Sejs said:
*nod* What Swrushing said.
Anyway, look at it from the character's perspective: as far as the dwarf is concerned, Goblins are wicked, deceitful, evil, baby stealing, well poisoning monsters and the only reward you'd get out of one for freeing it would be a knife between the shoulders as soon as your back is turned. Just because someone chained a couple up doens't make them innocent all of a sudden. It just makes them helpless - not something you'd laud about in tales of heroic battle, but putting the little buggers down is still a good thing to do. Means they won't go stealing someone's baby or poisoning some town well later on down the line.
Just as an example, mind you - I've got no idea what the dwarf's player actually thinks on the matter.
I don't think "as far as the dwarf is concerned" is good enough. As far as the japanese were conerned, Koreans were a lesser people, but that doesn't allow them to be considered 'good' while taking comfort women. At least one more question needs to be asked : "Is he right?" and if the answer is no, then a second question must be asked: "what has he done to avoid learning he is wrong?"
the first question is simple, and has been brought up before. how does the DM define goblins in his campaign, either through out of campaign conversations or campaign events? If the DM has made it clear that "no mortal races are inherently evil, though many have warred for a long time" or if the party is aware the goblin tribes trade with cityfolk, or other adventuring parties use goblin porters or followers, etc, then what the dwarf thinks is untrue. It is prejudice, and racism, painting a people in a way they are not. Merely thinking something false doesn't make your actions good just because they are consistant with your beliefs. If allignment is a cosmic balance sheet and magical marking as well as a personality trait, this distinction becomes even more vital, as the dwarf may go through life honestly believing himself a good person and then have a both unpleasant and confuing encounter with the groups new paladin.
Then the second question comes in. This one is a little more complicated and mildly philosophical. There is nothing unusual about a young person who has been exposed to only a very narrow group of people in his life coming to adulthood with a couple of flat out wrong ideas about other groups of people. if the dwarf was fresh to adventuring and the wider world and had spent his whole life up to that point in an environment where those feelings about goblins were ubiquitous and no chances to disprove them ever arose, his prejudice has (Imho) no bearing on his allignment. But what he does when confronted with evidence against these beliefs matters quite a bit. If his beliefs are wrong and he has had ample oppertunity to understand that but instead has on each occasion rejected the new information as lies, propaganda, stupid, irrelevant and "just wrong, you've been taken in by them", and burried his head in the sand as it were to avoid changing his beliefs, he has switched from an involuntry prejudice to a willful bigotry. And in my opinion, that sort of of deliberately defended and self perpetuated bigotry IS incompatable with a good allignment, no matter how rarely it has a chance to be demonstrated.
Obviously judgement of these factors, as has been mentioned, depends on the DMs decisions about his game world, and how well he has communicated those facts to his players. But even with a complete lack of information, the player should know that it is not his role to decide the personalities of anyone but his own PC, and certainly not an entire race - thus "as far as he's concerned" would never be taken as anything but a statement of PC prejudice by me, were I adjucating the situation. If he wants mindless hate to still be Good, he damn well better ask his DM about the issue first.
Kahuna Burger
). Just saying you hate someone does not describe the feeling. 
