Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality

[hamishspence]

Hmm.

I think "monstrous" races as PCs are still more common? And it does seem the community as a whole's moved further away from the... things, even if the devs haven't.

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.

[Morty]

Hasn't 5e been trying to move away from this? There are far more playable races now and many of them would have been called "monstrous races" only an edition or two ago, for example.

3e tried to move away from it - having gnolls as a player race in books like Races of the Wild and Unapproachable East. 5e reversed all the work 3e had done, by making gnolls demonic and irredeemable.

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.

[danielxcutter]

I see. Does anyone know why?

[brian 333]

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.

[danielxcutter]

I doubt many people bother to think that far if the sourcebooks don't suggest otherwise.

[Dion]

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.

[Fyraltari]

It’s not an amoral character like Conan.

I'm not sure I'd call Conan amoral. He's got a sense of right and wrong, it's just thay when he was young he didn't really bother himself with doing right and not doing wrong. As king of Aquilonia he's matured a lot and is a firm do-gooder.

[dps]

People have been pointing out why conveniently evil humanoids are several shades of terrible for years.

Heck, Tolkien himself was concerned about the problems with having Orcs be always evil.

Though, IMO, while it's a problem in stories, it's only a problem at the game table if you want it to be.

[Dion]

I'm not sure I'd call Conan amoral. He's got a sense of right and wrong, it's just thay when he was young he didn't really bother himself with doing right and not doing wrong. As king of Aquilonia he's matured a lot and is a firm do-gooder.

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.

[Fyraltari]

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.

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.

[Jason]

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.

[danielxcutter]

Oh boy this again?

[Morty]

Oh boy this again?

This is the discussion the concept of "evil races" inevitably leads to. All the more reason to hope it's done away with sooner rather than later.

[Cazero]

How can you be peaceful and evil at the same time? Or how can you be evil without engaging in evil actions?

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".

[Skull the Troll]

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.

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.

[hroþila]

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.

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.

[Jason]

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".

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.

[danielxcutter]

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.

[Jason]

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.

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.

[Fyraltari]

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 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.

My own guess is that only the "worst offenders", as in the ones with actual child's blood on their swords, fell, while merely being complicit in the slaughter of children isn't egregious enough to warrant a fall. In which case, bleeeargh.

[Taevyr]

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.



My own guess is that only the "worst offenders", as in the ones with actual child's blood on their swords, fell, while merely being complicit in the slaughter of children isn't egregious enough to warrant a fall. In which case, bleeeargh.

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".

[PontificatusRex]

Though, IMO, while it's a problem in stories, it's only a problem at the game table if you want it to be.

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.

[brian 333]

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.

[hamishspence]

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.

I'd rate 5e as worse than 4e on that subject, what with kobolds and goblins at least getting a full "playable" treatment in one 4e book.

[danielxcutter]

Aren't goblins and kobolds playable in 5e?

[woweedd]

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.

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 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.



My own guess is that only the "worst offenders", as in the ones with actual child's blood on their swords, fell, while merely being complicit in the slaughter of children isn't egregious enough to warrant a fall. In which case, bleeeargh.

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).

[Fyraltari]

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).

I was told that a paladin falls if they commit a single act of evil, while a good character may act evilly from time to time without that changing their alignment. Also Roy is trying to restrict Belkar's murders.

[Linneris]

Aren't goblins and kobolds playable in 5e?

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.

[danielxcutter]

Okay, who came up with that idea?

[dps]

Which again raises the question "how could anyone murder a first-grader and remain a paladin?

I remember first grade. I can buy "all first graders are evil" more easily than "all members of races A, B, and C are evil".