Post originally by Stephenls at 2004-01-14 16:39:09
Converted from Phorums BB System

woodelf wrote:

<I>> Well, i do. Why is it evil to have sex with
> a corpse? Icky and creepy? Sure.
> Unsanitary? I don't know, but i suspect
> after the first few hours, yes. But evil?
> Who or what is being harmed?

> Now, in a fantasy world, this one can
> easily be justified--the spirit lives on,
> and still has some sort of jurisdiction
> over the body, so it's basically rape,
> unless you get the consent of the deceased.
> But such justification needs to be put
> forth, and is dependent on other things
> (like whether or not spirits live on, and
> whether or not they are in any way still
> connected to the body).</I>

This is where you start to run into problems with D&D at a basic level. It purports to be a generic system for fantasy roleplaying, but actually a lot of the mechanical absolutes are tied into a very specific set of campaign assumptions. And you get situations like this one where they can't actually <I>say</I> those campaign assumptions (like what happens to souls after they die), but they still talk about the consequences as if they were absolutes.

This problem is basically unavoidable, though. Even GURPS suffers it -- take a look at the point cost of being a cybershell in GURPS Transhuman Space and you'll find it costs way more points than it should, because being a cybershell requires a bunch of traits that got assigned point values, and the THS authors aren't allowed to say "when you're playing THS, the following point costs are adjusted."

Working around it is diffucult, but not impossible if you're willing to just ignore stuff.
--
Stephenls
Geek