sebmojo posted:Link to $12 pdf for anyone who hasn't read it. I’d like to take you up on this too
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Aug 25, 2020 02:31
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Mniot posted:If Redcloak gets stripped of class powers because The Dark One doesn't approve of his behavior (attacking someone who offers to broker a peace deal), I will be pretty disappointed in Rich. Hold up, slow your roll. (I agree with you that I would be disappointed in Redcloak receiving a similar fate to Miko.) What I was trying to bring up, what reminded me of Miko, was the total dedication to their cause and (less absolute in Redcloak's case) an unwillingness to admit that there could be alternate interpretations/paths to that outcome. That led to Miko very nearly loving everything up by destroying the seal on the Azure City Rift. Given the past few pages, and given Start of Darkness, I think Redcloak is receiving a long, slow setup here to eventually redeem himself / his history. That's the other thing that reminded me of Miko: Soon's final words towards Miko, "Redemption is a rare and special thing, after all. It is not for everyone." It would be suitably Burlew-ian for Redcloak to be the one to walk a paladin-style path of redemption (though, again, not necessarily with the losing-of-class-powers and all that). The other thing that makes me suspect this is the setup is what another goon brought up: What Xykon is to Roy, I think Redcloak will be to Durkon. We've already seen that Durkon successfully turned the vampire Good (temporarily), and that he tried to do the same with Malack (and with Hilgya, in different ways). What's Redcloak's problem? That Goblins are always Evil. How do you solve that problem? Make Goblins not always Evil. What's a good first step? Why, how about starting with the High Priest of the god of the Goblins...?
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Aug 25, 2020 02:31
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sebmojo posted:Link to $12 pdf for anyone who hasn't read it. I'll do so as well!
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Aug 25, 2020 02:38
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aight pm me your email addresses and I'll sort you out! If you don't have pms, post it obfuscated then you can edit it out once I've grabbed it.
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Aug 25, 2020 02:43
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sebmojo posted:aight pm me your email addresses and I'll sort you out! Just sent mine.
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Aug 25, 2020 02:48
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It's a real good story and I strongly advise anyone who hasn't read it to buy in. Poor Right Eye.
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Aug 25, 2020 03:33
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habeasdorkus posted:It's a real good story and I strongly advise anyone who hasn't read it to buy in. Ever since O-Chul escaped, I've been expecting a panel where Redcloak has to look at himself in the mirror.
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Aug 25, 2020 04:10
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maltesh posted:Ever since O-Chul escaped, I've been expecting a panel where Redcloak has to look at himself in the mirror. There was one not long afterwards.
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Aug 25, 2020 04:20
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maltesh posted:Ever since O-Chul escaped, I've been expecting a panel where Redcloak has to look at himself in the mirror. He has - https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0701.html
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Aug 25, 2020 04:20
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I think Redcloak's issue (as Minrah points out) is that he's so unwilling to negotiate and so married to his plan that, even in the face of new information showing that his plan might have flaws, he is still willing to kill all living goblins in order to enact it. Like, it's perfectly sensible that he doesn't trust Durkon and that he thinks Durkon's information might be faulty, but it's a brute fact that he's willing to sacrifice every living goblin for the sake of ideology, and has been for some time. He doesn't think about it in those terms because he hopes that the gods will be cowed and fix things in this iteration of the world, but he's always been willing to go for a mulligan if they don't. He just studiously avoids thinking about the implications of that - the mass death of the people he's supposedly advocating for - because his whole identity is wrapped up in the specific parameters of his ideology, and the uncomfortable implications of that ideology are elided to protect his sense of moral righteousness. I also think, yeah, it's if anything more accurate to say that revolutionary leaders arising from conditions of severe oppression are often pretty flawed characters themselves, and are very often comfortable with trading the lives of their supporters en masse for the advancement of the cause. You have your rare exceptions, but for every Nelson Mandela there's ten Robespierres and twenty Dantons. Redcloak is a dude who enslaves and tortures his political opponents, not Malcolm X. Are the dwarves flawed too? Yeah, Durkon clearly doesn't even fully understand the level of the problem - he thinks it's a statehood thing that can be solved with incremental solutions, rather than the top-down dictat of a fundamentally oppressive ruling class. Durkon doesn't see this because he's a loyal servant of that ruling class and doesn't think of them as oppressive aristocrats, but as entities who possess a divine right to rule. Challenging the decisions of the Good gods does not come easily or intuitively to him, and he finds it difficult to comprehend problems in that framework at all.
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Aug 25, 2020 04:27
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OK, so... does TDO *know* that he "doesn't have enough gas in the tank" to survive? (btw, it's a bit weird that Minrah is using a real-world analogy. I can't think of any D&D situation where you put gas in a tank).
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Aug 25, 2020 04:40
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Gynovore posted:(btw, it's a bit weird that Minrah is using a real-world analogy. I can't think of any D&D situation where you put gas in a tank). Keeping a lamp lit? Best I can think of, at least.
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Aug 25, 2020 04:41
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Gynovore posted:OK, so... does TDO *know* that he "doesn't have enough gas in the tank" to survive? Dwarves live adjacent to gnomes and Minrah specifically is from the town closest to the surface, she has probably seen motor vehicles and spoken with their drivers
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Aug 25, 2020 04:42
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Gynovore posted:OK, so... does TDO *know* that he "doesn't have enough gas in the tank" to survive? Gnomes in this setting have motorized vehicles (that they use to accidentally power up evil golems) so maybe gas tanks exist. There's some kind of liquid fuel going on here anyway.
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Aug 25, 2020 04:43
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Mister Olympus posted:Dwarves live adjacent to gnomes and Minrah specifically is from the town closest to the surface, she has probably seen motor vehicles and spoken with their drivers Ah hell, I totally forgot about gnomish steampunk technology. That fits, I guess. So, does TDO know that he won't survive this campaign?
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Aug 25, 2020 04:44
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In other words, Durkon is blind to his privilege. He thinks that dwarves have a strong, stable society and are respected as a virtuous people because of their geopolitical history, their relations with other nations and their willingness to negotiate themselves a fair deal, rather than because when the gods were writing the rules they decided that dwarves would be a PC race and killing them for XP would be an Evil act. I think he still doesn't fully grok this. He's maybe just starting to get that the goblins got a raw deal from their divine creators, but he hasn't necessarily comprehended that his people are how they are because they got a really good one, for the most part. Maybe he'll be better able to persuade Redcloak if he starts to fully get that.
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Aug 25, 2020 04:48
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Gynovore posted:So, does TDO know that he won't survive this campaign? Probably not, given that it sounds like his contact with the other gods has been limited after the brief initial meetings and such, so unless he knows this stuff innately or whatever he might be oblivious. Though, to combine this with an earlier thing, if TDO does know, or learns sooner or later, then I think that committing to a plan of action that will result in the death of your god might be something serious enough for said god to revoke their cleric's power. Android Blues posted:In other words, Durkon is blind to his privilege. He thinks that dwarves have a strong, stable society and are respected as a virtuous people because of their geopolitical history, their relations with other nations and their willingness to negotiate themselves a fair deal, rather than because when the gods were writing the rules they decided that dwarves would be a PC race and killing them for XP would be an Evil act. Actually, the dwarves have kind of gotten screwed in a way as well, in the form of the wager between Thor and Hel. I could see that coming up in some context here, whether to find common ground or to make Durkon realize where Redcloak is coming from like you say. Hilgya might have actually been useful here for this reason, in addition to her being, you know, a terrifyingly powerful cleric (despite her apparently poor Will save) in her own right. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 04:49
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Roland Jones posted:Though, to combine this with an earlier thing, if TDO does know, or learns sooner or later, then I think that committing to a plan of action that will result in the death of your god might be something serious enough for said god to revoke their cleric's power. The Dark One: So, ehhh, this little detail about me, you know, not surviving the end of the world? You were planning on sharing this with me when? Redcloak: But... but... you never talk to me! TDO: There's this thing called a *Commune* spell, maybe you've heard of it? Would it kill you to call your own god once in a while?
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Aug 25, 2020 04:57
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The notion that a core tenet of this cosmology is that killing Goblins is automatically Good because they are Evil is a dubious one. The most we've seen on panel is that the goblins were created as XP fodder to level up the other races - and (IIRC) this was never said on-panel by any of the gods responsible for the creation of the world. At most we see that the Dark One and his followers believe this. Even if we accept this as a truth, that's not the same as saying "The Gods Decree That Killing These Creatures Is Automatically Just And Good". The only time we see people claiming to be Good killing goblins without excellent justification is the Sapphire Guard's purges - which are not only about a specific mission (protecting the gates from the Bearer Of The Crimson Mantle) but also have a note from the Giant that some of them probably Fell for doing it. Every other time, the goblins are either killed in clear-cut self defense, because they are guarding somebody that deserves smiting (Xykon), or they are killed by somebody with an unstated or non-good alignment. Keep in mind that the big lesson V learned from the Familicide arc was that indiscriminate slaughter is wrong even if you are targeting an "evil" species.
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Aug 25, 2020 05:05
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SKULL.GIF posted:Given the past few pages, and given Start of Darkness, I think Redcloak is receiving a long, slow setup here to eventually redeem himself / his history. That's the other thing that reminded me of Miko: Soon's final words towards Miko, "Redemption is a rare and special thing, after all. It is not for everyone." It would be suitably Burlew-ian for Redcloak to be the one to walk a paladin-style path of redemption (though, again, not necessarily with the losing-of-class-powers and all that). Oh, sorry. You wrote "Soon" but I read "Shojo". 
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Aug 25, 2020 05:21
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I really don't think the world was set up to be as blunt as "killing goblins for any reason is good." I think the world was designed where monster races would naturally be forced into desperate situations, because they were spawned in disadvantaged terrain, giving them strong incentives to raid for survival and prosperity. That sort of setup just naturally leads them into committing actions that means their society as a whole trends towards evil, and gives PC races justification for fighting back.
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Aug 25, 2020 05:26
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Raenir Salazar posted:Sure someone can do a fantasy roleplaying campaign that has nothing to do with any D&D cosmology (I'm not exactly how you'd do this, since D&D cosmology also references real world religions like the Hellenic and Sumerian pantheons; and things like Angels and Demons, so you'd also have to reject those, so you'd have a fantasy roleplaying setting without religion at all?) you can do religion without real-world pantheons, angels, or demons, hope this helped back on track, did rich ever give backstory for the goblin/hobgoblin split that redcloak bought into and then got over?
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Aug 25, 2020 09:38
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fluffyDeathbringer posted:you can do religion without real-world pantheons, angels, or demons, hope this helped i believe the back story is "they are a different colour than us" but also hobgoblins are lawful evil instead of neutral evil.
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Aug 25, 2020 09:44
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Well, shoot. I can't believe I missed/forgot that one.
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Aug 25, 2020 10:44
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violent sex idiot posted:i believe the back story is "they are a different colour than us" but also hobgoblins are lawful evil instead of neutral evil. Hobgoblins are also bigger and stronger so they gave goblins swirlies. https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0148.html
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Aug 25, 2020 12:05
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I mean, in an ideal world Redcloak and Durkon/Minrah would have gotten together in a closed off planar space to really discuss the matter - Redcloak doesn't have a whole lot of time to listen to the proposal without, like, Xykon coming along and meteor storming everything. Also... Redcloak's used a 9th level spell, and two 6th level spells so far in this encounter. Assuming he's not fresh due to the dungeon delving, I wonder how much juice he's got left.
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Aug 25, 2020 12:38
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fluffyDeathbringer posted:you can do religion without real-world pantheons, angels, or demons, hope this helped You're reading the post hyperliterally; because if you think about it for a few seconds it's trivial to argue that no, you in fact cannot do that. If you look at like Jungian symbology that this is patently impossible. Because any attempt to invent a religion that doesn't draw on real world religious elements, symbols, or iconography you can't think of will in fact exist somewhere.
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Aug 25, 2020 19:16
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Raenir Salazar posted:You're reading the post hyperliterally; because if you think about it for a few seconds it's trivial to argue that no, you in fact cannot do that. If you look at like Jungian symbology that this is patently impossible. Because any attempt to invent a religion that doesn't draw on real world religious elements, symbols, or iconography you can't think of will in fact exist somewhere. you specified specific real-world pantheons, angels, and demons in your initial claim that religion in dnd campaigns is impossible without them, you're only now expanding this into all real-world religious elements at all, ever, to shift the goalposts. not a good look famalam back on track: if redcloak could have an epiphany about what I assume to be decades of ingrained anti-hobgoblin biases, he'll probably have one about his current course of action pretty soon. honestly I'm betting a page or two
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Aug 25, 2020 19:57
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fluffyDeathbringer posted:you specified specific real-world pantheons, angels, and demons in your initial claim that religion in dnd campaigns is impossible without them, you're only now expanding this into all real-world religious elements at all, ever, to shift the goalposts. not a good look famalam It's not shifting the goalposts, I am providing additional context that appeared to be unclear to you. You can clearly see that my post implied a non-exhaustive list of things, which I'll highlight for you in case you missed them the first time: quote:I'm not exactly how you'd do this, since D&D cosmology also references real world religions like the Hellenic and Sumerian pantheons; and things like Angels and Demons, Sorry that you misinterpreted it, I am clarifying my meaning for you.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:16
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The stance Redcloak's taking now feels more like accelerationism than anything else- let it all get destroyed now, maybe next time it'll be better. And it's not like the dwarves' proposal is ideal either, it makes sense for Redcloak not to trust them, but where he goes astray is not being willing to look critically at his own plan.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:19
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What are the requisite side stories I need to read in order to get the full comic picture? Start of Darkness is one (thanks for providing that link) are there any others?
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Aug 25, 2020 20:30
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There are three prequel books, but Start of Darkness is the only one that you really need to read. On The Origin of PCs, which fills in a little bit of what the PCs were doing before they teamed up, is pretty much forgettable. Good Deeds Gone Unpunished has few stories set in Azure City and it's interesting background for some characters, but there's nothing that you really need to know about (at least so far).
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Aug 25, 2020 20:35
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Donkringel posted:What are the requisite side stories I need to read in order to get the full comic picture? Start of Darkness is one (thanks for providing that link) are there any others? How the paladin got his scar is a useful primer on goblin/human relations around azure city. Origin of pcs is a fun introduction to the characters. That's about it, I think?
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Aug 25, 2020 20:36
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Thank you both.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:47
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Start of Darkness is the only one that seems necessary to really understand things (That comic posted earlier with Redcloak looking in the mirror, for example, is pretty insane if you have the context). I would, however, also recommend reading How the Paladin Got His Scar, just because it's really loving good.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:48
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Raenir Salazar posted:It's not shifting the goalposts, I am providing additional context that appeared to be unclear to you. yeah no my mistake, clearly I was supposed to intuit you using highly specific examples of things you were talking about to mean you were always secretly talking about the sum totality of all real religious paraphernalia and concepts down to the core psychological jungian components (don't worry, rest of the thread, I'm just gonna stop this whole slapfight here now) back to the comic: looking at how this is shaking out, it turns out using highly specific arguments in a highly specific and unreproducable context to convince someone who's already partially you doesn't translate as well to actual debate as thor would like and minrah has an equal, if not better, track record of getting through to redcloak, who knew fluffyDeathbringer fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 21:03
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fluffyDeathbringer posted:(don't worry, rest of the thread, I'm just gonna stop this whole slapfight here now) Thank you, there are other places to continue this derail if either of you want to pick it back up again.
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Aug 25, 2020 22:23
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Donkringel posted:What are the requisite side stories I need to read in order to get the full comic picture? Start of Darkness is one (thanks for providing that link) are there any others? There's an official comment by Rich somewhere (I think it's in the introduction to OtOoPCs) that the side stories will never be required to understand the main comic, and that any material from them that is relevant will be re-told as necessary in the online strip. Everything important in On the Origin of PCs has already been explored in the online comic, but it was the first place you could read about things like Roy's dad's Blood Oath of Vengeance, Haley and the Thieves' Guild and Durkon's Exile. Start of Darkness is the big one to read right now. It's chiefly the story of Redcloak and how he got to where it is now, but it also involves the background of Xykon, The Dark One, Eugene Greenhilt and the Monster in the Darkness. The important bits may well come up again soon. Good Deeds Gone Unpunished contains five separate stories, four of which likely won't be relevant. There's a story about Therkla, one about Mr. Scruffy, a prequel about Lien, and a story about Kasumi and Daigo which shows the current status of the Azure City refugee settlement. The last story of the compilation, How the Paladin Got His Scar is about O-Chul, the Sapphire Guard, and hobgoblins. It's not currently relevant, but a lot of stuff in it is bound to come up later in the book. I'd heartily recommend the latter two, and OtOoPCs is a wholly decent read as well. I'd also recommend reading them in the published order rather than chronological, as there is a very slight bit of continuity across them.
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Aug 26, 2020 00:13
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So I was rereading Start of Darkness since people brought it up and noticed that early Redcloak said the vision he was given was explicitly of PC and NPC races sitting together in harmony. That seems to go against what he was saying later on and I wonder if that is in fact something that is going to be an issue.
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Aug 26, 2020 01:05
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:There's an official comment by Rich somewhere (I think it's in the introduction to OtOoPCs) that the side stories will never be required to understand the main comic, and that any material from them that is relevant will be re-told as necessary in the online strip. I really like GDGU, it's a nice mix of stories (Mr Scruffy and the sebmojo fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Aug 26, 2020 |
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Aug 26, 2020 02:08
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