D&D Alignments
Tired of Dragonlance posts yet?
So I've finally figured out something that's been bothering me about Dragonlance. It's the good/evil thing. Dragonlance (and, I'm sure, a lot of other D&D settings), don't treat good and evil as moral judgements. They treat them as sides in a fight.
While evil characters seem to be more likely than good characters to be all ruthless and, well, evil, it's perfectly possible within the dragonlance framework to be ostensibly "good" and perform actions that we would consider to be evil - just see the Kingpriest of Istar's crackdowns, given in the book as an example of "good" run amok and the reason that evil and neutrality were necessary in the world. "Good" wizards can be cruel and pompous; good clerics can be arrogant and close-minded.
I think it's this that gives rise to the good race/evil race thing in the books - because good and evil are just two sides in a fight, it's not their actions that decide which side you're on - it's which side you're born to. Or in some cases, which gods you decide to worship. Takhisis' knights seem perfectly capable of kindness and humanity; they just happen to worship an "evil" god, therefore they're evil. Verminaard showed that Takhisis' clerics were just as capable of healing as Mishakal's.
The whole series just seems to throw out "good" and "evil" a bit too freely, when they generally mean "our side" and "their side". Reminds me almost of the war in B5 - although the Vorlon v. Shadow thing seemed to be good vs. evil at first, it became a lot more complicated than that.
So I've finally figured out something that's been bothering me about Dragonlance. It's the good/evil thing. Dragonlance (and, I'm sure, a lot of other D&D settings), don't treat good and evil as moral judgements. They treat them as sides in a fight.
While evil characters seem to be more likely than good characters to be all ruthless and, well, evil, it's perfectly possible within the dragonlance framework to be ostensibly "good" and perform actions that we would consider to be evil - just see the Kingpriest of Istar's crackdowns, given in the book as an example of "good" run amok and the reason that evil and neutrality were necessary in the world. "Good" wizards can be cruel and pompous; good clerics can be arrogant and close-minded.
I think it's this that gives rise to the good race/evil race thing in the books - because good and evil are just two sides in a fight, it's not their actions that decide which side you're on - it's which side you're born to. Or in some cases, which gods you decide to worship. Takhisis' knights seem perfectly capable of kindness and humanity; they just happen to worship an "evil" god, therefore they're evil. Verminaard showed that Takhisis' clerics were just as capable of healing as Mishakal's.
The whole series just seems to throw out "good" and "evil" a bit too freely, when they generally mean "our side" and "their side". Reminds me almost of the war in B5 - although the Vorlon v. Shadow thing seemed to be good vs. evil at first, it became a lot more complicated than that.