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[KittyTac]

Maybe goblins should intentionally target limbs in combat to cause the most pain by breaking bones.

[Bumber]

Maybe goblins should intentionally target limbs in combat to cause the most pain by breaking bones.

It explains the scourges and whips, too.

[SixOfSpades]

I feel like the goblins ARE cruel rather than NEED to be cruel is more interesting to me since you can add things like, "This goblin tribe is trying to escape their nature and be kind" while if it's goblins NEED to be cruel they would suffer horribly from trying to do that . . .

Agreed, for the most part, as the flexibility allows greater diversity, which I've always supported. Although, even if cruelty were an actual biological imperative for goblins, they could still practice moderation by limiting themselves to more acceptable forms of cruelty, as previously mentioned.

I'd say I agree with GoblinCookie on one subject; I'd prefer goblins to be prone to a cruel personality, perhaps with a focus-based "need" for that, rather than the entire race being biologically dependent on it.

I was trying to be balanced and give each race a fairly exact parallel to dwarven alcohol; since dwarven booze is both physical ([ALCOHOL_DEPENDENT]) and mental ("unfocused after being kept from alcohol"), I was trying to entertain both possibilities for goblins as well--although I also agree that a physical, biological requirement to be cruel doesn't make much sense.

Or, they can keep their existing victims and enemies, and let them retaliate & get revenge as they wish. . . . As long as fatal attacks are uncommon, society continues to function, in fact it reinforces a social order with the strongest on top & the weakest at the bottom.

Well firstly the [fatal attacks] won't be uncommon and secondly it does not matter.  The issue you are not understanding is that is everybody wants to avoid each-other as much as possible, then society will collapse just as readily as it would collapse if everybody killed eachother.

You're placing yourself at a disadvantage arguing in this way: You imagine one situation and assume that that's the only way it could be, while all I have to do is provide one plausible counterexample. For instance, a goblin society could be arranged into strata, or castes, or gangs, and each group tries to shield its own members from murderous attacks from outside the group. The only (socially acceptable) way to kill a fellow goblin citizen (i.e., not a convicted criminal) could be to publicly call him out for a duel. Let's put the goblin who got branded into this scenario: If he wants revenge on the goblin who branded him, he can either
a) Try to murder the dude--if he succeeds, he'll probably get off scot-free, but if he fails, the dude's gang will pummel him without mercy, and probably brand him again.
b) Fight him in a duel--except that the branding dude clearly isn't afraid of pissing people off, OR of being challenged, so the branding victim doesn't have the best odds. This goes double if the brander was acting in his official capacity of government torturer.
c) Get payback via some other, less lethal but more creative, method.
Alternatively,
d) The branding victim could work out his aggressions on less threatening targets, while nursing a grudge against the brander until the end of his days.
Both options b and d reinforce the social pecking order, and neither a nor c work against it. Nor does this imagined setup require anyone to be antisocial. Yes, it does suggest the possibility of inter-caste enmity flaring up into full gang warfare, but One, that tastes just about right for goblins, and Two, any decent goblin war leader would quell/prevent such gang violence by sending in other gangs to flagellate the survivors.

The result is going to be a society where everybody hates everybody else and hence nothing gets done efficiently.

Precisely. That's pretty much what goblins do.

In fiction orcs might be cruel and whatever, but that is not how orc society can plausibly function. . . . If orcs were nicer, that would actually make them far more of a threat since it would make their society more functional (I suppose that could be what baby-snatching is about).

It is true, every time we are allowed to observe Tolkien's orcs (or Uruk-Hai) closely, there is orc-on-orc killing, although in each case there's a valid enough reason for it, especially in the instance of the Uruk-Hai, who kill a few troublemaking Moria goblins in order to enforce unity and strong leadership. But on the whole, I largely agree that they (and DF goblins) would be more of a threat if they cooperated to a greater extent, which is why I suggested that personal grudges should preferably be settled by non-lethal means.

In time even that stops working, folks get used to a certain level of pain and we end up constantly needing even more pain to cause them to actually suffer.

That's actually little more than wishful thinking. Empirical studies on torture are of course difficult to come by, but some researchers believe that repeated pain exposure actually increases pain sensitivity.

The connection between slavery and blackness is an entirely accidental one Six of Spades. 
I don't actually see a response relevant to anything I said about slavery.

Sorry, I was a bit blindsided by that rather breathtaking display of naivete. I apologize that my first reaction was to warn you that expressing those views in public could constitute a threat to your personal safety. As for what you actually said . . .

Slavery does not really work as cruelty however.  Slavery is not an individual cruelty to which an individual can personally be responsible.  Cruelty undermines slavery also, if the slaves think their masters are just being cruel then they have no reason to take their punishments seriously.  It is better for the slaves to think that their masters are kind people and they are only being punished because they are 'bad slaves' than it is for them to simply think that they are the random designated victim because somebody has to suffer today.

Um, nope, that's still bullshit. Slavery is obviously cruel, as it denies fundamental human rights. Individuals who restrain, imprison, overwork, hunt, torture, or otherwise abuse a slave can (and should) definitely be held personally responsible. And who the hell is not going to "take it seriously" after being flogged? Saying that they work for a "nice Massuh, good Massuh" makes the master feel better, not the slave. Crack open another history book, and go get yourself some damn sensitivity training.

You are not seriously comparing muslims to goblins?

No, I was using them as a counterexample to your suggestion that innate goblin cruelty would present dwarves/humans/elves with "a potential moral requirement to commit genocide". I said that most Muslim nations typically deny the basic right of self-governance to over half of their population, which most Western cultures consider appalling--and yet despite that, Westerners do not make war upon the Muslim countries to spread their culture by force, instead they generally prefer to live and let live. By the same token, a naturally-cruel goblin race would hardly present the player with an ultimatum that "you must murder thousands of sapient beings", etc.

Well then, the key difference here is that it is possible for muslims to change, they are capable of becoming less repressive over time, . . . Your goblins on the other hand, they don't have a choice, they can never improve, they can never get less bad

Yes, except for my repeated mentions of more acceptable (even constructive) outlets for their cruelty, and more mild-mannered goblins (including entire societies of them) who intentionally try to keep their desires in check.

That being the case, to allow such beings to survive is in effect to be complicit in everything they do, genocide is arguably the only moral outcome for them as their very continued existence requires them to harm others.  Nobody, including themselves can ever do anything to rectify this.  How can you not realize just how uniquely horrific this situation is?

The horror exists only in one's own imagination. Yours may be more horrific than mine. But as I said before, goblins are already cruel, already evil, already torture for fun. It's their nature. The only real change that I'm suggesting is to tell the player why they're that way.

As previously mentioned, personality-specific rather than race-specific cruelty needs means some goblins can play nice and function in non-goblin society, and some dwarves/elves/humans can be seemingly unnecessarily cruel, meaning more villain variety.

Good call.

Goblins are not supposed to be misguided creatures you can simply re-educate to become regular members of society. They need an outlet for their cruelty, even if personality shift causes them to hate themselves for it.

"What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?" - Paarthurnax
Not that I'm suggesting goblins should try to actually become good, more like simply gain self-control over their impulses. But overall, I'm in favor of anything that makes a good story. And I'd upvote your entire post if I could.

[GoblinCookie]

You're placing yourself at a disadvantage arguing in this way: You imagine one situation and assume that that's the only way it could be, while all I have to do is provide one plausible counterexample. For instance, a goblin society could be arranged into strata, or castes, or gangs, and each group tries to shield its own members from murderous attacks from outside the group. The only (socially acceptable) way to kill a fellow goblin citizen (i.e., not a convicted criminal) could be to publicly call him out for a duel. Let's put the goblin who got branded into this scenario: If he wants revenge on the goblin who branded him, he can either
a) Try to murder the dude--if he succeeds, he'll probably get off scot-free, but if he fails, the dude's gang will pummel him without mercy, and probably brand him again.
b) Fight him in a duel--except that the branding dude clearly isn't afraid of pissing people off, OR of being challenged, so the branding victim doesn't have the best odds. This goes double if the brander was acting in his official capacity of government torturer.
c) Get payback via some other, less lethal but more creative, method.
Alternatively,
d) The branding victim could work out his aggressions on less threatening targets, while nursing a grudge against the brander until the end of his days.
Both options b and d reinforce the social pecking order, and neither a nor c work against it. Nor does this imagined setup require anyone to be antisocial. Yes, it does suggest the possibility of inter-caste enmity flaring up into full gang warfare, but One, that tastes just about right for goblins, and Two, any decent goblin war leader would quell/prevent such gang violence by sending in other gangs to flagellate the survivors.

All of these are elaborate systems that require organization and cooperation in order to work.  Since all goblins are constantly trying to be cruel to eachother and hence also hate eachother, there is no way to arrange for elaborate systems along the lines you are describing.  The whole society will simply fall apart because all it's members either kill or avoid eachother.

Precisely. That's pretty much what goblins do.

Goblins are supposed to be a threat, not something that simply dies out in 50 years because of natural selection 'giving it's verdict'. 

It is true, every time we are allowed to observe Tolkien's orcs (or Uruk-Hai) closely, there is orc-on-orc killing, although in each case there's a valid enough reason for it, especially in the instance of the Uruk-Hai, who kill a few troublemaking Moria goblins in order to enforce unity and strong leadership. But on the whole, I largely agree that they (and DF goblins) would be more of a threat if they cooperated to a greater extent, which is why I suggested that personal grudges should preferably be settled by non-lethal means.

There is no way to settle a hatred by non-lethal means.  They *want* to kill each-other, because of the bad things that they all did to eachother in the past. 

That's actually little more than wishful thinking. Empirical studies on torture are of course difficult to come by, but some researchers believe that repeated pain exposure actually increases pain sensitivity.

That would be a very odd conclusion that would have pain working in the opposite way to pretty much all stimulus.  The effect of stimulus in general tends to get less acute the more you are exposed to it, you get desensitized. 

Sorry, I was a bit blindsided by that rather breathtaking display of naivete. I apologize that my first reaction was to warn you that expressing those views in public could constitute a threat to your personal safety. As for what you actually said . . .

My views were simply that some slaves suffered worse from slavery than others and that slavery largely functions because of this discrepancy.  I don't see what the controversy is, nor why anyone would want to kill me for it.  Yes I do think that people's understanding of slavery is mostly based upon anti-slavery propaganda, but even so I never argued that slavery was not an evil thing.  Yet in order to understand slavery you have to think like a slaver not a slave; the nature of slavery is determined by the former. 

Um, nope, that's still bullshit. Slavery is obviously cruel, as it denies fundamental human rights. Individuals who restrain, imprison, overwork, hunt, torture, or otherwise abuse a slave can (and should) definitely be held personally responsible. And who the hell is not going to "take it seriously" after being flogged? Saying that they work for a "nice Massuh, good Massuh" makes the master feel better, not the slave. Crack open another history book, and go get yourself some damn sensitivity training.

People who are legally slaves have no fundamental human rights to deny, since no relevant law has granted them such rights; do not confuse morality with legal rights.  Yes slavery is cruel, but that cruelty is not a question of the character of individuals, it inherent to the institution itself and also to other similar institutions, the most alike being a military occupation.  I say alike because in a military occupation unlike for instance a dictatorship there is no 'internal' group that cares to maintain slavery, that is to say no slaves would fight to defend slavery if it's abolition was imminent. 

In all coercive systems, it is important to divine the dissident minority from the compliant majority and keep at all costs the minority from becoming the majority.  As a slaver your rational aim is not to indulge your arbitrary cruelty but to get your slaves to work both as much as well as they can, in order to produce the greatest quantity and quality of work and to avoid your slaves rebelling.  To this end you target your cruelty to those individuals that you can designate to be 'bad slaves' based upon some real or fictitious basis, the human ability to see patterns in randomness is your friend here. 

You are then extremely cruel towards these designated bad slaves.  This serves to set an example to the other slaves not to become bad slaves themselves and therefore to do everything that you want them to do, as well as possible.  That is as a slaver your ideal objective, to have a legion of 'good' slaves working hard to produce the best quality stuff they can using the total of their skill, simply being personally cruel is an impediment to this.  Admittedly being personally kind is also an impediment as well, but that is not what we are talking about.

The reason is that when you meet of your cruel punishments to your designated bad slaves, you want the other slaves to conclude "X is a bad slave, I will now do everything master wants as well as possible to not end up like X".  What you do not want them to conclude is "I could be next," and so it is best that you are not perceived as a cruel being that simply metes out punishments arbitrarily.  A being along the lines of your goblins is pretty much the worse slaver possible, the slaves know that the master has no choice but to punish them and will definitely conclude the 'wrong thing'.

Once all the slaves decide that they are next, they will rebel whenever you attack one of them; this is what you want to avoid happening.

No, I was using them as a counterexample to your suggestion that innate goblin cruelty would present dwarves/humans/elves with "a potential moral requirement to commit genocide". I said that most Muslim nations typically deny the basic right of self-governance to over half of their population, which most Western cultures consider appalling--and yet despite that, Westerners do not make war upon the Muslim countries to spread their culture by force, instead they generally prefer to live and let live. By the same token, a naturally-cruel goblin race would hardly present the player with an ultimatum that "you must murder thousands of sapient beings", etc.

We are both in agreement that goblins are inherently cruel.  What you however are arguing is that there should be cruelty quota, a definite amount of cruelty that a goblin must meet out in order for bad things not to happen to them. 

Yes, except for my repeated mentions of more acceptable (even constructive) outlets for their cruelty, and more mild-mannered goblins (including entire societies of them) who intentionally try to keep their desires in check.

It is not a question of their desires though?  It is a question of them being goblins and having to be cruel or bad things happen to them. 

The horror exists only in one's own imagination. Yours may be more horrific than mine. But as I said before, goblins are already cruel, already evil, already torture for fun. It's their nature. The only real change that I'm suggesting is to tell the player why they're that way.

You are responding to me telling you that you don't understand how horrific your idea is, by telling me how you don't understand how horrific the idea is. 

[Dorsidwarf]

I like the idea of a societal imperative as opposed to a biological one in general, with people from that society getting morose or upset if they have no chance to fill that imperative rather than slowly ceasing to function

[SixOfSpades]

For instance, a goblin society could be arranged into strata, or castes, or gangs . . .
each group tries to shield its own members from murderous attacks from outside the group. . .
The only (socially acceptable) way to kill a fellow goblin citizen could be to publicly call him out for a duel. . .

All of these are elaborate systems that require organization and cooperation in order to work.  Since all goblins are constantly trying to be cruel to eachother and hence also hate eachother, there is no way to arrange for elaborate systems along the lines you are describing.  The whole society will simply fall apart because all it's members either kill or avoid eachother.

I can't decide which is my favorite model for your fallacy here. You give me so many choices.
Circular reasoning: "Without any form of social structure to constrain their violent impulses, goblins would all kill each other. And the goblins can't have any social order, because they're all dead."
Starting from the conclusion:
SixOfSpades- "Here is one possible example of a hypothetical goblin cultural system that could control its hateful tendencies."
GoblinCookie- "That could never work, because goblins are too bloodthirsty and vengeful to have a culture at all."
Thinly veiled ad hominem:
"Hmmm . . . SixOfSpades has got to be wrong about something here. I think I'll argue that his idea of goblins being innately cruel and violent would inevitably lead to their social collapse, and even extinction--never mind the fact that every portrayal of goblins and orcs ever, including DF itself, has depicted them as being cruel and violent, and yet they continue to pose a substantial threat to other races."

There is no way to settle a hatred by non-lethal means.  They *want* to kill each-other, because of the bad things that they all did to eachother in the past.

Really? Literally every single interpersonal conflict must unavoidably end in death? Granted, if we're already at the point where one goblin is branding another, a revenge killing sounds quite understandable--but equally understandable is a revenge branding. If you truly cannot imagine any non-lethal way to resolve enmities, then either you lack imagination, or you lack the desire to examine your own ideas for weaknesses. I strongly suspect the latter.

That would be a very odd conclusion that would have pain working in the opposite way to pretty much all stimulus.  The effect of stimulus in general tends to get less acute the more you are exposed to it, you get desensitized.

In my (admittedly casual) research, I found that most sites discussing how to improve one's pain tolerance mentioned only psychological ways of dealing with the pain, such as meditation or breathing exercises--decreasing sensitivity through repeated exposure didn't come up even once.
This segues into a related tangent, which I truly hope won't become a derail. Interestingly, the human brain does NOT remember pain: It remembers the memory of pain. A few years ago, some doctors did a study on a quite painful medical procedure (a colonoscopy), looking for a way to make it less unpleasant for the patients. At several points during the procedure, they asked the patients to rate how much pain they were feeling, and then after the procedure was complete, they asked how painful, overall, the entire process was. The researchers found, understandably, that pain was at its highest when the examination was nearly complete, when the endoscope was all the way in. But more importantly, they noticed that if the endoscope was removed and the procedure concluded at that point, while the maximum pain was still fresh in the patient's mind, the patient rated the entire colonoscopy as being very painful. But if, instead, the endoscope was almost removed, and the last few minutes of the procedure were minimally painful, the patient gave a much lower overall pain rating. We remember that we felt pain, not the pain itself. Anecdotally, when my own father had a colonoscopy, he was not given an anesthetic: he was given an amnesiac, which suggests that not being able to form memories of pain is just as conducive (if not more so) to recovery than not being able to feel the pain in the first place.
End of tangent.

Yet in order to understand slavery you have to think like a slaver not a slave; the nature of slavery is determined by the former.

Yes, that's quite true, but then you had to immediately contradict yourself with

. . . there is no 'internal' group that cares to maintain slavery, that is to say no slaves would fight to defend slavery if it's abolition was imminent.

Dude. Slaves would not fight to defend slavery, at ANY time. If you want to backtrack and say that you actually meant to write "slave owners", I assure you that slavers can, and would, and did, fight to defend slavery long after it'd been formally abolished.

People who are legally slaves have no fundamental human rights to deny, since no relevant law has granted them such rights; do not confuse morality with legal rights.

Now that's just pure hypocrisy in a nutshell, telling me not to confuse legality with morality almost literally in the same breath as doing so yourself. Fundamental human rights, by definition, supersede all legal matters and are held to be inalienable regardless of legal jurisdiction. The list of Substantive Human Rights has been internationally agreed to apply to all persons of all nationalities, and oh look what's the third one? FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY.

My views were simply that some slaves suffered worse from slavery than others and that slavery largely functions because of this discrepancy.  Yes I do think that people's understanding of slavery is mostly based upon anti-slavery propaganda. . .

Facepalm. Please do not express any more views about slavery until you read at least one relevant history book. Seriously. You're just digging yourself into a deeper hole, here.

I don't see what the controversy is, nor why anyone would want to kill me for it.

Oh, I doubt anyone would try to kill you over it . . . you might lose a couple of teeth, though.

We are both in agreement that goblins are inherently cruel.  What you however are arguing is that there should be cruelty quota, a definite amount of cruelty that a goblin must meet out in order for bad things not to happen to them.

Good, back to talking sense. While I (intentionally) never did specify what sort of effects cruelty withdrawal might have, yes, I do think it should be "something bad", solely to enforce the idea that goblins should have to act like goblins. No matter how you slice it, no matter what ethical red flags you think it raises, goblins are and always have been "driven to cruelty by its evil nature". Now, maybe some goblins can choose to resist that nature--that's fine, it makes for diversity & a good story. But goblins will never be elves, or even dwarves, and no one should be more aware of this than the goblins themselves. So as long as creative players can find relatively low-impact outlets for goblin cruelty, any moral concerns about this proposed change are quite effectively nullified.
(Also, the word is "mete", but blame your Autocorrect and I'll believe you in advance.)

You are responding to me telling you that you don't understand how horrific your idea is, by telling me how you don't understand how horrific the idea is.

Oh, gee. Someone who thinks that modern views of slavery are excessively colored by "anti-slavery propaganda", and who "doesn't see what the controversy is" about saying things like that, has an opinion about what is or is not horrific.


On another note, is "eachother" becoming a word in England?

[Detoxicated]

Whenever I see an argument on these forums and people raise their "voices" I see a: Urist Mc123 felt annoyed after an argument." Sometimes this becomes: Urist Mc123 has become enraged.

[KittyTac]

Whenever I see an argument on these forums and people raise their "voices" I see a: Urist Mc123 felt annoyed after an argument." Sometimes this becomes: Urist Mc123 has become enraged.

Just let them. One of them will get bored, or Toady will lock the thread.

[GoblinCookie]

I can't decide which is my favorite model for your fallacy here. You give me so many choices.
Circular reasoning: "Without any form of social structure to constrain their violent impulses, goblins would all kill each other. And the goblins can't have any social order, because they're all dead."
Starting from the conclusion:
SixOfSpades- "Here is one possible example of a hypothetical goblin cultural system that could control its hateful tendencies."
GoblinCookie- "That could never work, because goblins are too bloodthirsty and vengeful to have a culture at all."
Thinly veiled ad hominem:
"Hmmm . . . SixOfSpades has got to be wrong about something here. I think I'll argue that his idea of goblins being innately cruel and violent would inevitably lead to their social collapse, and even extinction--never mind the fact that every portrayal of goblins and orcs ever, including DF itself, has depicted them as being cruel and violent, and yet they continue to pose a substantial threat to other races."

A creature unable to form a viable society cannot form a viable society in order to deal with whatever it is that prevents them from being unable to form a viable society.  That is called logic, it is not a fallacy at all.  It is an example of "one cannot build a house with no bricks", beings unable to cooperate cannot cooperate in order to be able to cooperate.  If the moment the first goblins get together they immediately *have* to hurt each-other and consequently end up killing each-other due to the resulting hatred, there is no goblin society. 

Also if you weren't too angry to pay attention, you would have noticed by now that I am not arguing that goblins should not be cruel and that goblin society would not function.  I was specifically arguing only against the idea of having goblins have to inflict a given amount of cruelty in order to function.  I am only saying that a society would not function if all it's members were forced to be cruel to each-other by some biological imperative, not that creatures merely crueler than humans could not function. 

Really? Literally every single interpersonal conflict must unavoidably end in death? Granted, if we're already at the point where one goblin is branding another, a revenge killing sounds quite understandable--but equally understandable is a revenge branding. If you truly cannot imagine any non-lethal way to resolve enmities, then either you lack imagination, or you lack the desire to examine your own ideas for weaknesses. I strongly suspect the latter.

Everybody has been tormenting everyone else all their life because they are forced to do so by a biological imperative.  Everybody then wants everybody else dead, they hate each other so much that nobody is interested in anything short of their enemies deaths. 

Dude. Slaves would not fight to defend slavery, at ANY time. If you want to backtrack and say that you actually meant to write "slave owners", I assure you that slavers can, and would, and did, fight to defend slavery long after it'd been formally abolished.

That is exactly what I saying.  I am working on the basis that any regime is divided into friendly, hostile and neutral folks; the friendly oppress the hostile in order to demonstrate the costs of becoming hostile to the neutral.  The friendly are willing not only to support the regime but also to fight for it, the hostile are prepared to fight to overthrow the regime while the neutrals are not prepared to fight against the system but neither will they risk their skins for it.  Slavery as a regime has only the neutral and the hostile internal to it, the slavers are not themselves slaves so they are apart from the regime as it were. 

The friendlies have to the brought in from outside.  This is where the similarity between slavery and a military occupation comes in, the occupation forces as roughly equivalent to the slave drivers that enforce slavery.  A dictatorship aims to have as many friendlies are possible, but a military occupation aims to have as few occupying forces as necessary, the same logic applies to a system of slavery.  It does not cost anything for the dictatorship to have devoted minions that will fight for it, but it does cost a slaver or an occupying power to do so. 

Now that's just pure hypocrisy in a nutshell, telling me not to confuse legality with morality almost literally in the same breath as doing so yourself. Fundamental human rights, by definition, supersede all legal matters and are held to be inalienable regardless of legal jurisdiction. The list of Substantive Human Rights has been internationally agreed to apply to all persons of all nationalities, and oh look what's the third one? FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY.

Human rights are designed to create that confusion, one might even cynically say that is their very ideological purpose.  Human rights exist in so far as the countries involved have signed a treaty committing them to respect said rights, they cannot however be applied to all nationalities and jurisdictions because to do so would require a treaty to be binding on those not signatory to it.  Since legal slavery was generally abolished before any of said treaties were signed up to, it is not correct to say that historical slavery violated any slaves human rights, because those things did not exist at the time.  Only if one was to reintroduce slavery *without* rescinding the human rights treaties you have signed up to (requires leaving the UN) then that would indeed violate the prospective slaves human rights. 

Saying that slavery is wrong because it violates the slaves right to be free from slavery is a wasted breath.  What you actually saying is simply that you consider slavery to be wrong and nothing else, the rest is simply faux-legalism.  Either you were actually talking law, in which case the above paragraph applies, or you are simply referring to the entirely ideological and abstract foundations of your personal moral code.  In the latter case the slaver can simply assert their own "human right to enslave" and reveal that the redundancy of the concepts; all there is happens to be an argument between your moral code and theirs. 

Facepalm. Please do not express any more views about slavery until you read at least one relevant history book. Seriously. You're just digging yourself into a deeper hole, here.

How do claim to know how many history books I have read?  I do actually have a history degree and have read too many history books in my lifetime that I have long since lost count.  One interesting little detail is the ability of slaves to actually buy their freedom *from* their masters.  That implies that certain slaves slavery was sufficiently benign that they were able to hold down 'second' jobs and earn revenue independently of their masters.  That I always found strange, indeed it implies that not only were the masters not working their slaves every waking hour but they were also in effect respecting the property rights of their slaves, despite presumably having no legal obligation to do so either. 

Oh, I doubt anyone would try to kill you over it . . . you might lose a couple of teeth, though.

Over what? 

Good, back to talking sense. While I (intentionally) never did specify what sort of effects cruelty withdrawal might have, yes, I do think it should be "something bad", solely to enforce the idea that goblins should have to act like goblins. No matter how you slice it, no matter what ethical red flags you think it raises, goblins are and always have been "driven to cruelty by its evil nature". Now, maybe some goblins can choose to resist that nature--that's fine, it makes for diversity & a good story. But goblins will never be elves, or even dwarves, and no one should be more aware of this than the goblins themselves. So as long as creative players can find relatively low-impact outlets for goblin cruelty, any moral concerns about this proposed change are quite effectively nullified.
(Also, the word is "mete", but blame your Autocorrect and I'll believe you in advance.)

As long as they can find relatively low-impact outlets, what do we mean by that?

Oh, gee. Someone who thinks that modern views of slavery are excessively colored by "anti-slavery propaganda", and who "doesn't see what the controversy is" about saying things like that, has an opinion about what is or is not horrific.

You really think it is realistic to assume that a bunch of civilizations that are distinguished from pretty much all historical civilizations by their hatred of slavery are going to have a 100% neutral appraisal of slavery.  As far as I can see the popular understanding of slavery is all whips and chains, it really does not do the complexity of the institution throughout history any credit at all. 

The reality of slavery for many slaves was far more boring. 

On another note, is "eachother" becoming a word in England?

It is a linguistic development I would welcome. 

[Detoxicated]

Whenever I see an argument on these forums and people raise their "voices" I see a: Urist Mc123 felt annoyed after an argument." Sometimes this becomes: Urist Mc123 has become enraged.

Just let them. One of them will get bored, or Toady will lock the thread.

I let them, i just wanted to point it out. It usually settles quite nicely.

[Dorsidwarf]

A creature unable to form a viable society cannot form a viable society in order to deal with whatever it is that prevents them from being unable to form a viable society.  That is called logic, it is not a fallacy at all.  It is an example of "one cannot build a house with no bricks", beings unable to cooperate cannot cooperate in order to be able to cooperate.  If the moment the first goblins get together they immediately *have* to hurt each-other and consequently end up killing each-other due to the resulting hatred, there is no goblin society.

Actually this a very strong argument FOR the idea that goblins "must" be cruel when you think about it.

After all, as the current game goes it is impossible for goblin civilisations to form without a literal demon raising a fortress straight from actual hell to rule them, if I'm not mistaken. So the society is not being formed by the fractious creatures that could not create a stable society, it is being created by a magical being of great power to enable it to rule over them.
And when you look at classic fantasy that's a pretty common theme. The supreme commanders of orcs/goblins are very often external beings who either created their society, brought it to prominence, or in some cases actually created the species as servants.

I still dont think goblins should have a biological imperative to be assholes, because thats un-fun, but its an interesting thought

[SixOfSpades]

I can't decide which is my favorite model for your fallacy here. You give me so many choices.
Circular reasoning:
Starting from the conclusion:
Thinly veiled ad hominem:

A creature unable to form a viable society cannot form a viable society in order to deal with whatever it is that prevents them from being unable to form a viable society.

You Have Selected: Starting From The Conclusion. That's a bold move, Goblin, let's see if it pays off for him.

It is indeed a fallacy, because you base everything upon the assumption that having a racial drive to be cruel must needs cause every goblin to start bloodfeuds with their fellow goblins, to the point that culture and population centers cannot exist. You offer no hint of evidence (beyond your own feelings) to support your claim of how these goblins must unavoidably be. Of course, as the saying goes, what is asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence, but happily I don't even have to go that route, as it's quite simple for me to show that "alternate possibilities could exist," which was all I've been arguing for.
     Just as the other forum members have commented, I too agree that goblin cruelty would be better as a focus-based drive than a biological requirement. Yet there are creatures that DO have an absolute imperative to hurt, maim, and kill on a very regular basis: They're called carnivores, and almost all of them must kill at least once every couple of days. Granted, basic hunting does not necessarily involve any actual cruelty . . . except that it's a very common behavior for an adult predator to catch a prey animal, and bring it back to its young still alive, so that the offspring can inexpertly rip apart a critter that has already been too badly injured to defend itself. Common house cats, meanwhile, are well known for their practice of playing with their wounded prey for long periods before finally killing it, and they very often kill purely for sport. These behaviors actually go beyond the levels of cruelty that goblins are seen, or even hinted at as, doing in DF, and therefore one could quite plausibly argue that goblins are actually LESS cruel than cats. According to YOU, then, GoblinCookie, cats cannot have any kind of social organization, because they "have to hurt each other and consequently end up killing each other."
     Except of course, that that is patently false. What do we KNOW about cats? They have an innate drive to hunt, torture, and kill, even without need. They are fiercely territorial, and will defend their home turf against rival cats with tooth and claw. The more belligerent toms will frequently sport scars, torn ears, and other marks of their various battles. When on the prowl, cats almost always prefer to do so alone, and never cooperate to bring down a target animal. BUT. Their fights are only rarely fatal. That one-eyed tomcat is proof, not that he fights all the time, but that he survives those fights. Cats frequently make friends with other cats, and sometimes congregate in large communities where their individual interactions do hint at a social structure, and even a hierarchy.
     Now, granted, cats are not sentient, but even so we can clearly see that here is a creature with a genuine, full-blown biological cruelty "quota", that still manages not to murder itself to extinction, and even has a semblance of social order. I told you earlier that I only had to show a single reasonable counterexample in order to prove you wrong. That example is now provided, your baseless assertion is now disproved.

beings unable to cooperate cannot cooperate in order to be able to cooperate.

My point above was only one possible refutation to this line of thinking, two others are:
     They can if the beings are hostile to each other at some times, but more placid during others. With the most obvious examples naturally being the various species who routinely fight many duels during mating season, but get along with each other quite well at all other times of the year. We can see this especially in animals that have evolved distinctly non-lethal weapons to be used against rivals, such as the giraffe's little rounded knobs that pass for "horns". Cooperative behaviors learned during peacetime would very plausibly lead to mercy during times of stress, an effect that increases proportionally with the creature's intelligence.
     Innate cruelty, and social behaviors that can mitigate / channel said cruelty, could have evolved in tandem ('evolved' in this case possibly meaning either a generational progression of learned cultural behaviors, or actual genetic evolution). Cruelty and brutality can be very effective means to reproductive success, but taken to extremes they can also quite easily backfire and make one the common enemy of a larger group, so the two qualities of "You should be the baddest dude around" and "But not TOO bad, though" could wind up in a sort of arms race, each trait effectively striving to outdo the other. Apply this pattern to your average primate, and eventually you'll get a goblin. At no point does the creature's cruelty override its self-control by too great an extent, so there is no paradox.

Also if you weren't too angry to pay attention

Actually, I don't believe you've ever gotten me angry. Annoyed, but not angry.

I am not arguing that goblins should not be cruel and that goblin society would not function.  I was specifically arguing only against the idea of having goblins have to inflict a given amount of cruelty in order to function.

And that's very interesting to me, that you would take such a fine distinction (goblins perform some given amount of cruelty just for the hell of it, vs. goblins perform the exact same acts of cruelty because they feel some innate drive to do so) and explode it into such a major difference of results (goblins that torture for fun are seen to live in population centers of around 10,000 people, but goblins that feel biological pressure to torture can never be around each other). As I recall, you were similarly fond of hyperbole back during the DuckTales episode, arguing that the majority of ducks successfully reproducing could have no other result than total ecocide within the span of a single generation. Is "Extreme Conclusion Jumping" a sport? Should you be wearing protective equipment?

I am only saying that a society would not function if all it's members were forced to be cruel to each-other by some biological imperative . . .

I have stated repeatedly that goblins are NOT forced to be cruel to each other, victims such as other races, animals, the undead, and even inanimate dummies have all been discussed in this thread. If anyone isn't paying attention, it's you. Please stop arguing against things that I clearly did NOT say . . . unless you're playing Logical Fallacy Bingo, and you need "Straw Man" to win.

. . . slavers are not themselves slaves so they are apart from the regime as it were.

Slavery obviously cannot exist without slave owners, and therefore slavers are unequivocally an essential part of the system. They are also, as it happens, the part of the system with the greatest amount of control over said system, so the lion's share of the guilt & blame for slavery's inherent evils must fall directly to them. I say this not out of desire to perpetuate a slavery derail (you'll notice I'm not bothering to respond to your Human Rights clusterfuck), but merely as an example of how you tend to say ridiculous things if you think you can get away with it. Let me simply assure that you are wrong, on the factual count as well as the ideological one.

I do actually have a history degree

I wouldn't worry about it, you hide it rather well.

One interesting little detail is the ability of slaves to actually buy their freedom *from* their masters.

Yes, several cultures that practiced slavery did so in a manner that was decidedly low-key, compared to the more hardcore American version. But in those cases, an adult slave willingly signing his services over to a master for a set period of time, for a set wage, is actually far more akin to a contract employee than a "real" slave, born into bondage and with hardly any feasible way of ever escaping it, short of death. For some types of Roman slaves, it was practically being a slave in name only. But to extend that sort of leniency to all slave-keeping cultures, and imply that all slaves had the ability to buy their own freedom, is a gross overstatement on your part.

Oh, I doubt anyone would try to kill you over it . . . you might lose a couple of teeth, though.

Over what?

Sigh. Over saying crap that makes you sound incredibly racist, such as "Slavery is not an individual cruelty to which an individual can personally be responsible," and "It is better for the slaves to think that their masters are kind people and they are only being punished because they are 'bad slaves'".

The reality of slavery for many slaves was far more boring.

Yes, but when we modern humans think of the word "slavery", especially when it's goblins doing the enslaving, that kind of slavery is not what we're thinking of. We don't think, "Oh, I won't be allowed to vote or own property, but I'll still be treated about as well as a minimum-wage McDonalds employee", we think "Oh My God, I'm going to be flogged every night and worked to death, aren't I." That kind of slavery is clearly evil, and that's the clearly kind of slavery that goblins practice, and for you to step in and say, "ACKCHYUALLY, slavery was sometimes more moderate," does nothing but cloud the issue for no other purpose than to let you sound educated. If you want to muddy the ethical waters with low-impact slavery, have at least the good taste to specify that you're doing it with humans or dwarves, or with goblins trying to change their ways.

[IndigoFenix]

A creature unable to form a viable society cannot form a viable society in order to deal with whatever it is that prevents them from being unable to form a viable society.  That is called logic, it is not a fallacy at all.  It is an example of "one cannot build a house with no bricks", beings unable to cooperate cannot cooperate in order to be able to cooperate.  If the moment the first goblins get together they immediately *have* to hurt each-other and consequently end up killing each-other due to the resulting hatred, there is no goblin society.

Actually this a very strong argument FOR the idea that goblins "must" be cruel when you think about it.

After all, as the current game goes it is impossible for goblin civilisations to form without a literal demon raising a fortress straight from actual hell to rule them, if I'm not mistaken. So the society is not being formed by the fractious creatures that could not create a stable society, it is being created by a magical being of great power to enable it to rule over them.
And when you look at classic fantasy that's a pretty common theme. The supreme commanders of orcs/goblins are very often external beings who either created their society, brought it to prominence, or in some cases actually created the species as servants.

I still dont think goblins should have a biological imperative to be assholes, because thats un-fun, but its an interesting thought

Realism isn't really going to matter much anyway.  The main point of DF is to create stories, so the default behavior is going to be built around what will make the best stories.

From a narrative standpoint, the reason why goblins exist in the first place is to be "the evil race". Adventurers and fortresses need things to kill and the goblins provide that.  Elves and dwarves can fight over their ideals but can also make peace; but goblins are pointless if they can be empathized with, so the game is built around ensuring that they are "always chaotic evil".

This is reflected in the raws.  Elves, dwarves, and humans have personality ranges that run the entire spectrum of possible personalities; while elves are on average more vain and laid-back, and dwarves are on average more industrious and greedy, there are always exceptions to every rule.  Goblin personalities, conversely, are more one-note: many of their personality ranges are locked at above or below 50%.  The most altruistic, kindhearted, and calm goblin possible is merely average by human standards.  (Also, the most racist goblin is merely average by human standards, but that's another thing entirely.)  This means that, to the extent distraction affects gameplay, most goblins are indeed "forced" to be cruel.

However DF plays with this by allowing nurture as well as nature to affect a creature's needs.  A "kind" goblin raised in a civilization that values kindness may actually be altruistic.  A more typical goblin raised by the same society may be conflicted internally but may still even out to average.  Furthermore, just because a goblin is cruel and angry by nature doesn't mean they can't be a hero (or antihero at the very least).  Good doesn't have to be nice, and a goblin raised by non-goblins will have no hangups about hunting their own kind...

Personally I think this is a good system.  It enables your typical fantasy guilt-free extermination war (if you're fighting a goblin army from a goblin civ, you can be pretty sure that every last one of them is an asshole through and through) while still allowing the occasional "good" goblin to crop up in a different culture, yet even these "good" goblins will still mostly be noticably "gobliny" as far as their personalities are concerned.  But there can still be exceptions to the rule.

Gamey features like making every single goblin forced to be cruel is less interesting than using personality values to influence their average behavior, since it allows the rare defector (who can be an interesting character simply by virtue of their unexpected nature or internal conflict) while still maintaining the narrative role of the species.

Actually, I personally think (heresy of heresies!) that ALCOHOL_DEPENDENT is also needlessly gamey and would be better off replaced by just making the average dwarf have high immoderation, rather than treating them like some kind of alcohol-powered robot or whatever, but that's just me.

[George_Chickens]

Given the nature of the more spoilery aspects of goblinkind, I don't think it's really apt or fair to compare them to real life societies.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Goblins are minor demons created when a major demon escapes from hell. They aren't a natural race, they are literally fragments of evil specifically designed to carry out the ill will of the escaping demon. For all we know, the demon may rule by magic means of pure fear, for example, making interfering with his war plans, by infighting or other means, more terrifying than following orders. Goblins, due to their demonic nature, may be physically unable to act against the will and plans of their master.

With DF being VERY unfinished, we have no real way to gauge how goblin societies should act other than the little they do now, as in the next coming releases they may drastically change, as they have multiple times.

I'd really like to see goblin society expanded on, though, so we get a conclusion to how it actually runs. But I don't see the point of arguing about it like this, as though DF has some simulation aspects, it is still heavily a fantasy game and deals with things which may not make any realistic sense outside of the boundries set by the game world.

[IndigoFenix]

Did Toady actually say that?  It would explain some things (like why gobs don't eat or drink) but that's a major change from what I would have thought.  I hope it doesn't exclude the possibility of the occasional friendly goblin.