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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Oct 2023
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Because they are obvious stand-ins for real life refugees in this game and it would be considered genocide? Not to mention bad press and even ban in some countries. Besides they are probably all dead after the raid. Personally I wish goblin kids were unkillable as well. Or skip whiny kid characters entirely and add hot gnoll romance.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2018
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Because they are obvious stand-ins for real life refugees in this game and it would be considered genocide? Not to mention bad press and even ban in some countries. Besides they are probably all dead after the raid. Personally I wish goblin kids were unkillable as well. Or skip whiny kid characters entirely and add hot gnoll romance. Yup.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Mar 2020
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It leaves us with Larian back-handedly telling us that it's okay, and even encouraged, to murder children of one particular ethnic/racial group, but not another. Make no mistake: the goblins presented are a fully sapient, culturally structured people, and their children are as well. Larian did not have to present them that way, and they did not have to put goblin children in the space, and they did not have to put them in combat situations and offer incentives to kill them... that was all their personal design choice, alongside their other personal design choice of rendering the same action impossible against children of a different ethnic/racial group in the same chapter. And this encapsulates the problems of abandoning alignment. You can no longer tell stories where it is okay to kill hordes of evil monsters. When evil humanoids no longer exist they become an "ethnic/racial group" I know for some this was always the case and removing alignment simply removes the fig leaf that hid the problem of racist tropes in the fantasy genre but I think the people who say that: 1) fail to distinguish fantasy from reality 2) are blind to the many objectionable actions in the game. And if you talk to such people long enough they eventually reveal they have no problem solving problems by way of murder DnD is making a big mistake - I agree with EA Wyll. Killing every goblin is good thing because they evil raiders who kill just destroy another village if we let them go free.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2020
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Don't get me wrong - I absolutely agree that the more recent attempts by wizards to remove the 'evil' from their campaign spaces is harmful to the game overall; we need groups and individuals who can be evil, so that we can have our adventures and, for those seeking them, enjoy a hack and slash quest without getting tangled up in moral grey. Culturally evil Drow, culturally evil Thayans, intrinsically evil planars, and so on; we absolutely need those. However... the more we paint specific individual groups of these creatures as sapient, personable and cultured in their own way, the less that group falls into the above category. It is the job of the DM to assess what they want to pitch to their players, and if the players are here for a hack and slash adventure without moral greyness, then their DM should pitch the monsters they face accordingly - the goblin tribe they encounter should all be irredeemably murderous and ruthless. Larian chose Not to do this - but then also chose to incentivise killing the tribe's children, while deny the same action at all for the tiefling group; this moral arbitration by Larian is the problem, not the question of whether one group or another should or should not be killed. Generally speaking, and I'll spoiler this because it's a tangent and also contains elements of my own moral stance on the matter: Killing goblins because they are raiders doing harm to others is fine; killing goblins because they are goblins is not. This isn't even a 'new' thing, or related to wizards reduction of alignment presence in their work - it's been a thing since at least 3rd edition, that I know of. Stories and adventures, official ones, have existed since those earlier editions, that explicitly challenge 'all goblins are evil so killing a goblin is always right' mentality in particular; one of the game (I think it was an official nwn module, so 3.5?) told the story of a paladin who failed her final tests because she refused to save a goblin infant from danger, on the grounds that it was a goblin, and therefore evil... her mentor chastised her for this, and was disappointed that she was not prepared to approach her work with the degree of nuance required for one who would act as an arbiter of justice. It's not new. - Remember that the alignment as presented for most humanoids and other creatures that form social structures is an indication of the alignment of those social structures and thus the individuals in them, in majority; it's not a statement of intrinsic or inherent evil per individual, and it never has been for anything other than the creatures specifically called out as being intrinsically aligned (fiends, celestials, etc.)... so it's still entirely possible to tells stories of fighting hordes of evil monsters - most tribes of said creatures that you encounter, and indeed any you end up facing a raiding war band of, will definitely all be of that comfy evil alignment that you can feel safe dealing with... if that's what you wan,t however, and your DM is instead pitching you a goblin tribe that mostly wants to sing and party, get drunk and play games, and who are just trying to scavenge an existence and be left alone... who are perfectly happy to talk to you, and let you drink and play games with them as long as you don't cause trouble... Well, that's an issue you need to take up with your DM, because it's a conflict of game intent.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Mar 2020
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I think we are largely in agreement  Excepting a minor yet critically important matter. I think it better to have intrinsic, ontological evil to cultural evil. Cultural evil is too close to real world colonial thinking. Ideology of colonialism was that the good Europeans need to spread their superior culture to rest of the world. The church signed off on the idea that the Aztecs had to eliminated because they practiced human sacrifice, protestant U.S. created of residential schools designed to eliminate the evils of indigenous cultures including raiding . . . I prefer the 3.5 formulation - the good gods created servants, the monster gods created slaves. I prefer to deal with enslaved souls because it's truly an fantasy notion while cultural evil has real world analogues - people who mistake soul bondage for 'racism', oth, are victims of psychological projection. And yes some exceptional individuals escape the soul bondage. I never ran across the module you mention but it seems like a good example of DnD's proud history of conflicting sources The question about whether it's good or not to kill children has been around for some time yes. The caves in Keep on the Borderlands had orc nurseries in them. I think Gygax put those there to inspire a debate among party members. Btw, glad you are back. I hope you will post a lengthy review.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2020
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You are not incorrect about the difficulties that defining cultural evil presents; the only real fall back that the realms have is the idea that they are a space where objective good and evil are legitimately a thing (as they are not in the real world) - the presence of evil cultures doesn't overrule the very real existence of evil at an ontological level in the realms; those cultures are an expression of it. This grants the world space the leeway to say that a society that follows beliefs, philosophies and practices that are, by the external objective definitions, evil - that they are evil cultures and should, indeed, be resisted. Doing so still permits individuals that live or are raised in those spaces to step away from them or to escape them, and make their own decisions and lead their own (potentially non-evil) lives; it makes them simply 'very unusual', rather than divine-intervention-level 'exceptional'.
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Thanks, by the way ^.^ I'm not going to be doing a full retrospective until I've played more of the game, which I'm still taking my time getting around to, it seems. It's not managed to make itself a priority for me, even though I've started checking back here a little more regularly again. Other projects have had my attention.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Nov 2020
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I never ran across the module you mention The Shadows of Undrentide expansion for Neverwinter Nights 1, the very story that made Deekin Scalesinger (a kobold) a beloved character.
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journeyman
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OP
journeyman
Joined: Jun 2022
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If we'd like to consider a more thoughtful angle of concern here...
I'm not going to talk specifically about representation and treatment of juveniles in games; what I would talk about would be moral arbitration by games. Larian have been up front and overt about how they wanted to make a game where you could be who you like and do what you want, even if (especially if, judging from their advertising) that meant choosing to be a murderous, evil monster that delighted in causing suffering to others, or a greedy sociopath who values the lives of others less than the coin and shiny items they might have. They've been clear about wanting to make a game where you can choose to murder anyone in cold blood if it takes your fancy, and that you'll just have to deal with the consequences of your own actions. Setting aside the apparent watering down of actual consequences, that overall philosophy runs up against the situation we have here.
The moral arbitration becomes a problem, because on the surface they've said "We're not going to restrict you by what's right and wrong, and we're not going to tell you what you can and can't do; go wild!" ... but then they've stepped in and said "Wait, no, this is Wrong! You Can't do That!", which reduces their initial stance from "We're letting you do what you want, our hands are clean" to "We have a very relaxed view of what is and isn't acceptable, and everything below this line is fine!" - which is a much more morally dubious thing to say!
In itself, it's a concession that could be accepted; I doubt anyone would fault them for drawing the line at literal on-screen child murder... they show it being perpetrated by 'evil' people, but don't permit the player to simulate it by their own hand. However... The problem with this is that Larian have also permitted players to do this very thing elsewhere, and even encouraged it by creating a small penalty to the situation if you don't (extra reinforcements).
Where does this leave us? It leaves us in a pretty precarious and unpleasant situation, really: It leaves us with Larian back-handedly telling us that it's okay, and even encouraged, to murder children of one particular ethnic/racial group, but not another. Make no mistake: the goblins presented are a fully sapient, culturally structured people, and their children are as well. Larian did not have to present them that way, and they did not have to put goblin children in the space, and they did not have to put them in combat situations and offer incentives to kill them... that was all their personal design choice, alongside their other personal design choice of rendering the same action impossible against children of a different ethnic/racial group in the same chapter.
Larian definitely have the right to design a space and say "You can do what you like here, we will not stop you; your actions are on you, our hands are clean" - they absolutely can make that their stance, and I will defend to the hilt their right to do so! When they put their thumb on the scale and block some things but not others, however, they have abandoned that stance, and it leaves them saying "This is not acceptable... but that is!" And that particular kind of moral arbitration, especially over an event of this nature, and especially when their pitch has been that they aren't making any such arbitrations, is not okay in my book.
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P.s. It should be noted that this stands aside of any discussions about whether it's okay to kill goblins specifically, or their nature or alignment. In this particular situation, it's about presentation and subsequent action: the goblins in this game, and in these specific situations are presented, one hundred percent, as fully sapient, intelligent people, capable of feelings and emotions; of love, hate and apathy; of fear, hope and aspiration; of genuine attachment and sorrow; acknowledging these traits may not be favoured in their culture, but they are absolutely and deliberately depicted as being capable of such as presented in this game... and for the issue of moral arbitration of action, that is what matters. ^ This is what I was getting at. Thank you.
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journeyman
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OP
journeyman
Joined: Jun 2022
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Thanks for the mod.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Dec 2020
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addict
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addict
Joined: Aug 2023
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The general rule of thumb is that computer games never offer all options, like only a real tabletop session can. So theres no option to kill all the Tiefling kids. I would assume that Larian simply hasnt come up with an appropiate reaction to such an act, thus they dont allow it. Also I guess one may argue that these kids are especially resourceful with thievery, and thus would be able to escape any such murder attempt. Is there anyone who doesnt ?
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2018
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