>"Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is n

>>52302092
Oh hey it's THIS topic again

Oh boy.

>>52302092
>Protestants
>Human

LMAO next you'll be saying orcs aren't always CE

>>52302092
No, he knew exactly what he was saying. Allowing your enemies' children to grow up and take arms against you is foolish. You're going to have to kill them either way, better to do it while they're defenseless than give them a chance to win.

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>>52302224
To be fair, when your actions have the surety of absolute cosmological good like only a few&d paladins could, what would be horrific for any sane real world figure becomes basic sense for the paladin

Lawful good does not mean lawful nice

>>52302092
There was no such thing as n orc that was good when D&D was made, you know. they were literally always evil. Same with Githyanki, Drow, and several other races. they could not be good - there were no spells to change alignment, no player character races of these beings. They were meant to be killed and nothing more.

So it is entirely possible he knew exactly the origin of the quote........and used it correctly.

>>52302171
Yeah I'm not looking forwards to this thread either. Just felt it was necessary.

>>52302224
Okay. Because if Gygax knew exactly what he was saying...

Like, I didn't make this thread to debate alignment, use of violence, or use of lethal force in D&D. I made this thread because I need to figure out if Gygax goes in about the same category as H.P. Lovecraft. Someone where I can respect the significance of their creative output, while having to acknowledge that they were in some respects a really fucking shitty human being.

>>52302092
>An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is by no means anything but Lawful and Good. Prisoners guilty of murder or similar capital crimes can be executed without violating any precept of the alignment. Hanging is likely the usual method of such execution, although it might be beheading, strangulation, etc. A paladin is likely a figure that would be considered a fair judge of criminal conduct..."
Some of the others are pretty fucked, but this one, I can't find any fault in. we're talking about justice in its most basic sense: that people should reap what they sow, and be treated as they have treated others. The problem is, that goes against the idea of the "nits make lice" sentiment, which is essentially condoning the murder of innocents on the justification of future crimes.

>>52302295
Yeah, I don't have any issue with that bit either.

>>52302293
Name one person who has no redeeming qualities, and name one person who has no flaws.

They were both a product of their times and their environs. Just like you, a stupid idiot, are a product of yours.

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What you have to understand is the way d&d cosmology works. Most people never really 'get' it.

At its root is good vs evil. These are not just ideas but tangible forces linked to life and death. Every good act generates positive energy and contributes to the life of the universe. Every evil act generates negative energy and contributes to it's death. And because of how people work, there is almost ALWAYS much more death than life. That greedy shopkeeper who cheats his customers is not just being cruel and immoral, he is CONTRIBUTING TO THE DEATH IF THE UNIVERSE. Evil is a pestilence, a cancer, a choking vine. The paladin is the cure, the knife, the hatchet. Men are free to choose their own paths. Holy men often dedicate their lives to making sure they choose good ones. Paladins dedicate their lives to killing those who don't.

It's a matter of reduction. How much evil can a paladin kill without becoming evil themselves.

>>52302293
>I'm a trip and I think a healthy respect for justice makes you a shitty human being

I also assume you dislike Lovecraft because of his old timey racism? They're both a product of their times, get the stick out of your ass.

>>52302295
To be fair Ammurabi made the law "An eye for an eye" attemping to be Lawfull and Good since before his Code, people could start whole blood feud upon a scar.
So yes "eye for an eye" can be Lawfull and Good in the proper context.

>>52302292
Actually, I've been researching that some more just now, and it's a bit more complex than that. When D&D was made there was no alignment, and when Gygax added alignment was added it was entirely about law vs. chaos. Races generally could be in 2 out of 3 categories (i.e. neutral and either lawful or chaotic). There was a Detect Evil spell at this point, too; it worked in a way that made zero use of the alignment system.

>>52302305
Yes, and? What's your point?

Though that actually doesn't fit lovecraft. He was a remarkably virulent racist even by the standards of his time, or so I'm given to understand.

>>52302352
Don't be silly, he was just a man who understood black people were born from eggs and came to earth to rape white women

>>52302352
Try to live in New York during his time and you will be a virulent racist too.

>603 posts on your trip alone
You know it's not a username, right?

>>52302352
>or so I'm given to understand.

Most people where. He married a jew though, and by all accounts actually loved her deeply. It's like a casual "show up, complain about blacks, drink a few beers, and go home" KKK member marrying a black woman and treating her like a princess. Which makes him a flawed, but good guy. Everyone needs to vent somehow, unless they act on it they aren't really bad.

>>52302359
>hur dur, comics are historically accurate
Stupid fucker, aren't you.

>>52302383
You seem triggered anon is everything ok?

>>52302352
That's because the original AD&D was designed around the concepts presented in the Elric and Hawkmoon sagas. Law and Chaos were the organizations that ran the universe, and choosing an alignment was aligning yourself with either law, chaos, or remaining neutral to both.

Paladins were also not present in OD&D. your research is pathetic.

>>52302224
>if there is the remotest of possibility that you might do something bad then you have already done it and should die.

This is the kind of thinking that gets branded as stupid retarded alignment. You might as well kill everyone at this point.

>>52302405
Judge Death alignment?

>>52302342
>How much evil can a paladin kill without becoming evil themselves.
Well according to gygax you can kill all of it without being evil.

>>52302342
It's not that I don't see that as a viable stance on the alignment topic? The stance of explicitly saying "this is not like the real world, this is a genre piece where good and evil are tangible forces tied into the fundamental workings of the world."

But that's not what *Gygax* said. Gygax cited nothing but IRL historical precedents and an old adage spoken by centuries of IRL child murderers who were performing genocide.

Also if you look at the OP post his response is explicitly saying LG paladins should execute people who have chosen the good path, because they were previously on the evil path and could "backslide".

>>52302368
Well, that was back before WASPs came up with "white people", so anyone who didn't have your background, you hated.

>>52302373
Lovecraft was basically the closest thing to Bill Dautrive from King of the Hill, as he's the last yet lame scion of a high class family that died before he was born. He was raised and had the mindset of a stuffy highborn New England elite, but with none of the monetary backing. He was racist in the way THEY were, not your average Joe Pobucker.

Remember, he wrote a story where all people from Appalachia were knuckle-dragging semi-humans who were only capable of near human sentience when possessed by an otherworldly being that was dying because it pained it to be trapped in something so inferior.

>>52302092
While the 'nits' line comes from a saying about child-murder, I don't think he meant to use it literally. More in the "spare a baddie, and he'll keep doing baddie things" sort of way. Like, Evil is a fact of nature, hence why orcs were Always Chaotic Evil; Nature.

>>52302420
Prisons didn't exist in ye medieval times. The concept of rehabilitation did not exist. Wrongdoers and criminals were punished and that was that. What the fuck is the paladin going to do, check them into his work release program? He's a killer.

Once a paladin becomes involved, it's moved beyond the point of saying you're sorry.

>>52302420
You know, when a prisoner repents to a priest in prison we don't let him go? In the eyes of God he is forgiven, but he still has to pay his price to society. Justice isn't always merciful, and in western civilization we have to accept that our society has a dual nature around the concepts of christian mercy, and civil justice. It colors peoples thoughts and perceptions on the subject, and even in the same denominations and civil factions we have differing views on what exactly those ideas mean.

Also prisons and the idea of serving time as penance for crimes is new.

>>52302387
I think that idiots who literally use comics as a true historical reference should be locked into barrels and force fed to Niagara falls.

>>52302474
Niagra falls is a waterfall anon it can't eat anything

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>>52302092
>Paladins are not stupid
Gygax doesn't know his average player

>>52302489
Hasn't it been stated that the only class that's been played the way it's suppose to are Rangers?

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>mfw a smutposter tries talking about justice and the law

http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/33354547/#33368214

>>52302387
Contrary to the popular belief that everyone on /tg/ loves dumb bait, most of us actually think that the world would be better off if everyone who baitposts suddenly died of a heart attack. Not that this stops us from replying to all the bait ever.

>expecting sensible moral principles out of an alignment system conceived of by a highschool dropout who just liked fantasy fiction a lot

Seriously Dagda, I thought better of you. If you want a consistent moral system in D&D that doesn't wind up utterly monstrous when you sit down and think about it too hard, rip one out of a major philosophy. There's lots you can steal from. Stoicism, natural law, platonism, confucianism, Kantianism, etc. all spring readily to mind.

There's a good fucking reason most game most retroclones even) don't include alignment. Because it's easily the second worst thing about D&D (1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition psionics is number one, paladins are number 3).

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>>52302511
>this samefagging
Disgraceful.

>>52302520
>not checking the count of unique posters in the thread

That was my first post, asshole.

>>52302372
I've been around a while. What search function are you using? Sounds like it doesn't cover all of /tg/'s history, but still goes back quite a while.

>>52302373
Put it this way: If it was a matter of record that Lovecraft or Gygax repeatedly cheated on their wife, I wouldn't consider that fault really relevant to their creative output. By contrast, I do think it's notable that the song "All you need is love" was written by a guy who beat both his wives and abandoned one of his children. I think that's a thing worth bearing in mind when sampling the vision of the world that song offers.

If lovecraft was a shitty racist, that's worth acknowledging. How he compares to the others of his time is also worth acknowledging, for the sake of accuracy. Either way, there's no need to make excuses for him, nor is there much point to arguing whether he was somehow a "good person" or "bad person" in some broad-stroke overall way.

>>52302529
>I've been around a while. What search function are you using? Sounds like it doesn't cover all of /tg/'s history, but still goes back quite a while.
You know it's not a username, right?

>>52302540
>Either way, there's no need to make excuses for him, nor is there much point to arguing whether he was somehow a "good person" or "bad person" in some broad-stroke overall way.
Then why the fuck did you bring it up in the first place, you moron?

>>52302434
I also come from an old American family, except in my case we where professionals and yeomen in the south since the 1630's. Doctors, merchants, tobacco farmers. Wealthy enough to be respected, too poor to be gentry. The racism of old north elite is mostly harmless, they are the type to talk loud and brash among their own about separation of the races and how greedy the Jews are, but you'll find their friends with a good share of Jews and they wouldn't dream of walking the walk when the rope comes out. It's the racist equivalent of locker room talk. Real racism is something you know when it rears its ugly head, it's not pride in a flag or idle talk. It's them surrounding a house and demanding they hand over the nigger or they'll hang you next to them, and you knowing they mean. It's a hate that even when a fraction of it is directed your way, you learn to watch what you say to certain folk for fear of a fight or worse, and that's only because I belong to a religious denomination they happen to dislike. They reserve the real hate for other people.

It's also a hate that is exceedingly rare.

>>52302540
>If it was a matter of record that Lovecraft or Gygax repeatedly cheated on their wife

I don't believe you. Prove it.

>>52302584
Not him, but perhaps because understanding Gygax's mindset would be useful in understanding the work he created. Kind of how appreciating Otto Dix's art is helped by knowing that he was a seriously traumatized ww1 veteran.

So when Jesus said that it was preferable not to go straight for eye-for-an-eye, was that Chaotic Good or Neutral Good or what?

>>52302619
Are you retarded? Reread that statement.

>>52302627
Chaotic Good. Jesus actually rocked the boat pretty hard. He told people to be nice to the dregs of society that got hit the hardest, to not look for vengeance on your own and instead trust that justice will be done either by the legal authorities or by God in the end, to war sometimes and seek peace and others, and a bunch of other shit.

Also he ran out a bunch of tax collectors by screaming wildly at them and flailing around a whip, and there was that one time he cursed a fig tree because he was hungry and it wasn't bearing any fruit. Those are pretty CG to me.

>>52302445
Yeah, it seems like that could have been more his intent? Just trying to see if there's much evidence to be had one way or another. He doesn't address children in that particular response, don't think he says much on species either but haven't checked.

>>52302466
No disagreement here.

>>52302584
Because it's relevant context for the thing they created. The core concept of Lovecraftian Horror is that human beings can't survive the hideous realization that the true nature of the universe doesn't revolve around you or "care" about you in any way. I find it interesting that this concept came from a guy who was a huge racist growing up in a world that was leaving him behind.

>>52302553
Just curious what search function you're using. Is it 4plebs, notatrueending, or is there some other /tg/ archive I should know about?

>>52302619
What? Dude, your quote begins with "If". It was a hypothetical example to illustrate a point, I've never heard of either of them committing adultery.

>>52302092

I'm a paladin, you dick. My moral compass talks to me and gives me powers. If my job involves exterminating non-combatants then exterminating non-combatants is morally correct.

I'm glad they removed the LG requirement and fixed "lol ur paladin falls" curtailing everything a paladin does.

A warrior-priest with the direct backing and command of an actual extant capital-D Deity should be fucking terrifying and he certainly shouldn't be "lawful good."

"I never broke the law, I am the law" comes to mind. Why would I give a shit about what your scribes and judges say, I can get my laws direct from the source.

As for what Gygax said, I feel like it's more likely Gygax heard the saying somewhere and used it without knowing/thinking very hard about what he was implying, than that he advocates colonial genocide.

Since OP is an idiot and willfully went over a tangent hw practically made himself.

He was rascist, it did little to affect his works and somewhat managed to kept his rascist beliefs in private.
Done! He's an influential and great author who managed to create a new genre of horror.

Or are we also delving with tolkien's percistence analogous portrayal of blacks as monstronsities in his works?

>>52302511
>if you're not educated enough you're incapable of having a proper sense of right and wrong

Oh so that's why poor people commit so many crimes, thanks anon.

>>52302685
>I need to figure out if Gygax goes in about the same category as H.P. Lovecraft. Someone where I can respect the significance of their creative output, while having to acknowledge that they were in some respects a really fucking shitty human being.
> Either way, there's no need to make excuses for him, nor is there much point to arguing whether he was somehow a "good person" or "bad person" in some broad-stroke overall way.

You're not even consistent in the same thread. Fuck off.

>>52302293
No, actually, killing people who will eventually try to kill you doesn't make you a 'shitty human being.'

I understand you're a leftist and have no sense of loyalty or responsibility, but if you ever step out of your ivory tower safe space, you'll find that in the real world, nits really do make lice, and killing them is a small price to pay to protect the people who actually matter.

>>52302715
This thread is populated with some defensive motherfuckers.

No, I'm sure Gygax had a sense of right and wrong. But like most moral systems people hold, it was probably mostly intuitive and sometimes contradictory, because it wasn't grounded in philosophy.

>>52302612
>The racism of old north elite is mostly harmless
False, just look at how any discussion of gun violence revolves around freak events like mass shootings rather then the colossal numbers of young black men slaughtered every year in ghettos over drugs, why do you think that focus exists? What about affirmative action which allows authorities to completely avoid ever having to deal with the horrific state of most majority black schools? These things both come from northern elites and they do horrific damage on black people.

>>52302650

>using divine powers to kill a tree because it's not the right season for bearing fruit

>good

Jesus was CN, basically a fae-changeling trickster god whose sense of humor is distressingly out of sync with that of his victims. Gnostic gospels reinforce that idea.

>>52302742

t. fat 28 year old who's been in a conflict that escalated past flailing

>>52302742
Thank you for being one of the sane ones. Seems like that's pretty rare these days.

>>52302763
>using divine powers to kill a tree, a non living entity without a soul or feelings, that highlights his humanity
>this single pointless action invalidates him being good

Gnostics are jokes, and the Gnostic gospels are a fucking joke. I could say Jesus was evil too if I wrote a bunch of fanfiction about him listening to Nine Inch Nails and shooting up a school. If you put stock into any of their batshit writings, then you should kill yourself as matter is evil and it doesn't matter what you do to your body.

>>52302746
It's alright anon I get that you need to somehow justify wasting all that time and money on a philosophy degree.

>>52302809
This coming from the guy who feels the need to defend his masculinity on 4chan.

Don't worry, we were teenagers once too. You'll feel mighty silly about your opinions when you grow up (assuming you do).

>>52302687
>As for what Gygax said, I feel like it's more likely Gygax heard the saying somewhere and used it without knowing/thinking very hard about what he was implying, than that he advocates colonial genocide.
I think you're right, and think that might be the right way to view potential pro-genocide implications of the oldschool alignment implementations: Gygax wasn't thinking very hard about that kind of thing. But... well, I haven't found much yet that lets me discount the alternative as a (small) possibility.

>>52302720
Emphasis on "in some respects". You can be a murderous liar who'd never steal from someone poor or cheat on your spouse. If so, you're a good person in some respects and a shitty one in others.

>>52302742
The potentially shitty human being in this case would be Gygax IRL, if (seriously, IF) he consciously made a "LG kills orc babies" alignment system because he based his idea of LG on irl people who killed irish & native american children. Because those are the people his old nits & lice adage comes from.

As I've said earlier in this very post, I don't THINK that's the case. But I'm not 100% sure.

>>52302802
You don't know much about Gnosticism, do you? It's very strongly rooted in neo-Platonism (mind you, so is mainstream Christianity, just less so), and so killing yourself is counterproductive in the necessary enlightenment and transcendence of the material condition.

>>52302293
>trip
Kill yourself posthaste

>>52302835
Well, I've got to ask: what do you expect to accomplish with speculating on /tg/? If you seriously want to figure this out, you'd need to research through the man's writings, see if you can find letters or journals, contact people who personally knew him, shit like that. You'd basically have to work as though you were doing research for a biography, because I can assure you, nobody here knows him well enough to tell you.

>>52302856
>implying they're not dead inside already
The punishment for being a tripfag is being a tripfag, pretty brutal if you ask me. Gygax would approve.

>>52302835
Hey Dagda, you ever gonna do a portrait thread again?

>>52302856
>hating on Dagda

You're literally just new.

>>52302293

Go back to Tumblr and never leave your college you sheltered white upper class pussy.

>>52302888
Why would they ever leave college? It's not like they'd be able to get a job with their meme degree.

>>52302865
I'm doing that too. But this thread's had useful responses, and it seemed like something worth talking about.

>>52302878
Unikely; it's way harder to spam images nowadays, with the massive delay between posts & captcha. Contributing a dozen-odd pics is viable, but doing a big image thread by yourself takes forever.

>>52302878
I'm not new, I just have better taste than you do. KM is a namefag worth having around. This fucker is not. He should either kill himself, which is the option I would reccomend after seeing that he felt the need to create this thread or that he should drop the trip at all times unless it is specifically relevant.

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>>52302802

>buttmad monotheist

Nothing about Jesus makes any sense.

>if jesus isn't 100% god then he's a blasphemer: "before abraham was I am"

>if jesus is 100% god then why did he forget on the cross: "my god my god why have you forsaken me"

This math isn't adding up. I think God might've evacuated his divinity and killed himself, probably because he foresaw you.

>>52302742
I'm going to take a guess and say you're a neverserved civilian and your closest experience to killing someone is shoving cheetos and mountain dew in your face while playing pretend.

>>52302957

I miss sergalfag, desu

>>52302957
Is touhoufag still around? I always enjoyed his analysis of system math.

>>52302977
Aw shit anon are you a navy seal? Were you trained in a gorilla warfare? Nobodies impressed that you took part in war crimes for money faggot.

>Law and Chaos worldbuilding
>>52302092
IMO eye for an eye is about responding to violence with equal, impulsive violence. Following your instincts and your heart over your education and your brain. Which can be good, or it can be bad, but it's chaotic in its very nature, not lawful. Considering your options and settling on an appropriate punishment is lawful (and varying degrees of evil considering the specifics of the punishment.)

>Good and Evil morality
>>52302293
Anon, I also feel like Gygax's points are terribly wrong, but this is a matter of philosophy, not politics. For this reason, pretending the question can be answered confidently and conclusively like it's self-evident is fucking stupid.

>>52303010
Thanks for confirming for me, buddy.

>>52303025
Not the same guy I just found your post utterly pathetic.

>>52302994
Yeah, the creepy little weirdo is still ruining systems. He's gotten his hooks into Godbound.

>>52303029
Likewise, buddy. I'm sure mashing the update button desperately seeking validation made you feel better, though. Just remember that you've never done shit and never will do shit.

>>52303056
>lying
Yes your response definitely didn't strongly imply you were the same person.

>Just remember that you've never done shit and never will do shit.
Hey that's not true I managed to trigger you didn't I?

>>52303012
Seemed pretty clear that gygax was talking about "eye for an eye" as a formal legal code- the punishment for doing X to somebody is to have X done to the perpetrator.

What I found disturbing was the idea that gygax might have been in favor of colonial genocide and similar IRL. It's a pretty out-there possibility, just hoping I can track down something clearer from him on the whole child murder topic to say for sure.

>>52302835
>But... well, I haven't found much yet that lets me discount the alternative as a (small) possibility.

Why don't you follow the logical route here. You need to provide solid proof of your position. Have some? You are just guessing?

Then stop trying to be a typical white liberal who wants to virtue signal by being offended by something obscure.

>>52302092
>Was Gygax just ignorant as to the origins of that expression
No.

>>52303025
I'm pretty sure the guy you're replying to is the faggot from the is-bad-end-NTR-zombie-rape-okay thread who thinks it's edgy to insult war vets. Spend your time on something more productive, this guy is either actually retarded or baiting.

It's possible that Gygax just figured a fictional world with a fictional morality shouldn't necessarily reflect his own real world morals. As I recall he himself was some variety of protestant Christian, yet wrote a setting and game where polytheism is the encouraged norm. That alone should say that his real world morals didn't factor too much into D&D.

>>52303084
Is us or them Anon stop being a pussy and accept the truth. Do you thing that if Aliens ever come here they will be about Peace and Love? They will kill us all.

>>52303084
the real question is why would it fucking matter in any capacity. What he might have thought on the matter will have zero effect on how he is remember, the game he developed, or anything else of relevance.

I for one am glad that Gygax's paladins were reasonable and pragmatic rather than bowing to unsustainable and illogical modern ideas of morality.

>>52302342
>At its root is good vs evil.
At it's root is law vs chaos, good vs evil started when Asmodeus's angels were "poisoned" by demons

Are Jedis space paladins in the SWverse?

>>52303155
But Gygax's paladins are morally bankrupt on a philosophical level. When it came to moralistic philosophy, the guy didn't know what he was talking about.

>>52302092
>Was Gygax just ignorant as to the origins of that expression, and thought it meant something different? Because that old adage comes from real-life child murderers who were justifying actual genocide.
well so is he

you should be aware though he isn't saying you have to live by it to be LG, just that you can if you want to.

>>52303212
Except they aren't. He demonstrates utilitarian decision making, that doesn't make them immoral. This is doubly true in a fictional world where entire races are sometimes spawned by demons or dark gods.

>>52302253
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqGL9B_TPTI&feature=youtu.be
the best kind of character development

>>52303255
First off, that's not utilitarianism. They're not out there to maximize happiness, pleasure, utility whatever. Second, utilitarianism has holes you could fly a plane through.

If anything, it's deontological, but he never clearly laws down the rules of his deontology, or what their moralistic basis is (as Kant does with his categorical imperatives).

Fucking seriously, don't try to defend the man's philosophy if you don't understand philosophy yourself.

>>52303289
How about "nits making lice" being an objective truth. Seriously do you try to make cockroachs repent and leave your house by asking them or you gas them? Because this is what most fantasy evil race are. Fucking cockroachs.

>>52303289
it maximizes safety, security, and in some cases, the destruction of entities that are fundamentally evil. That's why I said it's a pragmatic outlook, and it could be easily argued that leaving evil to spread and threaten others would be evil in and of itself.

>>52302847
I've actually read a lot about them. I was interested in them when I read Against Heresies, which was a few years before got into reading pre-Christian philosophy. Firstly, Christianity predates neo-Platonism. You're thinking of regular old Platonism, which only a few Christian thinkers leaned on. Gnostic Gospels are a mix, with some clearly being neo-Platonist and some being apparently earlier. And secondly, Gnostic Christ and traditional Christian Christ are fundamentally incompatible. Acting like they are, and trying to say the Gnostic Gospels prove something about the traditional christian Christ is just wrong. Considering one would have to be the incorrect spin off of the other for either to be true. They where rejected by Christians due to their incompatibility with christian thought, and their direct contradiction of old and new testament canon. It's a pointless argument anyway, because Gnosticism is to Christianity what The Nation of Islam is to Islam. They're not even the same religion.

Also the demiurge is barely related to Plato's. They aped the name and general idea as 'creator of the material realm', but they added too much stuff in most branches to the point it doesn't resemble the original idea anymore.

>>52303212
Gygax has a world with objective, impartial and impersonal Good and Evil perspectives. You could debate if Good is actually "morally good" but the answer is, in the context of the setting, yes it is, full stop.
To perform actions that further the cause of Good within the planes is itself a morally good act. To perform actions that hinder the cause of Good is a morally Evil act.
Evil is to be destroyed wherever possible because it fundamentally increases the multiversal ratio of Good and Evil. Maximizing Good is the long-term goal of any Good individual.

Sure, it doesn't have any real application in real life, but this is a game.

>>52302687
>A warrior-priest with the direct backing and command of an actual extant capital-D Deity should be fucking terrifying
That's not what a paladin is, though. A cleric is closer, and even they have no direct command from their gods, and their "backing" is no more powerful than what a mortal can develop on their own.

>>52302503
Bait and shitpost are important when someone deserves it. Like op does.

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Observe: the Gygaxian paladin!
She did nothing wrong.

>>52302751
>the colossal numbers of young black men slaughtered every year in ghettos over drugs
I don't like to use the gun-nuts' arguments, but this seems like one of those cases where banning guns isn't going to have much of an effect.

>>52302092
He also said
>Halberds and their derivatives give me raging boner, which is why I spammed my handbooks with ridiculous amounts of it

>>52304139
On their own? Mortal can do magic because somewhere a God of Magic had the idea to give the monkeys some lego to play with.

Label me with what you want the gobbo children still die.

>>52302092
Fuck off, tripfag, we don't want your kind around here.

>>52304811
t. Goblin slayer

>>52303337
But D&D is a universe with free will, not a deterministic one. So that wouldn't be an objective truth.

>>52303350
That's inconsistent with their methods, you can't maximize safety and security by taking the fight to them, because any aggressive action by necessity requires you compromise your own safety and security (or the safety and security of others in the case of a war) to do so.

>>52303362
>but this is a game.

So why not just go "yeah, they are philosophically bankrupt" then? If it's "just a game" then why do you feel the need to claim they're philosophically consistent?

>rest of your post

The very notions of good and evil in D&D are built on inconsistent principles and axioms; they're absolute garbage and Gygax should have felt bad for thinking them up. You can't further a good that isn't built on consistent principles.

>>52303337
t. edgelord

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>>52302305
>>52302345
>>52302742
>>52302856
>>52302888
>>52303012
Come on guys, what more evidence than
>Like, I didn't make this thread to debate alignment, use of violence, or use of lethal force in D&D. I made this thread because I need to figure out if Gygax goes in about the same category as H.P. Lovecraft. Someone where I can respect the significance of their creative output, while having to acknowledge that they were in some respects a really fucking shitty human being.
do you need to pick up on the fact that this is bait.

>>52302092
If Gygax had ever attempted law school, this, my friends, is why he would have been kicked out.

>>52304692
A lot of them were strictly better than others. You were only expected to include the ones appropriate to your location and time period.

>>52302540
Talking about trips gets my goat more than using trips.
When people get on your case about it, please ignore that portion of their post so the side topic can die.

>>52302224
Honestly, this. You're going to be treated as the villain by the kids, they will become evil because of killing the evil people that cared for them.

It's less suffering for everyone involved to just do it right there, right now.

>>52302092
I always wondered if this applied to black spiral dancer's in W:tA

If you've been ritually abused since you were old enough to walk your likely going to have some problems acclimating to society.

Still, I'd have to say I'd prefer people err on the side of mercy.

Can you even prove Gygax said that?

>>52308202
I mean, if its some sort of "thing" that can barely breath under its own power, yeah, you'll probably want to kill it.

But if its a walking talking starry eyed kid who looks, acts, and talks like Damien from the Omen movies, maybe you can salvage something.

Of course, no telling if you have that the right way round, whether that blob of malign flesh has a noble soul and the kid is broken beyond repair.

Anybody remember that jeff goldbloom movie about the father whos kid became a serial killer and he tried to bring him back to life from the dead to give him a second chance?

>His beliefs in the context of a fantasy role-playing game absolutely reflect his beliefs about real life moral conduct

>>52307934
Your assumming they would not be grateful to you for rescuing them from whatever harm was befalling them from their parens. If the abuse was chronic and constant, they might not care much that their parens is dead.

>>52302092
How about the part where he says that slavery is Good as long as the slaves are of an evil race?

The current alignment system is fucking garbage and the way Gygax designed it was even worse. Anyone who would argue otherwise is mentally incompetent.

>>52308302
There are some very rare real life circumstances where this applies. Like those hillbilly families living up in the Appalachians with 3 generations of inbreeding.

Not saying thats typical, but its been known to happen.

>>52308321
All the alignment system was ever meant to do was get you to question authority.

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>ancient tripfag from the primordial days of the board returns to make a troll thread about Gygaxian alignment

dafuq

>>52308347
I mean honestly, I would have thought you kids would be smarter by now.

The whole point was that legality and morality were not the same thing, that you could be right and the law could be wrong.

>>52302293
If your dislike for Lovecraft is due to the racism you should know that he had a change of heart and disavowed his bigotry in his later years.

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>>52302295
>we're talking about justice in its most basic sense: that people should reap what they sow, and be treated as they have treated others.
>be treated as they have treated others.

>>52308360
Tell us of the days of the early millennium.

ITT soft-palmed CN modernists cringe over the iron virtues of one of the original LG civilizations

>>52311705
>Tell us of the days of the early millennium.
It was okay. Lots of porn and homebrews. We didn't have PDF uploading capability yet, so everything had to be shared off-site.

The original /hc/ hadn't been nuked yet, and spambots weren't a major problem, so there was no captcha system. If someone wanted to storytime a comic, they just loaded up xChan Directory Dumper and set it to automatically post an image every 65 seconds.

>>52308321
>How about the part where he says that slavery is Good as long as the slaves are of an evil race?
You are missing a crucial part there, the part where he also said that the purpose of it was to rehabilitate them.
You are thinking of slavery in terms of American thought, where rapine and violence are the methods of control. Having done exactly what Gygax suggests, I realize what he meant was denying them their freedom because they are still a threat to the public, but not placing them in a prison. You keep them near to you so you can instruct them on the virtues of a just life.
I did this in a game with orcs, with a frost giant, and with a powerful skull lord that had been baleful polymorphed into a frog by the wizard.
I technically "enslaved" them, denied their freedom, while I took the time, under threat of force, to encourage a shift in mindset.

>>52313321
Ah, the good old days.
There was definitely a wild west kinda feel.
Think of how /b/, while always a shithole, could at least be clever, surprising, entertaining, and at times unconditionally understanding. Then all that faded away when people started to believe the memes.
/tg/ when it first came around was a lot of fun, albeit aggravation could run high when you had trash like Verity running around. The porn flowed like oil from a vessel, and you could literally find superior porn threads of ANY sort, save loli, in /tg/ compared to their dedicated boards.
5e 40k had just dropped, and everyone was losing their minds over it, then 4e hit, and /tg/ started the spiral into shit at that point, I think.
That was the point where people started abandoning 40k and D&D threads, and more stuff about other games became strong, including homebrew and brand new games.
However, the edition wars because so consuming, and complaints so common, a new mod was assigned, the maligned "Nazi Mod", that out a dent in the edition wars, but enforced their own purist ideas of "board appropriate content".

>>52313431
For example, Elder Scrolls, SupCom, Dwarf Fortres were banished, and only after a MASSIVE outcry, that led to M00t personally referencing Commander Keen in a /tg/ thread, were video game properties allowed to be posted.
Some things, like Wakfu, were ejected and didn't return until like 2 years ago.
The ERP threads were squashed, with only the WST general surviving by tacit understanding, until that too fell.
Drawthread were unceremoniously scrubbed out, and many drawfags b& outright, causing many to leave /tg/ and never return.
A number of tripfags faded away during this time as well, like Rage, Golden Neckbeard, Rawk Lawbster who were usually amusing if not on topic, but this was also the time when a lot of the shitty tripfags were permanently sent packing, so it's what it is.
Rage, Grandpa Dread, Neckbeard, DLFG, Rawk, it's Guardsork. I miss yall sometimes. It was a lot of fun shooting the shit with yall, bitching about 40k. I pray that all of you are safe and well, I heard God Emp is doing poorly, and I think of her more than perhaps I would like.

>>52313322
>You are thinking of slavery in terms of American thought, where rapine and violence are the methods of control. Having done exactly what Gygax suggests, I realize what he meant was denying them their freedom because they are still a threat to the public, but not placing them in a prison. You keep them near to you so you can instruct them on the virtues of a just life.

This. 'Slavery' takes many forms and blurs into other concepts like indentured servitude or penitant labour. The African slave model is just one form of slavery (and historically one of the most brutal).

>>52302092
Turn off your trip

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>>52302092
>>52302293

Gygax had all kinds of crazy ideas. Pic-related is what he mistakenly thought egalitarianism entails.

Oh man oh no someone said something that isn't PC, quick have a 450 post pissing match about who is the most upset about this.

>>52302446
>Prisons didn't exist in ye medieval times.

>>52302466
>Also prisons and the idea of serving time as penance for crimes is new.

A quick glance at wikipedia says the Romans had prisons used for punishing criminals as long as 2600 years ago or more. So you're both probably flat wrong.

>>52308494
But this paladin gets it. That man should enjoy his new wife.

>>52313820
It sounds like he's talking about equality-of-outcome egalitarianism, which he didn't make up.

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>>52313927
To be fair, prisons were far rarer, and those that existed in the pre modern era were much smaller and less significant and of a much different nature than the ones that exist today.

They were in many cases used either for those awaiting trial instead of as punishment, or to punish debtors (who you wanted to force their family into coming up with the money), or to keep nobles or other important figures until a ransom was paid for them or to keep them as insurance so that an enemy would have to be willing to let them die if they rebelled or schemed against whomever held them captive. If a captive was sufficiently well behaved or important, they would be more under house arrest than proper imprisonment.

Typically punishments did not involve imprisonment and were either immediate or short in term, as well as involving very minimal amounts of capital and manpower, it involved lashes, branding, mutilation (typically removing of fingers or hands or ears), days locked up in a pillory or stock (where people often died of exposure or disease if they didn't have at least one friend who would try to keep them alive), enslavement (examples include being sent to a slave galley or salt mine), or death (often by hanging or other convenient means).

>>52313927
A quick glance at the wikipedia about the Roman prison in question reveals this wonderful piece of text

Imprisonment was not a sentence under Roman statutory law,[2] Richard A. Bauman, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome (Routledge, 1996), p. 23.

>>52313820
He's right tho.

hark back to the days when theologians spit bantz:

>O learned man who never learned to learn,
>Save to deduce, by timid steps and small,
>From towering smoke that fire can never burn
>And from tall tales that men were never tall.
>Say, have you thought what manner of man it is
>Of whom men say “He could strike giants down”?
>Or what strong memories over time’s abyss
>Bore up the pomp of Camelot and the crown.
>And why one banner all the background fills,
>Beyond the pageants of so many spears,
>And by what witchery in the western hills
>A throne stands empty for a thousand years.
>Who hold, unheeding this immense impact,
>Immortal story for a mortal sin;
>Lest human fable touch historic fact,
>Chase myths like moths, and fight them with a >pin.
>Take comfort; rest—there needs not this ado.
>You shall not be a myth, I promise you.

>>52314336

That might be the most pretentious post I've seen since I used to troll /m/ by posting Jacques Derrida wall of text quotes in response to people talking about whether a show was a deconstruction or not.

>He's right tho.

No, he's wrong. Egalitarianism isn't about absolute uniformity across the board. Gygax's rant is on the same level as crazy Yanks who think that the NHS makes Britain a communist dictatorship.

>>52314415
Initially it was about equality of opportunity, back in the salad days of classical liberalism.

But it was inherently incapable of surviving in that mode; because equality of opportunity is a logical contradiction in a world where people are unequal, and thus egalitarians are forced to embrace equality of outcome out of logical and political necessity.

>>52307400
The fact that OP was clearly triggered and replied several times to badly argue his point

>>52314415
>NHS makes Britain a communist dictatorship
It is essentially government wealth redistribution.

>>52303355
Look, I'm not agreeing with the guy you're arguing with, but a lot of what you're saving is very misleading. Christianity took hundreds of years to develop until it resembled the form that survived. The traditions of earliest Christians (the Jewish ones) all but died out as the Pauline faction won and spread the religion among the gentiles.

Gnostic Christianity was just a more esoteric offshoot of what was itself an offshoot of a Jewish heresy. You're acting like the Church that established the Nicene Creed was the same Church that existed at Jesus's death.

>>52313573
Wait- you're shitting me, they fucking banned drawthreads?

>>52302967
>He doesn't understand multiple beings with one continued phenomenal existence and different name and form
>He tries to put reason above the intellect
>He still uses a Buddhist image
I wanted to thank you for helping me understand that even among smart, well meaning people there are higher and lower natures.

>>52313573
You can still find RAGE on IRC.

This is why B/X will always be the best edition. It was Law, Neutral, and Chaos. It didn't have to deal with these bullshit moral conundrums which are specific to the D&D universe.

>>52313431
>There was definitely a wild west kinda feel.
I truly wish I could have been here for that but I was never big on online communities back in those days. Wasn't even into /tg/ to properly appreciate it anyways.

What's a thread like you doing on a page like 10?

>>52302420
Gygax didn't live in a world where you could just Google sayings to find out where they came from. We just repeated shit.

Keep your modern morality and ethics where it belongs: in real life. Medieval morality for medieval fantasy is the best way to go.

>>52302420
look at it this way. if hitler was captured and went "my bad, guys" could anyone be blamed for killing him anyways?

>>52314753
>a lot of what you're saving is very misleading

In what way? Christianity was generally cemented by the time of the Apostolic Fathers. When Neoplatonism was gaining any influence on some Church Fathers, more than a century after the deaths of the Apostolic Fathers, there was already a clear demarcation between the Greek, Latin, and Syrian branches of Christianity when it came beyond the general idea and went into more complex theological components. Also the Pauline faction of was winning clearly while Paul was still alive and producing writings. Hell by 80 AD, only two decades after his death, there was already a clear distinction between a church and a synagogue which shows a near complete separation from any old Jewish authority. I'll admit that a few very influential leaders where influenced partly by Neoplatonism, Agustine comes to mind, but that was already long after Christianity had gained a solid foothold and was a major religion of the region.

And yes, Gnostic Christianity is a more esoteric offshoot of an offshoot. The problem is it's too esoteric, and too far removed from the source material. It's own additions and beliefs make it fundamentally incompatible with the Christianity of the Apostolic Fathers, who warned against it. By that time it was already essentially 'Esoteric Jewish Christianity mixed with a thin veneer of Platonism and Persian mythology', adding in Neoplatonism didn't somehow bring it closer to Christianity. I stand by my statement that it is to Christianity what The Nation of Islam is to Islam.

>>52302792
>>>>/pol/'s thataway, my man

>>52304403
Getting rid of the tool most often used to do the job seems like a good start on making the job less likely to happen. It's not sufficient on its own but it's necessary.

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>>52322029
>Lets strip away man's God given right because I am fascist. It's not enough on it's own, but we can do more later when the people are disarmed.

Fixed that for you.

>>52321666
>Medieval morality for medieval fantasy is the best way to go.

Translated into D&D, that would mean that good and lawful alignments are limited to the martial classes and priests.

Bards could never be good and/or lawful and wizards could not be lawful.

>>52314571
By that painfully asinine definition, government spending on the military constitutes wealth redistribution

>>52322029
The economic incentives for violence don't go away if you make some of the tools harder to access. Legalization could work, but the problem the US would face with that step is that the government generally creates markets so that they can give'em away to people who have been funding their campaigns. Meaning that little would change for those that did not.

>>52322029
>Hurr criminals are going to stop buying guns because they are illegal

>>52322099
If you honestly think personal ownership of firearms by everyone ever is uncontroversially consistent with the constitution I don't know what to tell you, except that you don't understand constitutional law and are also silly.

If you also think that getting rid of a class of firearm that has no demonstrated statistical benefit in urban areas is 'fascist', then you have no idea about historical relationship between fascism and gun ownership, statistics in general, or indeed anything beyond the sacred cow of "muh guns!"

For bonus points in irony, your terribly executed image edit has infinitely more in common with fascist thought than not wanting poor people to shoot each other lots in a nationally expensive way.

Your thinking is part of the reason the rest of us look bad in the eyes of the non-gun owning population.

>>52322164
As was heavily implied by my use of the words to the effect that "it's not enough on its own but it's a start", I didn't actually say it was a sufficient measure, and no one sensible would. Eliminating the war on drugs and the poverty that makes the drug trade lucrative would also have to happen.

It's a big series of systemic problems, anon. We have to fix them because they're costing us money.

>>52322219
Massively reducing the legal supply massively reduces the total supply. I'm sorry we can't do everything completely perfect over here in reality, but we have this funny little notion that making it much harder for bad outcomes to happen is actually desirable.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, and reducing expensive and wasteful firearm deaths is a good outcome.

(reduction of supply is known to work basically everywhere that isn't the US; don't try to tell me that we're so exceptionally terrible as a country that we can't do the same and expect better results. Don't you have any faith in America?)

>>52322311
Yeah, congratulations. Now many legal-weapon carriers are potentially defenseless, and even if thugs don't have access to guns, there's still knives and all other weapons they can use to kill each other in the ghettos.

You don't prevent criminals from being dangerous, but disarming those who may need self-protection is a recipe for disaster.

Also, the main issue with the ghettos in the US is that the gang culture that has spread throughout them is literal shit tier. What do you expect from people that grow to not care about respecting the law, getting street cred being something important and that believe that self-improvement is a lie?

Do something about that first, and then see if it's still a matter of guns.

>>52314882
Yeah, drawthreads, sometimes the miscellaneous setting threads, anything anime.
Quest threads got their big jump around this time.
>>52315039
Good to know. People may bitch about them, but there was a strong feel of community, and for better or worse, they were a part of it.

>>52322390
Knives are much harder kill people with than knives, as evidenced by the fact that no military uses edged weapons as their primary means of attack anymore. Making sure that people have to use strictly much shittier things to kill each other with (because the super awesome killing tools we call hand guns aren't available) means death rates will go down. Reducing death rates is good because less people die, which costs us all less money. Long arms for home defense or bears or vermin? Not a problem.

As for the fact that poor and heavily disadvantaged people living in urban sink conditions are much more likely to kill each other, a) that's obvious and b) making it harder for them to do so means they can't hurt each other or anyone else as much. Obviously you've still got to fix the fact that they're poor and heavily disadvantaged but literally no one worth listening to thinks making Americans better off than they are like that is a problem.

As for handguns making you safer in urban areas, they don't. You're more likely to successfully commit suicide with one, or shoot yourself accidentally, or get shot by your kids, or get shot by your spouse.

You may feel safer, but they don't actually make you safe in any way that counts; they put you in the way of hazards that are more likely to hurt you than a robber, and unless you train regularly and effectively for a variety of situations you're probably not possessed of tha tactical skills required to pull your gun in a bank robbery or a car jacking or whatever and do anything useful. Professionals have to spend lost of time and effort gaining and maintaining said skills, and most handgun owners aren't professionals.

>>52323791
Agreed. Plus, he's a fun guy to talk to.

>>52324089
>We should take means of defense away from everyone because some people are retarded and regard them as toys.

5/10, made me reply

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>>52302092
I'll agree that "eye for an eye," totally qualifies as Lawful, and that you could be Good and still follow through with it under the precedence of fair-trades; taking what was took from those that first committed the crime in question.

Executing prisoners that have surrendered, however, is not something I could file under "Good," under normal circumstances. However, it is important to keep in mind that in D&D land gods and afterlives are objectively real; a person who has truly repented evil for good would receive some sort of positive consequence in most any standard D&D setting. In these contexts, you'd effectively be granting a once Evil person eternal salvation by executing them before they backslide. However, as a Paladin does not have to be aligned to a deity or religion, it brings into question whether or not that Paladin actually believes this, or if they believe they're just locking the person into a Good-state by killing them while they're Good. Would that be enough to grant them some sort of final reward? Again, this would largely differ by the setting.

That said, it's also foolish to mandate that all Good and all Lawful characters agree on everything, and behave in identical fashion. One Good character may agree with killing them and sending them off to salvation before they relapse, while another may believe that killing anything should be avoided at all costs, and another still may believe that simply saying you've renounced your evil ways isn't sufficient, and they must act upon it for a time before they're truly converted. Fact of the matter is: any one of them could be correct. In fact only the first and last are mutually exclusive.

Even in a fantasy world where multiple gods of both good and evil are tangibly real, there's still plenty of room for ambiguity. It always comes down to a by-the-character debate.