Musings

[Chamomile]

No you are defensive until you learn he is the uncommonly not fascist goblin

That's not what you said! This is what you said:

If you meet a goblin in the wilderness you don’t like them coming along with your party cause they’ll say racist shit about dwarves over the campfire and might steal your food if they think they can get away with it

And this:

It means you can hate grown Goblins with lethal force without moral worry

And this:

So Adventurers can kill goblinfolk with distaste but a clear conscious cause the camp they fought was full of genuine Nazi’s who excuse the torture of other goblins by their big strong chief.

And the closest thing you got to arguing against racial essentialism in your actual original post was this:

you shouldn’t kill their babies cause if you manage to kill most of the horrible ones the younger generation would be much less awful in like 20 years, but almost no one’s willing to spend 20 years around a bunch of nazi’s slowly teaching them to unlearn their elf genocide jokes.

These aren't statements about what people think. These are statements about what actually is, and they say that literally every goblin is part of the capitalist-fascist regime, and the closest it comes to pushing back on race-essentialism is a note that there could hypothetically be good goblins, but it still rules out the possibility that there are any good goblins right now.

Again, I get that what you're saying now is what you originally intended to communicate, but it is not what you originally wrote and you need to rewrite that shit or every other person you show it to will notice that it's a weird endorsement of racist socialism with a tacked on addendum about baby goblins and assume that is what you were trying to communicate, and you will have to have this conversation again every time.

[Dean]

So while writing societal write-ups about creature types I did a writeup of each type amongst the Capitalist/Fuedal/Wild/Socialist factions and doing so has led me to this weird little conspiracy theory about Giants. I was writing the different racial capitalist factions and basically if you ask what a Giant society would look like if one uberwealthy individual was defunding it and feeding them hatred and racial propaganda it kinda looks exactly like Saurons realm.

My new head-canon is that the "Cave Trolls" are the exact same species but the oppressed lower class. Balrogs/Saurons species already shows a propensity to have their physical appearance be representative of their inner being. They're clearly a morphic species and it makes perfect sense to me that if you take a 16ft tall magically morphic species and malnourish and propagandize hate to them they'd look like that. Then their leader class has sweet outfits and every one of them has a flaming sword or lightning whip that they paid for with the people's money.

[Grek]

It's a fucking crazy game conceit that you want to stab multiple different people every single gaming session and still be absolutely assured by the game that you are the good guy. But here we are so let's do the legwork.

There are numerous correct ways to do this (I'll even list some of them for you), but making a race of people who are okay to kill on the grounds that they're all thieves and murderers, except not really they're actually from a bad country full of thieves and murderers, except you should still judge them based on race, except judging them based on race is fine because they have generally opposite politics from you which makes them automatically okay to kill, only you shouldn't actually do that if they're living in a city with you because the police would be annoyed and/or they're one of the few 'good' members of that race and not like the thieves and murderers who are coming into the kingdom from overseas... is not. You've basically described the political views of the most racist of racists with regards to immigrants, except that the bad people with a different skin colour are green capitalists instead of brown Muslims.

Here are some better ways to justify getting your stab on:

• You happen to live in a region which uses outlawry as a capital punishment, and the people you are fighting are branded (on their faces) as outlaws for presumably very serious crimes which would justify killing them if you wanted to do that.
• You happen to live in a region which practices livestock raiding, and it is an acknowledged (if not necessarily welcome) practice to go to the next village over, steal their cattle and fight anyone who tries to stop you. They will do the same to you later.
• You happen to live in a region which has an ongoing war and you have joined one side or another as a result of your patriotic and/or mercenary ideals. The people you are fighting are wearing the other side's uniform.
• You have encountered a group of muggers, bandits (rural muggers) or pirates (sea muggers) who are attempting to extort you for money. Given that piracy is punishable by execution in this region, nobody will object if you kill them.
• You have encountered a group of undead who are okay to kill on the basis that they are walking corpses who kill and possibly eat people. There's a wide variety of sub-options here from zombies to vampires to ghosts.
• You have encountered a band of visiting Asura who hail from the celestial spheres of battle. They expect you to fight them and will not engage you socially until you have established your relative social standing via combat.
• Some jackass has created a snowman without giving it a soul via the clothing-and-naming ritual, and so it has gone on a murderous demon-possessed rampage as all unfinished golems are famous for doing. You should probably destroy it.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Wait... but if I'm the evil goblin, then there's no issues with stabbing fools and taking their stuff, right?

[phlapjackage]

So while writing societal write-ups about creature types I did a writeup of each type amongst the Capitalist/Fuedal/Wild/Socialist factions and doing so has led me to this weird little conspiracy theory about Giants. I was writing the different racial capitalist factions and basically if you ask what a Giant society would look like if one uberwealthy individual was defunding it and feeding them hatred and racial propaganda it kinda looks exactly like Saurons realm.

My new head-canon is that the "Cave Trolls" are the exact same species but the oppressed lower class. Balrogs/Saurons species already shows a propensity to have their physical appearance be representative of their inner being. They're clearly a morphic species and it makes perfect sense to me that if you take a 16ft tall magically morphic species and malnourish and propagandize hate to them they'd look like that. Then their leader class has sweet outfits and every one of them has a flaming sword or lightning whip that they paid for with the people's money.

Not super clear on your distinctions in the Wild/Feudal/Capitalist/Socialst groups. But I think that your idea above for the Giants might be more Feudal. There's no trade etc with the above?

Wild/Socialist gets you the Ents

*edit* or maybe Feudal is Giant Eagles? Didn't they have a king?

[Grek]

Wait... but if I'm the evil goblin, then there's no issues with stabbing fools and taking their stuff, right?

That is still bad, but if you are officially an evil goblin, you are expected to do bad things and presumably the metatextual entity dictating your actions is on board with being a bad person and doing bad things.

[Dogbert]

All I have to say is that there's a specific level of hell for GMs who allow their players to roll a sword dude only to troll them with post-modern Friendship Is Magic morality in the mud middle ages, thus making the only thing their character was built for useless.

Everything is "problematic." EVERYTHING. Games are for having fun. Playing baseline dnd doesn't make you a red cap the same way videogames don't make you a serial killer.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[Thaluikhain]

All I have to say is that there's a specific level of hell for GMs who allow their players to roll a sword dude only to troll them with post-modern Friendship Is Magic morality in the mud middle ages, thus making the only thing their character was built for useless.

Eh, you can still have useful fighters in that situation, you just fight totally alien monsters rather than people with different coloured skin or shaped ears. All the people of the world unite Star Trek style because there's a zombie apocalypse going on, done.

[Stubbazubba]

All I have to say is that there's a specific level of hell for GMs who allow their players to roll a sword dude only to troll them with post-modern Friendship Is Magic morality in the mud middle ages, thus making the only thing their character was built for useless.

Eh, you can still have useful fighters in that situation, you just fight totally alien monsters rather than people with different coloured skin or shaped ears. All the people of the world unite Star Trek style because there's a zombie apocalypse going on, done.

It's even easier than that: just have the bad guys do a bad thing. It is OK - encouraged, even! - to kill something that is trying to hurt/kill you or some innocent in a fantasy time with modern moral sensibilities. Unless you're deliberately playing a morally gray game, the first-level adventure doesn't have to be "Hey, scouts on patrol noted a Goblin camp, go eradicate it because adult Goblins are always up to no good," because that's boring anyway (there's not even a stated conflict, just a nebulous presumed one), it can and ought to be "Goblin bandits are terrorizing every caravan on the main trade route in violation of the treaty we signed with the Goblin King a decade ago. Investigate and take care of the problem. If it's anything more than a band of outlaws, I need to know."

Just tell GMs to make sure there's an actual conflict - a motivation for the opposition force - that is communicated to the players.

[maglag]

All I have to say is that there's a specific level of hell for GMs who allow their players to roll a sword dude only to troll them with post-modern Friendship Is Magic morality in the mud middle ages, thus making the only thing their character was built for useless.

Eh, you can still have useful fighters in that situation, you just fight totally alien monsters rather than people with different coloured skin or shaped ears. All the people of the world unite Star Trek style because there's a zombie apocalypse going on, done.

It's even easier than that: just have the bad guys do a bad thing. It is OK - encouraged, even! - to kill something that is trying to hurt/kill you or some innocent in a fantasy time with modern moral sensibilities. Unless you're deliberately playing a morally gray game, the first-level adventure doesn't have to be "Hey, scouts on patrol noted a Goblin camp, go eradicate it because adult Goblins are always up to no good," because that's boring anyway (there's not even a stated conflict, just a nebulous presumed one), it can and ought to be "Goblin bandits are terrorizing every caravan on the main trade route in violation of the treaty we signed with the Goblin King a decade ago. Investigate and take care of the problem. If it's anything more than a band of outlaws, I need to know."

Just tell GMs to make sure there's an actual conflict - a motivation for the opposition force - that is communicated to the players.

You can also go full comic/manga and every sword dude can safely disable enemies with their pointy sticks, zero risk of killing them accidentally.

[Wiseman]

I think this article is worth reading: https://springhole.net/writing/writing-non-humans.htm

Though more personally, I don't get why this is even an issue? It's not hard to come up with a reason why it's okay to stab these particular goblins in the face while not saying it's okay to stab every goblin in the face on sight.

[Zaranthan]

I don't get it, myself. If they're humanoids, you do the same thing you would do to designate a group of humans as "these are bad guys and you should stab them to gain in- and out-of-character bennies": they have swords and are pointing them at you. if you come across a group of humanoids and their swords are pointed at the ground, this is a positive random encounter and you should talk to them.

If you want to have intelligent creatures around that are okay to stab, there's an entire monster manual to work with. That's literally why it's there! So you can populate the countryside with chimeras, ettercaps, harpies, and other garthags for your players to narfle without moral ambiguity.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Wow, so it's okay to kill something on sight as long as it isn't humanoid?

[shinimasu]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of being this defensive of making goblins as a whole evil capitalists when the clear and easy fix is to just make like, a specific culture who's evil capitalists and then just stock it with an assortment of races.

But not it's got to be exclusively goblins for some inane reason. Because the concept of "enemy uniforms" isn't ingrained enough into popular culture?

[Omegonthesane]

Even a monoracial evil culture of capitalists would be better than what Dean was actually proposing - that the Goblins default to said evil capitalist culture to the point that it's just "Goblin culture" and not "the Evil Goblin Nation, legally distinct from the ethnogroup of goblins".

[Josh_Kablack]

Wow, so it's okay to kill something on sight as long as it isn't humanoid?

What else? Kill it! Squash it, smash it...just get rid of it

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture on their official website. Linky:

https://www.agriculture.pa.gov/Plants_L ... fault.aspx

[Shiritai]

If you want unambiguous kill-on-sight monsters in your setting, just make them unnatural. Goblins are a physical manifestation of the awakening dark lord's corruption on the land. There are no goblin children - there is no goblin history - goblins spring forth spontaneously from the tainted lands in-between settlements.

Bonus points: You don't have to worry about modeling an ecosystem for monsters anymore.

[Prak]

Moreover, beyond the various valid objections to Dean's characterisation of goblins...

I'm particularly curious as to where the hell the ideal of Goblins as "Fascist Capitalists" comes from... I mean, even if we're going full intellectually bankrupt tolkien fanboy, here... goblins are not fascist or capitalist in Tolkien's work. They are exploited by a fascist industrialist, which I feel is a big fucking difference...

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

What else? Kill it! Squash it, smash it...just get rid of it

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture on their official website. Linky:

https://www.agriculture.pa.gov/Plants_L ... fault.aspx

So if goblins are legally declared pests by the government, it's fine?

[Zaranthan]

Wow, so it's okay to kill something on sight as long as it isn't humanoid?

It's okay to kill something on sight if it's incapable of deciding to coexist with society. If a creature simply tries to kill and eat everything it sees, it's a menace to everything and needs to be put down if you want to have a civilization near its lair.

To use my examples:

Chimeras and ettercaps are basically Mordor-flavored bears. They're apex predators that only care about one thing: can you stop it from killing you? If so, it's going to run away. If not, it's going to eat you.

Harpies have some human-like physical features, can speak Common, and use tools and weapons, but you still can't bargain with them. When they see you, they sing at you. If you resist their song, they shoot arrows at you. If you aren't driven off, they flee. If they're defending their nest, they'll fight you to the death. If you don't just stab them on sight, they're not going to offer you safe passage in exchange for a toll, they're just going to start singing.

[Dogbert]

Eh, you can still have useful fighters in that situation, you just fight totally alien monsters

Oh, so just because you don't understand it then it's okay to kill it, got it... hmm where did I hear that before? I'm sure I heard the Catholic church say something like that about a specific group of people that "didn't have souls."

It's even easier than that: just have the bad guys do a bad thing.

Oh, so now you get to decide who lives and who dies! No due process, no fair trial, no jury of their peers... got it. That's not shitty at all.



Anyone else? I can do this all week... or not, because there's no purpose to it. At all. Sorry if you think I'm threadcrapping, but the innate contradiction of overanalyzing dnd is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Goblin Slayer put the "goblin nursery conundrum" to rest forever, enough dnd players are no longer buying that shit from bad-faithed GMs. If the creature attacks me and the monster gives XP, I kill the creature and take their stuff. End of discussion.

[Thaluikhain]

If the creature attacks me and the monster gives XP, I kill the creature and take their stuff. End of discussion.

I don't think anyone is complaining about killing things that attack you (whether or not you get XP). It's going after it when it isn't attacking you that's the problem.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Does it still give XP?

[Dean]

I'm particularly curious as to where the hell the ideal of Goblins as "Fascist Capitalists" comes from... I mean, even if we're going full intellectually bankrupt tolkien fanboy, here... goblins are not fascist or capitalist in Tolkien's work. They are exploited by a fascist industrialist, which I feel is a big fucking difference...

Being a participant of an exploitative Fascist Industrialist government means you're a fascist industrialist. The move from identifying them as fascist industrialists to fascist capitalists (the same thing, fundamentally) is entirely a matter of 100 years passing since Tolkiens day and the evil people that readers and players will be familiar with having changed their hats incredibly slightly. I can't prove Sauron performed large scale trade. He does seem to be the only one with wide spread boat travel based alliances from foreign lands, so I think there's good reason to assume it. But I can't scientifically prove he was a filthy capitalist rather than a filthy industrialist, but I'm very comfortable in making that word change to something contemporarily relevant and did so intentionally.

When we see starving Goblinfolk with leaders who are grotesquely obese in chambers covered in treasure we get a pretty clear picture of how their society works. And since there is no difference between being a participant in a fascist capitalist racial empire and -being- a fascist, capitalist, and racist we can comfortably use those words. That Goblin society is a racially segregated fascist capitalist empire seems self evident in Tolkien and other works.

Dwarves: Deep Roots
Dwarven society runs on a caste and clan system with Royals, Merchants, Soldiers, Workers, and Agricultural workers as the 5 broad castes. Dwarven leadership hordes wealth but their people always seem very well fed and well supplied which leads me to believe Dwarves have good unions. "Unions" is obviously a very anachronistic word there but I think it's right. In a caste system different clans arise within fields of specialized labor and they become powerful enough to negotiate even with higher caste clans. So the Dwarven people work very hard but they have a moral attachment to hard work because they're represented enough that they're paid well and they can see benefits come to their family and community. A Dwarves clan, their job, their place in society, and their family are all a deeply entwined, giving them a hard nosed attitude for following tradition and doing what's expected of a Dwarf. Dwarven last names are literally just their Clans primary profession based on their Caste. "Axe" or "Shield" are Soldier clans. "Iron" or "Forge" are worker clans. "Gold" and "Silver" merchant clans, and so on. When Dwarves marry across clan they combine their names, becoming "Ironforges" or "Silvershields" or the like. Dwarves of different clans who share a moniker, like Shield, view each other as cousin clans. A newly married dwarf either gives up their old family name for their partners or each will add one of their two monikers together to create their new family name. In this way a Dwarfs name can tell you a lot about their life and values. A Dwarven King with the name "Oakenshield" would be telling a story about their upbringing: That their family were the common folk of the lower castes but that they were given a chance to prove themselves as a soldier and succeeded enough to rise in station.

[Prak]

question- were the people who were forced by the Nazis to work in factories fascists because they were exploited by a fascist system?