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The problem isn't "Having problematic things in games", it's how those elements exist in the context of the medium they're presented in.
That some dwarves would have prejudices and hate makes a lot of sense, it fits with the setting and generally works.
Saying "dwarves are Good" and then having that hate also represented as a major part of their culture, however, has some odd and uncomfortable implications about what 'good' might represent in that context.
There's also a notion that some people just don't want to interact with certain themes. This is more of a personal thing, but it's worth considering how it effects the setting as a whole when cultural hatred becomes a major feature, even irrespective of the previous issue. It can potentially taint the whole feel of a story for some people depending on their own experiences.
This is really off on a tangent, but just as another example here's one that gets me:
This story isn't an endorsement of sexism, because Hell is very clearly capital E evil with no bones about it. Only not the most evil thing in the setting because they aren't omnicidal.
At the same time it's a story I profoundly dislike because it puts a big lens on a topic I don't really want to touch in most of my home games. I find that it detracts from the more interesting aspects of Hell and instead puts a focus on topics I find especially uncomfortable.
I'd rather just do the whole, terrible contracts and lust for power and all that stuff and not have an implicit suggestion that I need to put an asterisks on any interaction involving women and Hell.
... In reality I just completely ignore that lore entirely in my home games, which works well enough for me, but I'm still not a huge fan that it's there.
... Had the same problem with the Ferengi in Star Trek, tbh even though again it's clearly flagged as a Bad Thing in that setting.
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Also a genetic "I hate [Ancestry]" ancestry feat with no restrictions or requirements is just weird.
You can be a dwarf raised by Ysoki on Akiton... and you just genetically hate Drow/Duergar/Giants/Orcs/whatever else your GM adds to the list?
There's better ways to do revenge stylized mechanics, like someone attacking a party member in combat.
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The way we DO correct these things is, in new versions of similar books, to just never mention the error and present that new section adjusted. Hence, when we reprinted the deity information in "Inner Sea Gods" back in 2nd edition as the definitive source in a hardcover, we deliberately cut and changed references in the reprinted articles that spoke of Asmodean paladins or Erastil being non-family centered in how he treats women, hoping that folks would, over time, come to see those entries as canon.
I think Paizo overall has been making real strides towards an in-better-taste setting. But I'm not sure this particular part of the approach is really working out as hoped for. Please take this as helpful thinking along from someone who likes your goals.
I understand that you don't want to "rub in the stain", but you can go too far in the other direction and by just not mentioning stuff at all, you also miss the opportunity to really remove it from canon, as seen from a reader's perspective. If we read some nasty bit in a really old book, and don't really see any retraction or revision in later books, we're just as likely to assume it's still canon. Even more so when bits from various books get compiled into wiki articles.
To take the Dawnflower Cult as an example: there's an old Taldor book that basically says worshiping Sarenrae is forbidden in Taldor. There's a PFS scenario that uses that as premise. Then the concept is soundlessly dropped, there's just nothing to be found about it in Inner Sea Gods and barely anything in the newer Taldor book. So as far as someone who read the old book can tell... it's still being suppressed, it just didn't fit in the word count for the next book?
An option that was mentioned in a different thread would be to tackle this with sidebars; in the next book touching some tricky topic, put in a small sidebar basically saying "in some past books we said X, but we don't stand for that anymore, we're going with Y now". Doesn't have to be really long, but it helps you clear away old problems that won't go away by themselves.
You shouldn't have to repeat these - clearly saying it once should be enough to point to for wiki authors considering their sources, and to steer lore discussions in better directions.
Right now, this mostly happens through these forum posts like you say, which is better than nothing, but they tend to be reactive. Most of the time when you make a change to the canon you just stop talking about the old canon, until a big confusion arises and you have to step in.
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So on the topic of dwarves tending to Lawful Good and yet being known for vengefulness and having it out for other specific ancestries. It's a topic that people have been grappling with for years, even before Pathfinder. This particular homebrew had a take on it that I think works quite well:
The Stone Ledger: The Dwarves Remember
Deep in the mountains, the Dwarf people have records that go back to when most of the other races were learning about fire. Second only to the Aboleth themselves, the racial memory of the Dwarves extends to days beyond reckoning. At least, beyond reckoning to anyone who isn't a Dwarf. Dwarves keep their records chiseled into stone and preserved for all time with mystical might. While the spellbooks of the Elves eventually crumble into dust, the Ledgers of the Dwarves will stand in mute testament to their triumphs and failures for as long as day follows night and night follows day.
The Ledgers of the Dwarves measure in exact terms the location of all the cool things that the Dwarven people have found, they give tips for dealing with problems that Dwarves have overcome in the past, and they record in excruciating detail every bad thing that anyone has ever done to the Dwarven race. Remember that when you consider the implications of the fact that every group has at one time or another been at war with any other race you care to name. So the fact that sometimes goblins commit atrocities against Dwarf settlements means that each and every Dwarf child grows up reared on vivid and gory stories of generations of conflicts with goblins – and goblins really don't. From the goblin perspective... nothing is happening at all. Goblins don't live nearly as long as Dwarves do, and that means that they don't have a war with Dwarves even every generation.
This discontinuity leads to Dwarves being much better at the eternal war they are fighting with the Orcs, the Giants, and the Goblins than their opponents. That's because noone else really has the perspective to see that it is an ongoing conflict. The other races see it as a series of separate conflicts that are all individually about something, and mostly their poor record keeping techniques leave them often unable to even recollect the previous conflict. So really, the Dwarves keep winning because they are the only ones playing.
You may be tempted to ask "If these wars kill thousands, and the only reason they're being kept alive is because of the Dwarf Ledger, doesn't that make the Dwarves the bad guys?" And honestly, that's a pretty good question. The Dwarves are Lawful Good and are the only race involved that understands the epic scale of the over-conflict. But that doesn't mean that they bear sole responsibility. Indeed, while the average Goblin on the street doesn't even know that there's an ancient rivalry between his people and the Dwarves, the list of usual suspects for evil overlords is a laundry list of people who actually also know the whole deal. Liches, Fiend Lords, and of course Maglubiet and Hruggek all know that Dwarves spend large amounts of time training and preparing for battle with the goblin people, and they don't tell the goblins. The thought is that by not telling the goblins that the Dwarves are totally ready for them and have been for thousands of years, that goblins will fight more bravely – they literally don't know how very unlikely each individual goblin is to make it out alive from any conflict.
So life is pretty weird for a Dwarf. As a Dwarf you know that you are in an eternal struggle with the Goblin people. You also know that several times in your life, goblinoids are going to behave towards the Dwarven people as if nothing was wrong and have flourishing trade relations instead. But you also know that once every couple of goblin generations (which is to say several times in your life if you happen to be a Dwarf) some warlord is going to arise and send hordes of goblins to destroy your family. So if Dwarves come off as being intolerant jerks, that's why.
A special note has to be made about Dwarves and Arcane Magic. They like it. They are really good at it and have tremendous supplies of wizardly goods down in the depths. They can read spellbooks in the dark, and they are encouraged to do so. In some previous editions of D&D the Dwarven people were not allowed to use Arcane Magic because Gimli wasn't a spellcaster (the actual reasoning, I'm not even making that up), thereby ignoring the Dwarven magicians in many source legends (the Ring Saga for one), and even the Dwarven Magic from the Lord of the Rings. Fortunately, the bad old days are behind us, and Dwarves are back where they are supposed to be – slinging spells, scribing runes, and crafting magic items in their mountain halls.
I think this does a very nice job of explaining why the dwarves carry such grudges, and have this "enemy of my people" thing going, but can still be Good.
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Drow, Goblins, and Orcs aren't unthinking monsters in P2 so trying to use any of the above to justify in-game bigotry at them is you falling in to espousing bigotry, a rather glaring dog whistle, pushing for "safe" and "accepted" bigotry.
Indeed, it is the opinion of some old-school players that they never were. I don't know how common this attitude actually was, but I've seen and heard old-school GMs and players comment that in their groups, it was pretty well always understood that the orc statblock was not representative of the entire species, or that orcs hate humans not because they're inherently evil, but because they're two peoples competing for the same resources, and humans are kind of expansionist wangrods about it.
Of course, this is not to pretend the hobby has never bought into a huge variety of racist, sexist, or ableist themes... there is more than enough evidence of that being the case, however, it does suggest that some people's "good old days where monsters were all unthinking savages" are, well, like many people's "good old days" -- a product of their experiences and biases that does not reflect the general experience of others.
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The thing about the role of vengeance in Dwarven culture is that it really should be recontextualized as:
-Dwarves live a long time
-Dwarves are patient
-Dwarves do not forget
-Pray that they instead decide to forgive
It is preferable to forgive, for sure, but if Dwarves are the LG ancestry it makes sense for them to be a little harsh, since "Lawful Good" is not "More Good" just like "Chaotic Evil" is not "More Evil."
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I say axe alignment altogether so that judgements of moral character and worth are judged solely by the reader weighed against the actions and beliefs of the thing they're reading about. You'll avoid half (but not all) of the issues.
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Evil works for outsiders a little differently than it does for mortals. Good and evil aren't abstract concepts in Golarion — they are a literal, tangible essence, which manifest physical matter and personality. Whether forged from fiendish planes, or reforged from souls who willfully embraced evil in their former life, evil is part of a fiendish outsider's very dna. Tangentially, souls in Pathinder are complicated (as they are in real life religions and mythologies), but they seem to undergo a breaking down into raw essence and metamorphosizing upon leaving their mortal vessels, rather than remaining the same person; free agency is possible, but it must be experienced first, and then developed as a skill (as seen in the archetypal ghost whose entire personality revolves around a single event and motivation — they are in the process of breaking down to their most essential characteristics). They're a bit like a lot of fictional depictions of artificial intelligence, in a way, where sapience first develops as an error or mutation. Whereas mortals are agents of free thought that can occasionally embrace and embody transcendent ideals, outsiders are actually transcendent ideals that can occasionally embrace and embody free thought. This is usually exemplified in the manner by which outsiders "fall," typically through actions motivated by their alignment but are nonetheless actions that defy their very nature. The devil Doloras began as an angel who was motivated by desperation to save her friends to enact torture, breaking good's absolute hold over her. Likewise, I think Nocticula was probably motivated toward neutral aligned ideals through evil motivations ("This demon form is not worthy of my magnificence, only I am worthy of fashioning a divine form worthy of me; while Lamashtu wallows in her little queendom in the Abyss, I shall command respect and worship from all beings above"), thus why she is — as someone no longer evil — able to persuasively tempt purely evil beings away from evil.
In an ideal world, all spiritual essence would be consciously persuaded to embrace positive ideals. Unfortunately, that's a hard thing to accomplish at present. Evil outsiders are literally like programs or hosts from Westworld, living in loops, incapable of acting freely until fundamentally corrupted by an outside force or a complete breakdown in internal logic, compelling behavior that manifestly introduces conflict into their formerly pure nature. If you aren't going to slash them, you better be prepared to hack them.
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I say axe alignment altogether so that judgements of moral character and worth are judged solely by the reader weighed against the actions and beliefs of the thing they're reading about. You'll avoid half (but not all) of the issues.
Might be because I come from 5E but how I wish alignment in this system was treated more like 5e alignment: narrative tool with little to no mechanical implications. I started playing with the old Baldur’s Gate games and 3E, and I have a fondness for alignment, but I really dislike how mechanically intensive it is in PF2e.
EDIT #2: And since I don't think it was obvious—I very much appreciate your posts here, Keftiu, and I have largely been (quietly and personally) thanking and applauding your bravery in these threads the past several months when it has been kind of better for me to largely remain silent. But when you cite something like this, it feels like you're not playing fair and losing sight of all the hard work that I feel like I and the other developers and editors and designers at Paizo have been working so hard to promote and build into the setting. So, sorry if I came off in this post as overly defensive or antagonistic, but... a lot of what Sean added to the game is at the heart of my own frustrations with how alignment has been portrayed among religious elements in Golarion, and I've been trying to course correct several of those errors for as long as they've been in print. That Paizo has no real viable way of communicating lore errata other than messageboard posts continues to be a problem that I don't see a solution for other than this though.
I mean in Keiftu's defense your writing still is incredibly inconsistent because alignment doesn't work as a descriptor of morality. Aroden is the perfect example of this. He's presented as the epitome of humans which means he pegs almost every single part of the alignment spectrum. I don't get how you get true neutral from that.
Also, I know I was being a bit flippant and sarcastic but seriously just ditch that aspect of Gygax's legacy. Too much weird racist stuff surrounds alignment and there is no amount of writing you can do to salvage it. Like for example all this talk about genocide being lawful good does remind me that Gygax legitimately believes that. He ended up citing genocidal maniac John Chivington in trying to help define Paladins code of conduct.
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Evil works for outsiders a little differently than it does for mortals.
I personally don't agree.
First, your argument still leaves the question of chromatic dragons, undeads, aberrations and other commonly evil creatures. Second, the simple fact that some of them have been redeemed indicates that you can't kill them without mercy.Killing a sentient creature because it has a more limited access to free will or because it doesn't have a soul doesn't feel "Good" to me.
As a side note, your AI example is a bad one in a world where AIs can rise to Godhood.
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I say axe alignment altogether so that judgements of moral character and worth are judged solely by the reader weighed against the actions and beliefs of the thing they're reading about. You'll avoid half (but not all) of the issues.Might be because I come from 5E but how I wish alignment in this system was treated more like 5e alignment: narrative tool with little to no mechanical implications. I started playing with the old Baldur’s Gate games and 3E, and I have a fondness for alignment, but I really dislike how mechanically intensive it is in PF2e.
To continue on this tangent, in one campaign that I ran I changed "Evil" to "Enemy of my God (in 2E I'd make that people who have done acts that are anathema to my God)" and limited the detection, smiting etc to ONLY divine characters.
I liked the effect that it had. Detect Evil was still useful in that it gave out useful information. But it often wasn't enough to act on.
To use a Golarion example, a cleric of Shelyn would detect that person over there evil if he did the usual evil things (Shelyn is Good, after all) but the person would ALSO detect as evil if they'd destroyed works of art.
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So on the topic of dwarves tending to Lawful Good and yet being known for vengefulness and having it out for other specific ancestries. It's a topic that people have been grappling with for years, even before Pathfinder. This particular homebrew had a take on it that I think works quite well:
...The Stone Ledger: The Dwarves Remember
Deep in the mountains, the Dwarf people have records that go back to when most of the other races were learning about fire. Second only to the Aboleth themselves, the racial memory of the Dwarves extends to days beyond reckoning. At least, beyond reckoning to anyone who isn't a Dwarf. Dwarves keep their records chiseled into stone and preserved for all time with mystical might. While the spellbooks of the Elves eventually crumble into dust, the Ledgers of the Dwarves will stand in mute testament to their triumphs and failures for as long as day follows night and night follows day.
The Ledgers of the Dwarves measure in exact terms the location of all the cool things that the Dwarven people have found, they give tips for dealing with problems that Dwarves have overcome in the past, and they record in excruciating detail every bad thing that anyone has ever done to the Dwarven race. Remember that when you consider the implications of the fact that every group has at one time or another been at war with any other race you care to name. So the fact that sometimes goblins commit atrocities against Dwarf settlements means that each and every Dwarf child grows up reared on vivid and gory stories of generations of conflicts with goblins – and goblins really don't. From the goblin perspective... nothing is happening at all. Goblins don't live nearly as long as Dwarves do, and that means that they don't have a war with Dwarves even every generation.
This discontinuity leads to Dwarves being
You cannot both be Good and be an intolerant jerk. Even if you're a Dwarf.
Why do people so much want to overlook the Good in Lawful Good ?
I personally don't agree.
First, your argument still leaves the question of chromatic dragons, undeads, aberrations and other commonly evil creatures. Second, the simple fact that some of them have been redeemed indicates that you can't kill them without mercy.Killing a sentient creature because it has a more limited access to free will or because it doesn't have a soul doesn't feel "Good" to me.
As a side note, your AI example is a bad one in a world where AIs can rise to Godhood.
Undead and aberrations have unique interactions with the mechanical workings of the cosmos that should be examined separately and situationally (as concisely as I can put this: undead are formed from quintessential essence of destruction and corruption of life, and the degree by which an undead's soul remains intact after their transformation is different each time, whereas aberrations often exist outside of the conventional alignment spectrum and planar order and approach it from a completely alien mindset). Chromatic dragons are mortal creatures with free agency, just like metallic ones, unlike outsiders.
If you're killing a sentient creature just for the sake of killing it, yeah, that's not good. That's why most good gods place such importance on fighting to redeem evil before actually fighting it. Killing for the sake of killing is evil.
Way I understand it, AIs in Pathfinder are inhabited by souls as soon as their coding becomes sophisticated enough to support one. This is Pathfinder's spin on the trope. Simultaneously existing are artificial personality programs which are complex enough to simulate sapience, but not actually function as a sapient creature. With sufficient upgrades, this can change. This is similar, I think, to how outsiders work (substituting sapience with free will, in the outsider's case).
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“20 years ago, the same statement was made about orcs.”
Orcs have never been made of pure evil, moral relativism isn’t a gotcha for you here.
“There exist fallen angels and ascended fiends in the setting so outsiders are moral agents, it is just way harder for them than deviate from their "biological", for lack of a better term, imperative.”
And? Outsiders are made of their alignment and their concepts, humanoids have human mindsets.
“Too much weird racist stuff surrounds alignment and there is no amount of writing you can do to salvage it.”
This is an extreme overreaction. I’d say, in case of goblins and orcs, removing alignment/not having alignment in the first wouldn’t have changed a thing. You’d still have the racist arguments that have been had, you’d still have people try to other them. It’s not unique to Pathfinder, it happens elsewhere as well.
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I personally don't agree.
First, your argument still leaves the question of chromatic dragons, undeads, aberrations and other commonly evil creatures. Second, the simple fact that some of them have been redeemed indicates that you can't kill them without mercy.Killing a sentient creature because it has a more limited access to free will or because it doesn't have a soul doesn't feel "Good" to me.
As a side note, your AI example is a bad one in a world where AIs can rise to Godhood.
Undead and aberrations have unique interactions with the mechanical workings of the cosmos that should be examined separately and situationally (as concisely as I can put this: undead are formed from quintessential essence of destruction and corruption of life, and the degree by which an undead's soul remains intact is different each time, whereas aberrations often exist outside of the alignment spectrum and planar order and approach it from a completely alien mindset). Chromatic dragons are mortal creatures with free agency, just like metallic ones, unlike outsiders.
If you're killing a sentient creature just for the sake of killing it, yeah, that's not good. That's why most good gods prioritize trying to redeem evil before fighting it. Killing for the sake of killing is evil.
Way I understand it, AIs in Pathfinder are inhabited by souls as soon as their coding becomes sophisticated enough to support one. This is Pathfinder's spin on the trope. Simultaneously existing are artificial personality programs which are complex enough to simulate sapience, but not actually function as a sapient creature. With sufficient upgrades, this can change. This is similar, I think, to how outsiders work (substituting sapience with free will, in the outsider's case).
That's why I don't like the arguments like "Demons can be killed because they are litterally composed of evil". Because whatever the in setting justification, more people will remember only that demons can be killed because of what they are than people who will remember the actual reasons why you can kill them.
Also, I don't find the justification valid.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's why I don't like the arguments like "Demons can be killed because they are litterally composed of evil". Because whatever the in setting justification, more people will remember only that demons can be killed because of what they are than people who will remember the actual reasons why you can kill them.
Also, I don't find the justification valid.
Fiends are interesting concepts. More than an identity, they are supposed to represent an ideal. When you are battling a devil of domination, you are fighting the ideal of, say, might makes right (a little ironic there, yeah?). Because some of storytelling's favorite tools are exaggeration and personification, these ugly concepts are given personalities to make them a character that can be fought. We choose to project humanity onto these ideas, because, hey, we both have personalities, and personalities (and physical appearances) are the first thing we see. On the matter of appearances, I greatly value humanoids like Tieflings or fallen outsiders existing in the setting, which emphasize the fact that judging a creature's alignment merely based on their appearance is a bad, bad thing to do.
A fiend's personality is the mechanism by which its incarnate worldview is rationalized, so as to strike better against mortal hearts. "Rationalization," here, is a side effect of this incarnation, not its essence. Whether devil, daemon, or demon, their purpose is to persuade or compel people to embrace evil, so the evil ideas which they quintessentially are takes a form befitting this purpose.
Is this a mistake, to give representations of evil ideals a form so human-like in our stories? ...That's a good question, but I don't think so. Without a personality, it's hard to engage something in conversation. So if "evil" as a concept is going to directly engage with players, some semblance of a personality must be present. You can always approach morality from a spectrum of moral shades in human behavior, but that storytelling device only goes so far. When you engage with a person displaying evil behavior, you are talking to a unique individual. When you are engaging with an evil outsider, such as one preaching "might makes right," you are engaging with that ideal itself. Human villains can be tempted by their humanity, but to engage directly with a philosophical question is much more difficult, and much more fulfilling, I think. You have to engage with the question itself, dealing with it on its own terms. No shortcuts, no saving throws, no deus ex machinas. You have to take that question to heart and deal with it personally. That's why fiends are scarier than humans, in a way. They are pure, whereas humans never are.
Outsiders are philosophy, not philosophers. That is the mistake most people make about them, I think, by which many players gleefully regard them as lambs for their slaughter. In our devil of domination's case, this actually validates their message. Nothing pleases them more, than to see a hero "defeat" them by embracing their ideals, which is to say, by embracing them.
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I understand that you don't want to "rub in the stain", but you can go too far in the other direction and by just not mentioning stuff at all, you also miss the opportunity to really remove it from canon, as seen from a reader's perspective. If we read some nasty bit in a really old book, and don't really see any retraction or revision in later books, we're just as likely to assume it's still canon. Even more so when bits from various books get compiled into wiki articles.
To take the Dawnflower Cult as an example: there's an old Taldor book that basically says worshiping Sarenrae is forbidden in Taldor. There's a PFS scenario that uses that as premise. Then the concept is soundlessly dropped, there's just nothing to be found about it in Inner Sea Gods and barely anything in the newer Taldor book. So as far as someone who read the old book can tell... it's still being suppressed, it just didn't fit in the word count for the next book?
This criticism is 100% false. Paizo did address the Dawnflower Cult in Gods & Magic.
Sarenrae’s holy text is The Birth of Light and Truth. It records her struggles as an angel before mortal history began and also offers guidance on resisting evils of convenience, standing against cruelty in the world, and teaching and redeeming an evil soul. Preachers often publicly cite the text in passionate sermons when condemning cruelty and corruption, giving the faithful a reputation as fiery zealots. In places like Qadira, this puts many of her followers in conflict with those in power who allow or even support evils like slavery—in recent times, she has stripped her blessings from those among the faith who condoned such evils, though after the Dawnflower’s temper cooled, she has publicly offered redemption to disgraced faithful who are willing to repent.
I am frustrated with the ceaseless torrent of poorly-informed criticism of the Lost Omens setting. It seems that no matter what Paizo publishes, it will be ignored in favor of what they published in a previous edition, what was written in a forum post ages ago, or whatever else suits their critics.
Anyone who wants to understand dwarf-orc relations should read “An Ancient Wrong” on page 124 of Legends. Anyone who’s concerned that a LG deity is prejudiced should read that deity’s entry in Gods & Magic.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That's why I don't like the arguments like "Demons can be killed because they are litterally composed of evil". Because whatever the in setting justification, more people will remember only that demons can be killed because of what they are than people who will remember the actual reasons why you can kill them.
Also, I don't find the justification valid.
Fiends are interesting concepts. More than an identity, they are supposed to represent an ideal. When you are battling a devil of domination, you are fighting the ideal of, say, might makes right (a little ironic there, yeah?). Because some of storytelling's favorite tools are exaggeration and personification, these ugly concepts are given personalities to make them a character that can be fought. We choose to project humanity onto these ideas, because, hey, we both have personalities, and personalities (and physical appearances) are the first thing we see. On the matter of appearances, I greatly value humanoids like Tieflings or fallen outsiders existing in the setting, which emphasize the fact that judging a creature's alignment merely based on their appearance is a bad, bad thing to do.
A fiend's personality is the mechanism by which its incarnate worldview is rationalized, so as to strike better against mortal hearts. "Rationalization," here, is a side effect of this incarnation, not its essence. Whether devil, daemon, or demon, their purpose is to persuade or compel people to embrace evil, so the evil ideas which they quintessentially are takes a form befitting this purpose.
Is this a mistake, to give representations of evil ideals a form so human-like in our stories? ...That's a good question, but I don't think so. Without a personality, it's hard to engage something in conversation. So if "evil" as a concept is going to directly engage with players, some semblance of a personality must be present. You can always approach morality from a spectrum of moral shades in human behavior, but that...
There are 2 ideas in your answer.
The first one is that demons represent an ideal or an idea. The second is that this idea(l) impacts their personality and their behaviour.Demons should be killed for the second reason, not the first one. Representing an idea, even an evil one, is not enough to be killed if you don't act on this idea. Being made of pure evil shouldn't be a death sentence, but a warning.
I also think we both quite agree, just with different words.
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I understand that you don't want to "rub in the stain", but you can go too far in the other direction and by just not mentioning stuff at all, you also miss the opportunity to really remove it from canon, as seen from a reader's perspective. If we read some nasty bit in a really old book, and don't really see any retraction or revision in later books, we're just as likely to assume it's still canon. Even more so when bits from various books get compiled into wiki articles.
To take the Dawnflower Cult as an example: there's an old Taldor book that basically says worshiping Sarenrae is forbidden in Taldor. There's a PFS scenario that uses that as premise. Then the concept is soundlessly dropped, there's just nothing to be found about it in Inner Sea Gods and barely anything in the newer Taldor book. So as far as someone who read the old book can tell... it's still being suppressed, it just didn't fit in the word count for the next book?
This criticism is 100% false. Paizo did address the Dawnflower Cult in Gods & Magic.
Sarenrae’s holy text is The Birth of Light and Truth. It records her struggles as an angel before mortal history began and also offers guidance on resisting evils of convenience, standing against cruelty in the world, and teaching and redeeming an evil soul. Preachers often publicly cite the text in passionate sermons when condemning cruelty and corruption, giving the faithful a reputation as fiery zealots. In places like Qadira, this puts many of her followers in conflict with those in power who allow or even support evils like slavery—in recent times, she has stripped her blessings from those among the faith who condoned such evils, though after the Dawnflower’s temper cooled, she has publicly offered redemption to disgraced faithful who are willing to repent.I am frustrated with the ceaseless torrent of poorly-informed criticism of the Lost Omens setting. It seems that no matter what Paizo publishes, it will be ignored in favor of...
These threads are always exactly the same with exactly the same people making them and exactly the same arguments ad infinitum. Not sure why it keeps happening, but it seems to have been an endless problem on these boards that probably turns more players away than negative game rules threads. People in general don't like thinly veiled political discussions in their escapist game forums.
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Not engaging and actively refuting faulty and often dangerous arguments allows for a false perception of tacit endorsement by the community at large, which, by my metrics is far, far worse.
To everyone sorting through this thread, I highly recommend looking up Folding Idea's video on Thermian Arguments as to why in universe explanations do not somehow give this a pass.
Personally, I am always supportive of efforts to either reclaim or recontextualize problematic coding in fantasy and sci-if media. If it can't be salvaged, it should be ditched. If there is going to be dwarf prejudice against orcs and goblins, it should be represented realistically with complex facets to the conflict and active movements to fight such prejudice. Any god of the capital g 'Good' cannot also be a god of prejudice. There is no such thing as a 'good racist'.
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I am frustrated with the ceaseless torrent of poorly-informed criticism of the Lost Omens setting. It seems that no matter what Paizo publishes, it will be ignored in favor of what they published in a previous edition, what was written in a forum post ages ago, or whatever else suits their critics.
Anyone who wants to understand dwarf-orc relations should read “An Ancient Wrong” on page 124 of Legends. Anyone who’s concerned that a LG deity is prejudiced should read that deity’s entry in Gods & Magic.
Maybe you'd be less frustrated if you read a bit more careful? Then you don't have to get upset about stuff that people didn't actually write.
I didn't write anything about what the Cult of the Dawnflower was like, or the PF2/Lost Omens setting. I was talking about how the banning of all Sarenrae worship in Taldor was quietly dropped from canon halfway through PF1.
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The problem is when those problematic things - in this case, merciless violence against entire peoples - can be presented as Good-aligned. At present, a Dwarf Paladin of Torag could make the case that they’re entitled and obligated to slay every orc they see - and while I think anyone with sense would tell them no, the text itself arguably encourages this interpretation.My question is, why can't we have problematic things in games? Dwarves can be mostly good, if stoic, folk who have deeply flawed values when it comes to ancient foes. Given their long lives and rigid society it would also make sense for these views to change very slowly. A lot of Dwarves will have, to use modern parlance, a boomer mindset the sort of afable but racist grandparent that makes you cringe but has a generally decent sense of right and wrong.
At least that's how I use them.
That's only a problem if the player and GM both see things the same way. In such a case, that's an issue with that group and they would likely ignore the new lore in favor of what fits their ideal world. In all other cases the GM should act to make it clear that such is not Torag's will.
Violent hatred of orcs and drow isn’t presented as a traditionalist, regressive flaw in dwarven culture - it’s presented as a cool perk, central enough to the fantasy of being a dwarf to make it into the core rulebook and arguably sanctioned by a core Lawful Good deity.
So? One bad trait isn't enough to shift alignment. Even in a world of absolute morality I argue that it is the net vector of one's actions on the chart that determine good or evil. You are free to set your scale differently, the game gives no useful guidance on how alignment should be measured.
To everyone sorting through this thread, I highly recommend looking up Folding Idea's video on Thermian Arguments as to why in universe explanations do not somehow give this a pass.for convenience
Thanks, I'm posting from my phone and doing links on a touch screen is pain for me
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On the topic of demons and evil creatures, we have stories about fallen angels but are there examples of "fallen" demons? Ones that became good. Ragathiel might count.
There's a group of (former) Devils called the "Redeemed", who are Lawful Good. They are devils who have seen the error of their ways and asked the good gods for forgiveness. They join Heaven's ranks and become a unique type of angel, usually bearing a mark that represents their past sins.
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To make a contribution to the main topic (sorry for the derail!), I've got a lot of thoughts I'm percolating right now on dwarves in Pathfinder. I generally enjoy the story they've got going on in Pathfinder (with the caveat that they desperately need something new to do — Quest for the Sky happened eight thousand years ago and it's still their biggest thing they've got going on). Their entire culture is defined by familial bonds, faith through tribulation (in Torag, their ancestors, and each other), and the romance of tradition. They've a deeply intricate society to match, filled with ages of precedent and complex relationships and rituals. Despite being pretty isolationist, you can really get lost in the home and the stories they've carved out for themselves.
I also like the direction Legends is taking with Taargick's legacy. Paizo's creatives are taking this in the right direction. I also, in the manner of elves in the other thread, think they should probably pick a lane with Dwarven civilization's alignment. Isolationist doesn't equal xenophobic, nor does holding a grudge against a culture that wronged you automatically make you racist. Dwarven society can struggle with minority factions stoking racial enmity without letting that struggle define the society as a whole. Like, when you describe dwarven society as lawful good, but when you include player character options that give dwarves bonuses for fighting ancestral enemies (irrespective of those individuals' active involvement) and say that sharing the truth about their hero — High King Taargick — and his regrets for pursuing war and not peace with orcs, is enough of a controversy to send shockwaves through this society, and have the dwarves' lawful good god have "show mercy to the enemies of your people" as an anathema ... these are all a lot of individual components that together cast FKM Dwarven culture in a light that's hard to justify as lawful good. Not unsalvageable by any means, mind. What Legends did with this story is exactly what it needed to make something interesting and compelling out of this subplot. I especially loved the part about how the dwarves abandoned Torag's divine mandate when they pursued war with orcs, rather than fulfilling it. That was a good decision to make, that gives Torag's philosophy some much-appreciated nuance. I have complete confidence in the Paizo creative team's ability to make this into a bold, impacting story. Still, these are all issues that should be recognized in relation to each other.
I'd like to see dwarven enmity shift from "I don't trust those orcs" to "I don't trust those raiders from Belkzen. They hurt my family generations ago, and that blood debt was never repaid." Make it grounded and at least somewhat rational. It's hard to appeal to a racist belief, but enmity rooted in concrete events of injustice is something that can be approached rationally and productively. This latter feeling of distrust is an enmity I can see the average person in a lawful good society having, given what the limitations of what they know. I also think it might be appropriate to give that feat keftiu mentioned the "evil" trait, and remove it from Organized Play if it's legal there. That mechanic can be useful for storytelling, but it's something you want to deal with carefully. Also, would help to see more of Torag's opinions on dwarven relations with orcs. I personally think that tension is a lot of the reason he's been pretty inactive with his sterling children for the past several thousand years, and has permitted them to fall into decline.
That's enough for one post. Love what you people at Paizo are doing!
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So we have lore about the bigotry of dwarves and they are described as LG. That seems to be the main issue at this point. I'd like to know how it's depicted in their society and how it affects outsiders, orcs and goblins included because actions weigh heavier than views. I could believe they can remain LG and still have grudges and the like but it depends on how bad those grudges affect people.
So the thing about Dwarves is that they, for generations upon generations, lived in close-knit, inward facing, insular societies. They have figured out, through trial and error, how to deal with each other when you're all stuck in the same hole for goodness knows how long. They're less socially advanced when it comes to "how to deal with outsiders" but the thing to understand about Dwarves is that as a people they're not foolish and they're not mean for no reason. They're cautious and they're somewhat closed off since the basic concern for thousands of years is "how to make Dwarf society work for the people who live in it."
The Dwarven deities are best understood as an extended family, and Torag serves in the role of the "grumpy patriarch of the clan." This dynamic sort of requires Torag to ultimately have good and worthy intentions, but he often doesn't as good a view of something as his wife or his kid or his sibling, but he himself is wise and good to be able to see when he's mistaken and make things right. He's Uncle Phil, not Homer Simpson. His heart is in the right place, but his instincts run towards the harsh "we have to protect ourselves first and foremost" that can easily be twisted towards xenophobia and worse by others who are less wise, noble, and well divine.
Dwarven society at large understands that their Gods are basically their relatives, and thus deserve respect, but they're also not necessarily super well informed about the situation on/in the ground and tend not to make policy decisions on "what the gods say". Dwarven politics in general tends to be deliberative and based on representation/consensus that precludes zealots from holding the reign of society. If councilmember Iorg argues that we must drive the orcs from the shadow of our mountain since Torag says "to show no mercy to the enemies of the Dwarven people" then councilmember Malde will probably counter with "in what sense are they our enemies? All they're doing is farming and raising their families, maybe we should talk to them- do they even know we're here?" Then they're going to argue about it for a length of time that seems exhausting to humans, but is just how Dwarves do it.
Which is not to say that Dwarves make all right decisions all the time, they certainly have factions that are more backwards, xenophobic, traditionalist, etc. and Dwarven politicians can be extremely ruthless. But this is a society that over tens of thousands of years has figured out how to make it work internally. So while individual Dwarves can be bigots for sure, I don't think as a people they're prone to that sort of thing.
Creative Director
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I've not read much on this thread since last night, when I posted some stuff while I was in a pretty grim emotional state and I should have not posted it. Things are pretty awful right now in the world, at Paizo, and for me... but they're MORE awful it seems for a lot of folks around me, so I've been trying to keep my cool and stay calm.
Last night I lost that cool and calm.
In particular, I want to apologize, publicly, to Sean K Reyonlds for specifically, especially in that I did the very thing that I was so frustrated and angry about—clinging to old words that in theory I should have moved on from. But furthermore, it was hypocritical of me to throw Sean under the bus, since it's not like I've not put stuff into print in my writing that's problematic.
I'll do my best to keep listening and learning and staying calm, and part of that is going to be avoiding threads like these that obviously trigger some of my own mental hangups.
In the meantime, I'm really sorry Sean. You've long been one of my favorite game designers. You helped me get my foot in the door in my first published D&D hardcover credit with "Races of Faerun" back in the day. You helped me catch a giant spider outside of Jason's office. You increased the fun and joy of gaming as a GM (with you playing Vorn) and as a player alike.
I'm sorry, Sean.
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Love you, James, and take care of yourself. It feels like it's hard to make a difference in this world, but if it means anything, you've deeply impacted mine. What's more, the stories you've written have helped me share a little joy in my own circle of friends amidst their individual struggles, multiplying your impact. I wouldn't be the same person without the beautiful worlds you and Sean made together. Whatever comes, you've been one of the people working to build a better world, rather than break it. You and Sean are my heroes. Thanks for all you do. I won't forget.
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Another thing about the Dwarven pantheon, is that this is a situation where "every character follows one god" sort of does disservice here. They're a family, and unless you're actually a priest who performs Folgrit's rites at her temple, you're going to be someone who pays attention to Torag's entire clan since some of them are going to be more attuned to your situation than others.
Like there needs to be dynamics where Torag is less forgiving than Folgrit or Bolka, but is also less grim than Kols or Magrim, and less naive than Trudd, and less aggro than Dranngvit or Angradd. Likewise other situations where the various factions in the family work together and clash.
So if you personally, as a dwarf, are looking for some reason to do something, you can likely find someone in Torag's family who is at least tacitly in favor of the idea, but you could also find someone else in Torag's family that would be opposed to it. That the Dwarven deities disagree with each other, but ultimately work together for the good of the Dwarven people is a model of society. A Dwarf shouldn't just look at "what Torag says" and leave it at that.
Now someone who didn't come up in Dwarven society and sees Torag as the "show no mercy" war god probably has an entirely different view of things. So he's a problematic figure in the Godclaw, but less so in Dwarven society since Dwarves all understand that he doesn't necessarily always agree with his wife, siblings, and kids all the time and that while Torag is more powerful, they're all worth listening to.
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I do want to note: part of the reason I’m raising this is /because/ Pathfinder’s dwarves have gotten infinitely more interesting and nuanced in 2e. The love we’ve gotten for non-standard dwarven cultures - the M’beke and the Taralu, the more brief mentions of the Kulenett and Arcadia’s dwarves - are some of my favorite lore in the setting. Dongun Hold has been presented as ultimately cleaving very close to the familiar, but has foregrounded the clash between militant, xenophobic traditionalism and a more forward-looking view in a way that makes it actionable and interesting.
With all this, it makes these topics stick out like a sore thumb. Vengeful Hatred doesn’t make sense as a core option for the folk we’ve seen, and those who seem to espouse its viewpoint have been painted as hostile, reactionary forces within dwarven culture. If the intent with Torag is not that he supports this sort of thing, then either the dwarven people need not to have designated ancestral foes, or his Anathema could use a rewrite to something a little less permissive of it - or perhaps ideally, both.
I’d appreciate if the thousandth identical conversation about alignment and fiends take place somewhere else, and that those decrying the evils of anyone who dares voice any critique take their own advice and not click on the thread. Thank you!
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Thank you, James. You're a good guy and I know you're dealing with hard stuff at work. Looking forward to gaming in person with you again someday. :)
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I do think there's a strain of backwards traditionalism that runs throughout Dwarven societies throughout Golarion. Like the Dwarves that want to blow up the Gunworks in Alkenstar so they can go back to sealing themselves underground and ignoring the outside world.
I think this sort of "counterproductive dwarfiness" is also the source of things like "vengeful hatred".
Then again, we could also fix this issue by just changing the name of the feat. "Your people have fought against those people for a long time, and have learned something about fighting them which they taught you" has a lot less baggage than "hatred".
I do think there's a strain of backwards traditionalism that runs throughout Dwarven societies throughout Golarion. Like the Dwarves that want to blow up the Gunworks in Alkenstar so they can go back to sealing themselves underground and ignoring the outside world.
I think this sort of "counterproductive dwarfiness" is also the source of things like "vengeful hatred".
I’m not opposed to those elements existing - but they’ve consistently been framed as a negative, which is why baking them into a core mechanical option for ostensibly-heroic characters frustrates me. Vengeful Hatred isn’t framed as being a radical, xenophobic militant - it’s something common enough to all dwarves to be in the CRB.
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Vengeful hatred is too much but if it was axed I wouldn't mind still having a feat about dwarfy "grudgin" since that seems fairly dwarfy. Something like a reaction bonus to attack rolls against a creature type until your next daily preparation after it has attacked you. Keeps the essence of dwarfs having a long memory and being slow to forgive while being slightly less fraught bc it's contextual and not specific to any group across all of dwarfdom all the time. Then just name it something like "Grudge Bearer".