[D&D] On Morality [Archive]

andreww

03-23-2007, 04:47 PM

Recently I made the mistake of browsing through the EGG Q&A thread at ENWorld which can be found here (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=171753&page=11&pp=40).

One of the questions put to EGG was the perennial "what do paladins do with baby orcs." You can find the discussion on page 11.

The short answer, raise them to be good people, forcably extraxt confessions from them and then execute them.

If the infant orc was not able to reason, the paladin would not slay it, possibly see to its care somewhere until it reached a state where reason was possible; but if and when the immature humanoid was able to reason, the paladin would make it swear its rejection of evil, confess its adherance to LG, and then execute it before it could recant. Thus the orc would be guaranteed acceptence in a more benign afterlife.

Also, apparently, this is for their own good...

Note that the "converted" evil humanoid" is quite unlikely to remain so, will return to its evil ways, so thus the mercy killing by the paladin to assure that doesn't happen. It is all for the good of the subject of course.

As well as being acceptable amongst the rest of society.

That should pose no problem with those folk of the same persuation as the paladin, as they will understand and agree with that most caring dispatch of a reformed miscreant to a better place.

So, I am curious if this is how most gamers today see Paladins? I would be particularly interested to see how some of the old timers (I'm looking at you Geezer) deal with this issue.

Craig Oxbrow

03-23-2007, 04:51 PM

Flippin' 'eck.

Agent Oracle

03-23-2007, 04:56 PM

Why bother?

Seriously. Why bother trying to argue D&D's arbitrary alignment system?

It's a flippin' game!

If the GM sees fit to present the Paladin with moral quandries in order to make him fall, the player should just have the paladin coup de gras himself and play as a Knight instead. Get to be a right bastard as long as you fight fairly, in accordance with an extremely clearly defined code of conduct.

Now pass the beer & pretzels. I've got a marauding horde to take care of, one more level, and i can have my dire boar mount!

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 05:01 PM

So, I am curious if this is how most gamers today see Paladins? I would be particularly interested to see how some of the old timers (I'm looking at you Geezer) deal with this issue.

I think this issue hinges on the issue of redemption. Are Evil creatures and their offspring free moral agents that might repent and do Good (or at least become Neutral)? If so, then the deserve the same treatment that would be accorded to a human being who can make that choice.

If, however, they are Evil by nature, irredeemable, and lack the capacity to be Good, then I think a Paladin gains nothing by sparing them because their fate is inevitable. You can't even put irredeemable creatures together because they will simply be Evil and cruel to each other. In essence, they are like mortal demons or devils who are Evil incarnate.

Maedhros

03-23-2007, 05:02 PM

So, I am curious if this is how most gamers today see Paladins? I would be particularly interested to see how some of the old timers (I'm looking at you Geezer) deal with this issue.

The paladin's justifications, as described by EGG, are almost identical to those used by Catholic Inquisitors in the middle ages. I, for one, may consider the Inquisition to be Lawful, but by no stretch of imagination would I consider them Good.

The real issue is, of course, this: who cares what EGG says? It is the GMs duty to adjudicate player alignment drift (i.e. "morality"). It's your game - do as you wish.

RSC

03-23-2007, 05:02 PM

Given who said that, I think I have all the ammo I will ever need to argue against alignments.

Goblinardo

03-23-2007, 05:05 PM

Oh, I thought this was about converting nWoD Morality to D&D.

Hmm.... Ravenloft, perhaps?

YorkusRex

03-23-2007, 05:06 PM

Whenever I get confused about D&D alignment morality, I just imagine Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Ghandi arm wrestling shirtless on the back of a killer whale.

In other words, I remember that it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense and deal with it best I can. Also: a drink or two to clear my thoughts.

Opsimath

03-23-2007, 05:06 PM

If an orc is Evil by it's very nature, doesn't this convert-and-execute drill simply act as a metaphysical loophole by which Evil souls are sent to Good afterlives?

Unless, of course, orcs have variable-alignment souls but irredeemably Evil glands, or something like that.

Narcisista

03-23-2007, 05:07 PM

Look, in my opinion, D&D Alignment system is a cosmic prank meant to screw with the heads of any sane gamer who tries to think critically about it.

Just drop it and try not to think if genocide may be morally aceptable in given circunstances...

andreww

03-23-2007, 05:09 PM

Why bother?
But, but, but, pointless circular debates are what the internet is for.

Well, that and pr0n.

Narcisista

03-23-2007, 05:09 PM

Agent Oracle

03-23-2007, 05:09 PM

andreww

03-23-2007, 05:11 PM

If, however, they are Evil by nature, irredeemable, and lack the capacity to be Good, then I think a Paladin gains nothing by sparing them because their fate is inevitable. You can't even put irredeemable creatures together because they will simply be Evil and cruel to each other. In essence, they are like mortal demons or devils who are Evil incarnate.
Yes, but if this is the case surely you are fine to execute the infant there and then. It is objectively evil and will grow up to cause evil deeds. Waiting 10 or 15 years is just delaying the inevitable and risking innocent people being harmed by it.

andreww

03-23-2007, 05:13 PM

The Scribbler

03-23-2007, 05:18 PM

I think "Raise them to be good people" is the only necessary step if the evil is not innate, and dropping them off with someone trusted to raise them like that is a good second.

If they really are innately evil, then effort should be made to have them raised as best as is possible while searching for a means to alter their alignment magically.

But mostly I agree that babies shouldn't read as Evil unless they are, like, demon-babies.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 05:22 PM

If an orc is Evil by it's very nature, doesn't this convert-and-execute drill simply act as a metaphysical loophole by which Evil souls are sent to Good afterlives?

I didn't say that I endorsed Gary's version of things. I'm describing how I would handle it. If they are truly Evil by nature, then they cannot ever honestly repent or convert.

Unless, of course, orcs have variable-alignment souls but irredeemably Evil glands, or something like that.

Oddly enough, I think that's not far from his argument. Another way to put it might be the idea that they are addicted to Evil. But if there is a chance that they won't do Evil, then executing them simply for a high probability doesn't sound very Good to me, especially since the 3.x Good alignment talks about protecting the innocent.

Chaot

03-23-2007, 05:23 PM

Paladin casts Detect Evil on Orc Baby. If Orc Baby reads as Evil, and there is a Law in place for killing Orc Babies, the Orc Baby is dead.

I don't play D&D when I can help it.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 05:32 PM

Yes, but if this is the case surely you are fine to execute the infant there and then. It is objectively evil and will grow up to cause evil deeds. Waiting 10 or 15 years is just delaying the inevitable and risking innocent people being harmed by it.

I'm describing how I look at it. I think what he's trying to offer is a way to save their souls by killing them in a state of Grace, a sort of way to redeem the irredeemable. I think it fails because either you are giving redemption to creatures who don't deserve it or they aren't 100% inherently Evil and have some free moral agency, in which case you are killing an innocent, which is not Good.

Chaot

03-23-2007, 05:36 PM

But for the most part, D&D is a system of moral absolutes. There is some drifting in alignments written into the rules, but is it the Paladin's job to act as a nurturer? He or she is a holy warrior. Give the nurture job to the peaceful Cleric or Druid. The Paladin's job is holy vengeance within the law of his or her deity.

Tzeentch

03-23-2007, 05:40 PM

As several D&D books go to great lengths to explain, morality in the "standard" game is cut and dried, black and white. Some things (and beings) are EVIL and others are GOOD. If a creatures Alignment says "Always X" then any aberrants are, at best, a new type of creature (and some creatures are essentially described as such) and at worst just faking it.

The whole thing has become so ridiculous that I even think WotC has started to back away from the whole mess, as the explanations for how the "good guys" act in places like Forgotten Realms has become pretty outlandish and Eberron in particular doesn't seem to necessarily ascribe to this Absolute Morality.

But RAW (Rules as Written) make it pretty clear that if you Detect Evil on that newborn Orc it will PROBABLY show up as Chaotic Evil (it's important to note that orcs are not "always" an evil alignment) and thus is fair game for a righteous death. Heck you could even use some Feats and spells to make it go faster since it's EVIL INCARNATE in D&D and ripe for some smiting. But because they are not always evil in the current D&D EGG is a bit misguided in his interpretation - but with Absolute Morality most probably err on the side of caution just in case.

As Book of Vile Darkness says (hardly a gold standard for quality material but ...):

This [objective evil] is the straightforward approach taken in the D&D game, and it is the one stressed in this book as well. From this frame of reference, evil can be judged objectively. The evil nature of a creature, act, or item isn’t relative to the person observing it; it just is evil or it isn’t. This clear-cut definition allows spells such as holy smite to work. Conversely, an objective definition of evil exists because the detect evil spell works. Want to know what’s evil? Don’t study a philosophy book, just watch who gets hurt when the cleric casts holy smite. Those creatures are evil. The things they do, generally speaking, are evil acts. If your character still isn’t certain, he can summon a celestial creature or cast a commune spell and simply ask, “Is this evil?” The higher powers are right there, ready to communicate.

If course the BoVD also goes on to say this is for your own good, moral dilemmas are too much for you to handle!

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 05:41 PM

See, i'm a big believer in Nurture overriding Nature. My girlfriend's parents were both in jail for drug trafficing, but she's possibly the most ardent teetotaler I've ever met. Dosn't even drink caffinated beverages.

That's fine when you are dealing with human beings. It can be true for monsters, but doesn't have to be. Recent research into moral decision making and psychopaths suggests that a "conscience" is not something that a sentient creature must have and that a person without a conscience and with an enjoyment of cruelty is pretty much irredeemably Evil. In other words, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to imagine Evil creatures being born as cruel psychopaths, though there are certainly plenty of other reasons why you might not want them to work that way in your games.

The newborn should not read as either good or evil, they should be treated as innocent, and naieve, and neutral.

To the extent that they have animal intelligence, they would likely be Neutral in D&D terms unless alignment resisters their nature. But that still raises the problem of why you are raising them if you know, with 100% certainty, that as soon as they become sentient, they'll be Evil. What's the motive or goal of keeping them alive?

Halfjack

03-23-2007, 05:43 PM

I think this issue is best resolved through experimental play. Paladins in the Vineyard.

Goblinardo

03-23-2007, 05:49 PM

To the extent that they have animal intelligence, they would likely be Neutral in D&D terms unless alignment resisters their nature. But that still raises the problem of why you are raising them if you know, with 100% certainty, that as soon as they become sentient, they'll be Evil. What's the motive or goal of keeping them alive?

Uh, how do you know that? My copy of the SRD says orcs are "often Chaotic Evil", not "always Chaotic Evil" like, say, a succubus.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 05:59 PM

I think "Raise them to be good people" is the only necessary step if the evil is not innate, and dropping them off with someone trusted to raise them like that is a good second.

I think part of the reason why D&D doesn't encourage this is that it puts a huge burden on the players. "You just wiped out the orc village. Congratulations! You are now the proud parents of a half-a-dozen baby orcs that you are obliged to care for!"

If they really are innately evil, then effort should be made to have them raised as best as is possible while searching for a means to alter their alignment magically.

If the game provides a reliable way to alter the alignment of Evil creatures, then it should be used in every case, not just for baby orcs, and Paladins would go out trying to capture Evil to help them.

The problem is that once you humanize Evil monsters and have to deal with them humanely in a game with any moral depth, Paladins cease being butt-kickers for Justice who slay Evil and start becoming police officers and peacekeeping soldiers, raising the whole issue of things like the Geneva Conventions, prisoner rights, excessive force, and all of the other things that make being a police officer and soldier not so fun in real life.

But mostly I agree that babies shouldn't read as Evil unless they are, like, demon-babies.

If you can imagine demon-babies detecting as Evil, then why is it a greater stretch to imagine orc babies detecting as Evil?

andreww

03-23-2007, 06:02 PM

I think this issue is best resolved through experimental play. Paladins in the Vineyard.
Hmm, interesting idea. An all paladin party enforcing law and justice throughout the kingdom.

Sort of like jedi but with broadswords.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 06:07 PM

Uh, how do you know that? My copy of the SRD says orcs are "often Chaotic Evil", not "always Chaotic Evil" like, say, a succubus.

Beyond the fact that the SRD tries to have it both ways, there are two ways to read that. You can read it as "often Chaotic Evil" means that they could be any of the 9 alignments or that they can be any of the 3 Evil alignments. My point is that if you read it as "could be any of the 9 alignments", then killing baby orcs is wrong and killing orcs on sight, without checking their alignment first, is wrong, too. If you read it as "could be any of the 3 Evil alignments" and that they can't be Neutral or Good, then you might be justified killing them all on sight.

For the record, in my D&D campaign, orcs could be any Neutral or Evil alignment so that Paladins could not slay orcs on sight while goblinoids were Evil by nature and could be killed on sight. And in case you think I'm suggesting that killing Evil babies is great fun, the slaughter of a goblin lair, including all of the women and children, even though the women and children were all attacking the party, was probably one of the grimmest scenes in the entire campaign.

Tzeentch

03-23-2007, 06:12 PM

There's an issue of resources (Detect X is a first level Cleric spell) of course. But a devious player can REALLY play havoc with the game world if the DM decides to be anal about Absolute Alignment with one evil, devious, campaign wrecking item that costs a measly 4,000g at the local Magic Itemmart ("Shop Smart, Shop Itemmart!") --- HELM OF OPPOSITE ALIGNMENT (DMG and SRD, in the Cursed Items section. This thing is a One Stop Shop of Brainwashing for GOOD (or evil I suppose ... muhaha). Watch your DMs carefully laid plans disintegrate as you mass convert evil beings to your side (Grapple, put on helmet, Detect Evil, if still Evil remove and redon it on him until he eventually fails his save). Laugh at the spectre of an evil mastermind mass producing these things to lay low his enemies by converting poor commoners into slavering psychopaths!

Helm of Opposite Alignment: This metal hat looks like a typical helmet. When placed upon the head, however, its curse immediately takes effect (Will DC 15 negates). On a failed save, the alignment of the wearer is radically altered to an alignment as different as possible from the former alignment—good to evil, chaotic to lawful, neutral to some extreme commitment (LE, LG, CE, or CG). Alteration in alignment is mental as well as moral, and the individual changed by the magic thoroughly enjoys his new outlook. A character who succeeds on his save can continue to wear the helmet without suffering the effect of the curse, but if he takes it off and later puts it on again, another save is required. The curse only works once; that is, a character whose alignment has been changed cannot change it again by donning the helmet a second time.

Only a wish or a miracle can restore former alignment, and the affected individual does not make any attempt to return to the former alignment. (In fact, he views the prospect with horror and avoids it in any way possible.) If a character of a class with an alignment requirement is affected, an atonement spell is needed as well if the curse is to be obliterated. When a helm of opposite alignment has functioned once, it loses its magical properties.

Strong transmutation; CL 12th; Create Wondrous Item, creator must be 12th level; Price 4,000 gp;Weight 3 lb.

The Scribbler

03-23-2007, 06:13 PM

I think part of the reason why D&D doesn't encourage this is that it puts a huge burden on the players. "You just wiped out the orc village. Congratulations! You are now the proud parents of a half-a-dozen baby orcs that you are obliged to care for!"

Yes, well if you're running a game where orc babies are possibly going to be slaughtered I think it best to make it clear just what sort of action that's going to be.

I guess I mean that if I was playing in a game where decisions like that had to be made, which is more serious than most games I've played in but not all of them, I'd expect the decision to have actual weight and thought and consequences.

If the game provides a reliable way to alter the alignment of Evil creatures, then it should be used in every case, not just for baby orcs, and Paladins would go out trying to capture Evil to help them.

1) There's actually a society devoted to doing just that in Ptolus.

2) There's a difference between a helpless child and a ravening monster. One most likely must be put down rather immediately for your safety or the safety of others, the other presents a more sticky wicket.

3) Such measures do exist in the D&D rules.

4) I agree if such measures were immediately on-hand they probably should be applied in every available circumstance, though it's arguable that some creatures are more deserving of redemption than others.

The problem is that once you humanize Evil monsters and have to deal with them humanely in a game with any moral depth, Paladins cease being butt-kickers for Justice who slay Evil and start becoming police officers and peacekeeping soldiers, raising the whole issue of things like the Geneva Conventions, prisoner rights, excessive force, and all of the other things that make being a police officer and soldier not so fun in real life.

Well, yes. Which is why throwing moral conundrums like the slaughtering of helpless and innocent (if not pure) beings into the mix is a bad idea if you don't want that sort of weight in the game.

If you can imagine demon-babies detecting as Evil, then why is it a greater stretch to imagine orc babies detecting as Evil?

Oh it's not a huge stretch, it's just not the rules of the game. Demons and the like (outsiders for the most part) are innately evil by the rules of the game, but most intelligent humanoids are not.

Also, most innately evil creatures don't reproduce normally.

The Scribbler

03-23-2007, 06:16 PM

Beyond the fact that the SRD tries to have it both ways, there are two ways to read that. You can read it as "often Chaotic Evil" means that they could be any of the 9 alignments or that they can be any of the 3 Evil alignments. My point is that if you read it as "could be any of the 9 alignments", then killing baby orcs is wrong and killing orcs on sight, without checking their alignment first, is wrong, too. If you read it as "could be any of the 3 Evil alignments" and that they can't be Neutral or Good, then you might be justified killing them all on sight.

I don't think I've ever read "often Chaotic Evil" as anything but "they are often raised to be Chaotic Evil." Interesting. Basically it always seemed to me, especially when considering things like the nature of their culture, that it was a function of their society.

andreww

03-23-2007, 06:27 PM

Halfjack

03-23-2007, 06:28 PM

Yes, this had always been my assumption which I was so floored by EGG's comment of "raise them to be good little orcs then chop off their heads."

If that was the case would we not expect some isolated orc societies to show other alignments predominant? I think some orc anthropology is called for.

The Scribbler

03-23-2007, 06:33 PM

If that was the case would we not expect some isolated orc societies to show other alignments predominant? I think some orc anthropology is called for.

I do think that isolated orc societies would likely deviate in some ways. It wouldn't always be alignment, but it would sometimes.

Remember, though, that it's not just immediate environmental pressures... there's also the influence of the race's religion if it mostly worships a god of a particular alignment. And in D&D an entire society of orcs that didn't worship the god of orcs is either going to eventually get in trouble or will have found a new patron.

Nem

03-23-2007, 06:34 PM

I think I'll print and frame this thread under giant gilded scrollwork that reads "Absolute Morality is Doomed".

Goblinardo

03-23-2007, 06:37 PM

Remember, though, that it's not just immediate environmental pressures... there's also the influence of the race's religion if it mostly worships a god of a particular alignment. And in D&D an entire society of orcs that didn't worship the god of orcs is either going to eventually get in trouble or will have found a new patron.

It's not like race portfolio-free gods are scarce in D&D.

Hmm... Kord-worshipping Spartan orcs...

Noon

03-23-2007, 06:40 PM

I want to know what good and evil, as some sort of concepts, do when the pally raises the orc baby and decides to let it live, and the orc baby grows up and dedicates itself to become some mother Teresa like figure.

I mean, what the fuck do the concepts of good and evil do, jump up and down and get really pissed off? WHAT DO THESE ALMIGHTY CONCEPTS ACTUALLY DO IF YOU BREAK THEM????

Why is the pally following 'good' and redeeming/slaying the baby - cause good will spank him if he doesn't? Cause the pally is just like a robot following orders?

Neither is the case.

In D&D its easier to think of good and evil as deseases, like leprosy or something. Each desease enables some actions while blocking others - they each enable what the other blocks.

andreww

03-23-2007, 06:40 PM

If that was the case would we not expect some isolated orc societies to show other alignments predominant? I think some orc anthropology is called for.
Possibly we should form a research team to study orc anthropology across a wide range of different habitats on different game worlds. They would of course need some security, possibly from the military. They could get there using a series of giant inter-connected gates.

Hmm, I am now envisiging a DitV/Jedi/SG crossover of anthropolgist paladins studying indigenous cultures on other worlds and converting them to the "true faith."

Personally I have never been a fan of alignments or absolute good/evil spectrum except as it applies to outsiders. Should I ever run D&D again I will dispense with alignment entirely and make the PC's decide their reactions based on their own observations and prior knowledge of the creatures they are dealing with.

It isnt likely to have much of an impact on many monsters. I dont envisage the average party Paladin politely enquiring of the local vampires membership status in Blood Suckers Annonymous.

It might however make them think twice before charging into the local Hill Giant steading, gutting them and taking their stuff in the absence of some actual hostilities on the giants part.

andreww

03-23-2007, 06:43 PM

I mean, what the fuck do the concepts of good and evil do, jump up and down and get really pissed off? WHAT DO THESE ALMIGHTY CONCEPTS ACTUALLY DO IF YOU BREAK THEM????
In the case of Paladins they take away your shiny cool powers and leave you worse off than a straight fighter of the same level.

In D&D that is not a place you want to be where your life expectancy is measured in equal CR encounters.

Eslington

03-23-2007, 06:44 PM

Question: Who are the EGG?

I think for my next non-Eberron character I'm going to have to play an orc whose tribe was wiped out by adventurers when he was a baby, then passed into the care of a human village by the party's paladin.
Then, a year or two later, he is taken away when another orc tribe shows up to raid the village.
A month or two later, a different party of adventurers comes a-smiting...

You get the idea.
Whenever I get confused about D&D alignment morality, I just imagine Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Ghandi arm wrestling shirtless on the back of a killer whale.

In other words, I remember that it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense and deal with it best I can.I think I've found a new quote for my WotC board sig.

The Scribbler

03-23-2007, 06:47 PM

Halfjack

03-23-2007, 06:51 PM

So maybe the nature/nurture dichotomy is imply not sufficient in D&D precisely because of the source of alignments: factual, physical divinity. That is, we have forces of nature, nurture, and divine intervention. That's a different playing field.

andreww

03-23-2007, 06:52 PM

Question: Who are the EGG?
Gary Gygax, one of the authors of earlier versions of the game. He is considered both a living saint and the devil incarnate by different sections of the gaming hobby.

Chaot

03-23-2007, 06:52 PM

Yes, well if you're running a game where orc babies are possibly going to be slaughtered I think it best to make it clear just what sort of action that's going to be.

True, but by the book, Orcs are often Chaotic Evil. I guess it's up to the DM to decide if all babies in their world start out True Neutral (or Neutral Good for that matter) and develop one way or another. The fact is, all the Paladin has to do is cast Detect Evil. If they turn up as Evil, and the Paladin's god is for smiting Evil, then the Paladin will kill the baby with a clear conscience.

Do I like it? No. Would I play a game like that? No. You say slaughter, but wouldn't a Paladin view it as Holy Vengeance, a Writ from their god, and an act of protecting the forces of Good from an Evil menace?

2) There's a difference between a helpless child and a ravening monster. One most likely must be put down rather immediately for your safety or the safety of others, the other presents a more sticky wicket.

Not if that child is a ravening monster. If the child detects as Chaotic Evil, then the Paladin is in it's rights to kill it. The Paladin is a Holy Warrior whose job it is to vanquish Evil. I don't like it, but that's what you get when you play in a system with moral absolutes.

3) Such measures do exist in the D&D rules.

Yes they do, but is it the Paladin's job to reform misguided individuals? Nope. He's a Holy Smiting Machine.

To a Paladin, it doesn't matter if the condition of Evil is 'ornate' or not. It's an issue of, "is this being Evil?" If it is, the Paladin is within it's rights to smite it, providing there is acceptance of the Law to smite it. If it were illegal to smite orc babies in a given Provence, or if the Paladin's god found smiting orc babies to be unlawful, then the Paladin would be gong against his or her code by doing it.

Have I mentioned that I don't like the Alignment System in D&D?

Noon

03-23-2007, 06:53 PM

Oh wait, I just got it - it's a theory of mind issue.

The people who write up what the pally would do are interested, ie have a RL motive, in following the rules of the game in portraying the world.

That's the player confusing his interest in portraying the world for what a character might want to decide for himself. This is like when your a kid and your mother would decide to dress you in something you thought crappy - to her, the whole thing is done. But obviously she's ignoring what you might decide for yourself. Here the player is 'dressing' the characters actions.

The reason the morals come out entirely skewed is because the player can't identify that they even have a motive to portray the world (perhaps cause their going for immersion), and thus can't see where their motive should end and a fictional characters motives should begin.

Noon

03-23-2007, 07:28 PM

In the case of Paladins they take away your shiny cool powers and leave you worse off than a straight fighter of the same level.

In D&D that is not a place you want to be where your life expectancy is measured in equal CR encounters.
But that doesn't really make the choice for a character as to whether they keep those powers though, does it?

andreww

03-23-2007, 07:33 PM

But that doesn't really make the choice for a character as to whether they keep those powers though, does it?
I am not sure what you mean? It is however late hear and I should have gone to bed a few hours ago so I may be being a bit dim.

Belac

03-23-2007, 07:45 PM

I've always found EGG's rules for alignment (or my understanding of them, anyway) mind-numbingly stupid and creepy. Sorry EGG, but that's my take on it.

I don't want to play an RPG about killing babies. I don't care what EGG says about cosmic good and evil. That's bullshit. I don't run alignments like that. EDIT: There might be absolute good and evil in some of my campaigns, but in my book, an action like that qualifies as evil.

I don't like the idea of inherently evil sentient creatures. Sure, it comes from old fantasy tropes, but a lot of those trends were started by authors who grew up in environments where it was common to believe that sort of thing about real people. I have to study chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and the Holocaust enough as it is; I don't want that shit intruding into my game, and I'll be damned if I play any game that lauds that sort of behavior as heroic, fictional or not. Besides, Bilbo Baggins never murdered baby orcs.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 07:47 PM

Yes, well if you're running a game where orc babies are possibly going to be slaughtered I think it best to make it clear just what sort of action that's going to be.

Oh, absolutely. I had a lengthy discussion about what Evil was going to mean in my game. And it was at the request of the players that they got irredeemably Evil bad guys that they could kill without pause.

I guess I mean that if I was playing in a game where decisions like that had to be made, which is more serious than most games I've played in but not all of them, I'd expect the decision to have actual weight and thought and consequences.

Sure. All I can say is that you should have seen the looks on the faces of my players' faces after they carried out the slaughter of the goblin lair in my game. It was incredibly heavy. And that's even though almost every goblin that they slaughtered, including the children, were killed while attacking the party (the goblin babies in my game were born able to crawl, claw, and bite and matured quickly, otherwise they wouldn't survive live among their own kind very long). I think that witnessing the goblin mothers forcing their own children down the hallway to fight the party in hopes of saving themselves that was part of what made it so awful. And, yes, I had their whole social system worked out to explain how they could survive like that and why.

1) There's actually a society devoted to doing just that in Ptolus.

There were clerics in my game engaged in, for example, a mission to the orcs and the Good church extensively researched Evil creatures, including trying to raise their young to be Good, before declaring them irredeemable.

2) There's a difference between a helpless child and a ravening monster. One most likely must be put down rather immediately for your safety or the safety of others, the other presents a more sticky wicket.

Well, in my game, the goblinoid babies were a lot less helpless than human babies. They could crawl at birth and walk within days and were born with sharp teeth and so forth. They couldn't survive if they weren't born that way. Other goblin children would kill them as easy pickings.

3) Such measures do exist in the D&D rules.

As I said earlier, D&D tries to have it both ways (nature AND nurture) so I felt obliged to step in and make it more consistent. If you are talking about the Atonement spell, there is a distinct choice that has to be made. If you are talking about the goofy helm mentioned earlier in the threat, then alignment is something that can be forced on you.

4) I agree if such measures were immediately on-hand they probably should be applied in every available circumstance, though it's arguable that some creatures are more deserving of redemption than others.

I would think that a really Good paladin or cleric would want to offer redemption to any creature who might take it. And that's why I think that once you introduce redemption, free moral agency, and nurture into the mix, you've created a very complex moral situation at odds with freewheeling slaughter of the enemy.

Well, yes. Which is why throwing moral conundrums like the slaughtering of helpless and innocent (if not pure) beings into the mix is a bad idea if you don't want that sort of weight in the game.

Correct. But it can even be heavy if you have to deal with a single orc captive if orcs can be redeemed. How do you deal with orc captives, even if they are all male warrior types, and even if they are all evil, if they can be redeemed and turned from Evil? If I wanted to keep it light, I'd probably make Evil creatures irredeemably Evil and spawned through some sort of non-biological process like what we saw in the Lord of the Rings movies. The problem is that unless everyone just doesn't think about it, it's difficult to make killing both casual and moral.

Oh it's not a huge stretch, it's just not the rules of the game. Demons and the like (outsiders for the most part) are innately evil by the rules of the game, but most intelligent humanoids are not.

I don't think it necessarily conflicts with the rules, either. According to the D&D 3.5 SRD alignment description, "Being good or evil can be a conscious choice. For most people, though, being good or evil is an attitude that one recognizes but does not choose." So according to the SRD, most people are not free moral agents and most people simply recognize their alignment rather than choosing it. Yes, it's trying to have things both ways (nature AND nurture) but it's clearly favoring nature here.

Also, most innately evil creatures don't reproduce normally.

I don't think that really matters unless a player feels so strongly that behavior is all nurture that they can't wrap their minds around the idea of inborn behavior that's nature rather than a choice.

Rainfall

03-23-2007, 07:51 PM

The alignment system in DnD is open to some interpretation. You're not a slave to it.

One Paladin may slaughter an entire village of orcs and have done the right thing; considering that said village is probably pillaging and torturing everything around it and pretty much every male, female and any child able to walk was fanatically trying to inflict as much damage to him as possible, it can be understood too.

Another Paladin may manage to spare a few kids and have them raised as normal children. That's gonna be hard as hell, the True Neutral neighbors won't be too thrilled about it, but it can be done. He too would have done the right thing.

Yup, the two pallys may very well end up on opposed sides in a conflict. Ain't it fun?:D

Of course the GM can always make an ass of himself and ruin good roleplaying with "AND YOUR GOD TAKES AWAY YOUR POWERS!" to option one and/or two. Luckily I've played with far more clever DM's.

Of course other players haven't been so lucky...

andreww

03-23-2007, 07:57 PM

TOne Paladin may slaughter an entire village of orcs and have done the right thing; considering that said village is probably pillaging and torturing everything around it and pretty much every male, female and any child able to walk was fanatically trying to inflict as much damage to him as possible, it can be understood too.
So in a world with subjective morality and free choice you would consider it acceptable for a paladin to kill a humanoid infant or an adolescent with a pointy stick trying to defend his home and family from you?

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 08:04 PM

I don't want to play an RPG about killing babies. I don't care what EGG says about cosmic good and evil. That's bullshit. I don't run alignments like that. EDIT: There might be absolute good and evil in some of my campaigns, but in my book, an action like that qualifies as evil.

What is the purpose of sparing a baby orc or goblin if it will inevitably grow up to be a cruel and murderous adult? I'm honestly curious about your answer.

I don't like the idea of inherently evil sentient creatures. Sure, it comes from old fantasy tropes, but a lot of those trends were started by authors who grew up in environments where it was common to believe that sort of thing about real people. I have to study chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and the Holocaust enough as it is;

Something to consider...

What made chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and the Holocaust so awful was that the victims were never inherently Evil or as bad as those justifying those practices claimed that they were. But the reason why those arguments were used against the victims was that if they were true, the actions justified by the claims are not entirely unreasonable nor irrational. (ADDED: Please note that I am not saying that I'd personally endorse them even if they were true -- I wouldn't but I could understand how someone might.)

In other words, would you want an orc living next door to you if knew the odds were good that they'd rape your wife or daughter the first chance they got? Would you want a goblin living next door to you if you knew they hungered to east human flesh as surely as an alcoholic hungers for a drink?

And, yes, that looks and feels very dirty and racist because it's seeing a sentient creature in the same way a racist sees those they hate and it's reacting to them the same way that a racist reacts to those that they hate. For all intents and purposes, it's justified racism. And I can understand why someone wouldn't want anything to do with that in their games.

I don't want that shit intruding into my game, and I'll be damned if I play any game that lauds that sort of behavior as heroic, fictional or not.

In the game I ran, it wasn't lauded as heroic. It was treated as a grim but necessary duty, like shooting a horse with a broken leg because you can't help it get better. As I mentioned, the slaughter of goblin women and children was one of the grimmer battles in the campaign I ran. Players or characters who enjoy killing orc babies would be troubling.

Besides, Bilbo Baggins never murdered baby orcs.

According to the Lord of the Rings movies, there conveniently weren't any baby orcs.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 08:06 PM

So in a world with subjective morality and free choice you would consider it acceptable for a paladin to kill a humanoid infant or an adolescent with a pointy stick trying to defend his home and family from you?

Why limit it to infants and adolescents? If any humanoid surrenders to you in a world with subjective morality, on what grounds do they warrant a summary execution rather than humane treatment and a trial?

andreww

03-23-2007, 08:07 PM

According to the Lord of the Rings movies, there conveniently weren't any baby orcs.
A minor nitpick but I dont believe you will find baby orcs anywhere in the books either.

andreww

03-23-2007, 08:09 PM

Why limit it to infants and adolescents? If any humanoid surrenders to you in a world with subjective morality, on what grounds do they warrant a summary execution rather than humane treatment and a trial?
I would say that in a psedu european medieval society if the orcs/vikings/barbarians come into your village raiding and pillaging you probably arent going to try and capture them and put them on trial. You are going to try and drive the attackers away and protect your homes.

That is very different from following them back to their village and putting every last man, woman and child to the sword.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 08:19 PM

I don't think I've ever read "often Chaotic Evil" as anything but "they are often raised to be Chaotic Evil." Interesting. Basically it always seemed to me, especially when considering things like the nature of their culture, that it was a function of their society.

At that point, aren't orcs just humans that look different? Why not just make them humans at that point? And isn't it even more disturbing and racist if orcs are essentially human but get treated as sub-human by characters because they look different?

It all depends on what purpose you want orcs to serve in your game, what you want them to be a metaphor for, and so on. And the only way to eliminate all of the heaviness is to just not think about it because once you think about it, it's going to be heavy somewhere, no matter what you do because morality is funny that way.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 08:23 PM

A minor nitpick but I dont believe you will find baby orcs anywhere in the books either.

Agreed, but the movie vividly illustrates them as definitely not even existing at all. (A perfectly fine solution to the problem, too.)

andreww

03-23-2007, 08:24 PM

And isn't it even more disturbing and racist if orcs are essentially human but get treated as sub-human by characters because they look different?
Why is it racist to model a scenario in which less develped socities are exploited by or overrn by more developed ones.

This is pretty much what history has taught us and if you are including within your game a moral dimension I dont see a problem in including such elements.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 08:25 PM

I would say that in a psedu european medieval society if the orcs/vikings/barbarians come into your village raiding and pillaging you probably arent going to try and capture them and put them on trial. You are going to try and drive the attackers away and protect your homes.

That is very different from following them back to their village and putting every last man, woman and child to the sword.

So you can only attack the orcs and goblins and so forth that attack you, first? While that's an interesting way of looking at it, it kinda throws a wrench into the classic D&D dungeon structure, doesn't it?

Scurrilous

03-23-2007, 08:26 PM

It's a nasty can of worms, but one needs to keep in mind that EGG's alignment morality draws strongly on his religious background. Keep in mind that there are several divinely mandated genocides in the old testament when reading the D&D alignment system.

People always look at me funny when I describe D&D as a morality play written by a Jehovah's Witness, but that's exactly what it is. The alignment system is very much intended to raise moral questions.

Nikis-Knight

03-23-2007, 08:30 PM

Interesting thread. I browse DnD books, but haven't read them in depth. The morality described by the OP is a bit of an immature, or at least odd view of absolute morality.
Absolute morality can exist without intelligent creatures being entirely good or evil. It is actions that are good or evil; individuals are the sum of their actions, and none are entirely one or the other.
Men (elves, orcs, etc.) can be evil enough, or rather have commited enough evil, to be judged and sentenced and executed, and likewise can have done enough good to be lauded and emulated.
But babies of any inteligent species should be viewed as innocent, with futures open to them in which they may turn to good or evil or more likely some uneven measure.
Now it's concievable for some species, even some humanoid-looking species like orcs, to not be moral actors, i.e., to have their every instinct to be violent and be incable of learning a moral code. These creatures would not be evil, but simply be monsters or beasts acting out their nature, and could be killed with a clean conscience if necessary.

Anyway, that's how I'd run it.

By the way, I wrote a (very) short story on exactly the subject described here. Sheelba (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Sheelba_%28Leader%29#Civilopedia)

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 08:32 PM

Why is it racist to model a scenario in which less develped socities are exploited by or overrn by more developed ones.

Are you asking me whether it's racist to model such a scenario in a game or whether it's racist to declare such actions Good by the objective alignment of the setting and the sort of things that Paladins should do, being on the side of Angels in the matter?

See the games Power Kill and Violence for details about why the latter is messed up.

This is pretty much what history has taught us and if you are including within your game a moral dimension I dont see a problem in including such elements.

I don't have a problem with the elements. I do have a problem with calling such elements Good in accordance not only with my own morality but the definition provided by the SRD.

Reynard

03-23-2007, 08:40 PM

Blizzardborn

03-23-2007, 08:51 PM

I know something about that, since I'm in a playtest of a slimmed down D&D that lacks alignment (among other things).

Detect evil, Magic Circle against evil, protection from evil, Holy Aura, holy word, holy smite and their axial kin can actually be easily dropped. DJ says he could keep the Hallow and Unhallow as is, because alignment is only a part of the spell.

Paladins are long gone, but that's because a cleric/fighter is often a better build.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 09:09 PM

First and foremost, I believe the "orc babies" scenario to be DM asshattery at its most disgusting level. While i am sure that there'll be droves to come along and tell me I am wrong, i have never, ever seen that tactic used by a DM who wasn't being a complete dick to his players. It's stupid.

It depends on what the players and GM want out of the game and setting. If they are looking for a rollicking light game without any heavy moral issues, then you are probably correct. If they are looking for a morally deep and ecologically plausible setting that supports a high degree of verisimilitude and so forth, than asking where orcs come from and expecting orc villages and camps to contain women and children isn't only reasonable but desirable.

That being said, there's a whole range of issues that need to be considered for any moral quandries in D&D. the first is, obviously, how the group views alignment. Is it inherent? is it absolute? Is it a fundamental function of the cosmos? next up is morality (as being distinct from alignment). Is the morality a modern perspective? Is it a pre-modern one? Because, you know, if it is the latter then genocide can still be a perfectly lawful good act.

I'd argue that calling genocide "good" isn't going to make the players feel like it is unless the context is changed. That leads to the idea that Good and Evil are a sort of "team jersey" identifying two teams, neither of which is particularly the good guys in the battle.

The last time there was an alignment discussion here, I took an absolutist stand. During the course of that discussion, though, I re-read the alignment text and associated rules and came to the conclusion that D&D doesn't even know what alignments are.

I don't think that's entirely true. I think that there is some waffling to give GMs room to spin it however they want but it's pretty clear that Good is altruistic and takes personal risks to help the innocent while Evil is proactively murderous and/or cruel, with Neutral a self-interested but not cruel band between the two. In practice, I think that's an entirely workable way to define Good and Evil, even if some people won't like the categories that certain deeds and people get put in to.

The Scribbler

03-23-2007, 09:26 PM

At that point, aren't orcs just humans that look different? Why not just make them humans at that point? And isn't it even more disturbing and racist if orcs are essentially human but get treated as sub-human by characters because they look different?

Other than some far-out variations on races, I usually don't think of them as anything other than a physically distinct race that is otherwise just a strongly defined culture that the civilized world finds monstrous when it comes to D&D. To be honest, most of the humanoid races are only really alien if you make them that way; as they are presented in the game most simply have different body types, specialties, deities, and cultures that reflect these three things.

The Scribbler

03-23-2007, 09:31 PM

So you can only attack the orcs and goblins and so forth that attack you, first? While that's an interesting way of looking at it, it kinda throws a wrench into the classic D&D dungeon structure, doesn't it?

I've never played in a game that displayed monstrous races as anything other than completely aggressive and antagonistic where I felt comfortable playing as an adventurer who slaughters first and asks questions later. Well, unless my character himself was something less than a hero.

If the bad-guys are more than 2-dimensional, then no you shouldn't be attacking them unless they have (directly or indirectly, through threats/past action/etc.) attacked you first if you want to call yourself the good-guy.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 09:39 PM

If the bad-guys are more than 2-dimensional, then no you shouldn't be attacking them unless they have (directly or indirectly, through threats/past action/etc.) attacked you first if you want to call yourself the good-guy.

And what do you tell the boy whose parents were slaughtered by the marauding orcs that you are about to go hunt down and kill when he asks you why you didn't do anything about the orcs until after they killed his family?

Rainfall

03-23-2007, 09:47 PM

So in a world with subjective morality and free choice you would consider it acceptable for a paladin to kill a humanoid infant or an adolescent with a pointy stick trying to defend his home and family from you?

I honestly don't know why I even bother to answer. But I might as well try to do so for the three people who aven't left this thread in disgust yet.

We're talking about a species that pertty much lives on the destruction of others, that worship some god of slaughter and gets kicks corrupting their environment as much as possible. Subjective morality and free choice my ass, if played right those creatures have been raised from infancy to kill stuff.

Taking their kids and raising them in a more healthy environment probably would work, but it's not gonna help you when the entire village attacks you. Oh and they'll really enjoy torturing you to death if YOU surrender. What are you gonna do now, let them continue to destroy everything around them?

Hint; Pally's probably don't need to slaughter neutral orcs. They're too few and busy to bother with such nonsense. If you don't get it, you should probably stick to other games.

And what do you tell the boy whose parents were slaughtered by the marauding orcs that you are about to go hunt down and kill when he asks you why you didn't do anything about the orcs until after they killed his family?

How about putting yourself between the orcs and the boy's familly when the orcs come in the first place? Being Good is not being Stupid after all.

Coyraven

03-23-2007, 09:59 PM

It depends on what the players and GM want out of the game and setting.

That is true, but also to be fair- D&D isn't built for weighty or deeply moral games. The same way it is is not a engine to create a "realistic" fantasy society, or to act as a lifelike combat simulator.

It can be played as a soul searching experience. I know, I have played in quite a few games, but it takes some willful ignoring of fundamental parts of the system to do it--- often alignmnet. Or, at the very least, a reduction in its importance.

I think Reynard is right. The whole scenario doesn't often come up-- unless it is a dm being a jerk about a player having a paladin. If isn't an orc baby, then it is something else.

Moreover, for all the people who use the orc baby argument to decry D&D-- from what I see of actual play, anecdotes, and etc .. the type of scenario doesn't often comes up in their games either.

CR

ShanG

03-23-2007, 10:03 PM

Gloombunny

03-23-2007, 10:10 PM

RobertFisher

03-23-2007, 10:10 PM

Here's how I'd handle it:

1. Don't put orc babies in the game. Even better, leave the orcs out completely.

2. If I'm DMing, don't pick a version of D&D that includes Paladins. If I'm playing, don't play a Paladin.

3. Don't take D&D alignment so seriously.

John Morrow

03-23-2007, 10:23 PM

Is that situation at all different if it was marauding humans rather than orcs?

No.

It's certainly legitimate to require a real and present danger before a good character can attack. My point is simply that sometimes waiting for a real and present danger can result in victims and makes the Paladin more reactive than active. That might not be a bad thing but it can leave moral issues behind every bit as sticky as the orc baby problem.

Metallian

03-23-2007, 11:36 PM

Sort of like jedi but with broadswords.

That is very much how Paladins worked in my D&D campaign. An order of wandering warrior/diplomats (they have Diplomacy and Sense Motive as class skills, after all) who foreswear all earthly claims to land or titles (if of noble birth) or gods. Their powers stemmed from their sheer dedication to serving the common good (as the PHB says, "A Paladin need not devote herself to a single deity - devotion to righteousness is enough."), though I house-ruled that even serving a LG god was seen as a potential cause for conflict since a god is just one individual with its own interests. They were expected to be humble, wise, and good examples (Charisma being a key skill) to people they served and protected.

Yes they do, but is it the Paladin's job to reform misguided individuals?

Heh, in my campaign it was not required of Paladins, but it was encouraged. Eliminating a threat is beneficial to society. Turning a threat into an ally not only removes the threat, but actually adds to society. Obviously, this is not always practical or safe, the Paladins are expected to use their judgment.

When the (Half-Orc raised by humans) Paladin in my campaign took the Leadership feat, I used a bunch of reformed minor villains he had "straighted out" in the past as his followers. Some of them had met up with one another and appreciated what he had done for them, so they sought him out to help him with his work.

I don't think it necessarily conflicts with the rules, either. According to the D&D 3.5 SRD alignment description, "Being good or evil can be a conscious choice. For most people, though, being good or evil is an attitude that one recognizes but does not choose." So according to the SRD, most people are not free moral agents and most people simply recognize their alignment rather than choosing it. Yes, it's trying to have things both ways (nature AND nurture) but it's clearly favoring nature here.

"Not a conscious choice" does not always imply "nature." People get "programmed" to a great extent by their parents and their society. I imagine this would be even more true in an isolated tribal culture. I have picked up various habits from my parents, but I never actually sat down and chose them per se, nor do I think they are inborn traits I inherited.

Anyway, as for Orcs, the current Monster Manual rates them as "Often" Chaotic Evil. Not "Always" or even "Usually." The glossary defines this as: "The creature tends toward the given alignment, either by nature or nurture, but not strongly. A plurality (40-50%) of individuals have the given alignment, but execptions are common." (emphasis mine)

Orcs do not have the "Evil" subtype (like Demons or Devils), and while their description does not specifically state that their tendency to "Often" be evil is not inborn, there is a section on Orc Society that goes on about how their culture and religion promote Chaotic Evil behavior.

To me, this strongly implies that there is a very good chance that you could raise an Orc baby to be any alignment. This would not be true in, say, Middle-Earth, and it might not have been true in prior editions of D&D, but I think it would be true in the current edition of D&D.

That having been said, unloading a large number of any kind of babies on a bunch of PCs is kind of obnoxious. One orc baby is an interesting dilemma, a bunch of orc babies is a logistical headache.

The Metallian

Metallian

03-23-2007, 11:43 PM

confess its adherance to LG, and then execute it before it could recant. Thus the orc would be guaranteed acceptence in a more benign afterlife.

By this rationale, wouldn't it be good to execute all LG people you met, just in case they might turn evil later...??? It's for their own good! They'll be in a better place!

The Metallian

John Morrow

03-24-2007, 12:01 AM

"Not a conscious choice" does not always imply "nature." People get "programmed" to a great extent by their parents and their society. I imagine this would be even more true in an isolated tribal culture. I have picked up various habits from my parents, but I never actually sat down and chose them per se, nor do I think they are inborn traits I inherited.

Correct, and you can treat orcs that way but then we are back to funny looking people.

Anyway, as for Orcs, the current Monster Manual rates them as "Often" Chaotic Evil. Not "Always" or even "Usually." The glossary defines this as: "The creature tends toward the given alignment, either by nature or nurture, but not strongly. A plurality (40-50%) of individuals have the given alignment, but execptions are common." (emphasis mine)

Correct, again. But if that means that at least 50% are not Chaotic Evil and let's say that half of those aren't Evil at all, that gives us 25% of orcs which are Neutral or even Good. How many settings and campaigns portray them that way? I'm not saying that it can't be done but how many do?

Orcs do not have the "Evil" subtype (like Demons or Devils), and while their description does not specifically state that their tendency to "Often" be evil is not inborn, there is a section on Orc Society that goes on about how their culture and religion promote Chaotic Evil behavior.

The problem is that the "Evil" subtype is even more of a mess. It says, "Evil outsiders are also called fiends. Most creatures that have this subtype also have evil alignments; however, if their alignments change, they still retain the subtype. Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is. The creature also suffers effects according to its actual alignment." So the subtype doesn't necessarily equal the alignment, and vice versa.

Again, you can play it entirely cultural but that raises all sorts of other sticky moral issues whenever you capture an orc and so forth.

To me, this strongly implies that there is a very good chance that you could raise an Orc baby to be any alignment. This would not be true in, say, Middle-Earth, and it might not have been true in prior editions of D&D, but I think it would be true in the current edition of D&D.

A GM can put whatever spin they want on it. So where are all the Good orcs, then?

That having been said, unloading a large number of any kind of babies on a bunch of PCs is kind of obnoxious. One orc baby is an interesting dilemma, a bunch of orc babies is a logistical headache.

It depends on why the players are playing. One groups obnoxious logistical headache is another group's interesting adventure.

Belac

03-24-2007, 12:04 AM

I don't have a problem with the elements. I do have a problem with calling such elements Good in accordance not only with my own morality but the definition provided by the SRD.
WHOA! jensun said that, not me. You put the wrong name in your quotation. Just wanted to clear that up.

Anyway, back to what I was saying...I've gotten into this discussion before, and I'm going to try to make a clear and concise argument for once (although John Morrow already touched on what my feelings are.)

John Morrow:
I am not arguing that it would be morally wrong to kill an orc child if that child was automatically going to be a homicidal maniac. I am arguing that I do not want to play a game with a lot of that content in the first place. I don't mind throwing in a few "living killing machine" monsters or an edgy moral problem here and there, but I don't want it to be the focus of my entire game, and I don't want it to be casual.

Your example of the goblins is fine with me, for one big reason. I know that you didn't portray the slaughter of goblin children as a fun activity. On the other hand, I don't know that about EGG. It certainly seems a lot more casual for him. Yes, I'm basically questioning EGG's real-life morality. Has he ever specifically said that D&D alignments are completely opposite what his real moral ideas are? I've always heard that D&D's alignments were inspired by Gygax's real beliefs.

I'm also saying that I find racial alignments stupid in a game sense, much like I feel that Kevin Siembieda's dog boys, glitterboys, and dead boys have stupid names. It's a matter of personal preference there.

So, I have both a slight moral problem with playing games that I feel are about fantasizing about being a champion of Aryan racial purity (with real races replaced with fantasy equivalents that serve the same functions) and a much more concrete objection of the basis of style and gaming preference.

I am much happier with the Eberron-style creatures that choose their own morality than I am with the Gygaxian inherently evil races. They're more interesting characters, and they don't make me feel weird about gaming.

Oh, and I would argue that despite the way many people choose to run them in their own campaigns, Tolkien's orcs and _official_ D&D orcs are not the same thing. The movie version of Tolkien's orcs were zombie-like bioweapons and the novel versions were similar. D&D orcs (and other evil humanoids) seem much more human-like, even in older editions.

EDIT: And before someone says "It's just a game, you're taking it too seriously" to me, I have a response. I'm not really taking this very seriously. We're discussing a topic and I'm killing time and trying to explain my arguments, but this is not something I actually take very seriously. Even actual racist games like FATAL and RaHoWa register somewhere around position #10 billion on my list of bad things I'm concerned about. The problem of my discomfort with possible racist overtones in D&D is infinitely less important to me than the fact that I want to eat a microwavable pizza right now but don't want to put in the effort to walk five feet and get one.

Pillsy

03-24-2007, 12:09 AM

Why limit it to infants and adolescents? If any humanoid surrenders to you in a world with subjective morality, on what grounds do they warrant a summary execution rather than humane treatment and a trial?
On what grounds do they warrant summary execution even in a world with objective morality? D&D alignment, at least for humanoids instead of undead and demons and the like, is mostly about moral outlooks and values. Just because there's an objective moralty doesn't mean the goodies should go around killing people just because they have a shitty attitude.

Paladins go around protecting the innocent (being good) and punishing the guilty (being lawful), but you can be evil and innocent or good and guilty. A paladin would be honor-bound to protect you in the first instance and punish you in the second. His magical ability lets him ascertain whether someone's evil but not whether someone deserves punishment.

Where the difference comes in is the harshness of punishment. A paladin would be justified in being more lenient with a good criminal than with an evil one.

Agent Oracle

03-24-2007, 12:10 AM

This is stupid.

Helmet of Opposite Alignment. Duh.

Think, Paladin. Think.

Bah, mere DC 15 will save negates. Scarcely usable against any caster over level 2.

Though they rarely get captured anyway...

ShanG

03-24-2007, 12:17 AM

Bah, mere DC 15 will save negates. Scarcely usable against any caster over level 2.

Though they rarely get captured anyway...

Against infants, though? And Orcs to boot?
Going with this assumption that baby orcs are actually evil.

Besides, stuff like Temporary Wisdom Damage or penalties to the saving throw can take care of anybody else who you might want to use it against.

Pillsy

03-24-2007, 12:18 AM

SuperG

03-24-2007, 12:18 AM

Here's what I think of... the scene in an Eddings novel where a main character (Polgara) actually does kill an infant. A demonspawn, which /was/ irredeemably evil, and was going to grow up to be an utterly invincible monster.

That would be justified. THAT is a baby that detects as Strongly Evil.

Other babies detect as neutral. Even the demon baby doesn't have an evil alignment, it simply is MADE of evil. The succubus Paladin that showed up in an online article covers this nicely: redemption IS possible for any creature.

However, that doesn't mean they have a /right/ to be given the chance if they've done evil (you can certainly give them a chance, but there is no obligation for a good character to decide either way).

As for orc babies... I don't know what D&D games you people play, but I've never been in a game where we attacked a /village/. We attacked armies and warbands.

So. Evil =/= can kill at will. A Paladin should not fall for killing a being who detects as (strongly) evil if the being in question is in a position to be dangerous imminently... but Paladins are allowed to leave Evil alive.

The code says they may not /befriend/ them, they can't just turn a blind eye to evil. That is, however, all.

Paladins are not just smiting machines. Diplomacy is on the class skill list for a reason: they are ALSO ambassadors for good. Yes, redemption IS something they can help along.

SuperG

03-24-2007, 12:22 AM

So you can only attack the orcs and goblins and so forth that attack you, first? While that's an interesting way of looking at it, it kinda throws a wrench into the classic D&D dungeon structure, doesn't it?

Not so much... often, the monsters will attack you first. Also, it's more like killing the guards in a fortress - you're in the dungeon for a reason.

It's when you kill them rather than let them surrender that things get sticky.

Metallian

03-24-2007, 12:38 AM

Correct, again. But if that means that at least 50% are not Chaotic Evil and let's say that half of those aren't Evil at all, that gives us 25% of orcs which are Neutral or even Good. How many settings and campaigns portray them that way? I'm not saying that it can't be done but how many do?

Eberron springs to mind (admittedly, Eberron breaks the mold in a lot of ways), but I'm not very familiar with how current Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk products portray orcs in the world.

In my own campaign, there were some tribes of predominantly Neutral (on the good/evil axis) orcs in the large area dominated by orc tribes. They tended to work together better and be more productive than the Chaotic Evil orcs. They were also capable of limited trade with other societies. On the other hand, they were less savage in battle and did not have lots of juicy plunder. Since their lands were not particularly fertile, this tipped things slightly in favor of the evil orcs.

The problem is that the "Evil" subtype is even more of a mess. It says, "Evil outsiders are also called fiends. Most creatures that have this subtype also have evil alignments; however, if their alignments change, they still retain the subtype. Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is. The creature also suffers effects according to its actual alignment." So the subtype doesn't necessarily equal the alignment, and vice versa.

True, even the Evil subtype isn't a guarantee of Evil alignment, but IMO it indicates an inborn tendency as opposed to a simple cultural tendency amongst members of that species. For example, you could slap a Helm of Opposite Alignment on a demon and make it Good, but the substance of its body is still suffused with Evil Planar Essence and it retains its vulnerability to Holy weapons and so on. (Orcs are definitely not like that in current D&D.) I can't think of any examples I've seen of non-Evil "Evil subtype" creatures that weren't portrayed as bizarre and truly exceptional cases.

Personally, I tend to consider creatures of the Humanoid Type to be more like "funny-looking humans," and give them the benefit of the doubt unless it's explicitly stated that they have an "inborn" tendency to a certain alignment. Outsiders are at the other extreme, since they can actually be made up of the essence of aligned planes ("made of evil," if you will). The others "Types" fall on a scale depending on how far removed they are from Humans...again, unless they are specifically described as being more or less Humanlike than their Type would indicate.

The Metallian

insomniac

03-24-2007, 01:17 AM

Well, in the end, it all depends on how the evil races work in the campaign. The way I see it, there are three basic possibilities:

Orks are inherantly Neutral, but the culture & god are Evil. The result of this is, if a froathing ork comes at you with an axe, you can dispatch it without worrying about the moral justifications of the action. Even a whole villiage of ork warriors is, really, just waiting for their next chance to pilliage and slaughter, so it's a good deed to kill them before they get the chance. Babies, though, haven't picked up their culture's evil ways, so leaving them to be raised at the St. Cuthbert orphanage will most likely get you LG orks. Even adults are redeemable, if they choose to be, but trying to convert all of them will just result in a lot of dead townfolk while you're not putting the marauding orks to the sword. This seems like D&D as written.

Orks are inherantly and irredeemably Evil. Maybe they spring from the ground where human blood was spilled in great amounts. Maybe they were the creation of an evil god or wizard as nothing more than sentient killing machines, and are 'programed' at the core of their being to slaughter and rape. Maybe they're really animals, who are bright enough to form social structures and make complex weapons, but don't have the moral agency to choose not to be evil. Whatever the reason, redemption is an excersise in futility, and the only way an ork is bennefiting the world around it is if its rotting corpse is useful as fertilizer. A useful house interpretation if you want to have ork-slaughters without any moral compunctions.

Orks are inherantly but redeemably Evil. They inherantly have brutal, cruel, violent urges, but they do have the moral authority to decide whether or not to act on them. The vast majority of orks do give in, becoming the wicked monsters that desperately need a party of adventurers to show up and wipe them out, but a few (for whatever reason) see the light, and try to turn their back on their evil ways. I'd steal from C:tD's Kithbook: Redcaps for advice on Good and Neutral orks in this case; they act as either jokes or badasses. The 'jokes' spend their lives trying to fit in with good people by acting as un-orklike as they can, to convince everyone (including themselves) that they're no threat. They tend to be miserable, and usually wind up giving in to their base urges sooner or later. 'Badasses' are the ones who take their primal ork instincts, bottle them up, and never, ever give an inch. They're constantly in complete control of themselves, and watching for a slip, fully aware that, if they do, people will die. They hold themselves completely in check, holding down all the building agression until they find someone who deserves their rage--and then, every bit of repressed violence is let out against his enemies. Useful for some ethical dilemias and tortured heroes.

Any could probably work, in ways that lend themselves better to world-building than "never encounter baby orks." Which works best depends on campaign and style. Just my two cents.

wise_owl

03-24-2007, 01:32 AM

I realize that this might be tangental to the discussion of subjective/objective morality and so forth; But isn't killing a creature that can't defend itself inherently non-good? Might one even say Evil? I mean I expect Paladins to accept surrender even when the surrender is quite obviously a ruse from an Evil despot only looking for his chance to escape and begin his reign of terror anew. That's what being a Paladin means; Taking it on the Chin for your High and Lofty beliefs. To my mind a Paladin could never kill an infant period, even if it radiated primordial evil to a degree that caused the Paladin's eyes to bleed.

insomniac

03-24-2007, 01:37 AM

That sounds pretty Lawful Stupid to me, there. Paladins are holy warriors, and while they are there to uplift the good, notice that their powers tend toward finding and destroying evil. I see no reason that a paladin is obligated to let more innocents be slaughtered because the bad guy made an insincere promise.

Eric Tolle

03-24-2007, 01:40 AM

So in a world with subjective morality and free choice you would consider it acceptable for a paladin to kill a humanoid infant or an adolescent with a pointy stick trying to defend his home and family from you?

Do you mean something like this (http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/art/a/n/andersson/blood_of_vengeance.jpg.html)?

(Sorry, couldn't resist- it IS a direct riff on te issue raised by this thread.)

John Morrow

03-24-2007, 03:15 AM

But isn't killing a creature that can't defend itself inherently non-good? Might one even say Evil?

So does that mean that you think a Paladin would be against any executions and thus anti-death penalty?

Keefe the Thief

03-24-2007, 03:55 AM

So does that mean that you think a Paladin would be against any executions and thus anti-death penalty?

Oh boy... This will end in fla... Wait, it already has! ;)

andreww

03-24-2007, 04:06 AM

So you can only attack the orcs and goblins and so forth that attack you, first? While that's an interesting way of looking at it, it kinda throws a wrench into the classic D&D dungeon structure, doesn't it?
Yes, which is IMNSHO a good thing.

I don't have a problem with the elements. I do have a problem with calling such elements Good in accordance not only with my own morality but the definition provided by the SRD.
OK, I see what you are saying now and I would agree. Some of the reviews I have read of the Book of Exalted Deeds have really run with this theme.

andreww

03-24-2007, 04:18 AM

I honestly don't know why I even bother to answer. But I might as well try to do so for the three people who aven't left this thread in disgust yet.
I dont see anyone leaving in disgust nor do I particularly understand your level of hostility.

What I do see is a remarkably civil discussion about alignment, morality and their place in D&D.

Your view of Orcs is a valid one but it is not necessarily the only one and discussion what would be appropriate actions in different scenarios is entirely reasonable.

riprock

03-24-2007, 05:50 AM

Lord Lucifer

03-24-2007, 06:19 AM

D&D Morality... trying to find game mechanics to express peoples' opinions and belief system.

I don't find alignment useful, ever. I really don't.
It doesn't explain what moves people to do things, it only describes what an uninvolved third party thinks of those involved and their methods.

Personal motivations are much more useful. That gives me something to work with.

RedFox

03-24-2007, 07:22 AM

First, I don't think EGG is up on the current edition of D&D. It's likely he was answering from a version of the game from back before he and TSR parted ways.

Second, this is really a bit of an edge case. Most D&D action doesn't involve the raiding and wanton slaughter of tribal / village communities. Occasionally you may have situations where PCs stumble upon a cave where kobolds live or whatever. In that case, this is likely to crop up only if the PCs decide to slaughter everything in sight and the creatures make no move to surrender (even with communication problems, this is quite possible when mates and young are threatened).

How the GM handles such situations is what determines the tone of PC actions. If the GM has the creatures attempt to surrender, that sets up one tone. If the GM has the clawed babies being tossed at the invaders to slow them down by desparate females, well that sets an entirely other tone.

Nelzie

03-24-2007, 07:50 AM

Seriously, i despise the "baby orc" problem. if it's anyone's problem, it's the GM who declares that a BABY should read as evil.

It's a frickin' baby! the last decision it made was to attempt to focus it's eyes.

See, i'm a big believer in Nurture overriding Nature. My girlfriend's parents were both in jail for drug trafficing, but she's possibly the most ardent teetotaler I've ever met. Dosn't even drink caffinated beverages.

The newborn should not read as either good or evil, they should be treated as innocent, and naieve, and neutral.

That's wholly dependent upon the cosmology of the gameworld in question.

In the real world, Babies are neutral, naive and innocent.

In the non-existent fantasy world with magic and gods that interact with the world... A baby can be much more.

For example, in my gameworld all Orcs are unrepentant evil. It's because the evil gods have a grip upon their soul and more or less control their actions. Even at birth a baby Orc, within an hour or so of being born, will fight and attack armed adventurers like feral demonic little goblins. Any good aligned being that let a baby Orc live would be considered insane.

Iozz-Sothoth

03-24-2007, 08:09 AM

To me, this strongly implies that there is a very good chance that you could raise an Orc baby to be any alignment. This would not be true in, say, Middle-Earth, and it might not have been true in prior editions of D&D, but I think it would be true in the current edition of D&D.

It's probably at least partially supported by some 2nd Ed stuff -- there's a god of Good aligned humanoids, and (in Planescape) a Dwarven priest in Sigil who decided to test the 'Nature vs. Nurture' hypothesis by raising an abandoned ogre baby. Nurture appears to have the upper hand -- the kid's LN, and his family is rather protective of him, IIRC.

Chaot

03-24-2007, 08:34 AM

The movie version of Tolkien's orcs were zombie-like bioweapons and the novel versions were similar. D&D orcs (and other evil humanoids) seem much more human-like, even in older editions.

The orcs in Tolkien's novels were not zombie-like. They were corrupted elves and they were very individualistic. They constantly fought for dominance. They were also the creators of perverse, but effective 'machines' geared to war and torture.

Jackson's orcs were bioweapons....

For the record, I have never killed an orc baby. I do not plan on killing an orc baby. But I'm not a Paladin.

Ikselam

03-24-2007, 09:16 AM

If orcs are inherently evil, then you should just kill the baby. Don't even bother with the "redemption" angle, because you know it's not going to work -- its only purpose is to make you feel better about yourself: "Well, at least I tried!"

If they're just predisposed toward evil, then of course you shouldn't kill the baby, because it might end up good and noble if given the correct upbringing. Given that D&D seems to have been moving away from the idea of "natural" creatures having inherent alignments, this is probably the correct choice. I mean, by EGG's rationale, Drizzt should commit suicide asap before he backslides into spider-worshiping eeeeevil.

Reynard

03-24-2007, 09:36 AM

Drizzt should commit suicide asap before he backslides into spider-worshiping eeeeevil.

Among other reasons... :D

Fugitive Unknown

03-24-2007, 09:43 AM

Times like this are where I'm glad I made the "Paladins" for my world Lawful Neutral.

*Mercy* is for the *weak*

The Scribbler

03-24-2007, 09:50 AM

And what do you tell the boy whose parents were slaughtered by the marauding orcs that you are about to go hunt down and kill when he asks you why you didn't do anything about the orcs until after they killed his family?

Well if you honestly had no reason to think that they'd go after his family before, or that the defenses of the child's family and the society they were living in were not going to be enough to protect them, you tell him that you didn't know it was going to happen.

If you had reason to think that these orcs were going to attack these people, then maybe you should have done something about it. Killing people outright for crimes they might one day commit, though, is generally (not always, depending on threats they might have made or past actions of those people in particular) nonsense.

Greg 1

03-24-2007, 10:14 AM

If you honestly believe that whether you are good or evil at death determines whether you get eternal paradise or eternal torture, then it would be amazingly cruel not to want to slaughter every good person you can. There could be reasons for not doing it, but compassion for the subject would not be one of them.

Paladins, by right, should be more concerned with saving souls than protecting the good (the good are fundamentally doing ok, simply in virtue of being good).

Eric Tolle

03-24-2007, 10:23 AM

Times like this are where I'm glad I made the "Paladins" for my world Lawful Neutral.

*Mercy* is for the *weak*

That won't help much: if killing an orc baby is an evil act than "I vas chust followink orders" won't help, and the paladin will still get nailed for an alignment violation.

My dodge around the issue in one game world was to have all of the humanoids originally be humans whose desires and attitudes warped ther physical forms. Thus, thre are no orc babies, though living with orcs a child woud rapidly become one.

Metallian

03-24-2007, 10:39 AM

Paladins, by right, should be more concerned with saving souls than protecting the good (the good are fundamentally doing ok, simply in virtue of being good).

I disagree. Some quotes on Paladins, from the PHB:

The compassion to pursue good, the will to uphold law, and the power to defeat evil - these are the three weapons of the paladin. Few have the purity and devotion that it takes to walk the paladin's path, but those few are rewarded with the power to protect, to heal, and to smite. In a land of scheming wizards, unholy priests, bloodthirsty dragons, and infernal fiends, the paladin is the final hope that cannot be extinguished.

...

Code of Conduct

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents." (emphasis mine)

The Metallian

Greg 1

03-24-2007, 11:00 AM

I disagree. Some quotes on Paladins, from the PHB:

Oh, I'm not saying that the Paladin code doesn't forbid it. I'm saying that if you honestly believe that whether you are good or evil at death determines whether you get eternal paradise or eternal torture, then it would be amazingly cruel not to want to slaughter every good person you can.

The kind thing would be to want to slay the innocent and protect the guilty from being killed until they can be saved. There might be practical reasons for not doing that (maybe you need good people alive to help convert the guilty), but that should be the ultimate goal.

Metallian

03-24-2007, 11:36 AM

Oh, I'm not saying that the Paladin code doesn't forbid it. I'm saying that if you honestly believe that whether you are good or evil at death determines whether you get eternal paradise or eternal torture, then it would be amazingly cruel not to want to slaughter every good person you can.

The kind thing would be to want to slay the innocent and protect the guilty from being killed until they can be saved. There might be practical reasons for not doing that (maybe you need good people alive to help convert the guilty), but that should be the ultimate goal.

Gotcha, I missed the fact that your second statement was conditional on your first statement. And I agree with your extrapolation from EGG's logic in the OP.

Fortunately, "Good" alignment in D&D is defined as: "Good characters and creatures protect innocent life" and "'Good' implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others," which precludes such actions even if they do make sense in a setting where people can know exactly what happens to souls in the afterlife. Good alignment seems very focused on the concerns of life, as opposed to the afterlife.

(Of course, you could get into a really circular argument about how killing good people to send them to a cozy afterlife is evil, but since it would negate your own chances at a cozy afterlife it could be considered the ultimate "personal sacrifice to help others" and therefore good! :D But you could handwave that by saying that in the metaphysics of D&D, consequences that only take place in the afterlife don't "count" for the purposes of moral calculus.)

The Metallian

wise_owl

03-24-2007, 11:51 AM

So does that mean that you think a Paladin would be against any executions and thus anti-death penalty?

Hmmm.... tough call. In the end I would say yes, but not in terms we would understand. A Paladin is held to the highest 'statures' of Lawful Good behaivor. In the pseduo-medieval world of D&D that means societies are viewed through the lens of their rulers behavoirs. Thus a ruler who dispensed executions would probably be viewed as non-good, or at least not living up to the Paladin's standards. So while I think a paladin would still accept public executions, if asked he would advise a ruler not to engage in them.
On the flip side of that though is that I think a Paladin, like most people, has a morality that varies depending on the actors. A paladin's Moral code effects his own actions, not the actions of others(though of course it affects how he relates with others). I don't think a Paladin could be an executioner of any kind and retain his 'saintly' qualities.

Nikis-Knight

03-24-2007, 12:02 PM

Thus a ruler who dispensed executions would probably be viewed as non-good, or at least not living up to the Paladin's standardsWell, that's one interpretation. I don't see why a ruler executing serial killers would conflict with any good Paladin's sense of justice.
If the ruler was executing petty criminals or political rivals, then the Paladin should certainly see it as an evil act.

Calithena

03-24-2007, 12:11 PM

Greg 1

03-24-2007, 12:51 PM

The original post's solution is ludicrous in any case. By the same logic the paladin should kill every weak-willed or neutral-tending human, elf, dwarf, etc. the moment he drifts to good. After a night up with the rogue finally getting him to see the glory of goodness, the paladin slits his throat, secure in his god's blessings. Whatever.

Yes, by the same logic, the Paladin should do that. But it isn't ludicrous. It is the kind thing to do in the rather perverse universe in which the Paladin finds themself.

This life is a one-second pit-stop on the way to the permanent life - a permanent life that is liable to be either mind-blowing wonderful or mind-blowing horrific depending on your alignment at death. Whether you get a half-second or full-second pit-stop at the station is a trivial thing - what matters is that you get on the right train. (Alright, I've mutilated enough metaphores now)

John Morrow

03-24-2007, 02:13 PM

Even at birth a baby Orc, within an hour or so of being born, will fight and attack armed adventurers like feral demonic little goblins. Any good aligned being that let a baby Orc live would be considered insane.

My orcs weren't inherently Evil but the goblinoids were and, like your orc babies, my goblins were born being able to claw and bite. I think that helps mitigate the "Ick!" factor a bit if the babies in question aren't simply lying there helpless but can at least claw and bite at the adventurers to demonstrate their maliciousness and hostility.

SuperG

03-24-2007, 02:19 PM

The orcs in Tolkien's novels were not zombie-like. They were corrupted elves and they were very individualistic. They constantly fought for dominance. They were also the creators of perverse, but effective 'machines' geared to war and torture.

Jackson's orcs were bioweapons....

For the record, I have never killed an orc baby. I do not plan on killing an orc baby. But I'm not a Paladin.

Those were Jackson's Uruk Hai.

Given we never find out in the novels how the Uruk Hai were created, but we do see that they are vastly different from corrupted elf Orcs, I buy his interpretation.

What individuality the Uruk Hai showed in the novels would apply to the ones in the movie - yes, they don't speak as much in the movie, but he skipped the scenes where they would have.

Sauron's Orcs also didn't get personality scenes, but we don't see them being grown from mushrooms or something.

SuperG

03-24-2007, 02:26 PM

My orcs weren't inherently Evil but the goblinoids were and, like your orc babies, my goblins were born being able to claw and bite. I think that helps mitigate the "Ick!" factor a bit if the babies in question aren't simply lying there helpless but can at least claw and bite at the adventurers to demonstrate their maliciousness and hostility.

Even then...

A baby crocodile can claw and bite, and some baby animals get downright vicious (iirc)... and just because an evil god has it's grip on their soul, doesn't mean they /deserve/ to have the grip.

I mean, a demon possessed human baby? One would want to try and exorcise the demon, not kill the baby.

So even in your setting, what I'd want my good character to do is try and find a way to get this little creature - which is not smart enough to be evil, even if it's vicious (think people who try and preserve the crocodiles) - to have a chance at a life as something other than a monster.

I mean, give a human baby immense physical power and it might kill you in a tantrum. That doesn't make it guilty unless it's smart enough to not really qualify as a baby (rather, it would simply be a small/larval whatever).

John Morrow

03-24-2007, 02:43 PM

I mean, a demon possessed human baby? One would want to try and exorcise the demon, not kill the baby.

If the demon can be exorcised, yes. And if it can't?

So even in your setting, what I'd want my good character to do is try and find a way to get this little creature - which is not smart enough to be evil, even if it's vicious (think people who try and preserve the crocodiles) - to have a chance at a life as something other than a monster.

In my setting, doing so would be futile and would produce nothing but frustration for your character, at the very least. I wouldn't stop you from trying it, if you felt that your Good character just had to give it another try, but that wouldn't make it work.

I mean, give a human baby immense physical power and it might kill you in a tantrum. That doesn't make it guilty unless it's smart enough to not really qualify as a baby (rather, it would simply be a small/larval whatever).

Correct. But in my game, they were destined to be Evil and no amount of nurture was going to change that. That was a deliberate design decision. The orcs, on the other hand, could be raised to be non-Evil and it was the obligation of Good characters to spare them.

My point was specifically to address the point about killing the helpless. A human newborn is helpless. My goblin babies were not. Even if both are inherently Evil and cannot be redeemed, it's easier to kill something that's fighting you than something that's just laying there and doesn't pose any threat at all.

Scurrilous

03-24-2007, 02:46 PM

Are there any biographies of Gygax which describe his religious background and affiliation?

Not official ones. It came up in the letter to his fans when he had the stroke.

Maarzan

03-24-2007, 04:31 PM

One point that gets overlooked is numbers.

First - most monsters, even low CR ones, will mob the floor with common people or 0 lvl town watches and are quite aggressive. Leveled characters can do this with these monsters in a similar way, but they are much fewer than those homanoids and there are some more realy ugly monsters around, that also have to be kept in check.
So monsters surrender once they guess their enemy is over 5th level and has a lawful orientation. But how to deal with those captives, if most of them could break a non leveled guard bare handed? And having surrendered doesn´t mean nice person from now on.
Killing or even taking away the parents that refuse to leave their old ways and beliefs of killing others, will probably not be taken well by the bigger kids. In some few years you will have some angry, dangerous youngsters running around. Double so, if you don´t divide them from the parents and their aggressive culture. At what age do you want to make the cut?

Secondary there is the question of resources. Magic will probably lead to much better grain yields than in our middle ages, but there are also more people and cities in most fantasy worlds and the area to be used for farming has to get controlled because of monsters and is thus further limited.
So (example) there are some hundred or even thousands starving orcs at the border with their families, but the same drough that destroyed their foodbase has decidedly lessened your harvest also and the king has to open his storages to feed the towns people. Now trecks get robbed and farms get burned by probably even partly neutral orcs. But there are to few paladins and guards for too many farms and trecks. Imprisoning the orcs would only mean more people that would have to share the already thining supplies (and starving people or starving orcs anyway).

It is easy to be good, if you are living in an ideal, secure surplus society - but the typical paladin usually has responsibilities und circumstances that will force him to cut somewhere - or else there wouldn´t have been a conflict to start with.
If there is a single tribe making problems it is most probably possible to try to salvage the redeemable members - the crusading Horde on the move or a whole race fighting a war for basic resources- not so much.

medivh

03-24-2007, 04:54 PM

And what do you tell the boy whose parents were slaughtered by the marauding orcs that you are about to go hunt down and kill when he asks you why you didn't do anything about the orcs until after they killed his family?

Crying kid: "WHYYYYyyyyyy? Why didn't you kill those orcs before they attacked my family?

Paladin: For the same reason I haven't just stapped the baker: There was no cause. Maybe the baker will poison all his bread tomorrow. That he might do so does not give me the right to slay him today.

Halfjack

03-24-2007, 05:01 PM

Flibbertigibbet

03-24-2007, 05:11 PM

andreww

03-24-2007, 05:15 PM

Can't we kill him just because he's annoying?
Only if you promise to take his stuff. And to kill his friends so they wont bring him back from the dead. And all of the priestesses of Lloth who might reanimate him like they did with his dad to make him an even cooler Mary Sue, now with extra undead powerz.

Frankly its probably easier just to not let R A Salvatore near any writing implements for the rest of his natural life.

Greg 1

03-24-2007, 05:15 PM

Crying kid: "WHYYYYyyyyyy? Why didn't you kill those orcs before they attacked my family?

Paladin: They weren't ripe yet. Do you have any idea how few xp you get for a baby Orc?

ShanG

03-24-2007, 07:05 PM

Sauron's Orcs also didn't get personality scenes, but we don't see them being grown from mushrooms or something.

Don't they?

I think Ugluk, Grishnakh, Shagrat, and Gorbag are pretty much the definitive Orcs in my mind. They're pretty much like most humans - they work together and act like buddies while it's convenient, and start killing each other when they have something to fight over.

Flibbertigibbet

03-24-2007, 09:02 PM

Only if you promise to take his stuff. And to kill his friends so they wont bring him back from the dead. And all of the priestesses of Lloth who might reanimate him like they did with his dad to make him an even cooler Mary Sue, now with extra undead powerz.

You see, evil undead Drizzt would be fine.

Re: The Orcs conundrum. I think an Orc who was raised by a Paladin to be a servant of the good could turn out to be good. He could undergo a magical transformation sequence to be human. If Orcs represent a race of evil beings, then an Orc who stops being evil stops being orcish. If you create a race of humanlike beings who are incurably evil then I feel like you're engaging in a bit of very low grade racism. Alternatively, if you want to be literal minded you could have the Orc keep being an Orc but just be discriminated againist, but I feel like that would feel silly.

Gene Freak

03-24-2007, 10:10 PM

If you create a race of humanlike beings who are incurably evil then I feel like you're engaging in a bit of very low grade racism.

This is, at the heart of it, why I will never be able to tolerate D&D alignment. It is a black and white cosmology which condones racism. Granted it's condoning racism towards races that don't actually exist, but D&D does little to separate what traits are given to a character based on their race and what based on their culture. It seems, from the source of this thread, that the author is suggesting that to some extent race is culture...and that race can be so flawed as to be irredeemably evil.

That's an ignorant positition to hold and it's not one I'm willing to humor even at a game table (unless done in complete sarcasm).

Scurrilous

03-24-2007, 10:21 PM

Consider, however the lot of an orc being raised by humans in a human society. Yeah, he's smelly, ugly, and his dad ate your sister. So he doesn't get treated well in any case by the majority of human kind. He also matures faster, he's as big and strong as a full grown man by 13. He's dumber than average and he's got a natural temper.

Not an easy job. Do you kill the babies? Leave them to fend for themselves? Give them a chance to learn up close and personal how to hate humans?

Perhaps an isolated monastic orphanage would work? I can see the faces of the invading evil sorcerer and his minions when they meet a line of orcs between them and their victims. hmmm....

Flibbertigibbet

03-24-2007, 10:47 PM

he's as big and strong as a full grown man by 13. He's dumber than average and he's got a natural temper.

So me and my friends in middle school were incureably evil, is what you're saying?

Agent Oracle

03-24-2007, 11:01 PM

Crying kid: "WHYYYYyyyyyy? Why didn't you kill those orcs before they attacked my family?

"Look kid, I've given you something far greater than a family: A Background. Here, take these two short swords and this longbow. Now repeat after me: "Favored Enemy: Orcs".

Thanatos02

03-24-2007, 11:31 PM

"Look kid, I've given you something far greater than a family: A Background. Here, take these two short swords and this longbow. Now repeat after me: "Favored Enemy: Orcs".

And that's how new adventurers are made!

Noon

03-25-2007, 12:18 AM

SuperG

03-25-2007, 01:12 AM

Don't they?

I think Ugluk, Grishnakh, Shagrat, and Gorbag are pretty much the definitive Orcs in my mind. They're pretty much like most humans - they work together and act like buddies while it's convenient, and start killing each other when they have something to fight over.

In the movie, no personality scenes, but we can imagine those.

SuperG

03-25-2007, 01:20 AM

If the demon can be exorcised, yes. And if it can't?

Then ya keep trying until ya don't have another option.

In my setting, doing so would be futile and would produce nothing but frustration for your character, at the very least. I wouldn't stop you from trying it, if you felt that your Good character just had to give it another try, but that wouldn't make it work.

Depending on the character, they might go a loooong way in pursuit of that goal.

I mean heck, how hard can it be to kill an evil god? :cool:

Correct. But in my game, they were destined to be Evil and no amount of nurture was going to change that. That was a deliberate design decision. The orcs, on the other hand, could be raised to be non-Evil and it was the obligation of Good characters to spare them.

My point was specifically to address the point about killing the helpless. A human newborn is helpless. My goblin babies were not. Even if both are inherently Evil and cannot be redeemed, it's easier to kill something that's fighting you than something that's just laying there and doesn't pose any threat at all.

Seriously, while righting metaphysical injustice may be outside the scope of some campaigns (most campaigns?), accepting it is unlikely to be a priority.

Sounds like a game where adopting Neutral attitudes is more conducive to sanity.

andreww

03-25-2007, 04:09 AM

Nelzie

03-25-2007, 05:16 AM

Count Drunkula

03-25-2007, 06:14 AM

Well, EGG's description of how the paladin should handle the situation is how I do it...when I want to use paladins as antagonists.

I find absolute morality, indeed absolute anything, to be utterly devoid of interest. Interesting things come out of complexity; absolutes are the enemy of complexity, and I want no part of that. I want my characters, and their antagonists, to have free will and the ability to control their own lives. Iron-clad alignments, as discussed here, don't allow that.

It really is effortlessly easy to strip absolute morality out of D&D. Really. You just change the text of every alignment-based spell and ability to read Enemy instead of Lawful, Evil, or whatever. For divine magic, that means any Enemy of the god that grants the magic. For arcane or other powers (and there aren't many of those), it means any Enemy of the character's personal philosophy. Instant moral relativism.

Edit: Treat alignment restrictions on classes as suggested personality traits. It's not like they really provide anything useful to the game.

I treat alignment as a rough but handy two-word guide to how a character is likely to act. It's derived from actions in play, characters don't have one until they demonstrate one, and it really has never mattered a damn if a player forgets to fill in that line on the character sheet.

If a paladin wants to kill orc babies, he can go for it. He can even use his Smite Enemy class feature to do it, if his god hates orcs or babies. But he'd better be damn sure he's doing right by his god, or he's not going to be a paladin for long.

He doesn't ever get a convenient pseudo-moralistic justification for it. That's still a baby all over his hammer and his shoes, even though he knows he's done the right thing. How he deals with that is far more interesting, to me, than autopiloting through thirteen thousand faceless, cardboard cutout LotR orc-strawmen, carefree and lighthearted because he knows they're irredeemable.

But that's just me.

Ithaeur

03-25-2007, 07:01 AM

All this goes on to show that, IMO, Gary Gygax and George Lucas should both be treated the same way: afforded great respect for what they've created, while completely ignoring what they say.

loseth

03-25-2007, 07:12 AM

2. Orcs/Ogres/Trolls/whatever are just another race like anyone else. Their level of advancement is likely based on their societal structure, racial Int and Wis modifiers, religion and economic and environmental factors.

If you feel it's reasonable for races to have racial INT modifiers (racial tendency to higher or lower intelligence) and WIS modifiers (racial tendency to higher or lower wisdom), then wouldn't it be natural for races to have tendencies toward higher or lower agression, seflishness, mercy, honesty and the like? If so, how does this affect the paladin's decision about what to do with babies of said race? What if the paladin knows that humans brought up in a typical LN society have about a 25% chance of developing excessive tendencies toward aggression and selfishness, while orces have a 50% chance and trolls a 99% chance? What if he knows that even thought there's that 1% chance that the troll may grow up to become a good citizen, odds are that if it doesn't, it'll probably kill several innocent citizens over his lifetime? Does this have any effect on the paladin's decision?

Or do D&D species have some sort of external force that allows them to inherit tendencies toward greater intelligence or wisdom, but not toward greater or lesser mercy, charity, etc.?

Edit: P.S. I wonder if many 'good' humans who had just finished mowing through an orc village wouldn't take the easy way out and just do nothing to the orc babies and women? This would, of course, probably mean that the babies and women would mostly end up dead after being left to the ravages of the wild and other humanoid tribes, but out of sight, out of conscience, as the say...

loseth

03-25-2007, 07:15 AM

All this goes on to show that, IMO, Gary Gygax and George Lucas should both be treated the same way: afforded great respect for what they've created, while completely ignoring what they say.

You have wisdom.

riprock

03-25-2007, 07:26 AM

Crying kid: "WHYYYYyyyyyy? Why didn't you kill those orcs before they attacked my family?

Paladin: They weren't ripe yet. Do you have any idea how few xp you get for a baby Orc?

Please accept your Laugh Point. You have earned it by reminding us of the central doctrine: enlightenment by massacre.

Lord Lucifer

03-25-2007, 07:29 AM

And yet people seem to be perfectly happy to accept fiends, demons, devils, call them what you want as being irredemably evil.

That one's easy.
Demons and Devils don't have souls :)

If you have a soul, you have free will. If you have free will, you can change
Demons/Devils, and Angels/Whatever do not have souls, they're extensions of Gods/Arch-Daemons/whatever, tools used to sway mortal souls.
It takes a lot to mess up the soulless embodiments of Good or Evil, major effort.

Orcs, though, Orcs are mortal and therefore have souls.
Therefore Orcs can change.

This conveniently ignores fallen Angels and redeemed Demons, but I'm applying Alignment to a game, not mythology, so can say It Works Like This.
Because I'm the GM, and the GM likes convenient explanations like You Need A Soul To Have Free Will.

Or I'd just ignore alignment altogether.

The Scribbler

03-25-2007, 07:49 AM

insomniac

03-25-2007, 08:00 AM

That one's easy.
Demons and Devils don't have souls :)

If you have a soul, you have free will. If you have free will, you can change
Demons/Devils, and Angels/Whatever do not have souls, they're extensions of Gods/Arch-Daemons/whatever, tools used to sway mortal souls.
It takes a lot to mess up the soulless embodiments of Good or Evil, major effort.

Orcs, though, Orcs are mortal and therefore have souls.
Therefore Orcs can change.

This conveniently ignores fallen Angels and redeemed Demons, but I'm applying Alignment to a game, not mythology, so can say It Works Like This.
Because I'm the GM, and the GM likes convenient explanations like You Need A Soul To Have Free Will.

But in the rules as written, for the game, demons can become good and angels can become evil. It's not an interpretation, it's making something up--which I wholeheartedly approve of, but since orcs don't exist, it's no more true for anyone else's game world than "orcs don't have souls, they have a piece of a slain god of war and murder where their soul is supposed to be."

Lord Lucifer

03-25-2007, 08:31 AM

But in the rules as written, for the game, demons can become good and angels can become evil. It's not an interpretation, it's making something up--which I wholeheartedly approve of, but since orcs don't exist, it's no more true for anyone else's game world than "orcs don't have souls, they have a piece of a slain god of war and murder where their soul is supposed to be."

And where's the problem?
If Orcs do not have the capacity to become Good, there's no debate.
But then, the rules as written aren't really written that extensively on what evil is, what part of a character is evil, if their alignment represents their natural state at present, if their past weighs upon their alignment, if their alignment is dependant on their action or on their disposition, or a whole host of other things.
What it DOES do is allow for genocide to be made without needing to question.

The problem arises when people start to question anyway.
And if they start to question, perhaps alignment isn't something that's necessarily gonna work that great anymore.
Perhaps at that point it's better to consider alignment to be purely in view and in line with their God's view, where Pelor would consider the slaughter of Orc Whelps to be an act of evil, whereas St. Cuthbert would consider it just.

Meh, I like having reasons to do things, it makes life so much simpler.

Von Bek

03-25-2007, 08:40 AM

You know what's absolutely great, though it will not work for every campaign?

This thread: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=58227&page=1&pp=40

Seriously, it's a well-written summary of an ongoing (well at the time it was, he seems to have stopped updating) campaign and kicks off with a high-level Paladin having to deal with the fact that the succubus who was disguised as a lady in waiting and sent to seduce him claims to have fallen in love with him and offers herself to his justice when he confronts her.

That character's story gets more morally complex from that point forward. By orders of magnitude, I think.

Just got reminded of it.

That is an awesome story.

I tend to ignore alignment for the most part. I don't try to trick paladins into betraying their alignments, though I do present them with difficult choices at times. I believe that the alignment system in D&D is pretty ridiculous. I prefer to see stated alignment as a general tendency-even truly evil characters can love their family and friends.

Wratts

03-25-2007, 08:52 AM

I modified character classes with alignment restrictions with some edits and without alignment requisites to play the class.

Then I ditched alignments, ditched spells concerning alignments, and ditched any item that even remotely has to do with alignments, altogether.

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 09:10 AM

That one's easy.
Demons and Devils don't have souls :)

In some traditional (i.e., 1st Edition) D&D games, elves didn't have souls, either. They had spirits. There were differences in how the races could be brought back from the dead.

andreww

03-25-2007, 09:30 AM

You know what's absolutely great, though it will not work for every campaign?

This thread: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=58227&page=1&pp=40
Yep, Ive been a fan of Sep's work for a long time.

Thanatos02

03-25-2007, 09:32 AM

It's easy to remove absolute morality or introduce shades of gray. It's even easy to introduce a game world where moral absolutes are the creations of creatures nearly beyond mortal ken, and answer the old question of a dead Greek Dude by saying, "Well, it's Good, because the Gods said it was.", and then say, "Just because it's Evil, doesn't mean it's not the right action."

There's some gray.

Likewise, it's very easy to justify fictional genocide. Orcs are inherantly and irredeemably Evil, with a capital 'E'. Evil is always bad, and wrong. Good is the opposite. If you're not with us, you're against us.

Blammo! (>o.o)> Now you don't have to worry.
Neither of these actions is right, though I am biased in favor of the one that seems like more fun to me. There is only the attitude of your gaming group for what makes a good take.

Rob Doupe

03-25-2007, 09:33 AM

This whole thread is bizarre. D&D is a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff. Monsters - you know, creatures that are evil and dangerous and need to be killed. Notions of moral dilemmas and genocide were not even considered when the game was designed and developed. If Gygax was looking at any model for good and evil it was real-world medieval attitudes, which were pretty cut and dried.

People who want to explore subtle questions of ethical behaviour and agonize over angst and guilt should probably play a different game. Of just ditch alignment altogether and use some other model of ethics and morality.

I happen to believe moral codes are a product of their times and environment. I do not expect or want the values of 21st century North America to govern a game set in a medieval setting where ignorance, fear, and material want are the norm (and how could things be otherwise in a pre-literate world where monsters roam the wilds?). That's one of the reasons most 'historical' films these days leave me frustrated, and why I can't stand the assumptions and attitudes found in many RPG products. To me, it's as anachronistic for a nomadic warrior in an RPG to concern himself with sexism and genocide as it is to have him ride across the steppes in a motorcyle. I've read enough history and anthropology to have a pretty good idea how pre-modern societies see the world, and I'm detached enough emotionally from the games I play that I can evoke those attitudes cheerfully without subscribing to them myself in the real world.

andreww

03-25-2007, 09:33 AM

That one's easy.
Demons and Devils don't have souls :)

If you have a soul, you have free will. If you have free will, you can change
Demons/Devils, and Angels/Whatever do not have souls, they're extensions of Gods/Arch-Daemons/whatever, tools used to sway mortal souls.
It takes a lot to mess up the soulless embodiments of Good or Evil, major effort.

Orcs, though, Orcs are mortal and therefore have souls.
Therefore Orcs can change.

This conveniently ignores fallen Angels and redeemed Demons, but I'm applying Alignment to a game, not mythology, so can say It Works Like This.
Because I'm the GM, and the GM likes convenient explanations like You Need A Soul To Have Free Will.

Or I'd just ignore alignment altogether.
I would just like to point out that I am not trying to argue that one position is necessarily more appropriate or better for any game than the other.

I would say that for any game to make much sense then you do need to decide which way you are going to go. That or dump alignment all together which is not necessarily a bad thing.

andreww

03-25-2007, 09:36 AM

Thanatos02

03-25-2007, 09:48 AM

Because of course including any sort of moral dimension to your game inevitably leads you to some angt ridden, excessive eye-liner wearing goth vampire wannabe.

That's me! Er, except I don't really like Vampire.
>.>
<.<

But seriously, Rob, you can have it both ways. You can even run one game with all the ethical conundrums you want, and another where there arn't any. It's not hard, and it's not the wrong way to play. In fact, neither are even against the rules as written. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that you're wrong about how one ought to play, but right when you're playing it. ;)

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 10:30 AM

This is, at the heart of it, why I will never be able to tolerate D&D alignment. It is a black and white cosmology which condones racism. Granted it's condoning racism towards races that don't actually exist, but D&D does little to separate what traits are given to a character based on their race and what based on their culture. It seems, from the source of this thread, that the author is suggesting that to some extent race is culture...and that race can be so flawed as to be irredeemably evil.

The problem is that it's not the black and white cosmology that condones racism. It's the very idea of "races" of humanoids that have characteristics that make them objectively less intelligent, less wise, less charismatic and so on than humans (and others who, on the flip-side, are better than humans) and descriptions in the Monster Manual that assume that they are often or usually Evil in everyone's game that are the problems.

When I read Scurrilous' description of orcs here (http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=7088471&postcount=126), it was amazingly close to statements I've heard from white people about black people explaining how they are different. And, no, I am not claiming that Scurrilous did that intentionally or is a racist. I'm pointing out that a fairly reasonable description of orcs overlaps significantly with how racists portray other races. And that's because orcs exist to be an enemy race that PCs can fight and kill. Thus I find it no coincidence that valid descriptions of orcs that illustrate what makes them bad neighbors or worse just happens to overlap with descriptions used by racists of various human racial groups to illustrate why they claim they are bad neighbors or worse. Orcs (and other ugly, stupid, reckless, and brutish races) essentially allow the players and their characters to be rationally racist. Orcs and other evil races really are the bogeymen that racists imagine various other racial groups to be.

At that point, i think people have a few choice choices:

Don't think about it in any depth. This option simply ignores the problem, so I'm only including it here for completeness.
Make these humanoids just like human that just look different. Eliminate the racial characteristic modifiers, as well and make all differences cultural.
Keep the characteristic modifiers and make all of their behavioral differences cultural. Eliminate the tendency to be a particular alignment.
Keep the characteristic modifiers and make all of their behavioral differences cultural. Assume that they have a strong cultural tendency to be Evil.
Keep the characteristic modifiers and make most of their behavioral differences cultural. Assume that they have a strong cultural tendency and a mild inborn tendency to be Evil.
Keep the characteristic modifiers and make all of their behavioral differences inborn. Assume that they are born to be Evil and can never be raised to be not Evil. This turns them into actual monsters.

The second choice to make all other humanoid races essentially just like humans, only different looking, essentially purges any hint of racism from things. The last choice attempts to escape the problem by making them not human at all. It makes them enemy bogeymen to destroy by embracing that characterization to the hilt. It basically makes racism rational by eliminating the humanity of the hated creatures. And I can see where some people could find that disturbing.

But do any of the in between solutions really solve the problem of things like orcs being racist? I don't think so. Simply having them racially be less intelligent, less wise, and less attractive has racist overtones, even if they can be Good or Evil, and raises the question of what purpose they serve in the game. And the other two options that not only disadvantage them mentally and make them uglier but also assumes that their culture is Evil or that they have an inborn tendency to be Evil runs right into standard racist arguments. Basically, anything that makes characters treat orcs or any other humanoid any differently than a human because of their race is going to have racist overtones.

So other than ignoring the problem or making orcs and other conventionally evil humanoids just like people (no attribute modifiers, either), how can you depict such humanoids in your games (or any other humanoids, for that matter) without stepping into racist ideas that traits like intelligence and wisdom are inborn, one race can be uglier or more attractive than another, and ideas that certain races are predisposed toward being Evil? And on a more fundamental level, isn't the basic idea that the races are inherently different and can be better or worse than each other fall into racist territory if you want to think of those other races as people? Also, doesn't depicting their culture as the thing that makes them Evil raise other real-world issues that people might find equally troubling? How do you think that can be avoided?

Rob Doupe

03-25-2007, 11:15 AM

And on a more fundamental level, isn't the basic idea that the races are inherently different and can be better or worse than each other fall into racist territory if you want to think of those other races as people? Also, doesn't depicting their culture as the thing that makes them Evil raise other real-world issues that people might find equally troubling? How do you think that can be avoided?

Why draw a distinction between orcs and, say, beholders? Or manticores? Who's to say manticores don't have rich internal lives, and their own social networks that involve trust, love and mutual dependence?

If we say it's okay to kill ropers, it's only because our human-centric worldview has an inherent bias against slimey, tentacled creatures that dwell underground. A D&D character who has any pretensions of leading a moral life would have to do some serious soul-searching the moment he lights that torch in the Caverns of Dread and marches into another being's natural habitat with the intention to hack it to bits with no more justification than his own parochial agenda of self-aggrandizement or, at best, devotion to some human-centric religious or philosophical cause.

I think we can all agree that the real world has seen enough exploitation of the environment by man, enough predation on other species, enough resort to brutal violence as a means to solve problems that we don't need to succumb to those same primitive attitudes when we play games.

Lewd Beholder

03-25-2007, 12:02 PM

I can't believe that their is 10 pages after the easy answer was said.

Helm of opposite alignment.

If they are inherrently evil, just slap it on and change them from chaotic evil to lawful good.

do this to enough orcs and suddenly your kingdom has a huge workforce of taxpayers willing to do the manual labor so that the rest of your citizens don't have to. Plus after a couple of generations, the social constraints of enough orcs should help breed the evil out of them.

I'm not seeing this as a bad thing, and it makes palladins seem less like hitler youth.

it may actually be easier with lawful races (such as hobgoblins), that you may need less extreme means, just good legislation.

Agent Oracle

03-25-2007, 12:51 PM

I can't believe that their is 10 pages after the easy answer was said.

Helm of opposite alignment.

Already responded to this: it's a relatively easy DC 15 save Vs. alignment change. So the orc bigwigs (the casters) aren't going to go that route easily...but the classless baby? Might work.

Incidentally, next time i have 4k gp left laying around, i'm packing one of these things into my Knight's bag...

Scurrilous

03-25-2007, 01:00 PM

To the helm of opposite alignment folks: is removing someone's free will a good act?

The Scribbler

03-25-2007, 01:13 PM

To the helm of opposite alignment folks: is removing someone's free will a good act?

Well if they were born that way, it's innate, they never had a choice anyway, and there's not a way to give them a choice other than letting them try both ways (and even then you'd likely get a biased answer)... doesn't the question become "Which lack of choice does the most good for the most people?"

And if they did have a choice, but now it was "death or change your alignment"... well I guess you could/should give them that choice, though it's not much of one.

Belac

03-25-2007, 03:05 PM

And yet people seem to be perfectly happy to accept fiends, demons, devils, call them what you want as being irredemably evil.

I'm not. In fact, this actually bothers me even more because some people believe that these creatures exist in real life and are irredeemably evil. It doesn't matter if demons or devils really exist; the point is that many people who believe they exist and are irredeemably evil also have extremely immoral and dangerous attitudes toward real people that they believe are demon-possessed. (Read anything by Lester Sumerall. His books are still used by many large religious groups. Anything further on this belongs in Tangency, though, not here.) D&D demons and devils are not exactly the same as the demons from these real belief systems, but they are inspired by those demons.

There's only one problem with this train of thought.

You are applying real world sociology to a world that is a complete work of fiction that has wholly different rules than our own. In the real world, there are no pantheons of gods manipulating the very day to day lives of human beings. There are no avatars of gods appearing before groups of people and swaying them to this or that activity. In the real world there is no measurable quantifiable good or evil.

So if I make up a D20 Modern campaign world where non-whites are evil because they are influenced by evil gods, nobody should ever criticize me for it?

I don't think racism is only bad if it's directed at real people. I believe racism is potentially dangerous if it is directed at fictional people and becomes a habit that can then extend into real life under very specific circumstances. Basically, I believe that games with immoral activity don't inspire any real-life immoral activity as long as people who are playing the games realize that the actions their characters are engaging in would be immoral in real life and remain open to reasonable, constructive criticism about the dangerous element.

John Morrow's goblin theme is fine with me because it is very obvious that he made it clear that this sort of thing would be morally questionable in real life and that he at least understands why someone might be critical of it. As long as he has that attitude, there is probably absolutely no danger whatsoever of any sort of real-life racism being promoted by his game.

Gary Gygax's comments are a bit different because he is much more casual, does not make it clear that such actions would be horribly evil in real life, and uses an example that is very similar to real life crimes against humanity (the Inquisition in the past and some things that still happen) in a positive light.

More frustratingly, and the reason I post on this subject so much, is the common denial of anyone's right to question the moral elements in discussions on this forum. EVERY time this subject comes up, most of the forumites speaking in favor of these sorts of things don't say "I understand your concerns but..." Instead, they say things that imply a mesage of "Dude, it's just a game. Racism is cool if it's a game! You're a fascist if you are even remotely uncomfortable with this sort of thing."

"Racism is fine if it's fictional" is not true if readers or players don't acknowledge that it's still racism. Racism in the United States has been greatly strengthened for hundreds of years because of works of fiction. Bigoted ideology toward one group has often translated into racist ideology toward another. (The origin of anti-black racism in the United States was a combination of anti-Native American racism and anti-commoner ideology from English gentlemen.) So this explains why my example D20 Modern game, as well as RaHoWa and FATAL, are immoral. EDIT: For example, the book The Klansman and the movie Birth of a Nation were directly responsible for the recreation of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1900s. The Klan was a racist terrorist group that engaged in extortion, torture, kidnapping, and murder on a large scale through the United States.

"Racism is fine if it's fictional AND directed at a fictional race" is a little safer, but it's still an endorsement of a form of racism. Also, this endorsement is rarely phrased in the same way that gamers say "I like role-playing games because my characters can grab guns and engage in combat without hurting real people and without me getting arrested." It's generally phrased in a much more casual, dismissive way, as if anyone who even remotely questions it is automatically an idiot.

I wouldn't even be posting in these threads if some people didn't give such simplistic dismissals of anyone concerned about possible racism in games.

Basically, there's probably not any serious racism in 99.99999% of RPGs, but judging from the reasons given here for why those games are okay, if there was a lot of blatant racism in RPGs, there would still be many people here still defending them because "it's just a game."

Agent Oracle

03-25-2007, 03:32 PM

To the helm of opposite alignment folks: is removing someone's free will a good act?

Depends: A man stands on the edge of a bridge, intent to jump. Is pulling him back to safety a good act? His free will determined that he wanted to jump from the bridge to his death.

or would it be a better action to let him leap to his doom?

If you don't kill the orc, surely some other adventurer will follow you, or he might die trying to rob a caravan, or be killed by one of his brother. By reversing his alignment to lawful good, I've dramatically decreased the likelihood of death by adventurer...

Rob Doupe

03-25-2007, 03:44 PM

Gary Gygax's comments are a bit different because he is much more casual, does not make it clear that such actions would be horribly evil in real life, and uses an example that is very similar to real life crimes against humanity (the Inquisition in the past and some things that still happen) in a positive light.

Well, clerics in D&D are modelled after the militant Christian orders of the medieval Church. D&D has a medieval setting. It's shouldn't be a shock that the attitudes about good, evil, and violence are grounded in medieval thinking. D&D was never meant to be an arena to examine contemporary moral issues. Even the fantasy literature of the 60s and early 70s is very different from today's stuff, which has a far more 20th/21st century sensibility.

I wouldn't even be posting in these threads if some people didn't give such simplistic dismissals of anyone concerned about possible racism in games.

Would it help if you looked at orcs, goblins, etc. as monsters and not races? Or does your concern over the way these creatures are treated in D&D extend to the treatment of ettins, beholders, and manticores?

Knight of Ravens

03-25-2007, 03:51 PM

I tend to work on the basis that the only innately evil creatures are those made that way by their supernatural origins or some outside interference - examples might be greater demons of an intrinsically hellish and vile nature, or mortals who have turned to supernatural evils for power and surrendered their souls (and, in game terms, the ability to be of a non-evil alignment) as part of that infernal bargain.

Anything else, and particular, traditionally evil races, become that way through cultural development, often influenced by their characteristics. In D&D terms, a race whose INT and CHA average lower than the human averages is less able than humans to organise itself, less likely to produce respected and appealing leaders, and so more likely to emphasise the race's higher attributes in determining its social structures - a race with high STR can easily become one in which threats and acts of violence are the established method of achieving social goals, a race with high CON might build social standing around ritual ordeals or competitive tests of endurance, and so on and so forth. The race can still produce intelligent and charismatic leaders, of course, but the handful of flukes who roll 16 INT, 16 CHA are unlikely to be enough to change the basic tendencies of a culture in which the average member is 8 INT, 8 CHA, 12-14 STR.

I get around the "orc baby" problem as best I can by creating a world with enough credible threats that a good-aligned party will be kepy busy enough dealing with active, malicious forces that they won't really have the time or justification to strike at those who are passively evil over those who are actively malicious.

Certainly I wouldn't consider an orc raised by humans, kept away from situations in which he would learn the usefulness of resorting to violence to achieve social goals, and with the notion that might does not necessarily make right impressed on him suitably firmly would have to turn out evil.

pedant

03-25-2007, 03:52 PM

Why draw a distinction between orcs and, say, beholders? Or manticores? Who's to say manticores don't have rich internal lives, and their own social networks that involve trust, love and mutual dependence?

If we say it's okay to kill ropers, it's only because our human-centric worldview has an inherent bias against slimey, tentacled creatures that dwell underground. A D&D character who has any pretensions of leading a moral life would have to do some serious soul-searching the moment he lights that torch in the Caverns of Dread and marches into another being's natural habitat with the intention to hack it to bits with no more justification than his own parochial agenda of self-aggrandizement or, at best, devotion to some human-centric religious or philosophical cause.

I think we can all agree that the real world has seen enough exploitation of the environment by man, enough predation on other species, enough resort to brutal violence as a means to solve problems that we don't need to succumb to those same primitive attitudes when we play games.

In all seriousness, if manticores did appear to have rich inner lives denoting some human-level of rationality and self-awareness then I would suggest that the same problems as have been discussed above would be brought up. But generally speaking Manticores are not presented as having such an existence, whereas Orcs usually are so presented, so we have good reason to ask these questions and suggest that there may well be some inherent racism in dealing with them in certain ways.

It is ok to kill ropers, if ropers have only animal intelligence and present themselves as a danger to our brave adventurers. Not quite so obvious in the case of Orcs (although if they are trying to kill our brave adventurers we might think self-defence is permissible).

Mostly when we consider colonial Africa we don't really worry so much about the Big Game hunting as we do the treatment of the Africans themselves. Same thing with the ropers/manticores vs. Orcs.

We tend to think that it is ok to turn unfarmed land into farmed land, which will destroy the natural habitat of thousands of animals leading to much death, merely for the benefit of people now, and that doesn't seem so different to me from slaughtering the roper beast which has unwittingly collected a large amount of treasure. Of course if it could be done with little to no risk without hurting the roper, so much the better (same for the farmland, if one can make it into farmland such that most of the animals can move or continue to survive then that is even better).

So yeah, the question of Orcs, I suggest, is still relevantly different from that of other D&D Monsters.

It's even easy to introduce a game world where moral absolutes are the creations of creatures nearly beyond mortal ken, and answer the old question of a dead Greek Dude by saying, "Well, it's Good, because the Gods said it was.", and then say, "Just because it's Evil, doesn't mean it's not the right action."

It is just this answer to Plato's Eurythphro question in D&D which makes me dislike the alignment system. Along with Plato I have to say this just never made sense to me, so I can't take seriously the notion in a game that this is what Good is. I dunno, it is a suspension of disbelief thing for me. I mean, some people might find dungeons a problem because there is no ecology to them (I mean what do dungeon monsters eat?), which I don't find a problem, but Objective Good existing as Objective because the Gods say so strikes me as so wrong it breaks my concentration on the game. (This is, of course, just a matter of taste, if someone else can swallow it I have no problem with that).

Also it seems to me that the "Evil actions can be right" would usually specifically deny that the Objective, Deity-sanctioned/defined Good as the correct answer to Plato's question. That says "Good" is defined by the Gods as {x, y & z}, action A is "Evil" because it is specifically NOT-x (or whatever), but it is still the case that action A is right. To me that says that there is a system of morality prior to the Gods-define version, and that really the Gods-define version has not moral authority at all. That approach does allow for grey areas etc., but it does seem to specifically deny the D&D alignment system (or at least as I have so far seen the D&D system interpreted).

Thanatos02

03-25-2007, 04:21 PM

It is just this answer to Plato's Eurythphro question in D&D which makes me dislike the alignment system. Along with Plato I have to say this just never made sense to me, so I can't take seriously the notion in a game that this is what Good is. I dunno, it is a suspension of disbelief thing for me. I mean, some people might find dungeons a problem because there is no ecology to them (I mean what do dungeon monsters eat?), which I don't find a problem, but Objective Good existing as Objective because the Gods say so strikes me as so wrong it breaks my concentration on the game. (This is, of course, just a matter of taste, if someone else can swallow it I have no problem with that).

Also it seems to me that the "Evil actions can be right" would usually specifically deny that the Objective, Deity-sanctioned/defined Good as the correct answer to Plato's question. That says "Good" is defined by the Gods as {x, y & z}, action A is "Evil" because it is specifically NOT-x (or whatever), but it is still the case that action A is right. To me that says that there is a system of morality prior to the Gods-define version, and that really the Gods-define version has not moral authority at all. That approach does allow for grey areas etc., but it does seem to specifically deny the D&D alignment system (or at least as I have so far seen the D&D system interpreted).

Thanks for the intensive look at my quote, but as you might imagine, it is boiled down from a much lengthier perspective. I'm seriously considering starting a thread about Alignments (and the Planes) but I'm dubious as to if it would generate enough interest to be worth it. Mostly because it's be wordy as hell and about a fairly narrow band of interest.

Eric Tolle

03-25-2007, 04:43 PM

If we say it's okay to kill ropers, it's only because our human-centric worldview has an inherent bias against slimey, tentacled creatures that dwell underground. A D&D character who has any pretensions of leading a moral life would have to do some serious soul-searching the moment he lights that torch in the Caverns of Dread and marches into another being's natural habitat with the intention to hack it to bits with no more justification than his own parochial agenda of self-aggrandizement or, at best, devotion to some human-centric religious or philosophical cause.
But how can it be considered moral to inflict of our 21st multicultural viewpoint upon someone from a completely different culture? Isn’t that a particularly nasty bit of cultural imperialism to insist that D&D characters ignore their own history and world structure, and live by a viewpoint that is not only imposed upon them from without, but also may well be destructive? Isn't it the ultimate expression of white male European dominance to insist upon a “everyone is equally justified in living in a post-modernist society”, to the point of watching humans be slaughtered?

It is just this answer to Plato's Eurythphro question in D&D which makes me dislike the alignment system. Along with Plato I have to say this just never made sense to me, so I can't take seriously the notion in a game that this is what Good is. I dunno, it is a suspension of disbelief thing for me. I mean, some people might find dungeons a problem because there is no ecology to them (I mean what do dungeon monsters eat?), which I don't find a problem, but Objective Good existing as Objective because the Gods say so strikes me as so wrong it breaks my concentration on the game. (This is, of course, just a matter of taste, if someone else can swallow it I have no problem with that).
I'm not sure why that should break suspension of disbelief any more than a person being able to create a lightning bolt or open a gate between universes simply by waving his hands and muttering some words. Obviously, in a DnD world the universal laws are set up so that a person can create magic- it's only one step from that to say that the basic constancts of the universe are set up so that absolute alignments work, that Evil and Good are actual physical elements of the universe, as real as photons or gravity.

andreww

03-25-2007, 04:54 PM

But generally speaking Manticores are not presented as having such an existence, whereas Orcs usually are so presented, so we have good reason to ask these questions and suggest that there may well be some inherent racism in dealing with them in certain ways.
As weas recently pointed out to me by Old Geezer Manticores have an Int of 8, only marginally less than the average band of human intelligence. While they may not have a particularly sophisticated culture they certainly are sentient, capable of thinking andfeeling pain.

When you start to add in Beholders, Mind Flayers and Dragons you begin dealing with creatures more intelligent than you.

However, the difference between these fictional creatures and a minority which has been oppressed, victimised or discriminated against is that they most likely present a very serious and definate threat to your own society.

To suggest that acting against such a threat smacks of racism to me sounds rather far fetched. Not doing something about them smacks of stupidity.

Of course if our community of orcs/beholders/mind flayers are living in their own society and not really harming you or able to harm you then you may have a point.

In such circumstances it is rather easy (not to say disturbing) to draw parallels between a low tech humanoid society and every real world cultural clash between white christian europeans and native peoples over the last 400 years.

andreww

03-25-2007, 05:03 PM

The problem is that it's not the black and white cosmology that condones racism. It's the very idea of "races" of humanoids that have characteristics that make them objectively less intelligent, less wise, less charismatic and so on than humans (and others who, on the flip-side, are better than humans) and descriptions in the Monster Manual that assume that they are often or usually Evil in everyone's game that are the problems.
And I think perhaps this is one of the difficulties because we arent actually talking about different races here.

You cant really point to the elves and declare them the "french" or decide that the dwarves are the "germans" or even that halflings are the "belgians" (although it may explain why you need so few people to invade it...:p ).

What we are really talking about is entirely different species.

Your orc, elf, dwarf communities are far more akin to romulans, the hut, cylons etc than simply being different types of humans.

As such I see no reason why you cant reasonably have different creatures have different statistics in the same way as they might worship different gods, wear different clothes, speak different languages or be familiar with different technologies.

Ikselam

03-25-2007, 05:57 PM

But do any of the in between solutions really solve the problem of things like orcs being racist? I don't think so. Simply having them racially be less intelligent, less wise, and less attractive has racist overtones

I feel like the racism angle could be toned down if we simply stopped using the word "race" to incorrectly mean "species." Sure, it's a semantic dodge, but I think some part of the problem stems from semantics to begin with.

Iozz-Sothoth

03-25-2007, 05:58 PM

You know what's absolutely great, though it will not work for every campaign?

This thread: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=58227&page=1&pp=40

Seriously, it's a well-written summary of an ongoing (well at the time it was, he seems to have stopped updating) campaign and kicks off with a high-level Paladin having to deal with the fact that the succubus who was disguised as a lady in waiting and sent to seduce him claims to have fallen in love with him and offers herself to his justice when he confronts her.

That character's story gets more morally complex from that point forward. By orders of magnitude, I think.

Just got reminded of it.

Thanks for posting that link -- it's sheer brilliance. I particularly like the transcendence of the paradoxes of Lawful Goodness through dialectic, Zen, and antinomianism.

For the first time in years, I feel like running a D&D game. Need the right players, though... (i.e. people who don't equate paladin with asshat.)

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 07:11 PM

And I think perhaps this is one of the difficulties because we arent actually talking about different races here.

[...]

What we are really talking about is entirely different species.

Your orc, elf, dwarf communities are far more akin to romulans, the hut, cylons etc than simply being different types of humans.

I feel like the racism angle could be toned down if we simply stopped using the word "race" to incorrectly mean "species." Sure, it's a semantic dodge, but I think some part of the problem stems from semantics to begin with.

I don't think that the observation that they are different species rather than simply different races really changes anything. So long as they are sentient and have the ability to make moral choices to be Good, Neutral, or Evil, then I think they are morally the same as humans. Why would one treat an orc with an 14 STR, 8 INT, 8 WIS, and 8 CHA brought up in a nasty barbarian tribe any differently than a human with a 14 STR, 8 INT, 8 WIS, and 8 CHA brought up in a nasty barbarian tribe? Why make the orcs at all rather than humans?

Also let's not forget that humans can have children with orcs and elves, a strong suggestion that if they are separate species, the separation is not very large.

As for Cylons, the old sort anyway, I think they represent the sort of inherently Evil
that's the escape. If they don't have the ability to make moral choices or aren't sentient, then they fall into the same sort of category as devils, demons, and killer robots. The original Cylons were created during the the 1970s when you couldn't shoot down real people on early primetime television (you'll notice that the Sandmen use stunners in the Logan's Run TV series, too). The Cylons were designed to be the killable bad guys that could be mowed down with impunity without raising any moral objections.

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 07:19 PM

Incidentally, next time i have 4k gp left laying around, i'm packing one of these things into my Knight's bag...

So, hoards of well-meaning Good characters venture forth into dungeons carrying Helms of Opposite Alignment to help convert Evil humanoids to Good, only to have those helms fall into the hands of Evil creatures after suffering a TPK, who then use those helms to convert Good villagers and captured creatures to the side of Evil. I can't see that ending anyplace good.

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 07:30 PM

We tend to think that it is ok to turn unfarmed land into farmed land, which will destroy the natural habitat of thousands of animals leading to much death, merely for the benefit of people now, and that doesn't seem so different to me from slaughtering the roper beast which has unwittingly collected a large amount of treasure.

And that was why the Neutral Druid in my D&D campaign was told not to go too far in wiping out the Evil creatures of the world, because they held the humans in check, who would cultivate the entire planet if they could get away with it. ;)

Along with Plato I have to say this just never made sense to me, so I can't take seriously the notion in a game that this is what Good is. [...] I mean, some people might find dungeons a problem because there is no ecology to them (I mean what do dungeon monsters eat?), which I don't find a problem, but Objective Good existing as Objective because the Gods say so strikes me as so wrong it breaks my concentration on the game. (This is, of course, just a matter of taste, if someone else can swallow it I have no problem with that).

In D&D Objective Good isn't Objective because the gods say so. It has a very specific meaning independent of any deity. Good means making personal sacrifices to help innocent people. Neutral means self-interest. Evil means being cruel and casually murderous. A Good or Neutral character should normally never have to be cruel or casually murderous. And in the rare case where a Good or Neutral character must do something cruel or murderous, it should be because they have no other choice and thus it's neither cruel by intent nor casual in nature and fails, in my opinion, to be Evil.

Selfish pragmatism is Neutral, not Evil. Check the 3.x SRD. All Neutral requires are compunctions against killing innocents. That means that so long as you have some qualms against doing so, you can kill innocents with cause and still be Neutral, not Evil. My assessment is that Evil requires purposeful cruelty or casual slaughter, not pragmatic cruelty or pragmatic slaughter. And I think that interpretation goes a long way toward solving the problems of an objective alignment system.

Also it seems to me that the "Evil actions can be right" would usually specifically deny that the Objective, Deity-sanctioned/defined Good as the correct answer to Plato's question.

Can you give me an example of what you would consider an Evil action being right? I can think of an example or two but I don't think I'm thinking the same thing that you are.

Nelzie

03-25-2007, 07:34 PM

So if I make up a D20 Modern campaign world where non-whites are evil because they are influenced by evil gods, nobody should ever criticize me for it?

Non-whites?

Are you really going there?

That's an overtly racist statement, I really have to question why you feel the need to suggest such an extreme example that is 1,000 miles off the mark in comparison to what I have been posting about in here.

Are you suggesting that in my game world only "non-whites" are evil?

All I can say is that you have no idea what you are talking about and that's a terribly incorrect assumption. Really, I didn't think that I needed to go in depth into the history of how Orcs came to be in my game world. However, it looks like I have to explain it.

Orcs were white people, to put it quite simply. They worshiped the Dark Gods, did evil deeds and in the end were corrupted by the Dark Gods. They are the worst of the worst in terms of historical "White" behavior and act in the evil ways that whites historically (in the real world) painted other cultures.

I have been building my game world using a few principles.

1. Using the Moral Absolutes of "D&D" (Along with some other "D&D Genre" elements and several of my own elements).

2. Attempting to be very sensitive towards racial and cultural issues. (Which is why I aim strongly to create good, healthy and positive examples of cultures that any gamer can identify with. I could give a few dozen examples, but that would be for another thread.)

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 07:38 PM

John Morrow's goblin theme is fine with me because it is very obvious that he made it clear that this sort of thing would be morally questionable in real life and that he at least understands why someone might be critical of it. As long as he has that attitude, there is probably absolutely no danger whatsoever of any sort of real-life racism being promoted by his game.

Should I add that the player requesting inherently Evil bad guys for his Paladin to slay is black?

Basically, there's probably not any serious racism in 99.99999% of RPGs, but judging from the reasons given here for why those games are okay, if there was a lot of blatant racism in RPGs, there would still be many people here still defending them because "it's just a game."

To be honest, I also think the idea that you simply shouldn't have the characters ever face baby orcs is also a bit of a cop-out. It suggests that there is a dark nasty corner to the game reality into which no character should dare tread, lest they uncover a nasty and awful truth about orcs and other evil races. I'd rather figure out how to resolve the problem than be forced to look away from it.

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 07:54 PM

Are you suggesting that in my game world only "non-whites" are evil?

I think he's saying that being influenced by Evil gods, alone, does not justify the way orcs and goblins are often depicted in games. If it doesn't apply to you, then try not to take it personally.

Orcs were white people, to put it quite simply. They worshiped the Dark Gods, did evil deeds and in the end were corrupted by the Dark Gods. They are the worst of the worst in terms of historical "White" behavior and act in the evil ways that whites historically (in the real world) painted other cultures.

In other words, their Evil made them monstrous. It sounds like, from your examples, that you came to pretty much the same conclusion that I did. To make orcs monsters instead of a different type of people, they have to be inherently and unrepentantly Evil because so long as they are free to choose between Good(, Neutral, ) and Evil, they are essentially people.

The Scribbler

03-25-2007, 08:15 PM

Thanks for posting that link -- it's sheer brilliance. I particularly like the transcendence of the paradoxes of Lawful Goodness through dialectic, Zen, and antinomianism.

For the first time in years, I feel like running a D&D game. Need the right players, though... (i.e. people who don't equate paladin with asshat.)

Glad it could inspire you. Certainly did me.

Ikselam

03-25-2007, 09:28 PM

As for Cylons, the old sort anyway, I think they represent the sort of inherently Evil
that's the escape. If they don't have the ability to make moral choices or aren't sentient, then they fall into the same sort of category as devils, demons, and killer robots.

But the Cylons are sentient robots with the capacity for rational thought. They could choose to not implacably hunt down the last remnants of humanity. If you're basing your argument entirely around the free agency thing, then it shouldn't be okay to mow down Cylons, since even though they aren't made of meat, they aren't composed of elemental evil, either.

Belac

03-25-2007, 09:34 PM

Non-whites?

Are you really going there?

That's an overtly racist statement, I really have to question why you feel the need to suggest such an extreme example that is 1,000 miles off the mark in comparison to what I have been posting about in here.

Are you suggesting that in my game world only "non-whites" are evil?

All I can say is that you have no idea what you are talking about and that's a terribly incorrect assumption. Really, I didn't think that I needed to go in depth into the history of how Orcs came to be in my game world. However, it looks like I have to explain it.

I was replying to the argument that "D&D is fiction so racism is okay" by pointing out an example where racism in fiction would NOT be okay with the majority of people here. I was NOT saying anything about orcs in your game world. I was NOT saying that orcs represent non-whites in anyone's game. I was just pointing out that while I can kinda understand the argument that "D&D racism is okay because the targets are not real races," I cannot understand the argument that "D&D racism is okay because it's just a game." The second example would make games like RaHoWa morally acceptable.

--------------------------------
As for D&D clerics being based on the more militant variety of real medieval clerics, that may be true, but calling that sort of behavior "Good" is a bit creepy. Also, little else in D&D seems to be accurate to medieval culture.

I don't really have a problem with people using racial alignments to justify hack and slash campaigns (and I've done it in a few short games myself). I just have a problem when those people are so rudely dismissive of anyone who questions this in the slightest bit.

Kaiu Keiichi

03-25-2007, 10:10 PM

About D&D, Helms of Opposite Alignment, and the repugnance of Alignmnent -

In bog standard D&D 3.5,morality is not a choice, but a part of physics. It can be measured and magically manipulated. So, in traditional 3.5 settings, Free Will has literally no meaning. Morality is literally part of the magical physics.

I salute settings like Eberron , which makes morality into a choice again.

CB

John Morrow

03-25-2007, 10:10 PM

But the Cylons are sentient robots with the capacity for rational thought. They could choose to not implacably hunt down the last remnants of humanity.

In the original BSG, that was by no means clear, especially when you make the connection between the voice of the leader of the Cylons and Count Iblis, strongly hinted at being a demon or devil, as well as the whole, "By your command," thing. For the most part, the centurians were played up as dumb machines. You can find some evidence of moral choice in the Starbuck episode of Galactica 1980, but I'm not sure I'd consider that canon.

Added: By the way, it is by no means a given that being sentient or capable of rational thought means that someone can automatically choose between Good and Evil. If you want, I can give you a series of articles on how and why humans make moral decisions and what makes psychopaths so dangerous. The short version is that morality requires a conscience that operates on an emotional basis such that a person cares about being Good and that rational thought. There are very intelligent and rational human beings who still feel compelled to do incredibly horrible things to other human beings and lack a conscience to discourage them from doing so, which is why violent psychopaths and sex offenders have such a high recidivism rate. Such people make a very good model for sentient yet morally irredeemable creatures.

If you're basing your argument entirely around the free agency thing, then it shouldn't be okay to mow down Cylons, since even though they aren't made of meat, they aren't composed of elemental evil, either.

The Cylons in the new BSG, on the other hand, to appear to be able to choose between Good and Evil and, no, I don't believe in summary execution for them. I think that's a purposeful distinction that the new series is making. The new series, however, also gets around the problem a bit by making the raiders less than fully sentient and more like hunting animals.

Thanatos02

03-25-2007, 11:58 PM

Can you give me an example of what you would consider an Evil action being right? I can think of an example or two but I don't think I'm thinking the same thing that you are.

I know you're almost certainly not thinking about it in the same way I am. I really do think I'll start a different thread about it, (I'll link it when I do. I'm in the middle of several writing projects taking me in different directions) but it boils down to changing one's perspective.

If you approach the world from a Chaotic Evil mindset, (that's C/E with both capital letters, so a game descriptor) you're approaching the world from the point of view that is essentially propgated from The Abyss, a planar point of origin that, when viewed cosmologically in your canonical D&D universe, is not just an ethical volition, but a universal force of nature.

You can view this as an origin point for icons that can be thoughtlessly killed, because they are irredeemably destructive, but a more interesting and fun tack on it for me is to consider what Chaotic Evil is advocating.

The essential drive of Chaotic Evil is a destructively selfish one. The beings that espouse Chaotic Evil don't do so because they think it's a great lark to contradict Good, or anything. They champion CE by proxy, becsuse they are beings that know, more surely then we mortal can know anything, that CE is the best and most correct way to exist. It is existance free from being beholden to weaker beings. It is existance where the creatures that live and thrive most deserve, by virtue of earning it. No creature thrives in a CE world that does not constantly earn it by wont of being subjected to the cruible of existance for every moment of its being.

This is not a great way to live. It's awful for the vast, vast majority of creatures in existance. But, let's face it, to a CE being, that's correct. Why should weaker things thrive? They shouldn't. A CE society might deteriorate or thrive, depending, but that's mostly irrelevant to a CE being.

This is stupid for any creature even approaching a good alignment. But there it is. The right action is the action that befits ones ethos. Mortals derive their ethos either independant of dieties, where they forge their own virtues and codes of conduct, but in D&D, they are more likely influenced by the God that got to 'em first. So, they adopt the morals they're taught as correct, and if they thrive, that's proof they work. You've got 9 paths of conduct that, in D&D canon, foster various types of societies. Gods champion all of them, and have forged ethos in their names. 'Good' in D&D only has a passible similarity, philosophically, to what 'good' means to us. The names are misleading.

This is IMO, fully and totally. A premise for a games worldview based of of D&D cosmology as I see it. I only hope that, in writing this, I have inspired more game ideas then I do bickering or the like.

Agent Oracle

03-26-2007, 12:40 AM

I was replying to the argument that "D&D is fiction so racism is okay" by pointing out an example where racism in fiction would NOT be okay with the majority of people here.

You're treading dangerously close to a Godwin there. What you're pointing out is REAL racisim. Where a human hates another human purely because of their heritage, creed, or the color of their skin, in spite of all men being created equal.

This is Dungeons and dragons, where not every being is created man.

Consider the following:

In dungeons and dragons, there are assorted species of half-man, half-fish, and half-man, half-horse, and half-man, half-goat, and Goat / Dragon / Lion hybrids, and Owl - Bear mixes and lion-seal mixes, and Half-Dragon half-ANYTHING is permissible...

I guess what I'm trying to say is: At what point, in dungeons and dragons, is something genuinely a "race"and not a whole 'nuther SPECIES?

Because magic permits the mixture of bloodlines to a sufficient degree to create a half-fire elemental, that's right, half of their parentage is an anthropomorphic personification of a rapid form of oxidation, I hold that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be racist in dungeons and dragons. HOWEVER, it is entirely possible to be SPECIST. Due to long-standing conflicts between the wide assortment of mutually sentient species occupying the same area, it should be expected that there will be trans-species dislike.

Eric Tolle

03-26-2007, 12:43 AM

I have to say I don't like the term "species" when used with orcs, since they clearly can breed with humans. "Breed" might be more better, FWIW.

Anyway, the perfect example of innate morality would be the Daleks from Dr. Who, who are programmed to hate all other life. Hell, it took genetic reprogramming just to get one to think of other things than killing...and that only temporarily. One way to think of orcs would be as biological Daleks, with even the infants snapping and biting at humans (not that I'm saying that would be my preferred way of running orcs, just that it would be a viable version). Orcs like that couldn't really be compared to any human race;something more like sharks would be appropriate.

pedant

03-26-2007, 04:35 AM

As weas recently pointed out to me by Old Geezer Manticores have an Int of 8, only marginally less than the average band of human intelligence. While they may not have a particularly sophisticated culture they certainly are sentient, capable of thinking andfeeling pain.

When you start to add in Beholders, Mind Flayers and Dragons you begin dealing with creatures more intelligent than you.

However, the difference between these fictional creatures and a minority which has been oppressed, victimised or discriminated against is that they most likely present a very serious and definate threat to your own society.

To suggest that acting against such a threat smacks of racism to me sounds rather far fetched. Not doing something about them smacks of stupidity.

Of course if our community of orcs/beholders/mind flayers are living in their own society and not really harming you or able to harm you then you may have a point.

In such circumstances it is rather easy (not to say disturbing) to draw parallels between a low tech humanoid society and every real world cultural clash between white christian europeans and native peoples over the last 400 years.

Yeah, I would kind of see the main problem as being in the "Let us go into this dungeon and kill all the things which get in our way in order to take the treasure" attitude. I don't see that as being all that different from Western Society's approach to the rest of the world.

Eric Tolle:

I'm not sure why that should break suspension of disbelief any more than a person being able to create a lightning bolt or open a gate between universes simply by waving his hands and muttering some words. Obviously, in a DnD world the universal laws are set up so that a person can create magic- it's only one step from that to say that the basic constancts of the universe are set up so that absolute alignments work, that Evil and Good are actual physical elements of the universe, as real as photons or gravity.

I sort of agree. It is principally just a sort of personal perspective. I don't choose this, it just hits me.

I say sort of because I think the difference between breaking the current laws of physics is merely breaking a set of contingent laws of the universe, whereas the morality thing I think is breaking a set of necessary laws (by which I mean someone who says it is "good" to murder innocents has simply misunderstood the meaning of the words, a bit like if they said "Absolute zero is a very hot temperature"). I would find it equally concentration breaking if a game specifically broke down the laws of logic. Some people might be able to "get" that, but I really wouldn't. Still, it is just personal preference. I have no problem if other people can understand these.

John Morrow:

In D&D Objective Good isn't Objective because the gods say so. It has a very specific meaning independent of any deity. Good means making personal sacrifices to help innocent people. Neutral means self-interest. Evil means being cruel and casually murderous. A Good or Neutral character should normally never have to be cruel or casually murderous. And in the rare case where a Good or Neutral character must do something cruel or murderous, it should be because they have no other choice and thus it's neither cruel by intent nor casual in nature and fails, in my opinion, to be Evil.

Selfish pragmatism is Neutral, not Evil. Check the 3.x SRD. All Neutral requires are compunctions against killing innocents. That means that so long as you have some qualms against doing so, you can kill innocents with cause and still be Neutral, not Evil. My assessment is that Evil requires purposeful cruelty or casual slaughter, not pragmatic cruelty or pragmatic slaughter. And I think that interpretation goes a long way toward solving the problems of an objective alignment system.

If this is how things are presented then my complaint is indeed unfounded. I got the impression of the Deity-defined Objective Good from the various descriptions of how "Detect Evil" & "Smite" etc. work.

As Kaiu Keiichi said:

In bog standard D&D 3.5,morality is not a choice, but a part of physics. It can be measured and magically manipulated. So, in traditional 3.5 settings, Free Will has literally no meaning. Morality is literally part of the magical physics.

That was what I had understood and what I was arguing against. If Good and Evil become "magical physics" (a much better description of things, I think, than my "Deity-defined morality" term, though I think they refer to relevantly similar things).

From this my description of a right, but Evil, action is with this arbitrary definition of Evil from the magical physics. So it might be "Evil" to deal with devils, but perhaps if a devil has an innocent baby in its power (let us say and orc one :D), then perhaps we might offer it something which it values (but which it cannot use to do harm), say a year of my life and that this offer would be right.

I don't think on a non-magical physics system of good and evil will so easily have a conflict between right and wrong.

Anyway, apologies if these replies seem somewhat piecemeal. I am meant to be packing and things and catching trains and stuff soon.

Greg 1

03-26-2007, 07:06 AM

I was just pointing out that while I can kinda understand the argument that "D&D racism is okay because the targets are not real races," I cannot understand the argument that "D&D racism is okay because it's just a game." The second example would make games like RaHoWa morally acceptable.

That seems right to me. There are fictions that are bad ideas because of the way the real world is now that might not be bad ideas if the world were different.

I don't mind the slaughter of evil Orcs in D&D because I don't think that it actually does encourage racism in the real world or open the wounds of those who have suffered from racism. But if new information were presented to me regarding the way the real world is, I could change my mind on that one.

It all comes down to predictions of real-world effects to me. I think it was wrong to publish RaHoWa and I think it was would be wrong to set up a con game of RaHoWa. On the other hand, if some people I knew not to be racist were playing RaHoWa in their basement for some strange gamer reason, I wouldn't condemn that.

La Maupin

03-26-2007, 07:08 AM

"Look kid, I've given you something far greater than a family: A Background. Here, take these two short swords and this longbow. Now repeat after me: "Favored Enemy: Orcs".
You win the thread. =D

The Scribbler

03-26-2007, 07:15 AM

About D&D, Helms of Opposite Alignment, and the repugnance of Alignmnent -

In bog standard D&D 3.5,morality is not a choice, but a part of physics. It can be measured and magically manipulated. So, in traditional 3.5 settings, Free Will has literally no meaning. Morality is literally part of the magical physics.

I don't understand how there is an absence of choice, though I can see how that choice can be taken away because such forces are able to be manipulated.

Reynard

03-26-2007, 07:47 AM

IIf you approach the world from a Chaotic Evil mindset, (that's C/E with both capital letters, so a game descriptor) you're approaching the world from the point of view that is essentially propgated from The Abyss, a planar point of origin that, when viewed cosmologically in your canonical D&D universe, is not just an ethical volition, but a universal force of nature.

You can view this as an origin point for icons that can be thoughtlessly killed, because they are irredeemably destructive, but a more interesting and fun tack on it for me is to consider what Chaotic Evil is advocating.

The essential drive of Chaotic Evil is a destructively selfish one. The beings that espouse Chaotic Evil don't do so because they think it's a great lark to contradict Good, or anything. They champion CE by proxy, becsuse they are beings that know, more surely then we mortal can know anything, that CE is the best and most correct way to exist. It is existance free from being beholden to weaker beings. It is existance where the creatures that live and thrive most deserve, by virtue of earning it. No creature thrives in a CE world that does not constantly earn it by wont of being subjected to the cruible of existance for every moment of its being.

This is not a great way to live. It's awful for the vast, vast majority of creatures in existance. But, let's face it, to a CE being, that's correct. Why should weaker things thrive? They shouldn't. A CE society might deteriorate or thrive, depending, but that's mostly irrelevant to a CE being.

That's the best explanation of CE I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Bravo.

Eric Tolle

03-26-2007, 08:04 AM

I don't understand how there is an absence of choice, though I can see how that choice can be taken away because such forces are able to be manipulated.It's a bit like complaining that gravity takes away free will, because damn it, you ALWAYS plummit downwards. I demand the right to choose to fall upwards!

RobertFisher

03-26-2007, 10:13 AM

EDIT: And before someone says "It's just a game, you're taking it too seriously" to me, I have a response.

FWIW, I wish to clarify my own statement about "too seriously" earlier in this thread. I was saying simply that that is how I handle it in play, not trying to indirectly admonish anyone for the way they play. Secondly, I'm all for taking discussions of such topics too seriously!

This whole thread is bizarre. D&D is a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff. Monsters - you know, creatures that are evil and dangerous and need to be killed. Notions of moral dilemmas and genocide were not even considered when the game was designed and developed. If Gygax was looking at any model for good and evil it was real-world medieval attitudes, which were pretty cut and dried.

It's been kind of odd playing X1. The c. 1981 D&D equated law with good & chaos with evil. (Very little of the AD&D or later classic D&D "lawful can be evil" or "chaotic can be good" angle.) It also seems to very much inspired to the "everything in the dungeon/adventure environment is hostile & will attack on sight" nature of oD&D. (How many people really used reaction rolls? Gygax said he didn't.) Yet so many of the encounters on the island--not just south of the wall--are lawful & neutral. The players have been somewhat relieved when they encounter regular ole trolls.

To be honest, I also think the idea that you simply shouldn't have the characters ever face baby orcs is also a bit of a cop-out. It suggests that there is a dark nasty corner to the game reality into which no character should dare tread, lest they uncover a nasty and awful truth about orcs and other evil races. I'd rather figure out how to resolve the problem than be forced to look away from it.

I guess I won't argue that it isn't a cop-out on some level, but something that has been recently pointed out to me is that orc babies don't necessarily exist any more than demon babies do. Monsters don't necessarily have the same life cycle as humans. The dilemma need not be avoided simply because we don't want to deal with it, the dilemma need not be a part of the milieu at all.

Thanatos02

03-26-2007, 10:22 AM

That's the best explanation of CE I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Bravo.

Thanks! =D

Old Geezer

03-26-2007, 11:22 AM

John Morrow

03-26-2007, 12:42 PM

I guess I won't argue that it isn't a cop-out on some level, but something that has been recently pointed out to me is that orc babies don't necessarily exist any more than demon babies do. Monsters don't necessarily have the same life cycle as humans. The dilemma need not be avoided simply because we don't want to deal with it, the dilemma need not be a part of the milieu at all.

And that's fine with me because it shows that you've at least thought the problem through. My problem was with the idea that there are assumed to be orc babies in the setting but the GM should never let the PCs encounter any.

Old Geezer

03-26-2007, 01:03 PM

And that's fine with me because it shows that you've at least thought the problem through. My problem was with the idea that there are assumed to be orc babies in the setting but the GM should never let the PCs encounter any.

Oh, gotcha.

I think of it more in mythic terms; kobolds are the small noises heard down in the deep tunnels, orcs are the mysterious sounds you hear out in the woods...

rbingham2000

03-26-2007, 01:08 PM

And as far as demon babies are concerned, have you ever read Stephen King's IT? Or seen the Alien movies? The young of such foul creatures are far more likely to be unspeakable horrors themselves than anything cute and innocent.

La Maupin

03-26-2007, 01:51 PM

I think of this kind of question, honestly, as a semantic trap intended to get people into defending a soap bubble, and assuming that EGG's response is taken in the same vein as Christopher Lee's contemptuous dismissal of the fan asking him whether Saruman or Count Dooku would win in a fight, that response is wholly merited. So much in D&D depends on how the campaign world is written up. In one world, infant orcs may be just as evil and vicious as their adult counterparts. In another, they may be as helpless and malleable as a human infant. In a third, they may not even exist. It all depends on how the DM wants his campaign to come across.

Lewd Beholder

03-26-2007, 02:00 PM

er what fiend babies

demons are primorial creatures created as adults from the abyss itself?

devils are "recruited" souls and given a new body after death?

loseth

03-26-2007, 02:24 PM

Old Geezer

03-26-2007, 02:26 PM

I think of this kind of question, honestly, as a semantic trap intended to get people into defending a soap bubble,

I'ma gonna steal that. Well said.

Lewd Beholder

03-26-2007, 02:35 PM

isn't that what a plane is anyway, nothing more then a self contained soap bubble :P

Chocobo

03-26-2007, 03:15 PM

OK guys, here's my patented 3 step process to solve moral dilemmas in D&D:

1. Roll Knowledge(Religion) to determine what your religion says about the slaughter of monster babies.
a. If your religion says it is right to kill monster babies, then do so.
b. If your religion says it is wrong to kill monster babies, then don't.
c. If your religion has no rule about it, then kill them if they detect as evil.

2. If you rolled badly, and there is someone else around who would know and you can trust (LG Cleric or Loremaster for instance) then ask them.

3. If no one else knows either, convince your party to chip in for atonement cost (hello, why do you think diplomacy is a class skill?) and kill the babies if they have any XP or treasure.

Therion

03-28-2007, 08:47 AM

I haven't really gotten around to finishing the reading of this topic and replying until now, and considering the fact that I find it quite interesting.. here's my take (morality, alignments and orc babies):

I generally see (unless a world/story dictates otherwise) orcs as created by evil gods, basically standard evil in their.. eh.. 'genes' but with no magical compulsion to remain as such. Sure, some deity may be looking over their shoulder and so are a lot of fellow orcs.

Thus, the majority of the orcs are evil, but some neutral and good orcs could exist (I don't go for a standard neutral or good population unless it fits a campaign).

They are not 'made of evil' (like demons/devils), they just have a tendency (well, stronger than a mere tendency) to evil. It comes naturally to them.

I don't usually think much more on this and it hardly seems likely to come up, anyway. Most orcs are encountered as direct and obvious agressors or as enemies. Enemies, of course, needn't be evil, but if a nation of elves has a history of attacks from orcs an elven warband is not likely to question mature orcs on their ethical behaviour. So to speak.

I also think it's largely a point of view issue rather than one of 'racism/speciesism'. You play the humans/dwarves/elves/whatever and those orcs are your long-standing enemies. It usually doesn't get much more complicated. It can, of course, but it doesnt happen all too often. But it's an interesting situation to bear in mind. Just as it's good to be reminded of the fact that if orcs needn't be evil what the morality of certain actions really is.

I also don't think that alignments should be decided by deities. More like.. there is a certain objective good/evil/etc. (like.. gravity, as one poster wrote it) and it just so happens that some deities are good and some are neutral and some are evil. I also like spells like 'smite evil' but my take means that a deity who changes alignment simply can't use/grant powers with properties of his/her previous alignment. But I would not make alignments that hard-coded into people. People have a mind of their own.. and so do (many) other creatures. :P

Oh yes, that description of Chaotic Evil was really good, too. :)

Katsue

03-28-2007, 04:30 PM

Those were Jackson's Uruk Hai.

Given we never find out in the novels how the Uruk Hai were created, but we do see that they are vastly different from corrupted elf Orcs, I buy his interpretation.

We don't see how they were created, but Gandalf speculates that Saruman "bred Orcs with Men" (or words to that effect), and goes on to say that if that were the case, it would rank among the vilest of his crimes. IOW, Saruman had rape camps.

Also, Uruk-Hai are not shown to be significantly different in personality from other Orcs, except that they're taller and able to bear the light of the sun. And since Tolkien states at various points that Morgoth, once he had turned to evil, was incapable of true creation, it seems unreasonable to suggest that beings he corrupted from elves would have a different reproductive system to the one that elves have.

SuperG

03-28-2007, 05:25 PM

We don't see how they were created, but Gandalf speculates that Saruman "bred Orcs with Men" (or words to that effect), and goes on to say that if that were the case, it would rank among the vilest of his crimes. IOW, Saruman had rape camps.

Also, Uruk-Hai are not shown to be significantly different in personality from other Orcs, except that they're taller and able to bear the light of the sun. And since Tolkien states at various points that Morgoth, once he had turned to evil, was incapable of true creation, it seems unreasonable to suggest that beings he corrupted from elves would have a different reproductive system to the one that elves have.

I think it was also suggested they were 'ruined Men' rather than than hybrids.

Anyway.

Saruman, with his new 'mind of machines' perspective, doesn't seem well suited to working on breeding. Alchemy seems more suited to his style, growing abominations in an unnatural fashion.

Also, as 'fallen' beings, it makes a certain symbolic sense for the Orcs to reproduce in a 'lesser' or 'devolved' fashion.

Plus, the Uruk Hai sprang forth as an elite fighting force in a remarkably short time; at the time of The Hobbit, Saruman was still The White, because the Council opposed The Necromancer - AKA Sauron. So he didn't have the time for conventional breeding programs - okay, rape camps might have worked, but he would have had to gamble, since he would have to send the first generation to war, and Saruman was fairly risk averse.

ShanG

03-28-2007, 06:11 PM

I think it was also suggested they were 'ruined Men' rather than than hybrids.

Plus, the Uruk Hai sprang forth as an elite fighting force in a remarkably short time; at the time of The Hobbit, Saruman was still The White, because the Council opposed The Necromancer - AKA Sauron. So he didn't have the time for conventional breeding programs - okay, rape camps might have worked, but he would have had to gamble, since he would have to send the first generation to war, and Saruman was fairly risk averse.

Saruman was already doing his thing at the time of the Hobbit - he only agreed to help fight 'The Necromancer' because he was afraid of someone else finding the ring before he did, and wanted to keep that region clear of enemies while he searched for it.

I believe you're correct about the suggestion that the Uruk Hai were ruined humans. At least, J.R.R.T. later talks about how Saruman's experiments involved essentially (IMOW) re-discovering the methods that Sauron used to create Orcs in the first place. That is, he's taking evil men and nurturing their corruption until they weren't any better than orcs themselves, and then he started breeding them together to create a new strain - one that demonstrates hybrid vigor, and is more suited for daytime activity.

LoneWolf23

03-28-2007, 06:14 PM

Here's how I look at it... Have you ever seen kids in real life? They're hardly the "innocent angels" people make them out to be. Real kids are rowdy, undisciplined, and prone to mischief and selfish behavior. Raising a kid is just about as much about leading them away from such behavior as it is teaching them how the world works.

Now, consider that orcs aren't likely to discipline their young'ins out of acting rowdy and selfish, and orc children are likely to be just as vicious and violent as their parents, if not more so...

SuperG

03-28-2007, 06:38 PM

Della

03-28-2007, 06:38 PM

Personal opinion:

Check if they have any stuff. (pie, for example)

If they have any, kill them and take it.

Protip: If it's in a dungeon, kill it.

SuperG

03-28-2007, 06:39 PM

Saruman was already doing his thing at the time of the Hobbit - he only agreed to help fight 'The Necromancer' because he was afraid of someone else finding the ring before he did, and wanted to keep that region clear of enemies while he searched for it.

I believe you're correct about the suggestion that the Uruk Hai were ruined humans. At least, J.R.R.T. later talks about how Saruman's experiments involved essentially (IMOW) re-discovering the methods that Sauron used to create Orcs in the first place. That is, he's taking evil men and nurturing their corruption until they weren't any better than orcs themselves, and then he started breeding them together to create a new strain - one that demonstrates hybrid vigor, and is more suited for daytime activity.

Really? Odd.

Still, sticking to the books, it's all a little open to interpretation.

Albert

03-28-2007, 07:15 PM

Here's an idea I've used a couple of times:

The Orcs/goblins/whatever are evil, yeah, but potentially redeemable. So you demonstrate that your way of life is better, hoping they'll adopt your ways out of self-interest, instead of just genociding them.

Except that they look at your cool stuff and decide to take it. Leading to raids and rapes and all kinds of Bad Stuff happening to your people.

So, you chase down all the raiders and kill them. Then you go to the tribal leaders and inform them that you are holding them responsible for the behavior of anyone who lives under their authority. If any more raids happen, you're prepared to engage in total war to wipe them out to the last orc.

Their response is, of course, to either wage war if they think they can win, or to ritually cast out the young'ns who want to go raiding, so that they can claim - technically the truth - that the raiders are all feral outlaws who were cast out because of their violent desires. (The loot is all traded away before the raiders are allowed to rejoin their tribe, so that there's no incriminating proof.)

In this scenario, the PCs can be assigned as quick-response enforcers to catch the small raiding bands and slaughter them, or they can be called in after the local humans have gotten soft, decadent, and entirely unable to win if the orcs decide to make it a war.

-Albert

Old Geezer

03-28-2007, 07:58 PM

Personal opinion:

Check if they have any stuff. (pie, for example)

If they have any, kill them and take it.

Protip: If it's in a dungeon, kill it.

:D

Greg 1

03-29-2007, 06:31 AM

?

So, Orcs are evil because of their upbringing.

Wow, the guilt factor in killing their adults just went up. :(

This is always going to be a problem if the races in your fantasy world have psychology anything like human psychology. Humans who display violent destructive behavior in our own world have usually been raised badly too - not always, of course, but the correlation is massive.

Our genes are beyond our control. Our childhood environment is beyond our control. And those two things together seem to have a massive influence on how we turn out (we don't need to argue over which matters more here, since either way, we are getting pushed around by outside forces). To my mind, this makes any reward/punishment system intrinsically unfair and justifiable only on the grounds that it has good consequences. Killing adult Orcs might have good consequences. Sending Orcs to the lower planes after death, though, doesn't seem to have any good consequences that I can see.

thurgon

03-30-2007, 07:59 PM

thurgon

03-30-2007, 08:14 PM

Arguably, there is a contradiction - or at least a serious tension - in the alignment system as set out in 3E D&D.

The 3E rules present alignment as a set of shorthand descriptions - simple summaries of a person's behaviour and outlook. Someone who helps a lot is described as Good, someone who pillages a lot is described as Evil. It is in this way that the D&D alignment system is a type of objective morality: what is good and evil does not depend upon individual commitments or beliefs, but is rather "built into" the fabric of the universe ("good" = altruism etc, "evil" = psychopathy etc). A person's behaviour and outlook locate him or her within the metaphysical framework of the universe. Call this "descriptive alignment".

But the rules also present alignment as a set of commitments/ideals/values. The paladin is committed to LG. The typical orc is committed to CE. Considered in this light, D&D alignment is not an absolute system of morality, but a relative one. In particular, it does not deliver a single unique answer to the question "Given I am in situation X, what ought I to do?" The answer to this question depends on one's location on the alignment graph, and the values one is committed to by that location: for a LG paladin, the correct answer may be one thing; for a CE orc the correct answer may be something quite different.

Thus the following paradox: for a person committed to CE, the correct answer to the question "What ought I to do?" is "Do evil!" This makes little sense, and is hard to reconcile with the thought that one's behaviour lands one with the description "Evil" precisly because one has been behaving in a way that one ought not to. In short, a given alignment can be a shorthand description of outlook and behaviour, or an ideal to which a person might be committed - but it is hard for it coherently to be both. There is a category error in identifying a set of behaviours with a set of behaviour-guiding values.

At this point, there seem to be two ways to go. One is to essentially abandon descriptive alignment, and go entirely with alignment as commitment. I think this is how earlier versions of D&D did it (especially OD&D and Basic/Expert D&D, with their framework of Law/Chaos). Alignments essentially become competing teams. Each team has its own self-governing set of rules (so if you are on the paladin's team, and kill without excuse, then you will be kicked off, and lose a level in the process as per 1st Ed DMG) but these rules have no relevance to or validity for members of other teams - all evaluations of conduct are team-relative, and thus the orc really is doing the right thing by doing Evil, because this is consistent with the rules of his team.

For those of us who find this approach a little nihilistic, there is the second alternative. We might want to take a logical step back, and say that a person ought not to be committed to CE in the first place. The argument for this view would be "It is wrong to be committed to so much psychopathic pillaging!" But in that case, there is no need to adopt the idea of alignments as frameworks of commitment at all. Characters in the game - paladins and orcs alike - would simply articulate their commitments in terms of real-world values such as life, freedom, justice, responsibility, love, loyalty, bravery etc, and the alignment system would be used simply as a handy mechanical shorthand for tracking the outcome of these commitments and the actions that follow from them.

Under this purely descriptive approach to alignment, there would be no need for an alignment entry on the PC character sheet. Alignment status would be something for the GM to keep track of, based on the PC's behaviour. If a character wants to know where s/he stands in the cosmic framework, s/he should have to get a cleric to check for her (a paladin would also learn something was up when s/he lost her powers)! As for baby orcs, they would not have an alignment at all, as (like animals) they would have no actions and no commitments to action that would locate them on the metaphsyical axes of alignment. They would not register to Detect Evil.

Whether or not killing them would be justified is a further question. The whole idea that detecting Evil provides a moral shortcut through the problem of murder is absurd even within the moral framework provided by the D&D alignment system. After all, and adopting the descriptive approach to alignment, the fact that someone detects as Evil tells us nothing about them at all except that they are psychopathic in deed and/or outlook. This may be relevant to the question of whether they have a right to life, but it hardly settles it. Therefore, for a paladin of any moral sophistication, the question of what justifies killing is likely to be quite different from the question of whether or not someone is (descriptively) Evil.

A wyvern imprisoned in a zoo, for example, may be Evil (in the sense that it has a past history of attrocities, and a desire to commit more if possible) but would seem to pose no threat, and is also presumably the property of the zoo-owner, so killing the wyvern would both be a wrong in itself, and also a trespass to goods.

On the other hand, a paladin leading an army in a time of war will probably feel justified in killing enemy soldiers on the battlefield regardless of the alignment of those soldiers (just as, in the modern era, no one seriously maintains that every soldier justifiably killed in the Second World War was an evil person who deserved to die for crimes committed). And surely most attacks by PCs against orcs are better understood in a similar way - they are quasi-military activities which are to be justified within the framework of a just war analysis, not as the meting out of punishment for crimes committed or threatened. Of course, a noteworthy feature of just war theory is that it stresses the sanctity of civilian life - and thus suggests again that the babies should be spared.

If one wants to do away with moral questions altogether, then I think the easiest way to do that is to simply drop alignment altogether from the game. The PCs can then simply be played as patriotic, bloodthirsty and (perhaps) xenophobic raiders, at war with a different set of patriotic, bloodthirsty and xenophobic raiders (the orcs) with no need to try to locate each group of actors in any sort of external moral framework of the sort posited by the alignment system.

Even demons and devils can be handled pretty easily without alignment: look at how games like Runequest or Cthulhu do just that. It is enough to know that demons like to destroy, and devils like to corrupt. Orcs would therefore admire demons (at least when not being destroyed by them), and subtle manipulators might draw inspiration from devils. There seems to be no additional requirement, to get a playable game, that these behaviours and outlooks be located within a metaphysical alignment framework.

When such a framework is imposed, as it is by core D&D, it a substantial addition to the mechanics and to the gameworld that makes things more complex, not more simple.

Funkadelic

03-31-2007, 03:11 AM

But the rules also present alignment as a set of commitments/ideals/values. The paladin is committed to LG. The typical orc is committed to CE. Considered in this light, D&D alignment is not an absolute system of morality, but a relative one. In particular, it does not deliver a single unique answer to the question "Given I am in situation X, what ought I to do?" The answer to this question depends on one's location on the alignment graph, and the values one is committed to by that location: for a LG paladin, the correct answer may be one thing; for a CE orc the correct answer may be something quite different.

Thus the following paradox: for a person committed to CE, the correct answer to the question "What ought I to do?" is "Do evil!" This makes little sense, and is hard to reconcile with the thought that one's behaviour lands one with the description "Evil" precisly because one has been behaving in a way that one ought not to. In short, a given alignment can be a shorthand description of outlook and behaviour, or an ideal to which a person might be committed - but it is hard for it coherently to be both. There is a category error in identifying a set of behaviours with a set of behaviour-guiding values.

Granted I've only played DnD with a couple of groups of people and we never had alignment arguements. But I can't imagine a game actually being run this way. It's been a while since I've read the core books in depth, but I don't think it's that orcs are commited to CE it's just that they are. They don't go into a situation think what's the CE thing to do, they look to see if they're stronger then a person and how shiney their stuff is. Similarly a paladin doesn't think "What would be both Lawful and Good at this junction?" (At least not consciously anyway), he tries to do what is just.

Unless I was playing an Order of The Stick game I can't imagine a character being aware of his or her alignment as LG or CE anymore then they would be aware of being level 10 or having maxed out ranks in diplomacy. It's about justice, or being a skilled warrior, or being really good at getting people to see their point of view.

I read the alignment system as something for the players not the player characters. In a world where Good and Evil have capital letters, the player needs to see where there characters fit into that scheme of things. The only difference between alignments and CRs is that a player can't do much to change the CR of an encounter but has direct control of the characters alignment.

But on the note of killing baby orcs. That's what I like about the alignment system and DnD in general. Most orcs are CE. It doesn't tell you why, that's up the the GM. It gives you enough to make a basic setting or something unique. Maybe killing baby orcs is a good thing, they could be destined to be monsters. Maybe not. It depends on the setting.

Although I think when the core books mention playing monsters as character they often use an evil creature raised by good aligned creatures as a way it could work. So it's at least implied that alignment is more nuture then nature.

John Morrow

03-31-2007, 11:04 AM

mindstalk

03-31-2007, 02:30 PM

The problem is that are you equating "Good" with "what one ought to do" and "Evil" with "what one ought not to do". That's not what they mean in the game and it's not even what they mean in real life. Most people who aren't Good people, even if they feel entirely justified in the way they behave and even when they enjoy being a murderous psychopath and have no desire to change, understand that they aren't Good people and don't look to turn the words around so they are meaningless. And where you do see horrible people claiming to be Good, it's often to fool other people. They aren't fooling themselves.

That may be true for some people, but it's not clear how general that is. Certainly lots of evil gets done by people who not only claim to be good but plausibly think they are. Burning witches to save their souls, torturing criminals to make them confess, starting a war because you think God told you to, or for democracy, or to stop Communism, even if you end up killing a million civilians. Hitler's the canonical modern evil, but he didn't think he was Evil, he thought the Jews were evil and he was defending the Good of the Volk. Pol Pot and Mao might have thought they were doing Good. Stalin, not so sure.

Part of all this is different definitions of good (the old Chinese legal system required confessions from suspects to officially punish them, which obviously makes a kind of sense, but quickly led to torture to get the confessions out.) Part of it is "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions", as shadier and shadier actions start to seem justified for the sake of the Greater Good.

And even "base criminals" might, in many cases, try to justify things to themselves: "I need this to survive." "Society is unjust anyway." "I only steal from people outside my tribe."

thurgon

03-31-2007, 03:24 PM

The problem is that are you equating "Good" with "what one ought to do" and "Evil" with "what one ought not to do". That's not what they mean in the game and it's not even what they mean in real life.
So the orc's answer is "Do Evil!" and they are fine with that. It's what they are.

<snip>

It's not hard to reconcile both at all if you don't assume that people always think of their own behavior as Good and things they shouldn't do as Evil.

I'm not the only one to think that "Good" is equivalent to "What one ought to do." In the history of philosophy (and ignoring some subtleties that I don't think matter here), I've got Plato on my side, and Thomas Hobbes, and Kant, and all contemporary non-cognitivists and expressivists. A few virtue ethicists disagree (McIntyre, I think, and Philippa Foot) but they are a distinct minority.

This does not change the fact that alignment, in D&D is an absolute system.

Why not? If you agree that the answer to "What ought I to do" is relative to one's position on the graph, then clearly it is a relative system, not an absolute one - although it is an objective, not subjective, relativism.

thurgon

03-31-2007, 03:29 PM

a paladin doesn't think "What would be both Lawful and Good at this junction?" (At least not consciously anyway), he tries to do what is just.

Unless I was playing an Order of The Stick game I can't imagine a character being aware of his or her alignment as LG or CE anymore then they would be aware of being level 10 or having maxed out ranks in diplomacy. It's about justice, or being a skilled warrior, or being really good at getting people to see their point of view.

I read the alignment system as something for the players not the player characters.

The above is what I characterised as a consistent application of "descriptive alignment". I think it can work. I think it is far from clear that this is what D&D intends. Earlier editions, with their alignment languages and what-not, clearly saw alignment as an in-game phenomenon and not purely a mechanical shorthand. And the description of paladins in 3E, not to mention the operation of all the alignment-based spells and so on, suggests to some extent that the designers still have that intent.

Ithaeur

04-01-2007, 02:45 AM

Greg 1

04-01-2007, 06:21 AM

I'm not the only one to think that "Good" is equivalent to "What one ought to do.".

I must agree that by standard definitions, both in philosophy and outside, "good" means "what one ought to do" and evil means "what one ought not to do"

In real world, the philosophers can't get an objective reading of whether someone's good or evil; in a by-the-book D&D world, you can measure someone's "alignment charge". This means that a lot of real-world philosophy is going to be irrelevant.

It doesn't seem to mean that the definitions need to change. Most Christians think that God can can get an objective reading of whether someone is good or evil, and most people think there is an objective fact of the matter, even if we can't detect it mechanically. No part of the usual definitions of good and evil seem to require anything regarding measurability.

A disagreement over definition isn't a substantive disagreement - its just a matter of different conventions. But for the sake of understanding each other, lets use standard definitions.

hackmastergeneral

04-01-2007, 07:08 AM

I think, and have argued as such to my "slay all evil creatures", that the "mostly" or "often" phrase in the Monster Manual describing the alignment of a given race is the key factor. Very few playable races are ALWAYS evil (by playable I mean the main subsects of the PC races that get bandied about). Even Drow, one of the most evil societies on the face of the game world, aren't "always" evil. Thus, it presumes that a percentage of the race isn't evil. Thus in slaughtering hordes of Orcs and their children and villagers, you are possibly killing non-evil characters. Possibly even a good one or two.

On the other side, in my mind GOOD doesn't commit mass genocide. Good does not use the tactics of evil to advance the cause of good. Period.

Killing an evil orc who has surrendered is evil. Period. Killing babies is evil. Period.

You wanna do those things? Pick Neutral. Idealism, not Pragmatism. Sure, there are REASONS to kill those babies, but none of them are GOOD.

hackmastergeneral

04-01-2007, 07:19 AM

Hearing reports of orc raiding parties and investigating, finding the evidence leads to a certain orc tribe, going and killing them = Good in D&D terms.

Hearing of a orc raiding party and sweeping the mountains around the village of every orc and goblinoid tribe in a 20 mile radius = not Good.

Observing orcs killing things and looting and then killing every last orc in the vicinity - Good in D&D terms.

Stumbling upon an Orc village and slaughtering the inhabitants down to the last baby = not Good.

Paladins are supposed to be EXEMPLARS of Good and Law. They encourage the spread of both by leading by example - they are not holy ass-kickers. Well, they are, but thats not ALL they are. A Paladin, in D&D (not FR) can commit himself to the ideal of Good and Law, not just to a particular Deity. A Paladin must be the epitome of both Good and Law in the world. Slaughtering every orc you come across is NOT Good, nor does it spread the cause of Law. Converting a Chaotic tribe of Orc raiders into a Lawful just society? Thats the ULTIMATE of good and law. Seeing to the fosterage of a orc baby, to be raised in the preisthood of its church and seeing said Orc rise to become a Paladin itself? GOOD baby!

Ithaeur

04-01-2007, 08:48 AM

I must agree that by standard definitions, both in philosophy and outside, "good" means "what one ought to do" and evil means "what one ought not to do"
Yes. The D&D alignments do not directly map onto these; that's why they should always be capitalized. For example, many, if not most, moral systems say "Thou shall not kill", or something along those lines; in D&D, killing someone is not by itself an Evil act, and can indeed be unequivocally Good act, if the someone really needs to be killed (ie. is a demon or an undead necromancer).

It doesn't seem to mean that the definitions need to change. Most Christians think that God can can get an objective reading of whether someone is good or evil, and most people think there is an objective fact of the matter, even if we can't detect it mechanically. No part of the usual definitions of good and evil seem to require anything regarding measurability.
The thing is, in Christianity God is, indeed, an external, objective observer who decides on good and evil. But in D&D, Good and Evil are objective in the same way that positive or negative electric charges are, independent of any observer or higher power. Which is very different from the real world.

Furthermore, most Christians will say that even if God can objectively know whether someone is good or evil, us mortals cannot do that. In D&D, you can find it out.

A disagreement over definition isn't a substantive disagreement - its just a matter of different conventions. But for the sake of understanding each other, lets use standard definitions.
Unfortunately, it will lead to confusion. The alignment Good is not necessarily morally desirable; the alignment Evil is not necessarily morally undesirable. It depends on your morals.

Noliar

04-01-2007, 09:16 AM

Whenever I get confused about D&D alignment morality, I just imagine Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Ghandi arm wrestling shirtless on the back of a killer whale.

Ghandi would get pwned - Abe Lincoln was over 6' and a respected catch as catch can wrestler while Ghandi was a tiny little pacifist who kept starving himself. Mohandas's long lost brother Snake on the other hand...

hackmastergeneral

04-01-2007, 10:35 AM

There is a great deal of objectivity in D&D, but there is a lot of subjectivity as well.

A neutral cleric of an evil god, for example, radiates evil like an evil outsider. But they are commited not to evil, but to neutrality. Whereas a lawful evil cleric of a LN god radiates evil, but apparently less than the CN cleric of a CE god.

How does one judge? If the CN cleric has never commited an evil act in their life (A cleric of Umberlee, for example, who is dedicated to the chaos and capricious nature of the ocean, but not the evil aspects of Umberlee), they still radiate strong evil.

The Realms, as a whole, puts a lot of subjectivity into the equation. Good people worship evil gods - if you travel the oceans for a living, you'd better pray to Umberlee. Good rogues regularily worship Mask, as he is the god of Thieves and Rogues. Can you slaughter the entire parish of Mask or Umberlee?

I let alignment issues be dictated by the players. Tromping through a dungeon and killing inhabitants and taking their stuff is the expected norm. Thus, I don't push the alignment issue much. But refusing a surrender, and then killing the unarmed and prostrate foe is certainly not a good act. Going out of your way to hunt down and slaughter an orc village is not what I would expect a group of adventurers to do - not good ones anyway.

And, again, I consider Paladins to be the epitome of good and law. Thus, they are here to uphold those to the highest degree, and must be exemplars of those traits, evn to their own detriment.

But I don't actively try to screw paladins. But if a player continuously commits acts I have told him in the past are in violation of his paladin oaths, because he doesn't agree with me, well, thats just too bad.

The key crux of the arguement is are humanoid races, such as goblins and drow, inherantly evil? I don't think they are. I think they SKEW towards evil, and their societies may, again, trend towards evil, but I don't think you can say every single solitary orc or kobold is evil.

If everything were that simple, why don't cities just set up high level clerics at the gates, and detect the alignment of everyone who walks through the gates, and kill those who ping "evil"?

Old Geezer

04-01-2007, 01:30 PM

Task, tsk, tsk.

People, people, people. I guess your old Uncle Geezer needs to 'splain the situation to you.

Good, Evil, and the rest, are not moral stances.

They are flavors. And nobody likes their own flavor. And the farther they are from your flavor, the tastier you find them.

Orc, both nutritious and delicious.

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 01:46 PM

That may be true for some people, but it's not clear how general that is. Certainly lots of evil gets done by people who not only claim to be good but plausibly think they are.

Correct, but it is not necessary that Evil people think of themselves as Good and given the definition provided by the SRD, many of them would be hard pressed to do so. There are certainly cases of people who have done Evil for Good reasons and nothing prevents that from happening in D&D, either. Remember, what we are talking about here are people and cultures who are Evil as a goal, not an unfortunate side-effect. In other words, Evil cultures don't burn people because they think they are witches and believe it is a greater Good for society. They burn people because they enjoy the sound watching them squirm and scream in pain or, at the very least, have no compunctions about doing so.

Part of all this is different definitions of good (the old Chinese legal system required confessions from suspects to officially punish them, which obviously makes a kind of sense, but quickly led to torture to get the confessions out.) Part of it is "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions", as shadier and shadier actions start to seem justified for the sake of the Greater Good.

Correct. But remember that the D&D alignment system has 3 alignments on the Good to Evil scale (Neutral is between the two) and, given the definitions, it's possible to argue that killing for pragmatic reasons is not necessarily Evil, though it's not Good either.

And even "base criminals" might, in many cases, try to justify things to themselves: "I need this to survive." "Society is unjust anyway." "I only steal from people outside my tribe."

In D&D terms, "I need this to survive," is clearly Neutral and I think they'd have no trouble identifying their arguments as such given the D&D alignment definitions. That's a great argument for why they are not Evil but it's not a compelling argument that they are Good, even in the real world.

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 01:54 PM

I'm not the only one to think that "Good" is equivalent to "What one ought to do." In the history of philosophy (and ignoring some subtleties that I don't think matter here), I've got Plato on my side, and Thomas Hobbes, and Kant, and all contemporary non-cognitivists and expressivists. A few virtue ethicists disagree (McIntyre, I think, and Philippa Foot) but they are a distinct minority.

Yes, but that's not how D&D defines "Good". In other words, I have the 3.5 SRD on my side. I can also give you plenty of examples of people in both history and the sort of fiction that RPGs draw on that are not Good and will readily admit that they aren't Good.

Why not? If you agree that the answer to "What ought I to do" is relative to one's position on the graph, then clearly it is a relative system, not an absolute one - although it is an objective, not subjective, relativism.

Why not? Because that's not what "Good" means in D&D. Can you break the D&D alignment system by imposing a morally relative definition of "Good" on D&D? Of course you can. But you claimed that "there is a contradiction". There isn't any contradiction unless you force one by defining "Good" in a way contradictory to the way the D&D 3.5 SRD defines it, in which case you are forcing the contradiction. It's not inherent in the alignment system.

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 01:57 PM

And yes, this leads into a situation where Good is not necessarily objectively better than Evil; one or another may be pragmatically superior, depending on many things.

In pure pragmatic terms, Neutral is the superior alignment and, in fact, I tend to read the word "Neutral" in both directions as "Pragmatic".

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 02:01 PM

I must agree that by standard definitions, both in philosophy and outside, "good" means "what one ought to do" and evil means "what one ought not to do"

I don't think that's true. You can find plenty of examples in both history (e.g., Curtis LeMay, who commented that if the US lost WW2 that he would deserve to be tried for war crimes for the firebombing of Japan) and fiction (e.g., the Operative in Serenity), as well as psychopaths in the criminal justice system who will readily admit that they are not Good people and sometimes even that they are very bad people. Many people seem to have no problem differentiating being good from being pragmatic. It's also why we have the phrase "a necessary evil".

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 02:12 PM

On the other side, in my mind GOOD doesn't commit mass genocide. Good does not use the tactics of evil to advance the cause of good. Period.

So you don't think there is any difference between the mass genocide of innocent civilians and the mass genocide of an inherently Evil and malicious species of creatures?

For comparison, I could argue that it's Evil to make a species or organism extinct but would it really be Evil to make smallpox extinct? Would it be Evil to make HIV extinct?

Killing an evil orc who has surrendered is evil. Period. Killing babies is evil. Period.

So orcs who have slaughtered villages full of innocent humans know that if they surrender, a Good Paladin won't kill them. So they surrender. Then what? What does the Good Paladin do with them?

You wanna do those things? Pick Neutral. Idealism, not Pragmatism. Sure, there are REASONS to kill those babies, but none of them are GOOD.

I think that's a fairly good argument to make, actually, but I think it defines Good more tightly than the SRD definition (which makes a distinction between the innocent and not innocent) and would lead toward a more pacifistic definition of Good. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes being Good about as impractical as being Evil is.

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 02:19 PM

For example, many, if not most, moral systems say "Thou shall not kill", or something along those lines;

No, they tend to say, "Thou shall not murder". Not the same thing. The D&D 3.5 SRD definition makes a similar distinction when it uses the word "innocent" in the alignment descriptions. The distinction recognizes the difference between pacifism and accepting that killing is sometimes warranted.

(FYI, if anyone wants to claim, on the basis of the King James Version of the Bible that it says "kill", not "murder", I suggest (A) taking a look at a modern translation and (B) taking a look at what "killing" meant in the time of King James.)

Lev Lafayette

04-01-2007, 07:34 PM

Personally, I think the AD&D1e alignment system ain't too shoddy as far as universal perspectives go. Of course, it is certainly true that most people have allegiences to their family, lord, king and god before such abstract principles (all of which declare themselves to be on the side of the gods, on the side of good etc).

My reading of it is that the good/evil dichotomy is not culturally relative and is based on principles universal to all species. On the very good extreme are those who will not harm others against their informed consent. Heck even the Gygax says so himself in the DMG "Each creature is entitled to life, relative freedom and the prospect of happiness"; that's supposed to be the definition of good alignment (even if the EGG totally contradicted himself in the enWorld thread).

On the very evil extreme are those who will cause extreme harm others contrary to their express will. And as they say in Kill Puppies for Satan, stretching out the torture psychologically causes the best harm.

On the other axis is the law/chaos dichotomy. This, to me, is how closely one follows the laws and customs of one's society. Law-abiding straight citizens versus bohemian anarchists and arts students if you like.

Incurable evil? I don't buy it. A creature can't be sapient and incurably evil at the same time. Even an Orc can, and should, and will be saved; and anyone who goes around killing baby orcs is, imo, EVIL.

So says;

Sir duc Sean of the Innocent, Paladin of Robert, Count of Mortain (1071 AD)

thurgon

04-01-2007, 07:39 PM

In real world, the philosophers can't get an objective reading of whether someone's good or evil; in a by-the-book D&D world, you can measure someone's "alignment charge". This means that a lot of real-world philosophy is going to be irrelevant.

But not Plato's arguments that no rational being can will what it believes to be evil, which doesn't depend upon any assumption as to the possibility or impossibility of moral telepathy.

I can also give you plenty of examples of people in both history and the sort of fiction that RPGs draw on that are not Good and will readily admit that they aren't Good.

You can find plenty of examples in both history (e.g., Curtis LeMay, who commented that if the US lost WW2 that he would deserve to be tried for war crimes for the firebombing of Japan) and fiction (e.g., the Operative in Serenity), as well as psychopaths in the criminal justice system who will readily admit that they are not Good people and sometimes even that they are very bad people. Many people seem to have no problem differentiating being good from being pragmatic. It's also why we have the phrase "a necessary evil".

These cases raise a number of complexities.

First, the standard analysis of cases where people assert that evil, not good, is what they aim at in action, is that they are using "Good" and "Evil" in an "inverted commas" sense ie to denote that which is conventionally judged good or evil. They are not necessarily endorsing that conventinal judgement. If this analysis is correct, it leaves Plato's contention intact.

Second, in what sense does the firebomber, or the psychopath, think that he did what he ought to do? The paradox I drew attention to only arises if one asserts both "I ought to do X" and "X is evil" (or, perahps, "X is not good").

Third, there is the literature on "Dirty Hands" by Walzer and others, which discusses cases like the bombing of civilians in the Second World War. In trying to make sense of the came that one really can be obliged to do evil, these philosophers introduce dimensions of relativity (namely, relativity of obligation to political role). I don't really see this as a counterexample to my claim that D&D alignment contains a tension - dirty hands theory doesn't deny the tension, it just tries to explain it - nor that it entails a type of relativity.

Can you break the D&D alignment system by imposing a morally relative definition of "Good" on D&D? Of course you can. But you claimed that "there is a contradiction". There isn't any contradiction unless you force one by defining "Good" in a way contradictory to the way the D&D 3.5 SRD defines it, in which case you are forcing the contradiction. It's not inherent in the alignment system.

I have not denied that D&D morality is objective. I have only denied that it is absolute. These are not equivalent concepts. Eg the truth of the sentence "I am hungry" is objective, but not absolute, as it's truth is relative to the hunger of the one who asserts it at the time that they assert it.

The contradiction I suggested was the paradox of the claim "I ought to do what is Evil" which follows from D&D's attempt to combine a descriptive and a commitment approach to alignment: the latter makes "ought" statements relative to alignment, leading to the paradox that a statement "I ought to do evil, by killing these innocent children" is true when uttered by an assassin (although false when uttered by a paladin). This has nothing to do with imposing a morally relative definition of "Good". It arises, rather, from holding the meaning of "Good" fixed (as per the objective definition in the SRD) and noting the implications of this within a framework of "alignment as commitment".

There are three ways I can see to try and make the paradox go away. One is to abandon the commitment aspect of alignment altogether, and just use it as a descriptive shorthand (as another poster suggested).

A second would be to embrace a coherent relativist or expressivist framework for alignment. But this would be a more radical change to the game, which BoVD canvasses briefly but does not do the work of fleshing out enough to really be put into place.

A third would be to abandon Plato's moral psychology, and simply allow that some people, like orcs and assassins, truly assert "I ought to do evil!" The problem with this approach was pointed out in Dragon 101, in the article "For King and Country", namely, that it posits a moral pscyhology that is radically deviant from any actual or plausible human psychology (short of the extremely psychopathic).

When we think of great villains of history (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Franco, Eichmann, just to name a few from the 20th century) they did not have this sort of psychology. If we imagine an orcish society, most of whose members (under this approach) would have this psychology, it becomes an anthropological mystery how the society can even survive day-to-day, let alone endure long enough to pose an enduring and serious threat to other peoples.

This may not be an issue for a purely kick-in-the-door D&D game, but it is for one which tries to construct a more sophisticated gameworld with social and political depth, and characters with genuine inner lives.

thurgon

04-01-2007, 07:52 PM

Yes. The D&D alignments do not directly map onto these; that's why they should always be capitalized. For example, many, if not most, moral systems say "Thou shall not kill", or something along those lines; in D&D, killing someone is not by itself an Evil act, and can indeed be unequivocally Good act, if the someone really needs to be killed (ie. is a demon or an undead necromancer).

Most moral systems actually don't forbid all killing, although some may posit it as an ideal (making pacifisim superogatory, not obligatory). Hence my earlier reference to the theory of the just war, which (being a theory which includes medieval Catholic thought among its origins) seems the right model for a paladin.

As an exemplar, for a paladin much which would be superogatory for others comes closer to being obligatory. This includes not taking the easy way out, but making genuine sacrifices (or taking genuine risks) in pursuit of his or her ideals. But (given that paladins are warriors) it would obviously not include pacifism. King Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad, Percival or even (to draw on historical figures) the Knights Templar and Hospitaller all seem to give the right sort of model.

in my mind GOOD doesn't commit mass genocide. Good does not use the tactics of evil to advance the cause of good. Period.

Killing an evil orc who has surrendered is evil. Period. Killing babies is evil. Period.

You wanna do those things? Pick Neutral.

Paladins are supposed to be EXEMPLARS of Good and Law. They encourage the spread of both by leading by example - they are not holy ass-kickers. Well, they are, but thats not ALL they are. A Paladin, in D&D (not FR) can commit himself to the ideal of Good and Law, not just to a particular Deity. A Paladin must be the epitome of both Good and Law in the world. Slaughtering every orc you come across is NOT Good, nor does it spread the cause of Law. Converting a Chaotic tribe of Orc raiders into a Lawful just society? Thats the ULTIMATE of good and law.

These all seem sensible to me as ways to model paladinhood, and are broadly consistent with the actual approach to killing that most contemporary deontological moral philosophers would take. My only quibble would be a preference for exressing the paladin's ideals in more conventional language: "justice", "valour", "honesty" etc, rather than "good" and "law". This then means, that when they get into an argument with an assassin, and the assassin articulates her values in terms of "efficiency", "effectiveness", "minimising risk", etc, there is scope for a genuine moral debate between the two, rather than the matter being already foreclosed by the very language used. What could be more inane than an assassin who, when asked what values guide her deeds, has no answer to give but "Evil"?

thurgon

04-01-2007, 08:02 PM

The alignment Good is not necessarily morally desirable; the alignment Evil is not necessarily morally undesirable. It depends on your morals.

Good, Evil, and the rest, are not moral stances.

They are flavors. And nobody likes their own flavor. And the farther they are from your flavor, the tastier you find them.

Orc, both nutritious and delicious.

Right. This is the commitment approach to alignment, taken seriously and to its extreme of the "team" model of alignment.

It is workable, I think, but it does not fit with any sort of conventional theology of the medieval Christian or Tolkeinesque fantasy (which is in any event infused with pre-Vatican II Catholicism) variety.

For example, on this approach, when asked why he won't murder an innocent peasant to achieve some tactical advantage, the paladin can only answer "Because that is against my team rules". But when asked why his team rules are better than the orcish team's rules, he can't give much of an answer, because the language of ordinary moral argument has been neutered, and turned into a series of team badges.

Instead of moral evaluation, the paladin might appeal to aesthetic evaluation - he finds his team's method more appealing or pleasing in a certain respect. I think this sort of aesthetic approach works better for "law" vs "chaos" (think Neitzche, or Lovecraft and Moorcock) rather than "good" vs "evil" - can we really imagine anyone but the most depraved psychopath finding suffering more attractive than wellbeing? Another respect in which OD&D and Basic/Expert may have been a more sensible set of rules than AD&D.

Albert

04-01-2007, 09:01 PM

People who admire Good think in terms of Good-Neutral-Evil, People who admire Evil think in terms of Sucker-????-Competition.

Likewise, people who admire Law think Law-Neutral-Chaos, people who admire Chaos think Oppressive-????-Free.

Personally, I like to have the Good forces stronger(if nothing else, the fundamental intelligences of existence would rather be governed by a softy), but less willing to bring the full weight of their power onto a situation because of the Life>Liberty>Happiness priority tree (which would obviously exist to allow minds to develop and thus be able to more fully experience happiness)

-Albert.

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 09:38 PM

Incurable evil? I don't buy it. A creature can't be sapient and incurably evil at the same time.

Yes, actually the evidence suggests that a sapient creature could be be incurably evil. We have examples of human beings that pretty much exactly that problem (e.g., violent psychopaths and violent sex offenders).

The latest research on both moral decision making and psychopathic personalities suggest that normal human moral decision rely on emotional responses and not simply rational thought, and that a person who does not have the emotional responses required to have a "conscience" or feel "remorse" and who instead has emotional responses that make them enjoy hurting others will be evil and effectively incurably so.

If you are really interested in understanding how someone can be both sapient and irredeemably evil, these articles are a good place to start:

http://discovermagazine.com/2004/apr/whose-life-would-you-save/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/040311072248.htm
http://psychological.com/april_01_newsletter.htm
http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19940101-000027.html
http://www.hum.utah.edu/philosophy/faculty/nichols/Papers/PsychopathsFinal.htm

Please bear in mind that being a psychopath, alone, does not mean that a person will automatically do criminal or evil things and Dr. Robert Hare does believe that it may be possible to help psychopaths avoid doing criminal or Evil things, but I do think these articles demonstrate how and why a sapient being might be Evil and how they might be incurably so. How do you change a person who has no conscience, feels no remorse, doesn't want to change because they like the way they are, and enjoys hurting or killing others?

thurgon

04-01-2007, 09:53 PM

People who admire Good think in terms of Good-Neutral-Evil, People who admire Evil think in terms of Sucker-????-Competition.

Likewise, people who admire Law think Law-Neutral-Chaos, people who admire Chaos think Oppressive-????-Free.

Seems OK to me. Once Evil people aren't using Good and Evil as labels, then we're into a consistent application of the "descriptive alignment" model.

Personally, I like to have the Good forces stronger(if nothing else, the fundamental intelligences of existence would rather be governed by a softy), but less willing to bring the full weight of their power onto a situation because of the Life>Liberty>Happiness priority tree (which would obviously exist to allow minds to develop and thus be able to more fully experience happiness).

This fits with a lot of theological tradition and fantasy literature. It also fits with our contemporary mythologies about the Second World War, terrorism and (perhaps to a lesser extent) Vietnam (whether or not those mythologies are true is a different matter that I leave to one side). So it should be fairly easy to implement in-game.

thurgon

04-01-2007, 09:56 PM

Yes, actually the evidence suggests that a sapient creature could be be incurably evil. We have examples of human beings that pretty much exactly that problem (e.g., violent psychopaths and violent sex offenders).

<snip>

Please bear in mind that being a psychopath, alone, does not mean that a person will automatically do criminal or evil things and Dr. Robert Hare does believe that it may be possible to help psychopaths avoid doing criminal or Evil things, but I do think these articles demonstrate how and why a sapient being might be Evil and how they might be incurably so. How do you change a person who has no conscience, feels no remorse, doesn't want to change because they like the way they are, and enjoys hurting or killing others?

If this is the correct model for D&D Evil, then the puzzle posed by D&D Orcs is, "How does a society made up such people actually function?"

If we handwave this question because it's D&D, then presumably we can handwave the question of where the orce babies are also, and just populate our dungeons with orc warriors. But once we stick in orcish villages, and make the players worry about the non-combatants, then these other questions of sociology and psychology arise.

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 10:13 PM

But not Plato's arguments that no rational being can will what it believes to be evil, which doesn't depend upon any assumption as to the possibility or impossibility of moral telepathy.

Then I'll have to say that I think Plato is either wrong or using "good" and "evil" in a sense different than the sense used by D&D.

First, the standard analysis of cases where people assert that evil, not good, is what they aim at in action, is that they are using "Good" and "Evil" in an "inverted commas" sense ie to denote that which is conventionally judged good or evil. They are not necessarily endorsing that conventinal judgement. If this analysis is correct, it leaves Plato's contention intact.

I don't see evidence that they are using it in an "inverted commas" sense. In general, it's an acknowledgment of the conventional judgment while not feeling bound to comply with it, feeling justified on pragmatic ground to ignore it, or lacking the willpower to live up to it.

Second, in what sense does the firebomber, or the psychopath, think that he did what he ought to do? The paradox I drew attention to only arises if one asserts both "I ought to do X" and "X is evil" (or, perahps, "X is not good").

The psychopath (see links provided in a previous reply) does not worry about what they "ought to do" in the sense that a person who has a conscience or remorse normally would. So the question is irrelevant to them. They often understand the conventional judgment of Good and Evil well enough to put on a good act for others but don't feel bound to follow those judgments. In other words, they can identify that they are Evil and don't care that they are.

Third, there is the literature on "Dirty Hands" by Walzer and others, which discusses cases like the bombing of civilians in the Second World War. In trying to make sense of the came that one really can be obliged to do evil, these philosophers introduce dimensions of relativity (namely, relativity of obligation to political role). I don't really see this as a counterexample to my claim that D&D alignment contains a tension - dirty hands theory doesn't deny the tension, it just tries to explain it - nor that it entails a type of relativity.

That the person can self-identify that the bombing of civilians is seen by the conventional judgment of society as Evil and does it anyway, suggests that a person an identify something that they are doing as being Evil, regardless of how they rationalize it or justify it. In other words, the bombing of civilians is never Good. At best, it is a necessary Evil which, in D&D terms is pragmatic and Neutral (so long as it is done reluctantly).

I have not denied that D&D morality is objective. I have only denied that it is absolute. These are not equivalent concepts. Eg the truth of the sentence "I am hungry" is objective, but not absolute, as it's truth is relative to the hunger of the one who asserts it at the time that they assert it.

It's not difficult to adjust D&D's morality to be absolute, in my opinion. I think it's likely purposely imprecise to allow GMs to interpret it in several different ways, but a GM can easily clarify it to be absolute, if they want.

The contradiction I suggested was the paradox of the claim "I ought to do what is Evil" which follows from D&D's attempt to combine a descriptive and a commitment approach to alignment: the latter makes "ought" statements relative to alignment, leading to the paradox that a statement "I ought to do evil, by killing these innocent children" is true when uttered by an assassin (although false when uttered by a paladin). This has nothing to do with imposing a morally relative definition of "Good". It arises, rather, from holding the meaning of "Good" fixed (as per the objective definition in the SRD) and noting the implications of this within a framework of "alignment as commitment".

I think the problem lies in your assumption that there is a "ought", which implies a tension between what someone wants to do and what they should do. An Evil character has no such tension. They want to do Evil and don't care about what they should do in a broader societal context. The idea that a character will consider what they "ought" to do morally makes assumptions about what it means to make moral decisions that do not necessarily hold true for Evil characters.

A third would be to abandon Plato's moral psychology, and simply allow that some people, like orcs and assassins, truly assert "I ought to do evil!" The problem with this approach was pointed out in Dragon 101, in the article "For King and Country", namely, that it posits a moral pscyhology that is radically deviant from any actual or plausible human psychology (short of the extremely psychopathic).

Actually, it's not radically deviant from any actual or plausible human psychology and some researchers estimate that up to 4% or more of the human population is psychopathic. And once we start dealing with orcs, goblins, and other Evil creatures, why should we feel compelled to assume that they follow normal human psychology?

When we think of great villains of history (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Franco, Eichmann, just to name a few from the 20th century) they did not have this sort of psychology. If we imagine an orcish society, most of whose members (under this approach) would have this psychology, it becomes an anthropological mystery how the society can even survive day-to-day, let alone endure long enough to pose an enduring and serious threat to other peoples.

It's not that difficult to imagine. Really. Do some reading on psychopaths and how they manage in the real world. Also, it's possible to be cruel and abusive without being murderous every time. It's not like psychopathic serial killers kill every person that they meet.

This may not be an issue for a purely kick-in-the-door D&D game, but it is for one which tries to construct a more sophisticated gameworld with social and political depth, and characters with genuine inner lives.

Correct. And I think if you do some research on psychopaths and how humans make moral decisions, it's not that difficult to imagine sentient creatures that are irredeemably Evil and manage to not only survive day-to-day but threaten others. Part of the key is to understand that psychopaths don't respond to fear the way normal people do, either.

Albert

04-01-2007, 10:19 PM

If this is the correct model for D&D Evil, then the puzzle posed by D&D Orcs is, "How does a society made up such people actually function?"

If we handwave this question because it's D&D, then presumably we can handwave the question of where the orce babies are also, and just populate our dungeons with orc warriors. But once we stick in orcish villages, and make the players worry about the non-combatants, then these other questions of sociology and psychology arise.

For the most part, such societies _don't_ function too well. The top orc can personally beat up any other orc, so he's in charge. Right up until 2 orcs team up to get him. So you get a bunch of alliances based on mutual threat.

Of course, if orcs also have the usual anger management problem, they can't sustain big societies because eventually things get too complicated and they just start smashing things out of sheer rage.

'Orc' societies wind up small, with 50 as a soft cap. More if they are being controlled by really powerful leaders. Sauron-level demigods can actually enforce discipline on massive armies of orcs.

'Drow' societies get ever more elaborate as people make and break alliances until a big event brings the whole thing crashing down. If you show up as 'Competitor' on the Detect Alignment magic, they treat you as a threat/tool/opportunity. If you show up as a 'Sucker', they don't waste time trying to reconcile your inexplicable actions to their worldview, they just fleece you and stick a knife in your back.

-Albert

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 10:25 PM

If this is the correct model for D&D Evil, then the puzzle posed by D&D Orcs is, "How does a society made up such people actually function?"

My suggestion is to look at how psychopaths function in society. But even without that, I don't think it's a puzzle.

If we handwave this question because it's D&D, then presumably we can handwave the question of where the orce babies are also, and just populate our dungeons with orc warriors. But once we stick in orcish villages, and make the players worry about the non-combatants, then these other questions of sociology and psychology arise.

Look carefully at dysfunctional human families and social groups, not just psychopaths (though they sometimes work in pairs and groups), and you'll find plenty of models to work with. The Manson "family"? Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka? The Moche? Just because you are Evil doesn't mean that you kill everyone that you meet. And, yes, it would be horrible to be an Orc living in an Evil society that offers little more than survival and abuse, which kinda puts the decision of what to do with orc babies into even sharper contrast, I think.

Albert

04-01-2007, 10:28 PM

Seems OK to me. Once Evil people aren't using Good and Evil as labels, then we're into a consistent application of the "descriptive alignment" model.

The other part is that each side finds the other side's labels to be equally offensive. (Except for the others who find humor in throwing the other side's labels into their faces.) And their take on morality places their kind of people at the top and their opposites at the bottom.

But I still need terms for Neutral from Evil point of view and the Chaotic point of view.

-Albert

Albert

04-01-2007, 10:41 PM

And, yes, it would be horrible to be an Orc living in an Evil society that offers little more than survival and abuse, which kinda puts the decision of what to do with orc babies into even sharper contrast, I think.

Which is similar to a point I made, once, to a paladin character who was trying to decide if she wanted to stay a Paladin (but to a faith whose priests had fallen into evil) or serve the forces of darkness. She had an angel and a devil discussing the point with her.

Basically, the angel decided to show her the outcome of her 4 most probable paths.

The first, if she renounced her religion but tried to live a Good life, was to be taken up into the heavens when she died, but as a minor spirit, fading into the bliss and eventually reincarnating. The second, if she turned Evil but didn't embrace the darkness, was to be dragged down to the hells, to be tortured until there was nothing but pain in her soul, to eventually fade into the cleansing agonies and reincarnate.

The other choices were to become a Significant Power upon death - either a self-aware angel (a full ego is not something most angels have naturally) or a potential fiend-lord (most fiends likewise lack egos, although the rulers all have them). Either way, she would be beautiful, wonderful, awesome, and terrible. The difference was that she could rise faster in power as a fiend, but at the constant risk of being attacked and bound by something far more powerful; whereas as a angel she was in little personal danger(and could count on rescue if needed), but for eons the greater exercises of power would be at the bidding of her ruler, and would be a matter of channelling his/her energy.

-Albert

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 10:42 PM

'Orc' societies wind up small, with 50 as a soft cap. More if they are being controlled by really powerful leaders. Sauron-level demigods can actually enforce discipline on massive armies of orcs.

I think that the size of an 'orc' society will depend on what it has to prey on. If they have ample human villages to raid and plunder -- to satisfy their urges on and to get supplies -- and can keep their attention turned outward instead of preying on each other, I think their society can get fairly large. The problem occurs when they are starved of victims and turn on their own, at which point anything larger than your soft cap becomes a problem.

'Drow' societies get ever more elaborate as people make and break alliances until a big event brings the whole thing crashing down. If you show up as 'Competitor' on the Detect Alignment magic, they treat you as a threat/tool/opportunity. If you show up as a 'Sucker', they don't waste time trying to reconcile your inexplicable actions to their worldview, they just fleece you and stick a knife in your back.

Good characters make good slaves. Not only are they less likely to murder you and easier to control with threats (e.g., "We'll kill this innocent girl if you don't behave."), but they would likely be more satisfying to torment and abuse.

John Morrow

04-01-2007, 10:49 PM

Which is similar to a point I made, once, to a paladin character who was trying to decide if she wanted to stay a Paladin (but to a faith whose priests had fallen into evil) or serve the forces of darkness. She had an angel and a devil discussing the point with her.

I find it curious that the offers, as you've described them, revolved around what it would mean for the Paladin and not others. Since Good involves making personal sacrifices for others, if she was more concerned with her own fate than the braoder implications of her choice, I'd argue that she'd already slipped into Neutral.

thurgon

04-01-2007, 10:53 PM

Look carefully at dysfunctional human families and social groups, not just psychopaths (though they sometimes work in pairs and groups), and you'll find plenty of models to work with. The Manson "family"? Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka? The Moche?

But there is at least a plausible argument that psychopaths can function only because they are parasitic on the non-pscyopathic majority. This doesn't on its own show that a fully-pschopathic society is possible - and I still find it hard to imagine. What "dysfunctional" implies, after all, is that if you had only these elements then the system would not be functioning.

Btw, the paper from the Monist that you referred to (http://www.hum.utah.edu/philosophy/f...pathsFinal.htm) is interesting. It seems to support my position on some points; in particular, it suggests that psychopaths do use moral language (especially in the context of "ought" judgements) only in an "inverted commas" sense (p 295 in the journal imprint).

It also suggests that psychopaths are a counterexample to standard rationalist accounts of moral objectivity. To my mind, if we are accepting that "Evil" in D&D corresponds broadly to the psychopathic, then that suggests we have to abandon a rationalist account of morality (and thus, I would have to abandon my view that "I ought to do Evil" is paradoxical). Philosophically, that would seem to leave a type of hypothetical-imperative virtue ethics intact, and also a type of Neitzchean aestheticism.

Applying this conclusion to the game, I see the two most obvious alternatives as either:

*Alignment purely as description, a mechanical short-hand for in-game behaviour and outlook (so the in-game psychopaths don't have to think of themselves as Evil at all, but rather just refrain from moral judgement);

*Alignments purely as teams, with the rules not being moral rules at all, but rather conventions setting out the constraints of team-membership (so the in-game psychopaths can choose the team that fits with their aesthetic and prudential sensibilities, without having to concede that they are violating any binding moral principle in so choosing).

I still don't see how the current approach of D&D, which is to take a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B, can be rendered consistent.

Just because you are Evil doesn't mean that you kill everyone that you meet. And, yes, it would be horrible to be an Orc living in an Evil society that offers little more than survival and abuse, which kinda puts the decision of what to do with orc babies into even sharper contrast, I think.

I guess so. It certainly doesn't suggest to me that we have moral permission to kill them. I still think just war theory is the most relevant real-world moral thought to bring to bear on this paladin's dilemma.