Have Modrons n' Slaad ever warred with one another?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:36 am

We've got Good Angels vs Evil demons a plenty, but how about wars of Law vs Chaos? On one side we have beings of absolute Law in geometric forms, on the other we have Giant Frog. Both of them aren't taken very seriously either, so it would be pretty goofy to behold.

How could such a conflict begin, and would it have any effect on anyone whose not a sentient die or Giant Frog? Is one side favored to win over the other?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:02 pm

As far as I know, Modrons are purely a Planescape thing. For the Outsiders of Law, you have either the Inevitables (robots) or the Formians (ants).

Pick the latter. Ants vs Frogs. The war between Law and Chaos is now something that could conceivably happen in your yard.

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:10 pm

Can Law and Chaos reunite and give birth to some Frog Robots? Or Robot Frogs?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:32 pm

GâtFromKI wrote:Can Law and Chaos reunite and give birth to some Frog Robots? Or Robot Frogs?

Their interests are goofing off and focusing seriously on hobbies

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:51 pm

GâtFromKI wrote:Can Law and Chaos reunite and give birth to some Frog Robots? Or Robot Frogs?

No.

Koumei wrote:As far as I know, Modrons are purely a Planescape thing. For the Outsiders of Law, you have either the Inevitables (robots) or the Formians (ants).

Not quite. The Modrons are from Gygax days, ironically in the same book as the Formians were presented (although back then, the Formians were not extraplanar and just another flavor of beastman). Formians were elevated to a major planar race in Planescape because there are actually a really tiny number of Modrons and they needed some numerous outsider type to be the primary inhabitants of their Lawful planar cities. Inevitables were introduced in 3rd edition because Modrons are god damned embarrassing and David Noonan was pretty sure he could do better.

-Username17

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 1:21 pm

OgreBattle wrote:How could such a conflict begin, and would it have any effect on anyone whose not a sentient die or Giant Frog? Is one side favored to win over the other?

In the context of D&D's Cosmology and morality, it's really hard to imagine an other war than "Evil vs something".

The planes are infinite and contain infinite ressources; there is no point for Giant Frog to say "hey guys, the sentient dice have something we need, let's invade their plane". And actually, the Giant Frogs probably think that Mechanus is inhabitable, sentient dice probably think that Pandemonium is inhabitable, so why bother at all while both races have an infinite space to explore and colonize?

In the end, the only plausible reason for a planar war in this context is... "War is Evil, we are Evil, so let's do war!". So, planar wars are "Evil vs something".

Since alignments are retarded, you can probably add a "balance vs something" war, because "we were in peace with something for 1500 years, so now we need to make war with something for 1500 years".

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 4:07 pm

There was a big law-chaos war some time back in the early times of DnD's canon.

I had a link to something about it on Planewalker.com but it's not working for whatever reason.

Also, I think it said somewhere in dragon magazine that if two modrons get into a dispute (somehow) they settle it by seeing who can kill the most slaad.

Pixels · Post by **Pixels** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:33 pm

GâtFromKI wrote:The planes are infinite and contain infinite ressources; there is no point for Giant Frog to say "hey guys, the sentient dice have something we need, let's invade their plane".

Quite a few planes are actually very scarce on certain resources. It is likely a lot less work to stage a minor invasion of the Plane of Earth for precious metals and jewels than it is to find them natively in the Plane of Air, even if its infinite nature means there might actually be as much in both planes in a mathematical sense.

There's always good ol' rivalry and misunderstandings and politics and lots of other reasons various factions could war. Heck, Giant Frog might just do it because Giant Frog. The trick is that once you get a very large (or infinite) population moving in a particular direction it can be impossible to get them to stop, e.g. the Blood War.

And now that I think of it, the Blood War is between Chaos and Law - just happens to be specifically Chaotic EVIL and Lawful EVIL, but hey.

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:37 pm

Pixels wrote:Heck, Giant Frog might just do it because Giant Frog.

Seriously? There are still MC who are naive enough to believe a disruptive player saying "I am not Evil, I randomly attack people because I'm Chaotic"? Can I play with your group?

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:42 pm

GâtFromKI wrote:
Pixels wrote:Heck, Giant Frog might just do it because Giant Frog.
Seriously? There are still MC who are naive enough to believe a disruptive player saying "I am not Evil, I randomly attack people because I'm Chaotic"? Can I play with your group?

... or they might go there to feed the homeless.
Or feed on the homeless, as the mood might strike them.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:44 pm

Law could totally want to conquer everyone. What if the law of their land is

:Kill everything that isn't us.
:Assimilate everything that isn't us and can't be killed.
:No rasberry jam on thursdays.
:No stealing.
:Kill all blind people.

Then you have a lawful society of going to war.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:51 pm

GâtFromKI wrote:
Pixels wrote:Heck, Giant Frog might just do it because Giant Frog.
Seriously? There are still MC who are naive enough to believe a disruptive player saying "I am not Evil, I randomly attack people because I'm Chaotic"? Can I play with your group?

They call that old school.

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:06 pm

AndreiChekov wrote:Law could totally want to conquer everyone. What if the law of their land is

:Kill everything that isn't us.
:Assimilate everything that isn't us and can't be killed.
:No rasberry jam on thursdays.
:No stealing.
:Kill all blind people.

If they don't have a law "we are totally non-Evil", they might be considered as a Lawful Evil society.

Anyway, Lawful people aren't required to follow the law. They are only required to follow the Law (which is some undefined stuff and happens to be spelt as "law" with a caps for some reason).

Pixels · Post by **Pixels** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:01 am

GâtFromKI wrote:
Pixels wrote:Heck, Giant Frog might just do it because Giant Frog.
Seriously? There are still MC who are naive enough to believe a disruptive player saying "I am not Evil, I randomly attack people because I'm Chaotic"? Can I play with your group?

Frankly, the morality system as written in D&D is a confusing and contradictory mess, and the exact definition of what 'chaotic' means makes the least sense of the whole sorry lot.

Consequently anything I run tends to ignore alignment as much as possible, which turns out to be always. Disruptive players tend to find some way to be disruptive despite alignment or code of conduct or anything like that, and such systems cannot be relied upon to constrain them.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 2:40 am

GâtFromKI wrote:
Pixels wrote:Heck, Giant Frog might just do it because Giant Frog.
Seriously? There are still MC who are naive enough to believe a disruptive player saying "I am not Evil, I randomly attack people because I'm Chaotic"? Can I play with your group?

Well it's Giant Frog vs FaceDice, it's hard for them not to be silly. The premise of the war can be the giant frogs believe rolling dice is chaotic because it is random while modrons believe dice are orderly because there's statistical odds, they then get into the Meat War over it.

Scrivener · Post by **Scrivener** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 3:09 am

I can't think of D&D cannon Law vs Chaos war, but almost all of Michael Moorcock's books are about Law vs Chaos. The Corum books focused on what happens when Law is too powerful and the Elric and Hawkmoon (I think, they blend together in my head) focus on what happens when Chaos is in ascendancy.

Granted the Law vs Chaos war is all a backdrop for crazy pulp fantasy plots with completely overpowered artifacts for everybody, but if your looking for a good source of how the sides might fight the Corum books are great for that.

That being said, I personally think Giant Frogs have to win, I've lost countless dice, I have never lost a frog.

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:28 pm

AndreiChekov wrote:Law could totally want to conquer everyone.

All under heaven.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 4:33 am

Just to nitpick, Slaadi are Chaotic Evil these days. So Giant Frog is a perfectly valid reason to murder and eat and impregnate things in random order, because Giant Frog.

Meanwhile, the Modrons are not Evil and yet do the great march every x thousand years through the 1st layer of every other outer plane, and just kill everything they happen to run across. Why, you ask? Because it's again time for the great march.

Perfect Law isn't all that different to perfect Chaos. But mostly the Modrons fight with their neighbours and others on Mechanus/Nirvana. Even themselves when it's time.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 4:36 am

tussock wrote: Meanwhile, the Modrons are not Evil and yet do the great march every x thousand years through the 1st layer of every other outer plane, and just kill everything they happen to run across. Why, you ask? Because it's again time for the great march.

ALL OUT PLANAR WAR:

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 7:47 am

tussock wrote:Just to nitpick, Slaadi are Chaotic Evil these days. So Giant Frog is a perfectly valid reason to murder and eat and impregnate things in random order, because Giant Frog.

Only the Death Slaad (and possibly those stupid epic slaad)

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 8:11 am

It's possible that 4E decided to make them Chaotic Evil on the grounds that "Come on, they totally are, you have never seen them presented in a non-evil manner". And while I agree with that statement, that really just shines a light on how dumb the Law/Chaos alignments are, that you actually need to add Evil to make them worth including as enemies.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 8:18 am

Oh, are they evil in 4e? Meh. The real problem is that the entire idea of Chaos and Law being things you "care" about is that it came from (I believe) Moorcock, where he used them in place of and complete synonyms for Evil and Good. Because he was a hipster or something.

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:00 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Oh, are they evil in 4e? Meh. The real problem is that the entire idea of Chaos and Law being things you "care" about is that it came from (I believe) Moorcock, where he used them in place of and complete synonyms for Evil and Good. Because he was a hipster or something.

Actually, in Moorcock's books, both of them are synonyms for "stupid evil". Everyone knows that if one of those forces wins, the world cease to exist, and yet everyone try to make his camp win. Because everyone is stupid. And everyone is evil, because grimdark.

Anyway, as stupid as the alignment war is in Moorcock's books, it still makes more sense than in D&D. After all, they fight for a limited world, not for some unknown reason while already owning an infinite playground.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 2:54 am

I have my own definitions for the Axis of alignment.
Law: you follow rules, personal code, or countries laws.
Chaos: You don't follow rules
Good: you don't kill people unless you have to.
Evil: You kill people whenever you feel like it.

Giant Frog · Post by **Giant Frog** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 3:45 am

FROGFROG FROGFROGFROG GIANTFROGGIANT GIANTFROG GIANTFROGGIANTGIANT GIANTGIANT FROG FROGGIANTFROGFROG GIANTGIANT GIANTGIANTGIANT GIANTFROG FROGFROGGIANT GIANTGIANT GIANTFROG FROGGIANT FROG GIANTGIANTFROGGIANT GIANTFROGGIANT FROGFROGFROG FROGFROGGIANT GIANTFROGGIANTFROGGIANTFROG

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Have Modrons n' Slaad ever warred with one another?

Have Modrons n' Slaad ever warred with one another?

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