>the big bad is a member of a persecuted ethnic minority with legitimate grievances
>the only reason you're fighting them to begin with is because you're being paid by a member of a largely corrupt ruling class
This is bullshit, I just wanted to kill some goblins.
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is your DM
>Female
or do they have
>dyed hair
>facial piercings
>problem glasses
>hipster beard
>all of the above
?
I don't see why one is more acceptable than the other.
Unless that's the point you're trying to make.
and now you're getting paid to kill some goblins
win/win
Grey and grey moral ambiguity/EVERYONE IS WRONG is terrible and I hate it.
Team up with the goblins and create a just, egalitarian society by eating the rich.
Depends on how it's done. The Witcher does this right because, while the Scoia'tael definitely have legitimate grievances, their methods go too far. They target innocent humans and just generally make this worse for elves in human settlements with their attacks.
Like that shit's never been pulled before.
Try to think of it this way: Everyone does have legitimate concerns here, or in other words, both sides make good points, but not on EVERY point.
Maybe the nobility is corrupt. But:
>Do they still function?
>Would it really be any different if the marauding band were put in charge?
They might make things worse. What do they know about politics, or infrastructure, or negotiation with other national and international factions?
The marauders are violent and brutal and such, but maybe they have a reason to be.
>Have they been given other options?
>Is there anywhere else for them to go?
>Is it an inherent aspect of their culture?
Why are they marauders instead of, say, farmers? It's very unlikely that a massive group of people would all be rogues and thieves unless there was some outlying, ulterior motive for them to do so. Maybe some have integrated into the native culture and don't appreciate the resistance of those that haven't.
If your DM's really going to push this conflict, challenge them to actually show that the noble are wrong, or else you do have the right to to within a certain degree enforce the interests of the nation as a whole. I mean, that's what the law does, and if the minority is breaking it without any good reason, they forfeit the rights any other criminal forfeits when they commit crime.
Justice knows no social or minority bounds
>people are paying you to kill shit
>he fucking complains
You are an afventurer, a person, who's job is to kill shit for money. Go be a fucking tailor if killing is not for you.
But you agreed to play Shadowrun!
Convince the DM to make the minority goblins. Then you'll both be happy.
>legimate grievances
I guess, but by all accounts elves were just as big assholes as anybody else in their 15 minutes in power
Being huge assholes does not justify genocide.
Though, when given the chance, the Elves did the exact same thing to the Vran.
and the humans in tir na lia
>Pontificating instead of killing goblins
>Corrupt ruling class also only government that can rally against world-ending BBEG
Doth thou even smite, Paladin?
>muh murderhobo
>I juss wanna rollplay
This is why D&D sucks.
>elves in witcherverse
The fuckers had it coming. Every single last one of those chucklefucks. They genocided other races (vran and the race that populated Aen Elle's world), they got their shit pushed in, but when given the chance to start anew, they decided to go underground and slaughter innocent peasants, further antagonising themselves against humans. The universe would have been better off without elfs.
What's a hipster beard?
You fight for the side that pays better and where your chances of survival and advancement are better. So fuck those goblins or whatever.
If you really want some moral justification, there is no fucking way at least some of the reasons for killing them isn't genuine. And the corrupt ruling class is most likely way better at ruling than those goblins or any other group, so it's for the greater good in the end anyway.
...
>not taking jobs from both and playing the two sides against the middle, until you're the last man standing with a fistful of dollars
Yo, Jimbo! We got another one of them there faggots starting threads!
>not enjoying your new lucrative life as the kingdom's problem solver
goblins can't whine about how sad they are if they're dead
>goblins can't whine about how sad they are if they're dead
You also can't get paid to kill Goblins after you kill all the Goblins.
The perfect circumstance for me to keep operating in is if the Goblins always stay just prominent enough of a threat that the kingdom keeps hiring me, while never quite gaining enough power to actually succeed.
Well said
I think it might be a mustache?
Basically an overly styled beard, typically found on guys with weak chins or jawlines.
or some kind of perpetual goblin grinding mill
Don't need to do anything, just watch them scream and die from the comfort of your own home while collecting a tidy sum for the flour you're making.
That would be an ideal retirement.
Elves in witcherverse do this exactly right. You can kind of sympathize with them, but I did not have any qualms playing against them in either Witcher 1 or 2.
If it had been "actually you're the bad guys because we're the oppressed minority baww", it would have been shit. Now it's more like real life where people could theoretically live in peace already but several profilic fucktards keep the cycle of violence rolling.
Real world examples, IRA, HAMAS, etc.
Or for powering nefarious devices.
perfectly legitimate* devices, you mean
When did this happen? Tell me more about the group user, surely you can give details and aren't just making shit up to stir up a flamewar?
any beard, at this point.
>big bad is a member of a persecuted ethnic minority with legitimate grievances
>you're being paid by a member of a largely corrupt ruling class to fight them
As a counterpoint, does your DM have
>a room that he keeps locked at all times
>an odd obsession with old medals and milsurp
>strangely foreign music tastes that he refuses to explain
>an intense distaste for (((gnomes)))
?
>largely corrupt ruling class
How does that even happen pre-democracy? There wasn't any corruption among the nobility because the nobility was always expected to hoard power and shit on anyone who opposed them.
>there was no corruption because they were fundamentally corrupt by definition
Ok?
If everyone is wrong you should just kill them until no one bad is left.
It's not corruption until you're actually supposed to be doing something for others but instead act in your own interest. Nobody elected or expected nobles to help others in the first place. They weren't remiss in any duties by acting on personal interests because it was never their duty to do otherwise. If you give a person authority to act in a way that benefits others, but he instead uses that authority to benefit himself above others, then he's corrupt. You can't be undutiful if you lack a duty to fulfill in the first place.
Way to be negative user, have you stopped to consider that perhaps EVERYONE IS RIGHT?
>it was never their duty to do otherwise
>if you lack a duty to fulfill in the first place.
That's kind of a big assumption, don't you think?
Well, they probably have certain duties, such as being loyal to their sovereign and stuff like that.
>Hired to do a job
Only problem I see here is that you might not fucking do it because you wanna be a bitch.
Nah, nobility had a duty. It wasn't some kind of anarchy, divine right of the kings and all that shit was about nobles being appointed to a certain task. By design it was mutually beneficial solution.
If there is one take away from Dragon Lance it is that D&D Paladin do not make a good government. Great at short term leadership, very bad at long term leadership. The pressure of everyday life and rulership when not faced with some great evil or injustice is not kind to them. They are men of action, of judgement, and of strong yet brittle character.
>used to be the gm that would have two sides to every enemy, trying to force a level of drama because the bandit was robbing to feed his family or whatever
>end up giving up on it and making cartoon villains instead
It's more fun that way.
To be fair, the annihilation of the Tir Na Lia humans has given us an excellent antagonist for campaigns; imperialist interstellar space elves that hunt humans for sport.
I wish my fucking GM was like that, It grows boring dealing with cartoon villains. I want to see the group deal with the moral choices of killing a man and dooming his entire family all because he stole something from a noble.
but mustaches are the local ethnic style of facial hair...
Are all of my tribe hipsters!?
why not both?
Sometimes A sometimes B?
Because my GM is a moralist faggot, Who can only make things in black or white because otherwises half the group breaks while I do what I think is the right thing.
Moustacheeeeeeeeee
>you throw like a girl
On the subject of paladins, a paladin would have the perfect solution to OP's problem:
>Detect Evil
>Smite Evil
If neither side is evil enough to set off your evildar, break into a mausoleum to make sure nothings walking around in there.
This is 100% not true. Noblesse oblige is the most obvious example here, although that was a later concept from the early modern period. For an example of peasants describing the practice, see
de.wikipedia.org
Unfortunately the article isn't in English, and doesn't go into Kleinjogg's philosophy much, but he basically defended what has been called the "Old Deal" (see, for example, Morris' "Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve")
But long before the 18th century, nobility were expected to perform certain tasks for their followers. Anglo-Saxon nobles, for example, were expected to hold regular Manor Courts where the peasants aired their grievances and received judgments. Those who failed to do so often faced retribution, especially after the Norman conquest.
In fact peasants were so in favor of the system that they would usually go to great lengths while rebelling to insist that they were still loyal to their true, reciprocal masters. For example, see the Peasants' Revolt, where the peasants all claimed to be defending the king as his "true" servants (meaning they were only disagreeing with his advisers - who they all killed - because the advisers failed to help uphold the social order).
en.wikipedia.org
The whole "Nobility just raped peasants every day and stole all their shit" is propaganda from the French Revolution. I didn't think I'd ever unironically defend feudal hierarchies, but your comment is 100% false.
>morning star with two flails
>le sjw menace
> >Corrupt ruling class also only government that can rally against world-ending BBEG
That be a dealbreaker. If the ruling class is evil and corrupt, then I am obligated to fight them as well.
There is no greater good, or lesser evil. These are lies told to make us accept evil in small doses until it consumes us from within.
There is good, and there is evil. The world shall be good, or the world shall not be at all.
Doesn't mean you can't prioritize. Fight with them against greater evil, fight against them afterwards.
Fascinating, genuinely. Thanks for the info.
...
>hating on the technicolor furfag
>hating on Jim
Sargon, Le Not an Argument man, and banana fucker can go kill themselves.
>hating based Milo, king of the fags
Though by the time of the French Revolution industrialization had started to destroy or end those reciprocal relations and had largely become rent seekers as a social class
No problem, m8. If you're interested in this sort of thing, the book I mentioned by Ian Morris is pretty good. If you can, borrow it from the local library (there is a decent chance they can get access to a copy; it's also probably available at the nearest university library). I think he overstates his case for the determinism of human values overall, but he does a very good job of describing the "Old Deal" in the section on agricultural societies.
Wikipedia is also often surprisingly decent when it comes to pre-modern history. For example, this line from the article on the Peasants' Revolt is pretty key to understanding the whole thing:
>Ball rhetorically asked the crowds "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?" and promoted the rebel slogan "With King Richard and the true commons of England".[95] The phrases emphasised the rebel opposition to the continuation of serfdom and to the hierarchies of the Church and State that separated the subject from the King, while stressing that they were loyal to the monarchy and, unlike the King's advisers, were "true" to Richard.[98]
I can't think of a good example off the top of my head, but the same sort of thing applied to feudal lords. Basically, as long as they respected traditional agreements, peasants would be okay with things. If they didn't, stuff got messy. Any changes to the system were often justified by claiming they were actually reversions to a previous state (like when Henry VIII's advisers made up documents saying the pope had previously granted English kinds additional powers).
(Cont'd next post)
>The whole "Nobility just raped peasants every day and stole all their shit" is propaganda from the French Revolution. I didn't think I'd ever unironically defend feudal hierarchies, but your comment is 100% false.
I never once implied that they did. I said that they weren't individually given authority by the people and often weren't sworn to hold the well-being of their subjects before the well-being of their own selves, and often enriched themselves greatly at the expense of said subjects. These are things that would be considered corruption if they'd been granted authority on the basis that they would act for the benefit of the people and not for themselves, but as they were generally just born into the power they wielded, they can't really be considered corrupt in my opinion, because they weren't given power on the basis that they'd not act in self-interest.
>side with evil as a means to an end
I'd sooner die than fall in step with evil.
2/2
Medieval cosmology was pretty cool. Basically they thought that the kingdom on earth should mirror God's kingdom in heaven, with the king being at the top, and the nobility being like the angels. So in this sort of system, it was assumed that everyone had a "place," and most people wanted to fit into their places. Since people saw this as religiously-inspired, peasants who revolted (one of the few times they'd end up issuing written proclamations) would usually actually end up trying to justify everything they did as a means of returning to the proper order. This didn't really change much until the development of the market disrupted traditional social orders.
Yeah, this was the root of a number of problems. But the reason I describe the Revolutionary description of nobility as propaganda is that it often appealed to a false idea of the past. The authors who simply looked around and said, "things are not good currently," weren't necessarily wrong.
Industrial revolution didn't really get going in France until well after the Revolution though. In England it didn't fully pick up until after 1800~ either, but the change from a feudal to market based economy was (as I'm sure you're aware, but for other anons' benefits) pretty much already complete by 1650.
A decent book on those changes and how they effected English society in particular, if anyone is interested: "Earthly Necessities" by Keith Wrightson. Kind of dry a lot of the time but very good research.
Look at this filthy purist, proudly proclaiming his own disinterest in helping anyone or achieving his goals.
short groomed beard with a thin tipped handlebar moustache.
That's a more reasonable formulation of your original post. I don't necessarily disagree with that.
If that's what you were trying to say in the first post, then my apologies for misreading it. But I took issue specifically with this sentence:
> Nobody elected or expected nobles to help others in the first place.
Because they did expect nobles to help others, in certain specific ways.
Yeah, I guess I went a bit too Cracked at times with the sweeping exaggerations, my bad. I'll try to avoid it in the future.
I think he means that there were no rules that governed how rulers act, so anything they did was "ok"
Which isn't quite true but whatever
This.
>The BBEG's ultimate goal is to make the king sign the Magna Carta
>Not standing with the King to defeat the BBEG and this terrible device known as the Magna Carta.
>the Magna Carter is an enchantment will force all people in the Kingdom to be subject to the same laws
>Orcs who rob stores and kill town guards can no longer use 'cultural differences' as a defence in court
>Hobgoblin rape gangs become illegal, forcing the Hobs to abandon their religious practices
>Elves can no longer rely on mandatory race quotas to get them into the high paying jobs they think they deserve but can't actually compete in since Humans get an extra skill at first level
Through the letter of Law, Chaos will reign supreme.
???
Where did that even come from?
Then you're Stupid Good and deserve to die.
Then I'll die pure and washed clean by the light, instead of being raped by demons the whole way down to an eternity of pain and suffering.
I'd play that
As far as I can tell orcs and hobgoblins are different brands of muslims, while the elves are women.
Also when you do stupid shit like type a line of nothing but question marks it makes it easy to spot that you're a girl.
why tho
...