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2021-04-28, 12:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Races that are a bit less "human-shaped" have been moving into the rulebooks over time. Tieflings in particular, which have horns and tails, have been in the core PHB of both 4e and 5e.
Eberron gave us a playable construct (the Warforged) and a playable shapeshifter (the Changeling) in 3e and those have stayed in (albeit in campaign setting books rather than core PHB) ever since.Last edited by hamishspence; 2021-04-28 at 12:47 AM.
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2021-04-28, 07:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
3E paid some lip service to the idea that not all members of "monster races" are evil, 4E removed all of that and 5E flat-out rejected them as anything other than monsters during development. Like I said: the reason WotC has been making some small step towards maybe doing something about it in the past year is because they can't afford to keep ignoring the issue.
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2021-04-28, 07:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I see. Does anyone know why?
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2021-04-28, 08:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2011
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I've never viewed it as a problem, but as an opportunity.
If you have peaceful or non-combatant sapient beings and you kill them and take their stuff you have committed evil acts, even if the victims were themselves evil. 'Because they are Evil' is not a justification.
However, if you have raiders who sow not, nor do they reap, who survive by pillage and plunder and by robbing otherwise peaceful settlements, then it is not an evil act to end their predation, even if they are elves.
The issue is, are these beings acting evil? The stat block alignment and race description says that most goblins survive through pillage and plunder, but this has never excused the wholesale slaughter of a village of peaceful nocturnal hunter/gatherers.
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2021-04-28, 08:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I doubt many people bother to think that far if the sourcebooks don't suggest otherwise.
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
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Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
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2021-04-28, 09:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I recently started reading Fafhrd.
Fafhrd does murder children. He abandons pregnant girlfriends. He lies and schemes, and his friends are brutally and hideously murdered by his enemies.
And he feels bad about all of it.
It’s not an amoral character like Conan.
Perhaps Gygax imagined more Fafhrd in his role playing. I don’t know.Last edited by Dion; 2021-04-28 at 09:11 AM.
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2021-04-28, 09:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2021-04-28, 09:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008
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2021-04-28, 10:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I agree; Conan has morals. But the author never seems interested in testing them. Conan is always besting some evil foe, or bedding some willing princess (usually with a lot of casual racism, or a naive BDSM sensibility that would make even 50 shades readers roll their eyes.)
But he’s never, as far as I can tell, actually tested on his morality. Conan mostly experiences a life without moral consequence.
But my underlying thesis is this: even by the 70’s, I believe the sword and sorcery source material that influenced the game had evolved to include these moral problems.Last edited by Dion; 2021-04-28 at 10:09 AM.
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2021-04-28, 10:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
There's the bit in, Scarlet Citadel I think?, where he's captured by the ennemy kings and their sorcerer who offer him plenty of gold if he agrees to just **** off and let them conquer his kingdom and he tells them to shove it.
Likewise in the big novel of recycled plots, I dimly recall him being given a chance to carve out another kigdom but he decides to do the hard thing and free Aquilonia from the invading tyrants or something.
Aside from that, yeah his problems are more of the "big monster" kind than of the "moral dilemma" kind.
I can't adress your underlying thesis since I know jack on the subject.Forum Wisdom
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2021-04-28, 10:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
How can you be peaceful and evil at the same time? Or how can you be evil without engaging in evil actions?
If the goblins in your setting are living in peace with their neighbors and each other that's a good argument that they are not in fact evil.
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2021-04-28, 10:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Oh boy this again?
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
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Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
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2021-04-28, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Last edited by Morty; 2021-04-28 at 10:58 AM.
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
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2021-04-28, 11:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2014
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
By not being stupid.
Cooperation is disproportionaly beneficial to all contributors. A small group can trivialy outcompete a massively larger collection of isolated agents.
Refusing to reciprocate will get you ousted of the group, denying you the benefits. No matter how selfish or greedy you are, it is very obviously in your best interest to behave to some extent.
Peacefulness is not an achievement of virtue, it is the strict minimum bar to pass to enable cooperation, or as profiteers would say, "milk'em dry".Yes, I am slightly egomaniac. Why didn't you ask?
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2021-04-28, 11:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2010
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- A Shallow Grave
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
This is exactly right. I'd like to know what happened in the week before the Azurites arrived at Redcloak's village. would we have found them peacefully tending their crops, or fitting collars on their newest human slaves? Even from what we know however there is *some* justification for the Azurite raid. they were there to kill the bearer of the Crimson Mantle which was someone who was trying to literally end the world. Where the Azurites went evil was in slaughtering the rest of the village. Heck killing the kids would be wrong under any circumstance IMO.
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2021-04-28, 11:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
But the very fact that what we saw makes you wonder whether the goblins did anything to earn that level of hostility betrays your bias, I think. There's zero indication any of those goblins ever did any evil, and if the situation was reversed we wouldn't start digging for retroactive justification. Even the culpability of the bearer of the Crimson Mantle can be questioned. Having a theoretical plan is not the same as actively trying to carry it out, and even if he was actually trying to carry it out at the time, he was so far from being a threat to any gates that it could hardly justify such an operation even if the paladins had done their best to avoid non-combatant deaths.
ungelic is us
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2021-04-28, 11:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Being greedy, selfish, etc. but only acting within limits that allow you to cooperate within your community and allow your community to live peacefully with other communities sounds like neutral behavior to me, not evil.
Maybe if your community horribly tortures and kills the noncomformists in their own community they could still be described as evil. If everybody is getting along without active enforcement, however, because they all understand that they personally will benefit from a cooperative peaceful community that doesn't sound evil to me.
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2021-04-28, 11:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Redcloak's sister was the equivalent to an IRL first-grader according to Rich. They killed her as well for the XP and orders. And the rest didn't exactly exhibit evil either, essentially.
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Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
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2021-04-28, 12:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Which again raises the question "how could anyone murder a first-grader and remain a paladin?"
That's the problem with the scene - that none of the paladins are shown to have fallen for their actions, and in fact we know that at least some of the paladins who participated in that massacre remained paladins afterward with their hostility against goblins fully intact (i.e. they apparently did not have to repent or atone in order to retain paladin status - see HtPGHS).
I see two alternatives: 1) The Southern Gods were cheating by allowing their paladins to engage in evil acts and remain paladins, either because of their animosity towards goblins or fear of the Snarl being let lose or for some other reason.
Or 2) wiping out the whole goblin village was insufficiently evil to cause a loss of paladin status - in other words despite appearances the goblins must have collectively engaged in enough evil acts that wiping them all out was not a strongly evil act (although not neccesarily a good act either).
Alternative 1 seems more likely to me.
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2021-04-28, 12:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I would rather say that's the problem with having a universe where the enforcers of a particular authority are guaranteed to be upstanding. It limits one's ability to make some particular criticisms.
I see two alternatives: 1) The Southern Gods were cheating by allowing their paladins to engage in evil acts and remain paladins, either because of their animosity towards goblins or fear of the Snarl being let lose or for some other reason.
Or 2) wiping out the whole goblin village was insufficiently evil to cause a loss of paladin status - in other words despite appearances the goblins must have collectively engaged in enough evil acts that wiping them all out was not a strongly evil act (although not neccesarily a good act either).
Alternative 1 seems more likely to me.Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2021-04-28, 01:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2020
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- Right behind you
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Yeah, while I understand Rich's point that, from the narrative point of view, showing some paladins falling would take away from Redcloak's grievance, the seeming lack of repercussions for the paladins in that scene is really not helping any attempt to discuss it.
I can, to a certain degree, agree that not all paladins who took part in the raid fell or should have fallen. I cannot agree that any paladins who felt the slaughter of children was justified, or who were shown enjoying the rampant slaughter, did not, even if they didn't directly take part in any of the "evil" stuff. If that's the case, as the scene seems to indicate without taking Rich's commentary on the subject in account, there's something deeply wrong with the basis of divine morality and we might as well stop worshipping the whole Southern bunch.
As for my opinion of the general morality of "always-evil" races/species: in games, it's fine so long as they're clearly "evil enemy race" that you're supposed to fight because they threaten you/your world/existence/whatever and never gain much further development beyond that. Things like DOOM and such. In stories, it's more murky, and even a very simple black-and-white world will usually get some fleshing out of the "evil race" if you want to actually make it interesting beyond "protagonists fight evil".Last edited by Taevyr; 2021-04-28 at 01:08 PM.
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2021-04-28, 11:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2015
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
So, this is really the crux of it for me. There was no reason why Keep On the Borderlands had to include non-combatants and children of humanoid races. Folks responding have been praising the module and I agree it has lots of good points, but none of those good things hang on the whole "slaughter orc toddlers" element. I find it kind of horrible-yet-fascinating that Gygax chose to create that moral dilemma when it was so unnecessary, and I think gamers are still untangling the ramifications of those choices 40 years later.
Some people think that Chaotic Neutral is the alignment of the insane, but the enlightened know that Chaotic Neutral is the only alignment without illusions of sanity.
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2021-04-29, 12:26 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2011
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I guess I'm an odd gamer in that in my first D&D experiences our DM tossed moral breadcrumbs to us from the start, and morality and its consequences were for me always a part of the game.
When I began to DM alignment was very much a part of the game, and it wasn't always a case of DM dispensing justice; as often as not the players drove the discussions and, as DM, I was forced to reconsider and adapt.
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2021-04-29, 12:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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2021-04-29, 01:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Aren't goblins and kobolds playable in 5e?
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
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Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
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2021-04-29, 01:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2015
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
They didn't. The Southern Gods don't do the full display for EVERY fallen Paladin. Those guys just found themselves unable to summon their powers next time they tried. Quite a few of the Paladins remained, i'm assuming because they didn't do anything evil themselves, even if their comrades did. It wasn't shown on screen, because that was a flashback by Redcloak, who doesn't know, or, I imagine, care ("Oh, the person who murdered my family can't summon his magic horsey anymore? Truly, justice has been served.")
I don't like it, but it is kinda consistent with how Rich has framed Good and Evil before. Think how Roy is still good, in spite of all the people Belkar's murdered, or how Durkon's still good despite standing by as his comrades tortured a prisoner. In fact, one of his major criticisms of the Paladin class (as stated by Roy in-comic at one point) is that it forces the player to be responsible for other people's conduct as well as their own. I imagine this may be colored a bit by the background of role-playing games: In a game, trying to dictate another player's behavior is kinda a jerk move, and lots of Paladins took it to extremes by trying to constantly police other player's in game morals (admitley, that's often because of DMs being jerks and trying to gotcha Fall them, but still).Last edited by woweedd; 2021-04-29 at 01:35 AM.
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2021-04-29, 01:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Forum Wisdom
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2021-04-29, 02:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
They are. They're included as playable races in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
However, the fluff of Volo's describes goblinoids, orcs, gnolls, etc. as inhuman Other, focusing a lot on how their societies are systemically evil and how gnolls and orcs in particular are inherently evil because they were created by evil gods.
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2021-04-29, 03:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Okay, who came up with that idea?
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
We also have a TvTropes page!
Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
Extended sig here.
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2021-04-29, 03:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008