Here's the section on the Silvanesti fleeing to Southern Ergoth:
Here's the section on the Kagonesti in reference to the Silvanesti:
Definitely removed.
Dragonlance Dragonlance Philosophy thread
- Thread starter Velderan
- Start date
Definitely removed.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
Thank you
I don't know, discussion I was having with @Levistus's_Leviathan earlier seemed to be heading towards an objective sort of view, albeit hard to prove - science can be used to objectively measure what is good or bad for people's health and wellbeing - whether through foods, medicines, non-medical drugs, drinks, through to physical activities done or inflicted on, through obviously to extremes of mental and physical injury / death.
From there, I think we can then go to intent - someone injures someone else on purpose for enjoyment or because they felt like it - so intending to do objectively bad for someone's health to that someone just for their own selfish desires, could be defined as objectively Evil for humanity. Whereas if injuring accidentally, or injuring to prevent said person from harming other people, or perhaps injuring because that is what the justice system has prescribed due to actions that someone has done already breaching laws etc.
Of course what that means, is because it is often hard to determine what someone's motive may have been (much like in court cases determining what degree of murder a murder charge may be) it can be hard to determine if what they did is objectively Evil or not, but doesn't mean we can't describe what is objectively Evil as such.
The challenge this poses for Dragonlance, is while killing all the people the Cataclysm did is objectively bad for all their health, to say whether it was objectively Evil could depend on the motivation of the Gods in question - was it to prevent even greater suffering, if so then perhaps you would say not objectively Evil, or if it was, whether they were stuck between two objectively Evil choices if we determined that for humans that inaction when you know inaction will cause harm is also objectively Evil. It comes down to how we would determine the motivation feeding into Good / Evil part.
All these considerations, and hard to escape the view that it all still is somewhat subjective, is why I could support the idea that there is objective Good / Evil for humanity - inasmuch that there isn't a cosmically objective Good / Evil - and aliens et al could have a different 'objective Good / objective Evil' as allows for possibility that for humans that eventually we could as a combined 'society' for want of a better word define what is objectively Good and Evil for us, based on what is objectively good and bad for our wellbeing and the motives for actions people take that could support either outcome. Not something I think as a society we have determined as yet, but something we could determine in future. A philosophical point of view, but that is what the thread is about
Note - have attempted to capitalize Good / Evil where talking about the moral sense, whereas not capitalize where talking about good / bad in the more physical / mental sense, to try and separate out where 'good' is essentially using two different definitions.
Faolyn
(she/her)
The Cataclysm was done specifically to punish the kingpriest for his hubris in asking the gods for the power to defeat evil.
See, this is also where comparison to real-world religions fall flat. In the biblical flood, everyone was supposed to be evil. In the story of Moses, the Egyptians were enslaving Jews, and the Jews were spared.
In the Cataclysm, one guy and his minions were doing bad things, and everyone suffered for it.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
If you want to do a shades of grey not black and white world were good and evil are very blurry lines and everything is an obiwan quote* that works... when you do defualt D&D though as has been pointed out before we do out of game objective... like a person from they and a person from the dale lands can see themselves as good and the other as evil, but out of game the alignments will always line up with the reader/creator/base alingment... most likely making they evil and dale lands good.All these considerations, and hard to escape the view that it all still is somewhat subjective, is why I could support the idea that there is objective Good / Evil for humanity - inasmuch that there isn't a cosmically objective Good / Evil - and aliens et al could have a different 'objective Good / objective Evil' as allows for possibility that for humans that eventually we could as a combined 'society' for want of a better word define what is objectively Good and Evil for us, based on what is objectively good and bad for our wellbeing and the motives for actions people take that could support either outcome. Not something I think as a society we have determined as yet, but something we could determine in future. A philosophical point of view, but that is what the thread is about
Note - have attempted to capitalize Good / Evil where talking about the moral sense, whereas not capitalize where talking about good / bad in the more physical / mental sense, to try and separate out where 'good' is essentially using two different definitions.
This came up years ago when someone argued a LG drow raised to worship would look chaotic evil out of game becuse following the laws and traditions of Menzoberanzin is chaotic, and doing what you were taught was right was evil, so LG =CE... but in D&D that is just CE on the sheet on the page in the book.
so for D&D (unless/until they carve out an exception for Dragonlance, we HAVE defined alignments...)
now you can fix it by removing good and evil. you can fix it by making the good gods fall more in line with D&D good, or you can fix it with a exception wwhere good/evil in Dragonlance isn't the same as base D&D (I am sure others can brain storm other fixes)
Edit* Obiwan saying "It's true from a certain point of view"
GMforPowergamers
Legend
I just thought of a fourth fix... rapture, say that all good aligned and neutral aligned creatures were given the fast pass to paradises...
Faolyn
(she/her)
They raptured all the clerics away. Not, as far as I can tell, the good or neutral lay-faithful, just the clerics.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
right but add a few lines about how every good or neutral man woman and child got a ticket to heaven could be a fix.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
This is not necessary. Child abuse can be accepted to be objectively evil without us needing an entire, irrefutable definition of good and evil. Just like how we know that Quantum Mechanics and Relativity are both insufficient at completely describing the physics of our universe, but we still know that Black Holes and Muons and Higgs Bosons exist.
"Hey, murdering innocent people by the thousands is bad" is an uncontroversial statement that can be accepted into modern morality without needing to completely explain what good and evil are 100% of the time. Just like we can say "Higgs Bosons exist" without knowing if Gravitons do.
Maybe you have them blocked, but the person that was just banned from the thread was doing that.
Ask your 10 closest friends if they're in favor of the murder of innocent people. I'm willing to bet, unless you have "strange" friends, all of them will say that they're against it.
Child abuse is bad and evil. We have proven that. Genocide is evil. That is proven.
Scribe
Legend
Harming the innocent/children is evil.
Child abuse is harm.
Child Abuse therefore, is evil.
There is still a definition of 'evil' even if its unspoken. Profoundly immoral and wicked.
You cannot just say 'well its evil because I said its evil and everyone knows this' because that kind of definitive statement laden with assumption is exactly why we have 3+ threads all with various levels of angst. That's the point I would imagine overgeeked is making here.
Is anyone with sense and a soul going to argue child abuse is good? Absolutely not, but that is because we are coming (like it or not) from a shared view at an extremely basic level of what is immoral and wicked but there is a wide wide wide world out there, and I'm not going to imagine there isnt a scenario where I think something is evil, while a different culture on the other side of the planet think its good.
In fact I can think of things immediately which would fall under this scenario, and that is the point. Reasonable, decent, people, can disagree on things.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
I'll add something to this that I think is important: "on purpose". Accidents are terrible, but they're not evil. Accidentally hurting a child by stepping on their foot isn't evil. Purposefully stomping on the foot of a child is evil.
Yes, they can disagree on "things". Not on "is genocide/child abuse/murder of innocent people a good thing". If you disagree with that, you're not "reasonable" or "decent".
Scribe
Legend
Right, but most of the time, nobody is debating those levels of offense/actions.
The issue is, and this was done in another thread just now, breaking literally everything down to a dichotomy and robbing every discussion of nuance. Its just not how things actually function unless only the most extreme of circumstances is being discussed, and nothing but.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Not philosophically, no we cannot go anywhere from there. Again, the is-ought problem.
It's good to be clear and precise.
It is if you hope to be logical and rational.
Not without know why it's evil. And to know why it's evil we have to know what evil is. Definitionally. Without a definition to point to you're stuck in circular reasoning and pointless repetition.
No, they're not anything alike. We have centuries of math and science and theories that have been supported with repeated experimentation and observation to point to the working models we have of physics and quantum physics are likely true. We have actual hard data collected and poured over by hundreds of thousands of scientists over the years that all point to those things being real and true.
That's not in any way comparable to you making an assertion about morality on a D&D forum. You have no support nor data. You're not making an argument, you're repeating a claim. Without evidence. You're repeating the argument from incredulity.
Your logical fallacy is bandwagon. Morality is not democratic.
No, we haven't. We don't even have an acceptable definition of evil, much less bad, to work with. You're asserting things, not arguing for and supporting your claims.
Last edited:
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Basic formal logic.
That's the idea, but those are also loose terms that we'd need to define. Moral, immoral. Wicked. Etc.
Partially, yes. Saying you know it when you see it isn't good enough. Saying everybody knows isn't good enough. Saying Paladine told me so isn't good enough. To be thinking, rational, reasonable people we have to be able to talk about these things. Think about them. And express them. Saying "it's true because I say so" isn't a thinking response. Not being able to express it doesn't mean you're wrong, only that you need to think about it more. No shame in that. But you can't really have a discussion about things when people just keep repeatedly saying that they're right and refuse to support their argument.
Exactly so. No matter how fervently we believe something, there is, almost guaranteed, a person out there who believes exactly the opposite with equal conviction to yours. The only thing that makes you think you're right and the other person wrong is you happened to be born and raised here and now rather than there and then. Once we accept that fact, it's incredibly hard to think there's anything approaching universal morality to say nothing of actually objective morality.
Scribe
Legend
I've been thinking on this a LOT lately, as I know others have for...all of recorded history, and while its an interesting thought exercise (that I feel I'm making progress on personally) there's absolutely zero chance its a productive discussion on this forum.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Maybe. Maybe not. It's still worth a try, I think.
Scribe
Legend
I mean what is Good? If we wanted to boil down the concept of a universal good, would it be possible to get it down to 3 words, all of which would then have their own definitions?
Can we say 'this is good' and have it be truly universally applicable?
Good: Selfless, Peaceful (Pacifist? Non-Violence?), Altruism
I think selflessness is likely a universal Good, same with altruism.
I can see debate around pacifism/non-violence however, but I believe at its root, divorced for the other concepts Law (Order) Chaos (Freedom) I do believe "Good" would be peaceful.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
I don't know about universal. Not sure why it would need to be three words. But sure.
I don't think so.
Sure. I'd say that selflessness and altruism are almost repetitions, they're almost the same thing. Selflessness is the internal version; altruism is the externalization of selflessness. I've always thought that words without deeds are hollow, so I'd take altruism over selflessness. I'd also agree that good would be peaceful, but not necessarily non-violent. For example, it's not good to let others come to harm if you have the power to prevent it. As a default, peaceful.
But, as with the other poster's claims, they're mostly feelings that sound about right rather than anything I could prove or support with evidence or facts.
Scribe
Legend
Yeah largely, as for why keeping it to 3 words or 2 (Selfless = Altruism for example or close enough) is to distill it. To get it at its most pure, so see if a consensus on "just this thing" is even possible.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Well, we can't even get people to agree that definitions are important, much less necessary. I doubt we'd get consensus on what the definitions actually are. I know a lot of gamers who would define good in exactly opposing terms to what we have so far. They'd define good as complete and utter selfishness and a might makes right mindset. Mercy is for the weak, if you can't defend yourself you deserve what you get, and all that pleasantness. Real Cobra Kai types.
