatever who attack you on sight first.

Yeah but attack on sight implies you're the one attacking them on sight.

[Wildstag]

I feel like Rich's stance was clear on the treatment & portrayal of monstrous humanoids ever since he had Belkar quip about it in comic 13. I only read the print-only books years later, and I felt like they re-affirmed and expanded my already-held opinions about the goblin subplot, rather than creating them from scratch.

Taking a comment made in the double-digits before an overarching plot was even set up (it's literally just describing a "go kill big bad" plot and that's it); especially a comment made by the only explicitly Evil character in the party and that is immediately frowned upon by literally every Good character in the party as a world-wide viewpoint?

It seems to me just writing out that full explanation counters your point by sharing it. If the argument relies solely on Belkar being the voice of the overall population, or at least a significant enough one that people take HIM seriously? You're reaching.

Half the point of Belkar is that literally everyone that interacts with him despises him and his murderhobo behavior. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone else that is as much of a murderhobo as he is out of the tens (what, almost a hundred now?) named characters aside from Xykon. Maybe Thog?

Acting like his behavior is at all representative of the overall population in the world as we see it is a stretch of the imagination, especially when the majority of Good and Neutral characters have been shown to be opposed to that mindset.

Merriam-Webster refers to oppression as "unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power". On a mortal level, we haven't really seen oppression (at least in the online-only, but again, if it matters that much, put it online and make it free), because the goblins have been under their own authority and power. At most, it's xenophobia or racism resulting in a crusade/war, rather than "oppression".

You could reasonably argue that the Deities are oppressing them, if it were not shown that the crayon-art is even more an unreliable narrator than the characters in the comic are. We don't have a Deity that explicitly cared about the Goblins, however we don't have objective evidence (that I can recall, and that isn't crayon) that they were created to be sources of experience for PCs.

Elves were also unsponsored and just created to fill a trope niche, so why don't we assume they too were created to be fodder for growing adventurers? Again, because Rich assumes that generally people have a certain perspective based on his own experiences playing the game. I think that speaks to a level of cynicism and shallow understanding of humanity as a whole.


As for Lord Raziere, see my point about people with agendas. Every interpretation written up by a person is going to have inherent biases, especially highlighted by statements like "Themes I Have Observed". Anyone else is going to observe things differently.

[Jason]

An interesting thought: Belkar is supposed to be a parody of a type of problem player, and the fact that he's so popular while Miko, a parody of a different sort of problem player was distinctly not popular might indicate that there are far more Mikos than Belkars out there; far more self-righteous paladins than murder hobos.

[Ionathus]

Taking a comment made in the double-digits before an overarching plot was even set up (it's literally just describing a "go kill big bad" plot and that's it); especially a comment made by the only explicitly Evil character in the party and that is immediately frowned upon by literally every Good character in the party as a world-wide viewpoint?

It seems to me just writing out that full explanation counters your point by sharing it. If the argument relies solely on Belkar being the voice of the overall population, or at least a significant enough one that people take HIM seriously? You're reaching.

Half the point of Belkar is that literally everyone that interacts with him despises him and his murderhobo behavior. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone else that is as much of a murderhobo as he is out of the tens (what, almost a hundred now?) named characters aside from Xykon. Maybe Thog?

Acting like his behavior is at all representative of the overall population in the world as we see it is a stretch of the imagination, especially when the majority of Good and Neutral characters have been shown to be opposed to that mindset.

I apologize if I miscommunicated. I wasn't saying "Belkar's statement in comic #13 is the bedrock of the Goblin Oppression narrative." I don't see Belkar as a good spokesperson at all, and I certainly don't see him as any sort of "voice of the people."

I was simply pointing out that Rich as a writer was already poking fun at this mentality from the very beginning, so it didn't surprise me much when the topic continued to resurface in later strips.

An interesting thought: Belkar is supposed to be a parody of a type of problem player, and the fact that he's so popular while Miko, a parody of a different sort of problem player was distinctly not popular might indicate that there are far more Mikos than Belkars out there; far more self-righteous paladins than murder hobos.

The holier-than-thou bit might play a big part in that divide: characters who act smug, superior, or dismissive are often more hated by fans (sometimes in a love-to-hate way) than characters who just do "bad stuff" but are pretty open and blunt about it. Personally, I doubt that it has much to do with readers "seeing themselves" in Miko vs Belkar, and more to do with how annoying it is to read a smug antagonist.

But then, I don't believe there are truly all that many murderhobos or self-righteous paladins in the playerbase either. I agree with the people who've depicted it as a very loud, annoying minority.

[Lethologica]

I submit that the difference in popularity is purely down to how the story is written. Belkar is a protagonist and accordingly given jokes, POV time, awesome moments, a pseudo-redemption arc, the eventual grudging respect of the other protagonists, etc. Miko is always the killjoy antagonist, even when the other people in the room are literally Redcloak and Xykon. She is both unrelentingly strait-laced and the least self-aware character in a parody comic, hence always the unsympathetic butt of the satire. That has nothing to do with the frequency of killjoy paladins vs. lazy murderhobos around the table.

[Wildstag]

I apologize if I miscommunicated. I wasn't saying "Belkar's statement in comic #13 is the bedrock of the Goblin Oppression narrative." I don't see Belkar as a good spokesperson at all, and I certainly don't see him as any sort of "voice of the people."

I was simply pointing out that Rich as a writer was already poking fun at this mentality from the very beginning, so it didn't surprise me much when the topic continued to resurface in later strips.

Fair, I guess.

I just don't think he sets it up in the comic aside from Belkar's attitude, and snippets of what the VILLAIN is saying. Of course the villain is going to try to justify his stance. In the online-only stuff, we don't even see non-combatant Goblinoid life, and when we do it's played for laughs.

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.

The comic is criticizing not how the game is intended to be played, but how the game is actually played and has been for 35+ years. And how it is actually played 9 times out of 10 is that goblins are slaughtered because they are goblins, and the book says that goblins are Evil so it's OK. If you've never played in a game with people like that, then congratulations! You've had an exceptionally lucky D&D career, and that whole portion of the comic's subtext is Not For You.

In D&D fiction, I don't see that as being the case, and Salvatore has basically made a career of showing the "evil races" as being significantly more nuanced than just one or two notable exceptions. If you expanded the search to include books published by TSR or WotC, you'd probably find a similar situation. Unironic xenophobia and racism doesn't really sell well.

But then, I don't believe there are truly all that many murderhobos or self-righteous paladins in the playerbase either. I agree with the people who've depicted it as a very loud, annoying minority.

Regardless of whether we in this discussion feel that it murderhobos are a loud annoying minority, the issue rests on the fact that Rich seems to believe the reverse. The whole "goblins are oppressed" subplot hinges on the fact that when you say "self aware stick figure fantasy", the standard is that murderhoboing is commonplace and "death to green-and-fanged humans" is ubiquitous; the self-aware aspect hinges on those two things being truth. To me it seems lazy to just assume the reader has experienced something enough to relate to it. And more to the point, his assumption comes off as condescending when he declares his experience to be THE TRUTH, and not just HIS TRUTH.

Social commentary that relies on the writer's experiences being THE TRUTH and not just a fraction of it is inherently flawed. Especially when they make little to no effort to demonstrate that experience in their own work.

P.S. The last three sentences are also why I suspect certain people dislike a couple other comic's shifts in recent years.

P.P.S. Sorry I lack the ability to write concisely or provide tldrs.

[Ionathus]

Regardless of whether we in this discussion feel that it murderhobos are a loud annoying minority, the issue rests on the fact that Rich seems to believe the reverse. The whole "goblins are oppressed" subplot hinges on the fact that when you say "self aware stick figure fantasy", the standard is that murderhoboing is commonplace and "death to green-and-fanged humans" is ubiquitous; the self-aware aspect hinges on those two things being truth. It's lazy storytelling to just assume the reader has experienced something enough to relate to it. And more to the point, his assumption comes off as condescending when he declares his experience to be THE TRUTH, and not just HIS TRUTH.

Social commentary that relies on the writer's experiences being THE TRUTH and not just a fraction of it is inherently flawed. Especially when they make little to no effort to demonstrate that experience in their own work.

First off: Rich wasn't talking about murderhobos. He was talking about the treatment of goblinoids by everyone, not just the sadistic people justifying their behavior. Casual, unthinking "othering" of another sentient group is a lot more insidious than the outright sadistic type, because it rears its head in lots of sneaky small ways, even when the people involved don't have bad intentions.

Second: You're making a lot of assumptions about my opinions, this discussion, Rich's statements, and the comic at large. When I read OotS, I don't see any "requirement" for the readership to have experienced a certain playstyle or character treatment or goblinoid racism. Hell, there isn't even a requirement to play D&D -- I've been reading the comic for years and didn't start playing D&D until 2018.

I don't see anyone (Rich included), broadcasting "THE TRUTH" as you claim. I see plenty of characters, arguing and struggling against each other, asking questions and arriving at answers as the narrative unfolds. Hell, Redcloak's hypocrisy, which has recently been called out in-comic, is a clear sign that the story isn't just dealing in a bunch of preachy absolutes.

I've really valued this entire discussion, but now I'm afraid that I'm coming across as condescending. If it helps, please know that I don't hold ill will against anyone who disagrees with the "Goblin Oppression" narrative, anyone who's ever treated monstrous humanoids as black-and-white villains in their own games, or anyone else in this debate. I chimed in to give my own analysis of OotS, and share my opinions about how certain playstyles feel, to me, harmful. I'm certainly not here to condemn other people for how they play the game, but I'm happy to debate that "how" if they are.

[pendell]

The idea of "Don't kill a monster just because it looks different, or even if it is hostile" has been around since at least the Star Trek Episode Devil In The Dark . While there are people willing to kill someone merely for being the wrong species or gender or sex, there's been such a strong push in the other direction from popular culture in the last fifty years I have a hard time anyone above the age of 12 could go murderhobo and know it wasn't wrong, even if it was technically within game rules.

Although, on the other side of the coin, not every game or story needs moral complexity. Sometimes you want to explore the human condition; sometimes you just want to break heads. If I sit down to checkers, I'm more than willing to capture red pieces for no other reason than that they are not my piece's color, nor is it "genocide" to do so. This is a combat game, however, simplistic, and fighting is what they're here for.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Wildstag]

I don't see anyone (Rich included), broadcasting "THE TRUTH" as you claim. I see plenty of characters, arguing and struggling against each other, asking questions and arriving at answers as the narrative unfolds. Hell, Redcloak's hypocrisy, which has recently been called out in-comic, is a clear sign that the story isn't just dealing in a bunch of preachy absolutes.

I've really valued this entire discussion, but now I'm afraid that I'm coming across as condescending. If it helps, please know that I don't hold ill will against anyone who disagrees with the "Goblin Oppression" narrative, anyone who's ever treated monstrous humanoids as black-and-white villains in their own games, or anyone else in this debate. I chimed in to give my own analysis of OotS, and share my opinions about how certain playstyles feel, to me, harmful. I'm certainly not here to condemn other people for how they play the game, but I'm happy to debate that "how" if they are.

I just mean "THE TRUTH" as in those "the giant" quotes. Sure, they were written in 2012, and perhaps with a decade of thought Rich may think differently about them, I try not to assume anything more about him than what has already been said (simply because I do not know how a person has changed in their personal lives).

Redcloak can be a hypocrite without changing the fact that the author can feel similarly; it is the character's actions that makes him a hypocrite, not his words alone.

The meat of this setting is "self-aware stick figure fantasy", and the way it's portrayed makes it clear that "fantasy" comes packaged with "racism". And though that is certainly true in several games I've played, and in many stories I've read, they're never as simple as "the creature is inherently evil, and killing them is always justified" (or at least, not any humanoid creatures).

Comments like the one I quoted are a statement about everyone based on a single person's experiences. I would ultimately say that this comic has handled alignment better than it has the racism subplot.

Yeah, I value the discussion, and I don't want to come off as being personally against anyone. I just don't like that so much of the "Yes oppression" relies on taking unreliable narration straight or pay-per-view content being available. If it doesn't matter enough to make free for everyone, then it shouldn't matter enough that entire arguments rest on those examples.

Fwiw, you weren't coming across as condescending. I was trying to refer to Rich, since he's the one writing the story. I see how I could have written that better to better separate those thoughts.

[Lord Raziere]

As for Lord Raziere, see my point about people with agendas. Every interpretation written up by a person is going to have inherent biases, especially highlighted by statements like "Themes I Have Observed". Anyone else is going to observe things differently.

I have an agenda? I am shocked sir. SHOCKED! No one in history has ever had that before! Surely I am unique in this sin and you do not have an agenda of your own by pointing this out at all! Perish the thought.

[ebarde]

I think Belkar is more liked cause as the protagonist, we spend more time with him and get to see his more admirable traits from time to time. Also cause a lot of his early evil actions are played for laughs, and usually he's more or less useful enough to the order. Maybe if the comic was about the adventures of Azure city prison guard #4, we would all hate Belkar just as much as we do Miko. Belkar being a bad person has certainly made the party have a lot of trouble, but Miko's actions are arguably the reason why Xykon and Redcloak are still alive.

[hungrycrow]

I think Belkar is more liked cause as the protagonist, we spend more time with him and get to see his more admirable traits from time to time. Also cause a lot of his early evil actions are played for laughs, and usually he's more or less useful enough to the order. Maybe if the comic was about the adventures of Azure city prison guard #4, we would all hate Belkar just as much as we do Miko. Belkar being a bad person has certainly made the party have a lot of trouble, but Miko's actions are arguably the reason why Xykon and Redcloak are still alive.

I wonder how popular he was during Don't Split the Party when he actually started causing problems for the Order.

[Ionathus]

I wonder how popular he was during Don't Split the Party when he actually started causing problems for the Order.

I wasn't part of the community back then but I certainly started getting tired of him at that point -- especially after that stunt with the Oracle!

His character growth was timed pretty perfectly for my own experience, at least.

[Worldsong]

I wasn't part of the community back then but I certainly started getting tired of him at that point -- especially after that stunt with the Oracle!

His character growth was timed pretty perfectly for my own experience, at least.

Yeah, I think Rich did a good job showing that pre-development Belkar was only marginally useful because Roy had some skill with handling him. The moment Haley was his commander it all went to hell and he became annoyingly problematic.

[Jason]

The idea of "Don't kill a monster just because it looks different, or even if it is hostile" has been around since at least the Star Trek Episode Devil In The Dark .

Oh, that theme is much older than 1967.

How about Bilbo sparing Gollum in The Hobbit? That's after Gollum has already threatened to murder and eat him.
That would be in the revised edition of 1951, not the original, but it's still quite a bit earlier than "Devil in the Dark".

Or you could look at the Conan story "The Tower of the Elephant" Conan spares the very alien Yag-kosha out of pity until the creature asks him to kill it as part of its scheme for revenge on its captor. First published in 1933.

I'm sure there are even earlier examples, but you've probably all heard of those two characters.

[Mightymosy]

Ah, but I've done only done the first step.

Now to compile:

Spoiler: Index of Analyses

Show

Start of Darkness Analysis
No Cure For the Paladin Blues Analysis
War And Xp's Analysis
Don't Split The Party Analysis
Blood Runs In The Family Analysis
Utterly Dwarfed Analysis
Good Deeds Gone Unpunished Analysis

Spoiler: Themes I Have Observed

Show

From these various points of evidence, let us observe the themes that have been most consistently portrayed from these interactions:
Impulsive Adventurers:
Between Celia's pacifism traveling adventurers and her reaction to killing, Right-Eye's efforts to hide himself entering a human city, Belkar's use of adventurers to kill Yikyik and it working because they're a kobold, and other such examples like the cutaway panel in Utterly Dwarfed, there is a undercurrent of adventurers being as impulsive and quick to kill as Belkar, caring about the gold and experience before peoples lives. These examples show up enough that we cannot blame the Sapphire Guard for this. Its clearly, consistently shown that while there isn't organized oppression to specifically kill goblins outside of the Sapphire Guard, adventurers outside of the Order of the Stick are portrayed as paid raiders and murderers concerned only with their own gain, and its considered socially and culturally acceptable to kill monsters like goblins out of reasons like: money, paranoia, a war effort, experience points, hatred, because they are near someone who actually deserves it and revenge. Most adventurers aren't like the protagonist and in fact I'd say even the Order of the Scribble is uncommonly good, thoughtful and altruistic compared to most adventurers as they agreed to protect the Gates to preserve the universe despite their seemingly insurmountable differences, each one sacrificing much of their lives to do so- if they were typical adventurers, they wouldn't have these extreme philosophies and thoughts about the world they live in, nor would they investigate enough to know of the plot and just assume that macguffin is safe when the enemies dead while they collect the loot. It happens so regularly that its clear adventurers killing out of impulse or greed is far from a recent thing and is expected of them as normal from anyone that isn't specifically calling it out as wrong. Not all oppression or systemic injustice has a government behind it, and adventurers in this world form of a system that while ad-hoc, still kills people out of economic, social and cultural reasons and its often portrayed that they don't deserve it

Lack of Arcane Education and Divine Representation:
Throughout the comic most of the spellcasters we see are human. Clerics are a bit more varied in representation, but wizards and sorcerers are almost always human or elven and with often a very snooty attitude towards other peoples intellect, thinking people idiots for not being spellcasters like them or inheriting their power and using it as an opportunity to throw their power around so they can live like a king. While Redcloak is the one goblin cleric exception, most of the monsters don't get any representation in the Godsmoot with orcs maybe being another exception. Furthermore, clerics seem to require an established church hierarchy and organization in this world while wizards require college education, making it unlikely that any random monster would be able to become a cleric or wizard on their own. This is important because given how Wizards and Clerics are known as like, the two of the most powerful classes in 3.5 core? Yeah you want those classes if you want an advantage in these matters, clerics and wizards could go a long way towards bringing equality to the monstrous races as they can do all sorts of things as any 3.5 optimizer can tell you, just look at Dorukan's dungeon and the defenses he made now imagine apply such power to helping improve the lives of monstrous races who are less fortunate. Just look at Cliffport and its application of magic to improve peoples lives! No monsters get that. And I doubt wizard academies accept most monster applications into their institutions given their elitist attitudes, with early V dismissing hobgoblins as unintelligent creatures when the general they were talking to with more experience in dealing with them was perplexed as to why they were sacrificing so many. While Roy faces constant nagging from his father and sister about being a big dumb meatshield rather than becoming a wizard, and since most monsters probably don't have his education I doubt they'd be any better in their eyes. Clerics and Wizards are just plain valued over most other classes in terms of societal contribution. (notice that druids don't get the same level of value, since they're all about nature, not civilization)

Followers =/= Leaders
Another thing that is consistently portrayed throughout the comic and not just among monsters, is that what leaders want and what the people they rule want aren't necessarily the same, and many civilians, citizens or followers are not doing what they do out of actual belief in the cause, but because they have their own reasons or because they are forced into doing it out of circumstance. Its a consistent theme that most people have their own agenda and goals in life even as they doing something else and that they often have to compromise with others to get what they want, or go against their groups values behind their back. We see this with the goblins as well: Redcloak may be all in on the Plan, but its implied most hobgoblins fight for him don't think beyond what their job requires and leave all the thinking to him, and that the goblin leaders before him and HSL-2 were hateful of humans only in some vague lazy way that is more a reinforcement of tradition than anything that automatically provokes war. In turn Redcloak himself has a different agenda than Xykon. Right Eye came to have a different agenda than either of them. Oona herself doesn't join up with Redcloak out of devotion to his cause but rather because she is promised the bugbears will get a better shake with the rest of the goblins if she helps. And How the Paladin Got his Scar is all about how the followers of each respective faction don't agree with their leaders commands and both leaders in the end needed to get ousted from their positions whether by demotion or by death for true peace to be achieved.

But that guarantees nothing as leaders even if they have the best of intentions may not be shared by their people: Heck Thor can't even stop dwarves from attacking TREES for crying out loud! Even if all the good leaders of the world wanted to treat monsters in general better, that doesn't mean everyone will agree with them or that adventurers will comply with their rules, as its shown repeatedly that adventurers break what is considered lawful or good behavior all the time. and its clear some leaders don't care or don't want to. and if Kubota is anywhere near an average noble in this setting, I doubt the lives of sapient beings are high on their list of concerns. The Giant is making a point that while the races aren't automatically going to be chaotic good rebels, they can still be people who don't agree with their evil leaders and don't necessarily want what is given to them in life, and that just because they follow bad leaders doesn't mean they themselves deserve to die.

The Failures of Paranoia:
Why though, did people try to wipe out the Dark One or the Crimson Mantle in the first place? Paranoia. The kings were paranoid that the Dark One's power and instead of dealing with him, got him killed, just as the paladins were paranoid of any threat to existence that they were willing to kill whole goblin towns than just helping them so that the Plan doesn't look like their only hope. Both times instead of getting RID of the threat....they made it stronger than they could possibly imagine, making a dark god and a powerful high priest bent on revenge, with Azure City paying the price for a few paladin's decisions. Gin-Jun and Miko both in their paranoia went off the deep end in spectacular fashions, seeing threats wherever they looked without stopping to think whether any of it was right. and throughout the comic, from Girard to Haley's father, to V's paranoid preemptive strike on anyone who could possibly claim to be a black dragons relative, we are shown how paranoia fails to get anything done and only makes things worse when its applied outside of adventuring, and has only worsened relationships between people whenever someone uses paranoia as justification or reasoning for their actions. Gin-Jun nearly caused a war with his paranoia, and Miko ensured the war that happened would be lost in her paranoia. While Haley nearly lost her chance with Elan because of her paranoia and distrust. So how many adventurers who ARE good kill monstrous races out of paranoia that they might be evil anyways? How can equality exist if the starting assumption is this distrust of one another and an assumption that the other side is out to get them? Not helped by the fact DnD is written to make sure everything is out to get you.

Revenge and Escalation:
In some works, revenge is portrayed as something quasi-noble, with the protagonist seeking a truly evil being who has done an injustice to someone for no good reason until they find it, kill it and put that life behind them

In other works its portrayed more negatively, as an all consuming need to find the person responsible and make things equal in an eye for an eye fashion but that this will cause some other person to see revenge in turn to also go for an eye for an eye. Or the person goes to any lengths to secure their revenge against one person, doing a bunch of things to finally get it after a long time, killing many lives to get to that point, then the person feeling hollow as they realize how little it was worth it.

OOTS while negative in its portrayal of revenge, I would argue, goes even further. In OOTS, that quasi-noble revenge quest Roy is on is portrayed as more of a family duty he got saddled with that is pushed aside for the more important goal of keeping the world safe in general and is now more of a side benefit to destroying an evil lich, with Roy having no personal connection to the person being avenged. Other people with actual revenge stories however are more significant, as often revenge is only portrayed as a flawed way of "getting even", when really in this story its much worse:
-Belkar, Xykon and Nale show this on a small scale, all evil people whose response to slights against them are to start killing the person responsible immediately, which is a disproportionate response to many of things done to them: Belkar kills the Oracle for a smartass prediction, Nale practically makes getting revenged for quasi-imagined slights the Linear Guild's slogan and is technically pursuing Elan, a guy he previously never he even met or knew in his life to make his life worse simply because he is "the evil twin." Not just revenge, but an escalation.

-Vaarsuvius and the black dragon family of course has a conflict where the number of people dying escalates from one to a quarter of all black dragons and everyone that could possibly be related to those dragons and V having to live with the fact that their actions will never be truly made up for and perhaps may spend their entire life atoning for it, that nothing about this was even, nothing about this was proportionate, moderate or rational. Their revenge extended far beyond the original target and was generalized into killing many innocents who had nothing to do with this, the deaths not being apart of the process, but apart of the result of getting revenge.

-It would be one thing if Redcloak in response to his village being slaughtered by the Sapphire Guard, only targeted the Sapphire guard. But instead he generalized his feelings towards humans in general. He decided to many years down the road, raise an army, conquer an entire city destroy its army, enslave its people, and pretty much wipe Azure city off the map as a nation to make his own and crush any resistance attempting to change that. And he succeeds. Cause see, when it comes to revenge, Redcloak makes everyone else look like amateurs. While idiots like Xykon or Nale are trying to get their revenge served piping hot immediately, Redcloak is sits back and waits for his chance to finally serve himself some high quality vengeance ice cream when he can best do so. but he doesn't stop there, he is intent on potentially destroying the entire world for his goal, revenge against everything for a world he wouldn't even have any part of.

to take this further, its possible that given the Dark One's okayness with Redcloak sacrificing goblin lives and the Dark One is okay with sacrificing goblin lives as well- but why? isn't he doing this to help the goblin people? Perhaps not: do we know what the Gate's ritual actually does? We know its teleports the Gate but not whether it teleports the rift as well. Cause this is just a bit of fridge logic, but how you would teleport a HOLE in SPACE? its not a thing per se, its a tear. you can't transport a tear somewhere else, its a tear in the fabric of stuff. its an antithetical to an object as you can get, and conjuration is all about transporting objects around. So what if teleporting the gate....doesn't transport the RIFT to the afterlife at all? What if the Dark One just tricked Redcloak the same way Redcloak tricked Xykon by only telling him the partial truth, and what really is supposed to happen when Redcloak teleports the gate is that the gate just disappears....and the Rift stays allowing the Snarl to get out and start destroying everything so that the Dark One can force a reset? and that this plan is all about the Dark One's revenge against the world for humans killing him for what he tried to do? Its in theme: Redcloak is being an unthinking servant of the Dark One just like the hobgoblins under him, and the Dark One is lying to his follower just so he can get his revenge and think about improving the goblin race afterwards. Just like Redcloak did with Azure City. This theory kind of falls apart when you consider Dorukan considered the gates being used as a weapon a viable enough possibility to install a self destruct mechanism for it, but its certainly a plausible possibility.

Conclusion:
So, does goblin oppression exist in OOTS world? I would say so, yes along with many other kinds of oppression. There is Azure City who organized paladin death squads to go around killing goblins to protect a secret. But more than that, there is a consistent cultural and social expectation for adventurers to kill things for people, and those adventurers care only about the loot and exp over investigating things or caring about peoples lives- adventurers are not paid to be investigators, heroes or diplomats. They are paid to murder and kill, whether those reason are good ones or not. Going deeper, there is a noticeable lack of monstrous clerics or wizards for most races represented in the comic and I doubt that creatures living out in the world have access to proper education to be able to get into those classes which are so important in this world for various reasons. Finally there is the depiction of revenge and how it can escalate a situation into being a blood feud that spans generations where people wish for death of the other side on both ends, and how it has escalated so badly that one side of the conflict feels like they have to threaten the entire world to get heard.

Now, sure Redcloak and the Dark One's decisions are their own. they are bad people, and nothing about goblinoid oppression being true justifies what they do. However at the same time? They are still products of their circumstances. Even if they chose to take the highest road they could, you'd still have two powerful goblins feeling very negatively about humans and the world and rightly so. They only exist in the first place because the people involved were more concerned about stamping out the threat they represent, than engaging with them as people to make sure that they don't think they HAVE to be even bigger threats to get things done. Each time the humans tried to kill them, they only became stronger and less fond of humans as a result. It made the situation worse, not better. The heartless logic of stamping out all resistance so they won't fight back....doesn't work in the world of DnD because each time its tried there is a method to bite back harder. I doubt V's deal is the only one the Lower planes have done to ensure that a loser got the power to retaliate back. Even if Redcloak is his own person, his own decisions, a villain of his own choices...those choices could not have been made if adventurers- which includes paladins- didn't create the circumstances for a person like Redcloak to exist and be seen as an alternative to letting the status quo continue. Redcloak may be at fault for all the things he did, but the adventurers are at fault for making someone like Redcloak possible. For if they didn't, he would just be a lowly whitecloak, serving the community in whatever small way he could and perhaps in that capacity he would've been happy, rather than the person he is today.

Read that part about Cliffport and wizard academy and I think you should think who was the boss of Julia's school....
OotS' "Dumbledore" seemed pretty monstrous to me :-)

[danielxcutter]

Read that part about Cliffport and wizard academy and I think you should think who was the boss of Julia's school....
OotS' "Dumbledore" seemed pretty monstrous to me :-)

Perhaps, but to be honest it was a pretty obvious jab at the HP franchise in general.

Actually is there a race like that besides wereboars? Not even sure if lycanthropes can speak in hybrid form...

[Lord Raziere]

Read that part about Cliffport and wizard academy and I think you should think who was the boss of Julia's school....
OotS' "Dumbledore" seemed pretty monstrous to me :-)

Okay. out of how many people who are human?

so one person broke the wizard glass ceiling, cool. good for them. one example doesn't prove that monstrous races are widely accepted in wizard academies, just as one example doesn't prove that are oppressed. thats why I went through and found patterns and tendencies, the vast majority of wizards are still human with an elitist intellectual attitude towards anything that isn't a spellcaster or even the same class as a wizard, combine that with most of the monstrous races being intended to make warrior, thugs, soldiers for people to kill, its easy to see those races as big dumb warriors in race form from that mindset. that and the headmaster was a hog person anyways, which might not even have the same issues as an ogre, troll or orc. those three are popular common examples of monsters to kill in the monster manual. but I don't recall much mention of hog/boar people having the same level of spotlight and whether its something Rich made up or an actual player race, we don't know what their history is in this world. and the closest official equivalent I can find to such a race is a tabaxi and they're generally not considered a monster race, they may be humanoid cats but they aren't literally made to be evil beings out to kill people, so just because a race is anthropomorphic, doesn't necessarily mean they're a monstrous race in DnD. same thing with lizardfolk. the only race I can recall being anthropomorphic and monstrous are the gnolls, and the gobbotopia book is specific on what races they are open to: gnolls, flinds, yakfolk, minotaur, lycanthropes, there is "much more" but he specifically highlighted these ones and these are major anthropomorphic races that are also considered monstrous.

notice that lizardfolk and that one cat-folk girl in the Vector Legion work alongside humans just fine, while gobbotopia is specifically marketing itself in its propaganda as a safe space for a bunch of races that aren't lizardfolk or tabaxi.

[Mightymosy]

Majority does not mean oppression, in my opinion.

The fact that a monster person is the BOSS of the wizard academy means more to me than how many students are which species.
Because as the boss he can decide who may study wizardry and who may not.

Also, wizards are arrogant and think little of other people. Yes. But that is a profession prejudice, not a racial one.

I agree with these people who wrote that Rich MIGHT HAVE INTENDED that the OotS had racial oppression from humans against goblins, but the implementation of that idea is not as straightforward as it should be, IF that really is what he intended to portray.

Much of that is because the main problem with OotS analysis: he mixes serious and funny, and you have to guess how "to the letter" you should interpretate each piece of his work. It is like Belkar said: You shouldn't treat as serious anything I say in the last panel.
But applied to the comic as a whole.

[danielxcutter]

You sound like you don't want the comic to seriously deliver the message that racism is bad.

[Lord Raziere]

Majority does not mean oppression, in my opinion.

The fact that a monster person is the BOSS of the wizard academy means more to me than how many students are which species.
Because as the boss he can decide who may study wizardry and who may not.

Also, wizards are arrogant and think little of other people. Yes. But that is a profession prejudice, not a racial one.

I agree with these people who wrote that Rich MIGHT HAVE INTENDED that the OotS had racial oppression from humans against goblins, but the implementation of that idea is not as straightforward as it should be, IF that really is what he intended to portray.

Much of that is because the main problem with OotS analysis: he mixes serious and funny, and you have to guess how "to the letter" you should interpretate each piece of his work. It is like Belkar said: You shouldn't treat as serious anything I say in the last panel.
But applied to the comic as a whole.

Ok. The boar is clearly not serious as he is part of a parody of a work not related to DnD, so its best not to treat him as indicative of anything. Done.

[Keltest]

Ok. The boar is clearly not serious as he is part of a parody of a work not related to DnD, so its best not to treat him as indicative of anything. Done.

That sounds dangerously close to "If you ignore all the elements that indicate i might be wrong, my argument is flawless."

[Lord Raziere]

That sounds dangerously close to "If you ignore all the elements that indicate i might be wrong, my argument is flawless."

I would think it quite reasonable to ignore the 0.1 percent of the comic featuring Hogwarts, Final Fantasy and one panel of MMO mobster jargon.

[Keltest]

I would think it quite reasonable to ignore the 0.1 percent of the comic featuring Hogwarts, Final Fantasy and one panel of MMO mobster jargon.

Ignoring elements of parody in a parody comic seems... unwise to me.

[Lord Raziere]

Ignoring elements of parody in a parody comic seems... unwise to me.

Ignoring that said parody comic moved on from its roots during second book into long plotlines where actions have consequences and the oppression of monster races is plot relevant and being treated seriously by all those involved seems more unwise.

[danielxcutter]

There was a joke where Roy and Haley discussed about how random encounters with lots of treasure practically run at PCs to get killed or something, and that didn't exactly have much bearing on the plot or the messages the comic tries to convey. I imagine those are similar cases.

[Mightymosy]

You sound like you don't want the comic to seriously deliver the message that racism is bad.

You sound like you are seriously trying to put words in my mouth.

No, thanks, I pass.

That sounds dangerously close to "If you ignore all the elements that indicate i might be wrong, my argument is flawless."

This is what I mean....since Rich mixes up parody and seriousness, in order to make an argument people regularily need to dismiss parts of his work as "not counting" in their argument one way or another.

And there is no clear indicator when to do so is right and when it is wrong.

You think Warthog Dumbledore doesnt count because he *clearly* is just a one-of-gag?

Well, remember the panel where Hel got the dwarven souls who died without honor?
That gag had less panels than Warthog DD - up until it turned into the main plot all of a sudden.

[Lord Raziere]

You think Warthog Dumbledore doesnt count because he *clearly* is just a one-of-gag?

Well, remember the panel where Hel got the dwarven souls who died without honor?
That gag had less panels than Warthog DD - up until it turned into the main plot all of a sudden.

1. I technically didn't ignore it at first. I specifically already gave you analysis of it:

Okay. out of how many people who are human?

so one person broke the wizard glass ceiling, cool. good for them. one example doesn't prove that monstrous races are widely accepted in wizard academies, just as one example doesn't prove that are oppressed. thats why I went through and found patterns and tendencies, the vast majority of wizards are still human with an elitist intellectual attitude towards anything that isn't a spellcaster or even the same class as a wizard, combine that with most of the monstrous races being intended to make warrior, thugs, soldiers for people to kill, its easy to see those races as big dumb warriors in race form from that mindset. that and the headmaster was a hog person anyways, which might not even have the same issues as an ogre, troll or orc. those three are popular common examples of monsters to kill in the monster manual. but I don't recall much mention of hog/boar people having the same level of spotlight and whether its something Rich made up or an actual player race, we don't know what their history is in this world. and the closest official equivalent I can find to such a race is a tabaxi and they're generally not considered a monster race, they may be humanoid cats but they aren't literally made to be evil beings out to kill people, so just because a race is anthropomorphic, doesn't necessarily mean they're a monstrous race in DnD. same thing with lizardfolk. the only race I can recall being anthropomorphic and monstrous are the gnolls, and the gobbotopia book is specific on what races they are open to: gnolls, flinds, yakfolk, minotaur, lycanthropes, there is "much more" but he specifically highlighted these ones and these are major anthropomorphic races that are also considered monstrous.

notice that lizardfolk and that one cat-folk girl in the Vector Legion work alongside humans just fine, while gobbotopia is specifically marketing itself in its propaganda as a safe space for a bunch of races that aren't lizardfolk or tabaxi.

you were the one who talked about whether it was "serious" or not. I took it seriously from the start.

2. and until Warthog Dumbledore becomes apart of the main plot, a gag he remains. But really its about whether its one-off gag. its about whether its part of DnD or not. HP is not DnD. simple as that.

3. even if its all parody....I can multitask and find things both meaningful and funny. my ignoring it is not because its a gag, its because its not relevant to how Rich is examining DnD and through it a bunch of issues in general. Now I can analyze that one comic about Harry Potter if you want but its not going to be relevant to the DnD analysis, because thats a whole different bunch of issues. HP =/= DnD, therefore what its criticizing isn't whats being criticized about DnD.

[Emanick]

This is a bit of a tangent to the Warthog Dumbledore sub-discussion, but I've been flirting with bringing it up for weeks and it seems about time. And honestly, given how unlikely this sub-discussion is to wind up going anywhere fruitful, maybe it's worth derailing.

I've seen a number of posters claim, or at least acknowledge, that goblinoids don't appear to have any meaningful arcane casters. In SoD that's basically true, but by DSTP it no longer is. The browncloaks that patrol the streets of Gobbotopia née Azure City are wizards (see panel 7), and there appear to be quite a number of them.

It does seem a little jarring that goblinoid wizards appear to be all-but-nonexistent in SoD but fairly common by the time DSTP rolls around. That said, I can think of two possible explanations for the shift:

1. The residents of what appears to be the largest aboveground hobgoblin city have had more success in producing wizards than any other goblinoid culture we've seen in-comic, given their high population density and correspondingly greater ability to produce surplus human(oid) capital.
2. The conquest of Azure City gave the hobgoblins access to Azurite libraries and other magical resources, enabling them to start developing a corps of arcane magic-users.

Explanation #2 seems slightly more likely to me, given that I don't recall any hobgoblin arcane casters appearing in War & XPs or How The Paladin Got His Scar, but either seems quite possible. Either way, this suggests that, at the very least, there isn't some divine built-in Law of the Multiverse holding goblinoids back from practicing the arcane arts (except maybe in terms of sorcery). That slightly weakens the case for cosmic goblinoid oppression, though not by very much.

[Lord Raziere]

Oh, I never argued for some divine law holding them back, because even if the gods were cosmically oppressing them, they don't need to do something so metaphysical: just make sure they never get the opportunity for an education. goblins never getting to be able to attend college because the gods make sure their resources are so poor they can't live stable enough lives to go there is entirely possible and in keeping with what Redcloak claims how they are oppressed.

but I didn't know that dancing lights was exclusive to arcane casting in 3.5 I thought that brown cloak was a cleric and that they just had a domain for that. thing is, all the browncloaks we see only cast dancing lights, so its entirely possible that these hobgoblin wizards are really low level and thus just learning the magic in the few months of occupying Azure City yes- if they were higher level, there is certainly better ways of using their spells than casting a near-useless cantrip. Which fits with the wizards that Vaarsuvius once encounters on the western continent being so low level that they don't even have 2nd level spells- things are so unstable that they can't consistently live or level up enough to become powerful wizards and only just now getting the ability to form a wizard guild at all, probably because of Tarquin's efforts to unite the place, while V considers them dilettantes not work speaking to, implying that other wizards they have encountered are higher level than that.