Results 151 to 180 of 1023
-
2021-04-22, 01:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2020
- Location
- Canada
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Hanlon's Razor- "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
I guess this would be a corollary or variant as instead of stupidity, it's neglect, unless you consider passive neglect a form of stupidity (which, I guess one could in the sense of oversight).
True though we have to remember that moral alignment is still in play. Neutral and Evil gods exist and the latter would likely want to maintain terrible conditions. After all, terrible conditions leads to crime and thus leads to them having more power.
Smart crime lords know that they maintain their hold as long as society does not provide sufficiently for everyone, they can collect the left-behinds for their own agendas and powerplays. They also exploit what people want. The mob rose in large power because of the ban on alcohol and subsequent bootlegging of alcohol.
As such, malefic forces have a motivation for keeping things unfair so they end up benefitting. Fostering and exacerbating conflict could very well be the goal of certain gods or similar power, especially for their own purposes.Last edited by CountDVB; 2021-04-22 at 01:16 PM.
-
2021-04-22, 01:20 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
-
2021-04-22, 01:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
In which case the Goblins are right to want to blow up the entire system and start over, and keep blowing it up until the chips fall more their way. I doubt even the evil gods want that, so they'll be more amenable to compromise.
I don't know... but clearly when the vacuum is big enough, you can end up with spontaneous ascension.Last edited by Psyren; 2021-04-22 at 01:22 PM.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
-
2021-04-22, 01:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2020
- Location
- Canada
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Probably some sort of arrangement with Fenris I suspect. It's like how some media companies will sit on ideas for years or decades and don't do anything with them, but will still go on copyright strikes with them.
That and well, fantasy isn't just the key thing the deities do for this. They do all sorts of things. I mean, with the world of movie theater snacks, who goes with which pantheon?
-
2021-04-22, 01:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Location
- Sharangar's Revenge
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
My Spelljammer stuff (including an orbit tracker), 2E AD&D spreadsheet, and Vault of the Drow maps are available in my Dropbox. Feel free to use or not use it as you see fit!
Thri-Kreen Ranger/Psionicist by me, based off of Rich's A Monster for Every Season
-
2021-04-22, 01:24 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2017
- Location
- France
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Maybe they were afraid that associating with "the ennemy" would result in them losing more worshippers from their established base than they woild gain from the goblins.
Like how in The Elder Scrolls the elven god Stendarr isn't really popular among the traditionnal High Elves because he is "an apologist of Man" (and they don't like humans. At all).Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
-
2021-04-22, 01:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2020
- Location
- Canada
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Last edited by CountDVB; 2021-04-22 at 01:26 PM.
-
2021-04-22, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
-
2021-04-22, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Valencia, Spain
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Hi Brian. My thoughts right now on the matter of the "goblin question" are:
1) We have confirmation that the goblinoids weren't created as fodder. They were not designed to be on a disadvantage. Their creator intended them to be able to overcome all other races. They were designed to pull a zergling rush. As the zergling rush failed, their creator lost interest in them. They became broken toys.
2) The Gods aren't the solution for mortal problems. They don't care all that much, and even those who care, are bound by rules and stuff. It's up to mortals to solve their problems, learn to work together, and build a better world.
3) Redcloak expects that his God will solve everything for the goblins. But the Dark One won't. It's up to the goblins to improve their condition. Like Right-Eye attempted. Like the former hobgoblin leader did.
4) Destroying the World will solve nothing for the Goblins. Because the goblins aren't in their current condition due to any betrayal from the Keepers of the Status Quo, but as a consequence of being designed as a zergling-rush plot. And The Dark One being there in the next world's creation changes nothing: You make a new world, the goblins face the same problem when the zergling-rush fails. Unless they are created as something else. And if they are created as something else, then Redcloak wouldn't be sacrificing real goblins for imaginary ones, but for imaginary whatever else.
All in all, the point is: It's up to the mortal races to solve their co-existence problems. Gods won't solve the problems for them. If someone relies on the Gods to patch things up, they are more likely to end up blowing up the World instead.
-
2021-04-22, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
TDO and Redcloak have a blue shell, or at least are trying to get one. It's just that the heroes & gods are throwing a hissy fit about it.
They're certainly not justified in doing so, but when you're looking at the inequality your race suffers like it's a death spiral, The Snarl starts to look more and more appealing. You're less likely to try the traditional routes if you believe they're rigged against you, and gradual change is a lot less appealing than a big outlandish scheme to "stick it to The Man".Last edited by Ionathus; 2021-04-22 at 01:30 PM.
-
2021-04-22, 01:30 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2011
- Location
- Calgary, AB
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
-
2021-04-22, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2020
- Location
- Canada
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
That's less a blue shell and more a giant nuke. One being handled by people who don't know how it works and aren't considering how bad they could screw up.
And appealing doesn't mean practical nor logicial. Hence why Righteye said that he was still the same angry teenager he was back all those years.
-
2021-04-22, 01:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
None of your responses address the fact that the goblinoids definitely started out at a disadvantage, even if it wasn't an intentional one. Durkon says it. Thor admits it. This is proof that the gods allowed it to happen.
I agree wholeheartedly. TDO's plan is terrible and it won't work. Redcloak is deluded about his situation, his own motives, and his prospects. I'm just pointing out that, if Redcloak thinks the deck is stacked against him, it's not really surprising that he's refusing to sit down at the table and play.Last edited by Ionathus; 2021-04-22 at 01:46 PM. Reason: putting words in pendell's mouth
-
2021-04-22, 01:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
In the DVD commentary for LotR, John Rhys-Davies (who plays Gimli) said that he felt he had to come up with an accent for Gimli and was playing around with the voice, and what came out was a Scottish accent.
He didn't put too much thought into it; he just thought it fit.
So, that's where it came from. The whim of an actor.
-
2021-04-22, 01:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Knoxville Tennessee
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
This really sums it up, if there is going to be a solution it can't and we now see never could come from the Gods. Their hands are tied more ways then one, and while they made the best functioning world they could under the circumstanced... I kind of don't think it was this one. This was the self aware stick figure parody, the bottom of the barrel for a few pantheons long into a cycle that none of them genuinely thought could ever be broken that ends with every world ultimately being a waste. Whatever the best of possible worlds they could make was is long gone before this one, and Durkon's offer was best chance Redcloak will ever have to undo the failure of destroying his brothers work. Because this is it, this is the one chance to end the cycle and create real system change at the highest of all possible levels by removing the existential threat to the gods.
You might not think it's fair but it's eminently reasonable in the context we have and the only workable plan left, because the gods tier their own hands for very good very Snarl looking reasons, and also because frankly just doing nothing and hoping the gods can just fix all your problems is kind of silly. Yes, I consider spending all your time trying to work out the best way to extort the gods into what you want when you could put that same effort into actually fixing things sitting around doing nothing. Charitably I might add, considering pursuing those plans tanked a legitimately successful example of goblinoid/humanoid relations in a violent and tragic way.Last edited by Dragonus45; 2021-04-22 at 01:49 PM.
Thanks to Linklele for my new avatar!
If i had superpowers. I would go to conventions dressed as myself, and see if i got complimented on my authenticity.
-
2021-04-22, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2010
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Last edited by faustin; 2021-04-22 at 01:49 PM.
-
2021-04-22, 01:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2018
- Location
- NJ (right next to philly)
-
2021-04-22, 01:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
No joke, I've seen a similar thought in plenty of settings and even some written fantasy series. Humans are quite often the rats of fantasy humanoids: not the strongest, not the smartest, not the longest-lived, but still insanely adaptable and frickin' everywhere. Living in all the nooks and crannies of the world. We're goshdarned survivors, baby.
-
2021-04-22, 01:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2009
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Really? Huh. Thanks for explaining.
Is there anything in the rules which addresses this? -- whether children of characters with certain stats tend to have stats which resemble their parents'? In-comic, the chosen professions of Horace, Eugene, and Roy tend to suggest otherwise, though clearly Roy is no dunce.
Good luck! And a bit of advice from someone who watched an acquaintance flail: try to allow for Murphy's law. Don't assume that, for example, printers will never fail, computers never crash, etc. Leave yourself a bit of slack. (My acquaintance waited until the last possible time to get her thesis wrapped up, then had a printer failure.)
EDIT:
In Babylon 5, it was proposed that humans are uniquely good at forging communities from disparate groups of people. In the real world, of course... we aren't all that great about it, in many cases.Last edited by bunsen_h; 2021-04-22 at 01:52 PM.
-
2021-04-22, 01:53 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
I don't know about the rules, but from the parent/child dynamics we've seen, genetics does seem to influence stats to some degree. Roy, despite being a fighter, is still very smart like Eugene. Haley and Ian are both dextrous rogues. Tarquin and Elan/Nale are all, canonically, devilishly handsome.
Maybe it's a comforting thought, if you're creating alien/fantasy races, to imagine an idealistic world where humans handle diversity well.
For believability, sometimes it's an end result: "here in the 51st century, we've finally learned the lessons of the past and are so anti-racist that we're even the best anti-racists in a galaxy of alien races."Last edited by Ionathus; 2021-04-22 at 01:58 PM. Reason: reply to bunsen
-
2021-04-22, 01:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Knoxville Tennessee
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Thanks to Linklele for my new avatar!
If i had superpowers. I would go to conventions dressed as myself, and see if i got complimented on my authenticity.
-
2021-04-22, 01:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2021
- Location
- TX
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
At this point, we could make an entire Chain of Corrections about Fentanyl's name.
If you know any OOTS liveblogs or similar reactions that aren't dafukdidiwatch or mindareadsoots, please message me with them. I am starved of OOTS reaction content.
Also anyone analyzing it or using it as an example for something like thewebcomicsreview does sometimes. I just need more OOTS content.
-
2021-04-22, 01:57 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2021
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
I don't think there are rules for stats of kids specifically (there might be an obscure published article somewhere but it never comes up in actual games, so). I don't see Eugene as a particular example against such heritability though, and as said by Ionathus, there are some clear lines of things being passed down.
In general and just thinking about this more, the old age rules do suggest that heritability and early childhood experiences don't affect life expectancy (and neither does diet or literally anything else).
It's possible that humans are just so completely different from us in ootsworld that they lack not only genetics (yet can still inherit appearance) but also stuff like "the effects of your mother being malnourished while she was pregnant with you," and "the effects of being malnourished and understimulated yourself in early life," to the point that there's just no actual disadvantage to being born impoverished at all.*
But all of that does seem kind of aligned with the stuff that Elan brought up about Nale's upbringing. For that matter, that storyline did seem to suggest that traits like dramatic flair and penchant for complicated scheming are inheritable. It's also suggested that being hit in one's soft undeveloped baby skull can affect your future outcome. I think the story we're told about heritability and individual starting positions in ootsworld (within the Human race) is that there are effects and they can disadvantage you for life, you're just still responsible for your own moral choices and unlearning what you've been taught in adulthood.
*Personally I'm not a fan of this kind of thing. I don't see the goblins in oots used as an actual stand-in for disadvantaged humans. Rather it seems like the story is saying "this broad principle of fairness and inherited inequality is true, and in our story it applies to goblins, though it also applies elsewhere." So I don't have a problem with that.
But generally I dislike when stories take things like oppression based on the experiences of actual humans, and apply it to an inhuman group, and then completely bar it from applying to humans within the world. In itself it's not bad for a single fantasy world to do this. But it's something of a trend, and I dislike "human" becoming equated with "majority group, privileged, etc." in an entire genre. Because it isn't true that "privileged person from the majority group" equals "having humanity."Last edited by Good Coyote; 2021-04-22 at 02:10 PM.
-
2021-04-22, 01:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2011
- Location
- Norway
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
So Thor says that the goblinoids weren't intentionally created to lose/as xp-fodder... But some god clearly had it out for them when they created the world.
Whoever created the dwarfs and the gnomes gave them an attack bonus vs. goblinoids. Knowing you have a bonus when fighting specific races is an incentive to fight these races rather than other races as you'll have an extra edge if you fight goblinoids rather than f.ex. humans or elves.
So it would seem that some god desired conflict between the gnomes/dwarves and the goblinoids and wanted to gnomes/dwarves to be more likely to win such conflicts.
-
2021-04-22, 02:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Valencia, Spain
- Gender
-
2021-04-22, 02:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Why have a chain of corrections? We all know his proper name is FernGullyr.
According to today's comic, second page, panels 2-3:
Durkon: "But tha goblins start'd out wit less, so tha's na usu'lly wha happens. Wha happens, tha dwarf wins cuz 'e's gotta better axe an' better armor an's been eatin' better food 'is whole life!...it's na 'xactly fair fer tha goblin.
Thor: "I mean...yes, that's true. We didn't really plan it that way on purpose...but I guess we didn't really prevent it, either.Last edited by Ionathus; 2021-04-22 at 02:06 PM.
-
2021-04-22, 02:08 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
I wonder how Redcloak or the Dark One would feel if they knew that the goblins were intended by Fenris not only to not be victims but to actually dominate the entire world and he just miscalculated?
-
2021-04-22, 02:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
-
2021-04-22, 02:15 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2021
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Thinking about it still (my apologies for having such messy thoughts today), the fact that Commoner and Aristocrat are NPC classes definitely suggests that you can end up with mechanically different things depending on your birth station.
According to Google, the aristocrat not only has more skill points and proficiencies, but also a larger hit die (d8 v d6), so literally better health and harder to kill.
-
2021-04-22, 02:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2020
Re: OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread
Like the addition of Gleipnir