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<blockquote data-quote="Veltharis ap Rylix" data-source="post: 8843688" data-attributes="member: 66357">The issue, as I see it, is not with the Cataclysm itself, but with how it interacts with the overarching &quot;Balance of Good and Evil&quot; theme Dragonlance tries to pull off.The whole thing is shaky and incoherent, and depends entirely on your ability and willingness to redefine the word &quot;Good&quot; to mean whatever they need it to mean for the premise to function.If you want to do a &quot;The World Needs Balance&quot; scenario, then the world being in balance is the ideal (i.e. &quot;Good&quot;) state that should be strived for, whereas drifting to the either/any of the extremes is bad. The Moorcockian concepts of Law vs. Chaos, FFXIV's Light vs. Dark, etc. - the precise nature of the extremes may differ, but allowing the world to tilt too far in any either direction results in bad things happening.When &quot;Good&quot; is made one of the extremes in this kind of setup, then it by definition has to be bad for the model to remain coherent. In Dragonlance, Good has to be recognized as a bad thing in order for &quot;Balance/Neutrality&quot; to become the ideal. Not even just &quot;Oh, that kind of good can result in bad things&quot;, but the fundamental, axiomatic truth that, in Dragonlance, Good equals Bad - just a different and generally more palatable kind of Bad than Evil.The gods punishing the Kingpriest (and mortals in general) for hubris isn't the problem in and of itself, though I find the &quot;Good&quot; gods' justifications for the Cataclysm to be pretty flimsy and the reactions of mortals left suffering and abandoned in its wake painfully unexplored.It's when the setting tries to say that &quot;Things were too Good, which is Bad, so the gods had to knock the pendulum back in the other direction, which is why Evil, which is a different kind of Bad, is dominating now and you must rise up to fight back against it in the name of Good (which is, again, Bad)!&quot; that the framing of the Cataclysm loses me.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Veltharis ap Rylix, post: 8843688, member: 66357"] The issue, as I see it, is not with the Cataclysm itself, but with how it interacts with the overarching "Balance of Good and Evil" theme Dragonlance tries to pull off. The whole thing is shaky and incoherent, and depends entirely on your ability and willingness to redefine the word "Good" to mean whatever they need it to mean for the premise to function. If you want to do a "The World Needs Balance" scenario, then the world being in balance is the ideal (i.e. "Good") state that should be strived for, whereas drifting to the either/any of the extremes is bad. The Moorcockian concepts of Law vs. Chaos, FFXIV's Light vs. Dark, etc. - the precise nature of the extremes may differ, but allowing the world to tilt too far in any either direction results in bad things happening. When "Good" is made one of the extremes in this kind of setup, then it by definition has to be bad for the model to remain coherent. In Dragonlance, Good has to be recognized as a bad thing in order for "Balance/Neutrality" to become the ideal. Not even just "Oh, [B]that [/B]kind of good can result in bad things", but the fundamental, axiomatic truth that, in Dragonlance, Good equals Bad - just a different and generally more palatable kind of Bad than Evil. The gods punishing the Kingpriest (and mortals in general) for hubris isn't the problem in and of itself, though I find the "Good" gods' justifications for the Cataclysm to be pretty flimsy and the reactions of mortals left suffering and abandoned in its wake painfully unexplored. It's when the setting tries to say that "Things were too Good, which is Bad, so the gods had to knock the pendulum back in the other direction, which is why Evil, which is a different kind of Bad, is dominating now and you must rise up to fight back against it in the name of Good (which is, again, Bad)!" that the framing of the Cataclysm loses me. [/QUOTE]

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