Thoughts on the OOTS goblin predicament

[Kish]

I think a lot of people very much want racial morality to be valid and the answer to all Redcloak's concerns to be the pitiless slaughter of him and every other goblins who's appeared in the comic. Most of them have quit reading over the years, but not before expressing this concept.

But for my part, the thing about going, "Paladins don't have to be actually good," is that it defeats the purpose of what Rich said he was going for with Miko.

And that was a lot of what Miko Misayaki was about, was that she's lawful good, but she's a complete bitch, you wouldn't want to spend time with her at all. And I think that was sort of the flip side of the sympathetic villain: the unsympathetic hero. Or at least good guy. So yeah, I definitely like to subvert expectations in that specific way, because I think the alignment system gets a bad rap from people who aren't trying to make it work, and say "that's overly simplistic."

If I look at the character in the comic...she comes out of the gate a villain. She's not a hero or a good guy, sympathetic or otherwise. Sure, she helps against the ogres, but with her level of demonstrated trigger-happiness in her meeting-the-Order scene, it's only believable at all that she hasn't left a trail of innocent bodies if there's a magical guarantee that she hasn't. If avoiding Falling as a paladin just means that you need to have a vaguely plausible case that you're doing the right thing, then the part of the story with Miko isn't "how a good guy can be unsympathetic" but "how Roy Greenhilt mistakes a villain for a hero."

Edited to add, in response to the concept of using Book of Vile Darkness and not Book of Exalted Deeds: For whatever it's worth, that would be using a 3.0 book and actively not using a corresponding 3.5 one, which...um.

[hamishspence]

Edited to add, in response to the concept of using Book of Vile Darkness and not Book of Exalted Deeds: For whatever it's worth, that would be using a 3.0 book and actively not using a corresponding 3.5 one, which...um.

BoVD is seen in the strip itself, at least (when Redcloak's creation of the three Xykon Decoys comes up.

[Kish]

While this conjures the image of Miko or Gin-Jun pulling out the Book of Vile Darkness and saying, "I can nuke as many orc settlements as I want! Says so right here!"

...it doesn't address the issue that that's still a straightforward villain no more nuanced or ambiguous than the bandit leaders, not a heroic antagonist.

[hamishspence]

It's not like "sacrificing the few to save the many" is entirely out of character for Good-aligned beings.


It's just that it's a dangerous position to take, and for characters who think that way to turn into out-and-out villains is very easy.

[danielxcutter]

I think a lot of people very much want racial morality to be valid and the answer to all Redcloak's concerns to be the pitiless slaughter of him and every other goblins who's appeared in the comic. Most of them have quit reading over the years, but not before expressing this concept.

Not all of the people who complain, I believe. But yes.

It's not like "sacrificing the few to save the many" is entirely out of character for Good-aligned beings.


It's just that it's a dangerous position to take, and for characters who think that way to turn into out-and-out villains is very easy.

Jumping of the slippery slope assumes you were high enough to jump down after all.

[hamishspence]

I could definitely see a BOED paladin clashing with a Shadowbane Inquisitor paladin of the Order of Illumination (Complete Adventurer) over whether it's right to "sacrifice a village to prevent a powerful demon from escaping justice".


The BOED paladin saying "no" the Shadowbane Inquisitor "yes".


The Sapphire Guard, especially during the OOTS prequel-era, were a lot more like Shadowbane Inquisitors than like anything from BOED.

[Severance]

I think a lot of people very much want racial morality to be valid and the answer to all Redcloak's concerns to be the pitiless slaughter of him and every other goblins who's appeared in the comic. Most of them have quit reading over the years, but not before expressing this concept.

I think this is a very convenient way to portray something that never happened. I don't think I ever saw anyone advocating for the "slaughter of every goblin in the comic", a notion that even for a strawman borders on parody and bears no resemblance to any of the arguments that were presented so far.

[danielxcutter]

I could definitely see a BOED paladin clashing with a Shadowbane Inquisitor paladin of the Order of Illumination (Complete Adventurer) over whether it's right to "sacrifice a village to prevent a powerful demon from escaping justice".


The BOED paladin saying "no" the Shadowbane Inquisitor "yes".


The Sapphire Guard, especially during the OOTS prequel-era, were a lot more like Shadowbane Inquisitors than like anything from BOED.

To be fair, Shadowbane Inquisitor is literally designed for an optimal ex-paladin blackguard build, so yeah being easy to Fall is more of a feature and not a bug.

I think this is a very convenient way to portray something that never happened. I don't think I ever saw anyone advocating for the "slaughter of every goblin in the comic", a notion that even for a strawman borders on parody and bears no resemblance to any of the arguments that were presented so far.

You? I don't remember.

Other people in the past? Unfortunately, yes. I've seen people make that argument unironically before a mod scrubbed their posts.

[Jason]

If I look at the character in the comic...she comes out of the gate a villain. She's not a hero or a good guy, sympathetic or otherwise. Sure, she helps against the ogres, but with her level of demonstrated trigger-happiness in her meeting-the-Order scene, it's only believable at all that she hasn't left a trail of innocent bodies if there's a magical guarantee that she hasn't. If avoiding Falling as a paladin just means that you need to have a vaguely plausible case that you're doing the right thing, then the part of the story with Miko isn't "how a good guy can be unsympathetic" but "how Roy Greenhilt mistakes a villain for a hero."

Yes, the problem is that the villain paladins in the comic obviously are not lawful good, and yet they remain paladins.

If the aim was "show how lawful good characters can be villains," it failed. Because it turns out that characters who do evil things cannot be lawful good.

Most societies in D&D do not condemn anyone who detects as evil to death on the spot. Along with the many ways in which a detect evil spell can give an inaccurate reading there are also the facts that good aligned people believe in mercy, the possibility of redemption, respect for life, and respect for free will. A lawful good society will generally tolerate citizens who detect as evil so long as they are not caught actively breaking the law. Those that are caught breaking the law will be allowed a chance to defend themselves at trial and if guitly will only be sentenced to a penalty proportionate to the crime, not death for traffic violations.
A society that sends out "thought police" to kill everyone who detects as evil may still be a lawful society, but they are no longer a good-aligned society, and they will not be able to produce paladins.

[hamishspence]

Most societies in D&D do not condemn anyone who detects as evil to death on the spot. Along with the many ways in which a detect evil spell can give an inaccurate reading there are also the facts that good aligned people believe in mercy, the possibility of redemption, respect for life, and respect for free will. A lawful good society will generally tolerate citizens who detect as evil so long as they are not caught actively breaking the law. Those that are caught breaking the law will be allowed a chance to defend themselves at trial and if guitly will only be sentenced to a penalty proportionate to the crime, not death for traffic violations.

The way D&D has often been played, is adventurer paladins condemning "monsters" who detect as evil to death, on the spot, whenever they meet them in a wilderness or a dungeon.

As Quintessential Paladin II (a 3.5 third-party sourcebook that goes into great deal on playing paladins, and potential pitfalls, puts it:


A paladin can detect evil at will. What exactly does this mean?

Leaving aside the mechanical of the spell-like effect for the moment, the real question is, 'what does evil mean in the campaign world?' The paladin's player should discuss this with the Games Master before play begins. After all, a paladin has presumably been training in the use of detect evil for years and knows what it means when a stranger is Evil. Is true Evil (as defined by the spell) common or rare? If someone is evil, does that mean that the paladin should merely be wary of them, should arrest them or should he attack them immediately? This largely depends on the nature of evil in the campaign.

Problems with detect evil normally arise when the paladin is dealing with ordinary people - detecting that a monster in a cave is evil and then slaying that monster never seems to cause moral qualms.


Which is IMO the point The Giant is making with the Sapphire Guard - the moral dissonance, and hypocrisy, of the whole thing - of paladins slaying everything in the wilderness or dungeon that "pings" as Evil on sight, without qualms, and yet being much more careful about due process, in towns.

[danielxcutter]

The way D&D has often been played, is adventurer paladins condemning "monsters" who detect as evil to death, on the spot, whenever they meet them in a wilderness or a dungeon.

As Quintessential Paladin II (a 3.5 third-party sourcebook that goes into great deal on playing paladins, and potential pitfalls, puts it:


A paladin can detect evil at will. What exactly does this mean?

Leaving aside the mechanical of the spell-like effect for the moment, the real question is, 'what does evil mean in the campaign world?' The paladin's player should discuss this with the Games Master before play begins. After all, a paladin has presumably been training in the use of detect evil for years and knows what it means when a stranger is Evil. Is true Evil (as defined by the spell) common or rare? If someone is evil, does that mean that the paladin should merely be wary of them, should arrest them or should he attack them immediately? This largely depends on the nature of evil in the campaign.

Problems with detect evil normally arise when the paladin is dealing with ordinary people - detecting that a monster in a cave is evil and then slaying that monster never seems to cause moral qualms.


Which is IMO the point The Giant is making with the Sapphire Guard - the moral dissonance, and hypocrisy, of the whole thing - of paladins slaying everything in the wilderness or dungeon that "pings" as Evil on sight, without qualms, and yet being much more careful about due process, in towns.

I wonder how much is paladins specifically and how much is nominally Good adventurers in general?

[hamishspence]

Probably some of both.

[Kish]

I think this is a very convenient way to portray something that never happened. I don't think I ever saw anyone advocating for the "slaughter of every goblin in the comic", a notion that even for a strawman borders on parody and bears no resemblance to any of the arguments that were presented so far.

...what?

You've seriously that confident that no one ever posted what I said? Not to sound like post count ranks actually mean anything other than possible time frame, but...how long have you been reading the forum? I'm guessing not as long as me, somehow. And if you hadn't jumped to treat what I was saying as some kind of attack on you personally, you might have noticed that I said most of the people who posted things like that have left, over the years. (Some voluntarily, a lot because they got banned, sooner or later, for flipping out whenever the comic acted like goblins were people in any way.)

...but okay. Think whatever you like, just don't expect it to affect my posts.

[Jason]

The way D&D has often been played, is adventurer paladins condemning "monsters" who detect as evil to death, on the spot, whenever they meet them in a wilderness or a dungeon.

A lawful good society won't sanction having groups of adventurers going out and massacring random goblin villages that were just minding their own business either. Again, good-aligned societies value mercy, respect life, allow for redemption, respect free will, etc. It's when the monsters are actively raiding others that adventurers are called in, and even then the adventurers will be expected spare goblin non-combatants.
A more neutral society will be less finicky over exactly what the adventurers do to the non-combatant goblins of a tribe that was raiding them but will still tend to leave alone goblins that aren't actively causing problems.

[Fyraltari]

It's not like "sacrificing the few to save the many" is entirely out of character for Good-aligned beings.


It's just that it's a dangerous position to take, and for characters who think that way to turn into out-and-out villains is very easy.

[danielxcutter]

A lawful good society won't sanction having groups of adventurers going out and massacring random goblin villages that were just minding their own business either. Again, good-aligned societies value mercy, respect life, allow for redemption, respect free will, etc. It's when the monsters are actively raiding others that adventurers are called in, and even then the adventurers will be expected spare goblin non-combatants.
A more neutral society will be less finicky over exactly what the adventurers do to the non-combatant goblins of a tribe that was raiding them but will still tend to leave alone goblins that aren't actively causing problems.

How do you know a certain society is Good or Evil? Azure City had paladins, but it also had asswipes like Kubota and Tsukiko(two named Azurites who were indisputably Evil).

The Sapphire Guard may have certain traits of Azurite civilization as a whole dialed up to 11.5, but it's not a 1-to-1 for them either.

Kinda like how Redcloak is absolutely an asswipe, but isn't justification for stamping out the entire species.

Between this and someone(I think armenji or however it was spelled) mentioning Starcraft in earlier threads, I suppose Blizzard being a Really Big Thing^TM in Korea doesn't preclude it being that in other countries as well.

[Worldsong]

I was wondering whether someone would mention him before I did.

[Jason]

How do you know a certain society is Good or Evil? Azure City had paladins, but it also had asswipes like Kubota and Tsukiko(two named Azurites who were indisputably Evil).

If the society publicly endorses lawful good values and the majority of its citizens try to live by those values then I think it's fair to call it a lawful good society, even if some of the ruling class are not lawful good and even if in practice it doesn't quite achieve the lawful good ideal in every aspect.

[Dion]

Paladins are a bit of a joke.

In the D&D rules, “good” and “evil” are little more than ordinary game mechanics, like “black” and “white” in chess, or “clubs”, “hearts”, “diamonds”, “spades” in a card game.

And as long as you’re just playing with miniatures on a hex grid, and treat good and evil like a game mechanic (like figuring the difficulty of picking a lock or the damage resistance of a wooden door) the rules are almost adequate.

But it all falls apart once you try to apply the game rules to real world situations, like role playing, or a story.

No two people in the whole world agree what actions are good or evil. Anyone who says they have it figured out has, almost by definition, not thought long enough about it to take seriously.

[Worldsong]

Aw man, I was too slow to comment that, since a door can't feel pain or suffering, a paladin can't be considered Evil for brutalizing a door.

[Jason]

No two people in the whole world agree what actions are good or evil. Anyone who says they have it figured out has, almost by definition, not thought long enough about it to take seriously.

I have been playing with my current group for close to 20 years. The number of arguments we have had over what good and evil are in-game or what would be correct behavior for a paladin would be are around zero. We've had discussions of the proper behavior in some situations, but we all agree on the basic concepts of good and evil.

[Dion]

I have been playing with my current group for close to 20 years. The number of arguments we have had over what good and evil are in-game or what would be correct behavior for a paladin would be are around zero. We've had discussions of the proper behavior in some situations, but we all agree on the basic concepts of good and evil.

Yes, it is exceedingly common for people not to argue in real life.

Which is why the internet is such a shock for most of us! Suddenly we find out what people really think, and have been hiding from us for the last 20 years.

It turns out that people are a lot more crazy than we ever knew, and if we’re really self aware we realize that most of the ideas that we ourselves have are based on lies we’ve told ourselves over the years.

Oh, to back to the days before the internet, when most people were never ever once confronted by anyone who would disagree with them about anything.

[Severance]

...what?

You've seriously that confident that no one ever posted what I said? Not to sound like post count ranks actually mean anything other than possible time frame, but...how long have you been reading the forum? I'm guessing not as long as me, somehow. And if you hadn't jumped to treat what I was saying as some kind of attack on you personally, you might have noticed that I said most of the people who posted things like that have left, over the years. (Some voluntarily, a lot because they got banned, sooner or later, for flipping out whenever the comic acted like goblins were people in any way.)

...but okay. Think whatever you like, just don't expect it to affect my posts.

Based on personal experience the idea that people were flipping out because the comic "was treating goblins like people in any way" doesn't seem to adhere to reality, at least not based on the arguments I read in multiple 20-40 pages long threads all around this place.
It feels to me more like a convenient way to paint the people complaining as "bad" in order to dismiss the uncomfortable possibility that their arguments might hold ground, a practice which in opposite I've seen employed plenty during the threads I followed and discussions I lurked.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong, and the people you describe were all over the corners which I just happened to miss.

[Dion]

But hey, maybe I'm wrong, and the people you describe were all over the corners which I just happened to miss.

There was one person who said that it was acceptable for the gods other than Fenris to ignore goblins during creation, because goblins were somehow the “enemy”.

[Rrmcklin]

You don't have to even look at the goblin situation for that kind of mindset, Famlicide is another clear example of that mentality popping up.

I wasn't on these forums when it actually happened, but I have archive binged. And I distinctly remember one person going any paladin who had the option to do Famlicide on Black Dragons but didn't should fall.

[Jason]

Yes, it is exceedingly common for people not to argue in real life.

Which is why the internet is such a shock for most of us! Suddenly we find out what people really think, and have been hiding from us for the last 20 years.

The vast majority of what people put on the internet is not what they really think.

[Dion]

The vast majority of what people put on the internet is not what they really think.

I hope that’s true, though I’ve seen no evidence to suggest it is.

But back to my point: I honestly believe that good and evil rules as described in D&D are ludicrous, and that a large part of why they’re even still in the game is because people enjoy the preposterous arguments that they generate.

If you really have not had the experience of the laugh-out-loud ridiculous arguments about good and evil rules in your personal games, and this really is your first exposure to the wildly different ways that every person believes that the paladin rules should be interpreted, then you’ve been missing a great deal of fun.

Just let me say this: the way you would play a paladin is not how most people would play a paladin. And that’s a universal truth for everyone reading this.

No two people play paladins the same. If you want to argue that everyone else is somehow breaking the rules and playing wrong, that’s fine. That’s an argument you’re free to have. It is the internet after all.

[Mechalich]

Yes, the problem is that the villain paladins in the comic obviously are not lawful good, and yet they remain paladins.

If the aim was "show how lawful good characters can be villains," it failed. Because it turns out that characters who do evil things cannot be lawful good.

Indeed, the harsher paladins act like a harsh lawful neutral regime not a lawful good one. As a criticism of paladins I, at least, never found in convincing. If it was intended as a joke it didn't land.

And whatever, sometimes jokes don't land and sometimes a representational example has logical flaws. No work of fiction is perfect, certainly not webcomics. It happens.

The issue with regard to the goblin situation is that there are continual callbacks to this flawed paladin situation. It doesn't make sense that severely damages suspension of disbelief with regard to this plotline. I mean, we are being asked to believe that Durkon has discovered an injustice that escaped the understanding of hundreds of paladins over decades and even the gods themselves. That's a heavy lift and a big part of the reason for this series of angry discussion threads is that people aren't buying it. The paladin issue is one part of the issue, there are others as well.

To pull back a bit to the 20,000 ft level a big part of the issue I have with this plotline is the OOTS is fundamentally a comedy, and while comedies are often great at illustrating problems via example and analogy, they tend to be comparatively bad at pointing out solutions (especially to complicated problems, because they have to simplify by nature). Now, to Rich's credit he had Durkon admit that he has no idea what a solution would look like.

However the means whatever the solution is going to be it's probably going to be some kind of deus ex machina, whether it involves the Rifts, the Snarl, or the Dark One. And while deus ex machina endings can be satisfying in fiction, they're effectively never satisfying in terms of addressing a fictional scenario that's meant to present a real world issue. In OOTS the lands possessed of the goblins can be made better quality by a single person casting an epic spell (Redcloak's maybe 2-3 levels away from being able to do that himself). In the real world ethnic groups that have been forced by historical patterns of state violence onto marginally survivable territories are rather thoroughly stuck.

This is kind of an inherent issue of using high magic fantasy to illustrate any real world problem, because the high magic world solution is almost always 'moar magic!' which simply isn't an option in the real world.

[Dion]

Indeed, the harsher paladins act like a harsh lawful neutral regime not a lawful good one.

There are dozens of different types of paladins in fantasy, from Judge Dredd to Galahad, from The Tick to Warmamer 40K, from Superman to Zapp Branigan.

You have to admit that it’s a little silly to argue on the internet that some paladin portrayal is somehow “wrong”.

[mjasghar]

Epic characters are rare in Oots
Furthermore your example with regards to using epic spells to make the lands better is patently wrong because over time that would mean there would be no wastelands. Guess what? It doesn’t work like that because those areas are like that because of geography which will turn them back
And finally most of those areas are wastelands because the gods wanted it that way - they will simply undo it.