Dragonlance Dragonlance Philosophy thread

[GMforPowergamers]

Yes, it's not a theology or seminary class.

that is why I don't want to keep being dragged into this...

However, I see too many parallels to ignore.

every story ever told has parallels with each other, weather they be religious or secular. Regardless of WHAT religion it is. That is why there is no reason to bring real world religion in we can keep to talking about games of make believe.

We don't have to agree.

I doubt we ever will on this

 

[GMforPowergamers]

All Christians believe different things.

depending on how you count it the top 3 or the top 23 religions (some are really off shoots of each other so they are 1 base but the farther back you go the harder it is to see that because they have been 'there own' thing so long) are really similar and based together... but then that discounts massive numbers of non religious beliefs. (is science a religion, what about Taoism? if you trust that something can find the answer even if right now you personally don't have it, is that a religion or is that science?)

Does my fiancé believing in psychics make her more or less of her religion that doesn't? does both of us being variants of the same religion but both trusting science make us more or less religious?
me and my dad are the same religion, live in the US, but one of us thinks that laws should enforce our shared beliefs and the other says sine there are religions that believe different we MUST not make laws favoring 1. Does THAT make us different enough that we have different religions?

 

[billd91]

no it isn't... good can make mistakes, good can have to compromise, never did I say good CAN'T make any mistakes... genocide is a pretty big oppsie though... throwing the world into post apocalyptic points of light that are weaker against evil and almost leads to evil taking over is maybe the biggest mistake ever.

this isn't "Hey the goblin killed my best friend then surrendered but I killed him in anger then felt real bad about it and want to atone"
this is "The mayor is secretly an evil necromancer and has the town fooled, so I killed 90% of the town broke the kingdom up and then left... when I came back I wasn't remorseful but assured everyone that necromancer was a good guy but I had to kill him so I had to kill all those people too"

"We sure liberated the hell out of this place" was a comment made by a GI after obliterating St. Lô in 1944. I'm sure the same could virtually be said of Caen. A lot of French civilians suffered but we were fighting Nazis - so that's good, right? This kind of thing comes up from time to time and people ostensibly on the side of right, depending on the tools they have and the enemy they face, sometimes have to inflict injury on people who aren't their primary targets to get a job done with finality.

so no Good gods don't have to be perfect, but they also can't commit war crimes and not care.

Do we know they don't care? Maybe it does bother them but they felt they had to do something that drastic anyway because of the nature of the situation. Plus, it makes for better epic underpinnings of the setting in the same sort of dramatic idioms of mythology. Would it be as interesting if the gods somehow made the Kingpriest and all of his followers die of brain aneurysms? Definitely not.

 

[Xamnam]

so then just don't lable them good... heck just say "They are called the good gods on krynn even though there alignments are all 'unaligned' and the concept of good and evil is more complex then an average game world" there you go adds 30 words before the god entries, but then changes 12 gods from having 2 word alignments to 1 word so saves you 12 words... net cost 18 words

I can see your point. That said, if it doesn't work for you, that's totally fair, but like I said upthread, telling me a setting has black and white morality already does that.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

"We sure liberated the hell out of this place" was a comment made by a GI after obliterating St. Lô in 1944.

well it isn't 1944 i don't know that battle but from how you framed it (again without details) it sound like it might have been a bad battle or a war crime depending on those details... tell me do those GIs get labled cosmic forces for good or neutral people stuck in a war?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I can see your point. That said, if it doesn't work for you, that's totally fair, but like I said upthread, telling me a setting has black and white morality already does that.

how is this black and white... if anything normal D&D is four color/black and white morality and what YOU and others here describe krysnn as is all shades of grey no black and white...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

this isn't "Hey the goblin killed my best friend then surrendered but I killed him in anger then felt real bad about it and want to atone"
this is "The mayor is secretly an evil necromancer and has the town fooled, so I killed 90% of the town broke the kingdom up and then left... when I came back I wasn't remorseful but assured everyone that necromancer was a good guy but I had to kill him so I had to kill all those people too"

I can not stress enough the evil necromancer was trying to mind enslave the town...

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm not happy for you to be intolerant of people whose religion teaches them otherwise.

I have not said a single thing about real religion. That's something you're bringing to the discussion.

I'm talking about a fictional character's actions and depictions in a fictional world. As they say, any resemblance to a person or persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

 

[Azzy]

My values.

Intolerance of other people's beliefs is bad.

If other people believe that genocide is good? Then, yeah I'll be intolerant of that.

 

[Azzy]

I wonder if DL, the novels, were written when alignment was still just a team jersey and not the behavioral governor they became later.

Heck, even the 1e description of Lawful Good doesn't support mass murder.