Dragonlance Dragonlance Philosophy thread

[Scribe]

"So this is the end," Tanis said. "Good has triumphed. "good? Triumph? "Fizban Repeated, turning to stare at the half-elf shrewdly. " Not so, half elvin. The balance is restored. The evil dragons will not be banished. They remain here, as do the good dragons. Once again the pendulum swings freely. " "all the suffering, just for that?" Laurana asked, coming to stand beside Tanis. "Why shouldn't good win, drive the darkness away forever? " Young lady? " Fizban scolded, shaking a bony finger at her. "There was a time when good held sway. Do you know when that was? Right before the cataclysm!" "Yes" he continued seeing their astonishment " the king priest of Istar was a good man. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't, because both of you have seen what goodness like that can do. You've seen it in the elves, the ancient embodiment of good! It breeds intolerance, rigidity, a belief that because I am right, those who don't believe as I do are wrong."

"We gods saw the danger this complacency was bringing upon the world. We saw that much good was being destroyed, simply because it wasn't understood. And we saw the queen of darkness, lying in wait, biding her time; for this could not last, of course. The overweighted scales must tip and fall, and then she would return. darkness would descend upon the world very fast. " And so the cataclysm, we grieved for the innocent. We grieved for the guilty. But the world had to be prepared, or the darkness that fell might never have been lifted."

Perfect.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Kender are half an excuse for players to do the thing they want to do, just like 3e Paladins were half an excuse to dictate party composition and behavior.

 

[RuinousPowers]

Perfect.

Perfectly stupid. The Gods of Good destroyed the world because there was too much goodness.

 

[Faolyn]

"Encouraged players to act like jerks" So its the players fault then? Or are we really going to go with "If he didn't want to be robbed, he shouldnt have such a nice car."

The race itself did the encouragement. They "handle" anything they can, lie about it, their primary mode of defense is insulting others, they will do whatever they want when they get bored, and that they refuse to take orders. They are literally built to be disruptive. They are Obnoxious Chaotic Neutral: the race.

And again, nobody has this problem with any other race. Only the kender. Nobody says "every time I play with an elf, the player is so snooty." Nobody says "I can't stand dwarf players because all they ever want to do is craft all the time and it totally wrecks the party."

So it's good that kender were rewritten to make them into a race that plays well with others.

 

[Faolyn]

--

 

[Faolyn]

Perfectly stupid. The Gods of Good destroyed the world because there was too much goodness.

Exactly. It's not goodness by any stretch of the definition. That's the type of nonsense that says that the oppressed have to be nice to their oppressors because otherwise the oppressed are being mean. It's absolute nonsense.

 

[Xamnam]

Exactly. It's not goodness by any stretch of the definition.

Yes, I agree, by any stretch of the way it's defined on Earth. But goodness is a different thing on Krynn where it is a cosmic force, and not just an idea.

 

[Faolyn]

By any stretch of the way it's defined on Earth.

By people who aren't good. "Tolerance of intolerance" isn't a good thing; it's a thing used by bad people to try to justify their bad behaviors.

But goodness is a different thing on Krynn where it is a cosmic force, and not just an idea.

Then it's not moral goodness. It's just a meaningless name. You might as well say that Paladine is the chief god of Blue and Takhesis is the chief god of Orange for all actual meaning those words have.

 

[Xamnam]

Then it's not moral goodness. It's just a meaningless name. You might as well say that Paladine is the chief god of Blue and Takhesis is the chief god of Orange for all actual meaning those words have.

I mean, I don't terribly disagree. Those terms function more as identity as than as descriptive in this context, because those beings are of it. If these actions happened on Earth, then yes, it's easy to argue they are not good. But in a world where the word Good means something fundamentally different, I don't know that how we use that word is the best lens to criticize them through, if it's from an in-universe perspective.

 

[Fifinjir]

As someone outside looking in when it comes to Dragonlance, I want to take a questionably educated guess:

So we have the Kingpriest. He wants to make a world of pure good. At first this seems like an awesome idea help by the fact that his philosophy of what that means is derived from a god associated with Good as a concept. But as he becomes more successful, there’s less people willing or able to argue against him, the philosophy of pure good becomes an echo chamber, and that’s when it starts to rot. He starts trying to purge the imperfections that are an inherent part of being human (relatively speaking), and because the only ones left are those believing themselves to be the faultless ones, they keep cheering him on. Eventually the situation gets so bad that the only way to stop him and the desiccated bust of an ideology he’s spreading is the nuclear option.

This is in contrast to the Heroes of the Lance, from what I’ve read at least second hand. They have their share of qualities that make them less than paragons, and for the most part they’re not treated as being lesser for it.

So we get to the Balance of Good and Evil. I can’t say I like the term because it implies 50-50, but I can get some core idea behind it. Something being “flawless”, be it a person or a world, just means that it or they lack negative qualities. It says nothing about what good things they have going for them. A vacuum is flawless because it’s nothing.

So a complete lack of evil does not imply the maximum height of good, and in some theories may even impede it. Going further will probably take me into “not for a thread about elf games” territory, so I won’t.

Next time I should probably stick to works I’m invested in beyond internet arguments.