Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality

[PontificatusRex]

I've been thinking about this for a while. It seems to me that the portrayal of the Goblin Dilemma (and that of monsters in general) in Order of the Stick is an allegory for the evolution of role-playing games and the morality within those games. And so here's a lot of words about this:

To me, the Gods seem a whole lot like Game Designers. They create worlds to play their games in and if they cooperate and work together the game goes well for a while, but when they each try to do their own thing it falls apart quickly. And the story of The Dark One as told in Start of Darkness is absolutely, literally true in regards to the design of Dungeons and Dragons - goblins and similar weak monsters were put in the game to be easy enough for low-level adventures to kill before they got high enough level to fight more interesting monsters.

And from an ethics standpoint, that was fine. The game was a straight up pastiche of pulp-era Sword and Sorcery stories mixed with Tolkienian high fantasy. The goblins, etc could just be straight-up evil, they were the servants and troops of the Big Villains and you didn't need to try to justify it because the point of the story was not to create realistic societies. Tolkien's Orcs were not supposed to be regarded as a fully-rounded alien race but as a reflection of all the worst he saw in humanity, especially in his experiences in WW1. And D&D and it's early imitators took that and ran with it. Monsters were obstacles and threats, not sentient beings whose life was inherently equal in value to the characters.

And yet this moral framework was almost immediately subverted in the game. One of the first published adventure modules was Keep on the Borderlands, which I'm sure many folks remember. A party of adventurers makes a series of raids on a cave complex filled with different groups of evil humanoids and some other monsters, in the context of defending civilization against enroaching Evil. Should be no problem, except in those caves are not just enemy warriors, but non-combatant females (yes, sexist) and children. And it's strongly implied the adventurers are supposed to kill them. We're told their hit points and combat abilities, and they come from straight up Evil races so if they aren't killed they'll grow up to be deadly threats later...It's really messed up. I don't think Gygax was trying to throw a massive moral dilemma at the players (especially since it was an Introductory adventure), I assume he was trying to be "realistic" by putting those tribal groups in there instead of just combatants, but it clearly didn't occur to him that said realism completely subverted the Fantasy morality that made it ethically permissible for D&D Adventurers to exist. It's kind of odd that he failed to notice that we never saw baby orcs in Tolkien (except a mention of Gollum killing and eating young goblins, not a great role model), nor did Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Harold Shea, or any other of the protagonists of the stories that inspired Gygax ever have to decide whether or not to murder the children of their enemies.

The action of Keep on the Borderlands can actually be described as the destruction of Redcloak's village, from the human's point of view. There's never even any episodes of the humanoids attacking anyone else, it's completely framed as "Those guys over there are bad, go wipe them out."

On the other hand, in another very early module, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, you've got orcs as potential allies. While you're attacking a bunch of giants (and their non-combatant females, and their children...), there is a hideout of orcs who were slaves to the giants and escaped, and are potential allies to the adventurers. But they're still "Evil". Theoretically if any escaped the giants they would be as much a threat to civilization and should therefore be wiped out, but I doubt many real-life people ended up playing it that way when they ran the adventure.

So almost from the get go you've got monsters with families and children, monsters who are not just enemies but possible allies (a scenario I can't imagine with, say, Tolkien's orcs. I think at best Tolkien's orcs in a similar situation would have pretended to be friendly but betrayed the humans as soon as possible). Runequest, one of my favorite old RPG's, appeared soon after D&D and completely rejected it's ethical system, instead creating a world with the major races being neither good or evil and Elves and Dwarves being just as likely to be enemies of Humans as the Trolls, depending on the circumstances.

And there began a slow evolution to the current view, with 3.5 making humanoids races "Usually" Evil instead of straight up default, though that just complicated the moral issues of being a murderhobo. Orcs have gone from being armies of homicidal thugs to tribes of hardy barbarians (who breed with humans a lot), much like Star Trek Klingons. And Order of the Stick pushes very hard on the view that you just can't relegate any sentient species as "Evil" without keeping the narrative in very, very narrow parameters. Once the enemies have families they care about, the moral framework stops being Fantasy and starts being real-world. Goblins are not there to be enemies of the Player Races any more, they are equal in their inherent worth if not in material circumstances. And what kind of sociopath would wear the skin of their dead enemy as armor, anyway?

So, that was a lot of words. I hope some folks found them interesting.

[KorvinStarmast]

The action of Keep on the Borderlands can actually be described as the destruction of Redcloak's village

not if you play that module smartly. Smart adventurers figured out that some of those groups of humanoids were at odds with the others, and tried the old divide and conquer strategy. It made the module far more interesting than an attempt at a kill 'em all dungeon crawl.

Spoiler: spoiler for those who have never played that module

Show

And there is a backstab at the keep itself that can still get you ...

The premise, of 'borderlands' is that there is a zone of land that isn't under the control of humans, nor humanoids, and thus is contested. Kind of like the neutral zone in Star Trek, but actually more like a no man's land between battle lines on the Western Front. The adventurers are trying to tip the scales.

In the first group that I was in that played that, a whole lot of PCs died (and players had to roll up another one) during the course of that adventure.

[ebarde]

Yeah, I feel that's kinda of my problem with evil races. I'm mostly fine if they're clearly an entity that only exists for a single goal and don't do much outside of that, but the moment you try to flesh them out as a functioning society capable of a wide array of clearly human experiences, as at this point they are no longer really just an abstraction of a particular type of human behavior.

[PontificatusRex]

not if you play that module smartly. Smart adventurers figured out that some of those groups of humanoids were at odds with the others, and tried the old divide and conquer strategy. It made the module far more interesting than an attempt at a kill 'em all dungeon crawl.

Well, sure, that makes for fun gameplay but I don't think it's more ethical to manipulate different groups of neighbors into wiping out each other's families than to just march in and do it yourself.

[Vemynal]

https://twitter.com/rhdaly/status/12...468288/photo/1

Gygax was all for straight up baby murder cause they would have grown up into murderers.

On the flip, the Giant has spent most of his time writing this comic attempting to subvert and give evidence against this ideology.

Is it cool to have horrible irredeemable monsters? Absolutely! Strahd is a personal fav of mine. But I like how gaming has gone the direction of "Strahd is an irredeemable monster" and not "Vampires are irredeemable monsters".

Redcloak is fairly irredeemable at this point I'd say; but I have tons of hope for Jirax, Redcloak's niece, etc. Its more fun imo when adversaries have layers.


edit: i havent posted in so long i forget my avatar was a vampire when i wrote this lmao

[KorvinStarmast]

Is it cool to have horrible irredeemable monsters? Absolutely! Strahd is a personal fav of mine. But I like how gaming has gone the direction of "Strahd is an irredeemable monster" and not "Vampires are irredeemable monsters".

I don't care for vampire revisionism. It's a shame that Blade meets Twilight, the movie, never got made.

Also, there's this for those of you wrapped around the axel about goblins. You are victims of lazy DMs. The original game had a d12 table for level 1 monsters, here's what BECMI (rule compendium) has for the Monster Level 1 Table.

Monster
1d6 Bandit
1d6 Beetle, Fire
1d6 Cave Locust
1d6 Centipede, Giant
1d2 Ghoul
1d6 Goblin
1d3 Human
2d6 Kobold
1d2cLizard, Gecko
1 NPC Party
1d6 Orc
1d10 Skeleton
1d2 Snake, Racer
1d2 Spider, Crab
1d8 Stirge
1d3 Troglodyte
1d3 Zombie

Lots more than goblins, and two separate entries for human: bandit and human. (though the bandits can be of any sort, depends on the imagination the DM applies).

[Doug Lampert]

Keep on the Borderlands was printed in December 1979.

Original D&D was copyright 1973. There were adventures and multiple settings published in the first 6 years, Keep was not the first by a long shot.

[KorvinStarmast]

Keep on the Borderlands was printed in December 1979.

Original D&D was copyright 1973. There were adventures and multiple settings published in the first 6 years, Keep was not the first by a long shot.

not to mention the fine stuff by Judge's Guild, like City State of the Invinicible Overlord and Tegel manor ...

[arimareiji]

This is not unlikely my clear-to-the-bone-marrow jaded cynicism talking, but in a fantasy world where I get to decide alignments... Chaotic and Lawful can stay as they are. Good and Evil would have sub-categories "towards in-group" and "towards out-group", with ALL sentients being various shades of "Usually Good" to the former and "Usually Evil" to the latter. (^_^)°

The biggest difference would be the third axis: Humans would tilt far toward the Idealist (tendency to rationalize) pole, versus the "owning it" pole (brain is sleep-fuzzy; couldn't think of a good term).

[hroþila]

I think Tolkien's orcs are more nuanced than typically given credit for. For all their monstrosity, we still see the dwarves parlaying with them in The Hobbit in a way that suggests being given quarter was not out of the question, we're told that elves and men considered it ethical to treat orc prisoners humanely (even if they didn't always do it), we're pretty much told that the dwarves committed atrocities against them (which of course was reciprocal), a kind of judgment that requires acknowledgment that orcs aren't merely a pest to be destroyed. For all their destructive impulses, we mostly see fighting between orcs from different groups, not infighting as such. They're certainly evil, but we see them mostly at points in their history when they were most under the control of a dark lord that controlled them supernaturally to a certain degree.

[Sapphire Guard]

Once we move away from evil races, i find that the label just moves to some other group the PCs don't need to worry about killing.

Adventuring parties rarely murder villages just because they feel like it, it's a side effect of some other goal. It's usually more 'we're travelling through this forest to go somewhere or retrieve something, we fight back if attacked' than 'we are going out of our way to exterminate this species.'

[TRH]

Once we move away from evil races, i find that the label just moves to some other group the PCs don't need to worry about killing.

I assume that's why slavers are so common in RPGs. After killing a few dozen or a few hundred bandits, a player might stop and think about whether these guys are just trying to make ends meet and had to turn to crime, but slavers are indefensible, more or less.

[arimareiji]

I assume that's why slavers are so common in RPGs. After killing a few dozen or a few hundred bandits, a player might stop and think about whether these guys are just trying to make ends meet and had to turn to crime, but slavers are indefensible, more or less.

Not to mention that if you think it through, human traffickers at least enable a horrific act starting with R on a massive scale.

Which seems to have become unfortunately common in Hollywood fare as a shortcut for "This person is evil", i.e. reason #674 I generally avoid Hollywood fare like the plague. I think it's the result of a steady progression of reason #83 (Turn It Up To 11), in tandem with the unusual-for-Hollywood-realization that everything has to have a limit and not everyone can be Space H**ler.

[Clistenes]

I assume that's why slavers are so common in RPGs. After killing a few dozen or a few hundred bandits, a player might stop and think about whether these guys are just trying to make ends meet and had to turn to crime, but slavers are indefensible, more or less.

I dunno, if you are living in a village surrounded by wilderness, unprotected by state, king or lord, and these bandits are killing and raping people, what are you going to do? let them be? You usually don't even have the option of sending them to jail, because there isn't a jail, or any kind of judicial or penal system... it's either killing them, or letting them go and keep murdering and raping...

Same for "evil" species... if something or somebody is killing and eating humans, I would want them very dead, regardless of alignment or morality... I mean, yeah, eating humans may be a very important part of their culture, or maybe they are hungry and humans taste delicious... so what? **** them, they kill humans, they are dead!.

Which brings the uncomfortable issue of what to do with their children and non-combatants... An Ancient Age/Medieval person wouldn't have doubted what to do: They need to be eliminated so humans can live in peace in the future... but our modern mindset demands that there is a better solution... except there isn't one, because, a society that has to rely on roaming murderhobos for its protection can't possibly have the means to deal with a captured population of enemies who hates their guts, unless they break them and turn them into a slave underclass... which would have been considered humane by a Roman guy from I B.C., but is unacceptable to the modern sensibility of players...

You could claim that, having lost their hunters and looters and having to escape deep into the wilderness, most children will starve to dead of be killed by their mothers to save food, and that the women will look for a new tribe to join... but I don't think most players want to think about those grisly details...

[t209]

not if you play that module smartly. Smart adventurers figured out that some of those groups of humanoids were at odds with the others, and tried the old divide and conquer strategy. It made the module far more interesting than an attempt at a kill 'em all dungeon crawl.

Spoiler: spoiler for those who have never played that module

Show

And there is a backstab at the keep itself that can still get you ...

The premise, of 'borderlands' is that there is a zone of land that isn't under the control of humans, nor humanoids, and thus is contested. Kind of like the neutral zone in Star Trek, but actually more like a no man's land between battle lines on the Western Front. The adventurers are trying to tip the scales.

In the first group that I was in that played that, a whole lot of PCs died (and players had to roll up another one) during the course of that adventure.

Yeah, kinda saw it on the video about it.
Not sure if Gygax thought about Foederatii (Late Roman's policy of making Barbarian "friends" to keep other Barbarians off their back, which backfired when Alaric survived Friggidus after Goths were used as meatshield on Arbogaust's army) for divide and conquer idea in dealing with the tribes.
Edit: Also Goblin Slayer might be reverse or another take on goblins, which the anime showed what happened if Fenris' plan succeeded since we did see goblin attacks being a common problem yet not addressed by higher-level heroes despite the large attrition rate on militias and level1 1 adventurers.

Spoiler: Goblin Slayer spoiler

Show

In fact, had it not been for Goblin Slayer, the demon would have ravaged the world since the chosen one's village was almost attacked by Goblin horde that the titular hero stopped.

[Finagle]

The premise, of 'borderlands' is that there is a zone of land that isn't under the control of humans, nor humanoids, and thus is contested. Kind of like the neutral zone in Star Trek, but actually more like a no man's land between battle lines on the Western Front. The adventurers are trying to tip the scales.

It's really a copy of the *eastern* front. It more similarly resembles the medieval Teutons going east to build civilization in a wilderness. Many of these oldschool D&D players were students of medieval history (bill-guisarme, anybody?) The Keep is the last outpost to keep the monsters out, and the players are there to make the area safe for more civilization. The module is only for levels 1-3, but a creative DM could have the players go all they way up to name level and build keeps of their own in the area and start an open borders immigration policy to fill the land with taxable farmers.

KOTB didn't even have "evil" aligned monsters. They were just Chaotic. The forces of civilization were the players - Law - and the forces opposing them were Chaos. The adventure zone was even called the Caves of Chaos, just in case anyone forgot.

In the first group that I was in that played that, a whole lot of PCs died (and players had to roll up another one) during the course of that adventure.

Yeah, the monsters have a lot of room for intelligent reaction to the PCs, setting ambushes, moving things around, etc. One of the reasons the module is a classic.

[The Pilgrim]

Ah, the issue of "fantasy racism"...

Well, back then when Tolkien made the orcs, it was a device not different than when we make zombies or alien-bug-infestion stuff today. You can, and must, flesh out the Evil Overlord, but the Evil Overlord needs minions, and you can't flesh out every individual minion to explain to the reader why it needs killing. So you end up creating a generic non-humanized enemy as legitimate target for your heroes to kill. When I was a child, I remember how the TMNT cartoon made all Foot Clan soldiers robots so there would be no moral problem in the protagonist killing them (while in the comic, they were living people). Star Wars ended up stablishing all Stormtroopers were clones with no personality in order to justify their mass slaughtering (and I suppose their poor marksmanship, too).

Problem is when your enemy-by-default begins to get development too, as an species whith their society, biological cycle, women and children. Then they begin to look too much like people and you start to feel you can't just slaughter them at sight. And you can't really go with labelling them as "utterly evil" when they are mating and reproducing like any other living species.

When you reach that point, it's when it becomes "fantasy racism". Because that's the point were, if you want to keep justifying killing them at sight, you have to resort to the same kind of rationalizations that humans in the past have used to justify ethnical cleansing.

My point is, it's not racist to do what Tolkien did. That is, to invent a non-humanized guilty-by-default enemy. But it is to pretend to keep with it as the "evil species" get, eventually, "humanized".

Nowadays, the role of Orcs&Goblins as "legitimate targets" in RPGs has been largely overtaken by Undead and Fiends. And, in general fiction, by Zombies and Alien Bugs. Though the Alien Bugs end up being problematic, too. See Starcraft.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's really a copy of the *eastern* front. It more similarly resembles the medieval Teutons going east to build civilization in a wilderness. Many of these oldschool D&D players were students of medieval history (bill-guisarme, anybody?) The Keep is the last outpost to keep the monsters out, and the players are there to make the area safe for more civilization. The module is only for levels 1-3, but a creative DM could have the players go all they way up to name level and build keeps of their own in the area and start an open borders immigration policy to fill the land with taxable farmers.

KOTB didn't even have "evil" aligned monsters. They were just Chaotic. The forces of civilization were the players - Law - and the forces opposing them were Chaos. The adventure zone was even called the Caves of Chaos, just in case anyone forgot.

Nice summary. Yep. I had one AD&D 1e DM who ran it in AD&D 1e, (it took very little to adapt it) which made it quite a different adventure from running it in Basic. I also had a halfling/hobbit die by being eaten by

Spoiler: something not for those who have not played it yet

Show

one of the NPC's pet cats/feral cat.

Yeah, the monsters have a lot of room for intelligent reaction to the PCs, setting ambushes, moving things around, etc. One of the reasons the module is a classic.

yeah.

You can, and must, flesh out the Evil Overlord, but the Evil Overlord needs minions, and you can't flesh out every individual minion to explain to the reader why it needs killing. So you end up creating a generic non-humanized enemy as legitimate target for your heroes to kill.

Which is what the Goblins in Strip 0001 are. Minions of an evil overlord named Xykon.

Also: I've never had a problem with slaughtering zergs. It was the anti-protoss missions that got under my skin more (during the campaign: can't we talk? But there's a strain of 'religious zealot' built into the protoss that lends itself to them being the 'minions of an extremist ideology' ... Entaro Adun!)

[The Pilgrim]

Which is what the Goblins in Strip 0001 are. Minions of an evil overlord named Xykon.

Yep, they were free to kill until the strip actually got a storyline and became serious, then the author had to add flavor to them.

Also: I've never had a problem with slaughtering zergs. It was the anti-protoss missions that got under my skin more (during the campaign: can't we talk? But there's a strain of 'religious zealot' built into the protoss that lends itself to them being the 'minions of an extremist ideology' ... Entaro Adun!)

And by the final installment of the game, Zergs were humanized and got vindicated as a survival-of-the-fittest proud species with individual free will, who have been corrupted and enslaved by the Big Bad Guy and had to be freed by the human-born Queen of Blades.

The Protoss, I never got the hang of them. They were too expensive and fragile, to fix them you needed a Dark Archon to turn an SCV and set up a basic Terran camp to produce SCVs and Medics for repairing and healing. But by that point, I'd rather pull a Million Men Marine March and be done with the mission.

[t209]

Also: I've never had a problem with slaughtering zergs. It was the anti-protoss missions that got under my skin more (during the campaign: can't we talk? But there's a strain of 'religious zealot' built into the protoss that lends itself to them being the 'minions of an extremist ideology' ... Entaro Adun!)

Starcraft 1 justfied that Terrans being as Metzen puts it "an unfortunate people who got stuck in an intergalactic war but too busy fighting amongst themselves" with Protoss unwilling to talk with human due to being an outlier and prone to being infested (except Tassadar).
Starcraft 2 is iffy since Tel'darim is a malevolent cult (until Legacy of the Void, but only toning it down as a truce) not part of major Protoss civilization but you are technically looting sacred sites. Let's not mention

Spoiler: Haven mission spoiler

Show

"let's piss off our major ally by attacking a fleet that will burn down a colony. But we have Telltale story system where they would be shown as overzealous on what is essentially a minor containment yet taking side with Protoss will have it shown as out of control."

[Morty]

People have been pointing out why conveniently evil humanoids are several shades of terrible for years. Decades, really. Start of Darkness came out a long time ago as well. They haven't somehow become more terrible since then and other authors, games and works have managed to move on from it. It just took D&D a long while to catch up. The criticism became widespread enough that WotC finally deigned to talk about maybe doing something about it (the results being unimpressive so far).

[KorvinStarmast]

Let's not mention

Spoiler: Haven mission spoiler

Show

"let's piss off our major ally by attacking a fleet that will burn down a colony. But we have Telltale story system where they would be shown as overzealous on what is essentially a minor containment yet taking side with Protoss will have it shown as out of control."

Heh, I just did that one, have not been playing SC 2 for a couple of years so I am starting all over again. My first try at that mission was

Spoiler: mission details

Show

a case of "need to build faster to keep more of the colonies from getting scorched" since I took the side that the good doctor advocated for.

[Ionathus]

Well, back then when Tolkien made the orcs, it was a device not different than when we make zombies or alien-bug-infestion stuff today. You can, and must, flesh out the Evil Overlord, but the Evil Overlord needs minions, and you can't flesh out every individual minion to explain to the reader why it needs killing. So you end up creating a generic non-humanized enemy as legitimate target for your heroes to kill. When I was a child, I remember how the TMNT cartoon made all Foot Clan soldiers robots so there would be no moral problem in the protagonist killing them (while in the comic, they were living people). Star Wars ended up stablishing all Stormtroopers were clones with no personality in order to justify their mass slaughtering (and I suppose their poor marksmanship, too).

Problem is when your enemy-by-default begins to get development too, as an species whith their society, biological cycle, women and children. Then they begin to look too much like people and you start to feel you can't just slaughter them at sight. And you can't really go with labelling them as "utterly evil" when they are mating and reproducing like any other living species.

When you reach that point, it's when it becomes "fantasy racism". Because that's the point were, if you want to keep justifying killing them at sight, you have to resort to the same kind of rationalizations that humans in the past have used to justify ethnical cleansing.

My point is, it's not racist to do what Tolkien did. That is, to invent a non-humanized guilty-by-default enemy. But it is to pretend to keep withit as the "evil species" get, eventually, "humanized".

Nowadays, the role of Orcs&Goblins as "legitimate targets" in RPGs has been largely overtaken by Undead and Fiends. And, in general fiction, by Zombies and Alien Bugs. Though the Alien Bugs end up being problematic, too. See Starcraft.

This is a really great breakdown, and I agree completely.

People have been pointing out why conveniently evil humanoids are several shades of terrible for years. Decades, really. Start of Darkness came out a long time ago as well. They haven't somehow become more terrible since then and other authors, games and works have managed to move on from it. It just took D&D a long while to catch up. The criticism became widespread enough that WotC finally deigned to talk about maybe doing something about it (the results being unimpressive so far).

I think there's something special about how D&D plays out, because it's a combat-focused game with lots of rules about how to Kill Stuff Good, but it also leaves the door open for improv and character decisions in lots of ways. Of course, other Tabletop RPGs have that dynamic, but they aren't saddled with 40+ years of existing lore and baggage, and their systems are often a lot more open and less focused on "hit it until it dies" mechanics.

So what you get with D&D is a property and playerbase with loads of existing lore and expectations, trying to reconcile its old-school roots as "kill monsters and take their stuff" while giving new players the freedom to tell more narrative stories and treat monsters as something more than mindless Evil Minions who are just there to be fought & killed. Basically, I appreciate WotC trying to create a game that's open enough to tell (almost) any kind of story, but there's only so much you can change D&D's mechanics and base assumptions before it doesn't look like D&D anymore.

Of course some players have been treating the orcs as mortal/moral/redeemable since the '70s, but the playerbase's mentality has definitely evolved

[danielxcutter]

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.

[hamishspence]

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.

[danielxcutter]

.....Yeesh.

[hamishspence]

4e wasn't much better, but at least it had a splatbook with a section that went into some detail on how to play goblins as PCs (Into The Underdark: The Dungeon Survival Handbook).

5e's Volo's Guide, by contrast, is very much about goblins, and others, as antagonists, rather than as protagonists.

[Gurgeh]

The shift mid-4e to using Forgotten Realms as the "default" campaign setting over Greyhawk probably didn't help, either.

[hamishspence]

4E Realms at least has drow as a "full player race" in the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide. Dungeon Survival Handbook was one of the last 4E books - so I don't see how 4e moved away from "monsters as playable" over time.

If anything it's the reverse - goblins and kobolds are painted in a much less "playable" light early in 4e (MM), but late in 4e they got nuance.

[danielxcutter]

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.