Quote from: CTPhipps;913977Which is exactly how we goblins feel about elves.

And if I was the GM I wouldn't hold it against the member of a culture for a cultural perception. Its sort of like calling slave owners racists. They didn't know any better, it had been going on for generations and they were raised that way. You can call them all kinds of things based on today's ethical standards but if you were playing a game in that period, owning slaves wouldn't be an act of evil.

Same thing applies, its a matter of culture.

Where's that .gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn...

The brilliant Old World Bestiary for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Second Edition has various rumours and false notions about the various monsters.  In one part it tells us that Snotlings are Orc children and Goblins are Orc females.  Which of course they aren't.

But it really does depend.  If orc children are slavering beasts that attack and eat anything that gets in front of them and only stop as they mature and learn to behave due to harsh disciple it's far from dealing with helpless infants.  I tend to think of goblins as more fae than orcs.  If you want a real nasty twist, after having killed goblin children let the PCs discover that the goblins steal human infants which become goblins over time by eating their food.

I think you also have to think such a decision through to the end.

If its reasonable not to slaughter the young of an animalistic foe then what do you do with them? Turn them in to the authorities? Do they have orphanages for Goblin/Orc/Kobold/Bugbear or whatever children awaiting adoption? Do they enslave them on work gangs or at the mine? If they are adoptable and can be made productive members of society, where are all the adults that have benefited this way? Does your world have Orc bartenders and Kobold smiths? If so, then yeah, why not? Keep one as a hireling to keep your armor clean and blade sharp. If these humanoid races are instead truly evil and taking one home would probably end up in murder, well you have no choice... my coyote again.

Dammit, I only have like, half a story for this.

We had a party going through a warren (which, come to think of it, could have been from keep) and at one point we came across a cul-de-sac where there was a goblin (tribe?) amongst them the next generation and the women caring for them.

I was party leader, lawful good elf. I'd been the one so hard-nosed about following the "correct" path and being morally upright.

I agonized over it, but ultimately I elected to throw a bomb into the campfire. I was following the "vermin/mercy killing" line of thought.

GM ruled that was justifiable given the lack of humane alternative and/or the inherent monstrousness of the goblins.

I still don't feel great about it though... Also, I don't remember why I had a bomb?

Like I said, half a story.

I swore I wasn't going to weigh in on this one. Anyway, I think it has everything to do with setting, group dynamics, and reasons for playing. If the setting portrays goblinoids as mere evil, or at best neutral (think zombie child) killing machines whose sole purpose is to attack other people then I find no moral objection to the ending of goblin children's lives. If your group dynamics are such that certain things are glossed over, such as: sex; graphic portrayals of violence (stuff more detailed than I roll to hit, I do 5 points of damage); and yes, issues of morality, then I see no reason to even present the goblin children in the first place, or to portray them as anything more than combatants. If your group is playing a game to explore moral boundaries, then kill them or don't and discover the consequences as that would be what that sort of game is for.

As for whether or not it really is evil - it's a game and goblins are not real. You having a fictional character kill a fictional creature of any kind is no more or less evil than Shakespeare for (spoiler alert) killing Romeo and Juliet.

I don't think it's fair for a DM the players that question if goblins have an evil nature.  

If they don't have an evil nature pre-determined by setting and the DMs choices, than go for it.  Tough moral delima could lead to some interesting gameplay (although please avoid Turing the players into great white hunters or out right slave owners.)

If they have a nature the DM should not present the players with that choice.  No children, or they all get away, or even they were killed in the battle, collateral damage.  We have no experience of ever meeting any thinking, or speaking being with a immutable nature.  The only people  who have ever said that were evil people who used that line if reason to oppress other human being for their personal benifit.

That said its fun to pretend to kill hordes of bad guys and not feel bad about it.  So by all means slaughter the goblins, just don't then ask moral questions about it.  It's changing genera 's after the battles over, not fair.

And definatly don't assert a premise untrue in our world which because of your position as the DM is unassilible.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;913992On a side note, in one of his late essays on Orcs, Tolkien said that if they were rational beings, they had to be treated within the bounds of the rules of war--no torture, surrender had to be honored (although in practice, Morgoth and Sauron had so propagandized the Orcs that they never would surrender), etc.

"I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood" - Faramir.

There were many things about D&D that always seemed ridiculous to me. Alignments and sharply defined Good/Evil with many Evil and Good creatures was one of them. In our games (TFT) goblins, orcs, and almost everything else were just different races with different traits.

Of course, in the 19th Century, the USA was exterminating Indian tribes, and in the good old World War Two of the 20th Century, we were fire-bombing and nuking cities. Now we're enlightened and just using our flying robot air corps to bomb people (and mostly killing random people we weren't aiming at). Children dying left & right. Though only in the 18th Century was it about exterminating pretty much all the women and children on purpose.

In games I've run, the moral dilemma that comes up most often is whether to kill prisoners or not, in various circumstances.

Quote from: Skarg;914023There were many things about D&D that always seemed ridiculous to me. Alignments and sharply defined Good/Evil with many Evil and Good creatures was one of them. In our games (TFT) goblins, orcs, and almost everything else were just different races with different traits.

On the other hand many Fantasy setting have True Evil^TM

My own personal take with the Majestic Wilderlands is a bit of both. Demons and their ilk are indeed True Evil however the mundane world has all nuances of our own world. Most thing that are considered irredeemably evil are that way because they been corrupted or tainted by demons. The situation with goblins and orcs is that they been modified by the demon during the Uttermost War at the beginning of time.

The issue with orcs is that they are hyper aggressive to the point where the low end slightly overlaps the high end of normal human aggression. They simply can't co-exist with other races although there are individual orcs who can. In addition orcs have been unable to form anything more complex than a tribal culture. Anything more complex falls apart unless there is a strong non-orc leader involved. Another modification to the orcs was they are more receptive to charismatic leaders than baseline humans.

The issue with goblins is that they exhibit an autistic like hyperfocus on specific activities. Unlike orcs, goblins can form civilizations and be part of a civilization. However away from civilization tribal or nomadic goblins tend to be fiercely aggressive due to their hyper focus manifesting as as sense that everything in their territory is their. Along with the fact they will do crazy stupid things if they want something that somebody else has.

Killing Orc and Goblin children in my Majestic Wilderlands is an complex ethical dilemma. The default attitude most of the surrounding culture have toward orcs and tribal goblins is just kill them all and be done with it. The most "liberal" attitude are the elves who will try to keep the surrounding orc and goblins confined into a specific territory and go no further.

One of the major empires of my setting has nearly 40% of the population as goblins. And even the civilized goblins despise their tribal counterparts.

The takeaway from my post is not that I have THE answer. But rather think it through and come with A answer that works for the setting you want to run.

"Anybody up for discussing whether killing goblin children is evil?"

No.  Not now, not ever.

It's a shitass thing for a referee to put in the game, period.

Another question would be what means "alignment infraction" here.
If it is just a meta description -> So what.

If it has in game/world effects, one would expect in world reactions and secondary effects.
Exspecially for paladins I would expect kind of "handbooks" aka holy books that detail what proper behaviour is.
(Can´t feed and train one for years just to see them not killed by unholy scum but fall from grace 20 minutes after leaving the temple for the first time ...)
And if the deity is in any way dependent on his ground personell or believers then what is best for them, will color its attidude.

Quote from: estar;914028On the other hand many Fantasy setting have True Evil^TM

Hmm, I suppose, and certainly I had and still have evil people and even types of creatures but it's lower-case and often semi-subjective evil.

It's not a game stat that has three distinct settings, explicit descriptions, and is listed for all creatures great and small. It's slightly charming to me in a quirky way but it always seemed kind of crazy and weird.

Quote from: Harlock;914019As for whether or not it really is evil - it's a game and goblins are not real. You having a fictional character kill a fictional creature of any kind is no more or less evil than Shakespeare for (spoiler alert) killing Romeo and Juliet.

Dammnit! I was going to go see that tonight. Now that I know how it ends, why bother?

Now to be slightly more on topic. I think I only ever ran one cleric in D&D. Lawful good, I believe. He wouldn't have killed the goblin kids. In fact he actually accepted surrenders from adult goblins, orcs, etc. And prevented (so far as possible) allowing the other party members to kill those who surrendered. (Accepting a surrender and then going back on it by killing your prisoners...that can't be lawful or particularly good, now can it?) After the goblinoids surrendered, he would lecture them for a time on the evil of their ways, exhort them to turn aside from the path of darkness, and then let them go...sans any weapons.

Since we were all at that time in a dungeon, things may not have ended up all that well for most of the goblinoids. But my cleric was a Deontological Ethicist, of a strict Kantian variety, so any unfortunate side effects of his goodly actions really weren't his problem.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;914030"Anybody up for discussing whether killing goblin children is evil?"

No.  Not now, not ever.

It's a shitass thing for a referee to put in the game, period.

Trouble is, it comes up in the published modules. Little Keep on the Borderlands has basically every enclave of humanoids have "young uns" that must be dealt with. There are like 50 baby goblins, and like amounts of baby hobgoblins, orcs, kobolds, and even gnolls.

But, ultimately, the answer is "it depends." Every table has a different version of the game world. For me, a game where the afterlife is a certainty means the concepts of Good and Evil that we use on real Earth just don't perfectly carry over.

But it depends.