Sometimes it’s worth it. Something someone whipped up after V evil ascension.
The alignment system is so central to D’nD, from spells to some character classes. It’s too much work to cut all that out, rather than just play a different system where alignment isn’t built into the fabric of the setting…
The alignment system is built into the game. Mindlessly slaughtering everything with a different alignment from you isn’t. Yes, black dragons are clearly and unambiguously evil, but that doesn’t mean that good characters are expected to indiscriminately genocide them. Why would having a system of describing various behaviors (which is fundamentally all the alignment system is) imply anything of the sort?
Yeah. Assuming V brought the black dragon species across the brink of extinction (which it’s my sense he did), how many other parties did he gank future kills from? It’s incalculable, IMHO.
Hmmmm…I wonder. Did V just kill all the members of the black dragon’s (very) extended family, or did he kill the species?
I think Vaarsuvius should have remembered his own warning from 163.
You’re wrong about how the alignment system works.
I would say it was very mindful slaughtering.
They should, if they can.
You said it yourself - “clearly and unambiguously evil”. That’s good enough for me (in the context of a RPG - the real world, of course, is not as clear-cut.)
That’s* your* opinion on how you’d like it to work. I’ve been playing D’nD for …gods, something like 25 years, now? Suffice to say, I give my experience more weight than your opinion.
Another early dark moment. V’s refusal to help the helpless villagers because it wasn’t his/her job is pretty LE to my mind.
That said, you all credit Burlew with a whole lot based on what’s he’s said his motivations were after the fact. It’s too easy to claim credit that way, and simply bringing back a character’s family (the entire black dragon story) doesn’t prove foresight, merely a healthy sense of what’s gone before. Reread those bits about the juvenile black dragon- there’s no real sense that we’re going to hear about this again. Yes, V’s been headed down a dark path for a long time, but I don’t see any proof that Burlew has this all planned down to the details. He’s got the rough outlines, sure, and I’d believe that he’s got the plot structure pretty well figured out, but I just don’t see any good evidence that he’s got the whole thing planned down to the letter like that.
It’s an honor to meet you, Mr Burlew
Yeah, I admit it: I was barking up the wrong tree. Ah well. It’s all just speculation.
I have to wonder if this was foreshadowing.
Entirely possible, but I doubt Burlew had the black dragon/soul splice stuff worked out by then.
When you create characters for roleplay, the best way to make a solid, playable character is to give them a hook. It can be their reason for adventuring, some dark secret, something that the DM can take and either make a plot out of or weave into the larger story. I guarantee you when Burlew created V, he put V down as having a family whom V cares deeply about and is willing to do anything to protect and provide for. Burlew probably expected early on that V’s family would be put in danger by some villain, but I doubt he knew at the time whether it would be the dragon, Xykon, Miko, or some random band of hobgoblins.
Uh… uh… look, over there, a purple monkey! flees
I’m not him! I… uh… listen, just because I have an occasionally debilitating health problem that holds up my productivity, doesn’t mean… I’m not helping, am I?
Well, I’m female for starters. 
And I’m not sure I’m quite that on target but it doesn’t stop me from arguing that at times!
What a coincidence! I have been playing D&D since I was 17, most of the time as a GM, which makes it an even 25 years of experience, and I find your approach to alignment (“if it is evil, kill it”) rather abhorrent and not conducive to a good gaming experience.
Don’t you think that what you say is perhaps how you think it should work? Interpretations vary, and, honestly… In my gaming experience, a more flexible approach to alignment was way more enjoyable than going Dalek whenever you see something evil.
You said before that you preferred Rolemaster because it didn’t have alignment (or so I interpreted one of your posts). So it seems to me that what you are saying is that your beef is with the alignment system itself.
And, in any case, let us remember that we are not talking “pure” D&D: We are talking about “The Order of the Stick”, a story that, although set in an universe based on D&D, is not 100% D&D. For one, the “good” and “evil” beings in this story are way more complex than that simple descriptor conveys, in my opinion making it legitimate to inject at least a little bit of “real world” morality in our views of what is happening in the story.
To sum up: I think that, once V disposed of the black dragon that hurt his family, V’s further actions were very morally dubious, if not outright evil – To me, they are more a mafia-style vendetta than anything else.
With the added problem that V appears to be enjoying it quite a lot (or so I interpret V’s expression and body language in panels 10 and 11). Whether this is V personally enjoying it, or the three humongously evil souls doing the time-share enjoying it, I don’t know. But I see an element of enjoyment there. And that is not healthy. Dispose of an enemy if you have to. But, annihilating that enemy’s relatives to the N-th degree, relatives that you don’t even know, who have never had any beef with you until then, and enjoying it? That is bad.
And that is my opinion.
JoseB
The details of the storyline seems to fit together too well to just be made up as it goes along. I think Burlew’s telling the truth when he says he pre-plans a lot of what’s going to happen well in advance.
If anything, the alternative would be much more difficult. If Burlew isn’t planning his story out in advance and planting elements he’s planning on using later, then he’s pulling together random elements from his already written story and making them fit into the ongoing storyline.
While you may have some fine points, I’d still rather spend an evening drinking beer, eating nachos, and playing MrDibble’s version of D&D. Can I please keep the navel-gazing philosophy out of my gaming time? Can I kill an orc and get some friggin’ XP already without getting all weepy and moon-eyed about its family life? Thanks.
But of course! As I said in my post, I was talking about my gaming experience and that of most of the people I have tended to play with. Your gaming experience is different? Good for you!
Some people enjoy “Hack & Slash”. Others don’t. And some people will like both “Hack & Slash” and “navel-gazing” at different times. And I have the feeling that all of them are right, because, after all… We game to have fun. And we may find our “fun” in different ways.
I may have sounded too maximalist when I said that MrDibble’s approach felt “abhorrent” to me. I should have understood that many people like it. However, there are many people who don’t like it and that doesn’t make them wrong, either.
But we are not here to talk about gaming styles. We are here to talk about OotS 
And my point about OotS, as mentioned in my previous post, stands: OotS is not a pure D&D story (although it takes place in an universe based on it), its characters are more complex than a simple “good” and “evil” moniker might imply, and there is some justification to inject a little bit of “real world” morality into our interpretations of what we see happening in the story.
(And Vaarsuvius is really screwing things up! So there 
)
JoseB
Fair enough. Pardon my grumping. I’m irritable today for some reason.