COMING SOON! -- Presents for Goblins: Festive Resources for 5E on Kickstarter! A festive softcover of holiday-themed D&D 5E resources, including the short adventure 'Presents for Goblins'.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8027324" data-attributes="member: 6801228">You missed a lot of points here, and some of them I'm honestly scratching my head about.Perhaps this is an English thing. But, I never implied or thought that you were the writer for Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. I was using "you" in the generic referring to an audience sense. If someone is writing a story, and this is what happens, it is a problem with that story they wrote. Secondly, being make believe has nothing to do with anything. A story is a story, whether make believe or not, and in fact, make believe stories must be even more careful about making sense, because you do not have the defense of "look, I know it doesn't make sense, but that is what really happened." Full Authorial Control has that drawback. What? Honestly, what does having her be worshiped, raising the dead or anything like that have to do with her personality? I used her as an example because she is an inspiration to millions for her kindness, compassion and good work. She is a near universal benchmark to point to and say "that is a good person". That is why if you heard a story about her acting cruel or malicious, it would be dissonant and wrong. Because she is a good person, that doesn't make sense for her to act that way.The conclusion itself isn't the problem. It is the framing around the conclusion. Yes, good people can act terribly. That happens. Yes, bad things can happen to good, innocent people. That happens. But, how we frame those events adds another layer, and the framing in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is not just that the Dwarves blamed the Duergar for their plight, but that the Dwarves were not wrong to do so. We both agree that this course of action was ugly and wrong, but the book presents the story as though the dwarves did the right thing. That what they did was not ugly and wrong, after all, the Duergar are the bad guys and the Dwarves are the good guys. The Duergar are greedy now, they do hate Moradin now, so they must have been greedy and hateful back then, and that is why they were enslaved and tortured. We are not meant to see the Dwarves choice to cast them out as morally wrong, but morally right. And that is the problem. You have an event that was ugly, cruel and needless, and it is being framed as the correct course of action for the good dwarves to have taken.And remember, this is not presented to us as "the dwarven side of the story" this is presented to us from an impartial third party point of view.</blockquote>

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