True (sans the bits about the GitP fora, on which I cannot comment).
That is what the strip is lampshading – the whackyness of living in a world where the D&D alignment system is in effect. It doesn’t make sense. I, personally, don’t think it can make sense… as long as you’re using Real World stuff as your frame of reference.
Haley whacking Crystal was mean and nasty, but may not be Evil… because of the whacky D&D alignment system and the implications of goofiness such as raise dead being easily available.
Doing the same thing in the Real World, would definitely be evil.
Fantasy readers in this thread will probably be familiar with Steven Brust’s Draegara series, which doesn’t have an Alignment system, but which does have easily available resurrection. Vlad the assassin sorts out killing by (1) if they’re revivifiable, (2) if they’re not revivifiable, or (3) if their soul is destroyed by a Morghanti blade.
Vlad sees (1) more as sending a message. (2) is a bit more extreme, but he’ll resort to that on occasion. (3) he is really, really reluctant to undertake.
I mention this because Brust based Draegara on his old D&D campaign. That sort of mindset seems wrong, to us, because in our world any type of killing is a bad thing. But for Vlad (and Haley), some types of killing really are worse than others.
Thinking about Haley and whether what she did was evil, I start to nitpick. Haley didn’t jump Crystal in the shower. She knew that she was going to shower and lured her out by knocking on her door. Crystal was standing next to her knife, in a thieve’s guild, listening to Haley’s voice saying that she was someone that Crystal had never heard of, and Crystal still opens the door unarmed. Stupid. Especially for an assassin.
That fits the Crystal character though. She’s not skilled, she just likes to kill. Crystal’s lack of skill and thought is one of the things that bugs Haley. So using Crystal’s stupidity to set her up would leave Haley feeling, I was right, she is too useless to be in her position.
And is anyone else thinking that maybe Haley felt boxed into removing Crystal pro-actively by her recent travels with Celia? The lawful good sylph has been cramping Haley’s moves in a serious way. It’s been leaving her vulnerable. This was a definite plugging of a window of vulnerability. (Maybe more by taking Crystal’s knife and talismans than by killing her.)
And if Crystal is rezzed, it’s fair warning to the guild that the truce is off. A truce that would never have happened if there had been another fighter there instead of Celia. There has been a series of things Celia has done that have hampered or endangered Haley. I say blame Celia.
Turning people in to the authorities has been mentioned. What authority? Even if the authorities are willing to mess with the thieves guild, putting Crystal in a jail cell is just asking for dead guards and Crystal back out with a grudge.
Besides, going to the authorities would be a bigger betrayal of the guild than killing any of them would be. Haley would never do that.
Actually, there was a military coup by Haley, Belkar, and Celia a while back.
Plus, there’s the whole ‘just consent of the governed’ thing.
Again, it ties back into the fact that D&D worlds don’t take place in a universe with rule of law, and that privileges generally reserved for state actors can be rationally claimed by individuals.
Question: How many people who believes that Haley done wrong have watched Firefly (specifically, the Train Job episode)? How do your feelings about Haley’s actions compare to Mal’s when dealing with Crow?
Eh? Military coup? Are you perhaps misremembering the Resistance back in Azure City?
While in Greysky City, they’ve busted in to Grubwiggler’s and puked up the place, went into hiding with Pete, got betrayed and killled lots of flunkies (later rezzed), negotiated a truce with the Thieves’ Guild, busted back in to Grubbwigglers offscreen, and are now leaving having settled a few last details. Oh, and Belkar hooked up with whatshername the Bard.
Evil act, or at least non-good. A good person by D&D’s alignment would never execute a helpless captive, even one blustering as Crystal and Crow did. Doesn’t make him (or Haley) an evil person, though.
I was skimming back through the archives, and I discovered something. You know how Haley occasionally mentally personifies some aspect of her personality (the most common one being her goth self-loathing)? Well, in 319, we meet three more of these personifications. And one of them looks EXACTLY like current short-haired Haley.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any message or foreshadowing there, because the personification in question is “the part of Haley’s brain that is sick of all this emo crap and wants to get back to comedy.”
I would have called what Haley and Belkar pulled off against the Guild a coup. The flunkies were the guild; we’ve seen no evidence that if the party hadn’t accepted the truce, the Guild leadership wouldn’t have been decapitated.
Again, it’s not a matter of great importance; the Guild have even less of a claim on being a legitimate form of government than adventurers do.
Sorry, I don’t recognize any trap scale other than Grimtooth.
Seriously one thing that people have to remember is that D&D’s odd evolution has left a lot of strange artifacts in the rules and as people have blended stuff together over time it has come together oddly.
First edition xp was for collecting gold and beating monsters only. Second took away the gold awards and had a small reference to story awards with no guidelines. Third edition finally added the challenge rating system where it gave GM’s a scale to work from.
It also doesn’t help that the rules define things according to combat. The ruleset is designed for it and so it will be the first tool in the box that the vast majority of players reach for and the game’s moral system justifies it.
I suspect that this is why so many readers reacted so negatively to Celia. She took objection to D&D morality and the flimsy justifications that go along with it.
In retrospect, I’ll concede that foreshadowing is probably closer to what I was thinking than lampshading. Unless there’s a third term that expresses the idea “an incident that happens in a story that doesn’t appear to fit in with the overall story as it was related up to that point but calls enough attention to itself that it seems to be put there for a reason so you think it probably will be related to future events in the story.”
Chekov’s gun is also simular. But my understanding of a Chekhov’s gun is that it is an indication that something is going to happen in the latter part of the story. The situation here (in my opinion) is that the event has happened and now we’re waiting to see the reason it happened. (In story terms. It’s not an issue of what reason Haley had for killing Crystal. The question is what reason did Burlew have for Haley killing Crystal.)
