[OSSR] Shackled City

[Username17]

Long story short, the Captain of the Guard wants to hire the PCs to investigate what he thinks is a goblin infestation, and offers to pay them 5gp per goblin ear they bring back.

Wait... what?! Goblins in 3e D&D are people. People who are usually but not always part of rival nations and tribes. One of the player characters could just be a Goblin. The captain of the guard is basically paying for Injun Skalps, and that is totally fucked up. There's nothing about ears that marks warriors or members of miscreant gangs from like fishers or tinkers or whatever. What the actual fuck?

-Username17

[CapnTthePirateG]

There's precedent, one of the RA Salvatore novels had them doing this in the bloodlands of FR.

What I mean to say is, a lot of people never seem to have gotten over ORC R BAD ever because...reasons. See 5e and the reversion to the always evil orc blood (and 5e half-orcs have to resist the call of darkness or some shit). So while the official 3e position is that goblins and orcs are people that never really caught on with the whole playerbase so you get dumb shit like this.

If this reminds you of shit weird racists say...yeah!

[SlyJohnny]

The problem I have with D&D morality is that a lot of players profess to not care about moral issues and want to just get down and kill some greenskins, which is fair enough, but then they ALSO want to be unambiguously good agents of justice.

Like pick one or the other. I'm fine with playing in a world where the constant territorial disputes and cultural divide between humans and goblins means that human soldiers or peasant militia will generally kill goblins on sight, no questions asked, and none of the PCs happen to be people who have the motivation to seriously question this policy. But trying to persuade me that it's because goblins are innately evil is (a) kinda fucked, and (b) utterly waters down the threat of psychotic "always evil" outsiders and undead, if every low-level punk we roll is a card carrying member of the Forces of Darkness who wants to set the world to ruin.

If you want to run an adventure where we exterminate a nest of goblins, just tell us they burnt down our village's granary and stole some sheep or something, and we'll head right over there to murder them and steal their stuff, and I won't trouble myself with the details. But don't try to promote some weird fantasy human Manifest Destiny and THEN say that you don't care to wax philosophical about morality.

[Username17]

Having always evil outsiders (say devils) is just as fucked as having always evil goblins.

Doesn't have to be. As long as your outsiders aren't born but are instead hatched from souls or some fucking thing, then it's not really equivalent to racism. An evil demon that is made out of evil souls somehow isn't "born evil" or any of that weird mark of Cain shit, there's actual evil choices that have been made by it before it existed in its current form.

-Username17

[ishy]

Doesn't have to be. As long as your outsiders aren't born but are instead hatched from souls or some fucking thing, then it's not really equivalent to racism. An evil demon that is made out of evil souls somehow isn't "born evil" or any of that weird mark of Cain shit, there's actual evil choices that have been made by it before it existed in its current form.

-Username17

I disagree. If your outsiders are basically a form you pokevolve into, then sure. Otherwise you're basically a new entity and thus any and all previous baggage falls away.
Same thing if you said evil people reincarnate (through birth) as goblins.

[hogarth]

I think the interesting thing about Jzadirune is that the PCs don't actually have to clear every room. I had a party go Seal Team 6 and follow the exact route to reach the elevator in about 20-30 minutes of game play, simply by following the skulk's tunnels and finding the secret door.

My players also found the secret door that allowed them to skip directly to Kazmojen's area. Thank god they didn't have to slog through the long, long, long way.

The thing I always liked was showing the party there was a powerful villain in play, to cast a shadow on the campaign for them to deal with later. Maybe this isn't a great idea like I first thought, but all of my players have enjoyed the shock of it.

My players liked it, too. It feels a bit more natural than the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion method of having all bad guys in the entire universe level up at exactly the same rate as the PCs.

[RelentlessImp]

Long story short, the Captain of the Guard wants to hire the PCs to investigate what he thinks is a goblin infestation, and offers to pay them 5gp per goblin ear they bring back.

Wait... what?! Goblins in 3e D&D are people. People who are usually but not always part of rival nations and tribes. One of the player characters could just be a Goblin. The captain of the guard is basically paying for Injun Skalps, and that is totally fucked up. There's nothing about ears that marks warriors or members of miscreant gangs from like fishers or tinkers or whatever. What the actual fuck?

-Username17

Christopher Perkins is totally on board as treating goblins as subsapient creatures, going so far as to call them 'irksome pests' in the opening text crawl, and continually calling their presence an 'infestation'. Then again, it could just be looking at it through the eyes of the Captain of the Guard, who could be racist as fuck. That said, considering how little complaints there have actually been about this part of the campaign (possibly because most people who played it played it before Drakthar's Way was written) shows just how on board most D&D players are with treating the classic murder-victims-to-level-up as just that, despite them actually being totally sapient.

[Prak]

Having always evil outsiders (say devils) is just as fucked as having always evil goblins.

Doesn't have to be. As long as your outsiders aren't born but are instead hatched from souls or some fucking thing, then it's not really equivalent to racism. An evil demon that is made out of evil souls somehow isn't "born evil" or any of that weird mark of Cain shit, there's actual evil choices that have been made by it before it existed in its current form.

-Username17

What about D&D's (3e) idea that outsiders come from aligned planestuff? Are creatures made from Evil Quintessence are always evil equivalent to creatures made from sinners in your mind?

I'd actually say that it's more reasonable to make Evil Quintessence creatures always evil than it is to make Hatched From Sinners creatures always evil, because the latter should at least have some kind of option to repent.

Long story short, the Captain of the Guard wants to hire the PCs to investigate what he thinks is a goblin infestation, and offers to pay them 5gp per goblin ear they bring back.

Wait... what?! Goblins in 3e D&D are people. People who are usually but not always part of rival nations and tribes. One of the player characters could just be a Goblin. The captain of the guard is basically paying for Injun Skalps, and that is totally fucked up. There's nothing about ears that marks warriors or members of miscreant gangs from like fishers or tinkers or whatever. What the actual fuck?

-Username17

Christopher Perkins is totally on board as treating goblins as subsapient creatures, going so far as to call them 'irksome pests' in the opening text crawl, and continually calling their presence an 'infestation'. Then again, it could just be looking at it through the eyes of the Captain of the Guard, who could be racist as fuck. That said, considering how little complaints there have actually been about this part of the campaign (possibly because most people who played it played it before Drakthar's Way was written) shows just how on board most D&D players are with treating the classic murder-victims-to-level-up as just that, despite them actually being totally sapient.

Damn, now I want to find someone running this adventure just so I can play a goblin adventurer and go all SJW on the captain of the guard.

[TOZ]

Where's my fucking breakdown of SCAP? Were other OSSRs like this and I just don't understand? If so, ignore me.

[RelentlessImp]

Where's my fucking breakdown of SCAP? Were other OSSRs like this and I just don't understand? If so, ignore me.

Honestly I'm wondering why the 40k stuff has been ejaculated all over this thread. I've got more Shackled City coming, I've just been dealing with real life (and also enjoying video games for the first time in a while).

[fbmf]

Where's my fucking breakdown of SCAP? Were other OSSRs like this and I just don't understand? If so, ignore me.

Honestly I'm wondering why the 40k stuff has been ejaculated all over this thread. I've got more Shackled City coming, I've just been dealing with real life (and also enjoying video games for the first time in a while).

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
40K Ejacuate split off to its own thread.
[/TGFBS]

[hogarth]

My own impression of Shackled City was that the story was far too smalltime for the levels it covered. "Purging a secret cabal that controls a small region and seeks McGuffins that would allow them to free their boss so that they can possibly achieve greater importance" is a mid-level quest at most. If at level 18 the party is not dealing with world-ending threats, players have wasted the time they spent on leveling their character. So I was not interested enough to more that skim it through.

If you ended the adventure path at "Thirteen Cages", then you would have a campaign ending with the 16th level PCs stopping a demonic (well, demodandic) invasion of the region, grabbing control of a layer of the Abyss along the way. That doesn't sound particularly small-time to me, although "stop the invasion" is a pretty generic quest that could cover PCs of all levels.

The last two adventures after "Thirteen Cages" seem pretty tacked-on, though.

[Zaranthan]

People treating intelligent humanoids as red dots really gets my goat. I had a DM once actually tell me I "wasn't playing it right" because I tried to talk to a duergar we ran into. Said duergar was alone, on the surface, unarmed, and wearing tattered rags. We were level seven, the poor thing was on the threat level of "mischievous child" to us, but he insisted I should be frothing at the mouth and trying to cave its skull in just because his beard was a different shape from mine.

The thing I always liked was showing the party there was a powerful villain in play, to cast a shadow on the campaign for them to deal with later. Maybe this isn't a great idea like I first thought, but all of my players have enjoyed the shock of it.

My players liked it, too. It feels a bit more natural than the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion method of having all bad guys in the entire universe level up at exactly the same rate as the PCs.

I think showing off the (or at least a) major villain early on is a storytelling trick that works well in TTRPGs. It gives the players a sense of the scale of the campaign when they're stuck handling dire rat infestations and gives them a point to strive towards. My groups frequently have problems with "why are we doing this?" Having M. Bison appear answers that question nicely.

[TOZ]

It also gave me a wonderful moment where the party had negotiated for the kids and the paladin was taking them off into the hall when I realized I had forgotten about the dramatic entrance. In my inexperience, I kludged it in at the last minute, logic be damned. The paladin was the only one to be shown what was speaking to him at first, leading the rest of the party to urge him to attack. The paladin player emphatically responded that he could not do that. Then the party turned the corner and I showed them what was speaking and they changed their tune very quickly.

[fbmf]

Where's my fucking breakdown of SCAP? Were other OSSRs like this and I just don't understand? If so, ignore me.

Honestly I'm wondering why the 40k stuff has been ejaculated all over this thread. I've got more Shackled City coming, I've just been dealing with real life (and also enjoying video games for the first time in a while).

*Drums fingers impatiently.*

Game On,
fbmf

[FatR]

Wait... what?! Goblins in 3e D&D are people.

People who are and always were engaged in a war of extermination with people you actually play. Stop confusing your own setting with actual DnD. There are some examples when goblins and humans not killing each other on sight (though usually because of both beind minions of something like an evil god and his clerics), and maybe very few examples of goblins and other PC races not killing each other on sight, but the latter are so rare that for Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk (the default assumed setting at the times of 3.X, you know) I cannot remember any off the top of my head.

If you ended the adventure path at "Thirteen Cages", then you would have a campaign ending with the 16th level PCs stopping a demonic (well, demodandic) invasion of the region, grabbing control of a layer of the Abyss along the way.

I guess I missed the part about grabbing control of a layer of the Abyss. That would be a worthy quest, though I say going from protecting a small town right to ruling a vast extraplanar expanse might be a bit jarring.

[Chamomile]

Wait... what?! Goblins in 3e D&D are people.

People who are and always were engaged in a war of extermination with people you actually play. Stop confusing your own setting with actual DnD. There are some examples when goblins and humans not killing each other on sight

Well, there was that one Drizz't short story where he found a goblin enslaved by some random asshole up on the surface and realized that for all his mellodramatic brooding, there were people who suffered under worse prejudices than him. And he went off to go and get the aid of one of his buddies who'd ended up king or something to throw some legal weight around, but by the time he got back the goblin slave had already been hung. And this made Drizz't commit to never running off for legal authority to right a wrong his own scimitars could handle immediately, which is probably supposed to be some point about Law vs. Chaos but let's not even get into that.

So, FR at least has one story stating in no uncertain terms that yes, the captain is a terrible person whom Drizz't would stab in the face. And it is actually a part of Drizz't's character arc that he would do it immediately and regardless of legal consequences, rather than exhausting alternative options first.

[FatR]

Well, there was that one Drizz't short story where he found a goblin enslaved by some random asshole up on the surface and realized that for all his mellodramatic brooding, there were people who suffered under worse prejudices than him.

That part about "prejudices" falls rather flat after the first three or so Drizz't's books were spent hammering in the fact that all but two drow in the world are evil and should not be trusted under any circumstances, even besides their official policy of killing surface dwellers for shits and giggles.

[Prak]

Wait... what?! Goblins in 3e D&D are people.

People who are and always were engaged in a war of extermination with people you actually play. Stop confusing your own setting with actual DnD. There are some examples when goblins and humans not killing each other on sight

Well, there was that one Drizz't short story where he found a goblin enslaved by some random asshole up on the surface and realized that for all his mellodramatic brooding, there were people who suffered under worse prejudices than him. And he went off to go and get the aid of one of his buddies who'd ended up king or something to throw some legal weight around, but by the time he got back the goblin slave had already been hung. And this made Drizz't commit to never running off for legal authority to right a wrong his own scimitars could handle immediately, which is probably supposed to be some point about Law vs. Chaos but let's not even get into that.

So, FR at least has one story stating in no uncertain terms that yes, the captain is a terrible person whom Drizz't would stab in the face. And it is actually a part of Drizz't's character arc that he would do it immediately and regardless of legal consequences, rather than exhausting alternative options first.

Actually, Captain Carrot of Discworld is the example of how a(n intelligent) lawful character should handle that shit.

"Sir, I'd like to buy your goblin. Will ten gold suffice?"
"Fuck, sure, I was just going to kill him for being green."
"Uh-huh. Write me a receipt, so it's all legal like. Gotta make sure we do this ownership thing right, eh?"
"Ummm.... ok, whatever *scribble scribble*"
"Mr. Goblin, I present you with your receipt for yourself. You now own yourself and are personally responsible for whatever you may choose to do. I advise you to not kill this racist asshole while I step away to have a widdle."

(ok, Carrot wouldn't do that very last part. That's what Vimes and Angua exist for)

[RelentlessImp]

It's gonna take me a little while longer to do the next part. It's a loose connection of celebration activities that dives headlong into a murder investigation, and making it coherent through my rage at how much wasted page space there is is gonna take me a bit of time.

[hogarth]

I guess I missed the part about grabbing control of a layer of the Abyss.

It's much less interesting than it sounds. The adventure revolving around it is kind of a dud.

[Rejakor]

And now the region map: why does all those roads go to Cauldron, as if it was the fucking center of all commercial roads ? Cauldron is at the fucking top of a mountain ! You construct a fortress at the top of a mountain, not a town ! The whole point is to make the access to your fortress as hard as possible, and the access to your commercial town as easy as possible, not the other way around ! Commercial towns naturally develop around rivers and in mountain pass, not around a fucking lake connected to nothing on the fucking top of a fucking mountain !

In regions that aren't fully secured by some system of armed men or social construction, places where trade happens are the ones that are not in danger of being attacked, and which contain enough armed men to patrol the roads near the settlement.

Frontier towns being built 'wherever convenient' is an Old West thing - there, guns made defensive terrain advantage less necessary. Large, powerful walls or being built on a hill with good view were prerequisites for rough area towns in the middle ages that were not under the direct protection of a powerful noble. And a beholder is not a powerful noble - they spend too much LA on not-being-a-caster.

Wait... what?! Goblins in 3e D&D are people. People who are usually but not always part of rival nations and tribes. One of the player characters could just be a Goblin. The captain of the guard is basically paying for Injun Skalps, and that is totally fucked up. There's nothing about ears that marks warriors or members of miscreant gangs from like fishers or tinkers or whatever. What the actual fuck?

-Username17

People actually did pay for injun scalps, also for ears. The general faith-trust was that the ears you were bringing in was not of random peasants because people would see you killing the peasants and report that men fitting your descriptions had 'raided a village north of whatever', being as it was hard to kill all the people in a village and not leave some survivors to report your doings. And that if no reported murders + a bunch of ears happened, you'd gone and killed a bunch of bandits, who survivors of that group would not go and report the killings to the authorities, as they are outlaws, and known in the area by description, dress, or just are scared of being hung for the reason of not knowing if they were identified or not.

In a world where people are far more differentiated than 'injuns' from 'white men' or 'irish' from 'english', there is no reason why people in a medieval background would not pay for ears. Presumably the goblins in this area are native tribal goblins or criminals, and any exceptions (if there are any) take a lot of care to dress well and not act 'goblin-like' so people will accept them as 'not goblins'.

[Starmaker]

In a world where people are far more differentiated than 'injuns' from 'white men' or 'irish' from 'english', there is no reason why people in a medieval background would not pay for ears. Presumably the goblins in this area are native tribal goblins or criminals, and any exceptions (if there are any) take a lot of care to dress well and not act 'goblin-like' so people will accept them as 'not goblins'.

I don't think anyone's arguing goblin ear bounties aren't "realistic". But genocide of a people because some of them are "mugging, committing B&E, and tagging walls" is not good, not just, and certainly not an appropriate quest for a published adventure in which you're ostensibly playing the good guys. When you roll into town and the local authority gives you a quest to murder as many as possible injuns/gypsies/blacks for cash under flimsy pretenses, the situation isn't improved by you being unable to murder local people instead. And ffs you don't refer to it as an "infestation" like goblins were vermin with a dash in Int unless you have a dash in Int.

Now, I'm not advocating for pacifist runs. D&D is a game about killing people and taking their stuff and it's fine, but the game (and the adventure) has to provide a framework in which it's fine so that you aren't playing literally Hitler. If you set out to investigate the crimes and the goblins try to stab you in the face, it's okay to stab them back. Unless they're enslaved, or, say, dominated by a vampire -- that'd be a bummer.

[Rejakor]

In medieval society, either you were not committing crimes, or you were effectively facing ostracization, horrific torture disguised as justice, or a terrible way to die. The modern system of 'punishment fits the crime', as laughable as it is, did not exist at all. This led to escalation of crime in a big way - someone 'mugging' outside the social contract ('robbing someone in the bad area of town is fine, robbing them anywhere else is not fine') might lead to the death penalty, or permanent mutilation - in that circumstance, muggings quickly escalate to killings or worse as the thief gains confidence and realizes that lowering the chance of identification is worth risking the noose - as losing a hand is nearly as bad and leaves you often a beggar at best due to the fear/hatred of disfigurement, and identification as a criminal.

I'm not saying that you're not being asked to murder gypsies. Because you are. It's just more acceptable to murder gypsies because 'some gypsies have been doing crimes' in medieval style settings. It's glossed over in modern gaming. It only really comes out in these little things, and is justified by 'Tolkien', but history has lots of minorities getting murdered because of friction caused by actions perceived to be outside the social contract. Literally hundreds of pogroms, rashes of hangings, 'mob justice', etc. The minorities generally responded by fleeing. And in some cases they did end up being shifty and often thieves or assassins or whatever because the discrimination made it hard to be anything else.

[SlyJohnny]

At risk of repeating the arguments that got the thread split off into WH40K ejaculate, this is why I accept genocide of goblin for the most part, but get weirded out when we're portrayed as Champions of Light for doing it.

Like either say you don't care about morality in games, or give it a treatment more complicated than "green is bad".