Dragonlance Dragonlance "Reimagined".

[Vaalingrade]

Another way of putting it.

Is Batman evil for not stopping the Joker permanently? For not killing the Joker? How many hundreds, if not thousands, of people are dead because Batman refuses to kill the Joker. Is Batman evil? After all, he doesn't do "everything he can do" to stop the Joker. He most certainly could have killed the Joker, or even allowed the Joker to be killed, numerous times.

Yet, people will insist over and over again that Batman is good

Again, the situation is reversed. Batman is choosing not to do the evil thing for the perceived good.

And if we wanted to make a complete analogy, Bats would have to destroy Gotham City and everyone in it to stop the Joker because Bane and Azrael told him it was the only way. But he shipped Alfred and Lucias Fox off the Metropolis before doing it after posting a warning to the rest of the populace in the basement of the Gotham city hall, on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware the Leopard'.

 

[Faolyn]

The whole of the Superman canon makes sense only if Superman is a paragon of goodness - of truth, justice and the American way! Yet he has never stopped mass poverty, mass starvation, mass conflict, or many of the other affronts to truth and justice that are found in the real world and that are replicated in Superman comics and films.

And he isn't cosmic Goodness, as I said, which the Good gods of Krynn are supposed to be. And again, the only times he commits genocides are in non-canonical stories where he's evil. If Superman isn't going around saving everyone, that doesn't make him evil. It makes him one person who lacks the ability to cure all social ills. If Superman actively commits genocide, then he is evil.

We suspend our ordinary moral judgement when we watch a superhero film, or read a superhero comic, and instead step into the moral world that makes sense of supers - where stopping Luthor, or Magneto, or Doom, or whomever is of higher moral weight than reliving the real causes of real human suffering.

I tend to not suspend my moral judgement. Heck, I have a friend who couldn't get into Supernatural because the Winchesters used identity theft and credit card fraud to fund their hunting. But on the other hand, I also can't recall the last time I watched or read something that features a character who is supposed to be cosmically Good doing something evil--but if I did, it would likely sour me to the media. Unless it was a set-up for some interesting character development. I'm not even fond of having good characters do evil things unless it is called out in the media as being an evil thing. In that case, great! Otherwise, no--that's just a symptom of Mary Sueishness.

Abandoning the world for centuries is not character development.

There are moral and political critiques of the superhero genre that build on the point I've just made - again, Watchmen is one of them produced in the same medium as the genre itself - but if you take those critiques fully on board you have to abandon the genre, casting it aside as romantic or reactionary nonsense.

And again, you are comparing various mortal characters of various levels of morality to literal gods of goodness. You can't compare them.

There are criticism of this genre which think it is so irredeemably tainted, as reactionary ideology, that one shouldn't even enjoy it in imagination. When we play our FRPGs with righteous paladin rulers, and contented peasants in their rightful place, we are implicitly rejecting those criticisms. It doesn't mean, though, that we think that divine right of kings is a genuine political principle. We're just pretending!

Of course one can enjoy these media! A lot of characters I like are the bad guys or people of dubious morality. I just don't pretend that they're good. Once upon a time, I read a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic where the writer had decided that Spike had never ever killed anyone except for that one guy in his first episode, but there were extenuating circumstances so it was OK, because that writer couldn't handle liking a bad guy. I liked Spike a whole lot, but I never pretended he wasn't a mass murderer many times over.

And you can like Dragonlance as much as you want. What you can't do, in all honesty, say that godly beings who committed genocide are paragons of Good.

So it doesn't really matter if you're pulling out examples from comics or Tolkien or Arthurian legend. Is the character you're talking about a god who committed genocide when they literally had the power to choose a different way to achieve their goals? If yes, then that character cannot be cosmically Good. The end. If no, then you can't compare them.

If Dragonlance changed so there were just gods of varying alignment but not Gods of Good and Gods of Evil, and the gods with good alignments did something evil, then that would be fine. Because there is a difference between lawful good and Cosmically Good.

And the same with DL, just as with JRRT's downfall of Numenor. We use our imagination to step into a world where a people's hubris is a grave sin; where righteous punishment is what the Law of Consequence demands. In using our imaginations that way, we're not endorsing the imagined moral outlook any more than we do so when enjoying a King Arthur story, or a superhero story.

(Of course, there are real people in the real world who don't need to use their imaginations to step into the moral outlook of DL, because it is one they actually inhabit. This is what I mean when I say that the moral outlook of DL is an extremely familiar one.)

Yes. And the real world does not have people who are cosmically Good in it. We just have good people.

I don't know what you mean by "as good as one can expect". Someone who is a sincere pacifist or anti-militarist would expect the knights of Solamnia, in so far as they are genuinely good, to eschew the use of lethal violence - for instance, as various real-world religious figures in multiple traditions have done from time to time.

Really? Because I explained myself. The Knights of Solamnia are not cosmically Good. They are simply good people, or at least people who strive for goodness. Their society and technological level isn't one that can support people stopping bad guys by means of a friendly therapist and job coach.

So please understand this: I am talking about the gods of Good. Not mortals who are not cosmically Good. You are consistently comparing apples to carburetors. They are completely different things.

Of course we can imagine that theologians in Krynn debate how a baby, newly-born on the morning of the Cataclysm, warranted the punishment they suffered. Some of them might also ask how it is just for a Knight of Solamnia to kill an enemy and thus ruin the livelihood of that enemy's innocent spouse and children. Or even how it is just for a Knight of Solamnia to spend a fortune upkeeping arms, armour, steed, castle etc while the ordinary people live in poverty. In the real world, theologians and moral philosophers and policy makers come up with answers to these questions that satisfy some of the questioners at least some of the time. Maybe our thinkers of Krynn do the same. But the more we imagine these sorts of questions being asked, and the harder we press them, the closer we are coming to imagining our way out of the genre altogether.

I don't need to debate Krynnish theologians. I am talking about a fictional world from a meta-perspective, which insists that the Gods of Good committed genocide and kept their good alignments. I literally do not care about the in-setting perspective.

But I suppose I could turn the question around: what is the punishment for the sin of mass murder?

 

[Faolyn]

Again, the situation is reversed. Batman is choosing not to do the evil thing for the perceived good.

And if we wanted to make a complete analogy, Bats would have to destroy Gotham City and everyone in it to stop the Joker because Bane and Azrael told him it was the only way. But he shipped Alfred and Lucias Fox off the Metropolis before doing it after posting a warning to the rest of the populace in the basement of the Gotham city hall, on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware the Leopard'.

I'll also point out that Batman doesn't kill the Joker because he knows he wouldn't stop killing once he started.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And he isn't cosmic Goodness, as I said, which the Good gods of Krynn are supposed to be. And again, the only times he commits genocides are in non-canonical stories where he's evil. If Superman isn't going around saving everyone, that doesn't make him evil. It makes him one person who lacks the ability to cure all social ills. If Superman actively commits genocide, then he is evil.


I tend to not suspend my moral judgement. Heck, I have a friend who couldn't get into Supernatural because the Winchesters used identity theft and credit card fraud to fund their hunting. But on the other hand, I also can't recall the last time I watched or read something that features a character who is supposed to be cosmically Good doing something evil--but if I did, it would likely sour me to the media. Unless it was a set-up for some interesting character development. I'm not even fond of having good characters do evil things unless it is called out in the media as being an evil thing. In that case, great! Otherwise, no--that's just a symptom of Mary Sueishness.

Abandoning the world for centuries is not character development.


And again, you are comparing various mortal characters of various levels of morality to literal gods of goodness. You can't compare them.


Of course one can enjoy these media! A lot of characters I like are the bad guys or people of dubious morality. I just don't pretend that they're good. Once upon a time, I read a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic where the writer had decided that Spike had never ever killed anyone except for that one guy in his first episode, but there were extenuating circumstances so it was OK, because that writer couldn't handle liking a bad guy. I liked Spike a whole lot, but I never pretended he wasn't a mass murderer many times over.

And you can like Dragonlance as much as you want. What you can't do, in all honesty, say that godly beings who committed genocide are paragons of Good.

So it doesn't really matter if you're pulling out examples from comics or Tolkien or Arthurian legend. Is the character you're talking about a god who committed genocide when they literally had the power to choose a different way to achieve their goals? If yes, then that character cannot be cosmically Good. The end. If no, then you can't compare them.

If Dragonlance changed so there were just gods of varying alignment but not Gods of Good and Gods of Evil, and the gods with good alignments did something evil, then that would be fine. Because there is a difference between lawful good and Cosmically Good.


Yes. And the real world does not have people who are cosmically Good in it. We just have good people.


Really? Because I explained myself. The Knights of Solamnia are not cosmically Good. They are simply good people, or at least people who strive for goodness. Their society and technological level isn't one that can support people stopping bad guys by means of a friendly therapist and job coach.

So please understand this: I am talking about the gods of Good. Not mortals who are not cosmically Good. You are consistently comparing apples to carburetors. They are completely different things.


I don't need to debate Krynnish theologians. I am talking about a fictional world from a meta-perspective, which insists that the Gods of Good committed genocide and kept their good alignments. I literally do not care about the in-setting perspective.

But I suppose I could turn the question around: what is the punishment for the sin of mass murder?

I guess I don't really see the distinction. Polytheistic gods are sentient beings who make choices. What does cosmically good even mean? Is that just what they call themselves? The only difference between mortals and gods is that gods have a lot more power to enforce their will. They are making choices just like mortals do.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

When the setting has always had a single deity of disease, is there any distinction between "natural" diseases and those made by said god (even if he doesn't spread them himself)?

The "lose their powers" bit is presumptive. Crysania was still able to use her divine magic after turning Loralon down, including after being brought a century into the future (which was still the past to her, just not as far back).

Likewise Denubis in the "original timeline". In the Kingpriest Trilogy we actually see the original sequence of events, with Denubis turning down Loralon's offer (in the Legends trilogy he accepts it).

Crysania attempts to heal a priest in the post-Cataclysm which fails not because she lacks the power, but rather that the man rejects the divine healing. Its fairy consistently portrayed that the post-Cataclysm era isn't the gods abandoning Krynn, but people rejecting the gods. The deities return with Goldmoon and her protege because the anger is finally gone.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

That would be me. And there's a difference between a natural event (say, a storm) and a god performing the same event via divine powers. If (generic) you want to say the gods can't interfere, except by giving clerics spells, and its up to those clerics to stop natural disasters and cure diseases, that's fine. That's pretty standard, for these sorts of games. But then they can't interfere by going around chucking mountains at people, just because they don't like what those people are doing.


Yes. Because these gods presumably have a duty to their worshipers, who pray to them for help. Or at the very least, they gods have a duty to the world because they govern aspects of that world.


I was talking about natural diseases, and even diseases caused by clerics casting spells like contagion. I wasn't talking about Morgion going around spreading disease himself, in person.


So, come with us to be with your god, or stay on Krynn and suffer. Since it seems that it required very high-level time travel magic to escape the Cataclysm, and even if a cleric didn't die or get timeported away, they'd still lose all their powers and, presumably, would have a lot of very unhappily abandoned worshipers after them. Not really much of a choice.

I don't know what you mean "escape the Cataclysm" - plenty of people did, even in the Istar area. (who do you think the sea barbarians are descended from?)

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Page, after page of the idea that Paladine and his good gods planned and instigated the Cataclysm.

He did not.

Two-thirds of the Krynnish pantheon are not good, and the entire family of gods are not omnipotent. They obey the strictures of the High God In Dragons of Summer Flame Paladine is forced to acquiesce in the conquest of Ansalon by the Dark Knights due to the consensus of the evil and neutral gods that it is the best way to stop the Summer of Chaos. Likewise in the Cataclysm. It wasn't Paladine's plan, he did his best to avert it, but in the end it had to happen. Because in Krynn gods, like mortals, are bound by rules higher than themselves.

The neutral deities sided with Paladine in all the dragon wars, and the War of Souls, ps, so its not just a matter of the neutral and evil teaming up against the good.

 

[Hussar]

So basically, Superman is constantly making the correct choice not to murder just a ton of people and taking away the agency of all the others for the percieved greater good, as opposed to the choice the Kyrnnish gods who chose to do that.

But, no they didn't.

They did not take away the agency of the others for the perceived greater good. The gods didn't force the Kingpriest to do what he did. The gods didn't condone the Kingpriest. The gods did everything they possibly could to stop the Kingpriest. But, they failed. So, the gods, collectively, not just the good gods, but, all the gods collectively dropped a mountain on Istar.

Your Superman argument is exactly the same as the Good Gods. The only way they could have flat out stopped the Cataclysm is if they straight up killed the Kingpriest and probably all of his followers. And, even then, would that have stopped things? Would that have led to a better result? Who knows? Maybe the results would have been worse. Maybe all the people of Krynn would flock to the evil gods, becoming slaves to evil gods because free will is too scary - make the wrong choice and the gods will kill you.

I don't have answers here. I don't pretend to. But, I do know that there basically is no difference between Superman and Paladine in this situation.

--------

@Permeton - I do truly appreciate what you're trying to do here, but, I'd point something out. Nothing you've brought up hasn't already been brought up in this thread at least once. Genre convention, obvious parallels to religious and mythological stories, doesn't matter. You will not convince anyone here because they absolutely will not allow even the notion that it's possible to play in a game where the morality does not 100% fall in line with their own beliefs.

So, instead of trying to convince them of anything, we need to allow them to put forward a version of the Cataclysm that they find acceptable and work forward from there. Because, what you're doing here? This is just banging your head agsinst the wall. It absolutely will not go anywhere. Pointing to the text means that you're gatekeeping. Genre conventions don't matter. Actual real work parallels are unimportant. You absolutely cannot make any forward progress here. We really need to just agree to disagree and move on.

We have had some pretty decent interpretations put forward in this thread though.

1. The reason for the Cataclysm is unknown. There might be stories, but, ultimately, no one knows and it is up to individual tables to decide. Personally, I favor this one the most. Simple, easy to do and no one gets to get all shouty that someone is doing it wrong.
2. The Kingpriest did it. Also not a bad one. The gods tried to stop it, but failed, and ultimately it's the Kingpriest's fault.
3. There was a third one, but, I cannot seem to find it and my brain is not recalling it. Anyway, there are other interpretations that are acceptable.

 

[pemerton]

This is where a lot of people fail to understand the point of Superman and the archetype of the Paragon.

Perhaps. I'm not one of them.

The whole set-up of superhero comics - where superheroes use their powers to thwart artificial villains with artificial schemes - is morally absurd if taken literally. They're a type of literary device. And when you play a superhero RPG, or enjoy a superhero story, you buy into the imagined morality of the fictional situation.

Clark isn't the ultimate, infallible Good. He would never claim to be. He is a good (little g) man who has the values of his parents and who will do anything in his power to hold to that.

However.

While Superman knows he could cause world peace and end starvation and war and car accidents... he also knows that the only way he could do it would be to remove free will from humanity and become Supreme or Ultraman or all the other 'beware the superman' characters out there.

This is another fiction. Superman wouldn't have to remove freewill from humanity to carry food to famine victims, to build dykes that would stop floodwaters, etc. Storm would not have to remove freewill to relive droughts, control hurricanes, etc.

Mass poverty and crime and starvation and war are all a result of humans just plain interacting with one another.

<snip>

The only way to stop human ills is to stop humans.

That's one view. It's not self-evidently true.

Superman is constantly making the correct choice not to murder just a ton of people and taking away the agency of all the others for the percieved greater good, as opposed to the choice the Kyrnnish gods who chose to do that.

There are any number of things that superheroes could do to make a world like our real one a better world require murdering tons of people, nor taking away agency.

But in any event, the gods of Krynn are not acting for a greater good, perceived or otherwise. They are exacting punishment. Their motives are not utilitarian; they're retributive. A person doesn't have to share this moral framework to recognise that it has deep roots in a range of literary, folk and other traditions. Those traditions are what DL draws upon in its presentation of the Cataclysm. Just as JRRT drew on them when he wrote the downfall of Numenor.

 

[pemerton]

So it doesn't really matter if you're pulling out examples from comics or Tolkien or Arthurian legend. Is the character you're talking about a god who committed genocide when they literally had the power to choose a different way to achieve their goals? If yes, then that character cannot be cosmically Good. The end. If no, then you can't compare them.

In JRRT's work, the Valar - who are angels enacting the will of God - destroy Numenor with a great flood. The inspirations for this idea are obvious. JRRT does not intend that this shows the Valar to be evil. It is intended to be a story about the consequences of the sin of pride. Humility, particularly before the divine, is a recurrent them in work like JRRT's, and DL picks up the same tradition.

there is a difference between lawful good and Cosmically Good.

<snip>

the real world does not have people who are cosmically Good in it.

I don't know what you mean by Cosmically Good - that's not a notion I've come across in a D&D rulebook. The Dragonlance Adventures book that I quoted from upthread doesn't use it, as far as I know, and I don't remember it figuring in the DL novels that I read in the second half of the 1980s, though that is a long time ago so perhaps I've forgotten?

If by "cosmically good" we mean good in the way that God is understood to be good in a number of religious traditions, then obviously there are many people (the authors of Middle Earth and Dragonlance among them) who do think that the real world contains at least one such person; and who think that that person meted out collective punishment from time to time in human history, for reasons that are ultimately mysterious but are certainly related to the nature of human sin, including pride.